One of the problems with the patent system is that drug companies are encouraged to spend money creating copycat drugs. If you invent something truly novel, then your competitors will take the chemical for your drug, and change the chemical structure just enough to get past the patent, but not enough to change how it works.
A good patent system would encourage true novelty more than copycat drugs.
The reduction in audience is hardly unique to news. When you had 3 networks, all of who were showing news programs at the same time, you didn't have much choice if you wanted to watch TV.
Nowadays there are VCRs & movie rentals, Nintendo's, cable with dozens of speciality channels, and competition from FOX, UPN & WB networks, and with the obvious exception of cable news channels, none of these show news at all, and the big three's peak share has dropped from above 90% to under 60%. Peak means for the popular programs, the Seinfeld & Friends, not the news.
This is why the final episode of MASH (airing in 1983) 106 million people watched, in 1993, 80.5 million people watched the final episode of Cheers , but the final episode of Seinfeld, in 1998, only mustered 76.3
The net IS comprised of privatised segments. Part of it is owned by MCI/Worldcom, part of it is owned by Sprint, part of it is owned by PSINet etc etc etc.
What a silly question. Of course award ceremonies aren't useful. They're sales devices, used to promote movies, with the big studios being able to spend money to influence the members, and the smaller studios having less influence. Because of this many deserving movies, or actors loose out because of this.
If they were to truly reflect the quality of movies, then they should be structured more like the Pulitzer awards, which varies it's awards to match the years. A commonly used trivia question is "Who won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1954?" the answer is "nobody". Many catagories seem to have been created just to be able to award the pulitzer to two equally qualified candidates that year, for example, in 1968 the "Photography" catagory split into Spot News & Feature.
Having the source examined by an appropriate expert would allow Wired to tell if it is a genuine product which is currently misbehaving, or if it's just a scam.
Their reluctance to allow this review to take place suggests to me that it's just a scam.
In the 80's, BT was very big on prestel, which was their own private BBS type affair with teletext control codes doing the display.
In teletext, in band characters are used to display formatting, such as change colour, switch character set, and presumably add links.
An example, if you wished to put the sentence "the red bird" on the screen, with the word red in red, then you'd send the(codeForRed)red(CodeForWhite)bird. The two control codes would be displayed as spaces, and you'd get what you wanted. It was a way to minimize the memory required to store screens back in the days when memory was very expensive.
These control codes were refered to as blocks, because that's what they became on the screen, blocks of space.
As far as I can see, anything protected by any of the 'protection schemes' is not easy to get, because you have to jump through unreasonable hoops, like never moving the file once you've downloaded it.
BTW, isn't it ironic that the term used is 'protection schemes', the same as shakedown artists use.
Is this why the creat(2) system call, which can be duplicated with open(2)'s O_CREAT flag, no longer exists in modern *ixs? Funny, every system I've got seems to still have it.
There is no system call from V7 Unix which is no longer supported. I can't think of any library calls which were dropped from V7, but it wouldn't suprise me if there weren't any either.
I still find this dubious. It's quite easy to duplicate a book these days, but hardly anyone does it. It's easier to buy the book, because you get a nicer copy of the book than a photocopy provides you, and it's not prohibitively expensive.
But a CD-R copy of a CD is virtually identical, and a MP3 copy of a CD is good enough for most people.
This raises a very important point: antitrust law is retroactive and arbitrary. Think about it. If, when Microsoft tried to sign their first OEM-lockup agreement, a lawyer had said "hang on, you can't do this, because of such-and-such legislation passed n years ago as a result of the precedent of someone vs. someone-else", this situation wouldn't exist today.
If Microsoft had decent lawyers, that's exactly what they would have said. It's not our fault that they don't.
There was a breakup of IBM, they were forced to sell their SBC divison to their competitor CDC, in order to increase competition. This page has some details.
Obviously, this was not such a big division as is proposed in Microsoft, but it does show that it's not unprecedented.
Re:DeCSS will be good for DVD
on
DeCSS Update
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· Score: 3
I was just in Australia (Zone 4), and will be going to Europe (Zone 2) in the summer, but I live in Canada (Zone 1). While in Australia I spent quite a bit of money on books & CDs, as I actually had time to browse in the stores. However, I'm not going to buy a DVD which I can't play on a standard player here in Zone 1. This is money they just pissed away because of their sillieness.
John H. Patterson, and Thomas Watson, President & Chief Salesman of NCR in 1912, were each sentenced to one year in jail for anti-trust violations on Feburary 13, 1913.
The sentences were eventually overturned on appeal, but these are definatly punative sentences.
Watson was fired by Patterson, and joined, and was made president of a small company, "The Computer-Tabulator-Recording Company", which he changed the name to "International Business Machines" in 1923.
To be fair, the majority of closed source projects fail too. The RISKs digest is full of systems costing millions of dollars which have had to be shelved because they just don't meet the requirements.
Developing software is complex, and we don't always have the best people doing the jobs which are required in a project.
Perhaps we should be amazed that any software works at all.
The problem isn't dictionary availability, or words changing their meanings, there are several problems that cannot be solved with a pure dictionary based system. The first is that natural languages, and English in particular, rely on context to make ambigious words non-ambigious.
If I give the translation system the text "Pick up the lead." it doesn't know if I mean a cable, or a base metal.
The second problem is that words which are equvilant in one language are not neccessarily the same in other languages. For example in english, a book can either be a printed work, or a ledger of business transactions.
A third problem is that phrases generally do not translate. If you translate the phrase "Throw the book at him" directly into a non english language, you may well get something which has translated perfectly, but is understood totally differently.
None of these problems are totally unsolvable, but they need a good NLP in order for the computer to truely understand the text before attempting to translate it.
ree health care???I guess you haven't looked at Candada lately. People have to fucking come over to the US because the waiting list is too long on life or death operations. It doesn't work.
This is the claim which is brought out whenever the US's healthcare interests are threatened. However, they can't ever find any ACTUAL cases.
And of course, they conviently forget the growing percentange of Americans who don't have any access to healthcare at all.
America is historically the most generous country in the world, but nobody seems to remember that.
Actually, America is historically among the LEAST generous country in the world. From A deposition given to the house of representatives "Congressional support for relief and development assistance remains low, and the United States has now fallen behind Japan, Germany and France in terms of actual dollar amounts of assistance given to less developed nations. As a percentage of GNP, we now spend less on helping the poor overseas than any other of the world's 21 wealthiest nations. Last year, one-fourth of all U.S. foreign aid went to high-income nations, at a per capita expenditure of over $5 per person for the 638 million people living there. In contrast, the 3 billion living in the world's poorest countries received the equivalent of only 96 cents per person. Of this assistance, almost half went to military or security assistance. In overall terms, less than one percent of the Federal budget is spent on foreign aid, and less than half of that goes to development and humanitarian programs that help millions of the world's poorest people. This situation is deeply regrettable for a prosperous and powerful nation with the means and opportunity to make a tremendous difference in the lives of impoverished peoples and countries."
Slashdot Mirror
A good patent system would encourage true novelty more than copycat drugs.
Nowadays there are VCRs & movie rentals, Nintendo's, cable with dozens of speciality channels, and competition from FOX, UPN & WB networks, and with the obvious exception of cable news channels, none of these show news at all, and the big three's peak share has dropped from above 90% to under 60%. Peak means for the popular programs, the Seinfeld & Friends, not the news.
This is why the final episode of MASH (airing in 1983) 106 million people watched, in 1993, 80.5 million people watched the final episode of Cheers , but the final episode of Seinfeld, in 1998, only mustered 76.3
References: Primetime Forecast 1997-1998TBS Media group
Why TV Networks Are Still Worth Buying Wall Street Journal
I think UUnet saying 'no more internet' is about as likely as AT&T saying 'no more voice'.
The net IS comprised of privatised segments. Part of it is owned by MCI/Worldcom, part of it is owned by Sprint, part of it is owned by PSINet etc etc etc.
If they were to truly reflect the quality of movies, then they should be structured more like the Pulitzer awards, which varies it's awards to match the years. A commonly used trivia question is "Who won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1954?" the answer is "nobody". Many catagories seem to have been created just to be able to award the pulitzer to two equally qualified candidates that year, for example, in 1968 the "Photography" catagory split into Spot News & Feature.
There are many films which were first shown on other media before theatrical releases. Das Boot is a good example, but there are many more.
Is not saying you've forgotten when you haven't perjury?
Unfortunatly, as the user info is keyed by userid, it seems to always pick up the 202783 userid.
Their reluctance to allow this review to take place suggests to me that it's just a scam.
Regan & Gates had similar bouts when it was there turn to get awkward questions asked of them.
In teletext, in band characters are used to display formatting, such as change colour, switch character set, and presumably add links.
An example, if you wished to put the sentence "the red bird" on the screen, with the word red in red, then you'd send the(codeForRed)red(CodeForWhite)bird. The two control codes would be displayed as spaces, and you'd get what you wanted. It was a way to minimize the memory required to store screens back in the days when memory was very expensive.
These control codes were refered to as blocks, because that's what they became on the screen, blocks of space.
BTW, isn't it ironic that the term used is 'protection schemes', the same as shakedown artists use.
There is no system call from V7 Unix which is no longer supported. I can't think of any library calls which were dropped from V7, but it wouldn't suprise me if there weren't any either.
But a CD-R copy of a CD is virtually identical, and a MP3 copy of a CD is good enough for most people.
Many large organizations, including backbone ISP's have addresses registered to the US under ARIN, but actually used in Canada.
You can tell if it's US or Canada fairly easily, but telling if it's Canada is almost impossible.
If Microsoft had decent lawyers, that's exactly what they would have said. It's not our fault that they don't.
Obviously, this was not such a big division as is proposed in Microsoft, but it does show that it's not unprecedented.
I was just in Australia (Zone 4), and will be going to Europe (Zone 2) in the summer, but I live in Canada (Zone 1). While in Australia I spent quite a bit of money on books & CDs, as I actually had time to browse in the stores. However, I'm not going to buy a DVD which I can't play on a standard player here in Zone 1. This is money they just pissed away because of their sillieness.
The EU is very carefully watching the Microsoft trial, and will almost certainly take their own actions if not happy with the US's actions.
The sentences were eventually overturned on appeal, but these are definatly punative sentences.
Watson was fired by Patterson, and joined, and was made president of a small company, "The Computer-Tabulator-Recording Company", which he changed the name to "International Business Machines" in 1923.
Wouldn't this be Pierre Boulle's idea?
Developing software is complex, and we don't always have the best people doing the jobs which are required in a project.
Perhaps we should be amazed that any software works at all.
If I give the translation system the text "Pick up the lead." it doesn't know if I mean a cable, or a base metal.
The second problem is that words which are equvilant in one language are not neccessarily the same in other languages. For example in english, a book can either be a printed work, or a ledger of business transactions.
A third problem is that phrases generally do not translate. If you translate the phrase "Throw the book at him" directly into a non english language, you may well get something which has translated perfectly, but is understood totally differently.
None of these problems are totally unsolvable, but they need a good NLP in order for the computer to truely understand the text before attempting to translate it.
This is the claim which is brought out whenever the US's healthcare interests are threatened. However, they can't ever find any ACTUAL cases.
And of course, they conviently forget the growing percentange of Americans who don't have any access to healthcare at all.
Actually, America is historically among the LEAST generous country in the world. From A deposition given to the house of representatives "Congressional support for relief and development assistance remains low, and the United States has now fallen behind Japan, Germany and France in terms of actual dollar amounts of assistance given to less developed nations. As a percentage of GNP, we now spend less on helping the poor overseas than any other of the world's 21 wealthiest nations. Last year, one-fourth of all U.S. foreign aid went to high-income nations, at a per capita expenditure of over $5 per person for the 638 million people living there. In contrast, the 3 billion living in the world's poorest countries received the equivalent of only 96 cents per person. Of this assistance, almost half went to military or security assistance. In overall terms, less than one percent of the Federal budget is spent on foreign aid, and less than half of that goes to development and humanitarian programs that help millions of the world's poorest people. This situation is deeply regrettable for a prosperous and powerful nation with the means and opportunity to make a tremendous difference in the lives of impoverished peoples and countries."
Also much of the aid given by the US is actually inapropriate, either dumping of food unwanted in the US, destroying local agriculture or linking aid with helping the US's military interests