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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I need to match a series of user inputed words against a large dictionary of words (to ensure the entered value exists).
So if the user entered:
"orange" it should match an entry "orange' in the dictionary.
Now the catch is that the user can also enter a wildcard or series of wildcard characters like say
"or__ge" which would also match "orange"
The key requirements are:
* this should be as fast as possible.
* use the smallest amount of memory to achieve it.
If the size of the word list was small I could use a string containing all the words and use regular expressions.
however given that the word list could contain potentially hundreds of thousands of enteries I'm assuming this wouldn't work.
So is some sort of 'tree' be the way to go for this...?
Any thoughts or suggestions on this would be totally appreciated!
Thanks in advance, Matt
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I'm not sure, but I think a Suffix Tree could be what you're looking for - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffix_tree – Rubys May 11 '10 at 23:15
Do you have to support all grep style wildcards or just the ? (underscore _ in your case)? – Michael Dorgan May 11 '10 at 23:25
Do the wildcards match only a single character or can they match a string of arbitrary length? – drawnonward May 11 '10 at 23:29
Just the underscore, each underscore would represent a single character. – Sway May 11 '10 at 23:54
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6 Answers
up vote 11 down vote accepted
Put your word list in a DAWG (directed acyclic word graph) as described in Appel and Jacobsen's paper on the World's Fastest Scrabble Program (free copy at Columbia). For your search you will traverse this graph maintaining a set of pointers: on a letter, you make a deterministic transition to children with that letter; on a wildcard, you add all children to the set.
The efficiency will be roughly the same as Thompson's NFA interpretation for grep (they are the same algorithm). The DAWG structure is extremely space-efficient—far more so than just storing the words themselves. And it is easy to implement.
Worst-case cost will be the size of the alphabet (26?) raised to the power of the number of wildcards. But unless your query begins with N wildcards, a simple left-to-right search will work well in practice. I'd suggest forbidding a query to begin with too many wildcards, or else create multiple dawgs, e.g., dawg for mirror image, dawg for rotated left three characters, and so on.
Matching an arbitrary sequence of wildcards, e.g., ______ is always going to be expensive because there are combinatorially many solutions. The dawg will enumerate all solutions very quickly.
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Since I don't have access to the publications, I'm wondering one thing: do they build one DAWG for each different length or not ? I think it could considerably speed up the search, since in this case we know beforehand how many letters the word we seek has. – Matthieu M. May 12 '10 at 17:07
@Matthieu: Google will get you the paper, but I've also added a (possibly ephemeral) link. As for one DAWG per length, you can do this, but it's a time-space tradeoff. The DAWG will store a long word list very effectively with lots of sharing. With one DAWG per length you will lose that sharing. As for speedup it's an experimental question, and experiments may come out differently depending on the machine's cache. – Norman Ramsey May 12 '10 at 22:27
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No matter which algorithm you choose, you have a tradeoff between speed and memory consumption.
If you can afford ~ O(N*L) memory (where N is the size of your dictionary and L is the average length of a word), you can try this very fast algorithm. For simplicity, will assume latin alphabet with 26 letters and MAX_LEN as the max length of word.
Create a 2D array of sets of integers, set<int> table[26][MAX_LEN].
For each word in you dictionary, add the word index to the sets in the positions corresponding to each of the letters of the word. For example, if "orange" is the 12345-th word in the dictionary, you add 12345 to the sets corresponding to [o][0], [r][1], [a][2], [n][3], [g][4], [e][5].
Then, to retrieve words corresponding to "or..ge", you find the intersection of the sets at [o][0], [r][1], [g][4], [e][5].
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I would first test the regex solution and see whether it is fast enough - you might be surprised! :-)
However if that wasn't good enough I would probably use a prefix tree for this.
The basic structure is a tree where:
• The nodes at the top level are all the possible first letters (i.e. probably 26 nodes from a-z assuming you are using a full dictionary...).
• The next level down contains all the possible second letters for each given first letter
• And so on until you reach an "end of word" marker for each word
Testing whether a given string with wildcards is contained in your dictionary is then just a simple recursive algorithm where you either have a direct match for each character position, or in the case of the wildcard you check each of the possible branches.
In the worst case (all wildcards but only one word with the right number of letters right at the end of the dictionary), you would traverse the entire tree but this is still only O(n) in the size of the dictionary so no worse than a full regex scan. In most cases it would take very few operations to either find a match or confirm that no such match exists since large branches of the search tree are "pruned" with each successive letter.
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If you are allowed to ignore case, which I assume, then make all the words in your dictionary and all the search terms the same case before anything else. Upper or lower case makes no difference. If you have some words that are case sensitive and others that are not, break the words into two groups and search each separately.
You are only matching words, so you can break the dictionary into an array of strings. Since you are only doing an exact match against a known length, break the word array into a separate array for each word length. So byLength[3] is the array off all words with length 3. Each word array should be sorted.
Now you have an array of words and a word with potential wild cards to find. Depending on wether and where the wildcards are, there are a few approaches.
If the search term has no wild cards, then do a binary search in your sorted array. You could do a hash at this point, which would be faster but not much. If the vast majority of your search terms have no wildcards, then consider a hash table or an associative array keyed by hash.
If the search term has wildcards after some literal characters, then do a binary search in the sorted array to find an upper and lower bound, then do a linear search in that bound. If the wildcards are all trailing then finding a non empty range is sufficient.
If the search term starts with wild cards, then the sorted array is no help and you would need to do a linear search unless you keep a copy of the array sorted by backwards strings. If you make such an array, then choose it any time there are more trailing than leading literals. If you do not allow leading wildcards then there is no need.
If the search term both starts and ends with wildcards, then you are stuck with a linear search within the words with equal length.
So an array of arrays of strings. Each array of strings is sorted, and contains strings of equal length. Optionally duplicate the whole structure with the sorting based on backwards strings for the case of leading wildcards.
The overall space is one or two pointers per word, plus the words. You should be able to store all the words in a single buffer if your language permits. Of course, if your language does not permit, grep is probably faster anyway. For a million words, that is 4-16MB for the arrays and similar for the actual words.
For a search term with no wildcards, performance would be very good. With wildcards, there will occasionally be linear searches across large groups of words. With the breakdown by length and a single leading character, you should never need to search more than a few percent of the total dictionary even in the worst case. Comparing only whole words of known length will always be faster than generic string matching.
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"If the search term both starts and ends with wildcards, then you are stuck with a linear search within the words with equal length." Check out my answer: I skip the wildcards only if it's not the latest in the search string (in case of a full wildcards only search, which is linear), which forces it to make use of the binary search, no matter if it's wildcarded. – Pindatjuh May 12 '10 at 1:00
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You can try a string-matrix:
0,1: A
1,5: APPLE
2,5: AXELS
3,5: EAGLE
4,5: HELLO
5,5: WORLD
Let's call this a ragged index-matrix, to spare some memory. Order it on length, and then on alphabetical order. To address a character I use the notation x,y:z: x is the index, y is the length of the entry, z is the position. The length of your string is f and g is the number of entries in the dictionary.
• Create list m, which contains potential match indexes x.
• Iterate on z from 0 to f.
• Is it a wildcard and not the latest character of the search string?
• Continue loop (all match).
• Is m empty?
• Search through all x from 0 to g for y that matches length. !!A!!
• Does the z character matches with search string at that z? Save x in m.
• Is m empty? Break loop (no match).
• Is m not empty?
• Search through all elements of m. !!B!!
• Does not match with search? Remove from m.
• Is m empty? Break loop (no match).
A wildcard will always pass the "Match with search string?". And m is equally ordered as the matrix.
!!A!!: Binary search on length of the search string. O(log n)
!!B!!: Binary search on alphabetical ordering. O(log n)
The reason for using a string-matrix is that you already store the length of each string (because it makes it search faster), but it also gives you the length of each entry (assuming other constant fields), such that you can easily find the next entry in the matrix, for fast iterating. Ordering the matrix isn't a problem: since this has only be done once the dictionary updates, and not during search-time.
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Try to build a Generalized Suffix Tree if the dictionary will be matched by sequence of queries. There is linear time algorithm that can be used to build such tree (Ukkonen Suffix Tree Construction).
You can easily match (it's O(k), where k is the size of the query) each query by traversing from the root node, and use the wildcard character to match any character like typical pattern finding in suffix tree.
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Your Answer
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I didn't find a good comparison of jinja2 and Mako. What would you use for what tasks ?
I personnaly was satisfied by mako (in a pylons web app context) but am curious to know if jinja2 has some nice features/improvements that mako doesn't ? -or maybe downsides ?-
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closed as primarily opinion-based by Bill the Lizard Oct 19 '13 at 13:01
3 Answers
up vote 29 down vote accepted
I personally prefer Jinja2's syntax over Mako's. Take this example from the Mako website
<%inherit file="base.html"/>
% for row in rows:
% endfor
<%def name="makerow(row)">
% for name in row:
% endfor
update start
One of the removed construct here is the : <% ... python code ... %>. It was quite unfair to place it there since you should actually pass variable inside the context. But Mako still allows you to use plain python code within templates. It shouldn't be used often but when you really need it. It's there just to make your life easier. If you need something in one template but not anywhere else and Passing it to the context is overkill. That's what you really need.
update end
There are so many constructs here that I would have to consult the documentation before I could even begin. Which tags begin like <% and close with />? Which of those are allowed to close with %>? Why is there yet another way to enter the template language when I want to output a variable (${foo})? What's with this faux XML where some directives close like tags and have attributes?
This is the equivalent example in Jinja2:
{% extends "base.html" %}
{% for row in rows %}
{{ makerow(row) }}
{% endfor %}
{% macro make_row(row) %}
{% for name in row %}
<td>{{ name }}</td>
{% endfor %}
{% endmacro %}
Jinja2 has filters, which I'm told Mako also has but I've not seen them. Filter functions don't act like regular functions, they take an implicit first parameter of the value being filtered. Thus in Mako you might write:
${user | get_name, default('No name')}
That's horrible. In Jinja2 you would write:
{{ user | get_name | default('No Name') | escape }}
In my opinion, the Jinja2 examples are exceedingly more readable. Jinja2's more regular, in that tags begin and end in a predictable way, either with {% %} for processing and control directives, or {{ }} for outputting variables.
But these are all personal preferences. I don't know of one more substantial reason to pick Jinja2 over Mako or vice-versa. And Pylons is great enough that you can use either!
Update included Jinja2 macros. Although contrived in any case, in my opinion the Jinja2 example is easier to read and understand. Mako's guiding philosophy is "Python is a great scripting language. Don't reinvent the wheel...your templates can handle it!" But Jinja2's macros (the entire language, actually) look more like Python that Mako does!
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Not really fair: Your "equivalent in Jinja" excluded half the stuff from the Mako example and thus looks shorter. Mako's <% /> vs <% %> is not that confusing (blocks vs inline code). Mako has filter functions too and they look just the same. – Jochen Ritzel Aug 8 '10 at 23:02
@Jesse: I do not like Jinja2's insistence on (nearly) replicating Python. You can't use any built-in functions, including len and enumerate, unless you pass them in as context variables. And using .__len__ or loop.index0 instead is ugly and unintuitive. – Nikhil Chelliah Aug 13 '10 at 0:57
However, I agree that Jinja2 is generally cleaner, more customizable (e.g. you can change the syntax), and in my experience more forgiving regarding Unicode. – Nikhil Chelliah Aug 13 '10 at 1:02
how can you compare jinja filters to mako filters, say they're "better", but "you've not seen" mako filters ? Seems hardly reasonable. We use practically the same syntax as Jinja for filters: ${user | get_name, default('No Name') , escape} . It's pretty obvious you've never used Mako which is perfectly fine but you're hardly in a position to make a reasonable comparison, or call our syntax "stupid", thanks for that ! – zzzeek Nov 23 '10 at 3:59
I wrote this a few months ago and I've since read up on Mako filtering syntax. I never called it stupid but I do question many of the design decisions made by the Mako team. In my opinion, Jinja was designed to be learned as quickly as possible, with the fewest documentation trips required. Mako was not, and it exhibits an arbitrary and inconsistent syntax. I am in a position to judge Mako, as I have used it; enough that I decided that it's not for me. PS, a quotation mark is used to quote words actually said. You imply that I said one is better or one is stupid, but I said neither. – Jesse Dhillon Nov 23 '10 at 19:29
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I wrote an article about it at: http://williamferreira.net/blog/2010/12/28/mako-template-vs-jinja2/
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THank you William, did you write an english version for it ? that would benefit a lot of people too. – ychaouche Jan 7 '11 at 8:54
Google translation is readable. This is performance mostly. – Alexy Jan 11 '13 at 21:07
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Take a look at wheezy.template example:
@require(user, items)
Welcome, @user.name!
@if items:
@for i in items:
@i.name: @i.price!s.
No items found.
It is optimized for performance (more here and here), well tested and documented.
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| 6
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I often have to write code that I would like to optimize for performance, and I often have several solutions to a particular problem.
Is there a simple way to determine the number of CPU cycles a particular statement/function would take? I'm not talking about complex code that access the file system, Windows APIs or the network, I'm talking about comparing half a dozen lines of C++ code to determine which code would be more efficient.
The classic example would be comparing ++i with i++. The former is faster, but without knowing that, how would I be able to determine this myself?
I'd rather not install costly performance tools (e.g. Intel's tools), but find a simple way to get to the bottom. Is there a way to see the Assembler code that is generated by C++ code - without debugging?
Any other suggestions and/or approaches are of course welcome.
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No, with today's CPUs you can't look as the assembly code and tell how long it takes. Think caches, branch prediction, pipelines, etc. If you have to ask questions like this one, you likely don't stand a chance to get any significant insisghts this way. For most cases, the only reliable/practical way to know what runs fast is to, you know, actually run it and see how long it takes (i.e. profiling and benchmarking). And that's not even touching on whether you should even try. – delnan Aug 2 '11 at 19:41
@delnan I couldn't agree more. – Rafael Colucci Aug 2 '11 at 19:53
If I'm concerned about that (almost never) I wrap it in a (somewhat unrolled) loop and stopwatch it. If you execute it 10^9 times, then seconds translate to nanoseconds. – Mike Dunlavey Aug 2 '11 at 20:06
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3 Answers
up vote 1 down vote accepted
Using the Visual Studio prompt you can invoke cl.exe (the VC++) compiler and produce assembly listings with the option /FA[c|s|u].
cl.exe /FA mycode.c
Generates a file named mycode.asm, containing the listings, looking something like:
; Line 16
push ebp
mov ebp, esp
; Line 17
cmp DWORD PTR _argc$[ebp], 2
jl SHORT $LN2@main
cmp DWORD PTR _argc$[ebp], 2
jle SHORT $LN3@main
; Line 19
push OFFSET $SG2660
call _puts
add esp, 4
... and so forth.
Similarly if you put a breakpoint inside VS and open the disassembly, you will see the assembly listings (provided the circumstances are right, debug mode should probably be on.)
This is probably of interest as well: how to find CPU cycle for an assembly instruction
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Thanks, I accepted your answer since it essentially, well, answers my question. I realize though that this is a potentially tedious and inaccurate way of going about it, thanks to the other comments. Thanks everybody for their input. – Lucky Luke Aug 3 '11 at 2:20
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Your "classic example" of ++i vs i++ is usually irrelevant. Optimizing compilers are good enough to prevent that from being an issue. In fact they're really good at making code that looks slow fast.
Look at algorithmic complexity: often if code is unexpectedly slow, there's a hidden O(n) in an inner loop somewhere.
It's been said before, profile, profile, profile. Counting cycles is much less relevant now, because of the importance of the cache. Microbenchmarks are sometimes ok for small chunks of code, but often aren't representative for their performance in an application.
Visual Studio has a built in profiler, described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc337887.aspx which is really what you need.
Don't choose the code that's more efficient. Choose the code that's more readable.
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There are some cases where ++i vs. i++ is not irrelevant. For primitive types an optimizer will catch it. For more complicated iterators, it might not be able to discard the instruction that stores off the original value before incrementing. Otherwise good answer. – Nathan Monteleone Aug 2 '11 at 19:43
Thanks, I will have a look at the profiler - wasn't actually aware of that for some reason, I thought it only worked with C#. I don't totally agree with not writing code that is efficient - if I write a network server that processes 10,000 packets per second then I'd like to make it efficient :-) – Lucky Luke Aug 2 '11 at 20:03
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I know you said you do not want to pay for performance tools, but I highly suggests you to take a look at AQTime.
I know it can be expensive, but it is worth every penny invested. It is capable of doing a very good analyze of your code, such as allocation, performance and many, many others.
I can not imagine myself working without this tool, really. And I do not work for Smartbear. I am just a big fan.
What I think is: why should anyone bother reading and debugging Assembly when we have great tools to do that? Your time can be more productive if you have the right tools and focus on business.
Just my 2 cents.
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Yes, you are on to something. I've always had mediocre experiences with development add-ons, but their price is not completely unreasonable. I will definitely take a look. – Lucky Luke Aug 2 '11 at 20:03
It is not an add-on. It is an application. You can download a 30 days trial and see for yourself. – Rafael Colucci Aug 2 '11 at 20:27
I used the wrong wording. As "add-on" I meant a generic "add-on" to my develoment environment. I realize it's a stand-alone app. I will check it out, thank you. – Lucky Luke Aug 2 '11 at 21:15
I decided to give this product a try, but I'm far from impressed. The account manager can't reply to my emails, and the product is pretty cumbersome to use in my opinion. – Lucky Luke Dec 9 '11 at 19:36
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Your Answer
| 6
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I had the Logitech MX-518 mouse, but it had been having issues with responsiveness, causing me to call support for a replacement. Instead of another 518, they sent me a Logitech G400 mouse because the 518 has been discontinued. This causes issues because, while the MX518 was supported by lomoco, the G400 mouse is unsupported. Running $ lomoco -s shows 001.003: 046d:c245 Unsupported Logitech device: Unknown.
What I would like to do is lock the DPI of my mouse to a single value and remap the DPI+ and DPI- buttons to PgUp and PgDn on my keyboard.
How would I accomplish this?
Logitech G400
The buttons are, in order:
1. Button 1: Left-click
2. Button 2: Middle-click
3. Button 3: Right-click
4. Button 4: Mouse Wheel Up
5. Button 5: Mouse Wheel Down
6. Button 6: None
7. Button 7: None
8. Button 8: Thumb Button #1
9. Button 9: Thumb Button #2
10. Button 10: Task Switcher Button
11. Button 11: None
12. Button 12: None
On the previous mouse (MX 518), buttons 11 and 12 were the DPI keys. One of the things that makes these buttons different than the rest is that applications such as xev do not recognize pressing them as an event, by default. On the MX 518 mouse, in order to make those buttons able to be altered / binded, they had to first be disabled. I believe that lomoco called it "Logitech SmartScroll / Cruise Control." On the G400, lomoco doesn't work and I am unaware of an alternative.
Also, here is some output from xinput, in case it is helpful.
user@localhost:~$ xinput list
⎜ ↳ Logitech Gaming Mouse G400 id=8 [slave pointer (2)]
user@localhost:~$ xinput list-props 8
Device 'Logitech Gaming Mouse G400':
Device Enabled (121): 1
Coordinate Transformation Matrix (123): 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000
Device Accel Profile (248): 0
Device Accel Constant Deceleration (249): 2.000000
Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration (250): 1.000000
Device Accel Velocity Scaling (251): 1.000000
Device Product ID (238): 1133, 49733
Device Node (239): "/dev/input/event4"
Evdev Axis Inversion (252): 0, 0
Evdev Axes Swap (254): 0
Axis Labels (255): "Rel X" (131), "Rel Y" (132), "Rel Vert Wheel" (247)
Button Labels (256): "Button Left" (124), "Button Middle" (125), "Button Right" (126), "Button Wheel Up" (127), "Button Wheel Down" (128), "Button Horiz Wheel Left" (129), "Button Horiz Wheel Right" (130), "Button Side" (242), "Button Extra" (243), "Button Forward" (244), "Button Back" (245), "Button Task" (246), "Button Unknown" (241), "Button Unknown" (241), "Button Unknown" (241), "Button Unknown" (241)
Evdev Middle Button Emulation (257): 0
Evdev Middle Button Timeout (258): 50
Evdev Third Button Emulation (259): 0
Evdev Third Button Emulation Timeout (260): 1000
Evdev Third Button Emulation Button (261): 3
Evdev Third Button Emulation Threshold (262): 20
Evdev Wheel Emulation (263): 0
Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes (264): 0, 0, 4, 5
Evdev Wheel Emulation Inertia (265): 10
Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout (266): 200
Evdev Wheel Emulation Button (267): 4
Evdev Drag Lock Buttons (268): 0
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Have a look at the solution to a similar question. Give it a try and report back if it solves your issue. – Mark Rooney Apr 6 '12 at 5:18
@MarkRooney That question doesn't seem to help, unfortunately. In that case, the mouse wasn't functioning properly. In my case, the mouse works exactly as intended by Logitech. I just want to remap the DPI buttons to have useful functions. – Koviko Aug 8 '12 at 17:34
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1 Answer
up vote 2 down vote accepted
@Koviko - I have a similar mouse - a Logitech MX1100 - that also has DPI buttons that aren't sent to the USB when pressed in default mode. I did some testing on my own, and eventually was able to figure out the codes to send the signal to switch the mouse into "Driver Mode", which then allowed me to use easygestures/xev to reassign the buttons.
If you want, I can walk you through the steps I used to determine how to switch it off (I now have a script that I simply need to run on startup, as a very hack-y workaround, but it's working at least), but it involves setting up a VM and having a secondary mouse and sniffing the raw USB traffic, and unfortunately seems likely to be very mouse-specific.
My steps (better ones almost certainly exist):
1) Have a Windows VM (with the Logitech SetPoint software installed; I used VirtualBox, because that's what I already had set up with WinXP for work), Wireshark, and gcc installed on your system. 2) Then I ran the following steps in a terminal:
sudo modprobe usbmon
sudo wireshark &
sudo /usr/lib/virtualbox/VirtualBox &
3) Within Wireshark, choose to 'List the available capture interfaces...', and make a note of which USB bus number generates a ton of packets when you move your mouse around (mine was usbmon3, but I imagine that's purely based on which USB port your receiver is plugged in to).
3) From within VirtualBox (I needed to run as sudo in order to share the USB Controller), I edited the settings of the XP VM, and enabled both the USB Controller and the USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller. Then I added a new USB Filter populated from an existing device, and selected my Logitech mouse's receiver (Vendor ID 046d, Product c245, for you) and then started up the VM.
(Note: After this point, I needed a second mouse plugged in, because I had to give control over my regular mouse to the Windows VM so that the SetPoint software could see that it existed as something more than a generic mouse.)
4) In the VM, I then launched the SetPoint software, and went to the screen that lets you set custom actions for various buttons. Then back in Wireshark, I started a capture on the USB bus for the mouse, then immediately went in to the VM/SetPoint, and changed the button assignment from DPI +/- to Keystroke Assignment, then immediately went back to Wireshark and stopped the capture. (I repeated this about 10-15 more times, changing the settings to different modes, mostly because I wasn't sure how much data I'd need, but after reviewing, I really only needed the first 1-2 captures.)
Assuming your mouse works vaguely similar to mine, which I'd guess it would, your capture would likely have a total of 16 frames, 4x GET DESCRIPTOR, then 3x(2xURB_CONTROL out + 2xURB_INTERRUPT in). What you're looking for are the 3 longer URB_CONTROL out frames. An example of one of my captured frames is:
0000 c0 80 64 36 00 88 ff ff 53 02 00 03 03 00 00 00
0010 5e 4b 25 50 00 00 00 00 f4 d9 08 00 8d ff ff ff
0020 07 00 00 00 07 00 00 00 21 09 10 02 01 00 07 00
0040 10 01 80 65 82 85 ff
What we're looking for are the last 7 bytes from the response (in the above, the '10 01 80 65 82 85 ff'), from each of the longer 'URB_CONTROL out' frames. Finally, I downloaded the source of the "g_hack" from Git, and cobbled in both my mouse product code at the top, and a new option (I set it to 0/1 with an if statement within them since it was just a very crude proof of concept) which would switch my mouse into "driver mode" or "DPI mode".
After that, all that was required was to set up the newly available mouse buttons in your choice of remapping programs (I used easygestures because that was the first thing with a UI I found - it may or may not have a superior replacement).
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Everything regarding g_hack becomes rather cryptic, to me. Could you post the code that you wrote somewhere so that this can be easier to follow? I'm not sure what to do with those last 7 bytes from Wireshark, where you tossed in your product code, or where you added your new option. – Koviko Aug 11 '12 at 18:15
Certainly! See here for my version. I've annotated each section with my username to easily jump, but you've basically got two places to add in the product code detection, and then two more places to add the 7 bytes you detected with Wireshark. – Icehawk78 Aug 13 '12 at 14:44
Sadly, I'm having difficulty adapting this to my packet captures. I only have 2 bytes on 0040. No matter what I put into send_msg, I get the error "error sending to device: Invalid argument." I also tried changing uref.report_id to 0x8E and to 0x20 in send_report, but I still got the same error. – Koviko Aug 14 '12 at 5:35
Are these captures the entirety of the exchange when you reassigned the buttons, or just the URB_CONTROL out frames? It looks like your mouse is using a slightly different protocol than the others I've looked at. If you can pastebin the entire exchange for each capture, I'll see if I can tease out a better attempt for you to try. – Icehawk78 Aug 15 '12 at 14:24
Here are the full exchanges for unassigning DPI+, assigning DPI+ to PgUp, unassigning DPI-, and assigning DPI- to PgDn. Only one of them actually has URB_INTERRUPT in frames. The rest are composed entirely of URB_CONTROL out frames. – Koviko Aug 15 '12 at 14:50
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These functions will log in a user based on a username and password being matched in a MySQL database.
// function to escape data and strip tags
function safestrip($string){
$string = strip_tags($string);
$string = mysql_real_escape_string($string);
return $string;
//function to show any messages
function messages() {
$message = '';
if($_SESSION['success'] != '') {
$message = '<span class="success" id="message">'.$_SESSION['success'].'</span>';
$_SESSION['success'] = '';
if($_SESSION['error'] != '') {
$message = '<span class="error" id="message">'.$_SESSION['error'].'</span>';
$_SESSION['error'] = '';
return $message;
// log user in function
function login($username, $password){
//call safestrip function
$user = safestrip($username);
$pass = safestrip($password);
//convert password to md5
$pass = md5($pass);
// check if the user id and password combination exist in database
$sql = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE username = '$user' AND password = '$pass'")or die(mysql_error());
//if match is equal to 1 there is a match
if (mysql_num_rows($sql) == 1) {
//set session
$_SESSION['authorized'] = true;
// reload the page
$_SESSION['success'] = 'Login Successful';
header('Location: ./index.php');
} else {
// login failed save error to a session
$_SESSION['error'] = 'Sorry, wrong username or password';
Values would be captured from a form and then passed to the main function:
login($username, $password);
All pages involved would have the messages function somewhere so proper use feedback is given:
1. kneep
Permalink to comment#
// log user in function
function login($username, $password){
//call safestrip function
$user = safestrip($user);
$pass = safestrip($pass);
first you use the full $username and $password variables, then you use short version of them…this will not work this way
2. Permalink to comment#
Thanks Chris,
i find your site very informative and a lot of good stuff that i learn from you
3. Tom
Hey Chris
Love the site – quick question about this snippet.
I had some issues with this, the sql query wouldn’t grab my username and or password until i moved…
//convert password to md5
$pass = md5($pass);
below the query snippet
im new to md5 function and im not sure if what i did was correct but its the only way it seems to be running correctly.
• Dyllon
Permalink to comment#
That just means your passwords in your database aren’t hashed.
md5 gives your string of text an irreversible 32 character hash code.
would come out to be:
it’s very useful for if anyone should get into your database, they won’t know the passwords of all of the users.
4. Permalink to comment#
If you don’t initialize the sessions calling a session_start() your session variables will always get by the false option…
5. Permalink to comment#
Hey, I was curious, If i was to use this, Do i need to paste it on every page that has to have a log in?
How do i make multiple pages where you need to log in from?
Email me your answer please. Thank you.
• Sankar
Permalink to comment#
Hi all,
I too searching for the same .. Why can’t you guys create a code for full login modules and post here. So that most of the people can use it.
Waiting for response. Atleast via E-mail.
6. ND
Permalink to comment#
Hello Chris,
can I use this Login-function in WordPress too ?
Which modifications should I use if required ?
Is there an Video or Artikel about enduser-login, registration with wordpress ?
Leave a Comment
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Clarami Clarami is offline
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Showing Visitor Messages 511 to 520 of 673
1. Rayrah
2012-06-20 16:34
Haha, I'd be fine with some of my guy friends cooking for me. I really don't mind as long as it tastes good.
Push-ups are my way of unwinding, haha. Just don't give up hope! I know you will!
Ah, is that so? That's good to hear; it's nice to know not everybody is like Crapcom. Indeed.
You need to try Shadow of the Colossus; it's a seriously amazing game!
I'll see how I feel on the day. I'll probably end up going, though. Wow, Thai soup? That sounds deliciously fancy. And expensive! Haha, my body is ready for SAO. :3
Nah. My dad doesn't get hung over, and I seem to be the same. Oh. I didn't know that. And I feel a little better than before now.
Ahhh. Yes, good friends we are. Just a headache.
Hyperdimension Neptunia is basically about cute console girls fighting privacy. The first game is bad at a technical standard; the battles are repetitive, the dungeons are bland, the graphics are poor, and the music is pretty horrible. However, the characters are great, and the humor and references are hilarious. The second game (mk2) is an improvement; it's a much better game with a much better battle system. The 3rd game (V, for Victory) looks to be a step up from that. It's also the series my #1 waifu is from. :3 Also, my account on the forum of the company that localizes the games. :3
2. Yuno
2012-06-20 15:33
Story of the Flea:
A Japanese Scientist was studying flea behaviour and why they can infest so easily. One of the flees he decided to capture under a cup. Now flea's can jump very high! Almost three feet~ So he studied the flee under the cup. The flea jumped, but hit the top of the cup. He jumped again! However, he only hit the top of the cup. After a few days the flea stopped jumping and merely sat in the center of his cage. Once the scientist was finished studying and let the flea go. He noticed that the flea jumped only the height of the cup, despite the fact the cup was not there any longer! The flea would do so for the remainder of his life span.
This is why I don't like it when people abuse each other, or hurt each other. Sometimes it becomes a poison that weakens us for a long time. It makes it very difficult for us to jump beyond the height of the cup, when before we were doing it no problem. It is for this reason I often feel very compassionate towards people. They already suffer enough, I want to be a sanctuary.
3. Yuno
2012-06-20 15:24
You're quite right, there is always something new to discover about ourselves and about the universe as a whole. It is why I live through everything that I can. I want to know what happens next~
Hehe, Oh dear, there are others around the forums here and there. I'm happy to be your first female friend in the forum~ I am usually in and out. I recently came back to the forums to interact with people again. Now that I am meeting such wonderful people I am glad I returned!
Pester me? I don't think that is possible. I often have my skype on looking at many contacts with either the "busy" status or are offline. I just leave it on though, you never know when someone will chat~ Mmm, so what she said didn't have a good feeling. See when I picture that description I picture someone who smiles from the heart. So there smile is quite big and beaming. A clown is designed to mimic that, but of course it seems fake because it's painted on~ Yours I doubt is fake. Yes! I eat like a squirrel apparently hehe. OOh! Eating like a wolf. They eat very ravenously yet they don't make a mess. Pretty interesting~
Now it makes a little more sense. I'm worried about this "him" it sounds uncomfortable. You're right about CNN they're bought and paid for by the government. I did some digging on them before, and see them as not a legitamate form of infromation. I find it weird that they'd watch CNN when they live in Canada. We've so many better news stations in Canada!
Muuu~ That isn't good. I wish to emulate Kuan Yin and I believe in mercy and compassion. So I don't think I will barf. I find beauty in places when people find it hard to. Dogs, Cats, and other pure creatures of the earth can love us despite whatever flaw we have. Why can't humans? I won't barf because my case manager swears I am not human. Hehe~
Yes! You are right. Proper guidance is important. Many parent's forget that children although small are people too. People seperate from us, who live, think, and have feelings of their own. I don't condone actions such as violence, or verbal abuse. Words can cast spells, spells that bind us for an eternity. Reminds me of a flea study, but I will put that in a seperate VM I don't want to hit the word limit. I'm terribly sorry to hear about the way your parents treated you. It's something I hear from the US members often. I am ashamed that they are Canadian. They act more like American families I hear about. I can understand why one would not cry in an enviornment like that~
Thats great! I'll remember the rules as carefully as possible. A lot of them click. I really like: Rule 7: Justice and love will always win! I said that to my case manager today and he rolled his eyes at me.
That is a really nice sounding dream! It sounds like a really peaceful and safe place. I like the imagery of the snow, I find peace in winter too. Though I get cold very easily. Seeing that scene in my minds eye makes me feel peaceful. My dreams are usually "wishfulfillment" ones. My mind betraying my resolve~
Always a pleasure speaking with you ^.^
4. Rayrah
2012-06-20 12:24
Yeah. It's one skill I never bothered learning. :/
Eh, I'll worry about accommodation and whatnot after I see my results. It was such a damn headache to set everything up, only to see it all fall apart meh. I'm sure your roommate will be just fine. Most "messers" don't bother going to college.
Ah, that sounds like a very pleasant activity. And aww, why not? I'm sure you will! Just don't give up!
Well.. if it bombs.. we may not see another DmC (or am I mixing my facts up?).. that's the other side of the coin. :/
But that video. What the fuck. That was insane.. Hmm.. the MGS and DmC HD collections are so very tempting, but then again, so is the Shadow of the Colossus one..
Well, the "Anime Night" is on the 28th. These are really good friends of mine, but I dunno. Maybe.
Mint tea?? And nah, I'm not hung over, because I don't get hung over. I'm just extremely exhausted after the exams.
What makes you ask that? I'm just curious. I'll answer this question after I feel better, alright? I can't seem to gather my thoughts without my head seeming like it's about to explode.
5. Rayrah
2012-06-20 11:47
Ahaha, fair enough.
Ah.. that's a good mindset to have.. I can't cook to save my life (no, I'm serious. >_>), and if everything goes well, I'll also be living on my own soon. Meh. Need to find myself a friend who can. xD
Ah yeah, walks are good, too. Push-ups can be a great way of relieving stress, venting out any frustrations, and building strength all at the same time.
Haha, yeah. ._. The new Dante is just so.. ugh. Oh, the HD collection is out? Damn it.. I should totally get it. xD How is it? Any new content? And nice! :3
Well, they're into anime as much as me, but they don't watch it as much as me. Their tastes are also.. fairly different. So yeah, I'm more or less in the same boat as you. :/
Yeah, pretty much. Nah. They invited me to their "Anime Night" (LOL) after they found out about my interest in anime. Might tag along and see what's up. *shrug*
Ah, gotta go to a party soon, but I feel fucking horrible. I need to go talk to a person that could possibly give me a job there, too. Meh.
6. Rayrah
2012-06-20 10:52
Oh, dem crazy yanderes.
Ah, interesting. So you can cook? Ah, sports are good; a healthy mind is a healthy body, after all.
OH MAN, I forgot how fucking badass Dante is. I barely remember DmC 3, too..
Ah, rightio. My bad then. xD
I guess that's the disadvantage in living in such a big city. Plus, I've found that it's very difficult to find people who are as enthusiastic about anime as me. Well, there're 2 people that pretty much are, but they're very close friends of mine.
It wasn't a party or anything. We just had 1-2 cans of beer/cider and spent most of the night chatting. I showed them a bit of Steins;Gate and Baccano!, and they liked both.
7. Yuno
2012-06-20 01:54
Goodnight! Have wondeful dreams it's been fun talking to you~ Hehe I like that rule.
8. Yuno
2012-06-20 01:53
You're exactly right! I agree completely to what you say here. Finding out ourselves and going on a spiritual path is amazing and each step when there is progress touches the heart and mind in a way that is unexplainable. When I first studied Tao I had such an experiance. Since then I believe there are many paths, but one truth~ hehe
Oh hehe~ I always carry proof so people can't call me a liar. I hate lies, I hate lies so much... So I keep proof in a white box in my linen closet. If I don't have proof about something, I don't talk about it~ Awwh, it's okay no need to worry at all. There are a lot of guys in the forum so the mistake is commonly made by others too. Just not with me :3 hehe~ I don't mind though, I think it was fun surprising you.
Hehe, it's a long hard road. My brain likes to mix words around on me making it hard for me to read. However, I have figured out ways around it. I'm glad you enjoyed the Hobbit it's the first book I ever read and is very special to me~ Tyler? he is definitely in a better place. I brought him to the Tao temple and taught him. Then in a few months he was teaching me hehe~ He is fortunate that his fiancee went with him. So he has company ^.^ Ten years hmm~ I think that is about right. Many authors take a lot of time to write there books or get the first book done. I have faith in you~ I'm willing to help too! Oh really! That is great! My Skype account is in my profile, but I'll put it here for ease sake. pea.squirrel My mother calls me "pea" because I am really little. I am called squirrel by my dad because he claims I eat like one.
Awwh, I don't actually like living alone. Living alone with mental illness can be very tricky! Though I think it could be good for someone who is healthy. They can have a lot of space and do what they wish~ Hmm, that seems like a shallow reason to dislike someone. This is what I find most perplexing about people. I avoid people who hurt others physically, or are mean. Thats about it really~ They're missing out I say~
That is very sad for me to hear you say that. I don't think I'd barf to be honest. I have an iron tummy~ I haven't barfed since the movie Rec. That is because the camera is really shakey. Though it is smart not to give your real name and things on websites. I have had stalkers in the past because I put my real name down :S Never say never, I firmly believe that as long as you're not an alien there is someone for you ^.^
Thanks! It's the best way I think. This way a person learns the opposite methods and have a chance to grow. It's definitely equivilant exchange and a Tao principle too.
I'm glad you don't mind the length. SOME members don't like my endless typing haha~
Oh great! I haven't added anything to it in a while. I should put some of my new stuff on it. Hehe~ You'll be able to keep my lonely thread company. I've neglected it. Feel free to post about things you like or disliked I'd love to start talking in my thread again.
9. kenjiharima
2012-06-20 01:41
Same here and now I'll just quit Crappycom/Ca$hcom games. It's like even if they did make a game that is worthwhile and probably the best game ever made, it will be left out because of their bad reputation.
as for RE6 well it's like street fighter it's one of their golden goose, so it's gonna be taken care off, but I think that will be the final hurrah on RE6 and we might not get another.
10. kenjiharima
2012-06-20 00:58
For me the Crapcom fanboy has died. My new account is also banned again lol. I guess I'll just roll on the better memories when Crapcom is not monopolized by bad management. Still I love they're old school games and pretty much RE6 looks like a good game. The only new game that Capcom made that looks great is Dragons Dogma, I really think they put an effort on to this, though the management is holding back DLC again.
Dunno about their other new games I feel I don't wanna support those anymore because like you said "I'm not giving my money to a company who disrespects customers", those guys are the sheep.
The only thing remaining now is that if they make change, the only time that's gonna happen is that when they're not selling well anymore.
About Me
• About Clarami
Ottawa, Ontario
Freelance Writer
Avatar & Signature
Avatar: The Puppetmaster, Signature: ClariS
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| 7
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is implemented with id ?
Aahz aahz at
Sun Nov 4 06:12:10 CET 2012
Hans Mulder <hansmu at> wrote:
>On 3/11/12 20:41:28, Aahz wrote:
>> In article <50475822$0$6867$e4fe514c at>,
>> Hans Mulder <hansmu at> wrote:
>>> On 5/09/12 15:19:47, Franck Ditter wrote:
>>>> - I should have said that I work with Python 3. Does that matter ?
>>>> - May I reformulate the queston : "a is b" and "id(a) == id(b)"
>>>> both mean : "a et b share the same physical address". Is that True ?
>>> Yes.
>>> Keep in mind, though, that in some implementation (e.g. Jython), the
>>> physical address may change during the life time of an object.
>>> It's usually phrased as "a and b are the same object". If the object
>>> is mutable, then changing a will also change b. If a and b aren't
>>> mutable, then it doesn't really matter whether they share a physical
>>> address.
>> That last sentence is not quite true. intern() is used to ensure that
>> strings share a physical address to save memory.
>savings are minor; the time savings may be significant.
As others have pointed out, using ``is`` with strings is a Bad Habit
likely leading to nasty, hard-to-find bugs.
intern() costs time, but saves considerable space in any application
with lots of duplicate computed strings (hundreds of megabytes in some
Aahz (aahz at <*>
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| 12
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Playing It Safe
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2008 10:17 AM
I will say this: Barack Obama could have expressed a bit more disgust.
In doing the can't-comment-because-it's-under-investigation routine Tuesday, the president-elect limited himself to such bromides as "sad" in discussing the Blagojevich scandal. Actually, it's more than sad. Based on the wiretapped conversations recounted in the criminal complaint, it's an outrageous, appalling and thoroughly disgusting glimpse of government for sale.
The governor of Illinois deserves the presumption of legal innocence, but not the presumption that he acted honorably. And Obama, without prejudicing the case, needs to find a way to express how unacceptable he finds all this -- not least because it involves the auctioning off of his Senate seat.
By yesterday Obama's position had "evolved": Blago should resign (though he said it via a written statement). Why did it take the president-elect 24 hours to reach that conclusion, when the facts haven't changed? Is that kind of excessive caution going to define his presidency?
Still, Obama is exonerated on the tapes by none other than F-bomb Rod, who calls him a "mother [expletive]" and complains that the only thing O will offer for having his person picked for the Senate is gratitude. Obama, it turns out, won't pay to play. That's not how things are done in bleeping Chicago!
The facts, of course, didn't stop some conservative pundits from arguing that Obama has now been tainted by association with the Chicago machine.
But if Obama refused to play, how can he be blamed for the fact that Blagojevich, with whom he's never been close, was (according to the tapes) looking for a reward from the Senate appointment (as well as trying to squeeze the Chicago Tribune on the Wrigley Field deal)?
Obama's aides may have had normal political conversations about the appointment with the governor or his loyalists. Some of that might prove embarrassing as this thing unwinds.
One other thought: Many journalists thought Patrick Fitzgerald was the devil when he was jailing or threatening to jail reporters in the Plame case. Now he seems to be garnering praise as a square-jawed, no-nonsense lawman.
But prosecutors are not supposed to go beyond describing the allegations contained in the criminal complaint that was unsealed Tuesday morning. From the Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct: "The prosecutor in a criminal case shall refrain from making extrajudicial comments that would pose a serious and imminent threat of heightening public condemnation of the accused, except for statements that are necessary to inform the public of the nature and extent of the prosecutor's action and that serve a legitimate law enforcement purpose."
So Fitzgerald can read all the bleeping details he wants, but he's not supposed to make prejudicial proclamations such as "Lincoln would turn over in his grave." Yet journalists are so busy seizing on such sound bites that few have questioned whether their onetime antagonist has gone too far.
NYT: "The political fortunes of the besieged governor of Illinois unraveled further on Wednesday, after President-elect Barack Obama joined a near-unanimous chorus of political leaders calling for him to resign."
"If the wiretapped dialogue in the criminal complaint against Rod Blagojevich reveals anything," the Chicago Tribune says, "it's that the governor can deftly hold his own in the pantheon of political profanity."
Ya think?
"A cleaned-up version of the complaint would be cratered with blacked-out f-bombs, yet etiquette experts and anti-cursing crusaders say the language, which once would have made the nation blush, now comes across as almost de rigueur."
Atlantic's Marc Ambinder deconstructs Obama's tepid reaction:
"The first instinct of this [Chicago] inner circle was human and understandable; try to get away with adding as little fuel as possible to the combustion. That's always the first instinct of public figures when they (a) have something to side and (b) have nothing to hide. Obama has nothing to hide; indeed, the evidence so far suggests that his allies were repulsed by Blagojevich's entreaties. The trouble is that the public has been so familiar with the traditional script that politicians use when they're in trouble, and that script opens with the politician's somewhat cagey denial (even if the caginess was not intended) and it continues with the associates of that politician claiming that the questions are illegitimate and that the press is only searching for a head to spike on a pike. Then, the politician notices the criminal investigation and claims prudence."
Yep -- he looked like a typical pol.
The New Republic's Noam Scheiber says Rod didn't really get Barack:
"What's most remarkable to me -- at least once you get beyond the cartoonish brazenness, and, of course, the idea that Blagojevich had presidential aspirations -- is how spectacularly Blago misunderstands Obama himself. Among the various prizes he contemplates prying from the 'President-elect' are a cabinet seat (preferably HHS, but, as 'Deputy Governor A' points out, energy secretary 'makes the most money'), an ambassadorship, a position as head of a private foundation like the Red Cross, and some top role in the Change to Win coalition, which would apparently come about by way of an elaborate three-way trade involving Obama and SEIU. According to the indictment, Blago hoped to bargain for such a position in the manner of '. . . a sports agent shopping a potential free agent to various teams, stating "how much are you offering, [President-elect]? . . . '[President-elect], you want it? Fine. But, its got to be good or I could always take [the Senate seat]." ' In response to which one feels compelled to ask: Is there anything in Obama's background that suggests he'd react well to such an explicit shakedown?
But Politico sees nothing but trouble for the man from Hyde Park:
"At first blush, Barack Obama comes out of the Rod Blagojevich scandal smelling like a rose. The prosecutor at a news conference seemed to give the president-elect a seal of approval, and the Illinois governor himself was caught on tape complaining that Obama was not interested in crooked schemes.
"But make no mistake: The Blagojevich scandal is nothing but a stink bomb tossed at close range for Obama and his team. Legal bills, off-message headlines, and a sustained attempt by Republicans to show that Obama is more a product of Illinois's malfeasance-prone political culture than he is letting on -- all are likely if the Blagojevich case goes to trial or becomes an extended affair. Obama and his aides have so far mounted a tight-lipped defense, publicly distancing themselves from Blagojevich's alleged plans to profit personally from his power to fill Obama's newly vacant Senate seat with firm but vague denials of any involvement."
The scandal shoe is now on the other political foot, Michelle Malkin says:
"Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi can stop clucking now. For the last three years, Democratic leaders cheered GOP ethics woes. Dean accused Republicans of making 'their culture of corruption the norm.' Pelosi touted cleanliness as a liberal virtue. But with the eye-popping pay-for-play and bribery case against Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich topping a year of nationwide Democratic scandals, the corruption chickens are coming home to roost. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald called the breadth and depth of charges against Blagojevich and his Democratic Chief of Staff John Harris 'staggering.' That's an understatement. Anything that breathed was a potential shakedown target. It's the Chicago way. Democrat Blago's so dirty he'd hit up a children's hospital for money. Oh, wait. He's accused of doing that, too . . .
In Salon, Edward McClelland views the governor as a product of his environment:
"It's almost hard to blame Blagojevich for the trouble he's in. The odds were against him from the beginning. Three of his last six predecessors -- Otto Kerner, Dan Walker and George Ryan -- have gone to prison. Ryan, who as secretary of state sold drivers' licenses for bribes, is languishing in a federal pen in Wisconsin, pining for a Christmas pardon from President Bush.
"When Blagojevich was elected, he promised to clean up the state's 'pay to play' political culture. But nobody really believed him. He was the governor, for God's sake. The governor is the last guy who would do something like that. Who benefits more from shaking down political contributors?
"I never expected Hot Rod to get into a mess this hot, though. Frankly, I always considered him an amiable goof obsessed with hair care and jogging. Not smart enough to be competent, but not cunning or venal enough to hatch a Nixonian scheme like peddling a U.S. Senate seat as though it were a stolen flat-screen."
Here's a possible defense for Blagojevich, from Powerline's Scott Johnson:
"Is Blago nuts? That's the first question that crossed my mind yesterday upon hearing of the charge that forced the authorities to arrest Blago yesterday before he exercised his power to appoint Obama's successor. He must feel the exhilaration and invulnerability of the pathological narcissist.
"Is insanity a defense to corruption charges? That's the second question that crossed my mind yesterday. It is, though I'm not aware of it ever having been pursued in such a case. Perhaps the time has come."
Obama, meanwhile, is doing pretty well:
"President-elect Barack Obama is entering the White House with an enormous reservoir of goodwill from an American public that is rooting for his success in the face of bad economic times, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds . . . The poll found 73% of American adults approve of the way he is handling the transition and his preparations for becoming president." And Bush? "Just 18% say they are going to miss him when he is gone."
Had enough of politicians (Spitzer, McGreevey, Foley, Stevens, Craig, Jefferson and on and on) in trouble with the law? There's a new probe, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports:
"Federal investigators are looking into allegations that a longtime friend and benefactor tried to steer money to Sen. Norm Coleman, the Pioneer Press has learned.
"Agents with the FBI have talked to or made efforts to talk to people in Texas familiar with the allegations, according to a source familiar with the situation.
"Houston is where the first of two lawsuits was filed alleging Nasser Kazeminy, a Bloomington financier, tried to steer $100,000 to Coleman via his wife's Minneapolis employer. The second suit, filed in Delaware, alleges Kazeminy initially tried to get money directly to the senator. Both Coleman and Kazeminy have denied any wrongdoing."
There goes Obama, naming one of those over-credentialed Cabinet members again:
"President-elect Barack Obama will tap Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as his Energy secretary."
What about an appointee to represent the ordinary folks, huh?
Back in Washington, Michelle Cottle is training her eye on a neglected part of the transition:
"What does it take to get tagged as a shameless status-seeker in a town fueled by the eternal quest for access to power? Ask Beth Dozoretz, the former Democratic National Committee finance chair with a legendary affinity for snuggling up to the rich and powerful. (She asked pal Bill Clinton to be godfather to her now-ten-year-old daughter, Melanne.) It seems that, in the waning days of the presidential race, Dozoretz found herself at a dinner party with Michelle Obama. Not one to miss an opportunity, Dozoretz slipped Mrs. Obama a note from Melanne, in which the precocious fourth grader urged the Obamas to enroll their two girls, Malia and Sasha, at D.C.'s prestigious Sidwell Friends School.
"Shortly after Election Day, she and her husband, health care mogul Ron Dozoretz, popped up in the press talking about the note-passing and elaborating on their pro-Sidwell lobbying. All across Northwest D.C., tongues set to clucking: Tacky! Shameless! How could they be so out there? It wasn't so much that the Dozoretzes had attempted to cement a connection with the new First Family via their daughter's school. After all, veterans of establishment Washington understand that ingratiating oneself with a new commander-in-chief can require aggressive p.r. as well as exceedingly pointy elbows. Said veterans, however, prefer that the scramble be conducted without the vulgar details spilling out into public view. The sense that the Dozoretzes were publicly boasting of their sucking up was deemed downright embarrassing, prompting some observers to express disappointment that such a naked status grab didn't prompt the Obamas to send their girls elsewhere . . .
"The Beltway scramble for a piece of presidential prestige has begun, with all of the plotting, jockeying, and backbiting of a small-town beauty pageant."
That's what makes it delicious.
The Gregory era begins Sunday on "Meet the Press," and Jack Shafer has some advice:
"Get rid of the Russert regulars. Who hasn't heard enough from James Carville and Mary Matalin by now? Hasn't plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin run out of gas? Doesn't William Safire phone it in? Can't NBC do the right thing and give Andrea Mitchell her own show? And why does the mere sight of David Broder, Bob Shrum, E.J. Dionne, or Peggy Noonan on television make me want to kill myself?
"Blacklisting these usual guests from the Meet the Press round table and recruiting a younger band of participants would mark the passing of an era and acknowledge the arrival of a young president. It's not even a very radical step. Russert was known to experiment with formula, adding Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh to the mix. So it's not too much to ask some new voices to suit up for play . . .
"Instead of relying on guests for news, a Sunday show could break the mold by filing a reported story that makes news. (The lack of reported news stories on the Sunday show is one of economics. Reported stories are about 10 times more expensive to produce than studio chatter.) Lacking the budget or gumption to break news, Gregory's show could at least broadcast a reported segment that put into context the top story that everybody was about to discuss."
Reporting -- what a concept.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
© 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
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Jun 302010
As always, there is a lot of speculation as to what the Maple Leafs will do on July 1st when the NHL free agent season begins. Some are suggesting they should go big or go home and do whatever it takes to sign Ilya Kovalchuk as the answer to their offensive woes while others believe Kovalchuk is going for the big long term contract to which Burke has said on numerous occasions he isn’t interested in doing. After Kovalchuk though there aren’t any top tier forward free agents available to help solve the Leafs lack of scoring problems.
I am in the camp that I don’t believe that Kovalchuk will be a Maple Leaf. He’ll end up signing a long term big dollar contract somewhere else. Whether the Leafs will, or should, go after Kovalchuk depends a lot on what Burke believes he can acquire in a Tomas Kaberle trade. If Burke believes he can land a scoring winger with size in a Kaberle trade then the need to go after a guy like Kovalchuk is minimized.
Historically teams that win the Stanley Cup have excellent defenses, solid goaltending and are strong down the middle. Teams that have had elite level wingers but have lacked at center have generally not done well. What has Kovalchuk won? What about Jarome Iginla? What about Rick Nash? These are three of the best wingers in the game but haven’t achieved much, if any, playoff success. Feel free to toss Ovechkin into the mix (for now anyway). The Leafs already have an offensive minded winger in Phil Kessel and I don’t believe they necessarily need another offense-first winger like Kovalchuk, at least not if the price tag is $9 million.
As it stands right now, the Leafs forward lines might look like this:
Left Wing Center Right Wing
Tyler Bozak Phil Kessel
Mikhail Grabovski
Fredrik Sjostrom
Mike Brown Colton Orr
I have intentionally left a lot of blanks in there and have only listed the players I believe are fairly certain to fill those positions. That leaves the two left wing slots on the first two lines open, the second and third line right wing positions and the third and fourth line center positions as well as a reserve position or two which Brown may get bumped to depending on how the roster unfolds. Should Kulemin get re-signed he will fill in one of those open winger slots, probably either on the second or third line. The Leafs also have Luca Caputi, Viktor Stalberg and Christain Hanson in the fold but while all have showed flashes of potential, I don’t believe any of them showed enough last year to make me believe they should be written in as a sure bet to make the club. The same goes for John Mitchell who is set to become a UFA but who the Leafs have said they would like to bring back at the right price (read: close to league minimum or even a 2-way deal). Caputi probably has the best opportunity to make the club because he plays a physical game and is probably more suited to a third line role than Stalberg though Stalberg showed he might be ready for a top 6 role late last season. I haven’t mentioned Nazem Kadri yet but I should as it is likely he will fill one of the top six positions, possibly as a winger or as the second line center pushing Grabovski to wing where he may be better suited anyway (or he could be used as trade bait). So as it stands now there are five or six forward slots up for grabs and I am certain that Brian Burke wants to bring in at least two, if not three additional forwards to really create battles for those open slots.
Now it is time for some speculation. If Kovalchuk is out of the picture, as I believe he is, who will Burke go after. There are three things that we know that can guide us into figuring out what Burke might do. First, Burke has stated he wants to find a winger that can score, preferably one with some size. Second he wants to add more toughness throughout the lineup. Third, historically he has shown that he really likes to bring back players who have played for him before. So where does that leave us.
There are no first line or even true second line wingers who can score and have size on the open market. It seems to me that this is what he intends to acquire via a Tomas Kaberle trade. That trade probably won’t happen for at least a few days after the early free agent frenzy settles so I won’t speculate on that here right now.
There are players that will address toughness further down the lineup though and who are young enough who can contribute to the Leafs for the next several years. Two names that have been speculated upon are Colby Armstrong and Raffi Torres and both of these guys can fill that toughness role and they are both capable of scoring 15+ goals so in a pinch are capable of playing a second line role or second PP unit role. I fully expect that Brian Burke to go after and sign one of these guys so long as the price tag is around $2.5-3M per year on a 3 or 4 year deal.
In my mind the Leafs can desperately use a veteran centerman, if not two, as Bozak and Kadri would form a pretty inexperienced top two. If Burke is looking for a center under the age of 30 who can produce offensively you are pretty much limited to Matthew Lombardi, but I don’t see that as the route Burke will go because I don’t see Lombardi as the kind of ‘role player’ Burke wants on the third line. That means you may have to go a little older and so I think he might consider going after a guy like Matt Cullen who is 32 years of age and a pretty good 2-way player versatile in that he can play a second or third line role and play at center or on the wing. His price tag might get a little high for what Burke wants to spend on a third line player but he would be a nice veteran addition.
A similar player to Cullen who will cost somewhat less is Eric Belanger. Belanger isn’t big, but he plays a gritty physical game and would look good in a third line role and has consistently gotten around 35 points throughout his career.
We know Brian Burke has liked Brendan Morrison in the past. He had Morrison in Vancouver and signed him as a free agent in Anaheim. The Anaheim experiment was a bit of a flop mostly because he paid him too much money for what he could contribute but last year in Washington he showed he could be a serviceable role player as a third or fourth line center. I don’t know if Burke intends to go after Morrison but it wouldn’t surprise me if Burke signed Morrison so long as his contract short term (1 or 2 seasons) and no more than the $1.5M he made last year.
If Brian Burke is set on trading Kaberle for help up front he’ll probably want to pick up another defenseman but not one with a big salary. There are a lot of defensemen to choose from in this UFA class so it is difficult to speculate who he might go after but I suspect he’ll wait until the first rush on defensemen passes and he’ll try to pick up someone at a bargain price a week or two down the road as players start to see job openings dwindling away and get concerned about if and where they might play come September more than they are about holding out for maximum dollars.
Update: The Leafs have acquired Kris Versteeg from the Chicago Blackhawks for Stalberg and prospects DiDominico and Paradis. Versteeg will likely fill one of those second line winger roles.
Jun 092010
Behind the Net Blog recently used even strength when game is tied Corsi analysis to take a look at the divisional imbalance since the lockout and came up with an interesting conclusion.
The NW division is slightly better than the SE division against all shared opponents. But SE division teams outshot NW teams in head-to-head games. The difference between the two divisions is negligible, though the NW’s stronger showing against the pacific and central suggests that it’s just a little bit better than the SE.
What that essentially implies is that since the lockout the northwest division is only marginally better than the southeast division, which has generally been considered the worst division in hockey since the lockout.
This though is a perfect example of where Corsi analysis fails because that statement is proven downright untrue when you consider each divisions actual won-loss records. Against the southeast division the northwest has combined for a dominating 64-31-12 and only twice has a northwest team had a losing record against the southeast (2009-10 Wild at 1-2-3 and 2008-09 Flames at 1-3-1). The 64-31-12 record is the equivalent to a 107 point team over 82 games which is awfully good. The southeasts record against the northwest is 43-49-15 which is equivalent to a 77 point team. To put that in perspective, the NW is like Phoenix (107 points) and the SE is like Columbus (79 points) this past season. That makes the northwest division more than ‘a little bit better’ than the southeast division.
In another analysis at Behind the Net blog they look at Corsi +/- for teams in games against teams in divisions other than their own. For the northeast division they came up with:
Ottawa +200, Boston +134, Toronto +65, Buffalo -60, Montreal -266.
That would seem to indicate that Toronto has been a halfway decent team but they finished last in the northwest division in 3 of the 5 seasons and never finished better than 3rd. Montreal finished ahead of the Leafs in 4 of the 5 seasons and accumulated 49 additional points in the standings despite having an outside division even strength when game is tied Corsi +/- a whopping 331 points below that of the Leafs. The Minnesota Wild had a very dismal -419 Corsi +/- outside the division but had a respectable 134-106-26 record which is equivalent to a 91 point team. Now a 91 point team is nothing special, but it is a far cry from what the 3rd worst outside division Corsi +/- would indicate their record ought to be.
In both of these posts the use of Corsi analysis has failed to accurately explain what really happened on the ice and it comes down to the fact that even strength when the game is tied Corsi numbers only tell a fraction of the story. It doesn’t account for goaltending or power play or penalty kill or shooting ability or any number of other factors that influence who wins hockey games so using it as a tool for determining which teams or divisions are better is a pointless exercise because on the ice, all those other things matter. The better tool to use in evaluating which teams or divisions are better is the much simpler and more universally understood statistic known as win-loss records. Win-loss aren’t perfect, but they don’t try to tell me that the Leafs have been better than Montreal since the lockout or that the northwest division is only marginally better than the southeast division.
Jun 052010
This past season the Boston Bruins were the lowest scoring team in the NHL with just 196 goals for (the only team not to reach 200 goals) or about 2.34 goals per game and in the playoffs they were only slightly better scoring at a 2.58 goals per game pace. So the question that needs to be answered is how will they go about improving their offensive output? To answer that, lets start off by looking at their salary cap situation. The Bruins have the following players under contract:
• Forwards: Bergeron, Savard, Lucic, Ryder, Krejci, Sturm, Thornton
• Defesnse: Chara, Wideman, Ference, Hunwick, Seidenberg
• Goalies: Thomas, Rask
Total salary cap hit for those 14 players is approximately $50.5M including todays signing of Dennis Seidenberg at $3.5M a season for 4 years. The best case scenario is that the salary cap rises about $2M so let’s assume the salary cap gets set at $58.5M. That leaves $8M for 5-6 forwards and a couple defensemen.
The Bruins key restricted free agents include forwards Blake Wheeler, Daniel Paille, Vladimir Sobotka along with defenseman Mark Stuart. On the unrestricted free agent front there is Mark Recchi, Miroslav Satan, Steve Begin, and Johnny Boychuk.
The Bruins could probably get Wheeler, Paille and Sabotka signed for $4M combined and there may be interest in bringing Recchi (who scored 18g, 43pts) back on a cheap contract and I expect they will try to sign one of Stuart or Boychuk for under $1.5M if possible but they will barely have $2M in salary cap room remaining and they have only rebuilt last year’s team. They might like to bring Satan back who had an decent season since being signed (9g in 38 games) and an excellent playoff (5g, 10pts and team best +4) but his good play may have improved his market value beyond what the Bruins might be able to pay.
The Bruins do have the second overall pick which will likely be Tyler Seguin (assuming the Oilers take Taylor Hall) and I am sure they envision him being in their lineup next season to help their woeful offense. The thing is, the cap hit, including bonuses, for Seguin will total approximately $3.75M and with the CBA ending after the 2010-11 season (unless the players choose to extend it for one additional season) there will be no bonus cushion so the full $3.75M will count against the cap, regardless of whether he is able to reach those bonuses or not. There will be no carryover option. The end result is the Bruins will have some real tough choices to make this off season. Here are some options:
1. Don’t sign Seguin and let him play another year of junior. This is an extremely unlikely scenario since the Bruins desperately need Seguin’s offense and they wouldn’t want to give Seguin a bad view of the organization.
2. Trade a high priced player. There probably isn’t much of a market for Ryder or Sturm with their salaries unless the Bruins are willing to include their own first round pick or a top prospect. There would be a market for Lucic or Krejci but those guys, particularly Lucic, would be very difficult for the Bruins to part with. I am sure they would love to trade Tim Thomas but the success of cheap goalies this playoff season the market for older goalies with big contracts like Thomas is probably as low as it has ever been if it exists at all. Thomas is still likely a capable goalie It is tough to imagine anyone wanting him at his salary though we should never underestimate an NHL GM’s ability to make stupid moves. I don’t see them moving core players like Savard, Bergeron, Chara or Wideman so simply trading away a big contract is an unlikely scenario.
3. Buy out the contracts of Michael Ryder and/or Marco Sturm. Buying out Ryders contract would save them $2.66M in cap space and buying out Sturm would save them $2.33M in cap space. Either or both are highly possible scenarios but they would lose Sturm’s 22 goals and Ryder’s 18 so it wouldn’t do anything to improve their offense.
Under any of the above scenarios it is difficult to believe that the Bruins offense will be significantly improved through player movement. For the Bruins to improve their offense it will come down to keeping both Bergeron and Savard healthy and having guys like Krejci, Wheeler and Lucic improve their player closer to their 2008-09 levels. That said, the Bruins will likely be a team relying on great defense and goaltending once again in 2010-11.
Jun 032010
I am planning that over the course of the summer and into next season I will get back into analyzing hockey statistics more in depth again. Over the past couple of seasons Corsi numbers have become much more prevalent so I thought I would start off by discussing what they are and my thoughts on them.
Corsi numbers were originally created by former NHL goalie and now Buffalo Sabre goalie coach Jim Corsi. David Staples recently had a good interview with Corsi which goes into his thought process behind developing Corsi numbers. The interview is definitely worth a read but let me summarize.
In his role as the Sabre’s goalie coach, Corsi was attempting to evaluate the work load his goalies had in a game of play and found that simply shots against were not sufficient. The goalie can relax whenever the puck is in the oppositions end, but whenever the play is in his own end he can’t relax, regardless of whether a shot was taken or not. To get a better idea of his goalies workload he summed up shots, missed shots and blocked shots which should give a much better indication of a goalies overall work load. A goalie needs a certain skill level to successfully save the majority of shots on goal, but a goalie also needs a certain fitness level (both mental and physical) to be able to play under a certain workload level within a single game and over the course of an 82 game season and this is why Corsi invented the Corsi numbers.
More recently others in the hockey community have extended Corsi numbers to evaluate a teams ability to control the play of a game (i.e. does a team play more in the oppositions zone vs their own) and evaluate individual players by looking at their Corsi numbers for and against while they are on the ice and comparing that to their teammates Corsi numbers. Most notable are Gabe Desjardins of behindthenet.ca and Gabe and everyone else at the Behind the Net blog but there are others too. Some people, most notably Matt Fenwick of the Battle of Alberta blog only use shots and missed shots and do not include blocked shots as Jim Corsi does resulting in what is typically called Fenwick numbers. When used in this context Corsi and Fenwick numbers are calculated just as +/- is calculated which is to take the shots+missed shots+ blocked shots for his team and subtracting the shots+missed shots+ blocked shots numbers by the opposition while he is on the ice.
One of the benefits that many people believe that Corsi numbers provide is that since Corsi numbers include more events (i.e. shots+missed shots+blocked shots vs just shots or even just goals as in +/-) the statistical analysis will be far more accurate due to the larger ‘sample size.’
So what do I think of all this? I do agree with Jim Corsi that using Corsi numbers as a way to evaluate a goalies workload is probably far more valuable than just using shots on goal. Beyond that, I am pretty sure that Corsi numbers will give a pretty solid indication of a teams control of the play, for whatever that is worth. I say for whatever that is worth because some teams, when they have the lead, will choose to play in a defensive shell allowing a lot of shots from the point, but not giving up all that many high quality, in close, shots or worse yet, shots on rebounds. Corsi numbers when the game is close (tied, or within one goal with significant time to play such that the team with the lead has not yet gone into ‘protect the lead’ mode) may give us a better indication of a teams capability to control the play, when they want to but even that may be flawed. Also, a team with a strong set of forwards but a weak defense and goalie may control the play more than a team with a strong defense and top tier goalie but is that team really any better at winning games?
Much of the same arguments can be made when evaluating players. Defensive minded players are not necessarily on the ice to control the play, they are on the ice to not allow goals against most typically by the oppositions top offensive forwards. As mentioned above, one way to accomplish this is to go into a defensive shell and just not give up any quality scoring chances against. A player can have a sub-par Corsi number, but be doing his job perfectly well.
I do believe that Corsi numbers have a use in evaluating a goalies work load and even in showing which teams are controlling the play, but in my opinion using it anywhere beyond that we are making too many assumptions about how important Corsi numbers are with respect to winning games. Just ask the Washington Capitals how almost completely controlling the play worked for them against Montreal in round two of the playoffs. In the past I have used mostly goals for/against and shot quality (using shot type and distance as a proxy for quality) to evaluate players and while that has its own inherent flaws as well I will most likely continue to do so in the future.
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• : US Government War On Animals And Their Protectors
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• Anna Hridaaya
US Government War On Animals And Their Protectors http://www.animalsuffering.com/forum (See Animal Rights Talk section) True citizens expose the injustices of
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US Government War On Animals And Their Protectors
True citizens expose the injustices of their governments.
I have no right to judge any individual. But I have a right to work for change.
I do not support arson because it takes the lives of small mammals, birds,
insects and potentialy of human life. Each person's conscience is sovereign.
When PETA picketed the home of Caspar Weinberger because the DOD
was shooting dogs to give surgical practice, he graciously answered the door
and discontinued the program. Unfortunately, goats then became the new
scapegoats. It is my belief that people have a constitutional right to picket
the homes of vivisectors and to acquaint their neighbors with their occupations.
Not everyone shares my opinion.
FBI war on animals and their protectors
Justice Dept. funding tasering and burning of pigs at Univ.
of Wisconsin
FBI's role in quashing 1st amendment rights of activists
FBI Agent arrests man at Virginia circus demo for wearing an animal mask
FBI Cover up of Ft Detrick And Dugway Proving Grounds Primate Sacrifice
in Weaponied Anthrax Research
FBI Propaganda Amplified by KTVU re illegal arrests of animal rights
activists picketing homes of UC Berkeley vivisectors
US Military's War on Animals
US Air Force Pig Tasering And Other Experiments at Brooks AFB
which has also irradiated primates
Navy killing whales with sonar and propellers is sued by
several groups. http://www.hsus.org http://www.cousteau.org
Army's Dugway Proving Ground Experimenting With Weaponized Anthrax on
Soldiers Trained To Kill And Eat Animals
Donald Rumsfeld's American distribution rights to vivisector Roche's ineffective scam
drug Tamiflu
Human casualties in Afghanistan are underreported. Animal casualties
are censored. Afghan War Killing Some of the last 100 snow leopards in Afghanistan along with hibernating bears buried, sealed alive in caves,
big horned sheep and countless other species.
Afghan and other war effects of landmines on people and animals
Top brass Require Soldiers To Abandon Pets When Deployed Overseas
Depleted Uranium in Iraq at 81 Times The Average Gives Cancer to People and Animals
Ft Campbell Kentucky sprayed thousands of blackbirds with detergent in
winter so that the loss of oil would cause their deaths by freezing.
Ann Free of the Birmingham News wrote that the heat from their bodies
rose visibly (as their souls rose invisibly)
Army's Ft Sam Houston: rats immersed in boiling water for 10 seconds..
and then infected on burned areas
DOD: Goats substituted for dogs.. shot at Wound Labs for surgical practice.
Ft Detrick: Rabbits bound by steel rods while mosquitoes feast on them
NIH barbarism and negligence
NIH gives Harvard's underground labs more $ than any other univ
EPA testing on animals and approving lethal insecticides
and rodenticides
USDA Opposition to Mad Cow Testing. USDA
hiding the truth as well about Mad Pig Mad Sheep Mad Lamb
Mad Deer Mad Elk Mad Chicken Mad Turkey Mad Fish
Mad Milk
USDA: Revolving door between USDA and animal flesh industry
(Ann Veneman, USDA Secretary, was mentored by
Lyng of the American Meat Inst. before going on to UNICEF)
USDA, Monsanto, Dairy Industry Poisoning Children With School
Lunch Program
USDA Muzzling Mad Cow Truth
http://www.rense.com/general6/cow.htm (USDA muzzling list of
ingredients containing Mad Cow, Mad Pig, etc.)
USDA is mandated to investigate animal research labs. Its criminal
neglect in this area joins many other areas.
USDA's US Forest Service through the criminal policy of controlled burns
has set millions of acres on fire, burning people, animals, trees, buildings.
US Fish and Wildlife Service trying to kill hundreds of sea lions
along with Oregon and WAshington state agencies...
for the salmon fishermen who want to continue their
suffocation of salmon uninterrupted
Continues to promote hunting and fishing in violation of the teachings of
most religions and though the percentage of hunters in the population is
the smallest in history. 100% are taxed for the blood sport of 1 to 5%
(depending on the state.. Pennsylvania having the most)
4 of the many ways the Bureau of Land Management kills
and otherwise harms animals
US Commerce Dept promotes McDonald's and KFC around world..
building a hospital with McD in Brazil
NASA exploded thousands of animals over 5 states when Lockheed's
obsolete shuttle blew up. The public was not informed that NASA Glenn
captive animals were secreted into the hold.
Dept of Transportation: Through the instigation of Senators Feingold,
Grassley and Harkin, ratified by the Diebold Senate, the minimal protections for baby chicks in transit
were eliminated. They are now no longer under abimal status but are
classified as commercial mail, denied the requirements of protection from
freezing, heat, suffocation, smashing, thirst.
FDA, puppets of international pharmaceutical vivisecting pricegouging
manufacturers of lethal products, often fails to act about dangerous food:
Toxic Animal Flesh
Poisonous Fish Flesh
Atomic Energy Commission.. The Atomic Ark 4000 animals deliberately
sacrificed.. burned alive in atom bomb testing
To be added:
NASA's decades of animal torture, including primates imprisoned in restraining
chairs for months at a time.. their legs paralyzed..
Fast food employees paid by the taxes of the poor
The Air Force Experiments On Animals
Read the full report.
A one-second jolt with a Taser has been known to cause excruciating pain. One reporter recounted, "Taking the jolt, my knees gave out and the quick blast felt like it lasted 10 minutes. All I could see was red, and the pain was like an extreme migraine headache and how I imagine a whack in the back with a baseball bat would feel." After being subjected to an intolerable 15 seconds of electric current, it's no wonder that the animals refused to go back into the chamber. Even when they had been cruelly fasted for up to 48 hours, they balked, knowing what would happen to them.
In the protocols, the experimenters documented the following:
Pigs "vocalized loudly and ran in circles."
Most pigs "ran in circles. While being tasered, some of the swine jumped, either against the wall or over a wall."
One pig who was Tasered "was able to jump back and forth over a 2.5-ft wall."
One pig who was Tasered "was able to jump against the wall and its front hoof reached 6 ft off the ground."
The Air Force Video: Where's the Sound?
PETA was denied video footage of these experiments until our attorney filed a complaint. When we finally received the DVD, it was obvious why the Air Force was reluctant to release it. The animals were shown screaming and convulsing horribly, one after the other; they were deliberately and repeatedly subjected to prolonged electric Taser shocks. But the videotape did not have an audio track, and we've had to file another appeal for the full, unedited version as well as photographs that we know exist.
PETA wrote to the Air Force Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) members who approved this pitiless, revolting experimentwhich was designated a category 3 experiment ("Pain or distress without analgesia"). We sent them a copy of the DVD so that they could see for themselves what they had approved. We asked them to favor non-animal test methods and refuse to sign off on any other protocols that involve blatant suffering.
Experiments on AnimalsNot Good for the Air Force's Reputation
One member of the IACUC, John Ziriax, wrote that this experiment "will be a very high visibility project. This is a feature that has both good and bad consequences. On the good side, done well, this experiment could enhance the reputation of Brooks as a DoD bioeffects research laboratory. On the bad side, anything less than quality work has the potential for doing damage to our collective reputation and our ability to continue doing research with animals."
Take Action
Please write to Dr. James Jauchem, who presided over these experiments. Ask how these crude tests could have passed muster, and explain that they reflect very poorly on Brooks Air Force Base. Politely tell him that this does not qualify as "quality work" and that weapons experiments on animals must cease.
James Jauchem, Ph.D.
8308 Hawks Rd.
Brooks Air Force Base, TX 78235
Please also write to:
Col. David Karcher, Director
Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate
3097 Range Rd.
Quantico, VA 22134
Who are the billionaires for whom these government bullies work?
Nelson Peltz: billionaire owner of Arby's, Wendy's Kraft
Warren Buffett, billionaire owner of Dean Foods
Don Tyson: billionaire owner of the largest network of
pig and cow slaughterhouses
NPR: owner of 200 million in McDonald's stocks
Yum Foods, Kentucky based.. world's largest conglomerate
owner of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut etc.
Bill Gates, funder of vivisection at Duke University which maintains
a partnership with the Atkins Foundation (the toxic Atkins
diet condemned by the AMA and with Smithfield, largest
pig butcher in the US)
Karl Albrecht Germany 87 20.0 Germany
animal and fish flesh monger Aldi's which carries virtually
no vegan burgers, no vegan ice creams, no tempeh or hummus
David Rockefeller who owns cattle ranches in Argentina
and a sheep ranch in Australia as well as a collection of 50,000
impaled beetles.
The heirs of Winthrop Rockefeller, father and son, with
their Winrock Farms cattle ranch in Arkansas.
At least 5 Secretaries of State, including Henry Kissinger
and Dean Acheson, were made so because of their
connection to the Rockefeller Foundation. They were
trained in protecting its assets. The latest Secretary of
State, Hillary Clinton, was heavily invested in slaughterhouse
and vivisection products before being forced to divest.
Gioia Family connection to Topps Meat
(There are tens of thousands of billionaires, centimillionaires
and decamillionaires for whom the government agencies work)
For other billionaires see http://www.forbes.com
annual list of the biggest thieves in the world
Intimidating vegetarian and vegan groups
Decades ago, the US Govt told Seventh Day Adventist vegan
hospitals that unless they served meat they would lose
federal funding. The SDA caved in. Unfortunately, Loma Linda
Hospital, an SDA one, is involved in vivisection and murdered
a baboon for a heart transplant to a human.
The US Army's helicopters were buzzing the vegan community
called The Farm in Summertown Tennessee until Senator Al
Gore stpped in to stop it.
Because most of Sai Baba's 100 million followerse are vegetarian
or vegan and because they work actively to promote
a world without slaughterhouses, the US Govt as well
as those of the UK, Australia have spread disinformation
about the only man in history to have 100 million people believe
him an avatar.
The Commonwealth countries are all involved in mass
genocide of animals.
That is perhaps the main reason for their sharing of Echelon
satellites which spy on their citizens.
The previous Canadian PM was on NPR not as a statesman but
as a shill for Canadian cow flesh.
The present fraudulently elected PM Harper continues
to pay Newfoundland seal clubbers to massacre baby seals.
Many around the world are responding by boycotting the
Canadian Olympics
Canada advertises the hunting of bears.
It deforests old growth woods.
It kills animals in Afghanistan
The UK
kills primates and other animals in testing
promotes British animal flesh
kills animals in Afghanistan
has created drought with its deforesting livestock economy
kills 6 million kangaroos a year
New Zealand
is involved in the barbarism of live shipments of sheep and
cows aboard ship
Ft Detrick Maryland Killed 4000 Primates in Just 1 Weaponized
Anthrax Experiment Before shipping Primates and Samples
to Battelle Memorial Labs of Tennessee, Columbus and
West Jefferson Ohio.
Battelle received 1 billion from the CIA
rockcreekfreepress reprinted from
NY Times Complicit in FBI Anthrax Coverup
Back in 2001, just months after the anthrax attacks that killed five people,
several articles came out in mainstream newspapers that pointed clearly to the
CIA and Army as the most likely sources of the weaponized anthrax. Articles in
The Baltimore Sun, Miami Herald, Washington Post and New York Times laid out the
facts that incriminated Battelle Memorial Labs in West Jefferson, Ohio, and the
Army's lab at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah as the only logical sources for
the anthrax. These facts, as reported in 2001, include:
1. For over a decade, Army scientists at Dugway have been making weapons-grade
anthrax that is "virtually identical" to the anthrax used in the attacks.
2. The anthrax used in the 2001 attacks was extremely concentrated, with a
trillion spores per gram. The Dugway anthrax had a similar concentration.
3. The FBI was increasingly focused on US government bioweapons research
programs as the source of the deadly anthrax.
4. Both the lab in Utah and the lab in Ohio received anthrax samples from the
United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)
at Fort Detrick, although USAMRIID deals only with wet anthrax and ships it wet.
5. The investigation was focused on the Dugway anthrax, and Dugway was described
as the only facility that was known to be weaponizing anthrax.
6. One FBI official said that the CIA's anthrax was "the best lead we have at
this point."
7. Army officials said that Fort Detrick did not have the equipment for
weaponizing anthrax.
The FBI has never explained what became of this initial focus on the labs in
Utah and Ohio. Instead, after the death of Fort Detrick anthrax researcher Bruce
Ivins in July, 2008, the FBI attempted to make the case that Ivins was the
murderer and all other suspects had been cleared of suspicion.
Since Ivins' death, the media have, with very few exceptions, passively
swallowed the line dispensed by the FBI, and have acted as little more than
stenographers in parroting the hollow arguments presented by the FBI that Ivins
is guilty.
On December 12, 2001, The Baltimore Sun published a seminal article by Scott
Shane that clearly laid out just how strong the evidence was against the Dugway
Proving Ground in Utah. Subtitled "Organisms made at a military laboratory in
Utah are genetically identical to those mailed to members of Congress," Shane's
article also includes this eyebrow-raising line: "Scientists familiar with the
anthrax program at Dugway described it to The Sun on the condition that they not
be named."
Apparently Shane has forgotten all that he reported seven years ago. Now with
The New York Times, Shane's latest piece, published January 4, 2009, raises
troubling questions about the independence of The Times, and the memory hole
that Shane must have used to shunt away all that he once knew about the case the
FBI code-named Amerithrax.
Shane calls his 5,200 word article "the deepest look so far at the
investigation." Titled "Portrait Emerges of Anthrax Suspect's Troubled Life," it
is primarily a hatchet job on Bruce Ivins. Filled with innuendo and
unsubstantiated allegations, the purpose of the article is clearly to solidify
the perception that Ivins was the killer, and to pooh-pooh the widely held
belief that the anthrax came from a CIA or military lab in Utah or Ohio.
Shane dismisses these beliefs breezily, stating: "The Times review found that
the FBI had disproved the assertion, widespread among scientists who believe Dr.
Ivins was innocent, that the anthrax might have come from military and
intelligence research programs in Utah or Ohio." Not a single piece of evidence
is presented to back up this sweeping claim.
Halfway through his article, Shane springs another shocker on us. "By early
2004, FBI scientists had discovered that out of 60 domestic and foreign water
samples, only water from Frederick, Maryland, had the same chemical signature as
the water used to grow the mailed anthrax."
Really? Do FBI scientists think that anthrax researchers go to the kitchen sink
for the water they use to grow the anthrax? According to Wikipedia, biochemistry
labs use only highly purifi ed water, such as double-distilled. Distilled water
is created by boiling water and collecting the steam. To obtain double-distilled
water, the process is done twice, so that all impurities and minerals are
removed. Distilled water has the same chemical signature, namely none, no matter
where in the world it originates.
It is unprecedented to have a major development in a high profi le case go
unreported for a full five years. Not only has the FBI never before mentioned
this so-called discovery about the signature of the water, but when they were
specifically asked if anything could be learned from the water, they said no.
The question came up on August 18, 2008, when the FBI held a science briefi ng
to follow up on the highly publicized August 6 press conference by DOJ attorney
Jeff Taylor. The science briefi ng was hosted by Dr. Vahid Majidi, Assistant
Director of the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.
Dr. Majidi was asked: "In your looking at the elemental and chemical properties,
could you tell anything about the water that was used to fi lter this anthrax,
and did that do you any good?"
Dr. Majidi replied: "No. No."
Yet here we are, five months later, with Scott Shane telling us that the FBI has
known since 2004 that the anthrax was grown near Fort Detrick, because of the
chemical signature of the water.
Beyond these outrageous claims, Shane's article is busy assassinating Bruce
Ivins' character. We have Nancy Haigwood saying of Ivins "he did it," for no
apparent reason other than she doesn't like him and thinks he's odd. She also
thinks Ivins vandalized her house 27 years ago and impersonated her. No reason
is given for why she believes these things.
Shane editorializes heavily. He charges that Ivins was "chipper" even as five
people were dead or dying of anthrax inhalation, and was relishing his moment in
the spotlight. No evidence is presented for how Shane reached these conclusions
about Ivins.
Words Shane uses to describe Ivins (including quotes from others) are: corny,
dour, scary, provocative, emotionally laden, thin-skinned, aggressive, goody two
shoes, very sensitive, creepy, possessing an unnerving hubris, stressed,
depressed, rude, sarcastic, nasty, devious, jumpy and agitated.
We find out that Ivins had been a nerdy, awkward teenager, was not popular in
high school, and was still bitter about this.
He liked to eat a mixture of peas, yogurt and tuna for lunch and wore outdated
bell-bottoms, practices that, according to Shane, got him labeled an "oddball."
The words odd, oddball or oddities appear five times in Shane's article.
The final reference, regarding "a man whose oddities, for many people, made the
FBI's anthrax accusation more plausible," tips Shane's hand. His constant
harping on Ivins oddness betrays the poverty of the FBI's case, which Shane
acknowledges has "yielded nothing more persuasive than a strong hunch" that
Ivins was the killer.
Fortunately for many of us, being odd is not a crime.
But was Ivins odd? The Frederick News Post published a letter from Amanda Lane
on August 10, 2008 that includes: "I want to shout from the mountain tops that
Bruce was the kind of man we look up to
He was a decorated scientist and the
the task would get completed faster.
"He was not the greatest athlete, but he was the best cheerleader present at
every game to support his friends. I will truly miss his good humor, as there
are few people in life who measure up to this man. I hope that he knew how much
joy he brought to my life and others around him. If I learned anything from
Bruce, it was to enjoy life and to always smile. His friendship brightened so
many lives. I hope that Americans will remember Bruce for the funny and
compassionate person that he was, because that is all Bruce knew how to be."
Although Shane does mention that Ivins' colleagues cherished him, the
implication is that they didn't really know him, as "he hid from them a shadow
side of mental illness, alcoholism, secret obsessions and hints of violence."
The New York Times has published a hit piece, devoid of incriminating facts,
more gossip than journalism. Shane's article raises disturbing questions about
the relationship between The New York Times and the US government. What happened
to the FBI's original focus on the CIA and Army labs? Who is behind the drive to
pin the attacks on a dead man who possessed neither the means nor the motive to
carry them out? And why is The Times acting as a PR arm for those with an agenda
that has nothing to do with journalism?
Sheila Casey is a DC-based journalist. Her work has been published by the
Chicago Sun-Times, Reuters, the Denver Post, Dissident Voice and Common Dreams.
The Future is Vegan Money
(BSE Lawsuits, ecoli lawsuits, salmonella and anaphylactic
shock and amyloid plaque (Alzheimer's) lawsuits,
critical mass in vegan diet among the young,
need to maximize the earth's food yield through the
highest yield foods (fruit and nut trees)
need to stabilize the weather through fruit tree planting
Light in the Darkness
Dr Faust, chief of the USDA Fruit Labs, told a reporter he had
seen centenarian apple trees drop 2 tons each of free food.
State Govt. Barbarisms
(an almost infinite list)
Gov Perry's connections to vivisector Merck
Corrupt Senators (virtually all with emphasis on
the Western livestock state senators and southern poultry
state senators)
The Senate passed the criminal AETA bill which was pushed
most by Coburn and Inhofe of Oklahoma and Izaksom and Chambliss of Georgia.
John Cornyn of Texas, elected through vote fraud
.. was part of a hunting party which killed over 400
cage raised birds released in nets in front of him.. (in 1 day)
Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.. Pfizer's voice in the Senate..
Pfizer incinerates in New London CT incinerator alone, a truckload
of dead animal victims daily
George Voinovich of Ohio
1. as governor authored legislation which made the mourning
dove a hunted bird
2. when a German factory farmer was banned and jailed
for cruelty to animals and nearly killing a worker with nicotinic
insecticides, Voinovich invited him to Ohio with a red carpet
which turned out to be a carpet of blood.. 1/2 million birds
were killed in a tornado.. many of them without food
or water .. and without feathers..in the 30 degree weather
... were finally bulldozed alive into graves by Buckeye which
became Agrigeneral and now has another name
Dianne Feinstein, war profiteer and insider trading who has illegally
funneled billion dollar contracts from the govt. to her husband.
Feingold, Harkin Grassley... removed protections for baby chicks
in transit
Don Barnes' refusal to continue irradiating primates at Barnes AFB
inspired the movie Project X with Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt.
People tend to think of San Francisco as a liberal area.
Yet its elected politicians Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi
are warwagers. In addition UC Berkeley administration
worked with the FBI and Schwarzenegger to pass an
unconstitutional bill limiting the right to picket.
Army's Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah Confirms Weaponized Anthrax
Last Updated
14 Jun 2003 (before Rupert Murdoch bought the paper)
Source: Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2001.
Army Confirms Experiments With Anthrax at Utah Facility
The U.S. Army confirmed Thursday that it has experimented in the last few years at a Utah facility with powdered forms of anthrax that could be used as a weapon, but said all of the material had been accounted for.
Army officials refused to say if the powdered anthrax -- manufactured to test defensive decontamination methods, they said -- was the same as the Ames strain that was used in the mailing attacks. The Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah does have that strain, and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said they are now waiting for scientists to determine if it was used in powder form by the lab.
The FBI has been aware since October that the facility was experimenting with powdered anthrax and has questioned personnel there about the matter. But a senior law-enforcement official working on the case said, "to say someone from Dugway is the culprit is pure speculation. ... We've been working very closely with the Army, and they've been very cooperative."
Army shipping records show that anthrax was sent to Dugway Proving Grounds from the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. At Dugway, the anthrax was used as part of small-scale, regular experiments to test detection equipment and decontamination gear to better equip U.S. soldiers against biological weapons, Army officials said. The effort was launched after the Gulf War.
The Army said in a statement that "all anthrax used at Dugway has been accounted for. There is a rigorous tracking and inventory program to follow the production, receipt and destruction of select agents."
FBI officials say they have been surprised by the widespread use of anthrax in laboratories and research universities. "It's been eye-opening for us," a senior FBI official said Thursday. "The way the science community works, it's very freewheeling and free-sharing."
Tim Moore, director of research for the Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine, whose school has been contacted by the FBI, said there is a "very different culture of how scientists deal with their [anthrax] cultures. When I was in grad school the lab was a mess. There were cultures that had been in there for 15 years; nobody knew who they belonged to."
Meanwhile, federal health officials said they will meet this weekend to discuss whether to offer anthrax vaccinations to thousands of people who may have been exposed to the dangerous bacterium.
About 9,000 people in Florida, Washington, New York and New Jersey were told to take antibiotics for 60 days to stave off anthrax infections. As that deadline gets closer for many, some health officials wonder if the course was long enough to prevent anthrax spores in the lungs from causing infection. Evidence that many people didn't finish the regimen also has raised concerns; many of the postal workers at the Brentwood facility where contaminated letters were processed have told health officials they didn't finish the regimen.
Officials must decide if the possibility the vaccine may protect people is worth the possibility of adverse reactions to it. They also must decide how much of the 220,000 doses transferred from the Defense Department to the Department of Health and Human Services stockpile should be used rather than saved for potential future outbreaks. Vaccinating all the people deemed to be at risk would require at least 27,000 doses.
Postal officials also said they are considering issuing fliers to New Jersey residents in the hopes of securing more leads over the mailer of four anthrax-tainted letters postmarked Trenton, N.J. The proposed flier, to be sent out before Dec. 25, could include images of the letters, the FBI's profile of the mailer, the idiosyncrasies of the mailer's handwriting, and information about the case's $1.25 million reward.
-- Sarah Lueck, Chad Terhune and Kathy Chen contributed to this article.
This factsheet was completed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Please direct any questions or comments to PETA directly at 757-622-7382 or info@
Military Testing: The Unseen War
When news reports tally the casualties of war, or when monuments are erected to honor soldiers, the other-than-human victims of war--the animals whose bodies are shot, burned, poisoned, and otherwise tortured in tests to create even more ways to kill people--are never recognized, nor is their suffering well known. The 1987 movie "Project X" offered only a glimpse of the kind of experiments that go on far from public view but at taxpayer expense.
Uncounted Casualties
The House Armed Services Committee voiced its concern "about the use of animals in medical and other defense-related research" in its report on the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 1995.(2) At committee hearings, DOD revealed that its use of animals in experiments has increased 36% in the past decade, but that it spent $180 million on research using 553,000 animals in the last fiscal year.(3)
Top Secret
Sample Experiments
Radiation: At the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Maryland, nine rhesus monkeys were strapped in chairs and exposed to total-body irradiation. Within two hours, six of the nine were vomiting, hypersalivating, and chewing.(8) In another experiment, 17 beagles were exposed to total-body irradiation, studied for one to seven days, and then killed. The experimenter concluded that radiation affects the gallbladder.(9)
Animal Intelligence
Thousands of animals also fall victim to military operations and even military fashion. A series of Navy tests of underwater explosives in the Chesapeake Bay in 1987 killed more than 3,000 fish(15), and habitats for hundreds of species have been destroyed by nuclear tests in the South Pacific and the American Southwest.
"Alternatives to Animal Use in Research, Testing, and Education," U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, 1986, pp. 50-51.
Krizmanic, Judy, "Military Increases Animal Experiments," Vegetarian Times, August 1994.
Tom Regan, "We Are All Noah," 1985.
Burleson, "Flow Cytometric Measurement of Rat Lymphocite Subpopulations After Burn Injury and Injury With Infection," Archives of Surgery, 122:216.
Wretland, et al., "Role of Exotoxin A and Elastase in the Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Strain PAO Experimental Mouse Burn Infection," Microbial Pathogenesis, 2:397, 1987.
Phillips, et al., "Cloth Ballistic Vest Alters Response to Blast," Journal of Trauma, Jan. 28, 1988.
Dubas, et al., "Effect of Ionizing Radiation on Prostaglandins and Gastric Secretion in Rhesus Monkeys," Radiation Research, 110:289, 1987.
Durakovic, "Hepatobiliary Kinetics After Whole Body Irradiation," Military Medicine, 151(9):487.
"Obscure Office Drafts World War III Script," Washington Post, May 27, 1984.
Watts, et al., "Effect of Temperature on the Vector Efficiency of Aedes Aegypti for Dengue 2 Virus," American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 36(1):143, 1987.
Dobson, et al., "A Device for Restraining Rabbits While Bloodfeeding Mosquitoes," Laboratory Animal Science, 37(3):364, 1987.
"Goats Shot to Teach Army Doctors Skills," Williamsport Sun-Gazette, March 5, 1986.
"Uncle Sam Wants You, Too, Fido," Time, June 18, 1984, p. 33.
"Fish Deaths Cancel Navy Blast Tests," Washington Post, October 1, 1987.
"Air Force Needs a Few Goat Jackets," San Francisco Chronicle, April 8, 1988.
--- End forwarded message ---
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Genzyme Corporation Vol 4 10
Document Sample
Genzyme Corporation Vol 4 10 Powered By Docstoc
Genryme Corporation
One Kendall Square
CambrIdge, MA 02139-1562, US A
T 617-252-7500
F 617-374-7470
Dockets Management Branch 1572 33 APR,-7 A931
Food and Drug Administration
5630 Fishers Lane
Room 1061
Rockville, MD 20852
Subject: Docket Nos. 03D-0060,99D-1458,OOD-1538, OOD. 1543,00D-1542 and OOD-1539
Draft Guidance for Industry on “Part 11, Electra nit Records, Electronic
Signatures - Scope and Application”
4 April, 2003
Dear Sir/Madam:
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Draft for Industry on “Part 11,
Electronic Records, Electronic Signatures - Scope and Applicatio published in the Federal
Register on February 25,2003. Below are Genzyme’ s r your consideration.
1. We request that FDA state unequivocally that Part 11 is still effect at the start of the draft
guidance, as we have noticed many differing opinions throu out the industry and its
2. Please define the term “fewer records” in 5111A. It is our that FDA means that
process automation software
records for the
configuration management processes (paper and electronic)
unclear as to whether the concept of “durable media” as a def
created is still applicable. This
osmometers, TOG meters, etc.)
device that may reside on a durable media until overwritten, re also exempt, with the
exception of robust configuration managem,ent/metrology/S P control programs already in
3. In 3111A, it would be helpful if the items listed in the parenth ses were directly related to the
rule elements they reflect.
4. We request further definition of “enforcement discretion” me in 5111A, and some
characterization of the enforcement process. Does FDA consi to be part of the
escalation process detailed in the dispute resolution proposal
5. In 3111B 1, please clarify whether the term “merely incidental” * eludes security and controls
that enable us to prove that we have content integrity. We als request that FDA list classes of
Wb 1-9
Docket Nos. 03D-OO60,99Dl458,OODl5
8,OOD-1543,OOD-1542 and OOD-1539
www genzyme corn T Page 1 of 3
instruments or types of technologies covered by “incidental.’ use.
6. $111B 2, Bullet Point 2 suggests that hybrid environments w:.ll always be taken into account
under the business practice considerations. We note that ofl.icial documentation via SOPS will
not assure that e-records versus paper records (or vice versa) prevail. How will FDA
distinguish whether records or the context in which records are used fall under performance
of a regulated activity?
7. We are unclear as to what the Agency intends in 5111B 2, Bullet Point 3. It would seem that
submission requirements are covered under predicate rule.
8. We note, in 3111B 2 Bullet Point 4, that electronic signatures are not equivalent to “initials and
other general signings.” Electronic signatures are legally bir.ding equivalents of handwritten
signatures. We believe that FDA should provide clear distir-ction between electronic
signatures as opposed to electronic identity (that which is achieved by logging in to a
computerized system).
9. The first paragraph in 5111C 1 suggests that audit trails do not necessarily require validation
when a computer system is validated. Please confirm.
10. 5111C 1 paragraph 2 states ” . . . it may be important to the systems to ensure the
accuracy and reliability of part 11 records contained in in the absence of a
predicate rule requirement. Please explain the distinction b tween tools (applications that
create predicate rule e-records) and systems (that rule records). For
example, the use of Microsoft Word to create an ith a resultant electronic record)
versus SAP (an application that contains predicate rule elec for product
traceability and release).
11. Paragraph 2, 5111C 2 seems to indicate all systems and inter ces require risk assessments as
part of a central system validation effort, regardless of rule influences. This seems
inconsistent to us. Does FDA intend to be able to inspect su systems under routine agency
visits? Please consider the following example. If a Human management system
passes information to a predicate rule training system, system
required to apply audit trails and controls to meet Part ll? an audit trail be applied at
the interface level?
12. §I11 C 3 implies that a retired system or a static system does ot have to be remediated. If a
system was in existence prior to August 1997, (i.e., a legacy and the applicable
application has since been upgraded, will the Agency discretion” if the
system is not Part 11 compliant? We believe that a
technology/function-driven rather than date driven, as the te only constitutes part of the
story for achieving compliance. Also in this for intended
13. Please elucidate the Agency’ expectations during an inspec on in 5111C 4, specifically, what
is considered “reasonable and useful access” to records d an inspection? Will FDA
expect to review paper or will inspectors need to perform ele tronic system review? The
requirement for ability to search, sort or trend implies that th re may be a need to supply the
Docket Nos. 03D-0060,99D-1458,00D-1
38,OOD1543,OOD1542 and OOD-1539
Page 2 of 3
application. There are other types of files that could be “technology neutral” such
as CSV. We note that “technically feasible” can usually be ccomplished at great cost. We
would like to ensure that our efforts produce usable data for your inspectors.
Please provide specific examples of what kinds of e-copies e Agency expects to be
processable versus static.
14. In III C 5, does FDA expect access to electronic copies of ret records? In addition, does
the Agency require electronic copies of audit trails, and are audit trails expected to meet
predicate rule retention requirements for their associated Please clarify.
We believe that overall the draft guidance has been helpful in terpretation of previous issues,
e.g., clarification in the use of “technology-neutral” copy form , but has raised further questions
as noted earlier. In particular, we appreciate the enhanced sk assessment when applying
Part 11 to different systems. We also believe that the ability to ain electronic record information
in ways other than electronic form to meet long term retention riods is useful. Genzyme
appreciates the opportunity to comment on the Draft Guidan Industry on “Part 11,
Electronic Records, Electronic Signatures - Scope and Appl Please contact me at (617)
374-7275 or Juliette Shih at (617) 761-8929 should you have estions regarding this letter.
Rw Yocher
Vice President
Regulatory Affairs
Juliette E. Shih
Clinical Operations Analyst
Biomedical and Regulatory Affairs Compliance
Docket Nos. 03D-O060,99D1458,
OOD- 538,OOPl543,OOD-1542 and OOD-1539
Page 3 of 3
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Author's Note: This is a story that I started a very long time ago for someone. There are a lot of details that will make a lot of sense to that person, and be very meaningless to the rest of you, but that by no means makes it unreadable – it's just cutesy Emily/JJ story. :) (something which I don't do very often.) Oh and the title is a Snow Patrol song – a very good one so you should all go listen. That is all. Read and review, please! :)
Crack The Shutters
I wake to feel you breathing next to me, and for a moment I find myself happily lost in cliché. The single cliché moment where you feel wholly content, and instead of cringing at such a thing, I realise that clichés only exist because they're truths, they do happen.
But then something about this isn't cliché. Cliché defines as trite and familiar, but there's nothing trite about something you've very rarely felt, and there's nothing familiar about waking up next to you. It isn't familiar; it's never happened before now. It's simply comfortable, and I find myself smiling at that.
The previous night, you'd pulled out the IOU I'd given you many months before - the one entitling you to one movie, one pizza, your bed, and me. I laughed when I reminded you that the small print states that it can only be redeemed once, and that you'd already used it several times before. And you took that moment to remind me, with one simple gesture, of the further small print that I'd neglected to take into account: Terms subject to change; depending on the bearer's powers of persuasion.
I smiled inwardly as you sat there with your pouty bottom lip, a slight glimmer in your eye that told me you knew very well that that would get you everywhere. And I tried to keep a straight expression, not allow you the satisfaction of knowing you had me wrapped around your little finger, but soon enough that inward smile of mine visibly made it's presence known on my face, and a smug, satisfied grin formed on your own.
It was all a game, really. We both knew that there was never any question about me wanting to spend time with you, never even any need for you to ask. But perhaps a part of me enjoyed that split second where I could see you really did question that, where you thought that maybe I really did have better places to be. That split second right before you stuck out your bottom lip, and showed me that you did know it was a game, and that you were willing to play along.
That was last night, and this is now. You'd fallen asleep long before the credits rolled, with your head resting against my tummy and your left hand strewn loosely over my hip. I didn't have the heart to move you, and I wasn't uncomfortable, so I flicked off the TV, and let you sleep that way.
I move around in my sleep, and I guess that's the reason that neither of us are still in that same position when I wake up. But you're there, and though you know I don't like sharing a bed, and though I'd never tell you; I'm grateful for that.
I roll over onto my back before freeing my arms from the duvet and letting them rest on top. I take a quick glance at you, sleeping peacefully, and turn my head back and smirk to myself. I think about the ways I could wake you, disturb you from that peaceful slumber. I'm not sure at that point if you'd get pissed off with me for such a thing, but that uncertainty seems to make me want to wake you more. I want to see that initial annoyance reflected in your reaction, before you can't even pretend to be mad at me anymore.
Rolling onto my left side I prop myself up on my elbow, before bringing my right hand back beneath the duvet. It's cool from its brief encounter with the cold air beyond the cocoon of the blankets, and that smirk makes its presence known on my face once again as I imagine your body reacting to the sudden temperature change against your skin.
I could place my hand directly against your stomach, your chest, your neck, but I'm fairly certain that would simply startle you awake. That's not what I want; I want to see every tiny reaction your body has towards me. So instead, I run the back of my fingers slowly, barely grazing your skin, down the right side of your stomach. Your shirt has risen during the night - it likes to do that - so I begin my trail as high up as the material allows me to do so. I move my fingers gently along the side of your breast, your stomach, until I reach your hip, and allow two fingers to dip barely beneath your underwear. Only for a split second, before my hand continues its journey along your lower stomach - but I smile smugly to myself as a subtle movement in your hips confirms to me that I am having the desired effect.
I haven't taken my eyes off of you for a second, noticed every unconscious flicker of your own as my fingers make their way across your body. But the cool of my hand is fading quickly, and before it completely dissipates, I finally lay it flat against your stomach. The gesture is still gentle, barely touching you, but your sudden deep intake of breath assures me that you felt it. Your skin is hot, and my cool hand doesn't stand a chance against it's temperature. But I keep it there for a few seconds more; until I'm fully satisfied that you felt it right down to your core.
My eyes are still on you, watching every slight movement, and I see your eyes flicker once more as my hand, still flat against you, makes its way up towards your chest. There's a sharp intake of breath again as my fingers find your nipple, form a tight grip around it, and you turn your head away from me, slightly burying your face in the pillow and granting me access to your neck. I press my lips against the skin there, gently; a perfect contrast to the actions of my fingers. I make my way from your ear, down to the nape of your neck, before I pull away and watch you once more; every breath you take matches the motions of my fingers, and I can feel the heat between my own legs rising.
There's something incredibly hot about watching your body's response to me. Something incredibly satisfying about seeing and feeling the effect that I have on you, and I find myself craving more. But not just yet; I want to see your eyes as I press my fingers into you.
I remove my hand for a moment, and smile as a whimper escapes your lips at the loss of contact. "Something wrong, baby?"
You don't reply, but I notice the slight smile tugging at the corners of your mouth; I wonder if you realise how adorable you are.
A smile gracing my own lips, I press my mouth to yours, and you waste no time in grabbing a handful of dark hair and holding me to you. I pull away, only when oxygen becomes a definite issue, and you speak for the first time that morning, "Em, please.."
The desire to tease you some more is pretty much overwhelming but the need to be inside you overrides it, and as I press my lips to yours once more, my hand makes its descent further down your body. Your hips move as I reach the top of your underwear, and I smile once again, so fucking hot.
I tug at your underwear, "I don't think we need these," and I can't help but laugh as you hastily remove them as if your life depends on it. All desire to tease you leaves instantly as I run my fingers through liquid heat and hear you moan at the contact, "My god. You're so fucking hot, Jen." The words are barely a whisper against your lips, and I struggle to stifle my own moan as I feel your hips move against my hand.
"Please, baby.. I need you inside me."
Your wish is my command and the sharp tug against my hair as I press two fingers into you simply fuels my own desire even further. I prop myself up on my left arm, my hand tangled somewhere in your hair, and straddle your thigh; my fingers still buried deep inside you, my forehead pressed firmly against yours as our bodies meld together. Your hips pick up an instant rhythm against my hand, spurring me on, and I waste no time in matching your hips thrust for thrust.
You press your free hand to the small of my back, effectively forcing me down further against your thigh as we move together, the other locking its grip further into my hair as you crush your lips against mine. My fingers curl inside you and your kiss ceases as you concentrate on the sensations coursing through your body, but your lips don't leave mine – I can feel the heat of your breath burn against my lips as my thumb rubs circles against your clit, feel the vibrations of your moans right down to my pussy – and I have never felt more alive in my whole life.
I know this will be over long before I wanted it to be, long before I'm ready for it to be, but as my fingers push you to the edge that you're so desperately craving, as the friction of our movements brings me to that very same edge, I am somehow okay with that.
"Em, I'm gona come.."
That is quite possibly the most erotic thing I have ever heard and as I feel the signs of my own imminent orgasm, my thumb moves faster against you, my thigh presses firmer against your pussy. "Come for me baby.."
I feel every inch of you tense up at my whispered command, feel the grip on my hair become stronger as my own body chases that perfect state of euphoria. The air around us falls deathly silent for a moment – a silence that is laced with every word left unsaid between us. And whilst the silence is filled once again with ragged breaths of pleasure and release as we both finally fall over that beautiful edge, I find those unspoken words falling freely from my lips. "I love you, Jennifer. So fucking much."
My face falls to the crevice between your shoulder and neck for a second as I catch my breath, and I feel your hands stroke gently over my hair. I wonder briefly if you heard me and lift my head to meet your eyes. "I'm sorry I made you wait."
"I'll wait forever."
I frown at your words, at the indication that you're still waiting, and a small part of me feels a little angry that your innate uncertainty in yourself is preventing you from seeing the huge step that I just took, from seeing the reality of me finally having the courage to admit my feelings to you. And then a short conversation makes its way to the forefront of my mind – a conversation in which I told you that there's a huge difference between telling someone that you love them and that you're in love with them – and my anger dissipates into a smile. "I'm so in love with you."
You smile and hover your lips millimetres from mine. "I'm so in love with you too, Ms. Prentiss."
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End of a state authority leads to layoffs, labor boycott of state fair
All candidates for statewide office in Albany promise (or threaten) reform to state agencies and authorities, and the labor situation at the New York State Fair is a preview of what happens when the state dismantles administrative structures dating back to the Great Depression.
Last year, the Legislature dissolved the Industrial Exhibit Authority, set up to handle federal money provided in the New Deal era to build and improve buildings at the State Fairgrounds in Geddes. At the time, state representatives made incorrect predictions about the effect that dissolving the IEA might have on the Fair’s employees. According to the Syracuse Post-Standard:
A spokesperson for the state agriculture department said at the time that there would be no layoffs and the public would not notice a difference in the fair’s entertainment and exhibits.
The State Fair laid off 20 year-round workers back in May, and the Syracuse Post-Standard reports that instead of hiring union workers for seasonal jobs, the fair is hiring directly for less pay. Workers represented by the Plumbers and Steamfitters union earned about $47 per hour (including benefits) at the fair. The state is looking to hire people to perform the same work, and other skilled trades, for $17.78/hour this year.
Traditionally, Labor Day is the last day of the fair, and the Greater Syracuse Labor Council holds a parade. They’ve asked members to boycott the fair and the parade.
Boycotting the state fair is a big deal to people near Syracuse. It’s a bleak, unimaginable, Gianelli-less end to the summer and clearly a last resort. (I’m not entirely kidding.)
NY State Fair terminates union workers; thousands threaten boycott [Syracuse Post-Standard]
41 thoughts on “End of a state authority leads to layoffs, labor boycott of state fair
1. XDOH
Well, what are the jobs and what are the union workers skills? Is it a requirement to be in union to get job? Is it necessary to be in union?
Just some questions.
2. Common Sense
Paying a plumber $47 an hour plau benefits exceeds $100,000.00 a year in salary and benefits. I can understand the need to pay this kind of wage when you have a complex issue for the plumber to work on, but if your main function is just sitting around waiting for a sink or toilet to get clogged and then unstopping it the $47 an hour is just to much.
3. Goose and gander
Now, lemme get this straight…we’re supposed to fire all the consultants working for NYS and replace them with state workers to save oodles of money. But when we try to hire cheaper, non-union seasonal workers at the State Fair saving oodles of money, that’s bad?
Folks, you can’t have it both ways.
4. Don Murphy
It’s hard to comment on Ms.Northrup”s article when it is incomplete (or has been edited)but I’d like to know what happened to the members of the dismantled commissions.
I attended the forth of July concert and the people picking up the trash were driving their vehicles into the crowd at the end while the people exited instead of waiting till they left to clean up.If this is an example of the benefit of cheaper labor then it will be a calamity come Fair time
PS autodon50@gmail.com is my correct E-Mail address
5. Milli Vanilli Groupie
Hmmm….so we can hire the same amount of people to do the same work for nearly 1/3 of the price? That is such an easy decision, its ridiculous. It will be really sad if those parents deny their own kids a family tradition over flawed politics. The union endorsement is a kiss of death now anyway, so there won’t be much sympathy.
Why drag the kids into it? The fair is supposed to be all about them having fun and making lifelong memories. This shows us yet again that the union leaders don’t mind using them as pawns while refusing to concede there is even a problem. Boycotting it takes money out of the local economy and further hurts the “working families” that they themselves swear are the backbone of America and they exist to represent. What they really show with immature actions like this, is that if the union can’t have it, nobody can and they will go out of their way to harm their own kin.
Let the mindless robots sit home like their leaders say if they really are that trained to bark on command. We’ll have a great time without them. I can take comfort knowing many will have more common sense and take their little one on the bumper cars after they eat what they think is the biggest ice cream cone on earth.
Those who get life will get much more satisfaction having their child smile at them and say thanks for a great day rather than hearing somebody complain about their job. Make no mistake, the kids will remember these things forever when they grow up and will seek to relive it with their own children.
Despite the best efforts of the union to hurt their own community, this American tradition will be back next year too. I’d like to invite them off their pedestal to come down and have a fun time with their brothers and sisters. Forget about the politics.
6. Donna H
Common Sense, please show some. Regular maintenance workers take care of clogs, not plumbers. You know, those jack of all trades that fix anything that goes wrong until it’s beyond their skill set and then they call in the plumbers who are, you know, like paid for their extra knowledge and skill.
Or maybe Milli, they care about their children’s future more than they care about a one day outing but, hey, given that you proudly proclaim to like fake music over the real thing… well, enough said…
Thing is unions don’t need to do this. This seems like an invitation to trouble. Instead of paying for the skill the union plumbers possess, they’re going to hire those willing to work that kind of thing for $17.78 an hour!!! Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen to me since anyone willing to work that kind of thing for less money than I make on a seasonal basis, well, ain’t gonna be the someone with the impressive resume, work experience and good skill set.
7. Nassau Nell
But then where will I get my corndogs and jelly apples, and see obese people in stretch pants ?
Seriously: will this mean a boycott of politicians from the Fair?
8. FedUp (the real one)
Stop comparing this to state workers vs consultants. This is apples and oranges.
First of all, there is no reason why the State Fair – which isn’t even SEASONAL – it’s 2 WEEKS out of a year – needs to have any full time year round employees. That is a ridiculous waste. If they wanted to hire seasonal workers, union or otherwise, then that is much better.
The issue with consultants vs state workers is different. These are full time, year-round jobs, where the consultants sit side by side with the state employees, doing the same exact work, but being paid 2-3 times more (even including benefits).
According to the politicians who have been proven to have financial interests in these consultants or their companies, this saves the taxpayers money because “the consultants can be fired at any time”. Theoretically they can, but since they are politically connected, this never happens. Even in the face of gross incompetence. Many of the consultants being paid almost $200,000 a year, do not even meet the minimum requirements to take a civil service exam to get the job that a state employee would get paid $55,000 a year for.
For example, at my agency we have a highly paid “Network Engineer” consultant being paid $180,000 a year with no college degree, even an associates. Only 2 years of attending college with no indication the person even passed their classes, just that they “attended”. This is from the person’s own resume!
9. Mohammad Waheed
I don’t support unions, I never want to be part of one. To me, it is group of low educated workers sticking together so they all get share of the pie, and if one gets smaller share, all have to cause problem for everyone. I agree with the “Common Sense”, $47 is bit too much for some guy who happened to be in a union workforce. Lets find someone who is willing to take $25 or $30. After all, competition is always good.
Just my two cents.
10. Awesome
I would love to know what people do when it comes to their own finances. Oh, wait a minute, we’re in a recession because the housing bubble burst and people were getting more house than they could pay for! We cannot continue to run this state on credit that we can’t pay unless politicians raise taxes to offset the costs. Go ahead, hire the cheaper workers! There are tons of jobless folks out there that would love to work!
11. John
@ FedUp(the real one)
You are incorrect that the fair should not have full-time employees. Yes, the New York State Fair itsself is only two weeks long, however, there are events at the fair grounds year round. RV shows, horse shows, car shows, banquets, etc, etc. Full-time staff is necessary since this iss a year round operation.
12. Lenny Barlow
Do you have any idea what it takes to plan a State Fair? Do you think a couple of PTA moms just get together and make a few phonecalls? “Hey, Marge, you call the corndog guy and I’ll give the ferris-wheel guy a jungle”.
The State Fair requires land, insurance, accountants…a whole army of people.
13. FedUp (The real one)
@John – Thanks for that information. I didn’t realize that other events were held there as I live in the Eastern part of NY and have not heard them publicized here. Do the other events coming in pay to use the fair grounds? I would imagine that they do, perhaps the fee should be raised to cover the cost of staff and preparations for the event.
@Lenny Barlow – I realize that there is some planning involved, but it doens’t justify the number of year round, full-time staff.
Once upon a time I was very active in 4-H and went to the state fair every year for competitions. There was very little new there from year to year. Same rides, same vendors, most of the same attractions, etc. which were even positioned in the same spots around the fairground year after year. I really doubt it took an army of year round full-time staff to organize the same thing over and over.
14. K11
Let’s call it as it is, this is the Syracuse fair. Vendors come from all over to set up at any fair – Syracuse is the only area that benefits from this event.
This is taxpayer funded.
I say scrap it, entirely. Stop frying my dough. I don’t attend.
15. FedUp (The real one)
Oh and one more thing. The fair is great. I love fairs, specially the State fair.
That being said, if we’re in a dire fiscal crisis, where people are fleeing NY because of the tax burden being imposed on them, I think that optional recreational things need to be the first things to be cut.
We all know that the politcians will take away things like state parks, pools, and fairs away from the people paying taxes before they dare to cut welfare payments to peopel that don’t work. God forbid they didn’t have air conditioning, internet, and cable like they do now.
16. SomeSchmoe
@Common Sense: Hiring a plumber for $50 an hour isn’t the same as hiring a full time employee for $18. The $50/hr guy goes away when there is no work, so the cost difference between a $50 guy who does something and then goes elsewhere and a $18 guy who is sitting around all year waiting for plumbing to break isn’t quite that simple.
17. Milli Vanilli Groupie
@Donna H, nothing but the real music here, but thanks. My point is that life goes on with or without you and we may as well enjoy the short time we have here instead of being so self-centered. If you don’t have a kid, you’re probably home watching reruns anyway. Caring about your kid’s future is much more than making a paycheck, despite your sweeping generalization. Instilling family values is equally as important and a family day out at the fair is a great time/place to pass it on. That does not ignore reality, but puts things in perspective. I’m fine taking the burden so my child doesn’t have to, even if it means swallowing my pride (hence no boycott) so they can be them. You’re right. Its a short event. All the more reason to quit whining for the day.
Of course jobs are important and necessary, but if you are willing to spit in your brother’s eye, why should folks worry about defending you? The jobs are gone and wont be back in that form. Throwing a public tantrum won’t sway people who are themselves looking for work saying, “I’ll do that job for half what they charge”.
You just look at this the wrong way. There are still people being employed, so while one guy takes a seat, another guy willing to compete steps in. We get to save a bunch on top of it so its win/win. If some feel the pay is bad, they don’t have to apply.
Also, I love how the pro-union crowd will knock the skill of a non-union worker. You’re gonna tell me that the 5 year union worker is going to have the same experience as the guy working out of his house for 30 years thats been in every building in the neighbohood but didn’t take the union course and pay dues? Dont make me laugh. You sum it up like joining up automatically makes you some sort of a guru. It definitely doesn’t and statements like that portray an ignorant tone. Trust me, I’ve met some real geniuses on the jobsite and you wonder how they even manage dress themselves in the morning let alone survive 20 years in the local 41st or wherever. The fact is, private worker with significantly less overhead expense can offer a better rate. Simple as that. Skill has nothing to do with this debate. It’s beginner business economics. How many of those people you look down your nose at CAME from the union and decided to start their own business? I suppose they are the unskilled enemy you speak of too.
If you are going to look down on people, at least use some common sense of your own.
18. DeerJohn
I think ol’ Dan has the Plan, and we should bring him to Albany. Maybe help out the guv, or hey, even run for the job in November. If he can remove all the state workers and replace them for 1/3 the cost, just think of the savings! Maybe we could even balance the budget(if we had one)! Maybe replenish the bottomless Pork Barrel. O’Hara For Governor!
19. kevin
@ Milli Vanilli…I know for a fact that in some of general labor unions, construction workers, they have certain quotas for work to be done, and for the most part those quotas are FAR less than what should really be required; so if anything, the union workers do less work(in that scenario, anyways). You also have to remember that it really comes down to the individual’s own mentality. If a person is in a hard-working mindset, they are going to work until they feel accomplished, which is probably more than a quota would require. It probably all balances out in the end. It’s the same with private contractors…You’re only going to work as hard as you are going to work.
20. rkrough
$47 an hour for a plumber? Anyone got their number? Most plumbers around here charge $75 just to show up.
21. ResidentX
first, the studies have been posted here that the average state worker (union) has a higher level of education than the average private sector worker. Are there some that have little to no education? sure but the overall average is higher than that in the private sector. Many jobs in the state are specialized and thus require that education. Its actually pretty funny because private sector workers with the same level of education want to be paid accordingly but dont want to pay a public employee anywhere near the same for the same or even more education/skills.
I’ll also point to most of the road crews out there doing all that road work are actually PRIVATE contractors contracted to do the work and some even use state equipment. Strangely everyone wants to blame the laziness standing around etc on state workers when most are actually PRIVATE SECTOR workers.
also… with something like Information Technology.. let me know the first person willing to do the job for less than what a state employee is being paid. A state worker being paid 50,000 to do a job is working along side a private contractor being paid 80,000 or 90,000 … or more for the same job. The other side of that is the few contractors who actually make around the same as a state worker to do the job are actually working for an agency who is skimming 20, 30 thousand or more off the top of their contract so the worker may not be making a on more but it costs the state more just the same because the contract agency is being paid huge sums for the service.
a point on contract staff that hasnt been brought up. When a contractor is actually let go due to incompetence etc (which is far FAR from often) they are generally replaced almost immediately with another contractor because the contracting firm has a deal with the agency to place a certain number of contracts in order to achieve a certain profit. So even in tough times when cuts are necessary, its not like the state just doesnt place contractors to help save. They are pretty much forced to place/replace contractors due to the agreements with the contracting firms.
how about the time spent by these contractors looking for the next, more lucrative contract throughout their work day spending large amounts of time on their cell phones etc.
contract staff isnt nearly as cost effective as some seem to think and in fact can cost far FAR more. Much of that cost trickling into management and politicians pockets.
22. K11
“Goose and gander” you are a stooge. Through and through.
It’s not a matter of Union workers are cheaper. It’s a matter of *MATH*.
Union I.T. workers cost 1/2 what contractors cost the state.
Union Plumbers cost TWICE that of seasonal employees.
23. Another Albany Resident
Managing the Empire Expo Center where the state fair takes place would be an enormous undertaking with it’s full season of events and attractions. The logistics involved in the details of planning and contracting for these events is beyond what anyone on this blog can imagine, unless you are a professional meeting/event planner.
When people visit the fair or any of their events, they expect some level of quality. The choreography of the horse events has to meet expectations. The owners of expensive equipment need assurances that their investments are protected.
This does not come cheap. By devalueing hard work, we devalue the quality of the experience at the fairgrounds and we a lowering the economic bar. Why would we want to make peoples hard work worth less? That is bad for society in the long run. We must look beyond this fiscal crisis and ask ourselves what our time and education is really worth. $17 per hour instead of $47? Why try? Why do anything?
24. Clifton Park Voter
It looks like the state government may have tried to cut waste. Isn’t that what all politicans promise to get elected?
You want us to overpay for union work. The union then ‘donates’ money back to corrupt politicans. That is a kickback.
My hard work is worth less because I am forced to give an increasing amount of it to the state so they can overpay union labor. Maybe I should stop trying.
25. Mr Hoffa's Ghost
if it weren’t for unions and the limited leverage they provide, no one would be making more than minimum wage, or less – lets not forget that unions were created to protect workers from unscrupulous employers willing to exploit men, women and even children to make a quick buck – and if you think sweatshops and child labor are things of the past, you need to dig your head out of the sand
and with the plethora of unskilled resident alien workers ready to scarf up every available job for a less-than-respectable wage, I for one am glad to pay my dues to ensure my job isn’t out-sourced to anyone willing to work for peanuts, or less.
unions aren’t to blame for the mess we’re in – we didn’t ask for massive raises when the economy was booming, and since our taxes are based on our income, we raise more income for the state by virtue of our higher salaries, which in turn allows for higher entitlements such as welfare, medicaid, and unemployment insurance – the real reasons our state is fiscally bankrupt, since they account for over 70% of the state’s budget
union proud and union loud – the voice of fair labor practice will never be silenced!
26. Gary Evans
Yes, this NYS Fair is a waste of NYS tax dollars. Fair admission SHOULD and MUST cover all expenses. Period! Yes, the Syracuse area benefits greatly BUT at the expense of everyone else’s tax dollars! Just another bad example of New York State pork-barrel funding.
I’d leave it to the Fair managers whom to hire and whether or NOT they are union members PROVIDING I and others NOT directly benefiting do NOT have to pay.
If Syracuse wants THE fair then let Syracuse pay just a other local fairs around the state do!
27. FedUp (The real one)
I don’t agree with everything unions do, particularly with respect to protecting some bottom feeders within their ranks (which they are obligated to do). Every group will have a range of people that includes excellent to below average.
For the most part, most union workers are honest hard working people. They are not paid “more” than people in the private sector doing similiar work for the most part.
Maybe it is a little harder to fire them. And workign in government, especially NY state government, that is the ONLY way people who are not friend, family, or politcially connected would even be able to work in any state goverment jobs. The amount of political interference and retaliation even WITH union protections is mind-blowing.
You would see much more corruption if employees were living completely under the thumb of their politcial masters and could be fired on a whim. The types of underlying reasons you’d see peopel getting fired would include things like standing up to corruption, someone’s friend or family member needing the job, or someone’s wife being jealous.
28. hockeyguy
With the lengthy list of properties owned by the State of New York I would be astounded if there weren’t already a large number of unionized plumbers on the state payroll. Shouldn’t be too hard to find out what NYS pays unionized plumbers (I doubt it is either $17 or $47 per hour) and make that the rate. Or would that be too simple of a solution?
29. maverick100
@ Hockeyguy:
Here you go – the career ladder for Plumbers with the state:
And the pay schedule:
It looks like these plumbers, however, may have been in “exempt” positions and not true civil service positions, as the pay rates for their guild are a bit higher than the pay rates for those in civil service as listed on the Civil Service site. The guild does not look to be a civil service only guild, but a true trade guild for plumbers in any sector, public or private.
Adding up the hourly rate and benefits on the unions site, and adding the the hourly stipend for being a senior general foreman is what gets these plumbers to that $47/hour mark that was quoted – in other words, it’s $47/hour total compensation if you are in a higher level supervisory position (as I read the chart that is), and the actual hourly pay rate would be $32.48. In other words, plumbers that are members of this trade guild that are working on private sector jobs are making the same as the ones working in the public sector if I’m reading things correctly, as they only list one payscale.
Conversely, the Civil Service website reflects that a “Supervising Plumber” at the max pay rate would be making around $26/hour, and there are only 21 of those jobs statewide. The majority of the jobs (294 of them) are in the “Plumber & Steamfitter” title making from $17/hour as a trainee to $24/hour at the top of the payscale.
In other words, had they used actual “civil service” plumbers, it looks like they would have made a bit less.
Comments are closed.
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Amazon: "Primed" to disrupt Apple's textbook plans? | ZDNet
Amazon: "Primed" to disrupt Apple's textbook plans?
Summary: Apple may have thrown down the gauntlet for the iPad in education, but don't count Amazon out.
So. Apple. A huge library of textbooks for $14.99 each and a free authoring program for rich textbook content.
That about sums up this last week's events.
Oh wait. You can only sell that content produced with iBooks Author on the App Store and of course all of those texts are stuck in Apple's "Walled Garden".
Are we supposed to be surprised that this is the way Cupertino wants to do business? No, of course not.
It does bring up the issue however that if Apple becomes successful in making iBooks electronic textbooks a successful enterprise and an educational standard, a "digital underclass" might be created for those who cannot afford to purchase electronic texts if paper texts become no longer economically feasible to produce.
While I projected that this is probably more likely to happen faster to our public library system than our educational system, it does bring up the disturbing thought that iBooks textbooks might not be an affordable solution for most public school systems and only privileged, wealthy school systems will benefit from them.
I mean, to use iBooks Textbooks, the student needs to own an Apple iOS device. And realistically, you're going to need an iPad to read them, which currently have an entry cost of $500. That might be a reasonable expense for a university student to absorb on their own, but a public school system?
An iPad for every child?C'mon.
And before you tell me that Apple is going to drop the prices on basic iPads to under $300.00 because the company is feeling particularly philanthropical towards our poor children so they can read these wonderful rich content textbooks, stop dreaming.
The company nor its late founder has never been known for their philanthropy nor have their educational discounts on hardware been particularly generous in recent years.
Apple wants to make money, and lots of it. A 30 percent cut of sales on the texts and continued healthy margins on their hardware.
For the time being, iBooks Textbooks are targeted at K-12, not universities, so who exactly is going to pay for these iPads, public school systems? Our tax dollars?
Look, I'm not not saying that Apple's iBooks 2.0 technology or their iBooks Author tool isn't impressive. I've looked at both the tool and the sample textbook material it produces, and it's cool stuff.
But this is like saying a Porsche or a Corvette might be a cool car for your teenager when a Hyundai Accent or a Ford Escort will suffice.
If I may quote Master Yoda, "There is another."
Amazon, which is the world leader in electronic book sales and distribution is almost certainly not going to lie down and take it while upstart, elitist Apple treads over their blue collar books for the masses turf.
Amazon has the relationships and the financial moxie and then some to match Apple's deals with the book publishers and broker arrangements with the school systems. Quite frankly, while they too have a proprietary platform that also locks you into their ecosystem, it's got a lot more breathing room.
Of the two devils you want to deal with, Amazon is the much more warm and fuzzier one to sell your soul to.
The Amazon Kindle platform runs on literally everything. Cheap e-readers, web browsers, Macintosh and Windows PCs, iPads and Androids. At least as a K-12 or college student, on Amazon's platform, you've got a choice.
And if there needed to be a rich color content viewer for textbooks, you can pretty much be guaranteed that Amazon has the ability to work with public schools and even universities to get one manufactured and subsidized.
A 10.1" Kindle Fire would likely sell for $299 retail to the regular public. Knocking off another $100 for students and educational institutions provided certain commitments were made is not out of the question.
And can you say $150 7" Kindle Fires for educators and students? I knew that you could.
Now, it could be argued that with iBooks Author and iBooks 2, Apple currently has the ability to sell much richer content than Amazon does now. But I don't think your average high school or junior high school student is going to be equipped with iPads just yet.
Amazon has plenty of time to catch up -- and I suspect this is an area they have been working on for some time now.
There is the issue of advanced book formats and authoring tools where Apple now has a lead. One way that Amazon could erase that lead is partnering with a company that knows content creation better than anyone.
Say, Adobe, whose InDesign software is already the leading tool for e-book authoring.
I don't think it is that it is implausible that Amazon could offer a free version of InDesign specifically targeted towards the creation of book content for Kindle-enabled devices. Particularly if the offer was extended to Prime members to offset the subsidy costs to Adobe.
It would be nice if this tool could produce open EPUB output, and if Amazon could take a leadership position in furthering the open EPUB format and adopt it for its own Kindle content instead of the legacy MOBI/AZW, but that might be wishing for too much.
In addition to the tool itself, I also envision Amazon possibly offering a "Prime for Education". Essentially, this would be the same Amazon Prime we all know and love, with the same benefits, but it would be offered at a discount to students and educators.
[EDIT: Amazon already offers a version of Prime discounted under its Amazon Student program.]
Such a service could include additional value-added benefits such as a textbook loaner library, integrated social networking for teachers and students, and electronic textbook curriculum listing and procurement services for participating schools, so that a specific K-12 system could buy e-book entitlements in bulk based on a list of titles targeted towards their students for that year.
I could also see it used potentially with the Amazon Cloud to host other selected materials for educational systems, such as films and music and multimedia coursework via Amazon Video and Amazon Cloud Player. In short, an Amazon competitor to iTunes University.
Can Amazon disrupt Apple's electronic textbook plans with a competitive offering of their own? Talk Back and Let Me Know.
Topics: Apple, Amazon
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• Wow, great idea, insight...
Very insightful, Jason. Open system, the more affordable Fire comes into its own, lending library idea -- great stuff!
Gotta love competition.
• RE: Amazon:
@mcwong1 <br>Except that Amazon's Kindle platform is even more closed and restrictive in other ways.<br><br>Jason, you say Amazon is the lesser of two evils, but what about their far more restrictive hardware?<br><br>Apple has no problems allowing rivals to provide their apps on the iOS platform. Does Amazon allowed competing ebook stores on the Kindles? No, you're locked into buying your content from Amazon. How else can they sustain their loss-leader hardware model?<br><br>In contrast Apple allows Barns & Noble, Amazon and any other ebook retailer or store to exist on the iOS platform. Likewise, Apple has no problems allowing rival music stores, video and all sorts of other content.<br><br>Also, you talk about how wonderfully cheap Amazon hardware is, but you neglect to mention how much less capable the various Kindles are as general purpose tablets. Even the Kindle Fire is lacking in so many areas:<br><br>No Audio in or audio recording so no VOIP or capturing lecture audio or audio for projects. Not to mention Android's abysmal lack of support for low latency audio.<br><br>No front or back cameras so no video Skype, photo documentation, HD video capture or editing.<br><br>No Bluetooth so no external wireless keyboard for long form text entry or wireless audio systems or headsets or hands free car kits.<br><br>No 3-way gyroscope or digital compass or GPS, so no accurate motion sensing game or app control or augmented reality or navigation apps.<br><br>No 3G so no ubiquitous Internet connectivity option.<br><br>And don't even get me started on the limitations of the cheaper black and white Kindles.<br><br>You bemoan the expense of Apple's iPad but neglect the fact that students would have to buy a Kindle PLUS another tablet or laptop to get anything like the same capabilities of the "expensive" iPad.<br><br>Then of course there is the enormous gulf in app availability. Android and even more so the Amazon App Store are wastelands in terms of other educational apps or apps in other categories. And then there is the 45% of Android apps that are spamware or the 700+ malware apps or the legions of copyright infringing apps. Do you really want to load all of that on poor old overloaded educational IT support areas?<br><br>No, Amazon might like to think it is a viable alternative to the iPad and iBooks in Education, but boy what a lot of extra baggage and limitations they bring to the table!
• RE: Amazon:
Nope, Jason just love to kick Apple in the nuts if he gets a chance.
• RE: Amazon:
@Melciz Are you kidding me?
Google Sky? Show me the Apple Equivalent! Astronomy Anyone?
Google Earth? Again where is Apple's Equivalent? Geography Anyone?
Google Body? Nope, nothing really like that on Apple either! Anatomy Anyone?
Periodic Tables? Yep, on both! Chemistry Anyone?
C/C++/Objective C Programming and Compiler? Android Yes! iOS Nope!
Looking through the Android Market I also find, Spelling, Math, Language, Music and Science Apps!
I guess when you say there are No Educational Apps available on Android, you mean??? I have no idea what you mean, as you surely didn't check this before posting!
Oh and you can get the Kindle Reader as well and that has Text Books that you can Buy from within the reader!
Bottom Line, you have no clue what you're saying!
Also, the Google Apps are best of Breed!
• RE: Amazon:
@Peter Perry
I am very sure google loves you first for being a tool to sell ads and secondly to sell your personal info to advertisers and then your blind loyalty.
Good for you.
• RE: Amazon:
@Peter Perry,
Google Earth is on iOS as well and for every Google app that isn't there are dozens and dozens of equivalents on iOS. Why do you seem to think Apple has to author them?
There is no way you can say there are more educational apps for Android, it just isn't so, particularly for tablet apps where Android, is still miles and miles behind iOS.
Yes and the Kindle reader is available for iOS as well as I said.
So any comments about the closed aspects of Amazon's Kindle ecosystem or the fact that Kindle-owning students will need to also buy another more capable tablet or laptop to do much more than just read ebooks?
• RE: Amazon:
Spoken like a true Apple fanboy. Good job.
• RE: Amazon:
So do you have any facts to bring to this discussion or are you just going to sling the same tired old insults?
• RE: Amazon:
Um, you can read a book from Amazon on ANY platform, once you have argued that point, come back please.
• RE: Amazon:
You still don't understand do you.
My point is that Amazon's *hardware* is locked down more and is far more limited than Apple's.
As I say, Amazon does not let other book or media stores run on the Kindle hardware platform, whereas Apple allows a plethora of stores and services from thousand of other providers.
Which would you rather students have?
1. A cheap tablet that can only have ebooks and textbooks purchased from Amazon, has a tiny number of educational apps, virtually no tablet-optimised apps, zero Google apps and which would require the student to also purchase a laptop or other more capable tablet to do the wide range of tasks the iPad is capable of.
2. A slightly more expensive tablet that has hundreds of ebook stores, textbook sources, media stores, hundreds of thousands of educational apps and tens of thousands of tablet-optimised apps and far more capable hardware that actually browses the web at a useable speed, has best in class word processing nd DTP apps, spreadsheets, presentation apps, works with external Bluetooth keyboards, can do audio in, augmented reality etc etc.
As you can see the fact that iBooks only work on the iPad doesn't matter as you could just as easily buy textbooks or media from any other store or supplier and still run it all on that same piece of hardware.
This is far less limiting than getting Amazon Kindle hardware which locks students into a single source for content which is Amazon's business model.
• Today's News: Over 350,000 iBooks downloaded in 3 days
The market has spoken.
oh...and you're right about Amazon.
• Amazon Kindle app runs on bookoos of different platforms!
Do iOS apps run on Android tablets?
• RE: Amazon:
"My point is that Amazon's *hardware* is locked down more and is far more limited than Apple's."
My Kindle Fire has this nice little toggle switch in the settings to allow the user to side-load software. Without hacking the Kindle Fire in anyway I was able to install Barnes and Noble's Nook for Android, Opera, and Firefox with ease. Just download the file, tap it, and select install.
They may want to have some control over their app store but Amazon is NOT nearly as locked down as Apple. Let me know when Apple allows side-loading apps without hacking their devices.
• RE: Amazon:
@Melciz <br><br>You do know that you can run the Kindle app on any platform you like? I have it on my iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro and my Windows 7 portable. How is this locking out platform flexibility? Apple does'nt allow you to run their software on other platforms.
How is a $500 iPad going to help shrink the digital divide that is already widening in this country? Apple will never dilute their brand with lower priced iPads. Also; did you read the article on how Apple is licensing the free iBook software? Anything you create with their software can never be sold anywhere else. Talk about vendor lock-in.
I'm not an Apple basher, I own many of their products; including an iPad, iPhone and a MacBook pro. But that doesn't mean I don't see their business practices for what they are. Lock in for authors and no other platform for readers.
• RE: Amazon:
It is true that you can turn off the security restriction on side-loading on the Kindle, but the question is how many Educational IT groups would be keen on opening up their tablets to all the malware abounding on the Android platform let alone the support headache of anything and everything being installed by students?
Most Education IT teams I know of have breathed a sigh of relief over the parental controls and curated apps of the iOS platform so I think the last thing they'd want to do is turn off security settings on a platform that is already the number 1 mobile malware target in the world. (last quarter 100% of all new mobile malware discovered targeted Android)
• RE: Amazon:
@Melciz <br><br>"It is true that you can turn off the security restriction on side-loading on the Kindle, but the question is how many Educational IT groups would be keen on opening up their tablets to all the malware abounding on the Android platform let alone the support headache of anything and everything being installed by students?<br><br>Most Education IT teams I know of have breathed a sigh of relief over the parental controls and curated apps of the iOS platform so I think the last thing they'd want to do is turn off security settings on a platform that is already the number 1 mobile malware target in the world. (last quarter 100% of all new mobile malware discovered targeted Android) "<br><br>You start with a Hasty Generalization and then move right into a Irrelevant Conclusion.<br><br>Those that you have met are not representative of all IT teams. Nice try at diverting the readers attention with the malware scare.<br><br>{EDIT}<br><br>I was going to just ignore the Complex Question Fallacy but thought I would tell you about our school system and the iPad 2 that my child received this school year from the school system.<br><br>The iPad has a sticker with "Property of [School District Name], [School District address], [School District phone number]. Yes, it is a public school district. The device was issued without being associated to an account. We had to provide our own Apple account. I created a new one just for this device and used a bank issued virtual credit card number with a $1.00 limit (smallest limit possible). I setup the iPad upgraded the iOS from 4.x to 5. The school district then provided us with an iTunes card to purchase the software the school wanted for the student to use. I doubt that I have ever seen such an IT hands-off approach to any other device (maybe Windows 95/98 machines). We did not receive any documentation for the device nor any instructions on how to secure (Parental Controls) the device. Honestly, I didn't need any documentation since I am familiar with iOS. I would imagine that other parents might need some documentation.
• I can read a Kindle book anywhere
@Melciz I can read my Kindle book anywhere, on my PC, on my iPad, my Mac, my Kindle device (such as a fire), anywhere. The teacher can project part of the book on the screen at school through her PC that she read on her iPad last night without caring what hardware or OS is at school.
9 year olds don't need a gyroscope, camera, 3G or Bluetooth, so why pay for them to have them? Seriously, I use my iPad for Netflix and web browsing, I don't even need any of that stuff.
A Gray
• RE: Amazon:
@A Gray
As I read Melciz's comments, he claimed that you can't do much with the Amazon hardware. One particularly ANNOYING thing is you can't read ePub or other format books on the Kindle (either 'software' or 'hardware' Kindle).
Why would have to be locked to the not very convenient AZW format?
By the way, my platform of choice is FreeBSD and there is no Kindle application there. Luckily, most of my books are in FB2/ePub anyway so I can read them in that format everywhere (including the iPad), but not on my Amazon Kindle.
Also, you will be surprised what kids can use gyroscope, camera, 3G or Bluetooth for... just give the thing in their little hands. Most important of all -- they will learn a lot in the process.
• RE: Amazon:
@jammer6463<br>"Apple will never dilute their brand with lower priced iPads"<br><br>Actually, Apple already has released a lower-priced iPad. <br><br>It has front and back cameras capable of video calling and recording HD video @ 30fps, has a 3-axis gyroscope for app control, a microphone, Bluetooth for external keyboard, audio systems, headsets and other accessories, can connect to a big VGA screen or projector via cable or wirelessly using AirPlay all of which are missing from the Kindle.<br><br>It is priced the same as the Kindle, sells between 6-10 million units per quarter (4-10x as many as the 1-2 million Kindle Fires sold last quarter) and makes a good profit for Apple, not the loss Amazon incurs.<br><br>Oh, and it also runs almost all 500,000 games, ebooks, media and apps in the iOS App store.<br><br>It is also more portable than any Kindle.<br><br>It's called the iPod touch.
• RE: Amazon:
@Dragosani, <br>I work in a university IT support group and trust me, one reason we ourselves can be so hands-off with the iPad is because it's such a secure platform even without enabling parental controls. It and the iPhone have proved to be by far the easiest to support platforms of all those we support on campus. <br><br>Also, why did you have to get a $1 credit card for setting up your child's iTunes account when you can set up iTunes accounts without using a credit card at all?
| 6
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End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
Terminal/CLI Web Text
v0.1
A filtered extract of terminal and command-line content from two large web-text corpora.
Sources
- DCLM (
Zyphra/dclm-dedup) - FineWeb (
Salesforce/fineweb_deduplicated)
How it was built
- Fast filter: skip any document that doesn't contain obvious CLI indicators (
$,sudo,pip install,```bash,root@, etc.) - Score: remaining docs are scored (0-34) across five signals, each with a per-match point value and a cap:
| Filter | Description | Points | Cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prompt patterns | Shell prompts like $ cmd, user@host:~$, >>>, root@, PS C:\ |
2 per match | 10 |
| CLI commands | Known commands: sudo, apt-get, pip install, git clone, docker run, curl, ssh, gcc, etc. (30+ patterns) |
1 per unique match | 8 |
| stdout patterns | Output indicators: "successfully installed", "cloning into", drwx (ls output), "packets transmitted", "traceback", version strings |
2 per match | 6 |
| Code blocks | Terminal-flavored code blocks: ```bash, ```shell, <pre><code>, terminal/console div classes |
2 per match | 6 |
| Indented blocks | 3+ consecutive lines indented 4+ spaces (code/output blocks) | 1 per match | 4 |
Documents scoring >=5 are kept.
- Dedup: exact dedup across both datasets using xxhash64 on full text.
Stats
| Chunks | Size | Rows | |
|---|---|---|---|
| DCLM | 13,144 | ~229 GB | ~18.8M |
| FineWeb | 8,800 | ~669 GB | ~47.5M |
| Score | Count | % | Cumulative |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 39,025,201 | 63.62% | 63.62% |
| 6 | 10,787,199 | 17.59% | 81.21% |
| 7 | 4,063,886 | 6.63% | 87.83% |
| 8 | 2,911,983 | 4.75% | 92.58% |
| 9 | 1,304,162 | 2.13% | 94.70% |
| 10 | 1,022,996 | 1.67% | 96.37% |
| 11-14 | 1,609,090 | 2.62% | 98.99% |
| 15-20 | 536,421 | 0.87% | 99.87% |
| 21-34 | 80,340 | 0.13% | 100.00% |
| Total | 61,341,278 |
Use case
Mostly for upsampling agentic-adjacent data during pretraining.
- Downloads last month
- -