Recag/C4_52 · Datasets at Hugging Face

text stringlengths 10 62.4k
When it comes to print volumes, the Maxify MB2050 and MB2350 are geared towards home office use and can deliver up to 1,200 black and white pages per cartridge. The Maxify MB5050, MB5350 and iB4050 small office printers, meanwhile, are capable of 2,500 black-and-white pages per cartridge.
The ink inside the cartridges has been specifically developed for businesses and is water, friction and marker resistant thus letting small businesses produce high-quality documents that last.
Various options can be set up that allow printing costs to be monitored and controlled through password protection of colour printing as well as a record of total volumes printed, scanned or faxed.
The range will be out in October 2014 with the prices starting at £159 and topping out at £319.99.
Twenty-six of the 51 members of the Council charged in the letter that the world’s biggest retailer’s support of local causes is a cynical ploy to enter the market here.
“We know how desperate you are to find a foothold in New York City to buy influence and support here,” says the letter, obtained by The Post and addressed to Walmart and the Walton Family Foundation.
Last week, Walmart announced that it distributed $3 million last year to charities here, including $1 million to the New York Women’s Foundation, which offers job training, and $30,000 to Bailey House, which distributes groceries to low-income residents.
CAVUTO: If you are a New York City resident and you’re paying through the nose for everything from milk and coffee to bread to drugs, what’s wrong with a big-box retailer like Walmart coming in and offering you $4 prescription drugs, offering consumers in this city who could surely use a break, a break?
BRAMER: I don’t think you have to choose between having a retailer that offers competitive prices for its good and a retailer that treats its workers well. … When Walmart comes into a city, they take more than they give.
CAVUTO: Do you know how many people apply for the roughly 200 positions that the typical Walmart offers? 8,000. 8,000.
BRAMER: It doesn’t mean that those are good jobs.
OK, so… prohibiting whatever your definition of “bad jobs” happens to be (and those 8,000 average applicants apparently disagree), is better than not offering those jobs at all? Not to mention offering gobs of savings in consumer goods to low-income city residents? And who cares if Walmart is trying is indeed trying to spread some goodwill with some of the city’s movers and shakers? Let ’em! The unions shutting out the competition of free market for their own entirely selfish ends will keep fighting back just as hard.
IBM has filed a similar protest objecting to the contract's bidding and procurement process.
Any relation to IBM's purchase of RedHat, assuming that goes through?
Why is there a Babylon 5 cast photo leading the article ?
is this "being ironic", or "meta", or ..wrong..
It's the mixed up sci-fi troll meme. Star Wars acronym, Babylon 5 pic, Star Trek caption. Too bad they couldn't get some Dr Who in there. Craig Charles was my favorite Doctor.
Craig Charles was my favorite Doctor.
Not really pertinent, just thought I'd try to inflict it on someone else.
Well let me just say, "Ha! Ha!"
40 years of demanding companies only lock into Oracle tech and now you're whining like a bunch of toddelrs because it might mean you won't get a look in now you're bidding for deals? Excuse me while I adopt a Nelson Munz pose and say "Ha! Ha!".
I've suffered at the hands of Oracle's nasty severe audits where they literally checked every executing process from their software to see what charges could be added to the bill, I hope they award the whole damn contract to Bezos and Co, stuff it right up Larry and his dying-on-its-arse company.
More probably: "We don't know and we don't care"
It means "Oracle claimed something about conflict of interest. Even if what they claimed was true, it wouldn't let Oracle get what they want. So it's a waste of the court's time to even look into it, because it's not going to change the result. Oracle please go away."
I'm going to sit back and drink my "noxious infusion of oriental leaves" (tom baker) and watch the IBM effort.
What I find most amusing is that Oracle are complaining about their own usual behaviours.
Sorry - Fifth Doctor, not Fourth.
TURLOUGH: Good. I quite miss that brown liquid they drink here.
DOCTOR: Oh, a noxious infusion of oriental leaves containing a high percentage of toxic acid.
CHANDLER: Sounds an evil brew, don't it.
DOCTOR: True. Personally, I rather like it.
Your geek credentials have been revoked.
So now we have "legacy" cloud.
"We are convinced that if given the opportunity to compete, DoD would choose Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for a very substantial portion of its workloads because OCI delivers the best, most performant and most secure product available at the best price."
So... dear Oracle, you may be deludedly convinced. But no-one else is. You barely have the in house skills to manage, train and consult on your own products - so only Herodotus knows why anyone would trust you with a contract of this size. Which BTW includes a load of non-cloud related stuff that you simply don't have a track record in doing.
IBM will get it. That's my $0.10 worth. HP at a distant second. None of the others will be trusted by Donald Gump and his cronies as they are foreign owned, and therefore very scary.
...because it [JEDI] will never work properly, at least not within the ten years allocated to the contract, and probably never.
Given past history of government contracts, vender performance, and gold plating by those government managers involved, it most likely won't ever work even with massive cost overruns.
There's probably going to be massive off-shoring and sub-contracting to help the winners bottom line.
"... because the agency reasonably determined that a single-award approach is in the government’s best interests for various reasons ..."
"... we are not a financially corrupt institution and we live in the land of the free, like what His Excellency our Glorious Leader the Hair Monster says, so actually it's all ok because 'reasons'. Please move along and continue to enjoy freedom somewhere else before I set security on you."
I hope what is most occurring is that they want "one throat to choke." Years of finger pointing, lack of cooperation between contractors, and lack interoperability between said partner have sunk too many projects. Something this large really should be done by one company, even if they sub-contract it out to Tartarus and back.
Oracle only wants the contact so they can audit every 30 days and charge for things they know are not being used the way they claim. The stories I have heard from DBAs make me believe the Mafia moved into technology.
I would have thought that the House of the Rat, would have filed some paperwork reguarding the misuse of their new-ish property. That I'm sure a lot of People have just about lost all intest in.
Chiefly, Oracle – let's make that clear, Oracle – thinks locking an agency into a single legacy vendor is a bad idea in terms of innovation and security.
Personally I think they're right, even if they do have ulterior motives for that point of view. On the other hand, having hundreds of small vendors is even worse in terms of security, so I suppose I can at least see where GAO is coming from.
On the one hand, it is funny watching the DoD become as clueless as our own beloved MoD on the subject of large IT projects.
On the other hand, I don't think I want to live in a world where the only competently run military machines are the ones in Russia and China.
Oracle, you should be happy.
Now perhaps, you'll have extra time to look into plugging up all the friggen holes in your databases and other products.
Thankfully, more and more companies have stopped purchasing Oracle products.
Less cooks in the kitchen working on the same pudding. Especially in the upper management tiers.
It is only unsound, if there happens to be a catastrophic vulnerability which cannot be monitored for and cannot be mitigated, which is very rare these days.
Not to mention, it's a lot easier to monitor one set of products, instead of many; where, when there is a problem--everyone points blame on everyone else. In the case of one vendor, the buck/responsibility is easily attributed to... and quickly rectified.
The DoD has been the InfoSec model for the USGov't. InfoSec w/n the DoD began to lock down things in 2007 (DIACAP) with increased responsibility laid on IASE/DISA and then more in 2014. After the 2016 elections, the rest of the Gov't was made to come on board with the additions to the CSA.
While most of the US Govt has been a laughing stock for InfoSec, the DoD--with some exceptions--has been doing it right for a while. Not to mention, the requirements the DoD laid out over the past 15 years when bidding out contracts, has arguably been the biggest drivers to InfoSec infrastructure development covering the entire stack. Especially in high speed, low frequency wireless security.
Oracle, careful what you ask for. Ask Cisco what happened when they began to demand and attempt to pin the DoD into a corner. Suddenly, they were losing contracts (and good engineers) they sat on for years to minority, female veteran owned companies.
Don't ever think you're the only game in town, especially with DoD contracts. The blue collar personnel working on them, just move to the company who wins the contract, and business goes on as normal...well, except for your stock holders.
The defendant admitted fraud by false representation.
A police officer who arrested a convicted thief and con-woman said he had always found her to be very honest, a court heard.
Burnley magistrates were told how the officer said he knew Stephanie Russell, she always owned up to any offence she had committed, and the latest occasion was no different.
Russell (41) had managed to get a refund for stolen underwear at Sainsbury's and had tried to use a gift card she had been given. The defendant had claimed to be hungry and said she had wanted to steal food, but did not and had pinched some knickers instead.
The defendant, of Norway House in Colne, admitted fraud by false representation at Colne on July 18th. Russell is in breach of a suspended sentence imposed at the crown court in May, as well as a conditional discharge and was committed on bail to Burnley Crown Court to be sentenced on October 30th.
Mr Mark Williams, defending, said Russell was making quite good progress on the suspended order. He added the conditional discharge still had a month to run.
Howard County police charged a Columbia man yesterday with making a false bomb threat last week that targeted the George Howard Building in Ellicott City.
Police said a man called them at 9: 45 a.m. Feb. 1, saying there were "several bombs" under the county government building. Officials traced the call to a home on Jason Lane in Wilde Lake. When police arrived, a man there said he had more bombs, prompting a three-hour blockade, police said.
The man eventually surrendered peacefully, and he was taken to a mental health facility.
Edward Brown Jr., 57, was charged with five counts, including two of arson threat and giving a false statement about a destructive device. His bond was being set last night.
Plans for a new congestion-cutting bypass between Sheffield and Manchester have sparked a mixed reaction - with motorists torn over whether it is 'long overdue' or a 'waste of money'.
Highways England last week announced its preferred route for the A57 Mottram bypass, which will include a link from the M67 terminal roundabout to a new junction at A57(T) Mottram Moor and a link from there to a new junction on the A57 at Brookfield.
It is part of £242 million worth of improvements to help people travelling along the vital Manchester to Sheffield Trans-Pennine route and transport bosses claim it will "cut congestion and improve safety."
Some motorists agreed while others believe it will only serve to move the congestion onto other roads.
Sheffield resident Jim Graham said: "About time - and about 40 years too late."
Mike Halliwell added: "The residents on Hyde Road have been campaigning for this for decades - bring it on."
Mark Power is "cautiously optimistic" over the plans, while Stuart Burton said it is "definitely needed."
But one motorist, who did not want to be named, believes "all it is going to do though is shift congestion further back into Glossop."
Simon Geller said: "It wasn't approved previously because studies showed that it would just move the jam over to the eastern side of the Pennines. That evidence is being ignored.
"The freight needs to be moved to rail - a lot of it is going from Ireland to Europe via Liverpool and Immingham docks."
Sheila Moor added: "Will not make a scrap of difference, A57 still a bad road and Woodhead not much better, plus it will take years to do and cause major disruption whilst being built, then of course it will have to have ongoing repairs for another 10 plus years after that."
Carl Sellars believes it is just "another half-hearted attempt at resolving a major issue" and described it as a "complete waste of money."
Highways England said the route was chosen as about half of the 900 people who took part in a public consultation earlier this year were in support of that option.
In addition to the bypass, there will also be improvements to Westwood roundabout at Tankersley in South Yorkshire which links the A61 and A616, and would do further work to refine options for the dualling of the A61 between Westwood roundabout and the M1.
The proposed route will be presented in a statutory consultation next year with a plan to start construction in early 2020.
Plans for climbing lanes on the A628 between Barnsley and Manchester are also being considered further following the public consultation.
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Malaysia has agreed to allow Taiwanese vessels that are on a mission in the South China Sea to locate a missing Malaysian airline to dock at Malaysian ports for supplies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday.
Foreign Minister David Lin said yesterday that the agreement will allow a R.O.C. Navy frigate and two Coast Guard vessels that the nation dispatched Monday to conduct a search and rescue mission in waters where the plane disappeared to refill their supplies and refuel.
Lin made the comments in response to ruling Kuomintang (KMT) lawmaker Lin Yu-fang's question on the issue yesterday at a hearing of the Legislature's Foreign Affairs and National Defence Committee.
The KMT lawmaker said the three Taiwanese vessels only brought with them 14 days of fresh water supplies, but it will take four days for them to arrive at the designated area for the mission and another four days to travel back to Taiwan.
This means the R.O.C. vessels could only engage in the mission for six days if they cannot replenish their supplies, he said.
If Taiwanese military vessels could dock at Malaysian ports, it would mean a major breakthrough for the country diplomatically given the fact that both sides lack official ties, the lawmaker said.
According to Lin, Taiwan is among the 12 countries that have engaged in the mission to locate any sign of missing flight MH370.
The minister added that the search and rescue mission is being coordinated by Malaysia's rescue authorities.
Under the instruction of Malaysian authorities, Taiwan has been assigned to be responsible for waters between Malaysia and Vietnam to help look for the Malaysia Airlines plane.
Taiwan's participation in the mission showcases the nation's determination to take part in international rescue efforts and humanitarian assistance, he said.
Socially, it may be a small world, but it's hard to get from here to there.
In the current issue of the journal Science, researchers at Columbia University report the first large-scale experiment that supports the notion of ''six degrees of separation,'' that a short chain of acquaintances can be found between almost any two people in the world. But the same study finds that trying to contact a distant stranger via acquaintances is likely to fail.
The ''six degrees of separation'' notion came from an experiment in 1967 by Dr. Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist, where a few hundred people tried to forward a letter to a particular person in Boston by sending it through people they knew personally. About a third of the letters reached their destination, after an average of six mailings.
Dr. Milgram's experiment inspired a notion that the billions of people in the world, widely separated by geography and culture, actually form a close-knit network of social acquaintances, that you are a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of anyone anywhere.
Until now, few scientists have tried to confirm Dr. Milgram's findings, which some scientists find unconvincing because of the small number of participants and other shortcomings of the experiment.
The advent of the Internet enabled the researchers to more carefully explore the problem, which is part mathematical -- the structure of the network -- and part psychological -- what motivates people to participate or not, and how do people decide whom to send the message to? The answers are of interest both to computer scientists studying the ebb and flow of information on the Internet and sociologists studying the spread of gossip and cultural trends.

When it comes to print volumes, the Maxify MB2050 and MB2350 are geared towards home office use and can deliver up to 1,200 black and white pages per cartridge. The Maxify MB5050, MB5350 and iB4050 small office printers, meanwhile, are capable of 2,500 black-and-white pages per cartridge.

The ink inside the cartridges has been specifically developed for businesses and is water, friction and marker resistant thus letting small businesses produce high-quality documents that last.

Various options can be set up that allow printing costs to be monitored and controlled through password protection of colour printing as well as a record of total volumes printed, scanned or faxed.

The range will be out in October 2014 with the prices starting at £159 and topping out at £319.99.

Twenty-six of the 51 members of the Council charged in the letter that the world’s biggest retailer’s support of local causes is a cynical ploy to enter the market here.

“We know how desperate you are to find a foothold in New York City to buy influence and support here,” says the letter, obtained by The Post and addressed to Walmart and the Walton Family Foundation.

Last week, Walmart announced that it distributed $3 million last year to charities here, including $1 million to the New York Women’s Foundation, which offers job training, and $30,000 to Bailey House, which distributes groceries to low-income residents.

CAVUTO: If you are a New York City resident and you’re paying through the nose for everything from milk and coffee to bread to drugs, what’s wrong with a big-box retailer like Walmart coming in and offering you $4 prescription drugs, offering consumers in this city who could surely use a break, a break?

BRAMER: I don’t think you have to choose between having a retailer that offers competitive prices for its good and a retailer that treats its workers well. … When Walmart comes into a city, they take more than they give.

CAVUTO: Do you know how many people apply for the roughly 200 positions that the typical Walmart offers? 8,000. 8,000.

BRAMER: It doesn’t mean that those are good jobs.

OK, so… prohibiting whatever your definition of “bad jobs” happens to be (and those 8,000 average applicants apparently disagree), is better than not offering those jobs at all? Not to mention offering gobs of savings in consumer goods to low-income city residents? And who cares if Walmart is trying is indeed trying to spread some goodwill with some of the city’s movers and shakers? Let ’em! The unions shutting out the competition of free market for their own entirely selfish ends will keep fighting back just as hard.

IBM has filed a similar protest objecting to the contract's bidding and procurement process.

Any relation to IBM's purchase of RedHat, assuming that goes through?

Why is there a Babylon 5 cast photo leading the article ?

is this "being ironic", or "meta", or ..wrong..

It's the mixed up sci-fi troll meme. Star Wars acronym, Babylon 5 pic, Star Trek caption. Too bad they couldn't get some Dr Who in there. Craig Charles was my favorite Doctor.

Craig Charles was my favorite Doctor.

Not really pertinent, just thought I'd try to inflict it on someone else.

Well let me just say, "Ha! Ha!"

40 years of demanding companies only lock into Oracle tech and now you're whining like a bunch of toddelrs because it might mean you won't get a look in now you're bidding for deals? Excuse me while I adopt a Nelson Munz pose and say "Ha! Ha!".

I've suffered at the hands of Oracle's nasty severe audits where they literally checked every executing process from their software to see what charges could be added to the bill, I hope they award the whole damn contract to Bezos and Co, stuff it right up Larry and his dying-on-its-arse company.

More probably: "We don't know and we don't care"

It means "Oracle claimed something about conflict of interest. Even if what they claimed was true, it wouldn't let Oracle get what they want. So it's a waste of the court's time to even look into it, because it's not going to change the result. Oracle please go away."

I'm going to sit back and drink my "noxious infusion of oriental leaves" (tom baker) and watch the IBM effort.

What I find most amusing is that Oracle are complaining about their own usual behaviours.

Sorry - Fifth Doctor, not Fourth.

TURLOUGH: Good. I quite miss that brown liquid they drink here.

DOCTOR: Oh, a noxious infusion of oriental leaves containing a high percentage of toxic acid.

CHANDLER: Sounds an evil brew, don't it.

DOCTOR: True. Personally, I rather like it.

Your geek credentials have been revoked.

So now we have "legacy" cloud.

"We are convinced that if given the opportunity to compete, DoD would choose Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for a very substantial portion of its workloads because OCI delivers the best, most performant and most secure product available at the best price."

So... dear Oracle, you may be deludedly convinced. But no-one else is. You barely have the in house skills to manage, train and consult on your own products - so only Herodotus knows why anyone would trust you with a contract of this size. Which BTW includes a load of non-cloud related stuff that you simply don't have a track record in doing.

IBM will get it. That's my $0.10 worth. HP at a distant second. None of the others will be trusted by Donald Gump and his cronies as they are foreign owned, and therefore very scary.

...because it [JEDI] will never work properly, at least not within the ten years allocated to the contract, and probably never.

Given past history of government contracts, vender performance, and gold plating by those government managers involved, it most likely won't ever work even with massive cost overruns.

There's probably going to be massive off-shoring and sub-contracting to help the winners bottom line.

"... because the agency reasonably determined that a single-award approach is in the government’s best interests for various reasons ..."

"... we are not a financially corrupt institution and we live in the land of the free, like what His Excellency our Glorious Leader the Hair Monster says, so actually it's all ok because 'reasons'. Please move along and continue to enjoy freedom somewhere else before I set security on you."

I hope what is most occurring is that they want "one throat to choke." Years of finger pointing, lack of cooperation between contractors, and lack interoperability between said partner have sunk too many projects. Something this large really should be done by one company, even if they sub-contract it out to Tartarus and back.

Oracle only wants the contact so they can audit every 30 days and charge for things they know are not being used the way they claim. The stories I have heard from DBAs make me believe the Mafia moved into technology.

I would have thought that the House of the Rat, would have filed some paperwork reguarding the misuse of their new-ish property. That I'm sure a lot of People have just about lost all intest in.

Chiefly, Oracle – let's make that clear, Oracle – thinks locking an agency into a single legacy vendor is a bad idea in terms of innovation and security.

Personally I think they're right, even if they do have ulterior motives for that point of view. On the other hand, having hundreds of small vendors is even worse in terms of security, so I suppose I can at least see where GAO is coming from.

On the one hand, it is funny watching the DoD become as clueless as our own beloved MoD on the subject of large IT projects.

On the other hand, I don't think I want to live in a world where the only competently run military machines are the ones in Russia and China.

Oracle, you should be happy.

Now perhaps, you'll have extra time to look into plugging up all the friggen holes in your databases and other products.

Thankfully, more and more companies have stopped purchasing Oracle products.

Less cooks in the kitchen working on the same pudding. Especially in the upper management tiers.

It is only unsound, if there happens to be a catastrophic vulnerability which cannot be monitored for and cannot be mitigated, which is very rare these days.

Not to mention, it's a lot easier to monitor one set of products, instead of many; where, when there is a problem--everyone points blame on everyone else. In the case of one vendor, the buck/responsibility is easily attributed to... and quickly rectified.

The DoD has been the InfoSec model for the USGov't. InfoSec w/n the DoD began to lock down things in 2007 (DIACAP) with increased responsibility laid on IASE/DISA and then more in 2014. After the 2016 elections, the rest of the Gov't was made to come on board with the additions to the CSA.

While most of the US Govt has been a laughing stock for InfoSec, the DoD--with some exceptions--has been doing it right for a while. Not to mention, the requirements the DoD laid out over the past 15 years when bidding out contracts, has arguably been the biggest drivers to InfoSec infrastructure development covering the entire stack. Especially in high speed, low frequency wireless security.

Oracle, careful what you ask for. Ask Cisco what happened when they began to demand and attempt to pin the DoD into a corner. Suddenly, they were losing contracts (and good engineers) they sat on for years to minority, female veteran owned companies.

Don't ever think you're the only game in town, especially with DoD contracts. The blue collar personnel working on them, just move to the company who wins the contract, and business goes on as normal...well, except for your stock holders.

The defendant admitted fraud by false representation.

A police officer who arrested a convicted thief and con-woman said he had always found her to be very honest, a court heard.

Burnley magistrates were told how the officer said he knew Stephanie Russell, she always owned up to any offence she had committed, and the latest occasion was no different.

Russell (41) had managed to get a refund for stolen underwear at Sainsbury's and had tried to use a gift card she had been given. The defendant had claimed to be hungry and said she had wanted to steal food, but did not and had pinched some knickers instead.

The defendant, of Norway House in Colne, admitted fraud by false representation at Colne on July 18th. Russell is in breach of a suspended sentence imposed at the crown court in May, as well as a conditional discharge and was committed on bail to Burnley Crown Court to be sentenced on October 30th.

Mr Mark Williams, defending, said Russell was making quite good progress on the suspended order. He added the conditional discharge still had a month to run.

Howard County police charged a Columbia man yesterday with making a false bomb threat last week that targeted the George Howard Building in Ellicott City.

Police said a man called them at 9: 45 a.m. Feb. 1, saying there were "several bombs" under the county government building. Officials traced the call to a home on Jason Lane in Wilde Lake. When police arrived, a man there said he had more bombs, prompting a three-hour blockade, police said.

The man eventually surrendered peacefully, and he was taken to a mental health facility.

Edward Brown Jr., 57, was charged with five counts, including two of arson threat and giving a false statement about a destructive device. His bond was being set last night.

Plans for a new congestion-cutting bypass between Sheffield and Manchester have sparked a mixed reaction - with motorists torn over whether it is 'long overdue' or a 'waste of money'.

Highways England last week announced its preferred route for the A57 Mottram bypass, which will include a link from the M67 terminal roundabout to a new junction at A57(T) Mottram Moor and a link from there to a new junction on the A57 at Brookfield.

It is part of £242 million worth of improvements to help people travelling along the vital Manchester to Sheffield Trans-Pennine route and transport bosses claim it will "cut congestion and improve safety."

Some motorists agreed while others believe it will only serve to move the congestion onto other roads.

Sheffield resident Jim Graham said: "About time - and about 40 years too late."

Mike Halliwell added: "The residents on Hyde Road have been campaigning for this for decades - bring it on."

Mark Power is "cautiously optimistic" over the plans, while Stuart Burton said it is "definitely needed."

But one motorist, who did not want to be named, believes "all it is going to do though is shift congestion further back into Glossop."

Simon Geller said: "It wasn't approved previously because studies showed that it would just move the jam over to the eastern side of the Pennines. That evidence is being ignored.

"The freight needs to be moved to rail - a lot of it is going from Ireland to Europe via Liverpool and Immingham docks."

Sheila Moor added: "Will not make a scrap of difference, A57 still a bad road and Woodhead not much better, plus it will take years to do and cause major disruption whilst being built, then of course it will have to have ongoing repairs for another 10 plus years after that."

Carl Sellars believes it is just "another half-hearted attempt at resolving a major issue" and described it as a "complete waste of money."

Highways England said the route was chosen as about half of the 900 people who took part in a public consultation earlier this year were in support of that option.

In addition to the bypass, there will also be improvements to Westwood roundabout at Tankersley in South Yorkshire which links the A61 and A616, and would do further work to refine options for the dualling of the A61 between Westwood roundabout and the M1.

The proposed route will be presented in a statutory consultation next year with a plan to start construction in early 2020.

Plans for climbing lanes on the A628 between Barnsley and Manchester are also being considered further following the public consultation.

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Malaysia has agreed to allow Taiwanese vessels that are on a mission in the South China Sea to locate a missing Malaysian airline to dock at Malaysian ports for supplies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday.

Foreign Minister David Lin said yesterday that the agreement will allow a R.O.C. Navy frigate and two Coast Guard vessels that the nation dispatched Monday to conduct a search and rescue mission in waters where the plane disappeared to refill their supplies and refuel.

Lin made the comments in response to ruling Kuomintang (KMT) lawmaker Lin Yu-fang's question on the issue yesterday at a hearing of the Legislature's Foreign Affairs and National Defence Committee.

The KMT lawmaker said the three Taiwanese vessels only brought with them 14 days of fresh water supplies, but it will take four days for them to arrive at the designated area for the mission and another four days to travel back to Taiwan.

This means the R.O.C. vessels could only engage in the mission for six days if they cannot replenish their supplies, he said.

If Taiwanese military vessels could dock at Malaysian ports, it would mean a major breakthrough for the country diplomatically given the fact that both sides lack official ties, the lawmaker said.

According to Lin, Taiwan is among the 12 countries that have engaged in the mission to locate any sign of missing flight MH370.

The minister added that the search and rescue mission is being coordinated by Malaysia's rescue authorities.

Under the instruction of Malaysian authorities, Taiwan has been assigned to be responsible for waters between Malaysia and Vietnam to help look for the Malaysia Airlines plane.

Taiwan's participation in the mission showcases the nation's determination to take part in international rescue efforts and humanitarian assistance, he said.

Socially, it may be a small world, but it's hard to get from here to there.

In the current issue of the journal Science, researchers at Columbia University report the first large-scale experiment that supports the notion of ''six degrees of separation,'' that a short chain of acquaintances can be found between almost any two people in the world. But the same study finds that trying to contact a distant stranger via acquaintances is likely to fail.

The ''six degrees of separation'' notion came from an experiment in 1967 by Dr. Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist, where a few hundred people tried to forward a letter to a particular person in Boston by sending it through people they knew personally. About a third of the letters reached their destination, after an average of six mailings.

Dr. Milgram's experiment inspired a notion that the billions of people in the world, widely separated by geography and culture, actually form a close-knit network of social acquaintances, that you are a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of anyone anywhere.

Until now, few scientists have tried to confirm Dr. Milgram's findings, which some scientists find unconvincing because of the small number of participants and other shortcomings of the experiment.

The advent of the Internet enabled the researchers to more carefully explore the problem, which is part mathematical -- the structure of the network -- and part psychological -- what motivates people to participate or not, and how do people decide whom to send the message to? The answers are of interest both to computer scientists studying the ebb and flow of information on the Internet and sociologists studying the spread of gossip and cultural trends.