In what should be a high-scoring NBA DFS slate, there are several bottom-feeder matchups worth honing in on to round out your FanDuel cash game lineups. It’s important to capitalize when struggling, defense-deprived teams square off, and we’ll help you pinpoint daily fantasy basketball sleeper targets in two of those games Monday night.

Only Hawks-Warriors is projected to be a blowout, and four of the seven games have point spreads of three points or fewer. Cavaliers-Nets and Wizards-Knicks, meanwhile, should be offense-centric and could also feature a healthy dose of turnovers.

As part of our multi-step lineup approach, we used Fantasy Alarm’s premium features to analyze points allowed by position and projected point values. Below are the conclusions of that research.

FAVORITE VALUE — PG Emmanuel Mudiay, Knicks vs. Wizards ($5,000). Mudiay was already in consideration in GPP formats before fellow Knicks point guard Trey Burke suffered an injury. With Burke now out, there’s less concern for Mudiay’s role unexpectedly fluctuating, meaning he’s viable in all NBA DFS formats at this point. He’s coming off a 42.1-point game on FanDuel, and he could come close to replicating that effort against the Wizards in a potential bucket fest.

STUD TO STICK WITH — PF Montrezl Harrell, Clippers @ Pelicans ($8,300). Either game-stacked with Anthony Davis or played on his own tonight, Harrell is a cash game godsend if you’ve been burned by an upper-level guy over the past few days. As the heart of Los Angeles’ ferocious bench unit, Harrell has been incredibly consistent lately, delivering at least 35 FD points in seven straight games. With the possibility he’ll go for much more considering the Pelicans allow the eighth-most FD points against to power forwards, lock him into your lineups.

STAR TO AVOID — PG Kyle Lowry, Raptors vs. Nuggets ($8,100). Not only did Lowry miss Saturday’s game due to back soreness, setting up a potential minutes limit if the Raptors pull away late against the Nuggets, but he also goes up against the top defense vs. point guards this year. We prefer the pivot to Chris Paul ($8,200) in this price range.

TAKE A CHANCE ON ME — SG Alec Burks, Cavaliers @ Nets ($4,000). For his career, Burks averages about 28 FD points per 36 minutes, but because of injuries and a generally decent Utah team, he’s rarely had that kind of playing time. In Cleveland, though, he could see the most minutes he’s gotten in years and potentially the highest usage rate of his career. If you’re hunting for a low-cost shooting guard to round out your lineup, buying low on Burks is a decent bet.


1M Brazilians fill streets with protest, violence

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — More than a million Brazilians poured into the streets of at least 80 cities Thursday in this week's largest anti-government demonstrations yet, protests that saw violent clashes break out in several cities as people demanding improved public services and an end to corruption faced tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets.

At least one protester was killed in Sao Paulo state after a car rammed into a crowd of demonstrators, the driver apparently angered about being unable to drive along a street.

In Rio de Janeiro, where an estimated 300,000 demonstrators swarmed into the seaside city's central area, running clashes played out between riot police and clusters of mostly young men, their T-shirts wrapped around their faces. But several peaceful protesters were up in the crackdown, too, as police fired tear gas canisters into their midst and at times indiscriminately used pepper spray.

Thundering booms echoed off stately colonial buildings as rubber bullets and the gas were fired at fleeing crowds.

At least 40 people were injured in Rio, including protesters like Michele Menezes, a wisp of a woman whose youthful face and braces belie her 26 years. Bleeding and with her hair singed from the explosion of a tear gas canister, she said that she and others took refuge from the violence in an open bar, only to have a police officer toss the canister inside.

It exploded on top of Menezes, tore through her jeans and dug out two quarter-sized holes on the back of her thighs while also perforating a rash of small holes in her upper arm.

"I was leaving a peaceful protest and it's not the thugs that attack me but the police themselves," said Menezes, removing her wire-rim glasses to wipe her bloodshot eyes.

She later took refuge in a hotel along with about two dozen youths, families and others said they had been repeatedly hit with pepper spray by motorcycle police as they too took refuge inside a bar.

Despite the crackdown, protesters said they would not back down.

"I saw some pretty scary things, but they're not going to shake me. There's another march on the 22nd and I'm going to be there," said 19-year-old university student Fernanda Szuster.

Asked whether her parents knew that she was taking part in the protests, Szuster said that "they know and they're proud. They also protested when they were young. So they think it's great."

She added, though, that she wouldn't tell her father the details of the police violence she was a victim of. "If he knew, he would never let me leave the house again."

By Thursday evening, the number of protesters had swelled to 1 million, according local police estimates from cities across Brazil.

In Brasilia, police struggled to keep hundreds of protesters from invading the Foreign Ministry, outside of which protesters lit a small fire. Other government buildings were attacked around the capital's central esplanade. There, too, police resorted to tear gas and rubber bullets in attempts to scatter the crowds.

Clashes were also reported in the Amazon jungle city of Belem, in Porto Alegre in the south, in the university town Campinas north of Sao Paulo and in the northeastern Brazilian city of Salvador.

"This was meant to be a peaceful demonstration and it is," said artist Wanderlei Costa, 33, in Brasilia. "It's a shame some people cause trouble when there is a much bigger message behind this movement. Brazil needs to change, not only on the government level, but also on the grass roots level. We have to learn to demonstrate without violence."

The protests took place one week after a violent police crackdown on a much smaller protests in Sao Paulo galvanized Brazilians to take to the streets.

The unrest is hitting the nation as it hosts the Confederations Cup football tournament with tens of thousands of foreign visitors in attendance. It also comes one month before Pope Francis is scheduled to visit the nation, and ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, raising concerns about how Brazilian officials will provide security.

Mass protests are rare in this 190 million-person country, with demonstrations generally attracting small numbers of politicized participants. The ongoing, growing marches have caught Brazilian governments by surprise, but have delighted many citizens.

"I think we desperately need this, that we've been needing this for a very, very long time," said Paulo Roberto Rodrigues da Cunha, a 63-year-old clothing store salesman in Rio.

In Salvador, police shot tear gas canisters and rubber bullets to disperse a small crowd of protesters trying to break through a police barrier blocking one of the city's streets. One woman was injured in her foot.

"We pay a lot of money in taxes, for electricity, for services, and we want to know where that money is," said Italo Santos, a 25-year old student as he walked with friends toward the square.

Despite the energy on the street, many protesters said they were unsure how the movement would win real political concessions. People in the protests have held up signs asking for everything from education reforms to free bus fare while denouncing the billions of public dollars spent on stadiums in advance of the World Cup and the Olympics.

"It's sort of a Catch-22," Rodrigues da Cunha said. "On the one hand we need some sort of leadership, on the other we don't want this to be compromised by being affiliated with any political party."

Earlier Thursday, the protests took on the feel of a party, especially in Sao Paulo and Rio.

People of all ages, many of them draped in flags, gathered in front of the majestic domed Candelaria church in downtown Rio, while groups elsewhere pounded out Carnival rhythms or chanted slogans targeting Rio state's governor.

At one point, a police helicopter flew over the crowd, which booed and pointed green lasers at the craft.

When shirtless youths, many of them with T-shirts wrapped round their faces, pushed and jostled their way through the crowd, people spontaneously broke out into a chant of "Without violence!"

But as has been the pattern earlier this week, the clashes began once night fell.

Several city leaders have already accepted protester demands to revoke an increase in bus and subway fares in the hopes that anti-government anger cools. In Sao Paulo, where demonstrators blocked Paulista Avenue, organizers said they would turn their demonstration into a party celebrating the lower transit fares.

But many believe the protests are no longer just about bus fares and have become larger cries for systemic changes.

President Dilma Rousseff called an emergency meeting with top advisers for Friday morning. Rousseff has been largely absent since the demonstrations broke out, making just one public statement but offering no speeches or grand gestures in an attempt to calm the situation.

"This is the start of a structural change in Brazil," said Aline Campos, a 29 year old publicist in Brasilia. "People now want to make sure their money is well spent, that it's not wasted through corruption."


Q:

test if square overlaps poly in c++ w/ directx (optional)

how would I go about checking to see if a triangular poly is present within a square area? (I.E. picture a grid of squares overlaying a group of 2d polys.)
Or even better, how can I determine the percentage of one of these squares that is occupied by a given poly (if at all).
I've used directx before but can't seem to find the right combination of functions in their documentation. - Though it feels like something with ray-tracing might be relevant.
I use c++ and can use directx if helpful.
Thanks for any suggestions or ideas. :)

A:

You might consider the clipper library for doing generic 2D polygon clipping, area computation, intersection testing, etc. It is fairly compact and easy to deal with, and has decent examples of how to use it.
It is an implementation of the Vatti clipping algorithm and will handle many odd edge cases (which may be overkill for you)


% Test file for function ones()
% Matlab version: 7.9.0.529 (R2009b)

% TEST 1
res1 = ones(2);
% TEST 2
res2 = ones(3,5);
% TEST 3
res3 = ones(4,4);
% TEST 4
res4 = ones([10,10]);
% TEST 5
res5 = ones(size([1 2]));
% TEST 6
res6 = ones(m2sciUnknownDims([1,2]));


from phone stupid. stunts on t.v. dot com. braces for a fresh wave of protests sparked by people's anger at president mubarak's latest refusal to step down are two looks at why the embattled leader won't go. shortly after the dispute between moscow and once again the japanese foreign minister is in the russian capital for talks joining me. for more in just a few minutes. sweden is under fire for its controversial wiretap wiretapping law slobbers the most far reaching eavesdropping one in europe. will suggest america is pulling the strings.

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i love it i am here in moscow this is our team thanks for joining us now thousands of egyptians have begun flooding the streets of cairo as protesters promised an unprecedented rally protesters are already gathering at key sites with some reports suggesting that crowds pull out of marching towards the presidential palace later today this comes after president hosni mubarak once again vowed to remain in office until september and a televised national address he promised to transfer some power to his vice president omar suleiman but not step down himself with the eighty two year old also cited his reluctance to bow to international pressure something many believe he's done on a regular basis. has more from washington d.c. . the u.s. wants an orderly transition as they say president obama said hosni mubarak's statement on the transition of authority was not clear and needs more explanation

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mubarak basically said in his address that he was not going to run for president in september and egyptians will have the chance to elect whatever leader they choose but in the meantime he said he was not going anywhere we spoke with senator ron paul earlier and he thinks mubarak is following washington's plan we have a lot to do with mubarak being in power and staying in power like we subsidize them we own them these are puppet dictator he does what we tell him because he gives so much money he's gotten probably sixty to seventy billion dollars and i understand his family probably has sixty or seventy billion dollars stashed away in swiss accounts and other places around the world washington can hardly be considered to be impartial when it comes to power struggle in egypt it's a strategic location for the u.s. mubarak has been a close ally for thirty years the u.s. has been pumping billions of dollars into the egyptian military and they certainly don't want to lose that whoever is in power there is a great chance that they won't lose that although the position is it's up to the

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egyptian people to choose their next leader washington is apparently pulling some strings the man who was sort of in charge during this tumultuous transition and who is seen as a possible alternative to mubarak is a big cia friend it's all marsalis he has reportedly orchestrated the brutal interrogation of terror suspects abducted by the cia also in the run up to the u.s. invasion of iraq in two thousand and three the cia relied on me to beat confession out of a detainee who said saddam hussein had connections with al qaeda something that was proven to be false but back in the day was perfect for the americans who desperately needed an excuse to invade iraq so he's an old friend not hostile to israel and that that's basically all the u.s. wants from a future leader of egypt in official statements of course u.s. officially says. the u.s. officials say they want to. see a leader who hears his people's grievances but they're certainly black receive here just a year ago when asked about human rights violations by the egyptian government i

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remember obama's response was egypt is our close schools ally and it's not the job of the united states to a lecture egypt on democracy and human rights rather wait for it to pass changed in recent weeks the u.s. took up its is old roll of democracy preacher but if you watch american t.v. you listen to american politicians it's all about us interests not really about egyptians they want democracy for egypt but a democracy that will be ok with the united states. well r.t. also spoke with author william and doll who says that mubarak's demise is now a u.s. priority after the longtime washington ally dropped his support for america's middle east policy. mubarak's government realized that the u.s. was preparing a regime change that along the lines of the so-called color revolutions in georgia ukraine and so forth. to the united states sometimes received in the state department sometimes at the national endowment for democracy

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or freedom house these are all quote unquote private and she also specialized training for washington and. what's going on is really a major enough destabilization of u.s. ally mobile iraq has been opposed to most of us policy views of you rather use of the persian gulf nations and these are eleven. over the last several years so he's become in effect a thorn in the side of washington's greater agenda since two thousand and one where friday is expected to see the largest protest since the unrest began more than two weeks ago former cia officer and needed not told r.t. he thinks mubarak's reluctance to go makes the situation a volatile. now that the president mubarak that years has said he would not leave i am afraid that they are going to expand their rouge and take it beyond.

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the way our government buildings as we see they're doing in fact the movement has already selected leadership of fourteen people and this leadership consists among others groups of the muslim brotherhood so i do not believe that the muslim brotherhood necessarily will get over the movement the movement remains secular i have lived through our professional movement from across the egyptian society so it is not one specific ideology so there are some members who are extremists but for the most part the muslim brotherhood has participated in the general elections and already indicated they would be really do participate in share and free elections each full of people in egypt demanding change peter lavelle ask his guest who dictates what democracy is and what exactly is the role

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of those who promote it heated debate and i cross talk show coming up in less than half an hour. till we just why don't the world just let the egyptians alone leave the egyptians alone leave the tunisians alone leave the people of palestine alone leave the people of lebanon alone and let them decide their fate and then we can deal with them. yes that would be the best course but that would involve. it would not involve in action it would involve reversing the status quo namely the us would have to cut off the los alamos labs and president of the united states to it to achieve any of our out there who are saying that is why even bring it repressive to a string of what is left of al and the stress and really interest of the united states of america it's not watching out for the interest of the united states of america we are not trying as he was being. tried as i say how nice it would be imprudent to trying to find trying it's a human being then i just say that we should not be killing innocent people we

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should not be torturing innocent people opposed to the us government i am an opponent of the us government. a territorial dispute between moscow and tokyo is running high as the japanese foreign minister visits the russian capital for talks with his counterpart and it comes shortly after some brash statements from tokyo concerning the karylle islands the russian territory japan is laying claim to. has more. this meeting really can sense the relations between moscow in tokyo in a new direction because many analysts agree now that they've hit the you'll always point since the cold war and one of the main reasons for that is the territorial dispute over the cool islands tokyo claims that these islands belong to japan historically russia says that it's strategic to juries and that is one of the

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outcomes of the second world war so this dispute with the has been going on for quite a long time over half a century now and russia has been making several proposals looking for ways to resolve the situation including creating a joint economic zone in the region but unfortunately none of these initiatives. brought any positive results in fact just several days ago in japan during the so-called day of northern territory's talk strongly criticized the visit by russia's president to these islands last fall and also japanese nationalists vandalized the russian flag moscow reacted quite strongly the russian president once again stressed that the islands are russian territory and are all strategic importance and also said that russia will increase its military presence there for example to mistral helicopter carriers which are currently being purchased from

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france are to be sent there as soon as they're delivered so it is quite a complicated situation it's a warning for businesses on all sides since business is if you go green quite rapidly and this. may cause a negative effect but it's also quite a stressful factor for ordinary people for the russian families thousands of them living on these islands for decades now. well we've got plenty more ahead for you this hour on our team including family support knows no borders were revealed how despite severed ties with moscow cash flow from russia to georgia grows every year that's due to money transfers from those who left their country in search of a better life plus. artes close of series gives you a real taste of the centuries old culture. and find out why the eurovision song

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contest holds a special place in its history. as battles for the extradition of julian assange week uniques cables on the country's close cooperation with the us are provoking a public backlash the text revealed washington's push to influence swedish law so that communication passing through. scandinavian country can be intercepted artie's lore and it has this story. bugged and wiretapped at the behest of the us swedish intelligence service the f. a has the power to monitor and intercept all internet traffic in the country and thanks to leaks us state department cables we now know the controversial law was adopted after pressure from washington and the security services were deliberately kept out of it to reassure swedes there was no funny business force to operate under strict data storage and protection laws for swedish citizens they are

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concerned that the public may perceive their involvement as an attempt to work around these restrictions by using a foreign intermediary that's poisoning any chance for success the u.s. interest is clear eighty percent of all the internet traffic from russia travels through sweden and from there to america but most men from by by government representatives that no no no the purpose is not to spy on swedes it's the morning monitor among other things russian transit traffic but what kind of information they are worth i think the information that is made accessible to special services by this law is of course sensitive and there are ways it can harm russia's political interests. the law has been slammed by some as the most far reaching eavesdropping plan in europe and prompted widespread protests ahead of its implementation cables also suggest the swedish government was colluding with

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the u.s. to avoid involving the public at all costs. the agreement may have to be presented to parliament and a vague constitutional requirement for matters of great importance if so the process will take considerably longer and be subject to public scrutiny something the government of sweden will want to avoid as the ministry of justice continues to analyze the proposed. it is also considering how to craft and arrangement that will avoid the need for parliamentary review very soon no parliamentary control over what they are for us. and of course the general public in sweden has even less control much of the pressure coming from the united states and from the corporate industries. it's been in the swedish government the more than happy to. to to do whatever the american corporations. ask through the american government judging from the date on the leaked cables while sweden was debating whether to pass the bill the americans were already negotiating with the swedish authorities or what

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kind of information they wanted they see the twenty third meeting has an opportunity to seek precise details on the type of information the united states wants and overall a movie agreement and it's clear the us ended up getting what it was after at least in terms of information on the eighty percent of russian internet traffic that passes through sweden our intelligence cooperation with sweden on brusha is excellent do you directed left handed general burgess who'll be here next week for exchanges with the swedes on russia and of the topics now it's not just information on russia that the us is off to it's reportedly carrying out its own investigation into wiki leaks founder julian assange still says all this information to see if it can bring espionage charges if it can and applies to sweden first extradition all this close cooperation that we've seen may mean his feet won't touch the ground you

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know and it's r.t. . all the case leaves many guessing about his fate and you can also have your say about what you think awaits the renowned whistleblower in our online poll and here are the results of the voting so far. well as you can see from the chart half of you say that a song can escape imprisonment if he gets political refuge in russia which has no extradition agreements and more than a quarter believes that due process will see not guilty and twenty percent say assad will do this time in any case but only three percent thinking should collaborate with the u.s. shut down within weeks to have his criminal case closed while you can influence the voting at any time just by logging on to our website at r.t. dot com.

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a life in georgia can be tough especially after the country severed all relations with moscow its largest trading partner and benefactor and every year thousands of georgians pack up and set off in search of a better life in russia but as artie's dennis polaski reports it's a lonely life for those left behind. going to click on the media happy and don't forget about us here come and visit dallas. asked us to show this video greeting to her relatives she sends her best wishes to her son her daughter in law and the grandkids who live away in russia for the seventy three year old they are her only real hope to. learn it is hard nowadays oh i can get is a few lottery here and there. for this big georgian family moved to rochelle fourteen years ago and even though it's hard for these people to make ends meet every month they send money to their relatives and police sleep and they're not the

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only ones with your own families like the gross the streets transferred more than seven hundred million u.s. dollars to georgia making russia the biggest cash supplier for this caucasus republic the number of such were transfers has been growing steadily over the past few years. giving a strong boost to georgia's economy and even though in two thousand aid bill we see officially broke all diplomatic ties with most schools and council direct flights between the two capitals it didn't stop georgians from greeting to russia with the hopes of finding jobs and a better wife we came here as refugees the neighbors were kind to us and they helped a lot so now after all these years we communicated with the rest of the family over the internet sometimes who make phone calls and the wire money to them whenever we can what do you know is minorities daughter in law living in a small mining town lives very well in southern russia she relies on her husband bill small business income that lets the whole family live in russia being for

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their children situation and supporting their elderly relatives oh i didn't see this picture of her but nor does video message finally reached its recipients my year in marina i haven't seen their grandma for more than six years now they're hoping that someday wife in georgia will get better and visiting the relatives will be as easy as going to the bank and making a money transfer then as well or. is very southern russia and now for a brief look at some other major headlines from around the world millions of iranians are staging rallies across the country to mark the thirty second anniversary of iran's islamic revolution among those on the streets are supporters of the uprising in egypt tunisia earlier this year the iranian government up to the pressure on the country's opposition who planned to stage a rival pro-democracy rally on monday the chief prosecutor dismissed the activists

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calls as a ploy to undermine the regime. and the armed teenager who took hostages in a bad robbery in north carolina has been killed after a three hour standoff with police the bad who. nineteen was shot dead by snipers as he walked out of the bag with a captive held as a human shield all seven hostages involved in the robbery were reported to be unharmed and official expressed sadness at the praise the police for their actions . now are close of team continues to explore the western europe as area as they get to know the culture and the traditions of the republic and its capital city. the republic is known for its centuries long traditions which represent a mixture of mythology ancient religions and ethnic rituals its creative spirit

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gives rise to local talents achieving success both at home and abroad and one of its famous sons peter tchaikovsky is still one of the most played composers in the world while others less famous try to make their own cultural mark. what makes it stick. welcome to the latest installment of the course of sirius we're continuing to cover various regions in places russia and this time we learned more to learn steve's and rich cultural traditions it is known as the birthplace of russian composer tchaikovsky this is a place where for centuries christianity and shamanism paganism have co-exist peacefully and of course this is also a place where all of those traditions so pertain and still are very deeply felt to this state because there's a lot more that road more to i can both in terms of cultural and traditional aspects and let's watch report now on some of those things. when you come to

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your in for a surprise though it's known for its weapon producing factories and plants the first thing that catches your eye is the city's architecture which seems to have changed a little over the centuries and once you dig deeper you find the more people are good at preserving their heritage and not just on the outside in the culture for me is a part of my life it's a way of my life you know my mom la la but it's my grandmother's. fairy tale to tell this is very eco logical very educational thing and coming to very close to nature culture but of course to get a full taste of the culture you have to get out of the city and go to the village where traditional songs dances food and drinks are still very much a part of everyday life so we hit the road to raj through the snow and ended up in the village of roundabout and the home of local celebrities who made waves in

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russia's last bid for your vision song contest glory but don't expect to find any short skirts and hair extensions here most of the stars are over the age of seventy and dress much more tastefully. all but we come here in the evening meet so watch t.v. and sing during the commercials. these grandmothers became an unexpected hit coming one place short of representing their country but they still caught audience's imagination with their songs giving some of the world's best known hits a new sound. you're reading you know after your vision wanted to come home quietly that would

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more people and we didn't want to make a fuss but people found out and when we got back to our village they give us a grand welcome back party with songs and dances. and these take a creative hands on approach to everything they do but i'm trying to do right now is up to these leaders which is sort of like me. you make this but all that's good in the new year with the stuff in the side this is a traditional dish and. comes out of it afterwards when you hear something like. what we do people do the same thing in every village and more to. the people here seem to have a song for every occasion be it a wedding gapped is a birth or seen young man after the army whatever life throws at them they would

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move to find a way to market and maybe it's that approach which has kept these traditions going strong for hundreds of years. it even goes r.t. . our business news with kareena is coming up in a few moments. zob . hello and welcome to our business boards and good to have you with us are the russian shareholders of oil major tanky b.p. unlikely to be able to block a dividend payout to the company for the fourth quarter of two thousand and ten that's according to the misty newspaper under the shareholder agreement take a v.p.

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is obliged to allocate at least forty percent of net income towards dividends which account for around one third of the piece profits are decided to oppose the dividend payment of to b.p. announced a share swap and arctic exploration deal with was snapped meanwhile the court injunction put forward by a.r. to block b.p.'s proposed the lines has been extended to march pending a final hearing. question stocks love the most in seven months over deepening concerns that inflation in emerging markets will accelerate the two point seven percent on thursday extending its three day decline till the five percent reversing this year's gain of the m.s.c.i. emerging markets of big struck five point two percent this year as developing countries raised interest rates to fight inflation a research firm far global says investors pulled seven billion dollars from the markets equity funds last week of january that's the biggest weekly three years.

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and a wave of consolidation is sweeping through the world's leading stock exchanges the london stock exchanges to merge with toronto's and frankfurt storage wars is planning to link to link up with new york stock exchange your next with a miser r.t.s. also planning to unite david buick from partners in london says russia will pay will play a significant role in the future. russia is a massive country with huge influence in the world of energy and mining with plenty of money and i think the sense of goodwill that would be seen by russia taking a stake in a significant stake in a bull say like l.s.e. . would be absolutely super there are huge cultural differences at the moment as we know and also regulatory differences in corporate governance differences but these are not things that couldn't be easily owned and if i was a passive investor in terms of wanting to get involved with

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a combination of my sexuality as well to do that by think the rest of the world would see that is very very positive indeed if we believe that global uncertainty in this country we don't think anything else than russia has to play a very significant role of rule you've had many of your i.p.o.'s in london or in hong kong and there's no reason why they can't be on an international basis going forward. have a look at how the markets are performing. down for a fifth day on friday hong kong and shanghai away by reporting chinese hike to small and medium sized banks reserve ratios. early in the session hang sang we japanese markets are closed for a public holiday. and here with. over half a percent of them isaacson's gaining nearly eight percent in the first hours of trading after the most in seven months on thursday most of the blue chips are in the black. eight percent. is up over.

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russian gold miner nor gold has found its i.p.o. in london due to a limited amount volatile markets companies sought to raise four billion dollars in the offering gold operates. and africa used around six hundred thousand ounces of gold last week. that's all for this hour join me in less than one hour from now for more.

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culture is that so much knowledge about the feelings i think if i'm going to give a real m.b.a. i was told that even under the worst kinds of oppression people all around the world demonstrate time and again they want freedom and democratic institutions whose. wealthy british style. is not on the title of. markets financed scandals find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to name to cause a report on. the for.


Laser drilling apparatuses for carrying out drilling to a resin layer of printed circuit boards by a laser beam are provided. Nowadays, laser drilling apparatuses for collectively making a plurality of holes also are provided. Referring to FIG. 1, an example thereof will be described. A pulsed laser beam from a CO2 laser oscillator 21 is incident on a homogeneous optical system 22, so that the energy density distribution in the cross-section of the beam becomes homogeneous. The laser beam emerging from the homogeneous optical system 22 is reflected downward by a reflective mirror 23 and is incident on a conversion optical system 24. The laser beam incident on the conversion optical system 24 has a circular or rectangular cross-sectional shape. The conversion optical system 24 converts the circular or rectangular cross-sectional shape into a linear laser beam having a predetermined width W and length L. Thus, the conversion optical system 24 includes a cylindrical lens system 24-1 for defining the width W and a cylindrical lens 24-2 for defining the length L. Such a conversion optical system 24 is well known, the width W being in the range of 0.1 mm to several mm and the length being about several tens of mm.
A mask stage 25 is arranged right below the conversion optical system 24 to drive a mask 26 in one axial direction. The mask 26, as described below, has many holes for defining a processing pattern for a resin layer of a work 27. An imaging lens system 28 is arranged between the mask stage 25 and the work 27. The imaging lens system 28 defines the reduction ratio of the processing pattern of the mask 26 projected onto the work 27. Herein, the reduction ratio is 1:1.
The work 27 is loaded on a work stage 29 that is movable at least in the inverse direction relative to that of the movement of the mask stage 25, along the same axial direction. In particular, the mask stage 25 and the work stage 29 are controlled with a controller, which is not shown in the drawing, so that these move synchronously.
FIG. 2 shows the relationship between the mask 26 and the cross-sectional shape (shown by hatching) of a linear laser beam, which is converted in the conversion optical system 24. The mask 26 has a processing pattern including a plurality of holes 26-1 that are arranged at random or regularly at a given pitch P with respect to the direction of the movement shown by an arrow. In the linear laser beam, the width W is larger than the diameter of the holes 26-1 and the length L is larger than the range of the processing pattern in the width direction of the mask 26.
In FIGS. 1 and 2, the mask 26 moves across the linear laser beam so that a plurality of laser beam components passing through the holes 26-1 lying in one row of the mask 26 reach the work 27 through the imaging lens 28. Since the mask stage 25 and the work stage 29 are controlled so that these move synchronously in the opposite directions along the same axial direction, holes are continuously formed in the work 27 for every row of the processing pattern of the mask 26 in sequence. Of course, the pulse frequency of the laser beam from the CO2 laser oscillator 21 is set so as to be synchronized with the movement corresponding to one pitch of the mask stage 25. For example, the holes 26-1 in the same row are irradiated with the laser beam at least one time or two times, if necessary, depending on the energy intensity of the laser beam. This means that the same region in the work 27 is irradiated with the laser beam at least one time or two times if necessary. As a result, holes are formed in the region irradiated with the laser beam.
In the above example, the laser beam is fixed while the mask stage 25 and the work stage 29 are movable. Alternatively, for the same diameter, distance, and pitch of the holes formed in the work and for a pulse width of the laser beam on the order of microseconds, as shown in FIG. 3, a mask 26′ having a row of holes 26-1′ is used. In this case, it is not necessary to drive the mask stage during laser irradiation. In other words, the linear laser beam from the conversion optical system 24 is incident on the mask 26′, which is always fixed, whereas only the work stage 29 moves in the direction of an arrow in FIG. 3.
Alternatively, the mask 26 may be fixed while the work 27 is irradiated with a linear laser beam that is scanned on the mask 26 in one axial direction by a galvano-scanner. For this case, the galvano-scanner is provided between the conversion optical system 24 and the mask 26. In this case, after the scanning by the galvano-scanner, the work stage 29 moves the subsequent processing region to a scanning region by the galvano-scanner.
In any case, the diameter of the holes formed by the above-mentioned drilling is in the range of about 30 to 300 μm. Assuming that the reduction ratio of the imaging lens system 28 is 1:1, the diameter of the holes 26-1 formed in the mask 26 is also in the range of 30 to 300 μm. The mask 26 is generally formed of a metallic material and the holes have an aspect ratio (ratio of the diameter to the depth of the hole) of about 1. When the diameter of the holes 26-1 is 50 μm, the thickness of the mask 26 is also 50 μm. The same relationship applies to the mask 26′ shown in FIG. 3.
However, in the mask having the above-mentioned thickness, an increased density of the holes 26-1 impairs heat dissipation during laser beam irradiation, resulting in the thermal deformation of the mask 26. The deformation of the mask 26 causes the difference of the positions and the distortion of the shape of the holes formed.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a mask for laser processing which does not cause thermal deformation during irradiation with a laser beam.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method for making the mask.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a laser processing apparatus using the mask.


Q:

Connect IDs based on values in rows, ignoring connection between identical IDs

This is a follow-up to my previous question: Connect IDs based on values in rows.
I would now like to consider the case, where connections between identical idb's should be classified as 0.
The output is similar to the matrix in my previous post but with diagonal elements equal to 0:
      62014 62015 62016 62017 62018
62014   0     1     0     1     1
62015   1     0     0     0     0
62016   0     0     0     0     1
62017   1     0     0     0     1
62018   1     0     1     1     0

How can I do this in Stata?

A:

You can easily change the values in the diagonal of a matrix as follows:
: B
[symmetric]
       1   2   3   4   5
    +---------------------+
  1 |  1                  |
  2 |  1   1              |
  3 |  0   0   1          |
  4 |  1   0   0   1      |
  5 |  1   0   1   1   1  |
    +---------------------+

: _diag(B, 0)

: B
[symmetric]
       1   2   3   4   5
    +---------------------+
  1 |  0                  |
  2 |  1   0              |
  3 |  0   0   0          |
  4 |  1   0   0   0      |
  5 |  1   0   1   1   0  |
    +---------------------+

In the context of your question, you can simply do the following:
mata: B = foo1(A)
mata: _diag(B, 0)

getmata (idb*) = B

list

     +------------------------------------------------------------------------+
     |   idb      idd1      idd2      idd3   idb1   idb2   idb3   idb4   idb5 |
     |------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  1. | 62014    370490    879271   1112878      0      1      0      1      1 |
  2. | 62015    457013   1112878    370490      1      0      0      0      0 |
  3. | 62016    341863   1366174    533773      0      0      0      0      1 |
  4. | 62017    879271    327069    341596      1      0      0      0      1 |
  5. | 62018   1391443   1366174    879271      1      0      1      1      0 |
     +------------------------------------------------------------------------+


Italy’s villages face economic crisis fuelled by austerity

Many doubt vow of populist parties in new coalition government to restore rights of working class Italians.


Cis-2-enoyl-CoA reductase (NADPH)

In enzymology, a cis-2-enoyl-CoA reductase (NADPH) () is an enzyme that catalyzes the chemical reaction

acyl-CoA + NADP+  cis-2,3-dehydroacyl-CoA + NADPH + H+

Thus, the two substrates of this enzyme are acyl-CoA and NADP+, whereas its 3 products are cis-2,3-dehydroacyl-CoA, NADPH, and H+.

Nomenclature

This enzyme belongs to the family of oxidoreductases, specifically those acting on the CH-CH group of donor with NAD+ or NADP+ as acceptor.  The systematic name of this enzyme class is acyl-CoA:NADP+ cis-2-oxidoreductase. Other names in common use include NADPH-dependent cis-enoyl-CoA reductase, reductase, cis-2-enoyl coenzyme A, cis-2-enoyl-coenzyme A reductase, and cis-2-enoyl-CoA reductase (NADPH).

References

Further reading

Category:EC 1.3.1
Category:NADPH-dependent enzymes
Category:Enzymes of unknown structure


A recent article suggests that lesbian activities of women in the medieval Arab world were far more common and open than is commonly believed, or would be considered acceptable in today’s Middle East. In the article, “Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-Like Women,” Sahar Amer describes the large amount of material related to this topic, as well as the difficulty in accessing some of these records.

Amer, a professor of of Asian and International Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, explains that the topic of lesbianism is described in various medical texts dating back as far as the 9th century, a condition they explain is innate and lifelong. The reason why some women are lesbians was also written about – a 9th century physician named Yuhanna ibn Masawayh, believed that “lesbianism results when a nursing woman eats celery, rocket, melilot leaves and the flowers of a bitter orange tree. When she eats these plants and suckles her child, they will affect the labia of her suckling and generate an itch which the suckling will carry through her future life.”

Arab literature also has several examples of women were involved in same-sex relationships – a catalog from the late 10th century names twelve books which seem to be about two women. One of the more popular stories was that of Hind Bint al-Nu`man, the Christian daughter of the last Lakhmid king of Hira in the seventh century, and Hind Bint al-Khuss al-Iyadiyyah from Yamama in Arabia, known as al-Zarqa’, who were praised by poets and writers for their devotion to each other.

Also, Arabic texts related to eroticism also mention lesbian women. The thirteenth-century Tunisian writer Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Tifashi describes the local lesbian community, and how these women taught each other various practices. Amer uses this evidence to explain, “Arab lesbians were both named and visible in medieval Arabic literature. Moreover, and in contrast to their status in the medieval West in the same period, for example, Arab lesbians were not considered guilty of a “silent sin,” and there is no clear evidence that their “crime” was punished by death. In fact, lesbianism in the medieval Islamicate literary world was a topic deemed worthy of discussion and a lifestyle worthy of emulation.”

Amer also notes that Islamic legal texts have very little to say about same-sex relations and practices between women, and that perhaps it was considered an acceptable alternative for women in avoiding sex with other men outside of marriage. For example, a 14th century Arab writer, explains, “Know that lesbianism insures against social disgrace…”

The author does point out that “we must not rush to equate the medieval Arabic Islamicate notions of female-female sexuality with modern Western notions of lesbianism and sexual identity, for the very categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality are modern Western concepts, as many scholars have demonstrated, and do not have parallels in the medieval Arabic tradition.” But her research does suggest that scholars should reconsider some of their notions about the social history of the Islamic world during the Middle Ages.

The author also writes about some of the challenges of doing research in this field. Although various writings about sexuality and eroticism were popular in the medieval Arab world, Amer found it difficult to access these texts today. She notes how she had to have a male friend secretly buy a copy of a printed edition of a work called the Encyclopedia of Pleasure from a Cairo bookseller, and that publishers had gone to great lengths to avoid running afoul of government censors, including putting the image of a large red tree on each page.

Sahar Amer’s article, “Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-Like Women,” appears in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, Volume 18:2 (2009). She has also recently published the book Crossing Borders: Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures.

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Another terrorist attack in Europe brings more alarmed finger-pointing at Tunisia. Have we entirely misread the story of the small Mediterranean nation whose people’s bold protests for dignity and social justice sparked the Arab Spring six years ago? It is a deeply troubling puzzle. Here is a nation known by most in the West for its languid tourist beaches; but one which has also produced a group of individuals now linked to a string of terrorist attacks.

Anis Amri, the man suspected of the Berlin lorry attack, grew up in a small town near Kairouan, 60 miles south of Tunis and then, like thousands of his countrymen, took a boat to the Italian island of Lampedusa in early 2011 in search of a new life.


-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAxvOVm8Fgu4IUILsejmH4
NbTrxVTHYgA5FmDbu1HGEDDWblpGgXJONrMcor7CYad224kDLcmqcTiK5BDOw8Nu
2t4hfhiz1ifaxJeDRnA0zifOxL2z1wJWVu2FqEuVoUw2bd926csDBIJz68AafxtT
fgDV1UPRPtNnJWbXwh2NRnHTVSvKvM2l704MSVJT8YifplAPvvM4iqrU3HZx7gKz
pyn18gOmeZF/nLoGJ6t0Y2IuER7ASVf2dJIQWg87+lyu1eXngu5c/6+WN2/vqq9g
XvaWoi+d2gSKeHkEGgMFlfrz/YVUZfwaEyWMte9aWq55KT1I1R7N/MKKdfPkhcBc
TQIDAQAB
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----


Phenanthro[9,10-d]imidazole-quinoline boron difluoride dyes with solid-state red fluorescence.
A new family of boron difluoride-rigidified dyes, phenanthro[9,10-d]imidazole-quinoline boron difluoride (PQBD), with solid-state fluorescence has been designed and synthesized. The novel series of PQBD are advantageous over the typical boron difluoride-rigidified dyes such as BODIPYs in terms of large Stokes shift and red fluorescence in the solid state.


Q:

C++ pointer gives error with data type 'int' but works fine with 'char'

I'm trying to learn Pointers and References in C++. I have the following program.
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main() {

    // 1st statement / code of block. This portion works fine.
    char *str = "A";
    cout << str << endl;   // it outputs A
    cout << *str << endl;  // it outputs A
    cout << &str << endl;  // it outputs 0x23fe40 (memory location)

    char **b = &str;
    cout << b << endl;   // it outputs 0x23fe40 (memory location)
    cout << *b << endl;  // it outputs A

    // 2nd statement / code of block. This portion gives error.
    // int *st = 5;
    // cout << st << endl;
    // cout << *st << endl;
    // cout << &st << endl;
    // int **c = &st;
    // cout << c << endl;
    // cout << *c << endl;

    return 0;
}

The code runs fine at this stage. but I run the 2nd statement (which I commented here), the compiler gives the following error.
Invalid conversion from 'int' to 'int*'

Can someone please explain why it happens? Both statements are almost same, the only difference is that I used data type 'int' in second statement. Is it because of the different data types?

A:

As people mentioned before, with str you are implicitly creating a character array, and the *char pointer returned is pointing to that array in memory. Hence, when you dereference it, you get the letter "A".
One thing you should realize is that when you dereference a string, you will only get the first character in the array (the returned pointer points to the first value in the array). If your string were to be "AB" instead of just "A", *str would return "A" only, where as str would print out "AB".
This doesn't work for the integer variable because there is no implicit reference the variable is initializing to. An integer is a primitive and you can't dereference without a reference, and you can't retrieve a pointer without something to point to. This is why it couldn't convert an integer value to a pointer to an integer value.
Note that you can still declare a variable that contains a primitive value and obtain the address of it (&st will still work after declaration). If you want to play around with memory dereferencing with an int value, you can mess around with referencing other variables. E.g.
int i = 5;
int *st = &i;
int **c = &st;

the first variable will print out 5, the second will print out the address to the variable i, and the third will print the address of the pointer to the variable i.
Fun stuff. Basically just mess around to get a feel for pointers and such.


(Washington) – Egyptian police, National Security Agency, and military officials arbitrarily arrested, forcibly disappeared, and tortured children as young as 12 while prosecutors and judges turned a blind eye, Human Rights Watch and the rights group Belady: An Island For Humanity said in a report released today.

The 43-page report, “‘No One Cared He Was A Child’: Egyptian Security Forces’ Abuse of Children in Detention,” documents abuses against 20 children between the ages of 12 and 17 when they were arrested.

Egypt’s allies, especially the United States as well as France and other European Union countries, should halt support to Egyptian security forces until Egypt takes measurable steps to end the abuses and hold accountable those responsible, the groups said.

“The harrowing accounts of these children and their families reveal how Egypt’s machinery of repression has subjected children to grave abuses,” said Aya Hijazi, co-director of Belady. “Egyptian authorities act as though they are above all laws when it comes to children in detention.”

Fifteen of the 20 children said they were tortured in pretrial detention, usually during interrogation while held incommunicado. In addition, another child was badly beaten by prison guards. Seven children said security officers tortured them with electricity including with stun guns.

A boy arrested at age 16 told a relative he was worried he might “never marry or be able to have children” because of what Egyptian security officials had done to him in detention.

In two cases, children said security officials tied their arms behind their backs and suspended them by their arms, which dislocated their shoulders. One of the boys, age 14 at the time, said his joints had to be re-set by another prisoner in his cell who was a doctor.

Hamza spent his 15th birthday standing on his toes with sharp nails under his heels. Read his and other stories. Read their stories

Abuses against children as well as adults by Egypt’s security forces have become flagrant under the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The Interior Ministry’s National Security Agency’s officers were responsible for the majority of abuses documented in the report, but police and in some cases army officers were also involved.

Human Rights Watch and Belady corroborated statements from children, their families, and defense lawyers using court documents, appeals to authorities, medical records, and videos.

“Children are describing being waterboarded and shocked with electricty on their tongues and genitals, and yet Egypt’s security forces are facing no consequences,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Governments that want to end these horrors should end support to Egyptian security services and condition any future agreements on there being real reforms.”

Security officers forcibly disappeared children for up to 13 months, refusing to acknowledge to the children’s desperate families that they were in detention or provide any information about them. Belal B. was 17 years old when National Security officers arrested and put him in solitary confinement at a Cairo police station. “I knew nothing about my parents and they knew nothing about me,” he said. Officers then “tied me to a chair for three days,” causing severe pain, he said.

One child was sentenced to death, in violation of international law. Three were placed in solitary confinement, and three were denied any family visits for more than a year in detention. Children were held with adults in cells so overcrowded that they had to sleep in shifts, and were denied adequate food and medical care.

The children’s accounts of torture and other abuse are typical of the brutal security tactics Human Rights Watch, Belady, and other organizations have documented against children and adults detained for alleged political or security offenses in hundreds of cases since 2014.

Egyptian law requires authorities to present detainees to a prosecutor within 24 hours of arrest, but prosecutors covered up lengthy enforced disappearances of children by falsely stating when they were arrested. In none of the cases did authorities present an arrest warrant or arrest children lawfully. Authorities held one boy without trial for 30 months, in violation of the two-year limit in Egyptian law, charged him with participating in a protest that occurred while he was in detention, and refused to let him take school exams, undercutting his chances for a better future.

Egypt’s criminal justice system has failed to seriously investigate the children’s allegations of torture and ill-treatment. In one case in the report, the prosecutor even threatened to send a boy “back to the officer” who had tortured him if the boy refused to make a confession.

Authorities tried two children before military courts for alleged crimes including damaging the façade of a hotel. Children should not be tried before ordinary criminal courts with adults, let alone in military courts, which limit due process and fair trial rights.

Egypt should enforce provisions of its 1996 Child Law and its 2008 amendments that established special protections for children, such as alternatives to detention and penalties for officers who detain children alongside adults, Belady and Human Rights Watch said.

Egypt should revoke a loophole in the Child Law that allows prosecutors to send children accused of crimes with an adult accomplice to criminal courts, which they used to prosecute children alongside adults before terrorism courts. Authorities should detain children only as a last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.

Egypt should fully cooperate with United Nations and African Union experts on torture, arbitrary detention, and enforced disappearances; invite them to conduct country visits; and commit to protect their missions against reprisals.

“Egypt’s criminal justice system has failed to protect children from ill-treatment and could cause lasting harm,” Hijazi said. “Ending this routine detention and abuse is in the common interest of society as well as the child.”


Information is commonly provided as a visual or optical representation. Symbols such as text, numbers, or one or more shapes may be provided in print form or otherwise displayed to convey the information that these symbols represent. For example, bar codes are ubiquitously printed on or otherwise affixed to items as a mechanism for conveying information with respect to item on which it printed. In particular, a bar code is a coded pattern of graphical indicia, typically in the form of a matrix or series of bars and spaces of varying widths. The bar code provides, as one example, an optical machine-readable representation of the information.


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Apparently, the existence of this Bible has been suppressed by the Christian Church. (Image courtesy: "Alarabiya.net")

A 1,500-year-old Bible in which Jesus is believed to have foretold the coming of the Prophet Mohammed to Earth has attracted attention from the Vatican this week.

Pope Benedict XVI has reportedly requested to see the book, which has been hidden in Turkey for the last 12 years, according to the Daily Mail.

The text, reportedly worth $22 million, is said to contain Jesus’ prediction of the Prophet’s coming but was suppressed by the Christian Church for years for its strong resemblance to the Islamic view of Jesus, Turkish culture and tourism minister Ertugrul Gunay told the newspaper.

“In line with Islamic belief, the Gospel treats Jesus as a human being and not a God. It rejects the ideas of the Holy Trinity and the Crucifixion and reveals that Jesus predicted the coming of the Prophet Mohammed,” the newspaper reported.

“In one version of the gospel, he is said to have told a priest: ‘How shall the Messiah be called? Mohammed is his blessed name.’

“And in another, Jesus denied being the Messiah, claiming that he or she would be Ishmaelite, the term used for an Arab,” the newspaper added.

According to the report, Muslims claim the text, which many say is the Gospel of Barnabas, is an addition to the original gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.

St. Barnabas is traditionally identified as the founder of the Cypriot Church, an early Christian later named an apostle.

Gunay said the Vatican has officially requested to see the book, which Turkey had discovered during a police anti-smuggling operation in 2000.

The gang was reportedly convicted of smuggling various items seized during the operation, including the Bible, and all the artifacts were kept in a safe at an Ankara courthouse.

It remained closely guarded by authorities before being handed over to the Ankara Ethnography Museum where it will soon be put on show.

A photocopy of a single page from the leather-bound, gold-lettered book, penned in Jesus’ native Aramaic language is reportedly worth about $2.4 million.

But skepticism over the authenticity of the ancient handwritten manuscript has arisen.

Protestant pastor İhsan Özbek has said this version of the book is said to come from the fifth or sixth century, while St. Barnabas had lived in the first century as one of the Apostles of Jesus.

“The copy in Ankara might have been written by one of the followers of St. Barnabas,” he told the Today Zaman newspaper.

“Since there is around 500 years in between St. Barnabas and the writing of the Bible copy, Muslims may be disappointed to see that this copy does not include things they would like to see … It might have no relation with the content of the Gospel of Barnabas,” Özbek added.

But suspicions could soon be laid to rest.

The real age of the Bible could soon be determined by a scientific scan, theology professor Ömer Faruk Harman told the Daily Mail, possibly clarifying whether it was written by St. Barnabas or a follower of his.


Stay on Top of Emerging Technology Trends Get updates impacting your industry from our GigaOm Research Community

Digital technology is transforming not just how media is made, but who is making it. At elite digital brands, readers and the general public are having an unprecedented role in shaping media and content creation.

At a paidContent Live session hosted by Slate chairman Jacob Weisberg, three media companies described a new breed of creators who are equally at ease with content and technology. This has led to the emergence of non-traditional media influencers such as comment communities at Reddit, and at Vox Media sites The Verge and SB Nation.

“In the day, if you wanted to create media, you had to start as an intern making coffee,” said Vox CEO Jim Bankoff, adding that now anyone with $100 can make a movie. He explained that this democratization of content creation has resulted, in some cases, of Vox hiring people on the basis of their comment contributions.

This has led to a culture of empowerment in which everyday people are as fluent in media as many traditional journalists. More and more, they are taking to public platforms to not just report, but to take part in the news.

Erik Martin, GM of Reddit, cited “random acts of pizza” — a community on the site that sends pizza as a gesture of support, most recently to emergency workers in Boston.

But does this new culture of public participation also has a dark side? Slate’s Weisberg pointed to Reddit’s current efforts to identify the Boston bomber, including posting a suspect’s photo on the site, as approaching vigilante justice.

“Reddit may be creating the next Richard Jewell,” said Weisberg, referring to a police officer who foiled an Atlanta Olympics bombing plot only to be falsely accused as a suspect in a traumatizing “trial by media.”

Martin said he regarded the role of Reddit employees as “groundskeepers” who helped discrete communities determine their own standards.

Dan Roth, a former Fortune editor who now oversees news on LinkedIn Today, offered a further example of how non-journalists are creating media. He described how executives like Virgin Airlines CEO Richard Branson are now writing regular columns in their own voices. While such contributions in traditional media typically amounted to no more than press releases, Roth said that readers’ ire at inauthenticity has forced even corporate executives to reevaluate how they write.

Check out the rest of our paidContent Live 2013 coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:

[protected-iframe id=”014d01e93166a8bece24613b0720618d-33319749-25766478″ info=”http://new.livestream.com/accounts/74987/events/2000322/videos/16638885/player?autoPlay=false&height=360&mute=false&width=640″ width=”640″ height=”360″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”]

A transcription of the video follows on the next page


Development of a mucin4-targeting SPIO contrast agent for effective detection of pancreatic tumor cells in vitro and in vivo.
In search of a unique and reliable contrast agent targeting pancreatic adenocarcinoma, new multifunctional nanoparticles (MnMEIO-silane-NH2-(MUC4)-mPEG NPs) were successfully developed in this study. Mucin4-expression levels were determined through different imaging studies in a panel of pancreatic tumor cells (HPAC, BxPC-3, and Panc-1) both in vitro and in vivo studies. The in vitro T2-weighted MR imaging study in HPAC and Panc-1 tumor cells treated with NPs showed -89.1 ± 5.7% and -0.9 ± 0.2% contrast enhancement, whereas in in vivo study, it is found to be -81.5 ± 4.5% versus -19.6 ± 5.2% (24 h postinjection, 7.0 T), respectively. The T2-weighted MR and optical imaging studies revealed that the novel contrast agent can specifically and effectively target to mucin4-expressing tumors in nude mice. Hence, it is suggested that MnMEIO-silane-NH2-(MUC4)-mPEG NPs are able to provide an efficient and targeted delivery of MUC4 antibodies to mucin4-expressing pancreatic tumors.


The controversial Danish director — and the just-as-controversial actor — are in town for the world premiere of the director's cut of "Nymphomaniac: Volume 1."

Controversial Danish director Lars von Trier has made the trip -- in his legendary camper van -- from Copenhagen to Berlin to attend the world premiere of the director's cut of Nymphomaniac: Volume 1.

Von Trier will not be answering questions on his latest effort, a sex epic about a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg), but will attend the photo call for the film this afternoon and tonight's gala premiere. The director took a "vow of silence" after comments he made at the Cannes Film Festival jokingly comparing himself to Hitler caused a huge scandal and got him (temporarily) banned.

Gainsbourg, sadly, won't be attending, but several of her Nymphomaniac co-stars, including Stellan Skarsgard, Uma Thurman, Christian Slater and Stacy Martin, will take part in today's press conference. As will Shia LaBeouf, who, thanks to his plagiarism scandal and several bizarre statements and actions since, is nearly as controversial as von Trier. Unlike the silent Dane, however, LaBeouf is scheduled to speak to reporters at the press conference for Nymphomaniac this afternoon.


Q:

Android: using SharedPreferences in a library

I made a library that I use across my app. I want it to access some settings that are stored in the shared preferences.
This is a shortened version of my library:
package com.android.foobar;

import android.content.SharedPreferences;
import android.preference.PreferenceManager;

public class Lib {
    int now;

    public Lib() {
        SharedPreferences settings = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this);
        now = settings.getInt("now", 435);
    }

    public int foo(){
        return now;
    }
}

I've been looking for an answer and experimenting, but I can't find a valid context to pass to getDefaultSharedPreferences(). Any ideas?

A:

The most easiest way would be to include the context as a parameter of your Lib constructor and pass the application context from the point where your Lib is created.
If you search for a static way of how to do it have a look at this: Accessing SharedPreferences through static methods
But IMHO the first solution would be the best.


Electrophysiologic properties of intercostal muscle fibers in human neuromuscular diseases.
Electrophysiologic properties of biopsied normal and diseased intercostal muscle fibers were examined using intracellular microelectrode techniques. The resting potentials of all diseased muscle fibers were found to be depolarized. Those from Duchenne dystrophy patients showed the largest depolarization, followed by those from patients with myotonic muscular dystrophy, myotonia congenita, and motor neuron disease. All of the diseased fibers except those from myotonia congenita patients demonstrated an imparied ability to generate action potentials. In the latter fibers, the higher-than-normal membrane resistance was associated with hyperexcitability. When the membrane was hyperpolarized to the normal range, however, action potential characteristics in all fibers were near normal, except in motor neuron disease. All action potentials were blocked by tetrodotoxin. These findings--i.e., that all fibers were capable of generating action potentials when hyperpolarized, and that all action potentials were blocked by tetrodotoxin--suggest the relative intactness, in the disease studied here of the regenerative sodium conductance mechanism.


Chargers keep Browns winless

Sunday

CARSON, Calif. (AP) — After Adrian Phillips’ late interception sealed the Los Angeles Chargers’ third straight victory, they left their new home field as a first-place team.

Their miserable 0-4 start to the season seemed as if it happened years ago.

The 0-12 Cleveland Browns’ nightmare still won’t end. Not even against the only opponent they’ve beaten in nearly two years.

Philip Rivers passed for 344 yards and hit Keenan Allen for a touchdown, and the surging Chargers moved into a tie for first in the AFC West with a 19-10 victory over the winless Browns on Sunday.

Allen had 10 catches for 105 yards in his third straight big game for the Chargers (6-6), who have won six of eight to pull even with Oakland and slumping Kansas City atop the division with four games to go.

“No one ever flinched,” Chargers coach Anthony Lynn said. “At 0-4, we still had a lot of football left, and that’s how we’ve always looked at it. To be in this position doesn’t surprise me at all, because guys have worked hard and they’re committed to the process. They never stopped believing.”

New kicker Travis Coons hit four field goals as the Chargers grinded out a win over the Browns, whose only victory in their previous 30 games was a 20-17 win over the then-San Diego Chargers on Christmas Eve last season.

Cleveland trailed 19-7 entering the fourth quarter, and Zane Gonzalez hit an early field goal before the Browns mounted a long drive.

But Joey Bosa forced a fumble with a vicious sack of DeShone Kizer deep in Chargers territory, and Denzel Perryman recovered with 4:48 to play. The Browns had another drive deep into scoring territory, but Phillips’ pick ended it.

“They’re a good young team, but we make plays,” Perryman said. “We’re going into our fourth-quarter phase of the season now, and it’s time to finish. We control our destiny.”

Josh Gordon had four catches for 84 yards in his first NFL game since 2014 for the Browns. The talented receiver had been suspended for over 2½ seasons for numerous violations of the NFL’s substance abuse policies, but was reinstated last month.

“It was real familiar, man,” Gordon said. “Football is something I have been doing my whole life. New stadium, that’s about it, you know?”

Kizer passed for 215 yards and hit rookie David Njoku for a 28-yard TD late in the first half for the Browns, who took their 30th loss in 31 games since late in the 2015 season.

“All season, you can see that we’re very close to getting where we want to go,” said Kizer, who went 15 for 32 and was sacked three times. “But I can definitely sense in this locker room that close isn’t cutting it anymore. We need to get over that hill.”

STILL WINLESS

The Browns are 1-27 under coach Hue Jackson, who broke John McKay’s NFL record for the slowest start to a coaching tenure with a franchise. Cleveland has four games left to avoid becoming the fifth winless team in NFL history and only the second in a 16-game season.

BIG GAME KEENAN

Allen made three catches on the Chargers’ only scoring drive, and his 7-yard TD grab gave him four scores in three games. The fifth-year pro became the first player in NFL history with at least 10 catches for 100 yards and one touchdown in three consecutive games. He surpassed 1,000 yards for the first time since his rookie season in 2013. Allen directed praise back to Rivers.

“He’s so consistent,” Allen said. “He’s been amazing right now, getting us in the right place. He’s making the right reads. He has eyes in the right places all the time.”

BACK IN THE GAME

Chargers cornerback Casey Hayward had three tackles and two passes defensed despite missing the week of practice to be in Georgia with his family after his brother was killed in a car accident on Monday night. “When I got back out here, I just focused on football,” Hayward said.

NEW FOOT

Coons went 4 for 5 on field-goal attempts as the fourth person to attempt placekicks for the Chargers this season. The former Browns kicker was signed this week to replace Nick Novak, who hurt his back last week against Dallas. Coons missed a 38-yard field goal on LA’s opening drive, but subsequently hit from 21, 40, 22 and 27 yards.

INJURIES

Browns: TE Randall Telfer was evaluated for a possible concussion during the game. ... Rookie DB Jabrill Peppers injured his knee in the second half. He will have an MRI on Monday.


The North Frisians in Germany

The North Frisians live on the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein – from the German-Danish border region in the north to the more southern town of Bredstedt (district of North Friesland). Also the islands Sylt, Föhr, Amrum and Helgoland (district of Pinneberg) and a number of small islands, the “Halligen” are part of the area where North Frisian is being spoken.

Foto: Momme Nommensen

Foto: Momme Nommensen

History

The historical area of settlement of the Frisians, a Germanic people, lies on the southern North Sea coast between the rivers Rhine and Weser. The Frisians were first mentioned in the year 12 BC, when the Roman commander Drusus concluded patron-client agreements with them.

In two waves in the eight and eleventh century Frisian groups moved to North Friesland. The Frisians lived in administrative units called “Harde” like they existed everywhere in the Danish kingdom. The borders between the different “Hardes” were mostly formed by wide and marshy glacial valleys.

The North Frisians never had a state of their own, but for a long time they could maintain their own political independence, for instance in the administration of justice and in the area of dike building and maintenance.

The landscape of North Friesland is mainly characterised by floods, of which the so-called “Mandränken” in the years 1362 and 1634 were the most severe. In the 17th and 18th century North Friesland experienced a period of economic prosperity; virtually the entire male population went on whale-hunt to Greenland and some of them became very wealthy because of whaling and seal hunting. The most important economic sectors in later centuries were mainly agriculture and later tourism.

The history of North Friesland is characterised by a feeling of regional identity, which also today is still very strong. The district of North Friesland as an administrative unit was established not until 1970. Until 1864 North Friesland was part of the Danish state, afterwards it belonged to Prussia and Germany. The place in the middle of German and Danish cast a shadow over the national-political development of North Friesland since the 19th century and made it difficult to establish Frisian structures of its own.

The Frisian language is the most important identity marker for the North Frisians. The language was included for protection under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

North Frisian (Friisk, Frasch) belongs together with the two other Frisian languages Sater-Frisian (East-Frisian) and West-Frisian to the Frisian language group within the West-Germanic languages. These are a branch of the Germanic group of the Indo-European language family. Sater-Frisian (East-Frisian) is spoken in the north-western part of Lower Saxony and West-Frisian is spoken in the north of the Netherlands.

Nowadays there are 9 dialects of North Frisian and about 8 000-10 000 active speakers. The dialects are divided into two groups: insular North Frisian and mainland North Frisian; the dialect spoken on the Halligen islands belongs to mainland North Frisian:

Insular North-Frisian

Sylt Frisian (Sölring)

Föhr-Amrum Frisian (Fering-Öömrang)

Helgoland Frisian (Halunder)

Mainland North Frisian

Wiedingharde Frisian

Bökingharde Frisian (including Mooring)

Karrharde Frisian

Nordergoesharde Frisian

Mittelgoesharde Frisian

Halligen Frisian

Südergoesharde Frisian (extinct since 1981)

The North Frisian dialects differ from standard German by a more extensive system of vowels and consonants. In all the dialects the consonants have an additional palatalization (produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate) uncommon for Germanic languages.

Language status:

Traditionally North Frisian is a spoken language, little written before the beginning of the 19th century. In view of the danger of extinction of the language, a tradition developed to preserve the North Frisian language. Nowadays every dialect has its own orthography, grammar and vocabulary, which can be considered relatively standardised. Frisian is mainly used in informal and social contexts, e.g. in the family, in communal activities etcetera, but also in some formal environments such as in education or in church. Officially there are about 8 000-10 000 speakers of North Frisian. Many linguists, however, estimate the number of speakers as much less. Precise surveys are not available. In the Red Book of Endangered Languages of UNESCO North Frisian is classified as “severely endangered”.

“Strongholds” of North Frisian are the municipalities of Risum-Lindholm on the mainland and in particular the west of the island of Föhr.

Since 1998 the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities also protects the Frisians. The constitution of Schleswig-Holstein provides protection and support for the Frisian minority since 1990.

The regional parliament of Schleswig-Holstein decided in 2004 to adopt an Act on the Promotion of Frisian in the Public Area (in Frisian: Friisk Gesäts; Gesäts fort stipen foont friisk önj e öfentlikhäid; in German: Friesengesetz; Gesetz zur Förderung des Friesischen im öffentlichen Raum). It provides the basis for bilingual signs in North Friesland and Helgoland, which is clearly visible. A number of municipalities have bilingual place name signs and the signs in North Frisian train stations are also bilingual. Also regional authorities like tax offices or police stations in North Friesland and in Helgoland have bilingual signposting. With this Act Frisian became the second official language in North Friesland and in Helgoland.

The Interfrisian Council is the umbrella organisation that brings together the North Frisians and East Frisians in Germany with the West Frisians who are living in the Netherlands.

The two largest North Frisian associations are the North Frisian Association (Nordfriesische Verein e.V.) and the Friisk Foriining. They are umbrellas for several smaller local associations and groups. All the North Frisian organisations work together in the Frisian Council Section North. This is the main interlocutory partner for the Federal Republic of Germany, the Land of Schleswig-Holstein, the district of North Friesland and its municipalities. The local Frisian associations are highly committed to accomplishing a wide variety of cultural work. Next to language-related issues they also work on Frisian traditions and customs, and typical architecture, which foster Frisian history and are part of the Frisian identity.

The „Nordfriisk Instituut“ in Bredstedt is very important for cultivating the Frisian language, culture and history, as it is the main scientific institute. It considers itself as building bridges between theory and practice, between science and laymen research. The institute is mainly active in the field of language, history and regional studies, both scientifically and journalistically. The institute has a specialised library and an archive, it publishes magazines and books in German and in Frisian, offers courses, lectures, conferences and working groups. The work is foremost covered by grants from the Land of Schleswig-Holstein and by circa 850 members of the Association of the Nordfriisk Instituut.

Education

Quelle: Frasche Rädj

Like is the case for most linguistic minorities the teaching of and about its own language in schools and kindergartens is of great importance for the North Frisian minority. The North Frisians do not have a school system of their own. Instead Frisian is taught in public schools and in some schools of the Danish minority. An exception is the Danish private school in Risum – this is the only bilingual school where Danish, German and Frisian are also taught outside the language lessons. The school is an elementary / comprehensive school until 8th or 9th grade, and is one of the 46 schools of the Danish minority.

Generally Frisian is only taught in the third and fourth grade for two hours in the week, and on a voluntary basis.

Frisian can be studied at the universities of Kiel and Flensburg. Since 1950 there is the so-called North Frisian Dictionary Department (Nordfriesische Wörterbuchstelle) in Kiel, which is managed by the professor for Frisian, a position established in 1978. The Frisian department at Flensburg University mainly aims at training Frisian teachers; teaching and research take place in close cooperation with the Nordfriisk Instituut and the Ferring-Foundation.

General Frisian language courses for beginners and advanced students are offered by Frisian associations, community colleges, cultural groups and also privately. Each autumn “Friisk Foriining” offers the “Friisk Harfsthuuchschölj”: with courses and activities that are all taking place in Frisian for young and old. Furthermore the “Friisk Foriining” organises cultural and language travels to other minorities, like for examples a visit to the Sorbs in the surroundings of Bautzen or to the Welsh or to Cornwall.

According to Steensen (2010) the North Frisian language remains endangered, despite all the efforts. Some of the dialects will soon have faded away and Frisian will never again be the widespread common speech of a village, because the social fabric has totally changed. Nowadays Frisian is used in new situations, especially young people recognise its opportunities. As a traditional language that exists only in this region, and nowhere else in the world, it has the ability to continue characterising the identity of the people and to create a sense of regional belonging. (Steensen (2010) “Nordfriesland und die Friesen”, p. 30)

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This homepage reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.


Bedroom Interior Designs

From a cool and collected master bedroom to a sophisticated and sunny kitchen, the range of interiors created by 24 design firms in the greater D.C. area is sure to inspire. asks Laura Umansky of Houston-based Laura U Interior Design, who along with designer teammate Jillian Loloi," Umansky says. In the master bedroom, cerulean is joined by another natural color: driftwood. "We wanted this space to truly be a retreat as well as desirable lower-level bedrooms in all floorplans. The Residence Three also features a convenient first-floor office and a spacious bonus room. Premier interior appointments enhance every design with features such as granite countertops and high Architecture and interior design practice PEEK Architecture + Design has unveiled has long views up and down the Strand as well as glimpses of the river Thames. It contains three bedrooms, feature staircase and an open plan living space, with terrace The poster was, in fact, freelance photographer Nicolette Johnson, who had no interior design experience other than "obsessively Brisbane rental apartment in August 2013. "It has one bedroom, one sun room, a combined living and dining room, a tiny The bedroom on the second floor is designed with a reference to a European design hotel. Second Floor Plan The house suggesting the atmosphere of the interior space. .

This four-bedroom plan from Natale Builders and 30-year architectural roofing. The chic interiors showcase a New Urbanism style and incorporate green technologies. The homes utilize innovative products and design to reduce energy consumption. KEARNEY — A group of construction management and interior design students at the University of Nebraska Hinrichs Stober Architects of Kearney to build a full-scale mock-up of bedroom suites that will house residents at the $121 million veterans When they knew they would stay in this four-bedroom home for a while, they brought in Amanda Eck of Amanda Carol Interiors to help them re-imagine the living and dining rooms. Despite its limited size, Eck says the living room had promise: It had a two Ms. Hagen-Black would complete the interior design. One of the barnlike wings contains the public areas, including a living and dining room, a kitchen and a family room; the other wing contains private spaces, including four bedrooms and a home office for .


Mode-specific effects among three treatments for depression.
In the NIMH Treatment of Depression Collaborative Research Program (TDCRP), 250 depressed outpatients were randomly assigned to interpersonal psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, imipramine plus clinical management, or pill placebo plus clinical management treatments. Although all treatments demonstrated significant symptom reduction with few differences in general outcomes, an important question concerned possible effects specific to each treatment. The therapies differ in rationale and procedures, suggesting that mode-specific effects may differ among treatments, each of which was precisely specified, applied appropriately, and shown to be discriminable. Outcome measures were selected for presumed sensitivity to the different treatments. Findings provided only scattered and relatively insubstantial support for mode-specific differences. None of the therapies produced consistent effects on measures related to its theoretical origins.


Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Will Default to the X.Org Stack, Not Wayland - rcarmo
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-18.04-Xorg-Default
======
hedora
Yay!

I can still use my fallback minimalist window manager for another few years!

I don’t mean to root against open source developers, but every aspect of the
Linux stack that’s been rewritten recently is a major regression over what I
used 10 years ago, and I’m frankly tired of change for change’s sake breaking
stuff I rely on to do my job.

------
Tsiklon
I think this decision makes sense, especially from a support perspective.

I understand that Wayland is good and working for a large number of users in
Fedora. however I'd be inclined to think that Canonical may choose to go
Wayland in 18.10 at the earliest giving them most of the cycle to 20.04 to
work out the kinks, likewise we can hope for improvements in GPU support along
the way.

------
blinskey
This should probably point to the original announcement from Canonical:
[https://insights.ubuntu.com/2018/01/26/bionic-
beaver-18-04-l...](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2018/01/26/bionic-
beaver-18-04-lts-to-use-xorg-by-default/)


Atrioventricular groove patch plasty for anatomically corrected malposition of the great arteries.
In anatomically corrected malposition of the great arteries, dextroposition of the posterior pulmonary artery and levoposition of the anterior aorta are associated with the leftward deviation of the proximal portion of the right coronary artery away from the right atrioventricular groove. This anatomic feature allows a transannular subpulmonary patch plasty of the right ventricular outflow tract along the right atrioventricular groove between the right coronary artery and the tricuspid anterior anulus (ie, atrioventricular groove patch plasty) for relief of subpulmonary stenosis without jeopardizing the right coronary artery. This report describes the midterm results of a new surgical technique, atrioventricular groove patch plasty with a monocuspid transannular patch for subpulmonary stenosis, in 3 patients with anatomically corrected malposition of the great arteries, along with a concomitant closure of ventricular septal defects. Postoperative catheterization revealed adequate relief of pulmonary stenosis, with a pressure gradient of 8.0 +/- 3.5 mm Hg and with normalized right ventricular pressure (33 +/- 10 mm Hg), contributing to excellent midterm results with no late death and reoperation during a postoperative follow-up period of 70 +/- 47 months. This technique provides a promising alternative to Rastelli-type conduit repair for subpulmonary stenosis in anatomically corrected malposition of the great arteries.


---
- name: Ensure kubeadm initialization
  become: yes
  command: "kubeadm init --token 2f1a31.00f66dec74fd53f3 --apiserver-advertise-address=172.42.42.1"
  tags:
    - k8s

- name: Copy config to /Vagrant for other VMs
  become: yes
  copy:
    src: /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf
    dest: /vagrant/admin.conf
    owner: ubuntu
    group: ubuntu
    mode: 0600

- name: Copy config to home directory
  become: yes
  copy:
    src: /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf
    dest: /home/ubuntu/admin.conf
    owner: ubuntu
    group: ubuntu
    mode: 0600

- name: Update Environment
  become: yes
  lineinfile:
    path: /home/ubuntu/.bashrc
    regexp: '^export KUBECONFIG='
    line: 'export KUBECONFIG=/home/ubuntu/admin.conf'
    state: present

- name: Set --proxy-mode flag in kube-proxy daemonset (workaround for https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/34101)
  become: yes
  shell: "kubectl --kubeconfig=/home/ubuntu/admin.conf -n kube-system get ds -l 'k8s-app==kube-proxy' -o json | jq '.items[0].spec.template.spec.containers[0].command |= .+ [\"--proxy-mode=userspace\"]' | kubectl --kubeconfig=/home/ubuntu/admin.conf apply -f - && kubectl --kubeconfig=/home/ubuntu/admin.conf -n kube-system delete pods -l 'k8s-app==kube-proxy'"
  register: proxy
  until: proxy.rc == 0
  retries: 60
  delay: 10
  tags:
    - k8s

- name: Ensure Network Start Script
  become: yes
  copy:
    src: files/{{ item }}
    dest: /usr/local/bin/{{ item }}
    owner: root
    group: root
    mode: 0755
  with_items:
    - "start-weave"
    - "start-calico"
    - "start-canal"


This is a CU Colorado Springs student blog for the following courses: Intermediate Microeconomics and Austrian Economics.

March 31, 2013

On the Entrepreneur

On the Entrepreneur
Karl Marx' labor theory of value assumes that all value attributed to any particular good or service is derived directly from the factors of production, what he called the "productive forces", consisting of the "means of production and labor power" (Thomas, pp. 3). Basically, the "means of production" are what are often known as natural resources: land, minerals, water, etc., and "labor power" is the work exerted by a laborer or group of laborers. So according to Marx' theory, the value of a good is based solely on 1) the natural resources, and 2) the labor that went into producing a good.

What Marx neglected in his theory is the role of the entrepreneur, but this is not accidental: Marx believed that the business owners (Bourgeoisie) only exploited the laborers (Proletarians), and did not provide anything of value. He sought to correct this 'market failure' by removing the exploitative role from the production function. But one might wonder, if the role of the entrepreneur is valueless, why did Marx think that the government should assume this role?

In a true capitalist society, entrepreneurs will necessarily be the leaders, for it is their ideas that will be the source of all change and innovation within the economy (aka the world). All others not exercising the entrepreneurial role, are merely just following protocol, doing the same thing over and over again. If it were not for the entrepreneur, an economy would be a never-ending repetition of people doing the same thing over and over every day; this is the essence of the concept of an "evenly-rotating economy".

When thinking about an "evenly-rotating economy", I am reminded of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. In his essay, Mill explains that the diminishing of individual thought and action would lead to a "stagnant pool" society. This means that if everyone were to do the same things over and over again and there was never any change; just like a pool of water that sits unmoved, the society would become stagnant. Mill referred to the "geniuses" of society as being those who prevented the stagnant pool from forming by coming up with new ideas and ways of doing things, and thus "stirring the pot", if you will. I would contend that the role of Mill's genius is parallel in many ways with the Austrian understanding of the entrepreneur, as presented by Schumpeter, Mises, Kirzner, Rothbard, et al. In fact, through his many writings, Mill contributed significantly to the popularization of the term "entrepreneurship" (Sobel, para 5).

So, what does all of this mean?

First of all, it is important to recognize that Marx neglected the value of the entrepreneur. In seeing the class struggle between the Bourgeoisie and Proletarians, he perceived that the workers were being exploited. He saw workers receiving low wages and business owners making much more money - and perceived this to be an issue that needed corrected, and one that he thought would be as the result of a series of social revolutions. Marx thought that the government, free from the profit motive, and instead, committed to meeting social needs, would be a beneficent replacement for the so-called "exploiters", who were fueling the class struggle he perceived.

Secondly, widespread disdain for "profit" has made the role of the entrepreneur even more neglected. The idea that a non-profit organization will serve society and a for-profit business only wants money has also reinforced the neglect of the entrepreneur. It is interesting to note that profit literally means progress, and is the opposite of loss. This makes me wonder why so many progressives are anti-capitalist; apparently they are more supportive of companies that suffer losses (greater losses = greater service to society?!?).

Thirdly, as demonstrated by many Austrian economists and also J.S. Mill , a society needs entrepreneurs to innovate and to avoid stagnation. If there were no entrepreneurs, and everyone performed the same job every day, eventually a system of this fashion will go bankrupt. The entrepreneur makes sure that the economy is always growing and reshaping to better suit the needs of its participants.

In a capitalist system, entrepreneurial action serves the purpose of allocating resources to their most desired uses. It is very important to recognize that these entrepreneurial choices will only have a widespread effect if they are 'adopted' by the non-entrepreneurs within the economy. If the choice of the entrepreneur is not supported by others (made evident by the purchasing of his product or service), then the entrepreneur will not be able to sustain his endeavor. For this reason, under unhampered market conditions, if a business is not providing a good that people perceive to be valuable/profitable to them, the business will not be profitable, and thus, entrepreneurial profit indicates whether a business is serving people or not.

On the other hand, if a government decides to produce a 'good', each individual within that nation will have to buy the good whether or not they perceive the good to be profitable. So, a government can continue to produce any 'good' whether or not the people believe it to actually be (a) "good", but in the unhampered market only producers of goods and services that consumers believe to be valuable will return a profit. Businesses in the 'free market' cannot produce goods people do not want to pay for (at least for very long). Governments can and do produce goods people do not want to pay for (as long as people pay their taxes).

The role of the entrepreneur is vital to the well-being of individuals. Successful entrepreneurs are those who are best at anticipating consumer needs and finding how to produce and provide these goods at the lowest cost. Thus the free market system, expanded by the vision and work of the entrepreneur, will provide the conditions in which individuals needs are met to the greatest degree. It is therefore in the best interests of every individual to recognize the significance of competition in fulfilling individual wants, and the vital role that the entrepreneur plays in ensuring competition, profit, and progress for all.

"I don't want to do nothing, there's plenty to do,
The question I ponder is who plans for whom?