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Register now and join the FairCasinos.com community - It's FREE!!! The owner has gambled online since 1999 and only the best casinos can advertise here. To register please click...
The beauty of the casino forum system is that the members can discuss any problems and ask any questions they would like to fellow members of the casino forum. Although a consensus of opinion in the casino forum may show some questionable casinos to be okay in general, you will often find such casinos blacklisted here due to unresolved problems from the distant past. This Online Casino Guide aims to show the REAL truth about online casinos.
Only reliable online casinos are promoted. I've been playing online casinos for over ten years now and you can trust my selection! It really is fun and can be especially lucrative if you put your mind to it and take advantage of promotional offers. If you play mainly for entertainment purposes then you really won't be disappointed with the range of online casinos available.
The online casinos listed have been in existence for a while and most license their customized software from Microgaming Systems. I've played many kinds of online casinos along the years and a large number have been powered by Microgaming. Microgaming software is very popular with players and seems honest and fair in my experience. I'll only list online casinos that have been reliable, have a good reputation and are legally licensed to operate. You will be pleased to know that Microgaming has in the past backed up players and paid them in rare cases of a licensee going out of business.
There of course cannot be any guarantees. Online casinos have the technology to behave essentially the same as a physical casino and to simulate a roulette wheel or deck of cards almost perfectly by generating random numbers. It requires some understanding of statistics to believe this, but playing a game online should have identical odds to the game in a real casino. You should realise that it is still possible that online casinos cheat. It's arguable that the major software companies that license the online casinos have a lot to lose if they are found to cheat. Many smaller companies have been found out though which isn't a very good sign. Many are still going today that cheat or at one time cheated. Our forum will tell you which ones to avoid.
The fact is that many online casino software manufacturers take a percentage of player's losses as well as license fees for their software. They therefore may be tempted to cheat slightly to increase profits. It is possible that cheating goes undetected if it only occurs in special circumstances that are hard to detect. In my experience I've not had any cause for concern with most online casino software. I've occasionally had very bad streaks but also incredibly good ones, all of which is normal with a fair game. Microgaming Blackjack (single-deck) is one of the best in terms of theoretical payback and on average it returns nearly 99.9% of all bets if you play the best strategy. Being almost an even game, you will have as much chance of winning as of losing. If an online casino shaved off a fraction more (eg. another 0.02%), it could make more profit with little chance of detection. Even if it rigged the blackjack by 1% (returning nearly 99%), it would take around 100,000 blackjack bets to have a good chance of detecting this from the results.
Would you be concerned if the actual payback in blackjack was 99% instead of 99.9%? Well, it seems many thousands of internet gamblers take this added risk. It's possible to win in an online casino that is rigged, you just have less chance of doing it. If the cheating is more blatant, such as a 95% payback or less in blackjack, it is possible to detect cheating very easily with far less hands/bets needed in the test. One thing to remember is that anything is possible even if the outcome is extremely rare in a fair game but repeated testing should result in ever worsening odds if cheating continues. There is a calculator on this site (coming soon) to help you calculate the odds of a particular result. You will just need to enter the number of hands/games played and your final result in bet units won or lost (you will need to convert your result a bit if you didn't bet the same amount each hand). Of course, you will be bound to get very unlucky sometimes if you play regularly, but if a result is particularly unlikely and other players have similar terrible luck at the same online casino, then it is good evidence of cheating and not just bad luck.
If a skill based game in an online casino doesn't have identical odds to the real thing then that casino will be blacklisted here. It is hard to prove if something is amiss sometimes if the cheating is subtle but in many cases it can be found quite easily. Games such as slots are different because they are programmed for a particular payout and the odds aren't determined by the player's skill. Some online casino websites don't claim to be fair but it should be assumed that a player expects normal odds for games such as blackjack and roulette.
Note that if you don't play the 'basic strategy' for the best odds in blackjack, your odds of winning will obviously be lower, so I recommend learning it or printing it out. Even though Blackjack always has an average return of over 99% of bets with perfect play, most players do not play the best strategy at all times if at all. This means that on average the casino keeps a few times more than suggested by the 'house edge'.
If this has scared you off, I should add that playing online casinos has been very lucrative for me due to the huge bonuses they continue to give players. There are hundreds of online casinos that I've found to be reliable and fair. These bonus offers are not just given as an incentive to sign up, but casinos often offer regular bonuses to keep you playing there. A bonus usually gives a player a considerable advantage over the casino for once!
This site will soon have a unique bonus advantage calculator which can tell you the advantage you have over the online casino when a bonus is given, assuming a fair game.
Please note that the three Online Casino Guides linked to on the left (casinomeister, wizardofodds and winneronline) are some of the best in terms of providing online casino information but the online casino sites they recommend are not always good ones. We only recommend reliable casinos with no unresolved issues on this site and any from external links are not endorsed.
The Forum is in the process of being reorganised at the moment but below are a few recent message headings:
You gain entries to the Prize Draw by participating in the site and posting in the forum. Anyone can read and write messages but registration is required to participate further and enter the Prize Draw.
To have your website link featured here, your site must show the above forum summary (javascript code will be given). Please contact us at email@example.com to exchange links this way and recommend our forum.
You can use the forum search function to find out about any casino as we have archived news going back to 1998, before the forum even began. The forum lists online casinos by common ownership so you can find out which casinos are linked.
If you have a question about anything related to casinos, post it in the 'News and Views' section of the forum. Another good message board is this one at WinnerOnline.com (my nickname there is Sirius).
ZERO TOLERANCE POLICYWith so many online casinos out there, this site has a ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY and will blacklist any online casino that has digressed in the past. The blacklist will be available soon but for now please play at the safe online casinos listed here! Our blacklist will be far bigger than any other online casino portal but you should stick to our recommended online casinos if you want hassle-free gaming.(FairBingos.com, FairBookies.com, FairLottos.com, FairPokers.com and more will also be launched soon)
Our blacklist will be far bigger than any other online casino portal but you should stick to our recommended online casinos if you want hassle-free gaming.(FairBingos.com, FairBookies.com, FairLottos.com, FairPokers.com and more will also be launched soon)


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If you have ever considered becoming a tutor then we are looking for you. The success of students in their academic pursuits can be greatly enhanced by a good tutor and you can be a part of that. Passing along your knowledge and experience as well as time management and study skills is an opportunity for you to invest in a child's future. We will match you with the right students according to your skills allowing you the best opportunity to make a difference in their academic careers.
Plus Plus Tutoring can assist your child in understanding course work, preparing for tests, or completing homework assignments by providing professional private tutors. Our services provide you with the best value for your money nationwide. We have tutors available during the school year and during the summer. Tutors across the United States are available to aid your children at great prices. You have found the right place to acquire a private tutor to help your child succeed.
Plus Plus Tutoring currently has employment opportunities and contract positions available in many parts of the United States for qualified applicants if you would like the opportunity to become part of our team. Tutoring jobs are available for all subjects, grade levels, and ages so if you are skilled in a particular subject you may qualify. We are also looking for individuals to fill regional director positions. If you feel that you have applicable experience please contact us as soon as possible.
Planning for college may be the most important time in a young person's life. Plus Plus Tutoring will be happy to assist high school seniors in getting into their college of choice as well as aid other adults who have made the decision to return to college with our college planning services. It is our goal to make sure that you are as prepared as possible for this event. From applying to your chosen school and choosing the right major or courses to helping you with the time management and study skill necessary for success, Plus Plus Tutoring can help you develop a personalized plan for your future.
Choosing a tutor for your child should not be a stressful experience, so here at Plus Plus Tutoring we take as much of the guesswork as possible out of the equation. You can choose one of our home tutors based on your location, a particular subject, or the grade level of the student. This is a great way to make sure that your child is getting exactly what is needed, and to ensure that you get the most value for your money!
Plus Plus Tutoring services include test preparation for all standardized tests, for all grade levels, and for all ages. This includes, but is not limited to, the following standardized tests:
Our professional tutors are standing by to help students prepare for tough end of course and graduation-oriented exams as well, depending on state and national requirements. You cannot put a price on your child's readiness for these very important tests, and with personalized home tutoring programs you can ensure that your child has the utmost confidence.

subset: commoncrawl


text: Creative and Quality are the core of each enterprise. We have around 100 skilled workers, 10 experienced engineers, 5000 square meters factory, advanced equipment, we have our own SMT workshop with 4 sets of SMT machines; process lines with 3 assembly lines and 1 automatic aging burning test lines. Learn more >>


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Bud Howard Skater Profile
Sponsors: DGK (flow), Clockwork Skate Shop, Tork Trucks (flow), Supra (flow), Sk8 Junkie
Hometown: Macon GA, Stance: Regular, Age: 30, Status: Am
Last Update: Friday, May 9, 2014 Submit an Update
Bud Howard Mugshot History
Date: April 2013
Date: April 2012
Date: May 2011
Bud Howard Comments
Other Skater Links
- Full Skater Database - 6000+ skater profiles.
- Skateboarders on Instagram - browse your favorite pros and ams on Instagram.
- Skate News and Videos - daily skate news and videos from around the web.
- Media Coverage - we log all major magazine coverage by skater and photographer.
- Skate Photographers - we log all major magazine coverage by skater and photographer.
- Contest Results - over a decade's worth of contest history.


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Our publishing house IDG is running its Global Mobile Survey, quizzing you on your mobile device habits and media consumption. We're interested in learning more about how you use your smartphone or tablet. And you could win one of the latest Apple tablets worth £269! Win an iPad mini in our short survey
Your feedback will help us to more closely align our mobile services with your needs, so give us a hand by taking the survey!
Take the 2013 Digital Arts Mobile survey
The survey is around 10-15 minutes in length, so do it in your coffee break or at home – but there's a reward, our way of saying thanks for sharing your time with us: five lucky respondents who complete the survey will win an Apple iPad mini, worth £269.
This smaller tablet rivals not just 7-inch Android tablets but even its larger iPad brother.
Although it's the same physical size as its seven-inch Android rivals, the iPad mini packs a bigger 7.9-inch screen. You wouldn't think it, but this extra not-quite-an-inch gives the iPad mini around 35 percent more screen real-estate than a 7-inch tablet, and the difference is noticeable.
The mini is also noticeably thinner and lighter than most of its 7-inch rivals, including the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD.
For many people the iPad mini is the perfect tablet, much more mobile and handy than the larger 10-inch iPad.
You've got to be an UK resident aged 18 years or older to be eligible to win the iPad mini; at the end of the survey all you have to do is give us your email.
First name out of the digital hat wins the prize!
This year we want to explore whether our audience use the smartphone for online purchases, and if not what's holding you back?
It's a short survey and there are five iPad minis up for grabs so give it a spin!


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Millions of sociopaths
Experts estimate 1% to 4% of people are psychopaths or have antisocial personality disorder
It's impossible to know exactly how many people are psychopaths or have antisocial personality disorder. They are both men and women. They are found in all segments of society, all walks of life. What you really need to know is that there are millions of sociopaths, they can be anywhere, and watch out.
Dr. Robert Hare estimates that 1% of the population in North America are psychopaths, the term that he uses. The population of the United States is more than 305 million. That means, according to his standards, there are more than 3 million psychopaths in the country.
A related diagnosis is antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). This is the term used by the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Mental health professionals generally estimate that 3% of men and 1% of women in the United States have antisocial personality disorder. That would be 4.5 million men and 1.5 million women, for a total of 6 million people. Psychiatrists generally refer to these people as sociopaths.
Dr. Hare believes antisocial personality disorder has a broader definition than psychopath. In other words, he says all psychopaths have antisocial personality disorder, but not everyone diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder is a psychopath.
In The Sociopath Next Door, Dr. Martha Stout says 4% of the population are sociopaths — and by that she means people with antisocial personality disorder. That would add up to 12 million of them in the United States.
As you can see, estimates are all over the place. The Lovefraud Risk Calculator projects the number of sociopaths in a community. The calculation assumes that between 1% and 4% of the U.S. population are psychopaths or antisocials.
Next: The Internet is loaded with sociopaths


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Lambda Legal files federal marriage lawsuit with same-sex couples in Georgia
April 22, 2014
Today, April 22, Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit, Inniss v. Aderhold, seeking the freedom to marry in Georgia and respect for marriages legally performed elsewhere. The case, filed with pro bono co-counsel from Bryan Cave and White & Case, argues that same-sex couples should not be denied the dignity and respect that only marriage can provide.
The lawsuit joins 64 other lawsuits in 30 other states/territories where same-sex couples are making the case for why marriage matters to all families. You can keep track of all of the marriage litigation here, or read our Q&A about what's next for marriage in the courts here.
Tara Borelli, a Senior Attorney for Lambda Legal who is based in Georgia, explained today in a press release, "Every day that same-sex couples in Georgia are denied the freedom to marry, the government sends a message that their families are not worthy of dignity and respect. Georgians believe in the Southern values of love, honor and family, but as long as the State of Georgia continues to bar same-sex couples from marriage, it devalues these families and reinforces unfairness and discrimination."
Jeff Graham, Executive Director of Georgia Equality, added: "Today's filing represents a critically important step in the ongoing work toward marriage equality in Georgia. Georgia Equality stands with these inspiring couples in their fight to enable more than 21,000 same-sex couples and their families living in Georgia the freedom to marry the person who they love."
The plaintiffs in the case include three same-sex couples who wish to marry in Georgia - including Christopher Inniss and Shelton Stroman (pictured), who are raising a 9-year-old and have been together for 13 years; Rayshawn Chandler and Avery Chandler, police officers from Atlanta together for nearly three years; Michael Bishop and Shane Thomas, who are raising two children after seven years together. Additionally, plaintiff Jennifer Sisson, a widow who lost her wife Pamela Drenner last year, is suing after Georgia state officials denied respect for the women's marriage for the purpose of listing Jennifer on Pam's death certificate.
Meet the families involved in Lambda Legal's case, and learn more about marriage litigation.


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Gauchos Del Mar follows the story of two brothers as they pursue their dream of surfing the American Pacific, while camping and surfing on their way back home to Argentina.Watch Trailer
|One Dream. Two Brothers. One continent. Gauchos Del Mar follows the story of two brothers as they persue their dream of surfing the American Pacific showing the Continent as a whole, through its different cultures, villages, food, people, animals and landscapes while camping and surfing on their way back home to Argentina.
|Surfing Documentaries, Foreign Surf Films, Surf Travel Movies
|Julian Azulay, Joaquin Azulay
|Julian Azulay, Joaquin Azulay
|Gauchos Del Mar
|not rated
|Running Time
|1 hour
|Audio Language
|Spanish | Stereo (English Subtitles)
|Captions and Subtitles
|English, Portuguese, Spanish
|Download Resolution
|HD | 1280x720 (1.85 GB) SD | 848x480 (852.41 MB)
|Streaming Resolution
|HD | 1920x1080
|Additional Features
|Chapter Markers
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This allows you to pick a movie, episode or complete season to be given as a gift to a lucky recipient. You have the option to deliver the gift via email or printing a certificate on your own printer. Learn more about our Gift Options


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Home » Top Competitive Exams » GRE Books » 10 Extremely Important Books for GRE
Arco Master The Gre 2009 (With Cd)
This Book is very important for GRE. The exam includes some difficult math problems.This book reveals the best shortcuts to solve the problems in less time
No calculators were allowed to GRE Exam.The calculations part takes time,where the people waste valuable allocated time for the exam.I found this book a great resource for speeding up the calulations part.A must needed book to overcome the calculations part in the exam.
Acing the GRE
Another very important book for GRE Exam. The main feature of the book is the tips to keep you motivated for the entire exam preparation. Book contains very good reviews and model tests. It is one of my favourite GRE Exam book.
The GRE Exam contains essays taken form a large lists of essay topics in ETS website. This book provides answer to all of these essays. This book is a great resource to answer all these essay topics However, my suggestion is, do not memorize the essays word by word, it will reduce your score. My tips is read the essays once or twice daily so that you will have a good idea on answering the questions, because the probability of taking essays from this book is very high.
501 Synonym & Antonym Questions - Practicing these questions helps you in getting good grip at verbal ability part.
Very good resource to practice quantitative comparison questions. These questions constitute 50% (14 out of 28) of the mathematical ability part.
GRE word problems require extensive practice. This book will help you in that part of exam.
Similar to the previous book.This book focus completely on algebra
Introduction to Analytical Writing
This book contains all the tips and tricks for analytical writing part in GRE Exam
Barrons Wordlist
The ultimate weapon for success in GRE. The full wordlist from Barron's GRE book.
Post by Anusha
Post Rating: out of 5.
Post Summary:10 Extremely Important Books for GRE helps in choosing the right books for all categories of GRE Exam
Post Rating: out of 5.
Post Summary:10 Extremely Important Books for GRE helps in choosing the right books for all categories of GRE Exam


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Indian Land's biggest proposed shopping center is inching toward a major announcement soon, but some of the details are already out, including four tenants that have filed construction plans with the county.
Promenade at Carolina Reserve will have 500,000 square feet available for leasing, making it almost half the size of Carolina Place mall in Pineville.
Indian Land's much-delayed RedStone commercial project has a new expected opening date – February 2018.
Michael Bilodeau, development manager for MPV Properties, talked about the project Thursday. He said the anchor tenant, the 14-screen cineplex RedStone 14, has topped out at the site, and work on 11 of the 13 other announced businesses is under way.
Bilodeau said he feels very confident of the new opening date now that construction has started.
Kelly Morrissette
For The Lancaster News
Buford High School graduate Jayson Jordan has been named Young Engineer of the Year by the S.C. Society of Professional Engineers.
Jordan, 31, received the award June 9 at the group's annual conference and trade show.
Jordan, who lives in Lexington, is technical director at the S.C. Asphalt Pavement Association. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering from Clemson University.
Landmark News Service
Chester County got a big economic boost this week, as Roseburg Forest Products announced plans for a $200 million manufacturing plant that will employ 145 people.
The company, based in Springfield, Ore., will build the 450,000-square-foot facility on S.C. 9 about 6 miles east of Chester.
The deal was announced Tuesday at Gateway Conference Center in Richburg, followed by a celebratory luncheon that drew a large crowd of public officials and business leaders.
As Indian Land continues to grow, so does its need for a variety of housing options, such as The Indigo at Cross Creek, a new apartment complex that opened this summer.
The Indigo's first tenants moved into the complex at 2001 Cramer Circle on June 9.
Construction on the 303-unit complex of eight buildings began more than a year ago and should be completed this fall, said Charity Whitaker, Indigo's property manager.
What it has to offer
Simpson Electric, a family-owned electrical wiring company, will be relocating from Charlotte to Indian Land, with hopes to expand its workforce.
The company will start construction in the next two months on a new corporate office and operation center in Perimeter 521 Commerce Park on Northfield Drive. Simpson Electric now rents a building on Crump Road in Charlotte.
Danny Simpson, president of Simpson Electric, said the company is ready to have its own facility after renting for about three years.
Benford Brewing Co., Lancaster's own craft brewery, has grown from a backyard hobby to a supplier of beer from the Carolinas coast to Nashville.
The brewery is on a farm located at 2271 Boxcar Road, just off Riverside Road in western Lancaster County. Bryan O'Neal, 42, runs the one-man operation, which continues to grow due to hard work, creative marketing, the farm appeal, and the natural spring water that flows from three springs.
Kershaw's industrial park likely will get its first tenant, after the town council voted unanimously Wednesday to allow a solar-panel farm to be built on 18 acres in Kershaw Commerce Park.
Cypress Creek Renewables (CCR), a national provider of local solar farms, approached the town June 9 asking for a minimum of 18 acres to be leased for at least 20 years at $1,000 per acre per year. The deal will bring the town $360,000 over the life of the contract.
Family-friendly fun is about to get a huge boost in Indian Land with a new miniature golf course scheduled to open by the end of June.
High Seas Miniature Golf is an 18-hole pirate-themed course now under construction at 10001 Charlotte Highway near Southern Spirits and Phantom Fireworks.
Nutramax Laboratories' financial and philanthropic contributions to the community have earned it a top award from the S.C. Commerce Department.
Nutramax was named the 2017 South Carolina Large Industry Impact Winner among the state's 13 Tier Three counties. The Commerce Department honored the company May 11 in Columbia as part of the agency's 26th-annual Industry Appreciation Event.
Nutramax was selected because of its capital investment, job creation, community engagement, and commitment to the environment.
Copyright © 2019
The Lancaster News is your source for local news, sports, events, and information in Lancaster County and Lancaster, South Carolina, and the surrounding area..


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The iTunes App Store is currently listing apps as compatible with "ix", or more exactly -- "compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and ix.Mac.MarketingName". That's almost certainly a glitch of some kind in the system and I expect Apple will fix it asap but it does make for a fun question -- if there is indeed an "ix" in the pipeline, what could it be? An app-compatible Apple TV? Cross-compatible Mac Apps? A 5 to 7-inch device? Something we haven't imagined yet?
While Apple sees to its stray text, give us your best guess -- what's "ix"?
[Thanks Ethan!]


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Product Features
- Flexibility to add pages and accessories
- White paper with black ink lines/grey accents
- 7 Hole punch pages
- 12 months of planning system.
- Choice of quarterly start date:
Jan, April, July or Oct
- Executive size - 8 ½" x 11"
Dated formats - you pick quarter start date
- January
- April
- July
- October
Loose leaf organizer requires 7 ring binder or cover.
See All You Get
It's your complete, single-source reference.
Look at all you get...
- 52 Weeks of Increased Productivity Planning
See all your plans for the entire week on two pages. Helps you think in a logical order. Makes it easy to decide what deserves your attention. Funnels events from idea stage to point of action. A productive work flow is established. You work smarter.
- Goals/Projects Section
Helps you capture goals, track results, and collect ideas.
- Month Calendar Page
Monthly calendar and note page at the beginning of each month (dated Editions only).
- Forward Planning Calendars
Schedule a full year of important activity on a two page spread. You get the current calendar year, plus next two years. Great for planning meetings, deadlines, special projects and vacation time.
- Time Zone Map
Plan effective long distance calls and schedule your travel.
- Important Phone Numbers Section
Keeps your phone numbers "field ready." Gives you a quick reference to frequently called clients, friends and business places. Includes space for area codes and addresses, too.
- Holidays Page
Three year special events calendar for the current year and two years forward. Shows National holidays plus important Christian and Jewish observances.
- Handy Business Expense Record
There's space to show your expenses each week. Makes it easy to relate expenses to the event causing it. Creates valid evidence for tax purposes or employer reimbursement. A permanent record for future reference.
Why It Works
Discover the Planner Pad Organizer Difference
Compared to ordinary calendars, planners, and other organizing systems, the Planner Pad organizer's exclusive 3-tier design funnels your focus to help identify, manage, and accomplish things that matter most to you both at work and in your personal life.
Each weekly 2-page spread gives you plenty of space to:
- Categorize what needs to be done now and in the future
- Prioritize daily things to do and then
- Schedule specific times to get things done including activities, meetings, and appointments
A single organizing tool that balances all of your goals and activities 7 days a week.
Works like a funnel
to find priorities, organize work flow, and plan personal activities
- The top section replaces to-do lists and sticky notes. This is the "Project Warehouse" - a place where you can organize all business and personal activities by categories that you choose. The horizontal layout gives you maximum visibility making it easy to group like activities and see all that needs to be accomplished ...CATEGORIZE
- The middle section is your daily activity plan. Funnel down things that need attention during week and are a priority from the top section. Assign specific days for action ...PRIORITIZE
- The lower section is your "appointment book." Schedule time for you to work on projects from middle section and to get things done. Schedule people to see, meetings to attend, and personal activities...SCHEDULE
With the Planner Pad system, you've funneled down all those tasks that were placing such a burden of stress on your life and broken them down into easily manageable tasks.


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Parent Directory | Revision Log
|Links to HEAD:
|(view) (download) (as text) (annotate)
Java guide moved to https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Java
Fix bug #427860 - Use /etc/portage for make.conf and make.profile. Old location (/etc) is still supported, this is a heads up (new default)
Further fix bug #388973 - Updates on java VMs. Nightmorph already made the change on icedtea6-bin, this is the remainder of the patch as offered by Vlastimil Babka
pkgmove, icedtea6 to icedtea
correct category for icedtea6-bin, remove icedtea since it's only ~arch, remove chapter referencing outdated /proj/en/java/java-upgrade, bug 366257 and bug 366645
update java jdk/jre list, make icedtea a bit more prominent, address ACCEPT_LICENSE, misc fixes. bug 366261 and bug 366257.
#325885, speak about the system VM and the merge VM. Patch by Caster.
minor grammar fix, no content change
Remove the last of the blackdown references, since it's been removed from the tree
strip out ECJ version numbering, bug 291885
the default for java 1.6 is not necessarily sun, it varies by arch. pp64 has ibm, for example. so punt that sentence from the guide, as the instructions on installing the default jdk/jre for one's profile are immediately below it in the next chapter. thanks to betelgeuse on IRC
Updated Java guide for 64-bit plugins (bug 287675). Also removed some old cruft related to blackdown and old Sun versions.
new stuff about build-only VMs added, bug 285181
fixed irc references per council mandate
Coding style
updated java guide per an email exchange with a user and nichoj
updated java guide to reflect the nsplugin USE flag masking on blackdown for amd64, bug 161835
added some stuff to properly install a 32-bit java plugin, per a conversation with nichoj on IRC
fix java config file location, thanks to nichoj for confirming
Fixed eselect code listing for bug 151537
Removed java keywords section now that it's all stable, per nichoj's request on IRC
Updated java.xml for bug 148699. includes new java browser plug-in chapter, as well as updated code listings. thanks to nichoj for the help
more typo fixes, thanks again to honzig for reporting on IRC
Fixed duplicate paragraph, thanks to honzig on irc for reporting
Removing duplicate source USE flag explanation. Thanks to honzig on IRC for reporting
clarified p.keywords per nichoj's request on irc
#143379, adding sun-jce-bin to the list of packages that need unmasking
#143152, updated by java team
#141655, a typo, backdown-jdk -> blackdown-jdk, fix your translations
#92351, fixed some typos, no content change
removing a doubled word, no content change
typo fix (should have been java-vm not java)
Overhauled, updated java guide for bug 137760. thanks to nichoj for putting in all the time and energy on the update.
#125259 Fixed typo in code sample
#115240 Add link to /proj/en/java/
replaced tabs with spaces; no content change
#110476 update for nsplugin
fixed coding style. no content change
fixed coding style, no content change
#107293: switching deprecated mozilla USE flag to browserplugin, removing CLASSPATH setting (not supported anymore) and adding info about gentoo-java mailing list
Email change
#84282 - Fix ambiguosity (sp?), tx to aaby
#79399 - Java guide update (finally :)
Bug 34043
Coding style -- NO CONTENT CHANGE
Fix 17941: caveats arent valid anymore
Added $Header$ cvs tag -- NO CONTENT CHANGE
Fix guide.xsl issues
Fix 21672
Add license tag to all documents of which the authors have agreed on
changed incorrect emerge syntax
cosmetic changes
changed encoding to UTF-8
changed all of the <guide link> tags so that they are current
try #10030
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Playful, amusing, surprising – the Memory collection of ceiling and wall fixtures kindles the imagination and takes the beholder back to the carefree days of childhood. Three sizes and a range of colors allow you to turn your creativity loose in devising various lighting experiences. With the hanging strings serving to switch the lights on and off, there is nothing to interrupt the illusion of real balloons. This is beauty in its simplest and most effective form.
BROKIS – a synthesis of exquisite design, superior quality, and the remarkable craftsmanship of Bohemian glass artisans.


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Recipe Courtesy of Emeril Lagasse
Garlicy Bread Soup
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups chopped onions
¼ cup finely chopped garlic
1 bay leaf
pinch of crushed red pepper
2 quarts chicken stock
2 cups diced day old French bread
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup grated Parmesan Reggiano Cheese
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley leaves
In a large saucepan, over medium heat, add the olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the onions, garlic, crushed bay leaf, and crushed red pepper. Season with salt. Sauté until slightly caramelized, about 6 to 8 minutes. Stir in the stock. Bring the liquid up to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and simmer for 40 minutes. Turn the heat up and whisk in the bread and cream. Continue whisking until the bread has dissolved into the soup, about 10 minutes. With a hand-held blend, puree the soup until smooth. Whisk in the Parmesan Reggiano cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Ladle into individual soup bowls and serve. Garnish with parsley
Yields: 6 to 8 servings
Recipes courtesy of Emeril Lagasse, 1999
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text: "ALEF AUMAN" <auman_alef at hotmail.com> wrote: > Wake On Lan doesn't work for the following on board NIC card in a HP VL400 > computer : > 01:04.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev > 7 > I'm using Ubuntu(Edgy) Isn't WOL fun? I've wasted many days on WOL related problems. At least you know the board hardware really suports it, unlike the infamous Tyan S2466, since you have a positive control from XP. My last foray into this turned up a bug in the nvidia driver where it was writing it's own MAC into the NIC register backwards. The other trick is that you have to be sure that when the system shuts down it goes to the right power state. That's where Ubuntu might be biting you. See if anything in these links helps: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=70384 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1547189 > I don't have the following lines > Supports Wake-on: g > Wake-on: g > and this is not a good sign. > Maybe the driver is not good in Ubuntu? I think that may be normal for this card. Regards, David Mathog mathog at caltech.edu Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech


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(Updated August 2018)
Uranium was discovered in 1789 by Martin Klaproth, a German chemist, and named after the planet Uranus.
Ionising radiation was discovered by Wilhelm Rontgen in 1895, by passing an electric current through an evacuated glass tube and producing continuous X-rays. Then in 1896 Henri Becquerel found that pitchblende (an ore containing radium and uranium) caused a photographic plate to darken. He went on to demonstrate that this was due to beta radiation (electrons) and alpha particles (helium nuclei) being emitted. Villard found a third type of radiation from pitchblende: gamma rays, which were much the same as X-rays. Then in 1896 Pierre and Marie Curie gave the name 'radioactivity' to this phenomenon, and in 1898 isolated polonium and radium from the pitchblende. Radium was later used in medical treatment. In 1898 Samuel Prescott showed that radiation destroyed bacteria in food.
In 1902 Ernest Rutherford showed that radioactivity, as a spontaneous event emitting an alpha or beta particle from the nucleus, created a different element. He went on to develop a fuller understanding of atoms and in 1919 he fired alpha particles from a radium source into nitrogen and found that nuclear rearrangement was occurring, with formation of oxygen. Niels Bohr was another scientist who advanced our understanding of the atom and the way electrons were arranged around its nucleus through to the 1940s.
By 1911 Frederick Soddy discovered that naturally-radioactive elements had a number of different isotopes (radionuclides), with the same chemistry. Also in 1911, George de Hevesy showed that such radionuclides were invaluable as tracers, because minute amounts could readily be detected with simple instruments.
In 1932 James Chadwick discovered the neutron. Also in 1932 Cockcroft and Walton produced nuclear transformations by bombarding atoms with accelerated protons, then in 1934 Irene Curie and Frederic Joliot found that some such transformations created artificial radionuclides. The next year Enrico Fermi found that a much greater variety of artificial radionuclides could be formed when neutrons were used instead of protons.
Fermi continued his experiments, mostly producing heavier elements from his targets, but also, with uranium, some much lighter ones. At the end of 1938 Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Berlin showed that the new lighter elements were barium and others which were about half the mass of uranium, thereby demonstrating that atomic fission had occurred. Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch, working under Niels Bohr, then explained this by suggesting that the neutron was captured by the nucleus, causing severe vibration leading to the nucleus splitting into two not quite equal parts. They calculated the energy release from this fission as about 200 million electron volts. Frisch then confirmed this figure experimentally in January 1939.
Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn, c. 1913
This was the first experimental confirmation of Albert Einstein's paper putting forward the equivalence between mass and energy, which had been published in 1905.
These 1939 developments sparked activity in many laboratories. Hahn and Strassmann showed that fission not only released a lot of energy, but that it also released additional neutrons which could cause fission in other uranium nuclei and possibly a self-sustaining chain reaction leading to an enormous release of energy. This suggestion was soon confirmed experimentally by Joliot and his co-workers in Paris, and Leo Szilard working with Fermi in New York.
Bohr soon proposed that fission was much more likely to occur in the uranium-235 isotope than in U-238 and that fission would occur more effectively with slow-moving neutrons than with fast neutrons. The latter point was confirmed by Szilard and Fermi, who proposed using a 'moderator' to slow down the emitted neutrons. Bohr and Wheeler extended these ideas into what became the classical analysis of the fission process, and their paper was published only two days before war broke out in 1939.
Another important factor was that U-235 was then known to comprise only 0.7% of natural uranium, with the other 99.3% being U-238, with similar chemical properties. Hence the separation of the two to obtain pure U-235 would be difficult and would require the use of their very slightly different physical properties. This increase in the proportion of the U-235 isotope became known as 'enrichment'.
The remaining piece of the fission/atomic bomb concept was provided in 1939 by Francis Perrin who introduced the concept of the critical mass of uranium required to produce a self-sustaining release of energy. His theories were extended by Rudolf Peierls at Birmingham University and the resulting calculations were of considerable importance in the development of the atomic bomb. Perrin's group in Paris continued their studies and demonstrated that a chain reaction could be sustained in a uranium-water mixture (the water being used to slow down the neutrons) provided external neutrons were injected into the system. They also demonstrated the idea of introducing neutron-absorbing material to limit the multiplication of neutrons and thus control the nuclear reaction (which is the basis for the operation of a nuclear power station).
Peierls had been a student of Werner Heisenberg, who from April 1939 presided over the German nuclear energy project under the German Ordnance Office. Initially this was directed towards military applications, but by 1942 the military objective was abandoned as impractical. However, the existence of the German Uranverein project provided the main incentive for wartime development of the atomic bomb by Britain and the USA.
Russian nuclear physics predates the Bolshevik Revolution by more than a decade. Work on radioactive minerals found in central Asia began in 1900 and the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences began a large-scale investigation in 1909. The 1917 Revolution gave a boost to scientific research and over 10 physics institutes were established in major Russian towns, particularly St Petersburg, in the years which followed. In the 1920s and early 1930s many prominent Russian physicists worked abroad, encouraged by the new regime initially as the best way to raise the level of expertise quickly. These included Kirill Sinelnikov, Pyotr Kapitsa and Vladimir Vernadsky.
By the early 1930s there were several research centres specialising in nuclear physics. Kirill Sinelnikov returned from Cambridge in 1931 to organise a department at the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology (later renamed Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, KIPT) in Kharkov, which had been set up in 1928. Academician Abram Ioffe formed another group at the Leningrad Physics and Technical Institute (FTI), later becoming independent as the Ioffe Institute, including the young Igor Kurchatov. Ioffe was its first director, through to 1950.
By the end of the decade, there were cyclotrons installed at the Radium Institute and Leningrad FTI (the biggest in Europe). But by this time many scientists were beginning to fall victim to Stalin's purges – half the staff of Kharkov Institute, for instance, was arrested in 1939. Nevertheless, 1940 saw great advances being made in the understanding of nuclear fission including the possibility of a chain reaction. At the urging of Kurchatov and his colleagues, the Academy of Sciences set up a "Committee for the Problem of Uranium" in June 1940 chaired by Vitaly Khlopin, and a fund was established to investigate the central Asian uranium deposits. The Radium Institute had a factory in Tartarstan used by Khlopin to produce Russia's first high-purity radium. Germany's invasion of Russia in 1941 turned much of this fundamental research to potential military applications.
British scientists had kept pressure on their government. The refugee physicists Peierls and Frisch (who had stayed in England with Peierls after the outbreak of war), gave a major impetus to the concept of the atomic bomb in a three-page document known as the Frisch-Peierls Memorandum. In this they predicted that an amount of about 5kg of pure U-235 could make a very powerful atomic bomb equivalent to several thousand tonnes of dynamite. They also suggested how such a bomb could be detonated, how the U-235 could be produced, and what the radiation effects might be in addition to the explosive effects. They proposed thermal diffusion as a suitable method for separating the U-235 from the natural uranium. This memorandum stimulated a considerable response in Britain at a time when there was little interest in the USA.
A group of eminent scientists known as the MAUD Committee was set up in Britain and supervised research at the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Liverpool and Oxford. The chemical problems of producing gaseous compounds of uranium and pure uranium metal were studied at Birmingham University and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). Dr Philip Baxter at ICI made the first small batch of gaseous uranium hexafluoride for Professor James Chadwick in 1940. ICI received a formal contract later in 1940 to make 3kg of this vital material for the future work. Most of the other research was funded by the universities themselves.
Two important developments came from the work at Cambridge. The first was experimental proof that a chain reaction could be sustained with slow neutrons in a mixture of uranium oxide and heavy water, ie. the output of neutrons was greater than the input. The second was by Bretscher and Feather based on earlier work by Halban and Kowarski soon after they arrived in Britain from Paris. When U-235 and U-238 absorb slow neutrons, the probability of fission in U-235 is much greater than in U-238. The U-238 is more likely to form a new isotope U-239, and this isotope rapidly emits an electron to become a new element with a mass of 239 and an Atomic Number of 93. This element also emits an electron and becomes a new element of mass 239 and Atomic Number 94, which has a much greater half-life. Bretscher and Feather argued on theoretical grounds that element 94 would be readily fissionable by slow and fast neutrons, and had the added advantages that it was chemically different to uranium and therefore could easily be separated from it.
This new development was also confirmed in independent work by McMillan and Abelson in the USA in 1940. Dr Kemmer of the Cambridge team proposed the names neptunium for the new element # 93 and plutonium for # 94 by analogy with the outer planets Neptune and Pluto beyond Uranus (uranium, element # 92). The Americans fortuitously suggested the same names, and the identification of plutonium in 1941 is generally credited to Glenn Seaborg.
By the end of 1940 remarkable progress had been made by the several groups of scientists coordinated by the MAUD Committee and for the expenditure of a relatively small amount of money. All of this work was kept secret, whereas in the USA several publications continued to appear in 1940 and there was also little sense of urgency.
By March 1941 one of the most uncertain pieces of information was confirmed - the fission cross-section of U-235. Peierls and Frisch had initially predicted in 1940 that almost every collision of a neutron with a U-235 atom would result in fission, and that both slow and fast neutrons would be equally effective. It was later discerned that slow neutrons were very much more effective, which was of enormous significance for nuclear reactors but fairly academic in the bomb context. Peierls then stated that there was now no doubt that the whole scheme for a bomb was feasible provided highly enriched U-235 could be obtained. The predicted critical size for a sphere of U-235 metal was about 8kg, which might be reduced by use of an appropriate material for reflecting neutrons. However, direct measurements on U-235 were still necessary and the British pushed for urgent production of a few micrograms.
The final outcome of the MAUD Committee was two summary reports in July 1941. One was on 'Use of Uranium for a Bomb' and the other was on 'Use of Uranium as a Source of Power'. The first report concluded that a bomb was feasible and that one containing some 12 kg of active material would be equivalent to 1,800 tons of TNT and would release large quantities of radioactive substances which would make places near the explosion site dangerous to humans for a long period. It estimated that for a plant to produce 1kg of U-235 per day it would cost £5 million and would require a large skilled labour force that was also needed for other parts of the war effort. Suggesting that the Germans could also be working on the bomb, it recommended that the work should be continued with high priority in cooperation with the Americans, even though they seemed to be concentrating on the future use of uranium for power and naval propulsion.
The second MAUD Report concluded that the controlled fission of uranium could be used to provide energy in the form of heat for use in machines, as well as providing large quantities of radioisotopes which could be used as substitutes for radium. It referred to the use of heavy water and possibly graphite as moderators for the fast neutrons, and that even ordinary water could be used if the uranium was enriched in the U-235 isotope. It concluded that the 'uranium boiler' had considerable promise for future peaceful uses but that it was not worth considering during the present war. The Committee recommended that Halban and Kowarski should move to the USA where there were plans to make heavy water on a large scale. The possibility that the new element plutonium might be more suitable than U-235 was mentioned, so that the work in this area by Bretscher and Feather should be continued in Britain.
The two reports led to a complete reorganisation of work on the bomb and the 'boiler'. It was claimed that the work of the committee had put the British in the lead and that "in its fifteen months' existence it had proved itself one of the most effective scientific committees that ever existed". The basic decision that the bomb project would be pursued urgently was taken by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, with the agreement of the Chiefs of Staff.
The reports also led to high level reviews in the USA, particularly by a Committee of the National Academy of Sciences, initially concentrating on the nuclear power aspect. Little emphasis was given to the bomb concept until 7 December 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour and the Americans entered the war directly. The huge resources of the USA were then applied without reservation to developing atomic bombs.
The Americans increased their effort rapidly and soon outstripped the British. Research continued in each country with some exchange of information. Several of the key British scientists visited the USA early in 1942 and were given full access to all of the information available. The Americans were pursuing three enrichment processes in parallel: Professor Lawrence was studying electromagnetic separation at Berkeley (University of California), E. V. Murphree of Standard Oil was studying the centrifuge method developed by Professor Beams, and Professor Urey was coordinating the gaseous diffusion work at Columbia University. Responsibility for building a reactor to produce fissile plutonium was given to Arthur Compton at the University of Chicago. The British were only examining gaseous diffusion.
In June 1942 the US Army took over process development, engineering design, procurement of materials and site selection for pilot plants for four methods of making fissionable material (because none of the four had been shown to be clearly superior at that point) as well as the production of heavy water. With this change, information flow to Britain dried up. This was a major setback to the British and the Canadians who had been collaborating on heavy water production and on several aspects of the research program. Thereafter, Churchill sought information on the cost of building a diffusion plant, a heavy water plant and an atomic reactor in Britain.
After many months of negotiations an agreement was finally signed by Mr Churchill and President Roosevelt in Quebec in August 1943, according to which the British handed over all of their reports to the Americans and in return received copies of General Groves' progress reports to the President. The latter showed that the entire US program would cost over $1,000 million, all for the bomb, as no work was being done on other applications of nuclear energy.
Construction of production plants for electromagnetic separation (in calutrons) and gaseous diffusion was well under way. An experimental graphite pile constructed by Fermi had operated at the University of Chicago in December 1942 – the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.
Enrico Fermi, c. 1943-1949 (National Archives and Records Administration)
A full-scale production reactor for plutonium was being constructed at Argonne, with further ones at Oak Ridge and then Hanford, plus a reprocessing plant to extract the plutonium. Four plants for heavy water production were being built, one in Canada and three in the USA. A team under Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos in New Mexico was working on the design and construction of both U-235 and Pu-239 bombs. The outcome of the huge effort, with assistance from the British teams, was that sufficient Pu-239 and highly enriched U-235 (from calutrons and diffusion at Oak Ridge) was produced by mid-1945. The uranium mostly originated from the Belgian Congo.
The first atomic device tested successfully at Alamagordo in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. It used plutonium made in a nuclear pile. The teams did not consider that it was necessary to test a simpler U-235 device. The first atomic bomb, which contained U-235, was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The second bomb, containing Pu-239, was dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August. That same day, the USSR declared war on Japan. On 10 August 1945 the Japanese Government surrendered.
Initially Stalin was not enthusiastic about diverting resources to develop an atomic bomb, until intelligence reports suggested that such research was under way in Germany, Britain and the USA. Consultations with Academicians Ioffe, Kapitsa, Khlopin and Vernadsky convinced him that a bomb could be developed relatively quickly and he initiated a modest research program in 1942. Igor Kurchatov, then relatively young and unknown, was chosen to head it and in 1943 he became Director of Laboratory No.2 recently established on the outskirts of Moscow. This was later renamed LIPAN, then became the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. Overall responsibility for the bomb program rested with Security Chief Lavrenti Beria and its administration was undertaken by the First Main Directorate (later called the Ministry of Medium Machine Building).
Research had three main aims: to achieve a controlled chain reaction; to investigate methods of isotope separation; and to look at designs for both enriched uranium and plutonium bombs. Attempts were made to initiate a chain reaction using two different types of atomic pile: one with graphite as a moderator and the other with heavy water. Three possible methods of isotope separation were studied: counter-current thermal diffusion, gaseous diffusion and electromagnetic separation.
After the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, German scientists were "recruited" to the bomb program to work in particular on isotope separation to produce enriched uranium. This included research into gas centrifuge technology in addition to the three other enrichment technologies.
The test of the first US atomic bomb in July 1945 had little impact on the Soviet effort, but by this time, Kurchatov was making good progress towards both a uranium and a plutonium bomb. He had begun to design an industrial scale reactor for the production of plutonium, while those scientists working on uranium isotope separation were making advances with the gaseous diffusion method.
It was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the following month which gave the program a high profile and construction began in November 1945 of a new city in the Urals which would house the first plutonium production reactors -- Chelyabinsk-40 (Later known as Chelyabinsk-65 or the Mayak production association). This was the first of ten secret nuclear cities to be built in the Soviet Union. The first of five reactors at Chelyabinsk-65 came on line in 1948. This town also housed a processing plant for extracting plutonium from irradiated uranium.
As for uranium enrichment technology, it was decided in late 1945 to begin construction of the first gaseous diffusion plant at Verkh-Neyvinsk (later the closed city of Sverdlovsk-44), some 50 kilometres from Yekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk) in the Urals. Special design bureaux were set up at the Leningrad Kirov Metallurgical and Machine-Building Plant and at the Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) Machine Building Plant. Support was provided by a group of German scientists working at the Sukhumi Physical Technical Institute.
In April 1946 design work on the bomb was shifted to Design Bureau-11 – a new centre at Sarova some 400 kilometres from Moscow (subsequently the closed city of Arzamas-16). More specialists were brought in to the program including metallurgist Yefim Slavsky who was given the immediate task of producing the very pure graphite Kurchatov needed for his plutonium production pile constructed at Laboratory No. 2 known as F-1. The pile was operated for the first time in December 1946. Support was also given by Laboratory No.3 in Moscow – now the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics – which had been working on nuclear reactors.
Work at Arzamas-16 was influenced by foreign intelligence gathering and the first device was based closely on the Nagasaki bomb (a plutonium device). In August 1947 a test site was established near Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan and was ready for the detonation two years later of the first bomb, RSD-1. Even before this was tested in August 1949, another group of scientists led by Igor Tamm and including Andrei Sakharov had begun work on a hydrogen bomb.
By the end of World War II, the project predicted and described in detail only five and a half years before in the Frisch-Peierls Memorandum had been brought to partial fruition, and attention could turn to the peaceful and directly beneficial application of nuclear energy. Post-war, weapons development continued on both sides of the "iron curtain", but a new focus was on harnessing the great atomic power, now dramatically (if tragically) demonstrated, for making steam and electricity.
In the course of developing nuclear weapons the Soviet Union and the West had acquired a range of new technologies and scientists realised that the tremendous heat produced in the process could be tapped either for direct use or for generating electricity. It was also clear that this new form of energy would allow development of compact long-lasting power sources which could have various applications, not least for shipping, and especially in submarines.
The first nuclear reactor to produce electricity (albeit a trivial amount) was the small Experimental Breeder reactor (EBR-1) designed and operated by Argonne National Laboratory and sited in Idaho, USA. The reactor started up in December 1951.
In 1953 President Eisenhower proposed his "Atoms for Peace" program, which reoriented significant research effort towards electricity generation and set the course for civil nuclear energy development in the USA.
In the Soviet Union, work was under way at various centres to refine existing reactor designs and develop new ones. The Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (FEI) was set up in May 1946 at the then-closed city of Obninsk, 100 km southwest of Moscow, to develop nuclear power technology. The existing graphite-moderated channel-type plutonium production reactor was modified for heat and electricity generation and in June 1954 the world's first nuclear powered electricity generator began operation at the FEI in Obninsk. The AM-1 (Atom Mirny – peaceful atom) reactor was water-cooled and graphite-moderated, with a design capacity of 30 MWt or 5 MWe. It was similar in principle to the plutonium production reactors in the closed military cities and served as a prototype for other graphite channel reactor designs including the Chernobyl-type RBMK (reaktor bolshoi moshchnosty kanalny – high power channel reactor) reactors. AM-1 produced electricity until 1959 and was used until 2000 as a research facility and for the production of isotopes.
Also in the 1950s FEI at Obninsk was developing fast breeder reactors (FBRs) and lead-bismuth reactors for the navy. In April 1955 the BR-1 (bystry reaktor – fast reactor) fast neutron reactor began operating. It produced no power but led directly to the BR-5, which started up in 1959 with a capacity of 5 MWt, and which was used to do the basic research necessary for designing sodium-cooled FBRs. It was upgraded and modernised in 1973 and then underwent major reconstruction in 1983 to become the BR-10 with a capacity of 8 MWt which is now used to investigate fuel endurance, to study materials and to produce isotopes.
The main US effort was under Admiral Hyman Rickover, which developed the pressurised water reactor (PWR) for naval (particularly submarine) use. The PWR used enriched uranium oxide fuel and was moderated and cooled by ordinary (light) water. The Mark 1 prototype naval reactor started up in March 1953 in Idaho, and the first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, was launched in 1954. In 1959 both USA and USSR launched their first nuclear-powered surface vessels.
The Mark 1 reactor led to the US Atomic Energy Commission building the 60 MWe Shippingport demonstration PWR reactor in Pennsylvania, which started up in 1957 and operated until 1982.
Installation of reactor vessel at Shippingport, the first commercial US nuclear power plant (US Library of Congress)
Since the USA had a virtual monopoly on uranium enrichment in the West, British development took a different tack and resulted in a series of reactors fuelled by natural uranium metal, moderated by graphite, and gas-cooled. The first of these 50 MWe Magnox types, Calder Hall 1, started up in 1956 and ran until 2003. However, after 1963 (and 26 units) no more were commenced. Britain next embraced the advanced gas-cooled reactor (using enriched oxide fuel) before conceding the pragmatic virtues of the PWR design.
In the USA, Westinghouse designed the first fully commercial PWR of 250 MWe, Yankee Rowe, which started up in 1960 and operated to 1992. Meanwhile the boiling water reactor (BWR) was developed by the Argonne National Laboratory, and the first one, Dresden-1 of 250 MWe, designed by General Electric, was started up earlier in 1960. A prototype BWR, Vallecitos, ran from 1957 to 1963. By the end of the 1960s, orders were being placed for PWR and BWR reactor units of more than 1000 MWe.
Canadian reactor development headed down a quite different track, using natural uranium fuel and heavy water as a moderator and coolant. The first unit started up in 1962. This CANDU design continues to be refined.
France started out with a gas-graphite design similar to Magnox and the first reactor started up in 1956. Commercial models operated from 1959. It then settled on three successive generations of standardised PWRs, which was a very cost-effective strategy.
In 1964 the first two Soviet nuclear power plants were commissioned. A 100 MW boiling water graphite channel reactor began operating in Beloyarsk (Urals). In Novovoronezh (Volga region) a new design – a small (210 MW) pressurised water reactor (PWR) known as a VVER (veda-vodyanoi energetichesky reaktor– water cooled power reactor) – was built.
The first large RBMK (1,000 MW – high-power channel reactor) started up at Sosnovy Bor near Leningrad in 1973, and in the Arctic northwest a VVER with a rated capacity of 440 MW began operating. This was superseded by a 1000 MWe version which became a standard design.
In Kazakhstan the world's first commercial prototype fast neutron reactor (the BN-350) started up in 1972 with a design capacity of 135 MWe (net), producing electricity and heat to desalinate Caspian seawater. In the USA, UK, France and Russia a number of experimental fast neutron reactors produced electricity from 1959, the last of these closing in 2009. This left Russia's BN-600 as the only commercial fast reactor, until joined by a BN-800 in 2016.
Around the world, with few exceptions, other countries have chosen light-water designs for their nuclear power programmes, so that today 69% of the world capacity is PWR and 20% BWR.
From the late 1970s to about 2002 the nuclear power industry suffered some decline and stagnation. Few new reactors were ordered, the number coming on line from mid 1980s little more than matched retirements, though capacity increased by nearly one third and output increased 60% due to capacity plus improved load factors. The share of nuclear in world electricity from mid 1980s was fairly constant at 16-17%. Many reactor orders from the 1970s were cancelled. The uranium price dropped accordingly, and also because of an increase in secondary supplies. Oil companies which had entered the uranium field bailed out, and there was a consolidation of uranium producers.
However, by the late 1990s the first of the third-generation reactors was commissioned – Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 6 – a 1350 MWe Advanced BWR, in Japan. This was a sign of the recovery to come.
In the new century several factors combined to revive the prospects for nuclear power. First was the realisation of the scale of projected increased electricity demand worldwide, but particularly in rapidly-developing countries. Secondly was the awareness of the importance of energy security – the prime importance of each country having assured access to affordable energy, and particularly to dispatchable electricity able to meet demand at all times. Thirdly was the need to limit carbon emissions due to concerns about climate change.
These factors coincided with the availability of a new generation of nuclear power reactors, and in 2004 the first of the late third-generation units was ordered for Finland – a 1600 MWe European PWR (EPR). A similar unit is being built in France, and two new Westinghouse AP1000 units are under construction in the USA.
But plans in Europe and North America are overshadowed by those in Asia, particularly China and India. China alone plans and is building towards a huge increase in nuclear power capacity by 2030, and has more than one hundred further large units proposed and backed by credible political determination and popular support. Many of these are the latest Western design, or adaptations thereof. Others are substantially local designs.
The history of nuclear power thus starts with science in Europe, blossoms in the UK and USA with the latter's technological and economic might, languishes for a few decades, then has a new growth spurt in east Asia. In the process, over 17,000 reactor-years of operation have been accumulated in providing a significant proportion of the world's electricity.
Atomic Rise and Fall, the Australian Atomic Energy Commission 1953-1987, by Clarence Hardy, Glen Haven, 1999. Chapter 1 provides the major source for 1939-45
Radiation in Perspective, OECD NEA, 1997
Nuclear Fear, by Spencer Weart, Harvard UP, 1988
Judith Perera (Russian material)
Alexander Petrov, ITER Domestic Agency of the Russian Federation, A Short History of the Ioffe Institute


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Since they only have one account that they share* between them, the best we could do alone was a 2-man instance. Luckily for us, The Old Republic has a perfect introduction to an instance with The Esseles, a 2-person Flashpoint designed for L10-12. No other players in the area, no competition to complete a Heroic 2+ first, and we've got plenty of time to finish without rushing.
The Esseles has the bonus of being one of the best of The Old Republic flashpoints for story, so I knew that'd keep them attracted as well.
So, I pulled out the Old Man, reacquainted myself with how to play a Scoundrel (aka "get up in people's grill and blast them from behind with a
My oldest had the first run, and to be honest, that was the smoothest of the bunch. I told her straight up to let me maneuver into position first, and then backblast to start the fight. Typically I'd end up taking out a regular enemy, leaving Corso to round up the Strong and/or Elites for us to attack afterward. While the fighting went well enough, I had to explain the TOR method of choosing who gets to speak in a cutscene**. There was also the little matter of me playing the Old Man as more a devil-may-care type than my original Gunslinger, so I got to see some wording out of him that I ordinarily wouldn't ever see out of Dalaak.***
I heard a "Daa-aad!!" from upstairs more than once, but I shrugged it off.
But there was one problem: the Esseles crashes at the end on our desktop computer. Ironically enough, not the laptop, so I was able to restart SWTOR and get back into the Flashpoint before it ended, but still it was quite annoying.
Next came my son, and he was just as wisecracking as I was, but he reserved it more for the group chat. He was a bit overeager at times, but luckily it wasn't too big of a problem.
But my youngest....
I told her at the beginning to let me lead. I told her that during the flashpoint, too. Several times, in fact. She's ten, and I know she can read. But she still kept running ahead, running the wrong way, running into a boss fight before we cleared out the trash, and in general acting more like someone half her age.
Finally, her behavior caught up with her. She ran off the edge of a platform and disappeared into space.
I said a silent prayer of thanks that SWTOR flashpoints still let you do that, whereas you're hard pressed to do that in a WoW instance.
"Now," I said as she respawned, "Will you cut it out?"
"Oops," she replied.
"If you pull stuff like this in a regular instance, people will let you die to teach you a lesson. It's called 'You yank it, you tank it,' and the real tank would get really pissed off at you for this. Behave better, and let the person who has been here before do the leading."
After the lecture, she shaped up. I'd rather she get the lesson from me than finding herself vote kicked or being the reason for a wipe.
She also learned that --as a Gunslinger-- her abilities are best when behind cover, whereas my Scoundrel is built to get in the baddies' faces. She saw me at work and tried to imitate it, but I explained that her best abilities, like the Charged Bolts' bonuses and other assorted goodies she gets in her talent tree, are made for long distance.
By comparison, these runs ended better than the Hammer Station run I had the other day, where the Commando Healer didn't heal and the tank would rush in before I could CC a droid. By the time the Healer began to get the hang of things, the tank decided we weren't going to live through the first boss**** and dropped group. In spite of my encouragement, the Healer dropped too, and then after that so did the other DPS. These people were too willing to throw in the towel rather than try the hard work of actually making it through an instance slowly, grinding out a victory.
Maybe they could have taken a few lessons from some kids.
*My rules. I get to control the MMO accounts --LOTRO and TOR-- that way, and I also keep track of any activity within the toons.
**TOR has each person select an action and then a random (virtual) dice roll determines who gets to speak.
***I decided to have the Old Man play dumb with Beryl toward the end of the class questline on Taris. Kind of unusual for a guy who flirted with Grand Master Satele Shan in the closing cutscene to the Athiss Flashpoint, but I've decided that I want him to pursue a romance with one of the female companions later, so I want to minimize any repercussions later. Sometimes it helps having done the Smuggler class story before.
****Nobody had the ability to pick up the canisters, so he decided he'd rather drop instead of actually, you know, TRYING.


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'Waltons' and 'NCIS' Actor Ralph Waite Dead at 85
Longtime actor Ralph Waite, star of the classic television series 'The Waltons', and more recently known for his guest starring roles on 'Bones' and 'NCIS', passed away Thursday afternoon in his California home at the age of 85.
Already a known actor after parts in 'Cool Hand Luke' and 'Bonanza', Waite would become a household name during his 9-year-run as the patriarch of the Walton family in 'The Waltons' and its later television movies. Waite would be nominated for an Emmy for his work on 'The Waltons', but also for his role in the television event 'Roots'in 1977.
In the 90s, Waite took a couple breaks from regular acting work and ran for political office in 1990 and then again in 1998 for the U.S. Representative seat vacated when Sonny Bono passed away, but Waite would come up unsuccessful both times.
Lately, Waite has had regular guest star work on hit shows like 'Bones' and as Mark Harmon's father, Jackson Gibbs, on several episodes of 'NCIS' over the past few years. 'NCIS' star Pauley Perrette tweeted her condolences for Waite earlier today,
So Sad. Ralph Waite has passed away. Papa Gibbs. We love him at NCIS SO much. So so sad.
— Pauley Perrette (@PauleyP) February 14, 2014
via CNN


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Windproof vest with orange detailing
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Material: 100% polyester
Details: 12 button-hole top for simple hanging. Allows machine wash and dry maintenance. Curtain rod, shower curtain liner and hooks not included. Printed in the USA
Dimensions:71 x 74 inches / 1.80 x 1.88 cm
Airplane Shower Curtain is Perfect. The quality is superb and looks exactly like the post. Great conversation item. Thank You.
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Rbk EDGE Review: Penguins/
Part 24 of 30. All 30 NHL clubs have unveiled new jerseys under the new Rbk EDGE Uniform System for the 2007-08 season. Here at the NHLToL, we're going to review every one of them. Read up and then rate the new sweaters. We'll do a full ranking after completing all of the reviews.
The Unveiling
Wednesday, September 5. The Penguins unveiled their jerseys to fans at the Galleria at Pittsbrugh Mills. Several players, including Maxime Talbot, were on hand to model the new uniforms.
Home vs. Road
Home: Black. Road: White. The two sweaters are essentially mirror images of each other and both feature a specialty patch on the right shoulder.
The black home jerseys have a gold panel on the elbows. The underside of the sleeves are white extending the length. There is gold side paneling toward the back of the sweater. The collar is black and primary logo serves as the crest.
The white road jerseys have a gold panel on the elbows. The underside of the sleeves are black extending the length. There is gold side paneling toward the back of the sweater. The collar is black and primary logo serves as the crest.
In The Details
The patch on the right shoulder reads "Pittsburgh 250" in honor of the city's 250th anniversary. It will only be worn this season. The numbering and lettering style has been retained.
New & Old
The striping on the new jerseys has been altered significantly. The slanted stripes at the corners of the sweater are gone as well as the stripes on the sleeves. They've been replaced with unique sleeve paneling which meshes with fabric paneling of the sweater itself. Most notably, however, is the elimination of the secondary logo from the shoulders.
Standard FAQ
Numbers on the front? No.
Laces at the collar? No.
NHLToL Editorial by Chris
These are very plain jerseys. I think the Penguins had it right on the money before, but it would seem this is a case where Reebok missed the mark. I'm not saying there was a lot going on with the old jerseys but the design was very appropriate, especially to the logo. That's not really the case anymore. In fact, the striping pattern is almost identical to what the Senators are wearing (more on that later). That being said, it's still a very nice jersey. It doesn't knock my socks off, but it's a solid effort that shouldn't be tossed aside. 3/5


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From: NY, United States
Genre: Alternative/Alt. Rock, Rock & Roll, Art
The NowhereNauts aren't afraid to remind listeners that music is boisterous and evocative. They've honed their skills working with producers Kevin March (Guided By Voices) and Carl Glanville (U2). Whether transitioning from clean melodies to crunchy shredding worthy of Dinosaur Jr., this foursome will get your heart pumping.


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Mike Pelfrey was hit hard early, but stabilized and Manny Acosta made sure the game was out of reach in the Mets 8-1 loss to the Rangers.
Game Notes
Mike Pelfrey went six innings, allowing four runs on eight hits, walking two and striking out three. Big Pelf gave up three of those runs in the first inning, and after that seemed to get his bearings and keep the Rangers to one run over the next five innings. As noticed, Pelfrey has allowed more HR this season then he has all last season, as evidenced by his love affair with his four-seam fastball. While this isn't a horrible Pelfrey outing, giving up three in the first inning is a bit demoralizing.
Manny Acosta came out, decided that he likes allowing XBH to righties, specifically doubles and then home-runs to light-hitting utility men. Acosta went one and two-third innings, allowing four runs on five hits walking two and striking out one giving up two home runs. Acosta, for the most part has been atrocious this year. He has allowed more runs than innings pitched, and more hits while only striking out four. A trip to Buffalo seems in the cards, maybe upon the return of Taylor Buccholz. D.J. Carrasco got the last out of the eighth.
The offense was stifled by Matt Harrison, consistently struggling to make solid contact. Their only run was scored when Ronny Paulino doubled, advanced to third on a Daniel Murphy IF single and then scored on a Ruben Tejada single to center.
Jose Reyes – 0 for 3 with a walk. Grounded into a DP on a laser beam that Adrian Beltre ate up. Jose is beginning to hit the ball into the air a lot more, and that is when trouble ensues.
Scott Hairston – 0 for 3 – two fly outs (barely leaving the infield) and a tailor-made GIDP. With the Mets carrying six OF's (Pridie, Pagan, Bay, Beltran, Harris, Hairston) how much longer until Hairston gets the axe?
Turning Point
Manny Acosta doing his best impersonation of a bad pitcher. Or, himself. Either/Or.
Game Ball
Jason Bay – 3 for 4 with a strikeout. They may be singles, but contact is contact. At some point, these singles may become doubles. Baby steps.
On Deck
The Mets will head into tomorrow to face Rangers righty Alexi Ogando and will send out Jon Niese. Game time is 4:10 PM. In other notes, I wonder how the Mets will respond to the intense Texas hit in the middle of the day.


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In the months leading up to the Cosmopolitan's opening this week, the 2,995-room resort has pegged its marketing blitz on one simple message: it is different. Its billboards, print ads and buzz-inducing TV spot have all sought to further the idea that the $3.9 billion property was not built off the tried-and-true Vegas formula but from its own checklist of Vegas standards and more unusual stand-ins. Sure, there are slot machines, restaurants by celebrity chefs and an über club, but the details are what matter here—details designed to draw what CEO John Unwin calls "the curious class" and to make the resort feel out of the box, even though it's smack in the middle of the Strip. But all this talk of difference leads to a basic question: How? In the next pages, we answer that question ... and raise a few more.
The Music
Does anybody remember lounges? You know, those relaxed, unticketed musical spaces once at the heart of every Las Vegas casino? The folks behind the Cosmopolitan certainly seem to. The Strip's newest property has three separate venues on its casino floor that are deeply indebted to the Vegas lounge ideal.
"We're taking artists you would normally have to pay $10, $20, $30 to see nationwide and we're saying, 'This is what we feel like a Cosmopolitan customer deserves for free,'" says Rehan Choudhry, Cosmo's entertainment director. "Not a VIP. Every customer walking in the door. If you're coming in and you want great music, you'll have the opportunity to hear it without any barriers."
If you're thinking "lounge" in the Rat Pack sense of the word, think again. Judging from the acts booked for the three venues through February, the Cosmopolitan appears intent on redefining the word for a new generation of Vegas visitors. "I've noticed there's a vast misconception out there about what the lounge act really was," Choudhry says. "It's not associated with a particular type of music. It was an opportunity for rising artists to showcase their talents in front of large audiences and travel through town on a more frequent basis.
"To me, one of the things that stands out at the Cosmopolitan is its indie spirit. And I'll tell you, we've created a Cosmopolitan iPod—a phenomenal setlist of acts that are really gonna blow people away over the next year."
Partnering with Austin, Texas-based concert promoter C3 Presents—best known for producing major U.S. music festivals Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits—the Cosmopolitan has lined up an eclectic early calendar, from British soul singer Jamie Lidell to LA indie pop trio Best Coast to Swedish electronic-rock outfit Teddybears. The live bands will play Book & Stage, a sports-viewing-area by day/music room by night (capacity: about 200) with an elevated stage set behind a V-shaped bar. DJs and electronic acts will be split between Bond, a rectangular bar with views of the Strip, and the Chandelier, the casino's three-level centerpiece bar woven into a massive crystal chandelier.
To start, most acts are being booked for three-to-five-night "mini-residencies," with some playing two sets per night. Choudhry says performances at all three spots will be ticketless, coverless and require no drink minimums. "The beauty of the program is, I can look a fan of one of our acts in the eye and say, 'Trust me, you're gonna see something completely different here, a completely different performance.'"
Choudhry calls sound systems in all three venues "over-the-top phenomenal ... quality systems you might not expect, given that they're on the casino-floor." That poses two obvious questions: Is Cosmo worried about sound bleed, and how loud will it actually be in there?
"We've been really cognizant about any potential bleed issues between venues, and through all our sound tests we really haven't had a problem," Choudhry says. "And though I can tell you even though we're not holding back, it's not gonna be earsplitting. If you wanna play blackjack and enjoy some great music, park yourself in front of Book & Stage. But there are so many intimate areas of the casino, you can game, eat, drink and socialize quietly, too."
Along with its casino-floor entertainment, the Cosmopolitan, which staged a set from The Killers' Brandon Flowers at its Boulevard Pool for Wednesday's opening-night gala and has Jay-Z and Coldplay pairing up for an invite-only New Year's Eve show inside a ballroom, plans to bring in additional big names over the next year, according to Choudhry. They'll play mostly at the pool, some in multi-night runs. "And then, every concert we produce we're putting on our 65-foot digital marquee," Choudhry reminds, "and projecting the sound out onto the street. The idea is, if we've got a phenomenal concert, there's no reason the 300,000 people on Las Vegas Boulevard shouldn't be a part of that experience." —Spencer Patterson
The Art
CityCenter's $40 million art collection took high art on the Strip out of galleries and planted it directly in the path of tourists, creating a new level of art participation for Las Vegas visitors. Cosmopolitan is taking it even further.
The Deutsche Bank-owned hotel opens with an artist-in-residence program, aerosol works on the walls of its parking garage, a digital art collection displayed on eight large columns in its lobby, a partnership with New York's Art Production Fund and Art-O-Mat vending machines that sell $5 works created by artists around the globe.
This kind of high-end and low-end engagement is unprecedented in a Strip casino. It's clever and—particularly in terms of digital art—very progressive. But the casino insists that it's not trying to "force" art on its visitors, and chances are that many Cosmopolitan guests won't realize that what they're looking at is art. The digital works in the lobby could be seen as just another inventive attraction without making the direct association to high art.
"We wanted to find work that enhances the environment, and gives the guest something beautiful to consume without being too heavy-handed or heady," says Chris Burns, director of digital content and entertainment curation. "We wanted to build a program that will appeal to both the novice observer and the most savvy collector, so it was important to find work that can be accessed at any level."
Those who are accustomed to digital art, however, might stop in specifically to see the lobby works, some of which were created by Sam Taylor-Wood, Jennifer Steinkamp, T.J. Wilcox, Yoko Ono, Jeremy Blake and Marco Brambilla.
Burns says that more than 40 existing works will be on loan to the Cosmopolitan when it opens. Eight digital works were created specifically for the resort. Four existing works were adapted for the lobby columns.
Las Vegas has a few digital artists making headway in the art world, but none has yet to participate in the Cosmopolitan program. Burns says the long-term goal is building "one of the most robust collections of digital art in the world" and, through installations in the lobby, making Cosmopolitan a creative home for artists. What truly sets it apart from past efforts along the Strip is this focus on current, contemporary art of the day. Its partnership with New York's Art Production Fund has already brought in artists Shinique Smith, Kenny Scharf, RETNA and Shepard Fairey to create aerosol murals in the parking garage.
Cosmopolitan's P3Studio artist-in residence program, beginning this month with Fab 5 Freddy, will allow for guests to enter the studio and visit with the artists, selected for one-month residencies.
Why? "We hope to break down the real and perceived barriers between the art/artist and the observer," Burns says. Unprecedented. —Kristen Peterson
The Hotel and Casino
CityCenter is to newness as Encore is to class, as Palazzo is to opulence, as Cosmopolitan is to ... what?
Energy. Sharp corners, dynamic displays, live music—one way or another, Cosmopolitan is going to get your body moving and your neurons firing. But what's the property's endgame here? Where does all that energy lead?
To the casino. It's like Encore's, only bedazzled. But unlike the Encore gaming floor, the slots are pleasantly lowbrow, and the high-limit area is welcoming. I'll probably drop $1,000 there before 2011.
Cosmopolitan also wants its gamblers buying cocktails. Oh, they'll still serve free drinks to players, but there's a bar by every entrance, and no generic casino bars here! Each place has its own personality, and each place treats cocktails with a level of respect that, in Vegas, is usually reserved for $50,000 credit lines.
Like the casino, Cosmopolitan's rooms are dynamic and fun, but not necessarily relaxing. The "Studio" rooms have kitchenettes with dishwashers, but not stoves. Read: Don't eat; drink. The small suites have Jacuzzi bathtubs, but they're square and tall, for soaking, not intimacy. Ditto for the curved purple couches. It all sends a steady message, get out of your room and gamble, already.
The rooms do have balconies, though, to slow the pace down. Pour yourself a Sloe Gin Fizz, take a load off, and watch the sun set, the waters dance and the neon rise.
So, watch out, Aria. Cosmopolitan's going for your jugular. It won't get the old money, but it might just have LA and New York's new money locked up before Valentine's Day. —Rick Lax
The Nightlife
"This club is going to be different." In nightlife, we hear the same rote promise every time a new venue opens.
But then we had the chance to tour Tao Group's new Marquee nightclub. Maybe it's seeing the 40-foot LED video wall behind the DJ booth in the semicircular main room. Or hearing the massive 32,000-watt sound system while lighting created by mastermind Stephen Lieberman goes crazy (the same guy responsible for the stages at Ultra in Miami and Electric Daisy Carnival in LA), but something does feel different here. Marquee plans to focus on electronic dance music, or EDM, and encourage a festival vibe. At this point, it looks as if management has found all the right ingredients.
But wait, there's more.
A hydraulic bridge will lower over the crowd for performances and custom visuals are being created for the DJs, including Erick Morillo on New Year's Eve and Kaskade on January 1. Tao Group co-owner and operator Jason Strauss, himself a fan of EDM, has also brought in Sol Shafer (previously of Angel Management Group and N9NE Group) to handle scoring some of the best talent around. And to heighten the experience even more, Geneviève Cleary, formerly behind the show at Perfecto, is on board as the artistic director. Expect a variety of different elaborate performances and themes from Cleary and crew, depending on the night.
Sounds like a party. It also doesn't hurt to mention the 100 VIP booths inside and another 100 outside at the dayclub (plus outdoor gaming and snazzy Cosmopolitan bungalows where you can stay the night pool-side). But make sure you pry yourself away from the main room to explore the rest of Marquee. If the music in the main room isn't your style, the more intimate Boom Box Room will offer an alternate format (i.e., if there's a house headliner in the main room, you can get a dose of hip-hop/top 40/mash-up tunes in the Boom Box Room or vice versa).
And then there's the semi-secret Library. Walking behind that massive video wall up one level, you'll find a living room lounge-y vibe with walls of antique novels provided by the world-famous Strand Bookstore, a billiards table and a focus on craft cocktails as opposed to bottle service.
We could describe in detail all the gorgeous and intricate decorative features of the 60,000-square-foot club, but we'll leave those for you to "ooh" and "ahh" over on your own. —Deanna Rilling
The Dining
For those who still don't believe Vegas lives among the top dining destinations in the world, consider that in every other city, there might be one or two restaurant openings each year that generate enough heat to engulf the foodie community. Here, the hottest opening of the year equals nine restaurants. And they all opened on the same day. The Cosmopolitan may be the last Strip megaresort for the foreseeable future, but what a recent ride—CityCenter in 2009, Encore to cap 2008 and Palazzo to open that year. Throw in Wynn Las Vegas (2005) and you've got five incredible properties committed to dishing up the most amazing food in the world. Welcome to New Vegas, where people come to eat, and maybe gamble, shop and drink a bit.
Still, Cosmopolitan has somehow managed to differentiate itself. Edgy marketing helps, but the hype is particularly strong in that aforementioned foodie community (which includes pretty much everybody). Seriously, people are drooling.
Scott Conant, one of the more famous chefs in the Cosmopolitan stable, can feel the buzz. Having thoroughly conquered New York City, the star of Food Network's 24 Hour Restaurant Battle makes his Vegas debut with the fifth version of his Italian restaurant Scarpetta, as well as the new wine bar concept dubbed D.O.C.G.
"It's been a very exciting experience, getting ready for Vegas," Conant says. "Maybe the best part has been spending time with [other Cosmopolitan] chefs and restaurateurs, picking each other's brains. It feels like a fluid concept. I think the customer experience will be a great one here."
We'll be the judge of that, starting as soon as possible. But bringing proven and new-to-Vegas talent like Conant, José Andrés and David Myers is what truly sets Cosmopolitan apart. With CityCenter, we got some great new chefs and some same-old, same-old Strip spots. Everything is new at Cosmopolitan. In fact, the only familiar face in the kitchen is at the burger joint Holstein's, and even there, Chef Anthony Meidenbauer (LBS Burger at Red Rock Resort) will be going all out, dry-aging the beef for the burgers and making his own sausage and charcuterie.
Like Conant, the beloved Andrés brings us something old, his acclaimed Spanish tapas restaurant Jaleo, and something new, China Poblano. Ever heard of a Chinese Mexican restaurant? Lobster mango tacos on the same menu as Hong Kong-style wonton soup? You have now. Myers, a favorite in LA, brings us Comme Ça, a classic French bistro.
When Aria opened the first full-on Thai restaurant on the Strip, crickets. But everybody's excited about the first Greek restaurant on the Strip, Estiatorios Milos, probably because chef Costas Spiliadis is known for keeping it real ... authentic. Rounding things out are a couple more Big Apple favorites, hip steakhouse STK and eclectic sushi bar and grill Blue Ribbon.
Conant says he won't stray far from the Scarpetta formula and that sticking to what works means staying unique. "What we do is offer those modern components without sacrificing full flavor and approachability, and that balance kind of sets us apart." Maybe that's the Cosmopolitan's recipe for Vegas: something new, something cool, something for everybody. —Brock Radke