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Yonkers Hotel Rooms
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subset: commoncrawl


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Jan 20, 2013 10:49pm
President Obama used the first public remarks of his second term to address what he called the "most significant" event of this weekend: his wife's much-talked-about new haircut.
"I love her bangs," Obama told supporters at an inaugural reception at the National Building Museum. "She looks good. She always looks good."
First lady Michelle Obama, wearing a black sequined cocktail dress and showcasing her new hairdo, also heaped compliments on her husband.
"Let me tell you, it has just been a true thrill to watch this handsome, charming individual grow into the man and the president that he is," she said, as she reached out to playfully touch the president's face, sparking laughter from the crowd.
Praising his compassion and courage, the first lady introduced the president as the "love of her life."
Obama, who was sworn in for a second term in a small White House ceremony earlier today, kept his remarks short, noting he has another big speech to deliver Monday.
"There are a limited amount of good lines and you don't want to use them all up tonight," he joked.
Because the Constitutionally mandated date for the inauguration, Jan. 20, fell on a Sunday this year, the traditional, public ceremony was delayed until Monday.
Saving the best for his official inaugural address, the president instead dedicated the bulk of his remarks to thanking supporters for their hard work and dedication to getting him re-elected.
"You understood this was not just about a candidate; it was not just about Joe Biden or Barack Obama. This was about us, who we are as a nation, what values we cherish, how hard we're willing to fight to make sure that those values live not just for today but for future generations," he said.
"All of you here understood and were committed to the basic notion that when we put our shoulders to the wheel of history, it moves… It moves forward. And that's part of what we celebrate when we come together for inauguration," he said.
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Garden State Grandeur
A New Jersey home adopts classic style and an elegant palette
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Set aside your stereotypes. Janet Simon is not the typical Jersey girl--though she'll tell it like it is. Her hair's not big. Her dress is classic. She's the consummate hostess. And her house, situated in New Jersey's Morris County, is the epitome of good taste. The area the Simon family has called home for more than 20 years offers unspoiled countryside--rolling hills dotted with lakes and rivers--just 30 miles northwest of New York City. Here, beautiful estates might fool you into thinking you've traveled through time and space--perhaps to England in the 1930s. Hidden Pond Farm--the house this interior designer shares with husband J. Peter Simon, their four children (almost grown up now), as many dogs as kids, and a pony--is that kind of place.
The neo-Georgian residence was built between 1927 and 1933 for Thomas M. Debevoise, a prominent attorney and personal counsel to John D. Rockefeller Jr. Debevoise commissioned architects Delano & Aldrich to design what was to be his family's summer retreat. The home's gracious proportions and historicism are hallmarks of these distinguished early-20th-century architects.
Janet and Peter bought the house 19 years ago from the estate of Thomas's son, Eli Whitney Debevoise (named for his great-great-grandfather, inventor of the cotton gin). "The house was wonderfully untouched," Janet recalls. "The grounds were completely overgrown, like Sleeping Beauty's castle. We had to hack through thorny branches to get to the front door."
Peter saw the place first and knew his wife would be smitten. "I took one look, and I was gone," she admits. "It didn't frighten me, which it should have. I couldn't wait to start restoring it." The house had been vacant for 30 years, but it now passed from one steward to the next. "My first commitment was to keep its integrity intact," she adds.
And there was plenty to do before the house would suit the needs of the Simon family. "There was a servants' wing!" Janet exclaims. So she reconfigured the tiny staff bedrooms, added bathrooms, and created a layout that would accommodate their young children. (Peter Jr., who was 5 at the time, is now 24; Emily is 22; and Timmy is 20. Cameron, their youngest at 16, was born after the rest of the brood was firmly ensconced in the home.) Janet also created an expansive master suite that remains one of her favorite places. "My kids and their friends come in and chat with me here," she says with a laugh. "Probably because I go to bed so early!"
While the house's floor plan is rational, it also offers a sense of discovery. "That's created by the transitional spaces," Janet explains. "There are a couple of rooms directly off the main hallway, but most aren't." Adding character is a little round foyer leading to the library. A small square space gives some air between the breakfast room and the front stairs. And an oval back hall contains the back stairs up to the second floor.
To return the house's interior to its former glory, plasterwork was restored and the existing wood floors hand-finished and waxed. Janet, a designer by trade, got busy with the decoration, which continues to undergo constant refreshment. "It has evolved," she says in an understatement. "In the beginning, we had lots of swags and chintz." Since then, she has lightened up.
The living and dining rooms are rendered in a palette of soft blues and creams, grounded with gleaming wood furniture and golden accents. While formal, the two spaces are treated without kid gloves. Janet approaches her whole house with the same élan. The more casual breakfast room and sunporch are peppy and inviting. A bold mix of botanical prints and graphic patterns adds pizzazz to a cheerful green-and-white scheme in the former. The sunporch is still enveloped in the charm of chintz on walls and furniture, with side chairs in red-and-white candy stripes as the perfect foil. That's one room Janet hasn't changed, but in the new context, it feels fresher and more lively than ever.
These four rooms--breakfast, living, and dining rooms plus the sunporch, all with French doors that open to the terrace--combine to form the house's most elegant living spaces.
The wood-paneled library is appropriately clad in warm tones--but even here Janet manages to lighten her rich palette of reds, greens, and brown with little hits of pink and vivid orange.
At the back of the house, a section was extended for a kitchen with an eating area that connects to a terrace--and to a mudroom. (Janet is incredibly organized. In addition to the mudroom, she created "outgoing" closets for dry-cleaning, packages, tote bags, and more. "Who wants to see that stuff?" she asks. "Not me.")
Three new outbuildings/garages match the color and pattern of the house bricks--even to the grout. As in traditional English country houses, the facade you first see as you come up the sweeping drive has been as carefully designed as the main entrance.
The Simons worked with landscape architect Deborah Nevins to restore terraces and gardens, framing views and devising intimate outdoor spaces. Come spring, the rehabilitated 50-year-old peony walk enthralls with its ephemeral charm, and the six-acre pumpkin patch offers a special delight in autumn.
Janet, herself, is never happier than when she's entertaining--setting a beautiful table, bringing people together.
"The great thing about a big house is that everyone fits," she says. "There's always space for family and friends." She might have 40 people singing Christmas carols at the piano, 22 for dinner in the dining room, or an intimate summer lunch on the terrace--each event done with meticulous attention to detail, from custom-made linens to the perfect crème anglaise. "Any excuse will do for a party," she says. But with a home as lovely as Hidden Pond Farm, she doesn't need any excuse at al.
Photography: John Bessler
Interior design: Janet Simon, Janet Simon Inc., 310 South St., Morristown, NJ 07962; 973/682-2683, janetsimoninc.com.
Design consultant: Ralph Harvard, Ralph Harvard Inc., 212/535-0707, ralphharvard.com.
Builder: Ted Aanensen, Aanensen's, 201/998-6892 and 732/776-6927, aanensens.com.
Landscape architect: Deborah Nevins, Deborah Nevins & Assoc., 212/925-1125, dnalandscape.com.
The bright foyer features a Damoka rug.
Wall paint, glaze (custom): Nels Christianson, Christianson Lee Studio, 203/798-0098, christiansonlee.com.
Trim paint ("Mayonnaise" #2152-70): Benjamin Moore & Co., 888/236-6667.
Table; mirror; lamps; vases: owner's collection.
Area rug: Damoka, 800/326-6522.
The living room owes its serenity to soft blues and creams. Among the many fine details is the custom shell embroidery on the Penn & Fletcher draperies that flank a mirror by R Squared. An area rug by Tai Ping Carpets anchors the sitting area. The ceiling is painted Farrow & Ball's "Pink Ground."
Love seat: Jonas, Upholstery, 212/691-2777, jonasworkroom.com.
Love-seat fabric ("Treillage"/Taupe #34511-1); floral pillow on love seat ("Verlaine"/French Blue #34258-1); brown pillow on love seat (linen): Clarence House, 800/803-2850, clarencehouse.com.
Love-seat trim ("Vendome Braid" #32236/9625): Houlès, 310/652-6171, houles.com.
Embroidery on brown pillow: Penn & Fletcher, 212/239-6868, pennandfletcher.com.
Striped pillows on love seat: Lee Jofa, 800/453-3563.
Two-tiered table: Mallett Antiques, 212/249-8783.
Upholstered ottoman: Versailles Drapery Inc., 212/533-2059.
Ottoman fabric: discontinued.
Tray on ottoman: John Boone Inc., 212/758-0012, johnbooneinc.com.
Armchair by window: owner's collection.
Seat fabric on armchair ("Lydia Vine"/Sky #2644220): Decorators Walk, 212/415-3955.
Drapery ("St. Clair Silk"/Aqua, by Travers): Zimmer + Rohde, 212/758-7925, zimmer-rohde.com.
Shell embroidery on drapery (custom): Penn & Fletcher, 212/239-6868, pennandfletcher.com.
Drapery hardware: Joseph Biunno, 718/729-5630.
Wall paint (custom, with custom glaze): Nels Christianson, Christianson Lee Studio, 203/798-0098.
Ceiling and trim paint ("Pink Ground" #202): Farrow & Ball, 888/511-1121, farrow-ball.com.
Mirror between windows: R Squared, 843/722-1593.
Table under mirror: Amy Perlin Antiques, 212/593-5756, amyperlinantiques.com.
Lamp on table (by Jean Michael Frank): Eric Apel Antiques, 212/605-9960.
Area rug: Tai Ping Carpets, 212/979-2233, taipingcarpets.com.
Piano (Baby Grand): Steinway, steinway.com.
Mantel: original to house.
Benches: Sentimento Antiques, 212/750-3111.
Bench fabric: Lee Jofa, 800/453-3563.
Barrel chair by mantel: Bardith, 212/737-3775, bardith.com.
Chair fabric ("Portiere Weave"/Mocha #2003181-6): Lee Jofa, 800/453-3563.
This secretary is one of the Simons' much-cherished and much-used antiques.
Secretary—owner's collection.
A palette of gold, chocolate, and paprika warms the library. Fabric for draperies is by Lee Jofa; the desk lamp is by Lars Bolander.
Desk; chairs; chair cushions: owner's collection.
Red desk lamp: Lars Bolander, 212/924-1000.
Drapery: discontinued.
The library welcomes pets as well as people. The sofa is by Ernest Studio Inc.
Sofa: Ernest Studio Inc., 212/988-4900.
Sofa fabric (linen velvet): Cowtan & Tout, 212/647-6900.
Sofa trim: Theodore Merwitz Textiles Inc., 312/664-0726, merwitztextiles.com.
Pillows: owner's collection.
Bench; wing chair: Second Life Interiors & Upholstery, 212/254-5699.
Bench fabric (coral velvet): Christopher Norman Collection, 212/644-5301.
Wing-chair fabric ("Sevres"/Rust, Beige #5631): Fortuny Inc., 212/753-7153.
Drapery: discontinued.
Drapery hardware: Joseph Biunno, 718/729-5630.
Amphora jar: John Rosselli & Assoc., 212/593-2060.
Formal without being stuffy, the dining room features Bergamo fabric on the chairs, Lee Jofa fabric for the draperies, and a Charlotte Moss table lamp.
Table; chairs; mirror; area rug: owner's collection.
Chair-seat fabric: Bergamo Fabrics, 914/665-0800, bergamofabrics.com.
Wall covering: Gracie Inc., 212/924-6816, graciestudio.com.
Drapery: discontinued.
Drapery trim ("Sienese Fringe"/Taupe and Pink Strié #FC-1195-004): Scalamandré, 800/932-4361.
Drapery hardware: Joseph Biunno, 718/729-5630.
Table lamp: Charlotte Moss, charlottemoss.com.
Chandelier: Florian Papp Antiques, 212/288-6770.
Centerpieces: Lexington Gardens, 212/861-4390, lexingtongardensnyc.com.
For the gardenlike breakfast room, drapery fabric was chosen from the Kelly Wearstler collection. Fabric on the slipcovered chair cushions is by Rose Cumming.
Table; chairs; chandelier: John Rosselli & Assoc., 212/593-2060.
Chair-seat fabric (by Rose Cumming): Dessin Fournir, 785/434-2725, dessinfournir.com.
Drapery (Kelly Wearstler Collection): Decorators Walk, 212/415-3955.
Area rug: Patterson, Flynn & Martin, 212/688-7700, pattersonflynnmartin.com.
Wall paint: Vincent Painting & Decorating, 212/982-5777.
Light streams into the sunporch, made cheery by floral patterns in pinks and greens.
Wallpaper ("Althea"/Ivory #P990002-111); sofa and armchair fabric ("Althea Print"/Beige, Leaf Green on Ivory #879001-LJ): Lee Jofa, 800/453-3563.
Sofa (custom): Anthony Lawrence-Belfair, 212/206-8820, anthonylawrence-belfair.com.
Slipper chair: John Rosselli & Assoc., 212/593-2060.
Slipper-chair fabric: Hines & Co., 212/754-5880.
Armchair; area rug: owner's collection.
Bench in front of sofa: Sentimento Antiques, 212/750-3111.
The enclosed sunporch mirrors the nearby breakfast room with a curved exterior wall.
Slipper chairs: John Rosselli & Assoc., 212/593-2060.
Slipper-chair fabric: Hines & Co., 212/754-5880.
Table under shelves: Treillage Ltd., 212/535-2288, treillageonline.com.
A winding staircase is original.
Wall covering ("Mount Vernon Toile"/Charcoal #69534-06): Brunschwig & Fils, 800/538-1880.
Stair rail: original to house.
The bright kitchen's cabinetry and reclaimed terra-cotta flooring are from Smallbone of Devizes; the sleek wall ovens are Gaggenau.
Cabinetry: hardware; flooring (reclaimed terra-cotta): Smallbone of Devizes, 212/288-3454, smallbone.co.uk.
Wall covering ("Japanese Paper Weave"/Tan Basketweave #1616): Phillip Jeffries Ltd., 800/576-5455, phillipjeffries.com.
Wall ovens: Gaggenau, 800/828-9165, gaggenau-usa.com.
The kitchen dining area features whimsical animal-embroidered host-chair fabric by Brunschwig & Fils and hanging lights by Vaughan Designs.
Table: owner's collection.
Host chairs; side chairs: Second Life Interiors & Upholstery, 212/254-5699.
Side-chair fabric ("Lanei" #2309): Rose Tarlow-Melrose House, 323/651-2202, rosetarlow.com.
Host-chair fabric ("Animal Farm Crewel Embroidery"/Toast #89563-827): Brunschwig & Fils, 800/538-1880.
Hanging lights: Vaughan Designs, 212/319-7070, vaughandesigns.com.
Brown shade fabric: Kathryn Ireland, 310/246-1906, kathrynireland.com.
Beige shades: Manhattan Shade & Glass, 212/288-5616, manhattanshadeandglass.com.
Wall covering ("Japanese Paper Weave"/Tan Basketweave #1616): Phillip Jeffries Ltd., 800/576-5455, phillipjeffries.com.
Ceiling paint (50 percent "Linen White," 50 percent "Super White"): Benjamin Moore, 800/236-6667.
Helping the family stay organized is a mudroom outfitted with Brunschwig & Fils wallpaper.
Wallpaper: Brunschwig & Fils, 800/538-1880.
Area rug: Beauvais Carpets, 212/688-2265, beauvaiscarpets.com.
Umbrella; cupboard with baskets: owner's collection.
Trim paint ("Mayonnaise" #2152-70): Benjamin Moore & Co., 888/236-6667.
Small lime-green tables from Lexington Gardens garnish the terrace. The tablecloth is by Dransfield & Ross.
Outdoor furniture: owner's collection.
Lime green tables: Lexington Gardens, 212/861-4390.
Tablecloth and pillows: Dransfield & Ross, 212/414-4755, dransfieldandross.biz.
A timelessly pretty sitting room features watercolors by Stephen Freeburg. The bench is from Second Life Interiors and Upholstery, with fabric by Travers.
Sofa (Bridgewater-style): Versailles Drapery Inc., 212/533-2059.
Sofa fabric; blue-and-white striped pillow: discontinued.
Sofa trim: Samuel & Sons, 212/704-8000.
Upholstered armchair (Bridgewater-style): Versailles Drapery Inc., 212/533-2059.
Armchair fabric: discontinued.
Bench: Second Life Interiors & Upholstery, 212/254-5699.
Bench fabric ("Grenfell Woven," by Travers); slipper-chair fabric (by Travers): Zimmer + Rohde, 212/758-7925, zimmer-rohde.com.
Slipper chair; end table by sofa: owner's collection.
Paint and glaze: custom.
Table lamp (by Christopher Spitzmiller): Mecox Gardens, 212/249-5301, mecoxgardens.com.
Carpet ("Uplink"/Menthe): Stark Carpet Corp., 212/752-9000.
Art behind sofa (by watercolor artist Stephen Freeburg): owner's collection.
Plate collection (antique): Bardith, 212/737-3775, bardith.com.
The charming master bedroom has bed curtains by Chelsea Editions and linens by Leron. The bedside tray table is from Charlotte Moss, and the medallion-patterned area rug is by Patterson, Flynn & Martin.
Bed: owner's collection.
Bed drapery: Chelsea Editions, 212/758-0005.
Bed-drapery lining (by Travers): Zimmer + Rohde, 212/758-7925.
Swing-arm lamps: Ann-Morris Antiques, 212/755-3308.
Bed linens: Leron, 212/753-6700, leron.com.
Bed skirt ("Bailey Rose"/Rose, Green, Cream #7185): Cowtan & Tout, 212/647-6900.
Bench: owner's collection.
Bench fabric ("Durance Embroidery"/Mineral #55693): Schumacher, 800/523-1200, fschumacher.com.
Area rug: Patterson, Flynn & Martin, 212/688-7700, pattersonflynnmartin.com.
Tray table: Charlotte Moss, charlottemoss.com.
Wall covering ("Wolsey"/Rose #9670-7): Clarence House, 800/803-2850, clarencehouse.com.
Cowtan & Tout's floral wallpaper sets the palette for another airy bedroom.
Wallpaper; Roman shade fabric ("Bowood"/Red, Blue #1020-02): Cowtan & Tout, 212/647-6900.
Upholstered chair by window: Versailles Drapery Inc., 212/533-2059.
Vanity: owner's collection.
Vanity chair: Charlotte Moss, charlottemoss.com.
Fabric on upholstered chair and vanity chair seat ("Colorado"/Verveine #4625-17, by Manuel Canovas); fabric on vanity skirt and trim on upholstered chair ("Colorado"/Talc #4625-01, by Manuel Canovas): Cowtan & Tout, 212/647-6900.
Lamps on vanity: Nicholas Antiques, 212/688-3312.
Area rug (Portuguese needlepoint): Stark Carpet Corp., 212/752-9000.
Interior designer Janet Simon insists on quality, no matter the context. Whether decorating or entertaining, it's the details that count. "Keep it simple, but do it right," she says, and she translates that mantra into doing the right things for others. In addition to her residential work for well-heeled clients, Janet contributes her time and skills to pro-bono projects, most recently a mind-body room for the cancer center of Morristown Memorial Hospital. Named for Janet's sister, Lynda M. Franklin, who died of ovarian cancer, the space is designed to soothe and uplift patients who gather there for meditation, massage, and yoga.


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This tutorial describes how to set up database replication in MySQL using an SSL connection for encryption (to make it impossible for hackers to sniff out passwords and data transferred between the master and slave). MySQL replication allows you to have an exact copy of a database from a master server on another server (slave), and all updates to the database on the master server are immediately replicated to the database on the slave server so that both databases are in sync. This is not a backup policy because an accidentally issued DELETE command will also be carried out on the slave; but replication can help protect against hardware failures.Full story »
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Spinybed is a district located in northeast Las Venturas, San Andreas. It is primarily industrial, as you can see freight containers and abattoirs in many places. It also houses a few residences. To the west of Spinybed is the district of Prickle Pine. To the east is the K.A.C.C. Military Fuels Depot. To the south is Julius Thruway North and the district of Roca Escalante.
|Neighborhoods, districts and areas in Las Venturas, San Andreas
|Blackfield • Creek • Las Venturas Airport • Linden Side • LVA Freight Depot • Old Venturas Strip • Pilgrim • Prickle Pine • Randolph Industrial Estate
Redsands East • Redsands West • Roca Escalante • Rockshore East • Rockshore West • Spinybed • Whitewood Estates • Yellow Bell Golf Course


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The Colella family welcome you to Ischia Island!
Hotel Poggio del Sole (Hotel of the sunny hill) is a cosy, charming, family owned and operated hotel at the foot of the Mnt Epomeo on the beautiful Italian Island of Ischia.
Situated in the Gulf of Naples next to the island of Capri, the island experiences beautiful weather and long, sunny summer days. The hotel is perfectly positioned for quiet and peaceful afternoons spent gazing at the panorama of lush greenery, dramatic cliffs and sparkling blue waters and is in walking distance from both the centre of Forio and the sea.
Hotel Poggio del Sole provides everything you need to make your vacation perfect: comfortable rooms with unlimited views of the Mediterranean sea, swimming pool and jacuzzi with a sunning area, on-site parking and most of all the warm hospitality of the Colella family and staff.
When you leave, your only desire will be to return soon! And we hope you do!
The Colella family welcome you to Ischia Island!


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Oilers too much for Avalanche 4-1
EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) – Devan Dubnyk made 37 saves and the Edmonton Oilers scored all of their goals on the power play to defeat the Colorado Avalanche 4-1 on Monday.
Ales Hemsky, Jordan Eberle, Shawn Horcoff and Nail Yakupov, into an empty net, scored on the man advantage for the Oilers.
Taylor Hall and Sam Gagner each picked up two assists for Edmonton, which got a strong start to a game after falling behind in each of its four previous outings.
P.A. Parenteau scored for the Avalanche, who have lost two in a row to start a four-game road trip.
Edmonton opened the scoring at 15:23 of the first. Hemsky swooped in and swatted a puck past Colorado goalie Semyon Varlamov during a scramble in front of the net.
The Oilers added another power-play goal at 18:05 of the first as Eberle picked the top corner on a shot from the top of the circle for his third of the season.
Edmonton had 14 shots in the first while Colorado only managed three on Dubnyk.
The Oilers took a three-goal lead at 9:40 of the second period on yet another man-advantage opportunity as Hall's shot hit Horcoff's skate in front and squeaked past Varlamov.
Colorado had a great scoring chance a minute later as Jamie McGinn had Dubnyk beat, but rang a shot off the post.
Persistent pressure by the Avalanche in the third paid off at 7:43 as Parenteau fired a shot under Dubnyk's pads at the side of the net to make it 3-1.
Yakupov scored his third of the season on yet another power play with 33 seconds left and Varlamov on the Colorado bench for an extra attacker.
Varlamov finished with 23 saves.
Notes: It was the first of five meetings between the Northwest Division rivals. The teams split their six season meetings last season. … The Avalanche were without captain Gabriel Landeskog. He took a hit late in the first period by San Jose's Brad Stuart in Colorado's last game, but did return to finish the game. … The Avs remain without last season's leading scorer Ryan O'Reilly, who is holding out due to a contract dispute.
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At four o'clock in the morning on January 22, 2010, John Sargent was pedalling furiously on an exercise bicycle in the basement of his Brooklyn brownstone. Sargent, the C.E.O. of Macmillan Books, had a difficult decision to make. In five days, Steve Jobs would announce the first iPad, and he was pressing Sargent to agree to a new way of selling books. For more than a hundred years, publishers had maintained a wholesale business: they sold books to bookstores at a discount, and bookstores marked them up and sold them to consumers. The advent of e-books called that model into question. Because e-books didn't carry many of the costs of bound books, no one could agree on how they should be priced.
Amazon had the loudest voice in the conflict. Since introducing the Kindle, in 2007, it had come to dominate the e-book market, with about ninety per cent of sales. In the effort to gain even greater market share, it was selling books at a loss: while publishers typically sold e-books to Amazon for about fifteen dollars apiece, Amazon was selling many of them, especially best-sellers, for $9.99. Publishers were making money, but they were concerned that consumers would come to believe that $9.99 was what books were worth, and they were desperate to have greater influence on prices.
The deal with Jobs offered a way: an arrangement called the agency model, which Apple used for selling music and apps. The publishers would set prices, and Apple, acting as their "agent," would take a thirty-per-cent commission and give them the rest. Apple had a stipulation, though. There are six large publishers in the United States, and if Apple didn't get four of them to join its program it wasn't going to sell books.
Sargent was vexed. Amazon accounted for a third of the major publishers' U.S. sales. What if it refused to carry Macmillan's books? But if he didn't consent to Apple's plan, he feared, Apple would choose not to compete against Amazon, solidifying its monopoly.
This confrontation had been simmering for some time. In 2009, the Hachette Book Group, another of the Big Six publishers, sent a team to Washington to petition the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, hoping for help in curbing what publishers saw as Amazon's predatory practices. The team gave Justice a report asserting that Amazon was selling e-books below cost in order to induce readers to buy Kindles, and to drive bookstores out of business; if publishers resisted the lower prices, Amazon threatened not to sell their books at all. Justice wasn't interested in the case. "They just turned around to us and said, 'Sorry, we can't help, because the consumer is the winner,' " David Young, the chairman and C.E.O. of Hachette U.S.A., said.
The Justice Department believed that Amazon was serving consumers well by reducing book prices and by developing a popular device for reading e-books. Publishers believed that Amazon was attempting to control every part of the industry. It had formed a publishing arm that offered editing and promotional services, and wooed authors with promises of higher royalties; it bought BookSurge, to print its own books on demand, and Audible, a major provider of recorded books. Richard Howorth, the owner of Square Books, a well-regarded bookstore in Oxford, Mississippi, says, "Amazon not only wants to sell books to everyone—they act as publisher and agent and distributor and retailer and manufacturer."
There is a certain bluster about Sargent; confrontations did not discomfit him. His parents divorced when he was young, and his mother moved him and his sister to an isolated part of Wyoming. "It was cowboy country," an editor at Macmillan says. "John grew up spending lots of time alone." But he also had strong links to publishing—his grandfather Frank Nelson Doubleday founded Doubleday & Company, and his father, John Turner Sargent, Sr., built it into a respected firm—and as an adult he moved back to New York and joined the family business. At Macmillan, he oversees sixteen publishing houses. Before the Apple deal, he recalls, "I had half the staff saying, 'Do it,' and half the staff saying, 'Don't do it.' " Unlike other publishers, his parent company, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, was privately owned, so his bosses were not responsible to shareholders. They said it was his decision. He told Apple yes.
Five days later, Steve Jobs announced that five of the six publishing giants—Macmillan, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Penguin—would sell their books through Apple's iBookstore. (Only Random House said no, retaining the more lucrative wholesale model.) In addition to the agency model, the five publishers had agreed to a clause assuring Apple that it would have the right to match any other retailer's lowest price. Sargent flew to Seattle to confront Amazon. He argued that the agency model was a good deal for Amazon, too; it would pay the same price as any other bookseller, but, instead of losing money on the best-selling e-books, it would make a commission of thirty per cent. He also warned that if Amazon would not accept the agreement he would no longer allow it to carry his company's e-books.
In response, Amazon stopped selling Macmillan's books altogether. But Sargent did not back down, and two days later Amazon put up an announcement on its Web site: "We will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles." Within a few weeks, all five publishers that had accepted the deal with Apple had forced Amazon to agree to the agency model.
By 2012, it seemed that Sargent's gambit had worked. Amazon's share of the e-book market had dropped from about ninety per cent to sixty. Apple had about ten per cent of the market, and Barnes & Noble, which had introduced an e-reader called the Nook, had about twenty-five. Bookstores were hopeful. Richard Howorth, of Square Books, said, "It at least enables me to say to our customers that not only do I sell e-books but eighty per cent of them are available at the same cost as anywhere." William Lynch, the C.E.O of Barnes & Noble, says that without the increased revenue that came with the agency model the Nook might have failed. "We invested over two hundred million dollars this year," he said, introducing the first color reader and developing a way for store visitors to sample books on the Nook. "If Amazon had maintained its monopoly, we would not have been able to make that level of investment."
It was a peculiar victory, though. Under the agency model, many consumers paid higher prices, and Amazon made more money, while the publishers made less—according to one C.E.O., a hundred million dollars less each year. E-books are cheaper to produce, by about twenty per cent per book, because they do away with the cost of paper, printing, shipping, and warehousing. They also eliminate returns of unsold books—a significant expense, since thirty to fifty per cent of books are returned. But they create additional costs: maintaining computer servers, monitoring piracy, digitizing old books. And publishers have to pay authors and editors, as well as rent and administrative overhead, not to mention the costs of printing, distributing, and warehousing bound books, which continue to account for the large majority of their sales.
Publishers were terrified. Print revenues had declined fifteen per cent since the year before, and in just a couple of years e-books were projected to make up about a third of all book sales. Publishers worried that bookstores, burdened by the costs of rent and staff, were unable to compete with Amazon. Without the stores, publishers would lose their primary customers, and their strongest ally in marketing. "In bookstores, readers are open to trying new genres and new authors," Scott Turow, the president of the Authors Guild, has said. "It's by far the best way for new works to be discovered." Because each book is a unique product, large-scale advertising is usually unfeasible, so publishers work with stores to guide readers to books, in the belief that the tactile experience of shopping leads people to books they would not otherwise find.
"This idea of going into a store and being able to see a range of books that you never knew you wanted to buy, or you didn't know existed, is very important," David Young, of Hachette, says. On Amazon, publishers have little say in how a book is presented; buyers looking for a particular book are led to similar titles, chosen by an algorithm. A striking book jacket matters much less. John Makinson, the C.E.O. of Penguin, said, "Once you lose the ability to display a book and you have to rely on a consumer to discover a book, then publishers are not going to be able to publish anything like the range of books we do today. It will make absolutely no difference to some best-selling authors we publish. But breaking out the new author becomes a virtual impossibility."
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, believes that the book industry is infuriatingly wasteful. He says that his company intends to disrupt traditional "gatekeepers"—publishers, bookstores, agents, and other middlemen—who "slow innovation" and impede "self-service platforms." If books were all digitally produced, the process would be much more efficient, and the savings could be passed along to consumers. Bezos is a businessman, but, like the founders of Google and Facebook, he frames his business as a force for social good. In his terms, Amazon offers consumers the lowest prices, and allows authors who otherwise might not be published to sell books directly to readers. The Kindle best-seller list, Bezos wrote in 2011, "is chock-full of books from small presses and self-published authors, while the New York Times list is dominated by successful and established authors."
Russ Grandinetti, Amazon's vice-president of Kindle content, says, "Clearly, consumers are paying higher prices for books" under the agency model. "I don't see how not allowing price competition preserves competition." He argues that Amazon "is getting people to read more," pointing to Amazon surveys showing that readers who had a Kindle bought three times as many books as they did before. The ease of purchasing a book online "is powerful for the whole business," he says.
Yet, when I asked Grandinetti why publishers should view Amazon as a partner, he said, "We've always been a company focussed on customers, not competitors"—a peculiar way of describing your suppliers. By offering low prices on everything from books to designer clothes, power tools, and groceries, Amazon has made many business adversaries. It recently developed an app that allows people to scan the price of a product—a book at Barnes & Noble or a television at Best Buy—and instantly learn whether Amazon offers the same item cheaper. Stores complain that Amazon is stealing their customers, and that it often pays no sales tax on its goods.
In May, 2011, Amazon hired the veteran publisher Laurence Kirshbaum to lead a new general-interest imprint called Amazon Publishing, and in December it established a six-million-dollar fund to pay self-published authors. A publishing executive who has had extensive dealings with Bezos told me, "Going into publishing was a last option. But when publishers went into 'agency' it shifted the agenda for Bezos. He felt publishers were so irrational that he shifted to a predatory mode."
Grandinetti denies trying to put publishers out of business. Amazon, he argues, is simply acknowledging that consumers have many choices for entertainment—TV, e-mail, Facebook, games—and that the challenge is to make books both cheaper and more enticing. He believes that publishers are failing to keep up with change, and that traditionalists are missing the point when they ask, "Why doesn't the book business stay the same?"
The traditional model has advantages for authors, though, particularly in publishers' function as venture-capital firms. When an author sells a book proposal to a publisher, he receives an advance against royalties, which helps underwrite research and writing. Most of these advances are never earned back. But books that sell well support the ones that don't. In a good year, this earns the publishers a modest profit, and it allows more authors to take risks in starting new projects—which is to say, it supports a class of professional writers. In a more efficient world, publishers would pay authors who write best-selling books and rarely pay those who don't, an alarming prospect for most serious readers and writers. According to a recent survey by the Web site Taleist, half of all self-published authors make less than five hundred dollars a year from their writing. If publishers don't have the money to pay advances, Young says, "we're going to have fewer books of quality. The impact on authors could be huge."
The first sign that Sargent and the publishers had won a Pyrrhic victory came in August, 2011, when a class-action lawsuit was filed in California, claiming that Apple and the five publishers had colluded to fix prices. Many in the publishing business pointed out that a lead attorney for the suit, Steve W. Berman, worked out of a building in Seattle where Amazon has several floors of office space. Although Berman insisted that he was working only for his clients, it is clear that Amazon provided much of the evidence in the eighty-three-page complaint: accounts of meetings, phone calls, and e-mails between Amazon and publishers. Oren J. Teicher, the C.E.O. of the American Booksellers Association, asserts that Amazon helped organize the suit in order "to open up yet one more front in their effort to dominate the entire book business," and to "increase the pressure" on government to intervene.
The Justice Department's Antitrust Division soon began inquiries, as did the attorneys general of several states, and the European Commission. Unlike class-action lawyers, Justice can issue subpoenas, and it retrieved phone records from Apple and the five publishers, notes from meetings, and e-mails—twenty thousand from Penguin alone, according to an executive there. On April 11th, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that an antitrust suit had been filed against Apple and the five big publishers for "a conspiracy to raise, fix and stabilize retail prices."
In a thirty-six-page complaint, the Justice Department argues that publishers communicated by telephone and e-mail, and in meetings—including meals "in private dining rooms of upscale Manhattan restaurants"—to determine how to subvert Amazon's pricing strategy. The complaint noted that they "took steps to conceal their communications with one another, including instructions to 'double-delete' e-mail and taking other measures to avoid leaving a paper trail." In violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, it said, they had stifled competition and forced consumers to pay an average of two to three dollars more per book, for a total of at least a hundred million dollars.
Courts recognize various forms of price-fixing. One is horizontal collusion, in which competitors conspire to set prices. Another is vertical collusion, between, say, a manufacturer and a retail store. Justice's charge was a hybrid: "hub and spoke" collusion, in which a retailer coördinates manufacturers to gain control of prices. Between December, 2009, and January, 2010, the complaint said, an Apple executive named Eddy Cue shuttled between the publishers, keeping "each Publisher Defendant informed of the status of its negotiations with the other Publisher Defendants." (Apple denied the charges, and, through a spokesman, Cue declined to comment.) According to Justice, Penguin (which published my last three books) asked for assurances that other publishers would join with Apple, and Cue supplied them; two other publishing executives told me they had similar conversations with him. When Sargent threatened, in January, 2010, to pull Macmillan's e-books from Amazon, D.O.J. claims, Cue told him that other publishers were on board.
A number of publishers insist that they did not collude. "It was my decision alone," Sargent says. "That's why the whole thing about collusion is ludicrous to me. I was in a silo. It was just me." In places, the D.O.J's evidence is thin. The complaint says that, in September, 2008, the C.E.O.s of the Big Six publishers met in a private room at Picholine, a French restaurant near Lincoln Center, and notes, rather unsurprisingly, that "business matters were discussed." David Young says that he organized the dinner to welcome the new C.E.O. of Random House, Markus Dohle, and several C.E.O.s maintain that if there was any business discussed it was the sort of gossip and stray publishing talk common among executives who often encounter each other at awards ceremonies and public dinners. Sargent recalls, "I talked to him about getting his kids into schools. How do you get collusion on price and a business model from that?" In any case, the dinner was held a year and a half before Apple adopted the agency model—and before it had announced that it was going into the book business.
But the complaint provides several pieces of strongly suggestive evidence. Around the time that Apple presented the agency model, it notes, one C.E.O. called David Shanks, Penguin's U.S. publisher, to tell him, "Everyone is in the same place with Apple." In an e-mail, another executive discussed a prospective joint venture among publishers to create their own online books site, saying, "The goal is less to compete with Amazon as to force it to accept a price level higher than 9.99." One C.E.O. admitted under oath to calling two other publishers, including Sargent, in order to find out whether they planned to sign with Apple.
In responses to the Justice Department, Penguin and Macmillan insisted that they were innocent. Sargent, sounding incredulous, told me, "I cannot comment on a phone call that I may or may not have received. There was no collusion." And though the publishers welcomed Apple's terms, they insist that they arrived at them independently. In March, one of the five publishers defended Cue, saying, "He was telling me, 'Look, I'm not going to do the iBookstore unless I get three.' That was an absolutely fair and sensible thing to say. Otherwise, he'd be misrepresenting Apple's intent. He wasn't going to do an iBookstore if he got just my books. He needed some substance in that store to make Apple look like a player." Others pointed out that they hadn't profited from the deal with Apple. Young told me in March, "I had always understood that antitrust was about people colluding to make money. We were making less money on the agency model. We were playing the long game in the absolute belief that if we didn't do this the bookshops would suffer."
Nonetheless, lawyers for the defendants explored the possibility of a settlement. A public suit would embolden the European Commission, which can impose severe financial penalties—as much as ten per cent of the parent company's annual revenues—and it might fortify the class-action lawsuits. In April, Arnaud Nourry, the international chairman and C.E.O. of Hachette Publishing, sat in Hachette's midtown offices and explained unhappily that his company had agreed to settle. "It's been a tough decision," he said, and added, "I would have liked to convince D.O.J. we did not misbehave." The lawsuits had already cost Hachette eight million dollars in legal fees and were projected to cost as much as twenty million more. "It's a waste of time and a diversion for management. We're a small company compared to the big guys, like Apple and Amazon." Lagarère SCA, Hachette's parent company, has two and a half billion dollars in yearly revenue; Amazon has fifty billion, and Apple a hundred and eight billion.
In the end, three of the five publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster—agreed to settle. Justice did not file a criminal complaint, as is common in price-fixing cases, and it imposed no fines (although Hachette and HarperCollins agreed to pay at least fifty-one million dollars to tentatively settle the class-action suits). Under the terms of the settlement, the three publishers were allowed to maintain the agency model, but for the next two years they had to permit discounts of up to thirty per cent, the amount of booksellers' commission.
Effectively, publishers lost the ability to set a floor price, while Amazon could still offer deep discounts. As long as its total discounting did not exceed its commission, it could sell a typically priced e-book at $9.10, or discount select best-sellers to far less. The publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin wrote on his blog, the Shatzkin Files, "Every company in the industry is going back to the drawing boards. Only one is not unhappy about it." On the day that Justice announced its filing, Amazon released a statement: "This is a big win for Kindle owners, and we look forward to being allowed to lower prices on more Kindle books."
Apple, Macmillan, and Penguin decided to fight the suit. John Makinson, the chairman and C.E.O. of Penguin, disputed the D.O.J.'s evidence, saying, "Most fundamentally, we don't think we've done anything wrong. We did not collude with other publishers in reaching an independent decision." Nor, he believed, had they colluded with Apple. And since publishers were challenged in five different legal arenas—by Justice, state attorneys general, the European Commission, and class-action lawsuits in the U.S. and in Canada—"if we were to say in one jurisdiction, 'O.K., we will not admit liability, but we will settle,' we would be sending a signal that, in some way, we acknowledged the justice of the Department of Justice's position."
Sargent released a statement saying that "the terms the D.O.J. demanded were too onerous" and could allow "Amazon to recover the monopoly position it had been building." In April, I met him in his office on the nineteenth floor of the Flatiron Building, a triangular room with tall windows and views in three directions. He told me that many people in publishing thought that Amazon was enabled by the Justice Department, and that his colleagues' response had been " 'Thank you. Somebody had to stand up.' " Justice, he believed, had targeted the wrong party: "I felt the antitrust department should be addressing the predatory pricing that was keeping others out of the marketplace."
Every prosecutor has the power to choose what cases to bring before the courts. In 1940, Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, who later served on the Supreme Court, addressed a conference of U.S. attorneys, attempting to distinguish between justice and the rigid adherence to legal code. "Law enforcement is not automatic. It isn't blind," he said. "What every prosecutor is practically required to do is to select the cases for prosecution and to select those in which the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain."
The D.O.J. could have chosen not to bring this case. But, once it did, the law is clear, according to Christine A. Varney, who led the Antitrust Division until she returned to private practice last fall. "The fact that publishers or record labels or movie producers say their business models may not survive the digital revolution is not a particular concern of the antitrust laws. The antitrust laws look to preserve competition and innovation." Publishers might have had admirable intentions, she says, but if they colluded with Apple they violated the law.
But the Justice Department's complaint doesn't address the question of Amazon's attempt to monopolize the market. Nor does it concede that the publishers' and Apple's actions generated competition—helping to allow Apple and Barnes & Noble into the e-book market and driving up sales of the Nook and the iPad, which spurred a reduction in tablet prices. "I believe publishers decided to lower their income on e-books and are making the kind of long-term decisions we often accuse businesses of not making," the literary agent Simon Lipskar told me.
Tim Wu, a Columbia law professor who spent last year as a senior adviser to the Federal Trade Commission, defends Amazon. "It is possible that online book sales are a better business model than actual bookstores," he says—just as iTunes delivers a greater variety of music at lower prices than Tower Records did. "If Amazon was losing money on the sale of each e-book, who is the harm to? Not consumers. Barnes & Noble gets hurt. Is protecting booksellers worth it if consumers are paying more?"
But, if Barnes & Noble closes, Amazon will have an effective monopoly on all books, electronic and otherwise. What makes Amazon "dangerous," Sargent says, is that "there could come a day, if they get back up to ninety per cent of the e-book market and if the e-book format becomes the predominant way that people read, that we will be in a world where one company can decide what books get widely distributed."
David Young believes that Amazon's low prices—what he called "predatory pricing"—would have forced bookstores into bankruptcy, and perhaps driven prices below what it costs publishers to produce books. Wu disagrees, saying, "A predatory pricing theory relies on the idea that Amazon plans later on to raise prices. I don't know of strong evidence for that claim." But what Amazon did with Diapers.com provides at least one example. First, it competed to lower diaper prices; then it acquired the smaller business; then it raised prices. Amazon's profit margins are slim, especially compared with its stock-market value. The pressure from stockholders to increase profits will only grow, and, like conventional publishers, Amazon may want to make more money on its best-selling books.
Amazon is already using its position in the market to intimidate less powerful publishers. Although the Justice Department focussed on the Big Six, the majority of books are produced by independent publishers. "Amazon is using its monopoly power to dictate to these companies that they will continue to discount our books below cost," one small publisher says. "Amazon continues to insist that these publishers sell their books at prices that threaten their business."
On May 15th, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied a petition from Apple, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster to dismiss the class-action lawsuits. The court acknowledged the publishers' concern for bookstores and their sacrifice of income under the agency model. Nevertheless, it decided that there was enough evidence of a horizontal conspiracy to proceed.
As Apple and the publishers fight the suit, courtroom precedents are stacked against them. Barry Hawk, the director of Fordham Law School's Competition Law Institute, says that courts invoke two tests to adjudicate antitrust cases. In cases of vertical collusion, they typically use the "rule of reason," which allows defendants to argue that they were acting in the interest of healthy competition. For horizontal collusion, they use the per-se rule, in which agreements to fix prices are illegal under any circumstances. Hawk told me that he can't think of a single horizontal-conspiracy case in which defendants were found to have engaged in price-fixing and still won. "That's how strong this is," he says.
For the traditional publishing industry, the consequences of a loss could be dire. The consultant Mike Shatzkin says, "If Macmillan and Penguin were to lose their appeals, and the settlement between the D.O.J. and the three other publishers were allowed to stand, it would accelerate what is already an increasing concentration of book customers under Amazon's control." Amazon is the only publisher with ready access to consumers, and to their credit-card information. In the worst case, Shatzkin says, it will become the only company that can effectively create books and sell them to consumers. "The American trade-book publishing network of many publishers, wholesalers, and retailers will be effectively dismantled," he says. "It will be too late then to recognize the dangers of concentration. It will not be possible to rebuild what will have been destroyed."
In boxing, there's the main event, and there's the undercard—the warmup bouts that precede it. The fight between Amazon and book publishers could have profound repercussions for publishers, bookstores, and authors, yet to Amazon that fight is the undercard. The main event is a free-for-all among the five U.S. digital giants: Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.
In late April, Microsoft invested three hundred million dollars in the Nook tablet. For Barnes & Noble, it was a tremendous boon, allowing it to keep alive, in however attenuated a form, the old-fashioned idea of the bookstore. For Microsoft, it was a hardware solution: a way to produce a more popular tablet computer. Although Amazon is intensely secretive about its data, the figures it has released show that content—books, music, movies, TV shows, newspapers, and magazines—produces less than half of its revenues. For Apple, too, content is a small part of its business. The real fight is elsewhere. The iPad and the Kindle Fire compete as mobile platforms, and all five companies will likely compete in collecting credit-card information. Google is testing a one-day shipping service for online shopping which targets Amazon. Google and Microsoft compete with Apple and Amazon to provide operating systems for mobile devices. Four of the five firms are working on some form of search, and all are interested in cloud computing, games, social media, and selling ads.
The fierce competition among them "is the next iteration of the U.S. v. Microsoft case," Christine Varney, the former antitrust chief, says. The government has tried, with varying degrees of success, to police these companies: their privacy policies, their market dominance, their patent claims, their outsourcing of manufacturing, and their meagre tax payments. "Competition is good, so long as innovation remains viable for new entrants," Varney said. "That's the difficult thing to balance. Where does the competition between the big players promote our consumer welfare, and where does it inhibit new innovation?"
Tim Wu, who is sympathetic to Amazon in the fight against publishers, says, "I change my position," when he considers the battle between digital giants. "The Internet industries are incredibly concentrated, and probably more concentrated than old media. We need to watch Amazon, Google, and Apple and the rest very carefully."
Publishers know that they don't have the money for a prolonged struggle with Amazon. John Sargent says, "These are huge companies, who are fighting a very large game. Whether it be for the sale of devices, or to own the shopper, or to own a particular set of tools that people use—they are fighting to get as big a piece of that as they can get." Books, he says, are "in danger of becoming roadkill in that larger war." ♦


text:
KDE 4.0 Release Candidate 2 Out Now, Codename "Coenig"
The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the
KOffice has also put out a sixth alpha release, released separately.
While progress on the quality and completeness of what is to become the KDE 4.0 desktop
It doesnt seem to start for me under kubuntu gutsy
Well, I downloaded and installed the packages as per the instructions on the kubuntu site, but no dice. I can run some kde4 apps from my normal kde3 session, but when I try to start a Kde4 session from kdm nothing happens. I get a blank screen for a few seconds, then the kdm login screen re-appears as if nothing had happened.. hmm.
By Meh at Wed, 2007/12/12 - 6:00am
Re: It doesnt seem to start for me under kubuntu g
export KDEHOME=~/.kde4
and it should work
By hias at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
Re: It doesnt seem to start for me under kubuntu gutsy
I can top that. I installed the Kubuntu packages exactly as the instructions specified, and it uninstalled my entire KDE3! I was able to test drive KDE4 OK. From a console, I reinstalled KDE using apt-get, and I had my old faithful back. No real harm, just had to click out of all the first-run dialogs again. Good news is that I now have 3 and 4 working. Sweet.
By Louis at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
I've always been a big fan of KDE, but 4.0rc2 seems to be totally not KDE. One of the great things about KDE was the ability to configure it however you wanted, but now you can't configure anything anymore. Its a total nightmare -- like the Gnome developers kidnapped and replaced all of the original KDE staff. All I can say is I won't be switching to KDE 4 unless it goes through some major changes.
Please, please, please bring back the KDE philosophy that the user should be able to configure their GUI how they like. Eye-candy is nice but giving me the power to choose is really what I thought KDE and FOSS was all about.
Thanks to the KDE 3 people you've done great, and I love KDE. Sadly my KDE is gone.
By Sam at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
Re: Yuck!
I totally agree with you Sam. KDE 4 has become more Gnome than Gnome. They should change the name to BKE for Broken Knome Enamel. The Plasma interface is (to paraphrase an old proverb) the look of honey with the taste of ash. What's really astounding are the statements that this is "Release Candidate" quality material and that it is complete for final release except for minor tweaking. RC2 is a beginning alpha at best. There is nothing there! Behind the candyass look there are NO serious controls and NO configurations. This is a bad turn for KDE.
By Griobhtha at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
Re: Yuck!
It's not done yet. Stop whining.
By Coolvibe at Tue, 2008/01/08 - 6:00am
Re: Yuck!
It's like the whole desktop was designed after listening to gnome users complain about KDE on /.
The only criticism I ever agreed with was KDE's fondness for distracting eye candy but that never bother me because you could turn it all off. By all I mean all. No shadows, no heavy themes, no shadows or compositing, no animations, none of it. If I want something that's nice to look at, I'll go to an art museum. Now it seems like the eye candy has been made the whole point.
Hello. Part of the point of running linux is that forced hardware obsolescence is stupid. I should be able to use the same machine until it dies and not be forced to get a new one in order to upgrade my OS shell.
By Velvet Elvis at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
Re: Yuck!
Another possibility is that Havoc Pennington left a bunch of seed pods at a KDE developers conference somewhere
By Velvet Elvis at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
Re: Yuck!
With plasma you'll be able to totally swap out anything and replace it with another plasmoid. Personally I don't really notice what options your talking about (I still see plenty of configuration dialogs), but regardless in the long run (probably not even that long) there will be many many choices you can make. And not just little piddly things.
By Ian Monroe at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
Bunch of drama queens
The Plasma config is just not done yet. No konspiracy.
By Will Stephenson at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
Re: Yuck!
LOL, it seems like Gnome is the greatest nightmare for KDE users. Anyway don't worry, by the time the next RC is ready you will realize that the Gnomies haven't managed to kidnap our heroes ;)
By Bobby at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
O, come on!
Stop whining! By now everybode must know that:
1. This is an RC for a techonology preview version (called v4.0) in the KDE4 series.
By Fred at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
Might I suggest
Using the same terminology as, say, the rest of the world rather than calling dogs cats and cats dogs?
If you call something a release candidate, you'll get people installing it expecting something that's feature complete and of release quality, because that what release candidate. If you call it RC, it means that to the best of your knowledge it's ready to release as a stable version but needs more testing to be sure.
At best this makes the KDE developers look out of touch with the rest of the software ecosystem and does not build confidence.
It was my impression that in this case it was being used to mean that core features are presumed stable but bells and whistles still need tweaking because that would at least be in the same ballpark as how the rest of the world uses the term. No such luck.
Newsflash. This is a buggy beta release at best.
By Velvet Elvis at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
Re: Might I suggest
Newsflash: missing features != bugs.
By Paul Eggleton at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
Re: Might I suggest
news flash
release candiates are NEVER FEATURE COMPLETE
example microsoft has just release vista sp1 RC to the general public, 300 bug fixes, and they have stated this is not the finished product and there is much more to come in it.
Final releases are feature complete, not beta's not RC's. And if you knew the reasoning behind kde4 you will know it wont be feature complete until around 4.1 that 4 is being released so that people can port their software to it.
gezzzz, I can't count the amount of times I have read kde people explain that to you people and still you don't get it, and cry
Re: Might I suggest
Don't tell me, tell the parent poster - I agree with you :)
By Paul Eggleton at Fri, 2007/12/14 - 6:00am
Re: Might I suggest
"Microsoft breaks it too!" should not be an excuse.
The way I understand it is that once you're get all the redefined vocabulary out of the way, things aren't going to be out of beta until 4.1.
The reason I'm hacked off is because I was tricked into beta testing on my work machine and lost the better part of a day's work as a result.
One more time. "Release candidates" = "this software has the potential to be bit for bit identical to the final stable and feature complete release."
By Velvet Elvis at Fri, 2007/12/14 - 6:00am
About version numbers
> 1. This is an RC for a technology preview version (called v4.0) in the KDE4 series.
Thank you. "Technology preview". That's the thing all those people who keep whining don't seem to understand...
I don't expect the actual release to be totally feature complete and totally bugfree. I don't even expect it to contain all features found in 3.5.x.
The 4 in 4.0.0 means it is using new APIs and new technologies etc, breaking continuity from the 3.x series.
The .0.0 means it is the very first "release" version (as opposed to alpha, beta, rc), which means those technologies and their applications have hardly had time to mature, and libraries have hardly had time to get applications.
Comparing to Windows is misleading, because Windows has had punctual releases for a while now (95, 98, etc) which people buy, which are supposed to be stable, and get patches now and then.
KDE, and most open source software, on the other hand, has a continuous development - we will have 4.0.0, 4.0.1, 4.0.2, 4.1.0, etc.
If you want absolute stability and "full-featuredness" and configuration dialogs for every single detail, and all kinds of plasmoids, just wait for a few extra releases!
And yes, it is called "whining". Calling things "crap", etc, is not exactly constructive criticism. Saying this and that should be configurable just shows you haven't been following the development AT ALL.
By tendays at Fri, 2007/12/14 - 6:00am
Re: About version numbers
(by the way when I say "you" I mean whoever is whining that way - not the GP in particular)
By tendays at Fri, 2007/12/14 - 6:00am
Re: Yuck!
C'mon, this is ALREADY the most configurable KDE version EVER! The technology for many configurations is already there, but there are some configuration dialogs missing on RC2. I bet many of them will come for KDE 4.0, for instance, the configuration dialog for the panels. They are not there yet because the developers had got to worry about the most important thing first (the technology, which makes things actually work), since there aren't sooo many developers, they had to have priorities...
But don't worry, you will be able to configure things and you will see KDE 4.0 and 4.X series will be a dream coming true. Make configurations dialogs and menus for configuration is the easiest part.
By SVG Crazy at Fri, 2007/12/14 - 6:00am
Re: Yuck!
I've always tought peoplke complaining about the betas where exagerating a bit.
Visual is terrible! A nighmare!! Oxygen style is crappy! All constructive critics made during months here and there whent to deaf ears. BUT (big but) I've never used KDE default stile for more than a day, so I'll just use other thing. Sorry for people who stick with the default :-(
Talking about plasmoids... man! It's way too late! They just ... exist! No configurations, no answer for right click in most cases... I was lost when clocking on clock didn't call calendar! OK, you can tell me it's a work in progress, it will be fixed in 4.1... but it shouldn't! It should be very good already.
I was planning to keep KDE 3.X until version 4.1, but now I'm seriously thinking about 4.2 or even 4.3... Blah! I'm installing fluxbox right now! KDE4.. sorry, double sorry, sucks :-(
By Iuri Fiedoruk at Sun, 2007/12/16 - 6:00am
I'm going to say this only once
To all those naysayers, just let us code. It is KDE 4.0.0. It's just the beginning. There is no possible way for us to get KDE 4.0.0 completely polished now. You could extend the release date another 1 year but then who would begin porting their apps to KDE 4?
I'm just going to ignore all the negative comments and then wait for those to eat their words once things are polished up. Then you can beg for forgiveness, and maybe we'll accept your apologies :P
Trust me, when you look back at this whole affair everyone will say how cool KDE 4.x is and that they should've believed the developers in their vision.
By Shawn Starr at Thu, 2007/12/13 - 6:00am
Re: I'm going to say this only once
I think if you read just the positive comments you will miss out on a lot of good points and discussions. You may not like the negative comments, but remember they are coming from the kde users, do ignore what they say because you don't like the comments and focus on the positive is how you end up creating microsoft software ;)
plus you need to understand that the 3.5 release was manily to linux people, now with the release of 4, you have a lot of windows people joining the kde and linux community who have no idea, through no fault of their own, how things work with kde releases. Be kind to windows people, for they know nothing but buggy operating systems that are released buggy and end their life buggy, lol
Re: I'm going to say this only once
True, There's a a mixture of good and negative comments. Sure, but our KDE users need to understand, Rome wasn't built in one day, nor will KDE 4.0.0 be. If we have more developers things can move faster, so, Help us! :)
By Shawn Starr at Fri, 2007/12/14 - 6:00am
Re: I'm going to say this only once
agree, but remember to window's users they never go through any of this. They buy their XP, or Vista, etc, and are lead to believe that is the final version, until a few weeks latter bug fixes come out, a few months latter service packs come out. What I would like to see from dot is to show people how KDE is developed. Then maybe people will realise, that KDE is not a weird piece of software like windows, and that it continues to grow and develop with each release.
I mean lets face it, I've read comments in here claiming that Release candidates are meant to be feature complete. God only knows where that comes from. Perhaps they should read about Vista SP RC that was just released to the public and how it was explained that it is not complete and still a lot more to come. OR they could read the opensuse RC's and see how they were also not feature complete, yet KDE is meant to buck the trend and be feature complete in RC's, go figure, lol
I just think a nice article, dumbing everything down to explain to people that hey, RC's are your way of testing, and improving, finding bugs, etc, etc. That KDE 4 is your way of releasing so people can port their software to KDE, and that KDE in it's essence is something that is never finished and will always grow and change, it is the nature of it. Does that make sense? KDE 4 has a shit load of new users who simply do not understand how it is made and released, etc. I think dot needs to do an article on that. It's the windows effect,t hey come to kde expecting it's done like that. I don't even know if people realise you all do this for the love of it.
Re: I'm going to say this only once
>>God only knows where that comes from.
From years of software development standard language:
Granted, the release team is free to use whatever language they like for their releases, and they have explained that they are allowing some leeway for UI stuff, but that doesn't mean they should get pissed when people are confused by it. On the flipside, there's no reason for commenters to be dicks to the developers; that's not gonna have positive results.
By Louis at Fri, 2007/12/14 - 6:00am
Re: I'm going to say this only once
It's up to the developers to decide if their candidate is a RC. For people to say it has to be feature finished is incorrect, and naive
Just recently Vista 1 SP1 RC released today XP SP3 RC released, and both microsoft has openly stated these are not feature complete, and there is more to come in them. so perhaps you would like to go and tell them also that they can't be release candidates because they don't go by what you believe an RC should be
It is solely the decision of the developers to what they term a release candidate.
Look at the linux community. Opensuse RC, they were not feature complete, It is anal for people to argue with the people releasing their own software on the terms of what they call it. From what I have read the developers have every right to get pissed because the people constantly moaning have not read any of the explanations of how they are releasing, and keep moaning and complaining about the same thing without listening.
Re: I'm going to say this only once
"It is solely the decision of the developers to what they term a release candidate."
True. Especially considering the fact that many are doing this in their free time. But nevertheless they shouldn't be surprised by negative feedback if they choose a different definition than anybody else ;).
The times whern KDE could be a considered a toy just for geeks are over, that's good. But this also means that you have to play by the same rules than the competitors. Microsoft gets negative comments when releasing a crippled version as final version of their OS despite much marketing hype, and nowadays the same goes for KDE.
I would suggest - with no authority but that of a reader of the dot - that everybody cools down. And for the next release sit back and learn from the experiences the KDE4 release has brought. All of this mess could have been avoided by simple steps like replacing "beta" with "alpha" or "final release" with "technology preview" etc.
Nobody would have get hurt and really everybody would be happy with the great bunch of code and possibilities KDE4 is even now. So why not mark this simple naming problem as "leasons learnt" for the next release cycle and leave it be?
By anon at Fri, 2007/12/14 - 6:00am
Re: I'm going to say this only once
True. Especially considering the fact that many are doing this in their free time. But nevertheless they shouldn't be surprised by negative feedback if they choose a different definition than anybody else ;).
Why use microsoft? because like it or not they are the largest player in the market, and the fact that they, as well as many other developers are releasing RC's that are not feature complete shows that the meaning of the word has progressed and changed. And the way that the meaning has changed has shown anon that their definition is not different to others, but that the market and release cycles are changing. As was evident with Vista RC1 in 06, which blew all the arguments up that because it still needed a lot of work, and was not feature complete it wasn't an RC. And a year latter KDE has followed track, Opensuse releases RC's that are not feature complete. The meaning has changed.
I think also this will continue into KDE 4 release, people will be complaining that all the software isn't ported over and claim it isn't a release, in all honesty, who cares. All I care about is getting my hands on it, lol
By Richard Bollinger at Sat, 2007/12/15 - 6:00am
Re: I'm going to say this only once
I'm rather surprised to see you use a Microsoft practice as a justification for calling the current KDE4 a Release Candidate. Look at the meaning of the words. Something labelled as such is commonly understood to be a _Candidate for Release_. That is to say, it is something that is believed to be done, something that can and will be released barring the discovery of Release Critical bugs. It is by definition feature complete. There is no excuse for labelling the current state of things as a Release Candidate.
Now doing so is not a cardinal sin. Fixing, adding and coding things is far more important than dickering over semantics. I'm not going to reject KDE4 because of a terminology screwup. But a spade is still a spade, and it will have negative repercussions among those who understand the common definition of Release Candidate and are expecting something a little more complete. Then again, the same people will likely be disappointed with what will eventually be labelled "final" and will need to have the concept of *.0 software explained to them ;)
Bottom line: RC is a terrible choice of label, but I totally wasn't stuck on it until people started defending it. Illogicality is what actually set me off ;)
By jason at Fri, 2007/12/14 - 6:00am
Re: I'm going to say this only once
Nicely put...
I'm looking forward to KDE 4 and appreciate the coders hacking on it, really.
But the way any criticism is nowadays handled as evil flaming coming from stupid users really is disgusting.
As must criticisms are repeated from different sides, why cannot anybody say "OK, maybe it takes a bit longer, maybe the naming was uncommon and therefore a bit misleading, we'll think of that next time. But look at this and that, we are really getting there. This and that is not yet there, but wait, it will come."
But, on the contrary, anything not praising the new KDE4 here on the Dot is getting flamed. That's a sad development. After all, it's the users that count if you programm a desktop.
In fact, I have to admit that the way negative response to KDE4 is handled here on the Dot, even by developers, instead of professionelly taking it into account as user feedback by supporters of KDE, is for me more strange than any naming problems.
By anon at Fri, 2007/12/14 - 6:00am
I was wondering how you select apps for Autostart.
By LTV at Sat, 2007/12/15 - 6:00am
I'm sure it's gonna be as buggy as every new release. The older I get, the less I care about eye candy.
By szlam at Sun, 2007/12/16 - 6:00am
Where's the taskbar?? That shit down there is exact oposite of usability...
By bleh at Wed, 2007/12/19 - 6:00am
Support for old style menu
It will be great if kde4 will support switching to old style menu.
By kirill at Fri, 2007/12/21 - 6:00am
Re: Support for old style menu
By anon at Fri, 2007/12/21 - 6:00am


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Thursday, June 3, 2010
Treasure Chest Thursday -- Grandma's Frame
4 comments:
How nice! Perfectly made for your 5 grandchildren :)ReplyDelete
Excellent idea and what delightful grandchildren.ReplyDelete
Leslie Ann, Are you in the photo as one of Grandma Smedley's eldest 5 granddaughters? Also, what are those coin-like things called? I found one with my Mother In Law's picture in it. And I would date it at about 1940. (She was a young adult at that time) It was interesting to me, but I just don't know what it is called. Perhaps if you don't me copying, I'll post that photo/coin next week.ReplyDelete
Thanks for sharing!
I forgot to mention it in the original post, but I am the seventh oldest granddaughter. So I am not included in the frame. There is a total of ten granddaughters and seven grandsons.
The frame itself is one solid piece of wood with five perfect circles cut out of the front (it isn't cut all the way through, the back is solid). There is a round piece of plastic to place over each photo, and then I guess they are coin-like, metal rings that fit snugly into the holes to keep the photos in place. I would guess it was made in the late 60s. I bet anyone who works with wood and has the proper tools could make one easily.