text:
Solyndra, Lightsquared, and now Solayzme are all companies that are closely connected to the Obama campaign and all got government money. While the Obama Administration has been attacking Republicans as "crony capitalists" and using an army of left-wing pseudo-journalists to make the attacks, the Obama Administration has been rewarding campaign friends with government contracts.In Barack Obama's America, he, not the marketplace, picks the winners and losers. But just how far into the government and into the Obama campaign does this crony capitalism go?In an email sent out by Jo Ellen Kaiser to a group of online left-wing sites, she notes that
In response to member inquires about solid advertising opportunities, The Media Consortium would like to present the opportunity to partner with IB5k Network. IB5k Network is actively seeking progressive publishing partners who accept online advertising for politically progressive candidates. We hope and expect this to be a lucrative and relevant ad stream through 2012.IB5k's first opportunity for Media Consortium members is a great one with Obama for America. Available immediately, these static (no video or audio) digital ads ask viewers to sign up via email for Obama campaign updates. This is a short ad campaign starting immediately through the 5th of January.The advertisement is available in in 300×250, 728 x 90 and 160 x 600 sizes. A preview of the creative is available here: http://a.ib5knetwork.com/lt/obama_test.html.We know this is a busy time of year for everyone, but we believe this is a great opportunity with which to begin a relationship with IB5k. The Obama team set the gold standard for online political campaigns in 2008, and is certain to be placing many more ads through 2012. By beginning to work with IB5k now, you will be pre-approved to run those ads!
Jo Ellen Kaiser is the Executive Director of the Media Consortium and the email she sent came from her Media Consortium email address to a google group. The Media Consortium "is proud to partner with the We the People Campaign for Campaign Cash, a collaborative editorial effort to expose the influence of corporate money on the political process."IB5K, LLC, the company Jo Ellen Kaiser is pushing on her email list as the Obama advertiser, is a government contractor. So the group dedicated to exposing "the influence of corporate money on the political process" is helping out a company that's a government contractor and not just any government contract, but one that got its start on Obama 2008, then got a government contract, and is now handling online advertising for Obama 2012.But hey! If you work with IB5K now, "you will be pre-approved to run" ads for Obama 2012.
Back in November of 2010, the Wall Street Journal ran an article by Joe Walker on entrepreneurial former Obama workers. There was this interesting nugget about one of Obama's campaign workers, Joe Beckman.
Mr. Beckmann, 30, says he learned how to collaborate with a network of volunteers and supporters while working on Mr. Obama's video team. His company similarly relies on 300 freelancers— filmmakers, graphic designers and programmers—sprinkled across the country."It's hard when you have this many people in different time zones, to keep them all feeling connected," says Mr. Beckmann, who uses emails, personal visits and company retreats to keep his team focused on common goals. "The model for this really came from the Obama campaign."So far, it appears to be working for Mr. Beckmann. He says he's won a government contract to provide email-related services to Hill staffers, and he's helping Mystery Guitar Man—the YouTube sensation known for quirky YouTube videos—build a monetizable website. He expects IB5k to be profitable off of $1.2 million in revenue this year.
Campaign for Obama, get a federal contract. Is it really that easy?According to Beckmann's company website, which highlights work for Barack Obama and whose clients include the DNC, the DGA, and a host of liberal groups,
At the end of the day, our method saves you money. While members of our trust have been responsible for everything from creating initiatives at Obama for America, building 21st century cable networks from scratch, successfully bridging the gap between television and online video audiences, to developing custom-built software for Congress
I guess it really could be as easy as going to the Federal Procurement Data System, plugging in the names of all the Obama campaigners or their related businesses, and finding out who got a government contract after working for Barack Obama.Except, for some reason, Joe Beckmann's company IB5K, which the Wall Street Journal reports has a government contract and whose website reports it is developing software for Congress, does not appear in the Federal Procurement Data System. That brings us back to the Media Consortium, a group of left-wing pseudo-reporting sites that are going to be subsidized by the Obama campaign's campaign cash via a vendor who, were we talking about wingers, would be excoriating the crony capitalists getting government contracts after working for the winger campaign and not appearing in the federal procurement database.And yet here they are pitching an Obama advertising company that, after one of its principle partners worked on the Obama campaign got a government contract and now is again also handling Obama campaign advertising.


text:
After winning over U.S. operators with its security software for Android phones, Lookout Mobile Security is turning to Europe to find new networks ready to install or promote its software on the phones they distribute.
The San Francisco-based company, which counts 12 million users worldwide, is looking to expand its reach with operator deals similar to ones it has already struck with Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile in the U.S., said Kevin Mahaffey co-founder and CTO.
By the end of the year, all Android phones shipped by T-Mobile in the U.S. will have Lookout's software installed, Mahaffey said. Lookout also announced on Wednesday an agreement with the Australian operator Telstra, which will promote Lookout's software in its section of the Android Market.
Lookout offers a free version of its software with antivirus, data backup and missing device location features. A paid version includes remote data wipe and a privacy advisor, which scans applications and warns of ones that may have access to too much personal data, among others. It also has an application for Apple iOS, but without the antivirus features.
About 30 percent of Lookout's users come from non-English speaking regions, so Lookout plans to localize its application in languages such as German, Japanese, Spanish and Italian, Mahaffey said. On Wednesday, Lookout released a localized version for U.K. users.
Operators are interested in offering security software with the devices they sell, and Lookout is appealing because the basic version is free, Mahaffey said.
There are only 1,000 or so malicious applications aimed at mobile phones, a very small number compared to malware for desktop computers. But hackers are showing growing interest in mobile devices. Hackers have modified legitimate Android applications with malicious functions and slipped them into third-party applications markets.
Perhaps the most notorious was DroidDream. More 50 applications within Google's official Android Market were found to be contaminated with DroidDream, which copies information such as the phone's International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number and the SIM card's International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number and sent it to a remote server.
Another concern of operators is that a malicious application could infect many phones and be hard to remove, which could be very costly to operators, Mahaffey said.
Send news tips and comments to email@example.com

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Here's the latest article from the Cats site at BellaOnline.com.
Cats and Their Personalities
By guest author Michelle Taylor. My 3 cats are more like 3 ladies with their own distinct personalities and quirks.
Please visit cats.bellaonline.com for even more great content about Cats.
To participate in free, fun online discussions, this site has a community forum all about Cats located here -
If you have questions, comments or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Have fun passing this message along to family and friends, because we all love free knowledge!
Melissa Knoblett-Aman,
Cats Editor
One of hundreds of sites at BellaOnline.com


text:
|Perl-Sensitive Sunglasses
Re: Calling .NET Assemblies with Win32::OLEby dawook (Initiate)
|on Dec 07, 2007 at 22:52 UTC ( #655768=note: print w/replies, xml )
|Need Help??
Thanks for this, its clear and explained well, the example works. I am guessing from my experimentation though that there are some serious limitations to this method. I have a dll, that is comprised of multiple classes, and uses Reflection and and System.Diagnostics to gather information from the calling program, it also uses the IDisposable interface. Needless to say I could not quite get it to work with perl...yet at least. If you have any examples of more comples C# dll's I would appreciate the information. Thanks again great post :-)
In Section Tutorials


text:
Donaldson single in 9th lifts A's to victory
The Oakland Athletics have that September swagger again.
And it's looking a lot like a year ago when they rallied to win the AL West and stun the Texas Rangers on the season's final day - with walkoffs and whipped cream pie celebrations.
They are one win closer to clinching another division crown after Josh Donaldson hit a game-winning, bases-loaded single with two outs in the ninth inning in a 2-1 victory over the Los Angeles Angels on Tuesday night.
Donaldson delivered his third career game-ending hit - all this season - in Oakland's eighth walkoff victory this year. He received both a whipped cream pie from Josh Reddick followed by a dumping from the Gatorade bottle.
''I guess I have success in that situation,'' said Donaldson, 8 for 11 with 16 RBIs when the bases are loaded. ''I think a big part of it is allowing the ball to get deeper to me and hitting the ball up the middle to right-center.''
Grant Balfour (1-3) struck out the side in order in the ninth for the win as Oakland decreased its magic number to win the West to six.
Alberto Callaspo singled to start the bottom of the ninth against Michael Kohn (1-3) and Jemile Weeks entered as a pinch-runner. Weeks advanced on Stephen Vogt's fly to left and pinch-hitter Jed Lowie was intentionally walked to bring up Coco Crisp.
Crisp walked on the 10th pitch he saw to load the bases. Daric Barton struck out with the Angels bringing in right fielder Kole Calhoun as a fifth infielder.
''In the position we're in as a team, it was a timely hit by J.D.,'' Weeks said. ''Coco's at-bat was huge. Everybody in that inning did something special.''
There had been 11 full-counts between the teams and none of those batters reached base until Crisp's free pass.
Donaldson fell behind 0-2 before coming through against Kohn.
''Mike almost got back from the brink. Really one pitch away,'' Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. ''Just couldn't get the fastball where he wanted to to Donaldson and he hit it. ... Had Crisp 0-2 then lost him. Just a couple pitches got away from him and cost him.''
The A's lead the Rangers by 6 1-2 games. Texas won 7-1 at Tampa Bay to snap a seven-game losing streak.
Mike Trout hit another deep drive over the wall in center for his second home run in as many games, but that was all for the Angels.
Trout connected on a 1-0 pitch from Sonny Gray with two outs in the first to stake the Angels to another early lead. The Angels said Trout became the first player in AL history with 25 home runs, 30 stolen bases and 100 walks.
The A's tied it in the bottom half on Brandon Moss' ground-rule double.
Gray allowed one run and five hits, struck out five and walked one in six strong innings - but he faced six three-ball counts and saw his pitch count climb in a hurry. He threw 98 pitches.
Oakland reliever Ryan Cook hit consecutive batters with pitches, Howie Kendrick and Trout, to load the bases in the seventh after J.B. Shuck's two-out single. Jerry Blevins relieved and struck out Josh Hamilton.
Garrett Richards struck out six in seven-plus innings, but is still winless in seven career outings and three starts against the A's. He gave way to Buddy Boshers after Donaldson beat out an infield single to start the eighth.
Boshers struck out Moss and Juan Gutierrez relieved to record the final two outs in the eighth.
The Angels lost for only the third time in their last 13 road games a day after a 12-1 win to snap the A's five-game winning streak.
This victory clinched the season series for Oakland over the Angels for the third straight year.
A's left fielder Yoenis Cespedes played designated hitter for a second straight day as he nurses an injured right shoulder. An MRI showed tendinitis and no tear or serious structural problem. Manager Bob Melvin will give Cespedes time to let the arm calm down so he can throw comfortably before he returns to the outfield.
A cortisone shot is a possibility.
NOTES: Oakland SS Jed Lowrie missed his second straight start with a tight right hamstring. He is expected to start Wednesday afternoon's series finale. ... A's C John Jaso took batting practice on the field and was doing other baseball activities as he tries to return from a concussion before the end of the season. Jaso has been out since July 25. ''He's turned a corner the last four or five days where he feels pretty good,'' Melvin said. ... The Angels reinstated INF Chris Nelson from the 15-day DL after he missed 19 games with a strained right hamstring. ... Oakland will make about 12,000 extra seats available for the playoffs, taking the capacity from 35,067 to 48,146.


text:
The Mother of Them All
Special Containment Procedures
SCP-597 is to be guarded and researched by a rotating monthly shift. Those in charge of the design of the containment procedures are not allowed contact with the SCP; if at all possible this duty should be left to overseer level personnel. No one is to be allowed to view (on video or through a window) or be in the same room as SCP-597 for longer than five hours. Maintenance personnel are to alternate every day.
Evaluations are to be given at the end of the shift or whenever mental distress seems obvious. If psychological contamination is too great and poses a tangible danger, termination can be performed immediately by the on-site analyst. (The mental health offices are soundproofed for this purpose.) The doctor can terminate up to ten individuals at a time; any more requires the approval of an overseer. In this scenario, procedure 597-32 (Weaning the Babies) is to be activated. Vents in the ceiling require regular maintenance for this purpose.
Smoke detectors are not to be turned off for any reason; candles and incense lit in 597's cell are to be taken as an indication of a dangerous obsession. The leaving and offering of food, as 597 does not require it, is to be viewed in the same light as well. All other signs of unnatural love and religious awe are to be reported along with these.
The room and the surrounding area are to be sealed, with ventilation shafts, plumbing, and wiring checked daily. Measures are to be put into place for the continuous extermination of all vermin in the facility. Animals not part of the study found suckling on SCP-597 are to be removed and terminated as soon as possible due to risk of biological contamination. Because of this, in the morning, workers must wear Hazmat suits while entering the cell, for SCP-597 is often covered in vermin, including mice, opossums, squirrels, and bats.
597 is to be hosed down weekly, with special care given to the areas around the nipples, to prevent the buildup of saliva and drool. Those suckling need washing daily, as does the floor underneath them, for the removal of the puddles of urine, feces (for the first few days, but when solids completely leave the body this is no longer necessary, although occasionally a thin watery substance is excreted), and vomit, which is produced when they drink too eagerly, quickly, or out of rhythm. The cleaning products are to be plain and unscented (use of aromatics or herbal oils will be noted) and no scrubbing is to be done by hand.
SCP-597 is a blob of flesh approximately 5.8m (19ft) high, and 10.67m (35ft) wide, although this measurement changes slightly when it moves, or the substances expand and ripple. All over its body, mostly located on its rolls, are hundreds and hundreds of teats, of various colors and sizes. Whenever a mammal is released into its cell, it will be drawn to the corresponding teat for its species and then proceed to suckle as long as they are unimpeded. The milk released will be identical in every way to the makeup of the subject's mother's, although able to sustain the subject's nutritional needs indefinitely. While the fluid is the same as normal milk chemically, for some reason, whether it be an effect of the SCP or an unknown quality of the substances it excretes, any full-grown mammal that would normally require more can survive to the end of their normal lifespan give or take a few years, simply by suckling at the nipple, although their teeth will fall out, their muscle will atrophy due to lack of use (the subjects will curl up as close as possible on the side, lay under the SCP [there have been reports of suffocation], or immerse themselves and dive into the flesh itself) and stomach problems are presented because of the all-liquid diet.
Milk taken in a bottle does not have the same results, although those already affected by SCP-597 will fall under a quasi-hypnotic hold when presented with a container, will do anything to possess it, and find drinking it very gratifying.
Those in charge of bottling the liquid have the urge to use a rubber teat for feeding babies as a cover, even when a normal lid will suffice, and will attempt to do so even when informed that it is in violation of dangerous materials protocol, not being an airtight seal.
The urge to suckle is a mental, physical, and sexual compulsion. Lower lifeforms cannot resist at all. Humans have a difficult time. Those in SCP-597's presence describe it as a "mental pull" leading us to the conclusion that it is partially telepathic, although it also obviously appeals to deep instincts and is hormonal as well; endorphins associated with breast-feeding and maternal comfort are released. Those who do give in do so in a mad rush, all restraint broken at once, or a slow ritual, commonly involving bowing, kneeling, crawling, and chanting. They are reduced quickly to an infantile state, and within one hour lose all linguistic abilities, intellectual capabilities, and willpower. Before complete loss of brain function it is said to be highly comforting and pleasurable, and they say they feel safe, "like never before". Before and after contact is made, there are reports of strong feelings associated with vague images and recollections and sensations, all traced back to the womb or crib, often centered around remembrance of their parents' smell and facial appearance. [DATA EXPUNGED] █████ ███████████████ █████ █████ █████ ██ retarded blind [DATA EXPUNGED] permanently attached [DATA EXPUNGED]
Those who watch are also influenced, although in lesser or different ways. Increased pettiness, regression to childish states, extreme immaturity, decreased bowel control, fetishization, promiscuity, and even reports of public masturbation have all been noted. Staff's IQ, focus, and rationality all drop significantly over a period of time with SCP-597, and they often will fight with each other over silly things, such as objects or perceived insults, be wracked with laughing and crying fits, be unable to resolve problems in an adult way, and lose the ability to control their emotions. After four to five weeks, it is impossible for them to function in a work setting, and they all communicate with each other with a series of grunts, coos, and short confused sentences. Attention should also be paid to the fact that the employees' name for the object degenerates from the official title, "SCP-597" to "The Mother", then to just "Mother", then "Mom", "Mommy", "Mum", and so forth, often ending in sucking, blowing, or kissing sounds as the representation. Also of interest is that almost immediately strong oral fixations will develop or resurface. Those who quit smoking will start again (100% occurrence) and the chewing of gum, snacking, gluttony, nail and lip biting, and hair chewing, rises as well, almost to the point of psychosis; there are deadly weight gains, choking incidents, balls or clumps of human material obstructing the digestive system, murders over food (the vending machine is often completely empty), and dental and health problems. Doctors and personnel in the area of effect, even those entering for a few moments will find themselves absentmindedly putting something in their mouth without realizing it. Observation of the employees in their homes or private lives also reveals [DATA EXPUNGED], often to the point of only being aroused by [DATA EXPUNGED]
Men with already unstable or fragile egos find a strengthening in Oedipal complexes, often to dangerous levels; three employees have raped and murdered [DATA EXPUNGED]. These same personality types also enjoy [DATA EXPUNGED] and request access to SCP-597 for that purpose. Unfortunately, although this behavior is not encouraged, those with this disease are many, too many to take a moral or ideological stance and completely restrict the activity without losing the needed number of workers. A good number are also high-level personnel, although revelation of their identity is forbidden, and requires clearing the area and disabling the camera feeds so they can perform the act (which is not allowed to go over an hour, or separation will cause seizures and homicidal tantrums). Specific procedures for sexual visits can be found in See Document 597-XD-12
Addendum-01: ██/ ██/██ See Document 597-XX-23
Document 597-XX-23
Found currently at 597's base and sides are sixty-one specimens suckling. They are:
- Four dogs at its bottom area, laying out in front of it like a litter.
- Six cats.
- Twenty-seven rats hanging off its front (the wild vermin swarms that often horde around it are especially problematic, but these are all lab-bred, except for SCP-597-SS-19 and SCP-597-SS-24, which refuse to be removed, and are clamped too tightly on just to pull off)
- Fifteen bats that cover approximately all of its back, their wings flapping spasmodically, creating a slight gust.
- Eight humans (four D-class personnel, three doctors, one guard)
Addendum 02 ██/██/██ See Document 597-XD-12
Document 597-XD-12
[DATA EXPUNGED] care must be taken not to allow them to attempt to rip or tear a hole in 597 for penetration purposes [DATA EXPUNGED]
Addendum 03 ██/██/██ See Document 597-XX-25
Document 597- XX-25
An all female task force has been shown not to be more effective in containment, as demonstrated by three events: the development of bisexual tendencies in [DATA EXPUNGED], the loss of five women guards who after writing "mommy, mommy, how i love my mommy" all over the walls of the cell were lost and began suckling, and the suicide of Doctor Vanesen, who after circling each and every teat in red sharpie marker and writing "life" next to them, shot herself in the head.
Addendum 04 ██/██/██ See Document 597-XY-C13
Document 597-XY-C13
Inside the temple, the SCP was found, surrounded by scaffolding and staircases, with ladders propped up against the meat to allow as many people as possible to partake in the event [DATA EXPUNGED]


text:
A 21-year-old who sold a prototype of the new iPhone to the Gizmodo tech news site "regrets his mistake in not doing more to return the phone," said the attorney for the man, identified by Wired.com on Thursday as Brian J. Hogan.
Jeffrey Bornstein. who Wired.com said was Hogan's attorney, released a statement to the Web site about his client: "He regrets his mistake in not doing more to return the phone ... Even though he did obtain some compensation from Gizmodo, Brian thought that it was so that they could review the phone."
The case, dubbed "iPhone-gate," has taken several twists and turns since an Apple software engineer left the iPhone prototype about a month ago in a bar in Redwood City, Calif., 20 miles from the company's headquarters.
The phone was purchased for $5,000 by Gizmodo, which shared photos and information about the device, made by one of the world's most secretive technology companies. The new model is due to be announced in June.
Last week, with search warrant in hand, authorities seized computers, digital cameras, a cell phone and other items from the home and car of Gizmodo editor and blogger Jason Chen, likely in an effort to track down information about the person who sold the phone.
Gizmodo is challenging the search warrant, saying that it violated shield laws protecting journalists from search-and-seizure without a subpoena. "The San Mateo County district attorney's office said this week that investigators will not examine the seized materials until the legality of the warrant has been resolved," Wired.com said.
Wired.com said it "identified Hogan as the finder of the prototype by following clues on social network sites, and then confirmed his identity with a source involved in the iPhone find."
"Hogan has been interviewed by law enforcement investigators but has not been charged with a crime. His attorney says he is willing to cooperate with authorities," according to Wired.com.
San Mateo County chief deputy district attorney Stephen Wagstaffe told Wired.com that the person who found the phone "is very definitely one of the people who is being looked at as a suspect in theft ... Assuming there's ultimately a crime here. That's what we're still gauging, is this a crime, is it a theft?"


text:
|The White House
President George W. Bush
|Print this document
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
July 9, 2001
Remarks by the President
At Inova Fairfax Hospital
Inova Fairfax Hospital
Fairfax, Virginia
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all for coming. Knox, thank you very much for setting up the meeting with Knox and hospital officials, nurses, former patients. We had a great discussion about the need for our nation to pass legislation with America's patients in mind; that the whole core of a good bill recognizes that patients ought to have direct access to specialists, such as Dr. Berry, an OB/GYN, cancer specialists; that patients ought to have the capacity to take complaints to an independent review organization staffed by doctors and medical professionals.
We're making good progress. There is a lot of agreement on a bill that has -- bills moving their way through the House of Representatives right now.
But I want a bill to sign that does not run the cost of premiums up or health care up as a result of excessive lawsuits. I want a bill that honors patients, not trial lawyers; a bill that makes it easier for docs to do their job, as opposed to a bill that encourage excessive litigation.
I want to, again, thank you for the chance to visit.
Dr. Berry, you might want to say a few things.
* * * * * *
THE PRESIDENT: Okay, thank you all.
Q Mr. President, any decisions on stem cell --
Q What did you hear from the patients --
Q What did the patients --
THE PRESIDENT: The patients just want to make sure they've got access to specialists, and they, too, like the idea of having an independent review organization where they can take their complaints, where they can solve problems before it ends up in a court of law.
There are some people up there on the Hill that are interested in fostering excessive litigation, which is not good for patients. I think Americans understand that.


text:
If you are running epic in "dumb mode" (with the -d command line option), you may use the BOTMODE command to complete the transformation into a bot, equivalent to using the -b command line option.
You may want to do this if your script needs to interact with the user before launching into a bot mode (for example, asking configuration questions, or even just telling the user what you're doing).
The BOTMODE command first appeared in EPIC5-0.0.2.
# $EPIC: botmode.txt,v 184.108.40.206 2006/07/11 04:57:43 jnelson Exp $


text:
MasterCard on Monday revised its year-old mobile payment strategy by unveiling a digital, cloud-based service called MasterPass that moves well beyond near-field communication technology used in smartphones to support QR codes, traditional credit cards and other ways to make payments.
In an announcement at the start of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company called the change to MasterPass an "evolution" of its PayPass Wallet Services, first launched in the spring of 2012. MasterPass will allow consumers to make payments from digital wallets or traditional credit cards. Consumers can also rely on NFC or QR codes scanned with optical readers if such technologies are supported by the banks and stores that they use.
Because the new MasterPass system is cloud-based, consumers will be able to use their MasterCard or any other branded credit, debit or pre-paid card they want from any bank or merchant, officials said.
Purchases can be made at store checkout counters, or if customers don't want to wait in a checkout line, they can make purchases while standing in a store aisle via their smartphone or a salesperson's tablet. Consumers also can use the service from a mobile device or PC at home or elsewhere.
"MasterPass brings together all the ways we pay for things," said Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer for MasterCard.
The announcement is an indication of the slow global advance of mobile payments made with NFC technology, which requires consumers to use smartphones equipped with NFC chips and merchants to install NFC readers at checkout counters.
NFC technology has been used by consumers for transit and retail purchases for years in South Korea and Japan, but has been slow to catch on in other regions.
"We are still believers in NFC and think it will continue to progress, but there will always be merchants where NFC might not be the right solution and we don't want to be wed to one technology alone," said Ed Olebe, a senior vice president at MasterCard and head of MasterPass, in an interview.
"Where before we said to merchants to use NFC and PayPass using a secure element, you're now seeing us doing a lot more for those who want to use bar codes or QR codes or even sound waves to accept payments. Some technologies are more secure than others," Olebe said.
"Our insight is that the merchant is going to control their store and invest in the technology that might be right," Olebe said. "It's unlikely we'll be able to force merchants to pick a technology that's right for them. In some situations, plastic is still oftentimes right, so why force another mechanism on that?"
For payment technologies that are less secure than NFC, a merchant will incur greater liability and costs for theft, which could raise the price of products purchased in other ways than through NFC, Olebe added. That might include non-NFC payments made from a device carried in an aisle that scans a barcode or QR code using an optical scanner.
Consumers will be able to sign up for MasterPass through banks in the U.S. sometime in the spring, following the end-of-March launch in Australia and Canada, Olebe said. The U.K. will be added in the summer, followed by Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain and Sweden.
More mobile payment options at MWC
NFC will be one of many mobile topics at MWC, and MasterCard competitor Visa has scheduled an announcement for later Monday. Also, the head of product management for Google Wallet is making an appearance at MWC, even as Google has markedly toned down its presence at the annual event, which is expected to attract 75,000 visitors. Google is not sponsoring a booth this year or providing a keynote speaker. Last year, Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt spoke at the conference.
Google Wallet was first introduced in the fall of 2011 and relies on NFC in Android smartphones for mobile payments. In late 2012, Isis, a consortium of three U.S. carriers, launched NFC payments in Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas.
The GSM Association, representing 800 GSM carriers globally and the host of the MWC event, is also providing an NFC app that will work with Sony Xperia smartphones and 20,000 checkpoints at the new MWC venue (called the Fira Gran Via) and in some taxicabs in Barcelona. The app is based on a partnership of companies in the region that includes CaixaBank, Gemalto, Telefonica Digital and Visa Europe.
Even though mobile payments has been a major focus for NFC, some vendors promote it primarily as a data transfer technology between NFC-ready smartphones brought within about one inch of each other. Phones like Samsung's Galaxy S III use Android Beam software to rely on the NFC chip in two phones to kick off a Bluetooth data transfer.
Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed. His email address is firstname.lastname@example.com.
See more by Matt Hamblen on Computerworld.com.
Read more about mobile payments in Computerworld's Mobile Payments Topic Center.


text: Big changes are coming to data protection laws in the European Union. Are you ready?\n\nOn Saturday, the U.K. will begin to enforce the amended Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications\u2014better known as the E-Privacy Directive-which it passed last year. Meanwhile, all 27 member nations of the economic and political confederation are debating much broader draft legislation, introduced by the European Commission (E.C.) in January, which would reform and harmonize data protection laws across the E.U.\n\nThe E-Privacy Directive, which the U.K.'s Information Commissioner will begin to enforce on May 26, requires consent for all non-essential tracking of individuals as they traverse the Web, whether that tracking involves tags, cookies or other tracking technology. In other words, Websites must inform consumers in detail about any tracking that takes place on the site and obtain consent before proceeding with the tracking.\n\nUpdating the Data Protection DirectiveLike many other European data protection laws, the U.K.'s implementation of the E-Privacy Directive is an outgrowth of the Data Protection Directive, adopted by the E.C. in 1995 and intended to apply a set of common rules and safeguards for personal data throughout the member countries of the E.U. But as a 'directive' rather than a 'regulation,' it was up to the individual member countries to implement specific laws. \nIn the 17 years since the E.C. adopted the Directive, E.U. member states have adopted a patchwork quilt of data protection laws that vary in both language and the penalties for non-compliance. For example, when it comes to the E-Privacy Directive, some of the member countries adopted opt-in laws, others adopted opt-out laws and still others have considered annual consent procedures.\n\nIn effect, organizations operating in Europe have had to deal with a dizzying array of laws governing the holding and processing of personally identifiable information (PII). \n\nAdditionally, the Data Protection Directive was drafted in the early days of the public Internet: Hotmail did not yet exist and the public had yet to know what the term "Google search" meant. The directive did not anticipate the changes to computing that would come from software-as-a-service (SaaS) and other forms of cloud computing.\n\n"Currently, we have 27 member states in Europe, and each one of those member states have taken it upon themselves to create their own version of the Data Protection Act" says Jason Currill, CEO of Ospero, a provider of global hosting, infrastructure and platform services. \n"Most of them are pre-cloud, based on the Data Protection Directive formulated in 1995. Everything has now changed. Geopolitical barriers have been smashed by the cloud. There are data privacy issues and data sovereignty issues that didn't exist back in 1995," Currill says.\n\nIn January of this year, the E.C. published a first draft of a new legislative package intended to both harmonize the data protection laws across the E.U. member states and update them to address the new technological reality.\n\n"17 years ago, less than 1 percent of Europeans used the Internet," E.U. Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, the E.C.'s vice president, said in a statement in January when the draft was released. "Today, vast amounts of personal data are transferred and exchanged across continents and around the globe in fractions of seconds. The protection of personal data is a fundamental right for all Europeans, but citizens do not always feel in full control of their personal data. My proposals will help build trust in online services because people will be better informed about their rights and in more control of their information. The reform will accomplish this while making life easier and less costly for businesses. A strong, clear and uniform legal framework at E.U. level will help to unleash the potential of the digital single market and foster economic growth, innovation and job creation."\n\nScope of the Data Protection LegislationThe new legislation is expected to have a substantial effect on all organizations that operate or focus on Europe, say Ulrich B\u00e4umer and Stephanie Ostermann of the International Law Office, an online legal update service for companies and law firms worldwide. \nB\u00e4umer and Ostermann say the new laws, as currently written, would increase the regulatory burden on organizations with European operations; increase the amount of time, money and personnel required to achieve compliance; and raise the stakes in terms of potential fines and brand damage arising from non-compliance.\n\n"The new law will apply to anyone processing data in the European Union, as well as those outside Europe which are offering goods or services to E.U. citizens," they wrote in a paper about the new regulation. "For a multinational organization, the location of its European headquarters will determine which E.U. member state's laws will apply and which regulatory authority will have jurisdiction. That said, individuals will be given a wider range of powers to bring personal action against an organization (either in the country where a non-compliant organization is located or in the individual's local courts). Trade associations will also be empowered to bring class actions on behalf of their members. For the first time, data processors will share equal responsibility and liability for compliance with the new laws, raising the stakes for IT service suppliers."\n\nCloud Service Providers Would Feel the ImpactOne of the new provisions most likely to affect non-European businesses attempting to do business in the E.U., or European businesses seeking to use non-European cloud service providers, revolves around data transfer to non-E.U. countries. The extant data protection laws already prohibit data transfers to countries outside the E.U. that don't have data protection laws of the same strength as the E.U.'s laws-the U.S., for instance\u2014unless specific compliance steps have been taken.\n\n"Prospective E.U. customers of SaaS services face significant legal hurdles if they wish to make use of third-party vendor software that runs through a Web browser and involves the hosting of the customer's data-including personal data-outside Europe," Graham Hann and Sally Annereau of Taylor Wessing wrote in a white paper commissioned by VMware and Ospero. They noted that the hurdles include security rules for diligence and oversight of outsourced processing, rules restricting exports of personal data outside of the E.U. and threats from overseas regulator 'long arm' requests for personal data. \n"Concerns about the difficult in overcoming these hurdles, worries about compliance risks leading to regulator enforcement litigation and damage to reputation, coupled with uncertainty about the future shape of proposed E.U. law protecting personal data, has made E.U. business wary of switching to cloud-based SaaS solutions hosted outside of Europe," they say.\n\nThe proposed legislation would give organizations more options for dealing with this prohibition, specifically with regard to binding corporate rules (BCR), which govern multinational businesses.\n\nOspero's Currill says that he's in favor of the new legislation because it will give companies one set of regulations they must adhere to rather than the many different laws currently in place. Ospero has, in fact, already positioned itself to prosper from the E.U.'s data transfer laws by taking a cue from the physical world's warehouse distribution model.\n\n"A lot of these issues kind of go away if you just embrace the local culture that you're trying to do business in," Currill says. "The pitch to a German, to a French person, to an Italian, they're all completely different. The simplest thing to do is to embrace the local jurisdiction and embrace the local customer."\n\nTo do that, Ospero is marketing its data centers as "compliance hubs" that allow customers to operate in a country without the compliance issues involved in data transfer. Essentially, Currill says, customers host an image of their application in an Ospero data center in the country in which they wish to do business, while Ospero manages the data and the application without it ever leaving Europe.\n\nThe new legislation would also put strict restrictions in place with regard to consent requirements. It would require that consent for the use of PII be obtained in advance on an opt-in basis before it could be used, and would require parental consent for individuals age 13 and younger.\n\nIt also mandates data portability, giving individuals the right to demand that an organization transfer any information about them to a third-party organization in a format determined by the individuals.\n\nUnder the new legislations, organizations would be required to prove they undertake regular data protection audits and privacy impact assessments. Additionally, all private sector companies with more than 250 employees, all private sector companies whose core activities involve regular monitoring of individuals and all public authorities would be required to formally appoint a data protection officer (DPO).\n\n"The data protection officer must be empowered by the organization to act as an independent assessor of its compliance with data protection laws and report to the board of directors in doing so," say B\u00e4umer and Ostermann. "The E.U. regulation specifically requires the data protection officer to coordinate data protection by design and privacy impact assessment initiatives and to be responsible for data security initiatives generally. Responsibility for training staff is also mentioned as important. In short, the data protection officer must ensure that his or her organization has adopted good data governance policies and procedures."\n\nThe new legislation would also obligate organizations to notify data protection authorities of data breaches within 24 hours of discovering a breach, or to explain to authorities why it is not possible to provide full details of the breach.\n\nTo give teeth to the new legislation, the E.C. has proposed hefty fines for non-compliance. A provision would allow national supervisory authorities to send a warning letter for first offenses, but serious violations (like processing sensitive data without an individual's consent) would allow those supervisory authorities to impose penalties of up to \u00ac1 million or up to 2 percent of a company's global annual turnover.\n\nB\u00e4umer and Ostermann recommended a number of steps that organizations can take to prepare themselves for compliance with the new regulations.\n\nImplement Good Data Protection Governance MeasuresThey recommend that organizations review their policies and procedures to ensure they reflect a serious focus on data protection issues.\n\n"An organization's policies and procedures are a key benchmark against which its compliance is judged by regulators," they say. "The thought that has been given to both indicates how seriously data privacy compliance is taken. Information provided in policies, whether staff or customer facing, and the practices which they encourage are also at the heart of achieving compliance with two frequently breached principles of data protection law, namely: data security obligations which require "appropriate technical and organizational measures" to be in place to prevent data loss and unauthorized access to data (in other words, companies need to be well organized when it comes to information security); and knowledge\/consent obligations which require an organization to inform its staff, customers and suppliers what data it processes about them, and what it uses that data for (again, internal and externally facing policies provide a key mechanism for supplying that information)."\n\nB\u00e4umer and Ostermann also recommend regular and well-thought-out training programs for staff that handle valuable data. In addition, they recommend organizations make a point of taking compliance seriously by running regular audits and privacy impact assessments before introducing any new significant data processing activities. \n\nSupplier\/Partner AuditsWith regard to data transfer compliance, B\u00e4umer and Ostermann recommend adding an assessment of an organization's data transfer compliance to any compliance review of potential third-party partners. And because organizations are responsible and liable for the compliance acts and omissions of their suppliers, they recommend organizations adopt four mitigation measures, as follows:\nEncryption. One of the first steps regulators often take following a data breach is to require the adoption of encryption technology. Organizations can sidestep the expense and difficulty of implementing encryption on short notice by implementing it now.\nService levels. The data protection laws require companies to have strong written service levels in place with suppliers that are given access to PII. B\u00e4umer and Ostermann note that regulators will look poorly on companies that suffer a data breach if they do not have strong SLAs in place.\nData breach notifications. Some European countries already have data breach notification laws in place, and some sectors (like financial services and telecom) are also already broadly subject to such laws. But the new legislation would extend those requirements to all organizations in the E.U. B\u00e4umer and Ostermann recommend company management determine whether their organization is ready to meet the new requirements.\nSupplier due diligence. They note that in the event of a security incident, regulators will look closely at the pre-contract due diligence undertaken on the supplier. Regulators are likely to look more favorably upon organizations which undertake such due diligence.\nE-Privacy Compliance\nThe new legislation would update the existing E-Privacy Directive to require that opt-in consent be obtained before implementing any device or Internet usage tracking technology. B\u00e4umer and Ostermann say that the biggest challenge many businesses would face is how explain and obtain consent for the usage of such cookies or other tracking technologies without putting off visitors to their Websites. They recommend companies undertake an audit of their cookies and other tracking technologies to assess what they are used for and why. In addition, they suggest companies review their privacy policies with regard to tracking technologies and present notices to users. \n\nThor Olavsrud covers IT Security, Open Source, Microsoft Tools and Servers for CIO.com. Follow Thor on Twitter @ThorOlavsrud. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook. Email Thor at firstname.lastname@example.com


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Kidney (Nephrology)
We treat conditions of the kidneys, as well as the surrounding structures and tissues. The kidneys are a major component of the urinary system, also known as the renal system. The kidneys filter waste from the blood in the form of urine.
The branch of medicine that includes kidney care is called nephrology. Doctors who specialize in the kidneys are called nephrologists.


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Alright, Jalops and Jalop-ettes. I wasn't planning on posting a classic ad featuring the "Japander" phenomenon, where a Western celebrity stars in absurd Japanese TV commercials, for the third week in a row.
But after reader Dhalgren01 informed me about these early 1990s Toyota Celica ads starring Eddie Murphy, I just couldn't resist. How ridiculous are they? Let's just say they're everything you would expect from a combination of Eddie Murphy and Japandering.
In these ads Eddie is hawking the fifth generation Celica, the one that ran from 1989 to 1993. That car's looks don't hold up all that well today, but they're a great example of carmakers' abrupt shift from 80s boxiness to 90s streamlining.
The ad was also done at what was arguably the height of Eddie Murphy's career — by 1989 he had done 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop I and II, and Coming to America, all of which are fantastic films.
In this series of ads Eddie's quick to point out the Celica's smooth four-wheel steering, 10-speaker audio system, and "supa supa" styling. In New York it's almost as popular as Eddie is, wakata? Anyway, the ads are a bit repetitive, but they get more and more silly as they go on.
Check it out and then tell me: what's your favorite Eddie Murphy movie, and what's your favorite generation of Celica?


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1) Brush twice a day!
2) Dress right for the weather.
3) Visit the dentist regularly.
4) Get plenty of rest.
5) Make sure your hair is dry before going outside.
6) Eat right.
7) Get outside in the sun every once in a while.
8) Always wear a seatbelt.
9) Stay away from alcoholic beverages.
10) Smile! It will make you feel better.
11) Don't over indulge yourself.
12) Bathe regularly.
13) Read to exercise the brain.
14) Surround yourself with friends.
15) Stay away from too much caffeine.
16) Use the bathroom regularly.
17) Get plenty of exercise.
18) Have your eyes checked regularly.
19) Eat plenty of vegetables.
20) Believe that people will like you for who you are.
21) Forgive and forget.
22) Take plenty of vacations.
23) Celebrate all special occasions.
24) Pick up a hobby.
25) Love your neighbor as yourself.
Do all these things and you will be a happier, healthier person


text:
- Key Tags
- Plastic Cards
- Hole Punches
- Turnstiles
- Gates & Portals
- Access Control
- Scanners & POS
- Software
How To Order
Call to place your orderView styles and features online
E-mail your logo & textWe create a Proof (PDF) for you to review
You approve the proofWe go to press...
and ship!
Business Manager
- Club Software
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- School Software
- Martial Arts Software
- Loyalty Programs
- Clinic Software
- Club Software for Healthclubs
- Music Schools and Gymnastics
- Dance & Martial Arts Software
- Tennis Court and Pool Management
We have Satisfied Customers Worldwide
"Your prices are great and I appreciated your help with design!"- Sharon L.
"Thanks for the great service, the best deals and for meeting our deadline!"- Gary M.


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"Gaining confidence, one 160-foot fall at a time." That's how Canada-based organization 9 Lives Adventures describes bungee jumping for the wheelchair-bound.
One jumper clearly agrees. Posting the video of her jump to to YouTube, the unidentified woman writes, "first and definitely not the last time going bungee jumping in whistler, BC – Thank you 9Lives Adventures for making this happen!"
On their blog, 9 Lives founder Karim Ladki explains wheelchairs keep jumpers upright and prevent blood from rushing to the head. Wheelchair-bound jumpers also have a special bungee cord that attaches to the chair's axles.
PHOTOS: Bungee Jumping in New Zealand


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MADRAN, JEAN-MARIE (sometimes referred to as Joseph), Roman Catholic priest; b. 13 Feb. 1783 in Saint-Ours, Que., son of Jean-Baptiste Madran and Josephte Gamarre; d. 2 June 1857 in Petit-Rocher, N.B.
Jean-Marie Madran was one of ten children in a poor family left fatherless while he was still an adolescent. An intelligent and pious altar boy, he was brought to the notice of Abbé Pierre Fréchette, parish priest of Belœil. Fréchette was to pay for his studies at the Séminaire de Québec, from 29 Sept. 1810 to 9 Feb. 1813. After ordination on 12 June 1813 at Quebec, Madran served as assistant priest in Saint-Pierre on Île Orléans in 1813–14 and in Sainte-Famille at Cap-Santé in 1814.
His first posts as parish priest started well but ended with Madran desperate to leave. On 15 Oct. 1814, accompanied by one of his sisters, he arrived in the predominantly Acadian parish of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Nouvelle-Acadie (Saint-Jacques) north of Montreal [see Jacques Degeay*]. He quickly pacified quarrelling factions and persuaded the parishioners to complete the interior of the church. Madran himself donated 3,000 livres towards the total costs, which had mounted to approximately 28,500 livres and which the parish, in the midst of an agricultural crisis, was unwilling or unable to meet. But his conversion of a Protestant girl, Marie Brousse (Bruce), in July 1818 so outraged her father and caused such scandalous rumours that Madran asked Bishop Joseph-Octave Plessis* to transfer him. The continued goodwill of many parishioners was shown at a meeting when they voted the return of his 3,000 livres.
In the summer of 1819 Madran arrived in the Îles de la Madeleine, full of optimism: Plessis had considered the islanders model Catholics. But by September of that year Madran was complaining that outsiders had undermined native piety. Moreover, poverty compelled him to ask unsuccessfully for the additional parishes of Margaree and Chéticamp in Cape Breton and to consider the sale of dispensations. By 1821 quarrels between the Catholic inhabitants of Hâvre-Aubert and Hâvre-aux-Maisons, over who was to pay for the parish church and the chapel that they shared, combined with loneliness and poverty to drive Madran to despair. In a letter to Bishop Bernard-Claude Panet* of Quebec, he described this period as three years of misery and begged for a mainland post.
Madran went on to serve a number of parishes in succession: Saint-Joachim in Châteauguay, 1822–25; Saint-Patrice in Rivière-du-Loup, 1825–30; Saint-Georges in Saint-Georges de Cacouna, 1830–32; L'Assomption in Berthier-sur-Mer, 1832–34; and Saint-François in Saint-François-Montmagny, 1834–35.
He was to find a home in Petit-Rocher, N.B. On 26 Aug. 1835 he arrived and took charge of the parishes of Belledune and Petit-Rocher at Nepisiguit Bay. Madran built a new church in Bathurst and completed the chapel in Belledune. Although he found the life exhausting, he considered his parishioners to be people of goodwill and piety who respected him. While at Petit-Rocher, Madran bought several blocks of land and built a private house.
On 15 Jan. 1837 he became the parish priest at Caraquet with responsibility also for Tracadie. But parishioners disputing over church sites once again destroyed his early optimism. Around 1839 he was back in Petit-Rocher. A move to Shediac in 1848 was of an even shorter duration. Finding the church locked and the members of the congregation hostile, Madran quickly returned to Petit-Rocher without gaining the permission of Bishop William Dollard of New Brunswick. By June 1849 he was ill and asking for either retirement or a much quieter parish than Petit-Rocher. Dollard refused his request and sent him back to Shediac and Grande-Digue, where he served from 14 Oct. 1849 to 4 Nov. 1852. Throughout this period he was to be again plagued by contentious parishioners reluctant to pay their tithes.
From 1853 to 1857 Madran was officially the assistant to the priest in Richibucto, but by 1855, once again ill, he had returned to Petit-Rocher. There he was cared for until his death by Marcel Burgo and his daughter, the local schoolteacher, who in return were made heirs to his modest estate which included 140 acres of land, £300 in plate, and £60 of personal possessions. The community of Madran near Petit-Rocher was named in his honour.
A conscientious priest, Madran was anxious to confine himself strictly to spiritual duties. He tried to avoid the frequent controversies that other priests in Acadian parishes were encountering in trying to re-establish church control after the independence of the deportation period. His life provides an interesting contrast to those of contemporary Canadian priests such as François-Xavier-Stanislas Lafrance* and Antoine Gagnon* who sought a wider leadership role in Acadian society.
AAQ, 311 CN (mfm. at PANB). Arch. de l'évêché de Trois-Rivières (Trois-Rivières, Qué.), François Aché à Thomas Cooke, 8 juin 1837; F2, J.-M. Madran à Cooke, 17 nov. 1835; F4, Madran à Cooke, 22 sept. 1835. Arch. of the Diocese of Saint John (Saint John, N.B.), Dollard papers, 22 Aug. 1848, 25 June 1849, 3 Jan. 1850. Arch. paroissiales, Saint-Pierre-aux-Liens (Caraquet, N.-B.), Reg. des baptêmes, mariages et sépultures (mfm. at PANB); Saint-Polycarpe (Petit-Rocher, N.-B.), Reg. des baptêmes, manages et sépultures (mfm. at PANB). ASQ, mss, 432: 284. PANB, RG 7, RS64, 1857, J.-M. Madran. Gleaner (Chatham, N.B.), 6 June 1857. Guy Courteau et François Lanoue, Une nouvelle Acadie: Saint-Jacques de L'Achigan, 1772–1947 ([Montréal, 1949]). Robert Rumilly, Les îles de la Madeleine (Montréal, 1941; réimpr., 1951). Léon Thériault, "Les missionnaires et leurs paroissiens dans le nord-est du Nouveau-Brunswick, 1766–1830," Rev. de l'univ. de Moncton (Moncton, N.-B.), 9 (1976), nos.1–3: 31–51.
© 1985–2023 University of Toronto/Université Laval
Cite This Article
Sheila Andrew, "MADRAN, JEAN-MARIE," in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed September 26, 2023, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/madran_jean_marie_8E.html.
The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the Chicago manual of style (16th edition). Information to be used in other citation formats:
|Author of Article:
|Sheila Andrew
|Title of Article:
|Publication Name:
|Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8
|University of Toronto/Université Laval
|Year of publication:
|Year of revision:
|Access Date:
|September 26, 2023


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Field-programmable gate array (FPGA). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fpga
Major Vendors
- Altera http://altera.com
- Xilinx http://xilinx.com
- Latice http://latice.com
HDL - hardware description languages
- VHDL (Ada like syntax)
- Verilog (C like syntax)
- SystemVerilog (Extension of Verilog, including verification)
- MyHDL (Python based HDL, some resemblence to verilog)
Running Linux on FPGAs
Modern FPGA boards often have either a real CPU that can interface the FPGA logic (also called hard cores, most often PowerPCs) or at least enough resources to emulate a whole CPU in FPGA logic (so called soft cores), which are bit slower than hard cores. The advantage of softcores is that they're configurable and can be placed multiple times on the fpga.
Famous softcore examples are
- Nios II by Altera (proprietary)
- Microblaze by Xilinx (Linux support since 2.6.30) (proprietary)
- Leon (Sparc V8 compatible) made by Gaisler Research. Opensourced under the terms of the GPL
- OpenRisc available at OpenCores, licensed under the terms of the GPL
There was also a talk by John Williams (PetaLogix) about "Dynamic Co-simulation of FPGA-based Linux Systems-on-Chip" at the ELC 2011 which can be found here
See also John's other talks about FPGAs
- ELC 2010: Custom Hardware Modeling for FPGAs and Embedded Linux Platforms with QEMU
- ELC 2009: ELC2009_Embedded_Linux_on_FPGAs_for_fun_and_profit.pdf
Cheap Dev Boards
Altera based
- DE0 nano By Altera
- DE0 by Terasic http://de0.terasic.com/
- BEMICRO by Arrow Electronics


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!!! 720p preview: vimeo or youtube !!!
- After effects cs3 project (cs3, cs4, cs5, cs5.5, cs6 compatible)
- No plugins required (there is one project with optical flares parameters, and another project with prerendered optical flares, so you don't need to have any plugin installed)
- 30 placeholders
- Well organized compositions
Customization is very easy (replace images, logo and text), if you have any problem please send me a message.
Link for free font included.
Tutorial contains 3 parts:
1. Basic customization:
- how to insert your images
- how to edit texts
- how to replace envato logo
- how to choose background color (6 presets and intructions how to change color)
2. Advanced customization
- how to reduce number of placeholders (if you dont need 30 images in your video)
3. Tips for faster render
- reduce render time by rendering in lower resolution than full hd
- reduce render time by disabling some adjustment layers and motion blur.
I hope you like it and I hope this template will fit great for your promo / gallery / corporate / presentation / portfolio video
Music is not included.
There is several color schemes, please check image, and click on image for full hd preview.
Please rate.


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|An ATtiny84 and nrf24l01+ transceiver
Luckily for us, someone called Maniacbug has produced an excellent pair of libraries (RF24 and RF24Network) which simplify use of these devices considerably, and in a manner consistent with the Arduino way. The latter library makes building meshed wireless networks very easy indeed. (If you're thinking XBee at a twentieth-the-cost, you're way ahead of me.) An RF24Network article describes the design and implementation of an impressively low-cost, whole-building, wireless sensor network scalable to thousands of sensors.
While reading about this sensor network, a question arose: why was it restricted to ATmegas? Surely an ATtiny would be equally up to the job? It turns out that I wasn't the first to think about this. One source of problems was the ambiguous nature of the SPI interface on ATtiny chips.
Although these chips have pins named after SPI functions (SCK, MISO, MOSI) they are primarily for programming the chip over SPI, not for use in the SPI master role, to control other devices. However USI (for Universal Serial Interface), which can be used to implement SPI, is provided. In principle, therefore, it should be possible to talk to an nrf24l01 radio from an ATtiny, and it turns out by forking the Mirf library, it has been done.
Armed with this library, and the ATtiny development environment described yesterday, it was a simple matter to compile the helloworld_tx example from RF24Network. And, while it compiled fine, it failed to link because the resulting binary was too large for the ATtiny84's 8kB code space. An inspection of the library code revealed extensive use of printf_P, which eats up a lot of flash space on an ATtiny. A quick hack with the C preprocessor and the code size was down to 5700 bytes, leaving a couple of kB for user sketches.
When connecting a radio, DO connects to MOSI, DI to MISO and USCK to SCK. CE and CSN can be set to anything reasonable (check cores/tiny/pins_arduino.c for the Arduino pin mappings).
Here are my forked RF24 and RF24Network libraries.


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Hawaii Document Stamp
Are you a newly appointed or established Hawaii Notary Public? Whether you are ordering the Hawaii Document Stamp for the first time or you have recently renewed your license, you can ensure that we provide only the most recent and state recommended Hawaii notary supplies. This rectangle design allows you to choose from self inking, pre inked or hand stamp. We strive to carry only the latest state-approved designs, but be sure to check our detailed Hawaii Notary FAQs to ensure you order what you need!


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E-Visits to Doctors Might Streamline Care
Waiting in the doctor's office, reading old magazines is never fun. But some health systems are allowing patients with minor ailments to see the doctor—without seeing the doctor. These patients can log onto their personal health record portal, answer questions about their condition and get their doctor's diagnosis and recommended treatment.
But are e-visits as good as face-to-face consultation? A new study finds that they appear to result in decent diagnoses for common infections, while also saving time and money. The findings are in Archives of Internal Medicine. [Ateev Mehrotra et al., A Comparison of Care at E-Visits and Physician Office Visits for Sinusitis and Urinary Tract Infection]
Researchers analyzed some 5,000 doctor visits for sinus infections and 3,000 visits for urinary tract infection. Less than 10 percent of all visits were electronic. One possible e-visit drawback: doctors were more likely to prescribe antibiotics after an e-visit than a face-to-face. But patients with an e-visit had just about the same rate of follow up as those who had an office visit. Which suggests that there was not a higher rate of misdiagnosis or treatment failure online. E-visits were also cheaper.
—Katherine Harmon
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]


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- Home
- Departments
- County Clerk
County Clerk
The County Clerk is an elected County Official with a term of four years. Many of the duties of the office are prescribed by the Wisconsin Statutes.
The County Clerk's Office is the official record keeper for many basic County functions, including acting as the Clerk of the County Board of Supervisors. This function includes preparation and maintenance of agendas, minutes and proceedings as well as publishing the appropriate legal notices. The County Clerk's Office also provides staff assistance to the Walworth County Board of Supervisors.
Marriage Licenses
Marriage licenses are issued through the County Clerk's office. On an average the County Clerk's office issues between 800 and 900 marriage licenses per year.
Election Administration
Another major area of responsibility of the Office of the County Clerk is election administration. This involves accumulating the results of each election and canvassing the election returns for each federal, state and county office. The coordination of election programming, coding, ballot preparation, and election notices for the federal, state and county elected offices is also this office's responsibility.
For election purposes, the County Clerk's Office is the filing officer for the County Board of Supervisors and the County Elected Officials. This means that campaign finance and ballot access forms such as nomination papers, campaign registration and declaration of candidacy forms for these offices are filed with the County Clerk.
Other Duties
Pursuant to the Wisconsin Statutes, all county property is held in the name of the County Clerk and the Clerk also acts as legal custodian of the County's property.
The County Clerk's Office also prepares and distributes the County Directory.
The Wisconsin Statutes prescribe a host of other unrelated duties for the County Clerk's office in addition to those listed.


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After a slight hiccup, the folks at Athletic DNA are back on track by hiring NCAA coach Peter Smith as they've begun to finalize junior sponsorship contracts. Also, ADNA (not to be confused with ANTA) is now peddling goods online.
The highlight of their current offerings is this Ignite T, which mascot Robert Kendrick wore during his stint at Roland Garros earlier this year.
The tee — made with moisture-wicking, anti-bacterial material — fit a little too baggy on our skinny frame (but just right if you've got guns like Nadal). I guess we'll have to let the loose fabric billow in the wind. At least we'll stay dry doing it.
Buy: athletic DNA Ignite T, $49.95.


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Myanmar Muslims in remote Rakhine suffer worsening health crisis
By Paul Mooney and Thin Lei Win INN DIN Myanmar (Reuters) - Visitors to the medical facility in one of Myanmar's poorest and most remote regions are greeted by a padlocked gate and a sign reading: "Clinic closed until further notice." A vehicle that used to ferry around doctors and patients parked next to the neat compound of bamboo and brick buildings in the western state of Rakhine is covered in thick dust. Since international aid groups were forced out of the area in February and March, members of the minority Muslim Rohingya community who relied on them say basic health care services have all but disappeared. Worst affected are those in Northern Rakhine State (NRS), home to most of Myanmar's 1.3 million Rohingya who are stalked by sickness and malnourishment and as yet untouched by reforms under a semi-civilian government which took power in 2011. Many people in and around the village of Inn Din, a collection of bamboo houses with thatched roofs and earthen floors a two-hour drive from NRS's biggest town Maungdaw, speak of disease and preventable death. Nurfasa, born in late May, fidgeted in her grandmother's arms, her chest rising and falling with labored breaths. The desperately weak infant opened her mouth wide as if to cry, but no sound came out. For the first 20 days of her life, all Nurfasa had for nutrition was ground-up rice powder mixed with water, because her mother, legs swollen and womb racked with pain, could not produce enough milk to feed her. "We don't have the money to go to Maungdaw and the MSF clinic here is closed," said her grandmother Montai Begum. "We showed the baby to the government midwife in the village, but she asked for money." GLIMMER OF HOPE? The expulsion of international aid organizations stems from the violence that erupted across Rakhine state in 2012 between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, killing at least 200 people and displacing 140,000, most of them Rohingya. When Medecins Sans Frontieres-Holland said it had treated people it believed were victims of sectarian violence near Maungdaw in January, the government expelled the group for flavoring Muslims. Myanmar denies the attack took place. And after a foreign staff member from another aid organization, Malteser International, was rumored to have desecrated a Buddhist flag, NGO and U.N. offices in Rakhine came under attack and groups withdrew. MSF's departure has had "a major humanitarian impact", said Pierre Peron, spokesman for the United Nations' coordination agency UNOCHA. "MSF had built up a program over 20 years and it was reaching places that were very difficult to reach, and that's not something that can be done overnight," he said. MSF hopes it can return soon after the government announced on Thursday that the group could go back to Rakhine, a decision the organization welcomed. Whether that commitment is fulfilled, and under what conditions, may be questions for talks over the coming days. Some aid workers fret that the announcement has more to do with politics than resolving the humanitarian crisis. Yanghee Lee, the new UN human rights envoy to Myanmar, is in the country on a 10-day visit that included a trip to Rakhine. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry may visit Myanmar for the ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting in August, and President Barack Obama is also expected before the end of 2014. Timing is crucial. The health crisis could worsen as monsoon rains set in, making sanitation more difficult, and experts warn of the risk of diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis spreading in the absence of reliable medical care. Than Tun, a Buddhist community leader and member of the Emergency Coordination Center (ECC) set up by the government to oversee international NGOs (non-governmental organizations), confirmed MSF-Holland would be allowed back to NRS. But he underlined the level of mistrust between the Buddhist community and anyone it suspected of siding with Muslims. "Although we have agreed to allow them in, we are rather worried that they will not cooperate with us with full transparency like other INGOs," he told Reuters. "We find it difficult to trust them." TRUST IS SCARCE Rohingya, who are stateless because the government considers them to be illegal Bengali immigrants, often do not dare go to state-run hospitals and clinics for fear of what may happen. Aisyah Begum, 25, was still mourning for her husband, Kamal Husor, who was injured while working in the forest in May. According to Aisyah, the private doctor in Maungdaw, a bone-jarring two-hour drive away, said he could not help. She decided against going to the public hospital - she had heard Rohingya die there - and treated the wound with medicine from a make-shift pharmacy. Nineteen days later, Husor, 55, passed away from what was probably a treatable infection. "Had MSF been open, I would have taken him there," she said, looking forlorn. "I trusted them." Assessing the impact of the aid group's exit is difficult, with no one to provide reliable data on disease and death rates. But in the last quarter of 2013, MSF treated about 9,000 patients every month, and about 1,000 pregnant women in the six clinics it ran in NRS. Over the same period, it referred 160-200 people monthly to hospitals for life-saving treatment. Rakhine officials play down the role of international aid organizations. Government medical teams have been making limited visits to Rohingya areas, but foreign aid workers say they are inadequate. "The Ministry of Health has been providing better health care than MSF or Malteser," Than Tun said. "And we can see this with our own eyes." ACCESS RESTRICTED Access to NRS is severely restricted and only a handful of foreign reporters have been there. A Reuters team traveled seven hours by boat and car from Rakhine's capital Sittwe on a recent visit, one of the few times an international news organization has been allowed into NRS. They witnessed evidence of a growing health crisis in a region where Rohingya say their basic human rights are denied. International news coverage of the Rohingyas' plight has focused on sprawling, squalid camps outside Sittwe where those displaced by violence live. In NRS, many more Rohingya exist in what they call apartheid-like conditions. NRS's maternal mortality rate is double Myanmar's national average - which, at 200 deaths per 100,000 live births, is already one of Asia's worst. In Buthidaung and Maungdaw, two of NRS's three townships, malnutrition rates rival those in war-torn regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Myanmar was a military dictatorship for almost 50 years until a semi-civilian government took power in 2011, but reforms have largely passed NRS by - many Rohingya cannot travel, marry or seek medical treatment without official permission. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who led the fight for democracy while the military ran the country, has faced rare criticism abroad for her failure to defend the Rohingya. (Editing by Mike Collett-White)


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By 2030, scaled-up green power could meet the demands of a large grid 99.9 percent of the time, according to new research from the University of Delaware.
A mix of offshore and onshore wind, along with contributions from solar power, could provide reliable power flow during all but a handful of days in the hypothetical four-year period under study.
Moreover, researchers found that scaling up renewable generation capacity to seemingly excessive levels -- more than three times the needed load, in some instances -- proved more cost-effective than scaling up storage capacity, due to the high systems costs associated with storage technology.
"That's a lot of overbuilding," said Willett Kempton, a professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware and a co-author of the study. Much of that excess capacity would be underused during all but a few days a year, he said.
At the same time, thermal power plants face a similar problem today through inefficiency, he added.
"If you think about it, power plants burn three times the amount of fuel energy needed to produce their energy output," he said. "You burn three units of coal to get one unit of electricity."
Overgeneration would be cost effective even if all excess energy were simply dumped, according to the study. If that excess energy were harnessed -- to offset the costs of heating fuels, for example -- costs could be lowered even further.
Diversity of supply
Reliability has long been the Achilles' heel of renewable energy, which depends on intermittent weather conditions like wind and sun to generate power. However, by extending enough wind turbines and solar panels over a wide enough area, it is possible to achieve approximate reliability by shifting power from active to passive regions.
The study did not assume the introduction of new, more efficient technologies, although it did form its calculations based on 2030 technology costs and energy prices. Its models incorporated four years of energy use and weather data from within PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organization covering about one-fifth of the United States' total electrical system.
The simulations were run on the XSEDE supercomputer network, a project of the National Science Foundation. The researchers ran 28 billion separate simulations, sifting for the lowest possible cost to achieve varying levels of reliability for 72 gigawatts of power.
The simulations found that onshore wind power was consistently the cheapest renewable option, followed by offshore wind, with solar power and limited hydrogen energy storage coming online only when the researchers asked for near-perfect reliability.
"When we modeled to cover 30 percent of the hours under study, the least-cost scenario didn't include any offshore wind or solar, Kempton said. "When we modeled for 90 percent reliability, the scenario included both offshore and onshore wind."
It wasn't until the researchers asked for a scenario in which energy supply met demand 99.9 percent of the time that solar was brought into the picture, he said.
"Solar was more expensive than wind power, but it also matched load most closely," said Cory Budischak, an instructor at Delaware Technical Community College and co-author of the study. "It's more windy at night, but sunnier during the day when you see most of your peak demand. So at 90 percent reliability you can get by with just wind, but to get that last 9.9 percent, you really need solar."
Electric car batteries as backups
By building up renewable energy capacity to around 290 percent, energy could be delivered at a low cost with very little battery storage needed, Budischak said.
"You still need battery storage, but only enough for a couple of days, rather than a couple of weeks," he said.
The researchers ran simulations based on varying levels of battery and electric car storage. Electric cars, which could be tapped during daytime hours to help meet peak demand, provide the cheapest storage option since most of their costs would be absorbed by their owners, Kempton said.
"But with cars, you run into resource constraints," Kempton said. "It's not like every person in PJM is going to have five electric vehicles."
He added, "With wind and solar we don't see the same kind of constraints."
While most analysts believe the world can -- and, if the worst effects of climate change are to be averted, must -- transfer to a predominantly renewable-based energy economy, the role of fossil fuels as backup power supply is still hotly debated.
An article in the Los Angeles Times this week cited several sources as claiming that upscaling renewable would need to be met with a corresponding rise in traditional fossil fuel power plants in order to ensure baseload power supply.
According the University of Delaware study, a large enough system of renewable energy generators could feasibly fill its own reliability gaps. "In our 99.9 percent scenario, we found that, in four years, only five times would you need to bring fossil-fuel plants back online to ensure power supply," Kempton said.
Rather than build new plants, a few of the coal or gas plants offset by new renewable supplies could be kept online to provide that backup power, he said.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500


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After a period of time where it seemed like there weren't going to be any Senate confirmations of President Obama's nominations to fill various offices and positions, things seemed to ease up a bit over the winter. Our new Secretary of State sailed through confirmation with little more than a slight breeze in his face, and even the Secretary of Defense was dragged over the finish line after a rather rough scrum. But now the idea of confirmation battles is back in vogue.
President Barack Obama's latest round of Cabinet-level nominees is running into deep resistance in the Senate, pitching Democrats and Republicans into another tense standoff over White House appointments.
Just days after Republicans used Senate rules to block two nominees in committee despite the fact that both have the support of a majority of senators, Democrats are planning to force committee votes without Republican consent.
If Democrats do push the nominees through to the full Senate, they would almost certainly set off a Republican filibuster, which would jeopardize the confirmations and, for now, leave vacancies at the top of two federal agencies.
The nominations in question include a couple of real doozies which certainly wouldn't have been my choices, but then I wasn't elected President last November. Thomas Perez for Labor just looks like another huge win for unions and an anchor on private business. Gina McCarthy actually has some supporters among Republicans, which puzzles me, but I've never expected anything but trouble coming from the EPA while any Democrat is in the White House, so there's little to say there. And how Penny Pritzker's name ever showed up on a short list for Commerce is a mystery, as her most compelling qualifications all seem to involve the amount of money she raised for Obama.
But with all that said, confirmations are something that have to happen in every administration. I've certainly been criticized here for saying it before, but Obama did win the election, and he's only going to nominate people who reflect his views. If we want better nominees who agree with us, we need to do a better job of winning presidential elections.
The tactics being employed on both sides should be troubling in terms of what will happen in the future. Having all of the GOP members of a committee boycott a meeting to squelch a vote on a nominee can be viewed as little else than a straight abrogation of the duties you agreed to when you accepted a position on that committee. Having the Democrats craft a counter-strategy to arrange for votes without any representation from the other side is nearly as bad. And the latest tactic on display by the GOP – pulling a procedural maneuver to stop the adjournment of a session for no other reason than to prevent committees from even meeting – seems to be an indication that the rules system has failed us and the current structure is broken beyond usefulness.
And while nobody wants to be reminded of it, the shoe always winds up on the other foot. Yes, the Democrats started this when Bush was in office and they held more control in Congress, but the tit-for-tat is escalating. The day will come when there is a Republican in the White House again, and the Democrats will still hold a significant number of seats in both chambers. Will we still be having the same arguments then, with the only difference being which side is flying the obstructionist flag? It seems to me that maybe now is the time for both parties to agree to change the rules to get business done a bit more efficiently and just be prepared to accept that they will both be on the losing end of stick at various times in the future.


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China Tests a Small Smart Electric Grid
China has begun testing smart-grid technology that could eventually be deployed nationwide to make the delivery of electricity more reliable and efficient. It might also serve as a way to deliver high-speed Internet, TV, and telephony to the farthest reaches of the country.
The State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) is running the smart-grid project using passive optical networking (PON) technology—a high-bandwidth data wiring that can be run inside electric power cables without interference. Around 86,000 premises in China have so far been connected to the grid; if the project goes nationwide, it would cost around $2 billion to deploy.
Smart grids use computer networking to let utilities monitor everything from electricity use in customers' homes to the performance of generators at power stations in real time. The concept has gained much attention in the United States but has been slow to catch on. This is partly because regional utilities have different ideas about how to best connect the last mile of the smart grid to users' homes, says Rajit Gadh, a professor in UCLA's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
"We have about 3,000 utilities in the United States compared to two main utilities in China," Gadh says. "In our infrastructure, there is a mix of technologies that has been deployed for communications and that ranges from broadband to wireless."
China's nascent smart grid could help spur development of the underlying technology. "This is the largest utility company in the world, covering most of China, so it could potentially have a huge influence on the opportunities for equipment and component vendors," says Julie Kunstler, author of a report, The Merger of China's Smart Grid and PON—A Potential Perfect Storm, published recently by analyst firm Ovum. "The SGCC has a lot of money."
The SGCC is certainly spending big on smart-grid technologies, announcing plans in 2011 to throw $100 billion at related projects. It has 286 million customers and plans to achieve 100 percent smart-meter penetration by the end of 2015, according to Ovum.
Aside from local players like Huawei, ZTE and FiberHome, U.S. companies like Broadcom, Qualcomm Atheros, and Marvell that manufacture media access controller (MAC) chips for PON systems could benefit from the venture, according to Kunstler.
The question is whether the project will go nationwide. The SGCC has been looking at LTE and other communications alternatives that are cheaper than fiber for the data communications side of the effort. The use of fiber in smart grids requires networking technology to be redesigned to meet the SGCC's strict redundancy requirements, adapted to interface with other parts of the power grid, and modified for use outdoors.
Ovum's Kunstler describes the use of fiber as "unusual" in smart-grid rollouts, which normally employ Power Line Communication (PLC) or some form of wireless communications, and notes that the larger bandwidth it offers is simply not necessary in most scenarios. This would seem to point to the possibility of SGCC's plan to deliver Internet using the same technology, she says. It could apply for a service provider license, or potentially lease to an incumbent like China Mobile, which currently lacks significant fixed line infrastructure, in a bid to share costs.
Figures published in July 2012 by the China Internet Network Information Centre put the total number of Internet users in the country at 538 million with over half—388 million—on mobile rather than fixed broadband. So there is a huge opportunity for SGCC to improve both Internet penetration (beyond the current 40 percent) and the quality of Internet services to citizens by offering fixed line fiber to its users.
The entire project could also serve as a test case—showing utilities in the U.S. and elsewhere whether such a costly, large-scale project is achievable, and perhaps pointing to a novel solution to nationwide super-fast broadband coverage.
"Utilities touch every home, so why not take it a step further and say, 'If I already have a customer service relationship with you, let's take it to the next level and become your communications service provider,' " says Kunstler.
The main barriers in the U.S., however, are still cost-based rather than technological. Utility EPB is using fiber for its smart-grid network in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but nothing on the scale of a potential nationwide SGCC rollout. And utilities already have fiber cabling running alongside electrical power cables—but only in high- and medium-voltage areas, so there are major expenses associate with adding in fiber for residential and business subscribers, especially to underground power cabling, says Kunstler.
Some academics have also voiced skepticism that the approach could work in the United States. Michael Caramanis, a professor in Boston University's College of Engineering, says the synergy between fiber and smart grids is debatable. "It is not clear that the PON communications tech is a direction that we should mandate and subsidize in the U.S.," he says.
Clive Longbottom, founder of analyst firm Quocirca, goes further, arguing that America's free market economy may not be the right climate to foster such a radical, large-scale plan. "This is where [China's] pseudo-capitalist, centrally controlled system has its strengths, against the entrenched capitalist system we have here where the concerned parties tend to see ownership as being power, rather than capability," he argues.
UCLA's Gadh is more optimistic, however. Despite the different market conditions in the U.S., he believes utilities there may benefit from observing the SGCC pilot—although it would be down to each individual company to decide whether to follow suit. "I am sure there will be research and trial and error, and there will be lessons learned from the project in China," he says. "Based on lessons learned, American utilities would be able to determine if the technology is suitable for them."
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