text:
CHICAGO — For the better part of a year, I've been pulling my hair out about my kids' deep desire to guzzle sugary, high-caffeine "energy" drinks.
Red Bull, Monster, MiO, Rockstar, NOS, 5-hour ENERGY — you name it, they want it.
For months I've been showing up at dinner armed with news stories about how harmful these drinks can be for young, growing bodies. The Food and Drug Administration just confirmed that it is investigating whether Monster drinks were a factor in the deaths of five people since 2009. That's hard for kids to understand, though. They just nod their heads, because health pales in comparison with being cool.
Like most homes with teenage boys, cool means skateboarding, motocross, BMX biking and any type of "X-treme" sport. Those fans know the sponsors and love their colors, logos and imagery. Even kids into fancier sports such as lacrosse, golf and cycling get indoctrinated into the adoration of energy drinks. Fearless Felix Baumgartner's history-making jump from the edge of the atmosphere a few weeks back was sponsored by Red Bull.
My sons are forbidden from imbibing energy drinks, which the American Beverage Association estimates contain a little more than twice the amount of caffeine in regular cola soft drinks but about half of full-strength coffee, per ounce — but this hardly matters.
It seems as though every single one of my sons' friends drink these mega cans of high-octane not only without impunity but in the comfort of their own homes. Their parents buy these products in bulk and often guzzle them too. And I'm sure that's where my kids have gotten their fix because they've never gotten it at our home.
It simply boggles the mind that any parent would let their children drink this stuff. It is bad enough that research has found that high consumption (more than five 12-ounce cans per week) of regular high-sugar sodas by teens has been linked to higher incidences of violence and a higher likelihood of carrying a weapon than those who drank less.
Just imagine adding the higher levels of sugar and caffeine in energy drinks to the already explosive chemistry of the teen body. It's a recipe for either a really nasty family fight or actual danger.
But don't be fooled into thinking the worry is limited to high-energy drinks. I've learned the hard way that as a parent, you can't anticipate what's out there and the willingness of adults behind counters to sell to teens.
My son came home from a trip to the mall one day and told me he and his friend bought something called "Marley's Mellow Mood" and then felt groggy and sleepy on their bus ride home. I jumped on the Internet to learn that this tea, which comes in a brightly colored can sporting reggae legend Bob Marley's face, is part of a line of "natural relaxation beverages" infused with "calming botanicals" such as valerian root and chamomile.
I didn't appreciate an adult selling my young son the equivalent of a drowsiness-inducing vitamin wrapped in a can of tea. Today the stuff has gotten so popular it's now sold at my corner gas station — and what can I do but tell my kids to stay away from it?
I took no joy in bringing to our dinner table the story of how 14-year-old Anais Fournier died, her parents believe, after having downed two 24-ounce cans of Monster within 24 hours. But I was only too eager to show my sons her picture — she looks just like one of their classmates.
Since parents Wendy Crossland and Richard Fournier have brought this lawsuit against the Monster Beverage Corporation there is finally a much-needed spotlight on what effect all these new designed-for-adults drinks have on adolescents.
It may turn out that people who get sick or even die after consuming these beverages simply had other unknown pre-existing conditions. But years of scientific evidence showing that diets high in sugar plus a lack of regular, uninterrupted sleep result in poor attention spans and higher incidences of a variety of diseases should be enough to prod parents into making sure they don't allow their children to start an unhealthy habit.
Esther Cepeda is syndicated columnist and an NBC Latino Contributor.


text:
Retail Management: "We Have To Check ID Or We Get Screwed By Credit Card Companies"
Scott, a member of management for a retail chain, wants to share the other side of the checking-ID debate:
Your website continually runs stories about how merchants aren't allowed to ask for ID during a credit transaction. I work on the management team at a nationwide retailer, and credit card fraud occasionally hits our location. Every so often, we are hit with something called a 'retrieval request' from one of the big 4 credit authorization companies (Discover, AMEX, MC, Visa). This means we have 48 hours to provide a legible signed receipt, and video evidence of my staff checking a photo ID to verify the cardholder.
If we are unable to verify that my staff checked the ID of the cardholder, we are hit with a 100% chargeback to our account. That's right, they charge back the entire amount, because WE DIDN'T CHECK ID. Thusly, I have informed my staff to check photo ID on ALL TRANSACTIONS, as I am tired of dealing with bad debt. If a customer will not provide ID, I will not take their payment. I am not sure what merchant agreement your readers keep referencing, but this simply isn't true. How can I not check ID, per their agreement, and yet still be held liable for passing a stolen credit card? I would rather lose a customer than lose thousands of dollars in chargebacks every month. Just my two cents.
Update: See this rebuttal—with actual documentation instead of just opinion—sent in by another manager.
"LEAKS: Amex Document Shows Proof of ID Check Is Not Required For Chargebacks"
(Photo: Brett L.)
Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
A Polish man who called emergency services when he saw this fox stuck in railings was told it would have to wait three days before being rescued as it was a weekend.
Marcin Kowalski, 36, was out walking his dog in Gizycka,
Poland, when he stumbled upon the fox, which had wedged itself in between the
metal bars. He said: "I guess it got stuck going through the bars and
then decided to go back the way it came, making the problem worse.
"The poor
thing looked exhausted so I immediately called the emergency
service. But when I got through I was told by the operator that this
wasn't the first call they'd received about it - but as it was the weekend there
was no one available to deal with it and the fox would have to wait until Monday
before being rescued."
He said he had then called a fireman who was a pal
and he had arranged for his colleagues to come by with a vet, and they managed
to free the exhausted fox by cutting the gate bar. He added: "They freed
it and it ran off after the vet had given it the once over, but I'm outraged by
the lack of professionalism shown by the emergency operators."


text:
OAKLAND UNIVERSITY >> After struggling to draw large crowds to the O'rena this season, Oakland fans held up their end of the bargain Saturday. After trailing for much of the game, the Golden Grizzlies sent the nearly sellout crowd home happy after Duke Mondy's pull-up buzzer beating 3-pointer.
The Golden Grizzlies beat visiting Illinois-Chicago, the last-place team in the nine-team Horizon League, 76-75, behind Mondy's heroics.
Mondy said he thought he was actually further from the 3-point line than he really was, which caused officials to review the shot for roughly five minutes before raising their hands to validate the shot.
"It was just a regular shot. I have ice in my veins," Mondy said. "I deserved to make that shot after the work we do to prepare for a game."
Mondy, who was Oakland's second option on the play, charged the length of the court and stopped to pop the game-winner from the top of the key, well within the time remaining.
Freshman point guard Kahlil Felder led five Oakland players in double figures with 21 points on 9-of-11 shooting. Travis Bader followed with 19 points on 5-of-14 shooting from 3-point range, leaving him just eight shy of a new NCAA career record. Mondy and Corey Petros each had 11 points, while Dante Williams added 10 off the bench.
Oakland's largest lead of the game, two points, came just 30 seconds into the game, as the Golden Grizzlies led for just 55 seconds in the entire contest.
Oakland (8-14, 3-4 Horizon) flirted with a single-digit deficit late in the first half, but the Flames (5-16, 0-7) built a 13-point advantage with 7:04 till half and then again at the 5:05 mark. The Grizzlies were fortunate to find themselves within nine points at the break, trailing 40-31.
Oakland came out fired up for the second half, but was still struggling to get stops, as the Flames led for all but a few seconds, as the Golden Grizzlies' two late leads were short-lived.
PHOTOS: Oakland wins on buzzer-beater
Oakland went ahead by one on a 3-pointer by Travis Bader with 4:20 to play before a 3 from Pat Birt less 17 seconds later put the Flames back in front by two.
Felder's free throw gave the Golden Grizzlies another one-point advantage with 1:18 to play before Illinois-Chicago went up by one on a layup from Kelsey Barlow.
Felder redeemed himself for an errant turnover with 44 seconds remaining, the Golden Grizzlies' only giveaway of the second half, with a jumper that tied the game with 10 seconds to play.
"I wasn't going to let my team lose," Felder said. "I was thinking 'what can I do to help my team' after that play."
On the ensuing Flames possession, Felder forced them into an over-and-back violation.
Birt gave the Flames their final lead, two points, with a pair of free throws with 4.4 seconds remaining.
Oakland coach Greg Kampe is hoping the victory can help the struggling Golden Grizzlies gain confidence as the second half of the conference season nears.
"We really didn't play very well for the first 30 minutes of the game," he said. "It was very dumbfounding to me that we could play that way," with the crowd and the Homecoming atmosphere.
"For (the Flames) to make plays down the stretch and us to find a way to win is an encouraging thing. But you still have to question where everythig was in the first 30 minutes."
The Golden Grizzlies were outrebounded, 38-21, and outshot, shooting only 47 percent to the Flames' 56 percent from the floor.
Oakland scored 31 points off 22 Illinois-Chicago turnovers.
The Flames are now 0-5 all-time against Oakland and are still searching for their first conference victory of the season.
Saturday's crowd of 2,987 is the largest of the season at the 3,000-seat O'rena.
Oakland hosts Youngstown State Friday before heading back out on the road to Milwaukee Feb. 2.


text: Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums :: View topic - the most interesting comic Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Students and Teachers from Around the World!" FAQ Search Memberlist Usergroups Register Profile Log in to check your private messages Log in the most interesting comic Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Hobbies View previous topic :: View next topic Author Message gorogoroJoined: 15 May 2003Posts: 1 Posted: Thu May 15, 2003 11:14 pm Post subject: the most interesting comic  Hi! Hi! What kind of comics do you like? I like SLUM DUNK very much. Hanamichi Sakuragi who was a bad boy grows up by playing basketball. The seen that he passes the ball to Kaede Rukawa who Hanamichi hates to win Sanno High School moves us. Takehiko Inoue writes this comic, and other comics are also interesting. Please read his comics. Back to top shotaroJoined: 02 Jul 2003Posts: 2 Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2003 6:41 pm Post subject: I love SLAM DUNK I like SLAM DUNK very much! I met it when I was a high school student. I was so moved that I couldn't help crying.I think SLAM DUNK is the best. Back to top akinobuJoined: 08 Dec 2003Posts: 1 Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2003 10:02 pm Post subject: I like 'OISHINBO'. It's very interested. Back to top Display posts from previous: All Posts1 Day7 Days2 Weeks1 Month3 Months6 Months1 Year Oldest FirstNewest First Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Hobbies All times are GMT - 8 Hours Page 1 of 1 Jump to: Select a forum Student Forums----------------ComputersCurrent NewsCultureEnglish SchoolsFamilyFilm and CinemaFoodHealth and FitnessHelp CenterHobbiesHolidaysLearning EnglishLiteratureMaking FriendsMusicOpinionsPetsScienceSportsThe Strange and MysteriousTOEFL and Other English ExamsTravel You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum Dave's ESL Cafe is maintained by the one and only Dave Sperling. Banner Advertising | Bookstore / Alta Books | FAQs | Articles | Interview with Dave Copyright © 2018 Dave's ESL Cafe | All Rights Reserved | Contact Dave's ESL Cafe | Site Map Teachers College, Columbia University: Train to Teach English Here or Abroad Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group


text:
B&B Chiara
Real Reviews
Real reviews from fellow travellers
These are trusted reviews from guests who have actually stayed here. We hope you find them helpful.
Note: we only give a property a rating once it has received a minimum of 3 reviews.
- Page:1/1
- " This is excellent B&B. Very friendly owners. Basically, it is one huge studio with kitchen and large bathroom. Great value for money. Many times better than average hostel or hotel. We enjoyed our stay very much. "
- 10 Jun 2012 Meelis


text:
(Photo Credit: Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images)
Bobby Brown is making his return to the small screen. Just weeks after Brown checked himself out of rehab, he makes news with the announcement of a BET reality television show.
The New Edition member's follow-up to his 2005 Bravo series, Being Bobby Brown, will follow the singer as he deals with the struggles and triumphs of everyday life. According to a press release, the series is set to be executive produced by DuBose Entertainment's James DuBose, the reality show visionary who developed programs for Michael Vick,Trey Songz, Monica andKeyshia Cole.
SEE ALSO: More Information About Bobby Brown's Rehab
While the title of the show has yet to be announced, given Bobby Brown's turbulent career and reality show history, he stands to attract a large audience. From dealing with the tragic death of his ex-wife and pop music iconWhitney Houston to his current comeback with New Edition, the performer has remained in the spotlight.
Recently, Brown checked out of rehab three weeks into his publicized stay. No word yet when Bobby Brown's BET show will premiere. —Keith Murphy, CBS Loca


text: morning all! go ahead, throw your spitballs and snicker about my hair, im new in class so i expect it. been reading old posts, making baby steps, got firefox with no script addon and updated virus protection and firewall. would like some recomendations on heavy reading for beginners if anyone has any.will be lurking in some dark, dusty corner, poring over the old tomes, looking for the next step on the path to true enlightenment. when recomending reading, think zero previous experience please!


text:
AIB my son, who this week had to pick a natural disaster for a school report. I am so proud, he picked Pompeii/Vesuvius (I am a closet archaeologist). In the meantime, I am reading a book about Florida hurricanes and wondering how Cyburbians have fared in natural disasters in their areas. I have been thru umpteen hurricanes, was a couple miles from a string of tornadoes that killed dozens just 6 years ago around here. My dad worked the Keys after a tornado in the '30's and reported picking up bodies from the sea with pitchforks. Hey, it's a Florida thing.
Which natural disasters have you/family experienced and how have you fared?
Mod Edit (nerudite): Added 'other' option.


text:
to Cedar Spring Inn & Spa,
a comfortably luxurious Virginia bed and breakfast inn located on 36 scenic acres 11 miles north of Charlottesville and within 30 minutes of 12 wineries, Monticello and Montpelier, the University of Virginia and the Shenandoah National Park.
Come, relax in this architectural light-filled gem, your home away from home. Enjoy the peace and beauty
of the property . . . and leave with the memory of an experience.


text:
Hey M Girls!
There have been a few recent reports that One Direction will be making an appearance on iCarly, and now it's officially confirmed! They'll be on set for an episode called "iGot Jungle Worms" and rumor has it that 1D will perform "What Makes You Beautiful" in the episode.
1D will be on the iCarly set on MONDAY and here's a summary of what the episode will be about:
"Carly returns home sick after a trip and discovers that One Direction has accepted an invitation to perform on their web show. Not long after arriving, bandmate Harry becomes sick and we see Carly doting over him. Realizing Harry is playing sick for the attention, they hatch a plan to get him back in the group by telling him Gibby has become their newest bandmember."
Wow! We're SO excited to see 1D on iCarly!
Is Debby Ryan a good match for One Direction's Niall Horan? Cute vid: Watch the boys of 1D race cars! Have you seen One Direction's "One Thing" music video? Check it out!
Let's dish: - Are you looking forward to One Direction guest starring on iCarly? Who else would you love to see on the show?


text:
LAKEMOOR – Lakemoor residents may experience issues with water next week when the water department flushes all of its water systems.
The flushing may cause some water discoloration, pressure changes and cloudiness, according to a release from the city's engineering firm.
Call the water department at 847-634-5550 with questions.
– Emily K. Coleman


text:
Monday, May 19, 2008
College Football Fans Love Jim Delany
Got an email from MZone reader Matt telling us to take a look at Big Ten commish Jim Delany's Wikipedia page, specifically the "Influence" section. As Matt wrote, "You should probably hurry before someone takes it down."
He's right. Here's why...
Funniest thing about that Wiki post? The "[2]" where they actually cite a reference and strive to give proper documentation to their "complete and utter douchebag" assertion.
Who says Wikipedia hasn't fixed any problems with their fact checking?
UPDATE: Since this post, the Wiki entry has now been, uh, "updated."
22 comments:
- Catie said...
Ha, it has already been edited out (the douchebag part)
- May 18, 2008 6:21 PM
- Lane said...
i am in love with the internet - seriously, it is on all accounts the coolest thing ever.
oh, and can we finally just get this out there - catie's cleavage is like....just....wow!
- May 18, 2008 6:33 PM
- Catie said...
Ruh roh!
- May 18, 2008 7:34 PM
- Anthony S said...
- May 18, 2008 7:46 PM
- TitleIX said...
were not talking playoffs here
- May 18, 2008 8:36 PM
- Catie said...
T9, Oh yes we are talking Playoffs!
I think that implementing a playoff system is rather like implementing social health reform. There are too many benefiting from the current system that have too loud of a voice to allow such a change. If there is some way to show benefit to those who are currently benefiting, then there may be some hope.
- May 18, 2008 9:43 PM
- Joshua said...
That's awesome. Totally got taken by surprise with the douchebag line.
Four team playoff. Six at most. Anything else diminishes the regular season in too large of a way.
- May 18, 2008 11:03 PM
- Sgt. Wolverine said...
Raise your hand if you think a playoff system would stay at 4-6 teams in the long term.
(I'm not raising my hand.)
- May 18, 2008 11:51 PM
- Joshua said...
Yup. Pretty much not raising my hand. But can't a guy dream?
- May 19, 2008 12:54 AM
- Sgt. Wolverine said...
Sorry. Just call me Burrill, Destroyer of Dreams. (Sometimes even my own.)
- May 19, 2008 1:53 AM
- beast in 'bama said...
The entry's already been changed? Wait...I thought it was your assertion that Wikipedia has fixed its fact checking...I'm confused.
- May 19, 2008 7:50 AM
- TitleIX said...
I'm thinking Matt wrote it, screen shotted it and sent it on to Yost
posting the screen shot is somewhat akin to text-messaging all your friends about the great new shipment of ganja at the frat house.
someone's gonna 'hear' about it...
enter Wikipolice
- May 19, 2008 8:30 AM
- TitleIX said...
you mean college football playoffs......
I thought the reference was still to mammary glands
personally, I think that IF there is a 'playoff' it should be called a TOURNAMENT----just like every other NCAA sport with 'playoffs'!
ie--Congrats to the Softball Women, regional champs. SuperRegional here in A2 this weekend Sat and Sun versus VaTech. Also available on ESPN.
- May 19, 2008 8:33 AM
- Jeff said...
You should check out the history on his wikipedia page. After the "douchebag" comment was removed, people made a bunch of changes. Such as:
"Delanye has also done everything in his power to cater to the desires of Ohio State and Michigan, much to the malign of the rest of the conference. This includes hiring and retaining referees that give favorable calls to Michigan, most notably when they play perennial conference stepchild, Penn State. Once Delaney steps down, there is hope all conference members will be treated equally."
- May 19, 2008 9:13 AM
- Yost said...
Matt just sent the link. I saw it and it was there.
But I agree with you: there must be some system in place at Wikipedia that raises red flags when all of a sudden entries like the page for "Jim Delany" suddenly start getting thousands of hits.
While I'm sure it's possible there could be spontaneous, overwhelming interest in the Big 10 commissioner, the Wiki folks have probably figured something is probably amiss.
- May 19, 2008 11:03 AM
- Sgt. Wolverine said...
As part of a paper she was writing about not citing Wikipedia as a source, a friend of mine added her brother -- a current U-M student -- as a past president of EMU. It did get fixed eventually. (But considering the problems they've had there, I guess that's almost plausible...)
The main point of her paper was simply that the only really reliable way to use Wikipedia is simply to find actual reliable sources in the citations. Using Wikipedia as a source, she said, isn't much different than using a classmate's paper as a source.
- May 19, 2008 11:18 AM
- Mike From THE state of Ohio said...
A playoff never happening is kind of aggrivating. As I heard someone say earlier, by putting in a playoff- the regular season becomes less important (even though it'll still be a great feat to be in the top 4 nationally at the end of the season, as opposed to just the top 2).
There's no doubt it would help, because then there wouldn't be any of this "USC and LSU are co-champs" garbage. I would have loved to have seen a Nebraska-Michigan game in 1997 too.
Delaney being called a "douchebag" on one of the internet's most frequented sites = very funny.
P.S. - 4 days until the new Indiana Jones movie comes out...(Mike shreiks like a little school-girl)...
- May 19, 2008 11:40 AM
- Mikoyan said...
The problem I see is that any playoff system they come up with will perpetuate the status quo in the college football world. One of the nice things about the NCAA Basketball Tournament is that every team has an equal shot of winning it. And every conference has at least one entry in it. That would not be the case in a football tourney, unless they go to a 64 team format, which would be unlikely.
I'm probably one of the few folks in America that actually like the bowl system (although I don't like the BCS). And unless they address the above issue, I don't want to see a playoff.
- May 19, 2008 12:29 PM
- Matthew said...
Here's the story on how I found it:
My roommate works for Chicago 2016 and Jim Delaney sits on their board. My roommate was putting together a presser for some event they were having and decided to look on Wikipedia for some background information on Delaney. Knowing I would enjoy the post, he told me to go to Jim Delaney's wikipedia page, which I did. Finding it hilarious, I thought I would share it with Benny and Yost, who would appreciate it.
I did not create that information on Jim Delaney's page.
- May 19, 2008 1:15 PM
- TitleIX said...
Matt and Yost---
my apologies.
my post was meant to be funny, sort of tongue-in-cheek with the "idea" of "matt" posting it as an abstract concept
given the responses I can completely see what a crappily-written comment it were (sic)
I am sorry for any defamation and/or dismay that occurred.
- May 19, 2008 2:42 PM
- OSURulz said...
I'm in favor of a plus-one format. However I am apparently in the minority. Most people either like the current system or want 16 - 32 teams. I think that's crazy. I shiver at the thought of more than 8 teams being added to a tournament style format.
IMO nobody outside the top 8 has any room to cry foul. 8 teams would be mean 6 conference champions with 2 at-large bids. If you can't make that cut, then don't whine about not getting your shot. But even a +1 would at least cut down on the number of teams p1ssing and moaning about how they got passed up.
Besides, I would actually prefer my OSU boys to have some sort of tune up prior to an NC game instead sitting on their duffs for 50+ days. But I guess that kind of talk is on hold for another 6 years or so.
- May 19, 2008 7:08 PM
- bill said...
Someone needs to go change it back to the douchebag thing. I tried but I'm banned from wikipedia for "vandalism"
- May 19, 2008 7:23 PM


text:
Disaster Preparedness & Emergency Management
The study of disaster preparedness and emergency management provides students with a broad range of administrative skills and knowledge that are ideally suited to meet the critical needs of emergency management administrators. At UH West O'ahu, students may pursue a Bachelor of Arts in Public Administration with a concentration in Disaster Preparedness & Emergency Management or a certificate in Disaster Preparedness & Emergency Management. All courses meet the national standards as established by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Higher Education Project. Courses for the bachelor's degree and certificate are offered through in-class and distance learning instruction.
Graduates of the Disaster Preparedness & Emergency Management program will be prepared with essential skills and knowledge for careers in disaster and emergency management, as well as graduate programs in emergency management, program planning, public safety and security administration. Those already employed in the field will develop management, legal and behavioral skills for more effective job performance and career advancement.
Projections by FEMA support the increased need for disaster and emergency managers in Hawai'i, especially in seaport and airport security and natural disasters. According to HSTODAY, the most comprehensive publication and directory on government employment, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is expected to become the largest government employer with the greatest need for trained professionals with expertise in areas of public policy, emergency management, criminal justice, public safety and homeland security. Salaries for trained, mid-level professionals in emergency management and related fields can range from $50,000 - $80,000 a year.
PUBA 411 Emergency Management and Disaster Preparedness
This course examines emergency management, planning, and response techniques. Emphasis is placed on effective training and coordination of medical facility personnel, public and non-profit agencies, and the military to deal with a variety of man-made and natural events.
PUBA 461 Social Dimensions of Disaster
This course is an overview of empirical versus theoretical approaches; human behavior in disaster, myths and reality; group disaster behavior; community social systems and disaster; cultures, demographics and disaster behavior distinctions; and model building in sociological disaster research.
PUBA 462 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuation
This course is intended for novices in business continuity and disaster recovery planning. Topics include business continuity planning; recovery of information and communication system; the purpose, goals, and objectives of plan development; and initial response to catastrophic events.
PUBA 463 Disaster Recovery and Hazard Mitigation
This course addresses household, organizational, and community recovery from disasters, discussed in the context of mitigation activities to reduce vulnerability to disasters. Recovery policies, processes, and outcomes are examined at the local, state, and federal levels. Issues related to local adoption of mitigation measures are considered. The course addresses chemical properties of hazardous materials and wastes; legal requirements for their handling, storage, transportation, and disposal; methods of protecting employees, facilities, and the community.
PUBA 464 Terrorism and Emergency Management
This course will identify domestic and international terrorist organizations; analyze their objectives and tactics; and examine the law enforcement and military response. Topics will include: biological, chemical, and nuclear terrorism; cyber-terrorism; and an assessment of the level of preparedness within the U.S.
Students in the Disaster Preparedness & Emergency Management program have completed internships or obtained jobs at a number of local and government agencies including:
- U.S. Naval Criminal Investigation Service
- O'ahu Civil Defense Agency
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security
- Federal Emergency Management Agency
- Federal Aviation Administration
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Dr. Ross Prizzia, Professor
(808) 689-2365


text:
Real atomic clocks often have only have a nanosecond error. And new ones using ion gates are promising mobile clocks that are even more accurate. This is still pretty cool
What's a few nanoseconds among friends?
What is the resolution of the built-in clock on most PCs? An Atomic clock might have nanoscale resolution, but if a computer's clock only has microsecond resolution, then it stands to reason that you can only synch the computer to within 1 microsecond of accuracy, no?
That's right. Also, PC clocks tend to be not that great, in terms of reliability of the frequency, and error such as clock drift.
Hence the general recommendation to use NTP to keep your clock in synch with a good time source; a good time source, being something such as an atomic clock, or a radio-based receiver that provides time from a good source.
A PC clock can easily have errors of 100 PPM or higher. Or ~10 seconds of drift per day
Factors that seem small such as temperature can effect the frequency of the clock crystal also
With an error rate that high, it doesn't even sound worthwhile to sync with anything less than millisecond accuracy. Even if you sync exactly, you can't maintain accuracy long enough to reliably base any high-precision timing tasks on the internal clock.
These guys aren't using the PC clock crystal, and they're improving on NTP by a large margin.
Plus they split interval and wall-clock timers for people who really care that their interval measurements don't get screwed with by leap second (or DST) resets and such, and the accuracy of those measurements is down in the ns range.
if a computer's clock only has microsecond resolution, then it stands to reason that you can only synch the computer to within 1 microsecond of accuracy, no?
No. You can sync up to fractions of a clock cycle fairly easily. On average you can only report the time at any instant with around 0.5 uS accuracy, but you can set the edge where it cuts over from one uS to the next as accurately as you want, given enough time to sync...
Slashdot car analogy is I change my oil 4 times a year, so you're saying I can't tell you when I change my oil with any accuracy higher than a whopping 3 months. Yet I assure you, if sufficiently motivated, I can "sync up" such that I change the oil precisely at midnight on the 1st of every third month, with a reportable accuracy of like an hour or so.
I'm sure you mean to say that for every discrete interval n we can only report the value accurately +/- (n/2)
In this case n being 12/4 = 3 months, I can tell you when you change your oil with 1.5 month accuracy.
Also, for the car analogy, you would have to not make any excuses for missing your oil change, including weekends, sickness, or your oil change place being closed at midnight. I will accept +/- 1 hour.
I don't think it's anything special.
If you want atomic clock accuracy, then you go fetch the time from an actual atomic clock. Even back in the 1980s, I had a Commodore Amiga program that would automagically dial a 1-800 number, fetch the time, and set my internal clock. Doing it today via the web should be a piece of cake.
Are you sure it's really syncing? How often? (I'm sitting here with my laptop and cell phone disagreeing on time by more than a minute, which is annoying because the laptop is supposed to be syncing time to something accurate...)
It's called NTP. You just have to be careful who you choose as your peers.
ntpd also corrects for clock drift if the kernel supports it.
NTP is unreliable even on good networks and hopeless on even mildly bad networks. NTP's time synchronization can't be relied on to be better than 1ms, nowhere near the precision of an actual atomic clock.
RADclock can do much better.
"Fetching the time via the web" is using NTP or SNTP to get time from better clocks. The article says that NTP is at best getting you millisecond accuracy, and claims RADclock can get to microsecond level.
NTP solved this ages ago by distributing atomic clock accuracy through the network.
The only problem this will solve is where it is a private network not connected to public NTP servers (or organizations that do not trust public NTP). In that case, they would most likely be able to afford a atomic clock.
NTP solved this ages ago by distributing atomic clock accuracy through the network.
The only problem this will solve is where it is a private network not connected to public NTP servers (or organizations that do not trust public NTP). In that case, they would most likely be able to afford a atomic clock.
An alternate would be radio clock signals like the old MSF Rugby signal in the UK (now moved to scotland)?
Ok not as accurate as an atomic clock but for most NTP cases it would be accurate enough
GPS also provides an extremely accurate clock signal all around the world (after all, it comes from an atomic clock onboard the satellites). All you need is a GPS receiver. You can put most decent GPS modules into a "clock mode" where you lock their position on the globe and they optimize the calculations to give you the most accurate time.
Meinberg makes a line of products that provide GPS backed NTP servers, as well as PCI/PCI-E cards that give PC's a GPS based clock (with an external antenna). They also make a pretty good NTP server/client for WIndows. It's overkill for most projects, but if you have a large datacenter or need for very accurate time, I would think they could be useful, if nothing else to keep you from having to rely on external time sources (which could be a potential security hole). This research seem more about making
From TFA:
"The RADclock project (formerly known under 'TSCclock') aims to provide a new system for network timing within two years. We are developing replacements for NTP clients and servers based on new principles, in particular the need to distinguish between difference clocks and absolute clocks. The term RADclock, 'Robust Absolute and Difference Clock', stems from this. The RADclock difference clock, for example, can measure RTTs to under a microsecond, even if connectively to the time server is lost for over a week! "
or example, can measure RTTs to under a microsecond, even if connectively to the time server is lost for over a week!
Let's see... with connectivity loss over a week, that makes around a 604800000000us RTT plus or minus some error. If you don't trust your clock, and it's important to you, why would you leave it without connectivity for over a week?
Its gone thru a pretty severe journalist / PR filter.
"RTT under a microsecond" doesn't mean TCP RTT, it means the "delay" column on the equivalent of the peers command in the ntpq program for this new thing displays more than 3 decimals of milliseconds.
And the connectivity lost over a week means the "poll" interval column on the equivalent of the peers command in the ntpq program can go in excess of a week,
For example, I'm syncing to several clocks at home, one of which is ntp.sixxs.net. My delay is 130.76
NTP solved this ages ago by distributing atomic clock accuracy through the network.
The only problem this will solve is where it is a private network not connected to public NTP servers (or organizations that do not trust public NTP). In that case, they would most likely be able to afford a atomic clock.
If one reads the explanation at the beginning of the article literally (as the person who wrote the summary did), the article does seem to say that this system averages the time from the cheap quartz crystal clocks in all of the computers in order to arrive at a highly accurate estimate of the true time of day. This of course is absurd. If all of the clocks start out between one and five minutes fast, they will converge on a time that is about three minutes fast. So much for microsecond accuracy!
The article suggests that NTP did indeed solve this problem. Reading between the lines I gather that these researchers are developing the next generation protocol to replace NTP. This will allow all of the nodes to synchronize more tightly with whatever time source (such as an atomic clock) is used.
The next generation protocol has already been invented too, the Precision Time Protocol [wikipedia.org] (PTP) recorded as IEEE 1588, with open source implementations [sourceforge.net] already available.
PTP isn't a replacement to NTP: it's trying to solve a different problem. It's not useful on a general company LAN, but rather on a network that controls robotics or measurement devices.
Some limitations of PTP:
* only one "grandmaster" clock, i.e., no redundancy
* no WAN connectivity; it's UDP multicast-only, and so not very routable
* no security/signing of timestamps; NTP has security extensions if you need to be able to trust the time
* patented by HP/Agilent; NTP is both open and free
PTP was designed for small subnets of systems where measurement instruments and robotic systems are running on. This isn't a general PC/server solution.
PTP is NOT an Internet-ready solution. It only works modestly reliably on systems where you have exceedingly predictable latencies. Like inside a dedicated time sync LAN, or using high quality links between sites. (go buy some dark fiber!) Things like having load on a shared LAN link will throw off the results. PtPv1 was hideously allergic to even slight variations. PtPv2 added some buffering/averaging, but didn't change the basic problems.
I think you're missing the point, brilliance and usefulness of this. To put a rest to your argument, being behind a private network is just banter; you can still use a local time clock source from an internal server, server it up with NTP and let all your internal hosts connect to it to sync time. However, the point is that it's not a reliable time source, and even a network time nazi or your basic shell account user will tell you that the times are going to vary enough between your nodes to be bothersome
To answer your implication about time variation between nodes, even a basic ntp server to which your local network nodes sync will keep them in at the same wall clock time, even more so if you follow the protocol and use multiple servers, even if the time source is the servers' quartz clocks. If you have more than a few milliseconds skew after that, y
If you need more than fractional second timing for syncing a process or physical events, you don't try to coordinate timing over a communications medium without guaranteed latency (like ethernet). This can be seen in certain types of linux superclusters that abandon ethernet and its descendents in favor of synchronous communications.
Why would you go for a expensive synchronous networking when ethernet works perfectly well, given non-broken software?
If you really want to know, check out the rationale of the folks building Linux clusters with Myrinet instead of Ethernet. Here's a link to a paper discussing one implementation from 2001: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.31.9270 [psu.edu]
Simply put, when working with high performance computing tasks using parallel toolkits like MPI or on problems that require inter node communication of intermediate results, latency really matters to performance. Minimum latency of Myrinet or similar com
the need for crazy expensive accurate timing devices, the time it takes to fine tune them and some crazy ass person (like myself) with a fetish for time keeping to stay on top of it. Instead of buying ridiculously expensive time keeping appliances
Thats a heck of a lot of effort and money to get around opening port 123 on the firewall. Or implementing a "layer 7 firewall machine" that runs nothing but ntp, with one leg in the private net and one on the public internet.
Also in the olden days, like a decade or two ago, I was brought up that GPS units / radio clocks in general cost tens of thousands of dollars. Not so much anymore.
This really sounds to me like an interesting experiment in error correction.
You have n machines which were all (or most) at some point within 1 ms or so sync to an atomic clock. They all immediately started to add error to that time. So now, this system seems to be, sampling all of these machines, collecting all of their skew together. If the skew is random, you would expect it to cancel itself out. If it tends to bias in one direction, you should be able to figure out an average skew.
Then that average is u
NTP solved this ages ago by distributing atomic clock accuracy through the network.
Wrong. NTP is rarely as good as a millisecond. Atomic clocks should be accurate to better than a microsecond.
There is an IETF effort, TicToc [ietf.org], intended to help improve time transfer to better than NTP accuracy, but that requires router assistance (i.e., participation by the ISP), as routers and switches will introduce large and indeterminate delays by atomic clock standards.
NTP solved this ages ago by distributing atomic clock accuracy through the network.
You probably missed the point that the project is based in Australia. NTP doesn't work down there, because the Coriolis effect makes Australian clocks turn the opposite way of clocks in the Northern Hemisphere, just like their toilets swirl the other direction. This creates a problem, since many distros have NTP enabled by default, which causes the system clock to run backwards on Australian computers - really makes a mess of the logs, screensavers activate an hour before the computer is turned on, all sorts of odd things. If you start looking at the RADclock code, you'll find that it's surprisingly simple and elegant - they simply reverse the byte order of the NTP messages, and - voila! - their clocks can now run forwards while remaining synchronized.
This explanation brought to you by a six-pack of Fosters.
I can imagine the speaking clock:
"At the third stroke, it will be, most likely, sixish"
They have atomic clocks on board and GPS receivers therefore give highly accurate time.
A GPS receiver will be useless as the GPS time currently is (IIRC) 12 seconds ahaed of UTC.
GPS doesn't honor leap seconds. This behaviour is by design as it's quite hard to halt the sattelites orbits for a second.
If it's off by a known amount, I'd expect you could calculate the real value with some kind of mathematical equation.
- 12 seconds
The problem is that this will rise when the next leap second is scheduled. When GPS started, GPS Time was identical to UTC. And leap seconds aren't based on a regular pattern but on the irregulatories of earths movement.
So it's good enough for relative time or within a system that agreed to use GPS time instead of UTC. Any other setup would require constant manual intervention. (at least minitoring of International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Services announcments)
http://en.wikipedia.or [wikipedia.org]
So it's good enough for relative time or within a system that agreed to use GPS time instead of UTC. Any other setup would require constant manual intervention.
Easy way round this if you can access ntp but need the accuracy of gps:
Assume ntp is accuracte to within 0.5s (oviously it's much more accurate). Take the difference between ntp and gps times and round to nearest second. This gives you the current number of leap seconds, and you can then adjust your gps time with no manual intervention.
Surely you're not suggesting that keeping accurate time with an atomic clock doesn't require manual intervention every time a leap second is introduced?
Yes, you could, but what about the next leap second that changes it to 13 seconds (or worse, 11).
If you wanted to keep your UTC accurate, you'd have to ensure you kept patching your software each time another was announced. Not the end of the universe by itself.
But then, you've also got to deal with the problem of overlapping time (1/1/2015 12:00:00.5 happening twice), which for most people isn't an issue, but if you've got an application for which microseconds are important (like the high-volume financial
Well, you could separate the distribution mechanism for time data vs correction data.
The corrections can be high-latency and knowing what the latency is doesn't matter at all. The time data needs to have known latency, and preferably low latency.
Software updates are just a very-high-latency mechanism for distributing this information. It would not be difficult to come up with a better approach. WAAS already operates under a similar concept - providing additional metadata useful in increasing the accuracy
A GPS receiver will be useless as the GPS time currently is (IIRC) 12 seconds ahaed of UTC.
GPS doesn't honor leap seconds.
YRW, it's behind, not ahead.
And that's why you have
$ TZ=:America/New_York date; TZ=:right/America/New_York date
Thu Jul 8 09:14:01 EDT 2010
Thu Jul 8 09:13:37 EDT 2010
If you have some pathological need to have the exact wall clock time down to the microsecond (an amount of time no human can distinguish) correct and identical at multiple discrete
While computers have significant issues with subtraction, I am positive someone can find a solution to this monumental problem. After all the algorithm, while clearly complex seems solvable if only networked computers could connect to some remote resource to discover new information occasionally. Or perhaps these computing devices could respond to some sort of human interaction to gather such information and respond in a well defined manor.
While computers have significant issues with subtraction, I am positive someone can find a solution to this monumental problem. After all the algorithm, while clearly complex seems solvable if only networked computers could connect to some remote resource to discover new information occasionally.
Well.. it's called NTP.
Yeah. I read it up a few minutes after posting...
i stand corrected.
Also, the position of the satellite is meaningless for issues of timing, it only affects geolocation.
...but in what situation would the time of day on a server or cluster need to be accurate down to a microsecond? Military, I would presume...but what else?
The Financial Sector.
Also, synchronized robotics, precisely coordinated CNC, and a host of other applications. Primarily, it's where absolute time isn't the concern, but rather where arbitrary time must be consistent between multiple devices (accounting for propagation delays, failures, etc...). Of course, protocols like PTP solve this fairly neatly: this particular product solves a different problem, and probably isn't actually useful.
There are two time issues to consider. One is how close your environment is to true time. The other is how close your individual devices are to one another. Messaging time-critical information between devices is severely complicated when the two devices are not on the same plane time-wise. Atomic clocks and the like solve the first problem. PTP solves the second problem. NTP almost (95%) solves both, but falls short in certain extremely time-critical situations.
Cool! Thanks for the mini-lesson
Of course, the multi-device coordination problem is better solved by communications between the devices (ready to do step 1, do step 1, doing step , done step 1, ready to go to step 2, etc). Think of the transactional model (begin transaction, do work, commit transaction, wait for ack).
The only problem with that is latency - if you want two devices to coordinate steps while moving from step to step in less time than it takes for packets to travel between them, then you need synchronized clocks.
I'm also pretty sure there are desktop clocks based on microcontrollers that implement ntp, so they display an accurate time without a computer.
Most data centers that really care about time nowadays install a commonly available GPS unit on site, which syncs clock time with all the atomic clocks in the flying GPS constellation.
Seriously, could the edi
So, someone's invented ntp_time? That's only been around collecting time from time servers, many of which are atomic clock connected, since about 1985.
Seriously, could the editor that greenlighted this have done a google search or something?
Could you have done a google search yourself or something?
Then you might find this [unimelb.edu.au]:
The RADclock project (formerly known under 'TSCclock') aims to provide a new system for network timing within two years. We are developing replacements for NTP clients and servers based on new principles, in particular the need to distinguish between difference clocks and absolute clocks. The term RADclock, 'Robust Absolute and Difference Clock', stems from this. The RADclock difference clock, for example, can measure RTTs to under a microsecond, even if connectively to the time server is lost for over a week!
The RADclock project (formerly known under 'TSCclock') aims to provide a new system for network timing within two years.
Damn 2 years?? I suspect the time is somewhere between 2009 and 2011...
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this is not a big deal.
NTP works fine without central servers, by the way. You just sync between machines on your site, which solves 99% of the problems you wanted time sync for in the first place.
This is the sort of story item that I would expect to see in one of the little side news boxes... like announcement of a new release on freshmeat including the new algorithm, or maybe a summary of news from the ntp world on a network time dedicated
NTP works fine without central servers, by the way. You just sync between machines on your site, which solves 99% of the problems you wanted time sync for in the first place.
Only if you don't really care about time in the first place. NTP is likely to go on a wild goose chase once in a while and then reset time to recover.
the trick is within a given site it does not matter ~95% of the time if there is a time skew if The Whole Site is wrong by the same amount. So if the error is exactly 5 minutes 14.507693 seconds and the whole site has that same error then everything works out.
In the other ~5% of the time having a few systems sync to say our friends tick|tock.unso.nay.mil (or another NTP server) sorts things out nicely.
You can't realistically put a GPS receiver into every server; you'd be lucky if the top server managed to get any signal and the rest sure won't. Antenna cabling would be impossible with 40+ servers per rack.
Nearly no one does that. Two or three servers per site (depending on redundancy needs) is fine for all the sites I've seen.. use ntp to sync over local lan to those time servers.
Or if you really care about time that much, do go ahead and put a receiver in each server. Share antennas if needed. It's not impossible for those few applications that *really* need accurate time and who aren't for some odd reason interconnected using a common clock pulse over a dedicated network.
Say I have 1000 PC's at my place of work and a certain percentage are usually a little fast (clock wise) while another percentage are usually a little slow.
If I use the average of all clocks to determine the "actual" time, wouldn't it slowly shift either to the slow side, or the fast side over time?
Say 550 of those 1000 are usually a second slow per day. That is a bias towards slow every time we take an average. We sync all clocks to the slow side and keep on repeating this. The longer you do this, the w
This reminds me of an old joke about a retired Admiral who is responsible for sounding the morning cannon at the naval base, walking past a watchmaker's shop every morning and setting his pocketwatch to the correct time from a reliable old grandfather clock in the store window.
One day, on the walk in, he happens to see the watchmaker cleaning the store windows and mentions how he finds it amazing that the old grandfather clock keeps such flawless time.
"Oh, that old thing?" says the watchmaker. "It drifts horribly, and I have to reset it almost daily."
The Admiral then asks, "Since I've always noticed that it's reliable, from where do you get the time to set it?"
The watchmaker replied, "I use the report from the morning cannon at the naval base. It's always right on time."
Admiral walks past clock shop, sets watch to grandfather clock, goes to naval base and fires cannon.
After the Admiral walks past the clock shop, the clockmaker shows up for work. He waits until the cannon is fired and then corrects the grandfather clock.
The admiral is setting his watch to the "corrected" time from yesterday.
The only thing that's off is that the correction that the grandfather clock gets would be fairly minor, as the assumption is the cannon is fired soon after he sets his watch.
But it coul
One of my favorite quotes relates to this;
Credit goes to Mark Twain (IIRC).
"When you have a watch/clock you always know what time it is. When you have 2 you are never quite sure."
Can't wait to see all computers set their clocks to January 1st, 1980.
How does this account for rogue or malicious clocks present on the network? It sounds like it would be pretty easy to introduce significant error into the system.
I think I'll keep using one system connecting to the atomic clock and all the rest connecting to that one to keep their time accurate.
The people behind this project tried to get the ntp hackers interested a year or two ago, but since the only thing they have is a possibly improved distributed algorithm, vs real NTP which has been designed to work even in the face of (intentional or accidental) falsetickers, nobody was very interested.
Any NTP wrangler who's the least interested in accurate local clocks will spend an hour and less than $100 to buy a cheap gps (Garmin GPS18(x) LVC) with Pulse Per Second (pps) output, a USB cable and a 9-pin
That's all well and good, but it gets time to one server. Now what to do about the other 40 servers in the rack?
And don't say NTPd, because that will not get you anywhere close to microsecond accuracy. If it doesn't lose sync completely for no reason.
Chrony is somewhat better, but it's still stuck with the NTP protocol.
If you need us precision for all 40 servers in a rack, the solution can be either very simple (and cheap) or very complicated (or even cpu-intensive):
The obvious solution is to make a small amplifier, so that the PPS signal can be split into 40 cables and spread to all the servers.
Since NMEA is a one-way protocol you can also wire up one server which can send commands to the GPS and let all 40 of them listen to the responses.
You only need RMC or GGA output in order to number the second pules on the PPS sign
There was a story a few years back about a Security researcher that determined the quartz units in every computer are unique and have different enough time drift to fingerprint the individual machine's traffic despite IP address changes, proxies or anything similar. Botnets attacks wouldn't be tracked back to them, but CNC traffic to the botnets should still work.
Anyways this software comes out and samples millisecond differences between computer clocks on large networks, put this together with that guys Th
This sounds like a Wikipedia approach to "truth"... you have enough people voting on it and sooner or later you have something that sort of resembles and might actually be truth. Or in this case, accuracy.
I would think there would be much better ways than this of obtaining accuracy. One of the basic problems with any voting scheme is that you can get a large amount of drift as it is assumed there is no standard other than concensus. NTP is a reference because there is are systems out there that are known
Let's just not pay attention to things like the difference between precision and accuracy anymore, it's too much work.
I mean, there's no way that the same physical limitations would apply to all quartz clocks, right?
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work. -- John G. Pollard


text:
i have never had a chess clock i want something cheap so i am thinking analog but i only want to if they can set time increments is that possible?
simple chess clock question
simple, clean, cheap and durable
you can find it at other places its hard to miss since they are all bight blue
I just played in a major tournament, and not one analog clock. It's now all digital. I must own a dozen analog clocks. However, with the digital clocks that have to be set with either a 5 sec delay (no time increment, just freezes the clock from counting down in 5 seconds) in the lower seconds and 30 second increment in the expert/master section, it seems that half the people had difficulty in setting the clocks, which is sometimes difficult. In one of my games, my opponent did not add the 5 second delay, and it did not notice it until I had less then a minute to go. I complained to the tournament director, but all he said, was "I told you so." He did announce that it was up to both players to check the time control and delay. I lost on time in perhaps a drawn position, but did think I could play fast enough not to use up any time in the endgame. I had another opponent tell me that his digital clock burned up when he changed batteries, so I used my Saitek digital clock set for game in 2 hours plus 5 second time delay. I set up my clock for the right time ahead of time because I don't think I could have done it very fast in real time without the instruction book. I do miss the analog clock and flag. I really do not like the digital clocks, but I have been using analog clocks (BHB, Garde, Jerger, etc) for 42 years.
I have an Excalibur, both Saiteks (blue scholastic & silver pro) and a Duel Timer. Among these four, the Duel Timer Champion is by far the easiest to set up for any time control imaginable. The Blue Saitek is easy too, but can't do incriments. The Duel Timer, however, is not the most economical clock. So that is not what you are looking for, neither are the Chronos, DGT XL & 2010 clocks. But according to your criteria, incriment capability and affordable, your choice is between the Saitek Pro, the DGT North American and the Excalibur. Get one of those three!
The Excalibur has the most features, best display and lowest price of the three, but does not have the durability it seems a bit flimsy. But it is not as bad as folks say in the reviews. But at some web sites it can be purchased for less than 30 bucks.
The Saitek Pro appears to be much tougher than the Excalibur but the display sucks. B/c it only shows minutes and second after there is less than 20 minutes and during the delay it replaces your time with the delay count down. But the May 2012 Chess Life described it as a cool looking but not a beautiful clock.
DGT NA is blue and red instead of black, so I don't have one. :-) Can't comment but it should be a decent value for a clock. It gets good reviews.
Read the reviews about these three clocks in the Chess.com shopping section, at wholesalechess.com , amazon.com and other sites. Then make you decision. Any one of these 3 models, Saitek Pro, DGT NA, and Excalibur, is a good choice.
Do not get one of the cheap non name brand Chinese made clocks sold on eBay and other places. An analog is old fashioned don't get one for tournament use, only get it, if you realy want it, for nostalgia purposes.
I don't play in tournaments, but I wanted a small digital clock that I could set time increments with and use to play locally in friendly games. I was looking at everything out there and checking here (much like you) when someone mentioned a chess clock app for their phone! Duh! I don't know why I never think of that until it's pointed out to me. There are several available for free that are great and a bunch more for sale that are even better. And for the $.99 or $1.99 you can't go wrong. I use mine all the time and don't have to make space for it in the travel set. So unless you need it for tournaments, give it a try - assuming you own an iPhone or Android phone, that is.
Yes there are several good apps for chess clocks. I have a few on my phone. But do you really want people slapping you iPhone in a blitz game. And if it is an iPhone then the battery won't last for long games. They won't work in a tourney b/c phones aren't allowed. But the phone apps are fine for casual or club skittles games. I guess it won't be long before dedicated chess clocks go modern with full color LCD touch screens user friendly interfaces and lots of features and timing modes. And then discussions like this one about which clock is the easiest to use and has the right options, modes and features and affordable will be pointless.
However, it may take a while b/c chess players are natorius for not embracing the new. They didn't even except digital clocks until the late 1990's. All other sports were using them by the the late '60's to mid 70's!
You are correct, of course. I don't play in tournaments and don't really play blitz OTB either, which is why my iPhone works for me. Batter life is not an issue as long as the phone is fully charged, which mine always is. I only use mine for casual games, with friends mostly. If anyone was slapping at my iPhone they would get a friendly warning the first time, and then punched in the face the second time!
To the OP, http://www.chessset.com/chessclocks.html has the DGT NA on sale for 39.99 + $6.95 shipping. $47 shipped isn't bad.
travis1010 wrote:
To the OP, http://www.chessset.com/chessclocks.html has the DGT NA on sale for 39.99 + $6.95 shipping. $47 shipped isn't bad.
If you are an USCF member you can save an additional 10% at that vendor!
A tablet or phone should be fun to use. The best simple chess clock for Android is Chess Cloid by Fireworks. The best simple chess clock for Iphone/Ipad is Game Timer by Thana! They are free! I hope you find them very useful!
A tablet or phone should be fun to use. The best simple chess clock for Android is Chess Cloid by Fireworks. The best simple chess clock for Iphone/Ipad is Game Timer by Thana! They are free! I hope you find them very useful!
+ 1 on Chess Cloid. I've switched from iPhone to Android and this is a great little clock for free!


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Programming Erlang 314
|Programming Erlang - Software For A Concurrent World
|Joe Armstrong
|The Pragmatic Programmers
|Tony Pedley
|Parallel programming the easy way
Programming Erlang — Software For A Concurrent World (ISBN 10193435600X) is part of the pragmatic programmer series. As with all the books in this series, it is available in paperback or for a reduced cost you can directly download it in PDF format (which is always useful if you spend a lot of time on the move and you do not like carrying around a dead tree with you). The book's format and layout as with all the books of this series are clear and logical.
The book is written by Joe Armstrong, who co-authored the first Erlang book a decade ago. He was also one of the originators of the Erlang language and has been directly connected to its development ever since. We can therefore be assured about the author's knowledge and insight into the language, if not his impartiality.
The book itself can be roughly split into three main sections: Getting started and Sequential programming, Concurrent Programming and Erlang libraries and advanced Erlang techniques.
In Chapter 1 the author sets out his stall of why Erlang is worthy of your attention. It's clear from this chapter that the author feels Erlang's strength lies in applications requiring an element concurrency and fault tolerance. Another emphasis is made of running Erlang on modern multi-core processors, something that was only a glint in a hardware designer's eye 10 years ago, but is rapidly becoming an issue in all areas of programming. From this chapter you also get a feel on how the author approaches his programming in that he states that he wants the reader to have fun with the language, which is a refreshing change to some language text books whose main purpose appears to be as a cure for insomnia.
Chapter 2 goes through installing Erlang and the Erlang shell (a command line environment similar to ones with languages such as perl). The chapter also starts us into the strange world of functional programming, where variables can only be given a value once (e.g you cannot do i=i+1), recursion replace loops and pattern matching replaces assignments. Fortunately the Erlang language is remarkably concise. For example there are only 4 data types. However to those coming from a purely procedural programming background the learning curve could be a steep one. Saying that the Author does a good job of leading you through the languages intricacies with examples being compared to code from languages such as Java to help keep your feet on solid programming ground.
The next 3 chapters move on to writing simple Erlang programs. As a quick aside, for anyone new to Erlang it is well worth examining the quicksort implementation described in chapter 3. Its conciseness and simplicity was one of the reasons the language won me over when I first met the language.
These chapters also cover error detection and handling. It's worth noting that Erlang has a philosophy of ensuring programs fail hard, so that bugs can be weeded out at an early stage. This idea very much defines how Erlang error handling is defined.
One criticism of the first section is Chapter 6, which describes compiling and running an Erlang program. I would have preferred that this information be covered earlier in the book or be placed in an appendix because it is probably an area you will want to reference repeatedly.
Chapter 7 is where things really get interesting and the true power of Erlang starts to come to the fore. This is where Erlang's concurrency credentials are explained. This chapter begins by providing some useful metaphors of the Erlang concurrent model, but chapter 8 is where the fun begins by describing the Erlang concurrency primitives that allow the creation of processes and the process communication methods. The author here highlights one of the language features, the Erlang light weight process. These are true processes (not threads) but take up very little in the way of resources. Indeed it is not unusual to have 1000's of such processes running in an application.
The next few chapters expand on the available concurrency primitives and how to move from concurrency on your local processor to concurrency utilizing the resources of multiple machines either on a local network or across the web. It finishes the section off by showing the example of a simple IRC application.
Chapter 12 starts the next section by looking at how to interact with the world outside the Erlang environment. First it examines how to interface an Erlang program to applications written in other languages such as C. It then goes onto to look at file and socket handling in Erlang. Chapter 15 looks at two important Erlang storage primitives ETS and DETS before we get to the OTP Erlang libraries in Chapter 16.
The OTP libraries are the standard Erlang libraries and tools. In fact the OTP libraries are worthy of a book in itself. The author highlights the section on the generic Server module as the most important section in the whole book and one to be reread until its importance has sunk in. This is because here are encapsulated many of the lessons learned in writing industrial fault-tolerant applications, such the updating of a running applications code without causing that application to miss a beat. The section is finished off by describing the Erlang distributed database (humorously named Mnesia) and then finishing it off with the example of a simple server application.
The book finishes off by looking at Erlang on multicore systems including its support for SMP. As the author states this is the leading edge of present day Erlang and is still under development.
I would like to thank the pragmatic programmers for publishing this book. Erlang's profile has been in need of highlighting for many years and hopefully this book will help. The book definitely provides a great starting point for anyone who wants to get to grips with the language and takes them to the point where they can start writing useful applications. This book is a worthy successor to the last book published and does a good job of both updating the material and explaining some of the later developments such as SMP. Anyone who has a need for writing fault tolerant applications should at least look at this book. If nothing else you will never be afraid of dealing with recursion ever again.
In many ways the book cuts off just when things are getting interesting. There are hints in the book about real world Erlang's applications and it would have been good if some of these experiences could have been expanded. Hopefully this book is the start of increased exposure for Erlang. If so then someone may get around to writing another Erlang book describing some of the advanced issues about generating robust applications. I just hope it won't take another 10 years this time.
Tony Pedley is a senior engineer specializing in real-time embedded systems. In his spare time he likes to tease windows programmers and confuse managers by telling them it would be a lot easier if we wrote it in Erlang.
You can purchase Programming Erlang - Software For A Concurrent World from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.


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Joined: Dec 12
Posts: 9
Posted: 09 Jan 2013, 14:19
I'm looking at the weight loss results of most here and am extremely impressed with you all! I am recording everything - but still struggling in keeping carbs between 50-150/day. Not quite certain just what I'm doing wrong - unless not doing enough cardio. I do strive to walk approx 4 miles at least 5 x's per week up some steep hills but I guess that's not enough! Any suggestions?
Joined: Jan 13
Posts: 28
Posted: 09 Jan 2013, 14:24
Don't panic about the carbs. My niece is doing the Atkins diet and she can't have over 20grams of carbs p/day. I am having around 100-120grams of carbs p/day and my trainer told me to have more. It all depends on your energy needs and size. You will find what works for you. It has taken me 3 weeks to work things out with my diet and I am learning new things every day. My trainer told me that wieght loss is 85% diet 15% exercise. Good Luck!!
Start weight 20/04/2013 = 240kg Goal weight 120kg (total loss 120kg)
It won't happen over night, but if you don't give up it WILL happen.
Joined: Aug 12
Posts: 1,286
Posted: 09 Jan 2013, 16:30
Looking at the food you are eating, it doesn't look like the foods that are permitted on the Cordain Paleo diet. Most Paleo diets do not permit any sweetening, no cocoa, minimal fruit, no grains, no root vegetables, no beans, and no dairy. I suggest you locate a copy of the book and read what it permits.
Joined: Dec 12
Posts: 9
Posted: 10 Jan 2013, 12:27
ok...stupid question....I'm seeing the updated list of our group and the pounds lost (or sometimes gained
but where do you update a post of your own?? I keep going back to my original post to see this box of "quick reply"!! Anyway....I think after rounding out week one, I am going to switch meal plans. Paleo is just not working for me! And I think it's because I'm consuming more protein than ever and on the good days, ok...but if I sway a teeny,tiny bit on let's say Day 6, I'm up a pound or two because of the high caloric protein I've been eating! Just not working! So....I'm going to count calories and probably follow Dr. Fhurman's meal plan with no more than 3 oz of meat, poultry per day (as he prefers high nutrition, complex carbs). Any comments from any of you?
Joined: Aug 14
Posts: 1
Posted: 15 Aug 2014, 20:35
Ok listen... You are NOT eating enough fat... you are eating to MUCH carbs... Try for 23 weeks to just eat Fat... yes you heard me FAT... With that I want you to eat NON STARCHY veges and salad... as much green as you can. If you do that you will get the protein, get the low carb and get the fat... More importantly you will remove the need for your brain to want carbs (its hit) and start processing fat as energy. Don't get on the scales as this is a time for your body to go through a big change but after that perod if you have done what I have told you and eaten ONLY MEAT, BUTTER and VEG/SALAD with it your body will go into Ketosis... To get into that state you need 80% fat, 15% protein and 5% carbs... I look at your profiles and I see incomplete everything... You want answers you need to work with us and do the work... search the internet and research... set a start date and goal... do a meal plan and test it on this site to the correct ratios then do it. The difference is that you will have some knowledge and structure behind you... inbox me when your ready to have a fair go of it
nb girl
Joined: Jul 14
Posts: 135
Posted: 16 Aug 2014, 03:06
I agree with Dallas_par, do a lot of research. There's no such thing as one-diet-fits-all.
Play around with your daily food diary, see what happens to your carb content when you counteract it by cooking your steak with a tablespoon of butter.
Was your tomato ketchup really necessary, the sugar in the ketchup is very expensive carb wise. If the ketchup is necessary, then have a go at making your own, do an internet search for a low carb or paeleo recipe. Commercial tomato sauce has high fructose corn syrup which is 'poison'!
Keep going and make your journey fun.
Focus on how far you've come - as this is Reality!
Focusing on how far you have to go is only expectation!
Joined: Jul 12
Posts: 3,718
Posted: 16 Aug 2014, 07:56
It doesn't look like you are logging all your foods. If you are you are starving your body. it's going to hold onto everything to survive. Figure out a plan that works for you. Log ALL your food. Take a good look at it and see how you are really eating. If you want to follow paleo, get the book, do your research then stick to it.
"The way we eat in America makes us sick, and if we change our diet--simply incrementally-- we will be healthier." Mark Bittman Food Matters
Joined: May 14
Posts: 6
Posted: 16 Aug 2014, 08:34
For me cooking my own meals has helped tremendously. Reason: even the most innocent looking foods at restaurants may be processed and full of preservatives. Fat secret unmasked this for me when I would punch in what I was thinking of eating verses with the healthy alternative. I realized I have been making so many poor choices. I also realized if I make my own meals I can actually eat more with less salt and bad fat and sugar. Yes there is such thing as good fat. With that said if your going to make your own food....seasoning and preparation is key to enjoying it. I steam almost all my meats with a lid and very little water. Oil is not necessary for any of the meals that I make. Start with figuring out how to prepare your meals.
Things I tell myself when I feel like I want to be weak and eat out:
A grilled chicken sandwich from Mcdonalds cannot compare to the health benefits of making one at home...less salt which equals less water retention and bloating.
Deserts made at home contain less sugar which equals less unhealthy fat.
Ketosis like the person before me stated works! I personally cut beef out of the equation and have focused on eating fish (It has protein and hardly any fat) and chicken(It has protein and hardly any fat) paired with vegetables (It has good carbs and hardly any fat) and :lintels, brown rice,red beans as they help give you enough fiber to process all the protein you are eating. I drink enough water for my body weight and coconut milk as it also helps process protein. As far as desert I dont deprive myself of that, just eat the ones with the least sugar. My deserts are yogurt mixed with fruit and home made smoothies without any sugar added. Maybe twice out of the week I will allow myself bread but only cornbread. I dont eat out at all during the week which allows me to go out to eat once on the weekend guilt free. I am careful that the other two meals I eat for the day are healthy. Never ever skip breakfast and its ok to have snacks in between meals as long as its not processed food, my rule of thumbs is : do not to eat anything out of a box or plastic wrapper..........This worked for me but Im not saying it will work for you....This site helped me because it enlightened me on calorie,protein and fat intake along with the amount of calories required for my body weight and activity. I was forced to think smarter as you can easily eat your required calorie intake in one meal by eating unhealthy..then its like no wonder I was gaining weight as the other two meals of the day would go double over that limit. Pay attention to the pie chart and fill out your profile completely...GOod luck!
Joined: Jul 12
Posts: 3,718
Posted: 16 Aug 2014, 09:07
Some of the chains post the ingredients in their foods. I had a free chic filet coupon, looked up the ingredients on their site, threw the coupon in the trash. McDonald's foods are loaded with msg. (used to be a manager). Salad bars are loaded with chemicals that the veggies are dipped in to keep them fresh.
"The way we eat in America makes us sick, and if we change our diet--simply incrementally-- we will be healthier." Mark Bittman Food Matters
Joined: May 14
Posts: 6
Posted: 16 Aug 2014, 09:36
Thanks and yup throwing stuff in the trash like that is so liberating!
Joined: Jul 12
Posts: 3,718
Posted: 16 Aug 2014, 09:40
It was all chemicals, little food. I'm a whole food cook, avoid chemicals as much as possible. I do rarely though do pick up a quick sandwich running to grandkids games when I have to leave for them from work. I try to pack food but sometimes I miss.
"The way we eat in America makes us sick, and if we change our diet--simply incrementally-- we will be healthier." Mark Bittman Food Matters
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Book Review: Elemental Design Patterns 129
|Elemental Design Patterns
|Jason McC. Smith
|Addison-Wesley Professional
|Joe Kauzlarich
|Software Design
What's most fascinating about Elemental Design Patterns is the analysis performed in working out a solution to the question of how a pattern may be defined in a way that's language-agnostic and flexible to differing implementations. This was a success: his resulting pattern recognition tool even found unintentional usages of well-known design patterns in a large legacy code base, which could then be refactored from the ugly 'accidental usage' to transform apparent chaos into maintainable order.
The basic idea is that every pattern is composed of elemental patterns. For example, the 'Factory Method' pattern may be decomposed into four EDPs (elemental design patterns): 'Create Object', 'Fulfill Method', 'Conglomeration' and 'Retrieve'. The 'Pattern Instance Notation', introduced in this book, and which serves as an extension to UML, helps visualize the relationships between the four sub-patterns and the larger pattern. No doubt readers will find the notation useful in their own work.
This premise's success or failure hinges on two questions: are the set of patterns really elemental? and can the set of patterns be complete? Oddly, the patterns listed in the book are NOT complete: "this book touches on only one-quarter, at best, of the possible EDPs that exist" (p. 107). The fact that this book (which defines 16 patterns in depth) is only the beginning of a project is not well-communicated. Those who might benefit from a complete listing of EDPs (i.e. analysis tool makers) might be puzzled at how to immediately put this book to use if it's not complete. After all, Smith insists in the Preface that "this book is meant to be used." To me, this implies it should serve as more than a basis for research or design-skills edification.
As for them being elemental, in the sense that all possible 'macro-patterns' may be built from them, Smith backs up this claim with the help of a mathematical formal system called rho-calculus, which is introduced in some depth in the appendix, but avoided in the body of the text for readability's sake. Readers wanting a full mathematical treatment are referred to Smith's Ph.D thesis.
What makes the book worth reading and re-reading is in the methods employed to analytically derive EDPs. As dull as I probably make it sound, Smith gives the entertaining first half of the book an almost 'novelistic', first-person quality in which the reader is engaged to experience Smith's insights first-hand. In a sense, the EDPs are 'unfolded' from simple concepts like the degrees of method or object similarity in a method-call relationship.
Understanding this point is important to understanding EDPs: a method call is not just a method call from a 'micro-patterns' perspective. Calling a very different method on the same object is semantically distinct from calling a very similar method on a very different object. The first is described by the EDP 'Conglomeration' (breaking larger tasks into subtasks); the second, by the EDP 'Redirection' (redirecting a process to another object). Of course, the terms 'similar' and 'different' are fuzzy qualifiers to programmers and there's bound to be some debate on how these terms are applied. Smith, in order to make this distinction, puts faith in the developer's ability to name classes and methods. But anyway, such 'semantic' relationships are the real building-blocks of the higher-level patterns. Once other object-oriented principles are considered, like inheritance, the EDP list grows.
The importance of Elemental Design Patterns from a designer's perspective should now be more clear. I kept stressing the word 'semantic' in the last paragraph because what this book strives to do is provide a *language* for describing object-oriented structure that, first of all, doesn't rely on the OO language itself (C++, Smalltalk, Java, Javascript, etc), and more notably, which takes into account the designer's purpose for employing simple devices like method calls and class extension. As I said earlier, a method call is not just a method call. There may be a dozen or so 'structural' reasons to call a method, and each reason is given it's own 'word' (i.e. EDP) in Smith's language. It stands to reason that a designer with a firmer grasp on his own intentions is a more effective designer.
You can purchase Elemental Design Patterns from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.