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With the relentless march of technological progress, robots and other automated systems are getting ever smarter. At the same time they are also being given greater responsibilities, driving cars, helping with childcare, carrying weapons, and maybe soon even pulling the trigger.
But should they be trusted to take on such tasks, and how can we be sure that they never take a decision that could cause unintended harm?
The latest contribution to the growing debate over the challenges posed by increasingly powerful and independent robots is the book Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong.
Authors Wendell Wallach, an ethicist at Yale University, and historian and philosopher of cognitive science Colin Allen, at Indiana University, argue that we need to work out how to make robots into responsible and moral machines. It is just a matter of time until a computer or robot takes a decision that will cause a human disaster, they say.
So are there things we can do to minimise the risks? Wallach and Allen take a look at six strategies that could reduce the danger from our own high-tech creations.
Keep them in low-risk situations
Make sure that all computers and robots never have to make a decision where the consequences can not be predicted in advance.
Likelihood of success: Extremely low. Engineers are already building computers and robotic systems whose actions they cannot always predict.
Consumers, industry, and government demand technologies that perform a wide array of tasks, and businesses will expand the products they offer in order to capitalise on this demand. In order to implement this strategy, it would be necessary to arrest further development of computers and robots immediately.
Do not give them weapons
Likelihood of success: Too late. Semi-autonomous robotic weapons systems, including cruise missiles and Predator drones, already exist. A few machine-gun-toting robots were sent to Iraq and photographed on a battlefield, though apparently were not deployed.
However, military planners are very interested in the development of robotic soldiers, and see them as a means of reducing deaths of human soldiers during warfare.
While it is too late to stop the building of robot weapons, it may not be too late to restrict which weapons they carry, or the situations in which the weapons can be used.
Give them rules like Asimov's 'Three Laws of Robotics'
Likelihood of success: Moderate. Isaac Asimov's famous rules are arranged hierarchically: most importantly robots should not harm humans or through inaction allow harm to them, of secondary importance is that they obey humans, while robotic self-preservation is the lowest priority.
However, Asimov was writing fiction, not building robots. In story after story he illustrates problems that would arise with even these simple rules, such as what the robot should do when orders from two people conflict.
Asimov's rules task robots with some difficult judgements. For example, how could a robot know that a human surgeon cutting into a patient was trying to help them? Asimov's robot stories in fact quite clearly demonstrate the limits of any rule-based morality. Nevertheless, rules can successfully restrict the behaviour of robots that function within very limited contexts.
Program robots with principles
Building robots motivated to create the "greatest good for the greatest number", or to "treat others as you would wish to be treated" would be safer than laying down simplistic rules.
Likelihood of success: Moderate. Recognising the limits of rules, some ethicists look for an over-riding principle that can be used to evaluate all courses of action.
But the history of ethics is a long debate over the value and limits of many proposed single principles. For example, it could seem logical to sacrifice the lives of one person to save the lives of five people. But a human doctor would not sacrifice a healthy person simply to supply organs to five people needing transplants. Would a robot?
Sometimes identifying the best option under a given rule can be extremely difficult. For example, determining which course of action leads to the greatest good would require a tremendous amount of knowledge, and an understanding of the effects of actions in the world. Making such calculations would require time and a great deal of computing power.
Educate robots like children
Machines that learn as they "grow up" could develop sensitivity to the actions that people consider to be right and wrong.
Likelihood of success: Promising, although this strategy requires a few technological breakthroughs. While researchers have created robots able to learn in similar ways to humans, the tools presently available are very limited.
Make machines master emotion
Human-like faculties such as empathy, emotions, and the capacity to read non-verbal social cues should give robots much greater ability to interact with humans. Work has already started on equipping domestic robots with such faculties.
Likelihood of success: Developing emotionally sensitive robots would certainly help implement the previous three solutions discussed. Most of the information we use to make choices and cooperate with others derives from our emotions, as well as our capacity to read gestures and intentions and imagine things from another person's point of view.


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Graphic 45 is an award-winning scrapbook and paper crafting company owned and operated by a mother (Diane Schultz) and her two daughters (Aimee Filimoehala and Charee Filimoehala). Together they create vintage inspired crafting products that capture the flamboyant style of the 1920's and 30's.
ScrapbookSteals.com is the place where crafters of all levels get hooked up with the latest scrapbook steal at an unbelievable price. At Scrapbook Steals you will have access to hot scrapbooking supplies every day, at up to 80% off the retail price.
You can grab yourself some HOT Graphic 45 papers at a STEAL! Scrapbook Steals is currently offering Graphic 45 Communique and Playtimes Past Collections.
Leave a comment on each of the listed blogs for a chance to win this FANTASTIC prize package. Valued at over $40!
To get the party started, I have made a page layout using the Communique Collection. This was the very first Graphic 45 collection I saw and fell in love, instantly! It has remained in my top three favorite papers! (I may have to grab some for myself before Scrapbook Steals runs out!)
This layout shows photos of the ladies in my California craft group. There are nine of us who live within 30 minutes of each other, plus two more ladies who live in other parts of California. The nine of us who live locally get together once a month for craft time. Some of us meet yearly at a mountain retreat for 4 days of crafting (plus eating, laughing, talking, and more eating!). We also try to attend various Expos, trade shows, classes, and such. Some of us are in the craft business, either on design teams, running a business, or teaching. It is an amazing and creative group of women!
I knew I wanted to share these photos when I found out I was to use the Graphic 45 Communique papers. The mountain retreat where we all meet is very rustic and there is a barn next to the house that has all sorts of antique items. All of us are crazy about the "old junk" we see there. This paper is perfect!
To start with, I used a craft knife to cut some slits into the A Fine Specimen paper. I then tore, rolled, and inked the paper to create holes. I trimmed images from the Party Line paper and mounted them behind each hole. Then, I trimmed the printed paper and mounted it to black cardstock to form my page background.
I used some images trimmed from the Postage and Typography papers to create interest at the bottom of the page. I added "found" items and flowers to create a feminine, but antique feel.
I like to use foam tape to raise items on the page. It also allows me to bend and wrinkle items for more dimension. A trick I use when doing collage art is that everything must touch at least one other thing on the page. I missed a bit because my title does not quite touch the photo on the top right of the layout. However, it is close enough, and your eye should flow around the page since every other element is touching. There is nothing "floating" in space. Your eye can start with the title and flow in a clockwise circle around the layout.
My favorite part of the Communique Collection is the black, cream, and red color scheme. It's my favorite set of colors to work with.
I hope you enjoyed my project today. Make sure to visit the Graphic 45 Blog and the Scrapbook Steals Blog today for more inspiration!
Be sure to eave a comment to be entered into the drawing! To see a project with the NEW Graphic 45 A Ladies' Diary Collection, click HERE.
Graphic 45 Papers: Communique: A Fine Specimen, Classy Correspondence, Communique, Party Line, Postage, Typography
Cardstock: American Crafts black; Stampin' Up Very Vanilla
Chipboard Alphabet: Imaginarium Designs
Ink: Clearsnap Colorbox Graphic 45 Decades Antiquing Ink: Photogenic, Triumphant Red; Copic Marker Black
Wood branch: Prima Decorative Wood Embellishment
Flowers and leaves: Prima Laraine Black Tie; Wild Orchid Crafts red and cream roses
Metal Embellishments: Tim Holtz Idea-ology clock, pen nib, film strip; 7 Gypsies gear; Sky Blue Pink light bulbs; vintage key
Adhesive: Scotch 3M tape; Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L foam squares; white glue

subset: commoncrawl


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This article explores three processes involved in attending to evidence of students' thinking, one of the Mathematics Teaching Practices in Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All. These processes, explored during an activity on proportional relationships, are discussed in this article, another installment in the series.
Attending to Evidence of Students' Thinking during Instruction
Sherin Gamoran Miriam and James Lynn
Because We Love
Sarah K. Bleiler-Baxter, Sister Cecilia Anne Wanner O.P., and Jeremy F. Strayer
Explore what it means to balance love for mathematics with love for students.
Designing for Voice and Agency
Laurie Speranzo and Erik Tillema
Specific teacher moves and lesson planning can facilitate student empowerment in the middle school classroom.
Ferris Wheel Graphs
Wayne Nirode
To introduce sinusoidal functions, I use an animation of a Ferris wheel rotating for 60 seconds, with one seat labeled You (see fig. 1). Students draw a graph of their height above ground as a function of time with appropriate units and scales on both axes. Next a volunteer shares his or her graph. I then ask someone to share a different graph. I choose one student with a curved graph (see fig. 2a) and another with a piece-wise linear (sawtooth) graph (see fig. 2b).
Investigating a Super-Bear
Clayton M. Edwards, Rebecca R. Robichaux-Davis, and Brian E. Townsend
Three inquiry-based tasks highlight the planning, classroom discourse, positive results, and growth in one class's journey.
Letters to the editor
License to Do Math with a Full Tank
Ron Lancaster
Since its inception, the Mathematical Lens column has provided teachers with resources to use with their students to make connections between mathematics and the world around us through the use of photographs. The editors and the dozens of teachers who submitted material for columns have taken all of us on a journey around the world to discover where mathematics lives. These columns have offered teachers a license to do mathematics everywhere and to travel far with their students with a full tank of resources.
May 2019 Calendar and Solutions
Stephen Phelps
Edited by Anna F. DeJarnette
A monthly set of problems targets a variety of ability levels.
Prove It to Me!
Jo Boaler
Engage your learners through tasks proven to significantly promote reasoning and problem solving, which touch on many of the Mathematics Teaching Practices in Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All. These tasks are discussed in this article, another installment in the series.


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Pauline Hanson
This article might offend some minorities. Alas, as they are not the majority, we will eventually follow the democratic tradition and vote regarding the contents. Until then, neither Uncyclopedia nor the original author of this article condone racism in any form.
"The trout knows the price of everything and the value of nothing"
"Please explain."
"This is Australia and if the Aboriginals dont like it, they can go back to where they came from."
"Bloody asians! Go back to asia-land and take those bloody petrol sniffers with you! Did I mention I dont like Muslims?"
"Muslims are not compatible with the Australian way of life because they have a different region code"
"Explain, please. "
"Video killed the racist star, Howard wonders what you are"
Pauline "Paul" Hanson (née Seccombe; born 27 May 1954) was born a man and later had a sex-change to become a woman. She/he is one of Australia's least successful political figures. She won the hearts and votes of many Australians with her progressive policies on Aboriginals, illegal immigrants, and turtle neck sweaters. She is currently married to a man named Andrew, who is a beloved child's television character. Only recently, it has been reviewed that Pauline Hanson is a well known slut! Pauline is one of Australia's most dangerous and interesting creatures and should be feared!
Early life[edit | edit source]
Pauline Hanson began her life as a male rainbow trout in the Pacific Ocean. Her parents were a Japanese Bluefin Tuna and an Australian indigenous wobbegong. She spent her days looking after her roe, eating plankton and selling nuclear weapons to unsuspecting sea cows. She was also the conductor of an underwater symphony orchestra.
In 1965 BC, she was caught in the fish net stockings of Australian fisherman Nicole Kidman, who sold Ms Hanson to a small fish and chip shop in XXXXland. She was promoted, and became the owner of the shop. She worked there for 3958 years (during which time she evolved into something vaguely resembling a human, but not to be mistaken for an actual human), building up her takeaway empire until the floorspace in her shop reached across 90% of Queensland's Sunshine Coast.
Unbeknowst to her fans, Ms Hanson is actually completely bald from head to toe, and beneath her clothes she is covered in scales. On a visit to Brisbane Zoo in 1987 she broke into an enclosure and tore some hair from the vagina of a rare and endangered Red Chinese Panda. That Vaginal tuft became the the delightful trademark toupe she still wears to this day.
It was then that Pauline Hanson decided to begin a new life in Politics. With her gills flapping in the wind, she marched into the Australian Parliament with her army of educated fleas, declaring herself Lord of All Humans.
Politics[edit | edit source]
Pauline brought the issue of the terrible plight of the oppressed minority of "White People" who were rapidly losing their culture in the Asianisation and Aboriginalisation of Queen'sland. Her reason for her harsh immigration laws was that since terrible people (namely aboriginals) had come to her white land, planted an Aboriginal flag, declared it Queen Cathy Freeman country and shot all her family and friends while they were simply enjoying the dreamtime, that immigration should now be as punishable as drinking a VB without a stubby holder (read:death penalty). New rights were declared for the seemingly neglected White People, so that they were not overrun by blacks, asians or muslims, the bloodthirsty invaders of the great nation of Australia. She claimed it was time for the White People of the country to stand up to all the soulless monsters (Asians), infidels (Muslims) and dark-skinned devils (Blacks) who already accounted for almost 1.5% of the population, shunning their foolish requests for land, free speech and basic human rights. It was time for Australia to be delivered back to the hands of the "Sunburnt People of This Sunburnt Nation".
By 1999, 96.3% of Australians had already accepted Pauline Hanson as their "personal savior" for her contributions to the misunderstood "White Supremacy" movement. So they held a referendum to abolish the constitution, paving the way for an Australian Republic lead by the only the most pasty and sunburnt.
But in the end, the 'NO' campaign, led by John Howard and Queen Victoria proved triumphant in the referendum. Their winning strategy involved informing 70% of Australians that rainbow trout belong in the ocean, not in positions of power in the Australian government. They also accused Hanson of being a racist country girl who needed a good beating. In the end, John Howard, the Queen and Pauline Hanson had a threesome to settle their differences and have since become good friends. Unable to attract attention,she had her colleagues crucify her during the Anzac Day Dawn Service in Martin Place. Unfortunately, an over zealous ambo removed her from said cross and treated reulting wounds. Cardinal George Pell rebuked Hanson, saying the son of god was a son, not daughter, and crucifiction was a punishment not to be mocked by "some skirt wearing ginger".
The Assault on Parliament House[edit | edit source]
The people of Australia, realising that they had been made fools of by Pauline Hanson, quickly retaliated by launching a full scale attack on Parliament House in Canberra, where Hanson had gone into hiding with her army of educated fleas. Flea bombs were thrown through the windows eradicating her defences, and a brigade of fishermen, led by Nicole Kidman cast their lines in, eventually luring Hanson out with live bait- A person of ethnicity she hadn't yet completely insulted.
This signified the end of both Pauline Hanson's Career, and her life as a highly evolved Rainbow Trout. Law and Order soon returned to Australian television, and the people were disgusted and the lack of quality entertainment on television these days.
She also started the Ku Klux Clan in Australia but changed the name to Clan Klux Ku in a clever attempt to throw Australians off. In fact it worked so well that everyone thought it was charity to help homeless people (true story, and by "true" I mean "bullshit").
In March 2009, a conman claimed that the photos of a naked brunette wearing stockings is Pauline Hanson.
New Zealand[edit | edit source]
In April 2010, Hanson tried to sneak into New Zealand. As the country has quite enough stupid rednecks of its own (most of whom work in talkback radio in Auckland), immigration authorities apprehended her and sent her back across the Tasman before she could be impregnated by Winston Peters.
Fun Facts[edit | edit source]
- Her favourite song is "Speak English Or Die" by Stormtroopers Of Death.
- Her least favourite song is "The Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin.
- she once made a video saying "once you see this video, I'll be dead." Pretty much everyone in Australia has seen it, and guess what! that black-hating bitch isn't gone yet!
See also[edit | edit source]
- Australian Civil War
- John Howard
- Australia
- XXXXLand
- Half way between Melbourne and Sydney
- Beer
- Fascism
- Nazi
- Ku Klux Clan
- List of people born as male trout
- List of rangas


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Kidney infection (pyelonephritis) is usually due to ascending bacteria, although hematogenous spread is possible. The organisms and predisposing causes are similar to those of bacterial cystitis. Renoliths and ureteroliths, which impede the normal flow of urine out of the renal pelvis, may be contributory. Animals at risk of pyelonephritis are the very young, the very old, the immunosuppressed, or those with inadequate urine-concentrating ability. In many instances, an underlying cause is not identified. Virulence factors associated with specific bacterial strains play a role in allowing colonization of the urothelium, especially with pyelonephritis caused by Escherichia coli. The fact that pyelonephritis is usually ascending and bilateral suggests that these virulence factors are more important than previously recognized.
Animals with acute pyelonephritis may exhibit kidney or flank pain, fever, malaise, and sometimes vomiting, polyuria, and polydipsia. Urinalysis shows proteinuria, pyuria, bacteriuria, and/or hematuria. WBC casts may be present in fresh urine sediment. The urine culture is usually positive; the CBC may show leukocytosis with a left shift. The biochemical profile may be normal or show azotemia (prerenal or renal) and/or hyperglobulinemia. The animal may be in kidney failure. Chronic pyelonephritis is more difficult to recognize, because clinical signs may be subtle or absent. Polyuria and polydipsia are frequent. In many cases, the disease goes unrecognized until kidney failure occurs. Although abnormalities in the urinalysis are present, they are often less dramatic than with acute kidney infection. A single urine culture can be negative if bacterial numbers are low. Other useful diagnostic tests include abdominal ultrasonography and IV pyelography. Both studies may show dilation of one or both renal pelvises secondary to inflammation and partial obstruction. Asymmetric renal size and architectural changes with renal pelvic dilatation is highly suggestive of chronic pyelonephritis. In some cases, nephropyelocentesis via ultrasonographic guidance is useful to obtain a sample of urine from the dilated renal pelvis for analysis and culture.
Pyelonephritis should be treated aggressively with broad-spectrum antibiotics, based on urine culture and antimicrobial susceptibility testing, for 4–8 wk. The infection may respond to the same antibiotics recommended for cystitis, but more frequent administration (eg, amoxicillin tid rather than bid) and/or higher dosages are indicated. A fluoroquinolone or a combination of a fluoroquinolone with a β-lactam antibiotic is often effective. Dosages should be the same as for other soft-tissue infections. Animals that are febrile, anorectic, dehydrated, or azotemic should be hospitalized to provide IV antibiotics and fluid therapy. Fluid therapy may prevent acute pyelonephritis from progressing to azotemic acute kidney injury and will improve renal perfusion and uremic signs in animals already experiencing uremia. Animals with acute pyelonephritis may recover normal renal function, depending on the amount of damage that occurred before treatment. In cases of chronic pyelonephritis with a severely hydronephrotic, nonfunctional kidney, a nephrectomy may be the treatment of choice once the animal has been stabilized. This will remove the source of infection and hopefully save the opposite kidney. IV pyelography and/or renal scintigraphy are useful to assess the relative function of each kidney. If both kidneys are severely affected, medical management alone is the only alternative. Recovery to chronic, stable renal failure is possible in many cases.
The urine should be cultured during the first 5–7 days of therapy to assess antibiotic efficacy. A urinalysis and culture should be repeated 3–7 days after therapy, and then monthly for 3 consecutive months. If all of these cultures are negative, the interval between urine cultures may be gradually lengthened. Animals with pyelonephritis are at high risk of persistence or recurrence of infection and for secondary infections at other sites (eg, bacterial endocarditis and discospondylitis).


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Back in the Game
This afternoon, I had a short meeting with President Obama that left me more convinced than ever that he's serious about tackling the climate crisis. Sure enough, later under a sweltering sun at Georgetown University, I watched him calmly and forcefully restate the case for taking action on the climate crisis in one of the most important speeches of his presidency. He also outlined a Climate Action Plan that will help curb carbon pollution, develop clean energy sources, promote energy efficiency, and assert American global leadership on climate issues. Taken together, the new policies directly address what the president rightly calls "the global threat of our time."
Coming on the heels of an unprecedented string of extreme weather disasters, the plan recognizes that we must work on both the causes and the consequences of climate disruption.
But the two most significant commitments the president made were bona fide game-changers: First, he said that he will use the full authority of the Clean Air Act to limit air pollution from both new and existing power plants. Second, he declared that he will not approve the Keystone XL pipeline if it harms the climate, because to do so would not be in the national interest.
The science on Keystone's potentially catastrophic effect on climate could not be more clear. The rejection of this carbon pollution pipeline will be a major climate disaster averted.
Coal-fired power plants, however, are a disaster that has persisted for far too long and, as I listened to the president's speech, I shared the exuberance of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal activists and so many others in the movement who have fought to end this injustice. Coal-fired power plants are currently responsible for nearly one-third of U.S. carbon pollution; although only a decade ago, that share was greater than one-half. The recent and welcome decline in U.S. carbon emissions to 1986 levels is the result of a decade-long trend away from using coal to generate electricity. Extending clean-air standards to older coal plants, many of which have been polluting for decades, will speed that trend. Not only will this significantly reduce our carbon pollution, but it will also save tens of thousands of lives, since the plants emit many other toxic air pollutants, from sulfur dioxide to mercury.
To meet the challenge of the climate crisis, however, we must do much more than simply celebrate the end of the Coal Age -- we need to hasten a new era of smart, clean energy, energy efficiency, and the jobs that support them. Here, too, the president's plan lays out a practical vision for the future. The president is justifiably proud that generation of renewable energy from wind and solar doubled during his first term; now he has committed to seeing it double again. One of the ways his administration will make that happen is by responsibly siting more renewable-energy projects on public lands. The goal is to install enough such projects to power 6 million homes by 2020.
Other major initiatives will promote energy efficiency in both the public and private sectors, begin the critical work of developing a "smart grid" energy infrastructure, raise the bar on fuel economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles, and tackle the problem of climate-polluting hydrofluorocarbons and methane. Leakage and flaring of methane, which currently accounts for 9 percent of U.S. carbon pollution (and has a global warming potential that is more than 20 times greater than carbon dioxide), is one of the reasons why natural gas doesn't deserve its reputation as a "cleaner" fossil fuel.
Is everything in the Climate Action Plan workable -- or even a good idea to begin with? Of course not. Some ideas, like pursuing "clean coal" technology, investing in nuclear power, fracking, and building overseas markets for U.S. natural gas are either wrong-headed or dead ends. On balance, though, the plan offers a way for our nation to move forward strongly. Even if not every path offered is a good one, it's never been clearer what our destination must be -- and that this president wants to get us there.
Beyond the president's specific commitments, however, the most important takeaway from his speech is that he is determined to "personally own" this issue. That means taking responsibility in the face of what he has called a "moral obligation." He is far from alone in recognizing such an obligation. A national poll earlier this year found that 93 percent of Americans agree that we have "a moral obligation to future generations to leave them a planet that is not polluted or damaged."
Although the president's desire to save the planet certainly resonates with environmentalists like myself and the Sierra Club's 2.1 million members and supporters, that alone can't account for the overwhelming support of more than 90 percent of the American population. Our "moral obligation to future generations," though, is a different matter. If I ever need to get re-energized about fighting the climate crisis, all I need to do is look into the eyes of my kids. I know the same is true for President Obama. His exact words today: "As a president, as a father, and as an American, I'm here to say we need to act."
The president's plan may one day be seen as a critical turning point, but let's not forget that this struggle is far from over. The president himself emphasized that this will be a long and rocky road. In the near term, at least, powerful special interests will continue to throw up roadblocks and obstacles at every turn. Congress, for its part, has resolutely and shamefully shirked its own moral obligation. What matters today, though, is that President Barack Obama has reasserted his leadership on climate with both words and deeds. For that, he deserves both our deepest gratitude and our whole-hearted support (and here's where you can send it to him).
Hope is back in the game. Let's win it.


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Martin has been making guitars now for more than 175 years - well before anyone ever considered plugging one in. Yet the release of new models within the Performing Artist Series of electros gives evidence of its desire to look to the future rather than back at its past.
Launched at Winter NAMM 2010, the GPCPA1 was generally well received. But its price tag of £3,200 made what was a desirable guitar unattainable for the majority of those that would arguably make best use of its F1 Aura 'sound reinforcement' electro system.
The GPCPA2 followed shortly after, and featured a three-piece rosewood back, but was priced at equally wince- inducing levels.
However, by reducing the use of expensive materials and simplifying the design, the third generation of Performing Artist Series guitars prove more affordable.
Our review model boasts clean, crisp visuals with little to complicate what is a simple, unfussy design. Some would argue that at first glance the guitar looks like a Taylor, and we'd find it hard to disagree.
The guitar measures just less than 16 inches across its lower bout and is a shade under 20 inches tall, putting the model in Grand Auditorium territory - slightly wider and taller than a Martin OM's 15-inch-wide, 19.4-inch-long body.
All Performing Artist Series guitars sport a new signature pickguard design that, again, looks very 'Taylor' at first glance. We like the shape, and the choice of tortoiseshell suits the guitar.
As is increasingly common with Martin, new materials have been used instead of endangered traditional woods. Black Richlite, a composite also found in worktops, is used for the bridge and fingerboard, while another less new and widely used composite, white Corian, has been used for the nut. Graph Tech's Tusq, the bone/ivory substitute, is used for the saddle.
While employing the familiar mortise and tenon bolted neck joint, Martin has designed a new neck shape for the Performing Artist Series.
Described by its creators as the 'Performing Artist profile' the one piece, satin-finished necks are a shallow 'C', which doesn't thicken until after the 10th fret - it feels mega-comfortable, slick and super-fast.
We also find the string spacing to be a great compromise between the needs of flat- and fingerpickers alike. The nut measures 45mm, widening to 54mm at the 12th fret and 57mm at the bridge. We'd suggest that this 'hybrid' string spacing would particularly suit a player who enjoys genre-hopping.
The guitar features a Venetian cutaway, which is fractionally deeper than that seen on Martin OM cutaways and thus provides further access to the upper registers.
The integrated battery compartment is found at the base of the guitar with the input jack sitting within it. It's therefore impossible to change the battery while plugged in.
Adjacent is the strap button, which has been positioned off-centre, towards the top of the guitar. This cleverly pulls the guitar in towards the body and makes playing while standing more comfortable, with the guitar feeling more stable.
As previously mentioned, however, should you be unlucky enough for the battery to go flat on you while the guitar is hanging on its strap mid-gig, then you're going to have problems…
The F1 isn't Fishman's first foray into the world of digital modelling (or 'sound imaging' as it prefers), but it does represent a significant step forward in terms of the functionality available within one unit.
In its simplest form, the F1 is a blend system mixing the signal from the undersaddle pickup with one of nine preset images. These images are the result of recording a GPCPA1 with one of nine world-class, high-fidelity microphones. The amount of blend is adjustable, as is the ability to alter the EQ for both the pickup and mic image.
The F1 also features a variable-level compressor, a tuner (which works whether the guitar is plugged in or not) and a 'search and destroy' anti- feedback system. The guitar's signal can also be switched between in and out of phase.
In what must be viewed as a considerable achievement for Fishman, the F1 requires just two rotaries and a simple LED. That's right; the tuner, blend, compressor, automatic anti-feedback and mic modelling are all accessed and adjusted with just two knobs.
Granted, the rotaries have three different operations; turn, press and press 'n' hold, but it's an impressively minimalist control panel.
By way of comparison Fishman's own Ellipse Aura, as fitted to a Martin OMC28, offers less functionality and sounds but uses three switches, two sliders, one push-button and a rotary!
As you'd expect with so much on offer from so few controls, the F1 takes a lot of getting used to in terms of its menus and adjustment possibilities.
In the early stages of the test we became frustrated at how easy it was to turn the wrong knob, or turn the right knob the wrong way, and seemingly wipe out any progress made.
On occasion, the feeling is akin to accidentally closing a document before saving the changes. In reality, this wasn't the case, but it's noteworthy that the 'restore factory settings' facility is an uncomplicated procedure and users can bypass the second level menu with a 'tune up, turn up', plug-in-and-go option.
The LED screen measures just 16mm in diameter and in most applications it works well, but we found its position a little awkward when using the tuner.
With the guitar in the normal playing position we found it difficult to see all three tuning indicators simultaneously. Remedying this requires dropping the headstock to such a low angle it makes retuning an uncomfortable stretch.
These minor niggles aside, we grew to love the F1. Just as when becoming accustomed to a new mobile phone or other gadget, familiarity and ease of use come with time and practice.
In some ways, the F1's design is a brave move by Fishman and, by extension, Martin too. On trial, the initial hours can be confusing, frustrating and complicated. Prospective buyers in guitar shops could easily give up and hand the guitar back. We'd suggest this would be a mistake.
Our advice would be to hang in there; the rewards are just around the corner, next to patience and diligence.
The Performing Artist Series guitars come with Martin- branded hard cases, which contain a 20-page user guide and instructional DVD for the F1 Aura.
Martin has also launched a brand-new website solely for the Performing Artist Series that features instructional videos and guides.
The GPCPA3 is an all-solid guitar; solid Sitka spruce for the top and East Indian rosewood for the sides and two-piece back. The back and front are bound with white Boltaron, as is the fingerboard. The triple- line black and white coachlining match the simple soundhole rosette.
While the GPCPA3 is a modest guitar, aesthetically speaking, it's no plain Jane. The clean lines of this new body shape, along with the new shapes for the bridge and pickguard, make for a guitar that's both eye-catching and appealing in appearance.
A peek at the guitar's innards reveals the hybrid scalloped 'X' bracing. As you'd expect for a £2,100 Martin, everything is super-clean and tidy in here.
It almost feels superfluous to say, but Martin's general build quality and finish remains truly top-drawer and it's great to see the company maintain such high levels of quality control and craftsmanship.
Unplugged, the GPCPA3 does nothing less than astound. We half-expected tone to be a casualty of the cost-cutting sacrifices, but we couldn't have been more wrong.
The GPCPA3 is possibly the most versatile electro we've had our mitts on. From softly strummed chords to choppy riff-work, the GPCPA3 offers a plump, rich timbre full of character and warm overtones.
Slightly more aggressive playing opens the door to more snap but, try as we may, it was hard to overdrive this guitar. Fingerstyle players will enjoy the clarity offered across the dynamic spectrum.
Responsive, balanced, pulsating and with bags of soul, it's hard to justifiably want more from an acoustic. Simply inspiring.
Employing the F1 is equally impressive. As you can imagine, extensive experimentation is required to get the best from the onboard intelligence. Perhaps the most impressive aspect to the F1's capabilities lies in being able to shape the EQ for both the pickup and the selected image.
On offer are a wide range of variations that would suit recording and live settings alike. The compressor works very well and manages to tame even the most 'enthusiastic' player.
Another plus is the ability to 'destroy' any feedback virtually mid-song. Pressing and holding down both buttons engages the automated system and within no more than a couple of seconds feedback is nuked.
All in all, the F1's output is clear, versatile and it does an impressive job in capturing the soul of the GPCPA3.
Martin must be congratulated for this superb guitar. Build quality is high, acoustic tone is compelling and the onboard electronics first-class. Some will initially struggle with getting the desired settings out of the F1, but for those who persevere the rewards are great.
Perhaps what's most impressive about these guitars is that although designed as class-leading electros, they don't forget the need to serve as great acoustics as well.


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...making Linux just a little more fun! |
By Jim Dennis, Ben Okopnik, Dan Wilder, Breen, Chris, and... (meet the Gang) ... the Editors of Linux Gazette... and You! |
We have guidelines for asking and answering questions. Linux questions only, please.
We make no guarantees about answers, but you can be anonymous on request.
See also: The Answer Gang's
Knowledge Base
and the LG
Search Engine
We got a decent number of juicy Tips this month. And despite the incredible effort Dan puts into clobbering them, a record number of spams leaking through. Oh well. (Mind you, "record" is something like almost 20. This beats the crap out of the ratios we used to see... Yay for Dan!)
From a "peeves of the month" point of view though (hey, I haven't done those in a while) we also got a record number of people whose mail is quoted-printable in the text portion AND carrying useless HTML around with it. Super ouchie! Rick has long since macro'd his respone to the mime header to tell people how to undo that... I usually have some funnin' on them... such as, "Argh! I need to stomp out all these dratted =2E thingies!" You get the idea.
In the land of Linux itself - Hey, the household firewire pretty much works, USB runs great, we've got sound support coming out of... errr, into our ears... at least around my household, things are looking good. What's eating you that Linux isn't doing for you? Ask the Answer Gang - maybe it's not as hard as all that, or we can point you at who's picking up on that task.
My local Starship and free software group is running an Internet Lounge at the local science fiction convention in my area, Baycon. If you'll be in the San Jose area around the end of the month, drop on by and maybe you can meet a few us who live around here. Or just have a silly time in the 24th century.
Sorry for the short column this time folks. Have a happy.
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Although modern routers handle most functions automatically, some applications will require you to manually forward a port to that application or device. Fortunately, it's really simple to do if you know where to look.
What Is Port Forwarding?
There are plenty of projects we've covered that use your computer as a server for other devices. When you're inside of your network, most things will work fine. But some apps, if you want to access them when you're outside your network, make things significantly hairier. Let's start by taking a look at why that is.
How Your Router Handles Requests and Uses Ports
Here's a map of a simple home network. The cloud icon represents the greater internet and your public, or forward-facing, Internet Protocol (IP) address. This IP address represents your entire household from the oustide world–like a street address, in a way.
The red address 188.8.131.52 is the router address within your network. The additional addresses all belong to the computers seen at the bottom of the image. If your public IP address is like a street address, think of the internal IP addresses like apartment numbers for that street address.
The diagram raises an interesting question which you may not have thought about before. How does all the information from the internet get to the right device inside the network? If you visit howtogeek.com on your laptop how does it end up on your laptop and not your son's desktop if the public-facing IP address is the same for all devices?
This is thanks to a wonderful bit of routing magic known as a Network Address Translation (NAT). This function occurs at the router level where the NAT acts like a traffic cop, directing the flow of network traffic through the router so that a single public IP address can be shared among all the devices behind the router. Because of the NAT, everyone in your household can request web sites and other internet content simultaneously and it will all be delivered to the right device.
So where do ports come into this process? Ports are an old but useful holdover from the early days of network computing. Back in the day, when computers could only run one application at a time, all you had to do was point one computer at another computer on the network to connect them as they would be running the same application. Once computers became sophisticated to run multiple applications, early computer scientists had to wrestle with the issue of ensuring applications connected to the right applications. Thus, ports were born.
Some ports have specific applications which are standards throughout the computing industry. When you fetch a web page, for example, it uses port 80. The receiving computer's software knows that port 80 is used for serving http documents, so it listens there and responds accordingly. If you send an http request over a different port—say, 143—the web server won't recognize it because it's not listening there (although something else might be, like an IMAP email server which traditionally uses that port).
Other ports don't have pre-assigned uses, and you can use them for whatever you want. To avoid interfering with other standard-abiding applications, it's best to use larger numbers for these alternate configurations. Plex Media Server uses port 32400, for example, and Minecraft servers use 25565—both numbers that fall into this "fair game" territory.
Each port can be used via either TCP or UDP. TCP, or Transmission Control Protocol, is what's used most commonly. UDP, or User Datagram Protocol, is less widely used in home applications with one major exception: BitTorrent. Depending on what is listening, it'll be expecting requests to be made in either one or the other of these protocols.
Why You Need to Forward Ports
So why exactly would you need to forward ports? While some applications take advantage of NAT to set their own ports and handle all the configuration for you, there are still plenty of applications that do not, and you'll need to give your router a helping hand when it comes to connecting services and applications.
In the diagram below we're starting with a simple premise. You're on your laptop somewhere in the world (with an IP address of 22.214.171.124), and you want to connect to your home network to access some files. If you simply plug your home IP address (127.34.73.214) into whatever tool you're using (an FTP client or remote desktop application, for example), and that tool doesn't take advantage of those advanced router features we just mentioned, you're out of luck. It won't know where to send your request, and nothing will happen.
This, by the way, is a great security feature. If somebody connects to your home network and they aren't connected to a valid port, you want the connection to get rejected. That's the firewall element of your router doing its job: rejecting unwelcome requests. If the person knocking on your virtual door, however, is you, then the rejection isn't so welcome and we need to do a little tweaking.
To solve that problem, you want to tell your router "hey: when I access you with this program, you'll need to send it to this device at this port". With those instructions in place, your router will make sure you can access the right computer and application on your home network.
So in this example, when you're out and about and using your laptop, you use different ports to make your requests. When you access your home network's IP address using port 22, your router at home knows that this should go to 192.168.1.100 inside the network. Then, the SSH daemon on your Linux installation will respond. At the same time, you can make a request over port 80, which your router will send to the web server at 192.168.1.150. Or, you can try to remotely control your sister's laptop with VNC, and your router will connect you to your laptop at 192.168.1.200. In this way, you can easily connect to all the devices you've set up a port forward rule for.
The usefulness of port forwarding doesn't end there though! You can even use port forwarding to change existing services' port numbers for clarity and convenience. For example, let's say you have two web servers running on your home network and you want one to be readily and obviously accessible (e.g. it's a weather server you want people to be able to easily find) and the other web server is for a personal project.
When you access your home network from the public-facing port 80, you can tell your router to send it to port 80 on the weather server at 192.168.1.150, where it will be listening at port 80. But, you can tell your router that when you access it via port 10,000, that it should go to port 80 on your personal server, 192.168.1.250. This way, the second computer doesn't have to be reconfigured to use a different port, but you can still manage traffic effectively—and at the same time by leaving the first web server linked to port 80 you make it easier for people accessing your aforementioned weather server project.
Now that we know what port forwarding is and why we might want to use it, lets' take a look at some small considerations regarding port forwarding before diving into actually configuring it.
Considerations Before Configuring Your Router
There are a few things to keep in mind before sitting down to configure your router and running through them in advance is guaranteed to cut down on frustration.
Set Static IP Address for Your Devices
First and foremost, all your port forwarding rules will fall apart if you're assigning them to devices with dynamic IP addresses assigned by your router's DHCP service. We dig into the details of what DHCP is in this article on DHCP vs. static IP address assignments, but we'll give you the quick summary here.
RELATED: How to Set Static IP Addresses On Your Router
Your router has a pool of addresses that it reserves just for handing out to devices as they join and leave the network. Think of it like getting a number at a diner when you arrive—your laptop joins, boom, it gets IP address 192.168.1.98. Your iPhone joins, boom, it gets address 192.168.1.99. If you take those devices offline for a period of time or the router is rebooted, then the whole IP address lottery happens all over again.
Under normal circumstances this is more than fine. Your iPhone doesn't care which internal IP address it has. But if you've created a port forwarding rule that says your game server is at a certain IP address and then the router gives it a new one, that rule won't work, and nobody will be able to connect to your game server. In order to avoid that, you need to assign a static IP address to each network device you're assigning a port forwarding rule to. The best way to do that is through your router—check out this guide for more info.
Know Your IP Address (and Set a Dynamic DNS Address)
In addition to using static IP assignments for the relevant devices inside your network, you also want to be aware of your external IP address—you can find it by visiting whatismyip.com while on your home network. Although its possible you might have the same public IP address for months or even over a year, your public IP address can change (unless your internet service provider has explicitly given you a static public-facing IP address). In other words, you can't rely on typing in your numeric IP address into whatever remote tool you're using (and you can't rely on giving that IP address to a friend).
RELATED: How To Easily Access Your Home Network From Anywhere With Dynamic DNS
Now, while you could go through the hassle of manually checking that IP address each time you leave the house and intend to work away from home (or every time your friend is going to connect to your Minecraft server or the like), that's a big headache. Instead, we highly recommend you set up a Dynamic DNS service which will allow you to link your (changing) home IP address to a memorable address like mysuperawesomeshomeserver.dynu.net. For more information how to set up a dynamic DNS service with your home network, check out our full tutorial here.
Pay Attention to Local Firewalls
Once you set up the port forwarding on the router level, there is a possibility that you may need to tweak firewall rules on your computer too. For example, we've gotten a lot of emails over the years from frustrated parents setting up port forwarding so their kids can play Minecraft with their friends. In almost every case, the problem is that despite setting up the port forwarding rules on the router correctly, somebody ignored the Windows firewall request asking if it it was OK if the Java platform (that runs Minecraft) could access the greater internet.
Be aware that on computers running local firewall and/or anti-virus software that includes firewall protection, you'll likely need to confirm the connection you've set up is okay.
Step One: Locate the Port Forwarding Rules on Your Router
Exhausted by all the networking lessons? Don't worry, it's finally time to set it up–and now that you know the basics, it's pretty simple.
As much as we'd love to provide exact instructions for your exact router, the reality is that every router manufacturer has their own software, and how that software looks can even vary between router models. Rather than attempt to capture every variation, we'll highlight a few to give you an idea what the menu looks like and encourage you to look up the manual or online help files for your particular router to find the specifics.
In general, you're going to be looking for something called—you guessed it—"Port Forwarding". You may have to look through the different categories to find it, but if your router is any good, it should be there.
For comparison, here's what the port forwarding menu looks like on D-Link DIR-890L router:
And here's what the port forwarding menu looks like on the same router running the popular third-party DD-WRT firmware:
As you can see, the complexity between the two views varies greatly, even on the same hardware. In addition, the location is completely different within the menus. As such it's most useful if you look up the exact instructions for your device using the manual or a search query.
Once you've located the menu it's time to set up the actual rule.
Step Two: Create a Port Forwarding Rule
After learning all about port forwarding, setting up a dynamic DNS for your home IP address, and all the other work that went into this, the important step—creating the actual rule–is pretty much a walk in the park. In the port forwarding menu on our router, we're going to create two new port forwarding rules: one for the Subsonic music server and one for a new Minecraft server we just set up.
Despite the differences in location on different router software, the general input is the same. Almost universally, you'll name the port forwarding rule. It's best to simply name it what the server or service is and then append it if need be for clarity (e.g. "Webserver" or "Webserver-Weather" if there is more than one). Remember the TCP/UDP protocol we talked about at the beginning? You'll also need to specify TCP, UDP, or Both. Some people are very militant about finding out exactly what protocol every application and service uses and matching things up perfectly for security purposes. We'll be the first to admit that we're lazy in this regard and we almost always just pick "Both" to save time.
Some router firmware, including the more advanced DD-WRT we're using in the screenshot above, will allow you to specify a "Source" value which is list of IP addresses you're restricting the port forward to for security purposes. You can use this feature if you wish, but be forewarned it introduces a whole new host of headaches as it presumes that remote users (including you when you're away from home and friends who are connecting in) have static IP addresses.
Next you'll need to put in the external port. This is the port that will be open on the router and facing the internet. You can use any number you want here between 1 and 65353, but practically most of the lower numbers are taken up by standard services (like email and web servers) and many of the higher numbers are assigned to fairly common applications. With that in mind, we'd recommend picking a number above 5,000 and, to be extra safe, using Ctrl+F to search this long list of TCP/UDP port numbers to make sure you're not selecting a port that conflicts with an existing service you're already using.
Finally, put in the internal IP address of the device, the port you on that device, and (if applicable) toggle the rule on. Don't forget to save the settings.
Step Three: Test Your Port Forwarding Rule
The most obvious way to test if your port forward worked is to connect using the routine intended for the port (e.g. have your friend connect their Minecraft client to your home server), but that's not always an immediately available solution if you're not away from home.
Thankfully, there's a handy little port checker available online at YouGetSignal.com. We can test to see if our Minecraft server port forward took simply by having the port tester try to connect to it. Plug in your IP address and the port number and click "Check".
You should receive a message, as seen above, like "Port X is open on [Your IP]". If the port is reported as closed, double check both the settings in the port forwarding menu on your router and your IP and port data in the tester.
It's a wee bit of a hassle to set up port forwarding, but as long as you assign a static IP address to the target device and set up a dynamic DNS server for your home IP address, it's a task you only need to visit once to enjoy hassle free access to your network in the future.


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Design Imports Cook For Wine Print Chef Apron
Product Details
Cook for Wine Print Chef Apron DII has taken the basic apron and turned it into a fun and functional piece that is a must in every household Add some fun to your kitchen with DII s countless aprons styles You can create custom embroidered aprons with most of our aprons perfect for unique gifts or uniforms for coffee shops restaurants All aprons feature side or center pockets perfect for holding your recipe cards spatulas dishtowels more DII 100 Cotton Unisex Chef Aprons come with the adjustable neck strap and extra long ties that can wrap around and tied in the front the adjustable bib apron fits most sizes and is suitable for either men or women The apron also comes with a huge pocket to hold onto seasoning packets meat thermometer grill slips cellphone and recipe cards These colorful and functional aprons come include one font sturdy front pockets The simplicity of the aprons allows for easy apron customization projects such as embroidery fabric paint and dye Specifications . Weight 0 44 lbs
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Average Customer Rating4.8(25)5(20)4(5)3(0)2(0)1(0)


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Sometimes shopping for holiday gifts can be a real pain. Who wants what? How much does it cost? How crowded will the mall be? To make things easier on you this year, we encourage you to visit the John Deere gifts website to find the perfect gift for all your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, and anyone else on your holiday shopping list.
Your loved ones don't have to be John Deere enthusiasts to enjoy the variety of products we offer; a John Deere gift can suit just about anyone's personality. The selection of John Deere merchandise has been expanded this holiday season and the new products are guaranteed to impress even the pickiest person on your list.
For the Sports Fan: How about a stadium blanket to keep you warm while sitting on those chilly bleachers? Or, if that doesn't strike your fancy, the John Deere billiard set could add the finishing touch to your game room!
For the Techy: John Deere features a number of gadgets for your smartphone or tablet, including cases, covers, and stands. A leather-bound tablet case functions as a convenient stand while the sleek phone case keeps your phone protected and boasts the John Deere logo.
For the Fashionista: The variety of John Deere clothing available would be enough to give someone a full new wardrobe. You name it, they've got it: boots, hats, sweatshirts, tank tops, socks, jackets, pajamas, towel bath wraps, boxers, and on and on. All articles of clothing are available in a variety of colors, if green and yellow don't suit your fashion taste.
For Students: John Deere backpacks come in several shapes, sizes, and colors for both boys and girls, young and old. What better way to start the new year than with a brand new pink camo school bag or lunch box? Find the perfect style of John Deere school gear to fit the likes of the students on your list.
For Energizer Bunnies: This holiday season, surprise kids who never seem to run out of energy with a battery-powered tractor, a pedal-powered tractor, a John Deere bike, or a John Deere wagon. After all, there's nothing better than testing out a cool new toy!
For Everyone: There are also quite a few products that would please anyone, despite their personal preferences. A new John Deere flashlight is a great stocking stuffer and a puzzle is an activity the whole family can enjoy. Try a cooler, a water bottle, or a travel mug with the John Deere logo; they're essentials in any household!
As if these selection of gifts weren't enough to convince you that shopping for gifts at John Deere is the best option, then keep in mind our wrapping offer: When you order gifts from John Deere, we'll wrap them for you! This is a busy time of year and no one likes to be scrambling around at the last minute; take the stress out of your holiday shopping by signing up for John Deere product updates and get information about sales and new merchandise. With the John Deere gift site, there's no need to shop anywhere else this year.
Images Courtesy of: Ebay & Johndeeregifts.com
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We rebate a portion of our seller paid commission to you. Because real estate commissions in Chicago are so high on more expensive homes we use a sliding scale to determine our target commission - which is a lot less than the traditional real estate companies make. Everything above that amount we rebate to you. Our rebates vary from 20% to 50% of the cooperating commission, depending upon the price of the home.* For example, on a $500,000 home with a 3% cooperating commission and no deductions or bonuses we would rebate you 25% of our commission - or $3,750.
But wait, there's more! Occasionally, the seller and/or listing broker will offer the buyer's agent a bonus or other incentive in addition to the cooperating brokerage commission. We question the practice of buyer's agents keeping this bonus for themselves and not disclosing it to buyers. Therefore, we include any bonuses in our rebate calculation - which is a lot more than some of the other real estate brokers that offer rebates.
We provide our home buyers with a complete suite of home buyer services throughout Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. Just because we provide our buyers with a great deal doesn't mean they have to settle for less. We know you have access to a lot of data through the Internet so we are determined to demonstrate to you that we provide a lot more value than the "other agents". Think you don't need a real estate agent to help you buy a home? Think again!
Because our home marketing costs are not proportional to the price of a home we don't charge a flat commission like other real estate brokers. Instead, we use a sliding scale where the commission percentage decreases for more expensive homes. First, we help you determine the appropriate cooperating commission to offer buyer's agents. Then we determine the "sell side" commission based upon the price of the home. The end result is that instead of charging 6% we can charge as little as 3.7% for more expensive homes.
Full service doesn't have to mean full price! Lucid Realty will provide you with better home marketing services than a traditional broker but for a lot less money. Most traditional real estate agents would like you to believe that they provide some "unique", "comprehensive" marketing program for homes. The fact of the matter is that any true professional trying to justify a high commission is going to offer you the same basic package consisting of some variation of the following:
It turns out that some of these home marketing programs are bogus,designed to simply pacify you, justify a higher commission, or help the agent/broker generate more business for themselves at your expense. And despite all this bluster the #1 complaint of home sellers is that their realtor doesn't keep them informed about what is happening on the sale of their home.
At Lucid Realty we can match anything that a traditional real estate broker provides - and then some - but we do it for a lower commission and you don't need to sacrifice the personal touch of a traditional broker. Most importantly, we promise to provide you with regular feedback and insights about your sale.
On the other hand, if you are thinking of selling your home yourself you should first read our article on considering the for sale by owner option.
Relocating to a new city can be a daunting challenge but we can vastly simplify the process for you. We will enable you to conduct your research in the Chicago area while still enjoying life in your current home. We are experts at working with clients remotely, leveraging the latest technology to extend your reach. Whether your relocation is sponsored by your employer or you are handling it on your own we make it easy for you and save you money in the process.
But wait, there's more! Occasionally, the seller and/or listing broker will offer the buyer's agent a bonus or other incentive in addition to the cooperating brokerage commission. We question the practice of buyer's agents keeping this bonus for themselves and not disclosing it to buyers. Therefore, we include any bonuses in our rebate calculation - which is a lot more than some of the other real estate brokers that offer rebates.
*Rebates are paid only to buyers who have signed an exclusive buyer's agreement with Lucid Realty and close on real estate purchased above $150,000 with Lucid Realty under that agreement. For homes below $200,000 the rebate is $250. For homes at or above $200,000 the rebate is at least 20% of the cooperating broker commission plus incentives actually received by Lucid Realty at the close of escrow/settlement for representing the buyer, net of any allowances or other deductions related to the transaction. Rebates on more expensive homes can be as high as 50% of the cooperating commission. Speak to your Lucid Realty agent for details on how much you can expect to save. The rebate will be paid or credited to the party or parties named as the "buyer(s)" or"borrower(s)" on the HUD-1 Closing Statement.


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Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
No. If someone in the subdivision is violating a provision of the Association by-laws, it would be up to the Association to initiate legal action.
Show All Answers
No. Commercial motor vehicles, recreational vehicles, watercraft or trailers may not be parked on any street or alley within the City of New Haven except during such time as is reasonably necessary to make a bona fide pick-up or delivery.
If contact information was provided, we strive to contact complainants to let them know their complaint was received or to gather further information. If you've called in a complaint and do not see results within a reasonable period of time, please contact the Code Enforcement Office. We will gladly inform you of the status of your complaint.
You may either email Code Enforcement or call 260-748-7061 to report a violation.
Complaints are handled in a confidential, courteous manner. Code Enforcement will first verify the violation and then notify the property owner and explain the issue. Property owners are then given time to remedy the violation. While most property owners comply after the first notification, those who don't receive additional notifications and/or fines. In addition, some violations may be abated by the City at the owner's expense.
Yes. Trash containers must not be placed at the pickup location earlier than 4 pm of the day preceding the collection. It must be removed from the pickup location by 6 am the day following collection. Trash containers shall be stored either inside the garage or on the side of the house a minimum of four feet behind the front of the house when not at the pickup location.
Yes. The City of New Haven Code prohibits debris, rubbish, trash and weeds/grass that are in excess of nine inches in height on any lot.


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Related Expertise: Digital, Technology, and Data, Tech Function, Agile at Scale
By Karim Chaabouni, Marc Schuuring, Andrew White, and Miguel Monedero Rubio
Budget constraints are a fact of life for chief information officers, and they have coped in the past by leveraging digital capabilities to operate more efficiently and lower headcount. But today those budget constraints are amplified by the need to modernize the IT environment. The dilemma that many CIOs find themselves in is how, under these budget constraints, to pay for vital modernization initiatives and avoid further headcount reductions.
The answer, we believe, is to transform the organization and change the ways of working by adopting a platform-based IT organization. This new setup promotes the agile collaboration of functional and technical experts so they can align on and implement business solutions, increasing speed to market and productivity by two to four times. These improvements can fuel the budget to modernize IT while accelerating value generation and maximizing customer/user satisfaction. With this in mind, we have identified five principles to make platform-based IT organizations work: semiautonomous decision making, client and user centricity, advanced IT and data capabilities, highly skilled teams, and agile at scale.
Budget constraints are not the only challenge that CIOs face. They have been wrestling with a daunting array of obstacles related to digital transformation that weigh heavily on company performance. Now, COVID-19 has pushed these pain points to excruciating new levels. (See Exhibit 1.)
The good news is that technology advances are enabling new working models that can help companies address these challenges more effectively. By designing technology and the human organization around each other, a company can bridge the gap between being scalable (the province of technology) and being flexible (the province of humans). Now companies can also use standardized APIs and microservices for open-source collaboration, driving down transaction costs and facilitating innovation. Meanwhile, the advent of bionic learning allows companies to rapidly improve processes and create better outcomes. Machine learning detects patterns in big data, and then humans review them to make sure the numbers make rational sense.
One of the best ways to ensure that these new working models function at their full potential and address pain points is to implement a platform-based IT organization. In a nutshell, a platform-based IT organization gathers people with a common interest in a specific functional or technical domain so they can work directly with one another on a dedicated platform for a specific project. A platform-based IT organization is client-centric and fully aligned on business processes and flows.
The platform teams within a platform-based organization have end-to-end ownership (from design to run) and are empowered to make key decisions to deliver business value faster. These teams provide guidance and services to other business and technology teams to improve impact. And they facilitate collaboration across organizations, breaking down silos to share data and expertise.
Within a platform-based IT organization, there are four organizational units (two vertical and two horizontal) that regularly interact with one another: business platforms, technology platforms, communities of practice platforms, and transversal team platforms.
Business platforms are vertically integrated teams of business and technology people with end-to-end (E2E) ownership of a digital solution (front end, data, and back end) across the development life cycle in a distinct domain, such as sales and marketing, supply chain management, data management, or support functions. The E2E ownership encompasses the business flows and process steps, the associated IT services, and the people. The strategic needs of the business guide these platform teams, and the teams are accountable for the success or failure of the digital solutions they pursue. They practice agile ways of working, align on a solution, develop the solution in sprints, and scale up digital processes and engineering. Generally, these teams are allocated budgets incrementally each quarter, driven by business impact.
Business platforms are best suited to managing a fully digitized product or service, such as overseeing an airline's frequent flyer points. However, these platforms can also work alongside the physical business and improve the business flows there as well. For example, when dealing with the flow of physical goods (for example, specialized product orchestration), the platform can manage the value chain and the delivery of goods, reengineering the processes along with the underlying technology. These platforms can also help manage human talent—for example, by developing maintenance and shift schedules that employees can access and share digitally.
We have identified 13 key design principles for these business platforms. (See Exhibit 2.)
Technology platforms are vertically integrated IT service teams that develop and operate IT platforms to support the specific technology needs of business platforms. These teams have end-to-end responsibility for tooling, infrastructure, and technology standards. They practice agile ways of working, align on a solution, develop the solution in sprints, and scale up tooling, infrastructure, and tech standards (except in areas where the technical landscape prevents independent deployment in agile teams). These teams are also allocated budgets incrementally each quarter on the basis of business impact.
For technology platforms and business platforms to work together successfully, they need to be based on a common data and digital platform (DDP). The DDP's modular architecture separates data from core transactional systems like enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management, creates more modular interfaces between systems, and adopts cloud infrastructure for speed and agility. It also creates a digital front end that is more adaptable; it can evolve as customer, supplier, and employee needs change. (See Exhibit 3.)
With a DDP, technology stacks have simple interfaces. Data moves faster and becomes a new source of competitive advantage. Agile teams can work in new, more collaborative ways. Powered by AI and leveraging open-source software and cloud services, the DDP can combine internal and external data in new ways, provide that data as a service to an omnichannel smart business layer, and deliver new digital services to the frontlines every few weeks instead of every 12 to 18 months.
Communities of practice platforms involve horizontally integrated groups of digital experts (for example, product owners, engineering managers and directors, scrum masters) with common interests in specific topics (for example, UI/UX, quality assurance, integration). They build, share, and promote expertise and best practices in their topics across teams. They provide guidance to line managers who might not be experts in the topic, and they can support career development and training. The members of these communities include a sponsor from the leadership team and a community lead, who is usually a senior engineer. Core members are responsible for facilitating events and supporting the lead, while community members have a looser affiliation and participate according to their interest in the topic.
Transversal team platforms involve horizontally integrated teams that ensure governance and help coordinate a range of critical functions across the IT organization. These functions include the following:
The platform's modular architecture allows autonomous teams to work at greater speed to create business value. But team members need the right skills and familiarity with new, agile ways of working. Because these talents are in short supply, companies need a systematic approach for identifying the skills they need to source and for defining the new jobs they need to fill.
Some skills, such as coding and data science, might already exist within the organization. These skills should be reinforced. But there are also new, much rarer skills that companies must seek out, including cybersecurity skills (for example, SecOps and identity and access management), agile talent (for instance, scrum masters), and infrastructure and cloud skills (for example, cloud engineering).
In some cases, hiring from outside the company is the best, most expedient option. But, given the rare nature of these skills and the salaries these candidates command, companies should make the most of the talent within the organization. By undertaking a digital knowledge review that combines self-assessments and manager input, and then comparing the results with the competencies the company is looking for, a company can identify the best candidates for upskilling. Companies should tailor their upskilling programs and offer industry-recognized certifications to encourage participation. To further encourage employee engagement, companies could have employees codesign career paths with a manager and/or the HR department.
The organization needs the confidence to allow these platform teams to work freely to their full potential and not hobble them by enforcing old rules. We have identified five principles that will help companies cement new ways of working and make the platform-based scheme work.
The intertwining of technology and people that is at the heart of the platform-based organization is also fundamental to becoming a bionic company. A bionic company designs technology and the human organization around each other to transform operations and achieve outcomes such as new offers, new business models, and personalized customer experiences and relationships. We believe the company of the future will be bionic. (See Exhibit 4.)
A digital transformation is a daunting prospect. But with a platform-based IT organization, supported by a DDP architecture, the transformation can occur in manageable chunks, steadily and incrementally, using "speed boats." A speed boat is a means of deploying part of the new organization or way of working in an accelerated, agile manner. These deployments require relatively low effort, have limited operational impact or dependencies on the rest of the organization, have high value and visibility for business and IT stakeholders, and can be launched in a standalone way, separate from the rest of the transformation.
In our experience, platform-based deployments significantly improve the customer experience and P&L. The benefits include better business and IT collaboration for improved product development; agile product launch cycles that speed time to market by two to four times; less overhead and more built-in mechanisms for continuous improvement, which boost productivity two to four times; the digitization of operations and customer experience, which improves the cost-income ratio by 10% to 15%; and a more agile work environment that appeals to high-performing employees and aids recruitment.
For example, BCG worked with a large industrial goods company that responded to the COVID-19 business disruption by creating digital end-to-end (E2E) processes. It wanted to improve customer centricity, create integrated offerings, speed development, and boost efficiency. To those ends, we helped build a platform-based operating model on three pillars:
By setting up its platform-based operating model so quickly, the company accelerated its transformation toward being a bionic company. The new operating model allowed the business to decouple data and applications (making it possible to develop applications independently) and identify key capabilities to leverage across platforms to unlock value (both by reusing the capabilities and by scaling them across the enterprise).
The company's results have been dramatic across the board. Productivity increased 25% to 50%, time to market accelerated from 2-3 years to 3-12 months, the automation of DevOps reduced provision activities by 90% (thus improving agility), and IT run cost declined 20% to 30%.
CIOs will continue to struggle to find a good balance between cost reduction and the innovation needed to foster value generation. But there are ways to manage this tension. The platform-based approach we describe in this article creates agility and success by facilitating the collaboration of functional and technical experts so they can align on and implement business solutions. By marrying the power and scalability of technology (through the DDP architecture) with human expertise, flexibility, and creativity, the platform approach takes organizations closer to being the kind of bionic companies that will own the future.
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Can There Truly Be An "Internal Critique" Based Upon the Presuppositional Approach to Apologetics?
An "internal critique" is what is asked for, eh? And Paul did this internal critique of Islam in the link he provided eh,? So why don't Muslims just abandon their faith after reading what Paul wrote? Why? Why don't they accept his "internal critique" and deny their faith? Isn't it because every world-view has Kuhnsian anomalies to it that the believer accepts despite the difficulties? And with that being acknowledged from his presuppositional approach, then there can be no real internal critique to someone else's faith.
Just to say that an internal critique of the Muslim faith is what a presupposionalist does (i.e., negative cultic apologetics), doesn't solve much of anything. Why? Because Paul is still doing his critique from a different presupposed perspective other than the one he's critiquing internally. Paul's whole apologetical appraoch presupposes there is no common ground between the faiths he rejects, and hence, differing world-views and religions are incommensurable.
Therefore, Paul isn't truly accepting, for the sake of his critique, the whole world-view which he wants to internally critique. If he did, then according to the same presuppositional apologetical approach that he advocates, he would be a Muslim. Why? Because every faith has internally inconsistent anomalies to it that poses problems to the adherent's faith, but that faith is presupposed and believed despite the anomalies.


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Former Sioux Falls Stampede Star Thomas Vanek Talks About the Upcoming NHL Sesason [VIDEO]
Former Sioux Falls Stampede standout Thomas Vanek is in the headlines in the NHL these days as he gets set to enter the final year of his contract with the Buffalo Sabres.
Vanek and goalie Ryan Miller's names have been featured prominently in trade talks this off season as Buffalo heads into full blown rebuilding mode.
In an interview this week with KSTP-TV in Minneapolis, Vanek says he's prepared to go back to Buffalo for one more season, but isn't certain at this point what the 2013-14 season holds for him.
In eight seasons with the Sabres, Vanek has scored 30 or more goals four times. Last season a strike-shortened year, he scored 20 times and handed out 21 assists.
He was an All-Star in 2009.
Vanek played in Sioux Falls for three seasons from 1999-2002 and appeared in 108 games for the Stampede. During the 2001-02 season, he scored 46 goals and had 45 assists in 53 games, before heading off to the University of Minnesota to play college hockey.


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Exclusive: Medtronic probes insulin pump risks
Medtronic Inc has asked software security experts to investigate the safety of its insulin pumps, as a new claim surfaced that at least one of its devices could be hacked to dose diabetes patients with potentially lethal amounts of insulin.
While there are no known examples of such a cyber attack on a medical device, Medtronic told Reuters that it was doing everything it can to address the security flaws.
Security software maker McAfee, which has a health industry business, exposed the new vulnerability in one model of the Medtronic Paradigm insulin pump on Friday and believes there could be similar risks in others.
Medtronic and McAfee declined to say which model is involved or how many such pumps are currently used by patients. It has two models of insulin pumps on the market and supports six older versions, with about 200,000 currently in use by patients.
The finding points to a broader issue -- the potential for cyber attacks on medical devices ranging from diagnostic equipment to pumps and heart defibrillators, which rely on software and wireless technology to work.
This is an evolution from having to think about security and safety as a healthcare company, and really about keeping people safe on our therapy, to this different question about keeping people safe around criminal or malicious intent, Catherine Szyman, president of Medtronic's diabetes division, said in an interview.
Szyman, whose nephew uses a wearable Medtronic insulin pump, said the company turned to McAfee rival Symantec Corp and other security firms after an independent researcher exposed less serious vulnerabilities in the pumps in August.
Since then, a research team at Intel Corp's McAfee said it has developed code that allows it to gain complete control of the functions of one Medtronic insulin pump model from as far away as 300 feet.
We found a way around all the restrictions and all the limitations, said Stuart McClure, a senior vice president with McAfee who heads up the research team.
McClure, formerly a security expert at healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente, says he is exposing such problems to draw them to the attention of manufacturers and regulators.
McClure's team used a Windows PC and an antennae that communicates with the medical device over the same radio spectrum used for some cordless phones.
The type of vulnerability discovered by McAfee could theoretically be used as a new cyber weapon. A hacker could launch a drive-by attack aimed at a high-profile target, such as a politician or corporate executive, who uses this type of insulin pump, McAfee researchers said.
In August, Medtronic acknowledged that security flaws in its implanted insulin pumps could allow hackers to remotely take control of the devices.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration noted that there is no evidence of widespread problems from medical device security breaches. It says that device manufacturers are responsible for the safety of their software.
Any system with wireless communication can be subject to interception of data and compromised privacy as well as interference with performance that can compromise the safety and effectiveness of the device, FDA spokeswoman Erica Jefferson said. We continue to closely monitor for safety or security problems.
Medtronic is a leading makers of insulin pumps along with Johnson & Johnson's Animas Corp and Insulet Corp. McAfee did not report vulnerabilities in models from other manufacturers.
The fresh concerns over the pumps made by Medtronic, the world's largest medical device maker, follow a high-profile recall of heart defibrillator leads in 2007 and a more recent Senate probe into whether doctors it had paid failed to report problems from a spinal surgery product.
The company said it is also consulting with McAfee and has informed patients, through its website, to check their insulin pumps if they have a suspicious encounter with another person.
Medtronic officials have said it would be difficult to make changes to pumps already in use because of FDA regulations that require device makers to get agency approval before altering their products, including issuing software patches.
The company would likely have to first get FDA approval and then recall each pump, which uses wireless communications technology dating back 12 to 15 years, so that technicians could install the new software and check the equipment to make sure that it still accurately delivers doses of insulin.
Szyman said she could not say how long it would take Medtronic to come up with a fix for the vulnerabilities because its investigation is still ongoing. It is also unclear how long it might take the FDA to approve changes to the pumps.
There's different pathways to approval, she told Reuters, noting that the agency typically takes six to 12 months to approve a new medical device.
Medtronic's diabetes products, which includes its insulin pumps, accounted for more than $1.3 billion in revenue in its last fiscal year, out of a total of nearly $16 billion.
The Medtronic pump vulnerability was discovered by Barnaby Jack, a well-known security expert who joined McAfee last year after gaining notoriety by finding ways to hack into ATMs used at convenience stores, then force them to literally spit out cash. The manufacturers have since fixed the flaw by updating the software that runs those machines.
The nightmare scenario, according to McAfee, involves a hostile actor launching a potentially fatal attack by taking control of an insulin pump, then ordering it to dump all the insulin in its canister.
That is something that was hard to imagine when the product was first designed - long before the recent rash of hacking attacks: We are talking about code that was written over ten years ago, said Jack. They never expected anybody to pop these devices open and look under the hood. We are trying to spark some change and get a secure initiative under way and get these devices fixed.
Insulin is a hormone secreted by the pancreas that converts glucose into energy. In patients with diabetes, the body makes no insulin, or insulin levels are too low. This can cause the amount of glucose in the bloodstream to rise, a condition known as hyperglycemia.
When too much insulin is released into the blood stream, a person's blood sugar can become too low, a condition known as hypoglycemia. Symptoms of hypoglycemia range from nausea and confusion to, in severe cases, seizures, coma and death.
McClure declined to say how many models in Medtronic's line of insulin pumps were vulnerable. He said there is no evidence anybody else has identified the flaw or tried to exploit it.
We just tested one model number, McClure said. But we believe that more than that are vulnerable. His team demonstrated the vulnerability at a McAfee users conference in Las Vegas on Friday.
McAfee has consulted with experts at the Department of Homeland Security's Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, or ICS-CERT. That agency works with private companies in industries including healthcare to help investigate potential cyber vulnerabilities in their products.
Officials with ICS-CERT and Symantec could not be reached for comment.
(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston. Additional reporting by Toni Clarke in Boston, Anna Yukhananov in Washington and Susan Kelly in Chicago; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Edward Tobin and Martin Howell)
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