text:
Unfortunately Facebook's power is in that everyone uses it, and that is what they use to get new users too. Alternative projects are a humble goal, but especially with social networks you are quite much locked in to a single existing network just because everyone else you know uses it, and they in turn use it because you use it too.
Interestingly creating a network like this means you have convince everyone to forget about Facebook and move to this platform. Even if it would become successful, once these four students have millions of people in their social network, they most likely will change it the same way that Facebook did. Remember that Facebook also was a hobby project made by students.
I really don't get this. Everyone seems to be talking about Diaspora, which is still vaporware, when there are actual products that work right now. You can either go with the StatusNet [status.net] + plugins route (implementing OStatus), or you can choose OneSocialWeb [onesocialweb.org] (XMPP+extensions). Both are Free software. OSW is Apache licensed, FFS: how much more could you ask for?
Both of these products actually exist and work now. StatusNet is mature. OSW is still alpha, but fairly complete. It would be much better for everyone to hitch their wagons to one of these than to support some college students who may or may not know what they're doing and whose goal appears to be to "scrape Twitter and Flickr." That will never work. You have to be able to post status updates, pictures, videos, and blogs all within the same interface and have people be able to comment on or "Like" directly from that same interface. You can't expect people to leave Facebook for something cobbled together from pieces and lacking half the functionality.
I hope I'm wrong about this project.
Interesting - OneSocialWeb looks like it has some promise to me. StatusNet seems like it's aimed at a somewhat different role, though it clearly exists already, and I see that there's overlap.
OneSocialWeb needs to make sampling easy - open source is great, but just proclaiming the potential benefits and sticking up source code on a website isn't going to draw people, even geeky people like me, in. This is all still too early or too feature-incomplete to say "here it is, don't bother Diaspora guys, it's al
I realize that more has to be done to StatusNet than to XMPP to make a usable social network, and that they come at it from different angles, but both have key pieces already in place -- federation (which is hard), security, status, profiles, and plug-ins -- so I think either could be taken to the Facebook point with much less effort than starting a new project.
I especially like the XMPP route because some providers already offer this service, and that means more leverage over FB. For example, GMail already
If it's done right, then various multiple social platforms can work together, instead of competing. That was supposed to be the goal of the OpenSocial API (which is implemented by OneSocialWeb, among others).
The real trick here is how they build the communications and privacy models - how much data is open, how do they share it, what can you do with it - and how that affects what kinds of features you can build using it. You could build something like Livejournal on a pretty tight system with no central data storage, but it'd be harder to find your ex-girlfriend's cousin's third-grade-teacher's dog's picture and send it a cute icon of a fire hydrant. Or if you build a system that's really good at both of tho
The difference is that Diaspora is to be released under the aGPL license. Making it free software
...and its whole architecture is distributed (as is the case of other opens-source social networks systems cited elsewhere).
Just like Jabber, and other nice standard which emerged from opensource projects.
Thus you could run one instance ("seed" in Diaspora parlance) on your own server.
Or if you don't have the knowledge and/or resources to do it, create a profile on some Dispora-provider.
As it's distributed and open, it will still let you communicate with other users from other seeds running elsewhere on the
Its been done before - facebook is the new myspace is the new yahoo chat is the new geocities.
If they get their idea nailed down well, with a clean, easy user interface and a simple deployment mechanism and method for growth with privacy in tact, they may have a shot at it.
All true, but things get harder and harder as the user bases in question grow. Geocities used to popular for example, but it's user base never encountered anything remotely resembling what Facebook currently has. It's the digital equivalent of inertia.
Geocities used to popular for example, but it's user base never encountered anything remotely resembling what Facebook currently has.
Then again, MySpace did have a userbase comparable to Facebook. And yet it seems to have gone from being the the place to be to "are you still on myspace?" in a very short space of time.
If social networks function in the same way as (say) eBay, then you'd be right. In that case the size of the user base is itself a resource that draws in more users. But suppose there's a different dynamic at work. Suppose it functions like a fashion accessory. Then users could prove a lot more fickle that you'd expect.
A lot of the people driving adoption for new networks are kids. Then the parents follow so they can keep an eye on the children. Before long everyone's on the new network, and aside from a few die-hards, no-one wants to be seen dead on the old sites. And then the kids start looking for a place to hang out that their mums don't know about, and a new generation is coming up that doesn't want anything to do with what their big sister thinks is cool...
I could be wrong, of course. But it would explain why none of the previous social networks have managed translate users into longevity.
Then again, MySpace did have a userbase comparable to Facebook. And yet it seems to have gone from being the the place to be to "are you still on myspace?" in a very short space of time.
I think I know what to do: We need to get Rupert Murdoch to buy Facebook.
Then again, MySpace did have a userbase comparable to Facebook. And yet it seems to have gone from being the the place to be to "are you still on myspace?" in a very short space of time. If social networks function in the same way as (say) eBay, then you'd be right. In that case the size of the user base is itself a resource that draws in more users. But suppose there's a different dynamic at work. Suppose it functions like a fashion accessory. Then users could prove a lot more fickle that you'd expect.
People said the same thing about Friendster, for certain values of "everyone" at the time that Facebook started up. They said that MySpace was toast and that Friendster was taking off. Then Friendster just let the whole thing rot and people moved en masse to Facebook. It turned out it wasn't really that hard to pick up and move your social networking to another site - because really, most of the historical content was either not that relevant or not that hard to move.
Now, Facebook has tried hard to make that less true with features with tagging of images that build up their own database of historical information that is a bit harder to move over to another site.
But the reality is that like a club or social venue, the crowds can pick up and move to a new place when the last place becomes passe. And when your grandmother and your parents are all on Facebook, it's safe to say it's less cool than it used to be. More people, but because that network is now *so* broad, from people you went to school with, people you work with, your family, your parents, your kids, etc. it's hard to share anything but the lowest common denominator of information on there, especially with their continual stream of privacy gaffes. Which makes it distinctly less useful to many of us - more like a public website, less like a way to share information with friends.
People can pick up and move to other social networking venues. They aren't realistically going to abandon Facebook of course, but they can add a new social networking venue and just not update their Facebook profiles as much. That's what I did with Friendster. Then after a while, when you notice that nobody else is updating their Friendster profiles either, it stops being interesting going there. As a result, I haven't logged in for probably two years now, but it was a slow withdrawal process.
Don't overestimate the strength of Facebook's network effect. It's there, but it's not all-powerful. Shit on your customers for a while and alternatives will pop up, it's inevitable. I have no idea who will "win" in the long run and I don't think Facebook is going away anytime soon, but there is certainly still room for new entrants.
I think the key is that "openness" in and of itself isn't a feature. There needs to be more of a killer feature to get people to try something new. An open social networking framework is geek-cool, but if there are one or two things you can functionally accomplish there that Facebook can't or doesn't offer, that will get people to sample the new product and consider adopting it.
The main reason Friendster died-off was because it couldn't scale up. After it hit a certain level of popularity, you couldn't even visit the site without it spewing MySQL errors or hanging for a minute on every page load. Meanwhile, they launched some half-baked plan to rewrite the whole thing in Java, while people were bailing from the site out of frustration.
The other interesting thing about Friendster was the "friend-of-a-friend" privacy model. Which means if you weren't somehow connected to the active userbase, it did seem like a ghost town. That sort of model has its advantages, but it did limit network effects and probably accelerated the hipster effect of becoming too popular.
I agree with almost everything you said. People can definitely switch over, it just won't be a one day thing. People are constantly switching from one service to another, but it takes a while for the balance to switch from one to the other.
But I disagree about openness not being a feature. I think the point that could make this take off is that it is open. You get to host your own "node" of the network and choose what information you put on it. That will make it much more difficult to pull a switch lik
Dunno about Friendster, but MySpace was somewhat different to Facebook. Sure, it was insanely popular with younger crowds, but I think the biggest difference was everyone used fake names. So to add someone on MySpace, people would need the person's username - "Hotchick577228" or whatever. On Facebook the norm is to use your real name. This means that people you meet in real life, log onto Facebook and try to add you - almost expecting that you'll have an account. Or at least, it's certainly that way at uni.
The power isn't just that your friends use it, and other people use it, and you can give your username to them. The power of Facebook is the way anyone can search for your real name, with the probability that you have an account, and add you. The only way that's going to change if Facebook dies suddenly due to an external factor (legal, goes bankrupt, etc) and everyone moves to another alternative.
Most people don't care about the sharing of private information really. I mean, the primary reason I signed up was I was sick of not being invited to events (which seemed to be completely planned on facebook). Are you going to protest the way Facebook handles your data by boycotting it, and boycotting half the social events that may pop up over time?
It's no longer about being in this cool, online environment with your friends (MySpace) and more about an expected form of communication and networking - like a mobile phone, email address, etc.
This is unfortunately exactly correct.
I boycotted Facebook, until I realized it was negatively effecting my social life. Then I created an account with a fake name. It helped, but I was still getting excluded because few people knew my fake name. A lot of people seem to friend people their friends are already friends with after they meet them in some social context. That would never happen to me because they didn't see my actual name on their friends friend list.
I finally gave in and created a Facebook account with my real name (and no other personal info). Within a week I was plugged in to all my friends networks of friends. I get invited to events all the time now, friends who never emailed will write on my Facebook wall, I am no longer "out of sight, out of mind". I meet new people and we get to know each other via Facebook updates, we get invited to the same events because of mutual friends, we become friends. It's had a noticeably positive effect on my social life.
Basically, what it comes down to is that Facebook has leverage over your social life now. It's ingrained itself into our culture in a way that no previous social networking website has. With MySpace you didn't have to be a member if you wanted to get invited to the bar with your friends. With Facebook you have to be a member or else you will become unintentionally ostracized.
Are you going to protest the way Facebook handles your data by boycotting it, and boycotting half the social events that may pop up over time?
The beauty (tragedy?) of FB and sites like it is that they've convinced us to turn over the management of our social lives and public identities to a private business, in exchange for... well, we're not quite sure what, yet. In the beginning it's a convenience, but then you find you can't have friends at all without them.
And these people who won't invite you to their "events" if they have to shoot you an email... You call them "friends"?
"because really, most of the historical content was either not that relevant or not that hard to move."
It's because it's not that relevant. Moving it not a problem because photos people already have on their pc.
People really dont care about things that are more than 3 days old on social network sites.
[quote]Unfortunately Facebook's power is in that everyone uses it, and that is what they use to get new users too. Alternative projects are a humble goal, but especially with social networks you are quite much locked in to a single existing network just because everyone else you know uses it, and they in turn use it because you use it too.[/quote]
Doesn't Facebook have an API? I'm fairly sure you could get a massive head start by allowing you to import contacts from, and cross-communicate with, Facebook via
you have convince everyone to forget about Facebook and move to this platform.
Why is that, exactly?
What specifically is it about this project (or Facebook) that prohibits people from having accounts on both services at the same time?
facebook did it with Myspace. They pulled the majority of their users to facebook. the next big thing will suck facebook dry as well.
Just use a dummy profile and tell your friends (offline) to use email for most comm.
My Facebook page tells visitors that it's light on info because it's not more than a point of contact.
Interestingly creating a network like this means you have convince everyone to forget about Facebook and move to this platform.
Thing is this isn't equivalent to Facebook; it isn't a replacement-in-kind. Diaspora (sorry--Diaspora* whatever the asterisk means) seems to aspire to be a BETTER ALTERNATIVE. It is far to early to know how things will turn out as there is no complete and public implmenetation of their concept yet, however in my mind it is promising that there are motivated developers and financial backers who actually *GET* how the internet is supposed to work. See, so few people "get it" (and I fear that many powerful,
I'm going to replace a few words from the OP, using a little story from 1977:
Unfortunately IBM's power is in that everyone uses it, and that is what Big Blue uses to get new users too. Personal computers are a humble goal, but especially with centralized computing you are quite much locked in to a single computing architecture just because everyone else you know uses it, and they in turn use it because you use it too.
Interestingly creating personal computing means you have convince everyone to forget about
It will be decentralized. If engineered correctly, they will be incapable of doing what Facebook has done.
Even if engineered poorly, they will be incapable of doing what Facebook has done (but the poor engineering will either cause it to fail or kill the privacy they're looking for.) The point is, no one will own it.
Well, geeks. As a former geek turned millionaire I gotta tell you what the problem is.
Basically, you start your project all open source, full of good ideas and nice feelings.
Then it begins to grow, makes money, and then you are introduced to bleached hair playboy ascending models and penthouse pornstars that cost thousand grand to sleep one night with you and rock your world, because they just want to sleep with the next billionaire and prove to the other bitches they are the most expensive pussy in earth.
So, then you need more and more money to keep paying for them and it becomes an addiction.
So, you sell your soul to the devil and that is how it ends, just like facebook...
They already have the money they need to get this off the ground ($10,000). More pledged money is just icing on the cake.
[...] and start weighing their options
Ofcourse, now they want money to support themselves so they can run the project.
Afterwards, if it works and would run (unlikely in that timeframe) they will want to make money out of it because "they put alot into it and need to maintain it".
Not soon after, they'll want to make a fulltime living out of it, and try to come up with a way to make it "free" for users, yet try to find creative ways to make money off of it, like advertizing.
After that, we get the same thing
Or...Google finally has in their sights a young, cheap to buy social networking serive with bright future; for which they can ensure "not evil" state of affairs.
Google already has two social networks. How many more do they need?
It's called Orkut. google has had a Social site longer than facebook has existed.
it's wildly popular outside the usa.
Facebook is wildly popular (also) outside the USA. Orkut...pretty much only in Brazil and India.
This always kind of confused me. I could understand it if we were talking about older folks, but many people my age (mid 20's) and many people younger (i.e. people that never knew of a world without Internet) know about the privacy complications, yet still don't care, or post stuff on Facebook with reckless abandon.
I'm a frequent Facebook user (3-5 updates a day), but I never put anything on there I don't want the public to know. Like my parents taught me back in my IRC/ICQ/Yahoo Chat days: "If you don't
http://retromessenger.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] - serverless IM (finds IP of friends via DHT; apparently also has "push message to all friends" functionality, close enough to some social services)
http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] - in the spirit of the above, but more of a "service" at this point - Chat & Filetransfer, searching friends, messages, Forums...encrypted, DHT
http://tstone.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] - apparently strives to be a serverless VoIP cooperating with one of the above (generally they seem to be relate
Retroshare looks really good, maturity and technology-wise. The issue is that no-one cares about these platforms, i.e. they do not gain traction. The reasons for that is in my opinion:
(1) A new social network has to be significantly better than the existing one people are currently using. Otherwise people won't register there too.
- E.g. it has a cool feature: a game, a new form of interaction or discussion, etc.
- It is not enough to be a copy that does pre
This is why distributed approaches like Diaspora/Retroshare/... will fail:
- You have a problem publishing new versions of the software. You can't force new versions out, there will be incompatibilities between nodes, things will not 'just work'.
- Privacy aside, you don't add value that Facebook hasn't.
- Quality of the service: The development team or community will not provide a continuous, mature program version.
* unless they have some business model on how to generate revenue from it.
- No inspiration, or higher goal they strive to. They just do something existing a little bit better. But there is nothing fundamental about why one should use the new service. It is better in features, it is logical to use it. But that is not satisfactory.
- Original developers will at some point stop maintaining the project, and not have gained enough other developers around them that continue development, maintenance and infrastructure on a high quality level.
Please, Diaspora* team, prove me wrong. Read this and prove me wrong.
If you can't, it is not the fault of your expertise, or skills as a programmer or software engineer. There is just more to it than developing a superior product.
PS. If you have something against publishing some of your personal info on FB...just don't give it to them.
That doesn't do much. If you have friends who post, just about everything is going to end up on there anyway.
Try this: sign up for Facebook with a new email account. Don't let them scrape your contacts. Add a few friends and wait. One day soon, you will log in and Facebook will show you a list of a bunch of email accounts and ask you which ones are yours. Most of them will be yours. It totally freaked
That data was essentially public already...
What data are you talking about? Email addresses? Or the party photos your friend posted that have identified you with a helpful tag?
Or are you talking about the data they collect if you happen to forget to log out of Facebook and surf around to sites displaying the Facebook Connect button? IMHO, that's one of the most sinister ways that Facebook collects data. I suppose technically you are still volunteering the data because you didn't log out. After all, if you didn't want them to know about other sites y
Who are getting pissed over privacy [wired.com]. I'm just unhappy (as a 45 year old) that I have to check my privacy settings weekly, and sometimes daily.
Saw this article this morning. Don't overlook the "dirty Unix joke" on the blackboard.
Because first you did indeed host your own site, but YOU were a university or other large institution as they were the only ones to have access to the net.
If you mean the unwashed masses with everyone then the first hosting was the home page, provided by your ISP.
Geocities and the like came after that, when ISP's turned more towards low-cost and provided to little flexibility or capacity.
Next up was the blog, the home-page re-invented.
Myspace took a look in.
I think that with ip6 we might actually indee
Please apply 5 seconds' thought before getting all distributed up in my hizzizzy.
For this service to be popular, Real People will have to use it, not just you, me and him over there.
For Real People to use it, it will need to Just Work, First Time.
To Just Work, First Time, it needs to rely on having a reliable server/seeder/aggregator/gateway present 100% of the time. Let's call it a metaserver, although it's just semantics. There needs to be one place where every peer goes to find out where other peers are.
Who's going to run that default metaserver? Well, duh. The authors will run it.
When - not if, when - they go Dark Side and release a client that injects ads or collates data, who's going to switch to a fork clients and a different metaserver and protocol version? That's right: you, and me, and him over there. Not Real People.
If this takes off, then 99% of users will treat it exactly as they do Facebook, as a service that can (and will, eventually) do pretty much what it wants to them. Its success is predicated on being used by Real People, not you, me and him over there.
You may now commence your explanations of why this time, it will be different, and Real People will care about the things that you, me and him over there care about. I apologise for the interruption.
For this service to be popular, Real People will have to use it, not just you, me and him over there.
For Real People to use it, it will need to Just Work, First Time.
To Just Work, First Time, it needs to rely on having a reliable server/seeder/aggregator/gateway present 100% of the time. Let's call it a metaserver, although it's just semantics. There needs to be one place where every peer goes to find out where other peers are.
The key is to make it work like e-mail: if you want to add a friend, you use his personnal identifier and the server he is registered on.
Anybody can set up an e-mail server, and it will instantly work and anybody will be able to send e-mail to users registered there. This project must work the same way.
That would be the best way to gather a lot of people discussing how the product should be, and never actually deliver anything.
Just Work, First Time.
About what happens if Google ever goes under and their gmail messages are sold to corporations who want to mine them for compromising information.
The main "selling point" of this project can not be its opensourceness in itself, because very few people really care about that.
This project must have something more than facebook, some functionnalities never seen before. And those are realy difficult to come up with.
The idea of a decentralized service, where anybody can set up his own server, is actually a really good ground on which new ideas can germ.
The goal should not only be to create a networked facebook, but to create a network of socialnetworkin s
Pretty much covers it.
It's a darn tough sell, but I threw them $5 - why not? If it comes together, it would be a fantastic Wikipedia-esque next-step of social networking. On the other hand, if Buzz can't do it...
That's a bad thing?
This Easter I was BSing with the various family members after dinner. And my sister started getting on my teenage niece's case about some boy on her Facebook page and the teen-related shenanigans mentioned. Minor shit -- a kiss.
I finally looked at my sister and asked her if she recalled being that age. I recall my sister at that age, and let's just say our mom would have been elated if she could have kept her activities down to raunchy (as opposed to nasty).
Teens need liberated from Facebook. No one needs their goddamned parents breathing down their neck just because last night their boyfriend was breathing down their neck.
Teens need liberated from Facebook. No one needs their goddamned parents breathing down their neck just because last night their boyfriend was breathing down their neck.
I'd wager that the current crop of kids is the most supervised and tightly controlled of any generation, ever. The 50s were as oppressive as hell (and hence the rebellion of the 60s), but even then you could evade the scrutiny of parents, teachers, and "friends" at least a good part of the time. Will we wake up one morning only to realize that what felt like liberation was something else entirely?
There are quite a few projects to create this:
http://www.elgg.org/ [elgg.org] though it is not distributed (they are working on it)
http://onesocialweb.org/ [onesocialweb.org] is xmpp based, i have set up my own instance.
http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/Group:GNU_Social [fsf.org] has just started and is a gnu project.
There are some standards to help this kind of thing but most are not complete.
you may want to look into foaf for storing a social graph for example.
Please chat with other people if you find this interesting.
IRC chat: #social on freenode
Then use Atrium [openatrium.com] or Acquia [acquia.com]. Both provide turn-key social sites built on Drupal.
The point is, these guys are going to be spending 90% of their time writing behind-the-scenes functionality to make everything work, and 10% making it look good and easy to use. Drupal already provides the first 90%. If they really believe in open source, they could be contributing to work already done and making it better -- and end up with a better product than they could do on their own.
Sure, these guys are young and have
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them. -- Bill Vaughn


text:
The Verano Turbo came across as a strange jump for Buick. The Verano made sense; premium-compact vehicles are a rapidly growing class in today's efficiency- conscious market. But a sporty premium compact sedan? Hold on a moment, now, that's challenging some of the masters of this game, like BMW, Audi and Acura. Is Buick ready for that?
Turns out, it just might be. The smallest Buick already has shown it can achieve respectable levels of luxury and comfort in spite of its small footprint. Fuel economy is respectable, and Buick's signature style has translated well as a premium compact.
And now the Verano Turbo's packing a turbocharged 2.0 liter four-cylinder that bumps the performance up to seriously entertaining levels.
What's more, the turbocharged four bangs out 250 horsepower and still returns decent fuel economy. Shared with the larger Regal GS, the direct-injection 2.0 turbo is a fast-responding powerplant that's smooth at high speeds and never feels overworked. It'll even get you 31 mpg on the freeway if you're nice to it. The turbo spins up with very little lag, so there's ample acceleration available in any gear. Achoice of six-speed manual or sixspeed automatic transmissions is offered. The manual's the way to go for enthusiasts, of course. When was the last time you drove a Buick with a stick? The Verano Turbo's sixspeed is up to the power demand, though it can be a bit notchy going into the higher gears. The Verano Turbo cruises effortlessly on the freeway.
OK, so they've stuffed an engine into it, but how does it handle? Again, the Verano Turbo surprises, offering competent moves when the road gets twisty. The Verano features decoupled MacPherson struts up front, which provide good isolation from pothole impacts, and a self-centering Watts Z-link rear axle design.
Though it gives up some precision to fully independent units, the Verano Turbo offers predictable and steady handling, and it's not stiff so it won't beat you up on the freeway. The electronic rack-andpinion steering is responsive and direct, and the four-wheel antilock disc brakes stop the car confidently.
It takes some getting used to, combining the six-speed manual transmission and eager performance with Buick's signature ice-blue lighting and brightly-trimmed interior. The Verano Turbo keeps its airy, elegant interior environment rather than going for a somber black sports-car cabin, so at times the performance almost seems accidental, an unintended side effect of a new engine. Buick's modus operandi includes wood and satin-metal trim, premium materials and softtouch surfaces everywhere, and a variety of unique interior themes, including cream and mixed brown hues. At night, the Verano Turbo's interior is accented with pale blue light, and Buick's Quiet Tuning suite of sound-absorption materials ensures a serene cabin. If you don't want it quite so serene, there's an upgraded Bose sound system to make things noisy. Heated front seats and steering wheel are available. Buick's new IntelliLink infotainment system is available, enabling smartphone integration with a wide range of apps including Pandora Internet radio and others. IntelliLink also connects to the phone to allow hands-free calling and phone support. Abackup camera and navigation system are also tied into the high-tech suite.
Asuite of driver aids including a side blind-zone alert, backup camera and stability control is standard. The Verano Turbo also features ten standard airbags, including knee bags for front seat passengers.
It's hard to mistake the Verano Turbo for anything other than a Buick product.
Even if it weren't for the toothy, V- shaped grille up front and the porthole trim on the hood, the Verano features blue trim rings around the headlights and healthy doses of chrome. The car has a similar silhouette to the larger Buicks, but its shorter length gives it a more dynamic look. Eighteen- inch wheels are standard. Apart from badging, though, there's not much to distinguish the turbocharged Verano from the standard version.
The Verano Turbo is a sleeper - an entertaining label that no car with a BMW, Audi or Acura badge will ever manage to quite pull off - and it's a good one. Verano Turbo pricing starts at $ 29,105.
Specifications for 2013 Buick Verano Turbo
Length: 183.9 inches
Width: 71.4 inches
Height: 58.1 inches
Wheelbase: 105.7 inches
Curb weight: 3,300 pounds Cargo space: 14.3 cubic-feet Base price: $29,105 Engine: 2.0-liter direct-injection turbocharged inline four-cylinder
Drivetrain: Six-speed manual transmission, frontwheel drive
Horsepower: 250@5,300 Torque: 260@2,000 Fuel capacity: 15.6 gallons Estimated mileage: 20 mpg city/31 mpg highway

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Within a couple of years, the Blu-ray burners have become faster and have possibly reached their limits today by offering recording at Blu-ray recordable discs at 8x (although the 12x could be also achievable in theory).
Looking back some years ago when the development of the DVD recordable format was in full progress, we can easily say that the burning speeds for the DVD+R/-R as well as the DVD+RW/-RW were gradually increased, taking quite a long period to reach today's 24x limit.
It is obvious that the Blu-ray disc and drive makers have been eager to push the writing speeds of their products in an effort to make the Blu-ray disc format more attractive to PC users, offering quick burnings of huge amounts of data stored in BD-R SL and DL discs.
The latest Blu-ray disc burners are currently offering recording speeds of up to 8x for the Blu-ray recordable discs. The question here is whether these high-speed burnings are reliable and these 8x BD-Rs will be readable over a very long period of time.
In general, the readability of a disc depends on the reading drive, which is influenced by the
resultant writing quality produced on the disc, which is in turn
directly related to the recorder used for burning
and the optical medium itself.
Today we test the quality of some of the BD-R SL and DL media after being recorded with the Pioneer BD-R 203BK and Sony BWU-300S 8x BD burners.
Although measuring the quality of a disc is complicated and requires reliable testing equipment, we needed to have a first idea of what a user should expect from a high-speed BD-R burning.
For our tests, we used the Opti Drive Control software by Erik Deppe together with a LiteOn DH-4O1S BD-ROM drive as a reader. The software offers a quality disc scanning option and reports two signals that give indications (signals) of the digital errors found during the reproduction of a Blu-ray disc. These signals provide information about
the physical condition of a disc and the integrity
of the digital data, as they are stored on the disc
and retrieved by the player. You can find more information about the test configuration and methodology in the following pages.
We are not sure that out tests will make a clear statement on the playability of the Blu-Ray media and their reliability. The Blu-ray format is squeezing huge amount of data onto 12cm
media using various techniques, so it's easy to
understand why measuring the quality of the
recorded data is more complicated when compared to CD and
The Blu-ray disc format is uses a laser with a Numerical Aperture of 0.85nm. This means that the laser beam that accesses the data is very narrow, compared to CD and DVD. As a result, the laser beam can be easily diffracted by small particles or defects that exist on the disc's surface. The size of these particles could be microscopic, as in the case of the dust or smoke. So measuring the quality of a Blu-ray disc requires extremely careful cleaning of the disc surface first.
In addition, the equipment we used for this test is actually a home brew PC system and the reader we used, no matter how good, will time degrade in performance, not to mention the fact that with different drives (readers) it is most probable that we will get different results as it happened in case of DVD testing. If the drive's (reader) characteristics are not constant, then it will not be possible to have a reproducible test system to accommodate and correctly measure Blu-ray burning quality.
Technically speaking, it really isn't wise to expect very reliable results here using a common off the market drive and PC application such as the Opti Drive Control software and a commercial BD reader, at least compared to those produced by a professional test system. However, we hope that we will have a rough idea of the condition of the data stored on a BD-R disc burned at high speeds.


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For Erin Petric, Home for the Holdays isn't just an event — it described her visit to her hometown for Thanksgiving.
Petric and her family gathered along Liberty Street Friday night for Home for the Holidays' annual Lighted Holiday Parade.
"Once you move away from a small town into the big suburbs, it's the little traditions like this that keep you coming back every single year and I wouldn't miss it," Petric, now a Hoffman Estates resident, said.
Crowds of locals braved the chilly night for the parade, with parents bundling their children up in hats, mittens, jackets and blankets. Some families waited in parked vehicles until the first vehicles started making their way from the courthouse to Chapin Park along the parade route.
Before the parade, Amanda and Orlando Alvera, both of Morris, and their children, Jocelyn, 10; Mia, 7; and Tristan, 5, could be found at the corner of Liberty and Main streets, with the three children bundled up in blankets on the curb.
Amanda said the family comes each year for one main reason.
"To see Santa Claus coming to town," she said.
Mia said it's exciting to see Santa because children can share what presents they'd like to receive.
"Because he's out asking people what they want for Christmas," she said.
Vehicles from first response agencies including the Morris Police Department, the Grundy County Sheriff's Department and Morris Fire and Ambulance Protection District, along with local veterans, led the parade. They were followed by businesses and groups.
Floats and participants in the parade ranged from Morris Community High School Redskin football players to Model A cars wrapped in lights and inflatable Christmas ornaments to children's characters like Dora the Explorer and Bob the Builder. Santa Claus was a crowd favorite — eliciting cheers and waves from the roadsides.
The parade came to an end in Chapin Park, where the stage was set for the park's lighting ceremony. After a group countdown, the lights were turned on, revealing a flurry of snowflakes suspended above the park.
After the parade, Petric said the event is a family favorite.
"We've come many years," she said.
Petric was with her parents, Janine and Joe Petric; aunt Sharon Corell of Ballwin, Mo.; sister Ellen Peterson, of Orland Hills; and Peterson's three sons, Matthew, 7, Andrew, 5, and Erik, 3.
Janine said she has several reasons for enjoying the event.
"(I like) the Christmas spirit and the family time and I love Christmas lights," she said. "I'm a little kid. I'm old, but I'm a little child at heart."
She said her grandsons enjoy seeing Santa Claus, of course. Each of the boys gave the parade a favorable review, saying it was awesome.
"I liked Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse," Andrew said.
"I liked all the characters," Matthew said.
"I liked all of the parts," Erik said.
Holiday tradition... illuminated
Lighted Parade ushers Santa into Morris
For Erin Petric, Home for the Holdays isn't just an event — it described her visit to her hometown for Thanksgiving.


text: Wow have tried for a good while this morn to find the DIY link on how to make these and can not find it. Any help would be great! Thanks a ton! I have been lurking for some time now but now it is time to jump in with both feet so i am ready to get the family out this summer!


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TOWNSEND -- Environmental groups will be hosting an informational meeting Saturday on the proposed natural gas pipeline that would run through Northern Massachusetts.
The informational session will be held at the Townsend Meeting Hall, located between the library and Senior Center on Dudley Road, at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 21.
Presentations will be made by speakers from Berkshire Environmental Action Team and No Fracked Gas in Mass.
Everyone concerned with or interested in this pipeline should plan to attend.


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WOODSTOCK – Seven teens from Johnsburg and McHenry were charged with underage drinking after McHenry County Sheriff's deputies crashed the party.
Jesus A. Florez, 19, of Johnsburg, and Evan M. Pasinski, 19, of McHenry, both were issued citations along with five other teenagers, both male and female and ranging in age from 16 to 18.
About 4 a.m. Monday, Sheriff's deputies responded to the 100 block of Broadway Street in unincorporated McHenry for a noise complaint.
Outside the home, several juveniles admitted they were at an underage drinking party, according to a news release from the Sheriff's Office. Inside, deputies found additional teenagers who were drinking alcohol.
Parents of the 17 year olds were called and rides were arranged for all attendees.
All of teenagers charged are set to appear in court on July 15.
– Chelsea McDougall


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Subscribe for real-time aromatherapy updates from the American College, including aromatherapy tips, research, aromatherapy blends, and essential oils uses for prevention, healing, and relaxation. ACHS is based in Portland, Oregon offering accredited online degrees in aromatherapy including a Master of Science in Aromatherapy, Associate of Applied Sciences in Aromatherapy, Certificate in Aromatherapy and Diploma in Aromatherapy. Financial Aid available to those who qualify.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Aromatherapy Education
Australasian College of Health Sciences
A perfect way to approach to a spring cleanse is by adding a little aromatherapy to your regimen. Aromatherapy is a subtle yet powerful adjunct to any healing modality. According to Ayurveda, aromatherapy uses fragrances to promote the healing process, includes essential oils, flower essences and incense. It is effective for psychological (emotional) and psychic (spiritual) disorders. It also aids in meditation, disease prevention, health maintenance, longevity and rejuvenation. It is said to helps cleanse the chakras and channels. Traditionally,
aromatherapy is an important therapy in Ayurveda and is
mainly used for treating the mind. Recent research conducted in Europe and Soviet Union reveals that effects of odors on the psyche may be more important than scientists have suspected. Aromatic oils are usually applied externally unless diluted properly. Essentials oils can be placed on special areas on the skin, like between the eyebrows (crown chakra), the temples for headaches, root of the nose for sinus conditions or on the wrists, behind the ears and neck where they can be
easily smelled.
A great and pleasant way to approach a detoxification for spring using aromatherapy is by taking an aroma bath or soak. This can be done with either relaxing or stimulating essential oils and the effects of this type of therapy can be felt almost immediately. A combination of two natural factors is
responsible for the enhanced effect. First, the already high rate of penetration of an essential oil is further increased by the elevated temperatures of the bath water and by their hydrophobic nature. Although there are many different kinds of essential oils, there are primarily three different types: Flower aromas, spicy and pungent aromas and fruity sweet and sour fragrances. Their energetics are much like herbs in terms of heating, cooling or neutral. Flower fragrances like rose,
jasmine or gardenia are usually sweet or bitter in taste and cooling in energy. They calm the nervous system by decreasing irritability and anger. Spicy oils like clove, cinnamon or ginger are pungent in taste and heating in energy. Their action is more
stimulating and circulating and tends to clear the head. Fruit
fragrances like bergamot, lemon or grapefruit are neutral to cooling in energy and can uplift, relax or stimulate.
For a detoxifying effect, chamomile oil has been shown
neutralize the effect of toxins produced by bacteria. Both staphylococci and streptococci toxins are sensitive to chamomile oil in very small doses. Lavender and chamomile are a great combination for relaxation. Throw in some rose petals and relax to your heart's content. For something a little more stimulating and refreshing, try rosemary and peppermint together in a morning bath, which will give you an invigorating effect throughout the day. A good method to add to this lovely ritual and to eliminate toxicity is by dry skin brushing before the actual bath. This procedure will remove the layers of dead cells, stimulate the pores, tone muscles, redistribute fatty deposits, break up cellulite and stimulate circulation. Be sure your brush is made of natural bristles. Adding Epsom salt in your bath helps to draw out impurities and relax the muscles.
During this spring season, try setting aside special times
during the week to pamper and detoxify you mind, body and spirit by adapting an aroma bath into you daily regimen.
You'll be surprised at how much of a difference it can
make in your life. A great method and recipe is using
2-3 cups of Epsom salt per full bath. Add the essential
oils to the Epsom salt beforehand and mix well
using 3-4 drops of each oil, no more than
15 drops. Add directly into the water and
swirl the mixture around.
6 comments:
I love Ayurvedic aromatherapy
I love to use aromatherapy everyday. I'll often keep a refreshing blend in a spray mist bottle at my desk to use throughout the day. Peppermint essential oil is also great to have around if I start to feel a headache coming on. I just inhale a little bit and rub some into my temples (careful to avoid the eyes, of course!).
- Jera Rose said...
Just reading a blog describing epsom salt soaks and aromatic therapy made me relax...ahh spring!
- Jera Rose said...
Just reading about epsom salt bathes and aromatic therapy makes me relax...ahh spring cleansing!
I use aroma everyday. I make shake and sprays and organic perfume and let people choose from the hundreds of scents I have and make thier own special blends. I especialy like juniper and orange together. Lilac and orange is also a favorite. Is there studies on the ill effects of synthetic fragrance oils or is it just politically incorrect to use them? ;-)Kim
Today I am using a few drops of eucalyptus and lavandin essential oils in a diffuser as my daughter has a cold. It really helps her breathe easier and makes the whole house smell great! I can't imagine life without aromatherapy...


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Freshpet Spring Gift Ideas
The Easter Bunny isn't just for kids anymore – many pet parents are getting creative, with gifts for pups and kitties alike. We love any excuse to shower our fur-kids with love and affection, and Easter is no exception! So we've rounded up our favorite gift ideas for Spring.
Easter Basket Finds
Treat your pooches or kitties to their very own Easter baskets, filled with treats that are sure to please.
For dogs, start with our fresh Dog Joy treats, like Dog Joy Turkey Bacon, Dog Joy Sweet Potatoes, or Dog Joy Ready to Bake Cookies. The bright packaging ties in well with the colors of the season, and the delicious taste and wholesome ingredients are sure to be a hit with your fur-kids! Just remember to hide them only about 10-15 minutes before the basket search begins- and keep the treats in the fridge prior. Add in a holiday-themed doggy toy for extra fun, like these bunny and peep-shaped toys.
For kitties, fill the basket with a selection of our Freshpet Select Roasted Meals for cats or Vital Complete Meals for cats, plus our Freshpet Select cat food in cups. And don't forget brightly colored toys like these felt catnip balls and Easter Bunny catnip toys.
Avoid the Easter grass in these baskets, however; this plastic decorative is non-digestible for pets and can cause blocking in the stomach or intestines.
Easter Egg Hunt
Who says egg hunts are only for kids? Set one up for your pooches outdoors, or bring the fun indoors for your kitties. Simply scatter and hide treats, then enjoy helping your fur-kids find them all. Be sure to adjust their calorie intake accordingly for that day (though a little extra love for one day never hurts). Our Dog Joy Chicken or Beef Treats are the perfect size for a hunt. For cats, conceal Freshpet Select Roasted Meals around the house!
Keep your pups and kitties safe by keeping a close eye on them. Avoid placing treats into plastic eggs as these can be choking hazards.
You can also hide a few egg-shaped toys for your furballs to locate, like these crocheted squeaky toys, perfect for pups!
If you've dyed eggs at home, treat your pets to an extra punch of protein by sharing a few pieces of a peeled hard-boiled egg with them. Many dogs and cats love the taste of fresh cooked eggs, and these snacks are a safe treat for all.
Other Springtime Gift Ideas
We've rounded up a few adorable gift ideas to celebrate the warm weather, the re-introduction of bright colors into our lives, and of course, our love of our pets.
- What kitty could resist this adorable bow tie collar? Available in many festive colors.
- Freshen-up your pet's look with a new leash and collar combo made just for the season.
- Grab a harness for your pup for those long walks ahead, with bright spring prints to keep him or her looking stylish.
From all of us at Freshpet, we hope you enjoy the onset of beautiful weather and the Easter holiday!


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Two years ago, it was as good as it has ever been for Hesperia football. The Scorpions, under head coach Robert Kistner and running back Gavin Santos, rolled through the Mojave River League en route to a school-record 11-1 season. But those moments might as well have been decades ago as far as Hesperia is concerned.
All remnants from the 20 wins in 2007 and 2008, including Kistner, are gone. Left in their wake is a group of three returning starters that are coming back to a team that was 3-7 last year under brand-new coach Jeremy Topete. As Topete enters year two, he realizes that building Hesperia back up isn't a small task.
"I guess you can say we are officially rebuilding right now," Topete said. "We really do not have many kids coming back that have played at this level. It's going to be a challenge but it is one that we are ready to face."
The guys that are returning will have another year in Topete's system, something the coach is looking forward to. But the desire that the Scorpions have to improve will have to compensate for a lack of size, as senior offensive lineman/nose tackle Devin Diggs (6-2, 285) is the exception to the rule.
"We aren't very big on either line, which means we are going to have to work hard on technique," Topete said. "We have some younger guys that might eventually be there, but for now we aren't going to be very big."
Joining Diggs as returning starters are senior linebacker/offensive lineman Joey Medley (5-9, 185) and safety/wide receiver Branden Maddison (5-9, 170). Senior offensive lineman Joe Quesada (5-10, 225) also played quite a bit last year for the Scorpions.
Junior James Manibusan, who was the backup quarterback a year ago, will take the reins this year. Manibusan (5-10, 175) will have Maddison to throw to and a group of three running backs to hand off to in senior Daron White and juniors Daniel Rodriguez and Kavon Burnett. White (5-6, 150) and Rodriguez (5-6, 160) are your traditional scatbacks while Burnett (5-10, 165) adds a tiny bit more size.
Hesperia 2010 schedule (Home games in CAPS, * indicates league game)
Sept. 3 – RIDGECREST BURROUGHS
Sept. 10 – GRANITE HILLS
Sept. 17 – at Victor Valley
Sept. 24 – at Palm Desert
Oct. 1 – JURUPA VALLEY
Oct. 8 – at Kaiser
Oct. 22 – APPLE VALLEY*
Oct. 29 – at Sultana*
Nov. 5 – OAK HILLS*
Nov. 12 – at Serrano*


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Sue Crocker, a veteran employee with the Kroger food store on Dequindre and 25 Mile roads in Shelby Township is being credited with saving a 90-year-old Sterling Heights woman $4,000 by stopping a fraud.
�She did one heck of a job,� Sterling Heights police Lt. Luke Riley said late Tuesday morning. �If she wouldn�t have suspected something was wrong and stopped it the victim would have been out $4,000.�
The incident occurred Monday, Riley said. The woman, who lives in the 41000 block of Pond View Drive in the 18 Mile-Dequindre roads area, said she got a call from a man who said he had her grandson being held hostage.
The man told the woman he wouldn�t let him go unless the woman sent him $4,000 through Western Union.
�She was told by the caller not to tell anyone what was going on and then was allowed to hear what she thought was her grandson�s voice crying on the phone,� Riley said.
The woman withdrew $4,000 from her bank and went to the Kroger store to send a Western Union money order. Fortunately, Crocker was working and immediately realized that the elderly woman was being taken advantage of.
�The woman determined her grandson was okay and didn�t send the money order,� Riley said. �She put the money back into her own account and left the bank.�
When she got home, she received a call from the same man asking if she had sent the money. The caller wasn�t happy with the senior citizen when he told her she didn�t send any money.


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Gerard Butler - "Men's Health" October 2008
Gerard Butler is on FIYAH in the October 2008 issue of Men's Health. Sizzle. Here's what the 38-year-old Scottish stud had to say:
On becoming an actor after seeing a stage production of Trainspotting in 1995: "A week later, I packed my bags and moved to London to become an actor. I had no connections, no experience, no training, and no prospects. Everybody was laughing at me. Everybody was thinking I'd just messed up my whole career."
On changing careers to acting: "I know that changing careers was what I needed to do. But what the hell was I thinking? You have to understand that I was completely out of control. If I hadn't been so lost and insane, I'd still be a lawyer. Misery is a sign that something is wrong, that your life is in need of some big changes. I knew moving to London was a huge risk. But I said to myself, I'm aiming for the stars. I'll worry about the details later."
On achieving success: "I haven't had a drink in more than 10 years. That's when everything changed for me. That's when I learned what had to be done to succeed and be happy in life."
On the success of the movie 300: "You come out of that movie so pumped up, so ready to die for your friends or your country or anything. Like, 'I will fight for my parking space! I will kill. This is my parking space!'"
On his love for Scotland: "I love everything about the Scottish people – their warmth, their humor, their potential for violence. Nobody from Glasgow goes into acting. You were seen as weird if you wanted to be an actor. But I didn't mind. It's just what I wanted to do."
Gerry's upcoming Guy Ritchie-directed movie RocknRolla hits theaters this Halloween (Friday, October 31).
Click inside for Mr. Butler's four-step plan for beating stress…
1. Let go of what you can't control – "I have a very complex process for taking the pressure off myself. It starts with me saying, 'I can only do what I can do.'"
2. Don't hold back with the stuff you can control – "When I'm working, that's on my mind all the time, the faith that has been granted to me by people, the money that has been spent. It seems the best thing I can do to honor it is to work my butt off."
3. Make time for R&R – Rest and Recreation – "I don't want to abuse my success, so I don't go out partying all the time. I try to get as much rest as I can." "When I'm working in a new place, I'm always thinking, Okay, where are the trails? Where can I go hiking and running?"
4. Remember where you started – "I try to love where I am and what I'm doing. I see it as an honor to do what I do for a living."


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The White House is running out of reasons to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.
This administration's very own State Department recently released its much-anticipated report on the potential environmental effects of the project, which would construct a 1,179-mile extension of the existing Keystone pipeline system connecting Canadian oil sands and U.S. oil shale deposits to American refineries on the Gulf Coast.
The State Department's findings are unequivocal: Keystone XL is perfectly safe. There's little evidence the pipeline would do damage to the aquifers, eco-systems, and animal populations resting along its planned pathway.
The Obama administration's well-worn excuse for delaying approval of the pipeline is that regulators need more evidence about its environmental effects. Well, here's the evidence. Case closed, right?
Wrong. The White House is still refusing to reverse course. And officials are now pushing for a broader directive to all federal environmental regulators to consider the global warming implications of any new energy project before approving them. That's a move guaranteed to further drag out the Keystone approval process.
By bringing the climate change bogeyman into national environmental policy, Obama opens the door to endless lawsuits by the green lobby. Thus, the White House can delay the project without overtly ordering a halt.
Enough with the delays. The White House has no good reasons for rejecting the pipeline any longer. Keystone XL should be approved without delay.
With national unemployment still stuck at 7.7 percent, American workers are desperate for all the jobs expected to be generated by the construction, operation, and maintenance of Keystone. A separate report from the State Department estimates that building the Keystone pipeline extension would directly create 42,000 jobs, including nearly 4,000 new positions in the construction industry, which has been especially hard hit by the recession.
That total doesn't include the countless other jobs the project would stimulate in support industries, like hospitality and food services. Keystone would be a jobs boom, creating steady, well-paid positions up and down the pipeline's pathway.
These clear economic gains are a big reason there's already broad bipartisan support for completing Keystone. Many top Democrats have explicitly urged the White House to give its approval, including Senators Jon Tester and Heidi Heitkamp, and House representatives Henry Cuellar, Charles Gonzalez, Al Green, Gene Green, Ruben Hinojosa, and Sheila Jackson Lee.
Several major labor unions have also expressed frustration with the White House's foot-dragging, including the AFL-CIO and the Laborers' International Union of North America.
Most importantly, there's a growing national consensus that Capitol Hill needs to be prioritizing job growth.
On the other side of the Keystone issue, of course, are radical, reactionary green groups. No amount of evidence will ever persuade them that their hysterical claims about the project's environmental impact are unfounded. With every new official report finding Keystone XL safe, their case grows weaker -- and their rhetoric more heated.
Indeed, in response to the new State Department report, a coalition of marquee green groups signed a joint missive to Secretary Kerry urging him to further delay any decision on Keystone. Among the august signatories were Greenpeace, Ralph Nader brainchild Public Citizen, and Friends of the Earth.
Green groups have even latched onto the recent news that an aging ExxonMobil pipeline carrying diluted bitumen from Canada's oil sands recently ruptured in Arkansas. They say this development is proof positive Keystone will wreak havoc on the environment. Never mind that the pipeline that cracked is over sixty years old and substantially less technologically sophisticated than the Keystone pipeline.
The real irony of the anti-Keystone crusaders' cause is that if they are actually successful at blocking American construction of the project, Canada will simply reroute the planned pipeline to the Pacific coast for export to China.
The oil underneath Canadian soil will be sold and refined for energy under any scenario -- the economic gains for our neighbors to the North are just too great. The only question is if the United States will economically benefit from those sales. And transporting this oil to China is actually much less environmentally friendly than sending it down a pipeline to the Gulf.
The case against Keystone XL has collapsed. The White House needs to approve this pipeline as soon as possible. Doing so would generate tens of thousands of desperately needed jobs right here in the United States, while also putting us on the pathway to long-term energy security.
Chris Faulkner is the CEO of Breitling Energy Companies.


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Star Castle Brainstorming
- The rings can now move at variable speeds - I have slowed them down a bit in this version.
- The ring segment now disappear immediately when they are hit.
- The rings will regenerate when the outer ring is removed.
- The gun will fire projectiles at you when the inner ring is breached.
The big question now is how closely the 2600 version should match the arcade version. There are two sticking points, where I think it might be better to deviate slightly:
- In the arcade version, the ring segments take 2 hits to be destroyed. After the first hit, the ring segment increases in brightness to indicate that it has been hit. Unfortunately this effect isn't possible on the 2600. As a result, I am thinking that it might be better to remove the ring segments after a single hit. Otherwise the player is going to have difficult remembering which segments have already been hit, and it may make the collision detection appear flawed if nothing (visible) happens when a ring is hit. This will naturally simplify the gameplay a bit, but I think this may be offset by the second change.
- In the arcade version there can be 3 bullets on-screen at the same time (fired from the ship). However, in the 2600 version there can currently only be one. Increasing this number means that far more collision detection operations will be required. This can be handled by making the collision detection less precise (e.g. by checking the bullets on alternate frames). However, I'd prefer to keep the collision detection as accurate as possible as poor collision detection can really ruin a game. Having only 1 bullet on screen makes the game slightly more difficult, since the player will need to conserve bullets to deal with approaching mines.
starkernel7.bin (12KB)
downloads: 105
starkernel7.zip (31.6KB)
downloads: 79
EDIT: Here is a version where each ring segment takes 2 hits to destroy:
starkernel7_twohits.bin (12KB)
downloads: 90
EDIT2: Here is a version that changes the segments to dots after the first hit:
starkernel7_dotted.bin (12KB)
downloads: 89


text: Two Punxsutawney firefighters, Paul Pape (left) and Tony Runco (right), are shown taking the Stokes basket to the recovery site to aid in the retrieval of the body of a man who was found dead in Cloe Lake Wednesday. The Punxsutawney Fire Department boat was used in the recovery of the victim near the breast of the dam. Members of the Punxsutawney Fire Department's Water Rescue Team responded to the rescue call at 8:42 p.m. Wednesday at Cloe Lake in Bell Township. According to reports, the water rescue quickly turned into a recovery as the unidentified man was pulled from the water near the breast of the dam by the Water Rescue Team with the use of a Stokes Basket and the fire department boat. Jefferson County Coroner Bernie Snyder was called to the scene by Punxsutawney-based Pennsylvania State Police once the recovery operation was complete. No further details were available at The Spirit's press time.


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Not the place I want to see Posey.
Not the place I want to see Posey.
Odd defensive alignment there. They had Sandoval played like dead-pull guy. Isn't he more of a spray hitter?
Rounding third and heading for home...
Latos getting up a little
If Latos can keep pitch count down & go 5 innings would you start him in game 4 (if there is one)?
Bruce - wow!
Bruce going for the cycle tonight.
long ball fever ---- I like it
The older I get - the better I was
and yes - I hate the Cardinals (Reds fan since 1958)
Love hitting bombs in this hard place to homer
If he gets hot the odds in Vegas for the Reds actually go down.
If Bruce goes on a streak we're going to be really really hard to beat.
Board Moderators may, at their discretion and judgment, delete and/or edit any messages that violate any of the following guidelines: 1. Explicit references to alleged illegal or unlawful acts. 2. Graphic sexual descriptions. 3. Racial or ethnic slurs. 4. Use of edgy language (including masked profanity). 5. Direct personal attacks, flames, fights, trolling, baiting, name-calling, general nuisance, excessive player criticism or anything along those lines. 6. Posting spam. 7. Each person may have only one user account. It is fine to be critical here - that's what this board is for. But let's not beat a subject or a player to death, please.


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Halo 2 Expansion Pack Confirmed
Posted by Oscar M. Cantu Categories: Video Games,
Bungie finally shed some light on the rumors about a possible Halo 2 multiplayer expansion pack. There will definitely be an expansion pack which will include nine new multiplayer maps, scheduled will be available on June 28th. Seems like a long time from now, however Xbox Live users will be able to download the maps sooner than that. Starting in late April the first four maps will be available for download. Here's the twist though – two will be free and the other two will be available for purchase. How much is not clear, but we can probably expect to pay $4.99 for the pack (much like the rest of downloadable packs). The remaining five maps will be made available on Xbox Live the day the retail pack is made available (June 28th). For all those of you that actually have patience, ALL the maps will be available for free by late summer. Here's a quick list of the first four maps:
- CONTAINMENT - A massive, mostly outdoor, and somewhat symmetrical environment set in the frozen tundra near Sentinel Wall, on Delta Halo.
- WARLOCK - Set in the rain-soaked ruins of an ancient Forerunner structure, nobody knows if Warlock is a temple, a castle or even a dwelling.
- TURF - The surrounding streets and evacuated buildings of Old Mombasa make it a dangerous warren, with potential assassins lurking in every shadow and around every corner.
- SANCTUARY - A walled grotto defines the center point of this Forerunner habitat, from which aqueducts span out, like the hands of a clock.
These maps look and sound amazing. I know I can't wait to do some major slaughtering on these maps.
Read More | Bungie
iCool Pot Scented MP3 Player
Posted by Oscar M. Cantu Categories: Portable Audio / Video,
If you have yet to jump on the portable audio bandwagon, this may be the time to do so if you were waiting for a unique MP3 player. Audiotronic has a one-of-a-kind player line which they call iCool. The products range from embossed face plates, to aroma scented units. Now get this - you too can take a sniff of your Marijuana MP3 player whenever you please. Not sure what kind of effect this will have if you are trying to get through airport security (you might have to make a run for it if you see a big guy with some latex gloves coming toward you). The MP3 player line does not come with impressive storage capacity, as the units range from a whopping 16 MB all the way up to 256MB. They run for about 10 hours on a tiny AAA battery and are upgradeable through an SD/MMC slot. The iCool also comes with a built-in voice recorder, 96x24px blue-backlit LCD and has support for MP3/WAV/WMA.
Read More | Audiotronic via DAPreview
Star In the Film You Are About to See
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Movies,
If you have ever wanted to star in a feature film, but didn't feel like auditioning or paying thousands for acting lessons, here comes the next best thing. Over in Nagakute, Japan at the Aichi Expo, a theater allows audience members to have their faces scanned before the film starts. The faces are then superimposed onto the animated characters in the movie, in which the audience members become the stars. It is said that the film quality is equal to that of Shrek or Toy Story. Very cool.
Read More | Times Online UK
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Mac OS X 'Tiger' Available for Pre-Order at Amazon
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Software,
Amazon has put up a preorder page for Apple's next OS X update, Tiger. Looking at the product page, you will notice that there is no release date listed, but we expect you will have it in your hands sometime in April, possibly May. The features of the Tiger OS are said to be very close to what Microsoft plans to bring to the table in Longhorn.
Read More | Amazon Pre-Order
TiVo HME Bloglines Reader Add-On Released
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Home Entertainment, Internet,
Over the weekend word got out that a TiVo add-on for the HME (Home Media Engine) has been released. According to eHome Upgrade, this "must have" add-on is actually quite limited with its initial functions. It reportedly allows users to log-in and read their Bloglines feed subscriptions through the TiVo interface. This sounds great, but it doesn't seem to work all that well. The feeds aren't sorted in any particular order, folders in your Bloglines feeds are completely ignored ,and the screen title positioning is bad.
Read More | eHomeUpgrade
Sony Ordered to Pay $90 Million To Immersion
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Corporate News, Video Games,
Sony has been ordered by the US court to pay up $90 million in damages and halt Playstation and Playstation 2 sales in the US due to patent infringement.
SCE said it will continue US sales of the products ordered to be halted, which include PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles, two game controllers and 47 software titles, as the court order will not go into effect before until Sony's appeal. Sony will also be paying compulsory license fees to Immersion, the company who filed suit, an SCE spokeswoman said.
Immersion, a California-based developer of tactile feedback technology, claimed Sony Computer Entertainment infringed on its technologies that make a game controller vibrate in sync with actions in games.
(Thanks Veronica!)
Read More | CNN International
Duke University iPod Follow Up
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Corporate News, Portable Audio / Video,
Back in July we told you about Duke University giving iPods to all freshmen coming in. Well, the school has reported back with a few interesting paces on a page dedicated to their iPod program. The page has information on why the program was started, as well as the different projects that have come about through the program. While this is all nice, I think it is fair to say that most student just use their Duke-supplied iPod as an MP3 player - and not much more.
Read More | Duke iPod Experience
Orange SPV M2000 Review
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Cell Phones, Product Reviews,
If you have been looking for a good Skype phone for use on the go, this seems to be the one to get. In fact, the reviewer seems to think that this Pocket PC 2003 phone could possibly be a laptop replacement. A bold statement, but reading the review does make us wonder.
This device is extremely useful and can do a great deal. With the keyboard slid home it looks like many other PocketPC's or PocketPC Phones, but the inclusion of the keyboard - which after a very short while is easy to master - means that this gets a definite thumbs up from me.
Read More | CoolSmartPhone
TiVo to Go Content on Your PSP
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Portable Audio / Video,
I just ran across this site that not only answers most of the questions involving the TiVo To Go technology, but also explains the process of transferring TiVo To Go content onto your Playstation Portable. While this stands to be a lot better content-wise than the Sony PSP Connect videos, we all know that TiVo To Go pretty much sucks.
Zatznotfunny.com | ZatzNotFunny
Bicycle Wheel Persistence of Vision Hack
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Mods / Hacks,
This is a slick hack involving a bicycle wheel and a persistence of vision toy. One thing that's really cool about this one is there is a second led row that blinks out bitmaps backwards on one side of the wheel. This lets you print out text messages and have them be readable from both sides. It appears to work really well. Bicycle messengers get ready, now you can sell advertising while you work!
Read More | drewish via Hack A Day
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International Women's Day: address by Professor Joellen Riley
8 March 2013
Dean of Sydney Law School, Professor Joellen Riley gave the following address to mark International Women's Day, 8 March 2013:
The Gender Agenda: Gaining Momentum, by Professor Joellen Riley
I am especially honoured to be invited to speak at this event. I imagine that I owe this invitation to my recent appointment as Dean of Sydney Law School. I am not the first female dean of this school. My predecessor takes that honour: Professor Gillian Triggs, who is now President of the Australian Human Rights Commission. It is a very good thing that all the 'first woman' accolades have largely been taken up in recent times. We have our first female prime minister, and our first female Governor-General. We now have the first female President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal in Justice Margaret Beazley. Across the nation we have had a few female State premiers, quite a lot of women judges and heads of major institutions and companies. We have had a number of women Chancellors of this university. So - on a superficial glance at least - we can probably say that the 'gender agenda' of the past 40 or so years has indeed gained momentum, and made considerable advancements in recent times in Australia.
When I look back over that period, though, it sometimes disappoints me that it has taken such a long time to reach those achievements. I was a teenager in the Whitlam years - short as they were. I went to a comprehensive state school - Moorefield Girls High in Kogarah - and our principal at the time - Ms Vera Newsom - was an inspiring principal for girls. At school assembly, I recall, she often dispensed with the singing of the school's own rather bland anthem and had us sing Helen Reddy's I am Woman instead. For those much too young to remember that particular song, it began "I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers to big to ignore" and it used words like "strong" and "invincible". We shared our assembly hall with James Cook Boys High, and I often wondered what the boys thought of our repertoire. While I was at school, it seemed that Australia was on the cusp of a new world of female empowerment, and I was going to experience a very different life from my mother's.
Unfortunately, no one explained this to my ordinary working class family.
When I left Moorefield, after completing the 1974 Higher School certificate, my parents - and especially my father - were unhappy about my aspirations to go to University to do a general Arts degree. It wasn't because they were against university education per se. They were very proud of my older brother - whom they dubbed 'the boy genius' - when he obtained first class honours in Physics and went on immediately to his PhD, here in the Physics department, under the supervision of the famous Professor Harry Messel. The problem for me was that I was a girl, and my father could see no point in investing in an education for a girl. He had already lined up a job in the bank for me. His vision was that I should work as a bank teller for a little while until I had secured myself a decent breadwinning husband, and settled down to produce some grandchildren.
The reason that I stand before you today as the Dean of Sydney Law School is that I didn't take my father's advice. In my own quiet way, I rebelled. I persuaded my father that being a school teacher was also a good job for a girl. By the time I graduated from my Arts degree I was out of his house and married, fortunately to a man who had no problem with a working spouse, and was willing to encourage me, even after having two children, to go back to university to study law.
Now I don't tell you this because I want to criticise my parents. After all, we are talking about life nearly 40 years ago. My parents wanted me to have the normal happy life that they believed was available to a person like me. I am not sure whether they knew much about some of the books I was reading at the time - The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer; Damned Whores and Gods Police by Anne Summers - but I am sure that if they did they would have thought that the ideas in those books were all very well for the daughters of the privileged classes, who would be able to afford nannies and housekeepers to manage the drudgery on the home front while they went off to illustrious careers at the top of society. But it was pretty unlikely that a working class girl from Kogarah would ever be able to manage such feats.
They were being entirely realistic. At the time, child care was very difficult to find, let alone afford. Like most parents, they desperately wanted to become grandparents. They wouldn't have been impressed to think that a radical feminist elite with private school educations, and aristocratic inheritances to fall back on, would lure me away from the life that they were convinced would make me most happy.
Fast forward almost 40 years, and I ask myself how much the world has really changed. Has Helen Reddy's embryonic 'Woman' really made herself completely heard yet?
When we take stock in 2013, we do see more women on company boards, and more women in leadership positions, but we still face a picture of gender equality for women across the workforce more broadly. Gender Pay Gap Statistics published last year by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency showed that there is still an overall gap of 17.5 percent between the average weekly earnings of full time adult males and females in the Australian workforce. When the statistics are broken down according to different industry sectors, we see that this average disguises some very high gender pay differentials in some industries. I wasn't so surprised to see a big gap in mining (of 21.8 percent). Perhaps that reflects the fact that women have not yet entered that industry in large enough numbers to produce reliable statistics. The old stereotypes of tough, hard and dirty male jobs, versus clean, tidy and nurturing female jobs may well be proving hard to crack. But I was pretty appalled to see that the dubious prize for the highest differential went to the field my father chose for me, back in 1975 - financial and insurance services - a gap of 37.7 percent. That almost takes us back to the bad old days when female pay rates were deliberately set at two thirds of male breadwinner rates. We should pay attention to that number. It shows that even though we can and should applaud the momentous achievements of remarkable women like Gail Kelly, CEO of Westpac, the achievements of a few special women are not always matched by the advancement of women in the labour market more generally.
I am not going to try to explain the Gender Pay Gap data here. Indeed, I am not sure I have yet located any research that does adequately explain why such large pay differentials persist in 2013. I suspect it has a lot to do with the same concerns that my parents had, in contemplating the feasibility of encouraging a daughter to pursue a career in the paid workforce back in 1974. What my colleague and coauthor - Professor Rosemary Owens at Adelaide Law School - calls women's reproductive work has a tendency to get in the way of women's full participation in the paid workforce. In forty years, we are still struggling to deal with the difficult policy questions around provision of paid parental leave and child care services.
These issues are difficult. How do you ensure adequate availability of affordable child care, at the same time as making sure that child care workers - who are predominantly women - are paid decent wages and working conditions? A 'user pays' system is ill-suited to achieving that balance, certainly while we define the 'user' so narrowly as the individual parent of the child.
At the risk of being written off as a radical communist, let me question for a moment the basic assumption underlying the notion that parents are the users of child care services. Is a child the property of her parents, so that it is the parents who are receiving services from the child minder? Should we not treat the child herself as the citizen who is receiving services? We have a culture of providing publicly funded pensions to elderly people who have survived past the age of hard labour and require care. Why not allow a childhood pension, to enable children to pay for their own care? When we consider the broader economic benefit of greater female participation in the labour market, it is entirely reasonable to consider the whole community as the 'user' who benefits from the provision of child care services. Of course these ways of thinking about the child care problem would involve more thinking about how we raise taxes to fund such services. And any 'Big New Tax' is politically impossible in the present climate.
I would suggest, however, that until we deal adequately with the problem of affordable child care we will still have a gender pay gap, and we will still see class-based differences in women's capacity to participate fully in public life. Educated women with strong financial support from their families will continue to achieve the milestone goals for women, but the overall average performance figures for women will be pulled down by the women in lower socio-economic groups who still face obstacles to maintaining careers in the paid workforce, thrown up mainly by their own, and their families' expectation that they will become mothers, and hence carers of children. And of course these days, women are also often expected to be the carers' for elderly relatives as well. Care and how a community pays for it, is the elephant in the room in every discussion about the advancement of women.
Some of you listening to me might be wondering how I managed to build my career. Didn't I say that I had two daughters myself? Yes, I did, and I had the usual career break of a few years while they were little. I was lucky enough to be able to spend that career break at this law school, preparing for a new career. I was lucky to have a supportive spouse to share the child care costs when I did go back to work, first in a law firm, and then here at the university. I was fortunate indeed to have two healthy, bright and sociable daughters who survived the frequent changes of child care arrangements as we juggled our way through. And I am now rewarded handsomely - not only by the privilege of leading this great law school for a time - but by seeing my own adult daughters thriving in their own careers. Both have had excellent educational opportunities. Ensuring that women can access education is vital if the gender agenda is to continue to advance. The present government is to be applauded for its vision of improving access to education for Low Socio Economic groups, and this university also is committed to and working towards that goal. My elder daughter - an alumna of the History and Education departments of this great university, and now teaching at Sydney Grammar - pleased me no end recently when she chose a costume for a fancy dress party. She dressed in full denim overalls and cherry head scarf as Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter. That's my girl. A wonderful emblem of an empowered working class woman.
So - the 'Gender Agenda' has certainly been gaining momentum in recent times. We need now for that momentum to support the kinds of policy decisions that will enable women across the whole spectrum of society to share in the gains.
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CARSON CITY, NV - In April of 2012, there were smiles and high fives as ground was broken on a new milk processing plant in Fallon.
The plant meant construction work and 45 new jobs.
Welcome news in an agricultural community and a region hungry for economic development.
Attracting the plant to this western Nevada community marked just one of the success stories in the effort to bring new industry and new jobs to the five counties covered by the Northern Nevada Development Authority.
Add all those stories up and, according to authority executive director Rob Hooper and Governor Sandoval, you get an economic impact of $one billion dollars over the past three years in the five counties the authority represents.
That translates to 4-thousand new jobs in Carson City, Lyon, Churchill, Storey and Douglas Counties.
Monday morning on the steps of the state capitol that benchmark was cause for a celebratory press conference.
The governor said it helped to remember what that billion dollars meant.
"That means people are employed. They're buying houses.They're buying services. They're going out to eat. It's a tremendous impact for this region of the state.'
Statewide in the past year, Nevada added 22,000 new jobs outpacing, the governor said, 34 other states in job creation.
That success he and Hooper said was due to a sales pitch that includes
a business friendly tax and regulation structure, a key geographic location and the northern Nevada lifestyle.
"We have the hiking, the hunting and we have the great outdoors, Hooper said. "Their employees want this and it's just a great place to live."
It is, they said, a very competitive climate out there and when they lose a prospective business looking to relocate, it's often a matter of money. Other states offer greater cash incentives.
That's often offset, however, by other factors.
Nevada's success is happening however, in the face of a looming ballot battle over a proposed margins tax. The governor says when he's asked about it, he answers he's opposing it.
Hooper says the proposed tax is a problem, however.
"No one wants to better fund our educational system more than me, he says, "but this isn't the way to do it.


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Teamlist Tuesday is here with #NRL Teamlists and officials for Round 12 confirmed.
Head to bit.ly/L...
42 hours ago
The leadership of rugby league in Australia needs to grasp the key recommendations made by the Crawford Report on Sport Funding and run with them in the public arena and in private discussions with government.
As one who has been campaigning for years for greater public funding for rugby league, the recommendations are to be applauded - but there is no guarantee they will be adopted.
In running with them we don't need to even have apposition on the debate over Olympic funding. As Lyndon Baines Johnson used to say "we don't have a dog in that fight!"
One of the reasons why rugby league and other football codes have not been receiving adequate government funding is that they have allowed the debate to be hijacked by the funding of Olympics issue. We need to stay right out of that debate - and focus totally on what rugby league deserves.
The key recommendation of the Crawford Report is that the major participatory sports - such as soccer, AFL, league, union, cricket and hockey, should get additional funding as part of a national programme to improve fitness, lifestyles and so on. They could have added -" and to make communities stronger and more united".
In arguing for additional ongoing taxpayer funding for rugby league, the games administrators need to undertake to get its structures in order, and then give a commitment to do even more at the grass roots community levels, and especially in communities with social and other challenges. And these communities are in regional and rural areas as well as the major cities.
Rugby league, along with soccer and the AFL in particular, is more than pulling its weight when it comes to provide healthy sporting competition in schools and in communities.
It is costly - and the capacity of all sports to fund these programmes is not unlimited and is in fact under growing pressure. It is especially so for rugby league where the dependence on licensed club revenues and sponsorship is greater than for any other code.
There are those who will contest the very idea of government - taxpayer - funding for the football codes. One wonders if they also contest public funding for the opera, orchestras, and the art galleries?
The existing funding for all sports - including Olympic funding - pales into insignificance when compared with the total outlay by federal and state governments on the arts.
The millions poured into art galleries, opera and orchestra facilities and the like don't have the same "economic return" that is demanded of the majority of sports. The ground hiring charges that the Broncos and other clubs using major government-funded venues have to meet are tied to repaying the cost of the stadiums and funding their maintenance. If the arts was subjected to the same conditions then we would have more "opera in the park" and art exhibitions in tents!
Rugby league needs to regard the Crawford Report as an opportunity to stake a long term claim for Government funding - under partnership arrangements that not only allow the game to expand, but allow it to deliver even more at the community level.
In doing so it should not be reluctant to work with the AFL, Soccer Australia and the peak bodies of other major participatory sports.
The whole thrust in the Crawford recommendations is to focus on developing "participatory sports" - and on government funding to assist the major sporting bodies do so.
This is an opportunity the game cannot allow to pass by!


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Why EMV card adoption will boost online fraud (and 2 ways you can protect customers)
Traditional, magnetic-stripe credit cards have been the target of much scrutiny in recent years, due to a widespread increase in point-of-sale (POS) fraud. Recent data breaches at retailers such as Michael's, Neiman Marcus, and Target have served as a wakeup call for U.S. merchants and credit card networks to follow in the footsteps of the rest of the world in abandoning archaic magnetic stripe cards in favor of Europay-MasterCard-Visa global standard chip cards (EMV cards).
With the current magnetic stripe technology, hackers can skim card numbers and security codes to use stolen credit cards — something that EMV card technology will prevent.
Creating a unique code for each transaction, EMV chip cards are far more difficult to hack or counterfeit in-store. However, most merchants and credit card networks will not see increased online security measures as 1.2 billion U.S. credit and debit cards transition to EMV— making online transactions and accounts attractive targets for cybercriminals.
SEE ALSO: 3 reasons why sharing cybercrime info is good for all of us
While in-store fraud has significantly dropped in countries that have already adopted EMV cards, these countries have seen an increase in online fraud. For example, online fraud increased 21 percent in Europe in 2012 in part due to widespread EMV adoption.
As in other countries, the adoption of EMV cards in the U.S. will push cybercriminals away from in-store fraud and increase the likelihood of new, sophisticated strategies for fraudulent online transactions. The cybersecurity strategies most merchants and credit card networks currently have in place are ill-equipped to prevent this migration of fraud online.
In the absence of increased online security following the transition to EMV cards, how can businesses assure customers are protected against the increase in online fraud due to a shift online? Merchants and card providers can protect their customers using the following strategies:
Context-based authentication
This strategy enables businesses to establish trust for each account login based on a fully anonymized user identity, device usage, geo-location, customer behavior, and other contextual factors without compromising the user's identity or workforce efficiency.
Real-time trust analytics
Offers instant analysis of device, location, and behavioral context for every online activity. Real-time trust analytics use a consistent set of identity authentication policies that are compared against global benchmarks, as well as the size and scale of the business, geographic location and more, providing unprecedented identity authentication policies.
In order to effectively protect customers, merchants and card providers must prioritize increasing online security measures in advance of widespread U.S. adoption of EMV. Retailers are up against a hard deadline to make the switch to EMV payments systems, but they need to be prepared for the influx of online fraud that will accompany the transition to EMV. Online fraud has increased in every country that introduced EMV — and it will happen in the U.S. as well if appropriate preventative measures are not put in place.
Andreas Baumhof is chief technology officer of ThreatMetrix and is an expert on cybersecurity with deep experience in the encryption, PKI, malware and phishing markets. Prior to ThreatMetrix, Baumhof was co-founder of TrustDefender, a provider of security and fraud detection technologies. Baumhof also was co-founder of Microdasys, a provider of deep-content security solutions. There, he developed the first SSL proxy with patents pending in Europe and the U.S.


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Posted 6 years ago
(64 items)
RARE canvas Newspaper delivery over-the-shoulders 2-sided saddle bag. San Francisco Newspaper history. Randolph Hearst Newspaper history. San Francisco Political history! Mark Twain wrote for an early version of the Call. The paper was called the San Francisco Call-Bulletin between 1929-1959. MOST of these Call-Bulletin bags were probably destroyed when the paper changed its name in 1959, and for sure they were when the paper merged with the Examiner in 1965.
RARE COLLECTIBLE - newspapers are dying and they deliver by car or van now - IF they deliver at all! EXCELLENT condition - a little rust on a few rivets, and one of the d-rings. ALL COMPELTE! (I actually ran it through the washing machine YEARS ago! It's been in storage ever since!)
Between December 1856 and March 1895 The San Francisco Call was named The Morning Call, but its name was changed when it was purchased by John D. Spreckels. In the period from 1863 to 1864 Mark Twain worked as one of the paper's writers.
In 1913 M. H. de Young, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, purchased the paper and sold it to William Randolph Hearst who brought in editor Fremont Older, former editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. In December of that year (1913), Hearst merged The San Francisco Call with the Evening Post and the papers became The San Francisco Call & Post.
Its most famous editor, crusading journalist Fremont Older agitated for years against civic corruption and colluded with wealthy San Franciscan sugar baron Rudolph Spreckels to bring down the Mayor, Eugene Schmitz and political boss, Abe Ruef.
On 29 August 1929, the newspaper name was changed again to the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, when the San Francisco Call & Post merged with the San Francisco Bulletin. In 1959 the San Francisco Call-Bulletin merged with Scripps-Howard's San Francisco News becoming the News-Call Bulletin. In 1965 the paper merged with the San Francisco Examiner.


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FAIRFIELD COUNTY, Conn. -- Fairfield County residents: Daylight-saving time started at 2 a.m. Sunday, March 9, while you were probably sleeping. Remember to move your clocks ahead one hour this morning.
Daylight-saving time runs from the second Sunday in March through the first Sunday in November.
Many fire departments also remind residents to replace the batteries in their smoke detectors when they move their clocks forward.
Daylight-saving time was first suggested by Benjamin Franklin in in 1784, but never implemented until the energy crisis in the 1970s, according to timeanddate.com.
To learn more about daylight-saving time visit the timeanddate.com website.
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