There is a work around for the situation that will work on systems with IE 7. There was a secondary format that could be read with a reader program that could open and read the ebooks. The problem with that is the simplicity all goes out the window. I could have found 100 different programs that required a reader to view some proprietary ebook format.
What I wanted was one file that simply needed to be double-clicked to read the book. Like I said, it worked well while it lasted. I'm not bitter or anything. Stuff happens. If anyone contacts me about their books not working, I'll recompile it and give them the reader. The world won't end.
And thanks for the constructive comments...seriously
This is something we will see a lot in the future, if content owners and users do not start getting a clue about the DRM trap... People will be left with piles of worthless bits.
Ok, if you want to give your content away, that's fine with me. I actually give a ton of content away under a Creative Commons license. But say you had material you wanted to be compensated for, what would be your solution, may I ask?
And for the record, the "DRM" was very light, only disabling the ability to copy and paste. The ebooks themselves had zero protection on them to keep them from being shared.
Personally, I don't even care if someone shared them. The only thing I wanted to stop was someone else grabbing the content and selling it themselves...when I had a lot of time invested in said content.
However, I have a lot of time invested in the material. The ebooks do not have DRM, because if you gave one copy to a hundred people, they would all work. The only thing I did was turn off the ability to copy and paste from the ebook, but I do allow it to be printed out (and I think that is fair. If they want the material bad enough, they could print it and OCR it). I also custom compile the ebook for each one sold, and embed the purchaser's e-mail address into it.
Let me ask you this. If you spent a month on a book and you felt you should be compensated for your time, what would your solution be? Stick it up in a POS PDF file? Post it on the Net and ask for donations? Give it away but charge for support?
I sold a bunch of ebooks created with ebook software that used IE, and has worked with every version of IE since Internet Explorer 4+. The first book I sold after the IE 7 update, wouldn't work. Which means that every person who upgrades to IE 7 that I have sold an ebook too, will not be able to read their books.
Yes, I know the dangers of going with a proprietary solution, and I would love a cross-platform solution that "just worked," but I chose the software because it not only did everything I needed security wise, but was incredibly easy for the end user (e.g. just download it and double-click it).
Emails to the creator of the program have gone unanswered, too. So chalk this up for one more reason to use open source!
On the bright side, I did sell enough ebooks to just about break even on the cost of the software...and it really was an excellent program while it lasted.;)
Well, I am the IT staff, but not full time. Nobody ever told me about the.NET issue with the software, or I could have had the software installed on multiple laptops to avoid the failure of the software on a single laptop. They are fixing to give me more time to do IT work, but I'm not clairvoyant and I can't fix issues ahead of time that I didn't know was going to be an issue. I also don't control the company's purchasing, so I can't force them to have brand new laptops on hand (in fact, older laptops work a lot better for programming radios, so we actually have them for a reason).
Are you able to see into the future??? Do you know a trick for making.NET 2.x install faster?
Also, people who install and work on public safety and business radios are called technicians, not mechanics.
Just happened to me yesterday, in fact. We were under orders to have a constable's car completed in one day, which included radios, light bars, siren, flashers, etc. Unknown to me, the software that configures the light bars requires.NET. All went well and at 4:00, with an hour left, we needed to configure the light bar.
Short story, the.NET framework had been removed from the laptop (by who?) and the light bar software would not run, as it required version 1.1.x of.NET. I uninstalled the software and attempted to reinstall it. It doesn't install because.NET still isn't there. In my haste, I downloaded version 2.0 of.net. It took over an hour to install. The software still won't install because it needs version 1.1.x of.net.
I'm pissed now, so I download version 1.1.x of.net onto a desktop computer. 1.1.x of.net actually installs really quick, so I was actually able to install the light bar software. But I go to RUN the software, and guess what, it requires 2.x of.net to actually run. Now what kind of idiots made software that requires 1.1.x to install but 2.x to run? It is now about 6:00 and I have to download 2.0 onto the desktop and install it. It goes faster than the laptop, but it was about 6:30 by the time it installs. During this time, I downloaded 1.1.x onto the laptop and install it, so I can install the software onto it.
At about 7:00, two hours later, I have a desktop computer with both version of.NET and the required software up and running. I have to kill the computer, put it on a cart, and roll it out to the vehicle (by this time the laptop is almost functional, but we already had the desktop out by the vehicle).
At about 8:00, three hours later, they were pretty close to having the light bar configured, but I had an emergency phone call and had to leave, so I don't know what time they actually finished the programming.
Now I have run into having to have VB runtimes before to get VB program to run, but the runtimes usually just took a minute to install. Having to install two 20+ Meg programs, that took almost 2 hours to install (older laptop with Win 2000)...by the time it was all over, I was ready to take Bill G. apart with a blowtorch and a pair of pliars.
Anyway, that is my.NET from hell story that just happened to me.
I agree. But I think the key word here is valued. I think there is a difference between valuing education and seeing it as our salvation.
Throughout most of history, up until the mid-1800s, if someone introduced an educational device under the banner of "salvation to the world through information/education," the majority of people would have been horrified at that statement.
Education can take many forms: it can be formal, in a school, apprenticing to a master or just gaining experience through working.
I totally agree. But you do realize that to an educrat, to admit that someone can learn outside of the established educational system, is heresy.
And being the most powerful nation in the world somehow invalidates that sentiment?
Might does not equal right...or intelligence.
Education *is* the salvation, our very history is proof of that.
Given that the United States has some of the highest incarceration rates in the world:
the U.S. currently has the largest documented prison population in the world, both in absolute and proportional terms. We've got roughly 2.03 million people behind bars, or 701 per 100,000 population. (slightly old data alert)
...Maybe we need a One Laptop Per Child plan here. Or how about a One Laptop Per Prisoner program? Or should our prisoners here be denied salvation? Ironically, giving prisoners internet access really pisses a lot of people off, so information obviously isn't capable of salvation in all situations.
Oh wait, even the poorest people here in the United States could find access to a computer if they really put their mind to it (most as close as a public library).
Also interesting to note that it is our educated (highly?) in the United States that make the laws that lock up huge numbers for non-violent crimes. And given that these lawmakers certainly have access to computers, obviously, information was not salvation for our incarcerated, once again.
Personally, I'll put my faith in something other than education.
I think that in America, there is a long history of
beliving that education is our salvation. This was a very popular belief in the
mid-1800s, and has continued on to this day. For instance, no matter how bad our
schools do, we believe that giving them more money will fix the problem and save
us.
See this quote by Horace
Mann:
"the common school is the greatest discovery ever made by man: we
repeat it, the common school is the greatest discovery ever made by man...Let
the common school be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the
efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine-tenths of the crimes in the
penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be
abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more
inviolable by night; property, life, and character held by a stronger tenure;
all rational hopes respecting the future brightened." (Clarence Carson, A
Basic History of the United States, vol. 3, p. 91).
I think the Laptop program is just an extension of trying to
"evangelize" our philosophy on the rest of the world.
That said, however, I think the more people who can get around the
controlled press with these devices, and blog and create their own content, the
better off the world is. It's salvation...no.
If you are on dialup, you tend to want to get the smallest file possible. If you have a have a 6 meg DSL, the larger files aren't as much as an issue. Also, if you have a Creative Zen Nano with 512 Mb, you are going to want some good compression, however, if you have an player with a hard drive in it and 20 - 40 gig of space...this isn't so much of an issue.
I myself, have about 40 - 50 gig of mp3s, the biggest majority legal, since I have about 400 to 500 cds, and I usually rip to 128 kbps. I usually listen while riding my bike, and they sound just fine to me. If I need high quality, I could always dig out the CD it came from...but you know what, I rarely find myself wanting an audiophile experience pure enough for me to dig through my CDs.
Been working on a list of my biggest inventions and intellectual property items that flopped in a big, big way. My coolest inventions and IP flops are:
My book, "Men Are From Mars, and Women Love Martian Penis," failed to crack the NY Times Best Seller list for five consecutive years after publication.
NBC cancelled my sitcom, "Nudist, With Children," before a single episode was aired.
My idea for non-decomposing toilet paper never made it to market.
While at first very successful, my tubs of chocolate-chip cookie-dough flavored roach poison, designed to fool even the most intelligent roaches, were pulled from shelves nationwide. While a federal judge initially upheld an injunction on the recall, the injunction was later overturned by a law created in a special session of Congress (the law was named Kimberly's law, in honor of the memory of the two-year-old baby Kimberly).
But my all time coolest thing I have built, and my biggest tech flop, is one I called an abtaser:
Because of their small size, AbTasers can fit easily in your purse, bag, backpack, coat etc. Other Ab products, like Ab belts, are bulky and only work your Abs. The AbTaser's design lets you not only work other parts of the body, but you can work other people's Abs from up to 15 feet away!
Conveniently carry it with you whenever traveling around town, shopping leaving bars or night clubs, using pay phones, parking lots, garages, alleys, subways, bus stations, home alone, walking, jogging, running errands, deliveries, and for house wives, students, daughters, night workers, drivers, law enforcers, sales people, travelers, security guards, etc., and for anyone needing or wanting extra exercise.
Other low-power Ab products have to be used for an extended period of time. The high-powered AbTaser works every muscle in your body in a split second. And again, not only is it capable of working your abs, but you can also work the muscles of others up to 15 feet away. Imagine your bosses surprise when you decide he needs a little exercise! AbTasers are great for relieving stress, too. Feeling down, feeling blue? AbTasers will give you a new outlook on life!
*Check federal, state and local laws before ordering your AbTaser!
Do NOT carry your AbTaser concealed. Do not attempt to use the
AbTaser while operating a motor vehicle. Do not use the AbTaser
on someone else operating a motor vehicle. Do not attempt to
board aircraft while in the possession of an AbTaser.
10. "Haven't I downloaded naked pictures of you before?" 9. "Just close your eyes and pretend you're using a mouse." 8. "Care to run your fingers through my ridiculous five dollar haircut?" 7. "You haven't lived until you've watched 'Revenge of the Nerds' on laser disk." 6. "Looking at you, I'm neither micro nor soft." 5. Do you come here often? I don't, because I'm busy making billions of dollars." 4. "How would you like to be my human laptop?" 3. "So, who do I make the check out to?" 2. "I beat Michael Jackson for the title of World's Richest Virgin." 1. "I control the internet -- want to surf me?"
1. He wants to buy an old Cesna, paintit flashy colors, and call it Air Force '95. 2. He heard that some government agencies were using UNIX. 3. He wants to get that illegal sports car in SF Bay into the US. 4. He just thinks it would be neat to be president of two big thingies. 5. He's hot for Janet Reno. 6. His ego needs to be inflated. 7. He lost the key to his mansion, so he needs a new place to live. 8. He thinks that he can use MS Money to balance the budget. 9. He feels that Perot just didn't throw enough money at it. 10. He wants to make Windows '95 the official operating system of the USA.
Ok, those look kind of dated...but still funny
On the serious side, I wonder how many people with the power to see into the mysterious future, were tempted to e-mail the editor about a SERIOUS problem with this story!
Totally agree. In the past, these patents were used against other big companies. For instance, when SCO jumped IBM, IBM counter sued SCO, because SCO was infringing on its patents. However, when it comes to Linux, the ability to hang patents over everyone's head becomes much, much harder. I say, companies like MS, not only don't understand Open Source, but it also infuriates them that they don't have a big corporation to beat down with its patents. What is going on with Novell, is that MS wants desperately to get back to business as usual, and since they can't sue free software, they can try and do the one thing they know how to do...wield a patent over a rival company!
One thing I didn't think about until later on today is the bovine leukemia virus, since you specifically mentioned dairy:
The scariest virus is probably bovine leukemia virus (BLV). It was shown years ago that chimpanzees fed milk from leukemic cows from birth died of leukemia in the first year of life. Between 10-70% of the cows in the US are infected with BLV and approximately 60% of the herds surveyed similarly infected. BLV has been linked to acute lymphoid leukemia (ALL). ALL is a form of acute childhood leukemia.
The California Breast Cancer Research Program (CBCRP) has done actual tests on this and found evidence of BLV DNA in blood cells from 9 of 22 humans tested, and 50% of 100 tested had antibodies for the BLV virus.
http://www.cabreastcancer.org/
This research has addressed the first aspect of the overall proposal, whether humans can become infected with BLV. Human breast tissues removed during surgery, breast tissue sections received from a pathologist, and cells from milk and blood were searched for evidence of different components of BLV using cellular and molecular techniques (immunocytochemistry, PCR, and in situ hybridization). Human blood was tested for antibodies to BLV. We detected evidence of BLV DNA in blood cells from 9 of 22 human volunteers and in surgically removed breast tissues from 10 of 23 patients. We found evidence of BLV proteins in breast tissues from 8 of 26 patients. Antibodies to BLV were found in the serum of over half of the 100 human volunteers tested.
Ummm, what makes you think WiMax is cheap enough for the mom and pop ISPs? I work at a company trying to be a WISP, and all the WiMax equipment I have looked at costs a fortune, and is obviously aiming at being marketed to phone and cell phone companies, who are about the only people that can afford it at those prices. Am I missing something???
I'm really sorry to hear about your daughter. I have no explanation for it...but at one point I studied alternative cancer treatments fairly heavily for many years. My job has changed so much that a lot of the free time I used to have has vanished, though, so I don't get to follow it as closely as I used to.
Many years of research led me to believe that diet and lifestyle play a large role in cancer. But the whole issue is really tricky. Personally, I became a vegan, lost a ton of weight, and felt better than I have felt in many years, but the more research I did, I kept running into people who were vegans for many years and just fell all to pieces. Their teeth and hair fell out, or they developed things like MS...or worse. (Now some people did do good, long-term, but the ones that did, seemed like they had a ton of money and made up the difference with expensive foods and supplements that the normal person just can't do, and unfortunately, these are the people that write the books telling everyone how fantastic their diets are).
In fact, the more research I did, I came to the conclusion that cutting out meat entirely was a little risky, so I added back game meat and organic meats to my diet (And eventually, I got so broke, I just went back to the SAD diet because I couldn't afford quality food anymore. Right now, I'm working on getting back to eating healthy again).
My personal stand on diet is, I 100% believe that a vegan diet is fantastic for a short-term cleansing, especially for cancer. I'm less confident of vegan and even vegetarian diets for the long haul, even though the research shows that vegetarians can be healthier than those on the SAD diet. In fact, if you read any of my writings, I recommend a reduced-meat diet, and that the meats be of high quality. A couple of books that I recommend are the "Paleo Diet" and "Neanderthin,"... but read them from a very reduced meat point of view, not the authors "gorge yourself on meat" point of view.
But the deal is, even organic produce is lacking in vitamins and minerals, compared to produce from just thirty or forty years ago, and some very important cancer-fighting vitamins have all but vanished from the American diet. I think it is nothing short of a miracle that we do as well as we do. And I hate to sound doom and gloom, but I don't see things getting any better.
There are also other factors involved, too. If you look at studies of people deep in some forest in China, they have a cancer rate that is a fraction of what we have here in the US...but even they are not cancer free.
What really burns me up, though, is that for those that do get cancer here in America, the "Land of the Free," you have to leave the country to get non-toxic treatments.
I've read about this so much that I truly know what you are going through, and my heart goes out to you.
My web sites, though I don't get to work on them much anymore, are www.vitaminb17.org and www.roadtowellsville.com
Now I have thrown out vitamin B17, and the quack flags will be flying, but I believe that the body has its own way to fight cancer, which is enzymes, but failing that, there was a dietary backup plan in the form of a vitamin...a vitamin which has all but vanished from the American diet.
I had a close friend, a fine upstanding person, who not only knew the doctor, a real MD, that wrote the above book, but also knew one of the patients mentioned in the book. It was this friend who got me into my studies to begin with.
Interestingly, when I was in school, I had a physics teacher who thought that, way in the future, people would look back and wonder if we really stood with our faces stuck a foot away from the microwave door while it was running.
I lost touch with him for a while, and later heard that he died of cancer.
Rather than being the microwave that got him, though, he had this story where he had ordered this tiny, tiny amount of radioactive material for his class, and the secretary that ordered it thought he mispelled something and changed the order. In one of the weirder things you hear about, the company actually shipped this huge amount of radioactive material in a plain box, with a bill for something like $66,000.00. Well, the principal went through the roof when he got the bill and demanded to know what he ordered. Without opening the box, he said he went and got his giger counter, and within 60 feet of the principal's office, he said the needle was going crazy.
Anyway, that might not have been what got him either, but he swore the above was a true story. He used to tell it at least once a year.
indeed, it is easy to kill cells by blocking their enzymes but how do you distinguish between normal and cancer cells?
The point I was trying to make wasn't that cancer is killed by blocking enzymes, it is that there are a lack of key enzymes that let the cancer grow in the first place, and these enzymes are the body's normal defense against cancer to begin with, so they already know how to distinguish between normal cells and cancer cells.
Cancer happens a lot where the body is constantly being damaged and repaired (e.g. a smoker's lungs). Yes, there is a chicken and egg type of thing here, but I say that smoking doesn't "cause" cancer, it damages the body and the body's attempt to repair itself, over time, gets out of control...for multiple reasons -- including mutated stem cells/DNA in the area of damage, as you pointed out. But I say, and this is probably where we would disagree, the body has backup mechanisms in place to deal with this overgrowth of cells gone haywire, with the key backup mechanisms being: enzymes, vitamins (proper nutrition) and/or lifestyle choices. There is much, very real, scientific research related to exactly this, and I have already posted some in another reply to you. Obviously, I'm not going to write something in one paragraph that makes you change your whole worldview. But there are documented cases of doctors/scientists that exploited the body's own backup mechanisms to deal with cancer and achieved survival rates far beyond those obtained by conventional treatments.
Unfortunately, trying to get doctors to use these treatments is like trying to convince the RIAA that they don't need DRM. And some of that is understandable. The American people don't want to change their diet or exercise. They want to take a pill and be cured, and we have a whole, multi-billion dollar industry devoted to coming up with that pill, so the two feed off of each other.
The reason you get cancer is (VERY generally speaking) not because your body is stressed but because DNA replication and repair is not perfect. It leads to mutations which, in a VERY VERY unlikely event, create immortal and invasive cell lines we clinically call cancer.
Well, you being a biochemist and doctor, I highly doubt that anything I say is going to sway your opinion...but, no offense, instead of seeing cancer as having a single cause (e.g. DNA replication and repair leads to mutations), I see it as a multi-faceted problem, with the biggest factors being stem cells, enzymes, diet/nutrition, and lifestyle and exercise. The biggest problem with mainstream medicine, in my opinion, is that everything is treated in isolation.
In 1902, John Beard, a professor of embryology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, authored a paper published in the British medical journal Lancet in which he stated there were no differences between cancer cells and certain pre-embryonic cells that were normal to the early stages of pregnancy
In 2000+, we are just starting to see that cancer cells contain pre-embryonic stem cells that form the very material that John Beard saw in 1902. See:
The same John Beard also noted that the body had a way of regulating this material, to keep it from getting out of hand. In the same 1902 Lancet article, he pointed out that one of the ways the body keeps these cells in check is by the use of enzymes.
Note: See the 1993 study, almost 100 years later, by Nicholas Gonzalez, where he used pancreatic enzymes to get these results on patients with pancreatic cancer (And btw, Gonzalez based his treatment on research done at the turn of the last century!):
Five of 11 patients in the initial series, which was sponsored by the Nestle Corporation, survived for 2 years or more and the results were published this past spring in the journal, Nutrition and Cancer [33(2):117-124 (Note:The 5-year survival rate for all patients with pancreatic cancer is only 4 percent.)
If folic acid is in short supply, Ames found, thymine levels drop and a large amount of uracil instead of thymine is incorporated into human DNA. This leads to chromosome breaks when DNA is being repaired and subsequent mutations. The findings in the Fertility and Sterility report support this model, the authors claim. (reference: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2001/0 2/26_diet.html)
Go to google and type in "poor diet causes dna mutations" and then read my post from the Lancet again. The above reference is just one of many, many examples of poor diet causing DNA mutations, and there are several other vitamins, not just folic acid that play a role in cancer prevention. The bottom line is, they don't have cancer rates in third-world countries like we do in the United States. It isn't environmental, just read the Lancet article already cited and it isn't genes...but it is dietary/vitamin related.
I could cite research article after research article, but I'm not going to sit here all day ( Although, I could post more if it will actually be read).
The bottom line, for me, is this: I can count on a couple of fingers the number of people I have known that had cancer and went the traditional chemo/radiation/surgery treatments and lived more than a year afterwards. But I have personally known, and known through friends and co-workers, more people who put some of the above research into action and skipped the chemo/radiation/surgery and went on to live normal, healthy lives.
Again, cancer is a multi-faceted problem. Most Americans don't want to change their diets and/or lifestyle, they want to take a pill and be cured. I don'
[And for those that study enzymems, they will find that a poor diet causes the body's enzymes to get real stressed out. Digestion is hard on the body, which is why calorie restriction improves lifespan. But when a steady diet of junk food is eaten, the body works so hard trying to digest it, important enzymes that help repair the body decrease. The pieces of the puzzle are all there, it is just a matter of getting the big picture. -- Transporter_ii]
From the Lancet:
"In many [western] countries, peoples' diet changed substantially in the second half of the twentieth century, generally with increases in consumption of meat, dairy products, vegetable oils, fruit juice, and alcoholic beverages, and decreases in consumption of starchy staple foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, and maize flour. Other aspects of lifestyle also changed, notably, large reductions in physical activity and large increases in the prevalence of obesity."[18]
"It was noted in the 1970s that people in many western countries had diets high in animal products, fat, and sugar, and high rates of cancers of the colorectum, breast, prostate, endometrium, and lung; by contrast, individuals in developing countries usually had diets that were based on one or two starchy staple foods, with low intakes of animal products, fat, and sugar, and low rates of these cancers."[18]
"These observations suggest that the diets [or lifestyle] of different populations might partly determine their rates of cancer, and the basis for this hypothesis was strengthened by results of studies showing that people who migrate from one country to another generally acquire the cancer rates of the new host country, suggesting that environmental [or lifestyle factors] rather than genetic factors are the key determinants of the international variation in cancer rates."[18]
See also:
Scientists estimate that most cancers are associated with factors related to how we live, called lifestyle factors [note: these things effect enzymes -- Transporter_ii]. Evidence reviewed by the American Cancer Society suggests that about one-third of the 550,000 cancer deaths that occur in the United States each year is due to dietary factors (for example, excess calories, high fat, and low fibre). Another third is due to cigarette smoking. Other lifestyle factors which increase the risk for cancer include drinking heavily, lack of regular physical exercise, promiscuous sexual behavior,
[And for those that study enzymems, they will find that a poor diet causes the body's enzymes to get real stressed out. Digestion is hard on the body, which is why calorie restriction improves lifespan. But when a steady diet of junk food is eaten, the body works so hard trying to digest it, important enzymes that help repair the body decrease. -- Transporter_ii]
From the Lancet:
"In many [western] countries, peoples' diet changed substantially in the second half of the twentieth century, generally with increases in consumption of meat, dairy products, vegetable oils, fruit juice, and alcoholic beverages, and decreases in consumption of starchy staple foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, and maize flour. Other aspects of lifestyle also changed, notably, large reductions in physical activity and large increases in the prevalence of obesity."[18]
"It was noted in the 1970s that people in many western countries had diets high in animal products, fat, and sugar, and high rates of cancers of the colorectum, breast, prostate, endometrium, and lung; by contrast, individuals in developing countries usually had diets that were based on one or two starchy staple foods, with low intakes of animal products, fat, and sugar, and low rates of these cancers."[18]
"These observations suggest that the diets [or lifestyle] of different populations might partly determine their rates of cancer, and the basis for this hypothesis was strengthened by results of studies showing that people who migrate from one country to another generally acquire the cancer rates of the new host country, suggesting that environmental [or lifestyle factors] rather than genetic factors are the key determinants of the international variation in cancer rates."[18]
See also:
Scientists estimate that most cancers are associated with factors related to how we live, called lifestyle factors [note: these things effect enzymes -- Transporter_ii]. Evidence reviewed by the American Cancer Society suggests that about one-third of the 550,000 cancer deaths that occur in the United States each year is due to dietary factors (for example, excess calories, high fat, and low fibre). Another third is due to cigarette smoking. Other lifestyle factors which increase the risk for cancer include drinking heavily, lack of regular physical exercise, promiscuous sexual behavior,
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I agree with your assessment of the situation.
There is a work around for the situation that will work on systems with IE 7. There was a secondary format that could be read with a reader program that could open and read the ebooks. The problem with that is the simplicity all goes out the window. I could have found 100 different programs that required a reader to view some proprietary ebook format.
What I wanted was one file that simply needed to be double-clicked to read the book. Like I said, it worked well while it lasted. I'm not bitter or anything. Stuff happens. If anyone contacts me about their books not working, I'll recompile it and give them the reader. The world won't end.
And thanks for the constructive comments...seriously
Transporter_ii
This is something we will see a lot in the future, if content owners and users do not start getting a clue about the DRM trap... People will be left with piles of worthless bits.
Ok, if you want to give your content away, that's fine with me. I actually give a ton of content away under a Creative Commons license. But say you had material you wanted to be compensated for, what would be your solution, may I ask?
And for the record, the "DRM" was very light, only disabling the ability to copy and paste. The ebooks themselves had zero protection on them to keep them from being shared.
Personally, I don't even care if someone shared them. The only thing I wanted to stop was someone else grabbing the content and selling it themselves...when I had a lot of time invested in said content.
Transporter_ii
Yes, you pretty much summed it up.
However, I have a lot of time invested in the material. The ebooks do not have DRM, because if you gave one copy to a hundred people, they would all work. The only thing I did was turn off the ability to copy and paste from the ebook, but I do allow it to be printed out (and I think that is fair. If they want the material bad enough, they could print it and OCR it). I also custom compile the ebook for each one sold, and embed the purchaser's e-mail address into it.
Let me ask you this. If you spent a month on a book and you felt you should be compensated for your time, what would your solution be? Stick it up in a POS PDF file? Post it on the Net and ask for donations? Give it away but charge for support?
Yes, oh wise one, please share your secrets.
Transporter_ii
I sold a bunch of ebooks created with ebook software that used IE, and has worked with every version of IE since Internet Explorer 4+. The first book I sold after the IE 7 update, wouldn't work. Which means that every person who upgrades to IE 7 that I have sold an ebook too, will not be able to read their books.
;)
Yes, I know the dangers of going with a proprietary solution, and I would love a cross-platform solution that "just worked," but I chose the software because it not only did everything I needed security wise, but was incredibly easy for the end user (e.g. just download it and double-click it).
Emails to the creator of the program have gone unanswered, too. So chalk this up for one more reason to use open source!
On the bright side, I did sell enough ebooks to just about break even on the cost of the software...and it really was an excellent program while it lasted.
Transporter_ii
Well, I am the IT staff, but not full time. Nobody ever told me about the .NET issue with the software, or I could have had the software installed on multiple laptops to avoid the failure of the software on a single laptop. They are fixing to give me more time to do IT work, but I'm not clairvoyant and I can't fix issues ahead of time that I didn't know was going to be an issue. I also don't control the company's purchasing, so I can't force them to have brand new laptops on hand (in fact, older laptops work a lot better for programming radios, so we actually have them for a reason).
.NET 2.x install faster?
Are you able to see into the future??? Do you know a trick for making
Also, people who install and work on public safety and business radios are called technicians, not mechanics.
Transporter_ii
Just happened to me yesterday, in fact. We were under orders to have a constable's car completed in one day, which included radios, light bars, siren, flashers, etc. Unknown to me, the software that configures the light bars requires .NET. All went well and at 4:00, with an hour left, we needed to configure the light bar.
.NET framework had been removed from the laptop (by who?) and the light bar software would not run, as it required version 1.1.x of .NET. I uninstalled the software and attempted to reinstall it. It doesn't install because .NET still isn't there. In my haste, I downloaded version 2.0 of .net. It took over an hour to install. The software still won't install because it needs version 1.1.x of .net.
.net onto a desktop computer. 1.1.x of .net actually installs really quick, so I was actually able to install the light bar software. But I go to RUN the software, and guess what, it requires 2.x of .net to actually run. Now what kind of idiots made software that requires 1.1.x to install but 2.x to run? It is now about 6:00 and I have to download 2.0 onto the desktop and install it. It goes faster than the laptop, but it was about 6:30 by the time it installs. During this time, I downloaded 1.1.x onto the laptop and install it, so I can install the software onto it.
.NET and the required software up and running. I have to kill the computer, put it on a cart, and roll it out to the vehicle (by this time the laptop is almost functional, but we already had the desktop out by the vehicle).
.NET from hell story that just happened to me.
Short story, the
I'm pissed now, so I download version 1.1.x of
At about 7:00, two hours later, I have a desktop computer with both version of
At about 8:00, three hours later, they were pretty close to having the light bar configured, but I had an emergency phone call and had to leave, so I don't know what time they actually finished the programming.
Now I have run into having to have VB runtimes before to get VB program to run, but the runtimes usually just took a minute to install. Having to install two 20+ Meg programs, that took almost 2 hours to install (older laptop with Win 2000)...by the time it was all over, I was ready to take Bill G. apart with a blowtorch and a pair of pliars.
Anyway, that is my
Transporter_ii
I'm surprised they don't pull an Al Bundy and go for a bazillion dollars.
Also, what would a trillion dollars convert to in Brazilian dollars? I'm sure there is a good Bush joke in that somewhere, too...
Transporter_ii
Which is kind of fitting with the Buckaroo article on the front page yesterday!
Transporter_ii
Education has been valued
I agree. But I think the key word here is valued. I think there is a difference between valuing education and seeing it as our salvation.
Throughout most of history, up until the mid-1800s, if someone introduced an educational device under the banner of "salvation to the world through information/education," the majority of people would have been horrified at that statement.
Education can take many forms: it can be formal, in a school, apprenticing to a master or just gaining experience through working.
I totally agree. But you do realize that to an educrat, to admit that someone can learn outside of the established educational system, is heresy.
Transporter_ii
And being the most powerful nation in the world somehow invalidates that sentiment?
Might does not equal right...or intelligence.
Education *is* the salvation, our very history is proof of that.
Given that the United States has some of the highest incarceration rates in the world:
...Maybe we need a One Laptop Per Child plan here. Or how about a One Laptop Per Prisoner program? Or should our prisoners here be denied salvation? Ironically, giving prisoners internet access really pisses a lot of people off, so information obviously isn't capable of salvation in all situations.
Oh wait, even the poorest people here in the United States could find access to a computer if they really put their mind to it (most as close as a public library).
Also interesting to note that it is our educated (highly?) in the United States that make the laws that lock up huge numbers for non-violent crimes. And given that these lawmakers certainly have access to computers, obviously, information was not salvation for our incarcerated, once again.
Personally, I'll put my faith in something other than education.
Transporter_ii
I think that in America, there is a long history of beliving that education is our salvation. This was a very popular belief in the mid-1800s, and has continued on to this day. For instance, no matter how bad our schools do, we believe that giving them more money will fix the problem and save us.
See this quote by Horace Mann: I think the Laptop program is just an extension of trying to "evangelize" our philosophy on the rest of the world.
That said, however, I think the more people who can get around the controlled press with these devices, and blog and create their own content, the better off the world is. It's salvation...no.
And they are probably right that it is on both of their sides, because it sure the hell isn't on OUR side.
Transporter_ii
If you are on dialup, you tend to want to get the smallest file possible. If you have a have a 6 meg DSL, the larger files aren't as much as an issue. Also, if you have a Creative Zen Nano with 512 Mb, you are going to want some good compression, however, if you have an player with a hard drive in it and 20 - 40 gig of space...this isn't so much of an issue.
I myself, have about 40 - 50 gig of mp3s, the biggest majority legal, since I have about 400 to 500 cds, and I usually rip to 128 kbps. I usually listen while riding my bike, and they sound just fine to me. If I need high quality, I could always dig out the CD it came from...but you know what, I rarely find myself wanting an audiophile experience pure enough for me to dig through my CDs.
Transporter_ii
Been working on a list of my biggest inventions and intellectual property items that flopped in a big, big way. My coolest inventions and IP flops are:
But my all time coolest thing I have built, and my biggest tech flop, is one I called an abtaser:
Abtaser
10. "Haven't I downloaded naked pictures of you before?"
9. "Just close your eyes and pretend you're using a mouse."
8. "Care to run your fingers through my ridiculous five dollar haircut?"
7. "You haven't lived until you've watched 'Revenge of the Nerds' on laser disk."
6. "Looking at you, I'm neither micro nor soft."
5. Do you come here often? I don't, because I'm busy making billions of dollars."
4. "How would you like to be my human laptop?"
3. "So, who do I make the check out to?"
2. "I beat Michael Jackson for the title of World's Richest Virgin."
1. "I control the internet -- want to surf me?"
Transporter_ii
1. He wants to buy an old Cesna, paintit flashy colors, and call it Air Force '95.
2. He heard that some government agencies were using UNIX.
3. He wants to get that illegal sports car in SF Bay into the US.
4. He just thinks it would be neat to be president of two big thingies.
5. He's hot for Janet Reno.
6. His ego needs to be inflated.
7. He lost the key to his mansion, so he needs a new place to live.
8. He thinks that he can use MS Money to balance the budget.
9. He feels that Perot just didn't throw enough money at it.
10. He wants to make Windows '95 the official operating system of the USA.
Ok, those look kind of dated...but still funny
On the serious side, I wonder how many people with the power to see into the mysterious future, were tempted to e-mail the editor about a SERIOUS problem with this story!
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Totally agree. In the past, these patents were used against other big companies. For instance, when SCO jumped IBM, IBM counter sued SCO, because SCO was infringing on its patents. However, when it comes to Linux, the ability to hang patents over everyone's head becomes much, much harder. I say, companies like MS, not only don't understand Open Source, but it also infuriates them that they don't have a big corporation to beat down with its patents. What is going on with Novell, is that MS wants desperately to get back to business as usual, and since they can't sue free software, they can try and do the one thing they know how to do...wield a patent over a rival company!
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One thing I didn't think about until later on today is the bovine leukemia virus, since you specifically mentioned dairy:
The California Breast Cancer Research Program (CBCRP) has done actual tests on this and found evidence of BLV DNA in blood cells from 9 of 22 humans tested, and 50% of 100 tested had antibodies for the BLV virus. http://www.cabreastcancer.org/
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Ummm, what makes you think WiMax is cheap enough for the mom and pop ISPs? I work at a company trying to be a WISP, and all the WiMax equipment I have looked at costs a fortune, and is obviously aiming at being marketed to phone and cell phone companies, who are about the only people that can afford it at those prices. Am I missing something???
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I'm really sorry to hear about your daughter. I have no explanation for it...but at one point I studied alternative cancer treatments fairly heavily for many years. My job has changed so much that a lot of the free time I used to have has vanished, though, so I don't get to follow it as closely as I used to.
... but read them from a very reduced meat point of view, not the authors "gorge yourself on meat" point of view.
Many years of research led me to believe that diet and lifestyle play a large role in cancer. But the whole issue is really tricky. Personally, I became a vegan, lost a ton of weight, and felt better than I have felt in many years, but the more research I did, I kept running into people who were vegans for many years and just fell all to pieces. Their teeth and hair fell out, or they developed things like MS...or worse. (Now some people did do good, long-term, but the ones that did, seemed like they had a ton of money and made up the difference with expensive foods and supplements that the normal person just can't do, and unfortunately, these are the people that write the books telling everyone how fantastic their diets are).
In fact, the more research I did, I came to the conclusion that cutting out meat entirely was a little risky, so I added back game meat and organic meats to my diet (And eventually, I got so broke, I just went back to the SAD diet because I couldn't afford quality food anymore. Right now, I'm working on getting back to eating healthy again).
My personal stand on diet is, I 100% believe that a vegan diet is fantastic for a short-term cleansing, especially for cancer. I'm less confident of vegan and even vegetarian diets for the long haul, even though the research shows that vegetarians can be healthier than those on the SAD diet. In fact, if you read any of my writings, I recommend a reduced-meat diet, and that the meats be of high quality. A couple of books that I recommend are the "Paleo Diet" and "Neanderthin,"
But the deal is, even organic produce is lacking in vitamins and minerals, compared to produce from just thirty or forty years ago, and some very important cancer-fighting vitamins have all but vanished from the American diet. I think it is nothing short of a miracle that we do as well as we do. And I hate to sound doom and gloom, but I don't see things getting any better.
There are also other factors involved, too. If you look at studies of people deep in some forest in China, they have a cancer rate that is a fraction of what we have here in the US...but even they are not cancer free.
What really burns me up, though, is that for those that do get cancer here in America, the "Land of the Free," you have to leave the country to get non-toxic treatments.
I've read about this so much that I truly know what you are going through, and my heart goes out to you.
My web sites, though I don't get to work on them much anymore, are www.vitaminb17.org and www.roadtowellsville.com
Now I have thrown out vitamin B17, and the quack flags will be flying, but I believe that the body has its own way to fight cancer, which is enzymes, but failing that, there was a dietary backup plan in the form of a vitamin...a vitamin which has all but vanished from the American diet.
There is a good book about it here:
http://www.whale.to/m/binzel.html
I had a close friend, a fine upstanding person, who not only knew the doctor, a real MD, that wrote the above book, but also knew one of the patients mentioned in the book. It was this friend who got me into my studies to begin with.
Transporter_ii
Interestingly, when I was in school, I had a physics teacher who thought that, way in the future, people would look back and wonder if we really stood with our faces stuck a foot away from the microwave door while it was running.
I lost touch with him for a while, and later heard that he died of cancer.
Rather than being the microwave that got him, though, he had this story where he had ordered this tiny, tiny amount of radioactive material for his class, and the secretary that ordered it thought he mispelled something and changed the order. In one of the weirder things you hear about, the company actually shipped this huge amount of radioactive material in a plain box, with a bill for something like $66,000.00. Well, the principal went through the roof when he got the bill and demanded to know what he ordered. Without opening the box, he said he went and got his giger counter, and within 60 feet of the principal's office, he said the needle was going crazy.
Anyway, that might not have been what got him either, but he swore the above was a true story. He used to tell it at least once a year.
Transporter_ii
The point I was trying to make wasn't that cancer is killed by blocking enzymes, it is that there are a lack of key enzymes that let the cancer grow in the first place, and these enzymes are the body's normal defense against cancer to begin with, so they already know how to distinguish between normal cells and cancer cells.
Cancer happens a lot where the body is constantly being damaged and repaired (e.g. a smoker's lungs). Yes, there is a chicken and egg type of thing here, but I say that smoking doesn't "cause" cancer, it damages the body and the body's attempt to repair itself, over time, gets out of control...for multiple reasons -- including mutated stem cells/DNA in the area of damage, as you pointed out. But I say, and this is probably where we would disagree, the body has backup mechanisms in place to deal with this overgrowth of cells gone haywire, with the key backup mechanisms being: enzymes, vitamins (proper nutrition) and/or lifestyle choices. There is much, very real, scientific research related to exactly this, and I have already posted some in another reply to you. Obviously, I'm not going to write something in one paragraph that makes you change your whole worldview. But there are documented cases of doctors/scientists that exploited the body's own backup mechanisms to deal with cancer and achieved survival rates far beyond those obtained by conventional treatments.
Unfortunately, trying to get doctors to use these treatments is like trying to convince the RIAA that they don't need DRM. And some of that is understandable. The American people don't want to change their diet or exercise. They want to take a pill and be cured, and we have a whole, multi-billion dollar industry devoted to coming up with that pill, so the two feed off of each other.
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Well, you being a biochemist and doctor, I highly doubt that anything I say is going to sway your opinion...but, no offense, instead of seeing cancer as having a single cause (e.g. DNA replication and repair leads to mutations), I see it as a multi-faceted problem, with the biggest factors being stem cells, enzymes, diet/nutrition, and lifestyle and exercise. The biggest problem with mainstream medicine, in my opinion, is that everything is treated in isolation.
In 2000+, we are just starting to see that cancer cells contain pre-embryonic stem cells that form the very material that John Beard saw in 1902. See:
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2004/1227/070.ht ml
Note: See the 1993 study, almost 100 years later, by Nicholas Gonzalez, where he used pancreatic enzymes to get these results on patients with pancreatic cancer (And btw, Gonzalez based his treatment on research done at the turn of the last century!):
Go to google and type in "poor diet causes dna mutations" and then read my post from the Lancet again. The above reference is just one of many, many examples of poor diet causing DNA mutations, and there are several other vitamins, not just folic acid that play a role in cancer prevention. The bottom line is, they don't have cancer rates in third-world countries like we do in the United States. It isn't environmental, just read the Lancet article already cited and it isn't genes...but it is dietary/vitamin related.
I could cite research article after research article, but I'm not going to sit here all day ( Although, I could post more if it will actually be read).
The bottom line, for me, is this: I can count on a couple of fingers the number of people I have known that had cancer and went the traditional chemo/radiation/surgery treatments and lived more than a year afterwards. But I have personally known, and known through friends and co-workers, more people who put some of the above research into action and skipped the chemo/radiation/surgery and went on to live normal, healthy lives.
Again, cancer is a multi-faceted problem. Most Americans don't want to change their diets and/or lifestyle, they want to take a pill and be cured. I don'
[And for those that study enzymems, they will find that a poor diet causes the body's enzymes to get real stressed out. Digestion is hard on the body, which is why calorie restriction improves lifespan. But when a steady diet of junk food is eaten, the body works so hard trying to digest it, important enzymes that help repair the body decrease. The pieces of the puzzle are all there, it is just a matter of getting the big picture. -- Transporter_ii]
From the Lancet:
"In many [western] countries, peoples' diet changed substantially in the second half of the twentieth century, generally with increases in consumption of meat, dairy products, vegetable oils, fruit juice, and alcoholic beverages, and decreases in consumption of starchy staple foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, and maize flour. Other aspects of lifestyle also changed, notably, large reductions in physical activity and large increases in the prevalence of obesity."[18]
"It was noted in the 1970s that people in many western countries had diets high in animal products, fat, and sugar, and high rates of cancers of the colorectum, breast, prostate, endometrium, and lung; by contrast, individuals in developing countries usually had diets that were based on one or two starchy staple foods, with low intakes of animal products, fat, and sugar, and low rates of these cancers."[18]
"These observations suggest that the diets [or lifestyle] of different populations might partly determine their rates of cancer, and the basis for this hypothesis was strengthened by results of studies showing that people who migrate from one country to another generally acquire the cancer rates of the new host country, suggesting that environmental [or lifestyle factors] rather than genetic factors are the key determinants of the international variation in cancer rates."[18]
See also:
Scientists estimate that most cancers are associated with factors related to how we live, called lifestyle factors [note: these things effect enzymes -- Transporter_ii]. Evidence reviewed by the American Cancer Society suggests that about one-third of the 550,000 cancer deaths that occur in the United States each year is due to dietary factors (for example, excess calories, high fat, and low fibre). Another third is due to cigarette smoking. Other lifestyle factors which increase the risk for cancer include drinking heavily, lack of regular physical exercise, promiscuous sexual behavior,
[And for those that study enzymems, they will find that a poor diet causes the body's enzymes to get real stressed out. Digestion is hard on the body, which is why calorie restriction improves lifespan. But when a steady diet of junk food is eaten, the body works so hard trying to digest it, important enzymes that help repair the body decrease. -- Transporter_ii]
From the Lancet:
"In many [western] countries, peoples' diet changed substantially in the second half of the twentieth century, generally with increases in consumption of meat, dairy products, vegetable oils, fruit juice, and alcoholic beverages, and decreases in consumption of starchy staple foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, and maize flour. Other aspects of lifestyle also changed, notably, large reductions in physical activity and large increases in the prevalence of obesity."[18]
"It was noted in the 1970s that people in many western countries had diets high in animal products, fat, and sugar, and high rates of cancers of the colorectum, breast, prostate, endometrium, and lung; by contrast, individuals in developing countries usually had diets that were based on one or two starchy staple foods, with low intakes of animal products, fat, and sugar, and low rates of these cancers."[18]
"These observations suggest that the diets [or lifestyle] of different populations might partly determine their rates of cancer, and the basis for this hypothesis was strengthened by results of studies showing that people who migrate from one country to another generally acquire the cancer rates of the new host country, suggesting that environmental [or lifestyle factors] rather than genetic factors are the key determinants of the international variation in cancer rates."[18]
See also:
Scientists estimate that most cancers are associated with factors related to how we live, called lifestyle factors [note: these things effect enzymes -- Transporter_ii]. Evidence reviewed by the American Cancer Society suggests that about one-third of the 550,000 cancer deaths that occur in the United States each year is due to dietary factors (for example, excess calories, high fat, and low fibre). Another third is due to cigarette smoking. Other lifestyle factors which increase the risk for cancer include drinking heavily, lack of regular physical exercise, promiscuous sexual behavior,