There is also a new (at last! almost 4 months since.29) 3.1.30 pcmcia-cs package
Wow... cool... thanks for letting me know, and according to the changelog the preemptable kernel patch will work now... Have a lot of patching to do this weekend.
Primitive cultures like the one running Afghanistan don't accept the inevitability of globalism. Most other governments do, perhaps the primary reason the Arab world isn't actively resisting the much-resented United States in its new war. Countries that don't want to join in may end up like Afghanistan, beset by tribal conflicts, cut off from capital development and economic opportunity.
I think that Afghanis generally don't think about concepts like globalism. All they really know is that they have had 2 super powers fight a bloody war on their land and using their people. Madmen were given weapons to fight against EVIL communists. Know the holy-warrior-defenders-of-freedom madmen are labeled the EVIL-DOERS and Afghanistan is bombed again. Afghanis don't associate globalism with baywatch or mcdonalds but with war, bombings, and death.
I live in a third world country where there is a great deal of violence. This country accepts globalism and does whatever the US wants. Yet the violence has increased. You think Capitilism come Globilism is a stabilising force? You need to leave your bubble of your first world existence. People round here love cell-phones, cable tv, mcdonalds, baywatch, mercedes benzes, and will do whatever it takes to get them. There just isn't that many opportunities out there. So they sell drugs, sell their bodies, steal, or get a gun and kill to get what they want. People who are surrounded by violence lose perspective and do not value human life like those in the first world.
Please don't look at globalism as the saviour of the World. There will always be violence as long as people don't place a high value on human life. This means everyone. Those in the first world just can't sit back in luxury while millions starve and say "it's not our problem." It is just this attitude which makes America hated.
Baywatch and McDonalds aren't going to save the world, respect for human life will.
I knew that one or two days after I finished downloading the 2.2_rev3 iso (on a 56Kbs dialup!)that rev4 would come out... I'm gonna download the latest KDE now, so expect 3.0 to be released next week...
Everyone knows America isn't well-liked in certain areas of the world... but precious few man-on-the-street Joe Average Citizens can tell you -why-. That, in a nutshell, is what the problem is. If people knew -why- we were hated, if they took the time to learn about the past instead of repeating it, maybe we could find a way out of this that doesn't involve a billion dollars worth of explosions.
Excellent post...
The sad thing about it is that no one seems to be getting this. I find it scary how one-sided the reporting has been lately. What Americans don't know is that the WTC bombing isn't that big a deal in the developing world. Why should it be? do Americans care if 5,000 people starve to death in Africa (or case in point, Afghanistan) ? So why should Afghani's care that 5,000 Americans died in New York? How many Americans really care that innocent people are being bombed in Afghanistan right now, honestly?
Americans live their lives in a bubble. On Sept 11 that bubble was burst... but instead of looking out and seeing the real world for the first time, they choose to build a bigger, stronger bubble.
It is time for americans to wake up. In the real world, people die. Instead of building walls around yourselves and separating yourselves from the rest of the world, why not try to make the world a better place?
Americans want to give the CIA money and power to train agents to fight Bin Laden the same way they allowed the CIA to train Bin Laden to fight the Soviet Union. If you really want to get the guys who made Sept 11 happen then bomb the CIA. The US created a monster to fight the soviet Union. Once the the Soviet Union was gone they left them there. Who give a fuck about Afghanistan, right?
I find it sad that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. I find it sad the US trained terrorists to fight the Soviet Union, I find it sad that the Afghani people were at the mercy of these terrorists after the Soviet Union left. I find it sad that the World Trade Center was bombed. I find it sad that the Afghanistan is being bombed again. I find it sad that the terrorist will strike again in retaliation for afghanistan being bombed. I find it sad that the US will bomb more countries in retaliation for that.
The article seems to imply that its just Islamic Fundamentalists behind this. The way I see it there are fundamentalists on the US side too.
As soon as I stop typing this post I'm geeting this video... sounds like it may be a classic like "reefer madness" or "duck and cover." This could be the best thing Disney has ever made!
We need a place to publish the things which are outlawed in the US, without getting prosecuted for publishing these things to the US.
The site? http://thefreeworld.net/
This is a great idea, it's just too bad that this is the way it has to be. It seems stupid that the US can screw up research just because they have a congress which likes to impose backwards laws on the rest of the world. When will it end? just hope the "War on Info-Terrorists" isn't the same as the "War on drugs" : pointless and futile, like commanding the sea to recede. So far it looks that this is the way it'll be...
IANAL but it shouldn't make a difference as long as Americans can't access the data. So transmitting the data over their lines shouldn't cause a problem. If it did then they would have to find a way to stop it in which block it in which case it should route around the US.
Then again the DMCA sounds pretty screwed up... who knows what is illegal in the US these days...
"Just one more turn, then I'll get some sleep"
on
Sid Meier on Civ III
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Famous last words...
The interview didn't really answer the questions I have about the game.
Have they done anything about the micromanagement hell seen in Civ II? A little after the industrial revolution I find it seems to take forever to make things happen.
Are the AI's a little better? do the computer players still cheat? I assume so, but hopefully not as bad as before.
I definitely like the improvements though. Culture is gonna add a new dynamic to the game and certain resources being required will make things interesting.
I'll be looking forward to playing it... many sleepless nights ahead...
The *only* ODBC driver that is officially provided by the PostgreSQL team is for Windows. It's been available since at least 1998.
http://odbc.postgresql.org
Thanks... It will be helpful... would've been more helpful if I knew 10 months ago. Oh well I guess I should've read the docs more carefully. This underlines the importance of having things easily found on your website... I'm using MySQL only because the ODBC driver was easier to find on their website than on postGreSQL's... Time to make yet another new version of the database
Ok I use MySQL. Why not PostGreSQL? Well I had to use Access as a frontend to the database as it's already installed at all the sites and there is a windows MySQL ODBC driver. There is not (AFAIK) a PostGreSQL ODBC driver for windows. If there is then would someone pelase point me to it. If not don't tell me that PostGreSQL is superior, because while that may be true, it still can't do what I need it to do.
I do find MySQL to be very limited and I find it frustrating that it just can't do what I want it to do (without a huge amount of ugly workarounds). But hey I have to use Access so I'm used to it. I will use PostGreSQL If there was a ODBC driver that would work on windows.
yeah the one I tried was with 2.4.10 didn't work. my card's driver isn't included with the kernel so I have to compile the pcmcia driver that comes with the pcmcia-cs package (why IS there 2 different drivers?). I checked the changelog on the pre-emptive kernel page and it mentions that they are pressing the maintainers to fix the code for pcmcia-cs for the next release which I hope is soon.
Tried this patch before... it works great adds a nice option in the kernel config. But the problem is pcmcia-cs doesn't work with it. Says in the changelog it will be fixed on the next release of pcmcia-cs but I want it now!
It does work nicely... everything is a lot more responsive.
Great work!
Where I work I got a linux box (500Mhz K6-2 128MB RAM), which on top of being a router, and filesharing/backup, has a MySQL databse. We have Access frontends at the various sites around the island (jamaica) for the entry of data. When they need to upload all they have to do is connect up to the net, click one button on a the upload form I made and the data is automatically uploaded to the domain set (ala dyndns.com) in the system. Previously they had to put it on floppy and physically transport it.
Samba as mentioned above is great for file sharing... have no problems other than forgetting the sambafs mount option when compiling the first time.
IP masquerading has been great too... now all the machines in the office can use the one (56k) connection. Only problem: my boss is convinced it is somehow illegal... Boss: "does our ISP know we are doing this?" Me: "they don't need to know."
I still haven't gotten pcmcia-cs to work with 2.4.10 yet (although that's mostly due to my slackness). Anyone else have a problem with this? I think it has something to do with the preempting kernel patch I installed... Oh well see if it works with this one.
Well think about it for a second... Is the "real" world where humanity has to live in the sewers and the machines rule, or is that just another matrix to escape from. Are the machines using people for power? It seems to me to run a sophisticated AI which would be needed to create a matrix you would need a lot of processing power. People only use a small percentage of their brains... what if the machines weren't using our body heat to power them, but our brain power as CPU's. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of human brains if you will. Seems the fusion power is enough to give them the electricity they need, but the human brain is probably yhe most efficient processor they could find.
Also the AI said that humans want life to be difficult. If they were smart, they would have a multi-layered matrix. If you find life too easy, you can figure out a way to get to the matrix which exists outside the matrix and be able to live in an even more miserable world. If that is the case maybe it's not even machines which control the matrices, maybe its something else.
But then again, I'm probably overthinking this. They'll probably just make it like the first one but put in more explosions and more kung fu. Oh well.
will it simply be a cheap grab for more boxoffice bucks?
of course it will be... but will it be entertaining?
I hope they remove the bloat that made 1.4 unusable. I think Nautilus was the biggest problem but not the only offender. From what I can see Bonobo hasn't been used to it's potential yet, I'll have to check out 2.0 from cvs to see what's happening with gnome now (I've been using KDE lately). Although KDE is winning the desktop environment wars now, don't count out gnome yet.
As I see it these are what the priorities need to be for gnome to make me want to use it over KDE:
Nautilus shouldn't suck - I don't mean to insult those developing Nautilus, but for a file manager you need something fast, not pretty. If it can be both then fine, but right now it's just eye candy. I prefer a GUI for managing my files but so far I have not seen anything that is as nice as Windows Explorer (95 version or 98 with all the shit turned off). Why is this so hard?
Better Integration - Bonobo needs to be rock solid and needs to be used more often. This is especially true for Nautilus but also applies to many other apps. Nautilus should just give up trying to be a web browser and just load galeon as a component if it wants to view a web page.
More Organisation - The gnome project is very disorganised. If I want to develop a C Programme, do I use gIDE or Anjuta? Why is there so much duplication? While gIDE and Anjuta are working on two IDEs, KDE has one KDevelop completed.
Work with KDE instead of against it - Why all the hate between these 2 groups? They both want a free DE for unix, so why do they dislike each other so much? There needs to be more cooperation, or neither will be viable as a desktop for the average user, while microsoft will continue to get them hooked on their projects.
Make it fast again - I prefered 1.2 over KDE because it was twice as fast (or at least seemed so) after 1.4 I switched back to KDE because I got tired of waiting about a minute to open a text file.
I don't mean to bitch, I really like gnome and look forward to switching back from KDE. The terminal is nicer, GIMP is cool, Galeon is the best web browser i've ever used, and Open Office looks promising (I know I can use these with KDE but I don't like having both GTK and QT loaded, I have better uses for my RAM). But right now KDE works, so that's what I'll use. But I'll give 2.0 alpha a shot... and when gnome works again, It'll be my primary desktop.
Good luck to those working on gnome... and expect some bug reports from me soon!
They change their document just enough to screw everyone over with the release of Office2000. And just as that starts to work they screw it up enough to not work with XP
Would you expect Microsoft to do anything less
How hard is it REALLY to parse out Word Documents and have it work????
Parsing isn't that hard most of the difficulty comes in getting all the different OLE objects embedded in the document to work. Star/Openoffice, Koffice, AbiWord can all format the fonts, layouts, etc, quite well. The problem comes when you have an Excel Spreadsheet embedded in the word document as a table. Then each cell of the excel table is a word document. Then you gotta think about Macros, VB, etc.
Getting these things to work right is hard even for microsoft. Where I work now I have an Access database (I should've demanded they use something else, but they already had it installed everywhere) deployed to over 20 sites. I wrote the database in Access 97, but making it work in Access 2000 can be very tricky. Not only that, but at some places some of the Visual Basic Modules won't work in 97... welcome to my hell...
Anyway the point being, Microsoft has trouble in making THEIR office read previous MS Office files. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for someone who doesn't have the specs to make an app capable of reading them.
The only thing governments should be providing for us are public goods which the private sector cannot or will not provide us.
Is electricity a public good? how about sewer and water? Actually they aren't, since the private sector can provide them to us. But they can't provide them efficiently which is why the government or government regulated monopolies provide them. It is just simply not efficient to have three sets of power lines, 4 sets of water mains, etc.
The question you need to ask yourself is: Is it efficient to have multiple fibre optic lines being maintained by separate companies? Or just one being maintained by the governement?
Private does not always equal cheap and efficient. Corporations need to make a profit whereas a municipal government just needs to break even. In small communities the profit margin isn't great enough to provide an incentive to implement broadband so the corporations just don't do it. Municipalities can implement it and break even, so they are.
Besides, why is government always evil and inefficient? Personally I'd rather have things being run by people I can vote out, than by corparations which are only responsible to their shareholders (which I am not one of).
I'm no physicist, but like many here I like science fiction. Does anyone know if this could somehow be used to produce artificial gravity? or as some kind of propulsion for spacecraft? It seems really interesting at any rate...
Damn!
I was just going to suggest something like this... I guess great minds think alike.
Although I was thinking along the lines of a ROM in the shape of a key and a USB ROM reader. Just thinking it would be cheaper and you could set it up so if the ROM-key was not in the reader then you would not be authenticated, in case someone forgot to log out. But I guess someone could forget their key in the reader.
I guess there is no such thing as fool-proof.
Roche is basically saying to Brazil "pay what we want you to pay or your people die."
Brazil says "be more reasonable with the price of these drugs or we violate the patent and produce the drugs ourselves."
Who is worse?
The article doesn't say that Brazil is unwilling to pay anything, just that they wanted Roche to be reasonable. The article states the Brazil is complying with agreements with other pharmaceuticals. It seems to me Brazil is willing to compensate the pharmaceuticals as long as they are being reasonable.
A lot of people here are saying this will make the pharmaceuticals stop all research. What will really happen is the pharmaceuticals will be more reasonable when dealing with third world nations which just can't pay outrageous prices for drugs.
Excuse me for not feeling sorry for pharmaceutical giants...
Slashdot Mirror
Wow... cool... thanks for letting me know, and according to the changelog the preemptable kernel patch will work now... Have a lot of patching to do this weekend.
I think that Afghanis generally don't think about concepts like globalism. All they really know is that they have had 2 super powers fight a bloody war on their land and using their people. Madmen were given weapons to fight against EVIL communists. Know the holy-warrior-defenders-of-freedom madmen are labeled the EVIL-DOERS and Afghanistan is bombed again. Afghanis don't associate globalism with baywatch or mcdonalds but with war, bombings, and death.
I live in a third world country where there is a great deal of violence. This country accepts globalism and does whatever the US wants. Yet the violence has increased. You think Capitilism come Globilism is a stabilising force? You need to leave your bubble of your first world existence. People round here love cell-phones, cable tv, mcdonalds, baywatch, mercedes benzes, and will do whatever it takes to get them. There just isn't that many opportunities out there. So they sell drugs, sell their bodies, steal, or get a gun and kill to get what they want. People who are surrounded by violence lose perspective and do not value human life like those in the first world.
Please don't look at globalism as the saviour of the World. There will always be violence as long as people don't place a high value on human life. This means everyone. Those in the first world just can't sit back in luxury while millions starve and say "it's not our problem." It is just this attitude which makes America hated.
Baywatch and McDonalds aren't going to save the world, respect for human life will.
I knew that one or two days after I finished downloading the 2.2_rev3 iso (on a 56Kbs dialup!)that rev4 would come out... I'm gonna download the latest KDE now, so expect 3.0 to be released next week...
Just when I get the powers of 2 up to 65536 memorized...
Excellent post...
The sad thing about it is that no one seems to be getting this. I find it scary how one-sided the reporting has been lately. What Americans don't know is that the WTC bombing isn't that big a deal in the developing world. Why should it be? do Americans care if 5,000 people starve to death in Africa (or case in point, Afghanistan) ? So why should Afghani's care that 5,000 Americans died in New York? How many Americans really care that innocent people are being bombed in Afghanistan right now, honestly?
Americans live their lives in a bubble. On Sept 11 that bubble was burst... but instead of looking out and seeing the real world for the first time, they choose to build a bigger, stronger bubble.
It is time for americans to wake up. In the real world, people die. Instead of building walls around yourselves and separating yourselves from the rest of the world, why not try to make the world a better place?
Americans want to give the CIA money and power to train agents to fight Bin Laden the same way they allowed the CIA to train Bin Laden to fight the Soviet Union. If you really want to get the guys who made Sept 11 happen then bomb the CIA. The US created a monster to fight the soviet Union. Once the the Soviet Union was gone they left them there. Who give a fuck about Afghanistan, right?
I find it sad that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. I find it sad the US trained terrorists to fight the Soviet Union, I find it sad that the Afghani people were at the mercy of these terrorists after the Soviet Union left. I find it sad that the World Trade Center was bombed. I find it sad that the Afghanistan is being bombed again. I find it sad that the terrorist will strike again in retaliation for afghanistan being bombed. I find it sad that the US will bomb more countries in retaliation for that.
The article seems to imply that its just Islamic Fundamentalists behind this. The way I see it there are fundamentalists on the US side too.
As soon as I stop typing this post I'm geeting this video... sounds like it may be a classic like "reefer madness" or "duck and cover." This could be the best thing Disney has ever made!
The site? http://thefreeworld.net/
This is a great idea, it's just too bad that this is the way it has to be. It seems stupid that the US can screw up research just because they have a congress which likes to impose backwards laws on the rest of the world. When will it end? just hope the "War on Info-Terrorists" isn't the same as the "War on drugs" : pointless and futile, like commanding the sea to recede. So far it looks that this is the way it'll be...
JUST SAY NO TO ENCRYPTION!
yeah that'll work...
Then again the DMCA sounds pretty screwed up... who knows what is illegal in the US these days...
The interview didn't really answer the questions I have about the game.
Have they done anything about the micromanagement hell seen in Civ II? A little after the industrial revolution I find it seems to take forever to make things happen.
Are the AI's a little better? do the computer players still cheat? I assume so, but hopefully not as bad as before.
I definitely like the improvements though. Culture is gonna add a new dynamic to the game and certain resources being required will make things interesting.
I'll be looking forward to playing it... many sleepless nights ahead...
The *only* ODBC driver that is officially provided by the PostgreSQL team is for Windows. It's been available since at least 1998.
http://odbc.postgresql.org
Thanks... It will be helpful... would've been more helpful if I knew 10 months ago. Oh well I guess I should've read the docs more carefully. This underlines the importance of having things easily found on your website... I'm using MySQL only because the ODBC driver was easier to find on their website than on postGreSQL's... Time to make yet another new version of the database
Thanks!
Ok I use MySQL. Why not PostGreSQL? Well I had to use Access as a frontend to the database as it's already installed at all the sites and there is a windows MySQL ODBC driver. There is not (AFAIK) a PostGreSQL ODBC driver for windows. If there is then would someone pelase point me to it. If not don't tell me that PostGreSQL is superior, because while that may be true, it still can't do what I need it to do.
I do find MySQL to be very limited and I find it frustrating that it just can't do what I want it to do (without a huge amount of ugly workarounds). But hey I have to use Access so I'm used to it. I will use PostGreSQL If there was a ODBC driver that would work on windows.
yeah the one I tried was with 2.4.10 didn't work. my card's driver isn't included with the kernel so I have to compile the pcmcia driver that comes with the pcmcia-cs package (why IS there 2 different drivers?). I checked the changelog on the pre-emptive kernel page and it mentions that they are pressing the maintainers to fix the code for pcmcia-cs for the next release which I hope is soon.
Tried this patch before... it works great adds a nice option in the kernel config. But the problem is pcmcia-cs doesn't work with it. Says in the changelog it will be fixed on the next release of pcmcia-cs but I want it now!
It does work nicely... everything is a lot more responsive.
Great work!
Where I work I got a linux box (500Mhz K6-2 128MB RAM), which on top of being a router, and filesharing/backup, has a MySQL databse. We have Access frontends at the various sites around the island (jamaica) for the entry of data. When they need to upload all they have to do is connect up to the net, click one button on a the upload form I made and the data is automatically uploaded to the domain set (ala dyndns.com) in the system. Previously they had to put it on floppy and physically transport it.
Samba as mentioned above is great for file sharing... have no problems other than forgetting the sambafs mount option when compiling the first time.
IP masquerading has been great too... now all the machines in the office can use the one (56k) connection. Only problem: my boss is convinced it is somehow illegal... Boss: "does our ISP know we are doing this?" Me: "they don't need to know."
Total cost: $0
I still haven't gotten pcmcia-cs to work with 2.4.10 yet (although that's mostly due to my slackness). Anyone else have a problem with this? I think it has something to do with the preempting kernel patch I installed... Oh well see if it works with this one.
Well think about it for a second... Is the "real" world where humanity has to live in the sewers and the machines rule, or is that just another matrix to escape from. Are the machines using people for power? It seems to me to run a sophisticated AI which would be needed to create a matrix you would need a lot of processing power. People only use a small percentage of their brains... what if the machines weren't using our body heat to power them, but our brain power as CPU's. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of human brains if you will. Seems the fusion power is enough to give them the electricity they need, but the human brain is probably yhe most efficient processor they could find.
Also the AI said that humans want life to be difficult. If they were smart, they would have a multi-layered matrix. If you find life too easy, you can figure out a way to get to the matrix which exists outside the matrix and be able to live in an even more miserable world. If that is the case maybe it's not even machines which control the matrices, maybe its something else.
But then again, I'm probably overthinking this. They'll probably just make it like the first one but put in more explosions and more kung fu. Oh well.
will it simply be a cheap grab for more boxoffice bucks?
of course it will be... but will it be entertaining?
I don't mean to bitch, I really like gnome and look forward to switching back from KDE. The terminal is nicer, GIMP is cool, Galeon is the best web browser i've ever used, and Open Office looks promising (I know I can use these with KDE but I don't like having both GTK and QT loaded, I have better uses for my RAM). But right now KDE works, so that's what I'll use. But I'll give 2.0 alpha a shot... and when gnome works again, It'll be my primary desktop.
Good luck to those working on gnome... and expect some bug reports from me soon!
Would you expect Microsoft to do anything less
How hard is it REALLY to parse out Word Documents and have it work????
Parsing isn't that hard most of the difficulty comes in getting all the different OLE objects embedded in the document to work. Star/Openoffice, Koffice, AbiWord can all format the fonts, layouts, etc, quite well. The problem comes when you have an Excel Spreadsheet embedded in the word document as a table. Then each cell of the excel table is a word document. Then you gotta think about Macros, VB, etc.
Getting these things to work right is hard even for microsoft. Where I work now I have an Access database (I should've demanded they use something else, but they already had it installed everywhere) deployed to over 20 sites. I wrote the database in Access 97, but making it work in Access 2000 can be very tricky. Not only that, but at some places some of the Visual Basic Modules won't work in 97... welcome to my hell...
Anyway the point being, Microsoft has trouble in making THEIR office read previous MS Office files. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for someone who doesn't have the specs to make an app capable of reading them.
The only thing governments should be providing for us are public goods which the private sector cannot or will not provide us.
Is electricity a public good? how about sewer and water? Actually they aren't, since the private sector can provide them to us. But they can't provide them efficiently which is why the government or government regulated monopolies provide them. It is just simply not efficient to have three sets of power lines, 4 sets of water mains, etc.
The question you need to ask yourself is: Is it efficient to have multiple fibre optic lines being maintained by separate companies? Or just one being maintained by the governement?
Private does not always equal cheap and efficient. Corporations need to make a profit whereas a municipal government just needs to break even. In small communities the profit margin isn't great enough to provide an incentive to implement broadband so the corporations just don't do it. Municipalities can implement it and break even, so they are.
Besides, why is government always evil and inefficient? Personally I'd rather have things being run by people I can vote out, than by corparations which are only responsible to their shareholders (which I am not one of).
I'm no physicist, but like many here I like science fiction. Does anyone know if this could somehow be used to produce artificial gravity? or as some kind of propulsion for spacecraft? It seems really interesting at any rate...
Damn! I was just going to suggest something like this... I guess great minds think alike. Although I was thinking along the lines of a ROM in the shape of a key and a USB ROM reader. Just thinking it would be cheaper and you could set it up so if the ROM-key was not in the reader then you would not be authenticated, in case someone forgot to log out. But I guess someone could forget their key in the reader. I guess there is no such thing as fool-proof.
Roche is basically saying to Brazil "pay what we want you to pay or your people die."
Brazil says "be more reasonable with the price of these drugs or we violate the patent and produce the drugs ourselves."
Who is worse?
The article doesn't say that Brazil is unwilling to pay anything, just that they wanted Roche to be reasonable. The article states the Brazil is complying with agreements with other pharmaceuticals. It seems to me Brazil is willing to compensate the pharmaceuticals as long as they are being reasonable.
A lot of people here are saying this will make the pharmaceuticals stop all research. What will really happen is the pharmaceuticals will be more reasonable when dealing with third world nations which just can't pay outrageous prices for drugs.
Excuse me for not feeling sorry for pharmaceutical giants...