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The issue in each of these cases is what statute of limitations applies in an employee suit against an employer and a union, alleging the employer's breach of a collective-bargaining agreement and the union's breach of its duty of fair representation by mishandling the ensuing grievance or arbitration proceedings. United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U.S. 56 , held in a similar suit that an employee's claim against the employer was governed by a state statute of limitations for vacation of an arbitration award rather than by a state statute for an action for breach of contract, but left open the issues as to what state statute should govern the employee's claim against the union or whether, instead of applying a state statute of limitations, the provisions of 10(b) of the National Labor Relations Act establishing a 6-month limitations period for making charges of unfair labor practices to the National Labor Relations Board should be borrowed. In No. 81-2386, respondent local union brought a formal grievance under the collective-bargaining agreement based on petitioner employee's alleged improper discharge. After a hearing, a joint union-management committee informed petitioner of its conclusion that the grievance was without merit, and the committee's determination became final on September 20, 1977. On March 16, 1978, petitioner filed suit in Federal District Court, alleging that the employer had discharged him in violation of the collective-bargaining agreement, and that the union had represented him in the grievance procedure in a discriminatory, arbitrary, and perfunctory manner. The District Court ultimately granted summary judgment against petitioner, concluding that Mitchell compelled application of Maryland's 30-day statute of limitations for actions to vacate arbitration awards to both of petitioner's claims. The Court of Appeals affirmed. In No. 81-2408, petitioner local union invoked arbitration after it was unsuccessful in processing respondent employees' grievances based on the employer's alleged violations of the bargaining agreement arising from job-assignment practices. On February [462 U.S. 151, 152] 24, 1978, the arbitrator issued an award upholding the employer's job assignments, and on January 19, 1979, respondents filed suit in Federal District Court, alleging that the employer had violated the bargaining agreement, and that the union had violated its duty of fair representation in handling respondents' claims. The District Court, applying New York's 90-day statute of limitations for actions to vacate arbitration awards, dismissed the complaint against both the employer and the union. Ultimately, the Court of Appeals, acting in light of the intervening decision in Mitchell, rejected the contention that 10(b) should be applied; affirmed the dismissal as to the employer under the 90-day arbitration statute; but reversed as to the union, concluding that New York's 3-year statute for malpractice actions governed.
[ Footnote * ] Together with No. 81-2408, United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO-CLC, et al. v. Flowers et al., on certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
BRENNAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and WHITE, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., post, p. 172, and O'CONNOR, J., post, p. 174, filed dissenting opinions.
William H. Zinman argued the cause for petitioner in No. 81-2386. With him on the briefs was Paul A. Levy. Robert M. Weinberg argued the cause for petitioners in No. 81-2408. With him on the briefs were Michael H. Gottesman, Bernard Kleiman, Carl Frankel, and Laurence Gold.
Bernard S. Goldfarb argued the cause for respondents in No. 81-2386 and filed a brief for respondent Anchor Motor Freight, Inc. Isaac N. Groner, by appointment of the Court, 459 U.S. 1143 , argued the cause and filed a brief for respondents in No. 81-2408. Carl S. Yaller and Bernard W. Rubenstein filed a brief for respondent Local 557, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America in No. 81-2386.Fn
Fn [462 U.S. 151, 153] Steven C. Kahn and Stephen A. Bokat filed a brief for the Chamber of Commerce of the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal in both cases. Alan B. Morrison filed a brief for Teamsters for a Democratic Union as amicus curiae urging reversal in No. 81-2386.
David Previant, Robert M. Baptiste, and Roland P. Wilder, Jr., filed a brief for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America as amicus curiae urging affirmance in No. 81-2386.
Michael L. Boylan and Teddy B. Gordon filed a brief for Gordon L. Higgins as amicus curiae in No. 81-2408. [462 U.S. 151, 154]
JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.
Each of these cases arose as a suit by an employee or employees against an employer and a union, alleging that the employer had breached a provision of a collective-bargaining agreement, and that the union had breached its duty of fair representation by mishandling the ensuing grievance-and-arbitration proceedings. See infra, at 162; Bowen v. USPS, 459 U.S. 212 (1983); Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171 (1967); Hines v. Anchor Motor Freight, Inc., 424 U.S. 554 (1976). The issue presented is what statute of limitations should apply to such suits. In United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U.S. 56 (1981), we held that a similar suit was governed by a state statute of limitations for vacation of an arbitration award, rather than by a state statute for an action on a contract. We left two points open, however. First, our holding was limited to the employee's claim against the employer; we did not address what state statute should govern the claim against the union. 1 Second, we expressly limited our consideration to a choice between two state statutes of limitations; we did not address the contention that we should instead borrow a federal statute of limitations, namely, 10(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. 160(b). 2 These cases present these two issues. [462 U.S. 151, 155] We conclude that 10(b) should be the applicable statute of limitations governing the suit, both against the employer and against the union.
Philip DelCostello, petitioner in No. 81-2386, was employed as a driver by respondent Anchor Motor Freight, Inc., and represented by respondent Teamsters Local 557. On June 27, 1977, he quit or was discharged 3 after refusing to drive a tractor-trailer that he contended was unsafe. He took his complaint to the union, which made unsuccessful informal attempts to get DelCostello reinstated and then brought a formal grievance under the collective-bargaining agreement. A hearing was held before a regional joint union-management committee. The committee concluded that the grievance was without merit. DelCostello was informed of that decision in a letter dated August 19, 1977, forwarding the minutes of the hearing and stating that the minutes would be presented for approval at the committee's meeting on September 20. DelCostello responded in a letter, but the minutes were approved without change. Under the collective-bargaining agreement, the committee's decision is final and binding on all parties.
On March 16, 1978, DelCostello filed this suit in the District of Maryland against the employer and the union. He [462 U.S. 151, 156] alleged that the employer had discharged him in violation of the collective-bargaining agreement, and that the union had represented him in the grievance procedure "in a discriminatory, arbitrary and perfunctory manner," App. in No. 81-2386, p. 19, resulting in an unfavorable decision by the joint committee. Respondents asserted that the suit was barred by Maryland's 30-day statute of limitations for actions to vacate arbitration awards. 4 The District Court disagreed, holding that the applicable statute was the 3-year state statute for actions on contracts. 5 510 F. Supp. 716 (1981). On reconsideration following our decision in Mitchell, however, the court granted summary judgment for respondents, concluding that Mitchell compelled application of the 30-day statute to both the claim against the employer and the claim against the union. 524 F. Supp. 721 (1981). 6 The Court of Appeals affirmed on the basis of the District Court's order. 679 F.2d 879 (CA4 1982) (mem.).
Donald C. Flowers and King E. Jones, respondents in No. 81-2408, were employed as craft welders by Bethlehem Steel Corp. and represented by petitioner Steelworkers Local 2602. 7 In 1975 and 1976 respondents filed several [462 U.S. 151, 157] grievances asserting that the employer had violated the collective-bargaining agreement by assigning certain welding duties to employees in other job categories and departments of the plant, with the result that respondents were laid off or assigned to noncraft work. The union processed the grievances through the contractually established procedure and, failing to gain satisfaction, invoked arbitration. On February 24, 1978, the arbitrator issued an award for the employer, ruling that the employer's job assignments were permitted by the collective-bargaining agreement.
Respondents filed this suit in the Western District of New York on January 9, 1979, naming both the employer and the union as defendants. The complaint alleged that the company's work assignments violated the collective-bargaining agreement, and that the union's "preparation, investigation and handling" of respondents' grievances were "so inept and careless as to be arbitrary and capricious," in violation of the union's duty of fair representation. App. in No. 81-2408, p. 10. The District Court dismissed the complaint against both defendants, holding that the entire suit was governed by New York's 90-day statute of limitations for actions to vacate arbitration awards. 8 The Court of Appeals reversed on the basis of its prior holding in Mitchell v. United Parcel Service, Inc., 624 F.2d 394 (CA2 1980), that such actions are governed by New York's 6-year statute for actions on contracts. 9 Flowers v. Local 2602, United Steel Workers of America, 622 F.2d 573 (CA2 1980) (mem.). We granted certiorari and vacated and remanded for reconsideration in light of our reversal in Mitchell. Steelworkers v. Flowers, 451 U.S. 965 (1981). On remand, the Court of Appeals rejected the argument that the 6-month period of 10(b) applies. Accordingly, following our decision in Mitchell, it applied the 90-day arbitration statute and affirmed the dismissal as to the employer. As to the union, however, the [462 U.S. 151, 158] court reversed, concluding that the correct statute to apply was New York's 3-year statute for malpractice actions. 10 671 F.2d 87 (CA2 1982).
In this Court, petitioners in both cases contend that suits under Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171 (1967), and Hines v. Anchor Motor Freight, Inc., 424 U.S. 554 (1976), should be governed by the 6-month limitations period of 10(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. 160(b). Alternatively, the Steelworkers, petitioners in No. 81-2408, argue that the state statute for vacation of arbitration awards should apply to a claim against a union as well as to one against an employer. 11 We granted certiorari in both cases and consolidated them for argument. 459 U.S. 1034 (1982).
As is often the case in federal civil law, there is no federal statute of limitations expressly applicable to this suit. In such situations we do not ordinarily assume that Congress intended that there be no time limit on actions at all; rather, our task is to "borrow" the most suitable statute or other rule of timeliness from some other source. We have generally concluded that Congress intended that the courts apply the most closely analogous statute of limitations under state law. 12 "The implied absorption of State statutes of limitation [462 U.S. 151, 159] within the interstices of the federal enactments is a phase of fashioning remedial details where Congress has not spoken but left matters for judicial determination within the general framework of familiar legal principles." Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U.S. 392, 395 (1946). 13 See, e. g., Runyon v. [462 U.S. 151, 160] McCrary, 427 U.S. 160, 180 -182 (1976); Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 101 -105 (1971); Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U.S. 696 (1966); Chattanooga Foundry v. Atlanta, 203 U.S. 390 (1906); Campbell v. Haverhill, 155 U.S. 610 (1895). [462 U.S. 151, 161]
In some circumstances, however, state statutes of limitations can be unsatisfactory vehicles for the enforcement of federal law. In those instances, it may be inappropriate to conclude that Congress would choose to adopt state rules at odds with the purpose or operation of federal substantive law.
Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp. was a straight-forward suit under 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. 185, for breach of a collective-bargaining agreement by an employer. Unlike the present cases, Hoosier did not involve any agreement to submit disputes to arbitration, and the suit was brought by the union itself rather than by an individual employee. We held that the suit was governed by Indiana's 6-year limitations period for actions on unwritten contracts; we resisted the suggestion that we establish some uniform federal period. Although we recognized that "the subject matter of 301 is `peculiarly one that calls for uniform law,'" 383 U.S., at 701 , quoting Teamsters v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U.S. 95, 103 (1962), we reasoned that national uniformity is of less importance when the [462 U.S. 151, 163] case does not involve "those consensual processes that federal labor law is chiefly designed to promote - the formation of the collective agreement and the private settlement of disputes under it," 383 U.S., at 702 . We also relied heavily on the obvious and close analogy between this variety of 301 suit and an ordinary breach-of-contract case. We expressly reserved the question whether we would apply state law to 301 actions where the analogy was less direct or the relevant policy factors different:
It has long been established that an individual employee may bring suit against his employer for breach of a collective-bargaining agreement. Smith v. Evening News Assn., 371 U.S. 195 (1962). Ordinarily, however, an employee is required to attempt to exhaust any grievance or arbitration remedies provided in the collective-bargaining agreement. Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U.S. 650 (1965); cf. Clayton v. Automobile Workers, 451 U.S. 679 (1981) [462 U.S. 151, 164] (exhaustion of intraunion remedies not always required). Subject to very limited judicial review, he will be bound by the result according to the finality provisions of the agreement. See W. R. Grace & Co. v. Rubber Workers, 461 U.S. 757, 764 (1983); Steelworkers v. Enterprise Corp., 363 U.S. 593 (1960). In Vaca and Hines, however, we recognized that this rule works an unacceptable injustice when the union representing the employee in the grievance/arbitration procedure acts in such a discriminatory, dishonest, arbitrary, or perfunctory fashion as to breach its duty of fair representation. In such an instance, an employee may bring suit against both the employer and the union, notwithstanding the outcome or finality of the grievance or arbitration proceeding. Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171 (1967); Hines v. Anchor Motor Freight, Inc., 424 U.S. 554 (1976); United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U.S. 56 (1981); Bowen v. USPS, 459 U.S. 212 (1983); Czosek v. O'Mara, 397 U.S. 25 (1970). Such a suit, as a formal matter, comprises two causes of action. The suit against the employer rests on 301, since the employee is alleging a breach of the collective-bargaining agreement. The suit against the union is one for breach of the union's duty of fair representation, which is implied under the scheme of the National Labor Relations Act. 14 "Yet the two claims are inextricably interdependent. [462 U.S. 151, 165] `To prevail against either the company or the Union, . . . [employee-plaintiffs] must not only show that their discharge was contrary to the contract but must also carry the burden of demonstrating breach of duty by the Union.'" Mitchell, supra, at 66-67 (Stewart, J., concurring in judgment), quoting Hines, supra, at 570-571. The employee may, if he chooses, sue one defendant and not the other; but the case he must prove is the same whether he sues one, the other, or both. The suit is thus not a straightforward breach-of-contract suit under 301, as was Hoosier, but a hybrid 301/fair representation claim, amounting to "a direct challenge to `the private settlement of disputes under [the collective-bargaining agreement].'" Mitchell, supra, at 66 (Stewart, J., concurring in judgment), quoting Hoosier, 383 U.S., at 702 . Also unlike the claim in Hoosier, it has no close analogy in ordinary state law. The analogies suggested in Mitchell both suffer from flaws, not only of legal substance, but more important, of practical application in view of the policies of federal labor law and the practicalities of hybrid 301/fair representation litigation.
In Mitchell, we analogized the employee's claim against the employer to an action to vacate an arbitration award in a commercial setting. We adhere to the view that, as between the two choices, it is more suitable to characterize the claim that way than as a suit for breach of contract. Nevertheless, the parallel is imperfect in operation. The main difference is that a party to commercial arbitration will ordinarily be represented by counsel or, at least, will have some experience in matters of commercial dealings and contract negotiation. Moreover, an action to vacate a commercial arbitral award will rarely raise any issues not already presented and contested in the arbitration proceeding itself. In the labor setting, [462 U.S. 151, 166] by contrast, the employee will often be unsophisticated in collective-bargaining matters, and he will almost always be represented solely by the union. He is called upon, within the limitations period, to evaluate the adequacy of the union's representation, to retain counsel, to investigate substantial matters that were not at issue in the arbitration proceeding, and to frame his suit. Yet state arbitration statutes typically provide very short times in which to sue for vacation of arbitration awards. 15 Concededly, the very brevity of New York's 90-day arbitration limitations period was a major factor why, in Mitchell, we preferred it to the 6-year statute for breach of contract, 451 U.S., at 63 -64; but it does not follow that because 6 years is too long, 90 days is long enough. See also Hoosier, supra, at 707, n. 9. We conclude that state limitations periods for vacating arbitration awards fail to provide an aggrieved employee with a satisfactory opportunity to vindicate his rights under 301 and the fair representation doctrine. 16
Moreover, as JUSTICE STEVENS pointed out in his opinion in Mitchell, analogy to an action to vacate an arbitration [462 U.S. 151, 167] award is problematic at best as applied to the employee's claim against the union:
The most serious objection is that it does not solve the problem caused by the too-short time in which an employee could sue his employer under borrowed state law. In a commercial setting, a party who sued his lawyer for bungling an [462 U.S. 151, 168] arbitration could ordinarily recover his entire damages, even if the statute of limitations foreclosed any recovery against the opposing party to the arbitration. The same is not true in the 301/fair representation setting, however. We held in Vaca, and reaffirmed this Term in Bowen, that the union may be held liable only for "increases if any in [the employee's] damages caused by the union's refusal to process the grievance." 386 U.S., at 197 -198; 459 U.S., at 223 -224; see Czosek, 397 U.S., at 29 . Thus, if we apply state limitations periods, a large part of the damages will remain uncollectible in almost every case unless the employee sues within the time allotted for his suit against the employer. 17
Further, while application of a short arbitration period as against employers would endanger employees' ability to recover most of what is due them, application of a longer malpractice statute as against unions would preclude the relatively rapid final resolution of labor disputes favored by federal law - a problem not present when a party to a commercial arbitration sues his lawyer. In No. 81-2408, for example, the holding of the Court of Appeals would permit a suit as long as three years after termination of the grievance proceeding; many States provide for periods even longer. 18 What we said in Mitchell about the 6-year contracts statute urged there can as easily be said here:
These objections to the resort to state law might have to be tolerated if state law were the only source reasonably available for borrowing, as it often is. In this case, however, we have available a federal statute of limitations actually designed to accommodate a balance of interests very similar to that at stake here - a statute that is, in fact, an analogy to the present lawsuit more apt than any of the suggested state-law parallels. 20 We refer to 10(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, which establishes a 6-month period for making charges of unfair labor practices to the NLRB. 21 [462 U.S. 151, 170]
The NLRB has consistently held that all breaches of a union's duty of fair representation are in fact unfair labor practices. E. g., Miranda Fuel Co., 140 N. L. R. B. 181 (1962), enf. denied, 326 F.2d 172 (CA2 1963). We have twice declined to decide the correctness of the Board's position, 22 and we need not address that question today. Even if not all breaches of the duty are unfair labor practices, however, the family resemblance is undeniable, and indeed there is a substantial overlap. Many fair representation claims (the one in No. 81-2386, for example) include allegations of discrimination based on membership status or dissident views, which would be unfair labor practices under 8(b)(1) or (2). Aside from these clear cases, duty of fair representation claims are allegations of unfair, arbitrary, or discriminatory treatment of workers by unions - as are virtually all unfair labor practice charges made by workers against unions. See generally R. Gorman, Labor Law 698-701 (1976). Similarly, it may be the case that alleged violations by an employer of a collective-bargaining agreement will also amount to unfair labor practices. See id., at 729-734.
At least as important as the similarity of the rights asserted in the two contexts, however, is the close similarity of [462 U.S. 151, 171] the considerations relevant to the choice of a limitations period. As Justice Stewart observed in Mitchell:
In No. 81-2408, it is conceded that the suit was filed more than 10 months after respondents' causes of action accrued. The Court of Appeals held the suit timely under a state 3-year statute for malpractice actions. Since we hold that the suit is governed by the 6-month provision of 10(b), we reverse the judgment.
The situation is less clear in No. 81-2386. Depending on when the joint committee's decision is thought to have been rendered, the suit was filed some seven or eight months afterwards. Petitioner DelCostello contends, however, that certain events operated to toll the running of the statute of limitations until about three months before he filed suit. Since the District Court applied a 30-day limitations period, it expressly declined to consider any tolling issue. 524 F. Supp., at 725. Hence, the judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
[ Footnote 2 ] 49 Stat. 453. That section provides in pertinent part:
Justice Stewart, concurring in the judgment, would have reached the issue and would have applied 10(b) rather than any state limitations period. Id., at 65-71. See also id., at 64-65 (BLACKMUN, J., concurring); but see id., at 75-76, and nn. 8, 9 (STEVENS, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
[ Footnote 3 ] The employer contends that DelCostello's refusal to perform his work assignment was a "voluntary quit"; DelCostello contends that he was wrongfully discharged. The joint grievance committee upheld the employer's view.
[ Footnote 4 ] Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. Code Ann. 3-224 (1980).
[ Footnote 5 ] 5-101.
[ Footnote 6 ] Respondents argue that DelCostello did not raise the argument below that the applicable limitations period is the 6-month period of 10(b). He did raise the 10(b) point perfunctorily in opposition to respondents' motion for reconsideration, however, App. in No. 81-2386, p. 264, and he briefed it more thoroughly in the Court of Appeals, id., at 282-290. Respondents likewise addressed the 10(b) issue fully on the merits in the Court of Appeals; they did not raise any contention that DelCostello had waived the assertion. Brief for Appellees in No. 81-2086 (CA4), pp. 41-45.
[ Footnote 7 ] The other petitioner is the United Steelworkers of America, with which the Local is affiliated. The two labor organizations will be treated as one party for purposes of this case. Bethlehem Steel Corp. was a defendant below but is not before this Court in the present proceeding.
[ Footnote 8 ] N. Y. Civ. Prac. Law 7511(a) (McKinney 1980).
[ Footnote 9 ] 213(2).
[ Footnote 10 ] 214(6).
[ Footnote 11 ] DelCostello (petitioner in No. 81-2386) also contends that, if we decide that application of state law is appropriate, our decision in Mitchell should not be applied retroactively. We need not reach this contention.
[ Footnote 12 ] In some instances, of course, there may be some direct indication in the legislative history suggesting that Congress did in fact intend that state statutes should apply. More often, however, Congress has not given any express consideration to the problem of limitations periods. In such cases, the general preference for borrowing state limitations periods could more aptly be called a sort of fallback rule of thumb than a matter of ascertaining legislative intent; it rests on the assumption that, absent some sound reason [462 U.S. 151, 159] to do otherwise, Congress would likely intend that the courts follow their previous practice of borrowing state provisions. See also Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U.S. 696, 703 -704 (1966).
Justice Stewart pointed out in Mitchell that this line of reasoning makes more sense as applied to a cause of action expressly created by Congress than as applied to one found by the courts to be implied in a general statutory scheme - especially when that general statutory scheme itself contains a federal statute of limitations for a related but separate form of relief. 451 U.S., at 68 , n. 4 (opinion concurring in judgment); see also McAllister v. Magnolia Petroleum Co., 357 U.S. 221, 228 -229 (1958) (BRENNAN, J., concurring). The suits at issue here, of course, are amalgams, based on both an express statutory cause of action and an implied one. See infra, at 164-165, and n. 14. We need not address whether, as a general matter, such cases should be treated differently; even if this action were considered as arising solely under 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. 185, the objections to use of state law and the availability of a well-suited limitations period in 10(b) would call for application of the latter rule.
[ Footnote 13 ] Respondents in No. 81-2386 argue that the Rules of Decision Act, 28 U.S.C. 1652, mandates application of state statutes of limitations whenever Congress has provided none. The argument begs the question, since the Act authorizes application of state law only when federal law does not "otherwise require or provide." As we recognized in Hoosier, supra, at 701, the choice of a limitations period for a federal cause of action is itself a question of federal law. If the answer to that question (based on the policies and requirements of the underlying cause of action) is that a timeliness rule drawn from elsewhere in federal law should be applied, then the Rules of Decision Act is inapplicable by its own terms. As we said in United States v. Little Lake Misere Land Co., 412 U.S. 580 (1973):
Respondents in No. 81-2386 rely on a few turn-of-the-century cases suggesting that the Rules of Decision Act compels application of state limitations periods. See also post, at 173, n. 1 (STEVENS, J., dissenting). These cases, however, predate our recognition in Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938), that "the purpose of the section was merely to make certain that, in all matters except those in which some federal law is controlling, the federal courts exercising jurisdiction in diversity of citizenship cases would apply as their rules of decision the law of the State, unwritten as well as written." Id., at 72-73 (footnote omitted); see also Warren, New Light on the History of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789, 37 Harv. L. Rev. 49, 81-88 (1923). Since Erie, no decision of this Court has held or suggested that the Act requires borrowing state law to fill gaps in federal substantive statutes. Of course, we have continued since Erie to apply state limitations periods to many federal causes of action; but we made clear in Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U.S. 392, 394 -395 (1946), that we do so as a matter of interstitial fashioning of remedial details under the respective substantive federal statutes, and not because the Rules of Decision Act or the Erie doctrine requires it. "The considerations that urge adjudication by the same law in all courts within a State when enforcing a right created by that State are hardly relevant for determining the rules which bar enforcement of [a] . . . right created not by a State legislature but by Congress." 327 U.S., at 394 ; see also Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U.S. 99, 101 (1945); Board of Comm'rs v. United States, 308 U.S. 343 , [462 U.S. 151, 161] 349-352 (1939); Hoosier, 383 U.S., at 703 -704; id., at 709 (WHITE, J., dissenting); Employees v. Westinghouse Corp., 348 U.S. 437, 463 (1955) (Reed, J., concurring).
We do not suggest that the Erie doctrine is wholly irrelevant to all federal causes of action. On the contrary, where Congress directly or impliedly directs the courts to look to state law to fill in details of federal law, Erie will ordinarily provide the framework for doing so. See, e. g., Commissioner v. Estate of Bosch, 387 U.S. 456, 463 -465 (1967) (applying Erie rules as to the proper source of state law in a tax case); 1A J. Moore, W. Taggart, A. Vestal, & J. Wicker, Moore's Federal Practice § 0.325 (2d ed. 1982); 19 C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure 4515 (1982); Western & Lehman, supra. But, as Holmberg recognizes, neither Erie nor the Rules of Decision Act can now be taken as establishing a mandatory rule that we apply state law in federal interstices. Indeed, the contrary view urged by respondents cannot be reconciled with the numerous cases that have declined to borrow state law, see infra, at 162-163, nor with our suggestion in Hoosier that we might not apply state limitations periods in a different case, 383 U.S., at 705 , n. 7, 707, n. 9.
[ Footnote 14 ] The duty of fair representation exists because it is the policy of the National Labor Relations Act to allow a single labor organization to represent collectively the interests of all employees within a unit, thereby depriving individuals in the unit of the ability to bargain individually or to select a minority union as their representative. In such a system, if individual employees are not to be deprived of all effective means of protecting their own interests, it must be the duty of the representative organization "to serve the interests of all members without hostility or discrimination toward any, to exercise its discretion with complete good faith and honesty, and to avoid arbitrary conduct." Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 177 (1967). See generally Steele v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 323 U.S. 192 (1944); Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U.S. 330, 337 (1953); Syres v. Oil Workers, 350 U.S. 892 (1955); Humphrey v. Moore, 375 U.S. 335, 342 (1964); [462 U.S. 151, 165] R. Gorman, Labor Law 695-728 (1976). The duty stands "as a bulwark to prevent arbitrary union conduct against individuals stripped of traditional forms of redress by the provisions of federal labor law." Vaca, supra, at 182.
[ Footnote 15 ] The majority of States require filing within 90 days (22 States and the District of Columbia) or 3 months (7 States). See also 9 U.S.C. 12. Only two States have longer periods - one for one year, the other for 100 days. Other statutes allow 30 days (6 States), 20 days (3 States), or 10 days (2 States). The remainder of the States either impose time limits based on terms of court or have no statutory provision on point.
[ Footnote 16 ] Besides its brevity, use of an arbitration limitations period raises knotty problems of categorization and consistency. Application of an arbitration statute seems straightforward enough when a grievance has run its full course, culminating in a formal award by a neutral arbitrator. But the union's breach of duty may consist of a wrongful failure to pursue a grievance to arbitration, as in Vaca and Bowen, or a refusal to pursue it through even preliminary stages. The parallel to vacation of an arbitral award seems tenuous at best in these situations; it is doubtful that many state arbitration statutes would themselves cover such a case in a commercial setting. Yet if it were thought necessary to apply different state rules to these different possibilities, the result would be radical variation in the treatment of cases that are not significantly different with regard to the principles of Vaca, Hines, and Mitchell. Moreover, the difficulty of detecting [462 U.S. 151, 167] and mustering evidence to show the union's breach of duty may be even greater in these situations, and it may not be an easy task to ascertain when the cause of action accrues - obviously a matter of great importance when the statute of limitations may be as short as 30 days.
[ Footnote 17 ] Inability to sue the employer would also foreclose use of such equitable remedies as an order to arbitrate. See Vaca, 386 U.S., at 196 .
[ Footnote 18 ] One State's limitations period for legal malpractice is 10 years. Other statutes allow six years (10 States); five years (4 States); four years (5 States); three years (10 States and the District of Columbia); two years (16 States); and one year (4 States).
[ Footnote 19 ] The solution proposed by JUSTICE STEVENS also has the unfortunate effect of establishing different limitations periods for the two halves of a 301/fair representation suit. A very similar consideration led us to reject borrowing of a state statute in McAllister v. Magnolia Petroleum Co., 357 U.S. 221 (1958). See also Vaca, supra, at 186-188, and n. 12; Clayton v. Automobile Workers, 451 U.S. 679, 694 -695 (1981).
[ Footnote 20 ] This is not to say that the sole options available are a federal statute of limitations or a state one. As Holmberg and Occidental show, see supra, at 161, 162, we have sometimes concluded that Congress' intention can best be carried out by imposing no predefined limitations period at all.
[ Footnote 21 ] JUSTICE STEVENS suggested in Mitchell that use of 10(b) is inappropriate because there is no indication in its language or history that [462 U.S. 151, 170] Congress intended the section to be applied in the present context. 451 U.S., at 75 -76, and nn. 8, 9 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). With all respect, we think that this observation, while undoubtedly correct, is beside the point. The same could be said with equal or greater accuracy about the intent of the New York and Maryland Legislatures when they enacted their respective arbitration or malpractice statutes of limitations. See Occidental Life Ins. Co. v. EEOC, 432 U.S. 355, 367 (1977); n. 12, supra. In either situation we are applying a statute of limitations to a different cause of action, not because the legislature enacting that limitations provision intended that it apply elsewhere, but because it is the most suitable source for borrowing to fill a gap in federal law. See also Mitchell, 451 U.S., at 61 , n. 3; n. 13, supra.
[ Footnote 22 ] Vaca, supra, at 186; Humphrey, 375 U.S., at 344 ; see Mitchell, 451 U.S., at 67 -68, n. 3 (Stewart, J., concurring in judgment).
JUSTICE STEVENS, dissenting.
For the past century federal judges have "borrowed" state statutes of limitations, not because they thought it was a sensible [462 U.S. 151, 173] form of "interstitial law making," but rather because they were directed to do so by the Congress of the United States. 1
Today the Court holds that the Rules of Decision Act does not determine the result in these cases, because it believes that a separate federal law, growing out of "the policies and requirements of the underlying cause of action," ante, at 159, n. 13, "otherwise require[s] or provide[s]." The Court's opinion sets forth a number of reasons why it may make good sense to adopt a 6-month statute of limitations, but nothing in that opinion persuades me that the Constitution, treaties, or statutes of the United States "require or provide" that this particular limitations period must be applied to this case. 2 [462 U.S. 151, 174]
Congress has given us no reason to depart from our settled practice, grounded in the Rules of Decision Act, of borrowing analogous state statutes of limitation in cases such as this. For the reasons set forth in my separate opinion in United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U.S. 56, 71 (1981), I believe that in a suit for a breach of the duty of fair representation, the appropriate "laws of the several states" are the statutes of limitations governing malpractice suits against attorneys. I would apply those laws to resolve the worker-union disputes in these two cases. And I would continue to abide by our holding in Mitchell in resolving the employee-employer dispute presented in No. 81-2386.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
[ Footnote 1 ] In 1789 the First Congress enacted the Rules of Decision Act (Act), Rev. Stat. 721, 1 Stat. 92, plainly stating:
[ Footnote 2 ] When the Court recognized the cause of action in Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171 (1967), the majority explained: "We cannot believe that Congress, in conferring upon employers and unions the power to establish exclusive grievance procedures, intended to confer upon unions . . . unlimited discretion to deprive injured employees of all remedies for breach of contract." [462 U.S. 151, 174] Id., at 186. But nothing in the language, structure, or legislative history of the National Labor Relations Act compels the further conclusion that Congress intended the federal judiciary to abandon the traditional practice of borrowing state statutes of limitations when no federal statute directly applies. Saying that a statute impliedly creates a cause of action is not the same thing as saying that it impliedly commands the courts to abandon the standard procedure for choosing limitations periods and instead to borrow a period that Congress established for a different purpose.
JUSTICE O'CONNOR, dissenting.
As the Court recognizes, "resort to state law [is] the norm for borrowing of limitations periods." Ante, at 171. When federal law is silent on the question of limitations, we borrow state law in the belief that, given our longstanding practice and congressional awareness of it, we can safely assume, in the absence of strong indications to the contrary, that Congress intends by its silence that we follow the usual rule. 1 [462 U.S. 151, 175] In Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U.S. 696 (1966), we applied the "norm" to a suit under 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. 185. I see no reason in these cases to depart from our usual practice of borrowing state law, for we have no contrary indications strong enough to outweigh our ordinary presumption that Congress' silence indicates a desire that we follow the ordinary rule. As a result, I would look to state law for a limitations period. For the reasons given by JUSTICE STEVENS in his separate opinion in United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U.S. 56, 72 -74 (1981), I think that a malpractice action against an attorney provides the closest analogy to an employee's suit against his union for breach of the duty of fair representation, and I would apply the State's statute of limitations for such an action here. In DelCostello's action against his employer, I, like JUSTICE STEVENS, would follow Mitchell. 2
[ Footnote 1 ] I believe, basically for the reasons given by the Court, ante, at 159-161, n. 13, that our practice of borrowing state periods of limitations depends largely on this general guide for divining congressional intent. See, e. g., Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U.S. 696, 704 (1966); Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U.S. 392, 395 (1946). I agree with the Court that the Rules of Decision Act, 28 U.S.C. 1652, only puts the question, for it simply requires application of state law unless federal law applies. See ante, at 159-161, n. 13. Therefore, I am unable to join JUSTICE STEVENS' dissent. [462 U.S. 151, 175] My disagreement with the Court arises because I do not think that federal law implicitly rejects the practice of borrowing state periods of limitations in this situation.
[ Footnote 2 ] It is quite appropriate to apply Mitchell retroactively. Mitchell did not represent a "clear break" with past law, see Mitchell, 451 U.S., at 61 -62, application of its rule in this case would further the goal of promoting early finality for arbitral awards, id., at 63, and there is no inequity in applying the rule here. See Lawson v. Truck Drivers, Chauffeurs & Helpers, 698 F.2d 250, 254 (CA6 1983); see generally Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97 (1971). [462 U.S. 151, 176]
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The Montblanc Donation Pen Collection is honoring world-famous classical musicians of the past decades. The Donation Pen supports carefully selected cultural projects from pioneering artists the world over with a donation of 20 euros per fountain pen and 10 euros per ballpoint or rollerball. This year's edition pays tribute to George Gershwin, an American composer and pianist. The clip is in the shape of a clarinetÑa tribute to the clarinet opening from Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue". Another tribute to "Rhapsody in Blue" is the ink window which features a blue color. The cap ring is inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge to symbolise the close relationship George Gershwin had with his place of birth. The cap and barrel are made out of black precious resin combined with platinum-coated fittings. The special gift box additionally contains three prints of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Ident No. MB119877
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- Stephen J. Gould, evolutionary theorist: appearing to be smart
- "A revolution is when you change your thinking." I agree. Via Danielle Fong.
- Brain glycogen. Not all glycogen is in the liver.
- Ethiopians (in Ethiopia) don't eat dessert. Evidence that traditional diets may not be optimal.
- Katherine Reid on how dietary changes eliminated her daughter's autism (talk)
- The Floyd Leg. A shockingly simple great idea.
- Eric Lander, a professor at MIT and Harvard, says we should spend a lot of money on genomics without providing examples where it has been helpful. "The rate of progress is just stunning," says Lander, again without examples. Perhaps he borrowed this style of argument from the Nobel Prize press office. I am sorry to see James Fallows, the interviewer, be so credulous. Dear Dr. Lander: Why is it that doctors have no clue what causes heart disease or diabetes or depression or a dozen other major diseases — but think they do? Is more money for genomics going to help with that?
Thanks to Edward Edmonds and Bert Sutherland.


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Oliver Sacks
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- Died:
- August 30, 2015 (aged 82) New York City New York
Oliver Sacks, in full Oliver Wolf Sacks, (born July 9, 1933, London, England—died August 30, 2015, New York, New York, U.S.), British neurologist and writer who won acclaim for his sympathetic case histories of patients with unusual neurological disorders.
Sacks spent most of his childhood in London, though his parents (his father was a general practitioner and his mother a surgeon) sent him to a boarding school for four years during World War II to escape the air raids then strafing the city. Sacks attended Queen's College, Oxford, where he received a bachelor's degree in physiology in 1954 and a medical degree in 1958. He completed an internship at Middlesex Hospital in London in 1959 and served as house surgeon of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham in 1960. Sacks left England for the United States to accept an internship at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco (1961–62) before serving as a resident in neurology (1962–65) at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In 1965 Sacks became an instructor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx borough of New York City, eventually becoming a clinical professor of neurology (1966–75). He also joined Beth Abraham Hospital, a charity institution in the Bronx, as a staff neurologist (1966–2007). There he met a group of patients who had contracted a sleeping sickness, encephalitis lethargica, during an epidemic that broke out between 1917 and 1927. The patients had survived only to develop a type of parkinsonism that caused varying degrees of immobility, speechlessness, and depression. Sacks recounted the brief cure that the patients experienced after receiving the drug l-dopa and the drug's subsequent side effects in his 1973 book Awakenings, which was made into a motion picture (1990) starring Robin Williams as the doctor.
Sacks enumerated further experiences, both professional and personal, in a series of volumes written for a popular audience. Having injured a leg in a mountaineering accident, he learned firsthand how a physician's dismissal of a patient's condition could hinder recuperation, a saga he related in A Leg to Stand On (1984). Sacks took care to illuminate the existential as well as pathological conditions of his patients in works such as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (1985). While most critics found his descriptions of the often strange afflictions to be humane and sympathetic, some accused Sacks of merely attempting to excite and amuse his audience.
Sacks continued to record the extraordinary circumstances of the patients he encountered and the equally remarkable adaptations that they developed. In Seeing Voices (1989), he explored the ways in which sign language not only provides the deaf with a means of communication but also serves as the foundation for a discrete culture. In An Anthropologist on Mars (1995), he documented the lives of seven patients living with conditions ranging from autism to brain damage and described the unique ways in which they created functional lives in spite of their disabilities. Sacks described his journey to Micronesia to study a population with a high incidence of colour blindness and to Guam to study a mysterious form of paralysis in The Island of the Colorblind (1997). He presented further case studies in The Mind Traveler (1998), a program produced for television, and wrote of patients with conditions relating to music in Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007). The Mind's Eye (2010) investigated the compensatory mechanisms employed by people with sensory disorders, including himself (in the wake of vision loss in one eye as a result of ocular melanoma). Hallucinations (2012) inventoried conditions and circumstances—from epilepsy to drug use to sensory deprivation—that can cause hallucinations and chronicled the effects of illusory neurological phenomena on those who experienced them. Among his autobiographical works were Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (2001), Oaxaca Journal (2002), and On the Move (2015).
In 1989 Sacks received a Guggenheim fellowship for his studies of the influence of culture on the aberrant neurological processes underlying the rare inherited disease known as Tourette syndrome. In addition to his position at Beth Abraham, he served as professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine (1992–2007; 2012–15) and as a consulting neurologist at the university's Comprehensive Epilepsy Center (1999–2007). He was also a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City (2007–12). He was appointed Columbia University Artist, a position created for him to ensure that Columbia students from all disciplines would benefit from his association with the university. Sacks was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2008.
Though Sacks resided permanently in the United States, he never relinquished British citizenship. In February 2015 he announced that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The ocular melanoma for which he had previously been treated spread to his liver, and he ultimately succumbed to the illness. The River of Consciousness (2017), a collection of essays, was published posthumously. The documentary Oliver Sacks: His Own Life appeared in 2019.


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SEJournal Online is the digital news magazine of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Learn more about SEJournal Online, including submission, subscription and advertising information.
We told you so. Voluntary disclosure by fracking drillers of the chemicals they pump into underground formations that may impact people's drinking water wells is not good enough — especially with mile-wide exemptions for "trade secrets."
But now a Harvard study says it: the FracFocus registry designed and operated by the drilling industry (and its close friends) fails to meet the public's rightful need for complete disclosure and accountability.
Today's technology can release huge amounts of previously unrecoverable gas and oil. Well bores are drilled horizontally into hydrocarbon-bearing shale formations, and then a cocktail of fluids are pumped into the well under tremendous hydraulic pressure, fracturing the rock. When wells are drilled and sealed properly, drinking water aquifers above the fracking zone may be unharmed. But lack of effective regulations, inadequate enforcement, and frequent blackouts on what chemicals are used leave at risk the health and property of people nearby.
The study, released April 23, 2013, by Harvard Law School's Environmental Law Program, concludes that the industry's FracFocus database "fails as a regulatory compliance tool" because it is incomplete and opaque. The study's authors say FracFocus hides the identity of chemicals used and lists chemicals that do not exist. The industry, with support from many states, has put forth the voluntary FracFocus system as a solution to public concerns even as it has lobbied against legal requirements that fracking fluid ingredients and records be publicly disclosed.
- "FracFocus Fails as Fracking Disclosure Tool, Study Finds," Bloomberg Businessweek, April 23, 2013, by Jim Polson.
- "Legal Fractures in Chemical Disclosure Laws: Why the Voluntary Chemical Disclosure Registry FracFocus Fails as a Regulatory Compliance Tool," Harvard Law School Environmental Law Program, April 23, 2013, by Kate Konschnik, with Margaret Holden and Alexa Shasteen.
- "Fracking Disclosure Site Has 'Serious Deficiencies,' Study Says," Dallas Morning News, April 23, 2013, by James Osborne.
- "Fracking Trade Secrets Case Headed to Wyoming Supreme Court," Casper Star-Tribune, April 17, 2013, by Adam Voge.
- "Colorado Fracking Database Questioned by Harvard Study," Denver Post, April 23, 2013, by Mark Jaffe.
- "Fracking Hazards Obscured in Failure to Disclose Wells," Bloomberg, August 14, 2012, by Benjamin Haas, Jim Polson, Phil Kuntz, and Ben Elgin.
- "Bloomberg Finds Holes in FracFocus' Database," NPR/StateImpact Pennsylvania, August 14, 2012, by Scott Detrow.
- "Chemicals Used in Hydraulic Fracturing," House Energy and Commerce Committee Minority Staff, April 2011.
- "EWG's FracFocus Principles," Environmental Working Group, March 8, 2013, by Dusty Horwitt and Briana Dema.
- "State Hydraulic Fracturing Disclosure Rules and Enforcement: A Comparison," Natural Resources Defense Council, July 2012, by Matthew McFeeley.
- SkyTruth Fracking Chemical Database.
- FracFocus Chemical Disclosure Registry.
- Previous Stories: SEJ WatchDogs of February 13, 2013 and November 28, 2012.


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With PPC, you're not paying for a promise, and you're not paying to load an ad onto a page. You're paying for an actual result, a click. With PPC, you don't pay if nobody sees your ad, and you don't even pay if someone does see it but doesn't click. You pay only when someone clicks your ad. In the business, people talk about buying clicks because that's just what they (and you) are doing. You're paying a PPC company each time someone clicks a link pointing to your Web site.
Some PPC companies have taken to referring to each click as a lead, but that's just hype. (A lead in sales-talk is someone who has expressed an interest in your product or service. No sales professional would regard the visitor, at this click stage, as having expressed enough interest to have risen to the level of being a sales lead.) Nonetheless, you are paying for a particular action. Someone sees your ad, clicks the ad, and (in general) views your site. Certainly, now and then, people won't arrive at your site — they may click and then cancel before your page fully loads — but generally speaking, a click is the same as a visit.
Why isn't a click the same as a lead? Compare Internet advertising with direct mail. Imagine, for a moment, a direct-mail campaign that is intended to get someone to call your company. You mail a letter, someone opens the letter, reads the letter and, you hope, picks up the phone and calls you. When the person calls, the person becomes a sales lead. Most people who open the letter won't call, though. So you can't call the letter a lead, and you can't call someone opening the letter a lead. Displaying a PPC ad is the equivalent of sending the letter; and a click on the PPC ad is the equivalent of having someone open your letter. It's a step in the right direction, but it's most certainly not a lead.
Here's how PPC works:
1. The advertiser joins a search engine's PPC program and "loads" the account with some money — say, $50 (though some companies' PPC budgets are in the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars a month).
2. The advertiser creates a small text ad (in some cases, PPC can include images).
3. The advertiser specifies with which keywords the ad should be associated.
4. The advertiser specifies how much he's willing to pay each time someone clicks on the ad.
5. Later, someone arrives at the search engine, enters one of the keywords or keyword phrases specified, and clicks the Search button.
6. The search engine finds the matching ads and places them on the results page.
7. If the searcher clicks the ad, he is taken to the advertiser's Web site, and the advertiser is charged for the click.
PPC pulls the banner down
By the end of 2000, when the Internet bubble burst, banner advertising had acquired a really bad reputation. Billions of dollars had been spent on banner advertising, and most of it was wasted. Click-through rates — the proportion of ads that are clicked upon — for banner ads were very low, and many advertisers, perhaps most, spent more on the ads than they made on any sales derived from them.
Banner ads had several problems:
- They were expensive. Although CPMs were typically $35-$50, because only one ad impression in 200 resulted in a click, that often translated into a price of $7-$10 per click.
- They had low click-through rates (the ratio of ad impression to actual clicks on the ad), which made them expensive. People were sick of seeing them, so they learned to just ignore them.
- Conversion rates were low. That is, only a small percentage of the people who clicked a banner and arrived at a site actually bought anything.
- They were in the wrong places. Ads were often placed in front of people who simply wouldn't be interested in the offer, which meant people didn't click them much.
The main area of the results page contains organic search results. These are not ads; they are simply pages that Google found in its vast index of the Web (over 8 billion pages at the time of writing), pages that it thinks are the best matches for the search keywords. At the top, and along the side, are sponsored links. These are the PPC ads.


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Mozilla announced today that Firefox users have downloaded more than two billion browser add-ons. To mark the occasion, Mozilla has created a special list of the top 25 add-ons.
Although Firefox is falling behind the alternatives in some key areas like performance, the open source browser still delivers peerless flexibility with a rich add-on system and unrivaled support for extensibility. Mozilla's curated extension archive has over 60,000 add-ons that have been contributed by third-party developers.
The organization's statistics show that users have downloaded two billion add-ons and there are 150 million in active daily use. Some numbers published last year show that well over a third of all Firefox users have add-ons installed.
"When we reached 1 billion Firefox Add-on downloads in November 2008, we thought it would take us less than 3 years to get to the next billion, and with your help, we've gotten to 2 billion in half that time," Mozilla's add-on team wrote in a blog entry on the Rock Your Firefox blog. "With more than 150 million add-ons in use every day, we know that the next billion add-on downloads will be here before we know it."
Mozilla has run a series of promotional campaigns to encourage awareness of Firefox's add-on system and has added several new features to its add-on site over the past year, including a feature that allows users to donate money to the authors of their favorite add-ons.


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Anyone who's toted around a recent Microsoft Surface device knows this: Styluses and digital pens tend to disappear. A new Universal Stylus Initiative, released today, aims to make their replacement as painless as possible. That's a nice idea, but the companies with the most pen-friendly products—Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung—have yet to sign on.
The Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) establishes a cross-device specification for digital pens and styluses, including those found in the Surface line, Galaxy Note smartphones, and others. The goal is for one stylus to be usable on any touchscreen device, or for multiple styluses to be usable with a single device.
The USI believes its specification will establish a baseline that goes beyond the capabilities of today's devices. Active pens will be able to do more than just sense pressure and erase ink. Future-looking features include tilt-and-twist capabilities, the ability to measure motion in nine different ways, and airbrush functionality. Personalized ink settings would be maintained across devices, the USI claims. A USI spokesman said that up to 4,096 levels of e-ink pressure are supported.
Why this matters: We don't stop to think whether a specific keyboard will work with a Toshiba or a Dell PC, or whether a microUSB charger will power a phone. The USI hopes to bring this same freedom of pen input to tablets, smartphones, and other digital devices. Approximately 259 million tablets will ship in 2016 according to Gartner, most with an active stylus. According to the USI's vision, you won't need to use the stylus that the manufacturer provides. You'll be able to keep a generic stylus right next to your mouse and keyboard—and it will just work with whatever device you connect it to.
Who's in, who's not
The problem is that, for now, the products and manufacturers that come to mind when you think of digital pens—the Apple iPad, the Microsoft Surface, and the Samsung Galaxy Note line—haven't yet joined the USI.
Most industry standards are set by the IEEE, or by another, neutral standards organization. The USI, meanwhile, is a collection of PC and component makers. The organization charges $15,000 per year for "promoter" status, and smaller amounts that confer fewer privileges, such as the actual approval of the proposed specification and future updates. Nevertheless, the USI has attracted the support of Dell, Intel, HP and Sharp, as well as key touchscreen vendors like Synaptics and Wacom.
PC makers say they see the USI spec as a way for active pens to become pervasive, adding another way to interact with the PC.
"Dell welcomes the USI v1.0 specification because it enables a great active stylus experience across a variety of touch-enabled devices," said Liam Quinn, Dell's Client Solutions chief technical officer, in a statement. "Enabling interoperability among multiple manufacturers also will help drive broad customer adoption of the active stylus."
The omissions of Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung are noteworthy, though. Apple's absence would imply that there won't be third-party generic replacements for the Apple Pencil, protecting Apple's $99 Apple Pencil price and profit margins. (Granted, Apple claims that the Pencil was specifically designed for use with the iPad, with features such as shading, which is applied when the Pencil user tilts her hand.)
Another is Microsoft, which has a stake in the game as the maker of Surface tablets as well as the author of the software drivers that allow active pens to interact with Windows devices. It's also not clear whether Samsung considers its own Note pens to be a proprietary solution. Right now, it's not clear whether a USI pen could work without specific driver support from the device manufacturer.
There's still plenty of time for them to join up, though. According to a May roadmap, the first USI-compliant products will ship this fall—probably in-display components which support the new standard. A USI spokesman, meanwhile, says that USI styluses should ship by 2018, or possibly late 2017. In any event, your safest bet right now is to take a cue from the HP Elite x2 and ensure your digital stylus doesn't get lost—tie it down.


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The IK Multimedia iRig Pro Duo is made for totally mobile recording. Now you can truly go out and play and record anywhere, any time on any device with the smallest fully-featured dual-channel interface on the market. "Truly mobile" means completely self-contained… unhooked from the grid and free to create anytime and anywhere inspiration strikes you on any device. iRig Pro Duo delivers true mobility in grand fashion. It packs a ton of useful recording features into an extremely compact enclosure that you can take with you anywhere.
First, it lets you go off the grid and record great audio anywhere thanks to its comprehensive powering options — for true mobility iRig Pro Duo can be powered with two AA batteries and does not draw any power from a connected iPhone or iPad. When using the included USB or Micro USB to OTG cable connected to a laptop or Android device, iRig Pro Duo can be powered by the attached device or onboard batteries. Back in the studio? iRig Pro Duo can be powered with an additional DC power supply for powering extended recording sessions.
Second, it has to sound great and accept every possible instrument and recording situation. iRig Pro Duo delivers high-quality 24-bit audio on the go or in the studio with plug-and-play simplicity. It features 2 channels with XLR/TRS combo audio jacks and phantom power that can accommodate everything from high-end condenser microphones to guitars, basses, keyboards and more. Its crystal-clear ultra-low noise high-headroom preamps ensure that you get professional grade sound everywhere you go.
Fully universal "all-platform" portable recording is finally here thanks to iRig Pro Duo. It comes with every cable you need to connect to your iPhone, iPad, Android device or Mac/PC —you get a Lightning, USB-OTG and USB cables so no matter where you are or what device you happen to have with you, capturing brilliance is always enabled. If you want to connect to an older iOS device, all you have to do is pick up an optional 30-pin cable. And, iRig Pro Duo comes bundled with over $450 worth of software and apps for every platform to get you going.
iRig Pro Duo is the smallest full-featured dual-channel interface on the market. Its elegantly designed lightweight thermoplastic housing is designed to take the rigors of life on the road, session after session. IK have designed it so that it's the perfect size — it fits easily into the palm of you hand and can fit in any backpack, gig bag or even your pocket.
But don't take iRig Pro Duo's size for granted. This is one seriously powerful and connectible interface. It features 2 channels with XLR/TRS combo audio jacks and phantom power that can accommodate everything from high-end phantom powered condenser microphones to guitars, basses, keyboards and more. Each channel has it's own input gain control so you can dial in the perfect amount of input signal for your recording.
Each of iRig Pro Duo's two channels passes through an ultra-low noise high-headroom pro-quality preamp that then runs through a 24bit AD-DA converter, giving you amazing clarity and pristine studio-quality sound.
With iRig Pro Duo, you don't just have a superb portable interface for audio; you can also hook up your favorite MIDI controllers. This is thanks to its included TRS to MIDI-DIN cables and dedicated MIDI in/out jacks, so you can control MIDI-compatible software (or send MIDI data to MIDI-compatible hardware, like synthesizers, drum machines and samplers) with plug and play simplicity. It just works.
High-quality studio condenser microphones require 48V of external power to function. It's part of what makes them sound so good, crisp and accurate. With iRig Pro Duo, you'll have that 48V of phantom power at your fingertips. Just plug in your high-quality condenser mic, flip iRig Pro Duo's phantom power switch and record until your heart's content.
Monitoring your mixes and input is a breeze. iRig Pro Duo comes with two 1/4" TRS balanced analog audio outputs that let you send a zero-latency signal to your studio monitors or portable speakers. These outputs deliver a stunningly clear audio signal thanks to iRig Pro Duo's exceptional output drivers. The totally floating design of iRig Pro Duo's balanced outputs protect it from potential ground loop issues and buzz when performing onstage with iOS devices or laptops. This superior design makes it an ideal audio interface for when you want to perform live and connect your gear directly to the stage audio system without having to use any special cables or problematic DI Boxes.
There's also a Direct Monitor switch that lets you monitor either the direct incoming dry signals, or the processed signal returning from your device or computer. If you want to use your favorite set of analog headphones to monitor your playing and recording in real time, iRig Pro Duo has you covered. iRig Pro Duo features an integrated 3.5mm headphone output jack with a superior high-quality headphone preamp and level control, so you'll never miss a beat — perfect for use with the iPhone 7.
There's nothing worse than getting lost in the creative groove and running out of juice. With iRig Pro Duo, you'll have three options for power. First, iRig Pro Duo can be powered with 2 AA batteries when connected to an iPhone or iPad. Second, plug in the USB or Micro USB to OTG cables and iRig Pro Duo will be powered by the connected computer or Android device, or the AA batteries. Camped out in the studio? Plug it into the wall with a DC power adapter (not included) for extended recording sessions. Now you can record with confidence knowing full well that your interface is in it for the long haul with you.
iRig Pro Duo comes with a bundle of over $/€450 worth of serious music-making tools. Got an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch? If so, then head over to the app store because you get a whole bundle of free stuff like:
AmpliTube FREE, the ultimate guitar and bass tone studio for iPhone/iPad. You get 4 extra pieces of free gear just for registering your iRig Pro Duo: The Metal W and Metal 150 amps and the Wharmonator and X-Flanger stomp pedals.
VocaLive FREE, the professional vocal processor for practice, performance and recording. It comes with 2 effects and a single-track recorder, and it can be expanded to up to 12 effects and up to 4-tracks (or 8-tracks in the case of VocaLive FREE for iPad).
iRig Recorder FREE, the powerful and easy to use field recording app that lets you capture, edit and share great sounding audio anytime and anywhere.
SampleTank FREE, the ultimate virtual instrument and sound workstation for the mobile musician. It features an expandable collection of instruments and effects and a base library of 68 sounds.
iGrand Piano FREE, a high-end piano instrument with 3 world-class, multi-velocity stereo grand and upright pianos (1 included, 1 after registering iRig Pro Duo and 1 after registering iGrand Piano FREE).
On the Mac/PC side, you also get fully expandable versions of AmpliTube Metal with Custom Shop, T-RackS 4 Classic mixing and mastering suite (comes with 4 processors), SampleTank 4 SE Mac/PC sample workstation, 6 Free virtual instrument collections for SampleTank 4: The Grid plus 5 instrument collections from Beats and Elektronika series, plus 25 free Gear Credits to use in the Custom Shop.
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The Secret Beyond Matter
A9 TV, 8 July 2012
When the Knights Templar began feeling sympathetic toward Islam, when they began realizing that Islam is the true faith and when they felt and began saying that Islam is not a religion of savagery, as has been depicted, but one of love, the way of the dajjal (antichrist) immediately began outing its people to work. They foolishly imagined they could halt such developments by telling some miniature dajjal to start slaughtering people and to show people what the Knights Templar and freemasonry are like. In other words, they embarked on a counter-offensive, imagining they could stop freemasons becoming Muslims, that they could stop the Knights Templar becoming Muslims, that they could prevent the global dominion of Islamic moral values. But this is a hollow offensive. You saw how the Knights Templar came here and are full of love toward Muslims, going to mosques, worshiping, reading the Qur'an and trying to learn about Islam. They support peace and brotherhood. It is therefore improper for Muslims to say that all Knights Templar are bloodthirsty, cruel and your enemies. In that event, what will the other side do? They will say Muslims are bloodthirsty and cruel. They also make such propaganda. In the same way that Muslims cannot adopt someone who spreads terror and anarchy and claims to be a Muslim as a role model, so a Knight Templar or a freemason who sheds blood and spreads terror cannot be a role model for the Templars or freemasons. That is no reason for us to spurn them all. Of course some Knights Templar and freemasons are irreligious or atheists. Of course some are hostile toward Muslims. There are those who want to set Muslims against one another. But there are also good ones. In the same way there are good and bad Muslims, so there are good and bad among them. One has to distinguish. The important thing is thus a policy that unites, reconciles, makes people love Islam, eliminates enmity and brings peace. It is wrong to stir things up. If a Muslim declares that a whole community, a whole masonic or Templar community is our enemy, then that just suits the dajjal. We must not fall for that. We must make them love Islam and the Qur'an, and ensure they draw closer to Muslims. So they can understand the Qur'an and see how it brings peace, how that is the essence of Islam.
A9 TV, 25 July 2011
While bigots here are trying to prevent Turkish-Islamic Union. So are the bigots there. Therefore, I apologize to sincere Templars and freemasons. I appreciate their love for Islam and encourage it. I hope Allah will send them happiness. But I also hope they will clean out the impure ones who have infiltrated them. And they are doing that. This is not something that involves all masons and Knights Templar. Masons and Knight Templar will all follow the Prophet Jesus (as). They will be followers of the Mahdi. Islamic moral values will rule the world through smiling faces, peace, love and brotherhood. Not a drop of blood will be spilled, all arms will be abolished, the armaments industry will be eliminated and peace, security and beauty will rule the world. Islam means peace. The world will be a land of peace, and there will be peace, plenty and abundance everywhere.
2012-10-31 16:20:27


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Strange days indeed. This morning, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks announced that they are selling their wireless spectrum, which was held under the guise of joint venture SpectrumCo, to Verizon Wireless for $3.6 billion.
Under the terms of the deal, Verizon Wireless will acquire SpectrumCo's 122 Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum licenses covering 259 million POPs (points of presence). Comcast owns 64 percent of SpectrumCo and will receive approximately $2.3 billion from the sale. Time Warner Cable owns 31 percent of SpectrumCo and stands to gain approximately $1.1 billion. Bright House Networks owns 5 percent of SpectrumCo and is slated to receive approximately $189 million.
In addition to other regulatory hurdles, the sale of the wireless spectrum to Verizon Wireless is subject to approval by the Federal Communications Commission.
"These agreements, together with our Wi-Fi plans, enable us to execute a comprehensive, long-term wireless strategy and expand our focus on providing mobility to our Xfinity services," Comcast Cable President Neil Smit said. "We're excited about this partnership with Verizon Wireless and the future innovations we will bring to consumers."
The cable operators and Verizon Wireless also entered into agreements that will allow them to resell each other's products and services. The cable operators will be able to sell Verizon Wireless' service on a wholesale basis, which will give them the mobile quad play they've been seeking ever since the initial days of the Sprint-based Pivot wireless offering.
Additionally, the cable companies and Verizon Wireless also formed an innovation technology joint venture for the development of technology to better integrate wireline and wireless products and services. The joint operating entity will be based in Philadelphia, which is where Comcast has its headquarters. The joint venture is 50 percent owned by Verizon Wireless, while Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House own the other 50 percent stake.
Sam Schwartz, president of Comcast Interactive Capital and executive vice president of strategy and development at Comcast Interactive Media, will lead the strategic and creative direction of the joint venture in Philly, while Tony Heyman, vice president of new market development for Verizon Wireless, will lead the operations.
"Our wireless offering can become exclusive to Verizon in as soon as six months," Time Warner Cable spokesman Justin Venech said. "At that time, we can continue to service our existing TWC Mobile Internet customers (provisioned through the Clearwire joint venture), but we will not continue selling that service. We expect to begin selling Verizon services and them to begin selling our services sometime next year."
A spokesman for Comcast said the company would wind down its mobile broadband service with Clearwire in about six months, and there will be a transition for those customers over to Verizon Wireless.
Using Time Warner Cable as an example, Verizon Wireless will be able to offer the cable operator's double- and triple-play services along with its wireless service. A Verizon Wireless customer that signs up with Time Warner Cable's data service will be able to use the cable operator's Wi-Fi hotspots.
"We're excited to be able to offer the nation's best wireless services to our customers and to have Verizon Wireless as a sales channel for our superb wireline services," Time Warner Cable president and chief operating officer Rob Marcus said. "We're also pleased to have obtained an attractive price for the spectrum we're selling."
While the cable operators benefit from offering a truly national wireless service, Verizon is able to offer video services in places where it hasn't built out its expensive fiber-based FiOS service. But make no mistake: The cable operators aren't backing off of their competition with Verizon FiOS for video customers.
"The agreements are not with Verizon FiOS, they're with Verizon Wireless," Bright House Networks spokesperson Kimberly Maki said. "We expect that there will be no reduction in competition as a result of these agreements. We're still very much in competition with Verizon FiOS. We don't expect that to change."
Other key points and observations on the deal include:
- Tough news for AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. Verizon has wrapped up some very desirable AWS spectrum across the nation that will significantly shore up its 4G LTE plans, which isn't good news for AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.
- Each service provider retains its own subscribers. In other words, cable operator customers that subscribe to Verizon Wireless' service will receive a separate bill from Verizon.
- Clearwire may be out in the cold. Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Comcast are among the investors in Clearwire. Time Warner Cable and Comcast have deployed rebranded mobile broadband services with Clearwire, but Bright House Networks hasn't. With Comcast and Time Warner Cable confirming they no longer plan on selling Clearwire's services going forward, the deal with Verizon Wireless seems to have put Clearwire out to pasture.
- Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks cash in on the sale of spectrum. SpectrumCo originally forked out $2.37 billion for 137 AWS licenses in October 2006 in a Federal Communications Commission auction.
- Speculation at last month's SCTE Cable-Tec Expo included the thought that the nation's largest cable operators would band together to buy T-Mobile after the wheels came off the sale to AT&T. With the Verizon Wireless deal, the cable operators get the national wireless footprint they've long desired while retaining control of their respective subscribers, increase their bottom lines with the sale of spectrum, and form the JV with Verizon Wireless for new products and services. Buying T-Mobile doesn't stack up in comparison.
- What will Cox Communications do with its wireless spectrum after abandoning both the build-out of its own wireless network and its Sprint-based re-branded service? Cox was originally part of the 2006 SpectrumCo auction buy before exiting the entity in 2008. It still retains 700 MHz and AWS licenses, so Cox could decide to enter into a similar agreement with Verizon Wireless.
Filed Under: Industry regulations


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Hello! I am the counselor at Crawford Elementary. I am very excited for this school year.
The role of the school counselor is to serve the children, parents, and community members of Crawford Elementary through a guidance program which is created to teach the "Whole Child." The concept of the "Whole Child" means that not only is the counselor here to teach and support academics, study skills and career choices, but she is also here to teach the social and emotional skills that children need to be successful in life, such as compassion, empathy, responsibility, respect, relationships, etc. The counselor meets with students in the classroom every other week for a 30-minute lesson and activity on the focus word for the month. The counselor is also available to meet with students individually as needed and/or as small groups for extra skills lessons. Meeting with small groups and/or individual sessions can be for teaching conflict resolution, friendship skills, and social skills, etc.
The school counselor is also the test coordinator for Crawford Elementary. Throughout the year, I will be involved with implementing standardized testing that is mandated by the state. The building test coordinator responsibilities are training all faculty and staff for the tests being given, coordinating all student accommodation information, administering all make-up testing, and making sure that all testing materials are accounted for and returned to the district test coordinator by the end of the testing session.
I am also available to assist parents with meeting any of the needs their students may have. I am looking forward to a wonderful year at Crawford and being involved in all the special events throughout the year!


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Windows 7 Feature Focus
Hardware Support
One of the primary complaints about Windows Vista when it first arrived was that it lacked compatibility with some of the legacy hardware devices that were then on the market. Though these compatibility issues were overblown, Microsoft improved Vista's compatibility dramatically over time, via various driver releases that were collected into both of that OS's service packs and delivered seamlessly to customers. And when it came time to deliver Windows 7, Microsoft decided that it would retain the same compatibility model as Windows Vista plus service pack 2. The result was an OS that offered excellent hardware compatibility right out of the box. Windows 7 has always been broadly compatible with the hardware people are using and buying.
Offering this level of compatibility eliminated complaints, but it also allowed Microsoft to look more closely at how its OS interacts with the underlying PC hardware and provide some unique Windows 7 features related to hardware device support. And in this feature focus article, rather than focus on a single new Windows 7 feature, I'm going to highlight several hardware-related features that are unique to this Windows version. I'm all about more bang for the buck.
Device Stage
Because they're always pushing forward with new device types, hardware makers often have to create software applications that expose new capabilities to users. And these software applications are, almost universally, horrible, and that's as true of the simplest applets as it is of the full-blown applications they provide. So in Windows 7, Microsoft has created a new Device Stage platform that provides hardware makers with a consistent, task-based environment in which they can expose the various features of their products.
A typical Device Stage interface for an individual device.
Device Stage is optional, however, so it's only sparsely available, and is of course hardware dependent. It is particularly useful for multifunction printers--where the device's different functions, online ink ordering, and other features can be otherwise difficult to access--but can be found for other device types including MP3 players and even entire PCs. Some Dell computers and many Lenovo PCs utilize Device Stage, for example, as a front-end to access various PC-related features and services.
A Device Stage interface for an entire computer.
Finding a Device Stage interface can, however, be difficult. Certain device types will trigger a Device Stage UI when they're plugged into the computer. But you can check whether any of your devices provide a Device Stage UI by checking a related feature, Devices and Printers. And this one is available on all Windows 7 PCs.
Devices and Printers
While Device Stage provides a way to view and interact with individual devices, Devices and Printers provides a way to view and interact with all the devices that are connected to your PC. It is a superior and friendlier interface than the old Device Manager (which is still available in Windows 7), and replaces the old Printers folder (which is no longer available in Windows 7). And like the interfaces it replaces, Devices and Printers can be used both for troubleshooting purposes and to manage the devices that are found in the PC.
Devices and Printers provides a handy front-end for managing and troubleshooting all of the hardware in and connected to your PC.
The easiest way to launch Devices and Printers is via Start Menu Search (type devices), but it can also be found in the Control Panel under Hardware and Sound. As you select an individual device, you'll typically see one of two interfaces, a Device Stage interface for those devices that support it, or an old-school device property sheet. (Some devices, like Fax, can launch other applications.) And if the entire PC is exposed via Device Stage, you'll only see the PC listed under the Devices section; all of the other contained and connected devices (sans printers) are found within.
If a device doesn't support Device Stage, you'll get this old-school property sheet instead.
With regards to printing, Devices and Printers contains all of the capabilities that were previously exposed via the Printers folder. You can set the default printer, manage printer capabilities, view each printer's print queue, and so on.
Location-aware printing
Rather than require each Windows 7-based PC to have a single default printer, Microsoft has engineered the system to understand differences between the networks to which you connect--at work and home, for example--and to configure a different default printer for each location. Thus, when you're at work, any print jobs you start will go to the work-based printer you prefer. And at home, when you print, it will select your preferred home printer.
Location-aware printing requires a business-class version of Windows 7 (Professional or higher). It works automatically, but you can also manually configure which printer to use at which location (i.e. on which network) via the Manage Default Printers control panel.
Sensor and location platform
While many people associate location awareness to GPS hardware in smart phones, this capability doesn't necessarily require a GPS, but could also work with other interfaces, including various sensors, gauges, or other hardware interfaces. To this end, Windows 7 includes a new sensor and location platform that allows software applications to interact with whatever sensors and other hardware that may be connected to the PC.
To date, there haven't been many high profile sensor and location platform solutions, mostly because of the lack of compatible hardware. But my Windows 7 Secrets co-author Rafael Rivera has created an intriguing sensor interface called Geosense for Windows that allows any PC to report its location information using Google Location Services (Wi-Fi or IP-based), and without requiring proper GPS hardware. It's worth checking out.
Using a location sensor, compatible applications--like the weather gadget--can automatically detect your location and respond accordingly.
Better power management
As underlying PC hardware has improved and become more efficient, so too has Windows improved to take advantage of those changes. In Windows 7, Microsoft provides its best support yet for power management, providing improved battery life and performance when compared to identical PCs running Windows XP or Vista. These improvements run the gamut from deeper integration with the capabilities of the hardware to simple but effective tricks like dimming displays sooner and automatically disabling power-sucking hardware that isn't being used. (For example, Windows 7 will disable networking hardware when you're offline, such as on a plane.)
Windows 7 also provides simpler and more efficient power plans and power options, including a default power plan for both connected and unconnected states that scales back processor performance unless it's really needed. With Windows 7 for the first time, it's possible to achieve Mac-like resume times and appliance-like switchovers between power management states.
Windows 7 provides simpler and more efficient power management plans.
Windows Troubleshooting integration
The new Windows Troubleshooting infrastructure in Windows 7 provides a number of useful task-based wizards for solving PC problems. Many of these troubleshooters, not surprisingly, are hardware-related. The Hardware and Sound troubleshooters provide front-ends to fixing problems with sound devices and other hardware, printers, TV tuners, and more, and other troubleshooters cover display, networking, and power management hardware.
You typically access Windows Troubleshooting via Action Center, but you can also launch it directly from Start Menu Search (type troubl).
Many of the troubleshooters in Windows 7 are hardware related.
But wait, there's more...
Of course, there is much more going on with Windows 7 hardware support. I will cover additional hardware functionality in a future Feature Focus article.


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Let your personality shine through your wedding by making wedding invitations, place cards and wedding decorations yourself.
You choose the colours. There's lots of ideas with "How To" guides you can be inspired by.
Are you able to get your better half to help, you can have a great time together.
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Cervelli competing at catcher with no Minors options
TAMPA, Fla. -- Francisco Cervelli was stunned late in last year's camp when he was summoned to the manager's office and informed that he was being optioned to the Minors, but the Yankees will not be able to have that same chat this spring.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said on Sunday that Cervelli is out of Minor League options, so he cannot be sent down without first clearing waivers. Cashman had previously said that he believed Cervelli had an option remaining.
Cervelli is competing for the Opening Day catching nod with Chris Stewart, who is also out of Minor League options, as well as prospect Austin Romine, who can be sent back to the Minors without being exposed to waivers.
Asked to handicap the catching race so far, Cashman quipped, "We've got two guys out of options and one guy with an option. I think the two guys are winning."


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What sparks paradigm-shifting and disruptive innovation in any business? It's a special mix of entrepreneur and company, regular in every respect except for having the courage and foresight to make an idea happen that was supposed to be impossible. As an entrepreneur in a startup, how do you know if you have this potential, and what are the steps to get from an innovation to a revolution?
The first step is to meditate on the examples set by others, like Steve Jobs of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, or Thomas Edison with the electric light. There are many others, like the classic book about Ratan Tata bringing out the Nano car way back in 2009 in India for less than $2,500. Even though the car was not a success for production reasons, the book "Nanovation," by Kevin & Jackie Freiberg, still makes some great points.
These authors have studied many such examples, and summarize my own perspective on the characteristics of entrepreneurs they call "nanovators," that produce true, life-changing innovations:
- Get wired for innovation. We all agree that innovation is an adventure into the unknown. If you want people to follow, you need to be able to convince them of three things: (1) your mission is worth supporting, (2) you have the competence to build a critical mass, and (3) you have integrity to look out for their best interests along the way.
- Lead the revolution. Innovators have more than the vision; they have the drive to lead, and the focus to stay on target. They are wired to win. Organizations don't produce game-changing innovations; people do. They allow a leap of faith in their own ideas, as well as in the ideas and capabilities of their team.
- Build a culture of innovation. You need a culture where restlessness is tolerated, curiosity is encouraged, passion is inspired, creativity is expected, and people are always talking about what's next. Ultimately, the mind-set changes so significantly that innovation is natural, and no one is conscious of it.
- Question the unquestionable. Outsiders ask a lot of questions because they don't presume to know why something is done a certain way. Make your insiders think like outsiders. Provocative questions like "What if?", "Why not?", or "So what?" can help to get everyone outside the box.
- Look beyond customer imagination. First-of-a-kind products empower customers to do things they didn't even know they wanted to do, and now can't live without them. The computer mouse, Tivo, and Teflon are examples. Listen to customers, but remember that they can't always tell you what they don't know.
- Go to the intersection of trends. Innovators pay close attention to the early warning signs that precede major cultural, societal, and market shifts. Where most people see an isolated trend, innovators connect the dots by relating one trend to several others. They focus on next practices, versus best practices.
- Solve a problem that matters. The key here is to resist the temptation to pay more attention to the technology solution than the problem. Some people create brilliant solutions to non-existent problems, like maybe Segway and satellite phones. These solutions may be nice to have, but won't ignite a revolution to get there.
- Risk more, fail faster, and bounce back stronger. When you pursue a creative idea that takes you beyond, fear tempts you to make compromises. If you can push through this fear and doubt, or bounce back intelligently from initial setbacks, you often arrive at something that has truly never been seen before.
Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric argues that the next big thing could well be from "reverse innovation," where instead of industrialized nations adapting their products for emerging markets, innovation in emerging markets will bring new paradigms to home markets. In any case, the future is defined by what we put off until tomorrow, so don't wait too long to get started.
Marty Zwilling


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Cornerstone is more than a product, we're your partner.
For more than two decades, we've been at the forefront of talent and people innovation, helping our customers stay ahead of the curve. Our team of experts deeply understands your unique talent challenges and opportunities with an unwavering focus on our customers' success. Together, we will work hand-in-hand with you to deliver extraordinary experiences and the results that matter to your organisation.


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Communications System Lab
Contact: Prof. Aditya Trivedi Dial: 0751-2449717
Objectives and Activities
This laboratory is used for research in areas of:
- Cellular systems;
- Telephone systems;
- Microwave systems;
- Satellite systems;
- Fibre optic systems;
- Frequency division multiplexing;
- Time division multiplexing;
- Broadband and baseband systems;
- Packet data systems;
- Envelope filters;
- Voltage controlled oscillators;
- Coherent receivers;
- Communication mediums
Typical M. Tech projects in wireless networking, and multi-user detection in NC-CDMA are carried out in this laboratory
Personal computers and printer are the equipments making up the infrastructure of this laboratory. Software tools include MATLAB and QUALNET DEVELOPER.
This laboratory is located in room no C-115.


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The Barwon Coast, centred on the townships of Barwon Heads and Ocean Grove, combines a broad estuary system, fragile dunes and long surf beaches, producing a landscape with high environmental and conservation values. The coastal and marine environment is rich in both Aboriginal cultural heritage and European heritage.
The Barwon Coast Committee of Management has the responsibility for the management of the coastal Crown land reserves from beach access 7W at Collendina on the eastern boundary of Ocean Grove, through to 42W Blue Rocks to the west of 13th Beach. Barwon Coast is also responsible for the management of Riverview Family Caravan Park, Riverside Camp Ground, Barwon Heads Caravan Park and the port water of Barwon Heads.


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