text:
PATENT TROLLS OR POWER ROLLS
July 29, 2013 October 14, 2015 fweil
Patents have been in the news a lot recently, both as incentives to eye-popping acquisitions and as clubs used to "stifle" innovation or "extort" payouts from "innocent" parties. As a result there has developed an emotionally charged growing debate about the benefit or detriment to the economy and society at large from the assertion of rights conferred by duly-issued patents.
The subject has been taking on the trappings of a crusade against the people who seek to enforce the rights that patents have conveyed since the very beginning of our republic (see U.S. Constitution, Section 8). Interestingly, those managing the crusade are invariably those being charged with infringement of these patents.
The basic idea behind patents is to spark experimentation, innovation and invention, a basic engine of economic growth, by giving, per the Constitutional language, "for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Innovation always has been, and remains, part and parcel of our market economy. The invention of the cotton gin led to a vast expansion of cotton growth and manufacturing. That invention came from outside the cotton world by Eli Whitney in Massachusetts, who patented his machine in 1794. He and partners struggled for many years with infringers and farmers who felt they were being taxed to have their cotton processed. After the patent was finally upheld in 1807, Whitney began to license it widely, at which point his technology took off and revolutionized that world. But, alas for him, he fought so long the term of the patent ran out before he made serious money. Whitney ultimately and finally got rich from another patent on making muskets. This may be one of the most interesting cases of all time that illuminates how powerfully patents helped create the modern US economy and how difficult it is to capture the rewards deserved by the inventors for the patented technology.
As is always the case, there are two sides to every coin and every debate.
Today, the CON argument against patent enforcement goes like this: patent "trolls" (people–frequently lawyers– who acquire interests in patents -sometimes a lot of them) have to be reined in because they are thwarting the spread and use of those inventions by 'blackmailing' companies, and threatening expensive litigation unless royalties are agreed to and paid. The main arguments and lobbying behind this argument originate from big, powerfully rich manufacturers and marketers who hate paying for something they could have invented (but did not). They frequently copy and sell with impunity on the theory that the little inventors simply cannot afford ever to take them on. So when the little guys (derogatorily called "trolls" by the big guys) show up with a solid patent and money to litigate its enforcement, the big guys cry foul.
And, they are now lobbying to change the patent laws to basically protect their power in the market place, which they believe is equally important to the monopoly granted to a good patent. They couch their complaint on so-called "patent-quality" concerns but does anyone believe they will act differently if confronted with a "high- quality" patent?
The real foul is the lobbying behind this power grab. These parties are using shareholder wealth to protect this attempted power grab and using shareholder wealth to protect their power in the market place.
The PRO argument to sustain patent enforcement goes like this: little guys — tinkerers, professors and nerdy types — see gaps in modern technology and invent clever ways to fill them. To do so they need financing to experiment, test, protect and promote their inventions. Without patent protection, people with money to invest simply dismiss inventors because they know that the minute the big guys learn about an unpatented improvement, the little guy will be eaten alive. So, without patent protection the little guys get virtually no support and innovation suffers. Therefore, so goes the argument, there is nothing wrong with the inventors selling interests in patents to people that know how to and can enforce them as a reward for their efforts and to enable their continued inventing. It is not only acceptable, but vital to the functioning of our economic system, that inventors be able to sell interests in their patents to people who know how to and can enforce them against the big guys who control access to markets. What becomes obvious is that patent rights need to be enforced whether owned by big companies or by investors to keep the system functioning.
There are, of course, exceptions to both the Pro and Con arguments. But, those exceptions are rare and do not diminish the substance of both points of view.
Since 1996 I have lived through one of these stories and hence understand both points of view very well. The essence of my story involves my backing a distinguished professor of computer science at Yale, David Gelernter, who had invented and patented a wholly new way of organizing and finding stuff in computer files. I was part of a group that by by 2004 had invested about $20,000,000 to perfect, commercialize and expand the patent portfolio and introduce products into the market compatible with the existing big companies' platforms.
We explored all sorts of ways to work with the big guys. They all showed initial interest. Then they simply clammed up. Then they all started to use the patented technology. Ultimately, we shut down our operation and shifted gears into protecting our patented property rights against the big guys. As litigation is ongoing, it is inappropriate to get into too much detail here. Suffice it to say we do not see ourselves as "trolls" but as victims of a 'power roll' by entrenched interests who control markets and have figured out how to steal with impunity.
Accordingly, the lesson of today's sermon is: when and if you think about the public debate about patents today, please remember there are two sides to this debate.
On one side are the little guys who need liquidity that is provided by investors in intellectual property [who then enforce rights just like big companies.] and are crucial to keeping America's competitive advantage over much of the world.
On the other side are the big guys who have powerful lobbyists, access to expensive lawyers and tons of staying power called money and seek to perpetuate their market power by using their existing entrenched technologies in combination with new technologies in many cases obtained by ignoring third party patent rights.
It's never been a fair fight between big and small- that's why the Framers enshrined the principle of protecting individual inventors in our most basic and important governing document for the benefit of society at large.
How can you tell a real Venture Investor from your neighbor?
They very likely look alike. They may even have been roommates at college and grown up next door to each other on Ohio farms. They both are good talkers; each is bright and personable. One of them is VP in the local bank with a solid career ahead, while the other just seems to float around, in and out of town, and does nothing to hide the evidence of his rolling in big bucks. They are married to twin sisters, daughters of the local Episcopal minister.
Which one would you trust with a 20 percent piece of your recent inheritance of $500,000? Your aim is to invest with the goal of an outsized return to help round out your retirement plans for 20 years out. You have read that venture investing is really the only way to make big money unless you are your own genius.
What questions do you need to ask? And, what credence can you attach to the answers?
FIRST, how do you sort out actual evidence of trust from normal human instinct and judgment? Start by tamping down any sense you have from superficial factors.
The floater appears to be the more successful guy and often the best thing to do is follow a winner. But, you do not really know how, or even if, he was so successful. Even he tells you, his answer will be "complicated" and probably impossible to verify
The local banker is surely a solid and reliable guy but he makes little local loans and not much else. What could he know about venture investing?
The floater appears to be a winner; the banker appears to be solid and prudent.
Call it a draw so far.
SECOND, what questions can you ask to draw out what they know, think and are prejudiced about?
Try "What do you consider critical considerations in making an investment for me?" and "Are your interests and mine aligned?"
The floater says the key is the skill of the entrepreneurs who run the companies he invests in and although your $100,000 is below his normal minimum investment, he will make an exception and take you in. Your interests are exactly aligned, he assures you, because he has his own money in the same fund. and he makes several investments to spread the risks.
The banker says a key is skill of the entrepreneurs AND the odds of getting a major return if a bet works out well. He points out that there are two ways to make ten times your money: [1] from 1-10; the other [2] from 10-100 — the difference is how early one becomes an investor. If one gets in at 1 there is a chance to get to 100, so look for early stage investments. His bank may not do this but he can help you find funds and the bank does not take fees, so they are completely objective. He also said one has to be aware of the cost of management fees and 'carried" interests (share of profits), which give managers of venture funds a BIG advantage over their investors over time, even if they have their own money in the funds too.
Now you have some reasons to be concerned about the floater: he did not mention fees or carried interests at all and he seemed more concerned about risk spreading – which is good but probably helps the managers more than the investors because a mediocre return is better for managers who get fees too.
The banker makes solid sense about better odds that go with early stage investing and having the potential for higher returns. And, he has no stake – either success or failure– in what he might recommend which seems wise
OK, which way do I go?
Then an inspiration springs into your mind: ask the floater to advise me about the banker's suggestion and the banker to advise me about the floater's fund.
Let them duke it out a bit, listen and then decide.


For small restaurants, the cost of food purchases is often tracked directly as Cost of Goods Sold, which is a sub-category of expenses. While many small businesses can get a reasonably accurate calculation of their costs using this method, most locations will get better results by tracking inventory.
When you purchase food, it does not immediately count as an expense in accounting terms. It is considered inventory—an asset—until you sell it. Once you sell the food, it is no longer an asset, and becomes a cost of sales.
If you have a small location with minimal food storage, and at the end of every week you have empty shelves and freezers, you can probably get away with skipping the inventory, and recording purchases as an expense. Because every week, the amount of food you buy is roughly equal to the amount of food you use.
But if the amount of inventory you have on hand can vary from week to week, you will need to track your inventory to have an accurate picture of your usage. If you stocked up on supplies that week, your purchases were higher than your usage, and if you depleted a full stock, then your purchases were lower than your usage.
In that case, your purchases of food inventory should be recorded as "inventory", not "cost of goods sold". That means you will need to periodically add another entry in your accounting system, to move value out of Inventory, into Cost of Goods Sold.
If you want to run profit and loss reports more often than you count inventory, you will need to calculate a percentage of sales, and transfer that amount of inventory to costs. For example, if your target for food cost is 35%, for every $100 in sales you would record a transfer out of inventory, into costs, of $35.
If you do a physical inventory as often as you print reports, you can just enter an adjustment each time, rather than entering estimated percentages.
In either case, you will need to periodically do a physical inventory of your stock. You will need to calculate the estimated value of all the inventory you have on hand as of that date. In your accounting system, you should be able to show the current value of the inventory accounts, as of the same date. If your calculated value from your physical inventory is different from the current value in the accounting system, you then enter a transfer to make up the difference.
If you use the method of entering a percentage of sales as inventory transfers, and you often have to enter adjustments to lower the total inventory after a physical count, then the percentage of sales you are calculating is lower than what you are actually using.
To make your reports more accurate in between inventory cycles, you would need to increase the percentage you are calculating from sales to transfer from inventory to costs. Ideally, of course, you can nail down the reason your food costs are higher than you expected, but that's beyond an accounting issue.
This entry was posted in Articles on October 19, 2012 by jgbreeden.


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Q: jQuery - TimeAgo Highlight Numbers I am using TimeAgo jQuery plugin.
How can I highlight only numbers in TimeAgo  tag?
Format should look like

Online Demo

HTML

July 17, 2008

jQuery

$("abbr.timeago").timeago();

CSS

abbr span{font-weight:bold;color:red;}

A: I just had the same issue/wish for those who need the solution here it is:
if you open the jquery.timeago.js
there is a section strings:
 strings: {
    prefixAgo: null,
    prefixFromNow: null,
    suffixAgo: "geleden",
    suffixFromNow: "vanaf nu",
    inPast: 'elk moment',
    seconds: "minder dan een minuut",
    minute: "ongeveer een minuut",
    minutes: "%d minuten",
    hour: "ongeveer een uur",
    hours: "ongeveer %d uren",
    day: "een dag",
    days: "%d dagen",
    month: "ongeveer een maand",
    months: "%d maanden",
    year: "ongeveer een jaar",
    years: "%d jaren",
    wordSeparator: " ",
    numbers: []
  }

in this case I've translated it to dutch and made it bold, you could jut use a span and style it.
time.timeago > span{ color:red;}

last point to change is change the following line (194)
From:
$(this).text(inWords(data.datetime));
To:
$(this).html(inWords(data.datetime));

hope this helps.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Latest Securities regulation News
BEIJING (AP) — Trading starts Monday on a Chinese stock market for high-tech companies that play a key role in official development plans that are straining relations with Washington. Regulators have approved 25 companies in information technology and other fields seen by communist leaders as a path to...
Advocates hope Illinois private detention ban sparks change
CHICAGO (AP) — Far from the southern border crisis, Illinois has launched a bullish effort to undercut the Trump administration's immigration detention practices, and politicians and activists are taking note. The state recently enacted a first-of-its kind ban on privately-run immigration detention, as...
NY expands pay equity law on day honoring US soccer team
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York state expanded a state law Wednesday that prohibits gender pay discrimination, making it illegal to pay someone less based on characteristics including race, religion, disability or gender identity. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the changes into law in Manhattan, just...
SEC to require brokers only to reveal financial conflicts
WASHINGTON (AP) — Stockbrokers will have to divulge their potential conflicts of interest to clients when they give them investment advice under action taken Wednesday by federal regulators. The regulation adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission will also require brokerages to eliminate sales...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


AAAClean has worked in numerous commercial premises throughout Ashford, Kent, restoring dirty carpets and leaving them as good as new. No matter the size of your business premises, we have the high-powered commercial grade equipment that's required for yielding excellent results for commercial carpet cleaning Ashford.
If you own or rent a business premises you will know that stained and tired carpets, through heavy footfall, spillages and day-to-day accidents, are part and parcel of your business. It is therefore very important to make sure your carpets are cleaned regularly. You want to promote your business in the right way and clean carpets will play a large part in that.
At AAAClean we have the cleaning equipment, skilled technicians and industry experience required to properly clean heavily soiled carpets. Don't think your carpets need to be replaced just because they're tired and dirty. Our Ashford commercial carpet cleaning operatives are fully qualified and have the skills needed to bring your carpets back to life.
Having your carpets cleaned on a consistent basis is the most effective way of keeping them in tip-top condition. We can visit your Ashford premises and give you a free quote – which is valid for up to six months'. The commercial carpet cleaning equipment we use will have your carpets dry within two to four hours'. Because of the nature of your business, we can work in your premises at whatever time is convenient for you – overnight if the case maybe.
We cover the whole of Ashford, Kent and the South East of England, but we have worked further afield. Wherever you may be located, if you require our services please contact us today.
We are an established commercial carpet cleaning Ashford business who strives to set the highest standards. We want all of customers' to be happy with our service so they continue to use us.
We clean carpets for hotels, B&B's and guesthouses in Ashford. Carpet cleaning for hotels is a vital service your hotel should undertake on a regular basis. Hotels and guesthouses have high traffic areas and a large footfall making cleaning your hotel carpets an essential service that keeps paying visitors happy.
Pubs, bars and nightclubs require regular commercial carpet cleaning due to the very nature of the establishment. Food and drink stains are very common in pubs and bars and our commercial carpet cleaning machines and spotting solutions are perfect to restore your pubs carpets back to their original form.
It's no surprise that restaurants and cafe's should have their carpets professionally cleaned on a regular basis by a commercial carpet cleaning company. Our Kent and East Sussex commercial carpet cleaners can remove stains like red wine, ketchup, coffee, tea, tomatoes, gravy and curry from your restaurant carpets.
Serviced offices, office blocks and workplaces get heavy footfall on a daily basis. Tenants move in and move out once their term is up and its important to have your serviced office carpet cleaned ready for the next tenant. We can clean your office carpet, upholstery and apply stain protection at a small extra charge.
Care home and nursing home carpet cleaning services throughout Kent and East Sussex. We can remove all manner of stains and soling from your care home or nursing home carpets including: Urine, faeces, blood, tea, coffee, ink and many other stains. We can visit your care home and provide a quote free of charge.
Commercial carpet and upholstery cleaning services for doctors surgeries, dentists and other clinics is a very popular carpet cleaning service from AAAClean. With hundreds of people visiting your surgery or clinic on a weekly basis it's imperative to keep your surgery clean and tidy for your patients.
Conference centres and meeting rooms should have their carpets and upholstery cleaned on a regular basis. Thousands of people visit meeting rooms each year, which creates heavy soiling in carpet. We can clean your conference centre or meeting room to the highest of standards and apply protection for future soiling too.
We clean all types of carpets and upholstery for government buildings, libraries, city halls, courthouses, embassy's and consulates. Our powerful hot water extraction cleaning process guarantees excellent results and extremely quick drying time ensuring buildings can be back in use within a matter of hours, not days.


Make this shredded cabbage as a typical Japanese side dish. It offers a freshness to cut through the richness of tonkatsu or other fried Japanese dishes... The shredded cabbage is mixed with salt, at the rate of about 3 tablespoons salt to every 5 pounds of shredded cabbage. Packing the cabbage into the jar firmly allows the salt to begin drawing the juices from the cabbage. Once the crock is filled, the liquid leeched from the cabbage leaves should cover the cabbage. Place a plate and weight on top to keep the cabbage submerged in the brine.
Get new ideas for how to cook cabbage! Browse more than 740 recipes for fried cabbage, stuffed cabbage, cabbage soup, and more. Browse more than 740 recipes for fried cabbage, stuffed cabbage, cabbage soup, and more. how to make slimw with borax You'll need to cook the cabbage leaves for this recipe. It is very easy to do and you can make it a night before, or while prepping and cooking the sauce. It is very easy to do and you can make it a night before, or while prepping and cooking the sauce.
Cook the cabbage on high power for four to six minutes. Stir and then cook for another four to six minutes or until the cabbage is tender but slightly undercooked. Check the progress often because the total cooking time varies depending on the strength of your microwave. Cooking time for shredded cabbage is slightly less -- usually about five minutes. how to soften cabbage leaves to make cabbage rolls Sweet potato glass noodles stir fry with shredded cabbage-another super yummy and simple dish, easy to prepare but bring a big flavor. We are using glass noodles again today.
How to Make Shredded Cabbage Vada. Soak the rice and dals separately for about 5 hours. Drain out the water and grind finely. Mix in the rest of the above ingredients and form into round cutlets and deep fry to a golden brown colour.
While the onions are sautéing, finely shred one head of red cabbage (about 2 lbs. or 6-8 cups shredded) and thinly slice one granny smith apple. Add them to the pot along with 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/4 cup water, 1/2 tsp and 1/2 tsp salt.
This Shredded Cabbage Salad with Apples has a RIDICULOUSLY creamy curry dressing! It's an healthy, paleo and whole30 side dish that everyone will love! It's an healthy, paleo and whole30 side dish that everyone will love!


Cambuild Ltd. Refurbishment, renovation and extensions.
Waterside & Back Lane, Ely.
Full refurbishment of existing building to provide additional & updated accommodation for Fellows & Students – Trinity College, Cambridge.
Refurbishment of Existing Block of Period 4 Shops/Offices and Flats. Creation of 16 Graduate Bed Spaces with communal facilities.
Conversion of two 17th century cottages into one dwelling. Kitchen & bathroom extension & full refurbishment.
4 bedroom detached, bay fronted house – located in a conservation area and front elevation is faced with "Carrstone Slips".
Total refurbishment including repair and replace lime hair wall and ceiling plaster, new and refurbished fireplaces, overhaul sash windows etc.
Cambuild Ltd. are Building Contractors who were established in 1992 and whilst we undertake all types of building work we specialise in structural alteration, refurbishment, renovation and extension of listed buildings and period properties in the Cambridgeshire area.
We offer a complete service from foundations to floor finishes and work includes: major structural alterations, projects with difficult access conditions, working with traditional materials such as lime mortars, lime hair plaster, lath and plaster ceilings, stone cills and lintels. Our own skilled trades also install hand-cut roofs and all types of purpose made joinery & we also provide lead, copper, slate and peg tile roof coverings.
Generally our contract values are upwards from £50,000 to £1M. Our, Clients include Jesus, Peterhouse, Trinity, Clare, Kings, Gonville & Caius and Corpus Christi Colleges in Cambridge & also Ely Cathedral.
Our Company has been independently vetted by CHAS for Health & Safety compliance.
Our Managing Director Steve Cornwell is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Building and is CSCS certified for health and safety as a professionally qualified person.
We offer a professional service & have never completed a contract late.
How to contact Cambuild Ltd.
Copyright 2016 - Cambuild Ltd.


With the financial industry suffering from data deluge, the IT departments of retail banks are inevitably feeling the pressure. Retail banks have a particularly high data usage and the repercussions of their services and systems failing are serious, not only in terms of reputational damage but also due to increasingly complex compliance requirements.
Four key megatrends are transforming the type of connectivity retail banks need; the competitive landscape, customers' expectations, virtualisation of IT assets and regulatory changes.
Retail banking has gone through a digital transformation in recent years. Rather than being adapted to fit the current market, modern banks' core banking systems and branch networks are likely to be much more flexible, built with stringent compliance requirements in mind, and their online, mobile and social channels are more likely to be user-friendly.
Paul Thomalla, MD of software house, ACI Worldwide, told the FT around the time of the RBS fine that 'the antiquated IT infrastructure of many of our biggest financial institutions is a ticking time bomb which requires surgery and not just a sticking plaster'. Indeed, there has been a large connection between system upgrade failures and legacy technology infrastructure, making it vital that retail banks handle this carefully but rapidly in order to maintain a competitive edge.
Today, customers have zero tolerance for downtime and expect their bank to be keeping pace with the mobile generation, without fail. While ATM's were becoming mainstream 25 years ago, 24/7 online banking on smartphones and tablets has become the new norm. It's not just a case of checking balances online either, customers expect to be able to make important transactions online, which the network needs to support.
Retail banking has also been transformed by social media. Not only is it a source of information, it is now also a method to resolve problems. In the future, it may even provide the opportunity for banks to cross-sell their services. Indeed, big data analytics could provide insight on emerging consumer trends to inform strategy and enable traditional retail banks to maintain their dominance in the industry.
Meeting these consumer service demands, while being reliable and secure is a must for retail banks, but the level of data and systems involved can make achieving this a challenge. High-capacity, ultra-resilient networks are the only way to ensure that connectivity is fast and reliable.
The IT department itself is also changing as the efficiency improvements enabled by emerging technologies continue to carve out a competitive advantage for banks. While virtualisation and cloud technologies are used in the front and middle offices of many organisations and their data centres, orchestration technologies can be the most disruptive to the underlying network infrastructure.
Orchestration allows retail banks to allocate processing requirements between virtual servers housed across multiple data centres, therefore optimising compute power. This makes delivering multichannel services and the use of big data far more cost-efficient and reliable. It does present challenges, however, due to the greater amount of capacity, performance and flexibility required by the network. In fact, some legacy infrastructures simply can't deliver this level of performance and an attempt at better orchestration could jeopardise business continuity.
For many retail banks, flawless integration with a network that's able to scale and perform at the level now required, requires a considerable change to the network itself. This type of network would be able to cope with fluctuating demand and ensure that the advantages of newer technologies can be harnessed, rather than them overloading the network. In many cases, this requires a complete switch to incorporate fast and reliable optical and Ethernet services.
The financial industry has to satisfy stringent regulatory restrictions and retail banks must keep compliance front-of-mind with every change in process or technology implementation.
This in itself puts pressure on the network as ensuring and then proving compliance means vast amounts of information is continually crossing the network. What's more, for those retail banks that operate internationally, the number of regulations that have to be adhered to are multiplied for every country. It's not just processes and data handling that needs to comply with legislation either, the network itself and the data centre portfolio also needs to meet certain criteria.
Compliance largely depends on how effective, efficient and well-integrated a managed infrastructure is, making a well-designed network critical to a retail bank's ability to comply.
To cope with these four megatrends, retail banks must achieve seven key attributes in their network: accessibility, dependability, affordability, availability, scalability, security and responsiveness. Ensuring access will mean that services won't suffer due to network issues, regardless of the level of customer requests. Dependability will keep customers happy, while ensuring that legislation is adhered to when it comes to delivering a certain level of service. Affordability is important to keeping a retail bank competitive and equally significant is the availability of digital services and the ability to be responsive, in order for customers to o get the best service possible. Retail banks must be prepared for further change, making scalability critical to a well performing network. Last but not least, good security – both cyber and physical – is essential for compliance, social responsibility and to keep reputation intact.
Retail banking has changed; an 'anytime, anywhere' service is now expected and it's critical that infrastructures can adapt to these ongoing changes. The network plays a role in almost all transformations of the retail bank and it is therefore absolutely critical that it is prioritised every step of the way.


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Q: Problem with using getline and strtok together in a program  In the below program , I intend to read each line in a file into a string , break down the string and display the individual words.The problem I am facing is , the program now outputs only the first line in the file. I do not understand why this is happening ?
#include<iostream>
#include<string>
#include<fstream>
#include<cstdio>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
    ifstream InputFile("hello.txt") ;
    string store ;
    char * token;

    while(getline(InputFile,store))
    {
        cout<<as<<endl;
        token = strtok(&store[0]," ");
        cout<<token;
        while(token!=NULL)
        {
        token = strtok(NULL," ");
        cout<<token<<" ";
        }

    }

}

A: I'm new to C++, but I think an alternative approach could be:
while(getline(InputFile, store))
{
    stringstream line(store); // include <sstream>
    string token;

    while (line >> token)
    {
        cout << "Token: " << token << endl;
    }
}

This will parse your file line-by-line and tokenise each line based on whitespace separation (so this includes more than just spaces, such as tabs, and new lines).

A: Well, there is a problem here.  strtok() takes a null-terminated string, and the contents of a std::string are not necessarily null-terminated.
You can get a null-terminated string from a std::string by calling c_str() on it, but this returns a const char* (i.e., the string is not modifiable).  strtok() takes a char* and modifies the string when it is called.
If you really want to use strtok(), then in my opinion the cleanest option would be to copy the characters from the std::string into a std::vector and the null-terminate the vector:
std::string s("hello, world");
std::vector<char> v(s.begin(), s.end());
v.push_back('\0');

You can now use the contents of the vector as a null-terminated string (using &v[0]) and pass that to strtok().
If you can use Boost, I'd recommend using Boost Tokenizer.  It provides a very clean interface for tokenizing a string.

A: What James McNellis says is correct.
For a quick solution (though not the best), instead of
string store

use
const int MAX_SIZE_LINE = 1024; //or whatever value you consider safest in your context.
char store[MAX_SIZE_LINE];


The Venetian Book of the Dead: song-by-song notes by Kevin Hewick. 2.
Then Alessandro told me the next album was going to be music inspired by the tragedy of the workers in the vinyl factories of Mestre who had been exposed to deadly chemicals and contracted cancers as a result. Though it had been known by 1973 that they were working in lethal conditions their employers did nothing to alert them and it was effectively covered up until the 1990's.
This wasn't just something from the TV or a newspaper article - within the Unfolk collective (including Alessandro himself) fathers, mothers and other relatives and friends had died or were seriously ill as a result of this needless disaster, one that could have been prevented with actions finally taken too late for so many..
At first I didn't know how I could do justice to such a difficult subject matter, one that was so personal to the people there in Mestre - but I had my own recent raw grief over the loss of my mother in 2007 and the devastating impact that her death had on my own family - so I got to thinking I could project some of that into this idea and merge our collective sorrows into something real and convincing.
I did say this is so close to all of you can't you or somebody write Italian lyrics about it but Alessandro said they wanted English words for the meaning and message to reach a wider international audience, and so in August 2008 he sent me a lot of versions and mixes for the album. It was a stunning progression from his first collection and a vast body of work.


text:
Md Ashraful Alam
Digital Finance Forum Bangladesh
Ashraful is a career development finance professional with more than 25+ years of experience in delivering results in the private, public, and development sector. He spent his career designing and implementing development projects and programs with a particular focus on financial inclusion, regulation, MSME and entrepreneurship development, Digital Economy, and Digital Financial Services. He spent 15+ years of his career as a financial sector regulator and supervisor and has also worked at UNCDF as a Country Coordinator for Bangladesh. During his 4 years tenure with UNCDF he worked in identifying the intersection of technology and market-based business models focusing on the bottom of the pyramid population, smallholder farmers, women, and micro and small enterprises (MSEs) as clients.
Ashraful also held a position with the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), where he was a working group chair and represented Bangladesh in global forums on MSME development and financial Inclusion. He's worked on public-private sector collaborations, including with the SME Foundation in Bangladesh, and established a platform for promoting inclusive digital economy development whilst at UNCDF.
Ashraful has a strong understanding and demonstrated ability in financial sector regulation, regulatory reform, policy advocacy, innovation, and digital financial inclusion. He has an MBA in Finance, BSc (Hons) in Natural Resources Management, is a Certified Digital Finance Practitioner from Digital Frontiers Institute (DFI), and a fellow of the Fletcher School Leadership Program for Financial Inclusion from the Fletcher School at the Tufts University, USA. He is also DFI's Asia Regional Community of Practice Facilitator for Financial Regulators and Supervisors. He was awarded Bangladesh Bank Gold Medal, judged the best employee in one category, and received an AFI Award in 2015.
Ashraful currently focuses on Inclusive Digital Economy development, market-based innovations, MSMEs development with a particular focus on women, and data driven decision making in the financial services space.
Sarah Corley
Alliance of Digital Finance Associations
Sarah is CEO of the Alliance of Digital Finance Associations and Divisional Director at Digital Frontiers where she heads the Community and Professional Development Division. Sarah has over 20 years' experience in leading capacity building, community development and knowledge management focused on facilitating change. She has an MA in HR Management, BSc in Psychology and spent the first ten years of her career delivering training and team building for individuals and teams before moving into organisational development, strategy, and transformation.
Her current focus is catalysing the development of the digital finance profession. Sarah led the formation of national associations in thirteen countries in Africa and Asia. She was instrumental in bringing peers together and supporting them through writing constitutions, developing a brand, legally registering, attracting members, and implementing actions to make impact in their countries. She also facilitates a variety of activities to ensure the continual development of digital finance professionals through webinars, podcasts, blogs, a cultivated knowledge bank and a highly engaged LinkedIn group.
She then went on to found the Alliance of Digital Finance Associations, the collective voice leading the inclusive digital finance profession, with membership including the above national associations. The Alliance is facilitating the exchange of best practice and driving innovation and inclusion. The Alliance has already received interest from well-known global organisations wishing to join or partner.
She also created the Pathway to 17 Summit brand, and successfully delivered its first e-conference. She is now working on options for growth including bringing new streams of content relating to the SDGs and income generation through sponsorship.
Previous projects include increasing the operational efficiency, staff and patient satisfaction in various NHS departments whilst simultaneously reducing costs and supporting an NGO in Nigeria pivot in their business model to provide stability in income and change in organisational leadership and culture. She was also Director of an award-winning volunteer tourism business operating across multiple countries.
João Gaspar
FINTECH.MZ – Mozambique Fintech Association
João Gaspar has over 35 years of experience in the design, implementation, and management of business and services in the sectors of telecommunications, information systems, digital banking, and electronic payments. He worked for 16 years in Sociedade Interbancária de Serviços (SIBS), the Portuguese interbank switch, as director of the systems department and responsible for the ATM, POS, and interbank network as well as the international connections with SWIFT, VISA, and other interbank processors in Europe. He worked for 8 years for Portugal Telecom as Head of Outsourcing Business, a unit created to manage the top corporate banking service contracts in the country.
Since 2009 João has been a consultant for digital financial services and payment systems in the African continent where he developed several projects for the Department of Payment Systems of Bank de Angola. For Banco de Moçambique he worked as a senior consultant team leader in the strategic definition and implementation procedures for the new national interbank switch.
In the past 6 years, he has conducted DFS consulting projects for FSD Mozambique, Boston Consulting Group, World Bank, and Finance for Impact, in the areas of interoperability, DFS regulations, business models and tariffs, mobile money payment platform for MSMEs in Angola, assessment, and evaluation of a financial inclusion framework program in Mozambique, just to mention a few.
Residing in Maputo since 2013, João is currently CEO and founder of Paytek-Africa, the first licensed Fintech in the country, and chairperson of the Mozambique FinTech Association. He is also a member of the Digital Financial Services working group of the National Financial Inclusion Strategy, and Digital Frontiers Institute's Community of Practice Facilitator for Mozambique.
João has a degree in Electronic Engineering and Telecommunications from the Higher Institute of Engineering in Lisbon, having several specialization courses in technology and business leadership, namely in Digital Financial Services. He holds a Certified Digital Finance Practitioner certification from Digital Frontiers Institute certified by The Fletcher School at Tufts University, USA.
João defines itself as an active promoter of behavioural transformation for the implementation of a digital economy supported by innovation, open access, and low-cost services to increase financial inclusion, and the elimination of social and gender gaps, thus contributing to a significant increase in the population's quality of life.
Jason Lamb
Deputy Director on the Financial Services for the Poor initiative at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Jason Lamb is a Deputy Director on the Financial Services for the Poor initiative at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He leads the teams' engagement in key focus countries across East and West Africa, and South and South-East Asia. During his tenure at the Gates Foundation, he has served as Board Member and Board Chair of the Better Than Cash Alliance; Board Member of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion and ExCom Member and Chair for CGAP. Prior to joining the foundation in 2009, Jason spent six years at Washington Mutual Bank where he managed the Consumer Checking portfolio. Jason gained his initial experience in the financial sector and emerging economies during his seven years at McKinsey & Company, where he spent time advising banks in Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, and North America. He was a founding member of the McKinsey Budapest office. Jason holds a BA in Economics and History from the University of California, Davis and an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
Jason is delighted to serve on the board of the Alliance for Digital Finance Associations. As FinTech becomes an important contributor to economic opportunity and financial inclusion, there is a need to ensure that it drives equitable and inclusive access to those outside the formal sector such that they can capture new economic opportunities that will help lift them from poverty. Digital Finance Associations have the opportunity to play an important role to advocate for an open ecosystem that lowers the cost to serve customers while ensuring that the most vulnerable are protected.
Juliet Munro
Director of Digital Economy at FSD Africa
Juliet is a development professional with over 20 years' experience in Africa, primarily in financial sector development. She is currently Director, Digital Economy at FSD Africa, responsible for building and overseeing a portfolio of impactful programmes at the nexus of finance, technology and climate. In this role, she is particularly interested in the role that technology and finance can play in improving household resilience and livelihood opportunities and in strengthening economic value chains and enabling green-economic transformation more broadly.
Before taking up this role in 2021, Juliet held other positions at FSD Africa since 2013, overseeing initiatives that cut across various financial sector sectors and themes. One such initiative was Digital Frontiers Institute which FSD Africa co-funded the establishment of and which led, among other things, to the creation of the Alliance of Digital Finance Associations. She therefore has an intimate appreciation of the origin and purpose of the Alliance and is delighted to continue to support its work as a member of its Board.
Before FSD Africa, Juliet's other roles included overseeing FinMark Trust's work in Zambia and managing the Zambia office of a regional private sector development consulting firm. She holds a Master's degree from the University of Cheltenham and Gloucester, U.K. and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Liverpool, U.K. She is married with two children and is based in Zambia, where she has lived for the past 26 years.
Rob Ashley Madziva
The Association of Digital Finance Practitioners (ADFP) Tanzania
Rob has over 20 years' business development and consultancy experience at C-suite level in Digital Financial Services, Payments, Oil & Gas, Banking, Media & Entertainment, Telecoms, Agriculture, Health, and Public Sectors across 20 African Markets. After working in the corporate world for over 15 years, Rob founded Digital Mobile Africa (DMA) Limited after seeing the opportunities for impact and growth in Africa lay in the Financially excluded, especially in rural areas where Agriculture is the biggest economic activity with a potential for changing lives. DMA is a data-driven last mile FinTech for Smallholder Agribusiness, MSME Retail Merchant and Regional Payments Specialist Consulting Company.
Rob is the Chief Strategist and Executive Director for DMA's growth opportunities, leading business units, payments solutions strategy, digital product development, partner/vendor/regulator relations management and retail merchant acquisition. DMA has successfully acquired 8000 merchants, a base of 600,000 smallholder farmers and has over 20% active rate in a market new to cashless payments. He deployed a social banking platform for the food and agriculture ecosystem and established a farmer support services marketplace. DMA has continued to set the pace for Rural ecommerce and financial services access in Tanzania, investment has been secured and are now on a journey to bring interoperable payments and credit to agricultural value chains.
He is also pioneer Board member for the Association of Digital Finance Practitioners (ADFP) Tanzania, a member of the Tanzania Startup Association (TSA), and a member of the Mojaloop Product Council.
As a DFS Consultant, Rob focuses on supporting innovative and game changing initiatives that have great potential to drive business growth and access to life changing services to the underserved masses. He is a strong believer in Digital/Mobile Innovation as a potent catalyst to rapid economic growth, Financial Inclusion, International Development, Sustainability and Eradication of Poverty in Emerging Markets, especially for Sub-Saharan Product Management, Sales, Business Development, Agribusiness and SME Value Added Services, Project Partnership Management.
Rob Holds a Bachelor of Science, International Agribusiness Management from Royal Agricultural University and a Master of Computing Science Postgraduate Degree from Staffordshire University, UK. Rob owes his humble level of success and learnings to a wide network of mentors, advisors, and family support.
Camilo Tellez-Merchan
Better Than Cash Alliance at United Nations
Camilo is the Deputy Managing Director at the Better Than Cash Alliance, an UN-based partnership of over 80 governments, companies and international organizations that accelerates the global transition from cash to digital payments in order to drive inclusive growth and reduce poverty. At the Better Than Cash Alliance, he oversees global innovation and thought leadership, supporting members in Asia and Latin America in their efforts to build digital economies. Prior to joining the Alliance, Camilo held positions in the area of digital financial services for over 15 years at the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP); the World Bank; GSMA in London; the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, and at Microsoft Labs in Bangalore. Camilo holds degrees from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Sciences Po Paris.
Lito Villanueva
Fintech Alliance.ph
Lito Villanueva is the Executive Vice President, Chief Innovation and Inclusion Officer of RCBC. Concurrently, he is the Chief Digital Transformation Advisor for the Yuchengco Group of Companies, one of the oldest conglomerates in Asia. He is also the founding chairperson of Fintech Alliance.ph, the Philippines' largest organization of digitally enabled companies that generates over 90% of FinTech-initiated transactions volume in the country today.
He is the Philippines' leading and award-winning thought leader on digital transformation and inclusive digital finance, with over 20 years of experience in banking, telecommunications, payments, development finance, advisory, regtech, and financial technology. In the span of his career, he has covered over 30 markets in Asia, Europe, Middle East, and Africa with his various roles in the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Land Bank of the Philippines, PLDT-Smart Communications, Voyager Innovations, PayMaya, International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group, and Visa. He changed the game by helping enable regulations in collaboration with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), which promoted interoperability through the national retail payments system and made digital finance more inclusive through the adoption of a national strategy for financial inclusion and introduction of basic deposit accounts. As a digital inclusion and transformation advocate, he institutionalized the country's first code of conduct and code of ethics, providing a wider industry framework towards greater consumer protection in partnership with all regulators.
He has merited over 70 global and regional awards for championing innovations on financial inclusion and scaling digital initiatives for the unbanked and underserved. These accolades include being named one of the Top 100 FinTech Leaders in Asia, Mr. Fintech of the Philippines by BizNewsAsia, as Chief Innovation of the Year by the London-based The Banker, and among the Top 100 Filipinos on LinkedIn in 2021.
He released various publications including The Uncharted Beyond: The Taxonomy of FinTech in the Philippines and the award-winning three volumes of the Inclusive Digital Finance Report. He is Chair of the Alliance of Digital Finance Associations, is a member of the Inclusion Executive Committee of the Global Impact FinTech (GIFT) Forum, Singapore-based AIBP Advisory Board, and the Management Association of the Philippines. He is also the founding president of the BSP Governor Nestor A. Espenilla Jr. Institute for Growth towards National Inclusion, Transformation, and Empowerment (IGNITE).
He finished the Cambridge Intellect Leadership Programme in 2019 on Digital Transformation by Design at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School Executive Education in UK. He earned two graduate degrees: Master of Arts in public administration with magna cum laude honours from the University of Santo Tomas (UST), and Master in National Security Administration from the National Defence College of the Philippines as a state scholar, and its youngest graduate, thus far. His undergraduate degree is in political science also in UST.
Diana Akullu Wanyama
BOARD SECRETARIAT
Intervention Manager – Market Infrastructure at FSD Uganda
Diana has over 11 years' experience in Commercial banking and Technology. She is an expert in digital finance, product and project management, IT, and customer experience. She has been at the helm of intersecting business needs with technology demands and providing measurable results. She excels at forging partnerships with vendors and key stakeholders to ensure regular engagement and to develop specific solutions to market problems.
Diana is the current Chairperson and one of the founders of the Digital Frontiers Association (DFA) Uganda which fosters collaboration between all the stakeholders in the Digital Finance ecosystem. DFA influences policy and product innovation that fosters financial inclusion as a key enabler for social economic transformation and focusing on the underserved. Diana was also a member of the Steering Committee, the body that led the formation of the Alliance of Digital Finance Associations.
She is an author and speaker, having had pieces published in magazines including from the Uganda Institute of Banking and Financial Services, and regularly discussing digital financial services and financial inclusion at events in Uganda. She also played a pivotal role in ensuring successful collaboration of stakeholders including the regulator, suppliers, and consumers on the topic of interoperability of digital payments in the African markets and coordinated inter-country discussions on how digital economies can help countries recover faster post covid.
Diana is currently Manager, Contact Centre at dfcu Bank where she is driving digital transformation in customer experience through digitizing the customer journey to both lower costs to serve and ensure that the customer interaction with these channels is smooth, convenient and hassle free. She has spearheaded the roll out of dfcu Bank Uganda's innovative online banking platform, agency banking and has previously held roles in the bank's IT department and E-banking department.
Diana is passionate about digital and transforming the lives of the people around her and her personal mantra is "Make things happen." She has a bachelor's degree in Telecommunications Engineering and is currently pursuing a master's in business administration at the Edinburgh Business School and becoming a Certified Digital Finance Practitioner (CDFP) with Digital Frontiers Institute and Tufts University.


Durlston Castle and Country Park is the ideal location for your function, whether it be your wedding, a family gathering or a party, we can cater for your needs. Let the Castle be the stunning backdrop to your event, with the Gallery for larger functions and the Belvedere for more intimate gatherings the choice is yours.
Both the Belvedere and the Gallery are available for private hire, please contact a Ranger or email us at durlston@dorsetcc.gov.uk for further details.
The Belvedere room is the ideal venue to wow your guests with sea views on three sides and the woodland treetops on the other. Whether it be a board meeting, a drinks party, a Knight In Shining Armour or Princess Party, being on top of the Castle is bound to impress.
Hire of the Belvedere includes tables and blue chairs, and can include dry wipe board and flip chart if requested in advance. Access to the roof is permitted but not exclusive. Exclusive use of the roof can be requested for an additional fee at the same rates as room hire. Please note that the prices below are for private hire and not for wedding hire due to the cost of licensing the building as a wedding ceremony venue - all weddings must be booked through the wedding planner and are subject to a separate price structure.
2 hour £105, 3 hour £150, 4 hour £195, all day £350 (10am – Castle close: 4 or 5pm).
Evening hire £350 (6pm – 10pm), capacity of 50.
Thinking of a venue to host your anniversary or office party, your AGM or shareholders meeting? The Gallery can host it with style and panache. The venue regularly plays host to music concerts, comedy gigs and lectures so if you are looking for somewhere rather special to host your night, make us your first port of call.
Hire include tables and chairs, screen, sound system, projector and bar if required. Limited availability, contact us for availability and prices. Capacity 150 theatre style, 90 seated for food (including the Cinema room).
The café/restaurant can be booked for private events, please speak to a member of Seventhwave's staff for details or email seventhwaverestaurant@gmail.com Capacity 55 seated at tables.
The Learning Centre activities room is an ideal space for meetings, children's parties or talks. The room is equipped with a digital whiteboard, projector and speakers.
Morning £35 (9am – 1pm), afternoon £35 (1pm – 5pm), evening £100 (6pm – 10pm).
Community group discount rates (£25/£25/£60), capacity 60 theatre style seating.


Welcome to GCS Paving Company of Massachusetts, family owned and operated and serving residential & commercial customers since 1944. We are one of the most trusted and experienced paving contractors in Massachusetts, providing top quality asphalt paving, pavement installations, hot top installations and asphalt paving repair services. Our professional paving services include new pavement installations, new driveway installations, road repairs, sidewalks, tennis court installations and repairs, sealcoating and landscaping. Whether you're a homeowner, builder or facility manager in Massachusetts, turn to GCS Paving Company for driveway paving and parking lot pavement repairs. Please also contact us for commercial snow plowing and snow removal in Massachusetts. We strive to exceed your expectations by delivering top-notch asphalt paving services on budget and on time. Click here to see our Photo Portfolio. Contact GCS Paving Company to learn more about our state-of-the-art porous paving applications which have been created to improve drainage & pavement safety. We are happy to provide references from our customers in Mass.
GCS Paving services commerical and residential customers in Massachusetts. We provide a full range of asphalt paving services, installations & repairs. Please click below to see our portfolio.
GCS Paving provides expert asphalt paving services, installations & repairs in Massachusetts. Please click here to request a free quote.


Bolgatanga, Ghana became Africa's 2nd Fair Trade Town in 2014 and since then has hosted the Bolgatanga International Crafts and Arts Fair (BICAF); an annual trade fair showcasing the talents of the Upper East region's renowned crafts people, the work of artisans across Ghana and the rest of the world. Now in its third year BICAF 2016 will be held from 1st - 4th December at the Jubilee park, Bolgatanga.
BICAF places skilled people from the Upper East and beyond on an international stage, giving them a chance to be recognised for their work. By drawing attention to the 'craft capital' of the North, BICAF also provides the local producers with access to globally competitive markets, aiding the town's economic development in addition to growing global trade links.


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New Knives From the 2023 SHOT Show
January 20, 2023 By Free Range American
SHOT Show isn't just about guns and ammo, it's also one of the biggest venues for new knives and knife companies every year. Almost every major knifemaker shows up as do a whole lot of small bladesmith shops that always have something exciting and ...
TOPS Knives Has Something New for Everyone in 2023
I love TOPS. Nobody does ridiculously large but still functional blades better, and they also have a bevy of practical-sized knives that are built like absolute tanks. What's more, they're all made right in Idaho. Here's what they have in store for ...
The Rise and Fall of Hollow-Handled Survival Knives
June 19, 2022 By Kevin Estela
In 1982, Sylvester Stallone starred in a movie that defined much of his career and introduced a character that would always be associated with a popular and unique style of knife. First Blood is the story of a Vietnam veteran and Green Beret John J. ...
Don't Screw Up Father's Day: Get Dad Cool Stuff He'll Actually Use
June 05, 2022 By Free Range American
Shopping for Father's Day is hard. It's tempting to just get dad a gimmicky barbecue tool that will be used once before getting hung in the garage for the next decade. Or maybe a new pair of Crocs. But, this year, you don't have to be that lame. ...
Tom Brown Tracker: The Knife From 'The Hunted'
Every so often, a movie will make a gun or a knife astonishingly and surprisingly famous. Dirty Harry did it for the Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum revolver, First Blood did it for sawback knives with hollow handles, Crocodile Dundee caused a ...
$2.5K Knives and Cougar Sausages: Meet Master Bladesmith Josh Smith
January 01, 2022 By Noelle Wiehe
Josh Smith held a long blade in his hand. Maybe 18 inches long, it was still black and ragged from the forge, but he had a point he wanted to make. He held it up, so that the group of close to 20 in his shop could get a good look. All were ...
New Pennsylvania Bill Would Decriminalize Automatic Knives
November 23, 2021 By David Maccar
A piece of legislation was recently introduced in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives that would significantly loosen regulations on automatic knives in the state. Rep. Martin Causer introduced HB 1929, which would make the manufacture, ...
Cold Sharp Steel – A Guide To Putting A Razor Edge On Your Knife
November 20, 2021 By Fred Mastison
The cliché exists because it is true. A dull knife is a dangerous knife. When our trusty blade doesn't have the edge, it once did, we tend to force the cut a bit more. Or we simply reduce ourselves to sawing whatever it is we are trying to ...
Borka Blades: Grinding Away at the American Dream
October 23, 2021 By Hank Greenberg
Let's discuss the typical American day. It normally starts out by hitting your local Starbucks and buying that $5 cup of coffee. Drink it all down, and then it's time to hit 24-Hour Fitness before heading into that cushy office job. At ...
Cold Steel Hudson Bay Camp Axe Updates Centuries-Old Design
October 16, 2021 By Ballistic Staff
The axe continues its unlikely comeback as a staple of modern life. From axe throwing to hipster backyards, the axe suddenly finds itself cool again. But hey, we know it never lost its appeal. 'Cause sometimes, you just gotta swing a good axe to get ...
10 Knives That Would Make Crocodile Dundee Proud
July 11, 2021 By Waysun Johnny Tsai
"That's not a knife …" In 1986, Paul Hogan (no kin to Hulk Hogan) uttered quite possibly the most famous quote in the entire knife industry. Indeed, Crocodile Dundee was a man's man (who was manlier than most men). From the Australian Outback, Mr. ...
Knife Steel: What You Need to Know to Choose the Best Blade for You
June 18, 2021 By David Maccar
Choosing a knife steel is one of those things that if you go down that rabbit hole and get super into it, you're certain to form bizarrely strong opinions and develop weird loyalty for certain alloys. A lot of people fumble around with different ...
Straight Razor 101: Everything You Need to Know About Vintage Razors
June 06, 2021 By Sean Chaffin
Alfred Einstein once said he often got his best ideas while shaving. Whether a Nobel Prize winner or just a regular Joe, using an old-fashioned straight razor offers some extra time to ponder the world or even an excellent idea of your own. Men ...
10 Outdoor Survival Skills That Everyone Should Master
May 15, 2021 By Thomas Ray
The finest outdoor equipment in the world is of no value if you don't know how to use it properly. Knowledge of key outdoor survival skills and when to pull them out of the bag trumps the best gear every time. Here are 10 indispensable outdoor ...
Understanding Knives: Blade Shapes
April 30, 2021 By David Maccar
Cutting implements were among the first tools human beings ever created. Throughout history, we've created an impressive number of blade shapes fashioned from bone, stone, and steel. A whole lot of blade shapes have been created over the past few ...
Forging Forward: Lucas O'Hara Finds Success in Blacksmithing
April 12, 2021 By Gabriella Hoffman
Veterans transitioning to civilian life possess many marketable skills, but Lucas O'Hara credits blacksmithing for forging his path to success. On a recent episode of Free Range American with Evan Hafer and Trevor Thompson, the Grizzly Forge ...
Off Script: Free Range Q&A With Dalton Villines, Axe Thrower
April 12, 2021 By Matt Smythe
Dalton Villines could easily be a fan favorite on The Walking Dead. As a matter of fact, the folks at AMC might want to take note ASAP. He'd be as deadly with axes as Daryl is with his crossbow. The Kingston, Arkansas, native and Marine veteran ...
GEAR TEST: The Ultimate Replaceable Blade Knife Test
March 21, 2021 By Cosmo Genova
Sharpening and honing a knife blade is a necessary outdoor skill, but it's hard to beat the convenience, weight, and surgical precision of modern scalpel-like replaceable-blade knives. Many of the most knowledgeable hunters and outdoorsmen have found ...
From Battle to Field: 5 Popular Military Knives That Are Also Great Hunting Knives
March 09, 2021 By Matt Smythe
Every human has the knife-appreciation gene in their blood. We've inherited the recessive trait from our earliest and most inventive hunter-gatherer brethren. While the trait is not expressed in everyone, for those who served in the military or spend ...
Process a Moose Solo: Here are the Tools You'll Need
February 10, 2021 By David Maccar
Trevor Thompson told the Free Range American podcast recently about the time he was able to process a moose by himself on a hunt in British Columbia. He ended up filling his tag with a great bull early in the week, so he had the time and ...
Survival Knife: Understanding Blades
There is no such thing as a survival knife. Knives have been called that and have been marketed that way — as some kind of magical tool that will save your ass in some unlikely situation. But that idea is inherently flawed. Sure, some ...
Bushcraft Knives vs. Survival Knives
October 10, 2020 By David E. Petzal
The terms "bushcraft knife" and "survival knife" probably go back to the 1980s. The first comes from a seminal book by the Canadian survival expert Mors Kochanski. Bushcraft was published in 1987 and is an instruction manual on how to live in the ...
Review: The Tyto 1.1 is a Knife Every Outdoorsman Should Own
December 05, 2019 By Michael Herne
Hunters across the United States head into the wilderness each autumn in search of various game. Aside from their weapon, the most important item that every should hunter carry is a good knife, which allows them to properly care for the meat after ...
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Sandrin TCK 416 Makes a Sharp and Slim EDC Addition
June 17, 2019 By Karen Hunter
Even before the millions of everyday carry (EDC) pocket dump photos started popping up on social media, knives have been a common everyday tool. Young boys receive their first knife as a rite of passage, and more women are becoming acclimated to ...
The Quick Ascent of a World Champion Knife Thrower
December 06, 2018 By Justen Charters
The forest of mostly dead trees sits near the highway in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Syringes and broken bottles litter the landscape. On occasion, you might catch a vagrant cooking some food or a junkie getting his fix. You might also see master ...


We want to serve customers not only in Finland, but all over the world. KotiMai Design was established in April 2016 and we opened our webshop for Finnish customers on August 2016. We are keen to open our shop for European customers and in English as soon as possible, target is beginning of year 2017. We hope you can be patient to wait for that! Meanwhile we are happy to deliver orders to you, you can order via webshop and pay with Everyday or your credit card, please note that the delivery costs are higher for international orders and the delivery cost will be more than in the order. To cover the costs we need to charge you an extra fee for the delivery (approximately 8-15€ addition, depending on the location). Shipping will take 1-2 weeks.
Contact us if you need help and advice, you can also order by emailing: info@kotimai.fi or contact us at Facebook (KotiMai Design).


Ireland and Munster legend Paul O'Connell will be on his way to Offaly in the coming months after an Edenderry school won a training session with the rugby star.
Scoil Bhride in Edenderry won the Aldi Play Rugby grand prize and the result was announced by O'Connell himself through Aldi's Facebook page.
Aldi Play Rugby is a primary schools initiative developed by the IRFU and supported by Aldi. The programme is a fun, non-contact and safe way for kids to get involved in rugby in an enjoyable coaching environment which includes tag, touch and rugby prime.
O'Connell will now attend the school to train the winning class - a once in a lifetime experience for the young students there.


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Q: jQuery on click inside function(global) Why does this jQuery on click function work inside a function(global)? If I move it outside it would work. Could anyone explain a little the function(global) and how to fix this issue ? :D Thanks!
   (function (global) {
        $( "#buttonID" ).click(function() {
          alert( "Button clicked." );
        }.bind(this));
    })(window);

A: As long as the click event registered, no matter where you write, it works. You wrote self executing function and the click registered.


Dual band cell phone signal booster Hi17-EW is a smart and efficient solution for poor signal reception. The system will ensure constant voice service and uninterruptable 3G mobile data throughput at a time!
The model is suitable for large indoor spaces of up to 1000 sq.m. To enlarge the coverage area up to 1500 sq.m. you can add an extra indoor antenna to this model. Strong signal will come equally easily through the walls of a large house, office, parking lot, shop, restaurant, etc. and cover all the area immediately.
Get this booster now and have always great phone and online communication!
*Mind that in order to achieve full performance of your cell phone booster you should have at least 2-3 signal bars outside your house, office, etc. The level of signal enhancement also depends on your building design features.
Displays gain, frequency, and output power to let you keep control over the current working state.
Detects and shows an exact kind of malfunction (ALC or ISO) giving you the cue what is necessary to fix.
Helps to find best point for outdoor antenna mounting basing on the output power value displayed on the screen.
After the booster is on, AGC automatically measures input signal strength and adjusts best system parameters suitable for mobile signal reception conditions in your particular area.
AGC facilitates power control between the base station and a repeater to keep gain at the optimal level. This way HiBoost doesn't overlap mobile network and keeps noise minimized up to zero.
The function lets you thoroughly adjust mobile signal amplification power on your own manually. Recommended for advanced users.
Omni Kit is ideal if it's necessary to provide all round coverage, while Panel Kit is suitable if you need to focus the signal into a particular direction. Choose the one that best meets your needs!
CE - with CE (RED 2014/53/EU) certification, we declare our product's compliance with the requirements of the European health, safety and environmental protection legislation.
RoHS - RoHS directive proves the limitation upon the usage of hazardous materials in HiBoost product and in its components.
ISO 9001-2015 - HiBoost meets ISO 9001-2015 quality management systems standard that sets out the principles basing on strong customer focus, top management involvement and efficiency, consistent product quality improvement.


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Home Mercedes Benz DICV's Oragadam plant start production of BharatBenz and Mercedes-Benz buses
DICV's Oragadam plant start production of BharatBenz and Mercedes-Benz buses
July 14, 2015 | Ayan Ghosh
Added in: Mercedes Benz
Yesterday, the first BharatBenz bus has rolled off the production line at the Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) plant in Oragadam.
BharatBenz buses manufactured at the Oragadam plant will be front-engine for short distance travel targeting school, staff and tourist transportation. The premium segment will be addressed with Mercedes-Benz rear-engine buses for inter-city transportation. The new plant will manufacture buses with gross vehicle weight of 9, 16 and above 16 ton range. The first to roll off the line was a BharatBenz school bus.
With the new multi-axle coach
, DICV is introducing the first 15m bus in India, to be used primarily for intercity applications.
Speaking on the Occasion, Mr. Markus Villinger, Managing Director, Daimler Buses India said, "It is a significant occasion for us as we start production of Made in India buses for the Indian market
at our Oragadam plant. The buses are engineered to provide value to our customers and offer them suitable products with our two brand strategy. We see enormous potential for growth in the market
as the volume of the Indian market
for buses weighing over eight tons is set to double by the year 2020."
After today's start of production of buses, the DICV plant is the only Daimler Trucks plant worldwide to produce trucks, buses and engines with three brands – Mercedes-Benz, BharatBenz and FUSO – under one roof. The bus chassis are rolled out from the same assembly line as that of BharatBenz trucks, as they are technologically similar to the medium-duty BharatBenz trucks, showcasing the flexibility of DICV's assembly lines.
Before the local bus production started, DICV has already started to export its bus chassis from India to Egypt in February, other markets
to follow in future. Because the chassis are technically similar to those of the medium-duty BharatBenz truck, export activities from Chennai started even before the bus plant opened.


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The greatest songs ever. The podcast.
The Hall of Songs
VOTE! The current nominees
What is Hall of Songs?
So, This is Music Before Elvis
On July 8, 1954, Elvis Presley's cover of Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right" first hit the airwaves in Memphis, Tennessee. While the full weight of Elvis wasn't felt across America for another two years, you can draw a clear line in the middle of '54. After this is a music world with Elvis, whose pull was as strong as a deadly tornado, while before it is a vast landscape untouched by ferocious winds. It's a place where sounds could sprout and grow on their own terms. It's a time of innocence and wildness – really anything could happen.
What we've heard during the first three episodes of Hall of Songs is a whole range of sounds, from plaintive and searing country by way of Hank Williams to gashouse rhythm and blues by way of Billy Ward and His Dominoes, and from rousing blues by way of Big Mama Thornton to doo-wop by way of the Crows. This is practically everything in the Anglo West outside of jazz and the traditional pop laid down by the likes of Nat King Cole, Patti Page, and Tony Bennett, but it exists in pockets. There's rhythm and blues in the Deep South, Blues in Chicago, country music in between, and something a bit more polished on either coast. Soon everything will converge, and to many, it does so through Elvis.
That makes this period, the years between 1951 and 54, intimately special. All of the songs we hear in the Hall of Songs nominee pool are held dear by the youth and by Black Americans, by the non-traditional musical tastemakers. They're not pop hits because they're not pop, or in other words, pop hasn't shifted to these genres. That will happen with Bill Haley and especially with Elvis, and then there'll be some pushback in the very late 1950s and early 1960s, just before the Beatles kick down the doors for good. But before all that push and pull there's this small slice of music history, where pioneers like Les Paul and Lloyd Price advance music forward so that the more immortalized giants like Elvis can really thrive.
Once we get to 1954, everything begins to change. The sound that is generally accepted as early rock 'n' roll clarifies. The sound that is generally accepted as soul is born and quickly steps into its own lane. The truth is that these sounds are a lot closer than one thinks, that what we consider rock 'n' roll is actually a great combination of white and Black, of gee-tar and piani. But we've been told that this and that are different, and once 1954 hits, this and that truly start to become this and that.
But that's for future conversations. For now, we can appreciate the experimentation and the raw sounds of hiccupping guitars, bouncy boogie-woogie piano lines, and suggestive vocals not yet ready for prime time.
The music of the very early 1950s is as much enlightening as it is exciting. It's been a pleasure to fall in love with songs like "Sixty Minute Man" and "Night Train." Once Elvis hits, things won't ever be the same, but this small sample here proves that rock 'n' roll was always about underdogs, the overlooked, the underappreciated, and the viscerally adept.
Published by Tim Malcolm
View all posts by Tim Malcolm
Hall of Songs: 20th Election
Which of these songs are the greatest of all-time? Vote for up to ten (10) songs.
"(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," Aretha Franklin (1967)
"Here Comes the Sun," The Beatles (1969)
"You Can't Always Get What You Want," The Rolling Stones (1969)
"Bridge Over Troubled Water," Simon and Garfunkel (1970)
"Ain't No Sunshine," Bill Withers (1971)
"Won't Get Fooled Again," The Who (1971)
"Rocket Man," Elton John (1972)
"Lean on Me," Bill Withers (1972)
"Superstition," Stevie Wonder (1972)
"Walk on the Wild Side," Lou Reed (1972)
"Let's Get It On," Marvin Gaye (1973)
"Midnight Train to Georgia," Gladys Knight and the Pips (1973)
"Free Bird," Lynyrd Skynyrd (1973)
"Jolene," Dolly Parton (1973)
"Help Me," Joni Mitchell (1974)
"Return of the Grievous Angel," Gram Parsons (1974)
"September Gurls," Big Star (1974)
"Rikki, Don't Lose That Number," Steely Dan (1974)
"Waterloo," ABBA (1974)
"Rock Your Baby," George McCrae (1974)
"You Haven't Done Nothin'," Stevie Wonder (1974)
"You're the First, the Last, My Everything," Barry White (1974)
"Cat's in the Cradle," Harry Chapin (1974)
"You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet," Bachman-Turner Overdrive (1974)
"Fire," Ohio Players (1974)
"Autobahn," Kraftwerk (1974)


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Why Kenyans Must Keep Their Feet Firmly On The Ground
In Elections, Kenya, Politics
Patrick Gathara
Kenyans are given to bouts of euphoria. Once ranked as the most optimistic people in the world, it is a society almost congenitally programmed to look on the bright side of life and to seek out silver linings on even the darkest of clouds. It is famously the land of "Hakuna Matata", which for anyone who's watched Disney's The Lion King can recite, is "a problem-free philosophy".
Our irrational exuberance is once again bubbling up to surface in the wake of the Supreme Court verdict that annulled President Uhuru Kenyatta's barely three-week old re-election. In a sense, it is understandable. It has been a tense time, filled with trepidation, after yet another rapturous voting day, invested with all the hope for better days the country could muster. This is despite the knowledge that although the country has held regular elections throughout its 50 years of independence, they have never resulted in truly meaningful, lasting change.
Even the 2002 election – perhaps the most ecstatic of them all, given it was bringing the curtain down on the 24-year despotic and kleptocratic reign of Daniel arap Moi – only inaugurated Mwai Kibaki's turn to eat. Pretty soon, the Kenyans who had been going around effecting citizen arrests on corrupt cops in the belief all had changed, were treated to a rude shock when reports of grand corruption at the highest level began to surface with increasing regularity. So much so, that the President's own anti-graft czar had to flee the country. Corrupt ministers are "eating like gluttons" and "vomiting on the shoes" of donors, declared the British High Commissioner, Edward Clay.
Anyway, back to the Supreme Court ruling. Similarly to the 2002 poll, the election that the court has just voided was manifestly full of irregularities. However, 15 years ago it did not much matter. The vote against Moi's handpicked successor – ironically the current incumbent – was so overwhelming that the regime had little choice other than to concede. In any case, electoral reform at the time had mainly consisted of a "gentleman's agreement" that allowed the opposition to nominate some of the members of the electoral commission.
The integrity of the process today matters much more than it did a decade and a half ago. Elections are much more closely fought and the electoral infrastructure is much more elaborate. Methods for stealing them have also become more intricate and difficult to detect.
After a dispute over the 2007 presidential election led to violence that killed over 1300 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more, a commission led by South African judge Johann Kriegler proposed a raft of reforms to the electoral system, including the electronic transmission of results from polling stations.
Five years later, despite a new constitution, few of those reforms had actually been implemented. During the election, a hastily and dubiously procured system for biometrically identifying voters and electronically transmitting results failed (or was made to fail) across the country. Further, there were allegations that the election had been hacked. If that sounds familiar, it's because pretty much the same thing happened this year.
However, by the time Kenyans went to the polls nearly a month ago, laws governing the electoral process had been passed and largely clarified by the courts. On voting day, the biometric systems seemed to have worked but not the electronic transmission. As counting proceeded, figures started scrolling across our TV screens courtesy of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) headquarters. Figures seemed to show a constant and consistent lead by President Kenyatta over his closest rival, Raila Odinga.
The figures, which the IEBC would disown as mere "statistics" when their validity was questioned, were the first sign that something had gone seriously wrong. Thereafter, despite the verdicts of international observers, led by former US Secretary of State, John Kerry, when the IEBC could not produce the scanned forms on which the results were based, it became clear that the election was far from credible.
The appeal to the Supreme Court in 2013 had been dismissed in its entirety, with the court establishing an impossibly high standard of proof which seemed to ensure a presidential election would never be reversed. Four of the six judges who issued the widely-rubbished, unanimous judgment, are still on the court. Perhaps this is why the opposition initially said that although it wasn't accepting the results, it would not be taking its case to the court. Following a change of heart, they did file a petition, which to everyone's surprise, was upheld.
The annulment is a very big deal and definitely worth celebrating. Along with overturning an injustice and reinforcing Kenya's democratic credentials, by cementing the Supreme Court's credibility, it has made future 2008-type post-presidential-poll violence much less likely. For once, Kenya the state has stood up for Kenyans, and that is huge. But we should be careful not to get carried away.
First, there were problems with the court declaration itself. One of the allegations that had been put forward by the petitioners was that the incumbent had abused his office by using public resources and officials to campaign. The judges seemed to gloss over this when they found no evidence of wrongdoing despite glaring proof.
Further, the pronouncements of Kenya's accession to the league of mature democracies were not only premature when the now disgraced Chair of the IEBC made them as he declared Kenyatta the president-elect; they are premature today. The judgement is a giant leap forward but one decision does not a democracy make. It just creates possibilities for a better, more accountable electoral system. However, Kenyans have a tendency to want to persist in these giddy moments of possibility rather than to do the hard work of translating them into reality. Sadly, as we have seen with the 2003 election of Kibaki, can, if not seized, also inaugurate a much less desirable state of affairs.
Of immediate concern is the potential for a backlash from an Executive stung by what it considers to be a judicial uprising. "If you rattle a snake, you must be prepared to be bitten by it," the late authoritarian Cabinet Minister, John Michuki, warned us, after the government raided the country's second-largest media group in 2006. Kenyans cannot afford to be complacent. President Kenyatta has just been rattled and he is threatening to bite. Already, he has taken to calling the Supreme Court judges "wakora" or bandits and his lawyer has described the ruling as a judicial coup. "[Chief Justice David] Maraga and his thugs have decided to cancel the election. Now I am no longer the president-elect. I am the serving president… Maraga should know that he is now dealing with the serving president," he reportedly threatened on Friday. "We have a problem with our judiciary but regardless we respect [their decision]. But we shall revisit," he declared ominously a day later.
Whether it's Kenyatta or Odinga who gets elected in two-months' time, the independent judiciary will probably itself be the target of an Executive branch used to getting its way. However, with his Jubilee party in control of both houses of Parliament, Kenyatta will pose a particularly grave threat. History has taught us that great gains can be quickly reversed. Kenya still has a long way to go before it can get rid of its entrenched culture of impunity and become a society that truly caters for the needs of all its people, not the desires of a few at the very top.
Finally, another election has to be held within two months. Kenya is only the third country in the world, after the Ukraine and Austria, to have the courts annul a presidential election. In the other two repeat elections, the incumbent won. Now, that itself is not a problem. The Supreme Court has rightly said, who wins matters less than how that win is secured. There is little time to make significant changes to the electoral infrastructure which means there are few guarantees that the same illegalities and irregularities that led to the annulment won't crop up again. Ensuring that Kenya does not end up where it started will require vigilance from all players, including any egg-faced internationals returning to observe and report on the election. The media should set up independent tallying centres and be prepared to call the election, rather than simply regurgitate the numbers and "statistics" coming from the IEBC.
Kenya is not out of the woods yet. The passions and terror that have been on display over the last few months have not gone away. They continue to simmer away just below the surface. While the Supreme Court has reduced the risk of a violent explosion, it has not completely eliminated it. That can only be accomplished through honestly addressing the the problems of our past and finishing the task of implementing the constitution.
The judgement shows what that constitution makes possible but it would be grossly unfair to heap the burden of actuating it on the shoulders of seven judges. Kenyans must demand that the other independent state agencies, from the National Police Service to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, start to behave and conduct themselves in the manner envisaged by the constitution, not as lackeys of the Executive. Kenyans must realize that the people are the ultimate custodians of the supreme law and even as they celebrate, they should be rolling up their sleeves.
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Josh Gad Says "We'll See" to Reports of Him Playing Roger Ebert in RUSS & ROGER GO BEYOND
by Adam Chitwood January 5, 2015
Josh Gad may or may not play legendary film critic Roger Ebert in an upcoming film. Earlier today, word surfaced that the Book of Mormon star is the top choice to play Ebert opposite Will Ferrell in Russ & Roger Go Beyond, a film that focuses on the relationship between Ebert and provocative director Russ Meyer, who helmed Ebert's one and only screenplay credit Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. So when Steve spoke with Gad earlier today in anticipation of the release of his new comedy The Wedding Ringer, he asked the actor about the prospect of playing Ebert in the film. See what he had to say in response after the jump.
David Permut, who is producing the indie Russ & Roger Go Beyond, revealed that Gad is the top choice to play Ebert while speaking with Hollywood-Elsewhere, and The Wrap followed up by adding that an offer has yet to be made to Gad. But when Steve caught up with the actor at the Wedding Ringer junket, he dismissed the notion as simply rumors for now. The actor went on to say that he's reading scripts at the moment, closing with a "we'll see", so it sounds like Russ & Roger Go Beyond may be one of the projects he's considering, but no final decision has been made.
Watch the portion of the interview below, which includes an amusing reaction to the news from Gad's The Wedding Ringer co-star Kevin Hart:
Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone's MICHELLE DARNELL Gets New Plot Details and…
GOTHAM Recap: "Rogues' Gallery"
• Josh Gad • Movie News • Russ & Roger Go Beyond


FNZC's detailed forecasts show Contact earning an average $49.40 per Megwatt hour for wholesale electricity in the current financial year.
Contact has been battling to stem the bleeding of customers for more than a decade.
Contact is introducing billing plans that will give customers a choice of 10 cents, 30 cents or 50 cents per litre off their fuel purchases.
The move is the latest of many in the fast-shifting New Zealand loyalty schemes market and follows Genesis's closure in 2015 of its in-house loyalty scheme, Brownie Points.
The two companies have been working together since 2010 and say they have decided to focus more on their respective loyalty programmes. With special feature audio.
The 'Fly Buys Pumped' programme will still allow members to collect award points on fuel purchases.
TVNZ has axed one of its competitive cooking shows ahead of its plans for two more multi-night series.


Google is continuing their push to expand their contextually aware services to each and every one of us. Last week they announced an update to Maps that adds an Explore button that only shows at the right moment, based on factors including your location. This week, Google Search is adding the ability to help you out when on vacation or business trip, by allowing you to use your hotel as a point of reference.
If you have a hotel reservation in your Gmail inbox, you can now expect Google to know where that hotel is and perform searches for things in the area without needing to pump in the address or hotel name yourself.
On your Android device, open up Google Now, or just mutter those magic words "OK, Google" and follow up with a query like "give me directions to my hotel" or "show me restaurants around my hotel." Google says you can ask for things to do, eat or see nearby your hotel, all without having to remember even the name of that place you are staying.
This feels like a great companion and extension to the contextually aware Maps Explore feature from last week. The new Maps feature shows you things to do, eat or see nearby your current location, or nearby a specific alternative location that you manually type into the app. The recommendations are presented differently based on the time of the day, current weather and more, in an effort to provide you the best info possible at the time you need it.
It will be interesting to see if Google implements our hotel aware inquiries as normal searches, or if they tie in any of the contextually aware Maps Explore features outlined above.
Are you off for a vacation, let us know how Google's new hotel aware features work for you.