Actually it is indeed my last name and it originates from Algeria. Looks like we're homonymous (my email is kalifa@spammers_are_wussies.columbia.edu -you know which part to remove-, we shouldn't pursue this personal conversation on \. since it's offtopic).
Well, I've hesitated between the words "associating" and "assimilating", I was thinking "mentally assimilating". Anyway:
France has a specific history which makes its government quite powerful, and French people put more trust in their government than American people do (but then again, each country has its own excesses: I am regularly amazed by the incredible level of trust that American people put in some of their companies which are just screwing them big time).
Yet, this is not really related to socialism. It is rather called "Colbertisme" (prime minister of Louis XIV), "Jacobinism" (the ultras during the revolution), "Bonapartism" (Napoleon's last name), or "Dirigisme" ("diriger" means "to direct"). This is not really a consequence of socialist ideas which are stronger in Germany and in Northern Europe, for example. The French government was strong and centralized before the spread of Marxist and Keynesians ideas, even after it really became republican and democratic.
Today, many French people sincerly believe that a democratic state/government has a stronger role to play for the public interest, than Americans would think. But, once again, this is not really "socialism". The most socialist country in Western Europe is probably Sweden, with its numerous state-owned monopolies and huge taxes (yet their economy is doing very well, and their level of poverty is simply the lowest in the world, by far). And, for some reason, many people in Sweden strongly reject the French system, because they clearly see the difference with their own "socialism". A difference that many Americans do not see.
> In the French case the official line is to try
> and obscure their collaboration in the Holocaust
> by emphasising the (negligible) role of the
> Resistance.
I'm sorry, but this is just 100% wrong. The French are _obsessed_ with their past when it comes to the collaboration. Indeed, just after the war, they tried to obscure these memories, and, in this hysterical climate, they conducted huge trials where collaborators were hastly and severely condemned.
Today, things have changed. Most of our philosophers, historians, intellectuals, and even lawyers, are looking back at this period, trying to explain, understand ans accurately determine how things worked. Even Papon, who was a minister in the Gaullist government in the 60's, has been judged and condemned 3 or 4 years ago, and is now in jail.
The National Front has built itself on these trauma, this lost confidence, this complex of inferiority that the French seem to cultivate sometimes without any reason. However, its electoral score never went beyond 15%, and has strongly declined during the last years.
> And what should the civilized world learn from
> this whole debacle? Socialism doesn't work.
The simple fact that you are assimilating France with socialism simply shows that you are absolutely clueless on what you're talking about, and that you can only rely on silly cliches.
Ok, I'm French, and I can tell you that this other French guy is nothing but a wacky paranoid ideologist living in a huge conspiracy theory.
Va voir ton psychiatre, dude.
PS: If I had to choose, I'd rather live in a place where nazi propaganda is censored than in a place where sex is censored. Try to see nudity of hear explicit language on American channels before 22:30 pm.
I'm French, I'm spending a part of my time in the French academia and another part in the American academia. I really don't get your point about "cultural discrimination". The French have a strong international mentality and are usually very welcoming toward their European or American fellows. So I don't think there is a need to worry.
However, note that Marseille is, say, "specific". It's the less rich of all French big cities, it's very latin and messy. I don't know exactly what you're looking for, but if you're from northern Europe (or from Germany, Switzerland, Austria), the cultural differences with people in Marseille will be much more acute than with, say, Parisians. I personnally like Marseille because it's cosmopolite and fun, and because of the meditarrenean sea, but I wish it were more prospere and active. Another annoying thing is the perpetual ranting about Paris, often seen as too powerful.
> How exactly do you know that these 2 people are
> American? I could easily imagine two Canadians
> or two Europeans having the same debate and
> saying the exact same things.....
Well, I can't. First, because the preoccupations expressed by these 2 people are rather typically American (I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that a conversation between Canadians or Europeans would probably yield a different argumentation). Second, because one calls the other "Republican", which the other acknowledges.
Third, and this is the most important, because I don't know of any other country in which someone would say "this is the greatest place to live", or, as you usually hear from politicians, "the greatest democracy in the world", "the greatest land on earth". I only know of two contries which have been pretentious enough to see themselves as universal models: France, the "country of human rights", and America, the "land of freedom". France has gradually given up this idea after the series of trauma (wars, horrors and humiliations) of the 20th century. America is still very much in it. Having the French experience in mind, I know this kind of vanity is just nonsense.
> [] No standard, just a few people playing with > things, so they never introduced a product.
Currently changing. JPEG 2000 is based on wavelets.
> [] More obscure than 'typical' compression, more > effort and background is required to implement > it
No. Maths and algoritms are quite simple in the wavelet theory.
The real reason people don't hear much about it is that people in general don't hear much about what is really going on in day-to-day technology. Wavelets are everywhere, in thousands of application, for dedicated tasks. Jpeg 2000 is one of the very first application that can attract some attention by the media. This work might be another.
> During era of the Civil War, which ultimately > led to the freeing of American slaves, I would > have chosen: > > a) freedom > b) stability
FYI, the civil war was not about freeing slaves, it was about keeping the Union together. The slavery issue was just a narrative alibi. It was mostly about the northern Anglo-Saxon puritan and austere way of life enforcing its domination toward the more latin South. Northern had very few slaves because agriculture was in the South, plain and simple. And today, you hear assholes talking about freedom, 1st amendment and such and in the same time, seeing no problem in the censorship on American TV and movies when it comes to sex or to "explicit" vocabulary.
Ab. Lincoln said "If I should have saved the union without freeing any slave, I would have have done it". History has forgotten this sentence. As usual in America which has always been on the edge of historic falsification.
Well, once you've made the Gtk port and the bonoboification, I don't think there's gonna much of the original source code left...
Seriously, this is good news, but the problems are still ahead: do you think it's doable now to transform this non-native autarcic bloatware into a native and performant application? I don't. To me the main good thing is that this code should include pretty good MS-Office export/import filters that can be used in other projects.
> The OCaml compiler currently uses the Q Public > License, which means modified versions can only > be distributed as patches.
While I usually happen to prefer the GPL for applications, I think the Q Public License is fine for a compiler and other programming libraries, and maybe better than the GPL. Code fork can have dramatic consequences for a programming language since there is a risk to break the compatibility. Honestly, I think it is legitimate that the original authors somehow "forbid" such a threat.
Distributing the modifications as patches helps to prevent a break in compatibility. One can expect the developpers of the "official" version to intergrate patches which appear to be popular.
I agree. Here is another study of languages for scientific processing. O'Caml is doing pretty well (same order as C++ compilers).
And here is a more general study (but older, O'Caml has improved quite a lot since them). O'Caml is doing quite well again, except for the memory usage on one of the tests.
> Of course, in the works is ML2000, which will > incorporate some of the good ideas in O'Caml, > as well as adding real subtyping, run-time > generative types, and concurrency primitives. > ML2000 will be a seriously impressive > programming language.
Good, but please, try to avoid fragmentation and NIH-type competition between ML2000 and O'Caml. It would kill both (at least, it would prevent both to meet widespread success). If ML2000 can bring reunification, then great.
As far as I'm concerned, I would tend to say that the OO primitives in O'Caml bring more than "buzzword-compliance", because the OO design is really great in O'Caml. I mean, O'Caml may be the first language where the OO primitives can be useful:-)
There are tons of good reasons which can explain the failure of functional languages. Timing, installed basis, syntax familiarity, performance, fragmentation, worst-is-better (timing, again), marketing, etc...
I don't think Scheme can't change that. It has been around for 25 years now, hasn't really taken off, and is more fragmented than ever. Besides, many people are still reluctant toward this lisp-type syntax. I don't see why Haskell could change that either: it's nice, but it has a very small installed basis, which is not growing very fast. It cannot be used for system programming and big projects, and it suffers serious competition on smaller projects from fast-growing procedural "elegant" high-level languages, especially Python. Eventually, I don't see why Common Lisp should succeed now, after years of disappointments and decline.
Here's the problem: try to imagine a functionnal language, whose compilers bring performance that are far superior than Java compilers', and approximately as good as C++ compilers'. This language should be highly portable, suitable for Java-types applets, and have an object-orientation design at least as good ad Java's and CLOS. Its syntax should be more attractive than Lisp's, it should be interpreted and convenient to use and debug via a command-line interpreter just the way Python or Lisp dialects are, and in the same time, as mentioned above, compilable into a very fast executable code. It should also be able to interoperate wich C modules (and maybe others). And, besides all these qualities, it should also be much more than that, and bring other unique advantages.
Such a language exists, it is called Objective Caml. One thing only is missing, the most important one, the installed basis. So there is a need to create the ecosystem. Here's a suggestion:
One could think of a new type of desktop environment which would be based on Objective Caml. Emacs users know that Emacs is an incredibly powerful and convenient Lisp environment, which is unfortunately limited to textual tasks, due to the limitations of Emacs Lisp (at the beginning, Emacs Lisp was supposed to be used solely as a macro language for an editor, and it has gone much beyond that). Imagine an environment in the spirit of Emacs (highly integrated, fully extensible, customizable, reconfigurable and reinterpretable when you use it, etc...), but whose scope would not be limited to textual tasks, and which could actually serve as a full "multimedia-hype-buzzword-whatever" universal desktop. To put it another way, try to imagine an Emacs type environment which would cover all the functionnalities of a, say, MacOS X or Windows user environment. It this is doable, then it's in Objective Caml.
Now, I know, I have a big mouth, and I should show some code. Anyway, comments appreciated.
> small precious countries without internet access
Ahah. Funny troll. What's more, moderated up to 3, which suggests that the moderator is as ignorant and blind as you are... FYI, the communication infrastructure in this small precious country is excellent, and actually better than in most American states when you 're not in California ot in the big cities of the East Coast and Great Lakes. The www consortium is hosted in Grenoble, France. Everybody has been online and making purchases with the minitel terminal since the mid-80's. The lead over America in wireless phone and wireless devices in general is impressive. Etc, etc... not to mention smart credit cards which have been used by everyone for over 10 years now, or digital and interactive TV.
This kind of brainwashed ignorance really pisses me up.
> I mean, the French have traditionally been quite > nationalistic.
Blabla. Cliches. The French never elected a nationalistic government. What's more important, the French are the most active and enthusiastic when it comes to the European construction and integration.
The French don't put national flags on the front of their houses as the people in that other narcissic country (oops, sorry, when Americans do that, it's "patriotism", when French do that, it's "nationalism"). According to an American writer, "the French are the most international people". Note also that the kind of collective fanatism one can observe during a 4th of July in America is far more scary than gentle festivities during a 14th of July in France. Been there, seen that.
Note also that French newspapers don't have anti-Anglo Saxon articles, while English tabloids and American "serious" journals regularly publish their usual francophobic stereotypes (on issues like language, business, government, attitude, etc...). Even last week, I read an article in the "New York Observer" about the purchase of Seagram by Vivendi. Boy, it was incredibly hateful: replace in this kind of article, which are very common in the US, "French" by "Jews" of "Blacks", and you have a real scandal. But, for some reason, French-bashing is politically correct. And, contrary to what some of you might think, American or English-bashing is absolutely not politically correct in France, far from it. When there is a rebellion against the American domination, the point is not America, the point is the fear of a "for-profit" society, to put it in a simple way.
Oh, of course, there is the usual language issue. Well, first, if you think a minority of conservative French politicians are representative of the average French pesron (the vast majority of French _do_ speak fairly good English), you're just wrong. Second, may be Americans could show the way by switching to the metric system, for example, hmmm? It should be easier to do than changing the language which has been used for 1500 years and which has been the driving force behind the nation's unity... and it makes more sense, too: while it is almost impossible to claim the superiority of one language over another one, it's easier to realize that the imperial system is absurdly complex and archaic.
What the hell are you talking about? The death of Laurence Turbec has absolutely nothing to do with Jose Bove. The bombing of the McDonald's was organized by Brittany independists. This was their first fatal bomb attacks. They've been arrested, and their organization, considered as harmless before this event, has become highly unpopular and can be considered as dead. It's over, period. Too bad an innocent woman died. But please stick to the truth and don't amlagamate this with Bove.
> > the code was written in order to produce > > screenshots > > Well this is just 100% wrong.
To be more specific, I'm thinking about the kspread code in the fall of 98. Anyone can go and check who is right.
And if you don't set a difference of "attitude" between KDE/KOffice and other projects such as GNUStep or Berlin when it comes to launch a kewl web site, claiming highly promising features with corresponding screenshots just like if they were already there and granted, while no technology is well thought-out and reliable yet (come on, the first attempt for KOM/Openparts has proven to be a complete failure, tke KOffice team could at least have waited to have the right technology before claiming its wonders everywhere!), there's nothing I can do.
You don't get it. Of course, it's necessary to have information about current developments, my concern is with the way it's done. Making nice screenshots almost two years before the actual working software is released is not honnest. If you had looked at the KOffice code in the early hours, you would have seen the the code was written in order to produce screenshots. This is what pisses me off.
Now, my message would probably have been truer 4 or 6 months ago, because, indeed, Konqueror is now well advanded, so is Koffice, and it's becoming normal that we now have "real, honnest" screenshots. But I would not be surprised if, after the release of KDE 2, Konqueror and Koffice, the same gain started again with future developments.
You're right. It's kinda sad that, since and because of KDE, free software is now also playing this crappy marketing game : spectacular announcement, fancy screenshots, and "advanced" technical article describing how cool the software will be, and then you have to wait for several months (or even 1 or 2 year) until actual working software is released... and very often in a premature way. There was a time when a free software *.0 version was supposed to be reliable. What's even sadder, the actual software functionnalities and architecture are usually far below initial buzz words component-ORB-modular-reusable-transparent-interop erable-blabla expectations.
Remember the KOffice buzz? There has been fancy screenshots with embedded components for 2 years now, there has also been technical articles by Stadlbauer describing the "sexy-futistic-bleeding edge-blabla" architecture one year ago (actually, it's going to be exactly the same as Microsoft OLE/COM, talk about a revolution). And still nothing is working properly. This is ridiculous.
Some Gnome developpers told me they felt forced to behave that way too, because of the KDE competition. They recognize this sometimes goes way to far (remember Gmome 1.0?), but they pretend things would be much different if KDE was...
Fortunately the BSD folks don't do that yet. Nor does the FSF, nor does Linus ("show me the code!"). Nor did Kimball and Mathis with the Gimp. Nor does the XEmacs team. Nor does GNUStep, nor does Berlin, nor does XFree86. I hope it will remain this way. But KDE does, and Gnome follows. So do commercial distributions which now release a new version every 4 or 5 months, full of new functionnalities before their bugs got fixed.
There are just enough programmers to achieve technological breakthroughs in programming languages, such as ADA in the 70's, Eiffel in the 80's, and Caml/Objective Caml in the 90's.
Please compare Objective Caml with Lisp, C++ or Java, will you? Now, of course, with ignorant and xenophobic people like you, no wonder that a programming language has to come from the US, even if it's technically inferior, to meet widespread popularity.
Slashdot Mirror
> or, rather, the fact that
> there is anything external to the U.S.
Really? Oh... you mean cyberspace?
Actually it is indeed my last name and it originates from Algeria. Looks like we're homonymous (my email is kalifa@spammers_are_wussies.columbia.edu -you know which part to remove-, we shouldn't pursue this personal conversation on \. since it's offtopic).
Well, I've hesitated between the words "associating" and "assimilating", I was thinking "mentally assimilating". Anyway:
France has a specific history which makes its government quite powerful, and French people put more trust in their government than American people do (but then again, each country has its own excesses: I am regularly amazed by the incredible level of trust that American people put in some of their companies which are just screwing them big time).
Yet, this is not really related to socialism. It is rather called "Colbertisme" (prime minister of Louis XIV), "Jacobinism" (the ultras during the revolution), "Bonapartism" (Napoleon's last name), or "Dirigisme" ("diriger" means "to direct"). This is not really a consequence of socialist ideas which are stronger in Germany and in Northern Europe, for example. The French government was strong and centralized before the spread of Marxist and Keynesians ideas, even after it really became republican and democratic.
Today, many French people sincerly believe that a democratic state/government has a stronger role to play for the public interest, than Americans would think. But, once again, this is not really "socialism". The most socialist country in Western Europe is probably Sweden, with its numerous state-owned monopolies and huge taxes (yet their economy is doing very well, and their level of poverty is simply the lowest in the world, by far). And, for some reason, many people in Sweden strongly reject the French system, because they clearly see the difference with their own "socialism". A difference that many Americans do not see.
> In the French case the official line is to try
> and obscure their collaboration in the Holocaust
> by emphasising the (negligible) role of the
> Resistance.
I'm sorry, but this is just 100% wrong. The French are _obsessed_ with their past when it comes to the collaboration. Indeed, just after the war, they tried to obscure these memories, and, in this hysterical climate, they conducted huge trials where collaborators were hastly and severely condemned.
Today, things have changed. Most of our philosophers, historians, intellectuals, and even lawyers, are looking back at this period, trying to explain, understand ans accurately determine how things worked. Even Papon, who was a minister in the Gaullist government in the 60's, has been judged and condemned 3 or 4 years ago, and is now in jail.
The National Front has built itself on these trauma, this lost confidence, this complex of inferiority that the French seem to cultivate sometimes without any reason. However, its electoral score never went beyond 15%, and has strongly declined during the last years.
> And what should the civilized world learn from
> this whole debacle? Socialism doesn't work.
The simple fact that you are assimilating France with socialism simply shows that you are absolutely clueless on what you're talking about, and that you can only rely on silly cliches.
Ok, I'm French, and I can tell you that this other French guy is nothing but a wacky paranoid ideologist living in a huge conspiracy theory.
Va voir ton psychiatre, dude.
PS: If I had to choose, I'd rather live in a place where nazi propaganda is censored than in a place where sex is censored. Try to see nudity of hear explicit language on American channels before 22:30 pm.
I'm French, I'm spending a part of my time in the French academia and another part in the American academia. I really don't get your point about "cultural discrimination". The French have a strong international mentality and are usually very welcoming toward their European or American fellows. So I don't think there is a need to worry.
However, note that Marseille is, say, "specific". It's the less rich of all French big cities, it's very latin and messy. I don't know exactly what you're looking for, but if you're from northern Europe (or from Germany, Switzerland, Austria), the cultural differences with people in Marseille will be much more acute than with, say, Parisians. I personnally like Marseille because it's cosmopolite and fun, and because of the meditarrenean sea, but I wish it were more prospere and active. Another annoying thing is the perpetual ranting about Paris, often seen as too powerful.
> How exactly do you know that these 2 people are
> American? I could easily imagine two Canadians
> or two Europeans having the same debate and
> saying the exact same things.....
Well, I can't. First, because the preoccupations expressed by these 2 people are rather typically American (I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that a conversation between Canadians or Europeans would probably yield a different argumentation). Second, because one calls the other "Republican", which the other acknowledges.
Third, and this is the most important, because I don't know of any other country in which someone would say "this is the greatest place to live", or, as you usually hear from politicians, "the greatest democracy in the world", "the greatest land on earth". I only know of two contries which have been pretentious enough to see themselves as universal models: France, the "country of human rights", and America, the "land of freedom". France has gradually given up this idea after the series of trauma (wars, horrors and humiliations) of the 20th century. America is still very much in it. Having the French experience in mind, I know this kind of vanity is just nonsense.
> and i'll also know that this is the greatest
> place in the world to live
Funny how for many Americans this statement is not even questionable.
Yet, it is. Badly.
Signed: A "half-time in Europe, half-time in the US" dude, who hasn't made his choice yet, but who knows it's not simple.
My favorite book is this one ( Amazon). Wide-ranging, great for both engineers and mathematicians, intuitive, rigorous, and clear.
> [] No standard, just a few people playing with
> things, so they never introduced a product.
Currently changing. JPEG 2000 is based on wavelets.
> [] More obscure than 'typical' compression, more
> effort and background is required to implement
> it
No. Maths and algoritms are quite simple in the wavelet theory.
The real reason people don't hear much about it is that people in general don't hear much about what is really going on in day-to-day technology. Wavelets are everywhere, in thousands of application, for dedicated tasks. Jpeg 2000 is one of the very first application that can attract some attention by the media. This work might be another.
> FFT is O(nlog(n)).
And the wavelet transform is o(n) since Mallat's filter bank algorithms. Speed is never a problem with wavelet processing.
> During era of the Civil War, which ultimately
> led to the freeing of American slaves, I would
> have chosen:
>
> a) freedom
> b) stability
FYI, the civil war was not about freeing slaves, it was about keeping the Union together. The slavery issue was just a narrative alibi. It was mostly about the northern Anglo-Saxon puritan and austere way of life enforcing its domination toward the more latin South. Northern had very few slaves because agriculture was in the South, plain and simple. And today, you hear assholes talking about freedom, 1st amendment and such and in the same time, seeing no problem in the censorship on American TV and movies when it comes to sex or to "explicit" vocabulary.
Ab. Lincoln said "If I should have saved the union without freeing any slave, I would have have done it". History has forgotten this sentence. As usual in America which has always been on the edge of historic falsification.
Well, once you've made the Gtk port and the bonoboification, I don't think there's gonna much of the original source code left...
Seriously, this is good news, but the problems are still ahead: do you think it's doable now to transform this non-native autarcic bloatware into a native and performant application? I don't. To me the main good thing is that this code should include pretty good MS-Office export/import filters that can be used in other projects.
> The OCaml compiler currently uses the Q Public
> License, which means modified versions can only
> be distributed as patches.
While I usually happen to prefer the GPL for applications, I think the Q Public License is fine for a compiler and other programming libraries, and maybe better than the GPL. Code fork can have dramatic consequences for a programming language since there is a risk to break the compatibility. Honestly, I think it is legitimate that the original authors somehow "forbid" such a threat.
Distributing the modifications as patches helps to prevent a break in compatibility. One can expect the developpers of the "official" version to intergrate patches which appear to be popular.
> relative speed of the languages.
I agree. Here is another study of languages for scientific processing. O'Caml is doing pretty well (same order as C++ compilers).
And here is a more general study (but older, O'Caml has improved quite a lot since them). O'Caml is doing quite well again, except for the memory usage on one of the tests.
> Of course, in the works is ML2000, which will
:-)
> incorporate some of the good ideas in O'Caml,
> as well as adding real subtyping, run-time
> generative types, and concurrency primitives.
> ML2000 will be a seriously impressive
> programming language.
Good, but please, try to avoid fragmentation and NIH-type competition between ML2000 and O'Caml. It would kill both (at least, it would prevent both to meet widespread success). If ML2000 can bring reunification, then great.
As far as I'm concerned, I would tend to say that the OO primitives in O'Caml bring more than "buzzword-compliance", because the OO design is really great in O'Caml. I mean, O'Caml may be the first language where the OO primitives can be useful
I don't think Scheme can't change that. It has been around for 25 years now, hasn't really taken off, and is more fragmented than ever. Besides, many people are still reluctant toward this lisp-type syntax. I don't see why Haskell could change that either: it's nice, but it has a very small installed basis, which is not growing very fast. It cannot be used for system programming and big projects, and it suffers serious competition on smaller projects from fast-growing procedural "elegant" high-level languages, especially Python. Eventually, I don't see why Common Lisp should succeed now, after years of disappointments and decline.
Here's the problem: try to imagine a functionnal language, whose compilers bring performance that are far superior than Java compilers', and approximately as good as C++ compilers'. This language should be highly portable, suitable for Java-types applets, and have an object-orientation design at least as good ad Java's and CLOS. Its syntax should be more attractive than Lisp's, it should be interpreted and convenient to use and debug via a command-line interpreter just the way Python or Lisp dialects are, and in the same time, as mentioned above, compilable into a very fast executable code. It should also be able to interoperate wich C modules (and maybe others). And, besides all these qualities, it should also be much more than that, and bring other unique advantages.
Such a language exists, it is called Objective Caml. One thing only is missing, the most important one, the installed basis. So there is a need to create the ecosystem. Here's a suggestion:
One could think of a new type of desktop environment which would be based on Objective Caml. Emacs users know that Emacs is an incredibly powerful and convenient Lisp environment, which is unfortunately limited to textual tasks, due to the limitations of Emacs Lisp (at the beginning, Emacs Lisp was supposed to be used solely as a macro language for an editor, and it has gone much beyond that). Imagine an environment in the spirit of Emacs (highly integrated, fully extensible, customizable, reconfigurable and reinterpretable when you use it, etc...), but whose scope would not be limited to textual tasks, and which could actually serve as a full "multimedia-hype-buzzword-whatever" universal desktop. To put it another way, try to imagine an Emacs type environment which would cover all the functionnalities of a, say, MacOS X or Windows user environment. It this is doable, then it's in Objective Caml.
Now, I know, I have a big mouth, and I should show some code. Anyway, comments appreciated.
> small precious countries without internet access
Ahah. Funny troll. What's more, moderated up to 3, which suggests that the moderator is as ignorant and blind as you are... FYI, the communication infrastructure in this small precious country is excellent, and actually better than in most American states when you 're not in California ot in the big cities of the East Coast and Great Lakes. The www consortium is hosted in Grenoble, France. Everybody has been online and making purchases with the minitel terminal since the mid-80's. The lead over America in wireless phone and wireless devices in general is impressive. Etc, etc... not to mention smart credit cards which have been used by everyone for over 10 years now, or digital and interactive TV.
This kind of brainwashed ignorance really pisses me up.
> I mean, the French have traditionally been quite
> nationalistic.
Blabla. Cliches. The French never elected a nationalistic government. What's more important, the French are the most active and enthusiastic when it comes to the European construction and integration.
The French don't put national flags on the front of their houses as the people in that other narcissic country (oops, sorry, when Americans do that, it's "patriotism", when French do that, it's "nationalism"). According to an American writer, "the French are the most international people". Note also that the kind of collective fanatism one can observe during a 4th of July in America is far more scary than gentle festivities during a 14th of July in France. Been there, seen that.
Note also that French newspapers don't have anti-Anglo Saxon articles, while English tabloids and American "serious" journals regularly publish their usual francophobic stereotypes (on issues like language, business, government, attitude, etc...). Even last week, I read an article in the "New York Observer" about the purchase of Seagram by Vivendi. Boy, it was incredibly hateful: replace in this kind of article, which are very common in the US, "French" by "Jews" of "Blacks", and you have a real scandal. But, for some reason, French-bashing is politically correct. And, contrary to what some of you might think, American or English-bashing is absolutely not politically correct in France, far from it. When there is a rebellion against the American domination, the point is not America, the point is the fear of a "for-profit" society, to put it in a simple way.
Oh, of course, there is the usual language issue. Well, first, if you think a minority of conservative French politicians are representative of the average French pesron (the vast majority of French _do_ speak fairly good English), you're just wrong. Second, may be Americans could show the way by switching to the metric system, for example, hmmm? It should be easier to do than changing the language which has been used for 1500 years and which has been the driving force behind the nation's unity... and it makes more sense, too: while it is almost impossible to claim the superiority of one language over another one, it's easier to realize that the imperial system is absurdly complex and archaic.
What the hell are you talking about? The death of Laurence Turbec has absolutely nothing to do with Jose Bove. The bombing of the McDonald's was organized by Brittany independists. This was their first fatal bomb attacks. They've been arrested, and their organization, considered as harmless before this event, has become highly unpopular and can be considered as dead. It's over, period. Too bad an innocent woman died. But please stick to the truth and don't amlagamate this with Bove.
> > the code was written in order to produce
> > screenshots
>
> Well this is just 100% wrong.
To be more specific, I'm thinking about the kspread code in the fall of 98. Anyone can go and check who is right.
And if you don't set a difference of "attitude" between KDE/KOffice and other projects such as GNUStep or Berlin when it comes to launch a kewl web site, claiming highly promising features with corresponding screenshots just like if they were already there and granted, while no technology is well thought-out and reliable yet (come on, the first attempt for KOM/Openparts has proven to be a complete failure, tke KOffice team could at least have waited to have the right technology before claiming its wonders everywhere!), there's nothing I can do.
Now, my message would probably have been truer 4 or 6 months ago, because, indeed, Konqueror is now well advanded, so is Koffice, and it's becoming normal that we now have "real, honnest" screenshots. But I would not be surprised if, after the release of KDE 2, Konqueror and Koffice, the same gain started again with future developments.
You're right. It's kinda sad that, since and because of KDE, free software is now also playing this crappy marketing game : spectacular announcement, fancy screenshots, and "advanced" technical article describing how cool the software will be, and then you have to wait for several months (or even 1 or 2 year) until actual working software is released... and very often in a premature way. There was a time when a free software *.0 version was supposed to be reliable. What's even sadder, the actual software functionnalities and architecture are usually far below initial buzz words component-ORB-modular-reusable-transparent-interop erable-blabla
expectations.
Remember the KOffice buzz? There has been fancy screenshots with embedded components for 2 years now, there has also been technical articles by Stadlbauer describing the "sexy-futistic-bleeding edge-blabla" architecture one year ago (actually, it's going to be exactly the same as Microsoft OLE/COM, talk about a revolution). And still nothing is working properly. This is ridiculous.
Some Gnome developpers told me they felt forced to behave that way too, because of the KDE competition. They recognize this sometimes goes way to far (remember Gmome 1.0?), but they pretend things would be much different if KDE was...
Fortunately the BSD folks don't do that yet. Nor does the FSF, nor does Linus ("show me the code!"). Nor did Kimball and Mathis with the Gimp. Nor does the XEmacs team. Nor does GNUStep, nor does Berlin, nor does XFree86. I hope it will remain this way. But KDE does, and Gnome follows. So do commercial distributions which now release a new version every 4 or 5 months, full of new functionnalities before their bugs got fixed.
There are just enough programmers to achieve technological breakthroughs in programming languages, such as ADA in the 70's, Eiffel in the 80's, and Caml/Objective Caml in the 90's.
Please compare Objective Caml with Lisp, C++ or Java, will you? Now, of course, with ignorant and xenophobic people like you, no wonder that a programming language has to come from the US, even if it's technically inferior, to meet widespread popularity.