Slashdot Mirror
French Response to Google is Microsoft
efp writes "Mark Liberman posted over in the Language Log that, in considering alternatives to Google's library initiative in Europe, French President Jacques Chirac would consider a partnership with Microsoft 'since he has so many views in common with its president, Bill Gates'. This comes out of talks between the French president, the head of the French National Library and the Minister of Culture, in in part 'building an alter ego to the American project, before thinking of an eventual collaboration with Google, so as not to negotiate from a position of weakness' as they plan to digitize their cultural resources."
Just see the sig.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Karma be damned. France surrendering to what appears to be a superior power? Where have I seen this before...
They are both filthy stinkin rich, hate google, and dream of a new world order?
I have this really funny quote that I like to put here. Unfortunately, there's this really annoying thing called a char
France is evil. Just as we suspected...
J'utilize Linux
__________ Leave me alone I'm compiling a RPG II program on my S/36...Thanks to metamucil I'm a Regular Meta Moderator
If it's anything like my Outlook PST file, it will be able to hold about 1000 documents, then not work as well.
Sounds fun!
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
...a "freedom engine"? ;)
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
I see some kind of retaliation or what I'd call divide & rule, by the French government. "If you do not cooperate, (read `pay for content') I will go to your rival(s)." M$ used this against IBM on a limited level in the 80s and they succeeded to some extent.
for all the French+Bill Gates jokes
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
It seems to me that it is unlikely that the French government will align themselves with such a symbol of US cultural imperialism. Therefore, I suspect that the implied use of MS as a bargaining chip with google is correct.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
I have nothing against the French but what's next? France decides SCO's case has merit, claims jurisdiction? I'm just confused. It just seems odd that the country that takes issue with Google's helpful, automated services because they occasionally violate copyright is considering working with Microsoft, the king of anti-trust! No wonder the French people are so jaded.
When negotiating with Microsoft, is there anyone who can NOT negotiate from a position of weakness?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Perhaps the saddest part about France going to Microsoft for this project is that whatever data is produced is more likely to be locked into some proprietary format. That could be particularly unfortunate, since these cultural resources really belong to all the people of France and should therefore be made as accessible as possible.
is that the french are very nationalist and I would of thought they would of done something with a European or at least a French software outfit. I thought they were scared of globalisation and were worried about their identity being lost on the world stage. So to cure this fear they choose MS.
Jonathanjk.com
It is a well known fact that European governments prefer to support the under-dog: "Go Bill, go Bill, go!"
Now the French can leverage the power of DRM to keep their military failures in the last century a secret!
Moi, j'aime bien nos maitres francais des biblioteque borg.
__________ Leave me alone I'm compiling a RPG II program on my S/36...Thanks to metamucil I'm a Regular Meta Moderator
What's wrong with the french?
French good deeds this year: 2French bad deeds this year: 5
Le sigh . . . .
As Seen On TV's? Come back!!!
Wow, it seems you don't need to fire a shot now to get the French to surrender to somebody hell bent on taking over the world!
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
1760s: The indians can be relied upon to help drive the british from america
1803: Let's sell the Louisiana Territories
1934: Let's overlook Germany's military buildup
So Microsoft has just bought France to go along with their acquisition of evil?
Sounds like a matched set to me.
Something that would make sense would be cooperating with a big canadian software company, since Canadians speak french too.
The rest has been said by others, I've nothing to add.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Hmm. I read your gibberish post, and then examined the opening statement of your last post...
I am a high school history teacher...
I'd be fuckin' scared/annoyed/upset if you taught my children.
You're so stupid, it's almost funny
Come on! We're Americans! Do you think we *care* what everyone else thinks?
All joking aside, regardless of my feelings towards the French, which are pretty close to neutral, this does seem contrary to their nationlistic zeal to keep France French. I (like other posters) assumed that the government would come up with its own solution. It seems absurd that France would team up with that oh so American company Microsoft to thwart that other oh so American company Google.
P.S. The US was attacked by terrorists because of numerous things, but name calling is not one of them.
P.P.S. The rest of the world bashes the US. Don't you think we get tired of that?
Does someone realize that Chirac never actually talked about partnering with Microsoft??? Not even close?
This post relates to ANOTHER post which translates ANOTHER article in a French newspaper which says that some UNNAMED assistant to Chirac when asked about the possibility of partnering with Microsoft answered "why not?" (which does not seem like a terrible answer..., there is no reason to dismiss anybody before the project is launched...).
> if it wasn't their support of terrorists, their ingratiating manner about our saving their asses twice, and the fact that they are as useless as tits on a nun, now i have another reason.
in the words of Simon Pegg:
what a prick.
I'm inclined to bash anybody who chooses MS over Free Software. The fact that they're French this time is only a coincidence.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Say it frenchie! CHOWDA!
Don't Tread on Me
I've never met anyone from France that was rude and refused to try to speak English -- quite the opposite.
I've heard it argued that Americans go to Paris to "see France" -- and their opinions about the French is more or less similar to the common French opinion about people living in Paris... :-)
It has been a bit frustrating, when the "frogs" don't live up to the image I get from being steeped in the literature of English speaking (or mangling) cultures.
But I'll have to change opinion now. :-(
It do give a bit of perspective at the local politicians. There are worse examples.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
No wonder most Americans have such a distorted view of world history if this is how an American high school history teacher thinks.
Seriously, in that one sentence you've demonstrated that you're so clueless about history that you're a danger in the classroom. I have to agree with the other poster that I'd be very worried if you were teaching my kids.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
What happened up to now is that: The president of France said that he'd rather have his own "very large digital library" rather than let google do it all on their own. What some of his "minder" said in answer of a journalists question was: yes Microsoft could be a partner. Most probably if the journalist would have asked if Oracle, or Mysql or any other organisation/person/BEM the answer would have been more or less the same.
The first issue being: Should the governement fund a public "digital library" The second issue being: How.
So I do find it very unfortunate that people make a lot of "advertizement" for a mediocre propriaitary software provider (as in you can write good things or bad things about me, but first of all write about me !), based on partial information.
For the record, I do like the google search engine, but I do think that any government should make the effort of putting as much as possible of cultural content as possible online.
Of course I do hope that when the project will start it will use Free and Open Source Software, but for the time being there is not even a call for tender
BTW the french national library is called "La tres grande bibliotheque"/"Bibliotheque François Mitterand", (socialist predecessor of Chirac) no wonder Jacques wants his own.
For those actually interested in what is there http://gallica.bnf.fr/
So the lumbering dinosaur that is the modern Microsoft may ally itself with a backwardly-minded socialist republic that is rapidly being taken over by foreign immigrants because their population refuses to breed.
France is part of the past. Their role in the future will likely can be compared to the foodcourt in the mall except with a heavier emphasis on Middle Eastern cuisine. They're a dying nation who gave up their chance to be relevant when they started stumbling down the misguided road of nationalist socialism. The only thing France is known for anymore is a ramshackle economy, industrial goods no one else in the world would ever buy and opposing US imperialist foreign policy while simultaneously attempting to imperialistically control as much of EU and UN policy as is absolutely possible (and pissing on their own colonies for decades before finally losing them all).
MS is falling behind technologically when compared to the rest of the industry. Their upcoming OS "update" is a hodgepodge collection of features and patches that should've made it into Windows 98. They're renowned for border-line illegal business tactics, shoddy engineering and the some of the most idiotic and backwards arguments ever heard in the debates over intellectual property rights.
This is like the T-Rex and the Stegosaurus agreeing to unite in an effort to stop the meteor. It's downright comical.
Posting as AC to preserve my karma from the hordes of French pussies who'd rather mod me down than step up and fight...
So basically what you're saying is you're too much of a pussy to risk your karma because you're afraid someone might mod you down in disagreement?
"Run to Bill, he'll protect us!" Now there's an idea. Jeeze, France, explain to us how your country has actually been relevant for 30 years...
They're not running to Bill, when asked if they'd select Google's competitor, Microsoft, the president's advisor said "Why not?" Not "Yeah, we've already signed a contract", just "Why not?" if any other company was mentioned it would have had the same response.
You know what else is ironic? How closely his intermediate goals match up with the intermediate goals of the neocons. What the US is doing is certainly destabilizing the status quo in the Middle East, and loosening the grip of the House of Saud (albeit slowly). It's in the long term goals and of course the ideological differences that make Osama and the neocons imcompatible (and yet strangely complimentary*)
*Would the neocons have been able to advance their agenda as far as they have without an Osama? I doubt it.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
The thing is that places do acquire reputations for a reason.
I'm not saying everyone in France is rude, I'm saying that on average in France you are going to find more people who are seemingly rude (seemingly is key, more in a second) to you than perhaps if you travelled elsewhere.
I have a few friends who have travelled to France (including outlying regions beyond paris) and the only one who enjoyed the experience is someone whose wife spoke fluent French.
This effect is aggravated by the "seemingly rude" point - there are some things people do in other cultures that strike Americans as rude. Part of that for my friends was some sort of service issue at restaurants, I forget the detail but some seemingly inconsequential thing they wanted was looked on in outrage by the waiter. Perhaps he also viewed the request as rude, but the response basically discolored my friends opinion of restaurants in France.
My own example along those lines is from a trip to Barcelona - myself and a few friends (two of which spoke Spanish pretty well) went into a toy store to browse. Now there was this cool thing in the window that I wanted to buy, so I took it from the display to take up to the cash register -well let me tell you the owner of the store flipped out! He was yelling and cursing at me like I had just set fire to his dog. Even after we explained calmly that I had not meant to offend he was incredibly angry and demanded we leave the store that instant! Well no toy is worth an altercation but to this day none of us can figure out what set him off to that degree. While it did not make me think of all Spaniards as lunatics, it certainly made me think a little bit inside that shopkeepers there were on something of a power trip with little respect for customers.
So reputations of other countries being difficult may stem from the degree of cultural differences between two countries. And to some extent, I have to say that given that the reputation is correct as far as the average person goes. Even though the behavior there might not really be rude, to the traveller it might seem that way and really that's the same thing as far as the traveller is concerned!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can only assume that your history education was as flawed as that being received by the other poster's students.
1. The US didn't save anyone in World War I. By the time the US got involved, the war was practically over. Also, the US got involved because of the threat of a war on its own soil - didn't you learn about the Zimmerman telegram at school? - and not because of any altruism it felt towards France.
Without US intervention, France would still have been on the winning side.
2. The US played a role in liberating Europe in World War II but it didn't save the day single-handedly. Again, the US got involved way after the party started, being the last of the combatants to join the war. And, again, that US involvement was for its own reasons - because Hitler had declared war on the US in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbour - and not because of any altruism it felt towards France.
Without US intervention, France would still have been on the winning side, only it would probably have been gifted with a communist government by Soviet liberators.
3. The US involvement in Indo-China was a disaster. By the time that the US decided to involve itself, France had realised that its postition there was untenable. The US, however, once again decided to get involved for its own reasons - to stop the "domino effect" and the spread of communism in that part of the world - and not because of any altruism it felt towards France.
Without US intervention, France's borders would still have been secure.
Ask yourself this: In all three cases if the US really had French interests at heart then why didn't it help out its ally right away? Why did it always stand back and watch until it was practically dragged kicking and screaming into things?
The men of the US armed forces did the peoples of Europe a great service once their nation finally entered WWII. But to pretend that they were sent to war for anything other than fighting a threat to their own country is the sort of revisionist crap that I expect from a Hollywood studio.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Yes, I know about Vichy France, which the U.S. originally recognized before we joined the hostilities. At that point we supported de Gaulle and the Free French, but never whole heartedly, because de Gaulle was such a pain in the ass (from the Anglo-American perspective).
You might note that the Free French 19th Corps participated in Operation Torch. And it's been said that the fight was easier because many Vichy soldiers went over to the Free French side, rather than fight the Allies.
Still, one of the funnier Churchill quotes is, "The heaviest cross I had to bear during the war was the Cross of Lorraine." The Cross of Lorraine was the symbol of Free France, and de Gaulle was Free France.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Isn't that from "The Fountainhead"?
Anyway, there's a counterargument, although it's purely anecdotal: the NIH's PubMed system. It's an online index of most biomedical research published in the last 50 years. Probably the most essential web page for every biologist in the country, created solely by the US government.
So this type of project isn't necessarily a bad idea. The major differences, of course, are that PubMed was probably created by scientists who knew exactly what they needed, and there's a huge incentive for journal publishers to have their content indexed. As a result, it's self-sustaining and I doubt it costs much to keep running. There are few government projects I can think of that have been such spectacular successes.
The French government sided with the Nazis, and the French people didn't have a lot to say about it, with a foreign army parked on their territory. Certainly the French fought as they could. Ever heard of the Free French, which while lead by a royal pain in the ass, were as anti-Nazi as you could get. How about the French Resistance, which did a lot to make the German occupation a costly one for the Nazis. France had been screwed long before the war started, and its collapse was probably inevitible after the world stood by and let Hitler rearm the Rhineland.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The translation isn't correct for the first paragraph. That's quite a problem, since it changes the meaning significantly.
Le président serait-il prêt à s'entretenir avec le concurrent de Google, Microsoft, puisqu'il a tant de convergences de vues avec son président, Bill Gates, qu'il a longuement reçu à l'Elysée? "Pourquoi pas?", répondent les conseillers de M. Chirac.
The initial translator wrote "Would the president be ready to make a deal with Google's competitor, Microsoft" which is incorrect.
A correct translation would be:
Would the president be ready to talk with Google's competitor, Microsoft, since he has so many views in common with its president, Bill Gates, whom he has long welcomed to the Elysée?
Quite a different meaning, don't you think ?
Jacques has a lot in common with Bill Gates. They're both corrupt and arrogant.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
Sure. So it's all the fault of lefties...bah. Tree huggin' hippies, damn them all.
Seriously, i'm really suprised how can you have a such ignorant world view. I could tell hours and hours for you about the US shipping weapons and supplies first both to nazi Germany and the british and french. Then because of basically the germans got cut off, the USA transferred goods mainly to Britain and France. Of course it got a bit dangerous because of german submarines, and also it would have sucked if all that investment would have been lost, so USA ignored the japan plans about Pearl Harbor, it gave them a perfect cause to join the war. They continued to ship weapons, goods to Britain and after the 'Allies' won the war, a nice american guy formulated the Daves plan, so that they could (the usa) get back their money invested. If you're so ignorant to pretend that this was about fighting against the evil or that sort of things, you're most certainly not objective enough to teach children. People should learn from history not to step into the same shite again, not turn it into a fairy tale.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
As usual, the Slashdot headline is pure FUD.
Here is the snippet from Le Monde's article : Dans l'esprit du chef de l'Etat, il s'agit de bâtir un "alter ego" au projet américain, avant d'envisager une éventuelle collaboration avec Google, pour ne pas discuter en situation de faiblesse. Le président serait-il prêt à s'entretenir avec le concurrent de Google, Microsoft, puisqu'il a tant de convergences de vues avec son président, Bill Gates, qu'il a longuement reçu à l'Elysée ? "Pourquoi pas ?", répondent les conseillers de M. Chirac.
Translation : "In Chirac's mind, the idea is to build an "alter-ego" to the American project, before thinking about a collaboration with Google, to have a good position in negociations. Would the president be ready to talk with Microsoft, since he has many common ideas with Bill Gates, whom he has met at the Elysée ? "Why not ?" is the answer from Chirac's advisors."
In summary, Chirac wants to build a French language online library, to have a good collaborative work with google. Should that work be done with Microsoft ? Maybe yes, maybe not. But the stated goal is to work with google, whatever that goal that can be achieved with Microsoft or not.
If you need to work with Oracle, what do you do ? You call an MS sales man to leverage your negociations with Oracle. Well, France wants to work with Google, so it doesn't forbid itself from working with Microsoft, if that gives it a better negociations position.
Slashdot has become more and more a FUD machine, with more or less every headline in contradiction with linked article. Worse, since the actual content of the article is from Le Monde, and is in French, many non-French speaking readers won't be able to see the utter non-sense that the Slashdot article is. This is more and more becoming the Fox News for Nerds, and it's starting to seriously upset me.