Louisiana, in economic terms, has four major assets: farming (rice, sugar cane, etc...), proximity to oil (in Gulf of Mexico), tourism (in New Orleans), and the Mississippi River (shipping).
That's a good place to build a city! It can produce a tank every other turn! Just make sure it has City Walls, and the Mongols and the Babylonians won't stand a chance!
OBE is a joke these days, to the point where people turn them down.
Personally, I think turning down an OBE or whatever honor they try to bestow upon you, gives you more status than accepting one.
Unfortunately, I live in the Netherlands, and thus I will never be able to refuse such an honor. The reason is that if you refuse to accept it, you won't get it offered.
Too bad. Otherwise I would probably start to do lots of voluntary work and pander to officials, just to laugh in the queen's face when I get offered a "lintje" (of course, the queen won't be there herself, but at least I'll be able to thumb my nose at the mayor, and make sure it is in the papers the next day).
And if axing Sam & Max 2 wasn't enough to earn them a place amongst the low numbers of the 2004 Game Lows, the fact that they axed Full Throttle 2 a few weeks before that should be enough to put LucasArts on number 1.
As always, such wild futuristic predictions are nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of the readers/journalists", based on exaggerated claims by some fringe scientists (who regularly make such claims because they are a way to get funding).
And now for my own prediction: I work in artificial intelligence, and I predict that with the right amount of funding, we will have developed real AI, that rivals and extends upon human AI, by 2035. This AI will be so wise and have so much knowlwedge, that it will provide a solution to all the world's problems within minutes. And it will be our obedient servant, too! The world will become a paradise! Now give me a couple of millions to starts with, please.
So yes, you have to pay the levy, but you are also allowed to make non-commercial copies of books / magazines etc because of that.
Interesting, but weird. How am I supposed to copy a book or magazine with a computer? I see three ways:
Use a scanner. But in that case, the levy should be on the scanner, not on the computer, because by itself the computer can not be used for copying.
Type it all in. But besides the fact that that is so much work that (almost) nobody will do it, the same thing can be done with a pen. Is there such a levy on pens, too?
Copy the book or magazine from, for intance, the Internet. But isn't it an illegal activity to make copyrighted works available on the Internet? Does this mean that, by paying the levy, you are now allowed to profit from illegal activitities of other people? There seems to be an internal conflict here. Also, in this case the levy should be on the Internet connection, not on the computer.
What you forget is that people worry about filling their stomachs before looking fifty years down the road.
Nope. Those are totally different issues. And you seem to forget that developments in the Indian software industry have an impact on poverty now and tomorrow, not in fifty years.
Bring a load of cash and start a business hiring locals? Again, almost certainly.
A friend of mine tried this in Indonesia. He found that it was impossible for a foreigner to get the papers to do this. Bribing officials only went so far. At a certain point, he had to rely on an Indonesian partner to continue. Basically, it went like this: If you want to start a business in Indonesia, to get the papers which allow you to do that, you have to be able to prove that you can run this business by being in the business for at least five years. So you must start with the business without having the right papers. Now, if you are a foreigner, the police will immediately threaten to close you down, for lacking the right papers. This means you have to survive five years of bribing lots of officials before you can become legit, which you need huge amounts of capital for. However, if you are Indonesian, they are pretty lenient, and you may live through this ordeal.
Of course, I don't know if this is the same in India, but given the fact that in both countries bribery is the order of the day, and in both countries people believe Westerners are incredibly rich, I suspect as a foreigner you will meet a similar fate in India as in Indonesia.
Like the RSA algorithm (patent now expired). That is a legitimate invention and it is only fair that those who invented it should be awarded in the form of a 20 year exclusive ownership in return for making the algorithm publicly known.
Every patenting law has, until now, excluded the patenting of mathematical constructs. There are many reasons for this, not least of which the fact that mathematics can be considered a force of nature. The problem is that there is no real difference between a mathematical formula and an algorithm (see Knuth's letter to the patent office). So, any algorithm should be excluded from patenting.
There are some people who try to distinguish between "mathematical algorithms" and "non-mathematical algorithms". As I see it, this is a ridiculous distinction to make. But even if you would make it, the RSA algorithm quite clearly falls in the category of mathematical algorithms, since it is based purely on the number properties. So, the RSA patent should never have been granted.
Can you patent an ordinary computer with special software ? Or can you patent a Bessemer converter that happens to be software controlled ?
AFAIK, anywhere in the (technological) world you can patent specialised hardware in combination with software. The battle is about the patenting of software for a universal machine, what you call an "ordinary computer". In the US, this is possible -- and not only complete programs, but also teensy weensy algorithms, or even simple ideas which can be implemented in an algorithm. I believe Australia also allows this, and Japan does, but Europe doesn't, at least not officially (unofficially, at least 30,000 software patents have been granted in Europe, but according to the letter of the law these patents are invalid).
In the hierarchy of human needs, I do not remember reading about software patent issues.
What you forget is that industrialisation is a way out of poverty. The software market requires little monetary support, and lots of human labour. Human labour is available plenty in India, but money is scarce. Therefore, the software industry is ideal for India to help itself become richer. By introducing software patents, they set themselves up to let most of the gains from the software industry flow to the US. Not a smart move.
The AI was not exactly reading between the lines. As I understand it, based on an analysis of the contents of one document, the system looked for other documents which were closely related. Those other documents might very well contain the answer to the question directly.
While it is still an interesting application that can reliably indicate related documents, it is not new: at the institute where I worked 5 years ago, a similar application was developed, which was able to identify keywords which belonged to a document even if those keywords did not appear in the document. It was correct in 80-90% of its keyword guesses.
If someone finds out that some adware has invaded his computer, seriously harming its performance, it seems to me that person is not very likely to react positively to the advertisements promoted by the adware.
"Shit! I lost my documents, my computer is slow as molasses, and most of my screen is covered by ads for penis enlargement pills. Hm. Maybe I should order some penis enlargement pills..."
And it isn't a good answer anyway, because the problem stated that you had a ruler, a string, a mirror, and a magnet. It said nothing about having a full bladder.
My own solution (with a firmly wedged ball) would be to smash the mirror and cut the ball to pieces with the shards.
Even better, when they want to go after the original thieves of their material, Google will point them out to them! How else do they expect to find the miscreants?
This guy doesn't even know the difference between memory and storage so why should I listen to him?
Actually, there is no real functional difference between memory and storage.
The only difference is, basically, access speed. And since storage nowadays is a lot faster than memory was a decade ago, that difference is only relative.
You may add that memory is wiped when a computer is turned off, but that is not the case for all kinds of memory, besides the fact that many computers are never turned off.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a good place to build a city! It can produce a tank every other turn! Just make sure it has City Walls, and the Mongols and the Babylonians won't stand a chance!
But "Creatures" is not a game. The first requirement of a game is that it entertains. "Creatures" is a quite boring simulation.
Personally, I think turning down an OBE or whatever honor they try to bestow upon you, gives you more status than accepting one.
Unfortunately, I live in the Netherlands, and thus I will never be able to refuse such an honor. The reason is that if you refuse to accept it, you won't get it offered.
Too bad. Otherwise I would probably start to do lots of voluntary work and pander to officials, just to laugh in the queen's face when I get offered a "lintje" (of course, the queen won't be there herself, but at least I'll be able to thumb my nose at the mayor, and make sure it is in the papers the next day).
And if axing Sam & Max 2 wasn't enough to earn them a place amongst the low numbers of the 2004 Game Lows, the fact that they axed Full Throttle 2 a few weeks before that should be enough to put LucasArts on number 1.
"Microsoft Finally up for Disturbed Computing?"
And now for my own prediction: I work in artificial intelligence, and I predict that with the right amount of funding, we will have developed real AI, that rivals and extends upon human AI, by 2035. This AI will be so wise and have so much knowlwedge, that it will provide a solution to all the world's problems within minutes. And it will be our obedient servant, too! The world will become a paradise! Now give me a couple of millions to starts with, please.
Interesting, but weird. How am I supposed to copy a book or magazine with a computer? I see three ways:
Do you know more about this?
Nope. Those are totally different issues. And you seem to forget that developments in the Indian software industry have an impact on poverty now and tomorrow, not in fifty years.
A friend of mine tried this in Indonesia. He found that it was impossible for a foreigner to get the papers to do this. Bribing officials only went so far. At a certain point, he had to rely on an Indonesian partner to continue. Basically, it went like this: If you want to start a business in Indonesia, to get the papers which allow you to do that, you have to be able to prove that you can run this business by being in the business for at least five years. So you must start with the business without having the right papers. Now, if you are a foreigner, the police will immediately threaten to close you down, for lacking the right papers. This means you have to survive five years of bribing lots of officials before you can become legit, which you need huge amounts of capital for. However, if you are Indonesian, they are pretty lenient, and you may live through this ordeal.
Of course, I don't know if this is the same in India, but given the fact that in both countries bribery is the order of the day, and in both countries people believe Westerners are incredibly rich, I suspect as a foreigner you will meet a similar fate in India as in Indonesia.
Every patenting law has, until now, excluded the patenting of mathematical constructs. There are many reasons for this, not least of which the fact that mathematics can be considered a force of nature. The problem is that there is no real difference between a mathematical formula and an algorithm (see Knuth's letter to the patent office). So, any algorithm should be excluded from patenting.
There are some people who try to distinguish between "mathematical algorithms" and "non-mathematical algorithms". As I see it, this is a ridiculous distinction to make. But even if you would make it, the RSA algorithm quite clearly falls in the category of mathematical algorithms, since it is based purely on the number properties. So, the RSA patent should never have been granted.
AFAIK, anywhere in the (technological) world you can patent specialised hardware in combination with software. The battle is about the patenting of software for a universal machine, what you call an "ordinary computer". In the US, this is possible -- and not only complete programs, but also teensy weensy algorithms, or even simple ideas which can be implemented in an algorithm. I believe Australia also allows this, and Japan does, but Europe doesn't, at least not officially (unofficially, at least 30,000 software patents have been granted in Europe, but according to the letter of the law these patents are invalid).
What you forget is that industrialisation is a way out of poverty. The software market requires little monetary support, and lots of human labour. Human labour is available plenty in India, but money is scarce. Therefore, the software industry is ideal for India to help itself become richer. By introducing software patents, they set themselves up to let most of the gains from the software industry flow to the US. Not a smart move.
While it is still an interesting application that can reliably indicate related documents, it is not new: at the institute where I worked 5 years ago, a similar application was developed, which was able to identify keywords which belonged to a document even if those keywords did not appear in the document. It was correct in 80-90% of its keyword guesses.
Anything.
Wait until after January 1st and get what you want for a lot less cash.
Actually, usually they do not build a new engine, but adapt an older one.
KotOR is a case in point. In many places you see Neverwinter Nights shine through.
"Shit! I lost my documents, my computer is slow as molasses, and most of my screen is covered by ads for penis enlargement pills. Hm. Maybe I should order some penis enlargement pills..."
My own solution (with a firmly wedged ball) would be to smash the mirror and cut the ball to pieces with the shards.
last yer i cudnt spell 'ingineer' and now i are one!
Except that the masses aren't really that interested in teenage drivel.
Agreed. But don't discount the undead. Lawyers do everything by snail mail.
That's not too hard. Problem is that the schools that offer such a degree can only be afforded by children of the very wealthy.
It is actually not that difficult, but many people are enormously impressed by the results.
Think of the headlines: Honest Porn Merchant Degenerates into Sleazy Litigator.
Even better, when they want to go after the original thieves of their material, Google will point them out to them! How else do they expect to find the miscreants?
Actually, there is no real functional difference between memory and storage.
The only difference is, basically, access speed. And since storage nowadays is a lot faster than memory was a decade ago, that difference is only relative.
You may add that memory is wiped when a computer is turned off, but that is not the case for all kinds of memory, besides the fact that many computers are never turned off.