I tend to agree with what you say. However, "credit" in science is largely irrelevant to the actual science. I'm not saying it has no effect, particular on people who do not understand the science. The effect may be large and often the most clever, efficient, and devious, even perhaps ruthless survive. The fact that Bill Gates is the world's richest man, rather than the descendants of either Paul Gottlieb Nipkow and Philo Farnsworth show that the "spoils" of innovation don't always get passed to those who first propose it. However, this is only in the context of human behavior and the human "food chain" that feeds of the products of science. It is irrelevant to science itself. Ethical behavior is largely up to historians of science to discuss and to theologians, who always take it upon themselves to pass judgements on the behavior of others, whether they have a reasonable basis for such judgements or not.
Everyone knows that Newton and Leibnitz essentially "invented/(discovered?)" calculus. However, fewer are aware that recent discoveries suggest that many of the seminal mahtematical ideas with respect to "infinitesmals" may have been first worked out by Archimedes many centuries earlier in his Palimpsest. We are human so we would all like to be held in such high esteem as any of these giants. No doubt fame, prizes and rich awards, and maybe even sex, would follow. However, it really matters little to the actual mathematics (save notation, where it seems Liebnitz won this aspect hands down). By declining the Fields medal Grigori Perelman, a Russian mathematician made this point rather forcefully. It is worth noting that on the Field Medal is the inscription "Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri", Rise above oneself and grasp the world, which is the essence of what science and mathematics is about.
Generally speaking, if you are in science for credit, glory, fame, or money you are really in the wrong business. For the most part, one gets into science for the joy of doing and the excitment of discovery, and the satisfaction of knowing how it is you know. As far as the science goes, there is little else to it.
The parts of the ICZN ("the code") you refer to are recommendations listed in the Appendecies as Appendix A. The recommendations in Appendix A (Code of Ethics) are RECOMMENDATIONS and not part of the actual rules. Thus, unethical behavior does not technically violate the rules, only the spirit of the rules.
A famous case of "stealing" the original description is the case for the description of the second living coelacanth from Indonesia, originally discovered by an American but published first based on scales stolen from the specimen by a French worker (probably with an Indonesian accomplice). This nomenclatural act (publication prosing a new name) was challenged by many ichthyologists worldwide, who likewise took "a dim view" of such behavior, including many other French workers who saw the injustice of this. However, the ICZN had no basis to overturn the name proposed on the basis of scale morhology, regardless of how illicitly obtained because the "theft" did not explicitly violate the rules. This may seem unjust, but the Commission hardly has the time or resources to rule on nomenclatural issues, much less judge the ethical standards of fellow scientists.
The rules of priority can only be overturned in cases where an older name has not been used as valid since 1899 and where uses of the junior synonym can be shown to have been used a definite number of times over a definite period of years (See Arcticle 23.9.1). That is in cases where use of an older name would upset prevailing useage
However, while the French worker's name will in perpetuity be attributed to the French author, for all practical purposes the French worker destroyed his good name (assuming it once meant something to him) by his actions and will in perpetuity be associated with his egregeious and unethical behavior.
Possibly Botanists who have their own set of rules may have arrived at a different outcome (I am not familiar with the the rules for Botanical Names). It would be interesting to know.
Another thing I discovered about Vista is if you use it abroad to watch foreign CD's. While visiting South Africa, I rented a couple of DVD to played my new Dell XPS M1330. One was in US format the other was in South AFrican format. It automatically changed the settings without telling me, using up one of the "changes" M$ limits it users to just to watch a DVD. I had planned to watch one with another machine already in that the foreign format, but it didn't even give me a chance to do so. Just one more slimy marketing trick M$ uses to sell more operating systems. Really not necessary, as all in all, otherwise I really don't mind Vista (now that I have [ALMOST] gotten various XP programs to work on it (by essentially gutting all the new security features so older programs will run.
Why do creationists only believe in the 9 commandments? I thought they wanted to get through the gates of heaven, yet seem only to want instead to bear false witness. What a useless bunch of hypocrites and thats no theory its a fact!
As for theories, you seem not to understand that in science theories, like the "theory of natural selection" that are most useful to scientific understanding are hypotheses that have been tested repeatedly and found to be highly predictive. Theories survive in science only if scientists can not disprove them and instead find that "the facts" are rather explained by them or are constitent with them despite many independent tests.
Darwin's theory is so valuable scientifically, because it explains virtually ALL of modern biology and indeed forms the basis of what we know in biology. There are NO FACTS about Biology that are inconsistent with Darwin's theory of natural selection, except perhaps antiquated ideas Darwin may have had about the precise mechanisms of how characterisitcs of organisms are inherited. However, these do not repudiate the main tenants of his theory.
If you get sick you might prefer to see someone who is trained in medicine, which is based on biology and an understanding of how natural selection has created the human body rather than your local pastor or witch doctor. Of course, the choice is yours, since afterall you may think there are 100's of virgins up there waiting for you.
As one who has worked both with Linux and Windows extensively and watched both mature in their resective markets.
There seem to be three points here that are largely missed by the review.
1) the $200 puts a very low price floor on a rather relatively functional PC (browsing, networking, etc) compared to higher prices systems in the $400-$800 ranage. The features will now no doubt a) smooth out some of the kinks and set a baseline for improvements at this $200 price.
2) At $200 a large market can afford one to do the mundane computing tasks that are typically take up about 80% of most PC users time (few PC users actually spend their cpu cycles actually "computing" in a strict sense).
3) with such a large potential MASS market (from THE MASS marketer) Linux is being tried and becoming comfortable to a much wider base of users, which puts considerable pressure on other OS makers who expect to make a profit in the "commoditized segment" of the PC business.
As a Vista user, this is a win for me as it puts pressure for the first time on Microsoft to really make their OS perform with a minimum of penalties both in terms of cost and performance, lest they be replaced by cheaper, as nearly functional equivalents.
As a Linux user, this is a win for me because it puts additional pressure on Linux software developers to make their software run in more standardly configurable modules to conform to the dimensions of an increasingly larger Linux market, so that installation, maintenance, and peformance tuning become ever easier.
The nice thing is that if you don't like it, you don't have to buy one, but at $200 (sans monitor) a lot of people, especially younger, poorer users with limited budgets will.
If one reads the treaty closely, there is no provision in it that gives the USTR the power to enforce such penalties that would "OTHERWISE be considered acts of piracy, counterfiting or other forms of IPR infringement" (note emphasis). The US gave away that privilege when it signed the treaty. Since these articles (works) have been deemed exempt from the ordinary enforcement in the treaty (at least up to $21M) by the statutory mechanisms within WTO, there is technically no infringement (although there would have been hadn't the WTO ruled otherwise).
But if Antigua/Barbados can now legitimately sell the pirated works to people in third countries, they can largely dictate what the price will be in the entire market (outside of US) for all other copies and still legally give the copyright holder's their share of the take (based on a percentage of the RETAIL price [not what the copyright holders would WISH THEY COULD GET]). Even if the US were to penalize its own citizens, it is now powerless under the WTO to enforce such treaty-abrogatinng enforcements on third countries. Why would consumers in these countries pay more when you can get a "legitimate" copy from Antigua/Barbados for nearly free. The US copyright holders will simply have to pay a kickback to Antigua/Barbados just to be sure they keep the retail price high enough that the leverage Antigua/Barbados has been given under the WTO ruling will not be used to flood the world market with perfectly legal but "otherwises pirated" copies sold for fair, but incredibly cheap prices to third countries. Just think of all the "goodwill" they can generate in 3rd countries (or among US tourists abroad) by making all US copyrighted works available within the $21 million copyright free window.
Looks as if a bunch of US corporate lawyers outsmarted themselves on this one. Sometimes when you have your cake and eat it too, you can get one hell of a case of indigestion.
If I understand the situation correctly, copyright holders are paid a percentage of the retail price. If Antigua can set a very low retail price (nearly free) it can essentially distribute unlimmited copies of any work "copyrighted" under US law (as modified by the adoption of the Berne Treaty Protocols of 1989). Ironically, compensation in this public law, as far as I can tell, is focused only on the issue of providing relief to copyright holders in the event of harm through "breach of copyright". It does not stipulate specifically who can sell "copyrighted" works or what they can charge for them so long as the transactions provide for legitimate remuneration to the copyright holders.
Given the ruling it would appear that Antigua can now set any price it wants for ANY work that it can copy and distribute and essentially manipulate the entire copyright process using their $21 million "copyright window", so long as it remunerates the copyright holders their "fair share" of the selling price.
Thus, it would appear that Antigua can leverage their "$21 million copyright window" in any way they see fit and do so consitent with treaty obligations.
Does it matter if Antigua can set its own price for individual copies?
Take all songs/movies and use this number to divide 21 million then divide by the average number of songs/movies they intend to distribute, giving the cost they might be able to charge the average user for any particular US recording/movie.
It might not make them more than $21 million, but it sure would alter the way business is done in the move/recording industries. Overnight Antigua has become a powerhouse, with TEMENDOUS leverage. Anyone who argues with their way of doing business might just be hit with a price cut!
Thanks for the input. I tend to agree. Once graphics were introduced the tightness/clarity/performance of the code all seemed to suffer. Reveal codes seems essential to track down improperly nested tags.
Your comment about my luck is what has me worried. I feel as though I'm whistling past the hard disk, every time it does an automatic save. Hence, am seriously looking for an alternative.
I don't do much with pasting HTML at this point, but your comments are noted. I have heard that X3 does not accept EPS file inputs without transformation to another format. That is unfortunate, though not fatal for me as I only rarely use EPS format these days. Perhaps its of more consequence when moving to an online publishing format.
Thanks for the useful tips. These are pictures of representatives of individual species of fish, so having a photograph(s) to look at to compare against the text is useful. I'll try external linking.
LaTeX has interested me but it seems relatively complicated. Perhaps you know of a good source to flatten the learning curve? I use both Linux and Windows, but find myself using Windows a lot on my notebook, when traveling (collecting data). Is there a both Windows/Linux version of LaTeX or something that will allow one to transfer between OS's?
Also, are you aware of any translators from WordPerfect to LaTeX (ConTeXt)? The biggest impediment to any change is the thought of having to re-enter all the codes for non-English languages by hand.
Interesting. I have been using WP 8 to develop a very large MS (2100 pages of text) for some time now. I've been continuing my reliance on this older wordprocessor for several reasons 1) it does work very well 2) I want to retain my increasingly large text in one file as it is arranged alphabetically and this makes it easy for me to search only one document to find what I am looking for (quickly sections I need to add to or revise, without having to open and maintain multiple files), and 3) it has an extensive character set that permits me to encode other languages (except pictographic languages, such as Chinese and Japanese), which I need to quote verbatim.
I've tried Word and some time ago OpenOffice to see if I could transfer these character sets over from WordPerfect. However, I found the former hard to use and to paraphrase the article it doesn't do well with manuscripts over 40 pages. The seeming inability to adequately handle "master document" indices that would its use in handling large files out of the question. The comments with regard the ability of Open Office to handle manuscripts with hundreds of pages seems hopeful, but I'm dealing with 2,100+ pages not hundreds.
Two nice things about OpenOffice I liked was that it runs under Linux, which I use for many things not Word Perfect, and that files that include graphics seem to be saved in a much more compact, space efficient way (although I find the interface a bit more awkward to use, perhaps because of long familiarity with WP 8.0.
As I add graphics the MS is getting quite large (presently about 233 MB) and it is taking an increasingly longer time to do periodic backups, I have given thought to upgrading my computer (a Dell xps M140), but I fear what I will discover about the new WordPerfect in a Vista environment. Has anyone had experience with WP when making the jump to Vista? With all the graphics I'd like to incorporate, I expect the document to be 2 - 5 GB in size ultimmately.
Does anyone have comments from extensive experience dealing with very large documents using Open Office or the newer versions of Word Perfect running under Vista? I'd like to be open minded but the integrity of my work is paramount.
Has anyone had any success in translating the various extended character sets in Wordperfect to Open Office? When I last checked this was not possible, except via a (then, now?) expensive proprietary interface.
Are there other better wordprocessors that I should consider for incorporting lots of graphics into an already very big text file?
As for macros, I often process text using JEdit, which has extensive macro capabilities, in particular the ability to work on arbitrary windows (rows and columns) at one time, which is great when one has multiple lines of data that need to be placed into a new format interactively.
Suggestions from knowledgeable users would be appreciated. Real data dealing with file sizes and backup times, time to open and search/find would be especially informative.
Anyone heard of others dealing with even larger files?
This was just getting interesting, but it seems that the Snocone has just melted. It would appear that its a lot easier to generate lots of critical comments without actually providing any data from peer-reviewed journals that would substantiate the significance of any of these "critical comments".
I am left wondering why
1) if rapid global warming were not occurring are we NOW seeing so many tropical and subtropical organisms moving their distributions poleward, while we are not seeing hardly any [any?] high latitude species moving their distributions toward the equator?
2) if rapid gobal warming is not occuring why are virtually ALL [all?] the world's glaciers retreating simultaneously?
3) why are the summers starting to feel a lot hotter?
Judging from the random variability arising from the brainwaves of a few of the GOP presidential candidates, it is evident that the gods had a sense of humor.
In a previous debate you stated that you did not believe in the Darwinian theory of natural selection, even though modern biological and medical science is based on the correctness of Darwin's well-tested theory of evolution. How does your lack of belief in this theory differ from bearing false witness?
One might ask, "In a previous debate you said you didn't believe in the theory of evolution. How is your failure to believe in this scientifically well-substantiated theory different from "bearing false witness"?
I took Vladmir Walters Fish Biology course many years ago at UCLA. Walters was an avid, early investigator of fish hydrodynamics and much of the class deal with issues associated with swimming. During one lab we went to a location in West LA where a gentleman demonstrated a relatively simply underwater attachment similar to this forward facing flipper that permitted him and some of us students to swim around the pool at remarkable speeds. According to him, he demonstrated in to the military, by swimming from Santa Catalina Island to the mainland. He said you could often "sneak up on sharks", typically blue sharks and bull sharks, he believed because their lateral lines could not detect his presence until in close proximity. He said the military showed on limited interest at the time and I never heard if they ever attempted to employ it for their purposes.
He was trying to sell it too, for about $150. I saved the flyer for many years thinking someday I would have that kind of money, but lost it sometime later. It was quite remarkable. I just regret I didn't follow up on it or even now remember his name. A man ahead of his time.
Any other members of the class remember his name and other aspects of the design?
Perhaps your disinterest stems from the fact that you have never wondered what useful technology projects could have been implemented, if only your tax-monies hadn't been siphoned away by graft.
These guys are stealing your children's futures and you seem unable to notice. One can only suspect, given your acumen, that your code may not be worth much either.
Lets just hope that the Ross Ice Sheet doesn't calve off like a very large piece (the size of Manhatten Island did this past year). Scientists monitoring it have noted it is melting faster than anticipated. If it does calve and if it then floats beyond the Antarctic convergence, we can expect sea levels to rise about 30 m, in as little as a month. Apparently, large rapid melts have occurred previously in the geological record.
The one thing we are now learning about climate change models is that almost all are grossly underestimating the amount of change that is being observed on the ground. At current rates the entire Arctic Ocean will be ice free in summer in about 10 - 50 years, not the hundreds virtually all models had been predicting.
As far as "all talk and no action", you might step out and buy a Japanese Toyota Prius. I did and now get nearly 50 miles per gallon, which in time will pay for the price of the car over its useful life at current gas prices. If America doesn't get its act together, others will. Remember, America was founded by adventurous enterprising Europeans.
Its not political will that is lacking, rather a US administration that represents the people of the United States of America as a whole, rather than simply those in the oil, gas, and coal industries. When we change this, we will change current policy; not before.
The museum also hands out copies of the 9 commandments for the true believers as they walk in the door. The commandment that "thou shall not bear false witness" has been left out for concern that it would be bad for business to remind visitors and the employees that by entering they taker their first step toward Hell.
I agree with you. This is a very bad idea. The next logical steps in this direction are toward a national ID card linked to your ability to buy things. From a tracking and marketing perspective, you are what you buy. If one goes down this road, we can then expect cash to be phased out completely.
One can only assume at that point that the next step will then be that your eligibility to vote will be determined by your credit score, which will itself be determined by the size of your political contribution. No doubt Karl Rove's ultimate wet dream.
There is a far greater need for this kind of project that you realize. Very few people are familiar with even a small number of species that they can identify and distinguish from others. For many species the amount of information available is vast and spread over the globe so that for most species, only the "tip of the iceberg" appears on the internet or even in many monographs. Perhaps most importantly, we as humans depend on these myriads of species for our very survival, often without even realizing it (eg. Have you taken a breath today? If so, could you name and identify the species that provided it to you? What can you tell us about whether these species will survive climate change or other human induced disturbances?) With a rapidly (catastrophically) changing world, our very survival will depending on a clear understanding of how these species are interacting, how they will adapt or fail to adapt to human-induced global changes, such as climate change, habitat destruction, loss due to competition from invasive species, etc.
Because in the past the natural world was vast and largely undisturbed, it acted as a buffer that insulated us from the kinds of changes in biodiversity we will see in the future. We have in many ways already spent this patrimony and our future as a species is now far less certain. We tend to underestimate the damage that billions of humans operating mostly in total ignorance have on the subtle creations and interactions that it has taken 2.5 billion years of earth history to produce. We are talking about myriads of interactions that without the some type of electronic network, we have no hope of understanding in the time frames necessary to make fundamental decisions about future human welfare. Whether the network is wireless or still largely nailed to the www 10 years into the future is hardly material compared to the question of whether or not we will be able to put this information grid in place in time for it to make a difference for humanity's future.
My concern (as a practicing fish taxonomist) is whether the task of constructing the "database" may, like so many of these kinds of projects before, dry up or divert resources critically needed for experts to simply learn how to identify many of the organisms and properly name them. Organisms don't come with ID tags and while one can use "molecular markers", one has to establish a map between the markers and the whole organisms being identified. A molecular marker, will not create an isomorphism between usage of a name in the previous literature, without the ability to assess the validity of the identification at each step used. This requires expert identification. This problem is compounded by the fact that most organisms actually have had multiple names that have been inconsistently used to discuss varying aspects of their biology. Sadly, the human expertise needed to make identifications is very small. The problem is not that one can not make an ID. The problem is establishing a scientific basis to know whether the ID is accurate and then consistently applying it as one interprets previous usage of names. At each stage of the compilation process the ID's have to correspond or one is doing little more than creating a giant "mash" in which multiple species are being confused, with respect to this or that bit of information. A project such as this tends to gloss over the practical difficulties by indicating that it will be "working with the experts", without precisely saying how.
A critical element is how will such experts be supported going forward so that they can afford to participate in a meaningful, sustainable way. Sadly, big projects have a way of diverting critical resources toward on-line compilations that are often impressive to the layperson, but full of inaccuracies that are apparent only to an expert. Its not clear what institutional mechanisms are in place for some form of distributed, "self-correction" or who will decide what and how editorial (taxonomic?) decisions will ultimately
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I tend to agree with what you say. However, "credit" in science is largely irrelevant to the actual science. I'm not saying it has no effect, particular on people who do not understand the science. The effect may be large and often the most clever, efficient, and devious, even perhaps ruthless survive. The fact that Bill Gates is the world's richest man, rather than the descendants of either Paul Gottlieb Nipkow and Philo Farnsworth show that the "spoils" of innovation don't always get passed to those who first propose it. However, this is only in the context of human behavior and the human "food chain" that feeds of the products of science. It is irrelevant to science itself. Ethical behavior is largely up to historians of science to discuss and to theologians, who always take it upon themselves to pass judgements on the behavior of others, whether they have a reasonable basis for such judgements or not.
Everyone knows that Newton and Leibnitz essentially "invented/(discovered?)" calculus. However, fewer are aware that recent discoveries suggest that many of the seminal mahtematical ideas with respect to "infinitesmals" may have been first worked out by Archimedes many centuries earlier in his Palimpsest. We are human so we would all like to be held in such high esteem as any of these giants. No doubt fame, prizes and rich awards, and maybe even sex, would follow. However, it really matters little to the actual mathematics (save notation, where it seems Liebnitz won this aspect hands down). By declining the Fields medal Grigori Perelman, a Russian mathematician made this point rather forcefully. It is worth noting that on the Field Medal is the inscription "Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri", Rise above oneself and grasp the world, which is the essence of what science and mathematics is about.
Generally speaking, if you are in science for credit, glory, fame, or money you are really in the wrong business. For the most part, one gets into science for the joy of doing and the excitment of discovery, and the satisfaction of knowing how it is you know. As far as the science goes, there is little else to it.
The parts of the ICZN ("the code") you refer to are recommendations listed in the Appendecies as Appendix A. The recommendations in Appendix A (Code of Ethics) are RECOMMENDATIONS and not part of the actual rules. Thus, unethical behavior does not technically violate the rules, only the spirit of the rules.
A famous case of "stealing" the original description is the case for the description of the second living coelacanth from Indonesia, originally discovered by an American but published first based on scales stolen from the specimen by a French worker (probably with an Indonesian accomplice). This nomenclatural act (publication prosing a new name) was challenged by many ichthyologists worldwide, who likewise took "a dim view" of such behavior, including many other French workers who saw the injustice of this. However, the ICZN had no basis to overturn the name proposed on the basis of scale morhology, regardless of how illicitly obtained because the "theft" did not explicitly violate the rules.
This may seem unjust, but the Commission hardly has the time or resources to rule on nomenclatural issues, much less judge the ethical standards of fellow scientists.
The rules of priority can only be overturned in cases where an older name has not been used as valid since 1899 and where uses of the junior synonym can be shown to have been used a definite number of times over a definite period of years (See Arcticle 23.9.1). That is in cases where use of an older name would upset prevailing useage
However, while the French worker's name will in perpetuity be attributed to the French author, for all practical purposes the French worker destroyed his good name (assuming it once meant something to him) by his actions and will in perpetuity be associated with his egregeious and unethical behavior.
Possibly Botanists who have their own set of rules may have arrived at a different outcome (I am not familiar with the the rules for Botanical Names). It would be interesting to know.
Another thing I discovered about Vista is if you use it abroad to watch foreign CD's. While visiting South Africa, I rented a couple of DVD to played my new Dell XPS M1330. One was in US format the other was in South AFrican format. It automatically changed the settings without telling me, using up one of the "changes" M$ limits it users to just to watch a DVD. I had planned to watch one with another machine already in that the foreign format, but it didn't even give me a chance to do so. Just one more slimy marketing trick M$ uses to sell more operating systems. Really not necessary, as all in all, otherwise I really don't mind Vista (now that I have [ALMOST] gotten various XP programs to work on it (by essentially gutting all the new security features so older programs will run.
Just Love the G. B. Shaw quote!
"Any I missed?"
Yes, the commandent against bearing false witness.
Why do creationists only believe in the 9 commandments? I thought they wanted to get through the gates of heaven, yet seem only to want instead to bear false witness. What a useless bunch of hypocrites and thats no theory its a fact!
As for theories, you seem not to understand that in science theories, like the "theory of natural selection" that are most useful to scientific understanding are hypotheses that have been tested repeatedly and found to be highly predictive. Theories survive in science only if scientists can not disprove them and instead find that "the facts" are rather explained by them or are constitent with them despite many independent tests.
Darwin's theory is so valuable scientifically, because it explains virtually ALL of modern biology and indeed forms the basis of what we know in biology. There are NO FACTS about Biology that are inconsistent with Darwin's theory of natural selection, except perhaps antiquated ideas Darwin may have had about the precise mechanisms of how characterisitcs of organisms are inherited. However, these do not repudiate the main tenants of his theory.
If you get sick you might prefer to see someone who is trained in medicine, which is based on biology and an understanding of how natural selection has created the human body rather than your local pastor or witch doctor. Of course, the choice is yours, since afterall you may think there are 100's of virgins up there waiting for you.
Best of luck in your choice.
As one who has worked both with Linux and Windows extensively and watched both mature in their resective markets.
There seem to be three points here that are largely missed by the review.
1) the $200 puts a very low price floor on a rather relatively functional PC (browsing, networking, etc) compared to higher prices systems in the $400-$800 ranage. The features will now no doubt a) smooth out some of the kinks and set a baseline for improvements at this $200 price.
2) At $200 a large market can afford one to do the mundane computing tasks that are typically take up about 80% of most PC users time (few PC users actually spend their cpu cycles actually "computing" in a strict sense).
3) with such a large potential MASS market (from THE MASS marketer) Linux is being tried and becoming comfortable to a much wider base of users, which puts considerable pressure on other OS makers who expect to make a profit in the "commoditized segment" of the PC business.
As a Vista user, this is a win for me as it puts pressure for the first time on Microsoft to really make their OS perform with a minimum of penalties both in terms of cost and performance, lest they be replaced by cheaper, as nearly functional equivalents.
As a Linux user, this is a win for me because it puts additional pressure on Linux software developers to make their software run in more standardly configurable modules to conform to the dimensions of an increasingly larger Linux market, so that installation, maintenance, and peformance tuning become ever easier.
The nice thing is that if you don't like it, you don't have to buy one, but at $200 (sans monitor) a lot of people, especially younger, poorer users with limited budgets will.
If one reads the treaty closely, there is no provision in it that gives the USTR the power to enforce such penalties that would "OTHERWISE be considered acts of piracy, counterfiting or other forms of IPR infringement" (note emphasis). The US gave away that privilege when it signed the treaty. Since these articles (works) have been deemed exempt from the ordinary enforcement in the treaty (at least up to $21M) by the statutory mechanisms within WTO, there is technically no infringement (although there would have been hadn't the WTO ruled otherwise). But if Antigua/Barbados can now legitimately sell the pirated works to people in third countries, they can largely dictate what the price will be in the entire market (outside of US) for all other copies and still legally give the copyright holder's their share of the take (based on a percentage of the RETAIL price [not what the copyright holders would WISH THEY COULD GET]). Even if the US were to penalize its own citizens, it is now powerless under the WTO to enforce such treaty-abrogatinng enforcements on third countries. Why would consumers in these countries pay more when you can get a "legitimate" copy from Antigua/Barbados for nearly free. The US copyright holders will simply have to pay a kickback to Antigua/Barbados just to be sure they keep the retail price high enough that the leverage Antigua/Barbados has been given under the WTO ruling will not be used to flood the world market with perfectly legal but "otherwises pirated" copies sold for fair, but incredibly cheap prices to third countries. Just think of all the "goodwill" they can generate in 3rd countries (or among US tourists abroad) by making all US copyrighted works available within the $21 million copyright free window. Looks as if a bunch of US corporate lawyers outsmarted themselves on this one. Sometimes when you have your cake and eat it too, you can get one hell of a case of indigestion.
They are more likely to give the contract to FOX news, if they haven't already.
If I understand the situation correctly, copyright holders are paid a percentage of the retail price. If Antigua can set a very low retail price (nearly free) it can essentially distribute unlimmited copies of any work "copyrighted" under US law (as modified by the adoption of the Berne Treaty Protocols of 1989). Ironically, compensation in this public law, as far as I can tell, is focused only on the issue of providing relief to copyright holders in the event of harm through "breach of copyright". It does not stipulate specifically who can sell "copyrighted" works or what they can charge for them so long as the transactions provide for legitimate remuneration to the copyright holders. Given the ruling it would appear that Antigua can now set any price it wants for ANY work that it can copy and distribute and essentially manipulate the entire copyright process using their $21 million "copyright window", so long as it remunerates the copyright holders their "fair share" of the selling price. Thus, it would appear that Antigua can leverage their "$21 million copyright window" in any way they see fit and do so consitent with treaty obligations.
Does it matter if Antigua can set its own price for individual copies?
Take all songs/movies and use this number to divide 21 million then divide by the average number of songs/movies they intend to distribute, giving the cost they might be able to charge the average user for any particular US recording/movie.
It might not make them more than $21 million, but it sure would alter the way business is done in the move/recording industries. Overnight Antigua has become a powerhouse, with TEMENDOUS leverage. Anyone who argues with their way of doing business might just be hit with a price cut!
Thanks for the input. I tend to agree. Once graphics were introduced the tightness/clarity/performance of the code all seemed to suffer. Reveal codes seems essential to track down improperly nested tags.
Your comment about my luck is what has me worried. I feel as though I'm whistling past the hard disk, every time it does an automatic save. Hence, am seriously looking for an alternative.
I don't do much with pasting HTML at this point, but your comments are noted. I have heard that X3 does not accept EPS file inputs without transformation to another format. That is unfortunate, though not fatal for me as I only rarely use EPS format these days. Perhaps its of more consequence when moving to an online publishing format.
Thanks for responding.
Thanks for the useful tips. These are pictures of representatives of individual species of fish, so having a photograph(s) to look at to compare against the text is useful. I'll try external linking.
LaTeX has interested me but it seems relatively complicated. Perhaps you know of a good source to flatten the learning curve? I use both Linux and Windows, but find myself using Windows a lot on my notebook, when traveling (collecting data). Is there a both Windows/Linux version of LaTeX or something that will allow one to transfer between OS's?
Also, are you aware of any translators from WordPerfect to LaTeX (ConTeXt)? The biggest impediment to any change is the thought of having to re-enter all the codes for non-English languages by hand.
Interesting. I have been using WP 8 to develop a very large MS (2100 pages of text) for some time now. I've been continuing my reliance on this older wordprocessor for several reasons 1) it does work very well 2) I want to retain my increasingly large text in one file as it is arranged alphabetically and this makes it easy for me to search only one document to find what I am looking for (quickly sections I need to add to or revise, without having to open and maintain multiple files), and 3) it has an extensive character set that permits me to encode other languages (except pictographic languages, such as Chinese and Japanese), which I need to quote verbatim.
I've tried Word and some time ago OpenOffice to see if I could transfer these character sets over from WordPerfect. However, I found the former hard to use and to paraphrase the article it doesn't do well with manuscripts over 40 pages. The seeming inability to adequately handle "master document" indices that would its use in handling large files out of the question. The comments with regard the ability of Open Office to handle manuscripts with hundreds of pages seems hopeful, but I'm dealing with 2,100+ pages not hundreds.
Two nice things about OpenOffice I liked was that it runs under Linux, which I use for many things not Word Perfect, and that files that include graphics seem to be saved in a much more compact, space efficient way (although I find the interface a bit more awkward to use, perhaps because of long familiarity with WP 8.0.
As I add graphics the MS is getting quite large (presently about 233 MB) and it is taking an increasingly longer time to do periodic backups, I have given thought to upgrading my computer (a Dell xps M140), but I fear what I will discover about the new WordPerfect in a Vista environment.
Has anyone had experience with WP when making the jump to Vista? With all the graphics I'd like to incorporate, I expect the document to be 2 - 5 GB in size ultimmately.
Does anyone have comments from extensive experience dealing with very large documents using Open Office or the newer versions of Word Perfect running under Vista? I'd like to be open minded but the integrity of my work is paramount.
Has anyone had any success in translating the various extended character sets in Wordperfect to Open Office? When I last checked this was not possible, except via a (then, now?) expensive proprietary interface.
Are there other better wordprocessors that I should consider for incorporting lots of graphics into an already very big text file?
As for macros, I often process text using JEdit, which has extensive macro capabilities, in particular the ability to work on arbitrary windows (rows and columns) at one time, which is great when one has multiple lines of data that need to be placed into a new format interactively.
Suggestions from knowledgeable users would be appreciated. Real data dealing with file sizes and backup times, time to open and search/find would be especially informative.
Anyone heard of others dealing with even larger files?
This was just getting interesting, but it seems that the Snocone has just melted. It would appear that its a lot easier to generate lots of critical comments without actually providing any data from peer-reviewed journals that would substantiate the significance of any of these "critical comments".
I am left wondering why
1) if rapid global warming were not occurring are we NOW seeing so many tropical and subtropical organisms moving their distributions poleward, while we are not seeing hardly any [any?] high latitude species moving their distributions toward the equator?
2) if rapid gobal warming is not occuring why are virtually ALL [all?] the world's glaciers retreating simultaneously?
3) why are the summers starting to feel a lot hotter?
Judging from the random variability arising from the brainwaves of a few of the GOP presidential candidates, it is evident that the gods had a sense of humor.
In a previous debate you stated that you did not believe in the Darwinian theory of natural selection, even though modern biological and medical science is based on the correctness of Darwin's well-tested theory of evolution. How does your lack of belief in this theory differ from bearing false witness?
One might ask, "In a previous debate you said you didn't believe in the theory of evolution. How is your failure to believe in this scientifically well-substantiated theory different from "bearing false witness"?
I took Vladmir Walters Fish Biology course many years ago at UCLA. Walters was an avid, early investigator of fish hydrodynamics and much of the class deal with issues associated with swimming. During one lab we went to a location in West LA where a gentleman demonstrated a relatively simply underwater attachment similar to this forward facing flipper that permitted him and some of us students to swim around the pool at remarkable speeds. According to him, he demonstrated in to the military, by swimming from Santa Catalina Island to the mainland. He said you could often "sneak up on sharks", typically blue sharks and bull sharks, he believed because their lateral lines could not detect his presence until in close proximity. He said the military showed on limited interest at the time and I never heard if they ever attempted to employ it for their purposes.
He was trying to sell it too, for about $150. I saved the flyer for many years thinking someday I would have that kind of money, but lost it sometime later. It was quite remarkable. I just regret I didn't follow up on it or even now remember his name. A man ahead of his time.
Any other members of the class remember his name and other aspects of the design?
Perhaps your disinterest stems from the fact that you have never wondered what useful technology projects could have been implemented, if only your tax-monies hadn't been siphoned away by graft.
These guys are stealing your children's futures and you seem unable to notice. One can only suspect, given your acumen, that your code may not be worth much either.
Lets just hope that the Ross Ice Sheet doesn't calve off like a very large piece (the size of Manhatten Island did this past year). Scientists monitoring it have noted it is melting faster than anticipated. If it does calve and if it then floats beyond the Antarctic convergence, we can expect sea levels to rise about 30 m, in as little as a month. Apparently, large rapid melts have occurred previously in the geological record.
The one thing we are now learning about climate change models is that almost all are grossly underestimating the amount of change that is being observed on the ground. At current rates the entire Arctic Ocean will be ice free in summer in about 10 - 50 years, not the hundreds virtually all models had been predicting.
As far as "all talk and no action", you might step out and buy a Japanese Toyota Prius. I did and now get nearly 50 miles per gallon, which in time will pay for the price of the car over its useful life at current gas prices. If America doesn't get its act together, others will. Remember, America was founded by adventurous enterprising Europeans.
Its not political will that is lacking, rather a US administration that represents the people of the United States of America as a whole, rather than simply those in the oil, gas, and coal industries. When we change this, we will change current policy; not before.
The museum also hands out copies of the 9 commandments for the true believers as they walk in the door. The commandment that "thou shall not bear false witness" has been left out for concern that it would be bad for business to remind visitors and the employees that by entering they taker their first step toward Hell.
I agree with you. This is a very bad idea. The next logical steps in this direction are toward a national ID card linked to your ability to buy things. From a tracking and marketing perspective, you are what you buy. If one goes down this road, we can then expect cash to be phased out completely.
One can only assume at that point that the next step will then be that your eligibility to vote will be determined by your credit score, which will itself be determined by the size of your political contribution. No doubt Karl Rove's ultimate wet dream.
There is a far greater need for this kind of project that you realize. Very few people are familiar with even a small number of species that they can identify and distinguish from others. For many species the amount of information available is vast and spread over the globe so that for most species, only the "tip of the iceberg" appears on the internet or even in many monographs. Perhaps most importantly, we as humans depend on these myriads of species for our very survival, often without even realizing it (eg. Have you taken a breath today? If so, could you name and identify the species that provided it to you? What can you tell us about whether these species will survive climate change or other human induced disturbances?) With a rapidly (catastrophically) changing world, our very survival will depending on a clear understanding of how these species are interacting, how they will adapt or fail to adapt to human-induced global changes, such as climate change, habitat destruction, loss due to competition from invasive species, etc.
Because in the past the natural world was vast and largely undisturbed, it acted as a buffer that insulated us from the kinds of changes in biodiversity we will see in the future. We have in many ways already spent this patrimony and our future as a species is now far less certain. We tend to underestimate the damage that billions of humans operating mostly in total ignorance have on the subtle creations and interactions that it has taken 2.5 billion years of earth history to produce. We are talking about myriads of interactions that without the some type of electronic network, we have no hope of understanding in the time frames necessary to make fundamental decisions about future human welfare. Whether the network is wireless or still largely nailed to the www 10 years into the future is hardly material compared to the question of whether or not we will be able to put this information grid in place in time for it to make a difference for humanity's future.
My concern (as a practicing fish taxonomist) is whether the task of constructing the "database" may, like so many of these kinds of projects before, dry up or divert resources critically needed for experts to simply learn how to identify many of the organisms and properly name them. Organisms don't come with ID tags and while one can use "molecular markers", one has to establish a map between the markers and the whole organisms being identified. A molecular marker, will not create an isomorphism between usage of a name in the previous literature, without the ability to assess the validity of the identification at each step used. This requires expert identification. This problem is compounded by the fact that most organisms actually have had multiple names that have been inconsistently used to discuss varying aspects of their biology. Sadly, the human expertise needed to make identifications is very small. The problem is not that one can not make an ID. The problem is establishing a scientific basis to know whether the ID is accurate and then consistently applying it as one interprets previous usage of names. At each stage of the compilation process the ID's have to correspond or one is doing little more than creating a giant "mash" in which multiple species are being confused, with respect to this or that bit of information. A project such as this tends to gloss over the practical difficulties by indicating that it will be "working with the experts", without precisely saying how.
A critical element is how will such experts be supported going forward so that they can afford to participate in a meaningful, sustainable way. Sadly, big projects have a way of diverting critical resources toward on-line compilations that are often impressive to the layperson, but full of inaccuracies that are apparent only to an expert. Its not clear what institutional mechanisms are in place for some form of distributed, "self-correction" or who will decide what and how editorial (taxonomic?) decisions will ultimately