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I hope they at least manage to incorporate some of what they've learnt into their integrated chips.
Intel's integrated chips have been appallingly bad in the past, some incapable of decoding HD video with reasonable performance. Manufacturers using those intel integrated chips in their consumer level computers did a great deal of harm to the computer games industry.
For anyone stuck with an Intel GMA chipset: GMA Booster [gmabooster.com] may help solve some of your problems. Just make sure you have a decent cooling solution [newegg.com], as it can ramp up the heat output of your system considerably. Still, if you're stuck with GMA, it can make the difference between a game being unplayable and being smooth.
Note for anyone else whose curiosity was piqued, this only works with 32bit systems with 950 chipset based systems, and does not work with GMA X3100, GMA X4500, GMA 500, or GMA 900.
Not only that, but people shouldn't confuse the GMA500, which is a rebadged PowerVR in the mix.
It's interesting how although it boosts the clockspeed from 133/166mhz to 400mhz, the performance boost is approximately 25%.
It says right on the website, this is because it's RAM bandwidth starved - and as it gobbles more bandwidth, your CPU gets less, but it does result in a net gain.
That means in theory the performance gains could be higher on desktop systems with higher speed RAM, as opposed to laptops. However, being able to feed it more data also means it works harder, so the recommendation for decent
They've never been able to bring the most innovative designs to market.. they bring 'good enough' wrapped in the x86 instruction set.
If x86 was available to all I think we'd see Intel regress to a foundry business model.
They've never been able to bring the most innovative designs to market.. they bring 'good enough' wrapped in the x86 instruction set.
And, judging by what I've heard, a lot of people would say that the x86 instruction set itself is nothing more than 'good enough.'
I disagree. Intel has been destroying AMD these past 4 years.
AMD's 64bit instruction set, and athlons were a huge improvement where Intel had failed...
But now.. Intel's chips are faster, and AMD has been playing catch up. For a while there AMD didnt have an answer for intel's core line of cpus.
Now they do, and they're slightly cheaper than intel but they do not perform as fast as intel.
Intels chips are faster because Intel has much better production facilities.
Intels chips are faster because Intel has much better production facilities.
No way, man, it's their Speed Hole(tm) Technology!
I think you may be a bit off here. AMD meets or exceeds the performance available from Intel chips at every point of the price curve except the very high end where they do not compete at all.
The i7 920 is the only real competitor to AMDs chips in price/performance, coming in a bit faster than the AMD 955/965 in both performance and cost.. Above that point, incrementally more power from Intel comes at exponentially higher costs. Below that point and AMDs chips beat everything Intel has at each price point.
AMD does beat intel on the price curve... but not in performance. If you want the performance.. AMD has no answer for intel's cpus. I recently built a system for someone and looked at all of the cpu options. Ultimately I went with an AMD cpu for him because of his price range....
Like you said, AMD beats intel on the price... but not on the performance. If you want performance, you have to pay intels prices.
Thats why they cost more. The cpu's intel have put out these past 3 years are incredible. For a good t
It doesn't matter what's at the top.
If performance were the only metric one needed when selecting a product, we'd all be driving Bugatti Veyrons when we wanted to go fast, Unimogs when we want to move lots of stuff slow, and AMG Mercedes-Benz SUVs when we want to move stuff along with people.
Over here in reality, though, price is a factor. And so, Toyotas, the Hyundais, and the Chevys are a much better deal for most folks.
So, even if Bugatti made a more inexpensive and practical vehicle that I might be int
I agree that for everything from the i7 920 and up, intel is unquestionable faster. Even the new 6 core AMD chips will be able to match/beat the i7 920 at a some tasks despite similar system costs.
The AMD 955 at ~$160 outperforms the intel E8400, Q8200 and Q8400 and i5-650 available in the range of ~150 to ~190. The same goes for just about every lower price point as well.
I think that the larger section of the market lies in the low to mid range chips. I am not just talking about price, but value as well. I
AMD does beat intel on the price curve... but not in performance.
AMD does seem to have an edge in the multiprocessor arena, although I am not sure why.
According to PassMark, the fastest machines clocked using their software is a 4 x Opteron 6168 (4 x 12 cores = 48 cores) system and a 8 x Opteron 8435 (8 x 6 cores = 48 cores) [cpubenchmark.net]
The actual numbers are:
4 x Opteron 6168 : 23,784 Passmarks.
8 x Opteron 8435 : 22,745 Passmarks.
4 x Xeon X7460 : 18,304 Passmarks.
2 x Xeon X5680 : 17,910 Passmarks.
That $200 AMD chip that everyone is raving about, the Phenom II 1055T, scor
As somebody whose sole job is to squeeze maximum floating point performance out of Intel chips, I can tell you those benchmarks are absolute crap.
How was the code for the benchmark written? Did it use the compiler that intel puts out? Does it use ippxMalloc to create the datastructures for the number crunching? If the answer to any of the last two questions is no, then you are not getting even slightly close to the full throughput of the chips.
How was the code for the benchmark written?
Its fucking Passmark. Are you new to the benchmarking scene?
Did it use the compiler that intel puts out?
The one that intentionally outputs code that cripples performance on non-Intels? Are you new to the benchmarking scene? Yes, their compiler is great.. as long as you trick it into not crippling performance on non-Intels.
Does it use ippxMalloc to create the datastructures for the number crunching?
Its fucking Passmark. Are you a dipshit or something?
If the answer to any of the last two questions is no, then you are not getting even slightly close to the full throughput of the chips.
First you say the results are crap, and then later you say its only crap if the answer to blah blah blah is no? Make up your mind, dipshit.
Hello troll.
Yes, their compiler is great.. as long as you trick it into not crippling performance on non-Intels.
Well you could use the compiler that AMD puts out. I'm sure they have one that is specific to their architectures.
Its fucking Passmark.
Doesn't mean anything unless you can pop the hood and examine the code. To get the most out of recent chips, the coding style/methodologies have changed substantially. There are whole things you just shouldn't do now. You code to the compiler.
I generally write micro-benchmarks to test even simple things (std::max, if greater than do this otherwise do that, etc) and the difference
I think you may be a bit off here. AMD meets or exceeds the performance available from Intel chips at every point of the price curve except the very high end where they do not compete at all.
Performance/price != Performance
And of course, it also depends mightily on exactly WHICH performance characteristics you're talking about.
Well, not really
The P6 was a really good architecture. it's what AMD battled with the K7 arch (really good as well)
Of course, that, until Intel shot itself in the foot with the Netburst architecture (AKA Pentium 4)
A 1GHz P3 could run circles around the 1.4GHz, 1.6GHz even higher clocked Willamette P4
But the P6 arch carried on and Core 2 is based on it (with a lot of improvements on top)
' He added that Intel had 'missed some key product milestones' in the development of the discrete Larrabee product,
Like proof that they were even capable of making an integrated graphics product that wasn't a pile of garbage?
GMA910: Couldn't run WDDM, thus couldn't run Aero, central to the "Vista capable" Lawsuits
GMA500: decent hardware, crappy drivers under Windows, virtually non-existant Linux drivers, worse performance than GMA950 in Netbooks.
Pressure to lockout competing video chipsets. We're lucky ION saw the light of day. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,680035/Nvidia-versus-Intel-Nvidia-files-lawsuit-against-Intel/News/ [pcgameshardware.com]
A company that hasn't produced a discrete graphics card in over a decade (I'm pretty sure I remember seeing an Intel graphics card once. Back in the 90s.) is going to continue to not produce discrete graphics cards. Wow. Stop the presses. Has Ric Romero been alerted?
A large, publicly announced project with a great deal of media hype that had the potential to shake up the industry was cancelled. So, yeah, stop the presses.
Everyone I knew in the graphics business thought that Intel had gone completely insane with the i740; other companies were trying to cram more and more faster and faster RAM onto their cards while Intel were going to use slow system RAM over a snail-like AGP bus.
So I'd say the expectations were pretty low, at least among those who knew what they were talking about.
To be fair to Intel, most graphics cards then were on the PCI bus, not AGP, so they didn't have the opportunity to use the host RAM except via a very slow mechanism.
If by 'most' you mean 'Voodoo-2', yes. From what I remember all the cards I was using at the time Intel was trying to sell the i740 (Permedia-2, TNT, etc) were on the AGP bus.
I believe 3dfx were pretty much the last holdouts on PCI, because game developers had deliberately restricted their games to run well on Voodoo cards, thereby ensuring that they didn't need much bus bandwidth (any game which actually took advantage of AGP features so it ran well on a TNT but badly on a Voodoo was slated in reviews).
From what I remember all the cards I was using at the time Intel was trying to sell the i740 (Permedia-2, TNT, etc) were on the AGP bus.
Check the dates. The i740 was one of the very first cards to use AGP. Not sure about the Permedia-2, but the TNT was introduced six months after the i740 and cost significantly more (about four times as much, as I recall). It performed a lot better, but that wasn't really surprising.
The Larrabee chips actually looked pretty good. There was a lot of hype, especially from Intel. They demoed things like Quake Wars running a custom real-time ray-tracing renderer at a pretty decent resolution. Being able to use even a partial x86 ISA for shaders would have been a massive improvement as well, both in capabilities and performance.
From what I've been able to piece together, the problem wasn't even the hardware, it was the drivers. Apparently, writing what amounts to a software renderer for Ope
I almost let this slide until you put the other half of the pun in capitals!
There is lots of tasty competition producing NSFW "Discreet Graphics" that Sucks!
This is bad news for one reason. Competition. There are only 2 major players in discreet graphics right now and that is horrible for the consumer.
What about VIA and Matrox?
They produce joke cards.
VIA stopped designing motherboards for AMD and Intel CPUs about two years ago. Consequently, you can't find its GPUs in many places aside from embedded systems or ultra low-budget netbooks and the like. Weirdly they still sell a miniscule number of discrete cards, primarily overseas, but without divine intervention they'll never become a serious player again.
Matrox serves niche markets, mostly in the way of professional workstations, medical imaging equipment, and the odd sale of their TripleHead system to the ever-eroding hardcore PC gamer market.
In case anyone wonders what happened to the others: Oak Technologies' graphics division was acquired by ATI many moons ago; Rendition was eaten by Micron in 1998 and their name is now used to sell budget RAM; SiS bought Trident's graphics division, spun off their graphical company as XGI Technologies, had a series of disastrous product releases, and had their foundries bought by ATI, who let them continue to sell their unremarkable products to eager low-bidders; and 3dfx was mismanaged into oblivion a decade ago.
and 3dfx was mismanaged into oblivion a decade ago
And Nvidia picked up the pieces from 3dfx.
Matrox has been irrelevant ever since 3D became important.
Nvidia has been incredible for the consumer for a long time now.
I would like to see their quadro products come down in price though. They are ridiculously overpriced.
Are you kidding me? This is great for consumers.
If Intel got their claws in the discreet graphics market (which is already showing signs of stagnation rather than growth), then they'd take a huge chunk of nVidia and ATI's R&D budgets away. Unable to put as much money towards advancement, GPU generations (and their pricedrops) would come slower. Meanwhile Intel would utilize their advanced (and cheap) fabbing to make a killing on that market, just as they do IGPs.
End result? Slower progress, nVidia and A
I kind of think Larrabee was a hedge.
If you think about it, around the time it was announced (very early on in development, which is not normal), you had a bunch of potentially scary things going on in the market.
Cell came out with a potentially disruptive design, Nvidia was gaining ground in the HPC market, OpenCL was being brought forth by Apple to request a standard in hybrid computing.
All of sudden it looked like maybe Intel was a little too far behind.
Solution: Announce a new design of their own to crush the competition! In Intel-land, sometimes the announcement is as big as the GA. Heck, the announcement of Itanium was enough to kill off a few architectures. They would announce Larrabee as a discrete graphics chip to get gamers to subsidize development and....profit!
Lucky for them, Cell never found a big enough market and Nvidia had a few missteps of their own. Also, Nehalem turned out to be successful. Add all that up, and it becomes kind of clear that Larrebee was no longer needed, negating the fact that it was a huge failure, performance-wise.
Intel is the only company that can afford such huge hedge bets. Looks like maybe another one is coming to attack the ARM threat. We'll see.
From Sharp minds come... pointed heads. -- Bryan Sparrowhawk


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• All you need to know about July Fourth weekend fireworks displays.
• Other things to do over the July Fourth weekend.
• Colorado residents should play it safe and not set off own fireworks.
Erie held its annual July 3 fireworks show Thursday night at the Colorado National Golf Course.
Fourth of July celebrations will take place across Boulder County on Friday, starting with Ralphie's Independence Day Blast at the University of Colorado's Folsom Field, where gates open at 8 p.m. Broomfield County Commons, 13200 Sheridan Blvd., will host a fireworks show at 9:30 p.m., as will Lafayette's Waneka Lake Park, 1600 Caria Drive, and Longmont's Boulder County Fairgrounds, 9595 Nelson Road.


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- Home
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Official Payments
Things you need to know before you begin:
- Credit card payments can be made via the internet or by calling 1-800-272-9829.
- You will need to know your Account Number or Citation Number.
- You will also need to know the amount you are planning to pay for the account.
- You will need to know your credit card or checking account information, depending on the option you choose.
- When conducting a payment over the phone you will be prompted for a jurisdiction code. Please enter 4709 for Utility Bills and 4710 for Municipal Court Payments as the jurisdiction code.
- All online and phone payments are conducted by Official Payments. To learn more about the online payment service click here.
A convenience fee will be charged by Official Payments for your online and phone payment transaction.
- Convenience fee for credit cards is $4.95 for Utility Payments and $6.95 for Municipal Court.
Click Here to Pay Utility Bills
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Page One
New: Berkeley Couple Found Dead in Shasta County
A Berkeley woman and her boyfriend, who had been missing since Christmas Eve, were found dead in Shasta County on Friday, according to county sheriff's officials.
After weeks of searching, Shasta County Sheriff's and Search and Rescue Team personnel located the bodies of Camille Rae Kober, 52 and 54-year-old Eric James Eide on a piece of property owned by PG&E in the unincorporated town of Manton, where Eide was from, according to a statement from the sheriff's office.
According to sheriff's officials, Eide's mother reported the couple missing on Dec. 24.
Investigators learned that the man was last seen at the North State Recycling Center in Redding on Dec. 20 and told employees he was returning to the PG&E property in Manton, located about 40 miles southeast of Redding, to retrieve more scrap metal for recycling.
A PG&E worker reported seeing Eide and Kober the afternoon of Dec. 21 walking onto the the utility's property in Manton.
More workers reported finding Eide's maroon 1992 Toyota truck parked near the entrance to the property the following day. Sheriff's deputies removed the truck on Dec. 23.
Deputies searched the PG&E property as well as Eide's home in Manton but were unable to locate the couple.
After the pair was reported missing, the sheriff's office, with assistance from PG&E and a California Highway Patrol helicopter searched the area for Kober and Eide but still did not find them.
The search continued in the following weeks as family and friends reported that they had not heard from the couple.
On Friday, a PG&E helicopter crew searching for the missing pair over spotted an orange piece of cloth or plastic among some dense foliage on the utility's property.
Sheriff's personnel located the object, believed to belong to Eide and Kober, and organized a ground search in the area early Friday morning.
The search team fanned out in the area where the orange object was found, and soon located other objects that appeared to be signs of and other evidence of the couple.
Those signs ultimately led searchers to Eide and Kober, who had died.
Sheriff's officials said that crews did not find any evidence of foul play at the scene.
Investigators believe that the pair, who went missing during a heavy rain and snowstorm, became disoriented after darkness fell and temperatures dropped.
The couple's cause of death has not yet been determined.


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Review: High performance outweighs bulky design
High capacity USB drives have become commonplace a while ago, but although some memory outfits are peddling huge drives, up to 1TB, most consumers are still going for cheap 32GB and 64GB units. It is hardly a surprise, given the popularity of personal cloud services, but there is still room for trusty USB drives like the Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 Generation 3 in 32GB flavour. We've been using it for roughly two months and here are some of our experiences.
The design is modern, although some may say it is rather bulky in this day and age. However, we are dealing with a USB 3.0 drive and most 3.0 drives tend to be a bit bigger than their USB 2.0 counterparts. The write speed is 70MB/s, which is quite good, but the read speed is even better – 150MB/s, which makes it one of the fastest drives around. Peak vales are even higher but that is what you get on average.
Kinkston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 Generation 3 (32GB) specifications:
• Model: DTU30G3/32GB
• Capacity:32GB
• Connectivity:High speed USB 3.0 / 2.0 compliant
• Indicator:LED light indicator
• Read Speed: Up to 150MB/s USB 3.0
• Write Speed: Up to 70MB/s USB 3.0
• Read Speed USB 2.0: Up to 30MB/s
• Write Speed USB 2.0: Up to 20MB/s
• Capless Design
• Five-year warranty
DTU30G3 is made for straightforward data storage and transfer and you will not get any special encryption, protection or locking. No bells and whistles then, but the packaging is tight and water resistant, but we're not huge fans of such packaging.
The stick feels rather robust. The silver coloured bits are not plastic, they are real aluminium and you feel it every time you handle the stick. It also features a strong carrying clip with a Kingston logo, which means it can easily be attached to just about anything. Don't let looks fool you. We were a bit concerned that the logo might not stand up to punishment very well. However, two months later they remained in surprisingly good shape and more often than not the stick was carried around in a pocket full of keys and change.
The white dot above the Kingston logo is in fact an LED that lights up in a nice shade of blue when the stick is in use.
The choice of blue connector is not accidental; it denotes that we are dealing with a USB 3.0 stick. Some additional information has been laser cut into the connector itself.
When inserting the stick, it should always be held by the immovable back part, otherwise it will just slide back over the connector. There were no detection issues on any of the systems we plugged it into.
Since the edges are not curved, the DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G3 looks a bit bulkier than it really is, although it is no bigger than other drives in its class, such as the Kingston HyperX or Corsair FlashVoyager. All these sticks have a drawback. They are simply too big to be used next to each other in adjacent USB ports. Modern laptops and desktop cases take this into account, so the USB ports on them are not grouped closely together. The DT Ultimate 3.0 G3 will block the adjacent USB port if it's close, for example if you are trying to plug it in to the back of your motherboard.
The peak performance of the DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G3 is even higher than advertised, but our tests confirm that real world perforance is well described by 150MB/s read and 70MB/s write ratings on the box. Of course, if we connect the drive to a USB 2.0 connector it can't come close. It manages 30MB/s read and 20MB/s write, which means it maxes out the USB 2.0 interface.
- Motherboard: EVGA Z77 FTW
- CPU: Ivy Bridge Core i7 3770 (4.5GHz)
- CPU Cooler: Gelid The Black Edition
- Memory: 8GB Corsair DDR3 2400MHz
- Harddisk: Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB
- Power Supply: CoolerMaster Silent Pro 1000W
- Case: CoolerMaster Cosmos II Ultra Tower
- Operating System: Win8 64-bit
In ATTO test the drive peaks up to 187MB/s read and up to 66MB/s write.
In CrystalDiskMarkk test the drive peaks up to 195MB/s read and up to 87MB/s write.
In AIDA64 in Random read test the drive peaks up to 228MB/s and in Linear write test up to 92.5MB/s.
USB 3.0 test: Transfer of 14.2 GB (Crysis 3 game folder) onto the drive was done in 04:31:7 min.
USB 2.0 test: Transfer of 14.2 GB (Crysis 3 game folder) onto the drive was done in 11:47:3 min.
USB 3.0 test: Transfer of 14.2 GB (Crysis 3 game folder) from the drive was done in 01:18:3 min.
USB 2.0 test: Transfer of 14.2 GB (Crysis 3 game folder) from the drive was done in 07:54:5 min.
Countless 32GB drives are available in every market, but the DataTraveler 3.0 G3 is speedier than most of them, especially when it comes to read speeds, although write speeds are pretty good as well. In essence, USB 3.0 is the key. There is practically no point in getting a USB 2.0 drive nowadays, provided you have an up to date PC with USB 3.0 support. The only downside of USB 3.0 drives is that they are somewhat bigger than their predecessors, but other than that there is really nothing to complain about. We also appreciated the capless design, which eliminates the biggest shortcoming of most USB drives.
Kingston's DataTraveler 3.0 Generation 3 in 32GB flavour can be yours for as little as €30, which is pretty competitive. It is a quality product, albeit a bit bulky. Then again, the bulk is justified by high performance, at least in our mind.


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Talk:The Gregorian calendar proves that Jesus existed
From Iron Chariots Wiki
For those inclined to fix this page up, it needs the following work:
- Determine if the title is appropriate, or if it needs to be moved somewhere else. Should "Gregorian" be in the title or something else?
- Include a better summary at the top of what the argument is trying to say.
- Just what sub-category of Category:Arguments for the existence of God does this belong in anyway? I looked through the list, and "majority arguments" seemed like the best match, but I'm not sure. I thought this should be placed in the same category as America is a Christian nation, but that remains without a sub-category as well.
--Kazim 07:17, 24 June 2008 (CDT)
- I agree that the title is awkward, but I don't have any good names. Perhaps removing "Gregorian" would be sufficient, since some variants of the Julian calendar also have year 1 as the year Jesus was born.
- Perhaps this should go in a new "self-fulfilling prophecy" category: "some people believed Jesus existed, so they based their calendar on this fact, therefore Jesus existed" seems reminiscent of "the Bible says Israel would be a nation again, so a lot of people worked to make this happen, therefore the prophecy is correct".
- --Arensb 16:03, 24 June 2008 (CDT)


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Every year when March 4 rolls around, Shorewood resident Ruth Howard makes a point of celebrating. March 4, 2012, is the date Howard joined the team at Morris Hospital and returned to the career she loves — being a nurse in the hospital setting.
Howard was recently honored for doing what she loves when she was selected Fire Starter of the Month for December at Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers.
Howard says she always remembers wanting to be a nurse ever since she was a little girl. Her father, who passed away at age 50, was a diabetic and had a heart attack at a young age. That gave Howard plenty of exposure to doctors' offices and hospitals, and she instantly became fascinated with the medical field.
Before joining Morris Hospital, Howard was a medical/surgical nurse for several years and then left the hospital setting to work in managed care and workers' compensation. While she learned a lot about the insurance side of health care, she missed bedside nursing and accepted a position at Morris Hospital as Case Manager in the Utilization Management department.
As a Case Manager, Howard serves in a number of roles. She interacts and communicates with insurance companies if they need information about a patient's medical stay. She is involved in coordinating and arranging post hospital care for patients, whether the needs are medical equipment, home health care, or nursing home care. She reviews charts to check for appropriateness of hospital admission and use of hospital resources as well as length of stay.
"Ruth takes such a professional, yet compassionate approach to all patients and their situations that everyone knows her by name," said co-worker Barb Jett. "She checks in with the nurses, assistants, doctors, patients and their families all the time to make sure patients are receiving excellent care. Her caring personality as a patient advocate sets an example that all should follow."
One of the special assignments dear to Howard's heart is Project RED (Re-Engineered Discharge), the nationwide movement that's aimed at helping patients better understand how to take care of themselves when they leave the hospital so they don't unnecessarily come back. Howard has been the leader behind the Project RED initiative at Morris Hospital, which so far has focused on reducing readmissions among heart failure patients.
"Ruth puts her heart and soul into whatever she believes will help her patients understand the discharge plan and how to keep themselves out of the hospital while educating the families as well," adds Jett. "She doesn't give up until all parties understand and feel satisfied that all of their questions and concerns are taken care of."
Howard says one of the things she has always loved about being a nurse is patient education.
"I want to empower every patient to take charge of their health care," she says."The medical world does not come naturally to a lot of people. We have to figure out for each patient how to make this make sense to them. I have faith that people want to get better, and I rejoice in their successes."
In early civilizations, fire starters were the individuals who had the important job of keeping the flame alive. As Fire Starter of the Month, Howard received a Grundy County Chamber of Commerce gift certificate, a special "Fire Starter" lapel pin, and a designated parking spot for the month. Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers is the largest employer in Grundy County with over 960 employees.


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Maybe it's just me, but I feel like Sunday doesn't have a whole lot to look forward to. Sure, Dre and Snoop will probably put on a good show (not really my genre though), and girl talk is always fun (though I have a certain distaste for mashups), but there isn't any one band that I cannot miss.
The few acts I am looking forward to are: Real Estate, Metronomy, and a far 3rd and 4th would be Beirut and the Weeknd.
It could easily just be my lack of knowledge of most of the Sunday bands, anyone care to shed some light?


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EBay Sales Beat Estimates as Donahoe Pushes Mobile Sales
EBay Inc. (EBAY), operator of the world's largest online marketplace, surged to an eight-year high after fourth-quarter revenue topped analysts' estimates, helped by record holiday sales on the Web and mobile devices.
EBay rose 2.6 percent to $54.28 at 9:47 a.m. in New York, and earlier touched $54.89 for the highest intraday price since January 2005. Sales climbed 18 percent to $3.99 billion, the company said yesterday in a statement. That exceeded the $3.98 billion average analysts' estimate compiled by Bloomberg.
The results suggest Chief Executive Officer John Donahoe is sustaining a turnaround effort that began in March 2008, when he succeeded Meg Whitman. The company has been pushing to generate more revenue from consumers shopping on tablets and smartphones, and from retailers that use EBay to sell their merchandise. That has resulted in 14 straight quarters of sales growth, and a 75 percent rally in the shares since Donahoe took the helm.
"The legacy marketplaces business -- it's kind of carried into mobile," said Bill Smead, who helps oversee 340,378 EBay shares as chief investment officer of Seattle-based Smead Capital Management Inc. "You get involved with bidding or selling something on EBay, and it's nice to carry around the device where you're doing that with you."
On Cyber Monday in November, at the beginning of last year's holiday shopping season, transactions on EBay's mobile applications more than doubled from the year before, while PayPal mobile-payment volume almost tripled. San Jose, California-based EBay charges a fee for each item sold, and for each PayPal transaction.
PayPal, Marketplaces
PayPal's sales rose 24 percent to $1.54 billion, and active accounts increased 15 percent to 123 million. Revenue in the marketplaces division rose 16 percent to $2.05 billion, while the value of U.S. sales on EBay, excluding cars, trucks and other vehicles, rose 19 percent.
"U.S. sales volume not coming from EBay Motors is the metric everyone focuses on," Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc., said in an interview. "It's the best indication of the health of the core business in the U.S."
Net income in the fourth quarter fell to $751 million, or 57 cents a share, from $1.98 billion, or $1.51 a share, a year earlier, when EBay sold the remainder of its stake in Skype to Microsoft. Profit before certain items was 70 cents a share, matching projections.
Mobile Users
Donahoe said he's continuing his efforts to make sure users are buying on smartphones and tablets as well as EBay's website. Mobile users tend to complete purchases more often than those browsing on desktop computers, and mobile garners a quarter of new customers, drawing a younger demographic to the site, he said. EBay's acquisition of credit-card scanning company Card.io last year will further that goal, because the technology makes it easier for new users to sign up, he said.
"Picture by the end of this year, you download the EBay or PayPal mobile app, you take a picture of your driver's license, and you take a picture of your credit card, and that's registering," Donahoe said in an interview.
EBay's mobile payment volume reached $13 billion last year, while PayPal's total was $14 billion -- exceeding EBay's own projections of $10 billion for each.
First-quarter revenue will be $3.65 billion to $3.75 billion, EBay said, compared with an average analyst projection of $3.8 billion. The company forecast profit, excluding some items, of 60 cents to 62 cents a share, versus a 64-cent estimate. EBay's mobile payment volume will exceed $20 billion in 2013, as will PayPal's, the company said.
After cutting about 3 percent of its workforce in October, PayPal hired three new vice presidents this week -- Arnold Goldberg from Box.net, Koby Avital from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Ryan Granard from DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. (DWA)
To contact the reporter on this story: Danielle Kucera in San Francisco at firstname.lastname@example.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at email@example.com


text:
|© MLB Advanced Media, L.P. All rights reserved.
FSL notes: Grossman wreaking havoc08/10/2011 10:00 AM ET
By Guy Curtright / Special to MLB.com
When Robbie Grossman set as his goal this season to score 100 runs, the odds certainly weren't with him. That milestone had been reached just once over the past 10 years in the Florida State League, and Grossman was coming off a disappointing first season with Bradenton.
"You have to have high expectations," the Marauders outfielder and primary leadoff hitter said.
Grossman reached his goal with more than a month left in the season, scoring his 100th run July 31. Now the Pittsburgh Pirates prospect is nearing another distinctive accomplishment.
No Minor League player has scored 100 runs and walked 100 times in the same season since 2004, when New York Yankees outfielder Nick Swisher accomplished the feat for Triple-A Sacramento while a member of the A's organization.
Through 113 games, Grossman has 94 walks to go with his 105 runs scored. It's all part of a breakout year for the 21-year-old native of Texas.
Grossman hit just .245 last season in the Class A Advanced league, and the speedy switch-hitter needed plenty of bunt hits from the left side to get his average that high.
Solid from both sides now, Grossman is batting .287 with 37 extra-base hits to go with his 23 stolen bases. But it was his runs and walks that set him apart. One was his goal; the other has helped him reach it.
Grossman's run total is the most in the Florida State League since Brian Burgamy of Clearwater scored 110 times in 2006. The last player in the league to reach 100 walks was Joe Lawrence of Dunedin with 105 in 1998.
"I knew if I could score 100 runs, it would help my team win," Grossman said. "It was a team goal as well as an individual goal."
The Marauders have certainly benefited. They lead the South Division standings in the second half and had won nine straight games through Monday.
Grossman's development at the plate is dramatically shown by the difference in his strikeout-to-walk ratio from a year ago. He had 118 strikeouts to go with 66 walks in 2010. This year he has walked one more time than he has struck out.
A left-handed thrower but natural right-handed hitter, Grossman didn't start switch-hitting until midway through high school, and his late start was obvious heading into this season.
"I'm beginning to figure it out," said Grossman, who is second in the league with a .421 on-base percentage. "I'm more comfortable batting left-handed. I'm putting out better swings and driving the ball."
Grossman is hitting .333 right-handed compared to .269 from the left side. But eight of his nine homers and 20 of his other 28 extra-base hits had come as a left-handed hitter.
"I was challenged last year to bunt a lot," Grossman said. "Now I'm up there swinging away most of the time."
Not wildly, of course. His walk total illustrates his new patience at the plate.
Grossman seemed headed to the University of Texas out of high school, but the sixth-round 2008 Draft pick was convinced otherwise with a bonus of $1 million after a trip to Pittsburgh.
"I realized this is what I'd always wanted to do, and what a huge opportunity it was," Grossman said.
Grossman has played two seasons in the Pirates' Grapefruit League ballpark. In the future, he'd like to make McKechnie Field his regular Spring Training home.
"I'm happy with my season, but you can't be satisfied," Grossman said. "I know I have a lot to work on still. My ultimate goal is to play in the big leagues."
In brief
Ruf is ready: Clearwater's Darin Ruf was 14-for-29 with four homers and eight RBIs over an eight-day stretch, raising his average to .319. He was second in the Florida State League batting race and led with 36 doubles. Ruf also had 15 homers and 70 RBIs. He was hitting .368 with 11 homers in the second half.
Etheridge on hold: Wes Etheridge went on the disabled list with a sore knee soon after setting the Dunedin record with his 32nd save in as many tries on July 22. The sinkerball specialist is expected to return this month, but the time off could cost him a chance at the Florida State League record. The mark is 38 saves, done most recently by R.A. Dickey of Charlotte in 1998.
Rohan a hot addition: Greg Rohan batted .366 with six homers and 17 RBIs in his first 19 games with Daytona after being promoted from the Midwest League. The home run total was one more than he had in 75 games for Peoria, where he batted .314 with 52 RBIs. Rohan drove in five runs with a pair of homers at Clearwater on Sunday.


text:
Watch Dogs Xbox 360 Cheats
- Game: Watch Dogs
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ctOS Towers cheat for Watch Dogs on Xbox 360
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Submited by: blinky on Tue, 17th June 2014 11:20 PM
- Assassin's Creed Easter Egg
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- Online Unlockables
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text:
The Essence of OpenBSD
Pages: 1, 2
ORN: It seems that with most systems driver developers make up most of the kernel team. Is this true with OpenBSD? Who writes most of the drivers? Do you usually use other BSD drivers when possible? Do you sometimes use Linux drivers as an example?
drahn: This brings up the frequent problem with open source development: getting documentation for hardware. Most of the time, if a *BSD driver is available, it is much, much better to port that driver or at least start with that driver and make improvements where possible, hopefully feeding the changes back to the original authors.
Sometimes when hardware documentation is not available, the only source of information is from Linux device drivers. GPL prevents us from taking their driver and releasing it as a restriction-free driver. It is sometimes possible to read the GPL driver, reverse-engineer what the hardware does, and then write a driver based on that understanding.
jason: Systems driver developers are a big part of the group, but not the biggest. The largest group is probably the folks who handle third-party software "ports." Most of the drivers written from scratch are written by a very few people within the project. The majority of drivers come from the other BSDs, but this is not always a trivial undertaking. For instance, FreeBSD has a completely different disk subsystem, CAM, which makes porting SCSI drivers from there difficult. They also have a very different API for DMA handling. Linux drivers, besides the GPL copyright issue (which I will not address), are difficult to follow because of the use of "magic constants": using hex digits instead of symbolic names. In some cases, they can be used as supplements for vendor-provided documentation, but because of different kernel semantics and magic constants, it's difficult to use them more directly.
miod: This is probably true. A lot of developers are involved only in kernel code, or mostly in kernel code (like myself). A large part is also focusing on third-party applications (port collection), and then a few developers are working mostly on userland. However, there are no fixed boundaries; people work on what they like to work on.
As for driver support, a significant set of drivers is shared between the main three BSD flavors, regardless of where they originated; this is, for example, the case for a lot of network card drivers, the USB subsystem, and crypto hardware. I usually do not look at the Linux drivers, but the hardware I write drivers for is generally either not supported by any free operating system, or only by other BSD flavors.
ORN: As OpenBSD has grown, have you lost any vital developers, and why?
drahn: I was lost to OpenBSD for over a year, several years back. I have seen two main causes for loss of developers: One, lack of "free" time on the part of the developer, where they no longer have enough time in their life to continue working on OpenBSD. Two, personality conflicts.
ORN: What books were most helpful to learn how to do your particular specialty?
jason: The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System is a must, but primarily I have spent my time (and still do!) reading datasheets for various chips and then figuring out how they relate to existing drivers. I've learned a few things about datasheets:
- Prerelease glossies are useless (they don't even make good litter liner).
- Preliminary datasheets (before the chip is released) are problematic, since inevitably, something in the design changes and they forget to update the datasheet.
- Bad datasheets are almost as bad as no datasheets.
ORN: Sun has been defiant about providing UltraSparc III information, so that you could make a proper port to Sun's newest processor. The Linux developers that have added support for this processor signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). De Raadt has said that he will not do this. Has this tarnished your image of Sun, and has there been any progress towards adding a port for this processor?
jason: What really irks me is that the Linux guys did nothing to help the community at large by signing the NDAs. It's nice that a very small group of Linux folks can fix bugs in the bowels of their kernel, but not having docs generally available hurts the community. The Linux folks had the power to do this right a while ago.
My image of Sun is that of many other chip vendors who think that keeping the documentation closed somehow helps their business model. So they are not tarnishing my image of them at all, only living down to it, unfortunately.
miod: I am sure disappointed by this situation, especially since Sun has not been known for double-speak like this in the past. Like probably most of the UNIX-contaminated people out there, I have been happily using Sun hardware for years, and I am still satisfied with this hardware, but the company seems to be getting more and more unfriendly (to say the least) and I don't know if I will continue using Sun hardware over the next few years, if only because I do not trust the hardware manufacturer as I used to five or 10 years ago.
ORN: What systems other than OpenBSD do you use, and why?
jason: I have one Windows machine ... It runs Quicken and Quickbooks exclusively (mainly because the alternatives do not fit my needs).
miod: Being a Unix hardware collector, I use a lot of non-OpenBSD systems, such as AIX, IRIX, and Tru64 UNIX; also, NetBSD on some platforms which are not supported (currently) by OpenBSD. However, in my day-to-day use, the only operating system I use besides OpenBSD is IRIX (SGI's version of UNIX) because SGI workstations have amazing graphics capabilities, and IRIX is the only operating system that fully supports this hardware. And I really enjoy hardware OpenGL screen savers. I also used to run OS/2 happily for 10 years ('90-'99), but it feels like it was in a previous life!
drahn: Well, since a lot of the work I do is on Apple Macintoshes, I occasionally boot Mac OS 9/X on some of the machines. Sometimes this is to play games, sometimes this is to run software that is not available on OpenBSD. While I have had at least one PC-based machine since 1992, I have never had Windows installed on any of my machines.
ORN: If OpenBSD didn't exist, what would you most likely be using/doing?
jason: Probably working for a stuffy government contractor or something. Not having nearly as much fun. =)
miod: Well, OpenBSD evolved from NetBSD, and I had been a satisfied NetBSD user before I switched to OpenBSD in late 1997. So, if OpenBSD did not exist, I would probably be using NetBSD instead.
ORN: OpenBSD has used CVS practically since the OpenBSD project started. Has CVS scaled well for what you do, or have you been looking into other solutions?
drahn: CVS is a fair tool. However, it has its own set of problems. Some of the OpenBSD developers were hopeful when we first saw OpenCM. However, that system appears to have its own set of problems. Currently, it is not more desirable than CVS.
miod: Despite a few minor annoyances, I am pretty satisfied with CVS. I know that a few developers have been considering other software, especially the promising OpenCM, but I have not been researching this myself. CVS matches my needs so far.
ORN: It was noted in a message by De Raadt that i386 and the PowerPC are not capable of doing per-page execute permission. Are there any plans to have a workaround that might be slower, but provide something similar to this?
miod: As far as I know, there are already workarounds (in 3.3 for PPC, post-3.3 for x86), which are a best effort to compensate for the lack of real X bit in these processors.
drahn: OpenBSD has an implementation of W^X protection for
i386 in
-current. The current version has been implemented with no
noticeable slowdown. Some issues have been raised that may require some
adjustment to the current strategy.
We have plans for slightly modified version of this strategy for PowerPC; however, coding for that has not started.
ORN: Two AMD Hammer (x86-64) boxes have been donated to the project so that OpenBSD will support this architecture. What are your thoughts about this processor? Is it better from a security standpoint than x86 (non-executable pages of memory, etc.)?
drahn: The Hammer implementation is much nicer in that it has a per-page execute bit; this allows W^X support with no special tricks. Other than this and a >32-bit address space, the machine is basically just a standard PC. OK, I have to admit that at the current time the fastest processors available are PCs (x86 based).
ORN: Have you considered writing system programs in a safer language than C?
miod: I don't know much about the "new" languages of the last few years (such as Ruby or C#). But among all the languages I know, I feel C is the best-suited for systems programming, if only because it provides very few barriers, thus allowing you to do exactly what you want to do. The drawback is that you have to be very careful in what you do, and sincerely, I'd rather have to be twice as more cautious than trusting a compiler and its runtime library to do this work for me. A friend of mine likes to describe OpenBSD as "craftsmen work," and I agree with him here. Craftsmen pay attention to all the details, and only C will let you check all the details.
drahn: The problem with writing code in most languages other than C is that what they really do is limit what the developer is able to do, or wrap the actions with additional code. This often comes at a cost of code speed or obscures the code.
ORN: Do you have a need for more developers, and if so, what do you need help with?
jason: Drivers. I could really use more good hands in the network driver area.
drahn: More developers would be good; however, managing new developers can actually use up more time than writing code ourselves. This is done with the hope they stay around until they are actually useful.
miod: I think every software project needs more developers -- the more, the better. In the OpenBSD case, a few filesystem, memory subsystem, and non-TCP/IP network gurus would be really appreciated, although every area of the whole system is worth working on.
ORN: What 10 improvements would you like to make to OpenBSD in the future?
- SMP-capable PowerPC
- ARM port?
- Firewire Support
- 802.11g support
- Additional PowerPC hardware support (non-Apple)
- Improved RAM support on PowerPC
- Improved support for newer Apple machines
- Mac PPC audio support
- Mac PPC laptop suspend support
- i386 W^X improvements, which are in progress
Cameron Laird is the vice president of Phaseit, Inc. and frequently writes for the O'Reilly Network and other publications.
George Peter Staplin is a student in Utah whose own programming focuses mainly on computer graphics. He works mostly with open-source variants of Unix, including OpenBSD.
Return to the BSD DevCenter.


text:
Researchers and companies are bringing movement back into the office with treadmill desks, walking meetings and games. Employees say it has helped them lose weight and be more productive.
'James Levine, an obesity expert at the Mayo Clinic came up with the idea of the treadmill desk. He says that since the 1960s, work spaces have been designed to minimize movement. It's a culturally ingrained mindset, he says, which dominates much of our lives today.
Levine is on a mission to get any kind of movement into the workplace and the workday and has consulted with a number of companies nationwide to help them do this. The most popular activity by far, he says, is the "walk and talk" meeting. "They're generally shorter, more productive, and people don't fall asleep during walk-and-talk meetings."'


text:
Tourism–Hammer's Department Store
Hammer's is a discount general store that has been in business for over 50 years.
Everything from tools to fabric to toys to knick knacks to ladies clothing can be found here at bargain prices.
Hammer's is located on the south side of the square in Winchester, Franklin County, TN.
A Little History:
Hammers is one of the last of the family-owned, small department stores, is made for browsing and exploring the old wooden counters for treasures, sometime among rejects. People from all around come to Hammer's just to see what kind of unique finds and bargains they can get.
Hammer's was also recently voted 2012 Franklin County's Finest Clothing Store by the readers of The Herald-Chronicle..
A.B. Hammer bought the store in 1955 and his son, Earl was the first manager. Earl is still working there alongside his sons, Joshua and Jonathan.
"Thank you to everyone who voted for us," said Earl. "We will try to keep bringing the merchandise you want for many more years!"
People have always taken great pleasure in checking out their amazing deals and to see the ever-changing stock.
Joshua said, "You really don't know who you'll see here from day to day. It can be quite colorful and fun to see so many people!"
Hammers is open Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m.-8 p.m., 967-2886.


text:
D&D's Story Manager Answers Your Questions on Camera 112
Anonymous Coward asks "halivar asked what influence computer games might have had on the design of 4th ed, but what about computer games that are going to use the D&D rule set having an influence on the design of 4th ed? None of the games based on 3/3.5ed appealed to me because of the over-complexity of the rules, I preferred the older titles such as Baldur's Gate that used 2nd ed. That's obviously a personal opinion, but I know it's not an uncommon one. So, were there any design choices made based on the fact that computer games will also use the system?"
skinfaxi asks "Does WotC think all players and DMs are male?"
BobMcD asks "I'm looking at the back of that specific Tiefling Wizard's sheet, and it seems to me that conversion is going right out the window. This 1st level character seems pretty beefy to me, in terms of sheer spell face-meltage. Does 'At-Will' really mean 'as much as you want, just so long as it is your turn'?"
bugnuts asks "How does the Open Gaming License affect WotC's view on computer programs? Does Wizards consider the actual rules, the type of map, the genre, the number of d20's, etc to be their IP?"


text:
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text:
The Sacramento Kings have traded forward Thomas Robinson to the Houston Rockets in a six-player deal.
Sacramento also sent forwards Francisco Garcia and Tyler Honeycutt to the Rockets and acquired forward Patrick Patterson, guard Toney Douglas, center Cole Aldrich and cash considerations from Houston.
Robinson, the No. 5 pick in the 2012 NBA Draft, has averaged 4.8 points and 4.7 rebounds through 51 games with the Kings.
Garcia, an eight-year veteran, is averaging 5.2 points and 1.7 rebounds through 40 games, while Honeycutt has appeared in just nine games this season, his second in the league.
Patterson has started 38 of the 47 games he played in with the Rockets this season. In his third NBA campaign, the 23-year-old Kentucky product has posted averages of 11.6 points and 4.7 rebounds per contest.
Douglas has played in 49 games backing up starting point guard Jeremy Lin, while Aldrich averaged 1.7 points in 30 games for Houston this season.
"We are excited about the addition of Patrick, Toney and Cole," said Kings president Geoff Petrie. "They will add skill and depth along with the potential for a different look to our roster. We all want to thank Francisco, Thomas and Tyler for their efforts and contributions."
According to the report in the Houston Chronicle, the Rockets also reached an agreement to send forward Marcus Morris to Phoenix for a future second-round pick.
Morris, 23, appeared in 54 games, including 17 starts, with the Rockets this season and averaged 8.6 points and 4.1 rebounds per contest.
The Kansas product will be reunited with twin brother Markieff, who currently plays for the Suns.
All four Houston players involved in the trades were not with the team during Wednesday's 122-119 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder.


text:
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - The Texas National Guard will furlough civil service employees beginning Monday, a consequence of the automatic federal spending cuts taking effect across the country.
The furlough will affect about 2,000 full-time civil service workers, amounting to about 10 percent of the entire Texas National Guard. The Austin American-Statesman reports (http://bit.ly/129nx08 ) they'll be placed on furlough for 11 nonconsecutive days through the end of September.
Col. Amy Cook says about 98 percent of the workers are active-duty military personnel. The furlough will mean a reduction of about a fifth of their income.
About 1,000 furloughed workers are from Central Texas, including some 500 from Camp Mabry.
While training will be affected, the National Guard will still be able to respond to emergencies. "It will just be a bit harder," Cook said.
(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


text:
College Football Final Exam Shootaround: Grantland Bids Adieu to the BCS
speaking of frenemies
Unverified Voracity Bids Crystal Adieu
It's over. Hooray?
And lo, it ended. It ended for us before the new year, and now it's all over, all of it: the season, the BCS, the goofy bowl scheduling. Next year, there are three large games on New Year's Eve and three large games on New Year's Day, two of which are national semifinals leading to a final the next week.
The BCS itself was sent off with a grander finale than it deserved, a taut back-and-forth affair between Florida State and pretty-much-arbitrarily-chosen Auburn that worked out, unlike near-arbitrary matchups that ended up in one sided blowouts with another team with a near-identical resume looked on in disgust. With the playoff these outrages have been reduced in intensity and spread over a greater number of teams, which seems like progress.
How long this holds before expansion and realignment kicks in, I don't know. I tend to think we'll end up with an eight-team playoff sooner rather than later, and from there who knows what happens. Someone will say "but we can get more money," probably, and then things spiral on and on.
At the very least, a bunch of bad ideas have ceased to impact college football, like
- Coaches voting on teams they haven't seen and have a huge conflict of interest about
- Retired coaches voting based on what Oklahoma was like in 1975
- Computer polls that can't take margin of victory or anything else into account
- Richard Billingsley
Whether the new ideas are better is yet to be seen; they almost can't be worse.
OH GOOD. Penn State may have been an incestuous mockery of an athletic department for years, but by God did they turn that around quickly. Bill O'Brien goes so well that an NFL team scoops him up after two years and their sanction-riddled mess of a program heading for a crater is about hire away…
#Vandy coach James Franklin has emerged as the clear frontrunner for the vacancy at #PennState, per source
— Bruce Feldman (@BFeldmanCBS) January 7, 2014
...the guy who turned Vanderbilt from a 2-10 type outfit into a consistent bowl participant and all-around thorn in the side of the SEC. Ace and I are trying to come up with the last Big Ten coach to have 1) a job at the time of his hire and 2) a resume better than Franklin's, and, well…
[12:22 PM] Ace: is it bad that kevin wilson was the first name that came to mind?
[12:22 PM] Brian Cook: #ImitateAdam_Jacobi
…we're having some difficulty. Ace throws out Dantonio, but Dantonio's record in three years at Cincinnati was 18-17. Best we've got is Gary Andersen at Wisconsin, who implemented a hugely impressive build at Utah State. But I dunno man, Vandy is coming off back to back 9-4 years. Vandy. Which is in the SEC.
Not sure how good of a cultural fit the fiery, weird Franklin (remember that thing about how he only hires guys with hot wives?) will be at Penn State, but for a team in their situation to poach the hot up and coming SEC guy is impressive.
Unless this is all agents getting their dude a raise, but there's a lot of smoke here indicating he's the guy. Which will mean Michigan is in a division with Urban, Dantonio, and Franklin. Plus Randy Edsall. It's not all bad, I guess.
That was awesome, do it more. Twitter was agog about the ESPN News section of ESPN's BCS overkill broadcast, as it featured coaches (and Chris Spielman and Matt Millen) with instant off the cuff reactions to what was going on. I was with Twitter. Spielman's fervor for assignments came through clearly as he steamed about Auburn's screen touchdown, and then Kevin Sumlin jumped in to say that is what Auburn does, they put the eye candy in front of you for just those reasons, and everything was just terrific.
A few suggestions:
- Everyone do this all the time. Seriously, I would watch Glen Mason in a room just dying in disgust as he tries to watch Michigan run the ball. This may qualify as torture under the Geneva Convention; if it doesn't, do it.
- The game is the most important bit, so make it the whole screen, with the coaches popping in with small PIP boxes. The All-22 camera angle combined with the smaller box for the actual game was problematic, and I have a huge TV. Maximize the game size; no need to cut to visuals of Spielman, et al., when I can hear them talking.
- Cut two guys. One guy to run things, one D guy, one O guy, and Spielman.
- Send small electric shocks to anyone who talks in platitudes, like Paul Chryst did much of the night.
Thumbs up.
What I have been trying to express all year. Smart Football profiles Gus Malzahn for Grantland. This is the core of the offensive philosophy that brought Auburn from 0-8 in the SEC to the precipice of the national title in one year with a converted cornerback at QB:
Malzahn had never been in charge of an offense before. Searching for help, he turned to a book famous in coaching circles, The Delaware Wing-T: An Order of Football, by Harold "Tubby" Raymond, and followed it "word-for-word."
The genius of Raymond's book is that it's not merely a collection of football plays, though there's still plenty of that. Instead, it's primarily a treatise on how to think about offensive football. "The Wing-T is more than a formation," Raymond wrote. "It is sequence football." The animating idea behind Raymond's "Delaware" wing-T was his belief that the best offenses were built around a tightly wound collection of plays that fit together so that defenses effectively dictated the next play; each time a team tries to stop one thing, it opens itself up to something else. Beginning in the 1950s and lasting into the early 2000s — first as an assistant under wing-T innovator David Nelson, then as head coach from the mid-1960s on — Raymond fielded teams that devastated defenses. If the opposition tried to stop his base plays, Raymond had counters to his counters, counters to his counters to his counters, and so on. He amplified this "sequential" approach by "utilizing the misdirection theme to its fullest." With a dizzying array of motions, backfield actions, and fakes, Raymond correctly determined that defenses wouldn't be able to stop his offense if they couldn't find the ball.
Auburn's offense is a modernized version of that. It's like Fritz Crisler, basically, except not as wacky. Michigan does not have a tightly wound collection of plays, partially because they can't execute basic runs and partially because that's just not how Al Borges rolls. Borges does have sets of plays that are interrelated, but instead of piling wrinkle on wrinkle like Malzahn does—his thing this year was double arc blocks…
…Borges goes to a different package once his previous stuff has been figured out. And they dispense with the frippery. To me that's a philosophical thing on par with huddling.
How do you run the ball in college football? The top 25 teams in yards per carry this year, with offense type appended (note: distinction between spread to run teams and passing spread teams largely based on how many yards the QB had. Generally spread to run teams had 500+ QB rushing yards, and usually 700+).
|Ohio State
|Spread to run
|Northern Illinois
|Spread to run
|Spread to run
|Spread to run
|New Mexico
|Spread to run
|Passing spread
|Spread to run
|Florida State
|Passing spread
|Georgia Tech
|Passing spread
|Spread to run
|Passing spread
|Boston College
|Spread to run
|Spread to run
|Texas A&M
|Spread to run
|Spread to run
|Passing spread
|Passing spread
|Western Kentucky
Yeah, it's possible to have a good running game by going under center and grinding it out, but is it likely? Four of the top 25 teams are pro-style outfits, one of which is Alabama and their overwhelming talent. Is Michigan going to be Wisconsin? I hope so, because that's the only way we get on this list.
Dolla dolla bill. We have money. Some of it comes from the only incompetent Germans.
According to a study done by the Portland Business Journal, Michigan's contract with Adidas (which is currently set to expire in 2016) is the most lucrative apparel deal in the country. Yes, more than Oregon's flashy contractual arrangement with Nike.
Per the study, Michigan currently receives a total of $8.2 million annually from Adidas stemming from the contract signed in 2007 between the two parties.
Michigan receives $4.4 million in equipment and apparel, and $3.8 million in cash. That's more than twice as much as the next-highest school in the Big Ten, Nebraska, which makes a total of $4 million from Adidas.
Part of that is the fact that Michigan has so many sports, which drives up the equipment and apparel bit. I wonder what will happen in 2016; that Most Favored Nation status Martin acquired has long driven ND crazy and Michigan's national appeal has… uh… suffered in recent years. The brand, if you will. Maybe we'll run an ad campaign about how we know our football is terrible so we changed our football sauce.
Etc.: Noah Spence got suspended for… ecstasy? See you at DEMF, bro. Bring your glowsticks. Here are the twitter jokes about this you need to read. Jake Butt makes Leno. Congrats? HAIL SPIELMAN.
BCS Realpolitik: Let the great Oregon–Florida State debate begin
Richard Billingsley is still awful.
BCS Realpolitik: Don't blame Northern Illinois. Blame the lame Big Ten and Big East.
Bill Hancock, ladies and gentlemen
Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last?
Unverified Voracity Quits English
Touchdown Billy Taylor. A trailer for Dan Chace's upcoming Billy Taylor documentary:
More Yost pictures. From new M hockey blog Yost Section 25:
The first Sunday matinee game is going to be a trip.
Game: stepped up. OSU just announced a series with TCU starting in 2018, which is somewhat notable since they've already got Cincinnati on the docket. If TCU is notable, this is jaw-dropping:
"We will play two more BCS games that year," [OSU AD Gene] Smith told Yahoo! Sports via email Wednesday, using the parlance for a quality top six-conference opponent.
Even if those are Colorado-style one-off guarantee games, dang. OSU may be done with the Little Sisters of the Poor:
"That year [2018] is a snapshot of future years," Smith said. "As we move forward, from 2018 and out, our goal is BCS only. We are looking at top ranked teams, 1-50 teams."
Here's a thing I never thought I'd say: Gene Smith, I am impressed. If OSU puts together a full slate of BCS opponents in 2018, that will be their first time since 1995 (4-8 BC, 7-4-1 Washington, and 2-9 Pitt) and second time since 1990.
Michigan's last all-power-conference lineup was in 1997, and Dave Brandon has a lot of work to do to keep up with the Joneses what with the Notre Dame series ending*.
*[ : ( ]
Playoff: a motivator. Wetzel points out a key motivator behind the sort of scheduling seen above:
In 1988, before the creation of the Bowl Alliance, the precursor to the BCS, there were 15 non-conference games where both teams were ranked in the AP preseason top 20. This year there were just two featuring AP preseason top 20 teams: Alabama-Michigan and Clemson-South Carolina.
While one of the BCS's oft-repeated talking points was that it protected the regular season, it was, in fact, destroying the non-conference portion.
Now it's back to the future as athletic directors across the country place their faith in a selection committee that will rationally analyze a body of work, not just blindly follow records.
For example, Oregon was ranked fifth in the final BCS standings last season, one spot behind Stanford. The Ducks had two losses, but one was to then top-ranked LSU on a neutral field. Stanford had just one loss, but it was to Oregon, by 23 points at home. The Ducks also won the Pac-12 title.
The BCS didn't care. It claimed Stanford was better. An informed selection committee would never make that decision and thus penalize Oregon for playing a challenging non-conference schedule. Conversely, a weak non-conference schedule might cost you on selection day.
Even Wisconsin says it will seek out "at least" two major opponents in the non-conference schedule. Man, the BCS sucked. Not only did it pick the wrong team about half the time, it also created the worst scheduling practices since things like Iowa Pre-Flight stopped existing.
Money is another factor, of course. With ticket prices rising along with guarantee requirements the money has started coming in on the side of actual games.
Trouba: the devil on skates. Three tweets from the immediate aftermath of Jacob Trouba's first practice at Michigan:
Couldn't sleep last night, kept having nightmares @jacobtrouba was going to put me out for the year in practice today
— Alex Guptill (@alexguptill) October 4, 2012
With @jacobtrouba hope he doesn't eat my laptop..barbarian #JMFT #killer
— Adam Janecyk (@ajanny30) October 4, 2012
With the man, the myth, the legend. JMFT! #openicehits #killer @mchiasson3 twitter.com/ajtrea23/statu…
— Aj Treais (@ajtrea23) October 4, 2012
I think we are going to like Mr. Trouba.
Goalie: ack. In less sunny news, Red Berenson revealed that projected starting goalie Jared Rutledge had retina surgery recently and may not be available early in the season. Meanwhile, top backup Steve Racine is also coming back from injury:
Racine underwent an offseason surgery that limited his physical activity, Berenson said.
"He's just starting to get close to 100 percent, but he looks pretty good," Berenson said.
Racine is 21 after a long junior career and will be a nice guy to have on the roster—not every 5'6" walkon is going to be the statistically-best goalie in Michigan history.
Ain't got no headset. Hoke on WXYT:
"It is overrated," Hoke said Thursday on an interview with the Stoney and Bill Show on WXYT 97.1-FM. "You ever watch guys on head sets and they don't say a word? This gives me an opportunity to coach kids during a game.
"The game is a mental game, it's a game of motivation and enthusiasm and teaching. Not wearing a headset, I get to teach on the sideline and be a part of it."
As for the question of whether or not he knows what play offensive coordinator Al Borges is sending in, Hoke says he doesn't need a headset to hear that.
"I do know what the calls are, because there's a guy standing right behind me who tells me every call that's going in," Hoke said.
People keep bombing the Vincent Smith call, but when two linemen don't pull that's not really on the playcall.
Also Hoke likes "Smoke on the Water," surprising no one. I would watch a sitcom based around the misadventures of 20-year-old Brady Hoke in Muncie. I would break that thing down.
Oh for the love of God. Two sentences from two PR things I received today:
Heart of Dallas, a newly minted nonprofit, exists to inspire Dallas millennials to become the next generation of influencers and philanthropists by leveraging a consistent calendar of sports and entertainment events. Proceeds from Heart of Dallasactivities will be used to invest in collective impact strategies that make Dallas a better place.
make it stop
Flagstar had an interest in co-branding with our digital properties and we're excited to have them partner on our website and student loyalty program. We look forward to having Flagstar as a partner in our top-rated digital space on the collegiate level.
if you roll your eyes too hard do you evaporate into a mist of condescension
AAAAAAAAH!!! Do you need to bore someone to death? LITERALLY TO DEATH? DO YOU NEED SOMEONE SO BORED THEY MELT?!?!?! THIS IS WHAT YOU NEEEEEED.
Etc.: Ed O'Bannon lawsuit forces ESPN to release a ton of contracts. Go Ed O'Bannon lawsuit. GLI would move back indoors if the Winter Classic is lost to the NHL lockout. Game preview from Hammer and Rails. Guys don't have names like Adolph "Germany" Schulz anymore.