AOL alone deletes approximately 2 billion spam messages each day (reference here), and has won a lawsuit against a company that single-handedly sent a billion. Nine years is approximately 284 million seconds, so I suspect we are talking small fractions of a second per spam message.
Surgeries, Side Trips for 'Medical Tourists' Affordable Care at India's Private Hospitals Draws Growing Number of Foreigners
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 21, 2004; Page A01
NEW DELHI -- Three months ago, Howard Staab learned that he suffered from a life-threatening heart condition and would have to undergo surgery at a cost of up to $200,000 -- an impossible sum for the 53-year-old carpenter from Durham, N.C., who has no health insurance.
So he outsourced the job to India.
Taking his cue from cost-cutting U.S. businesses, Staab last month flew about 7,500 miles to the Indian capital, where doctors at the Escorts Heart Institute & Research Centre -- a sleek aluminum-colored building across the street from a bicycle-rickshaw stand -- replaced his balky heart valve with one harvested from a pig. Total bill: about $10,000, including round-trip airfare and a planned side trip to the Taj Mahal.
"The Indian doctors, they did such a fine job here, and took care of us so well," said Staab, a gentle, ponytailed bicycling enthusiast who was accompanied to India by his partner, Maggi Grace. "I would do it again."
Staab is one of a growing number of people known as "medical tourists" who are traveling to India in search of First World health care at Third World prices. Last year, an estimated 150,000 foreigners visited India for medical procedures, and the number is increasing at the rate of about 15 percent a year, according to Zakariah Ahmed, a health care specialist at the Confederation of Indian Industries.
Eager to cash in on the trend, posh private hospitals are beginning to offer services tailored for foreign patients, such as airport pickups, Internet-equipped private rooms and package deals that combine, for example, tummy-tuck surgery with several nights in a maharajah's palace. Some hospitals are pushing treatment regimens that augment standard medicine with yoga and other forms of traditional Indian healing.
The phenomenon is another example of how India is profiting from globalization -- the growing integration of world economies -- just as it has already done in such other service industries as insurance and banking, which are outsourcing an ever-widening assortment of office tasks to the country. A recent study by the McKinsey consulting firm estimated that India's medical tourist industry could yield as much as $2.2 billion in annual revenue by 2012.
"If we do this right, we can heal the world," said Prathap C. Reddy, a physician who founded Apollo Hospitals, a 6,400-bed chain that is headquartered in the coastal city of Chennai and is one of the biggest private health care providers in Asia.
The trend is still in its early stages. Most of the foreigners treated in India come from other developing countries in Asia, Africa or the Middle East, where top-quality hospitals and health professionals are often hard to find. Patients from the United States and Europe still are relatively rare -- not only because of the distance they must travel but also, hospital executives acknowledge, because India continues to suffer from an image of poverty and poor hygiene that discourages many patients.
Taken as a whole, India's health care system is hardly a model, with barely four doctors for every 10,000 people, compared with 27 in the United States, according to the World Bank. Health care accounts for just 5.1 percent of India's gross domestic product, against 14 percent in the United States.
On the other hand, India offers a growing number of private "centers of excellence" where the quality of care is as good or better than that of big-city hospitals in the United States or Europe, asserted Naresh Trehan, a self-assured cardiovascular surgeon who runs Escorts and performed the operation on Staab.
It is a known fact (PDF) that Chinese language processing uses different portions of the brain than English language processing. In addition, Mandarin Chinese requires one to interpret intonation, thus using both temporal lobes instead of just the left one.
So this finding is not necessarily a surprise, and it may not hold for languages that are similar to each other (such as English and Spanish).
Note that a manned mission is estimated to cost $2.2 billion. It's cheap because it's unmanned. That's all. And I'm wondering if it will even return to Earth or just stay on the moon transmitting data (like the probes on Mars).
I found a site called the banned books project to be very useful in figuring out why various books on the list were banned. Just search on the name of the book.
I remember reading about Where's Waldo, and here is a link confirming it, that there was a Where's Waldo beach scene contained a topless sunbather. That's why it's on the list.
Here are some links for other entries in your post:
This other page (from this/. comment) states that zinc whiskers are too small for normal dust filters, and it pretty much dismisses filtering as being a viable solution. (Of course, they're selling a non-filter solution so it's in their best interest to dismiss alternates...).
I left Mozilla (around the 1.2 era) and started using Outlook Express because it did a much better job of handling multiple email accounts. Is Thunderbird any better?
This idea is nice, but it would require the complete computerization of all mail handling--something that I'm not sure is currently realistic.
I work as a package sorter for UPS, and much of our sorting is broken down by zip code (although some is done by state or country). We sort by geographic areas, so that we can put the packages on a truck heading to that particular area. Zip codes are loosely based on geography and are therefore very useful for sorting.
Unique/portable postal codes would have no basis in geography. There is absolutely no way that human beings could sort to unique postal codes in a timely manner, and it would be prohibitively expensive to convert to a computer-based system. (Not to mention the problems with handwritten addresses, incorrect addresses, multiple labels, damaged labels, missing labels, damaged boxes, etc.)
I imagine the post office (USPS) would have similar problems.
I recently read a book on this topic, Vanishing Voices : The Extinction of the World's Languages. It was a fairly easy read and quite informative, although the authors had a difficult time explaining why it was a really bad thing to lose so many languages.
The basic argument was that preserving linguistic diversity would have the corollary effect of preserving cultural diversity (which is good). I found this indirect logic to be somewhat weak. After finishing the book, I did not feel that the authors had given me a good reason to be concerned about the loss of so many languages.
Note that the book focused more on the problem of preserving the languages in society. The authors considered an archive to be a poor substitute for a living, breathing language, much like a recording is a poor substitute for a concert.
Here is another link with pictures of some messed up hardware. In this case it was mainly due to user error, but it's amazing what people will do to those poor machines. My favorites are people who mailed motherboards in the original store-display box, and those who put memory in backwards.
Although I agree with most of what the author says, I believe he is missing some important points. MCA failed for a variety of reasons, most of them dealing with marketing. Here is my list:
Wrong type of innovation
Too proprietary
Too expensive
Wrong Type Of Innovation Although MCA was highly innovative, this fact was only obvious to computer geeks. It alleviated the problems with IRQ/DMA/Memory conflicts as well as device identification, and it also added the ability to attain faster bus speeds. But the typical business user didn't understand most of that. From the user perspective the first PS/2 machines were not a huge improvement. The author's examples of positive innovation (CDs, ThinkPad) have significant benefits that are obvious to everyone.
Too Proprietary IMHO, part of the reason that MCA never "took" was because it would have put a good number of computer and peripheral manufacturers out of business. So they fought back by continuing to produce ISA machines and creating the EISA standard. This worked until the PCI and 'plug and play' standards were implemented. If IBM had shared the MCA technology, instead of trying to exclusively license it, the industry may have adopted MCA.
Too Expensive The final nail in the coffin was price, and the article hits this one on the head. This was back when peripherals other than mouse, keyboard, and monitor could be recycled from PC to PC, and upgrading to a PS/2 meant buying all of them over again. Today this is not as much of an issue (every time I upgrade, I have to buy a new type of memory, for example), but back then it was a big deal.
I'm guessing the first one, as it is "a networked community of free software
authors, teachers, students, researchers, hobbyists and enthusiasts." Did I get it right?
I must agree with The comment about Insurrection. I was disappointed by Insurrection, and this gave me a heavy prejudice against Nemesis (even before the mediocre reviews).
We can only hope that Wil Wheaton will bring these comments to the attention of the powers that be. Maybe, just maybe, they will get a clue.
The buildings of the Naval Magazine were damaged extensively; sporadic damage to structural members of buildings was proven up to 13 miles - Suval [railroad] Station, California; plate glass was broken up to 35.5 miles - Petaluma, California; and a legitimate claim for plaster damage was reported at 48 miles - Calistoga, California.
Death count: 320 dead, 81 bodies recovered, of which 30 were positively identified.
A pilot flying at 9000 feet saw pieces of white-hot metal rise above his altitude.
Slashdot Mirror
AOL alone deletes approximately 2 billion spam messages each day (reference here), and has won a lawsuit against a company that single-handedly sent a billion. Nine years is approximately 284 million seconds, so I suspect we are talking small fractions of a second per spam message.
Surgeries, Side Trips for 'Medical Tourists'
Affordable Care at India's Private Hospitals Draws Growing Number of Foreigners
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 21, 2004; Page A01
NEW DELHI -- Three months ago, Howard Staab learned that he suffered from a life-threatening heart condition and would have to undergo surgery at a cost of up to $200,000 -- an impossible sum for the 53-year-old carpenter from Durham, N.C., who has no health insurance.
So he outsourced the job to India.
Taking his cue from cost-cutting U.S. businesses, Staab last month flew about 7,500 miles to the Indian capital, where doctors at the Escorts Heart Institute & Research Centre -- a sleek aluminum-colored building across the street from a bicycle-rickshaw stand -- replaced his balky heart valve with one harvested from a pig. Total bill: about $10,000, including round-trip airfare and a planned side trip to the Taj Mahal.
"The Indian doctors, they did such a fine job here, and took care of us so well," said Staab, a gentle, ponytailed bicycling enthusiast who was accompanied to India by his partner, Maggi Grace. "I would do it again."
Staab is one of a growing number of people known as "medical tourists" who are traveling to India in search of First World health care at Third World prices. Last year, an estimated 150,000 foreigners visited India for medical procedures, and the number is increasing at the rate of about 15 percent a year, according to Zakariah Ahmed, a health care specialist at the Confederation of Indian Industries.
Eager to cash in on the trend, posh private hospitals are beginning to offer services tailored for foreign patients, such as airport pickups, Internet-equipped private rooms and package deals that combine, for example, tummy-tuck surgery with several nights in a maharajah's palace. Some hospitals are pushing treatment regimens that augment standard medicine with yoga and other forms of traditional Indian healing.
The phenomenon is another example of how India is profiting from globalization -- the growing integration of world economies -- just as it has already done in such other service industries as insurance and banking, which are outsourcing an ever-widening assortment of office tasks to the country. A recent study by the McKinsey consulting firm estimated that India's medical tourist industry could yield as much as $2.2 billion in annual revenue by 2012.
"If we do this right, we can heal the world," said Prathap C. Reddy, a physician who founded Apollo Hospitals, a 6,400-bed chain that is headquartered in the coastal city of Chennai and is one of the biggest private health care providers in Asia.
The trend is still in its early stages. Most of the foreigners treated in India come from other developing countries in Asia, Africa or the Middle East, where top-quality hospitals and health professionals are often hard to find. Patients from the United States and Europe still are relatively rare -- not only because of the distance they must travel but also, hospital executives acknowledge, because India continues to suffer from an image of poverty and poor hygiene that discourages many patients.
Taken as a whole, India's health care system is hardly a model, with barely four doctors for every 10,000 people, compared with 27 in the United States, according to the World Bank. Health care accounts for just 5.1 percent of India's gross domestic product, against 14 percent in the United States.
On the other hand, India offers a growing number of private "centers of excellence" where the quality of care is as good or better than that of big-city hospitals in the United States or Europe, asserted Naresh Trehan, a self-assured cardiovascular surgeon who runs Escorts and performed the operation on Staab.
T
So this finding is not necessarily a surprise, and it may not hold for languages that are similar to each other (such as English and Spanish).
Note that a manned mission is estimated to cost $2.2 billion. It's cheap because it's unmanned. That's all. And I'm wondering if it will even return to Earth or just stay on the moon transmitting data (like the probes on Mars).
The "Stories We See Too Often" list referenced in the article can be found at this link.
I found a site called the banned books project to be very useful in figuring out why various books on the list were banned. Just search on the name of the book.
Here are some links for other entries in your post:
For those (like me) who had never before heard of Gully Dwarves, here is an informative link that discusses their counting abilities.
This other page (from this /. comment) states that zinc whiskers are too small for normal dust filters, and it pretty much dismisses filtering as being a viable solution. (Of course, they're selling a non-filter solution so it's in their best interest to dismiss alternates...).
I left Mozilla (around the 1.2 era) and started using Outlook Express because it did a much better job of handling multiple email accounts. Is Thunderbird any better?
In 1991 West End published a book named Extreme Paranoia: Nobody Knows the Trouble Ive Shot that is set in the Paranoia universe. It is hilarious, and I highly recommend it.
I work as a package sorter for UPS, and much of our sorting is broken down by zip code (although some is done by state or country). We sort by geographic areas, so that we can put the packages on a truck heading to that particular area. Zip codes are loosely based on geography and are therefore very useful for sorting.
Unique/portable postal codes would have no basis in geography. There is absolutely no way that human beings could sort to unique postal codes in a timely manner, and it would be prohibitively expensive to convert to a computer-based system. (Not to mention the problems with handwritten addresses, incorrect addresses, multiple labels, damaged labels, missing labels, damaged boxes, etc.)
I imagine the post office (USPS) would have similar problems.
About 8.3% 39.3M / (39.3M + 432M) = 0.083 (where 'M' is for million)
The basic argument was that preserving linguistic diversity would have the corollary effect of preserving cultural diversity (which is good). I found this indirect logic to be somewhat weak. After finishing the book, I did not feel that the authors had given me a good reason to be concerned about the loss of so many languages.
Note that the book focused more on the problem of preserving the languages in society. The authors considered an archive to be a poor substitute for a living, breathing language, much like a recording is a poor substitute for a concert.
Here is another link with pictures of some messed up hardware. In this case it was mainly due to user error, but it's amazing what people will do to those poor machines. My favorites are people who mailed motherboards in the original store-display box, and those who put memory in backwards.
HERE
Although I agree with most of what the author says, I believe he is missing some important points. MCA failed for a variety of reasons, most of them dealing with marketing. Here is my list:
Wrong Type Of Innovation
Although MCA was highly innovative, this fact was only obvious to computer geeks. It alleviated the problems with IRQ/DMA/Memory conflicts as well as device identification, and it also added the ability to attain faster bus speeds. But the typical business user didn't understand most of that. From the user perspective the first PS/2 machines were not a huge improvement. The author's examples of positive innovation (CDs, ThinkPad) have significant benefits that are obvious to everyone.
Too Proprietary
IMHO, part of the reason that MCA never "took" was because it would have put a good number of computer and peripheral manufacturers out of business. So they fought back by continuing to produce ISA machines and creating the EISA standard. This worked until the PCI and 'plug and play' standards were implemented. If IBM had shared the MCA technology, instead of trying to exclusively license it, the industry may have adopted MCA.
Too Expensive
The final nail in the coffin was price, and the article hits this one on the head. This was back when peripherals other than mouse, keyboard, and monitor could be recycled from PC to PC, and upgrading to a PS/2 meant buying all of them over again. Today this is not as much of an issue (every time I upgrade, I have to buy a new type of memory, for example), but back then it was a big deal.
-272 degrees Celsius is 1.15 degrees Kelvin and -457.6 degrees Farenheit.
Let's see... We have:
I'm guessing the first one, as it is "a networked community of free software authors, teachers, students, researchers, hobbyists and enthusiasts." Did I get it right?
I must agree with The comment about Insurrection. I was disappointed by Insurrection, and this gave me a heavy prejudice against Nemesis (even before the mediocre reviews).
We can only hope that Wil Wheaton will bring these comments to the attention of the powers that be. Maybe, just maybe, they will get a clue.
From chapter 9:
-
The buildings of the Naval Magazine were damaged extensively; sporadic damage to structural members of buildings was proven up to 13 miles - Suval [railroad] Station, California; plate glass was broken up to 35.5 miles - Petaluma, California; and a legitimate claim for plaster damage was reported at 48 miles - Calistoga, California.
Death count: 320 dead, 81 bodies recovered, of which 30 were positively identified.A pilot flying at 9000 feet saw pieces of white-hot metal rise above his altitude.
I'm impressed...
is HERE
Translation: I wanted to submit it early, before everyone else, so my story submission would get accepted.
Maybe I'm not counting correctly, but they refer to eight laws and then list six.