I would hate to see situations like this, where albums are only avialable in a lossy format, become the norm
It did happen. It was the switch from analog to digital. All digital formats are inherently lossy. So the question is, what is the critical bitrate?
Ultimately, all analog formats are lossy too, since there's a limit to the fidelity of a given format which limits the amount of information that can be stored on a given medium.
To be sarcastic, I'd ask "who the heck actually takes these studies seriously?", but obviously *somebody* does. Who are these people, and why do these people take these inudstry analyst firms/journals/reports seriously?
First, let's recognize that anyone experienced enough with both operating systems will have their own experiences that will tell them which OS is better in various ways. These people are unlikely to be swayed by studies. Therefore, the first thing that is critical to understand is this: these studies are aimed at people who are NOT experienced with both OS's.
As such, it seems there are two potential groups who are targeted by such studies: 1) CIO or sysadmin types who are experienced with windows systems, and who were thinking of trying linux; and 2) PHBs. For the first type, the MS studies are meant to deter. For the second type, the MS studies are meant to indoctrinate.
For example, let's say MS saturates WSJ, Fortune, and similar newspapers/magazines likely to be read by PHBs. They read it enough times, and given they have no field knowledge of the various TCO variables, they believe what they read from seemingly "objective" sources. What MS then wants is this: when an intelligent CIO or sysadmin goes to the CEO and says "Let's try linux, it's great!" the CEO says no, and considers the CIO incompetent for even considering such a blatantly horrible idea.
So basically these studies are meant to influence decision makers who don't have hands-on knowledge. It's a very good idea, really. It will keep Linux adoption a lot lower than it would be otherwise.
Can anybody think of copy protection on software that basically takes over the machine?
All copy protection, by definition, prevents you from doing something involving your machine and their product that you might otherwise wish to do. Is what Sony did a tad dangerous? Yes. Is it unheard of? No. Other methods of copy protection trick your CD drive into not being able to copy a protected disc. Many games manufacturers use this method. Sony just took a *really* bad approach to doing it. But it's not that different from what's been done for years.
Really, Sony would have been better served to just sell out F4I and claim innocence. If you don't consider the things they said since the rootkit fiasco, it wouldn't have been that bad for them. It's their reaction since it happened that's more worrying.
"Nothing unusual" != "nothing wrong". Sherman's response that Sony's crimes against its customers aren't unusual makes it worse. He defends the crimes by saying they're standard practice. He should get frogmarched to prison after a RICO case shows he conspires with the media cartel to commit these crimes, and to cover for them.
I believe he was stating that this is nothing unusual for the software industry, not specifically the music industry. He's saying that many companies use copyright protection, and that this software will sometimes result in system instabilities. Additionally, regular software might contain security bugs as well.
Of course, this is true. It's also true, however, that such practices happen to be far more common in the music industry than other purveyors of software.
Pop up blockers have nothing to do with the reduction of in-page (ie, non-popup) flash ads and the like. I do believe that, for the most part, these have been declining as well. I think this can be attributed at least in part to Google's push for text ads.
So much money will be spent on consoles and new games, and so much precious time squandered playing these games, it really makes me glad I am not a gamer!
So, Mr. Holier-than-thou, what do you squander your time on? Masturbating to pictures of Natalie Portman?
The U.N. general from Canada motioned to intervene. The U.S. refused. From your link:
UNAMIR's Force Commander General Dallaire became aware of plans for the genocide in January of 1994. He sent a cable to U.N. headquarters in N.Y. asking for permission to confiscate weapons. Throughout January, Februrary and March, he pleaded for reinforcements and logistical support. The UN Security Council refused. The United States refused to provide requested material aid
The U.N. itself cannot do anything: It's a place for the member nations to talk. If the biggest member decides that a genocide is not worth the risk of potential military casualties, then the fault for inaction is not with the U.N. for trying, but for the member nation for refusing to act.
That's a bit misleading. Why was it up to the US, *as always*, to be the ones who actually implement the crap the UN wants done? Perhaps they should have requested the "material aid" from among the other member nations? Perhaps the US wasn't comfortable risking its soldiers under the authority of the UN?
In the end, you're right - the UN is nothing more than a place for people to talk. It has no authority, power, or respect from the tyrants it might try to curb.
I have my Washoe County, Nevada, work card for security guard work in my wallet. When are you going to step up to the plate and be one of those smarter security guards?
That's true/in theory/. But I'e seen a ton of people say "Wow, I remember when I saw this back in 1996. Dugg!" or something stupid like that. Certainly you aren't trying to tell us that those are new for those people?
Once more, this is true/in theory/. However, people Digg random crap that doesn't belong. The site says in multiple places that Digg is for technology news, but people still Digg stupid things that certainly can't be considered important news. In fact, these things usually get the most Diggs (especially ones that say "DIGG IS GONNA BEAT SLASHDOT LOLZ0R!!!!!).
Two things: You're right, digg isn't purely a news site. It is somewhat more prone to "nostalgia" stories than slashdot. But by definition, if they get to the top, then enough people thought it was worth seeing to vote it up. Basically, this means that you share different tastes than the average digger. That's OK - it doesn't mean the site is inferior somehow, it just isn't for you. Different strokes, ya know?
Wow. What Digg do you read? I look at Digg and I find more editorializing by more people, tons more dupes (and then people yell at me when I point out the fact), and plenty more crap including and beyond that which plagues Slashdot.
Not to be pedantic, but it's hard for digg to have any editorializing when it has no editors. It has commentary - some of it by annoying clowns - but that's missing the point because commentary really isn't the point of digg. I don't even read it, most times.
More things you won't find on digg: slashvertisements, propaganda stories, flamewars (for the most part), trolls (for the most part), punitive modding from editors (timothy and michael were fantastic for that), and more.
I'm not saying digg is better than slashdot (I'm still here, evidently), but it can often be refreshing in a lot of ways. But as far as you're concerned, you're looking for a pure news site with a fully-featured message board system. Well, that's not digg. That's slashdot. So you have what you need right? No probelms.
You are getting away from the FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM with Digg. Namely that the display of the 'stories' or articles is not linear in nature. This is good if you are viewing digg infrequently, but when you are going back regularly, new stories will not necesarilly be at the top. The mechanism that determines this is not at all clear.
Stories stay at the top if they are consistently "dug." Stories that are consitently "dug" are new to the majority of active "diggers." Therefore, a digger that is as active as the average digger consistently sees new stories.
You're right in that new stories don't go straight to the top. *Popular* stories stay at the top. But that's good - less popular stories fade faster. This is a much superior system in that important news is persistent. If you've seen the lead story, ignore it and scroll down, but other people will probably want to see it.
In any event, the problem you cite is only an issue for people hit digg tons of times per day. If that describes you, I'd suggest getting a life. Either that or do your part by sifting through other stories not on the front page and voting them up.
Therefore, Digg is completely inferior to Slashdot.
Hard to buy that considering that digg lacks the blatant editorializing, dupes, and other crap that plagues slashdot.
Either you're way off base, or an extra hundred or two megs of RAM makes a WORLD of difference, as my 400mhz PowerMac G4 with ~700MB RAM (and with PCI, so no Quartz Extreme for me, damnit!) doesn't have any problems running Tiger.
It might make that difference, as I get the "beach ball" a lot. It's either Tiger straining the processor or huge memory leaks and other bugs in some of the programs I'm using (like Safari). I have to admit, I can't rule that out.
Any Digg cheerleaders out there with some positive things to add about the comment system that I missed in my ignorance?
Not a cheerleader, but a user of both sites, so here goes:
I've been to Digg, and their stories are much more current than Slashdot's (seemingly because of the way stories are posted)
Right on both points. They don't have lazy editors to get in the way between a good story and the readers. A truly democratic method. I'm surprised, though, that a troll community hasn't been fostered that gets foul image sites permanantly at the top. Maybe they have a method of preventing that, I don't know that much about it.
but the comment system is a steaming pile. There is no threading (seriously hard to follow conversations without threading). And, despite Slashdot's flawed moderation system, scanning article comments at +4 is usually a pleasant experience, and I can't find that kind of functionality on Digg as an anonymous reader.
Comments aren't digg's focus. The stories are. You'll get some commentary on the story, but that's about it. And I think there's some simplistic beauty in that - the goal there isn't to get an off-topic discussion going, it's to provide a simple mechanism for commenting *on the story.* So threads aren't really needed. This doesn't mean they're better or worse than/., just different.
I come to Slashdot for the comments. Not for the editor abuses, the typos, the political slant, the "last week" news, blah blah etc. I know I am not alone in this. It seems to me that Slashdot and Digg are both filling a different niche at the moment.
Precisely.
I'd like to see Digg with a better commenting system and some form of user-moderation of posts: right now it resembles graffiti on the wall, not discussion.
But then it would be slashdot - what would be the point?
It is strange how little people understand of the power and influence of the UN. Don't kid yourself, the UN is a very powerful institution, and its influence has been steadily growing since WWII. This is of course why neo-cons are doing their futile fight against the UN with all those lies and propaganda. It is also why the US leaders after WWII were smart and made sure the UN headquarter is on US soil.
The UN has no mandate on US soil and the US has veto power in any event. If all these "lies and propaganda" aren't true - whatever they are - then it should be quite easy for you to refute.
The main goal for UN is to formulate and shape international law, and in this day and age with the rapid rise in international trade and travel, the UN has become more and more important. As I point out, international law is not formulated in some parliament in a days vote, but takes long time to establish and set into practice. But when some principles of international law have become practice, it is also a long process to change it again.
That may be its goal, but it has no efficacy. Don't confuse the two. Principles aren't action.
This is why the UN process is so powerful and so important for all countries to play a part in.
That's your value judgement and a basically circular argument. I disagree.
The way to play a part is of course by having good diplomates and good allies.
Fortunately the UN isn't the only avenue for that (See NATO, NAFTA, OAS, etc)
(The lack of diplomatic abilities is one area where the Bush team will hurt US interests on the longest time scale, for these reasons).
Again, irrelevant to the UN. I would have maintained my comments about the UN 8 years ago as well.
Take as an example the International Criminal Court which now starting to make indicements. Its history goes back to the court cases against people from the third reich in 1946 (and also international courts before), and it has been a very slow process to make it into a permanent court in charge of cases of genocide etc. But this slow process is what you get when you need to build a system which most of the UN nations will respect and abide by.
You're right, the UN is slow, inefficient, and by the time it actually does something it's outdated. You also take for granted that anyone actually wants international government, when I think the vast majority of Americans (anyway) would rather not cede national sovereignty to an international body over which we have no voting control.
For instance, there are several verdicts in the supreme court in the US where the ruling is based on what the judges see as international law.
I don't know of any verdicts although I can think of some minority opinions. I also believe that, domestically in the US, that is a very unpopular practice among the majority of the voting public. Doing that is quite unconstitutional.
It is naive to think that the slow pace of the UN system is a sign of weakness. It is just a sign of the process, not of a bureacracy that is not effect.
No, it's realistic, not naive. It's naive to think that a system, principles, or ideas actually do anything. As it stands, the UN is ineffectual - regardless of the WMD outcome, we saw in Iraw in the 90s just how much weight the UN's declarations carry. The make resolutions but nothing comes of them because no one fears or respects the UN except the bureaucrats who involve themselves with it.
It's also presumptious to think that there is a general consensus in favor of a paternalistic international government system, especially here in the US. I don't think you have that. I don't think most Americans want to be controlled by a body they didn't elect. And as long as the UN doesn't have rule of law - and it doesn't, no nation is going to cede it legislative control - it has no power. That relegates it to nothing more than a very well funded student council - a forum for the irrelevantly self-important, and nothing more.
Shorthand like this is easier to write, not read. Since the kids in question are only reading the stuff - not writing books when they can barely read - what's the point?
Actually, even though one can paint this as a "victory" for the US (been some time since last time;-), I think the UN is very happy about the outcome. This is because this oversight committee is set up with the approval of most countries in the world, most notably both the EU and the US. International law is a slow moving process, which is based much on precedence and established ways for countries to cooperate. When a relative new thing (on the time scale of international law) like the internet comes a long, it is important then to make a new framework for countries to cooperate and make rules (treaties) that affected countries agree too. Of course international law will take inspiration from similar technology, like the telephone system, but there are many new challenges when talking about the internet.
This committee will now start its work and lay down a precedence on how the different countries can cooperate and make international agreements when it comes to how to run the internet effectively. Again, with the blessing of most UN nation as always is important when forming working international law. Of course, much precedence is already made by ICANN, but many countries were not particularly impressed with how ICANN has been run. This committee will make start making suggestions to ICANN how to change its course on certain issues. And in some years down the line, ICANN will again have to justify its existence, and the UN will by then have a working system to take over if this committee does its work properly (and ICANN doesn't).
You basically wrote a manual on how to establish a massive bureaucracy and never get anything done. You mention that the UN is happy because it can spend the next 20 years figuring out how the internet should run. Well, that's why the US is ecstatic - the UN returns to playing bureaucracy, doesn't actually do anything, and the US is actually making sure the internet keeps functioning. Everybody wins.
Note I'm not disparaging the other member nations of the UN - just the UN itself.
They're not stealing code, they're infringing on the author's copyrights by not respecting the license under which the code is be distributed (in exactly the same way people who "share" Sony/BMG music via p2p etc infringe on Sony/BMG's and the the artists' copyrights).
Yeah, my real beef with the analysis is that he compares a new Prius to a used Accord. Talk about stacking the deck! Compare 2006s (or 1999s) for both.
I think the Accord might still win, but let's not start with a blatantly skewed study.
To elaborate on parent, with whom I completely agree, patents are necessary in fields with a high barrier to research and a low barrier to production. A drug may take $100 million and 20 years to create, and $0.25 per pill to create after a 1-month setup. Clearly, in an environment in which the developing company were NOT given an exclusive production right, no company who spent $100M and 20 years would ever recoup their investment, and drug research would cease overnight.
Slashdot Mirror
People get irritated when they feel that 20% of the readers pay more attention to the site than the paid, so-called "editors."
It did happen. It was the switch from analog to digital. All digital formats are inherently lossy. So the question is, what is the critical bitrate?
Ultimately, all analog formats are lossy too, since there's a limit to the fidelity of a given format which limits the amount of information that can be stored on a given medium.
And who controls that, since such technology would be easy to do right now? Ah, right, the phone company.
First, let's recognize that anyone experienced enough with both operating systems will have their own experiences that will tell them which OS is better in various ways. These people are unlikely to be swayed by studies. Therefore, the first thing that is critical to understand is this: these studies are aimed at people who are NOT experienced with both OS's.
As such, it seems there are two potential groups who are targeted by such studies: 1) CIO or sysadmin types who are experienced with windows systems, and who were thinking of trying linux; and 2) PHBs. For the first type, the MS studies are meant to deter. For the second type, the MS studies are meant to indoctrinate.
For example, let's say MS saturates WSJ, Fortune, and similar newspapers/magazines likely to be read by PHBs. They read it enough times, and given they have no field knowledge of the various TCO variables, they believe what they read from seemingly "objective" sources. What MS then wants is this: when an intelligent CIO or sysadmin goes to the CEO and says "Let's try linux, it's great!" the CEO says no, and considers the CIO incompetent for even considering such a blatantly horrible idea.
So basically these studies are meant to influence decision makers who don't have hands-on knowledge. It's a very good idea, really. It will keep Linux adoption a lot lower than it would be otherwise.
Can anybody think of copy protection on software that basically takes over the machine?
All copy protection, by definition, prevents you from doing something involving your machine and their product that you might otherwise wish to do. Is what Sony did a tad dangerous? Yes. Is it unheard of? No. Other methods of copy protection trick your CD drive into not being able to copy a protected disc. Many games manufacturers use this method. Sony just took a *really* bad approach to doing it. But it's not that different from what's been done for years.
Really, Sony would have been better served to just sell out F4I and claim innocence. If you don't consider the things they said since the rootkit fiasco, it wouldn't have been that bad for them. It's their reaction since it happened that's more worrying.
...it generates a root exploit.
I believe he was stating that this is nothing unusual for the software industry, not specifically the music industry. He's saying that many companies use copyright protection, and that this software will sometimes result in system instabilities. Additionally, regular software might contain security bugs as well.
Of course, this is true. It's also true, however, that such practices happen to be far more common in the music industry than other purveyors of software.
Pop up blockers have nothing to do with the reduction of in-page (ie, non-popup) flash ads and the like. I do believe that, for the most part, these have been declining as well. I think this can be attributed at least in part to Google's push for text ads.
So, Mr. Holier-than-thou, what do you squander your time on? Masturbating to pictures of Natalie Portman?
The U.N. itself cannot do anything: It's a place for the member nations to talk. If the biggest member decides that a genocide is not worth the risk of potential military casualties, then the fault for inaction is not with the U.N. for trying, but for the member nation for refusing to act.
That's a bit misleading. Why was it up to the US, *as always*, to be the ones who actually implement the crap the UN wants done? Perhaps they should have requested the "material aid" from among the other member nations? Perhaps the US wasn't comfortable risking its soldiers under the authority of the UN?
In the end, you're right - the UN is nothing more than a place for people to talk. It has no authority, power, or respect from the tyrants it might try to curb.
Better question, when are you? ;)
/rimshot
Once more, this is true /in theory/. However, people Digg random crap that doesn't belong. The site says in multiple places that Digg is for technology news, but people still Digg stupid things that certainly can't be considered important news. In fact, these things usually get the most Diggs (especially ones that say "DIGG IS GONNA BEAT SLASHDOT LOLZ0R!!!!!).
Two things: You're right, digg isn't purely a news site. It is somewhat more prone to "nostalgia" stories than slashdot. But by definition, if they get to the top, then enough people thought it was worth seeing to vote it up. Basically, this means that you share different tastes than the average digger. That's OK - it doesn't mean the site is inferior somehow, it just isn't for you. Different strokes, ya know?
Wow. What Digg do you read? I look at Digg and I find more editorializing by more people, tons more dupes (and then people yell at me when I point out the fact), and plenty more crap including and beyond that which plagues Slashdot.
Not to be pedantic, but it's hard for digg to have any editorializing when it has no editors. It has commentary - some of it by annoying clowns - but that's missing the point because commentary really isn't the point of digg. I don't even read it, most times.
More things you won't find on digg: slashvertisements, propaganda stories, flamewars (for the most part), trolls (for the most part), punitive modding from editors (timothy and michael were fantastic for that), and more.
I'm not saying digg is better than slashdot (I'm still here, evidently), but it can often be refreshing in a lot of ways. But as far as you're concerned, you're looking for a pure news site with a fully-featured message board system. Well, that's not digg. That's slashdot. So you have what you need right? No probelms.
Stories stay at the top if they are consistently "dug." Stories that are consitently "dug" are new to the majority of active "diggers." Therefore, a digger that is as active as the average digger consistently sees new stories.
You're right in that new stories don't go straight to the top. *Popular* stories stay at the top. But that's good - less popular stories fade faster. This is a much superior system in that important news is persistent. If you've seen the lead story, ignore it and scroll down, but other people will probably want to see it.
In any event, the problem you cite is only an issue for people hit digg tons of times per day. If that describes you, I'd suggest getting a life. Either that or do your part by sifting through other stories not on the front page and voting them up.
Therefore, Digg is completely inferior to Slashdot.
Hard to buy that considering that digg lacks the blatant editorializing, dupes, and other crap that plagues slashdot.
It might make that difference, as I get the "beach ball" a lot. It's either Tiger straining the processor or huge memory leaks and other bugs in some of the programs I'm using (like Safari). I have to admit, I can't rule that out.
Not a cheerleader, but a user of both sites, so here goes:
I've been to Digg, and their stories are much more current than Slashdot's (seemingly because of the way stories are posted)
Right on both points. They don't have lazy editors to get in the way between a good story and the readers. A truly democratic method. I'm surprised, though, that a troll community hasn't been fostered that gets foul image sites permanantly at the top. Maybe they have a method of preventing that, I don't know that much about it.
but the comment system is a steaming pile. There is no threading (seriously hard to follow conversations without threading). And, despite Slashdot's flawed moderation system, scanning article comments at +4 is usually a pleasant experience, and I can't find that kind of functionality on Digg as an anonymous reader.
Comments aren't digg's focus. The stories are. You'll get some commentary on the story, but that's about it. And I think there's some simplistic beauty in that - the goal there isn't to get an off-topic discussion going, it's to provide a simple mechanism for commenting *on the story.* So threads aren't really needed. This doesn't mean they're better or worse than /., just different.
I come to Slashdot for the comments. Not for the editor abuses, the typos, the political slant, the "last week" news, blah blah etc. I know I am not alone in this. It seems to me that Slashdot and Digg are both filling a different niche at the moment.
Precisely.
I'd like to see Digg with a better commenting system and some form of user-moderation of posts: right now it resembles graffiti on the wall, not discussion.
But then it would be slashdot - what would be the point?
And let me tell you, my 1.25 GHz, 512MB RAM PB is really feeling it when it tries to run Tiger.
Must be a simple project if you can switch projects and figure things out in a couple of hours. Lucky if it isn't a couple of days.
The UN has no mandate on US soil and the US has veto power in any event. If all these "lies and propaganda" aren't true - whatever they are - then it should be quite easy for you to refute.
The main goal for UN is to formulate and shape international law, and in this day and age with the rapid rise in international trade and travel, the UN has become more and more important. As I point out, international law is not formulated in some parliament in a days vote, but takes long time to establish and set into practice. But when some principles of international law have become practice, it is also a long process to change it again.
That may be its goal, but it has no efficacy. Don't confuse the two. Principles aren't action.
This is why the UN process is so powerful and so important for all countries to play a part in.
That's your value judgement and a basically circular argument. I disagree.
The way to play a part is of course by having good diplomates and good allies.
Fortunately the UN isn't the only avenue for that (See NATO, NAFTA, OAS, etc)
(The lack of diplomatic abilities is one area where the Bush team will hurt US interests on the longest time scale, for these reasons).
Again, irrelevant to the UN. I would have maintained my comments about the UN 8 years ago as well.
Take as an example the International Criminal Court which now starting to make indicements. Its history goes back to the court cases against people from the third reich in 1946 (and also international courts before), and it has been a very slow process to make it into a permanent court in charge of cases of genocide etc. But this slow process is what you get when you need to build a system which most of the UN nations will respect and abide by.
You're right, the UN is slow, inefficient, and by the time it actually does something it's outdated. You also take for granted that anyone actually wants international government, when I think the vast majority of Americans (anyway) would rather not cede national sovereignty to an international body over which we have no voting control.
For instance, there are several verdicts in the supreme court in the US where the ruling is based on what the judges see as international law.
I don't know of any verdicts although I can think of some minority opinions. I also believe that, domestically in the US, that is a very unpopular practice among the majority of the voting public. Doing that is quite unconstitutional.
It is naive to think that the slow pace of the UN system is a sign of weakness. It is just a sign of the process, not of a bureacracy that is not effect.
No, it's realistic, not naive. It's naive to think that a system, principles, or ideas actually do anything. As it stands, the UN is ineffectual - regardless of the WMD outcome, we saw in Iraw in the 90s just how much weight the UN's declarations carry. The make resolutions but nothing comes of them because no one fears or respects the UN except the bureaucrats who involve themselves with it.
It's also presumptious to think that there is a general consensus in favor of a paternalistic international government system, especially here in the US. I don't think you have that. I don't think most Americans want to be controlled by a body they didn't elect. And as long as the UN doesn't have rule of law - and it doesn't, no nation is going to cede it legislative control - it has no power. That relegates it to nothing more than a very well funded student council - a forum for the irrelevantly self-important, and nothing more.
Shorthand like this is easier to write, not read. Since the kids in question are only reading the stuff - not writing books when they can barely read - what's the point?
Or just stop doing it alltogether. I signed up for one of those and found that I couldn't get any work done because I was constantly barraged by IMs.
Of course the irony is that I post this on /., but at least here I control when I need a work break. Speaking of which, back to work.
This committee will now start its work and lay down a precedence on how the different countries can cooperate and make international agreements when it comes to how to run the internet effectively. Again, with the blessing of most UN nation as always is important when forming working international law. Of course, much precedence is already made by ICANN, but many countries were not particularly impressed with how ICANN has been run. This committee will make start making suggestions to ICANN how to change its course on certain issues. And in some years down the line, ICANN will again have to justify its existence, and the UN will by then have a working system to take over if this committee does its work properly (and ICANN doesn't).
You basically wrote a manual on how to establish a massive bureaucracy and never get anything done. You mention that the UN is happy because it can spend the next 20 years figuring out how the internet should run. Well, that's why the US is ecstatic - the UN returns to playing bureaucracy, doesn't actually do anything, and the US is actually making sure the internet keeps functioning. Everybody wins.
Note I'm not disparaging the other member nations of the UN - just the UN itself.
+5, Pedant
Yeah, my real beef with the analysis is that he compares a new Prius to a used Accord. Talk about stacking the deck! Compare 2006s (or 1999s) for both.
I think the Accord might still win, but let's not start with a blatantly skewed study.
And government workers are special...why? In other words, if this screws your company who cares, but if it hurts bureaucracy, now we need to fix this.
To elaborate on parent, with whom I completely agree, patents are necessary in fields with a high barrier to research and a low barrier to production. A drug may take $100 million and 20 years to create, and $0.25 per pill to create after a 1-month setup. Clearly, in an environment in which the developing company were NOT given an exclusive production right, no company who spent $100M and 20 years would ever recoup their investment, and drug research would cease overnight.