I read a scientific prediction on the limit of population growth. It will stop at 9 thousand millions in the best case and 12 in the worst case. It's Africa, which has a relatively low population, which will grow the most in the next years. Asia is already slowing down, and Europe and America are decreasing.
I'm sorry I can't tell the reference, I don't have it at hand right now.
Of course, this is if Mother Earth doesn't get fed up with our stupidity and then decides to eliminate a great portion of us with some horrendous plague.
I think cubes are not that used here in Europe.
I was in the States for some time working in a project, and they gave me a cubible to work in. I found it really claustrophobic, I had never worked in such an environment before. But I must admit it was nice to concentrate in an environment that was lonely and silent most of the time. My office is a large open space always busy and noisy.
I noticed people in the North of Europe cope really well in an open environment because they tend to work silently most of the time.
In the South, however, as is my case, people talk to each other all the time, and tend to have meetings at their desks instead of using a separate room. It's annoying. Fortunately, I have my headphones and tons of MP3.
Anyway, I'm glad I don't work in a cube.
I have a Palm, and Evolution completely screwed my data, my recurring events were deleted or duplicated, my contacts got phone, fax and mobile numbers all mixed up, a complete wreck. I still find inconsistencies once in a while.
I boot Windows only for gaming and syncing Palm.
Everytime you must identify yourself, like visiting a company, opening a bank account, etc.
Police can ask ID Card everytime they see fit. And it's mandatory to show it.
I guess Anglo-Saxon people, having a different tradition of personal freedom and privacy, see this as a violation of civil rights, but we don't feel so much like that, it's just normal. And it's really useful, in this dangerous times we're going through.
I live in a EU country. We have compulsory ID cards for decades, it's mandatory to carry yours all the time, and nobody gives a shit about it.
Brits will get used to it, eventually.
I would say that is the main problem. I believe competition is nice to fire up people to do their best, but there are limits in the "collaboration vs competition" fight.
The scientists working for medical corporations hide valuable information from each other in order to keep their strategic advantage, or they disclose it but make it unavailable through patents to those who could benefit from it to their own projects. Then, scientists have to invent the wheel all the time, making it a lot harder to evolve.
Although this has a positive side, because it avoids monoculture and stagnation, the negative impacts are, IMHO a lot bigger.
As a solution, I think scientific investigation in essential matters, such as health, should be more on the State side and less on the corporations, with all new scientific discoveries being mandatorily released to the public domain, to benefit everybody.
Well, this is just me dreaming. But I think, if the situation arrives to a point when it's impossible to innovate and medical research (or any other essential research) is not profitable anymore, that way will be the only way out.
That's not what I understood from your first post. Anyway, I don't agree.
I think there are quite some languages that people can use, it was never so easy to mix languages and technologies like it is today, thanks to all the standards we have available.
In my workplace, we mix several technologies together quite often, though Java is more often the choice. We don't usually have the zealot attitude around here, though I have faced some of it coming from the usual Microsoft drones. I had to show them how easy it is to call Java objects from.NET and vice-versa, to break through their shell a little bit.
As an illustration, my personal experience:
5 years ago, applications were built using proprietary languages like VB, Delphi, Oracle PL/SQL, MS T-SQL, and all kinds of other one-of-a-kind technologies. None of these played well with each other. Most of the time, all the business logic was built in stored procedures and got locked to a particular database technology. It was a nightmare even to upgrade the DB software version, and completely impossible to switch BD technology.
The UNIX and MS worlds had their backs turned on each other. The interactions between both worlds was very difficult, and porting impossible many times.
I the presend day, you can develop pretty complex systems using only free languages that are powerful and available (Java, C#, PHP, Python, Perl, Shell scripting, Ruby). The change of paradigm to N-tier obsoleted the stored procedure nightmare. And the rise of standards allowed all these languages to interact easily, ending the custom protocols and the error-prone text file data transfers (aaarg!).
Nowadays, I can have 2 completely differnt development teams in the same project, one developing a pretty cool J2EE app and another developing a cool-looking Windows client for it using.NET, with zero or little integration issues. 5 years ago, you would have to develop a custom protocol for it, making up for a lot, if not most, of the project effort and costs. I know it, been there, done that.
So, what's your point for balkanization? I think it's exactly the opposite.
The reason Science will never be used as a means to dictate the truth is that its fundamental building block is doubt. In Religion, at least the biblical ones, faith is indispensable. The least doubt you may have is considered a sin and sends you directly to Hell.
Since I was a little kid, I could never accept Religion. Nobody could ever convince me I should believe some God whose existence I have never seen proof of. Nobody could ever convince me of the existence of places like Heaven and Hell that nobody has ever seen, or Life after Death. No dead person has ever returned to prove us that. I'm sorry, my religious friends, I don't mean to offend anybody, but it's all a bunch of bullshit to me.
When a scientist makes the claim of some discovery, he must present non-refutable evidence of his claim. Sometimes they are proved wrong, but somebody has to show evidence of their mistakes. Most of the time they are not completely wrong, but new knowledge adds to the old knowledge, completing it. For instance, Classical Physics are good for the majority of the cases, but to advance further, we have to factor in Relativity. And, of course, something new will add up to it in the future, allowing us to understand our Universe a little better. And so on.
In the name of Religion, I've seen people defend the most stupid and absurd ideas. In my country (Portugal), the Catholic Church is a very active agent of underdevelopment, since they oppose to every edvance in the social and scientific fields. Stem cell research is under fire, right now. As an example, abortion is still illegal and sex education in schools exists only in theory, causing us to be recordists in teenage mothers and sex-transmitted diseases. We are an exception among the developed countries. These problems are caused by coward politicians and public rulers, that are under the influence of the most reactionary sectors of society, instead of ruling based on science and knowledge. They basically do everything opposed to the many studies and reports they request to scientific commitees every year, that cost millions.
Now, that "Intelligent Design" thing really scares the shit out of me. Those ideas would never have a chance here in Europe. I got really scared when they imposed that bullshit in educational programs in Kansas. And it scares me to see your president talking about God all the time. He's a political leader. God is not his business. He should leave that to the priests, rabis, mullahs, or whatever. Everytime God and politics mix together, serious shit happens.
This is not the case where I'm working. Our IT department is all-powerful, and security rules are so strict that they in fact prevent us from working.
As an example, those useless motherfuckers refuse to give us VPN access to work remotely, so we have a big pain to get our job done when not in the premises. Of course, this reflects in our productivity. It seems as if the IT department is the one making money for the company, they are the rulers, and we have to shut up and obey.
Wow, I'm impressed. You have really studied your lessons.
I agree with you, my country has tons of useless bureaucracy. It's a nightmare to create an enterprise, or to do anything else, here. It's the result of incompetent management in the State, because for the management places, politics are more important than merit. Of course, our government likes to blame it on civil servants, calling them lazy and incompetent.
I totally disagree with you that the reforms have stopped in 99. Where did you get that idea? Reforms have been made all this time, thay are trying real hard to reduce bureaucracy to create businesses, for example. Our labour laws have suffered a radical transformation last year.
Also, to reach the levels of development of Ireland, I don't think de-regulation is the key factor. What I think would be needed was to massively educate the whole population, specially the entrepreneurs. That's what they did in Ireland. We have very poor education levels compared to the rest of Europe, and our businessmen have, in average less education that their employees.
Of course, the businessmen in Portugal, instead of promoting training and education of their employees, ask the government all the time to create laws that allow them to pay less, fire more, and force workers to work extra hours without pay. Like that was the problem!
Instead of using new working methods or new technology to improve productivity, they blame all their productivity problems on the employees. Instead of taking chances to create new and innovative products and services, they remain with the old things they have ever done, and then cry like babies because Chinese can do the same shit at half the price. They loooooove de-regulation and loose labour laws, and not paying taxes, but they always count on the govermnent to keep foreign competitors outside, and to give them subsidies all the time.
You are free to believe in your "free market" approach. But it's still to be proven.
In my country (Portugal), many reforms have been taken, but middle and lower classes' quality of life only grows worse and the rich only grow richer, and unemployment is rampant. So allow me to disbelief all that stuff.
Your logic is flawed. You assume that when workers give away their rights, they earn jobs. The fact is that Europeans have been giving away their labour rights and lowering their quality of living, and the unemployement just gets worse. At the same time, corporations are getting absolute records in profits. And those are not being used to improve living or create jobs.
If you give the corporations your hand, they will demand your arm.
I find it funny that many people take the side of the corporations, even when themselves are being injured by them. Tell me, are you a boss?
The evil motherfuckers in the European Comission are trying something of this kind. It's called the Bolkestein directive.
If this directive makes its way, then any company in a rich EU country can make an outsourcing contract with another in a poor country to hire a fellow in the rich country with the poor country pay and labour laws!
If you find it confusing, I'll explain it with an example:
Some company in Paris needs a programmer, so instead of hiring one in France, they outsource the programmer from a company in Poland. Then that company in Poland hires a French guy, paying him a Polish salary, that in Paris is not enough to even rent a house. The guy would be subject to Poland labor laws, that are a lot worse than those of France.
The commissioners say this is important to the Economy, but I personally think this is only to give corporations the right to fuck workers in the ass. It blatantly drags rich countries workers to the level of the ones in the poor countries.
This is something that's being discussed also in the WTO (World Trade Organization), so get ready to work in the US with the salary and labor rights of a guy in Bangladesh!
What the French, German and Russian governments did was simply obey the will of those who elected them. The invasion of Iraq faced massive disapproval from the peoples around the World. I call your attention to the fact that the History's biggest demonstrations ever, just happened recently, with the populations all around the globe rallying against Bush's intention of invading Iraq.
Particularly in Europe, disapproval of the war was rampant, and the governments from UK, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Italy, and others, just showed they think Democracy is good for wiping their asses, since they decided to support Bush's evil plans.
Now it's very fashionable to bigot French, and the neocons and their media propaganda machine keep pulling "facts" like this from their asses to desecrate France.
Although the Aznar cocksucker (former Spanish prime-minister) licked Bush's ass at the time, the Spanish people were recordists in opposition, since 90% of the population opposed to war. So, why don't you bigot Spanish instead?
And Barroso (Former Portuguese prime-minister, current Chairman of European Commission) also kissed the Texan ass, but 70% of the Portuguese people were against the invasion. So, why not bigoting Portuguese? Or English? Or Italians?
To pass the control from US to another country would be equally stupid, the point is, if the Internet is a public resource, it should be publicly managed, not be in the hands of one country or enterprise.
In my country, this would never have happened. The minister would be too busy kissing the polluters asses to aknowledge the existence of the website. The media wouldn't give a shit, and the woman could go on happily making her website and being ignored.
Innovation in Europe happens by government mandate or not at all
This is an unfounded and prejuditial affirmation you make. It's the sort of anti-european statements that some Americans like to pull out of their asses.
Now seriously, if you let this kind of idiot fanatics have their way, you'll be in trouble. This is getting serious.
Last year, I was in the US on business for 1.5 months. Some things I like, others not really. What impressed me the most was your absolute belief in freedom of expression. Even for an European like me, that was an astonishing thing.
Unfortunately, that freedom also works for every kind of quacks and fundamentalist morons to be able to populate the media with their bullshit. But now, this is getting serious. They are making their way into your education system, and also other areas, like government.
You must be able to stop that scum on their tracks. Those that can impose their bizarre views of the Universe on the education system may cause a great damage to the fundamental values of your society, freedom being the most threatened.
Be aware, people. In Europe these people are considered laughable, but when they have the power to change your education system they're not funny anymore. Do you want to be ruled by Christian Talibans?
I had the misfortune of becoming a ASP VB developer during a year. I hated it with all my guts, but I had to pay my bills.
My employer was too cheap to move on to.NET, so we had to work with that old ASP shit using legacy VS6 that somebody had bought ages ago. We did the classical stuff, editing ASPs in VB and T-SQL stored procs.
Later, I found out, to my surprise, that Eclipse was better for ASP and T-SQL development than the very M$ tools in VS6 and SQL-Server. Some weeks later, I was using Eclipse for everything, ASP, T-SQL, PHP, XML, etc., integrating with M$ Visual Source Safe, and all. I had an Eclipse instance running since the very first minute I sat in my office chair every morning. My M$ drone colleagues used to look at me as if I was a freak, or something. But I was more productive than them.
Installing the right plugins, Eclipse can be the IDE for any kind of development you imagine.
Human behavior is really stupid. When everybody thinks only in terms of his own individual needs, the combined result of millions of people is disastrous.
It's in you best interest, as a web site owner, that the whole web is standards based, and hot hostage of some monopoly forcing proprietary technology down everybody's throats.
You don't give shit if your website is standards based or not. So you're helping Microsoft establishing its web browser as the "stadard" one. Microsoft is trying since day 0 to turn the WWW in a proprietary network, without room for anything except its own proprietary protocols and languages. So what, say you.
Microsoft has won the browser war. Since its browser is not completely standards-abiding, and there are so many sloppy, lazy or careless web site developers, in practice some of the Web is closed to those that do not have a stack of Intel/Windows/IE, which I find really stupid, because web pages are described using a markup language, which has absolutely nothing to do with my processor being little or big-endian, or my file system using forward or back slashes!
When Microsoft is able to pervert the standards so much that it takes control of the Web, then the next generation of IE will use a proprietary, patents-laden markup language. Nobody will bother, because IE is what "everybody" uses, anyway. Web site developers may start to use the proprietary language to feed millions of IEs all around the World. You, too.
After this phase is done, Microsoft can simply start enforcing its rights over the language and protocols with an iron hand. You, careless webmaster, will be held by this iron hand by the balls so hard, that you won't be able to breathe. You'll start paying, and a lot, for the tools you use for developing your proprietary-language-based website. And when you get back to creating some cool web pages in with PHP, you'll find that you can't, because "everybody" uses IE, and IE doesn't support standards anymore. Then you're fucked.
I know this is just a catastrophic prophecy, but it's not very far from what could happen. Microsoft has been trying this for many years, and in lots of areas, this is the scenario (Office documents, WMA and WMV, etc.). When my friends send me audio or video, they never send standard formats, instead they use those proprietary Microsoft products, and then I can't open them, because I use Linux. And I get lots of Word documents, that could be sent in RTF or other open format (Thank you, OpenOffice). I don't even bother to warn them anymore. Those proprietary formats are the defaults in Windoze and are what "everybody" use. I don't have the freedom to listen to some audio or watch a video anymore. If you create files using those proprietary formats, the data you produced does not belong to you, it belongs to Microsoft.
If you want to preserve your freedom, suport standards. It's in your own interest too.
Slashdot Mirror
I read a scientific prediction on the limit of population growth. It will stop at 9 thousand millions in the best case and 12 in the worst case. It's Africa, which has a relatively low population, which will grow the most in the next years. Asia is already slowing down, and Europe and America are decreasing.
I'm sorry I can't tell the reference, I don't have it at hand right now.
Of course, this is if Mother Earth doesn't get fed up with our stupidity and then decides to eliminate a great portion of us with some horrendous plague.
I think cubes are not that used here in Europe.
I was in the States for some time working in a project, and they gave me a cubible to work in. I found it really claustrophobic, I had never worked in such an environment before. But I must admit it was nice to concentrate in an environment that was lonely and silent most of the time. My office is a large open space always busy and noisy.
I noticed people in the North of Europe cope really well in an open environment because they tend to work silently most of the time.
In the South, however, as is my case, people talk to each other all the time, and tend to have meetings at their desks instead of using a separate room. It's annoying. Fortunately, I have my headphones and tons of MP3.
Anyway, I'm glad I don't work in a cube.
I have a Palm, and Evolution completely screwed my data, my recurring events were deleted or duplicated, my contacts got phone, fax and mobile numbers all mixed up, a complete wreck. I still find inconsistencies once in a while.
I boot Windows only for gaming and syncing Palm.
Everytime you must identify yourself, like visiting a company, opening a bank account, etc.
Police can ask ID Card everytime they see fit. And it's mandatory to show it.
I guess Anglo-Saxon people, having a different tradition of personal freedom and privacy, see this as a violation of civil rights, but we don't feel so much like that, it's just normal. And it's really useful, in this dangerous times we're going through.
I live in a EU country. We have compulsory ID cards for decades, it's mandatory to carry yours all the time, and nobody gives a shit about it.
Brits will get used to it, eventually.
I would say that is the main problem. I believe competition is nice to fire up people to do their best, but there are limits in the "collaboration vs competition" fight.
The scientists working for medical corporations hide valuable information from each other in order to keep their strategic advantage, or they disclose it but make it unavailable through patents to those who could benefit from it to their own projects. Then, scientists have to invent the wheel all the time, making it a lot harder to evolve.
Although this has a positive side, because it avoids monoculture and stagnation, the negative impacts are, IMHO a lot bigger.
As a solution, I think scientific investigation in essential matters, such as health, should be more on the State side and less on the corporations, with all new scientific discoveries being mandatorily released to the public domain, to benefit everybody.
Well, this is just me dreaming. But I think, if the situation arrives to a point when it's impossible to innovate and medical research (or any other essential research) is not profitable anymore, that way will be the only way out.
That's not what I understood from your first post. Anyway, I don't agree.
I think there are quite some languages that people can use, it was never so easy to mix languages and technologies like it is today, thanks to all the standards we have available.
In my workplace, we mix several technologies together quite often, though Java is more often the choice. We don't usually have the zealot attitude around here, though I have faced some of it coming from the usual Microsoft drones. I had to show them how easy it is to call Java objects from .NET and vice-versa, to break through their shell a little bit.
As an illustration, my personal experience:
5 years ago, applications were built using proprietary languages like VB, Delphi, Oracle PL/SQL, MS T-SQL, and all kinds of other one-of-a-kind technologies. None of these played well with each other. Most of the time, all the business logic was built in stored procedures and got locked to a particular database technology. It was a nightmare even to upgrade the DB software version, and completely impossible to switch BD technology.
The UNIX and MS worlds had their backs turned on each other. The interactions between both worlds was very difficult, and porting impossible many times.
I the presend day, you can develop pretty complex systems using only free languages that are powerful and available (Java, C#, PHP, Python, Perl, Shell scripting, Ruby). The change of paradigm to N-tier obsoleted the stored procedure nightmare. And the rise of standards allowed all these languages to interact easily, ending the custom protocols and the error-prone text file data transfers (aaarg!).
Nowadays, I can have 2 completely differnt development teams in the same project, one developing a pretty cool J2EE app and another developing a cool-looking Windows client for it using .NET, with zero or little integration issues. 5 years ago, you would have to develop a custom protocol for it, making up for a lot, if not most, of the project effort and costs. I know it, been there, done that.
So, what's your point for balkanization? I think it's exactly the opposite.
What do you mean, balkanization?
I think you're misusing the word:
Check Dictionary.com
The reason Science will never be used as a means to dictate the truth is that its fundamental building block is doubt. In Religion, at least the biblical ones, faith is indispensable. The least doubt you may have is considered a sin and sends you directly to Hell.
Since I was a little kid, I could never accept Religion. Nobody could ever convince me I should believe some God whose existence I have never seen proof of. Nobody could ever convince me of the existence of places like Heaven and Hell that nobody has ever seen, or Life after Death. No dead person has ever returned to prove us that. I'm sorry, my religious friends, I don't mean to offend anybody, but it's all a bunch of bullshit to me.
When a scientist makes the claim of some discovery, he must present non-refutable evidence of his claim. Sometimes they are proved wrong, but somebody has to show evidence of their mistakes. Most of the time they are not completely wrong, but new knowledge adds to the old knowledge, completing it. For instance, Classical Physics are good for the majority of the cases, but to advance further, we have to factor in Relativity. And, of course, something new will add up to it in the future, allowing us to understand our Universe a little better. And so on.
In the name of Religion, I've seen people defend the most stupid and absurd ideas. In my country (Portugal), the Catholic Church is a very active agent of underdevelopment, since they oppose to every edvance in the social and scientific fields. Stem cell research is under fire, right now. As an example, abortion is still illegal and sex education in schools exists only in theory, causing us to be recordists in teenage mothers and sex-transmitted diseases. We are an exception among the developed countries. These problems are caused by coward politicians and public rulers, that are under the influence of the most reactionary sectors of society, instead of ruling based on science and knowledge. They basically do everything opposed to the many studies and reports they request to scientific commitees every year, that cost millions.
Now, that "Intelligent Design" thing really scares the shit out of me. Those ideas would never have a chance here in Europe. I got really scared when they imposed that bullshit in educational programs in Kansas. And it scares me to see your president talking about God all the time. He's a political leader. God is not his business. He should leave that to the priests, rabis, mullahs, or whatever. Everytime God and politics mix together, serious shit happens.
Please tell me, are you just trying to be funny, or you actually belive the bullshit you just wrote?
This is not the case where I'm working. Our IT department is all-powerful, and security rules are so strict that they in fact prevent us from working.
As an example, those useless motherfuckers refuse to give us VPN access to work remotely, so we have a big pain to get our job done when not in the premises. Of course, this reflects in our productivity. It seems as if the IT department is the one making money for the company, they are the rulers, and we have to shut up and obey.
Wow, I'm impressed. You have really studied your lessons.
I agree with you, my country has tons of useless bureaucracy. It's a nightmare to create an enterprise, or to do anything else, here. It's the result of incompetent management in the State, because for the management places, politics are more important than merit. Of course, our government likes to blame it on civil servants, calling them lazy and incompetent.
I totally disagree with you that the reforms have stopped in 99. Where did you get that idea? Reforms have been made all this time, thay are trying real hard to reduce bureaucracy to create businesses, for example. Our labour laws have suffered a radical transformation last year.
Also, to reach the levels of development of Ireland, I don't think de-regulation is the key factor. What I think would be needed was to massively educate the whole population, specially the entrepreneurs. That's what they did in Ireland. We have very poor education levels compared to the rest of Europe, and our businessmen have, in average less education that their employees.
Of course, the businessmen in Portugal, instead of promoting training and education of their employees, ask the government all the time to create laws that allow them to pay less, fire more, and force workers to work extra hours without pay. Like that was the problem!
Instead of using new working methods or new technology to improve productivity, they blame all their productivity problems on the employees. Instead of taking chances to create new and innovative products and services, they remain with the old things they have ever done, and then cry like babies because Chinese can do the same shit at half the price. They loooooove de-regulation and loose labour laws, and not paying taxes, but they always count on the govermnent to keep foreign competitors outside, and to give them subsidies all the time.
You are free to believe in your "free market" approach. But it's still to be proven.
In my country (Portugal), many reforms have been taken, but middle and lower classes' quality of life only grows worse and the rich only grow richer, and unemployment is rampant. So allow me to disbelief all that stuff.
Forgot the LA riots, dude?
Your logic is flawed. You assume that when workers give away their rights, they earn jobs. The fact is that Europeans have been giving away their labour rights and lowering their quality of living, and the unemployement just gets worse. At the same time, corporations are getting absolute records in profits. And those are not being used to improve living or create jobs.
If you give the corporations your hand, they will demand your arm.
I find it funny that many people take the side of the corporations, even when themselves are being injured by them. Tell me, are you a boss?
The evil motherfuckers in the European Comission are trying something of this kind. It's called the Bolkestein directive.
If this directive makes its way, then any company in a rich EU country can make an outsourcing contract with another in a poor country to hire a fellow in the rich country with the poor country pay and labour laws!
If you find it confusing, I'll explain it with an example:
Some company in Paris needs a programmer, so instead of hiring one in France, they outsource the programmer from a company in Poland. Then that company in Poland hires a French guy, paying him a Polish salary, that in Paris is not enough to even rent a house. The guy would be subject to Poland labor laws, that are a lot worse than those of France.
The commissioners say this is important to the Economy, but I personally think this is only to give corporations the right to fuck workers in the ass. It blatantly drags rich countries workers to the level of the ones in the poor countries.
This is something that's being discussed also in the WTO (World Trade Organization), so get ready to work in the US with the salary and labor rights of a guy in Bangladesh!
What the French, German and Russian governments did was simply obey the will of those who elected them. The invasion of Iraq faced massive disapproval from the peoples around the World. I call your attention to the fact that the History's biggest demonstrations ever, just happened recently, with the populations all around the globe rallying against Bush's intention of invading Iraq.
Particularly in Europe, disapproval of the war was rampant, and the governments from UK, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Italy, and others, just showed they think Democracy is good for wiping their asses, since they decided to support Bush's evil plans.
Now it's very fashionable to bigot French, and the neocons and their media propaganda machine keep pulling "facts" like this from their asses to desecrate France.
Although the Aznar cocksucker (former Spanish prime-minister) licked Bush's ass at the time, the Spanish people were recordists in opposition, since 90% of the population opposed to war. So, why don't you bigot Spanish instead?
And Barroso (Former Portuguese prime-minister, current Chairman of European Commission) also kissed the Texan ass, but 70% of the Portuguese people were against the invasion. So, why not bigoting Portuguese? Or English? Or Italians?
And how many of those vicious dictators are not backed by the USA???
To pass the control from US to another country would be equally stupid, the point is, if the Internet is a public resource, it should be publicly managed, not be in the hands of one country or enterprise.
Aren't they supposed to concern only about dollars?
In my country, this would never have happened. The minister would be too busy kissing the polluters asses to aknowledge the existence of the website. The media wouldn't give a shit, and the woman could go on happily making her website and being ignored.
Innovation in Europe happens by government mandate or not at all
This is an unfounded and prejuditial affirmation you make. It's the sort of anti-european statements that some Americans like to pull out of their asses.
Now seriously, if you let this kind of idiot fanatics have their way, you'll be in trouble. This is getting serious.
Last year, I was in the US on business for 1.5 months. Some things I like, others not really. What impressed me the most was your absolute belief in freedom of expression. Even for an European like me, that was an astonishing thing.
Unfortunately, that freedom also works for every kind of quacks and fundamentalist morons to be able to populate the media with their bullshit. But now, this is getting serious. They are making their way into your education system, and also other areas, like government.
You must be able to stop that scum on their tracks. Those that can impose their bizarre views of the Universe on the education system may cause a great damage to the fundamental values of your society, freedom being the most threatened.
Be aware, people. In Europe these people are considered laughable, but when they have the power to change your education system they're not funny anymore. Do you want to be ruled by Christian Talibans?
I had the misfortune of becoming a ASP VB developer during a year. I hated it with all my guts, but I had to pay my bills. .NET, so we had to work with that old ASP shit using legacy VS6 that somebody had bought ages ago. We did the classical stuff, editing ASPs in VB and T-SQL stored procs.
My employer was too cheap to move on to
Later, I found out, to my surprise, that Eclipse was better for ASP and T-SQL development than the very M$ tools in VS6 and SQL-Server. Some weeks later, I was using Eclipse for everything, ASP, T-SQL, PHP, XML, etc., integrating with M$ Visual Source Safe, and all. I had an Eclipse instance running since the very first minute I sat in my office chair every morning. My M$ drone colleagues used to look at me as if I was a freak, or something. But I was more productive than them.
Installing the right plugins, Eclipse can be the IDE for any kind of development you imagine.
Human behavior is really stupid. When everybody thinks only in terms of his own individual needs, the combined result of millions of people is disastrous.
It's in you best interest, as a web site owner, that the whole web is standards based, and hot hostage of some monopoly forcing proprietary technology down everybody's throats.
You don't give shit if your website is standards based or not. So you're helping Microsoft establishing its web browser as the "stadard" one. Microsoft is trying since day 0 to turn the WWW in a proprietary network, without room for anything except its own proprietary protocols and languages. So what, say you.
Microsoft has won the browser war. Since its browser is not completely standards-abiding, and there are so many sloppy, lazy or careless web site developers, in practice some of the Web is closed to those that do not have a stack of Intel/Windows/IE, which I find really stupid, because web pages are described using a markup language, which has absolutely nothing to do with my processor being little or big-endian, or my file system using forward or back slashes!
When Microsoft is able to pervert the standards so much that it takes control of the Web, then the next generation of IE will use a proprietary, patents-laden markup language. Nobody will bother, because IE is what "everybody" uses, anyway. Web site developers may start to use the proprietary language to feed millions of IEs all around the World. You, too.
After this phase is done, Microsoft can simply start enforcing its rights over the language and protocols with an iron hand. You, careless webmaster, will be held by this iron hand by the balls so hard, that you won't be able to breathe. You'll start paying, and a lot, for the tools you use for developing your proprietary-language-based website. And when you get back to creating some cool web pages in with PHP, you'll find that you can't, because "everybody" uses IE, and IE doesn't support standards anymore. Then you're fucked.
I know this is just a catastrophic prophecy, but it's not very far from what could happen. Microsoft has been trying this for many years, and in lots of areas, this is the scenario (Office documents, WMA and WMV, etc.). When my friends send me audio or video, they never send standard formats, instead they use those proprietary Microsoft products, and then I can't open them, because I use Linux. And I get lots of Word documents, that could be sent in RTF or other open format (Thank you, OpenOffice). I don't even bother to warn them anymore. Those proprietary formats are the defaults in Windoze and are what "everybody" use. I don't have the freedom to listen to some audio or watch a video anymore. If you create files using those proprietary formats, the data you produced does not belong to you, it belongs to Microsoft.
If you want to preserve your freedom, suport standards. It's in your own interest too.