text:
Title page for etd-0120115-141420
URN etd-0120115-141420 Author Richard Giovanni Oentoro (溫忠儀) Author's Email Address firstname.lastname@example.com Statistics This thesis had been viewed 17 times. Download 0 times. Department Department of Industrial Management Year 2014 Semester 1 Degree Master Type of Document Master's Thesis Language English Title Patents Valuation and Coopetition Strategy
Implementation in High-Technology Industry based on Analytic Hierarchy
Process and System Dynamic Framework
Title (Chinese) 高科技產業專利鑑價與競合策略-層級分析法及系統動態建模 Date of Defense 2014-12-05 Page Count 109 Keyword
Game theory
Patent valuation
System dynamics
Intangible assets
Keyword (Chinese)
Abstract This study
using two approaches in order to help the high technology industry faces
the complex competition and market uncertainties. The first one by
using the combination of AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) and System
Dynamics (SD) to calculate the patent value that used in the high-tech
Industry. And the second one was through examine the need of
coopetition, one condition where the firms can cooperate and compete at
the same time. Obtaining the right value of the patent can help the
company in spending their R&D budget wisely and having better
competitive advantage in the future. Through these two approaches, the
profit that was expected to be earned by the company can be boosted.
Three patents were considered to be applied in the product
13.3"Notebook–DW30 by W corporation, one of the biggest ODM company in
Taiwan. There are Magnetic Mechanism, Special Charging Function, and
Concealable Connector. The model of the corporation consists of five sub
model, demand order sub-model, project management sub-model, production
control sub-model, research and development department sub-model, and
financial planning sub-model. The second patent, Special Charging
function with cumulative index of 24.86 shows the highest profit in this
simulation, followed by the first patent, magnetic mechanism (24.11)
and the third patent, concealable connector (18.74). And in terms of
coopetition with the other firm, there was around 29,001,200 NTD of
additional profit for BU A, and around 31,225,175 NTD for BU B if they
choose to collaborate each other and sharing their technology. The
result of this study could provide a scientific basis for the company
management to make well founded management decisions as well as buying
the right patent for the company.
Abstract (Chinese) 本研究使用兩種方法幫助面臨高度
Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract i
摘要 ii
Acknowledgement iii
list of tables viii
List of Figures x
1. Introduction 1
1.1 Research Background 1
1.2 Research Objectives 3
1.3 Problem Definition 4
1.4 Research Process 5
1.5 Research Framework 6
2. Literature review 7
2.1 Patent Valuation 7
2.1.1 Discounted Cash Flow 8
2.1.2 Continuous time – Black Scholes (B-S) Option Pricing Models 9
2.3 Game theory and Coopetition Strategy 12
2.4 System Dynamics 13
2.5 Company Case Profile 16
3. Valuing Patent criteria and System Dynamic Implementation 19
3.1 Calculation of the Patent Index 21
3.2 AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) 22
3.3 System Dynamics 27
3.3.1 Causal Loop of the System 27
3.3.2 Process flow design and mathematical model 27
3.3.3 Demand Order 33
3.3.4 Project Management 34
3.3.5 Production control 35
3.3.6 Research and Development 36
3.3.7 Financial planning department 37
3.3.8 Verification and Validation 38
3.3.8 Model Verification 38
3.3.9 Model Validation 39
3.4 Individual Firm Simulation 41
3.5 Scenario Development 43
3.5.1. Patent Implementation Scenario 44
3.5.2 Expert Preferences Scenario 47
3.6 Taguchi Robust Design 52
4. Modelling of two business unit 56
4.1 BU A and BU B Base Model 56
4.2 Technology Valuation Modelling 57
4.2.1. Technology Classification 58
4.2.2. Simulation of Technology Valuation 58
4.3 Firm cooperation strategy - business process model 65
4.4 Relationship between two firms 67
4.5 BU technology exchange 72
4.6 Coopetition strategy profit analysis 75
4.7 Taguchi Robust Design for 2 BU 77
5. Conclusion 81
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Advisory Committee
Sophia Wang - Advisory Committee
Ren-Jieh Kuo - Advisory Committee
Kung-Jeng Wang - Adviser
Indicate in-campus at 2 year and off-campus access at 2 year.
Date of Submission 2015-01-23
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Title page for etd-0120115-141420


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Dog food reviews
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Dry Dog Foods
1 Star Dry Dog Food
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Diamond Pet Foods Inc Diamond Originals
Date of last review
Thu January 10, 2008
Recommended By
Average Price
Average Rating
No recommendations
None indicated
None indicated
Feeding guideline:
A 50lb dog should be fed 3 1/4 - 4 1/4 cups
Calorie Content: 3,388 kcal/kg (317 kcal/cup) Calculated Metabolizable Energy.
Meat meal, ground corn, wheat flour, poultry by-product meal, chicken fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols), beet pulp, fish meal, natural chicken flavor, vitamins, minerals and chelated minerals.
Guaranteed Analysis
Crude Protein 24.0% Minimum
Crude Fat 12.0% Minimum
Crude Fiber 4.0% Maximum
Moisture 10.0% Maximum
Post a Reply
Registered: October 2005
Posts: 3953
Review Date:
Thu January 10, 2008
Would you recommend the product?
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Byproducts, meat of unidentifiable origin, low quality grains, controversial filler
The first ingredient is meat meal, a low quality ingredient. "Meat" meal could be anything. It is defined by AAFCO as "the rendered product from mammal tissues, exclusive of blood, hair, hoof, horn, hide trimmings, manure, stomach and rumen contents except in such amounts as may occur unavoidably in good processing practices." Another meat-related ingredient in this food is byproducts. It is impossible to ascertain the quality of by-products and these are usually products that are of such low quality as to be rejected for use in the human food chain, or else are those parts that have so little value that they cannot be used elsewhere in either the human or pet food industries. The AAFCO definition of chicken by-product meal is a meal consisting of the ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered chicken, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs and intestines, exclusive of feathers, except in such amounts as might occur unavoidable in good processing practice. The last meat ingredient is fish meal, but this is far too far down the ingredient list to make a substantial contribution to the overall meat content of the food. We find no sign on the manufacturers website of a guarantee that protein ingredients used are free of ethoxyquin (ethoxyquin is a chemical preservative commonly added to fish ingredients, but banned or heavily regulated in human food production due to the belief that it is carcinogenic).
The main grains in the food are low quality ingredients also. Corn is of limited value, being a difficult to digest grain that is also commonly implicated in food allergies. Rice bran is a grain fragment, whilst wheat is believed by many to be the leading cause of food allergies in dog food. In flour form (in dog food, commonly a byproduct of human food production) this is a grain fragment we consider primarily filler.
Beet pulp is controversial filler which appears to be used in large quantities in this food. It is a by-product, being dried residue from sugar beets which has been cleaned and extracted in the process of manufacturing sugar. It is a controversial ingredient in dog food, claimed by some manufacturers to be a good source of fibre, and derided by others as an ingredient added to slow down the transition of rancid animal fats and causing stress to kidney and liver in the process. We note that beet pulp is an ingredient that commonly causes problems for dogs, including allergies and ear infections, and prefer not to see it used in dog food. There are less controversial products around if additional fibre is required. The food has added vitamins and minerals, but no information about these is given and it may contain synthetics.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Page One
Flash: Berkeley Police Apprehend Robbery Suspects
At 1:00 on Thursday afternoon Officer Jamie Perkins of the Berkeley Police Department announced the arrests of three robbery suspects, all Richmond residents, who were responsible for a series of North Berkeley robberies.
"With the arrest of these suspects, Robbery Detectives closed five North Berkeley Robberies in addition to the three committed on April 19th.We are asking anyone who has not reported being victim of robbery to come forward." she said.
Complete details, including photos of each arrested suspect, are in the BPD's press release. Police have asked any other robbery victims to contact them.


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The hosts OS might be Windows 7 and its firewall activated and the visualization is done by Virtual Box , but I think these details are less important.
This question might be related in some way to this which focuses on bridged mode, but my focus here is on using NAT.
Can malicious sites one visits from inside the VM, identify the host, scan its ports etc.


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That is when the really interesting cases show up. Or the ones that have not come for the past eight years.
Today was about bleeding profusely. Now some bleeding is normal after an extraction but it should not keep up for three days. Everyone was quite concerned. I was too. And I was very happy that I had not done the surgery. That had been the oral surgeons job.
So I called him and got the usual advice about pressure, etc and packing the socket. Stuff I already knew. I was hoping for some magic trick. Instead I did pretty much as advised. Removed suture, packed and replaced suture. Perhaps it was the adrenalin in the local anaesthetic, maybe the tighter suture or even the firmly held pressure, but it did finally stop bleeding.
Then we went on with the rest of our backed up day.
It reminded me again of working in the Congo. I learned the hard way to stop bleeding one night. The extraction had been difficult and some tearing had occurred down on the inside of the last bottom molar. It was nicely stitched back up but that night I got a call from the clinic nurse. — was bleeding, please come. So off I went and by lamp light examined my patient. Indeed there was blood! The nurse set up an IV of saline. That time I also had to reapply sutures and lots of pressure. I recall sitting there with my finger on the bleeding wound like the Dutch boy holding his finger in the leaking dike. And praying. For all I was worth. And we all survived.
Bleeding can be scary. I learned to be very cautious if I had a lingual tear. I learned that a patient can lose a significant quantity of blood from a tooth socket. I learned that pressure can stop most any bleeding. And I learned that God hangs around while I learn my lessons and lets me lean on him.
And those scary lessons learned have over time transformed into confidence which lets me in turn calm the anxieties of my patients. Maturity has got to count for something.


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On September 14, Door Open Quinte West will take place at the Quinte Genealogy Centre from 10:00 to 4:00 pm and learn about the Quinte Branch of the OGS (Ontario Genealogy Society).
Explore the Research Library and discover how they can assist you with your family history research.
The Quinte West City Hall Library is at 7 Creswell Drive, Trenton, Ontario.
The web site is at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~canqbogs/


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DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 20 June 2012. OCLC is taking the first step toward adding linked data to WorldCat by appending Schema.org descriptive mark-up to WorldCat.org pages. WorldCat.org now offers the largest set of linked bibliographic data on the Web. With the addition of Schema.org mark-up to all book, journal and other bibliographic resources in WorldCat.org, the entire publicly available version of WorldCat is now available for use by intelligent Web crawlers, like Google and Bing, that can make use of this metadata in search indexes and other applications.
Commercial developers that rely on Web-based services have been exploring ways to exploit the potential of linked data. The Schema.org initiative—launched in 2011 by Google, Bing and Yahoo! and later joined by Yandex—provides a core vocabulary for markup that helps search engines and other Web crawlers more directly make use of the underlying data that powers many online services.
OCLC is working with the Schema.org community to develop and add a set of vocabulary extensions to WorldCat data. Schema.org and library specific extensions will provide a valuable two-way bridge between the library community and the consumer Web. Schema.org is working with a number of other industries to provide similar sets of extensions for other specific use cases.
The opportunities that linked data provide to the global library community are in line with OCLC's core strategy of collaboratively building Webscale with libraries. Adding linked data to WorldCat records makes those records more useful—especially to search engines, developers and services on the wider Web, beyond the library community. This will make it easier for search engines to connect non-library organizations to library data.
"Schema.org introduces an important new standard," said Richard Wallis, OCLC Technology Evangelist. "Making library information compatible with the rich data sources now being published widely on the Web will establish libraries as a major hub in the linked data universe. This enhancement demonstrates the WorldShare Platform vision by exposing rich bibliographic and authority data on behalf of OCLC member libraries."
WorldCat has been built by thousands of member libraries over the last four decades and is the world's largest online registry of library collections. OCLC will continue to engage the library community and the larger developer communities to research, discuss and inform the progression of linked data projects on behalf of member libraries.
"Libraries generate, maintain and improve an enormous amount of high-quality data that is valuable well beyond traditional library boundaries," said Eric Miller, President of Zepheira, a professional services company that promotes the Web as a platform to manage information, and is assisting OCLC with linked data strategy. "By operating as a kind of switchboard to and from other data-driven resources, WorldCat data can better connect students, scholars and businesspeople to library resources."
OCLC sees Schema.org as a timely and significant development toward linked data technology adoption that will provide recognizable benefits for libraries. "OCLC Research has been a lead participant in putting semantic structure in the Web for many years," according to Jeff Young, OCLC Software Architect. "Schema.org gives us a search engine-friendly vocabulary to describe our complex data environment. It conveniently allows various communities to join authoritative sources on the web, such as Dewey, VIAF and FAST headings, using the same structures."
Further demonstrating its role in providing linked library data, OCLC has recently announced that the full set of DDC 23--more than 23,000 assignable numbers and captions in English--is now available as linked data.
OCLC is committed to the stability and improved functionality of linked bibliographic data. It is likely that such markup may evolve over the coming months as the community develops a common understanding. This release should be considered experimental and subject to change. This linked data release of WorldCat.org is made available by OCLC under the Open Data Commons Attribution License.
About OCLC
Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing library costs. More than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries have used OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend, preserve and manage library materials. Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic, abstract and full-text information when and where they need it. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world's largest online database for discovery of library resources. Search WorldCat on the Web at www.worldcat.org. For more information, visit www.oclc.org.


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- Speed Education
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P.O. Box 1784, Kill Devil Hills, NC 27948, USA
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With Daylight Savings Time beginning this weekend on Sunday March 8th, the Cutchogue Fire Department along with the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) encourages you to mark the occasion as a time to test your home smoke alarms and replace the batteries.
Every day in the United States, needless home fire deaths occur. Working smoke alarms significantly increase your chance of surviving a deadly home fire. A properly installed and maintained smoke alarm is the only thing in your home that can alert you and your family to a fire 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Whether you're awake or asleep, a working smoke alarm is constantly on alert scanning the air for fire and smoke.
In addition to changing your smoke alarm batteries this weekend, the USFA recommends following these simple steps to protect your life, your loved ones, and your home:
•Dust or vacuum smoke alarms when you change the batteries.
•Test alarms once a month using the test button.
•Replace the entire alarm if it's more than 10 years old or doesn't work properly when tested.
•Install smoke alarms on every level of your home, including the basement, and both inside and outside of sleeping areas.
•For the best protection, equip your home with a combination of ionization and photoelectric smoke alarms or dual sensor alarms.
•Interconnect all smoke alarms throughout your home so that when one sounds, they all sound. Interconnected alarms are available at most stores that sell smoke alarms.
•Make sure everyone in your home understands the warning of the smoke alarm and knows how to respond.
Finally, prepare and practice an escape plan so that you and your loved ones can get out of your home safely should there be a fire. Plan to meet in a place a safe distance from the fire and where first responders can easily see you.
For more information on smoke alarms, fire escape planning, and fire prevention, visit the USFA website at http://www.usfa.fema.gov/smokealarms


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Need IMMEDIATE Relief From Your Timeshare Burden?
How would you answer the following questions?
If you have answered "yes" to any of these questions, we can help.
At TimeshareRelief.com we are successful because of our relationships. For three decades, we have cultivated EXCLUSIVE relationships with resort developers, management companies and vacation clubs that have use for timeshares. This allows us to deal effectively with a property you no longer want in a way that you as an individual cannot. We are NOT a listing service that charges an upfront fee with a promise to sell your timeshare, and more importantly unlike these listing services our service is 100% guaranteed in writing.
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Relationships. That is what TimeshareRelief.com can offer you. To find out if your timeshare qualifies, call us right now at 855-781-0079. You have no obligation or commitment to us, only to yourself to learn the truth that will set you free from your timeshare burden.


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Click here. Wow. The most amazing thing about this video is how incredibly calm people are with swarms of bees flying around everywhere. As a person with an allergy to bees I find this positively terrifying!
Terrifying baseball game
One Response to "Terrifying baseball game"
Schaefer Says:
May 18, 2012 at 5:48 pm |
are you kidding me? that is crazy! and I thought all the bees were dying off…apparently they've just retired to Arizona


text:
Black and White Roman Mosaic at Villa Arianna, Stabia
Dating to the 1st Century C.E. at the latest,
since this small port town near Pompeii
since this small port town near Pompeii
was also destroyed by volcanic ashes in 79 C.E.
In Pompeii there are many mosaics with six pointed stars from the same period
Picture courtesy of Mark Mansfield (c)
See original:


text:
First time ever that Pak army backs action against India-focused jihadis
By Ajai Shukla
Business Standard, 1st Feb 17
A day after Pakistan's government arrested Hafiz Saeed, chief of the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), along with four associates and issued orders against the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and its humanitarian aid front, the Falah-e-Insaniyet Foundation; the Pakistani street is abuzz with speculation about what motivated this crackdown.
Pakistani government sources discreetly suggest that Saeed was detained to insulate Pakistanis from President Donald Trump's order banning non-US travellers from seven Islamic countries from entering the United States, and a follow-up suggestion from his Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, that this could be extended to Pakistan.
In contrast, Saeed flatly accuses Pakistan of succumbing to Indian pressure.
"This is taking place because of [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi's insistence, Trump's pressure and Pakistan's helplessness", Saeed stated after his arrest, according to Reuters.
Even so, the Pakistan Army's acquiescence would have been essential for such a step. Earlier this month, Business Standard quoted top Pakistan Army sources who revealed that the new army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, was readying to curb the LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) in order to ease tensions with India (January 11, "Is Pakistan Army preparing to turn on LeT and Jaish").
According to Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, the army's public relations chief, Major General Asif Ghafoor, stated at a media briefing on Tuesday: "This (Saeed's arrest) is a policy decision that the state took in [the] national interest. Lots of institutions will have to do their jobs."
This was the first time the Pakistan Army has publicly backed the arrest of India-focused jihadis, which it has long regarded as "strategic assets".
That raises the question: has Trump's blockage of Muslim travellers provided the Pakistani army and government with a plausible reason to crack down on Saeed and the LeT, without making it appear like India was being placated?
The action taken against Saeed, is stronger than what the Pakistani media has painted. For years, Saeed operated freely and openly in Pakistan, thumbing his nose at a $10 million bounty that Washington offers for information leading to his arrest, and being the star speaker at public rallies that whip up hatred of India. Now, unexpectedly, he is detained under Pakistan's stern Anti-Terrorist Act of 1997.
Nor is the LeT chief under "house arrest" as the media has erroneously noted. True, Saeed is at home in Lahore, but this has been notified a sub-jail. He is under full arrest for activities that "harm peace and security" of Pakistan.
This is significantly different from being arrested for acting again India, or sending militants into Kashmir, all of which are perceived as legitimate activities in Pakistan. When Saeed was placed under home arrest after the LeT struck Mumbai on 26/11 [2008], the widespread impression across Pakistan that this was at New Delhi's behest ensured the terrorist chief was released within six months.
This time round, there was a markedly different feel to Saeed's arrest. On Monday, when he was taken into custody from Markaz Al-Qadsia, the JuD headquarters in Lahore, four key associates were simultaneously picked up from across Punjab, reports the credible Pakistani newspaper, The Express Tribune.
Indicating a centrally directed, geographically dispersed crackdown, two associates --- Zafar Iqbal and Abdul Rehman Abid --- were arrested from Markaz Tayyaba, the LeT headquarters at Muridke. A third, Abdullah Ubaid, was picked up in Faisalabad; while a fourth, Kashif Niazi, was arrested in Multan.
To nobody's surprise, New Delhi has taken a sceptical view of Saeed's arrest. On Tuesday, the MEA stated: "We have seen reports on the Pakistan Ministry of Interior order placing the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Falah–e-Insaniyet Foundation under the watchlist (sic) and also the notification under which the Falah-e-Insaniyet Foundation has been included in the second schedule of their anti terror legislation under United Nations Security Council Resolution No. 1267."
"Exercises such as yesterday's orders against Hafiz Saeed and others have been carried out by Pakistan in the past also. Only a credible crack down on the mastermind of the Mumbai terrorist attack and terrorist organizations involved in cross border terrorism would be proof of Pakistan's sincerity", said the MEA.
Analysts say quiet scepticism from New Delhi would create a better climate for the government of Pakistan to act against jihadi groups than overt triumphalism, or breast beating by the Indian media. For now, a rampaging Trump has provided the necessary cover. It remains to be seen whether Indian politicians, in an election season, can display restraint and provide Pakistan with the space to act.
New Delhi sources are now watching carefully for renewed progress in Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi's trial for the Mumbai 26/11 attack.


text:
Caroline, you are one month old today!
Here are a few newborn photos from the past month...
"I prayed for this child and the Lord had granted me what I asked of Him." (1 Sam. 1:27)
"For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and earth...all things were created by Him and for Him." (Col. 1:16)
We love you, Caroline. Happy one month birthday!
1 month stats:
length- 20 inches
weight- 6 lbs 4 oz
diapers- newborn
clothes- newborn...but they're still a little big
sleeping- sleeping pretty well. we get 2 hour stretches and sometimes hit the jackpot with a 3 hr stretch at night. still no rhythm with naps and feeding and you definitely have to be cuddled/held/nursed to sleep...i take it you must really like us.
you've gotten so much better about being in your car seat, you rarely cry. but you make it clear you don't like baths, diaper changes, or tummy time.
you often smile when you first close your eyes to go to sleep. and the other day you had just closed your eyes and i kissed you on your cheek and you smiled (just half smile on that side of your face i kissed) i repeated the kiss 3 times and you repeated the half smile 3 times, can hardly wait till you start smiling at us!


text:
Title: The Big Lie
Larry Brown - 18yo - Played by: babysarahlauren
Nina Saunders - 23yo Mommy Witch - Played by: Miki Yamuri
Scene: Wandering around the mall looking for her next baby
Nina longed for something more permanent … more solid and less transitory. She wanted to be a REAL Mommy. Being a witch had its disadvantages … then again … there were advantages too. She had brought her magic wand with her and intended to find someone who would become her little girl baby.
Nina wandered near an electronics store and saw a young man peering into one of the display cases longingly. She could tell he wanted one of those game consoles really bad. She shook her head ... the only difference between men and boys ... are the price of their toys.
Nina wanders up in a sexy way and says softly, "I love playing that new war game ... Field of Battle."
Larry wanted to be anywhere else. To be someone else. He hated himself. He was tormented with anger, rage, and guilt. Why? Because he didn't want to grow up and was forced to do so without his consent. This infuriated him. He hated everything about adulthood … paying bills, going to a job that went nowhere, and always having to be … adult about things.
When he saw Nina, his ears perked up. "Field of Battle," he thought, "Yeah, okay," he said to himself. To Nina he only smiled a wan, sheepish smile.
Larry wasn't used to being propositioned like that. Still … this gal had an aura about her. Larry couldn't put his finger on it, but there was something about her that seriously attracted the inner child within him.
Nina moved closer to get a better look at the console. She said softly, "I think if we used the new wand controller, the game will be better."
Nina was a very attractive young woman. She had on a smock top and form fitting tight blue jeans. Her long hair hung in ringlets about her shoulders as she smile and looks to Larry. She used her inner site, and could see the infant within him begging to be released. She was sure he would make the perfect baby.
Larry turned and eyed Nina up and down. "Pretty," he thought, "But what kind of top is that?"
His eyes lighted on Nina's smock top. It looked almost … maternal. The cut of it and the way it hung off her shoulders showed off a beautiful set of perky breasts beneath without the assistance of a bra.
Larry got confused. What kind of hot chick wore clothes like that? He smiles, this one, obviously.
Then, Nina looked deep into his eyes. Just at that moment, her eyes pierced his soul. He felt the baby within him cry out for mommy. The attraction was sudden and total.
Nina said softly as she caressed his cheek lovingly, "Have you ever .... fantasized about ... returning to your mommy's arms, sweetie? You seem so .... innocent and ... helpless."
Nina continued to peer into Larry's eyes. It made him feel so wonderful ... he actually felt himself have a small accident and wet his pants. He shivers slightly as the warmth spreads around his crotch. Now his underpants were wet. They weren't underpants, really, they were panties.
Larry fancied himself as girl and dressed secretly underneath his outer man clothes as a girl. Nina confused him terribly just by looking into his eyes. He … so wanted to … be her baby it hurt. More confusion … He didn't really know what he wanted to be at this instant with all the turmoil in his soul, all he knew was that he didn't want to be who he was.
He knew what he really was … an 18-year-old geeky looking dude who certainly was no chick magnet. In fact, half the time he felt like a girl himself … only much younger. That was the strange part, half the time, he felt like a two-year-old little girl … A baby. So when he heard Nina, he...melted. His heart knew this was the voice of … mommy.
Larry's tongue became so tangled he couldn't speak properly. What came out sounded like a 2 year old's attempt.
Nina giggled as she replied in a cooing sexy voice, "Ooh, so you are a baby." Nina patted Larry's wet bottom. "And it seems baby has wet her panties."
Nina pulled open the front of his pants before he could react and peeked in. Nina smiled as she saw his lacy and adorably cute wet little girl panties. Larry blushed as pink as the panties themselves.
This made him look almost infantile … okay, totally infantile.
"But, how did you...?" he stammered.
Tears filled his eyes. Shame? Humiliation? Joy? He didn't know. What he knew for a fact, his baby girl panties were soaked. Along with his jeans … in the mall with all those people around, no less!
Worse, the more Nina cooed those strange words in her beautiful sing song voice, the more confused he became which made him feel particularly girlish and babyish … vulnerable. Larry realizes as he feels the weight of it behind … he had another ind of accident too. He was helpless to control himself around Nina. He knew … she was … mommy?
Nina coos softly like she talking to a very young child, "Ohh sweetie, you have had a nasty accident. Now come with mommy and I'll have you in just the right thing and all dry and comfy in a jiffy."
She takes Larry by the hand and begins to lead him somewhere. She was a whole lot stronger than she looked too. Larry realized he was helpless to stop her from taking him wherever she was taking him.
Actually, at this momant Larry was a helpless little baby inside. That's why he followed Nina willingly. … or shall we say, hypnotically. He couldn't help himself. As he walked, the wet panties and jeans sloshed between his legs. This was embarrassing.
Suddenly, a glimmer of reason returned to Larry's mind, "Hey, wait a second!" thought Larry to himself, "who was this gal, anyway? And why was she holding his hand? And why was he following her? Sure, he had wet his panties … but what the hell?
Being a witch had its advantages. It meant that Nina had a special place in this mall. She had made magical arrangements with the owner and had a special place to take her babies when she created them where they would not be disturbed, nor ever again found.
She led Larry through the door into this magical place beyond time … beyond reality.. Larry's eyes got big as he realized this was a changing room for ... Adult Babies. Nina immediately begins removing Larry's clothes. Before he can react, she had expertly removed his pants and wet panties to his ankles.
Larry was stunned. What was this? Who was this lady? She seemed so nice, so firm … Larry knew in his soul who she was … his mommy.
Nina coos to Larry like he's a very little child, "Now be a good baby for mommy while I change your wet panties."
Nina was far stronger than she appeared to be as Larry finds himself lifted onto the changing table and his wet pants and panties removed. Nina cleans him in his neathers with a sweet smelling, very large baby wipe, before lifting him by his ankles and placing his hinny into a very thick, soft crawly diaper, powdering him well, and fastening it on with locking diaper pins.
Then came the plastic panties. Slowly she pulled them up Larry's legs. The feeling was so wonderful, he almost fainted. Large goose bumps rose all up and down his body.
Nina stood Larry on his feet and took him by his hand. She coos softly, "OK, sugar puddles, mommy will take you to your new nursery and see if we can get a large bottle for you."
Nina leads Larry out into the crowded mall. Many people turn and stare at him. The only thing he has on besides his shirt, is the plastic panties and very thick diaper. Larry was bewildered. He felt little, and afraid--but comfortable. It felt so right.
He followed Nina willingly as she led him onward, and as he did, he became more and more of a little baby. Suddenly, he didn't care where he was or what he was wearing. He was Mommy's baby. Nina allowed Larry to more or less hide shyly by her as the many people looked on.
Nina explained to the staring and disapproving people, "He's a very special kind of person. In his mind, he can't grow up. He's going to always be my little baby."
Several old women came from the ogling crowd and kneeled by Larry. One of the women tweaked his cheek as she coos softly, "Such an adorable little baby."
Another took out a rather large lollypop and offered it to him, "Would the baby like some candy?"
The lollypop was huge and appeared to be strawberry or cherry flavored. In spite of himself, Larry took the lollypop. So good! He grinned a baby grin and sucked eagerly. He cooed happily, and the ladies giggled. Then he became shy. He snuggled up to Nina and pushed his face into her arm.
Nina smiled. She knew she had chosen her next baby well as Larry continued to regress mostly on his own. The regression spell was super strong of itself, but she could tell he wasn't resisting in the least.
She reaches into her purse and removed a silver pen looking devise. She pulled the top from it and pressed it against Larry's neck. There was a hissing pop. Larry felt a small sting, then an incredible rushing sensation all through his body. What ever adulthood was left to him vanished away like snow on a hot griddle. He could feel it as it invaded his mind and did major house cleaning.
There was nothing left. Larry was completely a baby. His legs gave out from under him and he fell on his heavily diapered bottom. Then he stuck his fist in his mouth and began to suck. Drool glistened on his shirt. He smiled up at Mommy as she patted his head.
Nina was so proud of Larry at this point. He hadn't fought it one bit. Nina lifts Larry into her arms and coos softly, "See? It didn't hurt one bit, now did it."
Nina thanked the ladies and carried the large baby off through the crowded mall, stopping to show her prize off at every opportunity. By the time they had reached the Witch owned, Babies of all Ages store, Larry's mind had sort of adapted to the new reality. He realized he was acting, and being treated just like a baby. Nina set him on the carpeted floor of the Ababy store as she talked to one of the employees. Babies of All Ages: What a store it was! Baby girl and boy clothes of every conceivable style and size, for every conceivable baby of any age. There was even a furniture department, with cribs and playpens and high chairs and changing tables--you name it, they had it. And the diapers! Shelves and shelves of cloth and disposables as far as the eye could see. And let's not forget the plastic panties--every kind you could think of! And toys … a baby could get lost in the many many thousands … It was a paradise!
The Clerk brought Nina many cute and adorable Ababy girl outfits. Larry had so many of them tried on him. The clerk cooed and caressed Larry and tickled him just like a little baby all the while. When the cart was totally full of outfits, diapers, plastic panties and plastic lined rumba panties of every description, Larry was dressed in an adorable Snuggle Bug Romper complete with the green fuzzy googly eyed booties. The romper was green and yellow with yellow ruffles around the bib and legs. There were 3 rows of green ruffles across his bottom.
The lady clerk coos, "Aww, such a cutie pie widdow girl she is." and pats Larry on his hinny softly.
Larry cooed with delight. But then Nina realized an important fact: Larry was dressed like a girl, but he still had, um, boy parts. Nina smiled and did a soft head palm: she had not changed that at the beginning! How could she have forgotten! It must have been the suddenness of Larry's transformation, Nina just got caught up in the whole thing. What kind of a witch was she, anyway?
Nina unsnapped the snaps between Larry's legs and pulled open the front of his plastic panties and diaper. She cooed softly as she tapped his nethers with a small wand, "This will feel really ... strange. Don't worry, you will make the best girl ever."
Nina said some arcane words, there was a flash with heat, Larry felt super intense and very strange sensations run all through his body for an instant.
Nina coos softly, "There, all done."
Larry realized his hair was in his eyes as the clerk brushed it behind his ear. Fortunately, all this had happened in the dressing room, so no one saw the magic in action. That was a good thing, because Nina's magic was top secret. At any rate, Nina now had a baby girl, even if she was a bit large. But Nina didn't mind; she preferred big babies.
Nina bent down and whispered to her new baby girl, "Lara, honey, I love you so much!" Nina gave Laura a huge smoochie as she hugged her close. Nina coos softly, "Now, Mommy has other daughters too and you are one of them for ever and ever. You won't ever have to grow up and will always be in diapers and pullups, mommy promises"
At that point, Nina crosses herself and makes the witches sign of a permanent promise. That meant, of course, that Lara was a big baby girl for always. Lara didn't really know what that meant, but she knew she loved Mommy, too.
After Nina had taken Laura to her house and into the new nursery and waited for her to lower the crib's side rail, Laura stood in front of a large full length mirror. The reflection that looked back, wasn't Larry anymore, but an extremely pretty Ababy girl with long curly bond locks, dressed in an adorable snuggle bug romper.
Nina tucks Laura into her new crib, places a bottle of warm milk in her lips, then kisses her nighty night for her first baby nap. Laura closes her eyes as her old life vanishes away ... and the new life of little girl Laura began. Laura knew it as a universal truth … The Adult Conspiracy was a Big Lie … Baby Rules … Rule!!
~~ The End?? ~~


text:
Walmart's $74 iPhone 4S discount was a 'pricing error' [u]
The price drop was first discovered at a Walmart store in Edmond, Okla., by Cult of Mac. There, both the black and white 16-gigabyte AT&T iPhone 4S is on sale for $114, down $74 from Walmart's usual $188 price.
In addition, the iPhone 4 was also reduced in price at the big-box retailer's location. There customers can get both the black and white 8-gigabyte iPhone 4 for just $34, on sale from Walmart's usual $88 price with a new two-year contract.
The sale is not reflected on Walmart's website, but it isn't confined to just one store. The Verge also found that one store in Austin, Tex., was also offering the iPhone 4S for $114, though none of the stores they spoke with were offering the iPhone 4 for less than $88.
Update: In a statement to CNet, Walmart said the price change was the result of a "pricing error in limited stores." The issue has since "been addressed and normal prices are in effect."
Even without the sale in effect, Walmart's low-margin business model allows the retailer to sell Apple's iPhone at prices lower than the suggested retail price. The 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S has an MSRP of $199 with a two-year contract, while the 8-gigabyte iPhone 4 regularly costs $99.
One study released in March revealed that Walmart does not play a significant role in iPhone sales. Outside of direct carrier sales, Apple sells 15 percent of iPhones in the U.S., while Best Buy accounts for 13 percent. The collective group of Walmart, Target, Radio Shack and Sam's Club accounts for just 3 percent of domestic iPhone sales.
Last quarter, Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones to start 2012, a higher-than-expected sum driven largely by international expansion of the iPhone 4S. Still, in the U.S., Apple's iPhone was the most popular smartphone at AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, the nation's three largest wireless carriers.


text:
This software is licensed under the Academic Free License version 3.0. See the file 'LICENSE' for more details.
This distribution comes with several pieces of documentation:
Still confused? The ECJ mailing list is here to help you. See the ECJ webpage for more information. Please post questions to the list. There is also a direct email address to the authors which you may use, but try not to do so except for direct questions to the authors, not general questions about using ECJ.
Here are some tutorials to get you up to speed. As I have time, I'll produce tutorials on the other various odd features of the system.
ECJ now has a basic GUI for loading and running jobs from parameter files and checkpoint files, editing parameters, and charting statistics. Try the quick examples in the next section; afterwards, you can try it by running java ec.display.Console. There are certain versions of the examples (in the gui) which, when loaded into the Console, will do charting for you as well.
The GUI can optionally chart statistics (see the ec/app/gui/ directory for some examples). However to use the charting, you need to install the JFreeChart and iText libraries (for charting and PDF export respectively). The console will still run without them, but you will not be able to run the charting examples. To compile the charting, facility, you compile with make chart
Some runs which result in the ideal individual being found (in most cases). First, cd to the ec directory. Then add the parent directory of the ec directory to your CLASSPATH. Then issue javac -O *.java */*.java */*/*.java */*/*/*.java Alternatively you can run the makefile.
Now you're ready. Here are some problems to try.
After a run, various statistical information is written to the out.stat file. All the GP examples use a population size of 1024, and 7-tournament selection. All other parameters are Koza-I/II standard.


text: Former Gov. Jim Florio returned to the Statehouse today to urge in a news conference that the state Senate quickly take up 22 bills designed to curb gun violence. The Assembly passed them last week. Florio took on the NRA over his ban on semi -automatic weapons when he was governor. Senate president Steve Sweeney says the Senate will take up some of them by April.


text:
A 54-year-old Illinois man has been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of his wife and mother after he was arrested following reports he robbed parishioners at a North Dakota church.
Billy Varner was arrested Saturday night near Williston, N.D., some 1,000 miles from his home in Antioch, Ill., where the bodies of his wife, Peggy Henderson, 61, and his mother, Dorothy Varner, 82, were discovered Oct. 28.
Cynthia Trujillo-Vargas, a spokeswoman for the Lake County state's attorney's office, said Varner was charged Monday with two counts of first-degree murder.
Police have not said how the women died.
Authorities say Varner walked into the Church of St. Michael in Ray during Mass shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday, told the three dozen parishioners to get on the floor and forced The Rev. Benny Putharayil to fill a black garbage bag with money.
"He was yelling, 'I don't care, you die, you see my face. Don't use your cellphones, and the gun is loaded,'" Putharayil said Monday. "I began to move down the pews, asking for money. There were a lot of tears and a lot of crying."
Putharayil, 46, who has led the congregation for five years, said he was prepared to die.
"I was not frightened. God has given me the grace to face that situation calmly," he said.
The man fled without harming or even pointing his gun at anyone, Putharayil said. Three men from the congregation briefly followed him in their own vehicles and were able to give a description to authorities.
Three Williams County sheriff's deputies located Varner's vehicle on U.S. Highway 2 about 13 miles from Williston, gave chase and apprehended him a short time later when he pulled over and gave himself up, Sheriff's Detective Caleb Fry said. Varner was driving a van that authorities in Illinois said he had taken without permission from a family member, Fry said.
Fry said Varner was arrested on multiple charges. Formal charges were not immediately filed Monday morning. Fry said North Dakota authorities were working with Illinois officials who want to question Varner.
Fry did not know if Varner had hired an attorney.
During a Sunday night news conference in Antioch, 60 miles northwest of Chicago, Antioch Police Chief Craig Somerville said, "We salute all who participated in this effort to take a dangerous subject off the streets."
Putharayil said that after the robbery, members of his congregation talked about what had happened for a few minutes, prayed for the robber, then held the Mass as planned.
"I switched on my mic and started putting them at ease. Many of them were in tears," he said. "Toward the end of the Mass, I got word that the man had been caught."
Putharayil said he thanked God that no children were in attendance Saturday night.
Officials with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bismarck issued a statement Monday saying they were grateful no one was hurt and that they were cooperating with the police investigation.
Man Charged in Antioch Deaths After Arrest in North Dakota
Billy Varner was charged Monday with two counts of first-degree murder
A 54-year-old Illinois man has been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of his wife and mother after he was arrested following reports he robbed parishioners at a North Dakota church.


text: NEW YORK -- In a dorm room-sized office near Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal, a lanky man in an inflated spacesuit dances. He hops, shimmies and boogies. He stretches his arms, sweeps his hands over his head, twists his torso and lifts a bent leg in the air. At one point he lurches over, as if to scoop up a rock on Mars. The guy in the spacesuit is artist and designer Ted Southern. Videotaping his performance is Nikolay Moiseev, a Russian mechanical engineer and Southern's partner in founding Final Frontier Design, a startup company that hopes to craft affordable yet highly capable spacesuits for a burgeoning commerical spaceflight industry. Just moments before, the suit resembled a saggy scarecrow's skin stitched together from plastic kiddie pools. But as it inflates, a crude simulation of the spacesuit prototype's behavior in a vacuum, the metamorphosis is shocking. Every scrap puffs into purpose under pressure: a joint, an ergonomic contour, a clever reinforcement, all of which permits fluid movement not afforded by spacesuit designs used today. "The current options are limited, expensive, heavy and not very functional. We think we can offer real improvement in terms of both performance and cost," Southern said. Southern and Moiseev met at a 2007 NASA competition to design a new spacesuit glove. Motivated in 2009 by their second-place $100,000 win, the duo now designs spacesuits from a workshop in the industrial boonies of Brooklyn, directly right across the street from a popular hipster bar. "We both wanted to go beyond gloves to a full suit, and we recognized a new market in the suborbital spaceflight industry," Southern said. The company recently launched a $20,000 Kickstarter campaign to develop its "3G" spacesuit. If funded, they'll spend the cash creating a prototype to vie for NASA's picky certification. After that they plan to sell lightweight, flight-approved models for about $50,000 a piece. Wired recently visited Final Frontier Design's headquarters. Get an exclusive look inside in this gallery. Mixed Histories Moiseev once ran 20 miles in a spacesuit on a treadmill to test boots designed for NASA's defunct Mars program. His expertise has put him into dozens of models. "I am only man who tried almost all space suits in the world," Moiseev told Wired. Image: NASA Moiseev and Southern met in Connecticut as empty-handed competitors in NASA's 2007 astronaut glove challenge. After the contest, Moiseev needed to catch a flight to Russia from New York City. Southern, who still lives in Brooklyn, offered to give him a lift to New York. During the ride Southern learned that Moiseev worked for Zvezda, Russia's prime spacesuit contractor, from 1986 until 2006. During his tenure, Moiseev helped design six spacesuits and dozens of prototypes, including some components still used by Russia and NASA today (above). "I did not sleep the night before my gloves were used for the first time," Moiseev said of a cosmonaut's 1988 excursion outside of the Mir space station in an Orlan-type spacesuit. "I was very scared." Conversely, Moiseev learned that Southern designs costumes for Broadway shows and to this day helps craft the angel wings for Victoria's Secret models (below). "It's a good way to pay the bills when you're designing spacesuits from scratch. We build them out of money from our own pockets," Southern said. Partners in Crime? After losing NASA's 2007 astronaut glove challenge, Moiseev occupied himself by designing a full spacesuit for space tourists, high-altitude skydivers and NASA's future commercial suppliers (above). He called it the "NAM" — short for his full name, Nikolay Alexandrovich Moiseev — but it never got off the ground. Moiseev and Southern joined forces to win second place in NASA's 2009 glove challenge, and by 2011 they'd crafted the "2G," a yellow two-layer spacesuit (below at right). To be permitted to sell spacesuits, Southern had to register as an arms trafficker. "Spacesuits are considered weapons by the U.S. Department of State. They're listed just after nuclear weapons under ITAR, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations," Southern said. "It's been a huge problem for us, because Nikolay is a Russian foreign national." The regulations also make it nearly impossible for Southern to hire talented foreign interns. He couldn't even disclose to Wired the exact weight of the 3G, which is a one-layer design that's lighter and more flexible than the 2G suit. "What I can say is that it weighs less than 14 pounds," Southern said. "To sell it to someone outside the U.S., it will take about six months [and] a couple thousand dollars in lawyer fees." Tight Timeline Final Frontier Design's deadline on Kickstarter is July 15, 2012 (above). To attract $20,000 in donations before then, they're offering everything from custom ear-unplugging valsalva devices (below at right) for $100 to a full 3G spacesuit for $10,000. "That will only get us so far to developing a flight-ready and certified suit, but it would be a huge help," Southern said. Getting as far as they have with the 3G today meant Moiseev had to move to New York City. But that required a visa, a hurdle that all too often blocks talented people from working in the United States. "Thankfully we were able to get him an 0-1 visa for individuals with extraordinary ability," Southern said. "Everyone calls it the scientists-and-supermodels visa." Keeping it Simple Operating on a shoestring budget means Final Frontier Design resorts to clever uses of common materials. Glove prototypes in their workshop (above) use a rubberized life raft-like fabric, which is then adorned with nylon straps and steel wires to control their shape under pressure. Helmets latch to an aluminum cuff with a simple twist and use a shatter-resistant polycarbonate shell for the visor. "In the new version we'd love to design a visor with a shade that flips up," Southern said. Spacesuit Seamsters From steel nails and wingnuts to cotton string and sewing needles, Final Frontier Design keeps it real with old-school materials in its workshop. But the fully functional prototypes don't seem to mind. "Some spacesuit manufacturers say the Washington, D.C. beltway is the most important orbit, and that getting a contract is more important than your technology," Southern said. "We disagree. Useful technology is the most important thing, and you don't have to spend tons of money to get it right." Tough Glove Gloves, Moiseev believes, are the hardest parts of a spacesuit to get right. "If they are not designed well, they will fail after very little use. Many astronauts lose their fingernails from the stress of the glove," he said. The startup uses a vacuum chamber (above) to test their designs. Under pressure, the gloves morph from saggy sacks into stiff, hand-fatiguing structures (below). Carefully sewn joints, however, provide flexibility and degrees of freedom that most spacesuit gloves can't match. "Hands are really important for human interaction," Southern said. "They're hard to get right, but we feel like we have very effective designs." Suiting Up The 3G prototype is a one-piece spacesuit (above) without hard-to-move airtight zippers that are common to most spacesuits. To get inside the 3G, a wearer sticks his or her feet through a tube of material in the front, then pulls the arms and helmet ring over the head. Once tucked in, an assistant twists and seals the entry tube. Southern (left, below) donned the 3G for Wired while Moiseev (right, below) helped him put it on. Vital Accessories A no-frills helmet twists and locks into place on top of the 3G spacesuit (above) while gloves (below) use similar aluminum hardware to keep the suit sealed. Underneath the garment, Southern wears long underwear, cotton gloves and a custom-made snoopy cap for communications. Com Check To communicate from their sealed-up world, Southern and Moiseev use a headset linked wirelessly by Bluetooth to an iPhone. "It's not flight-certified, and you can't have any electronic component in a high-oxygen environment. But it works for now," Southern said. Below, Moiseev chats with Southern inside of the spacesuit. Under Pressure Compressed air pumped into the 3G spacesuit raises the internal pressure to 2 pounds per square inch above external pressure (above). The simple exercise helps Southern and Moiseev test cooling flow within the suit, and simulate the flow of oxygen that will eventually come from a life support system. The inflation also helps the team examine the suit as single, functional unit in action. Below, Southern weaves together his gloved fingers in a show of pliability. "The spacesuit is a precaution against rapid depressurization, like oxygen masks that drop from the ceiling in airplane," Southern said. "At more than 200,000 feet, if your spacecraft loses pressure, your body can't survive that. It's essentially a vacuum. You need a helmet with a neck seal or a full spacesuit." Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes In the tight confines of a spacecraft, comfort is key for spacefliers. To that end, Final Frontier Design is designing the 3G to be as lightweight and flexible as possible (above, below) while inflated. "We were working on single-layer gloves, and we felt we could translate that to the entire suit," Southern said. "When you have two layers and you try to bend a joint, it's hard to do and you get a lot of friction. The single-layer suit is much lighter and more comfortable." Punctures and wear-and-tear on a single-layer spacesuit makes for a greater risk. But Southern said the 3G fabric is much thicker than that of the protective outer layer of the two-layer 2G model. "If it does seem like a greater risk, we'll add a lightweight protective coverall," Southern said. Starting Small The competition for suborbital spacesuits is limited to a few competitors -- David Clark, ILC Dover and Orbital Outfitters, for example -- but the stakes are high with a small pool of customers. "Generally [rocket] companies think a lot about the rocket and the spacecraft, but not so much the spacesuits," Southern said. "It's sort of an afterthought for them, and we feel there's a lot of commercial potential there." Although the 3G is not flight-ready yet, Final Frontier Design is already attracting potential customers. "Someone from a high-altitude balloon company visited us yesterday for a demo, and it looks like he might buy a suit for $10,000. That could push us over the Kickstarter limit," Southern said. "His friend, a pilot, also seems willing to do some testing of the suit in exchange for one." Images copyright of Dave Mosher (unless noted otherwise)


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Foreign Minister Tuomioja met Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Song Tao, who visited Finland
Press release 252/2012
30 October 2012
The affairs on the agenda of the meeting between Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja and Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Song Tao on 29 October included enhancement of bilateral relations between Finland and China, the economic situation of the eurozone and, as regards questions of international politics, Syria and the nuclear weapons issue of Iran. The Ministers considered it important to develop cooperation within the arenas of, for example, economy and student exchange. The high-level visits planned between the countries after the change of leadership in China were also discussed.
Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Song, responsible for Sino-European relations, visited Finland in order to conduct the regular talks between the Ministries for Foreign Affairs with Secretary of State Pertti Torstila. During his visit, he also met Minister for European Affairs and Foreign Trade Alexander Stubb and participated in a seminar organised by the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
Additional information: Krista Napola, Diplomatic Adviser to the Foreign Minister, tel. +358 40 590 7973


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Read the article in Inside Belleville, about how the Craving Change program at Gateway Community Health Centre is changing how we look at food.
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Started by Cadetter, November 05, 2017, 07:37:05 pm
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Quote from: Cadetter on November 06, 2017, 02:18:36 amBoth, graduating unaccredited homeschool and getting a GED. Like I said in the first post, the flagship requires homeschoolers to have a GED for scholarships (regardless of SAT/ACT scores and undergraduate coursework).
Quote from: Cadetter on November 06, 2017, 04:05:26 pmThe education I've gotten from being homeschooled is very worthwhile. I'm not applying as a GED graduate because I won't have my GED when applying. A home school curriculum can be every bit as challenging, you know... even if you discount all of it, there's also around 23 college courses of A's, including the entire general education, the entire undergraduate statistics coursework, the majority of the math program with research under a professor, and 3-4 undergrad language courses.And even without college courses, home school classes can still be VERY challenging. Please don't discount them.
Quote from: abdsp51 on November 06, 2017, 04:41:32 pmNot discounting home-schooling at all. In some cases I would advocate it. All I am saying is you'd be better off graduating from and accredited curriculum than going the GED route.And you didn't answer the question posed...
Quote from: spaatzmom on November 06, 2017, 04:07:55 pmCadetPlease try to remember that the whole home schooling thing is pretty much a foreign concept to those adults who are older than say 35 as it wasn't an accepted method of learning in much of the country until rather recently. Accreditation and a diploma was always an extremely important need to have for further education. GEDs would rarely get you into the door of a college just to get an application. I realize that times have changed, but often wonder if many of the changes I have witnessed are for the better.
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[Op-Ed: Africa Mass Killings]
Editor's Note: The Op-Ed is written by a Canadian attorney who represents a defendant before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, on war crimes charges. The attorney offers a counter-view to the one-sided representation of the Rwanda narrative. Readers are encouraged to submit their comments and reactions.
Rwanda before 1990 was considered the Switzerland of Africa, a model of social development.
The result of the 1959 social revolution that deposed the Tutsi monarchy and aristocracy and freed the majority Hutu population from serfdom and a lifetime of humiliation was the establishment of a collective society in which both Hutus, and Tutsis as well as Twas lived together in relative harmony.
Tutsis were members of the government, its administration, present in large numbers in the education system, the judiciary and controlled most of the large private commercial companies in Rwanda.
The Rwandan army was a multiethnic army composed of both Hutus and Tutsis and it stayed a multiethnic force even when the Rwandan Army was forced by the invaders from Uganda to retreat into the Congo forest in July 1994 because it ran out of ammunition due to the Western embargo on arms and supplies.
Rwanda descended into chaos in 1990 when the self-described Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) forces launched a surprise attack on October 1, 1990 from Uganda. In fact, every one of the men and officers of that invasion force were members of the Ugandan national Army.
It was an invasion by Uganda disguised as an independent force of "liberation". Liberation from what, has never been stated.
Initially the justification put out by the RPF was that of attaining the return of Tutsi "refugees" from Uganda to Rwanda. However, that problem had been resolved by an agreement between the RPF, Uganda, Rwanda, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the OAU a few weeks earlier. The Rwandan government had agreed to the return of all those Tutsis in Uganda who wanted to return to Rwanda.
That accord required that Tutsi representatives of the refugees travel to Kigali for a meeting to determine the mechanics of that population movement, and how to accommodate all those people in a small country. They were expected at the end of September 1990. They never arrived.
Instead of civilians returning in peace, Rwanda was viciously attacked on October 1, 1990 by a force that unleashed unbridled savagery. During that invasion the RPF forces of the Ugandan Army slaughtered everyone in their path, Hutu or Tutsi. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians, the majority Hutu, were butchered. These crimes have never been accounted for.
The RPF's favorite method was the bayonet or knife with which they disembowelled men and women or to tied their hands behind their backs and smashed their skulls with hoes, the farm tool iconic of the Hutu peasantry.
After several weeks of intense fighting, the RPF forces were destroyed by the small Rwandan Army and the remnants fled, on US instructions, back into Uganda to regroup and reorganize.
The RPF still never justified this aggression and the needless slaughter of civilians in a peaceful country. Individual Tutsis had always been allowed to return to Rwanda from the early 1960s and several times the Rwandan government invited them all to return. However the Tutsi aristocracy, jealous of its lost power and which viewed the Hutus as nothing but subhuman, refused to return unless their absolute power was restored. This the people of Rwanda, even the Tutsis who remained in the country, refused.
In the 1960s and early 1970s various Tutsi groups in Uganda and elsewhere had organized terrorist raids into Rwanda in which they murdered without pity anyone they caught. These raids were repelled by Rwanda's tiny armed forces. The years that followed were a period of development and peace for Rwandans. Even though one of the smallest and poorest countries in the world it had the best road system, healthcare, and education systems in Africa. Until the late 1980s it prospered and received help from both the socialist countries of the USSR, North Korea and China and West Germany, France and Israel and others.
Some Tutsis in Uganda became involved in the civil wars there between the socialist Milton Obote and the US- and UK puppet Yoweri K. Museveni who was supported by the West to get rid of socialism in Uganda. By 1990 Tutsis composed a large section of the Ugandan Army and all the senior officers of the RPF were high officers in the Ugandan Army, the National Resistance Army. Paul Kagame himself was one of the highest-ranking officers in the intelligence services of the Ugandan army and was notorious for enjoying torturing prisoners.
Rwanda until 1990 was a one party socialist state. The ruling party the National Movement For revolutionary Development (MRND) was not considered a party as such but rather a social movement in which everyone in society took part through local elections and the mechanism of consensus much like the system in Cuba.
The fall of the Soviet Union led to pressure from the West, notably the United States and France to dismantle the one party state system and permit multiparty democracy.
The President, Juvenal Habyarimana, instead of resisting, agreed to a change in the constitution and in 1991 Rwanda became a multiparty democracy. The fact the Rwandan government did this in the middle of a war is more than remarkable. It was also an offer of peace. The RPF, since its abject failure in 1990, had changed its strategy from a frontal assault to the tactics of terrorism.
The RPF likes to refer to this phase as the guerrilla. However, it was not the guerrilla of a liberation struggle like the FLMN in Vietnam or the FARC in Colombia. It was instead a mirror image of the Contras campaign of terrorism conducted against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Its purpose was not to make revolution. Its purpose was to overthrow the 1959 revolution. And, like the contras, the RPF was supported by the United States.
This was clear from the beginning of the war.
When the RPF launched their attack, President Juvenal Habyarimana was in Washington, lured out of the way, by the State Department. The evidence that the US was aware of and supported the October surprise attack was the US Administration's offer to Habyarimana of asylum in the United States if he surrendered power to the RPF.
Habyarimana refused and immediately flew back home. There was no condemnation of the Ugandan-RPF aggression by the United States, a matter which France raised at the United Nations, or any of its allies despite the big noise they made at the same time about the advance of Iraqi forces into Kuwait. Further, the Rwanda ambassador to the UN, then on the Security Council, filed a protest in the Security Council but the US had it taken off the agenda.
In fact the US and its allies supported the aggression against Rwanda from the beginning and US Special Forces operated with the RPF from the beginning. Recently, while former president Bill Clinton was in Toronto, he denied any involvement in Rwanda--this is one of the big lies of the century. Clinton and George W. Bush are up to their necks in the blood of the Rwandan and Congolese people.
With the arrival of multiparty democracy in 1991, the RPF took full advantage and created several front parties to take away support from the popular MRND. These parties though claiming to represent different political views in fact were, in the main front parties for the RPF.
The press was expanded and many of the new papers were financed by and acted as mouthpieces for the RPF. At the same time as these parties sprang up, criticizing the government, the RPF continued its terror campaign: planting mines on roads that killed Hutu and Tutsi alike; assassinating politicians and officials; and, blaming it, with the help of various NGOs funded by western intelligence agencies, on the government.
In 1992 a coalition government was formed with the RPF or its front parties seizing control of key ministries and appointing the prime minister. Through these agents they also controlled the civilian intelligence services that they then began to dismantle. The RPF engaged in a "talk and fight" strategy. Always agreeing to a ceasefire, pressing for more power, then launching new attacks on civilians. The most egregious was their breaking of the ceasefire and their major offensive in February 1993 in which they seized the major town of Ruhengeri in the process murdering 40,000 civilians most of them Hutu.
The Rwandan Army, even though hamstrung by the civilian ministries that were controlled by the RPF, managed to drive the RPF back. Finally in August 1993 the Arusha Accords were signed under pressure from the United States and its allies in which the RPF obtained major concessions in return to the formation of a broad-based transition government to be followed by general elections.
However, they knew they could not win such elections as the RPF was not only unpopular with the majority Hutu population it did not even enjoy the support of many internal Tutsis whose lives and businesses had been destroyed by the war they did not see a need for.
Instead of preparing for elections the RPF prepared for their final offensive. As far back as December 1993, UN reports document the massive build-up of men and weapons coming in from Uganda. The UN force that was deployed supposedly to ensure a peaceful transition; in fact, it was a cover for the US and its allies to assist in this build up.
General Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of the UN force hid this build up from the Rwandan army and the President. The build-up was accompanied by death threats against the president.
According to an account of Habyarimana's last conversation with president Mobutu Sese Seko of what was then Zaire, just two days before he was murdered, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen had, in October 1993, told Habyarimana, that unless he ceded all power to the RPF they were going to kill him and drag his body through the streets.
These threats were punctuated by the murder of the first Hutu president of neighboring Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, by Tutsi officers in October 1993 in which Kagame and the RPF also had a hand; the officers who committed the murder, including Lieutenant Paul Kamana, later fled to Uganda. Ndadaye was in office a mere four months, having won the country's first free elections. In the aftermath of that murder 250,000 Hutus were massacred by the Tutsi army of Burundi and hundreds of thousands of Hutus fled to Rwanda.
The result of the 1993 offensive was that one million Hutus fled the terror of the RPF in northern Rwanda towards the capital, Kigali, so that by April 1994 over a million refugees were encamped close to the capital and hundreds thousands more in camps in the south all fleeing RPF terror.
The RPF did all it could in 1994 to paralyse the functioning of the government, to exacerbate racial tensions, and prepare for war.
Then on April 6, 1994 they launched their final surprise attack by shooting down the presidential plane returning from a meeting in Tanzania that Uganda's Museveni had arranged. In fact it is known that Museveni's half-brother general Salim Saleh was at the final meeting at which the date for the shoot down was agreed.
The missile attack killed Habyarimana, as well as Burundi's new Hutu president Cyprien Ntayamire, and Rwanda's military chief of staff, and others on board. This was the first massacre of 1994 and it was a massacre of Hutus by the RPF.
The RPF then immediately launched attacks across Kigali and the north of the country. In the sector of Kigali known as Remera they killed everyone on the night of the 6th and the 7th, wiped out the Gendarme camp there, wiped out the military police camp at Kami and launched a major attack against Camp Kanombe, Camp Kigali and the main gendarme camp at Kacyriu.
The Rwandan government and army called for a ceasefire the same night and next day. The RPF rejected the call. The Rwandan government asked for more UN help to control the situation. Instead, the US arranged that the main UN force be pulled out while flying in men and supplies to the RPF using C130 Hercules aircraft.
The Rwandan Army, short of ammunition and unable to contain the RPF advances even offered an unconditional surrender on April 12th. The RPF rejected even this offer and instead shelled the Nyacyonga refugee camp where the one million Hutu refugees were located provoking their flight into the capital.
The effect of one million people flooding into a small city that itself was under bombardment cannot be described. The RPF used this flood of people to infiltrate its men behind army lines. This created panic among the Hutu population that began killing anyone they did not recognize. It was clear that the RPF was not interested in saving lives, even Tutsis, but in seizing total power and did not want to negotiate at all.
The late Dr. Alison Des Forges, the American who was considered a noted scholar on Rwanda, in her testimony in the Military II trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 2006 testified that the RPF claim that they attacked to stop a "genocide" was a myth; just propaganda to justify their attempt to seize power by force of arms.
She also testified that the Rwandan government did not plan and execute genocide. This accords with the testimony of General Dallaire who also confirmed an earlier statement that there was no planned genocide by the government as did the deputy head of Belgian Army intelligence, Col. Vincent, who also testified at the ICTR that the idea of a genocide was a fantasy.
The fighting in Kigali was intense. UN officers –confirming what has been said by Rwandan and RPF officers who have testified— state that the RPF was launching hundreds of Katyusha rockets every hour round the clock while the Rwandan Army ran out of hand grenades in the first few days and was reduced to fighting the RPF with hand made explosives.
The vaunted RPF could not take Kigali. The siege of Kigali lasted three months and only ended when the Rwandan Army literally ran out of ammunition and ordered a general retreat into the Congo forest.
RPF officers have stated that the RPF killed up to two million Hutus in those 12 weeks in a deliberate campaign to eliminate the Hutu population. The Akagera River, the length of which was under RPF control throughout, ran red with the blood of the Hutus massacred on its banks.
The RPF claimed these were Tutsis but there were no Tutsis in that area and only the RPF had access to that area. Robert Gersony, of USAID in a report to the UNHCR in October 1994, filed as an exhibit at the ICTR, stated that the RFP carried out a systematic and planned massacre of the Hutu population. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gersony
As the Rwandan Army, including Tutsi officers within that army and men retreated into the Congo forest, the Hutu population, in fear for their lives fled with them in their millions. In local villages, Hutu neighbours attacked Tutsis in revenge for the murder of Hutus or fearing death at their hands. Tutsis also attacked Hutus. It was total war just as the RPF wished. The RPF later pursued the Hutus through the Congo forest between 1996 to 1998 and killed hundreds of thousands and possibly millions. They were shelled, machine gunned, raped, cut to pieces with knives. Accounts of that trek are difficult to bear.
The RPF was assisted in its offensive by the United States. The UN Rwanda Emergency office in Nairobi was in fact manned by US Army officers and acted as the operational headquarters of the RPF and gave them intelligence on Rwandan Army movements and actions and directions.
Prudence Bushnell the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs telephoned the Rwandan Army chief of staff in May 1994 and told him that unless he surrendered he must know that he was fighting the United States of America and would be defeated. US Special Forces fought with the RPF. There is also evidence that Belgian forces of the UN were involved as an intercepted radio message from Kagame to his forces in the field refers to the help they had received from the Belgians.
There is also evidence that Canadian forces were also involved and Atoine Nyetera a Tutsi prince, who was in Kigali in that period testified for the defense in the Military II trial and stated that not only were there no massacres committed against Tutsis by the Rwandan Army but that it was the RPF that began the massacres after they took Kigali and began killing Hutus.
Nyetera testified that despite the claim by the RPF of being a Tutsi liberation group, when he saw their long columns enter the capital he saw that most of them were Sudanese, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Tanzanians and others speaking Swahili or Sudanese languages, in other words, mercenaries.
Several RPF officers have testified at the ICTR and stated that they fled the Kagame regime as they had been promised that they fought for liberation of the Tutsis. However, when they wanted to take over the streets of Kigali to stop reprisals against Tutsis by Hutu civilians the junior officers were forbidden to do so, putting the lie to Kagame's claim that he attacked to save Tutsis.
These officers testified that Kagame wanted deaths to justify his war. The RPF could have controlled large parts of Kigali as they had at least 15,000 men in or near the capital opposed to 5,000 Rwandan Army forces. Instead Kagame used his men to ethnically cleanse the rest of the country of the Hutu population.
The Rwanda War was a total war. All means were used to destroy that country and the Hutu people. The ultimate objective, the resources of the Congo. The US agreed to support the RPF in return for the RPF acting as a US proxy force to invade the Congo and seize its resources.
The US now has several military bases in Rwanda and the country is nothing more than a US and UK colony run by thugs who keep control of the majority of the people by intimidation, murder and disinformation.
None of this could have happened if those in the UN such as Kofi Anan, then in charge of the Department of peacekeeping operations, had done his job. None of this could have happened without the connivance of the NATO
countries and Uganda, from where the invasion was launched.
Ultimately, the prime responsibility rests with the United States of America and in particular the regimes of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and now President Barack Obama. As Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then UN Secretary General, stated to Canadian historian Robin Philpot in 2004: "The United States is one hundred percent responsible for what happened in Rwanda."
Toronto-based Christopher Black is a Barrister and International Criminal Lawyer. He is Lead Counsel, General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Chief of Staff, Rwandan Gendarmerie. International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda (ICTR).
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- Price: $150
- Posted: 25 October 13
- Expire: Recurring
- Age & Sex: M/F 18+
Behavioral Tech Research, Inc. is happy to announce a new chance to learn and use Behavioral Activation treatment (BA). BA is a brief, behavioral treatment for adults with despair that has been found to be extremely effective in the treatment of depression. In cooperation with BA treatment professional, Dr. Sona Dimidjian, we have established a BA computer-assisted treatment (BA-CAT) program. BA-CAT is a web-based, HIPAA compliant program that is develop to deliver training and on-the-job support to clinicians education BA treatment.
Teaching: BA-CAT permits clinicians to easily study about BA via media-rich teaching resources that can be accessed from wherever at any time.
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We are looking for clinicians who are presently treating adults with sadness to join in a research study to control the effectiveness of this new BA-CAT program. Our goal is to calculate how using the BA-CAT program parallels to standard attention for depression. No prior information of BA is needed!
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