this comes from the French notion of droit d'auteur, or author's right, which are indeed non-transferable. French law only allows financial revenue to be transfered, excluding all other rights.
<p>
Even though the French legislation fully complies with international agreements on copyright law, it keeps as its primary reference the notion of droit d'auteur, or 'authorright', and considers an author has permanent, inalienable and non-transferable rights on their creation. An example is that French movie directors are much more likely to have the final cut than producers in France.
<p>
Concerning patents, things are mostly managed on the EU level, with roughly the same rules as the US patent office, except that patents are more expensive to file, so their is not this flood of nonsense patent applications.
>> Math is always news for nerds, because programming is very much like the activity proving theorems
Actually proving theorem and programming _are_ the same things under certain constraints (basically that you don't prove that the [the property being false] is false in order to prove that the property is true). This is called the Curry-Howard isomorphism and is the general idea behind many formalizations of programming.
After the Ariane 5 maiden flight failure in '96, the software was tested by an academic lab in France with heavily mathematical formal methods. The arithmetic exception that caused the $1b explosion was proved to be possible, along with several other 'dangerous' operations. Formal methods are now taken much more seriously and the incident is invariably told as an incentive to students in majors that relate to the mathematical aspects of programming.
Another formal system originated in France is the Methode B, that consists in progressively refining logical statements that apply to the desired behaviour of your program (like assert() you put before and after the body of a function) into the implementation of the behaviour :
Actually I find the article rather uninteresting, but anyway here is a "human" translation (sorry for the bad english)
G8 : States and corporations go for hunting 'cyberpirates'
--abstract--
Jean-Pierre Chevenement (France's interior minister) rules out the creation, as the American suggest, of a world computer police that could have tracked suspects beyond borders. Governments want to convince corporations to invest in their own security.
How can an international 'Penal Code' can be established to fight all forms of intrusions on computer networks ? This is one of the main objectives of the most industrialized countries, confronted to an upsurge of 'cybercriminality', this new kind of delinquency, sometimes even terrorism, that threatens the interests of consummers, but also corporations and states. Website cracking, destructive messages transmissions like in the ILOVEYOU case, broadcasting of pedophilia on the Internet : the cybercriminality exists in various kinds, their common point being their ability to ignore borders so they can escape any control. 'Net heavens', comparable to 'Tax heavens', might proliferate, especially in Asia.
Since Monday the 15th, security in cyberspace is the theme of a three day meeting of the G8 (most industrialized countries) in Paris. Diplomats, magistrates, policemens, as well as members of organizationss in charge of protecting private life have been invited to chat with representatives of 150 of the most important companies if the IT and communication sector.
" Points of Contacts "
This cinference is part of the process that was started in the Lyon summit in 1996, when the G8 countries have adopted "points of contact" to share their informations over cybercrime. The Paris meeting should pave the way for actions of head of states and governments who will meet in Okinawa, Japan, in July.
For once, Europeans are less favorable to State intervention than Americans. In their analysis of the new criminality related to computer networks, the US favor a very repressive approach. The Europeans don't want any 'cyberpolice' to have the right to violate the private life a anyone in the name of the interests of the states. "They tell that the Internet is a territory with no right, that necessitates because of its own nature, a specific juridicial regime or a cyberpolice that would go beyond the states frame and their sovereignity. This is not true. The States keep the ability, and the responsibility, to act on their own." declared JP Chevenement, introducing the debates. The French stance is widely shared by Europeans and Japanese.
The Americans were first favoring an all-repressive system. Washington wanted a system where the intelligence services of the whole world could bypass judiciary institutions to track the criminals faster. The US consider cybercriminality to be a national defense priority issue. But their interest is mainly economics : they don't want to slow the rise of electronic commerce, that is supposed to fuel the american and world economic growth.
Confronted to European reluctance to engage in this crusade, the Americans have moderated their stance ("put water in their wine";) ). "The American discourse has changed" says the French delegation. Beyond the different initial positions, the G8 countries now make a unanimous constatation that anonimity and private life of everyone must be respected, but should not be a screen behind which anything could be done.
"States Sovereignity"
Thus, the delegations try to harmonize the definition of 'cybercrime' and to degine the procedures for an efficient cooperation within the states' sovereignity. As an example, the notion of "incitation to racial hatred" does not exist in the US. And nothing prevents US based neonazi websites to broadcast their propaganda to Europe.
The G8 States have coordinated their opinions but they still need to convince corporations to take their part of the responsibility. This is the main goal of the G8 meeting in Paris, that gathers for the first times the governments and the private sector. "The industrials want anything and the contrary", says a member of the French delegation. They want a maximum security for a minimum of cost. One of the main difficulties met by the states is to convince ISPs to keep during several months the date that they have, to allow the preservation of elements of proof. Regulatory will on one side, libertary aspirations of the "net economy" on the other : the conflict that looms is far from being resolved.
Boeing is massively subsided through military research credits. It was saved by those credits in the 70s.
If there was no political will from France and Germany, there would be only one aircraft manufacturer in the world. I wonder how you slashdotters who are often quick to stand for diversity and competition in IT technology would take that.
The American aerospace industry has been founded on government funding, be it the WWII industrial developpement (which _made_ boeing), or the Apollo program.
Airlines don't choose randomly. Airbus planes are competitive, and generaly more innovative that their Seattle counterparts. In less than 20 years they have conquered a 50% marketshare.
I'm not completely sure but AFAIK French troops fought against hispanic Mexicans in Mexico (an adventure that has not left much in History, but is still remembered in the French military tradition as the first war fought by the Foreign Legion).
I've never heard about French canadians fighting against US people. French settlers in canada have fought against british settlers before canada was a country.
Ironically, you failed to mention the only episode when French troops actually engaged American troops, that is, the invasion of North Africa in 1942. The engagement was very minor, since the strongly anti-Gaulist US army negociated with the Vichy administration that the latter would be kept in charge of Algeria. The occupying Americans even neglected to ask the Vichy administration to drop Vichy's anti-jews laws, which happened only after de Gaulle took over the French North Africa's administration a few months later.
In all European countries, ISPs make a living out of providing free internet access. They get revenue from telcos who charge on a per-minute basis. There is no subsidy involved. I suppose the city of Hamburg will not setup servers in the town hall, but will rather hire private ISPs to do the job. This is more like a PR operation. Nobody's locked in anything. If you want to access the internet from your TV cable or ADSL, nothing keeps anyone from providing you that service. You are freed from the phone charges, but have to pay an ISP, that's all.
OO has brought nothing, and certainly not productivity. Reusability is a joke when you see the global picture.
Problems in software design are not solved by abstracting things away from the implementer. It amounts to hiding the dust under the carpet.
Languages need focus on a problem / platform rather than genericity. They need simplicity rather than high level abstractions. They need to integrate the worked-on-by-a-team and the code-has-to-be-maintained-by-someone-else problems rather than reusability. C++ is dirty, has no clear semantics, no standard that is fully implemented, no serious typing discipline.
Oh they did recently when Blair thought that BAe could make a deal with the Germans, bundle Airbus in a company dominated by an Anglo-German conglomerate and sell it to the Americans with a good profit.
Things has not turned up this way however. BAe Systems is a minor and reluctant participant in Airbus, and while the French and Germans are discussing whether the A3XX should be assembled in Hamburg or Toulouse, all they manage to do is suggesting that it be assembled in the US... Thanks to our British friends for their inimitable sense of humor however.
Last time I was in the US I saw this show on Fox that shows tapes taken by employers of their emplyees with hidden cameras.
So this first class seats stuff is just about Air France trying American-style management and making sure the people that clean the plane do not talk about stealing headsets or newspapers left by the passengers:>
It does not seem like the UK government gives a sh*t about Airbus. British Airways, which has always been a notorious UK govt puppet, has long refused to buy any Airbus (as El Al did after Albright came to publicly threaten the israelis to stop US aid if they did buy airbus). They are trying to make a transition to an alliance with Boeing, especially since BAe Systems has become a very minor participant in Airbus when the other companies of the consortium have decided to merge.
I'm personnaly sorry of that and have some nostalgy of the times when the UK and French aeronautics industries could do great things together (e.g. Concorde and many common military programs in the 60s). The Germans are much more difficult to stimulate and do not have more ambition than the British have now for this sector, but at least they feel that there interests are common to ours and not to the US's, and their public opinion is not manipulated by constant insulting anti-French flame by tabloid newspaper.
>>> the UK is part of the Airbus consortium, so >>> according to the above, France is suing the UK >>> for it's own good. (it's nice of them to care!)
You're wellcome. The UK's doctrinal resentment of the government promoting any industry (apart from banking, insurance of shipwrecks and other money laundering activities), has already cost them their car industry, now their aeronautics are next in line.
Airbus will be controlled by a French-German dominated company (EADS), after the merger between France's Aerospatiale Matra, Germany's DASA and Spain's CASA in the next few month. FBW technology and generaly the electronics are mainly French, the Germans making the body of the plane. UK's BAe Systems is left with the wings, and I hope with nothing soon, so that they can go and suck Boeing's cock as they have long dreamed of.
well you're just unaware that there exist technology to produce software that is sufficiently secure to do that job. And that is precisely a European speciality, and something different in European CS courses. This also leads to secure railway signaling system, electronics in car engines and brakes, etc.
This is not quite a good time to rant about Boeing's reliability being superior to Airbus'. Ask Alaska Airlines guys.
An other thing : Each and every market lost by Boeing to airbus in the past 15 years (and that's half of the world's sales) have been lost because of the inability of Boeing to adopt reliable fly-by-wire technology. This involves putting hundreds of passenger's lives in the hands of computer software, something I don't want to be done in the country that made Bill Gates a billionnaire.
Yes they are dead. But are they dead because they were not adequate for the needs of people, or are they dead because the big players whose cash cow is the PC market, namely Microsoft and Intel, have killed them ?
Where is the sanity of unleashing twice the computing power that helped bring Neil Armstrong to the surface of the moon for the purpose of editing a letter for your insurance company or sending an e-mail to your son in college ?
99 % of home users have no use for power outside of game FX. PS2 will do these, supposedly pretty well.
I'm more eager to see more and better wireless devices that get me plugged on the road than GHz processors on 25 years-old platforms in ugly boxes that cost me space and electricity.
Slashdot Mirror
this comes from the French notion of droit d'auteur, or author's right, which are indeed non-transferable. French law only allows financial revenue to be transfered, excluding all other rights.
<p>
Even though the French legislation fully complies with international agreements on copyright law, it keeps as its primary reference the notion of droit d'auteur, or 'authorright', and considers an author has permanent, inalienable and non-transferable rights on their creation. An example is that French movie directors are much more likely to have the final cut than producers in France.
<p>
Concerning patents, things are mostly managed on the EU level, with roughly the same rules as the US patent office, except that patents are more expensive to file, so their is not this flood of nonsense patent applications.
Never heard of the New Economy ?
Giving $1M when the problem _is_ solved is an old-fashioned, actual-results-based, old-economy way of doing things.
CNNfn taught me that the New Economy way of doing it is :
-- give me $10M now. I promise to hire the brightest people on earth.
-- If I don't get anything done, I'll fill an IPO and screw some shareholders.
>> Math is always news for nerds, because programming is very much like the activity proving theorems
Actually proving theorem and programming _are_ the same things under certain constraints (basically that you don't prove that the [the property being false] is false in order to prove that the property is true). This is called the Curry-Howard isomorphism and is the general idea behind many formalizations of programming.
Encryption with keys up to 128 bits it completely free in France.
better link for the Methode B :
. html
http://archive.comlab.ox.ac.uk/formal-methods/b
After the Ariane 5 maiden flight failure in '96, the software was tested by an academic lab in France with heavily mathematical formal methods. The arithmetic exception that caused the $1b explosion was proved to be possible, along with several other 'dangerous' operations. Formal methods are now taken much more seriously and the incident is invariably told as an incentive to students in majors that relate to the mathematical aspects of programming.
o me/
Another formal system originated in France is the Methode B, that consists in progressively refining logical statements that apply to the desired behaviour of your program (like assert() you put before and after the body of a function) into the implementation of the behaviour :
http://estas1.inrets.fr:8001/ESTAS/BUG/WWW/BUGh
An academic formal methods team that checks the Ariane 5 software:
http://pauillac.inria.fr/para/eng.htm
http://pauillac.inria.fr/para/eng.htm
the US has no more exclusivity on breeding rednecks than they have on innovatiing technologies ;)
Actually I find the article rather uninteresting,
;) ).
but anyway here is a "human" translation
(sorry for the bad english)
G8 : States and corporations go for hunting 'cyberpirates'
--abstract--
Jean-Pierre Chevenement (France's interior minister) rules out the
creation, as the American suggest, of a world computer police that
could have tracked suspects beyond borders. Governments want to
convince corporations to invest in their own security.
How can an international 'Penal Code' can be established to fight all
forms of intrusions on computer networks ? This is one of the main
objectives of the most industrialized countries, confronted to an
upsurge of 'cybercriminality', this new kind of delinquency, sometimes
even terrorism, that threatens the interests of consummers, but also
corporations and states. Website cracking, destructive messages
transmissions like in the ILOVEYOU case, broadcasting of pedophilia on
the Internet : the cybercriminality exists in various kinds, their
common point being their ability to ignore borders so they can escape
any control. 'Net heavens', comparable to 'Tax heavens', might
proliferate, especially in Asia.
Since Monday the 15th, security in cyberspace is the theme of a three
day meeting of the G8 (most industrialized countries) in
Paris. Diplomats, magistrates, policemens, as well as members of
organizationss in charge of protecting private life have been invited
to chat with representatives of 150 of the most important companies if
the IT and communication sector.
" Points of Contacts "
This cinference is part of the process that was started in the Lyon
summit in 1996, when the G8 countries have adopted "points of contact"
to share their informations over cybercrime. The Paris meeting should
pave the way for actions of head of states and governments who will
meet in Okinawa, Japan, in July.
For once, Europeans are less favorable to State intervention than
Americans. In their analysis of the new criminality related to
computer networks, the US favor a very repressive approach. The
Europeans don't want any 'cyberpolice' to have the right to violate
the private life a anyone in the name of the interests of the
states. "They tell that the Internet is a territory with no right,
that necessitates because of its own nature, a specific juridicial
regime or a cyberpolice that would go beyond the states frame and
their sovereignity. This is not true. The States keep the ability, and
the responsibility, to act on their own." declared JP Chevenement,
introducing the debates. The French stance is widely shared by
Europeans and Japanese.
The Americans were first favoring an all-repressive
system. Washington wanted
a system where the intelligence services of the whole
world could bypass judiciary institutions to track the criminals
faster. The US consider cybercriminality to be a national defense
priority issue. But their interest is mainly economics : they don't
want to slow the rise of electronic commerce, that is supposed to fuel
the american and world economic growth.
Confronted to European reluctance to engage in this crusade, the
Americans have moderated their stance ("put water in their wine"
"The American discourse has changed" says the French
delegation. Beyond the different initial positions, the G8 countries
now make a unanimous constatation that anonimity and
private life of everyone must be respected, but should not be a screen
behind which anything could be done.
"States Sovereignity"
Thus, the delegations try to harmonize the definition of 'cybercrime'
and to degine the procedures for an efficient cooperation within the
states' sovereignity. As an example, the notion of "incitation to
racial hatred" does not exist in the US. And nothing prevents US based
neonazi websites to broadcast their propaganda to Europe.
The G8 States have coordinated their opinions but they still need to
convince corporations to take their part of the responsibility. This
is the main goal of the G8 meeting in Paris, that gathers for the
first times the governments and the private sector. "The industrials
want anything and the contrary", says a member of the French
delegation. They want a maximum security for a minimum of cost. One of
the main difficulties met by the states is to convince ISPs to keep
during several months the date that they have, to allow the
preservation of elements of proof. Regulatory will on one side,
libertary aspirations of the "net economy" on the other : the conflict
that looms is far from being resolved.
Boeing is massively subsided through military research credits. It was saved by those credits in the 70s.
If there was no political will from France and Germany, there would be only one aircraft manufacturer in the world. I wonder how you slashdotters who are often quick to stand for diversity and competition in IT technology would take that.
The American aerospace industry has been founded on government funding, be it the WWII industrial developpement (which _made_ boeing), or the Apollo program.
Airlines don't choose randomly. Airbus planes are competitive, and generaly more innovative that their Seattle counterparts. In less than 20 years they have conquered a 50% marketshare.
I'm not completely sure but AFAIK French troops fought against hispanic Mexicans in Mexico (an adventure that has not left much in History, but is still remembered in the French military tradition as the first war fought by the Foreign Legion).
I've never heard about French canadians fighting against US people. French settlers in canada have fought against british settlers before canada was a country.
Ironically, you failed to mention the only episode when French troops actually engaged American troops, that is, the invasion of North Africa in 1942. The engagement was very minor, since the strongly anti-Gaulist US army negociated with the Vichy administration that the latter would be kept in charge of Algeria. The occupying Americans even neglected to ask the Vichy administration to drop Vichy's anti-jews laws, which happened only after de Gaulle took over the French North Africa's administration a few months later.
In all European countries, ISPs make a living out of providing free internet access. They get revenue from telcos who charge on a per-minute basis. There is no subsidy involved. I suppose the city of Hamburg will not setup servers in the town hall, but will rather hire private ISPs to do the job. This is more like a PR operation.
Nobody's locked in anything. If you want to access the internet from your TV cable or ADSL, nothing keeps anyone from providing you that service. You are freed from the phone charges, but have to pay an ISP, that's all.
OO has brought nothing, and certainly not productivity. Reusability is a joke when you see the global picture.
Problems in software design are not solved by abstracting things away from the implementer. It amounts to hiding the dust under the carpet.
Languages need focus on a problem / platform rather than genericity. They need simplicity rather than high level abstractions. They need to integrate the worked-on-by-a-team and the code-has-to-be-maintained-by-someone-else problems rather than reusability. C++ is dirty, has no clear semantics, no standard that is fully implemented, no serious typing discipline.
Oh they did recently when Blair thought that BAe could make a deal with the Germans, bundle Airbus in a company dominated by an Anglo-German conglomerate and sell it to the Americans with a good profit.
Things has not turned up this way however. BAe Systems is a minor and reluctant participant in Airbus, and while the French and Germans are discussing whether the A3XX should be assembled in Hamburg or Toulouse, all they manage to do is suggesting that it be assembled in the US... Thanks to our British friends for their inimitable sense of humor however.
produces nothing ?
Er AFAIK we have the fourth GDP in the world.
Last time I was in the US I saw this show on Fox that shows tapes taken by employers of their emplyees with hidden cameras.
:>
So this first class seats stuff is just about Air France trying American-style management and making sure the people that clean the plane do not talk about stealing headsets or newspapers left by the passengers
It does not seem like the UK government gives a sh*t about Airbus. British Airways, which has always been a notorious UK govt puppet, has long refused to buy any Airbus (as El Al did after Albright came to publicly threaten the israelis to stop US aid if they did buy airbus). They are trying to make a transition to an alliance with Boeing, especially since BAe Systems has become a very minor participant in Airbus when the other companies of the consortium have decided to merge.
I'm personnaly sorry of that and have some nostalgy of the times when the UK and French aeronautics industries could do great things together (e.g. Concorde and many common military programs in the 60s). The Germans are much more difficult to stimulate and do not have more ambition than the British have now for this sector, but at least they feel that there interests are common to ours and not to the US's, and their public opinion is not manipulated by constant insulting anti-French flame by tabloid newspaper.
so wat ? Phillips is not a US, nor a UK company AFAIK.
>>> the UK is part of the Airbus consortium, so >>> according to the above, France is suing the UK >>> for it's own good. (it's nice of them to care!)
You're wellcome. The UK's doctrinal resentment of the government promoting any industry (apart from banking, insurance of shipwrecks and other money laundering activities), has already cost them their car industry, now their aeronautics are next in line.
Er, last time France considered the UK as an ally to defend against Germany, who has fled to defend their own country ?
send la vache !
Airbus will be controlled by a French-German
dominated company (EADS), after the merger between France's Aerospatiale Matra, Germany's DASA and Spain's CASA in the next few month. FBW technology and generaly the electronics are mainly French, the Germans making the body of the plane. UK's BAe Systems is left with the wings, and I hope with nothing soon, so that they can go and suck Boeing's cock as they have long dreamed of.
well you're just unaware that there exist technology to produce software that is sufficiently secure to do that job. And that is precisely a European speciality, and something different in European CS courses. This also leads to secure railway signaling system, electronics in car engines and brakes, etc.
This is not quite a good time to rant about Boeing's reliability being superior to Airbus'.
Ask Alaska Airlines guys.
An other thing : Each and every market lost by Boeing to airbus in the past 15 years (and that's half of the world's sales) have been lost because of the inability of Boeing to adopt reliable fly-by-wire technology. This involves putting hundreds of passenger's lives in the hands of computer software, something I don't want to be done in the country that made Bill Gates a billionnaire.
Yes they are dead. But are they dead because they were not adequate for the needs of people, or are they dead because the big players whose cash cow is the PC market, namely Microsoft and Intel, have killed them ?
Where is the sanity of unleashing twice the computing power that helped bring Neil Armstrong to the surface of the moon for the purpose of editing a letter for your insurance company or sending an e-mail to your son in college ?
99 % of home users have no use for power outside of game FX. PS2 will do these, supposedly pretty well.
I'm more eager to see more and better wireless devices that get me plugged on the road than GHz processors on 25 years-old platforms in ugly boxes that cost me space and electricity.