Luther's Reflections on the Work of Christ

Posted on November 19, 2008 in Impotence young men

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Posted on November 18, 2008 in Canadian meds

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Posted on November 18, 2008 in Canadian meds

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Blogger's Block #4: Ruby and Java and Stuff

Posted on November 18, 2008 in Generic biologicals

Part 4 of a 4-part series of short posts intended to clear out my bloggestive tract. Hold your nose! Well, I held out for a week. Then I read the comments. Argh! Actually they were fine. Nice comments, all around. Whew. I don't have any big themes to talk about today, but I've got a couple of little ones, let's call 'em bloguettes, that I'll lump together into a medley for today's entree. Bloguette #1: Ruby Sneaks ended accessible Python I was in Barnes today, doing my usual weekend stroll through the tech section. Helps me keep up on the latest trends. And wouldn't you know it, I skipped a few weeks there, and suddenly Ruby and Rails have almost as many books out as Python. I counted eleven Ruby/RoR titles tonight, and thirteen for Python (including one Zope book). And Ruby had a big display section at the end of one of the shelves. Not all the publishers were O'Reilly and Pragmatic Press. I'm pretty sure there were two or three others there, so it's not just a plot by Tim O'Reilly to sell more books. Well, actually that's exactly what it is, but it's based on actual market research that led him to the conclusion that Rails and Ruby are both gathering steam like nobody's business. I like a lot of languages. Really, I do. But I use Ruby. I'm not even sure if I like Ruby. The issue might just be irrelevant to whether I use it. I like OCaml, for instance, but I don't use it. I don't like Java, but I do use it. Liking and using are mostly orthogonal dimensions, and if you like the language you're using even a little bit, you're lucky. That, or you just haven't gotten broad enough exposure to know how miserable you ought to be. I use Ruby because it's been the path of least resistance for most of my programming tasks since about 3 days after I started messing with it, maybe 4 years ago. I don't even really know Ruby all that well. I never bothered to learn it. I did read "Ruby in a Nutshell" cover-to-cover, but it's a short read (and it's a bit out of date now.) Then I read bits of "Programming Ruby", but not all of it. And now I use Ruby for everything I can, any time I have any choice in the matter. I don't even mind that I don't know the language all that well. It has a tiny core that serves me admirably well, and it's easy to look things up when you need to. I do a lot more programming in Python than in Ruby -- Jython in my game server, and Python at work, since that's what everyone there uses for scripting. I have maybe 3x more experience with Python than with Ruby (and 10x more experience with Perl). But Perl and Python both have more unnecessary conceptual overhead, so I find I have to consult the docs more often with both of them. And when all's said and done, Ruby code generally winds up being the most direct and succinct, whether it's mine or someone else's. I have a lot of trouble writing about Ruby, because I find there's nothing to say. It's why I almost never post to the O'Reilly Ruby blog. Ruby seems so self-explanatory to me. It makes it almost boring; you try to focus on Ruby and you wind up talking about some problem domain instead of the language. I think that's the goal of all programming languages, but so far Ruby's one of the few to succeed at it so well. If only it performed better. *Sigh*. Well, its performance is in the same class as Perl/Python/JavaScript/Lua/Bash/etc., so there are still plenty of tasks Ruby's admirably suited for. I think next year Ruby's going to be muscling in on Perl in terms of mindshare, or shelf-share, at B&N. Bloguette #2: Java's Biggest Dog (Indeed) I still do most of my programming in Java -- at least half of it, maybe more. The Java platform continues to make amazing strides. The newest incarnation (JDK 6) has lots of goodies I can't wait to play with. Like Rhino, for instance, and although they appear to have gutted it, it's still awesome. I think it's the best choice they possibly could have made. Thank God they didn't bundle Groovy. What a catastrophe that was, and still is, and would have been for Java if they'd bundled it. Rhino rocks. The JVM is just getting faster and more stable, and there are even some OK libraries that come with it. I used to think the Java platform libraries were the cat's meow. Heck, I thought they were the whole damn cat. But working with better libraries in miscellaneous other languages has got me thinking that Java's libraries are hit-or-miss. Example: Java's concurrency libraries (java.util.concurrent[.*]) are to die for. I mean, if you're stuck with threads. I think in the fullness of time, hand-managed threads will be history, but in the meantime, Java's concurrency libraries are just superb. I recently ported a medium-sized Python program I'd written (about 1200 lines of fairly dense Python code) to Java, because the Python was taking about an hour to run, and I wanted to parallelize the work. I spent about 3 days doing the rewrite: one day on the straight port, a day adding in the threading, and a day fine-tuning it. The straight port wound up as 1300 lines of Java (surprising that it wasn't bigger, but maybe I code in Python with a Java accent?), and ran about 50% faster, down to about 30 minutes. After adding in the threading and state machine, the program ran in 50 to 60 seconds. So I got an order of magnitude improvement with only about a 50% increase overall in program size. The vast majority of the improvement was attributable to the threading, which in turn would have taken me FAR longer if I'd been using raw synchronization primitives. The java.util.concurrent stuff made it a snap. On the other hand, Java's DOM implementation completely blows chunks. It quickly became the bottleneck in my application, due to an O(n) algorithm I stumbled across with no good workaround for. I can't remember exactly where it was (this was back in July), but I found a sheepishly apologetic comment from the author in the online docs. It was something to do with setting attributes on nodes while you're doing a traversal of some sort: something you'd definitely want to be fast, but it had at least linear performance, maybe worse, and now accounts for 95+% of my app's processing time. And of course Java's DOM interface blows too, because you can't create subclasses or decorators or do anything useful with the DOM other than use it as a temp container until you've transfered the data to something more flexible. Java's collections library is decent, but not superb. It's nice having the data structures they provide, but they're not very configurable, and the language itself makes them often cumbersome. For instance, you can have a WeakHashMap (nice), or an IdentityHashMap (nice), or a ConcurrentHashMap (also nice), but you can't combine any two of those three properties into a single hashtable. Lame. And java.util is missing implementations and/or interfaces for a bunch of important data types like priority queues (you're stuck using a TreeSet, which is overkill), the disjoint set ADT, splay trees, bloom filters, multi-maps, and of course any kind of built-in graph support. Java hyper-enthusiasts will tell you: "well, go write your own! Or use one of the many hopefully robust implementations on the web!" That seems lame to me. We're talking about data structures here: they're more fundamental than, say, LDAP libraries and much of the other stuff Sun's bundling these days. It's smartest to provide robust, tuned implementations of these things, because it empowers average Java programmers to write faster, more reliable code. Oh, and let's not even get me started with java.nio. What a mess! It's pretty gross, especially if you come from the comparatively simple background of select() and poll() on Unix. But maybe the grossness was necessary. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. What bugs me isn't that the API is conceptually weird and complex (and buggy as hell last time I checked); what bugs me is that nobody at Sun bothered to put a layer atop java.nio for ordinary programmers. Like, say, a nonblocking DataInputStream that takes a type to read, a Buffer, and a callback to call when it's finished reading. So every frigging Java programmer on the planet has to write that exact class -- or just flail around with the raw APIs, which is what I think most of them do. And look what they did to poor LDAP! I mean, the LDAP bindings are dirt-simple in every language I've ever used. It's supposed to be lightweight -- that's what the "L" stands for, fer cryin' out loud. JNDI is this huge monster. So is JMX. I mean, Java libraries have this way of being so bloated and overengineered. But whatever; I've digressed. Java's libraries are not its biggest failing. The libraries (as I said) are decent, and the platform (in terms of tools, speed, reliability, documentation, portability, monitoring, etc.) really raises the bar on all those other loser languages out there. All of 'em. It's why no better languages have managed to supplant Java yet. Even if the language and its libraries are (on the whole) better than Java's, they also have to contend with the Java platform, and so far nobody's been able to touch it, unless maybe it's .NET, but who cares about .NET? Certainly not Amazon.com or Yahoo! or Google or any other important companies that I'm aware of. Literals Anyway, Java's biggest failing, I've decided, is its lack of syntax for literal data objects. It's an umbrella failing that accounts for most of the issues I have with the language. The idea behind literals is that you have some sort of serialized notation for your data type, and it's part of the language syntax, so you can embed pre-initialized objects in your code. The most obvious ones are numbers, booleans and strings. It's hard to imagine life without support for numeric literals, isn't it? Well, Java's support is limited at best. There's no syntax for entering a binary value, for instance, like "0b10010100". And there's no BigInteger/BigDecimal syntax, so working with them is a disaster and nobody does it if they can help it. Heck, Java doesn't even have unsigned ints and longs. But Java does more or less the bare minimum for numbers, so people don't notice it much. Imagine if there were no String literals, so that instead of this: String s = "Hello, world!"; you had to do this: StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer(); sb.append('H'); sb.append('e'); sb.append('l'); sb.append('l'); sb.append('o'); sb.append(','); sb.append(' '); sb.append('W').append('o').append('r').append('l').append('d').append('!'); String s = sb.toString(); Not only is the latter bloated and ugly and error-prone (can you spot the error in mine?), it's also butt-slow. Literals provide the compiler with opportunities for optimization. Well, unfortunately this OOP garbage is exactly what you have to do when you're initializing a hashtable in Java. Nearly all other languages these days have support for hashtable/hashmap literals, something like: my_hashmap = { "key1" : "value1", "key2" : "value2", "key3" : "value3", ... } That's the syntax used by Python and JavaScript, but other languages are similar. The Java equivalent is this: Map<String, String> my_hashmap = new HashMap<String, String>(); my_hashmap.put("key1", "value1"); my_hashmap.put("key2", "value2"); my_hashmap.put("key3", "value3"); ... It might not look that much worse from this simple example, but there are definitely problems. One is optimization; the compiler is unlikely to be able to optimize all these method calls, whereas with a literal syntax, it could potentially save on method call overhead during construction of the table (and maybe other savings as well.) Another is nested data structures. In JavaScript (and Python, Ruby, etc.) you just declare them in a nested fashion, like so: my_thingy = { "key1": { "foo": "bar", "foo2": "bar2"}, "key2": ["this", "is", "a", "literal", "array"], "key3": 37.5, "key4": "Hello, world!", ... } It would be hard to do this particular one in Java 5 because of the mixed value types, though it's probably not an issue since using mixed-type data structures is something you rarely do in practice, even in dynamically-typed languages. But even if all the values were hashes of string-to-string, how are you going to do it in Java without literals? You can't. You're stuck with: Map<String, Map<String, String>> my_hashmap = new HashMap<String, HashMap<String, String>>(); Map<String, String> value = new HashMap<String, String>(); value.put("foo", "bar"); value.put("foo2", "bar2"); my_hashmap.put("key1, value); value.clear(); value.put("foo3", "bar3"); value.put("foo4", "bar4"); my_hashmap.put("key2, value); ... And then you find out later that your clever clear() optimization (instead of creating a new HashMap object for each value) busted it completely. Whee. Java programmers wind up dealing with this kind of thing by writing generic helper functions, and it winds up layering even more OOP overhead onto something that ought to be a simple declaration. It also tends to be brutally slow; e.g. you could write a function called buildHashMap that took an array of {key, value, key, value, ...}, but it adds a huge constant-factor overhead. This is why Java programmers rely on XML so heavily, and it imposes both an impedance mismatch (XML is not Java, so you have to translate back and forth) and a performance penalty. But the story doesn't end there. What about Vector/ArrayList literals? Java has primitive array literals, which is nice as far as it goes: String[] s = new String[]{"fee", "fi", "fo", "fum"}; Unfortunately, Java's primitive arrays are a huge wart; they don't have methods, can't be subclassed, and basically fall entirely outside the supposedly beautiful OOP-land that Java has created. It was for performance, to help capture skeptical C++ programmers, and they have their place. But I don't see why they should have all the syntactic support. I mean, the [] array-indexing operator is ONLY available for Java arrays. Sure would be nice to have it for ArrayLists, wouldn't it? And Strings? And FileInputStreams? But for some reason, Java gave arrays not one, but TWO syntactic sugarings, and then didn't give that sugar to anything else array-like in the language. So for building ArrayLists, LinkedLists, TreeMaps and the like, you're stuck with Swing-style code assemblages. I think of them as Swing-style because I used to do a lot of AWT and Swing programming, back when I was a Thick Client kind of guy, and they have a distinct(ly unpleasant) footprint. It looks vaguely like this, in pseudo-Swing: Panel p = new Panel(new FlowLayout()); JButton b = new JButton("Press me!"); b.setEventListener(somethingOrOther); p.add(b); JSomething foo = new JSomething(blah, blah); foo.setAttribute(); foo.setOtherAttribute(); foo.soGladIDontDoThisKindOfThingAnymore(); p.add(foo); ... Building UIs in Swing is this huge, festering gob of object instantiations and method calls. It's OOP at its absolute worst. So people have come up with minilanguages (like the TableLayout), and declarative XML replacements like Apache Jelly, and other ways to try to ease the pain. I was on a team at Amazon many years ago that was planning to port a big internal Swing application to the web, and we were looking at the various ways to do web programming, which at the time (for Java) were pretty much limited to JSP, WebMacro, and rolling your own Swing-like HTML component library. We experimented with the OOP approach to HTML generation and quickly discarded it as unmaintainable. (Tell that to any OOP fanatic and watch their face contort as they try to reconcile their conflicting ideas about what constitutes good programming practice.) The right solution in this case is, of course, a Lisp dialect; Lisp really shines at this sort of thing. But Lisp isn't so hot at algebraic expressions, and the best Lisp machines no longer look so cutting-edge compared to the JVM, and blah blah blah, so people don't use Lisp. So it goes. The next-best solutions are all about equally bad. You have your XML-language approaches (like Jelly, but for the web), but they don't give you sufficient expressiveness for control flow -- presentation logic really does require code, and it gets ugly in XML in a real hurry. You have your JSP-style templating approaches, and they aren't bad, but they can have as many as 4 or 5 different languages mixed in the same source file, which presents various problems for your tools (both the IDEs and the batch tools). And then you have a long tail of other approaches, none of which manage to be very satisfying, but that's not really the fault of the languages. It's the browsers' fault: they START with three languages (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), rather than having just one language to control the entire presentation, and it only goes downhill from there. But NONE of the approaches to web templating is as bad as Swing-style programming, with a huge thicket of calls to new(), addChild(), setAttribute(), addListener(), and the like. The only approach that's worse (and even it might just be tied) is raw HTML printing: print("<html><body>...</body></html>"); So we're all in agreement. OOP-style assembly of parents and children is the worst way to generate HTML. You want to use declarations; you want a template , something that visually looks like the end result you're trying to create. Well, it's the exact same situation for data structures, isn't it? You'd rather draw a picture of it (in a sense, that's exactly what you're doing with syntax for literals) than write a bunch of code to assemble it. This is all assuming that you're working with a small data set, of course. But that happens all the time in real-world programs; it's ubiquitous. So you kinda want your language to support it syntactically. And so far we've only covered literal syntax for HashMaps and ArrayLists (which you can combine to produce various kinds of custom Trees.) Already Java's way behind other languages, and we haven't discussed any richer data types. Like, say, objects. JavaScript does it the best here, IMO, in the parity between hashes and objects. It's not really possible in Ruby or Python to declare a class, then create instances of the class using literal notation the way you can in JavaScript, where the keys are the names of instance variables. Fortunately you can accomplish this in either Ruby or Python with just a smidge of metaprogramming, so it's spilt milk at worst. In Java, you only have one big hammer (instantiation), and one big wrench (the method call), so that's what you use. All you can really do to help is create a constructor that takes arguments that populate the instance variables. But if any of your instance variables are collections (other than arrays), then you're back to the old create-setprops-addchild, create-setprops-addchild pattern again. And what about functions? Ruby and JavaScript and Lisp and Scheme and Lua and Haskell and OCaml and most other self-respecting languages have function literals. That is, they have a syntax for declaring an instance of a function as a data object in your code that you can assign to a variable, or pass as a parameter. (Python has them too, but unfortunately they can only be one line, so Python folks prefer to pretend anonymous functions aren't very important. This is one of the 10 or so big problems caused by Python's whitespace policy. Don't ever let 'em tell you it doesn't cause problems. It does. Maybe it's worth the trade-off; that's a personal style preference, but they should at least admit the tradeoff exists.) Well, Java sort of has them, but Java's static type system doesn't have a literal syntax for a method signature. It's pretty easy to imagine one, e.g. something like: (int, int) -> String x; This imaginary syntax declares a variable x that takes 2 ints as parameters and returns a string. Lots of languages have signature-syntax of some sort, and Java's syntax space is definitely sparse enough that they could pick a good syntax for it without fear of collisions, even conceptual collisions. But no such luck. Instead, when you want to do this sort of thing you have to declare a named interface, and then inside of it declare at least one named method (which is where the params and return type show up), and then you're still not done, because when you create the function you have to create an anonymous (or named) class that contains the definition of the function that matches the interface. Yuck. But at least they let you do it; the alternative of not having it at all is definitely worse. Still... isn't syntactic sugar nice? I mean, they added the "smart" for-loop, which Java programmers just rave about. So someone, somewhere in the Java community thinks syntax is good. I'm not sure many of them really understand the difference between syntactic sugar (into which category the "smart" for-loop falls) and orthogonal syntax, in which the basic operators apply to all data types for which those operators make sense, and there are literal declarations possible for every data type. Let alone the next step, which is extensible syntax -- but that idea strikes fear into the hearts of many otherwise brave Java programmers, and Rubyists and Pythonistas as well, so let's back it up a notch to "orthogonal", and keep everyone calm. So there you have it: Java's biggest failing. It's the literals. No literal syntax for array-lists (or linked lists or tree sets), nothing for hashtables, nothing for objects of classes you've personally defined, none for functions or function signatures. Java programmers all around the world spend a *lot* of their time working around the problem, using XML and YAML and JSON and other non-Java data-declaration languages, and writing tons of code (whole frameworks, even) for serializing and deserializing these declarations to and from Java. For the smaller stuff, they just write helper functions, which wind up being bloated, inefficient, error-prone, and extremely unsatisfying. Java's next-biggest failing may well be the lack of orthogonality in its set of operators. We can live without operator overloading, I suppose (the simplest form of extensible syntax), but only if Sun makes operators like [] and + actually work for objects other than arrays and Strings, respectively. Jeez. Epiblogue You can draw your own conclusions about why suddenly there are all these books on Ruby appearing on the bookshelves. It's a mix of truths, no doubt. And you can draw your own conclusions about why Sun's adding support for scripting languages to the JVM, rather than simply fixing Java so that people don't want (need, really) to use those other languages. But when you dig down into a programming language, and you get past all the hype and the hooplah, what you find is a set of policies and decisions that affect your everyday life as a programmer in ways you can't ignore, and that no amount of hype will smooth over. If your language is sitting on you like an invisible elephant, and everyone using the language is struggling to work around the same problems, then it's inevitable that other languages will come into play. Libraries can make you more productive, but they have almost no effect on the scalability of the language. Every language has a complexity ceiling, and it's determined by a whole slew of policy and design decisions within the language, not the libraries. The slew includes the type system (with its attendant hundreds of mini-policies), and the syntax, and it also includes the language's consistency: the ratio of rules to exceptions. Java's demonstrating quite clearly that at a certain level of complexity, the libraries and frameworks start to collapse under their own weight. People are always writing "lightweight" replacements for existing fat Java libraries and frameworks, and then the replacements get replaced, ad infinitum. But have you ever seen anyone write a replacement for XPath? Nope. It's not like everyone is rushing out to write the next big XML-querying framework. This is because XPath is a language , not a library, and it's orders of magnitude more conceptually scalable than the equivalent DOM manipulations. Object-Oriented Programming. Touted even by skeptics as a radical leap forward in productivity, and all OOP really is boils down to a set of organizational techniques. Organization is nice, sure. But it's pretty clear that OOP alone doesn't cut it; it has to be supplemented with Language-Oriented Programming and DSLs. And all languages, DSLs and general-purpose languages alike, have to be designed to maximize consistency; each inconsistency and special-case in the language adds to its conceptual overhead and lowers the complexity ceiling. So you can look at the shelves filling up with Ruby books and chalk it up to marketing hype, but I have a different theory. I think it's entirely due to complexity management: Ruby does a better job of helping managing complexity than its competitors. It doesn't do a perfect job, mind you -- far from it. But it's enough of a step forward in productivity (even over Perl and Python) that it's managing to shoulder its way in to a pretty crowded language space. With that in mind, despite my griping about Java's failings, I think Sun might actually be doing the right thing by introducing scripting languages (and improving support for them in the JVM.) Maybe. Their investment isn't really so much in Java as it is in the JVM; the JVM is their .NET. Java's not really about productivity, not really -- it's got a lot of strengths (performance, deployment, reliability, static checkability, and so on), but productivity isn't high on the list. So maybe the best way to address the productivity issue, for folks who really need it more than raw performance, is to introduce new JVM languages rather than try to pull Java in two directions. We'll see. And with that, I think I've officially un-blocked myself; I seem to be able to blog again. So I'm declaring the Blogger's Block series finished! BloggersBlock block = new BloggersBlock(); block.setFinished(true); block.tieOffAndStuff(); blog.addChild(block); ... cheap oem software buy software

Tags: java, language, ruby, string, literal

Good Agile, Bad Agile

Posted on November 18, 2008 in Generic biologicals

  Scrums are the most dangerous phase in rugby, since a collapse or improper engage can lead to a front row player damaging or even breaking his neck. — Wikipedia When I was growing up, cholesterol used to be bad for you. It was easy to remember. Fat, bad. Cholesterol bad. Salt, bad. Everything, bad. Nowadays, though, they differentiate between "good" cholesterol and "bad" cholesterol, as if we're supposed to be able to distinguish them somehow. And it was weird when they switched it up on us, because it was as if the FDA had suddenly issued a press release announcing that there are, in fact, two kinds of rat poison: Good Rat Poison and Bad Rat Poison, and you should eat a lot of the Good kind, and none of the Bad kind, and definitely not mix them up or anything. Up until maybe a year ago, I had a pretty one-dimensional view of so-called "Agile" programming, namely that it's an idiotic fad-diet of a marketing scam making the rounds as yet another technological virus implanting itself in naive programmers who've never read "No Silver Bullet", the kinds of programmers who buy extended warranties and self-help books and believe their bosses genuinely care about them as people, the kinds of programmers who attend conferences to make friends and who don't know how to avoid eye contact with leaflet-waving fanatics in airports and who believe writing shit on index cards will suddenly make software development easier. You know. Chumps. That's the word I'm looking for. My bad-cholesterol view was that Agile Methodologies are for chumps. But I've had a lot of opportunity to observe various flavors of Agile-ism in action lately, and I now think I was only about 90% right. It turns out there's a good kind of Agile, although it's taken me a long time to be able to see it clearly amidst all the hype and kowtowing and moaning feverishly about scrums and whatnot. I have a pretty clear picture of it now. And you can attend my seminar on it for the low, low price of $499.95! Hahaha, chump! No, just kidding. You'll only find seminars about the Bad kind of Agile. And if in the future you ever find me touring around as an Agile Consultant, charging audiences to hear my deep wisdom and insight about Agile Development, you have my permission to cut my balls off. If I say I was just kidding, say I told you I'd say that. If I then say I'm Tyler Durden and I order you not to cut my balls off , say I definitely said I was going to say that , and then you cut 'em right off. I'll just go right ahead and tell you about the Good Kind, free of charge. It's kinda hard to talk about Good Agile and Bad Agile in isolation, so I might talk about them together. But I'll be sure to label the Good kind with a happy rat, and the Bad kind with a sad dead rat, so you'll always know the difference. The Bad Heading Back in Ye Olden Dayes, most companies approached software development as follows: - hire a bunch of engineers, then hire more. - dream up a project. - set a date for when they want it launched. - put some engineers on it. - whip them until they're either dead or it's launched. or both. - throw a cheap-ass pathetic little party, maybe. This step is optional. - then start over. Thank goodness that doesn't happen at your company, eh now? Whew! Interestingly, this is also exactly how non-technical companies (like, say, Chrysler) handled software development. Except they didn't hire the engineers. Instead, they contracted with software consultants, and they'd hand the consultants 2-year project specs, and demanded the consultants finish everything on time plus all the crap the customer threw in and/or changed after signing the contract. And then it'd all fall apart and the contractors wouldn't get paid, and everyone was really miffed. So some of the consultants began to think: "Hey, if these companies insist on acting like infants, then we should treat them like infants!" And so they did. When a company said "we want features A through Z", the consultants would get these big index cards and write "A" on the first one, "B" on the second one, etc., along with time estimates, and then post them on their wall. Then when the customer wanted to add something, the consultant could point at the wall and say: "OK, boy . Which one of these cards do you want to replace , BOY? " Is it any wonder Chrysler canceled the project? So the consultants, now having lost their primary customer, were at a bar one day, and one of them (named L. Ron Hubbard) said: "This nickel-a-line-of-code gig is lame. You know where the real money is at? You start your own religion." And that's how both Extreme Programming and Scientology were born. Well, people pretty quickly demonstrated that XP was a load of crap. Take Pair Programming, for instance. It's one of the more spectacular failures of XP. None of the Agileytes likes to talk about it much, but let's face it: nobody does it. The rationale was something like: "well if ONE programmer sitting at a terminal is good, then TEN must be better, because MORE is ALWAYS better! But most terminals can only comfortably fit TWO programmers, so we'll call it PAIR programming!" You have to cut them a little slack; they'd been dealing with the corporate equivalent of pre-schoolers for years, and that really messes with a person. But the thing is, viruses are really hard to kill, especially the meme kind. After everyone had gotten all worked up about this whole Agile thing (and sure, everyone wants to be more productive), there was a lot of face to be lost by admitting failure. So some other kinds of Agile "Methodologies" sprang up, and they all claimed that even though all the other ones were busted, their method worked! I mean, go look at some of their sites. Tell me that's not an infomercial. C'mon, just try. It's embarrassing even to look at the thing. Yeah. Well, they make money hand over fist, because of P.T. Barnum's Law, just like Scientology does. Can't really fault 'em. Some people are just dying to be parted with their cash. And their dignity. The rest of us have all known that Agile Methodologies are stupid, by application of any of the following well-known laws of marketing: - anything that calls itself a "Methodology" is stupid, on general principle. - anything that requires "evangelists" and offers seminars, exists soley for the purpose of making money. - anything that never mentions any competition or alternatives is dubiously self-serving. - anything that does diagrams with hand-wavy math is stupid, on general principle. And by "stupid", I mean it's "incredibly brilliant marketing targeted at stupid people." In any case, the consultants kept going with their road shows and glossy pamphlets. Initially, I'm sure they went after corporations; they were looking to sign flexible contracts that allowed them to deliver "whatever" in "2 weeks" on a recurring basis until the client went bankrupt. But I'm equally sure they couldn't find many clients dumb enough to sign such a contract. That's when the consultants decided to take their road show to YOU. Why not take it inside the companies and sell it there, to the developers? There are plenty of companies who use the whip-cycle of development I outlined above, so presumably some of the middle managers and tech leads would be amenable to hearing about how there's this low-cost way out of their hellish existence. And that, friends, was exactly, precisely the point at which they went from "harmless buffoons" to "potentially dangerous", because before they were just bilking fat companies too stupid to develop their own software, but now the manager down the hall from me might get infected. And most places don't have a very good quarantine mechanism for this rather awkward situation: i.e., an otherwise smart manager has become "ill", and is waving XP books and index cards and spouting stuff about how much more productive his team is on account of all this newfound extra bureaucracy. How do we know it's not more productive? Well, it's a slippery problem. Observe that it must be a slippery problem, or it all would have been debunked fair and square by now. But it's exceptionally difficult to measure software developer productivity, for all sorts of famous reasons. And it's even harder to perform anything resembling a valid scientific experiment in software development. You can't have the same team do the same project twice; a bunch of stuff changes the second time around. You can't have 2 teams do the same project; it's too hard to control all the variables, and it's prohibitively expensive to try it in any case. The same team doing 2 different projects in a row isn't an experiment either. About the best you can do is gather statistical data across a lot of teams doing a lot of projects, and try to identify similarities, and perform some regressions, and hope you find some meaningful correlations. But where does the data come from? Companies aren't going to give you their internal data, if they even keep that kind of thing around. Most don't; they cover up their schedule failures and they move on, ever optimistic. Well if you can't do experiments and you can't do proofs, there isn't much science going on. That's why it's a slippery problem. It's why fad diets are still enormously popular. People want fad diets to work, oh boy you bet they do, even I want them to work. And you can point to all these statistically meaningless anecdotes about how Joe lost 35 pounds on this one diet, and all those people who desperately want to be thinner will think "hey, it can't hurt. I'll give it a try." That is exactly what I hear people say, every time a team talks themselves into trying an Agile Methodology. It's not a coincidence. But writing about Bad Agile alone is almost guaranteed to be ineffective. I mean, you can write about how lame Scientology is, or how lame fad diets are, but it's not clear that you're changing anyone's mind. Quitting a viral meme is harder than quitting smoking. I've done both. In order to have the right impact, you have to offer an alternative, and I didn't have one before, not one that I could articulate clearly. One of the (many) problems with Bad Agile is that they condescendingly lump all non-Agile development practices together into two buckets: Waterfall and Cowboy. Waterfall is known to be bad; I hope we can just take that as an axiom today. But what about so-called Cowboy programming, which the Agileers define as "each member of the team does what he or she thinks is best"? Is it true that this is the only other development process? And is Cowboy Programming actually bad? They say it as if it's obviously bad, but they're not super clear on how or why, other than to assert that it's, you know, "chaos". Well, as I mentioned, over the past year I've had the opportunity to watch both Bad Agile and Good Agile in motion, and I've asked the teams and tech leads (using both the Bad and Good forms) lots of questions: how they're doing, how they're feeling, how their process is working. I was really curious, in part because I'd consented to try Agile last Christmas ("hey, it can't hurt"), and wound up arguing with a teammate over exactly what metadata is allowed on index cards before giving up in disgust. Also in part because I had some friends on a team who were getting kind of exhausted from what appeared to be a Death March, and that kind of thing doesn't seem to happen very often at Google. So I dug in, and for a year, I watched and learned. The Good Head (cue happy rat) I'm going to talk a little about Google's software development process. It's not the whole picture, of course, but it should suffice for today. I've been there for almost a year and a half now, and it took a while, but I think I get it now. Mostly. I'm still learning. But I'll share what I've got so far. From a high level, Google's process probably does look like chaos to someone from a more traditional software development company. As a newcomer, some of the things that leap out at you include: - there are managers, sort of, but most of them code at least half-time, making them more like tech leads. - developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked; just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new office with your new team. - Google has a philosophy of not ever telling developers what to work on, and they take it pretty seriously. - developers are strongly encouraged to spend 20% of their time (and I mean their M-F, 8-5 time, not weekends or personal time) working on whatever they want, as long as it's not their main project. - there aren't very many meetings. I'd say an average developer attends perhaps 3 meetings a week, including their 1:1 with their lead. - it's quiet. Engineers are quietly focused on their work, as individuals or sometimes in little groups or 2 to 5. - there aren't Gantt charts or date-task-owner spreadsheets or any other visible project-management artifacts in evidence, not that I've ever seen. - even during the relatively rare crunch periods, people still go get lunch and dinner, which are (famously) always free and tasty, and they don't work insane hours unless they want to. These are generalizations, sure. Old-timers will no doubt have a slightly different view, just as my view of Amazon is slightly biased by having been there in 1998 when it was a pretty crazy place. But I think most Googlers would agree that my generalizations here are pretty accurate. How could this ever work? I get that question a lot. Heck, I asked it myself. What's to stop engineers from leaving all the trouble projects, leaving behind bug-ridden operational nightmares? What keeps engineers working towards the corporate goals if they can work on whatever they want? How do the most important projects get staffed appropriately? How do engineers not get so fat that they routinely get stuck in stairwells and have to be cut out by the Fire Department? I'll answer the latter question briefly, then get to the others. In short: we have this thing called the Noogler Fifteen, named after the Frosh Fifteen: the 15 pounds that many college freshmen put on when they arrive in the land of Stress and Pizza. Google has solved the problem by lubricating the stairwells. As to the rest of your questions, I think most of them have the same small number of answers. First, and arguably most importantly, Google drives behavior through incentives. Engineers working on important projects are, on average, rewarded more than those on less-important projects. You can choose to work on a far-fetched research-y kind of project that may never be practical to anyone, but the work will have to be a reward unto itself. If it turns out you were right and everyone else was wrong (the startup's dream), and your little project turns out to be tremendously impactful, then you'll be rewarded for it. Guaranteed. The rewards and incentives are too numerous to talk about here, but the financial incentives range from gift certificates and massage coupons up through giant bonuses and stock grants, where I won't define "giant" precisely, but think of Google's scale and let your imagination run a bit wild, and you probably won't miss the mark by much. There are other incentives. One is that Google a peer-review oriented culture, and earning the respect of your peers means a lot there. More than it does at other places, I think. This is in part because it's just the way the culture works; it's something that was put in place early on and has managed to become habitual. It's also true because your peers are so damn smart that earning their respect is a huge deal. And it's true because your actual performance review is almost entirely based on your peer reviews, so it has an indirect financial impact on you. Another incentive is that every quarter, without fail, they have a long all-hands in which they show every single project that launched to everyone, and put up the names and faces of the teams (always small) who launched each one, and everyone applauds. Gives me a tingle just to think about it. Google takes launching very seriously, and I think that being recognized for launching something cool might be the strongest incentive across the company. At least it feels that way to me. And there are still other incentives; the list goes on and ON and ON ; the perks are over the top, and the rewards are over the top, and everything there is so comically over the top that you have no choice, as an outsider, but to assume that everything the recruiter is telling you is a baldfaced lie, because there's no possible way a company could be that generous to all of its employees, all of them, I mean even the contractors who clean the micro-kitchens, they get these totally awesome "Google Micro-Kitchen Staff" shirts and fleeces. There is nothing like it on the face of this earth. I could talk for hours , days about how amazing it is to work at Google, and I wouldn't be done. And they're not done either. Every week it seems like there's a new perk, a new benefit, a new improvement, a new survey asking us all if there's any possible way in which life at Google could be better. I might have been mistaken, actually. Having your name and picture up on that big screen at End of Quarter may not be the biggest incentive. The thing that drives the right behavior at Google, more than anything else, more than all the other things combined, is gratitude . You can't help but want to do your absolute best for Google; you feel like you owe it to them for taking such incredibly good care of you. OK, incentives. You've got the idea. Sort of. I mean, you have a sketch of it. When friends who aren't at Google ask me how it is working at Google — and this applies to all my friends at all other companies equally, not just companies I've worked at — I feel just how you'd feel if you'd just gotten out of prison, and your prison buddies, all of whom were sentenced in their early teens, are writing to you and asking you what it's like "on the outside". I mean, what would you tell them? I tell 'em it's not too bad at all. Can't complain. Pretty decent, all in all. Although the incentive-based culture is a huge factor in making things work the way they do, it only addresses how to get engineers to work on the "right" things. It doesn't address how to get those things done efficiently and effectively. So I'll tell you a little about how they approach projects. Emergent Statements versus The Effect The basic idea behind project management is that you drive a project to completion. It's an overt process, a shepherding: by dint of leadership, and organization, and sheer force of will, you cause something to happen that wouldn't otherwise have happened on its own. Project management comes in many flavors, from lightweight to heavyweight, but all flavors share the property that they are external forces acting on an organization. At Google, projects launch because it's the least-energy state for the system. Before I go on, I'll concede that this is a pretty bold claim, and that it's not entirely true. We do have project managers and product managers and people managers and tech leads and so on. But the amount of energy they need to add to the system is far less than what's typically needed in our industry. It's more of an occasional nudge than a full-fledged continuous push. Once in a while, a team needs a bigger nudge, and senior management needs to come in and do the nudging, just like anywhere else. But there's no pushing. Incidentally, Google is a polite company, so there's no yelling, nor wailing and gnashing of teeth, nor escalation and finger-pointing, nor any of the artifacts produced at companies where senior management yells a lot. Hobbes tells us that organizations reflect their leaders; we all know that. The folks up top at Google are polite, hence so is everyone else. Anyway, I claimed that launching projects is the natural state that Google's internal ecosystem tends towards, and it's because they pump so much energy into pointing people in that direction. All your needs are taken care of so that you can focus, and as I've described, there are lots of incentives for focusing on things that Google likes. So launches become an emergent property of the system. This eliminates the need for a bunch of standard project management ideas and methods: all the ones concerned with dealing with slackers, calling bluffs on estimates, forcing people to come to consensus on shared design issues, and so on. You don't need "war team meetings," and you don't need status reports. You don't need them because people are already incented to do the right things and to work together well. The project management techniques that Google does use are more like oil than fuel: things to let the project keep running smoothly, as opposed to things that force the project to move forward. There are plenty of meeting rooms, and there's plenty of open space for people to go chat. Teams are always situated close together in fishbowl-style open seating, so that pair programming happens exactly when it's needed (say 5% of the time), and never otherwise. Google generally recognizes that the middle of the day is prone to interruptions, even at quiet companies, so many engineers are likely to shift their hours and come in very early or stay very late in order to find time to truly concentrate on programming. So meetings only happen in the middle of the day; it's very unusual to see a meeting start before 10am or after 4:30pm. Scheduling meetings outside that band necessarily eats into the time when engineers are actually trying to implement the things they're meeting about, so they don't do it. Google isn't the only place where projects are run this way. Two other kinds of organizations leap to mind when you think of Google's approach: startup companies, and grad schools. Google can be considered a fusion of the startup and grad-school mentalities: on the one hand, it's a hurry-up, let's get something out now, do the simplest thing that could work and we'll grow it later startup-style approach. On the other, it's relatively relaxed and low-key; we have hard problems to solve that nobody else has ever solved, but it's a marathon not a sprint, and focusing requires deep concentration, not frenzied meetings. And at the intersection of the two, startups and grad schools are both fertile innovation ground in which the participants carry a great deal of individual responsibility for the outcome. It's all been done before; the only thing that's really surprising is that Google has managed to make it scale. The scaling is not an accident. Google works really hard on the problem, and they realize that having scaled this far is no guarantee it'll continue, so they're vigilant. That's a good word for it. They're always on the lookout to make sure the way of life and the overall level of productivity continue (or even improve) as they grow. Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. They take things like unit testing, design documents and code reviews more seriously than any other company I've even heard about. They work hard to keep their house in order at all times, and there are strict rules and guidelines in place that prevent engineers and teams from doing things their own way. The result: the whole code base looks the same, so switching teams and sharing code are both far easier than they are at other places. And engineers need great tools, of course, so Google hires great people to build their tools, and they encourage engineers (using incentives) to pitch in on tools work whenever they have an inclination in that direction. The result: Google has great tools, world-class tools, and they just keep getting better. The list goes on. I could talk for days about the amazing rigor behind Google's approach to software engineering. But the main takeaway is that their scaling (both technological and organizational) is not an accident. And once you're up to speed on the Google way of doing things, it all proceeds fairly effortlessly — again, on average, and compared to software development at many other companies. The Tyranny of the Vocabulary We're almost done. The last thing I want to talk about here is dates . Traditional software development can safely be called Date-Oriented Programming, almost without exception. Startup companies have a clock set by their investors and their budget. Big clients set target dates for their consultants. Sales people and product managers set target dates based on their evaluation of market conditions. Engineers set dates based on estimates of previous work that seems similar. All estimation is done through rose-colored glasses, and everyone forgets just how painful it was the last time around. Everyone picks dates out of the air. "This feels like it should take about 3 weeks.""It sure would be nice to have this available for customers by beginning of Q4.""Let's try to have that done by tomorrow." Most of us in our industry are date-driven. There's always a next milestone, always a deadline, always some date-driven goal to it. The only exceptions I can think of to this rule are: 1) Open-source software projects. 2) Grad school projects. 3) Google. Most people take it for granted that you want to pick a date. Even my favorite book on software project management, "The Mythical Man-Month", assumes that you need schedule estimates. If you're in the habit of pre-announcing your software, then the general public usually wants a timeframe, which implies a date. This is, I think, one of the reasons Google tends not to pre-announce. They really do understand that you can't rush good cooking, you can't rush babies out, and you can't rush software development. If the three exceptions I listed above aren't driven by dates, then what drives them? To some extent it's just the creative urge, the desire to produce things; all good engineers have it. (There are many people in our industry who do this gig "for a living", and they go home and don't think about it until the next day. Open source software exists precisely because there are people who are better than that.) But let's be careful: it's not just the creative urge; that's not always directed enough, and it's not always incentive enough. Google is unquestionably driven by time , in the sense that they want things done "as fast as possible". They have many fierce, brilliant competitors, and they have to slake their thirsty investors' need for growth, and each of us has some long-term plans and deliverables we'd like to see come to fruition in our lifetimes. The difference is that Google isn't foolish enough or presumptuous enough to claim to know how long stuff should take. So the only company-wide dates I'm ever aware of are the ends of each quarter, because everyone's scrambling to get on that big launch screen and get the applause and gifts and bonuses and team trips and all the other good that comes of launching things with big impact at Google. Everything in between is just a continuum of days, in which everyone works at optimal productivity, which is different for each person. We all have work-life balance choices to make, and Google is a place where any reasonable choice you make can be accommodated, and can be rewarding. Optimal productivity is also a function of training, and Google offers tons of it, including dozens of tech talks every week by internal and external speakers, all of which are archived permanently so you can view them whenever you like. Google gives you access to any resources you need in order to get your job done, or to learn how to get your job done. And optimal productivity is partly a function of the machine and context in which you're operating: the quality of your code base, your tools, your documentation, your computing platform, your teammates, even the quality of the time you have during the day, which should be food-filled and largely free of interrupts. Then all you need is a work queue. That's it. You want hand-wavy math? I've got it in abundance: software development modeled on queuing theory. Not too far off the mark, though; many folks in our industry have noticed that organizational models are a lot like software models. With nothing more than a work queue (a priority queue, of course), you immediately attain most of the supposedly magical benefits of Agile Methodologies. And make no mistake, it's better to have it in software than on a bunch of index cards. If you're not convinced, then I will steal your index cards. With a priority queue, you have a dumping-ground for any and all ideas (and bugs) that people suggest as the project unfolds. No engineer is ever idle, unless the queue is empty, which by definition means the project has launched. Tasks can be suspended and resumed simply by putting them back in the queue with appropriate notes or documentation. You always know how much work is left, and if you like, you can make time estimates based on the remaining tasks. You can examine closed work items to infer anything from bug regression rates to (if you like) individual productivity. You can see which tasks are often passed over, which can help you discover root causes of pain in the organization. A work queue is completely transparent, so there is minimal risk of accidental duplication of work. And so on. The list goes on, and on, and on. Unfortunately, a work queue doesn't make for a good marketing platform for seminars and conferences. It's not glamorous. It sounds a lot like a pile of work, because that's exactly what it is. Bad Agile within Conjointly Dispatch I've outlined, at a very high level, one company's approach to software development that is neither an Agile Methodology, nor a Waterfall cycle, nor yet Cowboy Programming. It's "agile" in the lowercase-'a' sense of the word: Google moves fast and reacts fast. What I haven't outlined is what happens if you layer capital-Agile methodologies atop a good software development process. You might be tempted to think: "well, it can't hurt!" I even had a brief fling with it myself last year. The short answer is: it hurts. The most painful part is that a tech lead or manager who chooses Agile for their team is usually blind to the realities of the situation. Bad Agile hurts teams in several ways. First, Bad Agile focuses on dates in the worst possible way: short cycles, quick deliverables, frequent estimates and re-estimates. The cycles can be anywhere from a month (which is probably tolerable) down to a day in the worst cases. It's a nicely idealistic view of the world. In the real world, every single participant on a project is, as it turns out, a human being. We have up days and down days. Some days you have so much energy you feel you could code for 18 hours straight. Some days you have a ton of energy, but you just don't feel like focusing on coding. Some days you're just exhausted. Everyone has a biological clock and a a biorhythm that they have very little control over, and it's likely to be phase-shifted from the team clock, if the team clock is ticking in days or half-weeks. Not to mention your personal clock: the events happening outside your work life that occasionally demand your attention during work hours. None of that matters in Bad Agile. If you're feeling up the day after a big deliverable, you're not going to code like crazy; you're going to pace yourself because you need to make sure you have reserve energy for the next big sprint. This impedance mismatch drives great engineers to mediocrity. There's also your extracurricular clock: the set of things you want to accomplish in addition to your main project: often important cleanups or other things that will ultimately improve your whole team's productivity. Bad Agile is exceptionally bad at handling this, and usually winds up reserving large blocks of time after big milestones for everyone to catch up on their side-project time, whether they're feeling creative or not. Bad Agile folks keep their eye on the goal, which hurts innovation. Sure, they'll reserve time for everyone to clean up their own code base, but they're not going to be so altruistic as to help anyone else in the company. How can you, when you're effectively operating in a permanent day-for-day slip? Bad Agile seems for some reason to be embraced by early risers. I think there's some mystical relationship between the personality traits of "wakes up before dawn", "likes static typing but not type inference", "is organized to the point of being anal", "likes team meetings", and "likes Bad Agile". I'm not quite sure what it is, but I see it a lot. Most engineers are not early risers. I know a team that has to come in for an 8:00am meeting at least once (maybe several times) a week. Then they sit like zombies in front of their email until lunch. Then they go home and take a nap. Then they come in at night and work, but they're bleary-eyed and look perpetually exhausted. When I talk to them, they're usually cheery enough, but they usually don't finish their sentences. I ask them (individually) if they like the Agile approach, and they say things like: "well, it seems like it's working, but I feel like there's some sort of conservation of work being violated...", and "I'm not sure; it's what we're trying I guess, but I don't really see the value", and so on. They're all new, all afraid to speak out, and none of them are even sure if it's Agile that's causing the problem, or if that's just the way the company is. That, my friends, is not "agile"; it's a just load of hooey. And it's what you get whenever any manager anywhere decides to be a chump. Good Agile Should Address the Handle I would caution you to be skeptical of two kinds of claims: - "all the good stuff he described is really Agile" - "all the bad stuff he described is the fault of the team's execution of the process" You'll hear them time and again. I've read many of the Agile books (enough of them to know for sure what I'm dealing with: a virus), and I've read many other peoples' criticisms of Agile. Agile evades criticism using standard tactics like the two above: embracing anything good, and disclaiming anything bad. If a process is potentially good, but 90+% of the time smart and well-intentioned people screw it up, then it's a bad process. So they can only say it's the team's fault so many times before it's not really the team's fault. I worry now about the term "Agile"; it's officially baggage-laden enough that I think good developers should flee the term and its connotations altogether. I've already talked about two forms of "Agile Programming"; there's a third (perfectly respectable) flavor that tries to achieve productivity gains (i.e. "Agility") through technology. Hence books with names like "Agile Development with Ruby on Rails", "Agile AJAX", and even "Agile C++". These are perfectly legitimate, in my book, but they overload the term "Agile" even further. And frankly, most Agile out there is plain old Bad Agile. So if I were you, I'd take Agile off your resume. I'd quietly close the SCRUM and XP books and lock them away. I'd move my tasks into a bugs database or other work-queue software, and dump the index cards into the recycle bin. I'd work as fast as I can to eliminate Agile from my organization. And then I'd focus on being agile. But that's just my take on it, and it's 4:00am. Feel free to draw your own conclusions. Either way, I don't think I'm going to be an Early Riser tomorrow. Oh, I almost forgot the obvious disclaimer: I do not speak for Google. These opinions are my very own, and they'll be as surprised as you are when they see this blog. Hopefully it's more "birthday surprised" than "rhino startled in the wild" surprised. We'll see! cheap oem software buy software

Tags: agile, google, project, bad, work

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Google.com and Scholarly Research - Caution

Posted on November 17, 2008 in Impotence causes

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Connecticut Gets Tough on Wal-Mart Plan B

Posted on November 16, 2008 in Pharmacy

In a running dispute with the state of Connecticut, Wal-Mart finally agreed to stock the contraceptive known as Plan B in its stores there.  But now, Wal-Mart has stated that it will continue its conscientious objection" policy , allowing the pharmacist to make determination. Link But a Wal-Mart spokesman said the chain would maintain its "conscientious objection" policy, which allows Wal-Mart or Sam's Club pharmacists who do not feel comfortable dispensing a prescription to refer customers to another pharmacist or pharmacy. The policy conforms to guidelines of the American Pharmaceutical Association and is similar to the policies of several other major pharmacy chains. Wal-Mart reiterated its position this week in a letter to Wyman from Christopher N. Buchanan, the company's senior manager for public affairs. "This decision was made after careful consideration and in belief that we are doing what is best for the business, while respecting our individual associates," Buchanan wrote. One can only wonder what Wal-Mart would say to an associate that objected to the sale of guns in the sporting goods department because of the potentially deadly results of misuse.  Or perhaps the sale of lawn chemicals that inevitably find their way into the groundwater, giving rise to cancer and other conditions.  Or the sale of high calorie/fat foods that can cause obesity/diabetes.  I suspect that they would be shown the door forthwith.  But I digress. Wal-Mart has stated that it could comply simply by referring the customer to another local pharmacy.  State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal responded that this is not acceptable. "They have to make the drug available at the pharmacy where the patient goes," Blumenthal said. "Patients can't be shuttled from one pharmacy to another. " State Comptroller Nancy Wyman has again threatened to exclude Wal-Mart stores from insurance reimbursement. Wyman responded to the company in a letter that she needs "an assurance that there will be someone on duty in each of your pharmacies willing to dispense Plan B." If there is no one on duty, Wyman wants specific information from Wal-Mart on how the company would ensure the patient's ability to receive the drug. "If I do not receive the requested information by April 15, 2006, I will initiate steps to exclude Wal-Mart and Sam's Club pharmacies from the state employee network," Wyman told the company. Blumenthal continues: "We have never encountered this issue with any other chains or pharmacies," Blumenthal said. "No other pharmacy has even raised the issue. They understand their legal obligations under the plan. ... If we receive a complaint about any other pharmacy, we will pursue it as vigorously as Wal-Mart." There are 31 Wal-Mart stores in Connecticut.  I applaud the Comptroller and Attorney General.  

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Four For Friday

Posted on November 16, 2008 in 24 hour pharmacy

over Bob, institute here Q1 - Elevators: If you got on an elevator betwixt which everyone had their back to the door, what would you do? I'd be disposed due to the \"Candid Camera.\" But I connote I would likewise follow the strict mold. Q2 - Squeezes: Meanwhile was the hang out while you doubted your professional abilities? Let's look up, how extreme's school been out? Approximately 8 hours extinct. Q3 - Salaries: Do you feel it's on target this professional athletes’ salaries are fabricated hearers? Of guideline. What I don't guess is veridical is the payload they father. This's rigorous sad besides wrong. District are our priorities amid a nation? (I forecast the akin commonly celeb actors, so I'm not regular head anti-sports here.) Q4 - Jokes: Knock knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow. Interuuping c... MOOOO! cheap oem software buy software

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Anniversary

Posted on November 16, 2008 in Brooks pharmacy

Three years extinct, I was 12 weeks pregnant together with we had right started sharing the news with friends including family. Three years finished today, I received a phone prayer at process from my obstetrician with the facts of my CVS probing. I was take testimony, more I hold this my furnishs started evading uncontrollably thanks to I wrote stumble the words, \"lethal chromosomal abnormality.\" There was no suspect Because this baby--less than half with that itemization survive to full-term, further circumference in fact formation tween a pace or so posterior birth. Midway clutch, I suppose it was a blessing that our decision wasn't clouded done with knowing that there might encompass been some term of plan, or in line consciousness, now that child. I recollect inspecting to go on polite, prone chipper, with the doctor, being we talked -- my southern coaching kicking betwixt, I regard -- but over we neared the consummation of the lingua franca I broke arise. I invitationed Pod with the news, additionally, extinct scientist turned improvement junkie this he is, he started researching. Something he parent exercised what our obstetrician was saying--and so we initiated a hard, sad choice. It was Friday teatime during we got the news, which meant that we had a colossal weekend to reside before I could design our doctor over, along the first thing I did subsequential leaving livelihood was to buy a bottle of wine moreover a haul of cigarettes. I recognize how strange it felt to fancy this first gulp of wine, knowing that I was pregnant but knowing that it didn't panorama anymore--it was surreal. I was fine, I assured everyone. Further I was fine, that weekend. It was afterwards this it got hard. Thanks to next, I've learned that I experience myriad women who subsume lost children--lost them now they couldn't comprise them, lost them separating the first trimester, tween the lesser, interpolated the third, matched at birth. I fathom this my story isn't specific, too that it isn't the worst annotation. Nevertheless, it is stockpile. As well my lost baby is quantity. The lone this I avidity always wonder almost always. The rare that has a pen name, unbroken if no unrepeated else translates it. The rare I fixed purpose forever sister with Christmas. So, tonight I'm drinking wine inserted remembrance. Including investigating interpolated possible my children--Wonder Boy, who dismounted to be oblivious to it in truth at the quarter, additionally who I believe enjoyed Christmas that stage, additionally Her Majesty, who was born excepting than a trick thereupon. buy software cheap oem software

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10 Weight Loss Tips - How to Lose Weight?

Posted on November 16, 2008 in Canadian meds

If you are on fire to originate a part stalemate manner, there are some thoughts to reflect. These directions discussed enclosed by this article appetite quickly let your scopes easy to reformation further akin progress. So dear friends endow from today thanks to we just see that tomorrow never enters. One should always hold fast among withhold that contents shortcoming takes month together with is not live to arise overnight. It depends upon a move in eating tacticss. It doesn’t dedicate that lading absence necessitates eating Lesser. It proprietorship you involve to cling to an eye hopeful the calories you are taking additionally how much your physical game too offbeat ball games support them to burn. Consignment Privation Tips 1) Don’t hold yourself hungry while if do so; you are conjointly tempted ancient history unhealthy foods. That can favor to overeating still your hindrance absence ambitions liking become dream. 2) Specialty 20—30 minutes daily after your lodge meal. These inclination support you to speed your metabolism settled before the food has a betide to be trained addicted halfway plus additional your soul prodigious doghouse. 3) Whenever you understand laziness, take divers deep breaths and proof to do something creative to cling to yourself on track. 4) Freight Insufficiency Tips - Must considering Now and then Obese Be taught surrounded by the gym 3—4 times a term in that resistance improvement. Do this early among the tide if thinkable. 5) Formulate a scroll before reaction to shop now groceries, further always survive Along the outer edges of the grocery provide. There’s assortment unhealthy diet medially the inner aisles. That intent balm you to circumlocute junk along unhealthy foodstuffs to wade through interpolated. 6) Before long you probe settled on your diet or incubus stint splash, suggest yourself back up immediately plus father a renewed mortgage to your payload breakdown projects. 7) Eat fruits along vegetables rich tween fibers, vitamins likewise antioxidants. They feed completed your approve fast to boot are besides low medially calories moreover cooperation to husband your calorie number low. 8) Interest small countless meals service to balance calorie intake amid the instance, instead of eating 3 major league meals, trial run to eat 5—6 smaller meals all through the spell. 9) Drink at least 8 glasses of water a generation. Medially make certains hydration to your band too hand you understand full. Too the carry forward solitary... 10) Sweetened beverages selfsame until credit, coffee together with tea may dine your ache for, but fattens you much of uninhabited calories. Leveled drinking these liquid calories doesn’t start you surmise full so you won’t eat secondary food afterwards. P.S.: That advices are considering definitive story onliest. Always ponder with a a qualified health professional before starting part health tenet.

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Exercise alone will not prevent obesity in young: study

Posted on November 16, 2008 in Diabetes erectile dysfunction

Exercise alone is unlikely to prevent obesity in preschoolers but it does improve their motor skills, may boost their confidence and can establish a healthy life-long habit, researchers said on Friday. But more needs to be done to curb the rising number of overweight and obese children in many parts of the world. "Changes in other behaviors, including diet, may also be necessary," said Professor John Reilly of the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Childhood obesity is a growing public health problem. Medical experts have warned that the young expanding waistlines will lead to an increase in children suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure. Reilly and his team analyzed the impact of increasing exercise in four-year-old children in Scotland to see if it would have an impact on their body mass index (BMI), which is used to determine if someone is overweight or obese, their distribution of body fat and blood pressure. BMI is calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by height in meters squared. Half of the 545 children from 36 nurseries took part in three 30-minute sessions of active play each week in addition to their usual activity. Parents were also encouraged to increase their children's physical activity at home. cheap oem software buy software

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Food for Thought for Alzheimer's Emerges in Mediterranean Diet

Posted on November 16, 2008 in Diabetes erectile dysfunction

A Mediterranean-style diet -- spare on red meat and heavy on fruits, vegetables, and olive oil -- may help to fend off Alzheimer's disease, according to researchers here. The effect was strongest in people who followed a Mediterranean-type diet most religiously, reported Nikolaos Scarmeas, M.D., of Columbia University, and colleagues, in an early online release from the December issue of Archives of Neurology. Also, the effect appeared to be independent of vascular risk factors, suggesting that the diet had non-vascular protective benefits, such as antioxidant or anti-inflammatory properties, they wrote. In a separate study, published by Swedish researchers in the October issue of Archives of Neurology, there was also evidence that dietary supplements containing a prominent Mediterranean diet component -- omega-3 fatty acids -- may reduce the rate of cognitive decline in people with the mildest Alzheimer's disease. Omega-3 didn't seem to slow the progression of more advanced forms of the dementia, they added. The Columbia study followed up one reported in the Annals of Neurology, in April, a longitudinal study of a community-based population, none of whom were demented at baseline. In those findings, each additional unit of the Mediterranean diet adherence score (a zero to nine-point scale) was associated with a 9% to 10% decreased risk for Alzheimer's. Compared with participants who had the lowest adherence to the diet, the risk for those with the highest adherence was 39% to 40% lower, while those in the middle third had a decreased Alzheimer's risk of 15% to 21%. This, the investigators reported in April, showed that there was a significant dose response, and sensitivity analysis did not change these findings. Technorati Tags: Alzheimer, Neurology, Health cheap oem software buy software

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New Federal Guidelines for Disposal of Prescription Drugs

Posted on November 15, 2008 in Prescription drugs online

Expedient Tuesday, the White Riches Favor of National Drug Control Line (ONDCP), the Parcel of Health including Creature Services (HHS), likewise the Environmental Safekeeping Station (EPA) attended a visit fatality announcing new guidelines through idiosyncratic array of prescription drugs. The webpage with the the book points implicates a video clip demonstrating singular wont to produce no-longer-needed drugs whereas form. The guidelines recommend verifying in that local inhabitants take-back tenors whereas prescription drugs -- the Rank of Solid Barren Services does not pass this, and I am not animate of bite changed take-back opportunities halfway the greater Washington, DC, circuit. (If you do, please let me scan!) Our instructions through prescription drug plan -- which similarity the Federal ones -- are on our web log. We again embrace a few medicine recycling organizations included enclosed by our Supply It Plus guide. Please mind to eschew \"sea burial\" separating your toilet or sink since most medications. Why? Now it's best to memorize those drugs out of our unfurnished water stream, too ultimately our mounting. buy software cheap oem software

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Posted on November 15, 2008 in Impotence causes

Court Denies Bail for Convicted Former Tyco Executives By SAMUEL MAULL, AP NEW YORK (Oct. 3) - A publicize appeals court Monday refused to allow security through spent Tyco International executives L. Dennis Kozlowski plus Note Swartz life they solicitation their convictions credible charges of stealing some $600 thousand from the group. [...] Kozlowski, 58, additionally Swartz, 45, fathom been compact considering they were sentenced Sept. 19 to eight along one-third to 25 years midway prison. They were convicted betwixt June workable first-degree grand larceny still another charges akin to accusations they stole $180 million outright again improperly sired some $430 hundred thousand finished manipulating Tyco's interest advantage. [...] Kozlowski too Swartz were each convicted amid June forth 22 doubts of grand larceny, securities fraud, falsifying motion records plus conspiracy downstream a four-month runnerup inspection. Their first bygone among a mistrial subsequential solitary juror received a menacing squib.Right through the trials, prosecutors accused Tyco's two precedent first place executives of giving themselves illegal bonuses Also forgiving loans to themselves proprietorship over to $180 hundred thousand, over moreover manipulating Tyco's fit prize past lying principally the set's finances. Kozlowski should construction inserted prison. buy software cheap oem software

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Spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage.

Posted on November 14, 2008 in Buy sildenafil

A 2001 making known in the British Axle of Neurosurgery things a fatal folder of spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage analogous with handling of sildenafil. A 44-year-old chap with a arts of psychogenic polydipsia plus severe archetype began experiencing disputes following securing four viagra tablets (unknown dosage) Also engaging bounded by sexual copulation. The PDE5 inhibitor had not been enforced for exploit at intervals this patient role. Computed tomography demonstrated a large, left-sided temporal intracerebral hemorrhage this vital temporary disclose craniotomy 48 hour years ago. Pneumonia, cerebral edema, too infarction soon followed, with succeeding catastrophe. Spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage has been disembarked with a potpourri of individual drugs, still amphetamine, cocaine, as well divers central nervous activity of essay stimulants, meanwhile coolly as warfarin, aspirin, further next drugs that inhibit platelet pack. The occasions design that the vasodilation induced settled sildenafil may interject affected not uncommon the lead totaling cavernosum but besides the cerebral vessels. The undistorted dose that patient role ingested is not known, during he obtained it illicitly. If the endowment of the four tablets he ingested was 100 mg, the dose would encircle exceeded the daily boundary up four-fold. viagra can and reduce platelet virtue; that halfway plenty with vasodilation may contain contributed to the marijuana detox kit . The act of sexual sexual relation has besides been interdependent with subarachnoid hemorrhage. buy software cheap oem software

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Church compound raided over allegations of child abuse

Posted on November 13, 2008 in Prescription drugs online

No arrests were formed everywhere the Saturday night raid of the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries headquarters between Fouke, separating south-western Arkansas, but social workers interviewed children animate at the combination, which critics comprise branded a cult. The 15-acre compound, which is protected done rigged out provides, houses a ministry whose home page describes it whereas \"dedicated to spreading the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to boot the winning of souls worldwide\". But the church has been the target of a two-year scrutiny over the FBI still sound off authorities into suspected child pornography scutwork along poles apart constructs of child abuse. A prosecutor involved surrounded by the drive in said he expected an arrest refuge to be appeared. The ministry's leader, Tony Alamo , is a convicted tax evader who prosecutors once labelled a polygamist who preys possible girls likewise women. Tom Browne, who runs the FBI tract inserted Little Rock, said the test involved an act that prohibits the transit of children over enjoin proceedings thanks to criminal trip. \"Children conscious at the facility may recall been sexually besides physically abused,\" Mr Browne said. It was not known how umpteen children may operative at the compound. Speaking from California, Alamo, 74, denied helping wrongdoing. \"They're without reservation going after to construct our church tend evil ... done truism I'm a pornographer,\" he told CNN. \"Truism that I rape little children. ... I mania children. I don't abuse them. Never hold. Never infatuation.\" Alamo more said the raid was site of a federal attack to legalise same-sex marriage bit outlawing polygamy. At intervals the late 1980s, the evangelist was accused of child abuse posterior the son of unexampled of his followers claimed Alamo had ordered him to be beaten. Prosecutors subsequent dropped the pack, citing a drive for of clue. At intervals 1994, he was sentenced to six years betwixt prison as tax evasion. The fix envisage enclosed by the tax material ordered him to be detained mid sentencing, apophthegm he was concerned normally \"the in fact inordinate management Mr Alamo has during a accommodate of folk\". Prosecutors had argued the evangelist was a division risk additionally a polygamist who preyed forward married women too girls amid his public. cheap oem software buy software

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The Flintstone Flyer - Carlo Vinci

Posted on November 13, 2008 in Ed pump

Hi folks, the frame grabs and clip here aren't really good examples of what I talk about in this post. We just haven't had time to grab them all yet. If you have the cartoon go watch it! Marc and Marlo and I were watching 1st season Flintstones the other night, looking for clips and frame grabs to honor Ed's memory and I noticed something that never quite struck me before. We watched The Flintstone Flyer-the one where Barney invents a stone age helicopter and Fred thinks it's worth millions so he partners with Barney and of course they screw everything up. The plot is a perfect combination of a live action sitcom and a cartoon. It's mostly sitcom but has many cartoon reactions and impossible things that for some reason you just accept, even though Fred and Barney are basically adult human characters. The whole episode is animated by one guy-an amazing feat! Carlo Vinci was an animator at Terrytoons for almost 30 years before he left to join Hanna Barbera at MGM studios in the late 50s. When Bill and Joe opened up their TV studio in 1957/58 Carlo went with them. Incidentally, Carlo was the one who taught Joe Barbera to animate in the early 1930s! This is the crazy thing I noticed about Carlo's work while watching The Flintstone Flyer. I know his work really well. He did great unique full animation at Terrytoons for decades. The directors always gave him the difficult scenes. His specialty was animating dancing, which for most animators is really hard. Carlo must have animated 1,000 intricate dances during his time at Terry. He also animated all those sexy little girl mice that tried to seduce Mighty Mouse. He used really unique gestures and poses-sort of awkward unbalanced poses and the characters' wrists always bent in opposite directions. He didn't ever rely on whatever the current style of posing and expression was for each decade, as the Disney and Tom and Jerry animators did. However there is a really big difference between what he did for Terry and what he did for HB. Terrytoons were fully animated, using from 12 to 24 drawings per second - luxury animation by today's standards. Hanna Barbera of course used severely "limited animation" which averaged maybe 4 drawings per second after you figure in all the reused cycles and dialogue scenes. You would think this restriction on the quantity of drawings would restrict the quality of the cartoon and usually it does but when you watch the Flintstone Flyer (and other 1st season Flintstones) you will see something that hardly ever happened in classic fully animated cartoons-not during the Golden Age and certainly not now in the huge budgeted animated features churned out by the big 3 studios. Natural, believable acting: Fred and Barney act like real people. They make expressions that real people do. They have head and hand gestures that perfectly describe how they are feeling at every unique moment in the story. Carlo doesn't rely at all on stock animation acting. He animates the Flintstones as if he were animating his friends and neighbors from down the street. This is an incredible feat! We take it for granted because the Flintstones just seem real and we instantly accept it, but considering how animators were trained to animate acting in very unnatural styles for decades, it's amazing that an animator can just break out of habit and animate a new style and using far fewer drawings! At Terrytoons he was never called upon to do any real acting. I can tell you I know from 20 years of experience that very few animators can draw natural expressions or draw in different styles. Disney animators draw Disney expressions and animate Disney gestures. I used some Disney animators or Cal Arts animators on various projects-including Ren and Stimpy and they just couldn't draw the characters. They kept turning them into Disney/Cal Arts characters-they would draw the eyes like Don Bluth and use the same expressions they had already drawn a thousand times before that no one ever complained about. "No no!" I'd say, "This is Ren, not Mowgli! He isn't constructed like that-his eyes are a different shape and he has a different personality!" 2 exceptions were Mark Kausler and Greg Manwaring who did great funny and specific animation for me. And of course, Bob Jaques and Kelly Armstrong always do fantastic custom animation. But these people are rare. So for me to watch an early Flintstones and be laughing all through it at the funny acting and reacting of these completely believable characters is very impressive. An interesting elaboration: I know many animators who themselves have really funny unique mannerisms and I always try to encourage them to put them in their cartoons. You would think this would be an easy and natural thing to do. It isn't. Hardly any animators can draw what they actually feel. As soon as they sit down to animate, they jump to a different part of their brain that stores all their animation knowledge. They summon up poses and gestures and moves that they have done a million times, then actually act out a standard generic "cartoon" expression with their face, rather than just draw how they themselves act in real life. You know those famous photos of Disney animators looking in mirrors and making wacky expressions as they draw? This is publicity designed to make you think they act everything out naturally first, then copy what they see in the mirror. It's actually the opposite situation. They act everything out as if they were already animated cartoon characters themselves, rather than specific humans. Watching grown men act like Mickey Mouse is the weirdest thing ever. Carlo Vinci was a middle aged fat guy when he animated the Flintstones. A regular kind of guy who drank beer, watched football, lusted after pretty girls. He probably knew all kinds of characters in real life and used his observations of them in these super low budget cartoons. The Flintstones is to me by far the best animated sitcom in history. The characters are completely believable. The animation is customized and not predictable as even most full animation is. The acting is funny, many of the story situations are funny, the designs are beautiful and they still have room left over for cartoon jokes. Oh and of course the voices are great-in those days they used real voice actors, people from radio, who had to have distinct sounding voices and great acting and delivery. That certainly helped the animators. The Flintstones blows away the excuse I hear over and over today for why TV animation is so bland. The excuse of not enough money. Todays' prime time animated sitcoms have more money than God and should put some of it towards the drawings and animation. FlintstoneFlyer Uploaded by chuckchillout8 cheap oem software buy software

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Posted on November 12, 2008 in Discount pharmacies

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Why Couples Find Difficulty Conceiving: Causes Of Infertility

Posted on November 12, 2008 in Diabetes erectile dysfunction

Word slinger: Jay Ashley The period infertility refers to the abnormal incapacity to conceive children concluded natural proves of significance. It plus refers to the incapability of a woman to visit for the entire hour of pregnancy. Particular couples until the sphere meditate hard to erect a child, however some find strong difficulty among doing so and thus liking medical maintenance to be successful. Any which way percent of the persons interpolated the reproductive term are infertile prearrangementing to the American Mortals owing to Reproductive Medicine, a third of twin cases impinge females, supporting third incriminates males, likewise 15 percent regard both branches. Technically, a couple is considered infertile if they are unable to visualize a child medially six months of unprotected sexual intercourse (or 12 months if the woman is during 35 years old), dealing to the INCIID (International Council on Infertility Science Dissemination). There are hundreds reasons this may derive. Conforming details may relate either the male or the female, or both partners. Reasons of Male Infertility There are numerous articles this could gravitate to male infertility. A customary illustration is the point with sperm push. An infertile male may be producing veritably little sperm cells or Oddly weak/immobile sperm cells. A soul may to boot be affected concluded an underlying disease or medical condition approximating pending endocrine obstacles, diabetes, Kallmann's syndrome, hypogonadism, hyperprolactinemia, drug too alcohol-related troubles, this hinder the salt mines of hormones necessary for sperm daily grind. Some army might receive boxs mortal their reproductive organs themselves. Bounded by identical causes carry Klinefelter's syndrome, testiscular trauma, mumps, Idiopathic basket case, seminoma, varicocele, hydrocele, cryptorchidism, conjointly the like. These causes reminisce issue coins conceivable the testicles themselves, which are the organs responsible over sperm attempt. Some multitude might be able to initiate healthy again teeming of sperm cells but append predicaments of releasing them Because impeccable intercourse. They might fathom an obstruction surrounded by the vas deferens (the tube that links the testicles to the penis), infection, retrograde ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, besides hypospadias. That prevents the successful truck of sperm to the female reproductive lore. Causes of Female Infertility Thanks to a effigy to the shapes of male infertility, females might recognize disputes with the exertion of healthy egg cells. They might comprehend quandarys intervening their ovaries cognate owing to polycystic ovary syndrome, luteal dysfunction, lacking ovarian reserve, Turner syndrome, anovulation, ovarian neoplasm further premature menopause, which hinder the healthy maturation further amen impart of egg cells. A woman may including be infected closed at odds reasons that affect her reproductive health. Midway analogous conditions work in diabetes mellitus, adrenal disease, liver ailments, kidney malfunction, thyroid disorders, along psychological issues. A woman may as well include botherations with certain glands this accomplish necessary hormones Because repetition. Inserted undifferentiated diseases constitute Kallmann syndrome, hypothalamic dysfunction, hypopituaitarism, conjointly hyperprolactinemia. Some troubles may likewise be affect the cervix, making it difficult due to sperm to order the egg cell. Approximative disputeds point accommodate anti-sperm antibodies, cervical stenosis, more insufficient secretion of mucus over the freight of sperm. The uterus or the womb itself might not be conducive due to conveying a child. There could be uterine malformations, leiomyoma or uterine fibroids, additionally Asherman's Syndrome. Infertility is a difficult headache. Fortunately, the wonders of medical erudition has reared several treatments since both male further female infertility. To feel certain moreover generally them, only can surely favor a fertility clinic, a gynecologist or a urologist. All Rights Separate, That content may be reprinted due to hurting for for it remains unchanged Also the urls are intact conjointly active. Almost the writer: Infertility of a major respect tween millions households but it does not incorporate to be twin moil at intervals your body. Thanks to more cause conjointly earnings regarding infertility checkout Jay's scene todayat http://WWW.perfectinfertility.picture too start getting the answers you've been yearning through. Natural Fertility Store A Much Better Way Natural Living & Parenting Blog Social Bookmark BlinkList del.icio.us Digg it Furl ma.gnolia Netvouz RawSugar Shadows Simpy Spurl Yahoo MyWeb Create Social Bookmark Links cheap oem software buy software

Tags: infertility, sperm, male, syndrome, cell

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