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On April 26, New York City police officers set up mobile security scanners at the Acorn High School for Social Justice in Brooklyn. They seized 129 cell phones, 10 CD players, two iPods, a box cutter and a knife. Such searches and the ban on cell phones have prompted protests by high school students across the city.
Cell phones have long been banned in the city's public schools, but principals at schools without metal detectors, such as ACORN High School, often ignored the policy, and students got away with carrying cell phones, as long as the phones did not make noise in class.
Now all students have to obey the rules because of a new Department of Education security policy. City police officers have started randomly showing up at schools that don't have metal detectors and using mobile scanners to keep weapons out of the schools, according to a department press release. But the police are also confiscating cell phones, iPods and other banned electronic devices. If cell phones are seized during a scan at school, school officials decide when to return the phones.
Petitions and Protests
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein says the ban is necessary because students use the phones to cheat on exams, take pictures in locker rooms and call friends to help in a fight. But students and their parents say they count on cell phones to stay in touch before and after school. Some city public high school students have been using various tactics to protest the ban, with some students threatening to walk out of class if the metal detectors appear at their schools.
Sharon Weisberg, a freshman at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, organized a petition drive demanding that students be allowed to keep their phones at school for safety reasons. She has collected signatures from more than 700 of the 4,000 students who attend the school.
She said she plans to send her petition to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office when she gets at least 1,000 signatures. She's also working with students at Fort Hamilton, Franklin Roosevelt, Stuyvesant, LaGuardia and Port Richmond High Schools who are circulating their own petitions.
"I was enraged at the stupidity of the mayor. His decisions are idiotic and somebody needed to tell him that," Sharon said.
New Youth Connections writer Dorena Belovet Ruff, 17, understands Sharon's anger. Two years ago, she attended night school at Canarsie High School, which has permanent metal detectors. Her mother worried about her commuting home at 10 p.m. without a phone. "She's like, 'If something happens, I want you to be able to call home,'" Dorena said. "She didn't like it."
So Dorena, and other students at Canarsie, snuck their cell phones into school -- some wrapped phones in tinfoil and pretended it was a sandwich, she said. Dorena would walk through the metal detector and when it beeped, quickly slip the phone in her bag that had already made it safely to the other side.
But with all students -- not just those at schools with metal detectors-- facing the loss of their cell phones, more people are speaking against the policy. Judith List, assistant principal of Murrow's Communication Arts Department, said she's unhappy with the mayor's decision. She has a son in the ninth grade. "I need communication with my child, just like any other parent," said List. "I feel that as long as the student doesn't take it out in class, there should be no problem in carrying them." All students will suffer because of students who abused this privilege, she said.
Staying Home
Parents with children attending the New York City Lab School in Manhattan have suggested that children go home when scanners come to their school, according to comments posted on a Yahoo discussion group.
One Lab School parent told her son: "If you see them at school, just turn around and go home."
"Cell phones are essential for communication," said Alex Rich, 16, a Lab School student. If they try to take away my electronic devices, I just won't go into school."
Ilya Arbit and David Schmutzer are writers for the teen-written magazine New Youth Connections, published by Youth Communication. Â


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24 June 2008
One of the biggest issues with media websites is dealing with high amounts of traffic. Media is all about getting eyeballs, but if you get too many hits at once, slow performance can cause problems and damage your reputation. This problem is exacerbated by the bursty nature of this web traffic. You can be cruising along at a manageable rate, then get hit with a big news story which causes a big spike. One of our clients have seen spikes of two orders of magnitude in a matter of a couple of minutes.
The general solution in computing to speed up access to the same information is to use caches. If you keep requesting my home page the web server will build up a cache in memory so repeated requests avoid touching the disk.
It's easy to keep a cache for my website, because this page, like my entire site, is entirely static. Most media sites, however, contain a lot of dynamic content. You might not think there's much business logic on your average newspaper website, but once you start looking at advertising links, related stories, special features and the like, things get a good bit more interesting. A travel story to France might link to articles on french food, and advertising that knows that a web browser in Canada is interested in a holiday in the Loire Valley. Personalization makes this even worse, my personalized preferences should generate a personalized feature list on heavy red wines. Such logic is complex in its own right, it makes for a lot of computation with each request, and crucially it ruins most caching strategies.
The way to deal with this is to divide a page up into segments where each segment has a similar determination of freshness. The article on Loire travel can be relatively static, changing only to correct errors. A related article list which feeds off tags for "France" and "Loire" will change more often, but maybe only every few days. If we arrange this properly a request for a page with these two items may be able to gather everything from caches.
The most common way of doing this that I've seen is to form caches on the web server and assemble the page segments when the page gets hit. Tools like Sitemesh are a good option for this approach. As you write the page for 18th century loire delights, you include call-outs for sections like related articles. When you get the actual web request the web server takes the page and assembles the page from the separate pieces. Much of this can be cached in the web server, which avoids hitting the back-end domain logic and database.
An interesting possibility is to go even further and use the many caches that exist in the web itself. Most calls for this web page don't even reach my web server since my page gets cached many times along the way. If you build a web page dynamically and assemble it on the server, you have to take the hit to deliver the page. An alternative is to assemble the page on the client and then draw each segment from its own URL. Each segment could be cached in different places with different caching policies.
How might this work? We might store the static article content as
XHTML at an URL like
http://gallifreyTimes/travel/18-century-loire-delights. Inside that
file we want to insert some related articles by looking up articles
tagged with "loire" and "france". In the static page we put in a
simple "a" tag.
Related Links
In the header for the static page we link it to some javascript
in a separate library file. When we download the Loire article the
javascript runs and scans the article for elements with the right
class: in this case an "a" element with the "relatedLinks"
class. (The behavior
library is a good way to do this.) When it finds the element it
uses the information in the element to synthesize an URL for that
segment. In this case it would use what's in the element's href
attribute to come up with an URL like
http://gallifreyTimes/relatedArticles/france+loire. Once
it's got that URL it then gets the content and uses it to
replace the original "a" element. Since the related articles list is
handled through an URL, other gets on that URL cause caches through
the Internet to warm up, so there's a good chance that retrieving
the page may never cause a hit on the original server.
In the context of caching, the value is that each progressive
enhancement weaves in a lump of HTML with different freshness
rules. The original page is static, the related links change daily,
but both can be cached independently and weaved together. I can do
all sorts of additional elements, as long as I take care to keep
segment the page by the freshness rules. So I could include a
personalized weather forecast based on the user's profile to every
page by having the javascript pick up the user id from the http
session, using it to construct an URL like
retrieving the content (which would often be cached on my hard
drive) and weaving it into the page.

subset: commoncrawl


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Army Special Forces seeks to save historic barrack (GALLERY)
EGLIN AFB — Nearly 43 years ago, a group of special operations soldiers were training hard at a compound at Duke Field, but didn't know why.
They were working closely with special operations airmen at Eglin, practicing long flights over the Gulf of Mexico and rehearsing an operation in which they entered a replica of a guarded building that deep in the woods.
In wasn't until the men landed in Southeast Asia that they found out the nature of their mission: to force their way into the Son Tay prison in North Vietnam and free more than 50 American prisoners held there in tortured duress.
"For 90 days we were locked up in Duke Field," said retired Army Capt. Dan Turner of Columbus, Ga. "It was a very important part of lives."
On Thursday, Turner, now 70, visited the Army 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) cantonment along with three other men involved in the Son Tay Raid on Nov. 21, 1970.
They were in town to talk about a plan to save the officers' barrack at Duke where some of the soldiers lived while training for the raid. It is scheduled for demolition later this year.
See a photo gallery of the meeting. >>
They want to move the barrack to the 7th Group's property and use it as a museum, not just for the Son Tay Raid and the Army 7th Special Forces soldiers that participated in it, but for the history of American Special Forces in general.
The Air Force Special Operations Command is at Hurlburt Field and the Army Rangers have Camp Rudder near Duke. They all would benefit from the museum, said Army Lt. Col. John Cathell, executive officer of the 7th Group.
He said preserving the barrack and establishing a museum could help troops feel connected to those who came before them.
The 7th Group is one of the most deployed units in the Army.
"They just go and go and go," Cathell said. "When you are doing that you are so focused on today's mission (that) you lose track of history."
They will need to raise $116,000, primarily through donations, to move the barrack.
Thursday's session kicked off the fundraising drive.
"I am really proud to hear you are rescuing some of the history of how we got to where we are today," said retired Air Force Gen. Leroy Manor, who lives in Shalimar and served as task force commander of the raid. "That's something that could have easily been forgotten."
During training, the troops were told nothing about their mission; they were cut off from the rest of the world.
"No momma," Turner said. "We had some beer and fights in the club, but nothing else."
After being in the dark for so long, when they were excited when they found out they would try to rescue prisoners.
"Everyone in the military was anxious to do something to help the POWs," Turner said. "Being chosen to do this was an opportunity of a lifetime, something we knew we had to do."
The prisoners were suffering. They were subjected not to waterboarding-type psychological torture, but the "broken bones, maimed for life, death kind of torture," Turner said.
After months of planning and preparations, more than 50 soldiers and nearly 100 airmen participated in the raid.
That night, a quarter moon hung low in the sky — not too dark to see but not too bright to be seen.
Helicopters landed inside the Son Tay compound and soldiers penetrated the prison walls.
But the cells were empty and the raiders were devastated.
"There is no American word for how we felt," Turner said. "There's nothing in the English language that really describes it. It was the worst feeling of my life."
The feeling Turner had that night continued every night for three years until the POWs were released, he said.
The prisoners had been moved months before, before commanders even had selected a location for the mission, Manor said.
"They didn't know we were coming because we didn't know we were coming," he said.
He said that although they were unable to save any prisoners, the mission was not a failure.
"Our primary mission was to get the message to the prisoners that we had not forgotten about them."
After they were released at the end of the war, the former POWs reported that conditions improved dramatically after the raid.
The Son Tay raid, which went off as planned, led to a revolution in intelligence gathering and was used as an example of a successful joint clandestine special operation for years to come.
The officers' barrack and one other building scheduled for demolition at Duke are the only two structures that remain from when the men trained for the historic mission.
"We will not let a piece of history be destroyed, even if we have to go over there at 2 a.m. and take it apart piece by piece and bring it here ourselves," Cathell said.
TO LEARN MORE: For more information about the effort to save the barrack, contact email@example.com. Donations can be made to the 7th Special Forces Association, Attn: Nichole Vild, Son Tay Raiders, P.O. Box 2395, Crestview, FL 32536.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Lauren Sage Reinlie at 850-315-4443 or firstname.lastname@example.com. Follow her on Twitter @LaurenRnwfdn.


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|The Bollywood sound is the fusion of classic Indian music with modern styles of western culture. Tablas meet sampled drums, sitars meet electric guitars and traditional Indian vocals meet Rap - the perfect symbiosis of two cultures.
60s 70s 80s 8Bit Ambient Beat Big Beat Blues Bollywood Brazil Breaks Chillout Cinematic Country Crunk Dance Dancehall Deep House Disco Downbeat Drum and Bass Dubstep Easy Listening Electro Electro House Folk Funk Garage Hard Techno Hip Hop House IDM Indie Instruments Jazz Latin Lounge Metal Minimal Nu Disco Pop Punk R&B Reggae Rock Score Music Soul Soundeffects Surf Tech House Techno Trance Urban Various World


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Chiefs off to winning start under Reid, Smith
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Kansas City Chiefs scored more points in their season opener than they did in any game last season. They piled up six sacks, returned an interception for a touchdown and didn't allow the lowly Jacksonville Jaguars to score on offense.
The result? New coach Andy Reid and quarterback Alex Smith have the Chiefs already halfway toward their win total from last season.
"There's a lot of emphasis put on the first game within the league," Reid said Monday. "I keep in perspective that it's one out of 16 games and hopefully more that you have an opportunity to play, so I understand that. On the other hand, I'll tell you that you work your tail off to win every game, and that's what you do. So every victory you get, you're going to cherish and enjoy it."
Especially in a city that's been starved for victories.
The emphatic 28-2 result Sunday was the Chiefs' most lopsided season-opening win since beating Denver 59-7 in 1963. It also made Reid their first coach to win his opener since Frank Gansz in 1987.
More than anything, though, it helped folks in Kansas City forget last season ever happened.
It helped them forget about a team that finished 2-14, and didn't hold a lead in regulation until Week 10. It helped them forget about the paper bags that fans wore to games, and the banners that they paid for to fly over Arrowhead Stadium begging for CEO Clark Hunt to make changes.
It helped them forget about the dysfunction that existed under former GM Scott Pioli.
"There are some things we need to work on as a team, but getting this win raises the morale for us," said wide receiver Junior Hemingway, who spent last season shuffling between the practice squad and the active roster. "It'll help tremendously going into next week."
Rarely in the NFL do teams have an opportunity to cherish a victory. It's always on to the next game, in this case the Dallas Cowboys in the Chiefs' home opener next Sunday
But in this case, Reid wanted his guys to enjoy a comprehensive win.
Smith managed the game admirably in his first start since getting benched after recovering from a concussion last year in San Francisco. He threw for 173 yards and two touchdowns without committing a turnover, and was a big reason Kansas City built a 14-2 lead by the end of the first quarter.
After allowing a blocked punt for a safety early in the game, special teams were just as special as they'd been all preseason. Dexter McCluster's long punt return set up the Chiefs' first touchdown, and kicker Ryan Succop and punter Dustin Colquitt put the Jags in poor field position all game.
Then there was the defense, which has swapped out a "read and react" style endorsed by former coach Romeo Crennel for a "seek and attack" style under new coordinator Bob Sutton.
The result was three sacks for linebacker Justin Houston. Tamba Hali picked off a pass and returned it for his first career touchdown. Brandon Flowers nearly had another pick 6. And the defensive line bottled up Jacksonville star Maurice Jones-Drew all afternoon.
"We could see this coming with our defense," linebacker Derrick Johnson said. "We wanted to put something on film and let everyone see that the Chiefs' defense is for real."
Just about the only negative came when Pro Bowl running back Jamaal Charles bruised his quad. He briefly went to the locker room, returned to the field for a play, and then left the game for good after 77 yards and a touchdown on just 16 carries.
"He does have range of motion," Reid said at the team's training facility Monday. "We'll just see how he does over this week here. He is moving around today."
All the positives to come out of the Chiefs' winning start must be tempered by the fact they were playing Jacksonville, which also went 2-14 last season. A better gauge of where Kansas City is in its rebuilding project comes when the Cowboys visit Arrowhead Stadium next weekend.
Still, that doesn't change the happy vibes being felt everywhere in town.
"Every victory you get, you're going to cherish and enjoy it for that small window that you get to enjoy it," Reid said. "It was neat to see the offense and the defense and the coaches, they were very excited. We also know that we enjoyed it and now we're moving on."


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Items affiliated to " IV.1 Availability and utilisation of potassium, phosphorus and sulphur"
Group by: No Grouping | Authors | Refereed | Document Language | EPrint Type
Number of items at this level: 4.
Eriksen, J and Askegaard, M (2000) Sulphate leaching in an organic crop rotation on sandy soil in Denmark. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 78, pp. 107-114.
Eriksen, J; Nielsen, M; Mortensen, JV and Schjørring, JK (2001) Redistribution of sulphur during generative growth of barley with different sulphur and nitrogen status. Plant and Soil, 230, pp. 239-246.
Eriksen, J.; Olesen, J.E. and Askegaard, M. (2002) Sulphate leaching and sulphur balances of an organic crop rotation on three Danish soils. European Journal of Agronomy, 17, pp. 1-9.
Eriksen, Jørgen and Mortensen, Jørgen (1999) Soil sulphur status following long-term annual application of animal manure and mineral fertilizers. Biology and Fertility of Soils, 28, pp. 416-421.
This list was generated on Mon Mar 20 18:20:02 2023 CET.


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The lead manager stole small amounts at first. Then, after testing and learning the thresholds that would raise red flags, she became progressively bolder and siphoned off larger amounts in the names of fake businesses "owned" by friends and relatives.
Oversight authorities noticed that the average amount of transactions was trending upwards, but that was attributed to market conditions during the real estate boom. Over the course of 15 years, the manager's activities went undetected and she was able to steal $50 million. Here's the kicker – she worked for a tax agency, the very type of organization you would think would be most vigilant about fraud prevention.
While many tax agencies are focused on the hot topics of the day – such as identity verification quizzes and protecting PIN files – they may be overlooking other types of fraud going on right under their noses – theft from the inside. In this property tax refund case, basic reporting was so poor that the external auditors couldn't see the pattern. In 15 years the tax agency never discovered it. The fraud was actually exposed by a bank employee who sensed something fishy about a refund check presented for deposit.
The saddest part of this story is that this woman's supervisors were all fired because it happened on their watch. They hadn't put in place the right fraud prevention controls and reporting to thwart it or even recognize it was happening. They didn't know what they didn't know – and they were collateral damage. These were executives who had been with the agency for 20 years.
After that incident, the agency put more controls into their property tax system to prevent this type of fraud. However, several years later, a different employee in the tax enforcement division did a similar thing with individual income tax refunds to the tune of $500,000. In this case, automated reporting provided clues to impropriety, and a sharp-eyed CPA delved into it.
Free Paper: Analytics to Fight Tax Fraud
What can tax agencies do differently (and better) today than just a few years ago? This discussion summary from the International Institute for Analytics featuring SAS explores the challenges, opportunities and value of tax fraud analytics.
Still the question begs itself again – why did the fraud go on so long before anyone noticed? These cases point to the three biggest blind spots tax agencies face in fraud prevention and detection:
- The tendency toward "big eye." This term refers to being so focused on the most obvious emergency that you fail to see the bigger picture. For example, don't be so preoccupied with identity theft and taxpayer fraud that you fail to notice what employees are doing. Are any of them committing tax refund theft or helping friends and family trim their tax liabilities?
- Weak reporting. You can't get away with not knowing what you don't know. Have great analytical and statistical reporting. Give investigators and other staff the ability to generate their own reports, act quickly on alerts, investigate deeply and explore the patterns they see. The second fraudster described here was stopped much sooner – tens of millions of dollars sooner – thanks to added reporting capabilities. A solid fraud analytics solution would have found it almost immediately.
- Thin analytics. Integrated tax systems are great for automating return/refund processing and managing audit and collections cases, but even those with a "fraud module" tend to have limited analytical capability. These systems tend to take a narrow view, running a tax return against business rules that define what is customary or unusual. For example, rules might decree that total itemized deductions shouldn't exceed a certain percentage of adjusted gross income. Business rules can catch unsophisticated fraud, but they miss a lot of issues that advanced mathematical techniques can detect.
Advanced analytics for fraud detection
With predictive modeling, you can identify suspicious returns based on the known filing patterns of proven fraudsters. For example, a fraudster might file refund returns for progressively higher amounts year over year, testing to find the threshold that triggers scrutiny. Predictive analytics can spot this stair-stepping pattern and score the likelihood for fraud.
With anomaly detection, you can answer questions such as, "Are this person's itemized deductions out of line with others in the income peer group or geographic neighborhood?" or "Does the monthly variation in gross sales make sense for this type of business?" Unlike business rules, which require you to know what you're looking for, anomaly detection automatically establishes what "normal" looks like for a peer group – and then automatically flags anything that looks abnormal.
With link analysis, sometimes called social network analysis, you can see relationships among taxpayers, tax returns, tax preparers and others, such as corporate officers. People may be linked by a common address, employer, family member, bank account and so on.
At one agency, link analysis revealed that 1,900 refund returns with no listed tax preparer had all been submitted from a single IP address in rapid succession. Anomaly detection techniques then found very large charitable contributions and job-related expenses on these returns relative to the taxpayers' peers. Without these analytics, the agency's audit selection processes might have found a handful of these returns, three to five years after the refunds had already been paid.
Don't be the one who didn't know what you didn't know
Top-notch reporting with fraud detection analytics isn't a "nice to have" anymore. It's a necessity. Your job might depend upon it. Find out what's really under the hood of your tax systems, and supplement with additional analytics as needed. Advanced analytics solutions for tax fraud detection are inexpensive relative to your core tax system, they can be implemented quickly, and the two systems can work together to reduce fraud and protect revenue.
About the Author
With 20 years of experience building technology solutions for tax and revenue agencies, Deborah Pianko works with state and local governments to combat waste, fraud and abuse. She is a subject-matter expert in tax administration including collections, audit, return and payment processing, customer service, revenue protection and fraud detection and prevention.
Recommended reading
- Article 4 strategies that will change your approach to fraud detectionTechnology advances are giving financial institutions a better arsenal than ever for fraud detection. Take a look at four ways to turbocharge your defenses.
- Article How to prevent procurement fraudPerpetrated in several ways, procurement fraud is difficult to detect. Arm yourself with hybrid analytics that offer various approaches for cross-pollination of data and analysis.
- Article Proactive detection – A new approach to counter terrorTo counter terror, investigative teams can better utilize the data they already have by applying a fresh approach with these steps to proactive detection.
- Article When it matters: Safeguarding your organization from the insideWith evolving threats, fraud detection technologies have to be flexible and nimble, and automated risk detection is a crucial component of decision advantage.


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FALL PREVIEW: Arts scene offers plenty for children, families this season
Bring children to live arts performances and their wide-eyed delight and amusement may entertain you as much as the show itself.
This fall, music, theatre and dance is on stage at outdoor festivals and indoor halls. Whether annual or one-time events, they may spark a lifelong appreciation for the arts and cherished family memories. Below are some of the best through mid-November.
Life Is Good Festival, Sept. 21-22, Prowse Farm, Canton. A kids stage featuring Yo Gabba Gabba, Josh and the Jamtones, Recess Monkey, plus three other stages of music. Art activities, instrument petting zoo, games. Admission is $65 adults and $20 ages 12 and under for one day; $130 and $35 for two days. All proceeds benefit children in need. For information, go to www.lifeisgood.com.
Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival, Sept. 28, Columbus Avenue, between Massachusetts Avenue and Burke Street. A family play park with instrument petting zoo, plus three stages of music featuring Meshell Ndegeocello; Will Calhoun Trio, Robin McKelle & the Flytones and more. Free. For information, go to www.beantownjazz.org.
Opening Our Doors, Oct. 14, Huntington Avenue, Mass. Ave. and the Fenway neighborhood. Music, theater and dance performances as well as art activities presented indoors and outside by 22 institutions of the Fenway Alliance. Free. For information, go to www.fenwayculture.org.
Dinosaur Train Live! Buddy's Big Adventure, Oct. 20, Hanover Theatre, Worcester. A Jim Henson interactive, multi-media production set in a pre-historic time when dinosaurs rode trains. Tickets are $29-$39. For information, go to www.hanovertheatre.org.
The Hobbit, Oct. 25 – Nov. 24, Wheelock Family Theatre, The Riverway, Boston. Based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkein, Tickets are $20-$30. For information, go to www.wheelockfamilytheatre.org.
Boston Children's Chorus – The chorus celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Boston Children's Museum with a concert, Oct. 5, Boston Children's Museum, Boston. Free. For information, go to www.bostonchildrenschorus.org.
Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses - Second Quest, Nov. 2, Wang Theatre, Boston. A multi-media concert featuring 25 years of music from The Legend of Zelda series. Tickets are $38-$92. For information, go to www.citicenter.org.
Tanglewood Marionettes, Hansel and Gretl, Sept. 21, Amazing Things Arts Center, Framingham. Puppet show based on the classic fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, with melodies by Engelbert Humperdinck. Tickets are $12. For information, go to www.amazingthings.org.
Jenny the Juggler, Nov. 2, Amazing Things Art Center, Framingham. Juggling along with magic, music, song and physical comedy. Tickets are $10. For information, go to www.amazingthings.org.
Night of the Stars, Boston Ballet, Sept. 21, Boston Common. To celebrate its 50th season, the ballet performs with the Boston Ballet orchestra outdoors. Free. For information, go to www.bostonballet.org.
Step Afrika!, Nov. 7-9, Cutler Majestic Theatre, Boston. A professional company who performs the art of stepping, a percussive dance that combines kicks, stomps, claps and chants. Tickets are $25-$65. For information, go to www.maj.org.
Jody Feinberg may be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com or follow on Twitter @JodyF_Ledger.
READ MORE about this issue.


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Cell phones have taken another step towards becoming full-fledged pocket computers with an announcement by Micron and Intel. Get ready to carry even more of your digital life on your phone.
The 128Gb NAND device, a world's first, is the result of a multi-year collaboration between the memory and chip manufacturers. It uses MLC technology and has to potential to store as much as 2 terabytes of data on a 2.5-inch SSD drive—128GB per chip—and perform as many as 33 megatransfers per second on an eight die form. It goes on sale in January and is expected to quickly outpace the 64Gb version that is already in production.
You'll find NAND flash memory in most SD card formats and SSD's as well as many USB drives as it offers superior densities and greater fault tolerances than NOR memory. So expect to see huge capacity gains in phones, cameras, thumb drives—just about anything with non-volatile memory. [Slashgear - ArsTechnica]


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Fisk, James
Fisk, James, 1834–72, American financial speculator, b. Pownal, Vt. In his youth he worked for a circus and as a wagon peddler of merchandise. During the Civil War he became wealthy purchasing cotton in occupied areas of the South for Northern firms and selling Confederate bonds in England. In 1866 he established a brokerage house in New York City with the aid of Daniel Drew, whom he had formerly served as agent. He audaciously helped Drew and Jay Gould conduct the famous struggle with Cornelius Vanderbilt for control of the Erie RR. Afterward he and Gould unscrupulously manipulated Erie stock so as to gain millions for themselves but wreck the road. They also engineered the attempt to corner the gold market in 1869, causing the famous Black Friday scandal. Other raids by Fisk and his associates upset markets and aroused public indignation. Fisk controlled the Fall River and Bristol steamboat lines on Long Island Sound, operated ferries on the Hudson, and bought an opera house in New York City, producing drama and light opera there. He was killed by Edward S. Stokes, a former business associate who was a rival for the attentions of the well-known actress Josie Mansfield.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Business Leaders


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Located at the foothills of the Pyrenees and the Spanish border, the Basque Country is an authentic region with a strong identity revealed in the attachments its inhabitants have to their language and culture.
The beautiful landscape of both the ocean and the mountains attracts those who appreciate a preserved natural environment. With its changing climate, hot in the summer and remarkably warm in the winter, the Basque Country permits the practice of multiple activities: hiking, sailing, cycling, surfing, golf as well as pelote basque a typically local sport. Equally the Basque country is renowned for its cuisine, its restaurants counting among them eleven Michelin stars on the French side of the border and twenty-seven on the Spanish.
In requesting the services of Cote Ouest Immobilier you will find real estate agents who not only listen to your expectations but a team ready to share with you their passion for the Basque Country.
Cote Ouest Immobilier, exclusively affiliated with Christie's International Real Estate, will accompany you in your search for, or sale of, an exceptional property whether an apartment with an ocean view, or centrally located; a traditional or modern house; a plot, or perhaps a unique property in Biarritz, Saint Jean de Luz, Guethary, in the countryside or on the coast.


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First Look: All My Children Returns on the Web
Yes, soap fans, it's really, truly, finally happening. New 30-minute episodes of All My Childrenand One Life to Live - cancelled by ABC back in 2011 - will premiere April 25 on The Online Network (available via Hulu and iTunes). These long-delayed, buzzed-about reboots are "a new and really exciting way of telling soap stories," says AMC's Thorsten Kaye (who plays Zach, seen here with Debbi Morgan's Angie). AMC will leap some five years into the future to help explain why certain characters have vanished from Pine Valley (hello...Erica?) and others are suddenly grown.
"Our little ones are now teenagers in order to make them more dramatically viable," Kaye says. "I mean, how interesting is a 7-year-old?" Some have sprouted even more, like the former "Petey" Cortlandt, who is now "Peter" and being played by strapping The Price Is Right model Rob Wilson (shown below with Jill Larson's Opal).
How's it going so far? Ever the realist, Kaye says "It's been terrific getting back to work but we're definitely experiencing some growing pains. This is a huge undertaking. ABC did it for 40 years. For a company that's new to soaps like Prospect Park, it's a whole other ball game. We ask the fans to bear with us. It will take a bit of time to get it right but I do believe we can!"
Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!
View original First Look: All My Children Returns on the Web at TVGuide.com
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Posted on April 4, 2009 By Art Feierman
The Epson Powerlite 1720 is one of four similar projectors in the Epson lineup, each sporting a different combination of features. This allows you to pick the one that best meets your needs, and, of course, your budget.
Before we go further, ProjectorReviews.com has not physically reviewed the Epson Powerlite 1720. We recently reviewed the very similar, top of the line 1735W, which, in addition to being a widescreen (WXGA) projector, also supports sophisticated and easy to set up wireless and wired networking. The links on this page will take you to the appropriate sections in the Powerlite 1735W projector review. The remainder of this page, will provide you with an overview of the Epson 1720, as well as discuss some of the differences between it, and the reviewed Epson Powerlite 1735W. Rounding out the lineup, Epson also has the 1730W and 1725. The 1730W is basically identical to the 1720, but has widescreen WXGA resolution (1280×800). The 1725 is basically identical to the 1735W but, like the 1720, has the more traditional XGA resolution (1024×768).
The Powerlite 1720 is an extremely portable projector in a class often referred to as micro-portable. Weighing in just under four pounds, it is also very small, with a footprint about the same size as a standard sheet of paper.
While the 1720 is highly portable, being both small and light, it is also an extremely versatile projector, and as a result, it will appeal to many businesses, government agencies and schools as a low cost, rather bright projector for permanent installation.
Not only does the 1720 accept a ceiling mount, but it is designed so that users can replace an aging lamp, without having to unmount the projector, if it is ceiling mounted. This is thanks to the lamp door being located on the top of this Epson projector, rather than on the bottom (where mounts attach), which is where most portable projectors put their lamp door. The 1720 also has a black case, whereas the 1735W comes in white.
This Epson Powerlite 1720 shares most of the features found on the Powerlite 1735W, except for those relating to networking and the aforementioned widescreen resolution. You will find that the links above will take you to the appropriate sections of the 1735W projector review. Please use your Back button to return to this page. For those not needing widescreen resolution, networking capability and the related features and benefits, the 1720 comes in with a price of $1299, exactly $350 less than the 1735W.
Interfacing on the 1720 is both versatile and easy. For PC's or Macs you can connect via VGA and for many Macs that have no VGA connector, such as MacBook Pro laptops, just connect using the Mac's DVI to VGA adapter (standard with the Mac.) In addition, the Epson Powerlite 1720's remote can control presentations off your PC or Mac by a USB connection between the 1720 and the computer.
The top of the line Powerlite 1735W scored highly in many areas of use and performance. We expect all of those strengths to be shared by the Powerlite 1720. Please use the links to learn more about the common features and performance.
© 2021 Projector Reviews


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Janet Romero-Leiva is a queer feminist latina visual artist and writer whose explores immigrant displacement, denied aboriginality, queer and of colour existence, living and loving in dos lenguas, and the continuous intersection of identities that shape who she is and how she moves in this world. janet immigrated to canada at the age of 7 and has since been trying to find her footing between america of the north and america of the south. she loves smoothies, cartwheeling and can often be found reading children's books at the toronto women's bookstore.
BCP: Why did you start writing poetry?
JR: It was by accident, I didn't really know that is what I was doing…but I started writing because I felt a need to express and somehow release things I was trying to make sense out of – like my queerness, my feminism, my latinidad, my indigeneity, my experience of being an immigrant child
BCP: What is your writing process?
JR: I write a lot when I am trying to sort something out – a thought, a feeling, an experience….mostly it's from a feeling of discomfort or confusion. I will usually sit with the feeling for a while before I write about it and will usually write down a line or two so I can put it on paper and revisit when I feel capable of going back to that discomfort. When I go back to it I usually write about the experience itself and what feelings came up for me and when I have felt this before, then I go back an edit and edit again and again until I feel I've managed to capture the feeling more than the actual experience.
BCP: Who are your influences?
JR: Chrystos was the first poet I read that made me think I too could write – so I obviously love her, also Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, Qwo-Li Driskill, Lee Maracle.
BCP: You used to manage the Toronto Women's Bookstore. Did being surrounded by books help your writing? Did you find a lack in books written by people of colour? What is lacking, and what do you see as problems, in the publishing world?
JR: Yes and yes! The publishing world is lacking in feminist, queer, people of colour , trans people, working class people, folks with (dis)abilities, immigrant, older peoples writing. A big problem is that the majority of people in publishing are not the people on this list – they are white, middle/upper class, mostly heterosexual men, so they do not see a problem with this. They have a huge monopoly on the publishing industry, making it very hard for smaller/independent publishers to make it. It's not that no one is publishing people of colour, queer people, etc. it's that the big publishers and bookstores make it very hard for the independents (publishers and bookstores to survive) to thrive and be able to stay in business. I think another factor is that because we as queer, people of colour , trans people, working class people, folks with (dis)abilities, immigrant, older people have not seen ourselves represented in literature it is hard to imagine that this can change, so part of it is believing that this too is possible for us.
BCP: Much of your writing is political. Do you also write about the fun stuff of life? Why or why not?
JR: Ha! Ha! The fun stuff can be so boring! I don't write about fun very often because it's not something I feel the need to process or figure out – it just is!
BCP: Non-accessible academic writing, long and boring speeches, and yelling slogans on a megaphone are given precedence over poetry in the activist world.
What role do you see poetry having in activism? How can poetry get more than a quarter of a page in a magazine (if at all) and be used as more than an opener at events?
JR: I equate poetry with activism. We need to hear/know/understand the world from various perspectives and I think poetry allows us to express and hear things in a way that traditional methods (like speeches and academic writing ) do not because it evokes a feeling and when you leave a talk/conference/march you will forget the words you heard but the feeling will stay with you.
BCP: Some your poems deal with Aboriginality. Can you explain what you mean by Aboriginality?
JR: To me aboriginality is the existence of aboriginal/indigenous blood/culture in my family/ancestry. I use it mostly in reference to the denial of aboriginal blood that many Latin American folks suffer from…as if to admit we are part indigenous is to admit we are less.
BCP: How much queer content do have in your collection of poems?
JR: Probably about 80% to 90%, I always manage in some way to incorporate queerness because it's how I move in the world, so it's hard to dismiss.
BCP: Have any queer writers influenced your writing?
JR: Oh yeah! I try to read mostly queers of colour writers, so…Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, Qwo-Li Driskill, and Chrystos (To read a recent interview with Chrystos click on https://blackcoffeepoet.com/2010/09/15/interview-with-chrystos/)
BCP: Is there a book that you have read and re-read several times over?
JR: Borderlands by Anzaldua and Loving in the War Years by Moraga.
BCP: Have any Latina poets helped your activism as an Latina fighting for Latin@ rights?
JR: Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Ana Castillo.
BCP: What books by Ana Castillo did you read, like, and found that influenced you?
JR: The Mixquiahuala Letters, So Far From God: A Novel, Loverboys: Stories, I Ask the Impossible: Poems, and The Guaridans.
JR: As a writer I identify with all these identities because my writing focuses on how I live within these identities.
BCP: When can we expect to see your collection of poetry on bookstore shelves?
JR: I would definitely like to have my work published one day but it is not something I am actively persuading at the moment….but one day.
BCP: What advice do you have for young writers, women of colour writers, queer writers?
JR: Keep on writing, regardless of what people say – good or bad – continue to write what you need to write. Share your writing, if no one hears what you have to say then it is only you who will benefit from your work, which is great and important as a growing and learning tool, but it is also great for us to hear you and in this way normalize our reality and be an influence to others who may not have the words to express the many wonderful and difficult things we live as writers of colour, queer people, etc.
Tune in to Black Coffee Poet Friday, November 5, 2010 for a video of Janet Romero reading her poetry.


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Maggy London Black Illusion Dress Review
The Fact That This Dress Is Under $150 Blows Our Minds
The piece: Maggy London The Illusion Dress
The price: $148
Why we want it: We first fell in love with this dress in early January — and shared it with you then. The first shipment has already gone out, and now the dress is available again in all sizes for preorder. But why did this style get us so excited? The sheer neckline is sexy but fashion friendly and adds some intrigue to your overall look. Plus, a style like this could be brought into the office with the right blazer but is also perfect for the next wedding or cocktail party you have on the books. If you didn't get it the first time, now's your chance!


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(Still) feeling too lethargic and woolly-headed from my cold to get out and do much, I am amusing myself with simple projects — like up-cycling kimono sashes (obi).
The latest cushion was made entirely from the silk in the sash itself and required very little sewing.
I love these fabrics; the beautiful colours and designs, and the wonderful lustre of the silk fibres.
Posted to Ragtag Daily Prompt | lustre.