Slashdot Mirror

Watson-Watt Invented it

"Watson-Watt became the superintendent of the radio division of the National Physics Laboratory in Teddington. In 1936 his radio stations were able to detect aircraft up to 70 miles away."

"He persuaded the government to set up a network of radar stations to provide early warning of aircraft attacking over the English Channel. "Radar" was short for "radio detecting and ranging." It was due to radar that the over-stretched resources of the RAF were able to be in the right place at the right time as Luftwaffe aircraft streamed over during the Battle of Britain from August to October 1940. The Germans could not understand why the defending aircraft (such as the Spitfire, illustrated above) were so often there to meet them."

Loomis helped mass produce it for mobile use and developed it

"In the 1930s, British scientists were at the cutting edge of radar technology. While crude by modern standards, their systems could spot Nazi bombers up to 150 miles from the English coast, enough of a warning for Royal Air Force fighters to intercept them. But the radar apparatus was too bulky to mount in planes, and the equipment was not sensitive enough to detect a U-boat's periscope. That changed in early 1940, when physicists at the University of Birmingham invented the magnetron. This plump copper disk was only four inches across, but its glass horns emitted short-wavelength pulses of extremely high power--just the ticket for small radars that could probe much farther and resolve details far finer than any previous system."

"When Prime Minister Winston Churchill learned of the magnetron, he sensed that it marked a turning point in the war. Given the state of British industry, though, he needed U.S. help in refining the magnetron and, most of all, producing them in volume. That August, he sent a mission to Washington, where it presented a top-secret magnetron to astonished U.S. researchers."

So, as usual, a joint effort.

BigTom

I'd wager that those of us who give two damns about our privacy would much rather use a cross-platform, free solution such as Helix as opposed to [...] Windows Media Player.

First off, you're mixing your apples and oranges, comparing servers and clients. WMP and RealPlayer are both the devil's spawn, when it comes to individual users' privacy and rights.

Hiding Your Choices And Saying You Made Them (just this month!!!)
RealPlayer Uploads Your ID Too
(though, can't forget Big Brother Lifetime Award Goes To Microsoft)

Second, "cross-platform" and "free" are hardly synonymous with "privacy". I think you're confusing "free"-as-in-beer with "free"-as-in-liberty. Even "open" code isn't free from being abused to lock you in to solutions. Notice "lock-in" coming up as a recent buzzword at LinuxWorld? Wonder where the Slashdot rightousness was then. 'Course it must be okay if it's only companies who are locked into a proprietary solution, right?

RealNetworks isn't opening Helix out of altruism. They need market share, and this is a (potentially) sound business decision. Don't confuse it with any sort of plan on their part to stop doing everything they can to get more users -- and more information about those users.

Glad to see that while I was writing this, you got modded back down.

That's because she was a salesperson--not an engineer (or systems administrator or help-desk troglodyte)--before becoming CEO. The average chick in CS (or "IT" as you put it) is more like Mary Shaw, Judy Estrin or Anita Jones than Fiorina.

"And also, with the assistance Lockheed Martin, Internet Explorer now gives you the power to order your very own airstrikes."

Thanks to a system upgrade by defense contractor Lockheed Martin (LMT ), flyboys (and girls) could hop onto a special Air Force network from any PC equipped with a Web browser and special military encryption and authentication software. Once on this network, they could call for air strikes, direct reconaissance planes, or plot the movements of the most powerful flying force on Earth -- all from their laptop in a café (or, more likely, at a secured facility). "All you need is Internet Explorer," says Doug Barton, the director of technology for Lockheed Martin Mission Systems, based in Gaithersburg, Md.

MacSense and GLOOLABS already beat HP to the punch. Check out this story about the Homepod.

I love the irony of two slashdot articles in a row, where one talks about Apple's Rendezvous, and the next talks about Microsoft's new 'Spot' wristwatch thingy. Apple's product is useful, open-sourced, and can provide benefits beyond Mac owners, since devices can communicate without a Mac or any Apple products at all. Contrast this with the Microsoft announcement: a clunky, expensive watch that will cost at least $100 year in service fees.

Apple Press Release
Microsoft Watch Article

But there is something more going on here. Apple is returning to its roots, and to computing's roots, by giving away software in order to sell hardware. Microsoft sees the "free software" writing on the wall, and is desperately trying to sell hardware and services. Who's going to win?

I love the irony of two slashdot articles in a row, where one talks about Apple's Rendezvous, and the next talks about Microsoft's new 'Spot' wristwatch thingy. Apple's product is useful, open-sourced, and can provide benefits beyond Mac owners, since devices can communicate without a Mac or any Apple products at all. Contrast this with the Microsoft announcement: a clunky, expensive watch that will cost at least $100 year in service fees.

Apple Press Release
Microsoft Watch Article

But there is something more going on here. Apple is returning to its roots, and to computing's roots, by giving away software in order to sell hardware. Microsoft sees the "free software" writing on the wall, and is desperately trying to sell hardware and services. Who's going to win?

2) You always have to make sure you can squash the VPs around you.

3) The VPs around you have to fear you.

4) You mess up 3) see 1).

While the economy and stock markets struggled, 2002 was a golden year for the silver screen. Thanks to blockbuster hits such as Spider-Man, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings, ticket sales hit $9.3 billion worldwide, a remarkable 13% rise over 2001's then-record receipts. So much for claims that piracy threatens Hollywood's livelihood.

decently done article, not toooooo long

The last class of people was called slaves.

Do you like it or not, but H1B workers cannot change their employers unless INS approves it.

In some countries free people live in poverty, not only slaves. In USA both slaves and freemen (citizens and GC) have not a bad salary and some social protection (H1B slaves have it less, of course). But it doesn't make any difference. The slave is slave, if he cannot go free to another employer even if the other employer agree to hire. Consulting companies, re-selling the work time of their H1B slaves (often even without any contribution from a management side - just pure hours), make the picture even more clear.

If you don't really like the word slaves, then use another word - coacroaches, rates or parasites, that what americans mean anyway when they want to protect US job market from being infested by immigrants.

After a brief search here is one article and another one (both old, cannot find newer quickly) showing how the US export of cheap products kills the local industry and creates the stream of illegal immigrants flooding the US job market.

It's a perfect illustration: US wants to play the globalization game when it comes to US product export, but wants to close the border when it comes to the international job market response. That's not fair.

This thread was listed as the top Sci/Tech story this morning on google :-) ...

AT&T/DoCoMo Deal For W-CDMA Deployment In US
Slashdot - 3 hours ago
murky.waters writes "The specifics of several amendments to the original deal are spelled out in a news.com article: AT&T gets $6.2 billion from NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest telecom, for deploying a third generation wireless network in four of ...
NTT DoCoMo's $6 billion AT&T guarantee BusinessWeek
AT&T Wireless could owe $6B if W-CDMA rollout is late ComputerWorld

I wonder what kind of environmental hazard is posed by junking thousands of pay phones?

How about junking hundreds of thousands or millions of cellphones. Plus the batteries each unit may go through in a lifetime. There's no way those things last as long as a nice clunky pay phone. I know we have a couple of dead ones around here somewhere, and a lot of people upgrade simply for fashion or features.

Yes, people are looking into recycling the phones. It's difficult because the materials are so heterogeneous, and though a few like tantalum are quite valuable, the labor to break up the phones can outweigh that. A nicer idea -- hand-me-downs to less wealthy developing countries, for sale or parts. Cellular phones have a disproportionate value in countries that never got the telephone line infrastructure in the first place.

big disconnect with the facts here. tell 'em robbIE.

these guise do they ever quit?

big excitment about some heavy duty star gazing & hand waving, resulting in the speculation buy the VAST majority of fine&shill analcysts overt at bearonstearno.con, saying that sum of our billyuns would be returning some time next year, as if buy magic, if we would be willing to make some more heavy bets on phony payper stock markup scams. those guise. sheesh!@#$% do they think that we're sheep?, or stupid/greedy/afraid? we'll show them. right robbIE?

not about some fundamentalist eco-purism.

Maxxam's desperate cutting to pay off it's junk bond funded buyout of Palco (a tactic made illegal shortly afterwards) has resulted in many folks who live downstream from the timber lands losing their homes to floods and landslides.

And the silting and warming (due to removal of the sheltering canopy of the big trees) of the rivers that flow through Palco's land has greatly impacted the the local salmon fishery, which used to employ thousands (alot more than the increasingly mechanized timber industry).

IOW, this is about protecting the common resources of the area from a rapacious multinat, not about extreme environmental purism.

I'd really like to see what Amazon has to say about this. From mishaps like this to the supposed recommendations from this "person" -- I wouldn't be a bit surprised if this is simply another bot generating high ratings for Amazon partners in an attempt to push the ratings up and thus drive up sales.

Would I buy from them? Nope. I'll stick to visiting my local Barnes and Noble.

In other words, Microsoft can likely only outbid IBM if IBM chooses to allow such to happen. (Which is a very likely outcome if there is a bidding war. Neither IBM nor Microsoft is run by idiots. Nor is either company likely to bid more for Rational than management at each respective company thinks Rational is worth.)

"Current is becoming a major factor and a limiter on how complex we can build chips," said Grove. He said the company' engineers "just can't get rid of" power leakage... The problem of leakage threatens the future validity of Moores Law. As chips become more powerful and draw more power, leakage tends to increase. The industry is used to power leakage rates of up to fifteen per cent, but chips constructed of increasing numbers of transistors can suffer power leakage of up to 40 per cent said Grove. In chips made up of a billion transistors may leak between 60 and 70 Watts of power, he warned. The power is largely dissipated as heat causing cooling problems for powerful chips.

It's also working on new transistors and new chipmaking techniques that will let it continue to boost chip performance through 2005 and beyond, company representatives said Monday... Two additional papers will discuss AMD's ideas on building transistors that use metal, rather than silicon gates. Using nickel for the gate improves electrical current flow through the transistor, AMD said...

Here's an interesting article about Poole's departure from Mandrake -

...Poole set out to professionalize MandrakeSoft and sharpen its operations. To whip the company's finances into shape, he brought in an old friend, Jon Zimman, as acting CFO. Zimman was shocked to discover the startup had no budget and few controls. Mandrake's top-ranked financial manager was more of an accountant than a strategist. Writing a three-year business plan took months of effort and required placing big, risky bets.

That's when visions began to diverge. MandrakeSoft, with expected 2001 revenues of $3.7 million, was already a big seller of Linux. In fact, it sold more units through U.S. retail channels in 2000 than any other company, according to researcher PC Data.

Trouble was, those boxes didn't carry big margins, and Poole felt the company needed to find a more profitable niche for the long haul. His plan: Offer a suite of technical support services to MandrakeSoft's customers, including offering non-Linux products. For the founders, who had a strong emotional attachment to Linux, that was too much. "His business plan was really aggressive," says Walsh. "People here are just more conservative."

It could be worse. Idealab investors are suing so they can back out of their investment. Atleast in the case of Liquid Audio it appears like the investors have a choice in the matter.

I've been thinking, we should change IANAL to IANALBIHAOA (I'm Not A Lawyer But I Have An Opinion Anyway). ;-)

Funny thing, the U.S. dropped the tying claim altogether. They stuck to the 2 monopoly claim. This article describes the why and how (caution: may cause blurry vision).

My non-expert opinion is that DOJ sabotaged its own case on a go-easy directive from above. Actually, it may not have needed any such directive, as President Bush appointed people sympathetic to his views and the views of his supporters -- all people I would describe as antagonistic to antitrust generally. More than one conservative has proposed abolishing the department.

Apple is Steve's persona.... and it tends to be a lot of controlled show... once you talk with people who have worked with companies that deal with apple you start to see a not soo nice picture of what the company really is...

So what? You've missed the point entirely. Corporations can't accomplish anything on their own - that's why people work for them. You're right in that a corporation (which is just an abstract legal construct) doesn't have moral obligations, but the people who make the decisions for it sure as hell do.

An executive at Sun, or Microsoft, or whoever else, can't just sit there and say "there was money to be made, who am I to judge?" They had the opportunity to do the right thing, and say no.

Shrugging your shoulders and saying "that's what corporations do" is incredibly callous. The Chinese government is not playing around: people who get busted by these filters aren't getting a warning, or a fine - they're going to jail. Read some of the articles on the issue, like this one. People are being thrown in jail for simply speaking their mind using the net, and some of them have already died in custody.

How many people will pay over 20 percent of their monthly wage for broadband?

Probably because like most of Europe it is far cheaper to put up cell towers than to have wires run everywhere. Americans tend to forget how subsidized our wired telephone system was.

A quote:

RIGHT NOISES. That's because Europe's fourth-largest economy suffers from an outdated, expensive telecommunications infrastructure...

From: http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_09/b3670213.ht m

If you're going to chastise Billy Gates for M$'s "coming late to the party," then you have to praise him and his wife (as private citizens) for their overwhelming generosity:

The start of this new era can be traced to late September, 1997, when cable-TV mogul Ted Turner anted up an historic $1 billion pledge to the U.N.--and challenged wealthy "skinflints" to do likewise. The nation's underachieving billionaires got an even bigger prodding two years later when the world's richest man, Bill Gates, pumped a staggering $16.5 billion into his foundation to help pay for a campaign to improve health care for the world's poor. Gates and his wife Melinda have since poured a total of $25.6 billion--some 60% of their current net worth--into their foundation, making it the world's largest. Their mission to bring vaccines to poor children in Africa and India is as strategic and sweeping as Carnegie's promise to build a library in every American town.

This article reminded me of a previous slashdot artice that pointed to this Business Week article
"Sure, Wi-Fi has huge potential. But the spectrum could quickly become overcrowded and unreliable if it grows too quickly. Success will take two things: technological improvements and a helping hand from Washington. The Federal Communications Commission will either have to allocate more spectrum for wireless use or overhaul the way spectrum is divvied up -- an unlikely scenario given that the commission is overwhelmed by scandals in the telecom biz."
They seem to think that an expended frequency range would have huge economic impacts too.

The Latest info I can find is from last month where Lindows asked the Judge to dismiss the case filed by MS. There can not have been any ruling yet as the press would have written about it regardless of outcome.

Let me clarify that these are not my views on politics; they are my views on arithmetic.

Deficit: "an excess of liabilities over assets"

I.e., spending more than you have. Until recently, we were talking about having "surpluses." Shall I define that one for you, too?

The current Administration has consistently lied about how "money works." Anyway money doesn't work -- people do. These people, typically middle-class, will be the ones who ultimately pay for the current deficits resulting from overspending and inadequate revenue exacerbated by tax cuts predicated on the supposed surpluses.

There are various reasons for the disappointing bleakness of our economic forecasts, but none explains the 1+1=3 math we've been getting lately. I'm not favoring one party over the other on this, either.

The new California computer security/privacy law referred to in the Business Week article is available here: http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/bill/sen/sb_1351-1400/s b_1386_bill_20020926_chaptered.html

Plenty of companies hold back on selling new products that will undercut their existing sales. If I sell $200 vacumn cleaners that need replacing every 4 years, I don't want to market a new $500 model that lasts 20.

An industrial interest may choose to withhold a great new product, even if its expensive, if it will reduce their total profits.

"Speed up ending a battle and you sell some fighter jets. Speed up ending war and you lose a customer"

(I didn't say that the banned weapons were expensive either- the difference between a few kinds of bullets is minimal. In many cases, the loss of a banned weapon can spur expensive R&D into acceptable alternatives. Anthrax canisters are cheaper than atomic warheads.)

in 1899. I doubt that "military-industrial complexes" even existed

Oh yes they did. There's no such thing as "Military Industrial Complex" in formal terms of course- its no more real than a "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy". Both are amusing names that describe an emergent behavior of powerful groups: quasi-organizations that perform in a cohesive way without centralized control. (A collective unconcious)

The military has always been a profit center for nation-states. With today's technology, the wealth comes from "Defense" contracts for weapon systems. 100 years ago, it came from the prestige and position afforded to military leaders in society. (Societies that were more and more aristocratic and even feudal the further east you got into Europe).

The leaderships were built on a structure of occasional terrortorial squabbles with neighbors to enforce the insularity of their countries and strengthen their rule. The self-esteem of the Warrior-Kings and Dashing Archdukes were defined in terms of bravery in battle, and if a generation passed without a good war or two to impress their valor onto the poplace, they'd risk being discarded by a society that no longer valued them.

And that's what was happening as technology started to accelerate 150 years ago. Population density, transportation, and firearms had all advanced to the point where it could no longer be denied that a major battle was a horrible, disgusting affair that reflected poorly on all involved- skill and prowess were meaningless in the raw carnage of 10,000 opposing riflemen tearing each other to pieces through a ruined city.

It is this increasing vileness and blatant cruelty that the Geneva Convention was passed to address. (In 1864 btw- 1899 was an extension). You may think that this was a good thing- that it eased the suffering of poor soliders. And prehaps it did. But by making war more tolerable, you extend the time that it will be tolerated. That is, it is because of "Rules of War" like the Geneva Convention that it was possible for 1st world nations to wage war with frequency up until 1950.

Otherwise, the prospect of going into battle would've been that much less appealing, and even successful agressors would suffer so much in international opinion (such as Iraq suffers today) that violence would be less common.

By ameliorating the damage of war, the Geneva Protocol encouraged the fighting of them.

The IRC's noble efforts gave us another century of nationalistic bloodshed, encouraged by heads-of-state whose position as Commanders-In-Chief was legitimized by the realistic threat of war.

Lets finish up by going back to that link you provided, and reading between the lines. The only text of substance amoung the treaty boilerplate is

"abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body"

Now, why would any army willingly surrender the use of a weapon in combat? It can't be because the weapon is ineffective; otherwise they wouldn't want it anyway. So there must be some situations when a flattenable bullet is tactically superior to a hard one.

(For example, expending more effort from the medics who have to fish out several fragments from a wound, instead of removing a whole round. This reduces enemy mobility by slowing their evacuations.)

(I shall use you as if you were a military leader of a Geneva Signatory)

So if this weapon is effective, then by willingly forgoing it you are reducing your troop's performance. They won't fight as well, and more of them will die. More of your own people will die! in exchange for the comfort of a enemy group who you've already declared is to be shot on sight.

The whole point of war should be that it is the final extreme- the breakdown of all considerate communication and diplomatic recourse. "All's fair!" But yet, even in war, to uphold a promise written hundreds of miles away, the leadership sent their own young men to death. Your own gentlemanly honor, over the lives of the little people. The Geneva Signatories applied Law even to War- conveying upon War the status of an acceptable activity.

The effect of the bullet-regulation was a cosmetic one. If it applied to both sides, then it fairly degraded both's performance and the victor was the same- so why even bother? Because it made war "cleaner". Less messy. Not so many corpses lying splattered about. More clean kills, fewer crippled survivors. A genteel bandaid covering a festering fatal wound. More proud men marching home in the avenues, fewer being dragged in ambulances. A way to keep on with the parades and speeches and memorial ceremonies twice per year, but not needing to work all year round feeding a disillusioned ghost whose body survived where his soul died.

War is horrible. No one can change that, and if humanitarianism hides that then it is lying to conceal a crime.
</RANT>

If this sounds crazy, go to the AOLTW corporate site and look at their financials for the last couple of years. There is already talk about undoing the merger (see the recent article in Businesweek, for instance), and although some of the issues in re-splitting the company are tricky (in particular, how to split debt between the two companies) someone coming along with a giant pile of cash would solve may of those problems quite nicely.

Now that you know, try to act surprised when it happens.

I'm not sure which settlement you're refering to, but Microsoft's business practices are currently still under investigation by the European Commission. And let's not forget Japan, who are conducting their own investigations in these matters.

Similarly to the US, the EU has brought an antitrust case against Microsoft, with a preliminary ruling expected later this year. It is not unthinkable that the failure of the United States to take decisive measures against Microsoft may prompt harsher action from the EU.

The EC is particularly concerned that Microsoft may extend its monopoly to include server software and media services. Aside from that, the EU has a separate investigation into Microsoft's Passport service

The headline is a little misleading. This isn't a working group to create some new standard for interoperability. This is a working group to evaluate and possibly improve Jabber's protocol.

In other words, this new group will ensure that Jabber's existing protocol is secure and has good support for localization. But it has nothing to do with AIM/ICQ, Yahoo Messanger, or anything like that. You can use XMPP today - it's called Jabber (and it's pretty cool).

But economics, psychologists and other liberal arts types realize that human beings defy "nature" all the time. People who study economics essentially study the cases where economics don't work! Psychologists study why people are not rational/utility maximizers.

As far as the broadband/telecom connection goes, did anyone else read this article in Business Week?

It talks about how broadband providers are keeping prices artificially high because they would rather deal with slower adoption rates at higher margins than faster adoption at lower margins because THEY KNOW EVERYONE WILL ADOPT BROADBAND EVENTUALLY and they can force us to pay more. Cable broadband profit margins are about 50 percent now.

Makes you realize how much companies like Comcast can prevent high-speed adoption and screw over the telecoms in the process.

(I canceled my Comcast modem and television service last week. Originally, I just wanted to get rid of the television service, but they told me that if I did, they were going to jack up my cable modem price by $15. I told them to cancel everything.)

eWeek
Computer Graphics World
Business Week
Globetechnology.com
ZDNet

The wonders of news.google.com.

Do you remember Purple Moon? They thought much the way you do. "Oooh, girls like talking, so we'll make games about how difficult it is to get through school! They'll gossip about the other girls, and they'll try to be popular."

Purple Moon didn't survive. They were eventually bought by Mattel, mostly (as I recall), as a method of acquiring inexpensive office equipment.

As someone who's made successful games for girls, I can say that girls do like to solve puzzles.

It's true that they're not as into score as much as males are; they tend to prefer goals. And they don't project themselves into the character as much as men do, they usually prefer to play alongside the onscreen persona.

Granted, my games are for a slightly younger set, but the lessons translate well into later life.

Also, think The Sims. Very high female user base. Not really much "conversation", per se, but lots of goals.

That being said, I know several girls who game many types of games, both inside the game industry and out. I believe that most of the female aversion to gaming had to do with the way it was introduced in the 80's, rather than a genetic predisposition. But I tend to favor nurture over nature.

=Brian

Probably the same people who bought those Gateway TV / PC combo things that were good at neither computing nor home entertainment. Besides, most people who are inclined to use a PC to record television and use a PC as a DVR probably build their own anyway.

From 1996: Gateway Dimension, or "more crap they try to sell you"

This technology is known as a "PAN" or Personal Area Network and was developed at least five years ago by MIT.

I first read about it in the IBM Systems Journal, but can't find that reference on line.

Here's a reference to Business week from 1997.

Gee, don't people keep track opf tevhnology here ?

Also a new Business Week article here.

You are also mistaken that RSA started Verisign; RSA Security was the company that licensed the RSA public-key algorithm. They actually compete directly with Verisign as a CA.

Check your facts before you post. RSA was in fact spun out of Verisign. Just because they compete now doesn't mean that they weren't ever affiliated.

-a

It has some tips on selecting your surgeon. It notes that having an experienced surgeon can make a major difference in the risk on complications.

Also it is important to realize that not every eye is suitable for surgery. Some surgeons reject a third of their applicants for surgery. Those unsuitable eyes (for example with a too thin cornea) are the biggest cause of complications. And not every surgeon is critical enough.

Following links, you would find This Article
and
This Article

And Interesting quote from the first article:
According to Lessig, Congress has extended copyright terms 11 times since 1962, each just as the copyright on the first Mickey Mouse film, Steamboat Willie, was set to expire.

The work of the creator is art, and should definitely be protected and controlled by the artist (this brings them more profit off their work, hence more incentive to create additional works) But in many cases, the control has been handed over to greedy corporations. The bookmobile may be trying to demonstrate that these corporations (and the politians that pander to their every whim) have affected more than just their target media. Because of the greedy corporations *ahem* Disney *ahem* trying to protect Mickey Mouse, they've deprived everyone of other great works of literature and music (much greater than Mickey Mouse)
I do think it's unfair that it could be taken in the manner that writers are greedy, but that is definitely not the case.
The article is not talking about taking away copyrights, it's talking about increaseing public knowledge that their rights may be under attack and that restoring a resonable amount of time after an artists death will increase the value of the public domain and help the commons of information.

Following links, you would find This Article
and
This Article

And Interesting quote from the first article:
According to Lessig, Congress has extended copyright terms 11 times since 1962, each just as the copyright on the first Mickey Mouse film, Steamboat Willie, was set to expire.

The work of the creator is art, and should definitely be protected and controlled by the artist (this brings them more profit off their work, hence more incentive to create additional works) But in many cases, the control has been handed over to greedy corporations. The bookmobile may be trying to demonstrate that these corporations (and the politians that pander to their every whim) have affected more than just their target media. Because of the greedy corporations *ahem* Disney *ahem* trying to protect Mickey Mouse, they've deprived everyone of other great works of literature and music (much greater than Mickey Mouse)
I do think it's unfair that it could be taken in the manner that writers are greedy, but that is definitely not the case.
The article is not talking about taking away copyrights, it's talking about increaseing public knowledge that their rights may be under attack and that restoring a resonable amount of time after an artists death will increase the value of the public domain and help the commons of information.

that BusinessWeek's favicon is Netscape? I know the article was written by CNet, but I'm wondering if they have an agenda in pushing positive Netscape stories.

Another way, would be to cut back on the padding. (Sorry for the vague math below, but you could still make the same point adjusting the numbers below by one or two orders of magnitude.)

It's a simple question of return on investment. The average CEO takes about 500 times more than the average employee out of the budget. Business Week puts this at an average of $13.1 million per year per CEO. To state the obvious that's 10% of a $131 million budget. Or, assuming your engineers make $250 000 a year, that's 52 FTE engineers, but if your team has to squeak by on a paltry $125 000 a year per person, that's 105 FTE.

What kind of board would hire 104 staff to do nothing and fire productive staff to make room in the budget? Ouch.

Now, if this story was just about IBM/Sun, it'd be believeable, but Micro$oft products have added more workload to SysAdmins than any other OS... There's a story I remembered seeing, and Google was able to turn upthis one. -T

Yes, worldcom and others are in hot water, but that has more to do with accounting practices. Over expenditure on executive compensation, among other things, takes a bite out of profitability. European companies seem to be doing much better, but then they compensate their executives in a manner much closer to their engineers. Less wasted money means more marketing, services and R&D.

It's a bottom-line issue. Do you want to spend your company's money getting people to hire your services, expanding your profitability or is it enough just to pad the board's wallets?

According to Businessweek, average executive compensation is 531 times higher than average hourly employee compensation. Cost-wise, that's 1 FTE for a manageer {sic} and 530 FTEs to entropy. That's really got to cut into the bottom line.

I bet even after hiring staff to cook lunch or reduce the general workload, there's plenty of that 530 FTE left over.