I am not a patent expert, but Verbix seems to be a good prior art candidate. So is this, and a score of other results of a simple search for "verb conjugation".
I hope the application is thrown out.
"What's holding you back?" is a wrong question, and others have explained why. You need to search for reasons to read e-Books (and pay for them). Let me offer you a couple of scenarios.
I already have a device that is capable of reading e-Books (iPAQ). Reading books is not the principal reason for buying it, but it is a nice and useful feature. Where is it useful? 1) Travel: taking a few books with you on a trip, especially by plane, is easier if they fit into the small form factor and weight of a device that you are taking with you (for business reasons) anyway. 2) Occasional: if you are stuck for a while waiting, e.g., for a doctors appointment, and the choice is either to stare into the ceiling or read an interesting book on a device that - you guessed it - you have in your bag anyway, the choice is pretty clear.
Other than that, I don't see why anyone would prefer an e-Book to the real thing, unless saving trees in an obsession. Well, if you have already started a good book while on a business trip or waiting for an appointment, then maybe you'll want to finish it.
Bottom line - the only reason I see for e-Books is occasional convenience, and this is exactly how I use them. Corollary - you must have a suitable device for other reasons.
When the majority of the best and brightest in the country all lean towards a particular political philosophy, what should that tell you?
I am trained in empirical sciences, so I would based my conclusions on a (gedanken-) experiment: in a democracy, conduct a separate vote (e.g., in an election) among the best and the brightest. There are two qualitatively different possible outcomes:
the results are (roughly) the same as among the general population
the results are very different from the general population
What will either outcome tell you? That in a democracy IQ doesn't count?
The experiment will work, and the conclusions will remain the same, if you single out the best and the brightest in academia, or, say, among the biggest donors supporting the universities - a group that may have quite a different philosophical bias.
The definition of "supercomputer" these days seems to be "a collection of hardware that can run an MPI job". So BlueGene/L is a cluster of 64K computers, but it counts as one supercomputer.
Top500 classifies supercomputers as clusters, constellations, and MPPs (Massively Parallel Processors). BG/L is an MPP. It is obviously not a cluster since a single compute node is not a general-purpose machine. BG/L is specifically intended for massively parallel applications.
The difference between clusters and constellations is the ratio between the number of nodes (that can either work independently or be clustered) and the number of processors in a node.
The compute nodes of Blue Gene/L do not run anything that may be called an OS. They basically run a single application thread per processor, and they do not do any sophisticated system work at all (no context switches, the single user process has access to all the memory, etc). The system tasks are concentrated in the so-called I/O-nodes, and those run Linux. So all the system-related things there are Linux indeed. See this paper, for instance.
Note that I/O nodes and not "front-end" nodes. All the front-end machines (there are many) run Linux as well.
All the user-level stuff (the programming model, tools, compilers, etc) is standard Linux, too.
So, is it Linux?
[Disclaimer: I have worked on some system aspects of the beast, but this post is not sanctioned by BG/L team or IBM or LLNL. I am not disclosing anything proprietary here - all this is open info that can be found in many papers on the subject. Check out IBM Journal of R&D for a wealth of information.
Most of all the incredibly pitiful Windows' user interface. I can't get used to to the lack of workable virtual desktops (yeah, I tried them all), window autoraise, the multitude of useful behaviour customizations that X offers, or network transparency. Has anyone ever thought of how amazingly screwed up the simple process of copying and pasting text between applications is in Windows compared to X?
Just yesterday my (new) office mate asked "what??" when I mentioned autoraise casually. When I showed him my Linux desktop (a very simple, conservative, old-fashioned one) and its capabilities he was duly impressed.
And, of course, the lack of applications and tools comes close second.
Re:source code escrow not very useful
on
Source Code Escrow
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
If the developer goes out of business, getting the source code by itself is almost always useless: almost no single customer will have the resources to maintain and extend it. Source code is only cost effective if there is a community of users and developers, and that requires releasing the code under an open source license ahead of time.
Bzzzzt! Wrong. Code is usually put in escrow after a team of developers, either from the client or a third party, examines it (under an NDA) and comes to a conclusion that if the vendor goes bust they would be able to maintain it. This gives the client the option that their own people or a third party could take over if need arises.
Microsoft source code isn't their crown jewels, as they always claim: even if people got access to it, they couldn't develop and maintain it anyway.
Microsoft code will not be put under escrow any time soon, I suspect. The arrangement usually fits the situation where a small software vendor (e.g. a startup) delivers a software product to a bigger company. The bigger company is concerned that the small vendor may go under, but they have some assurance that they - or another software company - can pick maintenance up with the escrow code. Since they are big compared to the vendor the additional resources will not be prohibitive. They were paying the vendor for support, too. Now they will be paying someone else, or allocate a few people of their own.
What is put in escrow is negotiated - this would normally include everything that is needed to maintain the product, including a working build system, older revisions and logs, documentation, etc. Again, the package is examined before put in escrow, and someone whom the client trusts says, in a pinch I will be able to do it.
Normally the client would still prefer the vendor to stay afloat and provide the service though. Escrow is the second line of defense, and as such it is useful. From the clients point of view it is open source, but they are not in a rush to modify or redistribute it.
The Fastap keypad does away with the need to press keys several times to scroll through the letters associated with each number.
There is a (partial) software solution. Try sending SMS messages from a Nokia 6210 or 6310 phone: there is this nifty dictionary that "knows" which word you are typing. As a result, you practically never need to press a key more than once to get the right letter.
This leaves inputting new telephone numbers, addresses, calendar entries, etc. Those usually contain names and other words that are not parts of the dictionary, so you do need to press the keys as many times as needed. This happens relatively infrequently (how often do you input a new phone number?) and is not a problem.
The hardware solution seems clunky to me. I don't SMS as often as European kids, but I do use the feature, and typing is fast and convenient.
The ISP gives you so much bandwidth for so much money. If only one machine is using the connection, it gets all the bandwidth. If more machines start using it, the switch shares the available bandwidth amongst the machines requesting it.
That's the way it should be. However, it is likely to work differently. The bandwidth you pay for is that from your home to the ISP access point. Your traffic often goes beyond the ISP to the network the ISP is connected to. The ISP has to buy that bandwidth from that network, and that's a lot of money. Now, they would like to buy as little as necessary to support their customers. They know, however, that if you are downloading a huge file, your wife is shopping at Amazon, your daughter is in a chat session, and your son is swapping music at the same time you will use up more bandwidth than if you only had one computer (likely the single-user Windows) connected to the net. So they introduce a clause into the contract saying you have to pay more if you want to connect more than one computer to the net.
This was the clinch in my choice of ISP when I installed ADSL (not in the US). I had to choose between 2 ISPs and I chose the one that said they did not care how many machines I connect. The other one presented me with a price scale, though they were not able to tell me how they would know what was going on behind my NAT. Well, if NAT becomes illegal, they will...
Besides this, I just read Levy's article in Newsweek. Some things are still not clear to me. How will Intel, AMD, and others implement the hardware? Will the feature be ignored unless explicitly exploited by software, e.g. the OS? Hopefully so, otherwise the new architecture will only run Windows, at least until others catch up.
And how will others catch up? Even if the security features can be ignored, users will want to use them even if they run, say Linux or BSD. And who among the users of a multiuser system will "own" the processor? We can hardly expect Intel to build respect for UNIX file permissions into the CPU, can we?
Finally, what will happen if I swap a piece of hardware? What will I have to do to make a new chip do the same as the old one, if they are unique in some way?
However, if the company stops growing, and continues to retain cash in excess of its reasonable operating requirements, there comes a point where the management can be accused of failing in their fiduciary duty to maximize total return to the stockholders.
Maximizing total return to stockholders is not that simple. You see, when a company pays a dividend the value of the stock decreases on the ex-dividend date. Thus, the shareholders get the cash dividend but the value of the stock they hold decreases accordingly. There was a great article by Fischer Black (of the option pricing fame) that analyzed the various tradeoffs. I doubt you will find the paper on the net though.
When government attorney Kevin Hodges asked him to name an operating system besides those made by Microsoft in which the Web browsing software could not be removed, Madnick [...] suggested GNOME as an example.
I have not used GNOME for a while (got used to KDE - flame away), but what is GNOME's web browser that cannot be removed?
Lets be clear: software is not the same. Peoples lives do not depend on commodity software.
What's "commodity software" in this respect? The subject is network security. There are enough networked computer systems whose failure or lack of intrusion protection will affect people's lives.
Military, aerospace, nuclear energy, utilities, medical, insurance, law enforcement, financial industry. In each of those areas (and more) it is quite easy to point to not so farfetched scenarios in which people's lives, health, well-being, or just privacy (which is important to some of us) are dependent on security and reliability of computer systems.
In commercial world, companies routinely keep sensitive proprietary information, including those of other entities (under NDA's etc) on poorly protected networks, without appropriate backup schemes, or serious disaster recovery plans. Loss or leakage of such data can lead to companies going out of business, significant losses, people getting laid off, etc. This does affect lives.
I agree with you (and with Schneider) in that people do not normally think in these terms about computer and network security, while they do when bridges are concerned. It's high time this attitude is changed.
Frankly, I find this type of functionality critical in a company of even 8 employees: I just don't see how companies can get along without some kind of group calendaring solution.
Frankly, I find the ability to sync my calendar with my iPAQ and cell phone even more critical. I can live with a simple email scheduling an appointment and inserting it into my calendar manually. I do want to have my calendar with me when I am away from my office though.
Is there reliable syncing s/w for iPAQs and Nokia phones that do not require Windows on the desktop?
How do they figure an explosion of spacetime is nuclear? There were no nuclei to fuse or split.
Of course there were. For most of the famous "first three minutes" the matter consisted of electrons and protons (hydrogen nuclei), too hot to maintain compound nuclei or neutral matter. The hydrogen nuclei fused into heavier ones, such as deuterium, tritium, helium, some Li. Up until now most of the (ordinary) matter in the Universe is hydrogen, the rest of the elements are much less abundant.
The heavier stuff (O,N,C, what astronomers call "metals" and what constitute the basis of our life) formed much later in stellar interiors, but that's another story.
The first three minutes were not unlike a hydrogen bomb at all.
Also, does anyone know where Sanders, Finzi, Milgrom, and/or Bekenstein are working today, I would like to get in contact with them regarding their models. Locations and or email addresses would be great.
Milgrom - the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovoth, Israel. Bekenstein - the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Professional publications such as The Astrophysical Journal should list their email addresses in the headers of their papers, and most if not all are online. Last time I checked ApJ had a 100+ years [sic!] worth of issues online, so you can update yourself on the post-Newtonian developments yourself.
It's only new because it's in NYT. There is a whole area of research devoted to the problem - designing survivable networks - with labs, a wealth of publications, university courses. A couple of almost obvious basic considerations:
a) If you need a protection on a link between A and B you need another, disjoint link (to form a
ring). That is expensive indeed. However, you can't get 100% protection against a link failure without paying twice.
b) A node failure (such as Verizon) is much worse than a link failure, because it severes many links at once.
Design of survivable networks is very complicated, and is as much an art as a science. Many networks are not designed with survival in mind. Someone raised the question of what happens when an ISP is taken out. Many ISPs have star-like networks, with a few central hubs. Take one hub out - you better have another access point, or, better, an account at a different ISP. Transocean links are also a problem. Remember about a year ago a big fat cable was damaged in the Pacific, leaving much of Australia without Internet?
The problem is more serious than just Hebrew. The stranglehold that MS has on the Israeli computer scene is such that, in the words of an acquaintance of mine, not only a typical Israeli doesn't know what Linux (BSD, Mac, insert your favourite) is, he/she does not know what Windows is. A typical Israeli has a notion of "computer", which includes a certain look-and-feel of the desktop and applications that "everybody" uses.
This penetrates all the way through the professional circles, to the point where development for UNIX platforms is done on NT, with subsequent porting, where a unixoid like myself (using UNIX/Linux at work, as well as at home) has to be watchful and make special efforts to maintain smooth interoperability with co-workers. And we do not use Hebrew for anything that is crucial to our work. Microsoft's lack of portability is bad enough without the right-to-left and Hebrew-related problems.
Getting word docs as email attachments is bad enough. The doc might be in English, but if the template is in any way unusual, e.g. intended for Hebrew Office, then StarOffice may barf. Getting Windows shortcuts is also bearable - view them as text, and the path to the file is somewhere there,
so you can get to the file with samba or something like this (whether you will be able to read it is a different question).
Bigger problems occur when you need to create something that your colleagues are likely to use. What do you write your documentation with if the only thing people around you can handle is Word.
What if you need to write something highly technical with a lot of math? I am still to see a tool that would handle it as well as TeX/LateX. I can create Postscript, PDF, or HTML out of it, but others who only handle Word won't be able to modify the document.
What do you do when someone complains to you that a few lines you send in an email are much less convenient to him than an Excel attachment because it is easier for him to work with Excel while creating a MS Project Gantt chart? Tell him to bug off because less work for him means much more work for you? Not exactly a solution, since you are the exception rather than the rule. What about meeting notifications of Outlook Exchange? I fetchmail my mail from the Exchange server, so I do get the invitation, but is there a way to "accept" it that Outlook will understand?
Personally, I think that people should work in portable formats and environments, and use tools that are most suitable for the task at hand. I don't see a big problem with requiring that people learn new tools as needed. However, I cannot so easily dismiss the issues of co-operation with people who are convinced that whatever they use is fully portable, because it's the biggest game in town.
At some point it seemed that a likely - or at least possible - outcome in terms of electoral votes would be 271/269. This reminded me of a little paperback I read years ago: "Presidential Lottery: The Reckless Gamble in Our Electoral System" by James A. Michener. I found it quite fascinating at the time (and I am not American), I wonder how popular it will become now. Ironically, I could not find it on Amazon (or elsewhere, hence no URL), but in the process I came across a couple of other titles that look relevant. Michener's book is the only one I read, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.
Slashdot Mirror
I am not a patent expert, but Verbix seems to be a good prior art candidate. So is this, and a score of other results of a simple search for "verb conjugation". I hope the application is thrown out.
"What's holding you back?" is a wrong question, and others have explained why. You need to search for reasons to read e-Books (and pay for them). Let me offer you a couple of scenarios.
I already have a device that is capable of reading e-Books (iPAQ). Reading books is not the principal reason for buying it, but it is a nice and useful feature. Where is it useful? 1) Travel: taking a few books with you on a trip, especially by plane, is easier if they fit into the small form factor and weight of a device that you are taking with you (for business reasons) anyway. 2) Occasional: if you are stuck for a while waiting, e.g., for a doctors appointment, and the choice is either to stare into the ceiling or read an interesting book on a device that - you guessed it - you have in your bag anyway, the choice is pretty clear.
Other than that, I don't see why anyone would prefer an e-Book to the real thing, unless saving trees in an obsession. Well, if you have already started a good book while on a business trip or waiting for an appointment, then maybe you'll want to finish it.
Bottom line - the only reason I see for e-Books is occasional convenience, and this is exactly how I use them. Corollary - you must have a suitable device for other reasons.
I am trained in empirical sciences, so I would based my conclusions on a (gedanken-) experiment: in a democracy, conduct a separate vote (e.g., in an election) among the best and the brightest. There are two qualitatively different possible outcomes:
What will either outcome tell you? That in a democracy IQ doesn't count?
The experiment will work, and the conclusions will remain the same, if you single out the best and the brightest in academia, or, say, among the biggest donors supporting the universities - a group that may have quite a different philosophical bias.
Top500 classifies supercomputers as clusters, constellations, and MPPs (Massively Parallel Processors). BG/L is an MPP. It is obviously not a cluster since a single compute node is not a general-purpose machine. BG/L is specifically intended for massively parallel applications.
The difference between clusters and constellations is the ratio between the number of nodes (that can either work independently or be clustered) and the number of processors in a node.
Go to the Sublist generator of Top500 to see what machines belong to which category.
See, e.g., definitions here
Note that I/O nodes and not "front-end" nodes. All the front-end machines (there are many) run Linux as well.
All the user-level stuff (the programming model, tools, compilers, etc) is standard Linux, too.
So, is it Linux?
[Disclaimer: I have worked on some system aspects of the beast, but this post is not sanctioned by BG/L team or IBM or LLNL. I am not disclosing anything proprietary here - all this is open info that can be found in many papers on the subject. Check out IBM Journal of R&D for a wealth of information.
Most of all the incredibly pitiful Windows' user interface. I can't get used to to the lack of workable virtual desktops (yeah, I tried them all), window autoraise, the multitude of useful behaviour customizations that X offers, or network transparency. Has anyone ever thought of how amazingly screwed up the simple process of copying and pasting text between applications is in Windows compared to X?
Just yesterday my (new) office mate asked "what??" when I mentioned autoraise casually. When I showed him my Linux desktop (a very simple, conservative, old-fashioned one) and its capabilities he was duly impressed.
And, of course, the lack of applications and tools comes close second.
Bzzzzt! Wrong. Code is usually put in escrow after a team of developers, either from the client or a third party, examines it (under an NDA) and comes to a conclusion that if the vendor goes bust they would be able to maintain it. This gives the client the option that their own people or a third party could take over if need arises.
Microsoft source code isn't their crown jewels, as they always claim: even if people got access to it, they couldn't develop and maintain it anyway.
Microsoft code will not be put under escrow any time soon, I suspect. The arrangement usually fits the situation where a small software vendor (e.g. a startup) delivers a software product to a bigger company. The bigger company is concerned that the small vendor may go under, but they have some assurance that they - or another software company - can pick maintenance up with the escrow code. Since they are big compared to the vendor the additional resources will not be prohibitive. They were paying the vendor for support, too. Now they will be paying someone else, or allocate a few people of their own.
What is put in escrow is negotiated - this would normally include everything that is needed to maintain the product, including a working build system, older revisions and logs, documentation, etc. Again, the package is examined before put in escrow, and someone whom the client trusts says, in a pinch I will be able to do it.
Normally the client would still prefer the vendor to stay afloat and provide the service though. Escrow is the second line of defense, and as such it is useful. From the clients point of view it is open source, but they are not in a rush to modify or redistribute it.
Huh? Is there something wrong with the DNS server I use?
$ nslookup -sil slimeball.com
Server: 194.90.1.5
Address: 194.90.1.5#53
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: slimeball.com
Address: 206.252.133.138
This was my reaction to "IP of slimeball"...
Once thats done we'll Larry McVoy, by this time hopefully he will have the IP of the slimeball.
Do you mean 206.252.133.138?
The Fastap keypad does away with the need to press keys several times to scroll through the letters associated with each number.
There is a (partial) software solution. Try sending SMS messages from a Nokia 6210 or 6310 phone: there is this nifty dictionary that "knows" which word you are typing. As a result, you practically never need to press a key more than once to get the right letter.
This leaves inputting new telephone numbers, addresses, calendar entries, etc. Those usually contain names and other words that are not parts of the dictionary, so you do need to press the keys as many times as needed. This happens relatively infrequently (how often do you input a new phone number?) and is not a problem.
The hardware solution seems clunky to me. I don't SMS as often as European kids, but I do use the feature, and typing is fast and convenient.
That's the way it should be. However, it is likely to work differently. The bandwidth you pay for is that from your home to the ISP access point. Your traffic often goes beyond the ISP to the network the ISP is connected to. The ISP has to buy that bandwidth from that network, and that's a lot of money. Now, they would like to buy as little as necessary to support their customers. They know, however, that if you are downloading a huge file, your wife is shopping at Amazon, your daughter is in a chat session, and your son is swapping music at the same time you will use up more bandwidth than if you only had one computer (likely the single-user Windows) connected to the net. So they introduce a clause into the contract saying you have to pay more if you want to connect more than one computer to the net.
This was the clinch in my choice of ISP when I installed ADSL (not in the US). I had to choose between 2 ISPs and I chose the one that said they did not care how many machines I connect. The other one presented me with a price scale, though they were not able to tell me how they would know what was going on behind my NAT. Well, if NAT becomes illegal, they will...
Besides this, I just read Levy's article in Newsweek. Some things are still not clear to me. How will Intel, AMD, and others implement the hardware? Will the feature be ignored unless explicitly exploited by software, e.g. the OS? Hopefully so, otherwise the new architecture will only run Windows, at least until others catch up.
And how will others catch up? Even if the security features can be ignored, users will want to use them even if they run, say Linux or BSD. And who among the users of a multiuser system will "own" the processor? We can hardly expect Intel to build respect for UNIX file permissions into the CPU, can we?
Finally, what will happen if I swap a piece of hardware? What will I have to do to make a new chip do the same as the old one, if they are unique in some way?
However, if the company stops growing, and continues to retain cash in excess of its reasonable operating requirements, there comes a point where the management can be accused of failing in their fiduciary duty to maximize total return to the stockholders.
Maximizing total return to stockholders is not that simple. You see, when a company pays a dividend the value of the stock decreases on the ex-dividend date. Thus, the shareholders get the cash dividend but the value of the stock they hold decreases accordingly. There was a great article by Fischer Black (of the option pricing fame) that analyzed the various tradeoffs. I doubt you will find the paper on the net though.
When government attorney Kevin Hodges asked him to name an operating system besides those made by Microsoft in which the Web browsing software could not be removed, Madnick [...] suggested GNOME as an example.
I have not used GNOME for a while (got used to KDE - flame away), but what is GNOME's web browser that cannot be removed?
Lets be clear: software is not the same. Peoples lives do not depend on commodity software.
What's "commodity software" in this respect? The subject is network security. There are enough networked computer systems whose failure or lack of intrusion protection will affect people's lives.
Military, aerospace, nuclear energy, utilities, medical, insurance, law enforcement, financial industry. In each of those areas (and more) it is quite easy to point to not so farfetched scenarios in which people's lives, health, well-being, or just privacy (which is important to some of us) are dependent on security and reliability of computer systems.
In commercial world, companies routinely keep sensitive proprietary information, including those of other entities (under NDA's etc) on poorly protected networks, without appropriate backup schemes, or serious disaster recovery plans. Loss or leakage of such data can lead to companies going out of business, significant losses, people getting laid off, etc. This does affect lives.
I agree with you (and with Schneider) in that people do not normally think in these terms about computer and network security, while they do when bridges are concerned. It's high time this attitude is changed.
Frankly, I find this type of functionality critical in a company of even 8 employees: I just don't see how companies can get along without some kind of group calendaring solution.
Frankly, I find the ability to sync my calendar with my iPAQ and cell phone even more critical. I can live with a simple email scheduling an appointment and inserting it into my calendar manually. I do want to have my calendar with me when I am away from my office though.
Is there reliable syncing s/w for iPAQs and Nokia phones that do not require Windows on the desktop?
How do they figure an explosion of spacetime is nuclear? There were no nuclei to fuse or split.
Of course there were. For most of the famous "first three minutes" the matter consisted of electrons and protons (hydrogen nuclei), too hot to maintain compound nuclei or neutral matter. The hydrogen nuclei fused into heavier ones, such as deuterium, tritium, helium, some Li. Up until now most of the (ordinary) matter in the Universe is hydrogen, the rest of the elements are much less abundant.
The heavier stuff (O,N,C, what astronomers call "metals" and what constitute the basis of our life) formed much later in stellar interiors, but that's another story.
The first three minutes were not unlike a hydrogen bomb at all.
Also, does anyone know where Sanders, Finzi, Milgrom, and/or Bekenstein are working today, I would like to get in contact with them regarding their models. Locations and or email addresses would be great.
Milgrom - the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovoth, Israel. Bekenstein - the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Professional publications such as The Astrophysical Journal should list their email addresses in the headers of their papers, and most if not all are online. Last time I checked ApJ had a 100+ years [sic!] worth of issues online, so you can update yourself on the post-Newtonian developments yourself.
It's only new because it's in NYT. There is a whole area of research devoted to the problem - designing survivable networks - with labs, a wealth of publications, university courses. A couple of almost obvious basic considerations:
a) If you need a protection on a link between A and B you need another, disjoint link (to form a
ring). That is expensive indeed. However, you can't get 100% protection against a link failure without paying twice.
b) A node failure (such as Verizon) is much worse than a link failure, because it severes many links at once.
Design of survivable networks is very complicated, and is as much an art as a science. Many networks are not designed with survival in mind. Someone raised the question of what happens when an ISP is taken out. Many ISPs have star-like networks, with a few central hubs. Take one hub out - you better have another access point, or, better, an account at a different ISP. Transocean links are also a problem. Remember about a year ago a big fat cable was damaged in the Pacific, leaving much of Australia without Internet?
What are the likely long-term consequences of this tragedy for things like
* broadband (we saw quite a few servers overloaded, having no TV in the office);
* Echelon
?
Hmm... This is what I get from both links:
Passport Is Unavailable
Please try Passport at a later time.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
What gives?
Hmm... I would expect larger natural temperature fluctuations over 50 years...
Also, a crucial input to any model of this kind is the heat capacity of the ocean. AFAIK, it is not known to any (useful) degree of precision.
The problem is more serious than just Hebrew. The stranglehold that MS has on the Israeli computer scene is such that, in the words of an acquaintance of mine, not only a typical Israeli doesn't know what Linux (BSD, Mac, insert your favourite) is, he/she does not know what Windows is. A typical Israeli has a notion of "computer", which includes a certain look-and-feel of the desktop and applications that "everybody" uses.
This penetrates all the way through the professional circles, to the point where development for UNIX platforms is done on NT, with subsequent porting, where a unixoid like myself (using UNIX/Linux at work, as well as at home) has to be watchful and make special efforts to maintain smooth interoperability with co-workers. And we do not use Hebrew for anything that is crucial to our work. Microsoft's lack of portability is bad enough without the right-to-left and Hebrew-related problems.
Getting word docs as email attachments is bad enough. The doc might be in English, but if the template is in any way unusual, e.g. intended for Hebrew Office, then StarOffice may barf. Getting Windows shortcuts is also bearable - view them as text, and the path to the file is somewhere there,
so you can get to the file with samba or something like this (whether you will be able to read it is a different question).
Bigger problems occur when you need to create something that your colleagues are likely to use. What do you write your documentation with if the only thing people around you can handle is Word.
What if you need to write something highly technical with a lot of math? I am still to see a tool that would handle it as well as TeX/LateX. I can create Postscript, PDF, or HTML out of it, but others who only handle Word won't be able to modify the document.
What do you do when someone complains to you that a few lines you send in an email are much less convenient to him than an Excel attachment because it is easier for him to work with Excel while creating a MS Project Gantt chart? Tell him to bug off because less work for him means much more work for you? Not exactly a solution, since you are the exception rather than the rule. What about meeting notifications of Outlook Exchange? I fetchmail my mail from the Exchange server, so I do get the invitation, but is there a way to "accept" it that Outlook will understand?
Personally, I think that people should work in portable formats and environments, and use tools that are most suitable for the task at hand. I don't see a big problem with requiring that people learn new tools as needed. However, I cannot so easily dismiss the issues of co-operation with people who are convinced that whatever they use is fully portable, because it's the biggest game in town.
Maybe you can find some useful tips browsing the Healtheon web site - those guys probably asked themselves similar questions.
At some point it seemed that a likely - or at least possible - outcome in terms of electoral votes would be 271/269. This reminded me of a little paperback I read years ago: "Presidential Lottery: The Reckless Gamble in Our Electoral System" by James A. Michener. I found it quite fascinating at the time (and I am not American), I wonder how popular it will become now. Ironically, I could not find it on Amazon (or elsewhere, hence no URL), but in the process I came across a couple of other titles that look relevant. Michener's book is the only one I read, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.