Considering that practically all the queries come from developped countries, it is not that surprising that German is more queried than French: there are approximately 70 million Native French speakers in the developped countries (in France, Quebec, Belgium, Switzerland) and almost 100 million native German speakers (in Germany, Austria, Switzerland).
Besides, for the moment, the Internet is more widely used in Germany than in France. In part because of the Minitel, and more generally Northern Europe is more connected than Southern Europe (which may be because life is less boring in the neighboorhood of the mediterranean sea, but that's another story:-)).
Wrong. Most "trendy" French businessmen believe it has become a sign of archaism to keep on speaking French when doing business. The last "chic" is to speak English in a reunion, without any reasonable reason, surrounded exclusively by native French speakers. More specifically, english is in some sense the "right-wing" language, that is, the language of Anglo-Saxon style capitalism, and French is the "left-wing" language, ie the language of continental social-democracy. I'm caricaturing a bit, but not that much.
When a French company goes "global" (Alcatel, Vivendi, etc...), English becomes the official language used by the executives to produce documents.
Because it has all the great functional features that can make Lisp programmers happy.
Because it has a wonderful OO model which can make all OO programmers happy.
Because it has super fast compilers that can make C and C++ programmers happy.
Because it is great for imperative programming and for functional programming.
Because it is great for procedural programming and for OO programming.
Because it is as multiplatform and portable as Java.
Because it is designed to please everyone without compromising on anything, and, put more simply, because it can reconciliate the C, Java, Lisp and C++ community.
Because it can even be used indifferently as a scripting or a system language.
Because it is great for teaching AND for the real world.
Because its compilers are libre software and its design and developement are made in a very open fashion.
Actually, considering that the KDE project started 1 year before the Gnome project (summer 96 vs summer 97), and looking at the respective advancements of the two projects, I'm not at all convinced by your theory. KDE may be ahead in terms of integrated desktop, but not in terms of applications (abiword, gnumeric, graphics-related softwares, pan, etc... are way ahead or their KDE counterparts) and developper's libraries.
Gnome's weakness is, and has always been, its file manager, which is the centralizing component of a desktop. Gmc was a failure, and Nautilus is a failure too for the moment. Its configuration tool is weak too. In the meanwhile. Kfm/Konqueror and to a lesser extent Kcontrol are KDE's greatest achievements. Hence the contrast and the difficulty to make fair comparisons.
Besides plagiarism, another annoying thing with Disney and Hollywood in general is a peculiar form of nationalism, in the sense of either historical falsification, or slight modification of the stories to make sure that it fits with American patriotism.
Here we have a typical example. Instead of beginning in 1889's France, the story takes place in 1914's America. Why? Because this story involves cool heroes, a cool machine with an highly advanced technology, built by original and very wealthy people. Well, this HAS to be in America, doesnt'it?
This example follows the example of this Hollywoodian movie on the battle of England, where the allies manage to decode the German communication for submarines (again!), or something like that: this event was key in the battle of England. The British achieved it. In the Hollywoodian movie, the Americans do it. Pretty vicious, huh? It's based on actual historical events, but it's falsified to make sure that the heroes are American.
There are hundreds of examples of these types each year from Hollywood. It may be just because it is assumed to be good for business (although I know that Disney also has quite a conservative culture and has a problem with France), but it's morally unjustifiable. Moreover, which over country would dare do something like this than America? Can you imaging the Chinese movie industry creating "historical" movies, where the chinese are organizing the D-day and saving Europe from nazi Germany? Or can you imagine Zimbabwe shooting a movie where extraterrestrials attack, and where all the key events (their arrival, as well as their defeat) take place in Zimbabwe?
I know it's "just entertainment", and that it shouldn't be taken too seriously. Except that the power of Hollywood on the minds of the people everywhere on the planet has become tremendous. Hollywood can manipulate the people on a global scale, but to the advantage of one specific country, and of specific and sometimes questionable values. This explains in part the irritation of several countries with the American movie industry.
Indeed, 30 years ago, French still had to make a serious self-examination of its Vichyist past. But things have completely changed since then. The Vichyist past has become the prime obsession of historians, intellectuals, politicians, and finally of the average Frenchman. It has monopolized most of the debates and conversations during the 80s and the 90s.
> Yes, and forbidding the sale of these items
> cures these people of their problems, just turns
> them into docile bunnies. It is well-documented > somewhere, I am just sure of it!
I was not saying that the ruling is right; it's not. I'm just saying that the motivations underlying it were to adress a problem which has nothing to do with "France not facing her history", or this sort of things.
> The problem here is that there is a country that
> cannot face history.
Among the numerous negative and preposterous stereotypes on contemporary France, this one may be even further from reality than the others. France faces its Vichyist past in the eyes, sometimes even up to a point of obsession.
Here, we have a bunch of bigots who have found a sympathetic judge. Nazi artefacts can be seen everywhere in France, including of course TV and history books (including those for young children). If you enter a French library or bookstore, you will find that several shelves are occupied by history or fiction books related to the nazi era and/or the collaboration and the Vichyist goverment.
In the specific case of Yahoo! auctions, those who asked for this ruling were distrurbed by the fact that these items are very probably sold to sick animals, who do not have much interest in history, but rather a fascination for hate, violence, genocide or morbidity.
In European countries, where you're billed on a pay-per-length of connection basis, the biggest asset of dial-up, ie cheapness, fades away for heavy Internet users (which I am). I share my life between Paris and New York: in France, I have broadband access, whereas I'm still with good old dial-up in New York.
Otherwise, the claim "dial-up is a standard, and standards tend to stay" is rather Dvorakiesque (read: stupid) in my opinion: standards stay for compatiliblity reasons, plain and simple. This is not a problem with broadband: you don't have to change your PC, your operating system or the plugs in your appartement when you decide to go cable or DSL: just buy a modem.
Folks, I'm sorry to moderate the enthusiasm of all the fans, but Iron Chef is a dramatically stupid and mediocre show. Culinary speaking, it's nothing more than a mix of mediocrity, ignorance, and sensationalism. As Bernard Shaw, one the the best American food experts, put it when Ducasse opened his restaurant under harsch criticism in New York: "The same drop in standards that, in culinary instruction, has taken us from Julia Child and Jacques Pepin to Bobby Flay and the Iron Chefs has infected the world of food criticism as well, where a commitment to professional excellence and devotion to the enterprise have given way to sensationalism and a sometimes truculent ignorance."
There was a time, not long ago, when New American haute cuisine was on a roll and was supposed to catch up within a few decades with French haute cuisine. Well, if the majority of Americans let themselves intoxicate with this lousy and hype-based vision of gastronomy as the one which appears in shows like Iron Chef, this dream should be over really soon now.
For the 15340398th time: the Yahoo! ruling has nothing to do with the French government. The French justice is completely independent from the government. In this specific ruling, a bunch of bigots have found a sympathetic judge who has a very peculiar and twisted interpretation of French (mild) laws on racial hatred.
It's amazing how this kind of misinformation can be resilient.
And, BTW, at least the French did not force Yahoo! to remove their porn videos pages, but others oh-so-free did...
Re:I hope you hate GTK and the Gimp (troll below)
on
Eazel Come, Eazel Go?
·
· Score: 2
Simply because the gimp people decided themselves to dump Motif and write a free toolkit as a replacement.
Phase 1: Motif-based Gimp.
Phase 2: Uh, we're stupid, Motif sucks, Lesstif does not seem to come along nicely, we've made a mistake. Let's write our own libre toolkit and replace Motif.
All this without being forced by an external influence and external criticisms.
Don't tell me you cannot see the difference with KDE's early days.
Oh, gimme a fucking break, will you!? We're talking about a $7 million investment, from the FTT branch. If you seriously think that the French government decides of such small investments for the remote FFT branch, you're completely clueless.
And where do you think ADSL will be in 5 years, compared to cable, RNIS and regular modems? In 10 years? If you seriously think that the cable will take over DSL, well, I'd be happy to bet on it:)
A large part (maybe the majority) of Alcatel shares are on the French market, not on the American one. Alcatel opened a capitalization on Wall Street just very recently. In the meanwhile, Cisco and Nortel don't have market caps in Europe. But that's not the point: if you knew what you were talking about, you would never compare the sizes of different companies using capitalizations, but using revenues. Otherwise Yahoo!, just 12 months ago, was "larger" than Boeing: makes sense, doesn't it?
> In really precise niche markets like electronic
> components.
Yeah, right. Like, for example, the tiny Alcatel which happens to be #1 on a tiny niche market such as ADSL, and which happens to be just bigger than tiny dwarves such as Cisco and Nortel combined. Niche markets, I'm telling you!
As far as FT is concerned, you obviously have no clue on the nomination process of the CEO, and on the decision-taking process inside these part-private part-state owned companies. You also seem to have a very peculiar source of informations for your percentage figures...
Oh, well. I suppose it's much more comfortable to see France through archaic cliches. Makes things simpler, doesn't it? What fun would it be to try o get a clue, if it forced you to ask yourself some serious questions?
> Is France trying to compete with other countries
> in todays electronics?
1st, France does very well in today's electronics, thank you. 2nd, it's not the French government who decides where FTT will invest its money, so THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.
You may not be a conspiracist, but at least you're a stereotype-prone ignorant.
Very well, I'm glad to see that we now have three excellent libre software browsers (Konqueror, Galeon, Mozilla), and that they are improving very quickly, but... for the moment I'm still forced to use Netscape 4.* to do online banking (I think it's 128-bit encryption, I'm at Citibank). Even with PSM, even with https support activated... don't ask me why, I'm not an expert at crypto, all I know is that the problem is here.
So, can anyone tell me is this changes with Mozilla 0.9? If not, does anyone have an idea of when we will have a solution for this?
Slashdot Mirror
Considering that practically all the queries come from developped countries, it is not that surprising that German is more queried than French: there are approximately 70 million Native French speakers in the developped countries (in France, Quebec, Belgium, Switzerland) and almost 100 million native German speakers (in Germany, Austria, Switzerland).
:-)).
Besides, for the moment, the Internet is more widely used in Germany than in France. In part because of the Minitel, and more generally Northern Europe is more connected than Southern Europe (which may be because life is less boring in the neighboorhood of the mediterranean sea, but that's another story
Wrong. Most "trendy" French businessmen believe it has become a sign of archaism to keep on speaking French when doing business. The last "chic" is to speak English in a reunion, without any reasonable reason, surrounded exclusively by native French speakers. More specifically, english is in some sense the "right-wing" language, that is, the language of Anglo-Saxon style capitalism, and French is the "left-wing" language, ie the language of continental social-democracy. I'm caricaturing a bit, but not that much.
When a French company goes "global" (Alcatel, Vivendi, etc...), English becomes the official language used by the executives to produce documents.
Because it has all the great functional features that can make Lisp programmers happy.
Because it has a wonderful OO model which can make all OO programmers happy.
Because it has super fast compilers that can make C and C++ programmers happy.
Because it is great for imperative programming and for functional programming.
Because it is great for procedural programming and for OO programming.
Because it is as multiplatform and portable as Java.
Because it is designed to please everyone without compromising on anything, and, put more simply, because it can reconciliate the C, Java, Lisp and C++ community.
Because it can even be used indifferently as a scripting or a system language.
Because it is great for teaching AND for the real world.
Because its compilers are libre software and its design and developement are made in a very open fashion.
Please, my dear clueless friend, SHUT UP. This game is completely legal in France.
And, once again, once America frees itself of its absurd anti-nudity laws, maybe it will be able to teach lessons.
1 - Wolfenstein 3D, 1991
2 - Doom, 1993
3 - Quake, 1996
Wolf 3D was a revolution, and Doom was a huge step from Wold 3D. Quake was a minor improvement, but a huge commercial success.
Actually, considering that the KDE project started 1 year before the Gnome project (summer 96 vs summer 97), and looking at the respective advancements of the two projects, I'm not at all convinced by your theory. KDE may be ahead in terms of integrated desktop, but not in terms of applications (abiword, gnumeric, graphics-related softwares, pan, etc... are way ahead or their KDE counterparts) and developper's libraries.
Gnome's weakness is, and has always been, its file manager, which is the centralizing component of a desktop. Gmc was a failure, and Nautilus is a failure too for the moment. Its configuration tool is weak too. In the meanwhile. Kfm/Konqueror and to a lesser extent Kcontrol are KDE's greatest achievements. Hence the contrast and the difficulty to make fair comparisons.
Besides plagiarism, another annoying thing with Disney and Hollywood in general is a peculiar form of nationalism, in the sense of either historical falsification, or slight modification of the stories to make sure that it fits with American patriotism.
Here we have a typical example. Instead of beginning in 1889's France, the story takes place in 1914's America. Why? Because this story involves cool heroes, a cool machine with an highly advanced technology, built by original and very wealthy people. Well, this HAS to be in America, doesnt'it?
This example follows the example of this Hollywoodian movie on the battle of England, where the allies manage to decode the German communication for submarines (again!), or something like that: this event was key in the battle of England. The British achieved it. In the Hollywoodian movie, the Americans do it. Pretty vicious, huh? It's based on actual historical events, but it's falsified to make sure that the heroes are American.
There are hundreds of examples of these types each year from Hollywood. It may be just because it is assumed to be good for business (although I know that Disney also has quite a conservative culture and has a problem with France), but it's morally unjustifiable. Moreover, which over country would dare do something like this than America? Can you imaging the Chinese movie industry creating "historical" movies, where the chinese are organizing the D-day and saving Europe from nazi Germany? Or can you imagine Zimbabwe shooting a movie where extraterrestrials attack, and where all the key events (their arrival, as well as their defeat) take place in Zimbabwe?
I know it's "just entertainment", and that it shouldn't be taken too seriously. Except that the power of Hollywood on the minds of the people everywhere on the planet has become tremendous. Hollywood can manipulate the people on a global scale, but to the advantage of one specific country, and of specific and sometimes questionable values. This explains in part the irritation of several countries with the American movie industry.
Indeed, 30 years ago, French still had to make a serious self-examination of its Vichyist past. But things have completely changed since then. The Vichyist past has become the prime obsession of historians, intellectuals, politicians, and finally of the average Frenchman. It has monopolized most of the debates and conversations during the 80s and the 90s.
> Yes, and forbidding the sale of these items
> cures these people of their problems, just turns
> them into docile bunnies. It is well-documented > somewhere, I am just sure of it!
I was not saying that the ruling is right; it's not. I'm just saying that the motivations underlying it were to adress a problem which has nothing to do with "France not facing her history", or this sort of things.
> The problem here is that there is a country that
> cannot face history.
Among the numerous negative and preposterous stereotypes on contemporary France, this one may be even further from reality than the others. France faces its Vichyist past in the eyes, sometimes even up to a point of obsession.
Here, we have a bunch of bigots who have found a sympathetic judge. Nazi artefacts can be seen everywhere in France, including of course TV and history books (including those for young children). If you enter a French library or bookstore, you will find that several shelves are occupied by history or fiction books related to the nazi era and/or the collaboration and the Vichyist goverment.
In the specific case of Yahoo! auctions, those who asked for this ruling were distrurbed by the fact that these items are very probably sold to sick animals, who do not have much interest in history, but rather a fascination for hate, violence, genocide or morbidity.
In European countries, where you're billed on a pay-per-length of connection basis, the biggest asset of dial-up, ie cheapness, fades away for heavy Internet users (which I am). I share my life between Paris and New York: in France, I have broadband access, whereas I'm still with good old dial-up in New York.
Otherwise, the claim "dial-up is a standard, and standards tend to stay" is rather Dvorakiesque (read: stupid) in my opinion: standards stay for compatiliblity reasons, plain and simple. This is not a problem with broadband: you don't have to change your PC, your operating system or the plugs in your appartement when you decide to go cable or DSL: just buy a modem.
I know it's an enternaining program, I've never said anything else. But even an entertaining program does not have to be that stupid.
For entertainment, it's lousy. For culinary instruction, it's lousy.
Sorry, it's STEVEN Shaw, not Bernard.
There was a time, not long ago, when New American haute cuisine was on a roll and was supposed to catch up within a few decades with French haute cuisine. Well, if the majority of Americans let themselves intoxicate with this lousy and hype-based vision of gastronomy as the one which appears in shows like Iron Chef, this dream should be over really soon now.
Is it just me or did someone else notice that all these crazy megalomaniacs are always based in the most kitsch and megalomaniac city of this world?
Dammit!
/.ers:
Dear Roblio, dear
For the 15340398th time: the Yahoo! ruling has nothing to do with the French government. The French justice is completely independent from the government. In this specific ruling, a bunch of bigots have found a sympathetic judge who has a very peculiar and twisted interpretation of French (mild) laws on racial hatred.
It's amazing how this kind of misinformation can be resilient.
And, BTW, at least the French did not force Yahoo! to remove their porn videos pages, but others oh-so-free did...
Simply because the gimp people decided themselves to dump Motif and write a free toolkit as a replacement.
Phase 1: Motif-based Gimp.
Phase 2: Uh, we're stupid, Motif sucks, Lesstif does not seem to come along nicely, we've made a mistake. Let's write our own libre toolkit and replace Motif.
All this without being forced by an external influence and external criticisms.
Don't tell me you cannot see the difference with KDE's early days.
> As a moron that knows nothing about finance, are
> you suggesting that Alcatel is more Valuable
> than Microsoft whose revenue is 24B ?
Not "more valuable", but simply larger. For the moment.
Oh, gimme a fucking break, will you!? We're talking about a $7 million investment, from the FTT branch. If you seriously think that the French government decides of such small investments for the remote FFT branch, you're completely clueless.
And where do you think ADSL will be in 5 years, compared to cable, RNIS and regular modems? In 10 years? If you seriously think that the cable will take over DSL, well, I'd be happy to bet on it :)
A large part (maybe the majority) of Alcatel shares are on the French market, not on the American one. Alcatel opened a capitalization on Wall Street just very recently. In the meanwhile, Cisco and Nortel don't have market caps in Europe. But that's not the point: if you knew what you were talking about, you would never compare the sizes of different companies using capitalizations, but using revenues. Otherwise Yahoo!, just 12 months ago, was "larger" than Boeing: makes sense, doesn't it?
Ups, you're French apparently. Well, it's even worse... you're buying into stereotypes imported for ideological reasons.
> In really precise niche markets like electronic
> components.
Yeah, right. Like, for example, the tiny Alcatel which happens to be #1 on a tiny niche market such as ADSL, and which happens to be just bigger than tiny dwarves such as Cisco and Nortel combined. Niche markets, I'm telling you!
As far as FT is concerned, you obviously have no clue on the nomination process of the CEO, and on the decision-taking process inside these part-private part-state owned companies. You also seem to have a very peculiar source of informations for your percentage figures...
Oh, well. I suppose it's much more comfortable to see France through archaic cliches. Makes things simpler, doesn't it? What fun would it be to try o get a clue, if it forced you to ask yourself some serious questions?
> Is France trying to compete with other countries
> in todays electronics?
1st, France does very well in today's electronics, thank you. 2nd, it's not the French government who decides where FTT will invest its money, so THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.
You may not be a conspiracist, but at least you're a stereotype-prone ignorant.
Dammit.
Very well, I'm glad to see that we now have three excellent libre software browsers (Konqueror, Galeon, Mozilla), and that they are improving very quickly, but... for the moment I'm still forced to use Netscape 4.* to do online banking (I think it's 128-bit encryption, I'm at Citibank). Even with PSM, even with https support activated... don't ask me why, I'm not an expert at crypto, all I know is that the problem is here.
So, can anyone tell me is this changes with Mozilla 0.9? If not, does anyone have an idea of when we will have a solution for this?