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Accent in Japanese Phonology
Haruo Kubozono
The word accent system of Tokyo Japanese might look quite complex with a number of accent patterns and rules. However, recent research has shown that it is not as complex as has been assumed if one incorporates the notion of markedness into the analysis: nouns have only two productive accent patterns, the antepenultimate and the unaccented pattern, and different accent rules can be generalized if one focuses on these two productive accent patterns.
The word accent system raises some new interesting issues. One of them concerns the fact that a majority of nouns are 'unaccented,' that is, they are pronounced with a rather flat pitch pattern, apparently violating the principle of obligatoriness. A careful analysis of noun accentuation reveals that this strange accent pattern occurs in some linguistically predictable structures. In morphologically simplex nouns, it typically tends to emerge in four-mora nouns ending in a sequence of light syllables. In compound nouns, on the other hand, it emerges due to multiple factors, such as compound-final deaccenting morphemes, deaccenting pseudo-morphemes, and some types of prosodic configurations.
Japanese pitch accent exhibits an interesting aspect in its interactions with other phonological and linguistic structures. For example, the accent of compound nouns is closely related with rendaku, or sequential voicing; the choice between the accented and unaccented patterns in certain types of compound nouns correlates with the presence or absence of the sequential voicing. Moreover, whether the compound accent rule applies to a certain compound depends on its internal morphosyntactic configuration as well as its meaning; alternatively, the compound accent rule is blocked in certain types of morphosyntactic and semantic structures.
Finally, careful analysis of word accent sheds new light on the syllable structure of the language, notably on two interrelated questions about diphthong-hood and super-heavy syllables. It provides crucial insight into 'diphthongs,' or the question of which vowel sequence constitutes a diphthong, against a vowel sequence across a syllable boundary. It also presents new evidence against trimoraic syllables in the language.
Articulatory Phonetics
Marie K. Huffman
Articulatory phonetics is concerned with the physical mechanisms involved in producing spoken language. A fundamental goal of articulatory phonetics is to relate linguistic representations to articulator movements in real time and the consequent acoustic output that makes speech a medium for information transfer. Understanding the overall process requires an appreciation of the aerodynamic conditions necessary for sound production and the way that the various parts of the chest, neck, and head are used to produce speech. One descriptive goal of articulatory phonetics is the efficient and consistent description of the key articulatory properties that distinguish sounds used contrastively in language. There is fairly strong consensus in the field about the inventory of terms needed to achieve this goal. Despite this common, segmental, perspective, speech production is essentially dynamic in nature. Much remains to be learned about how the articulators are coordinated for production of individual sounds and how they are coordinated to produce sounds in sequence. Cutting across all of these issues is the broader question of which aspects of speech production are due to properties of the physical mechanism and which are the result of the nature of linguistic representations. A diversity of approaches is used to try to tease apart the physical and the linguistic contributions to the articulatory fabric of speech sounds in the world's languages. A variety of instrumental techniques are currently available, and improvement in safe methods of tracking articulators in real time promises to soon bring major advances in our understanding of how speech is produced.
Clinical Linguistics
Louise Cummings
Clinical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that applies linguistic concepts and theories to the study of language disorders. As the name suggests, clinical linguistics is a dual-facing discipline. Although the conceptual roots of this field are in linguistics, its domain of application is the vast array of clinical disorders that may compromise the use and understanding of language. Both dimensions of clinical linguistics can be addressed through an examination of specific linguistic deficits in individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders, craniofacial anomalies, adult-onset neurological impairments, psychiatric disorders, and neurodegenerative disorders. Clinical linguists are interested in the full range of linguistic deficits in these conditions, including phonetic deficits of children with cleft lip and palate, morphosyntactic errors in children with specific language impairment, and pragmatic language impairments in adults with schizophrenia.
Like many applied disciplines in linguistics, clinical linguistics sits at the intersection of a number of areas. The relationship of clinical linguistics to the study of communication disorders and to speech-language pathology (speech and language therapy in the United Kingdom) are two particularly important points of intersection. Speech-language pathology is the area of clinical practice that assesses and treats children and adults with communication disorders. All language disorders restrict an individual's ability to communicate freely with others in a range of contexts and settings. So language disorders are first and foremost communication disorders. To understand language disorders, it is useful to think of them in terms of points of breakdown on a communication cycle that tracks the progress of a linguistic utterance from its conception in the mind of a speaker to its comprehension by a hearer. This cycle permits the introduction of a number of important distinctions in language pathology, such as the distinction between a receptive and an expressive language disorder, and between a developmental and an acquired language disorder. The cycle is also a useful model with which to conceptualize a range of communication disorders other than language disorders. These other disorders, which include hearing, voice, and fluency disorders, are also relevant to clinical linguistics.
Clinical linguistics draws on the conceptual resources of the full range of linguistic disciplines to describe and explain language disorders. These disciplines include phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse. Each of these linguistic disciplines contributes concepts and theories that can shed light on the nature of language disorder. A wide range of tools and approaches are used by clinical linguists and speech-language pathologists to assess, diagnose, and treat language disorders. They include the use of standardized and norm-referenced tests, communication checklists and profiles (some administered by clinicians, others by parents, teachers, and caregivers), and qualitative methods such as conversation analysis and discourse analysis. Finally, clinical linguists can contribute to debates about the nosology of language disorders. In order to do so, however, they must have an understanding of the place of language disorders in internationally recognized classification systems such as the 2013 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) of the American Psychiatric Association.
Direct Perception of Speech
Carol A. Fowler
The theory of speech perception as direct derives from a general direct-realist account of perception. A realist stance on perception is that perceiving enables occupants of an ecological niche to know its component layouts, objects, animals, and events. "Direct" perception means that perceivers are in unmediated contact with their niche (mediated neither by internally generated representations of the environment nor by inferences made on the basis of fragmentary input to the perceptual systems). Direct perception is possible because energy arrays that have been causally structured by niche components and that are available to perceivers specify (i.e., stand in 1:1 relation to) components of the niche. Typically, perception is multi-modal; that is, perception of the environment depends on specifying information present in, or even spanning, multiple energy arrays.
Applied to speech perception, the theory begins with the observation that speech perception involves the same perceptual systems that, in a direct-realist theory, enable direct perception of the environment. Most notably, the auditory system supports speech perception, but also the visual system, and sometimes other perceptual systems. Perception of language forms (consonants, vowels, word forms) can be direct if the forms lawfully cause specifying patterning in the energy arrays available to perceivers. In Articulatory Phonology, the primitive language forms (constituting consonants and vowels) are linguistically significant gestures of the vocal tract, which cause patterning in air and on the face. Descriptions are provided of informational patterning in acoustic and other energy arrays. Evidence is next reviewed that speech perceivers make use of acoustic and cross modal information about the phonetic gestures constituting consonants and vowels to perceive the gestures.
Significant problems arise for the viability of a theory of direct perception of speech. One is the "inverse problem," the difficulty of recovering vocal tract shapes or actions from acoustic input. Two other problems arise because speakers coarticulate when they speak. That is, they temporally overlap production of serially nearby consonants and vowels so that there are no discrete segments in the acoustic signal corresponding to the discrete consonants and vowels that talkers intend to convey (the "segmentation problem"), and there is massive context-sensitivity in acoustic (and optical and other modalities) patterning (the "invariance problem"). The present article suggests solutions to these problems.
The article also reviews signatures of a direct mode of speech perception, including that perceivers use cross-modal speech information when it is available and exhibit various indications of perception-production linkages, such as rapid imitation and a disposition to converge in dialect with interlocutors.
An underdeveloped domain within the theory concerns the very important role of longer- and shorter-term learning in speech perception. Infants develop language-specific modes of attention to acoustic speech signals (and optical information for speech), and adult listeners attune to novel dialects or foreign accents. Moreover, listeners make use of lexical knowledge and statistical properties of the language in speech perception. Some progress has been made in incorporating infant learning into a theory of direct perception of speech, but much less progress has been made in the other areas.
Walter Bisang
Linguistic change not only affects the lexicon and the phonology of words, it also operates on the grammar of a language. In this context, grammaticalization is concerned with the development of lexical items into markers of grammatical categories or, more generally, with the development of markers used for procedural cueing of abstract relationships out of linguistic items with concrete referential meaning. A well-known example is the English verb go in its function of a future marker, as in She is going to visit her friend. Phenomena like these are very frequent across the world's languages and across many different domains of grammatical categories. In the last 50 years, research on grammaticalization has come up with a plethora of (a) generalizations, (b) models of how grammaticalization works, and (c) methodological refinements.
On (a): Processes of grammaticalization develop gradually, step by step, and the sequence of the individual stages follows certain clines as they have been generalized from cross-linguistic comparison (unidirectionality). Even though there are counterexamples that go against the directionality of various clines, their number seems smaller than assumed in the late 1990s.
On (b): Models or scenarios of grammaticalization integrate various factors. Depending on the theoretical background, grammaticalization and its results are motivated either by the competing motivations of economy vs. iconicity/explicitness in functional typology or by a change from movement to merger in the minimalist program. Pragmatic inference is of central importance for initiating processes of grammaticalization (and maybe also at later stages), and it activates mechanisms like reanalysis and analogy, whose status is controversial in the literature. Finally, grammaticalization does not only work within individual languages/varieties, it also operates across languages. In situations of contact, the existence of a certain grammatical category may induce grammaticalization in another language.
On (c): Even though it is hard to measure degrees of grammaticalization in terms of absolute and exact figures, it is possible to determine relative degrees of grammaticalization in terms of the autonomy of linguistic signs. Moreover, more recent research has come up with criteria for distinguishing grammaticalization and lexicalization (defined as the loss of productivity, transparency, and/or compositionality of former productive, transparent, and compositional structures).
In spite of these findings, there are still quite a number of questions that need further research. Two questions to be discussed address basic issues concerning the overall properties of grammaticalization. (1) What is the relation between constructions and grammaticalization? In the more traditional view, constructions are seen as the syntactic framework within which linguistic items are grammaticalized. In more recent approaches based on construction grammar, constructions are defined as combinations of form and meaning. Thus, grammaticalization can be seen in the light of constructionalization, i.e., the creation of new combinations of form and meaning. Even though constructionalization covers many apects of grammaticalization, it does not exhaustively cover the domain of grammaticalization. (2) Is grammaticalization cross-linguistically homogeneous, or is there a certain range of variation? There is evidence from East and mainland Southeast Asia that there is cross-linguistic variation to some extent.
Korean Phonetics and Phonology
Young-mee Yu Cho
Due to a number of unusual and interesting properties, Korean phonetics and phonology have been generating productive discussion within modern linguistic theories, starting from structuralism, moving to classical generative grammar, and more recently to post-generative frameworks of Autosegmental Theory, Government Phonology, Optimality Theory, and others. In addition, it has been discovered that a description of important issues of phonology cannot be properly made without referring to the interface between phonetics and phonology on the one hand, and phonology and morpho-syntax on the other. Some phonological issues from Standard Korean are still under debate and will likely be of value in helping to elucidate universal phonological properties with regard to phonation contrast, vowel and consonant inventories, consonantal markedness, and the motivation for prosodic organization in the lexicon.
Mayan Languages
Nora C. England
Mayan languages are spoken by over 5 million people in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, and Honduras. There are around 30 different languages today, ranging in size from fairly large (about a million speakers) to very small (fewer than 30 speakers). All Mayan languages are endangered given that at least some children in some communities are not learning the language, and two languages have disappeared since European contact. Mayas developed the most elaborated and most widely attested writing system in the Americas (starting about 300 BC).
The sounds of Mayan languages consist of a voiceless stop and affricate series with corresponding glottalized stops (either implosive and ejective) and affricates, glottal stop, voiceless fricatives (including h in some of them inherited from Proto-Maya), two to three nasals, three to four approximants, and a five vowel system with contrasting vowel length (or tense/lax distinctions) in most languages. Several languages have developed contrastive tone.
The major word classes in Mayan languages include nouns, verbs, adjectives, positionals, and affect words. The difference between transitive verbs and intransitive verbs is rigidly maintained in most languages. They usually use the same aspect markers (but not always). Intransitive verbs only indicate their subjects while transitive verbs indicate both subjects and objects. Some languages have a set of status suffixes which is different for the two classes. Positionals are a root class whose most characteristic word form is a non-verbal predicate. Affect words indicate impressions of sounds, movements, and activities. Nouns have a number of different subclasses defined on the basis of characteristics when possessed, or the structure of compounds. Adjectives are formed from a small class of roots (under 50) and many derived forms from verbs and positionals.
Predicate types are transitive, intransitive, and non-verbal. Non-verbal predicates are based on nouns, adjectives, positionals, numbers, demonstratives, and existential and locative particles. They are distinct from verbs in that they do not take the usual verbal aspect markers. Mayan languages are head marking and verb initial; most have VOA flexible order but some have VAO rigid order. They are morphologically ergative and also have at least some rules that show syntactic ergativity. The most common of these is a constraint on the extraction of subjects of transitive verbs (ergative) for focus and/or interrogation, negation, or relativization. In addition, some languages make a distinction between agentive and non-agentive intransitive verbs. Some also can be shown to use obviation and inverse as important organizing principles. Voice categories include passive, antipassive and agent focus, and an applicative with several different functions.
Pitch Accent in Korean
Chiyuki Ito and Michael J. Kenstowicz
Typologically, pitch-accent languages stand between stress languages like Spanish and tone languages like Shona, and share properties of both. In a stress language, typically just one syllable per word is accented and bears the major stress (cf. Spanish sábana 'sheet,' sabána 'plain,' panamá 'Panama'). In a tone language, the number of distinctions grows geometrically with the size of the word. So in Shona, which contrasts high versus low tone, trisyllabic words have eight possible pitch patterns. In a canonical pitch-accent language such as Japanese, just one syllable (or mora) per word is singled out as distinctive, as in Spanish. Each syllable in the word is assigned a high or low tone (as in Shona); however, this assignment is predictable based on the location of the accented syllable.
The Korean dialects spoken in the southeast Kyengsang and northeast Hamkyeng regions retain the pitch-accent distinctions that developed by the period of Middle Korean (15th–16th centuries). For example, in Hamkyeng a three-syllable word can have one of four possible pitch patterns, which are assigned by rules that refer to the accented syllable. The accented syllable has a high tone, and following syllables have low tones. Then the high tone of the accented syllable spreads up to the initial syllable, which is low. Thus, /MUcike/ 'rainbow' is realized as high-low-low, /aCImi/ 'aunt' is realized as low-high-low, and /menaRI/ 'parsley' is realized as low-high-high. An atonic word such as /cintallɛ/ 'azalea' has the same low-high-high pitch pattern as 'parsley' when realized alone. But the two types are distinguished when combined with a particle such as /MAN/ 'only' that bears an underlying accent: /menaRI+MAN/ 'only parsely' is realized as low-high-high-low while /cintallɛ+MAN/ 'only azelea' is realized as low-high-high-high. This difference can be explained by saying that the underlying accent on the particle is deleted if the stem bears an accent. The result is that only one syllable per word may bear an accent (similar to Spanish). On the other hand, since the accent is realized with pitch distinctions, tonal assimilation rules are prevalent in pitch-accent languages.
This article begins with a description of the Middle Korean pitch-accent system and its evolution into the modern dialects, with a focus on Kyengsang. Alternative synchronic analyses of the accentual alternations that arise when a stem is combined with inflectional particles are then considered. The discussion proceeds to the phonetic realization of the contrasting accents, their realizations in compounds and phrases, and the adaptation of loanwords. The final sections treat the lexical restructuring and variable distribution of the pitch accents and their emergence from predictable word-final accent in an earlier stage of Proto-Korean.
Speech Perception and Generalization Across Talkers and Accents
Kodi Weatherholtz and T. Florian Jaeger
The seeming ease with which we usually understand each other belies the complexity of the processes that underlie speech perception. One of the biggest computational challenges is that different talkers realize the same speech categories (e.g., /p/) in physically different ways. We review the mixture of processes that enable robust speech understanding across talkers despite this lack of invariance. These processes range from automatic pre-speech adjustments of the distribution of energy over acoustic frequencies (normalization) to implicit statistical learning of talker-specific properties (adaptation, perceptual recalibration) to the generalization of these patterns across groups of talkers (e.g., gender differences).
Vowel Harmony
Harry van der Hulst
The subject of this article is vowel harmony. In its prototypical form, this phenomenon involves agreement between all vowels in a word for some phonological property (such as palatality, labiality, height or tongue root position). This agreement is then evidenced by agreement patterns within morphemes and by alternations in vowels when morphemes are combined into complex words, thus creating allomorphic alternations. Agreement involves one or more harmonic features for which vowels form harmonic pairs, such that each vowel has a harmonic counterpart in the other set. I will focus on vowels that fail to alternate, that are thus neutral (either inherently or in a specific context), and that will be either opaque or transparent to the process. We will compare approaches that use underspecification of binary features and approaches that use unary features. For vowel harmony, vowels are either triggers or targets, and for each, specific conditions may apply. Vowel harmony can be bidirectional or unidirectional and can display either a root control pattern or a dominant/recessive pattern.


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A while ago, we covered a comparison between RISC OS and AmigaOS from a 'political' angle, in terms of OS ownership and the battle of native hardware versus emulation. AmigaOS, like RISC OS, is a minority OS that has seen better days but after being handed from company to company, it's starting to look up. The closed source OS recently celebrated its 20th birthday, so its age is comparable to RISC OS. Its developers have created a new website, including a page with 20 key features. Of all the operating systems on the planet, comparing RISC OS to AmigaOS is probably the fairest. Despite Apple's image as the 'little guy' in the computer industry, Mac OS X benefits from billions of dollars in the bank, which afforded them a totally new platform and kernel. The Mac OS dock and filer are comparable to their RISC OS counterparts, but that's about as far as it goes. Microsoft's Windows couldn't be any more different, and the development model of Linux and its Unix roots set it apart from RISC OS.
This isn't an attempt to bash AmigaOS - far from it. The OS, which aims to make computing fun again, deserves kudos for setting up an informative and friendly online presence, and for its advances in modern hardware support. While we have a few things in common with them, it's also a source of ideas for the future.
Full Story [2].

subset: commoncrawl


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Class of 2008
Director, Healthcare Compliance Certification Program
Amy Matey administers all aspects of Seton Hall Law's highly regarded U.S. Healthcare Compliance Certification Programs, including those held at the Law School and on the West Coast. She also provides programmatic support for the European and Asia-Pacific Healthcare Compliance Programs, Center events and educational programs.
Prior to joining Seton Hall Law School, Amy was an associate attorney at the law firm of Porzio, Bromberg & Newman. She then served as Assistant Counsel to Governor Chris Christie. Amy earned her J.D. from Seton Hall Law School and her B.A. in Psychology from Rutgers University.
View All ALUMNI COUNCIL MEMBERS >>


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All levels (some knowledge of crow quill pen techniques is suggested)
This class meets on Wednesday, Thursday & Friday, October 29, 30 & 31, 10 am – 4 pm. Bring a bag lunch. Materials list available here.
Pen and ink is an expressive medium and is particularly well suited to the detailed nature of botanical subjects. However, it is often considered difficult to handle. In this class you will learn to take the fear out of inking by mastering the development of an ink drawing from pencil sketch to finished ink rendering. Developing the drawing in stages, you will have the freedom to make a pencil sketch and a tonal study, plan compositional ideas, try out ink techniques to test which ones you like for your subject and transfer your image before you proceed to ink your drawing. Dry and live plants will be available to study in class. You may also bring your own plant to draw, but make sure that you choose a plant that will survive for the duration of the three days of the class.
Carol Ann Morley is a professional artist and dedicated teacher working in Milton, NH. She founded the Botanical Art and Illustration Certificate Program at the New York Botanical Garden and teaches botanical art and drawing at The New York Botanical Garden, the Wellesley College Botanic Garden and Sanctuary Arts in Eliot, ME, in addition to the Berkshire Botanical Garden.


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Cabin Creek West Virginia in Kanawha county.
Cabin Creek, West Virginia is located in Kanawha county within the zipcode 25035. With a total of 0 golf courses in Cabin Creek, it lies at an elevation of 603 feet above sea level. The current date and time in Cabin Creek West Virginia is March 23, 2018, 10:21 am. Add a course for free by clicking here or contact us here.


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American Airlines canceled one of its seven daily Sea-Tac Dallas flights today as it tried to recover from a rash of storms that struck the Dallas-Fort Worth area Tuesday.
Those storms, which spawned tornadoes, destroyed dozens of homes in the Texas metropolis.
American's largest hub airport, Dallas-Fort Worth International, was hit by a hail storm that pelted planes on the ground there with hail.
American still had dozens of planes to inspect and repair today, causing it to abbreviate its flight schedule. The airline canceled a 3:50 p.m. flight from Sea-Tac to DFW among hundreds of flights it canceled nationwide.
The airline had cancelled two flights from Sea-Tac Wednesday.
American said it may take several more days before it gets its flights running on a full schedule.


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Kai Cruz: Dirty and Mean
Added On: 19 Mar 13
Marco gets face fucked by Kai and then takes it in the ass, all in rather dusty surroundings and in the end he just gets left lying there.
Tags: analblowjobfetishhardcorecockdicksuckfucktwinkfeetoralgermansneakerssneaxniketnprollschavspenetration************kallamacka
pallmall3 5 months ago
den marco wuerde ich dort auch gerne rannehmen,aber wenn, dann zusammen blasen und bareback ficken.
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This is obviously the second part of this post and, like I mentioned in that post, it is less full of content, since the second church I visited was much more simple and less similar to what I usually like in art.
The main thing I noticed and liked in this church was the use of gold, but unlike in the one I visited beforehand, it is not darkened by the dark background it is on, but highlighted by the white base beneath it.
The main nave is monumental and very decorated, unlike the more simple lateral naves.
The other attraction, so to speak, was the tomb of Cardinal Cesare Baronio, who besides being a man of faith was also a historian. The ceiling of the chapel is ornate with gold an white and the subjects represented are putti.
This is all for my trip in Rome. I hope you enjoyed it and do not forget to check out part one.
Thank you for reading.


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Symantec makes improvements to data management and protection offerings
Las Vegas – During its annual Vision conference this week, Symantec announced several changes to what could be considered the core of the enterprise's offerings.
With a focus on streamlining information management and protection, as well as increasing visibility between physical and virtual networks, the changes introduced to Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 (SEP 12), Enterprise Vault 10, and Protection Center 2.0, will offer IT teams across the globe a wider range of options.
In addition to announcing the changes to SEP 12, Symantec also officially opened product beta testing to the public this week. The private beta consisted of 450 organizations, and was mainly used to tweak the software before the masses got their hands on it. The initial testing started internally at Symantec, leading to nearly 10,000 deployments of the alpha and beta versions.
Public registration for beta testing started earlier this year, ending with a peak of 6,500 sign-ups. Of those who were pre-registered for testing, one-third of them were using a competing product, with an overwhelming majority from the SMB market.
The Tech Herald sat down this afternoon and spoke to Seth Shestack, associate director of information security for Temple University. Temple started the alpha version of SEP 12 several months ago. Once the beta was ready, Shestack said he observed "tremendous stability" improvements, along with the new features.
SEP 12 is the first major revamp of the endpoint protection suite in nearly three years. While the software's smaller footprint is sure to get the attention of some, the most significant change comes from the consumer market.
Symantec has bundled Insight 2.0 and Sonar 2.0 into SEP 12, two technologies that have existed in the Norton line for some time. Symantec wanted the two technologies to mature before they were included in the enterprise offering, but it also wanted to ensure that they would work well alongside the improvements developed for virtual deployments.
When speaking about the two additions to SEP 12, Shestack said that Insight was giving Temple tremendous performance gains, especially on virtual servers, where the ability to skip scanning the same file over and over is lowering the amount of wasted CPU cycles and bottlenecks. Sonar, on the other hand, means there is less to panic over when it comes to definition updates.
Overall, Shestack is impressed with what he's seen so far, but plans to test other deployment options later next week. We'll keep in touch with him and report on the testing.
Endpoint protection is a critical tool in Symantec's overall enterprise offering, but data storage and management are equally important. One of the major changes in Enterprise Vault 10 is the addition of DLP. The DLP inclusion allows organizations to prioritize the data they are storing, by leveraging DLP for straight data and email.
DLP can also be included with Social Media policies, allowing data from social media to be archived. This will allow flexible social media access, and offer organizations the chance to leverage the social Web and remain worry free when it comes to many of the associated risks. Another benefit to the DLP inclusion is the ability to target documents for e-discovery requests.
The classification engine that leverages the DLP technology will enable IT to sort mountains of data and select relevant documents faster. Another major change allows administrators to classify PGP encrypted items and store them as needed.
Finally, Symantec is releasing a revamped tool for business intelligence that will work as a single pane of glass for security personnel to view all of the relevant streams of data on their network.
Called Protection Center 2.0, the tool's improvements are mostly related to requests from existing customers. Leveraging data from the entire line of Symantec products, as well as several third-party offerings, Protection Center 2.0 "will offer a centralized view across the Symantec security portfolio and third-party products through three levels of integration - single sign-on, data collection and process automation."
Existing customers will have the ability to get Protection Center 2.0 free of charge later this summer.
Visions runs through Thursday, and centers on training, peer sessions, and presentations from Symantec and its channel partners. We'll provide a wrap-up report later this week.


text:
I had one of those shopping experiences that I really don't look forward to last weekend.
I had to buy new tires for my wife's SUV. Tires for a car or truck are not cheap, so I wanted to find the best deal I could. The back tires were fairly old, and the front ones were getting worn, so it was really time to replace all 4. Often in the past, I have replaced only two at a time, so this time it was going to cost more than normal.
Since I knew this was going to cost a good bit of money, I wanted to try and find the best deal I could by shopping around and comparing prices. With tire prices varying so greatly, depending on the brand, model, and size, initially it looked like I could spend from $90 to $150 per tire. Ouch!
You definitely need to comparison shop to find the best deal when replacing tires:
Know your size, and shop online and call around
Knowing your car or truck's tire size will help here. You can usually find it on the sidewall, but it is probably a good idea to check the sticker on the inside of the door (usually driver's side) to make sure you or someone else has not put slightly different sized tires on than what was recommended by the manufacturer.
At some places, you will be able to check availability and pricing online, and you can call others to save yourself a trip and allowing you to do some quick cost comparisons.
Check out Warehouse clubs
Warehouse clubs such as Sam's Club or Costco are good places to start for finding good prices on tires. I don't have a Costco near me, so I was not able to take advantage of their good tire prices, but I do have a Sam's Club. I checked the tire stock at my local Sam's club online, to look at the prices, and it looked like the cheapest there was going to be about $80/tire, but I would have to order them and wait for them to be delivered to my local store.
Check chain tire shops, like Goodyear or Firestone, and smaller, local shops as well
Don't just assume that the large warehouse clubs will have the best deal, because you never know if a chain tire shop or a local independent shop may have a special running, or have a sale or other discount on the tires you are looking for. Places like Goodyear often have sales and rebates, so you may end up getting a pretty good deal here as well.
Where did I find the best price for tires?
Even though they did not show up online, I decided to swing by my local Walmart to see what they had available. To my pleasant surprise, they had some Goodyear tires for about $65 per tire, or about $25 to $30 cheaper than I had found anywhere else. Since I got there right before they opened, I only had to wait about 1 hour to get them installed, and I was ready to go.
Tires can wear out very quickly if you do not maintain them and take care of them. You want to take the steps necessary so you are not replacing 50,000 mile tires ever 20,000 miles.
Properly maintaining your tires and making them last as long as possible
- Rotate your tires regularly- the standard here is every 6 months or 5 to 6,000 miles, whichever comes first
- Make sure your tires are balanced
- Keep your tires properly inflated
- Get your front end aligned- If your car's front end is not aligned properly, it can cause uneven wear on the tires, causing their lifespan to be greatly reduced.
Image by S. Witherden
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67 WALL STREET, New York - November 19, 2013 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published its Business and Application Software Report offering a timely review of the sector to serious investors and industry executives. This special feature contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.
Topics covered: Cloud Computing Secular Trends - International Enterprise and Consumer Demand - Application Software Consolidation Activity - Cloud Computing and SaaS Trends - Health Care Transition to ICD-10
Companies include: SAP AG (SAP), Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE), Salesforce.com (CRM), Ultimate Software Group Inc. (ULTI) and many others.
In the following excerpt from the Business and Application Software Report, an expert analyst discusses the outlook for the Enterprise SAAS sector for investors:
TWST: In which customer end markets do you think we will see the best demand for enterprise software solutions, and what is happening in those end markets to drive demand? Which of your companies are well-positioned to serve those markets?
Mr. Zukin: In terms of end customer demand, I don't think it's necessarily changing much. I think it's across verticals. I think it's across customer sizes. I think what I've seen from all of my companies is that almost all the companies that I cover are seeing larger deal sizes, are seeing more enterprise-size deals, are seeing greater acceptance at both the CIO level as well as the CEO level. And I think you're seeing even stalwarts like the financial services industry, a more highly regulated industry, start moving in that direction.
I think one area where you've seen a disruption, in particular, is e-commerce. Those customers have kind of been left, I'd say, trying to catch up to the technology disruption that they've seen, and I think the prevalence - the other common theme that I'm getting besides larger/more enterprise acceptance. One of the reasons that that's happening is the need for agility. Businesses need to be more nimble today more than ever, because otherwise they lose business, and the spending on these solutions from the companies that I cover is a fraction of the amount of business that they would lose basically if they weren't investing in these areas.
TWST: What are the metrics you find most meaningful for analyzing the companies in your group that investors in the space should also analyze?
For more of this interview and many others visit the Wall Street Transcript - a unique service for investors and industry researchers - providing fresh commentary and insight through verbatim interviews with CEOs, portfolio managers and research analysts. This special issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.