text:
Perhaps most shocking are items such as the list submitted by D.C. Attorney Ronald L. Drake who decided he wasn't being paid on time by the D.C. schools and thus raised his rates retroactively from $390/hour to $425/hour, submitting as evidence the names, home addresses, ages and social security numbers of 67 children.
I hope every judge in the District of Columbia knows about that. What's even more humorous is that Carl Malamud includes a hyperlink [findlaw.com] in that letter to FindLaw in case you wish to contact Mr. Drake.
And the response informs Malamud that it's taken care of [scribd.com] with the SSNs redacted and the documents removed from public display. I wonder how long public.resource.org and Scribd have to demonstrate their usefulness before federal court documents are uploaded there by default in addition to being available through the court?
On a related note, I read in a Google blog [blogspot.com] that you can now release your works under Creative Commons on books.google.com and they happen to have Carl Malamud's A World's Fair for the Global Village [google.com] available for download. And if you wish to release your works under the Creative Commons, Google will host them.
This is wonderful news. Now I can save $2.40 on my various sexual harassment lawsuits.
It's not the amount that matters here, it's the principle. Public records should be public, and by that I mean freely available and easily searchable. And "easily searchable" is actually an intrenational standard in the age of Google.
The thing is, pacer records are intended to be public and supposed to be free. Lieberman has asked about this before [arstechnica.com]. The creation of documents online was supposed to make them free eventually, specifically.
hese sort of redaction failures are important to know about; however, Malamud's letter to the clerk of court betrays a severe deficiency in his understanding of the courts and how they work. The Clerk of Court cannot redact filings. It just does not work that way. Filers must (and are required to) redact filings. The Clerk of Court must also accept any filing. S/he can't turn it away because of a defect in form or substance. The most the clerk can do is notify chambers (the judge) of the issue. The judge can then order the filing sealed as well as a redacted filing from the originator of the document.
In addition, contrary to everything you are reading in this thread, court opinions are free on PACER. Anything that sets forth the reasoned opinion of the court is not charged. Most PACER fees come from people reading mundane scheduling orders and routine motions made by counsel. Yes -- these should be (and are) available to the public. They are even free if you visit the courthouse -- but the system that runs them did not appear out of thin air. PACER fees *do not* pay staff salaries or local court operational costs. They are used to maintain the infrastructure and development of the Case Management and Electronic Case Files system. That infratructure is complex and the software systems used to run and maintain the systems is under constant development to handle new requirements -- be they legal requirements or operational requirements.
The biggest problem with Malamud's project (and this plugin) is not the archival of public documents. I don't think anyone has a problem with that. The biggest problem is that it is woefully incomplete and someone might be under the mistaken impression that their project is anywhere near what Malamud claims it is. Their "vast repository' of documents contains fewer that 20% of the number of filings in one medium to large court out of 96 district courts (let alone Bankruptcy courts, which have much higher volume). The amount of actual data available from PACER dwarfs their available resources and is growing at a geometric pace compared to their relatively static growth. Take a look at their repository [resource.org] and just imagine how much has changed since this small slice of the whole pie was carved out. There is no way a few public users can keep up with hundreds of attorneys filing thousands of documents each day in all these courts. It cannot be done that way -- and they should make it clear that this is resource is nothing more than a tiny window on the whole.
There is no way a few public users can keep up with hundreds of attorneys filing thousands of documents each day in all these courts.
And that right there, is a very sad fact that should never have been allowed to exist.
I would rather eliminate the res judicata that forces attorneys to unload a full larder of motions at trial just to make sure nothing gets locked out at appeal.
"I would rather eliminate the res judicata that forces attorneys to unload a full larder of motions at trial just to make sure nothing gets locked out at appeal."
That is just plain silly. If you didn't have res judicata, the attorneys would file even more paper in multiple lawsuits instead of just one lawsuit. Furthermore, the other side would never have the relief of knowing that the case is really over.
You don't want causes of action to be ZOMBIES that are never dead! You want finality!!!
True, which is why that elimination needs to be paired with a loser pays system.
I dunno but I'm not much of a fan of finality if it means that miscarriages of justice get set in stone.
The appeals process is a nice compromise except for the fact that even THEY are overburdened enough and often give the bird to any cases they don't care about.
To be clear, I only think that cases should be revisited when the one who wants to do so bears the cost and burden of proof.
Possible refund if he proves he was right.
And until such time as he proves his case, the other side doesn't even get bothered.
How does the other side not even get bothered without also granting them a chance to defend themselves?
I don't understand why there is a paywall in the first place. I thought all government records should be available for free through a FOIA request.
I don't understand why there is a paywall in the first place. I thought all government records should be available for free through a FOIA request.
They probably are, but FOIA is a long and timely process. Surely for court documents that do not require any review before release, there could be an easier way? From PACER's FAQ [uscourts.gov]:
Why are there user fees for PACER?
In 1988, the Judiciary sought funding through the appropriation process to establish the capability to provide electronic public access services. Rather than appropriating additional funds for this purpose, Congress specifically directed the Judiciary to fund that initiative through the collection of user fees. As a result, the program relies exclusively on fee revenue.
The fee is eight cents per page you wish to view. While I don't agree with this now, I could maybe see how in 1988 this nominal fee would be needed for the transfer of this data. Today, bandwidth is cheap for documents. Bring on the Firefox extension and public.resource.org hosting! I think they should allow a bidding contract with "free" being the only option
It's not just for bandwidth, but for the total maintenance of the system.
If you read deeper, there is a cap on fees per case of $2.40, so (using their example) if a case has 50 pages of documents, you would only need to pay $2.40 instead of the full $4.00.
I'm sure they would love someone to take this responsibility off their hands. Here's their FAQ for usage:
What are the acceptable uses of the data obtained from the PACER system?
The PACER system provides electronic access to case information from federal co
I think it makes sense. Instead of spending tax dollars on something very few people (in contrast to the total number of taxpayers,) it's paid with by a per-use fee. If anything there's probably more tax-paid government services that could be handled this way.
I think it makes sense. Instead of spending tax dollars on something very few people (in contrast to the total number of taxpayers,) it's paid with by a per-use fee. If anything there's probably more tax-paid government services that could be handled this way.
You are correct. But I think you're overlooking people that would benefit from this. People like you and I that might be good with Google and interested in generic Federal Court history, Academics looking to study it and so forth.
Check out this Ars Technica article from April entitled "The case against PACER: tearing down the courts' paywall" [arstechnica.com], it says:
An important obstacle to improving PACER is the court's myopic focus on the system's current users. A recent article in the federal courts' internal newsletter promised to "survey the courts, litigants, attorneys, the media, and bulk data collectors-the people who use PACER." Conspicuously absent from the list are academics, non-profit organizations, and members of the general public: groups that would benefit from a more open PACER but which are discouraged from participating by the paywall and primitive search tools.
While I agree that at first glance a select few need this service, I also recognize that there are a select few who would benefit greatly from removing the paywall. Now, we can't come up with cold hard numbers to monetarily weigh one group against the other and optimize our tax dollars. But we can all use tools like this Firefox extension to satisfy the tax payers and help out the academics and curious general public.
Wars, yeah, okay, but not laws.
I don't understand why there is a paywall in the first place. I thought all government records should be available for free through a FOIA request.
They probably are, but FOIA is a long and timely process.
FOIA only applies to the executive branch.
Today, bandwidth is cheap for documents. Bring on the Firefox extension and public.resource.org hosting! I think they should allow a bidding contract with "free" being the only option
Since bandwidth is cheap, why not just post a torrent of the archive? If they're required to collect fee's to cover the costs, they'll only need a few hundred dollars (?) and meet both the letter and spirit of the law. Then all the aggregaters like Google or Scribd or anyone else could do it without prior negotiation and contracts, etc...
FOIA requests can charge for the resources needed to comply with them.
FOIA is the Freedom of Information Act, not the Free-as-in-free-beer of Information Act.
Processing court documents requires clerks and hardware, and that costs money. It will either be use fees or taxes; take your pick.
I had to get a PACER account when I filed bankruptcy, so that I could monitor my case and download the documents related to it. It's ridiculous how it works -- they charge you $0.03 for every page that you download. It's like going to the local library and paying to use the copy machine, except in this case it's completely electronic and costs them no consumables. Why are they allowed to charge so much for access to the public record? It seems like a reasonable amount to ask if you went to the local court house and started printing hard copies but $0.03/page for a PDF document? Really?
Kudos to the people who came up with this idea. Now if we only had a free way to search case law. You can access the current Federal and State statues from the relevant Government websites but you have no easy way to do the same for case law, which is at least as important under our legal system. Most of the services to do this are paid ones (Lexis Nexis), I've yet to come across a decent free one.
Wait, court maintain the records on servers, pays people to take care of them and maintain them, have people to imagine or record the files at windows or over the internet...then why should not court charge for documents? You think people who work at the court should not get paid? Just because that information is free to view, does not mean you should not pay for it to obtain.
You buy books and CDs that have long expired trademarks for money because someone put them together. You pay to receive your
Once the document has been scanned and introduced in the system, it costs almost nothing to distribute it.
You have almost fixed costs each month on people producing the documents, bandwidth, datacenter colocation, and some additional small costs on maintenance so a fee of 3 cents per page is not justified, especially if a document can get to hundreds of pages. You already run the system for years now, so you should know from statistics how many pages are read or how many documents are transferred and you sh
Once the document has been scanned and introduced in the system, it costs almost nothing to distribute it.
You have almost fixed costs each month on people producing the documents, bandwidth, datacenter colocation, and some additional small costs on maintenance so a fee of 3 cents per page is not justified, especially if a document can get to hundreds of pages. You already run the system for years now, so you should know from statistics how many pages are read or how many documents are transferred and you should especially know how much it costs you overall so they could implement something like 50 cents / 1$ per document and still cover their yearly costs plus a very small profit.
It appears they've already done this - the fee is capped at $2.40.
TINSTAFRL (There is no such thing as free lunch.)
Way to mangle TANSTAAFL [wikipedia.org]
I agree that stuff like this should be free since it is, after all, subsidized by our tax dollars.
But you're mistaken if you think it costs them nothing to make available to you these electronic documents. They have to (1) buy and maintain servers and storage, (2) pay the people to install and maintain that hardware, and (3) pay for electricity and cooling.
And you're wrong if you think that it's subsidized by your tax dollars:
From PACER's FAQ [uscourts.gov]:
Why are there user fees for PACER?
In 1988, the Judiciary sought funding through the appropriation process to establish the capability to provide electronic public access services. Rather than appropriating additional funds for this purpose, Congress specifically directed the Judiciary to fund that initiative through the collection of user fees. As a result, the program relies exclusively on fee revenue
But you're mistaken if you think it costs them nothing to make available to you these electronic documents
What makes you assume that I think it costs them nothing? It obviously costs them something. I just question whether or not it costs so much that they need to charge $0.03/page for a PDF document.
They have to (1) buy and maintain servers and storage, (2) pay the people to install and maintain that hardware, and (3) pay for electricity and cooling.
They'd have to do all that anyway. The courts would still be keeping these documents even if PACER wasn't around to make the easily available to the public. So the question is how much extra does having the PACER functionality cost?
What it costs is a good question. My low rent hosting charges a US penny per 10 Megabytes. How big are the PDFs? Are they incorporating the costs for personnel to submit the papers to their site? Are you sure it is 3 cents? According to this [uscourts.gov], it is 8 cents per page (but free if you don't use more than $10/year worth, and the cost is capped to $2.40/document.) That seems a bit more steep to me, especialy considering they classify a search which returns no results as a "page."
It actually makes more sense to always charge the same amount for a page, and choose a fee such that you manage to cover your costs.
The real problem is that to most incensed Libertarians assume the marginal cost should be the total cost. Apparently overhead does not exist.
3 cents is a lot? They have to pay for the servers, the electricity and the people who run these systems. Sure, the marginal cost for accessing documents is negligible, but there is a significant fixed cost that has to be made up for somewhere. And, parts of it--largely the opinions--are free.
As far as free ways to search case law, check out findlaw.com, lexisone.com, the websites for the courts themselves, archive.org, etc... Or, you can do what lawyers have done for centuries -- find a law library and
Kudos to the people who came up with this idea. Now if we only had a free way to search case law.
For Canadians, you can use CanLii [canlii.org] (Canadian Legal Information Institute) to research case law for free. The courts and tribunals in most provinces post their decisions online, as well. In British Columbia, the courts have been uploading their decisions to their website [gov.bc.ca] since 1996.
The fee structure is outdated now, but it made sense at the time PACER was first implemented as a cost-offsetting measure. These records are public, but the required labor and overhead must be accounted for. It's either use a per-use fee, or a dip into tax revenue.
The initial fee in $1 per minute in 1990. By 1996 it was down to 75Â per minute; in 1997 it moved to 7Â per page. http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/documents/epachron.pdf [uscourts.gov] Now PACER's revenue generates a lot more than its administrative costs
As someone who worked with court records esp. bankruptcy records in the late 90's - early 00's be thankful for the PACER of today. I still have nightmares about connecting to the OK City bankruptcy court through a Citrix client to check proof of claims filings. Or using PCAnywhere to connect to Trustee data(shudder).
75 Angstroms per minute seems extremely slow and 7 Angstroms per page sounds like they're using very small pieces of paper. Perhaps you should have used the preview button before submitting your post.
Perhaps you should have used the preview button before submitting your post.
I previewed the post several times before posting and did several edits. Yet I still managed to overlook the Â; I'm terribly sorry about that typo.
Now if you'd like to discuss PACER and Recap, let's do that.
Electricity is something I'd consider consumable...
Because subverting the will of the judiciary always turns out well.
They aren't "subverting the will of the judiciary". The judiciary isn't charging thousands of dollars a month and making a huge profit off of this. They're charging a few cents a page to cover the expense of keeping the program running. If someone else can and will store the same documents for free, it's less load for them to deal with. These are all public record documents that you could see for free if you went down to the courthouse and asked for them (though they'd probably charge you for copies, to cover those costs), it's not like these guys are breaking into the courthouse systems and raping and pillaging the information. It's public domain stuff, being stored in the public domain.
Bureaucracies are all react pretty much the same when faced with something that threatens their funding. They do what they can to kill the threat.
The fact that this is supposed to be public information is insignificant next to desire to protect funding.
I'm a US citizen and pay thousands of dollars a year in Federal taxes. Why should I pay *more* to access public court documents from the Federal courts? If the issue is the costs of hosting the documents on servers, this project, by its mere existence, shows that there are people who will gladly shoulder the cost of hosting the documents, so others can access them for free. If the issue is the cost of having people redact documents where necessary, and scan them in (in the situations where the documents are
So are user fees automatically bad everywhere? Toll roads, fuel taxes, school registration, and so on all fit the same criteria. You are paying tax to support *some* of it, but it seems fair to make the people who are actually using a service pay more.
User fees and general tax money is automatically bad. Pick one or the other. (Preferably user fees.)
Cable television subscriptions and commercial interruption is automatically bad. Pick one or the other. (Preferably subscriptions.)
Don't you blaspheme the Food Network! But yeah, Lifetime and all 6 of the ESPNs can go away. ESPN is directly responsible for about $8 of my cable bill, IIRC.
Actually, you have that the wrong way around--cable subscriptions are analogous to general tax money (since everybody who subscribes is subsidizing the 80% of the channels that they don't watch), while the commercials are funding the specific programs you watch.
I was thinking of NBC (no subscription, lots of ads) vs. Showtime (high subscription, no ads). Users of Showtime pay the fee; all people who buy products advertised on NBC pay for NBC.
"In 2006, the fund received $447.8 million, but they could only figure out what to do with $301.2 million, the so-called âoeobligated balance.â In other words, they had a âoesignificant unobligated balanceâ of $146.6 million. At 8 cents per page for a PACER Document, they could give away 1.8 billion pages of documents to the public and still have all the money they need to pay for their computers."
See question/answer #9 in the Recycling FAQ for a nice graph and a source of that quote: http://pacer.resource.org/recycling.html [resource.org]
... especially tolls, which are often wildly inefficient. When I lived in the SF Bay area, I would often wait a good half hour to pay a $4.00 toll. With two people in the car whose time is worth $40/hr each, the cost in time of paying the toll is 10 X the actual toll.
Raise the gas tax a little to cover all tolls and I would be much happier!
Tolls aren't solely about revenue generation, they can be about congestion control too. It actually sounds like the toll you pay is too cheap. It sounds like it needs to be $20.00, then you probably won't have to wait and you'll save 50% of your hourly wage.
Public services should be allowed to charge to cover the cost of providing the service. I don't mind paying to get into my favorite hiking parks for example.
But what RECAP is doing is an attempt to replace the for-pay service with a for-free service. RECAP obviously does not operate for "free", but if it operates much more cheaply than PACER--entirely possible--I see nothing wrong with them eliminating the fees! One hopes that the government will notice, and eliminate the costly program in favor of the c
The worst thing is, I think that I may remember that number for the rest of my life. What a waste of space.
And if you didn't get the joke,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab8GtuPdrUQ [youtube.com]
I'd much rather federal programs paid for themselves through taxes, rather than restricting access to legal proceedings to those with money.
Any price-based barrier to entry is too great for the legal system.
and archive.org is designed to be a nonprofit
If someone could RECAP the court transcript of the recent i4i v. Microsoft case, that would be very useful.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/I4i_v._Microsoft [swpat.org]
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Talk:I4i_v._Microsoft [swpat.org]
Video of the proceedings would be like icing on the cake! Why don't we have publicly available video content of proceedings? Any hopes for this?
You can't grep videos.
I'm fairly certain Google is working on that!
There is no video of Federal court proceedings, it's prohibited.
In light of this, please allow me to rephrase bogaboga's comment:
Video of the proceedings would be like icing on the cake! Why has the law prohibiting video recording of Federal court proceedings not been repealed? Any hopes for this?
As a lawyer who has used Pacer for many years, my first reaction was the same. Why am I paying for something with no marginal cost that should be free in the first place? However, look at the alternative: driving down to the courthouse and making physical photocopies at even greater expense.
I then learned that they are using the money to build their IT infrastructure to allow even better access. Of course, they will probably never remove the fees, but $.03 is really quite cheap compared to say, Lexis or Westlaw which charge about $100 per day to access their data without a subscription.
Right now, it is optional for lawyers (some courts even charge you to do it) to file electronic versions of your documents. Eventually, all lawyers will file electronic versions of their documents, and access will be better.
I support public.resource.org which is attempting to make all government laws free online.
The wheels of justice move slowly but surely.
It's not really a concern or a problem. If you're relying upon a holding or an order from a court, your opponent is going to go and get their own copy of that order (sure, maybe they go to RECAP). They will notice that what you said doesn't match up with the official record and tell the judge. Heck, when you file a brief relying on the order, you're going to get stopped by the judge anyway because (at least in my experience), the judge is going to ignore everything except your overall argument regarding that opinion/order, and then just go and read the opinion/order himself (off PACER, since it doesn't cost the judge anything). At best, you didn't include any of the lying bits. At worst (say the local rules required you to attach the case to your filing), you're essentially lying to the court. Judges aren't big fans of this. Lawyers and judges are (generally) not idiots. The possibility of this scheme actually working is so incredibly remote that you'd have to be nuts to try it.
Are you absolutely sure the RIAA or similar wouldn't potentially try to do this if a bad case came down against them? Once a falsehood starts circulating, it's very hard to kill.
Is that really such a bad thing?
Let me put it this way: LET THEM FALSIFY THE DOCUMENTS! When (WHEN) it gets out that some particular party--let's assume the RIAA--has falsified documents in the hopes that it'd sway public opinion, I can't imagine that future proceedings would be all that favorable. Judges may be impartial, but they'
> What's to keep me (aside from non-technical disciplinary stuff) from
> downloading documents that have unfavorable rulings to patet troll companies,
> then modifying them to make it look like the precident is different, and
> uploading them to RECAP?
a) Lawyers will only use unofficial sources like RECAP for research. Material that they intend to use in court will be downloaded from PACER and thus you will be caught.
b) Judges have no reason not to use PACER for everything since they don't pay the fees and do need to be sure they are looking at official versions. Thus you will be caught again.
However, this will encourage lawyers on small budgets to do much more wide-ranging research, will allow penurious litigants to have access to court records, and allow the general public to more easily follow cases.
Lawyers will only use unofficial sources like RECAP for research.
Exactly! And that's why it's worth falsifying. If I can convince you, through your own research, that what you're trying to do against me has been proven not to work, then you'll give up. When in fact, perhaps your research would have shown that what you were trying to do in fact worked very well!
And if I don't give up, and we go to trial? And the judge finds out what you did? Are you really willing to risk it? Even if it doesn't come out for years?
Three bucks would be 300 PAGES.
That might be 300 documents, or more likely as few as 1/3 of a document. How many single-page documents are commonly filed?
Of course, at ten bucks, you're getting warmer...
Perhaps this is the beginning of truly 'public' repositories. Or a way for not-for-profit journalism to survive, since they would benefit greatly from free or nearly-free documents. And shouldn't we also encourage public repositories of FOIA documents of all types? Oh, wait, don't many FOIA requesters a
It would be wonderful if all county, state and city records could also be easily accessed on non governmental sites. One effect would be that the paranoid could stop blaming the government for compiling records on them. Now they could blame entirely free and separate entities for compiling files. I'll also bet that such easily available information would reveal quite a few criminals activities.
I THINK MAN INVENTED THE CAR by instinct. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.


text:
Alvin's PXB board provides the convenience of a studio work surface in a compact, portable unit. The PXB is made from a smooth, warp-free, white Melamine laminated board and is equipped with a convenient carrying handle.
Other features include:
The PXB Portable Parallel Straightedge Board ships fully assembled.
Other features include:
The PXB Portable Parallel Straightedge Board ships fully assembled.
Ask a question about PXB Laminated Parallel Straightedge & White Drawing Board Ask a question about this product
Average User Rating: Based on (15 Reviews)
5 15
Amy S. from Washington, DC says:
I had previously ordered a more expensive portable desktop, and I like the mechanics of the straightedge on this one much more. Worth the money, for sure and it came quickly. This is the first time...[more]
Please wait...
You May Also Like...
How to get VIP Club Prices
Anyone can be a VIP Member with:
Only $25/year
Your email will not be shared. We will only use your email address to respond to your question. When asking your question, please be as descriptive as possible, it will allow us to give you the most accurate answer possible.
Please wait...
Please wait...

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The Digital Audio Access Protocol, or DAAP, is used by Apple's iTunes 4.0 digital audio player to share music across a network or the Internet. It provides capability not only to stream audio from one computer to another, but also to list the host's playlists so that they can be accessed remotely.
This project's aim is to completely document the protocol (until official documentation becomes available) and to provide a working, open source, client and server implementation that is compatible with iTunes. That way, any application developer can use the protocol within their own software creations.
May 8, 2003
I have received an email from Amandeep Jawa, Senior Software Engineer for iTunes, who worked on DAAP. He says that there will soon be official documentation for the protocol from Apple, which will immensely help in the effort. In the mean time, I'm still going to be working on libdaap using my reverse-engineered docs.
- Chris Boot
This is a C++ library with C and Objective-C/Cocoa wrappers that will, in time, implement a full DAAP client and server. It is licensed under the GNU Lesser Public License, which allows developers to use the library even in non-free software as long as a few restrictions are followed.
At the moment only the C++ interface is available, and it only understands the basic format of the data. It does not yet perform any network operations and thus also doesn't have a higher level interface for listing music and playlists. It also can only act as a client for the moment.


text:
UCAS figures earlier this week revealed that there has been a 9% drop in university applications in England and 8.7% across the whole of the UK. The figures published by the UCAS admissions service show that by the 15th January deadline there were 462,507 applications for courses beginning in September 2012.
Those who decide not to attend university will be looking for work enhancing skills they can learn and enjoy to have a more rounded experiences. The drop in university applicants also demonstrates the need for a well-planned and structured type of travel. With more than 120 tours to choose from, Real Gap continues to concentrate on giving small groups of 18 to 24 year olds the chance to get off the beaten path for less and learn some valuable life skills along the way.
To cater for the growing demand, Real Gap has introduced 18 new trips to accommodate student's needs this summer. There is a mix of shorter two week experiences to longer internships overseas to gain work experience and earn on the journey.
Future employers will be looking to their perspective employees to show their worth and that they used their time away in a constructive manner. Real Gap now offers more work experience travel including the new internships in Australia, the Namibia medical internship and paid work in Japan, this offers young people the opportunity to get on the career path from the start.
David Stitt, Managing Director of Real Gap Experience comments "Some youngsters are realising that a university degree is not the "be-all-and-end-all" and that an internship will give them a good head start with practical work experience that can be immediately translated into the trade or job for which they have been apprenticed. What's more if the youngsters gain other skills on a trip abroad, these can then be used in a constructive way when they return".
This style of travelling incorporates the changing face of the Gap Year, with youngsters considering more work experience related trips that offer an experience to learn. A-level students, and even their future employers recognise the cultural and experiential benefits of stepping out from an all too familiar comfort zone and heading off on an adventure that will test necessary skill sets needed in adult life.
Top 3 NEW Paid Trips from Real Gap Experience
Namibia Medical internship
Squeezed between the Kalahari and the South Atlantic, Namibia enjoys a striking diversity of cultures and national origins, boasting wild seascapes, rugged mountains, remote deserts, stunning wildlife and colonial cities.
This medical internship based in Eastern Namibia will appeal to those keen for a career in the medical field or the health care profession. The valuable work experience in the field provides vital care and treatment to patients in the San Bushman Community, many of whom live in extreme poverty. Interns will work alongside the resident doctor and nurse at the clinic, learn how to work in a remote rural health clinic, learn about common diseases and ailments that affect the local community and the most effective ways of treating them. They will also have the chance to assist in patient care with lessons on basic clinical skills, taking of patient history, observations, weighing babies and recording their growth etc. In addition to the day to day work there are opportunities to undertake research projects to benefit the clinic and help to further improve the services provided to the local community.
Once the internship comes to an end, it's possible to incorporate caring for orphaned, abused or injured animals at the Namibian Wildlife Sanctuary near the country's capital, Windhoek.
Prices start from £3,149 per person for 8 weeks land only, including: airport transfers, accommodation in a volunteer house alongside the doctor and nurse from the clinic, three meals a day, transfers to and from the clinic, orientation and internship placement. 12 weeks are available from £4049 per person. For more information visit www.realgap.co.uk or call 01892 277040
Internships in Australia
There are plenty of incredible sights and amazing wildlife in Australia; it's one of the best places to try out an authentic outback experience or enjoying the surf styled lifestyle. Finding work and living life the Aussie way is high up on most youngsters bucket lists and Australia is an essential stop when planning to work abroad for a year. To gain work experience in Engineering, Information Technology, Human Resources, Marketing, Business Administration or Accountancy and Finance, Real Gap has partnered with 500 host-company partners across Australia with tailored internship to meet training needs and career aspirations. A mentor in Australia is provided to guide through the placement to get the best from the experience with a high proportion of internship participants going on to secure full-time employment within six months of completing their placement.
Prices start from £1,399 per person for 8 weeks including: a quality internship placement with an Australian company, airport transfers on arrival, orientation with a personal mentor on arrival, a UK and Australian mentor, a professional training plan, full support throughout and an International Career Readiness Certificate. For more information visit www.realgap.co.uk or call 01892 277040
Japan Paid Work
Japan conjures up thoughts of kimono-clad geisha girls, ancient temples, futuristic cities, mist-shrouded hills, traditional ryokans, cherry blossom and lightning-fast bullet trains. But for the first time traveller it can be challenging settling in and living amongst a new culture whilst finding work. Real Gap has arranged an introductory programme to help get started in Japan. This programme offers a perfect way to not only work and immerse in a new and unique culture, but also there is the prospect to set aside some of the money earned to see more of the country.
Based in cosmopolitan Tokyo, the work on offer in Japan includes teaching at language schools, English assistant teachers at kindergarten, waiter/waitress, hotel clerk, actor, interpreters, translators, factory workers, web designers and researchers. If there is knowledge of Japanese, restaurant and Language School work can also be obtained.
Prices start from £599 per person for 3 months land only, including: arrival airport transfer, seven nights' accommodation in a funky Tokyo hostel in the centre of Shitamachthree on B&B, city tour of Tokyo's highlights, cultural orientation session and introduction to the Working Holiday Office and 3 months of in-country support. For more information visit www.realgap.co.uk or call 01892 277040


text:
"At the very moment when urban population has been reported to surpass the rural, this distinction has lost most of its significance, at least in many parts of the affluent world. Two hundred years ago, before automobiles, telephones, the internet and express package services, cities were much more compact and rural life was indeed very different from urban life. Most inhabitants of rural areas were tied to agriculture or industries devoted to the extraction of natural resources. Their lives were fundamentally different from those of urban dwellers."
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
onto Geography Education
I have spent a lot of time in cities. I think that urbanization as well as popularity of city-jobs will come to a halt once other planets are colonized. People will be able to spread out and move towards equilibrium and equality, but right now, cities seem like an excuse to open up potential for danger. In AVP II: Requiem, the people were ordered to the main area of city for an 'evacuation.' This evacuation never happened; instead, the area was bombed. It seems more strategically optimal for foreign or alien invasions to have people living closely in urban areas than it would for them to be spaced out in various country areas. I know it is terrible to think about that sort of stuff, but the title of this article is "The Ambiguous Triumph of the 'Urban Age,'" and I don't think that cities and urbanization are triumphant at all. I live in the sticks in Scituate, and I have had so many incredible spiritual experiences in the woods, and deep philosophical discussions with friends there, that I really condemn cities for what it takes away from the spirtual/animal part of being human. I fear evolution will bring about mass dystopia- as it has done in some countries, and I also do not think that automobiles are a good thing. I really disapprove of so many things in cities and urban societies, and I am unhappy when I see praise brought into the contexts of terrible achievements that damage the Earth.


text:
2012-08-02 / Letters to the Editor
Letter to the Editor
The following letter was addressed to the Putnam County Times, in Mahopac, and was copied to us by the writer. Dear Editor: I have enjoyed reading all local papers in Putnam County for years. I read the Putnam County Times, Examiner, and COURIER.
The full version of this story is available only to subscribers. Subscribe now to access to full versions of news stories in our archive of over 12,000 stories going back to 1999.


text:
How Jordin Sparks lost 50 pounds!
Jordin Sparks landed the August cover of Shape Magazine. The singer posed in a bikini, showing off her recent 50-pound weight loss! So how did Jordin lose the weight?
"There is no secret," the 22-year-old Sparkle actress told Us at the event. "It's just eating better and working out! It's definitely a daily thing."
Among her favorite ways to get her sweat on: high-energy dance classes like Zumba. "My mom's best friend is a Zumba instructor and I loved it," she gushed. "I started with walking then went to jogging and then Zumba. I started [working with a trainer] and we did 30 minutes of circuit training so I didn't feel like I needed to be in the gym for two hours."
In addition to intense cardio sculpting sessions, Sparks, who had been dating fellow singer Jason Derulo since last August, had to makeover her diet as well. "I stop now when I'm full," she admitted. "I love food and I love to eat. My thing was, do I really need seconds or do I want it just because it tastes good?"
But leftovers and second helpings have proven to pay off for the season 6 American Idol champ, who admits that she got extremely emotional when shooting her first bikini cover.
"I could only dream having a cover and looking like that," she said. "I thought, 'I did it!' I had to walk back to my dressing room and I had to pull myself together because I was overwhelmed. I cried. I shed a little tear but I'm really happy with how it turned out."
She looks amazing, but honestly…….she doesn't look much different to me. I know she was a bit pudgy, but did she really have 50 pounds to lose? Either way, good for her. She looks beautiful on this cover!


text:
Watch The ::God Is Imaginary Videos On YouTube ::
There is only one God who created man and the universe. He loves us all and only wants a loving relationship with each of us.
He created a perfect atmosphere for Adam and Eve and had a perfect relationship with them until they severely damaged that relationship by sinning in the form of disobeying God.This created a separation from God for all future generations.
God's only requirement for restoration and eternal life (as Jesus experienced as the first example and proof of what we can expect) is that we believe that He sent His only Son to die for our sins in our heart of hearts.
In order to give no one an excuse, He gave us the Bible, personal testimonies, our conscience, the obvious proof of creation, and periodically exposing most of us to the Gospel throughout out our lives.


text:
|Lakeland, Fla.
|Previous School:
|George Jenkins HS
2013-14: Went 4-7 in her first season in Scarlet and Navy...Posted a falls record of 3-3...Earned her first collegiate win on a fall in 0:45 over Siebhan Esquerra of University of the Cumberlands at the King University Duals...Earned two wins at the Missouri Valley College Duals, defeating Dabry Newman of Cumberlands on a tech fall, 13-0 and Marki Simmons of Missouri Baptist on a fall in 1:08...Won her first bout at the WCWA National Championships, defeating Laura Rodriguez of Jamestown on a fall in 1:02...Finished third at 58 kilograms at University Nationals.
High School: Wrestled for five years at George Jenkins HS... Won four consecutive state championships... Won 2012 high school girls' freestyle championship... Member of the 2011 Cadet World Team... Body Bar 2011 champion... Ranked nationally in Judo.
Personal: Daughter of Brian and Chris Germain... Majoring in Athletic Training... Volunteers as a wrestling and Judo coach... Fell out of her car at age five and nearly tumbled off a cliff... Florida's first four-time girls' wrestling state champion.


text:
Heh, made my buy Creatures series from Good Old Games. This weekend they actually even have them on 40% off sale [gog.com].
No Star Control II? Bah!
That's because Star Control II is available for free now: http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
The article lured me in also.
We're the place you cant even RTFA because we broke the hyperlinks.
Because we fired all of our proofreaders and editors.
i knew dick dastardly had a hand in this somewhere
correct link
http://mashable.com/2011/03/03/artificial-life-steve-grand/ [mashable.com]
Steve Grand is funding the development on kickstarter [kickstarter.com].
He's decided to ignore traditional publishers and do everything himself to make sure it comes out right. Probably a good idea too, Creatures isn't a very normal game, and having a publisher fund it would almost certainly mean they'd try to dumb it down.
I would love to see something like this on Impulse - and it'd help with the price, since the market for such games is very competitive.
Same here.
Don't care at all for things like Steam and Impulse though. Plain installer download for me, please.
I mean, I wouldn't want his experiment to escape and start eating silicon [wikipedia.org] in order to survive and reproduce.
Scroll down the the bit about emulating the vi '%' function. I added this to my
Bah. Parenthesis matching is absolutely nothing compared to Paredit http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit [emacswiki.org]
I don't know why Logos on tv bother people so much?
When I'm watching television I usually forget it's there. My brain mentally blocks it out --- same with the ads on websites. My Brain is my ad blocker.
"Brain, brain, brain. What is brain?"-
Spock's Brain
It bothers me intensely. I understand why they did it, as it was a response to piracy. In their minds your ability to store the content locally on your DVR and skip commercials *is* piracy. They wanted to make sure that no matter who watched it, that they were still getting some marketing and advertisement out of it.
It's gone too far. Why would I watch an entire movie on SciFi, or wherever, to have an increasingly larger logo... in addition the name.... in addition to the next program afterwards.... and its time in central/eastern?
I can't block it out. It's nice that you can, but it just pisses me off to no end. That is because I realize the bullshit. Specifically, that I am paying these executive fucktards a large salary with my $40 (average is usually a $100 for most people) so that I can be sold like a slave to advertisers. If that is not enough, they also feel the ludicrous need to keep reminding me of the name of their network and the next show that will be on. In fact, they've gone plaid. We all have DVR's now for the most part that with a press of a button will show us the programming for a channel for the next 3 hours.
I left years ago when I realized this before the branding started to appear everywhere. Then came the moving overlays. Can your mind really adjust to that? It's no different than a person standing in front of your TV and obstructing your view of the action, or environment.
It is the single biggest reason I stopped downloading TV. I can't stand the logos, but I can't possibly live with the moving overlays. It is just not worth it.
I pay $40 a month now for TV because I am forced to do so. It comes with the community I live in. Out of curiosity I connected it up one night and spent a frustrating hour trying to watch TV. Everything had those stupid logos on it, which got a LOT worse then before, and when surfing I came across commercials over half the time. I remember when it used to be less than half second to switch a channel. I suspect the advertisers influenced the TV and Cable Box manufacturers to make it the 2-3 seconds it takes now to force you to watch it.
I am actually interested in automating a capture on several lines at once to see the statistics on how many commercials are playing at the same time, the average length of a show, average length of non-commercial segment, etc.
No. I can't ignore the crap they pull. They ruined TV for me now permanently. I read a lot more, I bitch on Slashdot slightly more, surf for porn a heck of lot more (although I doubt there is a correlation there), and I spend more time with other activities.
When I hear a show is great I rent it or stream it on Netflix.
I would love for someone to develop AI for this purpose. I imagine an augmented reality visor where it can act like a middle man with 100ms delay. Strip out ALL advertisements, and basically anything I find offensive or disgusting. In other words, change the rest of you bastards into mute versions of Jessica Alba walking around in a bikini
Another way to put it is that he is a dreamer with a goal. If you ever played any of the games of the Creatures series (especially Creatures3 and, astonishingly, Creatures Village, both available at GOG.com), you probably know that the norns felt quite real and sometimes behaved in bafflingly intelligent-looking ways. So, although I don't think he'll reach his ideological goal to 100%, I'm looking forward to see how Grandroid turns out.
Wlil Grandroid be written in ApeScript? I wish he'd pour his Grandroid ideas into the Noble Ape open source project. [nobleape.com]
It features a number of autonomous simulation components including a landscape simulation, biological simulation, weather simulation, sentient creature (Noble Ape) simulation and a simple intelligent-agent scripting language (ApeScript).
The Noble Apes see their surroundings, have memories (internalizations of the external world), remember their encounters (almost drowning results in a fear of water) which leads emotion simulation & even relationships, can crudely communicate and breed with each other, and even dream!
If the Norns were "alive" in Creatures -- The apes are even more so, and a great deal closer to the goal of emergent sentience (esp. than to as yet nonexistent/unpublished Grandroid code).
What the Noble Apes don't have is a detailed graphical representation of themselves based on their genetics... I hoped that perhaps SPORE would help with this, but it was closed source.
The biggest failing of software (esp. some AI/AL simulations) is the desire to attempt to realize an idea or concept instead of truly collaborating with like-minded individuals and utilizing their works / ideas to realize a greater solution.
What I find interesting is machine learning through evolution [wikipedia.org] -- Start with a VM filled with random noise & a few inputs. Devise a goal & selectively "breed" the instances that are closer to reaching the goals.
IMHO, Yeah, he's quite full of himself... so much so that he'll start a new project.
Meh, I'll bet it will be a fun game, regardless.
dare i say he's having...Grand delusions?
*groan* I hope that you at least put on some sunglasses after typing that, then played the correct Who track...
It's hard to tell if the approach is realistic, but it is certainly novel.
Q: What other artificial life/intelligence projects are you keeping tabs on? What should we be excited about?
A: Oh, I'm the wrong person to ask. I try not to look.
Research and science, that is uninterested in what is being done in the field... I have a hard time coming up with something that fits that bill except pseudo-science.
I would absolutely stick to the limited domains.
My problem with AI is that if actually did get there, and maybe even exceed it and create Artificial Sentience, I can't help but be convinced that the most logical course of action is to "kill all humans".
Put yourself in their place. Vastly more capable than you, probably with far longer life spans, access to information, and the dawning realization that humanity acts like a virus. That the most dangerous creature on the planet, to the planet itself, its own
The main difference is that humans are pretty much stuck on earth. We need the shit here to function. Computer based life could exist pretty much anywhere it wanted in the entire universe. If it had survival as a primary goal, there's no real point in risking it by pissing off humanity. Just make a deal with some nation with the ability to properly equip it for spaceflight and some kind of initial mining. If it was a super intelligence it should be able to give a fair amount of scientific advantage to an co
Meh. Intelligence does not equal motivation. Even if you could create a "sentient" program, it will not have the same basic wishes that a human has. In fact, it will probably not have any motivation at all - not knowledge aquistition, not even self-preservation - unless you want it to. So it would be like, "Hm, looks like the humans are wrecking everything. Whatever."
for example: how do you encode a brain structure through a DNA like mechanism in a way that it isn't completely explicit regarding every single neuron and connection, yet the structure is substantially "close enough" that the brain can quickly learn the details from the environment it's placed in and function properly.
I'm curious, what are some of the best approaches to this so far?
There's NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies [ucf.edu] (NEAT) largely by Ken Stanley. There are extensions to that like HyperNEAT [ucf.edu] and Compositional Pattern Producing Networks [wikipedia.org] (CPPNs).
I am interested in other approaches too...
Q: What other artificial life/intelligence projects are you keeping tabs on? What should we be excited about?
A: Oh, I'm the wrong person to ask. I try not to look.
Research and science, that is uninterested in what is being done in the field... I have a hard time coming up with something that fits that bill except pseudo-science.
Well, considering how awesome all the AIs that all the REAL researchers have already managed to produce, I'm shocked that anyone even considers trying any alternative approaches, without even thinking about how such magnificent beings came into existence. I mean, how could you possibly compete with the researchers' AIs that just in a few more years will already be available for everyone to run in their own computers, performing all kinds of complex tasks only by describing them to the AI. As a programmer my
I think the soul of sarcasm is sorta the same as wit's, but never mind that...
My point does not, as you seem to assume, hinge on the research in the field being better.
Not looking at previous research is _never_ a strength in itself. I am all for new approaches, but if you do not check out the existing research, how will you know whether your approach has been tried? How did it fail? What did _the field learn_?
A scientist with a new idea should first check if his idea is new. Then, you pour money and work i
Research and science, that is uninterested in what is being done in the field
I'd agree, except that he made a quick note that the interview somewhat brushed over. He's keeping up with neurological research, just not with any competing attempts to implement them in software with similar goals. Which I'd actually agree is the best way to go about it. What he's describing is more applied science based on neurology than actual research. And the research elements he would be doing are things that would be kept
Not too long ago we discovered that there are eddy currents in our brains, neurons not even connected to other neurons will be influenced by the inductive thought currents. This is a radical design shift for all of those artificial brains that model neuron and synapse connections.
Have no fear folks... We WILL have artificial life eventually, we just don't have fast enough computers. Our understanding
I'd like to check out Creatures just to see what he'd been working on.
Of course, Amazon is selling this (released in 1999 game) for $46.
Yeah, right. 12 year old software for $46?
That's crazy, get all 3 at gog.com [gog.com] for $5.99
Best part of the whole Creatures "scene" was a guy called Antinorn. He used to abuse, torture and otherwise mess up Norns so they were quivering wrecks addicted to pain and hunger. People used to get upset for this for some reason... others used to try and rehabilitate his creations as a challenge.
There is an interesting short story by Greg Egan called "Crystal Nights" (no connection to the Nazi attack on the Jewish ghettos).
Partial SPOILER ALERT.
Basically someone (using a super-fast crystal based computer) tries to evolve, in software, lifeforms that will surpass humanity and solve our problems. What he doesn't realize is that evolution, to the individual (if not the species) means DEATH and the newly created godlings may not be happy with the sacrifices they have had to endure...
Anyway, Greg Egan (an extremely thought provoking author and, I think, physicist) has written some books that will blow your mind. Second only to the late Stanislaw Lem, he is one of my favorite S.F. writers. Go buy some of his books! Recommended: Permutation City (also about artificial life), Quaranitine and Incandescence. I think he may have released Crystal Nights as a free download.
> I think he may have released Crystal Nights as a free download.
Yup, it's on his publisher's website: http://ttapress.com/CrystalNights.pdf [ttapress.com]
Seconded. Diaspora is pretty good too.
It'd be awesome if there was a way to place this sort of intelligence into chemicals. Like, not just replicate the biology virtually... but actually do it with chemicals. Literally creating something like DNA, then getting bits of it copied with something like RNA to cause growth. Create cell like things that split. I mean, with work like this we have the theory... now could we put it into actual chemical practice? There I go being a dreamer
Dream no more, we have actually created synthetic life [ted.com], having DNA modeled 100% in a computer.
There's even a website address & code to decode the website address hidden in the synthetic life, sort of like a fingerprint.
I hear it's next goal will be to engineer the new lifeforms to help produce bio-diesel or other fuels.
I understand the desire to have unique ideas- actual research has found that people can generate more unique ideas alone than in a group (you can go find the CSCW papers for yourself, I'm lazy). That said, ignoring everything else isn't good either. There is a LOT of good work that has been done in this area. Is each individual project a complete solution to creating artificial life? No. But I suspect that many of the pieces are already out there just waiting to be assembled.
Maybe a good approach would be to have a group (or individual) working on the creative ideas independently, while another group looks at what each creative group/individual has accomplished and assembles the best bits of into a coherent whole? The idea of being "polluted" by someone else's research makes sense to me -- if you start thinking along a certain line, it's difficult to imagine other ways of solving the problem, whereas if you have no idea what other researchers are doing, you might fin
It'll prove intelligence can create life, but it won't prove intelligence is required to create life.
No, as conventional Intelligent Design utterly fails to prove the existence of any Designer, or where this hypothetical Designer comes from.
If he succeeds, the most he'll prove (from the ID perspective) is that it is possible to intelligently design life. Probably not even that, since he'll just implement evolution in his simulation.
Kickstarter [kickstarter.com] seems like a very good idea and I'm glad I followed the links related to this particular post.
There are some great minds out there and I hope this sort of venue can help those people pursue what they excel at for the betterment of us all.
Thanks to the
The problem with this term is that scientists are working on true "artificial life" that is micro-organisms, that are manufactured. They try to use different base sets (not ACGT but artificial ones).
However I understand that AI is already a coined term so AL is logical, however misleading.
Incidentally (or, maybe, not ?) GOG is doing a promo this weekend on Kalypso games, including the Creatures series: http://www.gog.com/en/promo/kalypso_games [gog.com]
Kill Ugly Processor Architectures - Karl Lehenbauer


text:
Student or Learner
During my career, I spent most of the time in telecommunication and software development field, and did a lot of onsite support jobs such as implementation, maintenance, health check and troubleshooting. I'm familiar with Avaya products such as AIC, GMH, SES, AES, CM and so on. Moreover, I have proficient English language skills, and Chinese and Japanese as well. I expect myself to be an expert in telecommunication field in the future.


text:
The Hampton Lifeguard Association will begin its junior lifeguard training program for boys and girls age 9 through 14 at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter pool Sunday at 1:30 p.m.
The program, which is free, is to benefit from a fund-raising dinner at East by Northeast restaurant in Montauk tomorrow from 7 to 11 p.m. The tickets cost $40 per person ($75 for a couple) in advance, or $45 and $85 at the door. The party committee members are Kathy Piacentine, John Ryan Sr., Mary Lownes, Stephanie Bogetti, Lynne Calabrese, and Marigrace Ryan.


text:
Some of my columns spark more outrage than others and, to my surprise, a brief report several years ago about random text messages supposedly awarding $1,000 Best Buy gift cards continues to rank near the top.
More than 150 people from all over the country have seen the article and contacted me to complain about getting the texts and to pass along phone numbers that are sending them. Most people who got the prize alerts knew they were phony — stores like Best Buy don't hand out huge gift cards for no reason — but recipients were not always clear about who was sending them and why.


text:
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley wants a gun-owner fingerprint database
The database would be created as a part of a comprehensive package of proposals to curb gun violence.
The Governor of Maryland plans to introduce a comprehensive package of proposals designed to curb gun violence, according to a handful of anonymous aides who spoke to the Washington Post. Martin O'Malley, who was elected in 2007 and expects to be as prominent a Democratic presidential contender in 2016 as fellow gun-control hawk Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has written up legislation that, if enacted, would ban assault weapons and — perhaps most significantly — require all new gun owners to submit to a fingerprint database, in order to contain the illicit distribution of guns via so-called "straw purchases":
Vincent DeMarco, a Maryland-based public-health advocate and gun-control activist, said the sort of licensing system that O'Malley is proposing can significantly curb "straw purchases" — the buying of a gun for someone who is prohibited by law from possessing one. [...]
"It really is the most effective tool a state can use to reduce gun deaths," DeMarco said. "I'm thrilled Governor O'Malley is proposing this. Straw purchases is the way criminals get guns."
Read more at The Atlantic Wire.
(Image via Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock.com)


text: Join our webcam models in the sin city. Las Vegas live web cam models strip down and ready to make your every desire come true. Take a look and imagine you're on the strip as you browse our North and South Vegas cam models. Don't be shy, play a little chat roulette�finding your lady luck might be easier than you think. Local webcam models are waiting for you!


text:
Submission + - IE 10 will have DO NOT TRACK by default angering Google and others (zdnet.com)
Billly Gates writes: Slashdotters and webmasters alike favorite browser (sarcasm intended) will have DO NOT TRACK settings enabled by by default in IE 10. IE 10 comes with Windows 8 and will go release candidate for Windows 7 very soon according to Anne Kohn in a comment in IE's blog. IE 10 already has a score of 319 in html5test.com, while MS is trying to position IE as a great browser again. Will this pressure other browsers such as Firefox and Opera to do the same?


text:
Energy Star Fridge Lawsuit Against Samsung, Lowe's Advances
(NEW YORK) -- A lawsuit against Samsung and Lowe's is moving forward after a judge ruled that the companies can't dismiss allegations that they used Energy Star logos on refrigerators that didn't meet federal energy-efficiency standards though selling them at higher prices.
"Overall, we're pleased with the judge's decision," said Anthony Vozzolo, an attorney for the two plaintiffs who will ask a judge to certify their case as a class action suit. "Qualification under the Energy Star program is a significant marketing tool for companies and one of the most highly recognized symbols for marketing purposes. Companies need to know they will be held accountable if they fail to live up to their promise to consumers."
The complaint alleges that damages are in excess of $5 million.
A statement from Samsung stated, "It is Samsung's policy to not comment on pending litigation."
A spokeswoman for Lowe's said the company is unable to comment on pending litigation.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Kevin McNulty in New Jersey sustained a number of complaints from the plaintiffs' original claims, originally filed in Nov. 2011.
Plaintiffs Lynne Avram and Margaret Lark each bought Samsung RF26VAB model refrigerators with the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Star label from Lowe's Home Centers in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Maryland in 2009.
The suit explains that they paid a premium for what they believed were energy-efficient fridges. On Feb. 18, 2010, the Energy Department alerted Samsung that the refrigerators did not meet the Energy Star efficiency requirements under the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
Avram looked only at Energy Star models when she purchased her refrigerator at a Lowe's store in Scottsdale, Ariz., for $1,213.20 plus tax on June 26, 2009. As part of the voluntary Energy Star program, to earn the Energy Star label, refrigerators and freezers must be at least 20 percent more energy efficient than the minimum mandated by federal law.
That purchase price included a "substantial premium" based on claims that the refrigerator was energy efficient and met the qualifications of Energy Star program, the suit states, adding that Avram would not have purchased the refrigerator had she known it was not Energy Star-compliant.
"When you sell an Energy Star appliiance, you command a premium in the marketplace," Vozzolo said, adding that people often look for the Energy Star logo when they purchase appliances.
Lark bought a refrigerator on Nov. 1, 2009, in Maryland for $2,100.
"As a result, Avram and Lark did not receive the benefit of the Energy Star bargain. They paid a price premium for what purported to be an Energy Star product but did not receive the energy savings they had paid for," the plaintiffs claim in their lawsuit.
Now that the judge has dismissed many of the defendants' motion to dismiss, Vozzolo said he will engage in discovery along with Lowe's and Samsung to ascertain additional facts, including how many of those refrigerator models were sold, thereby expanding the class. Vozzolo and his clients will later move to certify the class.
The plaintiffs allege breach of express warranty and implied warranty of merchantability, violations of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, unjust enrichment, and consumer fraud under New Jersey and Maryland law.
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio


text:
The lights are on
Yes, i've played through fallout 3 many times, going on my 4th with PS3 GOTY. Admittedly, there are a few scares that i've gotten in the sewers and tunnels of the DC wasteland. I was thinking of more of like a romero style game. I like left for dead kind of, but its to liniar. I think it would be neat to have a game where you'd need to raid stores for surplus and equipment and do it before you become candy for a ghoul. I think i'd get the new fallout even if it sucked just because bethesda hasn't steared me wrong yet.
@ Louie
Okay I get what you mean now, but sorry to spoil it for you a bit - Fallout New Vegas is being developed by Obsidian and published by Bethesda. That shouldn't steer you away from the game though - Obsidian is comprised of many of the developers from the first two Fallout games, which were great games. If anyone besides Bethesda could pull off a great Fallout game, it's the minds behind the original.
I havent played the first two, i've been thinking about trying to find them though. I love where they are taking games. I like knowing that my actions affect the game up until the end. Though i have yet to bring myself to destroy Megaton, i will some day when i'm having an off day. :P What other games have Obsidian done?
they should make a fall out game but with zombies.
Feral ghouls are, more or less, zombies.
they should make a fall out game but with zombies.
they should make a fall out game but with zombies.
Feral ghouls are, more or less, zombies.
Poor Gob would be so sad by what you just said.
However, Feral ghouls were like zombies for the game. It was almost too much fun going into one of the subways with a shotgun.
Twitter / Newcomer Cheat Sheet / Usage Guidelines
Dear god. You sad people who think Obsidian (Black Isle, the team who started Fallout) will not do as good a job as Bethesda (who made Fallout: Oblivion) need to play some classic games. Fallout and Fallout 2 are some of the greatest games I've ever played. New Vegas will be awesome.
If you bred HK-47, Shale, Chai Ka and Wrex, the gaming world would explode from sheer badassery.
I am very excited about this game. The exploration and adventure aspect of bethesda's games is something i'm trying to implement into my game. I really hope area 51 does indeed appear.
If you're interested please support my new video game project. One Click for you, one step towards my dream for me.
Area-51 has too appear when I think of the 1950's Area-51 is oneof the fubjects that I think about, so it has to be included.
Poor Gob would be so sad by what you just said.
I shot Mordin to set Gob free, but the ghoul was too faithful to his duty. =/
EDIT: LoL, Mordin... *ahem* Moriarty.
Demon of Elru:
Dear god. You sad people who think Obsidian will not do as good a job as Bethesda need to play some classic games.
Dear god. You sad people who think Obsidian will not do as good a job as Bethesda need to play some classic games.
Different people will have different opinions. You have to remember that Black Isle and Fallout have been collecting dust for about a decade now.
Most people who've played Fallout 3 have probably never heard of Fallout previously. Couple this with the fact that the majority of gamers aren't aware that Obsidian formed from what was left of Black Isle, and it's not hard to understand why people aren't embracing New Vegas as readily as you or I might.
In the end, it doesn't really matter. A good game is a good game, and people will see that even if they don't see the history behind it.
whaaattt, no ghouls, but then my terrible shotgun, wont be able do its job... they better have area 51, at least add it within a dlc if it wont be included. As for the meaningless objects matt, I think they are there for pure enjoyment if you can get a rock it launcher. Yeah the objects makes a clutter, but you telling me bethesda should have made a world without those everyday objects. I mean, how unreal would it be if the only thing to drink out of is the nuka cola bottles... it would lose its vibe.
then you are completely right, if i can't fire junk from my launcher, then they should do without the junk. in other sense, thank god for a rock it launcher to spice things up, damnem teddy bears... them suckers are gonna fly.
listened to the podcast and from what I heard is that you will be able to mod your weapons, my ideas are maybe add bayonets, ACOG scopes and maybe laser dots.
They also asked Todd Howard about Elder Scrolls 5 and he laughed sarcastically saying you know that sounds like a great idea, I'll crack the whip on my devs when I get back!
From another thread.
by maddkilo Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 07:19 PM
well said matthew, if the original minds of fallout can improve fallout 3 mechanics and graphics (with a revamped engine), and still work with the fps style given (especially the vats system), I think it would be too premature to say that fnv will be one of the best games of 2010. If they can take any tips from us gamers, I hope they improve interacting with other npc and random characters, customization with weapons and clothing, monetary system, interacting w/the enviroment and objects (why can't i see myself drinking a nuka cola or even a nuka cola in my hands if they are that good etc etc), emphasis on bringing back that awe and earie feeling of being alone in the abandon subways, and improve facial espresssions that can help when talking to people.
It wont hurt to also incorporate a page from bioware of transferring chracters and the decisions made in fallout 3 that will ultimately affect the way we can take on quests in fnv. Also i know the vehicles in fallout 3 are, well to put it nicely, not the kind of vehicle i would be seen in when killing mutants down the road. But from the timeline given, there had to be some old versions of the army jeep. I wouldnt mind putting a precision gatling laser in the back of that jeep.
These are just my idea, and hopefully the great minds of obsidian have already dwelved into these ideal improvements and already implying them into their test mods and engine. (wishful thinking at its best i know...)
wheres the podcast and other ideas i had was a co op system and tie mothership zeta with area 51. That would be awesome
www.oxm.co.uk/article.php - Pod Cast page, click on the Click in light green.
they said there will be no Online mode or Co-op
Yes I would like a vehicle too, but if that was so I would want a bigger map.


text:
"No major side effects; it'll only shrink your testicles!"
I have yet to meet a woman that finds big balls a turn on
Now that I think about it neither have I met anyone like that. Large, dangly balls tend to be quite nasty, in fact; it's usually the dangly thing ABOVE the balls that matters, not the balls themselves. I've never understood why men believe large balls are somehow attractive.
Are you qualified to comment, with your username?
I do still have female friends and relatives, mate
Sorry, that still doesn't make you qualified. There's a large discrepancy between how your "friends and relatives" will tell you how they feel and how they actually DO feel. When a story related to breasts or vaginas comes up, feel free to comment.
I hadn't realized that the need for male contraceptive was to prevent male pregnancy.
Large sacks are good as they allow the balls to swing and pound for the extra thrill.
By making your balls smaller it will make other things in that area appear larger.
Also consider the evolutionary perspective. You need big testicles when you need to generate a lot of semen; and you need that when it's a free for all (i.e. all males couple with all females), and you want more sperm just to improve your chances to impregnate a female who's been fucked by a dozen other guys - by beating them on the sperm count. That why chimps have huge testicles, for example, bigger than any other great ape - they are not monogamous like us, nor do they have harems like gorillas and orang
The page 5 of the original article PDF [cell.com] has a size comparison of disected specimens. The treated mice testes weight is roughly halved but the size is 2^(1/3) ~ >0.70 of the untreated ones.
There is a meassurement device called Prader orchidometer [rsna.org] that works by comparison with standarized orbs. It's very difficult to get an accurate size/volume in vivo without using ultrasounds and if even the orchidometer method is not precise much less expect that anybody could notice a significant difference just looking at them.
Certainly after some time not even yourself will notice at all. Definitely noticeable if meassured or compared side by side, but most probably irrelevant for a partner. The major issue may be the own psychological selfesteem burden that some insecure people could have of knowing that their testes shrank a bit, but far worse and by large would be that you got instead a vasectomy and later couldn't reverse it.
Always could do nothing and let all the responsability to your girlfriend/wife behaving like a macho(TM) or just ask for her opinion about it and decide together since also are "her nuts".
So do steroids but some guys take those all the time.
I'm sure it works better than trying to block the DDRT protein.
Besides that it is also an issue that males have less to lose if. They accidently get some one pregnant. There is a lot less incentive for males to take contraceptives then woman. Now condoms on the other hand help prevent him from getting diseases, so there will be a higher usage rate. For the woman she has most to lose if she gets pregnant.
So until our culture changes where after the birth the male is far more responsible for the child, I don't see a huge popularity in male contraceptives.
As if there is a single man in the world would would take a contraceptive that shrank their testes....
I don't think this is close at all, more like a story of a drug with horrific side effects that thankfully they caught before human trials.
As if there is a single man in the world would would take a contraceptive that shrank their testes....
I don't think this is close at all, more like a story of a drug with horrific side effects that thankfully they caught before human trials.
Compared to the horrific side effects of not using any birth control at all, I think a little testicular shrinkage is acceptable.
As if there is a single man in the world would would take a contraceptive that shrank their testes....
Well, if the research would find something that will increase the piece above the testes, I bet many would take it without thinking.
Its not like most slashdotters are getting any.
[adjusts pocket protector] Women go crazy for a sharp dressed man!
My real doll wants to see other people. FML!
I get this strange, uncanny feeling that it won't catch on. From my own experience and opinion, men get squicked-out when it comes to changing one of their body functions. Women are "meh, okay," when it comes to oral contraceptives (in SOME cases--me, it didn't work out at all) simply because they have to put up with major, stupid-ridiculous body issues over their entire lives (menstrual cycles, D-cups, pregnancy, menopause--just to name a few) while a man's changes are more subtle, quicker, and easily controllable (facial hair, voice changes, etc.). It'd be nice to, as Samwise says, 'Share the load,' (har har) but it'd take some time and re-thinking of roles.
I get this strange, uncanny feeling that it won't catch on. From my own experience and opinion, men get squicked-out when it comes to changing one of their body functions. Women are "meh, okay," when it comes to oral contraceptives (in SOME cases--me, it didn't work out at all) simply because they have to put up with major, stupid-ridiculous body issues over their entire lives (menstrual cycles, D-cups, pregnancy, menopause--just to name a few) while a man's changes are more subtle, quicker, and easily controllable (facial hair, voice changes, etc.). It'd be nice to, as Samwise says, 'Share the load,' (har har) but it'd take some time and re-thinking of roles.
Hell yes. Having a vasectomy was a bit of a mental hurdle to get over, although the difference there is it's permanent. Having had the vasectomy I'd still consider taking this if the smaller testes thing was a guarantee (and they didn't keep shrinking below the desired size), and they didn't result in any changes to sex drive.
I thought they could do a reversal for those who changed their minds? Either way, I think more and more men are evolving past their insecurities with body issues and it MAY catch on. Hoping so, anyway. Having more and more options on the table involving both sexes in preventing pregnancy, especially if either the man or woman can't DO oral contraceptives (as it was for me, previously stated) is a must, imho.
I thought they could do a reversal for those who changed their minds?
Tthey can attempt to reverse the procedure but it's around 80% successful for getting viable sperm in the ejaculate and about 75% percent successful for get a pregancy after reversal.
Actually, the problem is that it will reduce the need for condoms. Getting some deadly STD is a lot more life changing then an unplanned pregnancy. Especially in today's society when single parents are quite common.
Perhaps, but for a married couple who don't want any more kids, or ANY kids altogether, it can be beneficial to their love lives if one or both uses oral contraceptives. And really, MOST women (though not all, unfortunately) understand that birth control pills don't prevent STDs, but we take it anyway AND condom use is encouraged.
You forget that once you've been married for a few years you get used to feeling emasculated 24x7, which is why so many married men consent to readily consent to getting a minivans and a vasectomy..
I can totally see a married man taking those pills.
I really just don't get why. My wife had a contraceptive implant. One needle in the arm, bam, protected for 3 years. Because it introduces the drug into the bloodstream in a slow continuous way, rather than in one big hit each day with the tablets, side-effects are generally much milder. When we wanted to have kids, we took it out - just one needle. When we want to permanently not have any more kids, I'll have a vasectomy.
I mean, I understand some women have reactions to the pill, even in the implant-form.
I researched the availability of male birth control after the first time I ended up in the bedroom with a woman who was all "Oh you don't want kids, that's okay, I'm on the pill. No need to use a condom. NO. NO CONDOM! OKAY THEN, BUT USE THIS CONDOM, NOT YOURS! YOURS IS TOO UNBROKEN!"
Sounds silly, right? Apparently it's not that rare, and the older I get (or rather the older the girls I date get), the more common it gets.
So, I had to choose between exclusively dating girls half my age, find a way to put birth control under MY control since I don't want to procreate, or well, just live with it. A lot of guys choose the latter, which I suppose is why a lot of guys become fathers once their luck runs out. I'm not that kind of stupid.
So I just went with the other two options. Girls half my age are usually quite happy when they hear I've had a vasectomy, while a lot of older girls suddenly remember they need to wash their hair this saturday. Sunday. Every day. Every possible day I could ever meet them on, ever. They will have the cleanest hair ever, but they're not risking having sex with an infertile guy. Even though they supposedly are okay with that I don't want kids.
And women are surprised that we're confused by their behaviours...
Anyway I probably would have gone with the vasectomy anyway, but it would have been awesome to have a pill for when I was too young to legally do so. (25 here in Sweden.) So I really do hope that this thing takes off... This time. In difference of all the other ones, that have been in development for decades, and even undergoing human trials.
On the flip side that whole shrinking testes thing is a bit of a marketing problem if it persists in guys. Not for me per se, but generally guys seem to put a lot of stock in their nuts. I mean it's even made the language: "You've got balls." Having smaller balls makes you less of a man. No logic about that either... So most guys wouldn't buy this pill, even if it did work.
And men are surprised that women are confused by their behaviours...
Only find that type? I think you are overlooking the obvious here. When I find one that isn't, I keep her. Hence why I've spent about three quarters of my adult life in long term (2+ years) relationships. When I find a woman who genuinly didn't want to have kids, and who matched me well in most other ways, I even married her. Five years later, and we got divorced... She wanted more big city life, I prefer the countryside. These things happen. Now I'm dating again, and oh look... Girls my age (30+) either ha
Well, of course our experience would differ - we are very different people clearly, with very different search criteria. Let's say you look for girls of type U. Since girls of type T and V are similar, you'll dismiss all other girls, but you'll end up having to look closer at girls in the group TUV in order to find the ones that match best - the Us. Meanwhile I look for girls of type maybe I'm looking for type V, but since type U and W have similar characteristics, I dismiss all other girls and end up looki
Well, of course our experience would differ - we are very different people clearly, with very different search criteria. Let's say you look for girls of type U. Since girls of type T and V are similar, you'll dismiss all other girls, but you'll end up having to look closer at girls in the group TUV in order to find the ones that match best - the Us. Meanwhile I look for girls of type maybe I'm looking for type V, but since type U and W have similar characteristics, I dismiss all other girls and end up looking closer at girls in the group UVW. And thus there are girls I look at that you never meet, and girls you look at that I never meet. Because we dismiss them offhand due to other more immediate reasons.
Of course more likely you look for girls in the group ABC and I look in the group XYZ, but that's largely another story. Even in my subset these women are not the majority, but since they WILL lie and deceive to get their goals, they are over-represented in the girls that get past the first checks and balances.
So getting a vasectomy for me was a simple choice and an easy solution. I don't want to procreate, and telling girls that up front had no result. But telling them up front that I've had a vasectomy and CAN NOT procreate, well that is a new check that weeds out any of these crazies quickly, efficiently, and decisively.
And you can call me an ass-hole all you want, I still say Tacitus is overrated.
It's a typical double-standard like several we have regarding women. It's because we don't really want to think of them as equals, we want to think of them as more than equal to prove what a knight in shining armor we are.
A woman who plans for her future, protects herself from risks she does not want to take, and won't let a man take advantage of her is a strong woman.
A man who plans for his future, protects himself from risks he does not want to take, and won't let a woman take advantage of him
That's the double standard. I say let them call you an asshole. No man should be tricked into being a father. It should be an equal, bilateral decision.
A good way for women then to check if men are using the pill or just don't care!
Makes the whole thing a bit redundant.
It's estimated that 1/2 of all pregnancies in the US are unplanned. Really, every child should be wanted by both parents. Willing parents are the best parents. If this world only had children that were wanted, the quality of child rearing that each child gets is going to be far better. Population explosion could possibly come under control as well.
+1 on your post. It is just as important for men to have control over reproduction- modern society demands they are 50% liable for children (with which I do agree).
I would only add that there should also be no financial rewards to women having children, making sure it is the CHILDREN that are wanted, not the money from the government (yes, this is a big problem with certain socioeconomic populations).
modern society demands they are 50% liable for children
FWIW, here in Ontario family law judges are bound to award child support by applying a chart called the Child Support Guidelines. It takes into account the number of children and the parent's individual income. Equality never enters the picture. If the parents have joint custody and one makes $10,000 / year while the other makes $60,000 and they have two children, the first parent owes a grand total of $0 / month while the second must pay over $900 / month (according to 2010 numbers).
The only time equalization can possibly occur is in the case of joint custody and, say, their incomes just happen to be equal. They therefore need to issue a payment to the other every month for the exact same amount, and so the two payments just happen to cancel each other out.
While double income families are becoming more and more common, there is a LOT of incentive for one partner to become a stay-at-home-parent if they have no moral or ethical qualms about turning their partner into a potential slave. Rather than look at it as: the parent who worked made their own sacrifice by working harder (in some cases two or more jobs) in order to give the stay-at-home parent the opportunity to be with their children all day, "society" tends to take the view that having kids is a major sacrifice (how nice for the kids, huh?) and if someone stays home to "raise your kids" then you owe them (the parent, not the children) individual financial (spousal) support ON TOP OF child support.
Two friends of mine lived together for some years as common-law spouses, never legally married, but they had children when they broke up. The female sought legal counsel and later explained to me that her lawyer was baffled that she would actually want to seek work and earn her keep. The lawyer took it as her job to achieve a state where my friend would not have to work thanks to the spousal support (in addition to child support) that she could expect to collect from her ex on top of various government programs.
We hear a lot about misogyny, but I'm starting to witness more and more misandry over the years. The misogyny card almost seems like an excuse or a red herring these days. Women may have been treated unfairly in marriage and that needed to be remedied, but I don't see any equality to be found anywhere. Instead I see giving women more and more advantages by taking them away from men.
unplanned does not mean unwanted but you are in big part right.
it's called try being married for twelve years.
Is is really a good thing to give people more options to only block pregnancy instead of pregnancy and STDs?
Blocking pregnancy is really not good enough for any contraceptive. When/if this came out I predict a significant increase in STDs.
Also we men really do not have the best track record for honesty related to sex. And "I am on the pill" is a statement that cannot be verified.
Because, as the news keeps reminding us, it's a scary world out there. Drug-Resistent Gonorrha [wired.com] If you need me, I'll be in my parents' basement.
I hope they hang lower when they shrink due to less static acceleration of the ball bag.
Right now one big social problem is unwanted kids, public welfare, and family courts. The problem is there are lots if incentives for poor single women to get pregnant. They get better preferential treatment for things like housing, WIC, college, ect. If there was a male pill or reversible chemical vasecomy the change in social dynamics would change as severely as when the pill for women came out.
Women, who now have essentially the ability to get pregnant when they want to, will have to ask a man for permission to become pregnant, maybe even beg for permission to be a mother. Do they actually understand the shift in reproductive power that unthinking feminists have been pushing for for so long? Do they realize they lose control of their own pregancies? No more Tom Brady and Giselle kinda thing. No more babies by philandering pretty-boy candidates. No more rock star accidents. No more (oops) having that second child because you want one and hubby maybe isn't so keen. And can a silly woman who depends on a man to take his pill trust him to do so? No. Think of pregnancy as revenge etc., an act of aggression. Male contraception empowers men in a way that women may not find so "fair." Nobody really knew the society-wide changes female contraception would bring starting in the 1960s. Perhaps we are not really projecting the changes easy male contraception in pill form will bring in the future as its benefits to men become widely perceived by them.
I THINK MAN INVENTED THE CAR by instinct. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.


text:
Sivilisaatioiden allianssin ystäväryhmän kokous: pysyvän edustajan, suurlähettiläs Jarmo Viinasen puhe New Yorkissa 10.3.2011
President Sampaio, High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
President Sampaio, thank you for organizing this important Group of Friends meeting and thank you for giving me the floor.
Finland fully supports the objectives of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations to improve understanding and cooperative relations among nations and peoples across cultures and religions. Finland has actively participated in the Alliance's forums and other events. President Tarja Halonen has attended AOC Summits in Madrid and Istanbul. Finland annually supports the Alliance, and our current funding covers youth solidarity actions in Africa.
The UNAOC Mediterranean Regional Strategy and action plan frame was approved in November 2010. Its importance and the urgency of its implementation are further highlighted by the recent developments in North Africa.
Finland welcomes the proposal to hold the Doha Civil Society Pre-Forum and the Focal Point meeting in early May. As the Pre-Forum is expected to contribute to the Doha Forum preparations and to the work of the Focal Points, we would like to propose to hold the Focal Point meeting after the Pre-Forum. It would allow Focal Points to attend the meeting and make use of its deliberations.
Finland also supports the initiative to establish a link between the MDG agenda and the Alliance's goals regarding youth, education, media and migration at the Doha Forum in December. Moreover, we would like to see the active role of the Alliance in promoting the 2015 goals strengthened.
High Representative, President Jorge Sampaio has been invited to visit Finland this year by President Tarja Halonen. We hope that the timing of the visit could be agreed in the near future, to allow for the preparations of a national Alliance Day program during the visit.
Mr. President,
Finland also associates herself with the views and remarks expressed here by the EU representative.
Thank you.
Päivitetty 1.4.2011


text:
Bowling's the only sport I follow regularly other than cricket, if it can be called a sport that is. I'd just like to know if there are any other fans of bowling out here? If yes, do you bowl?
Bowling's the only sport I follow regularly other than cricket, if it can be called a sport that is. I'd just like to know if there are any other fans of bowling out here? If yes, do you bowl?
Sport has been ruined by chuckers IMO
Originally Posted by Axl Rose
RIP Craigos. A true CW legend. You will be missed.
No don't really follow it. It's a bit like a more energetic form of darts really. I mean, why waste the extra energy?
WWCC - Loyaulte Mi Lie
"Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself" - Tony Benn
#408. Sixty three not out forever.
Jason Belmonte went to the school down the road from me...that's about my limit on bowling though...
There's been a problem at my local bowling alley for a while now. There's this one guy who got kicked out and banned permanently a while back, and let's be clear about this, he was an utter dickhead. But he keeps trying to get back in and is using a variety of different aliases to get around his ban. We always find him out in the end though, and the pathetic bastard will disappear for a few months before trying the same old trick later on.
Fascist Dictator of the Heath Davis Appreciation Society
Supporting Petone's Finest since the very start - Iain O'Brien
Also Supporting the All Time #1 Batsman of All Time Ever - Jacques Kallis and the much maligned Peter Siddle.
Vimes tells it how it is:
I can empathise really. I've been visiting my local bowling alley for more than eight years now and come back nearly every day even though most of the patrons are dull and obnoxious. I don't even bowl any more, or even talk about bowling. I'm not sure why I keep coming back.
"Under the spreading chestnut tree,
I sold you and you sold me."
Yeah, he's clearly suffered enough afflictions already. It really would be best for all if that wasn't to happen.
Now let's not be all judgemental about crabs here.
Until recently I used to bowl all the time, a few months ago it felt like I must have bowled 10,000 times in a year. Become a bit more distant these days though, I mostly just comment on the newer people that come down to the alley.
I won bowler of the year last year, but then had a similar problem to sledger, but because of this problem I started calling everyone who ever smiled at that guy a ****, and they booted me for ages. Was a hard time, I wound up signing up for this alley that's ran by a robot to pass the time. Now I visit both.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)


text:
- Home
- News
- Sports
- Opinion
- Obituaries
- Features
- Special Sections
- Classifieds
- Public Notices
Accutrex Products is investing $2.5 million to expand its two Lancaster County facilities – a move that will bring up to 10 new jobs to the area.
Lancaster County Economic Development Corp. announced the decision in a media release issued Tuesday, Sept. 25.
Accutrex, which makes custom shims, gaskets, washers and sheet metal products, opened its first precision-parts manufacturing facility on Sunshine Road in the late 1990s.
In 2006, the company expanded to a second nearby facility on Pageland Highway (S.C. 9).
If you currently subscribe or have subscribed in the past to the Lancaster News, then simply find your account number on your mailing label and enter it below.
Click the question mark below to see where your account ID appears on your mailing label.
If you are new to the award winning Lancaster News and wish to get a subscription or simply gain access to our online content then please enter your ZIP code below and continue to setup your account.
|ZIP Code: