The biochemical mechanisms underlying phagocytosis are still largely unknown. Two groups have previously determined that the glucose analogue 2-deoxyglucose (2DG) inhibits opsonin-dependent phagocytosis in a manner unrelated to energy production. We have recently described a cytoplasmic phosphoglycoprotein of 63 kDa (pgp 63) possessing an oligosaccharide that appears to exist in two interconvertible states, one as an O-linked mannose disaccharide and the other containing, in addition, a phosphodiester-linked glucose residue. We have also described the two antagonistic enzymes responsible for the removal and addition of the alphaGlc-1-P. Our data in other systems suggest that pgp63 may be intimately involved in the CA++-dependent cascade leading to exocytic vesicle release and that the removal and addition of alphaGlc-1-P is an integral part of this cascade. We intend to critically test thecreated on a system, the account is given a [*security identifier (SID)*](/windows/desktop/SecGloss/s-gly) The SID ensures that an account created with the same name as a previously deleted account does not inherit the previous security settings. An access token is created by combining the SID, the list of groups of which the user is a member, and the list of enabled or disabled privileges. These tokens are assigned to all processes and threads owned by the user.

## Access Control

When the user wants to use a secured object, the access token is compared with the [*discretionary access control list (DACL)*](/windows/desktop/SecGloss/d-gly) in the security descriptor on the object. The DACL contains permissions called [*access control entries (ACE)*](/windows/desktop/SecGloss/a-gly). [*System access control lists (SACL)*](/windows/desktop/SecGloss/s-gly) do the same thing as DACLs, but can generate


ascertaining the dutiable value thereof, there has been illegally estimated and included, as a part of such value, charges expressly declared by section 7 of said act to be non-dutiable.
"Second. That, under the act of March 3, 1883, only the value of said cotton hose or other merchandise is dutiable, whereas the value of the usual and necessary sacks, crates, boxes, and other coverings have been estimated as part of the value of said goods, in determining the amount of duties for which they should be liable, contrary to the provisions of section 7, act March 3, 1883.
"Third. By the act of March 3, 1883, all duties heretofore exacted upon charges incurred in the importation of merchandise are repealed, but there has been included, in estimating the dutiablethe goods abroad outside of the abolished "charges." Goods may be bought abroad unfinished, and then caused to be finished; but in no case can the cost of finishing be left out of their value, however they have been obtained. So, the new oaths embrace only the value of the goods per se, and there is no oath as to any item before called "charges." The item of "finishing" is broad enough to include bleaching, dyeing, and dressing, but does not include any of the other charges specifically named in the old oaths.
The contention on the part of the government is that § 7 of the act of 1883 repeals only so much of the prior statutes as added to the market value abroad the charges which were


is referred to which ever recognized the value of cartons as other than a charge, and no such practice appears to have obtained before March 3, 1883.
As the action of the collector in this case appears to have been founded on a circular issued by the Treasury Department on May 15, 1883, and was sanctioned by the opinion of the Attorney-General, Mr. Brewster, given to the Secretary of the Treasury on January 11, 1884, and as there have been decisions of Circuit Courts in accordance with those views (although there have been some to the contrary), the question involved has been carefully considered by this court, and the judges are unanimously of opinion that the true view of the statute in force at the time the goods inthose of my employer. This blog expresses my opinions on product management, and are for informational and entertainment purposes only.The only exception are my views and opinions on red pandas, which are clearly correct and true for everyone :-)


Software Serial
 *  which is still useful for negative logic signal like Sun protocol
 *  if it is not supported by hardware UART.
 *
 *  TODO: delay is not accurate enough. Instruction cycle should be counted and inline assemby is needed.
 */

#define WAIT_US     (1000000L/SERIAL_SOFT_BAUD)

#ifdef SERIAL_SOFT_LOGIC_NEGATIVE
    #define SERIAL_SOFT_RXD_IN()        !(SERIAL_SOFT_RXD_READ())
    #define SERIAL_SOFT_TXD_ON()        SERIAL_SOFT_TXD_LO()
    #define SERIAL_SOFT_TXD_OFF()       SERIAL_SOFT_TXD_HI()
#else
    #define SERIAL_SOFT_RXD_IN()        !!(SERIAL_SOFT_RXD_READ())
    #define SERIAL_SOFT_TXD_ON()        SERIAL_SOFT_TXD_HI()
    #define SERIAL_SOFT_TXD_OFF()       SERIAL_SOFT_TXD_LO()
#endif

#ifdef  } while (mask&0xFF);
#endif

#if defined(SERIAL_SOFT_PARITY_EVEN) || defined(SERIAL_SOFT_PARITY_ODD)
    /* to center of parity bit */
    _delay_us(WAIT_US);
    if (SERIAL_SOFT_RXD_IN()) { parity ^= 1; }
    SERIAL_SOFT_DEBUG_TGL();
#endif

    /* to center of stop bit */
    _delay_us(WAIT_US);

    uint8_t next = (rbuf_head + 1) % RBUF_SIZE;
#if defined(SERIAL_SOFT_PARITY_EVEN) || defined(SERIAL_SOFT_PARITY_ODD)
    if ((parity == SERIAL_SOFT_PARITY_VAL) && next != rbuf_tail) {
#else
    if (next != rbuf_tail) {
#endif
        rbuf[rbuf_head] = data;
        rbuf_head = next;
    }

    SERIAL_SOFT_RXD_INT_EXIT();
    SERIAL_SOFT_DEBUG_TGL();
}


Q:

Are there quran that are written before othman standardization?

Uthman create a standard of quran. Before that there are many versions of Quran. Are there any of those other versions that survive now?

A:

The lower text of the Sana'a manuscript is, as far as I know, the only existing example of pre-Uthmanic Qur'an available today.  Uthman's text was standardized very early in Islamic history; every live copy, and pretty much every historical manuscript, we have to date is based on the Uthmanic tradition.

"To Las Vegas." "We're gonna get married." "Great." "Congratulations." "I just can't say no to her." "La notte e stellata, e tremano, azzurri, gli astri, in lontananza." "Who are you?" "You were screaming my name all night." "I'm Matteo." "Know what?" "We'll make love again." "Then you'll remember." " Shit, I need coffee." " I have better." "This bedroom sucks." "Let's fuck someplace else." "Buongiorno." "It's cool." "I'll explain." "I don't want to know." "We have to leave!" "Mi amore." "We're forever!" "Cut it out!" "You're a total idiot!" "She has to stay here." " Please, don't go." " Sorry?" "You can't get married on a whim." "You need to think it over." "I'm just doing it two days early." "Las Vegas isn't all it's cracked up to


"Okay." "Bye-bye." "Now I've" "Had the time of my life" "And I owe it all to you" "'Cause I've" "Had the time of my life" "And I owe it all to you" "I've been waiting for so long" "Now I've finally found someone" "To stand by me" "We saw the writing on the wall" "As we felt this magical fantasy" "Now with passion in our eyes" "There's no way we could disguise it secretly" "So we take each other's hand" "'Cause we seem to understand" "The urgency" "Just remember" "You're the one thing" "I can't get enough of" "So I'll tell you something" "This could be love" "Because" "I've had" "The time of my life" "No, I never felt this way before" "Yes, I swear" "It's the truth""You speak English?" "That'll show you, asshole." "How was it?" "Nice." "I wish you'd told me." "Well, if Miss Van der Beck wants to get married in a couple of hours," "I think she'd better hurry up." "Wait." "You've awoken me, Juliette." "I haven't felt this alive in ages." "Thanks to you, but for me..." "I feel alive thanks to you too." "Hold on." "Let me finish, please." "For me, it's too late." "I'm far away from here." "I'll cancel the wedding, everything." "Forget what I just told you." "We had a lovely evening, it was really great, but it ends right here." "It's Van der Beck." "Your mission is over." "All right." "What's she going to do?" "She's getting married." "Neither you nor I can hope to


to hook up with people—”

“—especially a guy who’s as hot as Jamie—”

“—yes, that too. Once they heard about me, a lot of the guys who knew they were gay, but hadn’t really been hooking up with anyone, decided they would seek me out.”

“Same with me,” Garen adds, “but that started later. We also share guys. You know, I’ll sleep with someone and let Jamie know if he’s any good, and he’ll do the same for me. That’s kind of how it worked with Lakewood, too. Obviously Ev didn’t go up to my dad and say, ‘Hey, I think my son’s as much of a fag as yours, we should date.’ But I’m pretty sure the only reason Ben decided to talk to me was because he thought INorway and four field trials in China. The major quantitative trait locus (QTL) with resistance from Naxos was detected close to the Pm3 locus on 1AS in all environments, and explained up to 35% of the phenotypic variation. Naxos was shown to carry another major QTL on 2DL and minor ones on 2BL and 7DS. QTL with resistance from SHA3/CBRD were detected on 1RS, 2DLc, 6BL and 7AL. The QTL on the 1B/1R translocation showed highly variable effects across environments corresponding to known virulence differences against Pm8. SHA3/CBRD was shown to possess the Pm3 haplotype on 1AS, but none of the known Pm3a-g alleles. The RIL population did not provide any evidence to suggest that the Pm3 allele of SHA3/CBRD acted as a suppressor of Pm8.


 {
                             Key = page.Key.Replace("~",localhost"),
                             page.Value
                           };

or if it has to be a KeyValuePair:
var pagesWithControl =
   from page in sitefinityPageDictionary
   from control in cmsManager.GetPage(page.Value).Controls
   where control.TypeName == controlType
   select
   newchanges.You WILL be agitated, you WILL be annoyed, and you WILL think what the heck am I doing here. But soon (or maybe a bit later) you will realize that it makes no difference and that the pain or the sensation will still be there no matter how your brain reacts to it.On the fourth day the actual Vipassana starts - the surgery on the brain. You will have laid the groundwork the first three days and will now cut deeper into the brain, observing sensations all over the body. Observing, acknowledging that it is there, and letting it go. Reacting with neither aversion or craving and becoming Equanimous.The art is in realizing that everything constantly changes, a sensation on the body comes and it goes again, observing


be completely the same for everyone.Please get in touch if I left any questions unanswered or if there is anything else you would like to know! Contact me, let me know what you think, are you going to make that change?Share your thoughts on this article by leaving a comment below, liking it, sharing it with friends and family, or by following our Cutting Loose Facebook page!

Hey Jacqueline,
feeling quite happy and touched about how you describe the experience. Really looking forward to share some of our experiences and development when we meet again! Crazy that its almost a year ago now that we spoke about presence and perception of things with a clear open mind. Thinking about it makes me even a bit melancholic right now since mydepartment had identified any urgent projects as part of the governments R846bn infrastructure upgrade plan over the next three years. She confirmed that to date, the department has spent R5.9bn of the R29.2bn budgeted for several projects, ranging from water services projects to mega infrastructure projects.

Photo: Flikr.com Sterkfontein Dam

Between 2006 and 2010, the SA Weather Services sponsored 149 students with, and had placed about two thirds of all students. Molewa said those students that had not been recruited by the weather service were continuing with their studies.

The South African National Biodiversity Institute gave out 38 bursaries between 2006 and 2010, to masters and doctorate students, to help foster climate change specialists placing 28% of the bursars.

So r over R2.5bn has been spent on the project the bulk (over


ethnical, and cultural contact with Persia, but with Trajan in 114 AD Roman control over Caucasian Albania was nearly complete with top social levels fully romanized.

During the reign of Roman emperor Hadrian (117–138) Albania was invaded by the Alans, an Iranian nomadic group.

This invasion promoted an alliance between Rome and the Albanians that was reinforced under Antoninus Pius in 140 AD. Sassanians occupied the area around 240 Ad but after a few years the Roman Empire regained control of Caucasian Albania.

Indeed, in 297 AD the Treaty of Nisibis stipulated the reestablishment of the Roman protectorate over Caucasian Iberia and Caucasian Albania. But fifty years later Rome lost the area that since then remained an integral part of the Sassanian Empire for more than two centuries.

In the latecommenters have said: those in the 20-40 age group, especially, are at the least "convenient" time to get involved in hobbies and other activities. They're just starting out in life, so their funds are pretty much committed to daily living (and, hopefully, retirement savings), and as they raise their families their priorities are elsewhere. Genealogy, model railroading, Lions Club, Optimist International -- the same goes for all of them.

The solution, or part of it, is two-fold: get them interested in an early age, and then accept the fact that they won't be active until many years later. I've seen this many times at model railroad shows: the kids love it, the parents don't want to get involved, but years later when the kids are grown and looking for


to YOU and other "older" people who seem to hold unreasonable and completely untrue stereotypes about young people is to stop insulting us and instead use your enthusiasm for and knowledge of genealogy to welcome us into the fold.

Hello Anonymous, Perhaps you also realize what a tiny group of people you represent in today's world. In 2012, less than 8% of the U.S. population had earned a Master's Degree and only 3% of the population a Doctorate or professional degree. If you feel that these statistics are "insulting" then perhaps you missed the point of my post. See Educational Attainment http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/2012/tables.html

Perhaps you also realize that only about 55% of the people your age are married. I could go on, but rather than be insulted, perhaps you should beblogging about family history or discussing it on Twitter and Facebook.

As has been mentioned, there are practical reasons why younger people may not actively research their family history: lack of time, lack of money and the fact that many archives are only open Mon-Fri during the day when most younger people are working. However, the fact that so many records are now available online means that many younger (i.e. below retirement age) people have been able to get started on researching their families who would have previously found it very difficult.

If there is a lack of younger people actively into genealogy, I'm not sure it's really a matter of concern. All of us currently researching have come to genealogy in our own way - often the birth of


young researchers out there, myself included. You won't be the ones to reach them. Other young genealogists are the ones who are going to get more people involved and interested in genealogy.

I started doing genealogy when I was 16. I'm 23 today, and I wouldn't trade what I've learned about my family for anything else in the world. It's a perspective I treasure. I travel extensively to deepen my love and understanding of my ancestors. I am just as qualified and savvy as any old timer, and I've unraveled my share of mysteries to prove it.

If any young genealogists happen to stumble upon this post and are looking to connect with other young genealogists, I've recently started a community on Google+ with a friend of mine called Youngthe SNR of the outcome. Hence, we use the actual number of repeated measurements in the same direction as a proxy for the amount of resource allocated for that direction.

3.  colored Gaussian noise with covariance $\Sigma_w$ added either prior to the measurement: $$y = A(x + w), w \sim \mathcal{N}(0, \Sigma_w),$$ or after the measurement: $$y = Ax + w, w \sim \mathcal{N}(0, \Sigma_w).$$

In the following, we will establish lower bounds on the amount of resource (either the minimum power or the number of measurements) needed for Info-Greedy Sensing to achieve a recovery error $\|x - \widehat{x}\|_2\leq \varepsilon$.

### White noise added prior to measurement or “noise folding” {#sec:isotrope-noise}

We start our discussion with this model and results for other models can be derived similarly. As $\beta_{i}$ does not


following number of measurements by unit vectors $\|a_i\|_2 = 1$:

$$\label{eq:Gaussian-number-noisy}
      m = \sum_{\substack{i=1 \\ \lambda_{i} \neq 0}}^{k}
            \max\left\{
        0, \ceil*{
          \left(
            \frac{\chi_{n}^{2}(p)}{\varepsilon^{2}}
            - \frac{1}{\lambda_{i}}
          \right)
          \sigma^{2}}
      \right\}$$

provided $\sigma > 0$. If $\sigma^{2} \leq \varepsilon^{2} /
    \chi_{n}^{2}(p)$ the number of measurements simplifies to $$\label{eq:Gaussian-number-exact}
     Info-Greedy Sensing formulation: $\|a\|_0 \leq k_0$, where $k_0$ is the number of non-zero entries we allowed for $a$ vector. This is a non-convex integer program with non-linear cost function, which can be solved by outer approximation [@DuranGrossmannOuterApprox1986; @schrijver1986theory]. The idea of outer approximation is to generate a sequence of cutting planes to approximate the cost function via its subgradient and iteratively include these cutting planes as constraints in the original optimization problem. In particular, we initialize by solving the following optimization problem $$\begin{array}{rl}
\underset{a, r, z}{\mbox{maximize}} & z \\
\mbox{subject to} & \sum_{i=1}^n r_i \leq k_0 \\
& a_i \leq r_i, \quad -a_i \leq r_i \\
& 0 \leq z \leq c, \quad r_i \in \{0, 1\}, i = 1,\ldots,n \\
& a \in \mathbb{R}^n, \quad z \in \mathbb{R},
\end{array}
\label{sparse_a_solution}$$ where $r$ and $z$


of measurements required to obtain a reconstruction of the signal with a prescribed accuracy. Assume the sequential measurements $a_i$ are linear and the measurement returns ${a\sp{\intercal}}_i x$. Formally, let $\mathcal F$ be a family of signals of interest, and $F \in \mathcal F$ be a random variable with uniform distribution on $\mathcal F$. Denote by $A=(a_1,a_2,\dotsc)$ the sequence of measurements, and $y=(y_1,y_2,\dotsc)$ the sequence of measurement values: $y_i = {a\sp{\intercal}}_i x$. Let $\Pi = (A,y)$ denote the transcript of the measurement operations and $\Pi_i = (a_i,y_i)$ a single measurement/value pair. Note that $\Pi$ is a random variable of the picked signal $F$. Assume that the accuracy $\varepsilon$ is high enough to ensure a one-to-one correspondence between signal $F$ and the $\varepsilon$-ball it is contained in. Thus we canreturn the center of such an $\varepsilon$-ball as the reconstruction $\widehat x$ of $x$. In this regime, an $\varepsilon$-recovery of a signal $x$ is (information-theoretically) equivalent to learning the $\varepsilon$-ball that $x$ is contained in, and we can invoke the *reconstruction principle* $$\label{eq:conservation}
  \mutualInfo{F}{\Pi} = \entropy{F} = \log {\left|\mathcal F\right|},$$ i.e., the transcript has to contain the same information as $F$ and in fact uniquely identify it. With this model it was shown in [@bgp2013] that the total amount of information acquired, $\entropy{F}$, is equal to the sum of the conditional information per iteration:

\[thm:estimateRunningTime\] $$\label{eq:1}
\mutualInfo{F}{\Pi} = \sum_{i=1}^{\infty}
  \underbrace{\entropy[a_i,\Pi^{i-1}, M \geq i]{y_i}}  _{\text{\rm information gain by measurement $i$}}
  \probability{M\geq i},$$ where $\Pi^{i-1}$ is a shorthand for $\Pi^{i-1} \triangleq
(\Pi_1,\dotsc,\Pi_{i-1})$ and $M$ is the random variable of


GMM signals {#app:GMM}
==========================

Let $\widetilde{p}$ and $\widetilde{\mathbb{E}}$ denote the probability density function and expectation given $\{y_{j} : j < i\}$. Using [@PalomarVerdu2006; @MChenThesis; @CarsonChenRodrigues2012], the gradient of mutual information with respect to $a_i$ is given by $$\frac{\mutualInfo[y_j, j < i]{x}{y_i}}{\partial a_i}
= \frac{{E_i(a_i; y_j, j < i)\sp{\intercal}} a_i }{\sigma^2},
\label{gradient}$$ where ${E}_i(a_i; y_j, j < i) \in\mathbb{R}^{n\times n}$ is the MMSE matrix conditioned on measurements prior to $i$, which can be written as $$\begin{split}
  &E_i
  = \int \widetilde{p}(y) \cdot
  \\
  &
  \underbrace{\int \widetilde{p}(x \mid y_{i} = y)
    (x - \widetilde{\mathbb{E}}[x\mid y_i = y])
    {(x - \widetilde{\mathbb{E}}[x\mid y_i = y])\sp{\intercal}} dx}_{g(y)} dy.
    \end{split}
\label{Ei_def}$$ For GMM, a closed form formula for the integrand $g(y)$ can be derived.y_{i} = y, c] =
   \widetilde{\mu}_{c}(y)$, $\widetilde{\mathbb{E}}[x\mid y_{i} = y]  =
  \sum_{c=1}^{C} \widetilde{\pi}_{c} \widetilde{\mu}_{c}(y)
$. Based on the above results $$\begin{split}
&g(y)
     \\
   \hspace{-0.05in} = & \sum_{c = 1}^C  \widetilde{\pi}_c
    \{
    \widetilde{\Sigma}_c +(\widetilde{\mu}_{c}(y) - \sum_{c=1}^{C} \widetilde{\pi}_{c} \widetilde{\mu}_{c}(y))
    {(\widetilde{\mu}_{c}(y)
      - \sum_{c=1}^{C} \widetilde{\pi}_{c} \widetilde{\mu}_{c}(y))\sp{\intercal}}
    \}.
    \end{split}
    \label{g_def}$$ The closed form expression enables the gradient to be evaluated efficiently by drawing samples from $p(y)$ and computing direct Monte Carlo integration, as summarized in Algorithm \[alg:a\_grad\]. We stop the gradient descent iteration whenever the difference between two conditional mutual information drops below a threshold. The conditional mutual information


a change of basis: thus the signal in the new basis is $F^{-1} x$, the measurement vectors are ${F\sp{\intercal}} a_{i}$, the covariance matrices are $\Sigma_{w}^{-1} \Sigma$ for the signal $F^{-1} x$, and the identity matrix for the noise. In this basis, the algorithm is identical to that of for the white noise added prior to measurement case in Algorithm \[alg:Gaussian-all\], and hence reduces every eigenvalue of $\Sigma_{w}^{-1} \Sigma$ to be at most $\norm{\Sigma_{w}}^{-1} \frac{\varepsilon^{2}}{\chi_{n}^{2}(p)}$. Note that the noise model is $y_{i} = {({F\sp{\intercal}} a_{i})\sp{\intercal}} (F^{-1} x) +
{({F\sp{\intercal}} \widehat{a_{i}})\sp{\intercal}} (F^{-1} w)$, and therefore the power $\beta_{i}$ provided by the formula ${F\sp{\intercal}} a_{i} =
\sqrt{\beta_{i}} {F\sp{\intercal}} \widehat{a_{i}}$, i.e., $a_{i} = \sqrt{\beta_{i}} \widehat{a_{i}}$. In other words, the power $\beta_{i}$ is still the length of $a_{i}$ in the original basis. Let $\Sigma'$ denote theLions VS The Bears Tonight at Kickers — Who Ya Got? [POLL]http://banana1015.com/the-lions-vs-the-bears-tonight-at-kickers-who-ya-got-poll/
http://banana1015.com/the-lions-vs-the-bears-tonight-at-kickers-who-ya-got-poll/#commentsMon, 22 Oct 2012 16:04:45 +0000http://banana1015.com/?p=149932Continue reading…]]>Fantone will be back at tonight with the Banana Crew from a live broadcast from Kickers for Monday Night Football. Fantone will broadcast his show live from 8pm-11pm as the Detroit Lions take on the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field.

]]>http://banana1015.com/the-lions-vs-the-bears-tonight-at-kickers-who-ya-got-poll/feed/0Facebook, KickersEnter Here For A Trip For Two To Chicago For The Lions Gamehttp://banana1015.com/enter-here-for-a-trip-for-two-to-chicago-for-the-lions-game/
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]]>http://banana1015.com/enter-here-for-a-trip-for-two-to-chicago-for-the-lions-game/feed/0Jonathan Daniel, Getty ImagesWin A Trip To Chicago To See The Lions Take On The Bearshttp://banana1015.com/win-a-trip-to-chicago-to-see-the-lions-take-on-the-bears/
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    return result;
}

static void Main()
{

Console.WriteLine(romanToDecimal("V")); //Gibt 5 aus.
Console.WriteLine(romanToDecimal("XIX")); // Gibt 19 aus.
Console.WriteLine(romanToDecimal("MDXXVI"));// Gibt 1526 aus.
Console.WriteLine(romanToDecimal("MCCCXXXVII"));// Gibt 1337 aus.
}

}

A:

Replace works differently in C#, use substring to remove the first few characters matching:
    static int romanToDecimal(string romanNums)
    {
        int result = 0;
        int[] deci = { 1000, 900, 500, 400, 100, 90, 50,      boolean: ['x','y','z']
    });

    t.deepEqual(argv, {
        x : true,
        y : false,
        z : true,
        _ : [ 'one', 'two', 'three' ]
    });

    t.deepEqual(typeof argv.x, 'boolean');
    t.deepEqual(typeof argv.y, 'boolean');
    t.deepEqual(typeof argv.z, 'boolean');
    t.end();
});
test('boolean and alias with chainable api', function (t) {
    var aliased = [ '-h', 'derp' ];
    var regular = [ '--herp',  'derp' ];
    var


    t.same(aliasedArgv, expected);
    t.same(propertyArgv, expected);
    t.end();
});

test('boolean and alias with options hash', function (t) {
    var aliased = [ '-h', 'derp' ];
    var regular = [ '--herp', 'derp' ];
    var opts = {
        alias: { 'h': 'herp' },
        boolean: 'herp'
    };
    var aliasedArgv = parse(aliased, opts);
    var propertyArgv = parse(regular, opts);
    var expected = {
        herp: true,
        h: true,
        '_': [ if ClassType is not type and isinstance(cls, ClassType):
        exc = InstanceType(cls)
    else:
        exc = cls.__new__(cls)

    exc.args = args
    for name, attrval in attrs:
        setattr(exc, name, attrval)
    exc._remote_tb = tbtext
    return exc

class GenericException(Exception):
    """A 'generic exception' that is raised when the exception the gotten from
    the other party cannot be instantiated locally"""
    pass

_generic_exceptions_cache = {}
_exception_classes_cache = {}

def _get_exception_class(cls):
    if cls in _exception_classes_cache:
        return _exception_classes_cache[cls]

    # subclass the exception class' to


bowl, whisk together 1/3 cup olive oil, 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, 1 clove garlic and ¼ teaspoon each salt and pepper. Toss with raw carrots, lettuce and cabbage for a quick salad or serve with steamed vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower or green beans.› Photograph

Howcanigettallerus Easy On The Eye Make An Editableprintable Html Invoice Csstricks With Gorgeous What Is Proforma Invoice As Well As Invoice Com Additionally What Is A Paypal Invoice And Gorgeous This Of Course Cant Do Nearly All The Awesome Stuff Freshbooks Can Do But It Might Be Useful To Some Of You With Extremely Lightweight Invoicing Needs Via Csstrickscom

Howcanigettallerus Gorgeous This Of Course Cant Do Nearly All The Awesome Stuff Freshbooks Can Do But It Might Be Useful To Some Of You With Extremely Lightweight Invoicing Needs With Gorgeous Make An Editableprintable Html Invoice Csstricks And Easy On The Eye What Is Proforma Invoice As Well As Invoice Com Additionally What Is A Paypal Invoice With How To Make Invoice Also Ms Word Invoice Template In Addition


departments are in favor of regulating cryptocurrency. For example, policymakers gathered at Blockchain Summit India in February where cryptocurrency regulation was discussed. Among participants were the Department of Science and Technology, the State Government of Uttar Pradesh, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the Ministry of Law and Justice, the Ministry of Human Resources Development, and the Department of Information Technology.

“The summit is targeted towards enabling Indian government and ministries to speed up the process of developing a ﬂourished blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem,” the summit’s website describes. At the event, policymakers discussed how to “speed up the process of regulating cryptocurrency,” Janina Lowisz, Marketing VP at Cashaa, the event’s fintech partner, told news.Bitcoin.com. An announcement was made at the end of the summit stating that “The regulation iscryptocurrency regulation. The response he received was “No information available.”

A Lesson From Korea

It is not uncommon for government departments to disagree with one another. A classic example is what happened in South Korea last year when a government department announced, without consulting other departments, a plan to ban cryptocurrency trading and shut down crypto exchanges.

South Korean Justice Minister Park Sang-ki told reporters on Jan. 11 last year that his ministry was “preparing a bill to ban cryptocurrency trading through its exchanges,” many news outlets reported. Following his announcement, over $100 billion was wiped off global cryptocurrency markets.

However, Kim Dong-yeon, the South Korean Minister of Economy and Finance and Deputy Prime Minister at the time, told reporters the following day that “The issue of banning exchanges that the justice


a counter (as a one-off authentication code for a card transaction, or a one-step logon to a banking website) or a challenge (for a two-step logon). There is also a third mode of operation: if session takeover becomes a problem, the CAP calculator can also be used to authenticate transaction data. In this case, it's planned to have the customer enter the amount and the last eight digits of the payee account number into her CAP calculator.

But the result might not be as good in banking as it has been in the armed forces. First, when your wallet is stolen the thief might be able to read your PIN digits from the calculator—they will be the dirty and worn keys. If you just use one bank card, thenThis led to a serious risk of 'fratricide'—people shooting down their colleagues by mistake—and drove the development of systems to 'identify-friend-or-foe' (IFF). These were first fielded in World War II, and in their early form enabled an airplane illuminated by radar to broadcast an identifying number to signal friendly intent. In 1952, this system was adopted to identify civil aircraft to air traffic controllers and, worried about the loss of security once it became widely used, the U.S. Air Force started a research programme to incorporate cryptographic protection in the system. Nowadays, the typical air defense system sends random challenges with its radar signals, and friendly aircraft have equipment and keys that enable them to identify themselves with correct responses. The chapter on electronic warfare has more details


to buy new software, convert files (if they can), and retrain themselves.

These features separately can lead to industries with dominant firms; together, they are even more likely to. If users simply want to be compatible with other users (and software vendors) then they will logically buy from the vendor they expect to win the biggest market share.

## 7.3.2 The Value of Lock-In

There is an interesting result, due to Shapiro and Varian: that the value of a software company is the total lock-in (due to both technical and network effects) of all its customers [1159]. To see how this might work, consider a firm with 100 staff each using Office, for which it has paid $500 per copy. It could save this $50,000 by moving to OpenOffice, so ifan attack of conscience and started stuffing the cash he'd stolen in brown envelopes through the branch's letter box at night. As people don't normally give money to banks, the branch manager finally realized that something was seriously wrong.

Volume crime—such as card fraud—often depends on liability rules. Where banks can tell customers who complain of fraud to get lost (as in much of Europe), bank staff know that complaints won't be investigated properly or at all, and get careless. Things are better in the USA where Regulation E places the onus of proof in disputed transaction cases squarely on the bank. I'll discuss this in detail in section 10.4 below.

All the really large frauds—the cases over a billion dollars—have involved lax internal controls. The collapse of Barings Bank


sacked each year. The typical offence is minor embezzlement with a loss of a few thousand dollars. No-one has found an effective way of predicting which staff will go bad; previously loyal staff can be thrown off the rails by shocks such as divorce, or may over time develop a gambling or alcohol habit. Losing a few hundred tellers a year is simply seen as a cost of doing business. What banks find very much harder to cope with are incidents in which senior people go wrong—indeed, in several cases within my experience, banks have gone to great lengths to avoid admitting that a senior insider was bent. And risks that managers are unwilling to confront, they are often unable to control. No-one at Barings even wanted toare not usually online.

The main protection goal in these systems is to prevent the stored-value tokens being duplicated or forged en masse. Duplicating a single subway ticket is not too hard, and repeating a magic number a second time is trivial. This can be made irrelevant if we make all the tokens unique and log their use at both ends. But things get more complicated when the device that accepts the token does not have a channel of communication back to the ticket issuer, so all the replay and forgery detection must be done offline—in a terminal that is often vulnerable to physical attack. So if we simply encipher all our tokens using a universal master key, a villain could extract it from a stolen terminal and set


to abuse the programming circuit. This circuit is designed to send a pulse to melt the fuse, but stop once the resistance drops, as this means the metal has melted and established contact. If the pulse weren't stopped then the metal might vaporise and go open circuit again. So the programming circuit has sensors to detect whether a fuse is open or short, and if these aren't sufficiently disabled after programming they can be used to read the bitstream out.
  * The brute-force approach is to determine the presence of blown antifuses using optical or electron microscopy, for example by removing the top metal layer of the chip and looking at the vias directly. This can be extremely tedious, but brute force attacks have been done onto reconstruct hardware circuits rather than simply clone software, and to force them to use more expensive processors in their pirate cards. In the first such implementation, the crypto processor was a separate chip packaged into the card, and it had an interesting protocol failure: it would always work out the key needed to decrypt the current video stream, and then pass it to the CPU which would decide whether or not to pass it on to the outside world. Hackers broke this by developing a way to tap into the wiring between the two chips.

Later implementations have the crypto hardware built into the CPU itself. Where this consists of just a few thousand gates, it is feasible for an attacker to reconstruct the circuit manually from micrographs


proxies are set up to break encryption by doing middleperson attacks on TLS. Even if you think you're giving an encrypted credit card number to Amazon, your encrypted session may just be with your employer's web proxy, while it runs another encrypted session with Amazon's web server. I'll discuss TLS later in this chapter.

### 21.4.2.4 Ingress Versus Egress Filtering

At present, most firewalls look outwards and try to keep bad things out, but a growing number look inwards and try to stop bad things leaving. The pioneers were military mail systems that monitor outgoing traffic to ensure that nothing classified goes out in the clear; around 2005 some ISPs started looking at outgoing mail traffic to try to detect spam. The reason is that ISPs which host lots ofsignals. The idea was that a video or music track might be unmarked, or marked 'never copy', or marked 'copy once only'; compliant players would not record a video marked 'never copy' and when recording one marked 'copy once only' would change its mark to 'never copy'. Commercially sold videos would be marked 'never copy', while TV broadcasts and similar material would be marked 'copy once only'. In this way, the DVD players available to consumers would allow unlimited copying of home videos and time-shifted viewing of TV programmes, but could not easily be abused for commercial piracy.

The proposed mechanisms depended on hiding one or more copyright marks in the content, and are reviewed in [193, 800]. For each disk, choose a ticket X, which can be a


to verify certain properties of cryptographic protocols. The working engineer's take on formal methods may be that they're widely taught in universities, but not used anywhere in the real world. This isn't quite true in the security business. There are problems—such as designing crypto protocols—where intuition is often inadequate, and formal verification can be helpful. Military purchasers go further, and require their use as a condition of higher levels of evaluation under the Orange Book and the Common Criteria. (I'll discuss this further below.) For now, it's enough to say that this restricts high evaluation levels to relatively small and simple products such as line encryption devices and operating systems for primitive computers such as smartcards.

Even so, formal methods aren't infallible. Proofs can have errors too; and oftento find that only some very basic features of the product have been evaluated. The vendor might have evaluated the boot code, but left most of the operating system outside the scope. This applies not just to CC evaluations, but to FIPS-140 as well; in the chapter on API Security I told how the IBM 4758 was evaluated by the U.S. government to the highest standard of physical tamper-resistance, and yet broken easily. The evaluators looked only at the tamper-resistant platform, while the attackers also looked at the software that ran on it.

Another fundamental problem is that the Criteria are technology-driven, when in most applications it's the business processes that should drive protection decisions. Technical mechanisms shouldn't be used where the exposure is less than the cost of


users will cooperate in finding and removing bugs; and where its economics include strong network effects. Security passes all these tests.

Some people have argued that while openness helps the defenders find bugs so they can fix them, it will also help the attackers find bugs so they can exploit them. Will the attackers or the defenders be helped more? In 2002 I proved that, under the standard model of reliability growth, openness helps attack and defence equally [54]. Thus whether an open or proprietary approach works best in a given application will depend on whether and how that application departs from the standard assumptions, for example, of independent vulnerabilities. As an example, a study of security bugs found in the OpenBSD operating system revealed that these bugs werestatistical tools to measure and predict failure. We should also tackle some taboo subjects. Why did the Millennium Bug not bite?

# 26.7 Further reading

There is a whole industry devoted to promoting the assurance and evaluation biz, supported by mountains of your tax dollars. Their enthusiasm can even have the flavour of religion. Unfortunately, there are nowhere near enough people writing heresy.

1 The same may happen with FIPS 140-1 now that commercial companies are starting to rely on it for third-party evaluations.
27

Conclusions

We are in the middle of a huge change in how security is done.

Ten years ago, the security manager of a large company was usually a retired soldier or policemen, for whom 'computer security' was an unimportant speciality he left to the computer department, with occasional help from


SM Bellovin, "Permissive Action Links", at <http://www.research.att.com/smb/nsam-160/>

[154] SM Bellovin, "ICMP Traceback Messages", Internet Draft, March 2000, at <http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-bellovin-itrace-00.txt>

[155] SM Bellovin, "More on Comcast Blocking Peer-to-Peer Traffic", Oct 22 2007, at <http://www.cs.columbia.edu/smb/blog/2007-10/2007-10-22.html>; and "Comcast Apparently Blocking Some Peer-to-Peer Traffic", Oct 19 2007, ibid.

[156] S Bellovin, M Blaze, E Brickell, C Brooks, V Cerf, W Diffie, S Landau, J Peterson, J Treichler, Security Implications of Applying the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act to Voice over IP <http://www.itaa.org/news/docs/CALEAVOIPreport.pdf>

[157] SM Bellovin, WR Cheswick, Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker, Addison-Wesley [1994]; ISBN: 0-201-63357-4

[158] SM Bellovin, M Merritt, Encrypted Key Exchange: Password-Based Protocols Secure Against Dictionary Attacks, in Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy [1992] pp 72–84

[159] M Benantar, R Guski, KM Triodle, Access control systems: Fromturbulent waves. Bathed in the orange light of sodium vapor street lamps, his eyes see only barely a blur through the tightly wrapped scarf. After a block and a half, he finally looks up into the face of the wind.

There it is, he thinks to himself. Through the dense blowing snow and a swaying, lone nearby street lamp, he sees a huge hulking brick building half a block away. A great green neon sign blinks brightly through the near whiteout blizzard blur, _Mo Rún_.

What the hell does that mean?

Infra red sensors and imaging devices automatically begin to track his movement.

Approaching closer, he sees that, whatever it means, it's big. "Holy shit," he mutters under his breath, "Look at the size of it, what the hell is this, a


over to a scanner on top of the cabinet beneath the big screen and scans the image. The snapshot appears in a window on the screen. "Todd, see that everybody sees this?"

"You bet."

"Any idea why she said she won't be here until late tomorrow night?" asks Mary.

"She didn't have a car with her. I guess she has some plan to try catching a ride with someone headed this way, I don't know. I hope she's all right. You don't think she actually tells me anything, do you?"

"Join the club," says David looking crossly at Mary.

"The less you know, the better," Mary shoots back.

"See what I mean?"

"Anyway, before these two start throwing things, tell me, where's your laptop now?" asks Todd, changing the topic.

"I locked it in the trunktraced it. She said it was a fixed IP address in Omaha. From there it wasn't much of a problem to look up the domain registration which had a company name and this address, your company, we assumed. We even looked at this place on a satellite map."

David laughs and says, "Wow, clever dude, I didn't think those posts would point back here. I'll have to use proxies in the future. I guess you really are into investigative reporting. And, you've learned something about computers since I last saw you. All you did with a computer back in college was play video games."

"I still play video games."

"Mike, sorry about the security thing. We just need to be careful. I'll explain later. But, right now, there's an empty apartment


the same as yours?"

"Yep, they all are. It's all yours. Check the closets in the bedroom, I think that's where they've been storing the better droppings, after they've washed them, that is. When we get enough, we send them over to the Salvation Army along with a cash donation. Not exactly sure what they do with a lot of club clothes but I guess there's a lot of homeless dressed to party in Omaha."

"I think some of them party too much as it is."

"Ahh, I think that may be so. If you want to wash up, go ahead. Sorry I don't have a key, we don't much need them up here. Not a lot of public access. The elevator has closed circuit cameras and no one gets upcall them engineers on a train?"

"It's software that interfaces between the operating system and the hardware."

"Nothing to do with trains?"

"Nope. Nothing at all. I want you to meet Lance, Todd you met before," he says gesturing to Lance and Todd successively.

"Hi Lance, glad to meet you. You don't play with trains too, do you?" says Mike as he walks around the table and shakes hands with Lance then picks up a plate, pulls a piece of pizza onto it and sits on the couch to David's left.

Lance laughs and says, "No, I got other toys."

"What are all these windows on the display?" asks Mike.

"We're watching the news coverage on your escape from Des Moines. Seems you've upset a few schedules on the railroad, just a bit," says Todd.

"Actually,


windows."

"Isn't that stuff normally encoded?"

The guys laugh. Lance says, "Yeah, they think so. But we don't."

"You mean you steal satellite signals?"

"Hey, if it lands here, we own it," says Lance firmly.

"Oh. How many dishes you got and where are they? I didn't see any when I came in but, then again, I could barely see the building itself in the snow."

"You need to see my little roof top array. We got lots of dishes, C-band, Ku-band, big ones, little ones, uplinks, downlinks, most we camouflage so wandering photo satellites don't get too suspicious," brags Lance.

"You got any missiles up there too?"

"Not yet but he keeps saying he's gonna install some real soon," says Todd. "Personally, I think he already has. Don't really know what he's up to halfof the building.

The ostensible business of the warehouse is paper goods. All kinds, from napkins to corrugated cardboard. Joe inherited the business from his father and has run it for many years. His trucks range across most of the Midwest and beyond making pickups and deliveries.

Joe Schmidt is a pasty, paunchy, middle aged guy with a fat wife with unrealistic social ambitions. Joe's personality is essentially that of a dirt lot used car salesman, he'll do anything for a buck so long as it doesn't involve any effort on his part. Joe is partial to plaid sports jackets, heavily patterned ties, and pants of a polyester look.

About ten years ago Joe got into financial trouble and found that his only offer for a bailout came with strings attached.


as pets. Most are totally tame and will land on your finger. They've become completely immune to the noise and they've learned to sing along with the bands. Some of them will fly down to the stage and perch on the mics and chirp right along. I think they've figured out what an amplifier is. That's quite a sight," he comments, gesturing through the rafters with his laser pointer.

"I'll bet they sing real nice. Any rappers?"

"No, not yet. Not that I know of. The place is becoming a freaking bird sanctuary."

"Neat! David's Aviary and Boozer. "

"Now, can we get back to the tour?"

"What are all those things that look like antennas?" asks Mike pointing at short black rods extending from several of the rafters.

"Antennas. They're part of thelocated around the world and, because of their speed, we attract a lot of traffic and thus can see the paths of many messages at once. With careful analysis of the timings of messages as they emerge from our candidate in the Gaza, we can develop a statistical picture of the hidden network that the guys use. With any luck, we can find the destination and bingo, fried terrorist and no bombs tonight."

"I think you could make a lot of enemies this way, dedicated enemies, man!" says Mike.

"I think you're right. But I'm very discreet and like you, I've taken precautions. I've got my own dead man switches installed on all this. If they get me, all material we don't normally publicize becomes public very quickly. Also, I


and programmers. Sometimes you just see the initials, _AYBABTU_. Todd has a whole closet of geek t-shirts. He collects them."

David points over towards the stage and says, "There's Lance over there. He runs the security crew, the bouncers and that sort of thing."

"What's with him? He looks like a bodybuilder or something?" Mike asks.

"Ahhh, I think I should fill you in there. He's originally from some small town about a hundred miles north west of here. He played football in college then worked for an insurance company for a while but didn't like it so he went back to school and got an M.S. in criminal justice then did a Ph.D. in information technology. After that, he started an information systems security consulting business here in Omaha."

"How'd youin the trade from Minneapolis to New Orleans. Suffice it to say, he's not an easy guy to deal with. And I had access to everything and he knows that. He's not gonna take what happened yesterday with the train very well."

"Ahh, probably not. Train wrecks piss people off, I hear," says David.

"Also, your friend Stan's murder could not have happened without Jack knowing and approving. For all I know, I might even have a record of what he paid to have the job done on my computer. Like I said, I copied everything and they kept surprisingly detailed records, in code, of course."

David looks at Todd, Todd at David and both back at Mike then David says, "Well, then, I guess we can assume that they probably


man, marijuana, pot, cannabis, weed."

"I live and learn, serves me right for being a druggie in college," says David, as he rolls his eyes.

"Okay, vocabulary lesson over. You do understand what I just told you? There's big trouble headed this way," says Mike.

"I do indeed. For now, we lie low and watch and see what develops. For starters, a lot of extra security. And you, stay upstairs when the club is open. There's no way they can get up there," says David.

"And I'll crack their phone network. I've got your list of numbers. My computers will scan for any activity in Omaha on any of those caller ID's."

Mike says, "No, man, I can't drag you into this. Ya'know, maybe when Jay gets here we should really leave andmetal against metal, wood against wood, doors slamming, some tubular piece of metal crashing like a bell on the stone floor. The racket of menial tasks permeates with an occasional shout or shrill whistle, the sound of roadies setting up for the evening's rock act remurmurs.

The last shafts of violet and pink light glow through the skylights. The scarce final beams of day reflect on edges of the glass and splay out as wide rainbows of light on the walls high above. The blue sky darkens to purple.

Mike watches as pin spots have their bulbs reloaded. The disco balls are dusted and polished. Mylar confetti guns are loaded and the main stage spots are tested. The sound system blares a screech of shrill audio feedback followed by, "Testing


they make the chip for me."

"Expensive?"

"Not really, mainly gate arrays. Anyhow, after a few years at OSU, I went to Wash-U and did my D.Sc. in computer science."

"Did you ever have anything to do with Stan's crusade against the drug lords?"

"No, I was back in school then. I knew about it but was too busy finishing my thesis at the time. I used to see David and Stan occasionally. We'd sometimes run into one another at a bar or Shaw's Gardens. We were all plant freaks back then. I still do a lot of bonsai's upstairs."

"Yeah, I noticed some when David gave me the tour of the machine room. They're real nice, I like them."

"They love the climate controlled atmosphere up there and the fluorescent lights are perfect."

"So,and goes back into the apartment. He reaches into a desk near the door and pulls out a small wireless microphone which he slips into his shirt pocket.

"You think I should come along?"

"Ahh, no. They may know you're here but let's not give the whole store away."

"And about the guns?"

"Yeah, like either of them could shoot straight after as many beers as they've had? Don't worry, you see how many guys I got working the floor? We got guns too. And then there's Mary."

"Still sounds risky."

"Yeah, but they don't know Mary. I'll have Lance arrange some backup, just in case. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how they react to the frontal approach. The _let'em look around_ strategy didn't work too well."

"I'm not sure I like your idea


of fun."

"Don't worry. I'll be all right. Go watch on the monitor."

"It's your funeral," say Mike as David leaves the apartment and Mike lights a cigarette and slouches on the couch watching the display focused on Tom and Bob at their table drinking beers and talking to one another, oblivious that they're being watched from all sides.

David threads his way across the floor to Todd's command post and says, "Anything new?"

"No, they've been just talking to people and drinking for the past hour," shrugs Todd.

"Yeah, we've been watching upstairs on the cameras. Did you see them talking with that group of women earlier when they started pointing over at the elevator door?"

"Yep."

"Then one of them told Mary someone said Mike was living upstairs. Must'a been one of theapartment, as he and they other guys listen to Tom and Bob, Mary walks in and sits next to David. "Go peel me a grape, honey."

"Go peel your own grape, this is important."

She gives a dirty look and gets up and heads for the kitchen where she opens a cabinet and pulls down a bottle of something red and very expensive. She takes it, an opener and a long stemmed goblet back to the living room and hands the bottle and opener to David who does the honors.

He pours her a libation then shuts down the audio feed from Tom and Bob's car. He turns to Mike and says, "Who's this Joe they're referring to with the warehouse?"

"Joe runs the show here in Omaha. The warehouse is his


"Either of you know it? What'ya think?"

"Nope, I know that part of town, probably driven past it but I don't know the place specifically," says Lance.

"Me neither," says Todd as he turns to Mike and asks, "Any idea where they might meet this Pete from Des Moines?"

Mike says, "Sure, in Joe's office. It's on the first floor, south west corner."

"Windows?"

"Yeah, facing south and west but they're painted over."

"Are they storm windows or double-paned?"

"No, just plain old plate glass with putty. That warehouse was built in the 30's."

"Good," then turns to David and says, "I think we can handle it from the cross street next to that parking lot."

"What are you going to do," Mike asks?

David says, "We're going to fasten a small radio transponder on the outside ofsit down and figure out what happens next," says David as he points them back into the apartment.

Once inside, Jay, looking around at the apartment, says, "Whoa, what a wicked place, dude."

Heading for the kitchen, David says, "Glad you like it, I think? What'ya drinking?"

"Got any gin and quinine?"

David reaching into a cabinet and pulling out a bottle and a glass, he pours it out and says, "This is a bar. Yeah, we got gin and tonic. Only in New England do they still call it quinine." He fetches a bottle of tonic water from the fridge.

"Well, that's what it is. Anyway, _tonic_ means soft drink or what you provincials call _pop_. What, no lime? What kind of a bar is this?"

David reaches back into the fridge and


and he begins transferring a copy of its contents into a folder on one of his servers. Once copied, he dismounts the player and hands it back to Jay.

"That's about 20 gigs worth of data. Lots of image scans?"

"Ea-up, lots of nice pictures," says Jay.

"Ea-up? Where are you from?" says David.

"Ahh, Laconia, New Hampshire, about sixty miles northwest of Portsmouth."

"You may need a translator. Jay doesn't speak American English very well. As I understand it, _wicked_ means good, emphatic agreement, or something like that. _Ea-up_ means yes or a general acknowledgment," says Mike to David then to Jay, "So, how the hell did you get here? It took you long enough."

"Bus, man, the bus. Went from Columbia to Kansas City. Took me the whole frigging night because ofthat took Mike's car while we were checking out the club, they must have spotted us. Ya'know, the more I think about it, that bouncer at the door last night, I think he was the one in the lobby at the motel. It looked like him, I think. Right?" says Tom.

"Hey, yeah, that was it! That was how they did us."

"Yeah, you might be right. And we showed Mike's picture to that waitress. She must have known Mike was there. She could have tipped off Shea. It really wasn't our fault," says Tom. "We were just doing what we were told to."

"But I still don't see how that's gonna help us much. I wonder what the full story is about Mike. Did you ever think he was really


a killing when he sold his company a few years before he moved here."

"Joe, I'm on a tight schedule. Certain people want Mike taken out of circulation now and by now, they mean now. Am I being clear?"

"Yeah, very clear."

"Right. So, if that's where he is, I want to know what we're up against."

"We'll do what we can, we don't want any problems," says Joe.

"Now, you two," as he turns to Tom and Bob, "Tell me what you saw last night."

Tom begins nervously, "It's like Joe said, a big, old red brick warehouse, a block long on each side, about five stories high. When you're inside, the central dance floor part goes all the way to the roof. Above, around the sides are the upper floors with balconiesthe one they use to make the room keycards. Also, I can monitor Jack's Internet traffic in St. Louis and see if anything turns up, like emails or IM's. And I can access that fax server in Des Moines too."

"How do you do that?" asks Todd.

"They use a Virtual Private Network, VPN, running through a proxy server. I've got the passwords to the proxy and the fax server. I can monitor all its traffic."

"Sweet," says Todd. "In the meantime, after he checks in and we capture his keycard data, I can send some people in and we'll bug his room. He said he had a laptop. Any idea what kind?"

"Oh yeah, it's a nice one, wireless, big disk, dual core, built in microphone and web cam too. It's


the door with a grocery store bag full of things. Mary takes the bag from him and says, "Well if you want some real food I might as well do the honors." She looks inside the bag and then at Jay and says, "I don't suppose you can cook or anything?"

"I got a USB coffee mug warmer, does that count?"

"Yeah, she once tried to cook supper on it. Nearly killed me and the laptop both," says Mike.

"What do you live on?"

"Mikey does the cooking. I put up with it as long as it keeps him out'a my hair. So, let him help, but personally, I don't think he's very good at it."

"You must be a joy to live with," says Mary, "Okay, then I guess it's up toinserts the plug. Lights blink on the back of her laptop as the network interface activates. A box pops up on David's display.

Jay calls out to David at the window, pointing at the keyboard saying, "Do you mind?"

"No, go ahead says David. Do what you need to."

"Are you crazy? Are you really gonna let her mess with your computer?"

"Yeah, well, it can be repaired. She seems to know what she's doing."

"Yeah, but wait until she tries to cook with it."

"You know, there are USB rocket launchers available. You might want to be a little more careful in your choice of words," Jay mutters without looking up.

After watching the telephoto camera shot of the van for several minutes, Mike says, "I guess he's just gonna sit there."

"Yep, just watching.


odd but, who knows? Must be a lot'a lights there. So okay, if we cut the club's power, then the street lights in the area stay on, right?"

"Yep. That substation only feeds the club, nothing else. Like I said, they got a dedicated substation. If you want their lights out for a while, I'll hit the substation. Otherwise, I can just take out one of the overhead lines."

"No, I want the power out for a while. I want their heat off too. That will surely make'em come out."

"Okay, Then I'll hit the substation."

"Good. Then we're okay to cut their power and start the party at ten pm tonight?"

"Right. The substation will be history at exactly ten pm."

"How many guys will you be able to put on the streetlook the place over just in case this doesn't work. The power station will be blown at ten pm. You know what to do."

"Right, no problem," says Mark. Pete hangs up.

Mary says, getting up, "Well, then, sounds like intermission. So, it's my turn. You!" pointing at Jay. "You're coming with me. We'll see if we can fix you up a bit."

Jay looks around at the others who are grinning. Mike says, "You've gotta go, resistance is futile, dude."

"No, I'm too young to die, save me, someone, save me!" says Jay in a melodramatic Theda Bara pose, palm outwards, across her forehead.

"Nope. It's your turn. Face it like a geek. Ya'know, whine incessantly, throw a tantrum, hide in the corner curled up in the fetal position and wail uncontrollably.


noisy are they? I never did like airplanes."

"Duh? Yes. But we vent them through the old chimney and anyway, with the racket on the dance floor, who'd notice?" says David.

"Mike doesn't like noisy mechanical things except that lead sled of a car of his," offers Jay.

"Hey, watch what you say. That lead sled saved my life! Anyway, I like you and, geeez, the noise I get from you!"

"Oh you love it. I'm the only one who takes you seriously."

He raises his head and shakes it then says, "Why me, Lord? Okay, Now what about the smoke bombs and gasoline?"

"Oh, I'll take care of them," says Lance.

"You do this a lot?" asks Mike.

"You'd be surprised what I do, dude," says Lance.

"Ahh, don't fill me in, please."

Lance and Todd getup and wander off to their duties, Jay continues to fiddle with her laptop. David sacks out and Mike helps Mary clean up the kitchen.

Time: 8 PM

It's 8 o'clock and Mike is lounging on David's couch, one foot on up on the table, watching the main entrance in one window while playing a video game in another. David's over by the window watching the traffic below. Jay is banging away at her laptop as usual with two cigarettes absentmindedly lit in the same ashtray to her left and a cold cup of coffee to her right. Mike spots Sid walk in through the main entrance and start going through security.

"Hey, it's one of them," calls Mike.

As Sid hands over his ID, another one of the bouncers distracts his


and looks around and up into the atrium vault above. "Geez," he says quietly to himself, "What a freaking palace. Tom and Bob were right!"

Around him are over a hundred people, mainly under thirty, milling about, laughing, drinking and generally having a good time. In the central dance floor, a few dozen couples are dancing to some recorded music which reverberates through out the open space above.

He wanders over to the middle of the bar, orders a beer and, holding it in one hand, turns to face the dance floor. His elbows lean against the bar behind him. He surveys the growing crowd as a steady stream of people now pours through the main door. Gazing intently upwards, his eyes, starting to adjust to the darkness, begin tothat feeds the club a few blocks away.

Mark and Sid sit at the bar for a few minutes watching the crowd and drinking their beers. Mark says, "They seemed kind'a nice?"

"Yeah, real nice. Too bad we won't be coming here after tonight."

They go back to crowd watching while the gang in David's apartment are watching them. Soon Mark looks at his watch and says, "Hey, it's getting near ten, we better get moving."

Sid quickly finishes his beer and they head for the coat room. As they pass Lance, he looks at them and says, "Later, dudes!"

Lance heads for Todd's console where he can get a full view of the events about to unfold and better coordinate his security team in the event of something unexpected. Todd's already switched


Joe.

"Yeah, I know. But we're burning it to the ground. The fires on the top floor and a few fire bombs on the first floor should do the trick. This will send a little message not to fuck with Jack. Jack wants the news organizations to know that he doesn't like investigations. He'll love it."

"You told him yet?"

"No, it's a surprise."

"Yeah, he'll be surprised, that's for sure," says Sid.

"Well, guys, that's the plan. Smoke bombs and fireworks first, then the break in, then the fire. Any questions?" says Pete.

"Shit, that's a lot of collateral damage," says Mark.

"Did you clear this with Jack yet?" asks Joe.

"No. I don't need to. Jack wants me to take care of this business. And I'm gonna send a message. This is the message.a gigabyte is?"

"It's bigger than a megabyte, I know that. Says it can hold forty hours of video or 7,500 songs. Geez, are there 7,500 songs?"

"Probably."

"I never could figure how you're supposed to get the video into it? Do they connect to a camcorder, or something?" Tom puzzles.

"No. You connect it to a computer. That's how they load them."

"Ahhh, so you need a computer too. This could run into money. I guess I'll stick to radio. But I still would like to have one, with or without video."

Bob pokes through the audio section looking at bulky systems with bulging speakers while Tom wanders over to a large flat panel TV with an electric guitar attached. He picks it up and quickly discovers that he can _play_ the guitar


the climate. He's setting up something nasty. I got a real bad feeling about this."

"Yeah, so do I but what the fuck are we gonna do about it? What can we do? Nothing, that's what."

"Let's get out of here. Let's get the fuck out of Nebraska. Let's get into the car and drive to California, man. We can make it. If we stay here, I don't think we're gonna live very long," says Bob.

"Listen, we just do as we're told and hope for the best. Joe'll take care of us. Forget about running, we're stuck here. We have no money, no families, no friends, nowhere to hide. Now let's go get some damn coats, we look like shit. Then we get the other stuff."

They walk sullenly off towardsThey hop outside the car and quickly strip off the old coats. They're still both wearing their 'club' shirts from two nights before. Rapidly putting on the new coats, they jump quickly back into the car. Bob says, "Put the heater up, it's cold out there."

"You bet. Hey, that doesn't look half bad."

"Yeah, I guess so. Yours looks okay too. I guess we'll get through this winter if we don't go surfing in the slush anymore."

"I can remember when we did that all the time," sighs Tom.

"Yeah, I also remember how your mother nearly killed us for ruining our coats then, too."

Then they sit there waiting smoking cigarettes and listening to the radio. About ten minutes later, a car pulls in and parks next to them. Joe gets


Anyway, half of them will be on fire. Nothing distracts a crowd like someone running by burning like a torch," says Joe laughing a bit. "Anyway, we're gonna set off a few car bombs across the street and in front of the club. No one will notice you guys. The place'll be a mad house. Piece of cake."

"It still sounds like we could end up being used for target practice," says Bob.

"Don't worry, it'll go down fine. The fires will be their main concern. You'll have it done in less than 30 seconds then get the fuck outa there."

"Oh man, this isn't good," says Bob. "You really want to kill and maim all those people?"

"Hey, it's no skin off my back. It'll be no problem," Joe says coldly.discount electronics departments throughout Iowa. He shows them the video phone and how to contact the others in the club and how to contact his console at the bar. Then he says, "Give me your cell phones."

"Okay, but what do you want these for?"

"Because we've infected all the phones in Pete's cell phone calling network with some virus code. I'll have it removed from yours and send them back up in a little while. When you get them back, don't use them, because the numbers can be traced. You don't want anyone to know you're here, do you?"

"No, definitely not," says Bob as he hands Todd his cell phone. Tom does the same.

Todd gets up to leave saying the food will be along shortly. After he goes, Bob


you wanted to, what would it be?"

"I still think I'd like to do landscape work if I had the money to get the equipment."

"Yeah, that would be real nice. Maybe then we can still do that, right Bob?"

"Maybe in LA."

Lois and Jane give Tom and Bob a haircut and some highlights, something they never had before. Then they have them dress up in the new clothes and present themselves. The girls pamper them. Tom and Bob are ecstatic. The girls agree, they've done their good deed for the day. Tom and Bob are definitely enjoying the afternoon.

Then Mary pulls out a camera and says, "Okay boys, let's get some pictures." She takes their pictures together and individually from several angles. They feebly protest but willingly cooperate.

"Okay guys, youabout them as well."

"So am I," replies Jay. "Mikey gets very difficult when there are loud noises."

"Yeah, I guessed that. Anyway, not much we can do besides wait and watch and try to think of every contingency. They're coming and there's no way to stop them."

Time: 11 AM

By 11 am Joe is back at the warehouse where Mark and Sid are already waiting for him. Once in the office, Joe calls out on the paging system for Dan, Bill, Roger, and Nick to come to the office. These are the guys from the warehouse crew he's picked to do the top floor tonight. Two others, Steve and Harry, have just arrived from Sioux City. Joe takes them out into the warehouse leaving the others behind in his office.


ten or fifteen cars. The walls are cinder block, painted gray, stained with soot and grease. The windows are dirt covered frosted glass set about 10 feet above the floor. The floor itself is marked by the blackened grease and the tread marks of many years of use. Old tires are piled in corners. Metal benches are covered with old tools, and tattered manuals. Rusted old car parts lie about in the corners. The remnants of posters and old cheesecake calendars hang on the walls. One shop light with two long tubes hangs humming and buzzing above and provides the only light.

Mike sees the van with his would-be killers in the middle of the floor directly beneath the shop light. His old car is parked in a stallThe prospect of three days on the road to Barstow with these drivers made the four very serious about keeping the door closed. A few shots are fired at the door but they fail to penetrate the thick metal panel. After several minutes of unaccepted solicitations, the truckers pee on the floor and stomp back to their big sleeper and drive off.

Cautiously the four creep back into the small lobby when they hear the truck roar off in the distance. They look with relief as they see its tail lights recede. That relief is short as, from their left, about two miles distant, they spot highway patrol cars, lights flashing, heading their way fast. One of the four quickly says to the others, "Okay, here's the story, we


were kidnapped by those two truckers and escaped here. Got it?"

"Where were we kidnapped?" asks one.

"I dunno, back in Omaha a block southwest of that club where we waited in Joe's van. Say we were going to the club when we were held up at gun point. My car's near there anyway. Don't say anything about what happened at the club, we know nothing. Tell'em it happened about 9:30."

"They'll never buy it."

"You got a better story? After that mess at the club, they won't give damn about us. You heard the shooting and the screaming back there. The police will only be interested in that case right now. Just say we were kidnapped at gun point. Anyway, the bullet holes in the door will prove we're telling thethe cops zip the body bags. Then I got the still pictures of Harry and Steve on the stage, one of the kid getting hit in the groin, several of the lasers toasting their hands, some of Harry and Steve hitting the floor, the crowd attacking them and some shots of what was left of them and, finally, the body bag shots. The site's been hit more than a half a million times and the videos are all over the Internet. Wanna see?" says Jay.

"Yeah, let's see," says David.

Jay hits a few keys and a screen rumbles down on the stage and an overhead video projector switches on. After about thirty seconds, it reaches full brightness and they all watch the replay and view the stills. Jay displays


first dose of coffee for the day. Jack lives in a spacious condominium in one of the nicer old gated communities near Forest Park. Jack is about fifty. He's been in the crime business all his life as was his father before him. Jack's dad had connections and Jack used them. He started out in Vegas running money laundering then got promoted to dean of discipline in LA. He left an impressive body count and few dissatisfied customers, at least, none that ever complained. He acceded to the Midwest barony when the previous incumbent met with an untimely early demise. Jack was good at arranging that sort of thing. In St. Louis, Jack ruled an inland empire of drugs, prostitution, smuggling, gambling, loan sharking and just about everyother vice known to man and beast. He had the political establishment of six states in his pocket. No one messed with Jack. His fuse was short and his reach was long.

But he freezes when he hears the news and watches angrily as the operation in Omaha collapses in a shambles. By now, the networks have begun to ask whether there's a connection between the small time drug dealers discovered on the interstate and the events at the club although there is no solid evidence of such. Not that the networks need any actual evidence, but because it gives them an excuse to show the lurid footage of four scantily clad guys, one with blood stains on his underwear. It's a ratings game, after all.

Jack now realizes that


path as they proceed.

"They got here pretty quick," says David.

"Well, there are airplanes, ya'know. There's a commuter run between here and KC about five times a day. With the right incentive, you can have very prompt service and I'm sure Jack paid for the best," says Lance.

The elevator stops on several floors until just Pete and his two visitors from KC are left. On the top floor Pete gets out. The two follow him. About half way down the hall, he begins to be uneasy. He walks faster. They walk faster. He begins to run to get to the safety of his room. They run faster. They hit him from behind smashing his face against the door just as he tries to swipe the keycard through the lock.screams halts abruptly in a crashing thud of impact that echoes throughout the massive open space. Pete's descent terminates among the luncheon buffet's crab dip platters. Little cocktail forks thrust into the flesh of his unconscious corpse.

Plates, silverware, serving trays, bowls and utensils fly upward in all directions. There is, for a fraction of a second, absolute, stunned, dead silence, followed immediately by the thundering clatter and crash of all those items sent airborne returning back to the earth. Another moment of silence except for the sounds of round platters spiraling about on the floor. Then bottles of wine and liquor that have fallen, finish their roll across the tables and begin to crash on the brick floor beneath.

The sound of shattering glass is followed by the first


called the hitmen. They all get a big laugh wondering what their reaction was to Todd's greeting.

"Probably wet their pants," says Jay.

They continue to chatter as Jay's somewhat erratic New England driving style careens them merrily towards the club. She parks the SUV in the lot behind. They all go in and straight to David's apartment. Waiting there are Mike, Todd and Mary who watched and heard most of what transpired via Pete's hacked laptop until the hitman stuffed it in the bag. They watched the lobby security cam until the explosion took it out. Now they're waiting for full play-by-play.

David, Jay and Lance collapse on the couches and Todd says, "Wow! Didn't see that coming."

"No shit!" says Lance. "Those guys were pros. In, out, quick, and splashy."

"Jackbig dance club a couple'a blocks east of here? I'll bet they take a lot of beer?"

"Oh yeah, just stopped there. Ten kegs of Millers on Monday and Wednesday and twelve on Friday. They sure do go through an awful lot of it."

"Sure sounds that way. You say Monday, Wednesday Friday, so, is it pretty much always the same route?"

"Oh yeah. Well the truck does the same route, anyway. But I just do this on Monday through Wednesday. Some other guy does the rest of the week. But yeah, with a truck that long, you don't have a lot of flexibility. I go one route Monday and Wednesday and another on Tuesday. Not a lot of variety except when the city tears up the street."

"Yeah, I guess with


glasses of ice water, two steaming coffee cups and one mini pitcher of cream.

"Where y'all from?" she asks casually.

"St. Louis," says Ed, "We're heading to Omaha. Any idea how the roads are up there? The snow's drifting badly out on the super slab."

"Hey Leroy," she turns and calls a trucker at the next table, "Didn't you just come through Omaha? How'd the weather look over yer shoulder"

Leroy swings around, smiles, a couple of teeth missing, and says, "Okay, wind's a bit strong but they're keeping the road clear. Just watch out for the ice on them overpasses. Saw some bears taking pictures on the north side, just over the Iowa line."

Ed waves and says, "Thanks, that's a big help." Leroy turns back to his dinner.

After she leaves, Jimdrawer.

"When you say borrowed, does that mean there are bodies involved?"

"Yeah, well, they won't be talking. But it's cool. They won't be found for a while either."

"In Iowa?"

"Yeah, about fifty miles south of Council Bluffs."

"Okay, here's the keys to that red Grand Am out on the lot. It belonged to a guy named Harry who won't be needing it anymore," says Joe as he hands a ring of keys to Jim. "Give me the keys to your car. I'll have it wiped for prints and ditched on some county road back over there. It'll be drifted over in an hour and won't be found till March. We'll let the Iowa police sort it out. They should be getting good at handling wrecks after today."

At Mo Rún Todd flips


ya'all know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Pete found out the hard way," says Sid.

Mark and Sid pick up their coats as Mark says, "Okay, so we'll see you here tomorrow afternoon?"

"Right, see'ya then," says Joe as Mark and Sid leave for their car.

Once outside, Mark says, "This is deep shit man. I don't like it at all."

"Me neither, man. Just keep a low profile and do what you're told. You wanna pull a Tom and Bob?"

"Hell no, there's no money in that. No, I just don't want to get caught. There'll be one hell of a lot of cops working on this."

"Yeah, you're right. We need to stay out of the spotlight."

Back at the club, Lance says, "So, how's the signal from Harry's car?"

"I'm getting apiece of cake. Here are the keys. This one is for the rear door padlock. The kegs are near the door so they can be off loaded first. Here's the clipboard of invoices you'll need to get signed at Mo Rún. The driver's in the van. Where's your car?"

"It's back on the street up there. Here's the keys," says Jim as he hands them to Mark.

"Good, I'll have it in the parking lot across from Joe's warehouse waiting for you."

"Good luck," says Sid as he heads back for the van. Ed and Jim get in the cab of the beer truck as Mark jogs up the alley to Ed and Jim's car. Behind him he hears the beer truck's diesel engine grind as the truck lurches forward. He


shoot us, I guess."

"Can you try to pull the duct tape off my hands? They wrapped it around about ten times and I can barely feel my fingers in this cold."

After some more squirming and rolling about Ed say, "No way. I can't find a start to it and there's too many loops to rip. Try mine."

After a while Jim says, "It's no use, there's nothing I can do. At least let's pull together, it must be fucking -30F in here." They huddle together in silence trying to conserve body heat knowing that it probably won't matter much longer.

Just inside Wyoming, the truck pulls off the interstate onto an old state route heading north. The outline yellow trailer lights are cut and just the headlights and small redtail lights are visible. Finally, miles from the interstate and many miles from any settlement, the truck stops.

Moonlight bathes the snow covered rolling high prairie. A few small, dark clumps of trees can be seen here and there in the distance. The drivers get out and open the rear of their trailer. Jim and Ed are huddled next to each other in the sub zero cold.

As one driver climbs up into the trailer, dim lights on the trailer roof switch on. He grabs Ed and Jim by their coat collars and drags them towards the rear opening. His partner is waiting on the ground with a hand gun pointed at them. The guy on the truck takes out a knife and slits the duct tape binding their arms


in. This beats reality shows of people eating insects. Traffic copters from the major stations in Omaha and Council Bluffs scram into action and flock like vultures around the scene. Within minutes, satellite uplinks are established around the world. Remote broadcast trucks converge on the site and transmitter masts and dishes are quickly deployed. The helicopter video feeds commence with the muffled shocked commentaries from the disoriented on-board news personalities recently rousted from several downtown bars.

People from New York to Los Angeles are riveted to their sets. The whole world is watching Omaha. Another ratings triumph for Jack and his special effects gang. And yet another railroad line shut down because of Mike.

Time: 10 PM

At the garage, Bob and Tony remain with the beer truck driver. At aboutsee some?"

"Yeah, let's look at some," says David.

The screen flashes to text and messages begin to slowly scroll by with desperate, _what the fuck is going on_ texts from one bad guy to another. Some are funny, most are clueless as to what is happening.

"Hee-hee, that's sweet man, real sweet," says Mike happily.

"Okay, Act II. Now they're deaf and blind, let's make them poor too," says David.

Todd hits a few keystrokes and a world map appears with various sized and brightness dots appearing randomly. "These are where their major off-shore banking accounts are. All numbered accounts in tax havens with very lax banking laws and no data exchange agreements with major governments."

"How did you get their account numbers and passwords? All that stuff is encrypted. You couldn't have


to drain every one of their private accounts and send the cash to the non-profits who will never know where the money came from. On the other hand, when the bad guys check their accounts, they'll find them empty with no transaction record as to where the money went. Nice little feature of secret off shore accounts, no history tapes."

He hits a few keys. On the screen arrow lines begin to flash from the bank accounts to the charitable organizations. "Those are the transfers taking place."

"Watch. After a while the bank account dots will vanish. When a dot disappears, the account is empty," says David.

Soon, all the bank accounts are gone and only the charitable organization stars remain.

"Well, wasn't that fun?" asks David.

"Holy shit, man, that was unbelievable!diligently on the data producing a detailed revelation of the unseen underground world. The threat from Jack at last seems to be over.

Monday, a little after noon, Todd and David decide to drive to an electronics parts supplier to buy some gear. Todd's got some ideas for a new stealth computer controlled robotic camera and he and David are going to build a prototype. They head to downtown Omaha, preoccupied and arguing most of the way over how the system should be built.

"Java's for wimps, I don't want 20 different layers of interpretation. I want this thing to respond in real time, not snail time, Todd," says David as they drive across town.

"No, Sun's just bought this company that has a native Java virtual machine kernel, there are


no more layers than in your Linux kludge. It's available now. Small memory footprint and full Java code functionality."

"Yeah, I've seen Java functionality. As soon as you get an application running, they change all the freaking libraries. I never could get any performance out of one of those applets. This isn't a browser, we're building. No, I want a Linux core and a real programming language, C, not some bastard version for people who can't program."

"C's old, man. Too error prone, no security, no neat network interfaces. Lots of buffer issues in the libraries. Most aren't even thread safe."

"Yeah, but it's efficient, isn't interpreted and it's got pointers. How the hell am I supposed to write controllers in Java?"

"Well, you can write the drivers in C and thenfew weights attached."

"No, don't do that. I'd like to meet Mr. Shea and his friend, I'd be very interested to meet them. Do you know the old farmhouse in Iowa where we keep supplies and collect the goods?"

"Yeah, it's about sixty miles from here, just west of Fontenelle, out in the middle of fucking nowhere," replies Nick.

Good, Jack thinks, now he knows these guys are legit. Not many people know about that particular farm.

"Bring them there and wait for me. I'll be on the next plane to Des Moines then head out there. It's about sixty miles from Des Moines. I should be able to get there by about six or seven tonight. You got that?"

"Yeah, boss, we got that, no problem."

"Great, good work guys, very good work.


grabs his coat, wallet and his prepaid cell phone. He rushes out the door for Lambert Field.

The phone in Council Bluffs rings as Jack calls back, "This is Jack. Okay, I got tickets. I'll be there around 7 pm. I'll rent an SUV and drive over. Be sure you get some food and booze on your way out there," says Jack.

"Okay, 7 pm. We'll leave the light on for ya. Any preferences in the food department?"

"Can any of you guys cook?"

"Ahhh, no, not really."

"Okay, get some pizzas and burgers or something and make sure there's donuts and coffee for the morning."

"Okay, sounds good. See'ya at the farm," says Nick and hangs up.

Nick looks to David and Todd, points his gun in their direction, and says, "Okay, you two,working on it. We've got a big element of surprise and we'll seriously outnumber them. Basically, we break in and take them. Details to follow."

Turning to Tom and Bob, Lance says, "You guys do know there's gonna be a lot'a risk here. Maybe a lot'a shooting, who knows?"

"Fine with us. We've been shot at before. You can count on us. We're cool under fire," says Bob.

"And don't worry, Lance, we know how to handle ourselves. We were on the school rifle team a few years ago. We made all-state in marksmanship. Either of us can put a bullet in the eye of a crow at a hundred yards," says Tom confidently.

"That's a skill we might just be able to use. Okay, people, now go get your coats and


supply of pseudophed dried up, not much cooking goes on here anymore except when they manage to get a shipment of pseudoephedrine out of Mexico. Then they crank it up and start making crystal meth in bulk. This time of year, however, it's mainly shut down.

Nick says, "Okay, Roger, you go get the furnace started, I hope there's enough propane in the tank out back, I don't want to try hooking up one of those from the barn. Dan and I got the groceries. Bill, you run that pickup with the snow plow around and get the road passable for Jack."

Nick opens the back of the van and says to David and Todd, "You two stay put unless ya wanna try to make it ten miles to thestomps through the front door and into the living room. She looks around and quickly focuses on Jack. "So, you're the shithead who's caused all this, you son-of-a-bitch! You've maimed and poisoned a lot'a kids. You're filth. Thank God for people like Mike McAneas who'll expose you and all your kind. I've treated enough of your victims, you fucking piece of scum. I only hope I'll see the day when you get what you deserve. Okay David. I just wanted to look on the face of the Devil for once. I wanted to see what evil really looked like. He's not much really. Pasty, flabby, not very appealing with a wet crotch where he's peed in his pants. I guess the Devil hasn't got much bladder control."

David walks


in multiple gasoline, diesel and kerosene tanks where, in fact, they were deployed. The resulting blasts sends burning gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel throughout the barn and out onto the farm yard where it soaks two of the CB4 just as they reach the door. The barrels of acetone and toluene rupture as they burst into brilliant flame. In seconds, the old, dry bales of hay catch fire. The ancient arid wood beams above, drenched in the burning fluids, likewise quickly ignite.

"Lance, I think we've found your clicker," says a startled Sean looking through the rear view mirror. "You wanna go back and get it?"

"Nah. Never mind. Keep driving. I think they figured out how to use it. I'll get another one," laughs Lance as his and allthat Jack arranged for Stan's death. Mike and Jay are hired full time as investigative reporters with an open assignment book. They continue to live at the club as they begin an investigation on international terrorist organizations. Jay develops an interest in home shopping channels.

David buys Tom and Bob the equipment they need to start their landscape business which does very well. They continue to room together at Mo Rún. By day, they work on their landscaping, by night they serve tables, tend bar and do odd jobs. They've each been admitted to a local college and will begin night courses in the fall. They're also recruiting a band of their own. Tom starts dating Jane and Bob is seeing Lois.

Mary begins her own translation of the poem.


effect on the three variables. The relationships are stated by three equations that, while further years of observations are anticipated, can be considered models to forecast the characteristics of the pollen season: the starting date depends on the mean temperatures of January and February, and the length and intensity of the season depend on the rainfall between the beginning of January and the starting date of the season. For the study period, the weekly concentrations (pollen curves) throughout the year showed no typical pattern of variation over the years, so that it was impossible to make mid- and long-term forecasts of the variation in weekly concentration. The most noteworthy aspects of grass pollen curves are a long pollen season, which starts in February or March and lasts untilAlice Aprot of Kenya led a group of seven through halfway in 14:46.81. A the back of that pack was Molly Huddle, who ultimately finished sixth in a new American record of 30:13.17. It took nine seconds off the mark held by Shalane Flanagan, set while winning bronze at the 2008 Olympics.

“I’m very happy with the time, I think I just need to digest it,” Huddle, 31, said. “I knew a medal was no guarantee. I had to count on one or two women messing up a bit there, because I’m probably the sixth-best person coming in…that’s where I finished. I’m taking the reality as it is.”

Related: 6 Incredible Stats From the Fastest Women’s 10,000-Meter Race in History

Even that speed at the beginning, just off of world-record pace,


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    opacity: 0;
    -webkit-transform: translateY(20px);
    -ms-transform: translateY(20px);
    transform: translateY(20px);
  }
}

.fadeOutDown {
  -webkit-animation-name: fadeOutDown;
  animation-name: fadeOutDown;
}

@-webkit-keyframes fadeOutDownBig {
  0% {
    opacity: 1;
    -webkit-transform: translateY(0);
    transform: translateY(0);
  }

  100% {
    opacity: 0;
    -webkit-transform: translateY(2000px);
    transform: translateY(2000px);
  }
}

@keyframes fadeOutDownBig {
  0% {
    opacity: 1;


perspective(400px) rotateX(-10deg);
  }

  70% {
    -webkit-transform: perspective(400px) rotateX(10deg);
    -ms-transform: perspective(400px) rotateX(10deg);
    transform: perspective(400px) rotateX(10deg);
  }

  100% {
    -webkit-transform: perspective(400px) rotateX(0deg);
    -ms-transform: perspective(400px) rotateX(0deg);
    transform: perspective(400px) rotateX(0deg);
    opacity: 1;
  }
}

.flipInX {
  -webkit-backface-visibility: visible !important;
  -ms-backface-visibility: visible !important;
  backface-visibility: visible !important;
  -webkit-animation-name: flipInX;
  animation-name: flipInX;
}

@-webkit-keyframes flipInY {
  0% {
    -webkit-transform: perspective(400px) rotateY(90deg);
    transform: perspective(400px) rotateY(90deg);
    opacity: 0;
  }

  40% {
    -webkit-transform: perspective(400px) rotateY(-10deg);
    transform: perspective(400px) rotateY(-10deg);
  }

  70% {
    -webkit-transform: perspective(400px) rotateY(10deg);
    transform:0;
  }

  60% {
    -webkit-transform: translateX(-20%) skewX(30deg);
    -ms-transform: translateX(-20%) skewX(30deg);
    transform: translateX(-20%) skewX(30deg);
    opacity: 1;
  }

  80% {
    -webkit-transform: translateX(0%) skewX(-15deg);
    -ms-transform: translateX(0%) skewX(-15deg);
    transform: translateX(0%) skewX(-15deg);
    opacity: 1;
  }

  100% {
    -webkit-transform: translateX(0%) skewX(0deg);
    -ms-transform: translateX(0%) skewX(0deg);
    transform: translateX(0%) skewX(0deg);
    opacity: 1;
  }
}

.lightSpeedIn {
  -webkit-animation-name: lightSpeedIn;
  animation-name: lightSpeedIn;
  -webkit-animation-timing-function: ease-out;
  animation-timing-function: ease-out;
}

@-webkit-keyframes lightSpeedOut {
  0% {
    -webkit-transform: translateX(0%) skewX(0deg);
    transform: translateX(0%) skewX(0deg);
    opacity: 1;
  }

  100% {


100% {
    -webkit-transform-origin: right bottom;
    transform-origin: right bottom;
    -webkit-transform: rotate(0);
    transform: rotate(0);
    opacity: 1;
  }
}

@keyframes rotateInUpRight {
  0% {
    -webkit-transform-origin: right bottom;
    -ms-transform-origin: right bottom;
    transform-origin: right bottom;
    -webkit-transform: rotate(-90deg);
    -ms-transform: rotate(-90deg);
    transform: rotate(-90deg);
    opacity: 0;
  }

  100% {
    -webkit-transform-origin: right bottom;
    -ms-transform-origin: right bottom;
    transform-origin: right bottom;
    -webkit-transform: rotate(0);
    -ms-transform: rotate(0);
    transform: rotate(0);
    opacity: 1;
  }
}

.rotateInUpRight {
  -webkit-animation-name: rotateInUpRight;
  animation-name: rotateInUpRight;
}

@-webkit-keyframes rotateOut {
rotate(0);
    -ms-transform: rotate(0);
    transform: rotate(0);
    -webkit-transform-origin: top left;
    -ms-transform-origin: top left;
    transform-origin: top left;
    -webkit-animation-timing-function: ease-in-out;
    animation-timing-function: ease-in-out;
  }

  20%, 60% {
    -webkit-transform: rotate(80deg);
    -ms-transform: rotate(80deg);
    transform: rotate(80deg);
    -webkit-transform-origin: top left;
    -ms-transform-origin: top left;
    transform-origin: top left;
    -webkit-animation-timing-function: ease-in-out;
    animation-timing-function: ease-in-out;
  }

  40% {
    -webkit-transform: rotate(60deg);
    -ms-transform: rotate(60deg);
    transform: rotate(60deg);
    -webkit-transform-origin: top left;
    -ms-transform-origin: top left;
    transform-origin: top left;