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A few days ago I posted an open letter to New York Gov. David Patterson about a measure that recently passed through the New York legislature and was awaiting his signature. The bill proposes a new regulatory regime for video games that would include greater state-based oversight of video game labels and console controls as well as an advisory board to monitor the industry. Unfortunately—but quite unsurprisingly—Gov. Patterson signed the bill last night. And so I am certain that another legal battle will ensue regarding the constitutionality of the measure, and it will likely be struck down like every other measure on this front because it violates the First Amendment. Regardless, let's talk a little more about what animates this specific legislative effort, because I think it is very important and foreshadows the heated debate to come over video games and all media in coming years.
The New York measure is notable in that, unlike most of the other state or local measures that had been stuck down in recent years that proposed penalties for the sale of games to youngsters which were labeled by the ESRB to be intended for an older audience, it simply proposed more "oversight" of the ratings process and parental control technologies by the state. Specifically, it mandated that all games be rated and that all consoles contain screening controls. The response to that proposal has generally been: "So what?" After all, all video games are rated already and all game consoles contain parental controls. The measure also mandated a 16-member oversight board to monitor the industry and this process. Again, that proposal was not regarded by many as a serious threat to the video games or free speech.
But I fear that many are missing the big picture here. The New York bill is actually far more important that many people suspect because of what it foreshadows: A day when politicians will claim that we can make rating systems more "scientific" by putting public health bureaucrats or university social scientists in charge of them. Indeed, last night on Bloomberg TV, this became the focus of a debate between me and Dr. Michael Rich, Director of the Center for Media and Child Health at the Harvard Medical School. After you watch the clip, I'll have much more to say about this issue down below the fold.
As you heard in the clip, Dr. Rich favors a greater role for "science" and social scientists in the video game rating and labeling process. But let's explore what that might mean in practice.
Over the past decade, I have heard many critics make the argument that media rating and labeling systems should be centralized in the hands of the government, some academic elites, a private (non-industry affiliated) rating organization, or some combination of all of the above. These critics often give lip service to private, voluntary rating systems but they then turn around and advocate that the entire process be run by people (usually closely resembling themselves!) who would somehow rate media according to more "scientific" criteria / variables.
The problem here is that media content is art, and art is fundamentally subjective. It's not like there is some sort of Periodic Table of Media Elements that tells us what makes for good vs. bad art. Media ratings and labels, therefore, will always be based on judgments made by humans who all have somewhat different values. Those doing the rating are being asked to evaluate artistic expression and assign labels to it that provide the rest of us with some rough proxies about what is in that particular piece of art, or what age group should (or should not) be consuming it. In a sense, therefore, all rating systems will be inherently "flawed" since humans have different perspectives and values that they will use to label or classify content.
Thus, even if a bunch of social scientists at Harvard were running the show, the media rating and content-labeling process will never be an exact science; there will always be something fundamentally subjective about it. Incidentally, exactly which "social scientists" would get a say in the process? Psychologists? Sociologists? Political scientists? Criminologists? Hey, what about art historians! I can almost see a joke in the making here: "How many Harvard social scientists does it take to rate a video game?"
But Dr. Rich and others like him would likely argue that some forms of media or art have unique influences on the development of the mind—especially the minds of children. They would argue, for example, that exposure to certain forms of violent media content will breed aggressive behavior in youth, or at least make them more desensitized and fearful of the world around them.
For the sake of brevity, I am not going to go into my typical long-winded discussion here about "media effects" vs. "catharsis effect." Instead I will just reference the latest of my many essays on the topic ("Why hasn't violent media turned us into a nation of killers?") and I also recommend that you read my review of the excellent new book, Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do," by Lawrence Kutner, PhD, and Cheryl K. Olson, ScD, cofounders and directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. (As you will see when you read the book, apparently not everyone at Harvard agrees with Dr. Rich! That also makes one wonder how much actual consensus there would be in the scientific community about the ratings and labels they would be imposing on artistic expression.)
OK, so let's just imagine that those social scientists who espouse "monkey see, monkey do" theories of media effects somehow get a say in rating and labeling video games. Think about what that would mean in practice. Imagine how long it would take a game like "Halo," "Gears of War," or "Grand Theft Auto" to get through that review process. And imagine what the warning label on the box would look like once they were done! They'd probably affix a 10-page memo to each game carton and then a poison (skull-and-crossbones) logo for good measure. Or perhaps the label would come in form of a Surgeon General's warning about the product being hazardous to one's (mental) health?
In the end, the whole system would become an unworkable farce if mandated by government. Nothing would be getting rated and to market in a timely way. Game developers would be in open revolt against it. And industry lawsuits would be flying.
More importantly, few people would likely use it. Many media critics seem to forget that there is trade-off between convenience and comprehensiveness in terms of rating and labeling systems. As Kutner and Olson note in their book: "The more complicated a system becomes, the less likely busy parents are to understand it and to actually use it." We have to be careful not to upset this balance. In my opinion, the current ESRB game rating system pushes the labeling process just about as far as it can go on the comprehensiveness scale, but does so using easy-to-comprehend ratings (7 of them) and content descriptors (over 30 of them). When media critics and social scientists say they want to make the system even more "comprehensive" and "scientific," therefore, I really have to wonder if they have thought through the practical implications of such a move. Exactly how many more ratings and labels are we talking about? Exactly how much more detailed could it be than the ESRB's existing system, which already has 12 different content descriptors for violent content alone (from "cartoon violence" to "sexual violence" and everything in between).
Another point: The argument that government or "ratings by social scientists" would provide more objective ratings is also undermined by the grim reality of special-interest politics. Government officials or government-appointed commissions would be more susceptible to various interest group pressures as they were repeatedly lobbied to change ratings or restrict content based on widely varying objectives and values. Inevitably, as has been the case with the broadcast indecency complaint process in recent years, a handful of particularly vociferous groups could gain undue influence over content decisions. That possible outcome raises what the Supreme Court has referred to as the "heckler's veto" problem since a vocal minority's preferences could trump those of the public at large.
Now let me be perfectly clear about one thing: I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with folks like Dr. Rich and his colleagues devising some sort of "scientific" rating or labeling scheme for video games and other forms media content. But the fundamental question in this debate is: should such a system should be the law of the land?
In my book on Parental Controls and Online Child Protection, I spend a great deal of time in Chapter 2 talking about the importance of third-party ratings and pressure and I heap a lot of praise on the various independent, third-party content rating and labeling systems out there today. In particular, my wife and I absolute love Common Sense Media and rely on its ratings every week when we are consider what media to allow our kids to consume in our home. It's a great system that is highly informative; and the feedback from average parents and kids on the site is very helpful too. Other great 3rd party rating and labeling services just for video games include: What They Play, Gamer Dad, and Children's Technology Review, all of which provide detailed video game reviews and information about the specific types of content that kids will see or hear in a game. [Incidentally, the ESRB has a section on its webpage that highlights all these independent sites.]
So here's the question for Dr. Rich and the folks in the social science community: Why not just create your own "shadow" ratings process or collaborate with these other organizations to serve a worthy "watchdog" role over the existing rating and labeling process? That's the win-win solution here.
It would be a huge mistake to throw out the existing ESRB system. It is working very effectively and it is already widely recognized by the vast majority of parents. Surveys by Peter D. Hart Research Associates reveal that 89% of American parents of children who play video games are aware of the ESRB ratings and that 85% of them consult the ratings regularly when buying games for their families. That's pretty impressive considering how young the ESRB rating system is.
Moreover, let's not forget that every game console and computer system on the market today is geared to read the ESRB ratings metadata (digital tags) that are embedded in every game shipped to market. That's how the parental controls are enabled. Should we toss all that work out the window and just start from scratch? I think that would be a huge mistake.
Again, there is nothing stopping Dr. Rich and his fellow social scientists from crafting their own system. In fact, I believe I speak for many parents when I say we would welcome it. But mandating it and asking that it serve as a replacement for the existing ratings and console controls is an completely different issue. It's a non-starter in my opinion.
Now that the New York bill has passed, however, the door is open for this sort of proposal to see the light of day. If the measure is not struck down, watch to see who is appointed to the 16-member advisory committee and listen to hear which way they are going. I bet it ends up being something along the lines of what I have suggested above.


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(CNN) -- Your dog may not actually be smarter than somebody's honor student -- popular bumper stickers aside. But your canine companion might well be smarter than their toddler, according to a growing body of research on how dogs think.
The smartest dog breeds are on par mentally with a 2 1/2-year-old, professor says.
Using adapted tests designed for human children, psychologists have learned that average dogs can count, reason and recognize words and gestures on par with a human 2 -year-old.
"They may not be Einsteins, but are sure closer to humans than we thought," said Stanley Coren, a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia and leading researcher on dog behavior.
Coren planned to present his research Saturday at the American Psychological Association's annual convention in Toronto, Canada.
He said the average dog can understand about 165 words, including signs, signals and gestures. They can also count to about 5, he said.
"I mean, we're not going to make them an accountant or something," Coren said in an interview with CNN Radio.
The smartest dogs, he calls them the "super breeds," are on par with a 2½-year-old, recognizing up to 250 words.
And, no, not all breeds are created equally.
For his book "The Intelligence of Dogs," Coren asked more than 200 dog-obedience judges to rank 110 breeds based on their intelligence. Border collies, poodles, retrievers, German shepherds and Doberman pinschers were among the dogs at the head of the class.
The intellectual runts of the litter? The borzoi, chow chow, bulldog, basenji and -- finishing dead last -- the Afghan hound.
The dividing line, Coren said, tends to be the age of the breed. More recent breeds, like the collies and retrievers, have been bred for years to do what humans want them to do.
"We've been wiring into dogs the ability to communicate with us," said Coren, author of several books on dogs' thinking, most recently "The Modern Dog." "If you will, we've been manipulating their intelligence."
Meanwhile, breeds like hounds naturally did what humans wanted -- i.e. chase tasty animals -- and didn't need to be fine-tuned, he said.
"They did the work all by themselves," Coren said. "They didn't have to cooperate with the human being, and all the human had to do was get there before the dogs ate it all."
Included in the number of "words" dogs are believed to know are hand gestures, like pointing, and nonverbal sounds, like the whistles used to direct sheep dogs and retrievers.
Counting ability is tested in drills such as one in which treats are dropped, one at a time, behind a screen. When the researcher either sneaks away one of the treats or stealthily adds an extra before raising the screen, the dog will wait longer -- appearing to puzzle over the bad math -- before eating the treats.
That's the same way toddlers respond when faced with a similar switch, said Coren.
Aubrey Fine, a psychologist and faculty member at California State Polytechnic University, said research like Coren's could help dog owners better relate to their animals.
"Too often, many people look at dogs as four-legged people," said Fine, who specializes in the use of dogs in treating patients with developmental disorders and other mental-health conditions. "We need to recognize what dogs cue in to. Once you understand better how to interact, it causes a better coexistence with your pet companion."
Coren said the findings on dog intelligence showed they have more sense than some scientists may have thought, but that some in the general public may be surprised for different reasons that span a wide range of thought.
"There are some people who think that dogs are just little human beings running around in fur coats and there are other people who sort of think that they're unfeeling biological mechanisms," he said. "The truth of the matter is really that dogs are neither extreme."
CNN Radio's Matt Cherry contributed to this report.
All About Dogs

subset: commoncrawl


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In 2008, he published a piece entitled Gays Rights vs. Democracy, in which he maligned marriage equality with diatribes like such:
. . . states have a legitimate right to define marriage. State legislatures, drawing on tradition and appealing to the values of their constituents, have defined marriage in a very particular way. Marriage requires a) two people who are b) of legal age and c) not closely related to each other who are d) one male and one female. Note that this definition excludes people who want to marry children, or guys who want to marry their sisters, or Muslims who want to take four wives, or that strange guy who wants to marry his dog.Now why am I bringing this up? Simply because recently, D'Souza reportedly attended a Christian conference with a young woman who he introduced as his fiance.
Now gay activists, with the acquiescence of the California high court, want to remove one of the criteria of marriage while keeping all the rest. Yet if it's discriminatory to gays to require that marriage be between a man and a woman, why isn't it discriminatory to Mormons and Muslims to require that it remain between two people? Isn't incestuous marriage also between "consenting adults" who have a right to equal protection of the laws? And why doesn't the Fourteenth Amendment protect the fellow who wants to walk down the aisle with his poodle on the grounds that "I love my dog and my dog loves me"?
The point is not that gay marriage is indistinguishable from child marriage or polygamy. The point is that any definition, and marriage is no exception, includes some people and excludes others. Consequently it's unreasonable to say that gays have a constitutional right to over-ride the definition but other groups do not. The court's real justification seems to have little to do with constitutional reasoning and everything to do with an assertion of political power.
Nothing wrong with that, except that it was news to everyone who knew that D'Souza has been married for 20 years to a woman named Dixie.
Sarah Posner gives the rest of the details:
Don't you just love it when anti-gay hypocrites fall on their faces. Dixie! Don't take him back! Take half of his money!
According to WORLD's Warren Smith, D'Souza, whose $10,000 per speech honoraria places him in the "top tier" of Christian speakers, was in South Carolina to speak at a Baptist church, which was hosting "high-profile Christians speak on defending the faith and applying a Christian worldview to their lives." (Cue guffaws here.)
Smith describes one conference organizer, Alex McFarland, being "distressed" at the behavior of their celebrity speaker. According to Smith, D'Souza told McFarland that he had "recently" filed for divorce, although Smith found in court records that D'Souza filed for divorce about a week after the South Carolina conference took place.
D'Souza is also the president of The King's College, and Smith reports that he's expected to be under scrutiny by the school's board over this incident. (Smith's boss, Marvin Olasky, resigned his post as TKC's provost shortly after D'Souza was named president in 2010.) After TKC began looking into the matter, D'Souza texted Smith: "I have decided to suspend the engagement."


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Almost 1.8 million people don't have a decent toilet.
Almost 1.8 million people don't have a decent toilet.
That's 1 in every 4 people living without this essential.
Over 1 million people currently live without clean water.
Over 1 million people currently live without clean water.
That's almost 1 in every 5 people.
56 children under 5 die a year from diarrhoea.
56 children under 5 die a year from diarrhoea.
Caused by dirty water and poor toilets.
Plumbing vs. Gangs
Teenagers are leaving behind violence to build decent toilets for their community.Read the full story
Water supplies in Bilwi are poor. Installing good quality pumps and toilets is expensive and many of those who want to do it have to take out a loan.
That's why we work with local organisations on a micro-finance and training scheme. One of our partners, Pana Pana, reviews the loan applications, and the successful borrowers pay them back at low interest. The installation is then carried out by supervised teenagers who have completed a plumbing course with our other local partner AMEC.
The young people who take the course tend to come from neighbourhoods where opportunities are limited. They've usually been identified as 'at risk' by the local police and have had some involvement with gangs and petty crime.
As well as receiving technical training, the students learn how to set up their own plumbing businesses, and take part in counselling sessions with a psychologist to address some of the social problems they face. "There has been a change in my self-confidence, self-esteem," says Bessy, an AMEC alumni. "If others in the neighbourhood received the same training, the same intervention, maybe that would help them."
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Registration numbers are soaring for an aviation convention planned this weekend at Bremerton National Airport.
As of Wednesday morning, 523 pilots had confirmed they planned to land at the airport for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Fly-In, which kicks off Friday evening and continues through Saturday.
Nearly 160 participants planned to camp under the wings of their
Total registration for the event had topped 1,700, but closer to 3,000 attendees are expected, according to airport director Fred Salisbury.
"It should be a packed house," he said.
Weather forecasts should help boost attendance. The National Weather Service predicts sunny skies and temperatures in the high 80s this weekend.
The Bremerton event will double the size of the AOPA Fly-In Spokane hosted in 2014, which attracted 1,500 attendees and 240 planes. (A torrential rainstorm the day before festivities began dampened attendance.)
Big registration numbers for Bremerton are encouraging to organizers, who believe the event will provide an economic boost to the area.
AOPA Fly-Ins typically generate about $680,000 for the local economy, according to the association. The conventions create business for hotels, transportation companies, food vendors and contractors.
Jack Edwards, manager of Bremerton's Baymont Inn & Suites, said roughly one-third of his rooms (about 50 units) were booked for the weekend by Fly-In participants. He started receiving reservations from AOPA members as early as April.
"We're still getting calls from them, but we're full," Edwards said.
Visitors who waited until this week to book rooms would be hard pressed to vacancies anywhere in Bremerton, he said.
Visit Kitsap Peninsula Executive Director Patty Graf-Hoke said the Port of Bremerton deserved praise for bringing the Fly-In to Kistap.
"The AOPA very prestigious national organization and their West Coast event offers locals new opportunities to introduce hundreds tourists to the region," Graf-Hoke said in an email. "Guests are filling up hotel rooms which is good for local businesses and the economy."
The AOPA Fly-In is free and open to the public. Click here to learn more about the event.
You don't have to be a pilot to enjoy the beauty of the Kitsap peninsula from the air. Click here to see Meegan Reid's gallery of aerial photos taken earlier this year.


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McGahn: Courts, Constitution Limit FECs Mission
Self-styled campaign finance "reformer" and media gadfly Norman Ornstein recently bestowed upon me an award — which he humbly calls an "Ornstein" — for not following my oath of office, supposedly evidenced by my refusal to "enforce any actions." No support is offered, and refuting this is easy — just ask anyone who recently has been subjected to a Federal Election Commission audit or enforcement action or has paid a monetary penalty whether they think Ornstein is correct.
But that's too obvious and ignores the real issue: What is the proper role for the FEC? Ornstein and his cohorts are offended that I am not enforcing the law as passed by Congress but instead as limited by the courts. Their half-cocked wisdom: Just ignore the Constitution and the courts. But contrary to this view, the FEC can only enforce the law to the extent permitted by the Constitution and the courts, regardless of what Congress might intend. This principle is as old as Marbury v. Madison. Were it otherwise, the president would have a line-item veto, and Members of Congress could be subject to term limits. And at the risk of being as dramatic as Ornstein, school systems across the country wouldn't have had to integrate.
When I joined the FEC, I was serious in taking my oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." It was not to uphold the wishes of the reform lobby and their belief in the amorphous "spirit" of McCain-Feingold. But that is what Ornstein demands: to violate my oath by pursuing unfounded and unsupportable investigations of Americans who have banded together simply to speak or otherwise participate in political discourse.
The reality is that Ornstein and his reformer cohorts are experiencing the demise of their longed-for utopia and a rapid descent into utter irrelevancy. Following the passage of McCain-Feingold (much of which Ornstein is credited with having written) and McConnell v. FEC, Ornstein and the reformers were riding high — it looked as though their ideals might be realized. But then, when their ideals were applied to real people in real situations, the court said enough is enough, and their utopia collapsed under its own weight (as such impossibly idealistic visions tend to do).
Ornstein and his cohorts always fail to mention the government's stunning string of losses before the courts (defeats due in part to the FEC's unfortunate pastime of running roughshod over the protected constitutional rights of our citizens). Instead of acknowledging these losses, they believe the FEC ought to continue unencumbered by such reality.
Recall, Citizens United v. FEC was a simple case about whether a nonprofit association was "permitted" to distribute a documentary movie via video-on-demand. Reformers urged the commission to take a staunchly regulatory position (Ornstein himself filed a brief that claimed the movie could be banned). And let's also recall: The government itself claimed it had the authority to ban books.
Faced with such unyielding extremism, the court did the only thing it could: It ruled in favor of liberty, and against the government. And they did so in a way that was not limited to a pay-per-view movie; instead, the court's broad pronouncements limit the ability of the government to regulate in the area of politics generally.
Let's be clear here: The FEC has been on the losing end of a series of recent challenges to its constitutional authority. The FEC lost the Wisconsin Right to Life challenge. It lost the Davis challenge. And it utterly fell on its face in losing Citizens United. In each case, the Supreme Court limited the FEC's jurisdiction and gave it clear instructions not to reach out and zealously enforce more but to act with solemn respect and caution for the First Amendment rights of our citizens.
The court's criticism of the old ways of the FEC was direct, pointed and unambiguous. And the wisdom of the Supreme Court's rulings is simple: An overzealous FEC is bound to trample speech deemed integral to a healthy civil society. Or as Chief Justice John Roberts put it, "Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor." As an FEC commissioner, I am bound by my oath to follow controlling precedent of the Supreme Court — including its logic — regardless of whether Ornstein likes certain case law.
So where does this leave Ornstein and his cohorts? On the wrong side of the Constitution. Not only have the courts declared much of their reform dogma to be illegitimate, their lobbyists have failed to make any headway in Congress — even their crown jewel of public financing is in jeopardy. And no wonder. Their policy preferences are simply outside the mainstream, and they seek to squelch the voices of everyday Americans in the name of electoral purity.
As a direct consequence of this single-minded pursuit of a purified electoral utopia, Ornstein and other reformers have become irrelevant. Instead of participating meaningfully in the policy debate, they have turned to childish name-calling in an effort to energize others to take up their ultimately futile crusade of co-opting the FEC.
As for me, I will continue to follow my oath in protecting the Constitution — a document that jealously guards the free speech rights of every person in the republic.
Don McGahn is a member of the Federal Election Commission and served as its chairman in 2008.


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By A Reader
Kendra Voth, a producer on Smallville, was recruited into the NXIVM cult by Kristin 'Kook' Kreuk.
They did Girls By Design together as their NXIVM project to spread NXIVM bullshit.
They also coached together in Vancouver and Seattle NXIVM.
Suzanne Gomez, Kristin Kook's CW Network producer, was recruited into NXIVM by Kook. She loves posting anti-Trump liberal/feminist crap on Twitter. How about admitting you were in NXIVM you self-righteous hypocrite, Suzanne, instead of attacking the morals of others on Twitter?
How about talking about Allison Mack, if you want to talk about #metoo type stuff? Does women branding other women like cattle not fit with your anti-male hysteria? Hypocrite. She even boasted on Twitter that she had a guy fired from Starbucks for being rude.
Both women recruited into NXIVM by Kook Tweeted a defense of her when all this DOS stuff came out. No acknowledgment that 1) they were in NXIVM and 2) she recruited them into the cult.
Sima Kumar, Kreuk's stylist was involved with the NXIVM cult, recruited by Kook.
Rose Bhura, a Pakistani woman who Kreuk started a "production company" with called "Parvati Inc" was recruited into NXIVM by Kook. The only thing they have ever "produced" was Olivia Cheng's "Queenie" YouTube videos and "Blink" which I do not recommend you see (it is awful).
Ally Wack was involved with this "production company" but quit. There wasn't exactly anything to quit.
Kristin Kreuk, Nicki Clyne, and Allison Mack appear on stage in Albany for a Keith Raniere a capella singing event that some say was a thinly disguised attempt to recruit college students into NXIVM. Notice that the actresses appear under Raniere's banner.


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Hackers stole about US$250,000 from BitFloor, a BitCoin exchange, on Monday, and it does not have the money to reimburse account holders, according to the website's founder.
BitCoins are an electronic currency that are generated as computers solve a changing mathematical problem. A BitCoin is essentially just a secret number, which is protected from unauthorized transfers by public key cryptography, that is associated with an 34-character alphanumeric "address" that a user holds.
BitFloor, based in New York City, allowed account holders to buy and sell BitCoins, exchange the currency for U.S. dollars and transfer the money using the ACH (Automated Clearing House) system.
The cryptography wrapped around BitCoins is designed to make it nearly impossible to derive the private keys needed to gain possession of the secret number. But in the case of BitFloor, hackers found the keys.
Roman Shtylman, BitFloor's founder, wrote on a forum that the hackers obtained an unencrypted backup of the keys, which were then used to transfer coins held by BitFloor. The backup "was made when I manually did an upgrade and was put in the unencrypted area on disk," he wrote.
"I realize the details of the failure and attack are interesting but I am currently focused on user accounts and exchange status going forward," he wrote.
BitFloor's reserve of BitCoins — about 24,000 — was wiped out. A BitCoin was worth about $10.46 as of Wednesday, according to Mt. Gox, another BitCoin exchange.
U.S. dollar accounts with BitFloor were not affected as well as records for accounts and trades, Shtylman wrote. BitFloor turned over around 64,000 BitCoins a month, worth some $717,000. It took a 0.3 percent commission from trades, amounting to around $2,100 in revenue for the site, Shtylman wrote.
"As a last resort, I will be forced to fully shut BitFloor down and initiate account repayment using current available funds," Shtylman wrote. "I still have all of the logs for accounts, trades, transfers. I know exactly how much each user currently has in their account for both USD and BTC [BitCoin]. No records were lost in this attack."
One user asked if BitFloor could secure some investor funds in order to pay back customers. "This would be a possibility if investors interested in helping continue operations show interest," Shtylman wrote. "It is certainly something I am thinking about."
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Following a four-month beta period, Rackspace has started offering its hosted servers and databases using the open source OpenStack suite of cloud software.
That OpenStack has been pressed into production use just two years after its launch, "is a great proof point for the maturity of the project," said Jim Curry, head of OpenStack at Rackspace.
Rackspace currently has over 180,000 customers of its hosted services. The company offers Windows and Linux servers, content delivery network services, and .NET and PHP hosting, all with associated management and monitoring services.
Starting Wednesday, when new customers log into Rackspace to requisition servers, they will interact with Rackspace Open Cloud services, which is based on the OpenStack Nova compute component. Rackspace has run the Swift object storage component of OpenStack for over 2 years for its Cloud Files storage service; it created the technology in-house and then contributed its code when it co-founded the OpenStack project.
Begun two years ago by NASA and Rackspace, the OpenStack project is an effort to create developa stack of open source software that can be used to provide IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) cloud services, either to customers or for internal use. The project rapidly gained popularity, attracting at last count the development efforts of over 3,300 programmers and 184 companies.
"When a customer signs up for a new cloud server, it will be powered with Nova cloud computing fabric. Historically, it has been powered using our legacy codebase," Curry said. Rackspace servers are priced from US$0.022 per hour (or $16.06 per month) for a Linux server with 512MB of working memory. A Windows server, with 1GB of working memory, starts at $0.08 per hour, or $58.40 per month.
Long-time users of Rackspace may not notice the switch to OpenStack at all, except for the fact they have been provided with a new control panel. Rackspace boasts that this control panel is easier to use, and provides more information. The OpenStack suite will allows users to provision resources much more quickly than they could have through Rackspace's previous console. An administrator can launch as many as 200 servers in 20 minutes.
Users can also tag servers, databases and other resources so they can be more easily identified and grouped. A searching capability has been added so users can search or filter by name, tag, IP address or some other identifier. The console also provides real-time status information about operational resources.
With the cloud service launch, Rackspace has also started offering instances of MySQL databases. The company claims that a single instance of this database can execute three times as many transactions as a similar offering from Amazon.
Rackspace is not alone in offering OpenStack cloud services. On Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard launched its HP Cloud Object Storage, also based on OpenStack.
Not everyone is so confident about OpenStack providing a competitive edge in cloud services, however. One customer found the Rackspace Cloud Files storage service slower than competing services, and attributed the shortcoming to OpenStack's immaturity.
"I'm skeptical that OpenStack is at the level it needs to be to provide for tier 1 storage," said Andres Rodriguez, co-founder and CEO of Nasuni. "We hope it can be as mature as Azure or Amazon, but right now this is an issue for Rackspace."
Nasuni provides managed storage services for its clients. To offer this service, it relies on cloud storage services, such as Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). The company routinely runs tests against the major providers of hosted storage as a way to identify the best providers.
In one of these tests, Nasuni compared transfer rates among Amazon S3, Microsoft Windows Azure and Rackspace. Testers moved a 12 TB block of data between different storage providers. They found that while it would take only 5 hours to move 12 TB from Rackspace to Amazon S3, it would take nearly a week to move that data in the opposite direction, from Amazon to Rackspace. Open Stack read and delete times also were slower than those of competing providers.
Such results might also apply to HP's offering, Rodriguez suggested. While Rackspace and other advocates praise the open source model for reducing potential lock-in, Rodriguez points to the slow transfer times as an example of how a service can discourage customers moving to competitors.
"This poor transfer-in performance gave rise to concerns within Nasuni about all the other clouds that are springing up based on OpenStack. It is hard for Nasuni's engineers to imagine that these other clouds based on OpenStack would perform better than Rackspace's Cloud Files, since Rackspace is OpenStack's premier reference implementation," stated the Nasuni report.
Rackspace disputed Nasuni's results, noting that Nasuni's tests were conducted during a Rackspace upgrade, when transfer times were temporarily slowed.
"Nasuni's tests were conducted during the brief period when Rackspace was implementing its hardware/software upgrades and the temporary rate limits were in place. As a result, we do not believe that the current Nasuni report reflects an accurate evaluation of Cloud Files or its performance in key areas such as data transfer rates, read errors and delete times," noted Scott Gibson, Rackspace director of product management, in a written statement.
Gibson also maintained that, after this upgrade, data rates for moving a 12TB block of data from Rackspace to another provider improved from one week to nine hours.
"We firmly believe that the cloud future will be around open and we think it will be significantly based around OpenStack," Curry said.
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is email@example.com


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I'm trying to take a formula, take it's integral which yields a formula with logarithms, and then directly plug in values with units and get an answer. However if the units go into any of the logarithms I get conditional expressions. Is it possible to set up the equations so I can just plug in units?
Here's my code:
Pideal[n_, T_, V_] := (n*R*T)/V
PvdW[n_, T_, V_, a_: a, b_: b] := (n*R*T)/(V - n*b) - (n^2*a)/V^2
W[V1_, V2_, P_] := Integrate[P, {V, V1, V2}]
Wideal[V1_, V2_, n_: n, T_: T] = W[V1, V2, Pideal[n, T, V]]
Here's the problem spot:
Wideal[5 Liters, 10 Liters, 1 Mols, 298 Kelvins]
I can work around this fairly easily, just leave out the Liters because they cancel out anyway. (
Liters = Quantity["Liters"], etc)
However when I get to a more complicated equation that doesn't work so easily without making sure to put back in what I leave out.
WvdW[V1_, V2_, n_: n, T_: T, a_: a, b_: b] =
W[V1, V2, PvdW[n, T, V, a, b]]
WvdW[5*Liters, 10*Liters, 1 Mols, 298 Kelvins, 0, 0]
This doesn't work for the same reason, even though the Liters cancel out Mathematica doesn't assume that. However if I leave them out, I still have problems with the Mols, which appear in and outside of Logarithms, even though they're multiplied by 0.
WvdW[5, 10, 1 Mols, 298 Kelvins, 0, 0]
Finally, I haven't even gotten to using b which also appears in the logarithm, and even though the volumes add up and cancel out, Mathematica doesn't assume so.
WvdW[V1*Liters, V2*Liters, 1 Mols, 298 Kelvins, 0, 0 Mols Liters^(-1)]


text:
The Canadian Commissioner of Competition believes Google has abused its dominant search position and in an ongoing investigation has filed a document with the Federal Court of Canada demanding more information on the company's practices.
Based on a preliminary investigation that started in May, the Commissioner believes the way Google operates its search engine and advertising platforms, as well as certain terms and conditions of its agreements with third parties, amount to abuses of a dominant position under the Canadian competition act, according to the Thursday filing.
The court filing lists a number of suspected anticompetitive behaviors, including entering into exclusive or default search agreements with websites, software and hardware vendors; favoring its own services in search results; and restrictions on the use of the AdWords advertising platform.
Despite changes made to the AdWords terms and conditions when Google settled a similar case with the U.S. FTC (Federal Trade Commission), the Commissioner continues to be concerned about how Google takes advantage of the AdWords API, the filing said.
To help with the investigation, the Commissioner now wants more information from Google in all these areas. Google and the Canadian Competition Bureau didn't immediately answer questions regarding these latest developments.
But the move by Canada's Competition Bureau, which is an independent law enforcement agency, to go ahead with an inquiry into Google's various practices shouldn't come as a surprise. Google's settlement with the FTC in January was at the time seen as a victory for the search giant. For example, the FTC said it wasn't going to pursue allegations that Google showed bias in its search results.
Google is currently also involved in an antitrust case in Europe. In an effort to avoid a fine in that case, Google has suggested labelling links to its own sites in search results and including links to three rival search engines for specialist search results.


text:
Effects of Hypertension (d) 22x28
AS-IS: This oversize 22" x 28" (56 x 71 cm) chart examines potential problems associated with high blood pressure. Topics covered by graphics and text include damage to the heart, eyes, brain, kidneys and blood vessels, as well as the progression of plaque build-up. ©2012
- February Heart Health Month
- Recommend hygienic satin UV lamination
Discontinued: Remaining inventory on discontinued poster titles may be discounted even though without physical damage. We call that a bargain!
Damaged: Get the content of pristine posters with slight surface imperfections. Severely damaged posters are recycled or returned to the manufacturer. A small supply of new posters may have faint spots, nicks or ruffles. More often than not, they appear along the edges and are concealed by framing. We offer them at a cost that covers materials and labor to laminate them in an effort to minimize bends.
Discontinued and damaged products are sold as-is and are non-refundable.
No need to download software. Full-size blue bounding box, rather than actual product is rendered. Currently, size.link supports two platforms:
- iPhone / iPad with iOS 12+
- Android device with ARCore 1.9+ support
General steps to view dimensions in augmented reality, with device variance:
- Click link on compatible mobile device.
- Pan camera back and forth in well lit room until blue bounding box appears.
- With finger, drag blue bounding box into location.
You may return products up to 30 days after receiving your order, unless otherwise stipulated. Non-returnable custom products include, but are not limited to, posters with grommets, extra-thick lamination, special-order frames, custom printed materials, and labor. Receive a return airbill label via email upon request for returnable products with your original order number.


text:
How Solid are the BRICs?
Four years on, we examine whether the BRICs economies are still on track
Since we began writing on the BRICs, each country has grown more strongly than our initial projections. Our updated forecasts suggest the BRICs can realise the "dream" more quickly than we thought in 2003.
The case for including the BRICs directly in global economic policymaking is now overwhelming.
We present the prospects for another set of developing countries, a group we call the N-11—the Next Eleven. Of them, only Mexico and perhaps Korea have the capacity to become as important globally as the BRICs.
We introduce a Growth Environment Score (GES), which aims to summarize the overall structural conditions and policy settings for countries globally. Improving long-term foundations is key to converting potential into reality.
Encouragingly, the BRICs themselves are all in the top half of the rankings for developing countries. While the BRICs are generally progressing, there is a need for considerable further policy improvement in each.


text:
Candace and I hope you are having a wonderful holiday
and we're excited to share our cute little wood Patriotic banner with you that we are also sharing over at Wood You Like To Craft today! Make sure to head over and see all the cute Patriotic ideas shared this week!
We cut them from 1/8" MDF, it's perfect for banners, not too heavy, not too thick, and makes them
a whole lot sturdier to store and hang.
Scallop, round and triangle edges add a bit of pop and depth to each pennant.
I find that my banners all end up looking very similar though, I can resist to bejewel them
for a little pop! I guess it's okay to go along with today's "sparklers" right?!
who serve to make our freedom possible!


text:
& Bad News
Join US
By Ahmed Amr.
Will the Times pay for its crimes?
By Ahmed Amr
NileMedia Editor
In a recent Guardian article titled 'Prime Time for Liars and Sleaze Artists' (3/8/2004), Peter Preston quotes Kurt Eichenwald, a New York Times reporter. "Pathological liars are pathological liars. They lie. I have come across more than my share of Blair-type liars. They are all the same. Once they are caught, they pretend to be confessing - then lie all over again ... And all of them - as you dig deeper into their false confessions - are thoroughly, thoroughly unrepentant ...". Over at Salon.com, another NYT reporter, Judith 'WMD' Miller was still defending the lies of the Times in her insistent way: "I was fucking right".
Kurt Eichenwald is well advised to stop preaching on the pages of the Guardian and start giving sermons in Times Square. After his indignant outburst in an English paper, it would be interesting to hear Kurt's critique of the lame mea culpa that his employer published just last week.
In what appeared to be a genuine display of contrition, the New York Times decided that it was "past time we turned the light on ourselves". The publisher, Sulzberger, demonstrated how serious he was by choosing a three-watt light bulb for the task. Even so, before flipping the switch, the Times wanted to congratulate itself on "an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of".
It didn't take long to scan this well crafted Times apologia for the name of the prime suspect responsible for systematically confusing the public about Iraq's none existent WMDs. But Judith Miller's name was nowhere to be found. This was not some casual oversight by Sulzberger's lads at The New York Times. The folks at the Daily Ruse must have agonized for weeks before deciding against a public reprimand of Judith 'WMD' Miller. Instead they chose to blend her canards with the foul produce of a gaggle of New York Times reporters who were supposedly taken in by a few shady Baghdad bad boys. The only apparent error that the editorial assigned to its WMD crew was that they "painstakingly extracted (information) from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information."
The lords at the 'paper of record' had a ready explanation for how little Miss Miller got duped. She apparently depended on a "circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on regime change in Iraq." How could Judith possibly doubt the credibility of a rascal like Ahmad Chalabi? The editorial, published on May 26th, stated that Chalabi's record "has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks?" Nice try, Sulzberger. But Chalabi's lack of credibility has been part of the public record for over a decade. The Daily Ruse staff should stop debating Chalabi's credibility and read all about it in a real newspaper.
The editors and publishers of the Daily Ruse didn't just blame Ahmad Chalabi, the designated fall guy for this "intelligence failure". The Times had another excuse for Miller's misfortune. "Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources."
Now, I am just guessing that the unnamed government officials being referred to are not Post Office employees and do not work for the Department of Health. Maybe the Times could narrow down this category to 'a rogue intelligence unit jointly operated by the Vice President's office and senior Pentagon Officials'. Like other parts of the Federal Bureaucracy, this 'rogue' operation might even have a proper name like 'The Office of Special Plans'. I will go out on the limb here and suggest that the Administration officials in question go by names like Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams and Lewis Libby.
A number of respected journalists have invested considerable time and effort in demonstrating that this anemic mea culpa from the wizards at the New York Times does not even begin to reflect the magnitude of deception and outright lies that were fed to the public by Miller and Company. No amount of apologies can begin to make up for the resultant cost in blood, treasure and national reputation. It is not the intent of this article to duplicate the magnificent analysis of Alexander Cockburn, Amy Goodman, Norman Solmon and many others who have refused to wade in the river of crocodile tears shed by Sulzberger and his WMD brigades. Soon enough, the value of their commendable work will become apparent and should guide responsible authorities in the right direction.
I have an entirely different take on the conduct of the Times. I say it was an illegal act that should earn both Sulzberger and Miller a good stint in a Federal Penitentiary. Bad journalism is just fine. Most journalism qualifies as bad or worse. Sloppy sourcing is also no crime. A lot of journalists just dish it out without so much as a second thought about second sourcing. Stupid and ignorant journalists can be found all around the globe and across the span of history. If stupidity and ignorance were made a crime, half the country would be locked up for life and the rest of us would be under investigation. And given the nature of American jails, we would no doubt end up with a long laundry list of Abu Ghraibs.
Newspapers lie all the time. We sort of expect them to. Journalism is not exactly considered the most reputable of professions. These days, journalists compete with politicians, circus barkers and prostitutes for the bottom rung of the evolutionary ladder.
But Miller isn't just a bad, stupid, ignorant and foul-mouthed journalist who likes to bully American officers by threatening to take her complaints to Rummy when they disobey her marching orders. She and her employer might very well be guilty of conspiring with certain elements in the intelligence community to disseminate propaganda to an unsuspecting American public. Such activities just happen to be in violation of federal statutes.
The problem here is not Miller's lack of character or the institutional lack of integrity that plagues The New York Times and other mass media empires. This is still a free country and the First Amendment allows you to tell any tall tale a sucker will listen to. Even war mongering yellow journalism is not a crime. You have the god given right to be as jingoistic as you want to be. You want total war all the time? If that makes you happy and you know it, clap your hands. Rupert Murdoch does it all the time. Every Americans has a right to an opinion about war and peace. You can publicly agitate for new wars or dissent against whatever war we happen to be involved in at the moment. Free speech is grand and freely available to all Americans, be they peacemakers or warmongers.
But believe it or not, the undiluted right to free speech does not extend to the intelligence community. See, the CIA and other intelligence units are perfectly entitled to spread whatever kind of propaganda they want to the heathen foreigners. But they are strictly prohibited from using their resources to spread similar material to the domestic market. That constitutes interference in our internal affairs.
There is a good reason for this prohibition. You wouldn't want the CIA Director to do a few 'misinformation' favors for a sitting president during a re-election campaign in exchange for a 50% pay raise or a little job security. And you wouldn't want a Republican dominated CIA to use their considerable propaganda skills to bring down a Democratic president. This is America, not Chile. By law, the intelligence community can conduct misinformation campaigns any place on the planet, except the United States.
Of course, the grown ups in the CIA and DIA know all about these 'red lines' and are all pledged to uphold the constitution and the law of the land, including the statutes that specifically prohibit them from using propaganda as a tool to mess with American minds. That might help explain part of the reason why the CIA and the DIA kept such a safe distance from Chalabi.
But a little known intelligence unit called the Office of Special Plans (OSP) didn't give a rip about the law of the land. Their staff was made up mostly of neo-con contractors loaned out from various Likudnik front operations that specialize in doing chores for Ariel Sharon. It was the OSP that passed around Chalabi to the media monopolies to amplify the latest fantasy cooked up by the Iraqi National Congress and The American Enterprise Institute. The AEI is a pro-Israeli think tank that had a symbiotic relationship with the OSP. For the record, the AEI publicly boasts about its connections in high media places where they have well placed assets like Judith Miller, Charles Krauthammer, William Safire and Thomas Friedman. What better way to deceive Americans than to brand propaganda with the corporate logo of The New York Times, The Daily Ruse.
Notice that no mention is made of the OSP in the NYT apologia. Most of the blame is placed on Chalabi and certain unidentified 'intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information'. That doesn't sound like the CIA or the DIA. But it is a perfect description of the OSP, which was set up by Wolfowitz and his neo-con pals at the Pentagon to bypass the 'timid' output of the mainstream intelligence community.
The NYT mea culpa, if swallowed whole, leaves us with an unidentified WMD reporter and a generic intelligence outfit who inadvertently collaborated in producing a major 'intelligence failure'. The Times only names Chalabi. This is no accident. All this dodging and weaving probably was painstakingly worked out with the paper's lawyers. Unlike his daddy, Sulzberger, the publisher, isn't out to get legal advice on whether to publish the Pentagon Papers. More likely, he wants his lawyers to lend a hand with the shredder.
Now you might still believe there was a genuine 'WMD intelligence failure' and that a notorious convicted bank embezzler just took in the amateurs hired by the OSP. And you might even buy into the notion that our 30 billion-dollar annual intelligence machinery just had a major breakdown. So at this stage, it is important to remove the CIA and DIA from the short list of suspects responsible for producing this deliberate 'intelligence failure'.
Both agencies were pretty much neutralized by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz in favor of the more glamorous OSP. The Office of Special Plans was supposedly more 'agile' than the stodgy crew in Langley. It was also more mobile. So mobile that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz managed to make it vanish shortly after the war started. Like Bush, the OSP put up a 'mission accomplished' sign and then just melted away.
Both The CIA and DIA appear to have resisted the temptation to participate in 'domestic propaganda'. The CIA and other members of the mainstream intelligence community disdained Chalabi, the OSP staff, Judith Miller and other neo-con media operatives. And they didn't like the CIA much either. Miller's reports are full of snipes at the CIA. Her columns would often contain pokes in the eye like "spokesmen for the CIA and DIA refused to comment about Mr. Saeed or whether they had interviewed him". Now, was that some kind of problem with the CIA or with Miller?
It is fair enough to ask if Saeed was one of the "circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles" that the New York Times is now moaning about. Is that why their legal staff recommended that they make reference to generic 'intelligence agencies' instead of the OSP. If you actually go back and read her garbage, you will discover that it was Miller who was marketing these suspect exiles to the mainstream intelligence community not the other way around.
Miller had plenty of room in her columns for other neo-cons who disdained the CIA. In a major column (1/23/2003), Miller struts out Richard Perle who was then the Chief of the Defense Policy Board. She quotes Perle as saying that "until recently, CIA officials were so hostile to defectors brought out of Iraq by the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella opposition group, that they refused to interview them and even tried to discredit their information.' Oh, the nerve of those folks at Langley.
On a triumphal note, Perle wanted it known that his neo-con cabal had licked the CIA and the DIA. "ultimately, the flow of information was so vital and so overwhelming that they could no longer ignore it." So, just a few weeks before the start of the war, we have the CIA resisting the urge to take Chalabi and his clowns seriously. 'Not ignoring' is a huge distance from swallowing and propagating.
Once you remove the CIA out of the 'intelligence failure' business, you are left with a very short list made up of Judith Miller, the Office of Special Plans and Chalabi. Miller and the OSP now both claim to have been force-fed lies by Ahmad Chalabi.
By Miller's own account, she verified her Chalabi scoops by checking with senior administration officials. And the OSP, in turn, backed up their Chalabi fiction by citing reliable media sources like the 'unimpeachable' New York Times. So, the only way that Chalabi could get away with his scheme was if the OSP and Miller were unaware that they were getting their information from the same source. How likely is that?
Miller often quoted unidentified 'senior officials' in her articles. The ombudsman at the Times is now suggesting that she should identify the rascals who misled her. But their identities are an open secret in the Beltway. Once again, the evidence points to Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby and Douglas Feith. All three of these confirmed Likudniks along with Vice President Cheney and his wife are associated with the AEI neo-con cabal. The AEI sponsored Chalabi from when he was just a wee little over paid public relations gimmick. The public record is clear on the AEI's frantic efforts to promote this war. In fact, the entire neo-con movement was mobilized to launch volley after volley of Weapons of Mass Deception against a defenseless American Public.
So, who was playing whom? Or were they all playing together against another team, the people of the United States.
Ahmad Chalabi is a crafty operator who was privately tutored in the ways of Washington by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. When he fell on his sword as a 'hero in error', he did it for his neo-con mentors and his other partner in crime, The New York Times. He was practically screaming "leave my people alone. I was the one who lied about Saddam chopping down that tree. If that's what it takes to be the George Washington of Baghdad, sue me." But no matter how many times Chalabi falls on his sword for his neo-con pals, he can't take the blame for the Yellow Cake Uranium scam and the outing of Valerie Plame. That was the exclusive handiwork of the OSP.
Notice that the only people still rooting for Chalabi are hard-core neo-cons like William Safire of the New York Times, a man who publicly boasts about being a ghostwriter for Ariel Sharon. Safire just recently wrote a nasty editorial attacking the CIA on behalf of the man who gave his paper all the WMD 'scoops'. Wolfowitz continues to rave about the quality of Chalabi's information. Richard Perle and other neo-cons were so insulted by the attack on their man in Baghdad that they barged into Condi's office in the White House to indignantly demand an end to what they called a 'CIA smear campaign'.
Once you stop accepting the ruse that Chalabi duped either the New York Times or the OSP, you are left with The Office of Special Plans as the tip of the spear in a plot to bombard the American people with Weapons of Mass Deception.
Which means that a major crime has taken place. If the OSP deliberately funneled propaganda to an unsuspecting Judith Miller, they stand accused of using intelligence assets to spread propaganda on the soil of the United States of America. To be specific, the OSP is in violation of Title 50, Chapter 15, Section 413b (f) of the US CODE, which prohibits covert actions intended to influence United States political processes. One doesn't have to be a lawyer to understand this law which reads "No covert action may be conducted which is intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies, or media". Of course, a more likely scenario is that the OSP and the New York Times launched this whole scam as a joint operation. This does not absolve the OSP. It just implicates the New York Times as a co-conspirator in this rogue intelligence operation.
It would not be the first time that these very same neo-con operatives at the Pentagon were suspected of violating of the law. Douglas Feith is still a prime suspect in L'affaire Valerie Plame. That particular felony was conducted in partnership with the Washington Post.
A few felons are still roaming the corridors of power at the Pentagon and the New York Times. Even the shrinking number of Americans who still believe that this Iraqi venture is a 'good war' should be up in arms and demand an investigation. It would be a dangerous precedent to allow a taxpayer financed intelligence unit to wage a propaganda campaign to skew a vital domestic debate on the wisdom of launching an unnecessary preemptive war of choice.
The American families who lost loved ones in this war or who will spend a lifetime caring for a wounded soldier should be paying close attention as this case develops. If the New York Times is found guilty of conspiracy in this OSP scam, individual and class action civil law suits are sure to follow. By joining hands with the felons at the OSP, the Times stands accused in the wrongful death and injury of thousands of Americans and Iraqis. Financial compensation will not settle accounts for the families of those who lost lives and limbs in this war of choice. But, we might just get the Times to pay an even stiffer price for their lies and criminal conspiracy. Seeing Miller and Sulzberger behind bars with the OSP crew would be compensation enough for many Americans.
Editor's note: The President of the United States and other members of the executive branch are obliged by law to report illegal intelligence operations to Congress. We should also note, that unlike the Jayson Blair affair, other major media monopolies have refrained from piling on the wagon to condemn the New York Times. There is an obvious explanation for why other media sharks are not eager to attack the 'paper of record'. The OSP operation also worked with key neo-con operatives at CNN, FOX, The Washington Post, MSNBC and the Wall Street Journal. A partial list of suspects includes Charles Krauthammer and Dana Priest at the Post, Wolf 'war room' Blitzer and Aaron 'arson' Brown at CNN. They too should pay a price for the willful deception of the American people.
Ahmed Amr is the editor of NileMedia.com, This article can be distributed at will.
Want to help spread quality independent journalism? Donate to NileMedia and watch us grow.


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Shipping usually takes 2 to 5 business days. You will receive a track and trace code as soon as your package has been handed to the delivery staff.
Free shipping (> € 80,-) to:
The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Finland, Poland, Ireland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.
Greece: € 18,- shipping costs
Switzerland and Norway: € 30,- shipping costs
Buyers from non-EU countries are responsible for any VAT and/or other local taxes.
All non-EU buyers are expelled from paying Dutch VAT. The reduction is integrated into the listing price.
Return shipment is for your own account.
We do not ship to Canada yet. However, we hope to be able to have the bath lovers over there Tubbling soon as well.
Tubble is Dutch, just like his inventor Arnoud. At times he would have loved to take a bath. But he didn't have one in his little Amsterdam bathroom. A renovation would be expensive and would mean that he would have to shower in his bath. Both not ideal. Then he got the idea for Tubble.
After developing the first Tubble design, the model has been tested, improved, tested some more, further improved, to the model you see here. Tubble, the flexible and inflatable bath, is now available in 20 countries and offers the luxury experience of a bath for a small price.
Arnoud has now made it his mission to make a relaxing bathing moment for everyone within arm's reach.
So you can enjoy your Tubble, wherever and whenever you want!
You can pay via:
• Ideal
• PayPal
• Mastercard, VISA, American Express
• Money transfer (The order will be sent as soon as the amount is on our account. Delivery can therefore take a little longer than with other payment methods.)
All payment methods are free.
With the supplied electric pump, inflating the bath takes one minute. Yes: just one minute.
Before you fill the bath you have already connected the drain hose to the bottom of the bath. Pull the built-in stop from the bath and let the water flow away easily in your shower drain.
Note: the shower drain must not be located too high (in a raised shower base, for example), because the water will not be able to drain properly. If your drainage channel is higher, there is the option to purchase a water pump with a drainage hose from our accessories page.
Fortunately, you can use all your delicious bath salts (including Epsom salt), bath oils, bath foam or bath bombs in the Tubble. Just rinse the bath afterwards with clean water.
The bath is suitable for bathwater up to 45 °C. It is also possible to take an ice bath if that's your thing.
Of course. The bath is made of high-quality PVC that complies with European (environmental) legislation. The electric pump has a CE quality mark.
The numbers tell the tale. The Tubble is flexible and fits in most bathrooms, but not in every bathroom. In case of doubt, we advise you to measure the space in your bathroom prior to ordering.
The Tubble Royale has the following dimensions: 158 cm (l) * 78 cm (b) * 54 cm (h) (at the headrest, at the foot end it is 44cm high).
The bath is flexible, so it will also fit in a 10% smaller space of approx. 143 cm (l) * 71 cm (b). Of course, you'll then have a little less interior space in the bath.
Yes. The bath is made of extra-thick PVC and is therefore suitable for outdoor use. But do not let the Tubble stand in the sun for too long and make sure that there are no sharp things close by.
Two, not too big, adults fit into the Tubble. It will not be very spacious, of course, but certainly possible. And 'gezellig' as they say in The Netherlands (described as cozy).
After several years the PVC will gradually become less strong, because of which the bath will possibly not inflate as well. How quickly this happens naturally depends on how often you make use of the bath. Every Tubble comes with a full 1-year warranty on manufacturing defects.
If you suspect there is a leak on your Tubble, first make sure that the air valves are completely sealed. Once your Tubble is fully filled with air, create a soapy solution (with water and dish soap or bath foam) and spray it all around the Tubble with a spray-bottle, look for the formation of new bubbles as they represent where the leak is found. Start by checking the valves, if you see bubbles forming around the valves, please make sure they are fully closed.
Leaks in PVC can be repaired with the repair-kit, consequently, place your Tubble on a clean surface. Apply glue over the leak (too much glue will often interfere with a proper repair). Allow the glue to become tacky for some minutes, and then place patch firmly on the damaged area. Use a weight to apply about 5kg of pressure for 24 hours. After the patch has dried, apply glue around the edges for a complete seal and let dry for 6 hours. Now you can safely use your Tubble again.
You can also view the following video to help you through the process.
The Professional Repair Kit works best for hard to reach places.
This is fairly simple: due to the large airvalves, it deflates within 1 minute. If you have used bath salts or bath oils etc., first rinse the bath with clean water. Then dry the bath, for example with a towel. Roll up or fold the bath and store it in the supplied storage bag. When it's folded, the bath is about as big as a filled shopping bag. In other words, you can easily store it under your bed or in a closet.
Still have a question? Send us an e-mail or let us know via the contact form. We will respond to your message within 1 working day.CONTACT FORM
Have a problem with your order or product? Any doubt or question will carefully be considered and taken care of. We are here for you from 9h to 17:30h every day of the week.


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Release Date: 2012 |
Album Rating: 3.0ANIMALS. ANIMALS. AM I LUCKY.
"when you've spoken to the world non-stop for the past fifteen years, might there even be anything worthwhile left to be said?"
What a fantastic line here.
This is an excellent review, Irving - you continue to inspire my writing with each review. One might say you talked about his history a bit too extensively but I felt it all added to this album's sense of purpose, or lack thereof. I'm not sure how I would feel about this; I loved Ghost, but don't really care for his other works. And "Lucky Animals" is really unpleasant to me, haha.
Spot on, Irving. Spot on.
I'd give you a pos, but you're above that ;]
Well fuck
"Devin Townsend has a lot of things to say, and many forms in which to say them in."
Maybe I'm crazy, but is this last "in" unnecessary? I think that because you said "in which to say them," then you don't need a second one. Not even nitpicking here - have more important things to do. I'm simply curious. =]
Album Rating: 3.5Haven't listened to it yet - Is it that great or alright?
Album Rating: 3.0really good review man
Album Rating: 3.5 | Sound Offgreat yo
don't listen to the grumpy people
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South Bend Stage 2 Daily Clutch Kit Subaru 2013-2019 BRZ
An SFI approved single mass flywheel is recommended for this application to get optimal performance. This clutch system is designed for the racing climate. The pressure plate is precision balance for vibration free operation at high RPM. The pressure plate fulcrum is altered for a positive disengagement and a quick shift. The disc is engineered with a Dual Damped design to provide accurate control when accelerating through corners. The friction material is a hybrid using a full face Feramic (Sintered Iron) lining on the flywheel side and a high metal content Organic lining on the pressure plate side. Engagement is positive yet buffered due to the high graphite content unique to Feramic facings.
- Recommended uses are daily and street with an emphasis on Rally and Endurance racing.
- Torque Rating: 445 Ft-Lb


text:
Over the years, Hollywood came calling many times. And in every case, Judy Blume said, "Thanks, but no thanks." Then, two years ago, someone finally persuaded her to make a feature film based on one of her 28 novels. That someone doesn't call her Judy, or Ms. Blume – he calls her "Mom."
"There has always been a lot of interest – people who wanted to adapt Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, or, especially, the Fudge books," said the author's son, Lawrence Blume. "But I think she finally decided, 'I'm not getting any younger,' and she wanted to be on location [during the filming], which is really grueling. It wasn't 'now or never,' but it was close."
Mother let son choose which film to make. Tiger Eyes, based on Blume's 1981 novel about a girl whose life is upended when her father dies violently and her mother moves the family from New Jersey to New Mexico, will be released on June 7, in theaters in 10 cities and simultaneously via video on demand.
"It has always been Larry's favorite," said Judy. "He feels very close to it because he came to live in New Mexico as a young teenager."
The two Blumes collaborated on the screenplay and share billing as co-producers. The financing came from giant British grocery chain Tesco. "Because they sell so many DVDs, for about five seconds they thought it would be an interesting idea to produce some material in-house," Larry said. Shortly after Tesco gave the green light, the company shut its entertainment division. That left the Blumes with complete creative control – and total responsibility.
"We made the movie with nobody looking over our shoulder, but it's been hard to wear every hat," Larry said. "We not only wrote and produced the movie, but had to be directly involved in the minutiae like deciding which theater in Albuquerque it should play in, or putting the font in for the green band [the trailer title card]."
All that work resulted in a film that completely satisfies the author, who admits she has teared up at every screening. Because she co-wrote the screenplay, Judy says the finished film is probably more faithful to the book than most adaptations, though the main character, Davey, was aged up a few years. The Blumes had just one day in Los Angeles to cast the female lead but made a shrewd move to use the casting company that found Jennifer Lawrence for the producers of Winter's Bone. "We figured they'd seen everybody worth seeing," Judy said.
At 23, Willa Holland already had an extensive resume as a model, as well as supporting roles in TV's The O.C. and Gossip Girl. Playing Davey Wexler was demanding since the novel is written in the first person; Holland appears in every scene.
"I learned very quickly I could get images of her that really expressed the deep emotions Judy wrote about in the novel," Larry Blume said. "If a picture is worth a thousand words, she could do 10,000 words with a look. We took great advantage of that. Any scene she wasn't the center of got cut out."
The film also stars Tatanka Means, the son of the late Native American actor/activist Russell Means. Tatanka Means plays Wolf, a college student visiting his gravely ill father in the hospital where Davey is volunteering. Russell Means came to the set for one day to play Wolf's father in a cameo, the last film he made before his death last October. "He told us, 'You guys can't afford me,' " Judy recalled, "but I think he liked the idea of doing this last film with his son."
Family Dynamics
The two Blumes had worked together once before, adapting Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great for ABC Television in 1991. But that was a 30-minute Weekend Special, not a feature film; Tiger Eyes took two years to complete and required 23 days on location in the canyons north of Los Alamos, N. Mex. Both agree they had only one bad afternoon as collaborators.
"We were having trouble getting a scene in the can, and even by rehearsing it, it just wasn't coming together," said Larry. "My last film [Martin & Orloff] was 85 percent improvised, so I asked the actors to try improvising, which caused great anxiety for Judy. Her whole creative life hangs on words and we were messing with the words."
In the end, he said, "the scene we wound up using is exactly what Judy wrote."
Even so, mother was willing to abdicate control to son when it was called for. "We both vowed if we took this on we were going to come out of it still loving and respecting one another, and we did," Judy said. "Without getting gooey, I know who's in charge on a set: the director. I learned a lot from him. He taught me to turn off the sound and watch the pictures, and the movie he made is visually beautiful."
The final challenge lies in marketing. Though Tiger Eyes is about a teenage girl, a "huge part of Judy's audience is 25 to 35, the so-called 'nostalgia audience,' " Larry said. Random House is publishing a movie tie-in edition with photographs and a behind-the-scenes diary written by Judy; a dedicated Facebook page is targeting the young women who grew up on Judy's books.
The author is hoping the release of her first feature-length film will be cause for celebration among her devoted fan base. "My dream is [for there to be] a lot of Tiger Eyes parties on June 7 where a dozen women and their daughters or their sisters or their mothers all get together to watch it."


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EBC Exercise 08 Installing Development Tools - bitbake
Embedded Linux Class by Mark A. Yoder
Early in the class most of the exercises we will do will all run on the BeagleBoard. You'll be able to edit (gedit), compile (gcc) and run all on the Beagle. Later, when we start compiling the kernel [1] or the boot loader, (U-boot) you will need to cross compile on a Linux machine and copy the results to the Beagle.
The purpose of this exercise is to install all the tools needed for compiling on your host so they will be ready when you need them.
Instructions for building Ångström are given here; however there are a few changes you have to make. Here's what I did.
Tip: Run this exercise using a wired connection if you can. The Ubuntu wireless driver can be finicky, and if it stops working you'll have to restart some of this.
Install development environment
These are the bitbake instructions. Use at your own risk.
The step is to get the crosscompilers, etc. installed. Generally you do this install on your local copy of Linux. Some of these installs can take a long time (one took me 12 hours, slow download times), so you may want to install on a remote server that's always connected to the internet. If so, see the tips [[ | below]]
Get the setup scripts
First install
git by running the following on your host computer.
host$ sudo apt-get install git-core
(Here is a nice git tutorial. Take a look at it if you want to understand the commands that follow. We'll explore it in more depth in a later exercise.)
Then run the following to load the meta data.
I have everything in a
~/BeagleBoard, so here is how I setup things:
host$ cd host$ mkdir -p BeagleBoard host$ cd BeagleBoard host$ git clone git://github.com/Angstrom-distribution/setup-scripts.git oe host$ cd oe
(The git took 4.5 seconds.)
This creates a directory for open embedded (
oe) and gets the script to download Ångström. What files do you see?
Setting up for the BeagleBoard
Now let's setup
local.conf for our needs:
$ gedit conf/local.conf
Add the following to the end of the file.
MACHINE ?= "beagleboard"
Look at this block of lines:
# Make use of SMP and fast disks PARALLEL_MAKE = "-j2" BB_NUMBER_THREADS = "2"
Here you can tell it how many parallel threads to run. If you have several cores on your machine, make this number big. If you have only one core, you might be better performance setting it to 1. If you have no clue which value to pick, Gentoo users suggest 1 more than the number of cores in your computer. More details are here.
- PARALLEL_MAKE sets the number "gcc" threads (same as make -j4 at compile time
- BB_NUMBER_THREADS sets the number of bitbake threads, (one thread can be downloading, while another compiles)
To save you a lot of time, it is useful to disable locale generation for all but the one you need. Add this to local.conf
GLIBC_GENERATE_LOCALES = "en_US.UTF-8 en_GB.UTF-8 de_DE.UTF-8 fr_FR.UTF-8 pt_BR.UTF-8 es_ES.UTF-8 kn_IN.UTF-8 ml_IN.UTF-8 ta_IN.UTF-8"
Now run:
host$ ./oebb.sh config beagleboard
I got some errors; some things are missing
host$ ls -ls /bin/sh 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Mar 29 14:53 /bin/sh -> dash host$ sudo rm /bin/sh host$ sudo ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh host$ ls -ls /bin/sh 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Aug 30 10:38 /bin/sh -> /bin/bash host$ sudo apt-get install gawk
Now try again
host$ ./oebb.sh config beagleboard host$ ./oebb.sh update
This will bring in all the tools you need. The config took about 3.5 minutes on my machine, update took about 1 minute.
Build a small program
Before the first time you run bitbake you need to do the following to set up the environmental variables:
host$ source ~/.oe/environment-angstromv2012.05
Take a look in the file and see what it is doing.
host$ less ~/.oe/environment-angstromv2012.05
To see if everything is ready, run the following
host$ bitbake nano
nano is a small editor. We really don't need nano, but if it can be compiled we know we have everything in place. I get the following error when I run the bitbake:
Pseudo is not present but is required, building this first before the main build . . . ERROR: Poky's config sanity checker detected a potential misconfiguration. Either fix the cause of this error or at your own risk disable the checker (see sanity.conf). Following is the list of potential problems / advisories: Please install following missing utilities: diffstat,texi2html,makeinfo,cvs,svn,chrpath ERROR: Execution of event handler 'check_sanity_eventhandler' failed
So, some programs are missing. Install them with:
host$ sudo apt-get install diffstat texi2html texinfo subversion chrpath gettext
This took just a few minutes.
Now run:
host$ bitbake nano
This will take a while. Mine first said it has 77 tasks to do. Once those were done it had 1113 tasks.
Below is a table of the times from last year. Add your bitbake time to this year's table.
|Run Time
|8 Core virtual machine
|PARALLEL_MAKE = "-j8"
|2.5 hours
|Intel Core 2 Duo T7800, 2.60 GHz
|PARALLEL_MAKE = "-j2"
|AMD Phenom(tm) II X3 720 Processor, 2.80 GHz
|PARALLEL_MAKE = "-j3"
|Run Time
|Dell E521 with AMD Athlon 64 dual-core
|PARALLEL_MAKE = "-j4"
Psyco? Yes.
|1.5 hours
|Intel Core 2 Duo T7800, 2.60 GHz
|PARALLEL_MAKE = "-j1"
Psyco? No.
|Intel Core 2 Duo T7800, 2.60 GHz
|PARALLEL_MAKE = "-j4"
Psyco? Yes.
Ubuntu 10.04 Running in VMWare Workstation 7.1.3 Under Windows 7 32-bit
Once nano is done building you can find it with:
host$ find . -name nano
Can you figure out which one is the nano that will run on your Beagle? I found it here:
Download and Compile the Kernel
The next step is to download and compile the kernel.
We want to keep the kernel source code around so we can experiment with it. Do this:
host$ gedit conf/local.conf
Find the line near the top that says
INHERIT += " rm_work " and comment it out. This will save the source code.
# INHERIT += " rm_work
Exit gedit and do the following:
host$ source ~/.oe/environment-angstromv2012.05 host$ cd ~/BeagleBoard/oe host$ bitbake virtual/kernel
Mine says it has 769 tasks to do. It took about 1 hour to do them. Once done you should get a kernel that will work.
If you accidentally run bitbake without commenting out the above line, after it runs you can comment out the INHERIT line and then run
host$ bitbake -c clean virtual/kernel host$ bitbake -f -c compile virtual/kernel
This second run should take less time (one timing: first run took 3.5 hours; the recompiling took 25 minutes).
Finding the Correct Kernel
When you do the bitbake virtual/kernel you get the most recent kernel. How do you know which version you got? Look in the source directory.
host$ cd ~/BeagleBoard/oe; ls -F build/ conf/ oebb.sh* pseudodone scripts/ sources/
Take a look in the sources directory.
host:~/BeagleBoard/oe$ ls -F sources bitbake/ meta-ettus/ meta-nslu2/ meta-ti/ downloads/ meta-handheld/ meta-openembedded/ meta-xilinx/ layers.txt meta-intel/ meta-openpandora/ openembedded-core/ meta-angstrom/ meta-java/ meta-opie/ meta-browser/ meta-kde/ meta-raspberrypi/ meta-efikamx/ meta-mono/ meta-smartphone/
Here you see directories that contain information about various repositories that were used in pulling together all the sources used to build the kernel, u-boot, and the cross-compilers. Look around a bit an see what you can learn.
Let's see what was built when we made the kernel.
host:~/BeagleBoard/oe$ cd build; ls -F sstate-cache/ tmp-angstrom_v2012_05-eglibc/
We are interested in the second directory. This is where the Angstrom build is kept, it's the 2012 version. Open Embedded can support other distributions and the software is set up so you can work with more than one distribution as the time. We're only working with Angstrom though.
The -eglibc tells us what libraries were used in making the build. We'll talk about libraries later. Look further:
host:~/BeagleBoard/oe/build$ cd tmp-angstrom_v2012_05-eglibc/; ls -F abi_version ccache/ qa.log stamps/ work-shared/ buildhistory/ deploy/ saved_tmpdir sysroots/ cache/ pkgdata/ sstate-control/ work/
I'm not sure what all of these are for, but I know the cross-compilers are kept in sysroots. Go and explore. See if you can find them. We'll work with them in a later exercise. What we want is in the work directory:
host:~/BeagleBoard/oe/build/tmp-angstrom_v2012_05-eglibc$ cd work; ls -F all-angstrom-linux/ beagleboard-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/ armv7a-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/ x86_64-linux/
These directories contain tools based on what they work on. x86_64-linux, for example, has the tools that run on your host computer. armv7a-angstrom-linux-gnueabi has things that run on all arm processors. beagleboard-angstrom-linux-gnueabi has things that are Beagle specific, and that's where we find the kernel.
host:~/BeagleBoard/oe/build/tmp-angstrom_v2012_05-eglibc/work$ cd beagleboard-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/; ls -F linux-mainline-3.2.18-r121b/
It looks like we have the 3.2.18 version of the kernel. Here's how you find out what kernel version have we've been running on the Beagle. On the Beagle run:
beagle$ uname -a Linux beaglebone 3.2.5+ #1 Mon Feb 13 19:22:44 CET 2012 armv7l GNU/Linux
It looks like we're running the 3.2.5+ kernel. But what if you don't want the most recent kernel? You need to find the bitbake recipe for the kernel you are running. Here's how I did it, back to the host:
host$ cd ~/BeagleBoard/oe host$ find . -name "*2.6.32*" | grep recipe ./sources/meta-ti/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-omap-psp-2.6.32 ./sources/meta-ti/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-omap-psp_2.6.32.bb
The find command looks for files and directories that contain the string 2.6.32, the grep command then displays only those that contain the string recipe in the name. What you find is the the name of the recipe for building the kernel we're interested in. Now all you have to do is bitbake it. Be sure the conf/local.conf file is set as described earlier so that the sources aren't deleted.
Note: Don't do this just yet. I'm not sure which version we need.
host$ source ~/.oe/environment-angstromv2012.05 host$ bitbake linux-omap-psp-2.6.32
I think mine took a couple of hours.
Download and Compile U-boot
While were' at it, let's get the boot loader we'll be using...
host$ bitbake u-boot
Mine took about 8 minutes.
Once installed you are ready for kernel work.
Embedded Linux Class by Mark A. Yoder


text:
Kelly's message: Notre Dame close to title caliber
Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly knows the importance of staying on message and he has been consistent all spring.
As the Fighting Irish prepared for the annual Blue-Gold game Saturday, Kelly said he believes Notre Dame is close to winning its first national championship since 1988. At the same time, he's telling players that they can't depend on last season's success leading to victories in 2013. And he's telling everyone he plans to be at Notre Dame for the long haul and talking about being a national power annually.
It's a task no Irish coach since Lou Holtz has been able to accomplish.
Championship-starved Irish fans are hoping he's right about Notre Dame being close. The embarrassing 42-14 loss to Alabama, the second most lopsided loss ever in the BCS title game, has shaken the faith of some long-suffering fans who jumped on the Kelly bandwagon last season.
During a Sirius XM Radio ''town hall'' Thursday, one fan told Kelly it appeared Alabama was a ''step and a half faster, 10 to 15 pounds stronger'' than Notre Dame, then asked: ''What do you have to do to bring the Notre Dame football program to the caliber of the SEC and Alabama?''
Kelly started by saying he believes Notre Dame is on the right path, but he believes the Irish might have been overwhelmed by the moment last January after going 12-0 and grabbing the No. 1 ranking.
''When we really sat down as a staff and analyzed it, we're a lot closer than many people think,'' he said. ''You look at the score and you look at the game, we were missing tackles and we weren't fitting plays, we didn't protect here or catch the ball there, we feel like - and we're realistic, we're probably more realistic than any fan - we believe we're on the right track and we're a lot closer than people believe.''
Revisionist history? It's definitely a different message than Kelly had immediately after the game, when he said the Irish needed to get physically stronger and ''continue to close the gap.''
Tackle Zack Martin said the Irish players know how much they need to improve after seeing Alabama.
''That's what it looks like. We know we're not there yet. But that's what we're working to,'' Martin said. ''We know we're capable of a lot of things if we can come in and work and get everything out of everyone every day.''
Martin said the message Kelly emphasized to the team back in January was that they couldn't count on last year's success translating to a continuation of that this season - and players understand that.
''We've got a lot to work on. For people to think we've arrived is a bit ridiculous. We know after that game that we're far from it,'' he said.
It's been nearly two decades since the Fighting Irish have been a consistent national power. They haven't finished in the top 10 in back-to-back seasons since being ranked No. 4 in 1992 and No. 2 in 1993. In fact, in the 19 seasons since, the Irish have finished only two seasons ranked in the top 10 - finishing No. 9 in 2005 and No. 4 last season.
But Kelly looks at Alabama and believes Notre Dame can have similar success.
''I believe we can do it here, what they've done at Alabama,'' Kelly said.
Kelly knows how he wants the Irish to do that. He wants to do it having a dominant defense, like the Irish did last year, when Notre Dame was seventh in the nation in total defense and second in scoring defense at 12.77 points a game. He also wants a fast-paced offense that keeps defenses off-balance with a no-huddle, hurry-up spread attack like he had when Cincinnati finished fourth in the nation in scoring in 2009 at 38.6 points a game.
''I want that as an offensive tool that we can go into a game at any time and change how we play the game. We couldn't do that last year,'' he said. ''I believe we are close to being able to do that this year.''
There was a time when Irish fans weren't certain Kelly would be Notre Dame's coach in 2013. He interviewed for the Philadelphia Eagles job on the day after the BCS game. Irish players were back at their homes when news broke and were concerned. Quarterback Everett Golson was worried if Kelly left it would mean starting over.
''But that fact that he did come back, we're ramped up and ready to go,'' he said.
Golson and other Irish players say they accepted Kelly's explanation that he was simply learning more about being an NFL coach and determining he is better suited for college. Kelly joked when asked if he had to do anything to win players back.
''They don't like me very much anyway, so it was really very little,'' he said.
Kelly said he expects more teams to contact him in the future ''because we're going to continue to win here. That doesn't mean I have an interest.''
Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the school is continuing to work on a contract extension for Kelly, whose current deal runs through the 2016 season. He said he hopes to have a deal in place by the start of the season.
So the focus now is on whether Notre Dame can contend again for a national title. The final question for Kelly at the town hall meeting came from emcee Tim Brown, the 1987 Heisman Trophy winner, about how many games Kelly expects Notre Dame to win.
''Thirteen,'' he said, to applause from the crowd, explaining it was the only possible answer. ''If our kids do the right things, which they have, and prepare the right way, and play the right way on Saturdays, we'll have them prepared and I expect to win each and every week that we play.''
That's the message Irish fans want to hear.


text:
Alert – U.S. Embassy Santo Domingo (May 15, 2020)
Location: Dominican Republic
Event: The U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo will send an update at least once a week to ensure that all U.S. citizens in the Dominican Republic have the latest information on COVID-19.
The following information has been updated on the Embassy Santo Domingo COVID-19 website:
- The Dominican Republic has 11,739 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 424 confirmed deaths.
- Flights are available to the United States through JetBlue and United Airlines. Check with the airline directly regarding booking flights.
- JetBlue: 809-200-9898; www.jetblue.com
- United Airlines: 809-262-1060; https://www.united.com; firstname.lastname@example.com
Actions to Take:
- Consult the CDC website for the most up-to-date information and what you can do to reduce your risk of contracting COVID-19.
- Dial *462 to reach the COVID-19 hotline in the Dominican Republic for specific instructions if you have been exposed or are experiencing severe symptoms. Note: English-speaking operators are limited.
- U.S. citizens who live in the United States should arrange for immediate return home or be prepared to remain abroad for an indefinite period. All U.S. citizens must follow the curfew and restrictions on public gatherings put in place by the Government of the Dominican Republic.
- Flights are available to the United States through JetBlue and United Airlines. Check with the airline directly regarding booking flights.
- Have a plan to depart from the Dominican Republic that does not rely on U.S. government assistance.
- Visit our Embassy webpage on COVID-19 for information on conditions in the Dominican Republic.
- Visit the COVID-19 crisis page on travel.state.gov for the latest travel information and other global impacts.
- Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive Alerts and make it easier to locate you in an emergency.
U.S. Embassy Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Av. República de Colombia 57, Santo Domingo
Emergencies: 809-567-7775
Non-emergency inquiries: email@example.com
Website: https://do.usembassy.gov/
Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive security updates


text:
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