After reading an article at truthout last night and identifying with the words that the writer was saying, it struck me that our current emphasis on “border patrol” may be in need of a quick fix.
The thrust of Ms. Knoll’s locutory ink revealed the following passage:
- “Since the U.S. increased border security in 1994, over 6,000 people have been found dead along the border. It is estimated that over 500,000 migrants cross the border illegally every year.”
If these figures pass the necessary credibility test then these points set forward below may be useful to slice up once fresh out of the box.
Militarizing the border may be the current, common perception on what were being done, but the whole thing started out as a response to trouble with gangs crossing into the US past the border and in effect running wild, stealing cars, shooting and killing people, and doing any the things that Mexico has already been dealing with from gangs on-runpage in their own country. Thus it’s no surprise each time a new report of a ton of gang members turning up under those very sheets occurs in the Mexican press, but because trouble does not lessen its impact nor its influence for being trouble. Rebellion and insane disobedience are not commencible traits to involve oneself with, and the bad gangs justice have earned the wrath of objection in the more stylish ways of an untamed Wild West than we tend to see in America, that celebration and festivity may be reserved to go on without terror.
The ‘bad gangs justice’ tangent
Impressive isn’t quite the word. There’s no telling why the gangs exist that trade contraband in that definitive way that calls attention to their qualifications for incarceration or drone plane status, although the matter does concern 1. Native plants 2. Poacher-class trade and 3. Control of territory. That they have problems were thereby inevitable. If a Union of states and their peoples yet have problems after all the fantastic and amazing, constructive things that their prior-ones have done, then naturally a dictatorially-controlled systematic blend of careless, offender gangs actually imposing their problems on an otherwise trying-to-be peaceful people makes for something of a begging-to-be-targeted by things that none of us control ourselves.
Gangs won’t solve the vaster majority of problems that have haunted civilization for thousands of years because their actions have been calling attention to the only ultimatum that matters before matters of political urgency, agitation of the sort that requires regard for the use of present technology. The fact of gangs being targeted by robot planes would not be so fantastic to consider to be compellingly inevitable, based on the simpler facts of what it means to ostracize your own from the world and refuse to recognize the Welcome Party that once greeted and extended the branch of peace. But slavery or bondage doesn’t operate that way; and if the offer is not a hand up to the civilized world then rescue from slavery were yet another branch of peace. Between a hand up and rescue, the question of why these gangs continue to deliberate themselves into perpetual trouble … it is not difficult to guess, although atrocious to leave to fester.
Turnabout against the hard light twide above
Blaming gangs for anything would be too easy. Consider other such matters as unpopularity in general. Natives (Mexican or not) have traversed freely across the border for thousands of years, border patrol or not. And now the idea to police the borders would appear to discourage something of a common bond between our peoples. That’s not the objective; but reality being reality, something was warranted in defense of the border crimes that known gangs had been perpetrating.
It seems that we never had been represented by a formal declaration of border emergency, although it would more likely be that this event was missed. Perhaps it needs a temporary calendrical date assigned in observation of the crisis? It just doesn’t feel like it were on the map, that the matter was represented. The current focus of The Administration presidential has been on neo-patriating illegal immigrants, as if taking them away from Mexico’s unwelcome Monster Machine.
The proposal for resolution that were so endeavored as fit-to-print would be more like instituting a national foreign policy — regardless of the deployment of capable border patrol agents — to establish at a regular distance the bi-national guarantee of border entry checkpoints that may admit anyone freely from the other side who does not have a criminal warrant outstanding for a felonious crime.
Missing the “accommodation” clause to border patrol — and our nation happens to be new at this in fact — were, although not omiss from national dialogue (being well-documented in the free printed press and online) — nonetheless lacking in angle. And thus this proposal for helping seal the bond between our nations, whether Mexico or Canada or the USSR in potential of scope.
The thrust of our own regard for border politic were that our borders should be policed rather than closed or shut down and that we should be supportive of the long legacy of reasonably unimpeded progress of the free peoples emigrating in either direction.
Continuing the rant against controlled self-destruction …
Having mentioned the problem of gang-related activity that was so abrasive, deleterious, and deadly for the border states such as Arizona such as documented in the late 1990s … and to-date.
The media has also reported something of a “gang and terrorism crossover threat.” This could be something of a because gangs don’t seem to recognize that mistakes can be made or that not everything that goes on in the world were the fault of Las Paunras.
The contraband connection means that as soon as Mexican (or associated) gangs become agents for distributing contraband such as that killing the last remaining elephants and rhinos, that they would take one deeper step into molten fire that has made their lives so harsh without contemplating global changes that have begun to act like a gyro upon the world and its traditional hopefuls today. If these gangs do not make peace and reclaim an identity worthy of their ancestors then they shall fail to preserve their only opportunity to uphold the decency that has made modest lives productive in supplying goods that can sustain people’s lives. It’s not certain that the drugs being supplied have been going where they deserve to be. And Maya although her calendar has expired, won’t be supportive of taboo crimes against what identity that distinguishes men and the society thereof from animals unlike in kind whereas apart in justice. If one could take a mache paste and apply it to Maya’s bleeding wound of limitless bloodshed coming out of that animal-favor social disintegration and international bait of action devoid of defensible basis, then the actual cause’d of human sacrifice would gradually become embellished as a sort of perfidious festering, that in fact of the Great Devourer that has come to claim Indolence in matters of fairness and rightness. Does that help put Maya in perspective? It were her people whom made this society of more ancient origin, not her society that made animal people. It appears that it were the very soil of the Americas that were of Maya, and unlike anywhere else, a ribbon of land running the very dimension of the longitude of the hemisphere: Maya. And then the other continent has their own sense.
Those who do not see fairness in the world do not see refuge.
Note about gangs:
Don’t bother with gangs … Gangs amount to a way of profiling people by organized authority, and members or associates of gangs may be innocent of any wrongdoing, regardless of their actions; and apart from the Way that information gets processed by guardian groups of national identity, the material data just isn’t that of your own. Let anyone see trial as a suspected witness and make case like any decent person before a documented, reasonable public that no one should be agitating nor terrorizing. Try not to get involved and consider well not escalating any matter that you did not personally witness. Take positive steps not to fear for your life.
Remember, in the civil world what you do toward good faith advance defense may matter. But in the world that relegates law to that of bystander and hostile-endeavor-only, there is no chance for anything you to do to matter once human psychology takes over the cage of the owl’s call. Civilization answers the call for fairness, we shall recognize. And being up-to-par — although it’s still not utopia day-to-day — amounts to being capable of steering a course rather than betting on your own bulls-eye status in such eyes of tooth and claws attempting to explain their own self-ostracized condition.
Times may be tough; but for the USPS, and its perpetual bankruptcy heading, there’s nothing like a little revamping from time to time. This definitively American institution needs new service offerings like it needs a realistic budget, and one of the services that this article shall propose concerns mailing letters that must be delivered on special occasions only.
This service, if you haven’t guessed it precisely, concerns a type of holiday mail that reaches its destination on the given day — or that otherwise won’t be delivered at all but returned to the mailer. And that’s worth a token dollar to deliver an ordinary card or envelope to offset the current cost of postage when you are paying for the probability of delivery on a precise date.
As part of the refund procedure for a letter — or parcel — that can’t be delivered on time, simply show the “bouncemark” as applied to the item at the post office desk to get the refund.
Special, custom stamps for each day of the year in any significance can be kept on hand by the USPS or instantly jetted by a special printer from a database collection to indicate that it is no ordinary mailing but rather a holiday-specific post.
This could also be a good time for the USPS to re-standardize its label makers from outputting the simple pink/red inked tape to something of a specialized label maker that can create the holiday marks to resemble something like the old wax-stamps in approximate size, preferably with a machine that can operate like a hand-pulsed flashlight to charge up an electrical power supply out of mechanical pulsed action, in case of power outage.
So, why would anyone want a package delivered on an “on-time or not-at-all” basis? The answer would be chiefly as a courtesy or as a favor.
And while we’re on the subject, why can’t advertisers pay the USPS to run ads on the same sticker tape that the postage has been printed on?
Peel-off postage labels could be one of the next best ideas in postal delivery. The possibilities can be endless. Imagine mailing a package transacted, say, from your Kindle or tablet computer that results in the printing of a label that gives the recipient an active coupon to go get a free specialty pizza from a local full service pizza station. Or there could be a peel-off sticker from a random advertiser to let you try a free sample of a product or service from a local shop to get you to evaluate the place. This peel-off label can serve all four purposes — the holiday stamp, postage validation, your own custom bonus, and an advertiser’s dream of benefiting from a welcome package by being featured on the “Wonder Tape.” The USPS can even imprint a delivery confirmation code on the label — and anything else that serves practical protocol. Everything the USPS ordinarily stickers on a new package can be placed on a series of pre-cut stickers that unpeel from the hand-held inkjet machine tape and paste as a ribbon of cut stickers directly onto the package or envelope.
If advertisers can sponsor ads on Wonder Tape and other package mailers pay a small fee to host their token gifts to the recipient on the Wonder Tape, then a constant source of revenue can make its way to the USPS in the form of advertising that anyone can get in on, and this should help pave the way to diminish the growing cost of postage and possibly turn back the cost.
By letting the people of the US be represented on common postal labels through a new Wonder Tape, the USPS can establish additional revenue that can help restore the imbalance of falling off the former US vault gold standard … and onto the labor standard that has since favored the perpetual corporate structure and opportune investment objectives. Letting advertisers and objective-oriented consumers have a say in what goes on the package can help put the USPS on a more realistic and more even keel with other package delivery services.
People have been getting killed all of the time when doing city work.
There should be a “hazard archive” that chronicles — and tags — every critical and lethal hazard that occurs involving contractors and other people who work for any given city.
With 18,000 – 25,000 cities in the USA, it would be great if all a worker had to do before working on a city job, such as bridge remodeling, could become acquainted with all known casualties from the type of job before beginning work. Further, an online database dedicated to revealing how people have been dying while on-the-job could have perpetual value for many other reasons, such as being a guide to identifying the nature of casualty. Reports of local incidents seem numerous each year.
Anyone could walk away from the database and its regular reports aimed at attracting traffic and human interest a much smarter person.
There are an unbelievably stupid number of recurring incidents that kill people that continue to do so because there is no formal statistical collection in any given city that collects news of fatalities and critical incidents that hospitalize routinely.
So, ultimately we’re at the mercy of authorities and “experts” to provide advice that would do better to belong to everyone.
The scope of the project can occur on a city-wide basis or as part of a collected online database for each and every city. Contributors can be from any city and need compile only five years worth of data, with a 25-year projected need. That’s because five years of data should offer at least some insight and justify any traffic that the site gets. Whereas, 25 years of data would look respectable. These represent my own unstudied estimates, as some projects won’t be repeated for decades, and the target objective is to look for repeat patterns of injuries.
Growing the statistics can occur either by letting time pass and entering daily statistics into the database or otherwise from diligent interest in growing the database with accountable facts and figures. Every entry needs its own source attributions.
It’s not our thinking that this sort of compilation has been done before.
The topics can vary from bridges, power lines, utility installations, maintenance duties, cherry pickers and the like. If a tornado has been swiping across a particular path every so many years, then visitors could use the data to make intelligent decisions such as building a home underground rather than let the alley become a continual disaster area.
The project represents one of the greatest needs for intelligence on a secular, civil, democratic level. Although anyone in any nation could potentially benefit from such a database.
So, whether you want to give your own city this sort of boost or work the idea in to a more comprehensive regard, the end “target effect” should be prevention of casualty by empowering workers to find out about previous casualties.
Remember, forewarned is forearmed.
Tired of visiting content sites and puzzling over article ranking when you really wish there were a better performance indicator?
It’s true that a title with 10 articles could contain 10 poorly-written articles or 10 highly-competitive pieces. As such, you never know what you may find.
Content sites are not synonymous with poor quality but rather sites of freelance opportunity. Writers come from all over to learn and contribute, but the best articles and writers stand out like foam in an icy beer mug.
Given that the popularity of the Internet is a recent phenomena, content sites will probably have to become competitive in the future if they want to prosper. Toward that end, it’s important to focus on the current weak points and then attempt such critique that may be constructive.
Case in point, rankings alone are not effective indicators of article performance. For the bigger picture, consider that any given article may best belong to the widest audience or only to a niche audience. Niche audiences are profitable for site owners and help bring in their primary source of traffic, even though general audience article might have potential to attract ten or a hundred times as many views.
Even so, no one wants to read an article of wide appeal concerning, say, “Heroes of the Murrah federal building bomb terror rescue,” at a gardening site, for example. So why would the gardening site publisher want to purchase the article for the site’s readership? Such an oxymoron event would be clear and obvious.
Therefore, the range of readership will be most with a more general interest and least with a more niche interest. Article rankings fail to live up to this relevant fact.
So! — a publisher looking for a gardening article for the purpose of luring new visitors won’t be looking in vain if hand-picking out of a dozen potential titles, but perhaps that asks too much of some publishers.
Optimizing article selection could be both fair to all writers and convenient for publishers who don’t want to spend a lot of time wondering what visitors read. A performance indicator of readership standing, based on the implicit that titles with a lot of hits are conditioned to a certain extent by word-of-mouth, with readers passing on their links via email and social media, would be a certain way of telling a bigger story. Whereas any writer could, at least in theory, house a master control panel that would be capable of posting the link of an article to a hundred different sites, it’s only by word-of-mouth that people testify that the article was worth reading. This gains hits that poorer fare cannot.
Performance ranking would be fair to all writers by indicating relative performance. A formula for this placement could be derived through systematic automated analysis of use of SEO and keywords that distinguish its marketable value and further by assessing the number of hits, factors any tracking data available, how advertisers have responded to the article, where the traffic comes from, third party statistics such as may be available from bookmarking sites, social media LIKES/+1’s, and whatever else such a formula may consist of. The article would then be marked based on its audience potential first (mass audience vs. niche audience); and then its marketability second. Anything that the formula says is not worth reading would be re-evaluated according to its rank, and if there are better rated articles beneath it in rank, then its performance rank could adjust up automatically.
Some publishers wouldn’t be interested and so it wouldn’t affect their decisions to purchase stock content. But other publishers could examine the performance rank in addition to the article’s given rank and then use it to find prospective titles without investigating every one. As relative value, high performance ranks would indicate that certain articles have the right moves. More complex formulations could be added that could be used as criteria that a publisher can turn ON or OFF. For example, if spelling issues are a selling point then a publisher could examine articles that pass a spell-check with an error margin of no more than 5 misspellings of words that are not proper nouns (spell-checkers tend to be persnickety about their recognition of actual words). Whatever formulation can be determined, then a publisher should be treated to an automated performance value rating like a statistical summary of what the article offered that was considered valuable by the full slate of applicable economic indicators and derived, formulated extractions.
In the end, writers would be looking at the same coached criteria as they currently must about improving an article that isn’t up to spec. The opportunities to write and be ranked thus go on, but the value of the article would become a bit more obvious both to publisher and to writer.
And for any publisher who wanted to sort through the articles without relying on computer analysis, that option would still be up to their careful method.
To be resolved at this point would be whether the performance ranking should be a simple binary or otherwise performed on a scale that reflects more than the mass audience and niche audience dichotomy. And then the issue of what to include in the formulation would require a good review of a content site’s available statistical information that not just anyone would have access to.
But to the point, the performance rank would give publishers a more efficient and convenient way to examine content without relying solely on title and rank. And that’s got to be worth taking a look at.
Naturally, attempting such a formulation would be risky to implement by using a content site for the guinea pig. So another type of site that can afford to accept a little risk could try it out. Or any content site could produce a mirror site where the effort were rendered available on an experimental basis.
What do you do when a kid does the wrong thing or starts getting involved in something that he shouldn’t? The question may certainly mean different things. But it implies a conflict of interest between parents and their child.
Don’t read that kids who do these things must be bad by any means. Rights apply to kids, and often kids would tend to pick up on any unfairness when adults engage in something restricted to minors. Trial and error would suggest any such activity to be more likely curiosity than getting oneself into trouble. But if as a parent, it would be something of a personal nightmare if a child were to develop interest in this sort of thing prior to reaching eighteen.
A party for mourning without casualty
Why not host a mourning party on behalf of the kid and invite family and anyone else whom you know who shares similar concerns? The saddest thing about mourning were that mourning alone probably won’t accomplish anything. People today probably have lot more reasons to mourn for social reasons rather than for purely personal ones. So why not consider what form a mourning party would be in?
The most sensible reason to call people together in the first place would be for such purpose of sharing and exchanging stories or advice. And people tend to be at their best when called to any sort of gala or occasion, even if it’s not a celebration. Consider instead that it could be a celebration of civil achievement, that everyone brought together has had some share of grounding in social problems and why let these experiences go to waste? Technically a more dynamic social interest expresses a certain flair for the democratic aspect of society. Other people make the rules, and the laws explain where the known trouble lies. Don’t worry about conflicting over issues here; this were the “here and now” aspect that has the laws already sitting on the table.
Parents awaken to unplanned decisions
Thus bringing us to the more febrile issue at hand, being the corruption of a child or the difficulty involved in relaying the child on through life.
When an underage kid gets involved with unsavory social ills such as tobacco and possibly alcohol, or begins taking pills or whatever were available, chances are that this fact were due to the fact of not getting enough gratification out of life in general. Minors should be getting gratification, at least ideally, out of prospects such as health education, physical fitness, and extracurricular activities both academic such as sports or clubs, and hobbies such as playing in a band. Adding tobacco into the picture isn’t anything of a pleasant proposition. Likewise with alcohol. Adults can be expected to discipline themselves and reserve these activities for unrestricted areas. But for a kid, discipline of this order probably takes on a greater appearance of recreation. Time away from parents means freedom in no uncertain terms — and opportunity to get involved in anything that were worth doing. And association of “recreational substances” tends to go toward such idea of escaping from parents as well. There may also be nightmares about the kid burning the house down. So — what better occasion to mourn?
Accouterments for the party
Thinking that such a sour occasion shouldn’t be reflected in whatever food were served, consider topping the party off with a chocolate cake and cocoa icing with licorice. Directing the food to relate to mourning in some distinctive way shouldn’t fool anyone but certainly should make the occasion a memorable one. Likewise, any holiday type of event such as Halloween can be turned into a mourning party for adults by excluding the kid from any plans. Celebrated early, it may also be a good occasion to consult anyone about the kid’s own Halloween party. One possible means to mollify yourself about the kid’s choice could be to offer more social opportunities, and hosting a party can accomplish this purpose.
If hosting the party via catering, it could be a good time to deviate from the common menu and order the grilled chicken from the crispy fried chicken place, the Alfredo pizza, the stuffed mushrooms, or the pasta with capers or calamari.
Alternately, serving the main and side courses of food to look distressed could be an effective strategy. Dye your potato salad blue, or light-orange if it must look edible.
Serve any meat thoroughly pounded with a meat tenderizing hammer. Perhaps serve oysters or stuffed crab. Reserve some ruffled seashells in advance of the meal to wear or color with non-toxic pigment and decorate the food. Serve salad with red lettuce leaves and spinach. Add chopped dried figs to your fruit salad and omit the carrot or use a white carrot from the garden (their originally known color).
Serve yellow beans instead of green ones. Sow tiny chunks of parsnips or turnips in with your mashed potatoes. Opt for Romanesco broccoli instead of common broccoli or cauliflower, or serve artichoke in dip or as a side dish. Any food that grows in spears or pointy edges isn’t a bad choice. Asparagus isn’t a bad idea either.
If you know of a food with a special appearance such as Black Calypso beans, a type of kidney bean that resembles the yin-yang “Tao” of opposing energies, chances are you can find it online without mortgaging your house to see it served. For dessert, star fruit offers a pointy pattern when sliced (note: don’t serve any star fruit concoction to kidney patients). Serving sour grapes is not a bad dessert option, either.
Of stylizing food for a mourning party, much could be said. These are just some ideas to christen any thought on the matter.
Dare to be different to sink home the fact of your anguish, but don’t make the food unpalatable, as your guests may never forgive your taste in parties!
What to wear
Black is always fashionable, with the side benefit of hi-lighting any colorful thing that you may choose to wear.
Otherwise, aim to dress to contrast how you feel with the issue that you have brought everyone together for. Women, consider wearing a black sweater with pink or fuchsia fringes.
Wear boots to show that you are not taking the matter sitting down.
Topics such as this can be strenuous, so even if you become emotional and decide you don’t want to discuss it or leave it to your significant other, you’ll still have the party and food to fall back on and simply tend the comfort of your guests.
Resolution
One thing for sure, given the ever-stranger outbreaks of violence in cities and notable places today, something must be done. When kids commit suicide, or when people commit bizarre acts of brutality or killing, it’s time to do something different and at least make a mark that shows anyone that there were efforts being made that are not more of the same. Perhaps more people simply need a way to visualize that social changes around them are not representative of stagnation and social decay.
So, break from the blase and apathetic and take up a tact when the wrong straw breaks. Show people that you are attentive and sensitive to the civil aspect of society and don’t settle for being disappointed or left to suffer any doubts alone.
Just take a simple look at the various language mechanic marks on your keypad and wonder for a moment why the letter “a” could have well over a dozen representations using the exact form of “a” — albeit with certain modifications. For example:
ä – â – å – à
You may even want a single dot over the top and can’t find it. Or you may want to coin your own “a.” There could be as many as a hundred a’s that may fit any particular purpose, possibly more.
As it so happens, the gist of the matter were that you can’t always produce the type of punctuation or alphanumeric character that you want or need to see on your screen for any particular document, comment or critique.
PC: Ease of use and virtually unlimited option for punctual expression
The basic concept of the letter, or keyboard character, with the dawn of the PC was that of an ASCII character that could be expressed in any style whatsoever — using a font set or font style.
Such ideas as boldface, italics, and outline characters presented some kind of problem — where otherwise color, or perhaps even size, amounted to nothing more than modified fonts. Eventually font styles came along, perhaps as many as four different font styles to serve all the types of markup that were desired for one font of expression, such as with the Courier font: Courier, Courier Bold, Courier Italic, Courier Outline (for example).
Unicode is another matter entirely, not so much concerned with font style nor type but rather with seeing that any specific character no matter how obscure can be expressed in methodological fashion, such as by typing //;3A17 when producing an HTML-markup document. Unicode helps address the problem of getting characters “right” so that they can be used at all.
When it comes to producing the right character or punctuation so specifically — there are so many possibilities that Unicode is not headed in the proper direction for and that won’t ever be available in any font if the present were somehow to get snagged on an inertial dampener and start to bead into the dirt on its way to losing its absolute velocity.
But the base question with text markup (style & font) and usability seems much more practically that of need for more immediate capacity, as such concern any necessary characters that make your expression, your work, what you are trying to convey to your reader because you have something to show … complete.
Technical
Typical “markup” is nothing other than customized, RAM-paralleled, custom-fabricated correspondence to pre-existing ROM-etched ASCII character correspondence.
In other words, a font set matches the limitations for ASCII characters and its individual components get their counterpart associations in memory, 0 to 127. Multiple font sets can exist simultaneously. ASCII positions 32 – 126 generally happen to be most relevant — 94 characters that contain visible keyboard characters worth emulating in any font. Bold, outline, italic versions of these fonts would be treated as one or as multiple fonts, depending solely on integration with existing operating system limitations.
Thus, a dazzling number of unique characters rather translate into multiple instances of re-pointing one set of ASCII characters to more than one font used for markup purposes. Not even HTML short-circuits the need for the same number of characters for the same number of markup results. Of course, in the past there were certain attempts to convert a font set into an engineered style of bold/italic/plain with the “brute force” method of mathematic expression. However — you’ll never break out of the fact that style were artistic rather than formulaic. That’s why the method never quite panned out and also why the majority of text seen today, from any published source derived, usually comes from a font set, style added, that has been subjected to mouse & pixel-by-pixel perfection.
Given 128 programmer-useful ASCII character positions in ROM, most relevant become the necessary letters and numbers reserved for their respective positions. Calling for more positions to be reserved for “markup zone” modifications requires use of “extended ASCII,” currently a perverse, non-standard, global array of languishing bitmapped-character notions.
Sacred goes the art and practice of writing
Our problem thus far can be expressed in one other important way: Using a computer isn’t even close to using a typewriter. Sure, there might be a way.
But sometimes you just want to re-insert the printed page upside-down into the typewriter, adjust the platen, space on over to one or more specific characters and insert the most basic of marks into the document for a more specific and refined sort of legibility.
Using the markup zone
A markup zone wouldn’t really affect the individual characters on a standard American keyboard that lacks diacritical marks and such, as such would be assigned values by the UI that translates hardware action into data. There are typically three markup zones that emanate from a central location around an letter or number. First, there’s the script zone that hosts the letter. Next you have the superscript zone. And then lastly there’s the subscript zone. These positions are purely relative to each other rather than absolute in the sense of trigonometry and circles. But the idea of three remains the same. Looking at even the weirdest of characters, such as “‰,” the per mille, it’s clear that the main character consists of a / with a superscript ° and a subscript ∞ (unavailable to find). Add a fourth zone in the middle, where infinity situates, and you have these:
- center, or script zone (no emanation)
- superscript zone
- subscript zone
- middle zone
The markup zone — refined
Now I’m sure than if any typesetters that be could have their way then they’d want to simplify the basic process rather than expect custom fonts for everything under the kearning sun.
And so, the solution appears clear as new need for what would be called a positional alphanumeric mark-set.
The idea were that our base positions look like:
x-superscript
y x-middlescript
x-subscript
But we rather need:
x0-super x1-super x2-super
x0-middle y0-center x2-middle
x0-sub x1-sub x2-sub
It can also be done this way:
Put that “a” anywhere
x0-super x1-super x2-super
x0-middle x1-center x2-middle
x0-sub x1-sub x2-sub
… and …
Superimpose any marks over that “a”
y0-super y1-super y2-super
y0-middle y1-middle y2-middle
y0-sub y1-sub y2-sub
… thus providing for superimposing characters, as needed, for such characters as strike-thru and in the case of the interrobang ‽ … such that the final rendering looks like 9 positional marks including superimposure over the actual character using one ASCII and one positional character. Or, using two areas of memory reserved for one character anywhere using one portion of memory and any number of positional characters anywhere in the 9 positions, plus an additional character that may or may not superimpose and 9 marks that are superimposed by definition.
Phrased in that way, what makes a whole lot more sense would be to use the “positional character” as any character that lacks an implicit ASCII “space.” That thus renders the necessary definition of any “positional character” as an character that is not only composed of a legitimate ASCII character but also composed of up to 9 additional, positional characters that may consist of ASCII in a “superimposure” layer. Ergo, our problem looks almost solved, thus leaving the trouble of having enough ASCII characters that will serve the purpose in question.
Really we’re trying to keep within the base idea of using ASCII characters and introduce a layer to the ASCII that can be conjured up with the pressing of a single key that belongs on new keyboard designs, called the positional character key. So then any user would be typing along and come to the letter “a” to make a special character of. Our keyboard mapping scheme would have no use for “ã,” “å,” “ä,” or any of the others. A single press of the positional key could call up a simple 9-point map of squares that would let each of the 9 positions be filled in with a special character such as ~, °, or .. that would already be at the correct mark size in a revised ASCII set. And then the computer would assign the resulting positional character a special code that could be used to derive the resulting ASCII character as an ASCII character that does not exist needfully in your key map for sake of space, other than being a number. That number might take up as many as 10 bytes, but the final character would be complete AND have its own ASCII code. ASCII code would be absolute within its existing 256 characters, extended for the extra characters of necessary size (unless they were to fit the existing blanks already included in the ASCII set), and then derived for the remaining 9 positions. As a hardware engineer, you would probably readily agree that there is no need of a 9! ASCII character keymap to express all possibilities of superimposed characters, so using a derived number of 10-bytes max is not but common sense.
True ASCII contains only 128 characters, with extended ASCII as many as 256, commonly, such as the Commodore 64’s original ASCII. Any time hardware developers need more than the 128 characters, then including an extended character set to the hardware map just makes sense.
How to invoke that positional markup zone number, when typing, would simply be to press the “positional key” and type in the proper numeric extended-ASCII value into each of the relevant 9 positions, leaving any position blank that does not need to be superimposed.
Diagram: Positional Mouse-able GUI
[ ] [°] [ ]
[ ] [ ] [ ]
[ ] [ ] [ ]
a
Remember, it’s the size of the positional ASCII character that means everything.
… turns up:
Simplicity!
å
Adding the keyboard-engineered positional character shift
The positional key that makes a lot of sense may look like the symbol of chaos, modified to a more even proposition; although another possibility could look like a tri-gram of three ellipses, one one top of another.
Thus outlined above has been a brief discussion about simplifying the user-end problem of how to go from the current limitation of any stock font set and the serendipitous albeit stone cold form of Unicode to what should be a much more practical — but infinitely useful — way of getting the proper characters out and onto your document and computer screen for a truly unique user experience. Plus we have formulated a rather satisfying alternative to what the computer experience has already lacked in terms of having limited power to allow for ingenius use much more functionally and mechanically like a typewriter.
… of going round-and-around from fridge to leftovers to salvage turkey for the delightful L-tryptophan that helps sleep in those who know how to use it. I know that it’s delightful and that I used it for the real holiday.
Now that the last of Thanksgiving’s turkey has been examined and isolated in the fridge, feeling new inspiration doesn’t seem very difficult today.
I spent the last 60 hours between eating and holiday on shopping with a very small budget and purchased a shareware program called ISOBuster that has high user appeal and that also claims as much to represent the be-all, end-all of optical disk (and other media file) recovery as of now for all of my CDROMs.
Thinking back thru my sum-total naivety, I remember when I first got a real CDRW drive that could both read and write as many as 700 – 800 MB of files. This was the year 2003, and I was so thrilled.
So, a couple years or so later I noticed that a bunch of my discs were no longer being treated as if anything were on them. This was very distressing, because I had made archive copies with intent to have them on-hand in case need ever broke out. And need would eventually, because hard disks don’t last forever. That was the whole point of going to the trouble to make the archive in the first place.
To my mind then, CD format was something like HFS (Hierarchical File System) and HPFS (High Performance File System). These were very old CDROM formats indeed and precede more familiar abbreviations such as ISO-9660 and UDF x.xx.
The great surprise was in a sort of slack discovery that the PCees had never evolved with optical disc hardware to support multiple drivers for files systems and therefore the situation emerged to where the data on my old archives was probably complete and intact, except that there was no capability equipped with the machines to read or interpret older disc-writing standards.
I find the matter no less oblique today and remain surprised that I had never encountered much ado about this form of neglect. Multiple platforms aside, all of my disc archives originated on PC and all of my “unreadable” discs were being “read” or rather “spun and rejected” asgibberish by later model PCees.
Worth mention concerns such fact that newer equipment should generally be backwards-compatible with older disks. And so, any archive once made on optical media should be readable by future generations of optical disk hardware. Even Blu-Ray and now-discontinued HD DVD optical disc machines evidently can read any strictly backward file system because of a provisional red laser or capacity, according to Wikipedia as well as CD-Info. Although there was no word on HFS and HSFS formats, I did run across a software program called WinISO that can handle an astonishing number of file formats and image files such as .NRG (Nero-related), MDS, WIM, IMG or ISO and others.
All right — so if you want to read HFS or HSFS then you’ll need a plain vanilla CDROM. Except that I don’t really have any.
This all goes to show that you can’t rely on your PC Operating System to tell you the truth because the limitations of what it “knows” relate to the limited scope of its software, if not to its hardware so necessary to read an archived optical disc.
I’ve wondered how many CDROM’s I’ve inadvertently thrown away in error because of the driver-related issue. And I’ve loathed PCees for providing an incomplete package for some time now, at the point where it seems that whatever you get, it won’t necessarily be useful with existing optical archives.
So I’ve been waiting for a product like ISOBuster for some time now and really want to see it installed and recover my files so I can throw away a bunch of CDROMs that take up space at a ratio of 5:1 CDR:DVD-RW. Yes, I prefer DVD-RW because it just makes sense, although there’s got to be comfort in making DVD-R discs once you’ve settled on a permanent archive that will do more than sit around — because then it won’t be “replaced.” Do you know how those replacements go? It’s like putting disk partition or whole disk images on a slew of discs. This sort of thing should be happening a lot more than it probably does, but a standard collection of as many CDRW as necessary to make your complete hard drive imaged can help simplify the task of making those copies once every so often when you don’t want to rely on another hard drive.
The modern drive to execute competitor businesses by buying out their company and burying their products is nothing short of stunning, if not outright idiotic. However, in a sizable amount of time, existing patents may expire and then revert to the masses for their own use 20 years after its formal acceptance.
Can Palm Really Be Gone Forever?
Such would appear to be just such a case with Palm, a company that, according to Wikipedia, began in 1996. So, in 2016 the Palm patent should expire. That means that 2017 could see a resurgence of familiar Palm-style hardware, no longer called by the specific name. Once anyone can produce those units without paying a hardware concept license fee, look out.
And Palm Wasn’t the Handiest, Easiest-to-Use, Most Practical Computer Ever for Around-the-House and Travel Practicality?
Presuming that the Palm still resonates with anyone who likes to carry a mini-computer in a shirt pocket or purse.
Palm, in terms of the usefulness of a mini-computer, is irreplaceable fun. It’s one of the most wonderful of devices that have ever come about on the market in thousands of years. It’s worth buying a Palm just to buy a laptop, desktop, or notepad to keep the major archive. You can take a Palm anywhere, after all.
Using a semi-truck to get from the bedroom to the kitchen: Stupidphones?
At some later date, someone got the not-so-brilliant idea to use the Palm OS with smartphones. It’s an easy idea to be critical of because the Palm itself started out as a hand-held computer and the whole idea would be like turning a scientific calculator or why not an abacus? into a smartphone. Then along come other smartphones and completely wipe the floor with the Palm OS because it’s not smartphone material.
Then Palm just has to lay down and die. And HP performs the hit by introducing WebOS, a new OS destined to pomp-up the mobile phone application further and completely without regard to having a practical computer at hand — or rather, at-palm.
The whole fact of the matter is that home computers were enormously popular in the 1980’s and that the industry has been trying to assassinate home computers any time that home computer pop up.
The truth about home computers is that if you learn how to program them, then you won’t need to buy any expensive hardware. The home computer is not just some product. It is a concept, really like an abacus, that lacks only one defining quality, and that is engineering. The proper engineering renders any issue of compatibility nothing other than an electrical wiring challenge and a software driver challenge. Any hardware device, printer or otherwise, is more than capable of handling itself so long as the software knows how to communicate.
Hardware compatibility is anything you want to network with … in theory
The industry was more than willing to comply and provide any manner of hardware and support. Want a hard drive? They’ll sell you one. Want an LCD monitor instead of an RGB monitor? They’ll sell it. But the devious vulnerability of all this is that computers are for businesses as such fact concern economies of scale, and that many businesses find — rather than hire their own computer programmers to produce useful software — instead to purchase computer software for hundreds of dollars.
The best home computer ever for business or fun
That’s all fine and well, but the only company that ever understood the basic division between business computers and home computers was probably Commodore. And their Amiga, although it was designed for business as well as the home, was put out of its misery with a reputation for being a “gaming computer.” It still looks like a modern computer for any practical purpose and is often faster than a PC, except that its CPU is now undeniably slow when it comes to the greatest need for the greatest simplicity in the greatest amount of work.
I use my Palm just about every day, and the 4.1 Cobalt version of the software can’t be beat.
Palm 5: More features, less usability
Palm 5 Garnet was a huge mistake. The menus were sometimes useless, and the features seemed as if packed into niches. Palm 5 was an embarassment, although there were certainly new and better features. The software also made possible faster CPUs that would only rise to maximum CPU power if the task so justified.
But no company since has cared to see a Palm with a long-lived battery supply. Faster CPUs may seem nice in theory, but the motive was clearly to add the same sort of capacity that you get with a desktop. And really, none of this was absolutely necessary. Choice is always great, but they made the one egregious error of eliminating the wonderful Cobalt OS Palms and all the wonderful choices for expandability.
Palm 5 Graffiti was terrible. It wasn’t improved. It was a failure designed to resemble an improvement. The addition of two-strokes to make a simple character was an idiotic flaw. The original Graffiti at least had the potential to be fast, and you can put the blame on the severing of the original pad in favor of more screen space. As a consequence, Graffiti 2 used more CPU power.
No, what the world really needed was to see the Cobalt OS improved rather than nigh replaced with an inferior version.
Palm Cobalt was the Master
What Palm really needed was a longer battery life and a wider range of single-stroke Graffiti. Then they should have added Unicode support with its own keypad and simplified the character strokes by adding extra “case” buttons, like a special Palm button, Shift button, Control button, and Alt button. That’s really the best way to improve over the original Graffiti, and then you can recycle keystrokes when practical.
A special button for multimedia should had used the MPEG4 standard and played video or converted MP3’s by standard inclusion of new software in the original installation package.
An e-book standard should had been used and given its own button, too, for reading stock e-books.
There was also need of support for memory stick or memory card latest PCMCIA standards, as different Palms used different PCMCIA cards. Plus there should have been attention given to compatibility with printer standards that accept PCMCIA cards or USB sticks that those cards can fit in. To accomplish that would require that Palm dispense with requiring each file to end in .PRC or .PDB and allow standard file extensions to be saved to the memory card. Indeed, requiring each file to have .PRC or .PDB was probably the greatest Palm flaw ever. That, and failing to include a means to organize files on the memory card in directories by use of a decent software program. When you want to synchronize, then you can pull the full set of directories directly to a specialized directory of choice rather than require that all files are stuck in the Backup or Archive folders after a Hotsync.
Wi-fi was also a necessary addition to existing hardware.
Those are really the only features that come to mind that were absolutely necessary to see improved.
Screen space
And what about screen space?
The Palm’s hardware could easily be rigged via Wi-fi to act as a Universal Input Device. That means that you could use your Palm to replace any input device whatsoever — keyboard, mouse, trackball, you name it — and send the output to any operating system of choice. That was certainly another feature lacking.
Some companies realized the wonderful potential of having a built-in IR port for infrared applications that could change channels on any digital appliance or even let you use your Palm to open or close your garage door if you wished, turn on fans or operate remote lights. The applications were endless. And it fits in your pocket! Need cash at the ATM or serve automated transactions at a store, you could even put your coupons on a Palm and transact using a standard protocol at the grocery. But Palm never got that far, you see. And what about programming your microwave oven or interfacing with a digital appliance to regulate its thermostat or even control your home AC or heater? One hand-held device could do it all, and it would be your property and your firewall.
Turn your computer on and select your operating system of choice, and select a few key programs to start up? Yup — all with a simple Palm program.
Palm still has this potential, in theory. Another idea might be to build the base unit and let it slip into a specially-designed unit that serves as its monitor. Then you could have the basic default 320 x 320 high resolution screen or choose any size of LCD hardware that you want to slip your Palm into. And continue to use the Graffiti pad. Then you wouldn’t need a Notepad computer because you could plug your Palm into a monitor of that size.
So, really, Palm made the best hand-held of the times, but then it rather disappeared.
It’s too bad that we probably won’t ever see such a useful wonder around again. The home computing enthusiasts would get locked out in favor of commercial schemes to maximize profitability for establishing Yet Another Platform to scuttle once all the requisite books have been purchased and understood. Then it’s the practical equivalent of the new platform owner pressing a button, and a trapdoor opens up beneath the computer owner and bam! — there is no more computer.
Naturally, business will be the major driving force for any particular computer or hardware. But when Palm came ’round for home or business, anyone had a real chance to get in on the action and enjoy the unit until its inevitable destruction some years after heavy use.
Now Palm would appear to be defunct in any recognizable way, and we have the legacy of old units that work great but that could also disappear out of existence any year or decade now.
Loss may be a bitter feeling, but with computer hardware there is hope.
Hello visitors using the Web or anywhere else that you have made the light in time.
Those of you familiar with the ongoing written works of freelance writer Bo del Ransi can now enjoy WordPress blog action.
This is my first time doing a blog. So far, it’s been easy — sign up, edit pages provided in the dashboard control panel, think of something to say, and aim it at being worth reading.
What motivated me, a freelance writer, to start a blog was because there is no place for readers to go on Helium without signing up for another account. Doubtless many of you have a WordPress account already and can already read and choose from an exciting list of blogs. And I thought that I needed to be here to share a piece once and a while about freelance writing and address any issues or concerns that you who read my articles, poetry or stories may have.
As you may already know, Helium is a great place to get grounded in freelance writing online. Not only does Helium cost nothing to join but you can make your own money in a number of different ways by doing your own, independent writing. However, I’m not here to promote Helium so directly but to give a voice and be a voice concerning my work and what you know that I like to write about. (Besides, they have their own blog right here at WordPress for that very purpose.)
So, why a blog instead of Twitter or Facebook social media?
I already have accounts on Twitter and Facebook as a video game enthusiast and to share Web materials with family and friends. I want my writing career to be unique and separate from my personal life because I have too many interests to reserve one ego for everything. Everything I’ve done online thus far has been confined to the written word, and I’m at my best when keeping my work private. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not accessible.
I want readers to know what they are getting and that my work is handled by certain regard for protocol. When I share with friends and family, I am free. Whereas for work, I have to abide by regard for protocol, recognition, and certain procedures. My writing aims to serve its target audience, and my time can at this early phase often be put to better use.
This distinction seems important to me and is very much the difference between stepping into a library as opposed to a burning house or a firehouse museum. Such regard for house rule and privacy remains important to our very heritage and deserves its own distinction toward recognition of civil society that we have here to choose in the United States of America and enjoy.
A big Thank You goes out to anyone whom has read my articles, for anything that you have done. Your clicks translate into pennies and the final result has become actually very promising month by month as my portfolio stacks toward infinity : )
Bo del Ransi
bodelransi 