Last time I heard of it, MCSE contained "Engineer" in it. So, is an MCSE counted as an engineer in the USofA ?
It is not in many countries. There are even some that would prohibit the use of this "Engineer" title if a diploma has not been delivered by a state-certified-and-verified cursus.
Agreed. And I fear we may all pay a kind of "US lawyers' tax" for a law that threatens me in no way... I mean, as long as those delicate lobbies in Brussel, Stasbourg or Paris do not corrupt enough MPs.
Is there anything by/. below -1 ? Because this one deserves it.
It is the same pack of sheer lies and half truth that was aired by anonymous US officials cowards for years now. "Saddam was not compying": the inspectors told repeatedly the contrary, maybe he was not complying enough, but he was. Where they bugged? "The Frogs would use their veto": right, but only because the previous resolutions were stating "no war while the inspections work", and they were at that time and a war was completely unecessary. And the Russians and the Chinese would have done the same. As well as most countries in the security council, so this would ot have been a veto, you see? As well as all people of the "grand coalition", especially Brits and Italians, who were overwhelmingly opposed to the war. Basically, Chirac, for once, had boll*qs for the others. "The UN inspectors were overtime": er... no, indeed, Saddam _had_ complied in 1991 but had forgotten to advertise it at that time. Anyway, it is hard to prove one has destroyed something when one actually did, and even more to prove it to someone that will not believe you, however hard one tries. "all western intelligence agencies were agreeing Saddam had WMD": er... no again. Have you heard them by the way? All had doubts, certainly, but what more?
And so on and so on. In the end, the facts matter and one can already guess who was right: the warmongers ot the others.
Thank you to point out that dishonnest misquoting.
But you ought to point out that the bias in the translation was setted up from second one: The Associated Press _in French_ misquoted Chirac and was translated that way. Tony Blair then used a somewhat-more-distorted-again quote in the Commons in his great discourse to justify this war before this temple of Democracy.
In the US it became something like "we must attack Saddam because he must be a real ennemy for the Frogs to defend him". Hum... Indeed, I am too pretentious of a frog, sorry: France was just bashed to provide a convenient red-herring and to distract the crowds from the already too many lies, distortions and so on that were already used at that time.
To be honest, I was working in the axis of Paris main military airport at that time (Villacoublay), and it is certainly true that French diplomacy used many planes to convince many countries not to support the war at that time. Maybe does this explains why the US and the UK warmongers were so angry. The point is and will remain, to quote and translate Chirac correctly, that this region (the Persian Gulf) was not needing another war at that time.
>> because some of them were not only wearing headscarves but actively promoting their beliefs in school, and this is not allowed here. > You don't consider that problematic? Again, I think Americans have a much stronger sense of Freedom of Religion than Europeans.
I do plainly agree that the US way to deal with religion is much more liberal (shall I say so?), and maybe is it related to history. As far as I know, many immigrants went in the US becaus they were persecuted for their faith in Europe. Religion and politics were totaly mingled then, in Europe. In France, when the State and the Church were separated (1905), the top clergy had played in the hand of a greedy elite for decades. Europeans had already suffered from many religious (or presented as such) wars at that time, wars of choice in the Holy Land and in America (North and South), civil wars, defensive wars (against the Muslims) and wars between Europeans too...
Hence a kind of suspicion toward religion... In my -catholic- opinion, separating Church and State is a great idea.
But lets go back to school: children there are minors. Are they free to discuss religious matters? Sure; who could stop that anyway? There are "clubs" and religious activities organised for pupils. Are they free to refuse to attend some teachings and invite their comrades to do so? No. Are they free to discard scientific teachings in public, in the name of their faith? No, they will hear about Darwinism and about sexual matters betwen mammals. Are they free to promote the idea that few Jews were killed in nazi Germany and that current Israelis (and the US gov. for that matter) are nazis? No. Is freedom well served when a school let pupils promote ideas about women inferiority and their necessary submission to males? Not in my opinion. All those questions were raised when it was decided to stop those behaviours.
Is this law a good law? I would not say that. I only daresay it is not too bad a law for this complicated matter. Where does religion freedom stops? Where it contradicts the common rule.
In France, we are very suspicious about what we call "communautarism": the generally agreed idea is that we are one People sharing common ideals, not several separate communities tied by a common belief in free market. This is certainly a provocative way to put it, but the idea is there. This does not bode well with some realities here, and I am pretty sure that US citizens feel bounded by more than Wall Street, but it may explain the different approach toward religious matters, without implying that religious freedom is threatened here.
> And, yeah, in France it's illegal to wear a crucifix or yamaka to school:
I think you are right for the yamaka but definitely wrong for non-oustanding religious symbols. Sikh hats and Jewish yamake _are_ considered oustanding symbols, as big cruxifix and Muslim headscarves are. But yamakas can be hidden behind hats, small crucifix of muslims hands are no issue. Do not rely on US sites to get info about France those days.
And the point about "religious freedom" is void: it is not threatened here. What the law states is that there are rules in state-run schools. There are rules in the US too. How could it be otherwise?
For instance, imagine a guy believing that he must not wear any clothes. That's his faith, he believes it, his children too. Why not? Now, how would the US "freedom" system would deal with that? The kids would most probably be forced to wear clothes in school, would they not? But that's an intolerable abuse, this does not respect their religious rights! Religious freedom is OK as long as it does not conflicts with the local rules. And there, this mess we all regret about Muslim headscarves, _was_ conflicting, for two reasons: - because many of those young girls would not only wear headscarves, but were refusing to attend collective sports (touching boys!) or to go swimming (mandatory teachings here), were banned from some chemistry teaching (nothing on the head when dealing with flames is allowed, hairs must be attached), would refuse to attend some courses (sexual education, biology conflicting with their beliefs), and so on. - because some of them were not only wearing headscarves but actively promoting their beliefs in school, and this is not allowed here. Some others were wearing it by fear of their parents and brothers.
The Muslim law allows Muslims to bypass non-essential religious rules to comply with local laws. Now there is a law banning headscarves in schools, French Muslims comply, the girls learn to swim and to play football, they are not present in school with a wear claiming them being threats to male morality.
Once again, this is not a perfect solution, but there is no perfect solution.
For years, the EU -and others- have pointed out several US policies that are considered too one-sided to be honest and asked for a change in US attitude and acts. Those calls were not rewarded with proper attention. How does it come as a suprise to you that the demands are now voiced with a harsher tone? Besides, the official EU statements I read were no menaces. Could you provide a first-hand link to substantiate your claim? When Chirac stated that "time had not come to invade Irak because the UN inspectors had found nothing", it was quickly transcripted in the US media as "Chirac states he will ever use its veto power to counter the US over Irak, whatever the circumstances". I am rather cautious with AP those days.
As for ICANN, it is a US gov appointed body, that could just be revoked/revamped/bypassed quickly by this administration. ICANN legal form does not really masks the fact that it is under a sole government rule.
I do not know what a Yamaka is, sorry. France has banned oustanding religious signs from state-run classes, in order to restore some order and avoid cultural wars inside the schools.
Sidenote: this is an issue for Sikhs. Sorry for them. No law is perfect. But, rougly speaking, the mess has gone with this law.
One can still wear small christian crosses or the little muslims "hands". One can also choose to send one's children to "confessional" schools, generaly for a small expense. In most of those, the teachers are paid by the state.
I believe it may be hard to understand for deeply religious Americans. But the same must understand that those proeminent headscarves were quite an insult to French values. To put it bluntly, and in my opinion, those headscarves mean "we dot not want to mingle with you native-born French". That's not the way one minor children is supposed to behave in the Republican schools here.
Aren't there any state-run schools in the US or elsewhere where the children must all wear the same uniform? Has this anything to do with true freedom of speech or faith?
Well. First I do not advocate a UN role as such for this DNS mess. I just understand the fuss.
The UN has been involved in scandals, as have many private companies and governments (US included) and NGOs: there is no perfect system. But the more transparent it is, the best it goes, and ICANN is (clearly:-) not transparent at all...
And then, the EU has _not_ threatened the US: it has _warned_ the US that the Internet could split if the current US position was not changed, which is a completely different matter. Besides, the EU has repeated that the current US-led system was not considered fair by the EU. This is no threat, just a longtime opinion and demand for reform. The fact is that those demands have not been considered by the US authorities for years.
The current US administration and its whole "business/military/media/lobbyist" political system has really dealt a blow on US standing: it is not trusted in any matter, except by some East Europeans and Tony Blair.
er... should you want to learn from France past brutality in Africa, why not come in France or in Europe? What let you think there is censorship? If accusations are made that are deemed défamatory, the author can be sued, as in the US, by the offended. This is not censorship.
Could you provide factual examples that there is no brutal-African-colonisation material in France?
> When will the Eurotsars' positions at various "commissions" and other non-elected parapolitical positions come to an end?
In case you had not noticed (surely you didn't), most decisions in Europe are taken not by bureaucrats but by the "Counsel", i.e. the assembly of the national governments, with EU parliament approval sometimes. So those decisions are taken by somewhat democratically elected people. The bureaucrats only deal with the recurring stuff, as everywhere else indeed.
You are right except for one aspect of the thing : if companies do heavy business through the Internet in several countries (clients & partners accessing its websites, and subsidiaries scattered all around the planet using various DNS), they could be much harmed by DNS records corruptions imposed by just one country (or plain access denial).
Considering how much trust the US has currently, this is considered a threat. Is ICANN to be trusted? Can we solely rely on Verisign? No and no. Is a private company more trusworthy than the UN? No again.
The EU is right in its attempt to broke a _fair_ deal to address this, not against the US, but with it. Apart of all technical matter, the discussion seems logical to me.
> I have a feeling that broadband lines in Europe and Canada, like anything else there (cough, Airbus), are heavily government subsidized and regulated.
Well, I rejoice your feeling is misplaced : - neither wireless phone carriers nor ISPs are subsidised in France (1 exception : some funds are/should be allocated to provide broadband for the countryside). - Those markets in France _are_ deregulated with rather tough rules. We have seen countless legal procedures between all those operators claiming unfair technical / commercial practices. There were many state led and EU led legal actions against cartel-like deals between them, that were later enforced. The fines are high (probably not high enough though). There were many consummers triggered class-actions too. - The former monopoly for fixed lines (France Telecom) was obliged to rent some of its own DSlam slots to its competitors, and then to rent space nearby so that those competitors could deploy their own DSlams right where the coper fibers arrived. - apart from a dense country, several factors led to high-broadband penetration in France : . we were accustomed to using "networked" services long ago with the Minitel. . France Telecom (the former monopoly) had setted up a really high quality network (from the backbone to the final wire) before it went private and faced competition. . there are really high quality engineers here. Free, the number 2 ISP, already had its own backbone in the Minitel era, they ugraded it, and devised very effective systems (based on Linux) administered by very few and very well paid top IT staff. They offer 20Mb/s ADSL access in Paris, with free and unrestricted phone calls to all-operators fixed phone numbers in France, cheap IP calls to elsewhere, TV over ADSL, a fixed IP, the ADSL "freebox" (ethernet, TV-out, fetches its configuration through the ADSL link from the DSlam at each reboot), for 30 Euros per month. A great service. France-Telecom has just launched a pay-per-view service over ADSL and Free will follow very soon. . Alcatel, world leader in ADSL equipments, is based in France, even if French owners do not detain a majority in its stock and if its managments has been gobbled by Americans.
- Mobile phone carriers are highly profitable. Major ISPs have become profitable here in the last years. No state subsidies, but the market is regulated, as should be, to avoid monopolies and cartels, and ensure interoperability. This just worked for that matter here. - Delivering movies at home through ADSL will provide the ISPs with a higher cash-flow. There are talks of very, very fast ADSL offerings being devised (100 Mb/s ?), through optical fibers that would go further than the telco's PABX. That would be expensive to set up.
- Airbus is "subsidised" by leases that _are_ reinbursed over the long term, when the planes are successfull on the market, and they are. This mechanism is transparent, contrary to defense-related disguised subsidies benefitting to Boeing. There are some other less-transparent "subsidies" like infrastructures built by local authorities to accomodate for Airbus needs (I am thinking of roads or harbors that have been built specifically to deal with the giant hull of the A380, at least in southern France, and that were partially paid by the state or the concernend districts. That is not unheard of in other industries or in other countries as far as I know). But that's off-topic.
The 35-hours-a-day-law in France applies only to a limited part of the workforce. It does not apply in many corporations (from lorry drivers to restaurant and hostels staff and so on) nor to the managers down to a low level ("les cadres"). Most shopkeepers frequently work 50 hours a week or more, as well as all "artisants". Next is the hourly productivity which is much higher than in the US, for instance. Finaly, the minimum wage is... not a minimum wage since many kind of businesses are allowed to bypass it.
So, this 10% unemployment rate, is certainly linked to the labor laws: recruiters are rather cautious and conservative, that's right. But relatively "generous" unemployement compensations are another factor, because some employees play with them.
So, the situation here has also much to deal with high healthcare costs (and universal benefits), with the high number of retirees (which live older than in the US) and with conservative individual policies (the saving rate is higher than 15% where it is... under 0% in the latest US surveys. Enjoy). One could also point out that the US massively borows foreign money, and that looks very much like an hoorific keynesian-socialist policy.
Many of us fear the financial elites are leading us right to the bottom of the pit, and by "us" I mean all citizens of the "developped" world, US included. The root cause of HP layouts are felt in the US alike: masive offshoring of value-added services, nothing else. Chinese or Indian or Tunisian quasi-slaves are much more profitable to big companies in the short term, they have few or no political rights, and will not really complain about very low wages for years.
The cruelest system may be the most effective. I am not all sure to love it.
Disclaimer: I am French and working much more than 35 hrs a week...
I do agree reverse engineering is legal, useful, moral, etc, etc...
But if it threatens a wider adoption of a free platform because editors cannot make a living if they develop for it, that's _not_always_ a good idea, espcially if a moral deal exists that says "we provide you our good proprietary tools for free provided you do not harm us".
The timeline of the "incident" provided in a related article shows apparently a not-so-clean behaviour on the reverse-engineering side. I do not speak from a legal point of view, but rather from fairness in the way the free-software community deals with non-monopolistic editors.
Once again, I have no in-depth knowledge of the case and I cannot judge if the reverse engineering was justified on a practical basis, if it was needed, if BK had refused to provide a useful tool. If all this was false, then I find Mr. Tridgell attitude dubious, a kind of free-software bigotry perhaps?
As for the open formats: I agree data, and especially _public_ data should not be locked in proprietary formats. But: - this off-topic here: the code source has always remained accessible; - if a company develops a good product that temporarily stores data in a proprietary format, that uses closed protocols, do you claim that it should be immediately cracked and replaced by a free alternative? Hum... I would rather see them make some money of their product and get a financial incentive to provide inovation that way, without having to rely on patents, for instance.
What has been done smells a little, even if it was perfectly legal.
I have few elements to back it up but I wish to submit an hypothesis: Torvalds reacts as if he had a moral deal with McVoy, and had been betrayed. "We use your free (as in beer) software, you got public advertising, you keep it free, we do not cost you anything nor threaten you (commercialy), we benefit from your good product".
Everybody was happy. Now Torvalds has lost a very valuable tool for him, and he is upset about it especially since any mediation was refused.
I am not technically qualifed to judge if the reverse-engineering was justified on a practical basis, nor to define if the main added value of BK lies in its protocols rather than in its code, nor even to judge if the "integrity" argument is void, but I am pretty sure it delivers a signal: "do not develop proprietary network-based tools for Linux; should they proove useful, you will not make a penny with them in two years time unless you lock in customers in another way".
Oh I am pretty sure you're right there, unelss one is firmly attached to its seat. There are vomitting risks too if I understand something about seasickness.
In fact, my real serious idea (I am sure I am not the first one to think of if, in between) was to provide such 3D visual environnement for quiet applications, preferably to mimic bits of reality and mix them with a real desk or table, so that most of the real surrounding of the user remain visible while, in the same time, virtual objects could be projected on its glasses or in its eyes seem in order to exist in 3D in some places around the user. Forget there is no real screen on your desk, you see one with both eyes. Forget there is no Rembrandt on the wall : your headset make it live whenever you gaze at it, wherever you stand in the room. And you can turn around this reduced-size car prototype standing on your real desk but not touch it: it's just an illusion, it can fly too...
Is it feasible today, costs appart? I am sure this would suppose means to know where one stands, in which direction its eyes are looking. Apple is providing sensors to monitor the PCs position/acceleration, I am thinking of the same principle applied to the head.
"Apple recommends that this motion sensing device be not used to play dirty games with adultz materials, and especially all "G Point" research are to be prohibitted: as our customers have noticed, notebook behave badly under high accelerations, even counted in heartbeats. Furthermore, let us remind it still disipate some heat hat may be prejudicial not only to your underpants."
Jokes appart, when will they include motion captors in stereoscopic headsets so that we really become sick with Doomlike games ?
Trademarks were supposed to use the.tm.fr TLD..fr alone was reserved for societies under their own legal names or their "noms d'enseigne", which are still somewhat different from trademarks.
There was very few paperwork indeed to register a.fr : one society had to prove it legally existed before registering a.fr domain name, that's all. This seems to me much more economically _efficient_ than the 'judges will decide' approach retained in the US: provide 1 page of paper and a copy of a document that will be asked to you several time a year (for instance, by other merchants...), and avoid legal harassement and fees and poker.
Er... unless you face a big stupid corp. But even then, see how she is able to defend her -perfectly valid in my opinion- domain name! How much would that cost to you in the US? I really look forward to knowing the answer.
The universal TLD of course, plus several sub-brands of the.fr:
-.asso.fr for the "associations" (charities & other registered non-for-profit organisations; the domain name has to be essentially similar to the name of the registered association).
-.nom.fr for individuals (never seen one!)
-.gouv.fr (government agencies)
-.presse.fr (scarcely used and outdated, it was intended for the newspapers and TVs)
-.tm.fr (brand names)
The rules have been relaxed recently.
Meanwhile, it seems to me that two years ago, one still had to present legal papers to register a.fr (Kbis extract for the societies) and that the domain name should be the essential part of the "Raison sociale" (the real official name of the society) or the "nom d'enseigne" (mentionned on the KBis, the common name under which a society is known).
"Email" sounds horribly in French. "Courriel" was not choosen by the Academie Francaise in the first place (sorry, no non-Us-ASCII characters here). Those old guys choosed "mel" in the first place. Fortunaltely, we have our cousins from Quebec who designed this perfectly adequate "courriel" word: they are not folowers mind you, they were already using it when no French "geek" had heard about the Internet.
So this is once again a beautiful example of the too-common "Us-English is fashionable" belief about middle rank IT guys in France, and of the whole marketting crowd.
As for the "naut" suffix in "internaut", does it not remind you of "Nautilus", for instance?
Slashdot Mirror
Last time I heard of it, MCSE contained "Engineer" in it. So, is an MCSE counted as an engineer in the USofA ?
It is not in many countries. There are even some that would prohibit the use of this "Engineer" title if a diploma has not been delivered by a state-certified-and-verified cursus.
I compute those are bloody communists.
Agreed. And I fear we may all pay a kind of "US lawyers' tax" for a law that threatens me in no way... I mean, as long as those delicate lobbies in Brussel, Stasbourg or Paris do not corrupt enough MPs.
Is there anything by /. below -1 ? Because this one deserves it.
It is the same pack of sheer lies and half truth that was aired by anonymous US officials cowards for years now.
"Saddam was not compying": the inspectors told repeatedly the contrary, maybe he was not complying enough, but he was. Where they bugged?
"The Frogs would use their veto": right, but only because the previous resolutions were stating "no war while the inspections work", and they were at that time and a war was completely unecessary. And the Russians and the Chinese would have done the same. As well as most countries in the security council, so this would ot have been a veto, you see? As well as all people of the "grand coalition", especially Brits and Italians, who were overwhelmingly opposed to the war. Basically, Chirac, for once, had boll*qs for the others.
"The UN inspectors were overtime": er... no, indeed, Saddam _had_ complied in 1991 but had forgotten to advertise it at that time. Anyway, it is hard to prove one has destroyed something when one actually did, and even more to prove it to someone that will not believe you, however hard one tries.
"all western intelligence agencies were agreeing Saddam had WMD": er... no again. Have you heard them by the way? All had doubts, certainly, but what more?
And so on and so on. In the end, the facts matter and one can already guess who was right: the warmongers ot the others.
Bye coward.
Thank you to point out that dishonnest misquoting.
But you ought to point out that the bias in the translation was setted up from second one: The Associated Press _in French_ misquoted Chirac and was translated that way. Tony Blair then used a somewhat-more-distorted-again quote in the Commons in his great discourse to justify this war before this temple of Democracy.
In the US it became something like "we must attack Saddam because he must be a real ennemy for the Frogs to defend him". Hum... Indeed, I am too pretentious of a frog, sorry: France was just bashed to provide a convenient red-herring and to distract the crowds from the already too many lies, distortions and so on that were already used at that time.
To be honest, I was working in the axis of Paris main military airport at that time (Villacoublay), and it is certainly true that French diplomacy used many planes to convince many countries not to support the war at that time. Maybe does this explains why the US and the UK warmongers were so angry. The point is and will remain, to quote and translate Chirac correctly, that this region (the Persian Gulf) was not needing another war at that time.
>> because some of them were not only wearing headscarves but actively promoting their beliefs in school, and this is not allowed here.
:-)
> You don't consider that problematic? Again, I think Americans have a much stronger sense of Freedom of Religion than Europeans.
I do plainly agree that the US way to deal with religion is much more liberal (shall I say so?), and maybe is it related to history. As far as I know, many immigrants went in the US becaus they were persecuted for their faith in Europe. Religion and politics were totaly mingled then, in Europe. In France, when the State and the Church were separated (1905), the top clergy had played in the hand of a greedy elite for decades. Europeans had already suffered from many religious (or presented as such) wars at that time, wars of choice in the Holy Land and in America (North and South), civil wars, defensive wars (against the Muslims) and wars between Europeans too...
Hence a kind of suspicion toward religion... In my -catholic- opinion, separating Church and State is a great idea.
But lets go back to school: children there are minors. Are they free to discuss religious matters? Sure; who could stop that anyway? There are "clubs" and religious activities organised for pupils. Are they free to refuse to attend some teachings and invite their comrades to do so? No. Are they free to discard scientific teachings in public, in the name of their faith? No, they will hear about Darwinism and about sexual matters betwen mammals. Are they free to promote the idea that few Jews were killed in nazi Germany and that current Israelis (and the US gov. for that matter) are nazis? No. Is freedom well served when a school let pupils promote ideas about women inferiority and their necessary submission to males? Not in my opinion. All those questions were raised when it was decided to stop those behaviours.
Is this law a good law? I would not say that. I only daresay it is not too bad a law for this complicated matter. Where does religion freedom stops? Where it contradicts the common rule.
In France, we are very suspicious about what we call "communautarism": the generally agreed idea is that we are one People sharing common ideals, not several separate communities tied by a common belief in free market. This is certainly a provocative way to put it, but the idea is there. This does not bode well with some realities here, and I am pretty sure that US citizens feel bounded by more than Wall Street, but it may explain the different approach toward religious matters, without implying that religious freedom is threatened here.
Enough for tonight, it is 1:30am here
> And, yeah, in France it's illegal to wear a crucifix or yamaka to school:
I think you are right for the yamaka but definitely wrong for non-oustanding religious symbols. Sikh hats and Jewish yamake _are_ considered oustanding symbols, as big cruxifix and Muslim headscarves are. But yamakas can be hidden behind hats, small crucifix of muslims hands are no issue. Do not rely on US sites to get info about France those days.
And the point about "religious freedom" is void: it is not threatened here. What the law states is that there are rules in state-run schools. There are rules in the US too. How could it be otherwise?
For instance, imagine a guy believing that he must not wear any clothes. That's his faith, he believes it, his children too. Why not? Now, how would the US "freedom" system would deal with that? The kids would most probably be forced to wear clothes in school, would they not? But that's an intolerable abuse, this does not respect their religious rights!
Religious freedom is OK as long as it does not conflicts with the local rules. And there, this mess we all regret about Muslim headscarves, _was_ conflicting, for two reasons:
- because many of those young girls would not only wear headscarves, but were refusing to attend collective sports (touching boys!) or to go swimming (mandatory teachings here), were banned from some chemistry teaching (nothing on the head when dealing with flames is allowed, hairs must be attached), would refuse to attend some courses (sexual education, biology conflicting with their beliefs), and so on.
- because some of them were not only wearing headscarves but actively promoting their beliefs in school, and this is not allowed here. Some others were wearing it by fear of their parents and brothers.
The Muslim law allows Muslims to bypass non-essential religious rules to comply with local laws. Now there is a law banning headscarves in schools, French Muslims comply, the girls learn to swim and to play football, they are not present in school with a wear claiming them being threats to male morality.
Once again, this is not a perfect solution, but there is no perfect solution.
For years, the EU -and others- have pointed out several US policies that are considered too one-sided to be honest and asked for a change in US attitude and acts. Those calls were not rewarded with proper attention. How does it come as a suprise to you that the demands are now voiced with a harsher tone? Besides, the official EU statements I read were no menaces. Could you provide a first-hand link to substantiate your claim? When Chirac stated that "time had not come to invade Irak because the UN inspectors had found nothing", it was quickly transcripted in the US media as "Chirac states he will ever use its veto power to counter the US over Irak, whatever the circumstances". I am rather cautious with AP those days.
As for ICANN, it is a US gov appointed body, that could just be revoked/revamped/bypassed quickly by this administration. ICANN legal form does not really masks the fact that it is under a sole government rule.
I do not know what a Yamaka is, sorry. France has banned oustanding religious signs from state-run classes, in order to restore some order and avoid cultural wars inside the schools.
Sidenote: this is an issue for Sikhs. Sorry for them. No law is perfect. But, rougly speaking, the mess has gone with this law.
One can still wear small christian crosses or the little muslims "hands".
One can also choose to send one's children to "confessional" schools, generaly for a small expense. In most of those, the teachers are paid by the state.
I believe it may be hard to understand for deeply religious Americans. But the same must understand that those proeminent headscarves were quite an insult to French values. To put it bluntly, and in my opinion, those headscarves mean "we dot not want to mingle with you native-born French". That's not the way one minor children is supposed to behave in the Republican schools here.
Aren't there any state-run schools in the US or elsewhere where the children must all wear the same uniform? Has this anything to do with true freedom of speech or faith?
PLenty of people here are working more than 35 hours a week, me included, and this is perfectly legal.
Next question.
Well. First I do not advocate a UN role as such for this DNS mess. I just understand the fuss.
:-) not transparent at all...
The UN has been involved in scandals, as have many private companies and governments (US included) and NGOs: there is no perfect system. But the more transparent it is, the best it goes, and ICANN is (clearly
And then, the EU has _not_ threatened the US: it has _warned_ the US that the Internet could split if the current US position was not changed, which is a completely different matter. Besides, the EU has repeated that the current US-led system was not considered fair by the EU. This is no threat, just a longtime opinion and demand for reform. The fact is that those demands have not been considered by the US authorities for years.
The current US administration and its whole "business/military/media/lobbyist" political system has really dealt a blow on US standing: it is not trusted in any matter, except by some East Europeans and Tony Blair.
er... should you want to learn from France past brutality in Africa, why not come in France or in Europe? What let you think there is censorship? If accusations are made that are deemed défamatory, the author can be sued, as in the US, by the offended. This is not censorship.
Could you provide factual examples that there is no brutal-African-colonisation material in France?
> When will the Eurotsars' positions at various "commissions" and other non-elected parapolitical positions come to an end?
In case you had not noticed (surely you didn't), most decisions in Europe are taken not by bureaucrats but by the "Counsel", i.e. the assembly of the national governments, with EU parliament approval sometimes. So those decisions are taken by somewhat democratically elected people. The bureaucrats only deal with the recurring stuff, as everywhere else indeed.
> Americans have rights that people in [...] or even Germany do not have.
Like what?
You are right except for one aspect of the thing : if companies do heavy business through the Internet in several countries (clients & partners accessing its websites, and subsidiaries scattered all around the planet using various DNS), they could be much harmed by DNS records corruptions imposed by just one country (or plain access denial).
Considering how much trust the US has currently, this is considered a threat. Is ICANN to be trusted? Can we solely rely on Verisign? No and no. Is a private company more trusworthy than the UN? No again.
The EU is right in its attempt to broke a _fair_ deal to address this, not against the US, but with it. Apart of all technical matter, the discussion seems logical to me.
> I have a feeling that broadband lines in Europe and Canada, like anything else there (cough, Airbus), are heavily government subsidized and regulated.
Well, I rejoice your feeling is misplaced :
- neither wireless phone carriers nor ISPs are subsidised in France (1 exception : some funds are/should be allocated to provide broadband for the countryside).
- Those markets in France _are_ deregulated with rather tough rules. We have seen countless legal procedures between all those operators claiming unfair technical / commercial practices. There were many state led and EU led legal actions against cartel-like deals between them, that were later enforced. The fines are high (probably not high enough though). There were many consummers triggered class-actions too.
- The former monopoly for fixed lines (France Telecom) was obliged to rent some of its own DSlam slots to its competitors, and then to rent space nearby so that those competitors could deploy their own DSlams right where the coper fibers arrived.
- apart from a dense country, several factors led to high-broadband penetration in France :
. we were accustomed to using "networked" services long ago with the Minitel.
. France Telecom (the former monopoly) had setted up a really high quality network (from the backbone to the final wire) before it went private and faced competition.
. there are really high quality engineers here. Free, the number 2 ISP, already had its own backbone in the Minitel era, they ugraded it, and devised very effective systems (based on Linux) administered by very few and very well paid top IT staff. They offer 20Mb/s ADSL access in Paris, with free and unrestricted phone calls to all-operators fixed phone numbers in France, cheap IP calls to elsewhere, TV over ADSL, a fixed IP, the ADSL "freebox" (ethernet, TV-out, fetches its configuration through the ADSL link from the DSlam at each reboot), for 30 Euros per month. A great service. France-Telecom has just launched a pay-per-view service over ADSL and Free will follow very soon.
. Alcatel, world leader in ADSL equipments, is based in France, even if French owners do not detain a majority in its stock and if its managments has been gobbled by Americans.
- Mobile phone carriers are highly profitable. Major ISPs have become profitable here in the last years. No state subsidies, but the market is regulated, as should be, to avoid monopolies and cartels, and ensure interoperability. This just worked for that matter here.
- Delivering movies at home through ADSL will provide the ISPs with a higher cash-flow. There are talks of very, very fast ADSL offerings being devised (100 Mb/s ?), through optical fibers that would go further than the telco's PABX. That would be expensive to set up.
- Airbus is "subsidised" by leases that _are_ reinbursed over the long term, when the planes are successfull on the market, and they are. This mechanism is transparent, contrary to defense-related disguised subsidies benefitting to Boeing. There are some other less-transparent "subsidies" like infrastructures built by local authorities to accomodate for Airbus needs (I am thinking of roads or harbors that have been built specifically to deal with the giant hull of the A380, at least in southern France, and that were partially paid by the state or the concernend districts. That is not unheard of in other industries or in other countries as far as I know). But that's off-topic.
I always feared we were not leaving on the same planet. Sorry for that. What is the length of Venus days ? That may be it...
Just for your information.
The 35-hours-a-day-law in France applies only to a limited part of the workforce. It does not apply in many corporations (from lorry drivers to restaurant and hostels staff and so on) nor to the managers down to a low level ("les cadres"). Most shopkeepers frequently work 50 hours a week or more, as well as all "artisants". Next is the hourly productivity which is much higher than in the US, for instance. Finaly, the minimum wage is... not a minimum wage since many kind of businesses are allowed to bypass it.
So, this 10% unemployment rate, is certainly linked to the labor laws: recruiters are rather cautious and conservative, that's right. But relatively "generous" unemployement compensations are another factor, because some employees play with them.
So, the situation here has also much to deal with high healthcare costs (and universal benefits), with the high number of retirees (which live older than in the US) and with conservative individual policies (the saving rate is higher than 15% where it is... under 0% in the latest US surveys. Enjoy). One could also point out that the US massively borows foreign money, and that looks very much like an hoorific keynesian-socialist policy.
Many of us fear the financial elites are leading us right to the bottom of the pit, and by "us" I mean all citizens of the "developped" world, US included. The root cause of HP layouts are felt in the US alike: masive offshoring of value-added services, nothing else. Chinese or Indian or Tunisian quasi-slaves are much more profitable to big companies in the short term, they have few or no political rights, and will not really complain about very low wages for years.
The cruelest system may be the most effective. I am not all sure to love it.
Disclaimer: I am French and working much more than 35 hrs a week...
I do agree reverse engineering is legal, useful, moral, etc, etc...
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But if it threatens a wider adoption of a free platform because editors cannot make a living if they develop for it, that's _not_always_ a good idea, espcially if a moral deal exists that says "we provide you our good proprietary tools for free provided you do not harm us".
The timeline of the "incident" provided in a related article shows apparently a not-so-clean behaviour on the reverse-engineering side. I do not speak from a legal point of view, but rather from fairness in the way the free-software community deals with non-monopolistic editors.
Once again, I have no in-depth knowledge of the case and I cannot judge if the reverse engineering was justified on a practical basis, if it was needed, if BK had refused to provide a useful tool. If all this was false, then I find Mr. Tridgell attitude dubious, a kind of free-software bigotry perhaps?
As for the open formats: I agree data, and especially _public_ data should not be locked in proprietary formats. But
- this off-topic here: the code source has always remained accessible;
- if a company develops a good product that temporarily stores data in a proprietary format, that uses closed protocols, do you claim that it should be immediately cracked and replaced by a free alternative? Hum... I would rather see them make some money of their product and get a financial incentive to provide inovation that way, without having to rely on patents, for instance.
What has been done smells a little, even if it was perfectly legal.
I have few elements to back it up but I wish to submit an hypothesis: Torvalds reacts as if he had a moral deal with McVoy, and had been betrayed. "We use your free (as in beer) software, you got public advertising, you keep it free, we do not cost you anything nor threaten you (commercialy), we benefit from your good product".
Everybody was happy. Now Torvalds has lost a very valuable tool for him, and he is upset about it especially since any mediation was refused.
I am not technically qualifed to judge if the reverse-engineering was justified on a practical basis, nor to define if the main added value of BK lies in its protocols rather than in its code, nor even to judge if the "integrity" argument is void, but I am pretty sure it delivers a signal: "do not develop proprietary network-based tools for Linux; should they proove useful, you will not make a penny with them in two years time unless you lock in customers in another way".
Probably a bad signal.
Oh I am pretty sure you're right there, unelss one is firmly attached to its seat. There are vomitting risks too if I understand something about seasickness.
In fact, my real serious idea (I am sure I am not the first one to think of if, in between) was to provide such 3D visual environnement for quiet applications, preferably to mimic bits of reality and mix them with a real desk or table, so that most of the real surrounding of the user remain visible while, in the same time, virtual objects could be projected on its glasses or in its eyes seem in order to exist in 3D in some places around the user. Forget there is no real screen on your desk, you see one with both eyes. Forget there is no Rembrandt on the wall : your headset make it live whenever you gaze at it, wherever you stand in the room. And you can turn around this reduced-size car prototype standing on your real desk but not touch it: it's just an illusion, it can fly too...
Is it feasible today, costs appart?
I am sure this would suppose means to know where one stands, in which direction its eyes are looking. Apple is providing sensors to monitor the PCs position/acceleration, I am thinking of the same principle applied to the head.
"Apple recommends that this motion sensing device be not used to play dirty games with adultz materials, and especially all "G Point" research are to be prohibitted: as our customers have noticed, notebook behave badly under high accelerations, even counted in heartbeats.
Furthermore, let us remind it still disipate some heat hat may be prejudicial not only to your underpants."
Jokes appart, when will they include motion captors in stereoscopic headsets so that we really become sick with Doomlike games ?
I do not quite agree.
.tm.fr TLD. .fr alone was reserved for societies under their own legal names or their "noms d'enseigne", which are still somewhat different from trademarks.
.fr : one society had to prove it legally existed before registering a .fr domain name, that's all. This seems to me much more economically _efficient_ than the 'judges will decide' approach retained in the US: provide 1 page of paper and a copy of a document that will be asked to you several time a year (for instance, by other merchants...), and avoid legal harassement and fees and poker.
Trademarks were supposed to use the
There was very few paperwork indeed to register a
Er... unless you face a big stupid corp. But even then, see how she is able to defend her -perfectly valid in my opinion- domain name! How much would that cost to you in the US? I really look forward to knowing the answer.
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The rules have been relaxed recently.
Meanwhile, it seems to me that two years ago, one still had to present legal papers to register a .fr (Kbis extract for the societies) and that the domain name should be the essential part of the "Raison sociale" (the real official name of the society) or the "nom d'enseigne" (mentionned on the KBis, the common name under which a society is known).
The naming rules are explained there (in French).
I wonder why this is not modded "troll".
I am sure many Americans are completely able to masturbate intellectually too and would even appreciate it.
More seriously, I really wonder how the parent can masturbate -even intellectualy- while watching such movies as Taxi, Taxi 2, Taxi 3 for instance...
thanks for the bashing fun !
"Email" sounds horribly in French. "Courriel" was not choosen by the Academie Francaise in the first place (sorry, no non-Us-ASCII characters here). Those old guys choosed "mel" in the first place. Fortunaltely, we have our cousins from Quebec who designed this perfectly adequate "courriel" word: they are not folowers mind you, they were already using it when no French "geek" had heard about the Internet.
So this is once again a beautiful example of the too-common "Us-English is fashionable" belief about middle rank IT guys in France, and of the whole marketting crowd.
As for the "naut" suffix in "internaut", does it not remind you of "Nautilus", for instance?