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Hotels near Ipswich Station

Search hotels near Ipswich Station in Ipswich

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Hotels in Ipswich near Ipswich Station

Ipswich Station in the Ipswich area, United Kingdom

Are you looking for a cheap Ipswich Station hotel, a 5 star Ipswich Station hotel or a family friendly Ipswich Station hotel? You just landed in the best site to find the best deals and offers on the most amazing accommodations for your stay.

When you search for hotels near Ipswich Station with, you need to first check our online map and see the distance you will be from Ipswich Station, United Kingdom.

Our maps are based on hotel search and display areas and neighborhoods of each hotel so you can see how close you are from Ipswich Station and refine your search within Ipswich or United Kingdom based on closest public transportation, restaurants and entertainment so you can easily get around the city. All the hotels details page show an option for free or paid onsite parking.

If you wish to see the hotels with the highest featuring discounts and deals near Ipswich Station, simply filter by price/ average nightly rate. We recommend you filter by star rating and read our genuine guest reviews so you can get the best quality hotel with the best discount.

One of the new features on guest reviews is that also show reviews from Expedia for Ipswich Station hotels and the TripAdvisor Ipswich Station hotels reviews so you can make sure that you checking with a reliable source. See the review scores on our Ipswich hotel information pages.

Make the most out of your family vacation when you book your accommodation with – book your hotel near Ipswich Station, Ipswich after reviewing the facilities and amenities listed for each hotel.

After booking your hotel near Ipswich Station, expect to receive your reservation confirmation in the mail in less than 10 minutes. The confirmation email contains more information on all nearby attractions, local directions and weather forecast, so you can better plan the days during your trip.

After getting the best hotel rates you can still save more by winning 1 free night! That’s right, book 10 nights in any hotel near Ipswich Station, Ipswich and after you sign up for the Welcome Rewards program, you are eligible hotel you receive 1 night free*

The best hotel deals are here: We have Ipswich Station hotel deals, Ipswich Station last minute deals and offers to get you the cheapest Ipswich Station hotel with our lowest price guarantee.


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Hotels in Wadersloh, Germany

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Best hotels in Wadersloh

With 10 hotels in Wadersloh, there are several way you can use to find the perfect room.

If you are looking for Wadersloh hotels in a particular area, you can use the search feature at the top of the page to search by neighborhood, landmark, address or zip code, or you can search by using the built-in map feature. You can also browse hotels in Wadersloh by type, amenities, and star-rating so that you can find the best hotel. Currently, top rated hotels in Wadersloh are:

  1. Hotel Waldblick
  2. Hotel bei Kliewe im Westfälischen Hof
  3. Hotel Pension Haus Sonnenschein
  4. Pension Haus Heitzig
  5. Welcome Hotel Lippstadt

The location of your Wadersloh hotel is important. If you are traveling to Wadersloh, &StateorCountry for business, you may want to consider getting a hotel close to the airport or near your meeting venue. By doing so, you can really cut down on transportation costs and time. You may also want to book a hotel that offers free wifi just in case you need to get some work done.

If you are traveling for vacation, figure out which attractions or landmarks you want to see and book a hotel that is within close proximity. Although hotels near attractions might cost a little more, you may find that spending those extra few dollars is worth the convenience. You can even find hotels that align with your interests. For example, if you are looking for a relaxing vacation, a spa hotel may be the perfect choice for you.

You’ll also want to determine which type of accommodations will suit your needs before booking a hotel in Wadersloh. If you’re traveling with the kiddos, a family friendly hotel will offer larger rooms and more sleeping arrangements. For those traveling for an extended period of time, booking a hotel suite with a kitchenette is a smart move and will feel a little more like home. If you are budget conscience and just need a place to rest your head, a hostel or motel may be all you need.

If you are looking to score the best discounts and deals, use the filter to sort by price from low to high. You can book a hotel in Wadersloh for as low as &PricesFrom per night. If you are looking to cut down on expenses, look for hotels that include free breakfast and parking. Some hotels even offer free shuttle service to and from nearby places. You can also sort by star rating, proximity, and guest rating.

Before you book, check out user reviews. has 0 reviews in Wadersloh. We show reviews from Expedia and TripAdvisor so you know that you are reading genuine, reliable reviews. Be sure to download the app so you can book your reservations on the go, view amenities, and save the hotels you want to view and compare later.

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Mid-Range Hotels in Bengaluru

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Pay now or later on most rooms

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Booking Mid-Range hotel rooms in Bengaluru

Booking with Hotels.com gives you access to great rooms for affordable rates. Booking a Mid-Range hotel room gives you the opportunity to stay in Bengaluru for less, allowing you to spend more money and time to enjoy more of the neighborhood and Bengaluru during your holiday. Hotels.com has secured some incredible hotel savings for longer stays in some of the most popular destinations in India. Some of the great affordable hotels in & StateOrCountry offer amenities like free breakfast and a hotel gym that you don't want to miss.

Here are popular Mid-Range hotels in Bengaluru travelers have booked in the last hour:

  1. Palm Meadows Club
  2. FabHotel Legacy Brigade Road
  3. The Iris Inn By Bhagini

By signing up for our emails, you can access our Secret Prices, exclusive offers, and even more great deals that aren't available to everyone. When you book online, you can enjoy up to 50% off your reservation. Joining our Welcome Rewards Program gives you a chance to win a free night at one of our hotels. If you download the Hotels.com app, you can book your reservations in India on the go, read guest reviews, and save the hotel reservations you want to view and compare later.

These deals on reasonably priced hotel rooms in Bengaluru won't last forever – reserve your room with Hotels.com today.

Bengaluru travel guides

Bengaluru travel guides


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Hotels in Framingham

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What you should know about Framingham

Framingham in the Worcester area, Massachusetts

Are you looking for a cheap Framingham hotel, a 5 star Framingham hotel or a family friendly Framingham hotel? You just landed in the best site to find the best deals and offers on the most amazing accommodations for your stay.

When you search for hotels near Framingham with, you need to first check our online map and see the distance you will be from Framingham, Massachusetts.

Our maps are based on hotel search and display areas and neighborhoods of each hotel so you can see how close you are from Framingham and refine your search within Worcester or Massachusetts based on closest public transportation, restaurants and entertainment so you can easily get around the city. All the hotels details page show an option for free or paid onsite parking.

If you wish to see the hotels with the highest featuring discounts and deals near Framingham, simply filter by price/ average nightly rate. We recommend you filter by star rating and read our genuine guest reviews so you can get the best quality hotel with the best discount.

One of the new features on guest reviews is that also show reviews from Expedia for Framingham hotels and the TripAdvisor Framingham hotels reviews so you can make sure that you checking with a reliable source. See the review scores on our Worcester hotel information pages.

Make the most out of your family vacation when you book your accommodation with – book your hotel near Framingham, Worcester after reviewing the facilities and amenities listed for each hotel.

After booking your hotel near Framingham, expect to receive your reservation confirmation in the mail in less than 10 minutes. The confirmation email contains more information on all nearby attractions, local directions and weather forecast, so you can better plan the days during your trip.

After getting the best hotel rates you can still save more by winning 1 free night! That’s right, book 10 nights in any hotel near Framingham, Worcester and after you sign up for the Welcome Rewards program, you are eligible hotel you receive 1 night free*

The best hotel deals are here: We have Framingham hotel deals, Framingham last minute deals and offers to get you the cheapest Framingham hotel with our lowest price guarantee.


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Cheap Hotels in Halland, Sweden

Halland hotels

Choose from 36 Halland Hotel Deals

First Hotel Mårtenson - Halmstad Hotels
Rating: 3.5 Stars

First Hotel Mårtenson

Storgatan 52, Halmstad - Map
"Nice hotel in out-of-the-way place"
Needed place to stay on way back to Copenhagen. Charming town and lovely room. Delicious breakfast.
A Traveller
Located in the heart of Halmstad, this hotel is within a 10-minute walk of Stora Torg, Picasso Park, and St Nikolai Kyrka …More
Good Morning Halmstad - Halmstad Hotels
Rating: 3.0 Stars

Good Morning Halmstad

Prästvägen 1, Halmstad - Map
3.4 out of 5 (73 reviews)
Situated in a shopping district, this hotel is 0.3 mi (0.4 km) from Eurostop Shopping Mall and within 3 mi (5 km) of Halmstad …More
Best Western Plus Grand Hotel - Halmstad Hotels
Rating: 4.0 Stars

Best Western Plus Grand Hotel

Stationsgatan 44, Halmstad - Map
"Very convenient for rail station; 5 minute walk."
Second stay and still the best balance between comfort and access to transport. Very friendly and capable staff.
Traveller from ox
This family-friendly Halmstad hotel is located in a shopping district, within a 10-minute walk of Picasso Park and Halmstad …More
Hotel Continental - Halmstad Hotels
Rating: 4.0 Stars

Hotel Continental

Kungsgatan 5, Halmstad - Map
"Really nice hotel"
I have stayed here a few times.. I do like the central location. The rooms are basic, but clean.. although I do miss a desk in my room (I booked a single room, although there were two single beds pushed together) one of the staff helped me with the parking outside, you have to pay between certain hours and she helped me with the paying with my credit card. Breakfast was good, The wifi is excellent. There was some work being carried out, I think on the roof.. scaffolding is erected on the inner side of the building and the workers started banging at 8.30 in the morning!
Traveller from Sheffield, UK
Located in the heart of Halmstad, this hotel is within a 10-minute walk of Picasso Park, Halmstad Castle, and Slottsparken …More
Varbergs Kusthotell - Varberg Hotels
Rating: 4.0 Stars

Varbergs Kusthotell

Nils Kreugers väg 5, Varberg - Map
"Nice hotel on the beach."
very nice facility. No AC, albeit given the climate would be seldom missed.
A Traveller
Situated near the beach, this spa hotel is 1.5 mi (2.4 km) from Kallbadhuset and 1.7 mi (2.7 km) from Varberg Castle …More
Hotell Strandpensionatet - Skummesloevsstrand Hotels
Rating: 3.5 Stars

Hotell Strandpensionatet

Stora Strandvägen 3, Skummesloevsstrand - Map
Situated by the sea, this hotel is within 6 mi (10 km) of Skottorp Castle, Melby Golf Club, and Bastad Harbour. Skansenbadet …More
Hotell Gästis - Varberg Hotels
Rating: 3.5 Stars

Hotell Gästis

Borgmästaregatan 1, Varberg - Map
"Great hotel with fun personality"
My husband and I stayed here for two nights. The staff at this place are very friendly, and the food buffet for breakfast and dinner was DELICOIUS. Cool and relaxed atmosphere, books everywhere to peak into, and wonderful home-like feel. The rooms are nice and clean, and the bathrooms are VERY clean and well ventilated. This place will really do whatever they can to make you feel happy and at home. We rented bikes from the hotel and went for a beautiful ride along the coast. You would be silly to stay anywhere else in Varberg! Exceptional.
Traveller from Switzerland
Located in the heart of Varberg, this hotel is within a 10-minute walk of Kallbadhuset and Varberg Castle. Getteron is 3 mi …More
Grand Hotel Falkenberg - Falkenberg Hotels
Rating: 3.5 Stars

Grand Hotel Falkenberg

Hotellgatan 1, Falkenberg - Map
3.7 out of 5 (609 reviews)
Situated by the sea, this hotel is within a 10-minute walk of Saint Lawrence Church, Olympia Photography Museum, and …More
Swedish Idyll - Falkenberg Hotels
Rating: 2.5 Stars

Swedish Idyll

Årstad Gamla Klockaregården 701, Falkenberg - Map
4.5 out of 5 (2 reviews)
Situated in Falkenberg, this country house is within 9 mi (15 km) of Vallarnas Open Air Theatre, Skrea Beach, and Olympia …More
Fegens vandrarhem - Fegen Hotels
Rating: 1.5 Stars

Fegens vandrarhem

Kapellvägen 2, Fegen - Map
3.9 out of 5 (7 reviews)
Situated on a lake, this hostel is 0.2 mi (0.3 km) from Fegens Chapel and 6.3 mi (10.1 km) from Gunnarps Church. Gekas and …More

Search from 36 Halland Hotels

    Why book with Hotwire ?

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    • 91% customer satisfaction

    Halland is calling — find the perfect hotel

    Everyone wants to score a deal on travel, but price is just one factor to consider when booking an unforgettable hotel. Whether you’re visiting family, attending a conference or taking a well-earned vacation in Halland, having an awesome experience should be a no-brainer.

    Hotwire will hook you up! From restful nights near your flight to that prime spot in the city’s heart, we’ve done our research to bring the best options to your fingertips. Book your Halland hotel with us now and start your next adventure.

    You’re not the average traveler — and we know it

    You’ve done your homework and know exactly where you want to go. We’re here to help with some Hotwire travel geek-approved tips on how to save on your booking.

    Get away for the weekend

    Hotels in bigger cities usually charge higher rates during the week, when people are traveling for business. Weekends can be a bargain! It’s the other way around for vacation spots, so if you’re looking for a beach escape, consider a mid-week trip.

    Give yourself some wiggle room

    If your plans are flexible, play around with some different travel dates – a shift of a few days either way can help you save big. Prices usually jump the weekends before and after popular holidays, so we recommend steering clear of them. Or consider visiting during the off-season, when prices are generally lower.

    Plan around big events

    Are prices surprisingly high? There might be a huge conference or festival in town. Consider shifting your dates if you can. Of course, if that’s why you’re going, you’ll have to bite the bullet. We’ll still work to get you the best rates out there.

    Noodle over new adventures

    Set aside time to plan what you want to see, taste and discover. Nothing completes a trip, big or small, like a few new experiences! Check city apps or area websites to find out what’s new and what events are happening during your stay. Even during a family reunion, you can detour to that locals-only fish taco stand or under-the-radar music club. Your cousins will be impressed.


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Hacked! All my sites gone

Discussion in 'Installation/Configuration' started by breauxlg, Nov 14, 2010.

  1. breauxlg

    breauxlg New Member

    All of the sites on my ubuntu server with ispconfig2 have been zapped. All that is left in the var/www/webXX/web folders are the default index.htm, and the error and webalizer folders. All of my databases are still intact, but the content is gone. I have no clue where to start looking. My mail is still working, but I don't know what is fried and what is not.
  2. falko

    falko Super Moderator ISPConfig Developer

    Do you have backups?
    Did you run rkhunter and/or chkrootkit to find out if there's malware on your server?
    Did you check your logs?
  3. breauxlg

    breauxlg New Member

    I'll have to find out how to do those things.

    I'll have to search on those functions to see how to do them. I had installed a backup program, but I don't see it anymore and the only backup I have on an external drive is old. I hadn't been paying attention to this server, because it just ran, so I thought everything was okay. I'm trying to move my email accounts to another server so I can zap this one and start again. Is there a place where a person can buy an ubuntu/lamp/ispconfig3 image that is bullet-proof?
  4. breauxlg

    breauxlg New Member

    RKHunter and CHKROOTKIT logs

    Here are the logs from RKHUNTER and CHKROOTKIT.

    Attached Files:

  5. falko

    falko Super Moderator ISPConfig Developer

    The logs look ok, but maybe one of your web applications is vulnerable. Did you keep them up-to-date?
  6. breauxlg

    breauxlg New Member

    Apparently, my apps are not up to date

    I checked for updates on the server and it says there are 113 updates available. Apparently I hadn't done them in a while. I see you have a perfect server for ubuntu 10.04 lts and ispconfig3 tutorial. I had used one of your older tutorials when I set this server up and it ran great for a good while. I do have a couple of drupal sites and one joomla site. Can those have been the culprits? It looks like I'll be doing the 10.04. Does that tutorial give everything I need to have a hack-proof server? Is there even such a thing? How often should I have the server check for updates? Do I ask too many questions? If so, disregard that last one.
  7. damir

    damir New Member

    Servers needs to be patched all the time, i check my servers almost every day. Subscribe to security RSS feeds and monitor your server regularly. Perfect guides are for installing, they are far from bulletproof. To secure and harden your system take some trial and error but it is something that you need to do.

    If you run your business on these servers than i would think twice to hire you but if those are hobby projects than it's a good learning.
  8. breauxlg

    breauxlg New Member

    Checking servers

    The sites I have on this server are not mission critical. I have a Windows 2008 server that sits right next to this one. It has a number of websites on it that have been running for years and I've never had any problem with them. I wanted to see what the linux world had to offer, so I took an old server and loaded Ubuntu on it to play around with. After I got a little comfortable with it, I bought a new server and installed the lts that was available at the time using Falko's perfect server tutorial.

    By the way, I can't say enough good things about Falko. I don't know where he finds the time and patience to do what he does (I guess he's a he) on these forums. The server was working fine, although I noticed that the drupal and joomla based sites get more than their share of probes from the internet. I just went back and saw that all of the site folders had been modified on October 29th at pretty much the same time. I would like to know how to look back at a system log to maybe figure out where the attack originated - maybe in one of the drupal or joomla applications. My system log only seems to go back a week.
  9. damir

    damir New Member

    Falko and Till are founders of howtoforge and ISPConfig, this is their living. If they stop, customers stops to come :) but they are top notch.

    If your server is patched and correctly configured, it is very very hard for attacker to take control of your system. To be root hacked is 100% administrators fault.
  10. metaldrummer

    metaldrummer New Member

    Is true...this problem is hack from turquish.

    Apache vulnerability.

    On my case i have opensuse 11.0 and not know how to upgrade to 11.3.
    I have fear that the server unusable.

    Any can help me or any guide?
  11. damir

    damir New Member

    ^ I have no clue how to upgrade to 11.3, im a Debian user but doesn't Opensuse provides security patched to 11.0?
  12. metaldrummer

    metaldrummer New Member

    Now only for 11.1, 11.2 & 11.3

    11.0 discontinued :-(

    Someone using OpenSuse 11.x with Ispconfig 2.x?

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text:
IspConfig can't remove old datas from mysql

Discussion in 'Installation/Configuration' started by didan, May 10, 2006.

  1. falko

    falko Super Moderator ISPConfig Developer

    I strongly recommend to make a backup of the DB before you try this!
    You also need to delete the appropriate records from isp_dep and isp_nodes.
  2. VibroMax

    VibroMax New Member

    I could not find any reference to or in isp_nodes. I could not also tell which record(s) in isp_dep was linked to or because all the values in this table are numbers. What I did was to delete the record in isp_isp_web which had in it. This seems to have solved the problem because I can now create ISPConfig seems not to have been adversly affected by the poking around in its database. Thanks a million for the help Falko.

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Installing MySQL-Frontend Chive (A phpMyAdmin Alternative)

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme
Follow me on Twitter

This guide explains how to install the phpMyAdmin alternative Chive. Chive is a free, open source, web-based database management tool with easy administration, super fast UI and state of the art web technologies. It takes advantage of the capabilities of modern browsers. Features include an SQL editor with syntax highlighting and built-in profiling of SQL queries.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Installation

To install Chive, your website needs PHP with MySQL support.

Chive installation is super-easy - it can be done with one single command. Just go to your document root (/var/www/ in this example)...

cd /var/www/

... and run:

wget -O - | tar -xzp

That's it! This will create a folder called chive inside your document root. To access Chive, open a browser and go to:

Log in with your MySQL username (e.g. root) and password:

This is how Chive looks:

2 Screenshots

Here are some further screenshots of Chive. You will notice that it looks similar to phpMyAdmin, therefore you will get used to it very fast if you are working with phpMyAdmin a lot, but it also has a lot of nice features to offer (for example, you can reorder columns with drag and drop):

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2 Comment(s)

Add comment

From: Anonymous

I followed these steps but when i do

It redirected to other page.

From: Anonymous

I have similar problem, when I try to access to folder it shows page not found. There is not much support or troubleshooting avaliable on Web. Anyone can help.


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Nepal’s six-year peace process between government forces and Communist party of Nepal (Maoist) combatants remained in limbo in 2012, and human rights commitments undertaken in the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) remained unfulfilled.

Impunity for wartime abuses continued, with the government continuing to advocate for establishing a Commission of Inquiry on Disappeared Persons, Truth, and Reconciliation that would be empowered to recommend amnesty for suspects implicated in crimes committed during the decade-long conflict from 1996-2006. The government has also promoted government officials and security force members suspected of involvement in human rights abuses. The closure in March of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) symbolizes the government’s retreat from promises for accountability.

In May, the Constituent Assembly, tasked to draft a new constitution, was dissolved amid political deadlock over extending its term. The collapse of the assembly, which also served as the country’s parliament, left the country without a legislature. In September, the government announced elections for a new Constituent Assembly, without clarifying the date or terms of the vote.

The political stalemate, along with weak governance, corruption and impunity, contributed to ongoing political instability, and problems with law and order.

Accountability for Past Abuses

The government failed to provide redress in 2012 for wartime crimes, including enforced disappearances, torture, rape, and extrajudicial executions. The government pushed for a politically appointed Commission of Inquiry on Disappeared Persons, Truth, and Reconciliation, with discretionary powers to grant amnesties for crimes under international law.

In the absence of a legislature, the cabinet controversially forwarded the bill to the president for executive approval, a power that no president has exercised to date. The framework for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was part of the November 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. However, granting amnesty for crimes against humanity clearly violates international law and Nepal’s Supreme Court decisions, and would undermine reconciliation.

The army continued to shield alleged perpetrators of human rights abuses. In July, the army recommended the promotion of Col. Raju Basnet, implicated in dozens of cases of enforced disappearance and torture, to the rank of brigadier general. The cabinet approved the promotion in October.

In September, the government promoted Kuber Singh Rana from additional inspector general of police to inspector general. Rana is a suspect in ongoing criminal investigations that the Supreme Court ordered in February 2009 related to the October 2003 enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killings of five students from Dhanusha district in Nepal’s southern plains.

Integration of Maoist Combatants

In October, the government completed the integration of a total of 1,450 former Maoist fighters into the Nepalese army. The integration marked the conclusion of a November 2011 agreement that all political parties signed allowing for a maximum of 6,500 former combatants to be integrated into a specially created general directorate under the army in non-combat roles.

Forced Evictions of Squatters

In May, the municipal government of the capital, Kathmandu, and the city’s armed police force started to forcibly evict residents of settlements along the Bagmati River to make way for a planned urban development project. Those forced evictions, which did not comply with UN-developed specific standards and due process, left over 800 people homeless, nearly half of them children. Authorities plan to evict some 12,000 people in Kathmandu for the planned project, without ensuring adequate and sustainable alternative housing.

Women's Rights

Trafficking of young girls, rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, and dowry-related violence remain serious concerns.

Migrants’ Rights

Hundreds of thousands of Nepalis migrate every year to the Gulf and Malaysia for employment, primarily in construction and domestic work. The money they send home makes up approximately 20 percent of Nepal’s gross domestic product. In August, the government banned young women under 30 years old from traveling to Gulf countries for work. The ban was a response to numerous cases of abuse of Nepali domestic workers, including unpaid wages, excessive work hours, and physical or sexual abuse.

International and national rights groups said the ban could push women to migrate through irregular channels and increase risk of exploitation. They called for the ban to be revoked and for better protections during training and recruitment. Nepali construction workers also face deception during recruitment, and exorbitant fees that leave them deeply in debt. This may put them at greater risk of getting trapped in abusive situations while working abroad. Corruption hampers effective monitoring of the recruitment industry. In October, Labor Minister Kumar Belbase resigned after he was caught seeking bribes from recruitment agencies.

Disability Rights

Despite policy advancements, children with disabilities face many barriers to education due to lack of implementation and monitoring. Nepal has ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and the government publicly promotes an inclusive education system in which children with and without disabilities attend school together in their communities. However in practice, many schools remain inaccessible and the current curriculum is inadequate for students with different learning needs. In addition, Nepal continues to have a system of separate schools for children who are deaf, blind, or have physical and intellectual disabilities, as well as segregated classes for children with disabilities in mainstream schools.

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Nepal’s government has made significant strides towards ensuring equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in recent years. The government’s 2011 census allowed citizens to self-identify as male, female, or “third gender,” though independent observers reported problems with tallying census figures.

In May, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a directive to allow citizens to identify as male, female, or “other” on citizenship documents based on self-identification, in line with a 2007 Supreme Court decision. However, the directive had yet to be implemented at this writing. In August, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) welcomed the government’s announcement that citizens would be allowed to identify their own gender, including those who do not identify as male or female.

Flaws in the citizenship law continued to make it difficult for women to secure legal proof of citizenship, especially when male family members refuse to assist them or are unavailable to do so. Without proof of citizenship, Nepali women cannot assert their rights to marital property, inheritance, or land. Moreover, the current law continues to deny citizenship to children born to non-Nepali fathers, effectively leaving them stateless. The 2012 draft articles on citizenship, which did not rectify these flaws, stalled after the Constituent Assembly dissolved.

Tibetan Refugees

Under increasing pressure from China, the government continued to deny Tibetans safe passage to India. In 2012, authorities also obstructed peaceful gatherings by Tibetans and Nepalis of Tibetan origin, including detaining demonstrators in violation of orders from Nepal’s Supreme Court.

The government continues to deny Tibetans the right to openly celebrate their holidays, including the Tibetan New Year. In March, 100 Tibetans were arrested during protests in Kathmandu to mark the 53rd anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. In September, the police arrested seven Tibetans in Kathmandu. Six were released the same day, but the police charged one under the Public Offenses Act and were investigating his activities at this writing.

In September, following a meeting between Tibetan refugees in Kathmandu and Robert O. Blake, the United States assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, the government queried the US embassy as to why Nepali authorities had not been notified of the meeting before it took place.

Key International Actors

Geographically located between Asia’s two powers, India and China, Nepal has a delicate balancing act to perform. India continues to exert a dominant external influence on Nepal’s politics, sometimes resulting in negative Nepali public opinion of India. India also continues to compete with China to invest in large infrastructure projects in Nepal, especially hydropower.

In recent years, Nepal has accepted increasing amounts of financial aid from China to finance infrastructure development and support the Nepali military. In return, the Nepalese government explicitly supports Beijing’s “one-China policy” that China has sovereignty over Tibet and Taiwan. Nepal also prohibits “anti-Chinese activities” within Nepal, even though there are no specific laws to support such prohibition.

In March, the Nepali government refused to extend the tenure of the OHCHR office in Kathmandu. The government has also failed to respond to OHCHR’s request to place a human rights officer in the city’s United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) office.

In September, the US removed the ruling Maoist party from its list of terrorist organizations, allowing US entities to legally interact with the party and its members after a nine-year ban.


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Ladies First

Broadhurst Theatre, (10/24/1918 - Closing date unknown)
Nora Bayes Theatre, (12/30/1918 - 3/15/1919)
First Preview: Total Previews:
Opening Date: Oct 24, 1918
Closing Date: Mar 15, 1919 Total Performances: 164

Category: Musical, Play, Original, Broadway
Description: A Musical in Three Acts
Setting: Uncle Tody's house, the gardens of Benny and Benton, and Betty Burt's house

Production Staff
Produced by H. H. Frazee
Music by A. Baldwin Sloane; Book by Harry B. Smith; Lyrics by Harry B. Smith; Based on a play by Charles H. Hoyt; Musical Director: Oscar Radin; Additional music by Nora Bayes, Seymour Simons, George Gershwin, Harry Clarke and Harry Akst; Additional lyrics by Irving Fisher, Seymour Simons, Ira Gershwin, Schuyler Greene and Harry Clarke; Featuring songs by James Brockmann and James Kendl
Staged by Frank Smithson
Scenic Design by D. Frank Dodge and William Castle
Nora Bayes
Betty Burt
May Brooks
Paul E. Burns
Lefty McGuirk
Jane Conrad
Lew Cooper
D. C. Washington
Martha Dean
Elma Decker
Jane Elliott
Mrs. Ebbsmith
Irving Fisher
Benton Holmes
Stanley Forde
Brighton Betts
William Kent
Uncle Tody
Florence Lee
Florence Morrison
Aunt Jim
Clarence Nordstrom
Little Jack
Charles Olcott
Larry Burt
Elsie Shaw
Doris Sheerin
A. Twitchell

Lottie Tyler
Henriette Wilson
music by A. Baldwin Sloane; lyrics by Harry B. Smith
(Unless otherwise noted)
ACT 1 Sung By
Happy Days Uncle Tody, Larry Burt and Brighton Betts
(I'm Always Happy with a) Crowd of Girls Larry Burt and Girls
Without You
(music by Irving Fisher; lyrics by Nora Bayes)
Betty Burt
(When I) Build a Home
(music by Irving Fisher; lyrics by Nora Bayes)
Betty Burt and Benton Holmes
ACT 2 Sung By
The Tea Party Betty Burt and Girls
(music by Harry Clarke; lyrics by Harry Clarke)
Betty Burt
(Just) What a Girl Can Do Betty Burt and Girls
The Older They Get the Harder They Fall
(music by Nat Vincent, James Kendl and James Brockmann; lyrics by Nat Vincent, James Kendl and James Brockmann)
Uncle Tody
What a Man Can Do (Just What a Girl Can Do) Benton Holmes, Uncle Tody, Brighton Betts, Little Jack and D. C. Washington
On to Victory Ensemble
ACT 3 Sung By
(The Real) American Folk Song (is a Rag)
(music by George Gershwin; lyrics by Ira Gershwin)
Larry Burt and Girls
All My Life
(music by Irving Fisher, Harry Akst and Nora Bayes; lyrics by Nora Bayes, Irving Fisher and Harry Akst)
Benton Holmes
Me and You
(music by Irving Fisher and Harry Akst; lyrics by Nora Bayes)
Benton Holmes and Betty Burt
Good-bye France (You'll Never Be Forgotten by the U.S.A.)
(music by Irving Berlin; lyrics by Irving Berlin)
Betty Burt


text:
Laurent Bossavit on Creating an Archive of Agile Knowledge and the Art of Being Wrong
Recorded at:

Interview with Laurent Bossavit by Shane Hastie on Dec 28, 2013 |

Bio Laurent Bossavit is mainly known as an Agilist and was a recipient of the 2006 Gordon Pask award from that community. He still likes to code though no longer doing so full-time, dividing his attentions between assisting Agile teams on technical and organizational matters, and the Institut Agile project which collects empirical evidence on the benefits and limitations of Agile practices.

Each year Agile Alliance brings together attendees, speakers, authors, luminaries, and industry analysts from around the world in a one-of-a-kind conference. The Conference is considered the premier Agile event of the year, and provides a week-long opportunity to engage in wide-open interaction, collaboration and sharing of ideas with peers and colleagues within the global Agile community.

1. [...] Could we start by talking a little bit about your engagement with the Alliance and what the role of the Archivist is?

Shane's full question: Good day, this is Shane Hastie with InfoQ, we are here at Agile 2013 with Laurent Bossavit, welcome. Thank you very much for taking the time to come and talk to us today. You are a board member of the Agile Alliance, a long time Agilista and you currently also have a part time role as the Archivist for the Agile Alliance. Could we start by talking a little bit about your engagement with the Alliance and what the role of the Archivist is?

I served in the board for about 4 years, we were hashing out Policy and Vision back then which actually in retrospect, I don’t think that role really suited me, back when I was decided to get involved I was more interested in actually doing stuff and since I’m a programmer, one of the things I thought I might be doing was writing code for the Agile Alliance and not doing any of that for four years but an opportunity came along after a while to actually help the organization with I think some very unglamorous housekeeping stuff like having a site where we could pull together the session materials and descriptions from all of the conferences. That didn’t exist back then, so we had problem I think still many conferences are having now where as the new conferences comes along and people get excited about that and forget about the previous years and the domain name goes down and maybe someone didn’t keep backups, some stuff that is precious to some people just vanishes basically, so I wanted to prevent that from happening so came up to Phil [Brock] one day and said: ”Would you like me to be the Agile Alliance Archivist?” and that is where it’s started.

2. So what are we putting on that archive?

Every session abstract and session types and author names, if you are interested in seeing what talks were given by Bob Martin or Andrea Freeze or me, you could just bring up the search box and have that list, so you could also search within session descriptions and get the slides. It’s very basic stuff but we didn’t have that.

3. And you are also building a repository of articles and knowledge within the Agile Alliance website as well, can you tell us a little bit more about that?

One of the reasons for doing that was people I met, my day job is as a consultant and clients, practitioners, were always asking where can I find some kind of basic reference material, glossary and I need to know what this strange name practice is about in a very short space, I don’t have time to read the book and seems to me like was the Agile Alliance job to put that kind of thing out. So I spent some time working on that, the reason was the guide to Agile Practices, so it’s one thing, and now we are trying to see what kind of supplementary material would be a good complement to that, so we now have a blog where inviting some people to come in as guest bloggers and we are slowly building up that corpus of content.

Shane: One of the things that I record seeing on there is a very interesting “subway map”, tell us a little bit about that, what looks like a subway map.

Yes, I was looking for some kind of organizing metaphor, some kind of visual representation and one of the things I wanted to be faithful to was the various practices that made up this guide, that was only a first cut, an initial list, it’s kept growing over the years and so a revision is in order to count for that expansion now, I will get around to it someday but the map was a way to pay homage to the communities that the ideas for the practices came from, so one of the main lines was the XP Line because that is the first I learned about, the first community where I learned about Agile Practices. And obviously the other big line was the Scrum Line and so as I start thinking along those lines, pun not intended, I thought well maybe some kind of geographical metaphor would fit and I used, I stole a JavaScript Library for something that look too little like the well known London Tube Map which is a very iconic thing, everyone recognizes that instantly, I thought that is the kind of thing I would like to people to come away with, to have some kind of image of: “This is the town of Agile”, if you will, “oh my, how it’s grown”. I wanted to get that across.

4. You are talking at the conferences this year, your talk is titled “The Art of Being Wrong”; please won’t you tell us a little bit about that?

All right, so to switch tracks because it’s actually related to the work I’m doing with the Agile Alliance but in very round-about ways, maybe will get to bringing up the relations, but that talk is a session that have been doing in various venues several times this year so that is kind of a change for me because so far I have liked to do different talks at different conferences and mixing things up a bit. This is a topic that I’m really passionate about, it came of my interest in the research of a fellow named Phillip Tetlock who wrote about how experts get things wrong, even people who are professional experts, people who are paid at making predictions. I find that research very interesting and his setup a research project to investigate that with normal people and people who are not paid to act as experts and to make prognostications basically.

So I enrolled into that program, I learned a lot of things, I’m not going to the details of the sessions but it’s about making predictions about future events. Therefore unknown uncertain events and that turns out to be, it’s a very interesting topic, it’s closely related to a number of things which are important in Software Development; chief among them estimation, estimation is about quantifying some kind of prediction about a future event - specifically how long it’s going to take to develop some piece of software. So that having long being a pain point for me in my practice of Software Development, I wanted to investigate that area. I ended up over a couple years spending many, many hours, countless hours, really invested in that investigation in finding out how you could improve at forecasting things within a fairly specific technical framework. So that took on the aspect of Deliberate Practice and I thought that having invested so much time in that, I might as well at least get a talk of it and so I started putting together some slides, some presentation and I thought it’s of interest to software people.

I was wondering if it was also, if could have broader applicability and I got some interesting opportunity to test that. The first time I actually did the session was at a Scrum Meeting in Paris, back in September last year, and it was one of those Indian summers, weather was still very nice and we had a meeting on a Saturday and we decided to have the meeting in the woods of the Fountain Bleu, and because the weather was nice, one of us said: “Can we bring our kids?” and so a bunch of us decided to come with our kids. Quite unexpectedly I ended that doing that session with an audience which was about ten grownups and ten kids including three of my own. If you think you’ve seen a tough audience, one that is stressful wait until you’ve had that kind of setup. I was completely unsure how they will take it so I took some time at the beginning, to say you won’t hurt my feelings if you walk away or go have fun somewhere but they actually ended up staying the whole hour; from 6 years old to 60 years old, so I had to improvise on motivating the topic of the talk so I started with: “Have you ever seen your parents fight?” and yes, a bunch of them raised their hands, and I addresses the parents. Has that happened? Sure, it happens, why does it happen? Because a lot of the time the culprit is Black and White thinking. If both people in a fight are typically convinced, absolutely convinced that they are each right and the other wrong. So that was the starting point and the session built on that and introduces the Art of Being Wrong.

5. So there is no Black and White?

No, it’s very much training in thinking in shades of grey.

6. Another thing that you being busy with likely is a book that you are putting together and publishing incrementally, on Leanpub, the Leprechauns of Software Development. I’ve read what is there so far and really enjoy it, but would you mind telling our listeners, our audience about that?

Yes, so to start with I love Leanpub, I think it’s a very cool concept, it’s kind of obvious in retrospect it’s one of those things and until someone comes up with it, it’s not so obvious. What I like about it is I’m able to have my book out there, people are buying it, downloading it, giving me feedback, of which goes into giving me new directions to think about. Meanwhile I have absolutely no deadline pressure, there are 160 pages out there, I’m writing more stuff but I’m putting that mostly on my blog and waiting for the right time to collate and organize the material and it’s really way better than the one time before had a book deal with a publisher and it were all those deadlines and I needed to estimate how long it will take me to write that chapter, I had no idea, it was very stressful, so this is much more my speed, but the book is out there and people can get it and there is a 100% money back guarantee if anyone is not happy with the state of the book.

So it’s a collection of things that basically debunk facts or beliefs that are very well established within the Software Engineering Community but witch turn out on closer examination not to be true. And I want to say I did not send out to be a debunker, didn’t wake some day and think: “There is all this misinformation or lies out there, I need to set the record straight”. The project came out of sense of curiosity, that’s how that relates back to the Archivist activity. I was trying to reconstruct history of ideas within the Agile Community, I wanted to give people some kind of accurate impression of how we came to adopt this or that idea, or this or that practice within the body of knowledge that the Agile Community is responsible for now, is a custodian for.

So I started investigating the history of Agile. As part of that I also started investigating the history of what came before so this is the history of the traditional modules, the waterfall module, the precursors to Agile things such as the Spiral Module, that is Barry Boehm’s or Tom Gilb’s EVO module which I think that came first. As I was investigating I came across things that I had long taking for granted and I went back to the source material, I wanted to be able to say well: “That is the exact thing that was saying by this person at that time that is how the idea came to like and that is how it was validated”. And it turns out in some cases including some very important beliefs what I called the Grand Truths of Software Engineering, the evidence just didn’t lineup with the claims.

So one example that I go on about for at some length is the claim that it costs exponentially more to fix a defect as you move through phases of the Software Lifecycle, that is the origin of formulation. Of course today we don’t believe so much in the Lifecycle anymore but we still have this idea kicking around that a bug cost more to fix and the cost rises exponentially as time moves on. I looked at the articles that are cited, the papers that are cited in the support of that claim and in many cases there are actually no numbers in the papers, so it’s very hard to say that the papers support the claim. Some of the papers are about something else entirely, I mean one of the papers is Fagan’s original paper in inspections, but it has almost nothing about the cost of fixing defects. One of the papers that has the most data, actual numbers, I took the initiative to take the numbers and put them into a Google spread sheet and make a graph, and instead of a nice smoothly rising exponential, what I found was this kind of a mountain curve and what you would actually take from that curve is, usually is much cheaper to fix a bug in maintenance than in the previous stages, which completely contradicts the original claim.

Some people when I write about that they can kind of shrug or I imagine them shrugging from the content of the comment saying: “How is that a big deal, people having publishing misleading statistics for ages”, I think that is actually kind of big deal because that one claim for instance is the underpinning of many of the fundamental principles in traditional for like of a better words Software Engineering. That is what you get for instance that you should focus on requirements, because if is very much cheaper to fix a defect in the requirements phase than later on, then obviously you want to invest a lot of effort in requirements. So as I was finding more and more of these things, I came to question more and more of those ground truths, even found quite a few Agile Leprechauns things the Agile Community beliefs to have been well established which in fact turn out not to be true. One of my major finds is the what I called “37 Billion Dollar Bluff”, there is supposed to have been a survey of US Defense Department Projects back in 1999 that found that 75% of those projects were failing and that has no basis in fact that I’ve been able to locate. There was a study back in the late 70’s, in 1979, which found the exact same percentages that are claimed for the ‘99 study and I have no formal background in statistics but I have consulted with statisticians and the numbers match so precisely that one of those sets of numbers has to be a copy of the other, a mimetic copy if you will, somebody took those numbers from one study and somehow people attributed that to later survey. I don’t know exactly what is going on there.

Shane: And that is being excepted as a fact

It’s been coated by Craig Larman for instance, I’ve discussed that with Craig so I’m not outing him with any malice, and he has admitted that at the time he didn’t actually check the original sources, he got fooled, many of us got fooled by many of those things, so in the book I also gone about things that I sincerely believed to be true at one point and on which I’ve changed my mind, and that is, part of that was the training that got over the past few years in The Art of Being Wrong. That is the tie in.

Shane: So being able to knowledge that these fundamental truths might not actually be so truthful.

Being able to question what you believe to be true, being able to change your mind and so one of my arguments in the sessions is that actually a key skill, it’s a life skill, it’s a professional skill, so it’s something that it’s well worth developing and the book was kind of a side effect of that practice.

Shane: Laurent thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today, I will encourage people to go to Leanpub and have a look at the Leprechauns of Software Engineering, you certainly opened my eyes with that book and I appreciate it and look forward to hearing your talk.

Thank you for having me Shane!

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Leverage Points: places to intervene in a system

by Dave West on Jul 29, 2010 |

A key decision for software architects and designers involves where and how to introduce change into a system in order to effect a desired change. Leverage points are those places where micro changes can result in macro results. The business enterprise is a system that can be changed by the strategic introduction of computing technology at appropriate leverage points. IT is also a system that can be altered by making key changes at leverage points. In both cases it is necessary to identify leverage points and determination of the type and value of the change to be introduced.

Donella Meadows is the author of Thinking in Systems: A Primer, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award and her work, Leverage Points is still considered to be a classic reference for those seeking to implement system change. Donella Meadows died in 2001, but her ideas about leverage points are summarized in The Solutions Journal.

This idea of leverage points is not unique to systems analysis—it’s embedded in legend: the silver bullet, the miracle cure, the secret passage, the magic password, the nearly effortless way to cut through or leap over huge obstacles. We not only want to believe that there are leverage points, we want to know where they are and how to get our hands on them. Leverage points are points of power.

Meadows identified 12 categories of leverage point, listed below in ascending order of effectiveness.

  • 12. Numbers: Constants and parameters such as subsidies, taxes, and standards
  • 11. Buffers: The sizes of stabilizing stocks relative to their flows
  • 10. Stock-and-Flow Structures: Physical systems and their nodes of intersection
  • 9. Delays: The lengths of time relative to the rates of system changes
  • 8. Balancing Feedback Loops: The strength of the feedbacks relative to the impacts they are trying to correct
  • 7. Reinforcing Feedback Loops: The strength of the gain of driving loops
  • 6. Information Flows: The structure of who does and does not have access to information
  • 5. Rules: Incentives, punishments, constraints
  • 4. Self-Organization: The power to add, change, or evolve system structure
  • 3. Goals:The purpose or function of the system
  • 2. Paradigms: The mindset out of which the system—its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters—arises.
  • 1. Transcending Paradigms

Experienced business managers, software architects and software developers will recognize these leverage points in their own work - especially "Numbers." Lean Software Development has a lot to say about 11, 10, and 9 - eliminating waste in unneeded or bloated buffers, value chains in "Stock and Flow Structures," and the waste associated with intrusive "Delays." Optimizing "Information Flows" is essential to good business and systems architecture design.

An understanding of "Self Organization" as a leverage point leads to a core issue - and at number 4 on the list, a very powerful issue - of Agility, i.e. the self organizing team. In fact, the entire concept of Agility can be seen as an attempt to exploit the number two leverage point - "Paradigms."

There is yet one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm. That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to stay flexible, to realize that no paradigm is “true,” that every one, including the one that sweetly shapes your own worldview, is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension. It is to “get,” at a gut level, the paradigm that there are paradigms, and to see that that itself is a paradigm, and to regard that whole realization as devastatingly funny. It is to let go into not-knowing, into what the Buddhists call enlightenment.

As mystical as this sounds - "Transcending Paradigms"are not foreign to software development. Kent Beck, in the first edition of eXtreme Programming Explained notes that XP has three stages: out of the box, adapted, and "transcended."

Another important element in the summary of Meadows' work comes from Jay Forrester of MIT:

although people deeply involved in a system often know intuitively where to find leverage points, more often than not they push the change in the wrong direction. The classic example of that backward intuition ... [was] a computer model [tht identified] a clear leverage point: growth. ... Growth has costs as well as benefits, and we typically don’t count the costs—among which are poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, and so on—the whole list of problems we are trying to solve with growth! What is needed is much slower growth, different kinds of growth, and in some cases no growth or negative growth.

An example closer to the IT and business world would be the leverage point of cost - an instance of "12- Numbers." Cost is clearly a leverage point, but too often, in both business and IT, it is leveraged in the wrong way - reduction only. This leads to all kinds of problems that might have been avoided if, perhaps costs for certain things had been increased - like paying more for more highly skilled developers and finding that you needed fewer of them.

An understanding of systems and of leverage points that can be exploited when designing systems is essential for all software architects, designers, and developers. The work of Donella Meadows, coupled perhaps with the Systems focused work of Jerry Weinberg, is a good starting point for obtaining that knowledge.

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Blog U ›
  • Confessions of a Community College Dean

    In which a veteran of cultural studies seminars in the 1990s moves into academic administration and finds himself a married suburban father of two. Foucault, plus lawn care.

College at 16?
November 10, 2008 - 7:43am

An alert reader sent me a link to this story about New Hampshire. Apparently, the Granite State is considering funneling most high school students into community colleges after tenth grade. (Tellingly, the story allows that "those who want to go to a prestigious university may stay and finish the final two years.")

This is one of those ideas that carries in it a real grain of truth, but that takes it much too far.

The grain of truth is that the later part of high school is frequently academically spotty. Since many states only require, say, two or three years of most subjects, many seniors start senior year already having met nearly every graduation requirement. In most cases, states deal with that through sponsoring 'dual enrollment' with local community colleges, and/or through AP or IB courses. All of those arrangements allow the junior or senior who is already bumping the academic ceiling of high school to take college-level courses, sometimes for dual credit, while remaining enrolled in high school. (In my limited observation, the advantage of dual-enrollment over AP or IB courses is the difference between transcripted credits and test scores. Some colleges that will only use AP scores for placement purposes -- rather than actually granting course credit -- will accept transcripted credits in transfer.)

Nationally, the trend in average age of cc students is conspicuously downward, which is at least partially a reflection of the popularity of dual enrollment. Add a whole cohort of 16 and 17 year olds, and the effect on a college's average age is predictable.

The New Hampshire plan apparently takes dual enrollment all the way out. Instead of taking some college courses in high school, why not truncate high school altogether and get a jump on college?

It strikes me as a little too convenient.

First, there's that part about 'those who want to go to a prestigious university...' Why would prestigious universities want an extra two years of academic preparation? Could it be that...I'm going out on a limb here...there's some academic value to those last two years? Perhaps that the typical 18 year old is more mature than the typical 16 year old? I'm guessing that the student who has had pre-calc in high school will do better in calculus than the student who hasn't. Call it a hunch.

There's also the democratic rite of passage part of high school. I get as tired of the high school 'coming of age' dramas as everybody else, but I think part of the reason they survive is that high school is the last time that every social class is forced to cohabit. Granted, residential segregation does a number on that, but even so, high school is a common experience. Yes, some of it amounts to what Newt Gingrich memorably called 'subsidized dating,' but I'd even suggest there can be developmental value in that.

My preferred solution would be to greatly improve the academic quality of the average high school experience. The tippity-top is already sufficiently challenged, what with dual enrollment and AP/IB courses and the whole selective-college-application-dance. But the vast majority doesn't fit that description. That's where the work needs to be done. Rather than throwing up our hands and simply making community colleges the new 11th grade -- which, if implemented, would have the disastrous effect of making community colleges the new 11th grade -- let's fix the 11th grade. Prepare the students so they're capable of succeeding at whatever comes next, whether it be college, trade school, the military, or work. Any of those requires a certain work ethic and sense of responsibility, along with a decent sense of math, writing, and the basic facts of the world.

Anyway, that's my first take. Wise and worldly readers -- especially those in New Hampshire -- what say you?

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Blog U ›
The Bookless Library & The Digital Content Divide
November 16, 2011 - 7:59pm

Barbara Fister writes in "The Myth of the Bookless Library",

"No matter how innovative the bookless library sounds, this isn't a situation we planned. If the academic library of the future is bookless, it won’t be because of vision. It will be because of the lack of it."

I think I understand the perspective of my library colleagues. Digital books have many costs, both obvious (price) and less-obvious (from privacy to preservation/access to availability).  Every library would love to offer books in every format, but the reality of scarce resources and non-library friendly publisher / e-book seller business models makes this very difficult.

My concern is that we are all participating, albeit with only the best motives, in creating a new content digital divide

I am rich enough to buy my books from Amazon rather than check them out of the library.

Because I am rich enough to buy my books from Amazon I get:

  • The book in the format I want it (e-book, audio or paper).
  • The exact book I want as soon as it is published.
  • Instant access to the book (via downloading).
  • The ability to read my book on multiple platforms, from my e-book reader to my phone.

Most of my reading life I did not have the money to buy my books, and I took many many books out of the library. And for most of my life, the "book getting" and the "book reading" process was pretty much equal when borrowing or buying. A paper book from interlibrary loan comes as quickly as a paper book from Amazon.

But now, for me, the e-book and the audiobook are superior. The e-book for the multiple platform and instant buying ability, the audiobook for a million other reasons (mostly having to do with time and the ability to multitask while reading).

For most of my life, my library has been the great equalizer.  Libraries made a scarce good (access to books) abundant.   My librarian never cared about my bank account.   Today, money matters for reading more than ever.

Yes, Amazon has the "Borrow Kindle Books from Your Local Library Program". (Can academic libraries participate in this program?) I have borrowed 2 books from my NH library system (Smokin' Seventeen by Janet Evanovich and Headhunters by Jo Nesbo. The system worked great, but these were the best books I could find to borrow. Everything I wanted to read (and my Wish List has over 500 books) was either unavailable or had a long wait.

What is the answer? The only thing I can think of is that we need to give libraries more money. We should not accept the emergence of this new digital content divide. The digital economy requires that we increase our investment in our libraries.

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Hope Amid Disappointment

As $12 billion graduation initiative appears to slip away, community college leaders focus on the benefits of a year in the spotlight – and look to the future.
March 16, 2010

After a year of high hopes, the apparent shedding of the American Graduation Initiative from combined health care/student aid legislation has left many community college officials deeply disappointed.

But, whether because they are accustomed to being disappointed by Washington politicians, or because they remain hopeful that the initiative and its financial windfall may re-emerge down the road, many community college leaders looked at the bright side in interviews on Monday. Some said their sector had benefited immensely from having been a focus of the Obama administration's education and jobs agenda for so long, and are optimistic about federal support for their institutions in the future.

The AGI, originally a part of the larger Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009, would invest more than $12 billion in the nation’s community colleges during the next 10 years, and calls for 5 million more two-year graduates by 2020. But as Democratic lawmakers continued to work Monday to craft a combined health care and student aid measure that would meet budget targets and reduce the deficit enough to meet a Congressional mandate, the initiative was among the many priorities that the administration and its Congressional allies appeared to sacrifice.

“Even though we understand the mechanics involved don’t necessarily reflect a lessening of support or appreciation of community colleges, it’s still disappointing,” said Scott Ralls, president of the North Carolina Community College System, who like many of his peers avoided any hint of anger or serious frustration. “It did take the air out of our sails,” added John J. Sbrega, president of Bristol Community College, in Massachusetts.

Ralls and others seemed inclined to focus on the positives, like the national attention the initiative brought to community colleges. “I’m someone who believes that community colleges have been an unrecognized player in the U.S. education fabric, and I think recognition, even without resources, has been important for us,” he said.

Other presidents said they had been using the AGI and President Obama’s goal as leveraging tools with state and local politicians to argue the importance of their institutions in a financial recovery.

“When President Obama announced the AGI, that was perhaps the first time in decades that community colleges had been put on what I would describe as the national agenda,” said Wright Lassiter Jr., president of the Dallas County Community College District, in Texas. “For him to use the phrase ‘community college’ in his State of the Union address was significant. We’ve been using the thrust of AGI as one of the focal points in expressing our views to the Texas legislature and to other stakeholders as to how we can help respond to economic and work force development needs. The AGI has done a lot to raise awareness.”

Community college lobbying during the AGI debate has even spurred some local initiatives that remain, despite the potential loss of federal funding.

Sbrega noted that the president's "wonderful" focus on two-year institutions "mirrors what [Massachusetts] Gov. Deval Patrick is doing. He’s been emphasizing the importance of community colleges and has been arguing for them to be free for all who seek access.”

Also, in Philadelphia, Mayor Michael Nutter recently set the goal of doubling the number of percentage of city residents who attend and complete college in the next 10 years. Currently, only 21 percent of Philadelphians hold baccalaureate degrees.

“Local officials have done a good job of articulating some of President Obama’s goals for education,” said Stephen M. Curtis, president of Community College of Philadelphia. “Still, I do hope Congress returns to this at some point. I think we have to make education, education reform and educational attainment every bit as important as health care or whatever other priorities we think are essential to provide.”

Some two-year-college officials say that preparing themselves to meet the high standards that would have been in place when they applied for grants under the graduation initiative had helped improve their methods of assessing themselves.

“We recognize that the goals of the AGI are our goals as well: increasing college completion rates, closing achievement gaps, melding education and workforce development efforts in way that benefit people today and tomorrow,” Randy Schmailzl, president of Metropolitan Community College, in Nebraska, said via e-mail. “In that respect, the AGI and its outcome benchmarks have served as a catalyst for continuous improvements at MCC that will continue with or without this new funding resource. That said, we are living in a time of dwindling resources. If Congress fails to ensure some funding for these types of improvements, along with the facilities support that is so critical to their success, state and local resources may not be able to make up the difference.”

Lassiter echoed that sentiment, noting that AGI’s benchmarks will live on in Dallas.

“It’ll cause us to take a closer look at how well we’re doing our jobs,” Lassiter said. “For me, this is very, very important, because if there was to be funding because of AGI, it would be based upon if we were being good stewards of that money. We’re still working hard on all measures of student success and how we’re doing in terms of retention and transfer and emerging workforce needs.”

Even if AGI were to pass, funding would not be a guarantee, as its grants were to be selected via a competitive process. Still, many community colleges had planned to seek grants to help with essential facilities projects.

“We were hopeful for construction funds,” said Vicki P. Hawsey, president of Wallace State Community College, in Alabama. “We have a health sciences and life sciences building that we were nearing the stage to breaking ground on, but this’ll slow down attainment of that goal. We’re already admitting less than half the nursing students we could because we’re already at capacity in our existing building. To move forward with construction, like all things in higher education, money will likely come through assessing students a fee to pay for part of the cost.”

Other leaders say they will look to local businesses and other community members to help fund the projects they had hoped to receive AGI funds to start or complete.

“We just announced the closure of four of our campus centers,” said Marsi Liddell, president of Aims Community College, in Colorado. “Any space we leased will be gone.… Whether it comes from the corporate world or what have you, you’re going to see more dollars coming from that sphere here at Aims. Major research universities have endowments and alumni, but community colleges are going to have to look more to the community.”

Despite the disappointment at the seeming loss of AGI, at least one community college president noted that the legislative priority towering over all other higher education priorities -- retaining Pell Grant increases for low-income students -- was enormously important to two-year institutions.

“I will say something which may not go over well with my colleagues,” Sbrega said. “But, to take from the medical field, my first take on this is to 'do no harm' to Pell Grants. It’s important that that is still there. Community colleges are helped by those funds, too.”

Sbrega and other community college leaders expressed frustration that AGI may become the victim of a highly partisan fight over the details of the student bill and health care reform. Still, many said they are optimistic about future federal support for their institutions.

“This is a difficult political environment we find ourselves in,” said Lassiter. “It’s unfortunate AGI got stuck with something else. Though it’s clear to me nothing is going to happen for AGI for at least a year or so, we won’t stop our efforts advocating for it.”

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Pacific Leadership “fono” form green growth coalition

A group of senior Pacific figures met for three days at the Inter Continental Fiji Resort, in Natadola, on 29th May to 1st June, to shape a new Green Growth Leadership Coalition to help address some of the key development challenges facing the Pacific Island Region.

The leaders who shaped the new Green Growth Leadership Coalition. Photo: IUCN Oceania

The newly formed Green Growth Leadership Coalition will work with leaders in the Pacific Island Region and provide mentoring, support and guidance on issues of critical importance for a more sustainable development model.

“Green growth has to be at the core of our solutions to climate change, in this region and globally,” said His Excellency President Anote Tong of Kiribati in his opening address of the ‘fono’ (a Tongan word referring to a gathering of leaders to discuss, reflect and provide guidance on critical issues). “We need a Pacific Way to define and achieve green growth”.

His Excellency urged Pacific leaders to refocus on showing the solutions and ingenuity of the Pacific, not just the challenges. “We know what our problems are! We need to put our solutions on the table, demonstrate where the global community can connect with us, on our terms. We need to set the agenda not just for Government, but to allow for civil society and the church to mobilise.”

Facilitated by IUCN and key partners, and supported by the Pacific Leadership Programme, leaders at the ‘fono’ were able discern and share their challenges from their perspective as Pacific Islanders, as individuals, but also as representatives of Pacific peoples: their values and their cultures. The group used talanoa, a process that created a space for open discussion, and deliberated on the key characteristics of leadership, and the challenges that can trap and isolate leaders, dilute their convictions and their effectiveness. Through talanoa the core group took ownership of the outcomes of the dialogue and committed to follow-up activities to create and nurture a regional Green Growth Leadership Coalition.

“Green growth is about putting social and environmental values back into economic development,” noted Taholo Kami, Regional Director for IUCN Oceania. “We want the world to better understand the value of the Pacific Islands region as a global good, and our people to transition from a focus on vulnerability.

The Green Growth Leadership Coalition will support countries, and regional bodies such as the Melanesian Spearhead Group, to prepare and deliver on Green Growth targets and commitments, such as in the mining and fisheries sectors.”

Green growth will also be the focus of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, to be held in Brazil later this month (‘Rio + 20’). It is hoped that the Green Growth Leadership Coalition will help countries in the Pacific Island Region to internalize and adopt new policies and strategies that will achieve lasting development outcomes.

For more information contact: Mr. Fe’iloakitau Kaho Tevi, IUCN Oceania Green Growth Consultant,

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Home » Tag Archives: Logging (page 3)

Tag Archives: Logging

21st century logging

I think logging should get more attention than we are currently giving it. When designing an application a great deal of effort goes into modelling the customer business logic, making sure all use cases are covered and handled properly. The business model is mapped to a persistence storage (be at a RDBMS or a NoSQL solution), frameworks are being chosen: ...

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How to create web-app with Quartz Scheduler and logging

I sometimes help out users in Quartz Scheduler forums. Once in a while some one would ask how can he/she setup the Quartz inside a web application. This is actualy a fairly simple thing to do. The library already comes with a ServletContextListener that you can use to start a Scheduler. I will show you a simple webapp example here. ...

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How to configure SLF4J with different logger implementations

There are many good benefits in using slf4j library as your Java application logging API layer. Here I will show few examples on how to use and configure it with different loggers. You can think of slf4j as an Java interface, and then you would need an implementation (ONLY ONE) at runtime to provide the actual logging details, such as ...

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Apache log4j is the leading logging framework

According to a survey from Zero Turnaround Apache log4j is the leading Java logging framework. This was actually a very interesting survey. It shows SLF4J is most often used as a logging facade with 61%. But it seems it is most often used with Apache Log4j, which is used by 52% of all survey participants. Just 29% use logback and ...

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SiftingAppender: logging different threads to different log files

One novel feature of Logback is SiftingAppender (JavaDoc). In short it’s a proxy appender that creates one child appender per each unique value of a given runtime property. Typically this property is taken from MDC. Here is an example based on the official documentation linked above:               <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <configuration> <appender name="SIFT" class="ch.qos.logback.classic.sift.SiftingAppender"> ...

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Your logs are your data: logstash + elasticsearch

Topic of today’s post stays a bit aside from day-to-day coding and development but nonetheless covers a very important subject: our application log files. Our apps do generate enormous amount of logs which if done right are extremely handy for problems troubleshooting. It’s not a big deal if you have a single application up and running, but nowadays apps, particularity ...

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Effective Logging in Java/JEE – Mapped Diagnostic Context

It all started when i was sitting with a colleague to resolve some application issue, when i noticed something interesting. He was merging the code and my eyes caught the attention of this class “org.apache.log4j.MDC”. This led to few discoveries on the way which  follow here: What is MDC? MDC stands for Mapped Diagnostic Context. It helps you to distinguish ...

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Mixin in Java with Aspects – for a Scala traits sample

Scala traits allow new behaviors to be mixed into a class. Consider two traits to add auditing and version related fields to JPA entities:                   package mvcsample.domain import javax.persistence.Version import scala.reflect.BeanProperty import java.util.Date trait Versionable { @Version @BeanProperty var version: Int = _ } trait Auditable { @BeanProperty var createdAt: Date = ...

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Spring: Setting Logging Dependencies

This post describes how to set-up logging dependencies in Spring. It is based on information available in a post by Dave Syer’s. A reminder on Java logging frameworks is available here. The code example is available at GitHub in the Spring-Logging-Dependencies directory. Spring uses Jakarta Commons Logging API (JCL). Unfortunately, many people do not like its runtime discovery algorithm. We can disactivate it and ...

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Grails SQL Logging part 2 – groovy.sql.Sql

I discussed options for logging Hibernate-generated SQL in an earlier post but today I was trying to figure out how to see the SQL from groovy.sql.Sql and didn’t have much luck at first. The core problem is that the Sql class uses a java.util.logging.Logger (JUL) while the rest of the world uses a Log4j logger (often with a Commons Logging or SLF4J ...

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Justice News

Associate Attorney General Tony West Delivers Remarks at the National Network of Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs Conference
United States
Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Thank you, [U.S. Attorney] Zane [Memeger], for that kind introduction and for the terrific work you and your staff are doing to lead and support community-based violence prevention efforts here in Philadelphia and throughout the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

I want to express my appreciation to Dr. Corbin, Dr. Fein, and all our friends at the National Network of Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Programs for the critical work they are leading, particularly in distressed communities and among young men of color.  My sincere thanks, as well, to Dr. Rich and the faculty and staff of the Drexel University School of Public Health for hosting us and for their outstanding commitment to reducing violence in our inner cities.

Before coming here, I had the opportunity to watch three compelling videos produced under the auspices of the National Network – and I appreciate Doctors Corbin and Fein sharing those with me.  Some of you may have seen them as well.  They feature young people whose lives have been torn apart by violence.

There’s the story of a teenage girl whose brother was in and out of juvenile detention from a young age and who was herself the victim of a brutal beating.
There’s the young man who describes living in perpetual fear of being shot, who naps during the afternoons because he’s too afraid to fall asleep at night.

There’s the boy who composed a video letter to his absent father, asking why he was never there to help him make sense of the mayhem going on all around him.

It struck me as I watched those videos, as it strikes me whenever I talk to young people who live among crime and distress, that something has gone very wrong when kids like these – fundamentally good kids – have to live with violence as their frame of reference.

Something is absolutely wrong when a teenager who should be thinking about homework and sports and dating spends his time worrying about how he’s going to make it through the day alive.

And there’s something terribly wrong when, instead of looking forward to the future and all the wonderful things that should lie ahead, a young person thinks about how bad the world is and doubts that the future holds any place for him.

There’s something wrong when violence dictates the terms of a young life.

I’m grateful that there are organizations like the ones represented by the National Network – groups like Project Ujima in Milwaukee, Caught in the Crossfire in Oakland, and Healing Hurt People right here in Philadelphia – working to end the cycle of violence in our nation’s cities and to bring hope and healing to troubled youth.

And I’m proud that through our Office for Victims of Crime, we are helping to support this great work.  There are now 22 programs like these across the country, providing trauma-informed care to young people injured by violence and giving these kids better options than retaliation and more violence.  I commend them all – and everyone here – for making this your mission.

The problem, as everyone here knows, is an urgent one, one that cries out for the kind of approach the National Network is promoting.  It’s a problem that disproportionately affects our boys and young men of color.

We know that African-American males between the ages of 16 and 19 have the highest rate of violent victimization of any race and any age group.  We know that black youth make up just 16 percent of the overall youth population but more than half of the juvenile population arrested for committing a violent crime.  We know that too often, boys and young men of color lack access to critical victim services.  And we know that for African-American boys and young men between the ages of 10 and 24, homicide is not only the leading cause of death, it results in more deaths than the next four leading causes combined.

Yes, violent crime in our country on the whole is down, and that’s something to celebrate.  But there are still far too many communities where violence remains prevalent, far too many kids thinking about their own mortality when they should be thinking about their future.

It’s a complicated, difficult challenge, and one not easily met.  But I would offer this:  As entrenched as violence sometimes appears, it is not inevitable.  When people of good will band together and establish norms of behavior; when local agencies and community and faith-based groups engage with one another in a spirit of true problem-solving; and when stakeholders use evidence-based approaches like the ones represented by the National Network; we can reduce violence and we can improve outcomes for our youth.

This isn’t just hopeful speculation.  We know it can work because we’ve seen it work and the research tells us it can be done.  Three years ago, under the leadership of the White House, we launched a major effort called the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention to build on some of these successes.  This is a collaboration of several federal agencies and 10 cities, Philadelphia among them.  We’re bringing together citizens, community and faith-based groups, law enforcement officials, public health professionals, business and philanthropic leaders – all the stakeholders – to create prevention strategies tailored to the needs of each community.

It’s exciting to see the level of support we’ve gotten for this effort, from the highest levels of the Administration, but also – and perhaps most importantly – from local leaders and from community members themselves.  We’re all working together to design bold, new strategies that address some of these communities’ most intractable problems, and this work is showing tremendous promise.  In fact, tomorrow and Friday, the Departments of Justice and Education are convening the Third Annual Summit on Preventing Youth Violence in the D.C.-area to highlight and share promising and evidenced-based practices to prevent youth violence.

What’s important to remember about the Forum is that it takes a comprehensive approach to youth violence.  This isn’t just about enforcement, because enforcement alone isn’t the answer.  We can’t expect to arrest our way to safer communities, especially if we hope to maintain legitimacy in the eyes of community members – and the research shows that perceptions of fairness in police practices, not just vigorous suppression, figure prominently in reducing crime.

So if our goal is to achieve sustainable reductions in violence – and to do it justly and effectively – we must augment enforcement with prevention and intervention, particularly interventions that recognize the devastating biological and psychological effects of trauma.

Intervention is critical to stopping the cycle of violence because that is where we can expect to have the greatest long-term effect, especially with kids who are exposed to violence early in their lives.  No doubt, many of you are aware of the troubling incidence of children’s exposure to violence.  Our research shows that more than 60 percent of American children are exposed to some form of violence, crime, or abuse, ranging from brief encounters as witnesses to serious violent episodes as victims.  Almost 40 percent – two out of five kids – are direct victims of 2 or more violent acts.  We should be shocked by these statistics.

And the consequences of this exposure to violence can be serious, from poor academic performance and drug and alcohol abuse to long-term psychological harm and – a concern for everyone involved in public safety – later criminal behavior.  We have a robust and expanding body of research that validates our concerns.  One recent study of children living in a low-income neighborhood who were regularly exposed to shootings and other violent events showed that they were 30 times more likely to have learning and behavior problems than children who were not exposed to the same kind of trauma.

Now fortunately, we know that young people are resilient and that effective intervention – especially early intervention – can counter the effects of violence in a young child’s life.

In 2010, the Attorney General responded to this challenge by announcing a new initiative called Defending Childhood.  The goal of Defending Childhood is to improve our knowledge about what works to lessen the impacts of children’s exposure to violence and to prevent that exposure from leading to a future of antisocial, criminal or other problematic behavior.

And in the course of our work with Defending Childhood we discovered some terrific programs out there – in communities across the country – that can reverse the damage done by violence.  We’re raising awareness of these approaches and working to get them into communities where children are at particular risk of encountering violence.  We’re also responding to recommendations from a national task force on children’s exposure to violence, which was co-chaired by Joe Torre and Bob Listenbee, who is the former Chief of the Juvenile Unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia and now serves as the Administrator of our Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.  And central to those recommendations is the need for trauma-informed treatment for children exposed to violence.

The task force report also emphasizes the role of the community in preventing and reducing violence.  We’ve learned from successful models, like the Group Violence Reduction Strategy pioneered in Boston and Chicago’s CureViolence program, that intervention has a much better chance of success when residents are involved in establishing and communicating norms of acceptable behavior.

Through a program called the Community-Based Violence Prevention Demonstration Program, our Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention supports evidence-based approaches built on these models.  Last year, we awarded a $1.5 million grant under this program to support the Philadelphia CeaseFire project.  Local partners in this city are working together, combining data and street knowledge to identify where to concentrate anti-violence efforts, provide intervention, and work with neighborhood residents to change norms.

And as we look at where crime is occurring and who is committing it, we must also remember – as the videos I mentioned earlier remind us – that while we must insist on accountability from young offenders, we must also provide the necessary guidance to re-direct kids from what seems to them to be a hopeless cycle of ongoing violence and victimization.

So as part of the Department’s Vision 21 Initiative, led by our Office for Victims of Crime, we’ve called for a re-assessment of the way we respond to these young victims, recognizing that our system for service delivery should be more flexible and should meet them where they are.

For example, we are supporting an effort called the Hidden Victims Project:  a program operated by the Center for Court Innovation in New York and centered in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn.  The goal of this effort is to add trauma-based victim services to an already-existing program designed to steer high-risk youth away from violence and other harmful choices and toward healthy lifestyles.

Programs like this one help us to meet the needs of young people who encounter violence on a daily basis.  They are showing these kids that there is a better way to deal with violence than retaliation and more violence.  And after all, that’s what these young people really want.  It’s what we all want.

And the National Network and its members -- you are helping us get there.  You’re showing us a better way to respond to kids at risk and reclaim our young people.  And although your work often occurs without fanfare or recognition, behind closed doors or in the quiet counsel of one-on-one conversations, your success is measured time and again where it counts  most:  in the hearts you touch, the souls you enrich, the doors you open and the lives you change.

Thank you for your time, and thank you for all that you do for our Nation’s young people.

Updated September 17, 2014