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Future Internet 2012, 4(2), 488-513; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi4020488
Distributed Performance Measurement and Usability Assessment of the Tor Anonymization Network
Institute of Computer Science, Freie Universität Berlin, Takustraße 9, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Institute of Information Systems, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Spandauer Straße 1, 10178 Berlin, Germany
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 1 November 2011; in revised form: 2 March 2012 / Accepted: 8 May 2012 / Published: 15 May 2012
While the Internet increasingly permeates everyday life of individuals around the world, it becomes crucial to prevent unauthorized collection and abuse of personalized information. Internet anonymization software such as Tor is an important instrument to protect online privacy. However, due to the performance overhead caused by Tor, many Internet users refrain from using it. This causes a negative impact on the overall privacy provided by Tor, since it depends on the size of the user community and availability of shared resources. Detailed measurements about the performance of Tor are crucial for solving this issue. This paper presents comparative experiments on Tor latency and throughput for surfing to 500 popular websites from several locations around the world during the period of 28 days. Furthermore, we compare these measurements to critical latency thresholds gathered from web usability research, including our own user studies. Our results indicate that without massive future optimizations of Tor performance, it is unlikely that a larger part of Internet users would adopt it for everyday usage. This leads to fewer resources available to the Tor community than theoretically possible, and increases the exposure of privacy-concerned individuals. Furthermore, this could lead to an adoption barrier of similar privacy-enhancing technologies for a Future Internet.
Keywords:internet anonymity; onion routing; Tor; web latency; usability
1. Introduction
The Internet increasingly permeates everyday life of individuals around the world. On the other hand, information technology allows data analysis to a degree which was inconceivable a few years ago. Simultaneously to the increasing amount and availability of information about Internet users, new information retrieval, data mining and further technologies allow to automatically collect, filter and analyze personal information and to draw conclusions based on this process. Democratic societies should further advocate environments that respect user privacy for citizens and should support individuals who face repressive censorship to access public information without being identified or traced. In political regimes, where personal rights, the freedom of speech, and in particular free access to information is restricted, these possibilities of modern data collection can lead to persecution of individuals if their identity is unveiled. Another restraint is censorship, which may be used to restrict free access to information [1].
By using anonymization tools such as the Tor onion routing network [2,3], Internet users can conceal their virtual tracks to a certain degree by obfuscating their IP addresses, allowing for a more anonymous Internet access. With Tor, application messages are not directly routed to the receiver, but are encrypted and forwarded through ephemeral paths of Tor relays through an overlay network, using more complicated routes that are difficult to analyze for third parties. The more users participate, the harder it is to correlate senders and receivers, and the less likely it is for any user to raise suspicions simply by using Tor: "Anonymity loves company" [4]. The anonymity provided within the Tor network attracts many different groups of users, such as journalists and activists or business, governmental, military, and private users [5,6]. A recent study showed significant growth of Tor users in China as the governmental censorship increased and also in Iran when the riots after the presidential election took place [7].
However, due to usability problems caused by Tor, many "average" Internet users refrain from using it. This causes a negative impact on the potential overall privacy provided by Tor, since it depends on the size of the user community and availability of shared resources such as Tor relays. Besides one-time installation and configuration efforts, the main usability loss when using an anonymization tool such as Tor is an increase in latency. Several authors already discussed technically why Tor is slowing down a client's Internet speed and proposed how to improve the performance [7,8,9]. However, detailed comparative measurements about the performance of Tor are crucial for assessing and solving this issue.
This paper presents distributed measurements on Tor latency and throughput for surfing to 500 popular websites from several PlanetLab nodes around the world during the period of 28 days (PlanetLab [10] provides a globally distributed testbed for network research). Furthermore, we compare these measurements to critical latency thresholds gathered from web usability research, including our own user studies. The resulting expected user cancelation rate—i.e., the percentage of users who abandon the wait during a certain time interval—is an indicator how easy it would be to keep existing users and to attract new, "average" Web users to Tor for increasing their own anonymity as well as the anonymity of the whole user community. Our results could also be relevant for integrating similar privacy-enhancing technologies into a "Future Internet".
The structure of the paper is the following. We present related work in Section 2, followed by a description of our measurement setup in Section 3. The experimental results are presented in Section 4. An interpretation of those results from the perspective of web usability is given in Section 5. Section 6 discusses limitations and future work. Section 7 concludes the paper.
2. Related Work
Even though Internet privacy is increasingly being covered in the media, many Internet users are still not aware of the attacks that threaten the privacy of their daily communication links. One important countermeasure against attacks on communication privacy is anonymization [11], the obfuscation of the identity of communication partners, especially of clients contacting a public server. As an important example, the Tor onion routing network provides privacy for Internet users by fundamentally enhancing their anonymity when using the Internet [2].
However, a fundamental problem associated with many of today's security and privacy solutions is not primarily that the level of security they provide is insufficient, but rather their lack of usability. If the usability for certain security features is too low, end users are not willing to apply them, increasing the users' personal risk of exposure to adversary attacks. Recent studies indicate that too complex security features are not applied unless they are mandatory, see for example the usage of security in banking scenarios [12]. The amount of time or money users are willing to spend for more security is restricted and differs individually.
There exist two ways to foster a broader application of security mechanisms: either (i) to increase the awareness of security risks in order to raise the willingness to pay money or time; or (ii) to increase the usability of the security features. In the case of Tor, we argue that due to its poor usability in terms of network latency, Tor is not as frequently and intensively used as would be desirable. A larger user base—with proportionate number of additional Tor relays—could enhance the privacy of its users indirectly by making Tor traffic (i.e., connections to well-known relays) less rare and suspicious. This argument is supported by research on economic network effects and the role of usability in anonymity systems [4,13].
Moreover, generalizing from current Tor adoption to future privacy infrastructures, if anonymity mechanisms are to be deployed to protect user privacy in a Future Internet [14], the performance expectations of average users need to be respected.
An important aspect of usability is the latency overhead caused by anonymization systems. Classical anonymity systems are mix networks, which were invented by David Chaum for anonymous email [15] and were later generalized to arbitrary anonymous communication [16]. In comparison to mix networks, Tor already provides much lower latency because traffic of different senders is not stored for a time and sent out in batches in order to counter timing attacks [2]. Recent studies provide a simulation analysis of the interrelation of network topology, additional synchronization and dummy traffic against timing attacks, anonymity, and overhead [17]. Even though Tor does not (yet) apply these additional protection measures, end user latency is still high.
Several authors have already qualitatively discussed why Tor is by design slow, or have proposed ideas how to improve the performance, e.g., [9] or [8]. An analysis of the number and the reported bandwidth of Tor relay servers from 2006 until 2008 gives an aggregated view on global Tor capacity and actual load [9]. Another study investigates the impact of different Tor path selection algorithms on anonymity and performance [18]. Further studies investigate the performance of Tor hidden services [19] and [20], which is different from our focus on accessing standard websites through Tor. Related research also includes demographic studies on Tor, e.g., number and countries of exit nodes or estimation of user numbers and origin [7].
In the Tor Metrics project [21], statistics such as number of users, relays, and bridges are collected. Furthermore, the duration and percentage of timeouts and failures of downloading files over Tor from a few data repositories are measured. These statistics also indicate that the performance of Tor is in general volatile over time, but the measurement of latency overhead compared to a direct connection is not provided. Furthermore, the number of servers used for these measurements is very small. In an earlier pre-study, we conducted three-day experiments from Germany to 50 websites [22]. There is also a report on Tor usage, including performance measurements [23] and the software TorFlow, a toolset for onion router performance analysis and measurements [24]. Another study [25] experimentally reveals a principal reason of Tor's weak performance, namely frequent delays (as high as a few seconds) contributed by single, overloaded onion routers with low bandwidths. An interesting twist of our problem at hand is discussed in [26], where the impact of different latency values on de-anonymizing communication partners is investigated.
In contrast to these studies, our current paper focuses on an extensive quantitative assessment of the latency overhead of Tor, comparing the latency of Internet access from several countries with and without the application of Tor, using a list of 500 popular websites. Furthermore, we provide an analysis and mapping of these measurements to latency acceptance studies. For this, we define measures in order to estimate when users cancel their Web page request, or in other words, how much waiting time users tolerate for a request. These measures are based on related work and previous user studies conducted by the authors [27].
In the area of e-commerce research, there is a common understanding that waiting time impedes online commerce [28,29,30,31], although the authors do not agree on a single, exact classification and threshold for latency acceptance. Table 1 summarizes the existing literature about critical latency thresholds for Internet users, showing the different classifications.
|Critical Latency Thresholds (s)
|Source Classification
|Tolia [32]
|Thin client response time—annoying
|Nah [33]
|For simple information retrieval tasks
|Tolia [32]
|Thin client response time—unacceptable
|Tolia [32]
|Thin client response time—unusable
|AccountingWEB [34]
|Optimal web page waiting time
|Practical advise
|Bhatti [35]
|Average tolerable delay (but high standard deviation of 5.85)
|Selvidge [36]
|Tolerable delay by users
|Practical advise
|Nielson [28]
|Optimal web page waiting time
|Practical advise
|Galetta [37]
|Start of significant decrease in user satisfaction
|Nah [33]
|Free user from physical and mental captivity
|Ramsay [38]
|Suggestion as cut-off for long delays
3. Measurement Setup
3.1. Introduction to Tor
Tor can be described as an anonymizing overlay network on top of the existing Internet protocol infrastructure. Tor nodes serve as additional intermediate "hops" that obfuscate the relation between a client and the application-layer messages it sends or receives, such as HTTP requests and responses while accessing a website. Each communication hop between Tor nodes during such a message exchange is protected by layers of encryption and authentication and involves a different IP address than the original IP address of the client, thereby enhancing client anonymity [2]. The final connection between an exit node, i.e., the last node of the Tor network that is used for the current communication flow, and the destination server is not protected by Tor. But during this step, the origin IP address is only that of the exit node, not of the original client. Since the connection via Tor usually involves more routers and a large amount of cryptographic operations (Figure 1), it is expected to be slower than the direct connection (Figure 2). Furthermore, analyses conducted by Tor developers [8] revealed several other contributing factors to slow performance such as negative interactions with TCP congestion control, abusive users, low Tor network capacity, and imperfect path selection. Our goal is to quantify the total performance overhead of Tor as it would be perceived by end users and to assess its impact on usability.
We use a distributed setup of web clients, each represented by a different computer and Perl scripts for automatically executing web requests (see Section 3.3). Those scripts will measure the performance of connections via the Tor network as well as of direct connections without Tor. In addition the exit node will be recorded providing the IP address and the country of origin. Table 2 is a summary view of our complete setup and the results we present within this paper. In the following we describe what metrics, locations, and time frame we chose, and why. In the next sections we present our measurement results.
|Time frame
|28 days
|Download Throughput
|USA (2 x)
|Tor vs. direct
|Exit Nodes
|Daytime Comparison
|Mapping of User Cancelation Rates
3.2. Metrics
The most common use case for Tor is browsing web pages anonymously, which is supported by studies on Tor exit traffic protocols [23,39]. Therefore we focus on HTTP requests in our metrics. Moreover, in order to include bandwidth performance, we also measure throughput of upload and download requests. The throughput metric captures another important use case: transferring larger amounts of data from and to the web via the HTTP protocol.
The "anatomy" of requesting a website without Tor is shown in Figure 3. This figure displays line-by-line the corresponding exchange of network packets that could be captured by any router on the path between client and server. After the client (192.168.178.20) has learned the current IP address (22.214.171.124) of the web server (here an Akamai mirror of apple.com) via DNS (not shown in the trace), it establishes a TCP connection via a so-called three-way handshake (first three lines of the network trace). Now, the client issues the HTTP request for the main page with the "GET / HTTP/1.1" command, and the server returns an "OK" message as well as initial data. In later exchanges, the client requests additional data via further GET commands to download the complete web page.
3.2.1. Core Latency: Duration of the First HTTP Request
Core latency involves the time needed for the first HTTP request and the return of corresponding data (often, a basic HTML document only, without pictures). This is an indicator for a first data response that can indicate progress in the browser window. In order to measure the impact of Tor on surfing to important websites around the world, a Top 500 list of domains was selected. The list was provided by SEOmoz [40] and represents the 500 most linked-to websites on the Internet. During any single run of the experiment the Perl script triggers an HTTP request for each website (from the Top 500 list), measuring the performance once with Tor and once without Tor. All Tor requests were directed over the Socks proxy Privoxy. Privoxy then forwarded the request to the Tor network. The fact that current Tor client installations based on the Tor Browser Bundle do not need a proxy server increases ease of installation and use, but cannot significantly influence connection speed. Therefore, our results are transferrable to this case. Using the Privoxy filter option could slow down the browsing experience because every page is first completely downloaded by Privoxy and than forwarded. However, we did not activate Privoxy filters during our experiments, therefore pages were directly and continuously transferred.
Tor clients were running as daemons on our nodes over the whole time of the experiment. There might be some influence on certain measurements (temporarily increased latency) in the moment when Tor builds new circuits. Nevertheless, this reflects best the browsing experience since also in normal web browsing the user will be confronted with Tor building new circuits. Static data like images, videos or Javascript files were excluded from the experiment. For each request, date, time, request duration and received bytes were logged. This script was built in order to run until it has made a request to all 500 web sites.
3.2.2. Page Latency: Duration of a Complete Web Page Download
Page latency is an estimated measure for the download time of the complete web page (including pictures, scripts, external content etc.), an indicator for whole web page presentation in the browser window. There are many uncontrollable factors that have an influence on page latency, including current dynamic content, script execution, externally hosted content (mash-up), server reaction time, and the kind and version of web browser used.
In order to provide a reproducible and browser independent estimate for extrapolating page latency from core latency, we utilized the GNU Wget tool for downloading multiple complete web pages of the Top 500 lists via the command line. Our comparison is based on the wget and wget -p commands, where wget -p serves as an estimator for retrieving entire web pages including inline images, sounds, and referenced stylesheets.
We calculated an extrapolation factor , where n is the number of web pages (here 500), lp the latency with wget -p, and l the latency with wget. Both latencies were measured 5 times in order to flatten one-time effects. Our results indicate an extrapolation factor F of 2.4, which means that on the average the following approximation holds: Page Latency Core Latency. Parallel control experiments using the Yslow plugin for Firefox indicated that this approach provides a good estimation in the average case for our set of websites. However, current web browser download web pages via parallel connections which should speed up the download of a complete web page.
3.2.3. Download Throughput via HTTP
For download throughput, we compare the transfer time with and without Tor while downloading 50 KB and 1 MB of data via HTTP. Pre-tests showed that 50 KB and 1 MB are sufficient in order to have a good throughput indicator. Furthermore, these are also steps chosen by the Tor metrics project [21]. By choice, the target URL for this part of the experiment was fixed throughout the experiment, since download of arbitrary files from multiple sites could lead to practical problems and could cause random errors. The downloaded file was located on Google's servers (http://dl.google.com/picasa/picasa3-setup.exe). Since this file is larger then required, the download was canceled after 1 MB. In this paper, throughput is used in the sense of effective "goodput", referring to application-layer throughput and not the actually larger amount of bytes sent via the network. Transmission overhead such as a TCP header is not being considered according to the definition of goodput [41]. The Perl script was executed twice an hour in order to measure the traffic being downloaded. This was once done directly and once using Tor via the Socks proxy Privoxy.
3.3. Experimental Setup on PlanetLab
The aim of our experimental setup is to provide a long-time and international measurement of the performance of Tor compared to a direct connection. Therefore, we compare the direct access of multiple clients to multiple servers on the Internet with the same connections established via the Tor network. (Note that this is the case of page latency measurements. For the download experiments we used only one target server.) Moreover, we deploy clients internationally with the help of the network research platform PlanetLab (http://www.planet-lab.org/) [42]. For this, PlanetLab nodes from most continents were chosen. It was not possible to find reliable PlanetLab nodes in Africa during the time of our experiment.
|PlanetLab Nodes as Web Clients
|Uptime (days)
|HTTP Requests
|United Kingdom
|USA (West Coast)
|USA (East Coast)
Each PlanetLab node provides its users with a minimal Fedora Core 8 Linux installation [10]. For our experiments, additional software needed to be installed. On all PlanetLab nodes we used Tor in version 0.2.0.32, Privoxy in version 3.0.6, Perl in version 5.8.8, Perl-CPAN in version 1.76_02, and LWP::UserAgent in version v5.835.
Table 3 shows the PlanetLab nodes that were selected for the experiment and experimental statistics. All nodes were capable of executing the Perl scripts for our experiments. Some other nodes we initially selected had to be excluded from the experiment. For example, our supposition why a PlanetLab node in China was not able to connect to the Tor network via public relays is that since September 2009 Chinese authorities started to block the Tor network in China [43,44].
3.4. Time Frame
In order to gain representative data from the tests, a time span of 28 days was chosen, starting on the 20th of December 2010. For the purpose of a direct comparison we had to leave out days when not all of the nodes were running. Observing such a long period, however, will prevent a biasing of the results caused by random load effects of PlanetLab nodes and their network connections. Initially, nodes started the HTTP script twice and the throughput scripts four times within an hour. Because some of the nodes provided only a very slow connection and the scripts would not finish before the next was started, this frequency was reduced. The HTTP script was then started once and the throughput scripts twice during an hour. But even with this change in the setup, scripts were sometimes started a second time before the last script was finished, but this did not impair the quality of the measurements.
4. Measurement Results
Each of the following subsections will describe the results of one of our metrics (http, download). Furthermore, we will present results concerning specific nodes and a comparison between different times of the day.
4.1. HTTP Requests
In this section the speed of usual web browsing between Tor and a direct connection is compared. The speed and duration were measured by executing an HTTP request. Table 3 provides an overview of all PlanetLab nodes, their uptime, and number of successful requests.
Figure 4 compares the durations of a request run with Tor and without Tor, displaying the 25% and 75% quantile of all requests. In this figure, all nine nodes are listed and it shows that all Tor connections are by far slower than a direct connection irrespective of the request's origin. Only the node in Canada sticks out because it took 4.7 s for the 75%-quantile of direct connection requests, which is by far the highest value for a direct connection. The figure also shows a comparison between the several median durations of a request. It shows that Tor requests from Canada are by far the slowest in our experiment. When comparing direct requests with requests tunneled through Tor, one can observe that the ratio (Tor/direct), which yields 4.8, is similar to the ratios measured at the other PlanetLab nodes. An explanation for this phenomenon could be a high traffic load that slowed down both the Tor connection and the direct connection. The average ratio of HTTP request durations (Tor/direct) of all nine PlanetLab nodes is 4.1.
Another observation is that the four nodes located in Germany, UK, and USA always have the fastest Tor connection compared to the other nodes—only these four nodes have the 75%-quantile below 8.7 s, and all other nodes are at least above 11 s up to 25.9 s. When regarding the median time of a request through the Tor network, the nodes located in Taiwan and Australia are almost as fast as the aforementioned four. Only the PlanetLab nodes in Brazil, Russia and Canada were significantly slower in terms of average, median and quantiles. The fact that connections from Germany, UK and USA are the fastest could probably be related to the fact that more than 50% of all Tor nodes are located in these countries [45]. One reason supporting this supposition might be a smaller geographical distance for the first entry point. Other studies showed that distance influences latency [24,46].
4.2. Download Requests
Figure 5 and Figure 6 show a comparison between the two connection types (with/without using Tor) from every PlanetLab node and the time it took to download 50 KB (Figure 5) and 1 MB (Figure 6). Most of the nodes have nearly the same median download speed, which is contributed by the fact that Google makes the downloaded file accessible with high download speed around the world, rendering the location of the node less significant [47,48]. Similar to the HTTP request results, the node in Canada was the slowest one, confirming the hypothesis that it had a lower bandwidth available for this experiment. This is also indicated by the median connection times.
Download measurements (from different web servers) are also conducted by the Tor metrics project [21]. During the timeframe of our experiments, the median value for downloading of 50 KB was reported as between 3 and 4 s, and for downloading of 1 MB between 9 and 15 s. Our results of downloading 50 KB were between 3 and 11 s (median), and for the download of 1 MB between 12 and 26 s (median). We see them as comparable. The difference is that the Tor metrics results were measured on the same nodes and differ in time, whereas our results differ in nodes and are averaged over time, probably causing a higher variation.
4.3. Exit Nodes
In order to empirically verify Tor statistics in practice, we also measured the exit node distribution depending on the source of the request. For each Tor request, the IP address of the exit node was recorded. Exit node locations were identified with the help of Utrace [49]. During the experiment, over 2.2 million records for exit nodes were recorded, which were located in 65 different countries.
With respect to the two connection types (HTTP single request, download), no significant differences were noticed. An intuitive explanation is that the Tor architecture and route calculation is the same for all connection types. Taking the usage of the exit nodes into account, we observe that the distribution of exit nodes used during the experiment is proportional to the distribution of exit nodes of the whole Tor network as reported by official Tor statistics. Comparing the amount and usage of exit nodes, one can confirm that exit nodes in countries known to be hosting a lot of Tor nodes were in fact used more frequently than nodes in countries hosting only a few. Figure 7 shows where the exit nodes were located during the entire experiment.
4.4. Daytime View
In the following, we investigate if and to what extent the daytime has an effect on the performance of a request of the two connections types, i.e., via the Tor network and the direct connection. In Figure 8, the average core latency of all nine nodes for every hour of a day for both connection types (Tor and direct) is displayed. (We tested for the node in Germany that the average has a similar progression like the median, the 25% and the 75% quantile.) The other metrics show very similar results, therefore we did not visualize them. In order to allow for a better comparability and to take the time shift of the geographical location of the nodes into account, we represented the timestamps for every request in GMT. Furthermore, we highlighted the local time at noon by means of a vertical dotted line in Figure 8.
Figure 8. GMT Daytime Comparison (Core Latency; +: Direct, x: via Tor). (a) Australia; (b) Taiwan; (c) Russia; (d) Germany; (e) UK; (f) Brazil; (g) Canada; (h) USA (East Coast); (i) USA (West Coast).
Our results indicate that the latency of direct connections is nearly constant over time of the day on most nodes. Especially Australia, Russia, UK, Brazil and USA (West Coast) show very little differences regarding the performance during different hours of a day. Only the nodes in Germany and Taiwan have a noticeable peak after noon (local time). The node in Canada shows a peak at 10 AM local time, and in the USA at 9 AM local time. The other metric, download throughput, confirms these results. We argue that this stability of the performance of the direct connection is provided by the mature backbone infrastructure of the Internet which has enough capacity available for web access even during Internet "prime-time" when approximately 25% of all traffic is generated [50] and Internet traffic is about 72% higher than during an average hour [51].
Comparing both connection types, i.e., the direct connection and through Tor, we can state that the daytime has a stronger influence on the Tor network than it has on the direct connection. This finding is consistent for all metrics. The Tor connection does not show a stable performance and seems to be affected by daytime. There does not seem to exist an exact common pattern explaining the performance variation of the Tor connection (cf. Figure 8). However, in general the overall performance appears to be decreasing during GMT evening hours independently of the location of the PlanetLab node.
Contrasting this with the results for direct connections, we argue that this effect is more dependent on the performance of Tor than on the geographical location of the client nodes. Tor nodes are usually selected worldwide in a random fashion, without preference for nodes which are physically close [52]. Although it is not part of the Tor route selection process, traffic is often routed through nodes located in different countries, and every node adds some latency. Since Tor nodes are not evenly distributed around the globe, Tor speed could correlate with the current local daytime of the majority of nodes in use (such as UK and Germany). This leads us to the conclusion that the diurnal behavior of Tor latency is in general more influenced by global factors than by local factors at the client.
5. Interpretation of Results with Respect to Usability
In this section, we focus on the combination of our technical measurements with studies of user behaviour while browsing the web. The aim is to reason about the influence of the latency that we measured on user acceptance. We already introduced critical latency values gained from experimental research (cf. Section 2). According to this related work, in particular in Table 1, we assume that user tolerance of waiting for web-page requests decreases after 2 s; it falls sharply within the interval between 7 s and 15 s, and ends with 50 s when the user stops waiting. In our opinion, the related research conducted by Nah et al. [33] is best suited for our experiment due to its empirical grounding and most recent data in comparison to the other studies. However, we extend these experimentally measured lab results [33] with results stated by users from our own survey [27].
Figure 9 shows four different scenarios with cancelation rates over time. The curve labeled "Nah without FB" is referencing the "first-attempt waiting" scenario of Nah in which the user is confronted with a broken link while not getting any feedback from the web browser [33]. Here, an important metric is introduced: the percentage of users who abandoned the wait during the time interval specified.
We adopt this cancelation rate as a good indicator for the user's waiting tolerance in our setting. The curve labeled "Nah with Feedback" is referencing the first attempt waiting scenario in which the user is confronted with a broken link while getting feedback in form of a progress bar from the web browser [33]. The other two scenarios are derived from our own survey and show stated tolerated waiting times for normal and anonymous web browsing. Those two cancelation rate curves indicate that people surfing anonymously have a higher tolerance in terms of latency. Nevertheless, the gap between the curves is small: The correlation is 0.989, the medians are 18.556 and 21.096 s, respectively. There are 948 data points. The maximum difference D between the cumulative distributions according to the Kolmogorov–Smirnov comparison is: 0.0854, with a corresponding p-value of: 0.002 (statistically significant at 0.5% level). Furthermore, we note that our survey results also confirmed the results of Nah's lab experiments.
In order to reason about expected cancelation rates for browsing the web via Tor, we map our technical latency results to corresponding user cancelation rates. On the technical side, we apply our core and page latency measurements for both direct connections and connections over Tor. Page latency, estimated by the applying the measured factor 2.4 to core latency, increases the median of core latency for HTTP requests via Tor from 13.36 s to 32.06 s. The median of HTTP requests without Tor increases from 1.72 s to 4.13 s.
From a usability perspective, we are provided with stated as well as experimentally measured user cancelation rates. As stated cancelation rates, we have statements for direct connection and anonymized connection. Experimental cancelation rates can be divided in those with and without feedback. Out of the possible combinations, Table 4 shows the meaningful mappings. The results from the lab experiment with feedback can be mapped to page latency because the user is given feedback during loading of the page (the page builds up stepwise). The lab experiment without feedback should be mapped to core latency because the user gets no detailed visual progress feedback until first data is retrieved.
|Type of Cancelation Rate
|Direct, Core Latency
|Tor, Core Latency
|Direct, Page Latency
|Tor, Page Latency
|Lab with Feedback
|Lab without Feedback
|Stated Direct
|Stated Anonymous
In Figure 10, Figure 11, Figure 12, Figure 13, we present our mappings of technical latency results (LT) and corresponding user cancelation rates (CR) of Figure 9. Each of the four figures describes a different type of cancelation rate and the meaningful mappings for technical latency (from Table 4). The extrapolated page latency (full page download) is referenced by PAGE, the core latency (HTTP request duration) by CORE, while requests directed via the Tor network are referenced by Tor, and direct requests by Direct.
The mapping in Figure 10 shows technical measurements of page latency (i.e., page loading time) and the resulting cancelation rates of users who are provided with feedback while loading the page. This figure indicates a high increase in user cancelation when sending requests via Tor. The median of page latency via Tor corresponds to a median of 67% cancelation rate, while user frustration for the median of direct page latency maps to only 2% cancelation. This gap between cancelation rates indicates a critical jump in expected user cancelation when using the Tor network, which we aim to investigate further by our own set of user studies in future work.
Moreover, the user cancelation rate follows a saturation curve. Therefore, early user loss (in terms of cancelation rates) caused by latency is massive. Lowering the page latency via Tor by 7 s would decrease the user cancelation rate by 12%. A reduction of Tor-based page latency by 12 s would reduce the cancelation rate by 33%. Hence, an only minimal optimization of the Tor network latency will not gain a substantial effect. Only if the optimization is massive, a real improvement would be made.
In Figure 11, a mapping is provided between technical measurements of core latency and the resulting cancelation rates of users who are not provided with feedback while loading the page. This indicates an even higher, disproportionate increase in user cancelation when sending requests via Tor. The median of the core latency via Tor maps to a median of 78% cancelation rate, while user frustration for the median of direct page latency maps to 14% cancelation (lowest measured cancelation rate, we assume an even lower cancelation rate here if cancelation rate data would be more precise).
Lowering core latency via Tor by 3 s would decrease user cancelation rate by 17%. A reduction of Tor-based core latency by 8 s would reduce the cancelation rate to the same level as when using a direct connection—of course with the caveat of non-exact measurement data of the laboratory studies for direct access. These results indicate an expected massive gain in user acceptance if Tor network latency is reduced significantly. Both mappings provide a combined line of argument. Their results indicate the same amount of performance improvements necessary for Tor.
The results shown in Figure 10 and Figure 11 do not distinguish between user acceptance of anonymous vs. non-anonymous browsing because this was not tested in the lab studies we refer to.
Figure 12 displays technical measurements of core and page latency using a direct connection, which are mapped to the resulting cancelation rates of users asked for their acceptance of latency during normal browsing (referenced by Norm). This mapping indicates that core and page latency of an average direct connection are accepted by more than 96% of the users.
Finally, Figure 13 shows the mapping of technical measurements of core and page latency using a connection over Tor to the cancelation rates of users who have been asked for their acceptance of latency while browsing anonymously (referenced by Anon). The resulting cancelation rates indicate that core and page latency of an average connection over Tor are accepted only by less than 30% of the users. The reason for the low acceptance are that only a few people are willing to wait longer in order to surf anonymously, while anonymous web browsing using the Tor network has a massively adverse effect on latency.
6. Limitations and Future Work
In order to assess usability implications on a global scale, we treated Tor explicitly as a "black box" in this paper. We measured what end users around the world are confronted with in terms of performance. Our experiments do not aim for a detailed white-box analysis of Tor or technical improvements for latency, but serve as basis for assessing Tor usability based on tolerated waiting time. Important related literature on the technical details of improving Tor is presented in the Section 2.
Moreover, the global experiments we conducted have some limitations in terms of node reliability, comparability, and estimation of page latency. When using the PlanetLab environment, traffic generated by other experiments on the same node could influence the experiment results. During the execution of the test scripts, the resources of the nodes have been shared with other experiments. Accordingly, the overall traffic speed might not be accurate and the performance of the direct and Tor connections should only be compared against each other and are (quantitatively) not exactly comparable across machines. However, the results from experiments conducted on the same node (i.e., direct vs. Tor) are still comparable since both traffic types used the same connection and the ratio between them was considered for analysis. On the one hand, our experiments might be overestimating the speed of normal web browsing, e.g., at home, because the PlanetLab environment provides in most cases server-grade computers with a good Internet connection. On the other hand, they may be underestimating the speed of normal web browsing because of the heavy load these PlanetLab nodes suffer. Though we suppose that these differences between PlanetLab nodes and common personal computers are insignificant, further research should include tests to strengthen this hypothesis. All in all, the relative ratio of both traffic types will be comparable.
Our approach for calculating the extrapolation factor for downloading complete web pages, though most suited for our experimental setting, has some limitations: (i) The results vary between different websites, while extrapolating does not cover this issue. We do not consider this as crucial due to the fact that we focus on page latency; (ii) When downloading the complete web page, additional variations in terms of time and coverage for different browsers and individual browser settings may be experienced. An alternative method, which could better reflect a real user's browsing behavior, would be to provide a Tor exit node and use the requested websites for live measurement experiments. However, even though such alternative experiments could in theory be conducted without affecting the privacy of Tor users, this could nonetheless raise strong privacy concerns and potentially also cause legal issues in our university environment.
We focused on clear-cut technical metrics that can be measured via automated requests. In the real world, the perceived latency of the user depends on various other aspects. Additional studies about influence factors for perceived latency such as cultural issues, the task at hand, or individual user settings of the browser or operating system could provide valuable information about how latency is experienced by users and what countermeasures could be applied, such as introducing a loading progress bar for Tor users. In future work, we plan a set of user studies on capturing those further, more individual or subjective aspects of latency acceptance and usability. In addition, we will investigate user acceptances correlation to educational and ethnical background and if IT knowledge has an influence on users acceptance. Furthermore, we will ask if risk awareness and risk aversion have an influence on the willingness to use Tor. First results in this direction were recently published by us [27].
Future research will also focus on performance improvements, which according to our studies will help to gain a wider user acceptance. We would like to investigate if changing parameters such as the number of hops in an anonymization network could have a positive influence on anonymity and usability, e.g., decreasing the number of hops could result in lower latency. This could result in broader user acceptance, leading to more users and increasing anonymity in general, but possibly leaving routes much more open to compromise. Another approach could be a performance-oriented one in which the behavior of the anonymization network is not focused on guaranteeing a certain degree of anonymity, but on a guarantee of performance. For example, one could include statistics such as number of participants and latency of nodes when calculating the route within the anonymization network. Such an approach is adopted by the I2P anonymity system, which takes the performance of the peers into account when calculating routes through the network. This is of course a compromise between performance and privacy [53].
7. Conclusions
In this paper, we extended previous research on measuring Tor latency and usability: for the technical measurement in terms of diversification and duration and for the user acceptance in terms of user cancelation rates. We included further statistics from web usability studies and we included our own results based on an interactive survey. Both extensions helped us to improve the significance and clarity of the usability analysis of the Tor anonymization tool. In particular, we analyzed the performance of the Tor network by comparing direct Internet access against a Tor-anonymized Internet access. Those tests were performed on different nodes around the world to gather data based on various locations. Enormous amounts of data were accumulated during a period of 38 days totaling nearly 4.5 million requests for each connection type.
The experiment results quantitatively confirmed the common intuition that one has to accept performance losses while using the Tor network. User waiting times exhibit a large spread, ranging from taking twice as long as to nearly a hundred times longer while using the Tor network. The median ratio while using the Tor network is around 7.8 times slower. Concerning the loss of usability in exchange for improved anonymity while browsing the web via Tor, we can say that for core latency, the median of all Tor requests was 7.8 times higher than the median of the direct connection. Furthermore, the experiments revealed that Tor latency seems to fluctuate more, i.e., the actual duration of an HTTP request via Tor is harder to anticipate for the user. The overall latency that a user finally experiences is approximated by page latency, estimating the download of a complete web page. Our results indicate that at least 75% of all direct requests are faster than 75% of all Tor requests.
Based on the results of our experiments, we provided a mapping that measures the expected increase in web user cancelation rate while using Tor. Comparing page latency between Tor-based and direct requests, there is a difference of 64% or 65% according to the lab experiment, respectively the user survey, in expected cancelation rate. This is a strong indicator for potentially high user frustration when using the Tor anonymization network.
We suggest that a usability improvement in terms of a massive latency reduction would significantly increase the adoption of Tor by new users, and thereby increase the anonymity of current users as well. On the other hand, if anonymization technology should become part of a Future Internet [14], our research offers first steps towards an empirically grounded analysis of corresponding performance requirements.
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Top Dominating SEO Trends & Tools for 2017
Search Engine Optimisation(SEO) is the act of increasing a website's ranking on search engines through the optimisation of its content and references. Its primary purpose is to make your site more visible to your potential customers and visitors.
SEO is a highly versatile process that does not involve set techniques. Its nature continually changes based on some factors such as:
- New technological advancements
- Search engine updates and announcements
- What tactics are being used by your competitors
Anyone who performs SEO should stay up-to-date with such trends to achieve optimum results. There is an abundance of tools available for that. Usage of such tools and following the latest trends can also be significantly advantageous in maintaining achieved rankings.
Some consultants in the industry are reluctant to change their ways. They believe that old tactics are capable of producing similar results to the latest ones. Changes can be costly but at the same time are incredibly powerful over old techniques.
Latest Trends
New SEO trends are emerging every six months to a year, while gradually making old methods less efficient.
Search Engine Updates & Announcements
Most SEO techniques tend to evolve upon significant announcements made by the premier search engines. Following is a graph that indicates such statements made by Google in the year 2016:
Blue colour: Google Updates
Red colour: Businesses obtained by Google
Green colour: Announcements made by Google on official Webmaster blog
Purple colour: Google patent publications
Brown colour: Google products
The majority of disclosures mentioned above have also influenced SEO techniques to be altered. For example,
- Googlebot update for Smartphones
- Mobile Friendly 2
- New Mobile-Friendly Test Tool
- Penguin 4.0 update
- New AMP Tester
- Mobile First Indexing
have all demanded website owners to make their websites mobile-friendly to gain higher rankings.
Bing has also transformed the SEO world through their algorithm updates. They have recently updated them to support app indexing more efficiently to cater the increasing search volume for smartphone apps (Wehren, 2015). Redefining the accepted sitemap file sizes from 10mb to 50mb is another significant change that they have made last year (Canel, 2016)
New Technological Advancements
There have been some significant advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the past few years. By the end of 2015, Google had integrated an AI system called RankBrain to their main search algorithm. Its primary objective is to learn search patterns and make searching on the web much more comfortable and more effective. RankBrain has also made some positive impacts on Search Engine Optimisation by making ambiguous search queries more concise and understandable. For example, it would convert a search query like "Brown coloured sweet confectionery" to Chocolate. Following is a search conducted on Google with it, and as it can be seen, chocolate or chocolate products are highlighted on 4 out of 7 top results despite the ambiguity.
Web 3.0
Web 3.0 is another technological leap that primarily aims to provide the best possible user experience. It has lowered the expectations of the users when conducting searches on the web. From an SEO perspective, it means more quality and highly relevant content. It has also defined new standards for website usability. Most of the search engines have already begun to enforce them by penalising sites with low usability by lowering their rankings. Google is strict on penalties. If your site has been hit with a penalty, then you should consult someone experienced in Google penalty recovery.
Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project is another significant trend that website owners should dig more. An AMP is mostly a lightweight web page designed to load faster than usual. It uses a combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript standards defined by Google and a large number of caches to speed up the website on mobile devices. AMPs are not a direct ranking factor, but it can vastly improve your site's user experience and attract more visitors to it. Following is an illustration of how you would see AMPs on your search results page.
What Are The Latest SEO Tools?
There is a large number of tools available for free to help you optimise your websites. There are also more surfacing along with new trends. Most of them are designed and provided to you by leading search engines. Following is a list composed of the latest and the most important of such tools.
Structured Data Markup Helper & Structured Data Testing Tool by Google
Schema.org, also known as 'Schema' is a standard defined by leading search engines including Google, Bing and Yahoo. It enables you to transfer additional information about your site directly to their search result pages. From an SEO viewpoint, it is incredibly beneficial because it highlights your web page among all the other results. Following is an example where you can see review Schemas in the search results.
The kinds of data that you can provide to search engines using Schemas include event details, company reviews, product information, tv ratings and much more. Usage of Schemas includes amending additional HTML tags to your web pages. Structured Data Markup Helper & Structured Data Testing Tool are two tools developed by Google to help you add them accurately to your site.
Structured Data Markup Helper helps you quickly generate Schema tags based on the information you enter, which you can then copy over to your site. Schema Data Testing Tool, on the other hand, helps you test your site for any existing Schemas and detect any errors.
Google Trends
Keywords are the foundation of SEO. It is unrealistic to expect to see your web page at the top of every search result page. It is highly recommended that you choose the most trending and the most relevant keywords for each of your web pages. It can also be highly beneficial to compare your competitors' keyword trends as well in the process. Google Trends is a tool that allows you achieve just that.
You can enter as many keywords as you want it and discover their popularity in particular regions. You can also compare the trends of other keywords with yours, which can help you to stand out from your competitors. Mastering the use of Google Trends has become essential for any SEO consultant.
User Experience of web pages has become indispensable. It is one of the main ranking factors of search engines. UX factors that can affect web page ranking include:
- Loading Speed
- Security
- Easy Navigation
- Internal Linking
- Mobile Usability
- Bounce Rate
Among them, page loading speed is considered to be the most important. There are certain metrics defined by search engines to measure page loading speeds such as Google PageSpeed and Yahoo YSlow. GMetrics is a tool that allows you to analyse your web pages using such metrics and generate a detailed report. Following is a report produced for google.com.au using GTMetrics:
In addition to a detailed report, it also provides some suggestions as to how you could improve the performance of web pages.
Search Engine Optimisation is a process that is in a constant state of flux. There are new trends, techniques, rules and regulations frequently surfacing, making their predecessors less effective or entirely ineffective. There is an abundance of tools available in the open web to assist you to adhere to such changes. Discovering them and mastering the use of them can be crucial for anyone to survive in the industry and maintain their reputation.
Related Posts

subset: commoncrawl


text: mnp13.com - random contact internet portfolio home example news random images users compatibility comments Every time you reload the page you will see a different image. Use your 'reload' button to test it, or just click random images Pachyderm Keep your site interesting! With random images, every time a visitor comes to your site they will see something new. The same idea can be used with banner ads, background colors, and background music. page text images edit users edit news


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1960 Rome Olympics
Here's another look back at some priceless archival footage taken by Gordon Wright and narrated by George Morris. This time we see our U.S. Show Jumping Team competing in the Rome Olympics for the silver medal.
Runtime: 4 minutes and 49 seconds
George Morris - Click here for his bio and other topics
Equine activities can be hazardous and may subject participants to injury. Neither Equestrian Coach, LLC nor George Morris assume liability for your activities. This program provides general instructions and techniques that may not be suitable for everyone. No warranty is given regarding suitability of these instructions to the viewer.


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As stated at the end of the previous post, I encountered a steering problem when I test rode the bike after installing the Tern handlepost and fork. It is kind of difficult to describe the problem clearly in words, but I will try.
Normally, a small wheeled bike such as my Dahon Boardwalk will have a more nimble steering feel as compared to bikes with standard wheel sizes. However, test riding the newly upgraded Dahon Boardwalk felt really strange. I found it difficult to keep the bike travelling straight even on a straight and smooth road. The bike tends to auto-steer to the sides, and it was taking a lot of effort to keep the front wheel pointing straight.
Having rode a folding bike regularly since 2008, I have a few years of experience riding small wheeled bikes, and I am familiar with the steering feeling. Although some bikes are naturally more twitchy, this felt different and wrong.
It got so bad that after a while, I could not steer properly while riding! Upon steering to the side, the handlebar stayed to the side and did not want to return to the centre. Luckily, I was going slow and only test riding around the estate, so there was no great danger. At that point I knew that something was seriously wrong with the steering.
My first suspicion was that the headset may have been tightened too much, causing the headset bearings to seize and stop rolling properly. However, even after I loosened the top cap inside the handlepost, the steering still felt stuck.
The next step to troubleshoot this problem is to remove the handlepost, and see if I can spot any anomalies. Upon removing the handlepost, I noticed some wear on the gold coloured headset bearing cup.
From the signs of wear that I spotted, I found that the edge of the handlepost base was rubbing against the headset bearing cup. This meant that the clearance between the handlepost base and the headset bearing cup is not sufficient to allow for smooth rotation. When there is no load on the handlepost (Eg. in the workstand), the handlepost can rotate smoothly. However, during riding, the load from my weight on the handlebars will close up the tiny gap, causing intermittent rubbing. This excessive friction eventually caused the handlepost to jam up and stop rotating properly.
One way to solve this would be to grind away the bottom edge of the handlepost base, to create more clearance. However, since the handlepost is already assembled with the rest of the handlebar, it is too troublesome to remove the handlepost for grinding at the workshop.
The other way is to add a spacer above the headset compression ring, so that the handlepost rests slightly higher. This will create more clearance between the base of the handlepost and the headset bearing cup. This spacer diameter is the same as a standard headset spacer, but they usually come in 5mm or 10mm thicknesses, which is far too thick. Therefore I sourced for thin headset spacers from Taobao.
From what I see, adding just one 0.3mm spacer will create sufficient clearance to avoid rubbing. However, I took the chance to add back the rubber seal that was on the base of the Tern handlepost. Therefore, I chose the 1mm thick spacer and placed it on top of the headset compression ring.
After making these adjustments, the steering feel of the Dahon Boardwalk is back to normal! The front wheel is now able to auto centre itself as designed, making steering much easier and natural, instead of me having to try so hard to keep the front wheel straight.
Now that the Tern handlepost and fork has been mounted successfully on the Dahon Boardwalk with no issues, I can now add on more accessories to the handlepost and handlebar. One accessory that I want to add to the Dahon Boardwalk is the Shimano Sport Camera.
The camera has previously been installed on the Merida Scultura 5000 road bike, using the K-Edge Go Big GoPro handlebar mount. If I want to mount the camera on other bikes, I would need to get additional mounts to allow quick and easy transfer of the camera from bike to bike.
However, the biggest problem here is that the K-Edge mount is really expensive! From Taobao, I found similar GoPro mounts at a fraction of the cost. They may not look as nice as the original K-Edge mount, but they have the same function and are much cheaper.
Through this project, I have learnt much about the design, construction and installation of the Tern handlepost. As for the ride quality, I have not detected any large improvement in handlepost stiffness, as the previous Fnhon 27cm 4 bolt handlepost is already very stiff. In fact, when I pull hard on the handlebar, I can feel some flex coming from other parts of the bike, such as the long seatpost and the main folding joint on the frame. The stiffness of the bike frame and handlepost is probably as good as it gets with this Dahon Boardwalk frame.


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High pressure raises silent stroke risk
A new study has found as many as one in twelve older Australians experience a stroke without knowing it.
The research, led by Professor Perminder Sachdev of the University of New South Wales, also found high blood pressure to be a significant risk factor.
Silent strokes occur when blood flow is blocked in one of the arteries leading to areas deep within the brain, which is typically unnoticed by the sufferer.
Sachdev and colleagues scanned the brains of nearly 500 healthy 60 to 64 year olds using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They found 7.8% of the volunteers had areas of the brain damaged by stroke, despite them being unaware that anything had occurred.
When the team later scanned the same volunteers four years later, they found an additional 1.6% had experienced silent strokes.
The results of the study appear in today's issue of the journal Neurology.
Sachdev says silent strokes may explain many of the cliché symptoms of old age such as forgetfulness, slowing down and becoming easily confused.
"[The strokes] probably have a cumulative effect. If they are very small then the brain has enough reserves to be able to cope with them and not show any abnormalities in function. But as they are increasing then the brain's reserve is depleted and you start seeing abnormalities," he says.
Sachdev says silent strokes can result in slowing of motor function, a reduction in information processing speed and less efficient memory for detail.
He says many of the sufferers of the stroke are not aware their cognitive performance has declined.
High pressure risk
Sachdev says people with high blood pressure were 60% more likely to have silent strokes than those with normal blood pressure. He says people with another type of small brain damage called white matter hyperintensities were almost five times more likely to experience the tiny strokes.
Professor Richard Lindley, board member of the National Stroke Foundation (NSF), says the study supports previous research into the relationship between stroke and blood pressure.
"The study suggests that high blood pressure is important, and this fits in with what we know about clinical stroke - high blood pressure being the most important single risk factor," he says.
Lindley says the NSF is also interested in the link between silent stroke and old age-related problems.
"The findings ... suggest that some problems in old age will be due to vascular disease in the brain, despite a lack of a stroke history. The challenge is to prove that we can prevent these types of lesions."
Sachdev recommends older Australians have their blood pressure tested regularly and seek treatment if it is up.
"We see blood pressure as one of the risk factors and it shouldn't be, because high blood pressure is entirely treatable."


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8th Street Farm, Las Vegas
A mile of the Gallinas River flows down the boundary of this productive farm! 73 acres with 53 of them irrigated. Currently a working hay farm with some cattle, and is the perfect setting for a horse property, vegetable farm, or vineyard. Fish and play under giant cottonwoods on the Gallinas River. 106 acre-feet of valuable water rights. Control your own irrigation releases as this is the only farm on the Papen Ditch! Perimeter fencing. Wildlife and Waterfowl. Large hay barn. Great location just outside the city limits of historic Las Vegas.
The data relating to real estate for sale in this Website comes in part from the Internet Data Exchange ("IDX") program of Santa Fe Association of REALTORS®, Inc. from a copyrighted compilation of listings. Real estate listings held by brokers other than Santa Fe Properties are marked with the IDX Logo. All data in this Website is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed accurate, and should be independently verified. The information provided is for consumers' personal, non-commercial use and may not be used for any purpose other than to identify prospective properties consumers may be interested in purchasing. All properties are subject to prior sale or withdrawal. All Rights Reserved.


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Michigan man to be resentenced for 1980 slaying while a juvenile
ST. JOSEPH, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan man sentenced to life in prison as a juvenile will have a chance at freedom after a judge granted him a resentencing.
Berrien County Trial Court Judge John M. Donahue vacated Michael Johnson's life sentence for second-degree murder on Tuesday, the Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph reported . Donahue cited new evidence regarding juvenile brain development in his decision to resentence Johnson.
A resentencing hearing hasn't been scheduled yet.
Johnson pleaded guilty to killing 16-year-old Sue Ellen Machemer in 1980, when he was 17.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a life sentence without the possibility of parole is unconstitutional for juvenile offenders. Prosecutor Aaron Mead has argued that the 2012 ruling doesn't have to be retroactively applied to Johnson because he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and his sentence carries the possibility of parole.
But Johnson has said that the Michigan Parole Board has never expressed interest in paroling him. He has repeatedly been denied of any meaningful opportunity for release, Johnson's lawyers argued.
Johnson's attorneys also said that the Parole Board has taken no notice of Johnson's numerous accomplishments in prison. Johnson obtained a GED diploma and an associate degree. He has completed vocational training for office jobs and received a certification as a paralegal.


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Is not our new pilot cute? Since 2006, our Dwarfs Miniatures inspire numerous collectors and lovers. This one controls directly to the heart. If he hits it, he will not let you go!
This year we can offer variety among our new releases. Many collectors groups have received charming growth. But go your own journey of discovery.
Our popular nutcrackers may have a grim expression, but they are sure to make their numerous fans smile in delight; turned from wood with love of detail and finished with paint, pelt and beautiful fabrics.
The famous "Räuchermänner" (or smoking man) originated in the Erzgebirge – Ore Mountains kept things cozy during Christmas time and all year round. Since the 18th century, these merry fellows made of artfully turned wood, fabrics, pelt and paint have been bringing fragrant scents into many a home. And even in modern times, they continue to create comfort and a wonderful ambience.
Small but mighty: Our bakery angels inspire delight wherever they are. Once you have laid eyes on them, you will never wish to let them go. For many years now, they have been conquering hearts. And every year we make more of them. Lovingly painted by hand, each and every figurine is a little masterpiece.
Are you looking for a suitable gift? Don't just give anything! By giving your vouchers you're giving something unique!
With the bark trees from the manufactory "Waldfabrik" you put our products in the right scene! These and many other articles from the "Waldfabrik" are now available online!
... to our website! In our online shop you can find the entire variety of products the Christian Ulbricht GmbH & Co. KG has to offer. We hope you enjoy browsing through the online catalogue.
We also would love to greet you in our store, which is located in the heart of the toy village of Seiffen. You cannot miss our store; the hand-painted details on each side of the building and the half-timbered roof make it unique. There you will find a huge presentation of Ore Mountain folk art. You can browse through a variety of our handmade wooden products like nutcrackers, incense smokers, decorations and toys on two floors. You will be amazed to see such craftsman ship. We are looking forward to your visit.


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After Yeezy at MSG, Vanessa Beecroft Strikes Again at Tod's during Milan Fashion Week
For VB Handmade, a collaboration with Tod's, the performance artist Vanessa Beecroft created a living picture by way of her two favorite tropes: exquisite stillness portrayed by exquisite-looking people, including the star of her show, Karlie Kloss. (Plus some equally exquisite leather needlework by the artisans at Tod's.) Catch a video of the performance here.


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Chick flicks. Whether you are a fan of them or not, you know what I'm talking about: those movies that are sure to make a girl cry. They usually have a tragic love story with ups and downs and twists and turns before the happily ever after ending.
We watch them and get caught up in those twists and turns and worry if the movie really will give us that happy ending. We cry along with the characters during their trials and broken hearts. Even if we briefly start to doubt that happy ending, in the end though we are never let down. Between our piles of Kleenex and empty bowls of ice cream and popcorn we will sniffle out "And they lived happily ever after…".
We sometimes want to fast forward to the end of the movie to make sure it will turn out the way we hope it will. However we know that every scene in the movie is important. Every scene leads the characters right where they need to be and helps them become who they are meant to be. If it was just a good beginning without all the ups and downs in the middle, there couldn't be a happy ending. We need to experience the whole story so we can truly appreciate the happy ending.
How often do we struggle with this same scenario in our real lives? As a believer, we know that God always works things out for good to them who love Him & are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28) Yet we still get our panties in a wad (as my mama would say), our hearts broken and our hopes crushed by the twists and turns that are the middle part of the movie of our life.
There are numerous times we want to hit the fast forward button just to make sure the ending is going to be good. We want to know that this muck in the middle is worth where ever it is taking us next. We get so caught up in the current scene that we don't see the entire big picture. We forget that our lives will always work out for the best and we will get that happy ending too. God has promised this to us and God doesn't break his promises.
When you start to doubt about your happy ending, remember you have to get through all the muck in the middle to get to the happy ending otherwise the ending wouldn't be so happy!


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March 22, 2010
Let's Put Things in Perspective
This Harmless Thought brought to you by Matt Harmless
Cell Size and Scale (From the University of Utah Genetic Science Learning Center)
Once you get to the site, use the slider at the bottom of the picture to go from coffee bean size to a carbon atom.
The site where I snagged this link posted this phrase, "God's creation is beyond comprehension!" I couldn't agree more.
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Common Questions and Answers
Whom Do I Contact for Special Accommodations?
Students in need of special accommodations for testing, or any other reason, must call the Office of Disability Services at (252) 335-3642 or (252) 335-3273.
Whom Do I Contact for Testing Accommodations?
There is no longer an ECSU specific placement exam. Academic programs will use SAT/ACT scores to determine course placement.
Some Transfer Students may still be required to take placement tests.
Transfer students wishing to schedule a placement testing date prior to NSO must call the Counseling and Testing Center at (252) 335-3273.
Does ECSU Offer the SAT? Yes!
The On Campus SAT will be offered to potential students in the Counseling and Testing Center (200 C.W. Building) @ 8:30 a.m. on the following dates:
Test Dates To Be Announced
Scores from this test are non-transferrable and are used only for students seeking admission to ECSU.
Score reports will be available two weeks after scheduled test dates.
The cost for taking the On Campus SAT is $50.00.
Students can register and pay using Register Blast www.registerblast.com/ecsu/exam
Whom Do I Contact Regarding Disability Services?
Students requiring assistance or Disability Services during New & Transfer Student Orientation, and the academic year, due to physical, psychological, and/or learning disabilities should register with Mrs. Felecia Brown, Counseling & Testing Center, 500 Griffin Hall, (252) 335-3642 or (252) 335-3273.
To receive appropriate accommodations during Orientation, please contact us at least ten business days prior to your scheduled orientation session. We are open Monday - Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. to assist you.
What is FERPA?
In accordance with the Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) guidelines, the Office of the Registrar is unable to provide confidential information pertaining to students without a written consent from a student. This is done by completing the Consent Form and returning it to the Office of The Registrar. Once we have received this information, we will be happy to comply with your request.
What Lodging Is Available in the Area?
Campus housing is not available during New Student Orientation for guests; however, there are several hotels in or near Elizabeth City.
Accommodations most convenient to the University are:
|Best Western Plus
|(252) 331-7751
|Days Inn
|(252) 335-4316
|Fairfield Inn & Suites
|(252) 333-1003
|Holiday Inn Express
|(252) 338-8900
|Hampton Inn
|(252) 333-1800
|Quality Inn
|(252) 338-3951
When Can I Move in to my Residence Hall?
Students living on-campus are able to check into their Residence Hall on Friday, August 9, 2019.
How Do I Get to Elizabeth City?
By Car: US Highway 17 and 158 come to Elizabeth City. For driving directions, click here or call 1-800-347-3278.
By Bus: Trailways Bus Line serves the city.
By Plane: Norfolk International (ORF) is approximately 50 miles from Elizabeth City – ORF is the nearest major airport to ECSU.
Telephone Numbers You May Need
University staff members are available and anxious to help and to answer your questions. Please contact the appropriate office if you need assistance.
Admissions (252) 335-3305 / 1-800-347-3278
Business & Finance (252) 335-3220
Commuter Student Service (252) 335-3587
Counseling & Testing (252) 335-3273
Financial Aid (252) 335-3283 / 1-800-529-8146
Health Services (252) 335-3267
Housing & Residence Life (252) 335-3761
New Student Orientation (252) 335-3143
Registrar's Office (252) 335-3300
Special Needs/Disability Services (252) 335-3642
Student Accounts (252) 335-3566
Student Affairs (252) 335-3276
Transfer Student Advisor (252) 335-3474
University Police (Parking) (252) 335-3265
For other campus phone numbers call (252) 335-3400 and press 9 for the operator.


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Click on an alumni listing from Newcastle, ON to find more information about the person.
The listing of alumni from Newcastle, ON includes graduates from 1 school. To filter results, select a Newcastle, ON high school using the links to the right. The Newcastle alumni list on this page come from a variety of sources. Clicking one of your friends will give you locations that you can get back in touch with the fellow graduate. To view alumni that graduated in Newcastle around your class year, enter your graduation year in the search box at the top of the page. You may also be able to find friends close to your home town. We also have listings for graduates from Bowmanville, ON, Courtice, ON, or Oshawa, ON.
|Sign up for free to get in touch with high school friends
Rr 8 Bowmanville Stn Main
Newcastle, ON L1B 1


text: christo-f 330 Posted June 23, 2009 White House to Abandon Spy-Satellite Program JUNE 22, 2009, 11:16 P.M. ET http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124572555214540265.html WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration plans to kill a controversial Bush administration spy satellite program at the Department of Homeland Security, according to officials familiar with the decision. The program came under fire from its inception two years ago. Democratic lawmakers said it would lead to domestic spying. The program would have provided federal, state and local officials with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery — but no eavesdropping capabilities— to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism. It would have expanded an Interior Department satellite program, which will continue to be used to assist in natural disasters and for other limited security purposes such as photographing sporting events. The Wall Street Journal first revealed the plans to establish the program, known as the National Applications Office, in 2007. "It's being shut down," said a homeland security official. The Bush administration had taken preliminary steps to launch the office, such as acquiring office space and beginning to hire staff. The plans to shutter the office signal Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's decision to refocus the department's intelligence on ensuring that state and local officials get the threat information they need, the official said. She also wants to make the department the central point in the government for receiving and analyzing terrorism tips from around the country, the official added. Lawmakers alerted Ms. Napolitano of their concerns about the program-that the program would violate the Fourth amendment right to be protected from unreasonable searches-before her confirmation hearing. Once she assumed her post, Ms. Napolitano ordered a review of the program and concluded the program wasn't worth pursuing, the homeland official said. Department spokeswoman Amy Kudwa declined to speak about the results of the review but said they would be announced shortly. The lawmakers were most concerned about plans to provide satellite imagery to state and local law enforcement, so department officials asked state and local officials how useful that information would be to them. The answer: not very useful. "In our view, the NAO is not an issue of urgency," Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, wrote to Ms. Napolitano on June 21. Writing on behalf of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, Chief Bratton said that were the program to go forward, the police chiefs would be concerned about privacy protections and whether using military satellites for domestic purposes would violate the Posse Comitatus law, which bars the use of the military for law enforcement in the U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D., Calif.), who oversees the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence, said she was alarmed when she recently saw that the Obama administration requested money for the program in a classified 2010 budget proposal. She introduced two bills that would terminate the program. "It's a good decision," Ms. Harman said in an interview. "This will remove a distraction and let the intelligence function at [the department] truly serve the community that needs it, which is local law enforcement." Supporters of the program lamented what they said was the loss of an important new terrorism-fighting tool for natural disasters and terrorist attacks, as well as border security. "After numerous congressional briefings on the importance of the NAO and its solid legal footing, politics beat out good government," said Andrew Levy, who was deputy general counsel at the department in the Bush administration. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites