... and did you notice, it looks like Microsoft spam ? Still I don't understand what motivates the guy to post it there. Can you post to/. by chance ???!!
Ralph Merkele, a nanotech man, made some excellent comments (...) Anyone know anything he has written that might not be too technical?
Have you checked on his homepage ? It's simply http://www.merkle.com . There are a lot of online papers. Of course, as those are reasearch papers, some are indeed rather technical (as complexity is unfortunately a must in scientific publications:-( ), but those in the 'Selected papers' section are short ; I was able to understand some of them without spending the whole day on it though I'm completely clueless about nanotechnology and the likes.
>Doing business internationally isn't the same as >not being based anywhere. (...) All the >international branches are just that, branches.
Of course they gotta have a central headquarter somewhere, but that doesn't mean the branches aren't regular firms in the country they belong. I mean in France where I live we have 'Coca-cola France' ; I guess there's 'Coca-cola Switzerland' too. I don't think there's any legal difference between them and other national companies. I may be wrong as I'm no lawyer but then I'd be surprised.
Of course it doesn't give them the right to bother that guy for somthing he's registered a long time ago. BTW I don't know about other countries but I've been taught that French trademark laws prohibit the registration of words like 'coke' which refers to a controlled drug.
OK I have to admit a lot of people think as you do that a four digits change is SOOOO exciting ; but then why on earth would that terrific excitement give you the right to call 'new millenium' something which isn't ? You know, like my girld-friend in that incredible red dress takes my breath away, but I don't feel the urge to tell her : 'Hey pretty millenium in your red dress, come over here'.
More seriously, I know that this is year 2000 only because most people think it is, so the new millenium could start anytime we want, but since most people agree on this, and since there's a mathematical way to decide when next millenium's gonna start, why not use it ?
BTW I'm sure the medias will also be celebrating the new millenium next New Year's Eve. I'm sure marketing people won't miss this unique occasion to re-use their millenium bullshit for selling us cars. Maybe we need to invent a Y2K+1 bug to help them in this most usefull work ?
Actually, since 1st January, I've noticed that a lot of people on TV where refering to Y2k as 'last year of the millenium', or saying that we were now at 'dawn of the new millenium'. It seems that it's terribly more exciting to be one second before the new millenium than one second after the new millenium. Don't ask me why...
As many people have pointed out, the give-it-away-then-charge-for-support (maybe we need a cool acronym for this:-) ) is mainly aimed at corporate users. When the big corporate bosses decide to use a product, they don't say "OK let's try this thing, if it's not easy-to-use then we'll pay for support".
No. They will almost automatically buy support. Actually if nobody supports the soft they won't even bother taking a look at it.
Why ? Because they think no product is perfectly 'easy-to-use', and they might be right. Because no how user-friendly the stuff is, you will always have to take the time to learn about it (RTFM;-) ) when you want to do unusual things with it. Because there will always be bugs and obscure features even in the best products.
One could argue that with open-source software users should learn by themselves or take a look at the code to debug it themselves. But corporate users, even if they had any clue how to do this, aren't paid for that. They're paid to use the product to work for their company.
So I don't think it's a good idea to make a crappy product in order to increase the demand for support. If the soft is bad then nobody will use it, which means no support deals at all - Microsoft software is another problem, because of their monopoly situation.
The 'progress' the guy talks about that the PRC is now 'one of the few superpowers'. I might be wrong, but in my eyes all it takes for a country these days to be considered a superpower is a nice amount of nuclear heads... which has nothing to do with China movina towards capitalism in the last 20 years.
BTW I'm sure opening their economy and making capitalist reforms helped China improve its economical statistics but did it have any positive consequences for the Chinese ? I doubt it, as I doubt it that a dictatorship with a capitalist economy is better than a dictatorship with a communist economy. People still die if they disagree with the governement, and most of them don't get any richer.
I actually wonder what progress the original poster was talking about.
These are the political proposals by the group of sad fuckers who call themselves "Front National", usurping the name of a former Resistance group. Not fluent enough in English to translate it in English but basically it means "foreigners out of France ?"
Now why did you post it ? To show that French people are all racists ? It's not true, each time these bastards make meetings there are hundreds of people in the streets to protest ! Sure it's sad but each country has its bloody fascists...
If you agree with them you have nothing to do on this website
Well I am French, I must be crazy to write something in this thread I'm gonna die by flaming. Anyway :
I am going to try not to be too arrogant:-)... I think it's nice to make fun of national particularities, (even min;-) ), as long as there is no racism around. I think we should be able to discuss people's opinions without telling them : "you're stupid because you're from [inseert country]".
Now, some wise people already said this : this is the government, not a popular action by the people. I've been talking with French people for 23 years now, and I never heard anybody complaining that the prime meridian does not run through Paris. Nobody actually gives a fuck. Even the worse arrogant French people:-).
Besides, I think this has nothing to do with the prime meridian it's just some silly 'cultural' action to celebrate Y2k or something like that... British conspiracy to discredit the gratest country of the world (joke) ?
Now I agree that some Frenchmen are arrogant. Especially my boss
Slashdot Mirror
... and did you notice, it looks like Microsoft spam ? Still I don't understand what motivates the guy to post it there. Can you post to /. by chance ???!!
Ralph Merkele, a nanotech man, made some excellent comments (...) Anyone know anything he has written that might not be too technical?
:-( ), but those in the 'Selected papers' section are short ; I was able to understand some of them without spending the whole day on it though I'm completely clueless about nanotechnology and the likes.
Have you checked on his homepage ? It's simply http://www.merkle.com . There are a lot of online papers. Of course, as those are reasearch papers, some are indeed rather technical (as complexity is unfortunately a must in scientific publications
Djaak
>Doing business internationally isn't the same as >not being based anywhere. (...) All the
>international branches are just that, branches.
Of course they gotta have a central headquarter somewhere, but that doesn't mean the branches aren't regular firms in the country they belong. I mean in France where I live we have 'Coca-cola France' ; I guess there's 'Coca-cola Switzerland' too. I don't think there's any legal difference between them and other national companies. I may be wrong as I'm no lawyer but then I'd be surprised.
Of course it doesn't give them the right to bother that guy for somthing he's registered a long time ago. BTW I don't know about other countries but I've been taught that French trademark laws prohibit the registration of words like 'coke' which refers to a controlled drug.
OK I have to admit a lot of people think as you do that a four digits change is SOOOO exciting ; but then why on earth would that terrific excitement give you the right to call 'new millenium' something which isn't ? You know, like my girld-friend in that incredible red dress takes my breath away, but I don't feel the urge to tell her : 'Hey pretty millenium in your red dress, come over here'.
...
More seriously, I know that this is year 2000 only because most people think it is, so the new millenium could start anytime we want, but since most people agree on this, and since there's a mathematical way to decide when next millenium's gonna start, why not use it ?
BTW I'm sure the medias will also be celebrating the new millenium next New Year's Eve. I'm sure marketing people won't miss this unique occasion to re-use their millenium bullshit for selling us cars. Maybe we need to invent a Y2K+1 bug to help them in this most usefull work ?
Actually, since 1st January, I've noticed that a lot of people on TV where refering to Y2k as 'last year of the millenium', or saying that we were now at 'dawn of the new millenium'. It seems that it's terribly more exciting to be one second before the new millenium than one second after the new millenium. Don't ask me why
As many people have pointed out, the give-it-away-then-charge-for-support (maybe we need a cool acronym for this :-) ) is mainly aimed at corporate users. When the big corporate bosses decide to use a product, they don't say "OK let's try this thing, if it's not easy-to-use then we'll pay for support".
;-) ) when you want to do unusual things with it. Because there will always be bugs and obscure features even in the best products.
No. They will almost automatically buy support. Actually if nobody supports the soft they won't even bother taking a look at it.
Why ? Because they think no product is perfectly 'easy-to-use', and they might be right.
Because no how user-friendly the stuff is, you will always have to take the time to learn about it (RTFM
One could argue that with open-source software users should learn by themselves or take a look at the code to debug it themselves. But corporate users, even if they had any clue how to do this, aren't paid for that. They're paid to use the product to work for their company.
So I don't think it's a good idea to make a crappy product in order to increase the demand for support. If the soft is bad then nobody will use it, which means no support deals at all - Microsoft software is another problem, because of their monopoly situation.
The 'progress' the guy talks about that the PRC
is now 'one of the few superpowers'. I might be wrong, but in my eyes all it takes for a country these days to be considered a superpower
is a nice amount of nuclear heads... which has nothing to do with China movina towards capitalism in the last 20 years.
BTW I'm sure opening their economy and making capitalist reforms helped China improve its
economical statistics but did it have any positive consequences for the Chinese ? I doubt it, as I doubt it that a dictatorship with a capitalist economy is better than a dictatorship with a communist economy. People still die if they disagree with the governement, and most of them don't get any richer.
I actually wonder what progress the original poster was talking about.
These are the political proposals by the group of sad fuckers who call themselves "Front National", usurping the name of a former Resistance group. Not fluent enough in English to translate it in English but basically it means "foreigners out of France ?"
Now why did you post it ? To show that French people are all racists ? It's not true, each time these bastards make meetings there are hundreds of people in the streets to protest ! Sure it's sad but each country has its bloody fascists...
If you agree with them you have nothing to do on this website
Djaak
( La jeunesse emmerde le Front National)
Yeah I really agree with you. All these moronic "my country's better than yours" flame wars should be banned from /.
Well I am French, I must be crazy to write something in this thread I'm gonna die by flaming. Anyway :
:-)... I think it's nice to make fun of national particularities, (even min ;-) ), as long as there is no racism around. I think we should be able to discuss people's opinions without telling them : "you're stupid because you're from [inseert country]".
:-).
I am going to try not to be too arrogant
Now, some wise people already said this : this is the government, not a popular action by the people. I've been talking with French people for 23 years now, and I never heard anybody complaining that the prime meridian does not run through Paris. Nobody actually gives a fuck. Even the worse arrogant French people
Besides, I think this has nothing to do with the prime meridian it's just some silly 'cultural' action to celebrate Y2k or something like that... British conspiracy to discredit the gratest country of the world (joke) ?
Now I agree that some Frenchmen are arrogant. Especially my boss
Djaak
( Pardon my English I am French )