Question: How long do butter cookies stay good after making them?
Answer: Butter cookies should be consumed within 4-5 days after they're made.<|endoftext|>
1. use of distractions appears to be useful in regulation cognitions and emotions
2. this is ineffective if the distractor is distressing
3. reckless, dangerous or violent activities are ineffective
4. psychological inertia- mood state creates conditions that make it more difficult to escape the mood

Consuming Behavior-eating of favorite food

a. not effective
b. may backfire- misregulation

Consuming Behavior- alcohol

a. may intensify depressive symptoms
b. sets up pattern- vicious cycle
c. attentional problem
-myopia- focusing on negative aspects
-transcendence failure
d. similar problems with anger and alcohol
e. disinhibitions

How to control anger?

1. Cooling off period
-no brooding
-no escalation of anger
-appropriate distractors
2. Rational discussion
3. Directly confront problem
4. Engage in instrumental progress at trying to change the state of affairs that led to the negative mood<|endoftext|>Artificial wombs could soon be a reality. What will this mean for women?

User Rating: 5 / 5

Star ActiveStar ActiveStar ActiveStar ActiveStar Active

Technology is well on the way to realising ectogenesis, improving premature baby survival and increasing fertility options. But it also has other, more frightening, implications

We are approaching a biotechnological breakthrough. Ectogenesis, the invention of a complete external womb, could completely change the nature of human reproduction. In April this year, researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia announced their development of an artificial womb. The “biobag” is intended to improve the survival rates of premature babies and is a significant step forward from conventional incubators. Their results show that lambs (at the equivalent of a premature human foetus of 22-24 weeks) are able to successfully grow in the biobag, with the oldest lamb now more than one year old.

Researchers at Cambridge University, meanwhile, have also kept a human embryo alive outside the body for 13 days using a mix of nutrients that mimic conditions in the womb. The embryo survived several days longer than previously observed and research only stopped because they were approaching the 14-day legal limit for the length of time an embryo can be kept in a lab. In other words, our ethics rather than our technology are now the limiting factor.

The key to survival through ectogenesis is reproducing the conditions of the womb. As scientists become better at that, the gap between the longest time embryos can survive and the earliest time a foetus is viable will narrow. When the two timescales meet, we will have the technology for a complete external womb.

It is exactly this kind of scientific discovery that I imagined for my novel, The Growing Season. In a world that is still similar to present day, the recent invention of an external womb known as the “baby pouch” is changing society. For some, it has brought equality, freedom and choice, while for others the implications are much more frightening. This world is perhaps only decades away from our own; what will happen when our version of the baby pouch arrives?

There will be amazing medical benefits: it could save the lives of premature babies, help infertile couples, give gay and trans people new fertility options and enable older parents to have children. It could offer a safer alternative to traditional pregnancy and childbirth and provide a healthier environment for the foetus by eliminating the risks of drugs or alcohol and providing an ideal balance of nutrients, temperature, movement and sound. But where do we draw the line between ensuring healthy development and only having children deemed to be the “healthiest”? Who decides which type of pregnancy is “best” – women or men? Doctors? Religious leaders? Employers?

There is a danger that whoever pays for the technology behind ectogenesis would have the power to decide how, when and for whose benefit it is used. It could be the state or private insurance companies trying to avoid the unpredictable costs of traditional childbirth. Or, it could become yet another advantage available only to the privileged, with traditional pregnancies becoming associated with poverty, or with a particular class or race. Would babies gestated externally have advantages over those born via the human body? Or, if artificial gestation turns out to be cheaper than ordinary pregnancy, could it become an economic necessity forced on some?

But an external womb could also lead to a new equality in parenthood and consequently change the structure of our working and private lives. Given time, it could dismantle the gender hierarchies within our society. Given more time, it could eliminate the differences between the sexes in our biology. Once parental roles are equal, there will be no excuse for male-dominated boardrooms or political parties, or much of the other blatant inequality we see today.

Women’s rights are never more emotive than when it comes to a woman’s right to choose. While pregnancy occurs inside a woman’s body, women have some control over it, at least. But what happens when a foetus can survive entirely outside the body? How will our legislation stand up when viability begins at conception? There are fundamental questions about what rights we give to embryos outside the body (think of the potential for harvesting “spare parts” from unwanted foetuses). There is also the possibility of pro-life activists welcoming this process as an alternative to abortion – with, in the worst case, women being forced to have their foetuses extracted and gestated outside their bodies.

One thing we can know for sure is that society will be greatly changed by ectogenesis. Growing humans outside women’s bodies raises various risks but may at the same time offer hope for new forms of equality and healthcare – and the debate is only just getting started. It is likely that we will have the ability to create an artificial womb within a generation or two. How will we choose to use it?

Source: The Guardian

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Please type your full name.
Invalid email address.
Please choose the country you live in
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IVF & fertility treatments

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View our Brochure<|endoftext|>Compass Labs Identifying Purchase Intent Through Social Conversations Says CEO Venkatachari

Compass LabsDilip Venkatachari is CEO and co-founder of Compass Labs, a real-time targeting technology company. Please share some background on you. And, where did the idea for Compass Labs come from?

Prior to co-founding Compass Labs, I led Google’s mobile monetization business and had responsibility for all of PayPal’s risk and fraud management, card and bank processing relationships, and regulatory compliance. Compass Labs is not my first start-up. I also co-founded and led two successful start-up companies – CashEdge and CommerceSoft – after stints at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs.

As a casual user of social networks, I noticed people beginning to use Facebook and Twitter to ask product questions of their friends and total strangers. It seemed that people were unable to find what they wanted by themselves, despite the wealth of information available online, and so were turning to others for help. Arjun Jayaram, who was at that time working on product search, Kittu Kolluri, a general partner at NEA, and Ajay Vashee, another NEA venture capitalist, joined me in brainstorming the potential of a solution.  The scale and scope of this business opportunity gradually became clear – and then we set about forming the company and fleshing out the strategy and technology.

What problem is Compass Labs solving?

Compass Labs identifies which products and/or services a specific user is interested in purchasing, and connects that user with an advertiser or merchant.

To do this, Compass Labs extracts meaning from users’ social conversations about products and services. Specifically, Compass Labs can identify who is about to buy a product or service, which product or service are they about to buy, what are the user’s interests, and what does the user feel about specific products and services

Describe how Compass Labs identifies purchase intent? Where in the purchase funnel is intent derived from social streams/messages?  How does this compare with Web search?

Compass Labs monitors social streams 24/7 and scores each user and each social stream for readiness-to-buy.  For example, a readiness-to-buy score of 95 indicates that the user is very likely to buy the product in the immediate term – i.e. the user is an imminent buyer. On the other hand, a readiness-to-buy score of 70 indicates that the user is seriously considering purchase but is still trying to decide, say, which brand to purchase. Thus, we can identify the user’s state of readiness.

These scores then make it possible for different types of advertisers to efficiently target the right customers. For example, a merchant will be interested in targeting imminent buyers (e.g. a score of 95), while a brand like Sony would be interested in targeting people who are trying to identify the brand preferences (e.g. a score of 70).

Users are increasingly asking product and service questions on social media before they conduct a Web search. Through analyzing these interactions across public networking sites, Compass Labs is able to identify users who are about to buy even before they visit a search engine. This means that advertisers using Compass Labs are able to reach users before Google.

Who/what is your target market?

Our target

1. use of distractions appears to be useful in regulation cognitions and emotions
2. this is ineffective if the distractor is distressing
3. reckless, dangerous or violent activities are ineffective
4. psychological inertia- mood state creates conditions that make it more difficult to escape the mood

Consuming Behavior-eating of favorite food

a. not effective
b. may backfire- misregulation

Consuming Behavior- alcohol

a. may intensify depressive symptoms
b. sets up pattern- vicious cycle
c. attentional problem
-myopia- focusing on negative aspects
-transcendence failure
d. similar problems with anger and alcohol
e. disinhibitions

How to control anger?

1. Cooling off period
-no brooding
-no escalation of anger
-appropriate distractors
2. Rational discussion
3. Directly confront problem
4. Engage in instrumental progress at trying to change the state of affairs that led to the negative mood<|endoftext|>Artificial wombs could soon be a reality. What will this mean for women?

User Rating: 5 / 5

Star ActiveStar ActiveStar ActiveStar ActiveStar Active

Technology is well on the way to realising ectogenesis, improving premature baby survival and increasing fertility options. But it also has other, more frightening, implications

We are approaching a biotechnological breakthrough. Ectogenesis, the invention of a complete external womb, could completely change the nature of human reproduction. In April this year, researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia announced their development of an artificial womb. The “biobag” is intended to improve the survival rates of premature babies and is a significant step forward from conventional incubators. Their results show that lambs (at the equivalent of a premature human foetus of 22-24 weeks) are able to successfully grow in the biobag, with the oldest lamb now more than one year old.

Researchers at Cambridge University, meanwhile, have also kept a human embryo alive outside the body for 13 days using a mix of nutrients that mimic conditions in the womb. The embryo survived several days longer than previously observed and research only stopped because they were approaching the 14-day legal limit for the length of time an embryo can be kept in a lab. In other words, our ethics rather than our technology are now the limiting factor.

The key to survival through ectogenesis is reproducing the conditions of the womb. As scientists become better at that, the gap between the longest time embryos can survive and the earliest time a foetus is viable will narrow. When the two timescales meet, we will have the technology for a complete external womb.

It is exactly this kind of scientific discovery that I imagined for my novel, The Growing Season. In a world that is still similar to present day, the recent invention of an external womb known as the “baby pouch” is changing society. For some, it has brought equality, freedom and choice, while for others the implications are much more frightening. This world is perhaps only decades away from our own; what will happen when our version of the baby pouch arrives?

There will be amazing medical benefits: it could save the lives of premature babies, help infertile couples, give gay and trans people new fertility options and enable older parents to have children. It could offer a safer alternative to traditional pregnancy and childbirth and provide a healthier environment for the foetus by eliminating the risks of drugs or alcohol and providing an ideal balance of nutrients, temperature, movement and sound. But where do we draw the line between ensuring healthy development and only having children deemed to be the “healthiest”? Who decides which type of pregnancy is “best” – women or men? Doctors? Religious leaders? Employers?

There is a danger that whoever pays for the technology behind ectogenesis would have the power to decide how, when and for whose benefit it is used. It could be the state or private insurance companies trying to avoid the unpredictable costs of traditional childbirth. Or, it could become yet another advantage available only to the privileged, with traditional pregnancies becoming associated with poverty, or with a particular class or race. Would babies gestated externally have advantages over those born via the human body? Or, if artificial gestation turns out to be cheaper than ordinary pregnancy, could it become an economic necessity forced on some?

But an external womb could also lead to a new equality in parenthood and consequently change the structure of our working and private lives. Given time, it could dismantle the gender hierarchies within our society. Given more time, it could eliminate the differences between the sexes in our biology. Once parental roles are equal, there will be no excuse for male-dominated boardrooms or political parties, or much of the other blatant inequality we see today.

Women’s rights are never more emotive than when it comes to a woman’s right to choose. While pregnancy occurs inside a woman’s body, women have some control over it, at least. But what happens when a foetus can survive entirely outside the body? How will our legislation stand up when viability begins at conception? There are fundamental questions about what rights we give to embryos outside the body (think of the potential for harvesting “spare parts” from unwanted foetuses). There is also the possibility of pro-life activists welcoming this process as an alternative to abortion – with, in the worst case, women being forced to have their foetuses extracted and gestated outside their bodies.

One thing we can know for sure is that society will be greatly changed by ectogenesis. Growing humans outside women’s bodies raises various risks but may at the same time offer hope for new forms of equality and healthcare – and the debate is only just getting started. It is likely that we will have the ability to create an artificial womb within a generation or two. How will we choose to use it?

Source: The Guardian

Have a question?

Please type your full name.
Invalid email address.
Please choose the country you live in
Invalid Input
Invalid Input

IVF & fertility treatments

IVF Medical Travel in Greece

Surrogacy, Egg Donation

View our Brochure<|endoftext|>Compass Labs Identifying Purchase Intent Through Social Conversations Says CEO Venkatachari

Compass LabsDilip Venkatachari is CEO and co-founder of Compass Labs, a real-time targeting technology company. Please share some background on you. And, where did the idea for Compass Labs come from?

Prior to co-founding Compass Labs, I led Google’s mobile monetization business and had responsibility for all of PayPal’s risk and fraud management, card and bank processing relationships, and regulatory compliance. Compass Labs is not my first start-up. I also co-founded and led two successful start-up companies – CashEdge and CommerceSoft – after stints at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs.

As a casual user of social networks, I noticed people beginning to use Facebook and Twitter to ask product questions of their friends and total strangers. It seemed that people were unable to find what they wanted by themselves, despite the wealth of information available online, and so were turning to others for help. Arjun Jayaram, who was at that time working on product search, Kittu Kolluri, a general partner at NEA, and Ajay Vashee, another NEA venture capitalist, joined me in brainstorming the potential of a solution.  The scale and scope of this business opportunity gradually became clear – and then we set about forming the company and fleshing out the strategy and technology.

What problem is Compass Labs solving?

Compass Labs identifies which products and/or services a specific user is interested in purchasing, and connects that user with an advertiser or merchant.

To do this, Compass Labs extracts meaning from users’ social conversations about products and services. Specifically, Compass Labs can identify who is about to buy a product or service, which product or service are they about to buy, what are the user’s interests, and what does the user feel about specific products and services

Describe how Compass Labs identifies purchase intent? Where in the purchase funnel is intent derived from social streams/messages?  How does this compare with Web search?

Compass Labs monitors social streams 24/7 and scores each user and each social stream for readiness-to-buy.  For example, a readiness-to-buy score of 95 indicates that the user is very likely to buy the product in the immediate term – i.e. the user is an imminent buyer. On the other hand, a readiness-to-buy score of 70 indicates that the user is seriously considering purchase but is still trying to decide, say, which brand to purchase. Thus, we can identify the user’s state of readiness.

These scores then make it possible for different types of advertisers to efficiently target the right customers. For example, a merchant will be interested in targeting imminent buyers (e.g. a score of 95), while a brand like Sony would be interested in targeting people who are trying to identify the brand preferences (e.g. a score of 70).

Users are increasingly asking product and service questions on social media before they conduct a Web search. Through analyzing these interactions across public networking sites, Compass Labs is able to identify users who are about to buy even before they visit a search engine. This means that advertisers using Compass Labs are able to reach users before Google.

Who/what is your target market?

Our target markets is the online advertiser – both brand advertisers and performance advertisers—as well as publishers (both social media clients like Seesmic, and web publishers like


Question: How do you mop the floor?
Answer: Get a bucket of water mixed with soap, dip your mop into it and pull it across every spot on the floor.<|endoftext|> somewhat of a blur- I remember that marines were holding out pieces of doughnuts at about mile 24 (Flash told me later that he had some- I felt nauseated when I saw them).  Jen kept up words of encouragement, and I couldn't respond that much but I was really grateful that I didn't have to keep encouraging myself.  We passed the 25 mile marker, and Jen said, "Only a mile to go! You are rocking it!" and even though I felt like I was dying, I took the breath to say, "Jen. Never. Let. Me. Do. This. Again. EVER."  And right next to us, a woman piped cheerily, "That's what I said last year!" I would have laughed hysterically if my diaphragm would have allowed it (I couldn't).

After an agonizing ten more minutes (and more ibprofen), I finally could see the finish- which was straight up a hill for the last .2 miles.  Flash had told me about it, but I didn't realize just how bad it would be after all you have already been through.  I took a deep breath and started to grit my teeth in preparation- and just then, I tripped! I stopped myself from falling flat, but stopping short like that was the death knell for my seizing legs. A woman ran by me and screamed, "good recovery- come ON!" and I tried to follow her, but it's like my legs didn't belong to me any more.  Jen was yelling over the crowd, "c'mon!  You can do it!! You're so close!" So I waddled a bit until I felt like I could do it, then I ran to the finish. I made it.

The aftermath is a blur- waddling through a packed crowd of finishers, shaking hands with marines in uniform and getting my finisher's medal (I started crying), wishing I could find Flash and hug him. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done, mentally and physically, and it was over.

People have asked me if I will ever do it again, or what I'm going to do in the future. I guess I should never say never, though I told Flash right afterward I would never do that again. I will still run, of course, and do shorter races; we are signed up for a half marathon in the spring. I'm also excited to try some triathalons- my next great adventure!  But the real truth is that it doesn't matter. I ran a marathon, and now I can always say I have done it. And the best part is, there is no end- it's the beginning, because I have the rest of my life to aspire to ever greater fitness.

One more thing I should say before I close: I decided to start eating poultry again.  I realized after a certain point that I was just feeling too weak after really long runs, and my doctor advised me to take in another pure protein source other than fish (especially since it turns out I am allergic to soy).  For my body, it seems, it's just not something that can be sustained long-term.  I still don't eat red meat (right now at least), and I'm going to try and eat antibiotic-free and environmentally-friendly as much as possible.  But I applaud all of those continuing veggie athletes out there- well done, good for you!  The MOST important thing, which I hope I got across in this blog, is that you should listen to your body and give it what it needs.

As far as all my training this year, thanks to all my friends and family who supported me, cheered me on, and put up with me during this whole process; I couldn't have done it without you.  Thank you to my mom, grandmother, and friends for cheering me on in the race.  Thank you to Jen for getting me through that last three miles when I felt like my body was falling apart. Thank you to Speedy for being the cheeriest running buddy ever at 6 am on long runs.  And most importantly, thank you to Flash: you inspired me a year ago, when I had only ever run an 8K and you had just finished your first marathon, to go on to ever greater challenges. You got me to sign up for my first and second half marathons, and my first full marathon, with only words of encouragement all along the way. You got me up on those cold mornings to run, drove me to races, and always coaxed me through self-doubt.  You are a truly inspiring two-time marathoner and running buddy, and I can't even imagine how I would have done this training without you.  But most importantly, you're an amazing friend, and I'm so glad that we get to run together.

If you found this blog inspiring in any way to re-think your lifestyle and food choices, then I feel that I have succeeded at least in part.  If not, I hope at least it was entertaining to read about my many antics over the months.  I may start a new blog about overall fitness (and triathalons?) in the future, but until then, this is Dash, signing off...

The end (and the beginning).

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Taper Tantrum

There is now less than a week until my marathon- and I can hardly believe that it's finally almost here. I run so many miles (at least a thousand this year), trained for so many hours, and put so much mental sweat into this race, let alone all the general nutritional preparation and decreased social life (ha).  But the biggest thing about the final week is that you basically can no longer prepare; it's already essentially already done.  The way you treat your body for the final week is, however, extremely important to being able to perform on race day. As I once read a coach say in a running magazine: the hay is already in the barn, you just have to stack it.  During this last week, you don't go on some last long runs to make sure you are ready- far from it. Instead, you have to make yourself just rest, sleep a lot, and wait. And eat more carbs.

So what happens during this time? Shouldn't it be a nice break? Well, not necessarily.  In fact, marathoners often call how they feel during this time a "taper tantrum." Like other runners, running is usually my distraction, my release from stress at work, my time to get my thoughts in order. I'm also an endorphin junkie at this point. I'm used to running at least 30 miles a week, sometimes as much as 50 in a seven day period, and now I had to bring it down to 7 total for the whole week.  I feel like I am chomping at the bit, feeling more and more nervous about the race, yet unable to release most of that nervous energy.  What's more, the very short runs sometimes even don't feel that enjoyable, because I am used to warming up for the first few miles.  I have to say, a couple of those three mile runs have just felt- awkward, as if I was no longer quite able to get fully into my rhythm. I also feel like I have had so much time on my hands- especially on the weekend, because I haven't been either preparing for or recovering from a 14-20 mile run.  I actually cleaned and organized my apartment for about 10 hours on Saturday as a result.

Flash had warned me that tapering would be difficult, and I knew it would be- but it's quite different when you are actually experiencing it.  It kind of feels like I'm being wound up like a spring, like my muscles are itching to really run.  To tell the truth, Flash has been having an even more difficult time with tapering than I have- he went on an unscheduled jog last weekend, and he ran the three miler yesterday reallly fast.  I have been having a pretty difficult time making myself only do what's on the schedule, but I'm doing it. I know that the people who created it know what they are talking about.

Five more days.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Chase the Rabbit

It shouldn't come as a surprise to many, but runners are a quite competitive bunch. I have spent a lot of time talking about the different psychological processes which help or hinder running, but one that I have yet to mention is what I call the "chase the rabbit" syndrome. When I am out running on roads, paths, and in races, I often pass or am passed by other runners, and an interesting phenomenon occurs: the person who is passed often speeds up their pace in order to keep up (hence the term "chase the rabbit"-- the passer served as an impetus to go faster).

This happens to me a lot when I pass someone, particularly a male runner. They hate being passed by other runners (especially a girl) so they speed up to run by again. I usually roll my eyes as they blaze by, since they had previously been just trotting along really slowly. It also happens to me in the opposite, however. Last week I set out at around midday on a cool and rainy Saturday for a solo 12 miler. I was planning on trying to go at a medium pace, since I had a 20 mile run the week after, but

 somewhat of a blur- I remember that marines were holding out pieces of doughnuts at about mile 24 (Flash told me later that he had some- I felt nauseated when I saw them).  Jen kept up words of encouragement, and I couldn't respond that much but I was really grateful that I didn't have to keep encouraging myself.  We passed the 25 mile marker, and Jen said, "Only a mile to go! You are rocking it!" and even though I felt like I was dying, I took the breath to say, "Jen. Never. Let. Me. Do. This. Again. EVER."  And right next to us, a woman piped cheerily, "That's what I said last year!" I would have laughed hysterically if my diaphragm would have allowed it (I couldn't).

After an agonizing ten more minutes (and more ibprofen), I finally could see the finish- which was straight up a hill for the last .2 miles.  Flash had told me about it, but I didn't realize just how bad it would be after all you have already been through.  I took a deep breath and started to grit my teeth in preparation- and just then, I tripped! I stopped myself from falling flat, but stopping short like that was the death knell for my seizing legs. A woman ran by me and screamed, "good recovery- come ON!" and I tried to follow her, but it's like my legs didn't belong to me any more.  Jen was yelling over the crowd, "c'mon!  You can do it!! You're so close!" So I waddled a bit until I felt like I could do it, then I ran to the finish. I made it.

The aftermath is a blur- waddling through a packed crowd of finishers, shaking hands with marines in uniform and getting my finisher's medal (I started crying), wishing I could find Flash and hug him. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done, mentally and physically, and it was over.

People have asked me if I will ever do it again, or what I'm going to do in the future. I guess I should never say never, though I told Flash right afterward I would never do that again. I will still run, of course, and do shorter races; we are signed up for a half marathon in the spring. I'm also excited to try some triathalons- my next great adventure!  But the real truth is that it doesn't matter. I ran a marathon, and now I can always say I have done it. And the best part is, there is no end- it's the beginning, because I have the rest of my life to aspire to ever greater fitness.

One more thing I should say before I close: I decided to start eating poultry again.  I realized after a certain point that I was just feeling too weak after really long runs, and my doctor advised me to take in another pure protein source other than fish (especially since it turns out I am allergic to soy).  For my body, it seems, it's just not something that can be sustained long-term.  I still don't eat red meat (right now at least), and I'm going to try and eat antibiotic-free and environmentally-friendly as much as possible.  But I applaud all of those continuing veggie athletes out there- well done, good for you!  The MOST important thing, which I hope I got across in this blog, is that you should listen to your body and give it what it needs.

As far as all my training this year, thanks to all my friends and family who supported me, cheered me on, and put up with me during this whole process; I couldn't have done it without you.  Thank you to my mom, grandmother, and friends for cheering me on in the race.  Thank you to Jen for getting me through that last three miles when I felt like my body was falling apart. Thank you to Speedy for being the cheeriest running buddy ever at 6 am on long runs.  And most importantly, thank you to Flash: you inspired me a year ago, when I had only ever run an 8K and you had just finished your first marathon, to go on to ever greater challenges. You got me to sign up for my first and second half marathons, and my first full marathon, with only words of encouragement all along the way. You got me up on those cold mornings to run, drove me to races, and always coaxed me through self-doubt.  You are a truly inspiring two-time marathoner and running buddy, and I can't even imagine how I would have done this training without you.  But most importantly, you're an amazing friend, and I'm so glad that we get to run together.

If you found this blog inspiring in any way to re-think your lifestyle and food choices, then I feel that I have succeeded at least in part.  If not, I hope at least it was entertaining to read about my many antics over the months.  I may start a new blog about overall fitness (and triathalons?) in the future, but until then, this is Dash, signing off...

The end (and the beginning).

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Taper Tantrum

There is now less than a week until my marathon- and I can hardly believe that it's finally almost here. I run so many miles (at least a thousand this year), trained for so many hours, and put so much mental sweat into this race, let alone all the general nutritional preparation and decreased social life (ha).  But the biggest thing about the final week is that you basically can no longer prepare; it's already essentially already done.  The way you treat your body for the final week is, however, extremely important to being able to perform on race day. As I once read a coach say in a running magazine: the hay is already in the barn, you just have to stack it.  During this last week, you don't go on some last long runs to make sure you are ready- far from it. Instead, you have to make yourself just rest, sleep a lot, and wait. And eat more carbs.

So what happens during this time? Shouldn't it be a nice break? Well, not necessarily.  In fact, marathoners often call how they feel during this time a "taper tantrum." Like other runners, running is usually my distraction, my release from stress at work, my time to get my thoughts in order. I'm also an endorphin junkie at this point. I'm used to running at least 30 miles a week, sometimes as much as 50 in a seven day period, and now I had to bring it down to 7 total for the whole week.  I feel like I am chomping at the bit, feeling more and more nervous about the race, yet unable to release most of that nervous energy.  What's more, the very short runs sometimes even don't feel that enjoyable, because I am used to warming up for the first few miles.  I have to say, a couple of those three mile runs have just felt- awkward, as if I was no longer quite able to get fully into my rhythm. I also feel like I have had so much time on my hands- especially on the weekend, because I haven't been either preparing for or recovering from a 14-20 mile run.  I actually cleaned and organized my apartment for about 10 hours on Saturday as a result.

Flash had warned me that tapering would be difficult, and I knew it would be- but it's quite different when you are actually experiencing it.  It kind of feels like I'm being wound up like a spring, like my muscles are itching to really run.  To tell the truth, Flash has been having an even more difficult time with tapering than I have- he went on an unscheduled jog last weekend, and he ran the three miler yesterday reallly fast.  I have been having a pretty difficult time making myself only do what's on the schedule, but I'm doing it. I know that the people who created it know what they are talking about.

Five more days.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Chase the Rabbit

It shouldn't come as a surprise to many, but runners are a quite competitive bunch. I have spent a lot of time talking about the different psychological processes which help or hinder running, but one that I have yet to mention is what I call the "chase the rabbit" syndrome. When I am out running on roads, paths, and in races, I often pass or am passed by other runners, and an interesting phenomenon occurs: the person who is passed often speeds up their pace in order to keep up (hence the term "chase the rabbit"-- the passer served as an impetus to go faster).

This happens to me a lot when I pass someone, particularly a male runner. They hate being passed by other runners (especially a girl) so they speed up to run by again. I usually roll my eyes as they blaze by, since they had previously been just trotting along really slowly. It also happens to me in the opposite, however. Last week I set out at around midday on a cool and rainy Saturday for a solo 12 miler. I was planning on trying to go at a medium pace, since I had a 20 mile run the week after, but I didn't want to go too slowly either.  About a half mile into my run, a girl in a brown rain jacket ran by me, and I automatically sped up behind her.


Question: How can I keep picture frames from scratching the wall?
Answer: Put dabs of hot glue on the back corner of the frames.<|endoftext|> tool which allowed any player to capture a screenshot or video, and then type in some feedback and send it in.

That actually went directly to a JIRA project tracking system that we had inside Blizzard, and then my production team and our quality assurance team actually went through and pulled all of those over, and our design team went through every single one. We basically had our whole team just basically on zoom, and I was sharing my screen, and we just went line by line; and I think one of the things is when you look at that feedback, and we're trying to look for trends, not just anecdotes, right? Some person may have a really easy time fighting a boss, and another person is having a very difficult time, and they can both be the same class.

So ultimately, we have to make a judgment call on what the experience is going to be, weighing all that different feedback. But we try to look for trends. For what Kristopher was saying, people weren't tagging monsters when they thought they should be able to tag monsters and get credit for them. That was a trend.

We saw over a bunch of different feedback from a bunch of players, and so in the end, we do have to make a judgment call. But we do really value that kind of feedback. Especially when we see a really clear trend over multiple players, but then we're also looking at Reddit, other community channels, to get anecdotes and feedback from there as well.

Kristopher: I'll give you another example of a trend that we were seeing. There was some complaint that the wizard class felt underpowered or that it wasn't playing the way people wanted to. A lot of people, the way they like to play wizard is to like: kite.

So they get a monster, big monster, hard elites and they chase, they get the kiting around, and they keep doing damage to them. They avoid taking any damage while controlling these monsters; and wizard just wasn't really cutting it at doing that; and we identified the core ways that wizard controls monsters is by chilling them, so that they move more slowly; and that the chill effects on the wizard just weren't strong enough.

You chill something. You go to do the next attack, and it has already caught up with you again, just catching up too soon. So we made all of the chill effects on the wizard class stronger. So monsters will be slowed down even more; and then the Ray of Frost ability got redesigned a bit. Instead of just chilling the monster, if he hit them at all, now the longer the Ray of Frost beam hits the monster, the more chilled it gets, the slower and slower it moves; and that lets you use the Ray of Frost to slow it down and then teleport to get some distance so that you can hit them with combos: like Scorch and Arcane Wind to cause an Inferno that kills the monster.

Before, it was too hard to pull that off. So we saw that feedback, and then we try to understand what was causing that "My wizard feels underpowered" by looking for where are the problems the class is having and then make specific changes to help the class feel better.

InvenGlobal (Aaron Alford): I was curious how the pandemic impacted the processes within your internal team? Do you feel like you adapted well? What challenges did you face as a result of the pandemic and presumably moving your team at least somewhat remote? Could you just talk about that a little bit?

Caleb: One of the things that we experienced very early on around the end of March that we were told we're gonna go home and work for a few weeks. That'll be fine; and I'm sure you guys were all told something similar; and then here we are.

I think one of the things that we experienced right away was a lot of our day is spent collaborating with one another in different meetings. We meet with design and we meet with art and production and all of our other disciplines.

So we're in meetings a lot, and usually when you're on campus, there's this mental break that happens when you get to walk from one meeting room to the next. You kind of get to exercise, get some fresh air and at least like take a mental break. When it's just back-to-back ZOOM meetings, we have this sometimes an exhausting efficient day where there's no downtime and you're barely moving, and you're just like clicking twice to go to your next hour block; and so sometimes it could kind of get exhausting because it's so efficient; and so I think what we started to do was try to end meetings earlier so that we just had that kind of like refresh so that we could context switch a little bit better.

But then at this point, I think that we've grown more accustomed to it. A lot of people, at least from me (myself), I like that I can stand up at the end of my day and go be with my family right away.

Like there's no commute time. That's great. Yeah. I mean, it's like portal technology, as far as I'm concerned, I can literally leave this world and go home like instantly.

So that feels pretty good, but I would be very excited to return to the office and see everybody in person again.

Kris: I think for me, one of the big challenges is before the time between meetings, there's sort of this informal ability to say: "Hey, Wyatt, I have this idea." Run it by him in 30 seconds, and not have to tell a meeting. Not to have to schedule something, and all of those little informal connections; or like where you're walking by somebody on the way to lunch, you're sharing ideas and all that cross-pollination. It's harder to make that happen. So we have to deliberately put it into the schedules.

Like I have multiple meetings a week where it's just me and Wyatt chat for half an hour or 15 minutes about what's going on, because we used to just do that all the time because we're sitting next to each other. So that's been a bit more of a challenge, and I think it's also just a little bit fatiguing that you're always in the same spot within the same chair, the same place; and you kind of want to get up and get around.

My big adjustment had been that I have a small dog that I take for walks three or four times a day just to get outside of the house; and the funniest thing that happens is every time I say: "Oh, I'm taking my dog for a walk" -- my entire household wants to go with me because everybody wants to get out of their chair and walk around.

So it's been interesting, and then meeting more of the neighbors, and it's just a totally different social experience.

InvenGlobal (Aaron Alford): Great. Thank you so much for sharing those details about your work life. I know that it can be a little more personal and it's not particularly the purpose of this, but I think it's important to understand the context in which what you guys are doing is happening because it's very impressive.

Kristopher: Yeah. Thanks.

GameRant (Cameron Corliss): Obviously, the way that people interact with mobile as a platform is a lot different than a PC or a console. Can you tell us a little bit about the changes that you've had to make to kind of rise to the occasion and how have you adapted the gameplay for mobile?.

Caleb: There is kind of two parts to this. The first, I'm going to let Kris talk about how we went about the gameplay design, but one thing I want to make really clear too, is that we have put our heart and soul into this game just like any other title. Just because it's on mobile, it doesn't mean it doesn't come with all the Blizzard polish and attention to detail, and effort, and telling a story that we would put in any of our other games.

I think that could be a misconception about being on mobile, that we are directly trying to confront and just blow away with Diablo immortal; and then there are like really specific design things that we've had to do that Kris can talk about.

Kristopher: Yeah, we're trying to make the most complete Diablo game we can. It's just as big as any other game of the series. In some ways bigger than some of the things we're trying to do; but one of the biggest areas you have to adjust is the control scheme, right?

You have less space on the screen. That's the size. So traditionally a Diablo game would have the big red and blue bubbles: the Health and Mana bubbles -- that show onscreen. How much resources you have; and we just don't have the space to display that.

So, okay. Let's not show those, but you can still see a health bar that's easy, but now we have this energy globe that we can't display, and keeping track of your energy resources for using abilities becomes very difficult. So the design of abilities shifted.

So most of our skills are cooldown controlled -- meaning they have a 10, 15, 20 (whatever) seconds cooldown between how many times you can use them. Now, that sounds like: "Oh, I'm just mashing things on cooldown." It's a little bit more complex than that. We do

 tool which allowed any player to capture a screenshot or video, and then type in some feedback and send it in.

That actually went directly to a JIRA project tracking system that we had inside Blizzard, and then my production team and our quality assurance team actually went through and pulled all of those over, and our design team went through every single one. We basically had our whole team just basically on zoom, and I was sharing my screen, and we just went line by line; and I think one of the things is when you look at that feedback, and we're trying to look for trends, not just anecdotes, right? Some person may have a really easy time fighting a boss, and another person is having a very difficult time, and they can both be the same class.

So ultimately, we have to make a judgment call on what the experience is going to be, weighing all that different feedback. But we try to look for trends. For what Kristopher was saying, people weren't tagging monsters when they thought they should be able to tag monsters and get credit for them. That was a trend.

We saw over a bunch of different feedback from a bunch of players, and so in the end, we do have to make a judgment call. But we do really value that kind of feedback. Especially when we see a really clear trend over multiple players, but then we're also looking at Reddit, other community channels, to get anecdotes and feedback from there as well.

Kristopher: I'll give you another example of a trend that we were seeing. There was some complaint that the wizard class felt underpowered or that it wasn't playing the way people wanted to. A lot of people, the way they like to play wizard is to like: kite.

So they get a monster, big monster, hard elites and they chase, they get the kiting around, and they keep doing damage to them. They avoid taking any damage while controlling these monsters; and wizard just wasn't really cutting it at doing that; and we identified the core ways that wizard controls monsters is by chilling them, so that they move more slowly; and that the chill effects on the wizard just weren't strong enough.

You chill something. You go to do the next attack, and it has already caught up with you again, just catching up too soon. So we made all of the chill effects on the wizard class stronger. So monsters will be slowed down even more; and then the Ray of Frost ability got redesigned a bit. Instead of just chilling the monster, if he hit them at all, now the longer the Ray of Frost beam hits the monster, the more chilled it gets, the slower and slower it moves; and that lets you use the Ray of Frost to slow it down and then teleport to get some distance so that you can hit them with combos: like Scorch and Arcane Wind to cause an Inferno that kills the monster.

Before, it was too hard to pull that off. So we saw that feedback, and then we try to understand what was causing that "My wizard feels underpowered" by looking for where are the problems the class is having and then make specific changes to help the class feel better.

InvenGlobal (Aaron Alford): I was curious how the pandemic impacted the processes within your internal team? Do you feel like you adapted well? What challenges did you face as a result of the pandemic and presumably moving your team at least somewhat remote? Could you just talk about that a little bit?

Caleb: One of the things that we experienced very early on around the end of March that we were told we're gonna go home and work for a few weeks. That'll be fine; and I'm sure you guys were all told something similar; and then here we are.

I think one of the things that we experienced right away was a lot of our day is spent collaborating with one another in different meetings. We meet with design and we meet with art and production and all of our other disciplines.

So we're in meetings a lot, and usually when you're on campus, there's this mental break that happens when you get to walk from one meeting room to the next. You kind of get to exercise, get some fresh air and at least like take a mental break. When it's just back-to-back ZOOM meetings, we have this sometimes an exhausting efficient day where there's no downtime and you're barely moving, and you're just like clicking twice to go to your next hour block; and so sometimes it could kind of get exhausting because it's so efficient; and so I think what we started to do was try to end meetings earlier so that we just had that kind of like refresh so that we could context switch a little bit better.

But then at this point, I think that we've grown more accustomed to it. A lot of people, at least from me (myself), I like that I can stand up at the end of my day and go be with my family right away.

Like there's no commute time. That's great. Yeah. I mean, it's like portal technology, as far as I'm concerned, I can literally leave this world and go home like instantly.

So that feels pretty good, but I would be very excited to return to the office and see everybody in person again.

Kris: I think for me, one of the big challenges is before the time between meetings, there's sort of this informal ability to say: "Hey, Wyatt, I have this idea." Run it by him in 30 seconds, and not have to tell a meeting. Not to have to schedule something, and all of those little informal connections; or like where you're walking by somebody on the way to lunch, you're sharing ideas and all that cross-pollination. It's harder to make that happen. So we have to deliberately put it into the schedules.

Like I have multiple meetings a week where it's just me and Wyatt chat for half an hour or 15 minutes about what's going on, because we used to just do that all the time because we're sitting next to each other. So that's been a bit more of a challenge, and I think it's also just a little bit fatiguing that you're always in the same spot within the same chair, the same place; and you kind of want to get up and get around.

My big adjustment had been that I have a small dog that I take for walks three or four times a day just to get outside of the house; and the funniest thing that happens is every time I say: "Oh, I'm taking my dog for a walk" -- my entire household wants to go with me because everybody wants to get out of their chair and walk around.

So it's been interesting, and then meeting more of the neighbors, and it's just a totally different social experience.

InvenGlobal (Aaron Alford): Great. Thank you so much for sharing those details about your work life. I know that it can be a little more personal and it's not particularly the purpose of this, but I think it's important to understand the context in which what you guys are doing is happening because it's very impressive.

Kristopher: Yeah. Thanks.

GameRant (Cameron Corliss): Obviously, the way that people interact with mobile as a platform is a lot different than a PC or a console. Can you tell us a little bit about the changes that you've had to make to kind of rise to the occasion and how have you adapted the gameplay for mobile?.

Caleb: There is kind of two parts to this. The first, I'm going to let Kris talk about how we went about the gameplay design, but one thing I want to make really clear too, is that we have put our heart and soul into this game just like any other title. Just because it's on mobile, it doesn't mean it doesn't come with all the Blizzard polish and attention to detail, and effort, and telling a story that we would put in any of our other games.

I think that could be a misconception about being on mobile, that we are directly trying to confront and just blow away with Diablo immortal; and then there are like really specific design things that we've had to do that Kris can talk about.

Kristopher: Yeah, we're trying to make the most complete Diablo game we can. It's just as big as any other game of the series. In some ways bigger than some of the things we're trying to do; but one of the biggest areas you have to adjust is the control scheme, right?

You have less space on the screen. That's the size. So traditionally a Diablo game would have the big red and blue bubbles: the Health and Mana bubbles -- that show onscreen. How much resources you have; and we just don't have the space to display that.

So, okay. Let's not show those, but you can still see a health bar that's easy, but now we have this energy globe that we can't display, and keeping track of your energy resources for using abilities becomes very difficult. So the design of abilities shifted.

So most of our skills are cooldown controlled -- meaning they have a 10, 15, 20 (whatever) seconds cooldown between how many times you can use them. Now, that sounds like: "Oh, I'm just mashing things on cooldown." It's a little bit more complex than that. We do things like abilities might have multiple charges, so it has three charges and every 15 seconds it adds a charge.

So you have some control about when


Question: how to easily clean your blender
Answer: remove that stuck-on gunk by pouring some warm water, a little baking soda, and a little dish soap in your blender and pulsing it for a few seconds. Afterward, give it a good rinse or pop it in the dishwasher to get it looking like brand new once again.<|endoftext|>. CST

    by mynemaborat

    why does he have to say he liked certain movies?? are u daft man? cos harry's on the take from certain studios! its not exactly subtle... and it doesn't bother me at all, because this is a blog, not the work of a professional film critic. and no the sarcasm and disdain i'm talking about has to do with the movie, not the audience. "General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio) who’s a really greasy sweaty scummy bad guy, complete with attempted rape scene, so you know he’s really, reeeeally bad, and he killed her family when she was a child and so now he’s going to die. She tries a few times. That’s the plot for Camille. Seems solid enough to me." "and then serial killer James Bond goes on a hilarious rampage across the globe, racking up a wicked body count in his effort to savagely strangle some answers out of the world at large" "Mathieu Amalric, so brilliant in THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, does hilarious and slimy work as Roman Polanski." its pretty damn obvious what he's saying. and how bout this little gem... "Of course it has a plot. Things happen. By definition, that’s a plot." when mori says something so totally un-mori like such as that, then u know somethings up.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:12 a.m. CST

    Daniel Craig

    by kwisatzhaderach

    is boring in this film.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:21 a.m. CST

    Roger Ebert's review

    by BillEmic

    was a complete joke. The thing about the Bond movies is, when they do something really light and fluffy like "Die Another Day," the critics go "This is all well and fun but one wonders what kind of heights the Bond character could reach if filmmakers took him seriously." Then when the producers DO take the series seriously, the critics go, "Oh, but this isn't fun at all! Bond should be about gadgets and secret hideouts and shagging babes!" It's damned if you do, damned if you don't. The only thing that matters is audience reception and so far diehard Bond fans like me have been loving this more serious and artsy take on Bond.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:31 a.m. CST

    by Ray Gamma

    Every time someone says "aw, they're just trying to rip of Bourne"....

Take a moment to think about this: Bourne only exists because it is a James Bond rip-off. Also, can anyone explain to me what the fuck was the plot in Bourne 2? Don't get me wrong, I like Matt Damon, but I don't have a fucking clue what happened in that movie. I saw lots of shapes flashing around on a screen for a couple of hours though, I'm glad I don't have epilepsy.

Finally, I would just like to add that Daniel Craig is an excellent Bond because, for a change, he actually looks like someone who could jump over a roof onto a truck and punch you through the windscreen. Whilst being a proper 'theatre' actor. I thought Quantum was excellent because of its realism. And I still love the old Bonds. I have no problem with that.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:32 a.m. CST

    correction: "rip off"

    by Ray Gamma

    sorry for my spelling.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:38 a.m. CST

    Quantum of Solace....

    by D o o d

    Daniel Craig is an awesome actor but even he can't save this turd. This film is rediculous and boring.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:42 a.m. CST

    Shoulda been called "Casino Royale: The Third Act"

    by TallBoy66

    Basically, put the movies back to back and you have one almost 4 hour Bond movie. I'm also kind of "eh" on this one, you can only tune out after awhile when it's all action and the character development was in the preceding movie (this flick does go differently to old school World Domination / Secret Organization on us), so on it's own it's not all that great. But slap it together with Casino, and you have a satisfying end to a movie that was kind of anti-climatic in the first place. On it's own, not so great, but it'll probably play better on DVD with Casino Royale.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:47 a.m. CST

    Also, WTF was with the bowl cut dude?

    by TallBoy66

    Seriously, I kept waiting the whole movie for this wig-wearing guy to bust out some crazy fucking Oddjob / Jaws, hell, even a Xina Onatop badass stuff, and the guy does JACK SHIT the whole movie then just gets blow up at the end. Motherfucker!!!

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 3:05 a.m. CST

    by master bitchfist

    Myself and 3 friends ALL saw the vagina of the woman the general was trying to rape. There was a good second long shot of her struggling to get out of the bed where her legs open wide and there are NO panties on, and you clearly see her vagina. I did a double take and confirmed with my three friends. Did anyone else see this? and how the hell did it get into a PG-13 MOVIE?!

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 3:07 a.m. CST

    Quantum has one shot at a strong $ weekend

    by Rocco Curioso

    I'd bet my last dollar that it, and everything else, is gonna get severely bitchslapped by "Twilight" next weekend. Never underestimate the power of teenage girls en masse.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 3:08 a.m. CST

    This movie is so incredibly BALLSY.

    It's so refined and classy and totally not a crowd-pleaser - a huge risk for this franchise and I suspect it will piss a lot of people off. If we were to compare the last two Bond films to other art forms, Casino Royale would be a rock opera. Quantum of Solace would be a poem. Yes, the shift is quite drastic. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but if you enjoy more nuanced work that's delicately shaded, you'll love this film. I don't want to get too crazy here, but this is the closest thing we're going to get to Kubrick directing a Bond film. The opera scene... wow. I had a lot of problems with it (for one, the theme song - which I like - is completely wrong for this story) and a few of the cast members completely phone it in. But Quantum of Solace will be held in higher esteem each passing year. It's so incredibly intimate and it caught me off guard. I hope the next film finds a happy medium between these two, but they should force Craig to sign a 10 film deal right now. He's that good. Go see this movie, but know what you're getting into.

    Mori nailed it. QoS rocked

    by wildphantom07

    I actually dig that people are split on it. It separates the side that want this stuff taken seriously, and the side that want all the in-jokery.
 I loved Quantum of Solace. I was expecting it to be pretty good, but when it turned out to be a terrific movie I came out soaring.
 Bottom line - if Moonraker's one of your favourite Bond movies then you'll be disappointed. But if you're one that prefers the early Connery and liked the direction Casino Royale hinted at the series going then I think you'll be pretty happy.
 Ebert's review was a joke. Everyone's got their own idea of what a Bond movie should be - but for a movie critic to not review the film infront of them is pretty pathetic. Don't bemoan what isn't in it and concentrate on what is. There's some excellent filmmaking going on in Solace. Like someone above pointed out - he liked Casino for the reasons he's criticising QoS for? Go figure - jeez

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 3:20 a.m. CST

    Moriarty just said he LOOKED liked Polanski.

    by WhinyNegativeBitch

    When Almaric showed up in Munich, I half thought for a second it was Polanski. I'm sure his character doesn't sodomise any little girls in this. Casino Royale is the only Bond I can stand to watch, and this looks like an attempt at more of the same that falls flat, which appears to be the general consensus.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 3

. CST

    by mynemaborat

    why does he have to say he liked certain movies?? are u daft man? cos harry's on the take from certain studios! its not exactly subtle... and it doesn't bother me at all, because this is a blog, not the work of a professional film critic. and no the sarcasm and disdain i'm talking about has to do with the movie, not the audience. "General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio) who’s a really greasy sweaty scummy bad guy, complete with attempted rape scene, so you know he’s really, reeeeally bad, and he killed her family when she was a child and so now he’s going to die. She tries a few times. That’s the plot for Camille. Seems solid enough to me." "and then serial killer James Bond goes on a hilarious rampage across the globe, racking up a wicked body count in his effort to savagely strangle some answers out of the world at large" "Mathieu Amalric, so brilliant in THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, does hilarious and slimy work as Roman Polanski." its pretty damn obvious what he's saying. and how bout this little gem... "Of course it has a plot. Things happen. By definition, that’s a plot." when mori says something so totally un-mori like such as that, then u know somethings up.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:12 a.m. CST

    Daniel Craig

    by kwisatzhaderach

    is boring in this film.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:21 a.m. CST

    Roger Ebert's review

    by BillEmic

    was a complete joke. The thing about the Bond movies is, when they do something really light and fluffy like "Die Another Day," the critics go "This is all well and fun but one wonders what kind of heights the Bond character could reach if filmmakers took him seriously." Then when the producers DO take the series seriously, the critics go, "Oh, but this isn't fun at all! Bond should be about gadgets and secret hideouts and shagging babes!" It's damned if you do, damned if you don't. The only thing that matters is audience reception and so far diehard Bond fans like me have been loving this more serious and artsy take on Bond.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:31 a.m. CST

    by Ray Gamma

    Every time someone says "aw, they're just trying to rip of Bourne"....

Take a moment to think about this: Bourne only exists because it is a James Bond rip-off. Also, can anyone explain to me what the fuck was the plot in Bourne 2? Don't get me wrong, I like Matt Damon, but I don't have a fucking clue what happened in that movie. I saw lots of shapes flashing around on a screen for a couple of hours though, I'm glad I don't have epilepsy.

Finally, I would just like to add that Daniel Craig is an excellent Bond because, for a change, he actually looks like someone who could jump over a roof onto a truck and punch you through the windscreen. Whilst being a proper 'theatre' actor. I thought Quantum was excellent because of its realism. And I still love the old Bonds. I have no problem with that.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:32 a.m. CST

    correction: "rip off"

    by Ray Gamma

    sorry for my spelling.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:38 a.m. CST

    Quantum of Solace....

    by D o o d

    Daniel Craig is an awesome actor but even he can't save this turd. This film is rediculous and boring.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:42 a.m. CST

    Shoulda been called "Casino Royale: The Third Act"

    by TallBoy66

    Basically, put the movies back to back and you have one almost 4 hour Bond movie. I'm also kind of "eh" on this one, you can only tune out after awhile when it's all action and the character development was in the preceding movie (this flick does go differently to old school World Domination / Secret Organization on us), so on it's own it's not all that great. But slap it together with Casino, and you have a satisfying end to a movie that was kind of anti-climatic in the first place. On it's own, not so great, but it'll probably play better on DVD with Casino Royale.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 2:47 a.m. CST

    Also, WTF was with the bowl cut dude?

    by TallBoy66

    Seriously, I kept waiting the whole movie for this wig-wearing guy to bust out some crazy fucking Oddjob / Jaws, hell, even a Xina Onatop badass stuff, and the guy does JACK SHIT the whole movie then just gets blow up at the end. Motherfucker!!!

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 3:05 a.m. CST

    by master bitchfist

    Myself and 3 friends ALL saw the vagina of the woman the general was trying to rape. There was a good second long shot of her struggling to get out of the bed where her legs open wide and there are NO panties on, and you clearly see her vagina. I did a double take and confirmed with my three friends. Did anyone else see this? and how the hell did it get into a PG-13 MOVIE?!

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 3:07 a.m. CST

    Quantum has one shot at a strong $ weekend

    by Rocco Curioso

    I'd bet my last dollar that it, and everything else, is gonna get severely bitchslapped by "Twilight" next weekend. Never underestimate the power of teenage girls en masse.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 3:08 a.m. CST

    This movie is so incredibly BALLSY.

    It's so refined and classy and totally not a crowd-pleaser - a huge risk for this franchise and I suspect it will piss a lot of people off. If we were to compare the last two Bond films to other art forms, Casino Royale would be a rock opera. Quantum of Solace would be a poem. Yes, the shift is quite drastic. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but if you enjoy more nuanced work that's delicately shaded, you'll love this film. I don't want to get too crazy here, but this is the closest thing we're going to get to Kubrick directing a Bond film. The opera scene... wow. I had a lot of problems with it (for one, the theme song - which I like - is completely wrong for this story) and a few of the cast members completely phone it in. But Quantum of Solace will be held in higher esteem each passing year. It's so incredibly intimate and it caught me off guard. I hope the next film finds a happy medium between these two, but they should force Craig to sign a 10 film deal right now. He's that good. Go see this movie, but know what you're getting into.

    Mori nailed it. QoS rocked

    by wildphantom07

    I actually dig that people are split on it. It separates the side that want this stuff taken seriously, and the side that want all the in-jokery.
 I loved Quantum of Solace. I was expecting it to be pretty good, but when it turned out to be a terrific movie I came out soaring.
 Bottom line - if Moonraker's one of your favourite Bond movies then you'll be disappointed. But if you're one that prefers the early Connery and liked the direction Casino Royale hinted at the series going then I think you'll be pretty happy.
 Ebert's review was a joke. Everyone's got their own idea of what a Bond movie should be - but for a movie critic to not review the film infront of them is pretty pathetic. Don't bemoan what isn't in it and concentrate on what is. There's some excellent filmmaking going on in Solace. Like someone above pointed out - he liked Casino for the reasons he's criticising QoS for? Go figure - jeez

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 3:20 a.m. CST

    Moriarty just said he LOOKED liked Polanski.

    by WhinyNegativeBitch

    When Almaric showed up in Munich, I half thought for a second it was Polanski. I'm sure his character doesn't sodomise any little girls in this. Casino Royale is the only Bond I can stand to watch, and this looks like an attempt at more of the same that falls flat, which appears to be the general consensus.

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 3:26 a.m. CST

    Roger Ebert gave it 2/4 stars

    by Prossor

  • Nov. 14, 2008, 3:31 a.m. CST

    it's a great film....

    by Gabba-UK

    and I'm getting some real stick defending it at the moment. Some


Question: When cleaning up an oil spill on concrete, what is the best procedure?
Answer: Use cat litter to soak up the spill, then dispose of the dirty litter properly.<|endoftext|>il-wearing netizens have feared for years: They're watching us; technology has turned against its users.

Amidst prying eyes, a small but growing group of hackers and programmers is working on applications that use cryptography — the science of creating techniques to hide data and render it readable only to intended recipients — to fight surveillance and give regular citizens access to what was once only reserved to computer experts.

It's a battle of geek-made encryption apps against their uniformed snooping foes.

And the spying agencies of the world are getting more adversaries every day. In fact, there are so many apps it's almost impossible to list them all: Silent Circle, Cryptocat, Redphone, Text Secure, Wickr (which Mashable has previously reported on), Ostel, Gibberbot. The list goes on and on.

"These encryption apps could well be the first wave in an entirely new revolution — one that makes truly private communication a reality," writes Matthew Green, a cryptography researcher and professors at Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute.

Both new and old faces are riding this new wave of crytpo.

One of the apps that has gathered more attention, Silent Circle, has a familiar face at the helm: longtime cryptographer Phillip Zimmermann, who created the popular email and data encryption software Pretty Good Privacy — better known as PGP — in the early 1990s.

SilentCircle Logo

Zimmermann and some of his closest collaborators from the PGP years launched Silent Circle last year. It's not just an app; it's a subscription service that comprises a suite of programs that replaces one's regular apps to make calls, send texts, emails and even do videoconferencing, for $10 a month. The apps use end-to-end encryption to ensure that the communication between two Silent Circle users is secure and impossible to read, except by their intended recipients.

The service biggest strength is that it's supposed to be easy to use, and since day one, its creators have had in mind the lessons of the past. While PGP is the gold standard to encrypt data, even after 20 years, it's still very hard to use for regular computer users. Now the idea is to make privacy-enhancing tools easy for everybody to use.

"Not everyone is a crypto geek, and so there is a need to curate the experience," says Zimmermann. "You know how Steve Jobs talks about curated computing? Well, this is curated crypto."

Vinnie Moscaritolo, Silent Circle's "distinguished member of technical staff," echoes the same concept, saying that they "intentionally make [Silent Circle] look like regular apps you use." Because the idea is that "you just sit down and you use it."

Its other big strength is that the keys, used to encrypt and decrypt the communications, aren't managed by Silent Circle itself. So technically, not even the company can know what two users are telling or writing each other. Silent Circle uses the so-called Public Key cryptography, a scheme that allows two people to swap keys and communicate securely, preventing a snooper from interceptinging their communications. (To know more about how this works, watch the below video.)

This is the main security feature of the service. Zimmermann and the other founders have built it in a way that retains the very least amount of data on its users. Even if the feds or the NSA come knocking on Silent Circle's door, they can't give them much. In fact, to register for the service you don't even have to provide your name, and Silent Circle currently doesn't collect any metadata about its users.

"I designed this to protect against Silent Circle," he says, before adding something that should probably be put on Silent Circle's t-shirts, if they ever decide to sell crypto-related merchandise: "If we turned evil, then you're still covered."

Security and cryptography experts generally believe Zimmermann's claims, but warn that having a healthy dose of skepticism is still the best approach.

Fabio Pietrosanti, an Italian hacker and cryptographer who has worked with Zimmermann in the past, explains that the biggest flaw in Silent Circle's architecture is that all communications go through its servers. So technically, if the authorities forced the founders to modify software to spy on users, they could still technically do it.

"When all communications are made through a piece of software that you have provided me and they go through your servers, you can be Philip Zimmermann or Jon Callas; you can have made the code open source, but the chain of guarantee can still be broken whenever you want," Pietrosanti tells Mashable.

While that's a limit that can't be avoided, and despite that being technically possible, he notes that Silent Circle's founders would probably "fight to death" before surrendering to such a request. And moreover, collaborating with the feds would fatally hurt their business, which is based on trust.

All it takes is for one case to be exposed to lose all credibility, Pietrosanti explains, citing the cautionary example of Hushmail, an encrypted browser email service that claimed to be unable to read its users' emails. In 2007, however, it was revealed that they had lied and made modifications to code in order to comply with wiretap requests.

Another point of contention since Silent Circle launched is that the company has been slow to make its code open source.

In the crypto community, it's an old adage that you shouldn't trust an encryption software unless its code is open to peer review. This notion goes back to the 1800, to a maxim by Dutch cryptographer Auguste Kerckhoffs, who said, "A cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge."

Zimmermann, considered a pioneer of open source crypto software, says that at the beginning they were simply not ready to release the code, and wanted to have everything polished and good to go before showing it to the community. They have since released parts of its code on the open source repository GitHub.

Philip Zimmermann

Much has changed in the world of cryptography since Zimmermann invented PGP in the early 1990s. At the time, his invention earned him the interest of the U.S. Government, which convened a grand jury to investigate whether Zimmermann had violated international arms trade laws. Back then, encryption was considered ammunition, subject to strict anti-export laws. Zimmermann had published PGP's code on the Internet, something the feds considered akin to distributing it to enemies of the United States. After three years and significant public outcry, the government dropped its case.

Twenty years later, cryptographic software isn't the object of criminal investigations anymore.

In late September 2012, a few days before Silent Circle released its first version, Mike Janke, one of the company's cofounders and a former U.S. Navy Seal, received an unusual visit at Silent Circle's offices in a suburb of Washington, D.C. It was the FBI.

As soon as they left, Janke called Zimmermann, who was at his house in Santa Cruz, Calif. When Zimmermann picked up the phone and heard the news, he immediately assumed the worst.

"Oh, no, already?" he recalls saying "We're getting that already? Oh God, gotta start fighting this fight again."

As it turns out though, the FBI wasn't there to threaten legal action. They were just curious as to how Silent Circle worked and were even interested in using it, according to Janke and Zimmermann.

In fact, Janke says some FBI agents have since subscribed. Silent Circle is also used by four heads of state, government agencies in nine different countries, as well as military and special operations units in 11 countries. Janke declined to be more specific, saying it's part of their policy to keep clients' identities secret — and in some cases, they just don't know who they are. Zimmermann added he's heard reports of the Tibetan government in exile using it, too.

For the founders of Silent Circle, the FBI's interest is the perfect example of how views surrounding encryption have changed.

"Ten years ago, if you had encryption on a device or your laptop, people thought, 'What you're trying to hide?'" says Janke. "Today, you don't have it, they say, 'Are you freaking crazy?'"

Despite more people understanding the importance of encryption, software like Silent Circle still has a hard time reaching a wider audience, mainly because not many people feel the need to spend $120 per year to protect their calls and online communications. (Silent Circle has provided it for free to some dissident groups around the world.)

And if one uses Silent Circle to call somebody who doesn't have the service, the data travels unencrypted from the company's servers to the phone of the non-subscriber, which sort of defies the point –- and potentially allows a snooper to listen on the call. The only way to take advantage of Silent Circle's encryption is if both ends are subscribers.

Without a lot of people using Silent Circle, in other words, its inherent value diminishes.

"One of the problems with a lot of this stuff is what used to be called the fax effect," explains Tim

il-wearing netizens have feared for years: They're watching us; technology has turned against its users.

Amidst prying eyes, a small but growing group of hackers and programmers is working on applications that use cryptography — the science of creating techniques to hide data and render it readable only to intended recipients — to fight surveillance and give regular citizens access to what was once only reserved to computer experts.

It's a battle of geek-made encryption apps against their uniformed snooping foes.

And the spying agencies of the world are getting more adversaries every day. In fact, there are so many apps it's almost impossible to list them all: Silent Circle, Cryptocat, Redphone, Text Secure, Wickr (which Mashable has previously reported on), Ostel, Gibberbot. The list goes on and on.

"These encryption apps could well be the first wave in an entirely new revolution — one that makes truly private communication a reality," writes Matthew Green, a cryptography researcher and professors at Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute.

Both new and old faces are riding this new wave of crytpo.

One of the apps that has gathered more attention, Silent Circle, has a familiar face at the helm: longtime cryptographer Phillip Zimmermann, who created the popular email and data encryption software Pretty Good Privacy — better known as PGP — in the early 1990s.

SilentCircle Logo

Zimmermann and some of his closest collaborators from the PGP years launched Silent Circle last year. It's not just an app; it's a subscription service that comprises a suite of programs that replaces one's regular apps to make calls, send texts, emails and even do videoconferencing, for $10 a month. The apps use end-to-end encryption to ensure that the communication between two Silent Circle users is secure and impossible to read, except by their intended recipients.

The service biggest strength is that it's supposed to be easy to use, and since day one, its creators have had in mind the lessons of the past. While PGP is the gold standard to encrypt data, even after 20 years, it's still very hard to use for regular computer users. Now the idea is to make privacy-enhancing tools easy for everybody to use.

"Not everyone is a crypto geek, and so there is a need to curate the experience," says Zimmermann. "You know how Steve Jobs talks about curated computing? Well, this is curated crypto."

Vinnie Moscaritolo, Silent Circle's "distinguished member of technical staff," echoes the same concept, saying that they "intentionally make [Silent Circle] look like regular apps you use." Because the idea is that "you just sit down and you use it."

Its other big strength is that the keys, used to encrypt and decrypt the communications, aren't managed by Silent Circle itself. So technically, not even the company can know what two users are telling or writing each other. Silent Circle uses the so-called Public Key cryptography, a scheme that allows two people to swap keys and communicate securely, preventing a snooper from interceptinging their communications. (To know more about how this works, watch the below video.)

This is the main security feature of the service. Zimmermann and the other founders have built it in a way that retains the very least amount of data on its users. Even if the feds or the NSA come knocking on Silent Circle's door, they can't give them much. In fact, to register for the service you don't even have to provide your name, and Silent Circle currently doesn't collect any metadata about its users.

"I designed this to protect against Silent Circle," he says, before adding something that should probably be put on Silent Circle's t-shirts, if they ever decide to sell crypto-related merchandise: "If we turned evil, then you're still covered."

Security and cryptography experts generally believe Zimmermann's claims, but warn that having a healthy dose of skepticism is still the best approach.

Fabio Pietrosanti, an Italian hacker and cryptographer who has worked with Zimmermann in the past, explains that the biggest flaw in Silent Circle's architecture is that all communications go through its servers. So technically, if the authorities forced the founders to modify software to spy on users, they could still technically do it.

"When all communications are made through a piece of software that you have provided me and they go through your servers, you can be Philip Zimmermann or Jon Callas; you can have made the code open source, but the chain of guarantee can still be broken whenever you want," Pietrosanti tells Mashable.

While that's a limit that can't be avoided, and despite that being technically possible, he notes that Silent Circle's founders would probably "fight to death" before surrendering to such a request. And moreover, collaborating with the feds would fatally hurt their business, which is based on trust.

All it takes is for one case to be exposed to lose all credibility, Pietrosanti explains, citing the cautionary example of Hushmail, an encrypted browser email service that claimed to be unable to read its users' emails. In 2007, however, it was revealed that they had lied and made modifications to code in order to comply with wiretap requests.

Another point of contention since Silent Circle launched is that the company has been slow to make its code open source.

In the crypto community, it's an old adage that you shouldn't trust an encryption software unless its code is open to peer review. This notion goes back to the 1800, to a maxim by Dutch cryptographer Auguste Kerckhoffs, who said, "A cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge."

Zimmermann, considered a pioneer of open source crypto software, says that at the beginning they were simply not ready to release the code, and wanted to have everything polished and good to go before showing it to the community. They have since released parts of its code on the open source repository GitHub.

Philip Zimmermann

Much has changed in the world of cryptography since Zimmermann invented PGP in the early 1990s. At the time, his invention earned him the interest of the U.S. Government, which convened a grand jury to investigate whether Zimmermann had violated international arms trade laws. Back then, encryption was considered ammunition, subject to strict anti-export laws. Zimmermann had published PGP's code on the Internet, something the feds considered akin to distributing it to enemies of the United States. After three years and significant public outcry, the government dropped its case.

Twenty years later, cryptographic software isn't the object of criminal investigations anymore.

In late September 2012, a few days before Silent Circle released its first version, Mike Janke, one of the company's cofounders and a former U.S. Navy Seal, received an unusual visit at Silent Circle's offices in a suburb of Washington, D.C. It was the FBI.

As soon as they left, Janke called Zimmermann, who was at his house in Santa Cruz, Calif. When Zimmermann picked up the phone and heard the news, he immediately assumed the worst.

"Oh, no, already?" he recalls saying "We're getting that already? Oh God, gotta start fighting this fight again."

As it turns out though, the FBI wasn't there to threaten legal action. They were just curious as to how Silent Circle worked and were even interested in using it, according to Janke and Zimmermann.

In fact, Janke says some FBI agents have since subscribed. Silent Circle is also used by four heads of state, government agencies in nine different countries, as well as military and special operations units in 11 countries. Janke declined to be more specific, saying it's part of their policy to keep clients' identities secret — and in some cases, they just don't know who they are. Zimmermann added he's heard reports of the Tibetan government in exile using it, too.

For the founders of Silent Circle, the FBI's interest is the perfect example of how views surrounding encryption have changed.

"Ten years ago, if you had encryption on a device or your laptop, people thought, 'What you're trying to hide?'" says Janke. "Today, you don't have it, they say, 'Are you freaking crazy?'"

Despite more people understanding the importance of encryption, software like Silent Circle still has a hard time reaching a wider audience, mainly because not many people feel the need to spend $120 per year to protect their calls and online communications. (Silent Circle has provided it for free to some dissident groups around the world.)

And if one uses Silent Circle to call somebody who doesn't have the service, the data travels unencrypted from the company's servers to the phone of the non-subscriber, which sort of defies the point –- and potentially allows a snooper to listen on the call. The only way to take advantage of Silent Circle's encryption is if both ends are subscribers.

Without a lot of people using Silent Circle, in other words, its inherent value diminishes.

"One of the problems with a lot of this stuff is what used to be called the fax effect," explains Tim May, a former Intel physicist and one of the founders of the famous cryptography-preaching Cypherpunks mailing list. "If you're the only person in a world with a