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Why is JBIs solution supposed to be a better alternative than the UN sponsored machine made by Blest (founded by Akinori Ito)?
IIRC, /. reported on this earlier this year, but no-one mentions a comparison between these solutions.

Check out the article and the video about Blests "plastic to oil" solution.

From what I can see, two of Blests major advantages, is that the equipment is so small that it's portable, and that it requires no chemical additives to do its thing.
That's going to be a huge factor when it comes to introducing this to the developing countries, which we most definitely will need to do in the long run.

WTF is giving these people shitty little computers going to accomplish? Why not invest the money in reversing desertification?

Australia has a low population, but it is very urbanized:

http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator.cfm?IndicatorID=30&country=AU#rowAU

In 2005, 92% of the population of Australia lived in urban areas - ranked 11th. In contrast, only 80.8% of the population of the USA lived in urban areas - ranked 38th.

Population density is just used as a bogus excuse for many things in Australia. Sure, Bruce in Birdsville and the other 50 people in town might have to wait a while, but they chose to live in a godforsaken remote location.

Actually, American workers have been doing worse, not better, since free trade came in. Real wages have gone down, and the gap between the rich and the poor has grown in America (and in a lot of other Western nations). This basically means that your average person has it tougher than her parents did. Free trade is not the only reason, but when you look at it, you can see that it would be a major contributor to this. With free trade, workers in the US have to compete with workers everywhere else in the world, and they can't compete with workers who are living in poverty and making subsistence wages. Naturally, with this kind of competition, there is strong downward pressure to lower wages.

Ironically, the automotive sector is to some extent immune from this effect, because it's cheaper to make the cars and the parts for them on the same continent they'll be sold in, hence there is less downward pressure on auto-workers' wages than there would be on those of other manufacturing workers.

Lastly, you do have a good point about protectionism being akin to racism. There is a strong ethical argument for free trade, specifically that workers in China or Malaysia or India should be allowed to compete against workers in the West. There's also some evidence that this competition is doing some good for workers in China, in particular, and that wages are increasing there. Check out this paper for some interesting information about income disparity around the world. It's out of date to the extent that it doesn't take into account the recent global meltdown, but is enlightening nonetheless.

offtopic/
The biggest problem I have with our current economic system is the widening income gap between the rich and the poor. This gap is probably not caused by "free trade" in the broad sense, but probably is caused (in part) by free trade as it is currently practised, where corporations are given the legal framework to disregard governments when they please. If you're interested about the curious effects of the widening income gap on our society, google up "Sick People or Sick Societies" which was a two-part special on Ideas (CBC Radio) that aired a year or two ago. CBC charges for a copy, but I was able to find the mp3s online for free, fairly easily. /offtopic

GVU has a nice site for viewing this kind of data (figures from 2002). Alternatively you can check the UN data directly (figure from 2000 since the US figures apparently aren't out yet). Both give a figure of about 7 per 1000 live births for the US and 3 for Sweden (the best performing nation), putting the US in roughly 33d place.

Not horrible, but certainly not great either, let alone "the best".

Tons of economic research on ((dis)advantages) of use of FLOSS and Open Standards in government has been conducted by UNU MERIT in their FLOSS: Policy Support programme.

Besides that, depending on your audience and/or the specific IT portfolio you're addressing, cost might not be a strong argument, and it's certainly not the only one. Perhaps you also need to identify more intrinsic benefits such as government transparancy and "digital durability".

As far as I can tell you are the first communist person to respond on this thread. From your signature I take it you go to a Russian University? And you study Math, Lisp, and Linux there? Very cool! Are you ethnic Vietnamese living in Russia or ethnic Russian?

You may be right about life in Vietnam and life in GDR or Poland. However, that is because Vietnam was such a backwards country from the beginning. They had a lot of catching up to do. But Poland is no longer communist. And the life there is still much better than the life of the average Vietnamese. And either way, we ultimately found out that the sort of economy that the Soviet Union was trying to create was not sustainable or practical and even Russia had to move towards a more free-market economy.

According to:

http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator_detail.cfm?IndicatorID=116&Country=PL

The life expectancy in Poland in the year 2000 was 68.6 years. In Vietnam it was 64.9. And according to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

The nominal GDP per capita of Vietnam is $829. In Poland it is now $11,072. Huge difference. And compare that to what it was in Poland before they became a free country. Huge difference.

Had GDR and Poland not suffered communism it is a pretty sure bet that they would have had even better lives. Saying life there was better than life in Vietnam is not saying anything at all.

I know many party members in Vietnam. In private they all tell me they love the Doi Moi "new thinking" which brought in the free market economy which made them richer. Now they are working on slowly moving away from the communist form of government. It has not escaped them that the more they get away from communism/socialism (two different but related things, I know) the more successful their country becomes. This study:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119050150/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

shows a 42% increase in GDP attributable to "Doi Moi" aka the move away from the socialist system to a market economy.

But they have to somehow maintain the pride of the people. They are all brainwashed into loving Ho Chi Minh (similar to how many Russians still like Lenin). They forget the bad and remember only the good (a lot of which is unsubstantiated). They spend a lot of time in school studying about him instead of studying reading, writing, arithmetic which puts them behind educationally. They have to somehow change course while the elders who got 2 million Vietnamese killed in their war to destroy their own country try to save face. They can't just come out one day and say it was all a big mistake and "I'm sorry." It would destroy their pride. So they must make the very slow change which ensures everyone feels good about it.

Right now they are fighting the scourge of corruption. There are far too many selfish people ruining the economy with the efficiency sapping corruption.

Yes, there was corruption in the government of South Vietnam. Because it was run by Vietnamese. That was part of their society at the time. And at that time the entire country was corrupt from north to south. It makes me wonder: Does communism bring corruption? Or does the corruption allow the communism to happen? It is hard to tell.

Things are slowly getting better in Vietnam as they change their society.

But there is still so far to go. Petty crime is everywhere. On Christmas day (3 days ago) my mother in law was standing in front of a very nice shopping area (Diamond Plaza) in downtown Saigon. A thief ran by and ripped the necklace right off of her neck. Fortunately, she was not injured. The communist police there do nothing about it. They are too busy confiscating peoples motorbike

Hyperbole, thy name is Slashdot!

Huh? Have you compared what people were paying for solar cells back in the 70s to what they are now? And even today's prices are inflated by manufacturing shortages (the market isn't stable). If manufacturing actually met demand, we'd be paying about $3/W today, not $4.80/W. And this ignores CIGS production like NanoSolar's that's just now coming online. NanoSolar claims $1/W would still be profitable for them. The other CIGS manufacturers also (quite reasonably) anticipate very low production costs. Sure, indium is rare (about as common as silver), but you only need a tiny amount of it.

As for the necessity of high efficiency, it's not neccessary. Even if just a small fraction of the world's urban area was paved with inefficient solar cells, it'd still power the world. I don't care to repeat this calculation yet again (I do it about once a month it seems), but look up China's total urban area (just China's) and do the math with 10% efficient cells (less than NanoSolar's) at, say, 20% coverage and an average 100W/m^2, then compare that to the entire world's electricity demand.

As for what potential efficiency we're capable of, it's actually looking up. But not for CIGS -- for more conventional semiconductor cells, which aren't likely to be cheap enough to panel the world. We're up to a staggering 42.8% now (Honsberg and Barnett) -- and the record keeps growing at a rather surprising clip. And there's more potential for that number to keep growing up to 60-70% or so. There are three technologies pushing this -- the ability to get multiple electrons out of a single photon, the use of integrated beam splitters so that different parts of the cell can be optmized to specific parts of the solar spectrum, and the use of phosphor coatings that can be excited to release photons in a desired energy range. These technologies may not end up running our grid, but they'll be running our satellites, our malibu lights, our self-illuminated highway signs, and so forth.

Back to the initial topic: Just to drive home the point as to how much photovoltaic prices have been dropping, let's put in some historical price points (in non-inflation-adjusted dollars):

1956: Bell solar cell: $300/W .
Early 1970s: Bergman's improvements lowers the price from then $100/W to $20/W

Specifically (in 1994 dollars):
1976: ~$51
1977: ~$38
1978: ~$27
1979: ~$21
1980: ~$18
1981: ~$15
1982: ~$14
1983: ~$11
1984: ~$11
1985: ~$10
1986: ~$9
1987: ~$8
1988: ~$8
1989: ~$8
1990: ~$8
1991: ~$7
1992: ~$7
1993: ~$6
1994: ~$6

In non-inflation-adjusted dollars, solar prices were at a minimum in the early '00s (~4$/W, if I recall correctly), and rose up until this summer due to supply shortages, when they started to go down again. And with the CIGS companies, the prices can be expected to go down a lot over the next several years. Anyways, I really don't see how anyone can look at the numbers and act like solar hasn't been advancing by leaps and bounds since it was first turned from a laboratory curiosity into a commercial product in the '50s.

That's only true if the density of housing stays the same - and Australia is one of the most urbanised countries on the planet (see here), so density is likely to drop rapidly outside urban areas. I don't doubt that you do know people who are just outside ADSL range (indeed, my parents' house here in the UK is *right* on the edge), but 91% of the Australian population is already covered by broadband.

Management of the environment is constant compromise since nothing is perfect. However. Since burning coal is the major SOURCE of Cd in the environment ...a quick web search reveals a sense of the tonnage: http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80841e/80841E0c.htm a balanced view considers the following. Which is cleaner? a) a highly controlled manufacturing process b) under-regulated coal bonfires belching Cd in the air and disgorging Cd in the ash. Bonus question: for extra credit what other nasty stuff comes out of a smokestack? ---537

That summary is over-concise. The 1979 Islamic Revolution was a result of growing unease with the US-backed monarch, installed through the 1953 coup when the elected prime minister didn't want to share the country's oil with the West. Say what you will, but under the Islamic government education improved, with female literacy improving tremendously.

The issues that the Iranian government is known for abroad are not necessarily interesting to normal Iranians. My Iranian friend happened to be there during the British hostage thing. The Iranians saw their government stance merely as a silly show-off. The Iranians I know are unhappy with the low economic growth and high unemployment rates rather than theological tensions.

While I agree with some of what you say, infant deaths rates are LOWER in Cuba then the US https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world -factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html Cuba has invested in educating the people. On a trip there last year I required a hospital stay and will clearly state that their health system is well run, funded and staffed. Compare the health related section between Cuba http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/country.cfm?country=CU and the US http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/country.cfm?country=US and it is clear that they while they may do a lot of stuff to the negative of their people, health care is not one of them.

While I agree with some of what you say, infant deaths rates are LOWER in Cuba then the US https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world -factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html Cuba has invested in educating the people. On a trip there last year I required a hospital stay and will clearly state that their health system is well run, funded and staffed. Compare the health related section between Cuba http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/country.cfm?country=CU and the US http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/country.cfm?country=US and it is clear that they while they may do a lot of stuff to the negative of their people, health care is not one of them.

China and India pollute substantially less per person than any EU country or the US. It would be absurd to bind them to a treaty when other countries are polluting 10x if not greater than those nations per capita. It would be like saying: "We got to industrialization first, so we're the only ones who get to benefit! Oh and you have to clean up just as much as us even though we've made a bigger mess." I'm really sick and tired of hearing the "Why isn't China/India bound by Kyoto?" argument, especially on this website. 1. As I stated above, they are polluting far less, even if all Kyoto countries were to reduce emissions by the 5-10% demanded of them, and China and India doubled their GHG emissions, EU and US would still pollute more per capita. http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/?2275 Gives an insightful image of pollution levels worldwide. http://www.carbonplanet.com/home/country_emissions .php as does this. Note China: 3.05 India: 1.34 USA: 24.09 As anyone can see, they have a LONG way to go. 2. Kyoto only binds countries for 2008-2012. After it expires, expect the UNFCCC to draft a new climate protocol. One day, when India and China are serious polluters they will curb emissions.

I like the way the map of greenhouse gases makes Alaska and northern Canada look like the ginormous centers of pollution, while Mexico (ever seen the air in Mexico City) looks ozone friendly!

Is the ongoing threat of far right political parties in Europe (the BNP, Le Pen, etc) the reason why Europe's socialist governments sink so much money into subsidizing their rail systems, whereas the United States has no need, and therefore couldn't care a whit about poor Amtrak?

I ran the numbers recently as well, here is what I came up with. Note that I didn't do any actual measurements and relied only on what I could find in google with a few minutes searching. I've made some pretty generous (read, unrealistically optimistic) assumptions about what the human body is capable of and what people will put up with to have power.

Here is a ballpark estimation of the practicality of human power generation.

Let's assume that a person who's profession was power generation would be highly fit and well suited to long hours turning a generator at high output. If such a person could maintain an electrical output of 400W for 10 hours a day he would produce 4 kilowatt hours of electrical energy (ignoring conversion loss for the sake of simplicity). This is beyond mere 'Olympic' performance and well into the realm of the 'heroic', similar to a good bicycle sprint for 10 hours.

Given a heroic muscular efficiency of 30% (beyond the human normal range of 14-27%) this 4 kilowatt hours represents about 13kWh of input power, or food. This is about 11,000 dietary calories. I'll presume that the waste heat is too low-grade for power generation, but could be used to offset living space heating requirements during cold weather.

If we feed our hero nothing but soybeans (inexpensive and fairly energy dense at 1.75cal/gram and 0.00025 cents per gram in bulk ($6.80 for 60lb) he will need about 6.25 kilos of beans a day, at a price of about $1.60.

So your human power will cost in the range of 40 cents per kilowatt hour, or about 4 times the price of grid electrical power, presuming you can find teams of heroes willing to donate their time for free.

The US consumes around 4,000,000,000,000 kilowatt hours per year. At a rate of 1460 kWh per hero per year, you will need to employ 2,700,000,000 people (almost half the world population) each year to produce the required electrical power. Feeding them will require about 6,100,000,000,000 kilos of beans a year, or about 90 times the annual US soybean crop. You may be able to reduce the number of people required slightly with a methane capture system :) You can probably increase efficiency by feeding the heros that die in the line of duty to the living heros, thereby recyling a hundred or 2 pounds of material.

A typical household in the US consumes about 30 kWh per day. Consider that this is about 8 heroes pedaling generators in your basement, consuming a 40 pound bag of soybeans each day.

Powering a typical smallish refrigerator requires about one kilowatt-hour per day, so it would only take one hero two and a half hours to keep your food cold (or, if he is charging a battery, 5 hours after losses).

A typical real person could reasonably be expected to produce 200W for an hour a day (maybe 2 for extremely dedicated individuals), certainly enough to charge small devices like laptops, but just a drop in the bucket next to the power used by a typical person.

Kinda puts the power of fossil fuels into perspective.

refs:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/reps/enduse/er01_us.ht ml
http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen.html
http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator_detail.cfm?I ndicatorID=46&Country=US
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice &dbid=79
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/06032 2113511.htm
http://coachesinfo.com/category/rowing/77/
http://homepage.mac.com/moises.santillan/paper

Nope. Kerala has the second lowest per-capita GDP in India - the lowest being Bihar.

To be among the richest 10% of adults in the world required $61,000 in assets, and more than $500,000 was needed to belong to the richest 1%, a group which

In 1995, the production of a single six-inch silicon wafer required 3,200 cubic feet of bulk gases, 22 cubic feet of hazardous gases, 2,275 gallons of deionized water, 20 pounds of chemicals, and 285 kilowatt hours of electrical power. In the process, 25 pounds of sodium hydroxide, 2,840 gallons of waste water, and 7 pounds of miscellaneous hazardous wastes were generated."

This doesn't apply only to the computer science industry of course: what big corporations in, say, hollywood marketing that make plastic happy meal toys for movies, and plastic super-soaker water guns are doing is shortsited and wrong too. There's plenty of more sustainable forms of entertainment: like chess, checkers, and capture the flag with bamboo water guns. Sure, we'll probably never run out of aluminum and steel. But that doesn't mean finding such resources is as easy as digging a hole in a field. No, in today's world resources are getting harder to find and aren't often the easy berries in the field anymore. It's gotten to where some companies in metal mining have investigated and are seriously taking into consideration mining under the ocean

http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business /stories/technology/10/08/8goldrush.html and in oil, well most people have their own suspicions.

But most people planning on buying new computers probably don't consider this; while many people buy computers on a need basis, I suspect many others probably buy when they don't need to to keep pace with technology. With the allure of time conveniences and great performance associated with new technologies, its demanding, but as long as nerds takes steps similar to prolonging the use of an old computer to save resources, at least part of the population is not going to run into a doomsday dumpster world.

While I myself am all for unregulated business, I think it's important to achieve sustainability, not so much for the current general population, but for my own interest in the future population. For example, I read on a website that

it is now widely agreed among both economists and physical scientists that energy or mineral resource scarcity is not likely to be a growth limiting factor, at least for the next half-century or so.

As an example of the importance of recycling or continuing using copper and other such things in computers now, diesel used to be 10cents a gallon when my grandpa just started fishing with his own boat in the 1950's or so; I'm sure the price of copper and other such things have risen similarly. And I suspect that's the way its going to continue rising from today on. If something's scarce, recycle it and make a buck longterm while at it.

At some point there should be plenty of old people's houses vacant, but that just doesn't show on their price tags right now.

Sweden: 2005 = 83.4% of 9.04 mil
United States: 2005 = 80.8% of 298.21 mil

At the end of the day, I don't think it does any good to have a pissing contest between the United States & Europe over internet connectivity, especially since we're arguing over an unscientific poll... What we really need to do is confront the US cable companies over why there is such a delay in trickling down new technology ...

Sweden: 2005 = 83.4% of 9.04 mil
United States: 2005 = 80.8% of 298.21 mil

At the end of the day, I don't think it does any good to have a pissing contest between the United States & Europe over internet connectivity, especially since we're arguing over an unscientific poll... What we really need to do is confront the US cable companies over why there is such a delay in trickling down new technology ...

One thing I haven't seen mentioned recently in the comments on Slashdot is the idea of the Precautionary Principle (http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80841e/8084 1E0o.htm#12.%20The%20precaution%20principle/. By its very nature, good science is uncertain- its investigations rarely produce evidence that points in only one direction, and the whole point of the scientific method is to avoid coming to dogmatic, unjustified beliefs.

This produces problems when science and politics come together, because of the way science is treated by popular culture and popular politicians. Essentially, science is popularly viewed and portrayed as being a source of certainty. This is why the extremely small number of global warming naysayers always are referred to as scientists (irrespective of whether their credentials are respected or relevant). It creates the illusion that "science" has yet to arrive at its intended goal: absolute certainty. But as any good scientist will tell you, scientific truth is always provisional.

Thus, the trouble with doing something about global warming is that there is a disjunction between the sort of certainty (absolute) that politicians facing re-election and pressure groups want before acting, and the sort of certainty (provisional, always subject to revision) that scientists can, in good faith and following the strict methodology of science, give. Enter the precaution principle, which basically states that if you have a reasonably likely possibility of really bad future outcomes, you should try to do something about it, even if it's possible those outcomes don't come to pass. To me, global warming fits this scenario.

Significantly, the ratio of potentially useful natural compounds to compounds screened is higher in marinesourced materials than with terrestrial organisms. There is, therefore, a higher probability of commercial success. Potential applications for marine organisms include: pharmaceuticals; enzymes; cryoprotectants; cosmaceuticals; agrichemicals; bioremediators; nutraceuticals; and fine chemicals. All the major pharmaceutical firms, including Merck, Lilly, Pfizer, Hoffman-Laroche and Bristol-Myers Squibb, have marine biology departments. Estimates put worldwide sales of marine biotechnology-related products at US$ 100 billion for the year 2000. Profits from a compound derived from a sea sponge to treat herpes were estimated to be worth US$ 50 million to US$ 100 million annually, and estimates of the value of anti-cancer agents from marine organisms are up to US$ 1 billion a year.

"If more contemporary comparisons are sought, we need only compare the current black literacy rate in the United States (56 percent) with the rate in Jamaica (98.5 percent)--a figure considerably higher than the American white literacy rate (83 percent)." ...
Footnote 1: The discussion here is based on Regna Lee Wood's work as printed in Chester Finn and Diane Ravitch's Network News and Views (and reprinted many other places). Together with other statistical indictments, from the National Adult Literacy Survey, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and a host of other credible sources, it provides chilling evidence of the disastrous turn in reading methodology. But in a larger sense the author urges every reader to trust personal judgment over "numerical" evidence, whatever the source. During the writer's 30-year classroom experience, the decline in student ability to comprehend difficult text was marked, while the ability to extract and parrot "information" in the form of "facts" was much less affected. This is a product of deliberate pedagogy, to what end is the burden of my essay.

The percentage of people aged 15-24 who can, with understanding, both read and write a short, simple statement related to their everyday life. 2004 - 94.5%

Did I say that she was still Prime Minister? Sorry that Wikipedia is not to your liking, even though the information on the page was accurate. So here it is, spelt out:

In Pakistan, a woman became head of state.

That's all.

True, Islamic radicalism has increased, but, OK, let's use another measure.

Seats in parliament held by women, 2004 (% of total):

• United States: 14.3
• United Kingdom: 17.9
• Pakistan: 21.6

You probably have an issue with any source that doesn't agree with your opinions, but the figures are from Globalis.

Year / GDP per capita (PPP-dollar)
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2002
2 840 4 230 5 950 5 840 6 230 7 130

You're right to protest, too: seems like things are up-and-away

In particular there are maps of African connectivity (Dr. Dzvimbo's) and mentions of use in education (like Dr. Miyagawa from MIT's OpenCourseware).

The U.S. in 2003 (at the first part of this conference) apparently was against the final draft saying anything about open source or choosing open source over commercial software. However this time it seems open source is being explicitly covered.

One interesting person there was Mike Reed, Director of United Nations University's International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST). He talked about their hiring 10 open source developers to develop a standardized desktop distro for learning in the third world. He's a famous mathematician and computer scientist, in particular he wants to mathematically prove that a distro and its programs will "just work" which sounds pretty interesting. Anybody wanting to go to Macau should contact him!

I converted all the pdfs to text and grepped "open source" below FYI.

D-22ChairmansReport.txt: Be development-oriented, ensuring equitable and sustainable distribution of resources Recognize the goal of accessibility for all, emphasizing the needs of people with disabilities and the poor Respect the Internet end-to-end principles and open source, open content, open courseware, and open standards Uphold human rights, rights to self-determination, and particularly the risks to privacy and leakage of personal information

D-23chairmans_report.txt: Be development-oriented, ensuring equitable and sustainable distribution of resources Recognize the goal of accessibility for all, emphasizing the needs of people with disabilities and the poor Respect the Internet end-to-end principles and open source, open content, open courseware, and open standards Uphold human rights, rights to self-determination, and particularly the risks to privacy, for example from the leakage of personal information

S2-3DrDZVIMBO.txt:The possibilities Click to edit Master title style ClickA majorto editinitiativeMasterthattexthasstylesnow emerged is the development of Free Open Source institutions. (e.g. Nairobi, Agadir, Cape African institutions are also developing initiatives to foster the development of Learning Object Repositories by university academics and Research Networks.

S2-5ProfOkamura.txt:Regional Support PEACESAT U.S. establishing Pacific ICT Academy in American Samoa MOODLE implemented in American Samoa, CNMI and Guam Open Source Squid, Apache, others

S2-5ProfOkamura.txt:Regional Support Activities PEACESAT U.S. establishing Pacific ICT Academy in American Samoa Open Source Software

S2-5ProfOkamura.txt:Suggestion #3c ICT Infrastructure 3 Suggestion Open source and other inexpensive technologies should be encouraged. Rationale The cost of software and applications are potential problems. e.g. American Samoa implemented VA Clinical Information System.

S4-1BANKS.txt: Perspectives of marginilised groups, excluded communities, grassroots activists Expertise, skills, experience & knowledge human rights, sustainable development, privacy & security, education, women's empowerment & gender equality, affordable universal access, open standards & interoperability, open source, open content & universal design for all

s4-2FRAU-MEIGSDivinaRev1.txt:Tools for Open Access: An open source backbone An education exemption to IP rights A Universal Service Fund Interoperabil

First of all, an apology. I didn't mean to come trough that way (and I had to look up what jingoistic meant :-).

That said, my statement is not entirely biased, as you undoubtedly don't know, and I will try to prove (mod me offtopic for this :P ):

Uruguay has an iliteracy rate of 2%, while the US has a slightly higher 3%
Life expectancy is similar, with the US being slightly higher at about 76 years to Uruguay's 74
Slightly higher schooling expectancy for US citizens, at an average 16 years to Uruguay's 15 (both well above average, trailing only the nordic countries and Australia)
The Economist, which can be said to be biased, ranked the US at 13th for quality of life, with Uruguay at 43rd, behind Argentina and Chile, in 2005. However, it is believed in South America that Uruguay actually has the best quality of life, as seen in the World Institute for Development Economics Research (maybe less biased than the Economist), which places both the US and Uruguay in the top 20 countries (the US at 2nd, Uruguay at 18th).
Other sources state that Montevideo has a similar quality of life than New York

Sources:UN's statistics page http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/so cind
The Economisthttp://www.economist.com/theworldin/inter national/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3372495&d=2005
FinFactshttp://www.finfacts.com/
http://www.wider.unu.edu/conference/conference-200 3-2/conference%202003-2-papers/papers-pdf/Rahman%2 0Tauhidur%20250403.pdf

For more references about this United Nations University study, here is one useful and informative links: UN study shows environmental consequences from ongoing boom in personal computer sales. You can look at the flyer of the study (PDF format, 2 pages, 181 KB). Finally, you can visit this page to discover the contents of the book, "Computers and the Environment: Understanding and Managing their impacts." You can even order it for $35 or 32. On a similar subject, you also can read Why Do We Need 'Greener' Computers which tals about all the waste of electricity caused by the inefficiencies of our computers after they're built. And on yet another similar subject, you can read 4 Tons of Plants per Mile to Ride your Car.

Here is another website about a similar idea, Universal Networking Language (UNL).

Biogas I belive would be a good use of the 'pigshit natural resource' ;-> infact I think it should be a requirement to setup co-gen similar to this. Infact I would be willing to federally subsidize the industry to do it

It's not quite done yet, but the system does show promise. Dictionaries have already been created in Spanish, English, German, Japanese, Italian, French and several other languages.

This would be a good point... if the PLA was actually trying to develop a force projection navy.

As far as I know from reading public sources, the navy has repeatedly announced plans to build a carrier, but has spent most of its resources on coastal defense and short-range force projection, understandable priorities if one understands Chinese military priorities (hint: forget the Middle East). Until someone points out to me what China would actually use an aircraft carrier for, the delay shouldn't be too surprising. Part of it also seems political -- the CCP trying to avoid offensive military gestures.

Incidentally, they already have an aircraft carrier in Shenzhen. It's an old Soviet model now working as tourist attraction.

That specifically excludes the largest source of greenhouse gasses - domestic animal farts, aka "methane", of which India & china are huge sources.

As romantic as that sounds, it's just not true. Rice cultivation is a bigger source of methane than animal farts, and carbon dioxide emissions in India are a lot bigger than methane emissions. See this ref for the numbers.

why don't we get some experts together to once and for all design a universal META langauge

Some experts already have.

That's why an interactive translator, such as UNL's editor is a good idea. The editor allows the user to resolve ambiguities at the time that he or she is entering the text, so that the text can be translated into the proper universal word and then the hopefully unambiguous translation can be further translated into the destination language with a minimum of mistranslations.

That's why an interactive translator, such as UNL's editor is a good idea. The editor allows the user to resolve ambiguities at the time that he or she is entering the text, so that the text can be translated into the proper universal word and then the hopefully unambiguous translation can be further translated into the destination language with a minimum of mistranslations.

Well, Is it so supprising this would happen? Canada's new network, our own Internet-2, euorpe doing a new network, of course china is gona do it. anyway, heres some info I found out and about in my past readings of china's network:

http://www.chinaeconomicreview.com/htm/2000cbh339a .htm
http://dawning.iist.unu.edu/china/bjreview/98Nov/b jr98-44-30.html
http://www.bjreview.com.cn/BeijingReview/Spanish/9 8Nov/bjr98-47s-15.html

The Universal Networking Language is such a project to provide this feature. Each website would be translated into a 'universal' language by describing mathematical relations between objects. See the website for more details (http://www.unl.ias.unu.edu/).

As discussed before on Slashdot, the United Nations University has a 10-year project to develop a Universal Networking Language.
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Paul Gillingwater

Actually, this has been discussed before on Slashdot. The United Nations University has a 10-year project to develop a Universal Networking Language, which is intended to provide an intermediate translation "universal language" to assist with machine-assisted translation between different languages on the Internet. No doubt /.ers will prefer to learn the UNL -- kind of like a verbal EMACS, I guess, and similarly elitist. :-)
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Paul Gillingwater

How about Universal Networking Language? Has anybody heard of it? My father worked in the portuguese part here in Brazil.

With UNL you have an artificial mathematical language -- understandable only by computers (like a criptic HTML). There's work in progress to build EnConverters/DeConverters to the 10 most spoken languages.

This way you could build your site, EnConvert it to UNL, and publish it in the internet. Browsers would have the DeConverters to the user's language. Somebody could also build real-time converters to use in chats.

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Try using UNL -- its a United Sations meta-language that lets write a page once but allow everyone read your page in their own native language. Basically it works like this. You produce a page in English and you translate it into "UNL" using their free software. Then your UNL file back into English. If the meaning hasn't changed then it will produce as good a translation for everyone else in their native language. Otherwise you can modify your file a bit and try again until it works. Unlike translators like Babelfish this translation engine works every time. Why? Because it comes with an interacive editor that asks you what you really mean.

Description from (http://www.quetzal.com/conlang/intern.html):

A United Nations University project to create an interlanguage for use on the internet; the idea being that you'd use special tools to create a document in this language and it would be automatically translated into any of the UN member languages on demand. They plan to make this feasible by restricting the grammar and vocabulary of the interlanguage, and have translation be only one-way, from the interlanguage to national languages. The interlanguage's vocabulary will be English words, with probably some type of grammatical markup added -- not intended for people to read or use directly. [Institute of Advanced Studies, United Nations University]

Seems like a possible answer for making programs more "international" if an interperter could be incorporated directly.

For those of you smarter then I (which means just about all of you..), check out http://www.unl.ias.unu.edu for more information.

Wiwi
--
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"

There has been some work (apparently) done in the area of an intermediate representation language for machine translation of human languages, by a team of people associated with the United Nations University in Tokyo. They claim to have had a conference on the topic on November 18th, but there's no indication of progress or announcements since then on their Web page.
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Paul Gillingwater

The UNL will be inconsistent as a few of messages has already pointed out.

Moreover, is this suppose to be the project of some freshman? The web page is messed up; there are lots of errors. One of the lines says "How to joint the UNL Community" on page http://www.unl.ias.unu.edu/eng/unlhp-e. html. I find a few by just looking at it. I think the people who are responsible for ths do not even care. The pages are poorly coded (made by some win9x program) and pictures look distorted. They did not even give an explanation of how will it be done.