First, the fact that any hippy cannot come to a prime minister to tell him what to do is not correlated in any manner to the french presumably being peasants, or to the french at all. Would George Bush receive him ? I hope not.
Second, when you say that people generally accept to be told what to do by their governments, it is like saying that americans are - without exception - against abortion, and that all of them go to see prisonners executions just as the french go to the movies. You have a brain ? Use it.
That said, I don't like the "don't you forget Diderot and Voltaire were french" argument either. Those guys are dead. We remember them, but they don't really inspire us any more, and the fact that they were pretty smart does not excuse our present mistakes.
As for the "recent protests against the governement", I'm affraid that pretty much fuels the parent's argument. Those protests were actually against bringing a little flexibility to labours laws, and were essentially lead by civil servants not willing to giving up their unfait advantages, and by completely unambitious students who think it is normal to be given a job for life when you have studied "sociology and philosophy of the ancient tribes of sweden in the second century B.C.".
Just my two cents. You might just ignore me anyway, as I'm french.
I don't really see it as a purely "IT field" problem, but more of a company culture and/or size problem.
My observations are:
Small companies tend to hire less people from minorities. That, it appears to me, comes essentially from customer pressure : if your workforce is small and some of your customers openly ask not to be served by "north-africans", you tend to hire more "whites".
Some companies have an history and a culture that makes them think some people might not "fit the company's culture". I heard it once in a big company. In this case there is no excuse to it. That's probably where positive discrimination might be somewhat useful.
Some other big, multicultural companies, are much more open because they can afford to value people "only" based on their competence, and naturally present a mixed population. The company I work for, a french bank, is particularly remarkable in this matter. It was even striking at first, because way different from any other (smaller) companies I've worked for before.
In my experience, you can see that in quite any field. What makes IT particular is not its nature (IT), but its population (higher-educated people,...)
[...] what actual products exist for OS X that would protect against infections?
Except if I work for an anti-virus editor, why should I need to buy some extra software to keep my box secure ?
That might seem incredibly naive, but I don't see any reason why I should trust an OS vendor that basically says I have to buy someone else's software because he's not able to write secure code.
Maybe basic security measures are useful anyway, like the use of a firewall, but my OS doesn't open dozens of ports without my knowing...
The biggest security flaw, in my opinion, is the guy who opens emails titled "I'm a gorgeous girl and I want to have sex with you..."
Asked whether the new designs meant NASA was going back to the future, he replied, "You can say, 'Hey, that looks pretty retro,' " but he drew an analogy to passenger jets from decades ago and those of today. "They look the same," he said, "but are completely different."
Is it just me, or almost all of the payload sent to space is carried by "traditional" rockets, and not cool-looking, but yet extremely inefficient space vehicles ?
The business of space goes well beyond the space shuttle, and almost everything that's useful and commercially viable uses rockets.
...that a laptop becomes sluggish the very moment the next revision comes out ? I didn't know about that, and my 3 year old iBook doesn't know either.
As usual when you want to buy a computer (or quite anything technology-related), you have to know what you need, and jump and buy it... Of course it will become outdated shortly, but do you really need the new one ?
Yep, you're right on these numbers.
Still, things may become a little messier when companies will actually begin to use those aircrafts.
In most airports, terminals are designed for 747-type aicrafts (in tems of capacity). I really think handling 120 more people will lead to overcrowded terminals, longer waiting time before boarding, etc...
AFAIK, the A380 is one of the reasons why the Terminal 2E (the one which collapsed last May) was built...
is that people who are paid to issue ID cards may be total morons.
In France, we've had IDs for quite a long time and I really don't think they're so intrusive.
But I have this example : I recently renewed my ID so that I could travel to some EU country. I filled in the form, waited for three weeks, and finally had my ID... just to notice (myself) that my name was mispelled (my name is 5 letters long !). So I sent it back saying that that may pose a problem. After three more weeks, I had a new ID. My name was correctly spelled, everything was fine and my trip went pretty good.
Some time ago, for an unknown reason, I read what was actually written in my ID, just to discover that they made another mistake...in my gender.
What this means is that those people who are paid to make those IDs and are not even capable of rereading them, potentially gave me two brand new identities...
I thibnk that's a problem...
a virus is actually a software exploit of a bug in the OS and components
This is the case for trojans, viruses spreading by mail (I should say "via Outlook"). For those I have to agree with you.
But I'm used to think about virus in terms of a little (native) piece of code which replicates by copying itself in another piece of code. From that perspective, I can't see any other solution than breaking everything at each new release, or embedding a antivirus into the OS.
Some years ago, viruses were written in assembler and even C was considered too high level for this purpose (!). Nowadays, virus writers don't even know what assembler is.
I really think archiving is important, and is one strenght of the internet : archiving your data without paying, or even asking for it.
I mean, there must be a lot of companies or organization (I think about the NASA, etc...) who probably have hundreds of terabytes of data, and don't want to spend money or time making backups. Add that most archiving medium won't last more than a couple of decades, and you'll understand that archiving is great because everyone can backup a little something, and all those wonderful datas aren't lost...
Slashdot Mirror
Those are two very different things :
First, the fact that any hippy cannot come to a prime minister to tell him what to do is not correlated in any manner to the french presumably being peasants, or to the french at all. Would George Bush receive him ? I hope not.
Second, when you say that people generally accept to be told what to do by their governments, it is like saying that americans are - without exception - against abortion, and that all of them go to see prisonners executions just as the french go to the movies. You have a brain ? Use it.
That said, I don't like the "don't you forget Diderot and Voltaire were french" argument either. Those guys are dead. We remember them, but they don't really inspire us any more, and the fact that they were pretty smart does not excuse our present mistakes.
As for the "recent protests against the governement", I'm affraid that pretty much fuels the parent's argument. Those protests were actually against bringing a little flexibility to labours laws, and were essentially lead by civil servants not willing to giving up their unfait advantages, and by completely unambitious students who think it is normal to be given a job for life when you have studied "sociology and philosophy of the ancient tribes of sweden in the second century B.C.".
Just my two cents. You might just ignore me anyway, as I'm french.
My observations are
- Small companies tend to hire less people from minorities. That, it appears to me, comes essentially from customer pressure : if your workforce is small and some of your customers openly ask not to be served by "north-africans", you tend to hire more "whites".
- Some companies have an history and a culture that makes them think some people might not "fit the company's culture". I heard it once in a big company. In this case there is no excuse to it. That's probably where positive discrimination might be somewhat useful.
- Some other big, multicultural companies, are much more open because they can afford to value people "only" based on their competence, and naturally present a mixed population. The company I work for, a french bank, is particularly remarkable in this matter. It was even striking at first, because way different from any other (smaller) companies I've worked for before.
In my experience, you can see that in quite any field. What makes IT particular is not its nature (IT), but its population (higher-educated people,That might seem incredibly naive, but I don't see any reason why I should trust an OS vendor that basically says I have to buy someone else's software because he's not able to write secure code.
Maybe basic security measures are useful anyway, like the use of a firewall, but my OS doesn't open dozens of ports without my knowing...
The biggest security flaw, in my opinion, is the guy who opens emails titled "I'm a gorgeous girl and I want to have sex with you..."
...that a laptop becomes sluggish the very moment the next revision comes out ? I didn't know about that, and my 3 year old iBook doesn't know either.
As usual when you want to buy a computer (or quite anything technology-related), you have to know what you need, and jump and buy it... Of course it will become outdated shortly, but do you really need the new one ?
Yep, you're right on these numbers.
Still, things may become a little messier when companies will actually begin to use those aircrafts.
In most airports, terminals are designed for 747-type aicrafts (in tems of capacity). I really think handling 120 more people will lead to overcrowded terminals, longer waiting time before boarding, etc...
AFAIK, the A380 is one of the reasons why the Terminal 2E (the one which collapsed last May) was built...
is that people who are paid to issue ID cards may be total morons.
In France, we've had IDs for quite a long time and I really don't think they're so intrusive.
But I have this example : I recently renewed my ID so that I could travel to some EU country. I filled in the form, waited for three weeks, and finally had my ID... just to notice (myself) that my name was mispelled (my name is 5 letters long !). So I sent it back saying that that may pose a problem. After three more weeks, I had a new ID. My name was correctly spelled, everything was fine and my trip went pretty good.
Some time ago, for an unknown reason, I read what was actually written in my ID, just to discover that they made another mistake...in my gender.
What this means is that those people who are paid to make those IDs and are not even capable of rereading them, potentially gave me two brand new identities...
I thibnk that's a problem...
would be to allow people to decide how much ads they want to see. The less ads you want, the more you pay.
But I'm used to think about virus in terms of a little (native) piece of code which replicates by copying itself in another piece of code. From that perspective, I can't see any other solution than breaking everything at each new release, or embedding a antivirus into the OS.
Some years ago, viruses were written in assembler and even C was considered too high level for this purpose (!). Nowadays, virus writers don't even know what assembler is.
Not a so good idea, nor really feasible by other means actually.
Maybe Apple should take a look at it for its hopefully-soon-to-come G5 laptop.
I really think archiving is important, and is one strenght of the internet : archiving your data without paying, or even asking for it. I mean, there must be a lot of companies or organization (I think about the NASA, etc...) who probably have hundreds of terabytes of data, and don't want to spend money or time making backups. Add that most archiving medium won't last more than a couple of decades, and you'll understand that archiving is great because everyone can backup a little something, and all those wonderful datas aren't lost...