State CIO J. Clark Kelso wants to make government more accessible to the citizens of California. In an interview with Information Week's Eric Chabrow, (Nov 22, 2004), Kelso announced, "We need to start changing the inefficeinent way we provide services." The state spends between $2 billion and $4 billion annually on IT.

Kelso is the author of the "California State Information Technology Strategic Plan" (PDF), a 5-year plan presented this month to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Plan follows a more lengthy report issued in August by the California Performance Review Commission. The Commision was charged by Gov. Schwarzenegger with figuring out how to make state government work better and cheaper. Among the ideas in the panel's $32 billion cost-cutting recommendations: favoring open-source software over proprietary alternatives for new IT purchases.

The report, titled Government for the People for a Change, is a 4-volume study with recommendations including recommendations to "Explore Open Source Alternatives." "The state should more extensively consider use of open source software," it recommends, "which can in many cases provide the same functionality as closed source software at a much lower total cost of ownership."

The CIO's most recent plan to bring efficiency to California Information Technology promotes six strategic goals including three that could be facilitated by open source RSS syndication:

• Make Government services more accessible to citizens and State clients.


• Implement common business applications and systems to improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness.


• Lower costs and improve the security, reliability and performance of the State's IT infrastructure.

Unfortunately, there is no mention of RSS news feeds or xml syndication anywhere in the plan.

California prides itself as the world's fifth largest economy, but in the world of providing syndicated news and services, it lags behind Rhode Island and Delaware. Social Commentator Jamais Cascio writing in WorldChanging wryly observes, "Some states that you'd think would be technologially on the ball (California, for example) have few if any feeds, while other locations are swimming in them."

Fr. Joseph asks Fr. John about the current need of clergy in this two part interview from Antiochian Village. He also notes a surprising development in “mission plants.”

Fr. Seraphim gives a short update.

He lived in the desert of Skete (Scetis) in Egypt during the fourth century, the golden age of the Desert Fathers. Nothing is known of his life in the world. He spent many years as the disciple of Abba Ammoes, who was very severe with him. Once the Elder took a dry stick, stuck it in the sand, and commanded John to water it every day until it bore fruit. Though this was plainly impossible, John performed the task uncomplainingly, walking a great distance to fetch the water, for three years. At the end of that time, the stick bore fruit. Abba Ammoes brought it to church the following Sunday and called out to the brethren, "Come and eat the fruit of obedience!" Though he had never praised or thanked his disciple, before he died Abba Ammoes said of John, "He is an angel, not a man." After his elder's repose, Abba John withdrew further into the desert, devoting all his time to vigil and prayer. As he prayed he would weave baskets, which he sold to meet his few needs. Sometimes he was so rapt in prayer that he would keep weaving until the basket reached an absurd size, filling his cell.   When, after many years, Abba John was delivered from all evil thoughts, Abba Poemen (commemorated August 27) told him to pray to God for another temptation to struggle against, for only in this way does the soul make progress. He rejoiced when he was insulted, was never known to be angry with anyone, and would run away as fast as he could if he ever saw men quarreling. He reposed in peace.   "Pray earnestly with compunction and vigilance. Pay no attention to the faults of others. Do not measure yourself against other people, for you are lower than every creature." — Abba John the Dwarf

He lived in the desert of Skete (Scetis) in Egypt during the fourth century, the golden age of the Desert Fathers. Nothing is known of his life in the world. He spent many years as the disciple of Abba Ammoes, who was very severe with him. Once the Elder took a dry stick, stuck it in the sand, and commanded John to water it every day until it bore fruit. Though this was plainly impossible, John performed the task uncomplainingly, walking a great distance to fetch the water, for three years. At the end of that time, the stick bore fruit. Abba Ammoes brought it to church the following Sunday and called out to the brethren, "Come and eat the fruit of obedience!" Though he had never praised or thanked his disciple, before he died Abba Ammoes said of John, "He is an angel, not a man." After his elder's repose, Abba John withdrew further into the desert, devoting all his time to vigil and prayer. As he prayed he would weave baskets, which he sold to meet his few needs. Sometimes he was so rapt in prayer that he would keep weaving until the basket reached an absurd size, filling his cell.   When, after many years, Abba John was delivered from all evil thoughts, Abba Poemen (commemorated August 27) told him to pray to God for another temptation to struggle against, for only in this way does the soul make progress. He rejoiced when he was insulted, was never known to be angry with anyone, and would run away as fast as he could if he ever saw men quarreling. He reposed in peace.   "Pray earnestly with compunction and vigilance. Pay no attention to the faults of others. Do not measure yourself against other people, for you are lower than every creature." — Abba John the Dwarf

He lived in the desert of Skete (Scetis) in Egypt during the fourth century, the golden age of the Desert Fathers. Nothing is known of his life in the world. He spent many years as the disciple of Abba Ammoes, who was very severe with him. Once the Elder took a dry stick, stuck it in the sand, and commanded John to water it every day until it bore fruit. Though this was plainly impossible, John performed the task uncomplainingly, walking a great distance to fetch the water, for three years. At the end of that time, the stick bore fruit. Abba Ammoes brought it to church the following Sunday and called out to the brethren, "Come and eat the fruit of obedience!" Though he had never praised or thanked his disciple, before he died Abba Ammoes said of John, "He is an angel, not a man." After his elder's repose, Abba John withdrew further into the desert, devoting all his time to vigil and prayer. As he prayed he would weave baskets, which he sold to meet his few needs. Sometimes he was so rapt in prayer that he would keep weaving until the basket reached an absurd size, filling his cell.   When, after many years, Abba John was delivered from all evil thoughts, Abba Poemen (commemorated August 27) told him to pray to God for another temptation to struggle against, for only in this way does the soul make progress. He rejoiced when he was insulted, was never known to be angry with anyone, and would run away as fast as he could if he ever saw men quarreling. He reposed in peace.   "Pray earnestly with compunction and vigilance. Pay no attention to the faults of others. Do not measure yourself against other people, for you are lower than every creature." — Abba John the Dwarf

He lived in the desert of Skete (Scetis) in Egypt during the fourth century, the golden age of the Desert Fathers. Nothing is known of his life in the world. He spent many years as the disciple of Abba Ammoes, who was very severe with him. Once the Elder took a dry stick, stuck it in the sand, and commanded John to water it every day until it bore fruit. Though this was plainly impossible, John performed the task uncomplainingly, walking a great distance to fetch the water, for three years. At the end of that time, the stick bore fruit. Abba Ammoes brought it to church the following Sunday and called out to the brethren, "Come and eat the fruit of obedience!" Though he had never praised or thanked his disciple, before he died Abba Ammoes said of John, "He is an angel, not a man." After his elder's repose, Abba John withdrew further into the desert, devoting all his time to vigil and prayer. As he prayed he would weave baskets, which he sold to meet his few needs. Sometimes he was so rapt in prayer that he would keep weaving until the basket reached an absurd size, filling his cell.   When, after many years, Abba John was delivered from all evil thoughts, Abba Poemen (commemorated August 27) told him to pray to God for another temptation to struggle against, for only in this way does the soul make progress. He rejoiced when he was insulted, was never known to be angry with anyone, and would run away as fast as he could if he ever saw men quarreling. He reposed in peace.   "Pray earnestly with compunction and vigilance. Pay no attention to the faults of others. Do not measure yourself against other people, for you are lower than every creature." — Abba John the Dwarf

He lived in the desert of Skete (Scetis) in Egypt during the fourth century, the golden age of the Desert Fathers. Nothing is known of his life in the world. He spent many years as the disciple of Abba Ammoes, who was very severe with him. Once the Elder took a dry stick, stuck it in the sand, and commanded John to water it every day until it bore fruit. Though this was plainly impossible, John performed the task uncomplainingly, walking a great distance to fetch the water, for three years. At the end of that time, the stick bore fruit. Abba Ammoes brought it to church the following Sunday and called out to the brethren, "Come and eat the fruit of obedience!" Though he had never praised or thanked his disciple, before he died Abba Ammoes said of John, "He is an angel, not a man." After his elder's repose, Abba John withdrew further into the desert, devoting all his time to vigil and prayer. As he prayed he would weave baskets, which he sold to meet his few needs. Sometimes he was so rapt in prayer that he would keep weaving until the basket reached an absurd size, filling his cell.   When, after many years, Abba John was delivered from all evil thoughts, Abba Poemen (commemorated August 27) told him to pray to God for another temptation to struggle against, for only in this way does the soul make progress. He rejoiced when he was insulted, was never known to be angry with anyone, and would run away as fast as he could if he ever saw men quarreling. He reposed in peace.   "Pray earnestly with compunction and vigilance. Pay no attention to the faults of others. Do not measure yourself against other people, for you are lower than every creature." — Abba John the Dwarf

Emerging from a long hiatus, Fr Joseph comes out of the closet (!) and runs into a bus full of bullies.

Fr. John draws attention to a feature of Byzantine statecraft in which the Emperor persecuted and manipulated the leadership of the Church.

Visit the "holy mountain" of Mt. Athos, and join in the quest for a spiritual elder with acclaimed poet and author Scot Cairns, who reads selections from his newly-released book and talks with two-time pilgrim to the holy mountain, Kevin Allen!

Aardman Animation worked with Patrick McHale and the original voice cast for an elaborate stop-motion tribute #

Here are two quick new book reviews. Think of them as tools for your Lenten tool box. :)

What do we do when bright week seems dim?

Richard Foord MP says there are no NHS dentists available in Devon for adults.

Transport for Wales says the service will not operate on Tuesday due to trains needing repairs.

1. Senators make short work of listless Leafs in a flat Battle of Ontario  The Globe and Mail
2. Tavares on Maple Leafs’ lifeless loss to Senators: ‘We should be disappointed’  Sportsnet.ca
3. Ullmark records first shutout of season as Senators smother Maple Leafs  TSN
4. TAKEAWAYS: Ottawa Senators draw first blood in Battle of Ontario  Ottawa Citizen
5. Wednesday FTB: Lose to the Sens, why not?  Pension Plan Puppets

Voice Activity Detection (VAD) distinguishes speech segments from noise or silence areas. An efficient and noise-robust VAD system can be widely used for emerging speech technologies such as wireless communication and speech recognition. In this paper, we propose two versions of an unsupervised Arabic VAD method based on the combination of the Short-Time Energy (STE) and the Spectral Centroid (SC) features for formulating a typical threshold to detect speech areas. The first version compares only the STE feature to the threshold (STE-VAD). In contrast, the second compares the SC vector and the threshold (SC-VAD). The two versions of our VAD method were tested on 770 sentences of the Arabphone corpus, which were recorded in clean and noisy environments and evaluated under different values of Signal-to-Noise-Ratio. The experiments demonstrated the robustness of the STE-VAD in terms of accuracy and Mean Square Error.

In order to improve the speedup and recognition accuracy of the recognition process, this paper designs a data mining method based on label mapping for long-term and short-term browsing behaviour of network users. First, after removing the noise information in the behaviour sequence, calculate the similarity of behaviour characteristics. Then, multi-source behaviour data is mapped to the same dimension, and a behaviour label mapping layer and a behaviour data mining layer are established. Finally, the similarity of the tag matrix is calculated based on the similarity calculation results, and the mining results are output using SVM binary classification process. Experimental results show that the acceleration ratio of this method exceeds 0.9; area under curve receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC-ROC) value increases rapidly in a short time, and the maximum value can reach 0.95, indicating that the mining precision of this method is high.

A semantically rich framework to enable real-time knowledge extraction from short length semi-structured documents Lavana Elluri 10:30-11:30 Monday, 4 November 2019, ITE346 Knowledge is currently maintained as a large volume of unstructured text data in books, laws, regulations and policies, news and social media, academic and scientific reports, conversation and correspondence, etc. Most of these […]

The post TALK: Real-time knowledge extraction from short semi-structured documents appeared first on UMBC ebiquity.

Hey geeks! Remember when Google rolled out goo.gl back in 2009? Yup, it was that long ago. Other than Bit.ly, it was the go-to tool for turning those ridiculously long URLs into neat, tiny links. Fast-forward 15 years, and Google's decided it's time to pull the plug on goo.gl. So, what does this mean for you, me, and the entire internet? Let's dive in. Why People Use URL Shorteners People use URL shorteners to create clean links because no one wants to share ugly, lengthy URLs. Shortened links also allow users to measure the performan...

The Pakistani drama star expressed her disbelief at being asked to attend a late-night audition in revealing attire.

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This video tutorial shows how to get the image (attachment) ID to use it in the shortcode for WordPress templates.

The post WordPress. How to get the image (attachment) ID to use it in the shortcode appeared first on Template Monster Help.

Marvin Maiocchi recently went on a BMX Park session at BMCC in Mannheim. On this occasion, he met with our bro and Mannheim local Robin Kachfi, who has captured the events on video. You can see the result above!

Enjoy the video, your kunstform BMX Shop Team!

Video: Robin Kachfi

Related links:

• all products of kunstform

Vermont’s unemployment rate was 1.9% in September, among the lowest in the country, and the labor force is still thousands of people smaller than before the pandemic.

The post Vermont may be the face of a long-term U.S. labor shortage appeared first on Boston.com.

Classical music abounds in Walt Disney productions: Fantasia contains animated sequences and narrations inspired by the pieces of classical music playing in the background, whether ... Read more

The post Watch These Five Disney Shorts about Classical Music appeared first on CMUSE.

Without question, the building and construction industry has been impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. Approximately 1.1 million construction jobs were eliminated in the first two months of the pandemic prior to the industry’s designation as “essential.” While the industry has recouped nearly 80 percent of its workforce since then, companies will need to hire another 1 million workers over the next two years to meet the country’s insatiable demand for new home construction and improvement.

In this highly competitive market, strong GC-subcontractor relationships have never been more critical.

Washington – State-run OSHA programs face staffing challenges in part because of budget cuts, and federal OSHA should provide better access to training and deadlines for taking over troubled state programs, concludes a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

Washington — President Donald Trump on Oct. 9 announced he will nominate Amanda Wood Laihow for one of the two vacant seats on the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, which has been shorthanded – and lacking a quorum – for more than five months.

Washington – The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has released guidance on break requirements for short-haul commercial truck drivers who unintentionally exceed time or distance driving limits.

Washington — Immigrant construction workers employed by small companies do not receive the same amount of safety and health training as their counterparts at larger companies, according to a recent study from NIOSH and the American Society of Safety Engineers.

Security dealers can create video content that represents the brand, creates brand recognition and generates interest in mere seconds.  

Washington — Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Administrator Raymond Martinez affirmed his belief in electronic logging devices, but said “additional flexibility” is forthcoming for agricultural transporters, during a May 22 hearing before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Highways and Transit Subcommittee.

Austin, TX — A perceived growing shortage of commercial motor vehicle drivers and potential changes to hours-of-service rules are the top issues affecting the trucking industry, according to an annual survey conducted by the American Transportation Research Institute.

Washington — The publication of a proposed rule intended to add flexibility to hours-of-service regulations for commercial truck drivers is expected soon, on the heels of a recent delay, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration head Raymond Martinez said during a June 19 hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

San Diego — For the second straight year, a driver shortage and hours-of-service rules are the top two issues affecting the trucking industry, according to the results of an annual survey conducted by the American Transportation Research Institute.

Washington — The Short Line Safety Institute has published a series of free videos designed to provide railroad workers with an overview of key elements of hazardous materials safety regulations.

Washington — In response to a nationwide shortage of N95 filtering facepiece respirators during the COVID-19 pandemic, OSHA has announced further temporary easing of regulations related to respiratory protection.

Washington — The validity of a perceived shortage of commercial motor vehicle drivers is again in the spotlight after a recent analysis conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Washington — Two months after Secretary of Labor R. Alexander Acosta touted OSHA’s increased number of inspections, the National Employment Law Project has released new data showing that the agency is coming up short in one measure.

Washington — A Mine Safety and Health Administration proposed rule intended to reduce worker exposure to respirable crystalline silica “does not demand enough from operators,” Reps. Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Alma Adams (D-NC) claim.

The recent CFI FCICA Convention in Orlando challenged the industry to raise the bar on installer recruitment, expand high-quality training, and expand awareness of the latest installation techniques and technologies.