text:
Web 2.0 - Barry Diller and Arthur Sulzbergerby Daniel H. Steinberg
Barry Diller and Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. talked to Web 2.0 Summit program chair John Battelle about publishing content online. Sulzberger is chairman of The New York Times Company which now includes NYTimes.com, Boston.com, and About.com. Diller is the chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, and chairman of Expedia, Inc. In the second half of their discussion they turn to community created content and answered questions about its role in their various websites.
You can download the audio as an mp3 or download the video as an mp4 or you can subscribe to the audio podcast or to the video podcast.
This episode is sponsored by the Intel Software Partner Program.
This transcript created by Casting Words.
ANNCR: Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, and Barry Diller, chairman and CEO of IAC, Interactive corp., and chairman of Expedia, Inc., spoke about media at the Web 2.0 Summit 2006. Here's Web 2.0 Summit's chair, John Battelle, in conversation with Barry Diller and Arthur Sulzberger.
John Battelle: Next up, this is a great conversation between two very well known people in the media and internet space. Arthur Sulzberger, the chairman of The New York Times Company and the Publisher of The New York Times, and Barry Diller, the Chair and CEO of Interactive Corp. May I ask you guys to come on up? I'm sitting here. You guys sit here. While you're coming up, we've got to give the biggest sport award to Barry because I want to tell this story. I had a call scheduled with Arthur last week....
Barry Diller: I feel like Eloise at the Plaza, I mean....
John: I'm sorry. I'll get a bed board in for you.
Barry: Thank you.
Arthur Sulzberger Jr.: What does that mean?
Barry: Reinforcement. Eloise at the Plaza? It's a long story.
John: We've got time, but we'll get to that. Let me finish first. I had a call with Arthur to prepare for this last week, and I did my usual research. I looked for stories that might pertain to the both of you and I found Geraldine Fabricant's story about your pay package, which I read with great interest. Actually, I had already read it, but I reread it with great interest and then I asked Arthur about that. I said, "Won't it be a tiny bit uncomfortable, you two being on the same sofa, with The Times beating Mr. Diller up a little bit."
Arthur said, "No, I'm sure it will be fine, there won't be any problem." Then, I found out that you had even taken that a little bit further.
Arthur: This is true. Really, on behalf of all of us in this room, most of us who are incredibly jealous....
Barry: I'm sure this is going to be very sweet and thoughtful.
Arthur: I want to present to you this plaque of that story, with a beautiful photo, and here's the good news: the drinks are on Barry.
Barry: Yes. Arthur, could you move that way. This is nice. It's almost as good as the one I made for myself.
Arthur: I couldn't afford that one.
John: Ok, now that we've managed to break that ice, let me start this way. Both of you run businesses with lots of different moving parts. We just had Eric here speaking about his business. Both of you have companies that partner very deeply with Google, and compete in many ways. You've got Ask.com, which is both partner and competitor. You've go About.com, which is a very strong partner. Then, you've got a lot of advertising driven businesses, where maybe you're not sure whether you are a partner or a competitor. Maybe we can start with, picking up the narrative thread of the last conversation, what do you make of Google? Friend or foe?
Arthur: If you're asking me, very much a friend. In fact, Google is now the largest single business partner of The New York Times Company.
John: You don't find that to be a threat?
Arthur: On the contrary, we are delighted by them, and especially with About. We have a very important relationship with About, and I think everybody understands that. At The New York Times, it is clear that they are not in the reporting journalism media space, but I think it's clear also from the conversation that you had with Eric that they are in the advertisement space. Well, they're a competitor. They are a good competitor. They are also a cooperator and we're going to have to see how this all develops, but it is an exciting partnership that we have entered into. We like that.
John: Barry?
Barry: I think the world is going to be more and more about competing and joining with. I think that as these things converge and converge, it's going to be impossible not to. So long as you all know what camps you are in, and where, obviously, you are cooperating together, a partnership or whatever you want to call it, or a client relationship or whatever, then that's fine. Then you go into the other room and you bash the hell out of each other.
So long as you do it with the knowledge of these multiple hats that you wear, it balances itself. It's ok in life to do that. If you actually had an approach which is, "because you compete with me, I'm never going to talk to you about anything, " that won't work today and is certainly not going to work tomorrow.
I thought I answered that very artfully about Google, don't you?
John: I did, but I'm going to dig in a little bit. Are you concerned that, at some point, because of its market dominance or because of the fact that it is hiring thousands of sales people, some away from The New York Times, some away from Timing, that at some point you become the inventory for Google to sell as opposed to an independent business? Do you worry that perhaps there may come a time when you are too dependent on them?
Arthur: No, I don't worry about that.
Barry: I don't either.
John: Can I ask why?
Barry: Because I don't believe that, certainly in the media, the world holds to one anything called media. It's just not possible that it's all going to be in one place. Leadership will be leadership, and frankly I don't care about this whole concept, the GE concept that's number one and number two.
First of all, in the media world, that's absurd. Media businesses have been around with four, five, seven principal players changing positions at various times, with one company sometimes being in the lead of it for seven years or some very long cycle. So, I just don't think it's going to be an all-or-nothing world. I can't believe that that's possible.
John: Related to that, both of you run businesses that are very much about brand. In fact, you described IAC as a stable brand, The New York Times as the sterling brand in news. How do you find your brands changing and shifting as you try to move them from a business model of sort of packaged goods media to the web, where you're not seeing as much revenue, although it's growing much more quickly. I'm curious about The Times.
Arthur: Well, let me set the stage briefly for The New York Times Company, because I think most people don't know that we are, in fact, the tenth largest internet company in the world, in terms of page views coming in. That's at About, that's at the New York Times on the web or at boston.com or other properties. So we've not only embraced this world, but we've found ourselves in a somewhat leadership position. The New York Times in particular, because I think you asked about that, we long have had the mantra that we must be platform agnostic. That it's not about the paper that makes newspapers exciting, it's about the news. So the work that you're seeing us do on the web is a sort of core element to what we are now. Translating that into a business model that is able to sustain the enterprise going forward is that key to re-balancing our business.
John: But can you pay for the New York Times journalists on New York Times online revenues?
Arthur: No, and thank Goodness I don't have to. The New York Times is on the web, it is profitable, it's growing at a tremendous rate, we're very excited by that. But we still have the print vehicle which is in some areas struggling more than others, but it's still a highly profitable business operation. So we're not facing a moment where we have to make a decision. We're going to continue to grow, we're going to continue to expand and the digital advertising is there and it is coming to us.
John: Now the pieces that I see that are advertising-driven, how are they doing, they are the fastest growing, aren't they, the online advertising pieces of your business?
Arthur: I mean, there are some other parts of the company in transactions that are growing faster, but they're growing really quite well. Certainly, the query growth at ask.com has averaged about 30% growth on the clock, almost every day this year, for about a year since we made that change to ask.com.
John: By killing Jeeves?
Arthur: We ditched the Jeeves, we didn't kill him.
He is somewhere.
John: I saw a Google engineer who come back as zombie Jeeves for Halloween.
Arthur: Yes, good. And that's where Jeeves is.
So advertising, for us, is growing well.
John: Now, as a media person and a brand guy, what's your strategy with regard to new forms of content? Like, you bought College Humor, or a majority share of it.
Barry: No, we bought it. I don't want say it, that sounds cruel, but we did buy it.
John: Are you going to be buying a lot more sites like that?
Barry: I don't know. We're certainly interested. We are also interested in creating them. One of the things that I think is great is that the time has now come when you can put real capital into creating programming of all different kinds and length and cuts and text/video or combinations thereof, etc. And I think it's now yet really there, but in the next couple of years, for certain, I am quite sure that being able to create programming (and I don't mean being able to create one or two minute pieces, I certainly don't mean that you're going to be creating a theatrical motion picture for the internet) but different hybrid forms, pure actual program creation, now is the moment for it, I think at least. That you could justify putting real capital in it, so we're going to do so.
John: Is that going to be part of the strategy of the New York Times, or is it going to be more hue to the original brand of news? Because about.com is...
Arthur: Well, about.com is its own entity and it's almost a form of citizen's journalism in a real way. But, for the Times, at the core of what we offer is journalism. And that can't ever change, that's the brand, I promise. What has to change however is our vision of how we interact with our community and how we allow our users to not only get the news and information that they want from the Times, but integrate into what we offer, the blogs that know what they want, the blogs that they don't know what they want. Tom Friedmann every morning would just say, "Here are the three blogs that you know ought to read today." That's a pretty powerful tool and that's where we are moving and should be. So, to give a greater ability for the Times to be part of the many conversations that are taking place on the web.
John: However, the conversations that Tom Friedmann has now cannot be pointed to by people with blogs because it's behind the pay well of Time Select.
Arthur: With the exception of this week.
John: Now, did you notice that Arthur made it free this week?
I think there is a plan there.
Arthur: Yes, you are right, Times Select, with the exception of this week is a paid site. Now, that doesn't mean that all parts of what Tom Friedmann does have to be part of a paid site, but Tom is. And so many of our op-ed columnists and people who don't hear it in the printed pages because it is a much more robust site.
John: How is it going?
Arthur: It's going well, it's a year into it. We're in the mids of our first annual re-op. If Times Select was a newspaper that was part of the New York Times company, it would be our third largest newspaper, after the Boston Global and the New York Times.
John: Are the writers happy behind that wall?
Arthur: I think that they understand, as do we all, that quality journalism is expensive. That if you are going to have the number of people we have in Iraq, that is an expensive proposition. If we're going to give Tom and other columnists the ability to pick up at a moment's notice and wind up somewhere around the world, that's an expensive proposition and we need to sustain that. It would be great if the New York Times in print were free, it would be great, it is not. And that is to sustain our journalism.
John: It's Election Day. Both of you have been known to hold opinions. I'd like to ask yours, not of any current races.
Eric Schmidt: Why not?
John: OK. But I would like to ask about some policy issues. What, as you run your companies, as you look at the internet industry broadly and its place in the World, what are some of the major issues that you think our elected officials should be paying attention to and that we should be paying attention to that perhaps we're not.
Arthur: Your turn.
Eric: Obviously, I think you said you were going to do debate. How, if there could be a debate on Net Neutrality is beyond me? Who is on the other side of it?
John: Well, we found the guy from Cisco.
Eric: Other than Ed Whitaker and some...
John: We found the guy who sells a lot of hardware to Ed Whitaker.
Eric: OK, so that would count. But they are totally disqualified, I mean it's ridiculous. It's impossible to argue against Net Neutrality, we have this magic box and this magic thing that we get to push a button and publish to the world. It's an accident, it's the first time in the history of the media that there haven't been distributors, there haven't been people who will say, "Well, it's a scarce resource and therefore we are going to dole it out to you on the basis of how much you will pay us." This is, "Push a button, publish to the world with nobody in between the creator or originator and the consumer." How could we let that go potentially awry by people whose stated positions is that they are going to do that?
Everybody, the only thing that we have to worry about, because connectivity is now assured... Now, we don't need to worry, we have a pretty big bandwidth right now, we're going to have a fat enough pipe. And so, the infrastructure is assured. The only danger is that we screw up the very basis on which that system works. So I think everybody has to get very voicy about this and particularly this next Congress is the ground for it. It will ever happen I believe in this next Congress or I don't think it will happen at all.
Eric: Arthur, what do you think?
Arthur: There's nothing that Barry said that I disagree with on Net Neutrality or. For those of us in the journalism game there are other issues out there and I want to commend Eric about what he said about the rights of privacy, the rights to keep the information flow open. That's been a big battle for the New York Times and for many of our colleague newspapers over the last few years.
Eric: You have locked horns over issues of right to publish.
Arthur: Right.
Eric: With the White House, even going to the extent of holding on a story for a while in deference until you decided you couldn't hold any more?
Arthur: Until we decided as we continued to report the story and this is the NSA wiretapping story that you're talking about. Until we were convinced by continuing to report that story out that the assurances that we received from the administration were not in fact as valid as they had laid out them to be. At which point, we realized, and for s story like this there is always a balance between national security on the one hand and civil liberties on the other. And newspapers are surprisingly good at making that balance, not every time perfect, but surprisingly. And it became clearer and clearer, as we continued to report the story that the civil liberties part was weighing heavier and heavier. And that's when we made the decision to publish.
Barry: Do you think that companies such as Ask, for example or Pricey, even the New York Times, certainly Google, who hold a lot of information about where people go, what they look for, what they do when they get there and so on might also have to make those balanced decisions in the future.
Arthur: Sure you do, but like anybody, if you run a department store, you know a lot about people. You don't tend to say, "There's this big fat woman in the closet there" and you don't tend to treat your customers badly. So you do make judgments all the time, you have lots of information and if you don't serve your customers, which means that you serve them and you respect them, then you're going to be a dead duck. But you do have to wait. It gets more and more complex because the process of information gathering, how you segregate it, who gets their hands on it, how do you protect it, all of these things, because of the immensity of it, it's in so many distributed hands that mistakes are going to get made, for sure.
Barry: And the challenge is not just in this country, Eric spoke eloquently about that. But the challenge is increasingly internationally. And it's not just the laws of the United States that you now have to recognize, it's the fact that if you are going to China, you have a different set of laws, and so on around the world. That makes it immensely more complex.
Eric: You mentioned blogs before and the conversation and I want to bring up with Barry. You spoke last year, I brought up user-generated content and you didn't exactly poo-poo it.
Barry: How could I? Most of the stuff we have is user-generated content. How do you think match.com survives, it isn't us that's making up the flirt.
Eric: But you did say that you didn't think that, you gave the impression anyway.
Barry: I said something different. I'm kind of leading the witness...
Eric: Lead on.
Barry: I said and I believe that the talent pool is finite. There are only so many people of the kind of talent that is going to resonate really widely. Now, obviously, anybody is capable of making up something that four people are going to like or 44 or people who are in their family or other things like that. And every once in a while something is going to come along. That whether is the dancing person in the bathtub or whatever it's going to be that it's going to be a flash on people, but that's not what I'm talking about in terms of talent. What I'm saying is that there are only a group of people in the whatever amount you would like to call them, it's not in the hundreds of thousands, I promise you. And those talent outs and that is the pool that we're going to extend upon as we always have for things that are going to generate to wide audiences.
Eric: Right. What's your view of the user-generated content?
Arthur: I'm going to put myself in Barry's camp. It's a wonderful thing that people have the ability to now post their opinions, post their information and in some cases even, rarely, post their knowledge on a web.
Eric: No, Arthur!
Arthur: It is a wonderful thing that all of us and the rest of the world has the ability to access that. Those are the good things. "Speaker's Corner" writ large. But at the end of the day, we're making a bet, as we have for 150 years, that quality information, information you can trust, not information that is inexorably accurate (we are a human institution and we make mistakes), but information that is processed, thought about and when the mistakes are made, corrected. That plays a role particularly in a democracy when all of us on this day enter a voting booth and need to know what it is you're pulling the lever for.
Eric: Isn't though, would you agree perhaps, that there is a model for more good information? In other words, there are only so many outlets: the New York Times or Fox.
Arthur: Yes, I do.
Eric: Now, a fellow who is extremely talented at reporting on the local school board, with most of the local papers I have some statistics here: the daily circulation of the LA Times is down 8%, the Chronicle 5.3%, the New York Times 3.5%, the Boston Globe 6.7%. There are four reporters in my local paper where I live in. Four, and they don't cover the school board where I live anymore.
Arthur: Absolutely, and this is important. Newspapers have to and are making increasing use of that kind of journalists, because it can be...
Barry: Tapping into that town.
Arthur: Tapping into it, but making judgments about it, and saying, "In our judgment, we think this is news, this is information and opinion that is valuable, that is worthy of your time. We're not going to be able to make all the choices, but we're going to make some."
Barry: You're talking about others...
John: Right.
Barry: ...and I don't think Editorship is going away, as a matter of fact I think it's going to be even more prized in the future.
John: I agree.
Barry: So while everybody would like to believe that their entrails are of great interest to everybody, it's just probably not so.
John: I'm arguing for short of an amateur class of people who are very good at doing a few things, whose talent would never have made it to the pages of the New York Times. But because they're extremely good at covering "the school board" in a county...
Arthur: Right, and we need to embrace that.
John: ...that's a new form of talent.
Arthur: Absolutely, and we need to embrace it, and we are embracing it.
Barry: It's a different... Sorry. Please...
Arthur: No, go ahead.
Barry: No, no, no, I'm using the word "talent" in a different...
John: I understand, talent to reach wide audiences. I understand what you're saying.
Barry: My definition is really different, and you misconstrue meaning if you think that what I'm doing is being negative or saying that you know, "that the great amount of people, and the great long tail you know, have nothing to contribute to anything." I don't believe that at all.
John: Well now that's cleared up, let's go to questions. We start over here?
Alan Worms: Yeah, my name is, Alan Worms. I'm with Participate Media, and among other things we publish "realclearpolitics.com." We're going to do 40 million pages this month, I don't know exactly how many unique visitors. We did more than this at the 2004 election. Our site is primarily editors, and I think it's a little bit, I don't want to say condescending, but the fact is I think a lot of people are creating content in areas that mainstream media have not focused on, or have not delivered on. You need to recognize that there are a lot of great people out there that who are going to have the opportunity now because costs are so low, to deliver that kind of content, and it's not just amateur-hour. I just want to make that comment.
Barry: Yeah, please, I'm not saying that it is, and I don't mean it in that way. I'm just purely talking, and I'm really talking from this "old media sense, " and it really deals, it deals with the creation of essentially narrative forms that I'm talking about. I'm talking about story telling more than anything.
Alan: And I agree with that. I was more referring to Mr. Sulzberger's comments on "the news", but thank you very much.
Barry: Oh, sorry.
Arthur: Well actually I'm surprised because I don't think you and I disagree. I have a good friend here in San Francisco, "Joan Walsh" who's the editor in chief of Salon. They've been doing what you're doing to a large degree I think for a number of years. I mean that is clearly good, solid journalism. So you and I are not disagreeing. I think where I started was, it doesn't matter how you present the journalism - if you present it on paper, if you present it a digital form, if you beam it directly into peoples brains. It's the quality of the reporting and the editing that's important, and - congratulations.
Alan: What I'm saying is, "the old line companies do not have a monopoly on quality" - that's all I'm saying.
Arthur: I couldn't agree with you more.
John: Over here on this side.
JD Laska: I'm JD Laska from Ourmedia. I want to pick up on this where we actually had it out last year, me and Mr. Diller on this subject, so I'm going to ask a question of Mr. Sulzberger instead.
JD: And that is - You know you may have considered journalism before, and I don't see the New York Times for my discussions with a lot of your editor's basically hiring a cadre of citizen journalists to go out and cover things, because of all the different complications of going out and fact checking, and vetting all that information. But I don't see the New York Times embracing the idea of citizen journalism to the extent that I think you have an opportunity to. So when I see the BBC or I see the Dallas Morning News actually showcasing photographs of, people are going out and taking photographs of disasters, or covering elections, or political rallies. The New York Times reporters and photographers can't be everywhere, and there's an amazing amount of incredible work that's being created by this talent pool of amateurs that John mentioned, and I'm wondering why don't we see more of that on the Times? Why don't we have these kind of showcases of people who are out there you know creating this high quality work, the amateurs?
Arthur: The first answer is: you will be seeing more of it, and we are looking at ways of doing that, that provides information gathered by if you will, the amateurs that we trust because at the end of the day, we're putting our name on that work. Now finding that balance is not easy, and you could argue we've been a little slow at it, I won't disagree with you. But the fact is, as we continue to unveil the Times on the web, continue to unveil the pages of My Times, things that are coming on-line now, you're going to see the ability to do that in a more robust way than you have in the past.
John: All right we have time, I'm sorry, but just for one more.
Evan Pagan: Hi, Barry. Evan Pagan, Hot Topic Media. I'm the founder of one of these newfangled kind of media models that's been you know growing for several years under our own power, profitable, the intersection of media technology marketing, a lot of things. It's neat to see all these other businesses getting recognized as valid models, and you know I see that as validation in us in some way. What I'm looking to you for is, from your perspective after doing this many times - How does someone in my position look at building long term equity value? Is there something that you learned that might be a counter intuitive thing, or something, somebody who hasn't done it before wouldn't know?
Barry: Don't sell it.
John: This is the guy that bought "College Humor."
Barry: He asked me, you know he's asking me from his point of view. Believe me, I'll try and sell him to sell it, but in this venue if you ask me - "What would I do if I had an idea today?" And because I think money is the easiest thing to obtain today on commercial terms, I don't think, unless you're going to go build server forms, I don't think these things are particularly capital intensive. So what I would say is, "take your idea, if it resonates with people keep going, keep going, and so long as it interests you, don't sell it to private equity, God forbid...
Barry: ... and just ride it. I think that equity is built by holding on. Now sometimes you've got to sell a little of it, but the idea is - if you want to build equity, hold on to it if you have something valuable.
Evan: Thank you.
John: Very good words to close with. Thank you very much Barry, thank you very much. Arthur, that was great, thank you very much, thanks a lot.
ANNCR: Barry Diller and Arthur Sulzberger at the Web 2.0 Summit 2006.
Daniel H. Steinberg is the editor for the new series of Mac Developer titles for the Pragmatic Programmers. He writes feature articles for Apple's ADC web site and is a regular contributor to Mac Devcenter. He has presented at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, MacWorld, MacHack and other Mac developer conferences.


text:
By Jennifer Sheehan, Of The Morning Call
For weeks, there's been buzz in Emmaus about what Rodale was doing with an old garage at 10th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.
On Monday, the family owned publishing giant opened Rodale's General Store, featuring the company's books, foods, unique gifts and flowers.
It's a blend of the company's past, present and future and a central place to purchase Rodale products, just steps away from the company's headquarters up 10th Street.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Little Buddies
Little Buddies
The MVP Health Care Little Buddies Series is a family-friendly film series at The Little Theatre.
The Little is located at 240 East Ave. For more information on this series, call the business office at (585) 258-0400.
Stay tuned for more programs in 2015
Upcoming films for this Series
This series does not have anything scheduled right now.
Past films from this Series
There are no past films listed for this series.


text:
From Noisebridge
(Redirected from Scheme:Procedures)
- Can also be viewed as anonymous procedures.
- Has the following syntax:
(lambda <args> <expressions>)
where <expressions> is one or more, well, expressions. Only the last expression's value is returned.
<args> is your variable definitions, which can take the following forms:
- var - all arguments are put into this single variable (as a list.)
- (var[1] var[2] ... ) - specifies a fixed number of arguments.
- (var[1] var[2] ... . var[n]) - a space-delimited period before the final argument specifies the remaining args (if any) to be put into a list under that variable.
Lexical Scoping[edit]
Modifies existing global variables instead of introducing new lexical ones. Values are reset at the end of the expression.
(do ((<var> <init> <step>) ... ) (<test> <expression>) (<command> ... ))


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Doing and Being
The story of Martha and Mary in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 10:32-42) illustrates the importance of the integration of doing and being, of the relationship between action and contemplation. Martha represents the active, busy life we all lead every day with its demands of work, friendship and hospitality.
Who hasn't felt annoyed at others listening to a favourite guest or meditating, and who, instead of being able to join in, has to carry on preparing the meal to be shared afterwards? Mary is the contemplative part of our being, meditating, listening deeply to the Christ within, at prayer or meeting him in careful reading of Scripture, Lectio Divina.
This story in a way symbolises, who we are. Action and contemplation are two sides of our own being. We are both Martha and Mary. When we are so busy and grumble about there being no longer any time to meditate, then Martha has taken over. When we contemplate giving up our job to devote ourselves totally to the work of prayer/meditation and listening deeply, then we want to be only Mary. But we can't be one or the other exclusively, we are both, even when living in community: pray and work – 'ora et labora', the rule of a Benedictine Community and the rule of our life.
Martha is doing an important job, making everything ready for the meal to be shared, but by focusing resentfully on this, she loses sight of the right to exist of the other half of her soul, the deeply listening attentive Mary. Jesus points this out to her: "Martha, Martha, you are fussing and fretting about so many things." Don't we all do this at times? Especially on those occasions we need to remember our contemplative side and do our duties with attention rather than grudgingly. If only we could do, what we have to do, from the awareness of our deep centre within us, where compassion and friendship for others dwells. The one who grumbles is our ego, whose need is esteem, who wants to be praised and see others blamed. But instead of that, what is needed is acceptance and integration of both sides of our being: we have to be Martha sometimes but we can also be Mary at other times and that is alright too. In Jesus' own life we see this wonderful balance of action and contemplation. He wanders over the countryside preaching and healing and yet often we hear that he withdraws to a quiet place to be still and pray: "During this time he went out one day into the hills to pray and spent the night in prayer to God."
Most life in the Church to day focuses on Martha and some have even forgotten the work that Mary is praised for by Jesus. There is doing, caring for others, talking and vocal prayer of praise, adoration, petition, intercession, thanksgiving and liturgical prayer – all important and valid ways of prayer. But Mary's work, silent prayer, deep listening – contemplation – is relegated to the few nuns and monks drawn to this way of being. This was John Main's calling in life, which Laurence Freeman carries forward: to try and re-connect ordinary Christians with the long-established tradition of contemplative prayer, which goes back to the teaching of Jesus .In 2007 the World Community of Christian Meditation received canonical recognition from the Vatican as a Ecumenical Contemplative Community, acknowledging the importance of the work of Mary.
Kim Nataraja
For further help with setting up and leading groups, please look at the 'Christian Meditation Groups' Website in English, Spanish and French, based on the book 'A Pearl of Great Price' by Laurence Freeman


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i'm obsessed with supermassive blac hole too!
my lyndsay is here!
I've never seen that picture before...
i'm making a new banner..well, i'm making avies of all the characters, then, i'm going to piut them all together into a neat banner
my mommy's home with breakfast
i'm so hungry!!!!!!!
i can't find a good picture of kristen with brown eyes


text:
Exercise-related heat illness (ERHI) or "heat injury" happens when exercise is done in high temperature and high humidity. It's one type of injury, unlike sports injuries caused by contact, that can almost always be prevented with proper attention to safety and common sense.
Immediate treatment should include cooling the body and replacing fluids (cool water or an appropriate sports drink).
Heat (fatigue) cramps
Stop exercising, massage or stretchinvolved muscle. Replace salt and water loss by drinking a lot of cool, salt-containing fluids. Future cramping may be reduced by improved conditioning, getting more used to exercising in hot temperatures, and drinking more salt-containing fluids.
Heat exhaustion
Stop exercising, move to shadedor air-conditioned area. Replace water loss by drinking a lot of cool fluids. If the athlete does not quickly improve or is unable to drink fluids, then the athlete should be immediately taken to the nearest emergency facility.
Heat stroke
Call 911 or your local emergencynumber. Begin cooling immediately; don't wait for help to arrive. The athlete needs immediate medicalattention.


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HP Overhauls Channel Program
Hewlett-Packard channel partners have gone through a lot of angst in recent years as the company seemingly lost its way. While questions remain about HP's strategic direction, the company took some major steps this week to repair its relationship with its solution provider partners.
On a more nuts-and-bolts level, HP unveiled a major overhaul for the PartnerOne channel program at the company's Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas this week. Topping the list of changes was a simplified "pay for performance" program that allows partners to qualify for incentives from the very first sales, dropping a requirement that partners hit 80 percent of their sales target before qualifying.
But more importantly partners heard directly from CEO Meg Whitman, who promised that partners would make more money with HP than with competitors. To cheers from conference attendees, she also outlined a new rules-of-engagement policy that prevents HP sales reps from taking accounts from partners.


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Monica Baray, one of the four suspects arrested so far in connection with a shootout at the Sinclair Station in Atwood, had her case moved back to Nov. 7 after a status conference Wednesday.
Related Stories
- Jan 2:
- 5th suspect charged with attempted murder in Atwood Sinclair shooting
- Dec 5:
- Bond revoked for woman charged with harboring Atwood shooting suspect
- Oct 18:
- Atwood shooting victim arrested on Weld County FTA warrant
- Sep 27:
- Atwood shooting "kingpin" charged, could face life sentence
- Sep 24:
- Atwood shooting victim arrested on drug, weapon possession charges
- Aug 31:
- Atwood shooting victim in court for drug charges
- Aug 20:
- Two more suspects arrested in Atwood Sinclair shooting
- Aug 15:
- Arrest warrant issued for 3rd suspect in Atwood Sinclair shooting
- Aug 13:
- Two arrested, formally charged in Atwood Sinclair shooting
- Aug 12:
- Two men found shot at Atwood Sinclair Station
She faces charges of attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery and conspiracy to commit first-degree assault, after allegedly helping to plan a confrontation that left several shot and one paralyzed.
Thor Bauer, Baray's attorney, requested an extended amount of time for her disposition hearing to allow for the "substantial" discovery involved in the case. He added that information was still coming in as well, and that he's applied for an investigator for his case.
The court agreed that setting the hearing six weeks out, while reserving the right to a preliminary hearing, was appropriate.


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Philadelphia, PA (SportsNetwork.com) - PGA TOUR - FARMERS INSURANCE OPEN, Torrey Pines (North & South Courses), La Jolla, California - The PGA Tour continues its west coast swing this week with the Farmers Insurance Open, where world No. 1 Tiger Woods will make his season debut.
Last year, Woods secured his seventh win at this event, finishing four strokes ahead of Brandt Snedeker and Josh Teater. He played the final 11 holes on Monday after all but 10 minutes of Saturday's play was stopped by fog.
It was the first of five wins in 2013 for Woods, who went on to capture PGA Tour Player of the Year honors and hoist the Vardon Trophy for lowest scoring average.
Joining Woods in this week's field will be world British Open winner Phil Mickelson and 2013 Rookie of the Year Jordan Spieth.
Golf Channel will have coverage Thursday and Friday, as well as early coverage on the weekend before handing off to CBS in the afternoon.
The PGA Tour shifts to Scottsdale, Ariz., next week for the Waste Management Phoenix Open, which Mickelson won in wire-to-wire fashion last year.
COMMERCIAL BANK QATAR MASTERS, Doha Golf Club, Doha, Qatar - The European Tour remains in the Middle East this week for the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters.
Chris Wood won this event in 2013, as the Englishman eagled the final hole to secure his first European Tour title in dramatic fashion. Wood led by three strokes entering the final round, but he was eventually surpassed by Sergio Garcia and George Coetzee. Wood went to the final hole one stroke back, needing at least a birdie to stay in contention, then blasted a drive down the fairway, sent his approach within 10 feet, and calmly drained the eagle putt for the win.
Wood will be back on hand to defend his title this week. Joining him will be 2013 FedExCup and Race to Dubai titlist Henrik Stenson, PGA Championship winner Jason Dufner and seven-time European Tour victor Luke Donald.
The event will run from Wednesday through Saturday, with Golf Channel handling coverage of all four rounds.
Next week, the European Tour heads back to the United Arab Emirates for the Omega Dubai Desert Classic, which Stephen Gallacher won in 2013.
PURE SILK-BAHAMAS LPGA CLASSIC, Ocean Club Golf Course, Paradise Island, Bahamas - For the first time in 13 years, the LPGA Tour slate will kick off in January, at this week's season-opening Pure Silk Bahamas LPGA Classic.
Last year, this event was staged in May and the weather did not cooperate. That Tuesday, the Ocean Club Golf Course at Atlantis Resort took on a foot of rain and forced officials to scramble to come up with a playable course. The event was eventually competed over three, 12-hole rounds to reach 36 holes, which made the tournament official. Ilhee Lee emerged from the deluge a 2- stroke winner at 11-under par 126.
Lee is back in the field to defend her title. She will be joined by world No. 2 Suzann Pettersen and world No. 3 Stacy Lewis, though top-ranked Inbee Park will not be on hand.
Sixteen-year-old Lydia Ko will make her debut as an LPGA Tour member. Ko turned professional in October and was granted full tour membership shortly thereafter. She won four professional tournaments as an amateur, including the Canadian Women's Open in each of the last two seasons. In December, Ko recorded her first win as a professional at the Swinging Skirts World Ladies Masters and she has since moved to No. 4 in the world rankings.
Golf Channel will have coverage of all four rounds.
After a short break, the LPGA Tour will return Feb. 13 for the ISPS Handa Women's Australian Open, which Jiyai Shin won in 2013.


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Indicted SW Ohio judge set for court appearance
- Written by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CINCINNATI (AP) — An Ohio juvenile court judge accused of misusing county credit cards and backdating court documents is set for a hearing.
Judge Tracie Hunter is set to appear Tuesday before a Hamilton County Common Pleas judge in Cincinnati for a scheduling matter.
Hunter has pleaded not guilty to nine felony charges. She is being allowed to remain free on her promise to attend all her court dates.
Hunter, a Democrat, has indicated she believes she is being targeted for political reasons.
She was indicted on counts including tampering with evidence, forgery and theft in office. Her indictment followed an investigation by two special prosecutors prompted by a memo accusing Hunter or someone in her office of backdating court documents in "a conscious act of deception.


text: Though it technically didn't finish the season with a perfect record, First Southern Baptist won every game it played, including the final two against Church of Christ Saturday night to win the Augusta Church League softball tournament championship. First Southern Baptist had to forfeit a game Saturday morning against Church of Christ, which meant it was put in the loser's bracket. But the team still ran the table by winning three straight games, beating First Baptist 22-4 and Church of Christ 17-7 and 15-8. In the first championship game, CoC took an early 3-2 lead after the first inning. Taylor Reichard turned a 6-4-3 double play in the second to get FSB?out of another jam. With the help of an error, Darren Po hit a two-run inside-the-park home run to give CoC a 7-6 lead. Back came FSB?in the bottom of the third. Traci Payne, who had a tremendous hitting day, scored on a double by Reichard. Trevor Holmes knocked in a run with an RBI single. Mike Lewis later crushed a two-run home run over the left-center field fence to give FSB?an 11-7 lead. Nick Huelskamp hit a lead-off solo home run in the fourth, Heath Train added a triple, Andy Hall had an RBI single and FSB scored six more for the 17-7 lead, where the game finished. In the rubber match, CoC couldn't get much offense going until the third inning. Derek Alley smacked an RBI triple, then later scored for the team's first two runs to cut FSB's lead to 5-2. But FSB put up a six-spot in the bottom of the inning, then added four more in the next two innings. Train had a triple and an RBI single and Reichard and Holmes both added an RBI single. CoC tried to keep their hopes alive with a six-spot of its own in the fifth. The team had four straight RBI base hits. But CoC couldn't score in the sixth as FSB won 15-8. CoC still had a successful season, finishing second in the league standings. - There will be a fall league for anyone interested in playing softball. The cost is $250 per team and requires at least three women to be members of the team. Anyone interested may call Amanda Garcia at 734-8015 or Marshall Manahan at 299-3193. There also may be a women's league if there's enough interest. Moving forward, a sand volleyball league also may be in the works to help provide competition for adults in Augusta.


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Chocolates, jewelry, wine - you name it - you'll find that special Valentine's Day gift in Estherville.
For roses that last, Simply Unique at 610 Central Ave. in Estherville has real roses lacquered and covered in 24 carat gold, plus sterling silver and crystal earrings and a box of chocolates for $99 - something that's sure to make a hit. The rose alone is normally $70.
Simply Unique also has a wide variety of gold, silver and gemstone jewelry with prices starting at $69 and up.
They also have Seiko and Pulsar watches.
"You don't have to go out of town to find real jewelry," said Brian Reichart, who owns and runs the store with his wife, Tina.
If you like chocolate, it's all at Estherville Drug at Sixth and Central. And there's even some in the heart-shaped boxes that are sure to please your Valentine.
Fifth Street Gifts also offers jewelry and other gift items and Fifth Street Salon has gift certificates available for manicures, pedicures and highlights.
Heartland Americana on South Sixth Street also has a nice selection of jewelry plus a great selection of native Iowa wines, including Tassel Ridge from Leighton, Little Swan Lake Winery from here in Estherville and John Ernest Vineyard & Winery from Tama.
And of course Heartland Americana also offers great home decor items.


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CH Vicmars Rave on JW
(Photo by Lisa Croft-Elliot)
(Photo by Lisa Croft-Elliot)
Day four at Crufts was a whirlwind with more events in the big ring than we could keep up with. The main events were the judging of the Utility (Non-Sporting) and Toy Groups and Best In Show.
First up was the Utility Group judged by Mr Terry Nethercott. His Best In Group was the Standard Poodle, CH Vicmars Rave on JW, Reserve went to the Lhasa Apso, CH Zentarr Elizabeth, Third to the Akita, CH Ruthdales Candy From A Baby, and Fourth to the Shih Tzu, Santosha Tunderbolt. Theo is the Top Winning Poodle in the UK for 2010. Congratulations to breeder/owner Sharon Pine-Haynes.
CH Pampolona Bring Me Sunshine
Mr JR Haynes had the pleasure of the Toy Group judging. His Best was the Bichon Frise, CH Pampolona Bring Me Sunshine. Reserve went to the Lowchen, CIB/NORD CH Cjic Choix Markey Lifar. Thrid to the Pug, N/S/DK/FIN/NORD/RUS/LV/LT/BALK CH Tangetoppen's Unbreakable News, & Fourth to the Pomeranian, DK/SE/INT/SK CH Soffies Queen Bee WW09. The Bichon, Eric, was fourth in the Toy Group at last year's Crufts. Congratulations to breeder/owner Michael Coad.
We will have BIS coverage for you shortly.


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Isn't it nice to know that the city of one's birth takes as its motto, "City of Peace and Justice?" I am very proud of that. That The Hague is also the place where the first Grand Pensionary (Prime Minister) of the Dutch Republic was executed after a trial in which he was allowed no defense, and the eighth, assassinated; where the socialist First International split between the Marxists and Anarchists in 1872; where Royal Dutch/Shell, a company that didn't have a problem doing business with the Apartheid regime of South Africa, has its headquarters; where The Netherlands ruled its empire including the colonies of Indonesia and Surinam — we tend to forget in the excitement about the alphabet soup of courts that is rising like a Phoenix from the dusty ashes of empire.
I grew up in an atmosphere of soot stained Fin-de-Siecle decay with a whiff of sic transit. A famous song (1964) wistfully populated my "city of empty palaces" with civil servants turning gray in service to their country and great novels similarly gathering dust in attics: a staid, boring, careful, utterly bourgeois has-been of a backwater.
But those "palaces," the residences of the great of the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century (European) world, aren't all that empty these days. They house a multitude of agencies – deftly explicated in Martin Newhouse's blog earlier this week on the international justice system.
Oddly enough, it was the presence of a twentieth-century edifice that brought the change. The Peace Palace, home of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, was built between 1907 and 1913 with a gift from steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. A picture of this over-the-top Neo-Renaissance piece of bad taste accompanies Martin's blog, and here it is in the watercolor painting that became the winning entry in the site's design contest.
How did the dull (so called by Queen Sophie of the Netherlands in her letters) government center of an insignificant country that will be under water within the next 50 years become the center of international justice?
Hugo de Groot, known as "Grotius," wrote his treatise Mare Liberum, in which he formulated the principle that the sea was international territory, while employed by the Estates General (the government of the Dutch Republic) between 1599 and 1618. Unfortunately, Grotius became embroiled in the same conflict that cost the first Grand Pensionary, his afore-mentioned head. Grotius, purveyor of dangerous ideas, was locked up for life in a newly anointed state penitentiary (with a state comes a penitentiary), but escaped in a trunk of books. I am happy to report that, unlike the other two prisons I have blogged about, Slot Loevestein is a museum. Upon his escape Grotius went into exile – and he wrote De Jure Belli ac Pacis (On the Law of War and Peace,) establishing the concept of international law. He did not return until he was buried in Delft. His books are…guess where? The point being … we are proud of Grotius in The Hague now that we are committed to Justice.
Law, especially international law, is suspect in the grand scheme of things Christian (the western world). If you practice law, you walk on the edge between what is okay and what isn't. Perhaps more importantly, you know where that edge is. I need not remind you of that tree in the Garden. Many of us, and this is very clear in American political discourse, cast a jaundiced eye on the lawyer's core activities of negotiation, and compromise: if you negotiate, your goal is practical rather than ideal. If you compromise, you might end up chucking that which is good for that which works. We like the law to be as clear as the Old Testament ("Thou shalt not steal"), but deep down we know that what the lawyer does is defining what might and might not be stealing, and by extension asking a dangerous question: was God really addressing all of us with "Thou?"
* * *
The Hague became a world political headquarters, not because it was a rich city in the center of things, but because it was not. The Counts of Holland, who built the castle that now forms the seat of Dutch government, did so (historians argue) because it was not a full-fledged city with rights. No mighty city regents in the picture.
The town never became a trading or industrial center, nor does it have a university. The Oranges and other royals, stadtholders, and parliaments that governed the various incarnations of The Netherlands, largely continued to keep their courts in The Hague until today. The Dutch were a rich lot in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and consequently The Hague became an international city with hordes of diplomats, ambassadors, and hangers-on who built all those "palaces."
Nineteenth-century Europe was in a continuous state of war, with new nation-states vying for supremacy. The Netherlands had moved off the world stage by the nineteenth century—though its large colonial holdings necessitated a large bureaucracy. This retreat brought relative peace — neutrality. Bureaucracy brought more palaces, though of a lesser sort, and all that expertise and know-how.
Which may have been why Tsar Nicholas II asked his eighteen-year-old cousin, Queen Wilhelmina, to use The Hague for a Peace Conference to regulate the affairs between nations (one of his advisors had attended The Hague Conference on Private International Law in 1893 and was impressed by the organizing savvy of the Dutch). The young queen was quite chagrined: having the conference in her residence meant as much as openly admitting that it was a safe place no one could object to, a non-entity. Nevertheless, the conference invitations went out from the two together.
International Peace Conferences were held in The Hague in 1899 and 1907. A third one was planned for 1915, but was canceled because of the start of World War I. At these conferences, attempts were made both to sign treaties that would result in peaceful relations or the avoidance of war to resolve conflicts, and to sign treaties about rules for making war. Theodore Roosevelt was one of the movers behind the 1907 conference, which confirmed the principle of arbitration from 1899 and updated the rules of the Geneva Convention (1864) to include such modern concepts as air war.
Afterwards, the road to legal war was clear: 20/20 hindsight tells me that the treaty signed at this conference laid down the rules for World War I, should arbitration fail–which everyone expected, since the nations of Europe were engaged in an extensive schoolyard negotiation. The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom did hold a conference at The Hague in 1915, but the organizers–including Jane Addams and Henry Ford–were attacked viciously by none other than Roosevelt himself.
And so it continued, PCA (1901), ICJ (1922), ICC (2002), ICTY, you name it. What was convenient, is that The Netherlands is an un-power with a hunger for influence: it remained neutral in World War I, was overrun in World War II, and is no longer an empire. Where neutrality had been the answer until 1939, negotiation became a way to keep standing during the second half of the twentieth century: the Polder Model of decision-making. Like law and neutrality, this is a suspect concept: if you want to achieve a practical solution through a process of consensus building, you have to be flexible in your commitment to your own ideas. A great place for Justice to hang out.
The Netherlands has made good business out of the re-emergence of international legal institutions after the Berlin Wall came down. Once the world started paying attention again (it had been largely asleep, or perhaps diverted by the need to reign in the Communist menace, since world War II), The Hague became the obvious spot to house the special courts on genocides in its empty palaces and newer buildings. The backwater military base of my youth–slated to be closed in the detente that came with the fall of the Wall–suddenly grew higher fences again. More that fifty percent of the population of The Hague was neither born nor bred Dutch. The Hague is as important as it has always been in its own eyes. Appropriate for a city whose emblem is the stork, no?


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StratosERP is a module set that allows you to use Drupal as a major part of your business operations in areas that Quickbooks and MYOB are lacking. The Drupal node system is used so that almost any other Drupal module can also be added to expand the power of the system. Existing Drupal modules are employed wherever possible, using Views, Gmap, Date, and Calendar modules in particular. The Stratos ERP module can act as the core of a small business, handling all aspects of it except tax reporting and employee payroll. Its features include franchises, stores, quoting/estimates, invoices, purchase orders, payment receipt, stock tracking over multiple stores with the option of tracking by serial number, job tracking, automated item/pricing import from CSV/XLS files via the Web or email, PDF generation of invoices for email, Ubercart item synchronization, POS instant login via RFID tag, and more.
|ERP Web business stock control invoices inventory Financial Accounting store
|Operating Systems
|Linux Windows Mac OS X
A Fluent OpenStack client API for Java.
A TWiki appliance that is easy to use and lightweight.


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LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) - A woman is recovering at UK Hospital after being shot in downtown Lexington.
Police received a call of shots fired around 3:30 Tuesday morning and, although they were able to locate the victim, they are still trying to piece together her story.
We're told that when officers arrived at the scene on Ross Avenue they found a man and woman inside a home. The man told police the woman was shot before she arrived at his house, and that she was refusing to leave. Police say she had been shot in the shoulder.
Police said both the man and woman were extremely intoxicated. The only thing the victim could tell police was that the man she was with did not shoot her. Officers said they did not find a gun.
The woman was taken to UK Hospital to be treated for non-life threatening injuries.
WKYT will continue to follow this story and have more information as it becomes available.


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Original URL: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/22/rackable_tiny_servers/
Rackable gets physical with the virtual
Real fake servers
Posted in The Channel, 22nd January 2009 00:50 GMT
The economy has been hard on boutique server maker Rackable Systems, but the company keeps tweaking its designs in the hope that a broad portfolio of servers and storage will win a little more business in hyperscale data centers.
Today, Rackable launched a new line of products that do what many of us in the server space have been advocating for years: Using Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX motherboards, they provide the sort of modest computing oomph perfectly suited to workloads like Web serving, print and file serving, and running search engine algorithms.
The MicroSlice servers take what people are doing with virtualization software - carving up a machine into smaller slices to drive up the overall use and efficiency of a standard two-socket or four-socket server - and they do it at the physical level, using smaller and cheaper systems sitting side-by-side in the server chassis or on a cookie sheet tray inside a rack.
With tongue somewhat in cheek, Saeed Atashie, director of server products at Rackable, calls this "physicalization" in an attempt to contrast this approach with the server virtualization that most server makers, including Rackable, have been touting.
Rackable is not against virtualizing big, fat server nodes. It is happy to do it. The company just thinks that the economics of Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX systems are compelling enough that in a down economy, a rack of tiny servers might make more sense and be cheaper to acquire and operate than virtualized machines.
"This idea has been around, and a lot of people have been kicking it around," says Atashie. "We are taking a hardware-centric approach with MicroSlice, using smaller nodes and going for cost optimization. This is really about cost effective scaling, with the cost per node dropping by up to 80 per cent and also giving a dramatic improvement in performance per watt - up to 51 per cent."
The MicroSlice servers allow up to 264 server nodes (using Mini-ITX boards, which measure 6.7 by 6.7 inches) in a single rack based on the CloudRack cookie-sheet servers that Rackable announced back in October 2008. Half as many server nodes can fit into the rack using Micro-ATX boards, which measure 9.6- by 9-inches and have more memory and I/O expansion than the Mini-ITX boards.
Both kinds of boards were originally designed for PCs and, in the case of Mini-ITX boards, various embedded devices. The company also offers smaller Nano-ITX boards (4.7 by 4.7 inches) and Pico-ITX boards (3.9 by 2.8 inches) using low-powered chips aimed at desktops and laptops or even lower-powered X64 processors used by enthusiasts before they ended up in netbooks. Atashie says that Rackable has not packed Nano-ITX or Pico-ITX boards into its CloudRack machines, but clearly it can.
Rackable's MicroSlice setup puts six Mini-ITX boards on the back right side of the CloudRack tray. Then, down the left side of the tray, a Roamer remote management server and an eight-port Ethernet switch links the server nodes to each other and to the network. The front of the tray has six 2.5-inch SATA disks, each one linking to a single Mini-ITX board.
The tray has the minimal amount of metal possible - no cover or back - and a 450-watt power supply rated at 92.5 per cent efficiency to power all the machines. The CloudRack, you will remember, does not have fans on the trays, but rather two big fans in the 22U half-rack or four big fans in a 44U enclosure that cools all the trays together. A big fan moves air more efficiently (and with less noise) than a bunch of tiny fans.
Sliced and diced
Rackable's Mini-ITX board uses Advanced Micro Devices' dual-core Athlon X2 processor and its N690E/SB600 chipset. The board has two memory slots and supports up to 4 GB of DDR2 main memory. This is the TR100-AT1 server in the Rackable catalog. The Micro-ATX board, given the product number TR1000-ATP1, is based on the AM2+ socket and AMD's 780V/SB700 chipset. It supports dual-core Athlon X2 chips today and will soon support tricore Phenom X3 and quad-core Phenom X4 chips. That Micro-ATX board has four memory slots and supports up to 8 GB of DDR2 main memory.
In addition to putting Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX boards into its CloudRacks, Rackable has also announced two half-depth rack-based servers that put a single Mini-ITX server (the same board as used in the CloudRack cookie sheet machines) into a 1U rack chassis. The C1002-AT1 points the Mini-ITX ports out the front end of the chassis and has four 2.5-inch or two 3.5-inch removable disks - hot swap is not a technology concept that Mini-ITX boards understand yet - while the C1000-AT1 has a single 3.5-inch drive inside the box.
While Rackable is peddling AMD processors and chipsets today, the company expects to put out MicroScale setups using Intel processors sometime this quarter. Rackable doesn't talk prices, but it says that it can get it down to under $500 per server node in relatively large configurations.
It may seem counterintuitive to use laptop or other processors inside servers, but the numbers are compelling. You might be thinking, "Why not just use low-voltage parts in standard motherboards to get a performance/watt boost?" But you can't get the cost of that two-socket motherboard down low enough to compete against four times as many Mini-ITX machines.
To make an apples-to-applesauce comparison, Rackable set up two of its machines: an Intel "Bensley" platform with two Xeon L5420 quad-core processors, one disk, and 32 GB of memory, and a follow-on "San Clemente" system with the same low-voltage processors plus a disk and 24 GB of memory. These two machines were compared to four of the Mini-ITX boards, each with an Athlon 4850E processor, 4 GB of memory, and a single disk.
Running Web serving benchmarks on Apache (presumably supported by Linux), the two Intel boxes fielded just under 8,000 Web requests per second. The four Mini-ITX boards could handle just under 12,000, resulting in a 54 per cent performance advantage.
But here's the kicker. If you normalize the cost of the boards against the Bensley box, the single San Clemente server was about 12 per cent cheaper, but the four Mini-ITX servers were 24 per cent cheaper. That works out to a 51 per cent improvement in price/performance for the Mini-ITX machines versus the Bensley box, and a 31 per cent reduction in watts burned to process a Web hit. A configured Mini-ITX server burns about 72 watts running real workloads, according to Rackable.
Rackable has certified Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 as well as commercial Linuxes from Red Hat and Novell on these new machines. They are available immediately.
The company is clearly hoping to stir up some business with these as well as the CloudRack configurations announced in the fall. Just last week, Rackable warned Wall Street fourth quarter sales would plummet would plummet, coming in at between $36m and $41m, a shocking drop from the $111.6m it had in the fourth quarter of 2007. IBM, Dell, and HP as well as boutique competitor Verari Systems have all been chasing the hyperscale money. But none of them have commercial Mini-ITX and Micro-ATX blade or tray servers - at least not yet. Give it a week or two. ®


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If you were to bore a hole from Hood River through the Earth to the other side, staying at about the 45th parallel, you'd end up roughly in Rustaq, Afghanistan.
Dr. Mike Pendleton's journey there was nearly as arduous and, arguably, more nerve-wracking.
In November, Pendleton flew halfway around the globe -- the last leg of which was a white-knuckle ride on a Tajik Air flight filled with reporters from the BBC and CNN -- to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, as leader of a three-member medical response team from Portland-based Northwest Medical Teams. Theirs was the first American physician group to enter the war-torn country after the U.S.-led bombing campaign began in October.
From Dushanbe, it was 280 km in a "Russian jeep" as Pendleton and the others called it (among more colorful names) to the Afghanistan border, through multiple checkpoints where armed men "arbitrarily administered arbitrary rules arbitrarily" and another five hours over a mountain range to Rustaq.
"Picture the worst logging road you've ever seen," Pendleton said of the overland travel. "Make it worse than that, then make it worse than that, then add six inches of dust."
Pendleton's month-long stint in Afghanistan was his fourth with Northwest Medical Teams to a global trouble spot. In the last few years he's volunteered for similar duty in Vietnam, Albania and Turkey.
Pendleton, a family practice doctor with Columbia Gorge Family Medicine, was joined on his team by Dr. Henry Reitzug, a physician from Seattle, and Erda Fuller, a nurse from Fairbanks, Alaska.
The team went in with six duffle bags of medical supplies expecting to face "classic" disaster relief conditions -- primarily people displaced because of the war.
Instead, they found something quite different.
When Pendleton and his team arrived in Rustaq, he felt a sense of "overstimulation." The town is about the size of Hood River -- but that, he said, is where the similarities end.
"It was an experience of time standing still -- of being completely in the moment," he said of driving into the town. "Everything was so totally new that I didn't have any frame of reference."
Rustaq was part of the last 10 percent of the country that the Taliban did not control (prior to the bombing campaign) and was "relatively unscathed," Pendleton said. General Ahmed Shah Massoud -- the Northern Alliance leader that was killed in a suicide attack Sept. 9 in a prelude to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. -- had been popular and his image, even three months after his death, was still prevalent.
"There were trucks driving around with his picture on the side," he said -- and also with machine guns mounted in the back. Nearly everyone walking around the streets was armed with AK-47s or RPG's (rocket propelled grenades).
Pendleton and his team stuck out because they were Caucasian and obviously Western but also because of Fuller.
"We would stand in the bazaar and there would be 100 kids just staring at Erda," Pendleton said. There were no women on the streets -- only men and children.
Pendleton and his team were put up in a mud-brick "compound" where they had two translators, a cook and a "man-Friday." They settled in and prepared to begin treating the sick.
But "within 24 hours, it became clear that the Western take on what was going on was superficial," Pendleton said. The events of Sept. 11 had put Afghanistan on the map and "brought it to the surface of our consciousness," he said. "But this was a disaster that had been generations in the making." They had gone in with the "Western notion" that people were dying in the streets, he said.
"Instead what was going on was that people were quietly desperate."
The team began working with two already-established medical clinics in town, and were immediately introduced to the "Afghan system." When word spread that there were American doctors in town, the first people who flooded the clinics were the local commanders -- even though most had no urgent medical problems.
"The way the Afghan system works is, first come the people in power, then their families, then the people who need it most," Pendleton said. Still, it wasn't long before a very sick patient came in -- a 2-year-old boy who was suffering from cerebral malaria.
Pendleton's instinct was to immediately start treating the boy. But he held back and deferred to the Afghan doctor, determined to provide help and Western medical expertise but not to take over. He wanted the local people to trust their own doctors -- and for the doctors to trust themselves -- knowing that he and his team would be there only a short time.
"It's the classic dilemma," he said. "Do you teach someone to fish or do you give him a fish?"
They treated the child with antibiotics and tried to rehydrate him, but he showed no improvement. Over the course of a few days, Pendleton watched the interaction of family members as the boy grew sicker. The mother, covered head to toe in a burqa, was nearly always present but would retreat to a corner of the room whenever Pendleton entered -- where she crouched and "became very small, trying to disappear." The boy's grandfather was also ever-present. One of Pendleton's most vivid memories is of the grandfather sitting in a corner of the dingy, candlelit room with tears streaming down his face, quietly weeping.
As they tried to save the boy's life, Pendleton found himself learning from the clinic's Afghan doctor and staff about a disease he had little experience with.
"It was very moving," he said. "They were like professors teaching me about malaria." Despite their efforts, the boy eventually died.
Within a few days of their arrival, Pendleton and his team shifted gears from rescue to rehabilitation. They continued to administer medical help, but also worked to come up with a more effective aid program.
"Our job was to come up with a (new) program and sell it to Northwest Medical Teams," he said. After realizing that the need was long-term, the team came up with an idea that differed from Northwest's usual model of sending teams like Pendleton's to disaster spots for 3-4 weeks at a time.
"This is a situation that really demands (a team) to be there for six months," Pendleton said. "It requires someone with a memory of what's been going on." The model they proposed was a three-pronged aid program that would distribute medical help via Northwest Medical Services along with food and non-food supplies via other non-governmental organizations (NGO's) -- "out of the back of the same truck," said Pendleton.
The "piggy-backed" aid package could be taken to rural communities, which would be offered the aid in return for doing some work that would help themselves in the long run -- like building a road, a latrine or a well. (Pendleton presented the proposal to Northwest Medical Teams upon his return. The organization is currently reviewing it and expects to decide whether to go forward with it or not in the next few weeks.)
Pendleton stayed in Rustaq most of the time, with one side trip to nearby Taloqan, a larger city to the south that had recently been liberated from Taliban control. There, too, he was surprised at how what he saw differed from his expectations.
"I kept on looking for any evidence of anything," Pendleton said. "Like hospitals suffering or the power grid destroyed." He expected the city to be pock-marked by bullets and people to be wandering around depressed or in shock.
"But people didn't seem to be, per se, worse off for having had the Taliban there, or better off for not having them there," he said. "There wasn't a firebreathing hatred of the Taliban." While there might have been more obvious machinations of war and the effects of the Taliban regime in larger cities like Kabul and Kandahar, Pendleton got the impression that the "pace of the day" in rural Afghanistan was pretty much the same as it had been for centuries.
In Rustaq, just as the Taliban's regime seemed far away, so too did the war on terrorism -- and even the U.S.-led bombing of the country.
One night American planes dropped hundreds of yellow food packets nearby. "When they found out it came from an airplane," said Pendleton, "the kids asked if they'd been bombed." He accompanied some locals as they went to retrieve the packets, which contained pasta and tomato sauce, dates, a pop tart, and peanut butter and jam.
The Afghans were unfamiliar with everything but the dates.
"They'd never seen peanut butter before," he said. "They thought it was like glue."
Pendleton was in Rustaq for the the last part of Ramadan -- the Muslim month of fasting -- and for the celebration at the month's end called Eid. For three days he was swept up in the celebration -- invited inside home after home for tea and joining in the festival atmosphere. It was the only time that women were seen much outside.
"It was like looking at fields of Easter lilies," he said of the pastel-colored burqas.
Pendleton left Afghanistan not only with his team's proposal for immediate aid to the Afghans, but with a distinct impression of long-term changes that need to happen for Afghanistan to become a functioning country. The number one priority, said Pendleton, is to give women status as citizens.
"Give the women the opportunity to do what women do well worldwide," he said. As soon as women are empowered, he said, there will follow a higher level of education and of health care. "Women won't take no for an answer" when it comes to their children, he said.
Another necessary fundamental change is to "get rid of the warlord class" by taking away their power and making them irrelevant.
Pendleton would like to return to Afghanistan -- especially if Northwest Medical Teams decides to implement his team's aid model. He feels that, along with helping people in need, such work makes him a better doctor here at home.
"Here, we rely so much on tests and labs," Pendleton said. "When you get away from that, your intuition takes over and you learn to trust your instincts."
Pendleton, who now has a map of Afghanistan on his office wall, said he also feels a "sense of ownership" of the problem.
"I feel like we could make difference, but it doesn't lend itself to a quick fix," he said. While others talk of "modernising" the country, Pendleton views it differently.
"We need to bring them very, very carefully not into the 21st century, but out of the 15th century and into the 20th.
"I look at it as a delicate piece of crystal," he added. "We only have one chance to do this right."
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In the weeks since I first wrote about the Bruins' inability to earn a sufficient amount of power plays, nothing has improved.
Boston still ranks just 28th in the league with 255 power-play opportunities. The Bruins have gone on the power play just once in each of their last two games. Last week against Chicago, they skated through an entire game without gaining a man-advantage
One would think that a team that relies so much on grit and work ethic would be able to attract more infractions against the opposition.
Head coach Claude Julien didn't want to delve into the topic this afternoon after practice. When asked why his team doesn't draw more penalties, Julien closed his media briefing with a veiled swipe at the officiating his team has had to contend with.
"That's a good question. Do you watch the games? Do you think we should have more power plays? That's my answer," said Julien.


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STEPHENSON COUNTY (WIFR) -- The Stephenson County Emergency Management Agency working with the National Weather Service (NWS) has made the following statement:
Stephenson County has received over three inches of rain in the past seven days. This rainfall has caused the ground to be close to saturation and the Pecatonica River to rise above flood stage at 13.17 feet and holding (Flood stage is 13.0 feet). This river level leaves the county vulnerable for further and more severe flooding.
At this time the NWS in Quad Cities is predicting from 2.25 inches up to 4.0 inches of rain to fall over the region from Wednesday noon to Thursday night. This volume of precipitation could cause the Pecatonica River to rise to moderate or major flood stage levels. At this time no river level prediction for the next several days has been released by the NWS. More information regarding flood crest predictions and current river levels can be found on the Stephenson County Emergency Management web site at stcoema.org.
As a precautionary measure residents living on or near the Pecatonica River or Yellow Creek should take steps to move possessions to higher ground, move outdoor pets to higher ground and make living arrangements in case evacuation is needed.


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From the Topeka Police Department
The Topeka Police Department will conduct testing for full time entry level police officer Saturday, February 2nd, 2013. Registration begins at 7:30 a.m. and testing will commence at 8 a.m. at the Boys and Girls Club 550 SE 27th.
Applicants will begin the day taking the National Police Officer Selection Test (P.O.S.T.). Study guides for the written exam are available at no cost by visiting the City of Topeka Human Resources Department and requesting a study guide or by mailing a request for a study guide along with a self addressed stamped envelope to the: City of Topeka Human Resources Dept, 215 SE 7th, Topeka, Kansas 66603.
Those who pass the written exam will participate in the Police Officer Physical Abilities Test (P.O.P.A.T.) at 1 p.m. at the Boys and Girls Club 550 SE 27th. There is a video posted on the police department recruiting web site (www.topeka.org/JoinTPD) that demonstrates how to best prepare for the Police Officer Physical Abilities Test.
Anyone wanting to participate in the testing for full time entry level police officer MUST pre-register for the testing either by visiting www.topeka.org/JoinTPD or visiting the Topeka Police Department (320 S. Kansas Ave.) to complete an interest card.
Equal Opportunity: It is the policy of the City of Topeka to provide equal opportunity in employment to all persons. This policy prohibits discrimination because of race, sex, religion, color, national origin, age, ancestry or disability.


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LUNENBURG -- The third-seeded Lunenburg football team enters Tuesday's playoff tilt with second-seeded Grafton as the apparent underdog, but that might not be a bad thing.
The Blue Knights make their way into the Central Mass. Division 4 semifinals with a losing record -- despite playing winning football over the past nine weeks -- and have a lot of young talent comfortable having success over the years. If Grafton comes in overconfident and Lunenburg controls the offensive line, the Blue Knights may be able to sneak their way into the Super Bowl.
Kickoff is set for Tuesday at 7:45 p.m. at Grafton High School.
"Being 5-6, I think if we were on the other side of that our kids might overlook us, too," Lunenburg head coach Steve Boone said. "But we've been playing pretty well, and we play a pretty tough schedule. We were 5-4 in our last nine games, so our kids are pretty motivated right now."
This is the first time that Lunenburg finds itself the postseason since 2008. Early in the season, a transition occurred when the athletes starting buying in the program and developing a stronger bond as a team.
"They have bought into the philosophy," Boone said. "They are a very hard-working group of kids and they are very close. They do a lot together; they're friendly off the field. They've been playing together for a long time and are starting to buy into the philosophy that hard work pays off. We expect a lot out of them, and they're really starting to respond to it.
Many thought, given the loss of 18 seniors from last year's team, that 2012 would be a rebuilding season for Lunenburg, but a lot of new faces stepped up. The experience of getting into the postseason could bode well for the future, as underclassmen in key roles could develop a hunger to return.
"We're starting sophomores and juniors, and a freshman or two," Boone said. "We're younger than we are older. This junior and sophomore group had a lot of success coming up through youth football. They have that work ethic in them, and being able to see this success and hard work that's paid off at such a young age will hopefully carry over to the program."
Grafton (8-3) is a member of Southern Worcester County League A and is an opponent the Blue Knights have not seen yet this season. The Lunenburg coaching staff hasn't done much scouting, but it's clear both teams enter the game with a run-first mentality.
"The key to the game for us is establishing the run and controlling the line of scrimmage," Boone said. "Grafton runs the double-tight, double-wing offense, which is a powerful running formation, so we have to be solid up front. I think ball control is going to be a huge component of what we do. There are 10-minute quarters, and we can't have any turnovers, and hope to keep their offense off the field."
The warriors in the trenches figure to play an important role on both sides of the ball. Sophomore tackle Luke McDonald, junior guard Matt Benoit, sophomore center Ryan Johnson, junior guard Sam Arciprete, senior tackle Mike Byrne and sophomore tight end Cody Lanzilotti make up the offensive front. Lanzilotti, McDonald, Johnson, Abare, Benoit and Kam Munroe represent the defensive line.
Senior quarterback Greg Abare will be one of the Blue Knights' biggest factors if they hope to secure the win. The multi-year starter in other positions has put forth a solid effort in his first year under center. Abare has responsibilities similar to a college quarterback, in that the team runs a true triple option, where he must read the defense to determine who gets the ball.
"This year Abare stepped into the quarterback role, and you don't see many quarterbacks playing defensive end," Boone said. "He does it all for us and is a senior leader. We run the true triple, and if he reads it, we're going to be successful. I give him a lot of the credit and I give him a lot of the responsibility."
Lunenburg features a number of stellar running backs in its wishbone offense. Juniors Bobby Colgate, Nate Nash and Tom Wagner make up the core of the Blue Knight rushing attack, while senior Cody Jacobs is also in the mix.
"All of those backs complement each other very well," Boone said. "The thing with them is that they block for each other and take pride in blocking. They work hard back there. It's hard to tell who will be the primary back, but each one of them has had breakout games, going over 100 yards. That's the beauty of the option, too, you don't know who has the hot hand."
Notable defenders are Jacobs, who leads the team in tackles, and fellow linebackers Wagner and Danny Szabady. Justin Cumming, Jeremy Nash and Andrew Sanders make up the secondary.


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The creation of the Department of Homeland Security dismantled what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Service and divided its functions into three core agencies:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Budget: $5.8 billion.
Employees: 20,000 , including investigators and staff nationwide and in 47 foreign countries.
Purpose: Enforcing immigration laws, investigating violators, carrying out deportations, and operating the massive immigration system.
Customs and Border Protection
Budget: $11.7 billion.
Employees: 60,399, including 21,000 agents patrolling the country's borders and 21,000 officers conducting inspections and patrolling points of entry.
Purpose: Securing the country's border and regulating immigration, and facilitating international travel and trade by inspecting goods arriving in the country.
Citizenship and Immigration Services
Budget: $2.97 billion, along with $102.4 million for E-Verify, an online system for companies to check their employees' ability to work in the United States.
Employees: 11,315, not including contractors.
Purpose: Oversees legal immigration and works with people seeking lawful US residency and benefits. The agency also runs E-Verify.
►Also involved in the immigration system:
Executive Office for Immigration Review, Department of Justice
Budget: $329.8 million
Employees: 1,707
Purpose: Administers the 58 immigration courts in the country.


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Just after sunrise several mornings each spring and fall, Susan Smith Pagano, an assistant professor in RIT's Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences, and her students head to Braddock Bay Bird Observatory on the south shore of Lake Ontario. They catch small songbirds in nets, band them, take blood samples and release them after a quick examination.
This is the third year blood samples have been studied in hopes of determining whether newer, invasive species of fruit-bearing plants are causing nutritional problems for the birds. Many species of migratory birds have seen a decrease in population in the last three decades, she says.
"We're worried the birds may not be able to put on enough body fat to continue migration," says Smith Pagano. "Native fruits tend to be higher in energy than those of invasive shrubs."
In the fall, migratory birds by the thousands flock to Braddock Bay for a rest after crossing Lake Ontario. They come from breeding grounds north of the lake and stop there before continuing their journey south to Florida or even South America.
"It's an important migration spot for birds," Smith Pagano says. "And they need a lot of fuel and energy to make the trip. So they'll stop and refuel along the way."
Those not hearty enough to make the journey could die trying, or not travel as far.
Smith Pagano, who received her Ph.D. for studying the nutrition of birds in Rhode Island, is focusing on small songbirds, including warblers, thrushes and sparrows. Her biology students examine blood samples, studying its proteins and lipids and the caloric energy of the berries birds eat.
Laboratory Science Technology students at RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf, under the guidance of Smith Pagano's husband, Associate Professor Todd Pagano, analyze the samples of fruit collected that the birds may eat using multidimensional florescence spectroscopy.
"We're trying to look at the molecular content of wild fruits," Pagano says. He says climate change could help invasive species thrive in this region, overtaking native fruit-bearing shrubs. And climate change may also alter the times when fruits ripen, which could force birds to miss the best food sources, especially if bird migration times are also shifting with climate change.
"We're trying to correlate the wild fruits they eat with the nutrients in the food. Phenols, chemical compounds that can contribute to antioxidant protection, are measured among other indicators," Smith Pagano says. "It's a nice interdisciplinary collaboration."
In September, Smith Pagano received a grant from the American Wildlife Conservation Foundation to help continue their research. "People can use this information for managing wildlife habitats and conservation efforts," Smith Pagano says. They hope to develop fact sheets about the quality of different shrubs and recommend adding specific plants to increase the food quality found in birds' natural habitats.
Undergraduate students have presented their findings at local, regional and national conferences as a way to disseminate their research. And their findings have been published in Northeastern Naturalist and alluded to by the Audubon Society.
Recommended native fruits: Arrowwood, Silky Dogwood, Gray Dogwood and Red Osier Dogwood
Invasive species for birds: Common Buckthorn, Bush Honeysuckle and Multiflora Rose


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Pirates Crack FF8 3 Times Over 106
Kolin the Anonymous Coward writes " Ign reports that the new anti-piracy protection on Final Fantasy VIII (the most hyped game of 99) has already been cracked three times over. Pirates wanting to copy the games onto cdr disks or to play the imported game have already found three solution to sony's new security featured on FF VIII and slated to be on many more games. These methods include a software crack applied before the game is put onto cdrs, a new "phantom" chip which can be easilly soldiered into any playstation and use of a hardware cheat device called gameshark. " I obviously don't support pirating games you don't own, but I this is interesting- it seems that the era of copy protection is at an end. And maybe this will help eliminate that obnoxious lag time before we get the cool games on this side of the pond.


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University of Central Missouri
Administration 302
Warrensburg, MO 64093
Phone: 660-543-4640
Fax: 660-543-4943
Contact: Jeff Murphy
After beginning the 2013-2014 academic year with a record fall semester enrollment, momentum has continued to build at the University of Central Missouri resulting in the largest enrollment in university history for the spring 2014 semester. Unprecedented growth in graduate and international students is contributing to positive enrollment numbers and a more diverse student body.
According to spring census data provided to UCM Board of Governors Feb. 14, total enrollment is 12,864, including both undergraduate and graduate students. This is an 8.3 percent increase over the spring 2013 total of 11,879, and 351 students more than the fall 2013 enrollment, 12,513, which was previously the university's all-time record.
"UCM has enjoyed three consecutive years of record enrollment increases, and to experience such positive growth this spring is a tremendous accomplishment for the university," said Charles Ambrose, UCM president. "This would not be possible without a total campus commitment to initiatives that are focused on providing the most affordable, quality education we can offer students."
Rick Sluder, the university's vice provost for recruitment and outreach, presented enrollment data to the board, noting that that graduate student enrollment is up 37.4 percent from spring 2013. With 3,122 graduate students now attending UCM, one in four UCM students is studying at the graduate level, compared to one in five a year ago.
Growth in graduate student numbers is mostly due to significant increases in the international student population. Currently, there are 1,420 students from other countries enrolled at UCM, a 161 percent increase over the same period a year ago. Within the graduate area, international student numbers climbed from 241 in spring 2013 to 1,112 in spring 2014, a dramatic 361.4 percent increase.
The largest number of graduate students are coming from India, mostly from communities situated near technology regions. According to Joy Stevenson, director of the international center at UCM, these "students are attracted to the high quality of our programs, plus the success of students within the program getting internships and great job placements after graduation." She added, "UCM is known as being a very supportive campus where students are assisted in many ways. It is also known as being a safe community where the cost of living is relatively low for the U.S."
Many international students come to UCM seeking degrees in STEM-related areas, she said. They are particularly interested in programs such as computer science and computer information systems.
"The faculty, program coordinators, deans and department chairs have done an outstanding job structuring programs that fit the needs of these students, and are in high demand by employers," Sluder said. "Courses are scheduled to meet the needs of students, affording plenty of flexibility, if they have jobs or other responsibilities. It really takes engaged and caring faculty members who are committed to students' success to make such programs possible."
Along with an increase in international students, the university is experiencing a 2.8 percent increase in Hispanic students, 4.2 percent increase in African-American students, and an 8.8 percent rise in students claiming two or more races, adding to a more diverse campus.
Realizing that affordability is one reason students attend UCM, the university continues to seek ways to reduce the financial burden its students and their families face during a tough economy. Measures such as holding tuition rates below the Consumer Price Index, enhancing scholarship funding, providing student employment, innovative programs/partnerships to reduce debt, and financial aid packages that include an increase in federal Pell Grant funding for Fiscal Year 2014 are helping to reduce the overall cost of an education at UCM.


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The stronger Aussie dollar, better promotion and improved flight schedules are combining to make South America a sought-after destination.
It used to be held up as a badge of honour for adventurous travellers; somewhere that only the intrepid would venture. But those looking for badges might want to look elsewhere because South America is now open to everyone, with mainstream operators catering for the group-tour market and top-end hotel chains looking after those who like their creature comforts.
Throw in a big boost in flights and promotional efforts, and it's hardly surprising that South America is absolutely booming.
The Latin America specialist Chimu Adventures says its sales out of Australia for the past financial year were up 50 per cent on the year before. The marketing manager, Meg Hall, says a favourable exchange rate, ever-improving infrastructure and greater awareness are combining to make the continent a mecca for Aussie travellers, particularly those who want adventures with comforts.
Retailer STA Travel is also seeing big growth in demand for South America, with numbers up more than 30 per cent on last year.
Its spokesman, Reuben Acciano, says the company has had a "significant increase" in inquiries since the London Olympics, with Rio due to host the Games in 2016.
One of the biggest factors in recent growth has been improved air services, with Australian travellers offered a range of flights to Buenos Aires in Argentina or Santiago in Chile, with onward services to Brazil, Peru and other areas.
Aerolineas Argentinas began direct flights from Sydney to Buenos Aires in July, having previously operated all flights via Auckland, while Qantas switched from Buenos Aires to Santiago earlier this year, enabling greater access to Chile.
The Chilean carrier, LAN Airlines, which flies daily from Sydney to Santiago, continues to expand its reach within South America, giving travellers affordable flights beyond the gateway. Late last year, the airline introduced flights between the Peruvian capital, Lima, and Easter Island, in addition to its Santiago-Easter Island services, creating a new "tourism circuit" without the need for backtracking.
The managing director of Trafalgar Tours, Matthew Cameron-Smith, says improved air access has been a "very significant" factor in boosting demand for South America. Trafalgar is in its second year of a dedicated South America tour program, and the presence of such a mainstream operator says a lot about how much the destination has changed.
Cameron-Smith says Trafalgar's presence shows a maturing - of both the destination and the Australian traveller.
The youth brand, Contiki, also launched into South America last year and its managing director, Fiona Hunt, says the destination is attracting an older demographic (average age 29-30), compared with 18-25 on most Europe trips.
Hunt says many travellers heading to South America have already done Europe once or twice and are looking for something new.
Another factor in the growth - and likely future expansion - has been a step-up in promotion.
Peru has been well promoted in the Australian market but other countries such as Chile, Argentina and Colombia are joining forces to boost their share.
Colombia has long had a reputation as a dangerous place to travel but the official Australian Government travel advisory for the country is currently "exercise a high degree of caution" - the same level as countries such as India, Kenya, Costa Rica, Mexico and Morocco.
Peru, which has been known as an adventure destination thanks to the Inca Trail and Amazon adventures, is moving into the luxury travel arena, with five-star brands such as Hilton and Marriott opening new hotels.
The promotional body, PromPeru, says tour operators are also targeting the high-end traveller, with experiences such as lodge-to-lodge trekking in the Andes, luxury trains to Machu Picchu, luxury lodges in the Amazon and upmarket sailing adventures in the Ballestas Islands.
Australian operators who have expanded their luxury offerings in Peru include Bill Peach Journeys, Adventure World and Peregrine.
Peru is also gearing up to host the start of the famous Dakar Rally next year, with the race setting off from Lima on January 5.
More than 1 billion people are expected to watch coverage of the race, which will take on Peru's southern coast before heading to Chile and Argentina.
Cuisine's day in the sun
When I think of dining in Peru I tend to think of guinea pig (they really do eat them), but the country is being touted as a new leader in cuisine.
Frommer's lists the Peruvian capital, Lima, as the top food-and-drink destination for this year, while The Wall Street Journal recently declared Peruvian food "the next big thing", saying it is having its moment in the gastronomic sun.
Peruvian food features a mix of Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and African cooking styles. One of its dishes is ceviche: seafood cured in lime juice and chilli.