One of the nice things about the USA is that in a lot of areas if we pay for it we get to get it for free... Charts in the US of A are public domain as well as NASA images, NOAA weather and suchlike because our tax dollars paid for them in the first place.
Sounds kind of fair...Though the last band of thieves in office made some serious efforts to make this free stuff we paid for (like NOAA weather) very expensive (given free to folks they liked so they could sell it to us)... Something to keep an eye on!
The US Government also has done much in the way of language education with its Foreign Service Institute and all of the official language courses and materials are also public domain. Many of them are available from FSI Language Courses. How neat is that?
As it happens, I like listening to language tapes mixed in to the iPod on the nightwatch mix. They help keep me awake and being able to ask for a beer in Thai, for instance, when we get to that part of the world opens all sorts of doors that are closed to folks who feel that everyone else should learn their language.
And you can hardly argue with FREE...
Sounds kind of fair...Though the last band of thieves in office made some serious efforts to make this free stuff we paid for (like NOAA weather) very expensive (given free to folks they liked so they could sell it to us)... Something to keep an eye on!
The US Government also has done much in the way of language education with its Foreign Service Institute and all of the official language courses and materials are also public domain. Many of them are available from FSI Language Courses. How neat is that?
As it happens, I like listening to language tapes mixed in to the iPod on the nightwatch mix. They help keep me awake and being able to ask for a beer in Thai, for instance, when we get to that part of the world opens all sorts of doors that are closed to folks who feel that everyone else should learn their language.
And you can hardly argue with FREE...
