text: In 2013, Travis begins his third season as Penske Racing NASCAR Competitive Director. As a competitive director, Geisler is responsible for all facets of the Penske Racing's championship-winning NASCAR racing programs and he serves as a liaison for the organization's crew chiefs and the team's engineering departments. Geisler reports directly to Penske Racing V.P. of Operations, Michael Nelson. A Pittsburgh-area native, Geisler comes from a racing family. His father Lynn, races dirt Late Models and is in the Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame. His brother Ben is Chief Marketing Officer for the World Racing Group. Geisler began racing go-karts at age 14 and moved to dirt Late Models two years later. He advanced to NASCAR's Weekly Racing Series, where he competed for four years in Late Models. After receiving his degree in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University, Geisler raced six races in the Auto Zone Elite Series and an ARCA Series event. In 2004, he competed in a dozen Nationwide Series races for DCT Motorsports and worked full-time at the race shop. He came to Penske Racing in November 2006 to serve as team engineer on the No. 12 Dodge and was subsequently promoted to the position of crew chief of the No. 77 Cup Series teammid-way through the 2008 season.


text:
Atlanta's Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children
It creates a true picture of the impact of these murders and an argument that they were covered up by a city on the rise…
It creates a true picture of the impact of these murders and an argument that they were covered up by a city on the rise…
A hopeful celebration of female camaraderie and strength.
Roger Ebert on James Ivory's "Howards End".
"The Ballad of Narayama" is a Japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. What a space it opens…
Chaz Ebert essay about the cancellation of Ebertfest 2020 and presenting an exclusive video of Ebertfest 2019.
A whimsical ode to the comic book character She-Hulk, who will be receiving her own Disney+ series.
A video essay celebrating Richard Lester's maligned masterpiece, Juggernaut.
Chaz Ebert essay about the cancellation of Ebertfest 2020 and presenting an exclusive video of Ebertfest 2019.
A correspondent offers her advice on stuff to binge during the quarantine.
Recommendations from Far Flung Correspondent Seongyong Cho about films other than Parasite that represent the best in modern South Korean film.
A review of the WWII drama series World on Fire, which premieres stateside on PBS on April 5.
A review of Doom Eternal.
In this 50th year of the James Bond series, with the dismal "Quantum of Solace" (2008) still in our minds, "Skyfall" triumphantly reinvents 007 in one of the best Bonds ever. This is a full-blooded, joyous, intelligent celebration of a beloved cultural icon, with Daniel Craig taking full possession of a role he earlier played well in "Casino Royale," not so well in "Quantum" -- although it may not have been entirely his fault. Or is it just that he's growing on me? I don't know what I expected. I don't know what I expected in Bond No. 23, but certainly not an experience this invigorating.
The movie's innovations begin in its first shots, which abandon the familiar stalking silhouettes in the iris lens, and hit the ground running. Bond and another agent are in Istanbul, chasing a man who has stolen a crucial hard drive, and after a chase through city streets (involving no less than three Fruit Cart Scenes), 007 is running on top of a train. We know from earlier films that Bond can operate almost anything, but "Skyfall" incredibly has him commandeer of a giant Caterpillar and continue the chase by crushing a flatcar filled with VW Beetles.
It's the kind of absurd stunt we expect in a Bond movie, but this one relies on something unexpected: a dead-serious M (Judi Dench), following the action from MI6 in London and making a fateful decision. After an enemy agent grabs Bond as a human shield, M's other agent, Eve (Naomie Harris), has both men in her gun sights. The stakes are very high. "Take the shot!" M commands. Bond seems to die, although since this happens around the 20-minute mark, we're not very surprised that he doesn't.
M begins to compose the obituary of Commander James Bond, and she might as well also be writing her own. Time has passed her by, she's older, and her new boss, Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), convenes a public (!) hearing requiring her to defend her tenure. It's time for a generation to be put out to pasture. Even Q and, as it turns out, Miss Moneypenny are practically kids.
M is not quite ready to retire, and "Skyfall" at last provides a role worthy of Judi Dench, one of the best actors of her generation. She is all but the co-star of the film, with a lot of screen time, poignant dialogue, and a character who is far more complex and sympathetic than we expect in this series. The film is guided by a considerable director (Sam Mendes), written by the heavyweights Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan, and delivers not only a terrific Bond but a terrific movie, period. If you haven't seen a 007 for years, this is the time to jump back in.
There's a theory that you can grade the Bonds on the quality of their villains. In "Skyfall," this is a cerebral megalomaniac named Silva, played by Javier Bardem, whose unpronounceable Anton Chigurh in "No Country for Old Men" approached the high-water mark of Hannibal Lecter. Here he plays a bleached blond computer whiz who stole the drive containing the guarded identities of every MI6 agent. Are we supposed to think of Julian Assange?
This is a brand-new Bond with love and respect for the old Bond. This is dramatized during Bond's visit to the weathered Scottish mansion inhabited by Kincade (Albert Finney), which has secrets to divulge and continues the movie's rewriting of the character's back story. During the early Bonds, did we ever even ask ourselves about 007's origins in life? "Skyfall" even produces a moment designed to inspire love in Bond fans: a reappearance of the Aston Martin DB5 from "Goldfinger," which remains in good operating condition.
Just as Christopher Nolan gave rebirth to the Batman movies in "The Dark Knight," here is James Bond lifted up, dusted off, set back on his feet and ready for another 50 years. And am I completely misguided when I expect to see Miss Moneypenny become a Bond girl in the next film?
I'm double-posting my review of "Skyfall" to encourage comments, which my main site can't accept.
To read or leave comments on this review, click here.
This message came to me from a reader named Peter Svensland. He and a fr...
A review of the new miniseries Unorthodox, now playing on Netflix.
While the pandemic will pass, our awareness of each other should not.
A tribute to the late director, Stuart Gordon.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Like most people, I love vacation.
Sadly, I'm just not good at it.
If I go on vacation for 5 days, I can't even enjoy it until day 4.5.
I've considered practicing my vacation skills, but I never seem to have enough time to get away.
But this week this all changes.
On Thursday and Friday, I will be taking two days of sweet sweet vacation time. It's possible I will even take the weekend as an extended vacation.
And I am looking forward to it.
No getting to the office early.
No phone calls to return.
No 75 emails per day in my inbox.
No students or teachers asking "Do you have a minute?"
No making a decision which automatically makes half the people mad at me.
Just peace and quiet.
Just me and Buddy the Dog laying around watching bad TV (technically he just might be sleeping).
I've been looking forward to this short vacation for weeks.
What I'm not looking forward to is the surgery.
But my wife is. She really doesn't want to have two Evil Spawns running around.
I may write a blog during this vacation. I'm guessing I'll think I'm hilarious while hopped up on valium. Maybe it will be about the bond of shared experiences Buddy and I will now "enjoy".


text:
Padres rally in wild eighth without notching hit
Nady, Smith score on Rockies' errant throws with bases loaded
SAN DIEGO -- In the first two weeks of the season, Seth Smith has helped the Padres win games with his bat. He's even made a few dandy catches in left field to thwart potentially big innings.
On Monday night, Smith found a way to help his new team win a game again -- albeit through unconventional methods, especially if you count his speed and headiness among his best assets.
Smith scored the go-ahead run during an eighth-inning rally that included three walks and no hits as the Padres stunned the Rockies, 5-4, before a crowd of 14,784 at Petco Park.
"You never know how a game is going to play out," said Padres manager Bud Black. "But this game of baseball takes some twists and turns."
And peculiar ones, at that.
In a game they once trailed 4-0, the Padres rallied for three runs in the fifth inning and then watched -- and watched is the key word -- as Rockies reliever Rex Brothers walked the bases full in the eighth and then watched him nearly work out of the mess he created.
Xavier Nady and Smith reached base on walks to start the inning, only after Smith nearly popped a bunt up for an out. The Padres (6-7) took the bunt sign off and he walked. After Brothers got Jedd Gyorko to fly out and Chase Headley to line out to center field, Yonder Alonso walked to load the bases.
That set the stage for Yasmani Grandal to put his team ahead, though he probably never figured that it would happen without making contact.
Brothers ran the count to 2-1 and then missed outside on a fastball as the ball skipped past catcher Wilin Rosario. That allowed Nady to score easily from third base. Rosario retrieved the ball and fired it back in the direction of the plate, only to see it miss wide as Smith, alertly, kept running.
Smith, who nearly made the first out of the inning on his bunt attempt, ended up scoring the go-ahead run.
In the span of seconds, a 4-3 Rockies lead dissolved into a 5-4 deficit.
"I can't remember the last time I saw that play," Black said.
Alonso, who watched the play unfold as he was rounding the bases, wasn't surprised in the least that it was Smith who scored all the way from second base.
"He's sneaky fast," Alonso said. "It was a heads-up play by everyone. It was a lucky bounce. It feels like the first one we've had here in [my] three years."
Smith admitted that he might have slowed briefly coming around third base, though third-base coach Glenn Hoffman was urging him to keep going. It's a good thing he didn't stop.
"In that situation, I'm going to go for it and make them make that play," Smith said. "You don't usually score two runs without a hit."
The Padres, who have won four of their last five games, hung around on Monday even though Rockies pitcher Jordan Lyles looked good early, taking a two-hit shutout into the fifth inning.
But the Padres scored three runs in the inning as Tommy Medica, pinch-hitting for pitcher Eric Stults, got a fastball to drive, lining it into left field for an RBI double. Later in the inning, Everth Cabrera knocked in a run with a double while Alexi Amarista had an RBI triple to right field to make it 4-3.
"I like the way our guys hung in there," Black said.
That extended to, Black said, Stults, who allowed three earned runs on nine hits with two walks over five innings. His line was a little deceiving, as Black said his overall stuff was actually pretty good.
"Stults doesn't give in. He's not going to give in and give you something to the middle of the plate. He still pitches to the edges of the plate when he gets in trouble," said Rockies manager Walt Weiss.
The Padres' bullpen combined for four scoreless innings, as Nick Vincent got out of a bases-loaded mess left by Alex Torres after three walks in the sixth inning. Dale Thayer (1-0) got the victory by tossing a scoreless eighth inning and Huston Street worked a 1-2-3 ninth inning for his fourth save in as many chances.
The Rockies (6-8) looked good early on, as they scored an unearned run in the third inning and then got an RBI single by DJ LeMahieu in the fourth inning. Rosario's home run to left field in the fifth inning left the Padres down 4-0.
But at that point, there was still plenty of time to get back into the game. In the bottom of the fifth inning, the Padres used their bats to score three runs. In the eighth inning, they didn't need to.
"We sort of stole that one," Alonso said, smiling.


text:
1977: First high-load Torlon® ball bearings
1987: First titanium runner blocks
1992: First AirBlock® design
1995: Hydraulic genoa leads
First carbon fiber drums & pedestal system: aluminum housing, titanium and stainless steel gears
2000: Titanium ULC* blocks; CRX* Roller Traveler cars; 65 halyard winch with simplified gearing system: easy to take apart and maintain
2003: Refine ULC blocks: titanium sideplates, composite bushing bearings, Torlon® thrust balls; 1111 primary winch with faster shifting mechanism
2007: TTR* block, soft attachment LOUPs™, titanium roller bearings, aluminum sheaves
Winch design review and weight reduction: oil-bath bevel gear box design, faster disconnect systems, aerodynamic carbon pedestal handle
*ULC - Ultra-light Composite*TTR - Titanium Roller Bearings*CRX – Captive Roller (Extreme)
Sir Peter Blake
Yachtsman Sir Peter Blake, KBE (Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire)(1948-2001), was known for his charisma, honesty, leadership, and talent. He competed in five Whitbreads, winning one in 1989. In 1994, he won the Jules Verne Trophy, setting a new circumnavigation record. His overwhelming 1995 America's Cup triumph with the fully Harken-equipped Team New Zealand launched Harken's winch business. In 2000, Blake led Team New Zealand to the first victorious defense of the America's Cup by a non-American team.
Sir Peter Blake grew up sailing off New Zealand's North Island where he acquired a love of nature, going on to found Blakexpeditions, an organization committed to promoting awareness of environmental issues through expeditions around the world. He felt that both individuals and governments were responsible for protecting the environment and that education was the starting point. At 53 he was killed by pirates during an expedition on the Amazon.
Stainless steel ball bearings, bushings, and cast sideplates-heavy,plagued with friction.
Torlon® Ball Bearings and Titanium Sideplates
We wanted to develop a line of Big Boat blocks. The Delrin® bearings in our dinghy blocks wouldn't work because they couldn't handle the loads. Metal bearings reduced block size, but they were heavy. What we wanted was a strong, low-friction plastic bearing that could handle extremely high loads. We figured somewhere in the world some crazy scientist would have the goop we needed. Amoco hadjust released Torlon® for commercial use. It was the toughest plastic in the world. The material was perfect for our prototype mainsheet block.
We were small boat builders and didn't know many big boat sailors in the U.S. We met the Swedish America's Cup team at the 1976 SORC in Florida, and asked if they would test a prototype Big Boat mainsheet block on 12-Meter Sverige, their entry in the 1977 Cup. After the series, the team told us our mainsheet block was the only one they didn't have to replace.
The America's Cup is a perfect arena to develop and test new products. The guys are out sailing every day for eight hours and are merciless on the equipment. We estimate the AC provides us with 10 years of hard testing in just one year. We use this information to improve our standard product line.
For the next 10 years, we focused on developing Big Boat blocks and travelers for offshore racing and America's Cup boats. At the 1987 Cup in Fremantle, we introduced titanium runner blocks for the first time. They were aboard over a dozen 12-Meters, including America II, French Kiss, Heart of America,and Kookaburra.
At the 1992 AC in San Diego, Bill Koch, Buddy Melges, and the guys won the Cup with America3 using high-load titanium AirBlocks®. Sheaves were designed to remove excess weight and roller bearings replaced the composite bearings used in our other titanium blocks. The AirBlock® surpassed all of our goals and is now part of Harken's Big Boat Black Magic® line.
It was time to take the next step-carbon fiber winches. We knew if we got into the AC winch game we'd really have to commit ourselves. It would be dangerous, because if we failed, the whole world would know. It's like entering the bull ring. Don't go looking for praise, cheering, and backslapping, because you're going to get bloodied. We told our guys here, "Guys, the pressure is going to be horrendous. At times we'll be working night and day. No whining."
A longstanding friendship between Harken distributor John Street and New Zealand syndicate head Sir Peter Blake opened the door for us. When talking with Blake he asked us, "Can you guarantee your winches will be successful?" We said, "We can't guarantee anything other than that we'll work our butts off to keep you sailing; we'll work around the clock if we need too."
Our winches had carbon fiber drums, a first in the industry, and were much lighter than the competition's. Blake also liked the idea of our service and took a chance. New Zealand won the Cup and everybody started looking at our winches. It was the first time in modern Cup history that one company had provided complete deck hardware and winch packages to both America's Cup finalists—this has continued to today.
We often ask ourselves, "How many times can we reinvent the wheel?" We get pressure from America's Cup syndicates. "You gotta solve this, you gotta solve that." If we say we don't have an answer,they say, "You must!" So we do.
Västmannagatan 81 B, SE-113 26 Stockholm, Sweden Tel: 0303-618-75 | Fax: 0303-618-76 Email: email@example.com our other locations


text:
Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) Server Survey
August 1st, 2009
As indicated by the above table, of the 5,102 servers queried, only 867 servers responded with a banner that allow us to identify the software being used. All of the remaining information in this report is based on the responses that allowed us to identify the software in use.
Security Audits | Managed DNS | Network Monitoring | Site Analyzer | Internet Research Reports
Web Probe
© 1998-2020 E-Soft Inc. All rights reserved.


text:
Ruffy necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 54 diseños de 22 diseñadores freelance.
Urban geek is a urban cool, streets smart, extremely creative and cutting edge Australian based online sales business that represents blue chip international sites in the Australian market such as http://www.heavy.com , http://www.GGL.com and http://www.bittorrent.com.
Digital Scope
Digital scope sells advertising in the UK on very cool global websites such as ufc.com, heavy.com, collegehumour.com, break media etc. The company is renown for its specatcular ad formats and integrated environments.
The company is very creative and always pushing the boundaries, also prides its self on understanding its very large online audiences. We want to be posistioned as a global publisher, with an edge...
our main clients are media buyers (which fall into the 21-25 year old age group). We deal with very cool brands, as we have a very cool audience.
The Geeks are a cool bunch of talents guys that know allthings about video sites and how to make money off them. The Urban Geek team isabout "making and shaking the market", we work extremely closely with thepublishers we represent, have a firm grasp of the local industry, have strongdeep seeded relationships with all the major media buying agencies, understandyour audiences and develop award winning integrated campaigns. A good referencesite is http://www.davinci-aus.com/ whichwe like the layout, clean and clear navigation, also fantastic use of imagery.Really want to get across that the business is extremely professional , yetrocknroll.
We want a logo that will reflect as a global company, but have edginess to it. must encaptulate and reflect our companies key drivers. - creativity, understanding our audience, digital experts and marketing gurus.
- 1. 8 separate pages headed, about the geeks,clients, our work, what we do, what we don't do, contacting the geeks and a geeksforum page
2. Made easily to be searched optimised
3. Clean and clear navigation
no clutter
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


text:
All categories
Welcome to the new 2pg.com. We offer you all the best in online 2 player games and much more. We started out as a strictly multiplayer games site, but we've also gathered many other games since.All the games are tagged and put in categories. You can filter and rank games based on poularity, ranking, votes and more. You can even add all your favorite games to your own favorites list. Just press on the heart symbol of a game you like and the game will be automatically added to your personal favorites list, accessible by the link in the menubar. The site is also fully compatible with all the major mobile devices. Whether it's iPad, iPhone, Android or Windows Phone, you will always be able to play online games here at 2pg.com. When you visit the site, games that are incompatible for your mobile device will be hidden, so you'll only see games that you can play!


text:
Gambling company Tatts looks set to reap $540 million in compensation after it won a court battle against the Victorian government.
But a similar bid from Tabcorp for $686 million failed in the Victorian Supreme Court on Thursday.
Victorian government lawyers are weighing up an appeal after Victorian Supreme Court Justice Kim Hargrave ordered the government pay $450 million plus interest to gambling firm Tatts.
Tatts and Tabcorp lost their exclusive duopoly on gambling machines outside Crown Casino in 2009.
Tatts chief executive Robbie Cooke said they expected more than $89 million in interest on top of the $450 million.
"Further details will be provided once orders on interest and costs have been made and once it is known if the state will appeal the decision," Mr Cooke said in a statement.
A statement from Tabcorp said it was reviewing the judgment before deciding whether to appeal.
Treasurer Michael O'Brien said the state government's lawyers had 14 days to decide whether to appeal against the decision, which is likely to cost $540 million.
He said the decision to change the Gambling Regulation Act was made by the previous Labor government.
"Should the Tatts Group decision stand it will result in a significant cost to the Victorian community," Mr O'Brien told reporters on Thursday.
"It's a very material blow to the state budget."
A Labor spokesman said contracts signed by the Kennett Government with Tattersalls in 1995 were to blame for the payout.
"However if the government is confident of its case than it should strongly consider appealing," the spokesman said.
Justice Hargrave accepted the state government's argument that awarding new licences in 2008 and 2009 did not trigger a terminal payment provision in the contract with Tabcorp.
"In the context of the clear purpose of the terminal payment provision, the court noted the unfairness of this result, but concluded that the statutory language was too strict to allow the alternative interpretation contended for by Tabcorp," Justice Hargrave's judgment said.
But Justice Hargrave did uphold a similar claim by Tatts, which also had a terminal payment provision included in its gaming operator's licence when Tabcorp was privatised in 1995.
He said changes to the Gambling Regulation Act in 2009 did not override Tatts' entitlement to a payout.
Tabcorp had argued that when the government privatised the Victorian TAB and listed Tabcorp on the share market in 1994, it enacted a law that guaranteed Tabcorp a payment when its 18-year licence expired.
Tatts' claim had sought compensation following the expiration of its gaming operator's licence under an agreement made in 1995.
Mr O'Brien said a hearing on Friday would determine the amount of interest the court required the government to pay.


text:
Get the Best Water Ionizer Available -- a 7-Plate Water Ionizer Direct from the Manufacturer for $895!"
Announcing…the new
Dear Friend,
I was shocked!
...when he said well over $4,000 after taxes, shipping & handling! That was the cost of the alleged top water ionizer and I was thinking: "Is it made of Gold?" (I'll refer to it as "KG" for legal reasons). I was sold on the benefits, having studied some of the medical research from Japan. Even Japan's version of the FDA and AMA endorses the use of ionized water.
But the price?! I had to think there was a better way.
Water Ionizers Flooding The U.S. Market
Even though Water Ionizers have been popular for over 25 years in the Orient the United States is just now catching on to the benefits of alkaline water. Because of this growing demand many Asian Manufacturers (primarily Japan, China, and Korea) have recognized the income potential. Especially when the leading brand sells for $4,000!!. Hence many Asian manufacturers are now producing water ionizers at lower prices.
I'm sure you've seen the other brands (other than "KG") online costing anywhere from $2,500, even as low as $1,200. You'll find most of them have the same features: 7 platinum plates, self-cleaning, ORP claims, warranty, etc, etc., etc.
Some talk to you. Some have fancy lights. But bells and whistle aside they all seem basically the same in function. Or at least they seemed the same. But are they really?
Why They're Overpriced:
Even if the claims and health benefits were only 1/2 true maybe it would justify the high price.
But I still had a suspicion that the price was due to one or more of the following:
It turns out that sales compensation (1 & 2) accounts for the majority of the high price. And while some parts (like the Platinum process for the plates) are a bit costly, none of them are made of gold.
So we began to research the water ionizer industry, the manufacturers, and the many units on the market to try and determine the best water ionizer. We took them apart and our resident "electronics" and "electrical" expert (one of the top electrical engineers on the planet – more on him later) soon revealed several shocking facts:
These shortcomings convinced us to design and create the World's Best Water Ionizer, one that used the safest materials, better electronics, higher quality,and better design features. After all that we still wanted to offer it at a better price than anyone other 7-Plate ionizer.
How To Get The World's Best Water Ionizers – At An Incredible Price
We did it! We put together the best water ionizer, at a better price with technology that is even better than the high priced models—the incredible Alive Water Ionizer! It's the result of taking the pros and cons of other ionizer brands to make the most complete ionizer system available today. It leaves out the flaws of other brands (including charging people too much!)
Think about this: Why would you buy an older technology ionizer for 2 to 4 times the price, when you can buy the best water ionizer in the world, with the latest advancements, for less? It doesn't make sense.
The Alive Water Ionizer is so much more than a simple water Ionizer and Purifier. It's a powerful new WATER HEALTH SYSTEM that's years ahead of the field. Before you purchase a water ionizer anywhere else, READ THIS LETTER CAREFULLY. It could save you a lot of money and keep you from buying an ionizer that won't even do half of what you hope it will. Avoid that disappointment. Take a close look at the incredible NEW Alive Water Ionizer.
FDA Approved "Safe Plastics" – This is the only ionizer sold in the U.S. I know of that uses safe plastics for all parts that carry water. Most plastics leech chemicals that can mimic hormones. These hormones can cause sensitive tissues, such as a woman's breast and a mans prostate, to absorb toxins and potentially cause cell mutations.
ETL Certified – This is the only Water Ionizer in the world that has passed the stringent ETL Certification, which is nearly impossible to gain by ionizers made overseas. If it gets plugged into a household outlet, it needs to be ETL certified by an independent laboratory as being electronically safe. It is much more stringent than the UL or CE certifications. Unlike our competitors who skip this important step, all our water ionizers are ETL certified safe. This certification uses over 200 criteria to determine that a machine is safe, and that the factory is monitored to comply with these standards.
Advanced Electronics For Affordable "Under-Counter" Installation – One of our friends saw the Alive Water Ionizer and installed it on his counter, via the faucet. But his wife said "What's that thing on my counter?" She didn't want it there. So despite what we think is a "modern look," we incorporated advanced electronics to allow under-counter installation (using an optional faucet). If you haven't looked, most of the under-counter water ionizers run an extra $1,000. Our "Dual faucet" is under $180, and includes color coded hoses and quick-connect connectors for easy installation. You can also add it later.
Affordable Activated Carbon Filter - We don't believe in over-charging for replacement filters. Based on reviews of water ionizers, our Carbon Filter at $40 compared to $110 for the top selling model is a much better value. This state-of-the-art water filter removes chlorine, benzene, trihalomethane, radon, pesticides, VOCs and hundreds of other harmful pollutants found in tap water. It also removes unpleasant odors and acts as an antibacterial/antimicrobial agent. And its extended filter life is 6,000 liters which means it will last approximately one year. Most expensive water ionizers use a filter that last only six months.
RTI Distinct - This new electroplate technology uses less energy while actually extending the plate life. No other model uses this technology.
Large LCD TouchPad Controls – The panel displays pH level; electrolysis activity and flow rate; water temperature; self-cleaning and filter replacement indicators; Oxidation Reduction Potential (ORP); and water levels. It's bigger and easier to read than the most expensive brand.
PH Levels - 7 Presets – (20% more than more expensive brands) Includes: 4 ionized alkaline presets (continuous variability pH 7.5 to 10.5 and ORP 0 to -550); Purified water (filters without changing pH); 2 acidic water presets (continuous variability, pH 5.5 to 6.5 and ORP 0 to +600).
Easier to Install – Our installation process is going to save you hours of work. We really thought the whole process through to make it easier and stress-free. Each water line and connection is color–coded (like many computers and TV sets today). And each connector is "quick-connect," eliminating the need for additional tools.
Limited Lifetime Warranty – We warrant all our water ionizers to be free from defects in materials and workmanship under normal operation and use; and we'll repair or replace the unit under the terms of the warranty for as long as the unit is owned by the original purchase.
You Save $600 off the Regular Price of $1495
And We'll Ship It For Free!
Email us:firstname.lastname@example.com
Common Questions & Answers
Q: The Alive Water Ionizer looks better than other ionizers on the market, yet this special price is so reasonable. How can you possibly do that?
A: We design and manufacture our own product and we only sell online, which allows us to ship directly from our U.S. warehouse to your home.
Because we don't sell through stores, infomercials, or Multi-Level Distributors we can keep our overhead low and return the savings to you. These "middle-men" (or "middle-women") can easily increase an ionizers price 47-78%.
Because we've sold thousands of air purifiers (aliveair.com) our manufacturing is state-of-the-art. By keeping our overhead low we can offer you a better ionizer, the best water ionizer, for a better price.
Q: How does it compare to the expensive brands when it comes to reliability?
A: Great question. We believe (and know from our customers) that our product is much more durable that others. We are the only ones (to date of this) who have paid to have the ETL ratings - that's because we knew we could pass their stringent tests.
And because we run a "tight ship" without a lot of overhead we can do periodic upgrades without having to wait as long as our competitors. So you can get the best water ionizer which is alos the most current water ionizer.
Q: What is your shipping policy?
A: We ship Ground directly from our warehouse, and usually get your order to the courier within 3 Business Days. Then it takes 2-5 days from the time we ship (faster for the West Coast, slower to go east).
We include a secondary quality control before we ship any machine out to insure that everything is working to specs. If you need faster service please consider the 2nd Day Delivery options.
Q: Can I talk to a person live before ordering.
A: Yes. We realize this is a big expense and we'd love to help and answer any questions by phone. You can call us at 1-888-265-3232 or send us an email.
Q: Are you legitimate?
A: Yes. I know buying online makes some people nervous. We've been in the business of selling air purifiers (aliveair.com) and other health products for over 30 years. You can visit our regular website at
Order Your Alive Water Ionizer Today
Only $895
You Save $600 off the Regular Price of $1495
And We'll Ship It For Free!
Email us:firstname.lastname@example.com
Or Skype:
Or Go "Under-Counter" with this special offer:
***Alive Water Ionizer Under-Counter SPECIAL***
(Alive Water Ionizer, Ionizer Faucet, with All Hoses and Connections)
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Turing School of Software & Design
The Turing School is on a mission to unlock human potential by training a diverse and inclusive student body to succeed in high-fulfillment technical careers. Founded in Denver in 2014, Turing is a 501(c)(3) non-profit while also being the most diverse, experienced, rigorous, and successful developer training program in the world.
40Local Employees


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Attention Users: Please see www.californiadgstats.ca.gov
for the latest CA solar data and statistics.
In the coming months, www.californiadgstats.ca.gov will become the new public reporting site for the
California Solar Initiative (CSI), net energy metering (NEM) and other programs.
Welcome to California Solar Statistics
California Solar Statistics (CSS) is the official public reporting site of the California Solar Initiative (CSI), presented jointly by the CSI Program Administrators and the California Public Utilities Commission. Here you will find actual program data summaries for the CSI General Market, Multifamily Affordable Solar Housing (MASH), and Single Family Affordable Solar Homes (SASH) programs as well as solar PV NEM interconnection data. Data is provided in several figures and tables, and can also downloaded for analysis.
Net Energy Metering (NEM) Interconnection Data Now Available
Interconnection data on California Solar Statistics fully captures solar PV net energy metering (NEM) participation in IOU territories (PG&E, SCE and SDG&E). NEM interconnection data sets undergo data integrity tests to ensure data quality, and are currently refreshed monthly. Due to the very large number of data entries, and because the data have been collected by different departments using different protocols, there are some remaining differences between the CSI and the NEM data – please see the "Read Me" file with each data set for more information. At present, the graphs and tables on this website represent only the CSI Working Data Set. New NEM interconnection data will be incorporated into the graphs and tables in the coming months. Download NEM Interconnection and CSI Data.
How to Use California Solar Statistics
View Solar Statistics
From the average cost per watt of a solar system, to the city with the most roof-top solar, to the total number of MW installed, the View Solar Statistics menu provides the most up-to-date information on the California Solar Initiative. The dynamic filters on each figure allow you to slice and dice the program data to suit your research and evaluation needs. Explore the View Solar Statistics menu at the top of the left navigation to get started.
Find an Active Solar Contractor
Looking for a solar contractor? Want to know how your current contractor stacks up against the competition? Find and compare solar contractors working in your area with just a few quick clicks.
Download NEM Interconnection and CSI Data
Get your hands on the data behind the figures and tables. Spreadsheets containing comprehensive information for the entire program are available here for download.
Looking for a specific project or want to see all the projects in a certain utility's territory? Search for pending and completed projects by any combination of Program Administrator, Customer Sector, Application Status or Program Type.
FAQs and Facts
Get the answers to your California Solar Statistics-related questions by visiting the FAQ.


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Cold War-era tourist sites feature weapons of mass attraction
In the early 1980s, when I was a fifth-grader at Jefferson Elementary School, in a small town in Minnesota, our teacher, Mr. Odegaard, asked us if we wanted to see something. We did. So he took us down a little-used stairway, through a door and into a tunnel beneath our school. He flicked on the lights. The sound of our shuffling feet echoed down a long, dark corridor.
"The walls down here are solid concrete," I remember him telling us, "and you need three feet to stop gamma rays. When the Russians launch their missiles, this is where I'm coming!"
Mr. Odegaard was an unusual teacher and one of my favorites. He felt that we should know about the real world, in addition to multiplication and division, geography and grammar. He also explained -- in great detail -- the finer points of the nuclear winter.
"Beta rays," he told us, "those are dangerous, but they can't go very far. Gamma rays. Those are the ones you have to worry about. Gamma rays can go right through anything."
I don't remember how far he said gamma rays could go, but I do remember that it seemed impossibly far. There was no escape. Gamma rays would go everywhere and pollute everything until the end of time. I also remember how it all felt so close at hand, how it only would take a few foolish minutes for the last war to begin.
Another day around that same time, I was sitting outside with my best friend Jon discussing this when he told me that after the missiles were launched, his dad was going to drive them to ground zero, because he didn't want them to die slow, painful deaths. I had no idea what my family's plans were.
Such were the dilemmas of the Cold War, which seems so strange and distant now. I was thinking about this recently when I stumbled across the mention of an abandoned missile facility south of Minneapolis, where I live. So I drove for an hour and finally turned down a dirt road that rolled through cornfields until it came up onto a high, wide hill, where I could see for miles in either direction. There, sequestered behind a high barbed-wire fence, was a series of low concrete buildings, with doors hanging off their hinges.
The ruin was one of four Nike missile sites that had been positioned around the Twin Cities. It was developed as an antiaircraft system, and limited antimissile function was added in the early 1960s.
I stood staring at the place. It was so quiet. Corn leaves rustled in the wind, and crickets sang in the midday heat. I looked up at the blue sky and tried to picture the rockets racing against hope -- the noise, the terror, the end.
But it all seemed far away. The empty place felt like an echo of the future it had once promised.
When I got home, I started looking for other places like it and discovered that there are many more and that they're becoming popular tourist destinations. Every day, the Cold War gets a little colder. And as it does, interest in these nuclear relics heats up. So, with a mixture of grim fascination and nostalgia, I pulled onto Interstate 94 and drove northwest to the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile Site in the hamlet of Cooperstown, N.D.
If not for the security fence and the various antennas on the roof, I might have mistaken the place for just another prairie ranch. In fact, it was the Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility, underneath which lurked a massive survival chamber where two men had sat waiting to turn the keys that would unleash Mr. Odegaard's nightmare.
Oscar-Zero was one of 15 command centers in the 321st Strategic Missile Wing -- one of six such missile wings built across the Great Plains in Missouri, Montana, South Dakota and other states between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. This one had 150 Minuteman missiles spread across an area the size of New Jersey, but all together, they contained 1,000 of these ICBMs, which could be launched in minutes and reach Moscow in half an hour. The Minuteman was a quantum leap from the previous generations of missiles, such as the ponderous, liquid-fueled Atlas and Titan, in whose abandoned, cavernous silos a few doomsday preppers have recently built their survival chambers.
The Minuteman missiles were a cornerstone of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which once numbered 32,000 warheads (and ultimately cost $5.5 trillion). But with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the climb down to the current 5,000 or so weapons began. After the START treaty was signed in 1991, three of six Minuteman wings were shut down, including the 321st. At each, a control center was marked for historic preservation, and they began their bureaucratic trek toward public use.
In 2009, the State Historical Society of North Dakota opened Oscar-Zero for tourists, along with the topside of a Minuteman silo two miles east of town called November-33. Site Supervisor Mark Sundlov told me he expected about 6,000 visitors this year but said interest is growing. The Griggs County Museum, in Cooperstown, N.D., for example, recently opened a new Cold War wing with an eye toward that traffic.
I could see that interest myself when I walked into the lobby at Oscar-Zero. It was a small room, and all told we were 15-odd nuclear tourists. After we'd each gotten our ticket, we trundled off together into the underworld.
First we passed through the bunkhouse, where the support staff had lived and which remained a kind of museum of 1980s decor, with acoustical ceiling tiles, institutional carpeting and lots of fabric-covered chairs. Sherry Lind, our guide, took us through the mundane existence of the eight men stationed above-ground, which sounded like excruciating boredom. She said before they got a VCR and a Sega Genesis console, they polished the floor for fun.
Sherry directed us to an elevator, and we piled in to begin our descent. Sixty feet down, we entered what could have been Mr. Odegaard's dream survival chamber: two huge rooms surrounded by four feet of reinforced concrete. It was like stepping into a giant petrified cocoon.
We walked past the 13-ton blast door, into the equipment room, and Sherry said there had been enough food, water and generator fuel for both the two missileers and the support crew to survive for nine weeks.
"What was the plan after nine weeks?" I asked.
Sherry shrugged. "I don't really know," she said. "Either starve down here or take your chances with the radiation. You were damned if you did and damned if you didn't."
Across the hall, we stepped into the control room, where two missileers had been present 24 hours a day in case the war came. They sat in red chairs facing a console where they would turn their keys to arm the missiles.
"Now if you look up there," Sherry said and pointed into a corner, "you'll see an escape hatch. Behind it is a three-foot metal tube filled with sand, and it goes to the surface at a 45-degree angle. That's so that if there was a blast, and you were down here for your nine weeks, and your food ran out, and you couldn't open the blast door, you could try that one."
"Where does it come out?" I asked.
"No one knows. Somewhere on the other side of the fence." Around the edge of the hatch door at our end, someone had written, "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter."
"Fascinating," said an old man next to me, as we filed out and began our ascent. "Just glad we never had to use it."
Almost a hundred miles north from Cooperstown sits one of the strangest ruins of the nuclear era. Technically, it is known as the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard facility, but it is also called "Nixon's Pyramid." I could see it long before I got to it: Its primeval shape grew bigger as I drew near, and it stirred something like awe, as if I could sense the primitive yearning for greatness behind it.
I turned off the highway and down a dirt road that passed alongside the pyramid, which stood several stories high. It had operated for just eight months in 1975 as a radar facility armed with Sprint and Spartan missiles to defend the 321st missile wing from a Soviet attack. The pyramid had a large white circle on each side facing the sky, like eyes.
The gate to the facility was open, so I drove into the sprawling, empty complex. Buildings sat vacant, and weeds grew up through the cracks in the parking lot. There was one building with a car next to it; I walked inside and found the caretaker, an imposing man named Neil "Buzzy" Holman, who invited me to sit down. He offered me some watery coffee, then informed me that I couldn't go see the pyramid without Army permission, though I was welcome to drive down the gravel road next to it and look all I wanted.
"You get many people up here?" I asked.
"We get a few," he said. "Some try to break in, and I'm not a good guy to do that with."
"They cut the fence?"
"They had a ladder. Said they wanted to take pictures. Well, you can take pictures from the road."
"Is the pyramid big inside?"
"It's huge. What you can see, that's just a third of it."
"What's inside?"
"Nothing. They gutted it. It's tomb now. That's all it is."
The United States' weapons of mass destruction -- unlike Saddam Hussein's or Kim Jong Il's -- are not hard to find. There are 450 land-based ICBMs still active, still on alert, and there are street signs that show where they are.
I decided to try to find some of these. I drove a few hours east from the pyramid, to a dying prairie town called Drake, full of empty, run-down homes and boarded-up shops. Drake was also home to 10 Minuteman missiles from the 91st Strategic Missile Wing, based out of Minot Air Force Base.
I stopped at the post office, where an older woman seemed to be the only employee. We chatted for a minute before I inquired about the bombs.
"Do you get many people coming through to see the missiles?" I asked.
"No," she said and shrugged. Then she thought about it and added, "No one's ever asked about it."
"Do you remember when they put them in?"
"Oh, yes!"
"What did you think about that?"
"You know, we didn't have much to say about it. Just like we don't have much to say about this new railroad they're putting in for the oil. Can't do much about the government or the railroad!"
Outside, I looked at the maps I'd printed out. Ten missiles were positioned around Drake, and it seemed as though they would be easy to find. I double-checked the maps with a book called "Nuclear Heartland: A Guide to the 1,000 Missile Silos of the United States," put out by Nukewatch in the 1980s. It was meant for protesters who wanted to bang a hammer on a silo or make some other quixotic gesture.
In addition to the locations of the individual missiles, it also gave the nicknames of each. They were mesmerizing. Some were literary: Farewell to Arms, Naked Lunch and Grapes of Wrath. Others were ironic: Sod Buster, Harmful if Swallowed and Guided Gas Oven. And others were straightforward: Cancer, Just War, Eisenhower's Sorrow and Omnicide.
Across the highway south of town, I turned down a dirt road, past a small lake, through some fields, and then I saw it on the left. A large patch of gravel that you wouldn't even notice if you passed by it on the highway. It had a small satellite dish and a few odd poles sticking out of the ground. From the road, I couldn't see the 100-ton door that would open to the sky to let out the missile inside -- this one named Sigmund. Yet it still made my stomach lurch to know that 90 feet underground was a Minuteman III with a nuclear warhead sitting on top, quietly awaiting orders. This was the place where all my young nightmares began.
I drove on. Down the road I found the next missile -- Cossack -- which sat on a rise where I could see its blast door clearly from the road. I went on to a third, High Tech, and my heart leapt a little when it came into view. This happened every time I spotted a new one, not because there was anything to see, but because it felt as if I was doing something wrong, seeing something I shouldn't.
I eventually found all 10. At one -- Guarded -- I saw a farmer standing by his car on the road next to the security fence. I rolled down my window. He walked over.
"You live around here?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said, "just south here." He pointed down the road.
"Doesn't it bother you to live next to this?" I asked, looking over at the missile.
"No," he said. "That's our security is how I look at it."
"You ever get any protesters?"
"No, not here. There was one up by Minot a couple years ago. Guy crawled across a fence. That's a federal offense."
"Seems like there used to be more protesters in the '80s."
"Yeah, those long-haired hippies who don't want to protect the country."
He seemed a little suspicious of me, so I said goodbye and I drove on.
The last missile -- Meadowlark Song -- was set farther back from the road than the others. I got out of my car and sat on my trunk. Out there away from all the politics and history, the whole thing seemed both so real and so unreal. It was out there, among the growing things, with so much violence hidden away, that I felt most keenly the two poles we're balanced between: our vast capacity for both creation and destruction. It's no wonder scientists say the earth has emerged from the Holocene, the geological era that began after the last ice age. They call this new period the Anthropocene, which means that instead of being covered by ice, the earth is covered by us: Our species has become a geological force. To what end that force is applied, however, remains to be seen.
There was one more stop on my post-pre-apocalyptic Cold War tour. A few hours from Drake, down the Missouri River and west along Interstate 90 sat the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, run by the National Park Service. Its main office was situated in a mobile home at the exit to Badlands National Park. That was where people could stop to get directions to both the Delta-01 Command Center and the Delta-09 missile silo, several miles to the west. Next year, however, a much bigger headquarters and interpretive center was scheduled to break ground across the highway. Still, it was the first National Historic Site dedicated to the Cold War. Even though there were no signs for the site, Chief Ranger Pam Griswold told me they'd had nearly 60,000 visitors the previous year. Once the new visitor center opened, and the signs went up, they expected 100,000.
Back on the freeway, I drove west a few miles. The sharp peaks of the Badlands were on one side and the rolling grassland hills on the other. At the next exit, I got off and pulled into the parking lot of the Delta-01 Command Center -- once the hub of its nuclear wheel, and one of the two remnants of the 44th Strategic Missile Wing.
Inside, I joined up with a tour group just as it was headed underground. As we got out of the elevator, the difference between the two was clear. Delta-01 was part of the second missile wing built; it had just one room, about half the size of the control room at Oscar-Zero, the sixth one built. Here there was no equipment room with power, water, food or air filters. I asked the tour guide, Signy Sherman, about this.
"These guys," she said, "had about 24 hours of oxygen down there. Pretty much when they turned that key, they were . . . expendable. There's an escape hatch they could get out. But once you get to the top, what are you going to find?"
Perhaps this was just a more honest post-apocalyptic scenario. But it seemed to me that we had better odds at Jefferson Elementary School. Signy could see my concern, which she thought misplaced.
"We know from declassified information," she explained, "that there was a 10-megaton nuclear weapon pointed at this facility. Ten megatons would have created a mile-deep crater. It would have destroyed everything from here to Kadoka, 20 miles that way, to Wall, 20 miles that way. If this capsule managed to survive, it would have fallen a mile."
After we came up from below, I thanked Signy and drove on to the final place. On the freeway, I rolled down my window, felt the summer air, and tried to imagine this whole area becoming a crater 40 miles wide and a mile deep. Mr. Odegaard had never said anything about that. Maybe he didn't know. Maybe that was for the best.
Somehow, though, seeing these places made me feel slightly more at ease, as if it was all a bad dream from which we had mostly awakened. Calling it history seemed to put it more firmly behind us, as if these sites were a kind of mausoleum where our past insanity was now safely preserved.
There was no one at the Delta-09 missile silo when I first pulled in. It was as quiet as it had been all those years it was in use. Unlike the active silos I'd seen, this was wide open and had a glass cover over the top. Inside was a training missile they'd used for practice loading -- a replica in all but its payload.
I walked over to the silo, looked down and took a sharp breath. Till now, all the missiles I'd seen had either been miniature reproductions or old photos. But this one was life-size and just a few feet away. It took me by surprise: It didn't look like a machine. It didn't look terrifying. It was smooth and white. It looked like something cared for, something feared and loved. It was -- and there's no other word for it -- beautiful. It looked like something waiting to be born.
After a few minutes, other cars pulled in, and tourists poured out. Kids ran and climbed on the blast door, while their parents stared down at the missile, unsure what to say. A man talked on his cellphone. A couple discussed other things.
As the crowd grew, so did my sense that history was becoming entertainment, that something deadly serious had been made into a diversion. Normally, I would feel a kind of loathing at that notion. But as I drove away, with the sun nearing the jagged horizon, I thought of mile-deep craters, of escape hatches, of gamma rays, and I wondered if turning terror into tourism might not be our greatest achievement after all.


text: The Wealth Manager blog looks at issues that matter to wealth managers, financial planners and other investment professionals. It offers a sampling of the insights, advice and other coverage available at Wealth Management, a new specialized section of wsj.com that is led by editors Kevin Noblet and Patrick Graham. Visit the section here. Wealth Management publishes a newsletter, Morning Call, that provides a daily summary of items of interest to financial advisers. Sign up for Wealth Management's Morning Call here. Write to us at email@example.com.


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We've been waiting months — countless aeons of interstellar time! — to watch Bravest Warriors, the space adventure show created by Adventure Time's Pendleton Ward. And now, not only is there a new comic book on the stands, but the first episode is live at Cartoon Hangover, the YouTube channel for Fred Seibert's Frederator Studios.
Any show where you get to hear the line, "Professor Fartsparkles will explain, but first I must wake him from his Time Nap," is an instant classic in my book. And hey, read our exclusive interview with Pendleton Ward here!


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Folklore Wallhanging
A one-to-one personal service with our in-house design team, who are on hand to help find the best rug for your space.
- Home Approval Service
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- How to care for your rug
Deliveries to mainland UK addresses are free of charge and we endeavour to make them within 2 working days (Monday to Friday) for items in stock.
We deliver to most national and international destinations. Deliveries to all international addresses will take longer, but we try to send all orders by the quickest route possible. Delivery charges for outside the UK are calculated by volumetric weight, and are calculated at the checkout.
If you wish to place an online order for delivery to the USA, South America or The Caribbean, please visit our United States Online Store.
For delivery to Europe, please visit our European website.
We want you to be delighted with your purchase, so if you are not completely happy, you may return it to us within 21 days of receipt for a full refund or exchange - provided that the item is returned complete and in original condition. The Rug Company will cover the cost of shipping returns within the UK, other than items purchased from The Archive Sale. Charges will be incurred for shipping outside of the UK.
To return an item, please contact us first by telephone or email. We will then arrange for UPS to collect the item from you. Returns can be collected from your home, work or alternative address.
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Alexander McQueen was a ground-breaking fashion designer renowned for theatrical creations which explored fantasy and rebellion. Since McQueen's death in 2010, the brand is led by Sarah Burton, who has earned her own international success, while still honouring Lee's vision. McQueen's rug collection is couture level, with arresting design, superior quality and skilled craftsmanship. The collection won Fashion's Contribution to Design award at the 2010 Elle Decoration British Design Awards.


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Centerbridge Partners acquires IBM's marketing platform and commerce software offerings to form a standalone next generation marketing and advertising technology company.
Learn about Watson Campaign Automation capabilities and complementary products
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Use Watson to help you make better decisions and to do your job faster. Ask for last week's results versus last month, sent time versus open rate, and more.
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Deliver targeted experiences with the help of AI-powered content management. Asset tagging and selection available directly from within Watson Campaign Automation.


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In the recent years, there has been a giant shift in the digital publishing space. The conversion of PDF to eBook with just a few of clicks is now part of the digital publishing revolution. As one of the key roles in the online publication space, FlipHTML5 free eBook publisher will take this revolution to the next level.
Being the flagship product of FlipHTML5, free eBook publisher can seamlessly convert static PDF into a changeable eBook. The company has been a front runner of digital transformation by breaking down the complex process of publishing into a simple one by taking it online. One of the disruptive innovations has been that FlipHTML5 enables its users to add multimedia into the eBook, making it an attractive online document for readers across the globe.
According to Jason Chen, the Chief Technology Officer of FlipHTML5, this revolution will have great implications in the publishing industry. "Self-Publishing has become a raging trend among new age authors. The cost of online publishing when compared to the tradition one alone makes it an obvious choice for users to take up online publishing. Not only that, the free eBook publisher is an example of how the author or researcher can make his publication creative and interesting for readers. That in itself is an innovative marketing strategy that many of our clients use to promote their publications. FlipHTML5 is creating a revolution as publishers have witnessed a tremendous rise in their sales."
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Bluetooth connection and troubleshooting for audio products
This page introduces Frequently Asked Questions about the Bluetooth for audio products.
Technology Overview
- Basic information of Bluetooth pairing and Bluetooth connection.
- How to pair Bluetooth device to a laptop / desktop.
- How to pair Bluetooth headphones with another device.
- How to pair Bluetooth speakers with another device.
- How to pair and connect Walkman with Bluetooth device
- What is the passcode, or password, for pairing with another Bluetooth device?
- What is the maximum number of Bluetooth wireless devices that can be paired?
- Is it necessary to pair with each connection?
- Tips to help with Bluetooth connection issues
- I cannot connect to the headphones or speakers via a Bluetooth pairing from the mobile device.
- I can't pair the Bluetooth Headphones or Speaker to a Computer.
- Sound or Bluetooth connection cuts or noise occurs from the headphones or speakers.
- What is NFC?
- What is an NFC compatible smartphone?
- What is One-touch function?
- Compatible devices with one-touch listening
- How to listen to music from a mobile device through an NFC-capable device using one-touch connection.
Video Tutorials


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Near the end of the 64th Warren Miller film, "Ticket to Ride," Olympic moguls champion Jonny Moseley says the words all skiers long to hear: "Winter begins now."
I know the winter solstice is a month away, and I've been on skis twice already this season, but for me this is the week winter begins: With another jolt of Warren Miller adrenaline at the Paramount Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and World Cup ski racing coming next week in Beaver Creek. "Ticket to Ride" also plays next Monday-Wednesday at the Lone Tree Arts Center.
There is a bit of an Olympic theme in this year's film, featuring Olympians Ted Ligety, Julia Mancuso, Gretchen Bleiler, Tommy Moe, Kaylin Richardson, Kelly Kelleher and Seth Westcott. In a quiet moment on a trip to Valdez, Alaska, Westcott reflects on what the Olympics have meant to him.


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How to Audition Speakers
Surely there are few more subjective tasks than evaluating speakers solely by listening. One audiophile's meat is another one's poison, after all. But among experienced listeners - those who have spent hundreds of hours comparing speakers under controlled conditions and who agree on a set of criteria - there should be some common ground regarding methods and conclusions. That's not to say we have to agree. If your notion of audio excellence runs to maximum bass-slam for dance parties, so be it. The advice, "Buy what you like," has the virtues of being direct, easily followed, and by no means wrong. But if you're prepared to accept "accuracy" as the loudspeaker ideal, you should find the following helpful in finding speakers that exemplify it. Accuracy in this case can be defined as reproducing the nuances of tonality, dynamics, and ambience in the original recording with as little change as possible, over as broad a useful frequency range as possible, within the relevant constraints of cost and size. Of course, this definition is circular, because how can you know what the recording "sounds like" until you play it back on some speakers? You can't - not any more than we can know just how closely the Mona Lisa resembles an actual sixteenth-century noblewoman. However, we know that Leonardo da Vinci was a skilled painter and accept his rendition as both an accurate representation and something more: a work of art. Similarly, if we choose an artful recording, we can assume that its playback has the potential to be a fair facsimile of the original performance. And even though recording equipment (like microphones) varies in inherent sound quality in almost precisely the same ways as speakers do, the essential qualitative differences among excellent recordings should be far smaller than those between an excellent and a mediocre speaker. On the Job There is no substitute for experience, so embrace every opportunity to listen to and compare speakers. And remember, the listening conditions are critical. Always use an excellent amplifier or receiver and a high-quality source component to minimize the variables in what you'll hear. But you can rest assured that the immediately audible differences even between similar speakers are likely to be worlds greater than those between properly operating amplifiers and disc players. If you listen with an A/B setup that allows you to switch directly between two pairs (or suites) of speakers, proceed with caution. If you're using an A/B "switcher," make sure that the comparison is carefully balanced so that both candidates play at the same volume, within 0.5 dB. (This can be determined only with an accurate sound-level meter.) It is a psychoacoustic fact that if one speaker is more sensitive than the other, and thus plays even slightly louder, it will be perceived as "better." Here's another tip: placement affects sound quality more than you might guess. Whenever possible, reverse the locations of speaker pairs you're comparing, even when they're side by side, and you'll hear just how much location matters. But don't rely exclusively on A/B comparisons. Also include some one-at-a-time listening sessions to get to know the sound of each speaker pair or grouping. Obviously, the program material you use is very important. Choose demo discs not for their musical excellence, but for their recording accuracy and ability to highlight particular aspects of sound quality. There are many approaches to selecting evaluation discs. I usually rotate a few familiar tracks so that I can zero in on key sonic characteristics (see "Following the Tracks" on the next page). Not the least of this method's advantages is that you quickly become so thoroughly sick of these snippets that you cease to hear them as music and can focus on how accurately the music is reproduced. A Listener's Checklist And when all is said and done, for what, precisely, are you listening? You could ask this question of a dozen "experts" and get a dozen answers, so take any of them with a dose of salt, mine included. 1. TIMBRAL UNIFORMITY. By far the most important factor to me, this means even emphasis and true timbre ("tone color") over the broad range from bass to treble. In practice, timbral uniformity is impossible to judge as a whole, so I tend to break it into four subcategories. o Vocal-range smoothness. Here I'm listening exclusively to voices, both singing and speaking, for freedom from midrange colorations - probably the most common speaker weaknesses. Most "errors" manifest themselves as tone-color constants that I can pick out in a variety of different voices. This can be a "honky" or nasal quality, a "cupped" tone (as if the words are sung or spoken through cupped hands), or a persistent raspiness or hollowness. I consider these the most serious of audible flaws because once I detect one I will hear it almost constantly, coloring the vocals of artists as disparate as, say, Janis Joplin and Gordon Lightfoot. o Bass/mid-bass anomalies. These are usually simpler to evaluate. The common telltales are boominess or thinness (a tendency to accentuate or short-change certain pitches), or chestiness or hollowness (overbearing or anemic-sounding low male vocals). o Low-treble smoothness. Massed orchestral strings are my usual test here. I listen for string tone that's unnaturally edgy or dry ("dead"-sounding) or overly syrupy. This is one of the toughest calls unless you have some experience listening to live string sections - and even the best strings can sound a touch harsh or steely depending on hall acoustics and playing style. However, keep an ear out for a consistently strident or metallic tone, as well as an unnaturally mellow or rich one. Try several recordings as these qualities can be artifacts of the recording itself. o Tip-top treble. In a great deal of music little actually goes on above 13 kHz or so, and we hear much of what does occur up there more as "sparkle" or "air" than as musical notes. Listening to jazz or rock cymbals is one reasonably easy way to find treble hooks. High-hat rides - the "tick-tick-ta-tick-tick" that glues together so much jazz and rock - from naturally recorded discs make excellent test fodder. They contain clean, repetitive transients. Focus on the character of each individual "tick," noting signs of dullness (too little top-octave sound), "spittiness" (too much), and "smearing" (a sort of vague, lisping, "un-metallic" quality that real-life cymbals don't have). 2. IMAGING. Here I'm talking about spaciousness, soundstaging, depth, and the hundred other terms used to describe how well or poorly speakers conjure up the ambience of a real acoustic space. All in all, imaging may be the most variable speaker quality, and it's certainly the most difficult to evaluate. That's because even the best reproduced sound is not, in fact, very much like the real thing. That said, I listen first for stability of the image. Does the apparent location of a lead vocalist or instrumental soloist "wander" from side to side, or front to back, as the music moves up and down in frequency? Is the soundstage arrayed across the full space between the two speakers, spread out beyond them on either side, or bunched up in the middle? Is there a natural sense of front-to-back depth to instruments and voices, without exaggerated (or repressed) reverberation? All of these questions are tough, and there are no "absolute" answers. Every speaker distorts "reality" in one way or another, so these variations are a matter of taste as much as anything else. And different types of speakers have inherently different imaging characteristics. For instance, dipolar speakers, like most electrostatic or planar-magnetic designs, usually create an enhanced sense of depth and space, but at some sacrifice in the "precision" of imaging and the tight localization of the instrumental soundstage. Controlled-directivity designs, such as those using horns, and certain multiple-driver arrays tend to have just the opposite character, and the great majority of conventional two- and three-way speakers usually fall somewhere in between. 3. DYNAMICS. Virtually all speakers compress dynamics to some small degree. That is, beyond a certain volume, the speaker will not keep producing clean acoustic output equally over the full frequency range. One form of dynamic limiting is obvious: audible distortions in which a driver, usually a woofer or midrange, produces buzzes, snaps, or pops on loud transients. Another, far subtler form is nonlinear response, in which the speaker fails to "keep" up with the input signal through some range, usually the deep bass. The result may be a progressive "brightening" at very loud volumes (the midrange/treble section can usually deliver a higher level of clean output than the bass section), or a loss of weight and impact on strong, wide-band transients. But limiting factors are notoriously hard to judge in casual listening sessions. Can you be sure you're hearing a woofer "bottoming" and not the amp clipping? Speaker distortion and not buzzes or rattles from furniture, floorboards, or windows? Is a telltale brightening caused by speaker limitations and not by your ears' natural "distortion" at very high volume? Unless you're listening in a very familiar environment, you cannot be sure where to lay the fault. 4. BASS EXTENSION. It's a rare speaker that can really reproduce the full audio range, unrestricted, down to 20 or 25 Hz. Paradoxically, it's also a rare speaker that cannot produce relatively strong output from 80 Hz and up. So when we talk about bass extension, we mean the bottom two octaves in the ten-octave musical range - and the lower one, the 20- to 40-Hz octave, sees very little action from traditional musical instruments. (Big percussion, synthesizers, and soundtrack booms and rumbles are another story.) Recordings with energy in the sub-40-Hz octave are relatively rare - big bass drums in classical music (like Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man) and ultra-low synth-bass lines in pop are your best bets. Unfortunately, it's very hard to judge the deep-bass response of a speaker until you get it home, because placement and room acoustics affect bass more than any other area of speaker performance. Given all the above, I tend to evaluate speakers with one or two very familiar recordings that have solidly dynamic percussion. I listen for a sense of ease, "weight" (unfetterred deep bass), and realistic snap. But I qualify my judgements a great deal until I've had a chance to repeat the trial in my own studio. Only then am I confident enough to call a speaker's low end "good," "bad," "mediocre," or "absolutely fabulous." Now try it!


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28 November, 2011
Prefer songs for U22Breathe, No line on the horizon, get on your boots, moment of surrender, vertigo, in a little while, kite, zooropa, one, ultraviolet, bad, the unforgettable fire, scarlet, out of control, one tree hill, hold me thrill me kiss me kill me, magnificent, vertigo, city of blinding lights, all I want is you, love rescue me, spanish eyes
25 May, 2011
mexico, mexicotanks for coming, tanks for bautiful night.
18 May, 2011
11 de mayo se escribio historia en MéxicI can think of only one word to describe the lived the night of May 11 at the Azteca stadium, AWESOME, took more than 20 years listening to the best band in the world, and had never had the opportunity to attend a live presentation, This time I did and simply wonderful, something that will not forget for the rest of my life, Thanks U2 for giving us such great moments, thanks so magnificently to hear some of his greatest hits, striking Miss Sarajevo, Vertigo, Elevation, ONE , sunday bloody sunday, Until the end of the world, and the spectacular closing MOMENT OF SURRENDER as I said at first simply AWESOME. Solamente se me ocurre una palabra para describir lo vivido la noche del 11 de mayo en el estadio Azteca, IMPRESIONANTE, llevo mas de 20 años escuchando a la mejor banda del mundo, y nunca habia tenido la oportunidad de asistir a una presentación en vivo, en esta ocasión lo hice y simplemente que maravillado, algo que no olvidare por el resto de mi vida, Gracias U2 por regalarnos esos grandes momentos, gracias por poder escuchar tan magnificamente algunos de sus grandes exitos, impresionante Miss Sarajevo, vertigo, elevatión, ONE,sunday bloody sunday, until the end of the world, y ese cierre espectacular de MOMENTO OF SURRENDER como lo dije en un principio simplemente IMPRESIONANTE.
14 May, 2011
AMAZING!!!!All my life I dreamed of seeing them live and finally my dream came true, from Costa Rica trip with my brother and four friends but still not go out of shock and continued to believe that that night was a dream! Thanks U2 for making me feel in heaven! I love Bono and U2!!
Juan Pablo
14 May, 2011
Amazing!Thanks boys for this great night!! It´s the most amazing show on the earth. See you tonight.
13 May, 2011
Just awesome!!!!!!!!Wooow Larry, Adam, the Edge and Bono were fantastic!!! Chose the best song is too dificult. Even better has so much power; Zooropa is beautiful; City of Blinding Lights and Vertigo are amazing!!! and the drums from Larry in Hold me, Thrill me, Kiss me kill me took my breathe away!!!
13 May, 2011
EPIC!!It was a night to remember. I loved it!! Thanks for the awesome performance!! I luv U2!!! And happy birthday again ^0^
12 May, 2011
Under a Gray with Rain SkyU2 is an AmAiZiNg gRrAcE "Awesome" -thanks for the "PrIde" in a "MoMeNt of SuRrEnDeR"... "OnE" more time was a "BeUtIfUl DaY" "WaLK On" my life remembered all the good thing in a "mYsTeRiOus WaY" -I WILL FOLLOW always... Thanks for the first show in the Azteca Stadium I hope listen BAD and unkwon caller in the second show "please"
12 May, 2011
awesome...!!!!happy birthday Bono.. !!!
12 May, 2011
Thank you guys!!!!It was a wonderful night!! We were so happy to see you here in Mexico City once again. Welcome to Mexico and don´t forget, this will always be your home guys!! We love U2.
12 May, 2011
u2, unforgettable!u2, the best thing than exists, thanks to delight to us with its great talent, thanks, thousand thanks! Bond we turned years the same day, congratulations! you are my better gift along with my son, with whom ire to its concert… the maximum!
12 May, 2011
U2 AND MEXICO... PERFECT COMBINATIONGreat show, best tracks last night? Difficult to say but if I have to choose 3: One, Vertigo and Where the streets have no name. Mexico is your home!!!
12 May, 2011
que padre estar de regazzo!!! :)Bono: A, for efford in spanish! I love to hear you speak spanish! memorable new words on my language and also, saying badwords: chingona! muchos huevos! :) Thanks for the Nezahualcoyotl poem! so great idea!
12 May, 2011
B-day bonoI loved when the edge begun with happy b.day and all the fans sang to bono.
10 May, 2011
I wish...Bono, I wish that you live forever!!! Happy Birthday, my love!! In Portuguese: Felicidades 1000!! Te amo demais!! Love you so much, forever and ever!! Andrea
10 May, 2011
AwesomeThere were lots of memorable moments in U2 360º concert in Sao Paulo, but What I liked the most it was When City of blinding lights took place. Loved the lights, the sound, the special effects, everything! Guys, you are awesome! U2 band is a body of light. You enchant the world with your music!
10 May, 2011
Happy birthday to youHappy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday Mr Bono Happy birthday to you... Good health, great music, lots of love, forever Bono


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Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Positive Signs
A baby step forward is still progress, no matter how small.
Whether it was due to Exxon's sponsorship pull-out of Epcot's Universe of Energy or an astute management decision from someone at Disney with taste, the aggressively ugly marquee that sat beside the pavilion is now history. No longer will guests be barraged by over-zealous splashes of mauve, crowded visual elements, pop-icon mugging, covert explosions of pink triangles, incongruous type fonts and golden dinosaurs all randomly glued to a cheap milk crate backing. This was a visual eyesore so discomforting it didn't belong at a Six Flags park, let alone Epcot Center's classy Future World.
On the other side of the country the final retro touches have been affixed to the once equally ugly Club Buzz at Disneyland's Tomorrowland. Also back is the original name for the area, The Tomorrowland Terrace. A lone designer at Disneyland's Entertainment Division saw fit to pay homage to the timeless design sensibility of Disney's legendary Imagineer Rolly Crump and his original modernist motif for this unique rising bandstand. Though not an exact re-fit of Rolly's whimsical airy space-age planters, it's a genuine and heartfelt nod to his take on a promising optimistic future. Club Buzz, on the other hand, was a heavy, brooding, dystopian monolith that sucked all the life out of the area.
Those that value great design and a quality guest experience right down to the smallest detail have reason to rejoice at these recent, albeit minor, changes. Progress at a snail's pace is still better than decay and destruction at any pace.
20 comments:
Thanks for posting the positive changes. Hopefully we will see Disney management get back into tune with Walt Disney's mindset and not forget that the "show" is comprised of many little things too. Such as signs, decorations, plants, names etc. These all help make the "show"
- October 11, 2006 at 3:03:00 PM PDT
The first time I saw the restored Rolly Crump design, I was amazed at how well it fit into the architecture and landscape of Tomorrowland. Way to go WDI! There's a lot more of Tomorrowland that needs to be restored. Inoventions anyone!
- October 11, 2006 at 8:39:00 PM PDT
The first time I saw the restored Rolly Crump design, I was amazed at how well it fit into the architecture and landscape of Tomorrowland. Way to go WDI! There's a lot more of Tomorrowland that needs to be restored. Inoventions anyone!
- October 11, 2006 at 8:40:00 PM PDT
- PARISINJUNE said...
I have only two words for The Universe Of Energy/ or EPCOT:
Geothermal technology.
- October 12, 2006 at 7:28:00 AM PDT
- Chris Merritt said...
Mr. Kaye is owed many many thanks for attempting to bring back some of Crump's magnificent fountain/planters.... He's a good egg in my book!
- October 12, 2006 at 7:59:00 AM PDT
I was at Disneyland this past weekend and made a point of checking out the new Tomorrowland Terrace. I never got to see the original version but never wavered in that Club Buzz was a complete horror show. The new design is beautiful, elegant, interesting and futuristic. Just what Tomorroland should look like. Now they just have to get the rest of the land to match it.
The new blue and white paint along with the new Tomorrowland Terrace are definite steps in the right direction.
- October 12, 2006 at 8:03:00 AM PDT
- Bartender Sam said...
Great to see blog aout positive changes but these positives still seem rare but maybe they will pick up steam in the coming years (fingers crossed).
- October 12, 2006 at 9:08:00 AM PDT
While I like that they brought back the old design (are they going to fill those bowls with some plants or something? I think a little green would be lovely, but maybe that's just the interior designer in me?), am I the only one that misses the sculpture that briefly appeared when the "New" Tomorrowland made it's debut in 97? Am I totally alone there?
- October 12, 2006 at 10:37:00 AM PDT
Hopefully these changes will be followed up at Epcot with the removal of the wand over Spaceship Earth.
- October 12, 2006 at 11:35:00 AM PDT
- The Ghost Host said...
By the way, the planters do now have some plants in them. And I'm quite happy with it...
..although, the Jedi Training Academy is unbearably cheesy. However, perhaps that is what the show needs; I'm not a 10-year old.
- October 13, 2006 at 12:00:00 AM PDT
"Progress at a snail's pace is still better than decay and destruction at any pace."
Well said.
When Club Buzz existed I couldn't bring myself to even look at it. I wouldn't even walk by it if I didn't have to. It was such a crime what happened to that whole end of the park, and Club Buzz was almost the worst of it.
The actual worst of it was what happened to the old Carousel of Progress/America Sings building.
- October 13, 2006 at 3:14:00 PM PDT
Progress at a snail's pace is still better than decay and destruction at any pace.
Sorry, to disagree -- unfortunately with Disney -- especially true pre-Iger -- it was one step forward and 10 steps back.
Yes, I'm optimistic about the future -- but the rebirth needs to come at a quicker pace. And, for every good sign -- Rolly's Tomorrowland Terrace for example -- we get bone-headed decisions to retheme Tom Sawyer's Island, to turn the Golden Horseshoe into an ice cream parlor and on and on ad naseum.
So sorry, I remain as skeptical as I do hopeful until I see some more results.
- October 14, 2006 at 12:05:00 PM PDT
- Scott M. Curran said...
I heard a doctor once say that "progress is defined by direction and not speed." I think that works in this context too. And here we have progress! So I agree that we should give credit where credit is due. Kudos!
- October 14, 2006 at 5:58:00 PM PDT
Um . . That Universe of Energy Sign has been gone for over two years now. Are you just noticing this?
- October 14, 2006 at 10:27:00 PM PDT
- Scott said...
How about yanking down the EPCOT wand and the Studios' sorceror hat while we're at it?
- October 15, 2006 at 10:37:00 PM PDT
Please take down that awful wand on EPCOT! The wand makes Spaceship Earth a label and not the powerful symbol that it should represent.
- October 16, 2006 at 3:36:00 AM PDT
- Digital Jedi said...
Randolph said:
>>>Um . . That Universe of Energy Sign has been gone for over two years now. Are you just noticing this?<<<
It was still up when I visited Epcot in October of 2005.
I think this is a small, but promising step in the right direction. It's going to be baby steps before we see any real changes, but thankfully, we ARE seeing steps. If we had to sit around for another few years of the same mismanagement with not even a small sigh that things were changing, then I'd be concerned. But one must expect if they want big changes, that smaller changes must preceed it. It's going to take time and patience before we see some real positive change on a grand scale. But the fact we are seeing changes now, no matter how small, means that the "disease" is finally being addressed in places.
But as I said in response to a previous blog, we shouldn't really be expecting this blog to be ALL about the positive steps Disney is taking. From the start and from the header, it has stated its been about addressing the problems with Disney. Some little commendation is good along the way, especially when problems discussed in the past are addressed by Disney in some manner. But at it's heart, this blog has always been about diagnoses. There's no logic in criticizing the blog, when that's what the blog is about.
- October 17, 2006 at 11:29:00 AM PDT
- Incredibles said...
Digital Jedi: "There's no logic in criticizing the blog, when that's what the blog is about."
If I'm not mistaken, the nature of a blog is for people to voice their opinions. The moderators have in recent articles decided to showcase the resolutions to the problems they see in the parks. This is in its essence what the blog is trying to achieve: a change at the parks. Also recently, people were criticizing the blog because (from my interpretations of their comments) the articles were a stretch or were onlt addressing a minor part of a much bigger flaw.
Kudos to the writers of these articles for their insight as well as the readers for posting the comments they have. It helps keep everyone in check. Your criticizing everyones comments as you often do doesn't help anyone (and I realize I am doing this now.) Let people write what they think. Otherwise people will stop writing and ultimately stop reading the site altogether.
Can't we all just get along?!
- October 18, 2006 at 5:34:00 AM PDT
- Digital Jedi said...
Incredibles, it wasn't my intention to insinuate that people should keep their opinions to themselves. It was my intention to point out that, for a while now, people have been making statements that all this blog has to say is negative things. Well, that's kind of the point.
I would never venture to say that people should keep their their opinions to themselves. Otherwise what's the point of discussion? But I would be remiss not to point out that criticizing a blog for doing what it said it was going to do in its header, is like criticizing Star Trek for always going where no one has gone before.
It's nice to see some positive comments in this blog. I would be ecstatic if this blog were responsible for that change even on a subliminal level. But a blog that is supposed to "catalog past Imagineering missteps" would likely remain focused on the things wrong with Disney, so that in the future, positive comments become commonplace. I don't mean to criticize the criticizers. I simply mean to point out that there's a focus to this blog that's spelled out in it's charter, and it seems odd that many demand it to deviate from that.
- October 18, 2006 at 9:58:00 PM PDT
I agree, Digital Jedi.
- October 19, 2006 at 11:33:00 AM PDT


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Subway strike suspended in Sao Paulo ahead of World Cup, stoppage may hit Rio
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SAO PAULO – A paralyzing subway strike has been suspended, though union officials warn that if their demands for higher pay aren't met they will call workers off the job again Thursday — the day Sao Paulo hosts the opening match of the World Cup.
In an assembly Monday night, union members voted to temporarily suspend the strike they began last week, but also decided they would take a new vote Wednesday to determine whether to restart the work stoppage Thursday.
Meanwhile, a union representing subway workers in Rio de Janeiro said members would vote Tuesday evening on whether they would go on strike.
The actions are a severe threat for World Cup fans because the subways in both cities are being counted on as the main way for spectators to get to the stadiums.
Union officials in Sao Paulo met with the state government Monday afternoon but the parties could not come to agreement on the size of a raise for subway workers, who went on strike Thursday and threw already congested traffic into chaos for the country's biggest city.
Sao Paulo union members clashed with police earlier Monday when they tried to hold a rally in a central station in the city. Officers used tear gas and brute force to push the strikers out of the station.
Altino Prazeres, president of the union leading the strike, said almost all of the 8,000 subway employees had been off the job. Marching along with workers on a central street, he said they were not interested in disrupting the World Cup.
"I love soccer! I support our national team. The point is not to stop the Cup," he said. "We want to resolve this today and all are willing to negotiate."
Prazeres said workers were willing to negotiate a lower raise than the 12 percent increase originally demanded if the state-run subway company offered more benefits, but managers have refused to agree. A labor court has ruled that the salary rise should be 8.7 percent.
A spokeswoman for the subway company declined to answer questions. About half of the city's subway stations were operating, but with greatly diminished service. Many of the city's key intersections were jammed with cars and trucks, and traffic was moving very slowly elsewhere.
Sao Paulo state's transport secretary, Jurandir Fernandes, told local reporters that 60 striking workers had been fired.
Bruno Everton, who sells tickets at a subway station and is one of the union's regional leaders, received a letter Monday saying he had been dismissed.
"It's an embarrassment that Brazil is depriving the workers of their rights," Everton said. "This is an illegal firing. The government is trying to provoke us. They are threatening us."
A Sao Paulo labor court over the weekend fined the union $175,000 for the first four days of the strike and said it would add $220,000 for each additional day the work stoppage continued.
Other groups have supported the strike, saying workers deserve a fair raise and the government ought to invest more in public transportation. But some people are angry because commutes are taking much longer in the city of 11 million.
Adriana Silva, who works as a cashier at a jewelry store downtown, said it had taken her three hours to get to work from the eastern tip of the city where the World Cup will kick off.
"Why do this now? Why so close to the Cup?" she said. "Who they end up hurting more is us. This has to stop."
The subway strike was the latest unrest to hit Brazil in the run-up to the World Cup. Teachers remain on strike in Rio and routinely block streets with rallies. Police in several cities have gone on strike, but are back at work now.
The work stoppages are in addition to a steady drumbeat of anti-government protests that began a year ago with huge demonstrations in dozens of Brazilian cities. Those protests blasted government spending for the World Cup and demanded big improvements in woeful public services like hospitals, schools, security and transportation.
The anti-government protests have greatly diminished in size but not in frequency. Demonstrations have repeatedly erupted in Brazil's metropolitan areas in recent months, with even a small number of protesters blocking main roadways and severely disrupting traffic.
Associated Press writers Joshua Goodman and Bradley Brooks in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report.