Reduce utility bills

Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs is an American record producer, best known for producing the TLC #1 hit “No Scrubs” and various Destiny’s Child songs from their best selling album The Writing’s on the Wall. He also produced hits for Pink, Whitney Houston, and many others.

“No Scrubs”, and several others She’kspere has produced, including the Destiny’s Child No.1hits “Bills, Bills, Bills” and “Bug-a-Boo”, had lyrics composed by She’kspere’s then girlfriend, former Xscape singer Kandi Burruss.

His post-2000 productions saw a new sound from Briggs as can be seen on the tracks he produced for Whitney Houston & Blu Cantrell.

The term utility station is used to describe fixed radio broadcasters disseminating signals that are not intended for reception by the general public (but such members are not actively prohibited from receiving). Utility stations, as the name suggests, do broadcast signals that have an immediate practical use, by means of analog or usually digital modes; most often utility transmissions are of a “point-to-point” nature, intended for a specific receiving station. Utility stations are most prevalent on shortwave frequencies, though they are not restricted to the shortwave frequencies.

Examples of utility station and modes

One common use of utility stations is used to disseminate weather information. Weather information is often broadcast using RTTY and sending synoptic codes, or weather charts are sent using radiofax, which are used by mariners and others. Airports make voice weather broadcasts on HF, known as VOLMET. Some examples include New York Radio, which broadcasts weather information for locations in the eastern United States, or Shanwick Radio, which does the same for Europe.

HF frequencies are still often used for trans-oceanic air traffic control.
News agencies used to use RTTY for news stories, and, less commonly, used radiofax for the images, although is no longer done. Satellite communications and the Internet have replaced HF for this application.

Many maritime radio services are often known as utility stations, including as ship-to-shore and vice-versa telephony and error-controlled radioteletype such as SITOR.

Military use of shortwave is also common, but nearly all transmissions are encrypted, with voice encrypted using modes such as ANDVT. Data transmission may make use of encrypted RTTY, use Link-11 for radar tracking data, or use of Automatic link establishment modes to set up communication links automatically.

Some utility stations are on other frequency bands, including NOAA Weather Radio, traveler information stations, and the like; other utility-type signals are piggybacked on FM broadcast subcarriers.

External links

• Utility World with various sound samples of utility modes

Rich Mountain Electric Cooperative is a non-profit rural electric utility cooperative headquartered in Mena, Arkansas, with a district office in Dierks, Arkansas.

The Cooperative serves portions of six counties in the states of Arkansas and Oklahoma, in a territory generally surrounding Mena.

As of September 2005, the Cooperative had more than 1,512 miles of power lines, and serves over 7,600 customers.

External links

• Rich Mountain Electric Cooperative

In microeconomics, a consumer’s Hicksian demand function <math>h(p, u)</math> gives the cheapest bundle under a price level <math>p</math> for which the consumer derives a utility level of at least <math>u</math>. The function is named after John Hicks.

Hicksian demand functions are often convenient for mathematical manipulation because they don’t require income or wealth to be represented. However, Marshallian demand functions of the form <math>x(p, w)</math> that describe demand given prices <math>p</math> and income <math>w</math> are easier to observe directly. The two are trivially related by

<math>h(p, u) = x(p, e(p, u)), \ </math>

where <math>e(p, u)</math> is the expenditure function (the function that gives the minimum wealth required to get to a given utility level), and by

<math>h(p,

v(p, w)) = x(p, w), \ </math>

where <math>v(p, w)</math> is the indirect utility function (which gives the utility level of having a given wealth under a fixed price regime). Their derivatives are more fundamentally related by the Slutsky equation.

The Hicksian demand function is intimately related to the expenditure function. If the consumer’s utility function <math>u(x)</math> is locally nonsatiated and strictly convex, then
<math>h(p, u) = \nabla_p e(p, u).</math>

See also

• Marshallian demand function
• Convex preferences
• Expenditure minimization problem

The Power Holding Company of Nigeria (abbreviated PHC or PHCN), formerly the National Electric Power Authority (abbreviated NEPA) is an organisation governing the use of electricity in Nigeria.

History

In the early 1960s the Niger Dam Authorities (NDA) and Electricity Cooperation amalgamated to form the Electricity Cooperation of Nigeria (ECN). Then, immediately after the Nigerian civil war the management of ECN changed its nomenclature to NEPA. What is currently called the Power Holding Company of Nigeria was formally known as National Electric Power Authority.

Local distribution companies

The government has divided the current PHCN distribution sector into separate companies or entities that will be called Local Electric Distribution Companies or Local Distribution Companies (LDC) among the regions.

Payment of bills

The sample consists of the procedures enrolled in payment of bills by way of banks. The Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, has made settling customers monthly electricity bills easier, hence the introduction of the bank revenue collection system to complement the operations of the cash offices in PHCN premises. This program is to facilitate prompt and regular settlement of the PHCN’s monthly bills, as customers are no longer expected to travel far outside their immediate neighborhoods to settle PHCN Bills. Ifedi, V. (2005, March 21). Power Reform and Electricity Generation. Dawodu.com. Retrieved March 29, 2006, from http://www.dawodu.com/ifedi1.htm

References

Arkansas Valley Electric Cooperative Corporation is a non-profit rural electric utility cooperative headquartered in Ozark, Arkansas, with district offices in Waldron, Arkansas, and Pocola, Oklahoma.

The Cooperative was organized in 1937 and the first 57 miles of power lines were energized in December 1938 to 114 meters.

The Cooperative serves portions of thirteen counties in the states of Arkansas and Oklahoma, in a territory generally surrounding the Arkansas River valley in west-central Arkansas.

Currently (as of September 2005) the Cooperative has more than 7,300 miles of distribution lines, 38 substations and services over 43,900 meters.

External links

• Arkansas Valley Electric Cooperative Corporation

In a formal, traditional construction project in United Kingdom, a bill of quantities is used as a form of cost planning and mapping to monitor and control the construction cost during the execution or post-contract period of construction.

These documents originated historically as non-contractual measurements, taken off drawings to assist tenderers in quoting lump sum prices.

Bills of quantities are drawn up and specified by a cost professional called a quantity surveyor and prepared in advance to take into account the works required for a project, and then later used as a tender document to acquire bidding from the contractors who would be interested in winning the job.

There are different styles of bills of quantities, mainly the Elemental BOQ and Trade Bills.

External links

• Buildsoft - [http://www.buildsoft.com.au - Bill of Quantities software for the building industry)
• Estimator - Cost Estimation Software

The LECOP was a bond issued by Argentine national government to replace the Patacón, which was issued by provincial governments. LECOP (sometimes written as a common word, Lecop), stands for Letra de Cancelación de Obligaciones Provinciales (”Letter of Cancellation of Provincial Obligations”).

These bonds were circulated at a substantial discount from their face value, so anybody accepting
was bound to experience devaluation (or inflation). While LECOPs were intended as a means to replace legal currency (Argentine pesos) at a time when cash was scarce, there were occasions in which LECOPs were not accepted as valid means of payment — most notably, most taxes could only be paid in pesos, or only partly paid in LECOPs. Public utility companies generally restricted the percentage acceptable to a 70-30 ratio, sometimes further limiting LECOP usage to 15% of the total bill.

LECOP bills at first sight, may appear identical to normal Peso bills, with the primary difference being a short disclaimer in small text on the rear of the bill stating that the bill would effect expire and be null at a set date.

Other complementary currencies in Argentina at that time where the Crédito, the Patacón and the Argentino.

The LECOP was a bond issued by Argentine national government to replace the Patacón, which was issued by provincial governments. LECOP (sometimes written as a common word, Lecop), stands for Letra de Cancelación de Obligaciones Provinciales (”Letter of Cancellation of Provincial Obligations”).

These bonds were circulated at a substantial discount from their face value, so anybody accepting
was bound to experience devaluation (or inflation). While LECOPs were intended as a means to replace legal currency (Argentine pesos) at a time when cash was scarce, there were occasions in which LECOPs were not accepted as valid means of payment — most notably, most taxes could only be paid in pesos, or only partly paid in LECOPs. Public utility companies generally restricted the percentage acceptable to a 70-30 ratio, sometimes further limiting LECOP usage to 15% of the total bill.

LECOP bills at first sight, may appear identical to normal Peso bills, with the primary difference being a short disclaimer in small text on the rear of the bill stating that the bill would effect expire and be null at a set date.

Other complementary currencies in Argentina at that time where the Crédito, the Patacón and the Argentino.

Apple Loops Utility is a small companion utility to Soundtrack Pro, Garageband, Logic Express, and Logic Pro, all made by Apple Computer. It allows users to create loops of audio that can be time-stretched. Audio files can also be tagged with their publishing (Author, Comments, etc) and musical information (Key, Tempo, etc). Multiple files can be tagged at the same time, a process known as batch tagging. Apple Loops Utility can read both AIFF and WAV file formats, but it will convert the latter to AIFF when saved with tagging information.

The most recent version available without purchasing the aforementioned software is 1.3.1, available from Apple’s Developer Web site. Version 1.4, which is the first Universal Binary version of the software, is available with Logic Pro or Express 7.2. 1.4 allows multiple files to have multiple tags added to them. Version 1.4 also allows content merging to occur with Logic Audio Express. Only version 1.4 will work natively with Intel Macs. Version 1.3.1 will appear to allow edits to be made and file information to be saved, but none of the essential tagging information will be retained on an Intel Mac.

External links and references

• Apple Loops SDK, including Apple Loops Utility (DMG)
• Apple Loops Utility Manual (PDF)

These are the Billboard magazine R&B singles chart number one hits of 1999:

See also: 1999 in music, List of number-one R&B hits (United States)

In microeconomics, the expenditure function describes the minimum amount of money an individual needs to achieve some level of utility, given a utility function and prices.

Formally, if there is a utility function <math>u</math> that describes preferences over L commodities, the expenditure function

<math>e(p, u^*) : \textbf R^L_+ \times \textbf R

\rightarrow \textbf R</math>

says what amount of money is needed to achieve a utility <math>u^*</math> if prices are set by <math>p</math>.
This function is defined by

<math>e(p, u^*) = \min_{x \in \geq(u^*)} p \cdot x</math>

where

<math>\geq(u^*) = \{x \in \textbf R^L_+ : u(x) \geq u^*\}</math>

is the set of all packages that give utility at least as good as <math>u^*</math>.

See also

• Expenditure minimization problem
• Hicksian demand function
• Utility maximization problem

The term utility station is used to describe fixed radio broadcasters disseminating signals that are not intended for reception by the general public (but such members are not actively prohibited from receiving). Utility stations, as the name suggests, do broadcast signals that have an immediate practical use, by means of analog or usually digital modes; most often utility transmissions are of a “point-to-point” nature, intended for a specific receiving station. Utility stations are most prevalent on shortwave frequencies, though they are not restricted to the shortwave frequencies.

Examples of utility station and modes

One common use of utility stations is used to disseminate weather information. Weather information is often broadcast using RTTY and sending synoptic codes, or weather charts are sent using radiofax, which are used by mariners and others. Airports make voice weather broadcasts on HF, known as VOLMET. Some examples include New York Radio, which broadcasts weather information for locations in the eastern United States, or Shanwick Radio, which does the same for Europe.

HF frequencies are still often used for trans-oceanic air traffic control.
News agencies used to use RTTY for news stories, and, less commonly, used radiofax for the images, although is no longer done. Satellite communications and the Internet have replaced HF for this application.

Many maritime radio services are often known as utility stations, including as ship-to-shore and vice-versa telephony and error-controlled radioteletype such as SITOR.

Military use of shortwave is also common, but nearly all transmissions are encrypted, with voice encrypted using modes such as ANDVT. Data transmission may make use of encrypted RTTY, use Link-11 for radar tracking data, or use of Automatic link establishment modes to set up communication links automatically.

Some utility stations are on other frequency bands, including NOAA Weather Radio, traveler information stations, and the like; other utility-type signals are piggybacked on FM broadcast subcarriers.

External links

• Utility World with various sound samples of utility modes

The Power Holding Company of Nigeria (abbreviated PHC or PHCN), formerly the National Electric Power Authority (abbreviated NEPA) is an organisation governing the use of electricity in Nigeria.

History

In the early 1960s the Niger Dam Authorities (NDA) and Electricity Cooperation amalgamated to form the Electricity Cooperation of Nigeria (ECN). Then, immediately after the Nigerian civil war the management of ECN changed its nomenclature to NEPA. What is currently called the Power Holding Company of Nigeria was formally known as National Electric Power Authority.

Local distribution companies

The government has divided the current PHCN distribution sector into separate companies or entities that will be called Local Electric Distribution Companies or Local Distribution Companies (LDC) among the regions.

Payment of bills

The sample consists of the procedures enrolled in payment of bills by way of banks. The Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, has made settling customers monthly electricity bills easier, hence the introduction of the bank revenue collection system to complement the operations of the cash offices in PHCN premises. This program is to facilitate prompt and regular settlement of the PHCN’s monthly bills, as customers are no longer expected to travel far outside their immediate neighborhoods to settle PHCN Bills. Ifedi, V. (2005, March 21). Power Reform and Electricity Generation. Dawodu.com. Retrieved March 29, 2006, from http://www.dawodu.com/ifedi1.htm

References

Gary Bills is a contemporary English poet. He has published two full collections of his own work and has edited an international anthology.
Titles to his credit include:

1. “The Echo and the Breath” (Peterloo, 2001)
2. “The Ridiculous Nests of the Heart” (bluechrome, 2003)
3. “The Review of Contemporary Poetry” (bluechrome, 2005).

This anthology was edited by Bills as a snapshot of English language verse from 2004, and it contains fresh verse from Andrew Motion, Brian Patten, Harry Guest, Al Alvarez, Penelope Shuttle and many other high profile names from the contemporary poetry world. It was marketed specifically to raise funds for the Stroke Association.

Bills’s own poetry tends to be both experimental and formal, with a strong emphasis on imagery and lyricism.

A religious or spiritual tendency is perhaps more evident in his first collection, and his later work is more personal, with a number of poems concerned with family life and fatherhood.

His work has been favourably reviewed in many high-profile literary journals in the UK, including Envoi, Orbis, The Black Mountain Review and South.

His poetry has also been published in the national UK newspaper, “The Guardian”.
Bills has given readings at “The Ledbury Poetry Festival” and also at the “Poetry on the Lake” event at Lake Orta in Italy.

He has won several prizes, including the Bill Winter Award, administered by Poetry on the Lake for the best short poem.

He is the associate editor of the international poetry journal, “HQ”.

Alongside John Hartley Williams, he is a judge of the 2007 Poetry on the Lake poetry competition.

Jigdo

(portmanteau of “Jigsaw” and “download”) is a download utility designed for the Debian distribution of GNU/Linux that downloads files from several mirrors in order to build an optical disk image.

A typical application of Jigdo is with its jigdo-file utility. A user that wishes to assemble a disk image downloads a relatively very small file called imagename.jigdo. The jigdo-file utility invoked with this file as an argument then proceeds to fetch additional files from the Internet: imagename.template and a series of .deb files that are listed in the .jigdo file. It then uses the mkisofs utility to build the ISO image.

Jigdo was implemented in Debian in order to reduce the need to have many CD image mirror sites, locations with sufficient disk space and bandwidth to serve numerous 650 MB files (and in more recent times, 4.7 GB files for DVD images). Instead, Jigdo files allow mirrors to carry the regular Debian archive, where packages are not grouped together in image files and instead kept separately where they are also accessible through apt-get and still allow for the making of optical disk images.

External links

• Official homepage
• Downloading Debian CD images with jigdo
• Debian Jigdo mini-HOWTO
• Jigdo Port for Mac OS X (and GUI)

Apple Loops Utility is a small companion utility to Soundtrack Pro, Garageband, Logic Express, and Logic Pro, all made by Apple Computer. It allows users to create loops of audio that can be time-stretched. Audio files can also be tagged with their publishing (Author, Comments, etc) and musical information (Key, Tempo, etc). Multiple files can be tagged at the same time, a process known as batch tagging. Apple Loops Utility can read both AIFF and WAV file formats, but it will convert the latter to AIFF when saved with tagging information.

The most recent version available without purchasing the aforementioned software is 1.3.1, available from Apple’s Developer Web site. Version 1.4, which is the first Universal Binary version of the software, is available with Logic Pro or Express 7.2. 1.4 allows multiple files to have multiple tags added to them. Version 1.4 also allows content merging to occur with Logic Audio Express. Only version 1.4 will work natively with Intel Macs. Version 1.3.1 will appear to allow edits to be made and file information to be saved, but none of the essential tagging information will be retained on an Intel Mac.

External links and references

• Apple Loops SDK, including Apple Loops Utility (DMG)
• Apple Loops Utility Manual (PDF)

xconfig is short for the 'xconfig' target for the Linux Makefile. It is a graphical Linux compilation utility, which uses Qt. The xconfig utility is invoked by running 'make xconfig' as root in the base Linux source directory.

Qt has only been used in Linux 2.6. Linux 2.4 uses a Tcl/Tk configuration interface. A [[GTK+]] interface is also available for Linux 2.6.

A qualification introduced by Bentham, to distinguish between two different types of utilities, or, rather, sources of utility (for utility, being identical to pleasure, remains always qualitatively the same). Expectation utilities are future-regarding, and thus imply desires and beliefs; “natural” utilities are not. Expectation utilities allow for long-term projects, which provide a higher proportion of utility than the natural utilities favored by those agents that can only pursue their immediate interest.

The notion of ‘expectation utility’ must not be mistaken for that of expected utility.

The Power Holding Company of Nigeria (abbreviated PHC or PHCN), formerly the National Electric Power Authority (abbreviated NEPA) is an organisation governing the use of electricity in Nigeria.

History

In the early 1960s the Niger Dam Authorities (NDA) and Electricity Cooperation amalgamated to form the Electricity Cooperation of Nigeria (ECN). Then, immediately after the Nigerian civil war the management of ECN changed its nomenclature to NEPA. What is currently called the Power Holding Company of Nigeria was formally known as National Electric Power Authority.

Local distribution companies

The government has divided the current PHCN distribution sector into separate companies or entities that will be called Local Electric Distribution Companies or Local Distribution Companies (LDC) among the regions.

Payment of bills

The sample consists of the procedures enrolled in payment of bills by way of banks. The Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, has made settling customers monthly electricity bills easier, hence the introduction of the bank revenue collection system to complement the operations of the cash offices in PHCN premises. This program is to facilitate prompt and regular settlement of the PHCN’s monthly bills, as customers are no longer expected to travel far outside their immediate neighborhoods to settle PHCN Bills. Ifedi, V. (2005, March 21). Power Reform and Electricity Generation. Dawodu.com. Retrieved March 29, 2006, from http://www.dawodu.com/ifedi1.htm

References

In economics, cardinal utility is a theory of utility under which the utility (roughly, satisfaction) gained from a particular good or service can be measured and that the magnitude of the measurement is meaningful. Under cardinal utility theory, the util is a unit of measurement much like the metre or second. A util has a fixed size, making comparisons based on ratios of utils possible. Perhaps more importantly, however, cardinal utility allows for comparisons of utility across persons—if a particular good gives Alice 200 utils but Bob only gets 100 utils from the same good, the good is said to give Alice twice as much utility as it does Bob.

This sort of comparison is of great theoretical value in social planning and ethics. Under the framework of utilitarianism, actions (including production of goods and provision of services) are judged by their contributions to overall happiness. Cardinal utility provides a way of judging the “greatest good to the greatest number”. An act that reduces one person’s utility by 75 utils while increasing two others’ by 50 utils each has increased overall utility by 25 utils and is thus a positive contribution; one that costs the first person 125 utils while giving the same 50 each to two other people has resulted in a net loss of 25 utils.

This ability to neatly compare utilities in theory runs into problems in practice. There are major difficulties in measuring utility, which is inherently subjective. Unlike with distance or time, one cannot simply use a ruler or stopwatch to measure satisfaction. It is not simple to definitively say whether a good is worth 50, 75, or 125 utils to a person, or even if it is worth the same number of utils to two different people. These problems have resulted in a shift in microeconomic theory towards ranked preferences or ordinal utility, in which a good with a higher utility is preferred to one with lower utility but the magnitude of the difference has no meaning.

There remain economists who believe that utility can be measured. These measures are not perfect but can act as a proxy for the utility. Lancaster’s characteristics approach to consumer demand illustrates this point.

The House Calendar is a calendar in the United States House of Representatives that schedules major bills which don’t involve money. The calendar can also be defined as a list of all bills reported from committee and eligible for floor action, except bills pertaining to taxation and spending.

Inter-Control Center Communications Protocol

The Inter-Control Center Communications Protocol (ICCP) is being specified by utility organizations throughout the world to provide data exchange over wide area networks (WANs) between utility control centers, utilities, power pools, regional control centers, and Non-Utility Generators. ICCP is also an international standard: International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Telecontrol Application Service Element 2 (TASE.2).

See also

• TASE.2
• SCADA Protocols
• Vulnerabilities

External links

• SCADA Security
• Introduction to ICCP

A utility vault is an underground room providing access to subterranean public utility equipment, such as valves for water or natural gas pipes, or switchgear for electrical or telecommunications equipment.

Utility vaults are commonly constructed out of reinforced concrete boxes, poured cement or brick. Small ones are usually entered through a manhole or grate on the topside. Such vaults are considered confined spaces and can be hazardous to enter. Large utility vaults are similar to mechanical or electrical rooms in design and content.

External link

• National Precast Concrete Association

Rich Mountain Electric Cooperative is a non-profit rural electric utility cooperative headquartered in Mena, Arkansas, with a district office in Dierks, Arkansas.

The Cooperative serves portions of six counties in the states of Arkansas and Oklahoma, in a territory generally surrounding Mena.

As of September 2005, the Cooperative had more than 1,512 miles of power lines, and serves over 7,600 customers.

External links

• Rich Mountain Electric Cooperative

The Read the Bills Act is legislation written by Downsize DC, a non-profit organization focused on decreasing the size of the federal government. The intention of the Read the Bills Act is to require Congress to read the legislation that they pass. The proposed act is a response to the passing of bills like the Patriot Act that are thousands of pages long and are passed without copies being made available to the members of Congress who vote on the bill. The bill is aimed at decreasing the size of government and the speed at which it grows.

Requirements of Act

The Read the Bills Act would require each house of Congress, in the presence of a quorum, to read any bill that they vote on. If a member is not present at the reading, s/he will be required to sign a sworn affidavit saying that s/he has read the bill. If a bill is amended at the last moment, Congress will be required to read, again in full, the bill before a quorum in front of Congress. The same rules applying to absent members will apply to all readings of last minute amendments to the legislation.

Congress will also be required to post the newest version of the bill on their website at least seven days prior to a publicly-announced vote. Any amendments to the bill will yield a new posting on the Internet of the bill and another seven-day waiting period.

It will also require that all bills coming up for renewal in Congress under sunset provisions will be subject to all rules of the Read the Bills Act.

Desired effect

The Read the Bills Act is intended to slow down Congress. Instead of passing many large bills in a short amount of time, Congress will have to either pass shorter bills or pass fewer bills than they currently do.(2/2006)

Theoretically, legislation will become shorter and less complex. In order to be able to read the bills, Congress will have to tackle fewer issues and have fewer projects in each bill. Due to the seven day waiting period, Congress will not be able to pass as many “pork” projects because the public will have a chance to voice their objection. Old legislation coming up under sunset provisions will probably become shorter because Congress will have to reread the bills.

Congress will not be able to insert last-minute secret clauses because they will have to reread the entire bill with the new additions and wait another seven days before passing the legislation.

See also

• Downsize DC Foundation

External links

• Downsize DC - the organization that drafted the Read the Bills Act
• [1] - Downsize DC’s page on the act

DTE Energy Co. () is a Detroit, Michigan-based utility incorporated in 1995 involved in the development and management of energy-related businesses and services nationwide.

DTE Energy’s largest operating subsidiaries are Detroit Edison, an investor-owned electric utility serving 2.1 million customers in Southeastern Michigan, and Michigan Consolidated Gas Co. (MichCon), a natural gas utility serving 1.2 million customers in Michigan.

The name “DTE” is taken from the stock symbol for Detroit Edison, DTE. [1]

Credit Reporting Program

In August 2006, DTE began reporting payment information to the major credit beaureaus on all of its 2.5 million customers without offering the ability to opt-out, making it one of the few utilities in the US to do so. Previously, only seriously delinquent accounts were reported. Groups, such as the NAACP, protested this change, on the basis that such a policy would benefit those who have no problems paying their bills, but would hurt those who are the most vulnerable economically and most likely to miss a payment, such as the poor, elderly, and disabled. This, in effect, would hurt their credit rating, and further hamper their ability to advance in society.

In January 2007, DTE changed the policy to state that only payments 60 days or more overdue would be reported to the credit beaureaus. The policy of credit reporting of all other information, without the ability for customers to opt-out, continues.

See also

• DTE Energy Music Theatre
• American Light and Traction

External links

• DTE Energy Co.
• Credit Reporting Article

“Wide Right” is a term in American football used to denote an extra point or field goal attempt that the kicker misses to the right of the field goal posts. In the history of both NCAA and NFL football, the term is often associated with these two separate teams/events:

• Wide Right (Buffalo Bills): Scott Norwood’s miss that cost the Buffalo Bills victory in Super Bowl XXV.
• Wide Right (Florida State): A series of missed field goals that plagued the Florida State University Seminoles in their games against the University of Miami Hurricanes.

Jigdo (portmanteau of “Jigsaw” and “download”) is a download utility designed for the Debian distribution of GNU/Linux that downloads files from several mirrors in order to build an optical disk image.

A typical application of Jigdo is with its jigdo-file utility. A user that wishes to assemble a disk image downloads a relatively very small file called imagename.jigdo. The jigdo-file utility invoked with this file as an argument then proceeds to fetch additional files from the Internet: imagename.template and a series of .deb files that are listed in the .jigdo file. It then uses the mkisofs utility to build the ISO image.

Jigdo was implemented in Debian in order to reduce the need to have many CD image mirror sites, locations with sufficient disk space and bandwidth to serve numerous 650 MB files (and in more recent times, 4.7 GB files for DVD images). Instead, Jigdo files allow mirrors to carry the regular Debian archive, where packages are not grouped together in image files and instead kept separately where they are also accessible through apt-get and still allow for the making of optical disk images.

External links

• Official homepage
• Downloading Debian CD images with jigdo
• Debian Jigdo mini-HOWTO
• Jigdo Port for Mac OS X (and GUI)

Ronald H. Edwards (born July 12, 1979 in Columbus, Ohio) is an American football player who currently plays defensive tackle for the Kansas City Chiefs. He started 35 consecutive regular season games at nose guard for Texas A&M University, where he recorded 121 tackles with 10 sacks and 23 stops for losses during his career. He was drafted in the 2001 NFL Draft by the Buffalo Bills. He went to Klein Forest High School.

In the British House of Commons, public bill committees (known as standing committees before 2006http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/stand.htm) consider Bills — proposed Acts of Parliament. The House of Lords does not have such committees, as Bills are usually considered by the House as a whole.

When a Bill has received its Second Reading in the House of Commons, it reaches its committee stage. The Bill is then usually sent to a public bill committee for consideration. However, some bills are considered not by a public bill committee but by a Committee of the Whole House; in this case, amendments are proposed and discussed by the entire House of Commons. This applies to Finance Bills, which are proposed by the Chancellor every year in March/April, and to some occasional bills such as the 1998/99 House of Lords Reform Bill.

The job of public bill committees is to debate and consider amendments to a Bill. The committee considers each Bill clause by clause, and may propose amendments to the House (which the House then debates on the Bill’s Third Reading). Under the post-2006 House of Commons procedure, public bill committees may take a limited amount of evidence (akin to a select committee) on certain bills remitted to them.

The composition of the committee is roughly proportional to that of the House itself, so it is rare that amendments are accepted that are contrary to a majority Government’s wishes. As the overall purpose of a Bill has been set by its Second Reading in the House, amendments at the committee stage may not make drastic changes.

References

In welfare economics, distributive efficiency occurs when goods and services are received by those who have the greatest need for them. Abba Lerner first proposed the idea of distributive efficiency in his 1944 book The Economics of Control.

The law of diminishing marginal utility

The concept of distributive efficiency is based on the law of diminishing marginal utility. According to this economic law, as a person gets more to spend, he will buy things that give him less and less utility. For example, if a person is given a gift certificate for a CD in a music store, he will use the gift certificate to purchase the CD he will enjoy the most. If he is given another, we will buy his second favorite CD, and so on. The process continues as long as the man keeps getting certificates for CDs. Each additional CD the person buys is slightly less desirable than the one before. After buying his favorites, than man starts choosing CDs he is merely curious about. In the end the person, having all the CDs he likes, will take CDs that he does not really like at all.

Diminishing utility and society

Lerner applied the concept of utility and its associated “law of marginal utility” to the distribution of income in society. The law of diminishing marginal utility implies that poorer people will gain more utility from money for additional spending than the wealthy. For instance, if a homeless family is given a gift certificate for a house, they will be able to use it to provide shelter for themselves. If a very rich person is given such a gift, he may spend it on a vacation residence which he will only use a few weeks of the year.

As such, aggregated utility would be maximized by taking wealth from the rich and giving it to the poor, and the state of optimized utility would be perfect economic equality. As Lerner puts it, “If it is desired to maximize the total satisfaction of a society, the rational procedure is to divide income on an equalitarian basis” (Lerner, 32). In other words, if we are given a fixed amount of wealth and a group of people to distribute it to, we can maximize total happiness by dividing the wealth equally between the members of that group.

However, in real situations the total amount of wealth is not fixed, and it has been argued that too much redistribution of income can reduce this total amount by lowering incentives for economic growth and development. Knowing this, Lerner qualified his earlier statement: “The principle of equality would have to compromise with the principle of providing such incentives as would increase the total of income available to be divided” (Lerner, 36). In this view, a balance must be reached between equality and incentives.

Criticisms of utility’s relevance

Different value systems have different perspectives on the use of utility in making moral judgments. Deontological views of morality focus on factors other than utility. Also, many Marxists, Kantians, and certain libertarians (such as Robert Nozick), all believe utility to be irrelevant as a moral standard or at least not as important as others such as natural rights. Distributive justice does not have much importance to those who do not agree with utilitarianism’s moral framework.

References

• Friedman, Milton. “Lerner on the Economics of Control.” The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 55, No. 5. (Oct., 1947), pp. 405-416.
• Lerner, Abba P. The Economics of Control. New York: Macmillan Co., 1944.
  

Christopher Kelsay (born October 31, 1979 in Auburn, Nebraska) is an American football tight end who currently plays for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League. He was originally drafted by the Bills in the second round (48th overall) of the 2003 NFL Draft. He played collegiately at Nebraska. On October 8, 2007, he set a Bills’ record with for the shortest reception for a touchdown, 0 yards.

He was about to enter the free agent market in 2007 but was re-signed before free agency started to a 4-year, $23 Million deal.

In a simple resistive circuit, a reduction in the voltage across the resistance will equate in a reduction in the power dissipated by the circuit.

Electric Utilities

Electric utilities have discovered that this basic principle can save utility companies, and their customers, a significant amount of money. Utilities are able to shave the peak of their power demand curves by reducing the voltage across their distribution system. When a utility reaches a point where power demand is expected to exceed supply, utilities only have two options. Either purchase power from another utility, usually at substantial prices, or reduce demand. Often utilities use load management systems to turn off customer’s air conditioners, water heaters and pool pumps to reduce demand. Voltage reduction has become another option for utilities to reduce demand - typically unbeknownst to the customer. However, only the resistive portion of the load responds to the reduction in voltage to reduce aggregate demand. Loads such as incandescent lights and heater coils will use less power as the voltage is lowered. On the other hand, induction motor loads are uneffected by the reduction in voltage, because the current simply rises to account for no change or even a slight increase in power consumption.

Even some resistive loads provide only short term benefits. A phenomena known as load diversity plays a role in voltage reduction and can counteract its effects on occasion. The concept of load diversity can most easily be expalined with an example. In your neighborhood, it is unlikely that all of the home’s water heaters are on at the same time. Particularly during non-hot water usage hours (morning and evening showers), when your hot water heater is on, your neighbor’s may be off. Due to the distributed and noncoincident nature of these loads, the aggregate peak can remain relatively constant. However, if the voltage is reduced to all of the resistive elements in the water heaters, the elements will not be able to heat the water as quickly. While an immediate reducition in the power demand will be recognized upon initating voltage reduction, over time water heaters will need to be on longer to achieve the thermostat set water temperature. Thus, more water heaters will be on at the same time. This will cause the aggregate peak to increase substantially. Therefore, with respect to thremostat controlled resitive loads the benefits of voltage reduction can be short lived, and may occasionally end up increasing the aggregate load demand.

The keen eye may also realize that by increasing the voltage, power demand from the resitive loads may increase as well. Again, the thermostat controlled resistive loads will react differently, but it is clear that it will cost a customer more to turn on that incandescent reading lamp with higher voltage than it would at a lower voltage.

In baseball, a utility player is a player who can play several different positions.

In general, each major league baseball team has at least one player who can be described as a utility player. The most famous utility player is probably Pete Rose (though he was not described as such), because during his career, he played left field, right field, center field, third base, second base and finally, first base late in his career. Most professional teams have two types of utility players. There are “utility infielders”, who usually play all of the infield positions (plus occasionally catcher). Utility outfielders, or fourth outfielders, tend to play all three outfield positions as various times. Occasionally, there will be players who perform a combination of the two duties. Utility players tend to be players who come off of the bench, though this isn’t absolute. Often, players who don’t have high prospects to be a major league star will learn additional positions so they can look more attractive to major league clubs as bench talent.

José “The Utilityman” Oquendo is regarded as the most versatile utility player in the modern game, having played every position, including Pitcher.

See also

• Ramon Santiago
• Willie Bloomquist
• Miguel Cairo
• Chone Figgins
• Rex Hudler
• Aubrey Huff
• Rob Mackowiak
• Mark McLemore
• Eli Marrero
• Josh Phelps
• Pete Rose
• Honus Wagner

Mark Derosa

Verendrye Electric Cooperative is a public utility cooperative based in Velva, North Dakota. It serves as the electric distribution utility in a portion of north central North Dakota. Verendrye Electric receives power from the Central Power Electric Cooperative - in fact, Verendrye took the lead in establishing Central Power in 1949 after having to deal with a 30% rate hike from its previous power supplier in 1948.

It is named after the French Canadian explorer La Vérendrye; in its early years it was headquartered in the small town of Verendrye (northwest of Karlsruhe; now a ghost town).

External links

• Verendrye Electric Cooperative site

In a formal, traditional construction project in United Kingdom, a bill of quantities is used as a form of cost planning and mapping to monitor and control the construction cost during the execution or post-contract period of construction.

These documents originated historically as non-contractual measurements, taken off drawings to assist tenderers in quoting lump sum prices.

Bills of quantities are drawn up and specified by a cost professional called a quantity surveyor and prepared in advance to take into account the works required for a project, and then later used as a tender document to acquire bidding from the contractors who would be interested in winning the job.

There are different styles of bills of quantities, mainly the Elemental BOQ and Trade Bills.

External links

• Buildsoft - [http://www.buildsoft.com.au - Bill of Quantities software for the building industry)
• Estimator - Cost Estimation Software

Emulex is a California based manufacturer of storage networking infrastructure solutions. Products include host bus adapters (HBAs), embedded storage switches, storage I/O controller and SAN storage switch products.

Software products

• HBAnyware, centralized HBA management utility
• AutoPilot Manager, HBA management utility for SMBs
• LighPulse Utility NT (LPUtilNT)
• AutoPilot Installer
• VMPilot, Virtual machine and NPIV management utility for use with Microsoft Virtual Server

See also

• List of Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters
• Emulex hoax

External links

• Emulex website

Inter-Control Center Communications Protocol

The Inter-Control Center Communications Protocol (ICCP) is being specified by utility organizations throughout the world to provide data exchange over wide area networks (WANs) between utility control centers, utilities, power pools, regional control centers, and Non-Utility Generators. ICCP is also an international standard: International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Telecontrol Application Service Element 2 (TASE.2).

See also

• TASE.2
• SCADA Protocols
• Vulnerabilities

External links

• SCADA Security
• Introduction to ICCP

A hybrid bill is a public bill which affects the private interests of a particular person or organization. It is generally initiated by the Government on behalf of non-Parliamentary bodies such as local authorities and is treated like a private bill for part of its passage through Parliament. This gives individuals and bodies an opportunity to oppose the bill or to seek its amendment before a Select Committee in either or in both Houses. The bill is then treated as a public bill.

Examples of hybrid bills have been those to construct the Channel Tunnel, the Dartford - Thurrock crossing (aka Dartford Crossing), and the London Passenger Transport Board.

The use of hybrid bills originated as part of the parliamentary procedure of the United Kingdom Parliament, but the procedure is also occasionally used by overseas parliaments and assemblies set up on similar lines to that of Westminster. In Canada, they are specifically disallowed by Beauchesne’s Rules and Forms of the House of Commons of Canada, which states that “According to Canadian standing orders and practice, there are only two kinds of bills - public and private. The British hybrid bill is not recognized in Canadian practice.”

Historically, hybrid bills have often been used by the Government on behalf of railway companies and transport agencies to obtain authorisation for major projects deemed to be in the national interest, but which would affect a large number of private interests.

Tom Donahoe is a former general manager and President of the Buffalo Bills of the NFL. Prior to his tenure with the Bills, he was Director of Football Operations for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Bills experienced five non-playoff seasons after he was hired in January 2001. During the period of Donahoe’s tenure, the Bills were tied for the fourth-worst record in the NFL at 31-49. He was responsible for several questionable personnel decisions. Some of these personnel decisions include hiring Gregg Williams as head coach, hiring Mike Mularkey as head coach, the decision to name Rob Johnson the franchise quarterback, gutting the entire defensive corps (which had been near the top of the league prior to Donahoe’s arrival) and drafting Mike Williams with the 4th overall pick. He was also known for a general failure to address offensive line concerns during his tenure (although this can partially be attributed to his quarterback choices– the aforementioned Johnson, the immobile Drew Bledsoe, and rookie J.P. Losman).

Prior to the 2006 NFL season, Donahoe was fired. Ralph Wilson reassumed the role of President, and the general manager position was filled by legendary Bills head coach Marv Levy.

See also

• Matt Millen, a similarly controversial general manager

pax is a utility defined and created by the IEEE Std 1003.2 (POSIX.2) standard. By default, it creates archives in ustar format, also defined by the POSIX standard. Rather than sort out the incompatible options that have crept up between tar and cpio, along with their implementations across various versions of UNIX, the IEEE designed a new archive utility. Pax means “peace” in Latin, so the utility is named to create peace between the tar and cpio format supporters.

See also

• List of Unix programs

Subjective expected utility is a method in decision theory in the presence of risk originally put forward by L. J. Savage in 1954. It combines two distinct subjective concepts: a personal utility function and a personal probability analysis based on Bayesian probability theory.

If you believe an uncertain event has possible outcomes <math>\{x_i\}</math> each with a utility to you of <math>u(x_i)</math> and where you believe that the probability of each outcome is <math>P(x_i)</math>, then your subjective expected utility is the expected value of the utility,

<math>\sum_i \; u(x_i) \; P(x_i).</math>

You may be able to make a decision which changes the possible outcomes to <math>\{y_j\}</math> in which case your subjective expected utility will become

<math>\sum_j \; u(y_j) \; P(y_j).</math>

Which decision you prefer depends on which subjective expected utility is higher. Different people may make different decisions because they may have different utility functions or different beliefs about the probabilities of different outcomes.

Savage assumed that it was possible to take convex combinations of decisions and that preferences would be preserved. So if you prefer <math>x(=\{x_i\})</math> to <math>y</math> and <math>s</math> to <math>t</math> then you will prefer <math>\lambda x + (1-\lambda )s</math> to <math>\lambda y + (1-\lambda )t</math>, for <math>0<\lambda<1</math>.

Experiments involving offering people lottery tickets have suggested that many individuals do not seem to have personally consistent utility functions in the face of risk. Savage’s response was not that this showed a flaw in his method, but that applying his method allowed individuals to improve their decision taking.

Rashad Baker (born February 22, 1982 in Camden, New Jersey) is an American football safety for the New England Patriots of the National Football League. He attended the University of Tennessee, and was signed by the Buffalo Bills as a undrafted free agent in 2004. In 2006 he was cut by the Bills and was picked up by the Minnesota Vikings. On November 7, 2006 he was released by the Vikings and signed by the New England Patriots.

In welfare economics, distributive efficiency occurs when goods and services are received by those who have the greatest need for them. Abba Lerner first proposed the idea of distributive efficiency in his 1944 book The Economics of Control.

The law of diminishing marginal utility

The concept of distributive efficiency is based on the law of diminishing marginal utility. According to this economic law, as a person gets more to spend, he will buy things that give him less and less utility. For example, if a person is given a gift certificate for a CD in a music store, he will use the gift certificate to purchase the CD he will enjoy the most. If he is given another, we will buy his second favorite CD, and so on. The process continues as long as the man keeps getting certificates for CDs. Each additional CD the person buys is slightly less desirable than the one before. After buying his favorites, than man starts choosing CDs he is merely curious about. In the end the person, having all the CDs he likes, will take CDs that he does not really like at all.

Diminishing utility and society

Lerner applied the concept of utility and its associated “law of marginal utility” to the distribution of income in society. The law of diminishing marginal utility implies that poorer people will gain more utility from money for additional spending than the wealthy. For instance, if a homeless family is given a gift certificate for a house, they will be able to use it to provide shelter for themselves. If a very rich person is given such a gift, he may spend it on a vacation residence which he will only use a few weeks of the year.

As such, aggregated utility would be maximized by taking wealth from the rich and giving it to the poor, and the state of optimized utility would be perfect economic equality. As Lerner puts it, “If it is desired to maximize the total satisfaction of a society, the rational procedure is to divide income on an equalitarian basis” (Lerner, 32). In other words, if we are given a fixed amount of wealth and a group of people to distribute it to, we can maximize total happiness by dividing the wealth equally between the members of that group.

However, in real situations the total amount of wealth is not fixed, and it has been argued that too much redistribution of income can reduce this total amount by lowering incentives for economic growth and development. Knowing this, Lerner qualified his earlier statement: “The principle of equality would have to compromise with the principle of providing such incentives as would increase the total of income available to be divided” (Lerner, 36). In this view, a balance must be reached between equality and incentives.

Criticisms of utility’s relevance

Different value systems have different perspectives on the use of utility in making moral judgments. Deontological views of morality focus on factors other than utility. Also, many Marxists, Kantians, and certain libertarians (such as Robert Nozick), all believe utility to be irrelevant as a moral standard or at least not as important as others such as natural rights. Distributive justice does not have much importance to those who do not agree with utilitarianism’s moral framework.

References

• Friedman, Milton. “Lerner on the Economics of Control.” The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 55, No. 5. (Oct., 1947), pp. 405-416.
• Lerner, Abba P. The Economics of Control. New York: Macmillan Co., 1944.

In microeconomics, a consumer’s Hicksian demand function <math>h(p, u)</math> gives the cheapest bundle under a price level <math>p</math> for which the consumer derives a utility level of at least <math>u</math>. The function is named after John Hicks.

Hicksian demand functions are often convenient for mathematical manipulation because they don’t require income or wealth to be represented. However, Marshallian demand functions of the form <math>x(p, w)</math> that describe demand given prices <math>p</math> and income <math>w</math> are easier to observe directly. The two are trivially related by

<math>h(p, u) = x(p, e(p, u)), \ </math>

where <math>e(p, u)</math> is the expenditure function (the function that gives the minimum wealth required to get to a given utility level), and by

<math>h(p, v(p, w)) = x(p, w), \ </math>

where <math>v(p, w)</math> is the indirect utility function (which gives the utility level of having a given wealth under a fixed price regime). Their derivatives are more fundamentally related by the Slutsky equation.

The Hicksian demand function is intimately related to the expenditure function. If the consumer’s utility function <math>u(x)</math> is locally nonsatiated and strictly convex, then
<math>h(p, u) = \nabla_p e(p, u).</math>

See also

• Marshallian demand function
• Convex preferences
• Expenditure minimization problem

Emulex is a California based manufacturer of storage networking infrastructure solutions. Products include host bus adapters (HBAs), embedded storage switches, storage I/O controller and SAN storage switch products.

Software products

• HBAnyware, centralized HBA management utility
• AutoPilot Manager, HBA management utility for SMBs
• LighPulse Utility NT (LPUtilNT)
• AutoPilot Installer
• VMPilot, Virtual machine and NPIV management utility for use with Microsoft Virtual Server

See also

• List of Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters
• Emulex hoax

External links

• Emulex website

Edward “Abe” Abramoski served as Head Athletic Trainer for the Buffalo Bills for 37 years. Prior to his stint in Buffalo, he was an athletic trainer at the University of Detroit, the Detroit Lions, and the United States Military Academy, and has long been recognized as a pioneer athletic trainer in professional football. His service to the Bills and the City of Buffalo is set to be formally recognized with the inclusion of his name on the Wall of Fame at Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of the Bills. He is a member of the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame (1996), a recipient of the Buffalo Bills Alumni Association Appreciation Award (1990,1994), and a member of the Niagara Frontier for Distinguished Achievements in Sports. Abe was inducted into the NATA Hall of Fame in 1986. A frequent volunteer for the New York State Special Olympics, Abe was instrumental in establishing a means for all athletes in Western New York High Schools receiving services from athletic trainers.

Rashad Baker (born February 22, 1982 in Camden, New Jersey) is an American football safety for the New England Patriots of the National Football League. He attended the University of Tennessee, and was signed by the Buffalo Bills as a undrafted free agent in 2004. In 2006 he was cut by the Bills and was picked up by the Minnesota Vikings. On November 7, 2006 he was released by the Vikings and signed by the New England Patriots.

Apple Loops Utility is a small companion utility to Soundtrack Pro, Garageband, Logic Express, and Logic Pro, all made by Apple Computer. It allows users to create loops of audio that can be time-stretched. Audio files can also be tagged with their publishing (Author, Comments, etc) and musical information (Key, Tempo, etc). Multiple files can be tagged at the same time, a process known as batch tagging. Apple Loops Utility can read both AIFF and WAV file formats, but it will convert the latter to AIFF when saved with tagging information.

The most recent version available without purchasing the aforementioned software is 1.3.1, available from Apple’s Developer Web site. Version 1.4, which is the first Universal Binary version of the software, is available with Logic Pro or Express 7.2. 1.4 allows multiple files to have multiple tags added to them. Version 1.4 also allows content merging to occur with Logic Audio Express. Only version 1.4 will work natively with Intel Macs. Version 1.3.1 will appear to allow edits to be made and file information to be saved, but none of the essential tagging information will be retained on an Intel Mac.

External links and references

• Apple Loops SDK, including Apple Loops Utility (DMG)
• Apple Loops Utility Manual (PDF)