Trying to track down where in Africa minerals are mined will require massive spending on auditors and lawyers. Bribery and corruption is rife.
A much more effective approach is to support refugees, wherever they may end up.
Furthermore, population growth and AIDS are larger problems than the African civil wars. Rwanda's population is already larger that what is was before the genocide there.
OpenStreetMap has an acceptable use policy, as opposed to limits. The sysadmins implement limits on an ad hoc basis to ensure that the servers are not overload.
The number of services from osm.org is however quite limited. For example no routing.
If you are serious about reducing fuel consumption and other forms of waste, it really makes sense to pay for the best service, be it Google Maps, OSM, NT or TA. Computing the best route between two points 20 kilometers apart is a fraction of a cent, even with the worst possible algorithm. The savings can however be many dollars.
I live in South Africa and I regularly pick up high power WLANs in my neighbourhood. And I suspect many of them are used to carry CCTV signals or to bypass the expensive telecoms operators. The public is sympathetic to these cause. So compliance with government regulations will not be very high.
On sites like spoj.pl there are plenty of easy questions. It's a good way to learn the basics, like sorting, input and output, because the judge will test your program for all the possible newbie mistakes.
Unfortunately, there are very few judges that will force you to use certain libraries (STL, boost, etc) APIs or language features (e.g. inheritance).
I wonder if all those people who helped OpenStreetMap are aware that OpenStreetMap knows the exact location where they were when they collected the data.
On a few rare occasions I investigated a few OSM user names. For example Googling it and looking at where the first edits were made. Rarely is it possible to determine the residential or work address with any kind of accuracy. Even the nationality of some contributors cannot be determined accurately, considering global im/emigration. And I doubt the sys admins will bother to mine the extra data they have access to.
So OSM cannot go nearly as far as Google or Appel, even if they wanted to.
Isn't it a bit misleading to say that Assen has a density of 2000 per square mile ? That's measured over 32 square miles. But if you look at a map, you will see that most of the population lives in an area of 2.5 miles by 3.5 miles. And my guess is that that area is quite flat, making it ideal for cycling.
No, there is at least some level of democracy. The MDC did gain many seats during the last election, as well as the position of prime minister. Furthermore, if Mugabe goes too far (for example by banning the MDC), he will loose support from South Africa.
Part of the reason why democracy has not produced results in Zimbabwe is because the disillusioned section of the population has been voting with their feet, i.e. immigrating to South Africa.
Firstly, the infrastructure to measure traffic flow patterns is being created as we speak. Every smartphone with a GPS can act as a sensor.
The political will is there, largely due to the desire to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Authorities should try to disincentive drivers to drive when peaks are predicted. It may take the form of toll charges being continually adjusted or it may take the form of free parking. But even without them, a mere warning from their smartphone will lead some drivers to reschedule or reroute.
"Strikingly, the images resemble one taken by Hubble of the star Fomalhaut."
Be careful in drawing conclusions from the above statement. In 'Cosmos', Carl Sagan summarizes one of the flawed arguments he came across : "Looking at Venus, what do you see? Just clouds. Not a single thing. Conclusion? Dinosaurs"
Where no blacks outside of the government are better off than they were under apartheid.
But clearly you are wrong on this. I live in South Africa, so I know the facts. They are richer. Their live expectancy declined (due to AIDS), but that was partly due to bad timing and NOT bad government policies. Most children received enough scientific information at school during the last 15 years to make informed choices. They knew there was some risk, yet they proceeded with risky behaviour. So it's comparable to the way that Western societies dealt with smoking during the larger part of the 20th century.
Africa is a giant mess... South Africa is no different.
South Africa is a lot different. GDP per capita is 20 times higher than in neighbouring Zimbabwe*. South Africa will continue to draw the most talented Africans to it's factories, mines and construction sites.
*: Gapminder.org is a nice tool to explore these differences.
Did his company actually loose money for the new owners in the 15 years that has passed ? If so it was the exception rather than the rule. South Africa's share market have made decent returns in real term under the ANC. And those returns look even better after converting to USD. Compared to the Dow which has been stuck at 10,000.
Yes, there is racial tension and tribal affairs. But slow and steady progress is being made: Yesterday tens of thousands of white rugby descended on the predominantly black township of Soweto to watch the Super 14 Rugby final. Afterwards many Whites partied in Black owned bars without incident.
I nominate Grand Theft Auto. It's so addictive. It causes a large percentage of teenage males to lock them selves up in their dorm rooms and basements. Like prison only cheaper.
And when they do eventually emerge, they're muscles are to weak to attack anyone.
I guess you proposed your rules in good faith, but it may turn out to be a big money maker for the legal profession. It will also raise the uncertainty for all parties involved (what if that ex-employee suddenly remembers reading about prior art and this information comes out). Legal costs and increased risk are a drain on the economy.
Rather raise the cost of filing to the point were the state can pay qualified persons to quickly assess the applications.
It's interesting that people complain how Africa is a third world country and how we should help them, but interestingly everyone sets artificial restrictions on them and restricts them from the other world.
The restrictions of Paypal and other payment networks on African citizens are not artificial. They are market forces reacting to the failure of African governments to prosecute fraud cases properly.
It is not difficult to understand why African governments are soft on crime. For example, the much stricter US criminal justice system is now incarcerating 10% of African American males, drastically increasing the number of single African American mothers. The Economist has a detail explanation of the phenomenon.
Helping Africa has proven extremely difficult: Aid in the form of infrastructure projects have often resulted in making governments lazy. More recently, some economists have speculated that increased trade leads to higher HIV rates and subsequent decline.
It is however not all doom and gloom: Celphones have had a enormous impact, arguably more than all other inventions combined. Renewed interest in it's resource wealth, esp. from China.
And I think the process can be accelerated: Aid money going towards education and investment flows to countries with reasonably good economic policies.
The cost per Watt of the new Medupi coal fired power station will be very similar at (+-$18b for 4800MW) but it will be able to operate at that capacity 24/7.
The solar tower will sell most of it's electricity when the price is at it's highest: In summer when all the air condition units are running.
When Bill Gates started MS he knew very well that his copyright was not going to be enforced in many countries. Yet he proceeded and even helped the Chinese by pushing UTF-16. They're hardly stealing.
What would the world look like if Hilter did not come to power or electric cars were easier to manufacture...
You must understand under capitalism there is not always a direct correspondence between cost and price. Sometimes retailers sell stuff at cost to clear excess stock. The other customers are paying the rent, the staff and the advertising. Expecting the OEM to reimburse you for the Win Tax is like expecting the retailer to give you the product at the discount price that already expired.
The good thing is that you, I and many others have installed Linux and are getting the word out. This puts pressure on MS to improve Windows and keep the Win Tax low. Witness the drop in their earnings.
So thank you for using Linux ! And sorry that we could not get more people to do the same in 2006.
The article suggest that a large number of the immigrants to South Africa also come from Lesotho and Mozambique. Even South African researchers are finding it difficult to attain the extent of and reasons behind the migration: Many immigrants do not want to admit that they were born outside the country, because of fear of persecution.
Helping them in South Africa is so much easier than helping them in their country of origin.
You blame Zimbabwe's leadership. Others blame the voters for not rising up sooner.
What I'm saying is that a country with a large GDP like South Africa is much less likely to descend into that spiral. The same goes for provinces and municipalities within South Africa: The ones with more money are more accountable and efficient.
If they can access the internet they can perhaps improve their agricultural output for a few years, until the demand is satisfied and the surpluses go to waist. Access to the internet certainly will not cause them to reform their governments, construct efficient cement plants, power plants and transport networks or conquor malaria.
South Africa (in particular Gauteng and the Western Cape) has economies of scale in all these fields and is accepting African migrants en masse. Instead of sending Zimbabweans food aid, it is after all much more productive to employ them in South Africa, by for example building houses. So investing in the South African economy is by far the best way to help the continent's poor (and has been more profitable than investing in America during the last decade).
Slashdot Mirror
Trying to track down where in Africa minerals are mined will require massive spending on auditors and lawyers. Bribery and corruption is rife. A much more effective approach is to support refugees, wherever they may end up. Furthermore, population growth and AIDS are larger problems than the African civil wars. Rwanda's population is already larger that what is was before the genocide there.
synthesize gasoline out of e.g. coal ... is still uneconomical compared to pumping and refining oil
Where coal is cheap enough, it can be extremely profitable
It is however also the single largest point source of carbon dioxide in the world
... they managed to [loose] about 1% of the entire assets of the wanna-be bank.... Note to self: don't do business in SA.
The correct conclusion is that incompetent governments should not be involved in banking.
OpenStreetMap has an acceptable use policy, as opposed to limits. The sysadmins implement limits on an ad hoc basis to ensure that the servers are not overload.
The number of services from osm.org is however quite limited. For example no routing.
If you are serious about reducing fuel consumption and other forms of waste, it really makes sense to pay for the best service, be it Google Maps, OSM, NT or TA. Computing the best route between two points 20 kilometers apart is a fraction of a cent, even with the worst possible algorithm. The savings can however be many dollars.
Getting the antenna deployed is another matter. For example ICASA has serious corporate governance problems.
I live in South Africa and I regularly pick up high power WLANs in my neighbourhood. And I suspect many of them are used to carry CCTV signals or to bypass the expensive telecoms operators. The public is sympathetic to these cause. So compliance with government regulations will not be very high.
On sites like spoj.pl there are plenty of easy questions. It's a good way to learn the basics, like sorting, input and output, because the judge will test your program for all the possible newbie mistakes.
Unfortunately, there are very few judges that will force you to use certain libraries (STL, boost, etc) APIs or language features (e.g. inheritance).
I wonder if all those people who helped OpenStreetMap are aware that OpenStreetMap knows the exact location where they were when they collected the data.
On a few rare occasions I investigated a few OSM user names. For example Googling it and looking at where the first edits were made. Rarely is it possible to determine the residential or work address with any kind of accuracy. Even the nationality of some contributors cannot be determined accurately, considering global im/emigration. And I doubt the sys admins will bother to mine the extra data they have access to.
So OSM cannot go nearly as far as Google or Appel, even if they wanted to.
Personally I don't mind telling the world where I've been, but I'm not too keen to tell them where I'm going. http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Nic%20Roets/traces
These taxes and compulsory schemes were poorly designed and now the judicial system is being asked to make sense of the mess.
Most economists agree that a consumption tax combined with some state sponsored welfare system is far, far better.
Isn't it a bit misleading to say that Assen has a density of 2000 per square mile ? That's measured over 32 square miles. But if you look at a map, you will see that most of the population lives in an area of 2.5 miles by 3.5 miles. And my guess is that that area is quite flat, making it ideal for cycling.
No, there is at least some level of democracy. The MDC did gain many seats during the last election, as well as the position of prime minister. Furthermore, if Mugabe goes too far (for example by banning the MDC), he will loose support from South Africa. Part of the reason why democracy has not produced results in Zimbabwe is because the disillusioned section of the population has been voting with their feet, i.e. immigrating to South Africa.
Firstly, the infrastructure to measure traffic flow patterns is being created as we speak. Every smartphone with a GPS can act as a sensor.
The political will is there, largely due to the desire to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Authorities should try to disincentive drivers to drive when peaks are predicted. It may take the form of toll charges being continually adjusted or it may take the form of free parking. But even without them, a mere warning from their smartphone will lead some drivers to reschedule or reroute.
"Strikingly, the images resemble one taken by Hubble of the star Fomalhaut." Be careful in drawing conclusions from the above statement. In 'Cosmos', Carl Sagan summarizes one of the flawed arguments he came across : "Looking at Venus, what do you see? Just clouds. Not a single thing. Conclusion? Dinosaurs"
Why hire Vinnie when the locals are so much better at it ?.
The alleged supplier wasn't Nigeria, but Niger, a landlocked country to the North.
Where no blacks outside of the government are better off than they were under apartheid.
But clearly you are wrong on this. I live in South Africa, so I know the facts. They are richer. Their live expectancy declined (due to AIDS), but that was partly due to bad timing and NOT bad government policies. Most children received enough scientific information at school during the last 15 years to make informed choices. They knew there was some risk, yet they proceeded with risky behaviour. So it's comparable to the way that Western societies dealt with smoking during the larger part of the 20th century.
Africa is a giant mess... South Africa is no different.
South Africa is a lot different. GDP per capita is 20 times higher than in neighbouring Zimbabwe*. South Africa will continue to draw the most talented Africans to it's factories, mines and construction sites.
*: Gapminder.org is a nice tool to explore these differences.
Did his company actually loose money for the new owners in the 15 years that has passed ? If so it was the exception rather than the rule. South Africa's share market have made decent returns in real term under the ANC. And those returns look even better after converting to USD. Compared to the Dow which has been stuck at 10,000.
Yes, there is racial tension and tribal affairs. But slow and steady progress is being made: Yesterday tens of thousands of white rugby descended on the predominantly black township of Soweto to watch the Super 14 Rugby final. Afterwards many Whites partied in Black owned bars without incident.
I nominate Grand Theft Auto. It's so addictive. It causes a large percentage of teenage males to lock them selves up in their dorm rooms and basements. Like prison only cheaper.
And when they do eventually emerge, they're muscles are to weak to attack anyone.
I guess you proposed your rules in good faith, but it may turn out to be a big money maker for the legal profession. It will also raise the uncertainty for all parties involved (what if that ex-employee suddenly remembers reading about prior art and this information comes out). Legal costs and increased risk are a drain on the economy.
Rather raise the cost of filing to the point were the state can pay qualified persons to quickly assess the applications.
It's interesting that people complain how Africa is a third world country and how we should help them, but interestingly everyone sets artificial restrictions on them and restricts them from the other world.
The restrictions of Paypal and other payment networks on African citizens are not artificial. They are market forces reacting to the failure of African governments to prosecute fraud cases properly.
It is not difficult to understand why African governments are soft on crime. For example, the much stricter US criminal justice system is now incarcerating 10% of African American males, drastically increasing the number of single African American mothers. The Economist has a detail explanation of the phenomenon.
Helping Africa has proven extremely difficult: Aid in the form of infrastructure projects have often resulted in making governments lazy. More recently, some economists have speculated that increased trade leads to higher HIV rates and subsequent decline.
It is however not all doom and gloom: Celphones have had a enormous impact, arguably more than all other inventions combined. Renewed interest in it's resource wealth, esp. from China.
And I think the process can be accelerated: Aid money going towards education and investment flows to countries with reasonably good economic policies.
The cost per Watt of the new Medupi coal fired power station will be very similar at (+-$18b for 4800MW) but it will be able to operate at that capacity 24/7.
The solar tower will sell most of it's electricity when the price is at it's highest: In summer when all the air condition units are running.
roadee, offmaps and a few does other use raster maps and an online routing server and do not fully utilize the capabilities of the iPhone.
I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new xgps, that will certainly push the envelope with vector maps.
When Bill Gates started MS he knew very well that his copyright was not going to be enforced in many countries. Yet he proceeded and even helped the Chinese by pushing UTF-16. They're hardly stealing.
What would the world look like if Hilter did not come to power or electric cars were easier to manufacture...
You must understand under capitalism there is not always a direct correspondence between cost and price. Sometimes retailers sell stuff at cost to clear excess stock. The other customers are paying the rent, the staff and the advertising. Expecting the OEM to reimburse you for the Win Tax is like expecting the retailer to give you the product at the discount price that already expired.
The good thing is that you, I and many others have installed Linux and are getting the word out. This puts pressure on MS to improve Windows and keep the Win Tax low. Witness the drop in their earnings.
So thank you for using Linux ! And sorry that we could not get more people to do the same in 2006.
Helping them in South Africa is so much easier than helping them in their country of origin.
You blame Zimbabwe's leadership. Others blame the voters for not rising up sooner.
What I'm saying is that a country with a large GDP like South Africa is much less likely to descend into that spiral. The same goes for provinces and municipalities within South Africa: The ones with more money are more accountable and efficient.
If they can access the internet they can perhaps improve their agricultural output for a few years, until the demand is satisfied and the surpluses go to waist. Access to the internet certainly will not cause them to reform their governments, construct efficient cement plants, power plants and transport networks or conquor malaria.
South Africa (in particular Gauteng and the Western Cape) has economies of scale in all these fields and is accepting African migrants en masse. Instead of sending Zimbabweans food aid, it is after all much more productive to employ them in South Africa, by for example building houses. So investing in the South African economy is by far the best way to help the continent's poor (and has been more profitable than investing in America during the last decade).