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An Economic and therefore Governmental Issue While the digital divide might bring up the idea that enterprises will be able to sell more and more computers during the next years another truth looks as if there was no hope for a certain percentage of the population to get out of their marginalization, their position of being "have nots". Studies show that the issue of different colors of skin play a role in this, but more than "racial" issues it is income, age and education that decides about the have and have nots. There exist ~ 103 million households in the USA. ~6 million do not even have telephone access. Why should they care about computers? The digital divide cuts the world into centers and peripheries, not into nations, as it runs through the boarder between the North and the South as well as through nations. The most different institutions with various interests in their background work in that field; not rarely paid by governments, which are interested in inhabitants, connected to the net and economy. see also: Searching information about the digital divide one will find informations saying that it is growing all the time whereas other studies suggest the contrary, like this one |
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Voice recognition The only biometric technology which does not measure the visual features of the human body. In voice recognition the sound vibrations of a person is measured and compared to an existing sample. The person to be identified is usually required to pronounce a designated password or phrase which facilitates the verification process. Voice recognition can be used on the phone, but has the weakness of technology is its susceptibility to interference by background noise. |
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RAND RAND (an acronym for research and development) is a non-profit institution that tries to "improve public policy through research and analysis". RAND was created at the urging of its original sponsor, the Air Force (then the Army Air Forces) and employs more than 500 people. Most work in RAND's Santa Monica, California headquarters, others are based in Washington, D.C. Some operate from RAND's Council for Aid to Education in New York City and from RAND Europe in Delft, the Netherlands. Areas of research are: Foreign relations and diplomacy, security and defense, economic issues, regional studies, social issues, health and welfare, education, labor and human resource development, science and technology. |
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R.J. Reynolds American manufacturer of tobacco products. The origins of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company date to the post-Civil War era, when Richard Joshua Reynolds (1850-1918) began trading in tobacco, first in his native Virginia and then in Winston, N.C., where in 1875 he established his first plug factory. The company began to diversify in the 1960s, acquiring chiefly food and oil concerns, and the tobacco concern became a subsidiary of R.J. Reynolds Industries, Inc., in 1970. |
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