text:
Wind River Systems

Wind River Systems, also known as Wind River (trademarked as Wndrvr), is an Alameda, California–based company, subsidiary of Aptiv PLC. The company develops embedded system and cloud software consisting of real-time operating systems software, industry-specific software, simulation technology, development tools and middleware.

History
Wind River Systems was formed by a partnership of Jerry Fiddler and Dave Wilner. Until 1981, Fiddler had worked at Berkeley Lab writing software for control systems, and wanted to pursue a career in computer generated music, which he funded through a consultancy business focused on real-time operating systems. His early clients included the National Football League and film director Francis Ford Coppola, for whom he designed a unique film editing system. Wilner, a former colleague at Berkeley Lab, joined Fiddler to form Wind River Systems in 1983.

In 2009, Wind River was acquired by Intel. In 2018, Intel spun out its Wind River division, which was then acquired by TPG Capital. On January 11, 2022, Wind River announced that it was acquired by Aptiv, an auto parts company, for $4.3 billion in cash.

The company's key milestones include:
 * 1983: Wind River is incorporated in 1983 with each partner contributing $3,000 and a desk to the business. The company was named for Wind River, Wyoming, where Fiddler had vacationed that year
 * 1987: Wind River introduces VxWorks, a leading real-time operating system for embedded devices.
 * 1995: VxWorks launches into space on the NASA Clementine moon probe. Also, the Tornado integrated development environment is launched and wins EDN's Embedded Development Software Innovation of the Year award as the first graphically oriented development environment for embedded
 * 1997: VxWorks, the real-time operating system for NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission, lands on Mars
 * 1999: Acquisition of one of their major competitors, Integrated Systems Inc., makers of pSOS. Wind River has since discontinued the pSOS product line and has recommended existing pSOS customers move to VxWorks.
 * 2001: Wind River Systems acquired Belgian software company Eonic Systems, the developer of Virtuoso RTOS for DSPs. In November 2015, Wind River Systems renamed the operating system to Rocket, made it open-source and royalty-free. In 2016, Rocket was incorporated into Zephyr RTOS hosted by Linux Foundation.
 * 2004: Wind River officially enters the embedded Linux market, with a Carrier Grade Linux platform targeting the networking & communications infrastructure industry. Also, NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, powered by VxWorks, land on Mars. Wind River helped in manufacturing the IntelliStar for The Weather Channel. The IntelliStar is used at Cable Headends to insert Local Weather into The Weather Channel's national programming.
 * 2007: Wind River joins Google's Open Handset Alliance as an original Linux commercialization partner.
 * 2008: Wind River establishes the embedded Linux market share lead with greater than 30 percent of total market revenue, four years after entering the market.
 * 2009: Intel acquires Wind River for approximately $884 million and it becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel. Wind River launches a commercial Android software platform. Wind River becomes a founding member of the GENIVI Alliance, now called COVESA (Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance).
 * 2010: Wind River adds Simics, a full system simulator, to its product portfolio. VxWorks becomes the first RTOS to be certified under Wurldtech's Achilles certification program, a standard for industrial cyber security. Wind River partners with Intel and the Linux Foundation to create the Yocto Project, an open source collaboration project providing templates, tools and methods to help developers create embedded Linux-based systems.
 * 2012: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) successfully lands Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, powered by Wind River technology. Wind River debuts software platform targeted at gateways and hubs for the Internet of things.
 * 2013: Wind River becomes part of Intel's Internet of Things Group (IOTG), but remains a wholly owned subsidiary. Barry Mainz assumes the position of President.
 * 2014: Wind River introduces its software for network functions virtualization (NFV) applications, as well as its next-generation VxWorks platform reinvented for the Internet of Things.
 * 2014: Wind River fined $750,000 by Bureau of Industry and Security for exporting encryption technology to countries including Israel and South Korea.
 * 2015: the company was accused of repeated trademark and licensing violations of the Grsecurity project, which as response has restricted its code to commercial partners only.
 * 2016: Intel announced that it intended to fully integrate Wind River into one of its divisions (thus ending Wind River's status as a wholly owned subsidiary,) although the scheduled completion date of this action has not been made public. Barry Mainz left the company to become President and CEO of MobileIron and Jim Douglas assumes the position of President.
 * 2018: Intel divested Wind River Systems to alternative asset fund manager TPG under undisclosed terms.
 * 2018: Ford selects Wind River Over-the-Air Update Technology.
 * 2018: NASA's InSight lands on Mars with VxWorks operating system.
 * 2019: Wind River became the first OpenChain 2.0 conformant organization.
 * 2020: Kevin Dallas named as CEO and member of the Board of Directors.
 * 2020: Verizon uses Wind River's software infrastructure for its deployment of virtualized 5G RAN.
 * 2020: Wind River becomes first and only to achieve The Open Group FACE Conformance for Linux.
 * 2021: Perseverance Mars becomes fourth Mars rover running VxWorks operating system.
 * 2021: Vodafone selects Wind River as a partner to build Europe's first commercial open RAN network.
 * 2022: Wind River was acquired by Aptiv from TPG Capital for $4.3 billion in cash.

Products
Among the company's products are the VxWorks real-time operating system, the Wind River Linux operating system, and the Eclipse-based Wind River Workbench IDE. VxWorks began as an add-on to the VRTX operating system in the early 1980s. Wind River Workbench superseded the previous Tornado environment.

VxWorks
VxWorks is the original flagship product of Wind River. It is a real-time operating system (RTOS) intended for embedded and critical infrastructure devices and systems. It supports multicore processors, 32-bit and 64-bit, for several architectures including ARM, Intel, and Power and has over one hundred board support packages (BSPs) for different hardware systems. VxWorks is a real time and deterministic operating system.

Wind River Linux
Wind River's Linux product is source code and a build system that generate runtime images suitable for embedded devices.

Historically, Wind River Linux has supported a variety of architectures, including ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, IA32 and SPARC.

The current release of Wind River Linux supports a variety of ARM, IA32, and IA64 platforms with both standard and realtime (PREEMPT_RT) kernels.

Wind River charges a subscription to provide commercial bug and CVE fixes for their Linux products. Pricing is project-based, with a flat fee for each solution built on top of Wind River Linux. There is no per-device subscription or royalty.

The key capabilities for Wind River Linux are 10 year commercial support life, complete customization including kernel changes, reproducible customizations, wide range of hardware support through Board Support Packages (BSP) that are ported, maintained, and tested by Wind River.

Early history
In 2004, Wind River announced a partnership with Red Hat to create a new Linux-based distribution for embedded devices. Wind River has since ended its partnership with Red Hat and now ships its own Linux distribution optimized for embedded Linux development.

Wind River released the first version of its embedded Linux distribution, Platform for Network Equipment - Linux Edition (PNE-LE) 1.0 in 2005. It was registered against the Carrier Grade Linux 2.0 specification and supported IA32 and PPC architectures. They added other platforms in subsequent releases, General Purpose Platform - Linux Edition (GPP-LE) and Platform for Consumer Devices - Linux Edition PCD-LE) starting in version 1.4. In 2013 Wind River announced Wind River Linux 6.0.

Wind River Systems acquired FSMLabs embedded technology in February 2007 and made a version available as Wind River Real-Time Core for Wind River Linux. As of August 2011, Wind River has discontinued the Wind River Real-Time Core product line, effectively ending commercial support for the RTLinux product. On August 7, 2007, Palm Inc. announced it would use Wind River Systems Linux for its (later aborted) Palm Foleo.

In 2008, Wind River announced cooperation with BMW, Intel and Magneti Marelli for development of a Linux-based open-source platform to control in-car electronics, which was extended in the GENIVI Alliance in 2009.

Yocto Project
In 2012, Wind River introduced a version of Linux that was developed from the Yocto Project open source development infrastructure and achieved Yocto project compatible registration. All subsequent releases of Wind River Linux are based on the Yocto Project.

Wind River Linux release history
Wind River has historically released a new Wind River Linux LTS (Long Term Support) about every year that are generally based on the then current Linux Kernel LTS release and the latest Yocto Project release.

Wind River Linux Distro
In 2022, Wind River launched a new product, Wind River Linux Distro, that is a binary Linux distribution based on the Wind River Linux source-based product.

The Distro is intended for embedded solution developers that need a commercially supported Linux for their project, but do not need the extensive customization capabilities of the Yocto Project-based Wind River Linux. The key features are quick time to value, customization via tools such as the Linux Assembly Tool & an RPM package feed, and updates via OSTree.

Developers can download a free version of the Wind River Linux Distro by going to https://www.windriver.com/products/linux/download

A number of hardware platforms are enabled by the Distro. Commercial support is currently available for a subset of the enabled platforms.

Simics
Simics is a full-system simulator used by software developers to simulate the hardware of complex electronic systems.

Wind River Studio
Wind River Studio is a cloud-native platform for the deployment and servicing of mission-critical intelligent edge systems.

Acquisitions

 * 1991: Assets of ITRA (Vannes, France)
 * 1997: DSP Foundry (WiSP RTOS for Motorola DSP563xx family)
 * 1999: Integrated Systems Inc. (pSOS+)
 * 2000: Merge staff of Dragonfly Software Consulting
 * 2000: Embedded Support Tools Corp. (ESTC)
 * 2000: ICEsoft (Bergen, Norway)
 * 2000: AudeSi Technologies Inc. (Calgary, Alberta, Canada)
 * 2001: Eonic Systems (Virtuoso RTOS)
 * 2001: Berkeley Software Design Inc. (BSDI)
 * 2005: ScopeTools business unit from Real-Time Innovations
 * 2006: Interpeak AB (Stockholm, Sweden)
 * 2007: Assets of FSMLabs (Socorro, New Mexico, United States)
 * 2008: MIZI (Seoul, South Korea)
 * 2009: Tilcon Software Limited (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)
 * 2010: Virtutech (Stockholm, Sweden)
 * 2011: Switch++ (Santa Clara, United States)
 * 2016 Arynga
 * 2020 Star Labs

title: Wind River Systems


text:
Shrinkwrap (contract law)

Shrinkwrap contracts or shrinkwrap licenses are boilerplate contracts packaged with products; use of the product is deemed acceptance of the contract.

Web-wrap, click-wrap and browse-wrap are related terms which refer to license agreements in software which is downloaded or used over the internet.

A software license agreement is commonly called an end user license agreement (or EULA).

The term 'shrink wrap' describes the shrink wrap plastic wrapping which coats software boxes or the terms and conditions which comes with products on delivery.

Shrink wrap assertions are unsigned permit understandings which state that acknowledgement on the client of the terms of the assertion is demonstrated by opening the shrink wrap bundling or other bundling of the product, by utilisation of the product, or by some other determined instrument.

United States
The legal status of shrink wrap contracts in the US is somewhat unclear. In the 1980s, software license enforcement acts were enacted by Louisiana and Illinois in an attempt to address this issue, but parts of the Louisiana act were invalidated in Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd., and the Illinois act was quickly repealed. Case history also fails to clear up the confusion. One line of cases follows ProCD v. Zeidenberg which held such contracts enforceable (see, e.g., Bowers v. Baystate Technologies ) and the other follows Klocek v. Gateway, Inc., which found the contracts at hand unenforceable (e.g., Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp. ), but did not comment on shrink wrap contracts as a whole. These decisions are split on the question of consent, with the former holding that only objective manifestation of consent is required while the latter require at least the possibility of subjective consent. In particular, the Netscape contract was rejected because it lacked an express indication of consent (no "I agree" button) and because the contract was not presented directly to the user (users were required to click on a link to access the terms). However, the court in this case did make it clear that "Reasonably conspicuous notice of the existence of contract terms and unambiguous manifestation of assent to those terms by consumers are essential if electronic bargaining is to have integrity and credibility."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Shrinkwrap (contract law)


text:
Vidura

Vidura (विदुर), also known as Kshatri, plays a key role in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. He is described as the prime minister of the Kuru kingdom and is the paternal uncle of both the Pandavas and the Kauravas.

Mandavya's Curse
The rishi Mandavya cursed Yama that he would be born as a maid's son for getting him impaled without a valid reason. He was born in the mortal world as Vidura.

Birth and early life
Vidura was born through Niyoga between the sage Vyasa and Parishrami, a handmaiden to the queens Ambika and Ambalika. Ambika first mated with Vyasa through the niyoga process but kept her eyes closed during the process because his appearance and power frightened her. As a result she gave birth to the blind Dhritarashtra. Later her sister Ambalika followed the same process with Vyasa, and knew to keep her eyes open. But she was pale with fear during the niyoga, and so gave birth to the albino Pandu. Finally the queens sent their maiden Parishrami in their place, who behaved appropriately during niyoga process and gave birth to the exceptional Vidura. But because his mother was a handmaiden rather than a queen, his status was always lower than his two half brothers. The queens were wives of king Vichitravirya – the grandfather to the Kauravas and Pandavas who eventually fought each other in the Battle of Kurukshetra, the climax of the Mahabharata on the threshold of which the Bhagavad Gita was given by Krishna to the Pandava prince Arjuna. King Vichitravirya was also the adopted father of Dhritarashtra and Pandu. After Krishna, Vidura was the most respected as an adviser by the Pandavas, whom he forewarned on various occasions of Duryodhana's plots to exterminate them, such as Duryodhana's plan to burn them alive in the house of wax.

Game of dice
Vidura tried to stop Yudhishthira from playing the game of dice, but his efforts were of no use. Except the prince Vikarna, Vidura was the only one who protested against the humiliation of Draupadi in the Kaurava court. In that moment, Duryodhana viciously rebuked Vidura, calling him ungrateful. Dhritarashtra moved to rebuke Duryodhana for insulting their uncle, but, remembering Vidura saying that a blind man cannot be king, holds his tongue, and instead reprimanded Duryodhana for insulting the prime minister. It is that incident that Vidura brought up years later when he severed ties with the Kurus and sided with the Pandavas at the onset of the Kurukshetra war. Unlike Bhishma, Dronacharya, Kripacharya, and Karna, Vidura did not have an obligation to Hastinapura or Duryodhana, but to his family. Hearing Dhritarashtra not acknowledge that relationship, Vidura felt compelled to side with dharma and the Pandavas.

Krishna's visit
According to Krishna, Vidura was considered as Dharmaraja, which means the king of righteousness. Krishna respected Vidura for his devotion to people's welfare and his proficiency in every sphere of knowledge. When Krishna visited Hastinapura as a peace emissary of the Pandavas, he shunned Duryodhana's offer to stay in the royal palace, preferring instead the home of Vidura, on account of him being the only neutral man in the Kaurava court. The reason Krishna stayed in Vidura's chambers for the night instead of Duryodhana's is due to the thoughts which were running through their heads and the difference between them. Duryodhana's intention was to heave luxury upon Krishna and convince him to join the Kaurava side. Sensing this intention, Krishna refused. Krishna knew the food that Vidura and his wife presented was presented with love and affection with no ulterior motive.

Kurukshetra War
In the Sanatsujatiya section of the Mahabharata, shortly before the Kurukshetra War began, Vidura invoked the sage Sanatsujata to answer Dhritarashtra's questions about death.

During Krishna's visit, Vidura repeatedly advised everyone in the Court to heed the messenger. Continuously irritated, Duryodhana bursts out, blaming the low-born mother of Vidura as the cause for him betraying the Kauravas who have been feeding him. In protest against verbal assault, Vidura resigned on the spot from the post of Prime minister and broke his bow, vowing not to take part in the Kurukshetra War. Lesser known versions of Mahabharatha praise Vidura as an archer so great that if he had participated on the side of Kauravas in the war, the Pandavas would have been crushed. Vidura's bow was crafted by Vishnu himself, and it was destroyed at the behest of Vishnu's visit.

Death
After the Kurukshetra War, Yudhishthira became the emperor and upon his request, Vidura resumed his post as Prime minister. After many years, Vidura accompanied Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti who retired to the forests to live a simple life. Sanjaya also accompanied them. When Yudhishthira went to forest after two years to visit them, he found Vidura's body to be lifeless. When he went near to the body, Vidura's spirit entered Yudhishthira's body and Yudhishthira realised that he and Vidura belonged to same entity, Yama. Yudhishthira left Vidura's body in the wood as a heavenly voice told Yudhishthira not to cremate Vidura's body.

Vidura Niti
In Chapters 33 through 40 of Udyoga Parva in the Mahabharata, Vidura outlines things wise people and leaders should do, and things they should not. Collectively, these are known as Vidura Niti (Vidura's Statecraft). Some examples of his recommendations for leaders:

 * 1) He should wish for the prosperity of all, and should never set heart on inflicting misery on any group.
 * 2) He should pay attention to those who have fallen in distress and adversity. He should not ignore persistent sufferings of those that depend on him, even if the suffering is small.
 * 3) He should show compassion to all creatures, do what is good for all creatures rather than a select few.
 * 4) He should never impede the development and growth of agriculture and economic activity by anyone.
 * 5) He should be always be prepared to protect those that depend on him for their safety and security.
 * 6) He should be fair and accessible to his people. By means of virtue should he attain success, by means of virtue should he sustain it.
 * 7) He should consider the welfare of his people as his personal responsibility.
 * 8) He should encourage learning and transmission of knowledge.
 * 9) He should encourage profit and virtue. Prosperity depends on good deeds. Good deeds depend on prosperity.
 * 10) He should avoid friendship with the sinful.
 * 11) He should never misuse wealth, use harsh speech nor inflict extreme or cruel punishments.
 * 12) He should only appoint those as ministers (senior positions in his staff) whom he has examined well for their history of virtue, dispositions, activity and whether they give others their due.

Vidura Niti also includes a few hundred verses with suggestions for personal development and the characteristics of a wise person. For example, in Chapter 33, Vidura suggests a wise person refrains from anger, exultation, pride, shame, stupefaction and vanity. He has reverence and faith, he is unhampered in his endeavors by either adversity or prosperity. He believes virtue and profit can go together, exerts and acts to the best of his ability, disregards nothing. He understands quickly, listens carefully, acts with purpose. He does not grieve for what is lost, and does not lose his sense during crisis. He is constantly learning, he seeks enlightenment from everything he experiences. He acts after deciding, and decides after thinking. He neither behaves with arrogance, nor with excessive humility. He never speaks ill of others, nor praises himself. He does not exult in honours to himself, nor grieves at insults; he is not agitated by what others do to him just like a calm lake near river Ganges.

In popular culture
Vidura is considered as the Mahachohan in the Theosophical world. Mahachohan is said to be the chief of a Social Hierarchy of the trans-Himalayan mystics. Most characters in the Mahabharata were reincarnations of one God or the other. Vidura was the reincarnation of Dharmaraja, more popularly known as Yamadharmaraja, who was born as a maid's son due to the curse of sage Mandavya.When Vishnu decided to take birth as Krishna, other deities also incarnated along with him. This is seen both in the Mahabharata and in the Ramayana. For example, in the Ramayana, the sage Narada was born as Vibhishana.

Vidura Niti, or Vidura's Statecraft, narrated in the form of a dialogue between Vidura and King Dhritarashtra, is considered the precursor in some ways of Chanakya Neeti by Chanakya.

Vidura is held to be a paragon of truth, dutifulness, impartial judgement and steadfast dharma. He is considered the embodiment of the inner consciousness of the Mahabharata. The curse carried by Narada was also transferred to Vidura. The curse that though he being bestowed with ultimate knowledge and wisdom about the past, the present and the future, he would not be believed.

Kaka Vidura, a Hindi minor poem by Rambhadracharya, has Vidura and his wife Sulabha as central characters.

Vidura Bhiksha is a Malayalam poetry work by Ullur S. Parameswarayyar.

title: Vidura


text:
Talk:Standard form contract

I've basically re-written this article, and changed it from adhesion contracts to standard form contracts which is the more commonly used term, especially outside the US. The section on common law treatment could be expanded to other jurisdictions (UK, NZ) and the section on legislation could be made more specific, though that's a daunting task considering the variety of the law out there. I don't know much about European/civilian law, so that could be added to aswell... Psychobabble

Seems that the quite successful use of Standard forms of Contract in the building industry might need inclusion in this article - I don't know anything about US construction Law though, but I could write a little on the UK side of things. mcginnly

Add a UK section, whats preventing you from doing that? It should be noted that Standard Form Contracts and Contracts of Adhesion are the same thing, but boiler plates are similar, though distinct in that they are basically restricted to "disclaimers" or "contracts" on the back of ticket stubs, claim checks, etc. They are called boiler plates for a reason, and that reason is because the contract resembles a boiler plate. Failure to notice this is a failure to recognize the legal terms of art. Also, the article is one sided as hell. Standard form contracts have vast advantages. 1) Efficiency in many ways, when the court interprets one std form K, all are interpreted; reduce the time and trouble needed to draft a k; and make planning and a solid contract available. 2) Risk assessment and security; risks become more calculable, and security becomes more foreseeable. DeWitt

Why are they called "adhesion" contracts?
It would be nice if the article explained this, especially to legal laypersons who might be curious. +ILike2BeAnonymous 06:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

 * It comes from the meaning of adhesion in the sense of something sticky. A contract of adhesion is one you are literally stuck with in the sense that it is stuck before your face and you either have to sign it or walk.  That is, you either have to take the contract as is or completely forego the service that is being sold along with the contract, because all sellers use similar contracts and the buyers do not have enough buying power to negotiate for significant modifications of the terms.

 * For example, all car dealerships in the United States traditionally use the same contract (with minor modifications for each state) for sales of cars on credit. If you don't want to sign that contract, you will not get a car.  You can always buy a car with cash, but unless you're Donald Trump, you will have to wait at least a few months (or years) to save up enough money to buy a car free and clear.  In contrast, in high-value transactions involving art, corporations, athletes, and so on, sophisticated, wealthy and powerful persons can sit down together in a conference room (accompanied by a small army of lawyers for each side) and argue over every point in the contract.  --Coolcaesar 09:06, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

 * The classic example of an adhesion contract, the one given to me by an actual lawyer when I asked what the term meant, is the ticket you get from a parking garage that has legalese printed on the back. This is the classic "take it or leave it" contract that you implicitly sign by accepting; maybe it should go into the article as an explanation.
 * By the way, another aspect of these contracts that ought to be dealt with in the article is the fact that they are, as I understand it, fairly unenforceable. Courts tend to recognize the unequal power relationship between parties and take that into account when litigation over these contracts comes up; this ought to be covered as well. +ILike2BeAnonymous 03:51, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The article fails to go into the positive aspects of the Standard form contract. It is one sided and opposed to it.138.16.12.232 21:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

 * There are parts of this that should probably be reworded for neutrality. Why not have a go yourself? — mholland 21:59, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

This article details a recognized area of legal analysis, which tries to ameliorate the negative effects of standard form contracts. There is no place in that legal discussion for advocating the use of such contracts; that is an economic, business, or ideological discussion outside the scope of legal research. Questioning the neutrality of this article because it fails to identify the positive aspects of standard form contracts reveals a poor understanding of legal studies.

Neutrality or confusion?
I think the problem here may not be neutrality, but confusion as to what this is refering to. If you look to the bottom of this there's a link to JCT, and it was a discussion of the type of contracts that they provide that I was looking for. Essentially JCT is a commercial organisation which sells neutral contracts to people in the construction business, but there are a number of other organisations doing similar things. The value is if you have a standard form of contract, you know it's fair and should you need to go to court there is plenty of precedent about the outcome. As I understand it, it also includes a clause (2.21) which overrides the terms of any contract bills attached to the project - which is the (potentially) skewed boiler plate text that you are talking about and which can lead to these so-called 'battle of the forms'. I think you need to go back to the adhesion contract name. I'm afraid I can't really write this up as I am just a second year Architecture student in the UK and basically only have a superficial understanding of the subject.Klue 11:44, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I would agree with Klue. The problem here is not neutrality as such as much as it is confusion. All adhesion contracts are standard form/boilerplate contracts, but not all standard form/boilerplate contracts are adhesion contracts. For a good counterexample, consider invoices and purchase orders. These are essentially standard form contracts, many of which contain boilerplate language on the reverse. Between a corporation and an individual, this may well be an adhesion contract, but between two savvy operators, e.g. two large businesses, these are likely to be negotiable. A standard form contract can become a contract of adhesion if the difference in bargaining power between the parties is sufficiently inequitable.Valkyryn 22:19, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Having found no argument or justification for the inclusion of the neutrality tag whatsoever, I am removing the tag. Feel free to re-add it if accompanied this time by at least a nominal description of a neutrality problem on this talk page. 128.62.214.82 (talk) 16:58, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

reputation
Even if this is the case, it is argued by some that only a small percentage of buyers need to actively read standard form contracts for it to be worthwhile for firms to offer better terms if that group is able to influence a larger number of people by affecting the firm’s reputation.

But don't companies in some cases actively advertise that their contracts offer better terms? (for example the common advertising catchphrase "no hidden fees") --Random832 (contribs) 16:32, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Hobson's choice?
Maybe someone could throw in a reference to [Hobson's choice] if it seems appropriate. Probably not for every case, but it makes sense for the "take it or leave it" type of this contract.69.72.86.210 (talk) 06:16, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Link to the French Wikipedia
First of all, I wish to apologize because the English is not my mother tongue, so I can commit some errors. I think that the link of this article to the French Wikipedia could be wrong, because a contract of adhesion is not the same thing that an abusive clause in a contract (though it may be similar in some cases). I suggest that someone with enough knowledge of English and French redirect the link to the right article or erase it. --85.155.69.30 (talk) 02:15, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 * And by the same token, "standard form contract" is not a synonym for "abusive clause in a standard form contract".

89.217.28.156 (talk) 00:50, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Conceptual error?
At the introduction, "... i.e. take it or leave it..." is illustrative, not a definition (!). A objective contract (where the partners will focus on a standard object) is not a "...a contract that is entered into between unequal bargaining partners...". Main reasons: --Krauss (talk) 12:00, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Focus on a standard object: partners are equal about many other objectives, such as speed, reliability, (low) transaction cost, that justify the standarization of the contract text.
 * 2) Context of the transaction: the article ignore that all commercial standard form contract is at a market context. There are a freedom of market choices:  "take it or leave it" is "take this choice with this terms, or go back to the market and take another choice".
 * 3) They are not always binary contracts: a form with a lot of clauses with checkboxes (clause options/variations) is a good example. The more checkboxes, more equal bargaining. The customer (and the company's representative) is in position to negotiate with the checkboxes.
 * PS: writing laws and contracts are not a creative process. Contracts and law are filled with tradictions, etc. "Standard text blocks" is better than "creative text blocks" in this context.

NPOV dispute
(see Neutral point of view)

The "Conceptual error?" topic above shows an overview of the problem. The article begins with a criticism, and then spend a large portion with the criticism. Sugestion: --Krauss (talk) 03:21, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) select a set of cosensual references (not webpages, ex. see books and articles of Transaction cost);
 * 2) correct (with neutral content) the lead section;
 * 3) change the section title "Theoretical issues" to "Criticism" (see Criticism), cuting some blocks for the adaption below;
 * 4) preserve and adapt some blocks for a new "Theoretical issues" with a neutral point of view. There are two main topics, where we can use some "theoretical arguments" and main references,
 * 5) * When the standard contract is good (market situation) and when is not (monopoly and specialized object situations).
 * 6) * Types of standard contracts: from the "unique choice text" (take it or leave it) to the "many choices" (checkboxes) and "free placeholders" forms.
 * 7) add a section "Typical abuses": puting the criticism in the perspective of the abusive uses (of the standard form contract) and distortions.

Complimentary Internet Terms of Use
One area that I think should be addressed (if I have it that this is the correct area to address these issues) is the "Complimentary Internet" terms of use that one is often asked to sign. Although these may not be "Standard Form Contracts" since every hotel chain has its own, there is no opportunity to negotiate anything, and, in fact, when one reads them one frequently gets quite upset, at least I do. I make no claim of objectivity my views about these documents, if that is the right word.

The general issue is that not only is there no opportunity for negotiation, one is in a position where one has a choice between agreeing to this "contract" and being out of contact with the world. That has led to contracts that seem light-years away from even normal standard-form contracts in terms of one-sidedness.

A particular instance (Hampton Inn in Littleton, NH) that I have recently experienced has added further issues that I would like clarified as I'm having trouble believing that these things are valid and want to understand if they are and what form of political action would be necessary to put things back on some reasonable (according to my own definition, to be sure) basis.

I guess it is clear why am not the person to update this page. Not only only don't I understand the law in this area, I am not approaching this primarily with regard to delineating existing law. My concern is making the law a whole bunch nearer what I think it should be, but I think concern does cause me to raise questions that people are going to want answered about existing law.

The specific issues that were raised by this experience:
 * The document specified that it was "a binding legal contract" and I'm wondering if it really is/was.
 * There was a lot of verbiage about digital signatures, but none of it seemed to address the fundamental issue why we have signatures, to verify that the person signing is known (and known to be of age, etc.). In particular, twelve-year-old's excited to get facebook would almost certainly hit "accept" without thought, to be in contact with their friends.  There was this stuff where the signer asserts that they have the right to sign (on behalf of everybody using the connection I believe) but if they don't have the authority to begin with, how can this assertion bootstrap us up to a signature.  Somebody accepted it.  Big deal.
 * The document was enormous. I'm guessing eight pages printed.  The preface said I shouldn't agree unless I read and understood all of the provisions (was it each and every provision?).  Since it is clear that 99.99% at least of the people agreeing could not meet that standard in terms of understanding (and almost all would give up and just accept), and that is obvious to those putting this forth, we have something that is fundamentally dishonest.  Isn't it?
 * The document later says that you should get legal review of such contracts. Unclear how that could happen unless you or your significant other were a lawyer who had no need to sleep.  I can't even imagine the cost of serious legal review of such a document.  Hard to imagine that those writing this don't know that.  Again, we have case of a fundamental dishonesty.
 * There seemed to be efforts made to make it difficult/impossible to get a copy of the proposed terms so that one might study them for next time. In addition, it seemed to me that a claim was being made that the text was copyrighted and that you could not publish it.  Not sure though.
 * I'm no expert but it seemed the document was as one-sided as it could possibly be (one exception, see next section). I would expect that that was part of the goal in drafting it.  All sorts of obligations for you.  I didn't see any for them.  If you did somehow get a court to find some kind of obligation which they violated, you agreed that a cup of coffee (or something trivial) would cover it.
 * I may have let it slipped by in this case but in the past, I have actually seen statements that assert their right to modify the terms (I presume in the case where they found some way to make the terms even more one-sided) without notice. You are supposed to check periodically to find out what your new obligations.  (It really is hard to believe that they will add obligations of theirs).  There are no tools to diff these things mentioned, so I would imagine that you have to rescan the whole nightmare to find out whether you can still live in your house or can say anything negative about the hotel.  My lack of objectivity is showing but I'm just wondering how anybody gets the chutzpah to write this kind of stuff.  I don't expect the wikipedia page to answer that question.  I guess my lack of "objectivity" is showing.

I didn't hit accept. When I checked out of the hotel I briefly told the manager why I was unable to use the "complimentary Internet Access". She told me, almost certainly honestly, that nobody had ever complained. I felt really good that I was able to get through the process and not scream at anybody. It wasn't her fault.

Again, solely to give you background, on why I want to understand existing law, I'm as much troubled by the fact that human beings can write this kind of stuff and present it to other humans beings to sign, as I am by the content itself. Does existing law encourage those writing such things to believe they can treat their fellow-citizens in this way? Have natural persons become the new harijans (sp?) afraid to let our shadow cross the august corporate persons. If you are thinking "left-wing idiot", the "idiot" part is clearly a matter of judgment about which we can differ, but you should know that I'm the kind of Democrat who believes that the minority opinion in Ricci v. de Stefano is atrocious and incoherent. It is not only the tea-partiers and "progressives" who believe that we have to take our country back.

Thanks for listening, everybody. DaveNoveck (talk) 05:29, 3 October 2010 (UTC)DaveNoveck

Doesn't sound objective
I dislike these sneaky contracts as much as anyone and am glad when they take a fall, but the article reads more like a polemic on what's wrong with these contracts than an article on legal doctrine. It should take a cooler tone.

For example:

There is much debate on a theoretical level whether, and to what extent, courts should enforce standard form contracts.

How could there be any doubt on "whether"? Any time you take a ticket in a parking lot, you have a contract, and it's enforceable. Most of the time, most of the standard language conforms to common practice and to the expectations of both parties. And most of the time, courts will enforce them routinely, and be right. Are they just enforcing simple common-sense fairness each time, ignoring the language on the back of the ticket?

The debate concerns to what extent, and in some cases, whether.

The author of the article seems to be using "standard form contract" as a synonym for "abusive aspect of standard form contract".

Like I said, I hate these contracts too, but I want to read an article on contracts. I can do my own advocacy.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.217.28.156 (talk) 00:48, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:Standard form contract


text:
Category:Waterfalls of the United States

This category is for waterfalls of the United States.


text:
Ambalika

Ambalika (अम्बालिका) is the queen of Kuru Kingdom in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. The youngest daughter of Kashya, the King of Kashi and Kausalya, Ambalika is abducted by Bhishma during her svayamvara ceremony, and becomes the wife of Vichitravirya, the King of Hastinapura. She is the mother of Pandu and the grandmother of Pandavas.

Legend
Along with her sisters, Amba and Ambika, Ambalika was taken by force by Bhishma during their svayamvara, the latter having challenged and defeated the assembled royalty. He presented them to Satyavati for marriage to Vichitravirya. Ambalika and her sister spent seven years in their husband's company. Vichitravirya was afflicted with tuberculosis, and died from the disease.

After Vichitravirya's death, since he left no heirs, his mother Satyavati sent for her first born, the sage Vyasa. She asked him to father children with the widowed queens of Vichitravirya, according to the prevalent custom of niyoga. Vyasa had come from years of intense meditation and as a result, he looked tremendously unkempt. When he approached Ambika, she closed her eyes in fear. As a result, the blind Dhritrashtra was born. When he approached Ambalika, she turned pale in fear. Her son Pandu, as the result of the niyoga, was born with a pale appearance.

Her son Pandu was married to Kunti and Madri. She is the grandmother of Pandavas – Yudhishtira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva, who were the central characters of the epic.

After the death of Pandu, Ambalika accompanied her mother-in-law Satyavati, and sister Ambika, to the forest, and spent the rest of her days in spiritual retreat.

In popular culture

 * In B. R. Chopra's 1988 series Mahabharat, Ambalika was portrayed by Menaka Babbar.
 * In the 2013 Star Plus's series Mahabharat (2013), Ambalika was portrayed by Mansi Sharma.

title: Ambalika


text:
Waddington, Lincolnshire

Waddington is a village and civil parish in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England, situated approximately 4 mi south of Lincoln on the A607 Grantham Road. The village is known for its association with RAF Waddington. At the 2001 Census Waddington had a population of 6,086, increasing to 6,122 at the 2011 census.

History
The name 'Waddington' means 'farm/settlement of the people of Wada'.

The village is a documented settlement in the Domesday Book of 1086 and was mainly an agricultural community until the late 19th century. Horseracing also took place on the heathland areas, which are now part of the RAF station. At various times other activities including malting, brick-making and stone-quarrying have taken place in the village.

Richard de Soham, a senior judge and Crown official in Ireland, was appointed parish priest of Waddington in 1303, and apparently retired there in 1305.

In 1790 Mary Farmery and Susanna Locker both laid claim to the affections of a young man; this produced a challenge from the former to fight for the prize, which was accepted by the latter. Proper sidesmen were chosen, and every matter conducted in form. After several knock-down blows on both sides, the boxing battle ended in favour of Mary Farmery.

Around 1830, George Boole, the mathematician, taught at Waddington Academy Boarding School in the village, run by Robert Hall. From 1838 to 1840, Boole lived in the village and became headmaster of the academy.

Enemy action during 1941 severely damaged 71 houses in the village, as well as the Horse & Jockey pub and the NAAFI building on the RAF station. The damage was mainly caused by two aerial mines; large bombs dropped by parachute and fused to explode before hitting the ground. Eleven people were killed, among them the NAAFI manager, Mrs Constance Raven, after whom the All-Ranks Club on the RAF station is still named.

The village 12th-century St Michael and All Angels church was rebuilt in 1721 and destroyed in a Second World War air raid on the night of 8 May 1941. It was replaced by the present-day Anglican parish church of St Michael on High Street, a modern stone building consecrated in 1954. The original Great War memorial was also destroyed and replaced by the current memorial.

Geography
High Dyke, the road that runs between the main RAF station and the service married quarters, lies on the line of the Roman road Ermine Street. There is only minor evidence that High Dyke is Ermine Street, but the alignment is so exact that it is unlikely to be a coincidence. Ermine Street, as it passes Byards Leap 20 mi to the south, is also called High Dyke. The traceable line of Ermine Street peters out in the adjacent village of Harmston and does not reappear until the other side of Lincoln.

Topography
Waddington is known as a Lincolnshire Cliff Village, as it is situated on a ridge of Jurassic limestone called the Lincoln Edge or Lincoln Cliff Waddington lies 3 mi south of Lincoln and 13 mi north-northwest of Sleaford.

During the Ice Age, most of the region surrounding Waddington was covered by ice sheets and this has influenced the topography and nature of the soils. Waddington's cliff-top position means it is 226 ft above sea level, giving it commanding views over the River Witham valley.

The Viking Way enters the village from the north on Far Lane and passes south along High Street then briefly along Millers Road.

Community facilities
The parish council office is located on High Street. There is a medical practice on Grantham Road, and a chiropody practice on Bar Lane. The Lincolnshire Fire Brigade premises are situated on Mere Road.

The village shops are mainly located in the Bar Lane area of the upper part of the village and the Redwood Drive Shopping Centre in the lower part of the village. There is an Indian takeaway outlet and a fish and chip shop. A post office and library are incorporated within the Co-operative Pharmacy premises on Bar Lane. Zoo Ceramics pottery workshop and gallery are situated next to the post office.

There are three village public houses: the Horse and Jockey (now closed) which faces onto the old village square at the centre of the village, the Three Horse Shoes, adjacent to St Michael's Church on High Street, and the Wheatsheaf, at the crossroads of the Lincoln to Grantham road (A607) and Mere Road, the main access road to RAF Waddington. There is also a pub restaurant, the Crow's Nest.

The village is also home to Foss Dyke Band who became one of the few brass bands in the UK to gain promotion from fourth section to championship section over a period of seven years and in 2013 established a new brass band in the village, Witham Brass.

The village is served by bus links to Lincoln and Grantham, operated by the Stagecoach Group.

Buildings
The older part of the village primarily consists of buildings built of the local limestone along with some brick-built houses built after brick-making began to take place on the lower slopes of the village. Newer residential areas are located in the Brant Road part of the village (which is at the bottom of the Lincoln Edge and has merged with the Lincoln suburb of Bracebridge), and are of modern brick and tile construction. The more modern areas of the village have developed down the steep hill towards Lincoln.

Education
There are two primary schools within the parish of Waddington. All Saints' Primary School is in the upper part of the village on Mere Road, and Waddington Redwood Academy is in the lower part of the village off Brant Road.

RAF Waddington
RAF Waddington is a British airfield east of the village's centre. It is one of the oldest airfields in the UK, founded in November 1916 for the Royal Flying Corps. RAF Waddington is the RAF's main ISTAR airfield, operating amongst others the E-3D Sentry (a.k.a. AWACS) reconnaissance aircraft. Previous to this, the station had been home to part of the Avro Vulcan nuclear bomber force.

RAF Waddington is now home to 13 Sqn who operate the MQ-9 Reaper Remotely Piloted Air Vehicles (RPAS), although the aircraft are not physically based there.

Two Commonwealth air force personnel of the First World War and 33 of the Second World War buried from this airfield have war graves in a plot St Michael's Churchyard.

Climate
According to the Köppen classification, the British Isles experience a maritime climate characterised by relatively cool summers and mild winters. Compared with other parts of the country, Lincolnshire – and Waddington – are slightly warmer and sunnier in the summer and colder and frostier in the winter. Owing to Waddington's inland position, far from the landfall of most Atlantic depressions, it is one of the driest places to live in the UK, receiving, on average, less than 3 ft of rain per year. The mean annual daily duration of bright sunshine is four hours and 12 minutes.

In the July 2022 heatwave, Waddington jointly recorded the new record high with nearby Coningsby at 40.3 C on the 19th. However, the Met Office does not officially recognise the joint record due to unstated "non-standard practices", and Coningsby is solely credited with the July 2022 all-time record. Waddington's records are in line with other stations and there is no known reason for why the record could be anomalous.

title: Waddington, Lincolnshire


text:
Sinclair Wetlands

The Sinclair Wetlands (Te Nohoaka o Tukiauau) are an internationally renowned wetlands located to the south west of Dunedin, New Zealand, at the southern edge of the Taieri Plains. They are on the western side of Lake Waipori and approximately equidistant between Mosgiel and Milton. The protected area covers a little over 315 Ha 3 km2.

The wetlands are home to many species of birds including scaup, swans and many more wetland waterfowl including the fernbird and rare bittern. A number of birds such as white herons and spoonbills occasionally frequent the area also.

The wetlands are named for Horace "Horrie" Sinclair, a local farmer who donated land to the wetlands scheme in 1984. An education centre opened in the late 1980s is located at the wetlands. The wetlands contain a small island (Whakaraupuka / Ram Island), which was in ancient times the location of a Māori settlement, Tukiauau Pā.

In the 1986 New Year Honours, Horace Sinclair was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to conservation.

title: Sinclair Wetlands


text: User talk:38.118.12.78

title: User talk:38.118.12.78


text:
Albert Town, New Zealand

Albert Town is located to the east of Wānaka in Otago, New Zealand. Until recently only a farming settlement, the population boom in this area has led to much new development. The confluence of the Clutha and Hāwea Rivers is located here. The town was named after Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Albert Town was formerly called Newcastle.

Demographics
Albert Town covers 3.89 km2 and had an estimated population of as of  with a population density of  people per km2.

Before the 2023 census, Albert Town had a larger boundary, covering 4.96 km2. Using that boundary, Albert Town had a population of 2,031 at the 2018 New Zealand census, an increase of 744 people (57.8%) since the 2013 census, and an increase of 1,326 people (188.1%) since the 2006 census. There were 687 households. There were 1,020 males and 1,014 females, giving a sex ratio of 1.01 males per female. The median age was 37.3 years (compared with 37.4 years nationally), with 468 people (23.0%) aged under 15 years, 282 (13.9%) aged 15 to 29, 1,080 (53.2%) aged 30 to 64, and 204 (10.0%) aged 65 or older.

Ethnicities were 95.4% European/Pākehā, 6.8% Māori, 0.7% Pacific peoples, 1.9% Asian, and 2.2% other ethnicities (totals add to more than 100% since people could identify with multiple ethnicities).

The proportion of people born overseas was 24.5%, compared with 27.1% nationally.

Although some people objected to giving their religion, 67.8% had no religion, 24.4% were Christian, 0.1% were Hindu, 0.1% were Muslim, 0.3% were Buddhist and 1.9% had other religions.

Of those at least 15 years old, 459 (29.4%) people had a bachelor or higher degree, and 126 (8.1%) people had no formal qualifications. The median income was $41,700, compared with $31,800 nationally. 354 people (22.6%) earned over $70,000 compared to 17.2% nationally. The employment status of those at least 15 was that 945 (60.5%) people were employed full-time, 303 (19.4%) were part-time, and 15 (1.0%) were unemployed.

Education
Te Kura O Take Kārara is a primary school which opened in Albert Town in 2020.

title: Albert Town, New Zealand


text:
USS Lapon (SS-260)

USS Lapon (SS-260), a Gato-class submarine, was the first ship of the United States Navy to be named after the lapon, a scorpionfish of the Pacific coast of the United States.

Construction and career
Her keel was laid down by the Electric Boat Company, Groton, Connecticut 21 February 1942. She was launched on 27 October 1942, sponsored by Mrs. J. B. Oldendorf, wife of Rear Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorf. Lapon was commissioned on 23 January 1943.

First and second war patrols, June – November 1943
Completing trials and training in Long Island Sound, Lapon departed New London for the Pacific 4 May 1943. She reportedly was mistakenly machine-gunned by friendly forces at New London Sanctuary on 5 June, but continued her voyage and arrived at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 1 June 1943. She departed 24 June for her first war patrol which was spent in the Sea of Okhotsk and Sea of Japan. On 3 July, Lapon, along with USS Permit (SS-178) and USS Plunger (SS-179) became the first U.S. submarines to slip through a mined strait into the Sea of Japan.

The entire time Lapon operated in the Sea of Japan, she was surrounded by thick fog and had problems with her radar. After she exited the Sea of Japan through La Perouse Strait, she patrolled off the east coast of Hokkaidō and Honshū. There she saw an aircraft carrier and a pair of destroyers. The escorts kept Lapon pinned down with the assistance of aircraft, and the carrier escaped.

The submarine departed 26 September for a close inshore patrol off the south coast of Honshū. After sinking cargo ship Taichu Maru 18 October, Lapon returned to Pearl Harbor 4 November 1943 and departed for the West Coast 7 November for an overhaul at Mare Island Navy Yard.

Third, fourth, and fifth war patrols, January – August 1944
Refitted with four new engines, the submarine departed for the South China Sea via Pearl Harbor in February 1944. Lapon sought out torpedo targets and inflicted heavy damage on the enemy. She sank the cargo ship Toyokuni Maru on 8 March, Nichirei Maru on 9 March, and Hokuroku Maru (8359 tons ) on 18 March, and inflicted heavy damage to several small craft. Lapon terminated this patrol in Fremantle, Australia, arriving 1 April 1944.

Departing 25 April, Lapon arrived in the South China Sea and on 23 May detected and tracked a convoy. During the early hours of 24 May, the submarine sank the cargo ships Wales Maru and Bizen Maru. Lapon cleared the area at flank speed chased by an escort and returned to Fremantle 6 June for refit.

Underway for the eastern part of the South China Sea 29 June, Lapon spotted a cruiser and destroyer, the latter escaping at high speed. Four days later she sent cargo ship Kyodo Maru No. 36 to the bottom. In the early evening of 31 July 1944, a convoy was sighted in Palawan Passage. Lapon closed in for a night submerged radar attack and sunk the tanker Tinshin Maru and damaged two other vessels. Lapon then headed for Australia and moored at Fremantle 10 August.

Sixth and seventh war patrols, September 1944 – January 1945
Lapon sailed for the South China Sea on 4 September, Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) Donald G. Baer in command. She rendezvoused with submarines USS Flasher (SS-249) and USS Bonefish (SS-223) and became a member of a wolfpack. Early in the morning of 21 September, the submarine contacted an enemy hospital ship and allowed the ship to pass unharmed. That afternoon, while rounding Palauic point, Lapon spotted smoke and commenced closing. As she neared attack position U.S. carrier-based planes attacked the convoy, inflicting heavy damage on the enemy. Lapon attacked remnants of the convoy 22 September and sank the cargo ship Shun Yuan. The next day Flasher and Lapon made a coordinated attack on several ships, Lapon sinking the tanker Hokki Maru. Patrolling off the coast of Luzon 10 October 1944, Lapon intercepted a Manila-bound convoy and sank the cargo ship Ejiri Maru. Assigned to lifeguard duty, the submarine was on station during the air attacks preliminary to the invasion of the Philippines; and 21 October departed for Australia, arriving at Fremantle 31 October.

Lapon left port for her seventh patrol 23 November and took position on a scouting line to prevent enemy reinforcements from reaching Mindoro and Leyte. Aircraft contacts were many and ship contacts few. Lapon was the last submarine to prowl Lingayen Gulf before the invasion of Luzon, and was ordered out of the area at high speed the day of the first landings. She headed for Pearl Harbor, arriving 21 January 1945. Departing for the West Coast 4 days later, she moored at Mare Island Navy Yard 31 January.

Eighth war patrol, April – July 1945
Bound for her last patrol, Lapon arrived at Pearl Harbor 22 April, stayed there for a month, then headed for Guam, arriving 5 June. Next day she sailed on a special mission of lifeguarding for a British carrier strike force and for B-24 and B-29 bombers striking the Japanese homeland. Returning to Guam 20 June, she headed for Saipan 4 days later to join submarines for a picket boat sweep ahead of Admiral Halsey’s forces which were to attack Tokyo area targets. Upon completion of sweeps, Lapon went on lifeguard duty off Tori Shima until 7 July when she steamed for Midway Atoll, briefly stopping at Saipan for temporary repairs, mooring 23 July.

The day she was to sail for another war patrol, hostilities ended. Instead, Lapon departed for the Atlantic coast 26 August and arrived at New Orleans, Louisiana, 20 September 1945. She remained there until she departed 24 October for the Texas coast, arriving Galveston 25 October. Two days later she berthed at Houston. Lapon got underway for Staten Island, New York on 30 October, arriving 4 November. She remained at New York until 8 January 1946, when she sailed for New London, arriving the same day. Lapon was placed out of commission in reserve 25 July 1946.

Greek service

Recommissioned at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, 13 April 1957, Lapon remained in the Portsmouth vicinity until 10 August, when she was decommissioned and struck from the Navy list. On 8 August 1957 she was transferred to Greece by Captain Samuel Francis under the Military Assistance Program and served the Greek Navy as Poseidon (S-78) (originally carrying pennant number Y-16).

Poseidon was purchased outright by Greece in April 1976 and stricken from active duty for use as spare parts for sister ships. SS-260 was stricken from the US Navy Register on 31 December 1975.

Honors and awards

 * U.S. Navy Unit Commendation ribbon.svg Navy Unit Commendation
 * Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with four battle stars for World War II service

Lapon was credited with sinking 53,443 tons of Japanese shipping. She was awarded the Navy Unit Commendation for her brilliantly successful third, fourth, fifth, and sixth patrols.

title: USS Lapon (SS-260)


text:
Magic: The Gathering Online

Magic: The Gathering Online is a video game adaptation of Magic: The Gathering, utilizing the concept of a virtual economy to preserve the collectible aspect of the card game. It is played through an Internet service operated by Wizards of the Coast, which went live on June 24, 2002. The game does not run on mobile (iOS or Android) as Magic: the Gathering Arena does, since it is only available for Microsoft Windows. Users can play the game or trade cards with other users.

As of February 2007, Magic Online has over 300,000 registered accounts; this does not represent the true number of players since people are allowed to register multiple accounts. According to Worth Wollpert in 2007, Magic Online was "somewhere between 30% to 50% of the total Magic business."

Gameplay
Magic Online is played as an electronic analogue to the physical card game. Digital artwork reproduces the look of the paper card game, and users interact with their cards to play with them on a virtual tabletop. Each game is hosted by the Magic Online servers, which apply a rules engine to enforce proper play. The logic for handling card interactions is provided by Perl scripts. Though the rules set as a whole is largely accurate and works well, it occasionally suffers from bugs.

Players can set up or join casual games of their choice for free in several rooms within the Constructed Open Play area. Currently, the casual game rooms are as follows: Just Starting Out, a room for players who are new to the game and are not looking for a tough duel. Games in this room are limited to the Standard format to restrict the power of the cards being used. Just For Fun, a room designed for players to play fun, casual decks against one another. This is the most populated room and has no restrictions on what format a player can host a game in. Getting Serious, this room is provided as a step up from the Just For Fun room, but it is usually unoccupied. Tournament Practice is the most competitive room in the Constructed Open Play area, it is where the most serious players go to test their best decks before entering them into a Constructed event.

In addition to free casual play, official competitive tournaments take place around the clock. Tournament play includes 8-person constructed events (in a variety of formats), limited sealed deck and drafts (generally using the most recently released expansions), as well as larger tournaments that take place according to a regular schedule. Entering events requires an investment of sealed packs and/or event tickets, with winners being rewarded with additional product.

Up until Version 3, League play was another method of competitive play. These month-long events were sealed deck tournaments of 256 players that allowed for intermittent play over a period of 4 weeks at the pace the player desired. After 6 years, leagues returned in February 2016. Initially they were only available for the sealed limited format. Leagues last two months, and in that time window a player can usually play between 5 and 9 matches. Once a player finishes playing their league matches, prizes are awarded and they can rejoin the league if they want. Currently, leagues are available in a variety of formats, including Standard, Modern, Legacy and Limited Sealed. Sealed leagues also offer "Friendly" and "Competitive" alternatives with different prize structures. The Competitive Sealed League lasts for 5 matches and typically features higher skilled players due to the top-heavy prize structure - winning all or most of your rounds provides a lucrative prize, with the downside of no prizes being offered to those who win less than 60% of their matches. The Friendly Sealed League lasts for a total of 9 matches and caters to a larger portion of the player base and offers prizes regardless of number of matches won. In addition, after each "stage" of 3 matches, the player has the option to add a booster pack to their deck to make it stronger for the next stage (either by using one from their inventory or purchasing one within the sealed tournament window).

Development
Leaping Lizard Software (LLS) had just completed a software product Magic Interactive Encyclopedia designed to allow Magic players to track which cards they owned and other cards that had been printed to help with online play. LLS initially approached Wizards of the Coast with an offer to create an online version of Magic: The Gathering. WotC was skeptical about whether such a system could be implemented. LLS then created a tech demo to prove to WotC that an online collectible card game could work. WotC was sufficiently convinced and contracted LLS to develop the service, which was then known as Magic Online with Digital Objects (MODO). Initially, the idea of charging for virtual goods, as opposed to a subscription model with unlimited access, was greeted with skepticism. Additionally, concerns were floated over how solid the server and trading code would be. After a period of beta-testing, the game became available to the general public on June 24, 2002. The name was changed from MODO to its final commercial title: Magic: The Gathering Online. At the time of launch, Magic Online supported Magic cards from the 7th Edition onwards.

In 2003, the Magic: The Gathering Invitational was held online for the first time. It was played on Magic Online each year from then on until 2007 when the Invitational was moved back offline.

Version 2.0
Knowing that it was possible to translate Magic gameplay online through the work LLS had done, WotC started to work at redesigning the Magic Online client in 2003. Though they praised the "groundbreaking" work LLS had done, they opted to terminate their contract with them and bring the development in-house to be able to focus on the direction needed to improve the client for a global audience.

The first showing of the new team was to be the online release of 8th Edition in July 2003, which was ambitiously scheduled to coincide with the paper release. The goal was to release Version 2 of the software with new functionality and implement the changes in rules that the 8th Edition had brought. However, with the change from LLS to the internal developers along with the fixed deadline, a number of development issues arose that were not resolved by launch. Version 2 was released on schedule, but the servers constantly crashed, and rules mistakes and other bugs were numerous. The game went into no-pay mode while temporary beta servers were opened to allow players to practice playing in for-pay formats.

As a concession for these issues, Wizards planned to throw "Chuck's Virtual Party," a weekend of free tournaments after the problems settled down. Unfortunately, it turned out that each user took up more memory in version 2 than the lightweight design of version 1. The result was that the servers crashed again under the strain.

In retrospect, some have merely chalked the decision to remove Leaping Lizard up to hubris. Others, however, point to certain intractabilities in later maintenance that suggest that Leaping Lizard had not delivered a very extensible program that, by nature, was too monolithic and hard to improve. Wizards of the Coast has said that "Leaping Lizard's 2.5 interface and backend are not scalable like we need it to be. It wasn't written with the goal of ten thousand users in mind, it was written thinking a couple thousand." According to the developers, there was a hard limit of 4,400 players in version 2.5. Regardless, Wizards decided that version 2.0 was not worth supporting indefinitely. They decided to maintain version 2.0 in the background but to start a new development team to rebuild Magic Online from the ground up. The labors of this new project would be called Magic Online version 3, which was first announced in February 2004.

The version 2 platform was shut down on April 9, 2008, in preparation for the version 3 launch.

Version 3.0
Magic Online version 3, in addition to supporting a much larger player base through multiple servers, was also to feature an updated interface and expanded in-game guidance. The release date, originally planned in late 2006, slipped several times, but eventually passed through beta testing and was released to the public on April 22, 2008. Initial reactions to the Version 3 were critical of the new user interface layout, and players found the server structure was not as stable as expected.

A notable incident called "Kiblergate" took place in 2013 as WotC were preparing Version 4 of the client. As part of a Magic Online Championship Series played via the client, which came with a US$25,000 prize and invitation to the Magic: The Gathering World Championship, Brian Kibler had won enough games to advance into the final rounds of play regardless of whether he won or lost. However, before his last two games, he had lost connection to the Magic Online servers, and could not log back on in time. Because he was not present for these games, he was considered to have forfeit his spot and was disqualified. Kibler took to social media to complain and suggest other players delete Magic Online from their computers, which caused the average cost of Magic Online digital cards to fall 11% in one day and prompted WotC to move quicker with the transition to Version 4.

Version 4.0
Magic Online version 4 opened to the public in wide beta on September 4, 2012. Both version 3 and version 4 ran simultaneously, with players having an option to play on either platform, until June 26, 2014, when Version 3 was shuttered. On July 16, 2014, version 4 became the sole client for Magic: the Gathering Online.

Card sets available
As of March 2014 with the release of Vintage Masters, almost all Cards that are tournament legal for at least one supported format are available. Most of the remaining tournament legal cards that are not printed are basically considered as tournament unworthy (such as cards that only trigger their ability during drafts). The earliest set available upon release was Invasion, which had been released in printed form in October 2000; all sets moving forward were made available online as well, with the exception of some self-parody expansions (Un-sets) and multiplayer sets (like Conspiracy). For the first 10 years of "Magic Online" sets released online three or four weeks after they released in paper in an effort to appease "brick & mortar" retailers. However, a policy of shortening this delay (to about two weeks) was instituted to allow professional players (who often use "Magic Online" for testing) to prepare for Pro Tour events (which usually happen two weeks after the release of a new set) and to "increase cohesion" between paper and online Magic. Wizards of the Coast has since released more pre-Invasion cards online. In autumn of 2005, Mirage was released online, nine years after its 1996 print release. This set was chosen as the earliest set usable on Magic Online because it was the first to be designed with both Limited and Constructed play in mind and the first to be intended as part of a three-set block. Additionally, Wizards unambiguously owns the rights to the artwork in Mirage block, and Mirage block contains no ante cards (unlike Ice Age and Homelands). It has been confirmed that the eventual goal of the developers was to have every expansion set from Mirage onward available online.

For cards released before Mirage, special MTGO-exclusive compilation sets called Masters Editions were created. These sets range in size from 195 to 269 cards. Most of the cards in a given set were previously unavailable on Magic Online. Exceptions are usually made to create enjoyable Masters Edition limited environments or to make specifically illustrated cards available online. The first Masters Edition was released on September 10, 2007, with Masters Edition II following in 2008, Masters Edition III in 2009, and Masters Edition IV in early 2011. As of January 2011, Magic Online was missing about 800 cards from the pre-Mirage and Portal sets. Most of the missing cards do not impact normal gameplay, as many older cards have become outclassed, or functional reprints have been offered. Nearly all other pre-Mirage cards usually considered tournament worthy have been released online. The Power Nine were released in a set called "Vintage Masters", along with tournament-worthy cards featured in Conspiracy, which was available in a limited period in June 2014. The addition of Vintage (which also replaced the alternative "Classic" format), made all sanctioned paper formats also available to be played on "Magic Online." In May 2015, a selected range of cards from Tempest block were re-released in a set called "Tempest Remastered".

The sets from Mirage to Invasion were released every few months from 2006 to 2011. In April 2006, Visions, the second set of the Mirage Block, was released online. The third set, Weatherlight, was released on December 12, 2007. The Tempest block has been released in its entirety. Stronghold went on sale on April 13, 2009, and Exodus was released on December 7, 2009. Of the Urza's block Urza's Saga went on sale on March 29, 2010, Urza's Legacy followed in June, and Urza's Destiny was released on April 13, 2011. The Mercadian Masques block followed in December 2011. The Masques block was released in Booster Packs containing cards from all expansions of the block. After the release of the Mercadian Masques block, all of the cards from Mirage forward are online, with the exception of several cards from the Portal sets.

Since the Amonkhet set in 2017, Online sets release in coherence of the paper counterpart's prerelease event: the Online set is available and can be used in tournaments on the day of paper prerelease event.

Reception
The original Magic Online generally met favorable reviews. GameSpot named it a runner-up for its July 2002 "PC Game of the Month" award. Version 2 of Magic Online was very similar to version 1 regarding the interface and functionality. Thus the problems of stability in the transition phase from version 1 to version 2 stood out in the perception of the public. Version 3, released in April 2008 was seen as a step back graphically to version 2, but by the end of its life it was highly regarded among Magic Online users. Version 4 was initially criticized while in beta, but has shown dramatic improvements from 2013 to 2014.

Reviews

 * Pyramid

Parallels to paper Magic
All cards that enter circulation originate from sealed booster packs or other products available through the Magic Online store; on Magic Online, these packs are represented as digital objects tied to a player's account. Virtual packs are purchased from within the client at MSRP. Once purchased, packs may be opened, traded, or used as entry materials for events.

Foil cards are available online. They are distinguished in their virtual form by a glossier appearance and an intermittent "shiny" animation.

Since 2009, some of the major events in Magic Online winners would be invited to (paper format) Pro Tour events. Between 2012 and 2017, the newly reformed Magic: The Gathering World Championship had a slot exclusively for the winner of the annual championship of Magic Online.

Redemption
Wizards of the Coast allows collectors who have assembled a full set of digital cards from a single expansion to exchange them for a factory set of paper cards for a $25 fee (plus shipping and handling). Regular cards and foil cards must be redeemed separately and cannot be mixed on a single redemption order. Each set is eligible for a period of as much as 4 years after the online release. This program was initially created in order to allay doubt and uncertainty over the investment into virtual cards.

The redemption policy offers a medium of exchange between the digital card market and the physical card market, though this is one-way only as there is no way to convert paper cards to digital cards. However, during Pax Australia in summer 2013 Wizards of the Coast announced that "reverse redemption" (the ability to turn physical, paper cards to the digital cards of "Magic Online") is a potential upcoming improvement to stay ahead of increased competition in the digital card game market.

In-game economy
The client software for Magic Online may be downloaded for free from Wizards of the Coast's website, but to play the game, it is necessary to register an account. Registration costs $9.99 and comes with a new account package. This package has 5 event tickets, 20 new player points (used to enter special, "phantom" events), 5 avatars, and over 650 common and uncommon cards.

Users may trade cards, sealed packs, event tickets, and in-game avatars (which are released for special events as promotions) with other players through the "Classifieds," which acts as a searchable bulletin board on which players post buy requests for certain cards, or notices of cards they own that are available for trade/sale.

In previous versions of Magic Online, other suggested methods of trading existed, but have since been abandoned in favor of the Classifieds, as the other methods were inefficient and prone to spam. A large number of the users posting offers to buy or sell are entrepreneurs with large collections looking to make a profit by selling cards at their own websites in addition to their in-game trades. Technically any transfer of cards in the game is not considered a "sale" because, for legal reasons, the digital objects are not actually owned by the collector, but rather Wizards of the Coast themselves. This enormously simplifies transactions, as issues such as import/export laws, duties, and underage concerns are sidestepped. Wizards has currently shown "benign neglect" of players buying and selling digital objects for (legal) currency on the secondary market. Due to this neglect, however, there can be problems with fraud, including non-delivery of paid-for product and false claims of non-delivery resulting in reversals of PayPal payments.

Economy
Event tickets act as a de facto unit of in-game currency; demand for them is sustained by the tens of thousands of tickets used up every day to pay for tournament entry. Every single ticket in the market was purchased from Wizards of the Coast for US$1, offering a baseline. Since tickets can be traded between players and they have a roughly fixed value in dollars, prices for cards in the trading rooms are usually quoted in tickets. When sold for money on the secondary market, a ticket is usually worth slightly less than US$1. Play Points were introduced to the game in 2015 and are a secondary in-game currency that are not tradable between accounts.

Magic Online allows players to use the same cards in multiple decks. Since the maximum number of copies of a card in a deck is usually 4 (the major exceptions being basic lands), any duplicates of a card beyond the fourth are unnecessary for deck building and can be traded off.

Due to the ease of trading away unwanted or extra cards, transaction costs on Magic Online are very low. While in real-life, the money gained by finding a better price at a different store might not make up for the expense in checking the other store (gas, time, effort, etc.), it's simple and quick to search for other values of a card you'd like to buy or sell online. This ensures competition where all prices move quickly towards the market price.

One inefficiency that the market does have is that since the ticket is the main unit of in-game currency, the bid–ask spread on cards is effectively fixed at one ticket. This makes buying and selling of cards quickly somewhat inefficient; other effects are that cards which cost less than a ticket must be offered in bulk (or else as standard barters). There are at any given time a large number of online 'bots', which are vendors who offer prices for buying and selling digital objects down to the hundredth of a ticket (maintaining a balance on account of fractional tickets for users where needed). Furthermore, in August 2009 the limit of cards allowed per trade was raised from 32 to 75, allowing much more flexibility. This limit was raised further in 2013 to allow for a maximum of 400 cards per trade.

Automated trading
Magic Online has accumulated a secondary market composed of automated traders, which have become the most common way to obtain cards. These traders, known as "bots", are accounts running programs designed to trade cards at variable prices and qualities. A simple bot might be one that will buy any three rares for one ticket, and offer any two rares it has for a ticket. More complicated bots can maintain detailed price lists and notice trends; for example, if many traders are selling one particular card, that is a clue that the bid price is too high, and it should either stop buying that card or automatically lower the price it bids for it. Lastly, some bots are designed to help advertise competing sellers' prices and give users a general sense of the values of cards they have.

Tournament effects on the market
Drafters and their recently acquired cards represent a main source of singles to the market. Winners in any tournament usually get balanced amounts of the packs used to enter; for example, someone who won 3 packs in an Onslaught-Onslaught-Legions draft would receive 2 packs of Onslaught and 1 pack of Legions. Conveniently, this is exactly what would be required to do a similar event again, along with a two ticket entry cost. For those not so lucky, or those needing tickets, they can sell singles from their opened packs to help defray the costs of the next draft.

Some online tournament players fund their continued play by selling the packs they win as prizes and extra cards they open for tickets, which they then use to enter more tournaments. While there may be a very small number of successful players who are able to sustain their tournament play indefinitely this way (termed: "going infinite"), this amount of success is not the norm.

Shortages
When Magic Online launched in the summer of 2002, the current set of the time was late Odyssey block. As a result, the preceding Invasion block was only sold for a very short time on Magic Online. This short supply, combined with rising demand as Magic Online's user base grew and the server became more stable, helped spike some early cards' prices. Chase cards from these early sets demand much higher prices than their paper counterparts; popular rares sell on eBay for 5 to 10 times as much as the physical version, and even commons can command a premium. Odyssey block and 7th Edition also had a shorter than normal "print run", though not as extreme.

To counteract the shortage of Invasion block cards, Wizards began offering Invasion block packs as prizes in special tournaments in lieu of normal prizes.

Magic Online Championship
The Magic Online Championship, formerly known as the Magic Online World Championship, has been held each year. It was originally held in conjunction with the Magic: The Gathering World Championship in 2009, but has been held as an independent event since 2012. The year in the event name (for events since 2012) denotes the year in which players qualified; the event itself takes place the following calendar year.

Eligibility
The 2009 tournament contained only 8 players: the winners of seven end-of-season championships and the Magic Online Player of the Year. In 2010, the tournament was expanded to include 12 players: the winners of ten end-of-season championships, the Magic Online Player of the Year and the winner of a last chance qualifier. The 2017 Magic Online Championship featured the previous Magic Online Championship winner, the finalists of four end-of-season playoffs, the winner of eight opens, and the rest were filled by at-large slots until the event had 24 players.

Tournament Structure
The structure of the tournament has been altered over the years. It usually consists of three to four different formats (which including at least one constructed format and one limited format) utilizing the Swiss with a playoff following a cut to the top 2 or top 4 players.

Prizes
The qualified players of each of the four seasons (finalists of each season's playoffs and winners of two opens), along with being awarded an invitation to the annual Magic Online Championship, win a variety of other prizes, including a premium foil set of every card on Magic Online, booster parks and gardens and a half years ago when you have to go home for sale, and an invitation to the next Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour.

The annual championship event, as of 2017, has a prize pool of $200,000. The winner of the event takes home as much as $40,000, and each of the 24 participants is guaranteed a portion of the prize pool. The winner will additionally receive an invitation to the next Magic Online Championship, as well as Platinum Level in the Pro Players Club for a specific period (roughly a year).

title: Magic: The Gathering Online


text:
New Brunswick Equal Opportunity program

The New Brunswick Equal Opportunity Program was a government program that transformed social services in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. It was begun in 1967 under the leadership of premier Louis Robichaud.

The program was one of a series of progressive reforms brought by Robichaud's Liberal Party government.

By the early 1960s New Brunswick had become a province with deep regional inequalities. The cause of this was that municipalities and counties were responsible for providing a wide range of services to their populations, but did not have an adequate tax base to pay for them. These services included health, welfare, education, and justice. In 1962 the Royal Commission on Finance and Municipal Taxation was formed. It proposed major services be operated by the province, funded by a market value assessment of property tax.

Parts of the report were implemented as the Equal Opportunity Program on 1 January 1967. The province took responsibility for health, welfare, education, and justice. The poll tax was abolished, the number of school districts was reduced to 34 from over 400, and property tax was imposed.

Municipalities remained geographically unchanged, although they no longer provided social services. Local government in New Brunswick's extensive rural areas, outside of municipalities, had been provided by county councils. These were abolished, leaving the county with no political role, although the old county and parish borders are still used to define the local service districts that replaced county councils, and for the census subdivisions of Census Canada.

title: New Brunswick Equal Opportunity program


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jon armstrong

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Article was deleted before the discussion began. Formatting accordingly several months later. Hedley 00:21, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

This page should be deleted. It has no content and cannot become encyclopaedic unless the guy continues to write his life history. It is not factual either.

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.


text:
Mount Mirador

Mount Mirador is a mountain situated in the city of Baguio in the Cordillera Central mountain range, Luzon Island in the Philippines. A meteorological station was established on September 1909 and was the second highest station during that time with the first being the meteorological station in Mount Fuji. Said station was also equipped with a time ball and a typhoon signal for the benefit of Baguio city.

The mountain provided pockets of Japanese resistance against the USAFIP-NL military and guerrilla regiment during the liberation of Baguio city.

title: Mount Mirador


text:
Division of Stirling

The Division of Stirling was an Australian electoral division in the inner northern and beachside suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, which included a large portion of the local government area of the City of Stirling.

History
The electorate was created in the Western Australia redistribution of 10 August 1955, and was named after Sir James Stirling, the 19th-century founding lieutenant governor and governor of Western Australia. Stirling covered a demographically diverse area, including several affluent beachside suburbs, as well as working class areas further inland. As a result, Stirling was often a marginal seat, alternating between the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party of Australia.

Unlike some marginal seats on the east coast, such as Eden-Monaro, Stirling was not often seen as a reliable barometer for winning government. For example, longtime Labor member Harry Webb survived the massive Coalition landslide of 1966, only to become one of two Labor MPs from the state to be defeated in 1972 even as Labor ended 23 years of Coalition rule. While it elected five government MPs, all but three of its members have spent at least one term in opposition.

Besides Webb, who held the seat for all but one term from its creation in 1955 until his defeat in 1972, the seat's most prominent member was Labor's Ron Edwards, who was Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives from 29 August 1989 to 8 February 1993. It had been expected that if the 1993 election had not been called so soon after Leo McLeay's resignation as Speaker or if Edwards had held his seat in the election upon the re-election of the Keating government, Edwards would have been elected Speaker.

Opinion polls in the leadup to the 2004 election had suggested a close result in Stirling, leaning towards the possibility of sitting Labor member Jann McFarlane retaining her seat. This was thought to have been more likely after Paul Afkos, the original Liberal candidate, was forced to resign after he was revealed to have borrowed money from a convicted drug dealer. A local businessman, Michael Keenan, was brought in as his replacement, and maintained the close difference in polling. However, on election day, the swing to the Liberal Party both statewide and nationwide was stronger than expected, and Keenan was ultimately successful in unseating McFarlane. The Stirling Times, a local newspaper, speculated in October 2006 that McFarlane, at that time a Stirling councillor, might contest the seat again in 2007. On 28 November 2006, former SAS officer and outspoken opponent of the Iraq War Peter Tinley accepted an offer from Kim Beazley to run as the ALP candidate in the 2007 election. Ahead of the 2010 election, Labor preselected Louise Durack, a social worker and executive director of People With Disabilities (WA) and past candidate for the state seat of Ocean Reef, to run for the seat. Keenan was re-elected at the 2010 federal election.

It was confirmed in June 2021 that this division would be abolished at the 2022 federal election, with its area redistributed to the neighbouring divisions of Cowan, Curtin, Moore and Perth.

Geography
Since 1984, federal electoral division boundaries in Australia have been determined at redistributions by a redistribution committee appointed by the Australian Electoral Commission. Redistributions occur for the boundaries of divisions in a particular state, and they occur every seven years, or sooner if a state's representation entitlement changes or when divisions of a state are malapportioned.

The division included the northern majority of the City of Stirling and a small portion of the City of Bayswater. Suburbs included

 * Balcatta
 * Balga
 * Carine
 * Dianella (part)
 * Gwelup
 * Hamersley
 * Joondanna
 * Karrinyup (part)
 * Mirrabooka
 * Morley (part)
 * Nollamara
 * North Beach
 * Osborne Park (part)
 * Scarborough (part)
 * Stirling
 * Trigg
 * Tuart Hill
 * Watermans Bay
 * Westminster
 * Yokine

In the redistribution that resulted in Stirling's abolition, the suburbs it contained west of the Mitchell Freeway were divided into two. In the north, the suburbs of Carine and Watermans Bay and the northern areas of Gwelup, Karrinyup and Trigg were allocated to Moore, while in the south, the remaining southern portions of Gwelup, Karrinyup and Trigg, along with Stirling's portion of Scarborough, were allocated to Curtin. East of the Mitchell Freeway, the southern fringe of the electorate, containing the suburbs of Joondanna, Tuart Hill and Yokine, along with the southern portion of Dianella, the south-east of Osborne Park, and Stirling's section of Morley, were allocated to Perth. The remainder of the electorate, approximately half of its total area, and including the suburbs of Balcatta, Balga, Hamersley, Mirrabooka, Nollamara, Stirling, and Westminster, along with the northern sections of Dianella and Morley and the north-east of Osborne Park, were allocated to Cowan.

title: Division of Stirling


text: User talk:129.128.229.59

title: User talk:129.128.229.59


text:
User talk:Everkat

Your image
Not funny. Don't do it again. --Slowking Man 06:38, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

This user has been permanently blocked for uploading pornographic, vandalistic images, and for masquerading as another user. RickK 06:41, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:Everkat