2012年10月31日 星期三

Parking rules and fees are not reasonable for students

According to the Parking Rules and Regulations outlined on UTA’s website, it is a privilege to drive and park on campus. Included in the definition of “privilege” is the word “immunity.” I have come to realize recently students like myself are not immune to those infamous little white envelopes containing parking tickets found on our windshields.A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls.

Within the past two weeks, I have received four parking tickets, each $50. While I am awareManufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing, that I’m in the wrong for parking on campus without a valid permit, the university should take into consideration the amount of tickets given within a short period of time, and how expensive that can be for a student.


Following each ticket I received, I started what might as well be the “Parking Ticket Chronicles” on my Twitter feed, which spurred replies from students explaining their ticket encounters, such as having a parking permit on the wrong side of the vehicle, parking in the wrong lot or parking in a handicapped space.

Parking Rules and Regulations Section VII states students can appeal their citation if they have “ample justification or mitigating circumstances.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility.” Below that, it lists reasons that may be invalid for appealing a citation. Among them is “referring to the rules as ridiculous.” Clearly this means students have tried using that excuse in the past. While I don’t agree it’s a legitimate argument, I do agree that some of the rules are ridiculous.

One is following a warning citation, “a fine of $20 will be assessed for each university citation for violators improperly displaying the parking permit.” According to UT-Austin’s parking rules, students improperly displaying their permit are given three warning citations in an academic year before they are charged only $15.

I guess because they have almost double our enrollment, they can afford to have lower ticket prices, right?

Do you think it’s fair that students should have to pay $20 for having their $130 sticker on the wrong side of the car, regardless if it’s outlined in the rules or not?

When I came across a police officer on campus, he said the only reason permits are to be on the passenger side of the vehicle was for uniformity. The stickers are not to be on the driver’s side as they would clutter the windshield when added with registration and inspection stickers.

Also, “A fine of $20 will be assessed for each university citation for violators improperly parked, even though they have a properly displayed permit.”

In addition, I’ve received several dings to the side of my car, which is usually caused by people who’ve parked too close to or over the designated parking lines.

As outlined in parking regulations, if cars are not within the boundaries of the parking space, they should also receive a parking citation for $20.

Of all the citations UTA Police hand out, I wonder how many are parked correctly in the space provided. Parking etiquette is one of my pet peeves, and I will back in and out of a parking space as many times as it takes in order for me to park correctly.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele ,

While neither of these were the cause of my tickets, I feel that they would fall under the “ridiculous” category.

UT-Austin charges $35 for parking without an authorized valid permit, which is the same thing I got a $50 ticket for. Why are the prices different? Both schools are in the UT System.

According to assistant police chief Rick Gomez, revenue generated from permits and tickets goes into an account that helps pay for parking garage operations, maintenance of parking lots and/or garages, construction of new lots as well as salaries for security guards, parking services and transportation services.

The College Park District parking garages are a story in themselves.

Numerous articles published in The Shorthorn have analyzed the amount of parking spaces in the garage. However,We specialize in howo concrete mixer, only certain floors are allocated for student parking. I can’t explain how frustrating it is to have to drive up two floors of empty spaces only to circle the floors above looking for parking.

Water priorities come up trumps

The elephant in the room analogy is becoming a bit overworked, but I like it. Lately, the elephant has been really showing off. In the debate about freshwater quality the elephant is nitrogen leaching.

It was brought into the room by conservationists a few years back but attempts to prod it into life largely failed. It just sat stinking in the corner.Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products.

But a few weeks ago Judge Craig Thompson of the Environment Court climbed aboard and hit it with a big stick.

The elephant reared back on its hind legs and let out an ear-splitting roar, loud enough to be heard in every milking shed and dairy factory throughout the land.

Now a group of farmers are approaching it gingerly, ropes in hand, to try to tie it down.

Watching all this, big gun at the ready, is the Government. It has the power to dispose of the beast, but is worried its death throes will injure the country's biggest income earner.

And then along comes the elephant whisperer.

It is the Land and Water Forum. It wants to talk to the elephant nicely and lead it out of the room.

At least something's happening at last.

The court's big stick is a cap on nitrogen leaching on the most susceptible land,Installers and distributors of solar panel, backed by a controversial measuring tool. It has handed the stick to the Manawatu-Whanganui regional council to use.

The forum, which has to represent the myriad views of all those with an interest in water, hasn't gone as far as the court.

Collaboration is the buzzword the forum uses.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. It features strongly in its final report on water quality and quantity, I'm told. That report will be released soon and I've been warned not to expect earth-shaking revelations.

It is the culmination of three years of research and, with two earlier reports, brings the forum's recommendations to the Government to 150.

That's a lot, but they can be boiled down to this:

On water quality: Yes, we've got a problem with polluted waterways; we think it should be dealt with at the catchment level by regional councils with government guidance; and we've got some suggestions about how the councils should proceed.

On water quantity it's even simpler: After community drinking and sanitation needs are taken care of, water should be allocated first to those who are most important to New Zealand's economic welfare. In both these cases, the forum is primarily talking about dairy farming.

Basically, it wants the farmers, regional councils and other interested groups to sit down, consider each catchment, talk about it and come up with a mutually agreed solution.

Cristaudo, who finished with two assists in the contest, gave Chopticon the early 1-0 lead as she slapped a shot in the back of the cage, on a cross from junior Jodie Buddenbohn, nine minutes into the game.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. That would be the eventual halftime score.

“If it wasn’t for my teammates, I wouldn’t have been able to score,” Cristaudo said.Klaus Multiparking is an industry leader in innovative parking system technology. “Coach ‘V’ gave us our pep talk and we were a different team in the second half. In the first half, we had some chances and just didn’t convert. “Our triangles were great today. In the first half, we didn’t have our sticks down, but we did a much better job of that in the second half.”

Four minutes into the second half, Buddenbohn put the Braves up 2-0 on an assist from senior forward Jessica Belfield. After Cristaudo fed Raley for her first goal of the game a minute later, Belfield added another Braves goal to make the game 4-0 with 14 minutes 57 seconds left.

Raley would score Chopticon’s next two goals to up give it the six-goal lead with under 10 minutes remaining. Belfield found the cage for the second time of the game with 4:58 left to cap off the scoring.

Chopticon’s defense was stout throughout the game, yielding no shots on goal by Stone. Braves senior goalie Shelby Farr earned the shutout without having to make a save due to a strong back line support from her defense.

Stone (1-12), whose lone win came on Sept. 6 versus McDonough, lost to Chopticon in the season opener 12-0, but only gave up one goal in the first half due to its defense.

Stone junior goalie Mikayla Parent had an array of shots come toward her and collected 11 of her game-high 13 saves in the first half to keep her team at bay.

The Canada-China investment protection racket

The first thing you need to know about the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, which has been called Canada’s most important treaty since the North American Free Trade Agreement, is that the treaty wasn’t concluded with the legitimate government of China, because there is no such thing. It is nonetheless quite right to call the deal a “protection agreement.Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products.” That’s because the Chinese Communist Party has mutated into a classic protection racket that brutalizes and corrupts everything it touches.

Because we are becoming accustomed to hearing the word “reciprocity” in commentary and reportage about the agreement Ottawa has struck with these gangsters it’s necessary to know that paradoxically, the agreement provides no reciprocity in “market access.” Beijing’s tariffs remain untouched and Beijing retains the prerogative to strong-arm Canadian investors as usual. But there is an actual degree of reciprocity involved, of a kind.

Beijing promises that the Chinese Communist Party will regularize its bribe system and put the boots to China’s subnational, provincial, county and municipal governments on behalf of Canadian companies, in the same way that the CCP’s enforcers put the boots to everyone on behalf of Beijing’s state-owned enterprises.Interlocking security cable tie with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. So long as Canadian investors do as they’re told, everybody gets along.

To reciprocate, Ottawa promises that China’s state-owned companies will be similarly exempt from any impertinence from the Canadian courts, from the provinces and from municipalities. Any backchat — say, a law sensibly requiring that Alberta bitumen be upgraded and refined in Canada rather than pumped through Beijing-financed pipelines to awaiting tankers on the west coast — and the upstarts can be punished with penalties assigned by special, closed arbitration tribunals in decisions beyond the reach of judicial review.

“Canada is willing up give up elements of its democratic traditions on the promise of investment coming in,” is the way Gus Van Harten, an authority in international law at Osgoode Hall Law School describes the deal. But once you’re past that small matter it’s true that the agreement is pretty well boilerplate lifted from similar deals Ottawa has struck with a couple of dozen countries, among them Latvia,We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. Barbados, Costa Rica, Armenia, Romania, Ghana, and of course that economic powerhouse known as Trinidad and Tobago.

You will be right if you’ve guessed that just one reason there is a difference is that none of these other countries has a so-called government that can boast the captive labour of a sixth of humanity or the convenience of a sovereign wealth fund that just opened up shop in Toronto with $323 billion in currency reserves at its disposal.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and outgoing Chinese president Hu Jintao signed the Canada-China deal in Vladivostok on Sept. 9. Its contents were kept secret until the agreement was tabled in the House of Commons, which doesn’t get to vote on it, on Sept. 26. Even so, reports of the agreement’s contents have already triggered a cascade of protests and petitions across the country. The PMO can call the thing a ratified treaty 21 sitting days after its tabling, which is to say pretty well any day now. The agreement is supposed to last 31 years.

If Harper seems to be in a terrible hurry to get such a sketchy arrangement rammed into force and effect it’s because the “energy superpower” legacy he laid out in 2006 as the thing he wanted most to bestow upon Canada is already a complete shambles, and it’s about to get worse. Beijing has him over a barrel.

To strike his target of tripling Albertan oilsands production, the prime minister had to turn to the cash-rich Chinese Communist Party’s overseas acquisitions arms. Beijing’s state firms have already spent at least $25 billion in their buying binge. But by two weeks ago, eight out of 10 Canadians surveyed told pollsters from Angus Reid that they’re against the whole damn thing. As if to teach us all something of the vicissitudes of political irony, those ordinary hardworking Albertans whose virtues the Conservatives persist in hectoring the rest of us about have turned out to be among the fiercest opponents of Beijing’s biggest-ever overseas gambit, China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s $15.1 billion, way-over-premium bid for Nexen Inc., and it’s still in the hopper.

To get a sense of what the prime minister’s witless critics on Parliament Hill understand about what we’re dealing with here, it is helpful to know the responses Epoch Times reporter Matthew Little elicited last month after spending a day or so wandering around up there, asking a single, simple question: Is China under authoritarian control? Only Green Party leader Elizabeth May and Liberal Party fixture Bob Rae were capable of answering like grown-ups: Yes.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. Biggest foot in mouth: NDP environment critic Megan Leslie. She said she’d need to consult her political science textbooks and then get briefed before she’d be prepared to give an answer.

The party hack tipped to be anointed China’s new president when the unelected and self-replicating Communist Party leadership meets on Nov. 8 is a shadowy geezer by the name of Xi Jinping. His family has amassed about $400 million in a wealth trajectory that by the oddest coincidence mirrors Comrade Xi’s rise through party ranks. But that’s nothing. By the meticulous reckoning of a Pulitzer-worthy New York Times investigation published last week, the family of outgoing Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has accrued to itself a net worth of nearly $3 billion.

While China’s per-capita income hovers around that of sand-rich Turkmenistan, last year the net worth of the wealthiest 70 members of China’s laughably named National People’s Congress, by Bloomberg News’ calculations,Argo Mold limited specialize in Plastic injection mould manufacture, was $89.8 billion. China’s nouveau riche know very well that the jig is up. Two surveys carried out in 2011 by China’s Merchant Bank and by Shanghai’s Hurun Institute found that roughly 60 per cent of China’s millionaires are already preparing for emigration or are planning to leave the minute a chance arises.

The Communist Party’s princelings have been plundering the country so ravenously that China’s financial institutions are starting to feel the shocks of capital flight. The China Economic Weekly reports that over the past 12 years more than 18,000 executives and officers of Chinese state-owned enterprises have been caught trying to flee with plundered funds. According to a study published just last week by the Washington, D.C.-based organization Global Financial Integrity, China’s elites squirrelled $472 billion out of the country last year alone.

This isn’t socialism with Chinese characteristics. This is the Sopranos with Chinese characteristics.

The final thing you need to know about the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement is its specific function. It’s to elevate Canada’s China-trade business executives from their hitherto mostly supine position as accomplices of Beijing’s gangland regime to a more formalized and official status as willing accessories to the beggaring of the Chinese people and the plundering of their wealth.

2012年10月29日 星期一

Bridget Riley presented with Sikkens

When Bridget Riley first started to make abstract paintings – beginning in 1961 with her chequerboard composition Movement in Squares – she banished colour from her art, using only black and white. It was six years later, in 1967, that she began introducing colour to her dazzling geometric compositions. This week, the painter, one of Britain's most revered living artists, has become the first Briton and the first woman to win the Sikkens prize, a Dutch award recognising the use of colour.

Previous winners include US artist Donald Judd, but also the Paris street-cleaning department, "for the consistent use of the colour green", and, in the 1970s, hippies, "for the exuberant use of colour as a playful aspect in human society".

In a rare interview, Riley, 81, spoke about the use of colour in her work, which was dubbed "op art", a pun on the pop art movement,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. in the 1960s. "In my years after leaving art school, I found a way of learning about the use of use of colour in modern art by copying a Seurat," she said, referring to Georges Seurat's Bridge at Courbevoie, in the Courtauld Institute. "It was the landscape of a river and its banks in autumn. I copied it from a reproduction, because it is much easier to copy when one is not intimidated by the presence of a masterwork. I learned lessons about how colours behave through interaction when placed next to each other.

"And then, on a very spectacular summer day looking over a valley near Siena,Purelink's real time location system protect healthcare workers in their daily practices and OMEGA interventions. sparkling and shimmering in the heat, I made my own attempt. I made studies, and later, a painting. I was quite pleased, in fact, with what I'd been able to do, but it had nothing to do with what I had actually experienced in front of this landscape …

"So I decided to start again to find a new beginning – to start from the themes themselves, that is to say, shapes, lines, and so on. That led to my making a black-and-white painting and seeing what it would do: and it moved."

That was Movement in Squares. The abstract works, in fact, began to possess some of the qualities Riley had discerned in that Tuscan heat haze: "Movement, shimmering, sparkling and reflecting … all those things that happen in landscape."

The apparently stern, self-imposed restrictions, such as the initial lack of colour and the gradual introduction of elements such as the curve, had been huge aids to her, she said. "Too much freedom is terrifying. The first thing Stravinsky would do was to set himself limits in his work. If he still felt inhibited by freedom, he set himself more limits." In a 2009 essay for the London Review of Books,Find detailed product information for howo spareparts and other products. Riley quoted the composer's words: "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit."

Asked about the difference between abstract and figurative art, she said: "Many people would like to know how to look at abstract painting because they may be used to looking at figurative painting.The oreck XL professional air purifier, But I personally believe they are all about painting itself. The big difference is conventions of looking." Certain arrangements of paint suggest figures or objects, she said, through tacitly agreed conventions – but in the end, all painting is about relationships of colour, shape and line, whether abstract or figurative.

Abstraction and figuration, she said, share the capacity to offer a spiritual experience to the viewer. "One of the most extraordinary things to look at is a painting of heaven and the celestial hosts and the mother of God – these are themes that artists gave as an experience of spiritual matters to their audience. In its best form, [abstract] painting offers a spiritual experience. It's very hard to define what that might precisely mean, and one shouldn't try."

To mark the prize, an exhibition of Riley's art has opened at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, including a new 20-metre wall painting executed by assistants, as is usual in her work. "I hope people will find things in it to look at," she said. "It has a variety of relationships, a variety of passages in it. There are things to find in it, I hope, just as there are in a landscape painting."

Riley has long had a serious relationship with the Old Masters: one of her important student works was a copy of Jan van Eyck's Portrait of a Man, a possible self-portrait in which the sitter is dressed in a red turban, and, in 2010, the National Gallery held an exhibition setting her work alongside paintings by artists including Raphael and Mantegna.

Asked about her impressions of the contemporary art scene of today – larger by far and more widely recognised by the public than when Riley began her career in the 1960s – she chose to talk about the Renaissance. "Contemporary art is not a new thing," she said. "Every period has its contemporary wing. In the Renaissance the practice of painting would have been a much bigger thing.

"Many people would have been painting, for religious works, for festivals, for processions; painting churches, carriages, chests, boats. There would have been an extraordinary amount of brushwork and decoration. These things furnished a platform for high art, as it were, but no one set out to be a fine artist.We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. Some individuals simply raised their bar, or got more ambitious. There will always be people born with talent, with gifts, with minds that seek new experiences, generation after generation."

An excerpt

Eighteen-year-old Rona Amir and Mohammad Shafia were a picture-perfect bridal couple, the beautiful eldest daughter of a retired army colonel and the handsome Kabul businessman.Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. Shafia, accomplished at age 25, smiled for snapshots with his porcelain bride on his arm. It was 1978, the year that Rona would later lament that her lot in life "began a downward spiral." That day, in the crush of well-wishers and glare of flashbulbs that froze her mask of happiness, she did not see the turmoil ahead.

Many people attended their elaborate wedding at the Intercontinental, the finest hotel in Kabul. The surroundings were posh, adorned with chandeliers and carpets in rich red tones. The teenaged bride wore a gauzy baby-blue dress. Two blue roses, fashioned from the fabric, protruded from the satiny waves of dark hair near her left ear.

It was a refined beginning. Shafia's mother, Shirin, had arranged the marriage two years earlier. She had found him this good girl when she attended the wedding of a distant relative, Noor. At the reception, Shirin noticed the bridegroom's younger sister Rona. The slender sixteen-year-old had beautiful skin and a round face with delicate features. She was quiet and reserved, perhaps even timid. Shirin was pleased. This girl was attractive, and she came from a reputable, middleclass family.If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. Rona would surely make a good wife for Shafia and mother for his children.

Shirin was careful to comply with the strict tradition of khwastgari, the ritual that dictated rules of betrothal. First she asked Rona's family for the girl's hand in marriage for her son, and then she visited Rona's home several times to see the girl with her family. The visits did not diminish her first impression that Rona was a good mate for her son. Rona and her family were also invited to Shirin's home, as custom required. The visits afforded Shafia a chance to get a good look at the girl that his mother had selected for him. He approved.

Rona's elder brother asked her if she would accept the proposal to marry Shafia. Rona didn't fully comprehend what it would mean to become a wife, but she recognized that it was her fate to be given away to a man she did not know or love.

"Give me away in marriage if he is a good man," she replied. "Don't if he is not."

And so Rona's family investigated Shafia. They learned that his father, Akbar, had died in a car crash when Shafia was only two. Shafia had completed Grade 6, but in the absence of a patriarch in his family, and out of economic necessity, he was thrust at a young age into a position of leadership and responsibility. He began apprenticing with extended family, learning to repair televisions and radios. By the time Shafia was a teenager, he had opened a small electronics shop with a loan from his grandfather. Shafia proved adept at electronic repair and was soon able to open a larger shop in downtown Kabul. He expanded from selling primarily radios to importing and reselling other electronics.

Learning this, Rona's family decided Shafia was a simple, hard-working young man who would succeed in business - an acceptable suitor. With the blessing of her family secured, the bright young high school student who had just completed Grade 11 was betrothed to a stranger seven years her senior.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. In a country where girls as young as two were offered up by their families as wives for men in their sixties and seventies, it was a reasonable arrangement viewed as a highly compatible match.

And so, in 1978, Rona and Shafia were wed, beginning their new life together in the same year that Afghanistan began its descent into three bloody decades of war and chaos that would reduce Kabul to rubble and displace millions of Afghans. President Daoud Khan was assassinated in a coup in which thousands died. War planes fired on the presidential palace in Kabul as military units loyal to Daoud battled troops sympathetic to the Soviet Union, which had long provided financial and political support to Afghanistan.

Rona and Shafia were still relative newlyweds when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Soviet commandos stormed the palace and killed the president, setting the stage for the installation of a puppet leader and a deadly, decade-long occupation that would see one million Afghans die.

In the Shafia home, an unexpected problem was festering: Rona could not get pregnant. At first, Shafia was not troubled by her failure to give him a child. He was busy with his expanding business empire. He launched a company, Babul Ltd., to import and distribute products from Japan. Rona visited several doctors, received injections and assurances, but still failed to conceive. Shafia took her to India for treatment from experts, but the expensive intervention did not help.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility.

After several childless years, Shafia began to hear derisive jokes from his acquaintances and business associates. People were ridiculing him for his failure to impregnate his wife. Maybe something was wrong with him, they were saying. There were crude taunts about farm animals.

Shafia trained his anger upon his barren wife. He began to snipe at Rona and became more controlling, telling her to stop leaving the home to visit her mother. "He would find fault with my cooking and serving meals and he would find excuses to harass me," Rona would write in her diary, years later. Until that point, she had considered his treatment of her to be kind.Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing, But Shafia could not contain his growing bitterness over his wife's failure to give him children.

Riding Out Sandy in the Rockaways

My neighbors in Rockaway are defying the evacuation order. The Master Plumber posted a picture of the boardwalk with the ocean already under it, but wrote that they were “high and dry,” and that I was missing the parties. It sounds like they’re moving from house to house, from cocktails to dinner to rum, waiting for the next high tide.

I am more concerned about my friend at the marina. I have a fourteen-foot rowboat with a six-horsepower motor, and last week I begged him to leave it in the water till Thursday, because it was my last chance this season to go by boat to the house my friend Paula inherited on the water in Gerritsen Beach, in Brooklyn. Since Paula and I are both from Cleveland, and not from boating families, we think it’s a riot that we have ended up owning homes (and boats) on opposite sides of Jamaica Bay.

The boss at the marina has been worrying about Sandy since early last week. I got to the boatyard on Thursday at about noon. He had left the boat in the water for me, but he was sitting in the forklift, eager to get boats out of the water. He had just taken out a boat called the Risk Taker. Another huge boat sat shrink-wrapped in ghostly white. I told him my plan. “Do you have my number?” he asked. “Call me, or I’ll worry.”

I loaded my gear into the boat and checked my cheat sheet: Gear in neutral, throttle on start, vent on gas can open, gas line plugged into motor, choke open. Pull cord. Nothing. Oh yeah, the lanyard: a red coil with a ring on the end, which I slipped over a knob to engage the engine. She started up. I throttled down and slowly pushed the choke in, then cast off.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. The tide was so low that I could see the floor of the bay. It was about 12:10 P.M. The bay was calm, the sky was overcast but not stormy. Oh, something I keep forgetting to put on the cheat sheet: make sure there is a stream of water coming from the engine, or it will overheat.

Ahoy! Land ho! An hour and a quarter later, I was at my friend’s dock. We headed down the inlet (Shell Bank Creek, according to my chart) to Tamaqua, a bar and marina. We asked at the dock where we tied up if there was a place nearby to get something to eat. “I’ve got frozen pizza I’ll heat up for you,” the guy said. Considering that we were hungry and that there was nothing else around, we said that sounded great.

Tamaqua is a big place, with a huge bar, a pool table, and a stage. It was decorated for Halloween. A handful of regulars—retirees—were propping up the bar. The barmaid was dressed as if for payday: full evening makeup, royal-blue blouse with ruffles, short tight black skirt, hair sprayed into place, plenty of bling at her throat. “Where did you ladies come from?” she asked as she served us a beer. We weren’t sure what to answer. Cleveland? An improbably long trip. Gerritsen? Why didn’t we drive? So I said it: Ebb Tide Marina, in Rockaway. “We’re the mean marina,” the boss has said. He flies the Jolly Roger.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck.

The pizza was taking a while, so we asked for some bar snacks. The barmaid plucked a bag of Fritos and a bag of potato chips off the rack, spread a napkin on the bar in front of us, and poured the chips onto it. Paula and I looked at each other; we had never before observed this quaint custom.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. Finally the pizza arrived: pepperoni. “I bought a hundred of these,” the man said. “Thought I should have them around in case anyone get hungry.” He had heated up an extra one, which the barmaid distributed among the regulars.

Soon I had to take my friend back to her house on the water. I called the boss at the marina, to let him know I’d be a little late—closer to five-thirty. The return trip was faster: now I was going with the tide. Four swans flew over, their necks stretched out like those trumpets they use in productions of Shakespeare to blow a fanfare for the king.

Circling into the marina, I consulted my cheat sheet again: Pull gas plug, slow way down, curve into slip just as engine dies (yes!), grab line on dock and wrap around cleat at stern,HOWO trucks are widely used and howo spare parts for sale are also welcomed . climb onto dock with bow line. Close vent on gas tank. Put plug on gas-intake valve, put gear in Forward, tip engine up and on its side. Oh, yeah,Gecko could kickstart an indoor tracking mobile app explosion. remove lanyard.

I put the lifejackets in the office for the winter and looked for the boss. The door to the bungalows on the dock was locked up tight. I walked back out among the slips, wondering if he was working there. Then he signalled me from the dock with a lantern and came out to meet me in the boatyard. “This could be a big one,” he said as I handed over the lanyard. He would take the boat out of the water the next day. The hurricane was on course to meet a storm coming from the west. “And there’s a full moon,” he said. The street leading to the marina floods regularly at moon tides; he has had as much as four feet of water in his bungalow. “And there’s so much stuff lying around in the yard,” he sadi. “I just hope it doesn’t hit at high tide.” He looked up at the sky and said, “Pop”—he is from a long line of mariners on Jamaica Bay—“let this one blow over.”

2012年10月24日 星期三

DART committee updated on paid parking initiative

A pilot program to charge residents of non-DART cities for parking at some rail stations has caused a spike in parking at downstream stations, and an expansion of the program may be necessary to fill an $88,600 deficit, a DART planning committee was told Tuesday.


The program was launched in April at Parker Road and North Carrollton-Frankford stations. The program is intended to address concerns from DART member city residents that many who park and ride come from outside of the service area and do not help fund the DART system with their tax dollars.

Between March and September, parking by non-residents at Parker Road station has dropped off by 438 vehicles per day, said Todd Plesko, vice president of planning and development for DART.

However, availability of parking at George Bush Turnpike Station, the first park-and-ride station south of Parker Road, has decreased, with 383 more vehicles parking at the station per day in September compared to March, bringing the station close to its parking capacity.

"Much of that population that's shifted from Parker Road obviously went from George Bush," Plesko said.

As of September, the overall program is running an $88,600 deficit.Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. Parking-fee operations at both stations are administered and paid for by a third-party company called Platinum Parking, Plesko said.

So far, non-residents parking at free lots have cost the program approximately $100,000 in revenue.

"If we don't make, ultimately, some different decisions in the long-term, it's perhaps not a break-even operation," Plesko said.

One way to capture this lost revenue is to expand the program, shifting lots at George Bush and Trinity Mills over to the pay-to-ride model, Plesko said.

The expansion could be done without a dramatic increase in costs by spreading labor across multiple stations, potentially using existing DART staff to help further offset costs, he said.

Plesko said expanding the program could bring it to a positive net revenue of $22,117 per month.

"It does address the equity issue, but it's not a massively profitable program," he said.

Ridership has changed little since the implementation of the program,Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. according to data presented by Plesko. Ridership is down 1.8 percent at Parker and has increased by 9.4 percent at George Bush since the implementation of the parking program.

"Realize that almost all of the riders that we believe didn't want to pay have gone to another station," he said. "They have not decided ...Gecko could kickstart an indoor tracking mobile app explosion. as far as we know, to leave DART altogether."

After Plesko's presentation, Mark Enoch, board representative for Garland, Rowlett and Farmer's Branch asked what the likelihood of implementing an extra cost at George Bush Station might be.

"I think that was the thought, to see where this takes us before we move forward," said Timothy McKay, executive vice president of growth and regional development.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. "At some point you've got to assume if it puts people too far down they will drive."

Pamela Dunlop Gates, representative for Dallas and planning committee chair, said the board must have a sense of how far down it can expand the program before it reaches the threshold of people choosing not to ride altogether.

"For us to be able to make an informed decision about how well this is going to work, we're probably going to have to modify the pilot,This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. the demonstration," she said, adding that the staff will have to bring the issue back to the board for further discussion at a future meeting.

The pay-to-park program expanded to Northwest Plano Park and Ride in July of this year. An already planned expansion of the program at Belt Line Station in Irving is slated for December.

'Rock Iowa' revs up young voters

An echo of the feverish get-out-the-vote effort under way by political parties, interest groups and community organizations in these waning weeks of the 2012 election is sounding in several Iowa high schools through the secretary of state’s new outreach program.

Matt Schultz has been traveling to dozens of high schools across the state in recent weeks with a special presentation for voting-age students aimed at getting them registered and ready to cast ballots.

It’s called “Rock Iowa,Klaus Multiparking is an industry leader in innovative parking system technology.” and it represents a collaboration between the Republican Schultz,We specialize in howo concrete mixer, whose office is the state-level administrator of elections, and Rock the Vote, the venerable youth-voting advocacy group. Schultz calls it the first such program of its kind and says it could be a model for other states in the years to come.

We’re the first, and kind of a one-of-a-kind event, but I think it’s going to start catching on,” he said.

The effort is an outgrowth of a Rock the Vote-sponsored “Rock the Caucus” event at Valley High School on the morning of the Iowa caucuses last January. That event featured Republican candidates Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, and four of eventual GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s sons, and inspired Schultz to take the show to high schools across the state.

Schultz and his staff have hit about 40 high schools with a slide show on the mechanics of voting and voter registration, a slickly produced Rock the Vote video and plenty of audience participation. The underlying message emphasizes participation.

“The rough math is, about half of you who are eligible don’t vote,” Schultz told the students in Perry. “Hopefully, after today, we can change that.Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile,”

The seniors at Perry High School didn’t appear to need much of an explanation or encouragement — several dozen already were registered and many more were involved in mock congressional and presidential campaigns being run out of government teacher Diane Gibson’s classroom.

The whole school will be invited to vote on Election Day, and the government classes will tally and scrutinize the results, comparing them and turnout data to local and national statistics, Gibson said.

On Tuesday,Find detailed product information for howo spareparts and other products. the school’s hallways were plastered with signs, banners and buttons signaling support for or opposition to congressional candidates Leonard Boswell and Tom Latham and presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and students in Gibson’s class were busy constructing color-coded ballot boxes.

But even with that background, the students were game for Schultz’s Rock Iowa presentation, in which he quickly described the rules and procedures for voter registration and then pulled two students up to the front of the school auditorium for an impromptu debate.

Daisy Cerna received a lanyard designating her “Candidate A,” and Kory Eiteman received another identifying him as “Candidate B.” Then they took questions from their peers on a wide range of issues: energy, the national debt,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. same-sex marriage, abortion, the war in Afghanistan and more.

Many of Cerna’s and Eiteman’s answers were thoughtful, some pleaded an earnest ignorance and surprisingly few differed all that much. And neither candidate hewed exactly to the established dogmas of the Republican and Democratic parties.

Cerna, for example, offered the more liberal view that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, but described a strong opposition to abortion, a conventionally conservative view.

“I say go for it, because everyone deserves the right to have someone they love,” she said of same-sex marriage, drawing the loudest cheers and applause of the afternoon from her classmates. On abortion, she added, “I think women should have their children. Any child that is conceived, or whatever, should get the opportunity to live.”

Eiteman came out in favor of technological innovation and high fuel standards as the solution to high gas prices and a gun policy that allowed the purchase of all but military-grade weaponry.

When one shaggy-haired student asked about legalizing marijuana — the question doesn’t come up at every Rock Iowa, Schultz said later, but it does at many — Cerna suggested doing so could be a source of additional tax revenue. Eiteman, after a long pause, said, “I honestly don’t have an opinion.”

Corvette Revealed with 450 HP

For years,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , car enthusiasts have debated what would come of Chevrolet’s iconic small block V-8. Would there be a next-generation engine? Would it get smaller? Would it still have pushrods? Would it have direct injection? Today, all of those questions have been answered.

Billed as the biggest change to the venerable small block V-8 engine in its 57-year history, the Gen-5 edition retains the trademark bore spacing, overhead-valve/cam-in-block valvetrain, and a few other key details, but the engine bristles with high-tech features. Direct fuel injection? Check. Variable valve timing? Got-it. The above was widely leaked common knowledge, but now we can tell you the rest of the story. Some 99.9 percent of the engine is new, with the engine’s carryover parts fitting in a Ziploc bag. Two starter bolts, a piston pin and a retainer bolt or two are all that remain of the LS3.

Displacement is indeed 6.2 liters, not 5.5 liters as rumored, and the RPO number is LT1, a designation well-known to the Corvette faithful. The key enabling feature of the new small block is cylinder deactivation. The Corvette was to be first with that technology, but the layout of the car was unsuited because of the rear transmission and various mounting solutions, it was an NVH nightmare in 4-cylinder mode.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. Those problems have been overcome now, and the system has been optimized to allow a wide operating range in the 3.1-liter V-4 mode. As it turns out, fuel economy is BETTER with a 6.2-liter engine, because smaller displacements reduce the amount of time the engine can operate in 4-cylinder mode, so bigger displacement saves more fuel. Counterintuitive, but true. Active Fuel Management applied to a performance valvetrain is unique, Chevy says. With its 6600-rpm engine speed fuel cutoff, this is the highest-speed valvetrain with cylinder deactivation. Cylinders 1, 7, 6, and 4 get deactivated.

Next-gen technologies have been key to improving performance and efficiency, while maintaining the compact size and high power density while preserving oiling under very high g loads. Direct injection, Active Fuel Management (GM-speak for cylinder deactivation), and continuously variable valve timing are the key enablers. Also on that list, according to Jordan Lee, the chief engineer and program manager for small block engines, is a “radically new combustion system with 11.5:1 compression ratio.” That compression ratio improves both power and efficiency.

According to Lee, direct fuel injection and the extensive air-fuel mixing dynamics in the cylinder combine to provide maximum in-cylinder cooling, so that the engine can tolerate a higher compression ratio. The advanced combustion system he spoke of is meant to burn every molecule of fuel,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing, extracting all the energy possible. Millions of hours of computer processing time was spent developing the top surface of the piston to optimize air-fuel mixture flow and combustion dynamics. Hundreds of combustion systems were analyzed. Over 6 million hours of computer processing time was dedicated to combustion system optimization while reducing knock sensitivity even under extreme climatic conditions. As a result, peak torque of 450 lb-ft is established with 1236 kPa BMEP. That nearly matches the outgoing Z06’s 7.0-liter V-8 from 2000-4000 rpm. As for durability, the new LT1 has withstood even more rigorous testing.If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. Each hour of durability testing is equivalent to 40 laps of the Nurburgring, and total testing = 60 times around the world. Cooling is repeatedly cycled from -4 F to +239 F while operating at peak power.

Direct injection hardware, according to John Rydzewski, assistant chief engineer for small block engines, is buried in the valley of the engine, so it doesn’t affect the size of the engine. It consists of a single high-output fuel pump, an isolated fuel rail that suspends the injectors for improved refinement. Operating fuel pressure in the rails is 2175 psi. The pump is driven off a special camshaft lobe with three peaks of 5.7mm lift. The fuel system and pump are encapsulated with an acoustic package to keep noise down.The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging.

For the serious techies, Chevy got down into the nitty-gritty details. Exhaust valves are 40.4 mm, intake valves are 55mm. The springs are 2mm taller, and the exhaust and intake valves are splayed 2.5 degrees from each other. Exhaust valves are sodium filled, and stiffer. The intake valves are nitride and hollow.

2012年10月22日 星期一

A solution in search of a problem?

There's been a lot of hype around mobile payments over the past year, but the No. 1 problem that the mobile payments market faces is adoption. Consumers simply don't see a reason to replace their cash or plastic with a phone.

And yet one company after another is clamoring to get into the market. Technology companies, such as Google and PayPal have thrown their hats into the ring along with wireless carriers, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile. Banks, such as Barclays and Bank of America,The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. have also announced plans for a digital wallet and mobile payments. And credit card companies have also announced solutions. Even merchants like Wal-Mart and Target want in on the action.

The benefits for these companies are easy enough to figure out. The concept of mobile payments fits nicely into Google's core advertising and local deals business. Wireless carriers were initially interested in mobile payments because they saw it as a potential revenue source. Merchants, such as Wal-Mart and Target, which announced plans earlier this summer to launch their own mobile payment system, view it as a way to avoid interchange fees that credit card companies charge them.

Financial institutions like banks may see a way to cut out the credit card middleman to reap a higher cut of the fees that are paid to terminate transactions. And credit card companies, like Visa and MasterCard, at the very least need to keep their hand in the mobile game to make sure they can protect their transactional business and in the future potentially drive higher volumes of transactions through smartphones.

And then there are the startups that seem to pop up almost daily. Companies such as Square and GoPago see big potential in upending the fee structures that exist today in payments. And they promise merchants and others in the value chain a more economical model.

Clearly, there are benefits for each of these companies interested in mobile payments. But what's not clear is how it will benefit consumers.The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging. And until consumers themselves see a benefit, they're unlikely to change their behavior.

"The market right now is not being driven by any specific or urgent consumer need," said Aditya Khurjekar, co-founder and program direction of the mobile payment conference Money2020. "Instead it's driven by businesses looking to benefit from new consumer experiences, that are yet unproven . Ultimately, any new experience will succeed only if it is solved by working together for the common customer, and the experience is 10 times better than the current one. And that's a tall order."

This may be why mobile payments, which has been kicked around by different companies for a little less than a decade, has not yet gained much traction.This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. I wrote my first story about NFC-enabled mobile payments in 2006. Handset maker Nokia was working with wireless provider Cingular Wireless (now AT&T), Citigroup and MasterCard Worldwide to trial phones with embedded Near Field Communications technology that leveraged the Mastercard PayPass contactless payment system. The companies launched a pilot program in New York City, which allowed people to use their phones to pay for things like subway rides or sodas at Coca-Cola vending machines.

The concept sounded interesting. Instead of carrying a wallet filled with cash or credit cards, all you need is your mobile phone, a device you're likely not to leave home without anyway. And when I first saw the Nokia solution demonstrated, I thought it looked nifty.

But to be perfectly honest, it seemed more like a novelty than a necessity. Using a mobile phone to make an in-store payment is no easier than using a credit card. And so the Nokia/Cingular/Mastercard trial never went anywhere.

Financial institutions like banks may see a way to cut out the credit card middleman to reap a higher cut of the fees that are paid to terminate transactions. And credit card companies, like Visa and MasterCard, at the very least need to keep their hand in the mobile game to make sure they can protect their transactional business and in the future potentially drive higher volumes of transactions through smartphones.

And then there are the startups that seem to pop up almost daily. Companies such as Square and GoPago see big potential in upending the fee structures that exist today in payments. And they promise merchants and others in the value chain a more economical model.

Clearly, there are benefits for each of these companies interested in mobile payments. But what's not clear is how it will benefit consumers. And until consumers themselves see a benefit, they're unlikely to change their behavior.

"The market right now is not being driven by any specific or urgent consumer need," said Aditya Khurjekar, co-founder and program direction of the mobile payment conference Money2020. "Instead it's driven by businesses looking to benefit from new consumer experiences, that are yet unproven . Ultimately, any new experience will succeed only if it is solved by working together for the common customer,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , and the experience is 10 times better than the current one. And that's a tall order."

This may be why mobile payments, which has been kicked around by different companies for a little less than a decade, has not yet gained much traction. I wrote my first story about NFC-enabled mobile payments in 2006. Handset maker Nokia was working with wireless provider Cingular Wireless (now AT&T), Citigroup and MasterCard Worldwide to trial phones with embedded Near Field Communications technology that leveraged the Mastercard PayPass contactless payment system. The companies launched a pilot program in New York City, which allowed people to use their phones to pay for things like subway rides or sodas at Coca-Cola vending machines.

The concept sounded interesting.The Kunyu Mountain Shaolin china kung fu school is located at the foot. Instead of carrying a wallet filled with cash or credit cards, all you need is your mobile phone, a device you're likely not to leave home without anyway. And when I first saw the Nokia solution demonstrated, I thought it looked nifty.

But to be perfectly honest, it seemed more like a novelty than a necessity. Using a mobile phone to make an in-store payment is no easier than using a credit card. And so the Nokia/Cingular/Mastercard trial never went anywhere.

First, Aid the Living

A U.S. ambassador is missing and his diplomatic team is desperately fighting off terrorist attacks. Our commander-in-chief and his national-security team in Washington are listening to the phone calls from the Americans under attack and watching real-time video from a drone circling overhead. Yet the U.S. military sends no aid. Why?

On September 11,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. at about 10 p.m. Libyan time (4 p.m. in Washington), Ambassador Chris Stevens and a small staff were inside our consulate in Benghazi when terrorists attacked. The consulate staff immediately contacted Washington and our embassy in Tripoli. The White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and numerous military headquarters monitored the entire battle in real time via the phone calls from Benghazi and video from a drone overhead.

Our diplomats fought for seven hours without any aid from outside the country. Four Americans died while the Obama national-security team and our military passively watched and listened. The administration is being criticized for ignoring security needs before the attack and for falsely attributing the assault to a mob. But the most severe failure has gone unnoticed: namely, a failure to aid the living.Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS.

By 4:30 p.m. Washington time, the main consulate building was on fire and Ambassador Stevens was missing. In response, the embassy in Tripoli launched an aircraft carrying 22 men. Benghazi was 400 miles away.

At 5 p.m., President Obama met with Vice President Biden and Secretary of Defense Panetta in the Oval Office. The U.S. military base in Sigonella, Sicily, was 480 miles away from Benghazi. Stationed at Sigonella were Special Operations Forces, transport aircraft, and attack aircraft — a much more formidable force than 22 men from the embassy.

In the past, presidents had taken immediate actions to protect Americans. In 1984, President Reagan had ordered U.S. pilots to force an airliner carrying terrorists to land at Sigonella. Reagan had acted inside a 90-minute window while the aircraft with the terrorists was in the air. The Obama national-security team had several hours in which to move forces from Sigonella to Benghazi.

Fighter jets could have been at Benghazi in an hour; the commandos inside three hours. If the attackers were a mob, as intelligence reported, then an F18 in afterburner,The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. roaring like a lion, would unnerve them. This procedure was applied often in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Conversely, if the attackers were terrorists,Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. then the U.S. commandos would eliminate them. But no forces were dispatched from Sigonella.

In the meantime, while untrained and poorly led by American standards, the terrorists at Benghazi were proving to be lethal. They forced the Americans to abandon the consulate, with the ambassador still missing, and fall back to an annex a mile away. When the terrorist gang followed the Americans,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. looters took the opportunity to ransack the empty consulate. But when they found Ambassador Stevens unconscious on the floor, they stopped looting and rushed him to a hospital. Unfortunately, the doctors could not save his life. Not knowing who he was, they took the cell phone from his pocket and called numbers. By about two in the morning, the American embassy received word that the ambassador was dead.

At about the same time, the 22 men from the embassy in Tripoli had arrived at the Benghazi airport. They drove to the annex to assist in its defense against persistent terrorist attacks. Around 4 a.m. Libyan time — six hours into the fight — enemy mortar rounds killed two of the defenders on the roof of the annex.

The fight began at 10 p.m. and petered out at dawn when the Libyan militia came to the aid of the Americans.

It is bewildering that no U.S. aircraft ever came to the aid of the defenders. If even one F18 had been on station, it would have detected the location of hostiles firing at night and deterred and attacked the mortar sites. For our top leadership, with all the technological and military tools at their disposal, to have done nothing for seven hours was a joint civilian and military failure of initiative and nerve.

Secretary of State Clinton has said the responsibility was hers. But there has been no assertion that the State Department overruled the Pentagon out of concern about the sovereignty of Libyan air space. Instead, it appears passive groupthink prevailed, with the assumption being that a spontaneous mob would quickly run out of steam.

BMW Urban Mobility

The ITS World Congress is the premier international exhibition for devices,Purelink's real time location system protect healthcare workers in their daily practices and OMEGA interventions. technologies and services associated with intelligent traffic systems.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. This year’s exhibition hosts a total of 300 exhibitors. The exhibition at the ITS World Congress in 2012 has the motto “smarter on the way”,HOWO trucks are widely used and howo spare parts for sale are also welcomed . and it has attracted all the key companies and innovators in this area. The exhibitors cover all aspects of traffic systems including complex information and communication systems, advanced navigation and payment systems through to the areas of safety, ecology and electromobility.

The BMW Group presents innovations from BMW ConnectedDrive at the ITS World Congress under the motto “BMW Urban Mobility”. BMW ConnectedDrive is the BMW Group’s definition of Intelligent Traffic Systems (ITS), because BMW ConnectedDrive provides the occupants of the vehicle and the vehicle itself with an intelligent network to connect them with the outside world. This network offers customers more safety, comfort and infotainment whether it is through driver assistance systems, navigation options or personalized entertainment. The network permits innovations for urban mobility that make interaction with city traffic even safer, more efficient and more convenient. The BMW Group stand presents App and vehicle-based routing functions, safety systems and solutions for mobility on two wheels.

Going about your business quickly and smoothly in a densely populated city is a big challenge. How can I get to my destination on time? Will there be any free parking spaces when I arrive? Where is the nearest charging point for my electric car? Will I be quicker with Park+Ride? The Mobility Assistant from the BMW Group will provide all the answers to these questions in future. It is currently being tested in Berlin as an iPhone application. This service is going to provide individual, intermodal navigation. When you enter a destination, the mobility assistant will display various routes to allow you to reach this destination cost-effectively and quickly – whether you are travelling by car, using suburban public transport or combining the two modes of travel.

“The Mobility Assistant is an initial step towards the reality of actual intermodal traffic use. The objective is to ensure mobility over a range of different modes of transport.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , This is empowering the BMW Group to support mobility sustainably and tailored to individual needs,” according to Martin Hauschild, Head of Traffic Technology and Traffic Management at the BMW Group. For example, all drivers with BMW cars equipped with ConnectedDrive encompassing RTTI (Real Time Traffic Information) are in a position to obtain the latest information about traffic conditions on the road.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. This new service is updated every three minutes and shows the current rates of traffic flow on the roads in five stages (gridlocked, congested, heavy traffic, slow-moving traffic, flowing normally).

The concept of intermodal routing is optimally enhanced by the DriveNow package available in Munich, Düsseldorf, Berlin and San Francisco. This Premium Car Sharing with BMW and MINI automobiles is independent of car-hire stations. This service is now available in four cities and is proving to be extremely popular. You can get mobile after completing a simple registration process. If you need a car, the DriveNow App displays the nearest DriveNow vehicle in the vicinity. After you have finished your journey, you can simply park the vehicle at your destination and another driver will be able to use it from that location.

BMW subsumes two functions under the concept of “Urban Navigation” both of which use local “traffic knowledge” to make navigation in cities faster, simpler and more predictable, particularly during rush-hour periods: adaptive navigation and strategic routing. “The BMW Group highlights its leadership role in intelligent and networked route management with the functions of urban navigation,” explained Martin Hauschild, Head of Traffic Technology and Traffic Management at the BMW Group. With strategic routing, the BMW Group is working together with cities to make traffic management data such as information about temporary disruptions (roadworks) or events and strategic diversion recommendation accessible to navigation systems and to take this into account in route planning. These future routing options create a route based on adaptive traffic management that takes local traffic planning into account and enables you to have a smooth drive through the city with minimum impact on the environment.

2012年10月17日 星期三

Max Soriano was praised and pilloried for bringing Pilots

Max Soriano, who was born to a poor fisherman in British Columbia, helped build a family business before landing a major-league baseball team for Seattle.

Soriano and his older brother, Dewey, a former minor-league pitcher, fronted a group that gained an American League expansion franchise. The sad-sack Seattle Pilots had a disappointing debut on the field and in the stands in 1969. The owners declared bankruptcy and the team moved to Milwaukee before the start of the following season.

Celebrated for their ingenuity in netting the club, the brothers were pilloried for the subsequent shipwreck. A two-metre-tall effigy was hanged from a ramp leading to a monorail station, a protest whose location gave it a peculiarly Seattle feel. The effigy had a sign pinned to it reading, “Thanks Max and Dewey.”

Soriano, who has died in Seattle,Load the precious minerals into your mining truck and be careful not to drive too fast with your heavy foot. aged 86, overcame that setback,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing, expanding his business interests and launching a shipping company with another brother. The company, now run by his sons, operates retail stores under the Alaska Ship Supply banner, outfitting the Bering Strait fishing fleet. Their clothing line is worn by fishermen on the popular Discovery Channel reality program Deadliest Catch.

Max Durban Soriano was born on Oct. 31, 1925, at Prince Rupert, a port city on the northern B.C. coast. He was the ninth child born to the former Anna Bundgaard, a farmer’s daughter from Denmark, and Angel Lorenzo Soriano, a fisherman from Torrevieja in Spain’s Alicante province. The couple had 11 children, with five born in Canada. The senior Soriano worked halibut boats along the coast for many years, but when Max was six weeks old the family resettled in Seattle – the entire household and all those children moved south in the family’s fishing boat.

An all-city pitcher as a senior at Franklin High School in Seattle, Max Soriano, a right-hander, hoped to follow Dewey in pursuing a professional baseball career. Dewey pitched for the Seattle Rainiers before joining the wartime Merchant Marine. Max followed him in 1944 after graduating from high school. He quickly rose in rank to become a junior officer on ships plying the waters from Puget Sound north through Georgia Strait and on to Alaska.

He enrolled at the University of Washington after the war, pitching for the school’s Huskies baseball team while earning a degree in American history. A persistently sore right throwing arm limited his baseball prospects, so he attended law school instead of pursuing an athletic career.

Soriano specialized in admiralty law, which proved helpful as he represented his brother in a lawsuit after Dewey, who worked as a harbour pilot, struck a submerged rock in Juan de Fuca Strait while guiding an Asia-bound freighter in 1961. (Dewey also struck another rock in 1967 and hit a bridge in 1982.)

In 1948, Dewey borrowed $15,000 from his brothers to purchase the Yakima (Wash.) Bears, a minor-league team for which he also served as manager and starting pitcher. In time, Dewey became president of the Pacific Coast League, a circuit which included the Vancouver Mounties. Max acted as the league’s legal counsel.

At baseball’s winter meetings in Mexico City in 1967,Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. a group headed by the Soriano brothers was awarded an expansion franchise on the condition a major-league-quality baseball stadium be built in the near future.

The brothers fronted $2-million, most of it in Max’s name,An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a term used for a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. as Dewey was going through a divorce at the time. Financing came from William R. Daley, a former owner of the Cleveland Indians.

The new team, named the Pilots, not coincidentally Dewey’s occupation, played at Sicks’ Stadium, a Depression-era park that suffered from a lack of amenities, not the least of which was low water pressure that made it impossible to flush toilets during games with a large attendance. Renovations to increase capacity were not completed before Opening Day, so many paying customers arrived to find their seats had yet to be installed.

The team, stocked with castoffs and rejects, stumbled on the field, losing 98 games. (One of those players was a knuckleball-throwing relief pitcher named Jim Bouton, who maintained a diary that would become the book Ball Four, a hilarious account of baseball life that is still in print.) Attendance was poor. The brothers – Dewey, the dynamic front man, and Max, the cerebral presence – were overwhelmed by problems.

Though voters had approved the building of a domed stadium, its construction seemed far off. With the club losing $12,500 per day and no financial institution willing to bankroll it, the brothers declared bankruptcy. The team was “without funds and it’s impossible to borrow money,” Max Soriano would tell an adjudicator.

The team moved to Milwaukee just days before the start of the 1970 season, leaving behind angry season-ticket holders and a flurry of lawsuits.

After the Pilots fiasco, Soriano once again turned to business, developing real estate in Seattle, Alaska and Hawaii. With brother Amigo Soriano, he purchased the freighter Western Pioneer and began shipping clothing, hardware and foodstuffs to Alaska, returning with boatloads of crab. The company stopped shipping in 2005 but retains stores in Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

Major-league baseball eventually returned to Seattle and, with the passing of the years, the enmity toward the Soriano brothers eased substantially.

“I think history has been kinder to Max and his brother Dewey for bringing the Pilots and for trying to get them started,” said Larry Soriano, Max’s son and president of Western Pioneer Inc. “They were ahead of their time.”

Max Soriano, who retired in 1998, never lost his passion for the summer game. He was an enthusiastic fan of the Seattle Mariners,Installers and distributors of solar panel, the successors to his ill-fated Pilots, and could be found sitting in his company’s season tickets in Row 14 behind home plate at Safeco Field.

Soriano died on Sept. 15 at Swedish Medical Center. He leaves two sons, three daughters, eight grandchildren and a great-grandson. He also leaves a sister, Gloria Soriano, and a brother, Charles (Chuck) Soriano. He was predeceased by his wife, the former Ruth Allingham, a teacher whom he married in 1950. She died of cancer, aged 72, in 1999. He was also predeceased by eight siblings, including Dewey Soriano, who died in 1998, at the age of 78.

Acworth Police Ready for Upgrade

To hear Det. Jonathan Sampson tell it, the Acworth Police Department's current record management system has some deficiencies.

Officers still have to save investigative reports on USB drives.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. They can't cross-check seemingly basic information while in the field. And the system's search function has limitations.

That's why Sampson made the pitch Monday night for a new system.

It's called CourtWare, and it won't cost the city anything. But more than that, it will eliminate redundancies and better assist the Acworth Police Department in investigations, Sampson told Mayor Tommy Allegood and the Board of Aldermen.

Currently, the police department,We are pleased to offer the following list of professional mold maker and casters. the court and the jail use different record systems.

"Not one of them," Sampson said, "communicates with the other."

So if an officer stops someone, that officer can't check jail or court records during the stop.

"The only way to use the jail software is to drive back to the (police) station, sit down at a terminal and use it,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory." Sampson said.

That's not the only limitation of USA Software, the system the city currently uses.

"For example," Sampson said, "Cherokee County calls us and says, 'Hey, you've got any dealings with so and so?' We can only search the people who've been to our jail system as arrestees and we can only search (the) people who have been reported as victims of crimes."

With CourtWare, the police department will be able to pull up the names of anyone it has dealt with, whether they've been arrested or not. And it will also allow law enforcement personnel to quickly search reports for keywords.

"For example,We specialize in howo concrete mixer," Sampson said, "Cherokee calls again and says, 'Hey, we've just recovered six iPads, four cell phones and a GPS. Currently, unless someone in the detective division remembers the report about stolen iPads or stolen electronics, we can't find that report without looking through each report individually. This new system allows us to search through the narrative for 'iPads,' greatly aiding our investigative ability."

Entering and maintaining reports can also a hassle, Sampson said.

"Under the current system, there are five different saves for one report to make it from the police officer to the citizen. An officer saves it in his car, then he saves it onto a USB drive and walks it into the police department. Saves it onto a computer in the police department. His sergeant pulls up the report, reviews it and saves it into another location. Then the records division pulls that report up, reviews it, and saves it into its final resting place.

"Under the new system, there will not be multiple saves. Everything will be saved in the cloud so to speak. In real time. And once the file's created it will stay in its location until it reaches records and the end user."

The police department has looked at three software providers: CourtWare, USA Software and OSSI. More than 50 percent of the law enforcement agencies in Cobb use OSSI, Sampson said.

While Acworth liked that software "more than we liked the one we have here," he said, the price tag was "out of our reach."

"The cost for OSSI is an initial investment of $300,000 financed over three years with an annual maintenance cost of $28,000 per year."

USA Software, the software the city currently uses,Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. quoted Acworth a one-time upgrade cost of $80,000 a year with an annual maintenance cost of $24,000 a year.

With CourtWare, there's no upfront cost and upgrades are free.

"The way their price works is they take a certain dollar amount off of each paid citation through the court system," Sampson said. "Our current rate is $4 per paid citation. The increase would be four more dollars, raising it to $8 per paid citation to finance this software. And that $8 per paid citation would cover ... everything about the software. There would be no other investment."

The police department will need $20,000 to outfit the department with new hardware to get the software up and running by Jan. 1, 2013. It will also need $4,000 to convert its old data from USA Software into the new system.

None of the money will come out of the city's general fund. The police department will pay for those expenses with money collected from drug seizures.

Romney trade jabs in spirited presidential debate

There were jabs from the right and jabs from the left Tuesday night at Hofstra University. Both presidential candidates came out swinging in a wide-ranging debate that covered job creation, energy regulation, drilling and auto company bailouts.

Over the course of the 90-minute debate they talked over each other, accused each other of lying and of relying on inaccurate figures and mischaracterized policy positions.

Free from the constraints of a podium-style debate, they met in the middle of the stage at times, but came nowhere near the middle on policy issues. At one point both walked toward the middle of the stage and engaged in a short back-and-forth about energy policy, talking over each other and resisting CNN moderator Candy Crowley's attempts to restore order.

In an early zinger, President Barack Obama blasted Republic challenger Mitt Romney's five-point plan to propose jobs.

"Gov. Romney doesn't have a five-point plan; he has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that the folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That's been his philosophy," Mr. Obama said, his demeanor markedly changed from the first presidential debate in which he appeared tired and unengaged.

He described his rival's approach this way: "You can ship jobs overseas and get tax breaks for it. You can invest in a company, bankrupt it, lay off the workers, strip away their pensions and you still make money."

Mr. Romney called that characterization "way off the mark."

In another heated exchange, the former Massachusetts governor accused the president of blocking jobs in the energy sector by enacting too stringent regulations, by opposing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and by pursuing criminal action when oil drilling caused birds to die in North Dakota.

"This has not been Mr. Gas, Mr. Oil or Mr. Coal," Mr. Romney said.

Mr. Obama said he's tried to be consistent.

Mr. Romney interrupted. "That's not what you've done in the last four years," he said, saying that energy production on federal land is down 14 percent.

"Not true Gov. Romney," Mr. Obama quickly responded as the two walked toward each other on stage.

"It's absolutely true," Mr. Romney said. "I don't think anybody really believes that you're a person that's going to be pushing for oil or gas or coal."

Audience members grilled the candidates on issues near and far to home. A student wanted assurances that there will be good jobs available when he graduates. A telecommunications worker wanted to know why the White House didn't better protect Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others killed last month in the Libyan embassy.

Mr. Romney used the opportunities to blast the president's response to issues both foreign and domestic and accused him of tending to political events when he should have been focused on the aftermath of the embassy attack. He also said the president took too long to acknowledge the killing was part of a terrorist plot, not the result of a spontaneous protest over an anti-Muslim film.

Mr. Obama said he is concerned for ambassadors' safety and that he increased security in the region after the attack.

It was their second of three debates this election season.

This time the queries didn't come from a well-rehearsed journalist but from undecided Nassau County, N.Y. voters, some of whom spoke nervously or had to refer to notes to finish asking their questions.

It's a format the president likes, said Robert Gibbs, a senior campaign adviser and former White House spokesman.Our vinyl floor tiles is more stylish than ever!

The stakes were especially high for Mr. Obama in this debate. He is coming off a lackluster performance in Denver two weeks ago. Melissa Rospek of Munhall was among 300 Hofstra students selected in a lottery to watch the debate from risers above the stage.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to actually go to the debate and be involved as a student and I really wanted to see it," said Miss Rospek, 19, a sophomore majoring in English.

In an interview before the debate she said she supports Mr.We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. Obama but that she could change her mind based on the debate.

"I don't want to say I'm absolutely solidly Obama until I hear what both of them have to say about health care and women's rights as far as access to birth control and abortion," she said.

When the topic came up during the debate Mr. Obama pointed out that his opponent wants to employers to decide whether employees get insurance coverage of contraception.

Not true, Mr. Romney said once again.

"I don't believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not, and I don't believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care or not," he said. Mr. Obama said he's grown jobs, improved the economy, provided more access to health care,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. ended the war in Iraq and cut taxes for middle class families.

Mr.The oreck XL professional air purifier, Romney responded by saying the country is worse off than before the president took office.

"I think you know that these last four years haven't been so good as the president just described and that you don't feel like you're confident that the next four years are going to be much better either," he told the audience. Surrogates from both campaigns flooded the media filing center before, during and after the debate.

Among them were Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley for Mr. Obama and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge for Mr. Romney.

Mr. Ridge, who supported former Utah Gov. John Huntsman during the Republican primary, said Mr. Romney has the right blend of business and civic experience to lead the country and that he has shown he is a decisive problem solver.HOWO trucks are widely used and howo spare parts for sale are also welcomed .

2012年10月15日 星期一

Whiteboards written off

The UK’s rail networks are getting busier. This is reflected in increasing activity levels within depots, in turn placing increasing burdens on depot staff and existing infrastructure. Improving productivity and efficiency are therefore key to reducing these pressures and to the continued successful operation of rail depots across the country.

Good planning, organisation and communication are essential factors in the effectiveness of almost any team-based work. In depots, this co-ordination has historically been based around a whiteboard, usually located in a control room or supervisor office somewhere on- site. Information is handwritten upon this whiteboard, detailing train expected arrivals and departures, together with the rolling stock maintenance tasks that need to be carried out.

This,Load the precious minerals into your mining truck and be careful not to drive too fast with your heavy foot. of course, presents the challenge of dissemination of relevant information to staff working around the depot who cannot directly see the whiteboard itself. It is also open to both the loss and corruption of information, as it can be wiped off the whiteboard, unclearly written and even just misread. Simple, easy-to-make mistakes are inevitable, and could have a significant effect on the depot’s output.

As the depot gets busier,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing, so does the whiteboard, with new information being produced more frequently and the amount of information being displayed growing. This places increasing strain on the whiteboard system and those operating it – who have to juggle updating the whiteboard with the multitude of other tasks they need to carry out. This obviously increases the likelihood of errors being made.Installers and distributors of solar panel, It also absorbs valuable staff time in its administration, which could be more productively utilised if released from the tedious manual updating requirements involved.

A modern, IT-based solution would therefore seem a natural development, in the same way that computer-based applications have been created for so many other information processing and control activities. With the above issues in mind, UK- based rail technology company Zonegreen has developed its Operator Planning Suite (OPS) specifically for use in rail depots.

Zonegreen’s Operator Planning Suite (OPS), a multi-user, web-based graphical task planning application, is designed to be a cost-effective replacement of the traditional manual whiteboard. It has a graphical map layout representing the depot on which users can position trains and create and assign maintenance tasks, together with schedules for train arrivals and departures.

Instead of being physically handwritten on a board, all information is added to the system electronically.Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. Entering changes and progress reports is straightforward and easy, and they are automatically and immediately recorded and updated, improving system reliability and reducing the likelihood of any communication failures and breakdowns.

OPS instantly transmits all information to anywhere in the depot – or elsewhere. It provides up-to-the-minute information on any train in the depot including train ID, train location within the depot, expected arrival and departure times and types of maintenance required. This real-time operation allows maintenance information to be updated and displayed in an accurate and synchronised manner.

This leads to another feature of the system, which is that more than one copy of the whiteboard can function at the same time. Zonegreen’s OPS is a web-based system using cloud technology – allowing anyone with suitable login credentials and an internet connection to access the system anytime, anywhere. The system has various user levels allowing for differing levels of user rights of operation and access.

As well as management and planning personnel, the system is useful to other staff working in the depot. Tasks can be shown in easy-to-read lists, making planning daily workloads simple. Graphical depot map layouts allow easy identification of rolling stock as well as forming an intuitive platform for the operation of the system.

It can also be beneficial to other areas of an organisation located outside of the depot, especially in large maintenance organisations or TOCs who can benefit from having up-to-the-minute information easily available to its various departments. All information handled by OPS is securely hosted online, instead of via any additional hardware, so any equipment that has an internet connection is able (with the relevant user login details) to access the most up-to-date information in real-time – excellent for transmitting information quickly and efficiently within an organisation.

The OPS system also has the ability to produce reports at the click of a button. All maintenance histories and logs are fully recorded, visible and traceable, allowing a user to produce complete activity reports for any specific vehicle or time period. This simple method of report generation has the potential to save hours of filling in maintenance forms and rifling through paperwork – the OPS system can do all the searching.An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a term used for a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. The traceability that the system offers by recording actions, and its facility for report generation, removes the afore- mentioned risks of loss or distortion of information inherently associated with the operation of a traditional, manual wipe-clear whiteboard.

Body Found at Miami Dade College Parking Garage

Investigators said they believe they found the body of missing worker Robert Budhoo deep within the rubble of the collapsed Miami Dade College parking garage on Monday.

Miami-Dade Police said they cannot confirm that the body of the adult male is Budhoo's, but based on all the circumstances, they believe it is.

It might take days for the body to be removed because of the instability of the rubble and serious safety concerns for workers on the site, police said in a statement.

Earlier, Budhoo's wife said she was frustrated and wanted an “around-the-clock” search for her 53-year-old husband, who has been missing since the garage collapsed at Miami Dade College’s west campus last Wednesday.

Investigators have briefed the Budhoo family on the latest development, police said in a statement Monday.

Laurel Budhoo was outside of the construction site over the weekend with family and supporters.

“I want them to extend the search around the clock,” she said. “I don’t want them to close off the light and the machines at 8 o’clock or 11 o’clock. I want them to work around the clock, get workers, do shifts.”

At a news conference on Monday,Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. the head of the company managing the project said he wasn't permitted to discuss the rescue recovery process and that it was being handled by the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue.

"We are working as quickly and as expeditiously as possible. We've made suggestions on how things can be done quicker and faster, and in consultation with all the authorities those processes are being ferreted out,We are pleased to offer the following list of professional mold maker and casters." said Ajax Building Corp. President and CEO Bill Byrne.

Byrne also said there has been no determination yet as to what caused the collapse.

Before the news that a body had been located, Budhoo's family still had hope he could be found alive.

“Time is going by,” Laurel Budhoo said. “He’s down there regardless of if he’s alive or dead, but I’m still holding on to hope that my husband is still alive because I believe in God.”

As of Sunday afternoon, Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Miami-Dade authorities approved the removal of debris to a staging site, which will help make search operations more expeditious, Byrne said. All the parties have agreed on a cataloging system of the debris and material was expected to start being removed very soon, he said.

Byrne added that the company is committed to finding out the facts and cause of the collapse.

Doral Police Chief Ricardo Gomez was at the construction site Saturday and said at least 15 people were searching for Budhoo at the time. He told NBC 6 South Florida that the “dangerous” building conditions were holding up the search.

“I’ve been telling them that they have to be patient,” Gomez said. “And they’ve asked me for certain things and I’m going to try to see if I can accommodate those requests because it’s the least we can do.”

He added that the reason for his visit was to inform the family that they have not been abandoned.

“It really tugs at your heart when you see them,” Gomez said. “You see the frustration, and you really want to be able to do more for them, it’s just that the situation is still fluid, you have a very dangerous site, and unfortunately, they’re not getting the communication and talking in a timely manner.”

VIDEO: How Could the Miami Dade Garage Collapse Happen?

Even after his visit, the family expressed their frustration with the police and fire departments.

“We’re not getting answers about what’s going on,” said Laurel Budhoo,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. who added that workers were calling off the search early and passing by the family without speaking.

“You can’t be working with the public and work like this,The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility.” she said.

Three people were killed and seven others hospitalized after the five-story structure collapsed Wednesday.

"As much as all of us want to know what happened, it is simply too early to determine what has caused this event," Byrne has said.

Last week, Byrne was asked about reports that a crane had bumped the structure just days before the collapse.

"I don't have the full confirmation of that. It's my understanding, an incident where the crane bumped a column, it didn't cause any damage to the column," Byrne said. "The crane was repaired and inspected and was recertified. The engineers, it's my understanding, looked at the column, deemed it, it was perfectly fine."

A team from the OSHA began its investigation on the scene Thursday. Ajax corporate safety director Marc Reeves said the company is working with OSHA to determine the cause of the incident.We specialize in howo concrete mixer,