Protecting piracy, not software
Article Abstract:
The Treasury Department continues to deny an export tax benefit to the software industry, despite the fact that software is among the fastest-growing segments of the US export business. A 1971 Congressional ruling allows companies to exclude from taxes about 15 percent of their profits from the export of films, tapes, records and similar products. Software was not specifically included because the market was in its infancy at that time. Part of the reason for the tax exemption is that licensing local companies to manufacture and distribute products can aid in recruiting powerful local interests to combat counterfeiting. The Treasury ruled in 1987 that software did not come under the 1971 regulation and the IRS has reaffirmed this decision. The Clinton administration is actively combating software piracy in China, Thailand and Mexico. Changing the regulation to include software companies could aid in this effort.
Publication Name: The New York Times
Subject: Business, general
ISSN: 0362-4331
Year: 1996
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I.B.M. to widen push for technology in classroom
Article Abstract:
IBM CEO Louis V. Gerstner Jr. is planning to announce the awarding of $10 million in grants to 12 school districts and state education departments to plan new technology classroom applications. Gerstner said the schools will seek innovative solutions to education problems, rather than maintaining the status quo. The IBM Foundation's second round of grants since 1995 will help teachers find the electronic ability to grade students' performances, communicate with their parents and teach students to read. Philadelphia schools, for example, received technical assistance from IBM in 1995 to develop a voice-recognition computer that can correct children as they read. IBM, which has donated $35 million to the program, is one of many contributors. Districts and education departments will have the latitude to tailor the technological innovations and meet their special needs.
Publication Name: The New York Times
Subject: Business, general
ISSN: 0362-4331
Year: 1997
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With major math proof, brute computers show flash of reasoning power
Article Abstract:
An Argonne National Laboratory computer program has solved a mathematical proof so complicated that researchers are calling the accomplishment a sign of computers' ability to reason. The program itself was designed to reason rather than solve a specific problem. The study may change scientists' ideas about creative thinking since it suggests the possibility that creativity may be more mechanical than previously thought. Mathematicians had been unable to solve the proof, that a set of three equations is equivalent to a Boolean algebra. In developing the successful program, researchers wrote programs in which a computer would assume a hypothesis was true or false and would then look for contradictions to those assumptions. Some experts feel that eventually computers may reason as well as they calculate.
Publication Name: The New York Times
Subject: Business, general
ISSN: 0362-4331
Year: 1996
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