I'm French and living near one of our oldest nuclear plants. Our electricity national firm was allowed to run it about 10 years more than what was planned at the beginning. I don't like it.
And I'm not very sure that solar and wind power will provide enough energy in the future. So I'd like to see fusion plants working as soon as possible...
A correction: Provence is far far away from vast and empty. It is our Florida. House prices are awfully high.
The site was chosen because we have already some fusion experimental equipment and qualified people at this place.
And yes, we want the jobs:-)
Re:A disaster for Europeans!
on
Blank Keyboard
·
· Score: 1
So I wonder how Windows or Linux recognizes a US/French/American keyboard when you plug one if this only keys swapping. And what about the keys the poor American keyboard doesn't know (like ü, ß, ç or ø ) ?
It must be a little more complicated than just software on OS side...
A disaster for Europeans!
on
Blank Keyboard
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Friends of mine live in France at borders, work in Germany or Switzerland, occasionnaly fly to the US or China. These people are used to mentally swith keyboard mappings. (*)
Imagine blank keyboard everywhere: impossible to know wich language it uses!!
[(*) As many people of my generation used to games which thought American keyboards were the only ones: in France convert A to Q, W to Z, comma and M, and do not use Shift for numbers...]
On the other side, these keyboards would be the first real international keyboards: just configure the OS, and you don't have to learn a new keyboard mapping each time you visit a new country.
(Yes, we can already do that, but it seems humans need a reason to be lazy and force the computer to adapt to them instead of adapting to it).
A colleague has one on her old laptop: letters on keys are erased after so much time. She must be the only one able to type quickly on it.
That could be a feature: "Learn to type more quickly with our evolving keyboard: letters disappear one by one with time!"
That could perhaps already be done withe the keyboard on my Powerbook with lighted keyboard: just stay in the dark room and cut light for one key each minute.
>However we English really do hate the French as > much as we seem to and they hate us just as > much right back.
This is not hate, this is total disagreement on many many subjects, lack of reciprocal understanding, mixed with centuries of wars and imperialism on both sides. But fundamental values of both nations are the same.
If a real problem arises, we'll probably be on the same side, as in the last century.
>The French market is not so large that it gets > all DVDs made specifically for it. Instead, > they tend to use multiple languages and market > to a lot of Europe at the same time. If that is > the case, do the big media companies stop > selling in France or do they start selling > non-protected DVDs more broadly?
French market is 60 millions people; add the French speaking Belgians and Swiss, that's 1/5th of the US.
We have our edition of about anything Hollywood produces (French speaking, with French as default language on the DVD, French 'do not copy' warnings, French trailers), and a rather strong cinema industry.
For comparison, only "small" countries like Denmark are not big enough to justify doubling actors'voices. Producing another version of a DVD is nothing in comparison.
>While some fools honestly did hate the french, > and went all out with their "Freedom Fries", > most people didn't do much more than make >french jokes. Not to offend, but just for > laughs. > Also, the French deserve it.
Do not worry, we French do not hate Americans as much as we seem, we too like to make jokes.
And you deserve it too:-)
In France, enterprises are not supposed to give money to politicians. Individuals do, and the State does (according to election results). Campaign expenses are capped (IIRC, about $15 millions per candidate for the election for Presidency).
Scandals still exist about enterprises paying political parties (rarely politicians themselves) for big public projects.
Don't worry, lobbying does exist in many ways. A popular way (in France like in the US AFAIK) is promising a nice place in your enterprise to the politician after he'll leave his public office.
And, more and more, we have lobbying at the European level...
This was not the government, this is a single judge with more brain. On this subject, the current French government is following the same line as the US.
I do not expect much of this judgment. All we will win is "Copy protected" written on all DVDs.
...and especially as a French, it was the last straw. I've decided since to avoid to go to the US for vacation. Not until common sense comes back there. (Probably not in the 4 next years...).
Americans probably won't care, but they've lost many tourists. Not for fear of terrorists in America, but for fear of Americans.
Why Windows for PPC won't appear:
- Because a whole class of bugs and performance issues linked to the compatibility with x86 code would appear and cause support costs (and new FUD on Windows);
- Because most applications won't be recompiled anyway for PPC, as the market is still mostly on x86 and compatibility with Windows/PPC must be ensured by MS,
- Because Intel and AMD would not like that at all, and would push Linux, or threaten to do it.
- Because what is good for PPC is good for Apple (lower processor costs) ; this is not in MS interest to have a mighty Apple. (It could be a move to strangle Apple by getting all PPC processors, but IBM is not stupid and in worst case Mac OS X could even appear on x86 Apple hardware... (with Intel/AMD help)).
- Because if Windows had to leave x86, it would not have failed before.
- Because MS has NO interest in doing it.
- Because MS culture is still basically "one platform, one OS, so we can control it" and not the geeky "it must run anywhere so customers can do everything they want with it."
>On a more serious note, France is getting to be >a shady place and not somewhere to be if you are >visibly religous, that's for sure (Muslim, >Catholic, or Jewish primarily). With some very >anti-immigrant laws, and a disturbing amount of >support for the facist party, you don't have to >be a reanimated former president to worry about >some of the trends on france and much of europe.
This should be flamebait.
There is no problem being religious in France, it's just considered private. President Chirac is Catholic (like the majority of people) and attends church. Former Prime Minister Jospin is protestant. Many Ministers were/are Jews. BTW, even the mayor of Paris is gay - and it was NEVER an issue, even in the nastiest political battles. Nobody really cares.
The Church gives its opinion on some subjects, you take it or not. The current governement is trying to help Muslims to organize themselves to improve cooperation and integration, and prevent extremism.
The anti-immigrant laws have nothing to do with immigration : Catholic or Muslims Africans are (mal)treated the same way, for the same reasons that the US tries to contains its own immigration.
We have currently problems with very small minorities: Muslims attacking synagogues, neo-nazis destroying Muslim or Jewish cemeteries, but this in direct relationship with the Palestininan conflict or bunches of stupid young guys that exist everywhere, not with the behaviour of the state or the majority of the population.
The rise of the (fascist) Front National has more to do with unemployment and fear of Europe/immigration/loss of identity/politicians than anything else, not with religion by itself.
We can discuss about the allowance or not of some personal religious symbols at school, but nobody cares in the street.
Of course, if you're Bush or Ben Laden, and want the others to behave according to YOUR book, expect to be flamed.
Nothing about this on French radio this morning or yesterday night.
It's a shame to have to surf on American sites to discover that the space program of my continent is not stalled or limited to Ariane and a few probes to Mars.
Getting all interesting subroutines written for my current customer an put them into the common firm-wide pool for reuse is even something that my boss asked for.
From an engineer POV, this is good practice, and there is no damage for my current customer (these are purely technical libraries aimed at speeding development), but as a principle I asked my boss who theoretically owned all this code. No answer.
BTW, all my questions about what we should do when patents will apply in Europe were unanswered too - including from our lawyers.
This is only a top-10 worlwide IT service company...
A few years ago, Serge Humpich discovered a flaw in the French smart-card payment system, and proved that it was possible to get money from an ATM with a false card ; he never earned money with it and just showed journalists he could get money, and gave it back.
Banks sued him, and won: 10 months jails (deferred), about 4000 euros to pay (amends+banks' laywers fee). Technically, he was guilty of "unallowed access to a computer system". Banks have denied that the flaw existed but changed their system ; it didn't prevent many false cards to appear in the following years. Disgusted, Humpich wrote a book ('Le Cerveau Bleu').
Although similar, I hope it won't finish the same way. Guillermito didn't crack any computer, so the Humpich precedent does not apply. The European version of the DMCA is not yet voted in France (it won't last), and copyright infringment claims are stupid. But America does not have the monopoly of technically illiterate judges, and he influence of good lawyers, as was already shown in his case. The "terrorist" accusation should be enough to sue ("diffamation"). Ironically, cryptography and stenography are supposed to be terrorists' tools!
I'd say he should contact "60 millions de consommateurs" and "UFC-Que Choisir", two powerful consumer organizations.
This man released something which involves making a copy of the copyrighted intellectual property from Microsoft! We must stop him, or Windows will be available on P2P networks very soon, and terrorists will use it to destroy the world!
(This 'copy is bad' nonsense works both ways, right?)
>Please. Oracle's supposed dominance in databases > is under far more threat from Microsoft and IBM > than it is from MySQL **at this point in > time.** IBM earns more database revenue than > Oracle, so it's not even fair to say that > Oracle dominates.
It does not, but it's still a reference. Nobody was fired to have choosen Oracle as a database.
Although MySQL is light-years ahead from Oracle, it is enough for many people. When talking about databases, many people will think 'MySQL' before Oracle, DB2 or SQL Server, and won't even install anything else if they do not really have to. Whole markets simply disappearing.
Add to this that Oracle (the database) is a pain in the ass to install and manage, that Oracle support and tools, while very useful sometimes, make you want to reformat your hard drive and switch, and that Oracle as a firm is even worse than MS, and I predict that Oracle will more and more be cornered into high-end databases, very complex environments (see Oracle 10g marketed as 'distributed'), or as part of whole packages with tools or ERP (eg. Oracle Applications). And don't forget thousands of legacy systems.
>Why would the government give a $683M break to >AMD to get 1000 jobs? That's two thirds of a >million bucks per job. It's amazing that a $2B >facility can be staffed by only 1000 people
Germans don't care about the 1000 people working there, they care about:
- the other $1.4B that will come and will be spent in Germany for a good part,
- the thousands people needed to build a high-tech plant,
- the hundreds of firms and thousands people needed to provide (high tech) "raw" materials, and provide outsourced services to the plant (food, cleaning, software, maintenance, tools...) : do not forget that Germans are good at making tools and chemical products (which such a plant really need),
- the money that will go through their banks,
- the fact that this part of country really need jobs (previous Eastern Germany, 20% unemployment).
BTW: If you have an opportunity to visit this part of Germany, do no hesitate. Dresedn was totally destroyed in February 1945, but the Communists really succeeded in building it again [about their only success], and the area is very nice.
MSN search is included in Internet Explorer for years, but Google was always used by people able to change the homepage. Why ? Loads quickly (not so important in broadband times), very easy (almost nothing on screen on the first page - this is important!), good results (better than MSN that does not give my homepage when I type my name, only pages that link to it?!?). Why should it change?
MSN must fight a competitor which:
- has a good reputation
- is well established
- can't be blocked at the user's computer (can't change the rendering of such a simple page without breaking millions of other sites; Google would adapt quickly; can't firewall its URL on all Windows computers without a PR disaster and problems with a court),
- does not want to be bought,
- does not interact directly with Windows or Office, hence can't be blocked by playing with incompatible standards,
- could probably strike back if attacked with patents.
This is typical from MS: they want to stay alone on the market. MS does not understand the notion of a free market with different players (do not forget Yahoo and many others).
I was customer of Noos years ago (was called Cybercable in 1998), but still subscribe to the customers' mailing list: it's so funny to see that some things never change.
I've never seen anywhere else in France such a mix of technical incompetence and arrogance. Billing department and technical support are be firewalled from the rest of the firm to maximize client frustration. Written contracts (small grey prints on yellow paper) are LOST in their internal process. Snail-mail is ignored (even 'official' with signature required).
In the past, these people were selling only water and TV cable, and are used to deal with local authorities to establish local monopolies, not to deal with customers that deserve a bit of respect. My English is too weak to explain all the frustration they raised.
And it is lasting for YEARS... The perfect example of the bad effects of big conglomerates : Noos is owned by Suez, a big financial firm, and the darwinits side of capitalism (the best one) can't apply.
The positive side : to keep my e-mail safe ('disk full' on a SMTP server, and e-mails waiting days to be delivered drive me mad), to keep a sane DNS, I was forced to learn Linux, and manage all of that myself.
As soon as ADSL was available (2000), I switched, although it was more expensive. France Telecom is not perfect, but there are still some compentent techies there. Now, there are much more competiton on the market, I don't understand how Noos can keep a single Internet customer.
Do you know many people not involved in IT who know what the game of life is? I wouldn't even recognize a glider.
This logo is better than others, but the Linux penguin had success because:
- he's cute (*)
- everybody knows what a penguin is,
- I can buy a toy which is like this penguin
- nobody cares that a penguin has in reality absolutely nothing to do with OS science.
(*) Drawing is important; I suppose ESR chose something so simple to draw because he's not a good drawer - I would do the same thing in his place, but I do not claim to give a common symbol to millions of people.
Having said that, the idea of a common drawing to identify yourself as a geek or nerd is a good one. It could percolate into the common knowledge. I'm hoping only that script-kiddies won't put it on every defacement...
My experience on proxies and filters in a French plant of a very-well known firm:
* Google Groups (French version) is banned by the "Websense" filter as being part of "Usenet" - but the international version is still allowed ?!?
* I put pictures on my newborn son on my website, and sent the link to colleagues. One of them could not access because it was categorized as "sex". No idea which part of www courtois cc/bebe the filter found so horny.
Same thing happened with a friend, from a French bank this time.
I wonder which part of this is caused by the language problems (Websense is American-based, the proxy is in England ; has "bebe" a sexual connotation in English ?!?).
Whole Asia, including China and India, is already more than half of the world. That's surely enough for them.
And that's surely more than half of the world of computer makers and plants...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm French and living near one of our oldest nuclear plants. Our electricity national firm was allowed to run it about 10 years more than what was planned at the beginning. I don't like it.
And I'm not very sure that solar and wind power will provide enough energy in the future. So I'd like to see fusion plants working as soon as possible...
A correction: Provence is far far away from vast and empty. It is our Florida. House prices are awfully high.
:-)
The site was chosen because we have already some fusion experimental equipment and qualified people at this place.
And yes, we want the jobs
So I wonder how Windows or Linux recognizes a US/French/American keyboard when you plug one if this only keys swapping. And what about the keys the poor American keyboard doesn't know (like ü, ß, ç or ø ) ?
It must be a little more complicated than just software on OS side...
Friends of mine live in France at borders, work in Germany or Switzerland, occasionnaly fly to the US or China. These people are used to mentally swith keyboard mappings. (*)
Imagine blank keyboard everywhere: impossible to know wich language it uses!!
[(*) As many people of my generation used to games which thought American keyboards were the only ones: in France convert A to Q, W to Z, comma and M, and do not use Shift for numbers...]
On the other side, these keyboards would be the first real international keyboards: just configure the OS, and you don't have to learn a new keyboard mapping each time you visit a new country.
(Yes, we can already do that, but it seems humans need a reason to be lazy and force the computer to adapt to them instead of adapting to it).
A colleague has one on her old laptop: letters on keys are erased after so much time. She must be the only one able to type quickly on it.
That could be a feature: "Learn to type more quickly with our evolving keyboard: letters disappear one by one with time!"
That could perhaps already be done withe the keyboard on my Powerbook with lighted keyboard: just stay in the dark room and cut light for one key each minute.
>However we English really do hate the French as
> much as we seem to and they hate us just as
> much right back.
This is not hate, this is total disagreement on many many subjects, lack of reciprocal understanding, mixed with centuries of wars and imperialism on both sides. But fundamental values of both nations are the same.
If a real problem arises, we'll probably be on the same side, as in the last century.
>The French market is not so large that it gets
> all DVDs made specifically for it. Instead,
> they tend to use multiple languages and market
> to a lot of Europe at the same time. If that is
> the case, do the big media companies stop
> selling in France or do they start selling
> non-protected DVDs more broadly?
French market is 60 millions people; add the French speaking Belgians and Swiss, that's 1/5th of the US.
We have our edition of about anything Hollywood produces (French speaking, with French as default language on the DVD, French 'do not copy' warnings, French trailers), and a rather strong cinema industry.
For comparison, only "small" countries like Denmark are not big enough to justify doubling actors'voices. Producing another version of a DVD is nothing in comparison.
>While some fools honestly did hate the french,
:-)
> and went all out with their "Freedom Fries",
> most people didn't do much more than make >french jokes. Not to offend, but just for
> laughs.
> Also, the French deserve it.
Do not worry, we French do not hate Americans as much as we seem, we too like to make jokes.
And you deserve it too
In France, enterprises are not supposed to give money to politicians. Individuals do, and the State does (according to election results). Campaign expenses are capped (IIRC, about $15 millions per candidate for the election for Presidency).
Scandals still exist about enterprises paying political parties (rarely politicians themselves) for big public projects.
Don't worry, lobbying does exist in many ways. A popular way (in France like in the US AFAIK) is promising a nice place in your enterprise to the politician after he'll leave his public office.
And, more and more, we have lobbying at the European level...
This was not the government, this is a single judge with more brain. On this subject, the current French government is following the same line as the US.
I do not expect much of this judgment. All we will win is "Copy protected" written on all DVDs.
...and especially as a French, it was the last straw. I've decided since to avoid to go to the US for vacation. Not until common sense comes back there. (Probably not in the 4 next years...).
Americans probably won't care, but they've lost many tourists. Not for fear of terrorists in America, but for fear of Americans.
Why Windows for PPC won't appear:
- Because a whole class of bugs and performance issues linked to the compatibility with x86 code would appear and cause support costs (and new FUD on Windows);
- Because most applications won't be recompiled anyway for PPC, as the market is still mostly on x86 and compatibility with Windows/PPC must be ensured by MS,
- Because Intel and AMD would not like that at all, and would push Linux, or threaten to do it.
- Because what is good for PPC is good for Apple (lower processor costs) ; this is not in MS interest to have a mighty Apple. (It could be a move to strangle Apple by getting all PPC processors, but IBM is not stupid and in worst case Mac OS X could even appear on x86 Apple hardware... (with Intel/AMD help)).
- Because if Windows had to leave x86, it would not have failed before.
- Because MS has NO interest in doing it.
- Because MS culture is still basically "one platform, one OS, so we can control it" and not the geeky "it must run anywhere so customers can do everything they want with it."
>On a more serious note, France is getting to be
>a shady place and not somewhere to be if you are
>visibly religous, that's for sure (Muslim,
>Catholic, or Jewish primarily). With some very
>anti-immigrant laws, and a disturbing amount of
>support for the facist party, you don't have to
>be a reanimated former president to worry about
>some of the trends on france and much of europe.
This should be flamebait.
There is no problem being religious in France, it's just considered private. President Chirac is Catholic (like the majority of people) and attends church. Former Prime Minister Jospin is protestant. Many Ministers were/are Jews. BTW, even the mayor of Paris is gay - and it was NEVER an issue, even in the nastiest political battles. Nobody really cares.
The Church gives its opinion on some subjects, you take it or not. The current governement is trying to help Muslims to organize themselves to improve cooperation and integration, and prevent extremism.
The anti-immigrant laws have nothing to do with immigration : Catholic or Muslims Africans are (mal)treated the same way, for the same reasons that the US tries to contains its own immigration.
We have currently problems with very small minorities: Muslims attacking synagogues, neo-nazis destroying Muslim or Jewish cemeteries, but this in direct relationship with the Palestininan conflict or bunches of stupid young guys that exist everywhere, not with the behaviour of the state or the majority of the population.
The rise of the (fascist) Front National has more to do with unemployment and fear of Europe/immigration/loss of identity/politicians than anything else, not with religion by itself.
We can discuss about the allowance or not of some personal religious symbols at school, but nobody cares in the street.
Of course, if you're Bush or Ben Laden, and want the others to behave according to YOUR book, expect to be flamed.
Nothing about this on French radio this morning or yesterday night.
It's a shame to have to surf on American sites to discover that the space program of my continent is not stalled or limited to Ariane and a few probes to Mars.
Getting all interesting subroutines written for my current customer an put them into the common firm-wide pool for reuse is even something that my boss asked for.
From an engineer POV, this is good practice, and there is no damage for my current customer (these are purely technical libraries aimed at speeding development), but as a principle I asked my boss who theoretically owned all this code. No answer.
BTW, all my questions about what we should do when patents will apply in Europe were unanswered too - including from our lawyers.
This is only a top-10 worlwide IT service company...
A few years ago, Serge Humpich discovered a flaw in the French smart-card payment system, and proved that it was possible to get money from an ATM with a false card ; he never earned money with it and just showed journalists he could get money, and gave it back.
Banks sued him, and won: 10 months jails (deferred), about 4000 euros to pay (amends+banks' laywers fee). Technically, he was guilty of "unallowed access to a computer system". Banks have denied that the flaw existed but changed their system ; it didn't prevent many false cards to appear in the following years. Disgusted, Humpich wrote a book ('Le Cerveau Bleu').
Although similar, I hope it won't finish the same way. Guillermito didn't crack any computer, so the Humpich precedent does not apply. The European version of the DMCA is not yet voted in France (it won't last), and copyright infringment claims are stupid. But America does not have the monopoly of technically illiterate judges, and he influence of good lawyers, as was already shown in his case. The "terrorist" accusation should be enough to sue ("diffamation"). Ironically, cryptography and stenography are supposed to be terrorists' tools!
I'd say he should contact "60 millions de consommateurs" and "UFC-Que Choisir", two powerful consumer organizations.
This man released something which involves making a copy of the copyrighted intellectual property from Microsoft! We must stop him, or Windows will be available on P2P networks very soon, and terrorists will use it to destroy the world!
(This 'copy is bad' nonsense works both ways, right?)
>Please. Oracle's supposed dominance in databases
> is under far more threat from Microsoft and IBM
> than it is from MySQL **at this point in
> time.** IBM earns more database revenue than
> Oracle, so it's not even fair to say that
> Oracle dominates.
It does not, but it's still a reference. Nobody was fired to have choosen Oracle as a database.
Although MySQL is light-years ahead from Oracle, it is enough for many people. When talking about databases, many people will think 'MySQL' before Oracle, DB2 or SQL Server, and won't even install anything else if they do not really have to. Whole markets simply disappearing.
Add to this that Oracle (the database) is a pain in the ass to install and manage, that Oracle support and tools, while very useful sometimes, make you want to reformat your hard drive and switch, and that Oracle as a firm is even worse than MS, and I predict that Oracle will more and more be cornered into high-end databases, very complex environments (see Oracle 10g marketed as 'distributed'), or as part of whole packages with tools or ERP (eg. Oracle Applications). And don't forget thousands of legacy systems.
>Why would the government give a $683M break to >AMD to get 1000 jobs? That's two thirds of a >million bucks per job. It's amazing that a $2B >facility can be staffed by only 1000 people
Germans don't care about the 1000 people working there, they care about:
- the other $1.4B that will come and will be spent in Germany for a good part,
- the thousands people needed to build a high-tech plant,
- the hundreds of firms and thousands people needed to provide (high tech) "raw" materials, and provide outsourced services to the plant (food, cleaning, software, maintenance, tools...) : do not forget that Germans are good at making tools and chemical products (which such a plant really need),
- the money that will go through their banks,
- the fact that this part of country really need jobs (previous Eastern Germany, 20% unemployment).
BTW: If you have an opportunity to visit this part of Germany, do no hesitate. Dresedn was totally destroyed in February 1945, but the Communists really succeeded in building it again [about their only success], and the area is very nice.
MSN search is included in Internet Explorer for years, but Google was always used by people able to change the homepage. Why ? Loads quickly (not so important in broadband times), very easy (almost nothing on screen on the first page - this is important!), good results (better than MSN that does not give my homepage when I type my name, only pages that link to it?!?). Why should it change?
MSN must fight a competitor which:
- has a good reputation
- is well established
- can't be blocked at the user's computer (can't change the rendering of such a simple page without breaking millions of other sites; Google would adapt quickly; can't firewall its URL on all Windows computers without a PR disaster and problems with a court),
- does not want to be bought,
- does not interact directly with Windows or Office, hence can't be blocked by playing with incompatible standards,
- could probably strike back if attacked with patents.
This is typical from MS: they want to stay alone on the market. MS does not understand the notion of a free market with different players (do not forget Yahoo and many others).
I was customer of Noos years ago (was called Cybercable in 1998), but still subscribe to the customers' mailing list: it's so funny to see that some things never change.
I've never seen anywhere else in France such a mix of technical incompetence and arrogance. Billing department and technical support are be firewalled from the rest of the firm to maximize client frustration. Written contracts (small grey prints on yellow paper) are LOST in their internal process. Snail-mail is ignored (even 'official' with signature required).
In the past, these people were selling only water and TV cable, and are used to deal with local authorities to establish local monopolies, not to deal with customers that deserve a bit of respect. My English is too weak to explain all the frustration they raised.
And it is lasting for YEARS... The perfect example of the bad effects of big conglomerates : Noos is owned by Suez, a big financial firm, and the darwinits side of capitalism (the best one) can't apply.
The positive side : to keep my e-mail safe ('disk full' on a SMTP server, and e-mails waiting days to be delivered drive me mad), to keep a sane DNS, I was forced to learn Linux, and manage all of that myself.
As soon as ADSL was available (2000), I switched, although it was more expensive. France Telecom is not perfect, but there are still some compentent techies there. Now, there are much more competiton on the market, I don't understand how Noos can keep a single Internet customer.
Do you know many people not involved in IT who know what the game of life is? I wouldn't even recognize a glider.
This logo is better than others, but the Linux penguin had success because:
- he's cute (*)
- everybody knows what a penguin is,
- I can buy a toy which is like this penguin
- nobody cares that a penguin has in reality absolutely nothing to do with OS science.
(*) Drawing is important; I suppose ESR chose something so simple to draw because he's not a good drawer - I would do the same thing in his place, but I do not claim to give a common symbol to millions of people.
Having said that, the idea of a common drawing to identify yourself as a geek or nerd is a good one. It could percolate into the common knowledge. I'm hoping only that script-kiddies won't put it on every defacement...
My experience on proxies and filters in a French plant of a very-well known firm:
* Google Groups (French version) is banned by the "Websense" filter as being part of "Usenet" - but the international version is still allowed ?!?
* I put pictures on my newborn son on my website, and sent the link to colleagues. One of them could not access because it was categorized as "sex". No idea which part of www courtois cc/bebe the filter found so horny.
Same thing happened with a friend, from a French bank this time.
I wonder which part of this is caused by the language problems (Websense is American-based, the proxy is in England ; has "bebe" a sexual connotation in English ?!?).
Whole Asia, including China and India, is already more than half of the world. That's surely enough for them.
And that's surely more than half of the world of computer makers and plants...
Visual Source Safe? ;-)
That would explain why MS couldn't find it again itself...