>>if they wanted, wouldnt the US military be able to jam them pretty easily no matter what frequencies they used?
no, because if you RTFA you'll notice that originally Galileo was to broadcast on the same frequency as GPS. That would mean that the US could not jam Galileo without also jamming GPS. By persuading Galileo to use a different frequency, the US will be able to jam its systems without affecting Galileo. (Though presumably it also means that people using Galileo will be able to jam GPS as well.)
>> Why should anyone be forced to pay for the BBC if they don't watch the BBC? Your stupid system forces anyone with a TV to pay a tax to support the BBC, even if they have their TV in order to watch anything but the BBC.
Why should anyone be forced to pay for schools if they don't use public schools? Your stupid system forces everyone to pay a tax to support public scools, even if they don't have kids.
It's clear from all the posts so far that I'm the only person to actually read the article.
Eco is not interested in the physical difference between paper and electronic media. He doesn't discuss problems of compatibility or the possibilities of electronic paper. His article is about the evolution of *what* we write, not how we write it.
The way in which the online world frees us from the single author, linear narratives of books and opens the door to multifaceted collaborative efforts (he doesn't mention wikis, but he seems to have got the idea). He thinks about what effect this will have on authorship and envisages the process as being akin to a jazz riff, slightly different every time depending on what the participants bring to it, rather than the single vision of an auteur.
It is indeed an insightful and thought provoking article by one of the world's leading philosophers. And frankly, it's not something you can even begin to comment on until you read it. Which makes me wonder how it got onto/. in the first place.
>>Firstly, the one thing that unites just about every civilization since Sumeria is a free market. The practice of barter is just about the most ancient one in human history.
no no no. don't confuse the existence of trade with free markets. Even in the Soviet Union you had to pay for food. There's no nation on earth that actually practices a truly free market -- they all have subsidies and import/export tariffs and restrictions that unfairly discriminate against at least some foreign imports. And many industries are dominated either by a monopoly (M$) or a cartel (oil) - and without government intervention under antitrust laws, a lot more would be.
That's because MS News is sourced from Moreover, which is a news aggregator that collects a lot of its content from newswire services and the like (often via RSS).
I did a study of Moreover a few weeks back. Unlike Google, Moreover news is not totally automated -- they have editors who manually rank how good they think a news site is. They also markup things like the subject and geographical scope of the site. Searches on the content itself are powered by an Autonomy search engine (I think).
Because of the human intervention, you might expect Moreover to have few boo-boos than Google News -- top ranked stories will almost always to come from reputable sources and be relevant to the content areas claim. On the other hand, the rankings assigned to each site are fairly static, so you'll probably see the same few news sites dominating every day. One of the things I like about Google News is the occasional wacky story from some nowhere local paper (or even/.) surfacing on he front page -- that's unlikely to happen with Moreover.
Read the post. The X1 is a DLP projector. No LCDs involved. And for the price of your 36" CRT behemoth you'll be able to get diagonals measured in yards from a box the size of a few video cassettes, plus you'll be able to use it for PC gaming.
Actually quite a few of these ads have now been pulled in the UK (if they were ever used here - cars were never sold as Acuras in the UK. We knew they were just fancy Hondas)
* Guinness is good for you hasn't been used for decades, and is now only seen on old posters in pseudo-Irish pubs
* British Airways was only allowed to advertise itself as the "world's favourite airline" because it carried more international passengers than any other airline. However it has now been overtaken (not sure by whom) and the slogan has been dropped.
>> Within 50 years, the average secretary will need to know how to program or will be unable to perform his or her job.
From my perspective, that's already started to happen. I work for a magazine publishers which is now doing most of its business online, so we do a lot of text processing. We recently sent 12 people on a perl course. Only 2 were in real programming roles. Most of the others were junior or middle management who had never programmed before. But they had finally figured out that instead of waiting for a developer to write a few lines of perl for whatever simple task needed to be done (e.g. substituting some XML tags) they could do it themselves. And even if they didn't do it themselves, at least they'd have an idea of how complex a task it really was.
And as for secretaries getting into programming... try creating even a simple Excel or Access macro without a knowledge of visual basic (or at least some understanding of programming).
If it were true, the above would be very interesting. But it's complete and utter bullshit.
First of all, the Post Office in the UK has had nothing to do with regulating e/m waves of any frequency since 1969.
Secondly, the BBC has not had a monopoly on broadcast radio in the UK since 1972. There are many more commercial, privately-owned stations than BBC stations across the country.
Thirdly, radio transmission by shining an infra-red vertically upwards? Hello? Moderators, are you smoking crack. Here's a few reasons why it couldn't work:
* Lower light frequencies, including infra-red light, are not scattered much by the atmosphere. That's why sunsets are red and the sky is blue: blue light is scattered all over the sky, red light passes more or less straight through.
* During the daytime at least, any infra-red signal from a scattered laser beam would be hopelessly swamped by infra-red coming from the sun (not to mention other IR sources in a city, i.e. anything hot)
* For this to stand a chance of working therefore, the laser beam would have to be very powerful. As noted above, the BBC's radio monopoly ended in 1972 and Post-Office regulation in 1969. Please tell me, what private individuals had access to powerful lasers in the 1960s? Dr Evil?
So please, moderators, don't mod up a story because it seems superficially plausible. Stop and think about it for a bit. 5 minutes Googling is usually sufficient to establish veracity.
Why is this the "tertiary" phase, given only one radio series has been made so far? (Was the secondary phase the TV adaptation?)
Given that the original radio series anticipated a lot of what happened in the first 3 books, it will be interesting to see if the new show takes account of that or if it tries to be a faithful adaptation of the books.
(BTW, any HHGTTG fan who has not heard the series should definitely do so -- OK so the characters' voices were nothing like what I had imagined, but it's brilliant and IMO superior to the book).
In 1605 they didn't have ministries and civil servants. There was no Prime Minister before the 18th century and no Civil Service until the late 19th centurs. Back then the King ran the government personally, and if he couldn't make laws without Parliament's consent, he could ignore ones he didn't like. It was only in 1689 that Britain truly became a constitutional monarchy, with Parliament in charge.
Actually in 1605, Parliament was on the periphery of London. Back in those days, London was still concentrated around the original "City of London" -- a few miles downstream from Westminster. Almost the entire population lived and worked in or just outside "the City" (today it's the financial district of London). Linking the Houses of Parliament and the City was the Strand, which was lined by aristocrat's mansions, and (nearer to parliament) Whitehall, then the site of the main royal palace. So the devastation would have barely affected most of London's buildings or population.
It qould have destroyed the Houses of Parliament, including all the MPS, the Lords and the King who were there for the state opening of parliament; Westminster Abbey; and the main royal palaces of Whitehall and St James's (Buckingham wasn't built yet). So the effect on the government & ruling class would have been devastating.
On the other hand, the main commercial, shipping and population centre of London at the time was the City of London, which is a couple of miles from Parliament (technically in the City of Westminster), so the direct effect on London's population would have been small. The knock-on might have been huge, though. Just as 9/11 may have ended lower manhattan's dominance of the finance sector in NYC, it's possible that London's importance as a trading centre would have been seriously dented.
Ten excellent reasons not to go on the atkins diet (in no particular order):
1. Pizza 2. Chocolate 3. Cakes 4. Bagels & breads 5. Sushi 6. French fries 7. Corn 8. Pasta/noodles 9. Oranges 10. Tomatoes (I could go on).
Sure, you'll lose a lot of weight if you do the Atkins thing (and stick to it). You might even live longer. But your tastebuds will shrivel up. You'll forget what sweetness tastes like. Your choice.
As to all those who diss exercise as a method of weight loss: you're right. Going to the gym regularly will not lose weight. That's because muscle weighs more than fat. You'll still lose inches (I have). Having more muscle also increases your metabolic rate, so you can eat more without putting on fat. Plus being fit increases your energy levels and brings with it incontrovertible health benefits.
Sure, you'll be skinnier on Atkins. But that doesn't mean you'll be healthier. Fat people aren't unhealthy because they're fat. They're unhealthy because they have unhealthy lifestyles. It's noticeable that Sumo wrestlers, while they suffer from some health problems associated with obesity (eg arthritis) have low cholesterol, low blood pressure and low risk of diabetes. Why? lots of exercise. So even if you're on Atkins, you should still lead the other elements of a healthy life.
>> I point to economic growth during the US's recessions rivaling Europe's times of normal productivity as evidence that the free market, despite all invective against it from the left in media and the academy, works incredibly well.
Please explain to me how any economy, even the US economy, can grow during a recession? The definition of a recession is an economic contraction (usually for 2 successive quarters). Anyway let's examine the truth of this statement by looking at the last US recession, in 2001. The US economy contracted for 3 successive quarters in 2001 (starting well before 9/11, so don't blame Osama for that), with total growth for the year around 0.6%. By comparison, Britain grew almost 2%, and the Euro area as a whole managed 1%. (Source: The Economist).
Indeed, the Economist (6 Feb 2002) also reports that since 1950, European productivity growth has averaged 3.3% compared to 2% for the US. Productivity in Belgium, France and Germany is higher than the US. GDP growth since 1995 has been higher in Europe (2.3% per year, averaged out) than the US (2%). It's true that overall US GDP remains higher than in Europe, but that's the payoff for getting 5-8 weeks' paid vacation per year and a 40-hour workweek. Its a payoff most Europeans are more than happy to take. I bet that given the choice, a lot of Americans would take that option too.
In any case, the Economist also points out that GDP is a poor measure of living standards. It includes things like prison spending and defence. It includes money spent on heating and air-conditioning -- so people in Britain, where neither is needed for much of the year, automatically have a lower GDP than people with identical lifestyles in Texas or Alaska. By GDP measures, a country in which everyone commutes 60 miles to work every day is better off than one where everyone is within walking distance, because of all that money spent on transport.
It's a mantra in the US that "old" Europe is forever condemned to economic stagnation while the US forges ahead. But it's based on ideology, not facts.
The point of researching these things is to not get caught with your pants down when someone else invents it. Now that this strain of smallpox has been developed, the scientists can determine how to protect against it.
This isn't a new type of bomb. It isn't even a new type of nerve agent. It's a new strain of a living organism. It's very hard (if not impossible) to independently develop identical strains of a living organism. Even organisms that behave in similar ways often have very different biochemical pathways.
As an example of the idiocy of this argument, why aren't scientists sitting around developing new extra-deadly versions of the flu, given that we know that sooner or later a severe flu is going to come along and wipe out millions? Simple -- because it's extremely unlikely that what a scientist comes up with in a lab will be anything like what they have to protect against in the future.
As far as I can see, there's only one way in which developing a super-deadly disease can have defensive benefits. Because if you also develop the only cure to that disease, and only vaccinate your own people, you've got a pretty damn potent deterrent.
And I don't see what this has to do with studying "sexual deviancy" as you call it in relation to AIDS. Studying gay people is unlikely to kill anyone.
In claiming that sauropods could float but not swim, I wonder if the researchers considered their tails? I can see that a diplodocus might have trouble doing the doggy-paddle, but with a tail as long as a couple of city buses, you'd think they could get some speed up swimming tadpole-style. Also their tails and necks would probably be quite effective counterbalances if they did start to wobble.
Major logical fallacy: that 2 tons (or however much) went to make the whole cow, not a single burger. Your single quarter-pounder is no doubt equivalent to several pounds of cowfeed, but that's nothing like as ineffecient as the conversions being talked about here.
Moreover however much the cow ate, its food came from recently grown, mostly sustainable sources (eg hay). It's carbon neutral over a matter of years. Burning up fossil fuels at this rate would be carbon neutral only over thousands if not millions of years, i.e. it would take that may years of plant growth to put that carbon back in the soil.
Paltry help? France declaring war on England prevented England from throwing all its resources into the war. Without the French navy's victory in the Chesapeake, Cornwallis would have been safe and cosy in Yorktown and would have never surrendered. Given that the population of the 13 colonies were more or less evenly split between revolutionaries and loyalists, for all we know the USA would just be part of southern Canada, with low crime and free healthcare for all. Hmmm, you're right. The Americans really should hate the French.
But the real answer to any arguments about the French (or other Europeans) "owing" the US for WWII is this: the war finished almost 60 years ago. Yes, as a European I am grateful to your grandfathers and great-grandfathers for their help. But this is not a debt that is passed down the generations. If YOU want my gratitude, then YOU do something to deserve it.
>>The most obnoxious (IMHO) is pushing the ongoing effort to make geographical indicators like "champagne" and "parmesan" to be protected with the force of trademarks in non-European countries.
Your absolutely right. What right does the French government have to make "parmesan" into a trademark. It's a frickin' Italian cheese after all. Or maybe you simply don't know the difference between the French government and the EU. But in any case, the US approach is much preferable. For example, instead of pursuing multilateral trade negotiations on such issues, why not just patent the foodstuff and then sue anyone who tries to import it. For example, basmati rice, as grown and eaten by billions in Asia for centuries.
Now if they could find a way of generating power out of beer, that would be cool. A power keg, so to speak. Though as there's almost no way of telling Molson apart from water, it's qutie likely that the scientists were actually using beer.
Slashdot Mirror
>>if they wanted, wouldnt the US military be able to jam them pretty easily no matter what frequencies they used?
no, because if you RTFA you'll notice that originally Galileo was to broadcast on the same frequency as GPS. That would mean that the US could not jam Galileo without also jamming GPS. By persuading Galileo to use a different frequency, the US will be able to jam its systems without affecting Galileo. (Though presumably it also means that people using Galileo will be able to jam GPS as well.)
>> Why should anyone be forced to pay for the BBC if they don't watch the BBC? Your stupid system forces anyone with a TV to pay a tax to support the BBC, even if they have their TV in order to watch anything but the BBC.
Why should anyone be forced to pay for schools if they don't use public schools? Your stupid system forces everyone to pay a tax to support public scools, even if they don't have kids.
will someone with an appreciation of Monty Python please mod parent as funny...
It's clear from all the posts so far that I'm the only person to actually read the article.
Eco is not interested in the physical difference between paper and electronic media. He doesn't discuss problems of compatibility or the possibilities of electronic paper. His article is about the evolution of *what* we write, not how we write it.
The way in which the online world frees us from the single author, linear narratives of books and opens the door to multifaceted collaborative efforts (he doesn't mention wikis, but he seems to have got the idea). He thinks about what effect this will have on authorship and envisages the process as being akin to a jazz riff, slightly different every time depending on what the participants bring to it, rather than the single vision of an auteur.
It is indeed an insightful and thought provoking article by one of the world's leading philosophers. And frankly, it's not something you can even begin to comment on until you read it. Which makes me wonder how it got onto
>>Firstly, the one thing that unites just about every civilization since Sumeria is a free market. The practice of barter is just about the most ancient one in human history.
no no no. don't confuse the existence of trade with free markets. Even in the Soviet Union you had to pay for food. There's no nation on earth that actually practices a truly free market -- they all have subsidies and import/export tariffs and restrictions that unfairly discriminate against at least some foreign imports. And many industries are dominated either by a monopoly (M$) or a cartel (oil) - and without government intervention under antitrust laws, a lot more would be.
That's because MS News is sourced from Moreover, which is a news aggregator that collects a lot of its content from newswire services and the like (often via RSS).
I did a study of Moreover a few weeks back. Unlike Google, Moreover news is not totally automated -- they have editors who manually rank how good they think a news site is. They also markup things like the subject and geographical scope of the site.
Searches on the content itself are powered by an Autonomy search engine (I think).
Because of the human intervention, you might expect Moreover to have few boo-boos than Google News -- top ranked stories will almost always to come from reputable sources and be relevant to the content areas claim. On the other hand, the rankings assigned to each site are fairly static, so you'll probably see the same few news sites dominating every day. One of the things I like about Google News is the occasional wacky story from some nowhere local paper (or even
Read the post. The X1 is a DLP projector. No LCDs involved. And for the price of your 36" CRT behemoth you'll be able to get diagonals measured in yards from a box the size of a few video cassettes, plus you'll be able to use it for PC gaming.
So US federal courts claim jurisdiction over the entire solar system with the exception of Guantanamo Bay?
Now I'm confused
Actually quite a few of these ads have now been pulled in the UK (if they were ever used here - cars were never sold as Acuras in the UK. We knew they were just fancy Hondas)
* Guinness is good for you hasn't been used for decades, and is now only seen on old posters in pseudo-Irish pubs
* British Airways was only allowed to advertise itself as the "world's favourite airline" because it carried more international passengers than any other airline. However it has now been overtaken (not sure by whom) and the slogan has been dropped.
>> Within 50 years, the average secretary will need to know how to program or will be unable to perform his or her job.
From my perspective, that's already started to happen. I work for a magazine publishers which is now doing most of its business online, so we do a lot of text processing. We recently sent 12 people on a perl course. Only 2 were in real programming roles. Most of the others were junior or middle management who had never programmed before. But they had finally figured out that instead of waiting for a developer to write a few lines of perl for whatever simple task needed to be done (e.g. substituting some XML tags) they could do it themselves. And even if they didn't do it themselves, at least they'd have an idea of how complex a task it really was.
And as for secretaries getting into programming... try creating even a simple Excel or Access macro without a knowledge of visual basic (or at least some understanding of programming).
If it were true, the above would be very interesting. But it's complete and utter bullshit.
First of all, the Post Office in the UK has had nothing to do with regulating e/m waves of any frequency since 1969.
Secondly, the BBC has not had a monopoly on broadcast radio in the UK since 1972. There are many more commercial, privately-owned stations than BBC stations across the country.
Thirdly, radio transmission by shining an infra-red vertically upwards? Hello? Moderators, are you smoking crack. Here's a few reasons why it couldn't work:
* Lower light frequencies, including infra-red light, are not scattered much by the atmosphere. That's why sunsets are red and the sky is blue: blue light is scattered all over the sky, red light passes more or less straight through.
* During the daytime at least, any infra-red signal from a scattered laser beam would be hopelessly swamped by infra-red coming from the sun (not to mention other IR sources in a city, i.e. anything hot)
* For this to stand a chance of working therefore, the laser beam would have to be very powerful. As noted above, the BBC's radio monopoly ended in 1972 and Post-Office regulation in 1969. Please tell me, what private individuals had access to powerful lasers in the 1960s? Dr Evil?
So please, moderators, don't mod up a story because it seems superficially plausible. Stop and think about it for a bit. 5 minutes Googling is usually sufficient to establish veracity.
Why is this the "tertiary" phase, given only one radio series has been made so far? (Was the secondary phase the TV adaptation?)
Given that the original radio series anticipated a lot of what happened in the first 3 books, it will be interesting to see if the new show takes account of that or if it tries to be a faithful adaptation of the books.
(BTW, any HHGTTG fan who has not heard the series should definitely do so -- OK so the characters' voices were nothing like what I had imagined, but it's brilliant and IMO superior to the book).
In 1605 they didn't have ministries and civil servants. There was no Prime Minister before the 18th century and no Civil Service until the late 19th centurs. Back then the King ran the government personally, and if he couldn't make laws without Parliament's consent, he could ignore ones he didn't like. It was only in 1689 that Britain truly became a constitutional monarchy, with Parliament in charge.
Actually in 1605, Parliament was on the periphery of London. Back in those days, London was still concentrated around the original "City of London" -- a few miles downstream from Westminster. Almost the entire population lived and worked in or just outside "the City" (today it's the financial district of London). Linking the Houses of Parliament and the City was the Strand, which was lined by aristocrat's mansions, and (nearer to parliament) Whitehall, then the site of the main royal palace. So the devastation would have barely affected most of London's buildings or population.
It qould have destroyed the Houses of Parliament, including all the MPS, the Lords and the King who were there for the state opening of parliament; Westminster Abbey; and the main royal palaces of Whitehall and St James's (Buckingham wasn't built yet). So the effect on the government & ruling class would have been devastating.
On the other hand, the main commercial, shipping and population centre of London at the time was the City of London, which is a couple of miles from Parliament (technically in the City of Westminster), so the direct effect on London's population would have been small. The knock-on might have been huge, though. Just as 9/11 may have ended lower manhattan's dominance of the finance sector in NYC, it's possible that London's importance as a trading centre would have been seriously dented.
Ten excellent reasons not to go on the atkins diet (in no particular order):
1. Pizza
2. Chocolate
3. Cakes
4. Bagels & breads
5. Sushi
6. French fries
7. Corn
8. Pasta/noodles
9. Oranges
10. Tomatoes
(I could go on).
Sure, you'll lose a lot of weight if you do the Atkins thing (and stick to it). You might even live longer. But your tastebuds will shrivel up. You'll forget what sweetness tastes like. Your choice.
As to all those who diss exercise as a method of weight loss: you're right. Going to the gym regularly will not lose weight. That's because muscle weighs more than fat. You'll still lose inches (I have). Having more muscle also increases your metabolic rate, so you can eat more without putting on fat. Plus being fit increases your energy levels and brings with it incontrovertible health benefits.
Sure, you'll be skinnier on Atkins. But that doesn't mean you'll be healthier. Fat people aren't unhealthy because they're fat. They're unhealthy because they have unhealthy lifestyles. It's noticeable that Sumo wrestlers, while they suffer from some health problems associated with obesity (eg arthritis) have low cholesterol, low blood pressure and low risk of diabetes. Why? lots of exercise. So even if you're on Atkins, you should still lead the other elements of a healthy life.
>> I point to economic growth during the US's recessions rivaling Europe's times of normal productivity as evidence that the free market, despite all invective against it from the left in media and the academy, works incredibly well.
Please explain to me how any economy, even the US economy, can grow during a recession? The definition of a recession is an economic contraction (usually for 2 successive quarters). Anyway let's examine the truth of this statement by looking at the last US recession, in 2001. The US economy contracted for 3 successive quarters in 2001 (starting well before 9/11, so don't blame Osama for that), with total growth for the year around 0.6%. By comparison, Britain grew almost 2%, and the Euro area as a whole managed 1%. (Source: The Economist).
Indeed, the Economist (6 Feb 2002) also reports that since 1950, European productivity growth has averaged 3.3% compared to 2% for the US. Productivity in Belgium, France and Germany is higher than the US. GDP growth since 1995 has been higher in Europe (2.3% per year, averaged out) than the US (2%). It's true that overall US GDP remains higher than in Europe, but that's the payoff for getting 5-8 weeks' paid vacation per year and a 40-hour workweek. Its a payoff most Europeans are more than happy to take. I bet that given the choice, a lot of Americans would take that option too.
In any case, the Economist also points out that GDP is a poor measure of living standards. It includes things like prison spending and defence. It includes money spent on heating and air-conditioning -- so people in Britain, where neither is needed for much of the year, automatically have a lower GDP than people with identical lifestyles in Texas or Alaska. By GDP measures, a country in which everyone commutes 60 miles to work every day is better off than one where everyone is within walking distance, because of all that money spent on transport.
It's a mantra in the US that "old" Europe is forever condemned to economic stagnation while the US forges ahead. But it's based on ideology, not facts.
>>No natural body of water has wter on the surface. its all coated by oily or other hydrophobic molecules lighter than water.
Either you've never left New Jersey, or you're living on a different planet to the rest of us. Possibly both.
I just hope the folks who modded this as funny also know it's true...
The point of researching these things is to not get caught with your pants down when someone else invents it. Now that this strain of smallpox has been developed, the scientists can determine how to protect against it.
This isn't a new type of bomb. It isn't even a new type of nerve agent. It's a new strain of a living organism. It's very hard (if not impossible) to independently develop identical strains of a living organism. Even organisms that behave in similar ways often have very different biochemical pathways.
As an example of the idiocy of this argument, why aren't scientists sitting around developing new extra-deadly versions of the flu, given that we know that sooner or later a severe flu is going to come along and wipe out millions? Simple -- because it's extremely unlikely that what a scientist comes up with in a lab will be anything like what they have to protect against in the future.
As far as I can see, there's only one way in which developing a super-deadly disease can have defensive benefits. Because if you also develop the only cure to that disease, and only vaccinate your own people, you've got a pretty damn potent deterrent.
And I don't see what this has to do with studying "sexual deviancy" as you call it in relation to AIDS. Studying gay people is unlikely to kill anyone.
In claiming that sauropods could float but not swim, I wonder if the researchers considered their tails? I can see that a diplodocus might have trouble doing the doggy-paddle, but with a tail as long as a couple of city buses, you'd think they could get some speed up swimming tadpole-style. Also their tails and necks would probably be quite effective counterbalances if they did start to wobble.
Major logical fallacy: that 2 tons (or however much) went to make the whole cow, not a single burger. Your single quarter-pounder is no doubt equivalent to several pounds of cowfeed, but that's nothing like as ineffecient as the conversions being talked about here.
Moreover however much the cow ate, its food came from recently grown, mostly sustainable sources (eg hay). It's carbon neutral over a matter of years. Burning up fossil fuels at this rate would be carbon neutral only over thousands if not millions of years, i.e. it would take that may years of plant growth to put that carbon back in the soil.
Paltry help? France declaring war on England prevented England from throwing all its resources into the war. Without the French navy's victory in the Chesapeake, Cornwallis would have been safe and cosy in Yorktown and would have never surrendered. Given that the population of the 13 colonies were more or less evenly split between revolutionaries and loyalists, for all we know the USA would just be part of southern Canada, with low crime and free healthcare for all. Hmmm, you're right. The Americans really should hate the French.
But the real answer to any arguments about the French (or other Europeans) "owing" the US for WWII is this: the war finished almost 60 years ago. Yes, as a European I am grateful to your grandfathers and great-grandfathers for their help. But this is not a debt that is passed down the generations. If YOU want my gratitude, then YOU do something to deserve it.
>>The most obnoxious (IMHO) is pushing the ongoing effort to make geographical indicators like "champagne" and "parmesan" to be protected with the force of trademarks in non-European countries.
Your absolutely right. What right does the French government have to make "parmesan" into a trademark. It's a frickin' Italian cheese after all. Or maybe you simply don't know the difference between the French government and the EU. But in any case, the US approach is much preferable. For example, instead of pursuing multilateral trade negotiations on such issues, why not just patent the foodstuff and then sue anyone who tries to import it. For example, basmati rice, as grown and eaten by billions in Asia for centuries.
Now if they could find a way of generating power out of beer, that would be cool. A power keg, so to speak. Though as there's almost no way of telling Molson apart from water, it's qutie likely that the scientists were actually using beer.