A study conducted by researchers at Stanford University indicates considerable and rising rates of Internet addiction among U.S. users.
The study, which asked more than 2,500 people about their Web habits, found that almost 14 percent said it was difficult to be offline for more than a few days. Eight percent said they use the Internet as a means to escape the real world, and a similar portion admitted to hiding their Web habits from their partners. Researchers said these kinds of behaviors are not unlike those exhibited by people with problems such as alcoholism. According to the study, the profile of a typical user who has problems with Internet addiction is a single, college-educated, white male who spends more than 30 hours per week using the Internet for "non-essential" purposes. Elias Aboujaoude, one of the researchers in the study, said that it is important to remind ourselves that despite all the benefits of technology, "it creates real problems for a subset of people." Indeed, six percent of the respondents said their addiction had adversely affected their relationships with other people.
Obviously the greatest headline news being avoided this week by the major US media is the free press rating list of the "Reporters Without Borders" based in Paris, France, since the US has consistently fallen from its initial top 10% rankingof 17th when the list started down to 53rd this year.
I did LOTS of search integration this morning and came up with the following compilation from numerous sources, who obviously dealt with tie scores in different ways, then, if you want to skip my own compilation, I finally found the entire listing, but without explanator notes as to the scoring, which is included.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.
The US continues to fall from its initial 17th place, edge of top 10%, to 53rd, edge of top 1/3, due to the practice of jailing reporters for political reasons– Joshua Wolf, who refused to yield a videotape of some political protestors to a grand jury, not to mention, of course, the whole Valerie Plame thing about a fake weapons of mass destruction report concerning Iraq in which a reporter spent her next half year in jail.
Inaddition, Sudanese cameraman Sami al-Haj who works for Al-Jazeera has been held in Guantanamo since June of 2002 without being charged and an Associated Press photographer named Bilal Hussein is being held in the Iraq jails by the US since April.
[Of course, Project Gutenberg, perhaps the largest literacy project, was not contacted about this.]
The Literacy Project, a portal to connect literacy organizations around the world, was announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany. It was created in a collaboration among Google, the Frankfurt Book Fair literacy campaign, and UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning.
Google's new online service lets teachers, organizations, and people interested in literacy use the Internet to search for and share relevant information through blogs, videos, and groups. Searchers can also locate literacy organizations using a zoomable world map.
[Of course this is only about risk to management, not to those who might have a medical risk, or who could be located by terrorists via their RFIDs]
A draft report from the National Institute for Standards and technology (NIST) covers some of the security and privacy risks of using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. Agencies must decide how much information to include on the RFID tags and how to protect it. If the tag is tied to a back-end database, for example, an intruder could use an RFID reader as a back door to the database unless it has been properly secured with access controls, password protection, and cryptography. According to the report, "When practitioners adhere to sound security engineering principles, RFID technology can help a wide range of organizations and individuals realize substantial productivity gains and efficiencies." The report's guidance is intended to help current and future RFID users understand the risks and the best-known safeguards.
We are seeking as much information as possible on the various approaches to Machine Translation. Any brand names or contact information would be greatly appreciated.
Dolphin Producer is a new software package which will convert a text document into a fully synchronized text and audio DTB at the push of a single button. The DTB can then be played back using Dolphin's EaseReader software player – which is included in Dolphin Producer.
The DTB can also be played back on any other DAISY DTB software or hardware player, as well as any MP3 player – The choice is yours.
LivingInternet.com provides a 700-odd page reference about the Internet "to provide living context and perspective to this most technological of human inventions", and has received input from many people that helped build the Internet. It currently receives about 3 thousand visitors a day, many from educational institutions. Now in its 7th year of operation.
which now indexes 24,000 books available free online, including all
PG(US) & PG(Aus)’s books, along with some basic date information
about them and their authors where you can find more.
Plus many books not available on line, a good place to search
for books by specific authors who you are interested in.