On The Margins

Monday August 30, 2004

[ Personal ] Russian Beer on the Road to Tehran

I've noticed people posting stories of beer drinking or photos of beer cans on their weblogs. Often one has a feeling that without a beer can in the background (or a wine glass in the foreground), questions may be raised about one's manhood. Well, here's mine, accompanied with the story behind it. Earlier, I'd written about a trip to Isfahan, this past July. On the road back to Tehran, the children were quite thirsty and I was, too. I stopped in Saveh, the city of pomegranates, and we started looking for a store. It was Friday, when most shops are closed, but luckily a couple of grocery stores were still open.

After some meandering through the maze of separated lanes, we were able to get into a lane that led to some stops. My wife, a true-blooded American (whatever that means), got off the car and went into one of the stores and used her very good Persian (of which I should be much prouder than I am) to purchase some drinks and snaks for us. The kids got a couple of different types of juices.

My reward was a frosty Russian beer, of the non-alcoholic sort, but in a tall can. It must have been past 40 degrees (Centigrade) outside and the old BMW I was driving had a broken air-conditioning. Just holding that beer can made me feel better. I opened it and took a sip. It was one of the best non-alcoholic beers I'd ever drunk.

How often do you read any praise of non-alcoholic beer in English? How often do you read any praise of it, in any language at all? In any case, I had to post a photo of the empty can, and kudos to the producers.

I'd heard about Russian (non-alcoholic) beer exports to Iran in a BBC television report. (No trace of the report can be found on the BBC web site.) Now, with a bit of web searching, I also found the news item on Baltika's web site. In any case, it was a great beer, and if I had a chance, I'd buy it again, in America, too!

2004-08-30 21:39:21.0 -- Comments [3] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

[ Web ] RSS, The Acronym . . . to Search

Acronyms often have multiple uses, and I have been wanting to write something about the multitude of things for which "RSS" stands.

I first ran into "RSS" as "Received Signal Strength." It is still used in that sense. For example, in Anthony J. Weiss' "On the Accuracy of a Cellular Location System Based on RSS Measurements" published in Vehicular Technology, IEEE Transactions on , Volume: 52 , Issue: 6 , Nov. 2003.

Then there is "RSS" standing for "Radar Support System." For example, see B. O'Hern, et al.'s " The Radar Support System (RSS): a tool for siting radars and predicting their performance" published in Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, IEEE , Volume: 12 , Issue: 12 , Dec. 1997.

There's also "RSS" as in "Resource Sharing System." I won't bother with an IEEE citation. I think by now you trust it can be found.

Last but not least is "RSS" as in Really Simple Syndication, possibly the most favorite use of the acronym for those of us who spend a good deal of our lives on the web.

Acronymfinder gives IBM as the user of RSS as an acronym for "Retail Store Solutions." How Acronymfinder got that fact into its index remains a puzzle. Perhaps, they used the same investigative techniques that they employed to associate "Remote Surveillance System" with Tom Clancy. Frankly, I've read absolutely nothing from Clancy. But why was I not surprised to learn he gets a kick out of generating acronyms? Perhaps, they make his novels more "real," at least for some people who must matter. I do know some people who live through his novels, and can testify that they do love acroynms but my sample size is quite small.

I just wrote this weblog because I don't think everyone out there really uses RSS in the same way as the blogging community does. It's important to know about such differences and variations.

I'm sure there are a number of other things "RSS" stands for.

Now, here comes the catch--a question about search.

If I've heard RSS used in one of these senses and do a search on Google, how do I get what I want? Try it yourselves. For example, try to see if you can find any mention of RSS as received signal strength in a context associated with AT&T Wireless.

2004-08-30 19:44:12.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

[ Telecommunications ] Information or Telecommunication Service?

The government has appealed to the Supreme Court a Ninth Circuit Court ruling on cable services that required the FCC to regulate them as telecommunications services.

Last October, the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, found unwarranted the FCC characterization of cable high-speed Internet services as unregulated "information service."

The court ruled that cable-modem services should be regulated more like a telecommunications service, which is more heavily regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. (See, for example, the unbundled network element requirements imposed on telecommunications service providers. The requirements have briefly been discussed on this very weblog: 1 and 2.)

The Ninth Circuit Court's decision came from a lawsuit filed by a small Internet-service provider called Brand X, which sued after the FCC developed rules that only lightly regulated cable broadband, (FCC v. Brand X).

"The high court will add the case to its docket and will likely make a decision on the appeal sometime late this year," reports Mark Anderson of the Wall Street Journal.

The Ninth Circuit is very active in rulings on communications services. (See the material on music sharing on this very weblog: 1 and 2.)

2004-08-30 11:23:10.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.