While the Distributed Proofreading Document Guidelines do call for sacrificing many aspects of text formatting, DPed works retain italics (using html-style tags), and boldface (sortof -- all caps for some reason). Double carriage returns indicate paragraph breaks, and line-lengths are preserved. Upper ASCII characters are required, too, so most of the accents and non-English standard characters are preserved. Some book projects have their own special guidelines that differ from the Doc Standards, and several of them include plans to distribute the finished work with high-res scans of illustrations, music staves, whathaveyou included.
How Gutenberg distributes them once DP hands off the text is up to Gutenberg. There are other repositories of texts online (see archive.org) that do things differently. What's perhaps most important, in terms of preservation, is that a fragile old book has been scanned for posterity. Distribution and portability benefits from its conversion to semi-plain and very plain text. As long as the original scanned images are preserved, they can be revisited if a richer document is required.
The Slashdot story added several thousand users to their rolls, myself included, and upped the output volume dramatically. Things have quieted down a bit in the months since the Slashdotting, but it's going *very* well over at DP. I encourage anyone who is remotely interested in helping to create a phat, free digital library to check it out and get involved.
It's truly amazing what you can accomplish with a large-enough group of volunteers, over a long-enough period of time. I've spent relatively little time proofing -- just a few pages whenever I've nothing else to do -- but over the course of several months it turns out I've proofed 551 pages... that's a decent-sized book that I, personally, have helped to bring to the masses. How cool is that?
It's off the homepage now, but I believe that a previous note from DP project management estimated that if it continues at its current pace, Distributed Proofreading will manage to add ~2,000 books to the Project Gutenberg library this year alone!
I have 7 tabs up in Chimera right now -- my "Mac Surf" bookmark set. Yes, it's true that I can't read all of the titles, but I can read enough of each (with their favicons) to know what's what without any problem. The tabbed page in the foreground has its full title in the window's title bar, too.
I don't particularly like opening up 8-10 unfamiliar sites as tabs, but for frequently accessed clusters of bookmarks, tabs are great. Surely you can make sense of my current line of tabs:
MacinTouch:... | InsanelyGreat... | MacSlash: A d... |/. Major Proble... | MacOS Rumo... | Think Secret -... | Mac OS X Hint...
One click on MacSurf in my favorites bar loads them all, then it's just a quick cycle from one news aggregator to the next, preloaded for convenience, and I've read almost all the daily Mac news I'm interested in. Do the same with favorite "regular" news sites, general tech sites, non-tech hobbies (gasp!) whathaveyou. That's what it's about. Random external links get opened in new windows, not as tabs.
You can keep textbooks for schoolchildren for more years.
In my experience, schoolbooks are kept too long as it is (or they were when I was a nipper). The slow yet reliable processes of juvenile destruction might just be the only thing that insures schools ever upgrade to new texts.
...for the quality of education in American schools
I don't know, really. If you ignore the proliferation of likes, she seemed otherwise well-spoken. And she used the word "bombard" in a sentence, which absolutely floored me. If anything, her Q rating has gone up in my book:-)
It's not just the larger asteroids that have names, and they're certainly not all from ancient mythology. Check out this list of minor planetary bodies. It's a long read, but there are some real gems. Lots of dead Greeks, of course, masters of dusty literature, music, science, etc. Seems like almost every city, state, and country has a minor planet named for it. Those who don't can be content to be represented by (6000) United Nations.
Perhaps most apropos to note in this forum are asteroids (9965) GNU, (9885) Linux, (9793) Torvalds and (9882) Stallman (all spotted and named by the Kitt Peak Spacewatch crew).
Childhood fairytales include (14014) Munchhausen, (17627) Humptydumpty, (1773) Rumpelstilz and (5405) Neverland. (2675) Tolkien and (2991) Bilbo are memorialized in minor planetary names as well.
Luminaries of Science fiction are well-represented by planetary bodies such as (5020) Asimov, (9766) Bradbury, (21811) Burroughs, (4923) Clarke, (6371) Heinlein, (12284) Pohl, and (7758) Poulanderson.
(4659) Roddenberry is accompanied by (9777) Enterprise, (26734) Terryfarrell and the dreaded (2913) Horta (2362).
The (3325) TARDIS is floating out there somewhere too, as is (18610) Arthurdent.
(13681) MontyPython and the circus are flying around -- (9617) Grahamchapman, (9618) Johncleese, (9619) Terrygilliam, (9620) Ericidle, (9621) Michaelpalin, and (9622) Terryjones.
(291) Alice may (or may not) be the young friend of (6984) Lewiscarroll -- along with (6042) Cheshirecat, (6735) Madhatter, (17518) Redqueen, (17942) Whiterabbit, (9387) Tweedledee and (17681) Tweedledum.
Beware the (7470) Jabberwock, my son (the jaws that bite, the claws that catch) beware the (9781) Jubjubbird and shun the frumious (9780) Bandersnatch!
Both (4386) Lust and (3162) Nostalgia might be served by a visit to (12382) Niagara Falls. Don't tell (10515) Old Joe.
Hollywood has a presence in space, with (25930) Spielberg and (7032) Hitchcock, (11548) Jerrylewis, (11419) Donjohnson, (20789) Hughgrant and (12050) Humecronyn. (13070) Seanconnery stars as (9007) James Bond.
Too many cool ones to list all at once, but I have to mention (8147) Colemanhawkins, and (6318) Cronkite. There's the trio of (5048) Moriarty, (5049) Sherlock and (5050) Doctorwatson, followed by (5051) Ralph.
IANAB, but if by mummification you mean desiccation, freeze drying is probably the closest thing to spontaneous mummification, and even that could take a year I'm guessing (since freeze drying a large dog can take up to 6 months). Don't know how else to gently remove all of the liquid content from a human body.
If, however, you're talking about getting the Full Pharaoh done in 15 minutes or less, then no. Not only is there the whole brain-removal-through-the-nose business to take care of, but also the internal organectomy (with associated preparation and individualized packaging into a charming array of Canopic jars), the stuffing of the cavities with delicious herbs and spices, the extended natron soak, the wrapping with fine linens... If you're doing the job right, of course, there will also be a tomb of opulent design upon which skilled artisans have been laboring for at least a decade, as well as kick ass grave goods...
Keith may well have a good head start on the process, depending on how much of his grey matter he's already removed via his nasal passages. Heavy alcohol consumption wouldn't be bad for traditional mummification either, but it would probably fuck up a nice predictable freeze dry -- too much alcohol in the blood and it doesn't freeze, and then where are you?
Netscape is the direct descendant of NSCA Mosaic, the Ur browser. Frankly, I don't remember what the big deal about Netscape 1.0 was, relative to Mosaic, but there was much hype. Maybe something really hardcore, like introducing background colors?
In most people's minds, "good judgement" means "if given the same set of facts, the other person would come to the same conclusion or make the same decision I would
Heh, we're going rather far OT here, but that's a good thing. I think I agree with your definition of "good judgment" in a non-political sense, although I don't equate it with necessarily making the same conclusion/decision that I do... just one that is defensible and apropos.
Say you're faced with a technical quandry, consider it for a while, and then choose the optimal solution path - I'd say you exercised good judgment.
Say you have a personal decision to make, such as whether to take the red pill or the blue pill. You consider the impact the possible outcomes will have on your life, and those of your loved ones (if any). It gets trickier to evaluate your decision, since so many of the weights are internal motivations unique to you, but I think with enough explication of your inner life and circumstances I could subjectively say whether your judgment was good or bad.
In political situations, however, you're oftentimes dealing with philosophical and moral issues. I don't know that one can say a senator exercised bad judgment in passing a law that, for example, bans gay marriage. Said senator may be firmly of the conviction that homosexuality is a scourge upon our nation, a danger to our youth, an affrontery to God, etc. Most likely his constituents agree, in the main, or they wouldn't have elected him. Now, that's certainly not my policial belief -- I'm all for legalizing gay marriages, bring 'em on! -- but I don't know that I'd say our hypothetical senator exercised "bad judgment," because I'm sure that within his own moral realm his judgment was probably spot-on. I would say that said senator is perpetuating an injustice, is living in the past, is oppressing the rights of a particular class of citizens, etc. I would say that the decision is injust.
Anyway, maybe we agree to disagree. Perhaps I should have qualified my original post by saying that very few of the officials who represent me in congress are ones whom I voted for. I tend to vote 3rd party (or 4th or 5th:)a lot, and those folks aren't getting elected just yet. Consequently, the best I can hope for from my representatives is that they hear my voice, as an opinioned constituent. What they do with my opinion, I leave to their best judgment:)
You elect someone for their judgement, not their positions on particular issues.
Ideally that would be the case, but judgment is a rather difficult quality to gauge. More often than not it is their position on particular issues that gets them elected, good judgment or otherwise.
One way or another, through primaries, lack of interest, or whathaveyou, you're left with two or three candidates on the final ballot. If I'm presented with the option of voting for a candidate whose platform is largely in-line with my political beliefs vs. one who is antithetical, even if the latter may be someone with "better judgment" I'm still not likely to vote for them. I don't want a jackbooted fascist with good judgment representing me.
Email volume as more or less an inverse measure of approval...
I'm not sure that's true. On the occasions when I have contacted my senator or representative, it has almost always been to voice my opinions about an issue in an upcoming vote, to encourage action against a policy which I find reprehensible, etc. Very rarely have I written to complain about their vote/conduct/etc.
Might it not be that the representatives who receive the most email also happen to have the most politically aware and active constituents?
Much of the spam I receive via other countries' servers seems to be for products and services offered by American companies, and I see no reason why the theoretical US anti-spam legislation should allow a loophole for American biz that outsource their spamming off-shore. If you're an American company trying to make a buck by feeding the spam machine, you should be punished.
America wields a pretty big stick internationally and occasionally this can be an advantage without being morally reprehensible. I would imagine that lots of world leaders would be hep to hop aboard an anti-spam bandwagon led off by the US govt. They'd all get to look tech-savvy and concerned for their respective constituents (especially the porn stuff... politicians love to hate porn), "preserving the internet" etc. Ultimately you wind up with an "Axis of E-mail" list of countries that don't join in the global call for responsible commercial emails. Then you can decide what you want to do with mail from those countries. Bit bucket, sez I -- if Sri Lanka doesn't punish it's spammers, well, I'm willing to take the chance that all email to me from.lk can be purged sight unseen.
I've got to assume that there will be fewer and fewer opportunities for spammers to make $$ from people non-local to them. As spam becomes outlawed throughout the developed world, people will come to associate it even more with shady disreputable merchants. Would you want to do business with someone like that, over international distances, presumably with a country that has sketchy/poorly enforced fraud legislation? And they'll have to make money from selling product, since it's not like they're gonna make a mint through banner sales.
Saying that legislation won't make a difference underestimates the importance of making a political statement. If something like this were passed, it would represent a certain level of consensus, and then the snowball starts to form.
The Maxis (or are they EA now?) spokesperson in the article stated that there would likely be more product placement deals announced before the launch of The Sims Online. They also made the point that the nature of the game allows for easy "upgrading" of clients to handle additional advertiser/sponsor insertions into the simworld after it launches.
I really don't have much of a problem with product placement on this level, as long as there are other options (ie, not every restaurant is a MacDonalds, and not every computer has Intel Inside). It will be equally troublesome, however, if they are signing exclusive contracts with these companies.
Just as in RealLife, I would want my Sim to have the option of eschewing certain brands. S/he shouldn't have to starve I choose not to endorse the MacEntity. Similarly, I would hope that Intel's inclusion doesn't mean that Apple can't buy some simspace as well, or Red Hat for that matter (maybe IBM would foot the bill and go for a co-branded sim-machine). Not only would it completely suck for there to be only one (real) brand of food, computer, car, etc (and make one wonder about the legal ramifications of monopoly positions in a simverse), but it would be either grossly unrealistic or virtually post-apocolyptic.
Damn, this makes me wonder whether any degree of entrepreneurialism is coded into The Sims Online. Can I have my character open a falafel and carrot juice stand, corner the market on vegetarian health food, and go on to sell franchises across the simverse? Hmmm.
USC prohibits any infringement of intellectual property rights by any member of the USC community. As an academic institution, USC's purpose is to promote and foster the creation of intellectual property. It is antithetical to this purpose for USC to play any part, even inadvertently, in the violation of the intellectual property rights of others.
I don't have a problem with the university attempting to keep its legal nose clean... (I do have a problem with what constitutes intellectual property these days, and the grossly extended period of time before anything is able to enter the public domain. Hopefully Lessig will prevail before the Supremes this October, though I can't say I'm optimistic.)
Still, the point is that the email does explicitly state that "As an academic institution, USC's purpose is to promote and foster the creation of intellectual property." I find that abhorrent. An academic institution's purpose should be to foster the education of its students, encourage critical thinking, broaden worldviews and prepare young men and women to live rich, intellectually stimulating lives. They might legitimately lay claim to "promoting the creation of new and innovative ideas," but to describe those as being intellectual property is pretty base. Ars Gratia Pecuniam.
Isn't that what most Fiat owners do? I mean, a few years after you've bought it you discover that you've replaced enough parts and it's spent so much time in the shop that you have essentially built your own Fiat:-)
Here is the TelecomEgypt page describing their service offering.
It's 10 pt/6 minutes, or 1 LE/hour, which is $0.22 at today's exchange rate. If you're connecting between midnight and 8 am, it's only 75 pt/hour, or $0.16!
So, what does a dollar buy you these days? With 07777777, it gets you over 4.5 hours of internet access. Thanks, GegaNet!
My question is what kind of throughput can you get over the average Egyptian phone line? I somehow doubt that it's a solid 56K from most locations.
The Egyptian Pound (LE) had been pegged at almost exactly 1/3 of a dollar for a long long time, but I look now and see that it's shot up to $1 = 4.65LE. Thus 25 = 1.15LE (approx). It's been about 10 years since I lived there... what does an Egyptian Pound buy you these days? Anyone on the ground in Cairo care to comment?
Looking for current data on income, the world bank cites a figure of $1,490 for Gross National Income per capita in 2000. So, that's about 6700LE. Africare says it's more like $3,420 (=15,903LE), but that's "real GDP per capita."
Getting useful numbers is tricky, especially when you're talking about a country like Egypt that has a vast off-the-books economy going on.
The SLES also can be used to rescue spacecraft that have been placed in a wrong orbit by their launch vehicles, or which have become stranded in an incorrect orbital location during positioning maneuvers.
They don't say anything about what happens after the SLES has moved the misplaced spacecraft. I suppose it would really depend on the needs of the rescued craft -- ie, whether it has enough on board fuel to maintain and adjust its attitude, or whether the SLES needs to hang around to help it.
As for a business model, well, how many satellites need rescuing? I would think that they're right to focus on the predictable market of sats that run out of juice instead of relying on error (human or mechanical) to create opportunities for them. At least, in the short-term. Once they've got their birds flying and have some real world experience, maybe they'll start getting creative with them and send them on "Extended Missions" once the sat-moving job is done.
Attitude control for the SLES and the telecommunications satellite to which it is mated is handled by ion thruster packs mounted on deployable booms. These booms are extended to provide sufficient thruster impulse for control of the SLES/telecom satellite combination.
I don't believe that they claim the GlucoWatch should be used as an accurate point-sample meter, but rather as a continuous monitoring device to indicate trends. Theoretically it lets you know the approx rate at which your glucose is rising/falling so that you can take the appropriate measures. The utility of the device probably depends on your personal diabetes management strategy -- whether you control your meds, or just your food, etc.
I have been told that its method of sampling tends to leave scar tissue behind, but I have no first hand (wrist?) experience of the product.
the pills people take today aren't really insulin... they just help your body use the insulin that you do produce, or coax more out of you. they only work for people who have relatively functional pancreases.
real oral insulin instead of insulin injections/pump would be a major breakthrough, and there is much work in the field. There seems to be some very promising work on this at Purdue, which may be related to the current Nobex clinical trials. Israeli researchers have a line on it, too. Shots may well soon be a thing of the past!
Slashdot Mirror
While the Distributed Proofreading Document Guidelines do call for sacrificing many aspects of text formatting, DPed works retain italics (using html-style tags), and boldface (sortof -- all caps for some reason). Double carriage returns indicate paragraph breaks, and line-lengths are preserved. Upper ASCII characters are required, too, so most of the accents and non-English standard characters are preserved. Some book projects have their own special guidelines that differ from the Doc Standards, and several of them include plans to distribute the finished work with high-res scans of illustrations, music staves, whathaveyou included.
How Gutenberg distributes them once DP hands off the text is up to Gutenberg. There are other repositories of texts online (see archive.org ) that do things differently. What's perhaps most important, in terms of preservation, is that a fragile old book has been scanned for posterity. Distribution and portability benefits from its conversion to semi-plain and very plain text. As long as the original scanned images are preserved, they can be revisited if a richer document is required.
Now, if only E Ink would get a product to market!
Rah, Rah Distributed Proofreaders!
The Slashdot story added several thousand users to their rolls, myself included, and upped the output volume dramatically. Things have quieted down a bit in the months since the Slashdotting, but it's going *very* well over at DP. I encourage anyone who is remotely interested in helping to create a phat, free digital library to check it out and get involved.
It's truly amazing what you can accomplish with a large-enough group of volunteers, over a long-enough period of time. I've spent relatively little time proofing -- just a few pages whenever I've nothing else to do -- but over the course of several months it turns out I've proofed 551 pages... that's a decent-sized book that I, personally, have helped to bring to the masses. How cool is that?
It's off the homepage now, but I believe that a previous note from DP project management estimated that if it continues at its current pace, Distributed Proofreading will manage to add ~2,000 books to the Project Gutenberg library this year alone!
I don't particularly like opening up 8-10 unfamiliar sites as tabs, but for frequently accessed clusters of bookmarks, tabs are great. Surely you can make sense of my current line of tabs:
/. Major Proble... | MacOS Rumo... | Think Secret - ... | Mac OS X Hint...
MacinTouch:... | InsanelyGreat... | MacSlash: A d... |
One click on MacSurf in my favorites bar loads them all, then it's just a quick cycle from one news aggregator to the next, preloaded for convenience, and I've read almost all the daily Mac news I'm interested in. Do the same with favorite "regular" news sites, general tech sites, non-tech hobbies (gasp!) whathaveyou. That's what it's about. Random external links get opened in new windows, not as tabs.
You can keep textbooks for schoolchildren for more years.
In my experience, schoolbooks are kept too long as it is (or they were when I was a nipper). The slow yet reliable processes of juvenile destruction might just be the only thing that insures schools ever upgrade to new texts.
Think of the Children!
...for the quality of education in American schools
:-)
I don't know, really. If you ignore the proliferation of likes, she seemed otherwise well-spoken. And she used the word "bombard" in a sentence, which absolutely floored me. If anything, her Q rating has gone up in my book
Not sure if it's supported in OS X, but it is in linux...
OS X does Bluetooth.
I thought it said "Nanotech Pants For Military"
So did I, but I assumed that it was a follow-up to this article from Jan '01 about nano-pants. What's become of those fabled fibers?
It's not just the larger asteroids that have names, and they're certainly not all from ancient mythology. Check out this list of minor planetary bodies. It's a long read, but there are some real gems. Lots of dead Greeks, of course, masters of dusty literature, music, science, etc. Seems like almost every city, state, and country has a minor planet named for it. Those who don't can be content to be represented by (6000) United Nations.
Perhaps most apropos to note in this forum are asteroids (9965) GNU, (9885) Linux, (9793) Torvalds and (9882) Stallman (all spotted and named by the Kitt Peak Spacewatch crew).
Childhood fairytales include (14014) Munchhausen, (17627) Humptydumpty, (1773) Rumpelstilz and (5405) Neverland. (2675) Tolkien and (2991) Bilbo are memorialized in minor planetary names as well.
Luminaries of Science fiction are well-represented by planetary bodies such as (5020) Asimov, (9766) Bradbury, (21811) Burroughs, (4923) Clarke, (6371) Heinlein, (12284) Pohl, and (7758) Poulanderson.
(4659) Roddenberry is accompanied by (9777) Enterprise, (26734) Terryfarrell and the dreaded (2913) Horta (2362).
The (3325) TARDIS is floating out there somewhere too, as is (18610) Arthurdent.
(13681) MontyPython and the circus are flying around -- (9617) Grahamchapman, (9618) Johncleese, (9619) Terrygilliam, (9620) Ericidle, (9621) Michaelpalin, and (9622) Terryjones.
(291) Alice may (or may not) be the young friend of (6984) Lewiscarroll -- along with (6042) Cheshirecat, (6735) Madhatter, (17518) Redqueen, (17942) Whiterabbit, (9387) Tweedledee and (17681) Tweedledum.
Beware the (7470) Jabberwock, my son (the jaws that bite, the claws that catch) beware the (9781) Jubjubbird and shun the frumious (9780) Bandersnatch!
Both (4386) Lust and (3162) Nostalgia might be served by a visit to (12382) Niagara Falls. Don't tell (10515) Old Joe.
Hollywood has a presence in space, with (25930) Spielberg and (7032) Hitchcock, (11548) Jerrylewis, (11419) Donjohnson, (20789) Hughgrant and (12050) Humecronyn. (13070) Seanconnery stars as (9007) James Bond.
Too many cool ones to list all at once, but I have to mention (8147) Colemanhawkins, and (6318) Cronkite. There's the trio of (5048) Moriarty, (5049) Sherlock and (5050) Doctorwatson, followed by (5051) Ralph.
Have some (29700) Salmon.
IANAB, but if by mummification you mean desiccation, freeze drying is probably the closest thing to spontaneous mummification, and even that could take a year I'm guessing (since freeze drying a large dog can take up to 6 months). Don't know how else to gently remove all of the liquid content from a human body.
If, however, you're talking about getting the Full Pharaoh done in 15 minutes or less, then no. Not only is there the whole brain-removal-through-the-nose business to take care of, but also the internal organectomy (with associated preparation and individualized packaging into a charming array of Canopic jars), the stuffing of the cavities with delicious herbs and spices, the extended natron soak, the wrapping with fine linens... If you're doing the job right, of course, there will also be a tomb of opulent design upon which skilled artisans have been laboring for at least a decade, as well as kick ass grave goods...
Keith may well have a good head start on the process, depending on how much of his grey matter he's already removed via his nasal passages. Heavy alcohol consumption wouldn't be bad for traditional mummification either, but it would probably fuck up a nice predictable freeze dry -- too much alcohol in the blood and it doesn't freeze, and then where are you?
Netscape is the direct descendant of NSCA Mosaic, the Ur browser. Frankly, I don't remember what the big deal about Netscape 1.0 was, relative to Mosaic, but there was much hype. Maybe something really hardcore, like introducing background colors?
Here are some examples of prior art, both digital and physical that should help your search :-)
In most people's minds, "good judgement" means "if given the same set of facts, the other person would come to the same conclusion or make the same decision I would
... just one that is defensible and apropos.
:)a lot, and those folks aren't getting elected just yet. Consequently, the best I can hope for from my representatives is that they hear my voice, as an opinioned constituent. What they do with my opinion, I leave to their best judgment :)
Heh, we're going rather far OT here, but that's a good thing. I think I agree with your definition of "good judgment" in a non-political sense, although I don't equate it with necessarily making the same conclusion/decision that I do
Say you're faced with a technical quandry, consider it for a while, and then choose the optimal solution path - I'd say you exercised good judgment.
Say you have a personal decision to make, such as whether to take the red pill or the blue pill. You consider the impact the possible outcomes will have on your life, and those of your loved ones (if any). It gets trickier to evaluate your decision, since so many of the weights are internal motivations unique to you, but I think with enough explication of your inner life and circumstances I could subjectively say whether your judgment was good or bad.
In political situations, however, you're oftentimes dealing with philosophical and moral issues. I don't know that one can say a senator exercised bad judgment in passing a law that, for example, bans gay marriage. Said senator may be firmly of the conviction that homosexuality is a scourge upon our nation, a danger to our youth, an affrontery to God, etc. Most likely his constituents agree, in the main, or they wouldn't have elected him. Now, that's certainly not my policial belief -- I'm all for legalizing gay marriages, bring 'em on! -- but I don't know that I'd say our hypothetical senator exercised "bad judgment," because I'm sure that within his own moral realm his judgment was probably spot-on. I would say that said senator is perpetuating an injustice, is living in the past, is oppressing the rights of a particular class of citizens, etc. I would say that the decision is injust.
Anyway, maybe we agree to disagree. Perhaps I should have qualified my original post by saying that very few of the officials who represent me in congress are ones whom I voted for. I tend to vote 3rd party (or 4th or 5th
You elect someone for their judgement, not their positions on particular issues.
Ideally that would be the case, but judgment is a rather difficult quality to gauge. More often than not it is their position on particular issues that gets them elected, good judgment or otherwise.
One way or another, through primaries, lack of interest, or whathaveyou, you're left with two or three candidates on the final ballot. If I'm presented with the option of voting for a candidate whose platform is largely in-line with my political beliefs vs. one who is antithetical, even if the latter may be someone with "better judgment" I'm still not likely to vote for them. I don't want a jackbooted fascist with good judgment representing me.
Email volume as more or less an inverse measure of approval...
I'm not sure that's true. On the occasions when I have contacted my senator or representative, it has almost always been to voice my opinions about an issue in an upcoming vote, to encourage action against a policy which I find reprehensible, etc. Very rarely have I written to complain about their vote/conduct/etc.
Might it not be that the representatives who receive the most email also happen to have the most politically aware and active constituents?
Much of the spam I receive via other countries' servers seems to be for products and services offered by American companies, and I see no reason why the theoretical US anti-spam legislation should allow a loophole for American biz that outsource their spamming off-shore. If you're an American company trying to make a buck by feeding the spam machine, you should be punished.
.lk can be purged sight unseen.
America wields a pretty big stick internationally and occasionally this can be an advantage without being morally reprehensible. I would imagine that lots of world leaders would be hep to hop aboard an anti-spam bandwagon led off by the US govt. They'd all get to look tech-savvy and concerned for their respective constituents (especially the porn stuff... politicians love to hate porn), "preserving the internet" etc. Ultimately you wind up with an "Axis of E-mail" list of countries that don't join in the global call for responsible commercial emails. Then you can decide what you want to do with mail from those countries. Bit bucket, sez I -- if Sri Lanka doesn't punish it's spammers, well, I'm willing to take the chance that all email to me from
I've got to assume that there will be fewer and fewer opportunities for spammers to make $$ from people non-local to them. As spam becomes outlawed throughout the developed world, people will come to associate it even more with shady disreputable merchants. Would you want to do business with someone like that, over international distances, presumably with a country that has sketchy/poorly enforced fraud legislation? And they'll have to make money from selling product, since it's not like they're gonna make a mint through banner sales.
Saying that legislation won't make a difference underestimates the importance of making a political statement. If something like this were passed, it would represent a certain level of consensus, and then the snowball starts to form.
The Maxis (or are they EA now?) spokesperson in the article stated that there would likely be more product placement deals announced before the launch of The Sims Online. They also made the point that the nature of the game allows for easy "upgrading" of clients to handle additional advertiser/sponsor insertions into the simworld after it launches.
I really don't have much of a problem with product placement on this level, as long as there are other options (ie, not every restaurant is a MacDonalds, and not every computer has Intel Inside). It will be equally troublesome, however, if they are signing exclusive contracts with these companies.
Just as in RealLife, I would want my Sim to have the option of eschewing certain brands. S/he shouldn't have to starve I choose not to endorse the MacEntity. Similarly, I would hope that Intel's inclusion doesn't mean that Apple can't buy some simspace as well, or Red Hat for that matter (maybe IBM would foot the bill and go for a co-branded sim-machine). Not only would it completely suck for there to be only one (real) brand of food, computer, car, etc (and make one wonder about the legal ramifications of monopoly positions in a simverse), but it would be either grossly unrealistic or virtually post-apocolyptic.
Damn, this makes me wonder whether any degree of entrepreneurialism is coded into The Sims Online. Can I have my character open a falafel and carrot juice stand, corner the market on vegetarian health food, and go on to sell franchises across the simverse? Hmmm.
USC prohibits any infringement of intellectual property rights by any member of the USC community. As an academic institution, USC's purpose is to promote and foster the creation of intellectual property. It is antithetical to this purpose for USC to play any part, even inadvertently, in the violation of the intellectual property rights of others.
I don't have a problem with the university attempting to keep its legal nose clean ... (I do have a problem with what constitutes intellectual property these days, and the grossly extended period of time before anything is able to enter the public domain. Hopefully Lessig will prevail before the Supremes this October, though I can't say I'm optimistic.)
Still, the point is that the email does explicitly state that "As an academic institution, USC's purpose is to promote and foster the creation of intellectual property." I find that abhorrent. An academic institution's purpose should be to foster the education of its students, encourage critical thinking, broaden worldviews and prepare young men and women to live rich, intellectually stimulating lives. They might legitimately lay claim to "promoting the creation of new and innovative ideas," but to describe those as being intellectual property is pretty base. Ars Gratia Pecuniam.
Isn't that what most Fiat owners do? I mean, a few years after you've bought it you discover that you've replaced enough parts and it's spent so much time in the shop that you have essentially built your own Fiat :-)
It's 10 pt/6 minutes, or 1 LE/hour, which is $0.22 at today's exchange rate. If you're connecting between midnight and 8 am, it's only 75 pt/hour, or $0.16!
So, what does a dollar buy you these days? With 07777777, it gets you over 4.5 hours of internet access. Thanks, GegaNet!
My question is what kind of throughput can you get over the average Egyptian phone line? I somehow doubt that it's a solid 56K from most locations.
The Egyptian Pound (LE) had been pegged at almost exactly 1/3 of a dollar for a long long time, but I look now and see that it's shot up to $1 = 4.65LE. Thus 25 = 1.15LE (approx). It's been about 10 years since I lived there... what does an Egyptian Pound buy you these days? Anyone on the ground in Cairo care to comment?
Looking for current data on income, the world bank cites a figure of $1,490 for Gross National Income per capita in 2000. So, that's about 6700LE. Africare says it's more like $3,420 (=15,903LE), but that's "real GDP per capita."
Getting useful numbers is tricky, especially when you're talking about a country like Egypt that has a vast off-the-books economy going on.
From http://www.orbitalrecovery.com/about_us.html:
The SLES also can be used to rescue spacecraft that have been placed in a wrong orbit by their launch vehicles, or which have become stranded in an incorrect orbital location during positioning maneuvers.
They don't say anything about what happens after the SLES has moved the misplaced spacecraft. I suppose it would really depend on the needs of the rescued craft -- ie, whether it has enough on board fuel to maintain and adjust its attitude, or whether the SLES needs to hang around to help it.
As for a business model, well, how many satellites need rescuing? I would think that they're right to focus on the predictable market of sats that run out of juice instead of relying on error (human or mechanical) to create opportunities for them. At least, in the short-term. Once they've got their birds flying and have some real world experience, maybe they'll start getting creative with them and send them on "Extended Missions" once the sat-moving job is done.
Wha? They're using them:
from http://www.orbitalrecovery.com/faq.html
Attitude control for the SLES and the telecommunications satellite to which it is mated is handled by ion thruster packs mounted on deployable booms. These booms are extended to provide sufficient thruster impulse for control of the SLES/telecom satellite combination.
bukra fil mish mish
tomorrow in apricots??
I don't believe that they claim the GlucoWatch should be used as an accurate point-sample meter, but rather as a continuous monitoring device to indicate trends. Theoretically it lets you know the approx rate at which your glucose is rising/falling so that you can take the appropriate measures. The utility of the device probably depends on your personal diabetes management strategy -- whether you control your meds, or just your food, etc.
I have been told that its method of sampling tends to leave scar tissue behind, but I have no first hand (wrist?) experience of the product.
the pills people take today aren't really insulin... they just help your body use the insulin that you do produce, or coax more out of you. they only work for people who have relatively functional pancreases.
real oral insulin instead of insulin injections/pump would be a major breakthrough, and there is much work in the field. There seems to be some very promising work on this at Purdue, which may be related to the current Nobex clinical trials. Israeli researchers have a line on it, too. Shots may well soon be a thing of the past!