I would not be so sure that France would no have no legal ground. Eavesdropping is a felony (article 226-15 of the penal code), and using informations yielded by a felony is a felony (article 321-1). As it was part of an organized scheme, this possibly carries a 10-year sentence and a fine of FRF 5,000,000 (yes, that's about 900 000 US dollars!), with civil penalties on top of that.
I am not a lawyer, but:
Airbus could thus perhaps sue Boeing, or its executives, in France for using informations yielded by eavesdropping. If sentenced, bank accounts or properties belonging to Boeing could be seized.
There is little probability that this would happen. There is a long history of spying between NATO allies, and usually all conflicts are solved by discreet informal agreements between governments.
> hey should follow US & British example conduct > air-raids and drop bombs on someone.
France was as far as I know the second contributor (behind the US) to the air war in Kosovo, and has supplied plenty of ground troops. France has already lost several soldiers in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia.
Oh, by the way, learn English: whinning -> whining ungreatful -> ungrateful.
"This sort of argument wouldn't surprise me if it came from a socialist country like France."
Last time I checked, France's name was "the French Republic", not "the People's Republic of France". Also, last time I checked, prices there were set by the market.
The directive seems to authorize the following behaviour: if I reverse-engineer Windows NT to understand NTFS and achieve interoperability with my Linux systems by writing a Linux driver, then this is legal, even if Microsoft does not agree (remember that law can supersede licenses).
Now whether or not this clause applies in the DVD case is not clear. Reverse-engineering the DVD content itself and writing a player for private use would seem perfectly legal. Here, they reverse-engineered a player not to make the player compatible with some other system, but to make DVDs compatible with some other system. Also, they published their work.
This text says that it is legal, within the EU, to reverse-engineer a program you hold a license to, even without the author's consent, provided you do it to ensure compatibility and the necessary information was not available to you.
Most people, including journalists, do not know much about the issues at stake when it comes to information technology. They are thus prone to be influenced by clever propaganda from influential groups with good public relation staff. They are also prone to judge on apparences and to make amalgams.
The mainstream media has said that Slashdot is the place where typical "hackers" and Linux-users discuss. If journalists or readers come to Slashdot, they are more likely to consider it as a place where young, spoilt idiots use rude words they would not say in front of their parents than a place where serious discussion is made on technical and ethical issues.
Decompilation 1. The authorization of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of Article 4 (a) and (b) are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met:[...]
I am not a lawyer and I don't know whether this applies to your cause or not.
2/ What do you think of the fact that some obscure Californian courts is prosecuting foreigners for alleged intellectual property offenses committed abroad, possibly legally according to the law of their home country?
Just as Newsweek, claiming to be an "International newsmagazine", is really an American magazine that makes articles on international issues.
I personnally don't object Slashdot emphasizing American issues: as you clearly pointed out, it's run by americans, so it's natural that they speak of what is near them.
The problem is rather that, sometimes, Slashdot talks on foreign places and makes some silly and ill-informed comments. On the other hand, that's true of most of the press anyway.
Personnally, I favor the existence of a world organization dealing with trade. The reason is that all too often, trade is dealt in obscure ways.
Political methods are used: for instance, to have the EU accept something, the US says it will retaliate against some products, including some products from the UK. Simultaneously, the mainstream British press (owned by TWO media moguls - so much for pluralism) says that because of bureaucratic silliness in Brussels, UK farmers suffer. The UK's prime minister is then forced to calm down its public opinion by asking the EU to cave in to the US.
The problem is that NONE OF THE ABOVE IS ABOUT TRADE! This is all about UK domestic politics.
On the other hand, the current WTO is not a decent alternative. Why should we accept that panels of so-called experts tell our countries what to do? These experts are not elected, and their decisions can be lead by their ideologies or the bribes they receive from corporations (even if such bribes would be legal, they are bribes, morally...).
I would rather favor a forum whose deliberations would be public and where various governments, non-governmental organizations and the like would meet. Actual witnesses of things to be dealt with (for instance, farmers or workers or consumers) or really independent scientific experts of various opinions would then be called (as it is done in courts of justice, after all). Then a deal could be made. Backroom maneuvers would be much more difficult.
If I'm not mistaken, democracy is a kind of government where the people decide for themselves. We generally add to this characterization that we refuse laws that breach on certain rights, even though at some point in time a majority of the population wished for those laws.
In many Western countries, there are periodic protests on trade, many of them because - farmers don't see how they could make an honest and decent living given the current conditions - consumers don't want to eat some things that some producers propose (hormone-enhanced beef for instance) - people are generally weary of the effects of capitalism focusing on short-term profits.
For those who might go into auto-fire mode and say I'm some kind of pinko or whatever, let me first tell you that I'm neither socialist nor communist, and some people even think I'm extreme-right. The point is that I have no ideology, thus I anger all those who have one.
It is a fact that capitalism needs regulation. May I remind all readers of the financial crises of 1929 and following, which ruined the lives of many people and promoted fascism and nazism (when people are in dire straits, they vote for whoever gives them a strong direction)?
But let's go back to democracy. Often, consumer-driven prohibitions of certain goods seen as hazardous in a country are seen by journalists of other countries as hidden protectionism.
For instance, the US press lambasts European governments because European customers don't want to eat hormone-enhanced beef (remember East German athletes?:-) ).
The press also lambasts the said governments because of protests. Hey, my, I never saw in this country protests where we had to send armored personnel carriers, rubber bullets and reserve army, and even impose a curfew! Such methods would surely be called "brutal" by the US press were they applied in any other country!
Now, in the United States, Americans are protesting against similar mistreatment of consumers.
Perhaps the US Press should apologize to other countries for their biased reports. That would of course suppose they have decency and professionnalism. I think they have little of either. [I'm not chauvinistic on this one: the international coverage of the French press is not good either, and the British one is abyssal.]
Now, what are the news from Seattle? I'd like to know the news from first-hand knowledge, not some fat-cat anchor that just sits in a studio and reads some communique.:-)
Perhaps it would be simpler to change the US tax code.:-)
When I worked in the US, I couldn't believe that employees would need to pay an accountant to fill their taxes. I mean, I know of no other country like that... In all the Europeans countries I know, you fill in some numbers in a form, you sign and that's it!
When I checked it during the week-end, it looked like GPLTrans computed the identity function in all directions. I mean, when you fed it a text x in English and told it to do English->French, it'd output the same text, without any translation.
> Hell, by European 35-hour week standards, the American software industry is one big sweatshop
Ever worked at an US company? I did.
People do spend a long time at work, right.
However, you must take into account the following things I noticed in some US companies I worked at or dealt with:
* inefficiency of secretaries since they are pretty uneducated
* lack of use of electronic resources (lots of paperwork, voice mail and interoffice mail, inability to send email when appropriate)
* lots of interruptions ("Let's have ice cream!", "Oh, it's friday afternoon!")
* lack of modernity (in Silicon Valley, people look up phone numbers in a row of huge paper books whereas in France, they type a few buttons on their computers)
For all those reasons, I was not terribly impressed by US productivity. I'd say the US works more in time, but less efficiently.
> I think that even your example of the Vichy French collaborators that most French people supported the underground and opposed Hitler.
You must take into account retaliation, as I said. My grandfather (the one that was not a prisoner of war deep in Germany) was nearly executed, because the Germans wanted hostages after some sniper shot one of their soldiers.
A common way to pressure caught people into telling all about their networks, apart from torture, was to threaten retaliation on families. You might be brave, but you might not want your daughter to be sent to some brothel for soldiers on the other side of the continent, right?
I still therefore think that the safest way to limit government powers is preventive legislation (for instance, France passed legislation against government and corporate files on individuals two decades ago, and is now removing restrictions on cryptography and promoting its use). Sadly, the current tendency at least in this country is that the government is less intrusive, but private companies become more and more intrusive. I hope our government won't get sold to business as much as the United States' one.
> It might seem that way, but unless the US military was willing to take significant casualties and/or unleash weapons of mass destruction against the civilian population (IE start bombing civilians), in fact the military would stand no chance against a motivated, armed guerilla populace.
Somewhat true. On the other hand, don't forget that most dictatorships have had supporters in the population (for instance, Pinochet didn't last only because he was supporter by the CIA, he was supported by a significant part of his fellow countrymen; same for Franco etc...). This would mean the military, the police and a significant share of the population carrying weapons against the other. This is called a civil war.
A civil war has already taken place in the US not so long ago, between opposed political views.
You might also be interested to know that, during WWII, some French resistance fighters were horribly tortured by their fellow countrymen. These supported Hitler because they saw him as the protector of Western Civilization against Communism. This is an experimental proof that strong, quasi-mystical, beliefs in how a country should be ruled can overcome the natural resistance to killing someone just like you.
> Gee, I am told that if you are in France, using 'ssh' is in fact forbidden......That makes me a criminal, since I dislike the idea of transmitting cleartext root-passwords on any network.
This is both true and false.
Some previous government (right-wing, I think) had passed a law putting strict constraints on cryptography. The current government (left-wing, or "socialist" if you prefer) is removing those restrictions, and actively promotes the use of cryptography.
So far, they lifted the limit on encryption without authorization from 40-bit to 128-bit. They couldn't go further legally - the executive branch just can't say "hey, the law says that there should be limits on encryption technology, but, hey, we issue an executive order saying not to care about it". They are proposing a law which would shred the remaining restrictions - and perhaps give some legal power of digital signatures. Alas, parliament is currently overloaded due to silly foot-dragging tactics by the right wing. How intelligent.
[And to contradict another myth: France does not regulated in which languages Web pages are written, except when they are from government agencies (understandable) and when they constitute an advertisement (you must put a translation nearby; this is because of litigations on misleading advertisement. Any other claim is myth.
People that want to verify can always check official legal codes on http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr.
> The reason government is the biggest threat > is because it has a monopoly on legal > coercive force.
In today's world, companies can use the government as a puppet for their own interests (not the people's).
Take for instance the justice system. In some Western countries, especially the US, trials are often won by whoever can pay the best attorneys. Even if you are right, the mere threat of litigation is enough to stop you, for fear of enormous legal costs.
Already, a subtle form of censorship takes place. Providers of contents that some big corporation does not agree with are not thrown into a cell, as it happened in France before the Revolution. No, instead they are denied all means of mass communication. Their Internet provider shuts their WWW page (for fear of litigation). Newspapers, owned by Big Business, don't relay the stories. Ok, that person still can make photocopies of his things and put them in mailboxes... in a country of dozens of million inhabitants, this is a drop in a bucket.
> Corporations don't have armies. Both true and untrue.
In the current Western world, corporations indeed don't have armies.
On the other hand, in many thirld-world nations, big corporations have private militias and support whatever dictator happens to provide them with the oil their want.
I wouldn't be surprised that when the situation has rotten even more, private companies won't be able to have their own militias in Western countries as well.
> Stop mischaracterizing that which you do > not understand.
Doing a little research yourself should do you good.
I'm a graduate student, and I teach a class of Java to freshmen at a college in western Paris.
My main problem is all the bad reflexes learnt in highschool:
- reliance on formal details while not paying attention to the actual material taught;
- willingness to learn "tricks to do the exam" and to do in advance all the exercises that could be asked in the exam, but not really to understand things;
- no use of the university's library.
Pouring more money into such a system won't do much; stopping encouraging immature learning patterns in highschool might do more.
As for keeping up on current science advances: do not fool yourself: science taught in highschool and early college is mostly old science anyway. Complex numbers are 18th century stuff; Banach spaces are more recent, but still quite old. [I also have a maths degree, so I take examples from maths as I know quite a bit on it.]
On the other hand, things aren't taught as they were discovered at the time. Early math proofs of a theorem are hairy and for specialists. Only with sufficient time, things are made clearer, more structured and learnable. Things that are now done in freshman years were at the time very advanced stuff.
This is the reason why I don't think it's so bad teachers don't know the latest discoveries. If only they could teach students some sound bases, it'd already be sufficient. Alas, we're far from there.
Insults thrown at random onto citizens of foreign countries is free speech.
Strong criticism from citizens of those countries is pure chauvinism that ought to be censored.
The same applies to the printed press. Most often, separation of opinion and facts only applies to domestic news. Foreign news are usually a mixture of the journalist's own political views and some declarations from the local groups he feels most in touch with.
> How in the world you haven't been moterated > into oblivion I don't know.
Must I understand the following: some guy makes some silly anti-european remark, not even able to spell "ricain" right. He does not get moderated. I answer with a troll, it should get moderated.
> Europeans, ostensibly led by the French, > have taken to referring to Americans by the > cute term 'Meriken', sometimes shorted to > 'Merken'.
FYI, it's "ricain". Ricains have lost their post-WW2 popularity in France and other European countries since their poured napalm onto children in Vietnam and shot down their own children on campuses back home (not to mention killing black civil right militants). Since then, ricains have become more of an annoyance, especially with their general tendency of talking arrogantly of things they don't know about which is after all not surprising given the fact that the average ricain is not even able to say where his own country is on a map of the globe.
So, basing yourself on some Babelfish translation of a German article written by journalists about some fictional implications of some EU technical commitee, you already blame certain individuals of a certain nation?
You are a clear example of your own law. You are an ignorant and an idiot.
[Little bit of chauvinism: this does not surprise me since it comes from an American. Most Americans are semiliterate and don't even know where their country is on a map of the globe. No wonder their universities and research labs are staffed with foreigners.]
> That Windoze has a French version means > little if the applications are English-only > -- and most commercial apps are.
Wrong.
All the "important" applications (that is, those relevant to most end-users, such as word processors and spreadsheets) have French versions. Otherwise, market forces would drive them into oblivion.
> France says "Hey this idea is great! Now lets make any > private enterprise that does business with us be "Open > Source compliant". Now your private enterpise can't > choose the software it wants to use.
Can you read English?
This proposal says that government agencies are supposed to use open-source software. It doesn't talk of private companies.
If you had worked in an US government contractor, as I did, you would know that the US government imposes far more stringent constraints on contractors.
Slashdot Mirror
I would not be so sure that France would no have no legal ground. Eavesdropping is a felony (article 226-15 of the penal code), and using informations yielded by a felony is a felony (article 321-1). As it was part of an organized scheme, this possibly carries a 10-year sentence and a fine of FRF 5,000,000 (yes, that's about 900 000 US dollars!), with civil penalties on top of that.
I am not a lawyer, but:
Airbus could thus perhaps sue Boeing, or its executives, in France for using informations yielded by eavesdropping. If sentenced, bank accounts or properties belonging to Boeing could be seized.
There is little probability that this would happen. There is a long history of spying between NATO allies, and usually all conflicts are solved by discreet informal agreements between governments.
> hey should follow US & British example conduct
> air-raids and drop bombs on someone.
France was as far as I know the second contributor (behind the US) to the air war in Kosovo, and has supplied plenty of ground troops. France has already lost several soldiers in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia.
Oh, by the way, learn English:
whinning -> whining
ungreatful -> ungrateful.
"This sort of argument wouldn't surprise me if it came from a socialist country like France."
Last time I checked, France's name was "the French Republic", not "the People's Republic of France". Also, last time I checked, prices there were set by the market.
Unregulated monopolies are prohibited in certain code of laws, including the French and US ones.
It is indeed very tricky.
The directive seems to authorize the following behaviour: if I reverse-engineer Windows NT to understand NTFS and achieve interoperability with my Linux systems by writing a Linux driver, then this is legal, even if Microsoft does not agree
(remember that law can supersede licenses).
Now whether or not this clause applies in the DVD case is not clear. Reverse-engineering the DVD content itself and writing a player for private use would seem perfectly legal. Here, they reverse-engineered a player not to make the player compatible with some other system, but to make DVDs compatible with some other system. Also, they published their work.
Please read this legal text.
If I am not mistaken:
This text says that it is legal, within the EU, to reverse-engineer a program you hold a license to, even without the author's consent, provided you do it to ensure compatibility and the necessary information was not available to you.
That is very true.
Most people, including journalists, do not know much about the issues at stake when it comes to information technology. They are thus prone to be influenced by clever propaganda from influential groups with good public relation staff. They are also prone to judge on apparences and to make amalgams.
The mainstream media has said that Slashdot is the place where typical "hackers" and Linux-users discuss. If journalists or readers come to Slashdot, they are more likely to consider it as a place where young, spoilt idiots use rude words they would not say in front of their parents than a place where serious discussion is made on technical and ethical issues.
1/ What does norwegian law say about writing software to circumvent copy protection?
European law (Council Directive 91/250/EEC of 14 May 1991 on the legal protection of computer programs) explicitly authorizes reverse engineering of programs to ensure compatibility:
Decompilation 1. The authorization of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of Article 4 (a) and (b) are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met:[...]
I am not a lawyer and I don't know whether this applies to your cause or not.
2/ What do you think of the fact that some obscure Californian courts is prosecuting foreigners for alleged intellectual property offenses committed abroad, possibly legally according to the law of their home country?
Just as Newsweek, claiming to be an "International newsmagazine", is really an American magazine that makes articles on international issues.
I personnally don't object Slashdot emphasizing American issues: as you clearly pointed out, it's run by americans, so it's natural that they speak of what is near them.
The problem is rather that, sometimes, Slashdot talks on foreign places and makes some silly and ill-informed comments. On the other hand, that's true of most of the press anyway.
Personnally, I favor the existence of a world organization dealing with trade. The reason is that all too often, trade is dealt in obscure ways.
Political methods are used: for instance, to have the EU accept something, the US says it will retaliate against some products, including some products from the UK. Simultaneously, the mainstream British press (owned by TWO media moguls - so much for pluralism) says that because of bureaucratic silliness in Brussels, UK farmers suffer. The UK's prime minister is then forced to calm down its public opinion by asking the EU to cave in to the US.
The problem is that NONE OF THE ABOVE IS ABOUT TRADE! This is all about UK domestic politics.
On the other hand, the current WTO is not a decent alternative. Why should we accept that panels of so-called experts tell our countries what to do? These experts are not elected, and their decisions can be lead by their ideologies or the bribes they receive from corporations (even if such bribes would be legal, they are bribes, morally...).
I would rather favor a forum whose deliberations would be public and where various governments, non-governmental organizations and the like would meet. Actual witnesses of things to be dealt with (for instance, farmers or workers or consumers) or really independent scientific experts of various opinions would then be called (as it is done in courts of justice, after all). Then a deal could be made. Backroom maneuvers would be much more difficult.
If I'm not mistaken, democracy is a kind of government where the people decide for themselves. We generally add to this characterization that we refuse laws that breach on certain rights, even though at some point in time a majority of the population wished for those laws.
:-) ).
:-)
In many Western countries, there are periodic protests on trade, many of them because
- farmers don't see how they could make an honest and decent living given the current conditions
- consumers don't want to eat some things that some producers propose (hormone-enhanced beef for instance)
- people are generally weary of the effects of capitalism focusing on short-term profits.
For those who might go into auto-fire mode and say I'm some kind of pinko or whatever, let me first tell you that I'm neither socialist nor communist, and some people even think I'm extreme-right. The point is that I have no ideology, thus I anger all those who have one.
It is a fact that capitalism needs regulation. May I remind all readers of the financial crises of 1929 and following, which ruined the lives of many people and promoted fascism and nazism (when people are in dire straits, they vote for whoever gives them a strong direction)?
But let's go back to democracy. Often, consumer-driven prohibitions of certain goods seen as hazardous in a country are seen by journalists of other countries as hidden protectionism.
For instance, the US press lambasts European governments because European customers don't want to eat hormone-enhanced beef (remember East German athletes?
The press also lambasts the said governments because of protests. Hey, my, I never saw in this country protests where we had to send armored personnel carriers, rubber bullets and reserve army, and even impose a curfew! Such methods would surely be called "brutal" by the US press were they applied in any other country!
Now, in the United States, Americans are protesting against similar mistreatment of consumers.
Perhaps the US Press should apologize to other countries for their biased reports. That would of course suppose they have decency and professionnalism. I think they have little of either.
[I'm not chauvinistic on this one: the international coverage of the French press is not good either, and the British one is abyssal.]
Now, what are the news from Seattle? I'd like to know the news from first-hand knowledge, not some fat-cat anchor that just sits in a studio and reads some communique.
Perhaps it would be simpler to change the US tax code. :-)
When I worked in the US, I couldn't believe that employees would need to pay an accountant to fill their taxes. I mean, I know of no other country like that... In all the Europeans countries I know, you fill in some numbers in a form, you sign and that's it!
When I checked it during the week-end, it looked like GPLTrans computed the identity function in all directions. I mean, when you fed it a text x in English and told it to do English->French, it'd output the same text, without any translation.
And now their server looks like it's down...
> Hell, by European 35-hour week standards, the American software industry is one big sweatshop
Ever worked at an US company? I did.
People do spend a long time at work, right.
However, you must take into account the following things I noticed in some US companies I worked at or dealt with:
* inefficiency of secretaries since they are pretty uneducated
* lack of use of electronic resources (lots of paperwork, voice mail and interoffice mail, inability to send email when appropriate)
* lots of interruptions ("Let's have ice cream!", "Oh, it's friday afternoon!")
* lack of modernity (in Silicon Valley, people look up phone numbers in a row of huge paper books whereas in France, they type a few buttons on their computers)
For all those reasons, I was not terribly impressed by US productivity. I'd say the US works more in time, but less efficiently.
This claim is backed-up by statistics I read.
> I think that even your example of the Vichy French collaborators that most French people supported the underground and opposed Hitler.
You must take into account retaliation, as I said. My grandfather (the one that was not a prisoner of war deep in Germany) was nearly executed, because the Germans wanted hostages after some sniper shot one of their soldiers.
A common way to pressure caught people into telling all about their networks, apart from torture, was to threaten retaliation on families. You might be brave, but you might not want your daughter to be sent to some brothel for soldiers on the other side of the continent, right?
I still therefore think that the safest way to limit government powers is preventive legislation (for instance, France passed legislation against government and corporate files on individuals two decades ago, and is now removing restrictions on cryptography and promoting its use). Sadly, the current tendency at least in this country is that the government is less intrusive, but private companies become more and more intrusive. I hope our government won't get sold to business as much as the United States' one.
> It might seem that way, but unless the US military was willing to take significant casualties and/or unleash weapons of mass destruction against the civilian population (IE start bombing civilians), in fact the military would stand no chance against a motivated, armed guerilla populace.
Somewhat true. On the other hand, don't forget that most dictatorships have had supporters in the population (for instance, Pinochet didn't last only because he was supporter by the CIA, he was supported by a significant part of his fellow countrymen; same for Franco etc...). This would mean the military, the police and a significant share of the population carrying weapons against the other. This is called a civil war.
A civil war has already taken place in the US not so long ago, between opposed political views.
You might also be interested to know that, during WWII, some French resistance fighters were horribly tortured by their fellow countrymen. These supported Hitler because they saw him as the protector of Western Civilization against Communism. This is an experimental proof that strong, quasi-mystical, beliefs in how a country should be ruled can overcome the natural resistance to killing someone just like you.
> Gee, I am told that if you are in France, using 'ssh' is in fact forbidden......That makes me a criminal, since I dislike the idea of transmitting cleartext root-passwords on any network.
This is both true and false.
Some previous government (right-wing, I think) had passed a law putting strict constraints on cryptography. The current government (left-wing, or "socialist" if you prefer) is removing those restrictions, and actively promotes the use of cryptography.
So far, they lifted the limit on encryption without authorization from 40-bit to 128-bit. They couldn't go further legally - the executive branch just can't say "hey, the law says that there should be limits on encryption technology, but, hey, we issue an executive order saying not to care about it". They are proposing a law which would shred the remaining restrictions - and perhaps give some legal power of digital signatures. Alas, parliament is currently overloaded due to silly foot-dragging tactics by the right wing. How intelligent.
[And to contradict another myth: France does not regulated in which languages Web pages are written, except when they are from government agencies (understandable) and when they constitute an advertisement (you must put a translation nearby; this is because of litigations on misleading advertisement. Any other claim is myth.
People that want to verify can always check official legal codes on http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr.
Don't trust what the press says!]
> The reason government is the biggest threat
> is because it has a monopoly on legal
> coercive force.
In today's world, companies can use the
government as a puppet for their own interests
(not the people's).
Take for instance the justice system. In some
Western countries, especially the US, trials
are often won by whoever can pay the best
attorneys. Even if you are right, the mere
threat of litigation is enough to stop you,
for fear of enormous legal costs.
Already, a subtle form of censorship takes place.
Providers of contents that some big corporation
does not agree with are not thrown into a
cell, as it happened in France before the
Revolution. No, instead they are denied all
means of mass communication. Their Internet
provider shuts their WWW page (for fear of
litigation). Newspapers, owned by Big Business,
don't relay the stories. Ok, that person still
can make photocopies of his things and put them
in mailboxes... in a country of dozens of
million inhabitants, this is a drop in a bucket.
> Corporations don't have armies.
Both true and untrue.
In the current Western world, corporations indeed don't have armies.
On the other hand, in many thirld-world nations, big corporations have private militias and support whatever dictator happens to provide them with the oil their want.
I wouldn't be surprised that when the situation
has rotten even more, private companies won't
be able to have their own militias in Western
countries as well.
> Stop mischaracterizing that which you do
> not understand.
Doing a little research yourself should
do you good.
I'm a graduate student, and I teach a class of Java to freshmen at a college in western Paris.
My main problem is all the bad reflexes learnt in highschool:
- reliance on formal details while not paying attention to the actual material taught;
- willingness to learn "tricks to do the exam" and to do in advance all the exercises that could be asked in the exam, but not really to understand things;
- no use of the university's library.
Pouring more money into such a system won't do much; stopping encouraging immature learning patterns in highschool might do more.
As for keeping up on current science advances: do not fool yourself: science taught in highschool and early college is mostly old science anyway. Complex numbers are 18th century stuff; Banach spaces are more recent, but still quite old.
[I also have a maths degree, so I take examples from maths as I know quite a bit on it.]
On the other hand, things aren't taught as they were discovered at the time. Early math proofs of a theorem are hairy and for specialists. Only with sufficient time, things are made clearer, more structured and learnable. Things that are now done in freshman years were at the time very advanced stuff.
This is the reason why I don't think it's so bad teachers don't know the latest discoveries. If only they could teach students some sound bases, it'd already be sufficient. Alas, we're far from there.
It's simple.
Insults thrown at random onto citizens of foreign countries is free speech.
Strong criticism from citizens of those countries is pure chauvinism that ought to be censored.
The same applies to the printed press. Most often, separation of opinion and facts only applies to domestic news. Foreign news are usually a mixture of the journalist's own political views and some declarations from the local groups he feels most in touch with.
> How in the world you haven't been moterated
> into oblivion I don't know.
Must I understand the following: some guy makes some silly anti-european remark, not even able to spell "ricain" right. He does not get moderated. I answer with a troll, it should get moderated.
Double standards?
> Europeans, ostensibly led by the French,
> have taken to referring to Americans by the
> cute term 'Meriken', sometimes shorted to
> 'Merken'.
FYI, it's "ricain". Ricains have lost their post-WW2 popularity in France and other European countries since their poured napalm onto children in Vietnam and shot down their own children on campuses back home (not to mention killing black civil right militants). Since then, ricains have become more of an annoyance, especially with their general tendency of talking arrogantly of things they don't know about which is after all not surprising given the fact that the average ricain is not even able to say where his own country is on a map of the globe.
So, basing yourself on some Babelfish translation of a German article written by journalists about some fictional implications of some EU technical commitee, you already blame certain individuals of a certain nation?
You are a clear example of your own law. You are an ignorant and an idiot.
[Little bit of chauvinism: this does not surprise me since it comes from an American. Most Americans are semiliterate and don't even know where their country is on a map of the globe. No wonder their universities and research labs are staffed with foreigners.]
> That Windoze has a French version means
> little if the applications are English-only
> -- and most commercial apps are.
Wrong.
All the "important" applications (that is,
those relevant to most end-users, such as
word processors and spreadsheets) have
French versions. Otherwise, market forces
would drive them into oblivion.
> France says "Hey this idea is great! Now lets make any
> private enterprise that does business with us be "Open
> Source compliant". Now your private enterpise can't
> choose the software it wants to use.
Can you read English?
This proposal says that government agencies are supposed
to use open-source software. It doesn't talk of private
companies.
If you had worked in an US government contractor,
as I did, you would know that the US government
imposes far more stringent constraints on contractors.