At the company where I work, when I started it was originally one legal entity. After a few years it became another one (some sort of rationalisation or something). Anyway, we all had to sign new employment contracts, confidentiality agreements, and invention and creative works agreements. From when I had started work the inventions and creative works one had broadened to include everything (if I wrote a novel it would be their copyright - I was in charge of an analytical chemistry group at the time, so this was ridiculous).
I told them I wasn't signing that, and suggested that they get back to me with the offending clauses struck out - the original agreement would be fine. They never did.
Things all got very tense a few years later, when I came up with something patentable. Things were progressing swimmingly until the lawyers started to be jerks over paying the considerations you are "entitled" to - these are nominal sums of money (50 Mexican Pesos kind of small - there were about half a dozen like this) that some countries assignment rules mean that you should be given in return for your invention. I was saying that if I'm signing a form saying that I had been paid a consideration of 50 Pesos, I wanted my 50 Pesos. Otherwise, no signature.
One of them pointed out on the phone, at great length and with not a little pomposity, that I had signed an agreement that compelled me to sign, and there were all sorts of dire repercussions if I did not: vague threats of court action, damages for breach of contract, and the like. I let him bluster along until he wound down, and then told him "Sorry, I didn't sign that form - I sent it back to HR for amendments, but they never did get back to me. Now, about these pesos..."
Never before has a silence sounded soooo good.
The, disappointing in a way, result was that they redrafted the forms (it must have cost them a fortune) and sent them back in an acceptable form for me to sign. The total value of all the considerations in the forms must have been about $10. And I never did get my Pesos.
Our real hope is that everyone else wakes up and realizes the danger stupid patents (and, perhaps, software patents in general) represent to our currently flourishing 'New Economy'
Stupid patents are OK - if someone want's to waste money for a patent on a system for measuring bra sizes then fine. Mad, but safe. The problem is obvious patents - software and others - being granted.
There were comments in the article about how difficult it is to test objectively for obviousness, and how restrictive the check for prior art is (basically patents + journals). It does strike me that there is another way - B&N got hit with an injunction soon after Amazon got its patent. Plenty of other sites had one-click ordering, I believe. The multiple independent "invention" (or, more accurately, implementation) of a "one-click" ordering system has got to say something about how obvious the idea is.
Also saying something about obviousness of the invention is its ease of implementation - most decent programmers, if given the spec, could knock it up quickly.
The problem, and it is a big one, is translating "saying something" into real action. But here's a stab anyway (and I'll throw in software patents lasting too long too)
1. Software patents last 4 years from granting. The process is fast tracked and takes exactly six months.
2. The patent must remain secret until granted - this means that you can't use it until it is granted. This gets round the problem drawing out the "patent applied for" process. And it gets rid of frivioulous applications - if sacrificing six months of use of a patent is to much of a price to pay for a four year monopoly, then I think it is fair to question the usefulness of the invention.
3. If anyone else independently invents the patent during the application process (6 months) then tough - the invention is too obvious to be worth a patent. Inventions can either be another application to the patent office, or a public implementation.
What these steps don't cover is how to cope with the "obvious, but no-one bothered to do it". I did think of giving the claims of the patent to some programmers, and seeing if they could quickly reproduce the mechanism, but I don't think that this is fair - a lot of the time the invention isn't about getting the right answer, but asking the right question.
Her strong suggestion was that we need to get people who *know* the art in the patent office. Until that happens, bad things will happen.
Welcome to the world where bad things happen.
An analogy may elucidate: here in the UK teachers continually get criticised because "they are not teaching the children properly". This is probably valid criticism in many cases. Now teaching is not an exciting job, and for any competent professional it is definitely in the lower quartile of the salary range. The result: no one, unless they have a strong ambition to teach, will become a teacher, which results in a lot of those who are teachers are teachers because they couldn't find anything else to do.
Patent offices have a similar problem, except worse: some people grow up wanting to be a teacher; no one grows up wanting to be a patent clerk. Anyone who can do anything else well will be doing it.
So what is the solution. I don't know. I have a feeling that something like peer review would be good. I've not thought this through, so feel free to pick holes in it, but a system like
A provisional patent is published - paper, web, everything.
Any one can comment on it. The idea is that before a patent is granted people have a chance to put forward prior art (as opposed to a single patent examiner having to find it in secret). Strict timelimits will apply. All comments will be public.
Based on prior art/comments received, the patent examiner can provisionally grant or reject the patent - if anybody objects to his decision the patent should go to some sort of patent court to decide. If nobody complains then it is a done deal.
This gets rid of the major complaint against the current system - patent examiners being incompetent. They will rely on the expertise of others and just become arbiters.
To be/. friendly think of it as open sourcing the patent review process: anyone can contribute.
Here is an overview of the law in the UK. What can be trademarked is astonishing: Slogans, Logos, Words, Packaging, Smells, and Sounds.
There was a notorious case a few years ago regarding the Jif lemon packaging (for those who don't know this is lemon juice in a bottle the shape of a lemon). Jif applied for and got protection on the lemon, and sucessfully took a supermarket to court to stop them selling (or rather, passing-off) their version of lemon-juice-in-a-lemon. This was in 1990, so it's fairly old and established practice.
So in this context the success of Apple getting and enforcing a registered design on the iMac isn't too much of a surprise. (I know it's a different juristiction, but trademark and design rules are pretty homogeneous throughout the west).
More than you would ever want to know about Designs and trademarks can be found here.
Personally I don't think that they have that good a case - the idea of these design registrations is distinctiveness and to prevent passing off. I don't think that the purchaser of the Daewoo products thought they were buying an iMac. Obviously the judge disagreed.
Don't expect copyrights to be expiring anytime soon. The Sonny Bono (may he rot in his grave) Copyright Act extended copyrights from 75 years to (I believe) 95 years, just in time to keep Disney's lousy Mickey Mouse out of the hands of The People(tm).
Tell me about it. A friend of mine has a business selling CDs of out of copyright recordings. He was put in the bizarre position of having to withdraw some of his catalogue because when the copyright act was amended here (from 50 to 70 years after the creators death) it had the effect of placing un-expiring expired copyrights. Totally mad.
Everywhere it reigns, from Wal-Mart to AOL/Time Warner to Microsoft, corporatism discourages creativity, pushes individuals to the margins and promotes conformity and control of software, hardware, intellectual content and culture.
One of the striking aspects of geek culture is that it's so far remained much freer than the mainstream. Software and hardware have enabled individuals to seek out rich, diverse and highly individualized entertainment. The ability to personalize culture in this way is unprecedented, a unique feature of life online.
These two paragraphs sort of struck me as a strange juxtaposition. In the first there is a strong antipathy towards the entertainment industry. But the second implies that the geeks seek out their "rich, diverse, and highly individualized" entertainment from these vendors of mediocrity. Odd that - I don't think that it's a valid complaint.
There is obviously more in the DMCA that is wrong. The main one is the the prohibition against reverse engineering. You have several ways sanctioned by your government to protect intellectual property: Trademarks, Patents, and Copyright. There are reasons for the existence of all of them (the reasons have been hotly debated here, but let that pass for the moment).
Trademarks aren't really germane here to this discussion. Copyrights allow someone the exclusive rights to publish something in return for them publishing in the first place - the idea being that everybody benefits. The creator can profit from his work, the rest can benefit by it, and after a while it belongs to everyone.
Patents are the same idea - you tell everybody how to do something, you get to benefit for a set period of time, society also benefits, and after a while it belongs to everybody.
The companies using DMCA want to have all the advantages of copyrights and patents (a government sanctioned monopoly) without the quid pro quo. More than this - they want it to reduce the rights that you have under patent and copyright law. And the sting in the tail is they want it to be illegal for you to try and get those rights back.
An example of this is expiry of copyright. Consider a film that has the full bells and whistles DVD protection. You have a copy of it. The copyright expires. Now what? Can you copy it? Nope. Can you reverse engineer the copy protection so you can copy it? Nope.
The DMCA is completely unbalanced in that it is focussed solely on the protection of the rights of copyright owners, and ignores the reasons for the existance of copyright in the first place.
?!? Did you read the text you just quoted? Where's the accusation? You do know what the word means, don't you? Where in the letter does it say Mr. de Joode is doing anything? Saying he could use the domain for data mining is not an accusation, it's an observation
It is an observation in much the same way that "Have you stopped beating you wife?" is a question. It is more than a simple observation - it is an observation that will produce a negative opinion of Mr De Joode in the minds of the reader.
An observation couched in those terms is nothing more than an Ad Hominem attack. There is not an iota of evidence, or even reasonable grounds for suspicion, that Mr De Joode is doing anything untowards. Indeed, based on his reputation, previous work, and useful contributions to usenet and other places, the opposite conclusion should, initally, be drawn.
Paranoid, baseless, and derogatory "observations" that try to put pressure on him say more about the observer than the observed.
And understanding what all these genes are doing will take even more time.
This is roughly the one of themes of John Maddox's (the former editor of Nature) book "What Remains to be Discovered" (ISBN 0-333-65009-3). He makes several good points relating to the enterprise, the most important being that (to paraphrase) "nobody can even guess at what most of the genes do, even for the simple orgranisms that have been fully typed". Admittedly, it is early days. But the point is that the map of the genome just gets us to the start line.
The book, incidently, is very good. The three themes are: "Theory of Everything" type stuff: "The origin and detailed workings of life"; and "consciousness, artifical intelligence, and species survival." Anyone who thinks that we are running out of things to know should have a read.
That's right, but remember, it doesn't necessarily need to go right up to the ECHR - we will be able to challenge it in ordinary British courts with the passing of the Human Rights Act.
You'll have to excuse my scepticism - the incorporation of the ECHR is due to take place in October. Until it happens I'll assume it isn't going to. After all, what happened to the promised "Freedom of Information Act" (promised within one year of election, wasn't it)? Strange how legislation that would dilute the power of the executive (e.g. the FOIA) get held up intermiably, whereas those which concentrate it (the abolition of the House of Lords, and the current example), manage to get enacted with almost indecent haste.
I think Blair is well-meaning - this makes him dangerous:
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
The Demon URL contains Demon's comments from the Home Office consulation on the updating of "The Interception of Communication Act." (IOCA) to deal with the Internet. The current bill contains most of these proposals. Therefore the comments on the shortcomings and inconsistancies of these proposals are still applicable to the new bill. There is obviously much more in the new bill that is objectionable, but what was a bad idea then is still a bad idea, and for the same reasons.
I totally agree with you regarding the urgency. Forcing a bill through Parliament quickly is usually a sign of bad legislation: either a law that doesn't do what it was intended, or a law that goes to far. Legislate in haste, litigate at leisure.
There is a high probability that the European Court of Human Rights will kill this (or at least some of the proposals) in due course, but that will take maybe 5 years.
Sorry, but in England (*) there is the presumption of innocence and, in a criminal matter, it is up to the prosecution to "prove beyond reasonable doubt" to find someone guilty.
(*) Things are a bit different in Scotland, although there is still the presumption of innocence. There are three verdicts: "Guilty", "Not Guilty", and "Not Proven". The last is usually taken to mean "We think you you did it, but they haven't proved it".
More of a riddle really - the whole theme of the book is the loss and rediscovery, and one of the recurring emphases of this is the loss of his name. The books starts with the narrator as a blank slate which is gradually filled in by dreams (which are actually memories). The book ends with him recovering almost everything important to him, including his name, but you are never explicitly told it.
There are, however, two apparently throw-away comments made whilst he is remembering his life that let you work out his name: I don't think this is accidental:). It took me a few reads before I twigged though.
Has anyone else figured out the "puzzle" in "The Bridge" - working out the narrator's name?
Re:Structure in writing
on
Inversions
·
· Score: 1
Yes, "Player of Games" is his best Iain M. Banks novel, although you have to be Scottish to appreciate some of the "in-jokes" - e.g. Azad is the name of a chain of Video rental shops (there are more, but I forget them now).
His best (or rather, my favourite) is "The Crow Road". Characterisation, Plot, humour, and a the denouement. All great. Avoid "Canal Dreams" unless you are a completist: his worst. Although "A Song of Stone" wasn't much better.
Inversions I read a while ago and it was definitely in the "OK, but nothing special category".
A few years ago colleges in the UK were allowed rename themselves as universities. One memorable near name change was when Newcastle-upon-Tyne College planned to rename itself "City University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne", until some spoilsport pointed out the unfortunate acronym.
Two media companies (Carlton Communications (TV) and United Media (Newspapers)) merged recently. The original proposed name: Carlton-United Newspapers and Television. Strangely, that was shelved too...
Books, newspapers, non-luxury food stuffs in the UK are zero rated (0% tax). This applies to stuff being imported to the UK too (but see below for an exception). What is good about US retailers that are known for books is that books have 0% import tax also, so ordering DVDs from such a place means that customs assumes they are books and they get thought without import tax or VAT.
Another difference in the EU is that VAT is changed from the point of sale, rather than the point of delivery. A lot of "high-tech" companies have web sales outlets in Ireland (because the can get Government and EU grants to set up there). This leads to the farcical situation where it costs more to order eg. a G400 card from matrox (with 21% VAT in Ireland), rather than from a local wholesaler (with 17.5% VAT).
And as for the blinkered Europhile sometime earlier asking whether a) High taxes but a good social welfare policy or b) low taxes but people sleeping in the street (they were in favour of a), needless to say). The UK gets the best of both worlds - high taxes and homelessness. I work in London, but every european city I have visited there are people "sleeping rough" (as it is euphemistically called). So great in principle, but the reality is somewhat different.
If this was true, then that would be fine. It's not.
The code was in the beta product, and the beta product was shipped to corporate customers as part of a preview program. The aim of the program - to test compatibility of various products with the new Windows software. Having the code in the beta destroyed DR-DOS in any corporate environment that intended to move to windows. If you were an IT manager in those days, would you have recommended MS-DOS or DR-DOS to run windows on, given that windows gave errors with DR-DOS?
A browser is a natural extension of an operating system, for the simple fact it is such a useful tool.
This is irrelevent. What is relevent is that MS did not have any intention of including the browser for free in the operating system until they failed to persuade Netscape to divide up the windows market - remember the first version of 95 plus which (1) was sold and (2) contained a version of IE.
One of the more amusing bits of the trial was BG, in his video testimony, denying that Netscape was a threat, and then the DOJ producing copious corresondence from within MS that showed the exact opposite.
There can be little doubt that MS bundled the browser free, tied within the operating system, purely to get a strangle-hold on the browser market. This bundling used their monopoly in the OS arena to gain market share (and what is getting close to a monopoly) in the browser arena in at least three ways -
(1) making sure that every copy of Win9x had a copy of IE on it
(2) making the installed IE just about inextricable from win9x
(3) using its Market development agreements with OEMs to prevent them distributing Netscape with win9x on consumer machines at an affordable price.
As has been pointed out many times, here and elsewhere, this type of predatory use of a monopoly is against the law.
>When discussing what's acceptable for European >audiences and American audiences, especially >when also discussing Kubrick, keep in mind that >A Clockwork Orange is still banned in England.
Not quite - it could not be shown in Britain while Kubrick was alive because a) he owned to copyright and b) he didn't want it to be shown (for various reasons to do with hysteria over copycat crimes when the movie was released).
Now he is dead I don't know what the situation is - certainly it is not the case that the "Authorities" banned it, as you seemed to be implying.
Slashdot Mirror
I told them I wasn't signing that, and suggested that they get back to me with the offending clauses struck out - the original agreement would be fine. They never did.
Things all got very tense a few years later, when I came up with something patentable. Things were progressing swimmingly until the lawyers started to be jerks over paying the considerations you are "entitled" to - these are nominal sums of money (50 Mexican Pesos kind of small - there were about half a dozen like this) that some countries assignment rules mean that you should be given in return for your invention. I was saying that if I'm signing a form saying that I had been paid a consideration of 50 Pesos, I wanted my 50 Pesos. Otherwise, no signature.
One of them pointed out on the phone, at great length and with not a little pomposity, that I had signed an agreement that compelled me to sign, and there were all sorts of dire repercussions if I did not: vague threats of court action, damages for breach of contract, and the like. I let him bluster along until he wound down, and then told him "Sorry, I didn't sign that form - I sent it back to HR for amendments, but they never did get back to me. Now, about these pesos..."
Never before has a silence sounded soooo good.
The, disappointing in a way, result was that they redrafted the forms (it must have cost them a fortune) and sent them back in an acceptable form for me to sign. The total value of all the considerations in the forms must have been about $10. And I never did get my Pesos.
Stupid patents are OK - if someone want's to waste money for a patent on a system for measuring bra sizes then fine. Mad, but safe. The problem is obvious patents - software and others - being granted.
There were comments in the article about how difficult it is to test objectively for obviousness, and how restrictive the check for prior art is (basically patents + journals). It does strike me that there is another way - B&N got hit with an injunction soon after Amazon got its patent. Plenty of other sites had one-click ordering, I believe. The multiple independent "invention" (or, more accurately, implementation) of a "one-click" ordering system has got to say something about how obvious the idea is.
Also saying something about obviousness of the invention is its ease of implementation - most decent programmers, if given the spec, could knock it up quickly.
The problem, and it is a big one, is translating "saying something" into real action. But here's a stab anyway (and I'll throw in software patents lasting too long too)
1. Software patents last 4 years from granting. The process is fast tracked and takes exactly six months.
2. The patent must remain secret until granted - this means that you can't use it until it is granted. This gets round the problem drawing out the "patent applied for" process. And it gets rid of frivioulous applications - if sacrificing six months of use of a patent is to much of a price to pay for a four year monopoly, then I think it is fair to question the usefulness of the invention.
3. If anyone else independently invents the patent during the application process (6 months) then tough - the invention is too obvious to be worth a patent. Inventions can either be another application to the patent office, or a public implementation.
What these steps don't cover is how to cope with the "obvious, but no-one bothered to do it". I did think of giving the claims of the patent to some programmers, and seeing if they could quickly reproduce the mechanism, but I don't think that this is fair - a lot of the time the invention isn't about getting the right answer, but asking the right question.
Welcome to the world where bad things happen.
An analogy may elucidate: here in the UK teachers continually get criticised because "they are not teaching the children properly". This is probably valid criticism in many cases. Now teaching is not an exciting job, and for any competent professional it is definitely in the lower quartile of the salary range. The result: no one, unless they have a strong ambition to teach, will become a teacher, which results in a lot of those who are teachers are teachers because they couldn't find anything else to do.
Patent offices have a similar problem, except worse: some people grow up wanting to be a teacher; no one grows up wanting to be a patent clerk. Anyone who can do anything else well will be doing it.
So what is the solution. I don't know. I have a feeling that something like peer review would be good. I've not thought this through, so feel free to pick holes in it, but a system like
A provisional patent is published - paper, web, everything.
Any one can comment on it. The idea is that before a patent is granted people have a chance to put forward prior art (as opposed to a single patent examiner having to find it in secret). Strict timelimits will apply. All comments will be public.
Based on prior art/comments received, the patent examiner can provisionally grant or reject the patent - if anybody objects to his decision the patent should go to some sort of patent court to decide. If nobody complains then it is a done deal.
This gets rid of the major complaint against the current system - patent examiners being incompetent. They will rely on the expertise of others and just become arbiters.
To be /. friendly think of it as open sourcing the patent review process: anyone can contribute.
There was a notorious case a few years ago regarding the Jif lemon packaging (for those who don't know this is lemon juice in a bottle the shape of a lemon). Jif applied for and got protection on the lemon, and sucessfully took a supermarket to court to stop them selling (or rather, passing-off) their version of lemon-juice-in-a-lemon. This was in 1990, so it's fairly old and established practice.
So in this context the success of Apple getting and enforcing a registered design on the iMac isn't too much of a surprise. (I know it's a different juristiction, but trademark and design rules are pretty homogeneous throughout the west).
More than you would ever want to know about Designs and trademarks can be found here.
Personally I don't think that they have that good a case - the idea of these design registrations is distinctiveness and to prevent passing off. I don't think that the purchaser of the Daewoo products thought they were buying an iMac. Obviously the judge disagreed.
Tell me about it. A friend of mine has a business selling CDs of out of copyright recordings. He was put in the bizarre position of having to withdraw some of his catalogue because when the copyright act was amended here (from 50 to 70 years after the creators death) it had the effect of placing un-expiring expired copyrights. Totally mad.
One of the striking aspects of geek culture is that it's so far remained much freer than the mainstream. Software and hardware have enabled individuals to seek out rich, diverse and highly individualized entertainment. The ability to personalize culture in this way is unprecedented, a unique feature of life online.
These two paragraphs sort of struck me as a strange juxtaposition. In the first there is a strong antipathy towards the entertainment industry. But the second implies that the geeks seek out their "rich, diverse, and highly individualized" entertainment from these vendors of mediocrity. Odd that - I don't think that it's a valid complaint.
There is obviously more in the DMCA that is wrong. The main one is the the prohibition against reverse engineering. You have several ways sanctioned by your government to protect intellectual property: Trademarks, Patents, and Copyright. There are reasons for the existence of all of them (the reasons have been hotly debated here, but let that pass for the moment).
Trademarks aren't really germane here to this discussion. Copyrights allow someone the exclusive rights to publish something in return for them publishing in the first place - the idea being that everybody benefits. The creator can profit from his work, the rest can benefit by it, and after a while it belongs to everyone.
Patents are the same idea - you tell everybody how to do something, you get to benefit for a set period of time, society also benefits, and after a while it belongs to everybody.
The companies using DMCA want to have all the advantages of copyrights and patents (a government sanctioned monopoly) without the quid pro quo. More than this - they want it to reduce the rights that you have under patent and copyright law. And the sting in the tail is they want it to be illegal for you to try and get those rights back.
An example of this is expiry of copyright. Consider a film that has the full bells and whistles DVD protection. You have a copy of it. The copyright expires. Now what? Can you copy it? Nope. Can you reverse engineer the copy protection so you can copy it? Nope.
The DMCA is completely unbalanced in that it is focussed solely on the protection of the rights of copyright owners, and ignores the reasons for the existance of copyright in the first place.
It is an observation in much the same way that "Have you stopped beating you wife?" is a question. It is more than a simple observation - it is an observation that will produce a negative opinion of Mr De Joode in the minds of the reader.
An observation couched in those terms is nothing more than an Ad Hominem attack. There is not an iota of evidence, or even reasonable grounds for suspicion, that Mr De Joode is doing anything untowards. Indeed, based on his reputation, previous work, and useful contributions to usenet and other places, the opposite conclusion should, initally, be drawn.
Paranoid, baseless, and derogatory "observations" that try to put pressure on him say more about the observer than the observed.
Nay, Nay and thrice Nay: .com is an international designation, not a US one.
This is roughly the one of themes of John Maddox's (the former editor of Nature) book "What Remains to be Discovered" (ISBN 0-333-65009-3). He makes several good points relating to the enterprise, the most important being that (to paraphrase) "nobody can even guess at what most of the genes do, even for the simple orgranisms that have been fully typed". Admittedly, it is early days. But the point is that the map of the genome just gets us to the start line.
The book, incidently, is very good. The three themes are: "Theory of Everything" type stuff: "The origin and detailed workings of life"; and "consciousness, artifical intelligence, and species survival." Anyone who thinks that we are running out of things to know should have a read.
You'll have to excuse my scepticism - the incorporation of the ECHR is due to take place in October. Until it happens I'll assume it isn't going to. After all, what happened to the promised "Freedom of Information Act" (promised within one year of election, wasn't it)? Strange how legislation that would dilute the power of the executive (e.g. the FOIA) get held up intermiably, whereas those which concentrate it (the abolition of the House of Lords, and the current example), manage to get enacted with almost indecent haste.
I think Blair is well-meaning - this makes him dangerous:
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding .
Louis D. Brandeis, Supreme Counrt Justice
The Demon URL contains Demon's comments from the Home Office consulation on the updating of "The Interception of Communication Act." (IOCA) to deal with the Internet. The current bill contains most of these proposals. Therefore the comments on the shortcomings and inconsistancies of these proposals are still applicable to the new bill. There is obviously much more in the new bill that is objectionable, but what was a bad idea then is still a bad idea, and for the same reasons.
I totally agree with you regarding the urgency. Forcing a bill through Parliament quickly is usually a sign of bad legislation: either a law that doesn't do what it was intended, or a law that goes to far. Legislate in haste, litigate at leisure.
There is a high probability that the European Court of Human Rights will kill this (or at least some of the proposals) in due course, but that will take maybe 5 years.
A long, but good, summary of the law and its implications can be found here
Sorry, but in England (*) there is the presumption of innocence and, in a criminal matter, it is up to the prosecution to "prove beyond reasonable doubt" to find someone guilty.
(*) Things are a bit different in Scotland, although there is still the presumption of innocence. There are three verdicts: "Guilty", "Not Guilty", and "Not Proven". The last is usually taken to mean "We think you you did it, but they haven't proved it".
how is the puzzle described?
:). It took me a few reads before I twigged though.
More of a riddle really - the whole theme of the book is the loss and rediscovery, and one of the recurring emphases of this is the loss of his name. The books starts with the narrator as a blank slate which is gradually filled in by dreams (which are actually memories). The book ends with him recovering almost everything important to him, including his name, but you are never explicitly told it.
There are, however, two apparently throw-away comments made whilst he is remembering his life that let you work out his name: I don't think this is accidental
Has anyone else figured out the "puzzle" in "The Bridge" - working out the narrator's name?
Yes, "Player of Games" is his best Iain M. Banks novel, although you have to be Scottish to appreciate some of the "in-jokes" - e.g. Azad is the name of a chain of Video rental shops (there are more, but I forget them now).
His best (or rather, my favourite) is "The Crow Road". Characterisation, Plot, humour, and a the denouement. All great. Avoid "Canal Dreams" unless you are a completist: his worst. Although "A Song of Stone" wasn't much better.
Inversions I read a while ago and it was definitely in the "OK, but nothing special category".
A few years ago colleges in the UK were allowed rename themselves as universities. One memorable near name change was when Newcastle-upon-Tyne College planned to rename itself "City University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne", until some spoilsport pointed out the unfortunate acronym.
Two media companies (Carlton Communications (TV) and United Media (Newspapers)) merged recently. The original proposed name: Carlton-United Newspapers and Television. Strangely, that was shelved too...
Books, newspapers, non-luxury food stuffs in the UK are zero rated (0% tax). This applies to stuff being imported to the UK too (but see below for an exception). What is good about US retailers that are known for books is that books have 0% import tax also, so ordering DVDs from such a place means that customs assumes they are books and they get thought without import tax or VAT.
Another difference in the EU is that VAT is changed from the point of sale, rather than the point of delivery. A lot of "high-tech" companies have web sales outlets in Ireland (because the can get Government and EU grants to set up there). This leads to the farcical situation where it costs more to order eg. a G400 card from matrox (with 21% VAT in Ireland), rather than from a local wholesaler (with 17.5% VAT).
And as for the blinkered Europhile sometime earlier asking whether a) High taxes but a good social welfare policy or b) low taxes but people sleeping in the street (they were in favour of a), needless to say). The UK gets the best of both worlds - high taxes and homelessness. I work in London, but every european city I have visited there are people "sleeping rough" (as it is euphemistically called). So great in principle, but the reality is somewhat different.
No, this code never made it to the end user.
If this was true, then that would be fine. It's not.
The code was in the beta product, and the beta product was shipped to corporate customers as part of a preview program. The aim of the program - to test compatibility of various products with the new Windows software. Having the code in the beta destroyed DR-DOS in any corporate environment that intended to move to windows. If you were an IT manager in those days, would you have recommended MS-DOS or DR-DOS to run windows on, given that windows gave errors with DR-DOS?
It seems to me the designers just thought it would be too tough or impractical to make it secure, or they just didn't think about security at all.
The bandwidth for RDS is 37.5 bits per second - so keys and digital certificates are out. Maybe in the days of digital radio, but not for RDS.
A browser is a natural extension of an operating system, for the simple fact it is such a useful tool.
This is irrelevent. What is relevent is that MS did not have any intention of including the browser for free in the operating system until they failed to persuade Netscape to divide up the windows market - remember the first version of 95 plus which (1) was sold and (2) contained a version of IE.
One of the more amusing bits of the trial was BG, in his video testimony, denying that Netscape was a threat, and then the DOJ producing copious corresondence from within MS that showed the exact opposite.
There can be little doubt that MS bundled the browser free, tied within the operating system, purely to get a strangle-hold on the browser market. This bundling used their monopoly in the OS arena to gain market share (and what is getting close to a monopoly) in the browser arena in at least three ways -
(1) making sure that every copy of Win9x had a copy of IE on it
(2) making the installed IE just about inextricable from win9x
(3) using its Market development agreements with OEMs to prevent them distributing Netscape with win9x on consumer machines at an affordable price.
As has been pointed out many times, here and elsewhere, this type of predatory use of a monopoly is against the law.
>When discussing what's acceptable for European
>audiences and American audiences, especially
>when also discussing Kubrick, keep in mind that
>A Clockwork Orange is still banned in England.
Not quite - it could not be shown in Britain while Kubrick was alive because a) he owned to copyright and b) he didn't want it to be shown (for various reasons to do with hysteria over copycat crimes when the movie was released).
Now he is dead I don't know what the situation is - certainly it is not the case that the "Authorities" banned it, as you seemed to be implying.
Time And Relative Dimensions In Space