Look - I've watched the dern thing like a dozen times with xine. Crank it up, push play, jiggle the little playback-position bar until you have visual, click full screen, crank the audio, and kick back for a few minutes. I'm using xine from the xine-ui package from Debian unstable.
Don't forget to jiggle the playback-position bar !!
Taco, taco, taco. A member of the Xine team reverse engineered the svq1 format, so you CAN watch the Two Towers trailer using Xine. At least, it worked for me.
I at one point hacked a bit on uemacs. I liked emacs, wanted a small binary written in C with 95% of the functionality and 5% of the cruft. Anyway, I went to add a tab-complete to the dialog for opening a new file. No worries, the glob function is POSIX. So I wrote it in, and it worked fine under linux.
Then I went to our alphas to do the same. Glob didn't work at all. Something went wrong. Then I tried to debug it, and what I found was that the libc glob function on OSF unix (4) was calling ksh to perform the globbing function. I contacted DEC people via Usenet and they basically told me to piss off. Somehow ksh interpreted the session as not being interactive, and then its globbing was dysfunctional.
I ended up writing a work-around based on the algorithms in the glibc globbing code. I found it awfully strange that a commerical libc was dependent on ksh for its functionality (note: the DEC programmers that told me to piss off didn't think this was odd at all).
This logic is all confused. You all assume this relates to copyright infringement. It doesn't.
Patent protection is valid against reverse engineering. Clean room implementations are irrelevant. What needs to be shown is that the functionality is accomplished without using any of the methods in the patent. This is true whether the person making the decoder knew of the methods or not. This is 'working around' a patent.
Clean-room reverse engineering is useful for making work-alikes of copyrighted methods. In those cases, copyright protects specific expression, and not methods. So, using a different specific expression to accomplish the same methods is fine. The same algorithms can be used.
Fans are one source of noise, but hard drives are another, and it can be significant. Once you get rid of those noisy fans, you are sure to notice the drive. There are quiet drives from Quantum, and hard drive case enclosures.
But, an all in one package case seems like a reasonable idea.
How come we don't hear about CTS amoungst piano players, organist and the like. What about guitarists? Eddie Van Halen may have cancer, but he's never complained about CTS. While I'm sure that such a condition exists, I'm sure the medical community over-diagnoses, because of the money involved.
You could not be more wrong. RSI is absolutely the plague of professional music students. We do some research on an elaborated form called focal dystonia, and getting subjects for research is as easy as going to the nearest college+ age music school.
These are very real disorders, that not only involve peripheral strain, but also involve central nervous system response to the movement which can be further aggravating.
Please, if you want to get informed on the extent of the problem, ask a physical therapist or neurologist about RSI and/or focal dystonia. Or do a simple search on focal dystonia and musician. Because, if anything, musicians are afflicted much more often than typists.
Get every bit of GNU software off your systems. Then see what your "linux" system is worth. Sure, you can get by without gcc, gimp, gnome, ncurses, emacs, bash. But you can start by getting glibc off your systems. And after you delete it, reboot.
Jules: Send me that service pack. It's the one named, 'Dumbass Motherfucker.'
Vincent: You know what the funniest thing about Microsoft is?
Jules: What ?
Vincent: Its the little differences. Its got a lotta the same shit as other operating systems, but with those guys it is a little different.
Jules: How so ?
Vincent: For example. Another company has a bug. They fix it in like two days, and then they annouce the bug and the fix.
Jules: Ok. And at Microsoft ?
Vincent: At Microsoft, when someone points out a security hole, the first thing they do is threaten a lawsuit against the guy who found the hole if he says anything.
Jules: You mean they threaten the guy who is helping them ?
Vincent: Yup - exactly what I mean. As long as there is not a big media splash, they never gotta fix nuthin.
Jules: So what happens if the guy opens his mouth.
Vincent: Generally he don't. But, some 15 year old kid in Asia finds the same bug, and then releases a worm, and it chews apart all the Microsoft systems worldwide in like two days.
Jules: No shit !
Vincent: Yeah, and then Microsoft tells everyone about the bug, and provides a patch, but no one fixes it.
Jules: No one !?
Vincent: Well, smart people do, but most people just miss the message. They gotta go to Microsoft, get the patch, and half the time the fix will break something else on their system.
Jules: So if this shit is so bad, why are so many people using it ?
Vincent: It used to be everything on personal computers were that bad. Then, Microsoft controlled the market. Everyone else started making good shit, but it didn't matter. Microsoft made people buy their new shit so they could continue to read their own old shit. Can you believe it ?
Jules: Man, that is some weird-ass shit. Like some idiot can't take a step back and see himself being played like that.
Vincent: Yeah, it's kinda sad. But it makes a great market for guys to run around spending all their time patching holes after they are exploited. If Microsoft made good shit, we wouldn't have jobs.
In antitrust law, remedies have always been limited in scope to the antitrust violations established in the case.
In this case, antitrust violations have been established about the browser, and more generally about using a monopoly to leverage Windows application markets. Violations have NOT been established about preventing competition in the operating system market - although other court cases (like BeOS) may establish such violations.
As such, the judge cannot turn this into a free for all (this is not an independent counsel). The judge has to make the remedy fit the violations, and linux is just not relevant in this case. The first set of remedies were thought by the appeals court to be inappropriate - they treated Microsoft as though it had used its monopoly to prevent competition for operating systems, whereas the findings of fact did not establish such violations.
I am not defending Microsoft's actions wrt other OS's - just pointing out that this case is unlikely to care about what Microsoft does wrt linux. Another case, one about an operating system getting crushed (BeOS), would be a MUCH more relevant case.
So why are people still arguing about the browser "monopoly"? For goodness' sake, lets allow businesses to LEGALLY SELL OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS, let's have a publication of the MS-Office formats, and let's have a marketplace where people selling computers without Windows are not routinely accused of piracy!
There has been no contention in this court case that Microsoft has used its monopoly to thwart OS competition. That will take another case, and another day. The evidence should not be admitted - not because it doesn't indicate a corrupt corporate culture at Microsoft, but because it doesn't relate to leveraging Windows to dominate Windows application markets.
Really, the big issue now is whether the issues related to browsers should be extended to other Windows application markets. That is the principal argument for the dissenting states. The memo also doesn't address that issue. Really, linux should be a complete non-issue in this case - bringing it up is just clever legal obfuscation by Microsoft.
I'm having a hard time imagining why the judge would have agreed to disallow this memo from being presented.
It could be because it is irrelevant. This case is specifically about browsers. Really, it is about Microsoft using its OS monopoly to leverage into the browser market. More generally, the case MAY also be about Microsoft using similar tactics to leverage its monopoly into other markets, such as email clients, media players, ISPs, etc.
But the case is NOT about Microsoft using its monopoly to prevent entry into the OS market. And this memo speaks directly to that issue, but not to any issue relevant to leveraging the OS monopoly into new markets. From an antitrust perspective, those are not the same issue.
...make them take out the ability to download files, or listen to music out of the box???
No, that is not what the proposal is about. The proposal identifies 9 key areas - browser, email client, and media player are three of them. For each key area, the Microsoft user tool must be removable and replaceable by an OEM without penalty. So, essentially, the OEM buys the stripped Windows and some subset of the 9 components from Microsoft, and gets the other components from other vendors. The OEM is free to configure Windows however it sees fit with respect to the 9 key areas.
Microsoft is NOT forced to ship an operating system that cannot download files. This responsibility has merely shifted to the OEM to configure these 9 tools.
Also, all the Microsoft add-ons must be priced at a pro-rated value relative to the stripped down Windows. That means the OEMs pay for Windows, and pay separately for each add-on based on value added.
With this proposal, and full disclosure of relevant APIs for each of the 9 key areas, competition for userspace tools would be restored to these key markets. Microsoft's leveraging power would be stripped, and its software could only compete on its own merits.
I really doubt it's an active conspiracy on Apple's part - the software business is at best a shaky balancing act: R&D vs. ROI.
I'd bet a bunch that Apple has a player in house already. After all, they have a Unix version.
We are not really talking about major costs. The whole API is exposed by open source players already, and the source for the codec is in house.
Then again, it could be a conspiracy - but Apple is under no obligation to provide ANY tools to Linux users, since that could hurt their own bottom line with OSX.
I was just pointing out the obvious problem wrt forcing me to buy Windows or MacOS in order to view copies of copyrighted material I own.
And, as I pointed out, Apple needs to spend NO in house $$ to port. Real didn't - they just provided specs. Intel and Radius both allowed xanim to make binary-only plug-ins, and no one in the community is up in arms.
Steve Jobs is scared sh%tless about the potential for linux on the desktop, and probably also feels a major market for OS X is people currently using linux that would like Microsoft Media Player and QuickTime.
when offered the chance to get a burst of pleasure the rats seem to comply almost without fail.
You refer to it as a pleasure center.
I would call it a control center for positive reinforcement. Anything that precedes its stimulation will be reinforced. Rats will do amazing things with a stimulating electrode positioned appropriately. So will almost all other animals.
Not coincidentally, similar pathways are relevant for addiction.
Since you don't have to pay to play Sorenson files, and you do have to pay to encode them properly... and 99% of the productivity apps that produce video run on MacOS and Windows (re: NOT Linux)... what incentive does Sorenson have to port the codec?
They don't have to port it. They simply need to allow it to be ported, as a player, to linux. Right now my friends make vids using Macs, and I cannot view them using linux. I have legally obtained copyrighted material, and due to patent protection I cannot look at it unless I buy Windows or MacOS. There is something fundamentally wrong with that. It is a form of collusion to keep linux out of the desktop space.
The real player for linux works fine. At least as well as the windows version. Anything Windows Medial Player can play (movies) will play fine with Mplayer.
However, to play QuickTime Sorenson codec movies, you have to pay for the CrossOver plug-in.
From the link: In the text of the license agreement Microsoft mentions two specific patents that relate to the CIFS/SMB protocol. The license grants a royalty free license to these patents, but specifically excludes free software distributed under the GNU General Public License from this royalty free patent license.
Some people have incorrectly assumed that Samba must implement the methods described in these patents. In fact, the methods described in these patents are quite inappropriate for a Unix/POSIX CIFS implementation such as Samba. It would not even be possible to implement the methods described in these patents in a portable POSIX application. Instead, Samba treats the SMBreadbraw and SMBwritebraw protocol elements in the same way as all other elements of the CIFS/SMB protocol. This means that as far as we are aware Samba is completely unaffected by the existance of these patents.
We would like to also point out that these patents cover an obsolete section of the CIFS/SMB protocol that Microsoft themselves have abandoned in their own products long ago. Microsoft abandoned these "raw" protocol operations in CIFS because their basic design is fatally flawed.
I modded him up because I believe in what he said. Sometimes too much choice is confusing for the end user, a valid point.
Well done.
I modded you as troll because beyond being offtopic, your spewing uninformed conspiracy theories.
Uninformed ? Come on, get real. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that someone was playing/. to sway opinion. The only question is whether that was someone just playing, or someone being paid to do it.
how many people do you think a large corporation would need to control slashdot moderation? Imagine, reading and posting to slashdot all day with 10-20 ids and getting PAID for it! I want that job!!;-)
One person. 20/. IDs, all of which post regularly. Then, wait for an appropriate article, make a few anonymous posts, and mod them up. Both articles were posted in the first 20 minutes (key for/.), both were instantly mod'd to +5, and in the long haul both are losing moderation points.
Like I said - a well-conducted troll, or a corporate marketing department. This wouldn't take that much time, and might easily be considered worth it.
The parent article, and the article currently modded to +5 that replied to Taco, were both posted as Anonymous Coward, both posted in the first 30 minutes of the topic, and both come right out of the MickeySoft handbook of philosophy on open source and competition.
Either this is a really well-concocted troll, or a corporate marketing department in action.
The one thing you DO get with choice is: competition.
Slashdot Mirror
Look - I've watched the dern thing like a dozen times with xine. Crank it up, push play, jiggle the little playback-position bar until you have visual, click full screen, crank the audio, and kick back for a few minutes. I'm using xine from the xine-ui package from Debian unstable.
Don't forget to jiggle the playback-position bar !!
I am 0 for 2, so check it out
Taco, taco, taco. A member of the Xine team reverse engineered the svq1 format, so you CAN watch the Two Towers trailer using Xine. At least, it worked for me.
apt-get install xine-ui
xine LotR-TwoTowers-Teaser.mov
Then, drag the little bar back and forth, stop and start a few times, and watch.
I at one point hacked a bit on uemacs. I liked emacs, wanted a small binary written in C with 95% of the functionality and 5% of the cruft. Anyway, I went to add a tab-complete to the dialog for opening a new file. No worries, the glob function is POSIX. So I wrote it in, and it worked fine under linux.
Then I went to our alphas to do the same. Glob didn't work at all. Something went wrong. Then I tried to debug it, and what I found was that the libc glob function on OSF unix (4) was calling ksh to perform the globbing function. I contacted DEC people via Usenet and they basically told me to piss off. Somehow ksh interpreted the session as not being interactive, and then its globbing was dysfunctional.
I ended up writing a work-around based on the algorithms in the glibc globbing code. I found it awfully strange that a commerical libc was dependent on ksh for its functionality (note: the DEC programmers that told me to piss off didn't think this was odd at all).
This logic is all confused. You all assume this relates to copyright infringement. It doesn't.
Patent protection is valid against reverse engineering. Clean room implementations are irrelevant. What needs to be shown is that the functionality is accomplished without using any of the methods in the patent. This is true whether the person making the decoder knew of the methods or not. This is 'working around' a patent.
Clean-room reverse engineering is useful for making work-alikes of copyrighted methods. In those cases, copyright protects specific expression, and not methods. So, using a different specific expression to accomplish the same methods is fine. The same algorithms can be used.
Sure you are.
Really.
$ httptype www.hotmail.com
Microsoft-IIS/5.0
See the httptype home page
What about the hard drives ?
Fans are one source of noise, but hard drives are another, and it can be significant. Once you get rid
of those noisy fans, you are sure to notice the drive. There are quiet drives from Quantum, and hard drive case enclosures.
But, an all in one package case seems like a reasonable idea.
How come we don't hear about CTS amoungst piano players, organist and the like. What about guitarists? Eddie Van Halen may have cancer, but he's never complained about CTS. While I'm sure that such a condition exists, I'm sure the medical community over-diagnoses, because of the money involved.
You could not be more wrong. RSI is absolutely the plague of professional music students. We do some research on an elaborated form called focal dystonia, and getting subjects for research is as easy as going to the nearest college+ age music school.
These are very real disorders, that not only involve peripheral strain, but also involve central nervous system response to the movement which can be further aggravating.
Please, if you want to get informed on the extent of the problem, ask a physical therapist or neurologist about RSI and/or focal dystonia. Or do a simple search on focal dystonia and musician. Because, if anything, musicians are afflicted much more often than typists.
No, they cannot release under the GNU license and also protect the patent on the GPL'd software.
However, nothing prevents them from charging proprietary software companies from using the invention described in the patent.
Get every bit of GNU software off your systems. Then see what your "linux" system is worth. Sure, you can get by without gcc, gimp, gnome, ncurses, emacs, bash. But you can start by getting glibc off your systems. And after you delete it, reboot.
Ncurses doesn't use a GNU license. It uses an MIT style license.
\
Jules: Send me that service pack. It's the one named, 'Dumbass Motherfucker.'
Vincent: You know what the funniest thing about Microsoft is?
Jules: What ?
Vincent: Its the little differences. Its got a lotta the same shit as other operating systems, but with those guys it is a little different.
Jules: How so ?
Vincent: For example. Another company has a bug. They fix it in like two days, and then they annouce the bug and the fix.
Jules: Ok. And at Microsoft ?
Vincent: At Microsoft, when someone points out a security hole, the first thing they do is threaten a lawsuit against the guy who found the hole if he says anything.
Jules: You mean they threaten the guy who is helping them ?
Vincent: Yup - exactly what I mean. As long as there is not a big media splash, they never gotta fix nuthin.
Jules: So what happens if the guy opens his mouth.
Vincent: Generally he don't. But, some 15 year old kid in Asia finds the same bug, and then releases a worm, and it chews apart all the Microsoft systems worldwide in like two days.
Jules: No shit !
Vincent: Yeah, and then Microsoft tells everyone about the bug, and provides a patch, but no one fixes it.
Jules: No one !?
Vincent: Well, smart people do, but most people just miss the message. They gotta go to Microsoft, get the patch, and half the time the fix will break something else on their system.
Jules: So if this shit is so bad, why are so many people using it ?
Vincent: It used to be everything on personal computers were that bad. Then, Microsoft controlled the market. Everyone else started making good shit, but it didn't matter. Microsoft made people buy their new shit so they could continue to read their own old shit. Can you believe it ?
Jules: Man, that is some weird-ass shit. Like some idiot can't take a step back and see himself being played like that.
Vincent: Yeah, it's kinda sad. But it makes a great market for guys to run around spending all their time patching holes after they are exploited. If Microsoft made good shit, we wouldn't have jobs.
Jules: Good point.
In antitrust law, remedies have always been limited in scope to the antitrust violations established in the case.
In this case, antitrust violations have been established about the browser, and more generally about using a monopoly to leverage Windows application markets. Violations have NOT been established about preventing competition in the operating system market - although other court cases (like BeOS) may establish such violations.
As such, the judge cannot turn this into a free for all (this is not an independent counsel). The judge has to make the remedy fit the violations, and linux is just not relevant in this case. The first set of remedies were thought by the appeals court to be inappropriate - they treated Microsoft as though it had used its monopoly to prevent competition for operating systems, whereas the findings of fact did not establish such violations.
I am not defending Microsoft's actions wrt other OS's - just pointing out that this case is unlikely to care about what Microsoft does wrt linux. Another case, one about an operating system getting crushed (BeOS), would be a MUCH more relevant case.
So why are people still arguing about the browser "monopoly"? For goodness' sake, lets allow businesses to LEGALLY SELL OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS, let's have a publication of the MS-Office formats, and let's have a marketplace where people selling computers without Windows are not routinely accused of piracy!
There has been no contention in this court case that Microsoft has used its monopoly to thwart OS competition. That will take another case, and another day. The evidence should not be admitted - not because it doesn't indicate a corrupt corporate culture at Microsoft, but because it doesn't relate to leveraging Windows to dominate Windows application markets.
Really, the big issue now is whether the issues related to browsers should be extended to other Windows application markets. That is the principal argument for the dissenting states. The memo also doesn't address that issue. Really, linux should be a complete non-issue in this case - bringing it up is just clever legal obfuscation by Microsoft.
I'm having a hard time imagining why the judge would have agreed to disallow this memo from being presented.
It could be because it is irrelevant. This case is specifically about browsers. Really, it is about Microsoft using its OS monopoly to leverage into the browser market. More generally, the case MAY also be about Microsoft using similar tactics to leverage its monopoly into other markets, such as email clients, media players, ISPs, etc.
But the case is NOT about Microsoft using its monopoly to prevent entry into the OS market. And this memo speaks directly to that issue, but not to any issue relevant to leveraging the OS monopoly into new markets. From an antitrust perspective, those are not the same issue.
...make them take out the ability to download files, or listen to music out of the box???
No, that is not what the proposal is about. The proposal identifies 9 key areas - browser, email client, and media player are three of them. For each key area, the Microsoft user tool must be removable and replaceable by an OEM without penalty. So, essentially, the OEM buys the stripped Windows and some subset of the 9 components from Microsoft, and gets the other components from other vendors. The OEM is free to configure Windows however it sees fit with respect to the 9 key areas.
Microsoft is NOT forced to ship an operating system that cannot download files. This responsibility has merely shifted to the OEM to configure these 9 tools.
Also, all the Microsoft add-ons must be priced at a pro-rated value relative to the stripped down Windows. That means the OEMs pay for Windows, and pay separately for each add-on based on value added.
With this proposal, and full disclosure of relevant APIs for each of the 9 key areas, competition for userspace tools would be restored to these key markets. Microsoft's leveraging power would be stripped, and its software could only compete on its own merits.
Yeah damnit! Dems do no wrong! Clinton didn't pork Monica and Gray didn't turn off the light switch.
Actually, the light switches were turned off when
Kenneth Lay wrote the White House energy policy for Cheney and
Enron manipulated the resulting energy market.
And, BTW, this cost California more than 9 billion dollars, making this (now voided) Oracle deal look like chump change.
So far:
Oracle has offered to cancel the contract.
Davis forced the guy bribed with a $25k check to resign.
Davis suspended the guy in charge of IT, the bribe recipient's boss.
Davis ordered a halt to all shredding and ordered the CHP to investigate.
It just looks like a coupla people in IT were massaging it on a big contract and got caught.
I really doubt it's an active conspiracy on Apple's part - the software business is at best a shaky balancing act: R&D vs. ROI.
I'd bet a bunch that Apple has a player in house already. After all, they have a Unix version.
We are not really talking about major costs. The whole API is exposed by open source players already, and the source for the codec is in house.
Then again, it could be a conspiracy - but Apple is under no obligation to provide ANY tools to Linux users, since that could hurt their own bottom line with OSX.
I was just pointing out the obvious problem wrt forcing me to buy Windows or MacOS in order to view copies of copyrighted material I own.
And, as I pointed out, Apple needs to spend NO in house $$ to port. Real didn't - they just provided specs. Intel and Radius both allowed xanim to make binary-only plug-ins, and no one in the community is up in arms.
Steve Jobs is scared sh%tless about the potential for linux on the desktop, and probably also feels a major market for OS X is people currently using linux that would like Microsoft Media Player and QuickTime.
when offered the chance to get a burst of pleasure the rats seem to comply almost without fail.
You refer to it as a pleasure center.
I would call it a control center for positive reinforcement. Anything that precedes its stimulation will be reinforced. Rats will do amazing things with a stimulating electrode positioned appropriately. So will almost all other animals.
Not coincidentally, similar pathways are relevant for addiction.
And, BTW, John Chapin is a good guy in my book.
Since you don't have to pay to play Sorenson files, and you do have to pay to encode them properly... and 99% of the productivity apps that produce video run on MacOS and Windows (re: NOT Linux)... what incentive does Sorenson have to port the codec?
They don't have to port it. They simply need to allow it to be ported, as a player, to linux. Right now my friends make vids using Macs, and I cannot view them using linux. I have legally obtained copyrighted material, and due to patent protection I cannot look at it unless I buy Windows or MacOS. There is something fundamentally wrong with that. It is a form of collusion to keep linux out of the desktop space.
The real player for linux works fine. At least as well as the windows version. Anything Windows Medial Player can play (movies) will play fine with Mplayer.
However, to play QuickTime Sorenson codec movies, you have to pay for the CrossOver plug-in.
From the link:
In the text of the license agreement Microsoft mentions two specific patents that relate to the CIFS/SMB protocol. The license grants a royalty free license to these patents, but specifically excludes free software distributed under the GNU General Public License from this royalty free patent license.
Some people have incorrectly assumed that Samba must implement the methods described in these patents. In fact, the methods described in these patents are quite inappropriate for a Unix/POSIX CIFS implementation such as Samba. It would not even be possible to implement the methods described in these patents in a portable POSIX application. Instead, Samba treats the SMBreadbraw and SMBwritebraw protocol elements in the same way as all other elements of the CIFS/SMB protocol. This means that as far as we are aware Samba is completely unaffected by the existance of these patents.
We would like to also point out that these patents cover an obsolete section of the CIFS/SMB protocol that Microsoft themselves have abandoned in their own products long ago. Microsoft abandoned these "raw" protocol operations in CIFS because their basic design is fatally flawed.
I modded him up because I believe in what he said. Sometimes too much choice is confusing for the end user, a valid point.
/. to sway opinion. The only question is whether that was someone just playing, or someone being paid to do it.
Well done.
I modded you as troll because beyond being offtopic, your spewing uninformed conspiracy theories.
Uninformed ? Come on, get real. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that someone was playing
how many people do you think a large corporation would need to control slashdot moderation? Imagine, reading and posting to slashdot all day with 10-20 ids and getting PAID for it! I want that job!! ;-)
/. IDs, all of which post regularly. Then, wait for an appropriate article, make a few anonymous posts, and mod them up. Both articles were posted in the first 20 minutes (key for /.), both were instantly mod'd to +5, and in the long haul both are losing moderation points.
One person. 20
Like I said - a well-conducted troll, or a corporate marketing department. This wouldn't take that much time, and might easily be considered worth it.
The parent article, and the article currently modded to +5 that replied to Taco, were both posted as Anonymous Coward, both posted in the first 30 minutes of the topic, and both come right out of the MickeySoft handbook of philosophy on open source and competition.
Either this is a really well-concocted troll, or a corporate marketing department in action.
The one thing you DO get with choice is: competition.
"There are only two things that have come out of Berkeley; LSD and Unix. And that's NOT a coincidence!"
LSD did not come out of Berkeley. It was invented at the Sandoz corporation while looking for drugs to induce a pregnant woman to give birth.