Word: ziff
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Computers as we know them will never have minds. No matter what amazing feats they perform, inside they will always be the same absolute zero. The philosopher Paul Ziff laid this out clearly almost four decades ago. How can we be sure, he asked, that a computer-driven robot will never have feelings, never have a mind? "Because we can program a robot to behave any way we want it to behave. Because a robot couldn't mean what it said any more than a phonograph record could mean what it said." Computers do what we make them do, period...
...often referred to as Japan's Bill Gates. But his $4.5 billion buying spree over the past 18 months has made Masayoshi Son something closer to the Napoleon of the multimedia business. First he swallowed Ziff-Davis, the American computer-magazine giant. Then he bought 37% of Yahoo, the U.S. Internet search-engine company. In June he and another corporate conqueror, News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch, acquired a 21% interest in TV Asahi, which will be the entrepreneurial duo's base for a 150-station satellite network called Japan Sky Broadcast. And in September, Son's Tokyo-based Softbank paid...
...access only certain sites. Those which are generally large and commercially-operated are more popular among users who are seeking reliable, up-to-the-minute information. Many of the most popular sites on the Web are those run by large media corporations such as Time-Warner, Ziff Davis and the New York Times...
...Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, publisher of PC Magazine -- fave of DOS dweebs -- was bought for $1.4 billion by Forstmann Little & Co, a New York investment firm run by high profile banker Ted Forstmann. Included in the deal is the giant publishing arm of Ziff Communications, which includes other magazines like MacWeek and Family PC, as well as Ziffnet, an on-line service. It's a move by Forstmann, a shrewd dealmaker, to keep pace with rival Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, which controls New York magazine and other media properties, says TIME associate editor Thomas McCarroll. "They have had this rivalry...
...battle among competing online newsstands is about to get even fiercer. This summer Apple opened a slick service, eWorld, and publisher Ziff-Davis is expected to launch its powerful new Interchange Online Network before the end of the year. But the most fearsome competitors may be ones that are still in the wings. Next year Microsoft is expected to introduce its own online service, code-named Marvel, which it could bundle into every copy of Windows it sells. Even more formidable would be an online service from AT&T, which can market directly to its 80 million customers...