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Any proficient Microsoft Excel user will agree that this program is a very powerful analytical tool. Wouldn't it be great to learn how to effectively use all the advanced Excel features? In this practical and information-packed course, you'll see how to maximize this program's functions and capabilities.
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Though Rufus W. Peckham, Jr. spent nine years on the New York State Court of Appeals, his most famous writing may be an opinion he penned as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
In the notorious case Lochner v. New York (198 US 45 [1905]) Justice Peckham, a zealous defender of personal property rights, handed labor activists a serious defeat in their efforts to reform labor laws and protect the health and safety of workers. In the 5-4 decision invalidating New York's law prohibiting bakers from working more than ten hours a day or more than 60 hours in one week, the Supreme Court held that the law was not a valid exercise of the state's police powers and that regulation of the health and safety of workers unconstitutionally interfered with Lochner's right under the Constitution's contract clause to engage freely in his business. Labor leaders and reformers contended that baking-which involved long hours and arduous conditions-was a hazardous profession and that the state was within constitutional parameters in regulating it. The Court, and Justice Peckham, disagreed. Believing the law was not justified on health grounds but was rather a thinly veiled attempt to limit work hours and hinting that the labor reformers might have communist sympathies, Justice Peckham wrote that "[t]he freedom of master and employee to contract with each other . . . cannot be prohibited or interfered with without violating the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of liberty" (198 US at 64).
In a biting dissent, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. accused the majority of imperiously employing their own personal views of laissez-faire economics to strike down reasonable laws passed by elected representatives of the State's citizens. He wrote that "[s]ome of these laws embody convictions or prejudices which judges are likely to share. Some may not. But a constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory" (198 US at 75).1 Indeed, Justice Peckham has long been remembered for invoking the concept of substantive due process in the context of economic civil liberties. A series of subsequent Supreme Court opinions weakened Justice Peckham's central holding and what has been called the "Lochner age" was dealt its final blow with West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (300 US 379 [1937]), which, though not explicitly overruling Lochner, finally upheld a state's minimum wage statute.2
Long before joining the Supreme Court, Justice Peckham had reached the highest echelons of the legal profession. Born in Albany, New York on November 8, 1838 into a distinguished family of attorneys, Justice Peckham was the son of Rufus W. Peckham, Sr. (1809-1873), a lawyer, Congressman and Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals (1865-1867) who perished at sea in 1873. Justice Peckham's uncle George was also a renowned New York attorney as was the Justice's brother Wheeler. The Peckham men were said to have born an uncanny resemblance to each other. Rufus W. Peckham, Jr. could easily have been mistaken for his father, with his bushy white hair and mustache, cameo face, and piercing eyes.
Educated at the Albany Boys' Academy, from which he was graduated in 1856, Justice Peckham also studied privately with tutors in Philadelphia. After completing his formal studies, he embarked for a year of travel and further education in Europe, returning to Albany to read law with his father. Ruminations on his childhood are few and far between, and it appears that the relationships which sustained him throughout his life were developed after Justice Peckham reached adulthood. Upon his death, the State Bar Association's commemoration committee wrote that "there are few of us who can remember [Justice Peckham] in the days before he became a Judge, in the freedom from restraint and reserve of ordinary professional life."
Having privately studied the profession, Justice Peckham was admitted to the New York bar in 1859 and practiced in his father's firm for ten years. While he neither attended university nor had a formal legal education, Justice Peckham was an exceptionally gifted oral advocate and in both civil and criminal law was almost uniformly successful. After Rufus W. Peckham, Sr. was elected state Supreme Court justice and then associate judge of the Court of Appeals, his son continued the law partnership with his father's former law partner Lyman Tremain, another highly respected advocate of his day. Over the course of ten years Justice Peckham developed into a highly regarded lawyer in his own right, representing primarily corporate clients. Among his more famous clients was the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad, for whom he acted as counsel in its famous fight against the raid of the company by the Erie Railroad, co-owned by American robber barons Jay Gould and James Fisk. As an advocate, Justice Peckham was described by his colleagues as "vigorous" and of "forceful character, frank and outspoken."3 After a decade in private practice in Albany, however, Justice Peckham, like his father before him, heeded the call of public service.
From his father's law firm, the younger Rufus W. Peckham followed the paternal footprints to the office of District Attorney for the City and County of Albany, which office he held from 1869 until 1872. During his years as a prosecutor, he also served as a special assistant to the state Attorney General in a series of criminal cases, bringing him further attention and renown for his demonstrated skills and talents.
Justice Peckham immersed himself in Democratic politics as both a supporter of other candidates, in a move that would prove quite professionally rewarding, he befriended future President Grover Cleveland (President from 1885 to 1889, and again from 1893 to 1897) during the future President's years in upstate New York, and as an active participant in electoral events. He represented his Congressional district at the National Democratic Convention of 1876 and during that election cycle was an ardent supporter of Samuel J. Tilden for the Presidency.
In 1883 Justice Peckham successfully ran for office as judge of the state Supreme Court. He served in that capacity for three years before election to the Court of Appeals, where he remained until President Cleveland nominated him to the United States Supreme Court in 1895. Highly versatile and an agile thinker, Justice Peckham wrote a number of Court of Appeals opinions with such depth that lawyers considered them to be treatises on the topics. Examples are: impeachment of one's own witness (Becker v. Koch, 104 NY 394 [1887]), the limit of government regulations in the face of real property rights (NY Health Dept. v. Trinity Church Corp., 145 NY 32 [1895]), the right to privacy as related to reproduction of one's image (Schuyler v. Curtis, 148 NY 754 [1896]) and taxation of charitable institutions (Colored Orphan Asylum v. The Mayor of New York, 104 NY 581 [1887]).
While serving on the Court of Appeals, Justice Peckham invested in a large estate and tract of land near Albany at Knowersville. Apparently wanting to explore the land as well as the law, he determined to use the land for agricultural purposes, hiring a farmer to grow and harvest hay. But Justice Peckham's enthusiasm may have exceeded his knowledge of farming. After his workers had harvested the bales, Justice Peckham returned to the estate one day noting that the fields had been cut clean, but confused as to what the piles of wet grass were doing on his property. He was quite surprised to learn that the wet grass he believed to be refuse was in fact the very hay he had set out to harvest.4
With deep roots in New York State, the entire Peckham family was invested in both its land and its politics. Justice Peckham's older brother Wheeler, another esteemed attorney in the Peckham family tradition, was as politically active in Democratic politics as his younger brother. Having supported the upstate faction of the New York State Democrats, Wheeler Peckham had also developed a friendship with President Cleveland, whom he supported in a series of political battles against the downstate faction. On July 7, 1893, fellow New Yorker and United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Blatchford died, creating a vacancy for President Cleveland to fill. The President first nominated William B. Hornblower,5 one of the greatest courtroom lawyers of his day, but Senator David Hill, Democrat of New York who had been in a patronage squabble with President Cleveland, torpedoed the nomination in an exercise of political power against his adversary.6 The President then nominated Wheeler H. Peckham who was also unwittingly caught in the political tug-of-war between Senator Hill and President Cleveland (who had defeated Senator Hill in the 1892 Democratic presidential primary).7 Senator Hill urged his fellow Senators to reject the President's nomination of Wheeler, which they did by a vote of 32-41. Senator Edward Douglass White was ultimately confirmed for that contested Supreme Court seat.
Two years later President Cleveland had the opportunity to appoint another Supreme Court justice due to the death of Justice Howell E. Jackson. The President turned to Rufus W. Peckham, Jr. who, perhaps in part due to Senator Hill's weakened political position, was confirmed in six days.
After his confirmation to the United States Supreme Court, Justice Peckham restricted his already limited social life and stopped giving any sort of public addresses. Such introversion did not, however, prevent him from maintaining a presence in the national and New York Democratic political landscape. He continued to advise President Cleveland on some matters and was even mentioned as a potential nominee for a future New York gubernatorial election. Prior to the Democratic nomination of New York State Court of Appeals Judge Alton Parker for the Presidency in 1891, Justice Peckham's name was prominently mentioned as a candidate for the office and again it was bandied about as a possibility for the 1900 presidential election.
Justice Peckham developed many close friendships with his colleagues during his nine years on the Court of Appeals and his tenure on the United States Supreme Court. The senior justice of the United States Supreme Court, Melville W. Fuller (Chief Justice from 1888-1910), in eulogizing Justice Peckham said that he was
"one of the ablest jurists who ever sat on the American Bench. He was absolutely pure in mind and thought, and free from everything that would prevent him from rendering an honest judgment in any case brought before him. He had strong political convictions; but when on the Bench he knew no litigants' politics and cared nothing for them. His sole desire was to administer the law as it was and to give each party in every case his just rights."
In addition to his close working relationships with his fellow judges, Justice Peckham maintained friendships with a number of famous tycoons, among them J. Pierpont Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John D. Rockefeller. In fact, during his years outside public service, Justice Peckham served as counsel or trustee or both for many banking, insurance, and other corporations, and his own investments were considerable. In 1884 he was elected a trustee of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, and continued in that capacity for twenty-one years. His associates on the board of trustees of that company included many of the most powerful capitalists in the world, such as George F. Baker, Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller, James Speyer, and many others of lesser, but still enormous, power.
Though many people believed these relationships predisposed Justice Peckham to a pro-business position as a jurist, his powerful opinions in a series of antitrust cases should belie any such inference. In a case against the Trans-Missouri Freight Association, for example, Justice Peckham held against a combination between railroads trying to fix rates. In the opinion, he wrote that such conduct violated Federal antitrust statutes, which made invalid all restraints of trade, not merely unreasonable restraints (United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Ass'n, 166 US 290, 328 [1897]). The Supreme Court soon thereafter backed away from the position that all restraints of trade violated Federal law. In yet another opinion by Justice Peckham, the Court recognized that those restraints "merely ancillary or incidental to another legitimate purpose" were not necessarily illegal (Addyston Pipe & Steel Co. v. United States, 175 US 211 [1899]). However, in Addyston Pipe & Steel the Court still held against the business, declaring that an agreement between manufacturers and dealers against competition between them in certain states and territories was a violation of the antitrust laws. Confident of the rightness of his results and thoughtful in his reasoning and analysis, Justice Peckham's writing style, according to one Supreme Court historian, "more nearly approached that of an essayist than any other Justice."8
Justice Peckham received honorary degrees from Union College in 1894, from Yale in 1896, and from Columbia in 1901. In 1866 he married Hariette M. Arnold, daughter of D.H. Arnold, a prominent New York merchant and president of the Mercantile Bank of the city. The couple had two sons, both of whom predeceased Justice Peckham, causing their father great grief. In 1909, while still an active Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Justice Peckham suffered a particularly debilitating asthma attack. Though he had been in ill health for some time, the attack appears to have marked the beginning of a precipitous decline in his health, which culminated in the fatal heart attack he suffered on October 24, 1909, while trying to regain his health at his estate in Altamont, New York. His body was laid to rest in the family plot at Rural Cemetery in Albany.
The name of Rufus Wheeler Peckham, Jr. was sure to live on in New York State history, associated not only with legal and judicial distinction, but also with the maritime industry. In 1943 the Bethlehem Steel Company launched a 10,000 ton ship named in honor of Rufus W. Peckham, Jr. The Peckham, a World War II ship, was launched on February 13, 1943 and was active until 1959, when it wrecked and sank.
Rufus W. Peckham, Jr. had two sons who predeceased him. One son, Rufus, also a lawyer who practiced in the New York City office of his uncle Wheeler's law firm, died childless in 1899. While Rufus died without heirs, the other son, Henry, left at least two sons, Harry and Rufus. The only living descendant presently identified is Rufus W. Peckham, Jr., an attorney in the Washington, D.C. area.
This biography appears in The Judges of the New York Court of Appeals: A Biographical History, ed. Hon. Albert M. Rosenblatt (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007). It has not been updated since publication.
Sources Consulted
21 Green Bag 662 (1909).
30 Alb. L. J. 160 (1884-1885).
55 Alb. L. J. 210 (1897).
60 Alb. L. J. 190, 190-191 (1899-1900).
Battershall, Henry Arnold Peckham and Rufus Wheeler Peckham, Jr: A Memoir, J.B. Lyon Co. (1909).
Bergan, The History of the New York Court of Appeals, 1847-1932 Columbia University Press (1985).
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, page 1396.
Browne, The New York Court of Appeals, 2 Green Bag 277, 337-338 (1890).
Collection of newspaper obituaries in the New York State Library.
Hall, 8 Green Bag 1, 1-4 (1896).
Hayes, Wheeler H. Peckham, 18 Green Bag 57 (1906).
History of the Bench and Bar of New York, Vol. 1, p. 442, New York History Co., 1897.
History of the Supreme Court of the United States, Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago, 1925, p. 627.
"The Insurance Year Book," 1905, p. 175.
King, Melville Weston Fuller: Chief Justice of the United States 1888-1910, Macmillan Co., 1950, p. 191.
Lasky, Rufus W. Peckham, His Life and Times: A Study in American Conservatism, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University, 1951.
Legal and Judicial History of New York, Vol. III, National Americana Society, New York, 1911, p. 47-48.
Obituaries, New York Times, October 25, 1909, p. 1 and October 26, 1909, p. 8.
Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, Hall, Kermit L., ed., 1992, pp. 626-627.
Pratt, Rhetorical Styles on the Fuller Court, 24 Am. J. Legal Hist. 189 at 208, 21, 213 (1980).
Proceedings of the Bar and Officers of the Supreme Court of the United States in Memory of Rufus Wheeler Peckham, December 18, 1909.
Proceedings of the Special Meeting of the New York State Bar Association in Commemoration of the Life and Services of the Late Mr. Justice Rufus W. Peckham, December 9, 1909. Proceedings in The Senate on The Investigation of The Charges Preferred Against John H. McCunn,@ etc., Albany, 1874: pp. 80, 100, 102, 110, 134, 142.
Schwartz, A Book of Legal Lists, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 36.
Spencer, Mr. Justice Peckham and the Sherman Act, 21 Green Bag 614 (1909).
There Shall be a Court of Appeals, 150th Anniversary of the Court of Appeals of the State of New York, (1997) (booklet on file with the author).

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The Arts and Crafts Movement began with a desire to revive the traditional crafts of yesteryear. After the turn of the 20th century, artists such as Will Hutchins, Augustus Vincent Tack and Willis Seaver Adams brought to Deerfield an academic understanding of color and structure and conveyed it to the craftspeople who then applied it to their work.
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2011 had 6 regions scored 95 or above. Port and Northern Rhone got the highest score, with a 99 and 98, respectively.
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PA DOT Test Simulator: Exam Mode 2019
This Pennsylvania DOT Test Simulator is different from other tests we have on this site. It is the closest thing you can get to the official exam. There are no hints and no explanations – because you won't have them at the DOT. You can skip as many questions as you want. You'll receive different questions every time you re-take this exam: no two tests are the same.
Do you sometimes get the test day jitters? You've studied and studied hard, but something happens on the day of the test. You do not even know what comes over you and why. You know everything there is to know, but then it's as if everything falls out of your brain and you're left with nothing. You can get over your test day nerves with the exam simulator. It simulates an official test at the Pennsylvania DOT. It's just like taking an test at the DOT, down to the number of questions that you'll take during a exam. This is a great way to get over the stress you feel on test day.
Are You REALLY Prepared?
Some people think they have a case of exam stress, when in reality, they just don't know the answers. They understand that immediately when they take the exam simulator. This simulator does two things to let people know if they have what it takes to pass the test at the DOT.
To begin with, it stops as soon as you fail. If you miss enough questions to fail the DOT test, this test stops and you don't get any additional questions.
Second, it tells you when you get the answer wrong by highlighting the right answer. This is the best way to learn the answers. Note down all of the answers you get wrong and then review them. You will be prepared if you go over all of your mistakes. Then you won't have any trouble going into the Pennsylvania DOT and passing your official test.
Still Have the Jitters?
If you still felt stressed on test day, continue to practice. Practice is the best way to deal with anxiety. Also, you can try some breathing exercises when you sit for your DOT test! That is a good way to get rid of anxiety. Just visualize yourself passing the test, as well.
You can do great on your test, but it begins with the practice test. Take it and then get ready to go into the DOT and ace your test.Rating: 4.19 out of 5 based on 116 votes. Or get unlimited access to all PA tests with Premium
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Presented is a list of current Ustream emoticons:
Ustream Emoticons
View step by step tutorials and workshops so you can learn how to use every feature on Ustream or make the most of your Ustreaming experience!
Ustream Emoticons
Presented is a list of current Ustream emoticons:
Ustream Emoticons Shortened Link
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Hello all! I was wondering if you could create a hummingbird icon for Phoebe. I know one was created for Molly - just thought it would be cool to have one for her as well!
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I too would like a few more emoticons. These are still the Justin TV emoticons arent they? I know its extra work adding another emoticon to all the servers and some code to chat clients and unreal, and for sure there is no glory or overtime pay budgetted for the project. But maybe one new emoticone every couple of years could be accomplished? Could even have some kind of contest site wide for a worthy design of each rare new emoticon?
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Most services offer some emotes. All of these were created for Ustream and always been exclusive to it.
I'm not familiar with the roadmap for emotes but typically things like this is much easier to say, than do. As you can imagine, all upgrades and projects must be prioritized and planned out as the programers' and designers' time is finite and they're always booked solid.
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Understanding Shibboleth
Shibboleth is a free, open-source web single sign-on system with rich attribute-exchange based on open standards, principally SAML. It is a federated system, supporting secure access to resources across security domains. Information about a user is sent from a home identity provider (IdP) to a service provider (SP) which prepares the information for protection of sensitive content and use by applications. So-called federations, while not a purely technical construct, can often be used to help providers trust each other in a scalable way.
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Laura Ingraham's Newsletter Doesn't Remember When Laura Ingraham Met With George W. Bush
Newsletter Hypocritically Lashes Out At Obama Progressive Media Meeting
Blog ››› ››› ERIC HANANOKI
UPDATE: Laura Ingraham staffer responds to Media Matters
The December 5 edition of conservative pundit Laura Ingraham's newsletter attacked President Obama for recently meeting with MSNBC personalities, claiming that "if Fox News hosts and conservative personalities had stopped by the Bush White House to discuss policy" the press "would have been rightly outraged." But President Bush did meet with a group of Fox News and conservative personalities at the White House -- including Laura Ingraham.
From LauraIngraham.com's December 5 newsletter: "Rachel Maddow, Al Sharpton, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Ed Schultz all stopped by the White House to discuss the President's fiscal cliff proposal. Can anyone even imagine how the press would have reacted if Fox News hosts and conservative personalities had stopped by the Bush White House to discuss policy? They would have been rightly outraged. Given MSNBC's history of blatantly promoting the DNC's talking points and spewing left-wing talking points, maybe its [sic] time they just become Obama's official mouthpiece." Full email here.
The New York Times reported in October 2006 that Bush hosted a group of conservative personalities including Ingraham, Fox News host Sean Hannity (who also met with Bush at the White House the following year), and Fox News contributor Mike Gallagher. During the hour and a half meeting, which was part of a campaign "to reclaim and re-energize a crucial army of supporters that is not as likely to walk in lockstep with the White House as it has in the past," Bush "discussed his case for the war in Iraq, his immigration proposals and even the personality of his Scottish terrier Barney, who scratched on the door during the session until the president relented and let him into the office, according to several hosts who attended."
The Times article featured this White House photo of the meeting, showing Ingraham sitting next to Bush.
From the Times article:
"This was clearly, clearly an effort to kind of rally the troops when the troops need rallying," said Mike Gallagher, who attended the meeting and whose daily program reaches at least 3.75 million people each week. "They know that we've got an audience of people who may or may not be on the political fence right now."
Mr. Gallagher said that he and the other hosts -- Mr. Hannity, Ms. Ingraham, Neal Boortz and Michael Medved -- talked about the experience on their programs "for days and days and days."
Mr. Hannity said of the meeting, "I think he'd have an 80 percent approval rating if he could bring people into the Oval Office six people at a time and explain it all to them."
But Ms. Ingraham, who recently went bike riding with the president, has continued to complain about federal spending, progress in Iraq and, lately, the Republican leadership's handling of the Foley scandal. Ms. Ingraham likened herself to a sports fan who nonetheless has occasional criticism of the coach. But, she said pointedly on her show: "I am not an advocate for the G.O.P. I'm an advocate for conservative ideas."
Ingraham's Daily Fix is a free email sent to LauraIngraham.com subscribers. It's sent under Ingraham's name, though it's not entirely clear who writes the content. A request for comment and clarification sent to Ingraham's website was not immediately returned.
During a discussion of the meeting on the December 5 edition of Fox & Friends, The Five co-host and former Bush press secretary Dana Perino said that "we would, sometimes, need to do some things like a talk radio row, I think we called it -- it was brilliant. We had all the conservative talk radio hosts lined up, and we would put -- get a whole bunch of interviews so that they could be convinced and persuaded to President Bush's point of view." However, Perino went on to claim that Bush took more questions from the press corp and "the problem" for Obama is he's just meeting with "the left" and "a narrow slice of the audience."
Following the publication of this post, a producer for Laura Ingraham defended the attack in an email to Media Matters. The producer wrote that the newsletter is written by staff while Ingraham is on radio hiatus and "Although I didn't know Laura had visited the Bush White House with other conservative radio hosts, the circumstances of her meeting the president were quite different":
During Laura's brief radio hiatus, the Daily Fix is written by staff. Although I didn't know Laura had visited the Bush White House with other conservative radio hosts, the circumstances of her meeting the president were quite different. Laura did not go to the White House to advise the president, but was simply briefed on policy for perhaps an hour. More importantly, it wasn't in the middle of a critical period when the President should be meeting with members of Congress to discuss resolving something as important as the fiscal cliff. The gist of the Daily Fix was that President Obama was neglecting crucial negotiations to meet with liberal members of the media, and that point still stands.
While the staffer defended Ingraham by writing that she "was simply briefed on policy for perhaps an hour," the newsletter originally asked: "Can anyone even imagine how the press would have reacted if Fox News hosts and conservative personalities had stopped by the Bush White House to discuss policy." [emphasis added]
The New York Times noted that the 2006 meeting included discussions about the war in Iraq and Bush's immigration proposals (both of which were under heavy debate at the time). The meeting also took place near the 2006 midterm elections and was reportedly part of a Republican campaign to persuade and energize supporters.
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The Early Symptoms of Spiritual Danger
from Sinclair Ferguson Mar 25, 2019 Category: ArticlesI can still recall the conversation although it took place more than three decades ago. A shocked friend asked, "Have you heard that Sarah is no longer a Christian?" What was so alarming to my friend was that Sarah had been one of the most influential, and apparently fruitful, members... Keep Reading
Dealing with Differences
from Roger Nicole May 15, 2009 Category: ArticlesWe are called upon by the Lord to contend earnestly for the faith (Jude 3). But that does not necessarily involve being contentious; it involves avoiding compromise, standing forth for what we believe, standing forth for the truth of God -- without welching at any particular moment. Thus, we are bound to meet, at various points and various levels, people with whom we disagree. Keep Reading
The Lord of the Church
from John MacArthur May 14, 2009 Category: ArticlesThe truth that Christ is Lord of His church may sound somewhat benign to a casual listener in our generation, but the struggle for Christ's authority in the church has come to us through the ages on a sea of blood. Thankfully, literal bloodshed over the issue is no longer very common. But faithful Christians are still waging a fierce moral and intellectual battle for Christ's lordship over the church. Keep Reading
Take Time to Focus on Family This Summer
from Karisa Schlehr May 13, 2009 Category: Ligonier ResourcesSchool is almost out, and summertime is just around the corner. While taking a break from the hustle and bustle of a regular routine and the busyness of life, it can be easy to take a break from our biblical studies as well. Keep Reading
The Letter to the Church in Laodicea
from Mark Bates May 12, 2009 Category: ArticlesThe pipes in our home sprung a series of leaks. Since most of my neighbors had replaced their plumbing, I knew it was time for me to do the same. However, hiring a plumber to do this would cost thousands of dollars. My friend, Monte, had just repiped his house himself and offered to help me with mine. I am not a handyman, but I am a tightwad. So, I figured, he could be the plumber and I could be the plumber's helper. Within a week, I had a new plumbing system. Keep Reading
Divine Immutability and the Doctrines of Grace (pt. 5)
from John MacArthur May 10, 2009 Category: ArticlesIn 1 Corinthians 15:25-28, we find a remarkable conclusion to this whole discussion. There Paul says, "For he [Christ] must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For 'God has put all things in subjection under his feet.' But when it says, 'all things are put in subjection,' it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all." Keep Reading
Top 5 Commentaries on the Book of 1 Peter
from Keith Mathison May 09, 2009 Category: ArticlesIt appears that the first epistle of Peter was written by the apostle from Rome sometime around A.D. 62-63, immediately before severe persecution began under Nero. The letter was written to Christians in Asia Minor (1:1) who were already suffering for their Christian faith. There are a number of helpful commentaries on the Book of 1 Peter, and the following are five of the best. Keep Reading
Divine Immutability and the Doctrines of Grace (pt. 4)
from John MacArthur May 08, 2009 Category: ArticlesSecond Timothy 1:9 introduces us to the answer. Speaking of God, the verse says that He "saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began." The phrase before the ages began is the English translation of the same Greek phrase rendered with the same words in Titus 1:2. Here, too, it literally means "before time began." In eternity past, before the dawn of history, God made the irrevocable decision to grant salvation to the redeemed. This is the promise of Titus 1:2, and it is a promise that God made according to His own independent purpose and grace. Put simply, it was a promise He made to Himself. Keep Reading
Is It Fitting for We Who Are Calvinists to Adopt the Theology of a Man, and One Who Murdered Servetus?
from R.C. Sproul Jr. May 08, 2009 Category: ArticlesAs my friend Doug Phillips has pointed out, this year has brought, in the providence of God, a strange confluence of anniversaries. The two men who have had the greatest impact on these United States may well be, on the one hand, Charles Darwin, and on the other John Calvin. Darwin was born two hundred years ago this year, Calvin five hundred years ago. Our perspective on each of these men will serve as a potent bell-weather for our perspectives on a whole host of issues. Keep Reading
New Airtime for Renewing Your Mind in Seattle
from Karisa Schlehr May 07, 2009 Category: Ligonier ResourcesAs of May 4, 2009, Renewing Your Mind with Dr. R.C. Sproul is airing in Seattle on KGNW-AM 820 at 8:30 a.m. The broadcast will continue airing at the previous 5:30 a.m. timeslot as well, so you still have a chance to listen if you miss it the first time. Keep Reading
Divine Immutability and the Doctrines of Grace (pt. 3)
from John MacArthur May 07, 2009 Category: ArticlesThough the doctrine of election applies to all that God does in a general sense, it most often refers, in a specific New Testament sense, to the election of sinners to become redeemed saints within the church. Divine election, in this particular regard, speaks of God's independent and predetermined choice of those whom He would save and place into the corporate body of Christ. God did not save certain sinners because they chose Him, but because He chose them. Keep Reading


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Fox Sports 2 to Air Monster Energy Cup
AURORA, Ill. – Feld Motor Sports® announced today that the highly anticipated Monster Energy Cup will air live on the recently launched FOX Sports 2 from Las Vegas' Sam Boyd Stadium on October 19 at 9:00 p.m. ET. Fans will enjoy 3.5 hours of live coverage as the biggest names in the sport battle it out for $1 million. The following day, FOX Sports 1 will re-air the entire race at 1:00 p.m. ET.
The popular team of Ralph Sheheen, Jeff Emig and Erin Bates will call the action as the world's top racers, including Justin Barcia, Ryan Villopoto, James Stewart and Ryan Dungey, lay it on the line for a shot at $1 million on a fresh, new track designed by five-time Monster Energy Supercross Champion Ricky Carmichael.
"It's great to hear that FOX Sports 2 is providing the fans at home 3.5 hours of live coverage from the Monster Energy Cup as I defend my title against the sport's heavyweights in Las Vegas," said defending champion Barcia.
"Heading into its third year, the Monster Energy Cup has quickly grown into one of the most anticipated races of the year, and showcasing it live on FOX Sports 2 will deliver this world class race to a new, multi-sport audience," said Ken Hudgens, COO, Feld Motor Sports.
FOX Sports 2, an extension of FOX Sports 1, is a new national 24-hour multi-sport cable channel launched by FOX Sports on Aug. 17, 2013. FOX Sports 2 content platform focuses on a broader spectrum of live sporting events from around the globe, including the Monster Energy Cup, and connects with fans through entertaining studio shows and original programming.
"It's awesome to be able to share a showcase event like the Monster Energy Cup live on FOX Sports 2," said FOX Sports SVP of Programming and Research Patrick Crakes. "This world-class race delivers a very passionate, young and growing fan base. And while final touches are still being put on the 2014 Monster Energy Supercross programming schedule, we can now say that most of the season's races will air live on FOX Sports 1, America's new sports network."
For more information on the Monster Energy Cup, log on to www.MonsterEnergyCup.com. For all media requests, please contact Denny Hartwig firstname.lastname@example.com or 630-566-6305. To follow the Monster Energy Cup on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram log on to www.Facebook.com/VegasMECup; www.Twitter.com/VegasMECup; www.Instagram.com/MonsterEnergyCup.com.
Tickets for the 2013 Monster Energy Cup can be purchased at the Thomas & Mack Center Box Office, UNLVtickets outlets, online at www.UNLVtickets.com, www.MonsterEnergyCup.com, or by phone at (702) 739-FANS. Tickets will be available at the Sam Boyd Stadium Box Office on the day of the event only.


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Note: The conversation below is in Kan-Tam (Kannadized Tamil), spoken quite widely in Malleswaram, with dialects as diverse as the families that speak it. I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to skip the vernacular and stick with the translations though :)
(What di Yadugiri, haven't seen you in ages. Been busy?)
Ille ma Sheerangu, aar maason Cincinatti-k patpoindhe, chin paNNde haathke.
(No ma Sriranganayaki, I was visiting the younger daugher in Cincinatti for 6 months)
Oh, annual visitaa? Apdi ikka unde haidhi? AvLe paath 5 varshath kitte ardhe.
(Ah, the annual visitaa? How's that daughter of yours doing? Havent seen her in 5 years at least)
Hoon ma, ingthik varthke aiykundille awlaale. Office karyon, pash-haLde schoole, yejmanarde vaaley, adh, idh ant time-e shik-kyundille awLke. Athkey ticket anpichoodra, naangl rand peron poit varthke.
(Yeah, yeah.. You know how it is, Work, children, husband's job, etc. Thats why she flies us up there every year instead)
Adh sari. Naanon yejmanaron hathrathle Minneapolis poit vandhon 6 maasathke. Ande peri paiyon ang ikkandha, gyaapkon ikkardha?
(Oh yeah, I know that one! The old boy and I were just up in Minneapolis for 6 months to visit our older son recently)
Oho aama, anna? Odh paanengl rand pero ange? Thalihe, paapa pathkordhe, phone le vaarthey sholrdhe: athnyeva? Athva engyana alchkund ponana, paiyyon?
(Oh, Yes, no? And what did you two do there? Cook, take care of the baby and talk to relatives on the phone? Or did he take you out somewhere?)
Hoon ma odho Taco Bell ant restaurant ikkardhe, angthik alchkund pona wor na dinner ke. Awnde haath leno jasthi dooron ille ant kaanrna. Namde rajma ikkardhe, athk kothambri sopp pot chapati le shuththi kudthaa. Parvayille, nanna indhe.
(Yeah, we went out once to this restaurant called Taco Bell. Didn't seem very far from his place. They dished us some weird Rajma and corriander wrapped in a chapatti. Wasn't too bad I suppose.)
Adh sari. Naangl yengyon jaasthi poville ma. Thalihe panni, papa-de karyon ella pathkorth-kullye sariya pochi. Paapon rand perkon office le shene karyon ant thonrna. Time-ey shikville engLe angyon appale alchkyund porthke.
(Ah ok. We didnt go out much ma. What with all the cooking, cleaning, looking after the baby and all. Looks like both of them were really busy at work. )
Aamva? Neengl vapas vandh aan pinne rand pero Europe trip patpona ant aaro sholkyundindhaaaa...? (sly smile)
(Well, r-e-a-l-l-y now. I heard they went off on a Europe vacation after you guys came back. (sly smile) )
Oh.. ha ha.. err.. aama ma, paapon, odho break vonon, break vonon ant kirchaadkyund indha appolenme. Naangl innu sheth naal irkunma irndhdhe. Adhe holidayk time ach ant begon anpichoota.
(Oh.. ha ha.. err yes, they were talking about that while we were there. We were infact supposed to stay on longer, but they sent us back early so they could go, poor things.
Aama Ne, nee unde naatpaNde daycare centre le thuNi thochkyund indhe ant kaette....n? (smirk)
But how about you? I heard you were in charge of the dirty laundry section in your daughter-in-law's daycare center? (smirk))
Umm.. errr... Ann ma, varme washing machine le adth potkundindhe athnye. Ange adhellaa periya kaaryon ille.
(Umm.. err.. well I .. just loaded the clothes in the machine and dried them out. It wasn't a big deal really... )
Hmm. Paapon. Nee yenmana chollu. Indh vysle ang poi oddhaadrthk badhla, ingye santhoshma irndh filter coffee utkund, kovilk poikund-vandhkund irklaan. Anna?
(Hmm.. Poor you. Eh, but who are we kidding. At our age, I'd rather do filter coffee shots and hang out at the temple here, than slog it out in a foreign land, what say?)
Aama Ne. Namde Malleshwaron thaa gathi namkellaan. Sari, appo vapas pore angthikke?
(Pfft, tell me about it. Malleswaram's the bees knees for the likes of us! When are you going back?)
Sadya (Thank god) ma, naat likely in thee neeyar future.
Nee lucky ma ude. Naa July le wapas ponmaardhe. Thirpyon Taco Belle- gille ant engyana alchkund ponaka adhHaLe kothambri marathk nethaad-vechoot vare.
(You are lucky ma, leave. I have to go back in July. But I swear, if those freaks take me to a Taco Bell again, I'll personally string'em up on their stupid corriander plant* .


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Lipofectamine® LTX Reagent is a proprietary, animal-origin free formulation for the transfection of DNA into eukaryotic cells with low cytotoxicity. This reference provides a recommended procedure to transfect plasmid DNA into Primary Mouse Neural Progenitor Cells (mNPC) using Lipofectamine® LTX Reagent (Cat. No. 15338-100).
Important Guidelines for Transfection
Follow these important guidelines when transfecting mNPC cells using Lipofectamine® LTX Reagent:
- Maintain the same seeding conditions between experiments. Use low-passage cells; make sure cells are
healthy and greater than 90% viable before transfection.
- NCP's grow as neurospheres, and can be adhered to culture plates and differentiated into neurons,
astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes upon addition of serum and insulin-like growth factor.
- Transfection can be performed both in the presence or absence of serum. Test serum-free media for compatibility with Lipofectamine® LTX Reagent.
- Using PLUS Reagent (Cat. No. 11514-015) enhances transfection performance in Primary Mouse Neural Progenitor Cells.
- We recommend Opti-MEM® I Reduced Serum Medium (Cat. No. 31985-062) to dilute the DNA and Lipofectamine® LTX Reagent before complexing.
- Visit www.lifetechnologies.com/transfection or contact Technical Service for other specialized transfection protocols.
- Lipofectamine® LTX Reagent performs well with vector-based RNAi experiments. For siRNA and Stealth™ RNAi transfections, we recommend Lipofectamine® RNAiMAX (Cat. No. 13778-075). Go to www.lifetechnologies.com/RNAi or contact Technical Service for more information.
Materials Needed
Have the following reagents on hand before beginning:
- Primary Mouse Neural Progenitor (NCP) cells maintained in DMEM (GIBCO Cat. No. 11960-044) medium
supplemented with 1% L-glutamine (GIBCO Cat. No. 25030), 1% penicillin-streptomycin (Cat. no. 15070-063), 1% dextrose, and epidermal growth factor. Grow cells at 37° C with 5% CO2.
- Plasmid DNA of interest (100 ng/μl or higher)
- Lipofectamine® LTX Reagent (store at +4°C until use), and PLUS™ Reagent (store at 4°C)
- Opti-MEM® I Reduced Serum Medium
- Appropriate tissue culture plates and supplies
Use this procedure to transfect plasmid DNA into Primary Mouse Neural Progenitor Cells in a 24-well format. All amounts and volumes are given on a per well basis.
- Begin transfection one or seven days after differentiation in 24-well plate.
- The day of transfection, remove growth medium from cells and replace with 0.5 ml of complete growth medium without antibiotics.
- For each well of cells to be transfected, dilute 0.25, 0.50, or 1.0 μg of DNA into 100 μl of Opti-MEM® I Reduced Serum Medium without serum.
- Mix PLUS™ Reagent gently before use, then add 2.5 μl PLUS™ Reagent directly to the diluted DNA. Mix gently and incubate for 5-15 minutes at room temperature.
- For each well of cells, add 0.1-2.50 μl of Lipofectamine® LTX Reagent into the above diluted DNA solution, mix gently and incubate for 30 minutes at room temperature to form DNA-Lipofectamine® LTX complexes.
- After the 30 minute incubation, add 100 μl of the DNA-Lipofectamine® LTX complexes directly to each well containing cells and mix gently by rocking the plate back and forth.
- Complexes do not have to be removed following transfection. Incubate the cells at 37°C in a CO2 incubator for 18-24 hours post-transfection before assaying for transgene expression.
- Results are best for NPC's differentiated for 1 day (compared to 7-day differentiated).
- Combinations that gave best results:
1.5 μl Lipofectamine LTX / 2.5 μl PLUS/ 1.0 μg plasmid
2.5 μl Lipofectamine LTX/ 2.5 μl PLUS/ 500 ng plasmid


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Difference between revisions of "Netbook Games"
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* {{App|[[Wikipedia:Teeworlds|Teeworlds]]|fast-paced 2D multiplayer shooter|http://www.teeworlds.com/|{{Pkg|teeworlds}}}}
* {{App|[[Wikipedia:Teeworlds|Teeworlds]]|fast-paced 2D multiplayer shooter|http://www.teeworlds.com/|{{Pkg|teeworlds}}}}
* {{App|[[Wikipedia:Warmux|Wormux (now Warmux)]]|Somewhat similar to Worms 2/Worms Armageddon|http://www.wormux.org/phpboost/news/news.php|{{Pkg|warmux}}}}
* {{App|[[Wikipedia:Warmux|Wormux (now Warmux)]]|Somewhat similar to Worms 2/Worms Armageddon|http://www.wormux.org/phpboost/news/news.php|{{Pkg|warmux}}}}
Revision as of 04:10, 7 April 2012
Template:Article summary start Template:Article summary text Template:Article summary end
This article lists games, which are playable on virtually every computer with at least 512MB system memory. For more modern and cool looking games see Common Applications/Games.
- FreedroidRPG — mature science fiction role playing game set in the future
- Cave Story/Doukutsu — addictive 1-man-made metroid-vania-esque platformer.
- If there happens to be a noticible lag when there are lots of enemies on screen or in larger levels, try running the Windows version through Wine. This should fix the problem.
- Counter-Strike 2D — 2D clone (+additional features) of the popular Counter-Strike Mod
- Frogatto — much enjoyable platformer, in which you help a small green fellow named Frogatto walk and jump between solid footholds without getting hurt; have a look at this review.
- Frozen Bubble — arcade game with colorful animated penguin eyecandy
- Hedgewars — Yet another Worms clone, considered to be better than its predecessor by many. Take turns to blast your opponents into oblivion with comedic results! Best in Multiplayer.
- Mari0 — The Mario game with Portal gun mechanics.
- Nikki and the Robots — cute physics platformer
- Teeworlds — fast-paced 2D multiplayer shooter
- Wormux (now Warmux) — Somewhat similar to Worms 2/Worms Armageddon
- Open Syobon Action — cross platform, open source version of the unforgiving Japanese parody of Super Mario Bros
- AssaultCube — realistic team oriented multiplayer FPS based on the Cube engine. Features a single-player bot system.
- Blood Frontier – Team oriented multiplayer FPS based on the Cube2 (Sauerbraten) engine
- low-fps on big maps. Kinda playable on small maps in duel mode
- Tweaks: set all to low, disable all special effects
- Cube – realistic team oriented multiplayer FPS based on the Cube engine.
- runs with little slowdown out of pacman
- Tweaks: not yet added
- OpenArena – fast multiplayer shooter based on the quake3-engine
- Sauerbraten – Next-generation Cube Engine
- runs with slowdown out of pacman
- Tweaks: set all parameters to low, avoid huge maps
- Quake 3 – Just quake 3 =)
- runs perfectly, out of pacman with quake3 or ioquake3
- Urban Terror 4.1 – modern multiplayer FPS based on the ioquake3 engine
- runs decently when most graphics-related options are set to low, but still looks great even with low-quality settings
- available from AUR
- Netpanzer — realtime Strategy game like Command and Conquer but without building bases.
- Unknown Horizons — 2.5D isometric realtime strategy simulation with an emphasis on economy and city building. Expand your small settlement to a strong and wealthy colony, collect taxes and supply your inhabitants with valuable goods. Increase your power with a well balanced economy and with strategic trade and diplomacy
- Warzone 2100 - 2.* — In Warzone 2100, you command the forces of The Project in a battle to rebuild the world after mankind has almost been destroyed by nuclear missiles. The game offers campaign, multi-player, and single-player skirmish modes. An extensive tech tree with over 400 different technologies, combined with the unit design system, allows for a wide variety of possible units and tactics
- Battle for Wesnoth — free, turn-based tactical strategy game with a high fantasy theme, featuring both single-player, and online/hotseat multiplayer combat
- Freeciv — multiuser clone of the famous Microprose game of Civilization
- Freecol — turn-based strategy game based on Colonization
- Widelands — slow-paced strategy like "the Settlers 2"
- Singularity (Endgame) — turn based single player strategy/simulation about a AI hiding, growing and evolving
- Penguin Command - A clone of the classic game "Missile Command" with improved graphics and sound.
- Lgeneral - Turn-based strategy engine heavily inspired by Panzer General.
Tycoon/Management Games
- OpenTTD — open source clone of the Microprose game "Transport Tycoon Deluxe", a popular game originally written by Chris Sawyer. It attempts to mimic the original game as closely as possible while extending it with new features
- Chroma — puzzle game like Sokoban with ncurses mode
- XMoto — challenging 2D motocross platform game, where physics play an important role
- Ri-li — toy wood engine GPL game
- ADOM — Ancient Domains Of Mystery
- Angband — roguelike dungeon exploration game based on the writings of JRR Tolkien
- ASCIIpOrtal — sidescrolling game with ANSI text graphics in which you are a person holding a device which creates portals, or links to other parts of the level
- bs — Battleships based shooter for the console
- Crawl (aka Dungeon Crawl) — Linley's Dungeon Crawl)
- DoomRL — Simple roguelike game, based on Doom. Perfect for starters
- Dwarf Fortress — single-player fantasy game. You control a dwarven outpost or an adventurer in a randomly generated persistent world
- Nethack — single player dungeon exploration game
- nInvaders — Ncurses based space invaders clone
- Rogue — original dungeon crawl game
- Stone Soup — Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
- ToME (aka Troubles of Middle Earth) — A dungeon crawler similar to Angband, based on the works of Tolkien. 2.X.X series.
- BSD Games — Collection of classic text games distributed with *BSD
- Fortune — Displays Random messages/quotes/jokes when invoked
Visual novels
- Digital: A Love Story — computer mystery/romance set five minutes into the future of 1988
- Don't take it personally — almost kinetic visual novel that tells a story of a new high school literature teacher, set in a prestigious private high school, and on the social networks of 2027
- RE: Alistair++ — English otome game (subtype of visual novel) that tells a story of a young girl fond of MMORPGs, her online and everyday life
- Narcissu — visual novel, telling the story of a terminally ill young man and woman
- Katawa Shoujo — bishoujo-style visual novel game that tells a story of a young man and five other girls suffering with varying disabilities
Interactive fiction
- Inform — design system for interactive fiction based on natural language
- http://inform7.com/ || inform7AUR
- INSTEAD — quest interpreter using Lua macros as game writing language
- TADS — prototype-based domain-specific programming language and set of standard libraries for creating interactive fiction (IF) games
- http://www.tads.org/ || tadsAUR
Chess simulators
- GNU Chess — one of the oldest computer chess programs for Unix-based computers, lets most modern computers play a full game of chess
- Eboard — chess interface to ICS and chess engines
Wine does not slowdown most games (even speeds up some), so all games with low system requirements that run in Windows works in Wine too. Consult Wine AppDB for game-specific compability information.


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The new frontline in the war on terror runs alongside a 20-meter-wide canal where a dozen or so Malian government soldiers and a handful of French armored personnel carriers now stand guard against an Islamist force that clearly is not backing down.
A signpost points the way north down a gravel road to Diabaly, some 40 miles away, where on Monday a rebel Islamist unit surprised a Malian garrison and overwhelmed it.
Two days later, fleeing refugees reaching here by car, donkey cart and bicycle reported seeing no signs of a much discussed counteroffensive to reclaim Diabaly. The 40 miles between Diabaly and this administrative hub was a no-man's land, they said.
"I did not see a single Malian soldier," said Cheikh Omar Dicko, who fled the whole way on a motorbike, with a friend on the back. "Not one."
France's short celebratory honeymoon in halting Islamist gains in Mali was dashed at Diabaly, when an Islamist force routed roughly 200 Malian troops from a small garrison in the village. The Malians were ambushed from behind, and many fled through a grove of mango trees and knee-high water.
It was a battle that taught the French some lessons about the anti-jihadist campaign they've begun:
– Air power is of limited benefit without ground troops capable of fending off the rebels – and the Malian military cannot.
– Their enemy is cunning, well-armed, brave, and already adapting to neutralize France's air power.
– The terrain, especially on this front, will not be their friend.
The story of the battle for Diabaly is still unfolding. But interviews with officials here and fleeing residents tells of a cunning Islamist force using all its advantages to take new ground, even in the face of a modern Western nation deploying air power.
The story begins in the town of Goma, which sits about 13 miles north of Diabaly. The rebels captured it months ago, marking the southern edge of an Islamist-controlled expanse that stretches from the western banks of the Niger River, north to the historic city of Timbuktu, and northwest to the porous border with Mauritania.
When the French began arriving in Mali on Friday, the Islamists sent reinforcements to Goma. Then, rather than wait for Malian troops to move into Islamist-controlled territory, the Islamists decided to move south.
The most likely attack route, Malian forces thought, would be a road that runs along a canal between Goma and Diabaly. They prepared to meet the Islamists there.
Instead, the rebel convoy, under the cloak of early morning darkness, turned east off the road three miles outside of Goma, at the village of Dogofru. From there, they navigated through the shrubby terrain toward the southeast.
Some parked their trucks and approached Diabaly on foot from the east, while about 20 other trucks looped around the bank of another canal – dubbed the Millennium Challenge canal by locals, because American aid dollars paid for it two years ago – and attacked Diabaly from the south, through the villages of Alatola and Kourouma.
The Malian soldiers tried to block them at Alatola but were pushed back to their base in Diabaly. There, they were ambushed on their flank by the rebels, who had crossed a swamp by foot to attack the town.
The battle lasted several hours, but before noon the surviving Malian soldiers fled.
The prefect for the wider region, Seydou Traore, said about 70 trucks full of insurgents participated in the attack, and he estimated about 50 more had arrived since.
The insurgents are staying in groups of 20 or so trucks, parking discreetly under trees to avoid aerial bombardment, he said.
That's not the only way the rebels are hiding from air power. The rebels are shutting down the roads to prevent civilians from fleeing. They are then mixing in with the population, even eating food at their houses.
From those fleeing, there were no reports of civilian casualties. There also were no reports that the rebel force had been significantly weakened from the bombardment, which came not only from jets but also from ground-strafing helicopters.
Niono is the next town in line for battle, if the Islamists continue their advance. The area is far from the type of desert warfare France may have been expecting: It's crisscrossed with canals, packed with rice and onion fields and eucalyptus plantations, its farms surrounded on all sides by countless dikes, ditches and bridges.
In Bamako, Mali's capital hundreds of miles away, there are rumors that the French are massing for a ground attack on Diabaly. Here, however, there is little sign of such preparations, though the prefect said appearances can be deceiving.
"Who said they are not here?" he asked. "They spent last night here. They are here, you just can't see them."
As dusk fell, four French armored personnel carriers were seen heading toward Niono.
Ali Giundo, 30, fled his Diabaly home on Monday, riding his motorbike all the way south to Niono.
"The road is full of rumors of this village and that falling to the jihadists," he said.
When he arrived at Niono, the soldiers at the bridge, the first he'd seen the whole trip, asked for his ID but did not frisk him.
"The enemy may try to infiltrate us as regular civilians," warned Traore, whose office is just a few yards from the checkpoint. "This is not conventional warfare."


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We have been playing around with WebLogic for a few weeks now; but I have only recently watched a course on the Jython based web logic scripting langauge, WLST, that you can use to automate common operations. It turns out that the setup for the tool take a few steps, so lets quickly define an alias that starts the tool with the right environment.
alias wlst '/bin/sh -c "source $WL_HOME/server/bin/setWLSEnv.sh; java -Dpython.cachedir=/tmp/wlst weblogic.WLST \!*"'
You can run WSLT in interactive or scripting mode, we are going to focus on script mode for the moment though. You will tend to use the interactive mode to debug your scripts. All the examples here can be simply placed in a .py file and passed as a parameter to wlst.
The first thing I wanted to do is the automate setting the HTTP/Tunneling preference which is required to enable deployment from within JDeveloper. Since we get new builds quite often I wanted a quick workaround. You can do this with the server running, and the commands are slightly different, but I went with off-line modification of configuration files.
readDomain('/ade/gdavison_wls/wls10/beahome/user_projects/domains/base_domain') cd ('Server/AdminServer') set ('TunnelingEnabled', true) updateDomain() closeDomain()
Now the server is properly configured you will probably want to start it. There is a script to do this but I figured would be interesting to do this using a WLST:
startServer('AdminServer', 'base_domain', 't3://localhost:7001', 'weblogic', 'weblogic', '/ade/gdavison_wls/wls10/beahome/user_projects/domains/base_domain', 'true')
And of course you might want to shut it down later. Since the AdminServer is the default local connection as I am not worried about clusters for the moment we can connection with the default connection information and force a server shutdown.
connect("weblogic","weblogic") shutdown(force="true")
Of course this has just scratched the surface of what you can do with this tool. The jython underpinning makes it really easy to do powerful things. For example this blog entry shows how to automate setting up a cluster. You can also impressively record operation when using web console and later use them in scripts to configure another server.


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Implementing UEFI Secure Boot in Fedora
Edit 02:10EDT 01/6/12: Clarification that it's a one-off payment
(Brief disclaimer - while I work for Red Hat, I'm only going to be talking about Fedora here. Anything written below represents only my opinions and my work on Fedora, not Red Hat's opinions or future plans)
Fedora 17 was released this week. It's both useful and free, and serves as a welcome addition to any family gathering. Do give it a go. But it's also noteworthy for another reason - it's the last Fedora release in the pre-UEFI secure boot era. Fedora 18 will be released at around the same time as Windows 8, and as previously discussed all Windows 8 hardware will be shipping with secure boot enabled by default. While Microsoft have modified their original position and all x86 Windows machines will be required to have a firmware option to disable this or to permit users to enrol their own keys, it's not really an option to force all our users to play with hard to find firmware settings before they can run Fedora. We've been working on a plan for dealing with this. It's not ideal, but of all the approaches we've examined we feel that this one offers the best balance between letting users install Fedora while still permitting user freedom.
Getting the machine booted
Most hardware you'll be able to buy towards the end of the year will be Windows 8 certified. That means that it'll be carrying a set of secure boot keys, and if it comes with Windows 8 pre-installed then secure boot will be enabled by default. This set of keys isn't absolutely fixed and will probably vary between manufacturers, but anything with a Windows logo will carry the Microsoft key[1].
We explored the possibility of producing a Fedora key and encouraging hardware vendors to incorporate it, but turned it down for a couple of reasons. First, while we had a surprisingly positive response from the vendors, there was no realistic chance that we could get all of them to carry it. That would mean going back to the bad old days of scouring compatibility lists before buying hardware, and that's fundamentally user-hostile. Secondly, it would put Fedora in a privileged position. As one of the larger distributions, we have more opportunity to talk to hardware manufacturers than most distributions do. Systems with a Fedora key would boot Fedora fine, but would they boot Mandriva? Arch? Mint? Mepis? Adopting a distribution-specific key and encouraging hardware companies to adopt it would have been hostile to other distributions. We want to compete on merit, not because we have better links to OEMs.
An alternative was producing some sort of overall Linux key. It turns out that this is also difficult, since it would mean finding an entity who was willing to take responsibility for managing signing or key distribution. That means having the ability to keep the root key absolutely secure and perform adequate validation of people asking for signing. That's expensive. Like millions of dollars expensive. It would also take a lot of time to set up, and that's not really time we had. And, finally, nobody was jumping at the opportunity to volunteer. So no generic Linux key.
The last option wasn't hugely attractive, but is probably the least worst. Microsoft will be offering signing services through their sysdev portal. It's not entirely free (there's a one-off $99 fee to gain access edit: The $99 goes to Verisign, not Microsoft - further edit: once paid you can sign as many binaries as you want), but it's cheaper than any realistic alternative would have been. It ensures compatibility with as wide a range of hardware as possible and it avoids Fedora having any special privileges over other Linux distributions. If there are better options then we haven't found them. So, in all probability, this is the approach we'll take. Our first stage bootloader will be signed with a Microsoft key.
We've decided to take a multi-layer approach to our signing for a fairly simple reason. Signing through the Microsoft signing service is a manual process, and that's a pain. We don't want to have bootloader updates delayed because someone needs to find a copy of Internet Explorer and a smartcard and build packages by hand. Instead we're writing a very simple bootloader[2]. This will do nothing other than load a real bootloader (grub 2), validate that it's signed with a Fedora signing key and then execute it. Using the Fedora signing key there means that we can build grub updates in our existing build infrastructure and sign them ourselves. The first stage bootloader should change very rarely, and we don't envisage updating it more than once per release cycle. It shouldn't be much of a burden on release management.
What about grub? We've already switched Fedora 18 over to using grub 2 by default on EFI systems, but it still needs some work before it's ready for secure boot. The first thing is that we'll be disabling the module loading. Right now you can load arbitrary code into grub 2 at runtime, and that defeats the point of secure boot. So that'll be disabled. Next we'll be adding support for verifying that the kernel it's about to boot is signed with a trusted key. And finally we'll be sanitising the kernel command line to avoid certain bits of functionality that would permit an attacker to cause even a signed kernel to launch arbitrary code. These restrictions will all vanish if secure boot is disabled.
Secure boot is built on the idea that all code that can touch the hardware directly is trusted, and any untrusted code must go through the trusted code. This can be circumvented if users can execute arbitrary code in the kernel. So, we'll be moving to requiring signed kernel modules and locking down certain aspects of kernel functionality. The most obvious example is that it won't be possible to access PCI regions directly from userspace, which means all graphics cards will need kernel drivers. Userspace modesetting will be a thing of the past. Again, disabling secure boot will disable these restrictions.
Signed modules are obviously troubling from a user perspective. We'll be signing all the drivers that we ship, but what about out of tree drivers? We don't have a good answer for that yet. As before, we don't want any kind of solution that works for us but doesn't work for other distributions. Fedora-only or Ubuntu-only drivers are the last thing anyone wants, and this really needs to be handled in a cross-distribution way.
Wait signed what
Secure boot is designed to protect against malware code running before the operating system. This isn't a hypothetical threat. Pre-boot malware exists in the wild, and some of it is nastier than you expect. So obviously bootloaders need to be signed, since otherwise you'd just replace the signed bootloader with an unsigned one that installed malware and booted your OS.
But what about the kernel? The kernel is just code. If I take a signed Linux bootloader and then use it to boot something that looks like an unsigned Linux kernel, I've instead potentially just booted a piece of malware. And if that malware can attack Windows then the signed Linux bootloader is no longer just a signed Linux bootloader, it's a signed Windows malware launcher and that's the kind of thing that results in that bootloader being added to the list of blacklisted binaries and suddenly your signed Linux bootloader isn't even a signed Linux bootloader. So kernels need to be signed.
And modules? Again, modules are just code. It's a little trickier, but if your signed kernel loads an unsigned module then that unsigned module can set up a fake UEFI environment and chain into a compromised OS bootloader. Now the attacker just has to include a signed kernel and a minimal initramfs that loads their malware module. It'd slow down boot by a couple of seconds, but other than that it'd be undetectable. X? If you can access the registers on a GPU then you can get the GPU to DMA over the kernel and execute arbitrary code. Trickier again, but still achievable - and if you've locked down every other avenue of attack, it's even attractive.
If we produce signed code that can be used to attack other operating systems then those other operating systems are justified in blacklisting us. That doesn't seem like a good outcome.
A lot of our users want to build their own kernels. Some even want to build their own distributions. Signing our bootloader and kernel is an impediment to that. We'll be providing all the tools we use for signing our binaries, but for obvious reasons we can't hand out our keys. There's three approaches here. The first is for a user to generate their own key and enrol it in their system firmware. We'll trust anything that's signed with a key that's present in the firmware. The second is to rebuild the shim loader with their own key installed and then pay $99 and sign that with Microsoft. That means that they'll be able to give copies to anyone else and let them install it without any fiddling. The third is to just disable secure boot entirely, at which point the machine should return to granting the same set of freedoms as it currently does.
But I don't trust Microsoft
A system in custom mode should allow you to delete all existing keys and replace them with your own. After that it's just a matter of re-signing the Fedora bootloader (like I said, we'll be providing tools and documentation for that) and you'll have a computer that will boot Fedora but which will refuse to boot any Microsoft code. It may be a little more awkward for desktops because you may have to handle the Microsoft-signed UEFI drivers on your graphics and network cards, but this is also solvable. I'm looking at ways to implement a tool to allow you to automatically whitelist the installed drivers. Barring firmware backdoors, it's possible to configure secure boot such that your computer will only run software you trust. Freedom means being allowed to run the software you want to run, but it also means being able to choose the software you don't want to run.
You've sold out
We've been working on this for months. This isn't an attractive solution, but it is a workable one. We came to the conclusion that every other approach was unworkable. The cause of free software isn't furthered by making it difficult or impossible for unskilled users to run Linux, and while this approach does have its downsides it does also avoid us ending up where we were in the 90s. Users will retain the freedom to run modified software and we wouldn't have accepted any solution that made that impossible.
But is this a compromise? Of course. There's already inequalities between Fedora and users - trademarks prevent the distribution of the Fedora artwork with modified distributions, and much of the Fedora infrastructure is licensed such that some people have more power than others. This adds to that inequality. It's not the ideal outcome for anyone, and I'm genuinely sorry that we weren't able to come up with a solution that was better. This isn't as bad as I feared it would be, but nor is it as good as I hoped it would be.
What about ARM
Microsoft's certification requirements for ARM machines forbid vendors from offering the ability to disable secure boot or enrol user keys. While we could support secure boot in the same way as we plan to on x86, it would prevent users from running modified software unless they paid money for a signing key. We don't find that acceptable and so have no plans to support it.
Thankfully this shouldn't be anywhere near as much of a problem as it would be in the x86 world. Microsoft have far less influence over the ARM market, and the only machines affected by this will be the ones explicitly designed to support Windows. If you want to run Linux on ARM then there'll be no shortage of hardware available to you.
Is this all set in stone?
No. We've spent some time thinking about all of this and are happy that we can implement it in the Fedora 18 timescale, but there's always the possibility that we've missed something or that a new idea will come up. If we can increase user freedom without making awful compromises somewhere else then we'll do it.
[1] In fact, chances are that everything will carry the Microsoft key. Secure boot requires that UEFI drivers also be signed. The signing format only permits a single signature per binary. For compatibility, approximately all add-on hardware shipped will be signed with Microsoft's key, and that means that all system vendors have to recognise Microsoft's key in order to permit that hardware to run on their systems.
[2] Current source is here. It relies on a port of the UEFI crypto library and OpenSSL that I have building with some handholding, and which I'll upload as soon as possible.


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Black Shoe Running Black Women's Volt NIKE White Lunartempo 700 XZngFff
Certified Fit Specialists
Visit our shoes or lingerie departments in any of our stores for a complimentary fitting with one of our Certified Fit Specialists. No appointment necessary. Not near a store? Use our store locator to find your nearest Nordstrom.
Looking for an expert shoeshine? We'll shine your shoes in select stores while you take a break from shopping, or drop a pair (or two!) off for pickup at your convenience.


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Welcome message
Dear Community Board Members,
It gives me great pleasure to invite you to join us at our 2019 conference in New Plymouth. The conference will take place 11 - 13 April 2019 at The Devon Hotel in New Plymouth.
The theme of the conference is Community Boards in a Time of Change.
Community Boards throughout New Zealand play a major role in supporting their communities and their Councils. This makes them an integral and vital cog in Local Government.
Combining great speakers with a range of informative workshops and entertaining social events, allows for invaluable networking and makes this a must attend conference.
We look forward to seeing you in New Plymouth.
Mick Lester
NZ Community Board Executive Committee


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Dallas News / SEARCH: 1463 Sonoma Drive Kennedale, TX 76060
- 5 beds
- 3.5 baths
- $310,950 price
- 1176019 mls id
- Half Baths: 1
- Square Feet: 3,603 sqft
- Neighborhood: The Vineyard
Listing Description
No description available at this time.
- New Construction Yes
Subdivision: The Vineyard
- Price Range $291.9K - $414.8K
- Sqft Range 2,500 - 4,360
- Subdivision StatusActive
Subdivision Description
-PHASE I- Dont' miss out on the last remaining lots in our current phase!!! -PHASE II- Coming early 2016!!! The Vineyard located at the corner of Mansfield Cardinal and Little School Road is our newest community in Kennedale. The community offers a small town family friendly environment with 5' sidewalks, ponds and common areas. The Vineyard is minutes from entertainment districts with easy access to the entire DFW Metroplex and it proudly serves the Kennedale ISD where families are assured that their children will receive an outstanding education.
1463 Sonoma Drive Kennedale, TX
Dallas News Real Estate Powered by Placester


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This is a sponsored post from Disney.
Just when you think you know everything about princesses, enter Sofia the First ... a first in shaping a new role model of princesses for our little girls. If you saw her movie premiere in November, you learned she's a little girl that stumbles into royalty when her life takes a royal turn after her mom marries the king.
In her new series debut next Friday on Disney Junior, little girls will continue to find this new role model of royalty a treat for the whole family. She surprises the whole court as the new girl in crown -- first girl to try out for the derby team, check! Hosting a royal sleepover with your friends from the village -- no brainer! And loving your step-brother and step-sister like they're your own -- a win for the whole family!
Disney Junior presents an all new series Sofia the First on Friday morning January 11 at 9:30 a.m./8:30c! Tune in to watch the new girl in crown as she continues her transformation from average girl to royal princess in the series premiere.
To get your little one warmed up for the enchanting debut, join Sofia's world online to start the fun! From a "Series Premiere Party Kit" to being awarded a Royal Prep Certificate, the virtual experiences are endless.
In the royal games, your prince or princess can earn gems by helping Sofia throw a royal tea party, practice steps for her Debut Ball, and more! Gems can be used to buy new items for your child's avatar from Sofia's world, designed to fit your little prince/princess. Each game played is a lesson learned, which is awarded by a Royal Prep Certificate. Psssst! We won't tell if you want to get in on the fun and reconnect with your own inner princess, too!
And of course, who doesn't like to show off your little royal one in style? On the Sofia The First Facebook page, the Disney Junior Design Studio allows you to upload photos and add magical touches from Sofia's world to create your own one-of-a-kind design! Share with your friends and even add them to your "royal court" for everyone to join the royal debut together!
So meet the new girl in crown in the All New Series, Sofia the First, Friday morning January 11 at 9:30 a.m./8:30c on Disney Junior on Disney Channel.


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Justine Tyerman apologises for praising the Aussies...
Like most patriotic Kiwis, I am loath to praise anything remotely Australian and have, until now, maintained a lofty opinion that no Aussie landscape could possibly compete with our lakes, mountains and national parks.
But a recent trip to the World Heritage-listed Blue Mountains has made me recant. I feel almost apologetic, even guilty - I am about to rave about the experience so stop reading now if you don't have the stomach for such a spiel.
Having stopped at an information centre on the way from Sydney, we were forewarned of the crowds that visit the "Blueys" even mid-week and mid-winter. So we headed for Scenic World at Katoomba first and did all the thrill-seeking things before the hordes arrived by noisy busloads from the city.
We duly plummeted 310 metres - screaming all the way, of course - down the world's steepest scenic railway through a natural rock tunnel to an old coal mining site, hiked through a Jurassic forest on the valley floor exploring fascinating relics of the 1880s mining era, glided smoothly back up the sheer cliff face to the top of the plateau in a huge 84-person cable car and then took a ride in the glass-bottomed "Skyway" 270 dizzying metres above the Jamison Valley and the Katoomba Falls.
That was all very cool stuff indeed and a wee bit scary, but the natural awe-factor of the scenery was somewhat overshadowed by all the clever man-made technology.
There was no chance to commune silently with nature here.
So, as the crowds moved in, we moved on to Echo Point to explore the famous Three Sisters rock formation, scaling the perpendicular stone and steel steps of the Giant Stairway to a platform cut into the "tummy" of the first sister.
Had we had more time - that elusive thing you never seem to have enough of when on holiday - we would have continued down the 800 steps to the base of the Katoomba Falls... and back up again.
Geology tells us the siblings were formed by erosion of the soft sandstone over many millennia by the wind, rain and rivers which are gradually breaking down the cliffs surrounding the Jamison Valley.
However, I prefer the Aboriginal legend, albeit disputed as a tourist gimmick, which tells of three beautiful sisters - Meehni, Wimlah and Gunnedoo - who lived in the valley as members of the Katoomba tribe. They fell in love with three men from a neighbouring tribe (the Nepean tribe), but marriage was forbidden by tribal law.
The brothers were unhappy about this and decided to use force to capture the sisters. A major tribal battle ensued, and the sisters were turned to stone by an elder in order to protect them, but he was killed in the fighting and no one else could turn them back. This story is claimed to be an indigenous Australian Dreamtime legend but historian Dr Martin Thomas disputes this.
He says the legend is a fabrication created by a non-Aboriginal Katoomba local presumably to add interest to the local landmark. Dr Thomas says the story originated in the late 1920s or early 1930s and is unknown prior to that date.
The traditional Aboriginal owners, the Gundungurra, have their own legend and are developing a website which will include their stories.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the Three Sisters, 922m, 918m and 906m tall, are a truly stunning sight especially on a clear winter day when the blueness of the Blue Mountains is at its most vivid.
But it was the Wentworth Falls further down the valley that stole the day for us. We only intended to do a short walk to view the breathtaking waterfall which drops 187 metres in three whispy tiers but we were drawn on and on as much by the dramatic scenery as our sheer amazement at the construction of the pathway.
It was hewn from sandstone cliffs by a fellow called Peter Mulheran and a group of men known as The Irish Brigade, between 1906 and 1908 at a cost of £430.
At one point we were walking on a narrow ledge on a precipice hundreds of metres above the valley floor and then edging along a track wedged between overhanging and underhanging rocks.
Further on, the descent was so steep, an enclosed ladder had been constructed down a sheer rock face. Staggering!
The story goes that over 100 years ago, the villages in the Blue Mountains were competing with each other to build the most spectacular walkway and workers were even lowered over cliffs in hanging baskets to complete death-defying construction work on seemingly inaccessible parts of the terrain.
We marvelled at the ingenuity and courage of those workers who must have toiled there in the intense heat of the summer and the icy chill of the winter over a century ago - and put it all down to the dogged determination of the Aussie psyche and that fierce sense of competition we know so well.
By late afternoon with the winter sun dropping below the horizon and the intense cold beginning to bite, we fought the urge to continually push on to see what lay round the next corner and reluctantly turned back, awed and thrilled at what we had experienced - alone in the Blueys.
And I had, once again, mercifully escaped the nightmare which haunts me whenever I go to Australia - the dreaded lurking-snake factor.
Getting There
Fly there with Air New Zealand Book now
Find out more at Australia.com
- nzherald.co.nz


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Ravens safety Ed Reed picked up a $55,000 fine this week for a hit on Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz, but he's remaining mum about whether he's planning to play another year in the NFL in order to help pay for it.
Reed doesn't need to keep playing to come up with that scratch, obviously, but he was mum on the topic of what will come in the future on Thursday. Reed, who will be a free agent after the season, said that he isn't thinking about anything other than the coming trip to the playoffs at this point.
Reed made the Pro Bowl this year and he's avoided the injuries that have hampered some of his recent seasons, although he admits age has taken a toll on his game. He's relying more on his brain than his physical range as a result.
"It's definitely not what it used to be when I was 24 versus 34 now, but that's where the mental part comes into it," Reed said, via the Carroll County Times. "You know, you slow down physically, but mentally you get a lot stronger and you understand the game more, which allows me to play the game a certain way and understand how to play the game and put myself in different situations to make plays."
There will be plenty of time to talk about Reed's future and whether or not he will continue to be a member of the Ravens. Even though he's slowed down, Reed isn't likely to have a hard time finding a new home if his long run in Baltimore comes to an end.


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Skyline Releases Baseball Report #1
- Bohonan named Player of the Week, Ferrante Rookie of the Week -
Clifton Park, N.Y. - The Skyline Conference released the first baseball report for the 2011 season this afternoon, including Player of the Week, Pitcher of the Week, Rookie of the Week, Honor Roll and Conference statistics
Sophomore outfielder Terrence Bohonan (Patchogue, N.Y.) was named Skyline Conference Player of the Week for baseball. Bohonan started off the 2011 season well, batting .423 (11-for-26) with six runs scored and three RBI. He went 4-for-4 with three runs scored and one batted in against RIT and led the Rams with three hits versus Western New England. Terrence only has one strikeout in 26 at bats thus far this year.
Freshman outfielder Anthony Ferrante (Holtsville, N.Y.) earned Skyline Conference Rookie of the Week honors. Ferrante collected five hits in 12 at bats and scored three runs on the week. He went 3-for-5 with a triple and run scored in Farmingdale State's 5-1 win over Keene State. Anthony posted an impressive .583 slugging percentage.
Junior pitcher Chris Phelan (Patchogue, N.Y.) was named to the Skyline Conference Player of the Week Honor Roll. Phelan picked up his second win of the season (2-0) against Keene State after allowing five hits and one earned run over 7.2 innings.
To view the full report, click HERE.


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Here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks.
(Ramona actually got 100% on this spelling test. The students grade each others' papers in her class, and the friend that graded her test didn't want her to get 100, so she marked a couple wrong. At least the teacher caught it!)


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Last week on WFAN, Sandy Alderson said while it's unlikely, it's possible Wheeler could make the team out of camp if they didn't acquire a starting pitcher to replace R.A. Dickey - the Mets reportedly agreed to sign RHP Shaun Marcum to a one-year deal on Thursday.
Wheeler went a combined 12-8 with a 3.26 ERA in 25 starts between Double-A and Triple-A in 2012, having allowed 59 walks with 148 strikeouts in 149 innings.
He's close, but I don't expect to see Wheeler in Flushing until around mid-season. And, now that the Mets have brought Shaun Marcum onboard, there's now even less of a chance Wheeler makes the club out of camp. That's a good thing; Wheeler saw limited duty at Triple-A last year and could use a little work to refine his command, it will likely allow him to work with Travis d'Arnaud before both are promoted, and it keeps the organization from exposing Wheeler to fill a short-term need right off the bat.
By the way, Wheeler is on the cover of Baseball America this month:


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Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are first and second on a list of 100 wealthy individuals who have made hefty investments in clean technology or environmental causes. The Times of London news organization, which examined dossiers of the world's richest people, says the 100 tycoons on its Green List are together worth $375 billion.
According to the Times, Buffett, who runs the Berkshire Hathaway investment firm, has poured $230 million into BYD, a Hong Kong company that makes batteries for electric cars. He also holds a major stake in MidAmerican Energy, a large wind energy utility. Gates has invested in several renewable fuels companies, including Pacific Ethanol and Sapphire Energy; the latter intends to produce gasoline from algae.
Americans hold 35 of the 100 spots. Another 17 are from China, 10 are British and seven are German. The top 10 individuals are listed here; the rest can be found at www.timesonline.co.uk/richlist.
- Warren Buffett (U.S.; car batteries, wind)
- Bill Gates (U.S.; biofuels)
- Ingvar Kamprad (Sweden; waste-to-energy, geothermal)
- Marcel Brenninkmeijer (the Netherlands; wind, hydro, solar)
- Mukesh Ambani (India; biofuel crops)
- Michael Bloomberg (U.S.; efficient cities)
- Michael Otto (Germany; green products)
- Paul Allen (U.S.; biodiesel, geothermal)
- Donald Bren (U.S.; environmental science)
- Sergey Brin (U.S.; electric cars, renewable energy)
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Top 100 Eco-Barons."


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Twitter may have taken hits recently with the high-profile hacking of such major brands as Burger King, Jeep and the Associated Press.
But for one of the world's most famous brands, Twitter is still the real thing — though not the only thing when it comes to brand advertising.
"We don't profess social as the 'be all, end all,'" Coca-Cola Co. executive Wendy Clark said in a tweet which she also mentioned in a Monday guest post on Twitter's website.
Clark is the head of a new Coke market division with a name that speaks to the soft drinks company's grand branding and advertising ambitions: Global Sparkling Brand Center.
"Don't get me wrong,\" she continued, \"we think Twitter, is great, and important, and useful," she continued. Twitter, she declared is "the zeitgeist of our core target – teens and young adults."
"But so too is social gaming, and mobile apps, and YouTube's content, and broadcast live sports, and Snapchat, and FIFA cross-platform content, and live-streamed concerts, and Spotify playlists, and live experiences, and brand co-creation opportunities and…. You see, their zeitgeist is plural, not singular."
In other words, in today's world, selling sugared water can't just rely on catchy TV advertising jingles or billboard – you gotta everywhere, including Twitter.
"Twitter isn't a silver bullet, but it makes everything else we do better," she said. With its ability to reach up to 15,000 tweets a day, that means "more reach, more engagement … more Happiness." [The caps on \"Happiness\" were Clark\'s.]
And happiness is about making connections, which is also what Twitter is to Coke: a way to make young people get stuck on the popular soft drink.
\"At every juncture, we want a teen to go deeper into our content,\" Clark wrote. Twitter, she adds, \"is our Elmers. It\'s the glue, a spoke, connective issue — whatever metaphor you want to use to mean something that can connect potentially disparate things together and make them better — that\'s Twitter.\"
That social media glue is particularly important when trying to attract young people\'s attention, she notes. For \"teens and young adults are fickle and their attention is, at best, fragmented,\" she said. \"No one medium can effectively engage this audience and create the impact and results brands seek.\"
It could be said that that\'s how Coke managed to survive for so long. The soft drinks giant celebrated its 127th birthday last week. Naturally, the head of the company\'s Global Sparkling Brand Center was there to tweet it: \"Happy Birthday Coca-Cola! 127 never looked so good.\"
Happy Birthday, Coca-Cola!127 never looked so good.
— wendy clark (@wnd) May 8, 2013
— Benjamin Pimentel
Following Benjamin Pimentel on Twitter @benpimentel
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