1. rehydration salts or intravenous fluids
2. Web 2.0
3. Wikis
4. cross-strait exchange
5. Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970
6. mortgage lending institution
7. bail out
8. a Consent Decree that took effect in 2001
9. Somali pirates
10. Irish wake
"would have been"
(The length of the sentence shall be no less than 10 words)
2008年12月27日 星期六
2008年12月14日 星期日
Children collecting dirty water in Harare. Cholera is spread through infected water and food.
American officials say Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will join talks on Zimbabwe this week at the United Nations. The State Department says the Security Council has failed to take meaningful action to end the country's political and health crisis. Zimbabwe faces a cholera outbreak that also threatens its neighbors. Many Zimbabweans have crossed the border into South Africa for treatment.
Secretary Rice is expected to try to increase pressure on President Robert Mugabe. Her spokesman Sean McCormack said last week that the United States wants to start a process that will bring an end to the tragedy in Zimbabwe. And he said southern African countries, especially, need to do more.
The United Nations estimated that as of last week almost seventeen thousand people were infected with cholera. Aid groups reported almost eight hundred deaths.
The outbreak grew from a lack of water-treatment chemicals and from broken sewage pipes. Many people are using unprotected wells for drinking water.
Cholera is a bacterial infection generally spread through water or food. It causes vomiting and diarrhea. In severe cases, people can die from a loss of fluids within hours unless they are treated.
Cholera is easily treated with oral rehydration salts or intravenous fluids. But Zimbabwe's health system has collapsed.
The outbreak began in August. On December fourth the government declared a national emergency and appealed for international aid.
But President Mugabe has dismissed international calls to resign. He says the West wants to use the crisis as an excuse to invade Zimbabwe. He said last week that the epidemic is under control. But on Friday U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon disagreed, based on reports from the World Health Organization and other agencies.
The U.N. chief urged President Mugabe to honor a power-sharing deal with the opposition -- and to "look to the future of his country." He said the people of Zimbabwe have suffered too much and too long.
The United Nations has been supplying clean water to treatment centers in Harare. And the International Red Cross has been preparing to provide more water and other supplies. Aid groups have warned that as many as sixty thousand people could become infected unless the outbreak is controlled.
Children collecting dirty water in Harare. Cholera is spread through infected water and food.
2008年12月10日 星期三
Questions for the "Internet Intersects politics" news article
How did Mr. Obama use Internet to win in the presidential campaign?
2008年11月29日 星期六
How Obama’s Internet Campaign Changed Politics
November 7, 2008, 7:49 pm
By Claire Cain Miller
One of the many ways that the election of Barack Obama as president has echoed that of John F. Kennedy is his use of a new medium that will forever change politics. For Mr. Kennedy, it was television. For Mr. Obama, it is the Internet.
“Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee,” said Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post.
She spoke Friday about how politics and Web 2.0 intersect on a panel with Joe Trippi, a political consultant, and Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. (Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich had been invited to balance out the left-leaning panel, but declined, according to John Battelle, a chair of the conference.)
Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign -– which was run by Mr. Trippi –- was groundbreaking in its use of the Internet to raise small amounts of money from hundreds of thousands of people. But by using interactive Web 2.0 tools, Mr. Obama’s campaign changed the way politicians organize supporters, advertise to voters, defend against attacks and communicate with constituents.
Mr. Obama used the Internet to organize his supporters in a way that would have in the past required an army of volunteers and paid organizers on the ground, Mr. Trippi said.
“The tools changed between 2004 and 2008. Barack Obama won every single caucus state that matters, and he did it because of those tools, because he was able to move thousands of people to organize.”
Mr. Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising. Mr. Trippi argued that those videos were more effective than television ads because viewers chose to watch them or received them from a friend instead of having their television shows interrupted.
“The campaign’s official stuff they created for YouTube was watched for 14.5 million hours,” Mr. Trippi said. “To buy 14.5 million hours on broadcast TV is $47 million.”
There has also been a sea change in fact-checking, with citizens using the Internet to find past speeches that prove a politician wrong and then using the Web to alert their fellow citizens.
The John McCain campaign, for example, originally said that Governor Sarah Palin opposed the so-called bridge to nowhere in Alaska, Ms. Huffington said. “Online there was an absolutely obsessive campaign to prove that wrong,” she said, and eventually the campaign stopped repeating it.
“In 2004, trust me, they would have gone on repeating it, because the echo chamber would not have been as facile,” Ms. Huffington said.
The Internet also let people repeatedly listen to the candidates’ own words in the face of attacks, Mr. Huffington said. As Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary words kept surfacing, people could re-watch Mr. Obama’s speech on race. To date, 6.7 million people have watched the 37-minute speech on YouTube.
The Internet also changes the way politicians govern. Mr. Newsom learned that last year when he ran for re-election. He showed up at a rally and didn’t see the usual crowd. His aides told him the audience was made up of his Facebook friends. “I said, ‘What’s Facebook?’” Mr. Newsom recalled.
These days, Mr. Newsom is “obsessed with Facebook.” It strengthens his connection with his constituents and their connection with the causes they care about, he said.
The constant exposure can, of course, turn against politicians.
Ms. Huffington’s “off the bus” team of 10,000 citizen journalists caught candidates saying things that embarrassed them later, such as Mr. Obama’s “guns and religion” remark. Now, she said, “there is no off-the-record fundraiser.”
Mr. Newsom said he is fearful of the constant need to watch his tongue. “I have to watch myself singing, ‘I left my heart in San Francisco’ on YouTube and it can’t go away. I am desperate to get it to go away,” he said dryly.
“There will be a lot of collateral damage coming to grips with the fact that we’re in a reality TV series, ‘Politics 24/7,’” Mr. Newsom said.
That’s a good thing, Mr. Trippi said. “This medium demands authenticity, and television for the most part demanded fake. Authenticity is something politicians haven’t been used to.”
He predicted that this real-time Internet contact with constituents will also change the way the president of the United States governs. He recently proposed that Mr. Obama start a Web site called MyWhiteHouse.gov to talk with citizens. (Mr. Obama just started a different site, Change.gov, on Thursday to keep in touch with people during the transition.)
“When Congress refuses to go with his agenda, it’s not going to be just the president they oppose," Mr. Trippi said. It will be the president and his huge virtual network of citizens.
“Just like Kennedy brought in the television presidency, I think we’re about to see the first wired, connected, networked presidency,” Mr. Trippi said.
By Claire Cain Miller
One of the many ways that the election of Barack Obama as president has echoed that of John F. Kennedy is his use of a new medium that will forever change politics. For Mr. Kennedy, it was television. For Mr. Obama, it is the Internet.
“Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee,” said Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post.
She spoke Friday about how politics and Web 2.0 intersect on a panel with Joe Trippi, a political consultant, and Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. (Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich had been invited to balance out the left-leaning panel, but declined, according to John Battelle, a chair of the conference.)
Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign -– which was run by Mr. Trippi –- was groundbreaking in its use of the Internet to raise small amounts of money from hundreds of thousands of people. But by using interactive Web 2.0 tools, Mr. Obama’s campaign changed the way politicians organize supporters, advertise to voters, defend against attacks and communicate with constituents.
Mr. Obama used the Internet to organize his supporters in a way that would have in the past required an army of volunteers and paid organizers on the ground, Mr. Trippi said.
“The tools changed between 2004 and 2008. Barack Obama won every single caucus state that matters, and he did it because of those tools, because he was able to move thousands of people to organize.”
Mr. Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising. Mr. Trippi argued that those videos were more effective than television ads because viewers chose to watch them or received them from a friend instead of having their television shows interrupted.
“The campaign’s official stuff they created for YouTube was watched for 14.5 million hours,” Mr. Trippi said. “To buy 14.5 million hours on broadcast TV is $47 million.”
There has also been a sea change in fact-checking, with citizens using the Internet to find past speeches that prove a politician wrong and then using the Web to alert their fellow citizens.
The John McCain campaign, for example, originally said that Governor Sarah Palin opposed the so-called bridge to nowhere in Alaska, Ms. Huffington said. “Online there was an absolutely obsessive campaign to prove that wrong,” she said, and eventually the campaign stopped repeating it.
“In 2004, trust me, they would have gone on repeating it, because the echo chamber would not have been as facile,” Ms. Huffington said.
The Internet also let people repeatedly listen to the candidates’ own words in the face of attacks, Mr. Huffington said. As Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary words kept surfacing, people could re-watch Mr. Obama’s speech on race. To date, 6.7 million people have watched the 37-minute speech on YouTube.
The Internet also changes the way politicians govern. Mr. Newsom learned that last year when he ran for re-election. He showed up at a rally and didn’t see the usual crowd. His aides told him the audience was made up of his Facebook friends. “I said, ‘What’s Facebook?’” Mr. Newsom recalled.
These days, Mr. Newsom is “obsessed with Facebook.” It strengthens his connection with his constituents and their connection with the causes they care about, he said.
The constant exposure can, of course, turn against politicians.
Ms. Huffington’s “off the bus” team of 10,000 citizen journalists caught candidates saying things that embarrassed them later, such as Mr. Obama’s “guns and religion” remark. Now, she said, “there is no off-the-record fundraiser.”
Mr. Newsom said he is fearful of the constant need to watch his tongue. “I have to watch myself singing, ‘I left my heart in San Francisco’ on YouTube and it can’t go away. I am desperate to get it to go away,” he said dryly.
“There will be a lot of collateral damage coming to grips with the fact that we’re in a reality TV series, ‘Politics 24/7,’” Mr. Newsom said.
That’s a good thing, Mr. Trippi said. “This medium demands authenticity, and television for the most part demanded fake. Authenticity is something politicians haven’t been used to.”
He predicted that this real-time Internet contact with constituents will also change the way the president of the United States governs. He recently proposed that Mr. Obama start a Web site called MyWhiteHouse.gov to talk with citizens. (Mr. Obama just started a different site, Change.gov, on Thursday to keep in touch with people during the transition.)
“When Congress refuses to go with his agenda, it’s not going to be just the president they oppose," Mr. Trippi said. It will be the president and his huge virtual network of citizens.
“Just like Kennedy brought in the television presidency, I think we’re about to see the first wired, connected, networked presidency,” Mr. Trippi said.
2008年11月19日 星期三
Question for the news article
What is the best strategy used by China with Taiwan, your opinions? (no less than 100 words)
2008年11月15日 星期六
Beijing's best strategy to use with Taiwan
Beijing's best strategy to use with Taiwan
Chen Yunlin, chairman of the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), left Taiwan on Nov. 7 with mixed results. Chen made history by being the highest ranking Chinese Communist official ever to formally visit Taiwan, technically still an enemy of Beijing. Four important agreements were signed.
The general perception is that Taipei and Beijing were treated on an equal footing in all activities during his visit. Official media in mainland China for the first time called Taiwan officials by their official titles. In Taipei, Chen even addressed Wang Jin-pyng, president of the Legislative Yuan, as “President Wang.” The only disappointment was that during his meeting with President Ma on the final day of his tour, he did not clearly call Ma “president.” Instead, he used “nin,” which was a deferential form of “you” in Chinese.
On the part of Ma, he made no mistake in reminding Chen that he is the president. In fact, calling people by their official titles should not be a significant issue at all, as long as the two sides are treated with parity during the cross-strait exchanges. It became an increasingly hot question, only because of the manipulation by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which kept saying that if Ma is not addressed as “president,” the dignity of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan as a sovereign state will be seriously impaired.
As a result, all Taiwanese are focusing their attention on this point, which became the main theme of the violent and bloody anti-government and anti-Chen protests sponsored by the DPP. Everyone knows that what a person is called is merely a formality, with little substantial meaning. Recent developments have indicated that Beijing has become more and more flexible and pragmatic in handling Taiwan affairs, by not denying Taipei as an independent political entity.
Against this background, Chen should have faced reality by calling President Ma as such to satisfy the persistent demand of dissidents here, without causing Beijing to sacrifice anything substantial.
While visiting Taiwan, Chen was, by and large, perceived as an intelligent, calm and professional diplomat. His emotional remarks upon arrival and his composure displayed in front of the violent protests that dogged him wherever he went, won widespread acclaim. But, if Chen had addressed Ma as president, his trip would have been much more successful.
How China deals with this question of calling Taipei’s government officials by their titles is directly related to its grand strategy toward Taiwan. An elaborate display of goodwill gestures by Beijing, we believe, would be the best and most effective method.
In this regard, it should be in the larger interest of China to consider removal of some, if not all, of its missiles aimed at Taiwan. Next, it should agree to a diplomatic truce with Taipei. Finally, it should help Taiwan participate in international activities as much as possible. That Lien Chan, as a former ROC vice president, will be the highest ranking representative from Taiwan to attend the forthcoming APEC meeting with the tacit approval of Beijing should be considered a wide move on the part of the Chinese Communists. Furthermore, China should consider giving active assistance to Taipei to enable it to participate in the World Health Organization (WHO) as an observer. Lien reportedly will mention this when meeting Hu Jintao, chairman of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), at the APEC meeting. Of course, there are hardliners in China, just as there are in Taiwan, who oppose any concessions to the island, considered a “renegade province” of China, on the question of sovereignty. But, it should not be difficult to convince these people of the need and advantage of using this kind of “soft strategy.”
Now that China has been universally recognized as a giant world power, and as such it can afford to be magnanimous in dealing with a state as small as the ROC on Taiwan.
Even today, Taiwan is already, to a great extent, dependent on mainland China for its export surplus. Many Taiwanese, including DPP followers, have toured and invested in mainland China. In fact, most of the protesters against Chen’s visit were partisan-motivated, many of whom, deep in their hearts, supported increasing cross-strait exchanges because such a development is in their best interest.
There is a well-known saying that all humans are made of flesh, meaning people are easily moved by tender acts. And this will particularly apply to the psychology of down-to-earth Taiwanese people, who are scrupulously taught by Chinese culture to be grateful to whomever is nice to them. It was reported that several residents in southern Taiwan, considered a stronghold of the Taiwan independence movement, expressed deep regret that they could not see Chen Yunlin to say “thank-you” for the hospitality he extended to them while sightseeing in mainland China.
Chen Yunlin, chairman of the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), left Taiwan on Nov. 7 with mixed results. Chen made history by being the highest ranking Chinese Communist official ever to formally visit Taiwan, technically still an enemy of Beijing. Four important agreements were signed.
The general perception is that Taipei and Beijing were treated on an equal footing in all activities during his visit. Official media in mainland China for the first time called Taiwan officials by their official titles. In Taipei, Chen even addressed Wang Jin-pyng, president of the Legislative Yuan, as “President Wang.” The only disappointment was that during his meeting with President Ma on the final day of his tour, he did not clearly call Ma “president.” Instead, he used “nin,” which was a deferential form of “you” in Chinese.
On the part of Ma, he made no mistake in reminding Chen that he is the president. In fact, calling people by their official titles should not be a significant issue at all, as long as the two sides are treated with parity during the cross-strait exchanges. It became an increasingly hot question, only because of the manipulation by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which kept saying that if Ma is not addressed as “president,” the dignity of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan as a sovereign state will be seriously impaired.
As a result, all Taiwanese are focusing their attention on this point, which became the main theme of the violent and bloody anti-government and anti-Chen protests sponsored by the DPP. Everyone knows that what a person is called is merely a formality, with little substantial meaning. Recent developments have indicated that Beijing has become more and more flexible and pragmatic in handling Taiwan affairs, by not denying Taipei as an independent political entity.
Against this background, Chen should have faced reality by calling President Ma as such to satisfy the persistent demand of dissidents here, without causing Beijing to sacrifice anything substantial.
While visiting Taiwan, Chen was, by and large, perceived as an intelligent, calm and professional diplomat. His emotional remarks upon arrival and his composure displayed in front of the violent protests that dogged him wherever he went, won widespread acclaim. But, if Chen had addressed Ma as president, his trip would have been much more successful.
How China deals with this question of calling Taipei’s government officials by their titles is directly related to its grand strategy toward Taiwan. An elaborate display of goodwill gestures by Beijing, we believe, would be the best and most effective method.
In this regard, it should be in the larger interest of China to consider removal of some, if not all, of its missiles aimed at Taiwan. Next, it should agree to a diplomatic truce with Taipei. Finally, it should help Taiwan participate in international activities as much as possible. That Lien Chan, as a former ROC vice president, will be the highest ranking representative from Taiwan to attend the forthcoming APEC meeting with the tacit approval of Beijing should be considered a wide move on the part of the Chinese Communists. Furthermore, China should consider giving active assistance to Taipei to enable it to participate in the World Health Organization (WHO) as an observer. Lien reportedly will mention this when meeting Hu Jintao, chairman of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), at the APEC meeting. Of course, there are hardliners in China, just as there are in Taiwan, who oppose any concessions to the island, considered a “renegade province” of China, on the question of sovereignty. But, it should not be difficult to convince these people of the need and advantage of using this kind of “soft strategy.”
Now that China has been universally recognized as a giant world power, and as such it can afford to be magnanimous in dealing with a state as small as the ROC on Taiwan.
Even today, Taiwan is already, to a great extent, dependent on mainland China for its export surplus. Many Taiwanese, including DPP followers, have toured and invested in mainland China. In fact, most of the protesters against Chen’s visit were partisan-motivated, many of whom, deep in their hearts, supported increasing cross-strait exchanges because such a development is in their best interest.
There is a well-known saying that all humans are made of flesh, meaning people are easily moved by tender acts. And this will particularly apply to the psychology of down-to-earth Taiwanese people, who are scrupulously taught by Chinese culture to be grateful to whomever is nice to them. It was reported that several residents in southern Taiwan, considered a stronghold of the Taiwan independence movement, expressed deep regret that they could not see Chen Yunlin to say “thank-you” for the hospitality he extended to them while sightseeing in mainland China.
2008年11月5日 星期三
Questions for the "smart pill" news article
1.Why does the so-called “smart pills” get so popular among students today?
2.What are the two most popular brand-name drugs used by the students as “smart pills”?
3.What are the original functions indicated by “Adderall”?
4.what are the major side effects of those popular “smar pills”?
5.What do you think if we should use these kinds of medicine to enhance our performance either on academics or career?
2.What are the two most popular brand-name drugs used by the students as “smart pills”?
3.What are the original functions indicated by “Adderall”?
4.what are the major side effects of those popular “smar pills”?
5.What do you think if we should use these kinds of medicine to enhance our performance either on academics or career?
2008年11月2日 星期日
A Dose Of Genius - Smart Pills
A Dose Of Genius
'Smart Pills' Are on The Rise. But Is Taking Them Wise?
By Joel Garreau
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Studying with diligent friends is fine, says Heidi Lessing, a University of Delaware sophomore.
But after a couple of hours, it's time for a break, a little gossip: "I want to talk about somebody walking by in the library."
One of those friends, however, is working too hard for dish -- way too hard.
Instead of joining in the gossip, "She says, 'Be quiet,' " Lessing says, astonishment still registering in her voice.
Her friend's attention is laserlike, totally focused on her texts, even after an evening of study. "We were so bored," Lessing says. But the friend was still "really into it. It's annoying."
The reason for the difference: Her pal is fueled with "smart pills" that increase her concentration, focus, wakefulness and short-term memory.
As university students all over the country emerge from final exam hell this month, the number of healthy people using bootleg 私酒 pharmaceuticals of this sort seems to be soaring.
Such brand-name prescription drugs "were around in high school, but they really exploded in my third and fourth years" of college, says Katie Garrett, a 2005 University of Virginia graduate.
The bootleg use even in her high school years was erupting, according to a study published in February in an international biomedical and psychosocial journal, Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Mining 2002 data, it noted that even then, more than 7 million Americans used bootleg prescription stimulants, and 1.6 million of those users were of student age. By the time students reach college nowadays, they're already apt to know about these drugs, obtained with or without a prescription.
Seen by some ambitious students as the winner's edge -- the difference between a 3.8 average and a 4.0, maybe their ticket to Harvard Law -- these "brain steroids" can be purchased on many campuses for as little as $3 to $5 per pill, though they are often obtained free from friends with legitimate prescriptions, students report.
These drugs represent only the first primitive, halting generation of cognitive enhancers. Memory drugs will soon make it to market if human clinical trials continue successfully.
There are lots of the first-generation drugs around. Total sales have increased by more than 300 percent in only four years, topping $3.6 billion last year, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical information company. They include Adderall, which was originally aimed at people with attention-deficit disorder, and Provigil, which was aimed at narcoleptics 嗜眠症, who fall asleep uncontrollably. In the healthy, this class of drugs variously aids concentration, alertness, focus, short-term memory and wakefulness -- useful qualities in students working on complex term papers and pulling all-nighters before exams. Adderall sales are up 3,135.6 percent over the same period. Provigil is up 359.7 percent.
Compared with the kind of drug users who get police attention, "This is an entirely different population of people -- from the unmotivated to the super-motivated," Restak says. These "drug users may be at the top of the class, instead of the ones hanging around the corners."
Smart-pill use generally doesn't show up in campus health center reports, he says, because "This is not the kind of stuff that you would overdose on" easily. Amphetamines are associated with addiction and bodily damage, but in use by ambitious students, "if you go a little over you get wired up but it wears off in a couple of hours. And Provigil has a pretty good safety record." Finally, smart-pill use is a relatively recent development that has not yet achieved widespread attention, much less study, although Restak expects that to change.
"We're going to see it not only in schools, but in businesses, especially where mental endurance matters." Restak can easily imagine a boss saying, " 'You've been here 14 hours; could you do another six?' It's a very competitive world out there, and this gives people an edge."
"With rising competition for admissions and classes becoming harder and harder by the day, a hypothesis was made that at least half of students at the university have at one point used/experienced such 'smart drugs,' " Salantrie writes in his report. He found his hunch easy to confirm.
"What was a surprise, though, was the alarming rate of senior business majors who have used" the drugs, he writes. Almost 90 percent reported at least occasional use of "smart pills" at crunch times such as final exams, including Adderall, Ritalin, Strattera and others. Of those, three-quarters did not have a legitimate prescription, obtaining the pills from friends. "We were shocked," Salantrie writes. He says that in his report, he was "attempting to bring to light the secondary market for Adderall" specifically because "most of the university is not aware" of its extent, he says.
When you start asking questions about smart pills, the answers you get divide sharply into two groups.
When you ask the grown-ups -- deans, crisis counselors, health counselors -- they tell you they don't know too much about the subject, but they don't think it is much of a problem at their institutions.
When you ask the students, they look at you like you're from the planet Zircon. They ask why you weren't on this story three years ago. Even if some of these drugs are amphetamines, it's medicine parents give to 8-year-olds, they say. It's brand-name stuff, in precise dosages. How bad can it be? Sure, there are problems with weight loss, sleep loss, jitters and throwing up, they say. But other unintended consequences are not what you might expect. Universities now sport some of the cleanest apartments in the history of undergraduate education. Says one student who asked for anonymity because she has been an off-prescription user of these drugs: "You've done all your work, but you're still focused. So you start with the bathroom, and then move on to the kitchen . . . ."
Warning: Side Effects
In the name of altering mood, energy and thinking patterns, we have been marinating our brains in chemicals for a very long time.
Caffeine is as old as coffee in Arabia, tea in China, and chocolate in the New World. Alcohol, coca leaves, tobacco and peyote 仙人掌go way back.
Even psychopharmaceuticals have been around for generations. Amphetamines -- which are the active ingredient in Adderall and Ritalin -- were first synthesized in Germany in 1887. Students have been using them for generations, in the form of Benzedrine and Dexedrine.
Beta blockers have been the dirty little secret of classical musicians since the 1970s. Originally prescribed to treat high blood pressure, they became the "steroids of the symphony" when it became clear Inderal controlled stage fright. As long ago as 1987, a study of the 51 largest orchestras in the United States found one in four musicians using them to improve their live performances, with 70 percent of those getting their pills illicitly.
What's new is the range, scope, quantity and quality of substances, old and new, aimed at boosting our brains -- as well as the increase in what's in the pipeline. Current psychopharmaceuticals represent only the beginning of cognitive enhancers aimed at improving attention, reasoning, planning and even social skills.
The memory compounds being raced to market by four U.S. companies are initially aimed at the severely impaired, such as early-stage Alzheimer's patients. But researchers expect the market for memory drugs to rapidly extend into the aging population we think of as normal, such as the more than 70 million baby boomers who are tired of forgetting what they meant to buy at the shopping mall and then realizing they've forgotten where they parked their cars, too. Or students who think such drugs could gain them hundreds of points on their SATs.
In research now underway, one such substance, ampakines, boosts the activity of glutamate, a key neurotransmitter that makes it easier to learn and encode memory. How useful they might be in a French or law exam.
But there are side effects with every drug. Strattera -- the ADHD medicine that is not a stimulant and may be taken for weeks before it shows an effect -- comes with a warning that it can result in fatal liver failure. The FDA warns it also may increase thoughts of suicide in young people. For a while last year, Canada pulled a form of Adderall from its markets as a result of sudden unexplained deaths in children with cardiac abnormalities. Provigil can decrease the effectiveness of birth control. All of these drugs come with a raft of side-effect warnings.
Nonetheless, pharmaceutical companies are racing to bring to market new drugs aimed at fundamentally altering our attitudes toward having a healthy brain. The idea is less to treat a specific disease than it is to, in the words of the old Army recruiting commercial, "Be all that you can be."
'Smart Pills' Are on The Rise. But Is Taking Them Wise?
By Joel Garreau
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Studying with diligent friends is fine, says Heidi Lessing, a University of Delaware sophomore.
But after a couple of hours, it's time for a break, a little gossip: "I want to talk about somebody walking by in the library."
One of those friends, however, is working too hard for dish -- way too hard.
Instead of joining in the gossip, "She says, 'Be quiet,' " Lessing says, astonishment still registering in her voice.
Her friend's attention is laserlike, totally focused on her texts, even after an evening of study. "We were so bored," Lessing says. But the friend was still "really into it. It's annoying."
The reason for the difference: Her pal is fueled with "smart pills" that increase her concentration, focus, wakefulness and short-term memory.
As university students all over the country emerge from final exam hell this month, the number of healthy people using bootleg 私酒 pharmaceuticals of this sort seems to be soaring.
Such brand-name prescription drugs "were around in high school, but they really exploded in my third and fourth years" of college, says Katie Garrett, a 2005 University of Virginia graduate.
The bootleg use even in her high school years was erupting, according to a study published in February in an international biomedical and psychosocial journal, Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Mining 2002 data, it noted that even then, more than 7 million Americans used bootleg prescription stimulants, and 1.6 million of those users were of student age. By the time students reach college nowadays, they're already apt to know about these drugs, obtained with or without a prescription.
Seen by some ambitious students as the winner's edge -- the difference between a 3.8 average and a 4.0, maybe their ticket to Harvard Law -- these "brain steroids" can be purchased on many campuses for as little as $3 to $5 per pill, though they are often obtained free from friends with legitimate prescriptions, students report.
These drugs represent only the first primitive, halting generation of cognitive enhancers. Memory drugs will soon make it to market if human clinical trials continue successfully.
There are lots of the first-generation drugs around. Total sales have increased by more than 300 percent in only four years, topping $3.6 billion last year, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical information company. They include Adderall, which was originally aimed at people with attention-deficit disorder, and Provigil, which was aimed at narcoleptics 嗜眠症, who fall asleep uncontrollably. In the healthy, this class of drugs variously aids concentration, alertness, focus, short-term memory and wakefulness -- useful qualities in students working on complex term papers and pulling all-nighters before exams. Adderall sales are up 3,135.6 percent over the same period. Provigil is up 359.7 percent.
Compared with the kind of drug users who get police attention, "This is an entirely different population of people -- from the unmotivated to the super-motivated," Restak says. These "drug users may be at the top of the class, instead of the ones hanging around the corners."
Smart-pill use generally doesn't show up in campus health center reports, he says, because "This is not the kind of stuff that you would overdose on" easily. Amphetamines are associated with addiction and bodily damage, but in use by ambitious students, "if you go a little over you get wired up but it wears off in a couple of hours. And Provigil has a pretty good safety record." Finally, smart-pill use is a relatively recent development that has not yet achieved widespread attention, much less study, although Restak expects that to change.
"We're going to see it not only in schools, but in businesses, especially where mental endurance matters." Restak can easily imagine a boss saying, " 'You've been here 14 hours; could you do another six?' It's a very competitive world out there, and this gives people an edge."
"With rising competition for admissions and classes becoming harder and harder by the day, a hypothesis was made that at least half of students at the university have at one point used/experienced such 'smart drugs,' " Salantrie writes in his report. He found his hunch easy to confirm.
"What was a surprise, though, was the alarming rate of senior business majors who have used" the drugs, he writes. Almost 90 percent reported at least occasional use of "smart pills" at crunch times such as final exams, including Adderall, Ritalin, Strattera and others. Of those, three-quarters did not have a legitimate prescription, obtaining the pills from friends. "We were shocked," Salantrie writes. He says that in his report, he was "attempting to bring to light the secondary market for Adderall" specifically because "most of the university is not aware" of its extent, he says.
When you start asking questions about smart pills, the answers you get divide sharply into two groups.
When you ask the grown-ups -- deans, crisis counselors, health counselors -- they tell you they don't know too much about the subject, but they don't think it is much of a problem at their institutions.
When you ask the students, they look at you like you're from the planet Zircon. They ask why you weren't on this story three years ago. Even if some of these drugs are amphetamines, it's medicine parents give to 8-year-olds, they say. It's brand-name stuff, in precise dosages. How bad can it be? Sure, there are problems with weight loss, sleep loss, jitters and throwing up, they say. But other unintended consequences are not what you might expect. Universities now sport some of the cleanest apartments in the history of undergraduate education. Says one student who asked for anonymity because she has been an off-prescription user of these drugs: "You've done all your work, but you're still focused. So you start with the bathroom, and then move on to the kitchen . . . ."
Warning: Side Effects
In the name of altering mood, energy and thinking patterns, we have been marinating our brains in chemicals for a very long time.
Caffeine is as old as coffee in Arabia, tea in China, and chocolate in the New World. Alcohol, coca leaves, tobacco and peyote 仙人掌go way back.
Even psychopharmaceuticals have been around for generations. Amphetamines -- which are the active ingredient in Adderall and Ritalin -- were first synthesized in Germany in 1887. Students have been using them for generations, in the form of Benzedrine and Dexedrine.
Beta blockers have been the dirty little secret of classical musicians since the 1970s. Originally prescribed to treat high blood pressure, they became the "steroids of the symphony" when it became clear Inderal controlled stage fright. As long ago as 1987, a study of the 51 largest orchestras in the United States found one in four musicians using them to improve their live performances, with 70 percent of those getting their pills illicitly.
What's new is the range, scope, quantity and quality of substances, old and new, aimed at boosting our brains -- as well as the increase in what's in the pipeline. Current psychopharmaceuticals represent only the beginning of cognitive enhancers aimed at improving attention, reasoning, planning and even social skills.
The memory compounds being raced to market by four U.S. companies are initially aimed at the severely impaired, such as early-stage Alzheimer's patients. But researchers expect the market for memory drugs to rapidly extend into the aging population we think of as normal, such as the more than 70 million baby boomers who are tired of forgetting what they meant to buy at the shopping mall and then realizing they've forgotten where they parked their cars, too. Or students who think such drugs could gain them hundreds of points on their SATs.
In research now underway, one such substance, ampakines, boosts the activity of glutamate, a key neurotransmitter that makes it easier to learn and encode memory. How useful they might be in a French or law exam.
But there are side effects with every drug. Strattera -- the ADHD medicine that is not a stimulant and may be taken for weeks before it shows an effect -- comes with a warning that it can result in fatal liver failure. The FDA warns it also may increase thoughts of suicide in young people. For a while last year, Canada pulled a form of Adderall from its markets as a result of sudden unexplained deaths in children with cardiac abnormalities. Provigil can decrease the effectiveness of birth control. All of these drugs come with a raft of side-effect warnings.
Nonetheless, pharmaceutical companies are racing to bring to market new drugs aimed at fundamentally altering our attitudes toward having a healthy brain. The idea is less to treat a specific disease than it is to, in the words of the old Army recruiting commercial, "Be all that you can be."
2008年10月22日 星期三
Discussion question for the news article 3
Should government bail out the current troubled financial market, including the stock market, to prevent economy slowdown or even meltdown?
Please write down your opinions and rationale. Prepare to present it in the coming session.
Please write down your opinions and rationale. Prepare to present it in the coming session.
2008年10月18日 星期六
Commentary: Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Congress has balked at the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Under this plan, the Treasury would have bought the "troubled assets" of financial institutions in an attempt to avoid economic meltdown.
This bailout was a terrible idea. Here's why.
The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.
Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.
(Being) Given the implicit promise of federal backing, the industry was happy to oblige and subprime lending soared.
This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.
Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.
…defaults and delinquencies soared, and left the industry which holds large amounts of…
The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.
The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.
Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.
In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.
Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.
Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.
Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.
The costs of the bailout, moreover, are almost certainly being understated. The administration's claim is that many mortgage assets are merely illiquid, not truly worthless, implying taxpayers will recoup much of their $700 billion.
If these assets are worth something, however, private parties should want to buy them, and they would do so if the owners would accept fair market value. Far more likely is that current owners have brushed under the rug how little their assets are worth.
The bailout has more problems. The final legislation will probably include numerous side conditions and special dealings that reward Washington lobbyists and their clients.
Anticipation of the bailout will engender strategic behavior by Wall Street institutions as they shuffle their assets and position their balance sheets to maximize their take. The bailout will open the door to further federal meddling in financial markets.
So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.
The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.
About the writer:
By Jeffrey A. Miron Special to CNN
Editor's note: Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University. A Libertarian, he was one of 166 academic economists who signed a letter to congressional leaders last week opposing the government bailout plan.
This bailout was a terrible idea. Here's why.
The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.
Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.
(Being) Given the implicit promise of federal backing, the industry was happy to oblige and subprime lending soared.
This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.
Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.
…defaults and delinquencies soared, and left the industry which holds large amounts of…
The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.
The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.
Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.
In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.
Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.
Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.
Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.
The costs of the bailout, moreover, are almost certainly being understated. The administration's claim is that many mortgage assets are merely illiquid, not truly worthless, implying taxpayers will recoup much of their $700 billion.
If these assets are worth something, however, private parties should want to buy them, and they would do so if the owners would accept fair market value. Far more likely is that current owners have brushed under the rug how little their assets are worth.
The bailout has more problems. The final legislation will probably include numerous side conditions and special dealings that reward Washington lobbyists and their clients.
Anticipation of the bailout will engender strategic behavior by Wall Street institutions as they shuffle their assets and position their balance sheets to maximize their take. The bailout will open the door to further federal meddling in financial markets.
So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.
The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.
About the writer:
By Jeffrey A. Miron Special to CNN
Editor's note: Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University. A Libertarian, he was one of 166 academic economists who signed a letter to congressional leaders last week opposing the government bailout plan.
2008年10月13日 星期一
Questions to discuss for the news article one
Questions:
1.Which software products will be challenged by Google’s free web browser that has just been released, called Chrome?
2.What are the Google’s typical web-based software that are free alternative to Microsoft’s lucrative desktop software?
3.Why does Google not have to win the browser war with Microsoft, strategically speaking?
4.What was the historic event happened on May 18, 1998 between Microsoft and the United States Department of Justice? And how was it eventually settled?
1.Which software products will be challenged by Google’s free web browser that has just been released, called Chrome?
2.What are the Google’s typical web-based software that are free alternative to Microsoft’s lucrative desktop software?
3.Why does Google not have to win the browser war with Microsoft, strategically speaking?
4.What was the historic event happened on May 18, 1998 between Microsoft and the United States Department of Justice? And how was it eventually settled?
2008年10月1日 星期三
Microsoft Faces New Browser Foe in Google
Microsoft Faces New Browser Foe in Google
By STEVE LOHR
Published: September 1, 2008
New York Times
(Lead)
The browser war is back on.
This time, Microsoft’s opponent is Google, a familiar foe.
On Tuesday, Google will release a free Web browser called Chrome that the company said would challenge Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, as well as the Firefox browser.
(Body)
The browser is a universal doorway to the Internet, and the use of Internet software and services is rapidly growing. Increasingly, the browser is also the doorway to the Web on cellphones and other mobile devices, widening the utility of the Web and Web advertising. Google, analysts say, cannot let Microsoft’s dominant share of the browser market go without a direct challenge.
Google already competes with Microsoft in online search and Internet advertising. They both make operating software for cellphones. Google is increasingly competing with Microsoft head-on in software that handles basic productivity like word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and e-mail programs. Google has Web-based software in these markets that are low-cost or free alternatives to Microsoft’s lucrative desktop software.
Web-based software
In software engineering, a web application or webapp [1] is an application that is accessed via web browser over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. It is also a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language (such as HTML, JavaScript, Java, etc.) and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.
Web applications are popular due to the ubiquity of a client, sometimes called a thin client. The ability to update and maintain web applications without distributing and installing software on potentially thousands of client computers is a key reason for their popularity. Common web applications include webmail, online retail sales, online auctions, wikis, discussion boards, weblogs, massively multiplayer online role-playing games and many other functions.
Google document, spreadsheet, presentation, google mail
Despite the frequent clashes with Microsoft — including the role Google played in thwarting an attempted acquisition of Yahoo — Google has come out on top only in search and search advertising. But Google does not have to win the browser war. Strategically, opening yet another front against Microsoft forces it to divert resources to defend franchises.
Now, Chrome heightens the rivalry and marks a shift for Google, which has strongly backed Firefox, the open-source browser that has gained about a fifth of the market against the dominant Internet Explorer.
Google’s browser project has been under way for more than a year, a person close to the company said.
In a brief statement, Microsoft welcomed the new entry and expressed confidence that people would prefer Explorer, which is on every Windows PC sold.
“The browser landscape is highly competitive,” said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer group. “But people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online.”
Google has clashed with Microsoft before, saying it had designed IE to gain ground in search, a market where Google is the runaway leader.
After Microsoft introduced IE 7 in 2006, Google complained that the browser’s search box favored Microsoft’s search service. Microsoft responded and made modifications, and a federal judge overseeing the antitrust consent decree against Microsoft determined that the browser design was not anticompetitive.
The antitrust consent decree against Microsoft
United States v. Microsoft, 87 F. Supp. 2d 30 (D.D.C. 2000) was a set of consolidated civil actions filed against Microsoft Corporation on May 18, 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and twenty U.S. states. Joel I. Klein was the lead prosecutor. The plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power in its handling of operating system sales and web browser sales. The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Microsoft Windows operating system. Bundling them together is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of Internet Explorer. It was further alleged that this unfairly restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or Opera) that were slow to download over a modem or had to be purchased at a store. Underlying these disputes were questions over whether Microsoft altered or manipulated its application programming interfaces (APIs) to favor Internet Explorer over third party web browsers, Microsoft's conduct in forming restrictive licensing agreements with OEM computer manufacturers, and Microsoft's intent in its course of conduct.
In its 2008 Annual Report Microsoft stated:[1]
“ Lawsuits brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, 18 states, and the District of Columbia in two separate actions were resolved through a Consent Decree that took effect in 2001 and a Final Judgment entered in 2002. These proceedings imposed various constraints on our Windows operating system businesses. These constraints include limits on certain contracting practices, mandated disclosure of certain software program interfaces and protocols, and rights for computer manufacturers to limit the visibility of certain Windows features in new PCs. We believe we are in full compliance with these rules. However, if we fail to comply with them, additional restrictions could be imposed on us that would adversely affect our business.
The first round of the browser wars in the 1990s led to a sweeping federal antitrust suit against Microsoft for the tactics it used to stifle competition from the commercial pioneer in browsing software, Netscape Communications. A federal appeals court ruled in 2001 that Microsoft had repeatedly violated the nation’s antitrust laws. Microsoft later reached a settlement with the Bush administration, which included some sanctions but left the company free to bundle browsing software with Windows, which runs more than 90 percent of all personal computers.
Microsoft recently stepped up its own browser development efforts, given the increasing importance of the browser and signs that Firefox is nibbling at its lead. Microsoft released a new version, IE8, last week to generally favorable reviews.
Microsoft still holds 73 percent of the browser market, according to Net Applications, a research firm. The market share for Firefox has climbed to 19 percent, while Apple’s Safari has 6 percent.
Chrome also puts Google in competition with an ally, the Mozilla Corporation, which manages the Firefox project. Just last week, Google renewed its deal with Mozilla. Under the arrangement, Google Search is the home page for Firefox and Google is its default search bar, and Google makes substantial payments to Mozilla. The agreement runs through November 2011, and will continue.
Given the increasing importance of the browser and its widening competition with Microsoft, Google’s entry into the market is not surprising, said John Lilly, chief executive of Mozilla.“It would be more surprising to me if Google didn’t do something in the browser space,” Mr. Lilly said. “After all, Google is 100 percent on the Web.”Google’s move, he said, would put “more competitive pressure on us to keep coming up with great browser technology. But having more smart people competing to improve browser technology and the user experience is a good thing.”
Mr. Lilly also noted that Mozilla, while a private company, is entirely owned by the Mozilla Foundation. The browser project was begun to provide an alternative to Microsoft’s browser. “The mission of Mozilla is to keep the Web open, a pure public benefit,” he said. “Others have other motivations and Google’s move also serves to highlight our position in the marketplace.”
Chrome will be available to download in a test, or beta version on Tuesday, Google announced on its Web site Monday afternoon. The browser will run on Windows. Google is also working on Chrome versions for Apple’s Macintosh, as well as Linux, an open source operating system.
According to Google’s Web site post, by Sundar Pichai, an engineering director and vice president for product management, Chrome is designed for speed and ease of use.
But the other design goal, it seems, was to make sure Google could control how well the growing range of Web-based software it is developing will perform, instead of having to run on a Microsoft browser.
“Under the hood,” Mr. Pichai wrote, “we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex Web applications much better.”
Later, he wrote, “we improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of Web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.”
The V8 JavaScript engine
It is an open source JavaScript engine developed by Google in Denmark and shipping with the Google Chrome browser[1].
It increases performance by compiling JavaScript to native machine code before running it, rather than to a bytecode or interpreting it. Thus, JavaScript applications will run at the speed of a compiled binary.
Chrome is based on an open-source rendering engine, WebKit, and an open-source version of Google’s Gears technology. Chrome will also be able to run in a privacy mode, InCognito, so that no information about a person’s browsing is collected. With IE8 last week, Microsoft added a privacy mode of browsing, called InPrivate.
The privacy features, analysts note, could undercut the Internet advertising business of Google, but also Microsoft, Yahoo and others that depend on ads aimed at users based on their browsing behavior. But it is unclear, analysts say, how large a share of users will opt for the privacy browsing mode and give up the convenience of having a browser store sites recently visited in tabbed settings for easy navigation.
Tabbed 設標簽的；被監視的
By STEVE LOHR
Published: September 1, 2008
New York Times
(Lead)
The browser war is back on.
This time, Microsoft’s opponent is Google, a familiar foe.
On Tuesday, Google will release a free Web browser called Chrome that the company said would challenge Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, as well as the Firefox browser.
(Body)
The browser is a universal doorway to the Internet, and the use of Internet software and services is rapidly growing. Increasingly, the browser is also the doorway to the Web on cellphones and other mobile devices, widening the utility of the Web and Web advertising. Google, analysts say, cannot let Microsoft’s dominant share of the browser market go without a direct challenge.
Google already competes with Microsoft in online search and Internet advertising. They both make operating software for cellphones. Google is increasingly competing with Microsoft head-on in software that handles basic productivity like word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and e-mail programs. Google has Web-based software in these markets that are low-cost or free alternatives to Microsoft’s lucrative desktop software.
Web-based software
In software engineering, a web application or webapp [1] is an application that is accessed via web browser over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. It is also a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language (such as HTML, JavaScript, Java, etc.) and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.
Web applications are popular due to the ubiquity of a client, sometimes called a thin client. The ability to update and maintain web applications without distributing and installing software on potentially thousands of client computers is a key reason for their popularity. Common web applications include webmail, online retail sales, online auctions, wikis, discussion boards, weblogs, massively multiplayer online role-playing games and many other functions.
Google document, spreadsheet, presentation, google mail
Despite the frequent clashes with Microsoft — including the role Google played in thwarting an attempted acquisition of Yahoo — Google has come out on top only in search and search advertising. But Google does not have to win the browser war. Strategically, opening yet another front against Microsoft forces it to divert resources to defend franchises.
Now, Chrome heightens the rivalry and marks a shift for Google, which has strongly backed Firefox, the open-source browser that has gained about a fifth of the market against the dominant Internet Explorer.
Google’s browser project has been under way for more than a year, a person close to the company said.
In a brief statement, Microsoft welcomed the new entry and expressed confidence that people would prefer Explorer, which is on every Windows PC sold.
“The browser landscape is highly competitive,” said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer group. “But people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online.”
Google has clashed with Microsoft before, saying it had designed IE to gain ground in search, a market where Google is the runaway leader.
After Microsoft introduced IE 7 in 2006, Google complained that the browser’s search box favored Microsoft’s search service. Microsoft responded and made modifications, and a federal judge overseeing the antitrust consent decree against Microsoft determined that the browser design was not anticompetitive.
The antitrust consent decree against Microsoft
United States v. Microsoft, 87 F. Supp. 2d 30 (D.D.C. 2000) was a set of consolidated civil actions filed against Microsoft Corporation on May 18, 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and twenty U.S. states. Joel I. Klein was the lead prosecutor. The plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power in its handling of operating system sales and web browser sales. The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Microsoft Windows operating system. Bundling them together is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of Internet Explorer. It was further alleged that this unfairly restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or Opera) that were slow to download over a modem or had to be purchased at a store. Underlying these disputes were questions over whether Microsoft altered or manipulated its application programming interfaces (APIs) to favor Internet Explorer over third party web browsers, Microsoft's conduct in forming restrictive licensing agreements with OEM computer manufacturers, and Microsoft's intent in its course of conduct.
In its 2008 Annual Report Microsoft stated:[1]
“ Lawsuits brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, 18 states, and the District of Columbia in two separate actions were resolved through a Consent Decree that took effect in 2001 and a Final Judgment entered in 2002. These proceedings imposed various constraints on our Windows operating system businesses. These constraints include limits on certain contracting practices, mandated disclosure of certain software program interfaces and protocols, and rights for computer manufacturers to limit the visibility of certain Windows features in new PCs. We believe we are in full compliance with these rules. However, if we fail to comply with them, additional restrictions could be imposed on us that would adversely affect our business.
The first round of the browser wars in the 1990s led to a sweeping federal antitrust suit against Microsoft for the tactics it used to stifle competition from the commercial pioneer in browsing software, Netscape Communications. A federal appeals court ruled in 2001 that Microsoft had repeatedly violated the nation’s antitrust laws. Microsoft later reached a settlement with the Bush administration, which included some sanctions but left the company free to bundle browsing software with Windows, which runs more than 90 percent of all personal computers.
Microsoft recently stepped up its own browser development efforts, given the increasing importance of the browser and signs that Firefox is nibbling at its lead. Microsoft released a new version, IE8, last week to generally favorable reviews.
Microsoft still holds 73 percent of the browser market, according to Net Applications, a research firm. The market share for Firefox has climbed to 19 percent, while Apple’s Safari has 6 percent.
Chrome also puts Google in competition with an ally, the Mozilla Corporation, which manages the Firefox project. Just last week, Google renewed its deal with Mozilla. Under the arrangement, Google Search is the home page for Firefox and Google is its default search bar, and Google makes substantial payments to Mozilla. The agreement runs through November 2011, and will continue.
Given the increasing importance of the browser and its widening competition with Microsoft, Google’s entry into the market is not surprising, said John Lilly, chief executive of Mozilla.“It would be more surprising to me if Google didn’t do something in the browser space,” Mr. Lilly said. “After all, Google is 100 percent on the Web.”Google’s move, he said, would put “more competitive pressure on us to keep coming up with great browser technology. But having more smart people competing to improve browser technology and the user experience is a good thing.”
Mr. Lilly also noted that Mozilla, while a private company, is entirely owned by the Mozilla Foundation. The browser project was begun to provide an alternative to Microsoft’s browser. “The mission of Mozilla is to keep the Web open, a pure public benefit,” he said. “Others have other motivations and Google’s move also serves to highlight our position in the marketplace.”
Chrome will be available to download in a test, or beta version on Tuesday, Google announced on its Web site Monday afternoon. The browser will run on Windows. Google is also working on Chrome versions for Apple’s Macintosh, as well as Linux, an open source operating system.
According to Google’s Web site post, by Sundar Pichai, an engineering director and vice president for product management, Chrome is designed for speed and ease of use.
But the other design goal, it seems, was to make sure Google could control how well the growing range of Web-based software it is developing will perform, instead of having to run on a Microsoft browser.
“Under the hood,” Mr. Pichai wrote, “we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex Web applications much better.”
Later, he wrote, “we improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of Web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.”
The V8 JavaScript engine
It is an open source JavaScript engine developed by Google in Denmark and shipping with the Google Chrome browser[1].
It increases performance by compiling JavaScript to native machine code before running it, rather than to a bytecode or interpreting it. Thus, JavaScript applications will run at the speed of a compiled binary.
Chrome is based on an open-source rendering engine, WebKit, and an open-source version of Google’s Gears technology. Chrome will also be able to run in a privacy mode, InCognito, so that no information about a person’s browsing is collected. With IE8 last week, Microsoft added a privacy mode of browsing, called InPrivate.
The privacy features, analysts note, could undercut the Internet advertising business of Google, but also Microsoft, Yahoo and others that depend on ads aimed at users based on their browsing behavior. But it is unclear, analysts say, how large a share of users will opt for the privacy browsing mode and give up the convenience of having a browser store sites recently visited in tabbed settings for easy navigation.
Tabbed 設標簽的；被監視的
2008年9月23日 星期二
Study Ties Wage Disparities To Outlook on Gender Roles
Study Ties Wage Disparities To Outlook on Gender Roles
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 22, 2008; Page A02
Men with egalitarian attitudes about the role of women in society earn significantly less on average than men who hold more traditional views about women's place in the world, according to a study being reported today.
It is the first time social scientists have produced evidence that large numbers of men might be victims of gender-related income disparities. The study raises the provocative possibility that a substantial part of the widely discussed gap in income between men and women who do the same work is really a gap between men with a traditional outlook and everyone else.
The differences found in the study were substantial. Men with traditional attitudes about gender roles earned $11,930 more a year than men with egalitarian views and $14,404 more than women with traditional attitudes. The comparisons were based on men and women working in the same kinds of jobs with the same levels of education and putting in the same number of hours per week.
Although men with a traditional outlook earned the most, women with a traditional outlook earned the least. The wage gap between working men and women with a traditional attitude was more than 10 times as large as the gap between men and women with egalitarian views
"When we think of the gender wage gap, most of our focus goes to the women side of things," said Beth A. Livingston, co-author of the study. "This article says a lot of the difference may be in men's salaries."
Livingston said she was taken aback by the results.
"We actually thought maybe men with traditional attitudes work in more complex jobs that pay more or select higher-paying occupations," she said. "Regardless of the jobs people chose, or how long they worked at them, there was still a significant effect of gender role attitudes on income."
The study, published in the September issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, is based on information collected by a federal government survey over a quarter-century. The Labor Department's National Longitudinal Survey of Youth began tracking 12,000 people in 1979 when they were 14 to 22 years old. The survey participants are now 43 to 51 years old.
Because many participants in the survey were children when it started, incomes for men and women changed dramatically over the 25 years that Livingston and co-author Timothy Judge studied. Averaged over the quarter-century, salaries ranged from $34,725 for working men with traditional attitudes to $20,321 for working women with traditional attitudes. Working men with egalitarian attitudes made $22, 795 on average, while working women with egalitarian attitudes made $21,373.
Livingston and Judge, who are organizational psychologists at the University of Florida, compared people's incomes over time to their evolving views on whether a woman's place is in the home and whether it is better for men to be the only breadwinners. People who endorsed distinct roles in society for men and women were considered to have traditional views, while those who advocated equal roles for men and women at home and in the workplace were classified as having egalitarian views.
The empirical evidence in the study showed a connection between people's attitudes about gender roles and their salaries. It was not designed to explain why those disparities come about or how people's attitudes -- supposedly a private matter -- affect how much money they make.
Livingston and Judge said there are two possible explanations: Traditional-minded men might negotiate much harder for better salaries, especially when compared with traditional-minded women. Alternatively, it could also be that employers discriminate against women and men who do not subscribe to traditional gender roles.
"It could be that traditional men are hypercompetitive salary negotiators -- the Donald Trump prototype, perhaps," Judge said. "It could be on the employer side that, subconsciously, the men who are egalitarian are seen as effete."
Livingston, a doctoral candidate in management, added: "People make others uncomfortable when they disconfirm stereotypes -- we don't know how to interpret them."
Increasing numbers of Americans hold egalitarian views about the role of women in the workplace, and the researchers suggested that if attitudes about gender roles are indeed at the core of the long-standing wage gap, disparities in income might recede as egalitarian views become more prevalent.
Parents looking at the study might be tempted to inculcate their sons with traditional gender views with an eye to greater financial success, but the researchers warned that this would come at their daughters' cost -- traditional-minded women suffer the greatest income disadvantage for doing the same work.
"Traditional values," Judge said, "do not have to be traditional gender-role values."
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 22, 2008; Page A02
Men with egalitarian attitudes about the role of women in society earn significantly less on average than men who hold more traditional views about women's place in the world, according to a study being reported today.
It is the first time social scientists have produced evidence that large numbers of men might be victims of gender-related income disparities. The study raises the provocative possibility that a substantial part of the widely discussed gap in income between men and women who do the same work is really a gap between men with a traditional outlook and everyone else.
The differences found in the study were substantial. Men with traditional attitudes about gender roles earned $11,930 more a year than men with egalitarian views and $14,404 more than women with traditional attitudes. The comparisons were based on men and women working in the same kinds of jobs with the same levels of education and putting in the same number of hours per week.
Although men with a traditional outlook earned the most, women with a traditional outlook earned the least. The wage gap between working men and women with a traditional attitude was more than 10 times as large as the gap between men and women with egalitarian views
"When we think of the gender wage gap, most of our focus goes to the women side of things," said Beth A. Livingston, co-author of the study. "This article says a lot of the difference may be in men's salaries."
Livingston said she was taken aback by the results.
"We actually thought maybe men with traditional attitudes work in more complex jobs that pay more or select higher-paying occupations," she said. "Regardless of the jobs people chose, or how long they worked at them, there was still a significant effect of gender role attitudes on income."
The study, published in the September issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, is based on information collected by a federal government survey over a quarter-century. The Labor Department's National Longitudinal Survey of Youth began tracking 12,000 people in 1979 when they were 14 to 22 years old. The survey participants are now 43 to 51 years old.
Because many participants in the survey were children when it started, incomes for men and women changed dramatically over the 25 years that Livingston and co-author Timothy Judge studied. Averaged over the quarter-century, salaries ranged from $34,725 for working men with traditional attitudes to $20,321 for working women with traditional attitudes. Working men with egalitarian attitudes made $22, 795 on average, while working women with egalitarian attitudes made $21,373.
Livingston and Judge, who are organizational psychologists at the University of Florida, compared people's incomes over time to their evolving views on whether a woman's place is in the home and whether it is better for men to be the only breadwinners. People who endorsed distinct roles in society for men and women were considered to have traditional views, while those who advocated equal roles for men and women at home and in the workplace were classified as having egalitarian views.
The empirical evidence in the study showed a connection between people's attitudes about gender roles and their salaries. It was not designed to explain why those disparities come about or how people's attitudes -- supposedly a private matter -- affect how much money they make.
Livingston and Judge said there are two possible explanations: Traditional-minded men might negotiate much harder for better salaries, especially when compared with traditional-minded women. Alternatively, it could also be that employers discriminate against women and men who do not subscribe to traditional gender roles.
"It could be that traditional men are hypercompetitive salary negotiators -- the Donald Trump prototype, perhaps," Judge said. "It could be on the employer side that, subconsciously, the men who are egalitarian are seen as effete."
Livingston, a doctoral candidate in management, added: "People make others uncomfortable when they disconfirm stereotypes -- we don't know how to interpret them."
Increasing numbers of Americans hold egalitarian views about the role of women in the workplace, and the researchers suggested that if attitudes about gender roles are indeed at the core of the long-standing wage gap, disparities in income might recede as egalitarian views become more prevalent.
Parents looking at the study might be tempted to inculcate their sons with traditional gender views with an eye to greater financial success, but the researchers warned that this would come at their daughters' cost -- traditional-minded women suffer the greatest income disadvantage for doing the same work.
"Traditional values," Judge said, "do not have to be traditional gender-role values."
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