Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Pet Tales: These dogs made it back from the Middle East before their saviors

Ghost, Amigo, Louie and Faith are actively serving veterans and soldiers who have served their country. A day after Veterans Day, let’s talk about the dogs and the organizations and individuals who help bring soldiers and dogs together — and sometimes bring them home.
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Amigo saved lives in a military zone in the Middle East by detecting bombs and explosives. Louie and Faith are trained to help their veteran partners cope with the after-effects of war.
Ghost is not nearly as accomplished. He’s a mixed-breed puppy who had a tough life as a street stray in a war zone. He simply wagged his way into the hearts of American soldiers who fed him, loved him and looked for ways to save him.
On Nov. 2, Amigo and Ghost flew to Pittsburgh on a commercial airliner. Ghost, who rode in the cargo hold, was met at the airport by Sara Cox, wife of Army Sgt. Christian Cox. The dog now lives in the couple’s Whitehall home with their daughter, Lily, 5, and Meiko, a 9-year-old German shepherd.
Guardians of Rescue, a New York-based nonprofit, paid $10,000 to transport Ghost and Amigo. Since 2010, the rescue has brought home 40 dogs, most of them street strays. The average cost is $3,000-$5,000 per dog.
“Soldiers find us, ask us to bring dogs home, and we find a way to accommodate them,” said its president, Robert Misseri. “It’s a small gesture we can do for our soldiers.”
Mrs. Cox doesn’t know when her soldier is coming home, but she knows he’s very happy that Ghost is safe at home with his wife and daughter.
“This is one less thing for him to worry about,” she said.
Ghost is still a puppy, probably 6-8 months old. He’s very high energy and more playful than the older Meiko, but the two dogs are getting along.
Ghost has never lived in a house before. He’s not at all accustomed to cold weather and doesn’t linger long outside on chilly nights or mornings. Little Lily loves him, her mother said.
“Ghost is a very sweet dog. He had a very rough life over there. They threw rocks at him, beat him and poisoned him. His mother, brothers and sisters died. Ghost and my husband formed a special bond. He asked me to research ways to bring Ghost home. I didn’t know where to start.”
She found a sympathetic ear at Guardians of Rescue.
“The people in war-torn Mideastern countries don’t have a high regard for stray dogs,” Mr. Misseri said. “They view them as vermin.”
Although Ghost flew home as cargo, Amigo got to fly in the cabin because of his status as a trained explosive detection dog. The 9-year-old Belgian Malinois was met in Pittsburgh by Carly Carolla, who is the girlfriend of Army Spc. Michael Fenton, and his mother, Michelle McGann.
Mr. Fenton met Amigo in a kennel near where he was stationed (the location is kept secret for security reasons). He was told the dog had been retired and would be euthanized unless someone could get him back to the States. Amigo worked for a contractor, Ms. Carolla said, not the U.S. military. He now lives with Ms. McGann in Green Tree.
“So far, so good,” Ms. Carolla said. “He is very friendly with everyone. He is very active. He loves being outside and loves the grass. I don’t know if he ever saw grass before.”
Amigo has a lot to learn, she said. “The commands he knows are in Arabic.”
Louie and Faith

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Microsoft Windows

"Windows" redirects here. For the part of a building, see window. For other uses, see Windows (disambiguation).
Microsoft Windows
Windows darkblue 2012 svg.svg
Windows 10 build 14393 (Redstone).png
Screenshot of Windows 10 (Anniversary Update), showing the Action Center and Start Menu
DeveloperMicrosoft
Written inCC++Assembly[1]
Working statePublicly released
Source modelClosed / shared source
Initial releaseNovember 20, 1985; 31 years ago, as Windows 1.0
Latest release1607 (10.0.14393.222) (September 29, 2016; 59 days ago)[±]
Latest preview1607 (10.0.14971.1000) (November 17, 2016; 10 days ago)[±]
Marketing targetPersonal computing
Available in137 languages[2]
Update method
Package managerWindows Installer (.msi), Windows Store (.appx)[3]
PlatformsARMIA-32Itaniumx86-64DEC AlphaMIPSPowerPC
Kernel type
Default user interfaceWindows shell
LicenseProprietary commercial software
Official websitewindows.microsoft.com
Microsoft Windows (or simply Windows) is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of several families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NTWindows Embedded and Windows Phone; these may encompass subfamilies, e.g. Windows Embedded Compact (Windows CE) or Windows Server. Defunct Windows families include Windows 9xWindows 10 Mobile is an active product, unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile.
Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs).[4]Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal computer (PC) market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. Apple came to see Windows as an unfair encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa and Macintosh (eventually settled in court in Microsoft's favor in 1993). On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system. However, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android,[5] because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2014, the number of Windows devices sold were less than 25% of Android devices sold. This comparisons, however, may not be fully relevant as the two operating systems traditionally targeted different platforms.
As of September 2016, the most recent version of Windows for PCs, tabletssmartphones and embedded devices is Windows 10. The most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2016. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox One game console.[6]

Friday, November 25, 2016

What Is a Book? The Definition Continues to Blur

These two new ventures join a market where Amazon (s amzn) is already publishing what it calls “Singles,” or short book-length publications that virtually anyone can produce. To take just one example, blogger and Hunch.com founder Chris Dixon recently bundled all his blog posts about venture capital (he’s also an active angel investor) and published them as an Amazon e-book. Journalism professor Jay Rosen mused on Twitter about doing the same thing with his blog posts about the future of media. And the list of publishers grows every day, with the TED conference launching its own e-book imprint recently, and marketing maven Seth Godin starting a new micro-publishing venture (backed by Amazon) called Domino.
Meanwhile, some authors are making millions by self-publishing multiple inexpensive e-books: Amanda Hocking became famous in the industry over the past six months for making over $2 million by self-publishing a dozen fiction books for younger readers, and recently signed a hefty contract with an existing publisher based on that success. Others have gone in the opposite direction; author Barry Eisler, after publishing a number of books through the traditional route, said recently he’s going to start self-publishing, because he will have more control over the process and will keep more of the revenue.
After centuries of not changing very much at all, the book industry is going through the same kind of upheaval as newspapers, Hollywood and the music business are — and that means more uncertainty, but also more opportunity

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Top 7 Reasons why School Life is the Best

7. Fun
fun
School is fun. A majority of people believe that school life is the most fun filled one. At school, there are big groups, and good friends. Kids are unselfish friends to each other. They have a great time together. Fun in school is a totally different thing. There is fun in playing games together, fun singing songs while prayers in the assembly, fun in bunking classes and hiding in the school itself, fun in the between the class chit chats, fun in school trips and night camps, and so much more. Every person’s school life is therefore the most memorable part of their life, since that is the only time they had fun, free of any tensions or troubles.
6. Carefree 
carefree
A child is free of any worldly concerns. At school, he has no worries, no pressures and no tensions. A school goer’s life is sheer innocence. His mind is young, fresh, unexploited and unexhausted. He has a life that is full of newness. He is yet to face the real world. The fact that at school, life is protected, shelled and covered from everything else, except his studies and friends, life is totally carefree and fun. There is pressure to study, compete and succeed, but this is absolutely negligible to all the burdens and responsibilities a person faces after growing up.
5. No monetary issues
no monetary issues
A school going is satisfied and happy with the little pocket money he gets. He doesn’t need to bother about his clothes, hairstyles, looks, or anything else. He has no monetary issues. At college, or the work place, everyone wants to appeal well. Everyone wants to impress. There is a competition that can be satisfied with only material sources, while this is totally absent at school. At school, the uniformity maintained never lets children get trapped into thinking of themselves as any different, or less, or superior to others. They all look alike, get alike, think alike and feel alike. This is one great advantage of school life that makes it the best part of life.
4. Less social pressure
less social pressure
At school, there is no social pressure. Yes, children do have to compete and excel. But this race is nothing in comparison to the greater races of life that they don’t touch till they leave school. After school, they have to compete on a much greater scale, because they are no more confined to the school boundaries. After school, the real journey of a person’s life begins. And this journey is full of social pressures. A person has to earn a living, make a decent life, get married, make a family and take up a hundred responsibilities. The initial steps towards attaining all this, begins right after school. A kid is suddenly expected to be a grown up as he is out of school. This calls for a lot of social pressure from which school goers are entirely abstained. Thus, school life has very less social pressure, being a great boon in making it the best phase of life.