text:
On Jan. 16, 1949, KNBH, the station now known as KNBC or NBC4, began broadcasting on Channel 4 to the Los Angeles Designated Market Area (DMA).
At that time, it was one of seven VHF stations licensed for operation in the market. KNBH, which stood for National Broadcasting Hollywood, was one of three stations in the market representing a national broadcasting chain.
The station, which was owned by the National Broadcasting Company, debuted with three hours and forty minutes of programming, which followed a 15-minute test-pattern-and-music session. Inauguration night launched with an eighteen-minute newsreel, "Review of 1948," the market's first variety program "On With the Show," and the station's first live program "The Pickard Family," featuring Dad and Mom Pickard and their four children singing familiar American songs.
By October 1949, KNBH had extended its operating schedule from five to seven days a week, with approximately 26 hours of television programming each week. The station continued to make major technical advances and was the leading promoter of television as the premiere advertising medium. In October 1950, KNBH transmitted the first commercial telecast of a sports event, a Los Angeles Rams Football Game, via the Los Angeles/San Francisco inter-city MicroWave Relay.
KNBH again made history in April 1951 when the first telecast, originating in the East, was presented to West Coast viewers on the same day. The station broadcast General Douglas MacArthur's speech before Congress less than five hours after it had been originated in Washington, D.C. In November 1962, the station relocated to the NBC Burbank facilities, its current location, and changed its call letters to KNBC.
When the station launched in 1949, Los Angeles was the fifth largest city in the United States, with only 80,000 television sets within 100 miles of the station's Mount Wilson transmitter. Today, the LA market is the second largest in the country and Channel 4 is viewed in more than five million households, reaching 15 million viewers regularly. The station now operates 24 hours a day, seven days per week.
KNBC was one of the first stations in the market to launch its own web site in August 1995. The site, located at www.nbcLA.com, receives almost one million unique visitors per month. On Oct. 24, 1998, KNBC was the first station in the market to broadcast a High Definition signal.
In addition to carrying the network's award-winning daytime, prime-time and late night programming, KNBC produces thirty hours of live, local news programming each week. A dominant station in the market, KNBC is known for the quality of its daily newscasts, its community outreach and its coverage of major breaking news.
More Reading: NBC4 Reporters, Anchors | NBC4 Names Todd Mokhtari Vice President of News | Steve Carlston Named President and GM of NBC4


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After months of testing and loads of hands-on feedback from tens of thousands of users, GitHub's programmable text editor Atom is now available for the general public to download. Its pricetag: free, with its source code available under the MIT license -- an ideal choice to quell any lingering questions about its licensing or monetization method.
Atom's main claim to fame is its hackability and extensability. Created by using Google's Chromium for its display engine and Node.js for its backend, Atom allows its functionality to be extended by either third parties or the end user by way of packages written in CoffeeScript or JavaScript.
In fact, Atom could be considered a 21st-century Emacs, the venerable text editor that's still in wide use among veteran programmers. The galaxy of add-ons for Atom include not only support for the behaviors of another old-school text editor, Vim, but also everything from tabbed editing to tree-view explorations for an Atom project.
When word of Atom first began to circulate, some developers wondered what its licensing model would be (e.g., open core with for-pay add-ons), or how closely it would be tied into GitHub's services. In announcing Atom's release, GitHub's Nathan Sobo (Atom team developer) and Chris Kelly (developer relations lead) made it clear that the licensing was designed to "leave the door open to allow others to do what was best for Atom." There are no plans on the table to monetize the product, either through cost-plus add-ons or services.
"GitHub's core mission has been enabling collaboration with software," Sobo said. "We're developers too, and we wanted to build this for ourselves as it is, but also make the community as big and vibrant as it can me and worry about money later."
Another element of Atom that might give GitHub skeptics pause is the package management system. Like Node.js itself, Atom uses a package manager to control the installation of add-ons. But right now, the back end for those add-ons is only via repositories on GitHub itself. That said, Sobo and Kelly reassured me that future releases of Atom would allow users to define their own Git-based source for add-ons.
Sobo and Kelly are also interested in seeing how the hackability of Atom extends not only to the add-on system within the project, but with the way the project's own bones -- its mix of Chromium and Node.js -- might be used to package and deliver other JavaScript/HTML5-powered desktop applications in the future as well. GitHub tried an existing project, node-webkit, as a possible base, but in the end elected to create its own parallel project to better obtain what it wanted.
The biggest existing direct competition for Atom would most likely be the for-pay, closed-source Sublime Text, which enjoys a broad user base and exists in OS X, Windows, and Linux editions. Sublime Text is also extensible, with its own culture of add-ons and plug-ins, but it uses Python instead of JavaScript for its extensibility, meaning the two might end up being complementary rather then competing in terms of what they offer programmers looking for a customizable work environment.
This story, "GitHub releases free and open Atom code editor," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.


text:
HANOVER, NH—According to students enrolled in professor Michael Rosenthal's Philosophy 101 course at Dartmouth College, that guy, Darrin Floen, the one who sits at the back of the class and acts like he's Aristotle, seriously needs to shut the fuck up.
His fellow students describe Floen's frequent comments as eager, interested, and incredibly annoying.
"He thinks he knows about philosophy," freshman Duane Herring said. "But I hate his voice, and I hate the way he only half raises his hand, like he's so laid back. We're discussing ethics in a couple weeks, but I don't know if I can wait that long before deciding if it's morally wrong to pound his face in."
"Today he was going on and on about how Plato's cave shadows themselves represent the ideal foundation of Western philosophical thought," said freshman Julia Wald moments after class let out Monday. "I have no idea what Plato's ideal reality is, but I bet it doesn't include know-it-all little shits."
Wald added: "If he uses the word 'dialectical' one more time, I'm going to shove my copy of The Republic down his throat."
Although he demonstrated a familiarity with Peter Singer's view on famine relief during a discussion of John Locke's theory of property, Floen is reportedly unfamiliar with the theory of cramming it for a change and giving someone else a chance to speak.
"Just last week Professor Rosenthal was talking about Russell's Paradox, and that jackass starts going off: 'But what about Heraclitus' aphorism: Everything flows, nothing stands still?'" classmate James Luers said. "At first I was like, 'That's totally irrelevant,' but then I was like, 'Well, actually, it does apply to the nonstop flapping of your trap.'"
Among the 40 students who regularly attend Philosophy 101, the one who has endured the most suffering is freshman William Deekes.
"Some people know Darrin as just 'that guy in philosophy class who needs to shut the hell up,'" Deekes said. "I, however, also know him as 'the douche in African history who seriously needs to chill' and 'the a-hole in environmental sciences who could really use a girlfriend.'"
"I enrolled in this course because I was fascinated by the question of God," said sophomore Miriam Blank. "After spending six hours a week in the same room as that unbearable windbag, I think I have my answer. Life is as long as it is cruel."
The outspoken student has not gone unremarked by the course's professor.
"Mr. Floen is a valuable contributor to our in-class discussions," Rosenthal said. "His tendency to question and challenge everything before him captures the very essence of philosophy itself."
Rosenthal added: "Having said that, I do wish he would occasionally do me the valued service of shutting his damn cake hole."


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In this Photoshop tutorial, we're going to see how to create extremely glossy and shiny text effect with glitter texture. We will use simple techniques blending and layer style effects. The psd file and pattern are attached. You may find free psd file below.
- Download source files:
- Download source - Glossy text effect PSD file.
- Wrexham Script font.
License and Attribution:This file is licensed under the Creative Commons license. Attribution is required and always appreciated. Thanks.
- Create a new Photoshop document 1024*768 px, resolution 72px/inch. Layer style setting are working correctly just for 220 pt font size(240 pt for the first letter). If you use different font, play with adjustments. You can change the final image size without losing effects after merging of all layers.
- To create background, fill the first layer with any color.
- Apply following Radial Gradient Overlay effect to this layer.
- Create a new empty layer above gradient background, place lines pattern.
- You may create it yourself, just fill the new layer with diagonal lines pattern and apply Filter > Distort > Twirl > 200 ° .
- Apply Overlay Blending Mode to pattern layer and Opacity 10%.
- Create a new empty layer and draw a large spot #ff0096 color using soft round brush with diameter 500 px in the center of composition.
- Type the text, I've used Wrexham Script font, font size 220 pt and 240 pt for the first letter.
- Load selection for the text layer - Menu > Select > Load selection. Make text layer invisible.
- Keep selection, create a ne empty layer, go to Menu > Edit > Stroke. Create 3 px width outside stroke.


text: Security researchers have discovered a new variant of the Duqu cyberespionage malware that was designed to evade detection by antivirus products and other security tools.Researchers from Symantec announced the discovery of a new Duqu driver, the component responsible for loading the malware's encrypted body, on Monday via Twitter. The driver is called mcd9x86.sys and was compiled on Feb. 23, said Vikram Thakur, principal security response manager at Symantec.Originally discovered in October 2011, Duqu is related to the Stuxnet industrial sabotage worm, with which it shares portions of code. However, unlike Stuxnet, which was created for destructive purposes, Duqu's primary goal is stealing sensitive information from particular organizations around the world.The discovery of the new driver is a clear indication that the Duqu authors are continuing their mission, said Thakur. "No amount of public awareness about Duqu has deterred them from using it to accomplish their objective.""I think when you invest as much money as invested into Duqu and Stuxnet to create this flexible framework, it's impossible to simply throw it away and start from zero," said Costin Raiu, director of Kaspersky Lab's global research and analysis team. "We always said that future variants of Duqu and Stuxnet will most likely be based on the same platform, but with enough changes to make them undetectable by security software. Indeed, this is the case here."The source code of the new driver has been reshuffled and compiled with a different set of options than those used in previous versions. It also contains a different subroutine for decrypting the configuration block and loading the malware's body."We have seen this technique in October 2011, when the Duqu drivers were recompiled and bundled with new encryption subroutines, following the public disclosure," Raiu said.The Duqu variant most likely uses a new command and control (C&C) server, since all previously known ones were shut down on Oct. 20, 2011, Raiu said. However, neither Symantec nor Kaspersky researchers know the exact address of the new server, because they don't have the component that contains that information."We do not have the full Duqu body, only the loader in the form of the driver. The loader does not contact the C&C directly, it only loads the main body which is stored in encrypted form," Raiu said.Even if the new server would be known, it would probably be configured in a manner that it wouldn't allow anyone to get too close to the real attackers, Thakur said. The Duqu authors are confident that the malware will remain non-attributable, he said.The organizations targeted by the new version are also unknown at the moment, but they're probably the same ones as in previous variants, Raiu said.


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Italian Woman, 116, Has Become Last Known Living Person Born in 1800s
Surrounded by relatives and friends, Italy's Emma Morano greeted with a smile the news that she, at 116, is now the oldest person in the world.
Not only that, but Morano is believed to be the last surviving person in the world born in the 1800s, with a birthdate of Nov. 29, 1899. That's just 4-1/2 months after Susannah Mushatt Jones, who died Thursday in New York, also at 116.
Journalists on Friday descended upon Morano's home in Verbania, a northern Italian mountain town overlooking Lake Major, to document her achievement, but had to wait until she finished a nap to greet her.
Morano lives in a neat one-room apartment, which she no longer leaves, and is kept company by a caregiver and two elderly nieces.
"I am doing fine —116!" she told well-wishers from her bed Friday.
"I finished school and I went to work. I used to sing. I had a beautiful voice," she added, summing up her life in a frail voice.
Her physician of 23 years, Dr. Carlo Bava, delivered the news earlier that she was officially the world's oldest person.
"She was very, very happy" and sitting up in a chair, he told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "She was all proud and contented."
For the occasion, he brought flowers as well seven Easter cakes called Colomba, an Italian specialty that he managed to procure out of season to satisfy her sweet tooth until Christmas, when Panettone is available.
The doctor said Morano has never had a very balanced diet, relying mostly on animal protein, the occasional banana and grapes in season. Her diet now includes two raw eggs and 100 grams of raw steak a day, which Bava prescribed after she had a bout of anemia some years back. Her nieces also make her apple sauce.
Italy is known for its centenarians — many of whom live on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia — and gerontologists at the University of Milan are studying Morano, along with a handful of Italians over 105, to try to figure out why they live so long.
Bava, who visits her every Friday, is convinced there's a genetic component to Morano's longevity in addition to her positive attitude. One of her sisters lived to be over 100 and another to nearly 100.
She has been in stable health for years, Bava said, with no chronic ailments.
"Her longevity is a genetic fact, nothing else," Bava said. "She is a person who from a young age had a difficult life that would have sapped the energy out of anyone."
He said Morano's husband beat her and she lost an infant son to crib death at 6 months. She supported herself working in a factory making jute bags, then in a hotel, working well past retirement age.
"She abandoned the husband in the Fascist era, when women were supposed to be submissive. She was always very decisive," her doctor said. (Oh the (((doctor)))! This is a perfect example how the regressive left media find a way to bash Fascism and traditional family values, in a story that is about the oldest woman alive. We're sure that this woman and Italy as a whole is far better of today, when Europe has opened the borders and all the migrant are flooding into Italy. So keep in mind goy that you should worry about Mussolini, not Muslims. You need to be reminded - constantly - that those who care for people, their country and seek order are the true problem, not those that are trying to destroy those things.)
Bava, who has known Morano since she was 90, also praised her emotional stability.
"She is always a very serene. The beauty of Emma is that it is normal that she smiles, but also in difficulties, she is very decisive," he said. "But perhaps this tranquility comes with age, which becomes wisdom. Who knows?"


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David Hartman and Bob Schieffer
Our emcee, Bill Griffeth, with Boston-area journalism students at the table he sponsored, along with honorees Bob Schieffer and David Hartman.
Trustee Peter Steingraber, Councilor Olivia Parker, Councilor Mary Tedesco, and Jean Powers with honoree Bob Schieffer.
Councilor Mary Tedesco, Councilor Lionel Spiro, and Patron Member Tracy Smith
Honoree Bob Schieffer enjoying a lighter moment with MaryAnn Ekberg of Wells Fargo.
Patron Members Tracy and Matthew Smith of Palm Beach, Fla., with Mary Ford Kingsley of Wellesley, Mass, and Brenton Simons, President and CEO of New England Historic Genealogical Society.
Dinner Benefactor, Life Benefactor, and Councilor Thomas Bailey Hagen of Erie, Penn., with honoree David Hartman.
Bill Griffeth of CNBC, interviews legendary television anchors Bob Schieffer and David Hartman.
Honorary Event Chair Kristin Servison of Brookline, Mass., with Robert and Donna Storer.
Guests Joan Crowley and Frank Callahan.
Honorees Bob Schiefferand David Hartman with Brenton Simons and emcee Bill Griffeth.
Curator of Special Collections Curt DiCamillo, Silver Benefactor Paul Roberts of Freeman's, honoree Bob Schieffer, and Stephanie Donaldson and Kelly Wright of Freeman's.
Dinner Silver Benefactors Judith Avery of San Francisco, Calif., and Barbara Jordan of Wayland, Mass.
Trustee Emeritus William Crozier, Jr., with his wife, Prudence Crozier, of Wellesley, Mass.; Vice Chairman Nancy Maulsby of Greenwich, Conn.; and Richard G. Schulze, Chairman of Old Sturbridge Village.
Dinner Benefactor Vivian Spiro of Boston, Mass., and Nicholas Gleysteen of Weston, Mass.


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On the most recent episode of Don Cherry's personal megaphone, Coach's Corner, the flamboyant Cherry addressed some concerns he had about Brian Burke's recent dismissal of Maple Leafs' coach Ron Wilson.
"Here's what kills me - Burke goes to my bosses and says I'm a bad guy and I said something 'vicious' about his coach," said Cherry. "Two weeks later he fires him. Figure that one out folks."
Cherry also decided to tear into Burke for his failure to have even one player from Ontario on the team.
"If you want Americans, you got the team. It's the only organization in Canada that cheers when Canada loses and it's an absolute shame.
"There's 40,000 kids in the GTHL ... (Tyler) Seguin, (Jeff) Skinner, (Jason) Spezza - they all come from the GTHL. This guy (Burke) has none. He has all Americans, he has American college guys who play for him right now and I could go on and on."
Finally, in a move that perfectly encapsulates Cherry's aggressively nonsensical personality, he challenged Burke to—I think—try to take his job again. He recalls a conversation that may or may not have happened back when Burke tried to get rid of him behind his back years ago. "You want to take me on? 'Oh Brian Burke, I'm shaking in my boots.'" This all segues perfectly into a sneak peak of the Cherry biopic, "The Wrath of Grapes."
h/t tomuban
Don Cherry blast Leafs' GM Brian Burke on Wilson firing [Globe And Mail]


text:
WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. has reached a $1.2 billion settlement with Toyota Motor Corp., concluding a four-year criminal investigation into the Japanese automaker's disclosure of safety problems, according to a person close to the investigation.
Attorney General Eric Holder, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, were announcing the settlement Wednesday morning, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the settlement on the record before the announcement.
In a statement early Wednesday, Toyota said it has "cooperated with the U.S. Attorney's office in this matter for more than four years" and had "made fundamental changes to become a more responsive and customer-focused organization, and we are committed to continued improvements."
The criminal investigation focused on whether Toyota was forthright in reporting problems related to unintended acceleration troubles.
Starting in 2009, Toyota issued massive recalls, mostly in the U.S., totaling more than 10 million vehicles for various problems including faulty brakes, gas pedals and floor mats. From 2010 through 2012, Toyota Motor Corp. paid fines totaling more than $66 million for delays in reporting unintended acceleration problems.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration never found defects in electronics or software in Toyota cars, which had been targeted as a possible cause.
The settlement continues a string of bad publicity for Toyota, which before the unintended acceleration cases had a bulletproof image of reliability. Since the cases surfaced, the company's brand image has been damaged and it has lost U.S. market share as competition has intensified.
Last year, Toyota agreed to pay more than $1 billion to resolve hundreds of lawsuits claiming that owners of its cars suffered economic losses because of the recalls. But that settlement did not include wrongful death and injury lawsuits that have been consolidated in California state and federal courts.
In December, Toyota filed court papers after a four-year legal battle saying that it's in settlement talks on nearly 400 U.S. lawsuits, but other cases aren't included in the talks.
The negotiations come less than two months after an Oklahoma jury awarded $3 million in damages to the injured driver of a 2005 Camry and to the family of a passenger who was killed.
The ruling was significant because Toyota had won all previous unintended acceleration cases that went to trial. It was also the first case where attorneys for plaintiffs argued that the car's electronics — in this case the software connected to a midsize Camry's electronic throttle-control system — were the cause of the unintended acceleration.
At the time, legal experts said the Oklahoma verdict might cause Toyota to consider a broad settlement of the remaining cases. Until then, Toyota had been riding momentum from several trials where juries found it was not liable.
Toyota has blamed drivers, stuck accelerators or floor mats that trapped the gas pedal for the acceleration claims that led to the big recalls of Camrys and other vehicles. The company has repeatedly denied its vehicles are flawed.
No recalls have been issued related to problems with onboard electronics. In the Oklahoma case, Toyota attorneys theorized that the driver mistakenly pumped the gas pedal instead of the brake when her Camry ran through an intersection and slammed into an embankment.
But after the verdict, jurors told AP they believed the testimony of an expert who said he found flaws in the car's electronics.
Toyota also had to pay millions for recalls, as well as a series of fines totaling $68 million to the NHTSA, the U.S. government's road safety watchdog, for being slow to report acceleration problems.
Still, the payments won't hurt Toyota's finances very much. In its last fiscal quarter alone, Toyota posted a $5.2 billion profit, crediting a weak yen and strong global sales.
Krisher contributed from Detroit.
Based on reporting by the Associated Press.
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Short term options, dental coverage, supplemental insurance and other health benefit plans are available through multiple sources. We suggest Smart Insurance Marketplace as the first place to look. Telephone and email support is available.
Freedom Benefits small business employee benefit plans now allow for inclusion of a wider range of options including: 1) Group or Individual Health Insurance, 2) Health Savings Account, 3) Preferred Provider Discount Pricing Service (including prescription drugs at over 45,000 pharmacies nationwide, Telehealth for facetime or call to a physician 24/7, Karis360 Suite of services including Healthcare Navigator, Surgery Saver and Bill Negotiator), 4) Health Reimbursement Arrangement, 5) Special Purpose Health Reimbursement Arrangement, 6) Qualified Small Employer Health Reimbursement Arrangement, 7) Flexible Spending Account including Dependent Care Plan. 8) 401(k) Plan, 9) Pension Plan, 10) IRA or SEP Retirement Savings Plan, 11) Deferred Compensation Plan, 12) Thrift Savings Plan, 13) Employee Home Office Expense Reimbursement Plan, 14) Employee Travel Expenses Reimbursement Plan, 15) Employee Commuter Mass Transit and Parking Expense Reimbursement Plan, 16) Employee Work-Related Expense Reimbursement Plan, and 17) Other benefits specified by the employer.
12/1/2017 Bangor Daily News reports that only 7% of the state's population lacks health insurance but that more than 34,000 taxpayers, 5.25% of state tax filers, pay a pay a federal tax penalty for not having coverage. Those penalties added up to an extra $15 million paid to the federal government last year. It seems to us that more taxpayers could be exempted from the penalty if they took a loser look at the issue.
11/8/2017 Maine voters approved expansion of Medicaid coverage for the poor by referendum yesterday after the state's governor vetoed the measure five times.


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(visited by Captain Peter)
10-Apr-2011 -- Underway from Vitória (E.S., Brazil) with 1,750 pieces (i.e. 30,000 metric tons) of steel slabs today, after a 17-days lasting voyage, we arrived at Brownsville, TX.
The Confluence is located 8 nautical miles (14.8 km) off the coast and the natural entrance to the Laguna Madre, commonly known as Brazos Santiago. From there an artificial navigable channel cuts in SW direction toward the Port of Brownsville, TX.
From the Confluence itself not too much can be seen. Toward WNW we see some hotels of South Padre Island and there is a close oilrig to SE.
The view toward WSW, unfortunately heavily in clouds today, would show us the US-Mexican Border area.
Brownsville, TX is located on the N side of the Rio Grande, thus directly on the river forming the border between the United States of America and Mexico. Opposite, on the S side of the Rio Grande, on Mexican territory, there is Matamoros – the "Twin Town" of Brownsville. Due to heavy traffic, commerce, and migration, several such "Twin Towns" have formed along the US-Mexican border. The most famous Twin Towns are Brownsville-Matamoros (Texas/Tamaulipas), El Paso-Ciudad Juarez (Texas/Chihuahua) and San Diego-Tijuana (California/Baja California).
The Rio Grande (Spanish: Río Bravo del Norte) forms the international boundary between the United States and Mexico. The river, however, is closed to navigation by international agreement. Rio Grande has a total length of about 3,000 km (1,860 miles). Its spring is in Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains. Hence it crosses New Mexico, and at El Paso begins to form the boundary between Mexico and the USA for about 1,800 km (1,100 miles) down to the Sea. Rio Grande is the second largest river of the USA after the Mississippi/Missouri. However, not much is left nowadays from the "Great River", as it is heavily drained for the irrigation of large agricultural areas. The International Boundary Commission has installed additionally several dams on the river to prevent fresh water wasting into the Gulf of Mexico.
The city of Brownsville, TX lies about 40 km (25 miles) upriver. It is both a summer and winter resort, which lies on a major route into Mexico at the center of a rich agricultural valley. Brownsville is the terminus of the Intracoastal Waterway, a sheltered route over a distance of more than 1,000 nautical miles (1,850 km) from Carabelle (Florida).
Brownsville itself is an industrial port, mainly linked to the oil industry (maintenance of oilrigs) and there are several scrapyards. The pilot who brought me in called it "the Bangladesh of the United States" (due to the fact that Bangladesh is known worldwide for having a very busy shipwrecking and steel recycling industry).


text: Osthoff Resort 101 Osthoff Ave Elkhart Lake, WI 53020 (920) 876-3366 (800) 876-3399 Group rates Woodland Room $113 Lakeside Room $118 Lakeside Superior Room $124 1 Bedroom Woodland Suite $127 1 Bedroom Woodland Deluxe Suite $138 1 Bedroom Lakeside Suite $143 2 Bedroom Woodland Suite $154 1 Bedroom Lakeside Deluxe Suite $160 2 Bedroom Lakeside Suite $171 Plus 10% tax The group rate(s) will be available 3 days prior and 3 days post the contracted dates. Individual Reservations: Each individual guest must make their own reservation by calling 1-800-876-3399 by June 22, 2010. After this date, rooms not covered by a rooming list or individual reservations, shall be released from Group's room block and resort may contract with other parties for the use of such rooms. Resort will continue to accept reservations from Group's attendees after that date at the prevailing room rate, subject to availability. http://www.osthoff.com


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NEW YORK – The gravity of the situation was etched on the face of New York Rangers coach Alain Vigneault. One more loss Wednesday night to the Los Angeles Kings and his squad gets the distinction of being swept in the Stanley Cup finals.
No team has been swept in the finals since Detroit did it to Washington in 1998, completing a run of four straight Stanley Cup sweeps. So while the Kings are trying to close out the series, New York's focus is strictly on moving past disappointment and getting back to LA for Game 5.
"We're down 3-0. We're all lacking sleep. This is tough," Vigneault said on a day of optional practices. "I didn't expect my players today to be cheery and upbeat. We're in the Stanley Cup finals and we're down 3-0. You don't get a lot of these opportunities.
"Excuse us if today we're not real cheery, but tomorrow I can tell you we're going to show up."
The only levity expressed after the Rangers were beaten 3-0 at home by goalie Jonathan Quick and the Kings was when Vigneault was asked what his team could do differently at Madison Square Garden.
"Score," he said.
The packed room of reporters laughed. Vigneault didn't.
The present predicament makes it seem long ago that the Rangers led by two goals in the series opener, and then held a trio of two-goal leads in Game 2. Both of those ended with overtime wins by Los Angeles that sparked the Kings and demoralized New York.
Getting blanked in the first Stanley Cup finals game at the Garden since the Rangers last won the Cup in 1994 only made them feel worse.
"I do believe we can turn this around. I do," Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist said, "because we've been that close in every game."
Even in the shutout loss, the Rangers outshot the Kings 32-15. They haven't been dominated, but they also haven't found a way to win.
The Kings know both sides of a 3-0 series. They trailed by that margin in the opening round of this postseason to San Jose and then became the fourth NHL team to rally and win.
"We've been down a lot this postseason, we've been up, been in some exciting games, some long games," Kings forward Jarret Stoll said. "We just keep playing, trying to find a way to win. We've had some fortunate bounces."
Two years ago, the Kings went up 3-0 in the finals against New Jersey — the fourth straight series they built such a lead — but allowed the Devils to stay alive until Game 6. Premature celebrations, ticket requests from people close to the players and other distractions took players' focus away from the game and penetrated the Kings' insulated wall, the one no-nonsense coach Darryl Sutter worked hard to create.
"Game 4 was at home. There was a lot of distraction," Sutter said of 2012. "That was a lesson learned, not just for our players but for our whole organization. We were trying to keep our players as a little inner circle, but the circle got a little bit of infringement."
The Rangers are hoping that kind of history repeats.
New York has never come back to win a series it trailed 3-0, but the Rangers rallied to knock out Pittsburgh in the second round this year after trailing 3-1.
"Today is a tough day," forward Brad Richards said. "Your mind is racing on a thousand different things you could've done. But you have to make the best of it. The series is not over. We all can't wait to get back on the ice. It's just the waiting and the thinking.
"We've just got to get back into the battle and see where it goes."
Where they hope it goes is back to LA for Game 5. One win can turn the mindset and the perspective on both sides: belief in one room, a sliver of doubt in the other.


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I Hate Halloweenby Little Too on October 31st, 2009
Last Halloween, they made me wear bells.
This is what I got stuck with this Halloween.
I think I liked the bells better.
I had to wear this yesterday at work. Then, they made me put it on again today so they could take photos.
Christmas had better be good. Lots of toys, I hope, to make up for this.
Or cheese.
Popularity: 100% [?]


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Tor is the encrypted, anonymous way to browse the web that keeps you safe from prying eyes, right?
Well, no, not always.
Blogger and security researcher Chloe spent a month tempting unscrupulous Tor exit node operators with a vulnerable honeypot website to see if anyone was looking for passwords to steal.
In all, the trap sprung for twelve exit nodes, raising a finger of suspicion for them and reminding us that you can't get complacent about security even if you're using Tor.
Tor is a bit of heavy duty open source security software that's famously used to access anonymous, hidden services (the so-called Dark Web) but, more commonly, used as a way to access the regular internet anonymously and in a way that's resistant to surveillance.
Tor (short for The Onion Router) works by sending your encrypted network traffic on an eccentric journey between Tor 'nodes'. At each step along the way each Tor node helps keep you safe by never knowing what's in your message and never knowing more about your data's journey than the node it came from and the next one it's going to.
Eventually your network traffic leaves Tor's safe embrace via an exit node – a gateway computer that decrypts your traffic so it can rejoin the regular internet before it arrives at its final destination.
Anyone can set up an exit node and because it's the place where traffic is decrypted, anyone who runs an exit node can read the traffic passing through it.
Bad exit nodes are entirely possible then, and bad news if they exist, but how do we find them?
Chloe set up a fake website with a Bitcoin theme, downloaded a complete list of exit nodes and then logged in to the honeypot site multiple times via Tor, using a different exit node and a unique password each time.
Crucially the usernames and passwords were sent over regular HTTP rather than encrypted HTTPS so that when Tor's layers of encryption were peeled back they were visible in the stream of traffic.
If the login attempts had gone unobserved and unabused then the total number of website visits and log in attempts recorded by the honeypot should have matched the number performed by Chloe exactly.
They didn't.
After a month of testing there were over 600 unexplained page visits, 12 failed log-in attempts and 16 successful ones that hadn't come from Chloe.
The passwords were not stored anywhere and were far too difficult to guess so if they were indeed stolen, they were stolen by somebody snooping on-the-wire.
The percentage of tests that experienced an extra log in attempt was very small (about 0.015%) and it's possible that the results are down to other factors such as snooping activity downstream or even testing errors.
That said the trap can only catch the snoopers who are watching, interested in the bait and willing to act on it quickly. Any snoopers (or snooping software) that didn't want to break cover for a quick Bitcoin would have gone undetected.
Chloe's research is interesting then, but not quite a smoking gun.
There is a smoking gun though, and it belongs to Dan Egerstad.
In 2007 Egerstad set up just five Tor exit nodes and used them to intercept thousands of private emails, instant messages and email account credentials.
Amongst his unwitting victims were the Australia, Japanese, Iranian, India and Russia embassies, the Iranian Foreign Ministry, the Indian Ministry of Defence and the Dalai Lama's liaison office.
He concluded that people were using Tor in the mistaken belief that it was an end-to-end encryption tool.
It is many things, but it isn't that.
Dan Egerstad proved then that exit nodes were a fine place to spy on people and his research convinced him in 2007, long before Snowden, that governments were funding expensive, high bandwidth exit nodes for exactly that purpose.
Tor is a fine security project and an excellent component in a strategy of defence in depth but it isn't (sadly) a cloak of invisibility.
Exit nodes, just like fake Wi-Fi hotspots, are an easy and tempting way for attackers to silently insert themselves into a network.
By running an exit node they can sit there as an invisible man-in-the-middle on a system that people choose when they want extra privacy and security.
When traffic emerges from an exit node, its origin is well concealed but the data itself is outside the protective umbrella of Tor's encryption.
So if you're using Tor to add an extra layer of security on top of your email, web or instant messaging, remember that it's exactly that, an extra layer on top of the HTTPS or STARTLS you'd be using anyway – and not a substitute.


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Navy Floral TopRegular price $65.00 Sale price $29.00 Save $36.00
Tax included. Shipping calculated at checkout.
- Cap sleeve
- Jersey Top
- 92% Cotton 8% Elastane
- Sizes Small to XXL (suits 10 to 18)
Why choose us?
Yes, we actually care!
We aim to INSPIRE women to wear what they love & to FEEL authentically themselves!
★★★★★Renae Johnson
Beautiful experience with my group of 10 ladies on the weekend. We all walked out with armfuls of new shoes and clothing. Staff very helpful, hope we see you next year
★★★★★Fiona Sweeney
I can not thank the ladies at Willow & Fli enough. After seeing a style of dress from the PQ brand on the internet, I asked if they could get it in for me instead of purchasing direct. Supporting local businesses is what I like to do whenever possible.Well a few simple text message exchanges later and they called to say it was in. I was happy to drive from Tamworth to pick up my new dress and a little something from their sale items.So support the small businesses because they always go above and beyond. Thank you ladies...see you next time!


text:
Weber Bluhm - Windows printer driver
Supported printers
- Bidirectional Markoprint X1JET
- Bidirectional Markoprint X2JET plus Touch
- Bidirectional Markoprint X4JET
- Bidirectional Markoprint X4JET plus Touch
- Bidirectional Markoprint Compactline 3.0
- Bidirectional Markoprint iJET
- Bidirectional Markoprint XB4JET
- Bidirectional Markoprint XB8JET
|The printer model supports bidirectional communication. NiceLabel driver can obtain the feedback of the printer status. The status can be reported to and displayed in NiceLabel software.
|Latest version:
Date changed:
October 12, 2017
|NiceLabel drivers are tested and work on:
|Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016
|Old operating system:
|NiceLabel printer drivers are no longer tested on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
Release notes
|Release version
|Release description
|Ver.: 7.4.00.11830
|Korean language added.
|Ver.: 7.4.00.11592
|Removed timeout for TCP/IP connection closure to prevent multiple connections from same printer.
|Ver.: 126.96.36.19999
|Installation of 32bit driver for sharing printer on 64bit OS has failed. This is corrected now.
|>> See more release notes


text:
In its latest press release about how well everything's going and how popular it is, Opera has revealed plans for an iPad version of its popular Opera Mini browser. It'll also be showing off updates of the app for "Android, iPhone, J2ME, BlackBerry, Symbian" at Mobile World Congress next week. If you're new to Opera Mini, there's a clever little emulator over on Opera's mobile site. [Opera]
Taylor Lorenz Talks "Extremely Online"


text:
One of the most important steps you can make when planning an upcoming event is to hire the right host. As booking managers with experience, we know that a host can make or break the celebration. These professionals are leaders, who have a keen sense of what the audience wants. They use their skills to improve the atmosphere of the event and make it unforgettable no matter how different the attendees are.
Entertainment Booking: Hosts Set The Tone
If you are looking for the best booking agency to hire a host for your next event, you have come to the right place. At Booking Stars Ltd, we know how to make the right arrangement for your upcoming celebration. We always start with the host. Even if you decide to invite the most popular artists to the event, it's still up to the host to make it memorable.
Is Booking Online Possible?
We've been booking music and hosts for many years. So we know how much our clients value their time. That's why we make booking online available. No matter which city or country you are in, you can start the booking process without getting off your favorite couch. Contact our musician booking agents, tell them your preferences, and they will take care of the rest.


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VATICAN CITY, 24 SEP 2009 (VIS) - Made public today was a transcription of the Pope's video message to participants in the UN summit on climate change, which was held in New York on 22 September.
"I wish to reflect today upon the relationship between the Creator and ourselves as guardians of His creation", says Benedict XVI speaking English. "In so doing I also wish to offer my support to leaders of governments and international agencies who are meeting at the United Nations to discuss the urgent issue of climate change.
"The Earth is indeed a precious gift of the Creator Who, in designing its intrinsic order, has given us guidelines that assist us as stewards of His creation. Precisely from within this framework, the Church considers that matters concerning the environment and its protection are intimately linked with integral human development. In my recent Encyclical, 'Caritas in Veritate', I referred to such questions recalling the 'pressing moral need for renewed solidarity' not only between countries but also between individuals, since the natural environment is given by God to everyone, and so our use of it entails a personal responsibility towards humanity as a whole, particularly towards the poor and towards future generations.
"How important it is then, that the international community and individual governments send the right signals to their citizens and succeed in countering harmful ways of treating the environment! The economic and social costs of using up shared resources must be recognised with transparency and borne by those who incur them, and not by other peoples or future generations. The protection of the environment, and the safeguarding of resources and of the climate, oblige all leaders to act jointly, respecting the law and promoting solidarity with the weakest regions of the world. Together we can build an integral human development beneficial for all peoples, present and future, a development inspired by the values of charity in truth. For this to happen it is essential that the current model of global development be transformed through a greater, and shared, acceptance of responsibility for creation: this is demanded not only by environmental factors, but also by the scandal of hunger and human misery".
The Holy Father concluded by inviting participants in the UN summit "to enter into their discussions constructively and with generous courage. Indeed, we are all called to exercise responsible stewardship of creation, to use resources in such a way that every individual and community can live with dignity, and to develop 'that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God'".


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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's broad effort to reduce gun violence will include proposed bans on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines as well as more than a dozen executive orders aimed at circumventing congressional opposition to stricter gun control.
Obama was to announce the measures Wednesday at a White House event that will bring together law enforcement officials, lawmakers and children who wrote the president about gun violence following last month's shooting of 20 young students and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
The broad package Obama will unveil will also include efforts to stop bullying and boost availability of mental health services.
But Congress would have to approve the bans on assault weapons and ammunition magazines holding more than 10 bullets, along with a requirement for universal background checks on gun buyers. Some gun control advocates worry that opposition from Republicans and conservative Democrats, as well as the National Rifle Association, will be too great to overcome.
"We're not going to get an outright ban," Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., said of limits on assault weapons. Still, McCarthy, a leading voice in Congress in favor of gun control, said she would keep pushing for a ban and hoped Obama would as well.
White House officials, seeking to avoid setting up the president for failure, have emphasized that no single measure — even an assault weapons ban — would solve a scourge of gun violence across the country. But without such a ban or other sweeping, congressionally-approved measures, it's unclear whether executive actions alone could make any noticeable difference.
"It is a simple fact that there are limits to what can be done within existing law," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. "Congress has to act on the kinds of measures we've already mentioned because the power to do that is reserved by Congress."
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday signed into law the toughest gun control law in the nation, and the first since the Connecticut school shootings. The law includes a tougher assault-weapons ban and provisions to try to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill people who make threats.
According to a lobbyist briefed Tuesday, Obama will present a three-part plan focused on gun violence, education and mental health. He'll call for:
— A focus on universal background checks. Right now some 40 percent of gun sales take place without background checks, including by private sellers at gun shows or over the Internet, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
— A ban on assault weapons and limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds or fewer.
— A federal statute to stop "straw man" purchases of guns and crack down on trafficking rings.
— More anti-bullying efforts; more training for teachers, counselors and principals; and funding for schools for more counselors and resource officers.
Obama also will order federal agencies to conduct more research on gun use and crimes, the lobbyist said, something Republican congressional majorities have limited through language in budget bills.
On mental health, Obama will focus on more availability of mental health services, training more school counselors and mental health professionals, and mental health first aid training for first responders, according to the lobbyist, who was not authorized to discuss the plan publicly before the president's announcement and requested anonymity.
The president's framework is based on recommendations from Vice President Joe Biden, who led a wide-ranging task force on gun violence. The vice president's proposals included 19 steps that could be achieved through executive action.
Obama also may order the Justice Department to crack down on people who lie on gun-sale background checks; only a tiny number are now prosecuted. Such a step has support from the National Rifle Association, which has consistently argued that existing laws must be enforced before new ones are considered.
And Obama may give schools flexibility to use grant money to improve safety.
Gun control proponent Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who met with Biden on Monday, said the president is also likely to take executive action to ensure better state reporting of mental health and other records that go into the federal background check database. But he, too, acknowledged there were clear limits to what Obama can do without Congress' say-so.
"You can't change the law through executive order," Scott said.
White House officials signaled that Obama would seek to rally public support for the measures he puts forward, perhaps holding events around the country or relying on Organizing for America, his still-operational presidential campaign.
Still, it's unclear how much political capital Obama will exert in pressing for congressional action.
The White House and Congress will soon be consumed by three looming fiscal deadlines. And the president has also pledged to tackle comprehensive immigration reform early this year, another effort that will require Republicans' support and one in which Obama may be more likely to get their backing.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has warned the White House that it will be at least three months before the Senate considers gun legislation. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said immigration, not gun control, is at the top of his priority list after the fiscal fights.
House Republican leaders are expected to wait for any action by the Senate before deciding how — or whether — to proceed with any gun measure.
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text:
Black As Death, the new album from Belgian neo-classical power metal masters IRON MASK, will be released stateside this February 14th, following its European release in December.
What started as a side project for Magic Kingdom guitar master Dushan Petrossi a decade ago, has taken on a life of its own, IRON MASK eventually becoming the more popular of the two outfits.
Following the release of 2009's Shadow of the Red Baron, the blistering Black As Death is IRON MASK's fourth LP in a decade. Boasting over an hour of the band's renowned talent through a diverse array of lightning-fast metal, glorious ballads, dizzying neo-classical arrangements and straightforward hard rock thunder. Dushan Petrossi and his band merge exceptional musical prowess with epic accessibility, making Black As Death a must-hear for fans of Firewind, Dio, Iron Maiden, Yngwie Malmsteen and Rainbow.
Black As Death Track Listing:
1. From Light Into The Dark
2. Black As Death
3. Broken Hero
4. Feel The Fire
5. Genghis Khan
6. God Punishes, I Kill
7. Rebel Kid
8. Blizzard Of Doom
9. The Absence
10. Magic Sky Requiem
11. Nosferatu
12. When All Braves Fall
IRON MASK lineup:
vocals – Mark Boals (Holy Force, The Codex, ex-Royal Hunt, ex-Yngwie Malmsteen, etc.)
vocals – Roma Siadletski (Magic Kingdom)
guitars – Dushan Petrossi (Magic Kingdom)
bass – Vassili Moltchanov (Magic Kingdom)
drums – Ramy Ali (Evidence One, Justice)
keyboards – Mats Olausson (ex-Ark, ex-Yngwie J. Malmsteen, etc.)


text:
Skip to product information
Introducing the ultimate accessory for Pokémon hunters! With the Go-tcha wristband you can enjoy Pokémon Go on the move without looking at your smartphone! Catching and Pokémon and collecting items just got easy - Go-tcha provides on-screen and vibrate alerts. Simply tap the Go-thca screen to grab the items. Select 'Auto-Catch' mode and you don't even need to respond - Go-tcha does it all! Collect Pokéballs, Potions, Eggs and other items at Pokéstops without having to check your smartphone. Touch Screen with vibration alerts, Auto catch mode, Rechargable battery.


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Mazinger Z
Review by JoshB
When Mazinga Z was relaunched in 2009 with a new TV series, we knew there would be changes. But I don't think anyone expected a change so radical as to make Mazinger a Transformer.
When the GX-45 Mazinga Z Soul of Chogokin was released, it was a pleasant surprise. It was a great toy, with new engineering, but the basics of Mazinger stayed intact. Then shortly thereafter, another Mazinger was announced. It looked like the same figure, but with a large wing called the God Scrander. This scrander could wrap Mazinger and turn him into a giant fist.
GX-49 Mazinger Z arrives courtesy of HobbyLink Japan
So why the two releases then? Why not just bundle the scrander with the GX-45? One theory is that that maybe including the fist gimmick would have been a "spoiler" for the series". The most likely scenario is that despite similar appearances, the GX-49 is an entirely different toy.
At first glance the core Mazinger Z figure looks the same, but closer inspection reveals a ton of differences. First, this new Mazinger lacks a lot of the articulation that the previous one had. Gone is the chest joint and waist joint. Gone are the lower metal legs and feet. Also gone is the ability to extend the leg and ankle joints. The chest and lower legs are an entirely new mold.
The head still looks nice and sharp, and still includes the detachable hover pilder. The hover pilder has a clear canopy and the wings can fold. Be careful – the tail of the pilder extends beyond the back of the head – it can easily be bent or broken.
The upper arms are metal, and the lower arms are held in place by magnets. Forearms are swappable between regular and firing arms. Two sets of hands are included – open and closed fists.
The God Scrander is a really massive wing for this figure. It features segmented sections so you can pose the wings in a variety of ways. The wing fits into a slot on the back and then snaps around the waist in the front. Three awkward jets protrude from the back of the scrander.
Combined, the toy is very top heavy.
The God Scrander and Mazinger Z can transform into what is known as the Big Bang Punch. This attack is literally the Fist of Zeus, and this glowing attack is extremely powerful.
The transformation is almost a "perfect" transformation, meaning almost no parts need to be swapped.
To start, the chest of Mazinger opens and the head is folded down into it. The chest ornaments are folded down. The arms get pulled out and shoulders bent back with a new joint system. The hands are removed and replaced with fingertips (the only parts swapping).
Push the gold points down on the wings of the Scrander, then push the wings down and back until they click together. Unfold the red tabs in the wings and attach to the back of the legs, then bring the wing sections around the front and click together.
The jets on the back of the scrander are then swung around and become fingers. The fingertips unfold from the end of the jets.
There you have it – the Big Bang Punch!
It's a little small compared to my hand, but probably the same as an average Japanese persons hand.
While the attack is supposed to be in a fist, it is a fully articulated hand, so you can put it in a variety of poses.
Several stand parts are included so that you can display the toy in either robot mode or Big Bang Punch mode. The stand attachment for the punch mode is weak – it doesn't clip on at all, so if you move it wrong it just slides off.
In robot mode the stand has an attachment for Mazinger in flying mode, or standing with a place to rest the scrander.
I was surprised as to how different this was than the GX-45. It's an entirely different toy, with a unique transformation. Purists will scoff at the idea of Mazinger Z Transforming into a fist, but fans of the new anime will appreciate the gimmick.
In my opinion, it's not a bad toy at all – it's just not essential. It's a one-trick pony. What it does, it does well, but you really have to like the alternate mode to justify buying it.
GX-49 Mazinger Z is available at HobbyLink Japan
Comments20 comments posted
Oh yes, I have this one.
From the very beginning, it was the only figure of the then upcoming nu wave of Mazingers I planned to get. Just for the transformation, it felt just right to have a transforming Z.
But, when it came out I was just pondering the dirty tricks Bandai has been pulling lately on customers. I think Josh is very generous to ascribe the belated announcement to a concern for disrupting the series' suspence, it seems more realistic to me that they just tried to catch two birds with one rock. First they release a superposable Maz celebrating the new series, then they announce they will be issuing the same toy with a gimmick(and don't even get me started on Big O's accessories set). And to top it off, what's the big idea behind the latest release? How do we make it different from the previous? Let's make it worse. Let's make the legs plastic. The previous had them in metal. Great idea. This way we'll make it almost impossible to pose it with the scrander on (but ehi, that's what we give them the stand for, right? Let the scrander rest there).
Maybe I'm oversarcastic here, but they simply did a string of totally unnecessary changes for the worse. The ankle articulation, for example, there was no need to do anything to that, being able to pull the legs would have helped greatly for major stability with the scrander on.
I would like to try the scrander on a gx-45 to see where we can go.
Of course, there are a few glitches that are exclusive to this release (or to my specimen, any way)like the chest that just does not stay closed, or the breast fire that comes off at the slightest tremble. And of all the things they did not change, they left the same pilder, with a fin way too long to fit in the chest without bending dangerously.
All in all it is not a terrible toy, but a blatantly missed chance to deliver a cool one. I would have expected this from any other company, but not Bandai.
In the end, I got it as a gift for xmas, and I'm glad I did not spend my own bucks on it.
Agreed this toy could have been so much more if they'd just left the legs alone. I decided to get the GX-45 as well it's a much better figure.
Also you're not alone in worrying about breaking the pilder during the transformation, I usually just leave it out.
I think a number of articulation points and diecast areas were removed not because it was structurally infeasible, but just as a means to keep the cost down. At around a hundred bucks it was already expensive for a Mazinger, and most fans had already picked up the GX-45 by the time the God Scrander version was announced. Bandai was probably worried not enough folks would bite the bullet if a "fully decked out" God Scrander Mazinger was released if it meant adding another $25 or $50 onto the price tag.
When I had placed my pre-order, I never would have guessed Bandai would sub out the feet and legs with plastic instead of metal. It stung me hard when I opened him up. Other than that (which is pretty huge!), I do like the toy and its design. And yes I liked all the new Shin anime. Except how easily Garada and Doublous go down! No Way.
I haven't seen this in person, but the alt super rocket punch mode does look awesome admittedly. :P
The Big Bang Punch is awesome in the show,but how many people are going to actually display the toy in hand mode?
Once again one of the HUGHEST issues I have with chogokin collecting, something looks great, the pictures rule, all pre-order details are great...then you get it home...open the box and feel like that kid who ordered the "real bike" from the cereal box...only to get a 1 inch plastic red lump in the mail...and of course you have no reviews to read or anything negative UNTIL you already have. I am totally annoyed about the plastic legs and limited mobility...but already bought the stupid thing and like all Bandai stuff lately, they flooded the damn market so you can not even recoup you money when you pre-ordered the stupid thing...Got super burned on last three things I pre-ordered....sigh
And can't just vent on Bandai...Max-factory...reissue of mazinger...the horns are like round in. little pieces of rubber with bubbles in the gold paint and Dragonar...that looked so cool and says max GOKIN...i.e...metal...is ALL plastic...thats right all plastic for frakin 200 bucks....this hobby is really starting to bug me...
Yes, it is predominately my fault...if I just waited and bought post review I would be better off...but seems like when I do that...it is the frakin chogokin that sells out everywhere and jumps a 100 dollar in price...not the thing that falls to 1/3 its original price because it sucks. The Fewture reissues were great..just new paint, same issues with leaning but still all metal. Yes the blue thunder and danguard ace were worth it...but still Bandai is like 0/4 with me lately and on my shiat list...and yes the Big O accessories for more that the main robot is about the most absurd screw job I have ever experience...I yes, I did NOT buy...150 for some chains and a rubber car...you have to be kidding...
Well from personal experience I can tell you that Bandai products tend to have good availability even years after release. However with Mazinger I think the smaller amount of diecast was known well before the figure hit the shelves. It's a pain, but you really do have to crawl through all of the hobby message boards to get all the necessary information on a product to make an informed decision. Waiting for picture reviews can help. Video reviews are even better in my opinion. There's a lot of little flaws that are easier to catch when someone's actually playing with the damn thing that aren't always apparent in static photos, whether it's loose joints or pieces falling off or a troublesome transformation.
The hobby has a lot of shining gems but also a lot of turds. Sometimes it's not easy to tell what will be hot and won't be. I've been let down by figures more than a few times, but I've also been pleasantly surprised with other purchases as well.
do you have any blog sites you rely on?? most I find are antiquated or a discussion of female attributes ( I honestly never heard about the plastic legs until it was released and I already paid for...like I did read about the high plastic [all] content in masterpiece grimlock...hence I never got one...and unfortunately most of my "turds" have been bandai purchases lately...
apex3, I'm with you, man. Getting burned on lackluster modern gokin is partly what made me reconsider vintage toys years ago. There were always some annoying little problems seemingly with every modern toy...and it was usually because of poor design choices that were really just inevitable given the complexity of these things. Vintage toys, on the other hand, are usually well-documented, much simpler (so fewer things can go wrong), and possess a really neat aesthetic.
I suggest this: if you get burned two out of three times with modern gokin, you still need to wait for reviews. Even if you end up having to pay 3 times more well after the release of the toy, you're only buying 1/3 the number of toys (since you're obviously not going to get the duds revealed in the reviews). You break even...but at least you don't have to deal with getting burned and potentially having to resell an opened modern toy. And, really, think about the numbers here: you're not really paying 3 times more after the release of the toy...it's probably only 50% more, tops. And at the same time, depending on your personal preference, a good half of new toys are duds. So if you wait, you have to be patient and you sacrifice "being the first" to get the toy, but you come out ahead in the end.
will do, but patience has been a hard learned lesson, for some reason I need to have right away something when it comes out. I am still bothered by the things that never make it here at all ...like Marmit's Deslar ship...
Yeah, patience is a tough one. Not to keep advocating for vintage (if you're not into it, you're just not into it), but many of these toys came out before we were born! So, there's no "right away"! All you have to wait for is the right specimen to come along on the auction circuit, and obviously for your bank account to be able to handle it. Once you get into that mindset (where the search is what's paramount), patience around new toys becomes trivial because even well after they come out, they're generally FAR easier to find.
But yeah...I hear you about toys that never make it to the "usual channels" like Deslar's ship. That's annoying. That forces you to pay exorbitant prices on eBay or go Y!J...two options that aren't particularly pleasant when trying to get something modern...
Not being in the field of toy production, I'm not that sure that making brand new molds for legs and lower torso is the best way to maintain low prices. Problem is, if they simply put out a gx-45 with collapsable head and god scrander no one would be here complaining. There is simply no reason to limit the posability of gx-49 in the legs. Maybe the torso would have been a harder item, but I think that if they tried spinning those little synapses of theirs a lil' bit faster, they would have come up with a satisfactory compromise.
We're talking the company that gave us Gunbuster, Ideon, Dancouga, God Mars... Hell, even Iron Gear is more posable than this...
Speaking of Bandai turds... Yesterday I saw a preorder for the Nanbara base for gx-50.
Ouch! It's 195 euros+s&h... A plastic box with 5 doors...
Someway, this does not seem the same company as before, any of you has any idea on the matter?
Yeah- new molds=lower list price? huh? Does not compute.
Read the article here about the slumping sales in the U.S. market for Bandai. When they pull crap like this, it is more than the current economic conditions that negatively affect their sales! I am very wary of Bandai after the GX-49 experience.
And yes, the Nanbara Base looks really cool- but I would never pay even close to that for it. Even with the coupon (Japan only?) they offer for the Nanbara Base, Bandai is out of their collective minds with this pricing!
I still just want the Mazinger Z that turns into a car. Been looking for that particular Mexican bootleg for years, if for no other reason than to just show it to people.
"You can't sell it until you get it from him, but you gotta sell it to pay him to get it to sell it".
---Jerilock, talking about me trying to raise the money I need to pay for the toys I already bought....
Passion for toys.......No other......
I just don't know why ..Maybe it's because I grew up with this anime and so with voltes v and the other go daikins that i need to get it. I actually got both the GX-45 and 49 and i wasn't dissapointed. One thing though, you cant attach the god scrander to gx 45...for one thing the pegs on the legs are not present. but then again, both has its own unique style, i also was taken aback why they remoed the leg articulation..it wouldnt afect the figure and also would not do any harm if they just remained die cast...i like the old anime better..but im not compalining about the new one either...hope they retool the other animes like voltes v or grendizer as well......
Taken from HLJs discription of GX-49
"The previously-released Soul of Chogokin GX-45 Mazinger Z now comes packed with a brand new weapon of mass destruction--the ultimate God Scrander!"
-_-' Always wait for the reviews.
I said this before in the GX-45 review... I hate this Bandai Rip-OFF !!!
GOLDRAKE Avantiiiiiiiiii !!!
Ironically, not long after this review went up, that Mexican knockoff I mentioned went on Ebay for the first time since I saw it 7 years ago. Sadly, I forgot to bid on it so I'll not be able to bring you guys a review. But here's the link for the morbidly curious...
"You can't sell it until you get it from him, but you gotta sell it to pay him to get it to sell it".
---Jerilock, talking about me trying to raise the money I need to pay for the toys I already bought....


text:
Protecting ice 2
Who needs the protection the most? The people posing behind an armed soldier or the ice, representing out planet and the collective threat from climate change?
Ice and traveling baby carriage
Polar bear in Paris
Olafur Eliasson
The artist Olafur Eliasson directing dancers performing with his iceberg sculpture at midnight in front the the Pantheon in Paris.
Ice dance 1
Dancers performing in Paris during the climate summit.
Ice dance 3
Bataclan Cafe memorial
Nun and the devil in metro
Wine tasting
Paris wine tasting with our friends and owners of the fabulous Chenen Bleu vineyards.
Licking ice
The children loved the icebergs. They licked, kicked and nicked them without pause.
Destination iceberg
Visitors from all over came to see the ice melt. Some stumbled across them as they meandered through Paris S.me were deliberate in choosing Eliasson's expression as a destination. Some were simply early morning joggers getting their daily exercise.
Half tour eiffel
The Eiffel Tower as seen from Palais de Tokyo on a foggy night in Paris
Ice dragon
This picture, made at 6:30am before Paris started stirring, reminded me of a resting dragon. (Not that I've seen to many resting dragons.) It formed naturally from the melting ice.
Superhero lands on iceberg
John Giorno retrospective - feet
Video installation of the poet John Giorno performing one of his poems at a retrospective of his work at the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris.
One Egyptian. 18 portraits.
Part of the first biennale of Arab photography at the Institute du Monde Arabe in Paris.
Refugees in waiting
Photographs at the Institute du Monde Arabe in Paris
Chez Robert et Louise
Beautiful bistro in le Marais. And I'm pretty sure that's Louise and Robert themselves in the right of the image.
(c) 2023 Hans Peter Brondmo


text:
Because I was so busy, the two-year anniversary of Huffduffer passed unnoticed back in October. Two years! It's hard to believe. It seems like just yesterday that I launched it. It's been ticking along nicely for all that time and I've been tweaking it whenever I get the chance.
I recently added oEmbed support. I'm very impressed with the humble little format. It's basically a unified API onto the multiple embed codes provided by so many websites. You request a URL from an endpoint such as
https://huffduffer.com/oembed?url= and you get back a JSON (or XML) file with the details of the HTML you need to embed the content—video, photo, whatever. Something like https://huffduffer.com/oembed?url=https://huffduffer.com/adactio/32454
YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo and a whole host of other sites support oEmbed and the Embedly service provides easy access to all of them. Now Huffduffer is listed amongst the 160 oEmbed providers supported by Embedly. Maybe if I make the right ritual sacrifices, perhaps Huffduffer players might start showing up in New Twitter: it uses a combination of oEmbed and a whitelist to display third-party content in the side panel.
I made some tweaks to the front-end of Huffduffer recently too. For starters, you might notice that the body copy font size has been bumped up from fourteen pixels to sixteen. While fourteen pixels is perfectly fine for Helvetica or Georgia, it's just that little bit too small for Baskerville.
While I was in there messing around with the CSS, I took the opportunity to tweak the small screen rendering.
For a start, I changed the way that the media queries are executed. Instead of beginning with the wide-screen "desktop" layout as the default and then undoing the
widths and
floats for smaller screens, I'm now using the same technique I've tried out here on adactio.com: begin with a linear layout-less flow and only add
widths and
floats within media query blocks. That way, mobile devices that don't support media queries will still get the linearised view.
The elephant in the room is, once again, Internet Explorer (below version nine, anyway). While I can quite merrily say "screw 'em" here on adactio.com, I need to make more of an effort for Huffduffer. So I split up my CSS into two files: a
global.css file that contains all the typography and colour rules, and
layout.css that contains a default wide-screen "desktop" view followed by media queries for narrower widths. This is how I'm calling both stylesheets:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/global.css" media="all">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/layout.css" media="all and (min-width: 30em)">
<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/layout.css" media="all">
See how the
layout.css file is being called twice? Once for browsers that support media queries (with a browser width wider than thirty ems) and again for Internet Explorer less than version nine.
Mobile devices that don't support media queries or conditional comments will never load the
layout.css file. Browsers that do support media queries, be they mobile or desktop, will only execute
layout.css if the viewport is at least thirty ems wide. Legacy versions of Internet Explorer will always load
layout.css because of the conditional comment. It's entirely possible that Windows Mobile 7 will also load
layout.css because the browser is currently using an IE7 codebase (Trident 3.1, to be precise). Screw 'em …at least until Microsoft bring out an update.
The disadvantage of this technique is that my CSS is now split up into two separate files. I'd much rather keep HTTP requests to a minimum by having just one style sheet, but I think that, in this case, the reward in cross-browser compatibility is worth the expense of that extra hit.
While I was testing the changes, I noticed something interesting on my iPod Touch when I was at the Clearleft office, where we have the stereo connected to the WiFi network. The most recent iOS update allows you to stream directly from your device to your stereo or television. What I didn't realise was that this is true of any media, including HTML5
video and
audio content in a web page. Nice!


text:
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