You should read up on the case. None of the detainees whether US citizen or not are held as POW.
The current administration invented the interesting term "unlawful combatants". A term that has no meaning and is not governed by any international human right standards nor treaties.
A POW is protected by the Geneva Convention. This guarantees that he/she will be treated in a decent way and are not allowed to be questioned and or further prosecuted by the enemy force that holds him or her.
That the US administration states to fight a war yet, denies POW status to enemy combatants is simply scandalous. Just because you fight against an enemy who does not have any respect for human right standards does not mean that you should feel free to abandon those standards yourself.
By doing this the US also sets a precarious precedent. If the US forgoes international law it will encourage other nations to do the same.
The Geneva convention used to be very powerful even Nazi Germany pretty much obeyed it. In recent history it protected the GIs that were taken by Milsovic's Yugoslavian army in the wake of the war on Serbia. The jeopardizing of the Geneva convention exposes a frightening foolishness on part of the current administration (I hope foolishness is all there is to it).
Currently I am involved (for the first time) in localizing a very complex product (sells for about 150,000).
While we have a nice (actually free) product to look at the GUI elements while translating them, the messages of the product come with no context.
In all modesty I can claim to know this product better than anybody else in my country (the product was developed overseas but I was in touch with the developers almost from inception). Nevertheless without context I sometimes have no clue what some messages are supposed to mean.
I would be surprised if this problem had already been tackled in the OpenSource World, if so please prove me wrong. (Disclaimer: I haven't been involved in localizing OpenSource products. My own stuff I write with an English GUI anyway).
From my experience I'd say that there is more to a localization framework than a central place to store all messages and GUI texts.
The latter is indispensable to be able to localize the software at all, but it does not make for a comfortable straightforward translation process.
For each message there should be context information that tells the translator under what circumstances the message string will appear for the user. Without this information a certain percentage of your translation will always end up being guesswork (depending on the complexity of the product).
Happy 2003 to all.
Re:You misunderstand completely
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 1
One thing Lars failed to mention is the fact that evolutionary mechanism (e.g. genetic algorithms) work quiet nicely in computer simulation.
So we have theories that explain given observations by means of an understandable mechanism versus creationism that relies on some outer-worldly intervention of god, who most certainly can not
be simulated in a computer.
It boils down to a very simple matter: As soon as you invoke god to explain anything you leave the realms of science.
A biology teacher of mine followed what I thought was a better approach to bring his believe system and scientific education into alignment: He studied the earliest bible texts in their original language (old Greek, Hebrew etc.) to prove that whoever wrote Genesis actually received a vision of the evolutionary process and tried to put it into words as well as the language of the time allowed him (or her) to.
Anyway my old teachers motivation puzzles me as much as the one of creationists because it looks to me as in both cases people feel the urge to uncover some "prove" that their believes are right. Correct me if I am wrong, but from my point of view somebody who is secure in his faith shouldn't have to fish for such "proves".
I was always wondering if Al Quaida was especially provoked by the collapse of the Israel/Palestine peace that accelerated when Bush took over.
At the beginning of his term Bush did not offer any leadership for this most volatile of all Middle East hot spots. It came somewhat into focus after 9/11 just to be quickly pushed into the background again. Clinton's administration maintained much more control there.
From my point of view the Isreal/Palestine conflict is the main source for Arab contempt of the US. Therefore it may not be by chance that 9/11 happened during Bush's term. Not because security changed, but rather because Al Quaida felt more provoked than ever by the administration's stance on the Palestine/Israel issue.
Irony is 9/11 transformed Bush from a laughing stock into the most popular president ever.
The exhaust of Bio Diesel is actually a little bit better than that of regular Diesel. But the energy (and the subsequent pollution) that you have to invest to produce Bio Diesel outweighs the benefits. Since my government (Germany) signed the Kyoto agreement I think we'd see a strong backing in my country for Bio Diesel if it actually was a viable means to lower our CO2 emissions.
Diesel fuel in the US does not comply to the same standards as in the EU. That is why many of the efficient Diesel engines can not be offered in the states. Too much sulfur in American Diesel. It's a pity. I currently live in Germany driving an AUDI TDI. I love that I can drive 1000 km before having to refill (granted it's also nice to have an ecological sound conscience).
I don't think companies purchase StarOffice because it is incrementally better than OpenOffice but rather because:
1) they want reliable tech support 2) the product has been tested by a vendor 3) warranties (granted the DMCA pretty much frees vendors from giving any, but if SUN is smart they give some warranty anyway)
The money in the software business is with the corporate accounts. They don't tend to use warez. I think that a software business plan that targets and solely relies on the private home user is inherently flawed and not worth the paper that it is written on.
Corel pitched in to early. If Linux ever manages to penetrate the corporate desktop market we will probably see Corel offering WordPerfect for Linux again.
At my company we conduct a yearly survey of our customers to find out in what direction to take our software development.
As soon as it became apparent that a large enough number was asking for Linux we ported the full range of products to Linux - no further questions asked.
(Of course it helped that we already offered our products for other UNIX platforms.)
I would expect other software companies to adapt a similar approach, but I know that - for whatever reason - many lack such a systematic market evaluation. This always puzzled me. Seems to me to be a surprising lack of business sense.
The job market in general is not doing very well these days. A year ago the job section in the most polpular IT magazine CT was almost as large as the rest of the magazine. In the issue from about three month ago there has not been a single job add! I've read this magazine for about ten years now and couldn't remember that ever to happen before. In the last couple of issues the job adds are slowly coming back. But it's still not more than a trickle.
On the other hand you may have more luck trying to work as freelancer. You can find companies that are looking for freelancers at sites like this.
One thing to be aware of is that it is about as hard for a US national to get a work visa in Germany as the other way around. You may want to contact the German embassy beforhand and learn about the options.
Well, I lived in both places Germany and the US. I find the US tax system much less user friendly. In Germany if you're only income is from employment you don't have to fill out a single form for your taxes. The percentage is simply taken out of your paycheck. You only have to fill out a form if you feel you are entitled to special expenses. Then you file this form and get some money back.
Now if your self-employed or run a business things are somewhat more complicated, but it's not more or less clandestine than in the states.
Well, I am German and I appreciate this very much. Maybe this way we get even for all the money that Germay has to hand over to the states every time they decide to invade Iraq. No to mention the fact that I already have to pay higher gas prices because of the advance of the next superfluous war in the Middle East.
While living in the states isn't bad at all my wife and I currently very much enjoy living in Germany.
My personal pet-peeve with the living quality in the states is the feeling of insecurity in some neighbourhoods. I very much enjoy feeling save here pretty much at any time at any place.
There are some things I miss though. My wife's and my favourite country is Canada. We think it just has the right blend between European and US culture. If it just wasn't so cold.
Don't know anything about New Zealand or Australia, but I was told that they also offer a very nice quality of living.
I don't think anybody is qualified to call some country the greatest of them all, what is your basis for your decision, have you lived in all the others?
You are right there should be consequences. One consequence has been the ongoing embargo against Iraq. Since this does not seem to generate enough leverage you can make a case for more severe consequences.
But there is something like due process on an international scale. If the US decides to be the executioner and the judge in the case against Iraq this will set a dangerous precedence.
It is up to the UN security council to set an ultimatum and to sanction the use of military force. Bush Sr. got this part right the first time.
If the US just storms in without following this procedure they pave the way for any other country to follow this example. There are many countries in defiance of UN resolutions, most notably Israel.
Following the same logic any Arab country could attack Israel claiming to try to militarily enforce these UN resolution (granted at this point this is a pretty hypothetical example.)
My comment was not meant to imply that Americans who blindly trust their government when it comes to foreign policy to be dumb. I assume they are merely disinterested. I am also sorry if I came across as sitting on a high-horse.
It just genuinely puzzles me how uncritical Americans tend to be when it comes to the track record of their government regarding foreign issues. Especially in light of the fact that many Americans are quite critical towards the power of their federal government on their own turf.
The only explanation I came up with is genuine disinterest in issues outside the US boarder on part of the large majority of Americans.
Your accurate description of the damage done by European nation engaging in empire building proves to me that you do have a fair interest in foreign affaires, so tell me, is my assumption correct that most of your fellow citizen don't tend to share this interest?
To overcome the reluctance of most European nation to support a war against Iraq it'll really help if the evidence of Iraq's involvement in 9/11 was made public.
In the context of this discussion the previous post was probably referring to the fact that the average American citizen consumes the most energy in global comparison. If I am not mistaken about twice as much as the average European, who is not very prone to energy efficient use either.
What puzzles me is your assumption that the US "feeds the world and runs to everyone's defense and aid". While it is true that American individuals are very generous when it comes to contributing funds to global aid organizations the track record of the American government is rather mixed (Just to pick one thread in current history: Involvement of the US in overthrowing the democratically elected leader of Iran in the 50s, subsequent support for the following non-elected leader. This regime went belly up, so the US backed Sadam to contain the fundamentalist Iran, then Sadam went out of control).
To me the common place assumption that the US only engages in do-good foreign policy is part of the reason that the US governments get away with very questionable foreign interventions. To me this looks like an awful lack of democratic control. The media hardly ever reports about these things and the average American remains complacent in the comfortable illusion that Washington, DC only brings good to the world.
The average American hardly ever believes that DC's internal American politics are always benevolent and driven by humanitarian notions. Why then is there this illusion that this is so when it come to foreign policy?
Klein and Schultz are very common names in Germany. Given our unfortunate history you can be quite certain that all those German Kleins and Schultzes are not Jewish.
To infer that these neighbors are supposed to be Jewish is an odd thing to do.
I am not sure if you can produce 100 W that easily, but the 15 W that my Netwinder consumes should be easily achievable. Lets say the circumference of the pedals are about 1 meter. You would have to push against a force of 30 Newton achieving one full revolution every 2 seconds to put out 15 Watt = (30 x 1)Nm / 1s
Now if you assume that you loose 20 % upon conversion into electrical current you will have to pedal a little bit harder agaisnat a force of 150 Newton. That's equivalent to the weight of 15 Kg. Sounds doable to me.
We still claim to be the largest, and I think this is in all likelihood correct. I doubt you will find another private outfit of that size in our industry (more than one billion dollar annual revenue).
I am happy to report that SAS never made me feel like a corporate cron job:)
... is standard at the largest privately held software company, since the company was founded over 25 years ago.
Disclaimer: I work for this company but I am based in Germany, and ironically enough the (trade union enforced) standard work-week here is 37.5 hours.
When relocating back to Germany I would have never expected to work longer hours than my American colleagues (still have much more holidays though).
The founder and CEO of my company always claimed that long work hours adversely affect the quality of the code, and that a 35 hour weeks for programmers makes perfect business sense. I think he is right.
the latter being their Java Develpment Environment. Tomcat is also shipped with many other product of SAS.
In Germany I know at least two companies that use Tomcat in conjuction with SAS® Strategic Performance Management.
Unfortunatelly they do not offer a good basis to judge scalabilty of Tomcat, because the product only addressed reporting needs for a limited number of executives.
I believe many custom build internal systems here at my workplace are also running on top of Tomcat, but I would have to inquire about this.
Slashdot Mirror
You should read up on the case. None of the detainees whether US citizen or not are held as POW.
The current administration invented the interesting term "unlawful combatants". A term that has no meaning and is not governed by any international human right standards nor treaties.
A POW is protected by the Geneva Convention. This guarantees that he/she will be treated in a decent way and are not allowed to be questioned and or further prosecuted by the enemy force that holds him or her.
That the US administration states to fight a war yet, denies POW status to enemy combatants is simply scandalous. Just because you fight against an enemy who does not have any respect for human right standards does not mean that you should feel free to abandon those standards yourself.
By doing this the US also sets a precarious precedent. If the US forgoes international law it will encourage other nations to do the same.
The Geneva convention used to be very powerful even Nazi Germany pretty much obeyed it. In recent history it protected the GIs that were taken by Milsovic's Yugoslavian army in the wake of the war on Serbia. The jeopardizing of the Geneva convention exposes a frightening foolishness on part of the current administration (I hope foolishness is all there is to it).
... is not as simple as I thought it would be.
Currently I am involved (for the first time) in localizing a very complex product (sells for about 150,000).
While we have a nice (actually free) product to look at the GUI elements while translating them, the messages of the product come with no context.
In all modesty I can claim to know this product better than anybody else in my country (the product was developed overseas but I was in touch with the developers almost from inception). Nevertheless without context I sometimes have no clue what some messages are supposed to mean.
I would be surprised if this problem had already been tackled in the OpenSource World, if so please prove me wrong. (Disclaimer: I haven't been involved in localizing OpenSource products. My own stuff I write with an English GUI anyway).
From my experience I'd say that there is more to a localization framework than a central place to store all messages and GUI texts.
The latter is indispensable to be able to localize the software at all, but it does not make for a comfortable straightforward translation process.
For each message there should be context information that tells the translator under what circumstances the message string will appear for the user. Without this information a certain percentage of your translation will always end up being guesswork (depending on the complexity of the product).
Happy 2003 to all.
One thing Lars failed to mention is the fact that evolutionary mechanism (e.g. genetic algorithms) work quiet nicely in computer simulation.
So we have theories that explain given observations by means of an understandable mechanism versus creationism that relies on some outer-worldly intervention of god, who most certainly can not be simulated in a computer.
It boils down to a very simple matter: As soon as you invoke god to explain anything you leave the realms of science.
A biology teacher of mine followed what I thought was a better approach to bring his believe system and scientific education into alignment: He studied the earliest bible texts in their original language (old Greek, Hebrew etc.) to prove that whoever wrote Genesis actually received a vision of the evolutionary process and tried to put it into words as well as the language of the time allowed him (or her) to.
Anyway my old teachers motivation puzzles me as much as the one of creationists because it looks to me as in both cases people feel the urge to uncover some "prove" that their believes are right. Correct me if I am wrong, but from my point of view somebody who is secure in his faith shouldn't have to fish for such "proves".
Happy 2003 to all.
I was always wondering if Al Quaida was especially provoked by the collapse of the Israel/Palestine peace that accelerated when Bush took over.
At the beginning of his term Bush did not offer any leadership for this most volatile of all Middle East hot spots. It came somewhat into focus after 9/11 just to be quickly pushed into the background again. Clinton's administration maintained much more control there.
From my point of view the Isreal/Palestine conflict is the main source for Arab contempt of the US. Therefore it may not be by chance that 9/11 happened during Bush's term. Not because security changed, but rather because Al Quaida felt more provoked than ever by the administration's stance on the Palestine/Israel issue.
Irony is 9/11 transformed Bush from a laughing stock into the most popular president ever.
Independent studies revealed that Bio Diesel is not more environmental. Sorry, only have two German links to back this up:
(1)
(2)
The exhaust of Bio Diesel is actually a little bit better than that of regular Diesel. But the energy (and the subsequent pollution) that you have to invest to produce Bio Diesel outweighs the benefits. Since my government (Germany) signed the Kyoto agreement I think we'd see a strong backing in my country for Bio Diesel if it actually was a viable means to lower our CO2 emissions.
Diesel fuel in the US does not comply to the same standards as in the EU. That is why many of the efficient Diesel engines can not be offered in the states. Too much sulfur in American Diesel. It's a pity. I currently live in Germany driving an AUDI TDI. I love that I can drive 1000 km before having to refill (granted it's also nice to have an ecological sound conscience).
I don't think companies purchase StarOffice because it is incrementally better than OpenOffice but rather because:
1) they want reliable tech support
2) the product has been tested by a vendor
3) warranties (granted the DMCA pretty much frees vendors from giving any, but if SUN is smart they give some warranty anyway)
The money in the software business is with the corporate accounts. They don't tend to use warez. I think that a software business plan that targets and solely relies on the private home user is inherently flawed and not worth the paper that it is written on.
Corel pitched in to early. If Linux ever manages to penetrate the corporate desktop market we will probably see Corel offering WordPerfect for Linux again.
At my company we conduct a yearly survey of our customers to find out in what direction to take our software development.
As soon as it became apparent that a large enough number was asking for Linux we ported the full range of products to Linux - no further questions asked.
(Of course it helped that we already offered our products for other UNIX platforms.)
I would expect other software companies to adapt a similar approach, but I know that - for whatever reason - many lack such a systematic market evaluation. This always puzzled me. Seems to me to be a surprising lack of business sense.
The job market in general is not doing very well these days. A year ago the job section in the most polpular IT magazine CT was almost as large as the rest of the magazine. In the issue from about three month ago there has not been a single job add! I've read this magazine for about ten years now and couldn't remember that ever to happen before. In the last couple of issues the job adds are slowly coming back. But it's still not more than a trickle.
On the other hand you may have more luck trying to work as freelancer. You can find companies that are looking for freelancers at sites like this.
One thing to be aware of is that it is about as hard for a US national to get a work visa in Germany as the other way around. You may want to contact the German embassy beforhand and learn about the options.
Hope this helps and good luck!
P.S.: My nick stems from an old German movie called "Quax, the Crash Pilot"
if you pay 50% taxes in Germany than you must make a lot of money.
Well, I lived in both places Germany and the US. I find the US tax system much less user friendly. In Germany if you're only income is from employment you don't have to fill out a single form for your taxes. The percentage is simply taken out of your paycheck. You only have to fill out a form if you feel you are entitled to special expenses. Then you file this form and get some money back.
Now if your self-employed or run a business things are somewhat more complicated, but it's not more or less clandestine than in the states.
Don't know were this number comes from. Please explain.
The only flow of money that I know of is from the US renting military facilities in Germany. If you don't want them anymore feel free to retreat.
Well, I am German and I appreciate this very much. Maybe this way we get even for all the money that Germay has to hand over to the states every time they decide to invade Iraq. No to mention the fact that I already have to pay higher gas prices because of the advance of the next superfluous war in the Middle East.
My, aren't we testy ...
While living in the states isn't bad at all my wife and I currently very much enjoy living in Germany.
My personal pet-peeve with the living quality in the states is the feeling of insecurity in some neighbourhoods. I very much enjoy feeling save here pretty much at any time at any place.
There are some things I miss though. My wife's and my favourite country is Canada. We think it just has the right blend between European and US culture. If it just wasn't so cold.
Don't know anything about New Zealand or Australia, but I was told that they also offer a very nice quality of living.
I don't think anybody is qualified to call some country the greatest of them all, what is your basis for your decision, have you lived in all the others?
DISCLAIMER: My wife is American I am German
You are right there should be consequences. One consequence has been the ongoing embargo against Iraq. Since this does not seem to generate enough leverage you can make a case for more severe consequences.
But there is something like due process on an international scale. If the US decides to be the executioner and the judge in the case against Iraq this will set a dangerous precedence.
It is up to the UN security council to set an ultimatum and to sanction the use of military force. Bush Sr. got this part right the first time.
If the US just storms in without following this procedure they pave the way for any other country to follow this example. There are many countries in defiance of UN resolutions, most notably Israel.
Following the same logic any Arab country could attack Israel claiming to try to militarily enforce these UN resolution (granted at this point this is a pretty hypothetical example.)
My comment was not meant to imply that Americans who blindly trust their government when it comes to foreign policy to be dumb. I assume they are merely disinterested. I am also sorry if I came across as sitting on a high-horse.
It just genuinely puzzles me how uncritical Americans tend to be when it comes to the track record of their government regarding foreign issues. Especially in light of the fact that many Americans are quite critical towards the power of their federal government on their own turf.
The only explanation I came up with is genuine disinterest in issues outside the US boarder on part of the large majority of Americans.
Your accurate description of the damage done by European nation engaging in empire building proves to me that you do have a fair interest in foreign affaires, so tell me, is my assumption correct that most of your fellow citizen don't tend to share this interest?
To overcome the reluctance of most European nation to support a war against Iraq it'll really help if the evidence of Iraq's involvement in 9/11 was made public.
In the context of this discussion the previous post was probably referring to the fact that the average American citizen consumes the most energy in global comparison. If I am not mistaken about twice as much as the average European, who is not very prone to energy efficient use either.
What puzzles me is your assumption that the US "feeds the world and runs to everyone's defense and aid". While it is true that American individuals are very generous when it comes to contributing funds to global aid organizations the track record of the American government is rather mixed (Just to pick one thread in current history: Involvement of the US in overthrowing the democratically elected leader of Iran in the 50s, subsequent support for the following non-elected leader. This regime went belly up, so the US backed Sadam to contain the fundamentalist Iran, then Sadam went out of control).
To me the common place assumption that the US only engages in do-good foreign policy is part of the reason that the US governments get away with very questionable foreign interventions. To me this looks like an awful lack of democratic control. The media hardly ever reports about these things and the average American remains complacent in the comfortable illusion that Washington, DC only brings good to the world.
The average American hardly ever believes that DC's internal American politics are always benevolent and driven by humanitarian notions. Why then is there this illusion that this is so when it come to foreign policy?
Klein and Schultz are very common names in Germany. Given our unfortunate history you can be quite certain that all those German Kleins and Schultzes are not Jewish.
To infer that these neighbors are supposed to be Jewish is an odd thing to do.
I am not sure if you can produce 100 W that easily, but the 15 W that my Netwinder consumes should be easily achievable. Lets say the circumference of the pedals are about 1 meter. You would have to push against a force of 30 Newton achieving one full revolution every 2 seconds to put out 15 Watt = (30 x 1)Nm / 1s
Now if you assume that you loose 20 % upon conversion into electrical current you will have to pedal a little bit harder agaisnat a force of 150 Newton. That's equivalent to the weight of 15 Kg. Sounds doable to me.
We still claim to be the largest, and I think this is in all likelihood correct. I doubt you will find another private outfit of that size in our industry (more than one billion dollar annual revenue).
:)
I am happy to report that SAS never made me feel like a corporate cron job
... is standard at the largest privately held software company, since the company was founded over 25 years ago.
Disclaimer: I work for this company but I am based in Germany, and ironically enough the (trade union enforced) standard work-week here is 37.5 hours.
When relocating back to Germany I would have never expected to work longer hours than my American colleagues (still have much more holidays though).
The founder and CEO of my company always claimed that long work hours adversely affect the quality of the code, and that a 35 hour weeks for programmers makes perfect business sense. I think he is right.
the latter being their Java Develpment Environment. Tomcat is also shipped with many other product of SAS.
In Germany I know at least two companies that use Tomcat in conjuction with SAS® Strategic Performance Management.
Unfortunatelly they do not offer a good basis to judge scalabilty of Tomcat, because the product only addressed reporting needs for a limited number of executives.
I believe many custom build internal systems here at my workplace are also running on top of Tomcat, but I would have to inquire about this.
DISCLAIMER: I am an employee of SAS.