Not to the Isthmus of Panama. To the Isthmus of Tehuantepec--but later to Panama:
"The United States-Mexico Joint Commission was formed in 1972 between Mexico and the United States with the goal of eliminating the pest from Mexico and pushing the barrier to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, just north of Guatemala. A new sterile screwworm plant at Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, Mexico, was dedicated in 1976. With a production capacity of more than 500 million sterile flies per week, it replaced the former production plant in Mission, Texas, which was closed in January 1981. APHIS also is cooperating with Central American countries and Panama in efforts eradicate screwworms from those countries and establish and maintain a barrier of sterile flies at the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia.
As a result of these cooperative efforts, Mexico was officially declared free of screwworms in 1991, Belize and Guatemala in 1994, and El Salvador in 1995. In addition, Honduras is considered technically free, with no pest detections since January 1995. Currently, screwworm program officials are focusing their efforts on eradicating the pest from Nicaragua and Costa Rica. APHIS hopes to begin eradication activities in Panama, the final frontier of the program, in 1997. Eradication activities include regulation of cattle movement, wound treatment, and the release of sterile flies. To date, the program has been very successful."
Not just the USA. They're continuing the eradication all the way down to the Isthmus of Panama.
"With only 25 screwworm cases during 1990--none since July--Mexico is approaching the point where it can be declared free of this pest. Eradication efforts continue to make progress in Belize and Guatemala."
And, in a very rare episode of international cooperation, in Libya. When these creatures attacked, a bunch of people realized it was time to put politics aside, and very surprisingly they did it.
"In response to an outbreak of screwworms in Libya, APHIS was able to obtain passage of legislation to permit cooperation with foreign governments [meaning Qaddafi]... to combat screwworm outbreaks by selling sterile flies produced by the U.S.-Mexico facility in southern Mexico."
They got there first, then hung on to their primary concepts. So they were outpaced by innovative competitors. It happens again and again in new industries.
When I worked there, there was a rumor of an "underground vault" where they kept everything that had ever been in orbit (small objects, that is--old space suits, etc.), in order to prevent a black market developing. Have no idea what the truth of this is. Probably there is a vault somewhere, but underground in Houston is a neat trick. Sometimes, when I'd walk across the lush JSC lawns, I'd see water squish up around my feet. As the other reply says, the water table is at roughly 0 inches underground.
There is an underground tunnel complex in Houston, with shopping, movies, and parking, so it's possible, using a lot of pumps going all the time I suppose. Last year the entire city got horribly flooded, including those tunnels. Flood maps. Think about floodwater deluging a clean room full of alien samples and then surging out across the Texas countryside--which does not drain very well either, and is plenty moist and warm for growing any sort of microbe you want. Heck, they had 2 cases of cholera in Houston when I lived there. Supposedly it arrived in bilge.
Also, the entire region is saturated with noxious chemicals from the petroleum industry. With this witches' brew already in place, I'd rather have the samples go to Iowa or some such high-and-dry location.
Johnson Space Center is just south of Clear Lake City, between the city of Houston and the Gulf of Mexico. The land it is on is already sinking. Every year, local roads disappear for days at a time under high water after heavy rains.
Houston locals, including the people at NASA-JSC, entertain themselves by betting on where the hurricanes are going to hit. Locals track them on maps--and everybody has maps with latitude and longitude, because they are distributed by local businesses printed on placemats, grocery bags, and such.
Clear Lake has a straight section running directly from the Gulf of Mexico to the south side of Johnson Space Center. Topo map A big hurricane, hitting at the right point in the tidal cycle, could create a storm surge that would flood everything at JSC up to, maybe including, the second floor.
When I worked there (a long time ago) high-water preparedness consisted of putting the equipment up on tables and desks.
It seems to me that a place which could be sloshing with seawater is not the best location for this lab.
What copying technology really means is a high probability that the focus of creative money-making will move to the uncopyable--which is, live personal appearances. If the industry uses advertising and other opinion-changing techniques to make seeing a singer IN PERSON even more desirable than it is now, suddenly music-sharing becomes free advertising and should be encouraged.
It seems to me that the live-performance effect will be a natural result of increased copying. When mass production of any kind moves in, suddenly people get to desiring authenticity and personalization.
Theft is wrong because it impoverishes the original owner or originator. If "sharing" does not result in loss to the originator, but in increased sales, as the essay claims, possibly "theft" is the wrong word for the act.
To proceed off-topically here, I'm fearful about the future of libraries. They're always short of money, and shelf space translates into money. So I imagine the committee meeting:
"Let's put all the X, Y, and Z in the sale. They're available online anyway."
"Yeah, and the Library of Congress has everything. We'll just install more computers..."
I need to make friends with some librarians so when the big throw-out happens I'll be around back at the dumpster.
As you can see, such a strategy would mean the classics would go, and the copyrighted new items would stay, weighting the library's contents even more toward best-sellers and the like. Bad for civilization.
Friend, I am a library habitue. But to get there, I have to drive. And the small city I live in doesn't have, for instance, that Macaulay history I was talking about. Plus, I forget to return 'em and build up huge fines, which I am too broke to pay, so I have to avoid the place until I work up the cash.
Libraries free? Kind of. And I believe in them. But the Gutenberg Project and its kin make my living room a library bigger than any in the world.
Re, "Hemingway, maybe. But Faulkner? Melville? It would drive one batty."
Why? I'm steadily reading through the 19th-century classics right now and discovering their quality at last. I read all of George Eliot on a Palm IIIxe--all that are available through the Gutenberg Project, that is. The first books I read on the Palm were Morris's fantasies. Wouldn't he roll in his grave at the format! But the stories are just as good without his extraordinary typography and illustrations.
"Your arms/hands don't crap trying to hold it open in various contorted ways..." and how else could I carry a couple of volumes of Macaulay's History of England from the Accession of James the II and a bunch of Zane Greys to the grocery store or doctor's office at the same time? A 75-pound backpack? Those PDA-format books make "waiting" a whole different experience.
I used to say this too, until I discovered the world of literature available at the Online Books Page. Most of the tens of thousands of books are in text or HTML format, easily converted to PDA format (I use MakeDocW) and readable with CSpotRun or fancier utilities.
This has opened up the world for me. I thought I was well-educated until I realized how many classics I'd never touched. And FREE. To buy them would have cost me a couple thousand dollars--and many are just not available any more.
I had the common idea that classics were something you are forced to read because they uphold the dead-white-male worldview. That's not so. They are classic because people recognize them as quality. If something gets read over and over again through the centuries, it's not because some eternal Book Police is enforcing it. It's because people of different times and cultures continue to like it.
End of digression. Harry Potter, or anything else, on e-books as well as in print is an excellent idea. Stick the CD in the book, same as for Linux Unleashed and the like--only you could use a credit-card CD.
Right, in 1801. From the link: "In France, Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented an automatic loom using punched cards for the control of the patterns in the fabrics."
Here's a pic of the machine that read them: card reader (the massive thing in the foreground). And, a keypunch, with cabinets for punch cards off to the right; and my favorite pic from the era, the DEC-10 in the dark (a long exposure). Used to turn the lights out and watch those register indicators or whatever they were.
The more complex a system is, the more stable it is.
1. It is more likely, at any given time, to have something broken in it, than a simple system with fewer parts.
2. But it will have redundancies--backup pathways.
No matter which way this comes out, the professional namers will get new business. (These are the people who come up with names for vehicles such as Isuzu Axiom and new corporate identities like Verizon.)
Memorable domain names and searchable business names both need these characteristics:
- Short, or few elements
- Unique
- Memorable in itself, and,
-- easy to associate with your product
-- and just your product, not everybody's
- Pronounceable on sight and spellable from memory
- Without ribald connotations in major languages
An excellent example: Slashdot.
Ordinary business people are no better at making up names than they are at drawing their own logos. If you can do it for them, you've got a niche.
The newly reinvented safety pin was protected by a US patent issued in about 1850 despite these items (fibulae) having been widely used a couple or three thousand years earlier. Look close: that thing's a fancy safety pin. The small item above it looks like a variation.
MagikSlinger is almost certainly right about this. However, if there is a terrorist group out there which was organized and sophisticated enough to carry out another large-scale, imaginative attack (which I doubt), Microsoft might be on their list for these reasons:
- It's American, and a symbol of American characteristics such as innovation, which is in itself hated by reactionaries.
- It's extremely visible.
- Its market dominance could be perceived as "imperialist" or culturally imperialist by people who think like that.
- It's a center of wealth and therefore, in puritanical minds, of evil decadence.
- It could be thought of as a "vital organ" of the American economy by someone who doesn't realize how decentralized the American economy is.
Arguing against an attack on Microsoft is the idea that it's causing enough trouble for the US by itself, but this concept is probably beyond the reach of most fanatics.
"Convergent evolution": Widely evolutionarily separated creatures develop the same appearance and methods of feeding and reproduction. One spectacular example is the naked mole rat (see them yourself) which is a small mammal that lives like an ant or termite, including having a queen, workers, etc. Live like a jellyfish, look like a jellyfish. But you won't revert to jellyfish structure, any more than mole rats become cold-blooded or exoskeletal just because they act like termites.
Even very low numbers may predict future growth. The best model is the Fisher-Pry substitution analysis formula (more information). Unfortunately there are few online references to this, and they are mostly academic.
How about better control for computerized surgery and other medical procedures?
Mapping, and lots of different kinds of aerial/satellite photo analysis. You don't have to be looking directly at something to see a 3D view of it--you can look at stereo images--and so could a computer. Examples at Lunar and Planetary Institute: 3D Mars images.
From Scientific American (April 25, 2001): Researchers have found differences in the blood chemistry of newborns which may predict whether they become autistic. This difference occurs long before any vaccination.
Excerpt from the article: "Scientists have identified blood markers that may be associated with the development of autism and mental retardation later in childhood.... Karin B. Nelson of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and her colleagues studied archived neonatal blood samples from children who developed normally, as well as those who went on to develop autism, mental retardation or cerebral palsy. The team found that the blood of children who later developed autism or mental retardation contained significantly elevated levels of neural growth factors in contrast to the blood from the other two groups."
Re, "...why not then show some common examples..." Examples are the one best tool for teaching somebody how to do something. Put a few in there and see how many man-hours are saved-- not just the user's, but the better-informed people they bother all day with questions.
Also, syntax (synopsis) code is very cryptic. It's straightforward enough after you learn it, but for a newbie all those [ ]s and { }s look like a barb-wire fence. Examples would clarify what the separate elements represent.
Re, "The dialogue alone is a treat"--For its humor among many other things. The interaction of the characters generates completely natural, but completely unpredictable, dialog that would make a cat laugh. Quick flashes of 24-carat comedy pop up momentarily in the middle of some big dramatic or romantic scene. Just like real life, in fact, but you don't see it in fiction much, probably because it's hard to do.
I just wish the Google archives went back to 1978 when the original Star Wars came out. There were some vigorous, interesting discussions online about it. You can't imagine how obsessive people were. It was a cultural watershed (turning point).
Slashdot Mirror
Not to the Isthmus of Panama. To the Isthmus of Tehuantepec--but later to Panama:
"The United States-Mexico Joint Commission was formed in 1972 between Mexico and the United States with the goal of eliminating the pest from Mexico and pushing the barrier to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, just north of Guatemala. A new sterile screwworm plant at Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, Mexico, was dedicated in 1976. With a production capacity of more than 500 million sterile flies per week, it replaced the former production plant in Mission, Texas, which was closed in January 1981. APHIS also is cooperating with Central American countries and Panama in efforts eradicate screwworms from those countries and establish and maintain a barrier of sterile flies at the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia.
As a result of these cooperative efforts, Mexico was officially declared free of screwworms in 1991, Belize and Guatemala in 1994, and El Salvador in 1995. In addition, Honduras is considered technically free, with no pest detections since January 1995. Currently, screwworm program officials are focusing their efforts on eradicating the pest from Nicaragua and Costa Rica. APHIS hopes to begin eradication activities in Panama, the final frontier of the program, in 1997. Eradication activities include regulation of cattle movement, wound treatment, and the release of sterile flies. To date, the program has been very successful."
Not just the USA. They're continuing the eradication all the way down to the Isthmus of Panama.
... to combat screwworm outbreaks by selling sterile flies produced by the U.S.-Mexico facility in southern Mexico."
"With only 25 screwworm cases during 1990--none since July--Mexico is approaching the point where it can be declared free of this pest.
Eradication efforts continue to make progress in Belize and Guatemala."
And, in a very rare episode of international cooperation, in Libya. When these creatures attacked, a bunch of people realized it was time to put politics aside, and very surprisingly they did it.
"In response to an outbreak of screwworms in Libya, APHIS was able to obtain passage of legislation to permit cooperation with foreign
governments [meaning Qaddafi]
They got there first, then hung on to their primary concepts. So they were outpaced by innovative competitors. It happens again and again in new industries.
When I worked there, there was a rumor of an "underground vault" where they kept everything that had ever been in orbit (small objects, that is--old space suits, etc.), in order to prevent a black market developing. Have no idea what the truth of this is. Probably there is a vault somewhere, but underground in Houston is a neat trick. Sometimes, when I'd walk across the lush JSC lawns, I'd see water squish up around my feet. As the other reply says, the water table is at roughly 0 inches underground.
There is an underground tunnel complex in Houston, with shopping, movies, and parking, so it's possible, using a lot of pumps going all the time I suppose. Last year the entire city got horribly flooded, including those tunnels. Flood maps. Think about floodwater deluging a clean room full of alien samples and then surging out across the Texas countryside--which does not drain very well either, and is plenty moist and warm for growing any sort of microbe you want. Heck, they had 2 cases of cholera in Houston when I lived there. Supposedly it arrived in bilge.
Also, the entire region is saturated with noxious chemicals from the petroleum industry. With this witches' brew already in place, I'd rather have the samples go to Iowa or some such high-and-dry location.
Johnson Space Center is just south of Clear Lake City, between the city of Houston and the Gulf of Mexico. The land it is on is already sinking. Every year, local roads disappear for days at a time under high water after heavy rains.
Houston locals, including the people at NASA-JSC, entertain themselves by betting on where the hurricanes are going to hit. Locals track them on maps--and everybody has maps with latitude and longitude, because they are distributed by local businesses printed on placemats, grocery bags, and such.
Clear Lake has a straight section running directly from the Gulf of Mexico to the south side of Johnson Space Center. Topo map A big hurricane, hitting at the right point in the tidal cycle, could create a storm surge that would flood everything at JSC up to, maybe including, the second floor.
When I worked there (a long time ago) high-water preparedness consisted of putting the equipment up on tables and desks.
It seems to me that a place which could be sloshing with seawater is not the best location for this lab.
What copying technology really means is a high probability that the focus of creative money-making will move to the uncopyable--which is, live personal appearances. If the industry uses advertising and other opinion-changing techniques to make seeing a singer IN PERSON even more desirable than it is now, suddenly music-sharing becomes free advertising and should be encouraged.
It seems to me that the live-performance effect will be a natural result of increased copying. When mass production of any kind moves in, suddenly people get to desiring authenticity and personalization.
Theft is wrong because it impoverishes the original owner or originator. If "sharing" does not result in loss to the originator, but in increased sales, as the essay claims, possibly "theft" is the wrong word for the act.
To proceed off-topically here, I'm fearful about the future of libraries. They're always short of money, and shelf space translates into money. So I imagine the committee meeting: ..."
"Let's put all the X, Y, and Z in the sale. They're available online anyway."
"Yeah, and the Library of Congress has everything. We'll just install more computers
I need to make friends with some librarians so when the big throw-out happens I'll be around back at the dumpster.
As you can see, such a strategy would mean the classics would go, and the copyrighted new items would stay, weighting the library's contents even more toward best-sellers and the like. Bad for civilization.
Friend, I am a library habitue. But to get there, I have to drive. And the small city I live in doesn't have, for instance, that Macaulay history I was talking about. Plus, I forget to return 'em and build up huge fines, which I am too broke to pay, so I have to avoid the place until I work up the cash.
Libraries free? Kind of. And I believe in them. But the Gutenberg Project and its kin make my living room a library bigger than any in the world.
Re, "Hemingway, maybe. But Faulkner? Melville? It would drive one batty."
Why? I'm steadily reading through the 19th-century classics right now and discovering their quality at last. I read all of George Eliot on a Palm IIIxe--all that are available through the Gutenberg Project, that is. The first books I read on the Palm were Morris's fantasies. Wouldn't he roll in his grave at the format! But the stories are just as good without his extraordinary typography and illustrations.
"Your arms/hands don't crap trying to hold it open in various contorted ways..." and how else could I carry a couple of volumes of Macaulay's History of England from the Accession of James the II and a bunch of Zane Greys to the grocery store or doctor's office at the same time? A 75-pound backpack? Those PDA-format books make "waiting" a whole different experience.
I used to say this too, until I discovered the world of literature available at the Online Books Page. Most of the tens of thousands of books are in text or HTML format, easily converted to PDA format (I use MakeDocW) and readable with CSpotRun or fancier utilities.
This has opened up the world for me. I thought I was well-educated until I realized how many classics I'd never touched. And FREE. To buy them would have cost me a couple thousand dollars--and many are just not available any more.
I had the common idea that classics were something you are forced to read because they uphold the dead-white-male worldview. That's not so. They are classic because people recognize them as quality. If something gets read over and over again through the centuries, it's not because some eternal Book Police is enforcing it. It's because people of different times and cultures continue to like it.
End of digression. Harry Potter, or anything else, on e-books as well as in print is an excellent idea. Stick the CD in the book, same as for Linux Unleashed and the like--only you could use a credit-card CD.
Right, in 1801. From the link: "In France, Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented an automatic loom using punched cards for the control of the patterns in the fabrics."
Here's a pic of the machine that read them: card reader (the massive thing in the foreground). And, a keypunch, with cabinets for punch cards off to the right; and my favorite pic from the era, the DEC-10 in the dark (a long exposure). Used to turn the lights out and watch those register indicators or whatever they were.
The more complex a system is, the more stable it is.
1. It is more likely, at any given time, to have something broken in it, than a simple system with fewer parts.
2. But it will have redundancies--backup pathways.
No matter which way this comes out, the professional namers will get new business. (These are the people who come up with names for vehicles such as Isuzu Axiom and new corporate identities like Verizon.)
Memorable domain names and searchable business names both need these characteristics:
- Short, or few elements
- Unique
- Memorable in itself, and,
-- easy to associate with your product
-- and just your product, not everybody's
- Pronounceable on sight and spellable from memory
- Without ribald connotations in major languages
An excellent example: Slashdot.
Ordinary business people are no better at making up names than they are at drawing their own logos. If you can do it for them, you've got a niche.
The newly reinvented safety pin was protected by a US patent issued in about 1850 despite these items (fibulae) having been widely used a couple or three thousand years earlier. Look close: that thing's a fancy safety pin. The small item above it looks like a variation.
MagikSlinger is almost certainly right about this. However, if there is a terrorist group out there which was organized and sophisticated enough to carry out another large-scale, imaginative attack (which I doubt), Microsoft might be on their list for these reasons:
- It's American, and a symbol of American characteristics such as innovation, which is in itself hated by reactionaries.
- It's extremely visible.
- Its market dominance could be perceived as "imperialist" or culturally imperialist by people who think like that.
- It's a center of wealth and therefore, in puritanical minds, of evil decadence.
- It could be thought of as a "vital organ" of the American economy by someone who doesn't realize how decentralized the American economy is.
Arguing against an attack on Microsoft is the idea that it's causing enough trouble for the US by itself, but this concept is probably beyond the reach of most fanatics.
"Convergent evolution": Widely evolutionarily separated creatures develop the same appearance and methods of feeding and reproduction. One spectacular example is the naked mole rat (see them yourself) which is a small mammal that lives like an ant or termite, including having a queen, workers, etc. Live like a jellyfish, look like a jellyfish. But you won't revert to jellyfish structure, any more than mole rats become cold-blooded or exoskeletal just because they act like termites.
Even very low numbers may predict future growth. The best model is the Fisher-Pry substitution analysis formula (more information). Unfortunately there are few online references to this, and they are mostly academic.
How about better control for computerized surgery and other medical procedures?
Mapping, and lots of different kinds of aerial/satellite photo analysis. You don't have to be looking directly at something to see a 3D view of it--you can look at stereo images--and so could a computer. Examples at Lunar and Planetary Institute: 3D Mars images.
Eventually, autopilots for cars.
From Scientific American (April 25, 2001): Researchers have found differences in the blood chemistry of newborns which may predict whether they become autistic. This difference occurs long before any vaccination.
Excerpt from the article: "Scientists have identified blood markers that may be associated with the development of autism and mental retardation later in childhood.... Karin B. Nelson of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and her colleagues studied archived neonatal blood samples from children who developed normally, as well as those who went on to develop autism, mental retardation or cerebral palsy. The team found that the blood of children who later developed autism or mental retardation contained significantly elevated levels of neural growth factors in contrast to the blood from the other two groups."
Re, "...why not then show some common examples..." Examples are the one best tool for teaching somebody how to do something. Put a few in there and see how many man-hours are saved-- not just the user's, but the better-informed people they bother all day with questions.
Also, syntax (synopsis) code is very cryptic. It's straightforward enough after you learn it, but for a newbie all those [ ]s and { }s look like a barb-wire fence. Examples would clarify what the separate elements represent.
Re, "The dialogue alone is a treat"--For its humor among many other things. The interaction of the characters generates completely natural, but completely unpredictable, dialog that would make a cat laugh. Quick flashes of 24-carat comedy pop up momentarily in the middle of some big dramatic or romantic scene. Just like real life, in fact, but you don't see it in fiction much, probably because it's hard to do.
I just wish the Google archives went back to 1978 when the original Star Wars came out. There were some vigorous, interesting discussions online about it. You can't imagine how obsessive people were. It was a cultural watershed (turning point).