What's more important is the per capita ownership of personal computers in Europe. I'm guessing it's a fair bit lower than in the U.S. Also, what about internet service. If I remember right, France's is nationalized (as if this should surprise anyone), and is charged for with a flat monthly rate and per hour of use. Also, what is per capita distribution of fast access internet in Europe? Again, I'm guessing it's a lot lower than the U.S.
Sorry to be rude to someone who might not deserve it normally for all I know but: What a load of stereotyped uninformed bullshit about what it's like across the pond !(as if this should surprise anyone...)
Per capita ownership of computers is indeed lower in western and southern europe than in the US, for various reasons. Some cultural, and one of them for instance in France, being that the country has had the infamous Minitel e-commerce terminal since the early 80's, and so Internet service suffered from a lack of incentive for the general public to switch until about 1997-98. ( the early days "oh it's just minitel, faster, on a computer" syndrome ).
From day one (1994), french ISPs have all been private entities, mom&pop shops in the early years, around 6-7 big players like everywhere today. France Telecom's own service Wanadoo (discl: my current employer) was actually late on the market (1996 or so) but took the newbie market by storm much for the same reasons that AOL did in the US.
Now, a word on the state of broadband:
80% of the population is eligible for DSL on France Telecom's network (but still with a choice of ISPs: FT *has* to offer them non discriminatory terms for collecting IP traffic from their customers). This will be 90% by the end of 2005. So much for your guess...
This means that my parents' 5.000 inhabitants place out in the countryside has had DSL for 2 years now. That would have never happened in the first place with market forces alone, US-style. But there's still a layer of competition/free market as ISPs rent the national DSL network.
And of course, they can roll their own, and do so: local loop unbundling has been going very strong for 2 years in urban areas.
Today in Paris, I'm getting 5Mbps DSL with free unlimited national VoIP-to-any-phone service + 100 channels of TV/DSL for 29.99EUR/mo. This service (delivered by Free.fr, Wanadoo's main competitor) is or will be available in all cities with 50.000+ pop.
Epilogue: I've been to the SF Bay Area in January, and yeah the CompUSA guy I talked with was very surprised too when I told him what kind of offers we had when shopping around for a router with a built-in DSL modem.
So as usual, Europe at first lags behind for several years, and we geeks look at the US with envy, but when it finally gets there, it's very often done the right way "regulatory-wise".
In the end, our broadband markets look in my opinion much better than the mess I read about on/. daily with big telcos trying to crush the competition of local DSL providers on their networks, and meanwhile the FCC rolls their thumbs because they should "let the market decide"... gimme a break...
Same deal as the California energy market, actually. When WE loose power, it's only because of strikes:)
(the above sentence is written half-jokingly, but it might spread another stereotype so I already regret it...hmmm;) )
I know the jokes about the original N-Gage never seem to end around here, but I've been perfectly happy with mine and I still fail to find anything today that comes close in terms of functionality. Consider this:
* State of the art phone
Tri-band GSM (I live and am using it in France, but it worked flawlessly during my trip to the Bay Area a few months ago) with the IMHO great Nokia usability.
And please, the whole sidetalkin' stuff is really overblown : I see no reason not to always use it as I do with the included hands free kit (2 earspeakers and a speed dial remote to take incoming calls or make new ones using voice-recognition)
Ok, MMCs aren't cheap and space is rather limited (we're talking a few hundred megs, not gigs), but my 128Mb one easily holds a few games + one album, which is more than enough for the daily commute time if you think about it.
Before leaving, I just connect it to my laptop using a standard mini-USB cable, and it shows up as a regular USB mass storage device under Windows or Linux, like your average digicam. That also makes it a USB key you're less likely to lose than a real one (because it's also your phone, so you'd better pay attention to it:) )
with instant access key, and which you can record to AAC.
* Games
Looking at Tony Hawk Pro Skater or Tomb Raider, I'd say the N-Gage roughly has the horsepower of a PlayStation 1. I'm not using that much actually, but all the other features still make me love my N-Gage
* Software : Symbian S60 system
That means a beautiful, consistent UI, and a stable OS. The included software is good : WAP browser, SSL-enabled IMAP/POP3/SMS integrated message center, the usual calculator/pda stuff, RealOne player...... and lots of third party software like Opera (which is *real* good and usable), streaming radios clients, etc...
I also love CityMaps, paid $5 for the single city version of this map software/route planner and it's so much handier than carrying a map or a separate device (also no recurring costs to use it since it's offline)
* It's ONE device
That's what buys me with the N-Gage : I don't like carrying too much stuff around, having to reach for it when I need it, and risking to forget them before leaving.
There I have MP3/radio/phone/games/basic PDA/internet client(+bluetooth modem) in just one device, and I've found this nowhere else.
(I don't care about the games, just the MP3/phone/internet/3rd party software capabilities, and even that I can't seem to find anywhere else)
I'm going to visit the SF Bay Area for 2 weeks in a few days, and I have a slightly different question from the original poster's:
I'll bring over my triband GSM phone from Europe, and I'd like to get a $20-30 prepaid card with a US phone number (since roaming is not an option with its horrendous prices)
What are good plans that would allow me to call local & international (to europe) ?
Funny how MPAA members (/. speak for something slightly more evil than satanist child molesters) , can turn into "fine folks" when circumstances need it.
RTT is for "Reduction du Temps de Travail" (Work time reduction).
These have been introduced with the 39->35 hours work week transition : in many positions (managerial, tech workers) where it's just not practical to work only 35 hours a week, people still do the 39 hour week, but are awarded "RTT" days in compensation.
Is akin to asking 'Do you think the existance of Atari 2600's is slowing uptake of the XBox?'.
No, because when all you need is to play Tetris, doing it on the Xbox adds no value.
Same for looking up numbers/train schedules : it's usually quicker to use a Minitel where you don't have an always-on PC with an always-on net connection.
Tech-savvy people obviously saw long ago that it was no competition to the net, but some senior citizens who just want access to some services and don't want to learn how to use a PC still use it extensively.
Re:French using out dated technology, Film at 11!
on
Minitel Hits Twenty
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· Score: 1
Hey dude, we're talking about the early eighties.
The technology indeed was (and still is) very eighties, but it did the job, and the fact is that, around 1985, your average family in France was looking up numbers, chatting and shopping online.
So when in the mid 90's, these families were told by ISPs and the media about that new revolutionary thing called the internet, that enabled you to buy stuff online and more, the first reaction was "So what ? An american version of Minitel?"
So it did take a while for the net to catch on here, because the incentive to switch just wasn't as strong as it was in the countries that started from nothing.
In some cases, it was even nonexistent : it takes 10-15 seconds to power on a Minitel, have it connect to the phone book, and get your answer. Booting a 1995 PC with a 1995 modem and net connection is ten times longer, so people gave up.
Things have changed in the mind of the most technophobes only with the advent of DSL, which spreads like wildfire here, and the 2 killers apps : P2P and chat.
Remember, FT mostly relied on third parties to provide content on Minitel.
And indeed, web & email access via lynx (made easy because unix tty setups exist for the Minitel, which has serial I/O btw) have been available on Minitel since 1994 or so.
(had my first email address there and discovered the joys of ftpmail and uudecode with an early version of "Internet for dummies", before I could afford a modem. Ah memories....)
After reading all this, it looks like France is much better off than I thought compared to our neighbours, wrt net connectivity:
Although France Telecom's Wanadoo is the biggest player among the general public, Free is generally agreed to have the best offers overall, is the most popular among the tech-savvy, and is very Linux friendly too.
Modem/ISDN Dial-up An analog phone line subscription with France Telecom is 13/month. ISDN maybe twice as much. And then:
56K V92/64K ISDN pay-as-you-go dial-up is more or less 1/hour.
There are many plans for all-inclusive 10, 20, 50 hours/month access. Free's offer is again the best deal, at 15 for 50 hours/month.
Broadband options
Cable has never been very popular here, and is available only in a few selected cities. There usually are upload restrictions, and competition is not very lively in this arena.
DSL is generally the way to go : excellent coverage mainly by France Telecom (around 80% of total population, every town with more than 5/10k people is likely to have its DSLAMs), and they are required by the equivalent of the FCC here (the ART) to allow ISPs to use the network for a fee. Free thus has a 512/128K offer for 30 with the nearly-nationwide coverage of this network, while FT's own service Wanadoo is still at 45, or 30 for 128/64
Local loop unbundling is becoming serious, and the likes of Free or 9Telecom have started rolling out their own DSLAMs and building their own network, which has less coverage than FT's right now, but Free for instance uses it to offer a quite innovative set-top box based service that provides 1 to 3 Mbps net access, Digital TV over DSL, and 2 VoDSL phone lines, all for 30!
Wireless connectivity
Wi-Fi is popular, as everywhere else, but public hotspots are still rare
Flat rate GPRS+WAP access is 6/month in addition to your mobile subscription, a little more for unrestricted GPRS+internet
Japan's i-mode has been licensed by Bouygues Telecom, and uses fancy handsets, but the pricing scheme is still horrid : in addition to your mobile subscription, you pay a monthly 3 for imode access, 1 per subscription-based service, and traffic is charged 0.01/Kb
More than I can imagine the US doing under similar circumstanced (imagine a dissident government in control of Florida and claiming sovereignty over the entire US today.)
hmmm, and they'd be called something like say, Jeb & George ?:)
Why is it that you Europeans insist on seeing corporations as the ultimate evil whereas you turn a blind eye to the dirty tricks the governments play (and have always plahed)?
In the current context where corporate scandals have never been so huge and have a very real impact on thousands of people's lives, in the context of the Seattle protests, in the context of former globalization advocates like Nobel prize Joseph Stiglitz admitting they were wrong, one could very legitimately reverse the question:
Why is it that you Americans insist on seeing governement as the ultimate evil whereas you turn a blind eye to the dirty tricks the corporations play (and have always played)?
How many wars have corporations started? How many cities have corporations razed down? How many prisoners have corporations tortured and executed?
Nowadays, corporations and generally speaking, the capitalist system, give governments most of their reasons to start wars. Iraq ? It's pretty obvious that no evidence has been found, and they're even willing to *offer unlimited access to UN inspectors* to avoid war! But : 2nd largest oil producer. North Korea has just admitted having an advanced nuclear program, but you're leaving them alone. Hello McFly ? Afghanistan ? How convenient that the US chose to put Hamed Karzai at the head : he used to work for a californian oil company, and the US needs control of the pipeline that goes through the country. Alaska drilling, US refusal of the Kyoto protocol: Why would any sane government official act suicidal like that and refuse to grant a much-needed break to the planet, if it wasn't for corporate interests ?
Will anyone here argue the fact that the MS problem would have been remedied long if only common sense applied (of course it's a fucking monopoly and it's stifling innovation !) and not corporate lobbying ?
I could go on and on for ever. In this day and age, the vast majority of the pain people have to endure (be it no pensions because of stock market crash, child labor, polluted environment...) stems from environmental or economic catastrophes caused by corporations. *Not* by governmental abuse of power. It is truely beyond me why most Americans can't see that.
It is the goverment that controls the killing machine (the military and the police) and should therefore be treated like a dangerous wild animal: kept on a tight leash.
Hey dude, it's not like it's an uncontrollable animal if you live in a democracy. I can see your point applied to a dictatorship, but that's our countries we're talking about right ? Just vote! You have that wonderful right, you can sway things one way or another. Try that with corporate monopolies. As for the killing power, you seem to forget that the government gets their power and legitimacy from the *people* (well, in any real democracy where elected presidents are actually the ones in charge *evil grin*), whereas CEOs get their power from *shareholders*. And increasingly, giant corporations have as much or more influence on people's ability to live in security (which includes financial security, aka being able to feed one's family) than the government has. If you can't see the threat to democracy of having an unelected body, controlled only by the few who *own*, taking precedence over the governmental body elected by those who *are*, and affecting the lives of everybody, then I'm really pessimistic about the state of the US opinion...(*sigh*)
But in this particular case like in many other fields, the net enables optimal market transparency by making information flow more freely (availability of used books at the same place where you can buy a new copy). In the end, the consumer always benefits from making an informed purchase.
When you think about it, what bothers the Authors Guild is exactly that, information: "the prominent placement" of used books, not the used books themselves. This is the kind of thinking that's often used to protect fundamentally flawed or obsolete business models, much like security by obscurity tries to protect flawed software. Of course this must be fought by all means. Amazon did the Right Thing for the consumer, and they should stand firm about that.
Like another poster suggested, in a perfect world this would result in publishers producing books so great people never ever *want* to sell them. They should remember that in the free market system, recurrent income shouldn't be taken for granted, but is merely a result of having the best deal around. So either live with it, or reject the whole system, but don't ask for privileges... (this applies to the RIAA and friends too, of course)
This is *OLD* news. The first power plant of this kind, "l'usine marémotrice de la Rance", has been designed in the early 60's (by an uncle of mine actually), and is still in production to date.
>The most significant efforts I have seen are the Stanford Meta-level Compilation Project [stanford.edu] and the/GS switch in Visual C++.NET [devx.com].
Amusingly enough, in this devx.com article: "There is no substitute for good programming skills and peer code review for discovering and fixing vulnerable code." (emphasis mine)
all right, who wrote this ?
"Michael Howard is a program manager on the Windows 2000 security team."
>Naturally, though, since the DoJ has dropped the ball on Microsoft, this sort of thing >will only get worse. Get used to it, and vote Democratic in 2004.
Ain't that what you US people already did in 2000 ?
you're talking about the initial kernel-based driver from alcatel, which is now obsoleted by the open source driver by Benoit Papillault (http://speedtouch.sf.net).
This one works better and only requires the standard kernel option "HDLC line discipline" to be compiled in.
Debian's apt will give you the best of both worlds:
Automated downloading and upgrade, just the same great dependency management as FreeBSD, and packages upgrades are a breeze.
Moreover, Debian packages are tightly integrated with each other and provide sensible default configuration files...
I suggest you try Debian.
With only a few tasks selected at install time, I got a ~60MB system, and I probably could have made it even smaller.
I had never achieved that with Mandrake before.
I don't know the exact situation in Germany, but here in France there are literally dozens of free ISPs, so giving access and hosting for free is no revolution. The most significant cost of internet access in Europe is still the phone charges.
Unfortunately, even though one of the main suppliers of xDSL technology (Alcatel) is French, DSL service has only been available here since November, in the biggest cities first.
So those of us in rural areas of Europe are gonna be stuck with slow and expensive V.90 until at least 2001...
1) MS wants domination in the streaming media market 2) Non-windows users have no other choice than Real, and that keeps Real alive and prevents MS from reaching 1) 3) MS decides to release WM player for alternative platforms and to start aggressive partnership with content providers 4) Real dies, WM becomes the new standard 5) MS starts delaying non-windows versions of WM player, and eventually cancels them. 6) "Linux for multimedia ? nahhh, you can't even play streaming movies from the internet"
I wonder if they'll be able to get away with it after the DOJ trial, though...
What we really need here is an open standard (IETF, where are you ?), possibly based on a new technology (wavelets/fractal, whatever works best) so that it gains wide acceptance.
If content providers and MS get to decide the specs of future audio and video formats, prepare for SDMI-type crap...
Excuse me if this is a silly question, but I can't seem to find an arch/ia64/ or arch/merced/ directory under/usr/src/linux.
Has Intel really ported the kernel alone ? I don't think this has been discussed at all in the linux-kernel list, and it'd surprise me if Linus, Alan, and the others had been working secretly with Intel.
Or does the article only mean that Intel is committed to porting Linux on Merced and that it'll be easy because the code is already 64-bit ready ?
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What's more important is the per capita ownership of personal computers in Europe. I'm guessing it's a fair bit lower than in the U.S. Also, what about internet service. If I remember right, France's is nationalized (as if this should surprise anyone), and is charged for with a flat monthly rate and per hour of use. Also, what is per capita distribution of fast access internet in Europe? Again, I'm guessing it's a lot lower than the U.S.
:
/. daily with big telcos trying to crush the competition of local DSL providers on their networks, and meanwhile the FCC rolls their thumbs because they should "let the market decide"... gimme a break...
:)
;) )
Sorry to be rude to someone who might not deserve it normally for all I know but
What a load of stereotyped uninformed bullshit about what it's like across the pond ! (as if this should surprise anyone...)
Per capita ownership of computers is indeed lower in western and southern europe than in the US, for various reasons. Some cultural, and one of them for instance in France, being that the country has had the infamous Minitel e-commerce terminal since the early 80's, and so Internet service suffered from a lack of incentive for the general public to switch until about 1997-98. ( the early days "oh it's just minitel, faster, on a computer" syndrome ).
From day one (1994), french ISPs have all been private entities, mom&pop shops in the early years, around 6-7 big players like everywhere today.
France Telecom's own service Wanadoo (discl: my current employer) was actually late on the market (1996 or so) but took the newbie market by storm much for the same reasons that AOL did in the US.
Now, a word on the state of broadband:
80% of the population is eligible for DSL on France Telecom's network (but still with a choice of ISPs: FT *has* to offer them non discriminatory terms for collecting IP traffic from their customers). This will be 90% by the end of 2005. So much for your guess...
This means that my parents' 5.000 inhabitants place out in the countryside has had DSL for 2 years now. That would have never happened in the first place with market forces alone, US-style. But there's still a layer of competition/free market as ISPs rent the national DSL network.
And of course, they can roll their own, and do so: local loop unbundling has been going very strong for 2 years in urban areas.
Today in Paris, I'm getting 5Mbps DSL with free unlimited national VoIP-to-any-phone service + 100 channels of TV/DSL for 29.99EUR/mo. This service (delivered by Free.fr, Wanadoo's main competitor) is or will be available in all cities with 50.000+ pop.
Epilogue:
I've been to the SF Bay Area in January, and yeah the CompUSA guy I talked with was very surprised too when I told him what kind of offers we had when shopping around for a router with a built-in DSL modem.
So as usual, Europe at first lags behind for several years, and we geeks look at the US with envy, but when it finally gets there, it's very often done the right way "regulatory-wise".
In the end, our broadband markets look in my opinion much better than the mess I read about on
Same deal as the California energy market, actually. When WE loose power, it's only because of strikes
(the above sentence is written half-jokingly, but it might spread another stereotype so I already regret it...hmmm
I know the jokes about the original N-Gage never seem to end around here, but I've been perfectly happy with mine and I still fail to find anything today that comes close in terms of functionality. Consider this:
:) )
... and lots of third party software like Opera (which is *real* good and usable), streaming radios clients, etc...
* State of the art phone
Tri-band GSM (I live and am using it in France, but it worked flawlessly during my trip to the Bay Area a few months ago) with the IMHO great Nokia usability.
And please, the whole sidetalkin' stuff is really overblown : I see no reason not to always use it as I do with the included hands free kit (2 earspeakers and a speed dial remote to take incoming calls or make new ones using voice-recognition)
MP3/MIDI ringtones, etc... and Bluetooth (improves your sex life!)
* MP3/AAC player.
Ok, MMCs aren't cheap and space is rather limited (we're talking a few hundred megs, not gigs), but my 128Mb one easily holds a few games + one album, which is more than enough for the daily commute time if you think about it.
Before leaving, I just connect it to my laptop using a standard mini-USB cable, and it shows up as a regular USB mass storage device under Windows or Linux, like your average digicam. That also makes it a USB key you're less likely to lose than a real one (because it's also your phone, so you'd better pay attention to it
And OGG support is coming through third party software.
* FM tuner
with instant access key, and which you can record to AAC.
* Games
Looking at Tony Hawk Pro Skater or Tomb Raider, I'd say the N-Gage roughly has the horsepower of a PlayStation 1.
I'm not using that much actually, but all the other features still make me love my N-Gage
* Software : Symbian S60 system
That means a beautiful, consistent UI, and a stable OS.
The included software is good : WAP browser, SSL-enabled IMAP/POP3/SMS integrated message center, the usual calculator/pda stuff, RealOne player...
I also love CityMaps, paid $5 for the single city version of this map software/route planner and it's so much handier than carrying a map or a separate device (also no recurring costs to use it since it's offline)
* It's ONE device
That's what buys me with the N-Gage : I don't like carrying too much stuff around, having to reach for it when I need it, and risking to forget them before leaving.
There I have MP3/radio/phone/games/basic PDA/internet client(+bluetooth modem) in just one device, and I've found this nowhere else.
(I don't care about the games, just the MP3/phone/internet/3rd party software capabilities, and even that I can't seem to find anywhere else)
I'm going to visit the SF Bay Area for 2 weeks in a few days, and I have a slightly different question from the original poster's :
I'll bring over my triband GSM phone from Europe, and I'd like to get a $20-30 prepaid card with a US phone number (since roaming is not an option with its horrendous prices)
What are good plans that would allow me to call local & international (to europe) ?
Funny how MPAA members (/. speak for something slightly more evil than satanist child molesters) , can turn into "fine folks" when circumstances need it.
Mandrake does have (or used to have) "big" names on their payroll, like David Faure of KDE fame, or kernel developer Jeff Garzik.
Any place that enables free software developers to make a living out of their passion deserves support anyway.
RTT is for "Reduction du Temps de Travail" (Work time reduction).
These have been introduced with the 39->35 hours work week transition : in many positions (managerial, tech workers) where it's just not practical to work only 35 hours a week, people still do the 39 hour week, but are awarded "RTT" days in compensation.
Is akin to asking 'Do you think the existance of Atari 2600's is slowing uptake of the XBox?'.
No,
because when all you need is to play Tetris, doing it on the Xbox adds no value.
Same for looking up numbers/train schedules : it's usually quicker to use a Minitel where you don't have an always-on PC with an always-on net connection.
Tech-savvy people obviously saw long ago that it was no competition to the net, but some senior citizens who just want access to some services and don't want to learn how to use a PC still use it extensively.
Hey dude, we're talking about the early eighties.
The technology indeed was (and still is) very eighties, but it did the job, and the fact is that, around 1985, your average family in France was looking up numbers, chatting and shopping online.
So when in the mid 90's, these families were told by ISPs and the media about that new revolutionary thing called the internet, that enabled you to buy stuff online and more, the first reaction was "So what ? An american version of Minitel?"
So it did take a while for the net to catch on here, because the incentive to switch just wasn't as strong as it was in the countries that started from nothing.
In some cases, it was even nonexistent : it takes 10-15 seconds to power on a Minitel, have it connect to the phone book, and get your answer. Booting a 1995 PC with a 1995 modem and net connection is ten times longer, so people gave up.
Things have changed in the mind of the most technophobes only with the advent of DSL, which spreads like wildfire here, and the 2 killers apps : P2P and chat.
Odd, http://www.voyages-sncf.com has been working fine for me with Mozilla & Konqueror for more than a year...
Remember, FT mostly relied on third parties to provide content on Minitel.
And indeed, web & email access via lynx (made easy because unix tty setups exist for the Minitel, which has serial I/O btw) have been available on Minitel since 1994 or so.
(had my first email address there and discovered the joys of ftpmail and uudecode with an early version of "Internet for dummies", before I could afford a modem.
Ah memories....)
400km is nice, but how about New York to Strasbourg, France, 2 years ago, using the same Zeus robot ?
Unfortunately it was drowned under the 9/11 news at the time.
Google for "Operation Lindbergh"
Although France Telecom's Wanadoo is the biggest player among the general public, Free is generally agreed to have the best offers overall, is the most popular among the tech-savvy, and is very Linux friendly too.
Modem/ISDN Dial-up
An analog phone line subscription with France Telecom is 13/month. ISDN maybe twice as much. And then:
Broadband options
Wireless connectivity
More than I can imagine the US doing under similar circumstanced (imagine a dissident government in control of Florida and claiming sovereignty over the entire US today.)
:)
hmmm, and they'd be called something like say, Jeb & George ?
Why is it that you Europeans insist on seeing corporations as the ultimate evil whereas you turn a blind eye to the dirty tricks the governments play (and have always plahed)?
...(*sigh*)
:)
In the current context where corporate scandals have never been so huge and have a very real impact on thousands of people's lives, in the context of the Seattle protests, in the context of former globalization advocates like Nobel prize Joseph Stiglitz admitting they were wrong, one could very legitimately reverse the question:
Why is it that you Americans insist on seeing governement as the ultimate evil whereas you turn a blind eye to the dirty tricks the corporations play (and have always played)?
How many wars have corporations started? How many cities have corporations razed down? How many prisoners have corporations tortured and executed?
Nowadays, corporations and generally speaking, the capitalist system, give governments most of their reasons to start wars.
Iraq ? It's pretty obvious that no evidence has been found, and they're even willing to *offer unlimited access to UN inspectors* to avoid war!
But : 2nd largest oil producer.
North Korea has just admitted having an advanced nuclear program, but you're leaving them alone. Hello McFly ?
Afghanistan ? How convenient that the US chose to put Hamed Karzai at the head : he used to work for a californian oil company, and the US needs control of the pipeline that goes through the country.
Alaska drilling, US refusal of the Kyoto protocol: Why would any sane government official act suicidal like that and refuse to grant a much-needed break to the planet, if it wasn't for corporate interests ?
Will anyone here argue the fact that the MS problem would have been remedied long if only common sense applied (of course it's a fucking monopoly and it's stifling innovation !) and not corporate lobbying ?
I could go on and on for ever. In this day and age, the vast majority of the pain people have to endure (be it no pensions because of stock market crash, child labor, polluted environment...) stems from environmental or economic catastrophes caused by corporations.
*Not* by governmental abuse of power.
It is truely beyond me why most Americans can't see that.
It is the goverment that controls the killing machine (the military and the police) and should therefore be treated like a dangerous wild animal: kept on a tight leash.
Hey dude, it's not like it's an uncontrollable animal if you live in a democracy. I can see your point applied to a dictatorship, but that's our countries we're talking about right ? Just vote! You have that wonderful right, you can sway things one way or another. Try that with corporate monopolies.
As for the killing power, you seem to forget that the government gets their power and legitimacy from the *people* (well, in any real democracy where elected presidents are actually the ones in charge *evil grin*), whereas CEOs get their power from *shareholders*.
And increasingly, giant corporations have as much or more influence on people's ability to live in security (which includes financial security, aka being able to feed one's family) than the government has.
If you can't see the threat to democracy of having an unelected body, controlled only by the few who *own*, taking precedence over the governmental body elected by those who *are*, and affecting the lives of everybody, then I'm really pessimistic about the state of the US opinion
Oh yeah, if that matters, I'm French.
You are allowed to revese engineer under the DMCA in order to create interoperable software, I believe.
The D-M-C what ?
They're in France anyway, and is reverse engineering is legal here, period.
(dunno how the EUCD is going to affect this, though...)
Used books aren't new.
But in this particular case like in many other fields, the net enables optimal market transparency by making information flow more freely (availability of used books at the same place where you can buy a new copy). In the end, the consumer always benefits from making an informed purchase.
When you think about it, what bothers the Authors Guild is exactly that, information: "the prominent placement" of used books, not the used books themselves. This is the kind of thinking that's often used to protect fundamentally flawed or obsolete business models, much like security by obscurity tries to protect flawed software. Of course this must be fought by all means. Amazon did the Right Thing for the consumer, and they should stand firm about that.
Like another poster suggested, in a perfect world this would result in publishers producing books so great people never ever *want* to sell them. They should remember that in the free market system, recurrent income shouldn't be taken for granted, but is merely a result of having the best deal around. So either live with it, or reject the whole system, but don't ask for privileges... (this applies to the RIAA and friends too, of course)
This is *OLD* news.
a ge/usine /usine.html
The first power plant of this kind, "l'usine marémotrice de la Rance",
has been designed in the early 60's (by an uncle of mine actually),
and is still in production to date.
See:
http://www.edf.fr/html/en/decouvertes/voy
Or google for "usine marémotrice rance"
>The most significant efforts I have seen are the Stanford Meta-level Compilation Project [stanford.edu] and the /GS switch in Visual C++.NET [devx.com].
Amusingly enough, in this devx.com article:
"There is no substitute for good programming skills and peer code review for discovering and fixing vulnerable code."
(emphasis mine)
all right, who wrote this ?
"Michael Howard is a program manager on the Windows 2000 security team."
straight for the horse's mouth...
>Naturally, though, since the DoJ has dropped the ball on Microsoft, this sort of thing >will only get worse. Get used to it, and vote Democratic in 2004.
Ain't that what you US people already did in 2000 ?
you're talking about the initial kernel-based driver from alcatel, which is now obsoleted by the open source driver by Benoit Papillault (http://speedtouch.sf.net).
This one works better and only requires the standard kernel option "HDLC line discipline" to be compiled in.
Debian's apt will give you the best of both worlds:
Automated downloading and upgrade, just the same great dependency management as FreeBSD, and packages upgrades are a breeze.
Moreover, Debian packages are tightly integrated with each other and provide sensible default configuration files...
I suggest you try Debian.
With only a few tasks selected at install time, I got a ~60MB system, and I probably could have made it even smaller.
I had never achieved that with Mandrake before.
I don't know the exact situation in Germany, but here in France there are literally dozens of free ISPs, so giving access and hosting for free is no revolution.
The most significant cost of internet access in Europe is still the phone charges.
Unfortunately, even though one of the main suppliers of xDSL technology (Alcatel) is French, DSL service has only been available here since November, in the biggest cities first.
So those of us in rural areas of Europe are gonna be stuck with slow and expensive V.90 until at least 2001...
1) MS wants domination in the streaming media market
2) Non-windows users have no other choice than Real, and that keeps Real alive and prevents MS from reaching 1)
3) MS decides to release WM player for alternative platforms and to start aggressive partnership with content providers
4) Real dies, WM becomes the new standard
5) MS starts delaying non-windows versions of WM player, and eventually cancels them.
6) "Linux for multimedia ? nahhh, you can't even play streaming movies from the internet"
I wonder if they'll be able to get away with it after the DOJ trial, though...
What we really need here is an open standard (IETF, where are you ?), possibly based on a new technology (wavelets/fractal, whatever works best) so that it gains wide acceptance.
If content providers and MS get to decide the specs of future audio and video formats, prepare for SDMI-type crap...
Excuse me if this is a silly question, but I can't seem to find an arch/ia64/ or arch/merced/ directory under /usr/src/linux.
Has Intel really ported the kernel alone ? I don't think this has been discussed at all in the linux-kernel list, and it'd surprise me if Linus, Alan, and the others had been working secretly with Intel.
Or does the article only mean that Intel is committed to porting Linux on Merced and that it'll be easy because the code is already 64-bit ready ?