text:
McIlroy Is Playing a Long Game
What do you get for $100 million? By spending that kind of money on an endorsement deal for Rory McIlroy, Nike NKE 0.09 % hoped that it was buying the ability to talk to a highly competitive global market comprising 55 million golfers with the current generation's most charismatic player for a mouthpiece. But first, Nike has to hope that McIlroy's form improves. Quickly.
The 23-year-old from Northern Ireland, whose deal with Nike is reported to be worth at least $100 million over the next five years, missed the cut at the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship on Friday, his first outing as a Nike pitchman. Worse still, in a desperate attempt to make the weekend, McIlroy gave up on his new sponsor's putter—the Nike Method—and went back to his tried and trusted short stick, one designed by Scotty Cameron and made by Nike's archrival of the golf manufacturing world, Titleist.
This won't have pleased Nike's marketing department, but there are bigger battles to be won. In terms of sales, putters are a mere sideshow. Industry experts agree that the key battleground is the market for drivers, accounting for over 50% of manufacturers' revenue.
Distance, it seems, is the handicap golfer's version of happiness, the one part of the game for which they are prepared to pay an ever higher price.
"Our research shows that golfers love to hit it long; distance is the number one reason golfers buy a new driver," Cindy Davis, the president of Nike Golf, said in a recent interview. "Plus, as more golfers determine their purchases based on launch monitor testing and club fitting, distance is measurable and even further influences the purchasing decision."
At a news conference, McIlroy gave a flavor of what's to come. He talked about his own brand ("It's authentic," he said) and about the Nike "family." Then he moved onto the hard sell. "I'm hitting it further. I thought I was hitting it far before, but this is really taking it to a new level."
The marketing talk, however, was soon undermined by his performance. McIlroy violently duck-hooked his new Nike cavity-backed driver behind the hospitality boxes on the 18th hole in Thursday's first round, with videos of the shot circulating soon after.
McIlroy chalked it up to rustiness and said he hoped that intensive practice with his new clubs would ready him for an assault on the Masters at Augusta, the first major championship of the year.
But McIlroy and Nike were just the highest profile story amid a slew of new product launches from all the major golf manufacturers in January. Each one is pushing a similar message. The aim, as one marketing executive put it, was to "own the distance conversation."
This is not new. TaylorMade launched the first commercially viable metal driver in 1979, the Pittsburgh Persimmon. The Pittsburgh Persimmon started a space race between the research and development departments of the major club makers. And one unsung character in this story is Ron Streck, the journeyman U.S. player was the first to win a PGA Tour event with a metalwood, the Houston Open in 1981.
Then in the early 1990s Callaway's Big Bertha transformed the landscape, grabbing over a third of market share and dominating sales. Big Bertha's legacy can be seen in the ad campaigns in the golf press. "You're about to get a whole lot longer," screams Callaway's new campaign for its X Hot driver, carrying the promise of "outrageous ball speed, explosive distance."
Adidas-TaylorMade, the market leader, launched its Rocketballz range in 2012 claiming that in 2011 it gave better players 17 extra yards and now, it would give them an additional 10.
But it's likely that Streck wouldn't recognize today's clubs. Adidas-TaylorMade's new driver offers its users a dizzying 168 separate settings, according to the company's brand director Jason Howarth.
"Innovation differentiates our product along with our ability to inspire and connect with the golfer," says Davis of Nike. "We've found golfers always respond to innovation. If the product is innovative and can make them better, golfers will want to put the product in their bag. Must-have products always create opportunities."
Davis added that revenues for Nike Golf were $726 million in the fiscal year ending May 31, 2012, a 10% increase over the previous year's $658 million.
In the hands of a player with an 18 handicap, these new clubs offer a harmless distraction and the chance of greater enjoyment. But when used by elite tour professionals, golf's distance conversation takes a more serious turn, according to Gil Hanse, the leading golf course architect.
"We're at a point where something has to be done," Hanse said. "We're talking about a tiny proportion of golfers where distance is an issue, a small handful of tour players and accomplished amateurs. Whether its bifurcation or rolling the ball back I don't know what the answer is, but the environmental question is really the one that is difficult for the manufacturers to refute."
The new normal in golf course design is the 8,000-yard layout.
"Two hundred acres is the new standard for a golf course compared to 150 acres a few years ago," Hanse said. "And 120 of those acres have to be maintained and watered as opposed to 80. You really are going down an unsustainable path. From a manufacturers standpoint, how can you argue against that? They can talk a lot about marketing, about player endorsements and how there's always been the same set of rules, etc., but the environmental argument is the winning one.
Water is not the only commodity in short supply, said Andrea Sartori, head of KPMG's golf advisory business. Money to build and maintain courses is also hard to come by.
"There is also an issue of financial sustainability," he said. "It is costing more to acquire land, and land is expensive. So if the size of a course has moved from 150 to 200 acres you are immediately growing the acquisition cost by 33%, which is massive."
Money and water have long been the nemesis of the club golfer. But they have yet to get in the way of the marketers' long game.


text:
by Melissa Brunner
Our high school track coach, Mr. R, had a simple way to settle disputes over his lineups. If you thought you should be running an event instead of someone he listed, you took it to the track. The "challenge" system gave these runoffs the final say in who ran. (Although, I will say, Mr. R was a pretty fair guy, so the challenges were rarely needed or used!)
The memory of the system came back to me while following the debate over who should get the final slot on the U.S. women's 100 meter team in track and field. Jeneba Tarmoh and Allyson Felix were found to finish in a dead heat for third place at the trials. USTAF didn't have a tiebreak in place to deal with this particular situation. Tarmoh and Felix focused on their 200 meter preps while the powers that be tried to figure out what to do. With the 200 complete (Felix qualified for the Olympics, Tarmoh did not), USTAF announced Sunday that the women would compete in a runoff Monday night for the final 100 meter spot on the Olympic team.
While some have called the situation a debacle, I was excited by the prospect of a runoff to resolve it. Talk about drama - a winner-take-all showdown! Really, what other way COULD you decide it? Would it really have been fair to look at qualifying and semi-final times, where runners often back off at the finish line once they know they're advancing? Would it really have been fair to look at finishes in prior meets, when runners peak at different times? Of course, if someone would get hurt in a runoff, there'd be second-guessing, but what's the alternative? It would be nice to say just send all four, but that's not an option. So do you just send two?
Alas, we'll never know. Earlier Monday, word came down that the runoff would not happen. Tarmoh conceded the spot to Felix. Tarmoh did not give a reason, but, just Sunday, commented that she felt she finished third in the initial race and had earned the spot. Instead of a runoff, Tarmoh will now be an alternate and could still run on the 4x100 relay team.
Timing technology is so advanced these days that it will likely be awhile before we see such a situation arise again. We'll see if USTAF writes runoffs into the rule book. Do you think they should?

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Knicks, Nets and Reality
We are still Basketball City. I swear. The wheels are not off. The fantasy survives. What was the fantasy again? OK, so it's looking a little rougher than it did in November. Rougher than it did just 72 hours ago. Nobody should be making title plans at the moment. (Was anybody making title plans? Really? Sort of crazy, no?) The Eastern Conference finals might be a stretch. Let's get to the postseason first. Just pack everyone into the car, OK? Get some Dunkin'. Crank some Taylor Dayne. Drive all the way to April. Time to sort it out later.
This is the deal. This is what you get when you play a basketball season that lasts/slogs 82 games. Peaks upon peaks, valleys under valleys. It goes on forever, one gigantic David Stern guitar solo at the karaoke bar. Last year was so crisp and civilized, thanks to that lockout. Fifty games! Clean and compact. Perfect. But 82 games? That's a lot of room to noodle, wander, write a bad novel. Lots of meandering plotlines. Lots of characters you meet in November who make no sense in March. You have to be patient. Plenty of pages left.
Here's what we know. The New York Knicks are 32-17. The Brooklyn Artisanal Farm-to-Table Nets are 30-22. That's quite good! First and second place in the Atlantic Division. No shame, either of them. They're pretty much certain to make the playoffs. There is no reason for midseason panic. It's not even the All-Star break. The Charlotte Bobcats aren't mathematically eliminated. The Lakers have only gone through two coaches. It's not a crisis. It's not…those new Golden State Warriors uniforms.
(A word about those Warriors uniforms: You have to be pretty oblivious to the general level of NBA merchandising to consider this canary yellow short-sleeve jersey to be some kind of sartorial outrage. I mean, it might not be a Tom Ford tuxedo, but a sleeved jersey is not even in the bottom half of NBA fashion disasters. Short-sleeved Warriors are not a faux pas on par with, say, the entire history of Toronto Raptors uniforms. The Warriors will look like pro cyclists, ready for the Giro d'Italia. Or aerodynamic 200-meter sprinters. It's OK. It's not the worst. Remember the uniform Charles Barkley wore when he was a Houston Rocket? That was the worst.)
But back to our local teams. Let's go back to Sunday. In the afternoon, the Knicks fell to the Los Angeles Clippers; in the evening, the Nets were rolled over by the San Antonio Spurs. The scores were 102-88 and 111-86, respectively. A gloomy finish to a weekend full of snow.
Now we can sit here and hit each other over the head with garbage can lids and argue over which of New York's teams is the better one—it's almost surely the Knicks; don't hit me with a lid—or we can cut to the bigger truth of what Sunday represented, which is the realization that while both teams are better than expected, neither team is, you know, ready. Like ready-ready. When it comes to hanging with the NBA elite, there's trouble. Nagging imperfections come into focus. The Spurs ran away from Brooklyn in the second half. The Knicks couldn't defend or rebound or keep up with the L.A.C. despite 42 points from Carmelo Anthony.
We knew these weaknesses existed, but after Sunday we know it a little more. The Knicks and Nets have been feasting on the NBA's low-level outfits (the Knicks are 20-6 against teams with records under .500; the Nets are 20-4) but have struggled against better teams (the Knicks are 12-11 versus teams over. 500, the Nets a measly 10-18 after Monday's OT win over Indiana). They're not there. Both could beat the Celtics in a seven-game series. But here's the thing: They could totally lose to the Celtics in a seven-game series, too. Do you want a piece of Chicago, with or without Derrick Rose? Indiana?
Because this city is this city—prone to hyperbole—there will be rushes to judgment. "This team is going backwards," Magic Johnson said of the Knicks. Rumors have swirled about the possibility that the Knicks might move second-year guard Iman Shumpert, which would be easy to brush aside if it didn't make a perfect kind of Knicks-style sense, a team that cannot man-on-man defend trading away its best man-on-man defender. ESPN reported Monday that the Nets are in the hunt for Atlanta's Josh Smith.
You are not convinced. And they are not convinced. Postseason success feels more vital for the Knicks than it does Brooklyn—if the Knicks fail to push out of the first round, there may be a meltdown—but it's still early. They haven't even had the dunk contest. The Rangers have only played 11 games. "Les Miz" remains in theaters. We're still Basketball City in New York and Brooklyn. I think. Pretty sure. Got to fix some stuff. Come visit in April.
Write to Jason Gay at email@example.com


text:
I would like to see special offers for my region
The Website has been restructured. The page you have selected has a new address. For further information, please visit our Homepage.
Please update your bookmark accordingly.
Please use the calendar to choose the respective flight dates.
The prices displayed may vary and should serve as a guide for your selected journey. The end price is subject to change depending on the selected payment option. Seats are limited and may not be available on all days/flights.


text:
Starving hackers
From Noisebridge
The nature of creative work means it doesn't always pan out financially, so every now and then even the best of us can have a cash flow problem. This is pretty serious in San Francisco due to its high cost of living. We want you to come to Noisebridge, but we also want you to have a place to call your own and to be able to get to and from there safely. Many of the following items are linked to from San Francisco Homeless Resource, which is a fantastic resource for anyone who finds themselves in a tough situation in our great city.
Generalized Resources
- The SF Help Charts offer a variety of guides to local social services including hot meals, pantries, shelter, medical care, mental health care, and neighborhood assistance.
- GlideSF offers a variety of programs and services including emergency shelter placement, women's services, health services, a hot meals program, and bagged groceries programs.
- Couchsurfing
- Tenderloin housing clinic
- Larkin Street Youth Center provides emergency shelter placement and a variety of other services to at-risk or homeless youth under 19.
- The bike kitchen is close enough that you can walk to it, and by volunteering your time you can earn enough credit to build your own bike from their spare parts. Some Noisebridge members have bikes from the bike kitchen and although they took some elbow grease, they work great.
- The Bay Bridge bike bridge is a cheap way to get across the Bay Bridge. It only runs during commute hours, but it's $1 cash each way (exact change only), much less than any other option.
- Food not bombs provides food nearby on occasion.
- The SF Food Bank offers a variety of ways to get free or reduced cost food.
- The Print Lists offer a multitude of SF based programs for food and various other social services.
- GlideSF provides a daily Free Meals program with three service times, and unlimited repeat trips through the line until doors close. Recommend you get in line early for a quick trip through.
- Breakfast: 8am - 9am
- Lunch: Noon - 1:30pm
- Dinner: 4pm - 5:30pm (Monday - Friday) and bagged lunches served Noon - 1:30pm (Saturday & Sunday)
- Breakfast: 8am - 9am
- San Francisco Personal Assisted Employment Services (PAES)
- Noisebridge Jobs mailing list
- SF CAAP General Assistance
- Dr. Jesus coordinates computer loans and donations through a generous hardware grant to Noisebridge.
- San Francisco Public Library, Mission Branch is nearby and has computers available to use.


text:
My Account
Sign in or Sign up
0 Items
Its always time for the Sports Authority!
If you are a sports enthusiast and like to tell time in style, the Sports Authority is your store for great brands in sporting goods watches. From Armitron, Callway, Casio and La Crosse, through other great styles from Dakota Watch Co. and G-Shock, we strive to keep our customers on time and up to speed with all their performance and time telling needs.
Are you looking for a digital sports watch, a watch with multiple timekeeping functionalities and underwater capabilities, solar watches, or just a nice simple dress watch? We have them all in different styles, different watch band materials, gold watches, silver watches, leather band watches, and several all sport analog watches for your workout.
Do you like your watch to be the latest technology in timekeeping? Sports Authority carries a great selection of digital watches with great LCD display technology for easy viewing. Alarms, chronographs, dual time and military time options are common amongst Sports Authority�s collection. Maybe you want a wrist top GPS unit watch, Garmin Forerunner has several units in multiple colors that might be just the fit for you. If you are an active or athletic person, sports fashion and functional performance are what you need and the G-Shock line from Casio boasts a lot of what you might be looking for.
Watches also make great gifts! If you know your friends and family are in need of the latest in sporting goods fashion or functional watches, go no further.
So make some time for the Sports Authority, where we strive to bring the best in men�s women�s and kids watches to all our customers, we hope you enjoy our collection of all the best brands and technology for your sporting goods watches shopping experience!
Save 10% Sign Up to be the first to save!
Need Help Online?
Need Help In Store?
Get to Know Us
Quick Links
In the Spotlight
Our Stores
Help Center
© 2015 Sports Authority.
© 2016 Sports Authority. All Rights Reserved.


text:
How can I install packages for system-wide use, but without requiring the
ls-R database to be updated?
The texlive documentation indicates that user specific packages should be placed in
TEXMFHOME while packages for multiple users should be placed in
TEXMFLOCAL (both of which are organized by the TeX Directory Structure (TDS)).
On your system, these locations can be found by using
kpsewhich (they are configured as part of the installation, not just as environmental variables):
kpsewhich -expand-var '$TEXMFHOME'
kpsewhich -expand-var '$TEXMFLOCAL'
As pointed out in this answer, the
TEXMFHOME solution does not require the
ls-R database to be updated: packages can just be added here and they will be found.
TEXMFLOCAL location, however, requires that
mktexlsr (
texhash) be run to update the
ls-R database (which must be done as
root if permissions are properly set).
Is there a similar location to
TEXMFHOME that does not require an
ls-R database for system-wide use?
The use case is that a user on a shared system maintains a package that we host in
TEXMFLOCAL. Whenever they change the names of files, the local
ls-R database needs to be updated by an administrator. How can we allow the user to modify the package – including changing file names if needed – without requiring an admin to update
I realize that there will be a performance hit if the database is not used, a separate tree should probably be used. Also, I am sure that the settings for
TEXMFLOCAL could probably be adjusted (by removing it from the
TEXMFDBS?) to obviate the need for
ls-R, but I am looking for a "standard" solution that meshes with the documented
texlive system behaviour.


text:
Follow Us On: Facebook Twitter YouTube
Last Friday, Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) was confronted by Occupy protesters at a fundraiser. The protesters were there taking aim at the role of big money in politics. The fundraiser was charging from $5,000 to $75,000 for a seat. Edwards responded to the protesters as she left the event.
Here's a recap of Public Campaign and Public Campaign Action Fund's (PCAF) work from November 21 through December 2, 2011.
Yesterday, Democratic Caucus Chair, Rep. John Larson, announced that House Democrats would push for several campaign finance proposals in the month of December.
"We continue to believe that this whole system is awash [in] money and needs reform," Larson told reporters in the Capitol. "The public is increasingly wising up to that. I think you're going to see several proposals emanating from our committees and from Democratic leaders in our caucus."
"you know, if it wasn't for special-interest groups coming to see us, we wouldn't have anything to do."
That's a quote from Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) at the 2009 hearing on the Fair Elections Now Act, a bill that would bring a small-dollar matching system to Congress. Now Rep. Harper is leading an effort to eliminate the presidential public financing system.
When news broke on Saturday morning of a leaked memo from a top Washington, D.C. lobbying firm spelling out a plan to undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement, Public Campaign Action Fund issued this press release.
Public Campaign Action Fund sent letters to 20 members of Congress yesterday requesting full disclosure of any benefits they've received from Delta Air Lines as Congress considers the long-term Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization legislation. Delta has been the only airline lobbying on the anti-union National Mediation Board Provision and has been pouring campaign contributions into members' campaign coffers.
House Oversight Committee Chairman, Rep. Darell Issa (R-Calif.), "is pushing for a federal probe of a New York City community organization based on a Fox News report that accused the organization of improperly aiding the Occupy Wall Street movement and linked the group to the now defunct ACORN," according to a story yesterday in the Huffington Post.
"Giving a gift to somebody who makes a decision on behalf of the public. At the end of the day, that's what bribery is."
That was corrupt former Washington, D.C. lobbyist, and recent jailbird, Jack Abramoff, in his interview last night on 60 Minutes. He of all people would know, so let's just get it straight from the horse's mouth.
A recap of Public Campaign and Public Campaign Action Fund's (PCAF) work from October 31 through November 4, 2011.
These quotes from Abramoff that will air on 60 Minutes, obtained by Politico, speak for themselves.
Public Campaign Action Fund
1133 19th Street, NW Suite #900 | Washington, DC 20036
email@example.com | (P) 202.640-5600 | (F) 202.640.5601


text: Earlier this year, I got my hands on the T-Mobile 4G Sonic Hotspot and as always, had to tear it apart as soon as I got it. I never wrote about it because I didn't find anything overly interesting, but now it's the end of the year, and I need to clear some inventory from my brain. If anyone remembers my post on the (older) T-Mobile 4G Hotspot (sans "Sonic"), the main limitation of that device was that the processor is an obscure one that required some digging to get information on. Thankfully, the Sonic variety is much easier to break into. Continue reading


text:
$theTitle=wp_title(" - ", false); if($theTitle != "") { ?>
All right guys tonight was the finale for Canada's first ever Big Brother! With a highly controversial end let's look back on how we got to this night.
For the first part of tonight three part HOH it was an endurance challange. Jillian going in figured she had the advantage as the girls are typically better at endurance challenges than the boys. However tonight's endurance challenge was built for the boys and she was not expecting that. The first challenge was named "No Blood on My Hands". Players had to balance themselves while holding a poll that held up a bucket of blood. The last player standing secured his/her spot in the last part of the HOH . The difficult part about this challenge was the weight of the blood, which caught all the houseguests off guard. After 1hr 33mins Jillian could not hold onto her bucket an longer and she was eliminated. I was glad she dropped first. She went into the competition way too confident telling Emmett she'll win the first part and he'll win the second making sure Gary had no power. At the 4hr mark, Gary dropped his bucket crowning Emmett the winner of the first HOH. Emmett automatically moved on to the final stage and got to sit back while Jillian and Gary duked it out for a spot next to him.
Okay I'm going through a range of emotions right now. When I should be feeling happy and excited I feel kind of sorry and upset that one of the final four left tonight. As we know tonight's episode was yet another one of Big Brother Canada's twists with an Instant Eviction. Arisa let the houseguests know at the beginning of the episode that they only had an hour before the instant eviction ceremony would take place. During that time we were shown the events that transpired after Sunday's nominations ceremony.
Gary and Talla sat beside each other on the block, both with final two deals with the only houseguest that was eligible to cast a vote. At the Power of Veto competition it was by far the most important competition of the season. The winner of tonight's Power of Veto would secure his/her spot along side Jillian in the final three.
Tonight's episode of Big Brother Canada had a light, almost reflective note to it as we were shown the ups and downs of Canada's first season of Big Brother. Before I forget, there wasn't much going on for the Head of Household competition. Everyone was it to win it and it came down to a 3-way tiebreaker. With both Gary and Talla being challenged with numbers it was a cakewalk for Jillian and she walked away with her 4th HOH win for the season. When it came down to the typical "Who wants to see my HOH room?" everyone including Emmett were less than thrilled to do the march up there.
Not surprisingly nothing interesting happened in tonight's episode. However I'll try to give you guys the main points and my thoughts going into the finale. Prior to the eviction we saw Talla and Andrew reaching a breaking point. Both being on the block tensions were running high and with alcohol involved sh*t got cray. Nothing too major happened, after all we have been blessed with a polite bunch of houseguests (yawn), but it did raise questions in peoples heads. During the argument Emmett put his hand over Talla implying he was supporting her in the argument. This struck a cord with Jillian as she wanted to stand up for Andrew and wondered where Emmett was coming from. Emmett eventually explained to her that it's best if the other players think there are holes in their showmance, to secure themselves votes for the jury. Makes no sense to me but whatever floats your boat. We also saw bits from Talla and Gary's family and their views of how they've played the game.
Tonight Big Brother Season 10 Winner and 14 runner up Dan Gheelsing joined the houseguests with one goal in mind, to stir things up! Dan is known for being the first houseguest in Big Brother history to host his own funeral and when all odds were against him, regain control of the house and make it to the end. He is by far one of my favorite players in Big Brother. The houseguests were informed that a mystery player would be joining them via BBMail. This is when Talla's screaming began. I would have evicted her weeks ago, solely based on her screaming. When Dan finally walked through the door he was greeted by a screaming Talla that then leaped onto him. He literally almost carried her down the stairs while she was still one him. After having a sit down with the houseguests he revealed that his presence was not to be welcomed as he was given the power to evict one houseguest right away. Immediately my heart sank because I'd recently been skimming the live feeds and a couple of them I didn't see Gary. Luckily it was one of the several jokes Dan would be "misting" the houseguests with during his stay.
After Thursday's eventful Big Brother Canada episode we picked up at the beginning of the Head of Household competition. Emmett, Andrew, Talla and Gary were battling it out to complete their puzzle first. I thought for sure that Gary would have the advantage but according to him puzzle aren't his forte. Ultimately Emmett managed to make sense of the puzzle and he completed his making him the new HOH. In other words, Jillian and Emmett have the HOH room to themselves again..
Wow! Tonight's episode was the best so far, only because I got to see my favorite Big Brother player of all time Janelle Pierzina!! I'll get to that momentarily but prior to the eviciton ceremony we saw a shaky relationship between Andrew and Talla, Peter tried to explain as many possibly outcomes to the houseguests so that they might save him. Unfortunaltely for him that did not work, by a vote of 2-0 Peter was the next evicted houseguest.
Hmm where to begin, well I'll dive straight into the Power of Veto competition seeing as how nothing note worthy occurred prior to it. For tonight's POV competition it was sleep themed Veto and it was sponsored by the Brick and Serta Mattresses. The competition had 3 rounds. The first was a teeth brushing competition where houseguests had to brush Big Brothers teeth clean. The first 3 to complete this part moved onto the puzzle round, from there the first 2 to complete their puzzle went on a hunt to located the Serta Sheep with a red star on its collar. The first houseguest to locate the sheep, climb the mattress staircase to a bed a lay in it was the winning of tonight's Veto Competition. In addition to Veto the winner was awarded a $10 000 shopping spree to the Brick.


text:
I'm developing a JS widget that can be embedded by 3rd party websites. When widget is shown, it sends request to my site. When this request is received, I know that it was shown to the user and pay website for this view. So I don't want to pay if widget is rendered not at the target website.I think that to verify site's url, I need to send embedding page's url in request parameter when widget is rendered. However, it will be possible to send such request from any place, not only from this site's page.
Is it possible to verify url where widget was placed?


text:
Health & Parenting
Very Early Experiences May Stick in Memory
Dec. 22, 2011 -- The ability to remember our earliest childhood experiences may be in place sooner than experts thought, according to new research.
Some children who played a unique game when they were just 2 years old were able to remember it six years later, the researchers found.
Other researchers who have focused on early memories, however, have said that adults' earliest memories usually start from when they were about 3 1/2 years old.
"We've got relatively objective evidence that people can recall things that happened as young as age 2," says researcher Fiona Jack, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago in New Zealand. "It's not common but [the study] shows it can happen."
The new findings may have implications for the theory of memory development. The new research may also help in legal settings, where it can be important to know if a memory is genuine.
The research is published in the journal Child Development.
Early Experiences & Early Memories Study
Jack and her colleagues report on 46 children who were ages 27 months to a little over 4 years. When they were ages 2 to 4, they all played a unique game called the Magic Shrinking Machine. The researchers watched them play.
The game includes a large black box designed just for the lab research. To make the machine work, the child turns it on by pulling a yellow lever, selecting a toy from an open suitcase, and putting it in a hole in the top of the box. Next, they turn a green handle on the side. When a bell rings, the child opens a red door in the front of the box to retrieve a smaller but identical version of the toy.
Jack and her colleagues interviewed the children and their parents six years later to figure out how well they recalled playing that game.
Only one-fifth of the kids recalled the event. Those who remembered included two children who were under age 3 when they played. About half the parents recalled the game.
Both the parents and the children who had the early memories gave the researchers very similar reports.


text:
GENESEO, N.Y. -- Scott Barry Kaufman, a New York University psychology faculty member specializing in intelligence, will open this year's All-College Hour Distinguished Speaker Series. He will address "Ungifted: Redefining Intelligence" Sept. 25 at 2:30 in the MacVittie College Union Ballroom. Kaufmann is among four speakers scheduled for the series this semester and all addresses are free and open to the public.
Kaufman is a popular science writer known for his research and writing on intelligence and creativity. He is co-founder of The Creativity Post. He won the 2011 Daniel E. Berlyne Award from Division 10 of the American Psychological Association for outstanding research on aesthetics, creativity and the arts by a junior scholar. He also is a 2011-12 recipient of the Mensa International Award for Excellence in Research.
Kaufman's latest book offers reflections on the ways we teach and learn and how those experiences shape our lives moving forward.
Three other speakers scheduled in the series this semester, all at 2:30 p.m. in the MacVittie College Ballroom:
The All-College Hour Speaker Series is sponsored by the college's Division of Student and Campus Life. It supports the College mission and embodies the principles of the The Bringing Theory to Practice Project. The aim of the series is to provide opportunities for the campus community to come together to engage in learning that promotes cognitive, emotional, and civic development. The topics of the series are intended to challenge thinking, spur self-reflection, encourage civil discourse, and promote social responsibility.
Media Contact:
David Irwin
Media Relations Manager
(585) 245-5516


text:
Let $A$ be $m*m$ and B be $n*n$ complex matrices, and consider the linear operator $T$ on the space $C^{m*n}$ of all $m*n$ complex matrices defined by $T(M) = AMB$.
-Show how to construct an eigenvector for $T$ out of a pair of column vectors $X, Y$, where $X$ is an eigenvector for $A$ and $Y$ is an eigenvector for $B^t$.
-Determine the eigenvalues of $T$ in terms of those of $A$ and $B$
-Determine the trace of this operator


text:
SPEEGLEVILLE (January 19, 2013)--A miniature pinscher named Mollie is lucky to be alive after she swallowed a penny back in October.
Mollie's owner Jerri James said she was vomiting and having diarrhea so she took her to an emergency veterinarian.
"They had diagnosed her with pancreatitis which is not common for a dog of her age and size," James said.
Even with the diagnosis Mollie was still touch and go.
"She was feeling better but she was stilling having the diarrhea and her blood count was dropping," said veterinarian Vickie Surbur, Live Oak Veterinary.
A specialist in Dallas ordered an x-ray and discovered a penny which was removed without surgery.
"Pennies have zinc in them, and as your stomach acids start to work on the zinc, the zinc goes into your system and is toxic to your blood," Surbur said.
James was shocked to learn that the cause of Mollie's poor health stemmed from a penny she swallowed.
"I figured they could choke on it, but not to that extreme in that way, I had no idea," James said.
All the special care Mollie needed to survive cost James $9,000 and a penny.
"It's a massive bill that we still have to pay back," James said. "It's a lesson learned, pick up your change, because you have no idea what it can do."
Mollie is doing better now but is still on some medications as her body works to get rid of the remaining zinc in her system.


text:
We have a tricky question in a project using Java & Hibernate, with a model containing bi-directional relationships.
As it's a small project with few users, few entities, and few rows involved in relationships (not more than 100 in 1-n relationships), we don't really need a 2nd level cache.
Operations done with entities are simple: inserting, removing and performing some computations with entities involving relationships loading.
Let say we have two Java entities:
Room and
Furniture. An item of furniture is in one room and a room can have many items of furniture. So
Furniture has a reference to
Room, and
Room has a list of
For the
Delete Furniture action, the easiest thing to do is to retrieve the right
Furniture, and tell the EntityManager to remove the
Furniture. But, to ensure the Java instances remain coherent, we should also remove the
Furniture instance in the list of
Furnitures in the associated
Room. Unfortunately, if the
Room instance is not loaded, a request will be done to the database for nothing if we don't have a cache.
So, what would be a better choice between:
A) Keeping it simple
- In general, no preoccupation about bilateral relationships in java instances coherence, as we don't have 2nd level cache
- Well document the fact that there is a cache per-action, so if specific computations must be done requering bilateral relationships coherence within an action, this action must take care of the coherence
- No boilerplate code for bilateral relationships coherence management needed
- No overhead of loading non-necessary entites
- If a 2nd level cache must be added, then a big effort in refactoring has to be done
B) Keeping it coherent
- Always maintain the bilateral relationship's coherence
- Enable 2nd level cache


text:
I see that term tossed around a lot, in articles relating to HFT, and ultra high frequency data.
It says at higher frequencies, smaller intervals, microstructure noise is very dominant.
What is this microstructure noise that they refer to?
I see that term tossed around a lot, in articles relating to HFT, and ultra high frequency data.
It says at higher frequencies, smaller intervals, microstructure noise is very dominant.
What is this microstructure noise that they refer to?
The term has a different meaning to different people.
It seems that your question refers to the microstructure noise defined in papers about intraday volatility estimates.
Originally, it comes from the bid-ask bounce, i.e. the fact that even if the volatility is zero, you have buyers and sellers at this price and consequently you observe prices at Bid or Ask prices, and not at mid-price. Because of that, if you use the classical quadratic variation estimate for the squared volatility: even with an underlying volatility of zero, you will measure a lot of time $(S_{ask}-S_{bid})^2$. If you model this using an additive noise $\epsilon$, meaning that when the mid-price between $0$ and $T$ follows a discretized Arithmetic Brownian motion ($S_{(k+1)\delta}=S_{k\delta}+\sigma\sqrt{\delta}\xi_{k+1}$), the price you observe at $k\delta$ is $S_{k\delta}+\epsilon_k$ (remember that $\epsilon_k$ is something around half a bid-ask spread, explaining why the traded price is not exactly the mid).
Consequently when you sample $[0,T]$ in $N$ slices (i.e. $\delta=T/N$), the expectation of the quadratic variation, that should be an estimate of $\int_0^T \sigma_t^2 dt$ is:
$$U(N)=\mathbb{E}\left(\sum_{n=1}^{N} (S_{n\delta}+\epsilon_n - (S_{(n-1))\delta} +\epsilon_{n-1}))^2 \right)= \sum_{n=1}^{N} \mathbb{E}(S_{n\delta} - S_{(n-1))\delta} )^2 + \mathbb{E}(\epsilon_n -\epsilon_{n-1})^2$$ since the microstructure noise is assumed to be independent of the price, moroever it is centered and has a variance $v$ so $\mathbb{E}(\epsilon_n -\epsilon_{n-1})^2=2v$.
Our estimate is now: $$U(N)\mathop{\rightarrow}_{N\longrightarrow +\infty}\int_0^T \sigma_t^2 dt+2Nv$$
It means that the estimate of the squared volatility increases linearly with the sampling rate! And technically this comes only from the microstructure noise (with variance $v$).
For more information on microstructure in general (and volatility estimate specifically), you can read:
Some cynical but functional definitions:
The third is the most accurate but the first is the most useful, IMHO. The second is the most common meaning in academic papers.
Some examples:
As you might expect, it is more significant in illiquid markets where there are insufficient players to make efficient market assumptions hold.
There are rigorous econometric definitions, as has already been eluded to by others. For practical purposes, microstructure noise is a component of a price process that exhibits mean reversion on some (possibly time-varying) frequency.
This reversion is particularly attractive to liquidity provisioners, who seek to profit from this noise component (along with other sources of revenue). In a strict sense, liquidity providers do not want to take directional bets on an asset (though in practice this certainly need not be the case).
Since high-frequency market makers are effectively today's liquidity providers in many electronic markets (replacing the traditional NYSE specialists that had a fiduciary responsibility to provide liquidity), it's quite common to see 'HFT' intrinsically linked to 'microstructure noise'.
Be sure to check out the late Fischer Black's article, 'Noise', from JoF, 1985:
Although the paper's direction differs somewhat from your question, it should be of interest.
Noise is a data anomaly that typically occurs in the absence of signal.
In the context of HFT it may refer to order activity (microstructure) motivated by a competing methodology, such as the rebalancing of a mutual fund portfolio to match the composition of the S&P.


text:
The Susan B. Allen Memorial Hospital Auxiliary will be holding its annual Membership Coffee & Guest Day event on Oct. 25 at Trinity United Methodist Church, 450 Eunice, El Dorado.
Guest speaker Pat Jones will speak on the mission of Dress for Success Wichita. This organization promotes
ongoing career development assistance to women re-entering the workforce. These women have been referred to them by homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and job training programs.
For those interested in the SBA Auxiliary, this is the meeting to attend for a time of friendship, food and fun. RSVP to Thelma Lore at 321-4859 or Nancy Hamel at 323-0673 by Oct. 22.
Location, ST | website.com


text: "(A) recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, found that 60 percent of respondents support increasing taxes on incomes more than $250,000 a year, including a meaningful 39 percent of Republicans. ... However, when you ask the public what the top tax rate should be, you get a completely different picture of reality. In a survey conducted by The Hill in February, 61 percent of likely voters said the top tax rate should be 25 percent or less, a rate that is substantially lower than the present top rate, demonstrating majority support for lowering taxes below what they are today. ... Only 4 percent supported a top tax rate of 40 percent, which is closest to the proposal of President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats to increase the top rate to 39.6 percent. This is worth repeating: Only 4 percent of the public supports the tax rate Democrats are trying to force successful small businesses and individuals to pay."


text:
The Comm*Unity First Year Service Learning Experience is designed to bring together service-minded incoming freshman commuters to participate in community service projects. The program provides an opportunity for students to develop leadership skills, strong friendships, and share rewarding experiences while engaging in uplifting community service.
Participants will create a series of service projects throughout the fall and spring semester and attend an Alternative Break over spring break. An Alternative Break is a trip where a group of students participate in a week of volunteer service during Spring Break.
The Comm*Unity experience supports students by connecting them with an NYU faculty member and 2 student advisors (one undergraduate student, one graduate students) to help create the community service projects.
The Commuter Leadership Upperclass Experience (CLUE!) is a new program for 2014-2015 designed specifically for sophomore, junior, and senior commuter & off campus students to learn about various topics that correlate to the different offices located throughout the university.
Students will be given the opportunity to participate in bi-weekly interactive educational workshops that would provide them with resources and connections to both students and staff members. These workshops will also focus on leadership development and character building.
There will be an outing once a month that will provide students with first hand experience and knowledge about the topic of the month. The group will be led by an undergraduate student leader, with the support of Student Resource Center staff.


text:
Competition for the Kids of any age.
Colour in our outline of Sam and have your picture on our website.
Simply colour in this black and white outline of Sam, either using your computer or pencils or crayons (you remember those, don't you?)
Draw a picture of Sam enjoying himself and send it back to us either by email, fax or snail mail.
Here are a few examples to get you thinking.
Home |
Shop |Events|
Technical Library |
Help | Search
J James Pty Ltd
"The Architectural Hardware Expert"
260 Bronte Rd Waverley. NSW 2024
Phone 612 8095 0116 Fax 612 9388 0442
mail - firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Fetching the remote, getting stuff from the fridge, opening and closing doors — Jackson the Australian Shepherd mix does it all.
And he learned it all by grabbing his owner a beer:
I started teaching him to get me beers from the fridge when he was young (about 10 months I think). He perfected it in about a month. All the other tricks are based on getting me a beer (i.e. opening/closing doors, picking things up, and placing different items in my hand).
Now that's a good boy.


text:
When I check for price tags for MySQL, I see a clause called "1-4 socket server" or "5+ Socket Server".. what does this mean?
"Socket" in generic term means Inter Communication Protocol. For MySQL, a socket unix file helps to communicate between MySQL server and MySQL client within local server, and there is only one as far as I know per MySQL server instance.
Please correct me if my understanding is wrong. Kindly shed some light what is meant by 4, 5+ sockets as I see cost increases as socket numbers rises. Also, what are the advantages of the higher sockets?


text:
The arts are global at Grinnell. Not only can you learn to play an instrument, you can be part of the Zimbabwean Mbira Ensemble. Not only can you learn how to draw and sculpt, you can help to curate an art show of works by Francisco Goya and Pablo Picasso for the Faulconer Gallery. Don't just act in a play: act in the first U.S. production of British playwright Steve Waters's work The Contingency Plan.
In other words, our fine arts faculty, our events planning groups and our student organizations(like the Public Events Committee, the Cultural Films Committee, SGA Films, SGA Concerts Committee or Writers @ Grinnell) know that creativity is worldwide. That's why every weekend and almost every weekday bring an opportunity to see a film, watch a performance, hear a piece of music, or view art created by an artist from outside of the United States. In addition, Grinnell students have opportunities to work with international artists in residence, like Portuguese artist Marta de Menezes or the Kunqu Opera Company from Suzhou, China.
You can even go abroad and do art—like studying painting at the Louvre in Paris, or doing a summer internship at an advertising agency in Vietnam.
Grinnell puts no national boundaries on the power of the imagination.
- Galina Aksenova, Professor of Film at the Moscow Art Theater School, led a six-week unit in the course on The History of Russian Film, sponsored by the Center for International Studies.
- Craig Quintero, Assistant Professor of Theatre, has his students work with Taiwanese actors before performing at the summer theatre festival in Avignon, France.
- The Latin American Ensemble focuses on a different style of Latin music every semester, and the selected pieces are presented to the Grinnell community at the end of each term.
- After graduating with a Theatre major in 2003, Per Janson trained at the Accademia dell'Arte in Arezzo, Italy.
- The World Music Instrument Collection holds over 325 instruments, including a kete drum and bell ensemble associated with the traditional chiefs of the Akan peoples of southern Ghana.
- The German Department hosts a contemporary German writer every spring semester who teaches a seven-week short course as the German-Writer-in-Residence.
- The Grinnell Singers have performed in Romania, Bulgaria and Istanbul.
- Faulconer Gallery prints by William Hogarth, Francisco Goya, Honoré Daumier, Käthe Kollwitz and Pablo Picasso as part of its permanent collection. Drawings from the former Soviet Union and graphic work from Eastern Europe and the Baltic States were acquired in the 1980s and 1990s.


text:
Does anybody here have a good grasp on how to successfully control the planes in Battlefield Heroes?
I've fiddled with the sensitivity settings so at least I can bank and whatnot more quickly, but some of the aerial dogfighting and troop-gunning that I've seen seem way beyond my reach.
Any advice on the best way to manage this?


text:
The Chinese Folk Music Orchestra from the Qingdao University of Science and Technology, in its present form, is comprised of some 30 music performance major undergraduates, which are directed by Mrs. Sun Pei Shan and conducted by Mr. Liu Jia respectively.
The orchestra has performed more than 30 concerts for international audiences receiving a warm welcome from America, Germany, Italy, Belgium, France, Israel, and Korea. The result has been a growing reputation for artistic excellence and an open door for the university's international cultural exchange.
The Qingdao University Folk Orchestra will be performing a wide variety of traditional Chinese folk music, compositions from modern Chinese composers, plus some numbers of European classic composers and popular American compositions. This variety of genres will demonstrate the versatility of Chinese traditional instruments some of which have been in their present from for three millennia!


text:
Hi acinteyyo,
You are right. Career and work entail dukkha, marriage and family entail dukkha, single life entails dukkha, and -guess what- monastic life also entails dukkha. Some think that monastic life is free of dukkha, or at least easier, but that's an illusion. What monastic life does is that it puts you (hopefully) in a better position to deal with dukkha.
It is important to understand that you cannot escape dukkha, no matter what you do. There is no running away from dukkha. But you can learn to avoid unnecessary dukkha and learn to manage the unavoidable part skilfully. You don't need to become a monk in order to do that.
While the avoidance of dukkha is skilful in some situations, one must realise that it makes a very poor life goal. If the supreme goal in life is the avoidance of dukkha, that's a bit like dodging life itself. I would not recommend this approach. Instead, follow the path that you recognise to be of true value.
Cheers, Thomas


text:
Main Content
- 600D Polyester
- Approximately 12.5" x 13.5" x 7"
- Dual carry straps
- Heat-sealed, leak-proof liner
- Holds 30 cans plus ice
- Imported
- Officially licensed collegiate product
- Screen print graphics
- Zippered closure
- Brand: Logo Inc.
Gators Customers also liked:
Special event items are produced by manufacturers only after the outcome of a game or event. These are advanced sale items and will ship immediately after they are received in our warehouse.
Manufacturer direct items are shipped directly from the manufacturer. These items are not available for international or expedited shipping.
Customized items can be personalized with options such as your name, your favorite number, and/or designs. Some options may be limited by league rules.


text:
Wex I.T. is an authorized Brocade reseller. Brocade networking solutions provide industry-leading capabilities for storage, Ethernet, and Ethernet fabric networking environments. Brocade maintains a solid commitment to ensuring the highest levels of quality in the design, manufacture, and testing of its products. As a result, organizations can feel confident in their Brocade networking solutions, knowing that they are using products that have met the most rigorous quality standards in the industry.
WEX-IT provides solutions to our customers in hardware, hardware support and IT service support. Our system effectively bridges the market's gap for CIOs and IT professionals who run computing environments that demand top quality equipment, customized configurations, high availability, and full operational control. At Wex-IT, we strive to meet the following goals:


text:
December is Identity Theft Awareness Month. The effects of identity theft can be devastating. Identity thieves may use your information to obtain credit accounts in your name or access your bank accounts. It only takes a short time for identity thieves to ruin your credit history and amass a fortune in debt under your name. The best way to protect yourself from identity theft is to safeguard your personal information. Shredding documents containing identifying information like Social Security numbers, bank account information and insurance claims can reduce your risk of identity theft. Act quickly if you suspect your identity has been compromised. Reporting the theft as soon as it happens may limit your liability for unauthorized charges and withdrawals. If you feel your personal identifying information has been compromised: � File a report with the police and keep a copy of the report. � Place a fraud alert on your credit file by contacting the three major credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. � Close compromised accounts immediately. � Follow up with banks and credit companies in writing. � Change PINs and passwords for new accounts. If your credit cards are lost or stolen, your maximum liability is $50 per card. For ATM or debit cards, your maximum liability is $50 only if you report the cards missing within the first two days of the loss. To help protect yourself from identity theft: � Only carry your Social Security card when absolutely necessary. � Shred identifying documents you no longer need. � Monitor your credit report for fraudulent or unauthorized activity. For more information or to request an Identity Theft Repair Kit, contact the Attorney General's Consumer Hotline at (800) 727-6432 or online at www.ago.ne.gov.
Location, ST | website.com


text:
Specifically from recordings that other people made.
migrated from avp.stackexchange.com Jan 24 '14 at 12:01
This question came from our site for engineers, producers, editors, and enthusiasts spanning the fields of video, and media creation.
If you don't have access to a DAW with noise-reduction plugins there is also standalone software designed specifically for this purpose. Audio Cleaning Lab by Magix is a popular one.
Another option is to use a low-pass filter to roll off the very high frequencies where this noise is usually found. However, it's usually difficult to completely remove the white noise without giving the audio a dull muffled sound.
The bad news is that you can't remove white noise from a recording completely. White noise by definition lives all across the frequency spectrum, and can't be distinguished from signal where they both exist.
The good news is that you don't have to. For the most part your brain can't hear noise when it is masked by a real signal in the same frequency range. So the noise reduction approach has two parts:
That's the basic forensic audio workflow. It's a hard problem; good luck!
Audacity has a decent noise removal plugin. It's free!
There are plugins that can do this. As far as I know, the RX Denoiser from iZotope is doing a fabulous job. See http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/
Adobe Audition has great noise removal. Unfortunately I don't know the specifics, but basically you select an area in which there is only white noise, it analyzes it, and removes that 'type' of sound everywhere else it occurs.
You might be able to use an MP3 encoder for this. Experiment with encoding to MP3s at lower bit rates than you normally would, and it should remove much of the noise while keeping the signal, in a psychoacoustically good way. It will degrade the quality of the recording, but it might be acceptable in a mix with other things.
If you are dealing with the white noise created during video production there are several steps to consider. Firstly, the power adapter will bring noise to the project. I recommend using the Camcorder batteries, which add almost no extra noise. The high end Panasonic video cameras have built-in noise reduction filters, which also reduce the noise.
Is this a presentation? Why record the sound in stereo when there is only one voice? This will add echo, which will cause production problems. It is normal to record in mono - it's how the music industry record your music collection. I use a mic that I bought on ebay, from a company in Manchester (UK), for £14. Using It produces a mono recording on both tracks. In Final Cut Pro (Studio 3) the Audio Mixer from the Tools drop down menu has a stereo slider allowing the user to manipulate where the sound exists within the stereo spectrum.
If you're adding music in stereo - that you have recorded the voice in mono - will not show. But the improved sound quality will make your production sound far superior. The Apple EQ in FCP appears a little complicated. But have a play, as it thins the sound making it less muffled. Only the bottom few categories on the EQ filter are the actual EQ; the rest are just filter settings, such as Gain. I'm looking at this now!
There is one other diamond for both video and music production when you are trying to get by on a budget: Soundtrack Pro. With your video project selected on the FCP Audio track right click the mouse to bring up the sub menu. Select 'Send To' and the listed Soundtrack link for the Aiff audio project. A small menu will ask you to save the file to your folder. Just click on OK. Now your sound is in Soundtrack Pro.
Highlight the entire sound clip using either 'Select All' or left click the mouse in the top right-hand corner of the sound and drag it to cover everything. There are some folder options in the menu on the left. Select the Analyse folder. Now tick all of the box options on the left for noise pops, etc. Select 'Analyse'. The software will detect and audio problems and correct them, but you still may have a little white noise. This is where it gets clever. Select the entire sound again and set the Ambient Noise Point. This can be found in the Process drop down menu. Having set the noise point go back in and select 'Replace with Ambient Noise.' Ambient noise is a natural part of the sound spectrum. It's often in most audio mixes, but we don't notice. It's like giving the noise camouflage.
At this point you may be happy with the sound, as the only other matter to consider is the level on final cut pro. This also can reduce the white noise. If you are still unhappy there is one other EQ diamond on Soundtrack Pro: The Parametric EQ, which is found in the Effects/Single Band EQ. I suggest that you place all three of the sliders to the left and adjust the top slider until the sound is as required. The other two sliders will control sound spectrum differences reducing the noise to near zero without losing too much quality.
When you have finished adjusting the sound use the save option from the drop-down menu. It will ask you how you want to save the file. It's the top answer - just click on OK. This will automatically save the changes to the existing FCP sound file. You can continue with your video now. Warning: Always use slugs for gaps in audio and video. If you fail to do this your video will stutter when you add it to social media.
Add: Forgot to mention the noise reduction in Soundtrack Pro. Set the noise point then just click on OK for the noise reduction. Have a little listen to make sure that it hasn't added a nasty digital sound to your work. If it has move two steps backwards and avoid. Sometimes it works quite well, but it's dangerous!
There is an iPhone app to remove background noise from any video on your phone called Denoise. There is an app preview video which shows how it works. Technically it is all the same algorithm to measure background noise profile and suppress noise frequencies after that (two phases approach). Some more information on the app could be found here => https://blog.2gzr.com/clean-sound-in-your-videos-without-external-microphone/
Disclaimer: I'm one of the app developers and would love to hear your feedback
Goldwave is a popular audio editor for Windows that has a noise reduction feature that is quite remarkable.
Waves plug-in's are the best slution if you use DAW for editing and recording. They have X-Hum, X-Noise, X-Click, X-Crackle, Z-Noise plugin's that can solve your problem. They are very expensive plug-in's by the way.
While removing white noise without tampering with the recording is a difficult task, a gate and tweaking of a compressor gets a descent result. of course the best way to achieve a perfect audio sample would be to record the audio again, but since its not your own recording, the gate, a compressor and an 8 band or higher equaliser help.


text:
Twentynine Palms, CA
Joshua Tree National Park in only 3 miles from the Harmony Motel. Other Twentynine Palms area attractions include the City of Twenty-nine Palms Oasis of Murals, the world's largest Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, downtown visitors' center, art galleries, Old School Museum, Pappy and Harriett's in Pioneer town, Joshua Tree Village, Pioneer Town, Yucca Valley, Morongo Basin, Victorville, Desert Hot Springs and Palm Springs. Explore nearly 800,000 acres of some of the most fascinating geology found in the California desert of the Mojave Preserve. Experience and enjoy rock climbing, hiking, camping, birding, star gazing and incredible landscape nature photography.


text:
Have your parcel delivery drivers lost all respect?
This is my 5th year in this particular house and this has become the norm, my neighborhood has at least 3 mail carriers that I've seen - I assume 2 are subs. Then I get random UPS drivers, but sometimes the same guy. I buy a lot of things online and we have those small community mailboxes (which happens to be on my property) so any parcel not the size of a standard envelope needs to go to my front door.
The Monday after Black Friday, I had a nice pile delivered to me with a courtesy doorbell ring. As the days have passed and the number of packages have increased, the service has gone to zero. First off, both UPS and USPS have started just dropping packages at the end of my walk way to my front door. It's another 20 feet to my door but they seem to just say "F it" and just throw them there. They have stopped ringing my door bell and I have to run outside everytime I hear a truck driving by. I work from home so I am a hawk about these things.
(out of space, see first reply)
28 Answers answer
I totally understand that every jerk in the neighborhood probably has a package coming with regularity leading up to Christmas and they probably have to walkup to hundreds of doors a day. However, I have paid for the delivery and I expect my packages to be walked that extra 20 feet so every car passing by doesn't see a pile of delivered packages sitting in my front yard.
So I ask, has your parcel delivery person given up and just half-asses it now?
actually, can they even leave the package there? Is the package just sitting there in plain sight 20 feet from your house? for US mail, i'd call your local post office and see if that's even legal. For UPS, i'd definitely call and ask what their policy is and file a complaint if needed. like you said, you're paying for delivery.
Mine still carries it to the door but the delivery didn't happen from the Post Office until about 9pm. My guess would be, with all the cuts, they are working late hours to get everything delivered and are trying to find shortcuts where they can. Hope you don't get any packages stolen.
I did try with Fedex a couple of times to have the package rerouted to a Fedex Office when I knew I wasnt going to be home for a delivery but it was still delivered anyways.
@carl669: Yep that is exactly the scenerio you can see everything just sitting there. Instead of going to their boss I've talked to them personally and so far so good. However I still get that from the sub drivers and those random delivery companies that Amazon and others use
It makes me wonder if their employers have accepted this behavior as means to run their business with less trucks on the road
Wow, that stinks! You can see a similar Wootizen issue below. I think it all depends on the driver.
I am very lucky. My UPS driver is great and if I am not home and he needs a signature he will give the package to the UPS guy that delivers to my office to get the signature. Talk about going above and beyond!
Maybe there is some animosity because of good ol' Amazon business. Rumor has it that USPS just won the bid for all the Amazon shipping and took it from UPS.
All my delivery people have been pretty good. My house is up a little hill, and they always take it right up to me. If needed, they back into (and up) my driveway and leave things at my front door or on the front porch. I've, long ago, asked them not to ring my bell since my dog goes nuts and I know they are there (since I also work from home). Unless it's a sub, they don't ring the bell.
The only thing that sometimes happens is they leave things at my garage door. I think when it's a bunch of heavier things. Luckily, I look, because if I didn't it would be very easy for me to back over packages when they do that. But, it's only been a handful of times.
If they were leaving things 20' from my door, I'd call and complain.
@kmeltzer: I am in a very similar situation. All my delivery people are terrific, they will even cover my packages with plastic bags if it is raining and we are not home. I have asked them not to knock on the door because it gets my dogs going, so they honk when they pull up which doesn't get a rise out of my critters at all.
I had one that was so awesome, we even gave him a gift for Christmas. He would always put our packages in the garage. Now we have a new person who doesn't do this. One time this person put an extremely light package outside on a very windy day and I wake up and can't find the package anywhere. Later I managed to see a little brown speck in the middle of the large field next to us.
Fortunately both my mail carrier (most of the time it's a sub, or someone new) and my UPS are pretty good about leaving packages on my enclosed porch.
The mail carrier doesn't ring the bell in most cases, but it is pretty easy to spot a package when going in/out of the house. On some occasions they leave it right on the ledge by my mailbox (it's by the porch door), but that's pretty rare. I think they don't mind putting it inside because they have to walk up the stairs to the porch to put the mail in the box anyway.
The UPS guy is so good, he used to leave a biscuit for my dog (when she was alive) because he loved her so much (she was a lover and had met him on a few occasions, and never barked when he put stuff on the porch and the house door was open and she could see him leaving it!). He always rings the bell! On the few occasions we don't have our regular UPS guy, they have left the package right by the front door or on the ledge by the front door.
DH is in outside industrial sales and works from the house. It is a rare day when he doesn't get a package of samples, most bulky and/or heavy. Our regular UPS driver recognizes us whenever we see him around town and, although he might not remember our names, he can recite our address! (LOL!)
It can't possibly be allowed by delivery rules (UPS, FedEx, USPS or any other) to leave large packages at the end of a driveway. Since you work out of your home, I suggest catching each delivery person and asking them first, then calling the company if it continues to be a problem. As other folks have noted, I suspect that you're getting a lot of short-timers who are only hired for the holiday rush. If this is the case, you might convince one to do the right thing, only to have a newbie the next day. Let the company know that this is a problem. They need to talk with ALL of their delivery folks so all will know what is expected.
This is the time of year when things get pretty nuts for the delivery guys. Somewhere around here I have a photo from a few years ago of a UPS guy making neighborhood deliveries on foot with a big hand cart.
I'm avoiding making any more delivery orders for the rest of the year because it's really frustrating tracking down missing items. When they hire temps our stuff gets delivered everywhere but the correct address.
I am the other way. I have asked my delivery folks to leave stuff, as I work days and they rarely come when I am at home. It's a big inconvenience to have to go to get my packages, UPS and FEDEX are about 20 miles away. At least USPS holds onto it for you, but I have had both FEDEX and UPS return stuff to the seller the same week it arrived, before I got a chance to go and get it. They can't get to my house as I have a locked gate, but they put it over the fence on the walk and I haven't ever had anything go missing, despite living in a low income neighborhood. I have varying results with different FEDEX and UPS drivers, from super nice to drop and run. My postal guys have all been nice.
@samstag: I saw my UPS driver cruising the neighborhood with a heavily loaded dolly on Monday when I went home for lunch. I kept an eye out to see if he had anything for me but he didn't.
All of my packages go to the "mail room" to be sorted and delivered to the tenants so the delivery driver just has to make one stop. I was surprised by the condition of my packages yesterday because they were really beat up. I was lucky that nothing was broken.
My normal UPS driver is wonderful. With Prime I put him to work. The extras they have at Christmas are not as good. They leave the packages at the garage door and days may go by before we realize it is there.
USPS is hit or miss. If all they have to do is put junk mail in the box they are fine. When it comes to mail holds or forwarding they never get it right.
Maybe because they are not addressed to you, they prefer to leave it by the mailbox. Sounds like a strange setup to me. What do they do if a signature is required? I have a new mail carrier that I haven't met, but until then, I had (and still have) a good relationship with my old one. I also got to know the UPS guys, since I buy a lot of stuff online. Never had a problem. He even left a box of booze on my porch because he knew I wasn't around to sign for it, rather than make me wait a couple of days more for it. And it's not like I tip or anything, I'm just friendly when I see them!
My UPS guy is fantastic. Always brings things to the porch. If I see him in time and hold the door, he puts them in my living room. And with Amazon Prime I get a lot. I did give him a Christmas present.
USPS is kind of hit or miss. I think the subs will leave a package for the next guy instead of bringing it up to the porch. Last year on Dec. 23, I received 1 of 2 boxes that had been sent at the same time. The next day, the 24th, the lady put mail in the box and continued on. We live on a dead-end street and when she came back I stood out in the street. "Oh, yeah, I have a box for you."
For some reason, I don't get much from FedEx.
My UPS guy is horrible. Everything I get looks like he kicked it off the back of the truck after he set it on fire... I try to avoid UPS every chance I get.
I seem to get a lot of subs from UPS especially. Mail seems to come at all weird hours, so I assume I get a sub for that as well -- old neighborhood was a lot more consistent.
However, with that said, my primary UPS is great and will even bring packages to the back door. I have a front stoop, but that's about it -- nowhere to really "hide" packages per se, so those he takes to the back which is really nice. I've never asked for this service...maybe the previous homeowner did?
I had a USPS sub decide that I no longer wanted to receive my packages any more, so she put in a forwarding order to nowhere! It took a week to straighten out, and I had at least 10 packages going all over the state, in circles, before finally getting back to me. I never had any trouble with UPS, but the other day, as one of the subs was getting off the truck to deliver my packages, my wife overheard him muttering "This fuc*ing guy, every day!" When he realized that she had heard him, he quickly and quietly returned to his truck.
@cfalgas: I receive frequent deliveries (Sundays are a sad day for me as I know I wont receive anything).
Before we moved, I knew my UPS/Fedex/USPS carriers by name, favorite color & their opinions on new movies coming out...., and they knew me the same.
Where I reside now, my USPS/UPS/Fedex carriers all seem to hate their job and you can tell! They are lazy and rude. (even the subs). It's frustrating and annoying...
FedEx is my problem. I live in a townhouse complex so everyone...let me restate that...EVERYONE...goes in through the carport and into the back patio vs the front door. If I get a UPS or USPS, they drop it over the gate. FedEx will inevitably drop it at the front door, then put a nice sign to anyone walking around that the box is behind a bush. I have a locked chain-link gate so I don't have to worry about losing items but no...front door. Always the bleeding front door. Luckily I'm psychotic about checking ship dates or I'd have crap sitting outside for a few days or stolen to before I knew what happened.
My husband's company just switched from Fedex to UPS.
Our very first UPS delivery under this new contract? Was four 50lb boxes literally scattered on our front lawn.
The second? They stacked them across our front steps so that you couldn't get around them.
The third? We heard the truck and met the driver outside. Our boxes seem to make it all the way onto the porch after that conversation.
Our USPS package delivery? Pretty good. That guy works hard and gets our stuff to the porch with a friendly attitude. Whether or not the packages get on the truck, well - that's hit or miss. I've been told that one of mine was being used as a door stop. No joke.
The mail carrier(s)? Forget it. They don't even pick up mail from our house some days. There's also at least one day during the week that we don't get our mail.
You've got to remember that their workload triples this time of year. Definitely stinks, but it's the downside to doing so much online ordering and gift mailing in November and December.
My FedEx guy is dyslexic, year-round. I live at 3239! not 3329! (The packages are always labeled right.) I hate it when FedEx is the only option and I'm shipping to my house, 1/3rd of the packages end up at my neighbor's, but they're good sports about it. I'd like to talk to the guy, but I'm not home during the day.
I have the best delivery folks in the country. My USPS carrier is a charmer: friendly, efficient, and always good at making sure my mailbox lid is closed properly to keep rain out. We always offer him ice water or sodas when we're home for his delivery times, he waves when we pass on the street if we've missed him, and we always make sure to give him a holiday gift card as a thank you. I don't know if we have a "regular" UPS guy or not, but whoever we have, he/they're equally awesome. Our parcels are always tucked safely onto the screened front porch, nothing has ever been damaged, and they're friendly. One time we came home in a typical summer-time rainstorm to find a box on the stoop with a huge plastic bag of mulch on top of it. Saw the guy the next day: the porch door was stuck, he thought it was locked, so he dragged the bag of mulch from the side of the porch to cover the parcel to protect it from the rain. What a great guy!
We feel really lucky to have such great delivery!
I don't necessarily want to excuse jerky behavior, but this season is probably hell for those poor souls.
I am apparently one of the crowd that gets excellent service from their couriers. I'm not sure who does it, but either my USPS or UPS carrier will pick up my newspaper from the sidewalk/lawn and put it with my packages on the front porch.
between amazon, zappos, newegg and woot, i think my UPS delivery guy now has zero respect for me.
i see my packages in strange positions that indicate they were literally tossed over the metal fence gating off our front yard. it's a latched gate and doesn't take more than a second to open, but apparently that's too much effort for the guy who gets 10 packages a week.


text:
Grab the only money making machine available. Print your money at your will. Join Global Ad Posting. The worlds highest paying program is open worldwide now. Grab your machine now. Post as many Ads you can. Create your own monthly income target. For more details visit
Last edited by shabbir; 30Dec2006 at 15:04.. Reason: Confine links to signature only


text:
Ancient Mew
13,165pages on
this wiki
this wiki
- For the Pokémon species, see Mew.
Ancient Mew is a Psychic-type Basic Pokémon card. They only made 6 of the card. It was released as a promotional card in the year 2000. This card's text is depicted in medieval Futhark Runic and Gothenburg Runic writing. However, this page uses their English equivalents.
Its single attack is Psychic which does 40 damage and requires 2 Psychic-type Energies.
It is weak to Psychic x2. Its Retreat Cost is 2 energy cards.
- This card appeared in The Power of One movie and its owner was Lawrence III.
- The bottom text above the retreat cost reads: "New Species. Little. Note... Very Evil".


text:
WACO (December 13, 2012)--A holiday celebration was held Thursday for all homeless veterans and veterans who were formerly homeless.
The celebration was sponsored by the VA Health Care System and was held at the Waco VA Medical Center.
Food and desserts were served and attendees were able to receive a free coat and other gifts.
The event is intended to provide support to veterans who end up spending the holidays alone.


text:
The John Deere Pavilion display floor in Moline, IL. The Project Can Do combine is set up in this panorama. This is a life size combine that is made of over 300,000 cans of food that were subsequently donated to the local food bank.
The particulars are:
Camera: Canon 1DmkIV
Lens: Canon EOS 16-35f2.8LII at 16mm
Pano Head: Nodal Ninja V
Tripod: Manfrotto 055XPROB
Frames every 36 degrees (10 frames per circle)
One row at -30 degrees and a second row at +30 degrees. Patched in the hole at the top and logo to cover the hole at the bottom.
7 exposures for each frame to do HDR (-3eV, -2eV, -1eV, 0eV, +1eV, +2eV, +3eV)
All frames shot in RAW
Frames managed in Aperture
Stitched and HDR Processed with PTGui
Converted to 360 Pano with krpano tools
Displayed with krpano
I'd appreciate any comments or critique.


text:
Introduction to PowerPoint Session #1
Location:Bluffton Branch
Date & Time:Monday, January 14, 2013 - 2:00pm – 4:00pm
Learn how to create effective slide presentations using Microsoft's PowerPoint program. Topics include the use of text, pictures, graphics, charts, and animation. Students need to attend all three sessions.
Free but registration required. To register please call 255-6503 or email email@example.com


text:
The following user on SO has a reputation of 91 (from one question) but still has a yearling badge. This seems to go against the description of the badge which says you have to have 200 rep per year.
What is meta?
- Any Stack Exchange user can ask a question
- The community provides support, votes on ideas, and reports bugs
- Your voice helps shape the way Stack Exchange operates
The other answers and comments cover this in bits and pieces, so here's a comprehensive answer. Maybe too comprehensive... but I'm hoping to use this as a template of sorts for future reports of this issue.
The behavior of the Yearling badge was changed in December 2009. (It's my fault.)
Until March 2010, upvotes on SO were worth +10 to rep, not +5 as they are now. This caused a global rep recalc.
The user in question, @screepnick, registered on Sep. 18, 2008, the same day he posted that question, and he hasn't really had any activity outside of that question. Per @mmyers, he has no deleted posts. I can't verify this, but it looks like all of the activity on the question took place well before his first anniversary. Currently, the question has 18 upvotes and no downvotes.
With those 18 upvotes, @screepnick would have had 181 rep on his anniversary, well over the 100 he needed. This would be true even if a handful of changes in votes came later. And there was roughly a three-month window between his anniversary on the site and the time the badge's rep requirement was changed, more than long enough to account for any delay in the badge awarding cronjob.
Badges, once awarded, are never taken away solely because of changes in the requirements or conditions. (EDIT: this rule, too, has an exception; Beta badges were unawarded at one point when the requirements changed.)
In summary: it's not a bug, it's a valid badge! Hurrah!
I would expect that the criteria changed over time. This user has been on SO for almost 2 years, so the badge was awarded some 11 months ago. I recall that at that time only activity was requested, not a certain amount of reputation. Any long standing SO members to confirm this?
Recalcs and rep changes (5 instead of 10 points for questions) might have caused this too.
Anyhow, wait another 16-17 days and I assure you that this person will not have a second yearling badge, unless you just pointed enough people interested in MSIL and Java byte code to his question, or he gets busy.
One thing to note is that before the rep recalc the user would have had 181 rep plus any rep from deleted questions.
So at one point he has been eligible, and as you know, once you gain a badge you don't lose it again, unless it's deleted by jeff.


text:
Provided you are ready to hire your first (or next) QA team member, what are the key properties of a person you will pay attention to?
Sign up
- Anybody can ask a question
- Anybody can answer
- The best answers are voted up and rise to the top
The tl;dr:
I've always felt that technical skill was one of the more vastly overrated attributes of test engineers. Certainly having technical acumen is critical to executing tasks, working with product managers and software engineers but it's only a portion of the actual job. Again, I'm not saying that you want test engineers that can't be technical but I am saying that it's only a part of what I've always viewed as a successful tester.
In my experience communication skills and diplomacy are some of the most critical skills a test engineer can have. When a tester finds a bug the real trick isn't the replication, really it's being able to communicate the failure cases to the development team and the impact to the product team. If you can't communicate to either of those groups you're not getting the result that you were hired for.
The "works on my machine" statement is the primary reason you need to have a tester that is diplomatic when they find bugs, write up bugs and lobby for their correction. It's a daily challenge working with Software Engineers and the really effective testers know when to be diplomatic in their interactions.
If you aren't curious about your system then you're not going to find all the bugs. Curiosity is one of the critical attributes to being a tester. The more curious you are, the more likely you will be able to ferret out the edge cases that your uses are going to find anyway.
Lastly, I look for my test engineers to have a lot of independent drive. I want my test engineers to be interested in different languages, frameworks and approaches. In fact, I challenge them to challenge the status quo that they work within so that we can improve our culture and tools.
Adding on to the above answers:
I've found that some of the better testers were ones who didn't get bored clicking the same buttons over and over again in The Great Bug Hunt.
Excellent posts! Apart from what's already been listed, I can add another (somewhat context-specific) ...
Coming into software testing from a UAT/business-side of things (I'm still working on developing the technical skills), a willingness to be able to talk to the business (be it managers, users, business analysts), defend their interests and work with (not fight against) the developers to meet those needs is important.
In one sense, testers are "advocates of the user" and knowing what the users want and how to find out what they want from a functional, usability etc. sense (usually more than reading the requirements) and putting yourself in their shoes is a very useful skill/s.
Please find my perspective
Junior QA
Senior QA
Usually testers are "advocates of the user" only when helping with user acceptance test.
More often, testers are "consultants to the product owner." In that role, they help to assess risk and focus testing on high-risk stories. In addition, they exercise low and moderate risk stories to identify defects.
Would like to throw in some more
Many good features are listed above, but to them I would add that a good QA person needs to be:
I will add to the above answers:
I'd like to add something I haven't seen in many of the other answers - I think that the passion for QA is extremely important in a person looking for a QA position.
It seems like a no brainer, but the reality is that there are many people out there who see QA positions as a stepping stone to development. I think that someone who truly wants to be a dev in their heart is never going to be as good of a QA person than someone who truly has a passion for testing.
I will have to slightly disagree with Laura Hensley's position on the presence of a "lone ranger."
The occasional "individual contributor" can be a powerful asset to a QA team. They tend to find the most defects, the most risky defects, and are extremely persuasive in having said defects fixed, no matter how minor they appear to be. With their eyes firmly fixed on product quality and not politics or advancement into management, they can dramatically improve the quality of a product.
However, where Ms. Hensley's comment rings true for me is in concern to his / her demeanor and integration with the rest of the team. As long as your testers respect and work well with each other, and even socialize well with each other, the occasional testing "lone ranger" isn't necessarily a bad thing.
There are many great characteristics required for a QA/tester. To me, communication is really important. Also, a team spirit is equally if not more important. Trying to prove oneself being smart or the other dumb will not help. We are all in it together. Defects or issues should be discussed with as clear as possible steps to reproduce the defects. Come ready with facts and figures to discuss further the issue. It's also important to not assume things and instead speak up, "we need to discuss this" and then hear out what the other party has to say whether dev, BA or PM. It's not about me or you or anyone trying to score points or look great to stake holders or upper management.
QA/Testing is about delivering the best quality we can.
protected by user246 Dec 24 '13 at 19:54
Thank you for your interest in this question.
Because it has attracted low-quality or spam answers that had to be removed, posting an answer now requires 10 reputation on this site (the association bonus does not count).
Would you like to answer one of these unanswered questions instead?


text:
Children's Health
Sweets Ban at School Parties May Cut Calorie Overload
Nov. 18, 2011 -- As childhood obesity rises, more schools have banned parents from bringing baked goods and other sugary treats for class parties.
Now a new study suggests those controversial "cupcake crackdowns" may be on the right track.
The study shows that kids can eat as many as one-third of all the calories they need in a day at a typical half-hour birthday party.
And those calories are coming from foods high in fat and sugar and low in nutrients -- such as cake, fruit punch, ice cream, and chips.
U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend that getting no more than 5% to 15% of your daily calories from solid fats and added sugars.
"No one wants to be the grinch who stole cupcakes," says David L. Katz, MD, MPH, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, in New Haven, Conn., in an email.
"But consider that there are multiple holidays each year, and every kid in a class has a birthday. If every one of those celebrations is an opportunity for caloric overload, it adds up to real trouble," says Katz, who was not involved in the new study.
The good news: When fruit is served alongside those sugary treats, kids actually eat it. In fact, having fruit at a party appears to cut kids' party calories.
The study is published in the Journal of Nutrition, Education, and Behavior.


text:
- Discover CSUB
- |
- Academics
- |
- Admissions & Aid
- |
- Student Life
- ASI (Student Government)
- Antelope Valley Campus
- Bookstore
- Campus Dining
- Campus Programming
- Career Education & Community Engagement (CECE)
- Children's Center
- Counseling Center
- Health, Safety And Wellness
- Housing & Residence Life
- Services for Students with Disabilities
- Student Financial Services
- Student Organizations
- Student Recreation Center
- Student Rights & Responsibilities
- Student Union
- Vice President for Student Affairs
- |
- Athletics
- |
- News & Information
- Pre-Admission Qualification
- Staff Directory
- How to Apply
- Campus Tours
- Our Services
- Campus Information requests
- Volunteer Opportunities
Future Students of CSUB!Get started!
Whether you're a middle-school, high-school, transfer, international, or adult re-entry student, find out why CSUB is IT!
Completing our Information Request Form will allow you to receive updates on admission, majors, housing, financial aid, campus tours and upcoming events. Learn why California State University, Bakersfield is your University of Choice!
We hope you will find the information you are looking for. Please do not hesitate to contact us for a campus tour, appointment, in-class presentation or just a chat!
Outreach & Recruitment Services are committed to students by providing the best care and service possible; be part of the change at CSU Bakersfield!
Department of Outreach & Recruitment
The CSUB Student Experience
Department of Outreach and Recruitment
California State University, Bakersfield
Department of Outreach & Recruitment
9001 Stockdale Highway
Bakersfield, CA 93311-1022
661-654-3138 phone
661-654-2278 fax


text:
The Medrash Rabbah בראשית ל''א ס''ק ה says that what the people of the Dor Hamabul did in order not to have to be punished by their courts is to steal less that a Prutah (minimal Monetary Value) which Halachicly makes them not responsible to pay.The question is that Halacha only applies to Jews a Ben Noach is responsible even for less then a worth of a Prutah?
Sign up
- Anybody can ask a question
- Anybody can answer
- The best answers are voted up and rise to the top
Some say that the Dor HaMabul had the halachik status of Bnei Yisroel, so they did have a shiur of Shava Prutah.
Source: Rabbi Yechiel Halpern of Minsk (1660- 1747) in Sefer HaLikutim, Mabul, §1
Even so, the definition of chamas, as opposed to gezel, according to Rabbi Chanina in Bereishit Rabba is less than a shava peruta. (So too Rav Acha in Yerushalmi Bava Metzia.) Since the pasuk mentioned chamas, rather than gezel, it is a midrashic approach to look at the halachic definition of a chamsan.
The courts back then, presumably, did not work according to the halacha. And so they did this in order to evade their courts, taking action just like a modern-day halachic 'chamsan'.
Although this is speculation, you are talking about a Midrash explaining why the Dor HaMabul deserved the flood. Post-Mabul Bnei Noaḥ - by definition - have different rules than the Bnei Adam who lived prior to (and were punished by) the Mabul. Prior to the Mabul, perhaps, their courts had a Perutah requirement - or perhaps the Midrash is just using that terminology to explain just how corrupt and despicable the Dor HaMabul was. That, essentially (though perhaps not literally), they used every loophole they could think of to be within the law but outside the bounds of morality or simple human decency and therefore deserved to be punished and wiped out. Bnei Noaḥ then, perhaps, were given a stricter set of rules than they otherwise should have needed, either as punishment or as preventive measure against future corruption (or both). The Midrash does not have to be historically accurate with regard to how the courts generally worked in the days of the Dor HaMabul. On the other hand, it could even be that the Midrash has a Mesorah about one such case in which this happened, and it's pointing to that as a demonstration as to just how low they had gone to maintain the non-culpability with their behavior.
But in any case, I think the points made by Josh Waxman and Reb Haim shed some light on this from a textual/Halachic standpoint.
I'm not convinced that the courts at that time used Bnei Yisrael's system of Halachah with regard to determining the minimum amount of money for which a thief is liable, though I remain open to that possibility. I am, however, fairly certain that the Midrash is using the example of deliberate less-than-Perutah theft to show how evil they were (because you must agree that this is evil) OR to make a point (you may not think this is evil, but see what happens if you employ this type of tactic!).
The only viable answer seems to be that then, as now, there was no legal responsibility under Divine law for stealing less than a perutah's worth, despite sources that on their surface state otherwise.
Since under Noahide law, according to the Rambam, the punishment for violation of any of the 7 laws is the death penalty, it cannot be that such a harsh penalty applied to stealing less than a perutah's worth (less than a nickel today).
G-d does not promulgate laws that would constitute a chillul Hashem.