text:
There used to be a programme on TV called 'This Is Your Life', hosted by a genial Irishman called Eamonn Andrews. His job was to surprise celebrities as they went about their fabulous days, doing fabulous things, and present them with a big, red photo album.
"Famous celebrity," he'd intone, with a twinkle in his jovial Irish eyes, "This is your life!" And the celebrity would coo and squeak and wave hands about, all a-flutter. Me? Me?? Really? I am not worthy - well, all right. If you insist.
The ensuing programme would display carefully-selected highlights from celebrity's life, usually told from the point of view of an invited guest:
"Father O'Shea, Tom Celebrity was instrumental in the airlifting of urgently-needed medication for ailing babies in the Congo, is that not right?"
"Indeed it is! We were desperate, so we were, but Tom Celebrity here just loaned us his private jet so we could fly in 20 tonnes of antibiotics for Congolese children. The man is a saint!"
Celebrity does his best to look modest: Aw, shucks. It was nothing. It was for the kids, man.
Good grief, where am I going with this?
Oh, yes: today's question - where are your finished objects now?
Finished projects: this is your life!
Sadly, I don't really know where more of them are. No idea. Or, at best, a vague idea. See, I like making stuff. But my finished objects need to find homes or we'd disappear under an avalanche of hats, scarves, afghans and baby blankets. I wrap them carefully and nicely in cellophane, with the vague idea of selling them on Etsy or Artfire - where I'd comandeer designer prices and would be able to give up my day job to sit at home and crochet. Then some Good Cause comes along and, filled with guilt because I have the means to sit at home crocheting and watching sitcom reruns while there are people out there - scarfless and mittenless and maybe even blanketless - I give them all away.
It's for the kids, man, I say, in my best celebrity voice. I'm doing it for charidee!
That might make me sound altruistic, but it's also kind of practical: I need space. However, there's something kind of vaguely exciting about sending stuff randomly out into the world, without knowing who'll get it or where it'll end up. It's like a message in a bottle, really. An injection of good karma into the cosmos. Yeah, man!
This, and half a dozen other baby blankets, ended up in the US about three or four years ago. A woman on another forum posted about her local hospital in Denver, Colorado, where babies from low-income families were being sent home in towels and torn-up old bedsheets because neither the families or the hospital could afford to provide proper blankets for the babies. It struck me as particularly sad to think of a newborn being sent home wrapped in a threadbare hospital sheet. Goodness knows, life had already dealt them a pretty rubbish hand, but starting it off in hospital cast-offs seemed somehow terribly unfair.
At the time, I'd been experimenting with Irish crochet motifs and I had these three odd colours: coral, deep peach and raspberry. Although they were individually quite nice, I simply couldn't match them to anything else, so they ended up in a blanket of their own.
I hope so.


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Instagram is an online photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr.
Download Instagram on iTunes:
iTunes Description:
Instagram is a simple way to capture and share the world's moments. Transform your everyday photos and videos into works of art and share them with your family and friends.
See the world through somebody else's eyes by following not only the people you know, but inspirational Instagrammers, photographers, athletes, celebrities and fashion icons. Every time you open Instagram, you'll see new photos and videos from your closest friends, plus breathtaking moments shared by creative people across the globe.
Over 400 million people use Instagram to:
very good looker

subset: commoncrawl


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VA to Suspend Mandatory Overtime for Claims Processors
Department secretary seeks to ease the burden on his workforce.
The Veterans Affairs Department will implement a temporary reprieve from requiring employees to work overtime to reduce the backlog of disability claims, saying it does not want to ask too much of its workforce.
During a meeting with reporters, Secretary Eric Shinseki announced a plan to generally cut back on the amount of overtime employees must take moving forward, saying he can only ask his claims processing units to "go full throttle for so long," according to the Associated Press. The overtime policy has played a critical role in reducing the claims backlog, with the number of veterans waiting more than 125 days for a response dropping by more than a third since March, to 401,000.
"I've got to be careful here," Shinseki said. "You just can't keep that running forever."
VA will lift the requirement -- which mandates claims processors take at least 20 hours of overtime every month -- for two months, beginning Nov. 23. The department will monitor the effect of the overtime freeze to determine its impact on the progress in processing claims. The employees can still take voluntary overtime, a department spokeswoman told Government Executive.
During the government shutdown in October, the processors could not take overtime, and progress slowed significantly. In fiscal 2013 -- which ended prior to the shutdown -- VA processed 100,000 fewer claims than it expected. In that year, however, it processed more claims than it took in for the first time in five years.
Shinseki said despite the temptation to use overtime, he was worried about diminishing returns.
"I've just got to be smart to get the workforce to continue to sustain the kind of performance they've had in the last 230 days," he said.
Congressional funding will also dictate the use of overtime, the spokeswoman said. The Veterans Benefits Administration, which conducts claims processing, received an 8.5 percent budget increase in fiscal 2013 and was exempt from sequestration cuts.
NEXT STORY: Federal Government Sheds 12,000 Jobs in October


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How to: Create a Publication and Define Articles (SQL Server Management Studio)
Create publications and define articles with the New Publication Wizard. After a publication is created, view and modify publication properties in the Publication Properties - <Publication> dialog box. For information about creating a publication from an Oracle database, see How to: Create a Publication from an Oracle Database (SQL Server Management Studio).
Publication and article names cannot include any of the following characters: % , * , [ , ] , | , : , " , ? , ' , \ , / , < , >. If objects in the database include any of these characters and you want to replicate them, you must specify an article name that is different from the object name in the Article Properties - <Article> dialog box, which is available from the Articles page in the wizard.
To create a publication and define articles
Connect to the Publisher in Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio, and then expand the server node.
Expand the Replication folder, and then right-click the Local Publications folder.
Click New Publication.
Follow the pages in the New Publication Wizard to:
- Specify a Distributor if distribution has not been configured on the server. For more information about configuring distribution, see How to: Configure Distribution (SQL Server Management Studio).
If you specify on the Distributor page that the Publisher server will act as its own Distributor (a local Distributor), and the server is not configured as a Distributor, the New Publication Wizard will configure the server. You will specify a default snapshot folder for the Distributor on the Snapshot Folder page. The snapshot folder is simply a directory that you have designated as a share; agents that read from and write to this folder must have sufficient permissions to access it. For more information about securing the folder appropriately, see Securing the Snapshot Folder.
If you specify that another server should act as the Distributor, you must enter a password on the Administrative Password page for connections made from the Publisher to the Distributor. This password must match the password specified when the Publisher was enabled at the remote Distributor.
For more information, see Configuring Distribution.
- Choose a publication database.
- Select a publication type. For more information, see Types of Replication Overview.
- Specify data and database objects to publish; optionally filter columns from table articles, and set article properties.
- Optionally filter rows from table articles. For more information, see Filtering Published Data.
- Set the Snapshot Agent schedule.
- Specify the credentials under which the following replication agents run and make connections:
- Snapshot Agent for all publications.
- Log Reader Agent for all transactional publications.
- Queue Reader Agent for transactional publications that allow updating subscriptions.
For more information, see Replication Agent Security Model and Replication Security Best Practices.
- Optionally script the publication. For more information, see Scripting Replication.
- Specify a name for the publication.
- Specify a Distributor if distribution has not been configured on the server. For more information about configuring distribution, see How to: Configure Distribution (SQL Server Management Studio).
See Also
How to: View and Modify Publication and Article Properties (SQL Server Management Studio)
Configuring Distribution
Publishing Data and Database Objects
Securing the Distributor
Securing the Publisher
Other Resources
How to: Create a Publication (Replication Transact-SQL Programming)
How to: Define an Article (Replication Transact-SQL Programming)


text:
JEvents v3.1.8 Stable Copyright © 2006-2013
Pham Ngoc Ánh (Rényi Institute): Special irreducible representations of Leavitt path algebras
|Abstract. Irreducible representations of both Leavitt and Cohn path algebras of an arbitrary digraph with coefficients in a commutative field introduced by Chen and Rangaswamy are constructed in several ways using both infinite paths on the right and singular vertices as well as direct limits or factors of cyclic projective ideals of the ordinary quiver algebra, respectively. A speciality of these irreducible representations becomes immediate when they are viewed as modules over the algebras generated by commuting symmetric idempotents of paths, providing a unified way to treat them. Furthermore, their defining relations are described, too, whence criteria are easily given when they are finitely presented or finite dimensional. Moreover, their endomorphism rings, annihilator primitive ideals are also computed directly.
|Location : Bolyai Intézet, I. emelet, Riesz terem, Aradi vértanúk tere 1., Szeged
JEvents v3.1.8 Stable Copyright © 2006-2013


text:
Rating of organization: 3/5, total votes 273.
Table of contents
|Name of Organization
|Full Name of Organization
TUSHAR LEASING & INVESTMENT PRIVATE LIMITED - Product Features
|Min. financing amount
|Max. financing amount
|Max. financing amount
|70 days
|Loan tenure
|Approval duration
|Average time from 2 to 12 hours
Fees & Charges
|Debt consolidation
|Information on debt consolidation is not listed on the site. You need to contact representatives of the organization through any source and clarify
|Processing fee
|One-time fee is not charged when making a loan
|Stamp duty
|Stamp duty is not provided in the organization
|Annual fee
|Annual fee ranges from 180% to 365% depending on the percentage under which you borrowed
|Other fees
|Other fees are not listed on the site. However, when applying for a loan, you can include insurance or any other services. For more information, you need to consult with representatives of the organization.
|Early settlement
|Early debt settlement does not charge you extra fees. For more information contact the credit organization.
|Late payment charges
|6% of overdue amount
|Other penalties
|Not provided
Additional Requirements
|Need to bind a bank account
|Other details
|Payment on the loan occurs through a bank card
How to take a loan in Moneyinminutes?
- Fill in the application for a loan.
- Confirm the offer. The offer is signed by an SMS code sent to your Get the solution instantly!
- Transfer money to a bank account or card in one day!
Additional conditions for granting loans:
- the whole process through the Internet, without leaving home;
- for Filipino citizens who have reached the age of 21 (majority);
- the presence of a permanent registration in the territory of the India;
Reasons for a loan denial:
- Poor credit score
- You are blacklisted, on debt review or had a judgement against your name
- You don't have enough income for the loan you requestedd
- Poor track record of credit card or loan repayments
Address - Tushar Leasing & Investment Pvt. Ltd 4A/36, First Floor, Tilak Nagar, New Delhi, Delhi 110018
Managing structure Moneyinminutes
Hi, Im Maria.L!
I know everything about the India financial market because I have been working in the financial sector for more than five years.
I know everything about the India financial market because I have been working in the financial sector for more than five years.


text:
Over-the-air broadcast streaming startup Aereo has good news for its customers in Denver and Salt Lake City: They can continue using the service for now. The federal judge who handed down an injunction in those markets today issued a reprieve, granting the startup a 14-day grace period (via Variety).
The stay is only temporary, despite Aereo seeking an indefinite one, because the judge in the case argues that it could continue to serve its customers by paying licensing fees to broadcasters and reducing its profit margin, while not catastrophically damaging their bottom line. Aereo is also seeking an emergency stay in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. All of this is a prelude to the Supreme Court's hearing on Aereo and its legality, which is coming up on April 22.


text:
STELLAMAX - 3d Printed Ring - Rhodium-Plated Brass
- Description
- Size & Fit
- How It's Made
- Shipping, Etc.,
Stellamax - 3d Printed Ring - Rhodium Plated Brass:
The Stellamax ring is covered in dramatic radiating spikes. Rhodium-plated brass has a mirror like finish that enhances the impact of this bold statement ring.
Our rings are available in standard US sizes, 4 - 10.5.
If you don't find your size in the drop down menu, please contact us about custom sizing.
If you're unsure about your ring size, we have found this mandrel and ring sizer to be very accurate, and have the same model in our own toolkit. (Do note, they use dashes to represent half-sizes, so a ring sizer marked "7 -" means "7.5" not "7".)
We design all our pieces from our Los Angeles apartment, using advanced computational and digital sculpting tools.
Our Sterling Silver and Gold-Plated-Brass pieces are first 3d printed in wax. Next they are cast in the final material in a traditional lost-wax casting process.
Our designs are intended to express the unique capabilities of 3d printing and are only possible to produce through this technology.
We often prototype with our desktop 3d printer. However, due to the high cost of professional quality machinery, we currently partner with dedicated fabricators to produce all items we offer for sale.
You can read more info about the materials we use here.
Our items are made to order and require up to three weeks of fabrication time before shipping. We generally ship orders as soon as they are ready unless you contact us beforehand about other arrangements.
If you need something sooner, please get in touch to confirm if we have stock on hand or to see if rush production is available.
All of the items in your order will ship together. So, the item with the longest fabrication time will determine when the whole order is shipped.
(Items in steel generally require the longest fabrication time.)
Shipping time will depend on the shipping method you select at check out. Please be aware that we cannot guarantee strict delivery deadlines. We rely on external delivery services such as USPS and UPS to deliver our packages. And the date by which they deliver is entirely their responsibility.
That said, we are here to help sort out any shipping issues, so please reach out if you encounter one.
Check out our FAQ page for more info. And feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@example.com (or use our contact form) if you have any questions or concerns.


text:
This program has been archived.
Cyberlearning: Transforming Education Crosscutting Programs
|Janet Kolodner
|Lee L. Zia
|Sharon Tettegah
|Mimi McClure
|Soo-Siang Lim
|Peter Vishton
PROGRAM GUIDELINESSolicitation 11-587
Important Information for Proposers
A revised version of the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF 22-1), is effective for proposals submitted, or due, on or after October 4, 2021. Please be advised that, depending on the specified due date, the guidelines contained in NSF 22-1 may apply to proposals submitted in response to this funding opportunity.
Through the Cyberlearning: Transforming Education program, NSF seeks to integrate advances in technology with advances in what is known about how people learn to
- better understand how people learn with technology and how technology can be used productively to help people learn, through individual use and/or through collaborations mediated by technology;
- better use technology for collecting, analyzing, sharing, and managing data to shed light on learning, promoting learning, and designing learning environments; and
- design new technologies for these purposes, and advance understanding of how to use those technologies and integrate them into learning environments so that their potential is fulfilled.
Of particular interest are technological advances that allow more personalized learning experiences, draw in and promote learning among those in populations not served well by current educational practices, allow access to learning resources anytime and anywhere, and provide new ways of assessing capabilities. It is expected that Cyberlearning research will shed light on how technology can enable new forms of educational practice and that broad implementation of its findings will result in a more actively-engaged and productive citizenry and workforce.
Cyberlearning awards will be made in three research categories, each focusing on a different stage of research and development: Exploratory (EXP), Design and Implementation (DIP), and Integration and Deployment (INDP). The Cyberlearning program will also support small Capacity-Building Projects (CAP) and a Cyberlearning Resource Center (CRC).
What Has Been Funded (Recent Awards Made Through This Program, with Abstracts)
Map of Recent Awards Made Through This Program


text: Theatre Review: How We Got On Jeff Hudson Tuesday, May 28, 2013 | Sacramento, CA Listen / Update RequiredTo play audio, update browser or Flash plugin. When I went to the B Street Theatre to see "How We Got On," I found myself sitting with a mildly apprehensive audience. (beatboxing in background) The folks in the seats that night were, shall we say, mostly white and old enough to be eligible for AARP membership -- a demographic that tends to be pretty skeptical of rap. I overheard several people saying "I'm not sure I'm gonna like the show we're about to see." But then the play began, and early on came a winning description of the techniques a successful rapper uses in performance: "Use techniques like metaphor:" "If rap was a shoe, you'd be a sandal.." "Simile.." "Black and heavy, just like an anvil…" "Hyperbole…" "Ice Mr. Freeze MCs to a standstill." "Alliteration." "Compete with this casual cool kid, you get cancelled…" Metaphor? Simile? Alliteration? Heck, I was an English major long ago, and I can follow that rhyme scheme. And before 20 minutes had passed, the young black and Latino actors in this show's cast had the audience – most of them old enough to be the actors' parents – smiling and clapping along. "Just throw your hands in the air. And wave them like you just don't care. And if you've got on clean underwear, let me hear you say "Oh yeah." "Oh yeah!" "Don't stop. Check my rhyme." Now let it be noted that playwright Idris Goodwin sets his tale in a leafy Midwestern suburb, rather than the inner city. And the story concerns three ordinary high school kids who are trying to produce their own rap tunes using a bulky old boombox with a cassette deck. It's a sweet, even nostalgic coming-of-age story, as the inexperienced but determined kids struggle mightily to focus their creativity, and convince their skeptical parents and teachers that their music is actually OK. And you know, if this energetically performed, well-written little play only needed a few minutes to win over a classically-inclined, 50-something theater reviewer like myself… chances are you'll find yourself enjoying it, too. The B Street Theatre's production of "How We Got On" continues through June 23rd. Follow us for more stories like this CapRadio provides a trusted source of news because of you. As a nonprofit organization, donations from people like you sustain the journalism that allows us to discover stories that are important to our audience. If you believe in what we do and support our mission, please donate today. Donate Today


text:
A large area off the coast of Massachusetts is being opened up for commercial wind energy leases, Gov. Deval Patrick and U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Tuesday.
The proposed area is more than 742,000 acres, or more than 1,160 square miles. That's larger than the land area of Rhode Island and will nearly double the federal offshore acreage available for commercial-scale wind energy projects.
The area is about 12 miles offshore, south of Martha's Vineyard, and will be auctioned as four leases, which officials hope to sell before the end of the year. Fourteen offshore wind energy companies have already expressed interest in the leases and that number could grow, Jewell said.
Jewell said federal officials have learned from the hurdles that have faced Cape Wind, the first-in-the-nation offshore wind farm slated to be built in Nantucket Sound.
The Cape Wind project, which would be closer to shore, has been in the works for more than a dozen years and has faced opposition and lawsuits. Jewell said federal regulators tried to outline areas that would generate energy without generating intense opposition.
"We put in zones that we believe have both high potential and lower conflict," Jewell said. "But it's going to actually get down to a specific construction plan on a specific site and (an environmental) analysis to determine what people want to do economically and what that impact is going to be."
How many wind turbines will be built is unclear, although Bureau of Ocean Energy Management acting Director Walter Cruickshank said there's potential in the area for "a few hundred turbines."
Cruickshank also said if turbines are built right at the boundary — 12 miles off Martha's Vineyard and 13 miles off Nantucket — they would be visible on a clear day. He said turbines would not be built at the boundary's edge, however.
Federal regulators have already determined "no reasonably foreseeable significant impacts" are expected to occur as a result of issuing wind energy leases.
So far the government has awarded five commercial wind energy leases off the Atlantic Coast, including Cape Wind and an area off Delaware. Two competitive leases also have been awarded in the Massachusetts-Rhode Island area and Virginia.
Tuesday's announcement triggers a 60-day public comment period ending on August 18. Comments will be considered before the publication of the final sale notice, setting the time and date of the lease sale.
Patrick said offshore wind power is a potential boon for Massachusetts, which has no oil or coal reserves.
"We sit at the end of the energy pipeline and we are held in some sense hostage to the fossil fuel roller-coaster," he said. "Offshore wind … represents an opportunity to create our own Massachusetts-made energy."
Patrick said his administration has been trying to position Massachusetts as "a hub of offshore wind," pointing to the construction of a marine commerce terminal in New Bedford, which he called a first-in-the-nation facility to support the construction and deployment of offshore wind.


text:
I drive a 12-year-old Ford, and why not? It's quiet and comfy, and it gets me there.
Lots of people feel the same way about software. Almost 30 percent of the world's desktop computers run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP, an operating system introduced in 2001. About 40 percent of the PCs at The Boston Globe still run XP, and so do 95 percent of the world's automatic teller machines, according to ATM maker NCR Corp.
But XP's hour has finally come. On April 8, Microsoft will stop all technical support for the software. There won't be any more updates or security patches. Despite the presence of a countdown clock on Microsoft's website, XP won't turn to a pumpkin at midnight. Keep using it — if you dare. But when it comes to protecting sensitive data from online thieves, you'll be on your own.
Well, almost. Microsoft will continue to update the XP version of its free Security Essentials program until July 2015. Other security software makers will do the same. But antimalware programs generally filter out attacks only after some users have already been victimized. Besides, the security flaw that made the attack possible will still be present. The bad guys will keep attacking it in different ways. Antimalware programs will never keep up. Also, a single compromised computer in a home or office network exposes the other machines to attack. Your XP machine is about to become the weakest link.
For Trey Ford, global security strategist at Rapid7, an independent data security company in Boston, that means it's game over. "There's no way I would encourage anyone to use Windows XP," Ford said. "I won't let anyone in my family run XP."
So the next move is a software upgrade. For most XP users, that means buying a whole new computer. Microsoft stopped offering the software at retail in 2008, so the newest of XP machines will be six years old, hardly worth upgrading to newer editions of Windows.
Thrifty users could keep running their old machines by giving up on Windows altogether. The open-source operating system Linux was once fit only for hackers and hobbyists. These days, it uses the same easy point-and-click interface as Windows, so any child can use it, and Linux runs well even on aging hardware. In fact, the government of Germany's third-largest city, Munich, is urging people to install Linux on their Windows XP machines and providing free copies at public libraries. A popular version called Ubuntu Linux is one of the easiest, and it can be downloaded for free at www.ubuntu.com.
Ubuntu's no good if you must use standard Windows software, such as Microsoft Office. But for more generic activities — Web browsing, e-mail, social networking, listening to music or watching videos — it's fine. The same goes for Chromebooks — those sleek, cheap laptops that run Google Inc.'s Chrome operating system. These machines sell for as little as $200 and deliver a decent computing experience.
But for most of us, a full-fledged Windows upgrade is the right move. Alas, most new machines are loaded with the clumsy and confusing Windows 8. Luckily, computers running on the superior Windows 7 system are still easy to buy online.
Along with the new computer, buy yourself an external hard drive and use it to back up all the files on your old machine. Windows 7 and 8 offer a built-in Easy Transfer program. Just connect the new machine to the external drive to copy your files. You can also load files directly onto the new machine through your home network or by hooking up a $30 file transfer cable.
Don't bother backing up software programs, such as browsers or Microsoft Office; you'll have to reinstall them anyhow. And don't be surprised if some old programs won't run on a Windows 7 or 8 machine. For instance, Microsoft's own Office 2003 isn't fully compatible with Windows 8 — you can get it to run, but Microsoft advises against it.
The retirement of Windows XP is the best news for computer makers in years. Sales of PCs have been on the decline since 2012, and the trend is expected to continue, as more people rely on tablets and smartphones. Despite that, Hewlett-Packard Co. has reported an increase in personal computer revenues, thanks to XP upgrades.
For many users, XP seems as reliable as my old Ford Taurus. But it's really more like the Ford Pinto, that 1970s car with a bad habit of bursting into flames. And the fire department's about to close. Time to move on.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
This article is more than 1 year old
Jury mulls verdict in UK teen hacking case
Trojan claim
The jury in the trial of a UK teen accused of an electronic attack on a major US port retired today to consider its verdict.
Aaron Caffrey, 19, of Shaftesbury, Dorset, allegedly hampered the operations of the Port of Houston by initiating an attack that crippled its Web-based systems for hours in the early hours of September 21 2001. This was the result of a misdirected attack by Caffrey against a fellow chat-room user, the prosecution claims.
Caffrey denies a charge of unauthorised computer modification connected with this alleged attack.
Summing up the case at Southwark Crown Court this afternoon, Judge Loraine Smith said that neither side in the case disputed evidence that an attack on the Port of Houston's Web servers originated from Caffrey's computer.
The jury had to decide whether it was Caffrey himself, or unidentified attackers who gained remote access to the teenager's computer, which initiated the attack. The jury also needed to consider who wrote the attack script (IIS Unicode Exploiter – PING DDoS tool, coded by Aaron) found on Caffrey's PC, Judge Smith added.
Trojan wars
Caffrey testified in his defence that evidence against him was planted on his machine by attackers who used an unspecified Trojan to gain control of his PC and launch the assault. However Neil Barrett, an expert witness for the prosecution, testified that Caffrey's computer contained no trace of the tell-tale signs that would be left by such an attack.
Computer logs from the Port of Houston's NT Server enabled police to trace the attack back to a computer in Caffrey's Dorset home. He was arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police's Computer Crime Unit, who lead the investigation, in January 2002.
Police recovered attack scripts and the transcript of an IRC conversation dating from around the time of the attack from Caffrey's PC. This transcript formed a key plank in the prosecution case against Caffrey.
Punch drunk love
Excerpts from the transcript show how Caffrey (or someone impersonating him) took exception to anti-American remarks made by an IRC user called Bokkie. Caffrey took particular exception to the remarks because he was "in love" with an American girl, called Jessica, at the time. This allegedly prompted him to take out Bokkie Net connection using an attack tool which, according to the transcripts, had minimal impact on his intended victim.
In court this week, it emerged that Caffrey's relationship with Jessica was an "on/off" cyber relationship and that the pair had never actually met.
Caffrey suffers from Asperger's Syndrome - a mild form of autism – which impairs his ability to concentrate over extended periods, impairs his ability to interact socially and predisposes sufferers to an "excessive preoccupation with a specialised interest".
Judge Smith told the jury to put aside any sympathy for Caffrey that they may have as a result of his condition and to decide the case on the basis of the evidence and testimony put before them during the eight day trial.
The case against Caffrey is one of very few in which a computer crime prosecution has been put before a jury in the UK. In most such cases, the accused enters a guilty plea or (more infrequently) the prosecution abandons its case long before reaching this stage.
Caffrey pleads not guilty to the single charge of unauthorised modifications of a computer contrary to Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
The jury will return to continue its deliberations in the case on Friday. ®
Related Stories
UK teenager accused of 'electronic sabotage' against US port
UK teen in 'elite' hacking group


text:
Whether an IT organization is going with public or private clouds, it's important to understand the nuances of multi-tenant architecture. For public clouds, IT managers need to understand the degree of multi-tenancy supported by whichever vendor they are looking at. For private clouds, the entire responsibility of designing a multi-tenant architecture rests with the IT managers.
cloud adoption has gone beyond the levels of intellectual pursuits and casual experimentation. An analysis by IDC shows that $17 billion of the $359 billion of worldwide IT spending for 2009 could be attributed to cloud computing. Two-thirds of Baseline magazine's survey participants plan to expand their use of public clouds.
None of that is to say that there aren't nagging issues, including but not limited to how different enterprise and responsible ways to .
Based on the characteristics of the workload, cloud adoption will swing between public and private clouds. Large enterprises have requirements that will force them to between the two clouds for their workloads. This is different for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) and start-ups, which might have a strong business case for wanting to use public clouds for almost all of their workloads. But in the end, their respective preferences will not be as much about the size of the organization as they are about the nature of their IT workloads.
Besides appropriate workload distribution, architectural considerations are also key. Multi-tenancy is one such architectural consideration, and understanding multi-tenancy is a critical first step towards broader IT cloud adoption.
Due to the early traction seen in public clouds -- where multiple enterprises end up being co-tenants -- "multi-tenancy" is wrongly used as a synonym for "multi-enterprise." But they are very different concepts. Also, the granularity of tenancy is established at the application level, not at the level of an individual user or entire enterprise.
Multi-tenancy defined
A tenant is any application -- either inside or outside the enterprise -- that needs its own secure and exclusive virtual computing environment. This environment can encompass all or some select layers of enterprise architecture, from storage to user interface. All interactive applications (or tenants) have to be multi-user in nature.
A departmental application that processes sensitive financial data within the private cloud of an enterprise is as much a "tenant" as a global marketing application that publishes product catalogs on a public cloud. They both have the same tenancy requirements, regardless of the fact that one has internal co-tenants and the other has external.
Multi-tenancy is the key common attribute of both public and private clouds, and it applies to all three layers of a cloud: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
Most people point to the IaaS layer alone when they talk about clouds. Even so, architecturally, both public and private IaaSes go beyond tactical features such as virtualization, and head towards implementing the concept of IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) through billing -- or chargeback in the case of private clouds -- based on metered usage. An IaaS also features improved accountability using service-level-agreements (SLAs), identity management for secured access, fault tolerance, disaster recovery, dynamic procurement and other key properties.
By incorporating these shared services at the infrastructure layer, all clouds automatically become multi-tenant, to a degree. But multi-tenancy in clouds has to go beyond the IaaS layer, to include the PaaS layer (application servers, Java Virtual Machines, etc.) and ultimately to the SaaS or application layer (database, business logic, work flow and user interface). Only then can tenants can enjoy the full spectrum of common services from a cloud -- starting at the hardware layer and going all the way up to the user-interface layer, depending on the degree of multi-tenancy offered by the cloud.
Degrees of multi-tenancy
The exact degree of multi-tenancy, as it's commonly defined, is based on how much of the core application, or SaaS, layer is designed to be shared across tenants. The highest degree of multi-tenancy allows the database schema to be shared and supports customization of the business logic, workflow and user-interface layers. In other words, all the sub-layers of SaaS offer multi-tenancy in this degree.
In the lowest degree, multi-tenancy is limited to the IaaS and PaaS layers, with dedicated SaaS layers for each tenant.
And in the middle degree of multi-tenancy are clusters of homogenous tenants that share database schemas (or schemae) and other application layers. In the middle level, each cluster of users has its own version of database schema and the application itself.
We can sum up the discussion on the degree of multi-tenancy as follows:
- Highest degree: IaaS and PaaS are multi-tenant. SaaS is fully multi-tenant also.
- Middle degree: IaaS and PaaS are multi-tenant. Small SaaS clusters are multi-tenant.
- Lowest degree: IaaS and PaaS are multi-tenant. SaaS is single tenant.
For example, Salesforce.com, at the relatively high end of the multi-tenancy spectrum, has 72,500 customers who are supported by 8 to 12 multi-tenant instances (meaning IaaS/PaaS instances) in a 1:5000 ratio. In other words, each multi-tenant instance supports 5,000 tenants who share the same database schema. Intacct, a financial systems SaaS provider in the middle of the spectrum, has more than 2,500 customers who share 10 instances in a 1:250 ratio.
Private clouds, and offerings such as 's Business By Design (due this summer), would be at the lowest end of the spectrum of multi-tenancy, with application layers that are dedicated and are more suited for specific large enterprise customers.
How to choose your multi-tenancy degree
One size doesn't fit all when choosing between different degrees of multi-tenancy. The characteristics of the workload in question have to be carefully studied first, including the workload's utilitarian versus strategic value, volatility, , etc. Higher degrees of multi-tenancy are best suited for cross-industry utilitarian workloads such as catalog management and sales force management.
These applications can very easily share the same schema and also benefit from a rapidly evolving set of features that are best developed centrally by a vendor or a corporate shared services team. They also tend to have simpler security requirements such as encryption and authorization. That's why public clouds are attractive multi-tenant platforms for "low-hanging fruit" types of workloads such as e-mail, collaboration, situational applications (expense reporting, travel authorization) and pre-production activities (development, user training and functional/acceptance testing).
For each such workload, IT managers need to determine the degree of multi-tenancy needed, and accordingly choose their providers from a growing list of vendors.
But for workloads that are meant for private and community (consortium of enterprises) clouds, the responsibility of designing a multi-tenant architecture rests with the IT managers. For these workloads there is a large list of fast-maturing technologies from both established and start-up vendors. IT managers have to evaluate these vendors and build their own custom IaaS, PaaS and SaaS layers, including support for building shared services and shared database schema.
Multi-tenancy is the core tenet of cloud computing. While multi-tenancy takes forward some of the concepts of mainframe computing to the x86 server ecosystems, its ongoing efforts to scale up these mainframe concepts to support thousands of intra- and inter-enterprise tenants (not users) are complex, commendable and quite revolutionary. It's only when the required degree of multi-tenancy is incorporated into all the layers of public and private clouds that the promises of improved scalability, agility and economies of scale can be fully delivered.
Sreedhar Kajeepeta is vice president and CTO of technology consulting for global business solutions at Computer Sciences Corp. Sreedhar is based in Farmington Hills, Mich., and can be reached at email@example.com.


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The Federal Reporter with Key-Number Annotations, Volume 268: Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit Courts of Appeals and District Courts of the United States and the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, December, 1920-February, 1921.
Description: The Federal Reporter contains the text of decisions and commentary regarding cases tried in circuit and district courts throughout the United States. The opinions printed in the volumes include both written statements and oral comments transcribed for publication. Index of cases starts on page ix.
Date: 1921
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department


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What's more valuable to your business – one customer deal or a lifelong customer relationship that results in repeat business and referrals? You'd think the answer is obvious, wouldn't you?
My family is in the market for a new SUV. We've got a Toyota Sequoia that's nearly a decade old with about 160k miles on it – and it's time for us to get a new one. It's been a good truck for us – so naturally, looking at new Sequoias was part of our purchasing plan. After some other research and a few peeks at various other brands and models, we narrowed our search down to a Toyota Sequoia or a Ford Expedition.
After a lot of discussions, research on both brands and price negotiations, we decided to stick with the Toyota. So my husband struck a good deal and signed the papers with McGee Toyota in Hanover, MA, on Friday. We bought our last Toyota from McGee and we have gone there for every service need for the last decade. So, it seemed to be a natural and feel-good move.
He had such a good experience with the salesman on Friday that on Saturday, after running a road race, we headed right back to the dealership with my sister-in-law who was also in the market for a new SUV.
After another great experience with the same salesman, we sat down do talk price – including an option for trading in her existing SUV (which we were driving, so the dealer could see it on the spot). The natural back and forth took place with the manager in his office (ivory tower) and the poor salesman running back and forth between him and us – trying to strike a deal.
Let me just point a few things out:
- We're repeat customers
- We've been loyal customers for a decade
- We brought in more customers/referrals
- We just bought a car the day before
- We came after a road race – in our running gear!
- The point being, clearly, we were serious buyers.
As I mentioned, my sister-in-law had a car to trade in. And the manager refused to tell her the estimate for the trade in – or negotiate the cost of the car she was trying to buy – until she would commit to buying RIGHT THEN AND THERE. Clearly, that wasn't going to happen if a) she didn't know the value of her trade-in, and b) the bottom line cost of the car she wanted to buy, and c) her husband (who wasn't present) had an opportunity to see the car and hear the possible deal (i.e., value of the trade-in as well as the deal for the new car after negotiation). Oh, and also – why would we commit to buying something without knowing the cost? Who does that?
This was the exact opposite experience than the day before – with a different manager (same salesman). What a shock.
After several rounds with the poor salesman – embarrassed and frustrated, recognizing we were serious buyers and repeat customers, shaking his head and apologizing – that went nowhere, we decided to get up and leave. My sister-in-law wasn't about to commit to buying a car without understanding the costs or even the courtesy of an estimate or starting point. Why were these games necessary when we were obviously serious about buying?
Before we left, my husband (keep in mind, it was his sister he brought in and thus, he's naturally protective) stated that he couldn't believe the way we were being treated after having just bought a car yesterday. And he began asking about the timeframe available to us to change our minds on our earlier purchase, considering we were not only being treated rudely, and being toyed with, but the manager didn't even have the courtesy to come out and thank us for not only buying a car the day before – but coming back the next day with another customer.
So my husband said he was going to look into the time we had to change our mind on our purchase – unless we heard from them on an estimate for her trade in soon. (Keep in mind, it's not that he didn't know the estimate – the salesman confirmed the manager had a price; he just didn't want to give it to us – wouldn't write down a number – until she committed to buying on the spot.) The salesman said "I don't want to tell him [the manager] that, you tell him." And my husband said, "I would if he ever had the courtesy to come out here and talk to us."
So we walked out and as we were getting into our car, the manager finally found a reason to walk out and talk to us. He boldly sauntered to our car and walked right up to the window as my husband got out. The manager then said, "Oh, you wanna call off the deal? That's fine, we'll rip up the contract right now."
Does this bullying tactic work on others? Because it didn't work on us. This man couldn't give us the privilege of a face-to-face discussion when we were ready to buy another car, and insisted on playing unnecessary, old-school games with a serious customer – and then he comes out with bravado and ego and tells us he'd rather lose TWO SALES than give us a simple estimate?
What is going on here? Would YOU do this? Is this how you treat your repeat customers? I sure hope not.
I can tell you what's going on now:
- McGee Toyota just lost two car sales – over ego. (Ask yourself, will your investment matter to them either?)
- They just lost a loyal, potentially life-long customer
- They showed how little their customers mean to them
- They created a negative brand experience associated with Toyota
- We'll not only never return, and never refer someone to them again, but we'll continually tell everyone we know not to buy from them – ever
- We're now back to discussions with Ford and may abandon Toyota altogether – we're still negotiating
- They showed that the value of a deal is more important to them than the value of a customer relationship.
A customer deal is great. But a salesman – especially a sales manager (or, perhaps he was the owner, which makes it even more ludicrous) – should be savvy enough to recognize when a customer is a serious, loyal and repeat customer who not only continues to give you business, but also refers others. This manager basically took the customer referral pyramid and chucked it out the window.
Am I out of touch here? Are $40-50k cars flying out the door in this economy? Are ready-to-buy customers flocking to the doors for you? Even if they were, would you treat a long time, loyal customer in this manner?
Make sure your sales team can recognize the difference between a customer deal and a customer relationship – and if you care about your business, train them to treat every customer with respect and gratitude. Even if you are in the car sales business.


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Teaching Sells: Building Membership Sites That Work
Darren Rowse, from Problogger said Teaching Sells is one of the most compelling and viable approaches to a real online business he has come across. I totally agree with that. Basically, Teaching Sells teach you how to to create membership websites that actually sell with Five Step-by-Step Training Courses. Here's What you will learn when you enroll in the Teaching Sells Training Program.
- Multimedia content strategies that result in valuable paid courses and a sustainable business
- Detailed marketing methods that work without wasteful spending on advertising
- Tools and techniques for producing dazzling interactive content that creates happy repeat customers
- Multiple business models to choose from in order to best achieve your revenue and lifestyle goals
- Easy instructions for building airtight interactive learning environments and membership websites
- Forum access to instructors and a step-by-step methodology to build your first paid interactive content site.
You can download the free report to evaluate Teaching Sells first.
One of the most important things is that Teaching Sells provide members A Private Label Rights Content Library containing high-demand niche content (updated monthly with fresh ebooks and articles) that you can repurpose for your membership sites. The following are few examples of the e-books that you can download and resell.
- 10 Dollar Profit Plans
- 100 Succulent Chinese Recipes
- 1000 Atkins Diet Recipes
- 10000 Dreams Interpreted
- 101 Camping & Outdoor Recipes
Teaching Sells members are able to promote the training program and earn substantial commissions as well. The affiliate program is available to members in good standing only, so you won't be competing against the whole world. They will pay you 50% of the initial sign-up fee (currently $197) when someone joins Teaching Sells from your referral. Plus, they will also continue to pay you 50% of the monthly recurring fees (currently $49) for that subscriber who remains in good standing beyond the first three month period. Commissions are paid monthly via PayPal Mass-Pay. They pay by the 20th of the month after the month in which the commission is earned.
Source: Sign Up Now


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RICHMOND, VA—Executives at Philip Morris USA this week unveiled Marlboro Earth, a new eco-friendly cigarette that gradually eliminates the causes of global warming and environmental destruction at their source.
"By killing off the No. 1 threat to the environment, new Marlboro Earths will have a long-term effect on the overall health of our planet," Philip Morris spokesperson Janet Weiss said. "If everyone in America does their part and joins our new green-smoking movement, then together we can eradicate man's destructive practices once and for all."
According to a press release from Philip Morris, the new environmentally friendly cigarettes work by employing powerful carcinogens that accumulate in the lungs of smokers, slowly breaking down their vital organs and eliminating the danger posed to the overpopulated planet by the human race.
Because Marlboro Earths take decades to work, the company stresses that people should start using them as early as possible, ideally during childhood or adolescence, in order to maximize the product's effectiveness.
"We've got to get everybody on board, the sooner the better," said Weiss, stressing that nothing less than the fate of the planet was at stake. "It doesn't take much. As few as two packs of Marlboro Earths a day can make all the difference in the world."
"Go ahead," Weiss continued. "Light up, breathe in, and help save Mother Earth."
Although industry research indicates people do offer some secondary benefits to the planet, such as recycling programs and wind power generators, studies have concluded these efforts fail to offset the disastrous potential of humanity.
According to Philip Morris, Marlboro Earths are the first green product to address that threat head-on.
"Wildlife habitat encroachment, climate change, the exploitation of precious natural resources—they can all become a thing of the past," said James Freedman, a member of the marketing team tasked with branding the new product. "Smoke these cool, clean Marlboro Earths every chance you get, and you'll reduce your carbon footprint to zero in no time."
Added Freedman, "Plus, you'll look really sophisticated and glamorous while doing it."
The new cigarettes, released in limited test-market cities over the past two months, will be ready for a national rollout in mid-June. An ad campaign with the slogan "Marlboro Earth: Saving the Environment One Customer at a Time" has already been launched, and the product's iconic new packaging, which is similar to the traditional Marlboro design but also features a tree, is reportedly testing "through the roof" with consumers.
In initial product trials, the eco-cigarettes have proven popular among smokers.
"I leave work three to five times a day to stand outside and help the environment," said longtime smoker Sam Davies, an office worker in Raleigh, NC. "And the best thing about them is they make saving the planet incredibly addictive. After only a few hours, I get the uncontrollable urge to go out and help the environment some more."
Philip Morris executives stressed that the new cigarettes, which contain the same great taste smokers have come to expect from Marlboro, but with nearly three times the tar and carbon monoxide, could make a huge difference in as little as 40 to 50 years, cutting down on urban sprawl, overpopulation, and eventually helping to enrich the soil with powerful fertilizers.


text: This is the final one – the last one that my friend from Jakarta, Indonesia sent. These have been a lot of fun since there's no way you can buy them here in the states! Awesome! Thanks again! So what does bawang mean? Onion. And what about kriuuk? Crunchy. Let's try this out.


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Most full-time personal trainers assist 7 to 10 clients per day. Sometimes they only have enough time to eat quick, smaller meals in between training sessions. Those meals must keep their sugar levels constant, cravings for fat low and metabolism high.
Trainers typically prepare their foods the night before a busy day, and they make a little extra just in case they need additional calories for a last-minute booking.
Below is a list of foods that I eat as a personal trainer during my busy days.
Quick Breakfast
- Brown rice tortilla, egg whites or Egg Beaters, fresh tomato slices, Tapatio hot sauce and a dab of guacamole
- Finish with a glass of water and vitamins
More: 12 Fast and Easy Breakfast Ideas
- Black coffee and water
- 2 to 3 cups of coffee throughout the day and about 3 liters of water
- If I add in a separate workout during the day, I drink an extra 1 to 2 liters of water
Snacks Eaten Throughout the Day
I eat these snacks every 2 to 3 hours. If there are leftovers, I eat them the next day.
More: 9 Portable Protein Snacks
This may look like a lot of food, but when you break it down calorie-wise, it's less than eating a whole meal at a restaurant. Remember: these are small portions. The goal of a personal trainer's food plan is to keep their internal metabolism consistent throughout the day and this can be accomplished by feeding their bodies the correct amount fuel all day.
- Small containers of low-fat or low-calorie Greek yogurt with almonds
- Small container of low-calorie cottage cheese with berries and a few Wheat Thins for crunch
- Small fresh fruit cup (e.g., apple, grapes, pineapples, melon)
- Small cup of oatmeal with almonds or a heaping scoop of peanut butter
- String cheese with apple slices
- A protein bar
- Plain banana with peanut butter and organic, local honey
- More apple slices (no cheese)
- One slice of whole-wheat or whole-grain bread with peanut butter and organic, local honey
- Small container of brown rice, cottage cheese and fresh blueberries
- 1
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The system is based on a four wheeled mobile platform which was originally built by the Technical University of Munich / Institute of Automatic Control Engineering (LSR). We changed the wheels control electronic part to integrate the platform into our control architecture. Therefore the platform and the arm can be controlled as a 10 axis system for manipulation tasks. To navigate the system through the lab, the platform can be controlled on its own over a trajectory interface. The platform is omni directional, but non holonomic.
To give the system extended manipulation potential, the DLR Lightweight Arm II with the DLR Hand is mounted on the platform. All systems are real-time controlled by PowerPC Boards running under VxWorks in a VME-Bus Rack. For the non real-time software components, like navigation, scene analysis, collision avoidance, a laptop running Linux is also attached to the system. All computers are connected by Wireless LAN to the lab infrastructure.
Vision applications are supported through a Digiclops Stereo Vision System mounted on a PanTilt unit on the platform. Digiclops provides wide angle video images as well as a 2 ½D point cloud (Depth Image).
The robot can be interactively driven through the lab either with the push sensor built on top of the platform or a space mouse.
The software part of the system consists of the control software for the platform, arm and hand and a task oriented programming system which allows to command the real-time control blocks.
Complex manipulation tasks can be composed of small sensor based operations easily within this system. The use of sensor information allows the real world to be slightly different from the model based view in the system. Therefore smaller changes in the environment do not result in the reprogramming of the whole task.
To obtain a representation of the environment scene-analysis software based on stereo images is integrated. This system can recognize and localize a set of known objects. Before activating any manipulation task, a so called World Model Update is executed with this scene-analysis component.


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Did the West Gas Thousands to Rescue Failed Syrian War?
Tony Cartalucci
Activist Post
As far back as 2007, it was a documented fact that the West, including the United States and its allies Saudi Arabia and Israel, conspired to use terrorists drawn from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda in an attempt to overthrow the governments of Iran and Syria.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 New Yorker article, "The Redirection," stated (emphasis added):
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
Starting in 2011, this conspiracy was catapulted into all out war – albeit behind the tenuous smokescreen of "pro-democracy activists" and the so-called "Free Syrian Army" fighting for "freedom" within and along Syria's borders.
Not only has this conspiracy been exposed, but it has categorically failed. The Syrian government has routed even the most dug-in terrorist proxies, making irreversible gains against a clearly depleted enemy. While the US continuously threatens to "arm the opposition," it is a fact that any and all weapons, cash, and support the US had, it has already sent over the last 3 years. This includes untold millions in cash, and literally thousands of tons of weaponry airlifted by the US and UK. The US and its regional allies have also scoured the global extremist networks they have built up over decades for every last fighter they could possible find – all to no avail.
There is nothing left except direct military intervention, which cannot be sold as helping an opposition now clearly exposed as being Al Qaeda. That means, the humanitarian intervention, "right to protect" (R2P) must be wiped clean of NATO's lies and crimes in Libya, and prepared for Syria. Only what exactly could the West use to justify an intervention against the Syrian government that is worse than what it and its proxies have already done to tens of thousands of Syrian civilians?
With a victorious Syrian government mopping up NATO's terrorist proxies and currently hosting UN chemical weapons inspectors in Damascus, the use of chemical weapons now would defy all logic – from a tactical level, to a strategic and political level. Chemical weapons, according to the US military's own reviews of their extensive use in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, reveal the true nature of chemical warfare – a truth the Western media has all but avoided in their speculative and purposefully manipulative coverage of the alleged incident.
A document produced by the US Marine Corps, titled, "Lessons Learned: The Iran-Iraq War" under "Appendix B: Chemical Weapons," provides a comprehensive look at the all-out chemical warfare that took place during the devastating 8 year Iranian-Iraqi conflict. Several engagements are studied in detail, revealing large amounts of chemical agents deployed mainly to create areas of denial, not mass casualties. In the end, it is determined that conventional weapons are by far more effective and more preferable.
The effectiveness and lethality of chemical weapons is summarized in the document as follows (emphasis added):
Chemical weapons require quite particular weather and geographic conditions for optimum effectiveness. Given the relative nonpersistence of all agents employed during this war, including mustard, there was only a brief window of employment opportunity both daily and seasonally, when the agents could be used. Even though the Iraqis employed mustard agent in the rainy season and also in the marshes, its effectiveness was significantly reduced under those conditions. As the Iraqis learned to their chagrin, mustard is not a good agent to employ in the mountains, unless you own the high ground and your enemy is in the valleys.
We are uncertain as to the relative effectiveness of nerve agents since those which were employed are by nature much less persistent than mustard. In order to gain killing concentrations of these agents, predawn attacks are best, conducted in areas where the morning breezes are likely to blow away from friendly positions.
Chemical weapons have a low kill ratio. Just as in WWl, during which the ratio of deaths to injured from chemicals was 2-3 percent, that figure appears to be borne out again in this war although reliable data on casualties are very difficult to obtain. We deem it remarkable that the death rate should hold at such a low level even with the introduction of nerve agents. If those rates are correct, as they well may be, this further reinforces the position that we must not think of chemical weapons as "a poor man's nuclear weapon." While such weapons have great psychological potential, they are not killers or destroyers on a scale with nuclear or biological weapons.
Therefore, had the Syrian government used chemical weapons and somehow was able to create the perfect circumstances to create mass casualties, they did so solely to produce an abhorrent civilian death toll and the perfect pretext for Western intervention, knowing full well such weapons would be otherwise useless in battling armed formations. Since Syria's chemical weapons would most likely be under the lock and key of its most elite forces, as they are in Iran, revealed in a RAND Corporation document, that would mean that their use was approved by the highest ranking members of the Syrian government and military – this would be the same government and military that exhibited unlimited restraint against intentional and coordinated provocations carried out by NATO-member Turkey and their regional partner, Israel – restraint exhibited solely to avoid providing the West with the pretext for direct military intervention.
Why then would the Syrian government choose now, of all times, to give the West exactly what it was looking for, right as the window was closing on the West to accomplish its goals versus Syria and neighboring Iran?
The answer is, the Syrian government did not use chemical weapons in Damascus, or elsewhere. And while the strawman currently being knocked down by the Western media is whether the attacks were faked or real, the stark reality is that NATO and its terrorist proxies most likely did expose a large number of people to something, seeking mass casualties in a last ditch effort to salvage what is clearly the end of their "Arab Spring" blitzkrieg.
As previously reported, NATO and its proxies in Syria have both the means and the motivation to carry out chemical weapon attacks.This includes access to Libya's stockpile of chemical weapons and a NATO-enabled pipeline feeding fighters, cash, and weapons from Libya into Syria via NATO-member Turkey.
Image: (via the Guardian) "Chemical containers in the Libyan desert. There are concerns unguarded weapons could fall into the hands of Islamist militants. Photograph: David Sperry/AP"
It was also confirmed that the US had been providing select terrorist units operating in Syria, training in the handling of chemical weapons. CNN had reported in December of 2012, in a report titled, "Sources: U.S. helping underwrite Syrian rebel training on securing chemical weapons," that:
The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday.
The training, which is taking place in Jordan and Turkey, involves how to monitor and secure stockpiles and handle weapons sites and materials, according to the sources. Some of the contractors are on the ground in Syria working with the rebels to monitor some of the sites, according to one of the officials.
NATO not only ensured that chemical weapons in Libya remained in the hands of a proxy regime now openly arming, aiding, and sending fighters to assist terrorists in Syria, but also appears to have ensured these terrorists possessed the know-how on handling and using these weapons.
While absolutely nothing adds up across the West's corporate media networks, one story that does add up is the claim by Syrian troops that terrorist tunnels have been discovered containing chemical agents – as reported in Reuters' article, "Syrian soldiers enter rebel tunnels, find chemical agents: state TV."
What we are now witnessing is an attempt by the West's corporate-financier establishment to push for direct intervention faster than the facts can come out over what exactly happened near Damascus. Just as was the case in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the West hopes people can be made hysterical enough, long enough, to get a "foot in the door," so the bombs can start dropping. Failing to do so at this juncture would spell the absolute end of the West's current plans versus Syria and Iran – and so however tenuous and discredited this latest plot may seem, expect dangerous desperation from the West.
Now more than ever, Syria and its allies must be prepared to defend against provocations both militarily and diplomatically.
Tony Cartalucci's articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at
Land Destroyer Report, Alternative Thai News Network and LocalOrg. Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here.


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Carson: Boot pols who lift debt limit
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Ben Carson rallied conservatives Saturday against lawmakers who voted to raise the debt ceiling, but also urged Republicans to keep their eye on the bigger picture come the fall midterms.
Carson, a former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference a year after breaking onto the political scene for criticizing President Barack Obama at a National Prayer Breakfast the president attended. On Saturday, he lambasted what he called an irresponsible handling of the national debt.
"The only way we get out of that, quite frankly, is we have to know who our representatives are and the ones who are voting to keep raising that debt ceiling, get them out of office," Carson said.
But he also urged Republicans to support each other in the general election in November, whatever their primary fights may bring.
( PHOTOS: Scenes from CPAC 2014)
"When we get through with the primary season, if your person hasn't won — you can call them whatever you want to call them, you can call them a RINO [Republican in name only], you can call them a tea-bagger, you can call them whatever you want — vote for them, OK?" Carson said. "We need those people."
Supporters behind a Draft Ben Carson for President Committee this year had a visible presence at the conservative confab, and many gave Carson a standing ovation and unfurled banners reading "Run, Ben, Run" and "Carson 2016" during his roughly 20-minute speech.
Carson addressed critics, referring to the firestorm last year after he said that straight marriage was "a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group — be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn't matter what they are — they don't get to change the definition."
"I will continue to defy the P.C. [political correctness] police who have tried in many cases to shut me up," Carson said Saturday.
"Of course gay people should have the same rights as everyone else," Carson added, "but they don't get extra rights."
Carson also touched on controversial comments about the "47 percent" by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, saying that he once belonged to the lower-income half of the country and that Republicans should work to create opportunities for those people.
"I know that there are a lot of people in that 47 percent who are decent, hard-working Americans who want to realize the American dream," Carson said.


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I'm finally on an actual vacation so posting will probably halt for the first time in Sart Inc history. There should be a good bit of sartorially nonsense going on though so I will do my best to document it all for your guys. Anyhow, I'll see you guys on the other side of the weekend - peace.
Friday, April 23, 2010
4 comments:
Have fun in the Big Apple!ReplyDelete
have a fantastic weekend! and if you get homesick for the south, let me know and I'll point you in the direction of my favorite home away from home spots in the city.ReplyDelete
This is going to be a hard few days... have funReplyDelete
Have fun LAS. Sounds like a great time with some great people.ReplyDelete
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And the tigers wept, and the tapirs sang: Ubisoft has confirmed that they're working on a patch for Far Cry 3 that will let players adjust or remove the game's clutter-y user interface.
In a statement sent to Kotaku:
Based on feedback from both press and fans, the Far Cry 3 production team is working on a patch that will allow you to toggle most HUD/UI elements based on player preference. The patch will also avoid issues encountered in the .dll hack that might create a mission walkthrough break (missing QTE prompts, critical information, etc;). The team is excited about how the Far Cry 3 community and fans of the game are enjoying themselves, and finding new ways to experience the Rook Islands. More news will be coming on the patch shortly…
Far Cry 3 is a lot of fun, but the screen-clutter kind of a mess, particularly if you're pretty good at the game and don't want to be told what to do all the time. Unfortunately, the game didn't ship with any way to turn that mess off—most players would just have to be content with constant notifications popping up every few minutes.
This week, some folks came up with a way to hack the PC version so that the HUD vanishes entirely. (The HUD-free screen up top is from my game with that tweak active.) I like playing that way, but it does come with its share of annoyances. A more preferable solution would be if Ubisoft let us choose how much or little of the UI we wanted to see.
Sounds like they're giving us exactly that. There's no ETA on the patch, but hopefully it'll be out in time for most players' second go-round.


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Veneer furniture is covered in a thin layer of real hardwood. Veneers are often used in high end furniture pieces and can be more costly than solid wood. Mid 20th century it became especially popular in interiors when teak wood was often used for Danish design furniture.
To fully enjoy your wood veneer furniture, please follow a few basic rules:
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Wood veneer requires gentle care to preserve the finish. Dust regularly and clean with a soft dry cloth.
Remove spills immediately as moisture can cause the veneer to peel off the surface. Prevent moisture from getting underneath the veneer by quickly and thoroughly cleaning up any spills. In case of water rings, rub the area with naphtha. Follow up with an application of oil or petroleum jelly to completely erase the mark.