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MTV is staying in business with Snooki & JWoww.
The Jersey Shore spin-off has been renewed for a second season, the network announced Friday at the Television Critics Association's fall TV previews. The series debuted in June to 2.4 million viewers, a big drop from Jersey Shore's Season 5 premiere, which drew 7.6 million viewers.
Snooki & JWoww: Shockingly tame
Speaking of Jersey Shore, the show's sixth season will return Thursday, Oct. 4 at 10/9c. The fifth season capped off with 4.99 million viewers turning in for the season finale. Additionally, the network also renewed hidden-camera series Money From Strangers.
"MTV has been a beacon for each young generation throughout its history, and this Millennial generation is no different," Head of MTV Programming David Janollari said. "Our distinctive blend of reality and scripted shows gives voice to the excitement and possibilities that frame their everyday lives. We strive to reflect their hopes, dreams and struggles, with a mix of humor, authentic voices and engaging stories that you can't find anywhere else on TV."
MTV also rolled out panels for its new series, including an adaptation of British series Inbetweeners as well as Catfish, a show based on the popular documentary film. Get the scoop on the network's new fare:
Based on the British series, Inbetweeners stars Joey Pollari, Bubba Lewis, Zack Pearlman and Mark L. Young as high schoolers stuck in the middle of the social ladder. Though the 18-episode British series was a starting point for the MTV series, executive producer Brad Copeland says his version, like The Office before it, will find its own way. "We tried not to copy exactly what they were doing and take the essence of it," he said. "The first season, out of 12 episodes, I'd say six borrow skewed versions of their plots. They only did 18 episodes, so there's really not that much to borrow." Inbetweeers will premiere Monday, Aug. 20 at 10:30/9:30c.
MTV orders adaptation of Brit comedy Inbetweeners, four new reality shows
The docuseries is inspired by the film of the same name, in which Nev Schulman, the show's creator, fell in love online, but was disappointed to learn that the woman he thought he knew wasn't quite who he expected. That's why Schulman and filmmaker Max Joseph are now helping those who find love online meet in person. While the network insists this isn't a "gotcha" show and there are some actual love stories in the mix, there are plenty of deception stories, with people motivated to lie because of poor self-image, insecurity and even revenge. The one thing the producers promise is that even Schulman and Joseph are discovering the truth along with their subject and don't know anything in advance. "The most important thing to me was to make it on my terms and the No. 1 term for me was I don't want to know anything because I suck at acting," Schulman said. "I can't pretend. We're actually going and discovering." Catfish: The TV Show will premiere Monday, Nov. 12 at 10/9c, followed by the return of World of Jenks at 11/10c.
MTV's dramedy follows five friends — Jared Kusnitz, Inbar Lavi, Michelle Ang, Sarah Habel and Diego Boneta — who, after one year out of college, struggle to tackle the real world. They attempt to stay optimistic through their major life changes, including taking on dead-end jobs, terrible bosses and romantic mistakes. Sound familiar? Executive producer Craig Wright recognizes the comparisons to HBO's Girls, but notes that he himself is not the voice of this generation, especially since it's based on his 23-year-old son. "I'm someone who's interested in listening to the voices of this generation," he said. Underemployed premieres Tuesday, Oct. 16 at 10/9c.
MTV orders two new scripted series, four reality shows
Though a reality series, Wakebrothers is more like a comedy. It follows the personal and professional lives of wakeboarding sibling superstars Phil and Bob Soven. The brothers are closer to Dumb and Dumber, with one brother the prankster and the other the more mature adult. The series, which airs Wednesdays at 11/10c, will follow the pair on the U.S. Pro Wakeboarding Tour.
Check out a clip of Inbetweeners:


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Actress Amber Riley battled through the pain from bruised knees to triumph on the competition show "Dancing with the Stars on Tuesday."
The "Glee" star waltzed her way to victory, beating out runner-up Corbin Bleu and third placed Jack Osbourne, and took home the trophy with professional partner Derek Hough, who nabbed a fifth win on the show.
Riley sported bandages on her knees throughout the competition and she admits it was difficult to dance through the pain.
She tells "Good Morning America," "They're just really bruised, the top of my tibia (shinbone) is bruised, so that's where the pain comes in and there's a little fluid on my knees. But, that will all be fixed with a little bit of rest and a little bit of ice."

subset: commoncrawl


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A Venture into Heresy
I'm old enough to remember when the Horus Heresy was just a glimmer in Rick Priestly's eye. Back then Leman Russ was listed as a hero of the Imperium and the primarchs had yet to be invented. But from those … Continue reading
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Redboat speeds animation rendering and delivery with Google ZYNC Render
About Redboat
Redboat creates animation that helps leaders in business, science and government communicate complex, sensitive and important messages to generate value and impact.
With Google ZYNC Render, Redboat has reduced the time required to create and deliver high-quality animations to clients, enabling the business to excel in a highly competitive environment.
Google Cloud Platform Results
- Reduced the time to undertake renders for an award-finalist client project from up to 400 hours in a conventional render farm to as few as 78 hours
- Supported the operation of a distributed business with freelancers operating in several locations
- Enabled the business to remain competitive in an environment where barriers to entry are lower than ever before
Growth in digital technologies, channels and content are transforming the way people receive and process information. Attention spans are contracting and individuals are becoming increasingly selective about the content they are willing to consume. These changes present formidable challenges for businesses and government bodies that want to create compelling animated content that resonates deeply with target audiences.
Redboat has cut the time required to complete overnight renders to 30 minutes and weekend renders to the same day.
"I move people from project to project - some of them are overseas and some of them local, but they all work remotely. Now we have Google ZYNC Render, we can all access those resources without me having to carry the overheads of a more traditional environment, which is great for us as a business."—Adrian King, Founder and Executive Producer, Redboat
This is where Redboat comes in. Founded by principal Adrian King 11 years ago, Redboat creates animations that help businesses and government bodies communicate complex, sensitive and important messages to target audiences. "We make exciting, attractive and engaging animation, but it's our strategic approach that makes it so effective," King says. "The imagery might get people's attention, but it's the substance that makes the message work."
King's approach has yielded animation work that has delivered finalist positions and won coveted international awards. An animation he created for Singapore television won the Best Animated Ident at the Promax BDA 2002 Awards, while in July 2017, the Animation Effects Awards Festival (AEAF) awarded 'finalist' status to a Redboat animation submitted to the AEAF 2017 Awards.
Despite his success, King has kept Redboat lean and agile with himself as principal and a pool of expert freelancers engaged on a project-by-project basis. "We can provide the services that larger studios offer without the overheads of staff and infrastructure," he says.
This flexibility has played a key role in enabling King to complete animation projects that vary considerably in scope and deliverables. "Every single project we do is different," he says. "For example, we may complete a 2D animation in four to eight weeks, including script, storyboard, voiceover, music, animation production and delivery with captioning and transcripts. Another time we may work with an agency that completes the script and storyboard themselves, leaving us to focus on the production."
The changes confronting animation professionals like King are not limited to the channels and types of content consumers are willing to consume. Like all animation studios and professionals, King and Redboat are facing the challenge of escalating client expectations, particularly around 3D animation projects. "The quality expected of 3D animations - resolution in particular - is getting higher and higher," says King. "So, our business faced the issue of render times going up and up and up, affecting our costs, performance and delivery times."
King had relied on on-premise servers running rendering software to complete animation projects for clients. However, this environment could not meet the challenges presented by the transformation of the animation industry. For example, King and his team had to wait up to 30 minutes to render a single image before making adjustments to improve the quality or better meet client requirements. They would then need to wait another few minutes for the changes to take effect. "When we got a frame to the point we had it looking right, we would undertake a full render," King says. "This needed to be completed overnight or over a weekend, which was a long wait and bottleneck in our production pipeline."
"Furthermore, our existing system was expensive and noisy for a studio in the business of 3D rendering," he says.
In 2015, King reviewed his options and decided to use Google ZYNC Render for Redboat's rendering activities. Google ZYNC Render enables studios to burst their rendering to the cloud, providing them with access to the computational power and global reach of Google's infrastructure. It acts as an alternative to expensive 'rendering farms' - racks of physical servers - used by animation studios.
The product also features native plugins to widely used animation tools and built in software for powerful rendering software.
"Google ZYNC Render worked 'straight out of the box' whereas the other products we tried all had problems around setup, interactions or accepting files," King says. "3D animation is extremely technical so it was extremely important for us to use something that just worked."
Redboat has not looked back since King made the decision. "Google ZYNC Render solved the problems we had been experiencing," he says. "The main advantages of the product are that we can scale up and scale down render farm usage; there are no fixed maintenance or running costs; and I can turn around highly detailed renders in a small fraction of the time we used to."
"That in turn means that we can collate our own internal feedback and reviews much faster, iterate work in progress much faster and ultimately give the client higher quality work sooner."
Render times slashed
Render times slashed Renders that previously had to be completed overnight can now be completed in 30 minutes while renders that previously required a weekend to process can now be returned the same day. This is due to the fact ZYNC Render can provide users such as Redboat with access to up to 32,000 cores on-demand to complete their jobs. "It's mindblowing - it's completely changed everything," says King. "This capability has alleviated the limitation we had of needing to optimise scenes to reduce render times, so now we can maximise the quality of the images."
An agile, distributed business model
Using Google ZYNC Render has also enabled Redboat to maintain an agile, distributed business model. "I move people from project to project - some of them are overseas and some of them local, but they all work remotely," King says. "Now we have Google ZYNC Render, we can all access those resources without me having to carry the overheads of a more traditional environment, which is great for us as a business."
Redboat's business model is also enabled by G Suite intelligent apps that connect its team members, who are distributed across Australia and internationally. "Using G Suite allows us to have an integrated ecosystem of apps that perform different functions for our business," King says. "We use apps like Google Sheets, Google Docs, Gmail, Calendar and Contacts all the time to organise and share work. All the files and information related to our projects are stored on Drive."
"G Drive is extremely stable and I'm extremely comfortable running the business on it."
The business has started developing with Google App Maker and expects the product to feature prominently in its production workflow in future.
"Google ZYNC Render solved the problems we had been experiencing. The main advantages of the product are that we can scale up and scale down render farm usage; there are no fixed maintenance or running costs; and I can turn around highly detailed renders in a small fraction of the time we used to."—Adrian King, Founder and Executive Producer, Redboat
A positive force for change
Looking beyond Redboat to the animation industry more generally, King views Google ZYNC Render as a positive force for change. "With Google ZYNC Render, we can all effectively access giant render farms regardless of the scale of our businesses - whether you're a freelancer working on a project at home or a big studio," he says. "It's completely disruptive technology that has broken the old system."
The contribution of Google ZYNC Render to Redboat's success is exemplified by the project (viewable here) that achieved finalist status at the AEAF 2017 Awards. This project was completed on the Google platform and cost only $A4,679.47 in rendering time. "We had 905 frames to render, each with between 10 and 20 layers," says King. "Some of the files we submitted for rendering were up to 1GB in size."
"Rendering all the layers of each frame took an average of one hour and 15 minutes per frame."
In total, Redboat submitted about 222 individual renders to Google ZYNC Render over six weeks. In a physical environment, this would have required 2,422 hours of render time (equal to 40.3 days worth of rendering on a single computer). "Using Google ZYNC Render, we completed the renders in a fraction of that time," says King. "The Google ZYNC Render logs show that all 222 sequences were rendered in 78 hours and 52 minutes.
"If I include job submission and download times, I estimate our total time to execute all our rendering using Google ZYNC Render at about 100 hours total, spread out over about four weeks," he adds. "If I had a 20 machine in-house render-farm that would have taken over 400 hours."
King describes Google ZYNC Render as a core platform that will underpin Redboat's business in future. "I expect we'll continue to find more and better ways to use it to enhance productivity and efficiency, as well as to do things that would have previously required enterprise level resources," he says. "That's good news for us."
About Redboat
Redboat creates animation that helps leaders in business, science and government communicate complex, sensitive and important messages to generate value and impact.


text:
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Main Page
The Problem
Let [math][3]^n[/math] be the set of all length [math]n[/math] strings over the alphabet [math]1, 2, 3[/math]. A combinatorial line is a set of three points in [math][3]^n[/math], formed by taking a string with one or more wildcards [math]x[/math] in it, e.g., [math]112x1xx3\ldots[/math], and replacing those wildcards by [math]1, 2[/math] and [math]3[/math], respectively. In the example given, the resulting combinatorial line is: [math]\{ 11211113\ldots, 11221223\ldots, 11231333\ldots \}[/math]. A subset of [math][3]^n[/math] is said to be line-free if it contains no lines. Let [math]c_n[/math] be the size of the largest line-free subset of [math][3]^n[/math].
Density Hales-Jewett (DHJ) theorem: [math]\lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} c_n/3^n = 0[/math]
The original proof of DHJ used arguments from ergodic theory. The basic problem to be consider by the Polymath project is to explore a particular combinatorial approach to DHJ, suggested by Tim Gowers.
- (1-199) A combinatorial approach to density Hales-Jewett (inactive)
- (200-299) Upper and lower bounds for the density Hales-Jewett problem (active)
- (300-399) The triangle-removal approach (inactive)
- (400-499) Quasirandomness and obstructions to uniformity (final call)
- (600-699) A reading seminar on density Hales-Jewett (active)
Here is a further list of blog posts related to the Polymath1 project. Here is wordpress's list.
A spreadsheet containing the latest lower and upper bounds for [math]c_n[/math] can be found here.
Unsolved questions
Gowers.462: Incidentally, it occurs to me that we as a collective are doing what I as an individual mathematician do all the time: have an idea that leads to an interesting avenue to explore, get diverted by some temporarily more exciting idea, and forget about the first one. I think we should probably go through the various threads and collect together all the unsolved questions we can find (even if they are vague ones like, "Can an approach of the following kind work?") and write them up in a single post. If this were a more massive collaboration, then we could work on the various questions in parallel, and update the post if they got answered, or reformulated, or if new questions arose.
IP-Szemeredi (a weaker problem than DHJ)
Solymosi.2: In this note I will try to argue that we should consider a variant of the original problem first. If the removal technique doesn't work here, then it won't work in the more difficult setting. If it works, then we have a nice result! Consider the Cartesian product of an IP_d set. (An IP_d set is generated by d numbers by taking all the [math]2^d[/math] possible sums. So, if the n numbers are independent then the size of the IP_d set is [math]2^d[/math]. In the following statements we will suppose that our IP_d sets have size [math]2^n[/math].)
Prove that for any [math]c\gt0[/math] there is a [math]d[/math], such that any [math]c[/math]-dense subset of the Cartesian product of an IP_d set (it is a two dimensional pointset) has a corner.
The statement is true. One can even prove that the dense subset of a Cartesian product contains a square, by using the density HJ for [math]k=4[/math]. (I will sketch the simple proof later) What is promising here is that one can build a not-very-large tripartite graph where we can try to prove a removal lemma. The vertex sets are the vertical, horizontal, and slope -1 lines, having intersection with the Cartesian product. Two vertices are connected by an edge if the corresponding lines meet in a point of our [math]c[/math]-dense subset. Every point defines a triangle, and if you can find another, non-degenerate, triangle then we are done. This graph is still sparse, but maybe it is well-structured for a removal lemma.
Finally, let me prove that there is square if [math]d[/math] is large enough compare to [math]c[/math]. Every point of the Cartesian product has two coordinates, a 0,1 sequence of length [math]d[/math]. It has a one to one mapping to [math][4]^d[/math]; Given a point [math]( (x_1,…,x_d),(y_1,…,y_d) )[/math] where [math]x_i,y_j[/math] are 0 or 1, it maps to [math](z_1,…,z_d)[/math], where [math]z_i=0[/math] if [math]x_i=y_i=0[/math], [math]z_i=1[/math] if [math]x_i=1[/math] and [math]y_i=0, z_i=2[/math] if [math]x_i=0[/math] and [math]y_i=1[/math], and finally [math]z_i=3[/math] if [math]x_i=y_i=1[/math]. Any combinatorial line in [math][4]^d[/math] defines a square in the Cartesian product, so the density HJ implies the statement.
Gowers.7: With reference to Jozsef's comment, if we suppose that the d numbers used to generate the set are indeed independent, then it's natural to label a typical point of the Cartesian product as (\epsilon,\eta), where each of \epsilon and \eta is a 01-sequence of length d. Then a corner is a triple of the form (\epsilon,\eta), (\epsilon,\eta+\delta), (\epsilon+\delta,\eta), where \delta is a \{-1,0,1\}-valued sequence of length d with the property that both \epsilon+\delta and \eta+\delta are 01-sequences. So the question is whether corners exist in every dense subset of the original Cartesian product.
This is simpler than the density Hales-Jewett problem in at least one respect: it involves 01-sequences rather than 012-sequences. But that simplicity may be slightly misleading because we are looking for corners in the Cartesian product. A possible disadvantage is that in this formulation we lose the symmetry of the corners: the horizontal and vertical lines will intersect this set in a different way from how the lines of slope -1 do.
I feel that this is a promising avenue to explore, but I would also like a little more justification of the suggestion that this variant is likely to be simpler.
Gowers.22: A slight variant of the problem you propose is this. Let's take as our ground set the set of all pairs (U,V) of subsets of \null [n], and let's take as our definition of a corner a triple of the form (U,V), (U\cup D,V), (U,V\cup D), where both the unions must be disjoint unions. This is asking for more than you asked for because I insist that the difference D is positive, so to speak. It seems to be a nice combination of Sperner's theorem and the usual corners result. But perhaps it would be more sensible not to insist on that positivity and instead ask for a triple of the form (U,V), ((U\cup D)\setminus C,V), (U, (V\cup D)\setminus C, where D is disjoint from both U and V and C is contained in both U and V. That is your original problem I think.
I think I now understand better why your problem could be a good toy problem to look at first. Let's quickly work out what triangle-removal statement would be needed to solve it. (You've already done that, so I just want to reformulate it in set-theoretic language, which I find easier to understand.) We let all of X, Y and Z equal the power set of \null [n]. We join U\in X to V\in Y if (U,V)\in A.
Ah, I see now that there's a problem with what I'm suggesting, which is that in the normal corners problem we say that (x,y+d) and (x+d,y) lie in a line because both points have the same coordinate sum. When should we say that (U,V\cup D) and (U\cup D,V) lie in a line? It looks to me as though we have to treat the sets as 01-sequences and take the sum again. So it's not really a set-theoretic reformulation after all.
O'Donnell.35: Just to confirm I have the question right…
There is a dense subset A of {0,1}^n x {0,1}^n. Is it true that it must contain three nonidentical strings (x,x'), (y,y'), (z,z') such that for each i = 1…n, the 6 bits
[ x_i x'_i ] [ y_i y'_i ] [ z_i z'_i ]
are equal to one of the following:
[ 0 0 ] [ 0 0 ] [ 0, 1 ] [ 1 0 ] [ 1 1 ] [ 1 1 ] [ 0 0 ], [ 0 1 ], [ 0, 1 ], [ 1 0 ], [ 1 0 ], [ 1 1 ], [ 0 0 ] [ 1 0 ] [ 0, 1 ] [ 1 0 ] [ 0 1 ] [ 1 1 ]
McCutcheon.469: IP Roth:
Just to be clear on the formulation I had in mind (with apologies for the unprocessed code): for every $\delta>0$ there is an $n$ such that any $E\subset [n]^{[n]}\times [n]^{[n]}$ having relative density at least $\delta$ contains a corner of the form $\{a, a+(\sum_{i\in \alpha} e_i ,0),a+(0, \sum_{i\in \alpha} e_i)\}$. Here $(e_i)$ is the coordinate basis for $[n]^{[n]}$, i.e. $e_i(j)=\delta_{ij}$.
Presumably, this should be (perhaps much) simpler than DHJ, k=3.
High-dimensional Sperner
Kalai.29: There is an analogous for Sperner but with high dimensional combinatorial spaces instead of "lines" but I do not remember the details (Kleitman(?) Katona(?) those are ususal suspects.)
Fourier approach
Kalai.29: A sort of generic attack one can try with Sperner is to look at f=1_A and express using the Fourier expansion of f the expression \int f(x)f(y)1_{x<y} where x<y is the partial order (=containment) for 0-1 vectors. Then one may hope that if f does not have a large Fourier coefficient then the expression above is similar to what we get when A is random and otherwise we can raise the density for subspaces. (OK, you can try it directly for the k=3 density HJ problem too but Sperner would be easier;) This is not unrealeted to the regularity philosophy.
Gowers.31: Gil, a quick remark about Fourier expansions and the k=3 case. I want to explain why I got stuck several years ago when I was trying to develop some kind of Fourier approach. Maybe with your deep knowledge of this kind of thing you can get me unstuck again.
The problem was that the natural Fourier basis in \null [3]^n was the basis you get by thinking of \null [3]^n as the group \mathbb{Z}_3^n. And if that's what you do, then there appear to be examples that do not behave quasirandomly, but which do not have large Fourier coefficients either. For example, suppose that n is a multiple of 7, and you look at the set A of all sequences where the numbers of 1s, 2s and 3s are all multiples of 7. If two such sequences lie in a combinatorial line, then the set of variable coordinates for that line must have cardinality that's a multiple of 7, from which it follows that the third point automatically lies in the line. So this set A has too many combinatorial lines. But I'm fairly sure — perhaps you can confirm this — that A has no large Fourier coefficient.
You can use this idea to produce lots more examples. Obviously you can replace 7 by some other small number. But you can also pick some arbitrary subset W of \null[n] and just ask that the numbers of 0s, 1s and 2s inside W are multiples of 7.
DHJ for dense subsets of a random set
Tao.18: A sufficiently good Varnavides type theorem for DHJ may have a separate application from the one in this project, namely to obtain a "relative" DHJ for dense subsets of a sufficiently pseudorandom subset of {}[3]^n, much as I did with Ben Green for the primes (and which now has a significantly simpler proof by Gowers and by Reingold-Trevisan-Tulsiani-Vadhan). There are other obstacles though to that task (e.g. understanding the analogue of "dual functions" for Hales-Jewett), and so this is probably a bit off-topic.
- H. Furstenberg, Y. Katznelson, "A density version of the Hales-Jewett theorem for k=3", Graph Theory and Combinatorics (Cambridge, 1988). Discrete Math. 75 (1989), no. 1-3, 227–241.
- R. McCutcheon, "The conclusion of the proof of the density Hales-Jewett theorem for k=3", unpublished.
- H. Furstenberg, Y. Katznelson, "A density version of the Hales-Jewett theorem", J. Anal. Math. 57 (1991), 64–119.


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Aura Solar Attic Fan | CFM: 1740 18″ Diameter 4″ Tall Collar ASF-18-C04
Basic dimensions of the Aura Solar Fan and it's identifying attributes. Primary identifying dimensions of vents and fans are the inside diameter of the Head, which equals the diameter of the hole being vented, and the height of the Collar which is the solid tube between the Head of the vent and the Flange which attaches to the roof.
Inside Diameter:
Outside Diameter:
Square Flange (side length):
Height of Head:
Collar Height:
Height of Flange:
Total Height with Collar and Flange:
Louvers are the vertical openings in the vent, which facilitates the flow of air, while keeping animals, insects, debris, and embers out. The combination of inner and outer Louvers on our patented "Aura" series of vents and fans are shaped to create a positive vacuum effect which draws air out of the vent, utilizing a physical principle known as the Venturi effect.
Louver Height (inside):
Louver Height (outside):
Size of opening btwn blades (inside):
Size of opening btwn blades (outside):
Expected snow and rain in your region and the pitch of the roof are the key consideration when choosing the height of the collar of your roof vents. Zones 1 and 2 are not expected to sustain significant snow packs, while zones 3-7 are likely to experience snow, possibly for weeks or months. Vent collars under 4 inches are inappropriate for flat (0/12 pitch) roofs because even heavy rain can splash water into a shorter vent.
Minimum Pitch Capacity:
Maximum Pitch Capacity (Standard Vent):
Maximum Pitch Capacity (Modified):
Total CFM:
Free Air Space:
Free Air Space:
1:150 Ventilation Rule:
1:300 Ventilation Rule:
Solar Fan Total Wattage:
Fan Count:
Solar Power Air Flow:
Total Air Flow @0.1SP:
Fan Dimensions:
Bearing Type:
Fan Speed (RPM):
Noise Levels (Decibels):
Rated Voltage:
Rated Current (Amps):
Power Consumption (Watts):
Life Hours:
Installation Guides Under Development. Coming Soon.
The Aura Solar Attic Fan uses both solar and wind power for optimum ventilation performance both day and night. Exhausting air passively, (driven by wind), also removes hot air from the attic on summer evenings and cloudy days, lowering attic temperatures.
- Aura Solar Fan, 18″ Diameter, 4″ Collar, and Square Flange
|Actual Package Weight
|19 lbs
|24 × 24 × 18 in
|UPS Dimensional (Billable) Weight
|75 lbs
Active Ventilation Products


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John Roese on Redefining Huawei and the Democratization of Smartphones
With $29 billion in revenues in 2010, Huawei is the world's second-largest maker of telecommunications and networking gear. But second largest and second best isn't good enough for the Chinese company, which aims to increase its annual revenues to more than $100 billion per year within the next 10 years by expanding its business beyond communications service providers. John Roese, head of Huawei's North American R&D team, is one of the guys charged with making that happen. How? By expanding its presence in the United States and hitting the sweet spot between the increasingly overlapping telecom, enterprise and consumer markets.
11:39 am: A few introductory remarks, and Ina Fried welcomes Roese to the AsiaD stage.
Ina Fried: Hi again, everyone. I'm very excited that our next speaker is John Roese of Huawei. Huawei, for those of you who don't know — I'm sure everyone in this room does — is, you know, a huge Chinese networking giant involved in all kinds of areas, from making devices, making the networks that devices run on, and has quietly, over the last many years, amassed just a huge talent pool, not just here in Asia, but also in the United States. And John Roese oversees the U.S. R&D arm, which I actually didn't realize is composed of as many thousands of engineers as it is. John also has an interesting career as CEO of Nortel, and several other technology companies before that. So, without further ado, John Roese.
Maybe, I think, John, the most helpful thing would be to talk first a little bit just about Huawei and what are the businesses it's in.
John Roese: Most importantly, everybody knows that Huawei is a telecom company selling things to carriers. But this year the company has gone through a complete transformation to become an ICT company, and it's based on the premise that in the future, most problems will not be solved purely by the consumer, the carrier, or the enterprise ecosystem. You actually have to combine the technologies from them to solve problems.
And so while we had a big carrier business and continue to be currently the second-largest carrier company in the world, in terms of equipment suppliers we quietly have emerged as a consumer company with a multibillion dollar consumer company in the handset business, and now have entered the market as an enterprise player with … about $4 billion in enterprise sales, which makes us probably the second or third largest in the world.
So the company is redefining itself on a premise that the future is not about distinct silos of technology, but how you put them together in a coherent way to actually solve more complex problems in this next generation of ICT.
Ina Fried: So everything's all related, but let's break it into silos for a second. What are the different products you guys make? You have networking — both, I think, wired and wireless — although carriers are certainly what you're best known for. You guys make phones and tablets which have been less in the U.S. but starting to show up first, I think, through smaller carriers and now through some of the major carriers. What other kinds of products do you make?
John Roese: To put it into context, my role in the U.S., I'm responsible for advanced technology across all of the business lines. And I kind of joke with people that, in just my organization, you can go from dealing with people developing photovoltaic technology, to cloud technology, to next-generation cellular technology, to enterprise switches and routers, to core optical networks, to handsets and tablets and smartphones. It's really the entire spectrum, and it's probably one of the broadest toolkits of any company in the industry, in terms of providing the communication infrastructure for — everything. It's a strange answer, but if there's a way to communicate, there is probably Huawei technology involved in that communication ecosystem.
Ina Fried: And let's talk about the organization you oversee. First of all, explain to people the scale. Because I certainly didn't have an appreciation for just how many people Huawei had in the U.S. And talk about what they're doing.
John Roese: So, obviously, over the years Huawei has gone from out-executing a lot of people in front of us to now out-innovating and being the leader in many segments. We're now the market share leader and the innovation leader. And as part of that, we realized we had to operate globally. We had to create a global ecosystem of innovation. The biggest change in that was this conscious decision to expand our innovation organization worldwide.
So my charter was to come in and essentially scale the North American organization from a few hundred people to well over a thousand people now, that are all chief scientists, chief technology officers. The average seniority in my organization, from an engineering perspective, is probably 25 to 30 years in the industry, these deep, deep experts that, quite frankly, have created many of the industries that we're dealing with, in terms of technology. So that thousand-plus people that's emerged over the last year is the tip of an arrow that, behind it, is today approaching almost 60,000 engineers around the world, many of them in India and Europe, and a huge portion of them in Shenzhen, Beijing and other provinces in China.
Ina Fried: So, 60,000 engineers — some huge percentage of the company's overall workforce — are actually engineers.
John Roese: Absolutely. As a technical guy, and having been an executive of many companies, one of the things that attracted me to Huawei was it's still a very technical company. Almost 50 percent of the company is R&D. There are very few companies that have this kind of emphasis on the development of technology, as opposed to other aspects of the business.
Ina Fried: And how did you build this workforce in the U.S.? You're in many sites in the U.S. and Canada; um, from what I recall, you've basically cherry-picked some of the companies on the downturn and grew that way.
John Roese: I answered that question to some folks in the U.S. government; they asked the same question about how, isn't it challenging to attract people? It was kind of an interesting conversation. I answered it, "One person at a time." We candidly looked at where innovation was happening and tried to make sure that we had a presence close by, so we could tap into those ecosystems if you want to do advanced terminals, smartphones, tablets. A great place to do that is San Diego.
So we opened a big facility in San Diego. If you want to do cellular wireless — Chicago; Ottawa; Bridgewater, N.J. — great places to do that. Our biggest sites are actually in Santa Clara, where you have this — ecosystem where you can almost find any technology within about three miles of our facility. So it was a very conscious decision to say that there are clusters of intellect within the North American market, and instead of trying to assume that you can bring them to you, it was better for us to go to them and attract them into the organization.
Ina Fried: And I understand that you guys — your chief recruiter — you owe a big debt to Larry Ellison?
John Roese: Well, we actually kind of find it very useful when there's mergers and acquisitions and consolidations. So when Sun and Oracle combined, we found a lot of people at Sun that basically wanted to rethink where they wanted to work. Sun is a fantastically innovative company, as is Oracle, but the cultures are different. So it was a great boon to us that we were able to be down the street, and be growing very rapidly, and have this idea where people could take their ideas and turn it into actual reality. By the way, we did the same thing up at Ottawa. When Nortel kind of disappeared, one of the things that happened very quickly, en masse, some of the top technical experts in Nortel just kind of walked across the street to a new facility while they opened, and joined the company.
Ina Fried: And that's how you came to the company, right?
John Roese: Well, I was a little bit later than that. Actually, that team, most of them who worked for me came into Huawei, and then I was kind of off doing other things, and then as we decided to scale it, I guess they gave me a good reference and they say, "Well you should go attract this guy because we liked working for him, he built a good innovation culture and maybe can help you take it to the next level."
Ina Fried: And talk about that: What was your thinking, how well did you know Huawei when they first approached you? I mean, obviously, some of your former workers were there. What were your concerns? What excited you about it?
John Roese: Well, I think most people, to quote my former neighbor up in Ottawa, the mayor of Ottawa — Larry O'Brien, at the time — he opened the R&D facility for us up there, and his comment was, "Huawei is the largest company I've never heard of." And that was very common in our engagements. And for me personally, I knew about Huawei, I had competed with them, I even tested their technology to prove whether or not it worked and whether it was a real threat, and learned very quickly it was a very real threat to companies like Nortel. But for me personally, I had kind of checked out of the industry after Nortel. I said, four Fortune 500 CTO roles, it's time to go do something else, I'll go to that Ph.D. in cultural anthropology.
But then I started talking to Huawei. I saw some of my best and brightest people — people that were Nortel fellows — come into the company, and as I got talking to them, when I came over to SenJen, when I met with the management team, when I met with the folks that were running the company, what I realized is, this is one of those companies that actually truly values technology; understands that you have to invest heavily into it and was genuinely excited about, not what happened yesterday, but what was going to go in the future. For me, as a technologist — every technologist, any engineer — the most valuable thing you can do is take an idea and turn it into reality. It's not about making money, it's not about prestige, it's about turning your ideas into reality. When I saw this engine here, and this desire to innovate into the future, it was just a complete no-brainer to join.
Ina Fried: Now, you talked about building your organization one person at a time, and part of the reason why Huawei has built its organization in the U.S. one person at a time is because the U.S. government won't let you acquire just about anyone. You guys have tried a couple times. How challenging is that, in a technology industry that is largely built by acquisition? You came from Broadcom; they gobble up a dozen companies a year.
John Roese: No one will accuse government policy of preceding the technical ecosystems and industries. It usually is a couple generations behind. So the current status of our relationship with the U.S. government is really that we're a bit out of sync. In most of the industries that we compete in right now, the industries have been highly globalized. If you wanted to build a wireless network today in the U.S., your choice of vendors would be, let's see, a Swedish vendor, a Finnish vendor, a French vendor and two Chinese vendors. Those are the tier-ones. There's no North American vendor that can build that for you. The last one was Nortel; it's not there anymore.
So part of our challenge is educating the U.S. government, educating the politicians. And not just the U.S. — around the world — that we're in a highly globalized environment, the innovation has shifted, the structure of the industry has shifted and there needs to be a rethinking of how public policy and governmental policy relates to understanding a technology and its application and networks.
Today we build the networks for 45 of the top 50 operators in the world. The remaining five, a chunk of them, happen to be in the U.S. And so we're very patient. Candidly, we're now engaging very heavily, we're dispelling myths on a regular basis, and it does make my life a lot more difficult. In fact, some of the U.S. government people made that comment. They said, "We applaud what you're doing because you're hiring lots of people in the U.S." And we're exporting $6 billion of goods and services into our global supply chain out of the U.S., we're a great corporate citizen. But we kind of have to get in sync between the public policy and the actual reality of the industry.
Ina Fried: And what do you think it is? Because, I mean, you mention all of your competitors are global, non-U.S. based companies, is it xenophobia, what is really fueling this fear, and are any of the concerns legitimate or are they all fear-based?
John Roese: Well, I think I would say none of the concerns are legitimate in the reality, but perception is sometimes reality in people's minds. So the punch line is, some people still think the industry that we exist in is the Bell Labs and the Lucents of the past. So, again, we do have to educate them about this future. The second is an unknown. My comment about Larry O'Brien — I mean, the biggest company he's never heard of. Well, if I went and polled people in Washington, every senator and congressman, and asked them, "Do you even know how to pronounce Huawei?" — the answer would be, probably not. So we have to engage.
There's an interesting thing: It's a $30 billion company; our definition of an emerging market is the United States. So when a U.S. company comes into China, there's a big educational process to kind of convince people that the company is legitimate, it can provide goo technology, it can be a good partner. And so it's really just a systematic process of getting them to understand the reality. It doesn't hurt now that we have a highly globalized workforce, that we have a big presence in the U.S., that we're not in front of them and dialoging and being present. But more important, the thing that will ultimately overcome this is innovation. There is — you can prevent or avoid certain companies, until the technology they develop is so far superior to what you have at your disposal currently, that it creates a competitive disadvantage. And we believe, given our investment in innovation, that we are almost at that point. In many places ,we are clearly out innovating our competitors, and it just is sound public policy to let the carrier infrastructure of the United States — or the terminal industry or the enterprise industry– use the best technology to solve the best problem, because the correlation between global development, economic advancement, user experience, is entirely tied to using the best technology.
If I told you you couldn't use any state-of-the-art tablet because I didn't like the country of origin, and you had to go back to using a typewriter, would you do it? Of course not. We're not quite there yet, but I think that will occur.
Ina Fried: So I want to turn to one of the topics that's near and dear to my heart — and certainly to much of the audience — which is this mobile revolution. You guys are playing in that in several areas. You're building, as you mentioned, the gear that a lot of these networks run on. Perhaps not the ones that I get to use in the States, but a lot of the other networks that I use when I travel, as well as, increasingly, some of the devices. And one of the areas that Huawei and ZTE and a number of Asian companies are making huge influences, democratizing these smartphones. Can you talk about the world you guys see, with smartphones everywhere on the planet?
John Roese: Absolutely. We've been through this before. A long time ago, Huawei decided that cellular technology — mobility — should be everywhere. And at that time, most of the big players said it wasn't cost effective to build cellular networks that could be deployed in sub-Saharan Africa or in the developing world. Huawei was one of the few companies that said, "No, no, no — we need to figure out how to do this." The result was skipping of generations, massive penetration, and today we have a couple billion people sitting on our networks, which is a good step.
Now we're in a different phase. The different phase is now that you have these mobile networks, there is still a bit of a have-and-have-not world, and that is the smartphone versus the feature phone. I think the day before yesterday somebody mentioned, "Would it be great if there was $100 smartphone, or something better than that"? Well, there is, we build them. In fact, in the U.S. right now, you could go purchase — there are commercials on television from some of the tier-two operators. They're our customers that essentially are describing $29 Android smartphones, Huawei-branded, no contract, no commitment.
Ina Fried: Now, does that mean you're building a phone that costs less than $29 to make?
John Roese: Well, the economics are slightly different and more complex, but clearly they're in that strata of the sub-$100 smart phone. The advantage of that is, once you get rid of this concept of feature phone/smartphone, that everybody has a mobile broadband device, everybody has a media-capable device — think about the capability that can unlock. I mean, I think Vice President Gore mentioned this concept of five billion people on mobile networks, and less than one billion on smartphones. Well, as soon as everybody is on smartphones, every interesting piece of technology you saw here over the last couple of days is contingent on having an interface that can actually do media, can do data, can be fully interactive. There is a huge opportunity, and the democratization of smartphones — which is clearly our message — we are absolutely trying to make sure that wherever there is a mobile user, they are a fully featured mobile user. That has a huge, profound impact; not just on the mobile networks and the devices, but all of these very interesting, over-the-top applications, cloud services and other things that are contingent on a better terminal and a better mobile experience.
Ina Fried: That growth you mentioned is also contingent, of course, on having networks that can handle that capacity; having enough spectrum. How much time does your organization spend looking at solutions? It's great to say, wouldn't it be great if the whole world has smartphones. I think we'd have a problem if any country went to 100% penetration. Data networks are struggling today. How much of your time is spent looking at that issue, and what are some of the things you guys are looking at?
John Roese: A huge portion. I mean, the good news is, I did a calculation a couple of years ago to say, how well have we executed as an industry in improving the bandwidth efficiency of networks — and this was wireline networks. But over a 20-year period, we had improved the cost-per-bit ratio by 22 million to one. That's a pretty good ratio, if you will. We are very good, as an industry, at figuring out ways to increase the available bandwidth. Now the challenge is, it gets a lot harder when you have to deal with laws of physics, when you deal with things like Shannon's Law and channel bandwidth. And so we are spending a huge amount of time. Given the composition of my organizations and the people in the organizations I run, they're all advanced technologists and they're the place where we are exploring not just how to make it more spectrally efficient, but how do we architect the cellular network. Instead of having these big monster cell sites all over the place, move to heterogeneous networks that have multiple tiers and multiple devices and ways to access, different kinds of networks to interface with, spread the spectrum over multiple spectrum channels.
At the same time, we go and lobby very heavily to get the digital dividend, free up spectrum, increase spectrum. That's a very precious commodity. But more importantly, think about ways to use that spectrum efficiently. Now, most people don't understand that a lot of the inefficiency in the network is based on the way it's designed, and the fact that things like the modulation rate degrades as you move away from the cell site. If you can fix that, then the efficient use of spectrum can improve dramatically. Those are the kinds of things that we keep working on.
I actually have a very high degree of confidence that, contrary to public belief, we're going to run out of capacity on the cellular networks. I think our industry is actually quite good at figuring out ways, creative ways, of improving that cost per bit of the available spectrum or the available capacity of the network. Occasionally we hit a wall, but usually we figure out a way around it. We innovate, we come up with a new approach and we continue to provide that kind of foundational attribute, which is capacity for people to connect.
Ina Fried: I want to get to questions in just a second, so definitely be thinking of them. But since a lot of people don't know Huawei, and don't know what you guys do, take us through the labs. What are some of the coolest projects that you can talk about, that you guys are working on? What are the things that you could tell your cousin, and they'd be like, "Wow?"
John Roese: Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the most interesting ones that I'm really excited about is cloud. So everybody knows the term "cloud"; the problem is, it's kind of cloudy — we don't actually know what it really defines. But right now, there's kind of two schools of thought about cloud. There's this idea that cloud is just a virtualized data center, and it doesn't really change much; it just makes things slightly more efficient. And then there's this very disruptive model that people like Amazon and Google have been focused on, which is, let's just rethink things like storage and compute and really change the economics so that we can kind of give storage away for free and make it up on advertising. So they had to really rethink how the world was created, in terms of some very foundational components like storage and compute.
So we have a huge amount of projects. I think today we have almost 2,500 engineers across Huawei working on cloud-based projects; which, by the way, is bigger than the total R&D staff of most of our competitors in many markets. But most importantly what we have to acknowledge is, the thing that we have to build is not just a minor iteration of the historical data center, but we have to actually take what people like Amazon and Google philosophically have created, which is a radical rethinking of storage and computing, and turn that into commercial offerings.
We are just about to start trialing and putting out technology to show some of these technologies. But imagine an environment where the cost of storage could be one-tenth what it is today. And you do that by delayering and stripping out a ton of technology so that it's just very simple architecture, very well-architected and orchestrated. If you change the cost of storage fundamentally for a carrier or for a consumer, for an enterprise, what is the implication of that? Everything. You could change your business model; you can no longer worry about, you only get one gigabyte of storage for your email or don't make those big files because I don't have anywhere to put them or be concerned about the cost of those hard drives, or the backup is too complex. If you can get rid of all of that by just changing this fundamental component of the cost of storage, it cascades through every one of these ICT ecosystems. So we call that single cloud, it's a piece of our overall cloud architecture; and, candidly, I think it's going to be one of these very big disruptions in the overall industry. Beyond that, obviously we're doing stuff in everything you could imagine, next-generation wireless. Imagine, if you've played with an LTE network today, it's pretty exciting. A 30-millisecond round-trip time, a 20-30 megabit per second of realistic bandwidth; the theoreticals are much higher. The stuff we're working on pushed the envelope up to hundreds of megabits or gigabits per second over the wireless environment.
Now, it's hard to say what you do with that. But I have no doubt that creative people will find a very interesting thing to do with gigabit wireless.
Ina Fried: Really fast dropped calls.
John Roese: Well, it's funny, I was just at MIT last week, and they were showing me holographic video. I asked them a simple question: How much bandwidth does this take? And they said, "Well, basically it's the equivalent of a whole bunch of high-definition channels combined to create this three-dimensional, high-definition visualization." So they were talking hundreds of megs or gigabits of capacity to do holographic video. We think holographs are kind of neat, and they're interesting. I've heard it come up a couple times in the last couple of days. But to move that over a network, we're going to have to rethink and redesign the networks, which might be one of those first applications, but even if that isn't the one, I have no doubt people will figure out what to do with it.
Ina Fried: Even making Netflix cost-effective. I mean, their pure data shows that right now we're not in that place where it's really you can get Netflix for $7.99 a month, but the cost of delivering a movie is approaching that same rate.
Moving on now to the Q&A with the audience …
Q: On this topic of spectrum and bandwidth, we actually had Mr. Gore here mention that one of the main challenges that the networks are facing is video delivery, broadband delivery; this is definitely one of the drivers. And if that's an issue not only over typical wired networks, it is only more an issue if every single one of us started to want to stream video or these other high-bandwidth applications over the networks. It's a significant challenge, which as I understand it, faces two very serious walls, which you've alluded to. One is the physics itself. And the second is a political wall. As an example, in Europe, one of the issues is you have a lot of small countries and space; they have to divide the spectrum in ways that are actually very, very inefficient and leave very little spectrum for a given country. So my question is, is this actually really a technical problem, or is it more of a political problem that needs to be solved, that will allow us to get that kind of bandwidth necessary?
John Roese: Yeah, well it's a great question. I mean, the bottom line is, yes, there's clearly a political piece to the equation. If you carve up spectrum in funny ways, or you decide that it can only be used in certain ways — like frequency division duplexing versus time division duplexing — these create an unnatural burden. Spectrum is a spectrum; it's just a segment of the airwaves. We'd like to see a little more rational spectrum policy. Clearly it's improving, and people I think, now — definitely the FCC, and around the world — are really thinking about how to free up spectrum. But it just takes quite a long time to actually accomplish that. But don't underestimate the technical problem. There is clearly a technical problem that needs to be solved. You cannot take a network that was historically designed to move very low-bit-rate voice calls, GSM and SMS, and suddenly assume it can be an ultrabroadband wireless delivery vehicle for high-definition video, without really rethinking not just how you do things like modulation on the cellular side, but also how you design the network. And so, that heterogenous networking model, which I think is where most of the action is going to be for the next several years, starts to say, well maybe we should redesign the way the network works. Instead of having one tier, let's have two tiers, let's have small cells, let's spectrum up in the 5- and 6GHz range in coordination with 700 megahertz spectrum.
Imagine a device, five years from now, that's always connected over a 700MHz channel. So it's got long range, great building penetration, it's kind of the control channel — that's where the important stuff flows. But it's seamlessly able to invoke additional radios when it's nearby a small cell, that gives it 100MHz wide channel, 4×4 MIMO, so it has a gigabit of capacity potentially to consume video. So those are all theoretically possible. There are technologies that can be built that way, but the design of the network is very different. It means that now you have to start putting those small cells somewhere; you have to decide that it's okay to put them on light poles or on building walls, and if we have to have a permitting process that says it takes six months and $10,000 per site to get the permit to hang something on a light pole that just is a small cell in the second tier, that's just not going to work. So you're absolutely right, both are important pieces of the equation, both are resolvable, but if you just solve one without the other, it probably isn't going to get us there.
Q: I have a question about Huawei and potential market share and mindshare in the U.S. One thing that I found really disrupting recently was, Google has shifted Chromebooks with an allocation of Verizon data for free each month. And I think that model is — it's an incredible model, and I think if you were to put it on lower in phones, you could get people to dig in to this data so that they would see the value of it and want to purchase it, but it's hardly anywhere. I'm just wondering if you have tried this in any markets around the world, and if you think that this might be something that would be disruptive enough to get traction in America? Because there's no one offering that.
Ina Fried: So the drug-dealer model — the first hit is free. [laughter]
John Roese: Yeah, we'd rather not use that analogy, but generally it's not us that are going to create that model, in the sense that it's the carrier that ultimately has to decide what makes economic sense. Now, the good news is that carriers are now more and more engaged with us saying — they used to think of Hauwei as kind of a supplier of technology that kind of kept the other suppliers honest. That's when we were in the fast-follower mode. Now that we're the innovator, the dialogue we're having with customers is fascinating. So I think you're on to something, and I think that there are markets where the carriers are looking for ways to increase the penetration rate. And I think now Huawei has an opportunity to actually describe new business models, and the carriers are much more willing to listen to us, because they view us more as an innovator. So I haven't had that discussion especially, but I'm pretty much, on a weekly basis, sitting down with either CEOs or CTOs or the operators.So maybe the next one, I'll bounce it off of them and see what they say. I think it's a great idea, and there's many other examples in the enterprise world where we've done that as an industry and it has worked really well. Get people excited.
Cloud storage is a great example. Give them the first 20 Gb, and see what happens. If they like it, they'll buy more.That's what Picasa does, that's what many of these systems do. You're absolutely right, it needs to be applied to other markets.
Q: I have a question about your intellectual property strategy. Traditionally, IP is still a little bit of a stigma over here, especially in China. But Huawei has a very impressive IP strategy, so I want to know how it is received internationally, and how it compares to when you were at other international companies.
John Roese: I think you're absolutely right. The perception is that intellectual property isn't important. Some companies historically — Huawei, seven or eight years ago — said, no, this is really important. And in the last couple of years we've been in the top five intellectual property producers in the world, in all industries — a couple of the years we were, I think, number two. Today we have about 50,000 patents PCTs and patent applications globally. So, my — to answer your question very briefly, compared to Western companies I've been CTO of, in fact the patent portfolio is larger and the discipline and desire to create it and the willingness to invest in it is absolutely higher in Huawei. They get it, they understand it and I think realize that intellectual property is a critical part of actually being able to compete in the global marketplace.
Q: It seems like on the one hand you have Moore's law, giving us faster and faster devices capable of consuming bandwidth, and new business models springing up to accelerate that consumption. On the other hand, you have networks struggling to provide enough spectra. I'd like the answer of, well, technology is going to find a way, but do you think that a period of just real latency is almost inevitable at this point, and if not, do you see solutions coming from outside the network world, like smart flash to do caching, to smooth peak times?
John Roese: Absolutely. The solution to these problems will not be just more bandwidth in the network. That's a great vehicle. I joke that I've been in this industry long enough that we go — we oscillate as an industry between finding really long-term solutions to problems by looking at the end-end ecosystem technically, to moments of time where suddenly the network provides more bandwidth, and we think that you can solve every problem by just throwing bandwidth at it. We're right now approaching a point in wireless where we can't just throw bandwidth at it. LT is going to give us a bit of a bump, but it's a bit more time before we get to LT advanced, and in between there, we will have to get very creative on content management, caching, dynamic transcoding, the intelligence of the endpoint, multi-tiered topologies — those are not cellular problems. And so, you're absolutely correct, which is great for Huawei, because we actually touch all of those, as opposed to only having one tool to solve the problem.
Q: And do you think that's going to result in an inevitable period where there's just going to be a lot of latency?
John Roese: I think it's going to slow things down in certain markets and certain business models, where the assumption of unlimited bandwidth in all environments is true. But you look over the last 20 years, and it has always gone through those cycles. I'm an optimist, I've seen us work through them before. The technical work to solve it when you're in those "periods of latency" is much more complex. And then eventually we have a breakthrough on bandwidth capacity and everybody kind of breathes a sigh of relief and rapid innovation occurs. And then we do it to ourselves again. It's inevitable.


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The Imposter
credit to arceusvictini
1. Code of Arceus (The Rules)
2. Application
3. Currency
4. Rank System
5. Rock Sector
6. Flying Sector
7. Fighting Sector
8. Competitive Corner (War info/team, tournaments, and tutoring program)
9. Various Shops
THE CODE OF ARCEUSWelcome to Eternal Diversity Nullam.
You may remember our old clan, EDR. Due to an unfortunate chain of events that had absolutely nothing to do with me, I swear, they collapsed. Faith in Arceus was all but gone. All but three of the plates were shattered. However, three faithful people kept the legend of Arceus alive, barely. They knew that to bring him back in all of his former glory, they had to band together, And thus, Eternal Diversity Nullam was born.
APPLICATION1. All regular SPPF and Clans rules apply here.
2. Sector switching can only be authorized by your current sector leader and the leader of the sector that you want to switch to.
3. Stay on topic. Part of the reason our faith all but collapsed was due to off-topicness. Look at the Clan rules to find out what's on and off-topic.
4. You do not need to use your sector's type in your team, but there may be challenges involving the type in the future.
5. When you earn Shards, tell your sector leader so that they can update the first post.
6. Put the phrase 'Rebirth of the Light' in your application to show that you read the rules.
SHARD SYSTEMUsername:
Time Zone:
Favorite Pokemon:
How long are you on Serebii?:
Pokemon Online name (optional):
FC? (Specify which Gen, also optional):
When the plates of Arceus shattered, the bits and pieces were scattered. These shards are what we use as our currency. For the shards that you get for completing a task, check here:
RANKINGSWinning a clan battle against a
Higher rank: 3 shards
Same rank: 2 shards
Lower rank: 1 shard
Losing a battle: 1 shard
Winning a war battle: 4 shards
Losing a war battle: 2 shards
Performing trade services: 1-5 shards (recipient decides)
Making artwork for a clan member: 1-5 shards (recipient decides)
When you have enough shards to reach your next rank, PM your sector leader so you can buy your next rank!1. Starter (0 shards)
2. Learner (10 shards)
3. Defender (30 shards)
4. Warrior (60 shards)
5. Master (100 shards)
6. Myth (150 shards or co-leader)
7. Leader (reserved for the leader of the sector)
The next three posts shall be the Rock, Flying, and Fighting sectors, respectively.
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From the PastorThe first Sunday of Lent is an opportune time to examine how Lent can aid us in drawing closer to Christ and dying more to self. These two go hand in hand if we are to succeed in practising virtues that help us in our relationship with Christ and in overcoming vices that pull us away from Him. I suggest that in establishing Lenten goals you focus on the physical, the spiritual, and acts of charity.
Our fallen nature has a tendency to want to be babied; it cries and whines so that we will give it what it desires. If we deny it food, it seeks compensation with extra sleep; when we deny it rest, it looks for food. It is never satisfied, and when we give in to it, it cries out all the more. Lent provides us an opportunity to deny ourselves something, and not necessarily just food. We should examine what attachments we might have – such as pushing the snooze button, getting our own way, our afternoon sugar, particular foods, and so on – and practise true mortification by giving up that which we are particularly attached to.
Giving up something that is physical must be accompanied by something spiritual for we are made of body and soul. We can have a supernatural motive for giving up physical things, such as offering the sacrifice for one's spouse or future spouse or for the Holy Father, but we should also take on a spiritual exercise for Lent. This exercise could consist of five minutes of meditation on eternal life or on the temporal nature of this life, praying the chaplet of Divine Mercy, or reading Scripture for a few minutes each day. Use the spiritual exercise to draw closer to Our Lord so that when Lent is over you will continue with it. It will also help you persevere with your physical mortification.
Finally, we should perform acts of charity, as this helps us reach out to others. Our Lord fasted and prayed in the desert for forty days before He began His public ministry, which consisted of spiritual and corporal works of mercy. Throughout these forty days, perform an act of charity daily – pray a Memorare for someone who offended you, pick up after someone else without being seen, or perhaps offer to do something for another person. There are so many opportunities to perform acts of charity within the context of the home, for charity begins at home. Take advantage of the season of Lent to reach out to help others.
St. John Chrysostom said: "Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works. If you see a poor man, take pity on him. If you see a friend being honoured, do not envy him. Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eye, and the ear, and the feet, and the hands, and all the members of our bodies. Let the hands fast, by being free of avarice. Let the feet fast, by ceasing to run after sin. Let the eyes fast, by disciplining them not to glare at that which is sinful ... Let the ear fast ... by not listening to evil talk and gossip ... Let the mouth fast from the foul words and unjust criticism. For what good is it if we abstain from birds and fishes, but bite and devour our brothers?"


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One of the most creative companies in London is looking for some talented Java developers to drive new technical projects forward.
Working as part of this award winning digital agency, you will have the chance to work on highly creative cutting edge projects including Spring, Hibernate and some of the latest Java technologies.
They have a superb culture and working environment, including regular social events combined with an emphasis for quality in all that they do.
The requirement is for developers who have a true passion for technology and software engineering, aspiring software craftsman and believe in test driven development (TDD), though they are happy to train candidates that show interest in this area. You must have experience with Java (1.5 or later) and have previous experience working on web applications. Ideally your technology portfolio will also include Spring and Hibernate. The company is especially keen on candidates that have experience working on personal projects or open source software in their spare time as many of their current developers do.
The role is based in Central London, paying 45-52k and will include a good benefits package.
Apply here: http://joberate.com/redirect/url/e7c6-de-e4-0f-59e105


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I'm a fairly new member here and just had a quick question that may save me some time if there is a tool like this...
Is there a tool inside of specific threads that will take you to your last post?
For example if I have a couple of posts in one thread and I check back a day or two later, I start from the last page and work my way back until I see my last post, and then read all posts after my last post to see what I have missed. Can be a pain when there are multiple pages to one thread and I accidentally scroll past my last post.
If I could click a button that takes me directly to the page of my last post It would save me some time...anyone know if there is a feature like this??


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It's hard to understand why the city of Chicago doesn't have its annual Celtic Fest in Grant Park anymore, but we still have the smaller but freewheeling and eclectic Irish Fest at the Irish American Heritage Center on Chicago's northwest side. It kicked off today and runs through Sunday evening. In addition to the headline acts Gaelic Storm, Michael McDermott, Tupelo, We Banjo 3, Runa, Makem Spain, and Scythian, there are entertaining bands like Baal Tinne, The Gleasons, Larkin And Moran Brothers, and The Academy Of Irish Music. Attendees can also watch the high-kicking Trinity Irish Dancers, Foy School Of Irish Dance, and O'Hare School Of Irish Dance; check out an art show; and shop for gifts. Admission is $15.
The Millennium Art Festival takes place this weekend on Lake Street at Michigan Avenue. It's not one of the city's bigger art events, but there's always some interesting work on display there, along with a live music stage and food vendors. Plus, it's right in the midst of several of downtown's best attractions.
There are at least three events this weekend for anyone who's tired of seeing pretty much the same bands at everyone of Chicago's outdoor events over the summer. West Fest, at Chicago Avenue and Damen Avenue, is teaming up with well-known indie rock venue Empty Bottle in presenting a lineup that includes Local H, Har Mar Superstar, Speedy Ortiz, Woods, Palehound, and Cymbals Eat Guitars. Square Roots Festival is being presented by The Old Town School Of Folk Music on Lincoln Avenue between Montrose and Wilson, and has Nikki Lane, Meat Puppets, and Lucero. Ruido Fest in Medill Park casts a spotlight on Latin alternative rock acts like Molotov, Desorden Publico, and Julieta Venegas.
Chicago-based alt rock band whitewolfsonicprincess will be playing at Tommy Nevins in Evanston this Sunday at 5:00 p.m., and at The Red Line Tap next Sunday, also at 5:00 p.m. The Red Line Tap gig will be part of the R And R Circus series whitewolfsonicprincess has been staging at that venue on a semi-regular basis.
In between the last paragraph and this one, I took a short break to go watch Band Called Catch performing their homespun original alt rock tunes at the Fred P. Hall Amphitheater right here in Palatine. I had forgotten how good their vocals are, and they've added a third singer since the last time I saw them.
Secret Colours, has a record release party for its new Dream Dream album coming up on July 15 at Martyrs' on Lincoln Avenue. Yoko And The Oh No's and Soft Candy are also on the bill.
The Rage And Rapture Tour, featuring Blondie and Garbage with special guests John Doe and Exene Cervenka from X, comes to Ravinia on July 22.
The Pitchfork music festival returns to Chicago July 21–23, offering over 40 bands on three stages in Union Park. There are several big names involved, including LCD Soundsystem, Thurston Moore Group, A Tribe Called Quest, PJ Harvey, The Feelies, Solange, and Ride. The Chicago-based band Ne-Hi will be performing songs from their impressive new album at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday of Pitchfork.
For a complete Pitchfork schedule as well as thumbnail bios of the participants, pick up a copy of Innerview Magazine at stores like Reckless Records. The Chicago-based Innerview publishes "Know Before The Show" guides to major events in town. Look for their annual Lollapolooza issue to appear in a few weeks.
Former WXRT and WLUP air personality Rob Skafish will be at the Chicagoland Record And CD Collectors Show in Hillside from 8:45 a.m. to noon on Sunday, July 16 to sell and sign copies of his book We Have Company: Four Decades Of Rock And Roll Encounters.
The American Ska-Thic festival will celebrate its 25th Anniversary on August 19 at Metro. MU330, Coolidge, The Eclectics, Detroit Rude Boy Society, Skapone, Tango Wedding Band, and DJ Chuck Wren will be performing.
Last week I mentioned that An Evening Of John Lennon, featuring Phil Angotti, Tommi Zender, and Casey McDonough, was coming up at City Winery Chicago, but I forgot to mention the actual date, which is August 6. In the meantime, Angotti will be part of the Great Moments In Vinyl ensemble when it covers The Beatles White Album next Friday, July 14 at Martyrs' on Lincoln Avenue.
Jay Goeppner brought his band Backdated to his hometown of Mount Prospect on the 4th Of July and gave the festival a rollicking finish. Backdated takes its name from The Who song "Substitute," so it was no surprise to hear them cover at least three Who songs. They also did well with stuff by The Doors, Chicago, The Hollies, and other 1960s acts.
Another highlight of Mount Prospect's 4th Of July celebration on Tuesday was the Motown revue band R-Gang. These guys have a great stage presence and cover a range of rhythm and blues songs that includes Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, The Time, and Fine Young Cannibals.


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CULTURE- BUZZBOX- Explosive: 6 Days play mountain rock 'n roll
"Explosive" is a word that typically conjures hard rock and heavy metal and thus might not be the most apt adjective for a bluegrass project. But parts of 6 Day Bender's self-titled LP practically demand it. At the top of opener "Best I Can," for example, it's hard to tell whether the momentum comes more from the dizzying banjo figures or singer Luke Nutting's maniacal laughter, but their combined strength propels the music forward for the next three tracks until the crashing guitars which announce "Jail Blues" up the ante a little more.
The band considers this its proper debut, and it's certainly a huge change from the long-form demo they released online for free in October. Many of the songs on Eastham Basement were draft versions of these same tunes, recorded in the band's practice space with extremely limited means, often with the whole band gathered around a single microphone like a bluegrass ensemble from the earliest days of the record industry.
"We got the old-timey vibe out of necessity," says Nutting.
A healthy portion of the ass-whoopin' quality probably comes from the fact that the Bender boys think of themselves primarily as a rock band. The bluegrass and old-time influences often seem to come to the forefront given that Nutting fronts the band with a banjo strapped across his chest, but rock influences ranging from the Stones to the Velvet Underground and bassist Mark Schottinger's occasional taste for bass guitar instead of upright always threaten to morph the sound into something more forceful, a twilight zone they've taken to calling "mountain rock 'n roll."
"I learned to play banjo after two of my guitars were stolen during my sophomore year of college," says Nutting. "It wasn't bluegrass that put me on the banjo, it was necessity."
That's his second use of that word in as many questions, and maybe that explains why the band's hybrid sound emerged– they're as country as circumstances dictate, but no more. "Bluegrass right now is a virtuoso game– the fastest, cleanest picker wins," he continues. "That's not at all our business. We still dig that music, but we're a lot louder and more electric."
In addition, founding fiddle player and passionate bluegrass purist Lauren Moses departed in November, leaving the band free to cannibalize the classics a bit more brutally. It's also a sausage party now, though, which is somewhat unfortunate– Moses and the backing vocals she supplied were a healthy point of contrast to Nutting's gritty drawl, and while Schottinger steps up to fill the gap on most songs, his voice is better suited for occasional leads like the hilariously anti-Philly "Philadelphia" than to playing yin to Nutting's yang.
But given that they're trying their damnedest to create mutant music, it shouldn't matter in the long run how much of the bluegrass influence comes and goes, or even whether Nutting's banjos eventually get stolen as well. They'll find their place in the middle as long as they don't really belong in either camp.
6 Day Bender turns the album loose at the Satellite Ballroom on April 18. $6-$8, 8pm.


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- "The sword of Gryffindor was made a thousand years ago by goblins, the magical world's most skilled metalworkers, and is therefore enchanted."
- —The description of this sword[src]
The Sword of Gryffindor[1] was a goblin-made sword owned by the famed wizard Godric Gryffindor, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Physical appearance
- "Fashioned from pure silver, it is inset with rubies, the stone that represents Gryffindor in the hour-glasses that count the house points at Hogwarts.Godric Gryffindor's name is engraved just beneath the hilt"
- —A physical description of the sword.[src]
Gryffindor's sword is made of pure silver, with rubies set into it - the stone is used to symbolise Gryffindor House at Hogwarts. Gryffindor's name is engraved just beneath the hilt.
Early years
The sword was made to Gryffindor's specifications by Ragnuk the First, King of the Goblins. When it was finished, Ragnuk coveted it so much that he pretended Gryffindor had stolen it from him and sent minions to steal it back; however, Gryffindor bewitched the minions rather than killing them, and sent them back to Ragnuk to deliver the message that if Ragnuk ever tried to steal from Gryffindor again, the latter would unsheathe the sword against all the goblins.
- "Only a true Gryffindor could have pulled that out of the hat, Harry."
- —Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter[src]
In May of 1993, the sword materialized inside the old school Sorting Hat when Harry was inside the Chamber of Secrets. Harry then used the sword to kill Salazar Slytherin's Basilisk, which was hiding inside the bowels of the Chamber. This caused the sword to be imbued with basilisk venom (since goblin-made items only imbibe what makes them stronger) and hence gained the ability to destroy Horcruxes. After the events of that year, the sword resided in the Headmaster's office.
During the summer of 1996, Albus Dumbledore used the sword on the Gaunt family ring, which was one of Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes. The sword cracked the stone in the ring, destroying it as a Horcrux.
- Rufus Scrimgeour: "Was it because Dumbledore believed that only the sword of Godric Gryffindor could defeat the Heir of Slytherin? Did he wish to give you that sword, Potter, because he believed, as do many, that you are the one destined to destroy He Who Must Not Be Named?"
- Harry Potter: "Interesting theory. Has anyone ever tried sticking a sword in Voldemort?"
- — Scrimgeour and the trio discussing the contents of Albus Dumbledore's will[src]
Before he died, Dumbledore entrusted the sword to Harry in his will. However, Rufus Scrimgeour claimed that the sword was not Dumbledore's to give away, and refused to give it to Harry. Dumbledore placed an identical copy of the sword in his office, because he knew that the Ministry of Magic would try to confiscate it, and hid the real sword in a hole in the wall behind his portrait. Sure enough, the sword on display in Dumbledore's office was later taken by Rufus Scrimgeour for examination.
When the sword was returned to Dumbledore's office, students Ginny Weasley, Neville Longbottom, and Luna Lovegood attempted to steal it for Harry. Following that incident and on Dumbledore's orders, Severus Snape passed the counterfeit sword to Bellatrix Lestrange, who stored it in her Gringotts vault, thinking it was real. Upon discovering where Harry and his friends were camping out, Dumbledore's portrait instructed Snape to give Harry the real sword without Harry knowing that it was Snape, in case Voldemort found out through Legilimency on Harry. Snape deposited the real sword in a frozen lake in the Forest of Dean and left a Patronus to guide Harry to the sword. When Harry tried to retrieve the sword, Salazar Slytherin's Locket closed around his neck and attempted to strangle him, sensing that its destruction was near. Ron Weasley came to Harry's rescue, retrieved the sword from the lake and used it to stab the locket, destroying the Horcrux.
Later, Harry, Ron and Hermione were captured by the Death Eaters and sent to Malfoy Manor. Harry and Ron were imprisoned in the cellar along with Luna Lovegood, Dean Thomas, Mr. Ollivander and the goblin Griphook while Hermione was being tortured and interrogated by Bellatrix Lestrange. Bellatrix demanded to know where the trio came into the possession of the sword, thinking that they had broke into her vault for it. She summoned Griphook to verify the sword, and at Harry's request, Griphook lied and said that it was a fake.
When Harry and the rest were saved by Dobby to Shell Cottage, Harry asked for Griphook's assistance to break into Bellatrix Lestrange's vault at Gringotts, as he suspected another Horcrux was hidden within it. Griphook, impressed by Harry's respectful treatment of the house elf, agreed to help on the grounds that he would be given the real sword as payment. Harry agreed reluctantly. When their break-in was discovered, Griphook seized the real sword and ran with it. But even after he took the real sword, after the news of Harry, Ron and Hermione's break-in of Gringotts got to Voldemort, the Dark Lord fired Killing Curses at the Gringotts personnel and even Griphook himself. The sword vanished from Griphook's hand.In the Battle of Hogwarts, the sword reappeared in the Sorting Hat for Neville Longbottom and he used it to behead Nagini, Voldemort's snake and his last remaining Horcrux, rendering Voldemort a mortal man once more. The sword was last mentioned lying beside Neville in the Great Hall following the conclusion of the battle.
Behind the scenes
- Gryffindor's sword owes something to the legend of Excalibur, Arthur's sword, as it had to be drawn from a rock by the rightful king as only a rightful Gryffindor can hold Gryffindor's sword.
- The role of the sword in the Chamber of Secrets film is much the same as in the book; however in the PC, PS1 and PS2 versions of the video game based on the film, the sword has a long range attack; a ball of light (PC), lightning (PS2) or basilisk venom which can be launched from the sword. In the PS1 version, however, the sword repels the venom like shiny metal or a mirror would repel a laser, and the player has to direct the shot onto the basilisk's teeth.
- The Gryffindor sword is featured in the hand of the goblin Griphook on the front cover of the UK version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The sword is also featured on the front cover of the German version of the book.
- An illustration of the sword can also be seen being held by Dumbledore before Chapter Eighteen in the American version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. In this image, the sword has a curved blade, like a scimitar, while in the film it is straight, like a knight's sword. On the American dust jacket of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry has a sword in his belt, and this sword has a cup-hilt which guards the fingers, unlike the cross-hilt sword of the movies and the Chapter Eighteen illustration.
- The sword was used twice in the series (by Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom) to kill snakes: Salazar Slytherin's Basilisk and Nagini, respectively. This may symbolise Godric Gryffindor's enmity with Salazar Slytherin, who was closely associated with serpents. This may also have been an homage to the courtly tales of heroes "slaying dragons with swords," (e.g. Saint George).
- It is interesting to note that the sword is the only one of the main relics of the Hogwarts Founders that is not a Horcrux but one of the few things that can destroy a Horcrux. Slytherin's Locket, Hufflepuff's Cup and Ravenclaw's Diadem are the other relics, but are also Horcruxes.
- In the series the sword's size changes often, on the cover of the seventh novel it looks more like a large dagger than sword, as mentioned above it appears like a scimitar in the American version illustrations. In the films the handle appears to have a one handed handle but when Neville wields it is's handle is relatively long and is more a hand and a half.
- The sword is Matthew Lewis's favourite prop from the series.[3]
- Twice, the sword presented itself to a Gryffindor who doubted that they belonged. Harry Potter pulled the sword out of the Sorting Hat, when he was worrying that he should have been in Slytherin, and Neville Longbottom had an argument with the Sorting Hat; The hat wanted to put Neville in Gryffindor but Neville was scared and wanted to be put in Hufflepuff. Later, he pulled the sword out of the hat.
- The sword, along with the Sorting Hat, are the only remaining relics of the Hogwarts Founders, as the others were turned into Horcruxes by Voldemort and subsequently destroyed in an effort to defeat Voldemort. Both belonged to Godric Gryffindor.
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (First appearance)
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (film)
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (video game)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (video game) (Appears on a Famous Wizard Card)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Mentioned only)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film) (Seen in deleted scene)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (video game) (Mentioned only)
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (film)[4]
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (video game)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (video game)
- LEGO Harry Potter: Building the Magical World
- LEGO Harry Potter: Characters of the Magical World
- The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
- Harry Potter LEGO Sets
- LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4
- LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7
- Harry Potter Trading Card Game
- Pottermore
- Harry Potter for Kinect
Notes and references
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 New from J. K. Rowling - The Sword of Gryffindor
- ↑ Pottermore states that the sword was made "a thousand years ago"; as it is written from the perspective of Chamber of Secrets, it is written in 1992; subtract a thousand to get 992.
- ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3FP-nmkFL0&feature=relmfu
- ↑ It is partially seen in glass case to the left of Dumbledore's portrait


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Legal Claim Schematic (Schema)
|1. A detailed set of drawings or instructions that detail any relevant elements of structure, layout, connectivity, interaction and/or appearance which are specific to one or more Legal Claim Items or Entities.
Read More
|1) The Semantic Root Noun for this term is: Legal Claim
2) Semantically Related Terms: The "Legal Claims Management Glossary"
3) The Legal Claims Management Home Page covers much more about other related terms and concepts associated with this term or phrase.


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A new red-band trailer for the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy The Dictator has gone online. The clip is basically structured similarly to the other trailers, but it includes alternate takes and different jokes. I was a big fan of Borat and admired the ballsiness of Bruno, but I'm starting to feel like The Dictator may be a bit one-note. This is the first Cohen comedy that's set up as a true narrative feature instead of a mockumentary, so it'll be interesting to see how this outlandish character fares throughout a true story arc. I liked the opening scene of the film so hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm not entirely convinced that I won't tire of the character after 30 minutes of the film.
Hit the jump to watch the trailer. We've also included an embed of a sketch from this past weekend's Saturday Night Live in which Cohen appeared in character as said Dictator holding the actor's Hugo director Martin Scorsese hostage. The Dictator opens on May 16th.


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Wandering deer makes splash in Colo. home's pool
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- A wandering deer found himself in hot water after stepping on a pool cover and making a big splash in the backyard of a Colorado home.
Homeowner Scott Smith says he found the buck in his ground-level pool Sunday morning trying to wrestle his way out of the pool cover. Smith says he had no idea when the deer wandered onto the patio in the backyard of his Colorado Springs home.
KOAA-TV reports that firefighters built a ramp to help the animal out. Photos show the buck was coaxed out of the pool with rope to guide his way up the ramp.
The deer ran off as soon as he got out of the water, some four hours after he was discovered in the pool.