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You are here, Viewing: WPS Office + PDF 10.7.1 (Mod Premium) APK
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Range of Use of Mathematica
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg88810] Range of Use of Mathematica
- From: "David Park" <djmpark at comcast.net>
- Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 05:30:16 -0400 (EDT)
For some years now 'AES' (actually Professor Anthony E. Siegman, McMurty Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Stanford University) and I have engaged in a running dialog on the extent of Mathematica's usefulness in preparing research material for publication. I believe that AES's basic position is that Mathematica is fine for doing computer algebra (traditional CAS operations), numerical calculations and generating starting graphics for publications. But then he advocates using outside programs for perfecting the graphics, doing typesetting and preparing the final publication. He thinks that "..even attempting (to combine these functions in Mathematica) . is inherently a bad idea." I suspect that this is, in fact, the procedure employed by most Mathematica users involved in research and publication. Not being myself extremely prolific in publishable ideas, and in recent years only publishing a few Mathematica papers, which were in notebook form, I'm not in a position to be too critical of AES's position and I do respect his experience and knowledge in these matters. What I have been interested in is using Mathematica to study various textbooks and subjects to attempt to learn some modern mathematics and physics. In doing this I have always wanted to produce notebooks that looked like textbooks or research papers. Not having publication as a primary objective, I have been willing to stay with Mathematica all the way. What I have learned is that with Mathematica I can produce notebooks that look like regular publications. I have to admit that this does require extra effort in the way of writing convenience routines that define and format various objects one may be dealing with. But it does not involve more work that buying additional, often expensive, applications and learning their installation, syntax and operation, and how to export Mathematica results to these programs. If one already has and knows well these additional applications, before coming to Mathematica, then AES's approach is the natural one. For those who come to Mathematica first, I think it would be far easier to work in Mathematica as far as possible. I don't see why one couldn't write an entire paper in Mathematica and then print it as a PDF document. Even if one uses Mathematica strictly for CAS work and numerical calculations, it is still necessary to write definitions and routines for processing the objects one deals with. I do not see why there should be an artificial line between extra routines that calculate and extra routines that format. And, in any case, having nice presentations of objects is often an integral part of calculating with them and understanding the theory. Having this preference for Mathematica notebooks, and looking at many textbooks and papers, I will go one step further, many will say right off the edge! Mathematica notebooks are inherently FAR SUPERIOR to static printed documents. They are so superior that I can't understand why anyone would want to transform to printed documents. A Mathematica notebook is to a printed document as the Parthenon is to its floor plan. Forget that static printed papers are the standard of today. They won't be in the future. I'll give two examples where printed documents fall short. The first is the general matter of presenting mathematical proofs in textbooks. I find proofs difficult and the limitations of the printed page do not make them any easier. Proofs usually have structure, but in books and especially with poor typographic layout, they often look like a run-on paragraph. Proofs often need commentary and sometimes extended examples or subparts. Putting these in the middle of a proof disrupts the structure of the proof and putting them before or after disconnects them. So I take it as something of a challenge to learn how to better present proofs using the active features of Mathematica. I've written a Derivation container that can contain comment and command expressions. The comments can be used to annotate the steps of a proof or derivation. A command gives evaluated results of a Mathematica statement, with a Tooltip of the generating statement. I've also designed Sidebars, which are notebooks embedded within the main notebook that can be launched by a button. These provide methods to clarify proofs and derivations but there may be other and better methods, such as using TabView for various sections of a proof. Every proof may require its own style of presentation. I think there is much that can be done with Mathematica to make the presentation of proofs clearer, more elegant and easier for students and readers than anything possible in printed documents. If we always think in terms of static printed documents we won't even take up this challenge. As a second example, my wife and I are reading 'King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry' by Siobhan Roberts. Excellent book! There, in discussing methods to visualize four dimensional space Coxeter used the idea of slicing, and slicing from 3-dimensional space to 2-dimensional space as practice. So there were pictures of sequences of parallel sections slicing the Icosahedron (vertex first, edge first and face first) and Dodecahedron. But these are very difficult to follow on a static page. I could partially follow them and my wife was rather lost. How much better to see these in a Manipulate statement where one could set the normal to the slicing plane and slowly move through a regular polyhedron. It would be especially nice if we could get the 3D slicing picture in one pane and the 2D outline in a second pane. It sent me to the Demonstrations project to see if this had been done but I couldn't find it, and I suspect it might be somewhat difficult. But I did find some nice animations demonstrating Euclidean solid geometry theorems by Isidor Hafner! Still, I have some reservations about the Demonstrations Project, as popular as it is. If forcing everything onto a static printed page is one restrictive mode or presenting material, then forcing everything into a Manipulate statement is another restrictive mode. Generally the Demonstration projects are lacking in textual discussion, derivations, methods of calculation, and because of that, generally difficult to actually follow and learn from. The lesson to me is that we should not artificially restrict Mathematica but use its full powers to present topics in notebooks that follow a classical style of writing but employ the active capabilities of Mathematica. David Park <mailto:djmpark at comcast.net> djmpark at comcast.net <http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark> http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark

subset: commoncrawl


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new york city
NYCortaca Continues the Tradition
Two IC Grads fill a Hole in the Doughnut Market
By Robin Roger
Dun-Well Doughnuts makes the best doughnuts in New York City.
According to the New York Daily News, that is. But the newspaper almost didn't consider the doughnuts, made by Dan Dunbar '06 and Chris...
New agreement benefits alumni, expands New York City program
Starting this spring, alumni will have a chance to stay in the heart of New York City at discounted rates. At the same time, the College will expand its Ithaca College New York City (ICNYC) program for current students.
Ithaca College has entered into an agreement that provides access to a first-class hotel...


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Reply: Do Powerful Politicians Really Cause Corporate Downsizing?
Keywords: Spending; Private Sector; Taxation; Interest Rates; Business and Government Relations; Investment; Employment; Power and Influence;
Citation:Cohen, Lauren, Joshua D. Coval, and Christopher J. Malloy. "Reply: Do Powerful Politicians Really Cause Corporate Downsizing?" Journal of Political Economy 125, no. 6 (December 2017): 2232–2237. View Details


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Photodissociation of Molecular Nitrogen (N2)
This movie shows how an ultraviolet (UV) photon can break apart a nitrogen molecule. When the photon hits the nitrogen molecule, it adds energy to the molecule. The extra energy breaks the bond between the two nitrogen atoms, and the atoms fly apart. This is called photodissociation.
You need the latest version of the Flash player to see this movie.
Photodissociation of Molecular Oxygen
Photodissociation of the Hydroxyl Radical
Last modified February 13, 2006 by Randy Russell.


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NASA Earth Observatory / NOAA
Egypt's Nile River valley and delta takes center stage in this night-light picture of the Middle East. The image was acquired on Oct. 13 by the Suomi NPP satellite's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite. The city lights of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem shine above and to the right of the Nile, while the island of Cyprus glows in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. The lights seen in this image have been brightened during processing to make the city lights easier to distinguish.
This outer-space view from the Suomi NPP satellite gives you much of the Middle East at one glance, with Egypt's Nile River Valley and Delta shining as the centerpiece.
The black-and-white image was captured on Oct. 13 and unveiled this week as part of NASA's "Black Marble" project. Suomi's VIIRS imaging instrument is well-suited to spot the glow of city lights as well as fires and other light sources in the night, and the satellite documented the nighttime glow around the globe during dozens of passes in April and October. The pictures from all those passes were assembled to create an all-around view of our planet at night.
This particular view takes in the Nile all the way down from Alexandria and the broad river delta, through Cairo, through to the Nile's big bend at Luxor and onward to the Aswan Dam. But there's much more to this picture than the Nile: Tel Aviv and Israel glitter to the right of the Nile Delta, which makes this picture particularly fitting for Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. The island of Cyprus is an oasis of light in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, with the Turkish coast above. Athens shines out in the upper left corner. And in the lower right corner, a string of lights leads from the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah to Mecca.
Who knew that one picture could take in so many of the world's historical centers of holiness and wisdom?
Suomi's view of the whole Holy Land serves as today's offering for the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which presents a fresh view of Earth as seen from space every day from now until Christmas. There's much more to the Black Marble project: For additional imagery, check out NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Flickr photo gallery or the NASA Earth Observatory. To explore a clickable, zoomable, 1.46-gigapixel version of the globe at night, head on over to the GigaPan website. And to find out what the not-so-black Black Marble is telling us about light pollution, check in with the International Dark-Sky Association.
More space calendar entries:
- 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
- Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
- Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
- Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm
- Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh
- Day 5: Night lights shine on 'Black Marble'
- 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
- 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
- The Atlantic: Hubble Advent Calendar
- Zooniverse Advent Calendar
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other science and space news coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered via email. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.


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To my knowledge there isn't a place where all the links for Marathon scenarios are available. I'd love any and all help compiling that list of links. If one already exists please let me know.
EDIT: Okay I did some poking and here's what I have found
Durandal's Son
Killing Time
Sigma Blue
Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge
Marathon: Eternal
Marathon Phoenix
List of 55 Aleph One scenarios @ Traxus


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As I started to watch today's TV coverage for the 2011 Frys.com Open at CordeValle Golf Club, a couple of things came to my mind. I knew that we would get a healthy amount of Tiger Woods. This was Tiger's first tournament since the PGA Championship. He was looking for his first victory since 2009 and looking to assess his game before the Presidents Cup where he was a captain's pick for Freddy Couples. I also knew that Ernie Els would be a main participant, as he was looking for his first top 10 of 2011 and turning up his game for his Presidents Cup appearance for Captain Greg Norman. We also had the stories about Briny Baird and Bryce Molder looking for their first wins on the PGA Tour after sixteen and ten years respectively. Finally there were the great coverage of Shane Bertsch, Bud Cauley, David Hearn and Billy Horschel all looking to secure their cards for the 2012 PGA Tour season.
Watching all this occur in front of me today, it became very clear that today's Lesson Learned was about PERSEVERANCE.
According to Dictionary.com the definition of Perseverance is:
"steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement."
With Tiger and Ernie, each a former number one in the world , both struggling with their games for many different reasons, but both have the heart and desire to work on their games back to levels where they were in the past when each was a force around the world.
With Briny and Bryce continuing to tee it up week after week continuing looking for their first wins. It is not easy to stand out in the hot sun or the rain week after week and not attaining your goal of winning. To show such desire and stamina after more then a decade out on tour says a lot about each person's character. We had Briny chipping in from 39 ft off the green on the 71st hole for an eagle to take a one shot lead, to then seeing Bryce make birdie on the 72nd hole from 11 ft to force a playoff.
With Shane, Bud, David and Billy, we have all four guys on the bubble to make the top 125 to keep their tour cards for next season. Most golfers on the bubble have had limited experiences on tour or have not played up to their potential. With the pressure mounting in these final few weeks, it becomes more and more difficult to attain the goal. Each of these guys shot in the mid to low 60's on Sunday to elevate their status and get them closer to having full status next year.
Finally, we have had the playoff. Each player was giving themselves opportunities to lock up their first title. Like a championship fight, each player going toe to toe with against the other. This playoff went back and forth with Bryce and Briny each being given putts to win. In the end, it was Bryce making a putt on 6th playoff to achieve his first title.
In the end, today's Lesson Learned about PERSEVERANCE is great lesson for all golfers. In this sport, the golfers who continue to grind it out with practice and believe what they are striving for are the ones that in the end will reach the gold at the end of the rainbow. Great job Bryce! You reached the pot of gold!
Craig Renshaw is the Director of Instruction at Lake Winnipesaukee Golf Club in New Durham, NH during the summer months and Lead Instructor for Golf Digest in Scottsdale, Arizona for the winter.
Experts on the business and game of golf. The best coaching tips and latest golf news delivered straight to you. Sign Up to get the latest.


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Why I switched to Linux
filed in Linux, OSS on Sep.24, 2006
My first experience with Linux was in 1996. Somebody I met in IRC offered to send me a set of Slackware CDs he had lying around for free. What a deal! It blew my mind a little to think that a whole operating system could be (legally) free. I can't remember now if it was four CDs or eight, but I remember being a little disappointed after I got it installed. Later I understood that Slackware was probably the worst distribution to start with, but then, coming from Windows and DOS, I couldn't understand why nothing worked right. Where were the drives? Where's the GUI? Why can't it autodetect my sound card? With no guidance and no goal, it felt like I had taken a huge step backwards into the days of DOS. I quickly gave up on it, but the vision of a free, open source OS had impressed me deeply. I tried to switch to Linux on my desktop around 1998 or '99; I think it was Redhat 6.something (this was before Redhat was selling an enterprise edition, I believe). I spent days and days trying to configure things like an internet connection over PPP, email, and sound. Sound never worked, but I finally figured out the rest. The breaking point, though, was X11.
What a mess. Back then, you had to actually define every display mode in terms of the horizontal and vertical refresh timings of your monitor. Not only that, but the only guidance the documentation gave was to find these timings in your monitor's manual (what manual?), along with the ominous warning that using an incorrect set of timings could permanently damage your monitor. I finally got X11 working, but the default windows manager was ugly as hell, and there weren't even any decent GUI applications available.
Well, by this time I'd had enough. I was spending all my time just trying to get the damn system to work the way I wanted instead of actually using it, and I haven't even mentioned the dependency hell caused by RPM (this was before yum). For a number of years, Linux's only place in my eyes was on servers. I finally switched for good last October, this time to Ubuntu 5.10, then Kubuntu 6.06. Here are the reasons I switched:
- Ease of use. Most things just work now; installation was a breeze, all of my hardware was detected, and most of the configuration dialogs make sense.
- I had started using a lot of GNU software on Windows with Cygwin. The Cygwin folks have done a great job, as have the contributors to GNU software that release Win32 versions, but despite all this running the stuff on Windows is still a pain in the ass. This was a very important point. I had gotten used to using a lot of software that I knew would work better and be easier to use in Linux. This is probably the biggest reason that I was able to stick with Linux through the rough parts, because even if I was having trouble with WMVs or Flash, I could still do my work.
- Windows Vista will be an expensive, unnecessary upgrade. I never upgraded from Windows 2000, but when it went into the no-updates phase I realized I'd be forced to upgrade soon. Vista has absolutely nothing that I need, and a lot of features I don't want. On top of that, I realized in the previous year that pirating software is unethical, and I had a moral obligation to stop. Facing the choice of paying $200 for an OS with a lot of features that I didn't want, or paying nothing for an OS with a lot of features that I did want but felt a little awkward, I decided to hunker down and make the switch.
Why am I writing this? There is a big group of people that advocate open source software with a conviction approaching religious. Like anyone advocating anything with such conviction, I think they are causing some harm to their cause. Here's the thing that most of them try not to admit: Linux is not right for most people. Sure, it could be right for most people, but it isn't. A lot of it isn't Linux's fault, but even if you got hardware manufacturers to make real Linux drivers, and you got the X11 group behind XGL, and you hired Orson Scott Card to write documentation for every package that was so good you'd read it in the bathtub, it still wouldn't be right for most people.
Most people are afraid of change. These days, Linux itself isn't really such a big change from Windows (patent and printer issues aside), but expecting someone to change not only their operating system, but every piece of software they use, it's too much. Most people have a tenuous grasp on their computer as it is, they simply can't drastically alter every aspect of how they interact with it.
If you're serious about advocating open source software you have to embrace Windows. You don't have to use it, but you have to acknowledge that most people do use it, and it's good enough for them. Don't push Linux on people, push open source alternatives to software they already use. Once they get comfortable with those things, they'll find Linux when they're ready.
If you want to advocate open source software, you have to be rabidly anti-piracy. Unfortunately, the very idea that software can be owned by someone, the crux of piracy, is considered invalid by a lot of OSS advocates, but for the average Windows user price is the only advantage that OSS has over more traditional software. Piracy takes that advantage away, so you absolutely must make it very clear to people that piracy is wrong. Really guilt them about it, and they'll make the right choice when they know they have an option.
Remember that computers are already very scary for most people. So talk softly and carry a big LiveCD.


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Hi, currently the top 5 or so is made up of people who are either inactive or in vacation mode. It's no longer possible to pass them to finish as #1, even with full upgrades and full warehouses, spoiling the fun for careerists. Player Mememe has topped the list for some months now, IIRC and may have forgotten that she(?) is playing here. Maybe some players simply want to be immortal in the top 10.
Suggestion: only count players for the ranking list when they're active.
Exclude inactives and vacationists from ranking list
Have a suggestion or idea for Nile Online?
2 posts • Page 1 of 1
Re: Exclude inactives and vacationists from ranking list
Actually, I think that's a pretty good suggestion. I think if Admin could set chronic inactives to Vacation, they would eventually lose their status. Maybe have something in the game's logic that for every month of Vacation, you lose x number of rank points...
2 posts • Page 1 of 1
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What's an asymptote? Simple: it's a straight line that is closely approached by a plane curve so that the perpendicular distance between them decreases toward zero as the distance from the origin increases to infinity.
See why I avoided math?
An asymptote describes a curved line that runs closer and closer to a straight line but which will never ever intersect the straight line.
Sanctification (the process of becoming more like Christ) is often just like an asymptote. Think of God's character as the straight line and our character as the curved line. When we first trust Christ, we seem to be becoming more and more like Christ in a hurry. But the longer our journey goes, the more we begin to realize that there's never a point at which the lines will intersect in this lifetime. Thus, as we mature, the change is not nearly as dramatic.
Sometimes this is frustrating for believers who long for the good old days when they were changing like crazy. But as I talk to people who are further along in the sanctification process I've realized something: the more mature you get the more you stop caring as much about the degree of progress and focus instead on your nearness to the straight line.
Your focus changes. Rather than thinking about who you used to be, the focus becomes who you will be. So even though change is less dramatic, it's sure and steady, approaching the straight line more and more every day.


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Batu Caves, Kuala Lumpur | Dru's Misadventures
By on May 7, 2012 in Batu Caves, Thaipusam, Uncategorized
I found an area called Batu and it is famous for the Batu Caves . It is an old Hindu shrine that is situated inside a mountain. It is considered one of the most important Hindu shrines outside of India
Go here to read the rest:
Batu Caves, Kuala Lumpur | Dru's Misadventures


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A female coach has never won "The Voice" – but season 10 could be Christina Aguilera's time to shine.
Aguilera and fellow coaches Blake Shelton, Adam Levine and Pharrell Williams sat down with E! News' Maria Menounos to talk about the return of the original female coach to the roster.
"She has the team to beat right now," Shelton dishes, revealing that he and the other coaches had the opportunity to steal some great singers from her after the battle rounds.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
But Aguilera's team is as strong as ever, and she thinks it could be her time to win, too. "I'm really hoping the girl curse will be broken," she says. "It's gotta stop at some point!"
Either way, everyone's happy that the superstar singer has returned to her second home.
"I love her. When she goes and comes back, because we started with her, it's one of those really familiar feelings that we always just get nostalgic about and it's always nice for her to come," Levine says of his opponent's return.
Host Carson Daly tells Menounos that we shouldn't count the guys out just yet, however. "As the producer in me, I have to say, these guys have great teams," he says – but Christina is coming out strong this year. Christina may win it, and it would be great to have our first female win. It would be great."
"The Voice" season 10 premieres tonight at 8 p.m. on NBC.
(E! and NBC are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)


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OC Metro on Tony Reagins
OC Metro, an Orange County business magazine, has a cover story on Tony Reagins. Click Here to read the article. The link is only good until the next edition, as it's a generic link for the current issue's cover story.
Buried in the article is a reference to FutureAngels.com.
Some skeptics weren't so confident Reagins had the right stuff. He never played pro baseball like Angels Manager Mike Scioscia, who was thought to be a contender for the top spot, let alone college or high school. "Without a strong background," a FutureAngels.com blogger speculated the day after his appointment, "Reagins may feel he needs to make a splash with some sort of spectacular move that gets him headlines for a few days, but in the long run, may harm the organization's long-term interests."
Click Here to read the original referenced article published on October 16, 2007.
Reagins fortunately has continued to follow the model established by his predecessor. Rumors to the contrary, Tony has yet to trade away top prospects for a quick fix. Whether he's tried, just as whether Bill Stoneman ever tried, we'll never know since neither ever says anything public about rumors. I'm just glad that Reagins has kept young talent like Casey Kotchman, Jeff Mathis, Erick Aybar, Howie Kendrick, Ervin Santana, Joe Saunders and more who are now contributing on the major league level. Brandon Wood and Nick Adenhart are right behind them, along with Matt Brown, Sean Rodriguez, Bobby Wilson, Terry Evans and a bunch of other Salt Lake Bees.
Down the line are Jordan Walden, Sean O'Sullivan, Hank Conger, Peter Bourjos and plenty more.
The only error in my opinion was the paperwork foulup that led to the loss of Warner Madrigal. Otherwise, Tony has kept a good thing going.


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Tim Armstrong and myself (Rob Aston) formed TRANSPLANTS in December of 1999. I had just moved to Los Angeles and was hanging out with Tim when he played me this beat he had made on his Pro Tools System in his studio. It was incredible. Like nothing I had ever heard before. He asked if I could write lyrics to it, and without hesitation I said yes. Honestly, I was scared shitless because I had never been in a band before. Not to mention, I was dealing with Mr. Tim Armstrong from Rancid. Long story short, we recorded whenever we found time and gave it our all. But something was missing. Tim had played all the instruments by himself and the drums were samples and loops. We realized that we needed to find the best drummer we could. So we called up Travis Barker from Blink-182 and Boxcar Racer. We pitched him the idea and before even hearing the songs, he was on board. Travis came to the studio laid down his drum tracks in five hours and that was that. Now we have a record that we are proud of.
With topics that range from murder (""Quick Death""), the passing of loved ones (""Sad But True""), to failed friendships (""We Trusted You""), we wrote songs that I think everyone can identify with for the most part. There's even a party song on the album (""Tall Cans in the Air""). Don't jump to conclusions though. It's by no means a happy/fun song. You're more likely to make an enemy than a friend with this one. Anyways, everyone goes through shit in life, some more than others. Some people choose to ignore it and think it will disappear. Not gonna happen. At least not while you're listening to the TRANSPLANTS record.
Diamonds and Guns
Tall Cans in the Air
©2015-2016 Indie Music People All Rights Reserved
Last pageview at: 7/9/2020 1:20:25 PMPageviews: 7554


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Company Overview
A global corporation with proven success.
Aegis Software is the leading provider of innovative software solutions to improve speed, control and visibility throughout manufacturing operations.
Founded in 1997 by two manufacturing engineers, Aegis has over 20 years of experience providing world-class software to customers around the globe. Our install base spans more than 2000 factory sites across the electronics, medical, automotive, military and aerospace industries.
Aegis is your turn-key solution provider with direct staff and operations in China, Germany, Japan, Singapore, UK and the US. Our organization develops, deploys and supports our solutions in-house, eliminating third-parties and providing customers with faster support and a better solution, in less time and at a lower cost.
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New product
This software allows you to extract professionals from the Canadian Yellow Pages directory and save leads in Excel format
Warning: Last items in stock!
Availability date:
|Windows / Mac / Linux, 32 or 64 bits
|Complete software
|System requirements
|300 MHz, Windows / Mac / Linux, 256 MB RAM, 100 MB available hard disk space, dynamic IP, downloadable product
IQUALIF Canada Yellow, Professionals, 1 Computer License
This software allows you to extract professionals from Canada's official Yellow Pages directory.
This tool safely extracts full contact details of professionnals listed in the targeted directory: corporate name, address, phone number, business type, company website and email, etc. into a CSV file (Excel).
Email addresses are included when present on the company's Yellow Pages website listing.
Otherwise, IQUALIF updates email addresses not found on the Yellow Pages listing directly from the websites of concerned companies (when available).
IQUALIF extracts information directly from each country's official directory and onto a continually updated database.
Purchasing a license will allow you to benefit from all of the functions and advantages of IQUALIF software, as well as real-time support and tools updates and improvements at no additional cost.
Once your purchase has been confirmed, you will receive your license via email in under 5 minutes to start using your White Pages extraction tool right away.


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LOS ANGELES (thefutoncritic.com) -- FOX is wrapping its summer run of "The Good Guys" a few weeks early while "Lie to Me" is moving to a later hour.
Both moves were confirmed to the site exclusively this morning.
"The Good Guys" will broadcast its "summer finale" on Monday, August 2 at 9:00/8:00c. The network had originally planned to air the series through August 23. As previously announced, "Guys" originals will then return on September 24 in its new home: Fridays at 9:00/8:00c.
Meanwhile, "Lie to Me" will shift to Mondays at 9:00/8:00c beginning August 16 - preceded by "House" repeats at 8:00/7:00c - and now run through September 13.
To recap:
Monday, August 2
8:00/7:00c - "Lie to Me"
9:00/8:00c - "The Good Guys" (Summer Finale)
Monday, August 9
8:00/7:00c - "Teen Choice 2010"
Mondays (August 16-September 13)
8:00/7:00c - "House" (Repeats)
9:00/8:00c - "Lie to Me" (New Time Slot)
Monday, September 20
8:00/7:00c - "House" (Season Premiere)
9:00/8:00c - "Lonestar" (Series Premiere)
Fridays (through July 30)
8:00/7:00c - "House" (Repeats)
9:00/8:00c - "Bones" (Repeats)
Friday, August 6
8:00/7:00c - "Bones" (Repeat)
9:00/8:00c - "Bones" (Repeat)
Between said lineups, look for "Night at the Museum" on August 13, NFL Preseason on August 20 and "Bruce Almighty" on August 27.
Fridays (September 3-17)
8:00/7:00c - "Human Target" (Repeats)*
9:00/8:00c - "The Good Guys" (Repeats)
* except September 10 due to "Stand Up to Cancer"
Friday, September 24
8:00/7:00c - "Human Target" (Season Premiere)
9:00/8:00c - "The Good Guys" (Fall Premiere - New Time Period)


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Barbados Fashion Week 2010 begins tomorrow, 22nd October and yours truly will be covering the event and chatting with some of the designers.
This year I am very interested in speaking with the younger designers, such as Andrew Harris, AHMW (Andrew Harris Mens Wear) because it is very rare to come across a talented young designer whose primary focus has been on mens clothing. I have a selfish reason for this because I am a man, and as such, I like designers who design for people like me… men.
I have already planned out my wardrobe for the event, and I will hopefully be making contacts for a future endeavor that I am working on, which I will keep you guys posted on. I have not attended in a couple years and I am really excited to see how the designers have matured and how the event itself has developed.
Barbados Fashion Week 2010: Dress for it! And will I ever!


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Some Yankees/Red Sox, With Pictures
I am told that the meeting Saturday night in which Joe Girardi "decided" to start Phil Hughes against the Red Sox Sunday night, was not limited to uniformed personnel and General Manager Brian Cashman. At least one other person was involved, couldn't confirm who it was. The reversal proved invaluable as Hughes offered his cleanest outing in weeks and he may have staunched the Yankee bleeding for the moment.
5 Comments
Thanks for the heads-up on "The Tenth Inning". Got my DVR set. 🙂 Great game tonight, by the way. It was fun, watching it on TV, and getting Tweets from you and others who were watching also. It was almost like watching with a group of friends. I was home, but not scoring… I still laugh every time I think of that line. I hope you enjoyed the game and stayed dry (or at least warm). Great blog post – thanks!
Please go to all the home games for the Yanks during the playoffs Keith! Since they won 15 out of the 16 games you attended I'll like their chances better if you're there.
Can't wait for Wednesday's Ken Burns special. Saw him interviewed last week by Jerry Remy during a Sox game in Boston….he also threw out a pretty good ceremonial first pitch!
To be correct, Ken Burns was interviewed by both Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo during the Sox NESN broadcast last week. His passion for baseball is infectious, as is yours!
Keith, Please comment on your thoughts on the new Ken Burns documentary! Was their anything that he was incorrect about? (I remember you had a long list with the 1994 version. Is their a list of all the errors you spotted during the 1994 showing? (Last I checked, The Hall doesn't have it.) Thanks.


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Court also foreshadows that if all they're talking about is metatags, there won't be much of a case.
Indiaweekly.com, LLC v. Nehaflix.com, Inc., 2009 WL 189867 (D. Conn. January 27, 2009)
In moving to dismiss claims brought against it for trademark infringement and false designation of origin under 15 U.S.C. Secs. 1114(1) and 1125(a), Indiaweekly.com, LLC claimed that the counterplaintiff Nehaflix.com had failed to allege sufficient facts to meet the standard of Fed. R. Civ. P. 9(b). That rule requires that "[i]n alleging fraud . . . a party must state with particularity the circumstances constituting fraud . . . ."
The U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut rejected Indiaweekly.com's assertion that such claims were subject to Rule 9's heightened pleading standard. Nehaflix.com's allegations that Indiaweekly.com placed Nehaflix's trademark on Indiaweekly.com to draw in search traffic survived the motion to dismiss. It was plausible that potential Nehaflix customers, when searching for the term "Nehaflix" would, upon being directed to another site containing the term and selling competing goods, conclude that the two businesses were related when in fact they were not.
It is important to note that the court assumed for the sake of the motion to dismiss that the allegations that the Nehaflix mark "appeared" on Indiaweekly.com meant that the mark was visible when viewing the site and not merely in metatags. The court nodded to S&L Vitamins v. Australian Gold, Inc., 521 F.Supp.2d 188 (E.D.N.Y. 2007), which held that mere metatag use was not "use in commerce" for purposes of the Lanham Act.
Photo courtesy Flickr user Meanest Indian under this Creative Commons license.


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Committee Membership Information
Study Title:
Needs and Research Requirements for Land-Change Modeling
Primary Board:
Study Director:
Dr. Daniel G. Brown
- (Chair)
University of Michigan
Daniel G. Brown is a professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on land use and land cover dynamics and makes use of multiple methods, including geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, digital terrain analysis, ecological mapping, social surveys and statistics, and computer simulation. Specific projects focus on the interacting social and ecological aspects of land use and cover change in rural and periurban environments, land use in climate vulnerability and adaptation, and spatial and social effects on health. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and member of the Association of American Geographers, the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and the International Association for Landscape Ecology. He has written numerous peer-reviewed articles and books. Dr. Brown is also a current recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation and NASA. He is the chair of the U.S. Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group and on the board of the Community Systems Foundation. Dr. Brown has served as a member of the National Research Council on the Panel on Human Health and Security and the Space Studies Board. Dr. Brown received a B.A. in geoenvironmental studies from Shippensburg University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ms. Kathleen O'Neill Green
Kass Green and Associates
Kass Green is the President of Kass Green and Associates where she consults on geospatial strategy, technology and policy issues to private, educational, and public organizations and the past President of American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS). Ms. Green is former president of both Space Imaging Solutions and Pacific Meridian Resources, a geospatial services company she co-founded in 1988 and sold to Space Imaging in 2000. Ms. Green has given several hundred research presentations throughout the world at various conferences and published articles in numerous journals. Her scientific service includes current membership on the National Geospatial Advisory Committee, past membership on three National Research Council panels for the National Academy of Sciences, authorship of several chapters of books, and co-authoring the text book, Assessing the Accuracy of Remotely Sensed Data. She is a 2011 ASPRS Fellow Award winner. Ms. Green received her B.S. degree in forestry from the University of California at Berkeley, her M.S. degree in resource policy and management from the University of Michigan, and advanced to Ph.D. candidacy at the University of California at Berkeley.
Dr. Lawrence E. Band
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Lawrence Band is a Voit Gilmore Distinguished Professor in the School of Geography and the Director of the Institute for the Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research primarily focuses on the structure, function, and dynamics of watersheds with an emphasis on the quantity and quality of surface water, and ecosystem cycling of carbon and nutrients. Dr. Band is currently working in a range of watersheds within forested, agricultural, and urban environments encompassing a set of Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites (Baltimore Ecosystem Study and Coweeta), as well as other watersheds in North Carolina. He is a member of the Association of American Geographers, American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation, Water Resources Research Institute of North Carolina, Duke Energy Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Forest Service. He has published numerous articles and technical reports. Dr. Band received a B.A. in geography from State University of New York at Buffalo and an M.A. and Ph.D. in geography from University of California at Los Angeles.
Dr. Elena G. Irwin
The Ohio State University
Elena G. Irwin is a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at Ohio State University. Her research interests focus on land use economics and policy, urban spatial structure, and coupled human-natural systems. Her work includes the development of econometric and simulation-based spatial models of urbanization to examine the influence of policies on urbanization patterns and impacts on ecosystem services. Other work includes the integration of urban and agricultural land use models with hydrodynamic watershed models to study the impacts of landowner and household decision making on water quality outcomes. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Journal of Economic Geography, Annual Review of Resource Economics, and the Journal of Regional Science. She is the 2008 recipient of the North American Regional Science Council's Hewings Award for distinguished young scholars in regional science and co-recipient of the 2009 Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America. She received a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis in German and History (1988) and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland (1998).
Dr. Robert G. Pontius, Jr.
Clark University
Robert G. Pontius, Jr., is a professor in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University, where he has advised over 100 theses since 1998. His research and publications focus on geographic information science, land change science, spatial statistics, ecological modeling, and coupled human & natural systems. Dr. Pontius has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, has reviewed papers for more than 80 different journals, and is on the editorial board of 10 journals. Most of his grants derive from the US National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research network, which won the American Institute of Biological Sciences Distinguished Scientist Award. Dr. Pontius earned a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics from University of Pittsburgh, a Masters of Applied Statistics from The Ohio State University, and a Doctorate in Environmental Science from the State University of New York.
Dr. Atul Jain
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Atul Jain is a Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois. Dr. Jain's research focuses on understanding how interactions among the climate system alter the carbon cycle, and to provide useful projections of future changes in global carbon and resultant future climate change. His research goal is to provide the required scientific understanding about how the components of Earth's climate system interact; it is motivated by the practical and pressing issue of human induced climate change. Dr. Jain's has won numerous awards and honors, including the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development Award. He has served as a lead and contributing author for major assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is the author of over 100 scientific articles, including highly cited articles in Nature and Science, most relating to global climate change as affected by both human activities and natural phenomena. He also directs a number of research projects primarily oriented towards improving our understanding of the impacts that man-made and natural trace gases may be having on the Earth's climate. Dr. Jain received a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the Indian Institute of Technology.
Dr. Eric F. Lambin
University of Louvain
Eric Lambin (NAS) is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Louvain, Belgium, and the George and Setsuko Ishiyama Provostial Professorship at the Schools of Earth Sciences and Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. Dr. Lambin has been a leader in the international development of land change science. He has developed novel methods to detect land change at sub-continental and high-temporal resolutions, demonstrated the causal dynamics for tropical deforestation and desertification, and explicated the conditions for transitioning to sustainable land uses. He leads a research team that is involved in several international scientific projects on human-environment interactions in different parts of the world. These projects combine remote sensing, socio-economic data, and spatial models to better understand and predict terrestrial ecosystem dynamics and their impacts. Dr. Lambin was the Chair of the international scientific project Land Use and Land Cover Change (IHDP/IGBP) from 1999 to 2005. He also contributed to the United Nations program Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. He is consulted by international organizations on issues related to tropical deforestation, desertification, the potential role of tropical forests in mitigating climate change, and environmental impacts of biofuels. Dr. Lambin was awarded the 2009 Francqui prize, the most prestigious scientific prize in Belgium, and has published numerous scientific papers and two broad audience books. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Lambin received an M.S. and Ph.D. in geography from the University of Louvain, Belgium.
Dr. Peter H. Verburg
Vrije University
Peter H. Verburg is a Professor of Environmental Spatial Analysis and head of the Department of Spatial Analysis and Decision Support at the Institute for Environmental Studies at VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He specializes in spatial analysis and simulation of human-environment interactions, with emphasis on land use and land cover change, ecosystem services, and scenario studies. Dr. Verburg is the developer of the CLUE model (the Conversion of Land Use and its Effects), which is currently used by more than 100 institutions worldwide for simulation for land use change scenarios and ex ante assessment of land use related policies. He chair of the scientific steering committee of the Global Land Project of International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and will lead the transition of this project into the new 'Future Earth' initiative. Dr. Verburg is involved in a wide range of research projects varying from local scale studies of land use decision making, regional scale spatial modeling, multi-agent systems and ecosystem service mapping to the development of novel global-scale land system change models. In 2012 Dr. Verburg was awarded an ERC independent researcher grant by the European Union. Dr. Verburg received both an M.S. in physical geography and a Ph.D. in land use modeling from Wageningen University, the Netherlands.
Dr. Karen C. Seto
Yale University
Karen Seto is an Associate Professor in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. Her research focuses on characterizing urban land-use dynamics, understanding the process of urbanization, examining the environmental consequences of land-use change and urban experience and forecasting urban growth. She is an expert in remote sensing analysis and integrating satellite data with social science research methods. Dr. Seto???s geographic expertise is in Asia, especially in China and India. She is the co-chair of the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project (UGEC) of the International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), and a coordinating lead author for Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report. Dr. Seto is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow and recipient of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration New Investigator Program Award, a National Science Foundation Career Award, and a National Geographic Research Grant. Dr. Seto received an M.A. in international relations and resource and environmental management and a Ph.D. in geography from Boston University.
Dr. B. L. Turner, II
Arizona State University
B.L. Turner II (NAS) is the Gilbert F. White Professor of Environment and Society in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. His research focuses on the study of human-environment relationships, distant past to present. Dr. Turner examines these relationships in the use of land and resources by the ancient Maya civilization in the Yucatan Peninsula region, the intensification of land use among contemporary smallholders in the tropics, land use cover change as part of global environmental change, foremost tropical deforestation, and the consequences of environmental tradeoffs resulting from the configuration of landscapes. He has contributed journal articles to the Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Ecological Applications, and many other publications. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Turner has served in several editorial positions, including the Editorial Board for Annals of the Association of American Geographers and Regional Environmental Science, and is an Associate Editor of PNAS. Dr. Turner received B.A. and M.A. degrees in geography from the University of Austin at Texas and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.


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A recent article in the Kansas City Star covered a group with a different sort of anti-bullying campaign: it's a boxing-based fitness class just for teenagers who've been bullied or whose friends have been bullied.
It's called Fight Club, and in general I think it's awesome. It sounds, in a lot of ways, like exactly what I needed in middle school.
There's only one thing that bothers me about the program: it's not an actual self-defense class. The article stresses that the kids taking the class are encouraged not to fight back against their abusers, and that the boxing serves more as an outlet for emotions than as practical training:
It's not a self-defense class. Holly Reynolds, the woman who started the program, can't call it that for legal reasons. It's not about fighting, either, though Reynolds gave it the same name as the 1999 Brad Pitt movie about underground fight clubs.It's not that the things the classes do offer --- improved physical fitness, confidence, an emotional outlet, a roomful of other people who are having the same experiences as you, along with adult trainers and mentors who are clearly on your side --- aren't also hugely important; I just worry that explicitly discouraging these kids from fighting back if they're assaulted undermines what the program is supposed to do. It's supposed to give you confidence and enable you to stand up for yourself or your friends; how can you do that if you freeze up once the confrontation escalates?
This Fight Club is about getting fit, feeling strong and fighting the good fight, she said.
These teens don't spar with each other. They spar with their feelings.
We have a serious problem in mainstream American culture, in that we tend to put all the blame on victims of violence --- especially certain kinds of violence. If you were raped, you must've done something to draw attention to yourself, or gone somewhere you shouldn't have, or trusted someone you shouldn't have trusted. To use some philosophical terminology, the rapist may have been the immediate or proximate cause, but you were the ultimate cause of your own rape.
It's the same with bullying, whether of children in school or of adults in the workplace or in their communities. If one or more people decide to harass you, stalk you, follow you around in groups yelling things at you, try to scare you, subject you to unwanted, gross and insulting sexual advances, physically attack you or vandalize your property, it's bad, but you must've done something to make them choose you as their target.
And with school bullying, adults tend to tell children very stupid, unhelpful things when those children ask for help, like, "Just ignore them; they'll go away if you don't respond." (More victim-blaming: you're only being bullied because you let them get a rise out of you!) They also hold victims of bullying to a much higher moral standard than the bullies themselves: no matter how in-your-face, menacing or even violent they get, if you hit them back, you're just as bad as they are. They ignore bullying until it does turn into a physical fight, and when that happens, they act as if all combatants are equally at fault*.
So, against that kind of cultural backdrop, I don't think it's doing the kids any favors to try and convince them they don't want to hit the people who are abusing them. Of course they do. Telling them they don't, when they know perfectly well that they do, would (I think) just work to undermine any impression you've made of being the rare adult who understands what they're going through.
Don't get the wrong idea; I know teaching kids self-defense won't magically enable every one of them to win a fight with a bully (especially those who are bullied by a whole pack of people), and I know it's not fair to expect victims of bullying to solve the problem on their own. In my ideal school environment, teachers and bystanders would play a much more active role in defusing incidents of bullying; I just think physical self-defense is also a tool kids need to be given, without shaming or second-guessing them when they use it.
*That happens to grown women, too, when they try to defend themselves against rape or domestic abuse.


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Green Pirate
April 5, 2012
Due process? Probable Cause? Screw that. Some US legislators are intent on being able to monitor all of your online activity, lurking in your internets like pedobear at a playground. The bill H.R. 3523, or Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), appears to be the next brewing threat to internet privacy and freedom.
Accord to the EFF, the bill contains "sweeping language [that] would give companies and the government new powers to monitor and censor communications for copyright infringement. It could also be a powerful weapon to use against whistleblower websites like WikiLeaks."
As long as "cyber security" is cited as a cause for violating your rights, the bill would apparently give a green light to governments and companies who wish to spy on user activity. ISPs, search engines and social networks would be able to make your data available to government agencies, leaving you with virtually no privacy.
"It effectively creates a "cybersecurity" exemption to all existing laws."
A scary aspect of this bill is that it allows a company to block or modify your communication.
What does it take for an entity to claim it is spying on you because you were a potential "cyber threat"? According to the definition in the text of the bill:
(2) CYBER THREAT INTELLIGENCE- The term `cyber threat intelligence' means information in the possession of an element of the intelligence community directly pertaining to a vulnerability of, or threat to, a system or network of a government or private entity, including information pertaining to the protection of a system or network from–
`(A) efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy such system or network; or
`(B) theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information.
Aside from the ability to censor any speech that a given service does not approve of, that definition sums up the target of this bill pretty bluntly. A was written would make it easier to hunt down anyone suspect in participating in Anonymous activism and B opens hunting season on pirates of the file-sharing variety.
There's no telling yet if this bill will be met with significant public resistance, but if the huge public response to SOPA and ACTA are any indication, a vast majority of the public do not want to suffer a violation of their rights for the benefit of a few elite anti-pirate groups. Will framing file-sharing and DDoS attacks as a major threat to "cybersecurity" be enough to convince the public to forgo their rights or will it be yet another failed propaganda campaign that ends with Chris Dodd whining about how Google and Wikipedia had a greater sphere of influence on what was actually a grass roots protest to preserve our rights and freedoms? Perhaps it will require more peer review, but my money is on the latter.
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Credit: PWInsider.com
In the Ohio Morning Journal featured an article about James Laurinaitis. The article nicknamed him "Little Animal" and some fans have been smuggling in shoulderpads with spikes on them in support of, an obvious nod to his father, Road Warrior Animal. Laurinaitis commented, "I'm very proud of what my dad has done....especially as a linebacker, if they want to call me the Little Animal, I'm going to be proud of that."
Chris Kanyon is now answering questions on the official Howard Stern message board.
In Todays Pennsylvania Tribune-Democrat features an article on how generous Vince McMahon is. They mention that he paid for a $2.5 million indoor tennis center to be built in Ebensburg as a gift to the community and his mother, Vickie Askew, who lives there.
In the Harrison Daily Times in Arkansas features a story on local boy who traveled to California to meet Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson via the Make-A-Wish Foundation in Hollywood during the premiere of "Gridiron Gang". The Rock made sure to introduce those who had come as part of their wish while on-stage during the premiere's ceremonies.


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As new additions are made to the ever growing Beta version of the hugely popular FamilySearch.org website one valuable resource is the Feedback and Community Support. The url for the Feedback and Community Support has the promising title of "getsatisfaction.com/familysearch." The site has links to the FamilySearch Support knowledge base, personal assistance and how to contact FamilySearch.
The topics covered on the Feedback and Community Support site reflect the current state of growth of the Beta FamilySearch.org website. From its inception about six months ago the Feedback and Community Support site has had a slow growth curve. Today's activity included 8 new topics including "We want the actual image of the records that were available earlier" to "Browsing records using the FHL catalog number."Although the numbers of users of this site are not large, the help provided is extensive. As the Beta site is converted into the primary site, the Feedback and Community Support site will be a welcome adjunct.
The amount of in-depth support for all of FamilySearch products is staggering. Not only is there a hugely helpful Help Center, but also Forums.FamilySearch and now, Feedback and Community Support. There is literally no excuse for not finding an answer to almost every conceivable question about the FamilySearch websites and other products.


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Kyle Lowry isn't going anywhere.
The veteran point guard who led the Toronto Raptors to their first post-season appearance in five years said Wednesday on Twitter he's staying put.
"This ain't Amir jersey y'all!! Lol….. it's for the 2014-15 season cause Toronto will be my home city," said Lowry, who added a picture of himself in a vintage Raptors jersey.
Lowry's deal is US$48 million through four years with an opt-out after the third year, according to multiple reports. League rules restrict signings or trades until July 10, but players and their agents are allowed to confirm agreements.
Re-signing Lowry, the top point guard available in NBA free agency, was a No. 1 priority for the Raptors after a stellar season. The Raps finished a franchise-best 48-34 in the regular season to win the Atlantic Division before losing in seven games to Brooklyn in the first round of the playoffs.
Toronto's resurgence can be in part credited to Lowry. The 28-year-old averaged career highs with 17.9 points-per-game and 7.4 assists-per-game. He was even better in the post-season, averaging 21.1 points against the Nets.
Lowry was spectacular in Game 5, scoring a career playoff high of 36 points.
After re-signing coach Dwane Casey to a three-year deal in May, Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri said Lowry was his next target.
"It's very important (to re-sign Lowry) in terms of continuity," said Ujiri. "Kyle has had a phenomenal year. I thought Kyle was a huge, huge key to our season. For me, negotiating is easy if we want Kyle to be here and Kyle wants to be here."
Click here to read Sportsnet's analysis of the deal.
The six-foot, 205-pound player was acquired by Toronto in a 2012 trade with Houston. He came to the Raptors with a reputation for being difficult and averaged just 11.9 points and 6.4 assists in his first year with the team.
But Lowry appeared to begin the 2013-14 season with a more positive outlook. By the time the team was cleaning out the locker-room Lowry's teammates were referring to him as the Raptors' heart and soul.
With files from Lori Ewing
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the Raptors' regular record this season.


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Booker Says He'd 'Sooner 'Die' If Trump Doesn't Leave Office
The Democratic leader thinks the President is a "demagogue."
Cory Booker was elected mayor of Newark in 2006, after a second bitter campaign against the entrenched incumbent Sharp James. His win made him the third African-American to hold the position. He studied political science at Stanford University while playing tight end for the football team before moving into the dilapidated and crime-ridden Brick Towers housing projects in Newark. His advocacy on behalf of the residents led to a successful run for city council, making him the youngest to hold the office at 29.
The Democratic leader thinks the President is a "demagogue."


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Lemon Pepper Fettucini
- salt
- 12 ounces fettuccine
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 1 large shallot, minced
- 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 to 2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
- 1/3 cup grated pecorino cheese, plus more for garnish
- Freshly ground pepper
- Crusty bread, for serving (optional)
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the fettuccine and cook as the label directs. Drain, reserving about 1/2 cup cooking water.
Meanwhile, melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add the shallot and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly golden, about 3 minutes. Whisk the cream, egg yolk and lemon zest in a bowl. Reduce the heat to low and add the cream mixture and cheese to the skillet. Cook, whisking, until slightly thickened, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and 2 to 3 teaspoons pepper.
Add the pasta to the skillet and toss, adding enough of the reserved cooking water to loosen the sauce. Divide among bowls and garnish with more pecorino. Serve with crusty bread, if desired.


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End Users of Concern
Military end users, research institutions, and universities undergo closer scrutiny than most other end users, especially when there will be remote access end users with full computational access. When applying for export or re-export to such end users, the applicant must ensure that all the required information is submitted. Submitting complete information on the end user and end use will avoid delays in processing these types of applications.
Remote Access End Users
License applications always must identify whether or not there are remote access end users, their location, and the computational access they will have. This includes, for example, whether the end users will have full or limited computational access.
In general, when remote access end users have full computational access and they are not tied to using a specific software application, addenda to the Security Safeguard Plans (SSP) may be required for each remote access end-user site. In most instances, an individual at that site (or responsible for that site) will have to sign the SSP. On the other hand, if a remote access end user is part of a large corporation and the computational ability is limited to running certain software applications (e.g., business, financial), only one SSP will be required. A corporate official at the parent company or the system administrator will be required to sign the SSP.
Statement of Aggregation
If there is more than one system on a license application, remember that an item appendix, form BIS-748P-A, is necessary for each system (see Supplement 1 to EAR Part 748) and you must identify the WT value of each proposed system listed on the license application. The transaction will be evaluated based on the final configuration of the system.
For example, if an end user already has a system with a WT value of 0.70 (received under License Exception APP or a license) and the new transaction is adding 0.50 WT to the existing computer system, you must list a WT value of 1.2 WT on the license application. Make sure you include any information on the "old" system being upgraded. You must indicate what type of system it is, the APP, MHz, number of CPUs, etc.
Security Safeguard Plans (SSPs): End-User Certifications
In general, a "Standard" SSP is required for most end users in Computer Tier 3 countries if the WT level is above the License Exception APP threshold. Since approximately 90% of all licenses for these countries receive a standard Tier 3 SSP, BIS encourages exporters to either submit the end-user certified SSP with the application or to obtain the SSP while the application is being processed. However, this is not a requirement. Once the license application is approved by all agencies, there may be additional SSP requirements (depending on the presence of remote access end users or the type of end user) beyond the standard Computer Tier 3 SSP. In this case, the exporter will have to obtain a certified addendum from the end user. The end-user must certify the SSP and the exporter may participate in all aspects of the SSP generation and SSP delivery to BIS.
The U.S. exporter may facilitate this process by assisting the end user in several ways, including:
- Determining the correct agency to certify the SSP
- Briefing the certifying agency should it require additional information on this process, and
- Contacting the Foreign Commercial Service Officers in the U.S. Embassies.
People's Republic of China (PRC) End-User Certificates
All HPC exports and re-exports under license to the PRC China require a PRC End-User Certificate issued by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC). The Chinese government does not provide these certificates for companies that are not Chinese legal entities under Chinese law. If you are exporting or re-exporting to companies that are not Chinese legal entities under Chinese law, you should submit a BIS-711 form in lieu of the End-User Certificate. Please refer to EAR Part 748 for additional information on required support documentation.
MOFTEC officials have informed BIS that to expedite the issuance of the PRC End-User Certificate, the applicant or the end user must ensure that all the relevant information is included. Therefore, you should provide your customers with the following information:
- Country of Exporter
- Title of Contract
- Contract Number
- Date of Signature
- Name of Importer
- Name of Exporter
- End-user
- End-use
- Commodity Name and Description
- Quantity
- Value
Post-Shipment Reporting Requirements
For exports or reexports of high performance computers (or upgrades) under license to a Computer Tier 3 country, post-shipment reports must be filed where the APP is greater than 1.5 WT. These reports must be submitted to BIS no later than the last day of the month following the month in which the shipment took place. See section 743.2 of the EAR for the specific requirements and instructions on HPC reporting. BIS multipurpose forms are available for reporting purposes: BIS-742R (pdf)| BIS-742S (pdf).
Practitioner's Guide to Adjusted Peak Performance
The Bureau of Industry and Security is pleased to provide a Practitioner's Guide to Adjusted Peak Performance (PDF) to aid in the calculation of the Weighted Teraflops (WT) values of high performance computers. This Guide has been prepared in conjunction with the Information Systems Technical Advisory Committee (ISTAC).


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Bowls of Comfort
Served as an appetizing first course or as a hearty meal, seafood soups dole out oceans of flavor.
When it comes to comfort food, a simmering pot of soup ranksamong the most versatile. Whether a creamy bisque, a basicconsommé, or a more adventurous bouillabaisse, soups satisfynearly any mood or taste. Adding seafood yields nutritious omega-3fatty acids and a briny burst of flavor.
Virtually any type of seafood works for soup. While canned fishmay be quick, fresh is better. The same holds true for stock, whichserves as the foundation for most soups. A good broth imparts adepth and richness not possible in water-based soups.
Bouillon cubes or granules work in a pinch, but making your ownfish stock is simple. You need only a pot of simmering water, a fewtrimmings (which include fish heads, shells, and bones), and somevegetables and seasonings. You can also make a specialty seafoodstock with just shrimp shells and heads. Add a couple of celerystalks, a carrot or two, a sliced onion, and a bay leaf, oranything that sounds appealing.
Many seafood soups taste richer when cooked a day in advance,allowing time for the full flavor to develop. Prepared soup can berefrigerated for up to two days, but wait to add cream or garnishesuntil just before reheating. Whether you dive into great cioppinoor chow down on chowder, one thing is certain: Seafood makes soupsimply delicious.
Hearty Cioppino
Serve this Italian favorite with garlic bread or grilledfocaccia.
1 red onion, chopped
1 fennel bulb, cored and chopped
2 serrano chiles, seeded and chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 orange or yellow bell pepper, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1 bay leaf
¼ teaspoon dried thyme
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
2 cups fish or chicken broth
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups zucchini, cubed (about 2 medium)
½ tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
½ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
12 sea scallops or 1 pound bay scallops
12 jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined
12 mussels, scrubbed and debearded
1 pound red snapper or other firm, white fish, cut into largechunks
Cook onion, fennel, and chiles in oil over medium heat in aDutch oven until onion is tender. Add bell pepper and garlic; cook,stirring constantly, 3 minutes. Stir in tomatoes and next 5ingredients. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 45minutes. Stir in zucchini and rosemary; bring to a simmer, andsimmer 10 minutes. Remove and discard bay leaf. Stir in salt andpepper. Add scallops and shrimp, and cook 3 minutes. Add musselsand fish; cook 4 more minutes or until mussels open and fish flakeseasily when tested with a fork. Makes 6 servings.
Halibut, Sweet Potato, and Leek Soup
1½ pounds halibut fillets
2 tablespoons butter, divided
1½ cups sliced leeks
4 cups peeled and cubed sweet potatoes (about 1½ pounds)
4 cups fish, chicken, or vegetable broth
¼ cup chopped fresh basil
1 cup whipping cream
Salt and white pepper, to taste
Garnish: sour cream
Sauté halibut in 1 tablespoon butter over medium-high heat3 to 5 minutes on each side. Let cool slightly; break fish intobite-size chunks. Set aside. Sauté leeks in a Dutch oven inremaining 1 tablespoon butter 5 minutes or until leeks are soft.Add sweet potatoes and broth. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat,and simmer 25 to 30 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Pureesoup in a blender or food processor until smooth, and return toDutch oven. Stir in basil, whipping cream, and halibut. Cook overmedium heat 5 minutes or until hot. Season with salt and whitepepper, and ladle soup into individual serving bowls. Garnish, ifdesired. Makes 4 to 6 servings.
Smoky Salmon-Clam Chowder
2 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, chopped
½ cup sliced celery with leaves
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 (8-ounce) bottle clam juice
1 cup fish or chicken broth
1½ cups milk
3 cups diced red potatoes
½ cup diced carrot
1 pound hot-smoked salmon, flaked
2 (3.66-ounce) cans smoked clams, drained
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded smoked mozzarella cheese
2 cups half-and-half
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Melt butter in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat; add onion andcelery, and sauté until tender. Whisk in flour; cook 1 minute.Gradually whisk in clam juice, broth, and milk. Stir in potatoesand carrot. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20minutes or until potatoes are tender. Stir in salmon, clams,cheese, and half-and-half. Cook, stirring constantly, 1 to 2minutes or until cheese melts. Stir in salt and pepper. Ladle soupinto individual serving bowls. Makes 6 servings.
Creamy Asparagus Soup with Lobster
½ cup chopped sweet onion
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2½ cups chicken broth
3 pounds fresh asparagus, cut into pieces
1 cup peeled and chopped potato
1 cup milk
½ cup whipping cream
½ teaspoon salt
3 cups (about 10 ounces) cooked and chopped lobster
Toasted sliced almonds
Cook onion in butter in a Dutch oven over medium heat 5 minutesor until onion is tender. Stir in flour; gradually add chickenbroth, stirring constantly. Add asparagus and potato, and bring toa boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes or untilvegetables are tender. Let cool slightly. Puree asparagus mixturein a blender or food processor in batches until smooth, scrapingdown sides, if necessary. Add milk, whipping cream, and salt,stirring well. Cook over medium heat just until thoroughly heated.Ladle soup into individual serving bowls. Top evenly with choppedlobster, and sprinkle with toasted almonds. Makes 4 to 6servings.
Note: Substitute cooked crab or shrimp for the lobster, ifdesired.


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Yep, so if you're a fan of Wendy's on Facebook, you'll have seen this Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger campaign of ridiculousness, so much so, that you just can't look away!
The campaign lets Facebook/Twitter Fans write the actual lyrics for #PretzelLoveSongs that are then turned into real music videos in record time, and posted back online, so that fans can watch what they helped to create just moments before. With 7.5m Facebook video views alone, and a 30% stock price rise, this must have sold some burgers! Created by the guys at VML. Very cool.


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The Über Playground
(Los Angeles, CA) January 10, 2009 - Mozart's The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) is a revival of the Los Angeles 1993 production, created originally by Peter Hall, now with a new cast directed by Stanley M. Garner and conducted by James Conlon.
With its fantastical, eye-catching sets and brilliantly colorful costumes, The Magic Flute transports the audience into a fanciful world where good battles evil, light vanquishes darkness, and love conquers all. It's a charming fairy tale that hints at deeper mysteries. The libretto was written by theatrical impresario Emanuel Schikaneder, who was also the opera's first Papageno.
Says the LA Opera's general director Plácido Domingo, "This is a work that can truly be called a classic, for it has been an audience favorite since its premiere in 1791." This production is especially colorful, in part because its designer Gerald Scarfe is also a political cartoonist, well known to readers of the London Sunday Times and the New Yorker magazine.
On premiere night, Georja and Gerald saw Matthew Polenzani as Tamino (a handsome prince), Marie Arnet as Pamina (daughter of the Queen), L'ubica Vargicová as Queen of the Night, Günther Groissböck as Sarastro (the high priest of the Sun), and Nathan Gunn as Papageno (a comic bird-catcher). This cast will do four more performances, and an alternate cast will do four more, for a total of nine shows before the curtain comes down on the run on January 25.
Georja: As are many operas, the story itself is discombobulated. The fairy tale part is charming, but the moralistic sermonizing in the songs is a bit much. There are countless pieces of dialogue which talk about virtue, love, hate, brotherhood, and other ethical ideals. Oy vey, and in German yet!
Gerald: The Grove Dictionary says, "The exotic costumes and setting...are a mask; Mozart and Schikaneder intended a coded representation of Freemasonry." The story of this opera is a mind game, an intellectual puzzle. That certainly says something about Mozart's fiendish sense of fun. I agree the plot is silly, but when I think more about it, I realize it seems silly because it's full of paradoxes, and means to be a real puzzle. What seems good is bad, and vice versa. And that's just a start.
Georja: I thoroughly enjoyed it purely as music, as a visual feast, as commedia, and as cartoonish, over-the-top design. The movement and staging are all dazzling, couldn't be better.
Gerald: Always looking for Pop parallels, I saw the Queen of the Night and her three ladies as Transylvanian vampires, the priest Sarastro as Darth Vader, and the gang of henchmen led by Monostatus as goons out of Yellow Submarine.
Georja: I want to talk about comedy. Nathan Gunn (Papagano) is hilarious. In addition to his considerable singing talent and his hunky physical attributes, his movements, facial expressions, and timing are impeccable. His long-lost love Papagana ( Amanda Squitieri), although short on stage time, is a high-comedy match for Gunn. The three lady harpies, who all vie for the handsome prince at the same time, are a scream. The character of Monostatus, in his goofy, overstuffed green costume, squatting and plotting, is a riot. I couldn't believe it when I saw the picture in the program of the young, handsome tenor Greg Fedderly, who portrays the ugly devil so well. Then there are three little boys in glasses, ruffed shirts, pink leotards, and white wigs! They sail high above the rest of the cast in a golden boat, on wires, gently guiding the characters to their destinies in sweet falsettos. Adorable!
Gerald: About the evil-is-good thing, it played through the costuming and the action. Darth Vader turns out to be leader of the good guys, and the Queen--whom we think is a good witch because she gives the prince the magic flute--ends up being in diabolical collusion with the ugly, bulging green guy!
Georja: According to Basil DePinto as quoted in the program notes, " Ingmar Bergman, in his classic film, took advantage of a cinematic close-up to indicate that the Queen was deceiving Tamino [all along] as she played on his goodwill and ours. That [subtlety] can't be done on the stage, but it makes perfect sense to conceive it that way." L'ubica Vargicová as the Queen is beautiful, bold, and magnificent. She's gorgeous even in silver-face, and her spirited arias are feisty and grabbed me from my seat.
Gerald: Like I said, it's this twisted mind game, and you either buy into it or you don't. Tamino goes through what amounts to a Masonic trial, and he's told continually that if he fails the test he will die. As Sarastro says to Pamina, in effect, "There's no vengeance here." Evil--and death itself--are illusions, have no sting.
Georja: We're talking about totally different things.
Gerald: No, we're not. It's all part of this complicated work.
Georja: Yes, we are. I keep wanting to talk about the elements that make it wonderful and charming, despite its verbal doom-and-gloom. First of all, the fabulous snake, which totally encompasses the set in the first scene, is startling and cute. The menagerie of animal combos is also a wonderment. There's the rhino-dragon, the turtle-tucan, the giraffe-ostrich, and especially endearing is the little alligator-penguin. Not to mention the many Sphinx-like lions, which populated the stage in many scenes.
Gerald: Not surprisingly, you liked it as entertainment. But I'm still trying to puzzle out the story. This opera can capture the audience both ways, and more.
Georja: One thing I don't appreciate is the second-class status of women in the story. The Queen's women are harpies. The Queen is strong and beautiful but has to be destroyed because she is evil. The princess Pamina is virtuous, but her feelings are disregarded in the quest for spiritual growth. All the high-stature, high-minded people are males. Except, of course, the lovable, down-to-earth Papagano is full of foibles and loves women.
Gerald: Apparently the Masonic ritual was (and still is) all about men. But in this production--and I don't know whether to credit Mozart for it--Tamino is joined in his final trial by Pamina, and they go through it together. The implication is that it takes both male and female to be an enlightened person, which is how they end up, standing on that glorious, sun-drenched pyramid.
Georja: I don't think that's a clear implication, since the priest Sarastro is THE man in terms of high spirituality (although nice, low tones in his bass performance!).
Gerald: Oh, by the way. I can't help remarking that, as the conductor was ready to give the downbeat, a woman called out from the audience, "Love you, James Conlon!" I wondered whether it was a personal or a civic message. The audiences all do seem to love him here.
Georja: And associate conductor and chorus master Grant Gershon took a deserved bow onstage with the company. The chorus work was superb.
Georja Umano is an actress-comedienne and animal advocate.
Gerald Everett Jones is the author of the Rollo Hemphill series of comic novels
Photos by Robert Millar except where noted.
Los Angeles Opera
(213) 972-8001
(213) 687-3490 fax
[email protected]
LA Opera Mozart's The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte)
Saturday, January 10, 2009 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, January 11, 2000 2:00 p.m.
Friday, January 16, 2009 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, January 17, 2009 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, January 18, 2009 2:00 p.m.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 1:00 p.m.
Thursday, January 22, 2009 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, January 24, 2009 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, January 25, 2009 2:00 p.m.


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Jordin Sparks is bangin'!
The American Idol winner debuted her new haircut Wednesday night at Crystal Light Liquid's Words With Friends event.
Sparks' bangs are only the latest part of the singer's makeover. Over the past two-and-a-half years, she's lost 55 pounds. "I was carrying a 5-year-old. It's insane," Sparks told Life & Style. "Fall 2010 through March [2011], that's kind of when I lost the first 30 pounds. By March of last year, I lost 50. And then I maintained it for the rest of the year.
Remember when Justin Timberlake had curls? Check out the most dramatic celebrity makeovers"I would've never thought two years ago that I would be doing running magazines and fitness magazines. It's really cool," she continued. "The fact that I can look back on the past two-and-a-half years of my life and say, 'I did that' — it's a really good feeling to feel."What do you think of her new 'do?


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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... .pub2/full
The basic results are summarised by their statement:
For example I searched one of the incomplete studies and it gave me https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registr ... 2000302853 which apears to be a trial by the hospital that actually performed my second procedure. The Dr spoke about this trial he was trying to get started. Obviously he had to get it done OS in New Zealand.There is currently no high level evidence to support or refute the efficacy and safety of PTA for the treatment of CCSVI in participants with multiple sclerosis.
Maybe one of these has completed.References to ongoing studies
ACTRN12612000302853 {published and unpublished data} ACTRN12612000302853. A randomised, blinded, controlled study of percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) for extracranial vein stenoses in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). http://www.anzctr.org.au.
NCT01089686 {unpublished data only} NCT01089686. Study to evaluate treating chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI) in multiple sclerosis patients. http://www.clinicaltrials.gov.
NCT01201707 {unpublished data only} NCT01201707. Evaluation of angioplasty in the treatment of chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI) in multiple sclerosis. http://www.clinicaltrials.gov.
NCT01371760 {unpublished data only} NCT01371760. BRAVE-DREAMS (BRAin VEnous DRainage Exploited Against Multiple Sclerosis). http://www.clinicaltrials.gov.
NCT01450072 {unpublished data only} NCT01450072. Prospective randomized endovascular therapy in multiple sclerosis - PREMiSE. http://www.clinicaltrials.gov.
NCT01555684 {unpublished data only}


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(Bloomberg ) Facebook Inc. (FB), seeking to break the long-held dominance of television over advertising budgets, plans to sell TV-style commercials on its site for as much as $2.5 million a day, two people familiar with the matter said.
The world's largest social-networking site, which has 1.15 billion members, expects to start offering 15-second spots to advertisers later this year, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the plans aren't public.
The move would follow efforts by Facebook's online rivals to capture ad dollars that have traditionally gone to TV networks. Google Inc. (GOOG) began funding original content channels on its YouTube video-sharing site in recent years, giving it a more curated venue for commercials. A year ago, AOL Inc. (AOL) started HuffPost Live, a CNN-like video stream running five days a week.
With Facebook, the idea would be to capitalize on the millions of users who actively check the site on a daily basis, including during the prime-time hours coveted by television advertisers. As of last quarter, 61 percent of Facebook members were using the site daily -- a number that has risen despite management predictions that it would decline.
"Every night, 88 million to 100 million people are actively using Facebook during prime-time TV hours in the United States alone," Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said last week on a conference call about second-quarter results.
Elisabeth Diana, a spokeswoman for Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, declined to comment on its advertising plan.
Instagram Length
While the social network already allows advertisers to upload videos to their Facebook page and then broadcast them to a user's news feed, the new service would let marketers buy their way directly into a person's feed with a 15-second pitch, according to the people. That's typically the minimum length of a television commercial.
At 15 seconds, the ads also would be the same length as Facebook's Instagram videos -- a feature that was added to the company's photo-sharing service last month. That means the commercials would come in a familiar format for users.
The commercials will initially be sold on a full-day basis and can only be targeted to users based on age and gender, according to the people. That would be a break from how ad units are currently sold on Facebook, which lets marketers target ads based on location and areas of interest -- data points that television networks generally don't offer. By relying on fewer categories, Facebook is mimicking the way television ads are purchased, an attempt to make the process more comfortable for executives accustomed to TV, the people said.
Three Showings
Facebook members won't see a commercial more than three times in a given day, the people said. Depending on how large an audience an advertiser plans to reach, the ads will range in price from $1 million to about $2.5 million a day, according to the people.
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who has been working with global marketing head Carolyn Everson on the video ad service, pushed back the start date at least twice, wanting to make sure Facebook's user experience won't be tainted by the ads, according to the people. Zuckerberg wants high-definition video and easy-to-use playback features, the people said.
Zuckerberg said last week that he's sensitive to how users react to advertising in general. He plans to limit the amount of ads people see to about one for every 20 updates. That would comprise about 5 percent of a user's news feed.
No Decline
"One of the things I watch most closely is the quality of our ads and people's sentiment around them," Zuckerberg said. "We haven't measured a meaningful drop in satisfaction."
Facebook shares rose 6.2 percent to $37.63 yesterday, reaching the highest price since May 2012, the month of its rocky initial public offering. The stock climbed as high as $37.96 during the session, coming close to the $38 IPO price. Surging demand for Facebook ads, especially on mobile devices, has helped the company rebound from one of the worst technology IPOs in a decade.
Even so, television remains the undisputed king of the ad world. Advertisers plan to spend almost twice as much on television as on digital media this year, according to ZenithOptimedia, a research unit of Publicis Groupe SA. Internet ads are expected to reach $36.2 billion, or 22 percent of all media purchases, while TV advertising will garner $63.9 billion, or 38 percent.
Facebook's move also would step up competition with social-networking rival Twitter Inc., which has been courting TV advertisers in its bid to reach $1 billion in sales by 2014. Earlier this month, the microblogging site expanded a service that markets direct promotions to viewers who tweet about shows they're watching on television.
Twitter Partnerships
Twitter also has built partnerships with television networks such as Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN; Viacom Inc.'s MTV and Nickelodeon; and Time Warner Inc., owner of TNT, TBS and CNN. The agreements let the company stream videos on its site and split the resulting ad revenue with the networks, a person familiar with the matter said earlier this year.
Silicon Valley companies have had difficulty luring away ad dollars from television networks because of a lack of a single measurement system that compares TV audiences directly to Internet audiences. Figures from measurement companies such as ComScore Inc. are difficult to compare against ratings from Nielsen, the dominant firm for measuring TV ratings.
Nielsen started working with Facebook three years ago on an effort to count Internet viewership the same way it does with television. Nielsen relies on Facebook's user data to create ratings measurements for online content, whether it's an ad or a TV show streamed over the Internet.
Facebook sees the Nielsen partnership as a boon in its effort to sell more video advertising, an executive familiar with the plans said. Advertisers will be willing to spend more if they're able to present comparable Nielsen ratings figures, the person said.
In a separate report released today, Nielsen found that Facebook attracts more 18- to 24-year-old people during prime-time viewing hours than any of four major television networks.