Well, I don't know about the RIAA, but in France there was someone who was sued because he had downloaded a few thousand songs (he's a kind of a collector)... and the judge decided he was guilty.
Before that, I thought that no one downloading MP3s or DivX (but not uploading) could be bothered. I guess I was wrong.
I'm sorry, I can't let you say this, as a French person. We don't go on strike just to "make a point". We go on strike without telling anyone, just so everyone else knows that we CAN (thank you French Railroads for making me get up at 5h30 am because you went on strike this weekend without telling anyone... not even your own people in the company.)
Re:I code C# for a living
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 1
sorry, I messed up with the code. So it is like this:
void f() {
for (int i = 0; i < i; ++i)
;// empty loop, as you can see:-)
int i = 1; }// OK, VC++6 has already begun to go wild:-)
This code is considered wrong by VC++ <= 6
Re:I code C# for a living
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 1
Just a question... Can you change your compiler with VS and still enjoy the use of the debugger ? I mean, having a great debugger is fine, but when the compiler is buggy, there's a big problem.
In VSC++ 6, there was this funny little piece of code :
void f() {
for (int i=0; i
This code doesn't compile with VC++ 6, because "i has already been declared before".
Later on, when VC++.Net was released, they fixed the problem... As an option : there where too many developers who had been coding with the bug to make it available by default...
and you see those ads panning Linux are you going to be swayed by the article any at all?
Sorry but... Do you *really* look at ads on web pages ? I know I see them... But I certainly don't look at them. This is all about cognitive sciences;-)
To make myself clearer : your boss isn't likely to really click on the ad, look at the report, etc. He will probably just do as you asked him to : he will read the article and get back to business.
Just a little nuances to add here :
We, as humans, are very clever and creative. It may be a (very) troublesome and painful transition, but we'll make it.
Well, I'm pretty sure LOTS of ideas are ready to be implemented, but
1. It would cost money to implement said ideas, so oil companies postpone that. It is not an American problem. It is widely known as the (short-sighted) "capitalistic pragmatism".
2. There is still LOTS of money to be made from oil, while the system a company would try to develop isn't necessarily be the one chosen by the public... Although I'm pretty sure the biggest oil companies have talks about a common way of doing money...
We can't use solar energy because the solal cells' capacity isn't big enough yet. Will that still be the case in ten years from now ?
There is a motor using hydrogen as a fuel means. The problem is of course that it is very flamable. But in the end, it is a very clean way of moving a car... It even produces water when the hydrogen is used ! If only there was a way to make it explosion-proof...:-)
"How are you going to live...When a gallon of gas costs 4 bucks? 5 bucks?" It already does in most of Europe, if not more. They seem to be living ok.
There is a difference : lots of people living in the US NEED a car to get things done (shopping, going to work/to see a friend, etc.). That is not so in Europe. Of course, we do use it a lot, but not so often as US citizen do. So the price of a gallon can be 4/5 bucks, it's OK, 'cause we have other means for most everyday tasks.
Concerning the fact that the world would 'route around' the USA, this would eventually happen, but I rather think that lots of countries would follow the lead of the US because they depend a lot on them, and can't really afford to be left behind.
Re:The battles would have been a lot better
on
Message in a Battle
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I liked the jokes, they didn't seem gratuitous - they were always "in character"
I don't agree. I really liked "The Two Towers", and the jokes would have been fine if 1. It wasn't *once again* some kind of old dwarf joke, 2. said jokes were in the book (maybe I'm wrong, and it IS in the book, but I can't remember them), and 3. Legolas did something funny (but no, NO ! A dwarf may - no, MUST - be comical, but not a noble Elf...)
But that wasn't the case.
Maybe I'm a fanatic (I don't think so, I like TLOTR, but I don't dream about it), but if so, it's all about details. When Legolas tells Gimli that he killed 17 orcs while Gimli got only 2, it IS fun. But then gimli catches up, and scores more than Legolas, who accepts his "defeat", and then it is fun again !
My point is that there is some humor in the books, and that it has been twisted into some grotesque joke at the expense of the dwarves.
they're always passing laws regulating business without thinking through the consequences
Wrong. They do think about consequences, but there's always the problem of having to let another political team get the reward for what someone else has initiated. In the case of the 35 hours, the problem isn't about the 35 hours project in itself, but about its implementation. The socialist gov. wanted its "baby" to be launched before the next elections, and then they just implemented it really badly. Had they been able to keep their pride for themselves, and accept the fact that surely it would have been a right-winged gov. that would have finished implementing the 35-hours project, they would have tried to make the 35 hours happen much more slowly, to let small and medium companies/industries think about adapting themselves to the changes.
Now, about the hard-to-fire employees. You're right. It's difficult for someone to be fired in France. But when you want a long-term contract, you accept to be put on "trial" for two months. Within these 2 months, the employer can fire without any legal problem. After that, well... That's another story.
OTOH, it's difficult for an employee to quit a company just like that : he/she must warn his/her employer between one and three months before quitting (unless the company is willing to let you go before), so the company can have some time to put ads in order to hire someone else.
Google should dump Google.fr and continue doing what they're doing. That'll leave the French courts with no one to sue nationally and will be another nail in the coffin for French xenophobia.
Mmmh. I'm sorry, but you're talking nonsense right now. Saying that there is more xenophobia in France than in other countries (such as the US, for instance) is BS, IMHO.
I wasn't aware of that court decision, and YES, our government does make stupid mistakes from time to time. So what ? Are you saying yours doesn't ? So please don't be xenophobiac on us, and put in arguments that are relevant.
Normally, lanaguages evolve by their speakers, not by a government based commission.
Wrong. French became the official language in France during the 16th century. Before that, several variations of low-Latin were used to communicate in the different regions that were part of France. It was a state decision to impose a certain vocabulary to people. Just because the government decides that some words must be told in French don't mean English words aren't supposed to be used. But if French had it the way they "should" according to what I often read on this topic, they WOULD be speaking only English when it came to computer science. Every science originates from a few countries. When doing some algebra, do you intend to use Arabic words ? No, you use English words, and that's for the better.
If you are caught working more than 35 hours a week you will be fined.
Well, you should maybe inform yourself before making such stupid statements. The official number of hours of work per week in France is effectively 35 hours, but you don't get fined for working more hours. At worst, your compagny gets fined, but that isn't even likely to happen, unless it is an amount of hours that is quite exagerated.
Police go to parking lots and mark tires to make sure you're not there too long.
Please do check your information before repeating hearsays.
Just another reason why socialism is bad.
The actual government is a right-winged, capitalist one. Except for 15 years from 1981 to 2002 (with some interruptions), that was almost the only time there was a left-winged party in France.
First of all, I am not American either (actually, I'm French), and even though I can't speak in the name of every French person, I can safely say that every person I've crossed today were deeply sorry for the US. So am I, because this act of terrorism makes me want to cry. I know this won't help recovering from the loss of a relative, but I believe that knowing other countries are with the US can't be a bad thing : it's not a whole nation that made the Twin Towers burn.
While I partly agree with you (there's a point where you just can't watch and say "Hey, you're behaving badly, let's discuss about it"), there's a problem standing : I'm not sure we're ever gonna know the truth about who did what. Let me explain:
The only people saying they were responsible for this atrocity are belonging to a Palestinian terrorist group which didn't have the material means to commit such a crime. I was listening to an Israelian politician who was saying (and I think he's right) that such an action must have been a very long term plan. Unless every other country outside the US are willing to find those terrorists, months may pass before a serious lead shows.
I sincerely thinks that even if people must seek who commited this horrible act, people must cool down a bit, lest they want to hit the wrong guy. I've read and heard tons and tons of different discourses about who could want to do that, and even though some leads seem to be pretty serious, I think people must remember that only a few people are responsible for this. In that way, I think there's a need for a "plea for peace".
I know this can seem a pretty dull question, but you have to define what kind of violence we're talking about. Let me explain :
While some adventure games may have no explicit violent scenes featured, the atmosphere conveyed can be unhealthy (think of Shadow of the Comet, or Alone in the Dark, two Lovecraft-inspired games).
On the contrary, combat games (such as Fatal Street Shodown;-) ) are stress-annihilators, since they redirect it into the game - but since they have no educationnal purpose, they can't be chosen.
I've seen some comments here saying that since they were fairy tale-inspired games, the King Quest series (and other games molded the same way) may not be a good choice. That is *so* wrong. Yes, fairy tales include real gory details, and a certain amount of violence. I think we're missing the point by searching violence-free games, because almost everything we do is violence-related in some way, IMHO.
Yes SimCity, etc. could allow people to create big cities just to crush them after that, but you just can't prevent people from diverting a game's purpose to fill their need of violence. We're all violent to some extent; we just need to know how to release our impulses the good way (ie by doing sports, playing fighting video games, whatever helps to avoid bashing one's neighbour).
Now, the purpose is educationnal, but since the players have litteracy problems, you need to make them want to play those games... Myst, etc. are very good games, but, as it's been said previously, maybe a little too "abstract" for these guys. An old game I quite like is The 7th Guest. It is graphically correct, deals with enigmas, and has a good, enticing atmosphere.
In any case, you just can't give them games that aren't featuring enough "beautiful" graphics - at least at the beginning.
I would personnaly recommend any of the lucas adventure games (with a preference for Day of the Tentacle, which is a really crazy game, and prompts the player to imagine the weirdest solutions to solve problems)
I agree that the "who am I to judge" attitude leads to bad situations, where people accept (hypocritically) behaviors which shouldn't be allowed, but only when people use this attitude to extremities.
However, the "I judge and accept to be judged" attitude can be as bad... again, in case of an extreme "use". That kind of way of life could lead to a situation everyone would be honest with others to the point where no one could stand one's neighbour. I know it's exagerated, but not that much.
I totally agree on the fact that anyone here should give his opinion freely, provided they're not popularity-seeking to the point where one makes promises that if something could be totally destroyed, things would be much better.(hint, hint:-) )
I also think that if my friend was cheating upon his girlfriend I would tell him what I think about it, but I don't think I would withdraw from him lest he was hurting people around him. I wouldn't defend him when the truth would be known, and surely would even be on the "opposite side" on that matter. But he would have known how I would act from the beginnning. You just can't burn bridges with long-term friends like that, I guess.
Bottom line is that both ways of thinking are bad when driven to extremes, since in one case people let others do unallowable actions, and in the other, people just don't let others live the way they want. If one wants to say that violence is bad in video games, fine with me. But I can disagree with him without judging him (in fact, since I believe that I have good arguments against that point of view, IMHO:-) ) If I don't want to judge other peoples's ways, it's because I want have the most objective point of view that is possible to have.
First rule of development : don't make people comply to your program, make your program comply to people's wishes.
I don't know about you, but being forced to type 1*10^-20 etc. to say that I want 0.00...1 is really far from being a pleasure. I understand the need of knowing how a program works. But a *good* program should accept different ways of using numbers - especially when it is supposed to work almost only with them.
I appreciate the fact that there is another office suite existing that can counter MS Office. But although MS-Office does use a lot of memory, it is quite stable (at least, much more than StarOffice 5.2).
I look forward to StarOffice 6, since from what I've read here, large improvements will be done.
by jenesuispasgoth on Monday August 27, @08:00PM (#)
I think you're forgetting that end users aren't (generally) computer science aficionados. When dealing with something as complex and rich as (to take the same example) AutoCAD, you can't expect someone who has spent *hours* to learn a software acknowledged as the best in its category (at least, it was supposed to be the best available when I had to study it) for a new (maybe as good, but maybe not) software just because it's cheaper.Another example : I'm no graphist, I barely know how to modify the "red eyes effect" on a photograph. But for each professionnal I hear praising GIMP (which is to my liking, btw), I hear 9 other people complaining about how unadapted is the interface compared to (say) Photoshop. The sysadmin could do anything he want, if the end user can't manage to work efficiently with tools, you can't blame him for being "not smart enough"... Remember the old vi/emacs fight ? Are those vi users 'not smart enough' ?:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I don't know about the RIAA, but in France there was someone who was sued because he had downloaded a few thousand songs (he's a kind of a collector)... and the judge decided he was guilty.
Before that, I thought that no one downloading MP3s or DivX (but not uploading) could be bothered. I guess I was wrong.
I'm sorry, I can't let you say this, as a French person. We don't go on strike just to "make a point". We go on strike without telling anyone, just so everyone else knows that we CAN (thank you French Railroads for making me get up at 5h30 am because you went on strike this weekend without telling anyone ... not even your own people in the company.)
sorry, I messed up with the code. So it is like this :
// empty loop, as you can see :-) // OK, VC++6 has already begun to go wild :-)
void f() {
for (int i = 0; i < i; ++i)
;
int i = 1;
}
This code is considered wrong by VC++ <= 6
Just a question... Can you change your compiler with VS and still enjoy the use of the debugger ? I mean, having a great debugger is fine, but when the compiler is buggy, there's a big problem.
.Net was released, they fixed the problem... As an option : there where too many developers who had been coding with the bug to make it available by default...
In VSC++ 6, there was this funny little piece of code :
void f() { for (int i=0; i
This code doesn't compile with VC++ 6, because "i has already been declared before".
Later on, when VC++
and you see those ads panning Linux are you going to be swayed by the article any at all? ... But I certainly don't look at them. This is all about cognitive sciences ;-)
Sorry but... Do you *really* look at ads on web pages ? I know I see them
To make myself clearer : your boss isn't likely to really click on the ad, look at the report, etc. He will probably just do as you asked him to : he will read the article and get back to business.
Just a little nuances to add here : We, as humans, are very clever and creative. It may be a (very) troublesome and painful transition, but we'll make it. Well, I'm pretty sure LOTS of ideas are ready to be implemented, but 1. It would cost money to implement said ideas, so oil companies postpone that. It is not an American problem. It is widely known as the (short-sighted) "capitalistic pragmatism". 2. There is still LOTS of money to be made from oil, while the system a company would try to develop isn't necessarily be the one chosen by the public ... Although I'm pretty sure the biggest oil companies have talks about a common way of doing money...
We can't use solar energy because the solal cells' capacity isn't big enough yet. Will that still be the case in ten years from now ?
There is a motor using hydrogen as a fuel means. The problem is of course that it is very flamable. But in the end, it is a very clean way of moving a car ... It even produces water when the hydrogen is used ! If only there was a way to make it explosion-proof ... :-)
"How are you going to live...When a gallon of gas costs 4 bucks? 5 bucks?" It already does in most of Europe, if not more. They seem to be living ok.
There is a difference : lots of people living in the US NEED a car to get things done (shopping, going to work/to see a friend, etc.). That is not so in Europe. Of course, we do use it a lot, but not so often as US citizen do. So the price of a gallon can be 4/5 bucks, it's OK, 'cause we have other means for most everyday tasks.
Concerning the fact that the world would 'route around' the USA, this would eventually happen, but I rather think that lots of countries would follow the lead of the US because they depend a lot on them, and can't really afford to be left behind.
I liked the jokes, they didn't seem gratuitous - they were always "in character"
...)
I don't agree. I really liked "The Two Towers", and the jokes would have been fine if
1. It wasn't *once again* some kind of old dwarf joke,
2. said jokes were in the book (maybe I'm wrong, and it IS in the book, but I can't remember them), and
3. Legolas did something funny (but no, NO ! A dwarf may - no, MUST - be comical, but not a noble Elf
But that wasn't the case.
Maybe I'm a fanatic (I don't think so, I like TLOTR, but I don't dream about it), but if so, it's all about details. When Legolas tells Gimli that he killed 17 orcs while Gimli got only 2, it IS fun. But then gimli catches up, and scores more than Legolas, who accepts his "defeat", and then it is fun again !
My point is that there is some humor in the books, and that it has been twisted into some grotesque joke at the expense of the dwarves.
they're always passing laws regulating business without thinking through the consequences
Wrong. They do think about consequences, but there's always the problem of having to let another political team get the reward for what someone else has initiated. In the case of the 35 hours, the problem isn't about the 35 hours project in itself, but about its implementation. The socialist gov. wanted its "baby" to be launched before the next elections, and then they just implemented it really badly. Had they been able to keep their pride for themselves, and accept the fact that surely it would have been a right-winged gov. that would have finished implementing the 35-hours project, they would have tried to make the 35 hours happen much more slowly, to let small and medium companies/industries think about adapting themselves to the changes.
Now, about the hard-to-fire employees. You're right. It's difficult for someone to be fired in France. But when you want a long-term contract, you accept to be put on "trial" for two months. Within these 2 months, the employer can fire without any legal problem. After that, well... That's another story.
OTOH, it's difficult for an employee to quit a company just like that : he/she must warn his/her employer between one and three months before quitting (unless the company is willing to let you go before), so the company can have some time to put ads in order to hire someone else.
Google should dump Google.fr and continue doing what they're doing. That'll leave the French courts with no one to sue nationally and will be another nail in the coffin for French xenophobia.
Mmmh. I'm sorry, but you're talking nonsense right now. Saying that there is more xenophobia in France than in other countries (such as the US, for instance) is BS, IMHO. I wasn't aware of that court decision, and YES, our government does make stupid mistakes from time to time. So what ? Are you saying yours doesn't ? So please don't be xenophobiac on us, and put in arguments that are relevant.
Normally, lanaguages evolve by their speakers, not by a government based commission.
Wrong. French became the official language in France during the 16th century. Before that, several variations of low-Latin were used to communicate in the different regions that were part of France. It was a state decision to impose a certain vocabulary to people.
Just because the government decides that some words must be told in French don't mean English words aren't supposed to be used. But if French had it the way they "should" according to what I often read on this topic, they WOULD be speaking only English when it came to computer science. Every science originates from a few countries. When doing some algebra, do you intend to use Arabic words ? No, you use English words, and that's for the better.
If you are caught working more than 35 hours a week you will be fined.
Well, you should maybe inform yourself before making such stupid statements. The official number of hours of work per week in France is effectively 35 hours, but you don't get fined for working more hours. At worst, your compagny gets fined, but that isn't even likely to happen, unless it is an amount of hours that is quite exagerated.
Police go to parking lots and mark tires to make sure you're not there too long.
Please do check your information before repeating hearsays.Just another reason why socialism is bad.
The actual government is a right-winged, capitalist one. Except for 15 years from 1981 to 2002 (with some interruptions), that was almost the only time there was a left-winged party in France.
Please check your sources.First of all, I am not American either (actually, I'm French), and even though I can't speak in the name of every French person, I can safely say that every person I've crossed today were deeply sorry for the US. So am I, because this act of terrorism makes me want to cry. I know this won't help recovering from the loss of a relative, but I believe that knowing other countries are with the US can't be a bad thing : it's not a whole nation that made the Twin Towers burn.
:
While I partly agree with you (there's a point where you just can't watch and say "Hey, you're behaving badly, let's discuss about it"), there's a problem standing : I'm not sure we're ever gonna know the truth about who did what. Let me explain
The only people saying they were responsible for this atrocity are belonging to a Palestinian terrorist group which didn't have the material means to commit such a crime. I was listening to an Israelian politician who was saying (and I think he's right) that such an action must have been a very long term plan. Unless every other country outside the US are willing to find those terrorists, months may pass before a serious lead shows.
I sincerely thinks that even if people must seek who commited this horrible act, people must cool down a bit, lest they want to hit the wrong guy. I've read and heard tons and tons of different discourses about who could want to do that, and even though some leads seem to be pretty serious, I think people must remember that only a few people are responsible for this. In that way, I think there's a need for a "plea for peace".
For the guilty part, though... No mercy.
I know this can seem a pretty dull question, but you have to define what kind of violence we're talking about. Let me explain : ;-) ) are stress-annihilators, since they redirect it into the game - but since they have no educationnal purpose, they can't be chosen.
While some adventure games may have no explicit violent scenes featured, the atmosphere conveyed can be unhealthy (think of Shadow of the Comet, or Alone in the Dark, two Lovecraft-inspired games).
On the contrary, combat games (such as Fatal Street Shodown
I've seen some comments here saying that since they were fairy tale-inspired games, the King Quest series (and other games molded the same way) may not be a good choice. That is *so* wrong. Yes, fairy tales include real gory details, and a certain amount of violence. I think we're missing the point by searching violence-free games, because almost everything we do is violence-related in some way, IMHO.
Yes SimCity, etc. could allow people to create big cities just to crush them after that, but you just can't prevent people from diverting a game's purpose to fill their need of violence. We're all violent to some extent; we just need to know how to release our impulses the good way (ie by doing sports, playing fighting video games, whatever helps to avoid bashing one's neighbour).
Now, the purpose is educationnal, but since the players have litteracy problems, you need to make them want to play those games... Myst, etc. are very good games, but, as it's been said previously, maybe a little too "abstract" for these guys. An old game I quite like is The 7th Guest. It is graphically correct, deals with enigmas, and has a good, enticing atmosphere.
In any case, you just can't give them games that aren't featuring enough "beautiful" graphics - at least at the beginning.
I would personnaly recommend any of the lucas adventure games (with a preference for Day of the Tentacle, which is a really crazy game, and prompts the player to imagine the weirdest solutions to solve problems)
I agree that the "who am I to judge" attitude leads to bad situations, where people accept (hypocritically) behaviors which shouldn't be allowed, but only when people use this attitude to extremities.
:-) )
:-) ) If I don't want to judge other peoples's ways, it's because I want have the most objective point of view that is possible to have.
However, the "I judge and accept to be judged" attitude can be as bad... again, in case of an extreme "use". That kind of way of life could lead to a situation everyone would be honest with others to the point where no one could stand one's neighbour. I know it's exagerated, but not that much.
I totally agree on the fact that anyone here should give his opinion freely, provided they're not popularity-seeking to the point where one makes promises that if something could be totally destroyed, things would be much better.(hint, hint
I also think that if my friend was cheating upon his girlfriend I would tell him what I think about it, but I don't think I would withdraw from him lest he was hurting people around him. I wouldn't defend him when the truth would be known, and surely would even be on the "opposite side" on that matter. But he would have known how I would act from the beginnning. You just can't burn bridges with long-term friends like that, I guess.
Bottom line is that both ways of thinking are bad when driven to extremes, since in one case people let others do unallowable actions, and in the other, people just don't let others live the way they want. If one wants to say that violence is bad in video games, fine with me. But I can disagree with him without judging him (in fact, since I believe that I have good arguments against that point of view, IMHO
First rule of development : don't make people comply to your program, make your program comply to people's wishes.
I don't know about you, but being forced to type 1*10^-20 etc. to say that I want 0.00...1 is really far from being a pleasure. I understand the need of knowing how a program works. But a *good* program should accept different ways of using numbers - especially when it is supposed to work almost only with them.
I appreciate the fact that there is another office suite existing that can counter MS Office. But although MS-Office does use a lot of memory, it is quite stable (at least, much more than StarOffice 5.2). I look forward to StarOffice 6, since from what I've read here, large improvements will be done.
by jenesuispasgoth on Monday August 27, @08:00PM (#) I think you're forgetting that end users aren't (generally) computer science aficionados. When dealing with something as complex and rich as (to take the same example) AutoCAD, you can't expect someone who has spent *hours* to learn a software acknowledged as the best in its category (at least, it was supposed to be the best available when I had to study it) for a new (maybe as good, but maybe not) software just because it's cheaper.Another example : I'm no graphist, I barely know how to modify the "red eyes effect" on a photograph. But for each professionnal I hear praising GIMP (which is to my liking, btw), I hear 9 other people complaining about how unadapted is the interface compared to (say) Photoshop. The sysadmin could do anything he want, if the end user can't manage to work efficiently with tools, you can't blame him for being "not smart enough" ... Remember the old vi/emacs fight ? Are those vi users 'not smart enough' ? :-)