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Jason Scott Talks about Preserving Games with the Internet Archive
Jonathan Anson / Aug 29th, 2016 1 Comment
Since it started in 1996, the Internet Archive has remained steadfast in its primary goal: digitally preserving knowledge in the many forms it exists. This task has resulted in making the digital library a host to the most extensive digital collection of media in the world, which includes books, movies, movies and more.
Recently the site has added software, which includes video games, to the list of media it seeks to preserve. The site has quickly amassed one of the most extensive digital libraries of software. Titles stretch across multiple platforms, from PC to consoles, most of which are playable within internet browsers.
The latest success in the site's quest for software preservation came in November 2014. That was when the site first released approximately 900 classic arcade titles, all of which can be played within its site.
Such achievements owe much to its lead coordinator: Jason Scott. Scott has been in charge of helping to preserve games like the ones featured in the Internet Arcade, and all software in general.
We recently talked to Scott about the Internet Archive's tremendous task in preserving software and the challenges that come with it.
You can listen to the audio below or continue reading the transcription. Listeners are warned that minor technical difficulties have resulted in some occasional glitches in the audio. Gaming Illustrated has done its best to eliminate these errors.
Gaming Illustrated: Tell me a little bit about what you do, specifically for the Internet Archive.
Scott: For the Internet Archive, my title is "Free Range Archivist" and lately it's also become "Software Curator." So I have kind of an open-ended job where my work involves reaching out for collections or materials that might otherwise not be found and then making them available on the archive where possible and helping people kind of connect with the archive. If they feel there are materials they want to host on there and [I'm] just helping them, you know, kind of move through the technical aspects and other processes.
Gaming Illustrated: How did you become in charge of spearheading this project to preserve video gaming on the Internet Archive?
Scott: The head of the Internet Archive is a fellow by the name of Brewster Kahle and Brewster is a visionary who started the Internet Archive in the '90's and at a time where everybody was just kind of happy that the web was existing, he thought about saving it and in some way taking copies of it then making those copies available for people and that process had become the Wayback Machine.
After things kind of settled down with the Wayback Machine, where it all kind of just worked, he started to kind of turn his ideas to "well what else doesn't have preservation in that way" or "what else can represent a library of information and knowledge" and that's when he started working on books and movies and music.
An early photograph of Jason Scott taken during 2005. (Photo by
Quinn Norton and used under Creative Commons 2.0.)
Around the time that I came on board, which was about 2011, he said "you know, we did music, we did movies and books and the web. But we never really did software. We have some but it's all locked up in these large archives and how are we going to make people be able to interact with it?" He said "you know, you should come on and definitely help us gather the software. But if you can come up with some ideas for how we will present the software with the ease of that we present books and everything else that would be really nice."
It took a few years and a lot of volunteers but we came up with a viewer that works for a lot of software that enables you to run it in a browser. On top of that we're consistently and constantly taking in collections of just general software, as much as we can, in much as the same way as one would gather books or movies or music. So there's a record and a collection of software going back over the last 30 or 40 years so that scholars or researchers or really anybody can kind of reference it in the same way ideally that we reference all these other types.
Gaming Illustrated: What's the typical submission process that goes into collecting software and how exactly do you help to preserve that software?
Jason Scott: Some of what software preservation and software archiving is right now is kind of a function of the fact that a lot of institutions didn't really look on it seriously until probably the '90's and the 2000's. So what that really means is that we're kind of far behind in terms of collecting these materials.
Whereas, you know, you might go to a place with a bunch of paintings, even if they don't want the paintings they go like "okay, there's a bunch of places we can bring you to that will take." We don't really have that in terms of software. There's a couple institutions out there that take it in whole scale amounts and then there's other ones that, you know, take specific pieces. So it's kind of a learning process.
Right now I'd say that the number one way that it happens is that a collector or a person who has a large amount of software contacts us and says "I have 50 or a hundred CD-ROM's" or "I have a few crates of software" and then I will talk to them about what they have and if it's something that's new, and by new I mean new to us. I'll usually arrange for them to mail it to us where I catalog it and put it in storage.
The idea being in the long term to take the digital information off of them and then make them available online as well scanning in any printed materials related to the software. So a lot of what we're doing right now is in the gathering phase where we're gathering both physical artifacts that people are mailing us in the mail or we are gathering collections that were put together online and taking them in just in case.
In an ideal world you have every piece of software for a given platform or given type available and functioning. But it's just simply not the case. We end up with a lot of other material that ends up being kind of stuck between the cracks. There might be evidence that it existed once but it won't be a fully cataloged description with historical context like we might get with a painting where you might be able to find out "here's all the things that this painting had done to it over the last hundred years" and "here's who owned it" and "here's why they painted it" and "who it was for." We don't quite have that with software but we have some of it like that so we're kind of in a real early stage with all of this.
Gaming Illustrated: That actually brings me up to my next question because… only fairly recently the site's actually started to really devote itself to video games. I was quite surprised recently to find out the latest venture in regards to that was the Internet Arcade. I was actually curious what actually got this shift in gears to get the Internet Archive in focusing more on preserving video games in regards to software in general.
Scott: A lot of it is that, like I said, Brewster kind of gave me a mandate of "we should really be, you know, gathering software" and one of the fundamental bits of thinking when it comes to the emulation in the browser is that there's a strong belief at the archive that access drives preservation. That people are more likely to support the preservation of items, to recognize the worth, to understand what's going on.
Scott is often seen wearing unique costumes whenever he gives lectures such as this one at The Last Hope 2008 (Photo by Rachel Lovinger and used under Creative Commons 2.0.)
If you say to them "go to this location, click this button and now you're trying the software that's being talked about" as opposed to "trust us, this spreadsheet is interesting" or, you know, "there's a pile of CD-ROM's here and there's probably something interesting but you can't see it because it's hard to get to." So there was always a move on my part from the beginning of making this emulation and when we put together these playable collections there's definitely all kinds of software: education, business, entertainment and so on.
The thing is that video games are designed from the ground up to attract attention, be beautiful and imply they are fun. If I link somebody to VisiCalc, a 1979 Apple II spreadsheet, the amount of people who will [play] it without being really pushed into it like it's some sort of museum, it's just very unlikely.
I put them up, I treat them well, but for some reason people just really get attracted first to games. They understand games and games are designed to be understood. A spreadsheet, or a business program, it's designed to be read and studied and then integrated into your business and business processes. So it's a study; it's an involved task.
Whereas a game usually tends to put up something beautiful and says "press here on keys and you can move me around" and people get that and that's all they have to do. So I always understood why it gets the most attention, the most press, but I don't limit what we grab.
So, I mean, we've had all sorts of software. But when we did video games, arcade games, I knew that would gain attention cause, just like I said, video games are designed to be attractive. It brought in millions of people which was interesting and I like to think they discovered all the other bits of material
But nobody's required when they enter a museum or a library to look at everything. So for some people it was just a matter of "wow, I remember this old thing. I used to play it as a kid," and they'd play it a few times and then move on.
Gaming Illustrated: And that actually brings me up to my next question. No doubt the whole Internet Arcade thing did have some problems attached to it, specifically in the legal department. Has there been any specific or major problems in regards to that or just the video games and software in general on the site?
Scott: Unfortunately I'm not really in any position to discuss the legal aspects or the ramifications with the archive just because it's not my position. But I can say that the archive's policy is that it never wants to a library to represent a financial drain on a functioning company. So if somebody uploads something that's commercial, something that is sold, let's say a John Grisham novel, into our general area and we're informed of it, we take it immediately down. We don't run some sort of, you know, ranting declaration or anything.
We have people uploading millions of things and we're putting up lots of things and so there's a lot of cases where we'll put something up and then some firm will go "hey, you know!" Like, for instance, we put up thousands of DOS programs. Well, many of these DOS programs were long obsolete and I would say about five or 10 had still been maintained. They were buried in there.
A really good example of that is the Ultima series. The Ultima series has been made and remade and is still in original form and in modern form from places like GOG.com or Steam and so there was a whole bunch of material that was removed from the software collection as it was already turning out to be accessible.
But we're talking about a sliver of the stuff. With the arcades they were more companies and they would contact us and we would take them down. So that's kind of how we go about it, you know.
Gaming Illustrated: What would say have been some of the most interesting additions to the software collection on the Internet Archive have been so far?
Jason Scott: There's things that I personally like and there's that I think get attention and so on.
Certainly one of the most interesting ones that I thought when it happened was I was contacted by a virus researcher named Mikko Hypponen in Finland. He runs a company called F-Secure and he said "I have a collection of defanged viruses and malware." That's malware where they've gone in and removed the ability of it to write to a disk. So you're left with just the messages it would print and how it would portray its infections
We made a little section on the archive called the "Malware Museum" and we basically put up a few dozen of these malware programs. So when you boot it up in your window, it infects it with this little virus and you can see what the virus would print. Some of them put in graphics, some of them put in messages and some of them would modify how your system worked.
We kind of clumped them all together, wrote a little bit about their context and then put it up. Within like four hours it had worldwide press attention and I think we spent weeks actually doing interviews. Because it was something very interesting and magical to people to be able to go and experience old malware when it was mostly just messages and comments and weird graphics. Because, of course, they [the malware] couldn't phone home, there was no internet in that way for them. So they all just kind of have to be amusing on their own and that kind of really entranced people and so I'm happy that we had that up.
There's a whole bunch of stuff related to Windows 3.1. Windows 3.1, being a very early mass-market graphical interface, has a whole bunch of interesting programs like calculators and astronomy and information retrieval. I think there's one about maintaining a bicycle.
Scott shows showed off both his technical knowledge and sense of humor at ROFLCon 2008. (Photo by
Scott Beale and used under Creative Commons 2.0.)
And all of these programs are right there, clickable and people had no guidelines, in the DOS world anyway, the DOS/Windows world, like they did in the Macintosh. When you programmed on the Macintosh they gave you like a book that you could buy that was "here's all of the standards of how a machine should interface with a human and what our humans were expected to interface with."
Windows and DOS had nothing like that. So people just made up their own way of "this closes the window," "this moves things," "this is how you shift around" and so you can see all these weird little experiments.
Without the ability to instantly look at them, I think people wouldn't go through the trouble, you know. They wouldn't download the program, get an emulator running, boot it in, start it up, experiment with it. You're talking, you know, a pretty significant amount of effort and then only to go "yeah, this is dumb," you know. "This is interesting. This isn't. This is." What we've done is we've turned it into this embeddable, instantaneous experience.
Personally I like the system bench-marking tools and the disc checkers. I like the things where it's making the emulated hardware do work to try and prove it's working where it'll say "okay, I'm testing your memory. Your memory is okay. I'm running through your disks. You're disks are responding this way." I like that. Because, for one thing, it proves whether or not the emulator writer did a good job. But it's also kind of just fun to think about how the program has no idea what it's located in and what's going on and that it's actually running inside of a window that's inside of a computer that's on a network and it's been 25 years and they have no idea.
Gaming Illustrated: Again, that brings me to my next question. Because the use of technology, obviously in trying to preserve all this software, such as the malware and the video games… could you tell me a little bit about the technology the Internet Archive uses to preserve software and games and all that?
Jason Scott: So the Internet Archive is a relatively small amount of people. It's actually really less that a hundred main employees and it's got another bunch around the country and the world doing [the] scanning of books. But it's a relatively small group and so we tend to focus on technological solutions.
So if something is added to the archive by anybody there are scripts that do dozens of tests to try and make all these decisions. Like how many pages does the book have, how many pixels per inch is the printing and is it functional and can I, you know, portray it different ways and convert it. So there's a real technical lean. If given a point, the archive will tend to let a machine do the work instead of making a person do the work and that choice kind of pervades all the way through both the way the software is added and the way that other things are added.
One of the things about the software, of course, we're talking about adding thousands and thousands. There's well over 50,000 software titles up on the archive that in some emulated state and there's probably a few million more that are in a non-emulated state at the moment and so we have to write scripts that go into them and play them and take screenshots and then put in the screen.
A much more recent photo. This one was taken at TAUGSHOW 2008. (Photo by Jason Scott and used under Creative Commons 2.0.)
You know, I'll have people say to me "oh, wow, when you put this in, didn't you notice it errors out on level 4," and I'd say "no, I've actually never touched it." A program ingested it, a program played it, a program screenshot it, a program filed it away. [It was] absolutely untouched by human hands and as time goes on I've got other tools that do other kinds of testing and let me respond to it.
But that technological bent is one of those cases where you allow certain shortcomings hoping that the general response and result will be good. So instead of every program being personally vetted and checked and doubled up and everything else, I'd say put up thousands and start figuring out which ones are the best and which ones don't work and then respond that way.
So as we're adding more and more items, I'm pretty strongly in favor of, you know, just throwing it all up there and then seeing how things kind of push out and if people tell me that there's a problem I push them away and move them out if it doesn't work. So, you know, I mean that's absolutely, you know, a choice, right?
Again, different places have different approaches and I never pretend one is the absolute right way. But a lot of places will, you know, they'll take in a collection and they'll be a person whose job is just to go through the collection piece by piece, catalog them, make sure that they're all what they say they are then hand it off to a second team who'll log it into another system, perhaps put [an] etching or a marking on it and then put all of that into an agreed upon spot in the physical space so that you can say "I want to find volume 5 of this encyclopedia" and they'll say "that's on the second floor, shelf three, area 5."
I am a different animal and the whole archive is a different animal. Literally we have millions and millions of pieces and we have thousands of items being added every day. The amount of software being added of course is much, much smaller than the books and the movies and other pieces. But it's a sizable amount.
People are uploading software, some of it emulated by other people out of the box, which has been a pleasure. It's nice just to wander in and discover somebody has uploaded ten public domain games when they were fourteen and it just runs and I didn't have anything to do with it, not even with a script. So there's some collaboration, it's going to be a learning process, I mean we've never really had this before in this way so it's all new.
Gaming Illustrated: Speaking of which, that sort of brings me to a little back to our question about some of the problems to the Internet. I know you talked specifically about the legal problems which I understand you can't talk much about. But have there been any other problems in regards to preserve software, video games, things like that?
Jason Scott: Well, a certain range of software had copy protection routines built into it. What that meant there was no copies available other than the original commercial copy and what that meant that there are titles out there for whom there are very few original boxes and original work and often only the pirated version is around and that means that a large grouping, you know, not the majority, but a large grouping of software that we have is the pirated version: the part which has a crack screen and which may or may not have all the functionality.
Just some of the many servers located at the Internet Archive headquarters that helps digitally preserve a myriad of digital items. (Photo by Jason Scott and used under Creative Commons 2.0.)
We chose to put it up because we said "well that's the only evidence it even existed," you know. It'd be like if the only version of a photo album was a photocopy that relatives did and you can't find the original photo album, well at least you can put the poorly photocopied version to at least show what kind of pictures were in there. So, whenever possible, I much prefer that we have really good original software that came from an actual piece of magnetic or optical media.
But all of this kind of shortcoming over the last 30 years in terms of how we treated software is now coming back to roost. It's not a dissimilar problem to early movies where they didn't have that value attached to them and so a lot of them are missing and so [is] a lot of early software.
So we're still at the point that I am being given estates of disk drives from people who used to be in user groups or some programmer will finally say "hey, look, just take my collection" and he'll mail us his boxes of disks. From that we'll say "wow, this is something that has never seen the light of day before. Here's a prototype version. Here's a version that they sold but they should only sold a couple hundred copies so there aren't really any out there."
Gaming Illustrated: And why do you actually think that is? Why has it only now recently that software and video games are being given the same respect as movies, books and music are now?
Jason Scott: I think part of it is that there's always a period with a new medium or a new process that sometimes the easiest way to get it out there is to make something entertaining with it like a game or to make a comic book or to have it be a simple newspaper or something.
At some point people tend to look as them as not just entertainment, but disposable entertainment. So they end up saying "well, it's just a bunch of comic books," "well, it's just a bunch of video games," "eh, it's just a bunch of children's records" or whatever else and so there's absolutely this kind of disposable feel that games have. You plug them it, you play them and then you sell them or throw them away. I mean you wouldn't go running to the local museum and offer them and the local museum wouldn't take them.
Now there's always collectors, right? I mean everything's always got collectors and certain a lot of collectors are important components in the saving of software where others didn't see that value as a professional institution, amateur collectors, or even professional collectors, would acquire items often, you know, to be honest, for an economic angle of like "I'm going to get this rare thing and I'm going to resell it."
And then, over time, we've started to see institutions say "okay, I guess this is valid. Let's go try to find who has it." They run into the collectors, they run into warehouses from old software stores, they run into video games that are all being kind of kept in a shed where an arcade closed. So they're kind of drawing them back out.
But, like I said, it's a catch up game, on every angle and then of course nobody's ever had to deal with "well, how do you make a 1978 video game come back when it was all customized circuits," or "how do you allow people to play a piece of software that requires a cloth map? Do you digitize the cloth map? Do you take pictures of the cloth map?" Do you realize that things aren't working and you don't know why? Oh, it's because there was a manual and without the manual you can't type in this word and, you know, things are just a disk." So they're dealing with all of that, like, just that catch up.
But I think really almost every medium has had some variation of this. I mean the classic one people always talk about was that Dr. Who was on what was considered to be disposable media and they would just write over it. They did the same thing with early Johnny Carson. They would record the tapes but then write over them when they were done, when they didn't think they could use them. So there's years of shows that there's just no example of.
Gaming Illustrated: That sort of brings up again my next point which is that, to ask sort of a rhetorical question, what exactly would the value be in trying to save specifically software and video games? What makes them so very valuable that makes them worth saving?
Scott sings out a tune at ROFLThing 2009 (Photo by David Fisher and used under Creative Commons 2.0.)
Jason Scott: There's several ways of looking at it. I mean obviously one of the first ones is that people are free to ask, you know, "why is energy being put into this direction? Couldn't the energy be put in other directions?" That's a pretty common thing if, you know, you say "oh, saving all this software. Nobody's doing the same amount of work for blank." a
And I don't tend to play that zero sum game. I tend to play more of a game of "what if everything that had some amount of meaning had advocates and collectors and curators?" I often try to make it when I'm doing things with video games I'm showing why this unusual medium needs to be saved in the hope that it inspires others.
And as for why in what I say, it's that software is a cultural and historical force and one can argue, that throughout the '80s and the '90s, it becomes a fundamental part of our fabric. Software currently is controlling a very large percentage of our lives. It's dictating our financial arrangements, it is moderating our social contracts and interactions. It's absolutely where creativity and communication is primarily taking place I could argue
And so people are, you know, living with this whole underground or invisible system of software. You know, even of course, as simple as games they used to play, programs they used to run: things being stored in something that the software that stored it is no longer available. Without an emulator or without the ability to get to it again, you'll lose not just that old software but the data that it represents.
There's a whole bunch of, just to me, cultural weight that software has that puts it up there with the others and again, I don't expect everyone to agree with me, and I don't think that I'm taking away from other things by focusing on this. I think there's room for everyone.
Gaming Illustrated: Very good. One final question: what exactly are the future plans in regards to the Internet Archive's project to preserve software and gaming and what not? Just in regards to the software department in general?
Jason Scott: The main thing with the archive itself and saving items is I'm just aggressively having us ingest as much digital material as possible and that's always ongoing. We have thousands and thousands of pieces of media that we're pulling from and so making that so that whatever happens next is easier because you're able to just get to it. That is absolutely critical.
Then the additional step of making it run in the browser is kind of a whole other level of technical situations. How do you make a CD-ROM mount in a browser? How do you make a DVD-ROM mount in a browser? How do you run all these different platforms and has that platform been emulated? And finding where there's unusual cases, you know, like there's no support for this chip set or there's no known emulator of this machine and then kind of pushing in that direction.
So it's kind of like a multi-front project because you're constantly trying to work through not just the technical aspects but to convince people that this is something that they should think about and contribute to themselves if they have old material or if they have knowledge of something that's out there. Many times I get original authors showing up and then kind of writing about why they wrote that program in the first place or people tell their stories related to it.
So, you know, that's a Sisyphean that never ends. So that continues to happen.
Gaming Illustrated: Thank you for your time.
Jason Scott: No problem. Thank you!
tags: digital preservation , interview , Jason Scott , technology , The Internet Archive
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Georgia 35 – South Carolina 38: If all you have is a hammer…
When you write something like I did last week, the natural thing to do is to use the outcome of the game as a verdict on Georgia's toughness. I don't think we can though. Georgia wasn't unprepared or unfocused, they didn't lay a 2012-style egg, and the crowd didn't do much to rattle the Dawgs. We saw resiliency when the team unfortunately had to battle back several times from double-digit deficits. We saw a struggling defense make a play that set the offense up with a chance to win the game.
But they didn't win the game. Georgia's deficiencies, particularly in the defensive backfield, have been well-documented since spring. The route to success for the Bulldogs depended on some combination of 1) multiple defensive players having a breakthrough season, 2) Jeremy Pruitt working magic with smoke and mirrors, and 3) the offense performing at a high enough level to outscore opponents. We saw that at work in the opener as the offense broke open a close game and the defensive pressure began to compensate for some earlier Clemson success down the field.
That formula was less effective in Columbia. The defensive standouts among the front seven were less effective. Pruitt's scheme was exploited by the same approach that worked against it in 2010 when Pruitt coached at Alabama. The offense nearly did enough to carry the team, but missed opportunities in the first half kept the offense from keeping up on the scoreboard, and the Dawgs had to play from behind most of the game.
Georgia's defense faltered in the first half against the pass and then in the second half against the run. South Carolina built an early lead by finding gaping holes in a pass defense that simultanously struggled to cover receivers and pressure the passer. Georgia adjusted by bringing more pressure, but the open receivers remained. Georgia's defensive backs did little to disrupt receivers at the line, so even under pressure South Carolina was able to move the ball with quick-release passes. The effective pass rush that helped to turn the Clemson game never materialized, and the pieced-together secondary proved to be the liability we feared it would be.
The defense didn't fare much better after the Gamecocks turned to the running game in the second half. Georgia used different personnel – Toby Johnson in particular – to try to counter South Carolina's big offensive line and tailbacks. The Dawgs actually did fairly well against Mike Davis, but Brandon Wilds did the bulk of the damage, coming up with 93 yards and 6.6 yards per carry. South Carolina was able to bounce runs outside as Georgia tightened up against the interior passing plays. South Carolina didn't pass for 50 yards in the second half, but they were still able to post two touchdowns and put the game away with their running game.
But as helpless as the defense was, it's the offense that most people are talking about thanks to the playcalling on Georgia's final possession. As important as that moment was, the game might have been lost in the first half. Georgia's offense started well enough with a lightning-fast response to South Carolina's opening score. We had a deep pass put right into the hands of McKenzie, and Michel scored on a perfectly-timed inside receiver screen. It seemed as if we were poised for a shootout, but that turned out to be Georgia's only touchdown of the first half. The Dawgs had a chance to gain momentum when Lorenzo Carter recovered a fumble, but Georgia only got three points from the great field position. Georgia also had to settle for field goal attempts on their two other scoring opportunities in the first half. The final field goal attempt proved to be an omen – Marshall Morgan broke his SEC record streak of 20 consecutive field goal makes by missing a 44-yard attempt. Worse, South Carolina was able to take that miss and drive for their own field goal at the end of the half which ended up being the decisive points in the game.
Had Georgia scored at the end, we'd be praising Hutson Mason for his steady play and noting everything that the offense accomplished. Georgia rushed for over 200 yards and outgained a very capable backfield. They didn't turn the ball over. The Dawgs were a tidy 16-of-22 through the air. Mason, with a few missed center exchanges and throws behind open receivers, wasn't stellar but also wasn't Quincy Carter in 2000. After weeks of hearing about the woes of Georgia's offense in Columbia, the Dawgs scored 35 and left even more points on the table.
I've heard a lot of people deflect criticism of the offense by saying that 35 points should have been enough. It wasn't enough – any more than 35 points would have been enough for South Carolina or Clemson in their openers. 35 points or 200 yards rushing or any arbitrary cutoff you choose is meaningless. On this day with the defense struggling as it was, Georgia needed more from its offense especially in the first half when the team fell behind by deficit that eventually reached double-digits.
As for the playcalling on 1st and goal at the 4…we forget how Georgia had scored its previous two touchdowns. The fourth quarter opened with a nice play-action pass on 1st and goal that found Jay Rome. Georgia's next drive featured an inspired use of Quayvon Hicks as the ballcarrier which caught the Gamecocks a little off-guard. Gurley was key on both of those drives, but the Dawgs found the endzone by other means.
With that success in their pockets, I can understand why Richt and Bobo thought they might try some more misdirection. This was likely Georgia's last scoring opportunity without the frenzy of a two-minute drive, and they weren't going to get a better chance to take the lead. As a friend so brilliantly put it, this was a Jimmy Chitwood "I'll make it" moment. No matter what else had happened earlier, this was the game distilled down to four yards and three downs with the best back in the nation on your side. You let Jimmy take the shot.
So while I appreciate Richt admitting "if we had to do it again, we would have hammered it," it's frustrating to hear. There were reasons why that call was made. Hindsight is fine, but it doesn't absolve you from having a critical look at the process that led to that decision in the heat of the situation. Even though the play called was reasonable and defensible (outcomes don't necessarily determine a good or bad play call), that doesn't make it the best decision.
With the fake punt in 2011, South Carolina's punt return in 2012, and Georgia's onside kick in 2013, you expected there to be a special teams twist that figured in the outcome. Marshall Morgan missing two field goals would've been way down on my list of ways that special teams could have affected this game.
As positive as special teams were against Clemson, they didn't go nearly so well this time. Gurley was a non-factor on kick returns by design, though Georgia ended up with decent field position on the short kickoffs. Each team had two uneventful punts, but a Gamecock personal foul on their second punt set the Dawgs up to pull within 3. Kickoff coverage became an issue late in the game. After Georgia scored to start the 4th quarter, the Gamecocks returned the ball to their 42, requiring Marshall Morgan to make the tackle.
With Chubb and Michel both settling into roles, Keith Marshall was conspicuous in his absence. We have to keep reminding ourselves that even though cleared to play he is still working back from a major knee injury. Hopefully Marshall can get some work against Troy and build confidence in his rebuilt knee.
While the first down on Georgia's final series will be brought up for years, the Dawgs missed a chance to score on third down. Mason tried to complete a pass to Bennett that would have been short of the goal line. Gurley ran an angle route out of the backfield and appeared to have left his defender on the break. Had Mason thrown to Gurley, Gurley would have had a few yards to build up a head of steam before he met the next defender near the goal line. It wasn't a clear path to the endzone, but it would have set up one heck of a collision at the goal line, and my money would have been on Gurley. He was visibly frustrated that the pass went elsewhere.
2 Responses to 'Georgia 35 – South Carolina 38: If all you have is a hammer…'
Wednesday morning buffet | Get The Picture
[…] With due respect to Groo, in reference to the playcalling on 1st and goal at the 4, it's not that we forget how Georgia had scored its previous two touchdowns. It's that we remember how the Dawgs scored their first touchdown of the second half. […]
Wednesday morning buffet | TheDawgSpot.com
[…] With due respect to Groo, in reference to the playcalling on 1st and goal at the 4, it's not that we …read more […]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
HomeBusinessNew Dubai bus stations for Oud Metha, Al Satwa
New Dubai bus stations for Oud Metha, Al Satwa
DUBAI 22 September 2019: Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), has awarded a contract for constructing two bus stations at Oud Metha and Al Satwa.
The stations accommodate integrated facilities for riders including parking spaces, pick-up and drop-off points, retail outlets, restaurants and offices.
"The state-of-the-art design caters to the needs of sustainability and People of Determination, yet it is coherent with the identity and shape of RTA's stations. The mission of the new stations goes beyond the prevailing concept of commuting passengers to encompass the offering of integrated services for passengers such as retail outlets, service points, offices and others," said Mattar Al Tayer, RTA Director-General and Chairman.
Oud Metha Station spans an area of 9,640 square metres. It is characterised by a location of high population density as it is in close proximity to Oud Metha Metro Station, schools, community clubs and offices. The station serves numerous bus routes including routes incoming from Dubai Academic City and the International City. The station building comprises a ground floor and two floors in addition to a rooftop car parking, said Wam.
The average number of riders using the station is expected to be 10,000 riders per day. The station has 10 operational parking for buses, 20 parking slots for out-of-service buses, and 316 parking for vehicles.
Al Satwa station covers an area of 11,912 square metres and comprises of a ground plus one floor, and rooftop parking. The design of the station is tailored to the nature of public transit means in the area. It has a parking space for buses, taxis and private vehicles. The station has a capacity to accommodate 7800 passengers per day, which is expandable in future to 15,000 passengers per day. The station has 15 operational parking for buses, 20 parking slots for out-of-service buses, and 227 parking for vehicles.
Both stations have pick-up and drop-off points, parking for waiting /standby buses, and parking spaces for taxis, employees, visitors as well as bike racks. The facilities also include air-conditioned and non-air-conditioned shelters, furnished public rest houses, prayer rooms for men and women, staff offices, public toilets and a children's corner. The stations also host self-service kiosks, nol card machines, bus information display panel, customer's happiness' index, ATMs, refreshment and snacks vending machines.
#busstations
You can now upgrade your iPhone every 90 days
Global Expat Survey: UAE ranked 6th for safety
Dubai spends Dh500 million to cut traffic delay to 45 seconds
Dubai's RTA launches a new night bus service
Emaar Downtown offers only for Dubai Metro users


text:
Jonathan Ward

## Introduction ##
DarkOs was started to provide first hand experience in operating system
implementation.  Usually, the best way to truly understand the why of a
problem or system is to implement it yourself.  Only then will all the
trade-offs, advantages, and disadvantages become known and understood.

With this in mind, DarkOs should provide a decent examination into the
difficulties of creating a multi-tasking operating system.

## Future Work / TODO ##
- Memory Manager (Mem_*)
  - Implement buddy list algorithm for use with both physical page allocator
    and the heap allocator.
  - MEM_ALLOC_FLAGS:
    - Read
    - Write
    - Execute
    - Contiguous
    - ???
  - Page Allocator:
    - Mem_PagesInit(size_t SystemRam);
    - Mem_PagesMarkBusy(void* pBasePa, size_t PageCount);
    - Mem_PagesAlloc(size_t PageCount, uint32_t Flags);
    - Mem_PagesFree(void* pBaseVa, size_t PageCount);
  - Heap / System VA allocator.
    - Mem_SysAlloc(size_t ByteCount, uint32_t Flags);
    - Mem_SysFree(void* pBaseVA);
- Process Definition
  - Process Block
  - Krn_CreateProcess(...);
  - Krn_TerminateProcess(...);
- Thread Definition
  - Thread Block
  - Krn_CreateThread(...);
  - Krn_TerminateThread(...);
- Scheduler
  - Start really simple here.
- Wait Blocks
  - Event Definition
  - Krn_EvtCreate(...);
  - Krn_EvtFree(...);
  - Krn_EvtWait(...);
- Other synchronization primatives?
  - Spinlocks?
- Define system semantics
  - Interrupts ?
  - Work items
    - KRN_WORK_ITEM
    - KRN_WORK_ITME_TYPE
      - ISR
      - Async

## Build System and Tools ##
Since we are building an operating system from the ground up, it's not wise
to use tools which target an existing operating system such as Linux, Windows, or
OSX.  Here is a list of tools required:
- A posix environment -- I use cygwin on Windows.
- A version of binutils capable of targeting i686-elf files and having a sysroot specified.
- A gcc cross compiler for i686-elf files.
- NASM, because I find GNU assembler syntax horribly annoying.

The sources and NASM for the current project binutils and gcc can be found here:
 http://darkautomata.com/DarkOs_Build_Sources_2016_01_14.zip

You probably also want a good (or a few...) x86 emulators.  I use VirtualBox
because of it's nifty debugging capabilities and it's speed.  It boots from a
VHD so updating the disk image is relatively painless.

## Conventions ##
The code is split into the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and the kernel.

## Booting ##
The current incarnation of DarkOs utilizes the GRUB boot loader.  It includes
a GRUB Multi-Boot 1.0 header, however it's currently being booted from GRUB 2
and I could see adding a GRUB 2 header in the near future.

The first incarnation of the OS included it's own boot loader.  There are multiple
issues with this that resulted in a rocky start.  First, boot loaders need
to do a surprising number of pretty boring things.  An Master Boot Record or
Volume Boot Record is required.  Most existing operating systems seems to have
an idea of what an MBR and VBR looks like.  For example, they are embedded in
format utilities in windows.  The first implementation of a custom boot loader
had rabbit-holed into a custom FAT32 format utility (and thus, parsing and
generating all the FAT32 data structures).  While certainly interesting, this
had deviated quite a bit from the original goal of the project.

As such, GRUB is used.  GRUB gets us to a spot where we can (barely) execute
protected mode code.  It also nicely sets up the VBE frame buffer if requested
and provides various BIOS created data blocks to the OS.  All this is pretty
useful and writing the code to do so is again, not the goal of this project.
As much as possible, calling BIOS interrupt support routines should be avoided.

Onward then, to how we actually boot.  GRUB loads our Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)
stubs and the kernel as a single flat file.  While ELF will be used for the
actual DarkOs image file format, the kernel loads as a flat file.  The layout
of the "kernel" image file is:

Kernel Image File Layout
~~~~
Component          File Offset    Size       Load Base
----------------------------------------------------------
HAL Upper Stub     0x00000000     8KB        0x01000000
Kernel             0x00004000     -          0x01004000
~~~~

## Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) Common ##
Partially implemented, need docs.

## Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) x86 ##
Partially implemented, need docs.

## CPU Context Block ##
A structure specific to each CPU in the system.  Referenced via [gs:0x0000].

Current CPU Context Block Format
~~~~
struc HALX86_CPU_BLOCK
    .CpuBlockPointer            resd 1
    .CpuBlockPointer_Pad        resd 3  ; Align on 16-byte boundary.

    ; The GDT and GDT table.
    .Gdt_Start:
    .Gdt_Len                    resw 1
    .Gdt_Addr                   resd 1
    .Gdt_Pad                    resw 1

    .Gdt_0                      resb 8
    .Gdt_1                      resb 8
    .Gdt_2                      resb 8
    .Gdt_3                      resb 8
    .Gdt_4                      resb 8
    .Gdt_5                      resb 8
    .Gdt_6                      resb 8
    .Gdt_X                      resb 40

    ; TSS, align on 4-byte boundary.
    .Tss_Start:
    .Tss_Link                   resw 1  ; 0x00
    .Tss_Link_Pad               resw 1  ; 0x02
    .Tss_Esp0                   resd 1  ; 0x04
    .Tss_Ss0                    resw 1  ; 0x08
    .Tss_Ss0_Pad                resw 1  ; 0x0A
    .Tss_Esp1                   resd 1  ; 0x0C
    .Tss_Ss1                    resw 1  ; 0x10
    .Tss_Ss1_Pad                resw 1  ; 0x12
    .Tss_Esp2                   resd 1  ; 0x14
    .Tss_Ss2                    resw 1  ; 0x18
    .Tss_Ss2_Pad                resw 1  ; 0x1A
    .Tss_Cr3                    resd 1  ; 0x1C
    .Tss_Eip                    resd 1  ; 0x20
    .Tss_Eflags                 resd 1  ; 0x24
    .Tss_Eax                    resd 1  ; 0x28
    .Tss_Ecx                    resd 1  ; 0x2C
    .Tss_Edx                    resd 1  ; 0x30
    .Tss_Ebx                    resd 1  ; 0x34
    .Tss_Esp                    resd 1  ; 0x38
    .Tss_Ebp                    resd 1  ; 0x3C
    .Tss_Esi                    resd 1  ; 0x40
    .Tss_Edi                    resd 1  ; 0x44
    .Tss_Es                     resw 1  ; 0x48
    .Tss_Es_Pad                 resw 1  ; 0x4A
    .Tss_Cs                     resw 1  ; 0x4C
    .Tss_Cs_Pad                 resw 1  ; 0x4E
    .Tss_Ss                     resw 1  ; 0x50
    .Tss_Ss_Pad                 resw 1  ; 0x52
    .Tss_Ds                     resw 1  ; 0x54
    .Tss_Ds_Pad                 resw 1  ; 0x56
    .Tss_Fs                     resw 1  ; 0x58
    .Tss_Fs_Pad                 resw 1  ; 0x5A
    .Tss_Gs                     resw 1  ; 0x5C
    .Tss_Gs_Pad                 resw 1  ; 0x5E
    .Tss_Ldt                    resw 1  ; 0x60
    .Tss_Ldt_Pad                resw 1  ; 0x62
    .Tss_IoBmpBase_Pad          resw 1  ; 0x64
    .Tss_IoBmpBase              resw 1  ; 0x66
    .Tss_Length:

    ; Current execution state.
    .CurrentProcessBlock        resd 1
    .CurrentThreadBlock         resd 1

    ; Size
    .size:
endstruc
~~~~

## Thread Context Block ##
TODO

## Process Context Block ##
TODO

## Segments ##
Segments indexes are configured globally for the system.

Current System Segments
~~~~
0x00    Unused
0x08    32-bit Kernel Code
0x10    32-bit Kernel Data
0x18    CPU Data segment
0x20    Task Segment
0x28    32-bit User Code
0x30    32-bit User Data
~~~~

## Paging ##
The lower 4 MB is identity mapped.  The lower 32 MB is also mapped to 0x80000000.
TODO: Discuss kernel vs. user page directory layout.
TODO: Discuss kernel PDEs always present (wasting 2MB of RAM, but for good reason).

## Interrupts ##
Partially implemented, see Halx86_IsrRootCallback.

## Context Switching ##
Not yet implemented, although close.  Design is taking shape now.

## Wait Blocks ##
Not yet implemented.  Need decent OS data structures (linked list, stack, etc.) which
have yet to be tested.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


It doesn't always make sense, but it's true. We are quick to run to God when our hearts get bumped, bruised, scraped up a bit. But ironically, the really deep, painful things that we experience are much harder to run to Him. Maybe it's because we blame Him. Maybe we want to pretend they are not there. Either way, those are the things we cover with our own band-aids, so no one can see how deep they are. Not even God.


text:
Eußerthal é um município da Alemanha localizado no distrito de Südliche Weinstraße, no estado da Renânia-Palatinado. É membro da associação municipal de Verbandsgemeinde Annweiler am Trifels.

Política
Cadeiras ocupadas pelos partidos políticos na comunidade:

Literatura
 Heribert Feldhaus: Das ehemalige Zisterzienserkloster Eusserthal, Imhof, Petersberg 2008, ISBN 3865682553

Municípios da Renânia-Palatinado

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told members of the House Committee on Financial Services today that he expects the Fed to raise interest rates at the next meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on March 15-16.
Powell Signals Fed to Move Forward with Interest Rate Hikes
on March 2, 2022 Compliance and Risk, Economy, Newsbytes, Technology
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told members of the House Committee on Financial Services today that he expects the Fed to raise interest rates at the next meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on March 15-16. Powell told the committee that with inflation well above 2% and a strong labor market, it is appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate and that he supports a 25 basis point rate hike.
Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, Powell warned that the near-term effects on the U.S. economy remain highly uncertain and that making monetary policy in this environment "requires a recognition that the economy evolves in unexpected ways." and "we will need to be nimble in responding to incoming data and the evolving outlook." Powell also told the committee that energy prices have already moved up further due to the Ukraine war and that those increases are likely to move through the economy, push up inflation and weigh on spending. He added that "we can't know how large or persistent those effects will be. That simply depends on events to come."
Asked about the possible use of digital currencies in Russia to avoid recently enacted sanctions for the Ukraine invasion, Powell told the committee that it underscored the need for congressional action on digital finance, including cryptocurrencies. "Ultimately what's needed is a framework and in particular ways to prevent these unbacked cryptocurrencies from serving as a vehicle for terrorist finance and general criminal behavior, tax avoidance and the like," Powell said.
Economy Federal reserve FOMC Interest rates Payments Payments system Russian Invasion of Ukraine Sanctions Virtual currency


text:
Get This!, Hard-to-find
Excess All Areas
August 19, 2012 Craig McAllister
Fritter about on the margins of success. Get signed. Release a hit single. Release a hit album. Tour bigger venues. Release a small run of future classic singles with killer b-sides. Release further singles and albums with ever-decreasing returns. Implode around 5th/6th LP when key member leaves or dies. A year or so down the line, entice same member back (unless dead) for one last hurrah and pay-day, but by then the magic is gone. All this is of course played out to a backdrop of drink and drugs and guns and girls and boys and Bentleys and bad and/or bent management. The trick for all bands is to make the upward trajectory as quick as possible, plateau for as long as everyone can stand you then make the downward trajectory as smooth and pain-free (and lucrative) as you can. (cf. most of your favourite bands, even that Stone Roses lot, – they all fit the model to some degree or other, but you knew that already).
Happy Mondays were well into the downward trajectory of their life when they decamped, in part to escape the Manchester drug scene, to Barbados to record …Yes Please!, the album that proved to be their last. Unable to secure the services of Paul Oakenfold, the uber producer who'd sprinkled their previous work with hit-making fairy dust, the band instead chose to work with Talking Heads' rhythm section, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth. On paper this sounds great – a decade earlier, Weymouth's Tom Tom Club had taken the Talking Heads scratchy funk/punk blueprint and created proper full-on dance records, of their time, yet simultaneously ahead of the game, and Happy Mondays, via Oakenfold's magic touch, had taken their clattering industrial funk and propelled it into the charts, the mainstream and the collective minds of most of the under 25s in the UK. In practice, however, things were not so great. Never has an album been more aptly named. Paul Ryder and his brother Shaun (suffering heroin withdrawal when he left Manchester), a pair of walking, talking Scarface caricatures who at the best of times could make any substance shoved under their noses disappear in Dyson-quick doubletime, arrived in a Barbados that was buckling under the weight of a crack epidemic. Want some? Yes, please. The cost of funding this adventure eventually broke Factory Records and Shaun spent so much time building crack dens out of sun loungers beside the studio pool, that he forgot to write a single lyric for the album, a fact only discovered back in the UK when Tony Wilson was forced to pay £50 ransom to Ryder for the return of the studio mastertapes.
When it eventually materialised, …Yes Please! took a bit of a kicking. Melody Maker posted a lazy, half-arsed review that simply said, "No thanks." Nirvana and their ilk were in full flow and for the first time ever, Happy Mondays seemed antiquated and irrelevant. It's right there on the shelf behind me, but I can't even remember buying it. Like many bands once they reach a certain point in their life, I bought it out of blind loyalty rather than musical merit. However….
…listening to it again recently had me doing some sort of mini re-appraisal. First single Stinkin 'Thinkin', with its ringing guitars and stoned, whispered vocal still stands up to repeated listens. The very antithesis of twistin melons, callin' the cops and all that jazz, it's downbeat, reflective and unlike anything Happy Mondays had done before or since. Drug confessional Angel is another that still cuts the mustard. "When did the Simpsons begin?" slurs Shaun, eyelids heavy with the fug of the night before. Although spoiled somewhat by foghorn-voiced Rowetta, the big haired, big mouthed wannabe rock chick the ill-advised Mondays brought into the fold for their later stuff, it's still a cracker. Currently appearing in pantomime at a medium-sized arena somewhere near you, Happy Mondays seem certain to eke out a living, Drifters style, from now on in. Stinkin', yes. But not really thinkin'. Stop! Now!
Anyway, whether he'd ever acknowledge it or not, those two Happy Mondays tracks above were a definite influence on Damon Albarn when he wrote the tracks for Blur's final LP, Think Tank. I've been playing Think Tank a lot lately, what with the Blur reunion (of sorts) and the excellent No Distance Left To Run documentary on the TV the other night. The dark horse in the Blur catalogue, Think Tank is famous for being an almost Coxon-free zone, the guitarist contributing to the woozy, wobbly Battery In Your Leg before having left after being increasingly frustrated at the (sigh) direction the band's music was going in. Recorded in Morocco, there's a noticeable space between the grooves that allows the album to pop open the top button of its trousers and, like, breathe. (Sadly) it's not tied up in any of those jerky, spasticated 2 minute shouty freakouts that Coxon does so well. (Thankfully) there's none of those terrible bleep/bang/bleep/scree tune-free bits or free-form atonal rackets best saved for b-sides or solo LPs. Think Tank as a whole is dubby, spacey and tinged with African bangs 'n beats. Now that I think about it, it's basically a precursor to Gorillaz, without the big-name special guests. Best track by a country mile is Brothers And Sisters, a track so clearly in debt to those two Happy Mondays tracks that Shaun Ryder would indeed call the cops if he was ever sober enough to listen to it properly. Built on a bed of elastic band bass, Albarn's loose, stoned, vocals practically stage whisper, "Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be Shaun Ryder!" Caffeine. Codeine. Cocaine. White doves. He reels off a tick-list Paul and Shaun would've had no bother putting away before breakfast.
Think Tank is also notable for featuring Me, White Noise, a hidden track you can find by rewinding from the start of the first track. With a backing track sounding like a fly trapped in a bass bin, Phil Daniels mutters and mumbles and shouts and swears his way through almost 7 minutes of thrilling stuff. "Fack orff!" he snarls. "I've got a gun, y'know…and I'd use it!" Thanks to this and Brothers And Sisters fore-mentioned prescription list, Think Tank got one of those stupid Parental Advisory stickers.
My parental advice? Split up when you're at your peak. Leave them wanting more. Don't reform. Ever. You'll come back looking like this:
You might even become a respectable, bespectacled married member of society…
*Bonus Tracks!
Although a Coxon-free zone by the end of the LP, Blur as a 4-piece recorded tracks during the Think Tank sessions that were never quite finished due to the guitarist walking out. Here's a couple of Coxon-enhanced crackers that turned up on future b-sides.
Money Makes Me Crazy
This half-considered Damon nicking off the Happy Mondays theory of mine may have legs. On the b-side of Happy Monday's 24 Hour Party People single, you'll find a track called Wah-Wah (Think Tank) Call The Cops!
Punch. Repeat. Punch. Repeat. Punch. Repeat.
Why could he not have walked out instead?
Tagged blur, damon albarn, happy mondays, shaun ryder, think tank, yes please
Published by Craig McAllister
Over one and a half a million visitors since Jan 07! The material on Plain Or Pan has been downloaded, digested and discussed by every knowing hipster throughout Europe, North America, South America, Australia, Asia and Africa - truly Plain Or Pan-Global! One and a half million thanks to each and every one of you! View all posts by Craig McAllister
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2 thoughts on "Excess All Areas"
John T Bubble says:
I quite like this as The Wake are on it – the first of these URL's. Plus, secondly, my favourite Hit Parade track…
Great article as always. Hurrah!
Madison says:
Hi, Nice post thanks for sharing. Would you please consider adding a link to my website on your page. Please email me back.


text:
A Republican Said Americans Won't Die Without Healthcare. Kamala Harris' Response Is Perfect
Brett Bose
A Top Republican Senator Just Gave Trump Awful News About Russia
Among the many shocking things Republicans said with regards to health care last week, Representative Raul Labrador's (R-Idaho) comments stand out as some of the most controversial.
The House Representative, who voted for Trumpcare, was defending the Obamacare repeal after it was criticized by some of his constituents. He said: "No one wants anybody to die. That line is so indefensible. Nobody dies because they don't have access to healthcare."
This shockingly ignorant statement angered many, especially Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), who had a harsh reply for the thoughtless representative.
"This guy, this congressman, you might as well say, 'People don't starve because they don't have food.'
What the fuck is that?"
Harris made these comments during an interview with Pod Save America, which was recorded in front of a live studio audience. Laughs and cheers erupted from the crowd, especially since moments earlier had stopped herself from saying "bullshit."
After Harris' minor outburst she got serious and told the audience that progressives really need to work hard to vote out Republicans that voted for Trumpcare.
Harris could have said a whole lot more, especially since Labrador's comments were so ridiculous. But, like the classy lady she is, she kept a sense of decorum while still sticking to her original message.
Listen to the full interview below, Harris' comments begin at around 42:30
Brett Bose May 9, 2017


text:
Bipolar man's illness leads to acquittal on marijuana possession charge
Charles "Chuck" Homan's lawyer believes the reasoning behind his client's acquittal -- a justification argument --...
Bipolar man's illness leads to acquittal on marijuana possession charge Charles "Chuck" Homan's lawyer believes the reasoning behind his client's acquittal -- a justification argument --... Check out this story on ydr.com: https://www.ydr.com/story/news/local/hanover-south-western-adams-county/2015/08/21/bipolar-mans-illness-leads-acquittal-marijuana-possession-charge/72288562/
Rick Lee, YorkDailyRecord Published 4:54 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2015
Chuck Homan, 64, who has a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, recently was acquitted of two misdemeanor counts of possession of marijuana. His attorney said his acquittal rested on Homan's "justification" of using marijuana to control his manic depression may be a first in Pennsylvania.(Photo: Chris Dunn — Daily Record/Sunday News)
Charles "Chuck" Homan needs his marijuana. For him, he says, it's a matter of life or death.
He recently used that argument successfully in York County court. His testimony, and that of a psychiatrist who reviewed 30 years of Homan's medical records, convinced a judge that Homan's use of marijuana to control his manic depression brought on by his bipolar 1 syndrome outweighed the fact that marijuana possession is illegal in Pennsylvania.
"Every person out there with a life-threatening disease, now has a defense. And hope," said Homan, who has lobbied for the legalization of medical marijuana for years.
Homan's defense attorney, Chris Ferro, also a proponent of medical marijuana, believes the reasoning behind the acquittal of the Glenville man — a justification argument — could be the first of its kind in Pennsylvania.
A retired slate roofer, Homan was busted in Hanover on Aug. 30, 2014 as he was heading to a wedding with his wife.
That was really nothing new to Homan, 64. He's been popped before for possession of marijuana, and for growing it.
This last time was when Hanover Borough Police Officer Ryan Henry found himself behind the Homans' car. He wrote in his criminal complaint that he could smell marijuana. Then, he stated, he saw the front seat passenger blowing smoke out the window.
Henry pulled the car over. Homan admitted on the spot to smoking marijuana and handed over a pipe. In the ensuing search, Henry found marijuana and hashish, according to his complaint.
Homan recently recalled the incident.
He said he usually doesn't smoke in town, but will on back roads. He said they were running a little late that day and he had not had time to smoke earlier.
He said he was almost done with the bowl, and rather than waste what was left, he puffed away to clean the pipe out, blowing smoke out the window.
His wife, Rayna Homan, laughed when she said she looked in the rearview mirror and told her husband, "Oh no. There's a cop right behind us. I can't believe you did that."
Having previously been found guilty of possessing marijuana, Homan, in fact, was still on probation.
Ferro said that there would be no dire legal consequences for Homan if he was found guilty again. But, Ferro said, this time Homan wanted to take it to a jury trial.
"I tried to talk him out of it," Ferro said. "He convinced me. He wore me down. He wanted to tell his story."
Homan said he wanted a trial "because I'm not a criminal in any way, shape or form."
No relief from doctors' orders
For most of his life, Homan said, he had chronic insomnia. It was as an adult, about 30 years ago, that he was diagnosed with bipolar 1 syndrome, which manifested in lengthy bouts of manic depression. Homan said he would turn into the Hulk.
He said he took every drug doctors prescribed. Few gave any relief and none worked long term. Some even put him into a depression, he said.
Homan said he was having manic bouts every two weeks while on the drugs.
He said it was after a weeks-long bout of depression around 2001 when he turned to marijuana. He said he was trying to wean himself off of prescribed sleeping medications that he had become addicted to but that did not work.
"I had a job to run," he said. "I was laying in bed. My head hurts, my stomach hurts. I couldn't function, I couldn't work."
Homan said that first time he smoked marijuana, which was in college, he felt sleepy and hungry, two sensations he had rarely felt in his life.
Homan explained he smokes on a regular basis to keep the Cannabidiol, or CBD, at a steady level in his system to stave off manic episodes. He said he doesn't believe he has ever gotten "high."
"I'm not even sure what that means," he said.
Homan said he has used medical marijuana that is legal in other states. When he cannot obtain that, he resorts to smoking.
Justification defense
When Homan pushed for the jury trial hoping to get a sympathetic jury, the prosecution dropped a charge of possession of paraphernalia, forcing Homan to settle for a bench trial. Misdemeanor marijuana possession does not qualify for a jury trial.
And, at his Aug. 6 trial, senior prosecutor Sarah Buhite asked Homan, who testified in his own defense, if he was suffering from a manic attack when he was caught smoking in Hanover.
"I said, 'No. It doesn't work that way,'" Homan said. "Once you go into a depression, no amount of marijuana is going to help."
After hearing from Homan and the expert who reviewed his medical history, Judge Thomas H. Kelley VI found Homan not guilty of possession.
Ferro said his argument was based on the "justification" of Homan possessing marijuana. He said it was Homan's "attempt to avoid the greater danger — suicide" by breaking the law by smoking marijuana.
Ferro said he had compared it to battered woman syndrome, where a wife shoots her sleeping, abusive husband in the head.
"Clearly, that's murder," Ferro said. "But it's also an act of self-defense."
Ferro said in his pretrial research he found no precedent and no established case law to support his justification argument.
But, he said, Kelley ruled that he heard "nothing to refute the facts of the case" and agreed that Homan "was facing a life or death situation, in his mind."
"That took a lot of courage for Judge Kelley," Ferro said.
Buhite said that Kelley made it clear that his ruling was specific only to Homan and his case, and that he was not attempting to set a precedent for others to follow.
York County District Attorney Tom Kearney would not comment specifically on Kelley's decision.
"It is not the place of the Office of the District Attorney to publicly question a judge's ruling, other than through the appellate process," Kearney said in a statement on Wednesday.
"Judge Kelley's decision however does not make Mr. Homan immune from prosecution for any future marijuana arrests.
"Possession of marijuana is against the law, and I have taken an oath to uphold the laws of this commonwealth unless or until they are changed by the legislature."
Richard Long, executive director of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, echoed Kearney's statement.
Sen. Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon and part of York County, who has sponsored a medical marijuana bill, did not respond to a request for comment.
"The safest drug on the planet"
Ferro said he was concerned that Homan might be "putting a target on his back" by talking publicly about his trial.
Homan said he is worried about law enforcement. But, he said, "A lot of people that were suffering as bad as I am are dead. I don't want to end up like Robin Williams or family and friends."
Homan said he was the granduncle of Jesse Leipold, the man who was shot outside Adams County Prison after forcing police into an armed standoff and later died.
"He was in a state of mania," Homan said.
He also said he was friends with a woman who hung herself in her garage after asking her husband to take their children out for an hour to give her some peace and quiet. The woman also had turned to marijuana to treat a debilitating disease, Homan said.
After three months, for reasons of her own, she stopped using marijuana and returned to her prescribed medications.
Homan said one of the woman's young daughters asked, "Why did mommy stop taking her medicine?"
"They saw her marijuana as her medicine and the girl said it was best three months of their lives. She was active, she could do things, she could be a mom," he said.
"That's what I mean by family and friends."
To Homan, being able to use marijuana to ease his depression is both a moral and religious issue. He said he believes God put marijuana on earth to help people like him and for the government to deny him "the safest drug on the planet" is immoral.
As for his acquittal, Homan, a Mormon, said, "I thank my heavenly Saviour first and foremost. I thank the judge for his courage.
"And, it doesn't hurt to have the best lawyer in the country."
Contact Rick Lee at 717-495-1782.
More on medical marijuana
To see more YDR coverage of the medical marijuana issue, visit goo.gl/C5Qegf.
York defense attorney, wife believe medical marijuana could help son with epilepsy
Self-medicating pot grower convicted despite bipolar argument
Read or Share this story: https://www.ydr.com/story/news/local/hanover-south-western-adams-county/2015/08/21/bipolar-mans-illness-leads-acquittal-marijuana-possession-charge/72288562/
Police shared racist, sexist, anti-Muslim posts
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Red Lion man pepper-sprays Pa. state trooper
Woman shot at York cookout, city police say
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INGREDIENTS: Prebiotic Dietary Vegetable Fiber, Whey Protein Isolate, Milk Protein Isolate, Vanilla Cookie Inclusion (Calcium Caseinate, Chicory Root Fiber, Palm Oil, Sugar, Whole Milk Powder, Ground Flax Seed , Natural Flavor, Sunflower Lecithin and Stevia), Cashews, Glycerin, Xylitol, Coating (Sugar, Fractionated Palm Kernel Oil, Dry Nonfat Greek Yogurt (Cultured Skim Milk), Nonfat Dry Milk Powder, Milk Protein Concentrate, Soy Lecithin [an Emulsifier], Vanilla) and Fruit and Vegetable Juice for Color (Radish, Apple and Blackcurrant Concentrate and Citric Acid), Freeze Dried Strawberries, Palm Fruit, Natural Flavors, Sunflower Lecithin, Sea Salt, Peanuts, Almonds, Sunflower Seeds, Stevia. ALLERGENS: Contains Milk, Tree Nuts (Almond & Cashew), Soy, and Peanuts. Manufactured on equipment that processes peanuts, soy, and other tree nuts.
I'd buy a whole box if I were you!
Taste is fantastic! Loaded with flavor but not that cheap strawberry flavor. Best tasting new flavor to date!


Written by Mike C. Fletcher on May 7, 2005 in Snaking.
Last update on May 7, 2005 .
So, it turns out that Twisted has some serious problems related to starting and stopping the reactor multiple times during a run, which is, of course, what we do all the time when doing test-driven development in the "normal" (twisted.trial-like) style.
Have just spent more than 2 hours trying to build something that would let us get around the problem, but I think I'm going to have to admit defeat and figure out the "proper" way (if there really is such a way) to make a Twisted test suite. Bob Ippolito has posted quite an extensive description, but somehow I'm missing how it avoids the starting/stopping. Must be a trial feature we're not using in our test suites.


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text:
"""Tests for distutils.filelist."""
from os.path import join
import unittest
from test.test_support import captured_stdout, run_unittest

from distutils.filelist import glob_to_re, FileList
from distutils import debug

MANIFEST_IN = """\
include ok
include xo
exclude xo
include foo.tmp
global-include *.x
global-include *.txt
global-exclude *.tmp
recursive-include f *.oo
recursive-exclude global *.x
graft dir
prune dir3
"""

class FileListTestCase(unittest.TestCase):

    def test_glob_to_re(self):
        # simple cases
        self.assertEqual(glob_to_re('foo*'), 'foo[^/]*\\Z(?ms)')
        self.assertEqual(glob_to_re('foo?'), 'foo[^/]\\Z(?ms)')
        self.assertEqual(glob_to_re('foo??'), 'foo[^/][^/]\\Z(?ms)')

        # special cases
        self.assertEqual(glob_to_re(r'foo\\*'), r'foo\\\\[^/]*\Z(?ms)')
        self.assertEqual(glob_to_re(r'foo\\\*'), r'foo\\\\\\[^/]*\Z(?ms)')
        self.assertEqual(glob_to_re('foo????'), r'foo[^/][^/][^/][^/]\Z(?ms)')
        self.assertEqual(glob_to_re(r'foo\\??'), r'foo\\\\[^/][^/]\Z(?ms)')

    def test_process_template_line(self):
        # testing  all MANIFEST.in template patterns
        file_list = FileList()

        # simulated file list
        file_list.allfiles = ['foo.tmp', 'ok', 'xo', 'four.txt',
                              join('global', 'one.txt'),
                              join('global', 'two.txt'),
                              join('global', 'files.x'),
                              join('global', 'here.tmp'),
                              join('f', 'o', 'f.oo'),
                              join('dir', 'graft-one'),
                              join('dir', 'dir2', 'graft2'),
                              join('dir3', 'ok'),
                              join('dir3', 'sub', 'ok.txt')
                              ]

        for line in MANIFEST_IN.split('\n'):
            if line.strip() == '':
                continue
            file_list.process_template_line(line)

        wanted = ['ok', 'four.txt', join('global', 'one.txt'),
                  join('global', 'two.txt'), join('f', 'o', 'f.oo'),
                  join('dir', 'graft-one'), join('dir', 'dir2', 'graft2')]

        self.assertEqual(file_list.files, wanted)

    def test_debug_print(self):
        file_list = FileList()
        with captured_stdout() as stdout:
            file_list.debug_print('xxx')
        stdout.seek(0)
        self.assertEqual(stdout.read(), '')

        debug.DEBUG = True
        try:
            with captured_stdout() as stdout:
                file_list.debug_print('xxx')
            stdout.seek(0)
            self.assertEqual(stdout.read(), 'xxx\n')
        finally:
            debug.DEBUG = False

def test_suite():
    return unittest.makeSuite(FileListTestCase)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    run_unittest(test_suite())


European Union sanctions on Iran's main oil tanker firm NITC have been annulled after the EU did not appeal against a court ruling that the measures should be lifted, the shipping group's lawyer said on Tuesday.
An EU official told Reuters the European Union was working to resolve the issue, adding: "The time for appeal had elapsed but work is still ongoing on remedial action for maintaining the entity on the list."
In July the Luxembourg-based General Court, the second-highest court in the EU, ruled there were no grounds to blacklist NITC in the bloc after the company contested the designation. Rulings are typically suspended for two months pending appeals.
"We are glad to see the (European) Council accept the judgment of the EU court that the sanctions were unlawful, although it is regrettable that they did not see fit to lift the sanctions sooner," said Rovine Chandrasekera of law firm Stephenson Harwood, which represented NITC.


Duplicate with Connections Script Updated!
The Duplicate with Connections script has been updated and be downloaded at AEScripts + AEplugins. This update adds an option to use the property index instead of the property name. This can be useful in which multiple properties may have the same name and therefore can confuse the expressions engine. I understand this could be of help with those of you using expressions in Element.
In other news, I have to apologize for the lack of communication for a while. It's been a busy few months at work and with a new baby at home! But I've got a video tutorial I am working on and an update for the Pixel Cloud plugin as well as a brand new plugin on the horizon!


STR: Can you remember your first experience with Street Fighter and/or ST?
AfroLegends: My first experience with ST was probably at my local arcade, Beach and Warner, when I was maybe 9 or 10 at the time. My bro, Donovan, took me there one day and I couldn't wait to play it. My brother actually trained me on how to play Street Fighter when I was small and he was a very good player himself. We would basically split the games that we played. So at the arcade, I watched my brother play and wasn't surprised that he was beating people down right away at ST.
STR: You were helped trained by Alex Valle, were you not? How was that experience, having such a legend help you out like that?
AfroLegends: I used to play SF: AE on Xbox Live back in the days and that's how I met Alex. This was like back in 2005. We had some good games and we ended up talking on AIM and it turned out that he lived right around the corner from me, like liteally 5 minutes away. So right before EVO2k5, which was my first ever tournament, Alex invited me over and we played a few hours on his Super Turbo arcade cab before I made the trip to Vegas. I ended up getting 9th place at that tournament, eventually losing to Ohnuki and Jason Cole, both great players by the way. Anyways, after the tournament, Alex and I started playing more regularly. I would come over and we would play for hours. He is a very unorthodox, aggressive player with the ability to adapt on the fly. He really brings the pressure by always rushing and attacking so that really leveled me up in terms of playing that style and knowing how to fight against it. He is just a really smart player and is capable of playing the whole cast which gave me plenty of practice in matchups that I was weaker at. But yes, he is indeed a legend.
STR: Can you tell us about how you got your nickname? It seems like people are always asking about this.
AfroLegends: Well, when I came up with that nickname, I was sporting a small fro. I used to play Ready 2 Rumble Boxing and my main character in that was Afro Thunder. And since I was sporting a fro at the time and my main characters were Black in ST, DeeJay and Balrog, I decided to go with Afro. I got Legends from Ken Masters. I pretty much just wanted something similar to that. It just sounded snappy and powerful to me, haha.
STR: How familiar are you with the Japanese scene? Any thoughts on their scene versus ours?
AfroLegends: I am very familiar with their scene. I've always watched tons of Japanese footage to see if I can steal or incorporate anything they have into my game. Their level of play is just amazing and breathtaking to watch. I pretty much patterned my Balrog by watching Tamashima and Tsuji play. Their scene is a lot smallr than ours and that makes sense why their players are so strong. You only get better by playing good players and pretty much everyone over there is good. I do believe that the top players in the US can hang with Japan's best, but overall, they are better than us due to level of competition.
STR: You are considered the top Dee Jay player in the US and historically, he has not been a popular character here at all. What attracted you to him and become a main character of yours?
AfroLegends: What attracted me to him at first was his killer combos and the ability to chain small attacks into another. I also loved the fact that he had so many great anti air options with his insanely good normals. He was just a lot of fun to play due to the fact that you can beat your opponent by playing patient and just countering whatever they do or changing the pace up and bombarding them with a great offensive assault. He's just a really balanced, all around character that I felt was underrated at the time due to his similarities to Guile.
STR: You play both characters at an elite level but do you consider Dee Jay or Boxer as your main? Or is there really no difference?
AfroLegends: There is really no difference but these days, I enjoy playing Boxer more. It is just fun rushing people down, haha. But I am pretty adept at both characters, and I consider them both my main, like 1A and 1B.
AfroLegends vs AfroCole from EVO West 2k7.
Battle of the Afros Part II HD Remix style. From EVO 2010.
AfroLegends: I really believe they should work on the fundamental parts of their game first. When I first started playing Street Fighter, I always wanted to land the big combo and I would lose matches because of it. When I became more familiar with the basics and learned the importance of fundamentals is when I started winning more.
AfroLegends: Well, I just got GGPO recently installed thanks to Papasi, and I've been on there quite a bit. I guess I'm averaging about a hour a day now. At my peak, It was roughly 40 hours a week, which was definitely crazy.
AfroLegends: These days, I just try to play more often. Maybe go into training mode and work on combos and timing.
But before, when I didn't have a full time job, my routine would be to dedicate one day of training against each particular character. So one day I would use just practicing combos, setups, perfecting spacing, developing strategies, and figuring the nuances of the match against Guile, then the next day I would do the same but against a different character. The reason I do this is because you never want to be surprised by anything in tournament play. SF is a game of reactions and if you've seen it before, more likely you will react to it faster.
STR: Why do you think ST has had such longivity and popularity? And what is it about ST that keeps you playing?
AfroLegends: It's just a great game and any match can end any second which keeps it exciting and you really have to be on your toes. I still play ST because it's still fun. I enjoy trying to outthink and ouwit my opponents. Honestly, I don't thnk I'll ever stop playing. It's a timeless game.
AfroLegends vs Snake Eyez – West Coast Warzone 2 Finals.
STR: What do you think about HD Remix? SF4?
AfroLegends: HD Remix wasn't a perfect game but I enjoyed playing it. My main characters weren't radically changed so I played it pretty much like I did ST and that worked fine for me. I don't really think too much of SF4. I just feel like it's an inferior game to ST and people are only playing it because it's the new craze and the flashiness of it. I guarantee you it won't be around 20 years from now. It's not a timeless game like ST.
AfroLegends: I think the best ST player in the US is John Choi, and then in no order: Valle, DGV, and myself. For HDR, it's probably Choi, SnakeEyes, DGV, and myself.
AfroLegends: My toughest opponent that I've played would probably be John Choi but I consider my rival to be DGV. We've played each other pretty regularly over the years and it's just a lot of fun playing him. He can beat you in so many ways so you really have to be on your game when you play him.
AfroLegends: My fondest moment in my SF career would probably be winning EVO2k9 and then beating Daigo at EVO2k10. I'm sure everyone's seen my infamous match vs Dagio at EVO2k6 and it felt great getting revenge against him, haha.
AfroLegends: Well, I just try to enter as many tournaments as possible and try to keep the scene going. I've been playing ST for a long time so anyone that wants to learn or asks for input, I try to help them out as much as I can.
AfroLegends: I would like that to happen, but I honestly don't think it will due to the fact that everyone's older, may be married, have kids, and dedicated to a job. It's hard to find time and I don't blame them because I'm in the same shoes right now. But SF is in my blood, so I will always keep playing.
AfroLegends: I just want everyone to keep playing and supporting ST. Go out to tournaments around your area and have some fun. That's all and thanks for having me!
STR: Thank you so much for your time, Jason. Good luck at So Cal Regionals next week!


Hair graying is shockingly common problem these days especially among teenagers. Hardly few kids are seen without a gray strand these days. This is unhealthy and something that is not natural. In teenagers, it is because of stress, tension, over exposure to sunlight and pollution, etc but one basic reason of graying of hair is age as well.
As we get older, the hair begins to get gray because of decrease in production of pigment called melanin in the bulb of hair. This promotes graying of hair but you can keep a control over it so that it does not easily happen to you. So here are some tips to avert graying of hair.
The first thing that you must do is to cover your hair when you go out. A fancy hat, a cool scarf or a protecting umbrella could be solution. The intense heat and bright light coming from sun could decrease the production of melanin which in turn causes graying. Limit he use of gels or hair creams as they kind of choke the pores of scalp and that can do some serious damage.
If you are into swimming, then a cap of swimming is a must have. Not only does the chlorine water promote hair graying, it can totally damage hair texture plus can cause various infections of scalp. You may suffer from irritation and redness of scalp. While sleeping, let your hair be loose and not tightly braided. This can weaken the roots of hair plus cause graying.
Oiling is one the basic thing that is recommended for proper hair nourishment and if it is not taken care of, hair would get less nutrition because of which graying happens sometimes. So oil hair with hot coconut oil thrice in a week followed by ho towel treatment.
Do not indulge much into alcohol and smoking plus do not use styling products containing alcohol as they can dry the hair roots. Use a natural shampoo as chemical based ones are very harsh on hair and cause graying if over used. So this is how you can prevent hair graying.


The huge original came out on Trapez LTD 18, here it gets re-mixed re-edited and spliced-up by Pan/Tone of Substatic, The Dirt Crew of MBF fame, Marcos Cabral and lastly Wolfgang Thuns. The Dirt Crew and Marcos Cabral both deliver deep remixes that are staple Trapez fodder, lush synths on both cuts with clean drums and a top click house feel for the perfect Trapez vibe, Senor Cabral takes the trophy for the deepest cut though. Flip over for the more fashionable side which has a trashier vibe, lots of bright drums on the Wolfgang Thuns shebang, backed by a phat and simple bassline with the full vocal in display over the top, and a little more sedate but just as hedonistic on the Pan/Tone remix, party time Trapez style.