text:
Conditional Admission
Fontbonne University recognizes the challenges non-native English speakers face when considering becoming an undergraduate student in the United States. That's why we created a unique conditional admission program, a transitional program that blends together ESL (English as a Second Language) classes with academic courses until the student is prepared to enroll as a full-time undergraduate students.
- Low – Intermediate English
- Combination of ESL classes and academic courses
- No TOEFL or IELTS required
- Support classes to help with homework and improving certain language abilities are offered
Undergraduate Conditional Admission Requirements
- Students without a TOEFL score, or a TOEFL score below 65ibt, may apply for conditional admission by completing the
International Student Application for Undergraduate Study.
- Students without a TOEFL will be required to take the Fontbonne
University institutional English placement test (compass) before the
start of classes.
- Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission Students (SACM):
Undergraduate scholarship students must have a 5.5 IELTS to be
considered for unconditional undergraduate admission, SACM students
possesing a lower score may ONLY apply for Intensive English Program
with the opportunity to apply for a conditional letter of acceptance to
the program of their choice once the IEP program has started.
Important Details
- Compass test minimum score required to move or skip levels.
- Students may take Compass test anytime to attempt a level change.
- Undergraduate scholarships fully apply for conditional admission students.
Program Structure
|Language Equivalency
|ESL only
|Compass ESL test 219 or lower
|1 academic class + 3 developmental ESL courses
|Compass ESL test 220-230
|2 academic classes + 2 developmental ESL courses
|Compass ESL test 231-245
|3 academic classes + 1 developmental ESL course
|Compass ESL test 246-259
|Full-time undergraduate
|Compass ESL test 260+
Graduate Conditional Admission
Conditional admission is available on a case-by-case basis for all graduate business programs. A student must earn a 275 on Compass or 6.0 on IELTS in order to enroll in academic graduate business programs. Students cannot dually enroll in graduate academic and ESL courses, and must complete the ESL courses or pass the COMPASS test or submit required IETLS/TOEFL before being allowed to enroll in Business courses.
Contact Us
Questions? Contact our Office of International Affairs: +1 (314) 889-4509 | firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Sorry! This item is unavailable.
Word Art Coaster- NEED, MORE, TEA, HERE
Practical coaster made from popular word art tiles.
Many designs available. Can be personlised and made to order.
Measures 3" x 3". Wipe clean only
Shipping & delivery
This item will be posted to you by Cushion Cottage within 7 days of receiving payment.
|Shipping destination
|Additional items
|United Kingdom
Returns Policy
You have 14 days, from receipt, to notify the seller if you wish to cancel your order or exchange an item.
Unless faulty, the following types of items are non-refundable: items that are personalised, bespoke or made-to-order to your specific requirements; items which deteriorate quickly (e.g. food), personal items sold with a hygiene seal (cosmetics, underwear) in instances where the seal is broken.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – For the second year in a row, senior Joey Rafidi (Los Angeles, Calif.) will represent MIT at the NCAA Fencing Championship and he will be joined by freshman Cordelia Avery (New York, N.Y.) at the competition scheduled to begin this Thursday at Ohio State. Qualifiers for epee and sabre, Rafidi and Avery are the lone Division III participants in their respective weapons.
Avery finished fourth at the NCAA Northeast Regional earlier this month, marking the fourth year in a row the Engineers have received a sabre entry and the second straight season a rookie will be representing the women's team on the national scene. She racked up a ledger of 59-12 in dual competitions as her 17-1 record in Northeast Fencing Conference action resulted in first-team All-Star accolades.
The first men's fencer to make back-to-back NCAA appearances since foilist Spencer Sugimoto '08 in 2005 and 2006, Rafidi looks to improve upon his ninth-place performance from last season. A runner-up at the NCAA Northeast Regional this year, he captured first place at the New England Championship and generated a total of 34-9 in dual competitions.
Avery makes her national debut at 3:00 p.m. on Thursday with action continuing at 9:00 a.m. the following day. Rafidi, meanwhile, takes to the strip at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday with rounds four and five starting at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday. For more information about the NCAA Championship, including live results and video of the semifinal and championship bouts, log on to ncaa.com/fencing.


text:
Earth : North America : United States of America : Midwest (United States of America) : Michigan : Southeast Michigan : Metro Detroit : Wayne County (Michigan) : Dearborn
Dearborn is a city in Wayne County in the state of Michigan. It is known for the second-largest Arab-American population in the United States, after New York City.
Get in
Get around
Visitors should plan at least one full day for the village, and another full day for the Museum.
The village is open 7 days a week, 9:30 am to 5:00 pm. It closes at the end of December, and does not reopen until mid-April.
This is a "must see". A massive historical and entertainment complex, a leading attraction with a keen focus on innovations. Highlights include: Lincoln's chair, Rosa Park's bus, JFK's limos, Thomas Edison's last breath hermetically sealed in a test tube , original historic structures, nice shops, great food, and, not surprisingly, a spectacular history of the automobile collection that is a football field long. Visitors may have many entertaining experiences such as mini-shows, music, parades, train rides, and Model T rides.
Balleys Irish Pub at Michigan Ave and Mason. They have something like 30 beers on tap.
[12] . 347 rooms
Get out
Detroit is about 25 minutes east. If you're not visiting downtown Detroit, you might want to stop in some of the suburbs. There's a nice movie theatre and good restaurants in nearby Canton; Novi and Troy (home of the impressive Somerset Collection mall) are good for shopping and Hamtramck has a sizeable Polish population.


text:
U.S. Futures Pop On Stronger Jobs News
U.S. stock futures reacted positively to the news that the unemployment rate dipped to 7.5% in April and non-farm payrolls continued a positive trend. Photo: Getty Images.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
... the the ... I wanna bring in a timely for Barron's Brendan was the markets this number Ralf ... this is a number that the market likes I think there were some folks out there has been ratcheting down their expectations ... they really seen them come ... over the market this morning and certainly ... he felt that the ten yesterday the film and features this morning the Dow set new supports severe some points I let's jump over quickly to three stocks you're looking at in the markets be the first is linked in ... Lincoln is interesting because ... with Lincoln is one of the social media stocks it's different from its peers ... in that its stock is actually real to deliver ... Facebook and are ... not a good investment so far ... Clinton has been this morning it's not the case ... because leading TV weaker than expected ... growth forecast a lot of hope prices the stock indices and they are coming of the bubble this morning ok another one is AIG ... yet that that wants hers for the poster child for the little bit the last of the financial crisis ... delivers a strong report that beats expectations ... I think the stock is interesting because hedge funds have come to love this topic ... the mood to do it and I'd I think that the here and in fact behind a lot of the rise lately up more than twenty percent this year judging by the market ... ok and last it's the stock but it's still relevant the oil price ... of oil price is suddenly and positive Tara tree gain for the year ... commodity markets as a whole has been very weak this year ... I'm ... loyal to have the biggest rise yesterday and has since I think early November ... aam party that is a rate cut ... in your city you was Khona getting very excited ... this is a lot of home baked into the economy now and the folks also know that if things go south the Fed we pumping money ... thing impact on other commodities like gold and copper t think ... I'd I'd I don't think so tail though gold has been low because of this tragic four after the jobs report you see people are kind of step stepping out of ... article ... on ... those other monies would will follow but just enough to sluggish this year okay Brendan Conway from Barron's thank so much that stuff


text:
rohodge on Family Tree Circles
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I am looking for Asahel Meric Hodge who was born in NY and died in 1876 in Meigs Co, Ohio. He married Sarah Elizabeth Vannest in 1869 in Meigs Co, OH. Any info would help!
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text:
Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that the Liberals did take action. It was project green, which the Conservatives killed when they came to power.
Our party focuses on maternal and child health from the millennium development goals. I think it is important for people to understand that malaria kills an African child every 30 seconds and remains one of the most important threats to the health of pregnant women and their newborn. An estimated 20% of the world's population is at risk of contracting malaria. The disease causes more than 300 million cases each year and kills one million people. Malaria is the disease most sensitive to weather and climate.
Our government has an opportunity help prevent malaria and save lives through taking action on climate change.


text:
LEWISBURG, Pa. - MIT's water polo team hit the road for the Bison Invite at Bucknell University over the weekend and came away with a 3-1 record after losing to host Bucknell (18-12), and defeating Navy "B" (17-11), Notre Dame College (14-5) and Toronto University (13-9).
In MIT's first game of the weekend, Bucknell got an early lead when it scored on sophomore goalie Spencer Boone (Thousand Oaks, Calif.) 30 seconds into the start of the game and then again a minute later. After goals for MIT by freshmen Kale Rogers (Newberg, Ore.) and Zach Nelson (La Jolla, Calif.) and juniors Andrew Dorne (Irvine, Calif.) and Craig Cheney (Sherwood, Ore.), the Engineers were trailing behind the Bison, 10-5, at the end of the second period.
In the remaining two periods, Rogers scored two more goals, bringing his game total to four. Senior Brendan Deveney (Newton Conn.) scored once, and freshman Ory Tasman (Orlando, Fla.) and sophomore Dylan Hallman (La Jolla, Calif.) had a pair of goals each, but the Bison remained out of reach, ending the game with a score of 18-12.
Against Navy "B" on Saturday afternoon, the Engineers got off to a good start, having a slight lead at the end of the second period, 6-5. The last two periods were even stronger for MIT, scoring 11 goals compared to Navy's seven, resulting in a final score of 17-11. Throughout the game, Cheney scored a total of five goals, Tasman netted four, Rogers scored three, sophomore Jack Clark (Laguna Beach, Calif.) and Dorne had two apiece and sophomore Kyle Bowman (Millbrae, Calif.) scored once.
On day two of the Bison Invite, the Cardinal and Gray started things off well with a sizeable win against Notre Dame College, 14-5. Even though the Falcons scored the first goal of the game, MIT quickly got the lead and prevented NDC from making many more goals. Cheney and Tasman were the top scorers with three goals each.
In the final game of the weekend against Toronto, the Engineers started off ahead and remained in the lead for the remainder of the game, ending the game with a score of 13-9. Cheney scored five goals, bringing his tournament total to 14. Junior Michael Farid (Dubai, United Arab Emirates) and freshman Matthew Orton (Los Altos Hills, Calif.) helped further MIT's lead when they made their first goals of the tournament. Dorne, Bowman, Rogers and Hallman also added points to MIT's final score.
MIT will return to the pool when they travel to Connecticut College and St. Francis College on Saturday, Oct. 6 at 12:00 and 6:00 p.m. respectively.


text:
All you need after having set up mplayer with vaapi is a few adjustments: Set rendering from auto detect to software. Then use a special config file .xbmc/userdata/playercorefactory.xml:
<player name="mMplayer" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="true">
<rules action="prepend">
<rule filetype="avi|mkv|ogm|wmv|mov|m2t|mpg|mp4|m2v" player="DVDPlayer"/>
<rule filetype="avi|mkv|ogm|wmv|mov|m2t|mpg|mp4|m2v" videoresolution="720|1080|1280|1920" player="mMplayer"/>
The corresponding script to start mplayer with vaapi (/home/user/mpl-xbmc) looks like this in my case:
mplayer -af volnorm -fs -va vaapi -vo vaapi -softvol -volstep 1 $*
And start xbmc on the console in the foreground, without "&". If you start it with "xbmc &", mplayer will fail to start correctly.
Enjoy! And don't expect wonders. You won't be able to resume and control the way you would with the internal xbmc player. You can just start mplayer using the nice xbmc interface for certain movies.
If you like this post, share it and subscribe to the RSS feed so you don't miss the next one. In any case, check the related posts section below. (Because maybe I'm just having a really bad day and normally I write much more interesting articles about theses subjects! Or maybe you'll only understand what I meant here once you've read all my other posts on the topic. ;) )


text:
Puppy Linux Discussion Forum
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Fri 14 Sep 2012, 13:07
Post subject:
Puppy Support Issues
Subject description: ...namely, problems with getting help in the first place...
This doesn't really belong in the Off Topic section, because this has a lot to do with Puppy.
I've noticed that people who post in the Beginners Help section, get a lot of attention. Everybody (myself included, occasionally) helps folks out who are new and don't know the ropes and have a problem.
However, I don't see the same thing outside of that. I've posted two threads asking for help, and I've not gotten even the dignity of a reply for either one. I don't know if that's just people avoiding me (I'd like to think not!) or if we've got a real problem, but I figured it would be wise to ring the alarm and find out.
If we indeed are supporting primarily the folks in the Beginners Help section, and not everyone else (i.e. if this is NOT limited to me) then that means we're leaving some important people high and dry, and that's a big problem.
One of the reasons I'm hesitant to switch off of WinXP myself, is this. If I can't get help about two simple things (audio won't work on a Compaq box, and Chrome's keybindings are all wrong)... how am I supposed to recommend Puppy to others, and say that there's good support? Why would I want to use it myself?
XP has three levels of support. I can solve a problem myself, many times, because I'm familiar enough with it to figure stuff out. I can also research online, since "everybody and their sister" (as the phrase goes) uses Windows. Or I can call Microsoft, credit card in hand.
With Puppy, there's only two levels: I can figure it out myself, and when that fails, this forum is the only other real place to go (let's leave Puppyite's gang out of things for now). But if I can't rely on the forum to help me, where the heck am I supposed to go then?
...and if it IS just me, I'd appreciate knowing what I've done to deserve such treatment, as I have to admit I'm a little clueless. TBH if I'm just being a general pest, that's OK, I can leave. I'll be very sad, but I can leave.
However, I would like to have this addressed. I've raised this issue before.
If anyone wants to help with the two issues I've yet to get replies on, I'd appreciate it if they'd post in the respective issue threads and NOT in this thread... those threads are as follows:
Chrome issue -->
Audio issue -->
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Joined: 05 Sep 2011
Posts: 2420
Location: Germany
Posted: Fri 14 Sep 2012, 16:03
Post subject:
Hi starhawk.
Maybe it's just because no one knows?
Fri 07 Sep 2012, 01:23
Something seems not to be known...
LazY Puppy
RSH's DNA
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Fri 14 Sep 2012, 16:32
Post subject:
I'd like to think that this forum could handle a few questions about audio and Chrome.
...although, your unanswered thread is evidence that it isn't "just me" -- that there are others whose queries have been ignored.
That's indicative of a problem. I don't think it's lack of knowledge. That doesn't make sense -- we've got people here who really do know Puppy well enough to figure this stuff out. It's not that they aren't knowledgeable. It's that this knowledge is being expended /only/ on the neophytes.
Something I'd like to point out with that last sentence: I'm not saying we should take the access to that knowledge away from the neophytes at all. I'm saying we need to expand that access, so that it covers the entire forum. I won't bother with numbers, because all I have are impressions and those don't translate to numbers well.
TL;DR takeaway here is -- beginners aren't the only ones that need help, so let's get some help for the rest of the forum. I don't think that's an unreasonable request.
EDIT: I do want to thank Flash for popping into both of my previously-ignored threads and trying to help. That's progress!
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Joined: 26 Oct 2011
Posts: 1696
Posted: Fri 14 Sep 2012, 19:37
Post subject:
Don't worry, it's
definitely not
only you.
View unanswered posts wrote:
Search found 9372 matches
I agree with RSH.
Most likely folks who have seen your threads - didn't know how to help out, and folks who might help you out - didn't see those threads...
[O]bdurate [R]ules [D]estroy [E]nthusiastic [R]ebels => [C]reative [H]umans [A]lways [O]pen [S]ource
Omnia mea mecum porto.
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Joined: 30 May 2007
Posts: 116
Posted: Fri 14 Sep 2012, 19:53
Post subject:
Maybe a help topic for Beginners (exist already), Intermediate, Advanced, and Expert users or developers.
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Official Dog Handler
Joined: 04 May 2005
Posts: 13154
Location: Arizona USA
Posted: Fri 14 Sep 2012, 22:54
Post subject:
SFR wrote:
...Most likely folks who have seen your threads - didn't know how to help out, and folks who might help you out - didn't see those threads...
That's why I sometimes edit thread titles - to catch the attention of people who might be able to help. Vague, cryptic or terse to the point of useless titles are a waste of everyone's time.
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Joined: 03 Apr 2007
Posts: 3425
Location: Oregon
Posted: Sat 15 Sep 2012, 00:12
Post subject:
It also seems to be common practice of those logging on and checking for new posts bypass those Asking for Help posts that have more than 1 entry assuming the person has been helped.
At other times, they get involved in specific threads and after replying in them, they log off with the unread posts being removed from the new posts list next time they log on.
Even us old timers have had posts for help go unanswered.
So do not feel alone.
As to your sound problem, I have a Compaq Presario with Nvidia video and sound and I guess I was a lucky one in that it works with most versions of Puppy.
I seem to recall a thread that discussed multiple sound and video cards and if one could find it, it might help.
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Joined: 18 Jan 2012
Posts: 103
Location: Oregon
Posted: Sat 15 Sep 2012, 01:09
Post subject: Some issues just sort themselves out.
I think everyone finds support satisfaction one way or another. That is to say, they work harder at finding an answer. I have yet to see any distros on Twitter - I don't think we'd get laughed at for trying and being first! Can I get a woof woof?
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Joined: 25 Apr 2010
Posts: 1350
Location: England
Posted: Sat 15 Sep 2012, 05:17
Post subject:
Google Chrome 21 for Slacko
- was the subject of your first query and you wrote
Running in, coincidentally enough, jejy69's GNOME Puppy 533. Works pretty good, except...
...it inherited keybindings (I think that's the right term) from Seamonkey or something. All I know is... backspace doesn't go back and shift+backspace doesn't go forward and it's driving me absolutely CRAZY.
Is there a fix for this somewhere...?
Just for starters:
(1) You wrote "GNOME Puppy 533" [not Slacko]
(2) You wrote "Seamonkey or something" [not Chrome]
(3) You wrote "backspace" [not tab?]
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Joined: 29 Jan 2006
Posts: 4353
Location: Sydney Australia
Posted: Sat 15 Sep 2012, 08:39
Post subject:
Often I notice that bugger all people are logged on lately.
And some questions are beyond me.
Also except for 01micko, Jejy69 and pemasu
there hasn't been much Puppy action lately.
And I am not having a go at anyone I missed....OK!
So the crowds are down....including responses.
Sorry mate....no-one hates you.
You're doing OK.
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Sat 15 Sep 2012, 14:10
Post subject:
@Jasper -- I was using Chrome in Jejy69's GNOME 533. (Jejy69 has since replaced it with a Puppy Precise version that I don't like as much.) I *assumed* that the keybindings were inherited from Seamonkey, which was present in that Puplet -- TBH I have no idea why Alt+LeftArrow should be "go back a page". What I do know is that I'm used to the Backspace key doing that, as that's what it is in Windows.
Make sense now...?
@cthisbear: I have noticed that the crowds were thinning. I was hoping that this wasn't the regulars being missing, but I guess it is. Sure hope it's not a 'lack of interest' thing!
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Joined: 05 Sep 2011
Posts: 2420
Location: Germany
Posted: Sat 15 Sep 2012, 14:29
Post subject:
cthisbear wrote:
Sorry mate....no-one hates you.
You're doing OK.
Sorry, i couldn't resist...
cthisbear wrote:
As I often say >>> " I don't discriminate, I hate everybody
Please, Chris, don't take this too serious...
It just did look to me a bit like a fulfilled picture of the wide range of human being.
LazY Puppy
RSH's DNA
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Joined: 25 Apr 2010
Posts: 1350
Location: England
Posted: Sat 15 Sep 2012, 16:43
Post subject:
Try Dillo and/or Windows if you must use backspace and shift+backspace.
In Chrome with a mouse you could click on the left or right toolbar arrows or you could right click and choose forward or back from the menu or from the keyboard you could use Alt+left or right arrows.
So you had at least three simple working solutions and you had to make an almighty fuss. Some forum posters have genuine non-trivial problems where nothing works - I believe they should receive priority.
Using Puppy, which browser(s) have supported your use of backspace and shift+backspace?
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Sat 15 Sep 2012, 17:23
Post subject:
Jasper, I'm an artist by nature. We're persnickety. We're fussy. We want everything a certain way because we have a vision of how things "should" be.
Perhaps I should not have been born with the ability to have this sort of vision?
I saw that I had two problems that were not being solved. Problems that appeared --to me-- to be easily solvable, given the required knowledge. I assumed, however incorrectly, that I was missing a small but simple key bit of information on both problems. I was right -- in the case of Chrome, I needed to know about an extension. In the case of the audio issue, I needed to be poked about having been in that system's BIOS exactly once ever.
But I also saw that there were others with problems that were not being solved.
I wanted to make sure that we all get what we need sometimes: help.
"A friend in need is a friend indeed."
I think you need a vacation, Jasper. Your tongue and your attitude are both a little sharp for this place.
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Joined: 25 Apr 2010
Posts: 1350
Location: England
Posted: Sat 15 Sep 2012, 17:31
Post subject:
Using Puppy, which browser(s) have supported your use of backspace and shift+backspace?
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text:
Basic and expert knowledge
The European standard EN 1672-2
Hygiene requirements for food production machines
Standard EN 1672-2 defines three areas in food production with different hygiene requirements.
Food zone(1)
All system parts and components that have direct contact with foods
The components need to be:
- Washable
- Disinfectable
- Corrosion-resistant
- Non-toxic
- Non-absorbent
- Smooth, continuous or sealed
- Use of special lubricants for the food industry
Splash zone (2)
All system parts and components that come into contact with food that does not return to the production stream.
Planning and design should follow the same criteria as in the food area.
Non-food area (3)
Components that do not come into direct contact with food
To avoid sources of infection, the components need to be:
- Corrosion-resistant
- Washable or disinfectable


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Caves from the Philippines, Indonesia and other areas in SE Asia
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text:
Being a corporate "finance leader" today means wearing multiple hats, if the spectrum of people who attended the 2014 VMA Finance Leaders Seminar April 10-11 in Arlington, VA is any indication. The topics they discussed among themselves during coffee breaks and the session topics covered ranged from today's main human resources concerns to legal and regulatory issues to general economic trends with one thing in common: In today's world, it all affects the bottom line.
Even the weather can come into play, as evidenced by remarks of the conference's opening speaker: Chad Moutray, chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers.
"The year 2013 had two distinct halves," Moutray told attendees. "First we had slow growth in sales, weak exports, public uncertainty," exacerbated by the government shutdown. By August, however, the nation was seeing much forward momentum and by the time the nation was approaching year's end, all the numbers were showing upticks.
"Then we hit the bad weather and saw a huge production downturn that went into the beginning of 2014," Moutray said.
Still, by March 2014, the nation was again in rebound mode, and by the time of the seminar, figures were just being released that showed manufacturing coming up strong again.
In fact, one of the general trends he talked about was that almost all the economic numbers tracked by NAM and other manufacturing-related organizations have reached pre-recessionary levels of growth and a few have gone on to all-time highs. "In some ways it's sad," he said, because it took so long to get there. But as a nation "we're moving in the right direction."
Moutray said other trends he sees are:
- Although some economists have downgraded their numbers because of the rough winter, Moutray said he still expects about a 3% growth in the U.S. economy for 2014. If that happens, it will be the first such growth since 2005. Moutray predicted similar growth in industrial production and about a 3.3% increase in production for 2015.
- Exports of U.S. goods have grown "frustratingly slow" over the last year. Exports to South America, for example, actually fell by about 2% for the year and exports to Canada, one of the U.S.' largest trade partners, were flat for the year. However, Asia, and in particular China, show great promise. Exports to China may see percentage growth in the double digits this year.
- Another indicator of moving in the right direction is the attitude of manufacturers. For the first quarter of 2014, 86% of NAM members had a somewhat or positive attitude, which is 8 percentage points higher than last year. Moutray said the least positive manufacturers are the ones that are small and the most optimistic are firms engaged in foreign trade.
Health Care Reform: What are the Costs?
After hearing about how the nation was doing in general, attendees heard about specific issues that financial leaders are facing. One of the top concerns: What is the true cost of Obamacare?
Gretchen Young, senior vice president, Health Policy for the ERISA Industry Committee, has been dealing with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) since its inception. She offered her expertise in four areas she sees as key to employers in the debate.
The first issue she addressed is the transitional risk reinsurance fee, which is being assessed on insured and self-funded group health plans to cover the fact people with pre-existing conditions cannot be excluded from major medical plans under ACA. The money will used to stabilize premiums in individual markets and the fee is expected to go down each year over the next three years.
During the first year, the fee will cost affected employers $63 per "life covered" (per person including family members, per year). The fees go down to about $44/life in 2015 and about $22/life for 2016. Young reported that the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) department will send a form to employers in November 2014 that will require reporting how many "lives" the company covers. Once the form is back at HHS, the department will send a bill for the reinsurance fee about 15 days after response.
"This fee took many employers by surprise," Young said. "I think what happened is that, until it was broken down to a per-employee amount, we couldn't see how much it will cost some employers, particularly the big guys." Now those big guys are seeing they may have tens of millions of dollars to come up with, said Young.
The second concern is a penalty that applies to employers that, under ACA qualification, do not offer health coverage to enough people in their companies or that don't offer insurance that is affordable enough that employees don't have to go the new insurance exchanges to get health coverage.
Under the new law, companies that do not offer health insurance to at least 95% of full-time employees and their dependents will be fined $2,000 per full-time employee; companies that don't offer insurance that is affordable will face $3,000 per employee covered by the law.
"There's been a delay in implementing this provision so that larger employees (over 100) have to be offering coverage to 70% this first year [instead of the 95%] and small employees (59 to 99 employees) are exempt until about 2016," but the full requirements are coming, Young said.
Both these penalties are triggered by having employees sign up for exchange programs. The difference is that the $2,000 penalty will be charged per full-time employee for every employee in the company while the $3,000 applies only to "each employee that goes to the exchange and is subsidized," she explained.
"A big problem with these penalties is that the rules are amazingly complex," Young said. For example, still to be determined is exactly who constitutes a full-time employee: Are independent consultants, temporary staff, seasonal employees considered full time under certain conditions? What happens when an employee goes on leave or becomes part time?
"These are threshold questions that have to be addressed," she said. "You may think if you don't give a person a W-2 they are not your 'employee', but an IRS auditor may not agree," she said. "Be careful, and know who your employees are," she cautioned.
The other two issues of most concern are the amount of reporting that may need to occur and how employee wellness fits into the picture, she said.
The reporting requirements are "where the penalty hits the road," Young said, because the new reports will determine when and how much an employer may owe.
The two forms created for ACA implementation are IRS forms 6055, which determines applicability of ACA provisions, and 6056, which addresses whether an employer falls under the penalty categories and whether employees are eligible for subsidized coverage on the exchange. Both reports are first due in 2016, "but like with W2s you file the year after" so they cover 2015, Young said. Employers have pushed for these forms to be part of the W-2 process, but so far, that hasn't occurred, Young said.
Besides the concerns of expense to file these reports and the administrative challenges of putting them into place, many of the nation's employers feel the reporting leaves too much room for inadvertent error, Young commented.
The main argument against the reporting has been that "this will only benefit 4% of the nation's employees [those whose companies do not cover them]," Young says. "At some point, does it push employers out of providing health care benefits to avoid the reporting?" she said.
The wellness program provisions of ACA increase the amount an employer can offer as an incentive to employees for participation in a wellness program to 30% (up from 20%) of the cost of premiums for general health and 50% for a smoking program.
The concern here is that adversaries fear the programs are something to replace pre-existing condition exclusions, Young says.
Corporate Investigations: SEC's Concerns
Another specific issue of concern to today's financial leaders is how the nation's regulators see their companies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and its enforcement staff. Martin S. Wilczynski, senior managing director, Forensic Account and Advisory Services for FTI Consulting, brought attendees up to date on the latest SEC actions.
Even though financial fraud enforcement cases have dropped significantly the last five years (from 154 in 2008 to 73 last year), other activity by SEC staff has ramped up, which can affect not only the bottom line, but much more, Wilczynski explained.
"Investigations at all levels are extraordinarily costly, disruptive to operations, bad for morale, staff retention and company reputation, and difficult to manage," he pointed out.
A few specific areas of concern he brought up are:
- SEC is considering using algorithms to look for anomalies on company accounting figures. These algorithms use key words and phrases that might suggest certain pressures or challenges a company faces. "Although this development is not as far along as what's been out in the press, the commission has embraced this concept," Wilczynski said.
- Commission staff has created a number of accounting initiatives on which to focus, including: looking at the difference between what a company presents to the general public and what it shows to its investor base; the difference between what companies report on their books and what they show for tax purposes; any areas where risk figures appear to be taken off the balance sheet; and whether a company makes multiple "revisions" after initial financial results go out. "The commission will be looking at any red flags to see if they are just one-off situations or indications of intentional misleading," he said.
- SEC is increasingly focused on individuals in its investigations, not just companies. "In your role as a financial profession, the commission sees you as gatekeepers of financial information," Wilczynski warned financial leaders. The auditors and legal counsel that used to get all the attention are being joined by people at all levels, he added.
- Whistleblowers are front and center right now, "and you'll see a lot more of this," Wilscynski said, because of new rules that went into effect in 2011. These rules are "incentivizing people" through cash rewards, including some well-publicized cases that netted substantial amounts, he said. "SEC has to look at those who are well-intentioned [in their whistleblowing] and those who are disgruntled in the same way," he pointed out.
- The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forbids certain actions that can be seen as foreign bribes, is getting increased SEC attention. "This is problematic because some of the transactions [that received attention] have been tiny," such as slipping an export official a thousand dollars or a few electronic components, two cases that brought great outrage, he explains. There seems to be "no connectivity between the action that prompted the matter and the amount of the fine," he said.
As far as what SEC staff wants to see, Wilczynski said they are looking for "lots of employee training, and they will want to know that transactions are tested rigorously and regularly and that you have done some vetting with the people with which you do business."


text:
Maritimes win inaugural Tournament 12 in Toronto
TORONTO -- The Cinderella story is complete.
The Maritimes -- an underdog team comprised of players from three Eastern Canadian provinces -- pulled off a number of unlikely victories and left Toronto as the last team standing at the inaugural Tournament 12.
TORONTO -- The Cinderella story is complete.
The Maritimes -- an underdog team comprised of players from three Eastern Canadian provinces -- pulled off a number of unlikely victories and left Toronto as the last team standing at the inaugural Tournament 12.
Backed by a dominating and deep pitching staff, the Maritimes won the championship after beating Quebec-Blue, 7-4, at Rogers Centre on Tuesday night.
"We're unbelievably proud of these boys," said coach David McQuaid. "They came out of nowhere, didn't get the respect they deserved and now they have shown they can play at this level."
Left-hander Myles Vincent threw six scoreless innings without allowing a hit, Cody Shrider homered and the Maritimes held off a seventh-inning rally by Quebec to cap off the memorable five-day event.
Shrider, who cleared the wall in left with his fifth-inning blast, admitted that he didn't think his Maritimes team would be celebrating on the final day when he first packed for Toronto.
"I'm totally surprised by this," said Shrider, who was among the Maritimes' standout players. "We definitely weren't coming in here expecting to do this. It's a little overwhelming and it means a lot.
"It's not often the Maritimes come together and beat teams like Ontario and Quebec."
The Ontario teams were stacked with Canada's most high-profile young talent, Quebec sent a lot of strong players to the tournament and British Columbia is one of the country's hot spots for baseball. But it was the boys from the Maritimes who had the last laugh and defied the odds by going 3-1 in the round-robin portion of the tournament before winning twice Tuesday to capture the top spot.
Right-hander Andrew Case is a big reason the Maritimes stuck around for the Tuesday night tilt with Quebec-Blue.
Case hurled a no-hitter over the seven-inning contest in what was the most dominating pitching performance of the tournament to get the Maritimes into the championship game, overpowering Quebec-White hitters en route to a tournament-high 13-strikeout, one-walk shutout (counts started 1-1 in the tournament to increase the speed of games).
It was the tournament's only no-hitter, and Case, who lost a perfect game when he walked a batter in the sixth inning, was carving up the opposition at will with a fastball that reached 90 mph and a slider he was throwing in the mid-70s for strikes.
Was it the best game Case has ever pitched?
"Ever, it's unreal," said an emotional Case following the afternoon victory. "To pitch like that in front of everyone, in this place, it's something else."
Case threw nine shutout innings over two games while striking out 19 and walking two.
Quebec-Blue defeated British Columbia-Orange, 5-1, to start the day before a convincing a 9-2 victory over Ontario-Maroon propelled them into a finals match against the Maritimes.
The Quebec-Blue team just didn't have enough left in the tank to beat a Maritimes club that proved to be loaded with pitching depth.
Vincent was throwing mid-80s, Case had some of the top velocity at the showcase, JP Stevenson set the tone with a lights-out start in the Maritimes' first game of the tournament Saturday, and even Shrider, who played a number of positions on the diamond, dialed it up to 88 mph.
"The guys did a great job this weekend," said coach Jason Davis. "Everyone came together as a team."
Teams, scouts, organizers and players were all pleased with the way the event turned out. Many have already started looking ahead to next year and pondering ways to make the tournament even better.
"We couldn't be any happier," said Rob Jack, the tournament operations manager and Blue Jays manager of social marketing. "And to see the Maritimes win -- a team that a lot of people didn't think would be competitive here -- is just the icing on the cake."
Worth noting
In a wild contest, Quebec-White defeated Alberta-Red, 12-11, in the final Pool B game to advance to the semifinal. Alberta did not go down without a fight, plating four runs in the final inning, but left the tying run on second base when Julien Cyr retired Joe Woods with a strikeout to help Quebec earn a spot in the final four.
Quebec was led by one of the top talents of the tournament in third baseman Charles LeBlanc, who went 3-for-5 with two runs scored, two stolen bases and three RBIs in the win, as well as outfielder Jonathan Martin.
Martin, who homered earlier in the tournament, went 2-for-4 with four RBIs.
Alberta was once again led by Wylie Johnston, who went 3-for-3 with two doubles and four RBIs to increase his tournament average to .700 over his four games. Johnston cashed in two runs on a hard-hit double in the seventh to bring his team within one run, and just narrowly missed hitting his second home run of the tournament in his previous at-bat when he hit an RBI double off the left-field wall.
Johnston, who attends the University of Calgary, is looking to transfer south of the border next school year, and at least a few American colleges are known to have expressed interest in the 19-year-old.
"When I first got here, I was pretty nervous," Johnston said. "But then I just kind of said, 'Let it happen,' and I hit really well, as good as I have ever hit, really. It's pretty cool to do it on this kind of stage.
"The one thing I wanted to do when I was here was hit a ball out of Rogers Centre, which I did. It was pretty awesome."
Chris Toman is a contributor to MLB.com.


text:
No brewing this weekend. Gearing up for a 10 gal. Old Stoner brew/12 gal. partigyle next weekend.
Denny, what do you get out of the second gyle of the Old Stoner grain bill? I mean OG wise and what sort of hop schedule do you run for the second?
... About the only time I do "seat of the pants" brewing.
IPA for the wife (well, ok me too) going with some Columbus for the first time.Schwarzbier or a Baltic Porter. Got some beautiful 2124 slurry that I racked a Pils off last night.Pretty stuff


text:
Copyright Getting In The Way Of Preserving Video Game History
from the and-again-and-again-and-again dept
Even if preservationists had the resources to develop the kind of emulators that can stand the test of time, their task would be made all the more difficult by the tendency of game companies to worry more about piracy than preservation. This means that documentation on how their machines work is either non-existent (if the company goes out of business or fails to preserve it) or secret, so makers of emulators must laboriously reverse-engineer existing hardware.The article also notes that there probably needs to be a legal change, such as exempting such archival activity in the DMCA rulemaking process that just concluded -- but so far it doesn't seem like such changes are likely.
Finally, there's the copyright issue. Getting permission to preserve a game requires signoff by everyone with a stake in it--its creator, publisher, etc.Given the current legal situation concerning emulation, it is not possible to preserve video games digitally using emulators and copy media to different physical layers without the manufacturer's agreement. Establishing responsibility for the preservation of digital data must be seen as a priority. Awareness has to be raised among the manufacturers of console video game systems and console video games to reach agreements about how to preserve their work.


text:
- Tasks that only need Perl knowledge
- Migrate t/ from custom TAP generation
- Automate perldelta generation
- Make Schwern poorer
- Improve the coverage of the core tests
- test B
- A decent benchmark
- fix tainting bugs
- Dual life everything
- POSIX memory footprint
- makedef.pl and conditional compilation
- use strict; and AutoLoad
- profile installman
- enable lexical enabling/disabling of individual warnings
- document diagnostics
- Tasks that need a little sysadmin-type knowledge
- Tasks that need a little C knowledge
- Weed out needless PERL_UNUSED_ARG
- -Duse32bit*
- Profile Perl - am I hot or not?
- Allocate OPs from arenas
- Improve win32/wince.c
- Use secure CRT functions when building with VC8 on Win32
- Fix POSIX::access() and chdir() on Win32
- strcat(), strcpy(), strncat(), strncpy(), sprintf(), vsprintf()
- Arenas for GPs? For MAGIC?
- Shared arenas
- Tasks that need a knowledge of XS
- Write an XS cookbook
- Document how XSUBs can use cv_set_call_checker to inline themselves as OPs
- Remove the use of SVs as temporaries in dump.c
- safely supporting POSIX SA_SIGINFO
- autovivification
- Unicode in Filenames
- Unicode in %ENV
- Unicode and glob()
- use less 'memory'
- Re-implement :unique in a way that is actually thread-safe
- Make tainting consistent
- readpipe(LIST)
- Audit the code for destruction ordering assumptions
- Extend PerlIO and PerlIO::Scalar
- Organize error messages
- Tasks that need a knowledge of the interpreter
todo - Perl TO-DO list
This is a list of wishes for Perl. The most up to date version of this file is at http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/Porting/todo.pod
The tasks we think are smaller or easier are listed first. Anyone is welcome to work on any of these, but it's a good idea to first contact email@example.com to avoid duplication of effort, and to learn from any previous attempts. By all means contact a pumpking privately first if you prefer.
Whilst patches to make the list shorter are most welcome, ideas to add to the list are also encouraged. Check the perl5-porters archives for past ideas, and any discussion about them. One set of archives may be found at http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/
What can we offer you in return? Fame, fortune, and everlasting glory? Maybe not, but if your patch is incorporated, then we'll add your name to the AUTHORS file, which ships in the official distribution. How many other programming languages offer you 1 line of immortality?
Tasks that only need Perl knowledge
Migrate t/ from custom TAP generation
Many tests below t/ still generate TAP by "hand", rather than using library functions. As explained in "TESTING" in perlhack, tests in t/ are written in a particular way to test that more complex constructions actually work before using them routinely. Hence they don't use
Test::More, but instead there is an intentionally simpler library, t/test.pl. However, quite a few tests in t/ have not been refactored to use it. Refactoring any of these tests, one at a time, is a useful thing TODO.
The subdirectories base, cmd and comp, that contain the most basic tests, should be excluded from this task.
Automate perldelta generation
The perldelta file accompanying each release summaries the major changes. It's mostly manually generated currently, but some of that could be automated with a bit of perl, specifically the generation of
See Porting/how_to_write_a_perldelta.pod for details.
Make Schwern poorer
We should have tests for everything. When all the core's modules are tested, Schwern has promised to donate to $500 to TPF. We may need volunteers to hold him upside down and shake vigorously in order to actually extract the cash.
Improve the coverage of the core tests
Use Devel::Cover to ascertain the core modules' test coverage, then add tests that are currently missing.
test B
A full test suite for the B module would be nice.
A decent benchmark
perlbench seems impervious to any recent changes made to the perl core. It would be useful to have a reasonable general benchmarking suite that roughly represented what current perl programs do, and measurably reported whether tweaks to the core improve, degrade or don't really affect performance, to guide people attempting to optimise the guts of perl. Gisle would welcome new tests for perlbench. Steffen Schwingon would welcome help with Benchmark::Perl::Formance
fix tainting bugs
Fix the bugs revealed by running the test suite with the
-t switch (via
make test.taintwarn).
Dual life everything
As part of the "dists" plan, anything that doesn't belong in the smallest perl distribution needs to be dual lifed. Anything else can be too. Figure out what changes would be needed to package that module and its tests up for CPAN, and do so. Test it with older perl releases, and fix the problems you find.
To make a minimal perl distribution, it's useful to look at t/lib/commonsense.t.
POSIX memory footprint
Ilya observed that use POSIX; eats memory like there's no tomorrow, and at various times worked to cut it down. There is probably still fat to cut out - for example POSIX passes Exporter some very memory hungry data structures.
makedef.pl and conditional compilation
The script makedef.pl that generates the list of exported symbols on platforms which need this. Functions are declared in embed.fnc, variables in intrpvar.h. Quite a few of the functions and variables are conditionally declared there, using
#ifdef. However, makedef.pl doesn't understand the C macros, so the rules about which symbols are present when is duplicated in the Perl code. Writing things twice is bad, m'kay. It would be good to teach .pl to understand the conditional compilation, and hence remove the duplication, and the mistakes it has caused.
use strict; and AutoLoad
Currently if you write
package Whack;
use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';
use strict;
sub bloop {
print join (' ', No, strict, here), "!\n";
use strict; isn't in force within the autoloaded subroutines. It would be more consistent (and less surprising) to arrange for all lexical pragmas in force at the __END__ block to be in force within each autoloaded subroutine.
There's a similar problem with SelfLoader.
profile installman
The installman script is slow. All it is doing text processing, which we're told is something Perl is good at. So it would be nice to know what it is doing that is taking so much CPU, and where possible address it.
enable lexical enabling/disabling of individual warnings
Currently, warnings can only be enabled or disabled by category. There are times when it would be useful to quash a single warning, not a whole category.
document diagnostics
Many diagnostic messages are not currently documented. The list is at the end of t/porting/diag.t.
Tasks that need a little sysadmin-type knowledge
Or if you prefer, tasks that you would learn from, and broaden your skills base...
make HTML install work
There is an
install.html target in the Makefile. It's marked as "experimental". It would be good to get this tested, make it work reliably, and remove the "experimental" tag. This would include
Checking that cross linking between various parts of the documentation works. In particular that links work between the modules (files with POD in lib/) and the core documentation (files in pod/)
Improving the code that split
perlfuncinto chunks, preferably with general case code added to Pod::Functions that could be used elsewhere.
Challenges here are correctly identifying the groups of functions that go together, and making the right named external cross-links point to the right page. Currently this works reasonably well in the general case, and correctly parses two or more
=itemsgiving the different parameter lists for the same function, such used by
substr. However it fails completely where different functions are listed as a sequence of
=itemsbut share the same description. All the functions from
endprotoenthave individual stub pages, with only the page for
endserventholding the description common to all. Likewise
qwhave stub pages, instead of sharing the body of
Note also the current code isn't ideal with the two forms of
select, mushing them both into one select.html with the two descriptions run together. Fixing this may well be a special case.
compressed man pages
Be able to install them. This would probably need a configure test to see how the system does compressed man pages (same directory/different directory? same filename/different filename), as well as tweaking the installman script to compress as necessary.
Add a code coverage target to the Makefile
Make it easy for anyone to run Devel::Cover on the core's tests. The steps to do this manually are roughly
do a normal
Configure, but include Devel::Cover as a module to install (see INSTALL for how to do this)
make perl
cd t; HARNESS_PERL_SWITCHES=-MDevel::Cover ./perl -I../lib harness
Process the resulting Devel::Cover database
This just give you the coverage of the .pms. To also get the C level coverage you need to
Additionally tell
Configureto use the appropriate C compiler flags for
make perl.gcov
(instead of
make perl)
After running the tests run
gcovto generate all the .gcov files. (Including down in the subdirectories of ext/
(From the top level perl directory) run
gcov2perlon all the
.gcovfiles to get their stats into the cover_db directory.
Then process the Devel::Cover database
It would be good to add a single switch to
Configure to specify that you wanted to perform perl level coverage, and another to specify C level coverage, and have
Configure and the Makefile do all the right things automatically.
Make Config.pm cope with differences between built and installed perl
Quite often vendors ship a perl binary compiled with their (pay-for) compilers. People install a free compiler, such as gcc. To work out how to build extensions, Perl interrogates
%Config, so in this situation
%Config describes compilers that aren't there, and extension building fails. This forces people into choosing between re-compiling perl themselves using the compiler they have, or only using modules that the vendor ships.
It would be good to find a way teach
Config.pm about the installation setup, possibly involving probing at install time or later, so that the
%Config in a binary distribution better describes the installed machine, when the installed machine differs from the build machine in some significant way.
linker specification files
Some platforms mandate that you provide a list of a shared library's external symbols to the linker, so the core already has the infrastructure in place to do this for generating shared perl libraries. Florian Ragwitz has been working to offer this for the GNU toolchain, to allow Unix users to test that the export list is correct, and to build a perl that does not pollute the global namespace with private symbols, and will fail in the same way as msvc or mingw builds or when using PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1. See the branch smoke-me/rafl/ld_export
Cross-compile support
We get requests for "how to cross compile Perl". The vast majority of these seem to be for a couple of scenarios:
Platforms that could build natively using ./Configure (e.g. Linux or NetBSD on MIPS or ARM) but people want to use a beefier machine (and on the same OS) to build more easily.
Platforms that can't build natively, but no (significant) porting changes are needed to our current source code. Prime example of this is Android.
There are several scripts and tools for cross-compiling perl for other platforms. However, these are somewhat inconsistent and scattered across the codebase, none are documented well, none are clearly flexible enough to be confident that they can support any TARGET/HOST plaform pair other than that which they were developed on, and it's not clear how bitrotted they are.
For example,
Configure understands
-Dusecrosscompile option. This option arranges for building
miniperl for TARGET machine, so this
miniperl is assumed then to be copied to TARGET machine and used as a replacement of full
perl executable. This code is almost 10 years old. Meanwhile, the Cross/ directory contains two different approaches for cross compiling to ARM Linux targets, relying on hand curated config.sh files, but that code is getting on for 5 years old, and requires insider knowledge of perl's build system to draft a config.sh for a new platform.
Jess Robinson has sumbitted a grant to TPF to work on cleaning this up.
Split "linker" from "compiler"
Right now, Configure probes for two commands, and sets two variables:
cc(in cc.U)
This variable holds the name of a command to execute a C compiler which can resolve multiple global references that happen to have the same name. Usual values are cc and gcc. Fervent ANSI compilers may be called c89. AIX has xlc.
ld(in dlsrc.U)
This variable indicates the program to be used to link libraries for dynamic loading. On some systems, it is ld. On ELF systems, it should be
$cc. Mostly, we'll try to respect the hint file setting.
There is an implicit historical assumption from around Perl5.000alpha something, that
$cc is also the correct command for linking object files together to make an executable. This may be true on Unix, but it's not true on other platforms, and there are a maze of work arounds in other places (such as Makefile.SH) to cope with this.
Ideally, we should create a new variable to hold the name of the executable linker program, probe for it in Configure, and centralise all the special case logic there or in hints files.
A small bikeshed issue remains - what to call it, given that
$ld is already taken (arguably for the wrong thing now, but on SunOS 4.1 it is the command for creating dynamically-loadable modules) and
$link could be confused with the Unix command line executable of the same name, which does something completely different. Andy Dougherty makes the counter argument "In parrot, I tried to call the command used to link object files and libraries into an executable link, since that's what my vaguely-remembered DOS and VMS experience suggested. I don't think any real confusion has ensued, so it's probably a reasonable name for perl5 to use."
"Alas, I've always worried that introducing it would make things worse, since now the module building utilities would have to look for
$Config{link} and institute a fall-back plan if it weren't found." Although I can see that as confusing, given that
$Config{d_link} is true when (hard) links are available.
Configure Windows using PowerShell
Currently, Windows uses hard-coded config files based to build the config.h for compiling Perl. Makefiles are also hard-coded and need to be hand edited prior to building Perl. While this makes it easy to create a perl.exe that works across multiple Windows versions, being able to accurately configure a perl.exe for a specific Windows versions and VS C++ would be a nice enhancement. With PowerShell available on Windows XP and up, this may now be possible. Step 1 might be to investigate whether this is possible and use this to clean up our current makefile situation. Step 2 would be to see if there would be a way to use our existing metaconfig units to configure a Windows Perl or whether we go in a separate direction and make it so. Of course, we all know what step 3 is.
Tasks that need a little C knowledge
These tasks would need a little C knowledge, but don't need any specific background or experience with XS, or how the Perl interpreter works
Weed out needless PERL_UNUSED_ARG
The C code uses the macro
PERL_UNUSED_ARG to stop compilers warning about unused arguments. Often the arguments can't be removed, as there is an external constraint that determines the prototype of the function, so this approach is valid. However, there are some cases where
PERL_UNUSED_ARG could be removed. Specifically
The prototypes of (nearly all) static functions can be changed
Unused arguments generated by short cut macros are wasteful - the short cut macro used can be changed.
Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall. On these systems, it might be the default compilation mode, and there is currently no guarantee that passing no use64bitall option to the Configure process will build a 32bit perl. Implementing -Duse32bit* options would be nice for perl 5.18.0.
Profile Perl - am I hot or not?
The Perl source code is stable enough that it makes sense to profile it, identify and optimise the hotspots. It would be good to measure the performance of the Perl interpreter using free tools such as cachegrind, gprof, and dtrace, and work to reduce the bottlenecks they reveal.
As part of this, the idea of pp_hot.c is that it contains the hot ops, the ops that are most commonly used. The idea is that by grouping them, their object code will be adjacent in the executable, so they have a greater chance of already being in the CPU cache (or swapped in) due to being near another op already in use.
Except that it's not clear if these really are the most commonly used ops. So as part of exercising your skills with coverage and profiling tools you might want to determine what ops really are the most commonly used. And in turn suggest evictions and promotions to achieve a better pp_hot.c.
One piece of Perl code that might make a good testbed is installman.
Allocate OPs from arenas
Currently all new OP structures are individually malloc()ed and free()d. All
malloc implementations have space overheads, and are now as fast as custom allocates so it would both use less memory and less CPU to allocate the various OP structures from arenas. The SV arena code can probably be re-used for this.
Note that Configuring perl with
-Accflags=-DPL_OP_SLAB_ALLOC will use Perl_Slab_alloc() to pack optrees into a contiguous block, which is probably superior to the use of OP arenas, esp. from a cache locality standpoint. See "Profile Perl - am I hot or not?".
Improve win32/wince.c
Currently, numerous functions look virtually, if not completely, identical in both win32/wince.c and win32/win32.c files, which can't be good.
Use secure CRT functions when building with VC8 on Win32
Visual C++ 2005 (VC++ 8.x) deprecated a number of CRT functions on the basis that they were "unsafe" and introduced differently named secure versions of them as replacements, e.g. instead of writing
FILE* f = fopen(__FILE__, "r");
one should now write
FILE* f;
errno_t err = fopen_s(&f, __FILE__, "r");
Currently, the warnings about these deprecations have been disabled by adding -D_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE to the CFLAGS. It would be nice to remove that warning suppressant and actually make use of the new secure CRT functions.
There is also a similar issue with POSIX CRT function names like fileno having been deprecated in favour of ISO C++ conformant names like _fileno. These warnings are also currently suppressed by adding -D_CRT_NONSTDC_NO_DEPRECATE. It might be nice to do as Microsoft suggest here too, although, unlike the secure functions issue, there is presumably little or no benefit in this case.
Fix POSIX::access() and chdir() on Win32
These functions currently take no account of DACLs and therefore do not behave correctly in situations where access is restricted by DACLs (as opposed to the read-only attribute).
Furthermore, POSIX::access() behaves differently for directories having the read-only attribute set depending on what CRT library is being used. For example, the _access() function in the VC6 and VC7 CRTs (wrongly) claim that such directories are not writable, whereas in fact all directories are writable unless access is denied by DACLs. (In the case of directories, the read-only attribute actually only means that the directory cannot be deleted.) This CRT bug is fixed in the VC8 and VC9 CRTs (but, of course, the directory may still not actually be writable if access is indeed denied by DACLs).
For the chdir() issue, see ActiveState bug #74552: http://bugs.activestate.com/show_bug.cgi?id=74552
Therefore, DACLs should be checked both for consistency across CRTs and for the correct answer.
(Note that perl's -w operator should not be modified to check DACLs. It has been written so that it reflects the state of the read-only attribute, even for directories (whatever CRT is being used), for symmetry with chmod().)
strcat(), strcpy(), strncat(), strncpy(), sprintf(), vsprintf()
Maybe create a utility that checks after each libperl.a creation that none of the above (nor sprintf(), vsprintf(), or *SHUDDER* gets()) ever creep back to libperl.a.
nm libperl.a | ./miniperl -alne '$o = $F[0] if /:$/; print "$o $F[1]" if $F[0] eq "U" && $F[1] =~ /^(?:strn?c(?:at|py)|v?sprintf|gets)$/'
Note, of course, that this will only tell whether your platform is using those naughty interfaces.
Recent glibcs support
-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 which gives protection against various kinds of buffer overflow problems. It should probably be used for compiling Perl whenever available, Configure and/or hints files should be adjusted to probe for the availability of these feature and enable it as appropriate.
Arenas for GPs? For MAGIC?
struct gp and
struct magic are both currently allocated by
malloc. It might be a speed or memory saving to change to using arenas. Or it might not. It would need some suitable benchmarking first. In particular,
GPs can probably be changed with minimal compatibility impact (probably nothing outside of the core, or even outside of gv.c allocates them), but they probably aren't allocated/deallocated often enough for a speed saving. Whereas
MAGIC is allocated/deallocated more often, but in turn, is also something more externally visible, so changing the rules here may bite external code.
Shared arenas
Several SV body structs are now the same size, notably PVMG and PVGV, PVAV and PVHV, and PVCV and PVFM. It should be possible to allocate and return same sized bodies from the same actual arena, rather than maintaining one arena for each. This could save 4-6K per thread, of memory no longer tied up in the not-yet-allocated part of an arena.
Tasks that need a knowledge of XS
These tasks would need C knowledge, and roughly the level of knowledge of the perl API that comes from writing modules that use XS to interface to C.
Write an XS cookbook
Create pod/perlxscookbook.pod with short, task-focused 'recipes' in XS that demonstrate common tasks and good practices. (Some of these might be extracted from perlguts.) The target audience should be XS novices, who need more examples than perlguts but something less overwhelming than perlapi. Recipes should provide "one pretty good way to do it" instead of TIMTOWTDI.
Rather than focusing on interfacing Perl to C libraries, such a cookbook should probably focus on how to optimize Perl routines by re-writing them in XS. This will likely be more motivating to those who mostly work in Perl but are looking to take the next step into XS.
Deconstructing and explaining some simpler XS modules could be one way to bootstrap a cookbook. (List::Util? Class::XSAccessor? Tree::Ternary_XS?) Another option could be deconstructing the implementation of some simpler functions in op.c.
Document how XSUBs can use
cv_set_call_checker to inline themselves as OPs
For a simple XSUB, often the subroutine dispatch takes more time than the XSUB itself. v5.14.0 now allows XSUBs to register a function which will be called when the parser is finished building an
entersub op which calls them.
Registration is done with
Perl_cv_set_call_checker, is documented at the API level in perlapi, and "Custom per-subroutine check hooks" in perl5140delta notes that it can be used to inline a subroutine, by replacing it with a custom op. However there is no further detail of the code needed to do this. It would be useful to add one or more annotated examples of how to create XSUBs that inline.
This should provide a measurable speed up to simple XSUBs inside tight loops. Initially one would have to write the OP alternative implementation by hand, but it's likely that this should be reasonably straightforward for the type of XSUB that would benefit the most. Longer term, once the run-time implementation is proven, it should be possible to progressively update ExtUtils::ParseXS to generate OP implementations for some XSUBs.
Remove the use of SVs as temporaries in dump.c
dump.c contains debugging routines to dump out the contains of perl data structures, such as
AVs and
HVs. Currently, the dumping code uses
SVs for its temporary buffers, which was a logical initial implementation choice, as they provide ready made memory handling.
However, they also lead to a lot of confusion when it happens that what you're trying to debug is seen by the code in dump.c, correctly or incorrectly, as a temporary scalar it can use for a temporary buffer. It's also not possible to dump scalars before the interpreter is properly set up, such as during ithreads cloning. It would be good to progressively replace the use of scalars as string accumulation buffers with something much simpler, directly allocated by
malloc. The dump.c code is (or should be) only producing 7 bit US-ASCII, so output character sets are not an issue.
Producing and proving an internal simple buffer allocation would make it easier to re-write the internals of the PerlIO subsystem to avoid using
SVs for its buffers, use of which can cause problems similar to those of dump.c, at similar times.
safely supporting POSIX SA_SIGINFO
Some years ago Jarkko supplied patches to provide support for the POSIX SA_SIGINFO feature in Perl, passing the extra data to the Perl signal handler.
Unfortunately, it only works with "unsafe" signals, because under safe signals, by the time Perl gets to run the signal handler, the extra information has been lost. Moreover, it's not easy to store it somewhere, as you can't call mutexs, or do anything else fancy, from inside a signal handler.
So it strikes me that we could provide safe SA_SIGINFO support
Provide global variables for two file descriptors
When the first request is made via
SA_SIGINFO, create a pipe, store the reader in one, the writer in the other
In the "safe" signal handler (
S_raise_signal()), if the
siginfo_tpointer non-
NULL, and the writer file handle is open,
serialise signal number,
struct siginfo_t(or at least the parts we care about) into a small auto char buff
write()that (non-blocking) to the writer fd
if it writes 100%, flag the signal in a counter of "signals on the pipe" akin to the current per-signal-number counts
if it writes 0%, assume the pipe is full. Flag the data as lost?
if it writes partially, croak a panic, as your OS is broken.
in the regular
PERL_ASYNC_CHECK()processing, if there are "signals on the pipe", read the data out, deserialise, build the Perl structures on the stack (code in
Perl_sighandler(), the "unsafe" handler), and call as usual.
I think that this gets us decent
SA_SIGINFO support, without the current risk of running Perl code inside the signal handler context. (With all the dangers of things like
malloc corruption that that currently offers us)
For more information see the thread starting with this message: http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2008-03/msg00305.html
Make all autovivification consistent w.r.t LVALUE/RVALUE and strict/no strict;
This task is incremental - even a little bit of work on it will help.
Unicode in Filenames
chdir, chmod, chown, chroot, exec, glob, link, lstat, mkdir, open, opendir, qx, readdir, readlink, rename, rmdir, stat, symlink, sysopen, system, truncate, unlink, utime, -X. All these could potentially accept Unicode filenames either as input or output (and in the case of system and qx Unicode in general, as input or output to/from the shell). Whether a filesystem - an operating system pair understands Unicode in filenames varies.
Known combinations that have some level of understanding include Microsoft NTFS, Apple HFS+ (In Mac OS 9 and X) and Apple UFS (in Mac OS X), NFS v4 is rumored to be Unicode, and of course Plan 9. How to create Unicode filenames, what forms of Unicode are accepted and used (UCS-2, UTF-16, UTF-8), what (if any) is the normalization form used, and so on, varies. Finding the right level of interfacing to Perl requires some thought. Remember that an OS does not implicate a filesystem.
(The Windows -C command flag "wide API support" has been at least temporarily retired in 5.8.1, and the -C has been repurposed, see perlrun.)
Most probably the right way to do this would be this: "Virtualize operating system access".
Unicode in %ENV
Currently the %ENV entries are always byte strings. See "Virtualize operating system access".
Unicode and glob()
Currently glob patterns and filenames returned from File::Glob::glob() are always byte strings. See "Virtualize operating system access".
use less 'memory'
Investigate trade offs to switch out perl's choices on memory usage. Particularly perl should be able to give memory back.
This task is incremental - even a little bit of work on it will help.
:unique in a way that is actually thread-safe
The old implementation made bad assumptions on several levels. A good 90% solution might be just to make
:unique work to share the string buffer of SvPVs. That way large constant strings can be shared between ithreads, such as the configuration information in Config.
Make tainting consistent
Tainting would be easier to use if it didn't take documented shortcuts and allow taint to "leak" everywhere within an expression.
system() accepts a LIST syntax (and a PROGRAM LIST syntax) to avoid running a shell. readpipe() (the function behind qx//) could be similarly extended.
Audit the code for destruction ordering assumptions
Change 25773 notes
/* Need to check SvMAGICAL, as during global destruction it may be that
AvARYLEN(av) has been freed before av, and hence the SvANY() pointer
is now part of the linked list of SV heads, rather than pointing to
the original body. */
/* FIXME - audit the code for other bugs like this one. */
adding the
SvMAGICAL check to
if (AvARYLEN(av) && SvMAGICAL(AvARYLEN(av))) {
MAGIC *mg = mg_find (AvARYLEN(av), PERL_MAGIC_arylen);
Go through the core and look for similar assumptions that SVs have particular types, as all bets are off during global destruction.
Extend PerlIO and PerlIO::Scalar
PerlIO::Scalar doesn't know how to truncate(). Implementing this would require extending the PerlIO vtable.
Similarly the PerlIO vtable doesn't know about formats (write()), or about stat(), or chmod()/chown(), utime(), or flock().
(For PerlIO::Scalar it's hard to see what e.g. mode bits or ownership would mean.)
PerlIO doesn't do directories or symlinks, either: mkdir(), rmdir(), opendir(), closedir(), seekdir(), rewinddir(), glob(); symlink(), readlink().
See also "Virtualize operating system access".
Organize error messages
Perl's diagnostics (error messages, see perldiag) could use reorganizing and formalizing so that each error message has its stable-for-all-eternity unique id, categorized by severity, type, and subsystem. (The error messages would be listed in a datafile outside of the Perl source code, and the source code would only refer to the messages by the id.) This clean-up and regularizing should apply for all croak() messages.
This would enable all sorts of things: easier translation/localization of the messages (though please do keep in mind the caveats of Locale::Maketext about too straightforward approaches to translation), filtering by severity, and instead of grepping for a particular error message one could look for a stable error id. (Of course, changing the error messages by default would break all the existing software depending on some particular error message...)
This kind of functionality is known as message catalogs. Look for inspiration for example in the catgets() system, possibly even use it if available-- but only if available, all platforms will not have catgets().
For the really pure at heart, consider extending this item to cover also the warning messages (see perllexwarn,
Tasks that need a knowledge of the interpreter
These tasks would need C knowledge, and knowledge of how the interpreter works, or a willingness to learn.
forbid labels with keyword names
goto keyword "computes" the label value:
$ perl -e 'goto print'
Can't find label 1 at -e line 1.
It is controversial if the right way to avoid the confusion is to forbid labels with keyword names, or if it would be better to always treat bareword expressions after a "goto" as a label and never as a keyword.
truncate() prototype
The prototype of truncate() is currently
$$. It should probably be
*$ instead. (This is changed in opcode.pl)
error reporting of [$a ; $b]
; inside brackets is a syntax error, and we don't propose to change that by giving it any meaning. However, it's not reported very helpfully:
$ perl -e '$a = [$b; $c];'
syntax error at -e line 1, near "$b;"
syntax error at -e line 1, near "$c]"
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.
It should be possible to hook into the tokeniser or the lexer, so that when a
; is parsed where it is not legal as a statement terminator (ie inside
{} used as a hashref,
[] or
()) it issues an error something like ';' isn't legal inside an expression - if you need multiple statements use a do {...} block. See the thread starting at http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2008-09/msg00573.html
lexicals used only once
This warns:
$ perl -we '$pie = 42'
Name "main::pie" used only once: possible typo at -e line 1.
This does not:
$ perl -we 'my $pie = 42'
Logically all lexicals used only once should warn, if the user asks for warnings. An unworked RT ticket (#5087) has been open for almost seven years for this discrepancy.
UTF-8 revamp
The handling of Unicode is unclean in many places. In the regex engine there are especially many problems. The swash data structure could be replaced my something better. Inversion lists and maps are likely candidates. The whole Unicode database could be placed in-core for a huge speed-up. Only minimal work was done on the optimizer when utf8 was added, with the result that the synthetic start class often will fail to narrow down the possible choices when given non-Latin1 input. Karl Williamson has been working on this - talk to him.
1 POD Error
The following errors were encountered while parsing the POD:
- Around line 888:
'=end' without a target? (Should be "=end todo")


text:
Perfectly looped background with acoustic guitar, drums, bongos, piano and ambient synth.
In .zip file you will find two versions:
1) Looped (wav + mp3 320kbps)
2) With fade in/out (wav + mp3 320kbps)
Preview file consists of both looped and fade in/out versions.
If you like it, please rate it!


text:
Desi Dougie: Punjabi's Puttin Down Their Own Twist Of The Dougie.. Then Hittin It Off With Their Own Sound!
Suburban Desi Dougie
Please click the "Report" button below if the video on this page is not working properly.
Comments will only be displayed by verified emails. No Spamming or Racism.


text:
Syria Spillover
Date created : Latest update :
Are Lebanon's fears of being dragged into Syria's conflict becoming reality? With Lebanon's leaders unable to prevent tit-for-tat cross-border kidnappings, François Picard's panel looks at what the possibility of regime change in Damascus may mean for its neighbour, and in particular for Assad ally Hezbollah.
- Hisham JABER. Director, Center for Middle East Studies (from Beirut);
- Elie ABDEL-HAYE. Coordinator, 'March 14 Forces' (opposition);
- Pierre ROUSSELIN. Senior Editor, Le Figaro
- David SCHENKER. Director, Program on Arab Politics, The Washington Institute (from Washington).
Produced by François Picard, Anelise Borges, Mary Colombel, Shamira Muhammad.


text:
She is survived by her two sons, Kevin Ralph Johnson, his wife Jody (Moraga, Calif.), and their daughter Kema, and Kerry Mark Johnson (Durango, Colo.), his wife Susan and their children Jared, Kevin and Kate.
Betty was born Aug. 11, 1925, in Moab, Utah, to Ralph and Genevieve Miller, Sr. The oldest of five children, she is still survived by her sister, Carolyn. Her other siblings, Ralph Miller, Jr., Colleen Miller and Patricia "Tish" Larsen, preceded her in death.
Betty graduated from Moab High School in 1943 and attended college in Havre, Mont., obtaining a degree as a medical secretary. She met her future husband, Harley (Hal), in Portland, Ore., while she was working at Emanuel Hospital. They married in Moab at the Baptist Church on Jan. 4, 1948.
Betty and Hal made their home in Moab from 1956 to the present day. Along with brother-in-law Ray Tibbetts, Hal owned and operated Family Budget Clothing and Miller's Clothing.
Betty raised their two sons. She loved being a wife, mother, and grandmother and treasured her extended family. She had many varied interests, including quilting, traveling, gardening, cooking and baking, singing in the Valley Voices, her church choir, and working and worshipping at St. Francis Episcopal Church.
Betty lived her life with great enthusiasm and appreciation. She had the ability to see the humor and whimsy in the world, as well as to take seriously the magic and wonder and any rough patch that came her way with grace and dignity. Betty treasured moments. Her diplomacy and common-sense wisdom made her a mentor, a trusted friend and a safe place to fall for young and old, family and friends. She was quick to examine all facets of issues and personalities and was always true to her values. Betty was a lady. She had a quick wit, surfacing at expected and unexpected times.
Betty's family and the family of mankind will greatly miss her snapping brown eyes, her quick smile, and her loving touch.
It was Betty's wish to be cremated with no memorial service.


text:
Pacific University Faculty Website: Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie
Welcome to the website of The Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie
Visit Dr. Currie's personal blog.
Dr. Currie's page on The Huffington Post.
Dr. Currie's Biography.
Dr. Currie's Contact Information.
Credo: What I Believe.
Disclaimer: Views expressed here represent the perspectives of Rev. Currie, as well as reader participants, and may not represent the official views of Pacific University, the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, or any local congregation. External links made from this site should not construe an endorsement. Rev. Currie has no more editorial control over such content than does a public library, bookstore, or newsstand. Such external links are made for informational purposes only.
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.Tweets by RevChuckCurrie


text:
Views: 1482
I think this is were I kind of failed, I only read snippets of the Bible (ironically the bad parts) and ignored the good. Even so, now that I'm going back to it, I'm reading it for what it is. An ancient book of literature and nothing more.
Welcome to reality Kaila! I support the suggestions below--Dawkins and Hitchens are must reads. I have also found The Christ Conspiracy by Acharya S a really great source to debunk the belief that Jesus was a real person and helping Christians-- understand that the whole "story" is a compiliation of older, previous god beliefs. I remember the feeling of liberation I had when I "discovered" that I was an atheist... almost a giddy high for months! You will find out that you are not alone-- in fact, you will actually be shocked at how many other nonbelievers are out there! Good luck with the family-- this is always difficult. You may find that the truely indoctrinated simply cannot accept reality as it threatenes everything they believe and it just may be too scary to deal with. So good luck and welcome!
I agree with that. It's very satisfying to ask a theist if they have actually read the bible all the way through. When I tell them that I have and I find out that they have not, I have the high ground.
Just the book of Job is enough though. God is just playing a game with Job. Kills all his 8 wives just to see how he will react (plus several other things). So later he makes up for it by giving him 8 new wives? Really? That makes up for it? What a loving god he is.
Oh, and if I were god, I'm sure I wouldn't have needed the Pharaoh's permission to get MY people out of Egypt. And it sure is a nasty god that would kill all those children.
So many other points to ponder, all mentioned in that book about "God's Problem".
Wasn't it 10 children that Job had? Don't remember any wives - perhaps it was immaculate conception x 10. Anyway, as god would say "the devil made me do it!" Or was that Flip Wilson?
There's also the tale of Onan who was struck dead for ejaculating outside of his wife's vagina, thus avoiding conception altogether. He has been the poster boy for the anti-masturbation bullies ever since. Struck dead for masturbating? That would certainly solve the overpopulation crisis.
Yes Des, you are correct. Job had 10 children that were killed, not 8 wives. My memory is getting bad. Now who was it that had 8 wives?
Henry VIII - and look where it got him - he started the Anglican Church.
Either way the bible is pretty clear throughout...you're not a REAL person unless you're an adult male. Women and children are expendable either way. Even the commandments state it from specifically a male point of view. Nothing about coveting thy neighbour's husband. And all I can remember about the evils of homosexuality is between two men not women...unless someone can correct me? I'd guess being written by men, the lesbian thing was just considered hot (^_-).
@Des - let's not forget that the Evangelical right wing is protestant-based. So we have "Our 'Enry" (English gag) to thank for the likes of Palin and probably even Mormonism!
Hi Kaila,
Here is a definition of atheism from the Oxford dictionary.
And a definition of sceptic also.
Thunderf00t on youtube is my favourite for some light hearted fun, disproving Genesis.
Nonstampcollector is also good fun.
I want to be educated on what science aspects go alongside atheism.
Science is made up of theories, to explain nature, that can be independently verified to be true or false.
Atheism is the lack of belief in God.
Personally I can not see any link between science and atheism. But I can see a link between religion and science. Religion is a prehistoric attempt to explain nature, that was written down when writing was invented. But atheism attempts to do nothing, it's just a lack of belief in god.
I see nothing wrong with the Bible, in the same way as I see nothing wrong with Star-Wars. But the main problem I have with religion is the 'forced indoctrination of children' by adults.
Good luck.
Another good source, yeah. I've only recently started looking into it, myself. I suggest all atheists in a Christian-dominated country like America read the Bible. I've already read it straight through, but I'm looking through various potions of it again, since obviously, it didn't all stick on the first pass.
Yeah, lots of snark mixed in, from what I've seen. Still a better way to read it than going dry. Leviticus and Numbers were so damned painful.
First of all, congratulations, Kaila! It's a huge step coming out like this, and a brave one, so good for you. I sort of know what you're going through with your family since I'm still the only atheist in my entire family, immediate and extended. I come from a long line of fundamentalists, so it can be really difficult when the people you care about most suddenly seem to turn on you and try to re-convert you.
My advice to you is to take some time away from your family, at least engagement-wise. If you're anything like me, you need some time to get to know yourself as an atheist, and purge some of the ideas that you were raised with. We call this "de-converting." Set some boundaries with them as to what you will and will not discuss, and let them know that you'll let them know when you're ready to talk about it. You're a baby atheist! Give yourself some time before you walk into the Battle of Little Bighorn.
I'd second the advice given above in saying to hold off on "God Delusion" and "God Is Not Great," at least if you're trying to keep your family around. Dawkins and Hitchens come from the neo-atheism camp, which is really aggressive towards religion. I'd recommend Sam Harris' "The Moral Landscape," Michael Shermer's "How We Believe" and Robert Wright's "The Evolution of God." Also, if you're interested in science I can't recommend any of Dawkins' other books more strongly, particularly "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind Watchmaker." I practically had a religious experience reading the former, just in the way that Dawkins describes cellular evolution! Massimo Pigliucci is also a great author (and blogger), and his most recent book "Nonsense on Stilts" or even "Denying Evolution" are fantastic places to start.
Third, I would say get on Meetup.com or do an Internet search and find your closest atheist/freethinker groups. Check out the Atheist Community of Tulsa. Start going to events and meet other atheists. It's really important to start surrounding yourself with people who are going to help and encourage you.
In the meantime, there's Atheist Nexus! Cheers!
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text: Yesterday Merete and Christopher, producers of Tiny the tiny house documentary posted on their facebook profiles a series of videos of them being interviewed about their journey of making their documentary. The interview grew to include a lot about the Tiny House Movement and their commentaries were really great. So here are the videos!


text:
This article was printed from mlb, originally published .
Read more news at: https://www.mlb.com/dbacks/news
D-backs recall Roe and Skaggs from Reno
Place Ross on disabled list and option Spruill
PHOENIX - The Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) recalled right-handed pitcher Chaz Roe and left-handed pitcher Tyler Skaggs (@TylerSkaggs37) from Triple-A Reno, placed outfielder Cody Ross on the 15-day disabled list with a dislocated right hip and optioned Zeke Spruill (@zekespruill) to Reno, according to D-backs' Executive Vice President & General Manager Kevin Towers.
Roe, 26, was 0-1 with 8 saves and a 1.21 ERA (3 ER in 22.1 IP) in 23 relief appearances with Double-A Mobile and Reno this season. He also has appeared in 4 games over 2 stints with the D-backs, going 1-0 with a 5.79 ERA (3 ER in 4.2 IP).
Skaggs, 22, has combined to go 6-7 with a 4.16 ERA (41 ER in 88.2 IP) in 16 games (14 starts) with Single-A Visalia and Reno in 2013. In 7 starts with Arizona this season, he is 2-3 with a 5.35 ERA (23 ER in 38.2 IP).
Ross, 32, suffered a dislocated right hip in the first inning of yesterday's game vs. New York-NL. He was hitting .278 (88-for-317) with 17 doubles, 8 home runs and 38 RBI in 94 games in his first season with the D-backs, including a .395 (17-for-43) average over his last 12 games.
Spruill, 23, was 0-2 with a 5.56 ERA (7 ER in 11.1 IP) in 6 games (2 starts) with the D-backs this season. He suffered the loss yesterday in a 9-5 defeat to the Mets, allowing 1 earned run in 3.0 innings.


text:
DwellStudio's New Patterns & À la Carte Bedding
Thank you, Dwell Studio. They got the memo that separates are where it's at. New for 2012 is a line of crib sheets, skirts and blankets available for purchase à la carte (i.e. not in sets) so you can choose which bedding pieces you want and don't want.
We first saw these new patterns at the ABC Kids show and it's nice to see them hitting stores. New rugs, changing pads, sleep sacks, bibs, and swaddling blankets round out the bedding offerings. A few items are available now and the rest can be pre-ordered for a March ship date. If you're currently planning a nursery (and we recommend starting with the bedding), we knew some of you would want to put these on the short list.
See more: DwellStudio


text:
Nothing Scales Like Stupidity
from the but...-but...-outliers! dept
Yes, that would be the smart thing to do, but it won't scale. The stupid approach is better because it scales.And that's it, in essence. Despite the fact that creative artists have to compete with free in this day and age, many people, even some in the creative community, still believe that this is optional. So, they lash out against any artist who has chosen to attack the perceived "piracy problem" by performing such aberrational acts as "connecting with their fans" and giving them a "reason to buy." Strange how that works.
But the arguments are always there. "This only works for X." "This artist is too small/unknown/niche/etc." If they're not running through the normal gatekeepers, it's made to seem as though every success story is yet another single example whipped up in a vacuum. Maybe the problem isn't the business plan that works, it's the outdated thinking that says that if it doesn't scale, it's not worth examining. Cook responds:
If the smart thing to do doesn't scale, maybe we shouldn't scale.One size will never fit all. Get over it. Look at what works and adjust per individual situation rather than looking for the simple "Plan A" that's supposedly a be-all and end-all for every creative artist. That doesn't exist any more.


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Throughout this Lenten season, we have talked about very specific ways to pray, fast and give alms, whether a 15-minute prayer structure, ways to read Scripture or volunteer ideas. This week, try something entirely different. Fast from time.
We schedule our lives and try to fit in so many activities and people into the day. So take off the watch and silence the phone (and do not look at it) before sitting with the Lord in prayer or spending the afternoon with someone. Focus on God. Focus on that person. Not you. Not what comes next. Not the to-do list. (Note: This could be slightly disastrous on a workday, so it is most likely best to save this for Saturday.)
Pope Francis told parents to "waste time" with their children, emphasizing the importance of the "free gift" of time. The same holds true in our other relationships. Give the gift of time.
Each week during Lent I am sharing a quick tip on each of the three disciplines of the season: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. So tune in throughout the week for more ideas! This is the last week of Lent before Holy Week. I pray you make it count.
Jennifer Rey is the web editor of Our Sunday Visitor Publishing. Follow her on Twitter @JenReyOSV.
Copyright © 1996-2019 Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.


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Asus develops Samsung Omnia rival for O2
XDA Zest nears completion
Pictures of a handset thought to be in development by Asus have been leaked online, showing a talker that looks strikingly similar to Samsung's Omnia.
Asus' handset: to be released as the O2 XDA Zest
A Chinese website has published pictures of the Asus phone which clearly show it runs Windows Mobile. Since there's no keypad, and the phone looks too thin to be a Sony Ericsson Xperia X1-style slider, it's reasonable to assume that the Asus talker is touchscreen-operated.
Worldwide mobile phone testing organisation the Global Certification Forum (GFC), lists the talker as the GM5, the Crystal and the XDA Zest.
XDA is, of course, carrier O2's in-house smartphone brand.
A rear shot of the phone shows it has a five-megapixel camera and a second camera lens can also be made out on the top of the phone's front. If so, the talker's certainly 3G and likely to support HSDPA connections too.
The GCF also confirmed the phone will support tri-band GSM connectivity.
Asus' handset could comes with HSDPA 3G ability
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are almost certainly on-board, as a touchscreen talker wouldn't get far in this day and age without either. A slot for Micro SD cards can also be seen on the phone's side.
The Asus handset sports a BlackBerry Pearl-style track-ball for on-screen navigation.
Since nothing's been confirmed by Asus or O2 yet, a release date or price for the UK is still unknown. We'll bring you more news as we have it.