Oh, I forgot, about the 35 hours work week... It is not actually related to unemployment. Indeed, at some point, the defenders of the 35 hours work week have insisted on this pseudo-justification. But everybody knew it was bull.
So, forget the rhetoric. The real reason why the work week has been reduced is because the French people _did really want_ it to be reduced, and have specifically voted for it in 1997. In other words, democracy worked. The French, in majority, wanted a reduced work week, which most companies did not want, and democracy won over particular business interests. Period. It is also important to mention that whis reduced work week was "traded" against a gain in organisation flexibility, and many companies are now very satisfied with this law.
So why would the French have voted for this law, and why is this law currently so popular? Easy: the French have a life beyond their jobs. They have kids, families, friends, hobbies, they travel, etc... as almost everyone in the Western world, I assume. This reduced work week simply gives them more time to... live. Question: what are all these technological achievements, and the subsequent enormous gains in productivity, good for? More wealth?.. maybe. More free time?.. maybe. Well, the problem is that in most countries, including the USA, the increase of wealth is concentrated in the hands of the 10 or 20% wealthiest (exactly the ones who don't need it), while John Doe is working as hard as before. To put it another way: you're being screwed, big time. You're more productive than ever, and you don't get anything in return. The French have chosen to get more free time. The income of the average Frenchman is pretty good, and its wealth, especially in real estate, is exceptionnally high. With a reduced work week. Yeah, this is why strikes and unions can be useful sometimes, you see.
Oh, about the "constant strikes from major sectors"... well, that's exactly what I was saying before: you're brainwashed.
Right, crappy businesses with underpaid, tough and tedious jobs are fleeing away. Too much work regulation, higher taxes. Yet economic growth is faster than in the UK. Who cares about closing Toyota plants, Dell hotlines, or fake IPO-oriented startups, when you have management centers, R&D departments, and really profitable high-tech start-ups?
As for employment... well, if I have to choose between a high official unemployment rate where most job-seekers are actually not in poverty at all, and a low official unemployment rate where the level of poverty and inequalities is insanely high, since I'm not into these protestant ethics which seem to consider that work is the central moral value, my choice is not difficult.
> His economic policies seem to be aimed at
> turning the U.S. into either India or France, I
> can't really tell which. He'd make a terrible
> president.
Beware: flamebait.
Turning the US into France? You mean, less commercials and uninterrupted movies on TV, no more puritanism, good eating habits, more sophistication, excellent healthcare for everyone, real and serious discussions among mainstream parties for legalizing cannabis -I mention this because you seem to care-, genelarization of the property of a second house for most households? Now, THAT is scary.
Oh, by the way: when it comes to economy, you're obviously brainwashed.
So, according to these benchmarks, at the same core frequency, a Crusoe is 30% slower than a Pentium III, right? Well, I think it's pretty good. I was expecting this code morphing stuff and this very low consumption architecture to hurt performance by a factor 2 or 3, and things are obviously much better than that. I'm especially pleased with the fact that the FPU is not ridiculous (which is definitely not the case for StrongARM and most ARM CPUs).
As far as I'm concerned, the speed of a Crusoe is waaayyyy enough for my needs, especially on a laptop, and I think it is true for most users. Besides, apparently a 1Ghz version is expected to ship by the end of the year, so there really is very few to complain about.
Novell is cutting workforce by 16%
on
Is Novell Doomed?
·
· Score: 4
Here. The explanations are full of PR twisted nonsense and fake optimism. Doesn't look good.
'Forgot to mention. Just to insist heavily on the sillyness of your examples,Yugo was part of the Communist block and as such as nothing to do with what happens in Western Europe. Next time I'll find a crappy North Korean car brand and say: "See? Americans car suck!", this won't be very different.
> It's no accident that we build Fords, while they
> drive Fiats and Yugos.
Oh, so brilliant, so unbiased, so smart. Now, I can play that silly game too: Is it accident that they build Mercedes (you know, these folks who purchased Chrysler not so long ago), Ferraris, Rolls-Royce, BMWs, while you build Dodges? Is it accident that Opel (GM European branch) and Ford Europe are falling behind Volkswagen, Peugeot and Renault? Is it accident that the same scenario is also taking place in South America?
Well, yes, I happen to know some poor people pretty well, or people who have been very poor, and I don't have to look very far: my wife. While I personnally grew-up in a well-off family (my parents are physicians), my wife grew up in a poor family, and we've spent a lot of time confronting our experiences.
As for your examples:
1- John is a moron, but John is a highly caricatural and biased example, and he is definitely not typical. He is an exception, and a system is not designed to deal in priority with exceptions, but with the mainstream. By this, I mean poor people who really run into difficulties, even if they are using their money in a very rational way.
2- Jack can succeed in a strong economic environment, but he will simply fail during a period of depression because opportunities just don't exist. In this case he may need indeed some help from the government. Besides, if Jack was living in a country in which the welfare is generous, Jack could quit his factory and still receive a full salary from the welfare for 6 months to one year, during which he could concentrate full-time on starting his business. The welfare is also a safety net that encourages people to take risks.
3- James is born in a golden room, good for him. But what creates employment is not his own achievements, it is the company and the wealth he inherited from. Wealth and employments depend on his company, his wealth and his luck rather than on his merits. Thus, claiming that he's a wonderful guy to whom the society should be thankful just because he _happens to_ be rich is an imposture, even if it is a very common one. Also, in a similar vein, note that some (many) people do not become rich by actually _creating_ wealth, but just by taking it elsewhere. These people have consequently made others dependent on their wealth, but cannot in good conscience claim they now are the nice guys who are providing employment.
As far as your opinion on working 8 or more hours is concerned, well, you may not understand people who don't really feel a need to professionally accomplish something, but there's no reason why this point of view should be enforced to people who disagree. Many people are hedonist, and can find real happiness by enjoying the world surrounding them, or collecting simple pleasures (gastronomy, art, litterature, sex, whatever). Others accomplish great things by other means than their profession. It can be via human relations, via their family, their hobbies -unfortunately many hobbies canot be transformed in a job to make a living-, etc...). Once again, I don't see why a system should make it mandatory to work hard in something they're not necessarily interested in (quite franfly, how many people are really _happy_ at work?), just to be able to live in decent conditions.
> By living in poverty and not achieving even a
> middle class status they have demonstrated that,
> for whatever reason, they do not have the
> ability to manage money properly.
I'm sorry, but this really is a crazy idea. What they have demonstrated is that they don't have the ability to _make_ money, which is a very different matter. But most of these poors do spend their money in a very rational way: food, clothes, and, when possible, housing, or taking care of their kids. Most of them are spending all of their money for vital needs, and they simply have no choice. This would be completely insane to put higher taxes on them.
As for richer people, the whole infrastructures, the whole legal system, the repressive arsenal, etc..., are designed to make them always more properous and secure. The system is made by them, for them. The amount of money spent by the government for welfare and benefits, which really is the least the American society can do, is ridiculous as compared to the amount of money spent by the government for other matters which will benefit in priority to the wealthiest (and to business).
Besides, as I consider that solidarity is one of the most important moral values, and as I really don't understand how people can let others croak in the streets, arrogantly saying "hey, I've worked hard to get where I am, and I can tell you he did not", I have very little sympathy for this way of thinking. As I also do not consider work as a central moral value in itself, because I'm not heavily influenced by the protestant ethics which are prevalent in America, I do not approve a system in which you _have to_ work hard at least 8 hours per day, just to be able to eat and to live in a decent place.
> The fact of the matter is that if you cannot
> rise above poverty in the United States it is
> because there is something fundamentally wrong
> with you. It is absolutely not for any other
> reason.
Yes, but first, this is the case in most of the Western world and this is something that many Americans seem to forget, and second, it is more likely that there's "something wrong" with someone if he grew up in the kind of environments we were talking about than if he grew up in a peaceful and prosperous environment. You're telling me that you succeeding in extracting yourself from a terrible environment. Congratulations, good for you. But let me point out that, with the qualities you had to show to achieve this, well, you probably would be in an even much better situation if you had grown up in a better place and in better conditions, growing in peace of mind, with parents able to send you to an Ivy League College, or to Stanford,etc... So, even if it is possible to rise, the inequalities are still greatly reproduced generations after generations.
Last, what is possible these days in this period of strong economic growth is not possible in days of depressions, which did happen, do happen, and will happen. When these times show up, you'd better not be the poor guy trying to rise, 'cause you simply won't find any opportunity. But the rich will hame much less to worry about.
As far as I undestand, your family had nothing to do with it from a material point of view, but they encouraged you, they didn't make you be confronted to domestic violence when you were a kid, and they didn't make you live in a terrible environment where criminality, drugs, prostitutions, racism, despair and dirt are part of your daily life. This makes a world of difference.
I forgot to mention that the most Socialist country in the Western world is Sweden, which is an exemplary democracy, and which is also the place where the poverty rate is the lowest in the world. And, no, I don't think they kill their people...
I would also like to ask you where the hell does the number of 19% unemployment come from? That would be very interesting... Also, one of these days, as mentioned for Sweden, you may want to compare the poverty levels or the percentage of people who do not have access to a good healthcare.
You may also try to learn the difference between official unemployment, ie the count of people who are actually registered as job-seekers at the employment agencies, and actual unemployment, which includes people who are completely out of the system and have no administrative existence as job seekers. In continental Western Europe, both numbers are very close. There's another big country in which it is definitely not the case...
> Tell me that people in socialist countries like
> China and France are better off now than they
> were before.
1st, France is not socialist. You may call its system "social-democrat", as in most western continental Europe countries. This means that it's just an Anglo-Saxon style capitalist system, tempered with a more generous welfare, more social protection, more public money for healthcare and education. And consequently, higher taxes.
Second, yes, the French are _much better_ than they were before (when is that "before", by the way?), and you're obviously incredibly ignorant on the rest of the world. I have no problem with ignorants as long as they're aware of it, but I have a problem when they start voicing strong and integrist opinions on topics on which they don't have a clue, and when they start offending and insulting other people.
Last but not least, I have a simple fact that you may want to think about it. If France sucked so much, well, the French which come temporarily to the US would not choose to come back to their country after a while. The French are simply the people, which, proportionnally, decide the least to stay in America. Besides, the proportion of Americans which come temporarily to France and decide to stay forever is higher than the proportion of French which go to America and decide to stay. So may be the oh-so-socialist France is not such an ugly place to be.
Absolutely. Missing features are not a problem, but such unstability is simply unacceptable for an officially stable version. I don't know if you guys are running a time-to-market race or something, or if you were simply tired of waiting, yet KDE 2.0 "stable" is unstable, and would have been less unstable if bugfixing development and beta testing had been going on for at least one more month. It sucks, sorry.
There are actually many more candidates in this election, and there really is variety, even if there are not as many candidates and sensibilities as in France.
The real problem and the main difference with France stems from the fact that it's a one-round election. In France, during the 1st round, every candidate gets his share and the votes are very dispersed. And then only two candidates (typically a moderate left-wing vs a moderate right-wing, as in America) remain at the second round. But voters have had a chance to fully express themselves during the first round, without worrying of whether their favorite among the big ones would be hurt. As a consequence, the "big guys" (ie institutionnal politicians) are quantitavely informed of the strength of ecologists, ulta-conservatives, communists, etc...
While I basically agree with most of what you're saying, I think the very low level of participation to the last referendum is not at all representative about what is really going on. Participation is usually between 50% and 70%. People just didn't feel the need to vote on this issue because:
1- The results were known in advance anyway, since almost everyone, both among the politicians and the people, was in favor of the reduction. The only opponents were archaic self proclaimed "hardcore republicans and/or Gaullist", whose positions were purely rhetoric and basically irrelevant.
2- It seems that the French are strongly opposed to the use of the referendum when this is not about a really huge, life-changing issue (such as the Maastricht treaty to join the monetary union). It was a very bad idea to organize a referendum on an issue on which almost everybody agrees, and which, after all, is not so important (even if it changes the constitution). If the reduction had been accompanied by other signifiant changes in the constitution (on issues like cumulation of positions, role -suppression?- of the Senat, etc...), things would have been different.
All these being said, you are right about marketing and disinterest. The socialists surprisingly came back to power because Jospin's attitude seemed to be slightly less "communication-driven" than the competitors'. And, all in all, the level of participation is -albeit quite slowly- decreasing.
Yet, I'm currently living in America, and it's pretty obvious that the level of indifference towards politics in America is much stronger and really has nothing to do than what can be observed in Western Europe (France of elsewhere).
It sounds nice, it reminds of the French Revolution (as RMS likes to point out when he gives lectures in France, the real ideals of the GNU project are "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" -Fraternite means brotherhood-), it's easy to understand in an English-speaking environment because "libre" has the same root as "liberty", it's not ambiguous.
The problem with "Open Source" is that it's just meaningless. For example, a commercial non-free software which is available with its source code to customers who bought it, but with conventionnal restrictive distribution terms, could easily be claimed by the marketing as being part of this category, even if it has nothing to do with the actual open source guidelines.
Note: I'm French, ie biased.
Re:Ralph Nader needs a posse - after his head
on
Should You Vote?
·
· Score: 1
It's pretty funny that you're associating people bankrupcies with "socialism" (you obviously don't know what socialism is anyway), 'cause America is, among the rich nations, the one in which the percentage of household indebtment and bankrupcies is by far the highest (and growing fast, too).
This is not very surprising: people are told that the economy is great, and they get blindly confident and consume more than ever, whereas they're in fact not richer than before, since this "prosperity" only benefits to the 10-20% wealthiest since 1975.
The "in the past" is unnecessary. Things aren't different today.
Panama, Indonesia, Rwanda, anyone? What about Irak daily bombing? Or support for African bloody dictators (actually, Africa is a pretty funny place: in almost every country, you have two potential bloody dictators fighting for power, each one being backed up by one or several company -oil, metal, whatever-, and France and US struggling in the background to make the final decision).
> So which European country are you from? Because
> it would be really ironic if you were from
> France.
Why? What is the "specificity" of France that would make it more ironic than if he was from another West European country? Thanks to elaborate (Beware, there's a trap).
> these are things that Europe could most
> definitely help with, but for some strange
> reason they keep saying "well, the US is looking
> into it, so we'll just follow them".
The problem is that the influence of the Anglo-Saxon vision in the international press is so overwhelming, that, every West European country which tries to follow an independant if not contradictory direction, is very quickly described, in NY Times, WSJ or FT editorials, as archaic/nationalist/anti-American/socialist/whatev er. You may be interested in reading, for example, the writings by Thomas Friedman, the NY Times editorialist and the author of "Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding the Globalization" when he talks about France. And his point of view is very representative from the Anglo-Saxon centric "international Western concensus".
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I forgot, about the 35 hours work week... It is not actually related to unemployment. Indeed, at some point, the defenders of the 35 hours work week have insisted on this pseudo-justification. But everybody knew it was bull.
So, forget the rhetoric. The real reason why the work week has been reduced is because the French people _did really want_ it to be reduced, and have specifically voted for it in 1997. In other words, democracy worked. The French, in majority, wanted a reduced work week, which most companies did not want, and democracy won over particular business interests. Period. It is also important to mention that whis reduced work week was "traded" against a gain in organisation flexibility, and many companies are now very satisfied with this law.
So why would the French have voted for this law, and why is this law currently so popular? Easy: the French have a life beyond their jobs. They have kids, families, friends, hobbies, they travel, etc... as almost everyone in the Western world, I assume. This reduced work week simply gives them more time to... live. Question: what are all these technological achievements, and the subsequent enormous gains in productivity, good for? More wealth?.. maybe. More free time?.. maybe. Well, the problem is that in most countries, including the USA, the increase of wealth is concentrated in the hands of the 10 or 20% wealthiest (exactly the ones who don't need it), while John Doe is working as hard as before. To put it another way: you're being screwed, big time. You're more productive than ever, and you don't get anything in return. The French have chosen to get more free time. The income of the average Frenchman is pretty good, and its wealth, especially in real estate, is exceptionnally high. With a reduced work week. Yeah, this is why strikes and unions can be useful sometimes, you see.
Oh, about the "constant strikes from major sectors"... well, that's exactly what I was saying before: you're brainwashed.
Right, crappy businesses with underpaid, tough and tedious jobs are fleeing away. Too much work regulation, higher taxes. Yet economic growth is faster than in the UK. Who cares about closing Toyota plants, Dell hotlines, or fake IPO-oriented startups, when you have management centers, R&D departments, and really profitable high-tech start-ups?
As for employment... well, if I have to choose between a high official unemployment rate where most job-seekers are actually not in poverty at all, and a low official unemployment rate where the level of poverty and inequalities is insanely high, since I'm not into these protestant ethics which seem to consider that work is the central moral value, my choice is not difficult.
> His economic policies seem to be aimed at
> turning the U.S. into either India or France, I
> can't really tell which. He'd make a terrible
> president.
Beware: flamebait.
Turning the US into France? You mean, less commercials and uninterrupted movies on TV, no more puritanism, good eating habits, more sophistication, excellent healthcare for everyone, real and serious discussions among mainstream parties for legalizing cannabis -I mention this because you seem to care-, genelarization of the property of a second house for most households? Now, THAT is scary.
Oh, by the way: when it comes to economy, you're obviously brainwashed.
So, according to these benchmarks, at the same core frequency, a Crusoe is 30% slower than a Pentium III, right? Well, I think it's pretty good. I was expecting this code morphing stuff and this very low consumption architecture to hurt performance by a factor 2 or 3, and things are obviously much better than that. I'm especially pleased with the fact that the FPU is not ridiculous (which is definitely not the case for StrongARM and most ARM CPUs).
As far as I'm concerned, the speed of a Crusoe is waaayyyy enough for my needs, especially on a laptop, and I think it is true for most users. Besides, apparently a 1Ghz version is expected to ship by the end of the year, so there really is very few to complain about.
Here. The explanations are full of PR twisted nonsense and fake optimism. Doesn't look good.
'Forgot to mention. Just to insist heavily on the sillyness of your examples,Yugo was part of the Communist block and as such as nothing to do with what happens in Western Europe. Next time I'll find a crappy North Korean car brand and say: "See? Americans car suck!", this won't be very different.
> It's no accident that we build Fords, while they
> drive Fiats and Yugos.
Oh, so brilliant, so unbiased, so smart. Now, I can play that silly game too: Is it accident that they build Mercedes (you know, these folks who purchased Chrysler not so long ago), Ferraris, Rolls-Royce, BMWs, while you build Dodges? Is it accident that Opel (GM European branch) and Ford Europe are falling behind Volkswagen, Peugeot and Renault? Is it accident that the same scenario is also taking place in South America?
Well, yes, I happen to know some poor people pretty well, or people who have been very poor, and I don't have to look very far: my wife. While I personnally grew-up in a well-off family (my parents are physicians), my wife grew up in a poor family, and we've spent a lot of time confronting our experiences.
As for your examples:
1- John is a moron, but John is a highly caricatural and biased example, and he is definitely not typical. He is an exception, and a system is not designed to deal in priority with exceptions, but with the mainstream. By this, I mean poor people who really run into difficulties, even if they are using their money in a very rational way.
2- Jack can succeed in a strong economic environment, but he will simply fail during a period of depression because opportunities just don't exist. In this case he may need indeed some help from the government. Besides, if Jack was living in a country in which the welfare is generous, Jack could quit his factory and still receive a full salary from the welfare for 6 months to one year, during which he could concentrate full-time on starting his business. The welfare is also a safety net that encourages people to take risks.
3- James is born in a golden room, good for him. But what creates employment is not his own achievements, it is the company and the wealth he inherited from. Wealth and employments depend on his company, his wealth and his luck rather than on his merits. Thus, claiming that he's a wonderful guy to whom the society should be thankful just because he _happens to_ be rich is an imposture, even if it is a very common one. Also, in a similar vein, note that some (many) people do not become rich by actually _creating_ wealth, but just by taking it elsewhere. These people have consequently made others dependent on their wealth, but cannot in good conscience claim they now are the nice guys who are providing employment.
As far as your opinion on working 8 or more hours is concerned, well, you may not understand people who don't really feel a need to professionally accomplish something, but there's no reason why this point of view should be enforced to people who disagree. Many people are hedonist, and can find real happiness by enjoying the world surrounding them, or collecting simple pleasures (gastronomy, art, litterature, sex, whatever). Others accomplish great things by other means than their profession. It can be via human relations, via their family, their hobbies -unfortunately many hobbies canot be transformed in a job to make a living-, etc...). Once again, I don't see why a system should make it mandatory to work hard in something they're not necessarily interested in (quite franfly, how many people are really _happy_ at work?), just to be able to live in decent conditions.
> By living in poverty and not achieving even a
> middle class status they have demonstrated that,
> for whatever reason, they do not have the
> ability to manage money properly.
I'm sorry, but this really is a crazy idea. What they have demonstrated is that they don't have the ability to _make_ money, which is a very different matter. But most of these poors do spend their money in a very rational way: food, clothes, and, when possible, housing, or taking care of their kids. Most of them are spending all of their money for vital needs, and they simply have no choice. This would be completely insane to put higher taxes on them.
As for richer people, the whole infrastructures, the whole legal system, the repressive arsenal, etc..., are designed to make them always more properous and secure. The system is made by them, for them. The amount of money spent by the government for welfare and benefits, which really is the least the American society can do, is ridiculous as compared to the amount of money spent by the government for other matters which will benefit in priority to the wealthiest (and to business).
Besides, as I consider that solidarity is one of the most important moral values, and as I really don't understand how people can let others croak in the streets, arrogantly saying "hey, I've worked hard to get where I am, and I can tell you he did not", I have very little sympathy for this way of thinking. As I also do not consider work as a central moral value in itself, because I'm not heavily influenced by the protestant ethics which are prevalent in America, I do not approve a system in which you _have to_ work hard at least 8 hours per day, just to be able to eat and to live in a decent place.
Thank you. This kind of "contribution" pretty much illustrates one of the problems with America.
> The fact of the matter is that if you cannot
> rise above poverty in the United States it is
> because there is something fundamentally wrong
> with you. It is absolutely not for any other
> reason.
Yes, but first, this is the case in most of the Western world and this is something that many Americans seem to forget, and second, it is more likely that there's "something wrong" with someone if he grew up in the kind of environments we were talking about than if he grew up in a peaceful and prosperous environment. You're telling me that you succeeding in extracting yourself from a terrible environment. Congratulations, good for you. But let me point out that, with the qualities you had to show to achieve this, well, you probably would be in an even much better situation if you had grown up in a better place and in better conditions, growing in peace of mind, with parents able to send you to an Ivy League College, or to Stanford,etc... So, even if it is possible to rise, the inequalities are still greatly reproduced generations after generations.
Last, what is possible these days in this period of strong economic growth is not possible in days of depressions, which did happen, do happen, and will happen. When these times show up, you'd better not be the poor guy trying to rise, 'cause you simply won't find any opportunity. But the rich will hame much less to worry about.
As far as I undestand, your family had nothing to do with it from a material point of view, but they encouraged you, they didn't make you be confronted to domestic violence when you were a kid, and they didn't make you live in a terrible environment where criminality, drugs, prostitutions, racism, despair and dirt are part of your daily life. This makes a world of difference.
> The government is effectively saying to the poor
> that, by being poor, they have demonstrated a
> lack of money management skills.
No. They have demonstrated a lack of "being born in the right family" skills.
I forgot to mention that the most Socialist country in the Western world is Sweden, which is an exemplary democracy, and which is also the place where the poverty rate is the lowest in the world. And, no, I don't think they kill their people...
I would also like to ask you where the hell does the number of 19% unemployment come from? That would be very interesting... Also, one of these days, as mentioned for Sweden, you may want to compare the poverty levels or the percentage of people who do not have access to a good healthcare.
You may also try to learn the difference between official unemployment, ie the count of people who are actually registered as job-seekers at the employment agencies, and actual unemployment, which includes people who are completely out of the system and have no administrative existence as job seekers. In continental Western Europe, both numbers are very close. There's another big country in which it is definitely not the case...
> Tell me that people in socialist countries like
> China and France are better off now than they
> were before.
1st, France is not socialist. You may call its system "social-democrat", as in most western continental Europe countries. This means that it's just an Anglo-Saxon style capitalist system, tempered with a more generous welfare, more social protection, more public money for healthcare and education. And consequently, higher taxes.
Second, yes, the French are _much better_ than they were before (when is that "before", by the way?), and you're obviously incredibly ignorant on the rest of the world. I have no problem with ignorants as long as they're aware of it, but I have a problem when they start voicing strong and integrist opinions on topics on which they don't have a clue, and when they start offending and insulting other people.
Last but not least, I have a simple fact that you may want to think about it. If France sucked so much, well, the French which come temporarily to the US would not choose to come back to their country after a while. The French are simply the people, which, proportionnally, decide the least to stay in America. Besides, the proportion of Americans which come temporarily to France and decide to stay forever is higher than the proportion of French which go to America and decide to stay. So may be the oh-so-socialist France is not such an ugly place to be.
> Big deal.
Absolutely. Missing features are not a problem, but such unstability is simply unacceptable for an officially stable version. I don't know if you guys are running a time-to-market race or something, or if you were simply tired of waiting, yet KDE 2.0 "stable" is unstable, and would have been less unstable if bugfixing development and beta testing had been going on for at least one more month. It sucks, sorry.
There are actually many more candidates in this election, and there really is variety, even if there are not as many candidates and sensibilities as in France.
The real problem and the main difference with France stems from the fact that it's a one-round election. In France, during the 1st round, every candidate gets his share and the votes are very dispersed. And then only two candidates (typically a moderate left-wing vs a moderate right-wing, as in America) remain at the second round. But voters have had a chance to fully express themselves during the first round, without worrying of whether their favorite among the big ones would be hurt. As a consequence, the "big guys" (ie institutionnal politicians) are quantitavely informed of the strength of ecologists, ulta-conservatives, communists, etc...
While I basically agree with most of what you're saying, I think the very low level of participation to the last referendum is not at all representative about what is really going on. Participation is usually between 50% and 70%. People just didn't feel the need to vote on this issue because:
1- The results were known in advance anyway, since almost everyone, both among the politicians and the people, was in favor of the reduction. The only opponents were archaic self proclaimed "hardcore republicans and/or Gaullist", whose positions were purely rhetoric and basically irrelevant.
2- It seems that the French are strongly opposed to the use of the referendum when this is not about a really huge, life-changing issue (such as the Maastricht treaty to join the monetary union). It was a very bad idea to organize a referendum on an issue on which almost everybody agrees, and which, after all, is not so important (even if it changes the constitution). If the reduction had been accompanied by other signifiant changes in the constitution (on issues like cumulation of positions, role -suppression?- of the Senat, etc...), things would have been different.
All these being said, you are right about marketing and disinterest. The socialists surprisingly came back to power because Jospin's attitude seemed to be slightly less "communication-driven" than the competitors'. And, all in all, the level of participation is -albeit quite slowly- decreasing.
Yet, I'm currently living in America, and it's pretty obvious that the level of indifference towards politics in America is much stronger and really has nothing to do than what can be observed in Western Europe (France of elsewhere).
Is your French better than his English, Mr AC?
It sounds nice, it reminds of the French Revolution (as RMS likes to point out when he gives lectures in France, the real ideals of the GNU project are "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" -Fraternite means brotherhood-), it's easy to understand in an English-speaking environment because "libre" has the same root as "liberty", it's not ambiguous.
The problem with "Open Source" is that it's just meaningless. For example, a commercial non-free software which is available with its source code to customers who bought it, but with conventionnal restrictive distribution terms, could easily be claimed by the marketing as being part of this category, even if it has nothing to do with the actual open source guidelines.
Note: I'm French, ie biased.
It's pretty funny that you're associating people bankrupcies with "socialism" (you obviously don't know what socialism is anyway), 'cause America is, among the rich nations, the one in which the percentage of household indebtment and bankrupcies is by far the highest (and growing fast, too).
This is not very surprising: people are told that the economy is great, and they get blindly confident and consume more than ever, whereas they're in fact not richer than before, since this "prosperity" only benefits to the 10-20% wealthiest since 1975.
The "in the past" is unnecessary. Things aren't different today.
Panama, Indonesia, Rwanda, anyone? What about Irak daily bombing? Or support for African bloody dictators (actually, Africa is a pretty funny place: in almost every country, you have two potential bloody dictators fighting for power, each one being backed up by one or several company -oil, metal, whatever-, and France and US struggling in the background to make the final decision).
> So which European country are you from? Because
> it would be really ironic if you were from
> France.
Why? What is the "specificity" of France that would make it more ironic than if he was from another West European country? Thanks to elaborate (Beware, there's a trap).
> these are things that Europe could most
v er. You may be interested in reading, for example, the writings by Thomas Friedman, the NY Times editorialist and the author of "Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding the Globalization" when he talks about France. And his point of view is very representative from the Anglo-Saxon centric "international Western concensus".
> definitely help with, but for some strange
> reason they keep saying "well, the US is looking
> into it, so we'll just follow them".
The problem is that the influence of the Anglo-Saxon vision in the international press is so overwhelming, that, every West European country which tries to follow an independant if not contradictory direction, is very quickly described, in NY Times, WSJ or FT editorials, as archaic/nationalist/anti-American/socialist/whate
I mean, it's a vortex, a leviathan, a God, but is it an OS?