Evidence which is illegaly collected is still admissable in Swedish courts (but a separate case may be opened to prosecute the offenders who used illegal methods). Regardless, I have seen no evidence that APB were using illegal methods.
The Council of Ministers, who will be deciding the matter, is the combined elected governments of the EU member states. I wrote an earlier post about this here.
I'm not sure that I follow. The CLR is well aware of the type of every.NET object and the kind of security vulnerabilities possible with C/C++ are not really possible with.NET. At least in theory, perhaps one could do some damage using Reflection and manipulating MSIL on the fly but I have a hunch the CLR would prevent this if appopriate permissions have not been granted.
The patent deliberations are hard to penetrate and I won't claim to fully understand what's going on (and I haven't really had time to read the latest updates). Regardless of how the parliament has been outmanuevered and by whom, the ultimate responsibility will fall on the national governments and I hope (probably in vain) that they will put a stop to this.
Thanks for mentioning state vs federal power -- indeed that is an anology I have often thought about. I think that it's crucial that Europeans stop deluding themselves and realize that what we're building is a country not entirely unsimilar to the US model, and to take the issues that this results in seriously (whether we call it a country isn't really important as it already has many of the main characteristic of one -- such as a central bank, elected parliament, supreme court etc). It's important to learn from the good and bad choices others made and the EU already comprises 450 million people -- it's not going to get any easier to manage in the future unless steps are taken before even more countries join.
Part of the reason why EU related issues often get confused is that some citizens themselves actually believe that unelected bureacrats are making the decisions and overruling elected governments, and they thus contribute to further confusion on forums such as this.
This is particularly evident in Scandinavia (such as Sweden, where I life) and in the UK. Part of the explanation might be that those regions never really considered themselves fully European due to their geographical position. Furthermore, in Sweden's case the fact that it hasn't been at war for a very long time might contribute to a skepticism of continuing European integration -- something countries on the main land took for granted following WWII as necessary for building a lasting peace. The Swedish public did vote to join the EU but only barely, and if there was a new referendum today the majority might even want to leave.
To make things even more complicated, governments in "euro-skeptic" countries sometimes use the EU to deflect critical voices. With an ignorant population, implying that "Brussels made us do it" can sometimes have favourable results even though that is rarely the whole truth.
What I also find ironic and tragic is that "euro skeptics" (in Europe) are generally those that most stubbornly fight any change that would enhance the EU's democracy or transparency. For example, the constitution which is now signed by all 25 governments (though not ratified by all parliaments or citizen referendums where applicable) mostly takes existing practice -- outlined in dusty old treaties that only lawyers fully understand -- and places them in a single comprehensive text that even school children are supposed to be able to understand. Unfortunately it's not nearly as simple as the US constitution, although the fact that it's fairly detailed might have the benefit of creating less ambiguity for courts to resolve in the future (I'm thinking for example of all the debates about what the US Founding Fathers really intended with regards to run rights). The constitution furthermore enhances transparency in council deliberations (which are currently taking place behind closed doors unlike the EU parliament debates) and explicitly adds an exit clause which spells out the right for an EU state to leave the union. Despite these improvements, even the mention of the word "constitution" is sufficient to provoke reflex-like hostility among euro-skeptic populations who, in a potential referendum, may well reject the text out of principle without even having read it. Probably because agreeing to a constitution might be a tacit admission that a federal union is taking form.
Another thing I might take the opportunity to highlight since we're on Slashdot is that the European Commision (the nationally selected officials, often former politicians, who propose legislation, though do not have the means to pass it without the consent of Council and sometime
What may from the outside world (and sometimes from the inside) look like a mess is the result of how the EU has developed.
At first (decades ago) the parliament was selected by the national governments and it was supposed to just monitor the decision making. The actual decision makers comprised the commision, whose members were selected by each local (national) government and whose main task was to propose Europe-wide legislation but to do so without consideration of local / national interests, and the council, which was the organization comprising the actual member governments and who had to approve any new legislative proposal.
With time it was decided that the members of the European Parliament should be directly elected by European citizens (which has now been the case for quite a long time). In addition, it has gained the power to sack the commision (though not individual members, only the entire group) in a vote of misconfidence should it want to. Meanwhile the EU as such has been expanded from a purely economic organization to a sort of quasi-government involved in all sorts of issues, including foreign policy, economic policy, environmental protection, labour issues, law enforcement, etc. The parliament has been granted more and more powers and actually has veto power over some, but not all, of the EU policy areas (in those that it lacks veto powers, it's supposed to have an advisory role).
At this point, an overview of the most important institutions might look like this:
1) European Commision. Members (one per country for small countries, two per country for large countries) selected by national governments and supposed to work for what is best for the EU as a whole. Members have to disavow strictly national interests and concerns. Has the role of proposing new legislation for Europe as a whole.
2) European Council. Comprises national governments and / or their diplomatic representatives. Concerned with the "national" interest. Has veto power over new legislation. In many policy areas a single country can stop an EU law, while in other areas a qualified majority (defined differently depending on policy area) is sufficient to pass any law. Small countries have more votes per person.
3) European Parliament. Directly elected by EU wide elections every five years. Organized in EU-wide political party groupings that correspond to the national political parties (for example, liberals, greens, conservatives, social democrats, communists, independants, etc). In some policy areas has veto power over new legislation. In other areas has merely advisory power. Small countries have a higher percentage of representatives per citizen (sort of like vote distribution in the council) to reduce the risk of large countries trampling all over small ones. Not unlike the vote distribution aspect of the US electoral college, I suppose.
4) European Court of Justice. Overrules national courts and is empowered with interpreting law and treaties / constitutional issues and resolving conflicts. Each country has exactly one judge although judges are of course expected to be legal professionals and not represent their nationality.
5) The European Ombudsman, tasked with investigating abuse by and within EU institutions.
What I think has happened with the patent issue, is that the Council members (i.e. national governments) have decided on their own to go ahead with the patent proposal, bypassing the other EU institutions and making it national law immediately (which would be subject to national parliaments, though). This may seem strange but if we remember that the council is just a collection of the national governments it sort of makes sense, they would be able to do this even if the EU didn't exist just like other groups of countries sometimes get together to form treaties and laws. It admittedly is a problem, though.
Ultimately what happens in the EU is something that national governments and EU parliamentarians have control of. Accountab
Visual Studio "Whidbey" /.NET framework 2.0 fully support this. I've seen some demos and it's pretty cool (works seamlessly for both new installs and upgrades -- and you can automatically have it check for new versions etc). The developer can also specify that the software should be downloaded every time it's launched as opposed to launched locally if available (useful sometimes for intranets etc).
Memory protection facilities have been available for an eternity. And it doesn't necessarily help, either, if I understood correctly from my quick glance of the site. If the server re-uses the same buffer while serving up e-mail to different people, how could memory protection do any good?
As another of those "old school" C= fans who still hasn't forgotten reading comp.sys.amiga.misc for hours on the night of the C= bankruptcy, I feel compelled to point out that it was AmigaOS and AmigaDOS, not AmiDOS.:)
That's because most people are familiar with ThinkGeek already. I was not familiar with Nerdorama and I'm thankful to have received this information as ordering things from the US can be expensive, tedious or impossible.
The grandparent post suggested that Linux might adopt BFS to stay competitive with Microsoft. I pointed out why I think that would be a bad idea and I think my motivation was perfectly reasonable. We know in greatdetail what will be in Microsoft's file system and there are betas around to play with.
BFS is basically files with extra metadata. WinFS is much more of a real database with a range of sophisticated features.
Is CDMA somehow related to 3G (UMTS)? If not, I don't know where you heard that "the Europeans" are "basing their next system on it". 3G seems to be all the rage right now (with many operators have rolled out their new networks and an increasing number of phones becoming available).
Windows codename "Longhorn" will include compilers and build tools, at least for C# and.NET (not sure about C++, but that language is pretty much deprecated anyway in the Windows world, as Microsoft sees it in the long term).
This isn't strictly true. The European Commision made a decision to fine Microsoft, but they are not a court -- just a regulatory institution of the European Union. What we're about to see now is the first actual court case. Only after it rules will Microsoft be convicted and sentenced (or aquitted).
Is it sufficient for a system to be referred to as "hard real time" when the interrupt latency is provided? Some say that upper bounds on system calls need to be provided as well. This is not the case for QNX, is it?
As you would expect, the average European is just as clueless about software patents as the average American. I wish this was not true but it is. It's possible that there's a higher awareness within the political parties, but not necessarily in favour of the free software position. At least the European greens in the parliament seem to have some clue.
Regards,
/ A EUropean who will take this opportunity to help vote in representatives this weekend with a favourable view on this matter.
When Tanenbaum isn't writing books about how to create operating systems and computer networks, he's writing books about how to create food. (Yes, he really did write a book titled How To Prepare Your Input.)
Slashdot Mirror
Bredbandsbolaget in Sweden has offered 100 MBit connections for some time. The price works out to about $75 USD per month.
Evidence which is illegaly collected is still admissable in Swedish courts (but a separate case may be opened to prosecute the offenders who used illegal methods). Regardless, I have seen no evidence that APB were using illegal methods.
The Council of Ministers, who will be deciding the matter, is the combined elected governments of the EU member states. I wrote an earlier post about this here.
I'm not sure that I follow. The CLR is well aware of the type of every .NET object and the kind of security vulnerabilities possible with C/C++ are not really possible with .NET. At least in theory, perhaps one could do some damage using Reflection and manipulating MSIL on the fly but I have a hunch the CLR would prevent this if appopriate permissions have not been granted.
The patent deliberations are hard to penetrate and I won't claim to fully understand what's going on (and I haven't really had time to read the latest updates). Regardless of how the parliament has been outmanuevered and by whom, the ultimate responsibility will fall on the national governments and I hope (probably in vain) that they will put a stop to this.
Thanks for mentioning state vs federal power -- indeed that is an anology I have often thought about. I think that it's crucial that Europeans stop deluding themselves and realize that what we're building is a country not entirely unsimilar to the US model, and to take the issues that this results in seriously (whether we call it a country isn't really important as it already has many of the main characteristic of one -- such as a central bank, elected parliament, supreme court etc). It's important to learn from the good and bad choices others made and the EU already comprises 450 million people -- it's not going to get any easier to manage in the future unless steps are taken before even more countries join.
Part of the reason why EU related issues often get confused is that some citizens themselves actually believe that unelected bureacrats are making the decisions and overruling elected governments, and they thus contribute to further confusion on forums such as this.
This is particularly evident in Scandinavia (such as Sweden, where I life) and in the UK. Part of the explanation might be that those regions never really considered themselves fully European due to their geographical position. Furthermore, in Sweden's case the fact that it hasn't been at war for a very long time might contribute to a skepticism of continuing European integration -- something countries on the main land took for granted following WWII as necessary for building a lasting peace. The Swedish public did vote to join the EU but only barely, and if there was a new referendum today the majority might even want to leave.
To make things even more complicated, governments in "euro-skeptic" countries sometimes use the EU to deflect critical voices. With an ignorant population, implying that "Brussels made us do it" can sometimes have favourable results even though that is rarely the whole truth.
What I also find ironic and tragic is that "euro skeptics" (in Europe) are generally those that most stubbornly fight any change that would enhance the EU's democracy or transparency. For example, the constitution which is now signed by all 25 governments (though not ratified by all parliaments or citizen referendums where applicable) mostly takes existing practice -- outlined in dusty old treaties that only lawyers fully understand -- and places them in a single comprehensive text that even school children are supposed to be able to understand. Unfortunately it's not nearly as simple as the US constitution, although the fact that it's fairly detailed might have the benefit of creating less ambiguity for courts to resolve in the future (I'm thinking for example of all the debates about what the US Founding Fathers really intended with regards to run rights). The constitution furthermore enhances transparency in council deliberations (which are currently taking place behind closed doors unlike the EU parliament debates) and explicitly adds an exit clause which spells out the right for an EU state to leave the union. Despite these improvements, even the mention of the word "constitution" is sufficient to provoke reflex-like hostility among euro-skeptic populations who, in a potential referendum, may well reject the text out of principle without even having read it. Probably because agreeing to a constitution might be a tacit admission that a federal union is taking form.
Another thing I might take the opportunity to highlight since we're on Slashdot is that the European Commision (the nationally selected officials, often former politicians, who propose legislation, though do not have the means to pass it without the consent of Council and sometime
What may from the outside world (and sometimes from the inside) look like a mess is the result of how the EU has developed.
At first (decades ago) the parliament was selected by the national governments and it was supposed to just monitor the decision making. The actual decision makers comprised the commision, whose members were selected by each local (national) government and whose main task was to propose Europe-wide legislation but to do so without consideration of local / national interests, and the council, which was the organization comprising the actual member governments and who had to approve any new legislative proposal.
With time it was decided that the members of the European Parliament should be directly elected by European citizens (which has now been the case for quite a long time). In addition, it has gained the power to sack the commision (though not individual members, only the entire group) in a vote of misconfidence should it want to. Meanwhile the EU as such has been expanded from a purely economic organization to a sort of quasi-government involved in all sorts of issues, including foreign policy, economic policy, environmental protection, labour issues, law enforcement, etc. The parliament has been granted more and more powers and actually has veto power over some, but not all, of the EU policy areas (in those that it lacks veto powers, it's supposed to have an advisory role).
At this point, an overview of the most important institutions might look like this:
1) European Commision. Members (one per country for small countries, two per country for large countries) selected by national governments and supposed to work for what is best for the EU as a whole. Members have to disavow strictly national interests and concerns. Has the role of proposing new legislation for Europe as a whole.
2) European Council. Comprises national governments and / or their diplomatic representatives. Concerned with the "national" interest. Has veto power over new legislation. In many policy areas a single country can stop an EU law, while in other areas a qualified majority (defined differently depending on policy area) is sufficient to pass any law. Small countries have more votes per person.
3) European Parliament. Directly elected by EU wide elections every five years. Organized in EU-wide political party groupings that correspond to the national political parties (for example, liberals, greens, conservatives, social democrats, communists, independants, etc). In some policy areas has veto power over new legislation. In other areas has merely advisory power. Small countries have a higher percentage of representatives per citizen (sort of like vote distribution in the council) to reduce the risk of large countries trampling all over small ones. Not unlike the vote distribution aspect of the US electoral college, I suppose.
4) European Court of Justice. Overrules national courts and is empowered with interpreting law and treaties / constitutional issues and resolving conflicts. Each country has exactly one judge although judges are of course expected to be legal professionals and not represent their nationality.
5) The European Ombudsman, tasked with investigating abuse by and within EU institutions.
What I think has happened with the patent issue, is that the Council members (i.e. national governments) have decided on their own to go ahead with the patent proposal, bypassing the other EU institutions and making it national law immediately (which would be subject to national parliaments, though). This may seem strange but if we remember that the council is just a collection of the national governments it sort of makes sense, they would be able to do this even if the EU didn't exist just like other groups of countries sometimes get together to form treaties and laws. It admittedly is a problem, though.
Ultimately what happens in the EU is something that national governments and EU parliamentarians have control of. Accountab
Visual Studio "Whidbey" / .NET framework 2.0 fully support this. I've seen some demos and it's pretty cool (works seamlessly for both new installs and upgrades -- and you can automatically have it check for new versions etc). The developer can also specify that the software should be downloaded every time it's launched as opposed to launched locally if available (useful sometimes for intranets etc).
Memory protection facilities have been available for an eternity. And it doesn't necessarily help, either, if I understood correctly from my quick glance of the site. If the server re-uses the same buffer while serving up e-mail to different people, how could memory protection do any good?
Some countries have had a powerful, constitutional freedom of information act since 1766.
As another of those "old school" C= fans who still hasn't forgotten reading comp.sys.amiga.misc for hours on the night of the C= bankruptcy, I feel compelled to point out that it was AmigaOS and AmigaDOS, not AmiDOS. :)
What about Sweden?
"It generates a lot of code but it's all unreadable and from the moment you edit it manually, the application simply fails to understand it."
Examples, please...?
That's because most people are familiar with ThinkGeek already. I was not familiar with Nerdorama and I'm thankful to have received this information as ordering things from the US can be expensive, tedious or impossible.
I have 10 MBit. It's very common here (Sweden). (And yes, it actually, really does reach that speed, all the time when I transfer files.)
But what is true; c++ will always be faster than java, .Net might be (but thats because of the infamous shortcuts than only MS ppl know of)
Please elaborate on this. What are these shortcuts you speak of? How do you even know they exist?
The grandparent post suggested that Linux might adopt BFS to stay competitive with Microsoft. I pointed out why I think that would be a bad idea and I think my motivation was perfectly reasonable. We know in greatdetail what will be in Microsoft's file system and there are betas around to play with.
BFS is basically files with extra metadata. WinFS is much more of a real database with a range of sophisticated features.
BFS was nice but it's outdated now, it can't seriously compete with Microsoft's upcoming offering.
Is CDMA somehow related to 3G (UMTS)? If not, I don't know where you heard that "the Europeans" are "basing their next system on it". 3G seems to be all the rage right now (with many operators have rolled out their new networks and an increasing number of phones becoming available).
Windows codename "Longhorn" will include compilers and build tools, at least for C# and .NET (not sure about C++, but that language is pretty much deprecated anyway in the Windows world, as Microsoft sees it in the long term).
Compiler and build tools as well as a much improved command shell with advanced scripting support will come as standard on every Longhorn disc.
This isn't strictly true. The European Commision made a decision to fine Microsoft, but they are not a court -- just a regulatory institution of the European Union. What we're about to see now is the first actual court case. Only after it rules will Microsoft be convicted and sentenced (or aquitted).
Is it sufficient for a system to be referred to as "hard real time" when the interrupt latency is provided? Some say that upper bounds on system calls need to be provided as well. This is not the case for QNX, is it?
The European Patent Office has been granting stupid software patents for years, even though they'll remain impossible to enforce pending the new legislation. For example, see some of Ericsson's patents here.
As you would expect, the average European is just as clueless about software patents as the average American. I wish this was not true but it is. It's possible that there's a higher awareness within the political parties, but not necessarily in favour of the free software position. At least the European greens in the parliament seem to have some clue.
Regards,
/ A EUropean who will take this opportunity to help vote in representatives this weekend with a favourable view on this matter.
When Tanenbaum isn't writing books about how to create operating systems and computer networks, he's writing books about how to create food. (Yes, he really did write a book titled How To Prepare Your Input.)
Thanks for the tip, that actually worked very well. I had no idea!