Headline September 04, 2016/ ''' *DECADES - ELECTRONICS- DOLDRUMS* '''

''' *DECADES - ELECTRONICS- 

DOLDRUMS* '''

AS MANY AS 6 MILLION  *HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS*    the world over have registered for  ''massive open online courses''   [MOCSs]-

Which are managed just so beautifully,   -mainly by prominent American universities. Since the marginal cost of these courses is zero, participants do not have to pay tuition. 

In September 2013,   a  17-year old  high school student  in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, who had taken part in a  MOOC  offered by the  Massachusetts Institute Technology achieved perfect scores in every subject, -and was granted tuition free admission..........

A QUARTER OF CENTURY  has passed since March 1991,  -when the Japanese economy plunged into a recession triggered by the bursting of the bubble boom.

The economy has since been effectively at a standstill, with the average annual growth of  gross domestic product standing at a mere  0.9% in very real terms.

Yet we are now enjoying a far more convenient and comfortable lifestyle compared with the past, writes Takamitsu Sawa, all set to delight you in a philosophic sweep that has overtaken him.

For years my profession has required me to send manuscripts to publishing companies and newspapers. Until the early 1980s, the normal procedure was to handwrite the manuscript and send them by registered express mail.

After the mid 1980s, fax  machines installed in offices sent the manuscripts through telephone circuits instantaneously as long as they were not too voluminous.

Towards the end of that decade, small fax machines for home use became available for about Yen 100,000, and word processors relieved authors from the chore of writing by hand.

It was in the early years of the past quarter century that the Windows operating system developed by Microsoft Corp, enabled authors to write on a personal computer.

Initially, the manuscript for a book was saved on a floppy disk, which in turn was sent to the publisher through the postal service.

After the mid-1990s, the use of e-mail became rapidly popular, enabling the author to send not only the manuscript but also all sorts of data as attachments by email in real time. 

A galley proof would be converted into a PDF file and sent back to the author.

When I started using email, I was bothered by the simple question of why the service was free. Before the email made its debut, it cost me several hundred yen  to mail my manuscript to the publisher either in its original form or on a floppy disk.  

My telephone bill would go up when I sent many pages by fax. In short, the postage and telephone charges would go up in proportion to the distance. 

Some time ago, many people used to send Christmas cards to other countries in Mid-November by surface mail in order to avoid more costly airmail postage. 

This was indicative of the high costs of communications for households and businesses.

WHY IS EMAIL FREE OF CHARGE?  The answer is that there is no charge for the use of Internet via the communications satellites of the U.S. Defense Department, which brings down to zero the marginal cost of sending each email

This contrasts with the postal service, the marginal cost of which cannot be zero because it requires manpower for mail delivery, and the telephone service, which has no marginal cost but charges large amounts of money for the use telephone circuit lines.

With access to web search engines provided by Google. Yahoo and others, anybody can obtain all sorts of  information  easily and without charge.That includes a celebrity's date of birth and career history, a list of hotels and-

Restaurants in a tour destination, how a baseball game is shaping up at any given point in time and   breaking news   stories.

Or, if you give the computer the time that you want to arrive at your destination,  it will inform you,  free of charge,  all public transport connections to minimize your travel time.

Moreover, there are huge numbers of applications that can be downloaded to your smartphones without charge.

Decades ago, it was common to find encyclopedias, dictionaries and other books filling the bookshelves of a living room. 

But they have become useless and  obstructive because any kind of information can now be obtained on the Internet.

The Honour and Serving of the latest Operational Research on ''Technologies, Lifestyle  and Progress''  continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing forward. And see you on the following one:

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and !E-WOW!  -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Ancient Memories '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless