Psypod Books presents Lone Star Planet by H. B. Piper and John J. McGuire. Read for you by Mark Douglas Nelson. Part 5 of Lone Star Planet by H. B. Piper and John J. McGuire. Read for you by Mark Douglas Nelson. This here LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 9 The trial got started the next morning with a minimal amount of objections from Sydney. The charges and specifications were duly read, the three defendants pleaded not guilty, and then Goodham advanced with a paper in his hand to address the court. Sydney scampered up to take his position beside him. Your Honor, the prosecution wishes, subject to agreement of the defense, to enter the following stipulations. To it, first, that the late Silas Kumshaw was a practice and politician within the meaning of the law, second, that he is now dead and came to his death in the manner attested to by the coroner of Sam Houston Continent, third, that he came to his death at the hands of the defendants here present. In all my planning I had forgotten that. I couldn't let those stipulations stand without protest, and at the same time, if I protested the characterization of Kumshaw as a practicing politician, the trial could easily end right there. So I prayed for a miracle, and Clement Sydney promptly obliged me. Defense won't stipulate anything, he barked, my clients here are victims of a monstrous conspiracy, a conspiracy to conceal the true facts of the death of Silas Kumshaw. They ought never to have been arrested or brought here, and if the prosecution wants to establish anything they can do it by testimony in the regular and lawful way. This practice of free-wheeling stipulation is only one of the many devices by which the courts of this planet are being perverted to serve the corrupt and unjust ends of a gang of reactionary land owners. Judge Nelson's gavel hit the bench with a crack like a rifle shot. Mr. Sydney, injustice to your clients, I would hate to force them to change lawyers in the middle of their trial, but if I hear another remark like that about the courts of New Texas, that's exactly what will happen, because you'll be in jail for contempt. Is that clear, Mr. Sydney? I settled back with the deep sigh of relief which got me, I noticed, curious stares from my fellow ambassadors. I disregarded the questions in their glances. I had what I wanted. They began calling up the witnesses. First, the doctor who had certified Ambassador Kumshaw's death. He gave a concise description of the wounds which had killed my predecessor. He was trying to make something out of the fact that he was Hickok's family physician, and consuming more time when I got up. Your Honor, I am present here as amicus curiae, because of the obvious interest which the government of the Solar League has in this case. Objection! Sydney yelled. Please state it, Nelson invited. This is a court of the people of the planet of New Texas. This foreign emissary of the Solar League sent here to conspire with the new Texan traitors to the end that New Texas shall be reduced to a supine and ravished satrapy of the all-devouring empire of the galaxy. Judge Nelson wrapped sharply. Friends of the court are defined as persons having a proper interest in the case. As this case arises from the death of the former ambassador of the Solar League, I cannot see how the present ambassador and his staff can be excluded, overruled. He nodded to me. Continue, Mr. Ambassador. As I understand, I have the same rights of cross-examination of witnesses as counsel for the prosecution and defense. Is that correct, Your Honor? It was, so I turned to the witness. I suppose, Doctor, that you have had quite a bit of experience in your practice with gunshot wounds. He chuckled. Mr. Ambassador, it is gunshot wound cases which keep the practice of medicine and surgery alive on this planet. Yes, I definitely have. Now, you say that the deceased was hit by six different projectiles, right shoulder almost completely severed, right lung and right ribs blown out of the chest, spleen and kidney so intermingled as to be practically one, and left leg severed by complete shattering of the left pelvis and hip joint? That's right. I picked up the twenty-millimeter auto-rifle, had weighed a good sixty pounds from the table, and asked him if this weapon could have inflicted such wounds. He agreed that it both could and had. This is the usual type of weapon used in your New Texas political liquidations, I asked. Certainly not. The usual weapons are pistols, sometimes a hunting rifle or a shotgun. I asked the same question when I cross-examined the ballistics witness. Is this the usual type of weapon used in your New Texas political liquidations? No, not at all. That's a very expensive weapon, Mr. Ambassador. It wasn't even manufactured on this planet, made by the Zasroff Star Cluster. A weapon like that sells for five, six hundred pesos. It's used for shooting really big game, Super Mastodon and things like that, and of course for combat. It seems, I remarked, that the defense is overlooking an obvious point here. I doubt if these three defendants ever, in all their lives, had among them the price of such a weapon. That of course brought Sidney to his feet, sputtering objections to this attempt to disparage the honest poverty of his clients, which only helped to call attention to the point. Then the prosecution called in a witness named David Crockett Longfellow. I'd met him at the Hickock Ranch. He was Hickock's butler. He limped from an old injury which had retired him from work on the range. He was sworn in and testified to his name in occupation. Do you know these three defendants? Goodham asked him. Yeah, I even marked one of them for future identification, Longfellow replied. Sidney was up at once, shouting objections. After he was quieted down, Goodham remarked that he'd come to that point later, and began a line of questioning to establish that Longfellow had been on the Hickock Ranch on the day when Silas Cumshaw was killed. Now, Goodham said, will you relate to the court the matters of interest which came to your personal observation on that day? Longfellow began his story. At about 0900 I was dusting up and straightening things in the library while the Colonel was at his desk. All of a sudden he said to me, Davy, suppose you call the solar embassy and see a Mr. Cumshaw is doing anything today. If he isn't, ask him if he wants to come out. I was working right beside the telescreen. So I called the solar league embassy. Mr. Thrombley took the call and I asked him was Mr. Cumshaw around. By this time the Colonel got through with what he was doing at the desk and came over to the screen. I went back to my work but I heard the Colonel asking Mr. Cumshaw could he come out for the day, and Mr. Cumshaw saying yes he could, he'd be out by about 1030. Well, long about 1030 his air car came in and landed on the drive, little single seat job that he drove himself. He landed at about 100 feet from the outside veranda like he usually did and got out. Then this other car came dropping in from out of nowhere. I didn't pay it much attention, thought it might be one of the other ambassadors that Mr. Cumshaw had brung along. But Mr. Cumshaw turned around and looked at it and then he started to run for the veranda. I was standing in the doorway when I seen him starting to run. I jumped out on the porch, quick like, and pulled my gun and then this auto rifle began firing out of the other car. There was only eight or ten shots fired from this car, but most of them hit Mr. Cumshaw. Goodham waited a few moments, Longfellow's voice had choked and there was a twitching about his face as though he were trying to suppress tears. Now, Mr. Longfellow, Goodham said, did you recognize the people who were in the car from which the shots came? Yeah, like I said, I cut a mark on one of them. That one there, Jack High, a bunny. He was handling the gun, and from where I was he had his left side to me. I was trying for his head, but I always overshoot, so I have the habit of holding low. This time I held too low. He looked at Jack High in coldly poisonous hatred. I'll be sorry about that as long as I live. And who else was in the car? The other two currs out of the same litter switched blade and turkey buzzard over there. Further questioning revealed that Longfellow had had no direct knowledge of the pursuit or the siege of the jail in Bonneville. Colonel Hickock had taken personal command of that and had left Longfellow behind to call the Solar League Embassy and the Rangers. He had made no attempt to move the body, but had left it lying in the driveway until the doctor and the Rangers arrived. Goodham went to the middle table and picked up a heavy automatic pistol. I called the court's attention to this pistol. It's an 11-millimeter automatic manufactured by the Colt Firearms Company of New Texas, a licensed subsidiary of the Colt Firearms Company of Terra. He handed it to Longfellow. Do you know this pistol? He asked. Longfellow was almost insulted by the question. Of course he knew his own pistol. He recited the serial number and pointed to the different scars and scratches on the weapon, telling how they had been acquired. The court accepts that Mr. Longfellow knows his own weapon, Nelson said. I assume that this is the weapon with which you claim to have shot Jack High a Bonnie? It was, although Longfellow resented the qualification. That's all, your witness, Mr. Sidney, Goodham said. Sidney began an immediate attack. Questioning Longfellow's eyesight, intelligence, honesty and integrity, he tried to show personal enmity toward the Bonnies. He implied that Longfellow had been conspiring with Cumshaw to bring about the conquest of New Texas by the Solar League. The verbal exchange became so heated that both witness and attorney had to be admonished repeatedly from the bench. But at no point did Sidney shake Longfellow from his one fundamental statement, that the Bonnie brothers had shot Silas Cumshaw and that he had shot Jack High a Bonnie in the shoulder. When he was finished I got up and took over. Mr. Longfellow, you say that Mr. Thrombley answered the screen at the Solar League Embassy, I began. You know Mr. Thrombley? Sure, Mr. Silk, he's been out at the ranch with Mr. Cumshaw a lot of times. Well, beside yourself and Colonel Hickock and Mr. Cumshaw, and possibly Mr. Thrombley, who else knew that Mr. Cumshaw would be at the ranch at ten-thirty on that morning? Nobody, but the air-car had obviously been waiting for Mr. Cumshaw. The Bonnies must have had advanced knowledge. My questions made that point clear despite the obvious, and reluctantly court-sustained, objections from Mr. Sidney. That would be all, Mr. Longfellow. Thank you. Any questions from anybody else? There being none, Longfellow stepped down. It was then a few minutes before noon, so Judge Nelson recessed court for an hour and a half. In the afternoon the surgeon who had treated Jack High a Bonnie's wounded shoulder testified, identifying the bullet which had been extracted from Bonnie's shoulder. A ballistics man from Ranger Crime Lab followed him to the stand and testified that it had been fired from Longfellow's Colt. Then Ranger Captain Nelson took the stand. His testimony was about what he had given me at the Embassy, with the exception that the Bonnie's admission that they had shot Ambassador Cumshaw was ruled out as having been made under duress. However, Captain Nelson's testimony didn't need the confessions. The cover was stripped off the air-car, and a couple of men with a power-dolley dragged it out in front of the bench. The Ranger Captain identified it as the car which he had found at the Bonneville Jail. He went over it with an ultraviolet flashlight and showed where he had written his name and the date on it with fluorescent ink. The effects of the AA fire were plainly evident on it. Then the other shrouded object was unveiled and identified as the gun which had disabled the air-car. Colonel Hickock identified the gun as the one with which he had fired on the air-car. Finally, the ballistics expert was brought back to the stand again to link the two by means of fragments found in the car. Then Goodham brought Kettlebelly's Sam Bonnie to the stand. The mayor of Bonneville was a man of fifty or so, short, partially bald, dressed in faded blue levis, a frayed white shirt and a grief-spotted vest. There was absolutely no mystery about how he had acquired his nickname. He discouraged a cut of tobacco into a spittoon, took the oath with unctuous solemnity, then reloaded himself with another chew and told his version of the attack on the Jail. At about ten-forty-five on the day in question he testified he had been in his office hard at work in the public service, when an air-car partially disabled by gunfire had landed in the street outside and the three defendants had rushed in claiming sanctuary. From then on the story flowed along smoothly, following the lines predicted by Captain Nelson and Peros. Of course he had given the fugitive shelter. They had claimed to have been near to a political assassination and were in fear of their lives. Under Sidney's cross-examination and coaching he poured out the story of Bonneville's wrongs at the hands of the reactionary landowners and the atrocious behavior of the Hickok Goongang. Finally, after extracting the last drop of class-hatred venom out of him, Sidney turned him over to me. How many men were inside the Jail when the three defendants were claiming sanctuary, I asked? He couldn't rightly say, maybe four or five. Closer twenty-five, according to the Rangers, how many of them were prisoners in the Jail? Well, none. The prisoners was all turned out that morning. They was just common drunks, disorderly conduct cases, that kind of thing, were turned them out so as we could make some repairs. You turned them out because you expected to have to defend the Jail, because you knew in advance that these three would be along claiming sanctuary, and that Colonel Hickok's ranch hands would be right on their heels, didn't you, I demanded. It took a good five minutes before Sidney stopped shouting long enough for Judge Nelson to sustain the objection. You knew these young men all their lives, I take it. What did you know about their financial circumstances, for instance? Well, they'd been ground down and kept poor by the big ranchers and the money guys. Then weren't you surprised to see them driving such an expensive air-car?  You know where they got the money to buy that car, I pressed. Kettlebelly Sam didn't answer. From the man who paid them to murder Ambassador Silas Kumshaw, I kept pressing. Do you know how much they were paid for that job? Do you know where the money came from? Do you know who the go-between was, and how much he got, and how much he kept for himself? Was it the same source that paid for that recent attempt on President Hutchinson's life?  Hone the ground that it might incriminate or degrade me. You can't degrade a Bonnie, a voice from the balcony put in. So then, I replied to the voice, what he means is, incriminate," I turned to the witness. That will be all excused. As Bonnie left the stand and was let out the side door, Goodham addressed the bench. Now your honor," he said, I believe that the prosecution has succeeded in definitely establishing that these three defendants actually did fire the shot which, on April 22, 2193, deprived Silas Kumshaw of his life. We will now undertake to prove. Followed a long succession of witnesses, each testifying to some public or private act of philanthropy, some noble trait of character. It was the sort of thing which the defense lawyer in the Waitney case had been so willing to stipulate. Sydney, of course, tried to make it all out to be part of a sinister conspiracy to establish a Solar League Fifth Column on New Texas. Finally, the prosecution rested its case. I entertained Gail and her father at the Embassy that evening. The street outside was crowded with New Texans, all of them on our side, shouting slogans like, Death to the Bonnies, and Vengeance for Kumshaw, and annexation now. Some of it was entirely spontaneous, too. The Hickocks, father and daughter, were given a tremendous ovation when they finally left, and followed to their hotel by cheering crowds. I saw one big banner lettered, Don't Let New Texas Go to the Dogs, and bearing a crude picture of a Zasroff. I seem to recall having seen a couple of our Marines making that banner the evening before in the Embassy patio, but... CHAPTER TEN The next morning, the third of the trial, opened with the defense witnesses, character witnesses for the three killers, and witnesses to the political iniquities of Silas Kumshaw. Neither Goodham nor I bothered to cross-examine the former. I couldn't see how any lawyer as shrewd as Sidney had shown himself to be would even dream of getting such an array of thugs, cut throats, sluts, and slatterns into court as character witnesses for anybody. The latter, on the other hand, we went after unmercifully, kneeling, under their enmity for Kumshaw, a small, hardcore of bigoted xenophobia and selfish fear. Goodham did a beautiful job on that. He seemed able, at a glance, to divine exactly what each witness's motivation was, and able to make him or her betray that motivation in its least admirable terms. Finally, the defense rested, about a quarter hour before noon. I rose and addressed the court. Your Honor, while both the prosecution and the defense have done an admirable job in bringing out the essential facts of how my predecessor met his death, there are many features about this case which are far from clear to me. They will be even less clear to my government, which is composed of men who have never set foot on this planet. For this reason I wish to call, or recall, certain witnesses to clarify these points. Sidney, who had begun shouting objections as soon as I had gotten to my feet, finally managed to get himself recognized by the court. This Solar League Ambassador, Your Honor, is simply trying to use the courts of the planet of New Texas as a sounding board for his imperialistic government's propaganda. You may reassure yourself, Mr. Sidney, Judge Nelson said. This court will not allow itself to be improperly used, or improperly swayed, by the ambassador of the Solar League. This court is interested only in determining the facts regarding the case before it. You may call your witnesses, Mr. Ambassador. He glanced at his watch. Court will now recess for an hour and a half. Can you have him here by 1330? I assured him I could, after glancing across the room at Ranger Captain Nelson and catching his nod. My first witness that afternoon was Thrombley. After the formalities of getting his name and connection with the Solar League Embassy on the record, I asked him, Mr. Thrombley, did you, on the morning of April 22nd, receive a call from the Hickok Ranch for Mr. Cumshaw? Yes, indeed, Mr. Ambassador. The call was from Mr. Lung Fellow, Colonel Hickok's butler. He asked if Mr. Cumshaw were available. It happened that Mr. Cumshaw was in the same room with me and he came directly to the screen. Then Colonel Hickok appeared in the screen and inquired if Mr. Cumshaw could come out to the ranch for the day. He said something about super-dub shooting. You heard Mr. Cumshaw tell Colonel Hickok that he would be out at the ranch at about 1030? Thrombley said he had. And to your knowledge, did anybody else at the Embassy hear that? Oh, no, sir, we were in the Ambassador's private office and the screen there is tap-proof. And what other calls did you receive prior to Mr. Cumshaw's death? About fifteen minutes after Mr. Cumshaw had left, the Zisroth Ambassador called, about a personal matter. As he was most anxious to contact Mr. Cumshaw, I told him where he had gone. Then to your knowledge, outside of yourself, Colonel Hickok and his butler, the Zisroth Ambassador was the only person who could have known that Mr. Cumshaw's car would be landing on Colonel Hickok's drive at or about 1030. Is that correct? Yes. Plus, anybody whom the Zisroth Ambassador might have told. Exactly! I pounced. Then I turned and gave the three Bonnie Brothers a sweeping glance. Plus, anybody the Zisroth Ambassador might have told. That's all. Your witness, Mr. Sidney. Sidney got up, started toward the witness stand, and then thought the better of it. No questions, he said. The next witness was a Mr. James Finnegan. He was identified as a cashier of the Crooked Creek National Bank. I asked him if Kettle Belly Sam Bonnie did business at his bank. He said yes. Anything unusual about Mayor Bonnie's account, I asked? Well, it's been unusually active lately. Ordinarily, he carries around two, three thousand pesos. But about the first of April, that took a big jump. Quite a big jump. Two hundred and fifty thousand pesos, all in a lump. When did Kettle Belly Sam deposit this large sum, I asked? He didn't. The money came to us in a cashier's check on the Ranchers Trust Company of New Austin, with an anonymous letter asking that it be deposited to Mayor Bonnie's account. The letter was typed on a sheet of yellow paper, in basic English. Do you have that letter now? I asked. No, I don't.  He told me that if we ever got another deposit like that, we were to turn it over to him in cash. Then he wanted to see the letter, and when I gave it to him, he took it over to a telescreen booth, and drew the curtains. I got a little busy with some other matters, and the next time I looked, Kettle Belly was gone, and some girl was using the booth. That's very interesting, Mr. Finnegan. Was that the last of your unusual business with Mayor Bonnie? Oh, no. Then, about two weeks before Mr. Cumsha was killed, Kettle Belly came in and wanted fifty thousand pesos, in a big hurry, in small bills. I gave it to him, and he grabbed at the money like a starved dog at a bone, and upset a bottle of red perma ink, the sort we used to refill our bank seals. Three of the bills got splashed. I offered to exchange them, but he said, hell with it, I'm in a hurry, and went out. The next day, Switchblade Joe Bonnie came in to make payment on a note we were holding on him. He used those three bills in the payment. Then, about a week ago, there was another cashier's check came in for Kettle Belly. This time there was no letter, just one of our regular deposit slips. No name of depositor. I held the check, and gave it to Kettle Belly. I remember when it came in. I said to one of the clerks, well, I wonder who's going to get bumped off this time, and sure enough— Sidney's yell of—Objection!—was all his previous objections gathered into one. You say the letter accompanying the first deposit, the one in basic English, was apparently taken away by Kettle Belly's Sam Bonnie. If you saw another letter of the same sort, would you be able to say whether or not it might be like the one you mentioned? Sidney vociferating more objections. I was trying to get expert testimony without previous qualification. But at all, Mr. Sidney, Judge Nelson ruled, Mr. Seelke has merely asked if Mr. Finnegan could say whether one document bore any resemblance to another. I asked permission to have another witness sworn in while Finnegan was still on the stand, and called in a Mr. Boone, the cashier of the Packers and Brokers Trust Company of New Austin. He had with him a letter, typed on yellow paper, which he said had accompanied an anonymous deposit of 200,000 pesos. Mr. Finnegan said that it was exactly like the one he had received, in typing, grammar, and wording, all but the name of the person to whose account the money was to be deposited. And whose account received this anonymous benefaction, Mr. Boone, I asked? The account, Boone replied, of Mr. Clement, Sidney. I was surprised that Judge Nelson didn't break the handle of his gavel after that. Finally, after a couple of threats to clear the court, order was restored. Mr. Sidney had no questions to ask this time, either. The bailiff looked at the next slip of paper I gave him, frowned over it, and finally asked the court for assistance. Ah! Can't pronounce this here thing at all, he complained. One of the judges finally got out a mouthful of growls and yaps, and gave it to the clerk of the court to copy into the record. The next witness was a Zasroff, and in the new Texas garb he was wearing, he was something to open my eyes, even after years on the hooligan diplomats. After he took the stand, the clerk of the court looked at him blankly for a moment. Then he turned to Judge Nelson. Your Honor, how am I going to go about swearing him in? he asked. What does a Zasroff swear by that's binding? The President Judge frowned for a moment. Does anybody here know basic well enough to translate the oath? He asked. I think I can, I offered. I spent a great many years in our consular service before I was sent here. We use basic with a great many alien peoples. Administer the oath then, Nelson told me. Put up right hand, I told the Zasroff. Do you truly say, in front of a great one who made all worlds, who has knowledge of what is in the hearts of all persons, that what you will say here will be true, all true, and not anything that is not true, and will you so say again at a time when all worlds end? Do you so truly say? Yes, I so truly say. Say your name. Pobomega kovotomek chichichi. What is your business? I put things made of cloth into this world, and I take meat out of this world. Where do you have your house? Here in New Austin, over my house of business on Coronado Street. What people do you see in this place that you have made business with? Pobomega kovotomek chichichi pointed a three-fingered hand at the Bonnie Brothers. What business did you make with them? I gave them money for a machine which goes on the ground and goes in the air very fast to take persons and things about. Is that the thing you gave them for money, I asked, pointing at the exhibit air-car? Yes, but it was new then. It has been made broken by things from guns now. What money did they give you for the machine? One hundred pesos. That started another uproar. There wasn't a soul in that courtroom who didn't know that five thousand pesos would have been a give-away bargain price for that car. Mr. Ambassador, one of the associate judges interrupted, I used to be in the used car business. Am I expected to believe that this, this being, sold that air-car for a hundred pesos? There's a notarized copy of the Bill of Sale from the Office of the Vehicles Registration Bureau, I said. I introduce it as evidence. There was a disturbance at the back of the room, and then there's a SROF Ambassador, Guglalfur Distapitan Vuvuvu came stalking down the aisle, followed by a couple of rangers and two of his attachés. He came forward and addressed the court. May you be happy, sir, but I am in here so quickly, not because I have desire to make noise, but because it is only short time since it got in my knowledge that one of my persons is in this place. I am here to be of help to him that he not get in trouble, and to be of help to you. The name for what I am to do in this place is not part of my knowledge. Please say it for me. You are a friend of the court, Judge Nelson told him, and Amicus Curia. You make me happy. Please go on. I have no desire to put stop to what you do in this place. From what person did you get this machine that you gave to these persons for one hundred pesos, I asked? Gugloufer immediately began barking and snarling and yelping at my witness. The dry-goods importer looked startled, and Judge Nelson banged with his gavel. That's enough of that. There'll be nothing spoken in this court but English, except through an interpreter. Yow! I am sad that what I did was not right, does this roff ambassador replied contritely. But my person here has not as part of his knowledge that you will make him say what made put him in trouble. Nelson nodded in agreement. You are right. This person who is here has no need to make answer to any question if it may put him in trouble or make him seem less than he is. I will not make answer, the witness said. No further questions. I turned to Goodham and then to Sydney. They had no questions either. I handed another slip of paper to the bailiff, and another zasroff, named Babark Joñekyag Kikiki, took the stand. He put into this world things for small persons to make amusement with. He took out of this world meat and leather. He had his house of business in New Austin, and he pointed out the three bonnies as persons in this place that he saw that he had seen before. And what business did you make with them? I asked. I gave them for money, a gun which sends out things of twenty millimetres very fast to make death or hurt come to men and animals and does destruction to machines and things. Is this the gun? I showed it to him. It could be. The gun was made in my world. Many guns like it are made there. I am certain that this is the very gun. I had a notarized copy of a customs-house bill in which the gun was described and specified by serial number. I introduced it as evidence. How much money did these three persons give you for this gun? I asked. Five pesos. The customs appraisal on this gun is six hundred pesos, I mentioned. Immediately Ambassador Vuvuvu was on his feet. My person here has not part of his knowledge that he may put himself in trouble by what he says to answer these questions. That put a stop to that. Barak Jonyakyeg Kokiki immediately took refuge and refused to answer on grounds of self-incrimination. That is all, Your Honor, I said. And now, I continued, when the witness had left the stand, I have something further to present to the court, something both as amicus curiae and as ambassador of the Solar League. This court cannot convict the three men who are here on trial. These men should have never been brought to trial in this court. It has no jurisdiction over this case. This was a simple case of first-degree murder by hired assassins committed against the ambassador of one government at the instigation of another, not an act of political protest within the meaning of New Texan law. There was a brief silence. Both the court and the spectators were stunned, and most stunned of all were the three Bonnie Brothers, who had been watching, fears sick, while I had been putting a rope around their necks. The uproar from the rear of the courtroom gave Judge Nelson a needed minute or so to collect his thoughts. After he had gotten order restored, he turned to me grim-faced. Ambassador Silk, will you please elaborate on the extraordinary statement you have just made? He invited, as though every word had sharp corners that were sticking in his throat. Gladly, Your Honor, my words, too, were gouging and scraping my throat as they came out. I could feel my knees getting absurdly weak, and my mouth tasted as though I had an old copper penny in it. As I understand it, the laws of New Texas do not extend their ordinary protection to persons engaged in the practice of politics. An act of personal injury against a politician is considered criminal only to the extent that the politician injured has not, by his public acts, deserved the degree of severity with which he has been injured, and the court of political justice is established for the purpose of determining whether or not there has been such an excess of severity in the treatment meted out by the accused to the injured or deceased politician. This gives rise, of course, to some interesting practices. For instance, what is at law, a trial of the accused, is, in substance, a trial of his victim. But in any case tried in this court, the accused must be a person who has injured or killed a man who is definable as a practicing politician under the government of New Texas. Speaking for my government, I must deny that these men should have been tried in this court for the murder of Silas Kumsha. To do otherwise would establish the principle and precedent that our ambassador, or any other ambassador here, is a practicing politician under, mark that well, Your Honor, under the laws and government of New Texas. This would not only make of any ambassador a permissible target for any marksmen who happen to disapprove of the policies of another government, but more serious, it would place the ambassador and his government in a subordinate position relative to the government of New Texas. This the government of the Solar League simply cannot tolerate, for reasons which it would be insulting to the intelligence of this court to enumerate. Mr. Silk, Judge Nelson said gravely, this court takes full cognizance of the force of your arguments. However, I'd like to know why you permitted this trial to run to this length before entering this objection. Surely you could have made clear the position of your government at the beginning of this trial. Your Honor, I said, had I done so, these defendants would have been released, and the facts behind their crime would have never come to light. I grant that the important function of this court is to determine questions of relative guilt and innocence. We must not lose sight, however, of the fact that the primary function of any court is to determine the truth, and only by the processes of the trial of these depraved murderers for hire could the real author of the crime be uncovered. This was important, both for the government of the Solar League and the government of New Texas. My government now knows who procured the death of Silas Kumshaw, and we will take appropriate action. The government of New Texas has now had spelled out, in letters anyone can read, the fact that this beautiful planet is in truth a battleground. Awareness of this may save New Texas from being the scene of a larger and more destructive battle. New Texas also knows who are its enemies, and who can be counted upon to stand as its friends. Yes, Mr. Selk, Mr. Vuvuvu, I haven't heard any comment from you. No comment? Well, we'll have to close the court to consider this phase of the question. The black screen slid up for the second time during the trial. There was silence for a moment, and then the room became a bubbling pot of sound. At least six fights broke out among the spectators within three minutes. The Rangers and court bailiffs were busy restoring order. Gale Hickok, who had been sitting on the front row of the spectator seats, came running up while I was still receiving the congratulations of my fellow diplomats. Stephen, how could you, she demanded. You know what you've done. You've gotten those murdering snakes turned loose!" Andrew Jackson Hickok left the prosecution table and approached. Mr. Selk, you've just secured the freedom of three men who murdered one of my best friends. Colonel Hickok, I believe I knew Scyla's come-shaw before you did. He was one of my instructors at Dumbarton Oaks, and I have always had the deepest respect and admiration for him. But he taught me one thing, which you seem to have forgotten since you expatriated yourself, that in the diplomatic service personal feelings don't count. The only thing of importance is the advancement of the policies of the Solar League. Scyla's and I were attachés together at the old embassy at Dramoul on Altair II. Colonel Hickok said, What else he might have said was lost in the sudden exclamation as the black screen slid down. In front of Judge Nelson I saw there were three pistol belts and three pairs of automatics. Switchplay, Joe Bonney, Jack Haie Bonney, Turkey buzzer, Tom Bonney, together with your counsel, approached the court and hear the verdict. Judge Nelson said, The three defendants and their lawyer rose. Bonney's were swaggering and laughing. But for a lawyer whose clients had just emerged from the shadow of the gallows, Sidney was looking remarkably unhappy. He probably had imagination enough to see what would be waiting for him outside. It pains me inexpressibly, Judge Nelson said, To inform you that this court cannot convict you of the cowardly murder of the learned and honorable old man Scyla's comeshaw, nor can you be brought to trial in any other court a new Texas again for that dastardly crime. Here are your weapons, which must be returned to you.  And you may regret and feel shame for your despicable act as long as you live, which, I hope, won't be more than a few hours. With that he used the end of his gavel to push the three belts off the bench and onto the floor at the Bonney's feet. They stood laughing at him for a few moments, then stopped, picked the belts up, drew the pistols to check magazines and chambers, and then began slapping each other's backs and shouting jubilant congratulations at one another. Sidney's two assistants and some of his friends came up and began pumping Sidney's hands. There, Gale flung at me. Now look at your master pace.   It hurt like the devil. She was a lot stronger than I'd expected. In about two minutes I told her, you can apologize to me for that, or weep over my corpse. Right now, though, you'd better be getting behind something solid. CHAPTER XI. I turned and stepped forward to confront the Bonney's, simply thanking Gale. Up until she'd slapped me, I'd been weak-knead and dry-mouthed with what I had to do. Now I was just plain angry, and I found that I was thinking a lot more clearly. Jack Bonney's wounded left shoulder I knew wouldn't keep him from using his gun-hand, but his shoulder muscles would be stiff enough to slow his draw. I'd intended saving him until I'd dealt with his brothers. Now I remembered how he'd gotten that wound in the first place. He'd been the one who'd used the auto-rifle out at the Hickok Ranch. So I changed my plans and moved him up to top priority. HOLD IT, I yelled at them.   The crowd of sympathizers and felicitators simply exploded away from the Bonney brothers. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sydney and a fat blousy woman with brass-colored hair as they both tried to dive under the friends of the court-table at the same place. The Bonney brothers simply stood and stared at me, for an instant, unbelievingly, as I got my thumbs on the release studs of my belt. Orange Nelson's gavel was hammering and he was shouting, "'Cord of political justice, Confederate continent of New Texas, is here with adjourned reconvene 0900 tomorrow. Hit the floor!' "'Damn! He mains it!' Switchplay Joe Bonney exclaimed. Then they all reached for their guns. They were still reaching when I pressed the studs and the crop-tottas popped into my hands and I swung up my right-hand gun and shot Jack High through the head. After that I just let my subconscious take over. I saw gun-flames jump out at me from the Bonney's weapons and I felt my own pistols leap and rive in my hands but I don't believe I was aware of hearing the shots, not even for my own weapons. The whole thing probably lasted five seconds but it seemed like twenty minutes to me. Then there was nobody shooting at me and nobody for me to shoot at. The big room was silent and I was aware that Judge Nelson and his eight associates were rising cautiously from behind the bench. I holstered my left-hand gun, removed and replaced the magazine of the right-hand gun, then holstered it and reloaded the other one. Hottie Ringo and Francisco Perros and Commander Stonehenge were on their feet, their pistols drawn, covering the spectator's seats. Colonel Hickock had also drawn a pistol and he was covering Sydney with it, occasionally moving the muzzle to the left to include the Zasroff Ambassador and his two attachés. By this time Nelson and the other eight judges were in their seats, trying to look calm and judicial. Your Honor, I said, I fully realize that no judge like to have his court turned into a shooting gallery. I can assure you, however, that my action here was not the result of any lack of respect for this court. It was pure necessity. Your Honor, concede that. My government could not permit this crime against its ambassador to pass unpunished. Judge Nelson nodded solemnly. Court was adjourned when this little incident happened, Mr. Silk, he said. He leaned forward and looked to where the three Bonnie Brothers were making a mess of blood on the floor. I trust that nobody will construe my unofficial and personal comments here as establishing any legal precedent, and I wouldn't like to see this sort of thing becoming customary. But you did that all by yourself with those little bean shooters? Not bad! Not bad at all, Mr. Silk. I thanked him, then turned to the Zasroff Ambassador. I didn't bother putting my remarks into basic. He understood, as well as I did, what I was saying. Silk Fido, I told him. My government is quite well aware of the source from which the orders for the murder of my predecessor came. These men I just killed were only the tools. We're going to get the brains behind them, if we have to send every warship we own into the Zasroff Star Cluster and devastate every planet in it. We don't let dogs snap at us, and when they do, we don't kick them, we shoot them. That, of course, was not exactly Striped Pants' diplomatic language. I wondered, for a moment, what Norman Gazarian, the protocol man, would think if he heard an ambassador calling another ambassador Fido. But it seemed to be the kind of language that Mr. Vuvuvu understood. He skinned back his upper lip at me and began snarling and growling. Then he turned on his hind paws and padded angrily down the aisle away from the front of the courtroom. The spectators around him and above him began barking, baying, yelping at him, tie a can to his tail, get for home, Bruno. Then somebody yelled, hey, look, even his wristwatch is blushing. That was perfectly true. Mr. Glaffer de Spaten Vuvuvu's watch face, normally white, was now glowing a bright ruby red. I looked at Stonehenge and found him looking at me. It would be full dark in four or five hours. There ought to be something spectacular to see in the cloudless skies of Capella IV to-night. Fleet Admiral Sir Rodney Trigascus would see to that. From report of Space Commander Stonehenge to Secretary of Aggression Klung. So the measures considered by yourself and Secretary of State Gopal Singh and Security Coordinator Natalenko, as transmitted to me by Mr. Haudy Ringo, were not, I am glad to say, needed. Ambassador Silk, alive, handled the thing much better than Ambassador Silk dead could possibly have. To confirm Sir Rodney Trigascus' report from the tales of the few survivors, the Zasraf attack came as the Ambassador had expected. They dropped out of hyperspace about seventy light minutes outside the Capella system, apparently in complete ignorance of the presence of our fleet. Have learned the entire fleet consisted of about three hundred spaceships and reports reaching here indicate that no more than twenty got back to Zasraf cluster. Naturally, the whole affair has had a profound influence and influence to the benefit of the Solar League on all shades of public opinion. As you properly assumed, Mr. Haudy Ringo is no longer with us. When it became apparent that the Palm Silk annexation treaty would be ratified here, Mr. Ringo immediately saw that his status of diplomatic immunity would automatically terminate. Accordingly he left this system embarking from New Austin for Alder Baron Nine, mentioning, as he shook hands with me, something about a widow. By a curious coincidence the richest branch bank in the city was held up by a lone bandit about a half an hour before he boarded the spaceship. Final message of the last solar ambassador to New Texas, Stephen Silk. Copies of the treaty of annexation duly ratified by the New Texas legislature herewith. Please note that the guarantees of non-interference in local political institutions are the very minimum which are acceptable to the people of New Texas. They are especially adamant that there be no change in their peculiar methods of ensuring that their elected and appointed public officials shall be responsible to the electorate. Department Addendum. After the ratification of the Palm Silk treaty Mr. Silk remained on New Texas, married the daughter of a local rancher there, see file on First Ambassador Colonel Andrew Jackson Hickok, and is still active in politics on that planet, often in opposition to Solar League treaties, which he seems to anticipate with an almost uncanny prescience. Nadelenko re-read the Addendum, pursed his thick lips and sighed. There were so many ways he could be using Mr. Stephen Silk. For example, he looked at the TrID Star Map, both usefully and beautifully decorating his walls. Over there, where Hottie Ringo had gone, near Alder Baron Nine. Those were twin planets, one apparently settled by the equivalent descendants of the Edwards, and the other inhabited by the children of a Juke's Calacac Union. Even the Solar League ambassadors there had taken the viewpoints of the planets to whom they were accredited, instead of the all-embracing view which their training should have given them. Curious problem, and how would Stephen Silk have handled it?


So, deadlifting a heavy one rep is often really, really fun. Not much feels quite as cool as doing that, but most of the time, you don't want to get stuck testing your strength, testing your one RM, your one rep max, testing how much weight you can use. You want to spend more time building that strength. And to do that, you're going to need a few more reps, right? Because strength has somewhat of an endurance component to it. And so, you have to kind of figure out, how am I going to do my reps? Do I want to touch and go off the ground, or do I want to reset between each rep? Now, I've kind of always been, you know, most of my development, I've thought that the touch and go is kind of like hands down the good one to do, because it'll get you more reps practicing how to get that tension started in the bottom, rather than turning a RDL from the top and just hanging onto that tension and coming back up.  It works really well, especially for power lifters, because you need that exposure, right? When you're doing your power lifting event, you don't get the second rep, you only get the first rep. You only get to do one rep, so you need that rep to be as optimal as possible. And so, you want to practice through it. If I am doing just general training, though, is there any real issue with doing a touch and go off the ground? Most of the time, I would say, no. You want to make sure that you're not just slamming everything around, because oftentimes what happens is stuff starts to bounce and you lose your bar path, right? The bar will start to drift away from you. You'll get stuck on your toes, right? You have the various inertia and various momentum that's going all over the place, but you also have your fatigue building up, and when you put those things together, it's very easy to mess it up. So especially as you get later on in your set, you probably want to slow down a little bit. You want to keep that control so that you know you're doing it correctly or effectively, and you're not losing your bar path. You're not losing your leverage while you're doing everything. Anything higher than six reps, definitely. I am doing a touch and go, because I don't know if you've ever done a high or pretty high rep set of deadlifts, but it's pretty exhausting, because each rep, especially as it's heavy, can be pretty long, even if it's only, you say only two seconds, but two seconds is a really long time to have what, 200, 300 pounds, 400, 500 pounds, depending on how strong you are on your back, basically. So the touch and go has its own variation, or it has its own benefits. The other big thing that I do want to mention, when you're doing those higher rep sets, it's okay to get the metabolic fatigue. It's okay to get that burning sensation in your legs, and the touch and go kind of encourages that. You never let go of the tension, and the blood never perfuses everywhere, it never clears out all that stuff, and so it builds up that burning, and it gets you used to it, and it makes you a little bit tougher, but it also signals a little bit more hypertrophy stimulus. It tells your body to put on more muscle, and so when I get down here, even though I might be slowing down to make sure I keep my bar path and tension, and just leverage like we were talking about, I might just tap, like maybe there's broken glass on the ground, and I just initiate back up, I rip that bar right up. Big things are, if I'm doing higher rep sets, I do want more fatigue, I do want more metabolic fatigue, and if my goal is to pick up one rep, then I probably want to reset each rep, and so those are pretty much my thoughts on pausing versus stop-and-going during your deadlift. If you have any other thoughts, please leave them in the comments below.


Hey guys, welcome to Higan Iruthil. We have reached 100,000 milestone, the first milestone for the pre-registration and we will be receiving 30,000 credit points for this. This is only the first one. This came in after a few days of the announcement of the pre-registration, but aside from the pre-registration milestone, I'm gonna share this with you guys. Most of you probably haven't seen this. Please join their official Discord. Just go to their official Facebook page. You're gonna see all these details. You can pre-register using this link above here. Then there's an event link here. Join their official Discord. Type in Iruthil here I am in the Gateway channel. Okay, take note of that. Here's the link to their Discord. The official Discord also clicked the link. All of the details are here. The prices is going to be an official, sorry, a Nintendo Switch, an OLED version. Three winners of $50 Amazon gift card and 10 winners of $20 Amazon gift card. So what is there to lose? You just have to join their official Discord. Also, pre-register to the game. We are nearing 300,000. I'm sure I'm sure probably I'm predicting before the end of December we can reach 1 million probably on the third week of December. But again guys, we need all your support for this game. Pre-registration rewards are at stake. Then we have your Discord prizes for everyone who joins their Discord. And also guys, I want to share this with you. This screenshot was taken from my iPad. So is this true that we're expecting it on January 12th, 2023? So if that is the case, we have a month more or less to make sure that we reach the pre-registration rewards up to 1 million. Probably go more than 1 million because I'm sure the devs are very, very generous that they can extend a little bit more as up to even beyond the 1 million prizes or stuff that they're going to give us. So again, this is not official, but this is going to be expected at January 12th. I'm sure there will be adjustments. Either it's going to be near the start of January or probably with towards the end of January. So this is just an expected date, not really the launch date. So more or less, again, this is just a guide on what to expect for Higan and Ruthill, especially for those who are excited about this game. So again, guys, comment down in the comment section on your thoughts on the launch date, the Discord prizes, and also the 100,000 achievement milestone for the game for pre-registration so far. Thank you guys, take care, stay safe, is the warden, and I'm out of here.


So, first of all, I'll introduce myself. I'm Deepali Trivedi and I'm platform architect for Staples.com. And this session, as part of this session, I'm going to share my learnings, my experience, what we did at Staples and the general application of musical technologies for a scalable e-commerce platform. So if you are here from the last two days, you heard a lot about all these different vendors and companies who actually write, either write the products, NoSQL databases, or they provide the services, right? But this session is from the different angle. It's from a user. If you are part of a, like, if you are a developer architect, manager, executive at any IT company and you are looking at NoSQL, hearing a lot about it, how do you start? I mean, you have a scalability issue, you are not that happy with other things, but how do you really start and make a change in your organization? So this is more from the user point of view, and how do you apply, how do you change your mindset when you start working with NoSQL technologies or big data, and specifically about the scenarios where it can be helpful. I mean, it can solve each and every problem that is there in IT, but it can be applied to specific areas and it is really helpful there. So I'm going to share that. A few years back, when I started to hear a lot about big data and NoSQL, MongoDB, work at Central, everything, I always thought that it's more for search engines and social networks. I mean, it's not for, like, that I think I was working with Pearson and learning and education domain. I thought, yeah, it's great, yeah, very good, like, for PhD students and for search engines and social networks. But as I was introduced more and I started using it, like, in one day, like, we really decided to go with it, after using it for a few years, I realized that it can solve problems in any domain, actually. So I personally use it in learning context and educational websites, identity and authorization and any commerce, for sure. And this is why I thought I should share with everyone that this can solve problem in many other areas.  I hope you don't know how many of you buy from staples or check out on staples and go online and buy it. So for staples, forget about retail, just looking at staples.com is the second largest website in terms of revenue. So of course, scalability is the biggest challenge or one of the key areas, stability and scalability, especially when the holiday season will come, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving. I mean, that is the focus, scalability and stability. So I'll just start with some of the context around e-commerce.  So I think it's not a new domain. But just from the data modeling point of view, I always think of e-commerce as a key entity, and you can disagree with me. But I mean, I always see it revolving around user product and order. So for user, why user is important? Because they are going to pay for it. They are going to buy and you are going to get money from that. And we run a lot of analytics and a lot of logic off of user and what they buy. So we divide the user in all these different segmentation. Oh, this is the user. This is a set of user who buy electronics. These are the user who will generally go for all the printer related stuff. And we target them with different promotions and couponing and ads. So that's why this user, and there is a lot of things. I mean, I just try to capture the main entities, but there are a lot of other entities that goes with the user product. And again, for the user, as I said, we do a lot of things with the user. And I mean, there are many users who are the client of the website. I mean, we need scalability for this part of the system. Now I go to the products. So product is all the skew or skew set that we sell in e-commerce website. And it is part of category and catalog. Ideally, product should not be the need that much of a scalability because there is a fixed set of skew or skew set that you are selling. But with this whole change with marketplace concept, we are allowing all these other vendors to come to our website and sell this stuff. And that's why there are huge number of skew and skew sets on the website. And that's why even product is an entity that needs scalability for e-commerce. If I go to the third one is order, and you can tie it to the shopping cart because we do a lot of things with shopping cart as well. But the order is the final key when you get the money and you do the checkout. And it has all the integrations with the backend system and fulfillment system and inventory check and with the online pickups. All other things are tied to the order. So that is the last push that needed to finish the transaction. And order is the place where you really need the transaction. So we'll visit that in detail how it works out with NoSQL. So this is the very basic data model for e-commerce. Okay, so if you, and some of the slides, I mean, I'm just trying to capture the key aspect of the NoSQL adoption. Like, if you are coming from SQL background, like many of us, right? I mean, I'm coming from SQL background. I studied normalization to that during my engineering and then used it for five, seven years. And I thought I was exported like doing the normalization. I mean, I can work with business and I was for a few hours and have a perfect data model using normalization. And one day my phone turned upside down and there is no normalization. I have to think from other way entirely. So, and that's why I think when you are as a user, as an architect, as a developer, going to end up NoSQL from coming from SQL background, this is the key. You have to just forget about having this normalization and start thinking, you have to try to merge all your data and try to see very few number of tables or very few number of core entities. So, just take the example of user, right? So if you do normalization, like the relational database, you will create one table user and put first name, last name, other attributes there. When you come to address, you will see, oh, address, if a user can have multiple address. So I should put it in a separate table and have some references here. For user segment, again, it's a separate table. No, no, no, it should not be here, it's a data application. So we'll put it in separate table and whenever we want to get the information across the entities, we'll try to do the joints and then get the data. That is the usual way, right? Now, forget all about it. Go to the NoSQL and you have to start with this flat entity. So you should, you have user, you have first name, last name, address. When you go to address, address is the nested entity of the user entity. So you don't create a separate structure for that, separate document for that. But you embed that and you call it nested entity here and you put it there. Same way, all the segmentation, users who buy a printer, this, that, everything, you try to put it here. I mean, I should not say everything, otherwise you will have just one document in for the entire table or entire schema. That's not the way, and we'll go to the next one there. So when we started doing it, we argued a lot. Should we really put user as the nested entity of segment or should we put segment as the nested entity of user? And I tried to find some guidelines like how do we decide per case, right? I mean, I can tell as a happy, oh, for this scenario, this makes sense. But why and how do you repeat that for development? So I think many others are also calling the same thing as question-oriented schema design, right? You work with your analysts, you work with business people, you find all the action that end user will take on your website. Then you try to identify inputs and outputs. So ideally, you are trying to identify the queries that will run on your system. The key here is that all the parameters of the query should be part of one document or one table or whatever you call in no SQL terms, right? If you are doing columnary interest, it should be part of that one structure. Whether, how to divide, how to decide nested entities? So just two examples, and maybe that can give you some answer. So if you are trying to figure out, most of the time, you're trying to figure out what are the products viewed the most in last week, then you start with the product and the viewed by, users are nested entity as viewed by. So that you can run the query efficiently. Or if you are interested in what are all the products viewed by the particular user in last week, you are trying to target the user, then you can start with the user input viewed product as the viewed column there. So, but the key, you can do mistakes here. I mean, that's fine. But the part that is important is that all the input and output parameter of the query should be part of the one structure. And that is the key. So, sometimes as a user, like as a user of technology, you don't really care too much, like how Java does the GV, JVM, how they put the variables in heap and all this thing. Like you really sometimes don't really care how does all this data business put, share the data in this different partitions. Like you know, you want to know limited amount of knowledge so that you can do your work, right? You don't want to know each and everything about that technology that you're trying to use. But there are a few things you really have to understand about NoSQL before you start using it. I mean, you don't have to know each and everything, but there are two or three key concepts when you design your system using NoSQL and eventual consistency is one of that.  But we have used relational database for so long that we take this asset properties or transaction management as, like default, right? We think, oh, it's always there. But it's not always there when you start with NoSQL. So you have to understand whatever NoSQL technology that you choose, you have to understand whether it have eventual consistency, like weak consistency or strong consistency, like how does it work out and you have to design your scenarios accordingly. Just to give you a very, very basic example of eventual consistency, what it is, and this is a little bit of non-commerce example, that if you have an account in bank with $100 and you open two browsers and fire the event at the same time and try to deduct $60, if that bank website is using relational database, it can throw error for one of the transactions because it's real time consistency, immediate consistency. You can get error in one of your sessions that you don't have enough amount and things like that. But on the other side, if you go to ATM, right, if you somewhere you try to deduct the $60 or $70 from two different ATM, at that time you can get the money, but eventually you will get some message alert and your account will have minus balance because ATM is a different transactional context, so it can't really have global transaction across website and ATM. So I mean, at the end, after some time, after delay of few millisecond or second, it will match up, but it won't be the real time consistency. In eCourse where it's important, inventory check, right? If there is only last printer left and there are two users who are trying to buy the same printer, one of the users should get an error, but it might not happen in that way in real time if you are using no SQL. So you have to design your system that way so that you don't really deduct your money before you know that there is a printer result. And I can discuss that part in detail at the last, but I think we struggle a little bit when we try to design some of this type of a scenario that really need transactionalization using no SQL. OK, so again, I said sometimes you really don't want to know where your data is stored, right? But one key concept that you should know about no SQL is that all of your data or all of your tables are not in one server. It's actually divided, it's partitioned, and it's sharded, and it is on this different physical server. It makes the life of your IT department infrastructure thing very easy because you don't need one beefy server. I mean, you can have a few commodity servers and you are good to go. So it's good in that way. But just on the logic side, you don't understand that your data is divided here. And that's why that is the reason why you can't do the join with no SQL, right? Because the part of your table or part of your documents are divided everywhere. So ideally, you can't really do the join very effectively. Mostly you are coding at application layer, but you still have admin and others who are dealing with this configuration and this logic. So that is one more key aspect of it. So just to recap on design guidelines, you had to think about aggregation and nested entities overjoin. Whenever you say your data is not normalized, you had to be OK with some kind of data duplication. Because normalization is good at that. It will avoid the data duplication. But when you are saying that it's denormalized, there can be some data duplication in your system, you'd understand eventual consistency. Actually, you had to understand the cap theorem. You had to understand you can't get everything. You will either get any two out of consistency, availability, and partition tolerance. So most of the no SQL technologies let consistency go and focus on availability and partition tolerance. So whatever technology that you choose, you should understand what is the product that you are making out of this three. And then sharding and linear scaling. I mean, sharding is the mechanism, but what you get is linear scaling, which is the key benefit. If I go up, how do you really build the e-commerce data model? You decided you want to start with the no SQL, and you did some presentation, and your VP, your director, everyone is, oh, yeah, let's do it. How do you really start doing it? And I think there are many other steps in between that. But I think this is a little bit from the SQL mindset. But still, if you follow this, you will get the initial data model for your no SQL system. So first of all, you have to identify the operations. The operations that end user will perform on your website. You identify all the entities that is referred by that operation. And then you identify the attributes of the entity in context of this operation. And then you identify the relationship between these entities, and then you repeat this for all scenarios and combine the design at the end. So the example here. Very, very basic operations for e-commerce. Find product by category. Or add product to the card. So find product by category. It will refer to product and category. Or add product in the card will refer to shopping cart. And what are the attributes that is needed there? So for a product's name, or two items in stock, price, category, et cetera. For categories, ID, name, or list of products, card, same here. Now, what is the key? As I told you, you have to think about all the parameters needed for each operation. And it should be part of the same structure. So you said find product by category. So you need all the attributes of the product and category in context of that operation part of the same document. And that's how you can match your data model, whether it will work at the end or not. So you can see here product. Product will have skewned the price as whatever is the key entity of the product. But it has category as well. So that you can actually run the query and find product from the category. Or you can find the categories of that product. And the card, so add product to the card. So the card will have all the card attributes here. But at the same time, it will have product that is added to the card. What is the total of it? What is the user that is owning the card? Things like that. Same here for the user. You have all the user. But at the same time, you have segments or products that you bought, card that you have, things like that.  You have to look at each operation or each query and see whether you can find all the answer of that query from any one of your documents. And this is more documented or needed. But you can do this anyway. Why is a card separated document from user? I can see over here for you, you have a card also.  Duplicating. So we are running a lot more analytics and a lot more query on the card, just the card. So every time if we go through the user, it will add some delay to that. And here for the card, we will not have everything. It will have only a subset of the attributes that is needed for here. But this card will have everything. And that's why I said, when you do the denormalization, there will be some amount of data duplication. You can decide. I mean, it's always a trade-off. If you don't want that duplication, you have to be OK with running the query in certain ways. If I go to the next one, again, if you have used any of the NoSQL, I mean, this is no brainer for you. But I still wanted to give you some real queries or example how it can apply to the e-commerce domain. So for example, find product by skew, that is still, oh yeah, that is correct. So I'll say that is like db.catalogs.find. So I mean, I'm just trying to show how different or how similar it is to SQL. Update the card so it will have some kind of push, addition or upend kind of thing to the card and it will increment the subtotal and things like that. Find the user by zip code. This is interesting. And again, this is a whole new topic of using Hadoop. But I will visit that. But how can you, I mean, there are few operations. There are information that is data-intensive, right? And time-intensive. And that doesn't really work out well for real-time queries. But if you want to see some of the trend long-term, we really need analytics and we need some other weekends. So this is the example for that, MapReduce. If you want to aggregate all total orders by zip code, you want to see how effective our website or our campaign or our company in this one particular region, you can map and then reduce and try to run it on orders and find like number of orders by zip code. Actually, if you want to do this for the last two years, you really need MapReduce. But if you want to do it for a shorter time period, like for a month or less than that, you can still do it with this kind of property. It doesn't take that long. So again, because I showed you a lot about MongoDB, just to give another variation of data modeling for e-commerce using Cassandra.  I can't explain you column and column family and super column and super column family here. But I always think of Cassandra as a recursion of table, right? I mean, if you have one table and you just take out one column and put another table there, I mean, that's how I always think of Cassandra data model. And so here I try to capture the user as a part of a super column family. So each user will make one row. So one row, each row is consist of one user. So that is the key, user one. The value will have again a column family. And in that column family, the first column is product spot and that will have two products. Then cards that will have products in total both. Again, the second row is user two and user two is the key. And again, the column family there. So that is how you can do it. And then you have to figure out the whole new syntax for your queries and things like that. Map header will remain the same. Okay. So next I'll go to analytics. But what I want to say for just on the nosical part is that as part of this presentation, I'm not trying to take a stab at best nosical technology for e-commerce. I mean, I don't think even I have expertise or even there is a finite answer in industry for the best nosical technology for any domain, for say.  I mean, I don't think there is any e-commerce platform can decide one day I want to rewrite whole system, whole site in nosical. You really can't do it. You have to think incrementally. So you take subsystem of your website, you take one component, try to use nosical and put it out there, see how it goes. And then, so migration is a whole new topic and you learn from your one implementation and apply it everywhere. And it's, I mean, we are going that idea and I don't know how everyone feels about it that maybe we can use different nosical technology for different subsystem of our website. We have to see how that goes. But it's hard to find one nosical technology that works for every scenario for such huge website. So that is just to share some of the thoughts that is going on for some. I don't hear that many slides. If you have a question, you can ask me. I have a question. Sure. Kind of back on the thing where you said I have the three different ways of looking at the data as a user of the old one. And so I have this product, the red paper, and it was $24. And, but you now have a price increase, $26. So does it happen such that if I happened to have gotten in at the $24, then my shopping cart was like $24, even though somebody else who may have come in because of the fact it's not consistent across, they will come up with the $26. So when you don't have consistency, like immediate consistency, this can be one of the scenario. And what we argued at the hard time is that we, I mean, for stipless.com and many other websites, they don't really change price in the middle of the day. They do it like one batch at the night. So anyways, we are not doing it real time. So it doesn't matter. Like we can invalidate all the web session at that time whenever we change the price or we can do some logic there. Like one doing that one time thing is easier than doing it like for every second, right? So then we thought we are just arguing or we are worried about the wrong problem and that was the conclusion. Because generally there are not many sites who will change the price in the middle of the day. Okay, but also I have price here, I have price here, I have price here. And is, from a data management point of view, how do you know that those are all price relation? It's all the same thing. And so in one system, there are different prices? You are talking about? In your system, you had basically three different documents. All had price in it, but you know that those all mean the same thing, those all mean price. From a different point of view, how did you know that those are all the same price? How do you keep it consistent if they're all called price? Yes, so actually for most of the e-commerce website works this way and our website also works this way that we have a different system, subsystem that we call PDB, like product data management. And we store all the pricing information there. So most of the price that we'll copy is the done product, orders that we'll save the price for, but ideally we won't have the real price fitting into our notes equal to store. So PDB is entirely separate subsystem that runs entirely in different, different, what do you call? It runs out of the website and it just has the integrations. Every night it will push the data. After that, the data is read only. So in our website, wherever you are seeing price, it's read only, most of the time it's all done. Either a user already bought that product, that paper at that price and that's why that price doesn't matter or that is the price for that day. And at the night it will be pushed again. No, I got to be in the morning. Sorry? That's what you want to ask. No, it's one of those things where you kind of say, I'm going to work on the price document, right? You're going to go work on the, a different document, the order document. And he's going to work on the third document, whatever it was. If we're not talking, how do I know, how do you know to call it price when I call the price and he knows to call it price? How do you keep track of that? So every night the data will be pushed and all the data. But when you defined it, even when you said this is the data that I want, how do you know that you should call it price? Maybe you say, I'm going to call it the sale number or whatever. No, no. And that's why we have to decide on this first, some basic structure of the document. Otherwise, all these different people will refer to this prices differently and then they can't really, yeah, yeah, definitely. We have to come up with, and that's why I know theoretically we can change the structure anytime we want and all that, but it doesn't work out that well with real scenarios because you have your analytics running on that. Today, suddenly I decide, oh, this is not price. This is my sales price. It won't work for analytics, right? Because it's running off of that. Or some other tools that is running off of that. So, yeah, theoretically, yes. I can still change my document structure and do my website will still work, but it will mess up something. And that's why I'm putting a lot of emphasis on this data modeling. Ideally, if you really go to any NoSQL tutorial, anything, they won't talk about schema. They don't talk that much about data modeling because it's flexible. You can change it as you are, but it doesn't work in real scenarios. That's why I agree with you, totally. Okay, but do you have anything that you can either do someplace else or something? Yes. That you keep track of price is always called price? Yes, so this is our take. That for e-commerce, 80% of transaction is read only. User will just browse, browse, browse, and then they'll buy. So what we are trying to do is that we are trying to use NoSQL. We are thinking about using NoSQL in those read-only scenarios instead of writing those scenarios. And that's why wherever we are writing the price, that system is still SQL.  So we don't have to worry that much about consistency. Oh yeah, and that's the thing I said, right? I mean, some of, maybe at the end, I shall say what is actually we are doing, what is the plan to do, and what is actually done. We can't really take our whole website. I mean, it's not possible to take the whole website and do NoSQL, right? We are just trying to look at this new subsystem that we are writing, for example, reserve online and pick up in store, okay? So we are trying to look at that and trying to see how we can use NoSQL in that scenario. So it's a very small subset of thing, but we are trying to think about this big bank just to get an idea how it works out, how can we do data modeling, how does it look like, and what are the areas that can give us the pain points. So that is it. Sure. So you talked about data being pushed, but it's been right happened somewhere and the data is pushed over. So have you had any concern over how long that takes and whether you need to bring some pieces of the system down or something like that? So today it works that way and it works really well. So every night something will run and it will load the data, but it will be enabled exactly at midnight or some point of time. So it will be loaded first, but it will be enabled for everything, like at one particular, like 3 a.m. in the morning. So that, I mean, we are not really worried about the loading part, like how long would it take and things like that, not worried about that part. So basically getting the data was a little more than how it's not really that big of a issue. There are a few things that is tricky there, but overall, no, I don't think it's that big of a thing because we are doing it one time. Yeah, sure. What is the usage of your loss equality guy? I'm still not able to understand. Yeah, it's not heavy for students. And maybe we'll go to the next one. So we are looking at the no-sequel technologies for a few specific areas, whatever the new areas that we are. And more on analytic side and more on, I don't know how much you know about staples, but we are using IBM commerce as our core engine. So, but we are trying to come up with all this new subsystem on cloud and open source and using no-sequel. So that is the new initiative and we are thinking about all this for that issue. Is it for order management, posting real-time transactions? No, no, no, no. So these are not your actual documents for cart management? Oh, no, no, no. This is just an example, right? This is not just the example, but this is some of the blueprint of the things. And once I'll get more feedback, that can help us deciding the directions. Good question. I agree with the use of the technology. The data has to be stored in the no-sequel. And for persistence, it has to go in layers, get stored in Hadoop or in your relational data systems. So, for that system to understand that the order is coming from this particular user, it has to be mapped. This ID has to be tracked with that system, right? So how do you do that? Very true. And that's the problem going with the subsystem, right? If you just decide to do no-sequel just for one subsystem, all your other relational systems need that foreign key that you are stuck with. And that's why you have to have that foreign key and you have to have something which will map your foreign key with this user ID, whatever you're talking about. And that's one of the biggest challenges we are seeing with this subsystem design and with this migration and things like that. And that's why we are trying to go with the systems first that doesn't really deal with this core entities, but it will have some, like I'll give you the example, right? It was online and pick up in store or something like that, which is really a top layer on the core website. Can you? So as of today, you have some kind of a mapping table which maps this mostly for unique keys with your relational data as unique keys? No, no, not today. Not today. This is the plan. This is not in production. But we have done very similar at Pearson. I have done very similar at Pearson and where we were trying to just take the user, just the authentication part and map it at MongoDB and everything else was in relational. But that was true so far. So we never had foreign key. It was like, it was vertically partitioned. So only there was a separate user schema and web services that we could replace very easily. And user was interacting with all other entities via web service. And that's why it was easy to really take that subsystem and rewrite it using NoSQL. So if we have the application like that, it's easier to just take one part and rewrite it. So I have a question there. You have a user's entity and over there, there is a product spot. That's one to many relationship. So is that product spot only for that particular session or it is mainly for the history also?  They buy the same product in reputating quantity, right? Like paper. So they will buy the same paper but like every month or like they buy the quantity will matter but not the total number of products they bought is really that different. But if there are like large number of products bought by one single user, we have to decide like how much data we want to store for that immediate system and how much data we want to store for analytics and long term data. So I mean if there's something like Amazon, they can't really store all the products bought by that user in your immediate scheme. So you can decide how much data you want to store. Do you guys take the data from the SQL store and merge it with like the order data for example which is maybe stored in a SQL store and send it to the do for large scale aggregation? I tell you one thing, whenever we start this migration order either it will never be turned into no SQL or it will be the last thing to turn into no SQL. So that's for sure. For now there is order is something that anyways it's a subset of we are using sterling for that. So it's more like a saspis vendor product for us. So we are not looking at the art but we know all the transactions and complexity around consistency will come into picture when we go to the order and that's the, we are not worried more about the checkout and everything because it's all like, all we just punch into Bank of America and get something out. So we are not worried about that part but we are more worried about the inventory and few other things that really is. It's actually more downstream towards Hadoop. If you're joining the order data from your SQL store with the stuff in your SQL store and sending all that stuff down for Hadoop processing. We are not doing it now but that's the one area we are thinking a lot about. So here, right? So what is, I think I just came out of there but what is more important for e-commerce? On one side you have all your sales data, right? On the other side you have all your co-opening and promotions and ads and everything. How do you correlate that?  You want to sell it at the price where user will buy it but you still make the profit out of it and that's why all this cross channel analytics is the key. Today for IT the problem is that there are many, cross, many ways you can sell data and there are many ways you can target user. Retail, tablet app, mobile app, then web store, there are global other, like Staples have 34, presence in 34 countries. So how do you really reconcile all this data and how do you see what is effective and what is not effective? And that's where we are struggling. I mean ideally we can really plug into all these different SQL and write one centralized SQL database or have some ETL and EDW but it makes it very, very brittle because if retail or if a website will change the data model, all the CTL and everything has to change, everything has to go at once and it's not scalable. I mean we get the data like 10 days back but what if we want to use the data from Black Friday on Cyber Monday, right? I mean we really need new real-time data and that's where we are thinking about using Hadoop and if all the system can send the text output or logs, several logs, et cetera and we can fit into the Hadoop cluster and run some map reviews or high because we still want to store our data long-term in SQL if we really want to or something like that we can still read this text file and have some dashboards or reports and everything out of it, some conclusion out of it and I think that implementing this will be easier than changing the core website into no SQL and this will have immediate success or immediate benefits in terms of that. I don't know how, I mean in that I mean I want the feedback on all these things because we are going to build that and we are thinking very seriously about that. Again I said I'm not going to compare all this no SQL technologies but just very basic overview of challenging advantages and disadvantages of SQL and no SQL. I think asset properties and this transaction management is the key. We are so used to it and there are many advantages with that so that is definitely the plus on SQL side but on the disadvantages. How many of you have tried zero, I mean how many of you get this push from your management that we should do zero downtime deployment and all this like DML changes are always complicated to manage for zero downtime deployment. Like you really want to run this DML queries and then fill the previous data and fix the other data and then that's kind of complicated. So it makes it brittle. There is no real linear scalability to support the master data volume and I mean it struggled with the lightweight analytics and things like that. On the other side no SQL grade, you don't have to worry about schema and brittleness and I mean it works really well for e-commerce because it's all read. Like most of the things are read until an early user will decide to buy that it's all read. So it works really well for that scenario. For normal IT I think the expertise and try to adopt this new technology and make the changes is one of the challenges. Like it's not the technical challenge but it's a challenge for sure and sometimes limited query capabilities and I think there is a lot of improvement in the last few years in this area. Like I mean earlier there was not a control for no SQL but I think all these companies are making progress in that one and migration is the key thing.  Again you don't have to worry about matching it and mapping it to different SQL and things like that. You can directly process the logs and tags and it's highly scalable in the expertise and all of the things are the challenges here. If you have any questions you can ask now. I would love to get your feedback if you think something makes sense, something doesn't make sense. This is not the direction that we should go or we should go. Please send me an email. This is my post email but you can, it's at dipali.3vedi.strippers.com is another one and that's all. Thank you. Thank you all for listening.


Good morning Higgits Friday. So our tour ended last night in Los Angeles. Almost every night for the last month I've stood at the side of the stage during your set and watched you play because I love your music and I love watching you perform it and also because it brings back memories. I think about the first time I saw you play in front of a crowd, 45 people in Grand Rapids, Michigan almost a decade ago now, or I think about other nights, Edinburgh, the first VidCon, or 8808 in Chicago when Harry Potter fans were singing your songs so loudly I could barely hear your voice over theirs. And I think about how later that night in 2008 we hung out with Amy Cross-Rosenthal, my friend who died earlier this year. Here's an Amy story I've been telling on tour, so back in 2005 Amy who was a children's book writer and memoirist and professional seeker of wonder in the world invited me to one of her readings. And at the time I was in one of my periods of intense unwellness. I felt like I was losing my whole self to intrusive thought spirals, but this particular episode was accompanied by a chest-crushing depression. I found nothing enjoyable, I struggled to get out of bed, the usual. It was at once absolutely excruciating and completely boring. Susan Sontag wrote that depression is melancholy minus its charms. Somehow I managed to get to the event but I wasn't having much fun at it because I was alone and I was stuck with these invasive thoughts I couldn't stop having and also Amy kept wanting people to participate in what she was doing and I hate audience participation. It just makes me very nervous because one, sometimes the audience doesn't deliver and also two, I have paid for the show to be entertained, not to be part of the entertainment. So anyway I was just in a terrible mood and then seemingly out of nowhere Amy started talking about how back in World War I all of these British soldiers who didn't understand why they were being asked to fight and die for tiny patches of ground far from their home started singing a song to the tune of that New Year's Eve song Ald Lang Sein. They would sing we're here because we're here because we're here because we're here. It was this recursive lament, an acknowledgement that there was no why, that life in the trenches was meaninglessness all the way down. But that night in 2005, Amy completely transformed that song for me without ever changing the words. Amy made me understand that we were here, meaning that we were together and even when we felt alone we weren't really because we were part of this vast and deeply interconnected us and also that we were here, even if only for a little while. And maybe we'll never know why we are here but we can still proclaim in hope that we are here. That night, Amy made me understand that hope is not foolish or idealistic or misguided, hope is true. And I really believe that. I really believe that hope is the correct response to the arc of history. Hank, some years are longer than others and 2017 has been a long one for me. It's been good and bad and difficult and amazing and joyful and terrifying and very long. But we're here. We're here. Hank, I'll see you on Monday. And now Hank, William? Yeah, I'm extremely scared. If somebody has a laptop with an internet connection. I'm getting kind of tired of this pre-publication I'll never have it in my life