But French? The French have a reputation for taking perfectly good, otherwise healthy and veggie safe foods, and drenching them in lard. Wrapping them in thinly sliced meat. Stuffing them with unnameable mollusks and cephalopods.
If you are so eager of "healthy" stuffs, then go directly to the provences (mediterranean food). I guess you will be positively surprised.
Concerning Spanish food. Let me tell you that they don't eat just vegetables out there. They have some of the best piece of meat and see food I've ever eaten (Barcelona).
Olivier
In that specific market maybe you are right.
Early eighties personal computers were an emerging markets like Internet was end of the nineties or electricity in the end of the XIXTh century.
Launching a PC brand right now would be as stupid as launching a new steel industry facility. if you don't have money this a nearly impossible dream.
But there are still emerging markets. Some are too specialized for common people to notice. these niche markets will reach the lambda consumer within a decade or more. Most of the time he/she will fail but when he/she will succeed it will be his/her life achievement.
The magic thing above Jobs and few others is that everything they touch...or most (except: nextstep) will become a gold mine.
You can't be an entrepreneur with the scepticism you are showing. An entrepreneur has to be reckless or crazy in some ways. Succesfull entrepreneurs have found on the "hard way" the extremly subtile balance between: pragmatism/vision.
He doesn't seem to understand than most linux users are just like any ordinary people.
I don't hate Microsoft or any other corporations, I simply use Linux because it's useful for some of my projects. Period.
All this hype will be gone within few years. New generations will find a new casus belli to fight for.
Sure there are fanatics. But if Linux didn't exist, i'm sure they would have find something else to worship.
I'm pretty sure also than most of these fanatics are just teenagers trying to find ther way. Hardly the core system of a labor union.
If another OS will be proven more reliable, more flexible, less expensive, better designed and better supported. Then I will happily switch to it.
Softwares are just tools for most people.
The only Machine I love is my first computer. A Sinclair Spectrum 16K. I won't launch a vendetta if somebody dares to critics its performance:-).
Back in 1994, I was Sysop of a two nodes 14.4 BBS... I ran a BBS with an ANSI interface (Wildcat BBS or something) and a Windows interface (Excalibur BBS).
After two years, This BBS was sold to an early ISP. I had to pay a debt owned to a local phone operator. I kept only 50 US$.
They used it to help early internet customers. early customers downloaded softwares like "mosaic", eudora, Winsock stuff, etc.
I was a very bad business (my first) but I was a great personal experience.
I was fascinating to see people chatting on my computer (well no more than two users but hey! It was fantastic;-) ).
Olivier
Probably for physical invention but not for software.
Software are algorithms, a software is a way to "say" something in a computer language.
Software is knowledge. You can't patent knowledge. You need to share knowledge in order to improve something.
When you "create" a program, you are forced to use "ideas" from others (when you are using a compiler, a dedicated API, etc. )
If not you would constantly reinvent the wheel. Most (if not all) ideas and concepts have already been imagined by somebody. You never create anything, you simply adapt it.
I'm ok for copyrights. You can't copy words by words a book just like you can't copy variables by variables an existing software without having an agreement with the author.
But you are free to talk about the same subject. In a software it would mean the same features.
Olivier
How do you know that? I've seen LOTS of pages built that way that are seriously broken in non-IE browsers.
Because I work as a pro web developer since 1997.
I understood something quite simple during the browser war:
- Make a list of tags (styles properties if you prefer) that work in most (if not all) browsers.
- Keep in mind what kind of table architecture works and don't.
Update these lists once a year. Check your new tags, etc. on every browser.
These are your tools to build a web page. Never used anything that isn't fully supported by the vast majority of browser. Because:
- Some customer may check your work on irrelevant browser (such as the infamous internet Explorer 5.2 on MacosX). Ever tried to explain to a customer why his US$ 10.000 or US$20.000 web site is so messy?
Curently defining the location of any content by CSS only, isn't part of this list.
Then you can try to make your life easier and you coding more efficient with these rules in mind.
CSS isn't broken. IE is.
You are right except:
I'm not paid to make W3C compliant web page. I'm paid to make web sites viewable by the biggest % of surfers possible with the best user experience possible.
Nobody cares about the technology behind except web designer/ web developer.
Olivier
Try to play around with CSS only tabled structure...Then do the same work with good old table and TD tags and hspace=0 vspace=0 for img border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0.
It will take me half of the time plus I won't have to care about compatibility. I know it will work in any browser.
I use right now CSS with tables. ID and class stuff in the CSS and only 4 years old CSS tag. Maybe that's called HTML 4.01 transitionnal. I don't care as long as I can guarantee to the client that it will look the same in any browser on the markets.
I still cannot understand what is so wrong with tags. Why should I write ?
doesn't give you the same flexibility. Everybody knows that.
Even for stupid things like
when you play with CSS only, the dot of
won't be at the same place (vertically) on Explorer, Safari or Firefox. Who cares? When your biggest clients are communication agencies stupid things like this matter to them most than the code behind. I spent an entire hour trying to fix that damn detail.
Then you have to define different stylesheets for each browser. You know it will be a pain to maintain even if your are using a CMS like typo3.
It sounds like the same pain we had to support Netscape and Internet Explorer.
If you don't want to have a junior marketeer complaining about details all the day because he has an outdated explorer on his even older desktop PC, then you use the most simple and bullet-proof tool you have in your pocket.
Interportability? They simply have to grab the content from the database, filter some basic HTML tags if there is any and that's all.
Call me a dinosaur I don't care. I will finish my job before the XHTML fanatic. I won't have to explain what this kaballistic code mean to a marketeer, why it doesn't work and I will have more time to play with my kids.
W3C folks don't live in the real world.
I would prefer seeing them promoting PNG compatibility than new HTML formats. PNG is needed, a new HTML format isn't.
Or what about plug-ins. A large part of the content over the web is handled by propriarty format such as WMV, FLASH and so on. When you have to publish video clips, you have to handle at least three different formats to guarantee that 80% of surfers will be able to see it. Even scarier some Real player or Quicktime aren't properly installed on some PC or will pop-up advertisings(quicktime and its paid version, Real and its own network).
The HTML war is over. The new war is in the multimedia.
Olivier
Consoles are becoming more powerful and
games take less and less time to be completed.
There should be a new Moore law behind.
Epic (Amiga): months were needed.
Xwing or Wing Commander, : weeks were needed.
DOOM 1: days and days...I even had difficulties to complete the free shareware version.
HALO 2: completed in 6 hours
I guess with these new consoles we will have just one hour of fun for twice the current price.
Olivier
Don't ever let him get rid of that Flash. I've found that when I see a webpage that invites me to download Flash, I can just close that tab: there's nothing there for me to see. That's saved me a great deal of time and bandwidth which I might have wasted if those sites had used animated gifs instead.
The GIF format open? Ask Unisys.
To replace FLASH by GIF? I guess you have never visited a FLASH driven web site since 1997 or something...
The funny thing so far i've seen concerning worm and viruses is the Windows media center.
I was looking at a new flat TV screen in an electronic shop. They were promoting the Microsoft media center.
The funny thing was a little popup window at the right of the taskbar.
"Windows did not find any anti-virus software on this computer." or something like.
Lol...Thanks but I prefer my good old Television.
Olivier
I'm an European (Belgian) and it's the first time I see "intelligent design".
I would be quite interested to know the European country where you used to live in. Even the vatican doesn't defend creationism anymore...
I knew that the USA is facing some problems with fundamentalists christians concerning the evolution. but never "never" any of my Biologist teachers talked about "Intelligent design".
For me, It looks more like a marketing trick to put religious dogmas in the scientific classroom.
Well i'm not French, i'm Belgian. I'm frenchspeaker.
The sad thing about this project is that "once again" a French official found a way to put some "Anti-american" bashings in his speech.
I'm fed up by their rethoric.
It looks more and more like xenophoby to me.
The French "elites" have a great problem with the US because nobody in France is listenning to them.
Read their speeches and then go to Paris. Movie theatres make money with American action films not with their boring state funded nombrilistic social drama movies.
Mc Donalds restaurants are everywhere. Young people wear NBA t-shirts and American brands on the street. Nobody feels threatenned by the American "culture" except the elites. People still speak French, still enjoy French food and still read French magazines, still wear French brrands etc. There is nothing wrong with some new ways of living coming from a foreign culture.
Even the French language is the consequence of a much bigger cultural invasion (Rome) and France as a political entity from a Germanic invasion (Clovis, Charlesmagne).
Anyway back to the real topic:
The project is simply great. I would feel more confortable if this European heritage is under public organization supervision than under a private company one.
Google is a private company. Its goal is about making money.
Here we are talking about culture heritage. Knowledge must be free. It should be copied, duplicated, modified, distributed freely. Nobody can have any claim on patents, copyrights or any stuffs like that.
Anyway As somebody pointed out. Sooner or later googlebot will browse their database and index it anyway. Maybe they could use it like they did with dmoz.org .
And other search engines too...
That's the real point. Sooner or later a better (privatly funded) search engine will come out and will get an access to this public database.
Olivier
I'm working for different prepress agencies here in Belgium (Europe). The number of Quark users is falling at an impressive speed over here.
Main reasons are:
(i'm not infographist, just tell you what they told me)
- Indesign seems to be better
- Adobe suite cheaper than Quark
- Better support of Unicode
- Adobe Products aren't bloated with an online server keys. When this server crashed the whole production is down.
- Better phone support.
They only keep some quark licences active for the archives.
Indesign is destroying the Quark market at the speed of light.
Olivier
You should first find a new opportunity before leaving your current job.
There are tons of "anonymous" services over the web (monster, and so on.)
Never leave a source of money without having a new one.
Olivier
I think too.
But I would add:
MIDP 2.0 and CLDC 1.1 is the future.
There is no floating point support in CLDC 1.0 IMHO. For an app, I had to develop my own classes to support very basic mathematic operations. I've never had to do that...Even on a ZX81 spectrum back in the old days:-).
Windows based smartphones account for around 3% of the market (Qtek and all). The leading player (I think it has 60% of the smartphone market) is Nokia. Nokia smartphones are all Symbian based. IMHO SonyEricsson is the third or the second, I can't remember the figures. (P900, P800 K700 and so on). I think they also use SYMBIAN OS.
If you have to pick up an environment for your applications. I would first consider J2ME MIDP 1.0 (you can easily port it to RIM) and Symbian C++.
5 years ago, distro like SUSE 5.3 were on the market.
I tested every single distro SUSE and others put on the market for the fun of it. I only decided to switch to linux on my professional Desktop less than a year ago (SUSE 9.1) . It simply cost nothing compare to the stuff i needed on windows.
But It is a geek desktop.
To be ready for the lambda desktop, you don't just need a super stable OS, you also partnerships with companies making printers, video cards, USB devices, etc.
I had a great pain to install a simple HP all-in-one printer and I still cannot use a LaCie USB HD because it crashed my PC each time I use it.
I do know that it's not linux fault. Linux can only be compatible with companies making linux drivers or at least sharing some codes.
It will change corporate companies are pushing Linux and I'm sure they will convince third parties to be compatible with their new flagship OS.
But when you say "ready for the desktop", lambda users won't care who's wrong or right, they simply want to plug their new device on, and enjoy it.
Well in the lower countries (quite close to Germany concerning technology). SUSE "is" quite popular. I'm working for a small company where non-geek people are using Linux.
From the desktop
SUSE 8.1
Open Office
KDE
to the server
SUSE 8.1 (we didn't try SUSE distro for server, too expensive for this small company)
files server
Print server
Raid + back-up
The boss was fed up by software prices and ask us to find a solution. We found one:o). This guy knew nothing about computer but he knew SUSE. (there are a lot of coverage in the business local press about Linux).
They sell mechanic pieces for big industries and they are using Linux. Believe they certainly don't look like geeks;-). The secretary is a 50 years old woman, she can print her mails and invoices:-) (based on a MySQL database with a HTML lay-out). It's funny too see her working on Linux. For her it's just another program, nothing else.
I think the most popular distro used to be Red Hat (until 2001 I guess). Now, most people prefer SUSE, Red Hat is a close number two and (much less) Mandrake.
Overall they quite pleased with Linux/KDE. Just one thing annoying, the poor copy&paste function (especially this annoying web active thing that pops up when they are writing mails...Didn't find a solution to disable it yet)
In their office, only one PC with microsoft remains...It is a DOS 5.2:-)). (because they keep using CUBIC DOS, a local accountant software)
Olivier
Slashdot Mirror
You are probably the only guy on that side of the Atlantic that has never visited a porn web site.
But French? The French have a reputation for taking perfectly good, otherwise healthy and veggie safe foods, and drenching them in lard. Wrapping them in thinly sliced meat. Stuffing them with unnameable mollusks and cephalopods.
If you are so eager of "healthy" stuffs, then go directly to the provences (mediterranean food). I guess you will be positively surprised.
Concerning Spanish food. Let me tell you that they don't eat just vegetables out there. They have some of the best piece of meat and see food I've ever eaten (Barcelona). Olivier
In that specific market maybe you are right. Early eighties personal computers were an emerging markets like Internet was end of the nineties or electricity in the end of the XIXTh century.
Launching a PC brand right now would be as stupid as launching a new steel industry facility. if you don't have money this a nearly impossible dream.
But there are still emerging markets. Some are too specialized for common people to notice. these niche markets will reach the lambda consumer within a decade or more. Most of the time he/she will fail but when he/she will succeed it will be his/her life achievement.
The magic thing above Jobs and few others is that everything they touch...or most (except: nextstep) will become a gold mine.
You can't be an entrepreneur with the scepticism you are showing. An entrepreneur has to be reckless or crazy in some ways. Succesfull entrepreneurs have found on the "hard way" the extremly subtile balance between: pragmatism/vision.
Olivier
He doesn't seem to understand than most linux users are just like any ordinary people.
:-).
I don't hate Microsoft or any other corporations, I simply use Linux because it's useful for some of my projects. Period.
All this hype will be gone within few years. New generations will find a new casus belli to fight for.
Sure there are fanatics. But if Linux didn't exist, i'm sure they would have find something else to worship.
I'm pretty sure also than most of these fanatics are just teenagers trying to find ther way. Hardly the core system of a labor union.
If another OS will be proven more reliable, more flexible, less expensive, better designed and better supported. Then I will happily switch to it.
Softwares are just tools for most people.
The only Machine I love is my first computer. A Sinclair Spectrum 16K. I won't launch a vendetta if somebody dares to critics its performance
Olivier
Back in 1994, I was Sysop of a two nodes 14.4 BBS... I ran a BBS with an ANSI interface (Wildcat BBS or something) and a Windows interface (Excalibur BBS).
;-) ).
Olivier
After two years, This BBS was sold to an early ISP. I had to pay a debt owned to a local phone operator. I kept only 50 US$.
They used it to help early internet customers. early customers downloaded softwares like "mosaic", eudora, Winsock stuff, etc.
I was a very bad business (my first) but I was a great personal experience.
I was fascinating to see people chatting on my computer (well no more than two users but hey! It was fantastic
Probably for physical invention but not for software.
Software are algorithms, a software is a way to "say" something in a computer language.
Software is knowledge. You can't patent knowledge. You need to share knowledge in order to improve something.
When you "create" a program, you are forced to use "ideas" from others (when you are using a compiler, a dedicated API, etc. )
If not you would constantly reinvent the wheel. Most (if not all) ideas and concepts have already been imagined by somebody. You never create anything, you simply adapt it.
I'm ok for copyrights. You can't copy words by words a book just like you can't copy variables by variables an existing software without having an agreement with the author.
But you are free to talk about the same subject. In a software it would mean the same features. Olivier
How do you know that? I've seen LOTS of pages built that way that are seriously broken in non-IE browsers. Because I work as a pro web developer since 1997. I understood something quite simple during the browser war: - Make a list of tags (styles properties if you prefer) that work in most (if not all) browsers. - Keep in mind what kind of table architecture works and don't. Update these lists once a year. Check your new tags, etc. on every browser. These are your tools to build a web page. Never used anything that isn't fully supported by the vast majority of browser. Because: - Some customer may check your work on irrelevant browser (such as the infamous internet Explorer 5.2 on MacosX). Ever tried to explain to a customer why his US$ 10.000 or US$20.000 web site is so messy? Curently defining the location of any content by CSS only, isn't part of this list. Then you can try to make your life easier and you coding more efficient with these rules in mind. CSS isn't broken. IE is. You are right except: I'm not paid to make W3C compliant web page. I'm paid to make web sites viewable by the biggest % of surfers possible with the best user experience possible. Nobody cares about the technology behind except web designer/ web developer. Olivier
It will take me half of the time plus I won't have to care about compatibility. I know it will work in any browser.
I use right now CSS with tables. ID and class stuff in the CSS and only 4 years old CSS tag. Maybe that's called HTML 4.01 transitionnal. I don't care as long as I can guarantee to the client that it will look the same in any browser on the markets.
I still cannot understand what is so wrong with
tags. Why should I write
?
doesn't give you the same flexibility. Everybody knows that.
Even for stupid things like
when you play with CSS only, the dot of
won't be at the same place (vertically) on Explorer, Safari or Firefox. Who cares? When your biggest clients are communication agencies stupid things like this matter to them most than the code behind. I spent an entire hour trying to fix that damn detail.
Then you have to define different stylesheets for each browser. You know it will be a pain to maintain even if your are using a CMS like typo3.
It sounds like the same pain we had to support Netscape and Internet Explorer.
If you don't want to have a junior marketeer complaining about details all the day because he has an outdated explorer on his even older desktop PC, then you use the most simple and bullet-proof tool you have in your pocket.
Interportability? They simply have to grab the content from the database, filter some basic HTML tags if there is any and that's all.
Call me a dinosaur I don't care. I will finish my job before the XHTML fanatic. I won't have to explain what this kaballistic code mean to a marketeer, why it doesn't work and I will have more time to play with my kids.
W3C folks don't live in the real world.
I would prefer seeing them promoting PNG compatibility than new HTML formats. PNG is needed, a new HTML format isn't.
Or what about plug-ins. A large part of the content over the web is handled by propriarty format such as WMV, FLASH and so on. When you have to publish video clips, you have to handle at least three different formats to guarantee that 80% of surfers will be able to see it. Even scarier some Real player or Quicktime aren't properly installed on some PC or will pop-up advertisings(quicktime and its paid version, Real and its own network).
The HTML war is over. The new war is in the multimedia. Olivier
Consoles are becoming more powerful and games take less and less time to be completed. There should be a new Moore law behind. Epic (Amiga): months were needed. Xwing or Wing Commander, : weeks were needed. DOOM 1: days and days...I even had difficulties to complete the free shareware version. HALO 2: completed in 6 hours I guess with these new consoles we will have just one hour of fun for twice the current price. Olivier
Don't ever let him get rid of that Flash. I've found that when I see a webpage that invites me to download Flash, I can just close that tab: there's nothing there for me to see. That's saved me a great deal of time and bandwidth which I might have wasted if those sites had used animated gifs instead. The GIF format open? Ask Unisys. To replace FLASH by GIF? I guess you have never visited a FLASH driven web site since 1997 or something...
The funny thing so far i've seen concerning worm and viruses is the Windows media center. I was looking at a new flat TV screen in an electronic shop. They were promoting the Microsoft media center. The funny thing was a little popup window at the right of the taskbar. "Windows did not find any anti-virus software on this computer." or something like. Lol...Thanks but I prefer my good old Television. Olivier
I'm an European (Belgian) and it's the first time I see "intelligent design". I would be quite interested to know the European country where you used to live in. Even the vatican doesn't defend creationism anymore... I knew that the USA is facing some problems with fundamentalists christians concerning the evolution. but never "never" any of my Biologist teachers talked about "Intelligent design". For me, It looks more like a marketing trick to put religious dogmas in the scientific classroom.
You are right. I forgot to point out that I was talking about content from the public domain.
Well i'm not French, i'm Belgian. I'm frenchspeaker. The sad thing about this project is that "once again" a French official found a way to put some "Anti-american" bashings in his speech. I'm fed up by their rethoric. It looks more and more like xenophoby to me. The French "elites" have a great problem with the US because nobody in France is listenning to them. Read their speeches and then go to Paris. Movie theatres make money with American action films not with their boring state funded nombrilistic social drama movies. Mc Donalds restaurants are everywhere. Young people wear NBA t-shirts and American brands on the street. Nobody feels threatenned by the American "culture" except the elites. People still speak French, still enjoy French food and still read French magazines, still wear French brrands etc. There is nothing wrong with some new ways of living coming from a foreign culture. Even the French language is the consequence of a much bigger cultural invasion (Rome) and France as a political entity from a Germanic invasion (Clovis, Charlesmagne). Anyway back to the real topic: The project is simply great. I would feel more confortable if this European heritage is under public organization supervision than under a private company one. Google is a private company. Its goal is about making money. Here we are talking about culture heritage. Knowledge must be free. It should be copied, duplicated, modified, distributed freely. Nobody can have any claim on patents, copyrights or any stuffs like that. Anyway As somebody pointed out. Sooner or later googlebot will browse their database and index it anyway. Maybe they could use it like they did with dmoz.org . And other search engines too... That's the real point. Sooner or later a better (privatly funded) search engine will come out and will get an access to this public database. Olivier
I'm working for different prepress agencies here in Belgium (Europe). The number of Quark users is falling at an impressive speed over here. Main reasons are: (i'm not infographist, just tell you what they told me) - Indesign seems to be better - Adobe suite cheaper than Quark - Better support of Unicode - Adobe Products aren't bloated with an online server keys. When this server crashed the whole production is down. - Better phone support. They only keep some quark licences active for the archives. Indesign is destroying the Quark market at the speed of light. Olivier
You should first find a new opportunity before leaving your current job. There are tons of "anonymous" services over the web (monster, and so on.) Never leave a source of money without having a new one. Olivier
I think too. But I would add: MIDP 2.0 and CLDC 1.1 is the future. There is no floating point support in CLDC 1.0 IMHO. For an app, I had to develop my own classes to support very basic mathematic operations. I've never had to do that...Even on a ZX81 spectrum back in the old days :-).
Windows based smartphones account for around 3% of the market (Qtek and all). The leading player (I think it has 60% of the smartphone market) is Nokia. Nokia smartphones are all Symbian based. IMHO SonyEricsson is the third or the second, I can't remember the figures. (P900, P800 K700 and so on). I think they also use SYMBIAN OS.
If you have to pick up an environment for your applications. I would first consider J2ME MIDP 1.0 (you can easily port it to RIM) and Symbian C++.
Windows smartphones are a niche market.
5 years ago, distro like SUSE 5.3 were on the market.
I tested every single distro SUSE and others put on the market for the fun of it. I only decided to switch to linux on my professional Desktop less than a year ago (SUSE 9.1) . It simply cost nothing compare to the stuff i needed on windows.
But It is a geek desktop.
To be ready for the lambda desktop, you don't just need a super stable OS, you also partnerships with companies making printers, video cards, USB devices, etc.
I had a great pain to install a simple HP all-in-one printer and I still cannot use a LaCie USB HD because it crashed my PC each time I use it.
I do know that it's not linux fault. Linux can only be compatible with companies making linux drivers or at least sharing some codes.
It will change corporate companies are pushing Linux and I'm sure they will convince third parties to be compatible with their new flagship OS.
But when you say "ready for the desktop", lambda users won't care who's wrong or right, they simply want to plug their new device on, and enjoy it.
It is not ready for the lambda user.
Well in the lower countries (quite close to Germany concerning technology). SUSE "is" quite popular. I'm working for a small company where non-geek people are using Linux. From the desktop SUSE 8.1 Open Office KDE to the server SUSE 8.1 (we didn't try SUSE distro for server, too expensive for this small company) files server Print server Raid + back-up The boss was fed up by software prices and ask us to find a solution. We found one :o). This guy knew nothing about computer but he knew SUSE. (there are a lot of coverage in the business local press about Linux).
They sell mechanic pieces for big industries and they are using Linux. Believe they certainly don't look like geeks ;-). The secretary is a 50 years old woman, she can print her mails and invoices :-) (based on a MySQL database with a HTML lay-out). It's funny too see her working on Linux. For her it's just another program, nothing else.
I think the most popular distro used to be Red Hat (until 2001 I guess). Now, most people prefer SUSE, Red Hat is a close number two and (much less) Mandrake.
Overall they quite pleased with Linux/KDE. Just one thing annoying, the poor copy&paste function (especially this annoying web active thing that pops up when they are writing mails...Didn't find a solution to disable it yet)
In their office, only one PC with microsoft remains...It is a DOS 5.2 :-)). (because they keep using CUBIC DOS, a local accountant software)
Olivier