01 October 2007
Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
Using two media reports as its source for each death, IBC[Iraq Body Count] says the civilian death toll by September 2007 was between 71,000 and 78,000. But the organisation also warns that many deaths may not have been reported.
These pages - updated monthly - give an overview of the most recent estimates.
And while it is possible to blame IBC for not providing a count for the last 3 weeks, IBC do have details up until the middle of September and a nice graph that shows a downward trend up to that date. Doing a scan of the IBC site it looks to me like "civilian" casualties in Sepetember are going to be around 1000, possibly less, which would also be (one of) the lowest numbers in 2007.
01 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
That's obviously what the leaker, and likely the group of 50, intended. But I haven't spoken to a single Republican leader who thinks that nominating Giuliani would "irrevocably split the GOP," a suggestion I find ludicrous. I have considerable respect for James Dobson, but he is anything but a kingmaker
And the post concludes:Contrary to the assumption of many liberals, religious conservatives (a group in which I include myself) are not stupid. As President, Rudy Giuliani would nominate judges who will support rather than usurp the Constitution. That's the only significant role the President plays with respect to social issues. James Dobson et al. wish that they controlled the Republican Party, and Salon wishes they controlled it, too. But they don't.
Dr Bob does make some fair points when he looks at how RWAs and their leaders play the balance between states rights on issues where the states agree with the RWA position and federal ones where they don't - Terry Schiavo anyone? - but overall I think he overstates the influence of the Religious Right (and hence the RWAs) within the republican party and overstates the willingness of RWAs to tolerate hypocrisy and inconsistency in their leaders when this is pointed out all over the press.
01 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
The number of Iraqi civilians killed per month in bombings and shootings has fallen to the lowest level this year, the Iraqi government says.
In September, 884 civilians were killed by violence, less than half the figure for August, the government said.
The BBC's Jon Brain in Baghdad says the figures suggest the so-called surge involving 30,000 extra US troops is having some success.
September also saw the lowest number of US troops killed for more than a year.
This is of course all good news and that clearly can't be allowed to be presented unchallened so there is this sentence shortly afterwards:However, our correspondent says, the political situation remains deadlocked and there are fears that when the extra troops are withdrawn the violence will escalate again.
So according to the BBC all this "surge" stuff has been merely the addition of 30,000 more troops. The fact that they have been deployed more offensively, that the Sunni tribes have decisively rejected insurgency against the Imperialist Yankee Pig Dog Oppressors and decided to go after the terribly misunderstood pious resistance people who have nothing whatever to do with Al Qaeda whatsoever really honest and so on is supremely unimportant. Glad we got that straight.
02 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
When my uncle bought his Provençal house he called on his neighbour, a farmer in his sixties, and jokingly apologised for the fact they now had "des anglais" next door. The farmer merely responded, "Heureusement, vous n'êtes pas Parisien."
However as some of the more Francophobic commenters point out France is a long way from perfect: bloated state bureaucracy, high taxes, high unemployment, widepsread racism, drunken drivers and so on. Still under ZANU Labour a lot of Britain's former advantages with respect to taxation, government etc. have disappeared. True it is still harder to officially hire and fire people, and so many people work on the black economy, but from what I read things are heading the same way int he UK. I would far rather fall ill in France than the UK - in France doctors will make house calls, hospitals are efficient and clean etc. I would also suggest that the French authorities seem to have fewer jobsworths in their ranks; not none of course, every expat has a tale or two about some idiotic bureaucratic hoop and unhelpful fonctionnaire, but most of us also have numerous tales about bureaucrats and others who are willing to bend the rules because of common sense (and/or a hint from the local mayor).
02 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
Bob Hamlen, 47, and Michael Burbidge, 31, were stunned when they were surrounded by uniformed officers as they sat on a bench outside the Westcliff Tavern in West Cliff Road, Bournemouth. [...]
"They said the reason I was being taken to the police station was because I had been seen passing a white envelope.
"But all I did was take my post out of my jacket pocket and open an electricity bill.
"On Michael's stop and search form they said they wanted to speak to him, under the Terrorism Act, because he had been looking at a police officer.
"That area of town is saturated with police officers and, from where we were sitting, it would have been impossible not to be watching one."
As numerous people have pointed out this latter offence sounds very like "Not the 9 o'clock news". No doubt other people were arrested for "loitering with intent to use a pedestrian crossing".
03 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
[T]he DMCA makes it far too easy to remove stuff that shouldn't be removed. In fact it seems to me that the DMCA is flat out a badly written law. It makes a lot of perfectly harmless things illegal, makes a bunch of things that should be easy difficult and vice versa. In other words, no matter whether you agree with the aims of the law or not is irrelevant because the law doesn't really deliver on its stated aims but is a mess. Indeed on the scribd blog the EFF legal reposnse makes it clear that the DMCA in fact allows scribd to do the slopey shoulders trick and disclaim any responsibility for anything and shove the blame right back to the SFWA.
What I didn't add precisely but should have was that the DMCA makes it relatively straight forward for large corporations with lawyers on the payroll to protect their IP but makes it a lot harder for smaller, less lawyer happy, folks such as your average writer or man in the street. As witness this tale about Google, Orkut and Flickr.Imagine if you walked into Scotland Yard to report a crime involving children, only to be given a telling off, before you'd opened your mouth, about the dire penalties for wasting police time. And that your complaints would be forwarded to a watchdog - and that you'd better come back with a lawyer.
That's how a group of parents feel after seeing photographs of their kids defaced on Orkut. Members of Google's social network created "mash-ups" of photographs originally posted to Flickr - adding text, some of which contained sexual innuendo, for children as young as five.
The upset parents turned to the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which permits private copyright holders to deal with infringement, without going through a lawyer. [...]
[I]t's been used by thousands of individuals, including many artists, and remains the most powerful tool for the ordinary citizen to seek redress without expensive litigation. It's a question of filling out a simple form.
Not that you'd ever guess from Google's page for DMCA complaints. The web advertising giant turns the presumption of guilt back onto the complainer.
Google warns that if they're not sure they own the copyright, they may face $100,000 fines. Ominously, it says their complaint may be forwarded to "Chilling Effects" - which monitors vexatious abuse of the Act. [...]
One parent, Dave from Nottingham, told us he thought Google should be trying harder to remove sexual content involving children - rather than put the frighteners on parents who complain about it.
"The way that it's phrased is that you're going to be in serious trouble, and need to send us large amounts of cash. They put you off," he explained.
"What they should say is 'send us an email, notify us, and we'll sort it out. They don't explain it to be as easy as it should be'."
In other words even in places where the DMCA ought to help, it may still end up scaring off the people who should be using it. In this case there is a happy ending but the point remains. The DMCA is great for the experts and the big boys but actually helps to frighten the smaller fry. Fortunately Googling for "sample DMCA takedown request" leads one eventually to a page containing a sample DMCA takedown request (over halfway down) as well as a bunch of other useful advice.
03 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
[A] new report suggests that low to moderate alcohol consumption may actually enhance memory. "There are human epidemiological data of others indicating that mild [to] moderate drinking may paradoxically improve cognition in people compared to abstention," says Maggie Kalev, a research fellow in molecular medicine and pathology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and a co-author of an article in The Journal of Neuroscience describing results of a study she and other researchers performed on rats. "This is similar to a glass of wine protecting against heart disease, however the mechanism is different." [...]
According to Kalev, it is hard to relate the alcohol the rats consumed to human quantities, but "based on their blood alcohol levels, the 2.5 percent ethanol diet was equivalent to a level of consumption that does not exceed [the] legal driving limit. This may be approximately one to two drinks per day for some people or two to three for others, depending upon their size, metabolism or genetic background."
The rats stayed on these diets for eight weeks; behavioral testing to assess cognitive function began after four weeks. One test involved novel object recognition, where rats were placed in a cage with two small objects inside multiple times over a two-day period. Then, one object was swapped for a new toy and rats were scored based on how quickly they explored the unfamiliar piece. In a second paradigm, rats were trained to expect a shock when they crossed from a white compartment to a black one inside a cage; a day after training, the rats were put back in the cage to see if they remembered that the black side was dangerous.
Among the normal rats, the animals that consumed moderate amounts of alcohol fared better on both tests compared with the teetotalers. Rats on a heavy alcohol diet did not do well on object recognition (and, in fact, showed signs of neurotoxicity), but they performed better than their normal brethren on the emotional memory task.
Which means that, as the researchers point out, drinking as an attempt to forget may be counter productive. What it remoinded me of though was the "Buffalo theory" as expounded by Cliff from the Cheers sitcom."[This study] provides interesting evidence for a mechanism that may be operating at the NMDA receptor," he says, but quickly cautions: "It's better not to drink at all than to drink too much," as is also demonstrated by this study.
03 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as thegunblogs.com.
As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on sites with content related to certain weapons and weapon accessories, such as firearms, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles.
They reply (after a week):
Hello,
Thanks for your email. We feel that, because the content of your site is largely focused on firearms, the site is not a good fit for the AdSense program. We appreciate your understanding.
Sincerely,
Scott
The Google AdSense Team
I reply:
You should specify that in your policy then. I and other reasonable people are unable to determine how you ‘feel.’
I note, however, you’ve had no issue selling gun related items on my site via your ads*.
Don’t be evil.
* Note: for evidence, look to your left.
And just in case it changes this is what was visible at the left when I visited:
04 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
SONY has new definition of what it considers software piracy which will criminalise most of the world.
In testimony in the flagship Capitol Records, et al versus Jammie Thomas Jennifer Pariser, case, the head of litigation for Sony BMG told the world that it was piracy for someone to back-up a CD they have bought or upload it onto their MP3 player.
If this were true, then more people would be pirates than there would be legitimate users.
She said that when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, Sony can say he stole a song." Making "a copy" of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'.
As the Inq notes strictly speaking this is the case in some countries (e.g. the UK) but in practical terms such copying is accepted as 'fair use' even in places where it is not permitted de jure. Sony however seems to think that it has a right to sell the same content over and over again. This is, to put it mildly, extremely stupid of Sony, a company who made loadsa money from hardware such as the walkman. Everyone I knew who had a (tape) walkman created the tapes by recording them from either CD or LP and as a result we could have cool tapes with a mix of tracks from a variety of artists instead being forced to listen to an entire album (or swapping tapes every 3 minutes).
04 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
Oct. 4, 2007 | Al-Qaida's targets on 9/11 were in New York City and Washington. But if Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., and 233 other members of the U.S. House have their way, those cities and others at high risk of terrorist attacks, including some that have reportedly been the target of foiled plots, would be stripped of the federal funding intended to keep their citizens safe from attack.
At issue are so-called sanctuary cities. There is no single definition of a "sanctuary city," but in essence it is one that takes a "don't ask, don't tell" stance toward the immigration status of its residents.
So let me see here. Illegal immigrants are (by definition) breaking the law by not having a right to live or work here. There is also a non-trivial chance that illegal immigrants will turn out to be terrorists but that's irrelevant. The key is that these cities have declared that they will make no attemt whatsoever to enforce the law of the land and still expect their country to provide them with money. Imagine if this were a private corporation who wanted federal funding for (say) research in one division but which had another division which refused to hire anyone other than white non-jewish males. Do you think our leftie friends would not be insisting not only that the EEOC sue them but also that federal funds be withheld until they'd hired a few blacks, women, jews etc.But opposition to sanctuary cities is not a purely Republican issue. A poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports in August put the proportion of likely voters in favor of cutting federal funding to sanctuary cities at 58 percent, with just 29 percent opposed. Up to 49 Democratic members of the House have supported some versions of the anti-sanctuary legislation.
Bilbray says he thinks public support will eventually force the passage of some anti-sanctuary measure. "I think the Democrats are going to realize, look, we have to take this one," he said. "Because the areas where they're demanding sanctuary for illegals, they're not at-risk districts. They're not the districts where they're going to either hold, or lose the majority. It's going to be those places where the illegal immigration is a real hot issue, and the sanctuary city thing will hurt them if they stand by it."
I am, for the most part, against the idea of immigration controls but the US has them and they seem to be perceived as a good idea by the majority. In other words the representatives who passed the various immigration laws and rules are, broadly speaking, doing what they should in a democrcy - namely passing laws to satisfy the desires of their electrorates. Likewise in a democracy elected officials are expected to enforce the law as written not as they would like it to be and should expect some kind of blowback if they flagrantly violate it.
04 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
04 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
MNF-I should consolidate PSCs into a unified DoD-backed organization: Security companies could to be placed directly under the command of a field grade officer assigned to MNF-I, with appropriate liaison staff big enough to support the needs and operations of all PSCs. This provisional Force Protection Command (FPC) would be assigned the job of organizing, supporting, regulating all PSC personnel in Iraq and making them accountable under a commissioned military commander. It has precedence, as virtually every military base police force in the US, including the Pentagon, operates contract security on a similar model.
Such a provisional command would make sense in that it would allow PSCs to operate in their present defensive role guarding reconstruction efforts against the insurgents, but would allow them to answer to MNF-I and the Government of Iraq (GoI) officially, as do all other forces. PSCs provide a high standard of force protection capability and could be placed where needed to keep the reconstruction effort moving.
Some have asked if this meant that a security company would essentially be nationalized or drafted by MNF-I? No, in fact MNF-I would be providing a framework for operations that would have safeguards and guarantees for both the company and the client, most of whom are their subcontractors or US government entities. In the present freewheeling environment this may be a difficult concept to accept but the advantages for both parties would be enticing.
For MNF-I it would create a legal and contractual framework to place additional security resources in locations that need localized security and that do not have a continuing need for large combat forces. The army would also be obliged to ensure that the PSCs are adequately prepared to operate in these areas of operations.
For the PSCs, it would receive government furnished weapons, vehicles and limits on liability. They would be treated as is any other civilian Department of Defense employee.
But coordination, unified command etc. are not the same as getting rid of them and this clearly irritates people like Kevin Drum and Majikthise who think the US military needs to wean itself off its mercenary habit. Majikthise, however, seems ot be missing a trick when she writes:No, the United States needs to change its foreign policy. If we can't attract enough volunteers, we shouldn't go.
The all volunteer military is an important democratic safeguard. We need to make would-be warmongers pay the political price for starting wars. It's a lot easier to hire mercenaries than to call up the entire Army Reserve or bring back the draft.
Why do I say that? Well because the US Army is meeting its recruiting goals (via VodkaPundit):October 4, 2007: The U.S. Army again achieved its recruiting goal (80,000 new recruits) for fiscal 2007 (that ended on September 30). That will also be the goal for 2008 as well, unless the army is given permission, and several billion dollars, to speed up their expansion of 13.5 percent (from 482,000 to 547,000), by doing that in four years instead of five.
In other words it looks like the only reason why the US does not have enough regular soldiers is that the US government doesn't want to spend so much on its regular army. The Army believes it could get more people if it had the budget, but the US government appears to prefer to spend the money on mercenaries instead of a larger army. This is not necessarily stupid: you can't fire 20,000 soldiers as quickly as you can do away with 20,000 mercenaries on short term protection contracts so if Iraq turns itself around then the army could end up looking too big. However it's probably more a case of different budgets - mercenaries are paid for by the State Department and other parts of the government that aren't the Department of Defence.These people are mercenaries and are a problem for the populace in the same way that all mercenaries are. At least they don't have official permission to loot and rape the way some had in the past.
In fact of course the groups who do loot and rape these days are those "peacekeepers" hired by the UN. One of Jerry Pournelle's correspondents puts it this way:If I were tasked to plan a peacekeeping operation somewhere in the world, and was told I couldn't get sufficient Western military forces to conduct the mission, I'd far rather hire private contractors than rely on UN forces or regional forces. I've been around those types, and don't want to do it again. This is one of the many reasons I've always told people who call for multinational forces that they clearly haven't ever worked in them.
I think it is pretty clear that none of the US lefties who protest the use of mercenaries and call for UN intervention have ever worked with UN "peacekeepers". I (and others) wrote about the possibility of the UN hiring mercenaries instead of poorly trained third world armies to do peace last year and nothing I've read about the behaviour of mercenaries in Iraq makes me change my mind that this solution would save UN money and keep the peace more effectively. However for some people it seems like armies of poorly trained and poorly armed third world personel are more suited to a blue beret than the former first world military folks who get hired by Blackwater and co.
05 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
06 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
A polio outbreak in Nigeria was caused by the vaccine designed to stop it, international health officials say, leaving at least 69 children paralyzed.
It is a frightening paradox in a part of the world that already distrusts western vaccines, making it even tougher to stamp out age-old diseases.
The outbreak was caused by the live polio virus that is used in vaccines given orally — the preferred method in developing countries because it is cheaper and doesn't require medical training to dispense.
...
Experts say such outbreaks only happen when too few children are vaccinated. In northern Nigeria, only about 39 percent of children are fully protected against polio.
The oral polio vaccine contains a weakened version of polio virus. Children who have been vaccinated excrete the virus, and in unsanitary conditions it can end up in the water supply, spreading to unvaccinated children.
In rare instances, as the virus passes through unimmunized children, it can mutate into a form that is dangerous enough to spark new outbreaks.
And yes this is very sad. But why you may ask are only 39% of Nigerian children not fully protected? Now we get to the tricky bit. You see part of the reason is that various Muslim leaders in Northern Nigeria claim that the polio vaccine is actually a cunning plot by the West to sterilize Nigerians (old report):What is going on with Nigerian Islam these days? First, they implement a crude and merciless form of shari'a (see Amina Lawal) that brought down Muslim condemnation from around the world. Now they're urging people not to take the polio vaccine, which they say "makes girls sterile" - poisoned in a US plot to reduce the Muslim population. The imams are probably saying that because they want more Muslim children, but their actions are having the opposite effect - over 600 Muslim children have contracted the disease, 15 million children in neighboring countries are at risk, and the World Health Organization's goal of eradicating polio globally by 2005 is threatened. The Nigerian government is desperately negotiating with the imams to get them to change their mind, but the imams conducted an "independent" test of the vaccine which they say confirms their findings.
This, and a number of medical cockups that help feed these conspiracy theories, leads to a situation where Nigerian children are dying from a disease that has been eradicated almost everywhere else in the world."Convincing the Nigerians to take even more of this vaccine will be a tough sell," said Dr. Samuel Katz, an infectious diseases specialist at Duke University and co-inventor of the measles vaccine.
Given their support for wild fables in their own neighbourhood one wonders whether Duke's group of 88 agree with their fellow academic or prefer to follow their precedent and agree with the Nigerian Imams and their conspiracy theories with regards to Western medicine?
08 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
LONDON (Reuters) - Six years after the September 11 attacks in the United States, the "war on terror" is failing and instead fuelling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements, a British think-tank said on Monday.
A report by the Oxford Research Group (ORG) said a "fundamental re-think is required" if the global terrorist network is to be rendered ineffective.
"If the al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the roots of its support must be understood and systematically undercut," said Paul Rogers, the report's author and professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in northern England.
"Combined with conventional policing and security measures, al Qaeda can be contained and minimised but this will require a change in policy at every level."
He described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a "disastrous mistake" which had helped establish a "most valued jihadist combat training zone" for al Qaeda supporters.
From the quotes it is unclear precisely what Prof Rogers proposes other than "run away and hide under the bed clothes" and unfortunately the ORG aren't yet making the briefing available on line so I can't see what the man actually writes. However reading some of his other work at Open Democracy and his previous ORG document (PDF) it looks like the man is a classic tranzi with a hang up about "Christian Zionists" in the Bush Administration so my expectations of common sense are limited. Reuters does report a couple of his suggestions:The report -- Alternatives to the War on Terror -- recommended the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq coupled with intensive diplomatic engagement in the region, including with Iran and Syria.
In Afghanistan, Rogers also called for an immediate scaling down of military activities, an injection of more civil aid and negotiations with militia groups aimed at bringing them into the political process.
[...]Rogers also warned of a drift toward conflict with Iran.
"Going to war with Iran", he said, "will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region. Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs."
There are two or three things to note here. Firstly a majority of Iraqis (of all persuasions) seem fairly convinced that if the US pulls out the result will be civil war. Secondly the British tried negotiating with the Taliban in part of Helmand province and it was a bloody failure. Thirdly "violence across the region", where the region is the Middle East, is not necessarily bad for people who live outside the ME. After all if they are fighting in the Middle East they may be too distracted to carry out actions further afield. Finally in the earlier extract Rogers is quoted as saying Iraq has become a "most valued jihadist combat training zone". It seems to me that this works both ways. The US led coalition in Iraq has also learned a lot about how to fight jihadis and the Jihadi casualies in Iraq are estimated to be between 5 and 10 times US casualties, implying that the US forces have tended to survive the learning experience while their foes have mostly failed to survive. One could claim that the dead Jihadis in Iraq (and Afghanistan) are the more incompetant ones and that the survivors are the smart ones who will go on to spread the word elsewhere. This may be partially true but it doesn't seem to me that global jihad is doing terribly well elsewhere either. In SE Asia the jihadis have lost major sanctuaries in Indonesia and the Philipines and are not have notable success in turning terrorism into political gains in Thailand. In Kashmir the jihadis seem to be quieter than previously and in Pakistan the attempt to extend jihadi militancy to the capital via the red mosque appears to be been a failure.
08 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
11 October 2007 Blog Home : All October 2007 Posts : Permalink
...Whether a given title of mine sells 10,001 copies or 100,000 copies, I will make 15% of the retail price from each sale.
Okay, now let's translate that into dollars and cents. The cover price of hardcover fiction titles varies a bit, but it's fair today to put $25.00 as more-or-less the standard price.
Even at the top 15% tier, in other words, a theft of one of my books causes me loss and suffering in the amount of $3.75. About what it costs to buy a cheeseburger and fries at a hamburger chain like McDonald's, or a large cappuccino at Starbuck's.
So. Can you imagine the ridicule I would be subjected to if I demanded that a louse who stole my large cappuccino was a "pirate." No different from a murderer, or a rapist, or an arsonist, or an armed robber?
Mind you, even the theft of a cup of cappuccino is a theft, sure enough. It's against the law, and if the police catch the culprit he will be charged with a crime.
A misdemeanor, to be precise. Because when it comes to theft
[...] Hundreds of millions of people visit Yahoo! each month. Yahoo! Music is the #1 Music site on the Web, with tens of millions of monthly visitors. Between 10 and 20 million people watch music videos on Yahoo! Music every month. Between 5 and 10 million people listen to radio on Yahoo! Music every month. But the ENTIRE subscription music market (including Rhapsody, Napster, and Yahoo!) is in the low millions (sorry, we don’t release subscriber numbers, but the aggregate number proves the point), even after years of marketing by all three companies. When you compare the experiences on Yahoo! Music, the order of magnitude difference in opportunity shouldn’t be a surprise: Want radio? No problem. Click play, get radio. Want video? Awesome. Click play, get video. Want a track on-demand? Oh have we got a deal for you! If you’re on Windows XP or Vista, and you’re in North America, just download this 20MB application, go through these seven install screens, reboot your computer, go through these five setup screens, these six credit card screens, give us $160 dollars and POW! Now you can hear that song you wanted to hear…if you’re still with us. Yahoo! didn’t want to go through all these steps. The licensing dictated it. It’s a slippery slope from “a little control” to consumer unfriendliness and non-Web-scale products and services.
I'll note in that regard that one reason why I read ebooks so much is that it helps avoid the hassle factor (and price) of getting English language paper books here in France. Having said that I just went to Wowio to look at the DayByDay ebooks and discovered that they are unavailable outside the US. Talk about inconveniencing the potential customer!