GPS navigation is it good for you?
by Clint Jhonson
There are many things in this world we use just to undertake our daily activities. Without these things life would be a lot harder than we know it. Even so we tend to take most of these things for granted and we don’t appreciate them as we should.
For example, let’s talk about cars. There are lots of things that can get us from one place to another, like buses, trams, subways, trains or others, but nothing can get you to your destination faster than your car. We don’t spend a lot of time thinking what process was undertaken to manufacture this new age wonder. To be honest, since it does its job, why would we be interested?
But there is one small problem about all of this. The car is designed to get you from one place to another, but with you as the designated driver. You have the knowledge of the destination and how to get there, at least in most cases. What happens in the unfortunate situation when you are heading to a destination where you have never been before and you don’t know how to get there? This is where GPS navigation comes in.
Cars are not the only technological wonder of our most recent history. Mankind was able to conquer space, the final frontier, and with it lots of benefits came. Satellites were launched into space so that humans could have a lot more information about what happens on the ground. Among the numerous benefits we can name predictable weather, cell phones and GPS navigation, the topic of this article.
GPS stands for global positioning system. This is a very useful tool in many fields such as military, aviation and consumer products, like the GPS navigation devices found in our cars. Can you imagine how much time would it take for a ship or an airplane to find out their position without these things?
GPS navigation devices can point your position on a map and tell you where you are going and how far you are from your destination. Just as airplanes have nothing but clouds where they are and ships nothing but water, you may find yourself in the position where there is nothing that can guide you to your destination.
GPS navigation is something that can get you out of a lot of troubles. You need to find the right GPS solution for you as a consumer and the choice you are facing is not the easiest one. Some of the best devices of this sort come from the brand Magellan.
To some people the name Magellan may not ring too many bells, but this was the company that manufactured the first handheld GPS receiver, in 1989. In 1997, they also introduced to the market the first global satellite communicator. In essence, they were the pioneers of the industry.
Today, Magellan manufactures and distributes vehicle navigation devices and outdoor handheld products for navigation. Their products offer various viewing options for daytime and nighttime, 3 dimensional bird’s eye view and various other graphic features.
The Magellan GPS navigation devices are something you can use in any situation. Manufactured according to the highest quality standards and very accurate, these devices can be found over the internet if you visit the website findritegps.com.
GPS navigation devices are not something you cannot go without on a daily basis, but there are some situations you can’t get out of without one. In order to avoid these situations you should purchase your own Magellan GPS receiver from the website mentioned afore.
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Integrated T1 for Small Business
by Warren Waite
The days of T1 circuits being something exclusively for large businesses is a thing of the past. Many small business owners get frightened when broached with the concept of implementing a T1. But speaking as a provider of T1 solutions often the only thing lacking with a small business is an educated consumer. Today T1 broadband prices are far less than they were a number years ago, and most modern digital and IP phone systems operate best with a T1 connection as their advanced features often require a broadband connection.
Most small business owners won’t even tolerate the thought of a T1. They are preconditioned to believe that it is simply too expensive. But for many small businesses an Integrated T1 Solution that provisions channels for their voice and internet services not only increases efficiency but can be implemented at an overall monthly savings. We are no longer comparing the monthly cost of a T1 to a DSL. We are comparing the monthly cost of the DSL, the telephone central office lines and calling patterns to the cost of a T1. Calling patterns can be a differentiator. Voice calls through a T1 are in six second increments. Local, regional, long distance and international calls are far less costly per minute, but that cost has to be added onto a monthly port charge (actual broadband connection) and the monthly loop charge which is the connection between your location and the provisioning central office hub.
A standard full T1 comprises of 24 Digital Channels (telephone company CO lines are analog), each providing 64Kbts per channel. The channels can be broken out for Internet Broadband and Voice Lines. The Voice lines would come in on one main number and DID (Direct Inward Dial Numbers) would be allocated for direct extension calling. The calls made to DID numbers bypass the reception or operators extension and go directly to the reach person. Assuming Voice Mail is implemented, if the receiving person does not pick up the phone the call will be delivered to the individuals Voice Mail Box. DID Numbers are not expensive they average about .24 cents each per month, so for a group of 20 for example the cost would estimate at $4.80 a month. Voice channels attached to the main number will simultaneously handle the number of calls equal to the number of channels the same as incoming lines, but do not have separate numbers attached to them.
A company that is operating with say 8 phone lines and 8 computers for example may use 15 channels for Internet, 8 for Incoming lines (8 Channels on a T1) and one for caller ID. The Internet Speed in this scenario is 960kbts. Unless the business is within 1000’ of a DSL hub, a loss in speed is unlikely, while an increase in speed may very well be noticed. Further, the reliability of a T1 over a DSL is hands down. A T1 is a direct connection loop, while the DSL is modem across standard telephone lines.
Telephone Company analog CO Lines in combination with a DSL has its place. A great many small business owners who may be alarmed at the concept of implementing a T1 should remain apprehensive. Depending upon your location a local loop charge alone may be enough to forgo the concept all together. However for some small businesses it is good fit. If you operate a small business and remain unsure if an Integrated T1 Solution is appropriate for your business, ask an honest T1 Service provider for a free analysis.
Warren Waite is President of Associated Communications Group LLC., a Nationwide Wholesale Reseller of Paetec Communications. Visit us at www.acgpaetec.com.
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Science, Education, and the Subject of Origins.
by PiBa
True science is the search for truth. The single most important principle of science education is the one that instructs students to identify assumptions, use critical thinking, make logical deductions, and consider alternative explanations. When any theory becomes dogma, and its proponents seek every device to protect the theory from challenges and seek to ban alternatives, this is poor science, poor education, and a violation of the academic freedom of students and teachers. These considerations are especially significant when applied to the teaching of origins, which not only significantly influences the teaching of biology and other physical sciences, but also philosophy, psychology, history, and religion.
Today evolutionists dominate our educational institutions and scientific institutions. Evolution is accepted and promoted by most people within the mass media-newspapers, radio, television, and magazines. The evolutionary establishment has reacted in a fit of mass hysteria to even the feeblest challenges to its control of public education and the promotion of evolution as an established fact.
The reaction of the evolutionary establishment to the adoption in August of 1999 by the Kansas State Board of Education of new guidelines for teaching science education is a glaring example. The Board, by a 6-4 vote, sought to demote evolution from the first place as the organizing principle of all of biology and its position as unquestioned truth requiring correct answers on certain tests. Predictably, the evolutionary establishment urged evolutionists throughout the U.S. to make known their objections to members of the Kansas State Board of Education and to contact newspapers throughout Kansas. Most of these papers published articles and editorials criticizing the action of the Board, declaring that the State of Kansas was in danger of becoming the laughing stock of the U.S. Many of these articles insinuated that evolution was in danger of being eliminated or drastically curtailed in textbooks. As a result, in the next election several of the Board members who voted for the new guidelines were not re-elected.
In February 2001, the new State Board of Education voted 7-4 to replace the science guidelines put in place by the previous Board with guidelines that reestablished evolution to its primary position. The evolutionary establishment had won. What precisely was the action taken by the earlier Board? Scott Hill, a member of the Board, and one of those who supported the modified guidelines, issued a public statement. In this statement he said:
In a word, the firestorm was about arrogance, . . . the fact is a group of close minded science educators were determined to put in place curricular standards that held up Evolution as the most important concept in all of science. Not only did they suggest a unifying status to evolution, but further suggested the concept transcended science. . . . These narrow-minded drafters ignored input from scores of professional scientists. . . . The State Board did not remove evolution; they did not even de-emphasize it. The State Board did not include creationism; they did not even mention it. What the State Board did do was take input from all constituents and develop a set of standards based on good, qualifiable science.
Actually, the most obvious criticism of the action taken by the earlier Kansas State Board should have been that it didn’t go far enough. Should the teaching about the theory of evolution, along with all of its assumptions and evidence believed to support it, be banned? Absolutely not. To do so would violate the academic and religious freedoms of those who believe in evolution. On the other hand, should teachers and students be encouraged to carefully examine and critically evaluate the assumptions that permeate evolutionary theory? Should teachers and students be permitted, even inspired, to search out and consider scientific evidence that challenges the assumptions and claims for the validity of the theory of evolution? Absolutely.
To do otherwise is poor science and poor education. Should teachers and students be permitted and encouraged to examine and evaluate the scientific evidence that many thousands of scientists throughout the United States of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, eastern religions, and other persuasions believe provides powerful positive evidence for a theistic, supernatural origin of the universe and its living organisms? Absolutely. To do otherwise places a severe constraint on the search for truth and violates the academic and religious freedoms of those who cherish such views.
But didn’t the U.S. Supreme Court, in their 1987 ruling on the Louisiana equal time law, which required that the scientific evidence for both creation and evolution be taught, declare that teaching scientific evidence that supports creation in public schools violates separation of church and state and is unconstitutional? Absolutely not. The Supreme Court ruled that the Louisiana law which required that evidence for both be taught was unconstitutional because it was wrongly motivated by members of the Louisiana legislature. The scientific evidence for creation can be taught in science classrooms if this is done voluntarily by teachers without coercion, and without reference to religious literature of any kind.
That this is so has been admitted by prominent evolutionists. Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University stated, “Creationists claim their law broadened the freedom of teachers by permitting the introduction of controversial material. But no statute exists in any state to bar instruction in ‘creation science.’ It could be taught before, and it can be taught now.” Eugenie Scott, who heads the anti-creationist organization, National Center for Science Education, stated that “Reports of the death of ’scientific creationism,’ however, are premature. The Supreme Court decision says only that the Louisiana law violates the constitutional separation of church and state; it does not say that no one can teach scientific creationism-and unfortunately many individual teachers do.” In spite of this fact, it is incessantly repeated in newspapers that teaching the scientific evidence for creation in public schools violates the constitution and has been prohibited by the Supreme Court. As a consequence most educators have accepted this false notion, and it is widely promoted by evolutionists.
But doesn’t introducing evidence that supports creation require a Creator and is thus religious in nature? Aren’t scientific theories restricted to the use of natural laws and natural processes? It is true that in our efforts to observe, to understand, and to explain the operation of the universe and the operation of living organisms we do and must employ only natural laws and processes. The evolutionist, however, goes beyond this, stepping outside of empirical science when he insists that we must use these very same natural laws and processes to explain the origin of the universe and the origin of living organisms. Thus the evolutionist is substituting metaphysics in the place of true science, the search for truth. No theory about origins, creation, or evolution, fulfills the criteria of a scientific theory. A scientific theory must be based on repeatable observations, be subject to scientific test, and be potentially falsifiable. There were no human observers to the origin of the universe, life, or a single living kind. These events took place in the unobservable past and are not capable of observation today. All changes that occur among living things are merely fluctuations within limits. No one observes apelike creatures evolving toward humans or fish evolving into amphibians. Creation and evolution are theories about the past, and such theories are never scientific theories. They do have scientific characteristics, they can be discussed in scientific language, and there is a mass of circumstantial evidence that can be considered.
Evolution is no more scientific than creation and it is just as religious. What is more religious, a Creator, or no Creator? Dr. Michael Ruse, an evolutionist, was one of the main witnesses for evolution in the 1981 Arkansas federal trial concerning the constitutionality of the equal time law for creation and evolution passed by the Arkansas legislature. At that time he argued vociferously that evolutionary theory was strictly science, while creation theory was exclusively religious. About 20 years later, in an article published in a Canadian newspaper, Ruse, although still a Darwinian evolutionist, revealed his complete turnabout on the question of evolutionary theory and religion. Ruse flatly stated that he now believes that “Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion-a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality . . . Evolution is a religion”. Unfortunately, the unofficial state-sanctioned religion in U.S. public schools today is this non-theistic humanism which clearly violates the separation of church and state.
But isn’t the scientific evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, solidly in favor of evolution? Didn’t Darwin provide the method that explained how evolution could and did take place? The amazing thing is that today, 140 years after publication of Darwin’s book, not only is Darwin’s theory under attack by creationists but is under attack by more and more evolutionists! In fact, Søren Løvtrup, well-known Swedish scientist and an evolutionist, has declared that “I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science.” The fossil record, for example, does not produce the evidence Darwin predicted. If evolution is true we should find innumerable fossilized ancestors and connecting forms. However, every one of these complex invertebrates appear fully formed, with no trace of ancestors or intermediate forms linking one to another. Furthermore, every major kind of fish known appears in the fossil record fully formed, with no ancestors and no connecting forms. If evolution is true there should have been uncounted billions of transitional links documenting the intermediate stages between some invertebrate and fishes. There are none. These facts disprove with evolution. On the other hand, these facts are precisely what creationists expect. The remainder of the fossil record reveals that each basic type of plant and animal appears fully formed in the fossil record.
Sir Fred Hoyle, world-famous British astronomer, declared after researching the probability of an evolutionary origin of life, the probability of a naturalistic evolutionary origin of life anywhere in the universe in 20 billion years is equal to the probability that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard would assemble a Boeing 747 in five seconds. Sir Fred, formerly an atheist, declared life therefore had to be created, therefore there must be a Creator. The all-pervasive existence of design and purpose seen throughout the universe and in every detail of the structure and function of living organisms shows eloquently the existence of the Designer.
Thousands of scientists holding advanced degrees in science from major universities throughout the world reject evolutionary theory and have become convinced on the basis of scientific evidence that the best statement we can make about our origin today is still, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” To deny the opportunity for the students in the tax-supported public schools in our pluralistic democratic society to be taught all of the scientific evidence that supports the two basic theories of origins, creation and evolution, is a denial of academic freedom and constitutes indoctrination in a humanistic, naturalistic worldview or religion.
by Duane Gish, Ph.D. from www.icr.org. Dr. Duane Gish is Senior Vice President of ICR. More articles at www.evolution-species.info
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Links Between Goals and Our Personal Thoughts, Actions and Feelings
by Roberto Bell
For example, imagine yourself as a young soccer player in a knockout match. You’ve felt great during the match because you’ve worked hard, made some great tackles and accurate passes, and your work on your concentration skills has paid off by allowing you to refocus quickly. You’ve spent most of the game in a highly task-involved state of mind and have received praise from your teammates.
The game is tied and goes to a penalty shoot-out. You are the last player of five selected, and the score is 4-4. As you make that long walk to the penalty spot, how does the situation and its potential consequences affect your view of success and skill? Will your feelings of competence depend entirely on scoring or missing? And, if you do become ego involved, how might it affect your chances of scoring?
All athletes have an innate preference for task or ego involved goals in sport. These predispositions, referred to as task and ego goal orientations, are believed to develop throughout childhood largely due to the types of people the athletes come in contact with and the situations they are placed in.
If children consistently receive parental praise that’s contingent on their effort and recognition for personal improvement from their coaches, and are encouraged to learn from their errors, then they are likely to engender a task orientation. It becomes second nature for them to believe that success is associated with mastery, effort, understanding, and personal responsibility.
The behavior of their role models in sport also affects this development. Such an environment is far different from one where children are rewarded by rewards for winning (alone), praise for the best marks, criticism or non-selection despite making their best effort, or coaches whose style is to hand out unequal recognition. This kind of environment helps an ego orientation to develop, along with the belief that ability and talent, not effort and personal endeavor, earn success.
Goal orientations are believed to be relatively stable and enduring characteristics that are largely formed by mid to late teen-age. Hence, coaches and parents should attempt to shape a child’s development as early as possible during the 6- to 14-year-old phase.
In this developmental period, children’s cognitive abilities start working overtime as they begin to understand that effort isn’t the sole reason for success at a sport. At about 11 or 12 years of age, they begin to realise that regardless of effort, some children simply have more ability than others. That’s when the fantasy of being the next sports star comes under obvious pressure for some children.
The strength of a goal orientation influences whether a player will adopt a task or ego involved goal in a specific sport scenario. It is also perfectly reasonable for evolving athletes to develop both high task and ego orientations if they have been exposed to an assortment of task and ego oriented situations and people. However, never underestimate the power of a particular situation.
The adolescent athlete might be quite high in task orientation, but in a competition with a high degree of public evaluation, judgment, criticism, or comparison based on who’s best, with rewards and benefits for winners and negative consequences for losers, he or she might become ego involved. Competitions accompanied by high perceived expectations and consequences arguably form the natural spine of professional sport.
Factors such as the stage of the event (e.g., final or qualifying match), whether selection is at stake, previous head-to-heads, financial rewards, age of the opponent (e.g., playing a talented younger player), representing the team or country for the first time, and the support of the audience can make competition a natural ego-involving laboratory.
Nevertheless, not all sport is like that; in fact, some sport situations offset the natural importance of superiority by emphasising participation and publicly reinforcing or rewarding personal effort, improvement, and problem solving rather than focusing on comparisons.
An example is a swimming club that encourages all standards of swimmer, with a coach who gives recognition solely based on individual improvements in time or technique. These situations increase the importance and number of task-involving cues. The key message here is that the availability of task-involving cues in sports that are naturally ego involving allows the athlete to develop a more task-involved approach to competition.
If you’re looking for Australian FIFA Agent, a Australian Football Academy or Football Tours, contact the Football Management Group.. Visit Bonds Between Goals and Our Thoughts, Actions and Feelings.
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Get your business off to a flying start what can a new phone system do for your business?
by Keith McGregor
Most businesses have an office telephone system. We take them for granted, they are used simply to transfer the odd call or put someone on hold while we fetch a file. Most of us have taken a call from a eager salesman who would like to tells about how this new phone system he is selling is going to revolutionise our lives, even make us tea or coffee when we need it. We tell the sales guy that we don’t have time to talk about our telephone system as the thing is still working so why would we change it? Good question. You might ask yourself the same question about your PC’s or your car but you have probably changed these before they were broken. Office PC’s for example are now a lot faster and capable than they were only 5 years ago. Telephone systems have also come a long way and are now more closely linked to the office PC network. Here are some ways that a new phone system can give your business an edge over your competitors:
Increase Productivity
Computer telephony integration (CTI) is the term we use for linking our office pc network with the telephone system. This can help by enabling users to click on telephone numbers in programs like Outlook, Maximizer, Sage Line 50, Goldmine and may others, including in-house systems, and the phone will automatically dial the number. The same system will ‘pop’ incoming callers records from a database onto the screen of the person that answers the call. These systems may sound like a gimmick but when you add up the time that can be saved across even a small business it doesn’t take long to see a return on investment.
Save money
There are many jobs done everyday by well paid staff that could be done by a phone system. Using an IVR system customers are able to access your database to automatically order goods. The phone system will speak to the database and then listen and interpret what the database is telling it back. You may have used one of these systems when you last called your internet banking. The time that can be save by using IVR allows the person that used to take those calls to use their skills dealing customers that need help, reducing complaints and lost calls.
Look professional
Not only do new phone look great on the desk but by using features such as marketing on hold you can offer your customers music while they wait on hold with personalised and targeted marketing messages to help you promote your business, like new products or advise customers of new opening hours.
Always available
Some new phone systems have a ‘Unified Communications’ theme which means that they offer cross media communication. For instance, you are sent an important email which is time critical but you are driving to another meeting which is equally as important. Wouldn’t it be great if you used your handsfree in the car to pick up your voicemails and then have your voicemail check your emails and read any new email to you while you are still driving? No problem using Avaya’s Voicemail Pro. You are on an important call at your desk but you need to leave to catch a plane. Rather than offering to call the person back or have then call you back wouldn’t it be great if you could transfer that call you your mobile seamlessly at the touch of a button and retain office phone features such as transfer, hold and conference on your mobile? By using Avaya’s Mobility feature all this is possible and a lot more beside.
What can a new phone system do for your business? A lot more that it could 5 years ago.
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