Axommsoft Pdf splitter Merger software offers more quicker and convenient way to manage pdf pages. Users, who use pdf documents very frequently for sh...

I was attempting to merge at the 3rd street/division onramp and was going the speed limit, signalling and saw this woman accelerating to cut me off. She was only 3 carlengths behind me, and had she kept her speed steady I would have merged just fine. She sped up, was looking down at her lap, and I had to brake hard and pull to the shoulder to let her by, before trying again to merge at a much slower speed. This woman doesn't have a clue how dangerous her driving is. I hope she finds out before she kills someone.

The "Fringe" Season 3 finale took us 15 years into the future. The year is 2026 and Locke is dead and Jack says we have to go back ... wait, no.It's 2026 and the alternate world is destroyed. Walternate is trapped in our world and is exploding wormholes all over the place to destroy the world that destroyed his world bit by bit, including shooting Olivia in the head.So Walter has to change Peter's consciousness of 2011 so he will make a different choice in the past and not destroy the alternate universe. It ... kind of works. The two universes merge. So, hello Fauxlivia. And Peter's son (we presume). But as Peter starts to explain how they need to work together, he blinks away. The Observers say he never existed and no one remembers him. Um ... what?Where do you think Peter went? And we're getting him back, right? Right?! (Mostly) Awesome Future ThingsElla...

Mornings in Liuzhou start with the beep of scooter horns. The scooter is the commuting vehicle of choice for many in this city of slightly less than 1 million people. With a tap of a thumb, drivers beep their horns when they pass, when a pedestrian approaches, when they zip between cars or when they merge close to another scooter....

It had been 20 days since I played a hand of online poker. But I was OK with that. Perhaps just somewhat, but OK nonetheless. I figured I'd simply increase my live poker play and as such would go to the wormhole PLO game a bit more often. But what is it they say about the best laid plans?

Evidence for the existence of wormholes has yet to be discovered. But if theoretical astro-physics is correct, apparently they are truly unstable constructs. My wormhole vanished. And by vanished, I mean shutdown by the local authorities. Unfortunately, PLO wasn't the only game that was running there. The trouble magnets known as video poker machines triggered this bust, and luckily for me, I wasn't there. Oh, I would have been. But thankfully Dr. Chako was coming to town for the mudrun and I had to stay near my house to pick him up.

"No PLO for you," said the imaginary poker Nazi, and he was right. If I were still planning on playing a PLO event at this year's WSOP, then where on Earth would I get practice?

Just one fix....

Browsing the 2+2 forums, I noticed that some US-facing sites were still in business. Was it risky to get involved with them now? You betcha. How much was I willing to risk? Well, perhaps the amount of my PokerStars check that I'm due to receive. On April 15th, I really expected my funds to simply vanish, so substituting one site's balance for another wasn't all too intimidating. And after reading more and more about it, I made a decision.

I chose Lock Poker.

I'm not an affiliate nor do I receive any benefits from sharing the following information. (edit: Actually, you can apply for an account at TheNuts.com using the bonus code BadBlood if you'd like. No worries if you don't.) I'm just doing it in case there are other readers out there who need their online fix and are willing to take a risk with a smaller site. They're on the Merge network and my hopes are that the US DOJ is too busy being involved with their current targets to take note of some of the minor sites. Again, it's a hope, and it could easily be that I've just set money on fire by depositing. But if you want to know, here's how I did it.

First, I went to TheNuts.com and signed up there. Why? Well they have a promotion going where if you sign up with them and use the bonus code THENUTSIPAD2 (verify, I'm not 100% sure that's correct, going off the top of my head), you will receive the following:

35% rakeback
a free iPad2 if you clear $1000 in rake in the first 60 days of play.

I believe this offer expires May 31st.

So I signed up, downloaded the software (Mac compatible too!), and tried to deposit.

...and utterly failed.

Back to the 2+2 forums I went and after some more research, I had heard that there were successful deposits if you chose the CASINO option in the Lock Software to deposit. Once successful, you could transfer from the casino to the poker room and begin playing.

So I tried that.

...and utterly failed.

I tried 3 VISA credit cards (WARNING: DON'T TRY CREDIT CARDS) and 1 VISA DEBIT card. The next day I was greeted with emails and phone calls from each card's fraud department. Fantastic. I was resolved to try the Western Union option and if that failed, simply hang my head in disgust and failure.

However, after speaking with my debit card's department, after confirming that it was me who attempted the purchase, the agent said that the charge should go through the next time I tried it. So I went home and tried one last time.

...and it worked.

However, by depositing with the Casino side, I wasn't able to enter the bonus code to entitle me to the free iPad2. A man needs goals afterall. So a quick email to support@lockpoker.com seemed to rectify the situation. Also, if you remember Rizen (Eric Lynch), he's a representative for Lock and is active over at 2+2. I PM'd him my details too just to be sure and he got back to me the next day with a reply. Outstanding.

And so off I went. By my calculations, I'll need to play about 12,000 hands of .25/.50 PLO to qualify for the iPad2. I'll be getting rakeback the whole time too, so my first $1000 in rake will yield about $850 back in my hands in either cash or, best of all, TECH GADGETS!!!

So there it is. Back online. For how long? Who knows. Will there be difficulties in the future with this endeavor? Highly likely there will be. Am I willing to take that risk right now? Well, apparently the answer is a resounding yes.

I need help.

I just got an email from DragTheBar saying that the Merge Network won't be signing up any new users with rakeback after June 1st, so if you were on the fence about starting there, now might be the time to hop on the bus because if you wait, you might end up getting screwed out of rakeback....

Merge Healthcare, Omnicare Clinical Research Partner for Oncology Clinical Trial

by Brad Johnson.

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room.

Senate Republicans have introduced legislation to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, established 40 years ago by President Richard Nixon to give Americans clean air and water. The bill, introduced by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), would merge the EPA, which enforces environmental laws, with the Department of Energy, which manages nuclear energy and energy research, into one department.

In January, Newt Gingrich proposed abolishing the EPA, and several House Republicans have supported that goal, while making numerous attempts to hamstring limits on industrial polluters. Burr’s statement announcing his bill to eliminate the EPA argues that “duplicative functions” can be eliminated, even though the two departments are completely different:

Burr introduced a bill that would consolidate the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency into a single, new agency called the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE).  The bill would provide cost savings by combining duplicative functions while improving the administration of energy and environmental policies by ensuring a coordinated approach.

Burr’s bill has 15 cosponsors, all of them global warming deniers: Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), John Thune (R-S.D.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Dan Coats (R-Ind.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), John Boozman (R-Ariz.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), David Vitter (R-La.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah).

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Why the Supreme Court should let states sue the country’s biggest carbon polluters

In recent weeks, concerned Fairhavenites have argued back and forth about a school department proposal to merge the Wood and Rogers Elementary schools into a single, larger and modernized Wood School.

Senate Republicans have introduced legislation to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, established 40 years ago by President Richard Nixon to give Americans clean air and water. The bill, introduced by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), would merge the EPA, which enforces environmental laws, with the Department of Energy, which manages nuclear energy and energy research, into one department.

Burr’s statement announcing his bill to eliminate the EPA argues that “duplicative functions” can be eliminated, even though the two departments are completely different:

U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) introduced a bill that would consolidate the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency into a single, new agency called the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE). The bill would provide cost savings by combining duplicative functions while improving the administration of energy and environmental policies by ensuring a coordinated approach.

In January, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich proposed abolishing the EPA, and several House Republicans have supported that goal, while making numerous attempts to hamstring limits on industrial polluters.

Burr’s bill has fifteen co-sponsors, all of them global warming deniers: Jim DeMint (R-SC), Mike Enzi (R-WY), John Thune (R-SD), John McCain (R-AZ), Dan Coats (R-IN), Richard Shelby (R-AL), John Barrasso (R-WY), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Boozman (R-AR), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), David Vitter (R-LA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT).

Digitimes

Samsung Galaxy S II review: Eye-popping Gingerbread CNET (blog) What do you get when you merge Android 2.3 Gingerbread with a 1GHz dual-core processor, a 4.3-inch high-end screen, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, and 4G capability? ... Samsung Infuse 4G Brings App Sideloading to AT&TPCWorld AT&T launches Samsung Infuse, offers glimpse into handset, network plansFierceWireless Check Out The Huge New Android Phone Samsung Just Launched In NYCThe Business Insider Skatter Tech -the unwired -Mobile Burn all 185 news articles »

Merge Healthcare announced Thursday that Omnicare Clinical Research, subsidiary of Omnicare, Inc., will implement its Clinical Imaging Management System (CIMS) as part of its end-to-end solution for image management of oncology, cardiology and ophthalmology clinical trials.

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T-Mobile USA struggled in the first quarter, reporting a loss of 99,000 subscribers in the quarter and increased churn compared to the year before. Revenue was flat while income fell. It highlights the challenges for the fourth-place carrier, which is preparing to merge with AT&T.

BlogsA warm welcome to David Johnson, whose new blog, Neuropoly, began on Nature Network this week. David is a neuroscience PhD student with a background in cognitive and social psychology. His research covers a wide range of topics in the cognitive sciences, from humans to mice and his first post, The neural correlates of (some abstract cognitive process), considers the exploitation of science in the media. He discusses a story the NY Times ran a few years ago which featured the work of a neuromarketing company where participants were asked to lay in a scanner while looking at pictures of presidential candidates. His post delves into the problems associated with this experiment, highlighting the ways the media can often mislead people by misinterpreting science:bq. It’s unfortunate that the study received such a prominent platform for distribution because people, especially non scientists, can be heavily influenced by articles with pictures of brains or technical sounding neuro language. One study, found that people were much more likely to believe a nonsensical article if it had meaningless neuroscience language in it than if it didn’t.h4{color:brown}. Popular topicsWe all know how valuable science education is and this has been the central focus of our recent mini-series. We have looked at how science is taught at all levels, have assembled some top tips from PhD students and have created a Storify summary of the recent Science Question time event in London. In order to collate all of this information, we have created a Dipity Flipbook; including our seven PhD interviews, other related blog posts and a summary of the live Q & A Nature held last week. You can find the Flipbook here and if you have any related questions, feel free to leave a comment in the thread.Onto another popular topic – weddings. With the hype over the Royal Wedding slowly dwindling, NPG’s News Blog have revealed that there is an experimental philosopher in New York City who is looking at marriage from a whole new perspective. Jonathon Keatsinstituteoffers.html is offering a sciencey way to share a special bond with your loved one. He will entangle couples, in the quantum sense, so that they will live “Happily ever entangled:” bq. Couples wishing to be entangled walk down a narrow corridor, two-people wide, and stand under the entanglement apparatus. This comprises a nonlinear crystal of beta-barium borate (commonly used to entangle photons), which will catch the sunlight from the window. Then a series of prisms will split that light – hopefully containing the entangled photons – and the light will hit the two people standing below.h4{color:brown}. DNA Origami When the world of art and science collide you often get some of the most ingenious creations. This week, Scitable’s blogger, Eric Sawyerorigami has been sharing with us some DNA origami,origami which, as the name suggests, is literally doing origami with molecules of DNA. He explains that since we know a lot about the structure of DNA and how it behaves, developing DNA origami is limited only by our creativity. h4{color:brown}. Science writing"How do you Write?":http://blogs.nature.com/rawilliauk/2011/05/04/how-do-you-write This is the question that blogger and PhD student Richard Williams asks in his latest post. As an apprentice scientist writing his first year report, he reveals his own tested method of writing and urges other PhD students who have any top tips to impart their advice:bq. Does this sound familiar to PhD graduates out there? Did you encounter a similar issue when you were at Grad School? If so, how did you overcome it? How do you write?The writing theme continues in The Sceptical Chymist blog. As you might already be aware, each month, an essay is published in Nature Chemistry about an element. These short pieces are fairly informal and often include anecdotes or historical tales about a particular element. Their most recent essay is by Ralph Puchta, from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, and he enlightens us about the element beryllium. You can read an extract from his essay in the post.. YouTube BanThis week Scilogs blogger Markus A. Dahlem has revealed that a video he posted on YouTube, which shows how some people see optical migraines, has been removed. It presented a simulated visual hallucination, a zigzag pattern, which you can see in the screenshot below:The video has received a lot of positive feedback from both the scientific community and from migraine sufferers. Blogger Markus feels that there no obvious reason why YouTube disabled his video, although he does try to offer an explanation in his post. What do you think of this decision? h4{color:brown}. To AV or not to AV? Yesterday in the UK, a national referendum was held to decide whether the voting system currently used in parliamentary elections should be changed. In the run up to this, in his post, to AV or not to AV, Tom Webb has been giving us a run down of what this actually means and cites Australia as an example of a country which has used AV for years. bq. We go to the polls in the UK tomorrow, in a national referendum to decide whether we should change the voting system we use in parliamentary elections. The choice is between our current system, First Past the Post (FPTP), and the Alternative Vote (AV) system.Like Tom, London blogger Joanna Scott has also been discussing this issue in her latest post, Politics and science: AV, ESF funding and libel laws. In her politically themed post she reveals that other votes are taking place that might be of more interest to scientists:bq. But AV is not the only vote going on today: London scientists may be more affected by a special assembly of the European Science Foundation (ESF) which is considering proposals to merge with the European Heads of Research Councils (EuroHORCs) and discontinue its grant funding activities.h4{color:brown}. Risk IntelligenceThis week’s guest blogger is Dylan Evans, author of numerous books including, Emotion and Placebo. In his post, he is considering Risk Intelligence, introducing us to the Forecasting World Events Project, a multi-year research program investigating the accuracy of individual and group predictions about global events. Now onto an event which perhaps could have been predicted: the death of Osama Bin Laden. Australian blogger MuKa, in his amusing post, Aladdin, reveals how he was taken aback at the announcement from his mother, who is originally from Bangladesh and has difficulty with pronunciation:bq. “Did you hear? Aladdin is dead!”."What?“, I asked with astonishment.”Aladdin, he’s dead!“.”Aladdin?_"."Yes“.His post sparks an interesting comment thread revealing how common it is to misinterpret language. MuKa encourages those who have experienced similar misunderstandings, particularly in science, to leave a comment.. Finally”Viktor Poor":http://blogs.nature.com/strippedscience/2011/05/04/crossing-over-cartoon has been asking us what happens when two homologue chromosomes meet…..?c/2011/05/high five-thumb-250×327-2674.png" width=“250” height=“327” class=“mt-image-left” style=“float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;” />

Warner Music finally agreed to sell itself to the Russian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik, who may eventually seek to merge the record label with the EMI Group.

Omnicare Clinical Research will implement Merge CIMS as a part of its end-to-end system for image management of oncology, cardiology and ophthalmology clinical trials.

The new unemployment report released by the Labor Department this morning finds that 244,000 jobs were added last month, the third straight solid month of job growth. But, the unemployment rate ticked up to 9 percent. Jobs gains for February and March were also revised upwards.

The Associated Press reports that CEO pay at the nation’s largest companies actually now exceeds that of pre-recession levels. The “typical pay package for the head of a company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 was $9 million in 2010.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that the GOP Medicare privatization proposal might make seniors “die sooner” because many more who can’t afford it would likely go without needed health care. Seniors “will run out of money very quickly,” she told a Congressional hearing yesterday.

According to a set of handwritten notes picked up by the Navy SEALs, Al Qaeda planned to attack the U.S. train network “possibly on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.” A Department of Homeland Security bulletin yesterday said it isn’t clear if there’s been further planning since early 2010 as the notes offered “vague” and “aspirational” rather than concrete information.

After suspending them in March, Fox News officially terminated its contracts with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Sen. Rick Santorum this week as the two Republicans weigh presidential bids. The termination “ratchets up pressure” on Fox host and former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) to announce his decision, but Fox News is denying reports that it’s given him a deadline of the end of May to decide.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) and fifteen other Republican senators introduced a resolution that would merge the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency into one government agency. Burr’s office claims the merger would net “$3 billion in savings in 2012 alone.”

On Thursday, 44 Republican senators stood together to oppose a strong Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and vowed to block any presidential nominee to the new agency unless their demands are met. Republicans were careful not to attack the popular mission of the CFPB, instead focusing their attacks on its “unfettered authority.”

Yesterday’s first debt limit meeting between Vice President Biden and Republican and Democratic House leaders produced many pledges of good will, but no specifics. Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Assistant Leader James Clyburn (D-SC) both expressed optimism about the prospects for striking a deal, but did not identify any possible areas of compromise.

Last night during the GOP presidential debate in South Carolina, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) said that states should have the right to legalize gay marriage. “I think the government should just be out of it,” he said, adding, “if we want to have something to say about marriage it should be at the state level and not at the federal government.”

And finally: Perhaps in a bid to outdo Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker in hands-on constituent services, a German mayor rescued a man trapped in a women’s prison. The man “became trapped” in the prison “after mistaking it for a shortcut to a nearby park.” Hildesheim Mayor Henning Blum heard the man’s cries for help while passing and notified his police.

For breaking news and updates throughout the day, follow ThinkProgress on Facebook and Twitter.

Warner Music finally agreed to sell itself to the Russian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik, who may eventually seek to merge the record label with the EMI Group.

(Disclaimer: Merge is one of my companies) One of the most effective forms of communication today is video. There is no other medium which packs in the same amount of objective information and subjective emotion into such a small space of time. This is why YouTube has recently become the second most used search tool [...] Related posts:

1. New Project: Art Revision.com
2. Entrepreneur Incubator Leadership Project
3. Latest Project

Today BPLead and JWI announced that they would merge their organizations to form the largest local PLM software and services provider in China and consist of over 200 PLM experts to support customers from 7 office locations across China.

Javalobby - The heart of the Java developer community

I just love git pull requests, but the new behavior from GitHub is beyond moronic. Take a look at a typical pull request:References Reference:  What where they THINKING? The github merge button is STUPID Mitchell Pronsc...

GroovyBlogs.org

I just love git pull requests, but the new behavior from GitHub is beyond moronic. Take a look at a typical pull request:References Reference:  What wh...

I just love git pull requests, but the new behavior from GitHub is beyond moronic. Take a look at a typical pull request:References Reference:  What where they THINKING? The github merge button is STUPID Mitchell Pronsc...

We have a document that needs mail merge fields to be put in the right areas, we have them in but need them moved in the exact positions. Also need some pages to have 2 copies, need some borders moved and it all needs to print out properly. When we go to print it says the margins are out on several pages. The document has notes written on it for the changes we need.

Disqus May 6, 2011 Nursing-home merger a go - Alice Hyde to build $35 million facility DENISE A. RAYMO Press-Republican Plattsburgh Press Republican Fri May 06, 2011, 03:28 AM EDT MALONE - Franklin County agreed to merge its Nursing Home with Alice Hyde Medical Center's and pay $10 million to get out from under the annual financial burden.

helo m put on a project were in need to do 1)create merge feild in word using c# 2)should able to edit and add this mail mergefield using c# please help

When git branches are merged, there is always the chance of a conflict arising if a file was modified in both the target and merge branches. You can resolve merge conflicts using a combination of fugitive’s :Gdiff command, and Vim’s built in diffget and diffput. In this episode, we’ll find out how. This is the third in a five part series on fugitive.vim.

HackerBooks.com - find and explore books from StackOverflow and HackerNews!

Just how can a smartphone help save lives? Indirectly, it can be used to call up an emergency number when a situation unfolds in front of you, but how about a more hands-on aspect? Researchers from Harvard have managed to merge the functionalities of a smartphones as well as a metal detector, ending up with PETALS – short for Pattern Enhancement Tool for Assisting Land mine Sensing. The whole idea behind this is to come up with a cost effective method to detect land mines in Third World countries, all without having to send people to go through rigorous training so that their ears are able to tell the difference between a deadly explosives or a tin can. 

PETALS mine detector is cheap and effective, By Ubergizmo. Top Stories : Blackberry Playbook Review, iPhone 4 Review,

Never mind about word in the industry concerning Twitter purchasing Tweetdeck, those of you who are rocking to a BlackBerry as your primary mode of communication might want to check out Twitter for BlackBerry version 2 Beta which is currently now available in the BlackBerry Beta Zone.

RIM attempts to take a different approach this time around, as the Canadian company intends to deliver more frequent beta versions alongside features that have been added to the mix – where the current version 2 of the Twitter app will deliver a simplified navigation bar right at the top. It will merge the Search, Find People, and Popular Topics screens into a solitary Single Search Screen, apart from integrating it with the Universal Search feature. 

Twitter for BlackBerry version 2 beta now available, By Ubergizmo. Top Stories : LG Optimus 2X Review, Nexus S Review,

Starting with the GSM product line, NSN plans to interconnect and eventually merge Moto's portfolio with its own Flexi platform, but will continue to sell Moto's original equipment Less than week after its $975 million acquisition of Motorola Networks closed , Nokia Siemens Networks has begun integrating the two vendors product portfolios, ...

Simco Industrial, a provider of electrostatic technology, has unveiled its new corporate

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EDIT: Oops, I see another thread below. Merge if necessary, mods! Tag for me. _Image: http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/Iron_Maiden_Freak/tagh.jpg _ Image: http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/Iron_Maiden_Freak/tag.jpg Have a great day, WUS! :-!

News Corp.'s IGN Entertainment acquired Hearst Corp.'s UGO Entertainment, a combination that sets the stage for the eventual spinoff of the gaming and male-oriented entertainment sites. Together, IGN's and UGO's online properties reach more than 70 million monthly users, who...

TechDay.co.nz

News Corp.'s IGN to Acquire Hearst's UGO Hollywood Reporter NEW YORK - As News Corp. continues to pursue a sale of social network MySpace, it said Thursday that video game IGN Entertainment, another part of its digital portfolio that is focused on video game and entertainment enthusiasts, has agreed to acquire ... News Corp.'s IGN Buys Gaming Site UGOWall Street Journal News Corp. buys videogame news sites from HearstAFP News Corp., Hearst merge online game, entertainment sitesLos Angeles Times Ninemsn -TechCrunch -Investorplace.com all 24 news articles »

KUT’s Emily Donahue spoke with Brandi Grissom of the Texas Tribune about the Senate’s passage of a bill to combine the Texas Youth Commission and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission, which manage the state’s youth offenders, into a new state agency, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. Aziza Musa reported on the bill’s passage today in the Texas Senate for KUT’s political reporting partner, the Texas Tribune. Musa writes, “A bill to merge Texas’ two state juvenile justice agencies is headed to the governor for a signature. The bill by Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, would consolidate the Texas Youth Commission and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission, which manage the state’s youth offenders, into a new state agency, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. Whitmire and state Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, worked together on the bill, which is estimated to save up to $150 million over the next biennium. The new agency will have an 11-member…

Confirming plans that were first leaked last Sunday, the game oriented media company IGN Entertainment has now officially announced it has acquired UGO Entertainment, which also adds the popular gaming web site 1Up.com to IGN's already large collection of web sites. Hearst Corporation, the previous owner of UGO and 1Up.com,...

The makers of Grand Theft Auto are set to revolutionise gaming by exploring the noir crime genre. Here the aim is to interrogate criminals – not kill them

Two police detectives burst into a filthy apartment. A woman is cowering on the floor amid upturned furniture as a group of hired thugs search every drawer and cupboard. A fist fight ensues, the heavies are dispatched and the officers are left to question the traumatised victim.

How do they start questioning her? How will they know if she's telling the truth? Well, that's your problem. You are the cop and this is a whole new type of video game.

LA Noire is the latest offering from Rockstar Games, the notorious publisher of Grand Theft Auto and last year's brilliant western shooter, Red Dead Redemption. The action takes place in the seamy, crime-sodden LA of the late 40s; the familiar hunting ground of Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy and Dashiell Hammett – all huge influences on the game's director, Brendan McNamara. The player takes on the role of rookie detective Cole Phelps as he investigates a series of kidnaps and murders, studying crime scenes, talking to witnesses and interrogating suspects. Gamers are able to choose the tone of each Q&A; session, playing nice and going in gently, or challenging every word the subject utters. Vitally, progress is made by watching characters as they stutter and squirm, judging whether they're lying or terrified; it's not killing people, it's reading them.

The realism of these virtual humans is incredible. In one scene the gamer has to question an actor who has been drugged, shoved in the back of a car and wheeled down an embankment in a thwarted murder attempt. Her eyes dart about, she shifts uncomfortably, her brows furrow in agitation – she's hiding something. These aren't the gross caricatures of facial expressions we're used to in video games; they are subtle and natural. Later, the gamer talks to a weasely prop house owner who has been caught running a seedy casting coach. He snarls his way through the session, but after a few threats he wilts, his expression droops. At times, it is almost photographic.

What LA Noire represents is a new era for interactive entertainment. Over the past 30 years, games have been based around challenging the player's hand-eye co-ordination – the ability to react quickly with a controller. But in LA Noire, the main skill is emotional perception, being able to judge body language and facial "tells" – the little nervous tics that betray liars. These are the same skills we use in real life and that allow us to engage with characters in TV and movie dramas. Suddenly then, games are a universal medium.

They have hinted at this before. Last year's gruelling psychological drama Heavy Rain required players to engage with troubled characters and carry out simple detective work, while the Mass Effect series of science-fiction adventures has provided a rich, emotional narrative. But the naturalism, the human drama of these games, has always been held back by slightly lifeless character models.

Central to the human realism in LA Noire is the motion-scan technology, a new method of capturing facial expressions, researched and developed by the game's creators, the Sydney-based studio Team Bondi. Standard motion-capture means that the actor's face is covered in small, reflective balls, which are tracked by a camera. "The problem with that is that having little balls on someone's face doesn't really capture the muscles or the skin movement," says McNamara. "It just captures skeletons and there aren't that many joints in the human face." But with motion-scan, each actor is surrounded by 32 cameras, which record every intricate movement at the rate of 1,000 frames-per-second, creating a three-dimensional animation of the actor's face as they deliver lines. All of this is captured in a special studio, complete with stark, white lighting: "When we first described this weird process to the actors, they thought they were going to be reprogrammed, like Alex in A Clockwork Orange," jokes McNamara.

The casting has also been vital. Team Bondi avoided going for film superstars, because their mannerisms and emotional cues will be too familiar to gamers. Instead, they've opted for lesser-known actors. Aaron Staton, who plays Ken Cosgrove in Mad Men, is Phelps. "When we started looking at the roles, Dan Houser [vice-president of Rockstar Games], had seen Aaron in Mad Men and thought he was an interesting actor," explains McNamara. "Luckily, we used the same casting agency as Mad Men, so once we had Aaron on board, half the rest of the cast heard about it and asked to be in it, too. Lots of them have cameos!"

There are over 400 characters in the game, and its script that would cover two seasons of a major TV series. But, for all this talk of human drama, LA Noire is still an action game. Between the interrogation scenes, there are shoot-outs and car chases, there are bank robberies to foil. Team Bondi claims a new style of co-operative gameplay will emerge to deal with this dichotomy. "One interesting phenomenon we've seen while testing the game is that three or four people will sit down and play together on a couch, with one handling the shoot-outs and the brawls, and someone else doing the conversations. It becomes an interactive experience that families might choose over half an hour of TV," adds McNamara.

So is there a future in which games abandon the need for visceral action altogether and concentrate on human relationships? McNamara is convinced this will happen, and, as internet-connected televisions become more readily available, we're going to see experiences that merge traditional TV shows with video game elements. "It's going to happen sooner than you think," he says. "We have shown with LA Noire the level of humanity you can get into games, the level of immersion, the believability of the characters. Games have always been good at interactivity, but where we've fallen down is in areas like story and characters. If we bring all that in, there's no reason interactive TV shows couldn't happen."

Until recently, games were about crude characters blasting space aliens; now they can be about rounded humans learning to gauge photorealistic strangers. McNamara's ideas about deep interactive dramas being broadcast like TV shows sound outlandish, but the technological building blocks are there. LA Noire points the way. We are going to need to put down our controllers and pick up on our people skills.

Many development teams are used to making heavy use of branches in version control. Distributed version control systems make this even more convenient. Thus one of the more controversial statements in Continuous Delivery is that you can’t do continuous integration and use branches. By definition, if you have code sitting on a branch, it isn’t integrated. One common case when it seems obvious to use branches in version control is when making a large-scale change to your application. However there is an alternative to using branches: a technique called branch by abstraction.

Branch by abstraction: a pattern for making large-scale changes to your application incrementally on mainline.

The example Paul Hammant provides in his original blog entry on this technique is moving from Hibernate to iBatis. As it so happens, Go, the continuous integration and agile release management platform I work on, is presently moving from iBatis to Hibernate, and has been doing so for over a year now. We are also slowly moving our UI over from Velocity and JsTemplate to JRuby on Rails.

Both of these changes are being done slowly and incrementally, at the same time as developing new features, while checking in to mainline on our Mercurial repository multiple times a day. How do we do it?

Moving from iBatis to Hibernate

The team decided to move from iBatis to Hibernate for two reasons: first, we were able to use its ORM efficiently since we had control of our database schema, which saved us writing lots of custom SQL, and second, because its second-level cache helped performance.

Of course we didn’t want to move the whole codebase over at once. So as we started adding new functionality that required new calls to the database, we added these new calls using Hibernate, moving over old calls that used iBatis as required.

It is relatively straightforward to update the persistence logic incrementally because the Go codebase uses a standard layered architecture, with controllers using services that in turn use repositories. Because all the database access code is encapsulated in repository classes using the repository pattern, it’s a simple case of incrementally changing one repository class at a time from using iBatis to Hibernate. The service layer has no idea of the underlying persistence framework.

Moving from Velocity and JsTemplate to JRuby on Rails

We also wanted to move over from a Java-based UI stack to a JRuby on Rails stack, both because it was much easier to write tests for this stack, and because it speeded up UI development. Again, this change was made incrementally. When we created a new page in the application, we would create it using the JRuby on Rails stack, linking to the new page from the rest of the application once it was ready.

We would also move pages over whenever we wanted to make substantial changes to them. Again, the new version of the page would be developed using the new stack, and then we’d switch URIs in the rest of the application to point to the new version of the page once it was ready. At this point, we would remove the old version of the page. So while most of the UI in Go is now implemented using JRuby on Rails, there are still a couple of pages that use the old Java stack.

However you’d never know by looking at the pages, because they have identical styling. You have to look at the URI. Any URI that starts /go/tab is routing through the old Velocity stack. All the other URIs are routed via Rack to JRuby on Rails, which in turn calls through to the same Java service layer that the old UI also uses.

How branch by abstraction works

Branch by abstraction involves making large-scale changes to your system incrementally as follows:

1. Create an abstraction over the part of the system that you need to change.
2. Refactor the rest of the system to use the abstraction layer.
3. Create new classes in your new implementation, and have your abstraction layer delegate to the old or the new classes as required.
4. Remove the old implementation.
5. Rinse and repeat the previous two steps, shipping your system in the meantime if desired.
6. Once the old implementation has been completely replaced, you can remove the abstraction layer if you like.

In the iBatis/Hibernate example, the abstraction layer is the repository layer, which hides the implementation details of which persistence framework is being used. In the JRuby on Rails example, the abstraction layer is the servlet engine, which can dispatch either to the JRuby on Rails framework (using Rack) or to standard Java servlets by matching on the URI.

While Go is a relatively small project – it has less than ten developers, and it’s only been going for a few years – the same principles apply on projects of all sizes, and teams in ThoughtWorks have used this pattern successfully even on large and distributed projects.

Admittedly, branch by abstraction can add more overhead to the development process, especially in the case that the codebase is poorly structured. You need to think hard and move a bit slower in order to make changes incrementally in this fashion. But in many cases the upside is worth the extra effort, and the larger the restructuring, the more important it is to consider using branch by abstraction.

The key benefit of branch by abstraction is that your code is working at all times throughout the re-structuring, enabling continuous delivery. That means your release schedule is completely decoupled from your architectural changes, and thus you can stop working on the restructuring at any point to do something else that is higher priority, such as putting out a release with an exciting new feature you just thought up.

Branch by abstraction compared with branching in version control

Branch by abstraction is a somewhat misleading name, because of course it represents an alternative to using branching in version control when making large-scale changes to your system. Teams often use version control branches to make large-scale changes so that they can continue to develop functionality and fix bugs on mainline. The problem of course is that the merge back to mainline is guaranteed to be painful, and the amount of pain is a function both of how big the change you want to make is, and the amount of work you do on mainline in the meantime¹.

That means that the stronger the forces are that push you towards using a version control branch, the more painful it is going to be at the end when you have to merge. If you’re also using branches for features, the situation is made even worse. In general, using branches for features or large-scale changes is a bad idea, unless you are working in a small, experienced team, and the branches are very short lived (less than one day). Martin Fowler has excellent articles on why feature branching is bad, and how to use feature toggles as an alternative.

That doesn’t mean that all branching in version control is bad. It’s OK to branch in order to spike out an idea that you’re going to throw away. It’s also OK to branch upon releasing, provided you only use the release branch for small, critical bug-fixes. However teams who are practicing continuous deployment usually don’t bother with this, since it’s typically easier to fix any problems on mainline and roll forward than it is to roll back, because the delta between releases is so small.

The only other time it might be permissible to use branching is if your codebase uses the big ball of mud pattern. In this scenario even creating an abstraction layer can be hard. In order to do this, you must first find a “seam” (typically in the form of a set of interfaces if you’re using a statically typed OO language) that you can put the abstraction layer over. If a seam was not readily available, you would normally create one through a series of refactorings, but if that’s not possible for some reason then you might have to resort to creating a branch to get into a position to do this. Of course, this is an extreme move.

Relationship to other patterns

Relationship to refactoring. Refactoring has been defined as “a change made to the internal structure of software to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify without changing its observable behavior”. In this sense, both of the examples given above of branch by abstraction are also examples of refactorings. Crucially though branch by abstraction is effectively a programme of related refactorings, which taken together result in a large-scale change to the architecture of the application.

Relationship to feature toggles. People often confuse branch by abstraction with feature toggles. Both are patterns that allow you to make changes to your system incrementally on mainline. The difference is that feature toggles are intended to allow the development of new features, while keeping those features invisible to users when the system is running. Feature toggles are thus used at deploy time or run time to choose whether a particular feature or set of features is visible in the application.

Branch by abstraction is a pattern for making large-scale changes to an application incrementally, and is thus a development technique. Branch by abstraction can of course be combined with feature toggles, such that – for example – you could switch between the iBatis and Hibernate implementations of a particular set of data access calls to compare the performance of them at runtime. But typically, the choice of implementation is chosen by the developers and either hard-coded or baked in at build time, perhaps through your dependency injection configuration.

Relationship to strangler application. The strangler application pattern involves incrementally replacing a whole system (usually legacy) with a completely new one. Thus it operates at a higher level of abstraction than branch by abstraction, which is for incrementally changing the implementation of a component of your system. The lines between the two start to blur if you have a service-oriented architecture.

Isn’t this just good object-oriented design? Yes. Code which follows the SOLID principles makes it very easy to apply this pattern, in virtue in particular of following the dependency inversion principle and the interface segregation principle (ISP). The ISP is important because it provides a nice level of granularity at which to switch out implementations. As my colleague David Rice points out, branch by abstraction is the only sensible way to change the implementation of some particular component. Martin Fowler makes the same point by sometimes defining a component as some part of a system that can be swapped out for another implementation.

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¹ Another argument that is sometimes put forward is that distributed version control systems make merging so easy we shouldn’t be afraid of branching. This is misleading for two reasons. Firstly, as Martin Fowler points out, automated merge tools are incapable of catching semantic conflicts. Second, the longer the branch exists, the harder it is to merge, even with the best tools in the world. You don’t have to look too far on GitHub to find projects with forks that everyone would like to see merged, but have diverged so far from mainline that merging them would require substantial amounts of integration work.

There are two ways to approach HDR in Photoshop now. One way, of course, is you can use the Merge to HDR Pro feature to combine several photos into an … Continue reading →

A customer asks the following question:

“We are building factory machine. New machines are usually delivered with the current stable software version. We don't do regular updates because our customers prefer stability over new features. After reading the Rangers Branching Guide I have some questions. I understand the need for the main and the development branch, we had a similar thing using feature branches for feature development merging the finished feature into trunk/main.

But we must be able to create an independent bug fix for every version of our product we ever delivered. Customers are using our machines in a specific version perfectly optimized for their production process. If they find a bug or need a change they don't want to get any other bug fix or feature we added in the meantime.

Should we create a label for every released/delivered version of the software. Whenever a customer requests a fix for instance for version v6.5, I create a "Release v6.5.1" branch from main, fix the bug, create a release/label for v6.5.1.0 and reverse integrate the fix into main. If this customer needs another fix I can do the next fix on the same branch (v6.5.1.1). If a different user with the same base version needs a different fix I can create a "Release v6.5.2" branch.

Can I achieve this with one of your strategies. I didn't find a way, but maybe I'm missing something.”

What do you do when you no longer have version 6.5 in Main? Suppose you have released a new major version, Release 7.0?

One characteristic of labels in TFS to be aware of - they are not immutable. You can probably achieve your goals by labeling your code with each release (6.5, 6.5.1, etc.). But TFS will not prevent you from modifying the *contents* of a label after it is applied to a branch. This may cause problems with auditors who want the contents of release *locked down*. This is one reason we recommend creating a release branch for each release, and locking it down. Since you need to be able to apply bug fixes to any prior release, you would need perhaps two branches for each release. Branch Main -> Servicing and then branch Servicing -> Release each time you do a release.

Lets say you have just released version 6.5.0. You could branch Main to create a Servicing 6.5. Label the code Release 6.5.0, but also branch Servicing 6.5 to create Release 6.5.0 and lock it down.

Now you need to create a bug fix against Release 6.5.0 - apply this bug fix in the Servicing 6.5 branch and release it to your customer. Label the code in Servicing 6.5 as Release 6.5.1 but also Branch Servicing 6.5.0 (with the hot fix) to Release 6.5.1 and lock it down.

Now if you need to apply a second bug fix to Release 6.5.1 make this fix in Servicing 6.5 (which now has the code for 6.5.1 as latest version). Make the fix in Servicing 6.5. Label the code in Servicing 6.5 as Release 6.5.2 but also branch Servicing 6.5 to create Release 6.5.2 and lock it down.

Each time you get a new bug fix for Release 6.5.x the fix would be made in Servicing 6.5 branch, but you need to decide which sub-version of the code to apply the fix to. It could be either 6.5.0, 6.5.1, 6.5.2. You should have a label you can roll back to if you do not want the bug fix against the latest version.

Later when you release version 7.0.0, you would branch Main to Servicing 7.0 and then branch Servicing 7.0 to Release 7.0.0 and lock it down.

If you are concerned about the overhead of creating a new lock-down branch for major Release and each minor hot-fix you could probably get by with only creating Release branches for the major releases and not each hot fix. Nevertheless, read my latest blog to gain a better understanding of the actual overhead involved in creating a new branch: http://www.tinyurl.com/tfsversioning.

Normally when you have a one-to-many relationship in a hierarchy (such as a branch hierarchy), you would make the *one* the parent and the *many* children of the parent. You might think you want to invert the relationship between the Release branch and the Servicing branch, since you have many possible bug fixes for a given release. But if you invert the relationship in this way: Branch Main to Release 6.5.0 and then branch Release 6.5.0 to Servicing 6.5.1 and later branch Release 6.5.0 to Servicing 6.5.2. But when you put the servicing branch(es) as a child of the Release branch, you cannot merge the bug fix back to Main without merging it into the Release branch first. You would no longer have a copy of Release 6.5.0 (as released) since you would have merged post-release bug fixes into it in order to get them all the way up to Main.

A bill that will merge the scandal-plagued Texas Youth Commission into a new juvenile justice agency has just been sent to the governor to be signed into law.

By: Jenée Desmond-Harris

Louisiana's Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, is continuing his efforts to merge two struggling universities there -- historically black Southern University of New Orleans (SUNO) and the largely white University of New Orleans (UNO).

At his urging, a state House committee took the first major step toward the merger on Wednesday after nearly six hours of emotional testimony from supporters and opponents, voting in favor of a legislation to combine the two schools.

Nola.com reports that House Bill 537 would combine the institutions into the new University of Louisiana at New Orleans starting in fall 2013.

It’s tempting for those of us who believe strongly in the continuing value of (and are admittedly a bit sentimental about) HBCUS to interpret this proposed merger as a typically conservative, and culturally and historically tone deaf attack by Governor Jindal (who we’ve never been able to take seriously since his bumbling State of the Union rebuttal in 2009, and who we don’t think would lose a wink of sleep over the closing over every black school in the nation any more than he would over overturning “Obamacare.”)

But, putting aside the personalities and politics involved and focusing on what we know of the substance, we can’t help but think an institution with a five percent graduation rate like SUNO’s (even if partly explained the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina) isn’t actually serving the well-being of the black community, or any other goal for that matter. Opponents at the hearing said a merger would restrict access to higher education for the mostly poor and minority students who now attend the school. But how much is this access worth if, for 95% of students, it doesn’t come with a degree?

Are we missing something here? Give us your take in the comments.

(The bill next goes to the House Appropriations Committee, which has joint jurisdictions over any measures that would cost the state more than $100,000. If approved there, it will head to the House floor where a two-thirds majority vote is needed for passage.)

Read more at Nola.com

In other news: Study: Race and the Death Penalty Reversal Rates

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By Doug Fritz of the Google Data Arts Team

Today we're sharing a new Chrome Experiment called the WebGL Globe. It’s a simple, open visualization platform for geographic data that runs in WebGL-enabled browsers like Google Chrome. The globe below shows world population, and we’ve created another globe showing Google search traffic.


The primary challenge of this project was figuring out how to draw several thousand 3D data spikes as quickly and smoothly as possible. To do this, we turned to Three.js, a JavaScript library for building lightweight 3D graphics. For each data point, we generate a cube with five faces – the bottom face, which touches the globe, is removed to improve performance. We then stretch the cube relative to the data value and position it based on latitude and longitude. Finally, we merge all of the cubes into a single geometry to make it more efficient to draw.

The second challenge of the project was animating the globe – we wanted it to be fun for the user to manipulate. Thanks to WebGL, we’re able to display thousands of moving points at high frame rates by using the user’s graphics processing unit (GPU) for 3D computations. Each state of the globe has its own geometry and we morph between them with a vertex shader, saving precious CPU resources. Additionally, to make the globe look nice, we took advantage of the possibilities of GLSL and created two fragment shaders, one to simulate the atmosphere and another to simulate frontal illumination of the planet.

Now that we’ve released the globe, we’re hoping that developers like you will create your own. What data will you show on it? If you’re feeling inclined, you can learn more about the data format (represented in JSON) and get the code here. If you create your own globe, please also consider sharing a link with us -- at some point in the future, we hope to post a list of interesting globes that have been submitted.


Doug Fritz is a creative programmer in Google's San Francisco office. Doug says he likes "simplifying the complex and complexifing the simple, because in reality it's all somewhere in the middle".

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

AirTran may be getting ready to merge under the wing of fellow discount flyer Southwest, but that doesn’t mean it’s stopped making waves of its own. AirTran’s Nonstop Savings Sale is the latest evidence.

Believe it or not, a sensational, highlight-reel kick exists in the Zuffa video archives that was not inspired by Master Steven Seagal.

I'm referring, of course, to the "Showtime Kick," executed by Anthony Pettis in his winning performance against Ben Henderson at WEC 53 last December.

It set the mixed martial arts (MMA) forums on fire and left everyone talking about what a force Pettis can be as a UFC lightweight as the brands began to merge earlier this year.

Well, almost everyone.

UFC lightweight number one contender Gray Maynard isn't buying into the "Showtime" hype and tells Jon Luther at MMAFA.tv that he isn't impressed because Pettis steamrolled a bunch of "scrubs:"

"I mean, who has he fought? I’ve been in the trenches this whole time fighting the toughest guys. He throws one kick and then he’s the greatest in the world? Let’s look at who he’s fought. Ben Henderson is the best name. And I don’t mind fighting him; I don’t care if I win the belt and then I have to take him on. But for me, guys like Miller, Melendez and all of these guys who have been on the f***ing grind, fighting the best competition for the past few years… that’s what I look at. Who have you fought? I don’t care about how good you looked when you fought a scrub. That doesn’t matter. If a guy isn’t good then you’re not supposed to look good. And for me, [Pettis] has fought one good guy in Ben, and he isn’t proven yet. He’s tough as hell, but we’ll see."

Pettis can prove Maynard wrong with a big win over veteran lightweight Clay Guida when they hook 'em up at The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) 13 Finale on June 4 in Las Vegas.

And if Gray can "Bully" his way past Frankie Edgar in their UFC 130 title fight, Pettis will have the opportunity to make him eat his words as the Duke Roufus pupil earns first crack at the 155-pound belt with a win over "The Carpenter."

With Jim MIller and a slew of other lightweights "in the trenches," that's part of what has Maynard so hot under the collar.

As an MMA fan, can you find merit in his argument? Or is he just sour because Pettis has the spotlight for being flashy and entertaining, something Maynard's struggled with in his career?

Opinions, please.