To that end, Brase launched the “Refuse to Enroll” campaign earlier this month on her daily radio show, “Health Freedom Minute,” which is broadcast on more than 350 stations nationwide, including the American Family Radio Network with stations throughout Ohio.
“Contrary to popular belief, non-enrollment in the exchanges does not result in any penalties; fines are only for failure to be insured,” said Brase, whose organization claims the law will limit consumers’ choices, threaten their privacy and increase the cost of health insurance. “We look at the law as being unconstitutional because it’s a government takeover of health care, so we want to make it difficult for the law to function as its proponents want it to.”
Conservatives are just hellbent on trying to keep poor people from getting decent health coverage. The right-wing intelligentsia can claim otherwise, but the plain truth is that no one in the actual governing wing of the Republican Party wants to replace Obamacare with Hands free access. They just want to repeal it, full stop. For some reason, the mere idea of poor and working-class people getting medical care with taxpayer help drives them into conniptions.
his campaign is only about the exchanges. So when Drum says “taxpayer help”, he means simply the cost of setting up and running the exchanges. This is critical, because lower enrollment numbers will not really affect the amount of taxpayer money being spent on the exchanges—the exchanges are basically a virtual market funded by the government, and the number of customers strolling through doesn’t really change the cost of maintaining a market space. So this isn’t, no matter what our inevitable half-educated screeching trolls will claim, about saving taxpayer money. This has nothing to do with the “taxpayer” part, and just with the “help” part—and really, it’s mostly about access.
I said it repeatedly during the battles over health care reform and I’ll say it again: Most of the paranoia and hysteria coming from the right over Obamacare (they’ll regret naming it after him when the exchanges plus subsidies become one of the most popular government programs running 10 years hence) boils down to one of the most base emotions on the right: The fear and disgust that boils up when they fear they will have to share something with lower class people. I’ve dubbed it the “waiting room problem”: conservatives are deeply, unshakably afraid that once the uninsured start getting insurance, they’ll have to sit next to them in doctors’ waiting rooms, and that’s what they don’t want to happen.
You may laugh, but if you think about it, this fear of having to share spaces with “others” who have less money than they do—and who may be, gasp, different than they are—drives a whole shitload of conservative policy preferences and hang-ups. The hostility towards any attempt to improve public transportation is expressing a direct preference for unmanageable traffic over having to sit on a train or a bus with poor people (even though no one actually makes you use public transportation, but I guess the mere temptation of using the train is so serious that the rest of us have to give access).
Hatred of immigrants and the ugly hostility towards cities? Same thing. There’s a tendency on the right to see lower income people as inherently contaminating, as if their very presence degrades everything around them by the force of magic or something. Witness George Will blaming “culture”—which is a conservative code word for the presence of lower income people and definitely for lower income people of color—for the problems Detroit is facing. Pay special attention to his freak-out over reading and real time Location system.
Being literate is a learned behavior; outside of those with learning disorders, it is not about anything inherent to the person. The reason that one school lags behind another in reading is because of social investment in that school and not anything to do with the inherent qualities of the students. Usually there are not enough teachers or the schools are falling apart or there aren’t enough resources.
Often, schools in poverty-stricken districts have outside problems coming in, too, such as students who don’t have enough rest or food, or have stressful situations outside the school doors that make it hard to study. All these problems have solutions, usually involving investment in communities and investment in decent paying jobs, but Will seems rock solid certain that it’s the poor people themselves that are the problem, that their mere presence is a contaminant that spreads—people themselves are viewed as the problem to be avoided or contained, instead of as people who have problems, such as lack of health care, that need to be fixed.
On the contrary, to the conservative mind, the last thing you want to do is help fix people’s problems, because the fixes usually involve creating situations where various classes of people have more contact. That’s how conservative thinking goes: If working class people have insurance, they’ll go to the doctor. It might be my doctor and then their very presence will ruin everything!
While this kind of paranoid thinking seems too idiotic to be possible, it’s evident all over conservative media and not just in Will’s prissy rants. It’s really common, for instance, for conservatives to suggest that health care is going to physically resemble a soup kitchen line. It’s not subtle, either—my Google search for “health care lines” turned this up as the first image.
I moved to California, and eventually did end up finding our angels, but we still needed more. We had underestimated the time we needed to make a polished and interesting multiplayer shooter and so we turned to our fans. We saw what the Overgrowth guys were doing and were inspired to try it out. We worked hard on our first game teaser, writing the tools and technology we needed for it alongside it. All the while we knew we had a very limited amount of funds left before we had to release the teaser and pray that our fans would support us.
We launched the teaser along with our NS2 pre-order program. $20 for the Standard Edition and $40 for the Special Edition, which granted you early alpha access and limited edition black marine armor. We were blown away when we raised over $200k in the first week and eventually went on to raise over $1M. Surprisingly, over 90% of our players opted for the Special Edition. That’s when the trouble began.
The first alpha we shipped to our players was a dreadful buggy mess. It’s no wonder: we were a team of 4, building a next-gen engine, tools and game. We were laying the tracks in front of a speeding train. We promised that our beta would be much better, but we were doomed to fail. It was another two years after our “beta” before we shipped v1.0 on Steam, and our fans were not happy about having a junky game in the meantime. We heard from many players that they were happy to support us just on the merits of the original free game alone, and that they would be happy even if we never shipped NS2. But we’re sure many players didn’t feel that way and often let us know it. Opening e-mail was dreadful. Reading our forums was downright painful. This reaction also caused our investors to panic and lose faith in us.
2013年7月31日星期三
Mood diary app personalises
The Phobic Trust mood diary mobile app, just launched into the Apple App Store, enables users to record anxiety and stress levels, mood triggers, sleep and exercise patterns, as well as set clinical appointment and medication alerts.
The app is free to download and was developed by the Phobic Trust in partnership with mobile health experts VADR, facilitated in part by a grant from the government’s Social Media Innovations Fund, which is part of the Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project, and funding from First Sovereign Trust Limited.One in five New Zealanders will experience a mental health issue in their lifetime and will therefore need support to manage it, says The Phobic Trust of New Zealand Deputy CEO Vivienne Euini.
“The mood diary empowers users in a discreet way to easily record triggers, mood peaks and troughs, and gives them quick access to key phone numbers in an emergency, clinical appointments and the ability to set reminders for scheduled medication, cognitive behavioral exercises or physical exercise,” she says.“Exercise reminders are a key component of the Indoor Positioning System, as evidence suggests a strong link between increased mental wellbeing for people who exercise.”
Vivienne says that by recording valuable information daily, people give the health professionals involved in their care access to the most accurate, collated statistics about their mental state. “Professionals get the best possible overview of a client’s wellbeing and can use it to tailor specific treatment to meet the changing phases of their mental health recovery.”
She adds that quick access by phone within the app to a 24-hour support line relieves the burden of stress for people already experiencing extreme levels of anxiety.The Social Media Innovations Fund supports the development of projects that use social media technology to improve youth mental health. VADR and The Phobic Trust were grateful recipients of the fund in February this year as part of the Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project.
The app offers an innovative Kiwi approach because it stimulates self-discovery and intimately engages users with their own treatment process and recovery, says Vivienne.“The mood diary app provides a quick, easy way for Kiwis to monitor and manage their mental health on a daily basis. Users gain an intimate knowledge of their own mood patterns over time and can record levels of exercise and sleep, all of which paints a clear picture for them and the people in their treatment team,” she says.
“The easy sign-in through Facebook makes the app extremely relevant and familiar to youth, who are the focus of the Social Media Innovations Fund”. The app is built upon VADR’s mHealth 360 platform which also powers the hugely popular Asthma NZ iPhone app.Vivienne says the mood diary app is a fresh and cost effective approach to tackling the daily issues of anxiety, depression and stress. She adds that in an increasingly paperless world, paper mood charts that don’t have the added value needed today, such as collating data, will slowly become a thing of the past.
Edward Snowden may be amoldering in the transit lounge of a Moscow airport, but the spy scandal he unleashed goes marching on across Europe's political and diplomatic landscape.
As a US military court on Tuesday convicted that other American security leaker — the WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning — on espionage, computer fraud and multiple other charges, it's unclear when the fallout from Snowden's revelations about America's electronic eavesdropping will end.
It's already casting a shadow over Europe's most powerful leader — German Chancellor Angela Merkel — as well as jeopardizing trans-Atlantic agreements that Washington views as vital to the fight against terrorism, and threatening the future of the world's biggest internet companies.
Anger over the PRISM system — under which the US National Security Agency claimed "direct access" to data stored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other tech giants — has boosted the positions of those seeking tough new data-protection rules that would make it harder for the US authorities to get their hands on the private details of European citizens.
"I hope that PRISM has been a wake-up call," Viviane Reding, the European Union's justice commissioner, said recently. "There is no area which lies outside the law in Europe, even when issues of security are involved."
Draft EU data privacy rules drawn up by Reding's office in 2011 were watered down by politicians who argued they would harm security and indoor Tracking. But the brouhaha over Snowden has prompted a turnaround, with powerful voices now demanding more protection.
Merkel has lent her highly influential voice to the demands for tougher rules. She's publicly called for "very strict" European privacy laws that would force companies such as Google and Facebook to keep European authorities informed of whom they share data with.
A change of heart in the European Parliament now seems certain to ensure that strict limits on how internet companies share European citizens' data with foreign governments will be re-inserted into the proposed EU data-privacy legislation.
Lawmakers fearful of upsetting EU-US relations had opposed the so-called anti-FISA clause — named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the US government to monitor international phone and email conversations. Snowden has changed their minds.
The inclusion of the clause in the final EU law could have profound implications for American tech firms. They could find themselves obliged by American legislation to share information about foreigners with government agencies at home, but facing massive EU fines for passing on such data.
The clause was removed from the bill originally drafted by Reding's office in 2011 after a bout of intense lobbying by the Obama administration. The US authorities and American internet giants are continuing to mount a major lobbying campaign to dilute the legislation.
"I've never seen anything like it, such a powerful lobbying operation," Reding told Spain's El Pais newspaper last week. "The lobbies have 10 times more people than my team, there are hundreds of lawyers' offices active on this and representatives paid by the big companies."
The Snowden scandal has pushed American lobbyists onto the back foot as European politicians call not just for tough new legislation, but also a rollback of existing rules that allow the sharing of information such as airline passenger data or bank account details.
The app is free to download and was developed by the Phobic Trust in partnership with mobile health experts VADR, facilitated in part by a grant from the government’s Social Media Innovations Fund, which is part of the Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project, and funding from First Sovereign Trust Limited.One in five New Zealanders will experience a mental health issue in their lifetime and will therefore need support to manage it, says The Phobic Trust of New Zealand Deputy CEO Vivienne Euini.
“The mood diary empowers users in a discreet way to easily record triggers, mood peaks and troughs, and gives them quick access to key phone numbers in an emergency, clinical appointments and the ability to set reminders for scheduled medication, cognitive behavioral exercises or physical exercise,” she says.“Exercise reminders are a key component of the Indoor Positioning System, as evidence suggests a strong link between increased mental wellbeing for people who exercise.”
Vivienne says that by recording valuable information daily, people give the health professionals involved in their care access to the most accurate, collated statistics about their mental state. “Professionals get the best possible overview of a client’s wellbeing and can use it to tailor specific treatment to meet the changing phases of their mental health recovery.”
She adds that quick access by phone within the app to a 24-hour support line relieves the burden of stress for people already experiencing extreme levels of anxiety.The Social Media Innovations Fund supports the development of projects that use social media technology to improve youth mental health. VADR and The Phobic Trust were grateful recipients of the fund in February this year as part of the Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project.
The app offers an innovative Kiwi approach because it stimulates self-discovery and intimately engages users with their own treatment process and recovery, says Vivienne.“The mood diary app provides a quick, easy way for Kiwis to monitor and manage their mental health on a daily basis. Users gain an intimate knowledge of their own mood patterns over time and can record levels of exercise and sleep, all of which paints a clear picture for them and the people in their treatment team,” she says.
“The easy sign-in through Facebook makes the app extremely relevant and familiar to youth, who are the focus of the Social Media Innovations Fund”. The app is built upon VADR’s mHealth 360 platform which also powers the hugely popular Asthma NZ iPhone app.Vivienne says the mood diary app is a fresh and cost effective approach to tackling the daily issues of anxiety, depression and stress. She adds that in an increasingly paperless world, paper mood charts that don’t have the added value needed today, such as collating data, will slowly become a thing of the past.
Edward Snowden may be amoldering in the transit lounge of a Moscow airport, but the spy scandal he unleashed goes marching on across Europe's political and diplomatic landscape.
As a US military court on Tuesday convicted that other American security leaker — the WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning — on espionage, computer fraud and multiple other charges, it's unclear when the fallout from Snowden's revelations about America's electronic eavesdropping will end.
It's already casting a shadow over Europe's most powerful leader — German Chancellor Angela Merkel — as well as jeopardizing trans-Atlantic agreements that Washington views as vital to the fight against terrorism, and threatening the future of the world's biggest internet companies.
Anger over the PRISM system — under which the US National Security Agency claimed "direct access" to data stored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other tech giants — has boosted the positions of those seeking tough new data-protection rules that would make it harder for the US authorities to get their hands on the private details of European citizens.
"I hope that PRISM has been a wake-up call," Viviane Reding, the European Union's justice commissioner, said recently. "There is no area which lies outside the law in Europe, even when issues of security are involved."
Draft EU data privacy rules drawn up by Reding's office in 2011 were watered down by politicians who argued they would harm security and indoor Tracking. But the brouhaha over Snowden has prompted a turnaround, with powerful voices now demanding more protection.
Merkel has lent her highly influential voice to the demands for tougher rules. She's publicly called for "very strict" European privacy laws that would force companies such as Google and Facebook to keep European authorities informed of whom they share data with.
A change of heart in the European Parliament now seems certain to ensure that strict limits on how internet companies share European citizens' data with foreign governments will be re-inserted into the proposed EU data-privacy legislation.
Lawmakers fearful of upsetting EU-US relations had opposed the so-called anti-FISA clause — named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the US government to monitor international phone and email conversations. Snowden has changed their minds.
The inclusion of the clause in the final EU law could have profound implications for American tech firms. They could find themselves obliged by American legislation to share information about foreigners with government agencies at home, but facing massive EU fines for passing on such data.
The clause was removed from the bill originally drafted by Reding's office in 2011 after a bout of intense lobbying by the Obama administration. The US authorities and American internet giants are continuing to mount a major lobbying campaign to dilute the legislation.
"I've never seen anything like it, such a powerful lobbying operation," Reding told Spain's El Pais newspaper last week. "The lobbies have 10 times more people than my team, there are hundreds of lawyers' offices active on this and representatives paid by the big companies."
The Snowden scandal has pushed American lobbyists onto the back foot as European politicians call not just for tough new legislation, but also a rollback of existing rules that allow the sharing of information such as airline passenger data or bank account details.
2013年7月29日星期一
Are the big names stealing the show again?
We all know the legend; how, in 1947, a group of artists feeling excised from the new Edinburgh international festival came together and forged a space of their own alongside it. Thus was born the Edinburgh festival fringe: defiant, independent and very much counter to the arts establishment.
Fast forward 66 years and this year you'll find 20 major subsidised theatres presenting work at the fringe – and that's discounting the Traverse Theatre, which can hardly help its position in the middle of the melee. The Young Vic has three shows; Soho Theatre is producing three comedians; Northern Stage is running its own venue for the second year running; and two national theatre companies – Wales and Scotland – are represented alongside the very biggest regional theatres across England: Manchester Royal Exchange, Bristol Old Vic and Sheffield Theatres.
These are some of the most successful and well-funded organisations in the country and their presence in Edinburgh this August looks like another instance of the creeping professionalism of the fringe. Do they really belong there? When big-name, television comedians fill big venues with bigger publicity campaigns, we worry they're taking audiences and attention away from their less established peers. Don't theatres have the same impact on emerging artists and independent companies – let alone the hundreds of student, amateur and other grassroots organisations that make up the bulk of the festival programme?
In that context, it's worth questioning the place of subsidy at the fringe. In a recent blog, former Total Theatre creative director Pippa Bailey diagnosed Arts Council England (ACE) as having "a schizophrenic attitude to supporting artists performing at the fringe." Regularly funded organisations (RFOs) are free to put their annual grant towards an Edinburgh run if they see fit – provided it doesn't prevent the fulfilment of their funding agreement terms.
Independent artists and companies, however, can't access ACE's lottery funded Grants for the arts scheme to do the same. With the costs associated with the fringe, a simple discrepancy on paper translates into a significant disadvantage in practice. Besides, don't these theatres have local audiences of their own to serve?
ACE says its hands are largely tied. "Being lottery money, the rules of the Grants for the arts scheme dictate that most of the funded activity happens in England," explains director of theatre Neil Darlison. "If we were to open it up to fringe shows, it would open the floodgates to applications in a time of diminishing funds, because everyone wants to go there, and I think it might just skew the Edinburgh economy – if it's not skewed enough already." In other words: even more subsidy, even more disparity.
A closer look starts to shift the picture. Far from tapping a large, eager festival audience for their own interests, most subsidised theatres with work at the fringe seem to be acting rather more altruistically. Some, such as Bristol Old Vic and the New Wolsey, are sending their youth companies. Plymouth Drum is supporting an influx of overseas artists as part of the inaugural Big in Belgium showcase. The vast majority, however, are supporting independent artists, many at the early stages of Hands free access.
The benefits of a fringe run for independent artists are potentially considerable. It has a theatre-savvy audience on tap, a bevy of critics and industry figures both from around the UK and overseas. It is a fantastic meeting place. As Young Vic artistic director David Lan explains: "Edinburgh's a marketplace. It's where you hope the world will see you."
But it is increasingly expensive. "It's very easy for a young company to go to the fringe, run for three weeks and lose between ￡5,000 and ￡7,000 – even with reasonable critical success and decent audience figures," says Lorne Campbell, artistic director at Northern Stage. "The question for us is how we reduce the financial risk for those artists."
Northern Stage's fringe programme, which hinges on (but isn't entirely unwritten by) an ACE grant through the strategic touring fund offers artists – particularly early-career artists – based in the north of England an Edinburgh run with different terms. "We go a long way to alleviating that risk," Campbell continues. "We provide marketing, accommodation and technical support. We're a solid brand for people to build off and we're offering the kind of financial deal that other venues don't come near."
To demonstrate the benefits, Campbell cites Daniel Bye's experience with The Price of Everything at the 2012 festival. "It's transformed his capacity as an artist. That piece has toured extensively, continued to tour and forged new relationships." The fringe, he says, can turn "a company of regional profile into a company of national profile".
In other words, these producing theatres are almost functioning like funding bodies. Their presence in Edinburgh feeds into a wider narrative of collaboration and umbrella organisations. Lan also flags up the role that support-in-kind can play in that relationship: "What we realised is that if we put a small amount of money into a number of shows that we're interested in, we can look after the show with rehearsal space and other resources. We can feed into them putting the rest of the money together."
But the reasoning isn't solely about outcomes. Campbell firmly believes in the festival itself: "Out of all of those artistic voices, bleating and shouting, and all of us watching, that's where the future is; the way a zeitgeist can emerge out of the wisdom of crowds. This is where society dreams itself."
With a network of producing theatres fuelling it, he believes the fringe gains in its own right: "You have a forum of buildings and organisations putting work onto the fringe which is driven by a creative and a cultural impulse. We're doing it because there is an audience who has an appetite for that and they're an audience that isn't necessarily served by a big upside-down purple cow."
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Fast forward 66 years and this year you'll find 20 major subsidised theatres presenting work at the fringe – and that's discounting the Traverse Theatre, which can hardly help its position in the middle of the melee. The Young Vic has three shows; Soho Theatre is producing three comedians; Northern Stage is running its own venue for the second year running; and two national theatre companies – Wales and Scotland – are represented alongside the very biggest regional theatres across England: Manchester Royal Exchange, Bristol Old Vic and Sheffield Theatres.
These are some of the most successful and well-funded organisations in the country and their presence in Edinburgh this August looks like another instance of the creeping professionalism of the fringe. Do they really belong there? When big-name, television comedians fill big venues with bigger publicity campaigns, we worry they're taking audiences and attention away from their less established peers. Don't theatres have the same impact on emerging artists and independent companies – let alone the hundreds of student, amateur and other grassroots organisations that make up the bulk of the festival programme?
In that context, it's worth questioning the place of subsidy at the fringe. In a recent blog, former Total Theatre creative director Pippa Bailey diagnosed Arts Council England (ACE) as having "a schizophrenic attitude to supporting artists performing at the fringe." Regularly funded organisations (RFOs) are free to put their annual grant towards an Edinburgh run if they see fit – provided it doesn't prevent the fulfilment of their funding agreement terms.
Independent artists and companies, however, can't access ACE's lottery funded Grants for the arts scheme to do the same. With the costs associated with the fringe, a simple discrepancy on paper translates into a significant disadvantage in practice. Besides, don't these theatres have local audiences of their own to serve?
ACE says its hands are largely tied. "Being lottery money, the rules of the Grants for the arts scheme dictate that most of the funded activity happens in England," explains director of theatre Neil Darlison. "If we were to open it up to fringe shows, it would open the floodgates to applications in a time of diminishing funds, because everyone wants to go there, and I think it might just skew the Edinburgh economy – if it's not skewed enough already." In other words: even more subsidy, even more disparity.
A closer look starts to shift the picture. Far from tapping a large, eager festival audience for their own interests, most subsidised theatres with work at the fringe seem to be acting rather more altruistically. Some, such as Bristol Old Vic and the New Wolsey, are sending their youth companies. Plymouth Drum is supporting an influx of overseas artists as part of the inaugural Big in Belgium showcase. The vast majority, however, are supporting independent artists, many at the early stages of Hands free access.
The benefits of a fringe run for independent artists are potentially considerable. It has a theatre-savvy audience on tap, a bevy of critics and industry figures both from around the UK and overseas. It is a fantastic meeting place. As Young Vic artistic director David Lan explains: "Edinburgh's a marketplace. It's where you hope the world will see you."
But it is increasingly expensive. "It's very easy for a young company to go to the fringe, run for three weeks and lose between ￡5,000 and ￡7,000 – even with reasonable critical success and decent audience figures," says Lorne Campbell, artistic director at Northern Stage. "The question for us is how we reduce the financial risk for those artists."
Northern Stage's fringe programme, which hinges on (but isn't entirely unwritten by) an ACE grant through the strategic touring fund offers artists – particularly early-career artists – based in the north of England an Edinburgh run with different terms. "We go a long way to alleviating that risk," Campbell continues. "We provide marketing, accommodation and technical support. We're a solid brand for people to build off and we're offering the kind of financial deal that other venues don't come near."
To demonstrate the benefits, Campbell cites Daniel Bye's experience with The Price of Everything at the 2012 festival. "It's transformed his capacity as an artist. That piece has toured extensively, continued to tour and forged new relationships." The fringe, he says, can turn "a company of regional profile into a company of national profile".
In other words, these producing theatres are almost functioning like funding bodies. Their presence in Edinburgh feeds into a wider narrative of collaboration and umbrella organisations. Lan also flags up the role that support-in-kind can play in that relationship: "What we realised is that if we put a small amount of money into a number of shows that we're interested in, we can look after the show with rehearsal space and other resources. We can feed into them putting the rest of the money together."
But the reasoning isn't solely about outcomes. Campbell firmly believes in the festival itself: "Out of all of those artistic voices, bleating and shouting, and all of us watching, that's where the future is; the way a zeitgeist can emerge out of the wisdom of crowds. This is where society dreams itself."
With a network of producing theatres fuelling it, he believes the fringe gains in its own right: "You have a forum of buildings and organisations putting work onto the fringe which is driven by a creative and a cultural impulse. We're doing it because there is an audience who has an appetite for that and they're an audience that isn't necessarily served by a big upside-down purple cow."
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
15 reasons why Harper is a fake feminist
When Stephen Harper stands in the House of Commons, he is surrounded by women. Earlier this month, he made a big to-do about promoting four new women to his cabinet. But any suggestion that Harper and the Conservatives genuinely care about women or the many issues women face can easily be refuted. Let's start with the following list.
Canadian women and the organized feminist movement made several gains after the Royal Commission on the Status of Women which began in early 1967 and recommended federal government initiatives to ensure equal opportunities for men and women in all aspects of Canadian society. Over the years, gains have included the legalization of abortion, improved sexual assault laws, and the inclusion of gender equality in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (leading to many favourable court decisions).
However, since 2006, Stephen Harper and his Cons have been cutting back women's rights in an unprecedented way, real time Location system, as they throw around the word “equality” and act as if the gender playing field is level. The Cons have been promoting a free-market, survival-of-the-fittest, socially conservative society. (In their first year, they tried to roll back same-sex marriage legislation.) Harper has followed the Chretien tactic of fighting the deficit by cutting social transfers to the provinces and weakening federal participation in social programmes -- health, education, and social welfare. He has ignored calls for anti-poverty initiatives, such as a national housing strategy.
The Cons have further justified their attacks on Canada's socially progressive state by diminishing government revenues with cuts to the GST and corporate taxes. Harper prefers to use our tax dollars to develop and promote environmentally unfriendly, non-renewable fossil fuels, thus poisoning and threatening our communities. He has turned away from previous "soft power" international strategies that enhanced the security of women and their families, expanded Canada's military capabilities, promoted the arms industry, weakened gun control, including the elimination of the Long Gun Registry in 2012, and put more Canadians behind bars.
Quality, affordable child care allows working parents (70 per cent of mothers now work) to maintain a better living standard with two incomes. It allows single mothers -- many of whom are poor -- to attend school or skills training, get decent jobs and accept job promotions. The incidence of single mothers living below the poverty line in Quebec has dropped since the introduction of universal access to regulated child care. At the same time, thousands of live-in caregivers, mainly from the Philippines and the Caribbean, are particularly vulnerable because immigration regulations require them to live with and work for the employer named on their work permit. The Cons have eliminated funding for community programs which helped such women at risk.
In 2006, the Harper Cons cut funding for Status of Women Canada (SWC) by 37 per cent -- from $13 million to $8 million -- forcing the closure of 12 of its 16 regional offices. As usual, they hid behind arguments of fiscal responsibility and "efficiency savings." They argued that the SWC's job was done because women were equal. The SWC mandate was also changed to exclude "gender equality and political justice." Program funding criteria were ideologically redrafted so that activities for research, advocacy, and lobbying were ineligible.
The loss of this important funding source set back or eliminated groups, including: the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women Womenspace, the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation, the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, the New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity, the Feminist Alliance for International Action, le Conseil d’intervention pour l’accès des femmes au travail, the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses, Réseau des tables régionales de groupes de femmes du Québec, and Action travail des femmes. By cutting support for so many women's organizations, the Harper Cons contravened Canada's obligation to maintain and improve domestic human rights -- as required under the UN and other international treaties. Sadly, with the infamous "enemies list," those women's groups which have survived are afraid to speak out against the Cons in case their future funding is cut.
The Cons regularly condemn what they call "judicial activism" -- meaning pro-equality rulings by judges. In 2006, they eliminated funding for the Court Challenges Program which for years had provided financial support for women, women's groups, and others to bring equality cases to court. This meant that Harper and company were deliberately undercutting women's ability to challenge discriminatory laws using Article 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Not only had Con cuts undermined women's ability to analyze federal policies and recommend reforms, they had also denied them the opportunity to turn to the courts to seek justice. In September, 2007, the offices of the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL), a well-respected organization that had made valuable contributions to improving women's human rights in Canada, were closed. For more than 30 years, the association was involved in precedent-setting legal work on behalf of women, including amendments to the Criminal Code concerning sexual assault, improvements to the Divorce Act, and the adoption of equality rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Before he became prime minister, Harper promised Canadians his government wouldn't re-open the abortion issue. But Con backbenchers have been doing exactly that by introducing Private Members Bills in an attempt to diminish freedom of choice. The 2008 Unborn Victims of Crime Act (Bill C-484), supported by Harper at Second Reading in the House of Commons, would have criminalized harm to a foetus by establishing its "personhood." This died on the order paper after an election was called, but it was soon followed by another bill "to protect the conscience rights of Canada’s health-care workers," so they would "never be forced to participate against their will in procedures such as abortions." This failed to pass.
In spring 2010 Harper launched his G8 maternal health proposal, theoretically aimed at saving "the lives of mothers and children all over the world." When women's health advocates and others asked for details, Harper was vague, hiding behind his usual doublespeak. Canadian maternal health policy now denies funding for abortion services in the developing world, despite the deaths and injuries caused by the lack of such services. In September, 2012, the House of Commons voted on Con MP Stephen Woodworth's private member's motion to study whether a foetus should have legal rights before birth. Ten Con cabinet ministers, including Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose, voted for this. In December, 2012, Con MP Mark Warawa introduced a motion regarding sex-selective abortions -- to "condemn discrimination against females occurring through sex-selective pregnancy termination," but later withdrew it. He claimed he wanted to defend human rights, but many saw it as another attempt to outlaw abortion.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Canadian women and the organized feminist movement made several gains after the Royal Commission on the Status of Women which began in early 1967 and recommended federal government initiatives to ensure equal opportunities for men and women in all aspects of Canadian society. Over the years, gains have included the legalization of abortion, improved sexual assault laws, and the inclusion of gender equality in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (leading to many favourable court decisions).
However, since 2006, Stephen Harper and his Cons have been cutting back women's rights in an unprecedented way, real time Location system, as they throw around the word “equality” and act as if the gender playing field is level. The Cons have been promoting a free-market, survival-of-the-fittest, socially conservative society. (In their first year, they tried to roll back same-sex marriage legislation.) Harper has followed the Chretien tactic of fighting the deficit by cutting social transfers to the provinces and weakening federal participation in social programmes -- health, education, and social welfare. He has ignored calls for anti-poverty initiatives, such as a national housing strategy.
The Cons have further justified their attacks on Canada's socially progressive state by diminishing government revenues with cuts to the GST and corporate taxes. Harper prefers to use our tax dollars to develop and promote environmentally unfriendly, non-renewable fossil fuels, thus poisoning and threatening our communities. He has turned away from previous "soft power" international strategies that enhanced the security of women and their families, expanded Canada's military capabilities, promoted the arms industry, weakened gun control, including the elimination of the Long Gun Registry in 2012, and put more Canadians behind bars.
Quality, affordable child care allows working parents (70 per cent of mothers now work) to maintain a better living standard with two incomes. It allows single mothers -- many of whom are poor -- to attend school or skills training, get decent jobs and accept job promotions. The incidence of single mothers living below the poverty line in Quebec has dropped since the introduction of universal access to regulated child care. At the same time, thousands of live-in caregivers, mainly from the Philippines and the Caribbean, are particularly vulnerable because immigration regulations require them to live with and work for the employer named on their work permit. The Cons have eliminated funding for community programs which helped such women at risk.
In 2006, the Harper Cons cut funding for Status of Women Canada (SWC) by 37 per cent -- from $13 million to $8 million -- forcing the closure of 12 of its 16 regional offices. As usual, they hid behind arguments of fiscal responsibility and "efficiency savings." They argued that the SWC's job was done because women were equal. The SWC mandate was also changed to exclude "gender equality and political justice." Program funding criteria were ideologically redrafted so that activities for research, advocacy, and lobbying were ineligible.
The loss of this important funding source set back or eliminated groups, including: the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women Womenspace, the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation, the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, the New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity, the Feminist Alliance for International Action, le Conseil d’intervention pour l’accès des femmes au travail, the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses, Réseau des tables régionales de groupes de femmes du Québec, and Action travail des femmes. By cutting support for so many women's organizations, the Harper Cons contravened Canada's obligation to maintain and improve domestic human rights -- as required under the UN and other international treaties. Sadly, with the infamous "enemies list," those women's groups which have survived are afraid to speak out against the Cons in case their future funding is cut.
The Cons regularly condemn what they call "judicial activism" -- meaning pro-equality rulings by judges. In 2006, they eliminated funding for the Court Challenges Program which for years had provided financial support for women, women's groups, and others to bring equality cases to court. This meant that Harper and company were deliberately undercutting women's ability to challenge discriminatory laws using Article 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Not only had Con cuts undermined women's ability to analyze federal policies and recommend reforms, they had also denied them the opportunity to turn to the courts to seek justice. In September, 2007, the offices of the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL), a well-respected organization that had made valuable contributions to improving women's human rights in Canada, were closed. For more than 30 years, the association was involved in precedent-setting legal work on behalf of women, including amendments to the Criminal Code concerning sexual assault, improvements to the Divorce Act, and the adoption of equality rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Before he became prime minister, Harper promised Canadians his government wouldn't re-open the abortion issue. But Con backbenchers have been doing exactly that by introducing Private Members Bills in an attempt to diminish freedom of choice. The 2008 Unborn Victims of Crime Act (Bill C-484), supported by Harper at Second Reading in the House of Commons, would have criminalized harm to a foetus by establishing its "personhood." This died on the order paper after an election was called, but it was soon followed by another bill "to protect the conscience rights of Canada’s health-care workers," so they would "never be forced to participate against their will in procedures such as abortions." This failed to pass.
In spring 2010 Harper launched his G8 maternal health proposal, theoretically aimed at saving "the lives of mothers and children all over the world." When women's health advocates and others asked for details, Harper was vague, hiding behind his usual doublespeak. Canadian maternal health policy now denies funding for abortion services in the developing world, despite the deaths and injuries caused by the lack of such services. In September, 2012, the House of Commons voted on Con MP Stephen Woodworth's private member's motion to study whether a foetus should have legal rights before birth. Ten Con cabinet ministers, including Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose, voted for this. In December, 2012, Con MP Mark Warawa introduced a motion regarding sex-selective abortions -- to "condemn discrimination against females occurring through sex-selective pregnancy termination," but later withdrew it. He claimed he wanted to defend human rights, but many saw it as another attempt to outlaw abortion.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
2013年7月24日星期三
Why The Mod Carousel Parody of “Blurred Lines” Works
I can’t get enough of this parody—I don’t even know if parody is the right word, because it doesn’t have the sort of nasty edge that you almost need to be a parody—of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” done by Mod Carousel, a Seattle-based boylesque group. The video takes the immediately-infamous “nude women/clothed men” original video and gender reverses it, but not in a tit-for-tat way so much as a very natural way that uses that actual signifiers of female power and sexualized male bodies. Just watch!
What struck me as so wonderful about this video is that, unlike other attempts at exposing how routinely women are objectified by casting men in their roles, the men in this piece are fully committed to being sexy, when usually in stuff like this, the men are subtly mocking the idea that men can be sex objects at all. Most of the time, when men agree to pose in classically “objectified” poses, they’re winking at the camera, using irony to give themselves distance from actually having to live in a traditionally woman’s space. None of these guys give off a “me so silly!” vibe that undercuts what this work is trying to do.
Take, for instance, this project of putting men in classic pin-up poses. I supported it, because it does a pretty good job of showing how silly the whole thing is, but one thing I don’t like is that the men go out of their way to not look sexy at all. Example.Wearing more clothes than a woman would, and way too much ironic distance. This image, while it drives home the silliness of pin-ups, also evades the real issue, which is why the only gender we consider “sexy” is women. After all, the original artists knew their poses were silly, but didn’t much care—the silliness was supposed to make the sexiness seem light-hearted. While it’s certainly possible to be sexy without being objectified, what I find so interesting about this is that the images don’t touch either possibility with a ten-foot pole. These images only work if you sort of think that men can’t be sexy, and that saying otherwise cannot be anything other than a joke.
But as the above video demonstrates, that’s not true at all. Not only are the men stripped down to thongs and wearing make-up, but they are striking all the pouty-sexy poses of the interchangeable naked women of the original video and it’s sexy. They’re not mocking the possibility that men could be, like women, visually stimulating at all. They’re owning it, and proving that it’s totally possible. And that’s way more uncomfortable and thought-provoking than dudes mocking the very idea that men could ever be looked at like women routinely are.
It’s more fun, too, because it’s hot. I saw a lot of people complaining that the men in this video are gay, which I found to be a very telling thing to say. It shows that our conception of heterosexual masculinity is that of the one who gets to do the Indoor Positioning System, and is never the one looked at—so much so that if you actually look at a man, that makes him culturally “gay”, regardless of his actual sexual orientation. We don’t actually have that information watching the video, but people seemed rock solid certain—that’s how sure we are that no straight man would don lipstick and stick his ass in the air to be admired.
I’m the first to admit that these men probably are all gay, but that only reinforces the deeply uncomfortable point they’re making, even while being sexy and having a ton of fun doing it: That sexiness is considered strictly for the male gaze in our culture. So much so that the only men who are “allowed” to pose, pout, and strip down for the viewing pleasure of others are doing it for other men. So we can comfort ourselves by saying these men are gay, knowing that straight men are still completely off-limits for being looked at, right?
Except of course that women are actually in the video, and they are actually looking and touching. Since the men in the video are being deliberately objectified—like the women in the original Robin Thicke video—their sexual orientation doesn’t matter. Objects don’t have orientations; they are there for the pleasure of the person looking and touching. The women, in this gender reversal, get to decide if or if you don’t “want it” or define if you are or are not a “good boy”. That’s the point! And I think they make it very, very well. While having fun with it.
Damascus has requested the U.N. investigate only one of the reported attacks — a March 19 incident in the northern village of Khan al-Assal in which both rebels and the government accuse each other of using chemicals weapons — but refused inquiries into other alleged attack sites in the central city of Homs, Damascus and elsewhere.The U.S. and U.N. officials have called on Assad’s regime to grant the United Nations team unfettered access to investigate all allegations of possible chemical weapon use.
Swedish chemical weapons expert Ake Sellstrom and U.N. disarmament chief Angela Kane arrived from neighbouring Lebanon for a two day visit, during which they are to meet with senior Syrian officials, the U.N. said in a brief statement issued in the Syrian capital.The Assad regime is said to have one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical weapons, including the mustard gas and the nerve agent sarin.There are concerns that Assad might use them on a large scale, transfer some of them to the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group or that the chemical agents could fall into the hands of al-Qaida militants and other extremists among the rebels.
“There is a growing body of limited but persuasive information showing that the regime has used and continues to use chemical weapons, including sarin,” said British U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant.
Russia, Syria’s close ally, has called the chemical weapons allegations against Assad’s regime groundless, claiming Russian experts determined that Syrian rebels made sarin nerve gas and used it in the Khan al-Assal attack, in which 31 people died.
What struck me as so wonderful about this video is that, unlike other attempts at exposing how routinely women are objectified by casting men in their roles, the men in this piece are fully committed to being sexy, when usually in stuff like this, the men are subtly mocking the idea that men can be sex objects at all. Most of the time, when men agree to pose in classically “objectified” poses, they’re winking at the camera, using irony to give themselves distance from actually having to live in a traditionally woman’s space. None of these guys give off a “me so silly!” vibe that undercuts what this work is trying to do.
Take, for instance, this project of putting men in classic pin-up poses. I supported it, because it does a pretty good job of showing how silly the whole thing is, but one thing I don’t like is that the men go out of their way to not look sexy at all. Example.Wearing more clothes than a woman would, and way too much ironic distance. This image, while it drives home the silliness of pin-ups, also evades the real issue, which is why the only gender we consider “sexy” is women. After all, the original artists knew their poses were silly, but didn’t much care—the silliness was supposed to make the sexiness seem light-hearted. While it’s certainly possible to be sexy without being objectified, what I find so interesting about this is that the images don’t touch either possibility with a ten-foot pole. These images only work if you sort of think that men can’t be sexy, and that saying otherwise cannot be anything other than a joke.
But as the above video demonstrates, that’s not true at all. Not only are the men stripped down to thongs and wearing make-up, but they are striking all the pouty-sexy poses of the interchangeable naked women of the original video and it’s sexy. They’re not mocking the possibility that men could be, like women, visually stimulating at all. They’re owning it, and proving that it’s totally possible. And that’s way more uncomfortable and thought-provoking than dudes mocking the very idea that men could ever be looked at like women routinely are.
It’s more fun, too, because it’s hot. I saw a lot of people complaining that the men in this video are gay, which I found to be a very telling thing to say. It shows that our conception of heterosexual masculinity is that of the one who gets to do the Indoor Positioning System, and is never the one looked at—so much so that if you actually look at a man, that makes him culturally “gay”, regardless of his actual sexual orientation. We don’t actually have that information watching the video, but people seemed rock solid certain—that’s how sure we are that no straight man would don lipstick and stick his ass in the air to be admired.
I’m the first to admit that these men probably are all gay, but that only reinforces the deeply uncomfortable point they’re making, even while being sexy and having a ton of fun doing it: That sexiness is considered strictly for the male gaze in our culture. So much so that the only men who are “allowed” to pose, pout, and strip down for the viewing pleasure of others are doing it for other men. So we can comfort ourselves by saying these men are gay, knowing that straight men are still completely off-limits for being looked at, right?
Except of course that women are actually in the video, and they are actually looking and touching. Since the men in the video are being deliberately objectified—like the women in the original Robin Thicke video—their sexual orientation doesn’t matter. Objects don’t have orientations; they are there for the pleasure of the person looking and touching. The women, in this gender reversal, get to decide if or if you don’t “want it” or define if you are or are not a “good boy”. That’s the point! And I think they make it very, very well. While having fun with it.
Damascus has requested the U.N. investigate only one of the reported attacks — a March 19 incident in the northern village of Khan al-Assal in which both rebels and the government accuse each other of using chemicals weapons — but refused inquiries into other alleged attack sites in the central city of Homs, Damascus and elsewhere.The U.S. and U.N. officials have called on Assad’s regime to grant the United Nations team unfettered access to investigate all allegations of possible chemical weapon use.
Swedish chemical weapons expert Ake Sellstrom and U.N. disarmament chief Angela Kane arrived from neighbouring Lebanon for a two day visit, during which they are to meet with senior Syrian officials, the U.N. said in a brief statement issued in the Syrian capital.The Assad regime is said to have one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical weapons, including the mustard gas and the nerve agent sarin.There are concerns that Assad might use them on a large scale, transfer some of them to the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group or that the chemical agents could fall into the hands of al-Qaida militants and other extremists among the rebels.
“There is a growing body of limited but persuasive information showing that the regime has used and continues to use chemical weapons, including sarin,” said British U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant.
Russia, Syria’s close ally, has called the chemical weapons allegations against Assad’s regime groundless, claiming Russian experts determined that Syrian rebels made sarin nerve gas and used it in the Khan al-Assal attack, in which 31 people died.
Chips from around the world
When I started playing live poker (at the first ever poker club in Yekaterinburg), I decided to also start collecting chips from different clubs. I wanted to raid a lot of casinos during my planned Vegas trip and to have at least one chip from each one.Recently, when I was showing my collection to my friends, it flashed into my mind that every chip has some sort of emotion or a story connected to it. I've decided to share them with you.
The first chips in my collection were obtained from Yekaterinburg clubs. In the picture above, the left green chip belonged to the first ever poker club that was opened in our city, which was called Nevada. I remember my wife and I going over there for the opening ceremony. The club only had three tables to play on and the welcome shootout freeroll with around $3,300 guaranteed gathered more than 100 participants. Turned out I had to wait three hours to get my chance to play a Sit & Go with a chance to enter the final table.
The only disappointing moment that I have when reminiscing about those times is that I had talked everyone's ear off about how profitable opening a poker club would be half-a-year prior to Nevada opening its doors. The sad thing was I only played NL50 at the time and didn't have the bankroll to start a club on my own. The ones that had more funds caught a wave and still do live off of that pretty well.My first poker tourney series and also my first trip abroad without my wife (girlfriend at the time). Even though I apparently had a doomswitch activated against me throughout the Hands free access, it didn't prevent me from immersing into the exciting atmosphere of tournament poker. So I decided not to quit it after the first try.
I recall a moment from the Red Sea Poker Cup when my friend and I, along with 30 other people, were rooting for the Russian businessman who was called 'Uncle Misha'. You could smell he was a fish from a kilometer away, yet he managed to take down the €300 turbo, winning €8,000 for 1st place. I felt as full with ardour and excitement as when I was rooting for Russia against Netherlands in the quarter-finals of Euro 2008. The famous line from a WSOP commercial, 'This is beyond fairytale, it's inconceivable' (referring to Moneymaker in the 2003 Main Event), would have gained some new meaning for you if you had seen this final table. 'Uncle Misha' literally steamrolled his opponents, winning ridiculous ALLYMs, as Misha pronounced it, with almost every hand (like 95s, for instance).
Actually, it turned out that rooting for someone else playing poker is a lot of fun, even if you don't have a piece! During the same series, PokerStars Pro Max 'decay' Lykov took down the HighRoller event after playing heads-up versus some cocky guy who refused Max's offer of a deal only because the deal included playing for the actual trophy after the split and not automatically giving that trophy to the guy (who had more chips at the time). All in all, it ended up being a swarm of Russians, including me, who cheerfully witnessed Max slowly taking down the villain and, subsequently, a trophy. Oh, and a small bonus of the €50,000 prize, of course.
Even my hometown, with 150,000 citizens, had its own poker club! It was located in a bowling centre, so I've visited it a couple of times. Can't really say that the overall 'score' was positive for me there. I blame it on my luck in that specific place. One time I had to desperately go to the other side of the city to get some more cash from an ATM after I was outdrawn by a 20% hand. The table was too much of an aquarium to leave early. I ended up insta-losing half of my buy-in though.
It was also my first time, and the only time so far, when I got slowrolled at showdown. At the time I had no idea that it was frowned upon, so I didn't even tell the guy off. He smirked and turned over one card for a pair with a board card - 'will that do?' - waited for me to turn over my aces, and then proceeded to turn the other card over to reveal a set.I visited Prague when it held the EMOP series - I skipped the tourneys and focused on playing cash. The only memorable thing was the procedure of gaining access to the indoor Tracking. My wife and I had our driver's licenses photocopies, and our cameras taken away. They then took our photo's before allowing us to proceed to the tables.
Very pleasant memories arise when I think of Monte Carlo. It was my first tourney where I made a solid amount of cash and I didn't share the buy-in with (almost) anyone. It was my first experience of playing the pre-final stages of a big tourney where you're only a few hands away from that pile of cash for the top places and, simultaneously, still such a long way away.It also was my first time busting out Greg Raymer and getting a fossil from him. A short time later, in Las Vegas, I added another one to my collection. I was also given a PokerStars card protector in Monte Carlo, which I used during the WSOP.
Wizard Wars was first announced in March of this year and was in part a response to the Magicka community's interest in a more flesh-out PvP game. The original Magicka shipped with a single-player mode where players played through a campaign with a detailed storyline. A PvP mode was later added. The response to the PvP mode was overwhelming, with some players spending more time in competitive multiplayer than in the single-player campaign. There was a problem, though — the PvP mode, by Paradox's own admission — was not very good.
The first chips in my collection were obtained from Yekaterinburg clubs. In the picture above, the left green chip belonged to the first ever poker club that was opened in our city, which was called Nevada. I remember my wife and I going over there for the opening ceremony. The club only had three tables to play on and the welcome shootout freeroll with around $3,300 guaranteed gathered more than 100 participants. Turned out I had to wait three hours to get my chance to play a Sit & Go with a chance to enter the final table.
The only disappointing moment that I have when reminiscing about those times is that I had talked everyone's ear off about how profitable opening a poker club would be half-a-year prior to Nevada opening its doors. The sad thing was I only played NL50 at the time and didn't have the bankroll to start a club on my own. The ones that had more funds caught a wave and still do live off of that pretty well.My first poker tourney series and also my first trip abroad without my wife (girlfriend at the time). Even though I apparently had a doomswitch activated against me throughout the Hands free access, it didn't prevent me from immersing into the exciting atmosphere of tournament poker. So I decided not to quit it after the first try.
I recall a moment from the Red Sea Poker Cup when my friend and I, along with 30 other people, were rooting for the Russian businessman who was called 'Uncle Misha'. You could smell he was a fish from a kilometer away, yet he managed to take down the €300 turbo, winning €8,000 for 1st place. I felt as full with ardour and excitement as when I was rooting for Russia against Netherlands in the quarter-finals of Euro 2008. The famous line from a WSOP commercial, 'This is beyond fairytale, it's inconceivable' (referring to Moneymaker in the 2003 Main Event), would have gained some new meaning for you if you had seen this final table. 'Uncle Misha' literally steamrolled his opponents, winning ridiculous ALLYMs, as Misha pronounced it, with almost every hand (like 95s, for instance).
Actually, it turned out that rooting for someone else playing poker is a lot of fun, even if you don't have a piece! During the same series, PokerStars Pro Max 'decay' Lykov took down the HighRoller event after playing heads-up versus some cocky guy who refused Max's offer of a deal only because the deal included playing for the actual trophy after the split and not automatically giving that trophy to the guy (who had more chips at the time). All in all, it ended up being a swarm of Russians, including me, who cheerfully witnessed Max slowly taking down the villain and, subsequently, a trophy. Oh, and a small bonus of the €50,000 prize, of course.
Even my hometown, with 150,000 citizens, had its own poker club! It was located in a bowling centre, so I've visited it a couple of times. Can't really say that the overall 'score' was positive for me there. I blame it on my luck in that specific place. One time I had to desperately go to the other side of the city to get some more cash from an ATM after I was outdrawn by a 20% hand. The table was too much of an aquarium to leave early. I ended up insta-losing half of my buy-in though.
It was also my first time, and the only time so far, when I got slowrolled at showdown. At the time I had no idea that it was frowned upon, so I didn't even tell the guy off. He smirked and turned over one card for a pair with a board card - 'will that do?' - waited for me to turn over my aces, and then proceeded to turn the other card over to reveal a set.I visited Prague when it held the EMOP series - I skipped the tourneys and focused on playing cash. The only memorable thing was the procedure of gaining access to the indoor Tracking. My wife and I had our driver's licenses photocopies, and our cameras taken away. They then took our photo's before allowing us to proceed to the tables.
Very pleasant memories arise when I think of Monte Carlo. It was my first tourney where I made a solid amount of cash and I didn't share the buy-in with (almost) anyone. It was my first experience of playing the pre-final stages of a big tourney where you're only a few hands away from that pile of cash for the top places and, simultaneously, still such a long way away.It also was my first time busting out Greg Raymer and getting a fossil from him. A short time later, in Las Vegas, I added another one to my collection. I was also given a PokerStars card protector in Monte Carlo, which I used during the WSOP.
Wizard Wars was first announced in March of this year and was in part a response to the Magicka community's interest in a more flesh-out PvP game. The original Magicka shipped with a single-player mode where players played through a campaign with a detailed storyline. A PvP mode was later added. The response to the PvP mode was overwhelming, with some players spending more time in competitive multiplayer than in the single-player campaign. There was a problem, though — the PvP mode, by Paradox's own admission — was not very good.
2013年7月22日星期一
SEC Tries Last Ditch Move
In the end, billionaire Steven Cohen, one of the most successful hedge-fund managers of his generation, could end up getting banned from the business he dominated for an error of omission, not commission.
In an administrative action that constitutes its first formal salvo against Cohen, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleged he failed to supervise two wayward portfolio managers and ignored “red flags.” The agency stops short of accusing the owner of SAC Capital Advisors LP of insider trading. While the proceeding may result in his being barred from managing other people’s money, it won’t carry the potential penalties available if the SEC had sued him. It also pales in comparison to a grand jury indictment for securities fraud, and the 20 year prison term a conviction could bring.
Instead, the SEC claim that Cohen should have known two of his subordinates were using material, non-public information to rack up hundreds of millions of dollars in trading profits will be easier to prove. The regulator will have a lesser burden of proof and won’t have to deal with all of the protections afforded a defendant in a lawsuit, real time Location system.
“They are using an Al Capone-style tactic,” said John Coffee of Columbia Law School, referring to the prosecution of the Chicago gangster in 1931 on charges of tax evasion. “The SEC is aiming at his kneecaps, not his jugular,” he said. “This is a little like catching John Dillinger entering a bank with a submachine gun and charging him with double parking.”
The SEC, which seeks to ban Cohen from the financial industry for life in the non-court action, alleged he received “highly suspicious” information that should have caused any reasonable hedge-fund manager to investigate the basis for trades by subordinates Mathew Martoma and Michael Steinberg.
Cohen may find some guidance in how to respond to the agency from Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director charged in the Galleon Group LLC insider trading probe.
Gupta sued the SEC after it filed an administrative action against him, saying he wanted the SEC to sue him so he could fairly defend himself. After both sides dropped their actions, agreeing any SEC matter would be in a federal court, Gupta was indicted by a federal grand jury. The SEC sued him, too.An SEC administrative proceeding is held before an administrative law judge, not a U.S. district judge or federal jury. The administrative law judge, in Washington, will hear testimony and issue a determination, without a jury present, said Tom Gorman, a former lawyer with the SEC’s Enforcement Division who is now in private practice.
After the administrative judge issues a ruling, the SEC makes the final determination, evaluating the facts supporting the allegations. Cohen may appeal to the federal appeals court in Washington, which handles such regulatory matters.But unlike if he were sued by the agency, Cohen won’t be entitled to evidence collected by the government, a distinct advantage if its only goal is to put him out of business.
SAC spokesman Jonathan Gasthalter has said the agency’s action against Cohen “has no merit.” Kevin Callahan, a spokesman for the SEC, didn’t return calls seeking comment. The administrative law judge will rule “no later than 300 days” from the date which the order was served, the agency said.SAC oversees $15 billion, about 60 percent of which is money from Cohen and rtls. Cohen, whose net worth is estimated at about $9 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has returned 25 percent a year in his funds since founding his firm in 1992, after taking half of the profits in fees, a record unsurpassed by other equity hedge-fund managers.
Both men, who were also sued by the SEC for insider trading, have pleaded not guilty in the criminal cases brought by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and are scheduled to go to trial separately in November.
Regulators alleged Cohen, 57, ignored the suspicious actions of his subordinates and signs that pointed to malfeasance, in a failure to properly supervise that allowed the alleged illegal trades to take place.
In the administrative action, the agency for the first time described Cohen’s alleged personal involvement in trading activities with the two subordinates, including a claim that Cohen sold off hundreds of thousands of shares of Dell in August 2008. The SEC said the sale came after Steinberg sent Cohen an e-mail that the U.S. alleged included nonpublic information about the company’s disappointing earnings set to be reported days later.
The agency doesn’t allege that Cohen knew that the information was illegal, a prerequisite to any prosecution of Cohen for insider trading. Instead, the SEC said he failed to supervise the men after receiving information that should have caused a “reasonable” hedge fund manager to investigate the basis for the trades.
The nature of the agency’s action against Cohen, in effect a disciplinary action that occurs internally, caught many by surprise, since it comes after years of scrutiny by federal authorities, both civil and criminal.
The government’s six-year insider-trading crackdown on fund managers, analysts and insiders at technology companies has resulted in charges against more than 80 people and convictions against 73 people.Prior to last week’s filing, the government’s major actions against alleged inside traders and their associates have largely been tandem federal enforcement efforts -- pairing simultaneous charges by Bharara’s office with a lawsuit by the SEC.
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal, citing unidentified sources, claimed federal prosecutors had concluded they didn’t have enough evidence to charge Cohen by the end of this month for crimes related to Martoma’s tips.
“This matter has been investigated for months,” said Tom Gorman, a former lawyer with the SEC’s enforcement division, now a partner at Dorsey & Whitney LLP in Washington. “Clearly the SEC does not have the facts to bring an insider trading case or they would have brought it.”Gorman said the SEC’s action was based on two criminal insider-trading cases that have yet to go to trial. Should either Martoma or Steinberg be acquitted, it could damage the SEC’s proceeding, he said.
While he wouldn’t address the Cohen case specifically, Bharara took the unusual step in a speech last week of pointing out that prosecutors have other statutes, including conspiracy, that can push back any statute of limitations deadlines.
In an administrative action that constitutes its first formal salvo against Cohen, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleged he failed to supervise two wayward portfolio managers and ignored “red flags.” The agency stops short of accusing the owner of SAC Capital Advisors LP of insider trading. While the proceeding may result in his being barred from managing other people’s money, it won’t carry the potential penalties available if the SEC had sued him. It also pales in comparison to a grand jury indictment for securities fraud, and the 20 year prison term a conviction could bring.
Instead, the SEC claim that Cohen should have known two of his subordinates were using material, non-public information to rack up hundreds of millions of dollars in trading profits will be easier to prove. The regulator will have a lesser burden of proof and won’t have to deal with all of the protections afforded a defendant in a lawsuit, real time Location system.
“They are using an Al Capone-style tactic,” said John Coffee of Columbia Law School, referring to the prosecution of the Chicago gangster in 1931 on charges of tax evasion. “The SEC is aiming at his kneecaps, not his jugular,” he said. “This is a little like catching John Dillinger entering a bank with a submachine gun and charging him with double parking.”
The SEC, which seeks to ban Cohen from the financial industry for life in the non-court action, alleged he received “highly suspicious” information that should have caused any reasonable hedge-fund manager to investigate the basis for trades by subordinates Mathew Martoma and Michael Steinberg.
Cohen may find some guidance in how to respond to the agency from Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director charged in the Galleon Group LLC insider trading probe.
Gupta sued the SEC after it filed an administrative action against him, saying he wanted the SEC to sue him so he could fairly defend himself. After both sides dropped their actions, agreeing any SEC matter would be in a federal court, Gupta was indicted by a federal grand jury. The SEC sued him, too.An SEC administrative proceeding is held before an administrative law judge, not a U.S. district judge or federal jury. The administrative law judge, in Washington, will hear testimony and issue a determination, without a jury present, said Tom Gorman, a former lawyer with the SEC’s Enforcement Division who is now in private practice.
After the administrative judge issues a ruling, the SEC makes the final determination, evaluating the facts supporting the allegations. Cohen may appeal to the federal appeals court in Washington, which handles such regulatory matters.But unlike if he were sued by the agency, Cohen won’t be entitled to evidence collected by the government, a distinct advantage if its only goal is to put him out of business.
SAC spokesman Jonathan Gasthalter has said the agency’s action against Cohen “has no merit.” Kevin Callahan, a spokesman for the SEC, didn’t return calls seeking comment. The administrative law judge will rule “no later than 300 days” from the date which the order was served, the agency said.SAC oversees $15 billion, about 60 percent of which is money from Cohen and rtls. Cohen, whose net worth is estimated at about $9 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has returned 25 percent a year in his funds since founding his firm in 1992, after taking half of the profits in fees, a record unsurpassed by other equity hedge-fund managers.
Both men, who were also sued by the SEC for insider trading, have pleaded not guilty in the criminal cases brought by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and are scheduled to go to trial separately in November.
Regulators alleged Cohen, 57, ignored the suspicious actions of his subordinates and signs that pointed to malfeasance, in a failure to properly supervise that allowed the alleged illegal trades to take place.
In the administrative action, the agency for the first time described Cohen’s alleged personal involvement in trading activities with the two subordinates, including a claim that Cohen sold off hundreds of thousands of shares of Dell in August 2008. The SEC said the sale came after Steinberg sent Cohen an e-mail that the U.S. alleged included nonpublic information about the company’s disappointing earnings set to be reported days later.
The agency doesn’t allege that Cohen knew that the information was illegal, a prerequisite to any prosecution of Cohen for insider trading. Instead, the SEC said he failed to supervise the men after receiving information that should have caused a “reasonable” hedge fund manager to investigate the basis for the trades.
The nature of the agency’s action against Cohen, in effect a disciplinary action that occurs internally, caught many by surprise, since it comes after years of scrutiny by federal authorities, both civil and criminal.
The government’s six-year insider-trading crackdown on fund managers, analysts and insiders at technology companies has resulted in charges against more than 80 people and convictions against 73 people.Prior to last week’s filing, the government’s major actions against alleged inside traders and their associates have largely been tandem federal enforcement efforts -- pairing simultaneous charges by Bharara’s office with a lawsuit by the SEC.
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal, citing unidentified sources, claimed federal prosecutors had concluded they didn’t have enough evidence to charge Cohen by the end of this month for crimes related to Martoma’s tips.
“This matter has been investigated for months,” said Tom Gorman, a former lawyer with the SEC’s enforcement division, now a partner at Dorsey & Whitney LLP in Washington. “Clearly the SEC does not have the facts to bring an insider trading case or they would have brought it.”Gorman said the SEC’s action was based on two criminal insider-trading cases that have yet to go to trial. Should either Martoma or Steinberg be acquitted, it could damage the SEC’s proceeding, he said.
While he wouldn’t address the Cohen case specifically, Bharara took the unusual step in a speech last week of pointing out that prosecutors have other statutes, including conspiracy, that can push back any statute of limitations deadlines.
Democrats say Cuccinelli questions
Democrats have been flipping through Republican gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli’s book "The Last Line of Defense" in a bid to paint him as conservative extremist.The latest citation from the 2013 book comes from the Democratic Party of Virginia, which is airing a TV ad with Peggy Borgard, a Henrico County senior citizen, criticizing Cuccinelli’s views on entitlement programs.
"In his book, Cuccinelli questions whether Medicare and Social Security should exist and said people are dependent on government," Borgard says.It seemed remarkable that any candidate would start an election year by writing a book questioning propriety of popular entitlement programs for senior citizens. That goes double for a gubernatorial candidate who, if elected, would have no influence over how the federal government runs Medicare and Social Security. So we looked into the Democrat’s claim.
On screen, the ad cites as its source page 62 of the book. At the bottom of that page is a passage that has been a lightning rod for Democrats."Sometimes bad politicians set out to grow government in order to increase their own power and influence," Cuccinelli wrote. This phenomenon doesn’t just happen in Washington; it happens at all levels of government. The amazing thing is that they often grow government without protest from citizens, and sometimes they even get buy-in from citizens -- at least from the ones getting the Hands free access."
"One of their favorite ways to increase their power is by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security and outright welfare (Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing and the like). These programs make people dependent on government. And once people are dependent, they feel they can’t afford to have the programs taken away, no matter how inefficient, poorly run or costly to the rest of society."That’s certainly not a ringing endorsement of the entitlement programs, which the Republican said are a tool leveraged by politicians to hold on to power.
But does that mean Cuccinelli questions whether those entitlements should exist at all?Cuccinelli answered that question on pages 237 and 238, as first noted by our colleagues at FactCheck.org. Cuccinelli wrote that government spends little on investments that result in economic growth, noting that Social Security, Medicare and defense spending amounted to more than half of the federal budget in 2011.
"There is no monetary return on these investments in any traditional business sense (that is, one invests money with a goal of getting a return in the form of interest, income or appreciation in value), although there are obviously other reasons America spends money on these programs," Cuccinelli wrote. "I’m not questioning here the existence of these programs nor the wisdom of how much money is spent on them. What I’m trying to illustrate is that most dollars that government spends do not create economic growth, but instead take money out of the hands of the people who do create economic growth." "On page 62 in the book he describes Social Security and Medicare as created by ‘bad politicians’ who ‘set out to grow government in order to increase their own power and influence,’" Coy wrote in an e-mail. "That statement clearly questions the foundations of those programs - why would he say they’re a big government ploy by bad politicians without questioning their existence?"
Coy also defended the statement by pointing to a Cuccinelli interview with Politichicks.tv at a 2012 Tea Party rally. Cuccinelli said, "We have had one answer in federal government to every challenge in health care for 47 years, and that’s more government. It goes back to the beginning of Medicaid, Medicare and as Dr. Phil would say ‘How’s that working out for ya?’ We need to go the other way. We need to move back toward the free market."The Fact Checker at The Washington Post recently gave the ad three out of four possible Pinocchios, saying "while it is fair to say that Cuccinelli is skeptical of government-run social programs" and that he prefers free market solutions as part of any overhaul of those entitlements, that doesn’t mean he thinks that the programs should not exist.
Cuccinelli gave the Democrats a tiny opening in writing that "bad politicians" have "tried to increase their power by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security" that make people "dependent on government."But ad goes overboard because it suggests Cuccinelli is questioning whether the entitlements should exist today and in the future. Cuccinelli specifically wrote in his book, "I am not questioning the existence of these programs, nor how much is spent on them."
Leap Motion launched its groundbreaking motion detection module on Monday, allowing anyone to connect a little box to their Mac or Windows computer that can detect gestures more precisely than Microsoft Kinect can, for a mere $80. Eventually, Leap Motion technology will be integrated into computers, so you won’t even need to buy a separate box in order to wave your hands in the air to select, control, create, and interact with music.
Minutes ago, the Leap Motion AirSpace Store appeared on the web; those with a Leap Motion Controller can access it from their computers, too. Developers are encouraged to submit their apps and ideas, and they appear to be excited about the possibilities of this promising new app platform, which threatens to free music apps from smartphones and computers, at least partially.
“We are thrilled to be among the first developers releasing apps for Leap Motion, and I believe strongly that, in the future, gesture may dominate human-computer interaction,” emailed Snibbe Studios founder and CEO Scott Snibbe. “It’’s what people are calling ‘‘Natural User Interface,’’ because we’’re now communicating with the computer the same way that we communicate with other human beings.”
Because of the special needs of photos, the placeholder for this type of file is a bit different. “When you flip through photos, [Windows] downloads large thumbnail images instead of the actual files. And [Windows] pre-fetches thumbnails to enable fast scrolling. It’s only when you want to edit a photo that [Windows] downloads the full file to the local disk.”
I noted previously that you could right-click on SkyDrive-based files and folders from File Explorer and choose “Make available offline” from the pop-up menu that appears. But this works from the SkyDrive app too, so tablet users and others that wish to avoid the desktop never need to leave Metro to access this functionality.
Also, Windows “always marks files for offline access if you’ve opened or edited them on this device before. [Windows does] that because most people tend to open the same files they recently opened, but the files they open often vary across different devices – so [it] remembers those files and makes this unique to the device you’re using.” You can also choose to have your entire SkyDrive available for offline access, of course.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
"In his book, Cuccinelli questions whether Medicare and Social Security should exist and said people are dependent on government," Borgard says.It seemed remarkable that any candidate would start an election year by writing a book questioning propriety of popular entitlement programs for senior citizens. That goes double for a gubernatorial candidate who, if elected, would have no influence over how the federal government runs Medicare and Social Security. So we looked into the Democrat’s claim.
On screen, the ad cites as its source page 62 of the book. At the bottom of that page is a passage that has been a lightning rod for Democrats."Sometimes bad politicians set out to grow government in order to increase their own power and influence," Cuccinelli wrote. This phenomenon doesn’t just happen in Washington; it happens at all levels of government. The amazing thing is that they often grow government without protest from citizens, and sometimes they even get buy-in from citizens -- at least from the ones getting the Hands free access."
"One of their favorite ways to increase their power is by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security and outright welfare (Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing and the like). These programs make people dependent on government. And once people are dependent, they feel they can’t afford to have the programs taken away, no matter how inefficient, poorly run or costly to the rest of society."That’s certainly not a ringing endorsement of the entitlement programs, which the Republican said are a tool leveraged by politicians to hold on to power.
But does that mean Cuccinelli questions whether those entitlements should exist at all?Cuccinelli answered that question on pages 237 and 238, as first noted by our colleagues at FactCheck.org. Cuccinelli wrote that government spends little on investments that result in economic growth, noting that Social Security, Medicare and defense spending amounted to more than half of the federal budget in 2011.
"There is no monetary return on these investments in any traditional business sense (that is, one invests money with a goal of getting a return in the form of interest, income or appreciation in value), although there are obviously other reasons America spends money on these programs," Cuccinelli wrote. "I’m not questioning here the existence of these programs nor the wisdom of how much money is spent on them. What I’m trying to illustrate is that most dollars that government spends do not create economic growth, but instead take money out of the hands of the people who do create economic growth." "On page 62 in the book he describes Social Security and Medicare as created by ‘bad politicians’ who ‘set out to grow government in order to increase their own power and influence,’" Coy wrote in an e-mail. "That statement clearly questions the foundations of those programs - why would he say they’re a big government ploy by bad politicians without questioning their existence?"
Coy also defended the statement by pointing to a Cuccinelli interview with Politichicks.tv at a 2012 Tea Party rally. Cuccinelli said, "We have had one answer in federal government to every challenge in health care for 47 years, and that’s more government. It goes back to the beginning of Medicaid, Medicare and as Dr. Phil would say ‘How’s that working out for ya?’ We need to go the other way. We need to move back toward the free market."The Fact Checker at The Washington Post recently gave the ad three out of four possible Pinocchios, saying "while it is fair to say that Cuccinelli is skeptical of government-run social programs" and that he prefers free market solutions as part of any overhaul of those entitlements, that doesn’t mean he thinks that the programs should not exist.
Cuccinelli gave the Democrats a tiny opening in writing that "bad politicians" have "tried to increase their power by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security" that make people "dependent on government."But ad goes overboard because it suggests Cuccinelli is questioning whether the entitlements should exist today and in the future. Cuccinelli specifically wrote in his book, "I am not questioning the existence of these programs, nor how much is spent on them."
Leap Motion launched its groundbreaking motion detection module on Monday, allowing anyone to connect a little box to their Mac or Windows computer that can detect gestures more precisely than Microsoft Kinect can, for a mere $80. Eventually, Leap Motion technology will be integrated into computers, so you won’t even need to buy a separate box in order to wave your hands in the air to select, control, create, and interact with music.
Minutes ago, the Leap Motion AirSpace Store appeared on the web; those with a Leap Motion Controller can access it from their computers, too. Developers are encouraged to submit their apps and ideas, and they appear to be excited about the possibilities of this promising new app platform, which threatens to free music apps from smartphones and computers, at least partially.
“We are thrilled to be among the first developers releasing apps for Leap Motion, and I believe strongly that, in the future, gesture may dominate human-computer interaction,” emailed Snibbe Studios founder and CEO Scott Snibbe. “It’’s what people are calling ‘‘Natural User Interface,’’ because we’’re now communicating with the computer the same way that we communicate with other human beings.”
Because of the special needs of photos, the placeholder for this type of file is a bit different. “When you flip through photos, [Windows] downloads large thumbnail images instead of the actual files. And [Windows] pre-fetches thumbnails to enable fast scrolling. It’s only when you want to edit a photo that [Windows] downloads the full file to the local disk.”
I noted previously that you could right-click on SkyDrive-based files and folders from File Explorer and choose “Make available offline” from the pop-up menu that appears. But this works from the SkyDrive app too, so tablet users and others that wish to avoid the desktop never need to leave Metro to access this functionality.
Also, Windows “always marks files for offline access if you’ve opened or edited them on this device before. [Windows does] that because most people tend to open the same files they recently opened, but the files they open often vary across different devices – so [it] remembers those files and makes this unique to the device you’re using.” You can also choose to have your entire SkyDrive available for offline access, of course.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
2013年7月18日星期四
Pushing the Right Buttons
Now, as Apple tries to reimagine television, it is taking the partnership route again, collaborating with distributors like Time Warner Cable and programmers like the Walt Disney Company on apps that might eliminate the unpleasant parts of TV watching, like bothersome set-top boxes or clunky remote controls.
Apple’s broader strategy — what its chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, recently called its “grand vision” for television — remains shrouded in secrecy, as everything Apple-related tends to be. Some analysts continue to predict, as they have for years, that the company will someday come out with a full-blown television set.
Whether or not an iTV ever materializes, the company’s more modest steps, like improving the $100 Apple TV box that 13 million households now have and adding access to cable channels through the box, suggest that its strategy stands in stark contrast to Google’s, which is contemplating an Internet cable service that would compete directly with distributors like Comcast and Time Warner Cable.
Reports emerged earlier this week that Google has held talks with several channel owners about licensing channels for such a service, but no content deals are within reach.Apple weighed something similar years ago, but its executives concluded that it should work with the industry’s powerful incumbents, rather than against them.
“Apple’s probably going to have greater access to content by deciding to cooperate,” said Natalie Clayton, who oversees digital video research for Frank N. Magid Associates.Case in point, Apple last month turned on HBO and ESPN apps for Apple TV owners, much to the delight of all involved. But those work only for people who have an existing cable or indoor positioning system.
Coming next is an app from Time Warner Cable, allowing some of the company’s 12 million subscribers to watch live and on-demand shows without a separate set-top box. The app will effectively add an Apple layer on top of the TV screen, providing what its proponents say is a programming guide that is far superior to anything offered by Time Warner.
Apple has talked in-depth with other big distributors about similar apps, according to people involved in the talks. Its intent is to collect a fee from distributors in exchange for enhancing their television service and in that way, theoretically, make subscribers more likely to keep paying for cable.“They’re trying to apply their software expertise, their user interface expertise,” one of the people said. (The people, both at distributors and programmers, insisted on anonymity because they said public comments would interfere with the private talks with Apple.)
Apple has sought support from programmers as well. It has proposed, for instance, an ad-skipping technology that would compensate networks for the skipped ads by charging users. While the idea is far-fetched, it intrigued some of the channel owners who were briefed about it and excited Apple followers when it was first reported by the technology writer Jessica Lessin earlier this week.
For Apple, further moves into television could neutralize some of the skepticism about the company’s future since the death of Steve Jobs in 2011. Investor concerns that the company might not have another iPhone- or iPad-level innovation on the way have dragged down its stock price, which topped $700 for the first time last September, but has recently hovered closer to $400.
For the time being, Apple TV is a small part of its business — something best suited to “hobbyists,” as Mr. Cook put it at the D: All Things Digital conference in May. At that time, he hinted at the opportunity Apple saw in the living room, calling traditional TV watching “not an experience that I think many people love” and “too much like 10 or 20 years ago.”
It is easy to see how Apple could help. Products like Apple TV and Roku, which connect TVs to the Internet’s wealth of streaming content, have proliferated because the set-top boxes that cable companies supply have not kept up with shifts in consumer behavior. But the streaming boxes remain a somewhat niche technology.Apple could choose to market its box more heavily, especially as competition heats up from Amazon and other companies. Or it could eliminate the need for any box at all by building its own TV set. Reports this week that Apple may acquire PrimeSense, a maker of motion-sensing technology that could be used to control a TV without a physical remote, prompted a new round of guessing about that.
In Apple’s partnership approach, some see the company placing a multitude of bets, recognizing that television could evolve in any number of ways.Through Apple TV, it is simultaneously supporting established distributors and programmers as well as a parallel universe of streaming TV, as represented by Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.
Last month, in a little-noticed move, the company approved an app for Sky News, the British-based cable news channel. Sky could already be streamed live free on the Web, but by creating an app for Apple TV, the channel gained access to the television sets in 13 million homes without the need for complex negotiations with cable companies.
The Sky News app is free, but the software that powers it, from a company called 1 Mainstream, also allows for à la carte subscriptions.Asked about the implications of the app, Rajeev Raman, the chief executive of 1 Mainstream, said: “It’s a learning year for Apple. And it’s a learning year for all of us, to say, O.K., what really does work?”
In effect the app is a more direct route to consumers for Sky News. Bloomberg TV, already available on cable, tried something similar earlier this year by cutting a carriage deal with Aereo, the streaming service backed by Barry Diller. But Aereo is antagonistic toward networks and existing distributors; Apple, at least for now, is positioning itself as a friend.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Apple’s broader strategy — what its chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, recently called its “grand vision” for television — remains shrouded in secrecy, as everything Apple-related tends to be. Some analysts continue to predict, as they have for years, that the company will someday come out with a full-blown television set.
Whether or not an iTV ever materializes, the company’s more modest steps, like improving the $100 Apple TV box that 13 million households now have and adding access to cable channels through the box, suggest that its strategy stands in stark contrast to Google’s, which is contemplating an Internet cable service that would compete directly with distributors like Comcast and Time Warner Cable.
Reports emerged earlier this week that Google has held talks with several channel owners about licensing channels for such a service, but no content deals are within reach.Apple weighed something similar years ago, but its executives concluded that it should work with the industry’s powerful incumbents, rather than against them.
“Apple’s probably going to have greater access to content by deciding to cooperate,” said Natalie Clayton, who oversees digital video research for Frank N. Magid Associates.Case in point, Apple last month turned on HBO and ESPN apps for Apple TV owners, much to the delight of all involved. But those work only for people who have an existing cable or indoor positioning system.
Coming next is an app from Time Warner Cable, allowing some of the company’s 12 million subscribers to watch live and on-demand shows without a separate set-top box. The app will effectively add an Apple layer on top of the TV screen, providing what its proponents say is a programming guide that is far superior to anything offered by Time Warner.
Apple has talked in-depth with other big distributors about similar apps, according to people involved in the talks. Its intent is to collect a fee from distributors in exchange for enhancing their television service and in that way, theoretically, make subscribers more likely to keep paying for cable.“They’re trying to apply their software expertise, their user interface expertise,” one of the people said. (The people, both at distributors and programmers, insisted on anonymity because they said public comments would interfere with the private talks with Apple.)
Apple has sought support from programmers as well. It has proposed, for instance, an ad-skipping technology that would compensate networks for the skipped ads by charging users. While the idea is far-fetched, it intrigued some of the channel owners who were briefed about it and excited Apple followers when it was first reported by the technology writer Jessica Lessin earlier this week.
For Apple, further moves into television could neutralize some of the skepticism about the company’s future since the death of Steve Jobs in 2011. Investor concerns that the company might not have another iPhone- or iPad-level innovation on the way have dragged down its stock price, which topped $700 for the first time last September, but has recently hovered closer to $400.
For the time being, Apple TV is a small part of its business — something best suited to “hobbyists,” as Mr. Cook put it at the D: All Things Digital conference in May. At that time, he hinted at the opportunity Apple saw in the living room, calling traditional TV watching “not an experience that I think many people love” and “too much like 10 or 20 years ago.”
It is easy to see how Apple could help. Products like Apple TV and Roku, which connect TVs to the Internet’s wealth of streaming content, have proliferated because the set-top boxes that cable companies supply have not kept up with shifts in consumer behavior. But the streaming boxes remain a somewhat niche technology.Apple could choose to market its box more heavily, especially as competition heats up from Amazon and other companies. Or it could eliminate the need for any box at all by building its own TV set. Reports this week that Apple may acquire PrimeSense, a maker of motion-sensing technology that could be used to control a TV without a physical remote, prompted a new round of guessing about that.
In Apple’s partnership approach, some see the company placing a multitude of bets, recognizing that television could evolve in any number of ways.Through Apple TV, it is simultaneously supporting established distributors and programmers as well as a parallel universe of streaming TV, as represented by Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.
Last month, in a little-noticed move, the company approved an app for Sky News, the British-based cable news channel. Sky could already be streamed live free on the Web, but by creating an app for Apple TV, the channel gained access to the television sets in 13 million homes without the need for complex negotiations with cable companies.
The Sky News app is free, but the software that powers it, from a company called 1 Mainstream, also allows for à la carte subscriptions.Asked about the implications of the app, Rajeev Raman, the chief executive of 1 Mainstream, said: “It’s a learning year for Apple. And it’s a learning year for all of us, to say, O.K., what really does work?”
In effect the app is a more direct route to consumers for Sky News. Bloomberg TV, already available on cable, tried something similar earlier this year by cutting a carriage deal with Aereo, the streaming service backed by Barry Diller. But Aereo is antagonistic toward networks and existing distributors; Apple, at least for now, is positioning itself as a friend.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
When a drone won’t do, you’ll hire a ‘gargoyle’
The dirigibles were easy enough to avoid. Simply stepping out of the way of their ponderous arcs was enough. Clancy had no problem with that.The drones, on the other hand, were trickier. They made noise at least, their eight little rotors whirring and buzzing as they zipped in for close looks here and there. Every now and then one would circle Clancy for a bit.
It didn’t bother him really — they were usually just curious and then got back to their task. Every now and then a drone would get piloted by some obnoxious script kiddie and try to get in his way, and that was annoying.But Clancy had an insanely high personal rep score. As a gargoyle, a contractor paid to gather data on location in the real time Location system, having a high personal rep score brought a number of privileges.
For example, he was coded for free entry to nearly all properties on the market. And not just during open hours; he had access during all empty hours.Empty hours, when the normal occupants were away, was ideal time for gargoyles. Clancy’s sensors were acute, his microcell connection was direct line, and his server farm was robust. Merely passing through a room at normal walking speed was enough to gather all of the normal data a person might want.
Empty hours were also the times when the drones were released. Often in two flavors. The preprogrammed blimp variety lumbered on a preset path up near the ceiling. The drones were “piloted” remotely and could go most anywhere. Software boundaries kept them from colliding with things.
Clancy found the steps down to the infrastructure NID in the basement. His client was overseas. Most of his clients were. Even if they were Americans they were overseas working on something that required in-person meetings. And they often had very specific interests in the technical capabilities of a property before they would make an offer.
His clients had very specific needs so the blimp runs really wouldn’t give them anything they really needed. They also had limited access to technology, or limited time, so bumping around with a drone wasn’t a good use of their time. Finally, they usually lacked specific skills to identify the technology in place anyway.Clancy had skipped college. From his perspective, college was either a great four-year vacation for people who had too much money or — as several of his friends found out — an on-ramp to a contemporary form of indentured servitude.
Instead, he worked with his hands on tech hardware, did some building and printing of his own, and learned what he needed in the digital commons. Along the way he learned to read Korean, the intricacies of hardware interface theory, a great deal of math, and a few things about human nature that you don’t learn at a college keg party.He was, as his grandfather liked to jokingly say, a cyberpunk. But that was an old-world term. The modern name for what he did — watching, moving, collecting data for hire — was gargoyle.
It was a living, and he enjoyed it. Sure as hell beat paying student loans for an outdated degree in software engineering.Once inside the NID, Clancy began making the readings. He’d need to do some of this manually. His client, a finance consultant, was currently in Antwerp, and had limited electronics access. The client did, however, know quite a bit about network interfaces if the data he was seeking was any indicator.
The drone buzzed around his shoulder. Some desk jockey was trying to figure out what Clancy was up to.The annoyance was something he didn’t have to put up with — his high rep score gave him the ability to “shun” a drone, which is basically to set a perimeter of 10 meters between him and all drones.
But Clancy wasn’t going to bother with it. It would be an unnecessary jerk move. Why ding the drone pilot’s rep score because of curiosity? That’s all Clancy had when he started tinkering. He used his 3-D pen to mark out a spot where the drone could hover and see what was going on without getting in his way. The drone locked into it.
Data gathered, Clancy started for the steps and signaled a car. He made another pass through the kitchen to collect secondary assessment data. His client didn’t request it but he knew the guy was married and he figured a little bit of information about the human aspects of the house couldn’t hurt — appliance repair and usage history; agent-based simulations on two people working the kitchen simultaneously; food volume per time unit for big parties — that sort of thing.
The dossier for his client was already zapped across his microcell by the time Clancy crossed the lawn to the waiting car. Air conditioning steamed out of the seating pod into the hot night air.As he traveled back to his studio he began to think about some of the business offers he’d had over the years. Every now and then someone would try to recruit him to do exclusive work. Sometimes they’d even offer reasonable money.
But they never seemed to understand that what made him good at what he did was his freedom to tinker, to learn new things. If he’d signed up to only work real estate, for example, then he never would have learned the things this client had wanted.The day-jobbers were always short on vision as well, it seemed. Along with their exclusive focus they didn’t recognize any external value in what they were doing. They’d want to hire him and then essentially give away his services. It was as if they’d lived an entire life on checklists and scripts.
They wanted his rep score but they didn’t want to do what it took to get that rep score. You couldn’t buy that sort of thing anymore. You couldn’t have done it for the past few years. These guys were dinosaurs.For every gargoyle gig Clancy did, he had a minimum of two customers. The people who wanted to “bring him in on the ground floor” were never putting revenue chains like that together. Tonight’s run, for example, had the Antwerp client to initiate the project. But there were three other data services bidding for access to the night’s work.
Clancy already knew which one would win. In fact, he’d had a suspicion that the bidding process was just a ploy for the winning firm to test the resolve of their competitors.When his contact at the data service had confirmed that the bidding process itself was as valuable to her as the data Clancy gathered he almost fell in love. But she’d gone to college and didn’t come out with debt. And mixing in that world was more complicated than he needed.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
It didn’t bother him really — they were usually just curious and then got back to their task. Every now and then a drone would get piloted by some obnoxious script kiddie and try to get in his way, and that was annoying.But Clancy had an insanely high personal rep score. As a gargoyle, a contractor paid to gather data on location in the real time Location system, having a high personal rep score brought a number of privileges.
For example, he was coded for free entry to nearly all properties on the market. And not just during open hours; he had access during all empty hours.Empty hours, when the normal occupants were away, was ideal time for gargoyles. Clancy’s sensors were acute, his microcell connection was direct line, and his server farm was robust. Merely passing through a room at normal walking speed was enough to gather all of the normal data a person might want.
Empty hours were also the times when the drones were released. Often in two flavors. The preprogrammed blimp variety lumbered on a preset path up near the ceiling. The drones were “piloted” remotely and could go most anywhere. Software boundaries kept them from colliding with things.
Clancy found the steps down to the infrastructure NID in the basement. His client was overseas. Most of his clients were. Even if they were Americans they were overseas working on something that required in-person meetings. And they often had very specific interests in the technical capabilities of a property before they would make an offer.
His clients had very specific needs so the blimp runs really wouldn’t give them anything they really needed. They also had limited access to technology, or limited time, so bumping around with a drone wasn’t a good use of their time. Finally, they usually lacked specific skills to identify the technology in place anyway.Clancy had skipped college. From his perspective, college was either a great four-year vacation for people who had too much money or — as several of his friends found out — an on-ramp to a contemporary form of indentured servitude.
Instead, he worked with his hands on tech hardware, did some building and printing of his own, and learned what he needed in the digital commons. Along the way he learned to read Korean, the intricacies of hardware interface theory, a great deal of math, and a few things about human nature that you don’t learn at a college keg party.He was, as his grandfather liked to jokingly say, a cyberpunk. But that was an old-world term. The modern name for what he did — watching, moving, collecting data for hire — was gargoyle.
It was a living, and he enjoyed it. Sure as hell beat paying student loans for an outdated degree in software engineering.Once inside the NID, Clancy began making the readings. He’d need to do some of this manually. His client, a finance consultant, was currently in Antwerp, and had limited electronics access. The client did, however, know quite a bit about network interfaces if the data he was seeking was any indicator.
The drone buzzed around his shoulder. Some desk jockey was trying to figure out what Clancy was up to.The annoyance was something he didn’t have to put up with — his high rep score gave him the ability to “shun” a drone, which is basically to set a perimeter of 10 meters between him and all drones.
But Clancy wasn’t going to bother with it. It would be an unnecessary jerk move. Why ding the drone pilot’s rep score because of curiosity? That’s all Clancy had when he started tinkering. He used his 3-D pen to mark out a spot where the drone could hover and see what was going on without getting in his way. The drone locked into it.
Data gathered, Clancy started for the steps and signaled a car. He made another pass through the kitchen to collect secondary assessment data. His client didn’t request it but he knew the guy was married and he figured a little bit of information about the human aspects of the house couldn’t hurt — appliance repair and usage history; agent-based simulations on two people working the kitchen simultaneously; food volume per time unit for big parties — that sort of thing.
The dossier for his client was already zapped across his microcell by the time Clancy crossed the lawn to the waiting car. Air conditioning steamed out of the seating pod into the hot night air.As he traveled back to his studio he began to think about some of the business offers he’d had over the years. Every now and then someone would try to recruit him to do exclusive work. Sometimes they’d even offer reasonable money.
But they never seemed to understand that what made him good at what he did was his freedom to tinker, to learn new things. If he’d signed up to only work real estate, for example, then he never would have learned the things this client had wanted.The day-jobbers were always short on vision as well, it seemed. Along with their exclusive focus they didn’t recognize any external value in what they were doing. They’d want to hire him and then essentially give away his services. It was as if they’d lived an entire life on checklists and scripts.
They wanted his rep score but they didn’t want to do what it took to get that rep score. You couldn’t buy that sort of thing anymore. You couldn’t have done it for the past few years. These guys were dinosaurs.For every gargoyle gig Clancy did, he had a minimum of two customers. The people who wanted to “bring him in on the ground floor” were never putting revenue chains like that together. Tonight’s run, for example, had the Antwerp client to initiate the project. But there were three other data services bidding for access to the night’s work.
Clancy already knew which one would win. In fact, he’d had a suspicion that the bidding process was just a ploy for the winning firm to test the resolve of their competitors.When his contact at the data service had confirmed that the bidding process itself was as valuable to her as the data Clancy gathered he almost fell in love. But she’d gone to college and didn’t come out with debt. And mixing in that world was more complicated than he needed.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年7月16日星期二
It's Not About the Money
In announcing its final rule concerning the Affordable Care Act's guarantee of free access to birth control for all American women -- including the Catholics and non-Catholics who work in religiously sponsored schools, hospitals and social service agencies -- the Obama administration bent over backwards to accommodate the Church's concerns. The goal was to spare the Church fathers from the anguish of getting their pristine hands dirty by, as the Bishops charged, being forced to sell, buy or broker birth control coverage for women, including students. The final rule allows that either the insurance company used by the institution will have to pay for birth control -- or if the institution is self-insured, the plan administrator will have to provide or arrange payment -- with reimbursement coming through a series of convoluted steps.
In a repeat of the Church battle over the Affordable Care Act, Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association, last week publicly approved the administration's final rule, issuing an explanation for the Association's members about how to implement it. Not so, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The week before, its head, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, released his statement expressing dissatisfaction with the compromise, saying that the bishops are subjecting it to further "analysis," feel their "religious freedom" is still under threat, and plan to continue "defending our rights in Congress and in the real time Location system." Count on the 60-plus law suits by Catholic diocese and universities around the country, joined, with the bishops' blessing, by secular employers who also don't like birth control and want to exclude it from their insurance policies, proceeding apace.
It is maddening that the administration had to go to such extremes to placate the Church fathers, who dare to put "moral" and "money" as it applies to this deeply compromised institution in the same sentence. How pure, really, were the hands of the Church fathers who began decades ago to secretly spend millions of dollars in hush money to silence child victims of clergy rape and sodomy, and rid themselves of the evidence of their paternal crimes? Hush money that came from the faithful in the pews, who paid for all those ever-escalating insurance premiums, and from selling the churches and schools out from under those same working-class Catholics? The victims merited all the compensation they got and more, but the Church fathers literally stole that money from the Catholics they served and lied about it.
When the conniving churchmen realized how much money they had to lose by even these secret settlements, hiding the goods from the victims became the next best strategy. So how pure, really, are the hands of Cardinal Dolan, the leading voice claiming the moral high ground in the battle to keep any of the church coffers from supporting birth control for women? Files just released by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee turned up a letter showing that when Dolan served as the Archbishop of that diocese, he secretly and successfully, and even as the Archdiocese was preparing to file for bankruptcy, petitioned the Vatican to bury nearly $57 million in a cemetery trust fund in order to protect those assets "from legal claim and liability," aka, child abuse victim compensation. And this was on top of his paying off some priest child sex abusers $20,000 a piece to leave the priesthood, reportedly defended by Dolan in one case as "an act of charity," so that, irony of ironies, the priest "could pay for health insurance."
And how pure, really, are the hands of the Church fathers regarding money when we look at the shenanigans at the Vatican bank? Still laughably named the "Institute for the Works of Religion," the Vatican Bank is literally drowning in mounting accusations of money laundering and mobster connections. Most recently, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, an accountant for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which manages the Vatican's property and investments (and a Vatican account-holder himself), was arrested and charged with conspiring to transfer some $26 million from Switzerland to Italy to dole out to his rich friends.
Given this sad financial state of affairs, how does paying for a health-saving service like birth control for women become such a threat to Church fathers that they've made a major campaign out of it?
The bishops claim this mandate violates church teaching that artificial birth control is "intrinsically evil," despite the fact that nearly 100 percent of Catholics don't believe there is anything "intrinsically evil" about birth control and use it. They claim birth control is the same as abortion; it isn't. They claim to be protecting the institution's "conscience," thereby stepping all over Catholic Church teaching that defines conscience as "the most secret core and sanctuary" of a person, not an institution, and the Church not as the "men of God" but as "the people of God," which would seem to include women. They claim the money at issue is "their" money, when most employees contribute to their health insurance premiums so this is at base a labor issue. And their claim that birth control is not a "health" service, in the face of current scientific knowledge and medical opinion, is tantamount to insisting that the sun revolves around the Earth.
In other words, a woman should not have access to methods of artificial birth control, should be at the mercy of her husband and her biology, because then her husband is more likely to remain committed to her and to God and faithful to the Church's "moral law." Keeping her at constant risk of pregnancy -- and the health jeopardy that is attendant on such risk -- is a small price to pay for maintaining the Church's moral order.
That position -- blindness to women's rights and needs -- has a familiar ring. It is the same refusal to see that underlies the all-male hierarchy's ban on female priests. It is the same refusal that forbids priests to marry. Indeed, at the heart of the contraception debate and so many debates around gender in the Catholic Church is a terror that if women have rights -- over their own reproductive lives, to be priests, to marry priests, to have real voice and power in the Church -- then the Church men will change. And if the Church men change, then the Church will change. And if the Church changes, the future that the all-male hierarchy lives in terror of -- Pope Francis's nightmare of rampaging feminists, waging a "vindictive battle," steamrolling men with their "chauvinism with skirts" -- will, at last, be here.
Click on their website www.ecived.com/en/.
In a repeat of the Church battle over the Affordable Care Act, Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association, last week publicly approved the administration's final rule, issuing an explanation for the Association's members about how to implement it. Not so, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The week before, its head, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, released his statement expressing dissatisfaction with the compromise, saying that the bishops are subjecting it to further "analysis," feel their "religious freedom" is still under threat, and plan to continue "defending our rights in Congress and in the real time Location system." Count on the 60-plus law suits by Catholic diocese and universities around the country, joined, with the bishops' blessing, by secular employers who also don't like birth control and want to exclude it from their insurance policies, proceeding apace.
It is maddening that the administration had to go to such extremes to placate the Church fathers, who dare to put "moral" and "money" as it applies to this deeply compromised institution in the same sentence. How pure, really, were the hands of the Church fathers who began decades ago to secretly spend millions of dollars in hush money to silence child victims of clergy rape and sodomy, and rid themselves of the evidence of their paternal crimes? Hush money that came from the faithful in the pews, who paid for all those ever-escalating insurance premiums, and from selling the churches and schools out from under those same working-class Catholics? The victims merited all the compensation they got and more, but the Church fathers literally stole that money from the Catholics they served and lied about it.
When the conniving churchmen realized how much money they had to lose by even these secret settlements, hiding the goods from the victims became the next best strategy. So how pure, really, are the hands of Cardinal Dolan, the leading voice claiming the moral high ground in the battle to keep any of the church coffers from supporting birth control for women? Files just released by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee turned up a letter showing that when Dolan served as the Archbishop of that diocese, he secretly and successfully, and even as the Archdiocese was preparing to file for bankruptcy, petitioned the Vatican to bury nearly $57 million in a cemetery trust fund in order to protect those assets "from legal claim and liability," aka, child abuse victim compensation. And this was on top of his paying off some priest child sex abusers $20,000 a piece to leave the priesthood, reportedly defended by Dolan in one case as "an act of charity," so that, irony of ironies, the priest "could pay for health insurance."
And how pure, really, are the hands of the Church fathers regarding money when we look at the shenanigans at the Vatican bank? Still laughably named the "Institute for the Works of Religion," the Vatican Bank is literally drowning in mounting accusations of money laundering and mobster connections. Most recently, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, an accountant for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which manages the Vatican's property and investments (and a Vatican account-holder himself), was arrested and charged with conspiring to transfer some $26 million from Switzerland to Italy to dole out to his rich friends.
Given this sad financial state of affairs, how does paying for a health-saving service like birth control for women become such a threat to Church fathers that they've made a major campaign out of it?
The bishops claim this mandate violates church teaching that artificial birth control is "intrinsically evil," despite the fact that nearly 100 percent of Catholics don't believe there is anything "intrinsically evil" about birth control and use it. They claim birth control is the same as abortion; it isn't. They claim to be protecting the institution's "conscience," thereby stepping all over Catholic Church teaching that defines conscience as "the most secret core and sanctuary" of a person, not an institution, and the Church not as the "men of God" but as "the people of God," which would seem to include women. They claim the money at issue is "their" money, when most employees contribute to their health insurance premiums so this is at base a labor issue. And their claim that birth control is not a "health" service, in the face of current scientific knowledge and medical opinion, is tantamount to insisting that the sun revolves around the Earth.
In other words, a woman should not have access to methods of artificial birth control, should be at the mercy of her husband and her biology, because then her husband is more likely to remain committed to her and to God and faithful to the Church's "moral law." Keeping her at constant risk of pregnancy -- and the health jeopardy that is attendant on such risk -- is a small price to pay for maintaining the Church's moral order.
That position -- blindness to women's rights and needs -- has a familiar ring. It is the same refusal to see that underlies the all-male hierarchy's ban on female priests. It is the same refusal that forbids priests to marry. Indeed, at the heart of the contraception debate and so many debates around gender in the Catholic Church is a terror that if women have rights -- over their own reproductive lives, to be priests, to marry priests, to have real voice and power in the Church -- then the Church men will change. And if the Church men change, then the Church will change. And if the Church changes, the future that the all-male hierarchy lives in terror of -- Pope Francis's nightmare of rampaging feminists, waging a "vindictive battle," steamrolling men with their "chauvinism with skirts" -- will, at last, be here.
Click on their website www.ecived.com/en/.
2013年7月14日星期日
Oneida Nation magazine abandoning print
A weekly magazine that is a leading source of Native American news is abandoning print in favor of an online-only presence, in a cost-cutting move that worries some readers who fear they may lose access because of the switch.
This Week From Indian Country Today, a New York City-based publication owned by the Oneida Nation, will become an online newsletter starting with its July 17 issue."In the age we live in, technology is really advanced to a point that we're trying to make sure we're serving what our audience really needs," said Indian Country Today publisher Ray Halbritter. Converting to an online newsletter that is emailed to subscribers will eliminate some of the lag time between when news happens and when it appears in writing, he said.
The magazine, which was started in 1981, provides a mixture of straight news stories and commentary by tribal members, and it is often a way for politicians to get their messages out to Native American communities. President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner have all done interviews or written opinion pieces.
For Native Americans on isolated reservations, access to broadband Internet is anything but guaranteed and print media is a staple of life. According to the Federal Communications Commission, just 43 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives have access to broadband Internet at home, compared to 65 percent of the U.S. population as a whole. Access on reservation and tribal lands is even scarcer, at less than 10 percent, although there are government efforts to expand such access.
Suzanne Sobel, the managing director of Indian Country Today Media Network, said she's not worried about the real time Location system."The reservations that don't have broadband Internet, quite frankly they were also having a hard time getting the magazine too," she said. Sobel said most tribal members on such reservations use their smartphones to get information. She noted that the website had 550,000 unique visitors in June and continues to grow.
Sobel, a former executive with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and creative director Christopher Napolitano, former editor at large for Playboy magazine, are leading Indian Country Today's transition to digital-only. The evolution has been in the works for some time, Sobel said. Halbritter said the change will allow the company to expand its international coverage of indigenous issues and work with more contributors.
He spent most of his career in Motorola's wireless-network equipment division, which was sold to competitor Nokia Siemens Networks in 2010, shortly after he joined the public-safety radio business.Motorola Solutions' main business is supplying a range of public-safety products, from two-way radios for police officers to connected patrol vehicles with video surveillance systems.
That side of the business accounts for roughly two-thirds of the company's revenue, while the rest comes from products for enterprise customers, such as bar code readers or smart tags using radio-frequency identification technology.In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Steinberg talked about trends and competition in the public safety communications industry, as well as Motorola's transformation over the past few years.
Having spent over 20 years at Motorola, I had mixed emotions seeing the company change, though it didn't affect my job much. There were some people who didn't want it to happen. They felt like they were leaving a family because they would no longer be part of Motorola. But nothing is forever. The world changes.
When Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility separated, both companies kept the brand Motorola, and both retained the cross license for all the intellectual property. Other than that, Motorola Mobility is now purely and simply a part of Google.
We spend a lot of time on customer research. We have ethnographers—anthropologists, sociologists, psychiatrists—who ride in firetrucks, police cars and live a day in the life of a customer. We don't expect a fireman or policeman to tell us what they need, but if you watch them the right way they will show you what they need. We gain a lot of insight from our ethnographers and I think that's why our customers trust us. They know we understand them.
Economies go up and down but typically public-safety communications are prioritized. Even when governments step into the period of austerity, they have to take care of the population. I wouldn't say it's recession-proof, but generally speaking we are relatively strong even during an economic downturn.
Those who hope that arming the opposition will help stem the regime’s current resurgence and compel it to negotiate are making a dangerous assumption. Whatever firepower may be provided to the rebels will be more than matched by the regime’s allies.
SAM missiles may affect the regime’s freedom in the skies, but it has sufficient alternative firepower in terms of its massed artillery and armoured forces to maintain its edge.
Anti-tank weapons are of limited use in what is essentially an urban war. Unless there is truly massive external military intervention (which seems unlikely), the net result of seeking to manipulate the current balance of power will be to prolong rather than curtail the war.
The history of the region shows that almost any outside interference (even on the part of neighbours) tends to end in tears. And the West, despite its long experience in the Middle East, remains profoundly alien to the region’s most deep-rooted forces of religion, sect, ethnicity, tribe and clan, and seemingly incapable of grasping their complexity.
The killing of the FSA commander and a series of other similar recent clashes point to yet another layer of conflict that is only likely to be exacerbated as the war goes on. Arming one side of the opposition will lead to a struggle over access to these weapons and thus a weakening of the anti-Al Assad front, rather than the opposite.
Click on their website http://www.ecived.com/en/.
This Week From Indian Country Today, a New York City-based publication owned by the Oneida Nation, will become an online newsletter starting with its July 17 issue."In the age we live in, technology is really advanced to a point that we're trying to make sure we're serving what our audience really needs," said Indian Country Today publisher Ray Halbritter. Converting to an online newsletter that is emailed to subscribers will eliminate some of the lag time between when news happens and when it appears in writing, he said.
The magazine, which was started in 1981, provides a mixture of straight news stories and commentary by tribal members, and it is often a way for politicians to get their messages out to Native American communities. President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner have all done interviews or written opinion pieces.
For Native Americans on isolated reservations, access to broadband Internet is anything but guaranteed and print media is a staple of life. According to the Federal Communications Commission, just 43 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives have access to broadband Internet at home, compared to 65 percent of the U.S. population as a whole. Access on reservation and tribal lands is even scarcer, at less than 10 percent, although there are government efforts to expand such access.
Suzanne Sobel, the managing director of Indian Country Today Media Network, said she's not worried about the real time Location system."The reservations that don't have broadband Internet, quite frankly they were also having a hard time getting the magazine too," she said. Sobel said most tribal members on such reservations use their smartphones to get information. She noted that the website had 550,000 unique visitors in June and continues to grow.
Sobel, a former executive with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and creative director Christopher Napolitano, former editor at large for Playboy magazine, are leading Indian Country Today's transition to digital-only. The evolution has been in the works for some time, Sobel said. Halbritter said the change will allow the company to expand its international coverage of indigenous issues and work with more contributors.
He spent most of his career in Motorola's wireless-network equipment division, which was sold to competitor Nokia Siemens Networks in 2010, shortly after he joined the public-safety radio business.Motorola Solutions' main business is supplying a range of public-safety products, from two-way radios for police officers to connected patrol vehicles with video surveillance systems.
That side of the business accounts for roughly two-thirds of the company's revenue, while the rest comes from products for enterprise customers, such as bar code readers or smart tags using radio-frequency identification technology.In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Steinberg talked about trends and competition in the public safety communications industry, as well as Motorola's transformation over the past few years.
Having spent over 20 years at Motorola, I had mixed emotions seeing the company change, though it didn't affect my job much. There were some people who didn't want it to happen. They felt like they were leaving a family because they would no longer be part of Motorola. But nothing is forever. The world changes.
When Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility separated, both companies kept the brand Motorola, and both retained the cross license for all the intellectual property. Other than that, Motorola Mobility is now purely and simply a part of Google.
We spend a lot of time on customer research. We have ethnographers—anthropologists, sociologists, psychiatrists—who ride in firetrucks, police cars and live a day in the life of a customer. We don't expect a fireman or policeman to tell us what they need, but if you watch them the right way they will show you what they need. We gain a lot of insight from our ethnographers and I think that's why our customers trust us. They know we understand them.
Economies go up and down but typically public-safety communications are prioritized. Even when governments step into the period of austerity, they have to take care of the population. I wouldn't say it's recession-proof, but generally speaking we are relatively strong even during an economic downturn.
Those who hope that arming the opposition will help stem the regime’s current resurgence and compel it to negotiate are making a dangerous assumption. Whatever firepower may be provided to the rebels will be more than matched by the regime’s allies.
SAM missiles may affect the regime’s freedom in the skies, but it has sufficient alternative firepower in terms of its massed artillery and armoured forces to maintain its edge.
Anti-tank weapons are of limited use in what is essentially an urban war. Unless there is truly massive external military intervention (which seems unlikely), the net result of seeking to manipulate the current balance of power will be to prolong rather than curtail the war.
The history of the region shows that almost any outside interference (even on the part of neighbours) tends to end in tears. And the West, despite its long experience in the Middle East, remains profoundly alien to the region’s most deep-rooted forces of religion, sect, ethnicity, tribe and clan, and seemingly incapable of grasping their complexity.
The killing of the FSA commander and a series of other similar recent clashes point to yet another layer of conflict that is only likely to be exacerbated as the war goes on. Arming one side of the opposition will lead to a struggle over access to these weapons and thus a weakening of the anti-Al Assad front, rather than the opposite.
Click on their website http://www.ecived.com/en/.
2013年7月11日星期四
One isn't just for gamers
The Xbox One is perfect for small business owners and an "entirely justifiable" business expense, Marques Lyons, Microsoft Xbox MVP and the director of Consumer Camp has claimed."What is being positioned as an excellent entertainment device can be just as enticing for you and your small business," claims Lyons in a new blog.
"The Xbox One, priced at $499, is an affordable option for small business owners, as there are many features built into the console that could help it rival even the most modest of video conferencing and networking platforms. "These features include Skype, SkyDrive, Wi-Fi Direct and Internet Explorer.
"One will allow people to not only use Skype on the console, but it will allow for multi-person chatting. Combine this with the wide-angle lens and 1080p view of the included Kinect and you have the means for collaborative meetings and presentations," explains Lyons.
He added: "Currently, on the Xbox 360, you have access to SkyDrive via the Internet Explorer web browser and the dedicated SkyDrive app. SkyDrive has become one of the leading cloud services for storing documents and having them available anywhere you need them. For the real time Location system, SkyDrive, snapped with Skype (for example) can make accessing documents for presentation and discussion easy.
"The SkyDrive app can let you easily access both photos and videos for viewing. If you're hosting a meeting at your office, don't worry about attaching a PC to the TV or using a projector. Store your videos in SkyDrive and then use the app to open that video. Do you have photos from recent travels or images showing details and diagrams? Open them with SkyDrive, navigate them with Kinect voice or hand gestures, be free from tethering that PC around.
"With SkyDrive via Internet Explorer, you can use it with the Office Web Apps to open that Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint. Use the Kinect voice and hand gestures to navigate to websites. Now you're free of clickers and light pens to use your hands to for more expressive gestures."
But it's Wi-Fi Direct, a new wireless technology that allows devices to connect to one another without the need for a wireless access point, which really gets Lyons excited."I'm currently in awe of Wi-Fi Direct and it's possibilities," says Lyons. "For consumers, I put forth the idea, that Wi-Fi Direct, plus SmartGlass, would mean being able to beam live TV to any SmartGlass enabled device. For you -- as the small business owner -- you could imagine having a SmartGlass enabled device and beaming in the other direction: Send your presentation to the TV, use Smartglass to navigate through the PowerPoint presentation, use your tablet to control Internet Explorer. "
With access to the Office Web Apps via Internet Explorer, Lyons says small business men could use the Xbox One as a PC replacement."Because Internet Explorer has access to the Office Web Apps, pair that with a Wi-Fi keyboard and mouse and you have the means to edit documents, when necessary, even if you aren't near your PC.," he explained.
For many years, TV was the leaky life raft for movie stars and directors to avail themselves of when the bloated Titanic of their film careers collided with the iceberg of audience indifference. These days, it's looking more like an escape in the best sense as the film industry, high on the pricey steroids of superhero blockbusters, has grown inhospitable to everything from character actors to character-based dramas. The latest casualty of Hollywood's comic-book obsession? Comic books themselves. This week it was announced that Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's literate adventure series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — featuring the exploits of Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Mina "Dracula's chewtoy" Harker, Dr. Jekyll, and the Invisible Man in a steampunk vision of Victorian London — was being developed by Fox as a put pilot. This is promising news for two reasons.
One, The League deserved better than the tepid Sean Connery movie that sent its star into early retirement back in 2003; when placed in the right hands, the material is rich enough to support an ongoing series. And two, Fox's move is a welcome and overdue sign that a thinkier tier of comic properties, gobbled up in the wake of Spider-Man's success, might finally fall out of the hands of uninterested, rights-hoarding film studios and into the more creative arms of television networks where they belong.
Grant Morrison's brain, even while sleeping, could power the Hadron Collider. His comic books, whether original creations like Seaguy and The Invisibles or franchise work on X-Men and Batman, are so packed with ideas it's a wonder there's any room for thought balloons. This makes an adaptation particularly tricky — unlike most comic writers, he's not auditioning for movies in his scripts, he's trying to make movies look small in comparison. But I think there's potential in this overlooked three-issue collaboration with ace artist Philip Bond. It's the story of Ali, a mild-mannered Pakistani twentysomething living in a tidy corner of the U.K. where he helps his father run a chain of corner stores. But all naraka breaks loose when, on the day Ali is to meet his arranged bride, a strange crate of Turkish delights opens a portal to a Day-Glo multiverse and all the deities and wonders of Islamic and Hindu myth come pouring out.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com.
"The Xbox One, priced at $499, is an affordable option for small business owners, as there are many features built into the console that could help it rival even the most modest of video conferencing and networking platforms. "These features include Skype, SkyDrive, Wi-Fi Direct and Internet Explorer.
"One will allow people to not only use Skype on the console, but it will allow for multi-person chatting. Combine this with the wide-angle lens and 1080p view of the included Kinect and you have the means for collaborative meetings and presentations," explains Lyons.
He added: "Currently, on the Xbox 360, you have access to SkyDrive via the Internet Explorer web browser and the dedicated SkyDrive app. SkyDrive has become one of the leading cloud services for storing documents and having them available anywhere you need them. For the real time Location system, SkyDrive, snapped with Skype (for example) can make accessing documents for presentation and discussion easy.
"The SkyDrive app can let you easily access both photos and videos for viewing. If you're hosting a meeting at your office, don't worry about attaching a PC to the TV or using a projector. Store your videos in SkyDrive and then use the app to open that video. Do you have photos from recent travels or images showing details and diagrams? Open them with SkyDrive, navigate them with Kinect voice or hand gestures, be free from tethering that PC around.
"With SkyDrive via Internet Explorer, you can use it with the Office Web Apps to open that Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint. Use the Kinect voice and hand gestures to navigate to websites. Now you're free of clickers and light pens to use your hands to for more expressive gestures."
But it's Wi-Fi Direct, a new wireless technology that allows devices to connect to one another without the need for a wireless access point, which really gets Lyons excited."I'm currently in awe of Wi-Fi Direct and it's possibilities," says Lyons. "For consumers, I put forth the idea, that Wi-Fi Direct, plus SmartGlass, would mean being able to beam live TV to any SmartGlass enabled device. For you -- as the small business owner -- you could imagine having a SmartGlass enabled device and beaming in the other direction: Send your presentation to the TV, use Smartglass to navigate through the PowerPoint presentation, use your tablet to control Internet Explorer. "
With access to the Office Web Apps via Internet Explorer, Lyons says small business men could use the Xbox One as a PC replacement."Because Internet Explorer has access to the Office Web Apps, pair that with a Wi-Fi keyboard and mouse and you have the means to edit documents, when necessary, even if you aren't near your PC.," he explained.
For many years, TV was the leaky life raft for movie stars and directors to avail themselves of when the bloated Titanic of their film careers collided with the iceberg of audience indifference. These days, it's looking more like an escape in the best sense as the film industry, high on the pricey steroids of superhero blockbusters, has grown inhospitable to everything from character actors to character-based dramas. The latest casualty of Hollywood's comic-book obsession? Comic books themselves. This week it was announced that Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's literate adventure series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — featuring the exploits of Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Mina "Dracula's chewtoy" Harker, Dr. Jekyll, and the Invisible Man in a steampunk vision of Victorian London — was being developed by Fox as a put pilot. This is promising news for two reasons.
One, The League deserved better than the tepid Sean Connery movie that sent its star into early retirement back in 2003; when placed in the right hands, the material is rich enough to support an ongoing series. And two, Fox's move is a welcome and overdue sign that a thinkier tier of comic properties, gobbled up in the wake of Spider-Man's success, might finally fall out of the hands of uninterested, rights-hoarding film studios and into the more creative arms of television networks where they belong.
Grant Morrison's brain, even while sleeping, could power the Hadron Collider. His comic books, whether original creations like Seaguy and The Invisibles or franchise work on X-Men and Batman, are so packed with ideas it's a wonder there's any room for thought balloons. This makes an adaptation particularly tricky — unlike most comic writers, he's not auditioning for movies in his scripts, he's trying to make movies look small in comparison. But I think there's potential in this overlooked three-issue collaboration with ace artist Philip Bond. It's the story of Ali, a mild-mannered Pakistani twentysomething living in a tidy corner of the U.K. where he helps his father run a chain of corner stores. But all naraka breaks loose when, on the day Ali is to meet his arranged bride, a strange crate of Turkish delights opens a portal to a Day-Glo multiverse and all the deities and wonders of Islamic and Hindu myth come pouring out.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com.
2013年7月9日星期二
A comprehensive comparison of Dota 2
MOBA games have been around for a long time, but Dota 2 and League of Legends are the first to regularly pull numbers like the 329,977 concurrent users on Dota 2 and the “over 500,000 peak concurrent players every day on just the EU West” League of Legends server.
You’d think that with the sheer popularity of MOBA games, they’d be easy to break into, but that’s usually not the case. Fortunately, this guide is here to help! This article should help you understand the basic concepts that are common to both games as well as the real time Location system.
If you’ve ever played any sort of RTS, then the basic layout of LoL and Dota should be at least somewhat familiar. These are top-down games where you control your champion or hero alongside four other players in five-on-five fantasy action.
Last hitting—delivering the killing blow to a minion—is likely the most fundamental skill you’ll have to learn to play either game. Last-hitting minions is your primary means of accruing gold. Wait until the minion gets low enough for you to kill it with a single attack before you hit it. You’ll still earn a slow trickle of gold over time, but killing a few extra minions can be the difference between buying the item that you need or missing out on XP for nothing.
LoL and Dota 2 do differ in how they reward players for killing players. In both games, killing an enemy player grants gold to everyone who participated in the kill. In League of Legends, the amount of gold a player is worth depends on how many times they’ve died without getting a kill and whether or not they’re on a killing spree. Dota 2 adds to this by punishing the dead player by throwing away some of the unreliable gold that they’ve earned. Reliable gold is awarded for kills while unreliable gold is gained over time and for killing minions.
The distinction between the two types of gold is reason enough to declare that Dota 2 is a far more punishing game. At the same time, getting kills is quite a bit more rewarding than it is in League of Legends because you gain reliable gold while causing an enemy to lose gold. Not only is it easier to make mistakes in Dota 2, but it’s also harder to come back from them.
Every single match of Dota 2 or League begins with the laning phase. This generally lasts from the time that minions spawn to anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes into the game. During this time, carry characters spend their time trying to last hit as well as possible. The goal of laning phase is to earn as much gold as possible while harassing your opponent.
Battles are more frequent and abrupt in Dota 2. Once a team commits to a fight, enemies will be stunned and spells will be unleashed. It usually only takes a second or two for the first casualty in a fight. During a game, it’s not uncommon to see first blood claimed only a few minutes in. Fights in Dota 2 are quite a bit like food fights—you look around to make sure no one’s watching, then let loose a few cups of pudding or an Arcane Bolt or two.
League of Legends is a little less chaotic. The first kill might take place 10 minutes into a match, but that isn’t to say that the game is any slower paced. You’ll be casting your spells far more often than you do in Dota 2 because of LoL’s emphasis on skillshots and low mana costs. Laning is usually a matter of last hitting while throwing out a spell or two to try and push your opponent out of lane.
The later section of both games is reserved for team fighting and coordinated pushes to try and reach the enemy base. As the end of the game approaches, teams usually start to stick together to knock down towers and eventually the base structures—the melee and ranged barracks in Dota 2 and the inhibitors in LoL which strengthens creep waves. Destroying the nexus or ancient is the only way to end the game without forcing a surrender vote.
Champions in League of Legends are more likely to have skillshots and spells that can be spammed. As a result, LoL focuses not only on traditional, attack damage (AD) carries, but also on ability power (AP) carries. Unlike in Dota 2, you can buy items that increase the damage output of your abilities in LoL. The laning phase in League games usually involve quite a bit more ability-based harass. Poking your opponent with a skillshot or target spell is reasonable because of the low mana costs that accompany most spells. Every single champion in this game has four main, character-specific spells along with room for two summoner spells; Flash is one spell that you’ll see all the time because it lets you jump a short distance in the direction of your cursor.
The comparatively lesser emphasis on skillshots doesn’t mean that Dota 2 isn’t a skill-driven game. It makes up for it by having a diverse pool of heroes that are able to build items to satisfy different roles. Dota heroes have much more explosive power with the ability to execute combos that usually leads to battles that last only a few seconds. These powerful spells come at a cost—the mana required to cast these spells is usually high—which prevents them from being used constantly. Another distinguishing factor of Dota 2′s hero pool is the Invoker—playable proof of the wide variety of heroes available in the game. With a total of 14 abilities at his disposal, the Invoker is considered by many to be the most complex character in any MOBA game. Mixing and matching reagents to invoke new spells demonstrates just how versatile and varied Dota 2 heroes can be.
However, those ads will be running alongside a multi-million dollar misinformation campaign orchestrated by the Koch brothers. According to the Think Progress Blog, the conservative group Americans for Prosperity is spending a fortune on television ads aimed at turning Americans against the new healthcare law. The group's first ad is called "Questions," and it features a mother of two who tells viewers that she "has some questions about Obamacare." Her so-called questions imply that under the Affordable Healthcare Act, she will be paying higher premiums and won't be able to select her family's doctor. The ad perpetuates myths that have been clearly debunked. As Think Progress points out, there is nothing in Obamacare that stops patients from choosing their own doctors, and people who get their insurance through their employer likely won't see any changes at all.
And, while the Americans For Prosperity ad refers to higher healthcare premiums, we've seen insurance rates go down in states implementing the law – like California – and millions of Americans will qualify for subsidies to purchase healthcare through insurance exchanges. In fact, it's Republican policies – like refusing to implement the law's Medicaid expansion – not Obamacare – that will leave some people uninsured. The constant misinformation from the Right is exactly why states like Oregon and New Jersey are working so hard to inform the public about the law's new benefits with their new television ads. However, thanks to the Koch brothers, Americans will have a difficult time sorting through the lies, and figuring out the real ways Obamacare will improve their lives.
Read the full story at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
You’d think that with the sheer popularity of MOBA games, they’d be easy to break into, but that’s usually not the case. Fortunately, this guide is here to help! This article should help you understand the basic concepts that are common to both games as well as the real time Location system.
If you’ve ever played any sort of RTS, then the basic layout of LoL and Dota should be at least somewhat familiar. These are top-down games where you control your champion or hero alongside four other players in five-on-five fantasy action.
Last hitting—delivering the killing blow to a minion—is likely the most fundamental skill you’ll have to learn to play either game. Last-hitting minions is your primary means of accruing gold. Wait until the minion gets low enough for you to kill it with a single attack before you hit it. You’ll still earn a slow trickle of gold over time, but killing a few extra minions can be the difference between buying the item that you need or missing out on XP for nothing.
LoL and Dota 2 do differ in how they reward players for killing players. In both games, killing an enemy player grants gold to everyone who participated in the kill. In League of Legends, the amount of gold a player is worth depends on how many times they’ve died without getting a kill and whether or not they’re on a killing spree. Dota 2 adds to this by punishing the dead player by throwing away some of the unreliable gold that they’ve earned. Reliable gold is awarded for kills while unreliable gold is gained over time and for killing minions.
The distinction between the two types of gold is reason enough to declare that Dota 2 is a far more punishing game. At the same time, getting kills is quite a bit more rewarding than it is in League of Legends because you gain reliable gold while causing an enemy to lose gold. Not only is it easier to make mistakes in Dota 2, but it’s also harder to come back from them.
Every single match of Dota 2 or League begins with the laning phase. This generally lasts from the time that minions spawn to anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes into the game. During this time, carry characters spend their time trying to last hit as well as possible. The goal of laning phase is to earn as much gold as possible while harassing your opponent.
Battles are more frequent and abrupt in Dota 2. Once a team commits to a fight, enemies will be stunned and spells will be unleashed. It usually only takes a second or two for the first casualty in a fight. During a game, it’s not uncommon to see first blood claimed only a few minutes in. Fights in Dota 2 are quite a bit like food fights—you look around to make sure no one’s watching, then let loose a few cups of pudding or an Arcane Bolt or two.
League of Legends is a little less chaotic. The first kill might take place 10 minutes into a match, but that isn’t to say that the game is any slower paced. You’ll be casting your spells far more often than you do in Dota 2 because of LoL’s emphasis on skillshots and low mana costs. Laning is usually a matter of last hitting while throwing out a spell or two to try and push your opponent out of lane.
The later section of both games is reserved for team fighting and coordinated pushes to try and reach the enemy base. As the end of the game approaches, teams usually start to stick together to knock down towers and eventually the base structures—the melee and ranged barracks in Dota 2 and the inhibitors in LoL which strengthens creep waves. Destroying the nexus or ancient is the only way to end the game without forcing a surrender vote.
Champions in League of Legends are more likely to have skillshots and spells that can be spammed. As a result, LoL focuses not only on traditional, attack damage (AD) carries, but also on ability power (AP) carries. Unlike in Dota 2, you can buy items that increase the damage output of your abilities in LoL. The laning phase in League games usually involve quite a bit more ability-based harass. Poking your opponent with a skillshot or target spell is reasonable because of the low mana costs that accompany most spells. Every single champion in this game has four main, character-specific spells along with room for two summoner spells; Flash is one spell that you’ll see all the time because it lets you jump a short distance in the direction of your cursor.
The comparatively lesser emphasis on skillshots doesn’t mean that Dota 2 isn’t a skill-driven game. It makes up for it by having a diverse pool of heroes that are able to build items to satisfy different roles. Dota heroes have much more explosive power with the ability to execute combos that usually leads to battles that last only a few seconds. These powerful spells come at a cost—the mana required to cast these spells is usually high—which prevents them from being used constantly. Another distinguishing factor of Dota 2′s hero pool is the Invoker—playable proof of the wide variety of heroes available in the game. With a total of 14 abilities at his disposal, the Invoker is considered by many to be the most complex character in any MOBA game. Mixing and matching reagents to invoke new spells demonstrates just how versatile and varied Dota 2 heroes can be.
However, those ads will be running alongside a multi-million dollar misinformation campaign orchestrated by the Koch brothers. According to the Think Progress Blog, the conservative group Americans for Prosperity is spending a fortune on television ads aimed at turning Americans against the new healthcare law. The group's first ad is called "Questions," and it features a mother of two who tells viewers that she "has some questions about Obamacare." Her so-called questions imply that under the Affordable Healthcare Act, she will be paying higher premiums and won't be able to select her family's doctor. The ad perpetuates myths that have been clearly debunked. As Think Progress points out, there is nothing in Obamacare that stops patients from choosing their own doctors, and people who get their insurance through their employer likely won't see any changes at all.
And, while the Americans For Prosperity ad refers to higher healthcare premiums, we've seen insurance rates go down in states implementing the law – like California – and millions of Americans will qualify for subsidies to purchase healthcare through insurance exchanges. In fact, it's Republican policies – like refusing to implement the law's Medicaid expansion – not Obamacare – that will leave some people uninsured. The constant misinformation from the Right is exactly why states like Oregon and New Jersey are working so hard to inform the public about the law's new benefits with their new television ads. However, thanks to the Koch brothers, Americans will have a difficult time sorting through the lies, and figuring out the real ways Obamacare will improve their lives.
Read the full story at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
2013年7月7日星期日
Thousands line Arizona roads in procession for 19 fallen firefighters
Firefighters began a 125-mile procession to bring the bodies of 19 colleagues who died in a wildfire a week ago from Phoenix to the mountain community where they lived.Nineteen hearses departed from the medical examiner’s office in Phoenix, rolled past a collection of firefighters outside the Arizona statehouse complex and will pass through the community of Yarnell where the 19 died.
Firefighters and police officers held hands over their hearts or saluted as the motorcycle-led escort slowly drove by and a quartet of bag pipers played a mournful song to a marching cadence. The firefighters’ names were posted on a side window of each hearse.The procession included several firefighting vehicles, including a truck that bore the name of the elite crew to which the 19 firefighters who died on June 30 belonged.
Lon Reiman of Scottsdale carried two small American flags as he waited for the procession to begin. Reiman said he has several relatives who are firefighters and thought of them once he heard the news of the deaths“When you think about their wives, their families and their kids, it just brings tears to your eyes,” Reiman said.
It’s unclear how long the procession will last.Since their fellow firefighters arrived at the scene where they were killed, the fallen firefighters have not been alone, a tradition among those in the profession in the U.S.“Since they were discovered, they have never been out of the presence of a brother firefighter,” said Paul Bourgeois, a Phoenix-area fire chief who is acting as a spokesman in Prescott for the firefighters’ families. “From the time they were taken to the medical examiner in Phoenix, while they’re at the medical examiner’s office, when they are received in a funeral home — there will always be a brother firefighter on site with them until they are interred.
“That’s something people don’t realize. We never leave your side,” he said of the tradition. “It’s a comfort to the survivors, whether they’re families or fellow firefighters.”The firefighters were killed a week ago in the Yarnell Hill fire, sparked by lightning on June 28. Crews were closing in on full containment after the fire destroyed more than 100 homes in Yarnell and burned about 13 square miles. The town remained evacuated.
The crew of Hotshots was working to build a fire line between the blaze and Yarnell when erratic winds suddenly shifted the fire’s real time Location system, causing it to hook around the firefighters and cut off access to a ranch that was to be their safety zone.The highly trained men were in the prime of their lives, and many left behind wives — some pregnant — and small children.
Earlier that week the Sunday Independent reported that Gwede Mantashe inexplicably appeared to be trying to pin the blame for the mayhem in Marikana on a Swede. (That’s what people from Sweden are called. They are ‘Swedes’ and not ‘Swiss’. You follow?). The Swede in question was activist Liv Shange, a Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) and Workers and Socialist Party (Wasp) leader. Mantashe’s assertions that Shange had been trying to destabilise the country by stirring up unrest amongst miners was widely met with ridicule, and read as another bizarre attempt to shift responsibility for South Africa’s very real problems, from the ruling party to mythically demonised foreign forces of evil. Sadly, these two almost laughable incidents will be the sum total of what most South African media followers have heard about the country of Sweden of late. That’s a real pity, because this little-known-about country for South Africans, has a lot more to offer.
Last month I was invited to travel to Stockholm, as part of a group of African representatives for a series of meetings with media regulators, journalists and a journalist union, media producers and the Swedish foreign ministry. Not being able to help myself, the more I learnt about Sweden, the more I began a mental comparative analysis with South Africa – what follows here is just some of that comparison and how we measure up to what is widely regarded as one of the most free, open, transparent and least corrupt of societies on the planet.
What first pricked my interest in Stockholm was something called the Freedom of the Press Act. Despite its name, this piece of legislation safeguards the freedom of expression rights of all citizens, not just the press. More than that, it means that any individual can contact any public authority and request access to any official document without having to provide their motivation for doing so and without having to identify themselves. With regard to the notion of open and free access to information, that sounded too good to be true. So I asked a few questions about how effectively this law works in practice.
Sven Bergman, an investigative journalist, at first lamented the corrupt nature of governments in general, and recounted a few stories of corruption in the Swedish government which had been uncovered by journalists in recent years, the most significant ironically being the sale of military goods to South Africa during the Arms Deal. So, I asked him, what about this Freedom of the Press Act? How well does it work in Sweden? He replied instantly, “It’s very good. Very good”. According to Bergman, the law works in practice precisely in the way that it is put on paper: a journalist can enter a government department at any time, request a particular document and wait while an official collects it and hands it over. The official has to hand it over, and they do. “Sometimes you to have a wait a few hours, but it never really takes longer than that. At some of these places you learn that if you talk nicely to the elderly ladies at the desk, and give them some cakes, then the documents come faster,” says Bergman, smiling.
In South Africa the law that is supposed to enable open access to government information is called the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). But often PAIA fails in implementation, acting as a hindrance to accessing to government information rather than promoting it. The process is burdensome: it requires having to complete a near unfathomable form, and officials at many government bodies do not understand the law themselves, which means that just tracking down the appropriate person to whom one must submit the form, can sometimes be time consuming. Once the PAIA application is submitted, the public body has 30 days in which to respond. Applications are often turned down, in which case one can appeal, but then you have to wait another 30 days to get an answer. So, it’s not a case of, ‘Wait here while I fetch that for you’. By comparison, PAIA is tedious, cumbersome and bureaucratic enough to, contrary to what its name suggests, act more as a discouragement to anyone looking for public information. From a media angle having to wait for 30, sometimes 60 days for information that rightly should be open to the public, when chasing a deadline, is ludicrous and impractical.
But all the legal stuff aside, there’s also the matter of pure principle. It’s the principle of Sweden’s Freedom of the Press Act, and the seemingly widely held respect for that principle within that country, that makes it work. What is that principle? It is that information held by PUBLIC institutions belongs to the PUBLIC. To see what I mean, try applying the same principle in South Africa. Imagine strolling into the Department of Public Works back in September 2012, and saying to a secretary that you would like to see the official records of all state funds spent on the president’s private home at Nkandla. Imagine he/she answers, “Sure! No problem. Just wait here while I fetch it for you.”
On Friday, 5 July 2013, the Mail & Guardian reported on a gargantuan pile of documents which they had finally secured from the Department of Public Works detailing some of the behind-the-scenes history to the Nkandla project. Three things are relevant in this case. First, the information released by the Mail & Guardian is damning, to the president as well as a chain of others involved in the project – which just illustrates the value of open access to public information in securing accountability in government. Second, the Mail & Guardian was at pains to point out, more than once, that the more than 12,000 pages worth of documentation which they now have in their possession thanks to a successful PAIA application contains significant gaps of information. The next question is, where is that information? Why wasn’t it handed over to the Mail & Guardian after the PAIA application, which by law, it should have been? Third, the Nkandlagate scandal broke for the first time in a City Press exposé last year in September. Yet, 10 months later, this is the first time a media outlet in South Africa has had access to official information held by a public institution on the matter. The fact that it has taken our public officials so long to release this information, especially with regard to the level of public interest, should have them hanging their heads in shame. (And yes, SABC head-honchos, I use the term ‘Nkandlagate’ deliberately, even though you’d like to have it censored).
The principle that information held by public institutions belongs to the public, were it respected in South Africa, could have saved the Mail & Guardian tons of legal fees and years of slogging through the courts for access to the Zimbabwe election report of 2002. And never mind the newspapers. This principle, were it respected, would have spared countless activists and community organisations around the country from a constant and exhausting struggle with officials to have access to information which should quite rightly be in the public domain for the purpose of improving people’s lives. It would have meant that the Right2Know Campaign could have simply walked into the front office of the Department of State Security and been handed the full list of national key points within a matter of minutes. Instead, Right2Know had to submit a PAIA application (which failed even on appeal) and the campaign then took to the streets in Johannesburg on World Press Freedom day out of protest. But in South Africa, we still don’t know what all of our own national key points are.
Click on their website http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Firefighters and police officers held hands over their hearts or saluted as the motorcycle-led escort slowly drove by and a quartet of bag pipers played a mournful song to a marching cadence. The firefighters’ names were posted on a side window of each hearse.The procession included several firefighting vehicles, including a truck that bore the name of the elite crew to which the 19 firefighters who died on June 30 belonged.
Lon Reiman of Scottsdale carried two small American flags as he waited for the procession to begin. Reiman said he has several relatives who are firefighters and thought of them once he heard the news of the deaths“When you think about their wives, their families and their kids, it just brings tears to your eyes,” Reiman said.
It’s unclear how long the procession will last.Since their fellow firefighters arrived at the scene where they were killed, the fallen firefighters have not been alone, a tradition among those in the profession in the U.S.“Since they were discovered, they have never been out of the presence of a brother firefighter,” said Paul Bourgeois, a Phoenix-area fire chief who is acting as a spokesman in Prescott for the firefighters’ families. “From the time they were taken to the medical examiner in Phoenix, while they’re at the medical examiner’s office, when they are received in a funeral home — there will always be a brother firefighter on site with them until they are interred.
“That’s something people don’t realize. We never leave your side,” he said of the tradition. “It’s a comfort to the survivors, whether they’re families or fellow firefighters.”The firefighters were killed a week ago in the Yarnell Hill fire, sparked by lightning on June 28. Crews were closing in on full containment after the fire destroyed more than 100 homes in Yarnell and burned about 13 square miles. The town remained evacuated.
The crew of Hotshots was working to build a fire line between the blaze and Yarnell when erratic winds suddenly shifted the fire’s real time Location system, causing it to hook around the firefighters and cut off access to a ranch that was to be their safety zone.The highly trained men were in the prime of their lives, and many left behind wives — some pregnant — and small children.
Earlier that week the Sunday Independent reported that Gwede Mantashe inexplicably appeared to be trying to pin the blame for the mayhem in Marikana on a Swede. (That’s what people from Sweden are called. They are ‘Swedes’ and not ‘Swiss’. You follow?). The Swede in question was activist Liv Shange, a Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) and Workers and Socialist Party (Wasp) leader. Mantashe’s assertions that Shange had been trying to destabilise the country by stirring up unrest amongst miners was widely met with ridicule, and read as another bizarre attempt to shift responsibility for South Africa’s very real problems, from the ruling party to mythically demonised foreign forces of evil. Sadly, these two almost laughable incidents will be the sum total of what most South African media followers have heard about the country of Sweden of late. That’s a real pity, because this little-known-about country for South Africans, has a lot more to offer.
Last month I was invited to travel to Stockholm, as part of a group of African representatives for a series of meetings with media regulators, journalists and a journalist union, media producers and the Swedish foreign ministry. Not being able to help myself, the more I learnt about Sweden, the more I began a mental comparative analysis with South Africa – what follows here is just some of that comparison and how we measure up to what is widely regarded as one of the most free, open, transparent and least corrupt of societies on the planet.
What first pricked my interest in Stockholm was something called the Freedom of the Press Act. Despite its name, this piece of legislation safeguards the freedom of expression rights of all citizens, not just the press. More than that, it means that any individual can contact any public authority and request access to any official document without having to provide their motivation for doing so and without having to identify themselves. With regard to the notion of open and free access to information, that sounded too good to be true. So I asked a few questions about how effectively this law works in practice.
Sven Bergman, an investigative journalist, at first lamented the corrupt nature of governments in general, and recounted a few stories of corruption in the Swedish government which had been uncovered by journalists in recent years, the most significant ironically being the sale of military goods to South Africa during the Arms Deal. So, I asked him, what about this Freedom of the Press Act? How well does it work in Sweden? He replied instantly, “It’s very good. Very good”. According to Bergman, the law works in practice precisely in the way that it is put on paper: a journalist can enter a government department at any time, request a particular document and wait while an official collects it and hands it over. The official has to hand it over, and they do. “Sometimes you to have a wait a few hours, but it never really takes longer than that. At some of these places you learn that if you talk nicely to the elderly ladies at the desk, and give them some cakes, then the documents come faster,” says Bergman, smiling.
In South Africa the law that is supposed to enable open access to government information is called the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). But often PAIA fails in implementation, acting as a hindrance to accessing to government information rather than promoting it. The process is burdensome: it requires having to complete a near unfathomable form, and officials at many government bodies do not understand the law themselves, which means that just tracking down the appropriate person to whom one must submit the form, can sometimes be time consuming. Once the PAIA application is submitted, the public body has 30 days in which to respond. Applications are often turned down, in which case one can appeal, but then you have to wait another 30 days to get an answer. So, it’s not a case of, ‘Wait here while I fetch that for you’. By comparison, PAIA is tedious, cumbersome and bureaucratic enough to, contrary to what its name suggests, act more as a discouragement to anyone looking for public information. From a media angle having to wait for 30, sometimes 60 days for information that rightly should be open to the public, when chasing a deadline, is ludicrous and impractical.
But all the legal stuff aside, there’s also the matter of pure principle. It’s the principle of Sweden’s Freedom of the Press Act, and the seemingly widely held respect for that principle within that country, that makes it work. What is that principle? It is that information held by PUBLIC institutions belongs to the PUBLIC. To see what I mean, try applying the same principle in South Africa. Imagine strolling into the Department of Public Works back in September 2012, and saying to a secretary that you would like to see the official records of all state funds spent on the president’s private home at Nkandla. Imagine he/she answers, “Sure! No problem. Just wait here while I fetch it for you.”
On Friday, 5 July 2013, the Mail & Guardian reported on a gargantuan pile of documents which they had finally secured from the Department of Public Works detailing some of the behind-the-scenes history to the Nkandla project. Three things are relevant in this case. First, the information released by the Mail & Guardian is damning, to the president as well as a chain of others involved in the project – which just illustrates the value of open access to public information in securing accountability in government. Second, the Mail & Guardian was at pains to point out, more than once, that the more than 12,000 pages worth of documentation which they now have in their possession thanks to a successful PAIA application contains significant gaps of information. The next question is, where is that information? Why wasn’t it handed over to the Mail & Guardian after the PAIA application, which by law, it should have been? Third, the Nkandlagate scandal broke for the first time in a City Press exposé last year in September. Yet, 10 months later, this is the first time a media outlet in South Africa has had access to official information held by a public institution on the matter. The fact that it has taken our public officials so long to release this information, especially with regard to the level of public interest, should have them hanging their heads in shame. (And yes, SABC head-honchos, I use the term ‘Nkandlagate’ deliberately, even though you’d like to have it censored).
The principle that information held by public institutions belongs to the public, were it respected in South Africa, could have saved the Mail & Guardian tons of legal fees and years of slogging through the courts for access to the Zimbabwe election report of 2002. And never mind the newspapers. This principle, were it respected, would have spared countless activists and community organisations around the country from a constant and exhausting struggle with officials to have access to information which should quite rightly be in the public domain for the purpose of improving people’s lives. It would have meant that the Right2Know Campaign could have simply walked into the front office of the Department of State Security and been handed the full list of national key points within a matter of minutes. Instead, Right2Know had to submit a PAIA application (which failed even on appeal) and the campaign then took to the streets in Johannesburg on World Press Freedom day out of protest. But in South Africa, we still don’t know what all of our own national key points are.
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