French Military Contributes To Thunderbird 3

fredboboss sends news about Mozilla's email client Thunderbird 3, whose release we noted last week. "Thunderbird 3 contains code from the French military, which decided the open source product was more secure than Microsoft's rival Outlook. The French government is beginning to move to other open source software, including Linux instead of Windows and OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. Thunderbird 3 used some of the code from TrustedBird, a generalized and co-branded version of Thunderbird with security extensions built by the French military."

Comments

It's over... it's all over

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunderbird just surrendered to Outlook on my computer. Now it's even helping Outlook import old messages.

Re:It's over... it's all over

[Djupblue]

It is a bit strong for Americans to accuse the French of being cowards considering that USA never gets involved in a war that you don't are completely and massively military superior in. France fought brave and well in WW2 but still lost. USA wouldn't know anything about fighting such a war where you risk losing your country. I guess you know that since you keep repeating that lame meme about France. It was old years ago and now it is just embarrassing so watch.

/Not French

</RantMode>

Re:It's over... it's all over

[Bert64]

Yes, it is a bit strong for americans to say that...
But the British say the same thing, you know that small country that fought in the same war and that hitler turned his attention to after beating the french?

Re:It's over... it's all over

[Anonymous Coward]

American war of Independence? War of 1812?

Re:It's over... it's all over

[LordAndrewSama]

I'm british you insensitive clo- where'd he go?

Re:It's over... it's all over

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... really? A whole thread of bashing the French? Are you really that pathetic?

Re:It's over... it's all over

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

But the main issue was the effort to preserve the peace, the effort to acceed to the "reasonable demands" of the "champion of the poor" (that would be Adolf Hitler).

Just to show you how desperate (and mind-boggingly naive and stupid) the attempts to "make peace" with Nazi Germany were. Here's the story of the start of WWII, according to wikipedia :

On 30 August the Polish Navy sent its destroyer flotilla to Britain, executing Operation Peking. On the same day, Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-migy announced the mobilization of Polish troops. However, he was pressured into revoking the order by the French, who apparently still hoped for a diplomatic settlement, failing to realize that the Germans were fully mobilized and concentrated at the Polish border. On 31 August 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. Because of the prior stoppage, Poland managed to mobilize only 70% of its planned forces, and many units were still forming or moving to their designated frontline positions.

Just so you know, the exact event is that the French Foreign minister convinced the Polish ministry of defence to give a demobilization order, 1 hour and 15 minutes after Hitler's attack had started at full strength (after the switch from sabotage operations, false-flag attacks and covert operations into full-scale open warfare, Hitler had already been attacking Poland for weeks covertly, something the French knew). After the war it would be shown that the French foreign ministry was well-informed about the state of German troops, and while they didn't find out about the attack order until about 7 AM, they did not feel the need to inform Poland (again this was done "to preserve the peace", according to archives).

The French believed they could acquiesce to Hitler's demands, and thus avoid a conflict. The reasons are that they really, really did not want to fight. The reasons for that included that at that time, Hitler was the hero, both of French Nazi's and of the French lefties, including socialists and communists, and even (quite large) parts of "center" parties. With the center parties Hitler was mainly seen as a preferable alternative to communism. While the "rightist" party was not convinced, even they found the "alternative" to communism a compelling part of fascist ideology.

Those center politicians saw Hitler as someone who could bring social justice without bringing the well-known disaster that communism was. This was, however only a real argument in the center parties. He was (in 1940) not openly anti-capitalism, he just insisted on "controls" on management and ownership. He was not openly anti-religious (he even attempted to ally himself with the Pope, who refused, and allied himself with the muslim "caliph", who jumped at the chance, Aymin al Husseini of Jerusalem, who would later help him create the SS and the extermination camps, providing sites, food and troops. Yes one of the dirty secrets of WWII is that the islamic religious establishment created several extermination camps, in addition to providing logistical and even military troops to others. The muslims did this, knowing full well what the camps were for (or at least, the upper echelon knew)).

Because no-one fully realized what national socialism stood for, and what Hitler was capable of to achieve his "social justice" (that's what it was about for him). Hitler was not a good speaker, but he did realize one thing : a politician should make speaches that convey little meaning and not discuss policy or make clear statements under any circumstances, because if people don't know your ideology, it allows people who were mortal enemies (religious parties and communists, for example) to both vote for you. He pionieered the "victimhood rhetoric" that is so prevalent today, accusing any and all political opponents of "hating" the poor, muslims (yes

Re:It's over... it's all over

[JackieBrown]

Really? I guess I missed the part were the French helped the Poles as per their treaty. Poland would have done better if they had know beforehand that France (and Britan) were not going to back them.

In fact, it wasn't until France was attacked 8 months later that they even started fighting.

Read up on the Phony War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War

Hell, France lasted a little over two weeks longer than Poland and it did not have the soviet union to deal with (and had eight months of knowing that Germany was on the military move.)

I am sure France has many things to be proud of, but World War II should not be one of them.

Re:It's over... it's all over

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

But the British say the same thing, you know that small country that fought in the same war and that hitler turned his attention to after beating the french?

After is a term that implies actual passage of time. "During" or "before" would be better imho.

Re:It's over... it's all over

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. There is no reason to single out the French as cowards, or generally to attribute military skill to national character. Experience is what makes the difference. The difference in British performance in 1940 and in 1944 makes that very clear, I think.

Poland was occupied fairly quickly in 1939 by Germany and the Soviet Union because of the sheer military strength of the aggressors, even though soldiers at both sides were green and performed comparably. Contrary to the impression German propaganda has created, this was a trying experience for the German army.

In 1940, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France were overrun quickly one after the other by increasingly experienced German veterans. Most of these armies fought too short (or not at all in the case of Denmark) to have the time to absorb the lessons given by the Germans. Most individual soldiers and most army units never fought the Germans in more than one encounter. Importantly, the British in 1940 performed no better than the continental armies they cooperated with. In all armies there are cases of exemplary courage, and of units that fought above expectations, and cases of the opposite.

In 1941 the Germans overreach themselves by attacking the Soviet Union. In 1943 and 1944 the British and Americans open additional fronts by invading Italy and France; British are by now mostly considered veteran by their German opponents, while the American units are mostly green when first fielded. Because the balance of power now favors the Allies (more firepower, air superiority), green Allied units now do survive their first encounter without falling apart or surrendering and do gain experience fast.

The outcome of 1940 has little to do with courage and a lot with political choices in 1937-1939. I don't believe at all that the US, if it had been on the European continent, would have acted very differently.

Re:It's over... it's all over

[daem0n1x]

They're just hurt because the French told them to fuck off when they took the criminal, insane and stupid decision of invading Iraq and wanted their friends to "play along". If the leaders of the nations that bought the "coalition of the willing" bullshit were any democratic they would have done the same, since the populations' support for Dubya's war for oil was near zero throughout most of Europe (and in the rest of the world, by the way).

They created the shit by yourselves. Now let them roll in it.

Taking into account they owe so much to the French, these bigot jokes are extremely ingrate and rude.

I'm not French.

Re:It's over... it's all over

[c0p0n]

The difference is that the germans appeared all over france in full strength, that is, by both air and land and from a closer distance to "base" so to speak. The british pretty much had to deflect "just" (as if it was easy anyway) the luftwaffe to defend themselves due to tanks not being that good at swimming. Hardly a fair comparison.

Re:It's over... it's all over

[10Ghz]

The French believed they could acquiesce to Hitler's demands, and thus avoid a conflict. The reasons are that they really, really did not want to fight. The reasons for that included that at that time, Hitler was the hero, both of French Nazi's and of the French lefties, including socialists and communists, and even (quite large) parts of "center" parties

Cut the crap. The reason why France did not want to fight was because they fought an extremely bitter war with Germany few decades earlier and they hadn't yet recovered from it. To give you some scale: UK lost 2.19% of it's population in WW2. Germany lost 3.82%. France lost 4.29%. Not to mention the fact that the fighting in the West happened mostly on French soil.

But still they went to war. And they were defeated (together with UK) by the most powerful military force in the world. Should they feel ashamed by that? Hardly. Only thing that saved UK from the same fate was the Channel. And in the end it took the combined force of UK, USA, USSR, France and Canada to ultimately defeat Germany. Yet France is supposed to feel ashamed because Germany defeated them?

For comparison, USA lost whopping 0.13% of it's population in WW1.... In fact, USA has had it amazingly easy in it's wars. Look at Winter War. Had USA suffered similar casualties as Finland did, it would have meant losses of over 1 million men in a war that lasted 105 days.

Re:It's over... it's all over

[10Ghz]

Yes, it is a bit strong for americans to say that...
But the British say the same thing, you know that small country that fought in the same war and that hitler turned his attention to after beating the french?

It's easy to be brave when you have 30-240 kilometers of sea between you and your enemy.... And wasn't it the British Army who ran for their lives in Dunkerque?

Re:It's over... it's all over

[bubbleentity]

Not the sole reason. Part of the reason of the French and English inaction, was basically that they were only just coming to realise just how badly they had screwed up. They had been pressuring Germany for years to pay ever higher and more ludicrous reparations for the previous war ( WWI). They did have data showing that Germany couldn't hope to pay the reparations demanded in anything like the deadline time, but they had convinced themselves that ( due to the German government's policy of forcing employment rates artificiality high), it was a ploy to get out of paying anything. As part of this pressure, the French army had made several incursions into German territory, holding some of the more valuable industrial zones as 'collateral'. This, combined with the removal of a significant chunk of German territory into polish hands, made it nearly inevitable that Germany would try a military expansion in order to acquire territory, particularly production centres in order to stave off bankruptcy. When Germany began pushing into polish territory, ( initially to regain control over land that was considered essential for food production), it marked a large change in how Germany's foreign affairs were interpreted. Previously England and France assumed Germany to be beaten, and unwilling to return to force of arms, a position that had been reinforced by German diplomatic efforts to convince the two nations of just how desperate the German economic situation was becoming.

It means a lot when Defense systems move over

[Kloplop321]

I would guess that it means a lot for a country's defense administration to move over to Open Source. I've never heard of TrustedBird before this, but it seems a WHOLE lot more secure than Outlook is. I use Thunderbird personally.

Re:It means a lot when Defense systems move over

[v1]

MS has a reputation for adding security as an afterthought, which almost always makes for very poor quality security. The whole "secure by design" concept just isn't part of their general dev cycle. Looks like this TrustedBird is taking an already solid base and hardening it, which is not necessarily the ideal way to go, but certainly beats the alternative of trying to harden something that's very soft to start with.

Kudos to them for open sourcing it.

Re:It means a lot when Defense systems move over

[TapeCutter]

"trying to harden something that's very soft to start with"

French women have exceptional skills in that department.

Re:It means a lot when Defense systems move over

[Eunuchswear]

Kudos to them for open sourcing it.

Shh, don't tell the BSD license fans, the GPL works as intended.

French thunderbirds rock

[syousef]

Take a look at some of the footage of those French fighter jocks doing terrain avoidance at a few feet high. Incredible.

As for thunderbird the email program, I like some things about 3, and not others. I'm glad the devs allow you to switch the old toolbar back on. Much better than the Mozilla Firefox attitude of forcing you into changes you don't want to make.

Re:French thunderbirds rock

[Nimey]

Security fixes aren't around forever for old branches, so essentially yes.

Re:French thunderbirds rock

[HeronBlademaster]

There is a balance between "maintain old versions forever" and "Firefox attitude of forcing you into changes you don't want to make."

Yeah - I think they struck that balance fairly. They only issue critical security fixes for Firefox 2. They don't force the upgrade through code. They don't pop up warnings saying "OMG UR FOXFIRE IS TEH OLD".

My point was, if there was sufficient demand out there for Firefox 2, someone would fork the codebase and continue developing it under some other name. That's how the open source community works.

It's not obnoxious to point out that it's silly to refuse to let the developers take their project in the direction they want to take it. You don't have to like it - use some other browser, if it's that important to you.

You can maintain only one version AND give everybody the UI they love, just make it an option.

... unless the two UIs have sufficiently different code, in which case you are asking them to maintain two essentially distinct versions, and of course maintaining two separate UIs can make UI-related bugs much more difficult to fix.

I'm not disagreeing with you that a lot of people like the old toolbar. But while it may be arrogant of the Firefox team to arbitrarily choose a new direction for their UI (though it is, you know, their project, so if anyone has a right to determine its course, it's them), it's at least equally arrogant of you to expect them to maintain two separate UIs just because some users happen to like the old one.

There is more than one way people could get the old behavior back. Maybe a plugin. Maybe a fork. But guess what - that's the beauty of the open source world. If you don't like the direction a project is taking, you have other options - nobody forces Firefox 2 users to use Firefox 3 (ceasing security updates is not "forcing people to upgrade", no matter which way you paint it). Nobody forces you to stay with Firefox at all.

If you don't like Firefox 3's awesomebar, there's nothing wrong with that. Switch to Opera, or Chrome, or Safari, or (shudder) IE, or any of the other dozen web browsers out there. It's not like there's a lack of choices when it comes to browsers.

I'll be honest - I didn't notice any significant UI changes between FF2 and FF3. I can't think of any behavior of the old toolbar which the new toolbar doesn't do. For my usage patterns, at least, the new toolbar works exactly like the old toolbar, but more... awesome. Maybe I'm atypical, but isn't it possible that the Firefox 3 devs think I'm typical? Isn't it possible that the Firefox 3 devs are catering to people with my usage patterns? Maybe they have some usage pattern data that they're basing their decisions on. I highly doubt it's just arbitrary.

I love this joke

[Anonymous Coward]

For sale: WW II era French rifle. Never used, only dropped once.

Re:I love this joke

[jggimi]

In the Great War, new technologies in small arms was brought to the field: The American Springfield, the British Enfield, the French Lebel, and the German Mauser. Many of these arms, and the internal technologies and engineering used, were seminal. One can find arms made today with designs that are rooted directly in features from some of these weapons.

Among collectors of WWI memorabilia, it is generally considered that the Springfield is the superior target rifle, the Mauser the superior hunting rifle, the Enfield the superior battle rifle, and the Lebel the superior lamp stand.

At Least...

[Nemyst]

At least some government agencies seem to understand that open source CAN be secure, stable and worthwhile. More power to them I say, they're quite forward-thinking on those matters it seems.

If only more could see that! With every new user, especially military organizations and government agencies, there are more bug fixes, more patches and more useful features added into the open source projects they use. That in turn makes the projects more appealing, more competitive and generally better, which closes the loop by enticing more to adopt it. We just need to get the ball rolling and, most importantly, to break old notions of open source being garage-geek-type material; I think we've seen all around us that we've evolved from that point.

Re:At Least...

[Brian Gordon]

I wouldn't mention OpenOffice while talking about how secure, stable, and worthwhile OSS can be. This is really only meaningful because people are starting to wake up and realize there are superior alternatives out there. But that doesn't apply to OO - OpenOffice is freer but it's not better. OpenOffice is a total mess of staggeringly bloated Java components. It's by far the most sluggish, memory-devouring application on my machine and integrates badly with my GTK theme. And there aren't any good ideas in OO, it's like someone bought Office 2003, made a list of features they saw, and tried to implement as many as possible throwing everything together without any kind of purpose or vision other than to take as much market share as possible away from MS office.

Gnumeric and AbiWord, on the other hand, are actually usable. The project knows what it wants, and continually refines toward that purpose, while OpenOffice scrambles to throw in new features every time someone discovers a use case that Office handles and they don't. A good sign that a project is maturing is when someone asks for a relevant feature that makes sense, and the project says no. I don't think openoffice has ever said no.

Re:At Least...

[JanneM]

"Gnumeric and AbiWord, on the other hand, are actually usable."

+1 on Gnumeric. It's the best spreadsheet app I've used (and I tend to use a lot of numerical and symbolic math stuff for work).

AbiWord, on the other hand, does have some potential, but they're still missing fundamental features like the ability to actually write using CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) scripts, something just about every other app of any kind out there can handle by now.

Re:At Least...

[adamrut]

OpenOffice is a total mess of staggeringly bloated Java components. It's by far the most sluggish, memory-devouring application on my machine and integrates badly with my GTK theme.

I think this is a bit of an exageration. I use OpenOffice on XP at work and OSX at home and find that performance is at an acceptable level. Everything that I need to do in an office suite I can do in OpenOffice and I've found with each release it's slowly improving.

And there aren't any good ideas in OO, it's like someone bought Office 2003, made a list of features they saw, and tried to implement as many as possible throwing everything together without any kind of purpose or vision other than to take as much market share as possible away from MS office.

There are a lot of good ideas, they're just not original ideas but this is not unique to OpenOffice. It's not as polished as MS Office but I don't find it as thrown together as you're implying.

Re:At Least...

[bcmm]

OpenOffice is a total mess of staggeringly bloated Java components.

OpenOffice is written in C++. The Java bits are optional (I don't use them, though I use Gentoo and it may be harder to disable them completely on other platforms).

Now, I'm not saying OpenOffice isn't a bloated mess, but have you tried MS Office? It's kinda another bloated mess.

How About a Plain Text Mode?

[camperslo]

Doing away with all of the potential HTML, javascript, Java, Flash etc vulnerabilities by having a forced plain text only mode would sure help with security and privacy issues.

Re:How About a Plain Text Mode?

[gzipped_tar]

Use the about:config editor. Come on, you're a slashdotter and should know better.

Re:How About a Plain Text Mode?

[Anonymous Coward]

You already can set Thunderbird to run operate only in text mode (for 2.0 at least).

ToolBar -> view -> message body as -> Plain Text

+

Tools -> Options -> composition -> General -> Send Options -> Text Format = Convert the message to plain text
(or = Send the message in both plain text and HTML)

Re:Well, at least we know it'll run well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah the French suck, I mean they only liberated your country and all.. Wanker.

Open source software and govt's

[Andorin]

Score one for the French. Proprietary software does not belong on the computer systems of any significant (ie, state or national) government. Access to source code is necessary in order to ensure that secrets remain secret and the software is up to any custom tasks the government might require.

This is a letter written by a representative of Peru's government to a representative of Microsoft in 2002, explaining to MS exactly why the government feels that free software is necessary on their computers. Not only does it provide some insightful reasons as to why they're using FOSS, but you get a chance to laugh at the Microsoft rep's arguments. ;)

Re:Open source software and govt's

[John Hasler]

> Access to source code is necessary in order to ensure that secrets remain
> secret and the software is up to any custom tasks the government might
> require.

That is, unfortunately, not a strong argument for Free Software as governments (and other large organizations) often can and do purchase access to proprietary source code.

Re:Open source software and govt's

[Andorin]

Well, there are other arguments too, such as the principle of using open software on publicly owned computers versus closed software. Access to source code is simply the one that came to my mind the quickest.

Also, if a government really can buy access to source code, you could just file this as yet another expense saved by using open software. I can't imagine Microsoft charging a government a trivial amount for Windows source code.

Re:Open source software and govt's

[rsborg]

That is, unfortunately, not a strong argument for Free Software as governments (and other large organizations) often can and do purchase access to proprietary source code.

So let me ask you this, when Microsoft or Adobe, etc give these governments the "source code" do they allow compilation of the resulting binary from the given source... with deployment of that binary as production-level binary?

The whole "shared source" concept fails when it comes to security because you can't VERIFY the source code is what you have in your binary unless you have the entire toolchain necessary to build, execute, and formally test the binaries you will deploy in your organization.

Re:Open source software and govt's

[digitalchinky]

A decade ago when I was doing the whole military intelligence thing, the answer was no, it was just the source code. Maybe someone had the tool chain, but this is not particularly relevant or interesting since distribution was forbidden anyway, even internally. The 'concept' has nothing to do with internal verification and security inside the 'air-gap' - there is no failure at all - access to the source was certainly used for 'bug hunting' - just that it was perhaps not for the reasons you have assumed in your post above. :-)

That explains...

[Anonymous Coward]

why it keeps quitting unexpectedly whenever I receive emails from Germany ;-).

Continuing the naming tradition

[Rising Ape]

TraceMonkey, SeaMonkey... SurrenderMonkey?

Re:Continuing the naming tradition

[Ihmhi]

CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkey

FTFY

Re:Continuing the naming tradition

[Rising Ape]

I think you might be overreacting a little. Doesn't every nation have jokes made about them, and have stereotypes? I see enough negative comments about my own country (UK) around the internet without needing to get defensive. Some of them are distressingly justified, such as the way we seemed to act like little more than the 51st State the way Blair sucked up to Bush, or that we tend to overstate our current relative importance in the world.

It is interesting that the French have been landed with the "surrender" stereotype though, given that their performance in WW2 was no worse than the rest of Europe. The UK was only saved by the Channel. I suspect it arises from the attitudes of some of their leaders post-war (particularly de Gaulle).

Re:Continuing the naming tradition

[Shompol]

For comparison, Russia (USSR) leader refused to acknowlege that we were attacked for 3 days after the invasion begun. Border troops were not prepared, and Germans literally marched deep into USSR before encountering any significant resistance (except Leningrad). Also of interest would be the fact that Stalin had all the high command officers executed years ago. Yes, Maginot Line was a big mistake, and now the jokes are on French army, although it was the French high command's fault, not the people. ... and here is another one : http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.humor.funny/2007-10/msg00005.html

France: going OSS like the rest of EU but better

[KlaasVaak]

The French Government really seem to get the hang of OSS every depeartment seems focused on using OSS like their entire justice department going ubuntu http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu.ars and unlike the Germans(+1 million failed projects) or Dutch(going Microsoft everywhere despite promises and even laws(!) to go open source) etc they actually seem to be making progress

Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begin

[Phrogman]

If there is one thing that is certain in this world, its that if someone says "The French" or "France" within hearing of any US Citizen, the immediate response will be an endless string of "Surrender" or "SurrenderMonkey" Jokes.

Caveat: I am not French just to clarify that. I am (English) Canadian, and I don't even particularly like the French myself.

It gets awfully tiring to be reminded of just how fucking bigotted the US is in this way. You should get over yourselves already.
Yes, the French got their asses kicked in WWII, whatever. Any nation invaded by Germany at that time would have suffered the same fate (and many of them did). You got your asses kicked in Vietnam, even if you don't want to admit it. You pulled your forces out before anyone had to surrender of course.

All these jokes serve to accomplish is to remind me just how fucking ignorant, narrow minded, bigotted and offensive the US can be at times. They make you look like nothing more than a nation of assholes. Then you wonder why the peoples of many other nations find Americans offensive.

Of course none of you seem to have enough education or enough wit to recall that during the Napoleonic period, France was the most respected and feared nation on earth. They conquered pretty much all of Europe and it took the combined might of England, The Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prussia, Russia and others to eventually defeat them after 20 years of warfare. At that point in time the US couldn't even carry out a successful invasion of Canada, and we (as the British) burnt the White House in response.

I for one would like to see this fucking "meme" be laid to rest. It was always present but seems to have been resurrected when the French decided not to commit forces to the first Gulf War (because it wasn't authorized by the UN I believe).

Now, queue all the responses from people calling me a "liberal", "faggot", "commie", "pinko" etc, because I criticized the US (I am none of those things by the way). What I am, is tired of seeing US citizens act like a bunch of fucking ignorant assholes, and then wondering why people think they are a bunch of fucking ignorant assholes :P

Yes, yes I have met many very decent and nice Americans, they just don't seem to post in response to their fellow citizens offensive shit that crops up like this every few days.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[wronskyMan]

Not going to call you a "liberal", "faggot", "commie", "pinko" etc but I will say you have a thin skin. There is a reason it's called a joke. Same reason we call Mac users gay and Southerners toothless.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes, a joke is just a joke. No strings attached, no intent to offend, no distaste for others, just a comment made in jest. The same people that make the surrender jokes will often make fun of their own nation just as quickly.

Try removing your head from your ass, you might see things a bit more clearly.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[moz25]

Well, you don't hear many jokes about Poland, The Netherlands or Belgium being invaded by the Germans. Perhaps the French history as a great nation and the cultural arrogance that comes from that makes them more of a valid target to joke about.

But with that said: the French were absolutely right about standing up to Bush against an unnecessary war. All they had to do was commit a symbolic number of troops to "fight" in some relatively peaceful outback region like other countries did. If only more people stood up to the false claims...

Now, years later, we know that the primary achievement of the whole Iraq war effort has been to transform their country from a secular dictatorship to a theocratic dictatorship. This at the mere cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of US military lives and tens of thousands of civilian lives.

So much for them Freedom Fries, eh...

No they nag you into upgrading.

[syousef]

They force you to upgrade?

Install Firefox 2 and see how often you get nagged to upgrade. Then there's the fact that security fixes are only released for the latest browser, extensions don't support the old version etc.

I'd love to have Firefox 1.0 co-exist with 3.0 but it'd be a pain in the neck to run with all the nagging.

Re:No they nag you into upgrading.

[Corporate Troll]

Why don't just just uncheck the "Automatically check for updates to: Firefox" checkbox in the preferences? It really is that easy to stop it nagging to you.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[Cassius Corodes]

Perhaps somewhat off-topic but I read somewhere that all this French = weak stuff started as allied propaganda to explain why the Nazis managed to beat such a powerful (and it was a world power at the time) country so easily. The thinking (according to this article or whatnot) was to keep up morale after such a disastrous outcome by essentially claiming that any other nation would have managed to fight them off but that the French are weak and gave up without a fight. Naturally the real reason was the blitzkrieg tactics combined with bypassing the majority of the French and English (they too where out in force as well) army by going thru the Ardennes (a forest region that the allies thought was not practical to pass thru). Its worth noting as well that every other European country attacked (including Russia at the start) pretty much collapsed under the blitzkrieg.

More secure than Outlook?

[magamiako1]

I fail to see how anything on their list of features provides any more security over what can be obtained with a properly configured Exchange/Outlook system.

Re:France: going OSS like the rest of EU but bette

[Anonymous Coward]

Being french and working with various agencies, I can give a few more information.

First, you should know that it's the military police (the gendarmerie) that switched to ubuntu, not the civilian police. The military have been using open source for years now and switching the gendarmerie is only one big step in a much bigger plan to move away from proprietary software. The justice department has not switched yet as far as I know.

On the civil departments side, there is a division (the DCSSI http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/archive/en/dcssi/index.html) that push for open source software and good practices in use by the government. All departments are ordered to follow those recommendations where it makes sense. They don't recommend to drop existing proprietary solutions unless it saves money. They do recommend new solutions to be open source though. It seems they changed their name again in the recent months though, but their mission statement remains the same: http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/site_rubrique88.html

Another impact this is having is the creation of various websites for public use. For example there is a website about computer security aimed to the general public: http://www.securite-informatique.gouv.fr/index.html

In the central government the move to open source is already well in progress. But I can't say it's the same nationwide, yet.

everyone hates the French

[Swampash]

They imposed ridiculous penalties on Germany after WW1 and allowed Germany to remilitarize, giving birth to Nazi Germany.

They defeated the British Army in the Revolutionary War and provided financial aid to the Continental Army, giving birth to the USA.

Basically the French are directly responsible for the two most hated nations in living memory.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[Foobar of Borg]

Yeah, and you're an idiot. The biggest reason the French suck is because they had the right, the obligation, the duty, to prevent the Germans from building up their military after WWI, and they gave in, they failed, they surrendered. Every death in WWII, including millions of Jews and Russians, can be laid at the feet of the French for failing to live up to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles which gave them the right to march into Germany at any point they desired and smack them down. But the french were afraid, and thus were key to making WWII happen by their inaction.

[Patrick Stewart voice] Gods! What a moron! [/Patrick Stewart voice] If the French are to be blamed for anything after WWI, it is for being too *aggressive* against the Germans. They crippled the German economy with vengeful reparations. They invaded and occupied the Ruhr. If it hadn't been for the post-WWI aggression of the French, Adolph Hitler would most likely have remained a unknown, raving anti-Semite and an artistic and political failure.

Damn you!

[WiiVault]

Excuse me. Are you suggesting the French give up easy? Alright you win.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[royallthefourth]

Now, years later, we know that the primary achievement of the whole Iraq war effort has been to transform their country from a secular dictatorship to a theocratic dictatorship.

It's worth mentioning that most American foreign interventions before Iraq had been for the purpose of removing democratically elected politicians and replacing them with pro-US dictators. The missions don't always succeed, but the outcome is always disastrous for the inhabitants.

Next time a anyone mentions "liberating" a foreign country, think about the Philippines, Chile, Indonesia, El Salvador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Vietnam, Laos, Afghanistan, Guatemala, the Seminoles, and Haiti.
I've probably missed a few in there, but anyone with a grasp of US history with regard to foreign interventions should be quite skeptical of any claims of "liberation" or "promoting democracy" abroad.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[Timbotronic]

Actually I think you'll find that Kiwis, Aussies and especially the Brits enjoy the "surrender monkey" theme just as much. All of us (including Canada of course) sent troops to France on D-Day so I think we're entitled to a little fun. Perhaps Canadians are just too polite - eh?

Re:Well, at least we know it'll run well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's safe to say we've paid them back more than once over.

When DeGaulle told Lyndon Johnson he wanted all the American soldiers off of French soil. LBJ responded "When you say you want all American soldiers out of France, General, does that include the ones who are buried here too?"

While the French government has always been odd, the people are generally nice; they just hate the way Merkins speak that Frenchie jibber-jabber.

If you read the battle history of the French Army in WW2, on the whole their reputation as cowards is undeserved. Had there been a land bridge to GB, London would have looked much like Paris in 1941. Fortunately, things worked out as they did.

Encryption ...

[dougmc]

... it wasn't that long ago that using encryption of any sort (except for signatures) by civilians was illegal in France. Seriously.

Not really here nor there, just something to mention.

Re:Encryption ...

[drinkypoo]

Please down vote parent, encryption up to 128 bits is allowed it's what's higher that's illegal (but not really enforced).

Please ignore cowardly comment above, GP was talking about the past, where (as per link) it was formerly, even fairly recently illegal to use any kind of encryption whatsoever. French SWAT teams wear opaque masks (where a clear one performs approximately as well) so that they cannot be recognized in court. France has a poor record on privacy and personal rights. Not that the USA doesn't mind you, but the comment is at least slightly relevant — and entirely true.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[gbarules2999]

I'm proud to be an American.

I'm proud to live in that dot over here. My friend wishes he had been born on the dot on the other side of the map, though. If only.

Re:Uranian Head Cheese

[Bob_Who]

(squinting eyes) .....looks like poop! (sniffing it) ....Smells like poop! (chewing) ....tastes like poop! (righteous glory)....Good thing I didn't Step in It!

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[mjwx]

But if you're going to make a joke, especially a derogatory joke (face it, the "French surrender" jokes are derogatory) at least make them original.

I, like the GP and most people with half a brain are sick of the same tired old "France surrenders, huh, huh" jokes trotted out when even so much as a croissant is referenced. I saw one about Thunderbird crashing whenever it receives a message from Germany and thought that it was semi original enough to justify a funny rating but for the most part such comments are uninspired, unfunny, tired old surrender jokes being trotted out time and time again which we've all heard before.

Maybe the comments are in jest, maybe someone has an anti-France agenda but if you do make derogatory comments in jest make sure they are funny, otherwise they just become annoying.

BTW, at least don't display an ignorance of history, the French resistance did far more harm to the Nazi's then the Vichy collaborators did good for the Nazi's. Much of the early war intel, including several parts of "Ultra" came from resistance fighters who risked their lives and families lives to get that intel.

Naaaah

[Max Littlemore]

The same people that make the surrender jokes will often make fun of their own nation just as quickly.

Yeah , but Americans are pretty fucked when it comes to derogatory jokes about them. Like how they are such pussies they can't even go to war unless they pick on a country that can't defend itself against air power - and even then pimply nerds do most of it by remote control.

The French surrendered against a kind of warfare that had only appeared very shortly before their invasion and then fought a very successful underground campaign against the aggressors, much like the Iraqis have done. Good on them. Beats a bunch of wusses that don't even have the balls to surrender properly to a bunch of midgets in black pajamas when they are licked, despite having all the jets, agent orange and napalm.

I too know plenty of decent Americans, but this vocal peanut gallery makes me sick, especially this anti-French bullshit. Even Kiwis don't generally hang the same level of shit on them. You guys go on and on because they won't join you in your international armed robbery? Good on them for having some balls, even if they are the stinky cheese ball variety.

Re:Naaaah

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

"Yeah , but Americans are pretty fucked when it comes to derogatory jokes about them."

Thanks for proving GP's point.

Re:Lightning

[maird]

The development builds of Lightning are compatible with Thunderbird 3 (and don't need an add-on for Google Calendar). Install the "Lightning Nightly Updater" extension (available from the TB add-on site). After the TB restart you should have a new Help menu item that will check for Lightning development builds and install the latest if supported. After that you should have Lightning in Thunderbird. Of course, you have to be comfortable using the development builds but you don't have to update every night after you get one that works ok. The 2009-12-08 05:39 PST build is working great for me so far on Linux and Windows.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[Johann Lau]

"The same people that make the surrender jokes will often make fun of their own nation just as quickly."

Bold claim, backed up by NOTHING, followed by insults. Anonymous, no less. Why does that not surprise?

But while we're at it: what is "just a joke"? What meanings and functions can a joke have, which do apply here? "It's just a joke, shut up now" is just a feeble attempt by weak intellects to shut down any pondering/discussion of that.

Specific members of the French military contributed specific code to Thunderbird -- what does FRANCE have to do with it? And no, I'm neither French nor would I care if be insulted and utterly outraged (LOL) if I was - I just think it's apeish and fucking lame, not to mention predictable and utterly boring to anyone except the "oooo-raaahhhh" crowd... which to me is the main function of such "mere jokes", they serve as a glue for people with common cognitive defects. It's not even dissing France or anything French, it's simply a signal flare saying "Idiot here, where are my idiots at?"

Someone pointing that out is doing you a favour actually. Do with it what you will.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[mctk]

I shoved my head back up my ass when I found out that the Freedom Fries people were serious.

Choice of Commandos

[dbIII]

I've never heard of TrustedBird before this, but it seems a WHOLE lot more secure than Outlook is.

That's not saying much.
Britney Spears underwear is a lot more secure than Outlook.

Re:Choice of Commandos

[peater]

I would think they are both equally secure. Pretty much anything gets through with little or no control over active-xxx elements.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[Mr Stubby]

Dude, go see the world. Between the French ,the English and us Australians and to a lesser degree Americans (because they generally take jokes at their expense poorly) giving each other a ribbing all in good fun is just how we roll. It's always been the case and probably always will be. I'm never offended by a joke at Australia's expense from any of our "allies" so to speak, i often find it funnier than the joke teller. We're all comfortable that we are timeless friends with more in common than we differ and mean no harm. Apologies if a joke gets under your thin skin, but there's a bigger world out there than the box you live in. Americans neither invented, resurrected or propogated the whole "fromage eating surrender monkey" shtick, they just joined in on the joke. Granted most Americans lack a propper sense of humour past the drivel they pump out in their sitcoms these days.. so It's hard to tell the difference when they have a go, but trust me, the rest of us aren't bothered and we're all in on the joke and you're giving yourself heartburn over nothing.

Which just goes to show...

[roc97007]

...even the French get it right sometimes.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[khallow]

The thinking (according to this article or whatnot) was to keep up morale after such a disastrous outcome by essentially claiming that any other nation would have managed to fight them off but that the French are weak and gave up without a fight.

It helps that this apparently was pretty much true. In the book, Collapse of the Third Republic, by William L. Shirer, the author not only discusses the military defeat in 1940, but also a number of political factors, some of which (eg, the Dreyfus affair) preceded both world wars. My impression is that France became so politically divided (between liberal and conservative forces, much as is present in most if not all democratic countries) in the 30's that defeat of the political opposition was considered a higher priority than the defense of France.

While we know the end result, it's worth noting that there are several times when France could have acted to stop the Second World War. A key point was the German reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 (which was the most egregious of the violations of the Treaty of Versailles prior to Germany's invasion of Austria two years later). France was both capable, within its rights to use military force, and at low risk (due to Germany's then weak military forces) to evict Germany from there. But they chose not to. Four years later, the country was occupied by Germany.

Jules & Vincent Vega

[breon.halling]

Jules: What do they call Thunderbird?
Vincent Vega: Thunderbird's Thunderbird, but they call it "le Thunderbird".
Jules: "Le Thunderbird"! Ha ha ha ha! What do they call Outlook?"
Vincent Vega: I dunno, I didn't use Windows.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[coder111]

Russians did. Stalin at the time of invasion by Germany probably did have more army than french did (counting men and probably equipment). Suffered the same fate, mostly due to poor leadership (good military leaders were "cleansed"). It took a harsh winter and fetching Zhukov from a gulag to stop them near Moscow.

--Coder

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[jensend]

Not that I think the jokes about the French are generally either funny or anything other than counterproductive, but they don't spring from Americans being "ignorant, narrow minded, [or] bigoted." They spring from the fact that France basically has never come to terms with the reality of what happened in WWII (see "Paris se libere!"), the rabid anti-Americanism which de Gaulle exhibited, and the many ways in which France has done things which are not only to its allies' disadvantage but also to its own disadvantage- for no other reason than to try to stick it to the Americans (and sometimes the Brits). I think the Macmillan paraphrase from that article is relevant- "France, he said, had made peace with Germany, had forgiven Germany for the brutality of invasion and the humiliation of four years of occupation, but it could never - never - forgive the British and Americans for the liberation."

You can't really even make much of an attempt to joke about what happened to most of the countries Hitler invaded. But the French pride, arrogance, and rewriting of history have in the past made it easier for people to find jokes about the French to be palatable.

Watch patriotic American geeks heads explode

[fantomas]

I'm going to love this one. How are the patriotic American geeks going to respond? US military goes with Microsoft products, French military supports open source....

Re:Watch patriotic American geeks heads explode

[icebraining]

Actually, US Dept. of Defense Creates Its Own Sourceforge.

Everyone is Arrogant and Superior

[thaig]

I am not an American, I'm actually from Zimbabwe. I promise you that Zimbabweans are as nasty and arrogant and superior as Americans in spite of all the s*** they are in at the moment. :-) I live in Britain and the British are arrogant and superior too, particularly going on all the time about how non arrogant and nice they are and how awesome their own sense of humour is. I see it because I am a foreigner and because when I go back to Zimbabwe I realise I have become a foreigner there too.

You often don't notice your own arrogance - I know I don't.

In the end, everyone needs to think that they are great, part of a great team or group. It makes us feel safe. There must be some branch of psychology or sociology devoted to this and I will look it up some day. The problem is that if your team is really good then it must be really good compared to something else - like that other team over there who talk funny and eat disgusting food and wear odd clothes and . . . .

Americans can just do all this bragging and loud mouthing with a greater degree of confidence than everyone else - partly because America is powerful and partly because they don't know any better. I've heard Chinese and Indian people express awful and immensely arrogant opinions but not quite so loudly.

Anyhow I think you're right about putting that surrender thing to bed but I also think that everyone needs to "pick the beam out of their own eye before picking the splinter out of the other guys" more than they think.

Re:France: going OSS like the rest of EU but bette

[DigitalContradiction]

As stated in the previous anonymous comment, the code was contributed by the gendarmerie (military police), which is quite tech savvy and has a long history of using and advocating open source solutions. They previously switched all their office software to OpenOffice.org in 2005, and are currently migrating most of their Windows workstations to Ubuntu. But this effort is not so widespread ; there are both successes (like the budget and public accounting administration recently migrating from Outlook and Notes to Thunderbird and OBM groupware) and failures, like the whole educational field, which is basically a mess. There are some isolated efforts to promote free software and open standards, but due to a lack of strong political willpower, huge lobbying from Microsoft, and general incompetence and disinterest about IT, teachers, students and administrative staff are usually stuck with proprietary (and often obsolete) solutions. There has been some recent effort to officially define open formats and standards and to enforce their use across the whole French administration (http://www.april.org/fr/rgi), but it was mostly thwarted by Microsoft using some FUD and promoting their pseudo-open OOXML format. I think we can say that more and more IT people in the French administration are aware than FOSS is a real and worthy alternative, but the battle is far from won.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[drinkypoo]

But with that said: the French were absolutely right about standing up to Bush against an unnecessary war. All they had to do was commit a symbolic number of troops to "fight" in some relatively peaceful outback region like other countries did. If only more people stood up to the false claims...

If this is the French version of standing up to Bush, then perhaps they deserve what other people say about them. A recent-ish survey I cannot currently locate claims that the French hate themselves more than anyone else does, so perhaps further they know something we don't. There is a lot of bad blood left over from war between the English and French, and Americans are more British than they know, having retained many of the attitudes and prejudices of that past. I can't help but notice that the USA and the UK are the world's primary surveillance societies, either.

Re:Well, at least we know it'll run well...

[bsDaemon]

It's an interesting story of an interesting fiction. If I remember correctly, the Zimmerman note was not exactly of genuine sentiment. Likewise, the Lucitania was transporting munitions in violation of the arms embargo and as such was a valid target for the U-Boats, despite being harped on as a passenger ship that was unfairly targeted.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[osobear]

Ugh, Ok. Yes, some people are biggoted assholes, it's true. We have them here in the US, but clearly you have them in Canada as well, judging from:

If there is one thing that is certain in this world, its that if someone says "The French" or "France" within hearing of any US Citizen, the immediate response will be an endless string of "Surrender" or "SurrenderMonkey" Jokes.

Emphasis mine.

Any blanket statement applied to all of the people that live within some certain arbitrary geographical area is dumb and bigoted. For instance, USians who say that the French are cowardly are bigots. Also, (English) Canadians such as yourself that say that USians are bigots... are also bigots. And, of course, there are people that say things like:

I don't even particularly like the French myself.

Well done.

Re:so where were you for the first 2 years of the

[gtall]

At the time, there was a lot of anti-another-goddamn-EuroWar sentiment in the U.S. The Japanese were seen by many as not threatening anyone with death except the poor Chinese and other Asians. The reports of Nazi atrocities were not given the moral relevance they clearly should have. One could argue that WWII woke up the Americans to not neglecting evil in the world and resulted in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq (regardless of whether evil was actually there in the case of Vietnam). Mind you the antiwar crowd was and still is not weak, however the leaders in Washington appear to break on the side of kill'em now so we don't have to kill'em later...well, some of them. There is also a segment of "gee, if the U.S. gets another 9/11 while I'm in office, I'll be out of office shortly." The anti-war crowd seems convinced the world would be a bunny world if the U.S. just left it alone.

So the quick answer, if it is an answer, they are all wrong and right, but not in equal measures.

By the way, as long as we are assigning blame, Europe, sans Germany, is also responsible for WWII. Starting with not stepping on Hitler early on, to the non-Germans aiding the Nazies, to Switzerland which was just so neutral it had no balls when it would have counted.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[Rising Ape]

Oh, I think you're pointing too much at the US here. We British have been doing anti-French jokes for a lot longer than that. Hardly something to get all excited about, and I'm sure the French have plenty of jokes of their own.