I am a vegetarian and eat plently of veggies, fruits, nuts and soy products. (including tofu) I eat a little dariy (mosty from the occasional yougurt or chocolate). And i barely ever eat eggs (unless they happen to be in some recipe). I do not take a multi vitamin but my mom thinks i will get sick. The thing is I have been eating like this for about two years now and have never felt better!
So my question is, could i develope a vitamin deffiency? If so what kind?
It seems like you are eating a balanced vegetarian diet, so I you don’t need to take any vitamins.
Sometimes people don’t get enough B12
Foods with lots of B12 are :
Breakfast Cereals
Dairy and Egg products
Soups, sauces, and gravy
Yogurts
and more…..
But you are eating most of those things, so your diet is perfect
Vitamins for Vegetarians is a post from the Vegetarian Vitamins Guide blog where you can find suggestions and advice from vegetarians and vegans on vegetarian diets, supplements, vitamins and overall nutrition.
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We spend a lot of time talking about innovation and ideas. Part of that discussion often turns to patents, and questions of whether it is better to “protect” or “hoard” your ideas, or to focus on sharing them. Patents live in this nebulous world between the two, where you partially (sort of) “give away” the idea, in exchange for the right to protect it. This seems counterintuitive when you think about it. Plenty of research has shown that people invent and innovate more often because they want what they’re inventing themselves — not because they want some sort of monopoly right over it. Other research has shown how innovation (rather than invention) is really an ongoing process, that often involves building on various ideas. For years, we’ve discussed how the “idea” is quite often overvalued, while the execution is undervalued. Lots of people have ideas. How you execute on them is where the real innovation occurs.
I was thinking about all of this after hearing of the launch of a new service called Mixtape For You, which let’s you create a limited time mixtape, which only a single person (who you email) can download. What does this have to do with ideas, execution and innovation? Well, let’s go back a bit… and follow this (somewhat convoluted, but fun) trail:
On Memorial Day weekend in 2009, at the annual Sasquatch Music Festival, some shirtless dude started dancing, and someone else started filming him with a cameraphone. Then someone else started dancing with the shirtless dude. Then someone else. Then a few more people. Then a bunch more. Then pretty much everyone. The guy who filmed it put the video up on YouTube, where it went viral (nearly 3 million views at this point). I remember seeing it passed around as a video that “just makes you smile.” And it does.
As the video became popular, some started to think about it a bit more, and all around smart guy, Derek Sivers, wrote up a nice little blog post in June, analyzing the sociological aspects of the video.
That discussion turned into an absolutely wonderful 3 minute TED Talk, given in February of this year, that Sivers gave, using the video as a way to explain and demonstrate the importance of “first followers” in creating a true “movement.”
That talk got a ton of attention, with lots of people telling Sivers that he should turn the whole “first follower” meme into a book or something like that. Sivers, however, said he wasn’t that interested in doing much with the concept and decided, in the very nature of the “first follower” to give away the idea and embrace anyone else who wanted to take the idea and run with it:
If this “First Follower” idea inspires you to elaborate on it, please do. Feel free to write a hit book about it, tour the corporate speaking circuit talking about it, or anything else. I won’t.
You don’t have to ask my permission, pay me, or even credit me.
I’ve been very lucky with lots of opportunities. This one’s all yours.
Another all around smart guy, Andrew Dubber, picked up on the idea and considered doing exactly as Sivers suggested above, and writing a book based on this concept. But, after sleeping on it, he decided to innovate and execute in a slightly different way. Instead of taking the “first follower” idea and preaching it, Dubber wanted to be a first follower of Siver’s other concept: giving away ideas. He decided that he would give away 30 ideas in 30 days — just like Sivers “gave away” his idea.
Starting March 3rd, Dubber did exactly that, giving away an idea a day.
On March 16th (day 14), Dubber’s idea give away, was called I Made A Tape, and was based on the idea that, back in the old days, when people made mixtapes, they were usually for someone specifically. And while there are a bunch of “mixtape” services out there these days (though the RIAA likes to shut them down every so often), Dubber thought it would be cool to create one that allowed someone to be more personal:
So that’s why my idea is an online music sharing site — but one that can only be shared with one person. You craft a “tape” with a single person in mind, and then that mix is sent to that person with a unique URL that only they can access.
They can download or stream the mixtape, and it comes with the liner notes that you’ve written.
And then… on April 6th, some other guy, Ray Kuyvenhoven launched MixTapeForYou.com, based very much on Dubber’s idea from just a few weeks earlier.
I’d been following the whole chain of events from the very beginning, but what struck me about it, and what caused me to write this post was when I read Dubber’s followup post, gleefully talking about how cool it was that Kuyvenhoven actually executed on his idea, this one line stood out:
I invented something, and it came true because I said it out loud.
That’s a really powerful statement when you think about it. And, of course, it goes way beyond that. Just look back at the trail of things that happened that resulted in this particular offering coming about — how many of them were disconnected and simply shared. Yet, we keep hearing people talk about the need to “protect” an idea? Innovation doesn’t come out of protection. It comes out of building on the ideas of others and sharing and others taking a different view on it and finally someone executing, not because they want a patent, but because they want the product.
And to tie this all together, Sivers (who kicked off a lot of the chain of explosions above) has also pointed out himself that it’s the execution that matters, and ideas, by themselves, are “worth nothing unless executed.”
But think about all this in context, and you realize that it was the openness and sharing of ideas that resulted in execution. It happened by building on different ideas — not “copying,” but innovating. And, it’s not just this one idea. Remember, Dubber put forth 30 ideas, and others have been doing the same, building on those ideas themselves. In fact, some have committed to delivering on other ideas that Dubber put forth as well.
Now, before people get upset and say “well that’s great, but it doesn’t mean patents aren’t useful,” you’re right. I’m not saying that any of this negates the need for patents (there are other reasons for that), but I found it to be such a great example of how ideas travel and morph and lead to eventual execution, totally separate from focusing on the need for protection, that it felt worth sharing. And hopefully, someone else might share it, build on it and do something different and innovative with this idea themselves.
We’ve written many times about the inherent conflict between free speech and copyright laws. Copyright law is an inherent restriction on free speech. The courts have tried to get around this with two tools: “fair use” as an exception to copyright and the “idea/expression” dichotomy, which is supposed to only allow copyright over the specific expression, rather than the idea (in practice, this is often violated — such as in the recent decision to ban an unauthorized sequel to Catcher in the Rye). So, that mostly leaves fair use. However, many people have noticed that fair use is woefully inadequate in preventing basic First Amendment abuses.
Justin Levine points us to an interesting paper by David Olson, where he proposes beefing up the basically non-existent “copyright misuse” defense for situations where copyright is clearly being used to stifle free speech against the First Amendment:
The Copyright Act serves First Amendment interests by encouraging authors to create works. But copyright law can also discourage the creation of new works by preventing subsequent creators from using copyrighted work to make their own, new speech. Courts have long recognized this inherent tension, and have also recognized that the conflict should sometimes be decided in favor of allowing a subsequent speaker the right to make unauthorized use of others’ copyrighted works. Accordingly, courts created, and Congress codified, the fair use defense to copyright infringement, which allows unauthorized use of copyrighted works under certain circumstances that encourage speech and creation of transformative works. The problem with fair use, however, is that the informational uncertainties and transaction costs of litigating the defense make the fair use right unavailable to many as a practical matter. Subsequent creators are left open to intimidation by copyright holders threatening infringement suits. By decoupling the copyright misuse defense from its basis in antitrust principles and basing it in First Amendment speech principles, the legal protections for fair use shift from theoretical rights to practical rights for many. Copyright misuse has two deterrent features that will allow fair use as a practical right. First, a copyright holder’s misuse of its copyrights against anyone can be used to prove the defense of misuse. Second, once misuse is found, the copyright owner loses its ability to enforce its copyright against everyone, at least until the misuse is cured. Thus, by defining as copyright misuse the unjustified chilling of speech that some copyright holders perpetrate, the misuse defense will encourage important speech rights that are currently under-protected.
This is definitely a paper worth reading, even if it seems unlikely to ever be adopted by the courts or Congress. It would definitely be a big improvement over what we have today. It’s really too bad how rare it is for courts to actually consider the First Amendment implications of their copyright rulings.
At the beginning of April, we noted that director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, who’s now consulting for some firms that would profit greatly from a re-architecting of the internet, is going around pushing a ridiculous moral panic about “cyberwar” and how we basically need to break the internet and get rid of all privacy and anonymity. Forget your civil liberties, there’s money to be made in scaring people. While even the US “cybersecurity” czar tried to throw some cold water on these claims, the press sure does love bogus “cyberwar” stories, despite the lack of proof that there is any such thing or that it could do any real damage.
The problem, of course, is the same as we described back in March: the people playing up the whole “cyberwar” threat are simply lumping together basic vandalism — the kind done by script kiddies, as if it’s part of a war. If that’s the definition of a “war,” you can find it going on around the country, anywhere there are kids and spray paint. Thankfully, Tom Lee has written a scathing critique of dumb journalistic coverage of this whole “cyberwar” crap:
The piece starts out by discussing Russian vandals’ successful efforts to screw with the Georgian government’s website — something that can be plausibly done by a disaffected teenager — then jumps rapidly to “monkey[ing] with GPS” which involves, you know, satellites, or at least skill at building, concealing and fortifying radio transmitters; and, if anything other than a braindead denial of service, would also require the discovery of a novel attack on the system’s design. These things are much harder than checking to see if the recently-launched website of a small ex-Soviet country is running slightly outdated software that someone else has written an exploit for….
Disrupting the operation of a website is very different from disrupting the operation of the internet, which is very different from interfering with military communication systems, which is very different from interfering with military battlefield communication systems, which is very different from being susceptible to the interception of digital communications. But all of these things are just jammed together, mindlessly.
What kinds of electronic attack are possible? To what extent are our defense systems susceptible to them — in particular, are those systems at all tangled up with the internet? If not, what economic consequences could plausibly be inflicted on our country by disruption of the internet, and how do they compare to the historical example of, say, a blockade? If an online attack originates from overseas, what countermeasures are available? And do we have a protocol in place with the major backbone operators to implement them?
None of these questions are asked or answered. Blah blah blah cyber. That’s it, over and over.
Welcome to the next moral panic that’s more about taking away your rights in an attempt to make some ex-politicians rich.
2009 Concorso Italiano – Click above for high-res image gallery
There’s something special about seeing a supercar in person, and it’s a once in a lifetime event to see several in the same place. It’s for that reason we’re big fans of supercar reunions. Last year, as part of the Monterey Classic Car Week festivities, Concorso Italiano hosted a Ferrari 288 GTO reunion as part of the car’s 25th anniversary, and an incredible fifteen examples showed up, making it the largest gathering ever.
Concorso plans to outdo itself this year with another Ferrari reunion, this time with the F40. More than a dozen owners have already signed on to bring their cars, and we fully expect plenty more to be on hand come August 13th. In fact, the event organizers hope to have more than 40 examples in attendance. The F40’s project director, Leonardo Fioravanti, is also scheduled to make an appearance.
If you’re a big fan of the F40 or even just Italian supercars in general, then start making your plans to be in Monterey in a little over four months. Until then, take a look at what you missed out on last year in the galleries below.
As we’ve seen time and time again, generally, when newspapers put up a paywall around their content, things do not turn out well. Yet, newspapers continue to put them up. While we applaud the spirit of experimentation, if they simply keep repeating the same experiment over and over again, with the same results, they’re apparently not learning anything. So, it’s not really surprising to see that yet another paywall experiment has ended badly. This time The Valley Morning Star, a small paper in Harlingen, Texas, decided in mid-2009 to implement a paywall. The paper, which has a circulation of about 23,000, was chosen as a test case for Freedom Communications’ stable of newspapers.
The paywall, which launched the week of July 15th, cost $3.95 a month, 75 cents per day, or was included if you had a subscription to the print version of the newspaper. The rationale was that since online readers were not paying a subscription fee, somehow the value to the print subscribers decreased:
“It will allow greater value to our many loyal print-edition subscribers by not giving away the news to non-subscribers,” Patton said. “The days of giving content away, which costs money to create and for which we charge our print subscribers, I think, are just over.”
As we’ve discussed here before, this is a flawed argument. The subscription price of a printed newspaper barely covers the costs of printing and distribution, not the production of the content, which is generally funded with ad revenue.
In any case, after 8 months, the The Valley Morning Star took the paywall down, proudly proclaiming they “will be moving back to a completely FREE Web site.” By now, so many of these paywall experiments have failed that you have to wonder when the industry will finally heed the lessons they teach.
“Playing” a Fernando Alonso lap of Bahrain in a Ferrari F10 – Click above to watch video after the jump
One of the questions creative types hate most is “Where do get your ideas?” So we won’t ask where this guy got the idea to “play” a lap of Bahrain, we’ll just chuckle and shake our heads at the fact that he actually did it. Sliding his fingers along a Gibson X-plorer, he recreates one of Fernando Alonso’s entire laps at the Bahrain GP down to gear changes and high-rev oscillations. So it won’t get this guy to Wembley, but it will get him all over the Internet, and that’s almost like the same thing, right? Follow the jump to check it out. Top tip, Jordan!
About a year ago, the faith of the Nissan Titan pickup looked really hazy. Sales of the full-size truck were down and plans to team up with Chrysler to use the Dodge Ram basis fell through.
After all that Nissan remained a bit quiet about what it has in the works for the full-size pickup segment… until now.
According to Carlos Tavares, Executive Vice President and Member of the Board of Nissan Motor, the company never stopped considering a replacement for the Titan.
“We didn’t consider stopping. When the Chrysler deal fell through, we immediately started on a truck of our own. We are committed to this market. We recognize that it’s an important part of this market, so we are not going to step out,” Tavares told Inside Line.
Last we heard anything, Nissan said that it will continue to sell the Titan while it works on the successor.
What do you get when you start with a 599 GTB Fiorano, lose 430 pounds, add 49 horsepower and import street-legal tech from the track-only 599XX? The sum of those many marvelous parts is the 599 GTO, the fastest road-going Ferrari in the automaker’s legendary history.
The folks in Maranello unleashed it’s king Horse to the public earlier this week before its official unveiling next month at the Beijing Motor Show, with the promise to build precisely 599 examples carrying the venerable GTO designation. The good news is Ferrari created a vehicle configurator that lets you customize your 599 GTO to your heart’s content. The bad news: at an estimated $460,000, most of us couldn’t afford it.
But still, it’s fun to dream, and with the hundreds of available combinations you’ll have plenty of time to play. Hues for the 50s and 60s are available, along with metallic finishes, and you can choose your own seat type (racing buckets come in small, medium and large), steering wheel type, a host of available carbon fiber accents, over a dozen different interior stitching options and plenty more. Check it out and start saving your pennies for the launch later this year.
Ron Paul was interviewed on the Dylan Ratigan show today. The Congressman commented on the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stevens, Mitt Romney’s vote-buying for the SRLC straw poll, and his ongoing efforts to audit the Federal Reserve.
Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry, announced today that it has teamed up with Harman International to acquire QNX Software Systems to gain technology for wireless connections in cars. The move is expected to help RIM into new markets as sales growth slows due to falling prices and competition from Apple’s iPhone.
“RIM is excited about the planned acquisition of QNX Software Systems and we look forward to ongoing collaboration between Harman, QNX and RIM to further integrate and enhance the user experience between smartphones and in-vehicle audio and infotainment systems,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at RIM. “In addition to our interests in expanding the opportunities for QNX in the automotive sector and other markets, we believe the planned acquisition of QNX will also bring other value to RIM in terms of supporting certain unannounced product plans for intelligent peripherals, adding valuable intellectual property to RIM’s portfolio and providing long-term synergies for the companies based on the significant and complementary OS expertise that exists within the RIM and QNX teams today.”
RIM said that the deal is subject to regulatory approval and is anticipated to close within 35-45 days.
We’re getting so many examples of content creators making use of CwF+RtB business models lately, that it’s difficult to figure out which ones are worth posting. Mostly, of course, we’re still hearing about the music industry, where these sorts of models are becoming more common, but here are two interesting ones that are in the movie business, where such models haven’t been as common. The first, pointed out by rosspruden is about a Spanish film called The Cosmonaut which has a few unique features surrounding it. Ross listed them out:
the filmmakers are releasing their work under a CC license to let others mix and reuse their film.
the film is fully funded from fan donations (so the film never needs to turn a profit)
profits are generated from sales of scarce goods
fans are allowed to invest in the project for real financial profit (not virtual profit), which isn’t allowed according to SEC regulations (yet)
The fan funding element is definitely interesting — though I’m still not convinced that investing for real financial profit really works that well in these situations. As we’ve seen with things like Sellaband’s problems, those can have downsides as well. Money is one incentive, but certainly not the only one. And, with crowdfunding projects, it often seems like giving the crowdfunders financial (as opposed to non-financial) incentives can lead to problems. People get less into supporting the content creators and then start worrying about what they might get back out of it. This isn’t to say it can’t work, but it has pitfalls. Still, either way, it’s definitely nice to see the Creative Commons license on the film, and the plan to let others not just watch it, but remix and reuse the film.
The second example comes from Ryan Estrada, who is involved in a project to create an animated romantic horror-comedy that is using a crowdfunding model as well, with the focus on being able to get “in the movie” in some manner.
This isn’t entirely new. We’ve seen some other movies do the same — and even just the idea of getting your name in the credits (the cheapest option) was something that filmmakers like Kevin Smith have done in the past (though, not for money). However, I think this actually works especially well in an animated movie. One of the (quite reasonable) concerns that filmmakers have expressed in hearing about fan funding movie projects that involve “get a part in the movie” is that this could seriously diminish the quality of the movie if the fans can’t act. But with an animated film, the idea is that you send in an image, and then an animated “you” shows up in the film. That seems to work a lot better, and to build a real connection with the fans.
Again, I’m not saying either of these will be success stories, but they’re two recent attempts at trying something new in filmmaking, and both seemed worth mentioning and discussing here.
We’ve been hearing about Audi working on a hotter R8 supercar for some time now and today we’re hearing those rumors once again. According to a little post by Straightline, Audi will soon launch a hotter R8 – now we’re not sure if that means more power or less weight or a combination of both.
Here is an interesting article we came across on CNNMoney about “Die-hard drivers” that have driven their vehicles more than 200,000 miles.
Featured in the story is Marc Broza and his Plymouth Satellite that could have gone around the earth more than 18 times. Broza’s 1967 Plymouth has drive about 450,000 miles.
The car was purchased new by Marc’s father and was restored in the early 1990s.
A tire war could be sparked in Formula One within a couple of seasons if Michelin gets what it wants. The French tire manufacturer ceased its participation in the sport after F1 moved to a single-supplier formula, selecting Bridgestone as its partner. But with Bridgestone set to leave at the end of next season, team bosses reportedly met with Bernie Ecclestone in Malaysia on Friday to discuss potential replacements.
Among the offers reportedly entertained, Michelin could be back in – but with some very serious conditions. For starters, it wants not only free trackside advertising – a hit which Bernie Ecclestone would reportedly pass on to the teams – but it would also expect each team to pay for its tires, to the tune of some 2-5 million euros… per team, per season.
In addition to the compensation issue, Michelin would reportedly want the sport to switch from its current 13-inch wheels to much larger 18-inchers (presumably with lower-profile sidewalls) so that the F1 initiative could be better integrated with Michelin’s sportscar racing program.
A large-scale tire war could ensue if Michelin gets what it’s asking for, with Korean rubber companies Hankook or Kumho potentially joining the battle for a slice of the pie, and Bridgestone reconsidering its position.
2011 Nissan NV2500 HD – Click above for high-res image gallery
Renault-Nissan’s partnership with Daimler is only a couple of days old, but the three companies have already divulged plenty of information on possible synergies. For example, the three automakers will work together on a small car platform that will one day underpin the Renault Twingo and future Smart cars. The companies will also collaborate on engine projects and share U.S. factory space.
Automotive News reports that another area where the three companies can find synergies is with commercial vans. Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche intimated as much during the press conference, adding “we have no concrete plans yet, but these are certainly areas of investigation which might lead to results.” Nissan is just getting its feet wet in the segment with the spanking new NV2500, while Daimler has a much more established van, the extremely capable (if pricey) Sprinter. Since commercial vans is one of the few areas where the companies will compete, the best way to combine efforts is through the manufacturing process.
The NV2500 begins production in Canton, Miss this fall, while the Sprinter is assembled from imported kit components at Daimler’s Charleston, S.C. plant. Since Daimler doesn’t have an engine plant in the U.S., the German automaker can benefit financially from Nissan engines built in Decherd, Tennessee. The move would improve Nissan’s economies of scale at its engine plant, while Daimler stands to save metric tons of money, since European labor costs are high and the company loses cash by the bucket due to the high value of the euro compared to the dollar. Sounds like a cargo-hauling match made in heaven to us.
At the Masters professional golf tournament, guests on-site at Augusta National Golf Club and viewers at select locations around the country will be treated to a unique view of the historic grounds, through Sony Electronics’ 3D consumer TV and professional camera technology. Sony, a sponsor of the Masters’ first broadcast in 3D, is outfitting hospitality suites at Augusta with its new 3D BRAVIA LCD TV sets to display a perspective never before seen of Augusta.
Select Sony Style stores will also host private events on April 8 with a two-hour live broadcast from two holes being broadcast in 3D.
Saturday April 10th 5-7pm EST: Live 3D tournament coverage
Sunday April 11th 5-7pm EST: Live 3D Final Round coverage
The 3D content will also be delivered to the new “Sony 3D Experience,” a consumer research center developed by Sony and CBS and located in Las Vegas within the CBS Television City facility at the MGM Grand Hotel.
To produce the 3D images, Sony HD cameras will be used in stereo pairs supplied by NEP Productions, the mobile production company for the tournament. This year’s Masters represents the largest worldwide gathering of Sony cameras being used to provide HD coverage, and the 3D coverage is being exclusively switched through a Sony MVS-8000 series production switcher.
“Sony technology is a big part of the Masters’ history,” said Mike Fasulo, Sony Electronics executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “Our professional HD cameras were used when the Masters was first shot in HD in 2000, and are now being used to shoot this year’s tournament in 3D for the first time. Now with our 3D TVs coming to market soon, Sony is delivering a true, end-to-end 3D sports experience for consumers.”
Comcast will use its fiber network to carry the 3D production feed to the Comcast Media Center where it will be packaged for distribution to cable systems, the official Masters web site, as well as Sony 3D TV sets in the Augusta National Clubhouse and hospitality, suites and select Sony Style stores.
Well-known DP and 3D expert Vince Pace will also be working with the Sony cameras on the NEP truck. Pace and director James Cameron co-developed a 3D camera system (based on Sony cameras) that was used to shoot “Avatar,” with similar rigs being deployed at Augusta.
It seems the merger between Volkswagen and Porsche has been complicated since the very beginning, and a report from Reuters shows that the dynamic may not change any time soon.
First Porsche was buying the much larger VW, then Porsche got stuck in a cash crunch and needed money from Volkswagen to stave off bankruptcy. Now VW owns 49.9 percent of Porsche, and The People’s Automaker expects to own the luxury sports car maker outright by 2011. Straightforward enough, right? Well, a prospectus filed by VW in late March reportedly shows that the merger between the two German automakers may be delayed until 2011 and beyond. The reason for the delay could stem from Porsche’s tax liabilities and hedge fund lawsuits alleging that former executives at the German sports car maker manipulated the market in an attempt to takeover Volkswagen.
A Volkswagen spokesperson reportedly told Reuters that the companies are still moving towards a 2011 merger as planned, while a Porsche spokesperson said the warnings in VW’s perspective list every possible risk and that the chances of a major problem is limited. Still, some analysts sound skeptical. The report goes on to state that Bernstein Research analyst Max Warburton said the risks associated with purchasing Porsche could force VW to pay cash for a remaining 50.1 percent stake. That would mean VW would have to raise capital and assume unwanted debt – a lot of capital and a mountain of debt.
As you may or may not know, India only recently changed its patent laws (under sever pressure from foreign countries and pharmaceutical companies) to allow pharmaceutical patents. Before that, pharmaceuticals (for the most part) were unpatentable there. Of course, contrary to what patent system supporters would tell you, India had a thriving pharma industry. Yes, a lot of it was in generic drugs, but according to patent system supporters if people can just copy each other, no one will even bother to get into that business. Reality shows that wasn’t true. But, of course, the big pharma companies were quite upset by all of this, and got their governments to put pressure on India to “join the world community.” In 2005, India’s new patent laws went into effect, and while the results of all of this are still being analyzed, one thing that politicians smartly put into the law were sections 3(d) and (e), “which restrict protection being granted to already known and long-ago patented drugs and their combinations.” This upset pharma industry sympathisers, but it’s hard to fathom who could reasonably be against such a rule. You simply should not be able to patent things that are already known or patent the simple combinations of drugs that are already known. This is just common sense to prevent pharmaceutical firms from getting monopolies on drugs already out there.
However, Jamie Love points us to the news of a new report that found that the Indian patent office has gone against this law and issued such patents quite frequently and, no surprise, the main recipients are among the world’s largest pharma companies, including Pfizer, Novartis and Eli Lilly. Is it any wonder that they’ve all been pushing to dump sections 3(d) and (e) all along? Remember, pharma patents are not about drug discovery, but about jacking up the prices on drugs.
Sony Japan has announced a cosmetic and totally droolworthy addition to the NW-A840 series OLED Walkman. The new color added is obviously white, and has blue Walkman symbol on the front and back of the device. Sony will sell this new version on May 1st, and will offer 16GB (NW-A845) and 32GB (NW-A856) versions. I want this so badly.
If you have forgotten, this simply is the most brilliant Walkman offering from Sony to date – it has all of the features people have been asking for in previous Walkmans while shedding what it needed to. In my opinion, this is the most stylish appearance I’ve seen in a personal media player – and it has a jaw-dropping 2.8 inch WQVGA OLED screen. This is also the thinnest Walkman ever created at only 7.2mm. It also has a TV-out function, that can output at 720×480 (SD) quality. There is no Wifi or touchscreen.
Of course, the A-Series is drag n’ drop, which also includes for the first time autoconverting video transfer! Additional features to round out this sweet package include a S-Master digital amplifier, FM radio, digital noise canceling (which we really think is incredible) and comes with premium MDR-EX300SL earphones. That is a really nice pair of stock buds to come with a Walkman – I am glad to see they didn’t skimp out. Other premium features to color your sound include DSEE, Clear Stereo, Clear bass, and lyric display.
I’m seeing here that the new A series has about 29 hours battery life at 128kbps, and 9 hours of video playback at 384kbps MPEG-4. Codec support looks like MP3, WMA, AAC, HE-AAC, ATRAC, ATRAC AL, PCM/wav. I assume ATRAC support will probably be limited to Japan, but we are not sure yet. For movies, the usual AVC (H2.64), MPEG-4 and WMV are allowed.
