Slashdot Mirror
French revolt against Prime Meridian-Sort Of
Well, this amused Rob and I so much that we just had to post it. Rather then continue to use the World-accepted Prime Meridian (Yeah, who needs standards?), the French Government has decided that the world' prime meridian runs through Paris. To celebrate, they're building groves of trees all the way down through France, which will be viewable from space. I should be clear: This is the Government, not a popular action by the people. And I think this is only 1/2 as stupid as US Crypto laws. I've been told that this is actually one of those many Millenium Celebration things, and not actually a revolt-thanks to those who write me.
What in the world do they think they are gonna prove? That they are more arrogant than anyone else in the world? Blah...
This isn't exactly new, but it IS quite funny. The French have really always seemed to have problems with the british stealing their thunder. Oh well... so what if there are two prime meridians.. that won't matter for y2k, right?
Actually, there are many places that use french. ... AFAIK, most of the caribbean countries, some asian countries, and lots of south pacific countries. And even the US - some of Louisianna is french-speaking.
It appears the time has come to unleash the Orbiting Satelites of Death, and go forward with the plan to turn Spain and Portugal into an island.
Vous ne comprenez rien : c'est juste une ligne d'arbres !!! C'est un monument qui sera construit sur toute la longueur du pays. Tout le monde pourra le voir et en profiter.
Cela ne remet pas en cause le méridien de Greenwich.
Allez chercher vos informations sur la France ailleurs que chez les Anglais. Ces mêmes anglais ne sont pas connus pour leur "Fair-Play" !!
Dude vous etes imbecile!!!!
Learn some geography, French is spoken in the following countries:
France, Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Vietnam, and many other Asian, and African countries. French as an official language is bigger than English following Chinese and Spanish. English is the worldest biggest second language!!!
What you are doing is protraying the stereo typical idiotic American. You should grow up and learn that both Americans and French are not the "arrogant" and "loud mouthed" people think they are.
Didn't the English invent the english system of wieghts and measures and not the Americans?
I Herby dub the Americans Honorary French for that remark!
You'd only have to work 3 hours a day !!
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternete !!!
Vive La Revolucion !
Hey what do you think of people that call computers "micro ordinateurs" ? [that's the way I remember from my school lessons].
I've heard of a competion where they make a dicate and the one without mistakes is the winner, and ther is only one winner!!! The "playoffs" are "almost" like playoffs for the NBA/NHL/NFL...
you know there is a difference meaning if you write a word with "é","è" or "e".
Lars
Sorry for my mistakes with the english language, german is my mothertounge (french NOT)
Translation, Courtesy Babelfish:
"You do not include/understand anything: it is right a line of trees!!! It is a monument which will be built over the entire length of the country. Everyone will be able to see it and benefit from it.
That does not call into question the meridian line of Greenwich. Seek your information on France elsewhere than among English. These same English is not known for their 'Fair-Play'!!"
The funny thing is, without having taken a French lesson ever, I understood it...
-HubCity
Too lazy at the moment to be anything but an anonymous coward.
BTW, second! (you were a little late.. slow fingers, perhaps?)
He's probably british. No wonder then.
A French.
You guys are such idiots! The BBC article certainly does not say that this thing is about to replace the Greenwich Meridian.
Yes Brits are known for their funny outlook on the rest of continental Europe, but the fact that this tongue in cheek BBC piece generated so much anti-French comments only shows how immature and ignorant the average American (and Slashdot reader unfortunately..) can be.
Time to head back to school and try to read thos books you were supposed to read in school. It looks like your reading skills are somewhat lacking...
Do you know why they buildt the Chunnell?
Next time the Germans invade France the Chunnell
will make it easier for the French goverment
to flee to England.
the BBC guys are dreaming !
i live in Paris and no one has ever talked
to me about this silly meridian stuff.
Nobody cares about it !
I think some BBC guys are searching all day
what could show the wolrd that the french are crazy.
Today they found this.
Let the children play with their little toys !
la vache?
Obviously some Americans seem to have some problems understanding vaguely subtle events ; such as planting a line of trees to celebrate the millenium (which is only marginally different than building a steel tower to celebrate 1900)
Oh well.
We are arrogant, and we are stupid for not using the metric system.
;)
However, we invented the car, so we get to pick what side of the road it goes on, and where the driver sits!
An Arrorgant Ammerican.
actually, they arent attempting to change time, rather they're trying to change longitude (which is relative anyways). i hearby dub you an honorary nationalist.
\begin{flame}
This is the most stupid comment I ever seen in my whole life. People never freely choose to suddenly speak the language of other people that live 5000 miles from them. America ? British ex-colony. Australia ? British ex-colony. South Africa ? British ex-colony. India ? British ex-colony. Nigeria ? British ex-colony... Get the point ?
\end{flame}
In the rest of the world, where french is neither the mother-tongue nor by tradition the language of political administration, people tend to choose to use other languages and that is what counts in the end.
You never travelled much it seems. In some third world countries, for instance, there can be tenth to hundreds of local languages. In those countriers, colonists' language is sometimes/often the language of choice for political administration, television, or for communication with people of other ethnic groups. This include English in India, and French is many African former-colonies, and many other examples.
Perhaps the Yanks should carve a big arrow in the desert in Area 50 pointing to Area 51? or the Brits should carve an arrow pointing to France with a subtitle "We're not with Stupid".
A Meridien is defined to be ANY line joining one pole to the other (I'd be incline to add from the North pole to the South pole but Australian and other people living in the southern hemisphere might object :-) ). Hence, this line of trees they are planning to put together does INDEED mark "Le Meridien". Oh wait, I see a meridien right here under my feet, and I bet you that there is one under yours too.
Once you have succesfully remove your head from deep inside your colon, go back to the BBS article and re-read it. There is a reason why us Brits make fun of illiterate Americans: You guys can't read! The worse part is that you think you can. It's a good thing that the power in the US is in the hands of the only top 5% of the population. The rest of you guys are just too stupid. If you cannot read and understand this simple BBC article, how could you possibly be trusted to vote.. Oh wait, you are not, you have delegates to do the job right for you. The Founding Fathers were not that dumb after all... They must have been part of the 5% I mentioned.
You sir, are certainly a proud red-blooded member of the remaining 95%.
Two words: French Babes
The french should spend there time/money in more effective methods...
..for example, they could build speedbumps to help slow the panziers
Oui, fetchez la vache!
Also, americans have been known to have less-than-perfect national standards. Daylight savings time, the continued minting of pennies, and the ANSI character set are all examples. :)
How can you make such stupid jokes ? I know that for you american people war is a funny thing that you can watch on CNN, but for us in Europe we've all lost one of more menbers of our familly in WW2, and it's NOT something that you can laugh about.
Yet the computer age has brought some of the English measurements back to Europe. At least here in Germany, you don't buy xx c.m. monitors, rather you buy 15, 17, 19, 21 'Zoll' (pronounced approx. 'tsole') monitors. The same is true for floppies, and other stuff where the standard sizes would convert to some ridiculous floating point number... (can you imagine: "Uh, I'd like to buy a 43.18 c.m. monitor")
chris
that's dead.
There are also a lot more people who call English their _second_ language than there are who speak French... :P
Just because the "United States" is abbreviated U.S. doesn't mean every other country is T.H.E.M.
And what is this supposed to P.R.O.V.E.?
There are also a lot more people who call English their _second_ language than there are who speak French... :P
Just because the "United States" is abbreviated U.S. doesn't mean every other country is T.H.E.M.
And what is this supposed to P.R.O.V.E.?
Shouldn't there be a limit on how much crack a government can smoke? No I know where all the dope from drug busts goes.
Because we saved you from the english soldiers a few centuries ago. Remember Lafayette ?
Remember, the Academy *does* manage to get
companies in trouble for using "nonstandard"
or "unofficial" French words.
As I recall, they were trying to ban terms like
"web surfer" recently.
> for us in Europe we've all lost one of more menbers of our familly in WW2
Ummm, hello? So have most Americans. Thats why its called a *world* war.
No, not that I herad of it
Lars
Languages that change over time are automatically
more vibrant than those that don't.
Consider this:
French is "controlled" by a committee with their
own agenda, and reasons to keep development closed.
English, on the other hand, is open-sourced.
Well, there's still this little country where people measure lengths in parts of their bodies and weights or volumina in a dozen of very obscure units.
BTW: I've redefined the prime meridian myself: Longitude 0 is always where I am!
What are you talking about? A lot of Americans died in that war, after all it was one of the major contributors...
Well can you beat the sheep in formaldehyde or the bisected cow and foetus by Damien Hurst.
(French art: burning sheep once they get across the channel!)
Didn't know America was also called the world ;-) (This is a joke)
My favorite childhood story was about Eli Whitney and his interchangable parts.
And more people use Microsoft than Linux, there are more retail clerks than computer programmers, more ants than humans, and more people read USA Today than the New York times. Who gives a sh**?
We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance...is futile.
I know nothing about the French Language Committee. I do, however, know that many countries with diminishing populations (relative to the world's growing pop.), have every reason to fear corruption of their culture and language.
Norway subsidises authors to publish books in Norwegian before they publish in English. Sure, it means the author is missing out on a larger market(money) for a period of time, but it also means that Norwegian continues as a written and spoken form of language. Canadian culture is overwhelmed in many respects by hear overpopulous neighbor to the south.
Software is the same way. Microsoft makes sure that developers get all the breaks needed to continue to develop for Windows.
Who ever heard of a prime meridian in Beil Switzerland. Or a unit of measure called a Swatch? If you think the French are crazy, just look at the Swiss. Sure, they started the whole precision timepeices deal, but that doesn't give them a right to move the Prime Meridian to Beil. If Swatch really wanted a "world standard that transcends borders" as they say on their site, why the heck would they call it a SWATCH.BEAT???
Go figure.
The americans beat the english themself, with rifles bought from the Dutch. The statue of liberty was however a gift of france (it was the last time the french did something cool too)
The f*cks should get over it.
(1) Napoleon has been dead almost 200 yrs
(2) When people say lingua franca they mean ENGLISH
(3) All French wines are have been "really" Californian for at least 100 yrs. (Only Californian grapes are resistant to a certain bacteria that wiped out all the French ones.)
Get over it. Stupid f*cks.
Autocratic ? monarchy ?
Did you know than French presidents were elected by _everyone_ (not only a few important voters), and that there were more than 2 significant parties to vote for (and they are not all on the right wing!)...
American people should think a bit more of what democracy really is!!!
Actually, I think the most costly war for America was the civil war, and only about 600,000 died.
I hate July. I'm counting off the days before it's Thermador again.
A. At this point in history English is more widely used as a linqua franca (look it up, stupid) than French because the English had a huge goddamn empire quite recently, and they sprayed their language around. When their empire crapped out, the USA took over and did the same. This has nothing to do with the French Academy, and it has happened in spite of the fact that English is a painfully kludgey and hard-to-learn language (that kludginess is the "feature" you're bragging about, by the way). Hey, I'm damned fond of it myself; it's endless and it has a certain charm. But I learned it in infancy, so I got in at a discount rate.
B. Do ordinary speakers of French really give a rat's ass about the French Academy?
C. French isn't going anywhere. It's not being "destroyed". It's doing just fine. A lot of people in France speak it, as well as some parts of Southeast Asia and so on and so forth. People whose native language is French speak French. Deal with it. Francophones aren't abandoning French and switching to English; English is a handy second language for a lot of Francophones to learn, that's all, just as Swahili is a second language for a hell of a lot of people in Africa. In fact, I seem to recall that French is still in use as a trade language in some parts of Africa for similar reasons.
Conclusion: Get a brain, get a clue, grow up.
cuase were th usa and we can
You are correct sir, but Prime Meridians have always been imaginary lines on the surface of the Earth.
Well imagine no more! Now thanks to the French we can specify accurate coordinate systems like:
Projection: Lambert Conformal Conic
Ellipsoid: Clarke 1927
Datum: NAD 83
Prime Meridian: that row of trees running through the middle France
Not all Americans are immature and ignorant, and unlike you I am man enough . . .
That's a joke, right? Playing little boy games in the same breath as claiming to be "mature"?
If it's a joke, it's funny.
If it's not, you're mentally retarded. And a typical American, by the way (Oh, sure, I'm an American too -- just not typical).
. . . to England. Good common sense, if you ask me.
Didn't know America was also called the world
Oops, no, I got it backwards: As in "we have both kinds of music, 'American' music and 'World' music . .
. . . who are disposable anyway, and the sooner the better.
:)
Well as far as bashing goes the french (at least the political french) like to bash on holland a lot, Narco-Etat (a year or two ago) and now we are a murder state. The suggestion that (by the previous french foreign minister) one should put a wall arround holland which would in turn solve all the french internal problem (socio economical, racial, drugs, etc.) if ofcource a complete farce ... anyway the nice thing is, all of the argumenst are provable incorrect so "get your facts straight" .... Get first your own mess (oh sorry 'facts') in order please.
hilbrink@smr.ch
. . . but MUCH better to annoy the goddamn Brits. A friend of mine who's hated the French all his life had a weird sort of epiphany a couple of years ago: "Damn, they French hate the Brits! They're okay after all!" And he's been fond of the French ever since. I'm willing to cut 'em some slack on that basis, too. Hey, why not? The French are goofy, but the English are disgusting and dangerous. When you really think about it, "goofy" ain't so bad. They're entertaining, at the very least.
...and I know the perfect items to drop on them.
No, not bombs... but Oscar Meyer hotdogs and bottles of California....no, TEXAS wine! 8-P
Mostly true. You can pay lots more money and buy a GPS with accuracy to 10s of meters, but that distortion is always present. Within the next 10 years the US military will remove the distortion and allow very accurate civilian GPS. Until then you can buy a Russian GPS that has no distortion.
FYI, GPS works by measuring the Doppler shift in the signal (like how the tone of a train changes as it approaches then passes) emitted from passing GPS satellites. With the Doppler shift you can calculate the distance to a satellite, with signals from several satellites and their orbits you can "triangulate" your position on the Earth.
I couldn't agree more with the general tone of
your post, especially the last paragraph.
Nice wrap-up.
And, BTW, I'm French.
> Also, americans have been known to have less-than-perfect national standards. Daylight savings time, the continued minting of pennies, and the ANSI character set are all examples.
:).
Didn't Daylight Savings Time start out as one of Ben Franklins jokes? And wasn't he our ambassador to France? Hmmmm. Curiouser and Curiouser.
I, for one, enjoy Daylight Savings. I find the extra hour that pops up right around first midterms is _really_ usefull.
As for minting pennies, they are a vital and necessary psychological tool for reducing inflation. You have to keep a set minimum unit of currency, and it needs to remain a minimum. This is related to the effect of Canada replacing their dollar bill with a dollar coin, effectively turning their fundamental unit of currency into 'small change'. Canadian currency took a sudden devaluation immediately thereafter.
Apart from all that, pennies are great fun to place on railroad tracks. Sometimes the get squished flat, but sometimes the LAUNCH
Just remember that the next time the Germans are kicking your ass up to your shoulders and you need help.
fils d'une prostituée. prostituée d'âne. abruti. baisez-vous! baise! merde!
> Yes, France does strange things and this is
> another example of the weird artistic taste
> (like the Louvre Pyramids)
Hey Genius, the Louvre Pyramids were designed by an AMERCIAN ARCHITECT.
je vous violerai trois fois par jour
I take the French over the Brits any day of the week, thank you very much. At least they behave like good european citizens, unlike the slimy british traitors who routinely spy on their friends and then hand over the data to the CIA/NSA.
AC in Europe
serez-vous ma position personnelle de sperme?
Je vous chasserai pour vous avaler et détruire, droit après que je termine ce mignon de filet.
BullSoft accompagne et soutient la création du LinuxMaster Group, initiative constituée pour favoriser le développement d'applications d'administration sur Linux. Association indépendante, créée dans l'esprit du logiciel libre, LinuxMaster Group s'est donné pour mission de développer sur OpenMaster des services d'administration de systèmes, de réseaux et d'applications sous Linux, notamment autour d'Internet. Les services d'OpenMaster sous Linux sont disponibles à des fins d'éducation et de recherche auprès du LinuxMaster Group.
"Grâce au portage d'OpenMaster sur Linux, de puissantes fonctions d'administration de systèmes et de réseaux sont déjà utilisables sur Linux", a déclaré Maria Legay, Présidente de LinuxMaster Group. "Suite à ces premiers développements, nous allons poursuivre avec nos partenaires le développement de nouvelles fonctions d'administration OpenMaster sur Linux, et multiplier les initiatives. Notre premier partenariat avec l'Ecole Centrale de Paris est très prometteur en ce domaine"
"Bull a décidé de s'engager sur Linux pour répondre aux besoins de ses clients désireux de disposer d'un système ouvert à très bas coût et bénéficiant de l'expérience Unix. Notre savoir faire d'intégrateur de Solutions et de Services, parmi les leaders en Europe, devrait nous positionner comme un des acteurs important pour la communauté Linux, en lui offrant un niveau de services équivalent à celui des autres systèmes d'exploitation du marché", déclare Noël Saille, co-Président de Bull Services.
"Oracle est heureux de voir son partenaire stratégique Bull s'engager sur la voie de Linux" a déclaré Régis Nacfaire, Directeur Business Development & Marketing Alliances, Oracle EMEA. "L'offre de services que Bull propose, les performances et la robustesse de la famille de serveurs Bull sous Linux associées à la base de données de l'Internet Oracle8i offriront aux éditeurs de logiciels sous Linux une infrastructure idéale pour le développement des solutions Internet les plus innovantes."
Mon pénis est presque un pied long.
Je vous déteste. Vous me rappelez ma mère. Ma mère a dormi avec des douzaines d'hommes étranges.
Je vous ai violé avant, et je le ferai encore.
Prime Medridan Standard - PMS :) lovely, just lovely.
Jesus saves!
Oh, wait!!
English is the language I was forced to learn, French is the language I chose to learn. No sane person hates the French anyway. It's imbeciles like you who make 'merkins look dumb and unrefined.
So the americans fooled the French again.
I have French coins from that era. They are numbered with the year 2, 3, 4, etc.
They gave it up after awhile, but I'm sure it felt as way-out-cool and radical as running Linux does now.
I am right-handed, therefore when a car is coming from the opposite side, I go right. Seems logical, uh?
Why is this surprising. That bunch of pussies, who haven't won a war on their own since Napoleon (and not really then either), were too scared that their beloved Eiffel tower might get damaged so they gave half the country to Hitler, ought to be nuked once and for all.
/.
Hey, you know why you have to learn English in
school and we don't? It's becase *we don't have
to*.
Go take a shower, or something.
Personellement, je m'en fous. Tout le monde sait que c'est a Grenwich, et si les francais veulent faire encore des betises politiques, laissez les le faire. Souvennez-vous de l'academie Francais il y a quelques annees, avec tout cette histoire du vocabulaire "anglais" et la musique anglophone sur la radio. Est-ce que ca marchait? Je ne le crois pas. C'est toujours une question de nationalisme avec les francais. Ils n'acceptent pas qu'ils ne sont pas au centre du universe. Tant pis pour eux. Vive l'angleterre, dieu saver la reine!
Oracle est heureux de voir son partenaire stratégique Bull s'engager sur la voie de Linux" a déclaré Régis Nacfaire, Directeur Business Development & Marketing Alliances, Oracle EMEA. "L'offre de services que Bull propose, les performances et la robustesse de la famille de serveurs Bull sous Linux associées à la base de données de l'Internet Oracle8i offriront aux éditeurs de logiciels sous Linux une infrastructure idéale pour le développement des solutions Internet les plus innovantes.
> Isn't Bill Gates' personal worth about to equal the GDP for France?
France's GDP was US$1.3 trillion in 1997.
(The US was about $8 trillion in 1997).
Bill Gates only has a measely 100 billion.
Why would he buy France when he can own
the US government?
- Alexis de Mockeville.
Tao:
Can you help out a poor, ignorant biochemist and cite a few examples? Quebec is pretty obvious, but can you name a few others?
If I remember my facts about World War II correctly,
About 13 million Americans served in the Military.
About 1 million Americans served in Combat
Less than 400 thousand Americans were killed in Combat.
Now that's really stupid. That town is called (and spelled) Dunkerque by everybody, except by the English who can't pronounce the name and decided to rewrite it Dunkirk.
The name has a Flemish origin, but people there have been speaking French (or dialects thereof) for centuries.
- Alexis de Mockeville
400 thousand American soldiers dead in 5 years of WW2....
Compare that with 400,000 non-soldiers killed by gun violence in the streets of America in the last than 10 years.
Who needs a war with a peace like that.
- Anonyward Comous
PS: most casualties in WW2 Europe were civilians. Many of them by American bombs. Can you say Dresden?
So what if there's a meridian going through Paris. So what if they want to paint strip their meridian. Might look kinda kool from outer space. Maybe it will look like a landing strip to all the aliens who will get curious when saturn lights from the 56kg of plutonium in the "clockworks" the US sent there a few months back.
After all, first one to get the next wave of aliens gets the next technological boost!
Last time I checked, there *was* also a meridian going through Dely Plaza when Kennedy was shot. Ceremonial High Noon, or something like that. Wonder if it's still there. fud, fud, fud
Where's the beef. It's like the New York fireman's joke.
Still, I like the frogs, or is it the rosters. Those Braunschweiger royals and their doting subjects are still a bunch of murders and theives.
As a Frenchman living in the US, I have to say that if there is a country were it's OK to "laugh @absolutely anything" it's France. Unfortunately, it is not true of the US. You gotta watch what you make fun of on this side of the pond.
-- Alexis de Mockeville
I don't think that the Americans invented the autombile any more than Karl Benz did. I think that it just sort of evolved since the invention ot the wheel. Conastoga build wagons that were horse powered, Benz may have invented a different power source and applied it to someone elses wheeled carriage, simple evoultion my friend, simple etc.
dumb dumb dumb, everything is divisable, half of anything is just that, half of anything. man don't need to be a rocket scientest to figure that out.
if it weren't for those so called English Types you mentioned, there wouldn't be a frog left on earth to listen to or defend the famous maggot line
You said "we" americans? I am Brazilian,
Brazil is in America. I understand and use the metric
system perfectly. Indeed, the only renegade people
who deny the metric system are those from this
cocky country who thinks it is worth the whole
continent, and whose inhabitants call themselves
the only "americans" of the World.
Give up this weird length system you use
and stealing other people's rights to be
considered from the continent. Then we can talk
about standards and fairness.
Immigration - Le départ des immigrés du tiers monde
Etablir dans tous les domaines la préférence nationale et européenne. (Logement, emploi, aide sociale).
Expulsion immédiate de tous les immigrés en situation irrégulière, contrôle très sévère de la filière des réfugiés politiques.
Réduction de la durée du permis de séjour à 1 an et départ des immigrés extra-européens à l'expiration du délai.
Suppression de toute acquisition de la nationalité française et réforme du code de la nationalité selon le "droit du sang".
Poursuite pénales sévères contre les organisateurs et utilisateurs de filières de travailleurs clandestins.
Front National
> Just because the english came up with it first the French must somehow either outdo the English,
Kinda like the Americans trying to outdo the Russians during the space race.
> or ignore then steal their standards claiming it their own.
Yeah, kinda like:
- Edison claiming he invented the motion picture
- Edison claiming he invented the phonograph
- Gallo claiming he found the AIDS virus
> but 're-mapping' the prime meridian simply b/c the english did it first and your nation resents them is absurd.
Kinda like a certain north american nation blockading a neighboring island for 40 years just because "your nation resents them".
- Anonicous Moward
This story amused I, too. Maybe we could take English classes together, sometime
Feeble minded Germans would get lost on the French rail system in a heartbeat ;-)
Your estimate of gun-related deaths in the US is pretty accurate. See USA GUN DEATHS but only about 40% of those are homicides...the remainder are suicides and probably would have occured even without Firearms.
As for Civilian Deaths caused by Allied bombing I offer:
But these pale when compared to the total Civilian Casualties
I leave it to you to figure who killed whom.
Etablir dans tous les domaines la préférence nationale et européenne. (Logement, emploi, aide sociale).
Expulsion immédiate de tous les immigrés en situation irrégulière, contrôle très sévère de la filière des réfugiés politiques.
Réduction de la durée du permis de séjour à 1 an et départ des immigrés extra-européens à l'expiration du délai.
Suppression de toute acquisition de la nationalité française et réforme du code de la nationalité selon le "droit du sang".
Poursuite pénales sévères contre les organisateurs et utilisateurs de filières de travailleurs clandestins.
Front National
I jeez, I always thought people used left-hand drive cars because the shifter is on the right (90% of the world is right handed...). I find it quite amusing that a country like England where manuals are still _very_ popular uses right-hand drive cars... Damn gears must be difficult to use! :-)
Sorry, don't speak much french here... But what da hey! I'm pissed because I buy this NICE *NEW* HP keyboard for $5. I find out why it was so cheap... Because the DAMN FRENCH needed to change the keyboard standard because they felt too inadequate for QWERTY (perhaps).
Laugh, the above was a joke! (I thouch type, so the keycap layout doesn't matter after remapping some keys...)
> They should concentrate their energy on taking baths and showers to rid themselves of bodily odors
Another evidence that racism is still and integral part of the American culture.....
It falls into the classic Racist cliche: "the [insert most hated culture here] stink".
Have you ever been to France?
> Why the HELL does the Prime Meridian have to be changed all of a sudden?
You should not believe what the British press says about the continent anymore than I should believe what the Iraqi, Serb, and Iranian press says about the US.
Americans affirm their superiority complex in many colorful ways (like dropping bombs and stupid soap operas here and there). The British simply make fun of the French and Germans. As to the French, they make gigantic works of art (like this line of trees), or prestigious but somewhat-useless technical achievements (like the Concorde).
- Anonicous Moward
...acutally this is just the first step.
Eventually all us sick perverted fscks plan of having the world standard organizations agree the the prime meridian runs though the equator (making it the same time all over the world). This will complete philosphical circle, reverting back to the old "world is flat debate". We've discovered that if you remove all meaning to dimentionality, the world, indeed, revolves around itself.
Well, as far as I remember, the country with the most casualties was Russia with about 9 Million soldiers, and a LOT of civilians. After that, they got kinda angry, because none of the "big four" took 'em very seriously...
wee wee!!
>the war began in the Pacific in Dec 1941.
Actually war was declared in Europe in 1939.
It does piss me off to hear about the French Resistance all the time. My Grandfather was turned over to the Germans by a French farmer in at the start of the war and spent nearly six years in a POW camp.
French == Collaborators
I count only two times:
1) The war of 1870
2) WWII
On the other hand, Napoleon kicked some Prussian ass and WWI was a draw until the US joined the war.
we got them too.
;-P
Et on te fera péter ta sa gueule de merdeux de ricain de mes couilles avec, si tu continue à nous chercher avec ton boeuf aux hormones, ta banane esclavagiste et ton cacacola aux fongicides, tête de noeuds
A few things to think about :
1- The greenwich meridian was adopted in France about one century ago, in application of a treaty which mentionned also that English and American would, as the whole world, adopt the metric system (based on a decimal division of the quantities - be them distance, weight, or anything else-.
US and GB never respected their signature.
2- Germany was created in the end of the 19th (sorry XIX th) century, and since, we surrendered once to them (1939) and them once to us (1918).
The US soldiers were not really deeply involved in world war I (sorry, that's historical, but they were deeply involved in WW2, I agree).
Before was Prussia. In the 19th century, Prussia won in 1870 and in 1815, and we invaded them in 1804. OK so that is 4:3
3- My grandfather was a resistant, and he blowed out german trains with explosives during the second world war. Early in 1940, he was jailed because he had distributed portraits od General De Gaulle in Paris. My grandmother used bribery to free him, and he was then able to go on with its underground work.
My other grandfather was prisoner of war in germany. And he did not met Colonel Hogan there. Colonel Hogan does not exist.
4- Who paid the guns you used to get your independancy ? The French people.
Who sent mens (remember Lafayette) to fight the brits for your indenpendancy ? The French people
Who gave you the Statue of Liberty? The French people.
I have about the same opinion of you than you have of us.
A french (so a coward, of course)
I know you yanks like butchering the English language by stupidifying (is that a word?) long words but this is ridiculous.
>Dely Plaza
Try
Dealey Plaza
>There they go again!! People just don't get it,
... except in the Great UUUUUnited States Of Americaaaaa) but never forget that diversity is also a strength.
>do they ?!... STANDARDS!!! why don't people just >stick to them... whats this about ? racial
>superiority ?!! Couldn't give a rats ass for >that.
Yep ! Lets standardize everything and chose the most efficient in every category :
Operating System : Linux
Keyboard layout : QWERTY
Language : Esperanto
Religion, Race, Government : ein wolk, ein
reich, ein Fuhrer !
Not so cool huh ?
Standards are usefull on many area (like the GSM for cellphones availlable in the 900MHz band everywhere
Some people like NT other like Be, Linux, Open BSD, QNX. Every system beneficts from the others : I'm not sure if KDE or GNOME would have existed without MS-Windows but I'm pretty sure that NT would have been worse without the Linux/BSD competition.
For the same reason I will continue to defend the french economical system against the American one because what is good for U.S. is not necerely good for the rest of the world.
Not because I think we're superior but because I'm not sure there is only one truth outhere.
BTW I think that my governement idea is stupid (but don't tell 'em, I'd like to see this line of trees some day !)
D.Saslawsky
Wanna buy some French rifles? Never been fired, and only been dropped once!
monkey , hairy monkey , smelly monkey , monkey
monkey see , monkey do , monkey took , a poo on you
monkey monkey
france sucks
monkey's favorite sites
iBox LX - cheap linux box
http://www.slackware.com/zipslack/ - linux for dos
monkey pee , monkey poo , monkey smells , and so do you
- The Monkey
And those who drive on the right do so because Robesoierre decided so in a fit of peak during the French revolution. Something about making the citizens of Paris conform to his will.
All hail the 5th republic.
Hey Guys, let's talk about viet nam.... >:D
MUHAAHAHAHAAAAAHAAAHAAAAAAAA!!!
What??!!??
What happens is that the duration of the day varies, and therefore the GMT second is of variable length -- not good for scientific measurement.
The problem is the orbit of the earth - it is not exactly regular. A second is a second is a second (it's defined as the time taken for a certain wavelength of light to travel a set distance I think) the reason for leap seconds is that a year (excatly one orbit of the earth) is not an exact number of our seconds. So we have to add one every so often to make up the difference.
The architect's name is Ieoh Ming Pei. He is a Chinese-American.
Please see :
http://www.louvre.fr
Please, don't make this kind of joke,
...
Wanna know why american gov't bombed Yougoslavia ?
Do you already know why ?
Not to protect kosovo,
they made it for *money* and nothing other,
and i'm knowing what i'm talking about,
all the time they bombed yougoslavia,
they constructed enormous database,
saying how their new weapon work, and
experimentating new weapon.
At the "Bourget" meeting,
they presented catalog explaining
how an weapon do / what it is capable to do
etc etc
What do you think of that ?
Another thing again,
you said french people are arrogant,
i doesn't agree with you,
first, we do not take yourself for the
"master of the world people" like many
americain.
Second, last time i saw americain people
in a french cinema, they were insulting other
french people, shouting when everybody
listened at the film...
Please, this is a french government idea,
not french people idea,
so don't judge against people.
Sorry for this english. ( i'm french,
and do not even worry about this topic ).
There's a saying in the British Army which states that when you are on NATO exercises, always ensure that you are in front of the French and behind the Americans, because the French will retreat through you and the Americans will just shoot you.
Isn't friendly fire great.
Mark
Encore une fois, tout pour Paris! A croire qu'il n'y a rien en France qui ne doive pas avoir un lien plus ou moins direct avec cette ville. C'est vraiment humiliant pour les "provinciaux". Paris est une belle ville, mais on en a d'autres en France. Il s'agirait de ne pas l'oublier...
Approximative translation :
Again, all for Paris! One can think that there is nothing in France that can't have a link with that town. This is humiliating for "countrymen". Paris is a nice town, but there are many others in France. It shouldn't be forgotten...
Doh. It's Monty Python, stupid. He's pulling your leg but good!
Thanks for the translation, Djaak. You must be from Algeria with a name like Djaak. Now TRANSLATE THIS.
Don't start on the ise/ize thing. Many people now believe that "ise" is correct UK English, and the "ize" form is only used by those damned colonials.
In fact, "ize" is original English when the stem is Greek and the suffix is actually pronounced "eyes" rather than "ice" or "iss". Or something like that, anyway.
Look in most good UK dictionaries and they'll give the "ize" form first or list it as preferred.
So, promise but realize. *Not* analyze though.
ac.uk. (that just occurred to me as being a good sig!)
"cons", surely?
ac.uk.
Wow - what a list of major, influential countries!
;-)
Portguese sounds like it'd be impossible to speak with a blocked nose. And what's with all the accents?!
ac.uk.
Gottfried Daimler, a German, built the first car. He later founded Daimler-Benz, which is now called Daimler-Chrysler.
The Americans also claim Bell invented the phone while actually the German Philipp Reis did. He thought the phone was a great toy and moved on. About 20 years later, I think, Bell reinvented the phone.
Meet Gomer, the Slashdot retard. Say Gomer, are you proud of your recursive family tree?
What do you expect? They're French!
I agree!
Time to start stoping reading Slashdot.
This debate clearly illustrates the type of reader currently reading slashdot.
John C. Randolph, did you have anything to contribute to this discussion? Try harder next time.
I agree, I'm really starting to have doubts about Slashdot. But considering that 95% of the US population has probably never heard of a prime meridian, the people on Slashdot may indeed be part of the US elite. A scary thought.
Brazil is in SOUTH America dumbass. The United States of America was America before your country even existed. You think anyone but Nazi war criminals would immigrate to your pathetic country? When people came to America they came to the good ol' USA baby.
Can you spell "typo"? Nope.
Moron.
Hey, none of these are in America! This is an outrage! (Joke)
...at a ripe old age after a wonderfully fulfilling life, in their sleep, painlessly.
Every language is a kludge, and the perceived "difficulty" of learning a language is a relative standard that differs from person to person.
That's true up to a point, but English has (as one poster pointed out) the most godawful irregular orthography known to man, and on top of that everything else is irregular, too. I've tried to explain English verb tenses to a native speaker of Hebrew; not a fun experience. I don't doubt that there may be a more annoying languages out there, but English is pretty bad. It's very expressive; for example, having more tenses than Hebrew makes it possible to express things in more detail. You win and you lose, really.
Do they derive the same amusement from the Academy as non-French speakers?
Hopefully.
English speakers are just trying to get revenge for the "corruption" of English after the Norman Conquest
Damn right! They fart in our general direction! Death to the Frogs!
I think he was mostly joking,
Actually I was quite serious. The post I was replying to was simply wrong. I don't think a lot of countries are migrating from French to English for their native languages, and the success that English has had can hardly be attributed to the qualities of the language itself. I don't think anybody out there is researching the respective architectures of English and Greek before deciding which one to learn. The natural-language situation is in no way analagous to, say, C displacing PL/I (or whatever C displaced).
Not using the metric system is a pain for everyone. We American's have been makeing a half-hearted effort to change or use both for decades. It's not much fun buying two sets of tool to work on my car. The metric system is obviously the superior of the two standards, but that doesn't make it any easier to change when your used to the inferior system.
No, I we did it some time in the 60ies..cant remember the exact year.
sorry for you but this terms are used in french ...
Did you even read the post? It wasn't talking about US or French elitism, but parisians thinking they're better than the rest of france.
Read, then post.
maybe...
beef comes from 'boeuf'....
and pork from the french 'porc'
SNIGGET !!!!! so there
> I agree either they are now Americans or we should all speak French, cause next the Frech Gov will repeal William the Conqueror's
> victory.
Okay, what the heck does this mean? I've been trying to wrap my head around this comment for five minutes now...
"repeal William the Conqueror's victory"? So the French are going to declare that they _didn't_ conquer England in 1066? Then why would "we" (presumably the Americans, though the poster doesn't say) speak French?
Gah, my head hurt...
According to an old map of Spain that hung in my
high-school Spanish class, longitude is measured
from the "Meridiano de Madrid"!
How many other countries have done this? Was there ever a "Socialist Meridian" running through
Moscow?
Yep ... Quite funny ...
/. talks about something in France, we get the same hoho-too-much-fun 'jokes' here ...
... Nothing to laugh at really ...
Each time a story on
I think americans are quite jealous, this is the only explanation I can find.
For us, americans are just 'weird' with their lawsuits, macdonalds, working conditions, TV-ads-controlled life
Sure in europe we have quite higher standards of life, does this simple fact make you so angry ??
About the car.. I m not so sure that it's a german invention...
The first think that use a motor is the Fardier
de Cunot (or sthg like that), it can move at
3 km per hour. (It was invented before 1800 !).
But about the nationality of Cunot (not really sure about his name) I dont know..
Thanks,
This is typical of the american thinking (U.S and T.H.E.M).
And Linux wouldn't be where it is now without code from french people (ext2fs comes to my mind).
"they bombed yougoslavia,
they constructed enormous database,
saying how their new weapon work, and
experimentating new weapon"
huh?? I guess this means that X-Files is shown in France, too?
Sounds like dad McKenzie in "So I married an Ax Murderer"...
"...the Vatican, the Rothchilds, the Gettys, the queen of England, and Colonel Sanders before he went tits up"
well for a country that has as it's emblem ;)
a big chicken, i doubt we could be intimidated
Brad
French? How dar you you young scally wag! We are a mixture. Orignally mostly Saxons and Angles before the Normans came. Uttering a comment like that here is almost blasphemous! We have a war every century with em virtually, im sure this meridian thing is just late cramming to start the next before new years eve. :P :P
If we are part french, then you are part spic, wop, dago, honky, kraut, frog, polac implant
so ner
I avoided the word nigger cos it seems to cause one to be called racist.
Well I'm french and I happen to like Holland, and especially Amsterdam ... If only we could have coffee shops in Paris ;)
Cunot was french of course ! And it's not Cunot in fact but Cugnot who invented a steam car in 1771. The some english made steam diligences. And in 1873 Amédée Bollé, a french from my town: Le Mans (yeah the famous race...), made the distance between Paris and Bordeaux in his car. Voila ;) :o) And anyway I love girls, no matter they are americans, french, swedish, russian or brazilian ...
Sorry for my bad english, I'm french. Hey I'm not arrogant I'm not saying that France is the best country in the world, I HATE patriotism because it leads us to war. But your jokes are quite funny
I'm French and I've never heard of that news...
Diffamation again and again...
Englishmen always had a problem with France,
they always stab in the back... It's not the
first time. Give no credit to that story.
I've always thought England should be banned from
Europe and be a US state, as they are their little
dog...
Of course they did not write it! Some Brit with a descent sense of humor wrote it. :-)
The stupid arrogant americans are the ones who are too stupid to have read the article and understood what was said, ignorant because they don't know their asses from the definition of a meridien and what "Le Meridien" means. Finally, they are judgemental because while they obviously do not know what the hell they are talking about, they certainly have strong opinions about it. I think that it is time to study the link between beef hormones and mental retardation and short attention span
I am the uebermensch!
you wouldn't need to resort to violence to grab special privileges if you were capable of holding your own in a fair competition . . . sad but true. nativism ("nativism" is your particular species of bigotry, stupid) is the last refuge of the hopeless incompetent. well, tough shit. that's not how the world works.
S'il vous plait.. Don't compare us to ppl from LA. I lived in France and ppl from LA were obvious to spot - they would announce to everyone where they're from regardless if they spoke english or not.
At the same time I've seen French ppl in the states make asses out of themselves. Must have been Parisiens. I dispise parisiens as many ppl in the provinces do.
France is interesting - the native languages are fascinating - breton & provencal - interesting ppl, love the place.
I know France too well and I can tell you without a doubt that its huge overbearing govt is etched in her brain - Franch will never be a tech powerhouse like the US despite its highly trained workers, great _free/cheap_ education... It's too bad!
You guys should revolt.
I also have heard this explanation...
Swatch, the watch manufactor in Switzerland, has already proven that the Swiss can beat the French in out-right arrogance. In October of 1998 the company inaugurated the Biel Mean Time (BMT) meridian which they marked off on the Swatch headquarters in Biel, Switzerland. Then, without ever even submitting anything to the IETF, they declaied BMT to be part of an "Internet time standard" with the basic unit of time being 86.4 seconds in length (thus also attacking the commonly accepted basic unit of time which is measured as 9,192,631,770 periods a cesuim atom). To top it all off, to help welcome in Swatch's new time system, they declaired that it would flood the ham radio frequencies from a Russian satalite.
The French goverment planting tree's on their own turf. That seems benign enough. They are not declairing by-passing the IETF in declairing Internet standards. The French is not trying to promote a new basic unit of time. And they are not declairing the entire globe's ham radio frequencies to be their own to do with as they please. Before continuing to attack the French goverment, you might want to look into what power hungry moves a Swiss *company* is doing. Swatch is being far more aggressive in trying to confuse time measurement standards that ANY *goverment*. How many New York Times or Los Angeles Times ads have you seen from the French declairing France as founder of the new world-wide time system?
Go back to your own country. France is a country for the French. Go back to Africa. Go Back to Turkey. Go back to Arabia. You are not welcome in France. France is not your home. You have been warned!
I leave in Paris and as a French Person I have never heard of this story I think 'National hobby' post from aspv is the closest to reality.
Anglo-saxon clichés, thanks BBC.
Most of the post seemed written by Rednecks not from Nerds...
I saw that many of you have no background in international affairs. If France left NATO that was to counter balance US Influence. What about the nuclear testings!!! Americans u are kidding!!! 10% of your GNP since 50 years has been devoted to nuclear testing, you bombed Japan twice, you did radiation testings on your black minority!!! so shut up!!! Whatching too much CNN and South parks stuff is brigging down your level down...
Take 2 passports one American one French, travel around the whole fucking world then we'll see which nation is the most hated. What is sad is that u don't even know why!! You think your government is taking actions to restore peace or democracy in the world!! Then don't give a flying fuck about it, this is what they make u believe... Ur president apologized a month ago in south America because US supported dictatorship there knowing it was killing 10's of thousand people!!! What about Apartheid in the US 30 years ago:: 'no dogs no blacks'!! Where was your Freedom of speech when u could not be Communist in the 50's and most American intellectuals had to flee to France!!!
You leave in a sick society filled with hypocrisy
and you wanna tell the whole wild world to take your lame example!!! take my advice move out from your country to see what is going on in the world, in 20 years from now China is going to have the highest GNP in the world!! would that make this country better than you?
Calm down. Those US-Americans think they are the only worthy nation on the world, saving the world all of the time. No talk about their ruthlessness and brutality in wars fought for economic advantages. No mention, that half of the US pupolation can't even find their state on a world map (acording to a survey).
But as for German history, you're wrong.
"...invading other countrey (first austria, then Tchequie, then Poland...)"
In Austria there was (unfortunately) strong support to join the "Reich", and there was a majority vote.
Those parts of the Czech territory Germany got in '38 was given to them by the other big European forces at the Munich Conference. Except for the fact, that the Czechs couldn't take part themselves, this was a legal contract.
This is what historians call the Appeasement Policy, and is one of the darker chapters and one of the biggest mistakes of politics of the (later)Allied Forces
Just remember your American History...
Do you know WHO IS La Fayette ?
You the Americans think the whole Earth owes you everything. Please stop supporting fascists governments in South America and playing heroes while bombing countries, pretending to save the world and justice.
French DO know American support helped them during WW2, and are grateful for that. But the whole Earth is fed up by American imperialism.
It was Adam Smith, actually.
You know, there's one thing you can say for the Jews: they do have a sense of humor. They had a real comedian dream up the name "peacekeeping mission" for the murderous forays they send United Nations and NATO troops on. Their gangs of mercenary killers are called "peacekeepers," but wherever they go to enforce the will of the New World Order they cause bloodshed and suffering, and nowhere is that more true than in Serbia.
The Jews undoubtedly are greatly amused by the ease with which they are able to deceive the Gentiles in such matters. Madeleine Albright announced to the world as she and her gang began their murderous bombing of Serbia in March that they were doing it for "humanitarian" reasons, to keep the Serbs from mistreating Albanians. She said this with a straight face, the news media people reported it with straight faces, and certainly a substantial portion of the Gentile public believed her, while the Jews were laughing up their sleeves. I mean, the real Serb persecution of the Albanians in Kosovo didn't commence until after Madeleine's bombing started, and it was in direct response to the bombing. The Serbs had just finished thoroughly trouncing the KLA following an attempt by that group last year to seize control of the Serbian province and force the Serbs out. There had been no large-scale ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The KLA was planning a large-scale ethnic cleansing to get rid of the Serbs, but the Serbian army whipped them before they could do it. And in whipping the KLA, the Serbs undoubtedly were very rough on some Albanians in Kosovo they suspected of collaborating with the KLA.
Click HERE to learn the truth about the Jews.
First, for the only purpose of being rated as `informative', let me recall that the actual longitude of Paris is 220' E :-) In fact, among the french cities that have a chance to be known by Americans, Deauville would have been a good candidate if this event had to be connected with the prime meridian, since it is at 004'E.
:-)). Not the kind of people to write messages such as the ones you can read here.
:-)
However, last time I read about this, amused of seing how people could find strange ways to spend their time to celebrate Y2K, this had nothing to do with the prime meridian (AFAIK). With the 'Méridien de Paris', perhaps.
Thus, I am a little suprised by the unfriendly tone of the article. Making fun by feeding misinformation to people does not qualify as journalism, I believe.
I would also like to say that most Americans I know personnaly are very nice people (but then most of them are physicists
To end also on an informative tone, did you know that the meter was designed so that 1000 km is the length of a straight line between the most northern and the most southern french cities ? With this kind of fact, you would almost forget that the Prime meridian passes by Greenwich and not Paris
Remember when the French right wing unanimously turned traitor and sold out to the Nazis, and the Nazis stole everything in the country that would move? Yeah, I remember, too. And then the Left had the balls to fight back while the Right collaborated . . . And finally the US came in and ate the Nazis for breakfast, which is the only reason you and le Pen have a country of your own to yell about. Foreigners? Foreigners, indeed! You'd be speaking German now, and saying "please" to foreigners every day of your life if it weren't for the US.
And you know what? If you and le Pen get out of control with your little paranoid fantasies, we'll come and smash you just as flat as we smashed Germany when they got out of control. You think we can't? No, you're not that dumb. You think we won't, then? Ha! Try us. Just try us. And if we don't flatten you, Israel will. They could own your sorry asses without breaking a sweat. They'd have enough sense to save Paris, too, which I'm not so sure the USA would have.
The metric system isn't as divisible as the English system, therefore it's inferior. Octal, Base 12 and Hexadecimal rule! Down with base 10.
If we'd followed to the letter the actions that established the Metric System, we would have also renumbered years, starting a new era with the year one (which was done on French coins for about the first decade after the French Revolution). We would also have gone to the metric year of ten months.
Of course, basing the whole system of units of measure on the arbitrary fact that we have ten fingers and ten toes is about as lame as any other scheme.
Let's use Hexadecimal. Why adopt half-baked solutions based on obsolete notions like base ten?
Or, of course, we could base units of measure on human-based scales and ratios.
But to prevent the degeneration into a Metric system squabble:
It's all great. I'm glad we're on the brink of adopting the Metric system, or whatever. I'll still feed those cats I own about a cup a day of kibbles. They don't care if I call it a watermelon. Just that it's in the dish in the morning.
My 13/37" wrench comes in handy all the time.
But I prefer to use a 21/43" if one is handy.
>>Why would he buy France when he can own
>>the US government?
Ummm....because he too thinks Jerry Lewis is a comic genius?
Because he gets all pissy when you use a language other than his? (Although French has better exception handling than VBScript...)
Because he too is convinced of his own superiority even in the face of evidence to the contrary?
Because he wants a World Cup? (Allez Les Bleus!)
Because his company's products are only allowed to use the security features his company develops?
Because he likes pommes frites?
Nononono... it's not like that.
We, humans, measure time in days.
A day is divided in 24 hours of 60 seconds.
Noon, GMT is defined as the time the Sun is directly above the horizon.
What happens is that the duration of the day varies, and therefore the GMT second is of variable length -- not good for scientific measurement.
Thus, they arbitrarily defined the UTC second, to closely match the GMT one. But if we were not to add leap seconds, then noon would drift (slowly but it would) and it time as we know it wouldn't be the same -- therefore it's a Good Thing.
On the other hand, one could argue that it would't make much of a difference. It would take a LONG time for the difference to reach 1 hour, and we don't seem to bother much when we switch to daylight saving time.
Establishing an accurate measuring unit of time for scientific purposes that also serves as a unit of time for day-to-day purposes without forcing us to 'forget' all those assumptions that are inherent in the human culture about time is almost impossible.
Which is a shame really.
Because German soldiers like to march in the shade!
What are French military exercises like?
Actually, let's get our fact a bit straight here...:
1) It is known as the "Meridien de Paris" or Paris' Meridian.
2) It is meant to be a celebration of the end of the millenium
3) It will consits of school kids holding hands for a few minutes so that there will be an uninterrupted line of people near the west-east center of France passing through Paris.
4) Trees are/will be planted along that lines every few 100's meters so that a line of tress will be visible from the air
Bashing the French might be fun and a national bobby, but you should at least get your facts straight! Yes, France does strange things and this is another example of the weird artistic taste (like the Louvre Pyramids) but at least they are trying to do things that are nice just because they can be done...
This still is inconsistent though. We should really be measuring time in meters.
Language planning is something many countries do. I'm not acquainted with the French Academy, but I do know about the Spanish Academy of Language, the counterpart for the Spanish language.
This kind of stuff is important to with international languages. Spanish, for example, is spoken in 20 countries, each with its own culture, national press, etc. It happens that sometimes people in one country spontaneously adopt some word from another language, say, English, but people in other countries do not, import a different word, or import the same word, but in a different form. For example, in Mexico people use the word troca (from the English "truck"); in Puerto Rico, people say troc. In some countries, there are even syntactical forms that don't exist in others!
The point is that there is a need for some organization to review the data on the language as its used in different places, and decide on general forms to be used by everyone when one needs to be sure to be understood everywhere. That is, there needs to be a general dictionary, which collects words that you can expect to be usable in all places, and a general grammar.
English speaking countries (well, at least Britain and the USA) also have this--- only that they are to be found in the form of the better known dictionaries (like the Oxford Dictionary) or grammar and composition guides.
---
---
And don't forget daylight savings, the idea from hell.
Umm... Excuse me, but doesn't the entire world other than (not so) Great Britian and it's (ex-) colonies agree with us on the whole which side of the road issue?
Two words: "OSI Model"
(Acutally, and acronym and a word, but who's counting?)
IIRC, all local times were based on the city sundial, which may or may have not been correctly aimed.
Note they never said, "with the naked eye", but, IIRC the great wall of china can be seen from space with the naked eye, and I think that's a little thinner than New Zealand.
I coulda sworn it was Lucky Stripes...
Hey, I like compound words... gets rid of so many messy adjectives.
This is probobly a little off topic, but My US passport is written in English and French. I just thought that was odd.
Why not?
In the case of "standard" vs /metric its lazyness not arrogance on the part of the US citizenry. I think the French are more steamed about minitel vs the internet and this is just one way of acting out their frustration.
American car you need 7/16 1/2 9/16 and thats it. Maybe a 5/8's if you doing suspension work.
Ebonics isn't US english
I guess if you laugh at Jerry Lewis you'll laugh at anything
Lobster Thermostat? I didn't get where I am today by saying "I didn't get where I am today..."
There was an attempt following the French Revolution (approximately) during the Reign of Terror. They wanted to rid themselves of the ancien regime as much as possible, including that obviously corrupt time system. My freshman humanities class learned about it from a reader on the French Revolution. If I recall correctly, the plan was 12 months per year 3 weeks per month 10 days per week 10 hours per day 100 minutes per house 100 seconds per minute The leftover days each year were intended as holidays for celebrating the revolution. I don't remember about leap years. This plan never got far although I have seen a photograph of a metric clock built during this period.
That is because all GPS systems (even those not American) uses a spheroid called WGS-1984, which is an *American* DoD spheroid...
Uh, I have two different Garmin GPS units. The old one has 23 different "spheroids" (called 'datums'), and the new one (12xl) has close to 100, including one for Britain (Ord. Survey) and two for Europe.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Posted by The Evil Dwarf from Hell:
I think this says it all.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
We've spent so much on our nuclear arsenal. Time to put it to good use- call it community service to the world. Hit Paris with a neutron bomb to take out all people, and leave some of the buildings, for mementos.
Posted by Largo_3:
Just because the english came up with it first the French must somehow either outdo the English, or ignore then steal their standards claiming it their own. I am all for nationalistic pride, I have no problem with the French or any nation celebrating their own achievements, but 're-mapping' the prime meridian simply b/c the english did it first and your nation resents them is absurd.
Posted by The Future Sound of London:
I'm sick and tired of the French and their proprietary systems! They're like a chain-smoking, closed-source Asylum.
Let's face it, who wants to set their watches to PMT?
Contradicting an earlier response to this question, I can confirm that the GPS service available to civilians is deliberately kept to a precision of no better than around 100 yards. This is called "selective availability" (SA) and is implemented with a simulated clock error on each of the satellites: it is by far the largest source of imprecision in GPS measurements.
Military GPS users have access to a second, encrypted channel which allows them to circumvent SA and also gain accurage measurements of ionospheric delay error, since you can get a good guess at the absolute signal delay by measuring the difference between delays of signals at different frequencies.
Civilian GPS users can get around SA with a system called "differential GPS" (DGPS), in which a ground station at a precisely known position near to the roving receiver broadcasts the error term in the signal it receives, allowing the roving receiver to compensate. DGPS allows position measurement to within 2-3 metres.
For measuring small relative displacements, there's also RGPS which can measure down to the centimetre level.
None of this is secret or denied or anything, it's all part of the publically released GPS specs. I had to learn all this stuff when I used to work for a navigation company that handled deep-sea surveys.
--
Employ me! Unix,Linux,crypto/security,Perl,C/C++,distance work. Edinburgh UK.
Xenu loves you!
"Will you ask your master if he cares to join us on our quest for the Holy Prime Meridian?"
"Well I'll ask him, but I don't think he'll be very keen... 'e's already got one, you see."
"Already got one?"
"Yes, it's a-very nice."
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Obviously this is so the next foreign leader who plans their domination of the world from an orbital space platform will know exactly when they should tell the French leaders to lie down and play dead, or at least put up the glorious Twenty Minute Struggle.
How like the French, they think they invented the "Not Invented Here" Syndrome.
In the meantime, I'd like to declare that the new international date line runs right through Raleigh, NC. Therefore, if I need an extra day to work on something, I can just say I was downtown. That's a good reason, right?
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
spelling?
whatever, I don't care. What the Nazi's were doing justified that. The fact that we were in war justified it. When the gov't purposely targets civilians, that's wrong. When they bomb a city, my feeling is that it's too bad but that's why wars suck. I wish all these people whining about a couple dozen Serbs getting killed when we bomb would look at those mass graves and shut the fuck up.
Actually the French did help save our asses in the Revolutionary War. In more ways than one, in fact. IIRC, England didn't feel like being all tied up here when they were fightin France in Europe or thought they would be soon. That, in addition to the fact that the French sent over military aid, helped us win.
We did this in '68 (or was it '69?) in Iceland, just decided to switch from left to right overnight. (Actually, I think it was at noon or something). Weird thing though, the accident rate fell after the change...
Jón
Well, outside of Europe the only countries where french is spoken in daily life are former - or current - colonies, where the language has been imposed on the people some time or another. In the rest of the world, where french is neither the mother-tongue nor by tradition the language of political administration, people tend to choose to use other languages and that is what counts in the end.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
3 degrees to the west. That would be enough..
they have this kind of competition in the United States as well. They probably have it in other countries (Germany maybe? :)
If I remember my history correctly, there was a great debate as to where the prime meridian was supposed to be at first. It obviously came down to France and England, and it's rather obvious who 'won'. Now, I'm not looking to play the blame game but England and the United States are not ones to speak when it comes to avoiding world-accepted standards (inches vs. meters, driving left vs. driving right, etc). So please, before you insult the whole French population, think of your own country and how it stands out from the others in terms of standards. Also, one of the posts was saying that the French are arrogant, and although I'm not saying they aren't, you can't deny that there is no country more arrogant than the USA. And yes, for the last time, I think this is a dumb idea.
Let the flaming begin! (right KrON?)
What's even better is when you are working on your American car and some of the bolts are metric and others are english. That's just great fun!
2. Microsoft will purchase the road, trees, and French national archive.
3. Bill Gates will be revealed as having invented the Meridian, before the French -or- British, and the (updated and re-released) French archives will "confirm" this.
4. The Microsoft Meridian will be announced, as running through Redmond. All versions of Windows will be updated to use the Microsoft Meridian.
5. The Grenwich Observatory will be purchased by Microsoft, to prevent competition, sorry, reduce incompatiabilities.
6. World Governments will shift to the Microsoft Meridian, as none of their computers will work with anything else.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This is an example of what the Academie Française can get up to. This is an extract of a mail that I received from a Frenchman, needless to say that none of the terms propsoed are in current usage. The French in general find the Academie rather strange too, however it is _their_ institution.
...
(I won't try to translate - it would rather spoil the idea!)
"
A ma gauche, les termes anglais, utilisés par tout le monde. A ma droite, les termes de l'Academie Francaise ou du Journal Officiel correspondant.
Firewall - Ecluse
Shareware - Partagiciel
Plugin - Plugiciel
Freeware - Graticiel
Hacker - Finaud
Browser - Brouteur, butineur
E-mail - Mel
CD-ROM - cederom
Chat - Babillard
Chat mode - Babillardage
Swap - Permutation
Polling - Scrutation
Debugger - Epépineur
Encapsulation - Emmaillotage
Flame (to) - Attaquer au lance-flammes
HTML - Langage Hyper Descriptatif a Ferrets
patch (to) - Rustiner
Smiley - Souriard, Mimique, Emoticon, Rictus, Facies, Binette, Souriant
Thread - Enfilade
Virus - Fragment infectieux de code necessitant un programme hote
WWW - Hypertoile
WYSIWYG - VISualisation Imitant Virtuellement une Impression Graphique
Par exemple :
J'ai lancé le brouteur de Rose qui a refusé de demarrer. Je pense qu'il est infecté par une Fragment infectieux de code nécessitant un programme hôte. Avec l'épépineur je n'ai rien vu. Il faut dire qu'avec l'emmaillotage de axmth on ne peut pas savoir si le programme a été rustiné ou pas. J'ai essayé d'envoyer un mel au support mais il y a un probleme d'ecluse. L'Hypertoile est inaccessible. J'en ai marre de ces graticiels, ils ne sont meme pas multi-enfilade ! Je vais demander à un de mes finaud de me trouver un meilleur partagiciel
La France avance...
"
Excusé-moi - peut-être j'ai tort! Je travaille en France (Sophia-Antipolis - 06) et je n'ai jamais entendu la plupart des mots ci-dessus.
...
Pire que ça - j'ai traduit quelques termes en français (de anglais) et j'ai complètement confondu mes collegues. Ex l'interface 'E1' pour ISDN (je n'ai jamais entendu RNIS) est prononcé "eee one" et pas "uuu un"
David K-M (dckm88@zepler.org)
"He's on a roll."
If the French want to believe Napoleon won at Waterloo, we 'Merkins are in no position to complain. We picked Napoleon's side in that war and it's not as if our high school textbooks tell us that we lost.*
*unless they've changed a lot in the last 30 years.
Boston is the Hub of the Universe, not merely the center.
The Prime Meridian is a global standard - its position affects everyone on the planet. That's completely different than the Americans using the English measurement system: no one outside the US is affected if the speed limits in the US are in miles/hour instead of km/hour.
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
"Mankind in general occupies the position between the angels and the French." -Mark Twain
But then, we 'mericans can't say much since we can't comprehend the metric system.
--
The Future: Some assembly required; batteries not included.
Crap, it'd be nice if France got over itself. The empire is long dead, guys. The British seem to have gotten over the loss of their empire. The Italians are doing okay. So the current Western empire is American... I do hope we'll have the good grace to let it go when our empire dies. Else we'll end up doing the same ludicrous things the French do.
Way back when I was a U.S. soldier in Germany, I remember that the French would unofficially send elements of the French army to tag along when we Americans and the Germans went on field exercises. It was pretty clear that if the "shit hit the fan" French troops were going to be there shoulder to shoulder with the US Army and the German Bundeswehr. By and large the French were good guys, modest and intelligent.
Of course, that didn't stop French officials, then or now, from making silly statements. C'est la vie.
It's cool that this was decided by consensus to meet the need of a diverse group and not due to political pressures. Kinda like this linux thing.
Brian Seppanen
Minister of Information and Propaganda
Area 54 The Secret Government Disco Labs Provo
Don't quote me on this, but I believe that the French had their hand in the imperial system as well. It depends on what you're measuring. The Farenheit scale (one of the greatest scientific bloopers of all time, due to the fact that 0 is where seawater freezes and 100 is supposed to be human body temperature but the test subject had a fever that day) is German, I believe (or was it Austrian?) The standard for time goes waaaaaaay back, to ancient Persia if I'm not mistaken (and even the French don't dispute that standard; people wouldn't stand for that one). The weights are mostly English, I think. However, distances and areas come from all over the place (the acre is from ancient Mesopotamia, of all places), and I believe several of them come from France (I'm pretty sure the yard does).
Interesting, since the French are also credited with the metric system (and adopted it during the French Revolution not so much for its scientific value as for its ability to piss off the aristocracy by removing the lengths of their various body parts from the standard of measure; this is why they also completely rewrote the calendar).
Regardless, it appears Bill Gates has infiltrated the French government, since they're trying to Embrace and Extend the standard for cartography and time zone measurement.
And the hell of it is, they got it wrong. The measure isn't completely accurate. I suppose that puts it up near the Farenheit scale in the Greatest Scientific Bloopers of All Time list.
The government offered special deals for a couple of years previously to tempt people to buy right hand drive cars, and then when the majority of cars were righthand drive they basically made a colossal changeover overnight from one side to the other
Granted this was early in the century when im sure the amount of cars on the road was pitiful in comparison to the modern amount, and the cars would hardly have been zooming around at any great speed. But still a very impressive achievement, I wish we could pull off a trick like this at the current late stage.
Make our cars a bit cheaper i suppose, and we could do away with the lines of messages at the airports saying to drive on the left, and the occasional crushed continental car that shows up everynow and then when someone forgets.
I wouldn't mind finding out if my half overheard and forgotten version of the swedish events were correct. Anyone know ?
C.
I sometimes write stuff
Prime Meridian
w &VdkVgwKey=%2Fextra4%2Fwww_echo%2Foii%2F en%2Fgis.html&QueryZip=prime+meridian%0D%0A ISO/IEC JTC1/SC32
ISO/IEC 6709:1983 Standard representation of latitude, longitude and altitude for geographic point locations Characteristics/description Latitude is measured positively north of the equator and negatively south. Longitude is measured postively east of Greenwich and negatively west. The Prime meridian is indicated using a plus sign while the 180th meridian is preceded by a minus. Both longitude and latitude may be expressed in degrees and decimal degress, degrees, minutes and decimal minutes or degrees, minutes, seconds and decimal seconds. Number less than 10 must have a leading 0.
Optionally an altitude can be specified as a number of metres and decimal fractions thereof above or below the geodetic reference datum level.
Locations are entered by entering two or three numbers identifying the latitude, longitude and, optionally, altitude, each number preceded by either a plus or minus sign and with no spaces separting the numbers. The end of the locator is identified by a solidus (slash) giving a completed entry of the form +24.45-00.11+800.35/.
Usage (Market segment and penetration) Standard scientific notation for global positioning.
Further details available from: ISO or local national standards bodies
Assignment of ISO 6709 to TC211 (NB. By March 1998 this decision appears to have be rescinded!) OII Multimedia and Hypermedia Standards Activity Report, May 1997
http://www.echo.lu/search97cgi/s97_cgi?Action=Vie
other facts
ITRF92 (International Terrestrial Reference Frame ) WGS84
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), whereas WGS84 was developed by the US Department of Defence over ten years ago
WGS84 system was developed it was based on the GRS80 ellipsoid, but computational techniques resulted in a small difference in the flattening.
When used to express earth-centred Cartesian positions (X, Y, Z) as latitude, longitude and ellipsoidal height, these two ellipsoids result in a difference of less than 1 millimetre. WGS84 GRS80
Semi major axis (a) 6378137 m 6378137 m
flattening (1/f) 298.257223563 298.257222101
from australian cartographic viewpoint new and improved coordinate system for Australia which is compatible with modern positioning techniques such as the Global Positioning System (GPS).
http://www.anzlic.org.au/icsm/gda/faq-f.htm
Q. Will zero degrees longitude still pass through Greenwich?
A. Yes, zero degrees longitude will still pass through Greenwich because this is part of the definition of the coordinate system used by GDA.
Q. Will GDA be the same as the WGS84 coordinates used by GPS?
A. GDA and WGS84 are compatible at better than a metre. In fact in early 1994, the WGS84 system was modified to align it even more closely with the ITRF system on which GDA is based.
Q. Why is the ITRF92 used for GDA, instead of the WGS84?
A.The International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF) has been adopted in favour of WGS84 because it is more recent and is supported by the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), whereas WGS84 was developed by the US Department of Defence over ten years ago. This decision was affirmed in early 1994, when WGS84 was modified to align it more closely with ITRF.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Erm, I thought the reason we Brits drove on the left was that horse carriage hand brakes are located on the side of the vehicle, and therefore the driver had to have his strong hand (usually his right hand) within easy access of the hand brake.
This would mean the driver was seated on the right.
In order to have a seating position central to the road (to give better visibility), the driver therefore rode on the left of the road.
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
They're just planting trees to stop me from making a giant parking-lot/haute-cuisine-drive-thru out of France.
;)
You're not fooling me, you french guys.
Oh well, maybe I just didnt like my french lessons back then...
*not* funny...
fetchez la vache !
Greenwich Mean Time: GMT
Paris Mean Time: PMT?
Someone's having a laugh!
--
Barry de la Rosa,
Senior Reporter, PC Week (UK)
Work: barry_delarosa[at]vnu.co.uk,
tel. +44 (0)171 316 9364
-- /. ID is lower than Bruce Perens'!
Barry de la Rosa,
public[at]bpdlr.org
My
Each rotation of the earth contains (a) an infinite number of days and (b) and infinite number of seasons. That is, if you can be at an infinite number of places at once!
Makes perfect sense to me...
(my monkeys have just finished Hamlet and are starting on Romeo and Juliet)
--> Any fool can criticize - and many do --
True, being from Bordeaux I'd rather keep Greenwich Meridian (0 deg 44 min west... It's almost Bordeaux Meridian, as you can see on the map ;) )
More seriously, this looks like history; Never heard anyone complaining of Greenwich Meridian in my life...
No! Americans developed a weird, nonstandard system of weights and measurements with little internal consistency. It's only natural that it would be named after someone else. You expect it to make sense?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well to be quite accurate, the Center of the Universe is located in Boston. Right at Downtown Crossing. There's a little plaque set into the ground, marking the point around which all else revolves.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Some moderator is gonna burn a lot of points on Flamebait, I belive. Eight posts, all "Flamebait".... :)
Not that I actually care, though. A nation that has a board to determine the proper french form of words such as CD-ROM doesn't attract a lot of sympathy....
Then again, is this message flamebait itself?
--I hate people when they're not polite -"Psycho Killer", Talking Heads
Ok here goes..
90 % of the population is right-handed, and in days of yore, people drove in the middle of the road. When they passed someone coming in the other direction, 90% of peopl pulled in to the left to present their "sword hand" to the on-coming vehicle in case the occupants were enemies.
It was usually middle- and upper-class people who could afford coaches/horses etc in those days, so the French revolution changed things.
After and during the revolution, people drove and rode on the opposite side of the road (the right) to show their contempt for the middle and upper classes.
This practice was adopted throughout republican Europe, and spread to the New World.
Us Brits and other eccentrics stuck to driving on the left.
Hope that clears up a few things.
Lots of love,
Morbid
xxx
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
Actually, it's _July_ 1st..
I'm not sure where Rob and Jeff got their information, but there is no revolt against the prime meridian in Greenwich going on.
What's really happening is that the French government, in a celebration of the year 2000, thought it would be nifty to plant trees along the old French meridian (which runs through Paris) so as to get as many people in France involved in the celebration. People are being encouraged to buy a tree and plant it along the line, and on New Years eve, go and have a picnic lunch by the line.
There is no revolt going on. The people of France (or the Government) have no intention of trying to reinstate the French Meridian, which, Sorry, folks, is simply not going to happen.
-- Void_Ptr
"It's a sort of threat, you see. I've never been very good at them myself, but I'm told they can be quite effective."
Friends help you move
Good friends help you move Bodies
I think you got that a little backwards -- "Beef" and "Pork" are from Norman French (the language of the the invaders who became the ruling class of England), and "cow" and "pig" are from Anglo-Saxon (the language of the native peasants).
To paraphrase:
"It's symbolic of their struggle against reality"
Krakken
We saved the French from the Germans in WW2 for the same reason the Germans conquered Belgium in WW1 -- they were along the way.
=)
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
The reason the Prime Meridian is where it is is because of the Greenwich Observatory, considered at the time to be the astronomical observatory. It wasn't because England wanted to be the world's center of culture, it was so that when an astronomer anywhere in the world noted the time of an event, it could easily be converted to the precise (as in not-off-by-even-one-second) time at a major observatory.
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Hey, they're easier to spot from space than a bunch of stinkin' olive trees...
-----
".sig,
Eywwww!
Sounds like a good alternative should the Pentagon run out of napalm.. 8-)
-----
".sig,
There they go again!! People just don't get it,
do they ?!... STANDARDS!!! why don't people just stick to them... whats this about ? racial
superiority ?!! Couldn't give a rats ass for that.
What are they trying to imply ?! that the rest of
the world is stupid and that they are too good
to stick to standards ?!
Read it, y'all. Even back when measuring longitude was still a challenge worth a king's ransom, England and France were haggling over the placement of the prime meridian.
And it's a biography of a cool 18th century hacker.
Indeed, IIRC, the original definition of metre was one ten-millionth of the distance from the north pole, through Paris, to the equator.
"That's the great thing about kill-bots, you can always make more."
Explain this to me, since the state of California has a higher population than France?
MooooOOOOOOOO! *SPLAT*
Well, in honor of France's attempt at changing time, I hereby dub them Honorary Americans. Not since we invented the english system of weights and measurements has another scheme been so stupid as to evoke hysterical laughter from every other country on the globe.
And not a moment too soon.. David Letterman was running out of material.
--
Oh yeah? We have Monty Python.
"I fart in your general direction!"
--
Why couldn't Congress have the guts to join the rest of the world with standards of meaurements?
Under Article I, section 8, the Congress has the authority to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures." In 1866 the U.S. Congress passed a law establishing the metric system in the United States. (No other system of measurements has been established by the Congress.) We were one of the original 17 signatories to the Treaty of the Meter in 1875. In 1893, the metric measurement standards were adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States. Congress passed the Metric Coversion Act in 1975. The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act Of 1988 designated the metric system as the "preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce," and required that all federal agencies use the metric system by 1992.
Accordingly, your question would be properly phrased as, "Why couldn't Congress have the guts to punish people for using non-metric measurements?"
Therefore, I ask you -- what should be the punishment for using a non-metric system in the U.S.? Six months in jail? $100 fine per incident? Life imprisonment without parole?
We are metric by law. The people, not Congress, are responsible for our current state.
Let them have it! :o)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
The French make me laugh.
Ha. Ha.
Ha.
Haiti; Tahiti and the rest of the French Polynesian Islands; much of Africa (Algeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mali and all the other areas that were once called French Equatorial Africa and French Central Africa.)
Not to mention all the "World Series" and "World Champions" in domestic US sport - the Champ cars,
the baseball, the NBA . . .
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
...historically the french used the Paris meridian for a long time before switching to the std one. :)
So people don't get confused here, the french are in no way going to use the Paris meridian again, they're just celebrating it
(And btw even though I live in france I haven't heard about this story at all)
SLASHDOT - In a stunning turn of events, Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) responded to France's actions, declaring that the equator runs directly through Redmond, Washington. Microsoft Corporation will place millions of DOS floppies end to end, forming a straight line that can be seen from space.
We've had enough trouble with the Quebec French in Canada. Things like laws that prohibit non-French signs, speaking English publically, things like that. Anyone ever heard of "Dunkirk"? It was a major battle during WWII. But the French call it Dunkirque. Well, it's actually Dunkirk, because the people there don't speak French as their native language. Or didn't. Now they do, as they are being forced into French schools.
"The United States of America was America before your country even existed."
Brazil exists by this name since 1500. And, as far as I remember my maps, NORTH America has 3 countries.
"You think anyone but Nazi war criminals would immigrate to your pathetic country?"
And even then, only those your space program didn't want, right? But, seriously, the answer is yes again. As Brazil is far less racist that USA, lots of asians and africans prefer to come live here. Brazil has the largest Japanese population outside Japan.
American lack of historical information never ceases to amaze me.
That's a lot of pubic hair; a whole wig's worth... I'm not sure if tha's insulting or not, however. Seems that a collection of such magnitude would be quite an achievement. :)
* http & web techs were built by swiss & french people, not so bad ;-)
Err, no. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, is British.
Dodger, who is Irish.
But today's french dishonor their past. Not that I have much moral authority as an American, but what the French have done is truly pathetic. This is only the latest, and perhaps the most laughable, series of sad events, from their ungrateful rejection of NATO to their nuclear testing. The french should take a long hard look at themselves.
Um... you're generalising the French based on some decisions by their government. It's like saying, "All Americans either cheat on their spouses or hire special prosecutors to search out those who do."
For example, I know many French people who think that the nuclear testing in the Pacific was a bad idea, just like many Americans don't ever want to hear another word come out of Ken Starr's mouth.
"I'm beginning to think you haven't had a-- my dear child, don't be so gleeful when you talk about hacking at people with swords-- safe moment in your life."
- Queen Teleria to Eilonwy
The first translation made more sense than that!
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
--
Brent J. Nordquist N0BJN
In a lot of ways the US's refusal to adopt the metric system is more of a problem, because anyone who wants to understand your measurements has to know how many inches, quarts, or pounds there are in the real unit. If my clock is only 2 minutes off, I don't even bother to change it.
There are times when it is necessary to speak.
Bite the hand.
For those that haven't seen the movie about one thousand times... listen close next time:
Leader yells: "Fetchez la vache!"
Underling whispers: "What?"
Leader annoyingly whispers: "Get the cow!"
The movie works on so many levels. And to think, I actually thought I had found every joke in there up to that point. Never again will I assume...
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
BUFFAAWAHAHAHAHAHahahahhah!!!!!!
...h hahahahahah...
whhoooooo hahahhahahaah!!!
Not baD!
I, a student of military history, got a real kick out of that one.
----- if ($anyone_cares) {print "Just Another Perl Newbie"}
warn "Just Another Perl User" if $anyone_cares;
Amazing how people think its only Americans or French who are arrogant. Anyone remember Hitler and his Arians(sp)? Anyone remember "The Sun never sets on the British Empire, Brittannia (sp) rules the waves?"
How about Iraqi's? Russians? Albanians? Don't forget Canadians. The point is, every people on the earth think their nation (in general) is the best, and most all other national peoples are:
arrogant
make bad cars
don't have enough alcohol in their beer
are lousy tourists
should be molested on site
This... is why we still have racist jokes, wars, AND flame wars on anonymous sites such as this. Ta-ta!
(ps. This public service announcement has been brought to you by an ignorant, arrogant, intolerant, judgemental, bible-thumping, knuckle-dragging yank... oh wait that's a stereotype...)
----- if ($anyone_cares) {print "Just Another Perl Newbie"}
warn "Just Another Perl User" if $anyone_cares;
Actually, this didn't surprise me the least. The French are always like this, they won't be like everyone else, if so just for the sake of them having inventeded the system they are using. Just take Citroën as an example. And who doesn't remember the ban of English language in national television. BTW, is that still on? Any French out here who can enlighten me?
Since UTC is referred to as 'zulu time' by US military and others, I propose that the PMT be referred to as 'Jerry Lewis' time.
Example:
It is now 19:12:00 EDT, 16:12:00 PDT, 23:12:00 Zulu, and 23:21:22 Jerry Lewis.
-- hgc
-- hgc
Linux: There is no infringing code.
First, let me say that I have not heard about this story outside slashdot. And I live in France.
Second, nobody ever "invented" the english weight and measurement system. Actually two hundred years ago every country had its own system, that was made arbitrarily by the local kings. French navigators were using Paris as the meridian origin, English navigators were using Greenwitch. The French were using pounds and inches that were slightly different from English pounds and inches (today there is still a English oz and an American oz, and a difference between nautical miles and miles). Actually the definition of these units was, for example in a business discussion, a matter of who had the power to impose its point of view. The French revolution wanted to introduce a weight and measures system that was independent of any localization or balance of power, that would be designed to do science and that would have a rational basis. Hence the metric system, which later evolved into the SI units system for physicists.
In the indispensable globalization of standards that followed, the Greenwitch meridian prevailed, and the metric system prevailed.
The new world order needs more loose cannons rolling around on the deck.
Anyone remember back when the only private company selling sattelite surveillance photos was the Spot Image Corporation?
Would anyone else be in this business, if it hadn't been for Spot Image breaking the monopoly of government intelligence agencies?
Viva le'Arrogant. Or whatever.
Looks like the French aren't only trying to change the time but the calendar as well. According to my calendar today is July 1st, guess the French have managed to change yours to June while you weren't looking.
---
I always thought that there was 2 continents there (north AND south america and maybe even central.) Its bad enough for a cocky country to pretend that it is an entire continent (australia anyone?) but to presume that you are 2 (or 3) continents is beyond reproach :)
"The French are an annoying race."
-- Some Limey
To be truly different, and even more annoying, why don't the French designate Paris as being astride the "prime latitude" (le latitude prime)...
Sure, this would mean that there are more degrees of latitude from the s. pole to Paris than from Paris to the N. pole, bit what the hell, nobody important gives a shit anyway. And it sure would annoy the Brits, what with their long-standing distaste for all things french ("The wogs begin at Calais").
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
Come on, get a clue about language. There's absolutely NO correlation between the degree to which a language incorporates words from other languages and 'language study' as you put it.
Language change is as inevitable as the seasons and the ability to absorb words into the language allows more subtle distinctions, i.e.:
legal - loyal
regal - royal
beef - cow
pork - pig - swine
etc.
There's a word for languages which don't evolve:
'extinct'
chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
My cookie didn't fly or something...
chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
...about the U.S.
U.S. doesn't have an 'official language'. English is the 'administrative' language. Every attempt (always by conservatives) to have English declared as the official language has failed.
chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
>>The rich folks (being inbread and not too bright)
That's 'inbred' -> (breed, bred, bred)
>>thought that "beef" meant "dead cow that's been cooked" while the servants where just saying their word for "cow".
As pointed out above: backwards. And it wasn't a matter of misconceptions. Like I said, that's not how it works. The nobles called what was on their plate 'boeuf' (approx.) and the peasants called it something like 'kuh' and all of their common descendants incorporated it all together!
>>If my English teacher was right, then the Brits messed up those words long before they got to the US. We've messed up many, many other things (see: Velveeta) but not those words.
If your English teacher calls that messed-up then he or she is teaching the wrong language, otherwise I have to assume that you are applying that term, in which case see my message above regarding a clue and what to do with one.
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
* for a country that built up a e-commerce in 1980 when you did not know it could be possible, that is not bad ;-) (i am talking about the Minitel, ok that was 1200 bd down and 75 bd up, that was character mode only but what did you have that was nationally used in 80s ?) ;-)
;-)
;-)
:-) and french bread is far better ;-p
* for a country that built up ATM (the CERN) its not so bad
* http & web techs were built by swiss & french people, not so bad
* well, i do not say french are better that us, that false (because incomparable since us are 300M people and french are 60M people). But france is not that silly backward country that you may think it is
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
yes french revolution changed everything (metric, calendar) system, but that was mainly to have something totally different from the monarchal system ;-) ;-p
metric system design was based upon the rim of earth or something like that and it was decimal because people count in decimal... and it's easier to have only one counting system. even britts changed their complicated monetary system to simplification some tenth years ago (sheelings(?) went out)
on the other side, the calendar changement did not last because it was not pratical.
as for weight and volumes, it integrates very nicelly with the length system : you only have one logic, you do not have different rules depending on the measure you take
so what ? you prefer illogical and complicated system ? that's ok since for you its easier because you are now used to it, but it is not better for that reason
BTW metric system is not oxolete, it is younger that gallons and miles and other measures... so its more hightech
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
Hey, so the conversion is actually easy: combine this law with the "Three strikes - out" rule, and everyone will be in line in no time!
Hurricane Application Group, Dept of Meteorology Control, Ministry of Proactive Defense
Just like Octal said, it gets rid of messy adjectives: the premier German example of a compound word is
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän,
which translates in English to
Danube Steam Ship Cruise Company captain
(see? same thing, just with spaces), and in French (probably - my Italian is better) to
capitan de la Compagnie de navigation autrichienne sur le Danube
(translations from EuroDictAutom).
Just to prove the point...
Hurricane Application Group, Dept of Meteorology Control, Ministry of Proactive Defense
Most Americans fear and despise everything that they have no knowledge of, and this usually includes all foreign countries.
...
It's silly to make blanket generalizations about the attitudes of whole countries.
Contradictory? Thanks for painting my entire country with a wide brush.
I'll go back to being my good ol' hatred filled self now. Thanks for showing me my true self.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
A micro-computer is a "micro ordinateur", certainly no worse than calling my hard drive a "Festplatte".
The national dictation contest is kind of amusing, French has so many homonyms and subleties that the winner often has an error or two. The competitors are university professors and the like...
My mother tounge is English, but I can happily butcher several others!
Think about it. Flying at 40,000 ft. in your B-2 bomber...
"What're we supposed to drop these on again?"
"Just aim for that line of trees down there!"
Blech. Signatures.
This page was generated by a committee of revolting frogs for SissyLaLa (17392).
Hail to the Sun God! He is the Fun God! Ra! Ra! Ra!
But where can I buy some French time?
... because I live in Bordeaux and the Greenwich meridian is much closer.
...).
We can't EVEN get rid of that stupid summer time (ici on TROUVE midi [solaire] a 14 heures [legales]) (there is a 2-hours offset on the solar time, not too good for cancers and pollution) because of european regulations.
Rather than chosing le meridien de Paris we should use le meridien de `replace by the name of the french village where the Greenwich Meridian is crossing 45 deg latitude' - and make 1 day made of 10 hours, 1 hour made of 1000 seconds, and 1 year made of 10 month (there was an attempt to make weeks 10 days in 1789
For a country that brought us the split baud rate Videotex terminal (75 baud TX/1200 baud RX), this doesn't surprise me. Ever wonder why various comm api's require us to specify a transmit and a receive baud rate? This is why...
India, Australia, Japan, and pretty much the whole of Asia (excepting, I think, China) drives on the left. I think worldwide more people drive on the left than on the right...
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
If it isn't their snooty attitude, or their pathetic attempts at war, or their prissy language, it's their damn socialist society... Damn.. what a sesspool.
Corndog
"wire of a prostitute. prostitute of stunned ass kiss you! kiss! shit!"
er.. um.. ok
my other penis is a vagina
It doesn't matter. No one cares about ANY of them. They are irrelevant, because WE GOT THE BOMBS!
;-)
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
No, not really. I was actually just starting a flame thread.
On the whole, the French I've met (and I *have* met some French people) have been rude and arrogant. Is this a cultural norm? I don't know, but they've not left a good impression on me, and I'm the only one that counts, the way I see things.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
After having lived and worked with the French for the past several years I must say that they are an amusingly eccentric nationality. They have a lot going for them - a very strong educational system, a healthy respect for engineers (they are one of the few countries that numbers several engineers amoung their national heros, including having Gustav Eiffel's portrait on some of their money). The top schools in the country are engineering schools, and they recieve a very healthy dose of math in their education. They have a very worthwhile culture, too - a lot of important contributions to the western way of life, and Paris really is a very beautiful city. Like most of the world they find themselves awash in a sea of American culture - which is of course decended from British culture, the long time enemies and rivals of the French.
The French have a very sensible way of living, with a good balance between cultural and economic activities - they are refreshingly not as materialistic as Americans, much to their credit. All in all I think that they provide a valuable counterpoint to the American way of thought, and I am glad that they try to preserve their culture. The thing we need in this world most of all are new and different ideas.
BUT they seem to be a little too backwards looking to my tastes - too much looking back to the glorious days when France ruled the Europe, when Napolean defeated the Brits at Waterloo and all that rather than trying to move forward and become a real player in the global economy. This bit about the prime meridian is a perfect example of the French way of holding on to the past - the meridian was established 100 years ago and was not French. Rather than realizing that you aren't going to change this, and move on to something else, they keep hanging on to something that is really over and done with. The French need to move forward onto something else rather than try to cling to some faded glory. The French also need to be a bit more open to other ways and cultures than they are - working with them is hell as they are not open at all to toleration of other ways of doing things. They are very autocratic (the French are traditionally and still emotionally a monarchy) and beauracratic (a French word devised during Napolean's time) which hinders their ability to get along with other cultures.
Isn't Bill Gates' personal worth about to equal the GDP for France? I seem to remember something like that... so, for at least a year, Billy could own France, I suppose.
this
Just exactly how many countries speak English that weren't once an English colony? Or how about Spanish? People don't necessarily choose a language because it is superior, they choose it because that is what the majority of the population already knows. BTW, how many countries have chosen Swedish as a language?
This really looks like a studid move by the french gov (who are all members of the College of Pataphysics, so that figures). .*bsd, aix, vms, NT, os/9, etc. are around. And yes, I write this on a Mac.
But right now, in this world, what we NEED is chaotic thinking. I picture the New Economics-Wired-power-branded cum web site and screen saver IPOed future world, and anybody who says "Merde" to that is welcome.
Or to make it clear to you, as much as I like Linux, I cherish the idea that freebsd, openbsd,
Think like geneticians. We need diversity.
And we need the French to go on doing their thing. They're a pain in the neck, but what would we do without them?
Foucault, Sartre, l'École des Annales, Deconstructivism, Camus, Surrealism, etc. may seem like fringe to you. But THEY are the mortar of our bits and bytes universe.
On our side of the ocean, isolationism is still rampant. We need to get over it. And we need to get over the idea that we have of the french ("Don't shoot me, I'm a collaborator"). What happened in the 30's and 40's there is not unlike what happened in the 1860's in America: a nation willing to self-amputate rather than allow practices against their ideals (communism and front populaire vs slavery). So, since the 4th and the 14th of july are coming, I'll raise my glase of californian pinot noir and say "Merde" to all of you. From Canada.
---------- ovidius naso
Translation: there are idiots, and there are IDIOTS.
There are more human beings on the planet who call French their native language than there are English. I suppose that by your definition, that's dead.
Just because the "United States" is abbreviated U.S. doesn't mean every other country is T.H.E.M.
Get a clue, or an education. Which ever comes first.
--- Tao
Hello?? The USA is an old British colony. So is Australia, so is most of Canada, so is New Zealand, so are MOST of the countries, other than England where English is spoken!
Strictly speaking, if you excluse colonies, you still come out even.
--- Tao
Is this cultural elitism? Yes, but not in the France vs. The World way that many of the posts here imply.
Keep in mind that the prime meridian already goes through France. The "problem" is that it doesn't go through Paris. Who views this as a problem? The Parisians, most likely! How dare the origin of longitudes pass through western France? Those rural yokels will never really understand Camus the way *we* do...
I suspect this is much like those (not all) New Yorkers who callously regard Manhattan as "The Capital of the World." Luckily the U.S. founders had enough sense not to put the nation's capital in the nation's biggest city. (Even if they did have to resort to building a city on a swamp.) If they had put the capital there, we'd probably be plowing over upstate New York to build giant space-visible concrete arrows pointing at NYC.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Easy way out of that one just put on a really crappy accent (french or english I am pretty good at either) no one will suspect a thing. Actually I think Iran or Afghanistan are some of the worst places for Americans to go.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
I am Belgian, and bashing the french people is definitely a hobby we take VERY seriously. We're quite good at it too. And you can't say that it's not fair, because the french do spend an awful lot of energy at bashing belgians :) we kid because we love...
:)
That being said: The article from the BBC is a bit misleading it seems. are we surprised? Can't blame the british for being a bit defensive. open your history book: french vs. england is not exactly new.
It seems that they have no intention or pretention to replace GMT as a world (or even national) standard. They are merely reviving an old concept ("Meridien de Paris") and make an end of the millenium ceremony out of it. It actually sounds like a great idea! It's both a look back to the past, and a look ahead to the future. And a great way to involve a lot of french people (not just from paris) into a peaceful demonstration. The more i think about it, the more i like it! While americans obsess about the bad things that may happen (Y2K "bug" is a bit over-rated. My honest opinion as a software engineer), the french will be having fun
And by the way, to all the americans that seem to believe that the french people are some of the most hated people on the planet: not even close! Americans are definetely it! (in some countries, they actually want to kill them pretty badly, last time i checked nobosy felt that strongly about the french). Now before you start flaming me, i want to point out that i live in the US and do not dislike americans. just pointing out a fact that most americans may not realize...
-Ralph Wiggam
How do you think 56K modems work?
56K RX, 33K TX.
not such a silly idea.
them crazy french folk ;-)
Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of eldeberries (sp?). Noooowwwww... GO! or I shall be forced to taunt you a second time. PPPTTTHHHHHH :P
"It compiles, SHIP IT!" -Overheard at Microsoft's development lab
How apropriate for this to happen on the international standards day - 1 July, except for in France where it is on 25 February, England 5 May and U.S.A 17 October.
Remember?
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
When Hank Scorpio is deciding what country to blow up first
Hank: Homer what's your least favorite country? Italy or France?
Homer: Umm.. France
Hank: Nobody ever says Italy
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
D'autant plus que cela mene la plupart des etrangers a confondre les Francais avec les Parisiens, qui sont souvent vus comme ventards et pretentieux (ce qui n'est pas le cas de tous les pParisiens non plus heureusement) par les Francais de la province.
He les Americains, vous voulez qu'on vous compare tous aux habitants de New York/Washington/LA/...? Non! Il y a de grandes differences entre la cote est et la cote ouest n'est-ce pas? En France aussi.
Translation:
And this also lead strangers to assimilate French with Parisians, which are often viewed like having big egos and pretentious (but this isnot the case of all Parisians hopefully) by French not living in Paris.
Hey, you Americans, do you want to be all compared to New York/Washington/LA/... inhabitants? No! there are big differences between the East coast and the West coast isn't it? In France this is the case too.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I'll always be ok to make fun of ANY country/people/community as long as it is done for the fun and not to hurt people (in their mind). It's even ok to make fun of French (I'm one), but don't forget that we may also make fun of you (I'm assuming you're American here).
;-)
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Do you remember when everybody said that Clinton was attacking Saddam Hussein because of the problems he had with Miss Lewinsky?
In fact the daylight saving was imagined by Valerie Giscard Destaing (the French president at the time) to deturn the public from others things (don't remember what it was). It's like when you say "Oh look, there is
that was clever to talk about it, what was totally and utterly dumb was to DO it. He should have stop before doing it.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
What?? You don't want to blame the German (in fact the Nazis) to try to achieve world domination (or at least Europe domination) and invading other countrey (first austria, then Tchequie, then Poland...) but you want to laugh at those that tried to fight it (ok, there was also those fucking collabos)? You really are an asshole.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Hahaha, sorry but Americans didn't do it because of Auchwitz, they weren't even able to imagine that human being could do such horror, you disocvered it after coming in Germany so don't try to use it as an excuse (BTW the bombing were justified I think, but NOT by what they did at Auchwitz because this wasn't known).
The Americans were so unable to imagine Auchwitz that they censored the excellent Charlie Chaplin movie "The dictator". Charlot got it right YEARS before the war and you told him tpo shut up.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
They may control what is said in ACADEMIC French but not what is used in day to day French. Day-to-day French is as Open Source as English...but we can accumulate the advantages of both development models
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Well, the way Austria was annexed looks like the way Hitler had the power. Do you believe he was elected by the german people? Nope, he never was elected president of Germany.
This is not because other country didn't react at the Munich coonference that the German invasion isn't one any more. Czech wasn't their property and they had no power to give it. This is like, if we were in a parralel world were the DesertStrom operation never happened ion 1990 and we let Hussein have th eKoweit, this is like to say that Hussein didn't invade the Koweit because we give it to him. Bullshit. You can say what you want but Hitler definitely invaded the Czech republic.
What we European did at the Munich conference was to lick Hitler's butt. i'm not proud of it but I hope we won't forget it when some people try to do the same thing (Milosevic anyone?).
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
...or more interressant than the latter ;)
;)
Ok, this is just kidding. in love to read books in English and see movies in English, but I love being French for all the stuff we have got too (this would probably be valid for quite any other country). Have you ever heard about "Le diner de con". It's a French movie that will have an Amreican remake called the dinner's game, and this is a GREAT movie. Unfortunately the American have not the background (or the wit?) to understand this kind of humor. You're missing something but we WE have the better American culture, so we win on both levels
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Due to a reaction to the monopoly of right-handed people more and more poeple are being converted to the fat, slow and unstable right-handed system to the fast little left-handed system.
Given a study made by IDC the left-handed market should go more rapidly than any other handed community combined for the next three years.
;)
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Then what it is doing is a conversion.
GPS signals use the WGS-1984 spheroid, and I think coordinates are sent in MGRS. It isn't too hard to convert to another spheroid.
I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. Most of the problems do result in taking the earths surface and putting it on a flat map. This isn't to big of a deal for small areas, but it is for larger ones, as you correctly point out. Latitude and Longitude themselves aren't the problem, but the way they are used is. People do try to take lat/long lines and make them perfect squares, and that is what we need to move away from.
And while lat/long are polar, they assume that the earth is a perfect sphere, which isn't true. Using two lat/long coordinates to calculate a distance is pretty imprecise. Other coordinate systems are better (MGRS is what the DoD is most concerned with). An accurate 3D Polar system would have a third variable, the distance from the center of the earth (geometrically, not the center of mass). Lat/Long uses a constant distance to mean sea level.
I hate to tell you all this, but there isn't a standard on the Prime Meridian. When you create a mapping system, you have to account for the curvature of the earth, including the fact that it is fatter at the equator (think of a slightly squished ball). As a result, map creators have created things called spheroid's (there are also datum's, which are related). Any decent map should tell you which spheroid and which datum it used to figure the latitude and longitude. Each spheroid is a little different, and each has their own "prime meridian". Spheroids are chosen to be very accurate in specific areas, and less so in others (there is no spheroid that gives more better than 100 meter accuracy everywhere on earth, and as far as I know, there isn't one that does very well at the poles).
If you go to England, and see the "official" marker for the Prime Meridian, and then check with your nifty GPS system, you will find that there is about a 100 meter difference (assuming my memory is correct in this). That is because all GPS systems (even those not American) uses a spheroid called WGS-1984, which is an *American* DoD spheroid, and is very accurate except for the north pole, south pole, and along the International Date Line. The British have used several different spheroids over the course of history, each one a little more accurate than the previous one, but each with their own areas on earth where they aren't so hot. The Soviets use GK (Gauss-Krueger, which I think was originally a German standard) which is very accurate in Europe, reasonable for the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, but poor south of it. Many American sailors use Perry-1864. Most foreign sailors use International. The Japanese have a Tokyo standard, which does well in the Pacific. No one spheroid is really better than all the others everywhere (though WGS-1984 is better than most), and there is no standard spheroid, and hence no standard Prime Meridian (though WGS-1984, because of its association with GPS systems, might become a standard in the future).
Most of these spheroids differ only by a maximum of 600 meters or so, which is more than accurate for most of us. However, Sailors, pilots, and the military care very much which spheroids are being used. If you are using a map and you want to relay detailed information to someone else, you both have to agree on a spheroid. Luckely, most groups have a standard within themselves, so most pilots, sailors, and soldiers don't even know about all this. I only know all this because right now my job is working for a Government contractor that maintains software used by the U.S. Military Intelligence community, and I have been dealing mainly with different mapping subsystems, so I have a fairly "low-level" perspective on maps (not that I understand most of what I know).
Really, if the French want to do this, let them. It will probably mean another spheroid for everyone to worry about, but that isn't much of a big deal.
Stuff like this will continue until there is a recognized standard or until we move away from the stupid longitude/latitude way of doing things. I mean, the basis for Longitude/Latitude is that you can divide the world into little squares, which is obviously not accurate. 3D Polar Coordinates would be much better as long as you correctly model the shape of the earth.
Now, I'm not looking to play the blame game but England and the United States are not ones to speak when it comes to avoiding world-accepted standards (inches vs. meters, driving left vs. driving right, etc).
So, is the world-accepted standard to drive on the left, or to drive on the right, and pray tell how can the UK and the US both violate said standard? Same for metric vs. english units, since the UK switched over a few years back.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
But of course, everyone knows that there are actually four days in one. Or at least that's what the guy at timecube.com says.
P.S.: Don't bother trying to convince him he's wrong...it's like trying to convince the Pope that God doesn't exist.
[BTW, all american readers are invited to search for 'Clinton' on any search engine you may think of. Get a hint ??].
I used to think most people on /. had to be at least litterate, and thus would prove to be intelligent.
Is there a higher than usual proportion of internet-enabled morons in your country ??
This really looks like like an AOL forum from the 'good' old times.
Fabien BERNARD.
What's that jack-ass wrech that Bob Villa sells for Sears? The auto-grip or some non-sense? Man, that wrench was just invented for POS "American" cars that have like 85% foreign (metric) parts in them!
What a disaster!
(As an afterthought, that is actually really lame compared to what the french are doing. Unless the ball falls down because of Y2K, that would rule!)
--
According to the NIST
"The international definition of a second is "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium atom."
"An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will" Wicca Rede
I agree either they are now Americans or we should all speak French, cause next the Frech Gov will repeal William the Conqueror's victory.
Hey, at least they aren't converting to Swatch Internet Time.
Vive la difference!
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Silly english types... Your father was a hampster and your mother smelled of elderberrys.
Now go away or we shall taunt you some more...
How come I learned about this thing only on slashdot?
No media here's talking about that thing. If nerds are so eager to exercise their nationalists arguments than they take a minor celebration and describe it as a 'revolt' they should start considering to stop using drugs.
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
Bite two ...
Interesting that you chose nuts and bolts for your example, IIRC it was Whitworth who made the first manufacturing standard, when he decreed the thread size/pitch and width. Now you could take one manufacturers bolt and use any other manufacturers nut, provided they used Whitworth's standard. Much like open standard software.
The UK government in its infinte wisdom has banned imperial measurements (the US has arsed around with gallons anyhow) on foodstuffs to bring us in line with Europe. At least the pint of beer stays - just the right size.
> When the british came up with it I guess they didn't hire a shrink and figure out what's easier for humans.
It's far easier to mentally work out quotients without a calculator than floating point when doing division.
French kiss, French fries--two things I try to not do without for extended periods of time.
+&x
French view on standards :
You don't frighten us, English pig-dog! Go and boil your bottoms, son of a silly person. I blow my nose on you, so-called Arthur-king, you and your silly English K...kaniggets.
Dava Sobel, in her excellent book "Longitude" (subtitled: How a lone genius solved the greatest scientific problem of his time - mandatory reading for any geek interested in pre-20th century hacking), points out that French navigation charts and ephimerides (tables of astromonical movements) protested the establishment of Greenwich as the Prime Meridian by printing thier reference time as "Greenwich Mean Time retarded by 19 minutes and 42.3 seconds" (not the actual value, do you think I memorized it??).
:-)
So really, this isn't new, just the same dumb thing again, which seems to be a pattern over there. I'm sure this sort of thing embarasses our French colleagues, so let's try not to be too hard on them. It's not thier fault they have the stupidest and most spineless government on the planet. Hmm, on second thought, maybe it is...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Perhaps if the French were not so quick to surrender, the members of my family here in America might not have had to go over there to give their lives. I assure you the US felt the war nearly as severely as did many European countries.
Clue for the clueless: As a general rule, it's bad form to criticize those willing to come to your aid from halfway around the world when your country has a history of being unwilling to defend even its own territory.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Geez, when did the political correctness bug escape the States? :) I thought when the rest of the world wasn't using various and creative curses to describe the people of the USA that they refered to "us" as Americans. And as you put it, you are from Brazil and therefore Brazilian.
And maybe things have changed in current education but I thought there was a continent called _North_ America and one called _South_ America. With all these different ways of qualifying how one is an American I find it hard to believe that I'm "stealing other people's rights..."
Of course, being a member of a magnanimous society and willing to please, I am more than happy to have Brazil as a 51st state and consider you an "Amazonian American".
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Not another 'can be seen from space' ploy. Maybe M$ did buy France after all! There's no way the French could plant enough trees to be wide enough to be visible, even from LEO. Think about it for a minute - New Zealand can't be seen with the naked eye from space, so how the hell could they plant enough trees??
1nterMod
As well as many of the xDSL standards. It just makes sense to allocate more of the available bandwidth to downloading, as that is what most people do, most of the time.
hey, lots of people do it. sometimes for benevolent reasons and sometimes not.
examples: iceland, israel, indonesia, china, etc.
the english language is just more of a slut than most. we get into bed with anyone, but mainly because we'd rather absorb a word or two than actually encourage real language study.
Well, for a country with a committee to monitor that the language not change from 16th Century forms, I shouldn't be too surprised...
"We Surrender!"
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
Not even close, I'm afraid. Try Greece.
It's a pubic-hair wig used by stage actors. It's an adequate description for many Americans, I admit.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
except in a few countries like England, Ireland, and Japan.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
http://www.dolex.org see the movie
This is JUNE 1st, not April 1st. *grin*
--Carlos V.
Its a shame this came out after school park was released. They could have had the line going through south park :)
Vamos lá ter mais calma.
O Português é a unica que merece o titulo de língua mundial.
As línguas Inglesa, Francesa, Italiana e Espanhola são versões fracas do Latin.
Pelo menos os seguintes países falam decentemente: Portugal, Brasil, Angola, Moçambique, Sao Tomé e Principe, Macau e Cabo Verde.
Quem sabe um dia o resto do mundo vai acordar!
We could bombard them with boxes of Windblows9X! We could shower them with the 95 upgrade floppies! We could even drop Kenneth Starr and Linda Trip on them!! (how about dropping the boxes of papperwork from the CLITon trial....
So I can shift and steer with my strong arm while flipping off the sorry bastard that is driving in my lane with my left!
A more widely accepted theory is that Britain never developed a true national economy until canals were dug - the dirt roads were too muddy for travel most of the year. Since most people are right-handed, they naturally led their mule trains on the *left* bank of the canal so the mules and barge would be on their right.
In contrast, the US developed a national economy with roads (although a few canals were built). Instead of mules pulling a barge to the side, we had horses pull carts behind themselves. Again the people walked so the horses and carts were to their right, but unlike barges the drivers could chat in the middle of the road. So they usually passed each other on the right so they could easily talk.
By the times automobiles were introduced (and they were *not* invented by Americans) the patterns were well established.
This theory may not be correct either, but I doubt anyone would take the first theory seriously. By the time of the French revolution the canal and horse-drawn cart patterns were well established and French revolutionary politics would only affect France, in the same way that only the US picked up the odd knife-and-fork usage (arguably) developed as a way to disarm dinners caught up in political discussion.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
This just adds weight to my claim that the French suck (irrational dislike, I know, but so what). This is complete silliness. A couple months ago I walked around on DC on my lunchbreak surveying tourists, asking them "Do you support the nuclear annihilation of France and the extermination of its people," and plan to send the results to the French embassy when I get 1,000 people. An overwhelming majority of people said yes. I feel it is time to reopen the survey. Send your answers to isis69666@hotmail.com, with age, gender, and race (statistical purposes only).
Meghan
Even if this were more than simply a celebration, it wouldn't be suprising. The US of A is the only non-third world country that *still* doesn't use metric, just going to show that you don't have to be French to be obstinate.
There are some who believe that Robert Pierce in Canterbury, NZ may have made earlier, more controlled, powered, heavier than air flights sometime before the Wright brothers. Some initial research that someone did on the history leading to the development of the automobile found some evidence that Koreans in the early 1700's may have made heavier than air flights (not necessarily powered, but like gliders).
The justification that UTC replaced GMT due to GMT being based on the (changing) duration of the Earth's rotation probably doesn't tell the whole story. After all, the new UTC-defined second was based on the old second. It was merely a refinement of that well-established short period of time. It isn't really a new measure -- it's just a new, more precise, way of measuring the same period.
;)
Why didn't we simply adjust GMT rather than come up with a new name -- that didn't include the name of a place in England? Maybe the new name was thrown in because we non-Brits vastly outnumber Brits.
Anyway, now that we have our atomic-clock derived whiz-bang UTC that is not *quite* GMT, we add a leap second now and then to bring it back in line with GMT. So much for the technological justification. Sheesh.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
What is wrong with this ?
There aren't much human made monuments u can see from space and these monuments were build for military reasons.
So why a government could'nt celebrate the next millenium with this? It's not just about being proud ("arrogant" as you say).
US is now world's only hyperpower. It dominates the entire world in term of science, technology, culture, and even way of life!
Can't we just have a monument to remember the days were France was leading.
Nobody builds cathedrals, cathedrals are now skycrappers and it's build for banks. The world's only god is money and it's the god who figures on USDollars!
So materializing the Paris Meridien may be seen as arrogant, but it's not for money, just for history, and future space tourism.
What about creating a Free Monument Foundation to cover the world and show visiting aliens we're not focused only on money anymore ?
Personellement, je m'en fous. Tout le monde sait que c'est a Grenwich, et si les francais veulent faire encore des betises politiques, laissez les le faire. Souvennez-vous de l'academie Francais il y a quelques annees, avec tout cette histoire du vocabulaire "anglais" et la musique anglophone sur la radio. Est-ce que ca marchait? Je ne le crois pas. C'est toujours une question de nationalisme avec les francais. Ils n'acceptent pas qu'ils ne sont pas au centre du universe. Tant pis pour eux. Vive l'angleterre, dieu saver la reine!
Veuillez m'excuser pour le manque des marques d'accent. Je n'ai pas une clavier AZERTY ici.
Tcl my Pico! There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
How does one "stope"? Is it legal in Virginia?
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
> the basis for Longitude/Latitude is that you can
;) Look at a globe.
> divide the world into little squares, which is
> obviously not accurate. 3D Polar
> Coordinates would be much better as long as you
> correctly model the shape of the earth.
Hate to tell you, but Longitude/Latitude *do* specify polar coordinates. You have been looking at maps for too long.
The square-problem only arises when you try do map earth's surface to a flat map. You'll have to make compromises, depending on what the map is for. E.g. road maps will usually give correct distances, but angles will be distortet. Naval maps will have distortet distances, but angles will be accurate.
bla
Or make fun of absolutely anything. Realy now, you aren't healthy if you cannot accept things being made fun of, including - but not limited to:
If you don't accept things being made fun of, you will have a miserable existance. If you enjoy things being made fun of, you can enjoy existance more.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Wasn't it Cugnot? Anyhow, this is correct - from what I know his was the first "steam carriage" or whatnot. The thing was HUGE - the boiler (on the front, driving the front wheel - the chassis was a tricycle arrangement, two back wheels undriven, one front driven steering wheel) was something like 8 feet in diameter (there goes those imperial mesurements again)! The thing was meant to haul cannon, and was pretty slow. Funny thing was, he crashed it into a stone (or brick) wall on its initial run - and that was that!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Yes I took the bait....
Has anyone ever taken anything apart??
You take apart your japanese, german, whatever bicycle and you need a 13 mm, ok that doesn't fit, try a 14 mm, ok great works.
You take apart your "Made in USA" bike and you need a 5/8, nope that's not it, hmm whats next, multiply by 2, ok that gives me 10/16, so I guess I need an 11/16. Hmm thats not it...what's next 12/16, nope not a wrench, reduce..3/4..aha, got it.
Having twice as many wrenches as the world needs is pain enough, but why the hell can't all the English wrenches have the same denominator?? Or a precentage of an inch? When the british came up with it I guess they did'nt hire a shrink and figure out what's easier for humans. At least they learn from their mistakes.
I have to program a goddamn data structure for fractions every time I want to fix my car.
quoth the article. As my own little french-bash:
When did the French stop being revolting?
NO FRENCHMEN WERE HARMED IN THE CREATION OF THIS MESSAGE.
Here's the english translation for the language impaired (if you don't know at least two (foreign) languages, you can't be considered a full human) :
Personally, I'm mad about this :
Everyone in the world knows that (the prime meridian) is at Greenwich, and if the french want to commit some political stupidities, let them. Think back of the Academie Francais(e) some years ago, with all these stories about the "english" vocabulary and the "anglophone" (==english speaking) music on the radio. Did this work ? I don't think so. This is always a question of nationalism with the french people. They don't accept that they aren't in the center of the universe. Too bad for them.
Long live england. God save the queen.
Premier argument to install Linux at the workplace - I get paid while waiting for fsck to scan the partitions.
Where do you think the names florida, california, arizona, new mexico, nevada, montana, colorado, and texas came from? Much of the western US (and therefore, much of the US in general) was colonized by the spanish, not the english
While english may be the most common language in the western US, it does help to be able to habla espanol a little bit, even if to just appreciate place names a little bit.
Some example street names that I've seen in southern california:
El Camino Real --> "the king's road"
Salsipuedes --> "get out if you can"
Indio Muerto --> "dead indian"
>We would also have gone to the metric year of ten
>months.
Actually some clockmakers preemptively started making decimal clocks (there used to be one at my old high school for some reason...you could never figure out when class was over!). They never caught on. The metric system, as you indicate, is no better than any other, besides the fact that human brains can understand decimal arithmetic more easily (for some reason). The metric system would not work well for a calendaring system. The time system we use dates back to the Shumarians' (yes..Sh) 60-based system (60 seconds a minute, 60 min/hr, etc.). This works out very well and is intuitive. Months are based on the cycle of the moon...of which there happen to be ~12 per year. If we wanted to be like the Romans, time would actually progress faster during daylight in the winter (due to the usage of sundials to tell time), so that the average "day" would be shorter in winter. It just doesn't make sense to apply a decimal system to everything. In fact, in some very important ways, forcing the usage of a sole numbering system is very restrictive and dangerous (where would computers be without bin, hex, oct?). Just like language, mathematics is merely a medium for ideas and thoughts...it shouldn't arbitrarily be cast into one form.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
When will the French realize that they aren't the center of the universe (America is of course). While saying America is obviously an arrogant (and only half serious) statement, at least it can be backed up.
But the arrogance is only part of it, the worst part is the ungratefullness, remember WWII? Now the French did help out America in the American Revoultion, but that was mainly to piss off the British I think. Anyway we kept strong to France afterwords and were friendly etc... But not long after WW II the French turned out to be irritating and ungrateful to America. Ah whata ya gonna do.
are these the same French people that think Jerry Lewis is funny? I still wonder why people see that place as a tourist spot...
It seems, from the replies that slashdot's French readers have posted, that this article is completely wrong--a gross distortion produced by a deranged francophobic British journalist's imagination. I suggest that the article be removed from slashdot.
--
As a matter of fact, many French people are fascinated by the U.S., so it's no surprise that most of the TV shows and movies shown in France, and most of the songs on French radio, are American. And French foreign and economic policy heavily favors the interests of the U.S. government and U.S. corporations.
It's silly to make blanket generalizations about the attitudes of whole countries. Governments often do unpopular things. Would it have been logical for a Vietnamese person in 1972 to conclude that most Americans hated Vietnamese people?
--
Man, the French government has pulled some stupid shit in their time, (like the Dreyfus affair, and the Maginot line), but this is so absurd that you could almost denounce it as a plot by traitors in the French government to make France look stupid.
They just haven't been right in the head since the NAZIs marched in, kicked their asses, and got their national hero to bend over and run the Vichy government. I think they hate the US and the UK for saving them, even if they didn't have a ghost of a chance of saving themselves.
Note to France: GET OVER IT!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I guess I missed the above story. If ya don't like it, just go against the rest of the world. Jeez.
seems to me, that the united states(and I agree fully) thinks that We've got the bombs. therefore, we win.
BAHAHAHAHA!!!! Sure, no problem. Are they willing to pay for the costs to rewrite all the books and programs that will now have to be updated for their revolutionary idea? Why the HELL does the Prime Meridian have to be changed all of a sudden? They should concentrate their energy on taking baths and showers to rid themselves of bodily odors.
In reference to WE GOT THE BOMBS and the frenchman who said 'yeah we got them too':
Sure you got 'em, but they suck! French nuclear weapons sounds like an oxymoron. I'd like to see Dassault or whomever make a system to match a D5.
because french women put out.
In composing this reply about 9e9 "meters" passed by... I'm thinking this is just a tad awkward. :-)
Hey, if we can all switch over to Paris Meridian Time before the Millenium then we could watch all the MS boxes out there crash 9 minutes and 22 seconds earlier!
Stop working on those Y2K bugs, we must devote ALL of our attention on the new problem of removing Greenwich mean time to Paris mean time!
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
"Ribbit"
-awc
Badda-boom
Before the rise of the railways, it was normal for cities in Britain, and most probably everywhere else as well, to use their own local time. Thus, in traveling a few hundred miles east or west, you would have to reset your watch. The church bells would ring at the local noon, when the sun was in the South.
Not a problem when the journey took several days, and you probably didn't have a watch anyway.
One of the relics of this age is a clock on the railways station in Bristol (IIRC), which has two minute hands, set about 12 minutes apart. One shows railway time (i.e. London time), and the other shows local time.
After a while it became obvious that simple timetables were more improtant than the sun being in the south at noon, and most places picked standard timezones.
I don't know when the US or France switched over though. Does anyone know how this came about?
Yeah I really agree with you. All these moronic "my country's better than yours" flame wars should be banned from /.
These are the political proposals by the group of sad fuckers who call themselves "Front National", usurping the name of a former Resistance group. Not fluent enough in English to translate it in English but basically it means "foreigners out of France ?"
Now why did you post it ? To show that French people are all racists ? It's not true, each time these bastards make meetings there are hundreds of people in the streets to protest ! Sure it's sad but each country has its bloody fascists...
If you agree with them you have nothing to do on this website
Djaak
( La jeunesse emmerde le Front National)
For those living in Canada, this shouldn't surprise anyone. The French government has had long history of attempts to impose Franco culture/standards everywhere... even on the Internet.
9 90614/2722299.html
9 90609/2701204.html
The Quebec government now patrols the internet, looking for Quebec websites that are in English only. If the webpage is in English, and it's related to business/commerce, they can now be fined.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/
http://www.microbytes.com/protest1.html
gutterface
After all 55 years ago, our grandfathers were screwing their grandmothers for Hershey bars and packs of Camels.
The French are just like their cute little poodles....noisy and annoying as hell but not very important in the scheme of things.
You mean British BullShit?
Impaired? Next time let's translate it into Chinese. There are languages other than French and English and certainly more important than the former.
Guys,
Such practices of public information reaches
the bottom of ethics. This is no better than
MSNBC's coverage of the Monica's "scandal".
Slashdot was supposed to be a symbol of the
Linux community, an advocate for tolerance
and "stuff that matters".
There is always a bit of xenophobia in any
national information channel, and having an
out of context link to such information is often
like opening a Pandora box.
People lobbying for a French Meridian or
planting any nationalistic ideas into young
people's mind are all from the same vermin.
Those same people exist in all countries and
should be the our common enemy. They are the
same ones who say that you must pay for your
human basic needs (college, health care...
Operating System).
The Linux movement goes in the opposite
direction, and is of course immediately,
wrongfully and intentionally tagged with a
"commie" reputation.
Many people who commented today should
understand that in a certain context, humor is
a double-edged weapon and that an anonymous
flame can actually ignite things out of control.
The community is at a crucial stage of it's life.
Many eyes are directed to it while some of it's
most notorious names (RedHat, Cygnus, VAR)
are trying to control the delicate alchemy of
business and public service.
This is also valid for the SlashDot team and I
hope that those words will reach them in some
way.
[ Ego is the most addictive substance -- himself ]
I have read in several books unrelated to the specific subject of geography about the Paris meridian. This is nothing new, just a resurgence.
Arawak
Yeah, of course us Americans haven't lost family members in wars. especially since we had to come save some french asses. I was lucky my grandfather survived, or I wouldn't be typing this. But I don't blame the Germans or the Japanese, but I will continue to laugh at the french for their pitiful attempt to fight.
Come on, who's with me! No one likes the french anyway. They'll never be missed. This ranks up there with the "internet swatch time". Maybe I should make up my own time standard....
It bemused me when I first looked at this 'Paris Mean Time' that the abbreviation PMT stood out. This may give other an insight into Fances time dillema.
:)
BTW, will anybody else in the world really take notice of this new meridian? I think not