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October 12th, 2005 by eugene
A Brief History of StorageReview's Testbeds
When we launched StorageReview back in 1998, one of our principal goals was to maintain a consistent, unchanging test platform that would enable readers to directly compare a wide variety of drives with each other. Back then, when one could find them at all, hard drive reviews were always conducted on "the latest and greatest" machine that the individual reviewer could put together. Though such articles occasionally featured one or two other drives tested in the same machine for comparison, by and large, it was difficult to directly compare contemporary drives with one another. This changed, however, with StorageReview's debut of Testbed1.
Testbed1: Our initial testbed was a 440LX-based 266 MHz Pentium II machine featuring an ATA-33 controller operating off of the PIIX4 southbridge. An Adaptec 2940U2W provided Ultra2 (80 MB/sec) SCSI functionality. Windows 95 and NT 4.0 laid the foundation for our tests, ZD's WinBench 98 and Adaptec's ThreadMark 2.0.
Despite its flaws, WinBench 98 truly was the best tool to measure single-user disk performance at the time. ThreadMark was our initial attempt to present multi-user performance. Looking back, however, its clear that the benchmark came up short.
Testbed1 nonetheless carried us through dozens of drive reviews spanning two years from March 1998 to March 2000. By then, it was clear that both the hardware and benchmarks required updating.
Seagate, Maxtor, and Western Digital have all entered the fray with SATA units specifically tuned for the enterprise sector. While leveraged from consumer-class SATA designs, these differentiated models undergo tests under different workloads, often enjoy longer factory burn-in cycles, are rated for longer mean times between failures, and are backed by a more business-oriented 5-year warranty.
Let us take a closer look at three 500-gigabyte units that squarely aim to seize the burgeoning nearline enterprise sector where cost and capacity rather than sheer IOps drive the market.
Testbed2: Testbed2 initially hinged upon three key factors. First was the impending introduction of Windows 2000, which, at the time, was heralded as the release that would unify Microsoft's consumer (Win9x) and professional (NT) kernels. Next was Intel's i820 chipset, the first chipset that would introduce Rambus memory, the RAM of the future. Lastly, Testbed2 was to take advantage of ZD's WinBench 2000 to update our single-user performance tests.
All three of these updates failed to materialize. Microsoft decided it needed more time to move their consumer operating system to the NT core and instead updated Windows 95 yet again in the form of Me. The i820 chipset suffered from delays and bugs... and Rambus memory, of course, never took off. Finally, it turned out that WinBench 99 was the last iteration of ZD's venerable component-level benchmark.
Thus, we stuck with a 700 MHz Pentium III paired with Intel's tried-and-true 440BX chipset. Promise's Ultra66 provided ATA-66 operability while Adaptec's 29160 delivered Ultra160 SCSI compatibility. We chose to go with Windows 2000 Professional and abandoned the Win9x core entirely since the former paired with the NTFS file system represented the future of desktop machines.
Though we presented WinBench 99 results on Testbed2, our big focus was on testing with IOMeter. On the surface, IOMeter's highly-customizable nature seemed promising- tinkering with its settings yielded a pattern that we dubbed "workstation," one that we believed could best represent single-user performance. Unfortunately, we were dead wrong. IOMeter lacks any facilities to simulate localized drive access- i.e., the tendancy for a given piece of required data to be very close to the last piece of data accessed. This delivered "workstation" numbers that differed very little from the server results returned by IOMeter. Though Testbed2 was originally mapped out for a two-year run, it became painfully clear that our methodologies were flawed and that an update was needed as soon as possible. Hence, Testbed2 lasted just 19 months.
Testbed3: Testbed3 was truly a massive undertaking, the fruition of nearly one-thousand hours of research into developing the ideal way to assess single-user performance. The hardware consisted of an i850-based Pentium 4 featuring Promise ATA and SATA controllers and Adaptec's 29160 SCSI controller. The most significant change, however, was on the software side. Microsoft finally released Windows XP, the version that finally unified both its OS lines into a single whole. More importantly, Intel's IPEAK SPT 3.0 provided us with an opportunity to capture and exactingly reproduce the accesses generated by any Windows-based application. IOMeter, which was always a great tool for assessing multi-user performance, remained for our server-side tests.
We thus segued from a "dark age" of sorts where Testbed2 presented inadequate and downright misleading results to a renaissance with Testbed3- IPEAK in effect allowed us to design our own custom benchmarks, the StorageReview Desktop DriveMarks. Testbed3 debuted in November of 2001 and provided a stable, unchanging platform for nearly four years. It was retired this summer.
This brings us to Testbed4. Unlike our three previous changes, Testbed4 is far from revolutionary. When we moved from Testbed1 to Testbed2 and from Testbed2 to Testbed3, we were motivated primarily by concerns that our methodologies were yielding inaccurate results. Testbed3, however, has stood the test of time- it is only the dated hardware and captures of aging applications that have finally driven us to move on. Testbed4 is an evolutionary update- IPEAK SPT and IOMeter remain as our cornerstone benchmarks. We recommend that readers re-read Testbed3's introduction for extensive information and discussion of IPEAK SPT and its superior ability to assess single-user drive performance.
Unlike StorageReview's three previous testbeds, Testbed4 aims to be significantly more enterprise-oriented as we prepare the machine for regular tests of multiple-drive arrays. Hence, while Testbeds 1, 2, and 3 were all built largely from an enthusiast's point of view, Testbed4 is predominantly an enterprise-style machine with some enthusiast-like concessions thrown in. Key among these is a low noise floor- while Testbed4 needs to be a beefy machine, low noise levels remain a key factor in subjectively assessing drive acoustics.
Motherboard: SuperMicro X6DAE-G2
Once again, for the fourth time in a row, we have chosen to go with an Intel-based platform based on the 7525 (Tumwater) chipset and a pair of 800 MHz FSB Nocona Xeons. AMD's Opteron has made considerable strides into the business world, but at the time of assembly and installation, no supporting chipset and motherboard combined the features we sought.
The SuperMicro X6DAE-G2 delivers the wide variety of expansion slots necessary to conduct tests with controllers/HBAs of varying types. A 16x PCIe slot anchors the configuration while a secondary 4x slot provides a path through which newer controllers may be integrated. Three PCI-X slots, all 100 MHz or greater, provide the backbone necessary to incorporate the wide variety of tried-and-true solutions available today.
Processors: 2x Intel Xeons, 3.0 GHz, 800 MHz FSB
In many ways, processor speed remains among the least important factors when it comes to assessing storage subsystem performance. This time around, the duty falls to a pair of 3.0 GHz Noconas- beefy enough to handle most tasks thrown at them.
The fans that accompany the retail processors and heatsinks are quite noisy. Bart Lane of 1COOLPC was kind enough to lend a hand by removing the fans and strapping on a pair of far-quieter Vantec units.
Memory: 4x Crucial 512 MB PC3200 DDR2 Registered SDRAM w/ECC
Initially we sought to keep Testbed4's RAM to no more than one gigabyte in an effort to maintain as much disk access as possible when capturing key application traces. Such a configuration, however, starkly contrasted the machine from servers in the enterprise which routinely feature far more memory. As a compromise, we equipped Testbed4 with 2 GB of RAM.
Display Adapter: MSI NX6600GT-TD128E
Among the least expensive PCIe video cards we could find, this Nvidia 6600GT unit occupies the motherboard's 16x PCIe slot and provides enough horsepower to run the titles featured in our gaming performance tests.
SATA Host Adapter: Silicon Image SI3124-2 Reference Board
A key drawback of virtually all server/workstation motherboards is the lack of an NCQ-capable SATA controller built-in to the southbridge. The 7525 is no exception- it relies on the tried-and-true ICH5 rather than the newer and NCQ-capable ICH6. As a result, we had to turn to an add-on controller. Though SR has used Promise adapters in the past, Silicon Image has made great strides and has established itself as a de facto standard in the SATA world. The SI3124-2 features full 133 MHz PCI-X support, SATA-2 style 300 MB/sec transfers, and NCQ as well as legacy TCQ support.
SCSI Host Adapter: LSI 21320 Dual-Channel Ultra320 SCSI
Though SR has equipped past testbeds with an Adaptec SCSI HBA, it is clear that in today's world, LSI rules the SCSI roost. The 21320 provides a robust PCI-X dual-channel Ultra320 solution to Testbed4 as well as delivering base-level mirroring and striping capability.
SAS Host Adapter: LSI SAS1068-IR
An 8-port SAS HBA, this PCI-X board also incorporates some rudimentary software RAID functionality.
Boot Drive: 2x Western Digital Raptor WD740GD
Configuring and running StorageReview testbeds over the years has involved a lot of imaging and restoring using PowerQuest's Drive Image utility. With Testbed3 we relied on a single Barracuda ATA IV divided into two partitions. Though an ultra-quiet drive, the Barracuda's single actuator struggled through the copy and restore operations so ubiquitous to the machine.
Testbed4 features dual Raptors. WD's second-generation units are speedy and, just as important, very quiet. Independent use of these two drives (no RAID here!) permits one drive to serve as a constantly refreshed boot unit while the second disk stores all necessary images and archives test results.
Chassis and Power Supply: SuperMicro 743i-645
Housing all of Testbed4's components is SuperMicro's 743i, a modular 4U rackmount chassis that also works well as a stand-alone tower. The case integrates perfectly with the SuperMicro motherboard and provides easy access and great cooling for up to eight hotswappable drives.
The basic 645 watt power supply that accompanies the 743i, surprisingly enough, operates as quietly as the manufacturer boasts. Its healthy output and wonderful acoustics make it the ideal power supply for Testbed4.
Fans: 6x Panaflo 80mm
Testbed4's use of a rack-mount chassis rather than an enthusiast-oriented case allows for a move from individual drive coolers to a more holistic approach of robust system-wide cooling.
While they certainly move a lot of air, the fans that come with the SuperMicro case are far from quiet. Swapping them out for some of the ever-popular 80mm Panaflos yields a system that maintains decent ventilation even with multi-drive arrays.
- Display: Dell UltraSharp 2001FP
- Sound Card: Realtek AC'97 Audio (Built-in)
- Speakers: Cambridge Soundworks Soundworks
- Optical Drive: NEC ND3500A
- Keyboard: NMB RT8255TW+
- Network Interface Card: Intel 82546GB Dual Port Gigabit
- Mouse: Logitech MX1000
- Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2
- Chipset Driver: Intel 7525 126.96.36.1995
- Display Driver: Nvidia ForceWare 18.104.22.168
- SAS Driver: LSI SAS 3000 series 126.96.36.199
- SCSI Driver: LSI Ultra320 SCSI 200 series 22.214.171.124
- SATA Driver: Sil 3124 SATALink 184.108.40.206
- Sound Driver: Realtek AC'97 22.214.171.12490
- WinBench 99 v2.0
- Business Winstone 2004 v1.1
- Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 v1.1
- Intel IPEAK SPT v3.0
- IOMeter v2004.7.30
- FarCry v1.3
- The Sims2 University v1.0
- World of Warcraft v1.4
The 2006 Desktop DriveMarks
With Testbed3, we debuted tests based on capture and playback of actual drive use via Intel's IPEAK Storage Performance Toolkit v3.0. IPEAK SPT's WinTrace32 and RankDisk offer the best way to exactingly capture a "real world" sequence of disk accesses which may then be precisely replayed on a variety of target storage subsystems. For more information, check out this writeup.
The 2002 Desktop DriveMarks that premiered with Testbed3's introduction consisted of captures of 8 separate disk activities. The Office DriveMark 2002 represented thirty minutes of typical use by yours truly. The High-End DriveMark 2002 was a capture of Veritest's 2001 Content Creation Winstone. Due to popular request (though we do not believe such performance is truly relevant), we also included a capture of Windows XP's bootup process. Finally, captures of 5 different popular PC entertainment titles represented the Gaming DriveMark 2002.
Our goal with the 2006 Desktop DriveMarks was to update the represented applications while streamlining the test process. The 2002 DriveMarks, replete with captures from five different games, took a considerable amount to run on each test drive. Through the reduction of the number of titles represented (from 5 to 3) as well as the time taken to capture each (30 minutes of gameplay for each title in the 2002 DriveMarks as opposed to 5-10 minutes of key disk-intensive gameplay in the 2006 components), we have shaved the time it takes to run a drive through the Desktop DriveMarks by 75%. This in turn will facilitate more timely coverage on newly-released products and permit more in-depth looks at multiple-drive performance. These traces were captured on Testbed4's Raptor WD740GD boot drive with a single 40 GB NTFS partition running on the Intel motherboard's ICH5 controller.
StorageReview.com Office DriveMark 2006 - The SR Office DriveMark is a trace recording of Veritest's Business Winstone 2004 test. It consists of Office XP, Winzip 9.0, and Symantec Antivirus 2003 run in a lightly-multitasked manner. While the Winstone suite itself primarily aims to measure aggregate system performance, the use of IPEAK SPT to capture and replay the test's disk access delivers relevant and highly-repeatable results that home in on the performance of the storage subsystem. Let us examine how these applications request data from a drive:
As was the case with the Office DriveMark 2002, 4 KB transfers remain dominant in the 2006 test. Most interesting, however, is the dramatic rise in 64 KB blocks. In the older 2002 trace, 64 KB units represented about 7% of all total requests. The figure climbs to over 20% in the 2006 capture. A preponderance of 64 KB transfers indicates a higher percentage of sequential transfers as Windows XP requests large chunks of data in 64 KB segments. All together, while the older test's average request size weighs in at 23 KB, the 2006 Office DriveMark hits an average transfer size of 48 KB.
The Office DriveMark 2006's average queue depth rises a bit when contrasted with its predecessor. The 2002 DriveMark's mean depth hovered around 1.34 outstanding I/O operations. The 2006 test, on the other hand, reaches an average value of 1.87.
Of particular interest is the seek distance graph. Nearly one quarter of all requests are serial in nature as indicated by the "seek distances" of zero. Just as importantly, however, these graphs demonstrate that 50% of all requests fall within 8 megabytes (that is, within 16 thousand LBA sectors) of the previous request. Given today's densities, such requests often reside on the same track, or at most one to two tracks away, indicating that when the buffer does not satisfy the request it is rotational latency and/or track-to-track seek performance that bottlenecks requests. It is clear that as operating systems and applications advance, the effects of locality exert themselves more than ever.
How do contemporary drives stack up in the SR Office DriveMark 2006? Note that in these tests, the "Server" and "Desktop" next to Seagate's SCSI drives indicate Server Mode (Seatools Performance Mode Off) and Desktop Mode (Seatools Performance Mode On) respectively. SATA drives capable of either TCQ or NCQ were tested with queuing both enabled and disabled. "no CQ" indicates that the drive's queuing was disabled while the "standard" label represents performance with command queuing enabled.
Here's a look at how things change for the contenders as they move to this more modern test from the older 2002 DriveMark:
At the high end of the scale, the SCSI monsters from Fujitsu and Maxtor continue to rule. The Raptor, with its tagged command queuing disabled, continues to deliver a strong showing. WD's newcomer, the native SATA Caviar WD2500KS, displays its prowess with a huge gain when moving to the more contemporary applications represented in the new DriveMark. Though it places in the middle of the pack in absolute terms, Samsung's SpinPoint P80 delivers better performance and leaves the bottom of the charts it occupied under the 2002 test. On the other end, Seagate's flagship, the Cheetah 15K.4, takes a beating. Even with a desktop-oriented buffer segmentation strategy, the Cheetah fails to deliver performance that rivals its competitors.
The 2006 Desktop DriveMarks (Continued)
The SR High-End DriveMark 2006 is a trace recording of Veritest's Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 suite. It consists of Adobe Photoshop 7.01 and Premiere 6.50, Macromedia Director MX 9.0 and Dreamweaver MX 6.1, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9, Newtek Lightwave 3D 7.5b, and Steinberg WaveLab 4.0f run in a lightly-multitasked manner. While Winstone suite itself primarily aims to measure aggregate system performance, the use of IPEAK SPT to capture and replay the test's disk access delivers relevant and highly-repeatable results that zero in on the performance of the storage subsystem.
Let's take a look at how these applications request data:
The "content creation" applications represented in the High-End DriveMark 2006 routinely deal with very large files as clearly demonstrated by these transfer sizes. Windows XP, of course, reads and write large files 64 KB at a time- more than half of this DriveMark's requests are of the 64 KB variety. The average request size of the 2006 test reaches 122 KB, up from the 70 KB of the original 2002 trace.
Interestingly, while the newer Office DriveMark's average queue depth increases when contrasted with its predecessor, the High-End DriveMark 2006's depth actually decreases to 1.24 from the 2002 test's 1.40.
Over half of the data requested by the High-End DriveMark immediately follows the previous requests as indicated by the seek distance graph- unsurprising given the file sizes typical to photo, audio, and video editing. While the occasional request does send the actuator across significant distances, in the end, locality also plays a very important part in today's editing applications. Like the Office DriveMark, more than half the High-End DriveMark's requests occur within 8 megabytes of their predecessors.
What does all this mean for high-level performance? Let us take a look. Note that in these tests, the "Server" and "Desktop" next to Seagate's SCSI drives indicate Server Mode (Seatools Performance Mode Off) and Desktop Mode (Seatools Performance Mode On) respectively. SATA drives capable of either TCQ or NCQ were tested with queuing both enabled and disabled. "no CQ" indicates that the drive's queuing was disabled while the "standard" label represents performance with command queuing enabled.
Here's a look at how things change for the contenders as they move to this more modern test from the older 2002 DriveMark:
The SR High-End DriveMark 2006 sees the Atlas 15K II stumble a bit and thus leaves Fujitsu's mighty MAU3147 in a class of its own. The Cheetah 15K.4 fares much better in this DriveMark than in the Office test and claims second place. Though still no slouch in an absolute sense, the ever-popular Raptor slides a bit when contrasted with the competition. The big winners, relatively speaking, are Samsung's SpinPoint P80 and Seagate's Barracuda 7200.8. These drives, rather sedate in the old 2002 DriveMark, post sizable relative gains to earn middling positions in the new test.
Gaming Tests
With Testbed3's introduction, we presented access patterns from five different PC games that were subsequently normalized and averaged into the StorageReview Gaming DriveMark 2002. Gaming, after all, represents only one facet of a myriad of applications. By presenting a single gaming score rather than results from five different tests, we balanced our review presentation and and avoided overwhelming our articles with figures from entertainment titles. Normalization, however, tends to dilute results between individual test drives and muddies distinctions that may occur. As a result, we are abandoning the averaging process and will instead present individual results from three separate games.
When it comes to first-person shooters, Half-Life 2 and Doom3 are arguably the latest and greatest. Last year's FarCry, however, remains king when it comes to sheer level loads... the process is agonizingly slow, usually taking over half a minute on even the swiftest drives. FarCry is thus our title of choice to represent the FPS genre. Our FarCry trace consists of a capture of the game's initial startup and the loading of three separate maps with one minute of gameplay in between each console-initiated map change.
Unsurprisingly, the latest drives designed for the demanding multi-user environment also happen to deliver the best performance in this disk-intensive title. Fujitsu's MAU3147 runs away with the top slot; the Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 (in Desktop mode) comes up a somewhat distant second. Getting somewhat more practical, WD's Raptor, long an enthusiast darling, leads the SATA crop.
The Sims franchise has been incredibly successful, serving as publisher EA's cash cow for over half a decade now. Like its predecessor, The Sims 2 undertakes significant disk access when one switches between neighborhoods and individual households. Equipped with the University expansion pack, The Sims 2 is Testbed4's "strategy game" entry. Our trace captures the game's startup, the "import" stage of a university to the default neighborhood, a switch to the game's character creator, and a few loads of individual lots.
If price is no object, a 15,000 RPM drive will serve readers well when running this people simulator. This time around, Maxtor's Atlas 15K II captures the top position with Futjisu's 15K unit a close second. On the SATA side of things, the WD Raptor and Hitachi's Deskstar both post strong showings (with TCQ disabled, of course).
When it comes to online role-playing games, there's World of Warcraft and there's everybody else. With Blizzard's titan boasting more than 4 million players worldwide, WoW represents Testbed4's online/RPG entry. World of Warcraft's most notable disk access arises when zoning upon initial game startup as well as when switching between the game's continents or individual dungeons. Intermittent requests continue throughout the game, however, as textures from lands and characters are swapped into memory. Our trace consists of the game's initial load, a changing of continents, an entry into an instance, and a long flight that passes over several different lands.
Fujitsu's ever-present MAU3147 once again climbs back to the top of the charts here. The Cheetah 15K.4, a drive mired in mediocrity when running The Sims 2, returns to second place in this test. When it comes to SATA drives, the Raptor and Deskstar (with TCQ disabled) once again deliver top-flight performance.
IOMeter (Server/Multi-user) Tests
StorageReview introduced Intel's IOMeter to the media world in March of 2000 with the launch of Testbed2. The benchmark delivered what was at the time a bewildering array of multi-dimensional results difficult to present to readers in an easy-to-comprehend manner. Towards the end of Testbed's life as well as throughout Testbed3's reign, we have attempted to simplify results by offering a weighted average of results under a variety of loads. While the "SR Server DriveMarks" distilled figures down to a single number, a weighted average by definition tends to dilute results and mask differentiation. In the year 2000, SR was the only major source presenting IOMeter results. Since then, however, use of the tool has proliferated across the internet. These days, most readers are familiar with the default "File Server" pattern that accompanies the benchmark and understand the varying queue depths under which the pattern may be run. Thus, with Testbed4 we are going to discard the weighted average and return to presenting results over progressively increasing loads.
Soon after Testbed3's launch, Intel, which had not updated IOMeter for some time, released the benchmark to the public domain. A team of developers over at sourceforge.net now maintains the project.
At its heart, IOMeter is simply a random access time test. Its strengths arise from its ability to vary the requested block sizes as well as the capability to issue new requests before a previous request is fully serviced and thus driving up the simulated load. IOMeter's principal weakness remains its lack of facilities to simulate locality. As demonstrated in the IPEAK SPT single-user based tests featured in the SR Desktop DriveMarks, a vast majority of requests occur very close to their immediate predecessors. Fortunately, highly-random non-localized activity simulates the loads under which busier Unix- and Windows-based servers run. IOMeter remains an excellent tool to assess a drive and arrays of drives under multi-user performance conditions.
With Testbed4, we are formally dropping the included "Web Server" pattern. It mainly differs from the "File Server" configuration by consisting purely of reads. While a static http server may indeed exhibit a preponderance of reads, factors such as virtual memory and databases running on the same drive make a 100% read pattern unrealistic. Today's web servers are similar to file servers- they feature requests varying in sizes and incorporate both reads and writes.
A high-level, "real world" benchmark such as IPEAK SPT's WinTrace32 and RankDisk duo is by definition heavily influenced by the "recording side" hardware such as processor speed, amount of RAM, etc. IOMeter, on the other hand, is affected only by the controller, controller driver, and drive(s). As a result, the changes in IOMeter results when moving from Testbed3 to Testbed4 are relatively minor and may be attributed predominately to our move from Promise and Adaptec to LSI and Silicon Image controllers. Let us examine how today's drives stack up:
SATA drives remain in a period of transition. The SATA-2 spec, of course, includes provisions for Native Command Queuing, a reordering of requests that allows for significant gains under the heavier, more highly-concurrent loads that occur in multi-user scenarios. The majority of today's SATA drives either incorporate NCQ itself or ATA-4 style Tagged Command Queuing (in the case of the WD Raptor and Hitachi Deskstar). The SI3124 does not deal particularly well with drives that do not feature some sort of command queuing ability as demonstrated by the results from the WD Caviar WD3200JD, WD Caviar WD2500KS, and Samsung SpinPoint P80. Most drives, even without command queuing, should yield some gain as loads grow progressively heavier (due to factors such as OS-level reordering). These three drives, however, remain constrained to their initial single-I/O score straight through a load of 32 outsanding operations. It is only the significantly heavier 64 and 128 queue depths that permit these drives an increase in I/Os per second delivered.
Contrast these results with those from the Maxtor MaXLine III (featuring NCQ), Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 (also NCQ), and Hitachi Deskstar 7K400 (with TCQ). These drives deliver a steady gain in achieved I/Os per second as loads increase. Hitachi's drive in particular manages to scale upwards ever so slightly even when moving from 64 to 128 outstanding operations. The MaXLine, while starting slightly behind the Barracuda under a linear load, scales much more elegantly than Seagate's drive and pulls significantly ahead as loads rise. Even the modest Barracuda, however, demonstrates command queuing's benefit over drives that have none.
The future of SATA includes NCQ. While it is true that drives lacking command queuing such as the SpinPoint P80 and WD's Caviars aren't receiving a fair shake here, the fact remains that most, if not all, upcoming SATA drives will incorporate the feature and as a result will scale properly as loads increase. When publishing IOMeter results in our stand-alone drive reviews, we will always present them with available command queuing options enabled.
As we have come to expect lately, it is Maxtor's Atlas 10K V and Fujitsu's MAT3300 vying for the top spot in the 10K RPM landscape. Maxtor's drive races out of the gate ever so slightly stronger but fades a bit under queue depths greater than 32 whereas the MAT3300 continues to scale upwards and offers the best performance under very heavy loads.
The Seagate Savvio 10K.1, alone with its unique 2.5" form factor (as opposed to the 3.5" form factor sported by all other enterprise-class drives) and inherently short-stroked design, delivers performance on par with that of the Atlas all the way through a queue depth of 32. The drive regresses a bit at a depth of 64, however, and lags the leaders at 128.
Hitachi's Ultrastar 10K300 and Seagate's Cheetah 10K.7 trail the others by a bit throughout all depths. The Ultrastar manages to close the gap between itself and the Atlas to a razor thin one by the time loads hit 128 I/Os. On the other hand, the Cheetah, like the Savvio, stumbles a bit and drops the ball at a queue depth of 64, only recapturing rather than improving upon the performance delivered at 32 I/Os by the time loads hit 128.
WD's Raptor still stands alone as the sole SATA drive featuring a 10,000 RPM spindle speed. It scales relatively slowly through a depth of 8 I/Os, finally delivering a large jump at the 16 mark. From there the Raptor quickly levels off. In the end, though the WD's performance remains well above that of a 7200 RPM drive, its implementation of ATA TCQ is not robust enough to let it deal with progressively increasing loads as well as that of a SCSI drive.
When the fastest of the fast meets multi-user performance, Maxtor's Atlas 15K II rules the roost. Starting out of the gate all the way through 32 outstanding I/Os, the Atlas maintains a significant lead over the competition. Though Fujitsu's MAU3147 comes close at the heavier depths of 64 and 128, the Atlas remains on top. Interestingly, as was the case with its 10K RPM drives, Seagate's Cheetah 15K.4 exhibits a deficiency at a depth of 64. The Hitachi 15K147, on the other hand, offers steady though not necessarily inspiring performance.
Environmental Measurements
When Testbed3 debuted, we discussed in some detail the difficulties associated with assessing the various facets of hard drive acoustics. Please revisit this page of the Testbed3 writeup for an overview of potential problems and caveats.
With Testbed4, we are continuing with the approach of objectively measuring the sound pressure of a test drive at idle and providing subjective commentary on seek noise. An important change, however, is the distance from which we take idle measurements. Previously, we settled on a distance of 18 millimeters, one close enough to negate most ambient noise. Four years ago, Seagate's Barracuda ATA IV was the end-all in quiet drives. The proliferation of fluid dynamic bearing motors and heightened attention to acoustic design in general, however, have combined to significantly reduce the average noise level of today's hard drive. Further, with Testbed4 poised to evaluate notebook drives, the mean noise level of test drives will drop even further. To deliver meaningful differentiation in measured idle noise, we've reduced the distance between the microphone and the drive to 3 millimeters. As one would expect, this raises the scores of most drives by a decibel or two. Here's a look at how current drives stack up with this adjustment:
A more drastic change arises regarding top-plate temperature measurements- they are disappearing completely. Recall that in Testbed3, our drive temperature results were garnered through the measurement of 16 different locations of the drive's top side using a standard thermocouple thermometer. Though the procedure delivered repeatable results, we admittedly have not been overly confident that such figures provided the best method for readers to assess whether a drive may be integrated into a given machine.
Power dissipation measurements will replace surface temperature assessment. Readers are (or should be, at any rate) concerned about how much heat a drive will add to their system as a whole rather than the temperature the drive itself achieves. Given the (relatively) closed nature of a system case, a drive that dissipates more power will raise the chassis's overall temperature by a higher amount. The actual temperature hit by various drives given a static amount of power dissipation, of course, may vary. Drive cases may be made out of different materials, some drives feature a serrated design that increases surface area, etc. One should remember, however, that a drive that "feels" hotter may in fact be doing a better job of moving that heat energy away from the internals. Conversely, a drive that remains very cool to the touch may in fact be insulating and thus trapping the heat in a place where it should not be. Over time, however, all drives will release this heat into the chassis environment. It is this holistic temperature that matters. As a result, we are confident that presenting measured drive power dissipation is by far the most useful thermal measurement that StorageReview can offer to readers.
To deliver these results, we are using a custom-built instrument devised and assembled by long-time SR reader and forum participant jtr1962. Featuring a standard 4-pin molex input and output, four LCD displays, and a variety of modes, this device enables us to quantify the instantaneous and peak power draw of drives under evaluation. Here's how today's drives fare in this new thermal measurement:
Readers have also requested peak power-on measurements for drives, a figure important when powering up multiple drives simultaneously in the same system (in a RAID array, for example). While manufacturers routinely provide such information on spec sheets, the reasoning goes that such documentation can not always be trusted- for example, it is rare that a drive features an actual seek time identical to that claimed. Indeed, our tests reveal some discrepancy between actual power draw when idle/seeking and the figures given by a manufacturer.
The following graph summarizes the peak power draw of today's drives on both the 5V and 12V rail when powering up. Generally speaking, the 12V rail achieves its maximum value as the drive's spindle starts to turn and ramp up to maximum speed. The 5V rail, however, usually peaks upon head/actuator initialization, well after the 12V rail crests.
Concluding Thoughts
Newer hardware and updated application traces shuffle the status quo a bit. On the high end, Maxtor's Atlas 15K II continues to deliver the best multi-user performance one can get. When it comes to single-user applications, however, Fujitsu's MAU3147 generally bests the Atlas. The raison d'etre of 15,000 RPM drives is, of course, servers. Thus, the Atlas 15K II retains the leaderboard crown. The MAU3147, however, is the drive to look at for workstations and hot-rod desktops.
Things are slightly different when one ratchets it down a notch and looks at 10K RPM drives. Here the Fujitsu MAT3300 scales a bit more robustly than the Atlas 10K V and manages the best server performance under heavy load. Further, Fujitsu's drive easily offers the best single-user performance one can get out of a 10,000 RPM drive. As a result, the MAT usurps the Atlas 10K's leaderboard slot.
On the SATA front, Samsung's SpinPoint P80 and Western Digital's Caviar WD2500KS make large strides. The SpinPoint in particular posts solid gains and proves that with today's applications it no longer competes to bring up the rear. As was the case in Testbed3, however, it is Maxtor's MaXLine III and Hitachi's Deskstar 7K400 gunning for the top spot. Though the MaXLine remains impressive overall, the Deskstar fares a bit better with newer hardware and software than it did in the last testbed... and it certainly was no slouch there either. Further, Hitachi's contender delivers a pleasantly robust legacy TCQ implementation that scales very well when dealing with multi-user loads. So, in the end, the Deskstar 7K400 rises to the occasion and seizes the leaderboard slot.
The WD Raptor WD740GD remains an iconoclast as only 10,000 RPM SATA market offering on the market. Despite its relative age, the Raptor continues to deliver excellent performance and maintains its position as the fastest SATA drive around.
Where do we go from here?
Testbed4's formal launch clears the way for quite a few exciting developments. A backlog of drives such as the WD Caviar RE2, the SAS Cheetah 15K.4, the Seagate NL35, Deskstar 7K500, and more await formal tests. The new testbed's ability to easily handle multiple drives will allow us to more frequently present results for multi-drive RAID array. Finally, our new power measurement suite paves the way for a long-requested review- notebook drives! Thanks for sticking with StorageReview throughout the years. We look forward to many more years of delivering the most reliable, consistent, and downright best drive reviews around.
Recommended Reading and Discussion:
Reader Comments on the Office DriveMark
Reader Comments on the High-End DriveMark


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Attention Shapelings! Remember how, a while back, we asked you what you wanted to see next out of Shapely Prose, and then you told us all kinds of things, and then we got stressed out and stopped posting much? Good times. Well, one of the most frequently expressed wishes was to have a place where Shapelings could connect with each other off-blog for chatting, meetups, and just generally extending the community we've built here.
Good news, everyone! Starting now, such a magical site of happiness exists. Rev up your clickin' finger and head on over to:
If you don't have a Ning account already, you should be able to join here.
Obviously, we still encourage your participation via comments here on the blog! But when you want to hook up with other Shapelings, talk about something off-topic, post photos, or do whatever, we think you'll like the new Ning site. And if you don't, there's a forum thread called "Suggestion Box" where you can tell us how to make it better.
We expect the community site to be largely self-regulating. If it is as useful to you as we hope it will be, then it will be too busy for us to monitor all the forums. Obviously, there won't be a benevolent dictator there as there is here, but we hope that you will abide by the community guidelines established in our comments policy in terms of language, respect, and trolls. If things get out of hand, we'll revisit the idea of moderation.
So head on over, try things out, and have fun! You'll notice some content on there already, as we invited a few Shapelings to test drive for a while before opening it to all y'all. Thank you to our fabulous beta testers (you know who you are) for helping us out. See you on Ning!
If you have any questions or concerns about the new site, please direct them to me via email (my address is in the sidebar).

subset: commoncrawl


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The latest addition to NAD's burgeoning range is the C355 stereo integrated amp, which is set to replace the well-liked C352. Although the amp is priced at just £400, it is said to benefit from a number of refinements taken from the brand's top-of-the-range Masters Series M3 dual mono integrated amplifier.
Trickle-down tech
The refinements include an application of NAD's Distortion Cancelling Circuit in the C355's output stage, plus a BEE Clamp in the power supply - two innovations by Bjorn Erik Edvardsen (the BEE bit) - NAD's director of Advanced Development. The newcomer also includes an improved tone control circuit and a PCB layout that's revised to reduce distortion and noise to unprecedented levels, according to a spokesperson.
The amp is conservatively rated at 80 watts (continuous) which ramps up to 140 watts (into 8 ohms) of dynamic power when required. It also includes NAD's proprietary 'PowerDrive' circuit topology, which is said to allow maximum performance with difficult speaker loads by automatically sensing speaker impedance characteristics.
The amp comes supplied with NAD's SR 6 Full-System remote control, which can also operate many other NAD products, including its CD players, and tuners. It will be finished in a choice of either NAD graphite or titanium.


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Tooling Update
Wintriss Launches Die-Protection Knowledge Base
Wintriss Controls Group, Acton, MA, has added a Die Protection Knowledge Base to its website, loaded with tips on sensor selection and installation. Articles already posted to the site include Know Your Critical Angle, Partial Feed Detection, Prox Sensors in the Lower Die for Feed Protection, and Selecting the Right Stop Type. Visit the site regularly, as Wintriss will post a new article each month.Wintriss Controls Group: 800/586-8324; www.wintriss.com
See also: Wintriss Controls Group LLC
Related Enterprise Zones: Sensing/Electronics


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Silestone HelixSilestone Helix Stone Worktop. Ideal for use as Kitchen Worktop, Island Worktop or a splashback.
Also perfect for bathroom applications like Vanities, Bath Surrounds, and others.
Please Note: Samples are generally 100x100mm but sizes can differ. All pictures shown are for illustration purposes only, actual product may vary.
Silestone Quartz worktops are very easy to clean and require minimal maintenance. In order to assist you to make the most of your worktops, please see below Care and Maintenance instructions provided by the manufacturer:
Here is a summary of the most popular edge details:
- Double Pencil Edge - Slightly rounded edges on the top and bottom of your worktop edge to be polished. This is our most popular edge profile for kitchen worktops.
- Mitred Apron Edge - For this edge, we add a downstand piece with a mitred edge to the worktop, providing a thicker look. You can specify the height of the mitre, most popular is 40mm for kitchen worktops. Additionally, islands worktops and end panels can have a mitred edge providing a smooth, continuous looking surface which is sometimes called a waterfall feature.
- Full Bull Nose -Fully rounded stone worktop edge profile often used for bathroom vanities but also traditional looking kitchen worktops for example. This edge can make the stone look thinner.
We are a GOLD level fabricator for Silestone and as such we can offer a full and certified 25 year guarantee for your worktops. Activating your Silestone warranty could not be easier by following the steps provided in the link below:


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Matias Myllrinne
Alan Wake: The Writer DLC to be the last, says Remedy
Remedy boss Matias Myllrinne has told Evil Avatar the new second piece of premium DLC for Alan Wake, The Writer, will be the last for the game.
Matias Myllrinne headlines
Alan Wake runs in 720p, Remedy not happy over recent leaks
Remedy's confirmed that Alan Wake will run in 720p throughout the thriller, and not 520p as previously thought over the weekend.
Remedy's Matias Myllrinne joins GDC Europe panel
ThinkServices has said the Remedy MD Matias Myllrinne has joined the GDC Europe advisory board.
Remedy in "no hurry" for next-gen consoles
Alan Wake developer Remedy has told GI that developers are in "no hurry" for a generation transition.
Naughty Dog designer added to speaker list for DICE 2010
Richard Lemarchand, game designer for Naughty Dog, has been confirmed as a speaker at the DICE Summit which takes place February 17-19, 2010 in Las Vegas. Manveer Heir, lead designer at Raven Software, Zynga Games chief creative officer Brian Reynolds, and Mike Yuen, Zeebo senior VP of content and services, are also confirmed. Other speakers […]


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May 29, 2015 - Middle school students from Griswold, Groton, Ledyard, Mystic, Niantic, North Stonington, Norwich, Oakdale, Pawcatuck, Salem, and Voluntown were recognized as the state's top Scholar Leaders at the 2015 Connecticut Association of Schools (CAS) Scholar Leader Banquet sponsored by the Connecticut and Western Massachusetts McDonald's Owner/Operator Association.
As part of its long standing commitment to supporting educational programs in Connecticut, McDonald's joined CAS to honor the following local students as the best of the best in the state at an awards ceremony held at the Aqua Turf Club in Plantsville, Conn. on May 28.
• Kaitlyn Davis and Matthew Spinelli, Griswold Middle School, Griswold
• Britney Toussaint and Thomas Wagner, West Side Middle School, Groton
• Olivia Strelevitz and Patrick Templeton, Ledyard Middle School, Ledyard
• Olivia Carney and Andrew Kerst, Cutler Middle School, Mystic
• Emma Small and Christian Donovan, Mystic Middle School, Mystic
• Daven Roberts and Sumeet Kadian, East Lyme Middle School, Niantic
• Jessica Neddeau and Seth Jones, Wheeler Middle School, North Stonington
• Molly Cournoyer and Ryan Smith, Kelly Middle School, Norwich
• Marissa Madera and Noah Lucien, Teachers' Memorial Middle School, Norwich
• Abigail Orbe and Henry D. Tighe, Leonard Tyl Middle School, Oakdale
• Izadora Yarnall and Mark Costanzo, Pawcatuck Middle School, Pawcatuck
• Emma Vlaun and Spencer Winakor, Salem School, Salem
• Calla Millovitsch and Ryan Owens, Voluntown Elementary School, Voluntown
• Chloe Wilson and Alexander Fayan, Clark Lane Middle School, Waterford
"McDonald's is pleased to congratulate this year's Scholar Leader recipients," said Scott Taylor, McDonald's owner/operator and president of the Connecticut and Western Massachusetts McDonald's Owner/Operator Association. "As a proud partner with CAS, McDonald's is honored to recognize Connecticut's top middle school students, who have put their best foot forward and earned remarkable achievements in both school and in their local communities."
The Connecticut Scholar Leader Awards is the largest program of its type in the state. The award is presented to one male and one female student in each middle school whose record of academic achievement and service have been truly exemplary, whose personal standards and accomplishments are a model for others and who possess high levels of integrity, self discipline, honesty and courage.
About McDonald's
The Connecticut and Western Massachusetts McDonald's Owner/Operator Association is comprised of local McDonald's restaurant owners who are community and industry leaders. They have a long-standing commitment to supporting educational initiatives and organizations in the communities they serve, including providing resources to promote balanced, active lifestyles to kids and nutritional information for families. For more information, follow us on Instagram or Twitter @McD_CTWMA.
McDonald's USA, LLC, serves a variety of menu options made with quality ingredients to more than 27 million customers every day. Nearly 90 percent of McDonald's 14,000 U.S. restaurants are independently owned and operated by businessmen and women. Customers can now log online for free at approximately 11,500 participating Wi-Fi enabled McDonald's U.S. restaurants. For more information, visit www.mcdonalds.com, or follow us on Twitter @McDonalds and Facebook www.facebook.com/mcdonalds.
# # #
© 2015 McDonald's
This item was posted by a community contributor. To read more about community contributors, click here.


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Commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War through unique programs and learning opportunities at your library this year! From September 2011 through May 2012, all CCPL branches will feature events and activities centered around the greatest conflict in our nation's history. From reenactments to special programs on the role of women and local African Americans in the war, not to mention children's activities and book discussions with local authors, there's something for everyoneand everywhere!
Click the poster to view a larger version, and call any branch library for more details.
Tags: adults, author, book discussion, Cecil County, cecil county public library, civil war, community, events, family, film, free, history, information, kids, library, local history, movie, news, programming


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by Eckhart Tolle
Library Journal Tolle follows up his successful The Power of Now-it's sold two million copies worldwide since 1997-with a plea to reject egotistic ways for a new form of consciousness. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.


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Create Promo Videos Online Courses
Create Promo Videos Online Courses in Zimbabwe
2KO Zimbabwe offers an online computer course called Create Stunning Promo Videos in 30 Minutes or Less Using After Effects templates. 2KO delivers cutting-edge IT products in the consulting and business services space, as well as offering top-rated training for various IT vendors. Our internationally recognised courses can be offered either as hands-on full time classes, or as online learning.
Boost your sales by 75% or more by creating a promotional video that impresses and connects with your customers. Have you ever watched a promotional video and said: Wow! I wonder how much they paid to have that made? Have you ever decided to buy something after watching a video? Now you can create your own stunning promotional videos, and you can do it in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed!
How Does
It Work?
The video creation process you will learn in this "Create a Promo Video in 30 Minutes" course is so simple it's almost ridiculous.
You will be learning
how to use pre-designed templates to create unbelievable videos that
anyone can create using Adobe After Effects.
When you use templates, the hard work has been done for you by the developer. All you need to do is replace the text and add any images or videos that help you tell the story of your product. If the process sounds simple, that's because it really is.
Why Is This "Create a Promo Video in 30 Minutes" Course So Short?
This "create a promo video" course may just be the shortest comprehensive course on Udemy, and it will probably be the only course you actually finish to the end. Why would you want to sit through 7 hours of lectures when you can learn such a valuable skill in less than 30 minutes?
What Kinds of Videos Can I Make?
Take a look at the videos we have displayed in "Section 2: More Video Styles You Can Make After Taking This Course". By the end of this course you will be able to make every one of the videos you see there, plus hundreds more just like them. Every one of the videos in Section 2 were created in 30 minutes or less, and were created by an After Effects novice. That's the power of using After Effects templates. Turn that power into money for your business. What are you waiting for? Get this "Create a Promo Video in 30 Minutes "course and make more money today!
More Video Styles You Can Make After Taking This Course
Pop Out Book Template
White Space Template
Mobile App Template
Introduction to After Effects and Working with Templates
Installing After Effects
Opening a Template
Introduction to After Effects
Creating a Promo Video
Editing Text
Altering and Moving Text
Adding Images
Adding Videos
Adding a Logo
Rendering Your Video
Post Production
Video Production Resources
Free and Paid After Effects Templates


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U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission
Contact Us
This is not secure e-mail! If you need to provide us with personal information, such as your Social Security number or home address, please call, write or visit. Please include an address, telephone number or e-mail address so we may contact you.
E-mail Address: inspector.general@
Postal Address:
OIG Main Number: 202-663-4327
OIG Fax Number: 202-663-7204
OIG Hotline Number: 800-849-4230
Milton A. Mayo Jr., Inspector General
The United States Congress established an Office of Inspector General at the EEOC through the 1988 amendment of the Inspector General Act of 1978, which expanded authority to independent agencies and federal entities. OIG's primary responsibility is to assist the EEOC by ensuring integrity, efficiency, and accountability in the agency's programs to enforce laws against discrimination in the workplace. Specifically, OIG supports the Agency by carrying out its mandate to independently and objectively conduct and supervise audits, evaluations and investigations; prevent and detect fraud, waste, and abuse; and promote economy and efficiency in programs and operations. The OIG keeps EEOC's Chair and members of the Congress fully and currently informed about problems, recommends corrective action(s), and monitors the EEOC's progress in implementing such action.
The OIG is under the supervision of the IG, who provides overall direction, coordination, and leadership to staff. The OIG includes a deputy inspector general, an audit and evaluation staff, an investigative staff, an independent counsel, and an administrative staff. The Deputy Inspector General serves as alter ego of the Inspector General and has the responsibility for providing overall program guidance, direction and supervision to audit, evaluation and investigative staffs. The audit program provides assurance to the Chair and Congress that EEOC programs are working efficiently and effectively. The audit staff conducts performance and financial audits, as well as special reviews and evaluations. These audits focus on management controls, administrative and program operations, transaction processing and financial and other information systems. Special reviews and evaluations assess program performance and information security and consider the implications of EEOC programs, operations and policies.
The mission of the investigative program is to perform investigative activities related to the integrity of the EEOC's programs. Most of OIG's investigations focus on violations of law or misconduct by Agency employees, as well as, allegations of irregularities or abuses in operations and programs. When needed, OIG's investigators work in concert with other law enforcement entities. Over half of the investigative inquiries result from employees and the general public calling OIG's 24-hour telephone (hotline) to report wrongdoing. A significant amount of these calls concern EEOC's discrimination complaint process and are referred to the appropriate program office.
Peer Review
System Review Report On the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Office of Inspector General Audit Organization: PDF version | HTML
|OIG Semi-Annual Reports to the Congress
|Other Reports


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'''Lúthien Tinúviel''' was the only daughter of King [[Thingol]] of [[Doriath]] and [[Melian]] the [[Maia]]. She was said to be the fairest maiden to have ever lived.
'''Lúthien Tinúviel''' was the only daughter of King [[Thingol]] of [[Doriath]] and [[Melian]] the [[Maia]]. She was said to be the fairest maiden to have ever lived.
Revision as of 07:02, 9 December 2007
This article or section needs expansion and/or modification. Please help the wiki by expanding it.
|Lúthien Tinúviel
|Biographical Information
|Princess of Doriath
|c. F.A. 505 (aged c. 3,400 years)
|Thingol + Melian
|Physical Description
|Hair color
|Images of Lúthien Tinúviel
Lúthien Tinúviel was the only daughter of King Thingol of Doriath and Melian the Maia. She was said to be the fairest maiden to have ever lived.
Early History
Lúthien would often dance in the woods, while her friend Daeron would play his flute. Daeron came to love her, and while she enjoyed his company, she did not return his love.
Quest for the SilmarilBeren as he wandered the woods of her father's kingdom, and instantly fell in love with her. Daeron chirped out a warning, and she hid. While he searched for her, he accidentally laid his hand on her arm. He caught her alone some months later, and they grew to love one another. When Lúthien took Beren before her father, he was apalled that his royal daughter should wish to wed a mortal, and as is recounted in the Lay of Leithian so set Beren what he thought was an unachievable task, to recover a Silmaril from the Iron Crown of Morgoth himself. So Beren left Doriath in pursuit of his hopeless quest.
After a time, a darkness fell on Lúthien's heart, and she learned from her mother Melian what this meant; Beren had been captured by Sauron, and was held in the dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth. Though Thingol sought to stop her, Lúthien set out from Doriath to rescue Beren, if she could. Passing through many adventures, she gained the help of Huan the Hound, and together they came to Sauron's Isle. Through Lúthien's magic and Huan's strength they defeated Sauron and rescued Beren. Eventually Beren set out for Angband once again, and Lúthien accompanied him.
Through Lúthien's powers, they passed the gates of Angband, and the great wolf Carcharoth that guarded them. Coming before the Dark Throne itself, she wove a spell that put Morgoth and his court into a deep sleep, and Beren cut a Silmaril from the Iron Crown. Returning to the gates, they found that Carcharoth barred their escape. Beren held up the hallowed jewel to protect them, but the monstrous wolf bit off his hand, and with it consumed the Silmaril. But the Silmarils were blessed by Varda herself, so that any unclean flesh that touched them would be withered and burnt. The wolf's innards were consumed with that burning, and it ran howling into the south.
Lúthien healed Beren, and they came at last back to her father's halls at Menegroth. There they heard tidings that the maddened wolf had entered Thingol's realm, and Beren set out with the King to the Hunting of the Wolf. After nightfall they returned; the wolf was slain and the Silmaril recovered, but Beren was wounded mortally. So he passed away, and soon after Lúthien too wasted of grief.
AftermathHalls of Mandos in the Uttermost West, and there Lúthien sang a song of such extraordinary power and beauty that it moved even the implacable heart of Mandos himself. So she was granted a unique fate, to become mortal and return to Middle-earth with Beren, where they dwelt for a time in happiness on the green island of Tol Galen in the River Adurant.
Elu Thingol = Melian | | | House of Bëor | : | : LÚTHIEN = Beren | | Dior Eluchíl = Nimloth | ________|________ | | | | | | Eärendil = Elwing Eluréd Elurín | ____|____ | | | | Elrond Elros


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20% off all wall art! Today only! Offer ends tonight at midnight EST.
This product is currently out of stock.
Image Size
The image is near the edges of the product but doesn't cover the entire product. Some of the background color may appear around the outside edges of the image.
Background Color
Here it is... the towel that's taking the internet by storm. Our round beach towels are 60" in diameter and made from ultra-soft plush microfiber with a 100% cotton back. Perfect for a day at the beach, a picnic, an outdoor music festival, or just general home decor. This versatile summer essential is a must-have this season!
60" Diameter Not Including Tassles
Care Instructions
Machine wash cold and tumble dry with low heat.
Ships Within
2 - 3 business days
View All & Comment
Canvas Print
Framed Print
Art Print
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Wood Print
Greeting Card
Phone Case
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Tote Bag
Round Beach Towel
Carry-All Pouch
Beach Towel
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Thanks Thomas Woolworth, for featuring my work in the group, https://fineartamerica.com/groups/the-american-flag.html
Average Rating (5 Stars):
Charles Rogers
August 29th, 2018
Judy Bostrom
July 28th, 2018
Karoll Domeij
July 27th, 2018
Kay Roberson
July 19th, 2018
Wow - I didn't realise it was going to be that big! It's a gift for a young member of the family - I think he'll be thrilled as he's a tractor fanatic at 6 years old. A practical gift too. The towel has a smoother upper side so it'll be more comfortable to sit on at the beach. It seems to have a thick absorbent power so no usual skinny beach towel.
2D OOF (Out Of Frame), also known as OOB (out Of Bounds) image of two brothers having fun chasing soap bubbles created by Mom in Denton, Maryland.
I'm a retired communications instructor/developer, raised on the Eastern Shore of Maryland (USA). I have a wide range of interests which include some artistic talent. My eclectic tastes, thirst for variety, and preference for images over words, eventually lead me through the internet to the world of 3D stereo in 2005. Since I've been with Fine Art America, I've focused primarily on regular photography with a touch of digital manipulation to better compose the images and ideas. Each time I think I've reached a peak, I find myself crossing another threshold that challenges my abilities and talents while paving way to another plateau. Best Regards, Brian Wallace https://twitter.com/Starg82343
Our return policy is very simple:
If you're not happy with a purchase that you made on FineArtAmerica.com, for any reason, you can return it to us within 30 days of the order date. As soon as it arrives, we'll issue a full refund for the entire purchase price. Please note - Fine Art America does not reimburse the outgoing or return shipping charges unless the return is due to a defect in quality.
Fine Art America sells thousands of pieces of artwork each month - all with a 100% money-back guarantee. We take great pride in the fact that hundreds of thousands of artists have chosen Fine Art America to fulfill their orders, and we look forward to helping you select your next piece!
All round beach towels ship from our production facility within 2 - 3 business days of your order.


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At Portsmouth ECU Remapping not only can we measure your engines power output before & after ECU remapping, we log parameters such as boost, air fuel ratio, RPM, load, intake air temperature, advance & oil temperature. We can also hold your car at a certain RPM or load to diagnose any problems or smooth out any flat spots in the power delivery. The rolling road dyno tuning process is carried out by trained professionals. Don't make the mistake of going to a cowboy firm! Do some research!
Please note, Dyno Tuning & Rolling road tuning is only available at the BHP UK Development Centre in Lancashire.
ECU Remap, Dyno Tuning & Rolling Road Tuning
Remapping and Dyno Tuning? But...how?
Remapped & Dyno-tuned: Not just with the right tools!
Of course we appreciate that it takes more than tools to get a job done. Portsmouth ECU Remapping's map writers are qualified professionals with a firm background in the automotive tuning and programming industry.
Our rolling road is available for power runs to check the power output of your car and is also available to hire on an hourly or daily basis.
Please give us a call & find out about any Rolling Road Tuning days we may have coming up or any Special Offers we may have. (Please note: T&Cs may apply)
The DynoJet rolling road can be booked for a whole or half day or just for a single vehicle. We give discounts to larger bookings, groups & vehicle clubs. Ring Portsmouth ECU Remapping on 02392 377 890.
Request info about a Dyno Run / Live Dyno Tuning Remap
Book Portsmouth Dyno Tuning & Test Your Car on our 2000bhp DynoJet Dynamometer Rolling Road! Speak To A Dyno Tuning : Call 02392 377 890
Expertly Tune Your Vehicle With Our Rolling Road DynoJet Tuning Experts!
Increase Fuel Economy & Reduce Fuel Bills By 20%
Tired of excessive fuel costs? Our Economy Remapping will provide your vehicle with increased power & torque.
Increase Power, BHP & Performance By Up To 30%
Our Performance Remaps will help increase power, performance and torque where it matters! Click below…
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Once your vehicle's been remapped the transformation in bhp, power, performance and torque is massive.
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Petrol ECU Remaps & Petrol Tuning for turbo petrol engines and non-turbo engines. Click below for more info…
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Diesel Engine Tuning & Diesel Engine Tuning for turbo diesel engines. Economy and Performance Remaps.
DPF Removal, EGR Removal and DPF Deletion
DPF Removal, DPF Deletion & EGR Removal. All covered by the most reputable tuning firm. Click below…
Find the Right Dyno Tuning & Rolling Road Tuning For Your Vehicle.
Browse 1000s of Remaps, View potential gains & bhp increase in our comprehensive database of Petrol Performance Chip Tuning Remaps, dyno tuning and rolling road remaps.


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Under the guise of praising the new MacBook Pro's gorgeous retina display, Tapbots' Mark Jardine just confirmed the existence of the Tweetbot Mac app.
He was lauding the pretty screen, posting a picture that showed Tweetbot for OS X open on his laptop. When asked later, he wouldn't say anything directly about the client, but he posted a a higher-res picture that gave a closer glimpse—and Tweetbot for Mac looks pretty similar to its iPhone counterpart. The Verge said Tapbots indeed answered in the affirmative the app is coming, and we've reached out to the company for more information. If it is, in fact, coming, many users will be pleased. Twitter for Mac hasn't been updated in well over a year, meaning people are probably looking around for other viable alternatives. With a clean, thoughtfully designed interface and tons of customizable features that make it simple to tweet, retweet, Tweetbot is a very good one. [The Verge]


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Gucci marks the spot with a G in their latest press campaign, model Carmen Kass* is pictured pulling down her knickers and showing off body hair shaved into the letter 'G'.
Mario Testino shot the image he calls 'Pubic Enemy' and it's displayed in Vogue's February edition. Some people have called the image 'vile, coarse and degrading to women'.
The Advertising Standards Authority in the UK, which has the power to ban offensive material, said it was investigating after receiving a number of complaints.
Gucci boss Tom Ford is used to this kind of attention, he was behind the controversial images of model Sophie Dahl in the Yves St Laurent Opium perfume campaign two years ago. It became the most complained about ad in the ASA's history. Also he sells perfume with full frontal male nudity.
John Beyer, director of Mediawatchuk, called for an immediate ban of the image;
"The companies involved clearly release these kind of pictures to create as much publicity as possible, but it's a thoroughly unpleasant and irresponsible tactic. We can't simply ignore them.
Imagery showing young women in this way is extremely harmful to society, and should not be appearing in mainstream magazines.
The ASA has a duty to ensure that advertisements are decent, and this clearly isn't. It's deeply offensive and should be banned immediately."
A spokesman for Gucci lets us know: "All our important players are in Milan at the moment and nobody is around to speak about the picture." Toasting in grappa, for a controversial stunt well done, I'm sure.


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|Instrument: MISR : Multi-Angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer
Instrument Category:
Earth Remote Sensing Instruments
Instrument Class: Passive Remote Sensing
Instrument Type: Spectrometers/Radiometers
Instrument Subtype: Imaging Spectrometers/Radiometers
Associated Platforms
Spectral/Frequency Information
Wavelength Keyword: Near Infrared
Spectral/Frequency Coverage/Range: Near Infrared
Wavelength Keyword: Visible
Spectral/Frequency Coverage/Range: Blue, Green, Red
Related Data Sets
View all records related to this instrument
To accomplish its scientific objectives, the MISR instrument measures Earth's brightness in 4 spectral bands, at each of 9 look angles spread out in the forward and aft directions along the flight path. Spatial samples are acquired every 275 meters. Over a period of 7 minutes, a 360 km wide swath of Earth comes into view at all 9 angles. Special attention has been paid to providing highly accurate absolute and relative calibration, using on-board hardware consisting of deployable solar diffuser plates and several types of photodiodes. To complement the on-board calibration effort, a validation program of in situ measurements are being conducted, involving field instruments, one of which is the &PARABOLA III&, which automatically scans the sky and ground at many angles, and a multi-angle aircraft camera (AirMISR). Global coverage with MISR is acquired about once every 9 days at the equator; the nominal lifetime of the mission is 6 years.
MISR was built for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and is one of five instruments launched into polar orbit aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft in August 1999. The spacecraft flys in a sun-synchronous orbit, designed so that it crosses the equator every 98 minutes, always at 10:30 a.m. local time, as Earth rotates below.
[Source: MISR Project Home Page https://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/]
Online Resources
Instrument Logistics
Data Rate: 3.3 Megabits/second average, 9.0 Megabits/second peak
Instrument Start Date: 2000-02-01
Instrument Owner: USA/NASA


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From AOL to Revolution: Steve Case's second act
The Gunther Report
From AOL to Revolution: Steve Case's second act
Steve Case is having a pretty good second act.
Case, as you surely remember, led America Online to glory and riches during the Internet boom. The first Internet firm to go public, AOL was the best performing stock of the 1990s, with a 11,616% (!!) return. That put the upstart in a position to acquire media giant Time Warner, in the largest merger in business history -- and one of the most ill-fated.
Case, who is 53, is back, and he's busy, as the chairman and CEO of Revolution, a company that "invests in people and ideas that can change the world"; as chairman of the Case Foundation, which is mostly run by his wife Jean; as chairman of the Startup America Partnership, a nonprofit that supports startups in a variety of ways; and as a member of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which has him advocating bipartisan legislation to make financing for startups easier.
What ties all those interests together is Case's belief that entrepreneurs are the "secret sauce" that keeps the American economy humming, he told me last week at VERGE DC, a conference organized by GreenBiz about the convergence of energy, information, buildings and transportation..
"I really do believe that entrepreneurs change the world," he says. "They're willing to take risks, start companies around new products, ideas or services and in many cases new industries emerge. That's why we're the leading economy in the world. It didn't happen by accident. Fortune 500 companies don't instantly vault into being Fortune 500 companies. Walmart started as one little store in Bentonville, Ark.
"I saw it first-hand with America Online. We started in 1985. Three percent of people were online. They were online for an average of one hour per week. We said, someday this is going to be a ubiquitous medium that's going to change the world, that everybody would be connected all the time, with multiple devices. It took a quarter century to get there, but now we're there."
"We're now ushering the second Internet revolution," he went on. "Now that everyone's connected through multiple devices, connecting more habitually and more mobile-ly, you're now able to have a transformative impact not just on media and communications and financial services, but on other core foundational industries in our country -- energy being a key one, health care being a key one, education being a key one."
"They actually have not changed that much," he said. "But I have no doubt over the next 25 years those industries will be fundamentally reshaped, transformed, disrupted by this second Internet revolution, and that provides a real opportunity for entrepreneurs who are challenging the status quo, playing an attacker role."
I've known Steve since 1996, and I've always enjoyed talking with him. I wrote a cover story about him for Fortune in 1998 (The Internet Is Mr. Case's Neighborhood) which I'll never forget because the magazine invited my daughter Sarah, then 14 and known as [email protected], to write a sidebar (Why AOL is Cool) to explain AOL to clueless older readers. On the day AOL announced its purchase of Time Warner in 2001, I was on my way to interview Steve; that meeting was scratched when a PR woman called me at 6 a.m. to say, "We're buying your company." Crazy times.
But I'd always felt Steve was about more than the bubble. At least in the early years, Steve and many of his AOL colleagues were mission-driven. They were excited by the idea that cyberspace (yes, that was what we called the Internet way back when) could connect people who'd never been connected before.
Now he's mission-driven again, hoping to disrupt established businesses that have grown sluggish. "I'm a better attacker than I am an defender," he said. Since VERGE is fundamentally about sustainability and efficiency, about using the power of information to better use and manage physical assets, I asked him about Zipcar, one of Revolution's early investments.
When they invested, he said, "most people were unaware of it, but we believed that the idea (of car sharing) driven by environmental concerns and economic concerns -- and driven particularly by the Millenial generation that was rising, and believed in sharing rather than owning -- we believed there'd be a lot of opportunity…If you live in a city, that's just a better way and a more responsible way to access transportation. But it's only possible because of the first Internet revolution." Zipcar renters can locate a car on their cellphones or online and unlock it with their phone. "The ubiquity and the mobile nature of the Internet makes that industry possible," he said.
"Give consumers more control, give consumers more choice, give consumers more convenience, have a positive social impact and you can build a significant, sustainable company around that," he said.
Another example: An office sharing company called LooseCubes, which connects companies that have great work spaces with people who need it."There's excess capacity in lots of offices," he said. "If you can get rent for that, for a day or a week or a month or six months, that's interesting. But what's more interesting is if you can [get] these innovative, entrepreneurial types into your office, that can create a much more interesting, creative atmosphere."
He sees lots of potential in the sharing economy: "There's a shift to use and sharing and experiences as opposed to ownership."
It'll be tough, he acknowledges, to upend powerful entrenched interests in energy, health care and education. Those are all tough sectors to disrupt because "they are structurally different…Decisions are generally made not by consumers but by some other institutions. Healthcare is basically run by the payers. It takes a lot longer to break through." Education, of course, is mostly a government monopoly, and all three sectors are heavily regulated and not as consumer-centric as many other businesses.
"We have a bias at Revolution toward harder problems that take decades to fix," he said. That's where the big opportunities lie.
Photo of Marc Gunther, left, and Steve Case at VERGE DC taken by Goodwin Ogbuehi for GreenBiz Group.


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Fragging Supplies
Growing healthy frags starts with having the proper fragging supplies on hand. Here at Bulk Reef Supply, we carry a variety of equipment that can greatly improve the beauty of your aquarium.
We have natural coral frag mounts that are 100% reef-safe and made of all-natural calcium carbonate or ceramic. These convenient mounts have a natural shape that easily blends in when it's time for you to move the frags into the aquarium. They have a natural uneven surface where you can easily grow your frags.
Ocean Wonders coral frag plugs and disks are also available here, and these are perfect for the propagation and fragging of hard and soft branching corals such as Acropora, Birdsnest, Montipora, Kenya Trees, Xenia, and Zoanthids. Additionally, we carry coral dips from Coral Rx and all the tools and glue from EcoTech and Ocean Wonders, as well as our own BRS line of propagation kits and super glues.


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Designed specifically for Cable Strut span installations or bracing applications.
Available in 'light duty' and 'heavy duty' options:
- The light duty 1/8" Cable Strut solution is ideal for suspending lightweight electrical & lighting services, ductwork, and signage. Supports up to a 66 lb vertical load per horizontal span.
- The heavy duty 1/4" Cable Strut solution is perfect for suspending mechanical, electrical, or HVAC services, or where a long Cable Strut span is required. Supports up to a 220 lb vertical load per horizontal span.
- Supplied as complete, ready-to-use kits, including galvanized cable cut to specific lengths, Gripple fasteners, a hex locking key, and release key.
- Fast installation, reducing time spent working at heights.
- Locking mechanisms in the Gripple fastener prevent dynamic movements.
- Visually discreet.
- Easily tensioned using the Gripple Cable Strut Tensioning Tool (for use with 1/4" Cable Strut only).


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Statewide Effort To Distribute Venison Growing
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - A statewide effort to share extra venison taken by deer hunters is bringing in record donations.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports (http://bit.ly/Vrz9uZ ) the program, called Missouri's Share the Harvest, is on track to distribute 400,000 pounds of donated meat.
The program allows deer hunters to donate the venison when they take deer to food processors. The venison is distributed through regional and local food pantries.
The Conservation Federation of Missouri, the Missouri Department of Conservation, regional food banks, local food pantries and meat processors participate in the program.
Dave Murphy, executive director of the Conservation Federation of Missouri, says the program has grown because of increased funding and more attention from hunters. Gov. Jay Nixon also has strongly promoted the program since taking office in 2009.


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I've been playing do too much work.
Although I occasionally squeeze in STALKER : Call of Pripyat when I can. Currently in Pripyat and exploring before going into the secret lab. Got calibration tools; planning to totally tweak out all my gear.
Old thread closed due to mega-ness. It can be found here, it isn't going anywhere.
New and awesome WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING thread now open for business.
I've been playing do too much work.
Although I occasionally squeeze in STALKER : Call of Pripyat when I can. Currently in Pripyat and exploring before going into the secret lab. Got calibration tools; planning to totally tweak out all my gear.
Yeah, Too Much Work's taking up all my time too. I tend to multitask with Family Drama 2011. Though I get Deus Ex Human Revolution in when I can. In Montreal now.
Bioshock 2. I think I'm liking it better than the original Bioshock, although it's difficult to disentangle my feelings about that game from my expectations and disappointment when those expectations weren't met. I have to say, I don't particularly like the *feel* of how the game controls, I don't like the feel of the weapons - in terms of shooters, it's definitely not one of my favourite ones - but now that they've got the Big Theme and Deep Meaning of the first game out of the way, the storytelling and writing feel more relaxed. I definitely liked Pauper's Drop and encountering another living person in Rapture who isn't out of her gourd.
That's exactly how I feel too. Plus the little sister protection thing, albeit repetitive, isn't so bad. I'd even go as far as to say it rewards tactical approaches and results in much more satisfying shooting sessions than the original.
Not enough time for playing as well. I've been concentrating my efforts on The Witcher 2 for quite some time but I'm barely at the end of Act II right now. I'm conflicted so far with regards to the first game, but I love it nevertheless. Still, it takes itself too seriously and often loses a lot of the charming naivety of TW1. For the moment, my playthrough can be summed up by "Give me pretty erotic cards any time over ugly non-interactive sex cutscenes", literally and metaphorically.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Still in China, wubba!
Ok, and a little bit of NES/SNES emulation.
Deus Ex:Human Revolution here, too. And way too much of it, frankly.
- Designing maps for Joint Operations, for my friends on our weekly games night, and figuring out the NILE editor has been taking up much of my game time. If anyone knows of some good reference material for this editor, I would really appreciate it. I understand the basics, but so much of it has gone undocumented, and searching the internet is largely pointless.
- Forget-me-not - great little iOS game ported to the PC, and made better in the process.
- Jagged Alliance - agonizing over my first team picks to head into Arulco. Gonna stay focused on the game this time, I swear! No distractions, no distractions...
- Looking-for-work - the only game worse than Doing-the-work
Been playing Master Thesis: Sleeless Evenings eXtreme, and a bit of Online Payment API: 200 pages aint got shit on us Edition. From games, tho, I managed to cram in some 12 hour long Alpha Centauri marathon here and there. Just finished a long war with my once long time ally Spartans, who finally agreeded to a truce after I took over half of their bases. Now, trying to unite the planet in a struggle against The Hive which has been dangerously spreading its territory...
Another one here on DX:HR. What a pleasant surprise this is. I was skeptical of the game before it's release, but I'm glad I turn out to be wrong.
re-playing San Andreas.
Yay, threads back, or more or less anyway .
Hows GTA SA going?
I had been playing Diablo 2 and got to act 4, but then Deus Ex Revolution came out and that's been all I've been playing ever since (other than occasional games of Super Mario Kart with the gf). Man I LOVE this game.
Its a game you can just lose yourself in for days/weeks, and while it doesn't have the openness of Fallout 3 there's still heaps of side stuff to do and different ways to do things. I find that going and and taking each and every path to an objective, before actually completing the objective works best (XP and praxis points wise).
Odd though that there isn't much of a negative to doing bad things. For example I went and snuck into the police station in Detroit for a mission and whilst there thought I might as well go hack every pc here and knock out every cop and person in the building for the xp. And once I completed that aim, there was no negative result of it. No stuffed up quests, or reprimands or people liking me less or whatever. None of it. Odd. If anything, playing the game on the more evil end, or atleast more willing to knock out anyone end of things, your alot better off it seems (long as your very careful and play very Thief like). Note that I'm playing the game non lethally for the most part.
By the point in the game I'm at (currently at the medical center) got most of the skills I wanted maxed. So yeah, loving this game. Best FPS since Fallout 3. Then be back to Diablo 2 once I'm done.
Last edited by icemann; 3rd Sep 2011 at 01:43.
Killzone 3.
Howd I become the black sheep of this group?
By not posting enough, Alchy! Post more, we love you. Your armflailing keeps us cool, anyway
I sucked it up and started the Baldur's Gate series. Not sure how much combat changes in Baldur's Gate 2 to earn it the "best game of all time" I've heard thrown around a lot, but jesus christ combat in BG1 drives me INSANE, especially early on. From what I understand it gets easier later on as you've leveled and geared up more to take more hits. But until then, I'm turning the difficulty down.
Combat seems to go like this, both for my characters and the enemies:
Miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss HIT FOR 3/4 OF THE HEALTH BAR miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss DEAD
Today that kind of gameplay is considered the stupidest of the stupid, but 15 years ago we didn't know any better and considered "luck" a perfectly acceptable central gameplay element. I'm crying on the inside and a little on the outside too, though, when I have to reload 6 times on the 3rd fight of the game because the enemy's sporadic ability to hit me happened to be less sporadic than usual. I was prepared for these kind of shenanigans when I decided to play an old game though, so I'm committed to see this one through!!!
The Redbox near me finally got LA Noire so I picked that up. So far I'm not seeing what too much of the excitement is about, other than that character animation is BADASS in all capital letters. I keep playing just so I can see the amazing facial expressions. It's weird that a game's actual art can look so cartoony, yet the facial expressions can make you forget you're not looking at the real thing.
Wizardry VIII.
Currently playing GTA San Andreas and Quake 4. Have just pre-loaded Dead Island.
And that's all I have to say about that.
I'm currently playing Tropico 4 and loving the humour, a throwback to Theme Hospital. Also looking forward to Dead Island.
Mostly I am re-re-replaying ES4: Oblivion trying different mods (including a couple I made) almost every time I play. I would claim I play it to prepare for the release of ES 5: Skyrim, but the facts are that the game looks awesome despite its age (thanks to my brand-new hardware), the hundreds of great mods greatly extend its replay value, and I love Vilja's sense of humor and general hotness.
My new computer came with a free license for Portal, so last night I gave it a try. 5 hours later I had finished the game. I guess I'll have to read some reviews for Portal 2 to decide if I want it.
When I feel like going online, which isn't that often, I play Champions Online.
Playing Deus Ex 3 like anyone else with a clue.
Avalon - early level in every infinity engine game is all about how completely overpowered bows/slings are (same with early level Dragon Age 1, for that matter). Go into every fight unleashing a pile of arrows/bullets until they start to close, then switch your frontline fighters to melee to keep them off your back 4 who should be unleashing ranged hell. Also, and this may be so obvious it shouldn't be mentioned, take out one enemy at a time since it's one less person who can fight back, and focus on enemy spellcasters because they'll go down fast if you don't give them time to fuck your shit up.
Playing Deus Ex 3. DUH. Thoughts once I'm done.
I'm wishing I had made my character a ranged guy, but I'm far enough in that I really don't want to redo it and go through the hell of all that combat I've done already. I have to make a point of letting my dude be the last to run in because even though I've equipped him in the best "tank" gear I could possibly get at this point, he can still die in 1.5 seconds if I don't let my horde of companions buffer the damage first.
Even your melee guys should probably have bows or slings (depending on their class) early on, until you start fighting some mobs that you can overpower in melee. Even if your melee guys only end up firing an arrow a piece it still helps to soften things up.


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global warming: Is it not true that the earth has always gone through cycles of warming and cooling?
Question by Mortaro: global warming: Is it not true that the earth has always gone through cycles of warming and cooling?
Studies of climate show cycles of warming and cooling long before industry and machines could have had any possible effect. As one scientist put it, effects of industry could have no more than .01 degree (one hundredth) rise in temperature.
Also, for the past 10,000 or so years, earth has had a relatively stable climate, even with the "little ice age" of medieval times. Before then, the climate showed instabilities beyond anything we have experienced or imagined. There is the possibility, even probability, that these times could return, with hurricanes of 400mph winds and as large as a hemisphere, with flash freezes that occur in minutes bringing
-100 degree temperatures. Man does not know or understand everything about our climate. We are lulled into a sense of security and safety with the stable climate of today. Read and study climatology. Don't just go by what politicians and the news networks say; they don't take the time or effort to do their homework and be objective.
Best answer:
Answer by GJ
Okay about every 10 000 years there is something called an ice age so yes but because of global warming our ice age the one to come is going to be coming sooner or later if it comes later we are not going to be around that much longer.
What do you think? Answer below!


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Take a look at this article on pre-commercial procurement and how it can support developing innovation capacity.
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Low-carbon economy
Take a look at examples of how other regions are succeeding in creating sustainable urban mobility.
Take a look at an inspiring example of this project on how the filming industry can be greener.
Environment and resource efficiency
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Video Annotation and Reference System
Project DescriptionThe Video Annotation and Reference System (VARS) is a software interface and database system that provides tools for describing, cataloging, retrieving, and viewing the visual, descriptive, and quantitative data associated with video. Developed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) for annotating deep-sea video data, VARS is currently being used to describe over 4500 dives by our remotely operated vehicles (ROV). VARS has allowed MBARI scientists to produce numerous quantitative and qualitative scientific publications based on video data.


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- This event has passed.
Cedar Saturday Market
May 25, 2019 @ 9:00 am - 1:00 pm
Cedar Saturday Market held 9:00 am – 1:00 pm in the IFA parking lot (summer) & inside (winter) (905 S Main St, Cedar City), admission is FREE. Come for the farmers, food, and artisans as well as drawings, bingo and more! For information visit them on Facebook, Cedar Saturday Market, or call Nancy 435-463-3735.


text: RMI WebSocket provides a library for remote method invocations between a browser and a Jetty Web Server using the HTML5 WebSocket. The idea is to enable tight method-level integration between the user interface and the server so that patterns such as MVP (Model-View-Presenter) can be applied in a Web environment. The method-level communications between the browser code and the server code allows the developer to think about the Web page and server-side components as objects in a UML world. Details such as the over-the-wire protocols in WebSockets are abstracted away in the process.


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Late night trading venues such as nightclubs, pubs and bars across the state that would normally trade between 3am and midday are required to cease the supply of alcohol at 3am on ANZAC Day.
ANZAC Day is a time of respectful commemoration for all Australians. To protect the solemn observance of this day, trading hours for licensed venues are restricted on the morning of ANZAC Day.
This restriction achieves a balance between the commercial interests of the industry and community expectations.
Applications for temporary limited licences and major event licences for ANZAC Day will still be considered. The Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation must be satisfied that the supply of alcohol is in connection with commemorative activities and will be consistent with the solemn observance of the day. Visit the Temporary licence page for details on how to apply for these licence categories.
RSL clubs and sub-branches may apply for an extension to ordinary trading hours on ANZAC day.
For RSL clubs that wish to supply liquor before midday on ANZAC Day, a letter must be submitted to the VCGLR requesting a change to trading hours. The submission should provide information on how trade prior to 12pm on ANZAC Day would be connected to commemorative services and be consistent with the solemn observance of the day. Submissions can be sent to GPO 1988, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, or via the contact us enquiry form.
Note: Late night venues should check their trading hours for the day before ANZAC Day to ensure they are authorised to trade. For example, should ANZAC Day fall on a Sunday, a licence that shows Saturday trading until 5am the following day is not authorised to trade past 3am.
There are two and a half restricted trading days each year:
All liquor licensees should check the conditions on their licence to determine whether these days affect their trading hours.


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Managing Director & Senior Partner
Dominic Field is a leader within The Boston Consulting Group's global Marketing, Sales & Pricing (MSP) practice and is a core member of the firm's Technology, Media & Telecommunications practice. In his role on the MSP's leadership team, Dominic leads the global marketing business.
Since joining BCG in 2001, Dominic has advised clients in the telecom, media, and technology sectors, focusing on marketing efficiency and effectiveness as well as a broad range of strategic and operational issues. He has particular expertise in topics related to digital technology.
Dominic believes that digital technology is the most critical driver of competitive advantage in business today, and that companies that seize the digital advantage will be the ones to shape the future of their industry for the next 20 years.
Before joining BCG, Dominic worked as an account executive for a major advertising agency based in the UK.