text:
The percentage of voters believing that the country is better off since Barack Obama became president jumped seven points after the two political conventions, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Thirty-eight percent of registered voters now say the nation is better off, which is up from 31 percent in the August NBC/WSJ poll conducted before the conventions.
Still, a plurality of voters -- 41 percent -- believe the country is worse off, while 21 percent think it's in the same place.
"Are you better off than you were four years ago?" has been a question that Republicans raised right before the Democratic convention began earlier this month. And top officials and surrogates from the Obama campaign had a difficult time, initially, answering the question.
The release of a surreptitiously taped Romney fundraiser yesterday added to a tough few weeks for Mitt Romney that included Clint Eastwood's appearance at the RNC and President Obama's post-convention bump in the polls. As NBC's Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro discuss, with 49 days until Election Day, Romney's destiny may be out of his control.
But in his convention address the day before Obama's acceptance speech, former President Bill Clinton answered the question affirmatively. "No president -- not me or any of my predecessors -- could have repaired all the damage in just four years. But conditions are improving, and if you'll renew the president's contract you will feel it."
And the Obama campaign followed up with a new TV ad -- on the fourth anniversary of Lehman Brothers' collapse -- also making the case that the country is better off.
The new NBC/WSJ poll asks a separate question: Which candidate -- Obama or Mitt Romney -- is better prepared to lead the country four years from now? On this question, 47 percent of voters pick the president, while 36 percent choose Romney.
The full NBC/WSJ poll -- which was taken of 900 registered voters (270 by cell phone) from Sept. 12-16 and which has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.3 percentage points -- will be released at 6:30 pm ET.
That release will include the poll's initial look at the presidential contest among likely voters.


text:
It's been a long time since I used XP at home, even though I use it or Vista at work almost every day. The X60s came with a legitimate installation of XP, but I wasn't interested in it until a few days ago, when I wanted to investigate a couple of things.
The first was to take a look at the OpenDisc. I found my way to Linux via the Gimp and TheOpenCD, and was always a little sad when the latter project sputtered. Seeing the OpenDisc rise from the ashes was a good thing.
I can only say, if you absolutely must use Windows, demand the OpenDisc. I count myself as lucky in that I am under no obligation to use Windows (except at work, as I have mentioned), but if I were forced, I'd definitely make sure I had access to at least a few of the projects that are available from that collection.
And if you're familiar with Linux it won't be anything new. Blender, the Gimp, Inkscape, Battle for Wesnoth, Freeciv, Firefox, Pidgin, Thunderbird, VLC, GnuCash, OpenOffice.org, 7zip and as many more that you probably know or have seen, if you don't already use them.
I'm guessing that all of those projects, and about a bajillion more, are downloadable for Windows platforms from their respective home pages, but getting them all in one large swoop is an issue of convenience. Yes, you could pick and choose, but by downloading the DVD image, you get everything you were after in the first place, plus a huge array of new things you might not have known about.
So going back to XP for part of a day gave me the chance to take a look at that disc, see what I had missed and take a look at a lot more.
The other thing that had been bugging me was graphics performance on some of the games I'm used to playing from the days of my Inspiron. That video card — a wise old 64Mb GeForce 440 Go — ran some stunning graphics at a staggering 1600×1200, whereas the Intel GMA 950 seems to have trouble sometimes at a measly 1024×768.
And the odd part of the experiment is that sometimes yes, and sometimes no, the 950 has a harder time in Linux than in Windows. Games I had no hope whatsoever of running in Linux — like Aquaria, from the Humble Indie Bundle — ran beautifully in XP.
At the same time, my long-time favorite Neverwinter Nights in Windows was a total drag compared to how smoothly and cleanly it behaves in Linux. Rotten frame rates and sluggish performance, even at the lowest detail settings, made me eager to see my favorite game disabused of Windows.
It seems strange to me, as someone who knows absolutely nothing about the mechanics of these games, to think that two different titles could perform so oppositely on two different platforms. Mostly I expected the contrary to be the case — that NWN would be lightning fast under Windows while Aquaria was impossible. But I must admit my surprise, and make my uneducated conclusion that the issue is with the software, and not the hardware.
Anyway, Arch Linux is back on that machine now, ironically in that same pseudo-Windows Classic look that I cobbled together a year ago. It was interesting to see how XP behaved on a machine that hasn't run anything but Linux since I got it. But it reinforced my commitment to the Penguin: I am not missing much by sticking with free software.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
"Vital signs were taken and documented somewhere in the chart. I have no idea where."
Friday, May 6, 2011
Lost & Found
"Vital signs were taken and documented somewhere in the chart. I have no idea where."
16 comments:
That's a CYA note if ever there was one.
- May 6, 2011 at 9:45 AM
- kate sweeten said...
I wonder if that would work for me up front...
"Yeah, I took care of that referral. I sent it...somewhere. I think. Maybe. You're welcome?"
- May 6, 2011 at 9:50 AM
- Jon said...
At least the doctor documented.
- May 6, 2011 at 9:59 AM
Sounds like a question for Annie.
- May 6, 2011 at 10:22 AM
Just another example of how great EMRs are.
- May 6, 2011 at 12:06 PM
- Nectarine said...
That way when reviewing the file you know you are not the only one who can't find them!
- May 6, 2011 at 12:24 PM
I bet they are with the Seeker's car title.
- May 6, 2011 at 5:17 PM
My very favorite cranky doctor in the world was kind of an ass sometimes and apparently one of his nurses forgot to write a patient's BP in his chart. Dr C's walls were kind of thin, so I heard him walk into the hall and say "Hey Sunny, so should I just call time of death on Mr Anderson here, because apparently he doesn't have a blood pressure."
- May 6, 2011 at 5:59 PM
Reminds me of a ex primary care doc I fired who asked in shock 'you were diagnosed with disorder X???' After I had told him (and he shared with me he'd only had 3 patients so far with disorder X) AND I could see some sheets in my chart with big university logo, a consultation letter that likely stated something about disorder X with in the first three lines.
Documentation fail. That was the moment I realized 1. he keeps terrible office notes and 2. he did not read any of the (at least three) consultation letters the big university docs had sent him.
Send that guy a nicely designed vital signs form he can affix to the front cover of the chart and charge him for the design of the form.
- May 6, 2011 at 6:42 PM
Syndrome x or fragile x disorder? Got me kinda curious...
- May 6, 2011 at 10:20 PM
EHR, right?
I have an inpatient chart/consult that auto-cites a rx from -someone else- that reads "I just want to give the patient a freaking four-footed cane. Why is that so hard?" [This was what was typed in the sig field when "4-footed cane" was not findable in the rx field.]
Written last year on the second day we went to our brand new shiny electronic health record.
Sent electronically to the DME supplier, apparently.
I laughed so hard I peed a little.
That was a Very Bad Weekend (TM).
I printed out the consult note and still use it to torture the ortho who wrote it.
- May 7, 2011 at 2:12 AM
It sounds like the Doctor who wrote that was a wee bit tired, cranky, and taking a passive-aggressive shot at whoever was supposed to take the vitals for the patient for not writing them where Dr. Cranky could find them with just a quick glance.
- May 7, 2011 at 2:16 AM
he is hoping that counts as a bullet for a billing code upgrade. the coders may disagree.
- May 7, 2011 at 3:53 AM
- ERP said...
So I guess he did not order them repeated.
- May 7, 2011 at 8:34 AM
- Jacob said...
You could read his notes?!?
- May 9, 2011 at 7:50 PM
I have that feeling nearly every day trying to review nursing home charts. They document in crazy places, and half the time the documentation is on some random flow sheet in a binder, and not in the chart at all.
- May 9, 2011 at 10:09 PM


text:
Kitty Hawk 26
Timm Smith
Skill Level to Build:
The Kitty Hawk 26 is a cold-molded, Carolina Style center console. Powered by a single four stroke outboard, she will be an economical offshore fishing boat.
If you are a designer who offers plans, or kit boats, we invite you to enter your information in the Directory of Boat Plans & Kits. There is no charge! This is for boats of WOOD hull material. And if you're in the market for a boat to build, this is a fine place to start.
To refine your search, add quote marks. If you search Nutshell Pram Kit, you will get all the listings which include Nutshell, Pram, and Kit. To refine, search "Nutshell Pram Kit" and you'll see just Nutshell Pram Kit results.


text:
James L. Chamness
Regiment Name: 128 Illinois Infantry
Side: Union
Company: B
Soldier's Rank_In: Pvt.
Soldier's Rank_Out: Pvt.
Film Number: M539 roll 15
My grandfather has a record which states James Chamness was 1 of the approximately 700 that deserted the 128th Infantry Regiment. The 128th Regiment was assigned to 16th Army Corps, District of Columbus, Ky. November 1862 - April 1863. The 16th Army Corps was formed in Dec 1862 and left for Tennessee shortly after the 128th left Illinois for Tennessee in November 1862. These troops were stationed in the vicinity of Memphis, La Grange, and Corinth Tennessee until June, 1863.
An Account of the 128th Infantry Regiment:
Joseph A. Logan, US Congressman from Benton, Franklin County, IL
originally supported the southern states' rights to own slaves. But once
the talk turned to secession, Logan withdrew his support and openly and
violently opposed secession. He was instrumental in raising several
companies of Union soldiers in Franklin, Williamson, and St. Clair
Counties. Unfortunately, his former law partner, William Joshua Allen,
was a high mucky-muck in the KGC who was later arrested for
sedition. Because of this, some of Logan's initial recruits for the Union
army were viewed with open suspicion and scorn, and hounded and ridiculed
by violent diatribes in the papers and by armed and hostile
unionists. The 128th Illinois Infantry, in which three of my ancestors
enlisted, was formed immediately after one of Logan's recruiting speeches, and two of its officers were KGC members.
The 128th were sent up to Springfield, most of them with only the clothes
on their backs and only a few had rifles, expecting to be outfitted when
they were mustered in. During the march up to Camp Butler in Springfield,
they were constantly verbally abused by the citizens of the areas they
passed through, and by the newspapers of the day, who accused them of
being a "fifth column" (subversives) for the Confederates. When they got
to Springfield, whether by deliberate design, or innocent accident, there
were no barracks or other shelter for them, and no food, uniforms, shoes,
guns or ammunition. They were furloughed home until the situation could
be rectified, and forced to re-march through the same hostile
countryside. When they were finally called up to muster, more than 700 of
the 860 men refused, effectively becoming deserters. The decimated 128th
lasted for five months and fought in only one battle before it was
disbanded, and the officers cashiered for gross incompetency. The
deserters were rounded up by bounty hunters.
One of my ancestors, Archibald Odum, of Benton, IL was one of the
deserters, and was captured by a bounty hunter who was paid $6.00 for his
troubles. Arch, along with some of the other captured deserters and most
of the loyal former 128th members, was sent to the 9th Illinois infantry,
where he served with his brothers Thomas and Wiley. Arch was wounded when
mounting up for a patrol. While convalescing, he was on duty in the
kitchens. He was delivering dinner to the pickets, when they were all
captured by a rebel patrol. Arch was sent to Andersonville Prison, where
he was joined by his brother, Wiley who was captured in a separate
incident. Arch survived and was released at the end of the war, but he
was a skeleton, his gums black and his body covered with scars from
scurvy, and he suffered life-long from rheumatism and chronic
diarrhea. Brother Wiley died of starvation and scurvy and is buried in
the prison graveyard.
James L. Chamness - Civil War - 128th Illinois Infantry Regiment
6:02 PM Anonymous No comments


text:
I clearly had no idea what I was doing when I signed up to NaNoWriMo this year. For those of you that don't know NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and runs from 1-30 November. The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel in one month.
In 2010 when I first participated, I wrote everyday. I remember it being really stressful but I had a novel on my head and I was stubborn. I got to 50,000 words by 28 Nov and that was that – I won!
This year I'm struggling. It's my second attempt. I put it off each year since 2010 and now I've jumped in. The problem is I'm meant to be at 18,000+ words by today and I'm only at 8,000+. At this rate, I won't reach 50,000 words till the first week of Jan 2015! It's a mess – and totally unlike me. I don't write everyday, which is a major cause of the lack of progress. When I do write, I feel like I'm writing pages and pages but when I look at the word count, it says I've done only 123 words. What??!
Anyway, I was hoping for some help. I have put to paragraphs here in the hopes that you will suggest how the story could go for a paragraph or two.
Excerpt 1:
"Why do you tolerate it, Mama? Why?" Gina felt her heart pounding and her hands shaking. She continued before her mother had a chance to respond, "He treats you so badly, Mama! I don't understand…" Tears ran down Gina's face. She had had enough. This was why she left home. "Gi, you will understand with time. Where we come from, women don't just leave their husbands…" Her mother's voice was gentle. "We women stay and fight." She concluded. That was the day Gina swore never to marry anybody. She would rather die than live a life sentence.
Excerpt 2:
Bea and Beth sit in silence for a little while before Beth says, "if it makes you feel any better, I haven't had sex in months!" Bea smiles and then starts to laugh. "Yeah it does make me feel better…" Bea reached for Beth's shoulder squeezes it and says, "Thanks for being there for me. I have no one to talk to and with Gavin out of town…," Bea cleared her throat, "I got a little overwhelmed with everything."
"Any time, Bea…you know I'm here any time," Beth says as an unpleasant memory flashes through her mind. She reaches for her cup and finally sips her lukewarm latte. Everything is almost OK in the world.
Can anyone help? What could happen next in either of the paragraphs? There may be prizes 😉


text:
Thailand is one of most iconic Buddhist country. Their monks to this day still literally beg for their food. Many Buddhist, like myself, goes to Bangkok to see some of the most sacred and majestic Buddhist temples. And like most Buddhist I also went to see the iconic 'Patron Buddha' of the country, which is the Four Faced Buddha at the heart of Bangkok.
The famous Four Faced Buddha at Erawan Shrine draws both local and 'international' devotees as wells as tourists. The funny thing though, the Four Faced Buddha is not inside a Wat (temple in Thai), it is just in a small patch of land at Phloenchit Road corner Rajadamri Road. In fact, tall buildings around the area, a hotel, and Bangkok's Skytrain tracks dwarf it. But do not be surprise to see that not a single minute passes by with a person praying or paying homage to the Four Faced Buddha. In fact, keeping the area uncluttered is a big problem for the city officials. They need to have somebody removed the flowers offered to the image every 10 minutes for 15 hours a day. If they fail to do this, the area will drowned in a sea of flowers offered to the Buddha.
Although, famously called as the Four Faced Buddha, Thailand's unofficial Patron Buddha is not a Buddha, it is a Brahma and technically it has nothing to do with Buddhism. However, Thai Buddhist monks have already quietly and unofficially recognized the 4-Faced Brahma as an unlikely Buddhist deity, that a lot of people has recognized it as a 4-Faced Buddha. In a way, it can be said that the Four Faced Buddha is now an 'adopted' Buddhist deity.
There are a lot of Four Faced Buddha in Thailand, but the most popular one is the one Erawan shrine. One proof that the Four Faced Buddha in Erawan Shrine is really miraculous is how much money thankful devotees and worshippers throw in as an offering to the Buddha. In fact, the 'joke' there its their second central bank and that's where they mint baht coins and print paper baht. The money is then used to maintain the shrine and also to feed some poor Thai families.
While I was there I met an American guy who said that he believes that it was the Four Faced Buddha who saved his life. He said, on a previous trip to Bangkok his Thai friend toured him to Erawan Shrine, and this friend also gifted him with a Four Faced Buddha pendant. While he doesn't a strong religious background, he wore the pendant out of respect and also out of sentimental value for his friend who has been nice. "Besides the pendant is quite nice. Exotic. If you know what I mean?" he added.
Anyway, a few months after he got back to the United States, he experience a '…. miraculous event that made me believed in the Four Faced Buddha." Apparently, while working on an electrical problem in his apartment, something that he felt he could handle on his own, he got electrocuted. He said it was really bad and that he literally felt all the electricity going through his body until he lost consciousness. According to him, his roommate saw him thrown off to the other side of the room! But he doesn't have any recollection of this happening. He was rushed to the hospital and regain consciousness on his way there. After being observed he was released the following day.
On his way home he remembered his Four Faced Buddha pendant and thought the medics must have taken it off him. Resigned to the fact that he already lost the pendant, he just forgot about it. About a week after the incident when his roommate was cleaning the apartment, his friend saw his broken pendant under a cabinet. When the American saw his pendant, he just knew right away that it was the Four Faced Buddha that saved him.
Another story I heard 3rd hand. My Thai host shared the story with me. He said his officemate was in need of big amount of money for her father who's battling cancer. Upon the advice of their other officemate his officemate who is need of money went to pray to the Four Faced Buddha. 7 days after she prayed to the Four Faced Buddha she was asked to go S30 hotel in Bangkok to meet a client. When their meeting ended, she went to use the rest room and in the stall the she used she saw a bag that must have been forgotten by somebody. She opened the bag to search for identification as to who might own the bag. What she saw surprised her because there was a huge amount of baht and US dollars inside the bag. She was honest enough to admit that she was really tempted to just get away with the money because it will definitely help her with her financial woes, not to mention the fact tat there was nothing in which she can use to identify the owner of the bag. She even wondered whether this was the help sent by the Four Faced Buddha. As soon as thought of it she also realized that it's quite impossible that the Four Faced Buddha will be sending help by getting the money from somebody else. She decided to just surrender the bag to the hotel manager.
When she got to reception, there was a frantic girl being consoled by her client. As it turned out the frantic girl is the owner of the bag and she also happens to be the sister of her client. To make the long story short she returned the bag, to the obvious relief of the frantic girl.
Two days later she got a call from her client. Her client knew of her financial problem because of her father illness from her boss, and as it turn out her client's sister's father-in-law is an oncologist in Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, out of gratitude they offered to help her father. Not only will the father-in-law waive his professional fee, he also arranged for somebody to shoulder the medical bills of my host's officemate's father. My host said that the father of his officemate is now alive and 'kicking'! They now visit the Four Faced Buddha every week!
Still another story was shared with me by another devotee who I met online thru the course of my 'research' about the Four Faced Buddha. J is a Malaysian Chinese businessman. He visited the Four Faced Buddha at the Erawan Shrine the first time he visited Bangkok. The tour guide told him that the image is miraculous and that it will grant all good wishes. J said he is not a very religious person but seeing the number of devotees that visits the site something just prompted him to ask for his 'simple' wish. He has been hoping to expand his business, having 5 children he wants to make sure that he is able to make sure that all children will have financial wealth that he can passed on to them when he gets older. J said while he was sincere in asking for the Four Faced Buddha's help, he really didn't give much thought to it. Until he slowly notices that his business was expanding, getting bigger, and more secured. By that time he has already forgotten about the wish that he has asked from the Four Faced Buddha of Erawan Shrine in Bangkok, Thailand. Nevertheless, he was really thankful. He decided to see a Taoist monk friend; J wants the Taoist monk to conduct a thanksgiving ceremony. While talking to J the Taoist Monk suddenly had a 'vision' and told J that the best way for the thanksgiving is to thank a man with four faces. The Taoist monk was not sure about his vision but J understood it right away! It was the Four Faced Buddha who granted his wish!
Since then J would travel to Bangkok once or twice a year simply to give thanks to the Four Faced Buddha. Every time he is there he would donate some flowers, incense, fruits, Elephant images, and he would always leave 15,OOO Baht as his thanksgiving. In a way he is trying to pay it forward. He also has invited an image of the Four Faced Buddha into his house and all his family even his grandchildren all wear the image of the Four Faced Buddha as an homage to the deity who granted them wealth.
It's not surprising that the Four Faced Buddha is miraculous, because even the story of its placement in that particular site was sort of a miracle. In 1956, the government was building the government-owned Erawan hotel. However, the government failed to consult geomancers as to what is the best time to built the hotel and this proved to be problematic. They were several accidents and labor problems that the construction workers threatened to walk out of their work, several times. Geomancers, Feng Shui experts, and Geomancers were called in to assess the problem. They reminded the government that the area used to be a dumping ground of people who were salvaged and also criminals were also used to be displayed and killed in the area. In fact, a portion of the place has become a 'hungry ghost house' of these troubled souls. They recommended putting an image of the Four Faced Buddha at the location where they identified as the 'hungry ghost house'. I'm not really as to how they came about the decision that the image that should be placed there is that of the Four Faced Brahma, but after its installation construction went on smoothly and Erawan Hotel became a landmark until it was replaced by the Grand Erawan Hyatt Hotel in 1987 who happens also to be one of the most successful chain of Hyatt.
The image that you'll see there now is not the original statue. The original one was destroyed by a mentally ill man who smashed the statue completely destroying it! Some people believed that the man is possessed by the devil. Some people who are in the area chased the man and UNFORTUNATELY killed the guy. The incident completely stunned and saddened the whole nation, a lot of Thais openly wept for the destroyed image, and they all felt that there's a great misfortune that is about to befall their country. True enough 7 months after the incident they saw one of the most violent political crisis Thailand faced in modern era, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted from his position by a coup de' tat!
Last May 21, 2006 at exactly 11:39am they have installed a new image of the Four Faced Buddha or Four Faced Brahma. It's now made of a special alloy that consists of 9 different metals which includes the remnants of the first image and gold and silver.
I personally don't have any 'miraculous' story to share about the Four Faced Buddha, however, you only have to go to the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok to see that its impossible for it not to be miraculous given the number of its devotee or worshippers who attests to the power of the Four Faced Buddha!


text:
While doing research in preparation for creating library workshops on social media and other Web 2.0 tools, I stumbled across a wiki created by the University of British Columbia Library, HLWIKI Canada. One page offers the "Top Ten (10) Social Media Competencies for Librarians":
- Understand, explain and teach others about the main principles and trends of web 2.0 (and library 2.0).
- List major tools, categories and affordances of social networking.
- Apply social media to solve information problems, and communicate digitally with users.
- Use social networking sites for promotional, reference and instructional services in libraries.
- Navigate, evaluate and create content on social networking sites.
- Follow netiquette, conform to ethical standards and interact appropriately with others online.
- Explain copyright, security and privacy issues on social media sites to colleagues and user communities.
- Understand the importance of identity and reputation management using social media.
- Explain related terminology such as collaboration 2.0, remix and open source.
- Renew social media competencies, advocate for institutional strategies and policies and build evidence base in social media.
But what are social media competencies? In Educause Review, Howard Rheingold makes the point that what "makes social media social is that technical skills need to be exercised in concert with others: encoding, decoding and community." He goes on to focus on five core social media literacies:
- Attention
- Participation
- Collaboration
- Network awareness
- Critical consumption
Attention, Rheingold states, is fundamental to all these interconnected competencies. And attention is often at the heart of whether an educator will or will not include social media in the classroom. Can learners truly have deep and comprehensive learning experience if their attention is drawn to multiple places at once? If not, then how do librarians, who thrive on riding the cutting edge of technology, respond?
What do you think?
Rheingold, H. (2010). Attention, and Other 21st-Century Social Media Literacies. EDUCAUSE review, 45(5), 14.


text:
Notice of new legislation - Updates will be posted regularly.
Veterinary and Para-Veterinary Professions Act, 1982,
Rules to the Practising of Veterinary Professions:
Amended Rule 2, Amended Rule 10
____________________________________________________________________2012 New schedules
New regulations ito 31 of the Animal Diseases Act, 35 of 1984
link to document available at:
Agriculture and Animals :: animals
Animal Diseases Act (35/1984): Regulations: Amendment
Origin: Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
Details: R564 of 2010
Published in: GG 33323, 23 Jun 2010, Notice R564, page 3
In terms of:
Affects the following legal instruments:
Regulations, R2026 of 1986:
item 2 (R564/2010) substitutes reg 24(e) (R2026/1986) on 23 Jun 2010
item 3 (R564/2010) amends Table 2 (R2026/1986) on 23 Jun 2010 by
substitution for directive in column 4 opposite the controlled animal
disease "Bovine spongiform encephalopathy" and the controlled animal disease
"Scrapie" in column 1 of the following directive: "No person shall feed any
protein of ruminant origin (except milk and milk products) to any animals
other than predators and carnivores, except with written approval of the director.
Any written approval for the above-mentioned exception may only
be granted for the feeding of ruminant blood meal to non-ruminant animals and
is subject to the conditions as may be determined by the director"
Amendment to Farm Feeds Regulations in terms of s 23 of the Fertilizers, Farm Feeds,
Agricultural Remedies and Stock Remedies Act, 36 of 1947is available at
MCC Approved minimum Parameters for the Use of Lysodren (Mitotane) Section 21
Applications May 2010
Animal Diseases Act, 1984 (Act No.35 of 1984) Publication of proposed Notice on
Measures to Control certain Animal Diseases April 2010 Respond to the Directorate:
Animal Health by 7 July 2010
Medicines and Related Substances Control Act, 101 of 1965
New schedules have been published in Government Gazette 32838, 31 December 2009,
Notice 1230, page 14. In terms of s 22 A (2) of the Medicines and Related Substances
Control Act, 101 of 1965
The latest amendments to Regulations in terms of the Animal Diseases Act (35/1984)
was published in the Government Gazette 32695 on 13 Nov 2009, Notice R1059 and is
available at:
Table 2 is amended by substituting the directive in column 4 opposite the controlled
animal disease "Bovine spongiform encephalopathy" and the controlled animal disease
"Scrapie" in column 1 and regulation 24(e) is furthermore amended.
Comments are invited on notice to control certain animal diseases before 5 March 2010
click on the link:
Amendments have been made to Table 7 of the Regulations published
in terms of the ANIMAL IMPROVEMENT ACT, 1998 (ACT NO. 62 OF 1998)
October 2009 and may be downloaded from the following website:
Registration of laboratories:
Animal Diseases Act: Regulations: Amendment, G 32213, GoN 527,
15 May 2009


text:
Joe Wolverton, II
The New American
Sunday, July 15, 2012
FLASHBACK: Congress Paves Way for Unmanned Drones in U.S. Commercial Airspace
President Obama's drone fever is contagious and is spreading worldwide, and the American industries that build the drones are slavering over the chance to supply the demand.
Christopher Ames, the director of international strategy development for Pentagon contractor General Atomics Aeronautical, was almost gleeful in his statement to Reuters regarding the opening of a potentially lucrative overseas market for his company's remote control killing machines.
"There has been very considerable international interest," he told Reuters. "There have been countries that for a long time have been asking for Predator… (the export variant) opens up those markets to us."
Ames would not disclose which countries were expressing the most interest in acquiring his company's drones, but he did confirm that Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia "were all areas of considerable buyer interest."
Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks reveals that several regimes, including those in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, have tried to secure contracts to purchase armed drones from American providers but have thus far been unsuccessful.
In fairness, General Atomics isn't the only American defense contractor anxious to peddle the Predator-style drones to other eager governments. Northrop Grumman and other companies continue to lobby Congress and the White House to ease export restrictions on drone sales. Such wide open sales could, of course, result in the drones ultimately ending up in the hands of regimes that would use the devices to harm American interests around the globe — Iran, for example.
The prohibition currently in place was established in 1987. As an article on AllGov.com reports:
In 1987, the Reagan administration joined other democracies (but not Israel) in signing an agreement that prohibited the sale of unmanned aircraft that carry 1,102 pounds for more than 186 miles at a time. Because UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] below this size are allowed, some manufacturers have begun to get around the restrictions by building smaller drones.
Manufacturers aren't happy having to adhere to these Reagan-era restrictions. Wes Bush, Northrop's president and CEO, argues that "export restrictions are hurting this industry in America without making us any safer."
What is certain is that additional arms sales will not make us safer, either. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told the Los Angeles Times that making larger and deadlier drones could make starting wars much easier and cheaper for governments currently considering such operations.
"The proliferation of this technology will mark a major shift in the way wars are waged," Kimball said. "We're talking about very sophisticated war machines here. We need to be very careful about who gets this technology. It could come back to hurt us."
Not accustomed to not getting their way, drone manufacturers know that the way to a congressman's heart is through his wallet.
Chances are readers have never heard of the Unmanned Systems Caucus.
The relationship between drone makers and lawmakers was recently reported by an Arizona radio station:
The drone caucus — like the technology it promotes — is becoming increasingly important in the nation's capitol as the government looks to unmanned vehicles to help save money on defense, better patrol the country's borders and provide a new tool to U.S. law enforcement agencies and civilians.
"It's definitely a powerful caucus," said Alex Bronstein-Moffly, an analyst with First Street Research Group, a D.C.-based company that analyzes lobbying data.
"It's probably up there in the more powerful caucuses that sort of is not talked about." And, he says, caucus members are well placed to influence government spending and regulations.
Congressman Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.) is the co-chair of the caucus. Notably, McKeon also serves as the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
It is noteworthy that the caucus includes eight members of the House Committee on Appropriations, the body that has substantial control over the federal government's purse strings.
Many of the drone caucus members are supported financially by the industry they endorse. According to Bronstein-Moffly's data, the 58 drone caucus members received a total of $2.3 million in contributions from political action committees affiliated with drone manufacturers since 2011.
Furthermore, 21 members of the drone caucus represent border states. These congressmen received about $1 million in deposits to their campaign coffers from top large drone makers in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles, according to information reported by the Center for Responsive Politics and analyzed by Fronteras Desk and Investigative Newsource.
For example, General Atomics is among the top three all-time campaign contributors to California Congressmen Brian Bilbray, Ken Calvert, Jerry Lewis, and McKeon.
In 2010 and 2012, General Atomics' PAC has paid out over $140,000 in donations to drone caucus members representing states located on the border with Mexico.
A PAC largely financed by Northrop Grumman contributed about $150,000 to 16 congressmen in the drone caucus who represent districts in California, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada.
No wonder these companies are champing at the bit to grease the skids for the removal of obstacles to their overseas sales plans. In a recently published study, the Teal Group estimates that UAV spending will almost double over the next decade from current worldwide UAV expenditures of $6.6 billion annually to $11.4 billion, totaling just over $89 billion in the next 10 years.
"The UAV market will continue to be strong despite cuts in defense spending," said Philip Finnegan, Teal Group's director of corporate analysis and an author of the study. "UAVs have proved their value in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and will continue to be a high priority for militaries in the United States and worldwide."
The millions spent by these drone manufacturers to federal legislators seem to be influencing the White House, as well. President Obama has already announced his plan to supply missiles that will arm the drones already sold to Italy.
According to a story printed by Reuters, the Obama administration will proceed with the implementation of its projected sale of American-made drones to Italy. Italy will then join the United Kingdom in deploying the remote control weapons loaded with "laser-guided bombs and Hellfire missiles."
Until the sale of the weaponry is complete, Italy's reported arsenal of six Reaper drones sits unarmed and thus useless to the president and his global allies who remain committed to avoiding the tedium of trials of those suspected of threatening international security.
The cost of mounting these sophisticated weapons to the Italian drones runs about $17 million, money that can then be redistributed into accounts funding the cost of policing the globe and protecting the "homeland."
Now that the National Defense Authorization Act has designated the United States as an active theatre in the interminable War on Terror, it's about time Europe be officially tagged, as well. The sale of drone weapons to Italy (and previously to Britain) is likely just the first of many such deadly deals to be made with other regimes clamoring to join the claque of countries with the capacity to eliminate enemies with the push of a button.
While it is the policy of the State Department to not comment on proposed sales of U.S. military hardware until formal notifications have been completed, one State Department official quoted by Reuters described his position on the greater good served by increasing the size of the global drone market:
"The transfer of U.S. defense articles and service to allies like Italy enables us to work together more effectively to meet shared security challenges," said the official, who declined to be named.
Yes, security. It is the freedom and civil liberties of Americans that is the now common sacrificial lamb tied to the altar of security and corporate bottom lines. The Constitution is shredded and used as kindling in the fires that consume the blood offering. When safety is "secured," due process and other judicial protections are then stripped and prepped for the surrender to the gods of globalism and big business.
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text:
Concert. Freewill offering.
Location: Trinity Church, 1230 Bank Street
Old Ottawa South Community Association
|Music at Trinity: Ottawa Guitar Trio
Concert. Freewill offering.
Location: Trinity Church, 1230 Bank Street
To add events to our calendar you must create an account on the site and log in as a site contributor (link found in the footer of each website page).
Click the '+' icon on a calendar cell to add an event to that day or click on the 'Add an event' link shown at the bottom of the event calendar.
Please keep your event description brief, as it will be included in our weekly newsletter. The newsletter goes out every Thursday afternoon and will include any events for the next two weeks.
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text:
Yesterday I was happily roasting away, then I was not so happy. The drum slowed to a very slow jerky rotation, the heat shot up and disaster imminent. As the roast was nearly half way through, I attempted to control it by lowering the heat, due to the slow speed the temperature seesawed up and down but I managed to finish with a very good looking roast. This morning I tested it, there is that marshmallow blandness you get from using the beans too soon, I am hoping for better tomorrow.
The good new is that I contacted Mr Li in Taiwan and he is sending me a new motor by air mail.
I have stripped the machine down and I am very impressed by the skill that goes into building a custom roaster. The stainless steel welds are very neat, there are lots of screws and nuts holding it together and the whole unit strips down completely. I was able to clean it up in the washing up bowl in the kitchen.
To be continued.............


text:
Kurt Nimmo
May 17, 2010
David Hammer, the death row inmate who authored two books on the Oklahoma City bombing, was locked down by prison officials following his interview last week on the Alex Jones Show.
Margaret Roberts, a journalist who wrote the preface to Hammer's 2004 book Secrets Worth Dying For: Timothy James McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing, contacted Alex Jones today.
"David Hammer has been locked down by prison officials, who are investigating alleged security violations relating to his interview with Alex," writes Roberts. "David believes these actions represent the federal government's effort to silence him for reopening the Oklahoma City Bombing case. In the email, he reports on an ominous incident over the weekend in which prison officials tried to take him out of his cell for an unscheduled 'medical visit.' Hammer suspects he never would have returned from said visit. He refused to go."
A number of people connected to the Oklahoma City bombing have mysteriously died, including Oklahoma City police officers, Terrance Yeakey, Gordon Martin and Ken Griffin, a number of Oklahoma City firefighters, Dr. H. Don Chumley, G.S.A. employee Mike Loudenslager and others.
On April 20, Alex Jones talked with Jane Graham, a ninth floor survivor of the Murrah federal building bombing. Graham spotted Timothy McVeigh at the building on several occasions prior to the bombing. Graham also witnessed mysterious men inside the Murrah building and in the parking garage. "I am utterly convinced the ATF and the FBI are involved in the bombing of that building," she told Red Dirt Reporter.
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
- {openx:49}
During the May 14 telephone interview from death row at the Terre Haute prison in Indiana, Hammer provided details on his relationship with Timothy McVeigh and McVeigh's account of government involvement in his recruitment and perpetration of the bombing.
"This is extraordinary human drama: a prisoner defying the federal government, which holds his life in its hands, over the right to tell the truth about one of the darkest days in American history," Roberts continues.
She says the interview with Alex Jones created significant activity on the "Deadly Secrets" website and renewed interest in Hammer's revelations.
See the entire interview with Hammer here.
She includes the following email sent to her by David Hammer:
This email was marked 3:55PM May 17, 2010 through the computer system at USP Terre Haute
Subject: Get the word out
Well it's official yours truly is in the shit again! I was informed at 1:00 P.M. today that I am officially under investigation for posing a threat to the security of the institution all because of the Radio Interview I did with Alex Jones on Friday, May 14, 2010. For those of you who haven't heard the interview it's on Facebook, and several other places on the web. I'm told by those who have immediate control over me that my legal calls to my attorneys […] have been suspended. I have no doubt that my social calls and e-mail access will be terminated soon as well.
It appears as if the federal government is intent on trying to keep me quiet about the Oklahoma City Bombing. I'm afraid that they may be planning to try and shut me up for good. Early in the a.m. shortly after midnight (May 17, 2010) the unit officer came by my cell to inform me that I was going to be going on a medical trip and to refrain from eating or drinking. Since I'm not scheduled for any such trip I respectfully declined to go on any such trip. It would be an easy thing for some guard to say I attempted to escape after he had shot me. No, I'm not paranoid, and those of you who know me well know this to be true. I don't however put anything past some people within the Department of Justice and other governmental agencies.
I'm told that I am going to be transferred to an isolation cell here on the unit. I don't know for certain as no written or official word has been given to me yet. What I know comes from the officers working the unit. About five minutes ago, my Counselor, John Edwards brought me some legal mail and when I ask him if this was all because of the Alex Jones Interview, he said "I shouldn't have to tell you this." When I explained to him that according to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit's en banc [a French term meaning "on a bench" used to refer to the hearing of a legal case where all judges of a court will hear the case] opinion, I am allowed to do telephone interviews and I'm allowed to conduct conference calls with my attorneys, Mr. Edwards stated "You'll have to take that up with someone above my pay grade." Well, so far I've not seen anyone else in any position of authority.
I attempted to place several telephone calls on the inmate telephone line to alert y'all to my situation, but wasn't able to get the calls to go through. Kept getting a recording saying you have reached mail box——— I've not yet been told if this is the Bureau of Prisons intercepting the calls or what. Usually they are only allowed to take such action after disciplinary action has been litigated in the institutional system.
I want to get the word out to Alex Jones, Scott Horton, and online via all avenues. I can't blog if they take away my e-mail access, so I need those of you in a position to do so to do it for me. I encourage Warden Helen J. Marberry's e-mail address and telephone number be placed online. The more people who protest what is happening the better. Those of you in a position to do Alex Jones show and to cover this situation the better. There is still a First Amendment in this country and while prison officials may be able to stop me from speaking out, they can't stop y'all.
I want to send this on now in hopes that it will reach you all before they stop my e-mails from going out.
Just so everyone knows, I am not planning to kill myself or do anything else stupid. If I end up dead it's for speaking the truth and nothing more.
In Solidarity,
David Paul Hammer
Federal Death Row
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text:
I went by the lake today to see how the
little bass were doing... the ones the hatchery
were stocking in the lake last Sunday.
I found them hiding in the grass along the shore.
They seemed in good shape, nice and healthy.
I don't think this one was really pleased to have
his picture taken. Or it might have been that he "felt the steel",
and missed a meal.
The little peacock bass were also out in good numbers...
Saw lots of BIG peacock bass... the 3 to 5 pound size...
but I was using 4# test and knew there was no way
to land those big'uns on my little Tenkara rod.
While I was landing this little guy a huge peacock bass tried to eat it.
I spoke with some fishermen who did land
some 3 and 4 pounders... using live bait.


text:
By Kevin Davies
March 1, 2008 | MARCO ISLAND, FL – On the second evening of the ninth AGBT conference*, a little known company, Pacific Biosciences, sponsored a beachside fireworks display to raise awareness among 600 delegates as it emerged from stealth mode.
It needn't have bothered.
PacBio founder and CTO Stephen Turner's closing presentation was unquestionably the talk of the meeting. Together with the launch of a low-cost, open source sequencing instrument called the Polonator, and Illumina's announcement of a complete $100,000 human genome assembly, the ninth AGBT conference had more than its share of highlights.
15-Minute Genome"How cool was that?!" purred Washington University's Elaine Mardis, following Turner's talk. Evolutionary geneticist Jonathan Eisen (on his Tree of Life blog) said Turner's "technology is the first I have seen that has shown some results and that could really lead to the $1000 human genome." And Yu-Hui Rogers, scientific director of the J. Craig Venter Joint Technology Center, hailed the technology as "potentially revolutionary." Such sentiments were endorsed by many other academics, not to mention scientists from most of the current crop of next-generation companies, possibly bracing for extra competition a few years down the road.
Turner predicted that within five years, PacBio's technology will be able to produce a raw human sequence in less than three minutes, and a complete, high-quality genome in just 15 minutes. Genome scientists have heard such claims before, but Turner's preliminary data left most of the audience believing that this approach could be truly disruptive.
The company's chairman and CEO, Hugh Martin, a former telecommunications executive, told Bio•IT World that a commercial instrument won't be ready until 2010 or 2011. PacBio has raised almost $80 million thus far, and is looking to raise a lot more to finance that work. Nevertheless, Martin told The New York Times, "When we're ready, we're just going to win the [genomics] X Prize."
Seeing the LightPacBio was founded in 2004 — the company was originally called Nanofluidics — but the technology dates back to Turner's days as a grad student and postdoc at Cornell University. The SMRT (single molecule, real time) system monitors the procession of a DNA template as it engages with a single DNA polymerase enzyme. Using four fluorescently tagged nucleotides, the system images each nucleotide as it is snagged by the enzyme prior to incorporation in the growing strand. The polymerase is tethered to the bottom of a zero-mode waveguide (ZMW) — a sub-microscopic, 20-zeptoliter well that the company claims is "the world's smallest detection volume." All this happens at a speed of about 10 bases/second (in nature, the polymerase moves 50-80 times faster).
Using the ZMW concept that Turner and his former Cornell colleagues, physicists Harold Craighead and Watt Webb, published in Science in January 2003, the PacBio method ingeniously illuminates the area around the tethered enzyme, while leaving the unincorporated fluorescent bases floating in the dark. The light generated by each nucleotide as it is snagged by the polymerase is recorded by a CCD camera, using a prism to separate the colors and thus identify each nucleotide.
Turner likens the principle to the small holes in the mesh screen door of a microwave oven, which do not allow the longer microwave radiation to pass through. As he told Bio•IT World: "If you shrink both the radiation wavelength and the holes down to the nanoscale, so the wavelengths go to visible light of 500 nm, and the holes are just a few tens of nanometers in diameter, the result is that if you illuminate the hole through the transparent substrate that's holding it, light that impinges upon the circular aperture of the hole can't pass through the hole. So all of these nucleotides, while close at hand and accessible to the polymerase, are in the dark and don't contribute to the background noise."
Meanwhile, the enzyme sits at the base of what Turner descriptively calls "the evanescent decay zone of the device," allowing his team to specifically detect the emanating fluorescence from the enzyme-bound nucleotide.
Turner presented preliminary data on synthetic DNA templates. He presented CCD images of a grid of 1000 ZMWs on a chip smaller than a pinkie fingernail, which burst into fluorescent life when all the necessary ingredients are presented to the enzymes sitting in each well. That's a throughput of 36 megabases/hour. (The video had to be slowed down, because the human eye wouldn't be able to register the images in real time.)
"No-one's ever seen 1000 polymerases making DNA before in real time," says Martin proudly.
Advantages of the SMRT system include the location of the fluorescent tags (at the end of each nucleotide), such that they are removed before the base is incorporated into the growing DNA strand. The read lengths should be comparable to Sanger sequencing, thus avoiding the bioinformatics challenges of assembling very short reads. And the system will have no moving parts, aside from the polymerase itself, once a run is started.
Although the SMRT system is far from perfect, Turner presented readable sequence traces from known DNA templates, as well as the ability to derive consensus sequences by using circular templates that are read multiple times by the same enzyme. Turner says PacBio is launching its first genome sequencing project, after which it will have a much better sense of the accuracy of the system. That will be improved by ongoing studies on the directed evolution of the polymerase enzyme.
PacBio is still years from debuting its instrument, but Turner outlined plans for future enhancements that include (1) producing a chip with 1 million ZMWs; (2) increasing the speed of DNA polymerization from 10 to 50 bases/second; and (3) using a 20-megapixel CCD camera with on-chip magnification to make it single photon sensitive. Those enhancements are expected to deliver a throughput in five years' time of 100 Gigabases/hour.
"This is what is required to get genome sequencing into routine medical practice," says Turner. "It is disruptively faster than current... technologies. Instead of being hours per base, it's bases per second."
The Rise of the PolonatorThere was no data from the other new platform unveiled at AGBT, but considerable interest in seeing the Polonator up close. This instrument is based on protocols developed by George Church's group at Harvard Medical School and manufactured by Danaher Motion.
Kevin McCarthy, CTO for Danaher Motion, enthusiastically intoned visitors to "Lay your hand upon the sequencer." Sure enough, waving in front of a motion sensor cues the Polonator to hum into life.
The instrument is based on the polony and ligation chemistry methods developed by Church and colleagues. In April 2007, McCarthy arranged to give a presentation to members of Church's lab. He recalls: "My driver got lost on the way down, we had a hard cut off at 12 noon. We got there late, and basically I had 15 minutes. Stand and deliver. Apparently I did! It's been all uphill since then."
McCarthy had argued that his firm could dramatically improve the Church lab's existing design plans and engineering. "For example, there was a $20,000 autosampler next to the instrument. 'What's that doing?'" McCarthy asked. "I think I can subsume that function and bring it inside the instrument in a much better way." He didn't meet Church himself until last August. But six months later, the first Polonator was being shipped to the Church lab, with the Broad and Max Plank Institutes to follow.
The Polonator sells for $150,000 — a snip compared to other next-gen platforms — although McCarthy concedes margins are small. It contains many examples of Danaher engineering, such as motors and a Leica lens and objective, along with a specialized $25,000 electron-modifying CCD camera from Hamamatsu that McCarthy says "is worth every penny."
McCarthy says a high "level of obsession permeates this entire piece of hardware." He adds: "I can strip this machine down to raw hardware in about 15 minutes… It's eminently serviceable, and more to the point, eminently upgradeable."
Aside from cost, the other appealing aspect of the Polonator is Church's open-source approach. "We're drinking the cool aid! George is a visionary," McCarthy says. "We're enabling the vision. His vision is, 'I want this adopted as quickly as possible. I need an engine for the Personal Genome Project.'"
The Church lab will be making its pair of Polonator software source codes freely available for download, allowing users to improve and extend as they wish. One program runs image acquisition and controls the instrument, while the other is responsible for image processing and real-time base calls. These functions are handled by separate dual-core CPU computers.
The open-source philosophy extends to the wet side as well. Originally, Danaher was not going to supply reagents. "People were like, 'Look, I don't want to deal with all the [supplies],'" says McCarthy. So Danaher agreed to produce kits, but is encouraging customers to seek better deals elsewhere. He says the Polonator currently uses a novel, low-cost PCR polymerase, a very low-cost ligase, "and all the fluors are license free — freedom fluors!"
Each of two flow cells contains 18 wells, which hold about 60 million DNA-coated beads, for a total of some two billion beads. "As Carl Sagan says, that's a large number," jokes McCarthy. "One is undergoing biochemistry, while the other is being imaged." A completely automated run takes about 80 hours, producing 10 gigabases of sequence per run. Each read consists of 28 bases, 14 from each paired tag in every DNA fragment. "That's just what we're going out of the gate with," says McCarthy, but he expects significant improvements in the near future.
Another Week, Another GenomeWith so much made of the two new platforms, the presentation by Illumina's David Bentley of the complete assembly of the world's first African genome was somewhat overlooked.
Bentley, based at the former Solexa headquarters near Cambridge, U.K., said that in a span of 6.5 weeks at the end of 2007, Illumina successfully sequenced and assembled the genome sequence of one of the original HapMap donors, for about $100,000. The work was done primarily with paired reads of 35 bases in length, although Bentley said that 50-base reads are becoming more standard. Recent improvements in the Genome Analyzer, including larger channels and improved optics, allowing for shorter run times, enabled the work to proceed, following a pilot project on the human X chromosome.
To sequence the African male DNA sample, Illumina used two libraries containing 200-base pair (bp) and 2-kilobasepair inserts. Performing 27 runs on the Genome Analyzer, Bentley's team produced almost 77 Gigabases of DNA sequence, an average of 3.27 Gb per run, spanning more than 90 percent of the genome.
Bentley said that the sequencing revealed more than 3.7 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), including more than one million novel polymorphisms. The work also identified a number of structural variants, large deletions, and chromosomal rearrangements. Public data release is expected very soon.
In the News:
454 published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine identifying an arenavirus as the culprit underlying the sudden, mysterious deaths of three organ transplant patients in Australia;
Applied Biosystems announced Geospiza and GenomeQuest had joined its SOLiD software development community;
Helicos sold its first HeliScope, priced at $1.35 million, to an undisclosed customer.
This article appeared in Bio-IT World Magazine.
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text:
(OLD) (ARCHIVED) Puppy Linux Discussion Forum
Puppy HOME page :
"THE" alternative forum :
This forum can also be accessed as
It is now read-only and serves only as archives.
Please register over the NEW forum
and continue your work there. Thank you.
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
The time now is Sat 19 Sep 2020, 08:22
All times are UTC - 4
Forum index
Off-Topic Area
Evercookies: extremely persistent browser cookies
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Official Dog Handler
Joined: 04 May 2005
Posts: 13653
Location: Arizona USA
Posted: Fri 15 Oct 2010, 16:55
Post subject:
Evercookies: extremely persistent browser cookies
Extremely persistent browser cookies
WARNING -- When you visit this site, it stores an evercookie on your machine.
evercookie accomplishes this by storing the cookie data in several types of storage mechanisms that are available on the local browser. Additionally, if evercookie has found the user has removed any of the types of cookies in question, it recreates them using each mechanism available.
Specifically, when creating a new cookie, it uses the following storage mechanisms when available:
* Standard HTTP Cookies
* Local Shared Objects (Flash Cookies)
* Storing cookies in RGB values of auto-generated, force-cached PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag to read pixels (cookies) back out
* Storing cookies in Web History (seriously. see FAQ)
* HTML5 Session Storage
* HTML5 Local Storage
* HTML5 Global Storage
* HTML5 Database Storage via SQLite
And the arms race continues....
The safest way I know to check out the website linked to at the top of the quote would be to boot Puppy from a live CD with the
puppy pfix=ram
boot option. Alternatively, boot from a multisession DVD and don't save to it when you shut down.
Back to top
Joined: 03 Oct 2010
Posts: 63
Posted: Fri 15 Oct 2010, 17:24
Post subject:
Well... I hope Mozilla is on this... a new browser option under the cookie section to prevent "evercookies" from being set... Until everyone starts using them (Hulu, YouTube, Google et al) and we can't get sites to run without allowing them...! Then there'll have to be a cleaner to wipe them... they're starting to sound like viruses and rootkits!
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Joined: 10 Dec 2005
Posts: 383
Location: UK
Posted: Sat 16 Oct 2010, 04:29
Post subject: Noscript
I presume something like Noscript kills this stone dead?
Two problems with that. When you whitelist or allow a site in Noscript how do you know it won't have evercookies?
When I try and add Noscript to Seamonkey in fairly recent Puppies it doesn't work. (Does anyone know which version of Noscript works with 1.1.18 SM?)
Presumably a script could be written in Linux to look at creation times and dates after you close a browser and just delete anything stored in those various locations?
Or maybe you could mount a virtual filesystem at the start of a browsing session and delete it when you have finished? You'd have to put all the cookies and URLs you wanted to keep somewhere else though.
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Joined: 29 Jun 2008
Posts: 10548
Location: SwedenEurope
Posted: Sat 16 Oct 2010, 09:04
Post subject:
In another thread I tried to remember a program that was supposed to delete almost anything. I failed to remember it then but it could be a windows version of CClean or CCleaner? Something like that.
Maybe that one has updatd to clean out such evercookies?
I only wild guess?
But it seems to be an arms race indeed. We will have to accept them or else they block us from looking at the page.
Wow we have to talk to politicians that there should be laws and filter for such cookies set up on every ISP in a country or that ISP would loose license to have internet access.
We have to go together in strong consumer organizations and fight back this total control society we are heading into.
I get angry. Why should one need to be an expert to protect against such nasty things they set up?
The developers doing it should be fined a huge sum for accepting to create such code. .
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though
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Joined: 02 Jul 2008
Posts: 768
Location: West Wales, Britain.
Posted: Sat 16 Oct 2010, 09:29
Post subject:
Someone posted a comment to this article in The Register
and claimed that evercookies do not work when Opera is used in privacy mode.
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Joined: 11 Oct 2007
Posts: 411
Posted: Sat 16 Oct 2010, 17:35
Post subject:
Subject description: "Bar room lawyers assemble!"
Thanks, Terryphi.
Hmm, addressing the lawyers (bar room or otherwise) in our happy band, what criminal charges might you or I face if we sought to interfere with someone else's computer without their consent (or even knowledge)?
Minor Pentagon-hackers appear to get crucified, even outwith the USA.
Wherever you are, what is your own state's legal position on interfering with someone else's kit? I could go to jail if I sought covertly to tweak your box - does BigBiz get away with this somehow?
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Joined: 31 May 2008
Posts: 3217
Posted: Sun 17 Oct 2010, 19:50
Post subject:
I noticed that Firefox is using sqlite now to store cookies, which can get added to a clean-up script. It's also being used for history.
To see what gets changed, touch /tmp/mark before loading browser, and then:
find /root/.mozilla -newer /tmp/mark -not -type d > /tmp/list
cat /tmp/list
Note: Some of the changed files are necessary for add-ons, etc, so be sure to back them up before deleting. No problem with the cookie files, though.
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Bruce B
Joined: 18 May 2005
Posts: 11488
Location: The Peoples Republic of California
Posted: Tue 19 Oct 2010, 18:43
Post subject:
I appreciate Flash posting this information.
A cookie is a tracking device and is of little value to the stalker who designed it if it doesn't
last long.
For example; if someone installed a GPS tracking device on your car and you removed it
two miles later, it had little value to the tracker. Moreover once removed it has zero value to
the tracker.
Prior to my learning about this wicked cookie I have been practicing 'good house keeping'
regarding my browser. Specifically, the following is how I run the browser clean.
By way of script
delete the flash information
delete all browser .sqlite files
delete all browser cache
I do this a few times a day on a 'hard day browsing'
Also, every couple weeks I delete the mozilla profile and built it from scratch. This might
seem a lot of work, but once a system is developed, it only takes a few minutes.
The article Flash linked to doesn't say how to remove the evercookies, but the house
keeping advice posted would delete them, along with web bugs, super cookies and
Note: If the user wants to keep some specific cookies, there are a variety of ways of doing
this and still keep things clean.
Puppy Linux Links Page
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Joined: 29 Jun 2008
Posts: 10548
Location: SwedenEurope
Posted: Wed 20 Oct 2010, 06:27
Post subject:
Thanks Bruce that is good to know.
And I sure trust you guys are that "savvy" to be able to set it up.
and maybe all newbies except me can follow the instruction but I feel very unsure if I am able to.
so I would appreciate if many of us try these advices out and tell as much as possible what puppy we tried it on.
If we have the browser outside of the pupsave or not?
Which script we used and step for step how one set it up.
And to end it all.
I heard about FaceBook that they kind of have build a database with "contacts" of all their users.
So even if you and me are serious about our email addresses and so on. Facebook know our email addresses telephone numbers maybe even if we never have been on facebook
through our friends
and relative sharing their contact lists with facebook who share it with their partners.
So these evercookies maybe is even more sinister than we think now. Through the accumulative databases they know about us even if we delete everything. Because out friends tells them about us.
They did a lot of tests giving evidence for this to be true. Using persons that never had been at FB and FB still had several of their friends showing up.
and worse. Even if one give a totally fake name and address and fake birthday FB still knows who you are through the MAC address of the hardware you use and the IP range.
So one would need to go to a public library and give false data to them or else them would unknowingly reveal your true identity to FB.
I red this on BBC if my memory not fails me. yes here it is
If you hate the idea of social networking and have never been on Facebook, then Facebook knows nothing about you. Correct? So how come when you set up a profile on the social network for the first time, it can suggest friends for you?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though
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Joined: 15 Dec 2008
Posts: 4439
Location: West Lothian, Scotland, UK
Posted: Wed 20 Oct 2010, 07:03
Post subject:
this thread at the PC-Guide forums
[at least I think it was there], I first saw mention that an evercookie stores itself in many [8 listed here] different/diverse locations...
And only one need remain un-eliminated for the evercookie to restore all [8?] locations.
Hence you MUST eliminate all to finish it off.
What I do is...
Use a pupsave on a Flash Drive...
And make the necessary configuration and code change...
So I can choose to NOT SAVE back to the pupsave [neither during, nor at shut-down] any changes made to the session.
And naturally, I keep backups of all the various pupsaves at various points in time.
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Joined: 29 Jun 2008
Posts: 10548
Location: SwedenEurope
Posted: Wed 20 Oct 2010, 07:20
Post subject:
Sylvander that seems to be a practical way to stop such then.
The evercookie is only written to these places that all of them only exists in RAM until the write to pubsave is activated.
Where do you save the emails you want to keep then? Oh maybe you only use webmail?
Have you placed Seamonkey or ThunderBird outside of pupsave and them save on the HDD?
But does not one of the evercookie save as bookmarks something hidden. I dont' remember they have tried to be clever I heard.
But maybe you use CD/DVD and never save to HDD?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though
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Joined: 15 Dec 2008
Posts: 4439
Location: West Lothian, Scotland, UK
Posted: Wed 20 Oct 2010, 09:12
Post subject:
1. Shortly after beginning to use Puppy...
I began using smm ["SaveMyModem"] to look at my emails whilst they are still on the POP3 server.
Almost all are deleted whilst still on the server.
2. If I ever need to fetch any emails onto the PC...
At this time...
I will boot into
my old operating system
[Win2000Pro], which is installed to the 1st partition on the 1st internal HDD....
And use Outlook Express to fetch them, and store them all in that location.
Actually I moved the storage folder [and various other things] off the Windows partition [C:]...
To a suitably named folder on D: [2nd partition on the 1st HDD].
[So I can restore the Windows partition without any of the "Moved" items being affected]
There is definitely an advantage to keeping all the fetched emails, and the address book, all in one location.
3. When I first began using Puppy...
I installed Thunderbird...
And began fetching some->[certain_chosen_type_of] emails into that Puppy [a full install of Boxpup-413]...
Except I moved the Thunderbird storage folder off the Boxpup filesystem, and symlinked back...
So that I could restore a backup of the Boxpup folder system without losing recent emails [they would be untouched by the restore].
4. I've since migrated to a newer PC...
And haven't yet got around to installing Thunderbird on any of my Puppies:
[6-off 1GB pupsaves, each in 1 of 6-off 1.3GB partitions, on an 8GB Flash Drive] plus...
[6 suitably named Puppy folders, in the root folder of the 2nd of my 2 internal HDD's].
So far I've COPIED 3 of the pupsaves from their partition on the Flash Drive, into their own folder on the internal HDD.
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Joined: 29 Jun 2008
Posts: 10548
Location: SwedenEurope
Posted: Wed 20 Oct 2010, 10:59
Post subject:
Sorry I lure us to go off topic. We have to take this by private message instead Okay.
Hi, Sylvander.
Posted: Wed 30 Dec 2009, 08:55
I'd like to see a good Puppy replacement for Mailwasher.
I use SaveMyModem [smm], but it isn't quite as good as Mailwasher.
e.g. Cannot copy and paste [or click] URL's to easily go to a webpage.
No means to set a rule for hiding [and deleting] emails from a particular sender or domain.
so there is no good replacement for Mailwasher then?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though
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Joined: 25 Apr 2010
Posts: 1350
Location: England
Posted: Wed 20 Oct 2010, 11:35
Post subject:
Subject description: Mailwasher
Hi nooby,
Mailwasher works well with Wine. I continue to use version 2.0 which is ancient, but the current version also works well.
A possible disadvantage is that the free version can only access one email account.
My regards
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Joined: 03 Apr 2007
Posts: 3425
Location: Oregon
Posted: Wed 20 Oct 2010, 12:41
Post subject:
Anyone know if a plugin called Better Privacy works?
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Mars, like Earth, has ice caps at its north and south poles. The ice caps on both worlds are dynamic; that is, they expand and contract with the passage of the seasons. On Earth, both the permanent and seasonal polar caps are made up entirely of water ice; on colder Mars, temperatures fall low enough in winter that carbon dioxide condenses out of the atmosphere at the winter pole, depositing a frost layer about a meter thick on the permanent water ice polar cap and surrounding terrain. The three-kilometer-thick permanent caps cover a little more than 1% of Mars's surface, while the seasonal caps at mid-winter each span from their respective pole to about 60° of latitude.
Confirmation that Mars's permanent polar caps are made mainly of water ice did not come easily. The polar caps were first glimpsed in the 17th century, and were widely believed to be made of water ice by the end of the 18th. In 1965, however, data from Mariner 4, the first spacecraft to fly past Mars, indicated that the permanent caps were made of frozen carbon dioxide, an interpretation the Mariner 6 and 7 flybys (1969) and the Mariner 9 orbiter (1971-1972) did little to contradict.
In the late 1970s, the Viking orbiters revealed that the northern permanent cap is made of water ice. Confirmation that Mars's southern permanent cap is also made of frozen water had to wait, however, until 2003, when new data from the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey orbiters became available.
In 1976-1977, before the composition of either of Mars's permanent caps was known with certainty, a team of students in the Purdue University School of Aeronautics and Astronautics studied a Mars Polar Ice Sample Return (MPISR) mission. The mission's primary goal was to collect and return to Earth a 50-meter-long, five-millimeter-diameter ice core from Mars's southern permanent cap.
The Purdue team assumed that the polar caps of Mars were, as on Earth, built up of layers of snow or frost deposited anually. Each layer would contain a sample of the dust and gases in the atmosphere at the time it was laid down, making it a record of atmospheric particulates and climate conditions. On Earth, ice cores from Greenland record lead smelting in the Roman Empire and vegetation changes in Ice Age Europe. A martian polar ice core, the students believed, might yield a planet-wide record of dust storms, asteroid impacts, volcanic eruptions, surface water, and the development of microbial life.
MPISR would use a Mars Orbit Rendezvous mission plan similar to that described in a 1974 Martin Marietta/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Mars Sample Return (MSR) report. The students envisioned a Viking-derived MPISR spacecraft comprising a 5652-kilogram Mars Orbiter Vehicle (MOV) with "stretched" propellant tanks and a 946-kilogram lander. For comparison, the twin Viking orbiters each weighed only 2336 kilograms at departure from Earth, while the landers they carried to Mars each weighed 571 kilograms. The lone MPISR orbiter would carry a 490-kilogram Earth-Return Vehicle/Earth Orbit Vehicle (ERV/EOV) based on Pioneer 10/Pioneer 11 Jupiter/Saturn flyby spacecraft hardware, and the MPISR lander would include a 327-kilogram Ascent Vehicle (AV) for launching the polar ice sample to Mars orbit.
The need for a short-duration flight from Mars to Earth and for south pole conditions safe for a lander would dictate the MPISR mission's Earth departure date. A long flight back to Earth would place great demands on sample refrigeration equipment. Data from the Viking orbiters had shown the south pole ice cap to be too unstable for landing and sample collection in the spring and summer, when the temperature climbs too high for carbon dioxide to remain solid. At mid-winter, on the other hand, snow and frost accumulation might bury the MPISR lander. The team proposed, therefore, that the lander set down 75 days before southern hemisphere autumnal equinox.
The MPISR spacecraft would lift off from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 29 April 1986, in the payload bay of a delta-winged, manned Space Shuttle Orbiter. It would reach Earth orbit attached to an expendable Tug derived from the U.S. Air Force/NASA Centaur upper stage. The Purdue students calculated that the proposed Tug could launch up to 9000 kilograms out of Earth orbit toward Mars during the favorable 1986 Earth-Mars transfer opportunity. Their proposed Earth launch approach reflected hopes about the Space Shuttle's projected capabilities that were not finally dashed until the January 1986 Challenger accident.
On 16 November 1986, after a flight lasting nearly seven months, the MPISR orbiter's propulsion system would slow the spacecraft so that Mars's gravity could capture it into a polar orbit. Over the next 14 months, the orbiter would map the martian poles using Viking-type cameras, a Viking-type thermal mapper, and a new-design Radar Ice Sounder for determining ice depth. The sounder, which is not depicted in the MPISR orbiter image above, would employ an 11.47-meter-diameter dish antenna deployed from the orbiter soon after Mars orbit arrival. Scientists on Earth would use data from these instruments to select a safe and scientifically interesting south pole landing site for the MPISR lander.
On 3 February 1988, the lander would separate from the orbiter, ignite solid-propellant rockets to slow down and drop from Mars orbit, then descend through the planet's thin atmosphere to the selected landing site. Because it would have nearly twice the mass of the Viking lander from which it was derived, the MPISR lander would lower on six parachutes and six terminal descent rocket engines (in each case, twice as many as Viking). The engines would be arranged in three clusters of two engines each.
Soon after touchdown, the lander would reach out with its modified Viking sampler arm and detach one of its three descent engine clusters, clearing the way for Ice Core Drill (ICD) deployment. Sixty-seven times over the next 90 days, the ICD would collect a 75-centimeter-long ice core, gradually drilling down to ice and dust layers hidden 50 meters below the surface.
Radioisotope Thermal Generators (RTGs) would power and warm lander systems. The lander's three footpads and underside would be insulated to prevent its heat from melting the ice, helping to ensure that it would not sink from sight during the three-month sample-collection period.
On 2 May 1988, with winter settling in at Mars's south pole, the first of the AV's three rocket stages would ignite to blast the ice core samples into Mars orbit. The first and second stage would burn solid propellants. The liquid-propellant third stage would place the sample container into 2200-kilometer circular orbit about Mars. Refrigeration in the sample container would keep the ice core pristine. The MPISR orbiter would dock with the AV third stage using a docking collar on the ERV/EOV on 17 May, then the sample container would transfer to the ERV/EOV and the AV third stage would be discarded.
On 27 July 1988, the ERV/EOV would separate from the orbiter and fire its engine to leave Mars orbit for Earth. To reduce the period of time the sample container would need to provide refrigeration for the ice core, the ERV/EOV would expend extra propellants to speed its return to Earth. A minimum-energy transfer in the 1988 Mars-Earth transfer opportunity would last 122 days; the ERV/EOV's energetic Mars departure burn would slash this to 98 days.
Nearing Earth, the cylindrical 1.5-meter-long EOV would separate from the ERV and fire a solid-propellant rocket motor to slow down so that Earth's gravity could capture it into a 42,200-kilometer circular orbit. The ERV, meanwhile, would speed past Earth into solar orbit.
Discarding the ERV ahead of Earth-orbit capture would reduce EOV mass, thus reducing the quantity of propellant needed to place it into Earth orbit. The Purdue team found that this approach would have mass-saving knock-on effects throughout the MPISR mission design, yielding a 6% reduction in spacecraft mass at Earth launch.
The EOV would carry enough refrigerant to cool the ice sample for 28 days in Earth orbit. During that period, an automated Tug would climb from low-Earth orbit to retrieve the EOV and convey it to a waiting Shuttle Orbiter or an Earth-orbiting space station.
Purdue's MPISR concept generated considerable interest and demonstrated surprising longevity for a student project. After a summary of the study appeared in the pages of the British Interplanetary Society publication Spaceflight, two of its authors (Staehle and Skinner) briefed JPL engineers on the concept. In 1978, JPL new-hire Staehle pitched a variant of the MPISR plan at a Mars science meeting at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.
"Mars Polar Ice Sample Return Mission - 1," Robert L. Staehle, Spaceflight, November 1976, pp. 383-390.
"Mars Polar Ice Sample Return Mission, Part 2," Robert L. Staehle, Sheryl A. Fine, Andrew Roberts, Carl R. Schulenburg, and David L. Skinner, Spaceflight, November 1977, pp. 399-409.
"Mars Polar Ice Sample Return Mission, Part 3," Robert L. Staehle, Sheryl A. Fine, Andrew Roberts, Carl R. Schulenburg, and David L. Skinner, Spaceflight, December 1977, pp. 441-445.
Mars Polar Ice Sample Return Mission, R. Staehle and D. Skinner, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, September-October 1977.
Mars Polar Ice Sample Return Mission - Overview, R, Staehle, presentation materials, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, January 1978.


text:
Police gave the "all clear" at St. Rose of Lima Church in Newtown after it was evacuated during a noon mass on Sunday due to a threat.
Someone made a very menacing phone call to the church, according to Brian Wallace, a spokesperson for the diocese.
Rev. Luke Suarez was giving the homily around 12:30 p.m. when the church pastor, Monsignor Robert Weiss, interrupted him and told parishioners they had to evacuate.
U.S. & World
More than a dozen state troopers armed with assault rifles entered the church and then the church's education center on Church Hill Road, according to NBC Connecticut reporter, Audrey Washington.
Parishioners and news media were told to leave the church property.
It was another heart-stopping incident for the people of Newtown, already dealing with unspeakable grief after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday.
Police gave the all clear around 1:30 p.m.


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A NewsHour Special Report, Day 1
Tune in for live gavel-to-gavel coverage of the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. PBS NewsHour and NPR join forces, marking the first time the two public media organizations are collaborating on convention coverage. Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff will co-anchor. NPR host Rachel Martin will be reporting from inside the hall with the NewsHour's Lisa Desjardins and John Yang and NPR's Sue Davis. They will also be joined by NPR's Mara Liaisson, Ron Elving and Domenico Montenaro, as well as NewsHour regular contributors, including syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cook Political Report's Amy Walter. Coverage will extend online and on social media to include live streaming of stage speeches and floor interviews.
This program will encore at 6:30 pm.


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CONTACT: Jennifer Rankin Byrne or Ruth Nyblod
Phone: (571) 272-8400 or email@example.com or firstname.lastname@example.com
WASHINGTON - The Commerce Department's United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland (NBPR) agreed to partner in establishing a Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot program. PPH agreements are cooperative initiatives that streamline the patent system and promote expeditious, inexpensive and high-quality patent protection throughout the world. The U.S.-Finnish PPH is USPTO's tenth such agreement with other nations' patent and trademark offices. The pilot period will begin on July 6, 2009, and continue for a period of one year.
"This PPH pilot marks a new cooperative partnership with the National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland," said Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Acting Director of the USPTO John Doll. "By taking advantage of the work done at each other's office, we will reduce inefficient redundancy of efforts and expedite the examination process at both offices. PPH plays an important role in our workshare strategy to counter the growing backlog and increasing pendency of patent applications and offer more options to our users."
"Serving our clients is our top priority," said President of NBPR Martti Enäjärvi. "We believe the reduction of duplication of examination work, speeding up processing, and improvement of patent quality will bring great advantages to Finnish and U.S. applicants. With this agreement, the NBPR will now have PPH pilot programs with two major patent offices, the USPTO and the Japan Patent Office. We are pleased with the new collaboration with these key offices and having the possibility to provide new alternatives for our clients."
Under PPH agreements, an applicant receiving a favorable ruling from one nation's patent office on at least one claim in an application may request that the corresponding application filed with the other nation advance out of turn for examination. By coordinating patentable results between both nations' offices, applicants can expect to obtain patents in both nations more quickly. USPTO requirements for participation in the U.S.-Finnish PPH are available at: www.uspto.gov/web/patents/pph/pph_nbpr.html.
NBPR requirements for participation can be found at: www.prh.fi/en/patentit/pph.html.
The USPTO and NBPR will continue to evaluate the needs of applicants and the progress of the PPH. Discussions on revisions to the requirements and to improve the procedure of the PPH will be ongoing.
The pilot program may be extended if necessary to adequately assess the feasibility of the PPH program. Notification of any revisions will be posted on the Web sites of each office.


text:
NEW YORK, N.Y. - UPS says online shoppers are propping up its business in a tough global economy.
The world's largest package delivery company believes that consumer demand for gadgets will drive its shipments and earnings this year, making up for slower trade between businesses.
The company also narrowed its earnings forecast for the year, and now expects growth of 5 to 7 per cent from 2011. The stock rose almost 3 per cent Tuesday afternoon.
UPS said it predicts earnings of $4.55 to $4.65 per share, compared with its earlier forecast of $4.50 to $4.70. The new outlook indicates that earnings in the fourth quarter will exceed Wall Street expectations.
"Global trade continues to be less strong than any of us would like at this point in time," CEO Scott Davis said in a conference call with analysts. "UPS has made the necessary adjustment. In the fourth quarter we expect to hit on all cylinders."
For investors, the outlook offset weaker results in the most recent quarter — and lingering uncertainty about the economy.
For the three months ending in September, United Parcel Service Inc.'s net income fell 56 per cent to $469 million, or 48 cents per share. The results were brought down by a big charge to restructure pensions. Without the charge, UPS would have earned $1.06 per share, matching Wall Street expectations.
Revenue fell less than 1 per cent to $13.07 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet, on average, expected $13.32 billion.
Revenue and daily package volume improved at UPS' core U.S. package segment. But operating profit fell because higher prices weren't enough to offset increased fuel costs and lower average package weights.
Meanwhile, the international segment produced its highest-ever operating profit for the summer quarter. Growth was driven by shipments of new technology products out of Asia. Apple Inc.'s iPhone 5 was introduced last month.
Because it handles so many consumer and business shipments worldwide, UPS results sometimes foreshadow broader economic trends.
UPS said 40 per cent of total shipments are from businesses to consumers, compared with about a third from a few years ago. It expects these shipments, typically from large catalogue or internet retailers, to grow to half of all packages during the holiday season.
UPS said there is some uncertainty about how strong the holiday shopping season will be, but it's growing more certain of its ability to increase earnings in a still-weak global economy.
UPS expects consumers will continue to drive its results as online shopping increases. UPS and its smaller rival FedEx Corp. can benefit twice when consumers shop online: They ship the gift to the receiver, and they also ship the unwanted presents that are later returned.
Online sales are expected to grow at four times the pace of traditional retail sales this year.
This trend is helping UPS' earnings despite weakness in trade between businesses. Business-to-business shipments are typically between a manufacturer and a retailer, and are closely tied to industrial production. Manufacturing output in the third quarter fell for the first time since the spring of 2009.
Consumers spending, meanwhile, picked up. Retail sales gains in August and September were the strongest in two years.
UPS shares rose $2.17, or 3 per cent, to close at $73.73 Tuesday after climbing as high as $74.14 earlier in the session.


text:
craving light
A corner of our living room from yesterday afternoon. I hate that it's starting to get dark so early already but I'm also ready for some cooler weather. It is still pretty hot here in Idaho and I hate the heat. I find myself turning on a lot of lights in the evening to try to make the house bright again and trying to keep lighter colors in every room to reflect what little light there is. Sadly, it's only going to get worse soon.
Anyone else have little things they do to fight the darker Fall months?
Other Stories
13 comments:
I so know how you feel: I love the cooler temps (not too cold though!) and love the light this time of year, but know it's only time before winter comes. My favorite time of year is when summer subtly blends into fall. I'm dreading winter as I do every year. Our house is very dark as well, but we're getting ready to paint our living room white!! Hang in there.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousSeptember 20, 2012
... Embrace it !ReplyDelete
Fall and winter are my favorite seasons of the year. I'm just like you, I hate the fact that it gets dark sooner - but I tend to see it as the occasion to do indoorsy activities such as going to museums, renting movies or going to the movies, cooking butternut squash soup, drawing... Plus I'm a big fan of the all-white christmas lights year-round so yippie-yay for me I get to turn them on more often ! And for you (according to the pictures I saw of your home) that means more fire in the fireplace ! Yippie-yay for you dear ! :)
candles + fireplace! they are a great addition to the evening urges i'm having lately to curl up on the sofa with a cozy blanket and a novel. and if all else fails, embrace the moody lighting completely and bring that novel with you into a bubble bath :)ReplyDelete
That lamp is fantastic! Where did you get it?ReplyDelete
i turn EVERY lamp on in my house when the darker months start creeping in.ReplyDelete
i use it as a time to catch up on books and cook!
xo the egg out west.
The end of our living room by the fireplace is always dark. The fireplace itself is dark, there's wood and dark tiles. We have dark curtains. The walls are cream but it's still dark, we rent and I would greatly love to repaint the fireplace. (on a long list of things i'd fix in this rental!).ReplyDelete
We're in spring at the moment in the southern hemisphere so it's nice for our days to be longer.
I moved into a new home this spring and the apartment was so over filled with natural light all through that I didn't even have to turn the bathroom light at night. Now the nights are getting darker and I'm putting up lamps all over the apartment and buying lots and lots of candles (which I do every autumn and fall). Also a new blanket is on the shopping list as well as new tea cups :)ReplyDelete
I love the autumn light streaming in the house in the afternoon, but yes the early dark nights are a little depressing. We now have a living room with a fireplace we used to live in a flat - with no fireplace) so I am now really looking forward to the winter which is something I thought I'd never say..!? If I didnt have a real fireplace though, I think I would definately invest in installing one of those modern type built-in-to-the-wall-behind-glass gas fires which I've seen a lot of lately in homes magazines, they look gorgeous...XReplyDelete
It's a very original lamp, love it!ReplyDelete
I understand you, but sometimes I like when the dimmed light in the envening slowly takes us to a peaceful night...
I love every picture ok your blog, the interiors are so beautiful and inspiring !
Love the lamp, I've been thinking about getting one myself to light up the evenings now when it's darker out... I try to catch some sun- and daylight everyday by taking a walk out during my lunch break or sitting on my balcony for a short moment! Also, lighting tons of candles helps me fight the dark fall :) Hope you'll have a great week! /KajsaReplyDelete
we're getting more lights as it's completely the opposite down here in australia :) i just wanted to say, i LOVE your blog! can't believe it took me this long to find your blog, adding you to my reader just right about now. have a lovely day!ReplyDelete
Wow love that light fixture- so unique! Hmm well i embrace the early nights..with a big cup of tea and my favourite show :)ReplyDelete
Hello ;)ReplyDelete
Wondering where you got the silver skull from ?
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