> In France, isn't it a fact, that a surprising percentage of the > work force is in the public sector working for the > government?
This percentage is made artificially high by the fact it counts teachers in public schools, personnel of public hospital and other categories of people that are not counted as such in the US.
All the same, the US artificially lowers the number of government employees by subcontracting government work to companies working almost exclusively for the government. Other countries would talk of "subsidies"; the US prefers to say "research grants for defense".
As for the overall impact of such a reform: I think that substancial exemptions would anyway be granted.
This bill by no means prohibits proprietary software. It would just change GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT rules so that free software is preferred over propritary software.
Read the fucking documents. If you can't read French, then get someone to translate them. But please don't speak without knowledge like this.
> You would think they would prefer an operating > system that was designed in France, by > Frenchmen, and whose native > language is French, and can't be localized > to other languages.
You've just described the United States of America!
Americans: * hardly speak any foreign language; * disregard any foreign invention (that is the reason why the US is far backwards in smart card technology: it's a French invention, so it was regarded with suspicion) * disregard foreign films - foreign films can't be imported except in very select theaters, because of cultural isolationism (the US public basically dislike anything non American) and protectionism from movie companies; it is interesting that numerous European films are routinely "remade" by Hollywood, which means that they take an American cast, an American director and change the cities from, say, Berlin or Paris to NY or LA, while keeping the scenario (think of "Three men and a baby", for instance) * have made extensive use of 7-bit characters in software products, which makes them impossible to use in 8-bit environments; Let's add that the US Federal Government makes foreigners sign lengthy, ununderstandable legal documents in English with no translation provided (ex: IRS form for the opening of a bank account). Of course, any error is a triable crime.
I can give precise references for each of this points.
With all that evidence, I think it is clear that the "language nazis" are rather the US than France.
As for the claims that English speaking is prohibited in France: laws on language in France only pertain to: * government business; * contracts; * advertisement (because of consumer protection). There are additionnally laws on quotas in broadcast shows and music, but it is rather something to protect against the unjust concurrence from the US (may I repeat that while the US exports films, importing a film into the US is nearly impossible?).
Any other claim about "The French government trying to regulated the Internet so that French sites only speak French" is bullshit. Check your sources, or shut up.
If you have technical questions about Linux threads that aren't answered in the FAQ and kernel documentation, I suggest that you ask the author of the thread system, Dr Xavier Leroy (Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr).
My recent experiences with the UK's alleged quality press is that it has gone the way of the British popular press: tabloid journalism full of sensationnalism, exaggerations and the like.
Take this article with a pinch of salt. It wouldn't be surprising if they had grossly distorted what the scientists have said.
The Slashdot model has clearly weaknesses, among which is a total lack of reliability of the posted information. News posted on Slashdot have mostly appeared on other media outlets, and Slashdot webmasters just add the link with maybe some editorial comment, without making some special effort to check whether the information is reliable or not.
This scheme sometimes goes wrong: for instance, the BBC ran some nonsense story about the French government contesting the Greenwich meridian and organizing some big party along the Paris meridian. This was bullshit. Yet Slashdot posted the message, and there were about 200 comments taking the information as genuine.
This leads to the next problem: the total lack of responsability of Slashdot. In serious paper media, readers or people involved in the printed story can get some rebuttals printed. In Slashdot, it is impossible. Ok, you can send some additional comment, but it'll be drowned at the end of the list of comments, and won't cancel the possible bad effects of the story.
I advise everybody to take information from the BBC with a grain of salt. While the BBC used to enjoy a good reputation when it came to news, it looks like it's now drifting the way of the British paper press, that is, to tabloid-like "information".
For a precise example: the BBC had a story, linked here on Slashdot, saying that the French Government, disapproving of the use of the Greenwich meridian instead of the Paris one as reference, was organizing the plantation of olive groves and a mass picnic along the meridian. This was bogus. This nevertheless generated 200 comments here.
So, until some serious press gives an independent report on this, I'd not believe in this too much.
1. Select the surface around which you want to draw, using the circular selection or whatever.
2. Use Edit->Stroke in the menu.
This will stroke around the current selection.
Everybody, including Gimp developer, has seen that it is an unduly convoluted way to draw a circle and that many would-be users simply think you can't draw circles. A more user-friendly interface is being worked on.
Unsaid assumption: for any country X different from the US, from any kind of infrastructure Y, Y in X is of course more primitive than Y in US.
:-)
My own experience is that the power grid in the US seems to be more prone to problems that the one in Europe. I've never heard of entire French cities, with whole suburbs, put into the dark by an accident, while it happens regularly in the US, including in the high-teach areas of the San Francisco bay.
From my experience, the phone infrastructures in France are as modern, maybe more, than those in the US.
The current problem is the following: there used to be a state monopoly on all communications (now called France Telecom). This monopoly has been suppressed for long-distance calls (by simply pressing 7 instead of 0 in front of a long-distance call, you select Cegetel for instance). On the other hand, it will take a few years before concurrence for local calls.
In the meantime, France Telecom is prohibited by concurrence authorities from breaking down the prices for local calls, for instance by proposing unmetered local calls. The reason is that other operators, newcomers to the marketplace, wouldn't be able to propose at first so interesting pricings.
A recent decision said that, in the end, it could sale "batches" of 20 hours a month of local calls, for Internet use especially. The forecasts are that it makes France, which used to be one of the most expensive European countries for Net access, one of the cheapest.
There are major changes, mainly the driver structures has been enhanced, allowing for dynamically loadable, OS-independent drivers to be loaded. This is intended for boards manufacturers; for now, if they wanted to ship Linux drivers with the board, they had to put a full X server.
Unfortunately, that means that some porting is needed for the old drivers.
Other added goodies include: - antialiased graphics (especially TrueType text); this is currently under development - 3D stuff.
Actually, as far as I know, most developped countries spy on each other. It goes usually unnoticed, since matters are usually settled discreetly between the concerned governments (we are supposed to be allied, remember?). Sometimes, things don't go so smooth, and "diplomats" get expelled. For instance, a few years ago France and the USA respectively sent packing US and French spies.
I worked in an US company which was heavily subsidized by the US federal government. Oh, wait. They don't call that subsidies, but defense research contracts. Nevermind.
As far as I know, Airbus hasn't been subsidized since they broke even quite a while ago.
I've thought several times about suing a spammer for keeping my name, email address (and thus my employer's name) in a database without noticing me, in violation of the French "computing and freedom" act.
Problem: I get very little spam from France. Almost all the spam I get comes from the United States.
Let's note that spammers are often very stupid: they spam non-US address like mine with things only pertaining to US citizens or to US residents.
What we've got here is an international agency; mainly led by the US, EU, Japan, proposing a plan pertaining to domain names. Such a proposition has no legal enforcing value by itself... it is a proposition.
Furthermore, it does not propose the creation of any international body to oversee anything. So it would be as the current agreements on intellectual property, trademarks, and similar things.
If you don't agree with this, don't go potty mouth about the UN. You should rather ask yourself whether those you elected to the US congress are able to understand the issues involved, because it is them who will vote any enforceable statute on the topic.
I'm French and have worked for about 6 months in an US company doing research in computer science. In this laboratory and in the teams I knew in similar areas elsewhere in the US (Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University), there seems to be a minority of Americans. I saw all kinds of nationalities (French, Algerian, German, Israeli, Russian, Indian, British, Irish, Chinese...) but few Americans in the research staff (graduate students, guests and permanent staff).
I do not have explanations for this fact, except the fact that US companies are ready to pay a foreign student thousands of dollars a month (whereas European companies tend to underpay young workers just because they are young and looking for jobs), and thus are attracting people like me...
* An embargo will make Serbia poorer, but won't by itself remove Milosevic. You can be a dictator in a poor country as well; in fact, it's easier.
* Victims in Kosovo are not attacked with expensive, high-tech weapons. A pack of angry men armed with submachine guns (even shotguns) is enough to force all the inhabitants of a bunch of houses to flee. Such weapons are likely to be useable for years after the embargo is put into effect; in the meantime, all the victims will have been killed or driven out.
* Embargoes don't work if there's an external sponsor (like the USSR for Cuba - now we have Bosnia).
If Russia wants to send planes and ships to Serbia, you won't be able to prevent them from arriving, short of sinking them. Do you want to start World War III?
* The embargoed country will show pictures of sick children and accuse the embargoers of killing them with the embargo. This won't play well on TV.
[ The fact that the dictator could suppress the real or imaginary problems of those children by leaving is going to be ignored. ]
With kpackage, install a RPM is easy. Anyway, rpm -i is far more easier than installing a MS-DOS application (remember, DOS and its brain-damaged memory setups?), and DOS used to be popular...
What I think is badly designed is default configurations. Things like: - autofs should be used by default for Zip, CD-Rom and floppy; - KDE should be default, using kdm for login; - kpackage should ask for the root password when wanting to install something when non-root. Etc...
You are absolutely right in saying that tinkering with configuration, reinstallations and the like should not suck one's time.
Sadly for me, I am computer-savvy and know several non-computer-savvy people that run Windows 95. As a consequence, I'm frequently asked to repair their computers.
Windows 95 is an user-friendly OS... as long as nothing goes wrong. As soon as there is a little problem, it can drive you into pure Kafka.
For instance: Windows 95 can detect a peripheral and DEMAND that you introduce the CD-Rom for the drivers BEFORE it has detected the CD-Rom drive and has installed the drivers for it
For instance: I had to reinstall Windows 95 on my mother's computer because she had installed the driver for her printer off-site (ie without the printer connected). After we connected the printer, the system would DEMAND that we give it some weirdo file, then hung.
Repairing 95 on other people's computers can suck a significant part of my time (repairing my mother's means spending the week-end there).
I'm not the only person with such problems: a friend of mine spent half the afternoon with his father, then his father-in-law, each having trouble with this supposedly "user-friendly" OS.
Let's face it: Windows 95 is unusable by a non-computer-savvy user, as soon as there is the faintest trouble. The online help is designed for idiots (ex: you have printing problems, all it tells you is to check whether the printer is on...) - my mother, being a totally nontechnical person, has become allergic to it since it doesn't address any real problem. There are tons of undocumented things to know to repair anything.
Not that I would to sound presomptuous, but have you ever thought of going to school and learning how to write? Also, please note that only schoolchildren and fools think that the use of swearwords make them look stronger or more competent.
Slashdot Mirror
> In France, isn't it a fact, that a surprising percentage of the
> work force is in the public sector working for the
> government?
This percentage is made artificially high by the fact it counts
teachers in public schools, personnel of public hospital
and other categories of people that are not counted as such
in the US.
All the same, the US artificially lowers the number of
government employees by subcontracting government
work to companies working almost exclusively for the
government. Other countries would talk of "subsidies";
the US prefers to say "research grants for defense".
As for the overall impact of such a reform: I think that
substancial exemptions would anyway be granted.
This bill by no means prohibits proprietary software. It would just change GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT rules so that free software is preferred over propritary software.
Read the fucking documents. If you can't read French, then get someone to translate them.
But please don't speak without knowledge like this.
> You would think they would prefer an operating
> system that was designed in France, by
> Frenchmen, and whose native
> language is French, and can't be localized
> to other languages.
You've just described the United States of America!
Americans:
* hardly speak any foreign language;
* disregard any foreign invention (that is the
reason why the US is far backwards in
smart card technology: it's a French invention,
so it was regarded with suspicion)
* disregard foreign films - foreign films can't
be imported except in very select theaters,
because of cultural isolationism (the US
public basically dislike anything non
American) and protectionism from movie
companies;
it is interesting that numerous European films
are routinely "remade" by Hollywood, which
means that they take an American cast,
an American director and change the cities
from, say, Berlin or Paris to NY or LA,
while keeping the scenario
(think of "Three men and a baby", for instance)
* have made extensive use of 7-bit characters in software products, which makes them impossible
to use in 8-bit environments;
Let's add that the US Federal Government makes
foreigners sign lengthy, ununderstandable
legal documents in English with no translation
provided (ex: IRS form for the opening of a
bank account). Of course, any error is a triable
crime.
I can give precise references for each of this
points.
With all that evidence, I think it is clear
that the "language nazis" are rather the US
than France.
As for the claims that English speaking is
prohibited in France: laws on language in
France only pertain to:
* government business;
* contracts;
* advertisement (because of consumer protection).
There are additionnally laws on quotas in broadcast shows and music, but it is rather something to protect against the unjust concurrence from the US (may I repeat that while the US exports films, importing a film into the US is nearly impossible?).
Any other claim about "The French government trying to regulated the Internet so that French sites only speak French" is bullshit. Check your sources, or shut up.
If you have technical questions about Linux threads that
aren't answered in the FAQ and kernel documentation, I
suggest that you ask the author of the thread system,
Dr Xavier Leroy (Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr).
My recent experiences with the UK's alleged quality press is
that it has gone the way of the British popular press: tabloid
journalism full of sensationnalism, exaggerations and the like.
Take this article with a pinch of salt. It wouldn't be surprising
if they had grossly distorted what the scientists have said.
The Slashdot model has clearly weaknesses, among which is
a total lack of reliability of the posted information.
News posted on Slashdot have mostly appeared on other
media outlets, and Slashdot webmasters just add the link
with maybe some editorial comment, without making some
special effort to check whether the information is reliable
or not.
This scheme sometimes goes wrong: for instance, the BBC
ran some nonsense story about the French government
contesting the Greenwich meridian and organizing some
big party along the Paris meridian. This was bullshit.
Yet Slashdot posted the message, and there were
about 200 comments taking the information as genuine.
This leads to the next problem: the total lack of
responsability of Slashdot. In serious paper media,
readers or people involved in the printed story can
get some rebuttals printed. In Slashdot, it is impossible.
Ok, you can send some additional comment, but it'll
be drowned at the end of the list of comments, and
won't cancel the possible bad effects of the story.
I advise everybody to take information from the BBC with a grain of salt.
While the BBC used to enjoy a good reputation when it came to news, it looks like it's now drifting the way of the British paper press, that is, to tabloid-like "information".
For a precise example: the BBC had a story, linked here on Slashdot, saying that the French Government, disapproving of the use of the Greenwich meridian instead of the Paris one as reference, was organizing the plantation of olive groves and a mass picnic along the meridian. This was bogus. This nevertheless generated 200 comments here.
So, until some serious press gives an independent report on this, I'd not believe in this too much.
1. Select the surface around which you want to draw, using the circular selection or whatever.
2. Use Edit->Stroke in the menu.
This will stroke around the current selection.
Everybody, including Gimp developer, has seen that it is an unduly convoluted way to draw a circle and that many would-be users simply think you can't draw circles. A more user-friendly interface is being worked on.
Unsaid assumption: for any country X different from the US, from any kind of infrastructure Y, Y in X is of course more primitive than Y in US.
:-)
My own experience is that the power grid in the US seems to be more prone to problems that the one in Europe. I've never heard of entire French cities, with whole suburbs, put into the dark by an accident, while it happens regularly in the US, including in the high-teach areas of the San Francisco bay.
From my experience, the phone infrastructures in France are as modern, maybe more, than those in the US.
The current problem is the following: there used to be a state monopoly on all communications (now called France Telecom). This monopoly has been suppressed for long-distance calls (by simply pressing 7 instead of 0 in front of a long-distance call, you select Cegetel for instance). On the other hand, it will take a few years before concurrence for local calls.
In the meantime, France Telecom is prohibited by concurrence authorities from breaking down the prices for local calls, for instance by proposing unmetered local calls. The reason is that other operators, newcomers to the marketplace, wouldn't be able to propose at first so interesting pricings.
A recent decision said that, in the end, it could sale "batches" of 20 hours a month of local calls, for Internet use especially. The forecasts are that it makes France, which used to be one of the most expensive European countries for Net access, one of the cheapest.
XFree86 4.0 is going forward slowly.
There are major changes, mainly the driver structures has been enhanced, allowing for dynamically loadable, OS-independent drivers to be loaded. This is intended for boards manufacturers; for now, if they wanted to ship Linux drivers with the board, they had to put a full X server.
Unfortunately, that means that some porting is needed for the old drivers.
Other added goodies include:
- antialiased graphics (especially TrueType text);
this is currently under development
- 3D stuff.
Actually, as far as I know, most developped countries spy on each other. It goes usually unnoticed, since matters are usually settled discreetly between the concerned governments (we are supposed to be allied, remember?). Sometimes, things don't go so smooth, and "diplomats" get expelled. For instance, a few years ago France and the USA respectively sent packing US and French spies.
I worked in an US company which was heavily subsidized by the US federal government. Oh, wait. They don't call that subsidies, but defense research contracts. Nevermind.
As far as I know, Airbus hasn't been subsidized since they broke even quite a while ago.
www.serbia-info.com aka www2.eunet.yu works for me. I'm in France and the traceroute goes through Greece.
.yu on its side of the Net. Could people in the US try it again?
Of course, I can't test whether the US government censors
I've thought several times about suing a spammer for keeping
my name, email address (and thus my employer's name) in
a database without noticing me, in violation of the French
"computing and freedom" act.
Problem: I get very little spam from France. Almost all the
spam I get comes from the United States.
Let's note that spammers are often very stupid: they
spam non-US address like mine with things only
pertaining to US citizens or to US residents.
I don't know whether that's a troll or gross lack of knowledge.
Are you suggesting that the UN has a standing army? Where?
I think that some people here are overheating.
What we've got here is an international agency; mainly led by the US, EU, Japan, proposing a plan pertaining to domain names. Such a proposition has no legal enforcing value by itself... it is a proposition.
Furthermore, it does not propose the creation of any international body to oversee anything. So it would be as the current agreements on intellectual property, trademarks, and similar things.
If you don't agree with this, don't go potty mouth about the UN. You should rather ask yourself whether those you elected to the US congress are able to understand the issues involved, because it is them who will vote any enforceable statute on the topic.
I'm French and have worked for about 6 months in an US company doing research in computer science. In this laboratory and in the teams I knew in similar areas elsewhere in the US (Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University), there seems to be a minority of Americans. I saw all kinds of nationalities (French, Algerian, German, Israeli, Russian, Indian, British, Irish, Chinese...) but few Americans in the research staff (graduate students, guests and permanent staff).
I do not have explanations for this fact, except the fact that US companies are ready to pay a foreign student thousands of dollars a month (whereas European companies tend to underpay young workers just because they are young and looking for jobs), and thus are attracting people like me...
Some points about an embargo:
* An embargo will make Serbia poorer, but won't by itself remove Milosevic. You can be a dictator in a poor country as well; in fact, it's easier.
* Victims in Kosovo are not attacked with expensive, high-tech weapons. A pack of angry men armed with submachine guns (even shotguns) is enough to force all the inhabitants of a bunch of houses to flee. Such weapons are likely to be useable for years after the embargo is put into effect; in the meantime, all the victims will have been killed or driven out.
* Embargoes don't work if there's an external sponsor (like the USSR for Cuba - now we have Bosnia).
If Russia wants to send planes and ships to Serbia, you won't be able to prevent them from arriving, short of sinking them. Do you want to start World War III?
* The embargoed country will show pictures of sick children and accuse the embargoers of killing them with the embargo. This won't play well on TV.
[ The fact that the dictator could suppress the real or imaginary problems of those children by leaving is going to be ignored. ]
Yo! Yet another grave case of dragging communism etc... where it doesn't belong.
Reminds me of Communist newspapers. Anything they don't like, they tie it to capitalist oppression.
Either this is a troll, or somebody here really needs to get a life.
With kpackage, install a RPM is easy. Anyway, rpm -i is far more easier than installing a MS-DOS application (remember, DOS and its brain-damaged memory setups?), and DOS used to be popular...
What I think is badly designed is default configurations. Things like:
- autofs should be used by default for Zip, CD-Rom and floppy;
- KDE should be default, using kdm for login;
- kpackage should ask for the root password when wanting to install something when non-root.
Etc...
You are absolutely right in saying that tinkering with configuration, reinstallations and the like should not suck one's time.
Sadly for me, I am computer-savvy and know several non-computer-savvy people that run Windows 95. As a consequence, I'm frequently asked to repair their computers.
Windows 95 is an user-friendly OS... as long as nothing goes wrong. As soon as there is a little problem, it can drive you into pure Kafka.
For instance: Windows 95 can detect a peripheral and DEMAND that you introduce the CD-Rom for the drivers BEFORE it has detected the CD-Rom drive and has installed the drivers for it
For instance: I had to reinstall Windows 95 on my mother's computer because she had installed the driver for her printer off-site (ie without the printer connected). After we connected the printer, the system would DEMAND that we give it some weirdo file, then hung.
Repairing 95 on other people's computers can suck a significant part of my time (repairing my mother's means spending the week-end there).
I'm not the only person with such problems: a friend of mine spent half the afternoon with his father, then his father-in-law, each having trouble with this supposedly "user-friendly" OS.
Let's face it: Windows 95 is unusable by a non-computer-savvy user, as soon as there is the faintest trouble. The online help is designed for idiots (ex: you have printing problems, all it tells you is to check whether the printer is on...) - my mother, being a totally nontechnical person, has become allergic to it since it doesn't address any real problem. There are tons of undocumented things to know to repair anything.
Not that I would to sound presomptuous, but have you ever thought of going to school and learning how to write? Also, please note that only schoolchildren and fools think that the use of swearwords make them look stronger or more competent.
Many unemployed people don't have the money to pay for electricity, let alone a computer and an Internet access.