Archive for April, 2008

Docketing software - providers and

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

Docketing software is computer software for use in scheduling legal matters. In ex parte proceedings, litigation, and other legal matters, timing is highly critical. The schedule used by one who practices before a court is called a docket.


External links

  • List of docketing software providers in intellectual property law on the European Patent Office (EPO) web site
  • United States Patent and Trademark office patent application information retrieval (PAIR)
  • IP MENU - A list of Docketing Software providers

Links

Dramatic - The Voice

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

Dramatic may refer to:

  • Drama, a literary form involving parts for actors
  • Dramatic is a classification of the human voice in European classical music. The adjective describes a specific vocal weight and a range at the lower end of the given voice part, e.g. dramatic soprano; see voice type

Links

Moniteur - External links Official

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

Moniteur (French for Monitor) may refer to:

  • Belgian Official Journal, the official newspaper of the Kingdom of Belgium
  • Le Moniteur Universel, official gazette of France from 1789-1869
  • *Il Monitore Napoletano, gazette of the short short-lived Parthenopaean Republic was named in emulation of the above French one.

Links

Taroom Aboriginal Mission - stated mission statement

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

This was an early Aboriginal Mission up until 1927 and apparently had a troubled history including a strike in 1916. In 1927 Aboriginal people from Taroom Aboriginal Mission were marched some 300 kilometres to the newly settled Woorabinda Aboriginal Mission.

The Taroom Aboriginal Mission was a neighbouring mission of the Hull River Aboriginal Settlement which relocated to Palm Island.
hello

Links

Nuclear Management Company - is licensed under the

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Nuclear Management Company is a contract/operations firm that currently oversees two nuclear power plants: Monticello and Prairie Island. NMC provides operational collaborations between plants. NMC does not own the plants, nor the energy produced from them. NMC’s corporate headquarters is in Hudson, Wisconsin.


History

NMC was formed in February 1999 by four utilities: Alliant Energy Nuclear, NSP Nuclear Corporation, WEC Nuclear Nuclear Corporation, and WPS Nuclear Corporation. Consumers Energy joined and became an investor in 2000. Alliant Energy, WPS, and Consumers Energy are no longer part of NMC as they have sold their nuclear plants.


Nuclear plants

  • Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant
Monticello is located in Monticello, Minnesota. Monticello is owned by Northern States Power Company, now a subsidiary of Xcel Energy. MNGP is a BWR licensed through 2030.
  • Palisades Nuclear Power Plant (sold in 2007)
Palisades is located in Covert Township, Michigan along the shores of Lake Michigan. It was owned by Consumers Energy, a subsidiary of CMS Energy. On December 12, 2005, the plant was put up for auction and the sale to Entergy Corporation was completed in 2007. Palisades is a PWR licensed through 2031. The plant is now operated by Entergy.
  • Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant (sold in 2007)
Point Beach is located in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. The plant is owned by We Energies, a unit of Wisconsin Energy Corp. Point Beach is a two unit PWR, with Unit 1 licensed through 2030 and Unit 2 licensed through 2033. An agreement to sell the plant to a subsidiary of FPL Group was reached in December, 2006, and the sale was completed in 2007.
Prairie Island is located in Red Wing, Minnesota. Prairie Island is also owned by NSP, now part of Xcel Energy. Prairie Island is a two unit PWR, with Unit 1 licensed through 2013 and Unit 2 licensed through 2014.
  • Duane Arnold Energy Center (sold in 2006)
DAEC, located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is Iowa’s only nuclear power plant. It was originally owned by Alliant Energy-Interstate Power and Light (70%) and two co-op utilities (30%) when NMC formed. On January 27, 2006, FPL took Alliant Energy’s 70% ownership of the plant. DAEC is no longer part of NMC and is operated by FPL. DAEC is a BWR licensed through 2014.
  • Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant (sold in 2005)
Kewaunee is located in Carlton, Wisconsin. Kewaunee was originally owned by WPS Resources, Wisconsin Public Service Corp., and 2 other partners. On July 5th, 2005, the plant was sold to Dominion Resources and is now operated by Dominion. Kewaunee is a PWR licensed through 2013.


External links

  • NMC
  • Alliant Energy
  • Xcel Energy
  • Wisconsin Energy Corporation
  • WPS Resources
  • Consumers Energy
  • CMS Energy

Links

WEUP - and is licensed

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

WEUP could refer to two radio stations in United States:

  • WEUP (AM), a radio station broadcasting at 1700 kHz on the AM band, licensed to Huntsville, Alabama.
  • WEUP-FM, a radio station broadcasting at 103.1 MHz on the FM band, licensed to Moulton, Alabama and serving Huntsville, Alabama.

Links

  • Voip Choice - Home Free Australian VoIP guide with service provider price comparisons, explanations of VoIP technology for new users, VoIP store, news and more., Logging on to
  • voip-info.org - voip-info.org A wiki that covers VoIP software, hardware, service providers, reviews, configurations, and standards.
  • IVR Platforms / IVR Hosting / IVR Development Get to market quickly with our A to Z VoIP platforms and services Our IVR and VOIP hosting, turnkey platforms, and developer services - powered by

Minnesota Rail Service Improvement Program - program in February

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

The Minnesota Rail Service Improvement Program (MRSI) was created in 1976. Funding for the MRSI Program was authorized in 1978. In 1982, a Constitutional Amendment provided for Bonds to be used for the MRSI Program. The MRSI Program has received General Fund appropriations totaling $16.0 million and Bond appropriations totaling $25.5 million over the life of the program. The 2003 Legislature rescinded $3.9 million July 1 2003 and another $2.5 million will be taken July 1 2004. This deduction from the MRSI Program will decrease the General fund appropriations to $9.6 million.


References

  • http://www.budget.state.mn.us/budget/capital/2004/prelim/223457.pdf

Expression-oriented programming languages - statement

Saturday, April 26th, 2008

An expression-oriented programming language is a programming language where (nearly) every construction is an expression and yields a value. Macro definitions, preprocessor commands, and declarations are often treated as statements in expression-oriented languages. Some expression-oriented languages introduce a void return type to be yielded by expressions that have only side-effects.

ALGOL 68 is an example of an expression-oriented language. Pascal is not. All functional programming languages are expression-oriented.

Expression-orientation can be confusing in imperative programming languages, as many commands used normally as statements are in fact expressions. For example, assignment in the C programming language is an expression, not a statement. This allows for the following confusion:

if (x = 1) {
 ...
} else {
  /* this branch is never executed */
}

The condition of the if is the result of the expression x = 1, which is 1. Thus the if will always execute the true branch. The above is often confused with:

if (x == 1) {
  ... /* executed if x is 1 */
} else {
  ... /* executed if x is not 1 */
}

For this reason, many programmers write the constant first in conditionals, as 1 = x is a syntax error, and mistyping = for == will not result in a bug.

Links

Direct Inward Dialing - to VoIP. The

Saturday, April 26th, 2008

Direct Inward Dialing (DID, also called DDI in Europe) is a feature offered by telephone companies for use with their customers’ PBX systems, whereby the telephone company (telco) allocates a range of numbers all connected to their customer’s PBX. As calls are presented to the PBX, the number that the caller dialed is also given, so the PBX can route the call to the desired person or bureau within the organization.

Developed by AT&T in the 1960s, patterned upon the earlier IKZ service of the Deutsche Bundespost, this feature enables companies to have fewer lines than extensions, while still having a unique number for each extension, callable from outside the company.

By way of example, each extension of the PBX system may be assigned a seven-digit external telephone number, with a fixed four- or five-digit prefix. Someone who knows the internal extension of his/her correspondent can dial the seven-digit number and be connected directly to the person called, bypassing the operator or PBX auto-attendant.

This system is also used by fax servers. Instead of an exchange at the end of the 234 000 line, a computer running fax server software and fax modem cards uses the last three digits to identify the recipient of the fax. This allows 1000 people to have their own individual fax numbers, even though there is only one ‘fax machine’.

When people give out their work number and say it’s a “direct line”, often what they mean is that it’s a DID number.


DID (DDI) and VoIP aka “Call Through”

DID” numbers have particular relevance for VoIP communications. In order for people connected to the traditional PSTN network to call people connected to VoIP networks, DID numbers from the PSTN network are obtained by the administrators of the VoIP network, and assigned to a gateway in the VoIP network. The gateway will then route calls incoming from the PSTN across the IP network to the appropriate VoIP user. Similarly, calls originating in the VoIP network will appear to users on the PSTN as originating from one of the assigned DID numbers.

US DID numbers can be purchased in bulk from a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier.

International DID numbers can be purchased in bulk from international DID providers like:

DID World Wide (60 countries covered)

Voxbone (40 countries covered)

There are also a number of DID resellers offering DID numbers for individuals and small enterprises:

DID eXchange

Ring WorldWide call forwarding service

Virtualphoneline

PimpMyNumber (UK Numbering Options)


See also

  • Dialed Number Identification Service

Links

Atmos Energy - customers such as

Saturday, April 26th, 2008

Atmos Energy (), headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is the largest distributor of natural gas in the United States, serving 3.1 million customers nationwide. Atmos acquired TXU’s natural gas and pipeline holdings in 2004. The company began as Energas in 1983, a spinoff of the natural gas distribution division of Pioneer Corporation. In 1988, the company changed its name to Atmos and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.


References

Atmos Energy, the largest pure natural gas distributor in the United States, delivers natural gas to 3.2 million residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural and public-authority customers. Its regulated utility services are provided to more than 1,600 communities in 12 states.[1]

Atmos Energy has grown from 279,000 customers in 1983 mainly by acquiring utility assets. Its most recent acquisition was the distribution and pipeline operations of TXU Gas Company, the largest natural gas utility in Texas. Atmos Energy is also the largest natural gas distributor in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Atmos Energy is known as one of the most efficient natural gas utilities in the industry. In 2006, the company served 723 utility customers per utility employee, as compared with an average of 532 customers per employee served by its peer group. The company’s utility operation and maintenance expense of $112 per customer in fiscal 2006 was also lower than its peer group average of $218 per customer.

Atmos Energy’s nonutility operations are ranked as one of the leading domestic mid-tier gas marketers. The company markets natural gas supplies to industrial customers and municipalities in 22 states, arranges for gas transportation and management services and manages company-owned gas storage and pipeline assets, including one of the largest intrastate natural gas pipelines in Texas.


External links

  • Company web site

Links

Current asset - promote the current state

Friday, April 25th, 2008

In accounting, a current asset is an asset on the balance sheet which is expected to be sold or otherwise used up in the near future, usually within one year, or one business cycle - whichever is longer. Typical current assets include cash, cash equivalents, accounts receivable, inventory, the portion of prepaid accounts which will be used within a year, and short-term investments.

On the balance sheet, assets will typically be classified into current assets and long-term assets.

The current ratio is calculated by dividing total current assets by total current liabilities. It is frequently used as an indicator of a company’s liquidity, its ability to meet short-term obligations.

Links

Jau Gwei - information security vendors

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

Jau Gwei (Chinese: 走鬼 lit. running [away from] ghosts) refers to the sudden abandonment of roadside vendor stalls in Hong Kong, when the squads of the Hawker Control Team (小販管理隊 or 販管隊 in short) are coming and the vendors are either operating a stall illegally or selling prohibited goods.

Gwei refers to the Gweilo, as the hawker control officers were usually westerners in the old days.

Jau Gwei is the word shouted out to warn other vendors of the approaching squads. Hong Kong has tried to reduce illegal vendors by licensing hawker permitted places, but a large percentage of street vendors still operate illegally. The term can be heard in other parts of Mainland China’s Guangdong province where similar situations exist with illegal street vendors.


External links

  • An impact study concerning Hawker Permitted Places

Links

  • voip-info.org - voip-info.org A wiki that covers VoIP software, hardware, service providers, reviews, configurations, and standards.
  • UK VoIP Provider VoIP UK Provider. Get a FREE VoIPtalk account and start making free calls with your VoIP Phone now! Free VoIP Service. Pay monthly Packages
  • Business VoIP - Gradwell Dot Com If you have broadband at home or at work, Gradwell's VoIP services allow you to deploy all the features of office-based telephony, with a fraction of the
  • VoipDiscount | Free Calls and SMS Free phone calls with VoipDiscount. Call your online friends for free as well as a special selection of popular international destinations.
  • AT&T: VoIP VoIP from AT&T converts your voice into data and uses your high speed Internet connection to send and receive calls. Connect your home or business with VoIP
  • CBC News In Depth: VoIP VoIP allows people to make telephone calls using a broadband internet connection instead of a regular analog phone line — at a fraction of the cost.

LTT - and Telecom

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

LTT is an initialism for the following:

  • Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency
  • Light Triggered Thyristor
  • Lightstream Transmission & Telecom a Global telecommunications carrier
  • Lancastrian Transport Trust a charity concerned with preserving trams and buses of the Fylde Coast in the North West of England
  • Libya Telecom & Technology
  • Linux Trace Toolkit
  • Local Transport Today a UK publication for the transport planning profession

Links

Alliance for Democracy and Federation - Alliance VOIPSA

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

The Alliance for Democracy and Federation (Alliance pour la Démocratie et la Fédération) is a liberal party in Burkina Faso. It is part of the Alliance for Democracy and Federation-African Democratic Rally (Alliance pour la Démocratie et la Fédération-Rassemblement Démocratique Africain), the largest opposition party in the country.


See also

  • List of liberal parties
  • Liberal democracy

Links

Shakwak Agreement - completed an

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

The Shakwak Agreement, also known as the Shakwak Project, is a highway construction funding accord between the United States and Canada, reached in 1976. The agreement, covering Canadian portions of the Haines Highway and Alaska Highway, deals with long-standing requests from Alaskans for improvement of the roads connecting the panhandle with the rest of the state of Alaska.

Under the agreement, the United States approves funds that are used by Canadian contractors to rebuild the highway. For most of the last 20 years, the funding was handled by the Yukon government, as it tendered sections of the highways for work. The Haines Highway rebuild was actually completed during the early 1980s, then funding dried up for several years. Work since the early 1990s has been carried out on the Alaska Highway, and is expected to be completed before 2010, with three major bridge replacements yet to be completed.

Links

GNU Chess - GNU General Public

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

GNU Chess is a computer program for playing chess. GNU Chess is one of the oldest computer chess programs for Unix-based computers and has been ported to several other platforms. The GNU Chess project is one of the older parts of the GNU package of software, having started in 1984. The first version of GNU Chess was written by Stuart Cracraft. http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-chess/2002-12/msg00018.html All subsequent versions before version 5 were written by John Stanback.

GNU Chess is free software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, and is maintained by collaborating developers. It is often used in conjunction with a GUI program such as XBoard.

In 1998–1999 GNU Chess underwent a transition to version 5. Version 5 was essentially a complete rewrite from scratch of GNU Chess to eliminate spaghetti code and replace antiquated data structures with more advanced computer chess implementation techniques. These included bitboards, a search algorithm called Principal Variation Search (PVS) (a variation by Professor Tony Marsland of alpha-beta minimax), and full end-leaf evaluation. The primary author of version 5 was Chua Kong-Sian. http://gnu.open-mirror.com/brave-gnu-world/issue-39.en.html

It uses a number of other techniques to improve its performance, such as an opening book (generated by studying master games) to help it start well and hash tables storing previously-analyzed positions to prevent wasting time re-analyzing already analyzed positions.


References


External links

  • http://www.gnu.org/software/chess/
  • http://chess.delorie.com/

Links

Football Australia - stated

Saturday, April 19th, 2008

Football Australia may refer to:

  • Football Australia, a full colour Australian rules football magazine publication which ran between 1993 - 95.
  • Australian Football League, the national league in Australian rules football
  • Football Federation Australia, Official body of soccer in Australia (stated they will also be know as Football Australia[1])
  • See also Football in Australia

Links

Mission High School (Mission, Texas) - VOIPSA’s mission is

Friday, April 18th, 2008

Mission High School is a secondary school located in Mission, Texas.

Mission High School, which serves grades 9 through 12, is a part of the Mission Consolidated Independent School District.

Mission High School was, for many years, the only high school for the city of Mission. Currently, it competes in the 4-A Texas classification and is home to approximately 2,200 students. At its peak, it was home to over 4,000 students before MCISD split the Mission High School attendance zone into two, with the addition of Veteran Memorial High School.


Notable alumni

Among the many Mission High alumni, are Koy Detmer, brother to Ty Detmer, who are both known for professional football careers, as well as Tom Landry, known for coaching the Dallas Cowboys for many years. The school’s football stadium is named for the coach, as is a street running through the town’s center.

More Notable Alumns
Jamaar Taylor pro football player with the Giants (retired). Also Aaron Ramirez, who won the 1986 individual cross country championship running for the Arizona Wildcats. Ramirez also ran in the 10,000 meters during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.


External links

  • Mission High School

Links

  • VoIP - ZDNet Asia toolkit Voice over IP (VoIP) technology is gaining traction in the corporate arena, as more organizations look for ways to keep communications costs down.
  • VoipDiscount | Free Calls and SMS Free phone calls with VoipDiscount. Call your online friends for free as well as a special selection of popular international destinations.
  • Voice-Over-Internet Protocol An overview of VoIP from the Federal Communications Commission. With news, FAQs, factsheets, and findings.
  • VoIP Connecting a business to a VoIP network doesn’t require a big, expensive integration overhaul. Quintum’s VoIP access solutions are designed with integrated

Dark current - current state

Friday, April 18th, 2008

Dark current is the constant response exhibited by a receptor of radiation during periods when it is not actively being exposed to light.

In biochemistry, dark current is the depolarizing current, carried by Na+ ions, that flows into a photoreceptor cell when unstimulated.

In physics and electronic engineering, dark current is the relatively small electric current that flows through a photosensitive device such as a photomultiplier tube, photodiode, or charge-coupled device even when no photons are entering the device.

In analytical chemistry, dark current refers to constant response produced by a spectrochemical receptor, even in the absence of radiation. This response adds to the signal produced when the receptor is used to measure light and so must be dealt with to determine how much of the detector response is actually due to the radiation. To compensate for this extra signal, the dark current may be measured in the absence of radiation and then subtracted from the final signal or it is reduced to zero by a compensating circuit. Dealing with dark current is a form of blank correction.

Links

Royal College of Dentists - promote the current

Friday, April 18th, 2008

The Royal College of Dentists of Canada (RCDC) administers examinations for qualified dental specialists as part of the dentistry profession in Canada.

The RCDC was established federally in 1965 to promote high standards of specialization in the dental profession and to recognize properly trained dental specialists. The current examinations are known as the National Dental Specialty Examination (NDSE). Successful completion may lead to Fellowship in the College (FRCDC) and/or may be used for licensure purposes.


See also

List of Canadian organizations with royal patronage


External link

  • Royal College of Dentists of Canada

Links