text:
I2P dev meeting, September 10, 2013 @ 20:00 UTC
Quick recap
- Present: dbowie, dg, efkt, EpicCoffee, Pseudonemo, psi, topiltzin, trolly, welterde, zzz
Log IRC completo
20:00:31 <zzz> 0) hi
20:00:38 <zzz> 1) website revamp (str4d)
20:00:55 <zzz> 2) console home page request for http://open4you.i2p/
20:01:03 <iRelay> Title: open4you.i2p (at open4you.i2p)
20:01:11 <zzz> 3) disable outproxy (topiltzin / dg)
20:01:20 <zzz> 4) netdb project update (hottuna)
20:01:23 <zzz> 0) hi
20:01:25 <zzz> hi
20:01:30 <dg> hi
20:01:35 <topiltzin> hi
20:01:42 <zzz> more info and links at http://zzz.i2p/topics/1460
20:01:55 <zzz> let's try something new and limit each agenda item to 15 minutes
20:02:00 <iRelay> Title: zzz.i2p: Meeting Tues. Sept. 10, 8 PM UTC (at zzz.i2p)
20:02:03 <zzz> 1) website revamp (str4d)
20:02:07 <zzz> go str4d
20:04:12 <zzz> skipping 1) for now
20:04:17 <zzz> 2) console home page request for http://open4you.i2p/
20:04:21 <iRelay> Title: open4you.i2p (at open4you.i2p)
20:04:28 <zzz> is the open4you requester here?
20:05:53 <zzz> skipping 2) for now
20:05:59 <zzz> 3) disable outproxy (topiltzin / dg)
20:06:05 <zzz> go dg or topiltzin
20:06:05 <dg> \o
20:06:13 <dg> I'll take it first.
20:06:50 <dg> Hi all, I've been mulling this over for some time: I think the outproxy for HTTP (and possibly HTTPS) being included by default isn't aligned with our goals;
20:07:25 <dg> most of the time, when asked on IRC about outproxying, community members recommend Tor and not to touch the outproxy for many/any uses
20:07:38 <dg> "we leave that to Tor" is something that's thrown around a lot
20:08:22 <dg> the outproxy is centralized which is obviously a big issue, there's problems with Tor having thousands of exit nodes even, let alone us having just one
20:08:43 <dg> security issues aside, it's a usability problem. What if someone trying to use I2P thinks I2P is just really slow because google.com loads slow? Oh, and it's in German? Huh?
20:09:14 <dg> We haven't built in the code for outproxying as a 'real' measure for a reason: we don't want to do it and hidden services are our target
20:09:58 <dg> I feel we're putting users at risk by inserting the outproxy by default and (possibly) confusing their perception of what I2P is and what it does.
20:10:04 <dg> iniial pitch over
20:10:17 <zzz> topiltzin, you have anything to add?
20:10:52 <topiltzin> that's a good list; I can also see KillYourTV 's point that the functionality should not be removed
20:11:22 <zzz> ok let's throw it open to comments from others
20:11:23 <topiltzin> but I strongly agree with dg that it's better to steer users away from using i2p for clearnet surfing
20:12:17 <dg> Someone (Pseudonemo) has suggested an explanation page as to why clearnet websites will not load and possibly a Tor recommendation.
20:12:19 <welterde> a plugin that outproxies via tor locally would be nice..
20:12:45 <dg> welterde: funny you say this.. jtor was introduced by ioerror to zzz a few weeks back.
20:13:26 <welterde> dg: yeah.. that's what I was thinking about.. should be much cleaner than having to rely on an external running component
20:13:52 <dg> So, thoughts?
20:13:54 <efkt> Usually the only time I observe topic of I2P's in discussion is answering questions like "Why doesnt it work like I want it to?" and supplying alternatives like Meeh's outproxy or just using Tor. Having the option for the outproxy is a good thing, and having users knowing that there is such an option is also nice.
20:13:56 <zzz> I'm against removing it - it's a limited feature, yes, but what it does it actually does pretty well. We won't improve the usability of it by disabling it. We'll just make things harder and more confusing.
20:14:45 <EpicCoffee> I think overall I agree with zzz (since my entrance)
20:14:58 <zzz> perhaps when we have a better solution (a tor plugin) then we could disable echelon;s by default
20:15:19 <trolly_> options are always good, and I use the outproxies a lot, I know of course not to trust outproxies communications
20:15:21 <dg> Why should we do something that we (mostly) acknowledge is something Tor is better for? It seems like we're letting down people by even trying, it's a false impression. A well designed explanation page could ease the confusion/hardness
20:15:46 <dg> I don't suggest we remove the capability, just the default
20:15:47 <zzz> sounds like dg is mainly describing a documentation / education problem, that won't be fixed by disabling it.
20:16:24 <topiltzin> it would not be fixed but would be avoided
20:16:31 <dg> I don't know why the user should be trusting a third party by installing I2P
20:16:36 <zzz> i2ptunnel is scary and I'd rather not have to point people in there to turn it on
20:16:36 <EpicCoffee> Some people do not use tor and will not use tor for various reasons. They can have use for an I2P outproxy.
20:17:12 <topiltzin> kytv's proposal to have a warning page that makes things clear would be a proper solution, no?
20:17:16 <trolly_> dg you are right, EpicCoffee too
20:17:26 <EpicCoffee> On rare occasions I use the outproxy, mostly to check out links sent in i2prc
20:17:42 <dg> I understand we can say "well, the user should read" or similar but.. should we let them shoot themselves in the foot so easily?
20:17:49 <trolly_> like me EpicCoffee
20:17:51 <zzz> to look at it another way, while it's on by default on the i2p side, it always takes affirmative action by the user to enable it in the browser. So you could say it is not on by default now, if you consider the browser too.
20:18:09 <EpicCoffee> If the link cannot be loaded through the outproxy, I am unlikely to load it through the clearnet.
20:18:32 <dg> it takes affirmative action to browse eepsites, it is still confusing. If someone is aware of the risks, they can add the outproxy.
20:18:37 *** trolly_ is now known as trolly
20:18:37 <dg> Or load the maybe-coming tor plugin
20:18:49 <EpicCoffee> I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
20:18:49 <EpicCoffee> lol
20:18:55 <zzz> does eche|on have an opinion?
20:19:03 <dg> This isn't an attack on echelon either but should we be trusting a single person with all outproxy traffic?
20:19:12 <dg> Regardless of who it is, it's a single point and a single person
20:19:37 <zzz> would you rather trust one person you somewhat know, or 3000 people you don't?
20:19:41 <dg> An assumption could easily be made that I2P is performing a tor like mechanism
20:19:57 <dg> 3000 people I don't
20:20:10 <zzz> coming up on the 15 minute mark. do we have any sort of consensus? anybody else that has a thought on this?
20:20:34 <welterde> imho we shouldn't disable it until we have the tor plugin
20:20:37 <Pseudonemo> I think dg is primarily arguing from the perspective of new users. They don't know eche|on.
20:20:51 <topiltzin> +1 Pseudonemo
20:20:59 <dg> *I* know eche|on, as a result, I don't mind the outproxy much but yes.
20:21:04 <dg> welterde: I can agree on this compromise.
20:21:21 <EpicCoffee> nobody should use an outproxy for anything sensitive. that should be a given lol.
20:21:22 <dg> Let's leave it there?
20:21:33 <topiltzin> assuming a tor plugin is in the works at all.. which it isn't
20:21:54 <zzz> ok, interesting topic, thanks for bringing it up dg. May be worth talking about again after a while, whether we have a tor plugin or not
20:21:59 <topiltzin> it is an education problem so it would be best to solve it through education
20:22:16 <dg> zzz: no problem, thank you.
20:22:39 <zzz> any volunteers to look at the education / documentation issue and propose some improvements?
20:22:42 <EpicCoffee> topiltzin: I don't think I would like a tor plugin in i2p. My opinion on that is I don't like/trust tor.
20:22:55 <dg> EpicCoffee: moved topic, save for next time :)
20:23:16 <zzz> last call for volunteers and then we are done with this topic
20:23:43 <zzz> ok then.
20:24:04 <zzz> skipping 4) as hottuna is not here
20:24:04 <zzz> lets circle back to 1), is str4d here?
20:24:45 <zzz> skipping 1) again
20:24:49 * EpicCoffee must be oblivious to the "list"
20:25:01 <dg> EpicCoffee: you weren't here for the start, will pm.
20:25:09 <zzz> 2) open4you.i2p, which we will discuss whether or not the requestor is here.
20:25:12 <EpicCoffee> ah thank you dg
20:25:13 <zzz> open4you are you here?
20:25:15 <topiltzin> EpicCoffee: channel is logged real-time http://killyourtv.i2p/irclogs/%23i2p-dev.2013-09-10.log
20:25:54 <zzz> the request is at the bottom of http://zzz.i2p/topics/1429
20:26:03 <iRelay> Title: zzz.i2p: 0.9.8 Release Summary (at zzz.i2p)
20:26:44 <zzz> as a refresher, since we haven't done this in a while, my personal guidelines are at http://zzz.i2p/topics/236
20:26:49 <iRelay> Title: zzz.i2p: How to get my Eepsite added to the Router Console home page (at zzz.i2p)
20:27:09 <zzz> has anybody used this site? Does anybody have any thoughts about putting it on the console?
20:27:30 <dg> If open4you doesn't turn up, can I propose one?
20:27:31 <dg> loading the guidelines now
20:27:36 <topiltzin> I like that the operator is upfront about what he can and cannot guarantee
20:28:08 *** trolly is now known as trolly_
20:28:14 <topiltzin> but besides that (positive) impression there isn't much to say...
20:28:15 <zzz> we are considering open4you only today, at least in item 2). If you like you can have a new item 5) dg
20:28:28 <EpicCoffee> I believe there should be available hosting on i2p, however I'm not sure I would trust a host lol. I'm conflicted on the hosting topic so I'll step aside on this one
20:28:29 <dg> zzz: ok, thx
20:28:42 <zzz> his TOS looks ok to me
20:29:03 <zzz> it's a new category not currently on the console so that's a plus
20:29:03 <dg> i know of no clients from open4you.i2p so I can't vouch for it but if the owner can turn up another time, I'm fine with discussing it again
20:29:56 <dg> no vouches makes me suspicious
20:30:24 <zzz> the recent FreedomHosting thing makes eepsite hosting interesting
20:31:13 <dg> I get the gist this is free, right?
20:31:19 <zzz> do we have any questions that the requestor must answer for us to make a decision? or can we make a decision today?
20:31:33 <zzz> I didnt see whether it was free or not. the faq is only in russian.
20:31:45 <topiltzin> it's free
20:31:45 <dg> If it's free, why not? There's no risk of a scam and it's definitely of 'interest'.
20:31:49 <dg> "9 months work free web hosting in i2p."
20:31:58 <dg> sorry guys, I was under the impression it was bitcoin
20:32:19 <topiltzin> still, we have no idea if it actually works
20:32:46 <dg> Should we bite the bullet and find a volunteer to test it at some point from now to the release?
20:32:55 <dg> If it doesn't work, we pull it
20:33:15 <zzz> I'm inclined to say yes now. I don't know what one person testing it would prove. We can always pull it later.
20:33:33 <dg> well, testing it at least works. There's not much else we can test.
20:33:39 <zzz> I would hope people are at least vaguely aware of the trust issues involved in hosting
20:33:41 <dg> yeah, I'm also a yes.
20:34:10 <zzz> there's no reason it shouldn't work. For one, I dont see any evidence of an automated process.
20:34:12 <dg> Any other votes?
20:34:26 <dg> it seems to be email drivne
20:34:28 <dg> driven
20:34:43 <zzz> last call for opinions / objections
20:34:57 <topiltzin> by works I mean whether the operator will actually do what he says he will do
20:35:14 <psi> do we have any testimonies from users on open4you?
20:35:22 <topiltzin> as opposed to set up an eepsite and abandon it
20:35:24 <dg> no
20:35:28 <topiltzin> psi: none, that's the problem
20:35:31 <dg> topiltzin: if that happens, we can remove it.
20:35:39 <dg> the owner is at least somewhat active as he requested
20:35:48 <dg> I'm for it.
20:35:53 <psi> yeah, i'd say not to go ahead with endorsement , first we get a test user in
20:35:56 <zzz> my guess is he has almost no business so far. Let's give him a trial period of a couple of I2P releases with it in the console, and if its bogus then we pull it
20:36:09 <psi> or... if we endorse put a big fat warning on it
20:36:10 <dg> zzz: +1
20:36:27 <psi> hmm
20:36:33 <psi> zzz has a good point
20:36:42 <psi> but... still
20:36:49 <dg> psi: it is free
20:36:56 <zzz> psi pls clarify are you objecting or not
20:36:56 <topiltzin> I'll email him the next few days
20:36:58 <psi> oh? it is?
20:37:04 <dg> yes
20:37:08 <psi> i am voicing caution
20:37:13 <psi> no objection
20:37:16 <topiltzin> I guess I might as well put zab.i2p back up
20:37:22 <dg> I thought it was bitcoin but it isn't
20:37:25 <dg> It's free so.. I don't care much about testimonies yet
20:37:30 <dg> :)
20:37:40 <dg> topiltzin: You for or against?
20:37:52 <topiltzin> abstaining
20:38:00 <zzz> sounds like we have no objections and it's approved? if I'm wrong please speak up
20:38:01 <topiltzin> I will test his hosting the next few days though
20:38:05 <dg> 2 for, 0 against
20:38:12 <psi> abstain
20:38:19 <welterde> abstain
20:38:26 <EpicCoffee> im curious how files are transferred to open4you hosting account
20:38:47 <dg> EpicCoffee: ftp (huh?) or via a control panel it seems.
20:39:07 <psi> sftp?
20:39:18 <zzz> ok I'll email him to get a logo and check the stuff into the console. Any of you so inclined, please sign up and report back
20:39:34 <zzz> if it's bogus or doesnt work, we can always pull it just before the release.
20:39:35 <dg> "1 GB of available space, php5, mysql, ftp access, 3 tunnel \ 2 hop"
20:39:40 <dg> +1
20:39:48 <welterde> psi: doubt it..
20:40:01 <zzz> and that ends item 2)
20:40:18 <zzz> no sign of hottuna or str4d so we're on to 5) dg's request
20:40:20 <zzz> dg go
20:40:29 <welterde> although it should work better over i2p (you know.. passive/active mode and so for ftp..)
20:41:36 <dg> I propose http://salt.i2p/ (not my site, efkt's) for inclusion in the router console. salt.i2p contains; a helpful, large wiki of eepsites and guides; xmpp; an IRC channel which is probably most active one on IRC2p
20:41:51 <iRelay> Title: salted (at salt.i2p)
20:42:00 <dg> It provides a lot of eepsite 'starting points' and is SFW.
20:42:02 <EpicCoffee> ill say +1 for salt
20:42:07 <EpicCoffee> I like the salt wiki
20:42:16 <topiltzin> yep, #salt pwnz +1
20:42:18 <dg> salt has grown to be a great resource for me and others in the community
20:42:28 <dg> the channel is #salt ftr
20:42:52 <zzz> we really can only take requests from the eepsite owner. Could you ask him to apply following the guidelines on http://zzz.i2p/topics/236 ? then we can consider it for 0.9.9
20:42:54 <welterde> +1.. pretty much what that old wiki used to be now..
20:43:06 <iRelay> Title: zzz.i2p: How to get my Eepsite added to the Router Console home page (at zzz.i2p)
20:43:33 <zzz> I'm not familiar with the site
20:43:55 <zzz> I don't think we want to start adding sites w/o permission
20:44:14 <dg> He was active not long ago, he may shoot up in a second
20:44:23 <dg> I agree with not adding w/o permission
20:44:34 <dg> figured it was worth a shot though
20:44:43 <zzz> paging efkt
20:44:49 <efkt> You have my permission as long as everyone's happy with it. I created the site with some of I2P's possible policies and ideas in mind about what content is appropriate for I2P. Im open to discussion if you don't like some of what might be there (Just saying)
20:44:53 <EpicCoffee> efkt is the owner of salt? I presume such based on observations.
20:44:59 <dg> Yes, EpicCoffee.
20:45:10 <efkt> Thus the disclaimer on the front page, explicit policies about gore/pr0n/etc
20:45:43 <efkt> The wiki is not open to edit unless we end up knowing you, so it is unlikely to be vandalized.
20:46:03 * EpicCoffee also points out the salt xmpp
20:46:17 <dg> the XMPP is popular too and comes with guides. :)
20:46:50 <topiltzin> yeah salt is pretty damn great.. has a real community feel to it
20:46:59 <zzz> if you want to do it right now please answer the following questions. If it's too much to do now we can discuss in about 6 weeks before the next release
20:47:00 <EpicCoffee> so long as users of it realize the admins can see what is said if not encrypted (I think the wiki article on it highly encourages otr)
20:47:06 <efkt> We have enough XMPP servers floating around that in the future it might not be a bad idea to list a few in the console. Most of us running servers have S2S happening.
20:47:07 <zzz> - An email address
20:47:07 <zzz> - The URL to link to
20:47:07 <zzz> - The URL of your English terms of service if available or necessary
20:47:07 <zzz> - If the site is not in English, a brief description of the site in English
20:47:07 <zzz> - (Optional) A URL to a transparent png icon to display. Size must be 32x32 (subject to change). If no icon is provided the icon will be "toopie". We will copy this icon into the router console source and serve it locally.
20:47:10 <zzz> - If an icon is provided, the license of the image.
20:47:12 <zzz> - (Optional) A one or two-word label in English. If not provided we will use example.i2p
20:47:14 <zzz> - (Optional) a few words or a sentence in English for a popup (tooltip)
20:48:19 <efkt> email@example.com
20:48:23 <efkt> site: http://salt.i2p
20:48:27 <iRelay> Title: salted (at salt.i2p)
20:48:38 <efkt> site terms of service - Theres a disclaimer on the front page: http://salt.i2p
20:48:43 <iRelay> Title: salted (at salt.i2p)
20:49:15 <efkt> I dont have a 32x32 icon to provide speedily but it would be the same as our favicon, a black star with transparent or white background
20:49:47 <efkt> label name can be simply "salt"
20:49:59 <EpicCoffee> efkt I can make a quick 32x32 icon if you want. well as quick as i2p will allow lol
20:50:25 <zzz> we can give you a week for the icon :)
20:50:32 <zzz> how long has the site been up?
20:50:34 <efkt> EpicCoffee: If you like. Its just like the favicon - the black "anarchist star", you see the same kind of shape all over google images. It takes only a moment really
20:50:40 <efkt> zzz: august 2012, IIRC
20:51:21 <dg> http://salt.i2p/wiki/index.php/Main_Page#Tutorials
20:51:21 <efkt> Honestly, I'm very surprised I get so many users unable to reach the site as its not part of the default addressbook (or the XMPP) - Yet we get a lot of newcomers being directed there through IRC. Sorry to step off topic.
20:51:35 <iRelay> Title: Salted Wiki (at salt.i2p)
20:51:41 <efkt> zzz: Oh, and the blurb "Cryptomunitions and tutorials'
20:51:46 <dg> Yeah, it's a problem (in addition to the annoying addressbook-not-found bug) when introducing users.
20:52:20 <zzz> anybody on the console home page is automatically added to the default address book
20:52:42 <efkt> Oh. That will be helpful for anyone who is new to I2P coming to IRC2P to explore.
20:52:52 <efkt> one headache solved :)
20:52:59 <dg> 1/2.
20:53:05 <dg> no xmpp.salt.i2p ;)
20:53:32 <zzz> efkt to me your terms of service are insufficient for a wiki that we would recommend, as it describes only what you are not responsible for. It does not say what type of content if any is disallowed.
20:54:03 <zzz> If anything goes then I cannot support the request.
20:54:04 <efkt> zzz: Even though noone is allowed to edit the wiki, at all, unless I have personally vetted them and given them an account?
20:54:19 <dg> efkt: I believe he's saying the actual rules are unclear. pr0n, etc.
20:54:41 <efkt> Hrm.
20:54:53 <zzz> there are no rules stated at all.
20:54:56 <dbowie> 32X32 blackstar.jpg, base64 encoded: http://pastethis.i2p/show/5437/
20:54:57 <iRelay> Title: Paste #5437 | LodgeIt! (at pastethis.i2p)
20:55:00 <zzz> wrt allowed content
20:55:54 <efkt> I can easily add something. It's not a problem, only mulling over what "extra" things to add - Content such as Gore, Rape, Torture, Snuff, or weird sex will never be allowed on the site
20:56:23 <dg> so, family friendly - safe for work etc?
20:56:53 <zzz> I don't think we should ask you to draft a content ToS in the next 30 seconds. Want to think about it and come back in a few weeks?
20:57:06 <efkt> At this time no I cannot say salt is family friendly or safe for work. The onionland page explicitly links to drug onions.
20:57:43 <efkt> zzz: Yes, I'd like that at least - Id rather work with everyone and produce something desirable that's useful to I2P
20:59:22 <EpicCoffee> EpicCoffee: any image hosts on i2p?
20:59:24 <zzz> my philosophy is that anything similar to postman's tracker rules are acceptable.
20:59:24 <zzz> I don't want to tell you how to run your site or how to write your rules. You do what you like and then we'll decide if we want it in the console.
20:59:24 <zzz> but you can survey the links we have now and get a feel
21:00:36 <zzz> we're past 15 minutes so can we ask you to come back in a few weeks? Any site that has that much support from the folks here I think would be a good addition to the console, if you can work out the ToS stuff.
21:01:36 <efkt> I'm happy to work out a ToS, and to talk about anything on the site the community feels doesn't belong. Thanks zzz. Yes that's fine
21:02:13 <zzz> great. glad to hear about a new site I wasn't familiar with. I'll check it out. email me or post on zzz.i2p when you pull it all together
21:02:19 <zzz> and that's the end of 5)
21:02:25 <zzz> last call for str4d for 1)
21:02:36 <zzz> hottuna still not here for 4)
21:02:47 * zzz warms up the baffer
21:03:50 * zzz *bafs* the meeting closed
21:07:16 <zzz> thanks everybody, good meeting


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The slowdown in makeup sales doesn't deflate Selma Terzic's outlook. In fact, the CEO of Iconic London hopes to ignite a resurgence of cosmetics sales in the United States as she expands the brand stateside. Iconic London...


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Dr. Kenneth Cooper knows a thing or two about branding. It's no wonder that the man who coined the term "aerobics" also branded his own line of nutritional supplements. In 1998, the Cooper Aerobics Center, which Cooper founded in 1970, launched a line of nutritional supplements called Cooper Complete. Just a few years later, two club companies with recognizable names of their own—Life Time Fitness and Bally Total Fitness—also launched supplement lines under their club brands. Other club companies, such as Curves, soon followed.
Sales of supplements—club branded supplements or not—continue to grow. During the past 13 years, sports nutrition and weight loss (SNWL) supplements have had a compound growth rate of 10.2 percent, according to research by the Nutrition Business Journal. Sales in SNWL were $22.7 billion in 2010. With such a large market, it's no wonder that of the 703 health clubs that responded to a survey by the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, 89 percent sell some type of dietary supplement. And it's no wonder that some better-known club brands have taken to branding their own supplements to capture a larger piece of this pie.
"Private labels are big everywhere, from big-bucks grocery stores to mom-and-pop stores," says Dan Fabricant, vice president of global government and scientific affairs for the Washington, DC-based Natural Products Association. "It's a trend that's here to stay."
Bally and Life Time would not share specifics about their supplement revenue, but Todd Whitthorne, president and CEO of Cooper Concepts, the division of Cooper Aerobics Center, Dallas, that markets the company's supplements, says they constitute 5 percent to 10 percent of Cooper's business, and supplement revenue has grown each year, usually by double digits. "It's a profitable business for us," Whitthorne says.
"It's a growing business. But it's not the biggest revenue generator for our operation."
Pete Marino, spokesman for Bally Total Fitness, Chicago, says, "Clearly, there is a relevant ROI (return on investment), otherwise we wouldn't be selling supplements. More than that, though, we offer products more to provide a total fitness experience versus being a core part of our business plan. Our sales data indicates our members purchase Bally products at the same rate they choose other brands."
Life Time Fitness, Chanhassen, MN, reported that in 2010, total center revenue grew $70.5 million to $894.1 million. Of that increase, 47.5 percent was from in-center revenue, which increased $33.6 million. That growth was primarily from increased sales of LifeSpa and LifeCafé products and services and personal training, according to the company. Life Time sells its nutritional products through its LifeCafés as well as through its website.
At Life Time, the ROI has everything to do with the clientele.
"Our greatest return comes from ensuring our members can achieve optimal levels of health," says Tom Nikkola, the company's nutrition program manager. "We believe that includes proper exercise and nutrition, along with the appropriate use of dietary supplements. The more lives we change for the better, the more significant our ROI is."
Life Time's line of nutritional products focuses on daily health, weight management, energy and athletic performance. Its line includes men's and women's multivitamins, omega-3 fish oil, joint maintenance tablets, whey protein isolate and a meal replacement product. Life Time recently released multivitamins for children and a protein powder for vegans and vegetarians.
The Cooper Complete line was created to address the weaknesses of supplements, including poor absorption rates and purity concerns, Whitthorne says. The line includes multivitamins for elite athletes, adults, teenagers and children, as well as supplements to improve brain health, skin and eye health, prostate health and joint function.
Whitthorne categorizes Cooper's nutritional products as dietary supplements rather than SNWL.
"When you talk about trying to sell somebody on a fat burner, that's pretty well validated that that's not the longterm solution," Whitthorne says. "Most everybody who loses weight is going to gain it back within a year. So losing weight is not the issue. Losing weight and keeping it off is the issue. We know what works there, and that's lifestyle modification. That's changing your lifestyle, not taking a pill."
Bally moved into the supplement market with a private label meal-replacement protein drink called B-Trim Shakes after a survey of 1,200 members revealed that two-thirds of them shunned breakfast and often lunch.
"Bally believes that supplementation is an important part of any fitness regimen," Marino says. "We have developed a comprehensive and high-quality line of Bally-branded supplements to offer our members at an affordable price."
Name Recognition
When a well-known club brands its own supplements, its name recognition can help the company reach beyond its members either through sales in retail shops or online.
Although the primary customer base for Cooper's supplements is the company's clinic patients, distribution via the Internet and retail shops, such as Whole Foods, has attracted customers in all 50 states, Whitthorne says.
Some doctors and independent health clubs also carry the Cooper supplements, but they are not sold in big club chains. Whitthorne says that is because so many supplement manufacturers are willing to brand a product for chains, which allows the chains to achieve sales margins of 60 percent to 80 percent.
For the smaller independent clubs that carry the Cooper products, supplements generally are not their core specialty, which means it's important to educate employees about supplements if those clubs want to make money selling supplements, Whitthorne says.
Cooper formulates its own products through its scientific advisory board, which includes doctors from Harvard and Tufts universities. Most of Cooper's products are manufactured by Douglas Labs in Pittsburgh; its omega-3 products are made by Ocean Nutrition in Canada.
Life Time develops its products inhouse with its registered dietitian team consulting with its manufacturer's staff doctors on formulations, Nikkola says. The company also partners with LaValle Metabolic Institute, Cincinnati, to formulate its line.
"Once designed, we use a best-in-class manufacturer following good manufacturing practices to ensure that applicable formulations and manufacturing regulations are being adhered to in the manufacturing of products," Nikkola says, "and we feel that these measures greatly reduce the liability inherent in branding a product with our name on the label."
Bally has an internal team that works closely with food scientists and registered dietitians at its manufacturers to continue to develop and test new products based on the latest scientific information and consumer trends, Marino says.
"All of our products are developed to offer our members the best products with the highest quality ingredients at an affordable price," he says.
Supplement Worries
Despite the precautions taken by these three organizations, Fabio Comana, an exercise physiologist at the American Council on Exercise, San Diego, worries about supplement safety.
"I can understand why clubs sell and brand supplements," Comana says. "It is a huge revenue-generating opportunity, considering how people will typically buy supplements regardless. The club mentality, therefore, is why lose a revenue stream by allowing other businesses to capitalize on selling our customers products when you can do it yourself? The issue is safety. Where are the assurances that the supplement will not harm me?"
Concern about consumer safety was discussed in October 2010 at the Council for Responsible Nutrition's (CRN) Annual Symposium for the Dietary Supplement Industry in Austin, TX. The council's biggest worry is product contamination, something that would be difficult for consumers to forgive.
"My fear is that we have this great consumer trust, and that one event can change that forever," Jim Hamilton, president of DSM Nutritional Products USA Inc., Nutley, NJ, said in a statement on the CRN website. "I think trust is the No. 1 issue."
Andrew Shao, Ph.D, and senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for CRN, says, "When a place like Bally decides to have its own line, it becomes responsible. They're a retailer, just like any other retailer. Their brand is on the line, and I hope they take it very seriously to deliver what they promise to the consumer."
Marino says that Bally is indemnified by its product manufacturer should any problems occur.
Supplements are not tested or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but the administration requires that supplements, which are under the umbrella of "foods," be labeled with accurate information, including the name and amount of each ingredient.
Still, enforcement can be lax, Whitthorne says.
"It's not like the FDA has a SWAT team that goes out, picks a product off the shelf and takes it back to the lab and analyzes it," he says. "The DSHEA—the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act—really puts the responsibility on the manufacturer to do the right thing."
DSHEA, which was signed into law in 1994, defines dietary supplements as a separate regulatory category of food. Still, supplements can be sold before being proven safe, and the FDA typically only investigates a supplement if it receives a report of an adverse reaction or of a claim being made that has no scientific validation, Whitthorne says.
"That's where most companies get into trouble trying to overhype a particular product, what a product will do for you," he says. Supplement manufacturers and retailers can say that a supplement might help support healthy eyes, but they cannot say that that supplement cures macular degeneration, for example.
Health Club Attention
In addition to concerns about supplement safety, Jasmine Jafferali, health and well-being director for Proactive Partners, a division of TCA Holdings, Chicago, also is concerned that branded supplements divert club companies' attention from their primary business.
"[Health clubs] need to focus on exercise, personal training, post-rehab fitness, not getting into branding their own supplements," says Jafferali, who has led seminars about supplements at Club Industry conferences. "If they want to purchase other supplements, sell them in their shop, that's fine. But they shouldn't be making our supplements and protein shakes. They're getting out of the scope of their practice. They're going to spend money on their own supplements when they should be creating better fitness and exercise programs for their club."
That's why management at The Rush Fitness Complex, Knoxville, TN, leaves supplements to those with expertise in the area. The Rush partners with an Internet-based weight loss and dietary supplement company so its members can buy products online. The partner ensures that members get everything that they need from a multivitamin and meal replacement perspective, says Don Bertsch, a spokesperson for The Rush.
"Our goal is not to compete with all of the other health food and supplement stores," Bertsch says. "Instead, we want to be excellent at providing the best workout environment with all of the services needed to have our members see success."
Matt Terry, personal training department head for Life Time, has no doubt the company offers legitimate, worthy products that are top-notch.
"For some clubs, [selling supplements and weight loss products] is a sheer profit thing, and they are producing an inferior product," says Terry. "With Life Time, [our employees] have a voice in what we want. We want what offers the best value and the best quality. People want supplements, and we arm our members with the best."
Still, some unnecessary supplements are being sold, Whitthorne says, noting, in particular, protein supplements.
"By and large, there are a lot of people spending a lot of money on things that aren't generating that much benefit," Whitthorne says.
Considering only three in 10 adults in America get the recommended weekly physical activity, according to the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, the majority of people taking SNWL aren't athletes— they are people looking for a shortcut, Whitthorne says.
"Most people think this: 'I'm going to do this—whatever this is—for a prescribed period of time. I'm going to get down to my ideal weight or where I want to be. Then, I'm going to change my lifestyle. Once I get there, I'm going to start doing everything right,'" Whitthorne says. "It never works that way. Ever."
In the end, supplements should be just one part of the health equation, he says.
"For us, 'supplements' is a perfect name," Whitthorne says. "They need to supplement your diet. There's no weight loss fat burner or post-exercise nutrient that will suddenly make you a better athlete."
Still, the market for supplements— both good and bad—is out there, and club companies are increasing their revenues by retailing these products. And, for those that have recognizable names and the finances needed in order to get into supplement development and manufacturing, a private label brand of supplements can add even further to that bottom line.


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By Chris Wright
It's hard to argue that Roman Abramovich's chop-and-change approach to football club ownership hasn't worked at Chelsea, with the club going from Premier League also-rans to Champions League winners during the Russian's ten-year tenure at the Bridge and, having seen Arsenal fall seven points behind their beloved next-door neighbours yesterday, Petr Cech has been wondering out loud as to whether adopting similar methods might benefit the Gunners.
Cech told The Sun:
"People say that if there was more stability with the manager at Chelsea we would have had more success but I'm not sure that is right.
"In the last nine years we have won more or less the same number of trophies as Manchester United. They have had one manager in that time – we have had eight.
"We do it our way, other clubs do it their way. Arsenal have had the same manager and they haven't won anything for a long time.
"Maybe if you asked them they might say they would rather have had 10 managers and six trophies, I don't know."
It's pretty much impossible to know whether the "itchy trigger finger" method would work at Arsenal without actually seeing it action, though the main difference would obviously be that, while Chelsea have a bajillisquillion disposable oligarch dollars set aside for hiring, firing and paying-off their endless succession of short-term managers, Arsenal's business plan more resembles a script from an episode of "The Good Life".
Assuming, say, a Middle East consortium staged a £1.5billion takeover of the club and money was no object, would the Gooners out there prefer to see their club can the incumbent and begin tearing through managers to start picking up silverware again or would you prefer to see Arsene Wenger allowed to finally rebuild a proper squad in the image of his Invincibles over the course of a few more trophy-less seasons?
How desperate are you?
(Via The Sun)


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Within the last few years, service providers have engaged in a wide array of initiatives to transform their networks and business models to monetize growing user demand for new interactive multimedia communications and entertainment experiences. While the drive to grow revenue is, and will remain, a core factor for operators, the requirement to save on operating and capital costs has more recently risen to equal prominence, as new data revenues have not yet made up for declining voice services and slowing subscriber growth for most operators.
Many paths to more cost effective service provider operations are being examined. The most prominent of these is to migrate to an all-IP-based network. Whether fixed or mobile operator, this migration requires a transformation from time-tested legacy infrastructure with built-in reliability to a relatively new set of platforms that require careful engineering and integration to ensure a premium quality of experience. The transformation also requires changes in OSS/BSS and opens up the possibility of new service delivery and customer management business tools and models.
As a result, service providers are engaged in a more complex integration environment than ever before. While the overall concept of transforming to an IP-based network is conceptually feasible, the multitude of migration and optimization requirements that are visible in todays network environment threaten to overwhelm service provider staff capabilities at a time when cost management is becoming the key priority.
Case Study: Cost Reduction At BT
Project examples include British Telecoms investment in a converged IP core network, an intelligent service enabling infrastructure based on IMS, an operations support systems (OSS) architecture based on commercial off-the-shelf systems, and the development of an open application layer that allows faster time-to-market for traditional and Web 2.0 services. These initiatives, dubbed the 21st Century Network by BT, are based on a business case that emphasizes platform consolidation as a way to first reduce operating, development and maintenance costs; and eventually generate new services and new sources of revenue. The clock is ticking on achieving this transformation, as BT intends to close down its last PSTN switch in 2011.
However, such cost reducing initiatives can be hampered by complexity; multiple projects are required to not only transform the various domains of the network, but integrate them into a seamless end-to-end working solution. The process of translating the vision of a transformed network into a positive business case and process road map can be very time consuming. After the road map is complete, then the work really begins with a multitude of sub-projects to drive the transformation of each network domain and the overall end-to-end network solution.
Needed Expertise
In many cases, service providers lack the expertise to effectively carry out both the pre-transformation planning and the post-execution training and ongoing support of numerous projects. Manpower shortages and a lack of specific knowledge/expertise may be an issue for a small-to-medium operator, while even a large operator may lack the technology expertise in IP or Web services to effectively carry out the plan with only in-house resources. Alternatively, service providers may have internal expertise but wish to prioritize the utilization of these resources to address their core competence developing and delivering end user services.
Frequently, a number of outside experts are brought into the service provider to carry out major transformation projects, or certain subprojects within a major project. These vendors can include:
- Telecom equipment suppliers working with the network-facing elements;
- IT systems integrators working with operational support and billing systems; and,
- Software and Internet services specialists focused on applications.
Without careful management the cost and time requirements of the sub-projects may quickly wipe out a large portion of the cost savings in the original business case.
However, one strategy being adopted by a growing number of service providers to minimize the cost of transformation is to select a single integrator that brings together a combination of its own skills and a roster of best-of-breed partners to achieve desired transformation goals in the most efficient manner.
According to TBRs Telecom Infrastructure Services Model (TIS), service providers worldwide will spend more than $15 billion on integration services in 2008, as shown in Figure 1 below. TBRs TIS Model tracks telecommunications infrastructure services spending by service providers worldwide. Published semiannually, the model is based on analysis and forecasts of product-attached or capex-driven services such as deployment and maintenance, and non-product-attached or external opex-driven services such as professional and managed services.
As indicated in the preceding figure, service provider investments are expected across four major domains to achieve effective end-to-end network transformation. The domains address the key areas of the service provider infrastructure, and each domain requires a set of specialty skills to support the required optimization, consolidation and integration goals of each subproject. The four key domains are defined as follows:
Subscriber Domain
Transformation in the Subscriber Domain enables a shift from mass market services built to provide a common experience to all end users, to easily accessible services tailored to the individual on demand. Service providers are well-positioned to deliver these services because they can leverage assets such as subscriber presence and location information, subscriber preference information, single sign-on capability, real-time rating and charging, and content administration. Service providers gain differentiation by an ability to account for individual preferences and desires, which builds customer loyalty and reduces churn. In addition, this new capability allows service providers to field alternative business models such as advertising.
In addition, the transformed Subscriber Domain makes it easier for service providers to deliver third-party applications that support value-added services tailored to the individual subscriber. Critical to this capability is the ability to provide third-party services access to federated subscriber data. To transform the Subscriber Domain, operators must integrate multiple subscriber systems into an optimized management system that allows subscriber data to be quickly and easily accessed by service provisioning and delivery and billing systems. However, the transformation process goes beyond simply replacing aging silos of subscriber data with a distributed intelligent database: transforming the subscriber domain means enabling personalization and delivery of targeted content for end users, in addition to consolidating platforms, while maintaining the quality of experience, regardless of the targeted end user network or device.
Applications Domain
The Application Domain of the network is perhaps the most critical of the four domains. As service providers rapidly convert to software-oriented architectures that support concepts such as write once, deploy everywhere applications, the ability to provide a common development platform is crucial. For example service providers such asAT&T base their implementation of new service layer-enabling technology on the number of services they can rapidly bring to market. With AT&T in the midst of deploying U-verseIPTV service for the home and high-speed HSPA wireless broadband networks, the goal for a growing number of these services is that they be accessible via three screens the PC, the television and the mobile device.
In addition to the three screens target, service providers are leveraging SOA and Web 2.0 environments to reduce the time to market for application deployment. The goal is to make available IP-compatible services as quickly as possible. This requirement increases the need for a well-integrated application delivery environment that can seamlessly leverage the underlying IP network.
Added to these requirements is the ability to present and quickly deploy applications from third-party developers without reengineering network interfaces. The new Applications Domain must not only be capable of delivering to any access point, but must also be capable of seamlessly integrating with non-native applications. The transformed service delivery environment therefore requires seamless migration and mediation services for third-party applications.
Billing And OSS Domain
Integrating billing and operations support systems (OSS) are crucial to managing customer revenue acquisition and retention, and ensuring network and applications reliability and consistent quality of service. Transformations in this area typically focus on consolidating diverse OSS and BSS systems that today address separate silos or applications, to create a single, consolidated support management system that tracks and manages the customer based on all his or her relationships with the service provider. In concert with the subscriber and application domain evolutions, future billing systems must evolve to support new customer relationships and new application revenue recognition models such as advertising and third-party revenue sharing.
OSS consolidation on commercial off-the-shelf platforms is gradually replacing the highly customized platforms of the past. These operational support systems must also accommodate new network elements, particularly the ability to monitor and manage IP traffic and cross-domain applications.
Network Infrastructure Domain
The integration of high capacity access networks with common core network elements supporting reliable delivery of IP multimedia services requires unique expertise. Service providers are increasingly relying on partnerships with equipment suppliers to guarantee quality of service in these implementations. Many are turning to out-tasking or outsourcing models to reduce costs for in-house training.
Ultimately, however, integrating the layers of network infrastructure from the device to access, aggregation, edge, core and transport to deliver services in an optimized seamless manner requires a range of network integration skills. Further, these evolutions must be accomplished in concert with transformation in the other domains to achieve effective end-to-end implementation.
Network Integrator Role
As Figure 2 indicates, the Network Integrator delivers best-in-class integration capabilities within each of these four domains and, most importantly, delivers the design, project management and integration services expertise to integrate the entire set of domains to deliver the desired services to end customers.
Without sufficient attention to integration requirements across domains, service providers run the risk of lack of project coordination, imbalanced investments among the various domains and not meeting end-to-end service objectives. A Network Integrator is often needed to resolve such issues because many service providers still operate in silos of control, in which each domain is owned and managed by different stakeholders in the company.
Case Study: Verizons Silos
Verizon Communications provides a good example of a network operator in the early stages of transformation. The companys core businesses, as characterized by Verizons Director of Multimedia Services Architecture Bill Goodman, include:
- A local telecommunications business that is focused on transforming from traditional voice service to fiber to the premise (FTTP), delivering a bundle of intelligent, interactive services;
- A business services arm, Verizon Business, that is evolving to an IMS-driven, SIP-based services model; and,
- Verizon Wireless, a mobile business joint venture with Vodafone Communications, which is upgrading capacity to support VoIP and fixed mobile convergence by means of dualWiFi /CDMA devices.
While there are many integrators operating within todays service providers, consolidating the transformation projects under the supervision of a primary Network Integrator offers the following areas of business value:
Cost Savings
There are a number cost savings benefits to working with a Network Integrator, including 1) consolidating supplier management, 2) maintaining overall project vision and 3) ensuring project goals are achieved in a timely fashion.
Consolidating Supplier Management
By establishing the transformation process as a project under the guidance of a single Network Integrator, the service provider consolidates the cost of supplier management. Rather than manage a host of subprojects with different suppliers, the service provider, according to the business plans, maps out a vision and sets performance expectations according the business plan with a single partner. The Network Integrator is responsible for managing the subprojects within the context of multivendor agreements with the appropriate third parties and the service provider. With the right Network Integrator, the service provider will also be able to turn over supplier sourcing, resulting in additional savings in time and staff resources. Alternatively, the Network Integrator may be required to work with other suppliers identified by the service provider. The integrator must be skilled at both identifying appropriate suppliers and working with installed base suppliers or service provider preferences.
Maintaining Project Vision
Because of the multiple domains involved, service providers can easily become focused on a portion of the transformation within a single domain rather than maintain the complete roadmap. Operating independently, suppliers can move at varying speeds within subprojects and lose track of the big picture. These issues can cloud the once-clear evolution/transformation path across domains, causing imbalanced investments and outcomes for key milestones. For example, an IT supplier may implement an integration project involving the deployment of new consolidated BSS/OSS platforms without sufficient understanding of the changes in the underlying network, or parallel subscriber and applications domain. This may require costly additional integration expenses to create the appropriate interfaces or even change major aspects of platform functionality to accommodate the misunderstandings.
Achieving Goals on Time
Acting as the chief project manager, the Network Integrator ensures that cost savings through platform consolidation and other transformations are achieved according to deadline. Often these savings can be delayed due to interdependencies of the various sub-projects. The Network Integrators role is to help the service provider identify interdependencies and effectively manage them to meet the project timeline. The Network Integrator may bring its own design and analysis tools to bear on the full-scale transformation, allowing better risk mitigation and contingency planning across all subprojects and suppliers involved.
Faster Time To Revenue
As in the case of BT, while many of todays transformation projects are based on business cases that focus on cost reduction, operators understandably expect to attain new sources of revenue at the end of any transformation project. Decreasing time-to-market and reducing investments required to launch new products and services will continue to be requirements in transformation projects.
While many service providers engage in IP transformation as a hedge against future challenges to their business models, most foresee the impact of new sources of revenue from services that blend personalized content with multimedia and multi-device access capabilities. They also expect new revenue sharing and advertising models to create incremental revenue. These future value/benefit expectations are driving todays transformation projects.
The Network Integrator must possess sufficient expertise with new revenue sources to achieve the revenue-generation milestone, and not just settle for delivering cost savings. This commitment is a change from the traditional position of equipment suppliers, who have historically operated with a philosophy of if we build it (the network), they (subscribers and revenue) will come. In short, the delivery of the subscribers through investments in customer acquisition was up to the service provider.
The age of the Network Integrator does not mean a fundamental shift in roles. Service providers must still invest in customer acquisition and focus on new services development. But the Network Integrator, operating in partnership with the service provider to achieve the transformation vision, shares the requirement to secure subscribers. To this end, the Integrator must possess end-customer knowledge through research and experience so that the transformations within each domain cater to real revenue value for the service provider.
Figure 3 maps the Network Integrator skill requirements to the key domains to achieve the transformation sought by the majority of service providers today. The data indicates that the Network Integrator role requires both domain and project management expertise at a multivendor level, as well as experience achieving transformation milestones.
Case Study: Telstra One Click
Telstra represents a major network transformation project in which the skills of the Network Integrator have been crucial to meeting project milestones and delivering benefits to the service provider, according to Michael Lawrey, Telstras Executive Director for Network and Technology. Telstras journey began in November 2005 with the challenge of creating an end-to-end IP infrastructure that could enable one-click services, whereby the end user could access a consistent experience no matter which network access method was used. To enable the IP infrastructure to meet this, Telstra executed three infrastructure transformations:
- Transformation of the mobile network infrastructure to a next-generation network
- Installation of a high-capacity IP core network
- Transformation of a next-generation access network
- Cross-domain network operations and service delivery
The Network Integrator, in this case Alcatel-Lucent, provided complete end-to-end cross-domain project management. Regardless of the equipment we used in the network, the integrator was responsible for it all, even including the testing and quality assurance tools, Lawrey said.
The key for Telstra was to work in close collaboration with the Network Integrator, which provided a single point of accountability. In addition to managing the interdependencies of a multivendor, cross domain environment, the Network Integrator provided the critical functions of ensuring that subscribers would be served efficiently with the quality of experience Telstra expected. Lawrey characterized this as making sure the customer delivery system operated effectively, including services activation and network assurance.
Telstra achieved cost savings of 30% to 40% by employing a single Network Integrator, Lawrey said, including via a reduced workload on Telstras staff and through cost savings in equipment and services from the suppliers involved in the project. By pushing the workload to a single integrator we achieved economy of scale, Lawrey said.
The transformation of Telstras network domains is an ongoing project that includes the complete lifecycle of deployment, operation and maintenance. Lawrey expects the Network Integrator to come along for the entire journey. We have built a relationship not only with the country team, but also the global assets of the supplier. We have a deeper relationship with coordination of global road maps and strategy. This is a partnership for the lifecycle of the network, Lawrey said.
While not all firms can fit the bill across the range of skills required for the Network Integrator role among suppliers, service providers have a short list of consolidated firms that are vying for the opportunity. These include the largest suppliers of telecom infrastructure services as shown in Figure 4.
The importance of the Network Integrator role will continue to grow as service providers move more aggressively toward transformation. Maintaining the skill sets and delivering on the project milestones will be key differentiators for suppliers in both IT and telecom going forward. Alcatel-Lucent has an early lead with positions in a number of major service provider projects. With the role of Network Integrator open to a single supplier at each account, the companys position is the strongest of the top suppliers. However the position will not go unchallenged; each supplier will work from its installed base and technology position to gain the role.


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MIAMI, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- LeBron James reached the 30-point mark for the sixth straight game Tuesday and the Miami Heat posted a 117-104 win over Portland.
James sank 11-of-15 shots in the performance, becoming the first player in NBA history to score 30 or more points and shoot at least 60 percent in six consecutive contests.
Chris Bosh led the Heat with 32 points and 11 rebounds while Dwyane Wade contributed 24 points, nine rebounds and seven assists in the victory, Miami's sixth in a row.
The Trail Blazers got 33 points from Damian Lillard but still dropped their fourth straight.
LaMarcus Aldridge added 29 and Wesley Matthews provided 20 in the loss.


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ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- The leader of an anti-government militia in Alaska who proclaimed that "God's law" trumps "man's law" was sentenced on Tuesday to nearly 26 years in prison for a plot to kill government employees he portrayed as his enemies.
Schaeffer Cox, the 28-year-old leader of the Alaska Peacekeepers Militia and a onetime candidate for the Alaska House of Representatives, apologized through tears for his actions.
"Well, I put myself here, with my own words, and I feel horrible about that, and I hurt my family, and that's who's really paying, and I feel horrible about that," he said at a hearing in federal court in Anchorage.
"I put a lot of people in fear by the things I said and the crazy stuff that was coming out of my mouth," he said.
Cox was convicted last summer of conspiring to murder federal and state government officials, including judges and law enforcement agents, soliciting others to commit murder and related weapons charges.
Evidence included a cache of illegal weapons, detailed lists of potential targets, testimony of government informants and tape recordings of speeches and meetings, some made secretly.
During the trial, Cox spent two days on the witness stand, at times confidently telling the jury his philosophy and likening himself to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi.
He testified that he sincerely believed government agents were planning to kill him and that he was justified in taking steps to defend his family against the police.
'Master manipulator'
But at Tuesday's sentencing, Cox disavowed many of those stances. He and his attorney cited a post-trial psychological evaluation that concluded Cox was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, delusions and a paranoid personality disorder.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Bryan, who imposed the sentence, said he agreed Cox probably was mentally ill but said that did not excuse his actions.
"I want to note that he has never been so ill as to not be able to have followers and convince people to follow him," Bryan said. The 310-month sentence falls well short of the life term Cox could have received.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Skrocki, who described Cox as a "master manipulator," said he was "comfortable" with the sentence, even though prosecutors had been seeking 35 years.
Election, economy spark growth of militias
"Our view of what Mr. Cox said to the court is thoroughly contradicted by his actions," Skrocki told reporters after the sentencing hearing, noting those actions included putting longtime family friends "on a hit list."
Cox's sentence was the same as that imposed on Monday on one of his followers, Fairbanks-area resident Lonnie Vernon, who was convicted of murder conspiracy and weapons charges. Vernon's 66-year-old wife Karen, got 12 years for her role in the plot.
A fourth defendant, Coleman Barney, 38, was sentenced in September to five years in prison for weapons charges.


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Former USNA teacher faces assault allegations
Attorney: Students' statements at hearing not consistent
A former teacher at the U.S. Naval Academy is facing allegations he sexually assaulted a student in 2011.
An academy spokesman says testimony ended Tuesday in a military court hearing. The academy identified the teacher as Marine Maj. Mark Thompson, who arrived at the school in 2010.
The alleged incidents happened after two female students attended a croquet match between the academy and St. John's College.
William Ferris, an attorney representing Thompson, said Wednesday statements made by the women to Navy investigators and at a hearing were not consistent. He contends none of the allegations happened.
Cmdr. William Marks, an academy spokesman, said the case will be reviewed to decide whether it warrants a court martial.
Thompson, 43, faces charges of fraternization, aggravated sexual assault and conduct unbecoming an officer.


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The main dinosaur movement that is of interest to paleontologists is locomotion, primarily running ability. One thing that we are very interested in at Manchester is….maximum running speed. This is especially important for both predator and prey. One trying to avoid becoming lunch and the other trying to catch lunch.
The methods available to biologists when studying modern species, such as cinematography, video recording, measurements of energy consumption, force and pressure plate studies, are not easily applied to the extinct species, unless time travel is miraculously invented!
One avenue of research that the Manchester group has focused on is the relative running abilities of different groups of dinosaurs. We particularly focused upon the challenge of determining, if possible, the top running speeds of various dinosaur genera. This work has been led by Dr Bill Sellers, who works in the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester.
Both Bill and I had a fun day explaining to Apple Inc. about our research into dinosaur locomotion, amongst other things. We both use Apple computers for the work that we do at Manchester. Here is a short video that might give you a little more insight to what we do at Manchester.


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Promiti Computers & Network (Pvt.) Ltd. has been incorporated in 1998 in the joint stock exchange as a private limited company which started it's operation way back in 1996 with a goal to serve the Computer Software & Hardware market mainly as a customized software developer, service and support organization. We are proud to announce that Promiti has in its possession the best computer engineers, programmers and dynamic sales squad concerning educational background and experience. Having adequate expertise, Promiti Computers & Network (Pvt) Ltd. has the capability to serve the local need of IT with proper support & maintenance services. Services offered by the company also includes: Customized Software Development, Network Integration and Support Services, Sales & Distribution. Promiti's aim is to give the customer an efficient and reliable system for maximum productivity as well as the lowest possible expenditure of maintenance.
Our mission is to enable people and companies to increase their business value through the use of IT technologies.
We aim at delivering services which will open new possibilities for our clients and allow them to work effectively with creativity.
The banner of Promiti Computer & Networks forms in July '96. In August, '98 Promiti emerged as a private limited company by enlisting itself in the joint stock exchange and is now known as Promiti Computers & Network (Pvt.) Ltd.Read More
Promiti has been in software development for over 20 years. Our expertise in developing different kinds of projects for various industries and with varied budgets has allowed us to polish our approach to overall quality assessment.Read More
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" Over 15 years we are using micro credit management information system ( μMIS) for our savings program developed by Promiti. We also appreciate their support and maintenance."Mr. Khademul Islam


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Runway Looks at Unbelievable Prices
When it comes to fashion heartbreak, you've seen it all. The local retail boutique that just sold the very last designer purse in stock. The "all designer clothes on sale" blowout at your local clothing retailer that persuaded you to spend half your paycheck for a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. The discount "designer" jeans you bought online, only to send them back when you discovered they were just knockoffs.
Good news: The heartbreak is over. ItalianoFashion.com sells the very best in discount clothes for women from top designers like Dolce & Gabbana, Armani, Versace, and Roberto Cavalli. With ItalianoFashion.com, it's possible to walk down the street wearing a pair of women's designer jeans that you bought for 80% off retail prices. Here you can shop for everything from designer women's suits to Italian-made women's shoes from the comfort of your home. Everything we sell, from fabulously fashionable D&G dresses to stunningly chic designer jeans, is completely authentic and of the finest quality.
Whatever your look – crisp and tailored, flirty feminine, or head-turning sultry – you'll find something to express it amidst the huge selection of discount designer clothing from ItalianoFashion.com. We make it easy to buy discount designer dresses and the latest shoes, accessories, and suits with the impeccable cut and quality you've come to expect from Italian designers. Whether you're looking to buy the latest Roberto Cavalli apparel online or just browsing for stylish discount jeans, ItalianoFashion.com has got you covered.
If you're a habitual outlet shopper, you know the thrill of a fine quality off-the-rack discovery. Now experience the thrill of finding the best in discount designer apparel without the crowds and hassles of a brick-and-mortar store. ItalianoFashion.com is your Armani Jeans online supplier. Shop our Dolce & Gabbana outlet at your own pace without worrying about someone else nabbing that eye-popping skirt you've set your heart on.
You may find other online clothing stores selling the latest in haute couture, but when it comes to discount designer clothes, ItalianoFashion.com is the place. So say goodbye to fashion heartbreak and ciao! to the finest names in designer women's discount clothing with the premier looks from ItalianoFashion.com. Call us at 888-519-9060 to learn more or to place your order by phone


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ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE: Les dessous de l'opération alliance du centre
by Rosa Moussaoui
Translated Thursday 19 April 2007, by
Former prime minister Michel Rocard calls on candidate François Bayrou of the Center-Right to form an alliance prior to the first tour of the presidential election. A simple operation or a large-scale political plan?
By choosing a political program truly on the Left, the voters can refuse to participate in a slide to the Right in this country.
François Bayrou must thank Michel Rocard. At a moment when his campaign seemed to be passing through an air pocket just a few days before the first balloting of the election, the call by the former prime minister under President Mitterand for an alliance, even before the first vote, between the Socialist Party (PS) and the center right party (UDF) has put him back in the center of the campaign.
Rocard's call for an alliance: a simple operation or a large-scale political plan?
After Bernard Kouchner, on Sunday, Claude Allègre responded in turn to the call by the man who, in 1993, promised the "big bang". In the columns of yesterday's Parisien, the former minister of Education in the Jospin government judged an alliance PS-UDF "entirely conceivable". The only soft pedal: "it is not yet operational", and it is necessary to wait for the second tour "to see if these convergences will take place". Michel Rocard and Bernard Kouchner, in his view, thus driving in the nail, "are only repeating what Dominique Strauss-Kahn has already said: there are no major differences between what Bayrou proposes and what the socialists propose".
Are these isolated positions of former socialist bosses? Not just that. The call by Michel Rocard follows a series of initiatives that have appeared on the surface of this presidential campaign. Daniel Cohn-Bendit of the Green party, already for several months, has been calling for the constitution of a pole around which gather the centrists, socialists and ecologists. In a more obscure manner, anonymous groupings of personages or top socialist officials have frequently adventured into the debate. The first, called "Spartacus" [1], in the form of unqualified support for François Bayrou. The second, baptised "Les Graques" [2], calling for a recomposition of the center on the basis of and "ideological softening" of the PS that would lead it to a greater acceptance of the "market economy". On 13 April, Dominique Strauss-Kahn launched a nebulous call for an "anti-Sarkozy front" between the two tours of the election, and this before the first vote.
Perfectly orchestrated, carried by the media, these initiatives, to which one can add other positions to be taken in coming days, take the form, in these days preceding the election, of a veritable political offensive. If the "third track" offered one after the other by Barre, Veil, Delors, Rocard and Giscard never saw the light of day, its promoters hope today to transform the blurred, undefined landscape of this election into a window of political opportunity through which such a transformation can take form. And to build such a front, to count on the strong current of hostility which has crystallized around the UMP candidate, whose failure is in the process of becoming the major issue in this balloting.
What are the consequences of these calls for a recomposition around the center?
For the present, these calls maintain confusion and give credit to the idea if la vote utile (the useful ballot) in favor of François Bayrou, who repeats over and over that he is the candidate best positioned to beat the candidate of the UMP (Sarkozy). They arrive in aid of a UDF candidate handicapped by the virtual character of the majority of "national unity" upon which he proposes to base his political power in the event he wins the election. Joined by several personages on the Right (François Goulard, Azouz Begag, Corrine Lepage), this initiative manages to render credible the political configuration defended by the leader of the Center Right, which up to then had been viewed as that of a solitary individual. "It is for me a very great hope of gathering forces well beyond the traditional dividing lines", he declared on Sunday in Nantes.
These calls suddenly render fragile the socialist candidate, who tries to draw a distinction, all the while endeavoring not to injure the sensibilities of the UDF voters, upon whose votes she counts in the event she manages to make it into the second tour. "We must respect the voters: leave the voters free, don't bother them with bargaining and manipulation, back-room deals — we'll take another look between the two tours", she affirmed, yesterday on RCM-Info. "All these negotiations in advance of the first tour, under the pretext of forming an anti-Sarkozy front, they do not address the problem at hand."
Is it ineluctable, the perspective of such a slide on the political chessboard?
Forces exist, in favor of a pole PS-UDF. They count on the idea according to which the French Left must go the distance in its ideological capitulation which will lead it to melt completely and definitively into the mold of economic requirements dictated by globalization and the iron laws of capitalist economy. Such a configuration will complete the conservative revolution launched in the 1980's, under the heading of "return to rigor". This perspective, as with the possible recomposition, Italian style, of the French Right under Nicolas Sarkozy, will launch a shift to the right, already visible, on the political and ideological chessboard.
But this scenario meets with a certain resistance. François Hollande and several socialist leaders have excluded any alliance with the Center Right. "François Bayrou, he is on the Right", repeated Laurent Fabius on Canal Plus, deploring the "trouble" created by Michel Rocard's proposition. Characterizing the action as "intellectual Meccano", the Green party candidate Dominique Voynet says she is convinced that "the Left and the Right, that has a meaning". On the contrary, Olivier Besancenot and Arlette Laguillier seemed, this weekend, to take a turn to the Right, the former demanding a "right to opposition", the latter sending Royal and Sarkozy back to back.
"A Left that looks to the center, that's no way to beat the right", warned Marie-George Buffet. For the candidate of the popular and anti-liberal left [3], only a "left-wing political program" will permit Ségolène Royal to win against the Right. This is a political program that only a pole of social transformation anchored in a left-wing majority can guarantee. Hence the importance of her score and that of the PCF in the legislative elections. Michel Rocard, correctly deplored, last September at the Summer University of the UDF, the traces left by the influence of the Communist Party, primarily in economic matters. "This mentality has always caused damage in our country", he said with annoyance.
[1] Leader of the uprising by Roman slaves in the year -71. Also reference to the Spartacusbund, a group of socialist revolutionaries that separated from the social-democratic movement in 1915, headed by Karl Leibknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin. Antimilitarist, and at the origins of the German communist party.
[2] Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, Roman tribune in the year -133, redistributed public lands, controlled by the rich, to the poor. The movement did not take root, Gracchus was massacred during an uprising provoked by the reactionary patricians.
[3] terminology adopted for the presidential election by the PCF candidate


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Winter is coming to Norway. As I write, on the shortest day of the year, the sun rises at 9:45am and sets at 3:30pm. Since it is common for children here to have to wear their woolen long underwear until mid-May, we have a lot of winter yet ahead of us.
Norwegian culture has developed coping mechanisms over the years to help people 'stay cozy' through long, dark winters and bad weather. "Koselig" ("Cozy") is one of the first words one learns upon moving to Norway; the word, or some related root word, is ubiquitous throughout Norwegian culture. To say that you enjoyed a social gathering, you would say, "Vi koste oss," "We cozied ourselves." At the end of the week, people look forward to their "fredagskos," their "Friday cozy." When the weather outside is frightful, Norwegians love to "cozy themselves" in front of a roaring fire and read, knit, or veg out in front of the television.
Because the weather is so lousy in Bergen (25 days of rain in the last 30), we do watch more TV in the winter than we do the rest of the year. We mostly enjoy sports we didn't get to watch at home, like Norwegian favorite biathlon (which combines cross-country skiing and target shooting) and the family favorite, ski jumping. My 4-year-old insists ski jumping is her future. I'm glad we live somewhere with free healthcare.
We watch winter sports on TV in part to fill the NFL-shaped hole in our lives and in part because, well, there's not much else on that appeals to our still-rather-American tastes. Recently, Norway's public broadcasting system, NRK, has started to garner international attention for being exceptionally, spectacularly slow. Earlier this year, the New York Times gently mocked their enormously popular program on firewood, featuring expert tips on chopping, drying and stacking it, followed by eight hours of a fire burning in a fireplace, "all night long, in suspensefully unscripted configurations." Riveting stuff.
This fall, NRK aired a four-hour documentary taking viewers through the process of how a wool sweater is made, from the sheep shearing to the sewing of the final seams. They then devoted an additional five hours of airtime to an attempt to break the knitting world record. Said the producer, "it's kind of ordinary TV but very slow, although they'll be knitting as fast as they can" (Yahoo). Unfortunately, I missed the broadcast and so can only imagine the drama that five hours of fast knitting can create.
This week it was announced that "Slow-TV" ("Sakte-TV") is the 2013 "New Word of the Year" here in Norway, and Television Business International has named Slow-TV the year's "Best New Format" (TBI).
The thing is, Slow-TV is not really all that new in Norway. Their first live slow broadcast was in 2009, when they covered the scenic train trip from Oslo to Bergen, minute by minute, for 7 hours and 16 minutes. Thirty percent of Norway's entire population watched. A year later, when the program was exported to Danish TV, 170,000 Danes tuned in, at a time of day when the channel was normally off the air. This suggested to the network that it "wasn't just Norwegian patriotism driving viewers to their TV screens," but a broader "need for a soothing, anti-overload experience" (NRK).
(Here's a ten-minute clip from Bergensbanen, worth viewing in full-screen):
A year later, NRK cameras followed one of the Hurtigruten, the fleet of ships that has transported people and goods up the coast of Norway, from Bergen north to the Russian border at Kirkenes (1814 miles), for over 100 years. The resulting 134-hour broadcast can still be viewed from the program's website, where they also discuss their reasons for producing such programming.
"Primarily because we're a publicly funded Public Service Broadcaster with a responsibility towards Norwegian culture; a responsibility for covering things important to the inhabitants of a small country, a country that in spite of, or perhaps because of, our significant oil wealth has a vulnerable culture. And programmes like this aren't economically feasible for a commercial channel; to a large amount of the public it probably seems completely useless, but to some of our viewers it can have a very high value, be something they wouldn't get in any other way, and in twenty or two hundred years, it will be a strange document of life at the edge of civilisation from a different time" (NRK).
(You can stream the entire 134-hour program at nrk.no/hurtigruten/.)
Though I may not yet be sufficiently Norwegianized to sit through so many hours of fire crackling/sheep shearing/coastline passing, it's not difficult to appreciate the state's efforts to preserve these aspects of Norwegian culture that make Norway Norway, and provide such a koselig "anti-overload experience." We might laugh at the slow hokiness of some of this programming, but as a friend of mine commented when I posted a status about this phenomenon on Facebook: "Remember this when you return to the land of bloodbath-and-misogyny network programming."
I leave you with "The Cabin," a video from the Ylvis brothers poking fun at cabin culture, another slow way Norwegians like to unplug and cozy themselves.


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Cold Steel Self Defense Pepper Spray
Cold Steel gets in the Self Defense Pepper Spray market big time! They have done an excellent job of improving on the products presently available and offering them at a great price. www.knifecenter.com has their full assortment.
There are many unfortunate people who have endured the terror of a violent assault. The luckier ones that survived these crimes are often changed forever. There remains, long after the incident has passed, a paralyzing loss of confidence, a circumspect mistrust of strangers, and a thorough foreboding about the world in general. In short, they got away with their lives, but are now fearful of everything. It's as if they get victimized twice!
Those who have never suffered a life-threatening assault dread the possibility of it happening to ourselves or our loved ones. The mind numbing idea of being unable or insufficiently prepared to defend one's self is too alarming to consider.
It's unfortunate as well that we cannot always count on assistance from an already overburdened police force. Law enforcement agencies aren't equipped to respond to every call, no matter how desperate, and often by the time they are called it's too late for them to do much more than assess the scene and call an ambulance.
There were over 1,408,337 violent crimes committed in 2007, and with the general loss of economic prosperity we've had in 2008, that number is surely going to continue to rise. The statistics from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program paint a grim picture of the world we live in today:
* One murder occurs every 31 minutes (that's 46 a day!)
* One forcible rape happens every 5.8 minutes (that's 248 a day!)
* One robbery transpires every 1.2 minutes (that's 1200 a day!)
* And one aggravated assault takes place every 36.8 seconds (that's 2345 a day!)
The only answer to this threat of physical violence is a thoughtful plan of self-defense. Since many men and the vast majority of women lack the physical strength and martial skill necessary to repel a violent attack it's important this plan includes some sort of weapon that could be used as an equalizer.
A firearm is the ultimate equalizer, and it's the one that comes first to most people's minds. And it truly is. That is if you're well trained in its proper use, and know fully its limitations as well as its advantages. A person untrained in the use of firearms may think they can just pull their handgun out of their pocket or purse and start blasting away. It's a dangerous kind of confidence. You could get hurt, and you might hurt or kill somebody other than your attacker. So what's the answer? A non-lethal weapon like Inferno that's instantly available, easy to use and totally effective.
What is Inferno?
Inferno is a new pepper canister weapon from Cold Steel that will turn the biggest, meanest, most violent criminal into helpless molten wax at your feet. Unlike other pepper sprays you may have heard about, Inferno deploys a highly targetable foam that contains 8% Oleoresin Capsicum and 2% black pepper. It dissolves into a liquid on contact (this liquefaction effect is tactically important, since other sprays remain "foamy" -like a pie in the face-and make it possible for your assailant to wipe the foam from his face and chuck it at you). One good shot in the face with Inferno will dilate the capillaries of the eyes causing temporary blindness. It will induce choking, coughing and nausea and most importantly trigger and immediate and massive sneeze reflex (due to the atomized black pepper particles) that will drag the super hot Habanero chili extract deep into the mucous membranes of the sinus cavities of the nose, throat and lungs causing them to swell up and prevent all but desperate life support breathing. In short Inferno will melt any attacker(s) into the ground and leave them totally incapacitated for a considerable period of time giving you ample opportunity to escape and summon the police.
Advantages of Inferno
1. Highly Targetable – because it's a foam and not a spray or fog, it's easy to hit your target accurately indoors or outdoors with Inferno. It won't contaminate an entire room. This makes it ideal for use in confined spaces like homes, shops, offices and parking garages.
2. Not Overly Sticky – Many pepper gels on the market are advertised to stick like glue and that is a pretty good description as they adhere so firmly, that it's difficult to clean away the crusty, over sprayed contamination that ends up on furniture, automobiles or on your clothing. In contrast Inferno, while being extremely effective can be easily cleaned off with ordinary soap and water.
3. Safe – Inferno's unique formulation will not blister the skin or burn the corneas of the eyes.
4. High Quality – Unlike other brands, Inferno uses the absolute best HFC134A aerosol propellant, which is the same propellant, used in bronchial inhalers. The force of this propellant never diminishes no matter how much you have already sprayed out of the canister. In contrast, competing brands use Hydrocarbon, which is flammable, less consistent and less powerful. Some use nitrogen, which leaks out of the canister over time and supplies an inconsistent pressure.
5. Non Flammable and Awesomely Effective – Inferno, as mixed, is non-flammable and while the HFC134A propellant is one of the more expensive alternatives, we use it because it breaks up and atomizes the particles of chili pepper and black pepper 2,000 times finer than other propellants on the market, making Inferno more effective as a stopping agent, because more material is inhaled/absorbed by your attacker. This makes Inferno very effective on people who are intoxicated on drugs or so enraged that they do not feel pain during their violent rampages.