Reduce utility bills

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.

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

A computer security utility going by the name GetAdmin was released in early July, 1997. The utility exploited a flaw in the Microsoft Windows NT 4 operating system in order to escalate privileges of an arbitrary specified account. GetAdmin will no longer work on newer versions of Windows operation systems and patches have been made available for NT4.

External links

• GetAdmin Utility Grants Users Administrative Rights (Microsoft)
• The ever popular getadmin exploit (Insecure.org)

uncompress is a shell command in Unix-like environments.

The uncompress utility will restore files to their original state after they have been compressed using the compress utility. If no files are specified, the standard input will be uncompressed to the standard output.

This utility supports the uncompressing of any files produced by compress. For files produced by compress on other systems, uncompress supports 9- to 16-bit compression.

Usage

The uncompress command options are specified like this:

uncompress switches files

Switches

uncompress has a number of command line options, or “switches”, that can modify the output. Some of these options are

• -f: force. If given, uncompress will not prompt for overwriting files.
• -v: verbose. List all files as they are being uncompressed

See also

• compress
• List of Unix programs

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

In economics, marginal concepts refer to the effect of producing or consuming one more of a good, i.e. at the edge, or margin, of the total produced/consumed.

For example, marginal cost refers to the cost of producing one more unit of some good. In general this will be lower than the average cost because the average cost includes fixed costs. (See economies of scale). Marginal benefit is the extra utility accrued from one additional unit of a good.

Similarly marginal utility is the additional utility (satisfaction or benefit) that a consumer derives from an additional unit of a commodity or service. It is assumed that marginal utility generally falls as consumption increases, so that one’s 10th doughnut in a day is less satisfying than the first or second.

Other marginal concepts include:

• marginal tax rate
• marginal propensity to save and consume
• marginal rate of substitution

The related concept of elasticity is the ratio of the incremental percentage change in one variable with respect to an incremental percentage change in another variable.

Sam Aiken (born December 14 1980 in Clinton, North Carolina) is an American football wide receiver who currently plays for the Buffalo Bills in the National Football League. He was originally drafted by the Bills in the fourth round (127th overall) of the 2003 NFL Draft. He played collegiately at the University of North Carolina.

Aiken attended James Kenan High School in Warsaw, North Carolina and was a letterman in football, basketball, and track & field.

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 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.

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 term Timex can refer to:

• Timex Corporation, a large manufacturer of watches
• Timex (Unix utility), a Unix utility tool used to measure the duration of shell processes
• Timex Sinclair, a series of microcomputers
• Timex Social Club, a band from the 1980s with one major hit, Rumors.

A Utilities commission, Utility Regulatory Commission (URC), or Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is a governing body that regulates the rates and services of a utility.

The utility that is being regulated may be owned by the consumers that it serves, a mutual utility like a Public Utility District, a state or government owned utility, or it may be a stockholder owned utility either publicly traded on a stock exchange or closely held among just a few investors.

See also: Public Service Commission

Countries:

• Anguilla Public Utilities Commission
• Bahamas Public Utilities Commission [1]
• Belize Public Utilities Commission [2]

United States:

• Regulatory Commission of Alaska [3]
• Arizona Corporations Commission [4]
• California Public Utilities Commission [5]
• Colorado Public Utilities Commission [6]
• Hawaii Public Utilities Commission [7]
• Idaho Public Utilities Commission [8]
• Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission [9]
• Maine Public Utilities Commission [10]
• Minnesota Public Utilities Commission
• Michigan Public Service Commission [11]
• Nevada Public Utilities Commission [12]
• New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission [13]
• New Mexico Public Regulation Commission [14]
• North Carolina Utilities Commission [15]
• Public Utilities Commission of Ohio [16]
• Oregon Public Utility Commission [17]
• Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission [18]
• Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission [19]
• San Francisco Public Utilities Commission [20]
• South Dakota Public Utilities Commission [21]
• Texas Public Utility Commission [22]
• Public Service Commission of Utah [23]
• Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission [24]

A Utilities commission, Utility Regulatory Commission (URC), or Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is a governing body that regulates the rates and services of a utility.

The utility that is being regulated may be owned by the consumers that it serves, a mutual utility like a Public Utility District, a state or government owned utility, or it may be a stockholder owned utility either publicly traded on a stock exchange or closely held among just a few investors.

See also: Public Service Commission

Countries:

• Anguilla Public Utilities Commission
• Bahamas Public Utilities Commission [1]
• Belize Public Utilities Commission [2]

United States:

• Regulatory Commission of Alaska [3]
• Arizona Corporations Commission [4]
• California Public Utilities Commission [5]
• Colorado Public Utilities Commission [6]
• Hawaii Public Utilities Commission [7]
• Idaho Public Utilities Commission [8]
• Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission [9]
• Maine Public Utilities Commission [10]
• Minnesota Public Utilities Commission
• Michigan Public Service Commission [11]
• Nevada Public Utilities Commission [12]
• New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission [13]
• New Mexico Public Regulation Commission [14]
• North Carolina Utilities Commission [15]
• Public Utilities Commission of Ohio [16]
• Oregon Public Utility Commission [17]
• Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission [18]
• Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission [19]
• San Francisco Public Utilities Commission [20]
• South Dakota Public Utilities Commission [21]
• Texas Public Utility Commission [22]
• Public Service Commission of Utah [23]
• Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission [24]

A computer security utility going by the name GetAdmin was released in early July, 1997. The utility exploited a flaw in the Microsoft Windows NT 4 operating system in order to escalate privileges of an arbitrary specified account. GetAdmin will no longer work on newer versions of Windows operation systems and patches have been made available for NT4.

External links

• GetAdmin Utility Grants Users Administrative Rights (Microsoft)
• The ever popular getadmin exploit (Insecure.org)

uncompress is a shell command in Unix-like environments.

The uncompress utility will restore files to their original state after they have been compressed using the compress utility. If no files are specified, the standard input will be uncompressed to the standard output.

This utility supports the uncompressing of any files produced by compress. For files produced by compress on other systems, uncompress supports 9- to 16-bit compression.

Usage

The uncompress command options are specified like this:

uncompress switches files

Switches

uncompress has a number of command line options, or “switches”, that can modify the output. Some of these options are

• -f: force. If given, uncompress will not prompt for overwriting files.
• -v: verbose. List all files as they are being uncompressed

See also

• compress
• List of Unix programs

The Utility Data Center, or UDC, is a product of Hewlett Packard. It was intended to be a combination of hardware and software to enable rapid deployment of virtualized resources, Virtual Networking, Virtual Storage, and Virtual servers. The project was canceled on September 27 2004.

External links

• HP Utility Data Center

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

Terrance Pennington (born September 25, 1983 in Los Angeles, California) is an American football offensive tackle free agent of the National Football League. He was originally drafted by the Buffalo Bills in the seventh round (216th overall) of the 2006 NFL Draft. He played collegiately at New Mexico. He got cut after the 2007 training camp from the Buffalo Bills.

NFL career

He was drafted in the 2006 NFL Draft out of the University of New Mexico. Pennington took over as the starting right tackle for the Bills midway through the 2006 season. Despite Langston Walker being brought in to start at right tackle in the offseason, Pennington was expected to stick with the Bills team as a backup. In a move that was surprising to some fans he was cut while the less experienced Kirk Chambers was kept. Pennington is now a free agent.

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

In United States patent law, utility is a patentability requirement. Today, the utility requirement is the lowest bar and is easily met. Largely utility is used to prevent the patenting of inoperative devices such as perpetual motion machines. Utility is required by the patent law: 35 U.S.C. 101, “inventions patentable”, and 35 U.S.C. 112, “specification”.

There are three types of utility:

1. General utility is the requirement of functionality.
2. Specific utility is the requirement that the invention actually perform the function.
3. Moral, or beneficial, utility requires that the invention not “poison, promote debauchery, facilitate private assassination”. Lowell v. Lewis, 15 F. Cas. 1018, 1019 (C.C.D. Mass. 1817)

The patent examiners guidelines require that a patent application express a specific, credible, and substantial utility. Rejection by an examiner usually requires documentary evidence establishing a prima facie showing of no specific and substantial credible utility.

European patent law does not consider utility as a patentability criterion. In this respect, decision T 388/04 of March 22, 2006 of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office has made it clear that “subject-matter or activities may be excluded from patentability under even where they have practical utility” (headnote III.), thus ruling out the utility of an invention as a decisive patentability criterion. Instead, it requires that to be patentable an invention must have industrial applicability. Under the European Patent Convention, see for instance .

Notes and references

See also

• Sufficiency of disclosure
• Diamond v. Diehr
• Reduction to practice
• State Street decision
• Utility model

External links

• 35 U.S.C. §101 Inventions patentable (introducing the term “useful“)
• 2107 Guidelines of Examination
• Utility Patents & Non-provisional Patent Applications

Billy Buffalo is the official mascot of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. According to his official statistics, he’s about eight feet tall, and weighs 600 pounds. Billy is a graduate of Bovine University where he received a masters degree in mascotting skills. Born in Kissimmee, Florida, he now resides at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park, New York. He was the #1 pick in the 2000 NFL Mascot Draft. When not at games Billy likes signing autographs, playing with kids, and eating Buffalo Wings.

Through the years Billy has spawned many followers, one of the newest being Captain Buffalo, another fan of the Buffalo Bills.

External links

• Official Bio of Billy Buffalo

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

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

In economics, marginal concepts refer to the effect of producing or consuming one more of a good, i.e. at the edge, or margin, of the total produced/consumed.

For example, marginal cost refers to the cost of producing one more unit of some good. In general this will be lower than the average cost because the average cost includes fixed costs. (See economies of scale). Marginal benefit is the extra utility accrued from one additional unit of a good.

Similarly marginal utility is the additional utility (satisfaction or benefit) that a consumer derives from an additional unit of a commodity or service. It is assumed that marginal utility generally falls as consumption increases, so that one’s 10th doughnut in a day is less satisfying than the first or second.

Other marginal concepts include:

• marginal tax rate
• marginal propensity to save and consume
• marginal rate of substitution

The related concept of elasticity is the ratio of the incremental percentage change in one variable with respect to an incremental percentage change in another variable.

uncompress is a shell command in Unix-like environments.

The uncompress utility will restore files to their original state after they have been compressed using the compress utility. If no files are specified, the standard input will be uncompressed to the standard output.

This utility supports the uncompressing of any files produced by compress. For files produced by compress on other systems, uncompress supports 9- to 16-bit compression.

Usage

The uncompress command options are specified like this:

uncompress switches files

Switches

uncompress has a number of command line options, or “switches”, that can modify the output. Some of these options are

• -f: force. If given, uncompress will not prompt for overwriting files.
• -v: verbose. List all files as they are being uncompressed

See also

• compress
• List of Unix programs

Coy Michael Wire (born November 7, 1978 in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania) is an American football linebacker and safety who currently plays for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League. He was originally drafted by the Bills in the third round (97th overall) of the 2002 NFL Draft. He played collegiately at Stanford.

Football career

He played high school football for Cedar Cliff High School along with pro Kyle Brady. After his NCAA career with Stanford, Coy was drafted by the Bills in the 3rd round of the 2002 NFL Draft. Although he played multiple positions in college running back and outside linebacker the Bills originally converted Wire to strong safety, but have since transformed him into the starting weak-side linebacker. In his 3-year career, Wire has recorded 117 solo tackles but 0 interceptions.

Wire signed a 3-year contract extension following the 2006 season. Bills General Manager Marv Levy cited Wire’s special teams play as well as his switch to linebacker as reasons for re-signing him. Wire is known throughout Western New York for his role in the community and with various charitable organizations.

A Public Utility District (PUD) is an entity that provides, electricity, natural gas, sewer, waste collection, wholesale telecommunications, water, etc., to the residents of that district. The district is created by a geographical and political body such as a city, county, metropolitan service area (multiple communities joining together for efficiency), etc., for the sole purpose of promoting the development of a designated area by providing a service, such as water and sewer, electricity or gas, to the members, or consumers, of that district. The PUD operates in the same manner as a municipal utility district, but is created by a local government, not a private developer. Normally the districts are nonprofit entities. The general members usually elect a board to run the utility.

REDUCE is a general-purpose computer algebra system geared towards
applications in physics.

The development of the REDUCE computer algebra system was started in the 1960s by Anthony C. Hearn. Since then, many scientists from all over the world have contributed to its development under his direction.

REDUCE is written entirely in its own LISP dialect called Standard LISP,
expressed in an Algol-like syntax called RLISP. The latter is used as a
basis for REDUCE’s user-level language.

Implementations of REDUCE have existed on a staggering variety of computers, operating systems, and LISP bases over the decades. Currently, it is available on most flavors of Unix, Linux, Microsoft Windows, or Apple Macintosh systems by using an underlying Portable Standard LISP or Codemist Standard LISP implementation.

REDUCE is distributed for a cost-recovery fee that for a long time has usually included the full source code for the system, making it a popular research tool in the field of computer algebra.

See also

• MACSYMA

External links

• REDUCE web page

Larry Tripplett (born January 18, 1979 in Los Angeles, California) is an American football defensive tackle who currently plays for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League. He was originally drafted by the Indianapolis Colts in the second round (42nd overall) of the 2002 NFL Draft. He played collegiately at Washington.

Professional career

On March 12, 2006 Tripplett signed as a free agent with the Bills.

A Public Utility District (PUD) is an entity that provides, electricity, natural gas, sewer, waste collection, wholesale telecommunications, water, etc., to the residents of that district. The district is created by a geographical and political body such as a city, county, metropolitan service area (multiple communities joining together for efficiency), etc., for the sole purpose of promoting the development of a designated area by providing a service, such as water and sewer, electricity or gas, to the members, or consumers, of that district. The PUD operates in the same manner as a municipal utility district, but is created by a local government, not a private developer. Normally the districts are nonprofit entities. The general members usually elect a board to run the utility.

A Utilities commission, Utility Regulatory Commission (URC), or Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is a governing body that regulates the rates and services of a utility.

The utility that is being regulated may be owned by the consumers that it serves, a mutual utility like a Public Utility District, a state or government owned utility, or it may be a stockholder owned utility either publicly traded on a stock exchange or closely held among just a few investors.

See also: Public Service Commission

Countries:

• Anguilla Public Utilities Commission
• Bahamas Public Utilities Commission [1]
• Belize Public Utilities Commission [2]

United States:

• Regulatory Commission of Alaska [3]
• Arizona Corporations Commission [4]
• California Public Utilities Commission [5]
• Colorado Public Utilities Commission [6]
• Hawaii Public Utilities Commission [7]
• Idaho Public Utilities Commission [8]
• Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission [9]
• Maine Public Utilities Commission [10]
• Minnesota Public Utilities Commission
• Michigan Public Service Commission [11]
• Nevada Public Utilities Commission [12]
• New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission [13]
• New Mexico Public Regulation Commission [14]
• North Carolina Utilities Commission [15]
• Public Utilities Commission of Ohio [16]
• Oregon Public Utility Commission [17]
• Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission [18]
• Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission [19]
• San Francisco Public Utilities Commission [20]
• South Dakota Public Utilities Commission [21]
• Texas Public Utility Commission [22]
• Public Service Commission of Utah [23]
• Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission [24]

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

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.

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)

Mefo bill refers to a credit note that was issued by the Government of Nazi Germany, from 1934 on, under the guise of a company named “Metallurgische Forschung”, or “MEFO” for short. They were a fundamental part of the re-inflation of Germany’s economy under Finance Minister Hjalmar Schacht.

Funding rearmament

The German government needed to spend a large amount of money to fund rearmament. However, it faced two problems. First, rearmament was illegal under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and secondly there was a legal interest rate limit of 4.5%.

The government would normally borrow extra funds on the money market by offering a higher interest rate. However, because of the limit it was unable to do so. And a large, visible government deficit would have attracted attention.

An imaginary company

Hjalmar Schacht formed the limited liability company Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft, m.b.H., or “MEFO” for short. The company’s “mefo bills” served as bills of exchange, convertible into Reichsmark upon demand. MEFO had no actual existence or operations and was solely a balance sheet entity. The bills were mainly issued as payment to armaments manufacturers.

Mefo bills were issued to last for six months initially, but with the provision for indefinite three-month extensions. The total amount of mefo bills issued was kept secret.

Essentially, mefo bills enabled the German Reich to run a greater deficit than it would normally have done. By 1939, there were 12 billion Reichsmark of mefo bills, compared to 19 billion of normal government bonds.

This enabled the government to fund rearmament, and do so in a stealthy manner.

Fueling growth

This strengthened the German economy by providing the government with various goods and services which it was then able to reinvest in the economy, fueling its growth, and preparing it for Hitler’s aggressive foreign and domestic policies. Not only did the bills serve the above functions, but they also concealed the military expenditure forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles.

External links

• Nuremberg Trials discussion of the mefo bill
• Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression Individual Responsibility Of Defendants, the Nizkor Project

John McCargo (born August 19, 1983 in Drakes Branch, Virginia) is an American football defensive tackle who currently plays for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League. He was originally drafted by the Bills in the first round (26th overall) of the 2006 NFL Draft. He played collegiately at North Carolina State.

Many draft experts considered McCargo a late-2nd or early-3rd round pick before the 2006 NFL Draft. Because of this, many people were shocked when the Bills traded up to select him 26th overall.

McCargo spent most of the 2006 season on injured reserve, but could compete for playing time in the 2007 season.

External links

• Official website

The term Timex can refer to:

• Timex Corporation, a large manufacturer of watches
• Timex (Unix utility), a Unix utility tool used to measure the duration of shell processes
• Timex Sinclair, a series of microcomputers
• Timex Social Club, a band from the 1980s with one major hit, Rumors.

Description

VoiceOver is a feature built into Apple Computer’s Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger” operating system, as well as the latest presentation build of Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard”; the latter version represents a significant step forward from the 10.4 VoiceOver speech synthesiser. By using VoiceOver, the user can access his or her Macintosh by using speech and the keyboard. The feature is designed to increase accessibility for those with impaired vision.

From Apple’s website

VoiceOver reads aloud the contents of files including web pages, Mail messages and word processing files, provides a comprehensive audible description of your workspace and includes a rich set of keyboard commands that allow you to navigate the Mac OS X interface and interact with application and system controls.

External links

• Apple’s VoiceOver website
• VoiceOver manual

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.

Roy’s identity (named for French economist Rene Roy) is a major result in microeconomics having applications in consumer choice and the theory of the firm. The lemma relates the ordinary demand function to the derivatives of the indirect utility function.

Derivation of Roy’s identity

Roy’s identity reformulates Shephard’s lemma in order to get a Marshallian demand function for an individual and a good (<math>i</math>) from some indirect utility function.

The first step is to consider the trivial identity obtained by substituting the expenditure function for wealth or income (<math>m</math>)in the indirect utility function (<math>\psi\ (m, p)</math>, at a utility of <math>u</math>):

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

This says that the indirect utility function evaluated in such a way that minimizes the cost for achieving a certain utility given a set of prices (a vector <math>p</math>) is equal to that utility when evaluated at those prices.

Taking the partial derivative of both sides of this equation with respect to the price of a single good <math>p_i</math> (with the utility level held constant) gives:

<math>\frac{ \partial \psi\ [e(u,p),p]}{\partial m} \frac{\partial e(u,p)}{\partial p_i} + \frac{\partial \psi\ [e(u,p),p]}{\partial p_i} = 0</math>.

Rearranging gives the desired result:

<math>\frac{\partial e(u,p)}{\partial p_i}=-\frac{\frac{\partial \psi\ [e(u,p),p]}{\partial p_i}}{\frac{\partial \psi\ [e(u,p),p]}{\partial m}}=x_i(m,p)</math>

Application

This gives a method of deriving the Marshallian demand function of a good for some consumer from the indirect utility function of that consumer. It is also fundamental in deriving the Slutsky equation.

References

• Roy, René (1947). “La Distribution du Revenu Entre Les Divers Biens,” Econometrica, 15, 205-225.

uncompress is a shell command in Unix-like environments.

The uncompress utility will restore files to their original state after they have been compressed using the compress utility. If no files are specified, the standard input will be uncompressed to the standard output.

This utility supports the uncompressing of any files produced by compress. For files produced by compress on other systems, uncompress supports 9- to 16-bit compression.

Usage

The uncompress command options are specified like this:

uncompress switches files

Switches

uncompress has a number of command line options, or “switches”, that can modify the output. Some of these options are

• -f: force. If given, uncompress will not prompt for overwriting files.
• -v: verbose. List all files as they are being uncompressed

See also

• compress
• List of Unix programs

Sam Aiken (born December 14 1980 in Clinton, North Carolina) is an American football wide receiver who currently plays for the Buffalo Bills in the National Football League. He was originally drafted by the Bills in the fourth round (127th overall) of the 2003 NFL Draft. He played collegiately at the University of North Carolina.

Aiken attended James Kenan High School in Warsaw, North Carolina and was a letterman in football, basketball, and track & field.

Terrance Pennington (born September 25, 1983 in Los Angeles, California) is an American football offensive tackle free agent of the National Football League. He was originally drafted by the Buffalo Bills in the seventh round (216th overall) of the 2006 NFL Draft. He played collegiately at New Mexico. He got cut after the 2007 training camp from the Buffalo Bills.

NFL career

He was drafted in the 2006 NFL Draft out of the University of New Mexico. Pennington took over as the starting right tackle for the Bills midway through the 2006 season. Despite Langston Walker being brought in to start at right tackle in the offseason, Pennington was expected to stick with the Bills team as a backup. In a move that was surprising to some fans he was cut while the less experienced Kirk Chambers was kept. Pennington is now a free agent.

A utility bicycle (aka city bicycle or a beater) is one which is designed for a practical purpose, as opposed to “sport bicycles” which are designed for recreation and competition, such as touring bicycles, racing bicycles and mountain bicycles.

Utility bicycles are used for short-distance commuting, for running errands, shopping and sometimes promotion. They have been used for courier service in wars and to get around such large workplaces as large factories, warehouses, airports and movie studio lots. Utility bicycles often feature a step-through frame so they can be easily mounted, hub gears and drum brakes to reduce the need for maintenance, mudguards to keep the rider’s clothing clean, a chain guard to prevent skirts or loose trousers from being caught in the chain, a skirt guard to prevent a long skirt catching in the rear brakes, a kickstand so it can be parked anywhere, and a basket or pannier rack to carry personal possessions or shopping bags. Utility bicycles typically are heavier than “sport bicycles”, parts such as rims/wheels are chosen for strength and durability and low cost rather than high performance. The handlebars are almost always curved back, and higher than the saddle so that the rider can ride in an upright riding position. Some people add a child seat or a trailer.

These parts and features mean a good utility bike is functional, durable, comfortable and versatile. These virtues come at the expense of high weight.

The utility bicycle is the most widely used form of bicycle in many parts of the world, but in many industrialized nations motor vehicles have replaced bicycles for personal transport in the 20th century and the reduced availability of utility bicycles in some countries has led people to adopt sport bicycles for tasks for which utility bicycles are better suited. A few countries, notably the Netherlands and Denmark, are exceptions to this rule. In addition, the Deutsche Post uses utility bikes in most German cities for delivering mail.

See also

• Bicycle messenger
• Roadster (bicycle)

PayPoint is a system for paying bills in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, run by PayPoint plc. The network is installed at over 20,000 Convenience stores and Petrol stations. Generally, payments are made in cash but other forms of payment such as credit/debit cards and cheques may be used dependent upon PayPoint and/or the retailer.

The PayPoint network was set-up in 1996 providing a convenient place for customers to pay towards a limited range of utility companies’ payment schemes. Over the years PayPoint has increased the variety of clients on offer, and now has a client list of over 700. Some PayPoint agents have integrated the PayPoint system into their own EPoS systems. However, the vast majority (circa 16,000) use a small counter-top terminal provided by PayPoint. The service offers customers the opportunity to top-up their mobile phones, pay for services such as gas, electricity and TV Licences at the same time as their shopping. This is extremely useful for those who do not have a bank account and may not even have a regular income as they can choose when and how much to pay. The customer does not pay a surcharge for using the service; the costs are recouped from the organisation whose bills they are paying.

Payments using PayPoint can be loosely grouped into two broad types:

• Those which either pay off an existing debt or add “credit” to an account
• Those which “charge” (in the same sense as one charges a battery) a “smart” token which then contains the credit.

In the first category is the ability to pay Council Tax and traditional utility bills, possibly in irregular instalments which would not normally be accepted. More recently, PayPoint terminals have been able to offer E top-up including ezetop’s international phone top-up remittance service, and print vouchers, for pay as you go mobile phones, as well as the London congestion charge. The second category includes Quantum smart cards and similar electricity “smart keys” which are now widely used in place of coin-based electricity meters. The company has also branched out to provide retailers with a credit/debit card processing facility as well as in-store ATMs connected to the LINK network.

Rivals to PayPoint include Payzone, Post Office Ltd (in the UK) and An Post’s PostPoint network (in Ireland) all of which offer similar services.

References

External links

• PayPoint
• PayPoint Ireland
• ezetop.com

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)

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.

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

Coy Michael Wire (born November 7, 1978 in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania) is an American football linebacker and safety who currently plays for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League. He was originally drafted by the Bills in the third round (97th overall) of the 2002 NFL Draft. He played collegiately at Stanford.

Football career

He played high school football for Cedar Cliff High School along with pro Kyle Brady. After his NCAA career with Stanford, Coy was drafted by the Bills in the 3rd round of the 2002 NFL Draft. Although he played multiple positions in college running back and outside linebacker the Bills originally converted Wire to strong safety, but have since transformed him into the starting weak-side linebacker. In his 3-year career, Wire has recorded 117 solo tackles but 0 interceptions.

Wire signed a 3-year contract extension following the 2006 season. Bills General Manager Marv Levy cited Wire’s special teams play as well as his switch to linebacker as reasons for re-signing him. Wire is known throughout Western New York for his role in the community and with various charitable organizations.

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.