What vote are you talking about? - Denmark is a real member of the EU (if it's not I'd like you to explain my Danish EU passport). Also, you clearly don't know that the ammendments to the draft Directive effectively newter it
Also, read this transcript to see just how many politicians were on our side. If the draft Directive had not been passed at all, we would probably be faced with the prospect of renegotiating the European Patent Convention, and there would have been no democratic input at all.
Oh God, another little-Englander. When will people like you get with the program, and realise that the EU is here to stay, that it's good for Britain, and that it's in our interests to be actively involved in all apsects of it so that we can shape it from within...
My only problem with it is that it's not as democratic as I would like it to be, and that was largely due to the fact that the Brits and Scandinavians weren't in it at the beginning. Maastricht saw a sea change, and the new constitution should help somewhat. It's not perfect but a definate improvement, and the EU *IS* reforming slowly.
And besides, do you have any idea what would hapen if we were to leave the EU? Foreign investment in Britain from outside the EU fell by 73% in 2002, while rising in countries that have adopted the Euro, as a result of us staying out of the currency so far. Why would anyone invest in us if we left the EU?
Caroline Lucas and the Greens
on
Lobbying For Linux
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Of all of my local MEPs that I've emailed, Caroline Lucas (Green) has been both the most responsive, and the most supportive of our position. If they were only pro-Euro, they'd get my vote every time...
(Christopher Hume (LibDem) has sent me a number of letters, the most recent of which (16/09/2003) says that "software should not be patentable simply because it is running on generic computer equipment", and goes on to say that they want a Directive to "enforce the original EPC, rather than codifying what has become common practice - and illegal practice - of allowing the patenting of computer-implemented inventions".)
More specifically, check out the "Linux 101" keyboard for a remake of the classic IBM 101-key buckling spring keyboard with the Ctrl, Caps-Lock and Esc keys in the right places. Of the two layouts, Layout 2 looks better to me.
Check out the "Linux 101" keyboard for a remake of the classic IBM 101-key buckling spring keyboard with the Ctrl, Caps-Lock and Esc keys in the right places. Of the two layouts, Layout 2 looks better to me.
The best version of course was Worms: The Director's Cut, which only came out on AGA Amigas (A1200 and A4000), and was probably the last big game to come out on that platform. That said, it was the ultimate version with loads of cool new weapons and silky smooth quarter pixel scrolling. Mmm - custom chips...
When I was paid to be a nu-meeja-hor I always heard it shortened to "dub-dub-dub", which I think sounds better than "wuh-wuh-wuh".
Personally, I think both the "www." and domain extensions are pointless. National domains are daft on the border-free internet, and how many Merkans use ".us" anyway?
Absolutely. I'm sick of the flipping in British politics between the Tories and Labour. Blair had the chance to introduce Proportional Representation (with which the LibDems could have propspered), but he fluffed it. Frankly it would be nice to have a consensual and constructive style of government in this country where our "representatives" were actaully representative of the wishes of the electorate.
"Very likely this is related to the fact that cars go where the owner wants whereas public transport only takes you along the routes the State lays down... Interesting how much pressure there is here in Britain to demonise cars and subsidise public transport these days."
Oh come on, you know as well as I do the problems that Britain is having with traffic congestion, and having less vehicles on the road is good for the environment too. The govts attempts to promote public transport are admirable (if a little half hearted), and the suggestion that this is so that the state can control where you go is absurd.
I just got this email from Dr Caroline Lucas, a Green MEP for the South East of England. It makes for interesting reading, and highlights the positions of the major parties. At the bottom of the email she includes a press release called "MEPs must back EU plans for patents for inventions" that was given to all of the Labour MEPs.
Subject: software patenting - the vote has been postponed until the week of 22 September
As a constituent who has emailed me recently on the issue of software patenting I am writing to inform you that the vote, due to have taken place on Tuesday, was postponed until September 24th. The reason for this is as follows:
Back in July we Greens wanted to delay the vote as we knew that some of the big political groups in the Parliament were divided. Furthermore, we want to wait for the conclusions of the work of the Committee of Petitions as there is a petition, signed by 200,000 people against software patents, being presented to the Committee on 30 September.
The PPE (of which the UK Conservatives are members) agreed with the Greens asking for a postponement of the vote, then changed their mind. The Socialists then asked for a delay realising that they were hopelessly divided.
The current state of play within the Socialist group is that the Rapporteur, Labour MEP Arlene McCarthy, is only supported by the other Labour MEPs and half the Germans. The PPE group are mostly in support of Arlene McCarthy's proposal, except for the Catalonian and Scandanavian members (among the UK Conservatives, Malcolm Harbour MEP has been very supportive of Arlene McCarthy). Furthermore, the lead member of the PPE on this issue is Mme. Janelly Fourtou MEP, whose husband is the CEO of Vivendi Universal. The UK Liberal Democrats have been quite silent on this issue despite party policy being opposed to such patents.
The reason why no vote is taking place is that the pro-patenting lobby is refusing to negotiate a sensible compromise, simply arguing that the law, as presently drafted would not grant unlimited patentability of software.
This is simply not true.
Given the strong lobby against the proposed legislation, Arlene McCarthy has launched a counter offensive and below I have copied a press release issued by the Labour Group of MEPs.
I will of course contact you again to let you know if and when the vote proceeds. The Greens are co-organising a demonstration against software patents on the morning of the vote outside the Parliament building in Strasbourg.
Yours sincerely,
Caroline Lucas Green MEP for South East England
This Press Release was sent out by the "UK Labour Delegation in the European Parliament" to all Labour MEPs on monday Sep 1st 18:11 for immediate publication.
Subject: MEPs must back EU plans for patents for inventions For immediate release
1st September 2003
MEPs must back EU plans for patents for inventions
Controversial new legislation on patents for computer-implemented inventions will be put to a critical vote in the European Parliament in Strasbourg at the end of this month (Parliamentary Session 22-25 September).
Following a barrage of misinformation about the new EU wide patenting proposals, Labour MEP Arlene McCarthy - who wrote the Parliament's Report on the new proposals and is steering it through the Parliament - spoke out against the systematic campaign of misinformation being waged against new rules in the run up to the Strasbourg vote saying:
A proposal for an EU wide law on patents for computer-implemented inventions is essential both to protect the interests of European Industry and prevent the drift towards US-style patenting of business methods. In a situation where both the European Patent Office (EPO) and the 15 national patent offices are handing out patents for computer-implemented inventions, an EU law can assist in clarifying the limits to patentability in the field of computer-implemented inventions. This would give industry more
Unlike VB 6 and C++, which were at "opposite ends of the world," the differences between VB.NET and C# are minor, said Janacek, who began working with.NET while it was still in beta. "You can code in C# and show that code to a VB.NET programmer, who can read it straight out. The framework controls are identical. The syntax is a little bit different. But catching errors, writing to files--that's the same across languages," he said.
So C# is just VB.NET with squiggly brackets? MS are geniuses.
Please mod the parent down - it is wrong and therefore not informative.
Scandinavia is Denmark, Sweden and Norway and sometimes Iceland (the ancient lands of the Norsemen), while the Nordic countries are Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland.
Ahh, interesting. They seem to have some problems with Linux though:
"Partial/Unsupported: * Audio (Has stopped working in this release) * Floppy * Real Time Clock * Podules
Kernel issues: The ethernet driver needs modification to read ts MAC address from eeprom and has instead been modified to read it from its PCI memory as a temporary measure.
Because the real time clock is currently unsupported (boiler plate code only currently), it is recommenend you install the Debian "ntpdate" package if you are on a permenent connection. Otherwise, you will need to use the "date --set" command to set the time.
The USB card is not reset fully on reboot, therefore if you reboot from Linux you will need to reset the machine to regain USB functionality in RISC OS.
X Windows: X can be made to work with some modification to the X Server using and using the frame buffer. This is very slow and the colours are wrong. We hope to soon have a working accelerated 'nv' driver for the machine."
Yeah, it was a shame what happenned to the BeBox - I think it was probably a mistake for Be to concentrate on the x86, although I can understand their reasoning. Nowadays, with Linux being the mainstream "geek" OS, platforms like the BeBox and the Pegasos have a much better chance of surviving, since people can buy a machine purely on the merits of the hardware (all open-source programs can be re-compiled to different traget platforms). Until an ARM (nicest processor IMHO) based desktop motherboard appears, the Pegasos is probably the way to go for the discerning geek (and lets face it, if the x86 platform had not been commoditised in the way it was (which led to its cheap price) noone would be using it - the original designers of the IBM PC wanted to use the Motorola 68k).
For those of you who don't know, the company behind Pegasos is focused on creating the ultimate "geek" machine. A number of Pegasos machines have been provided to various alternative OS developments, and it seems that the alternative OS market is a good niche that should allow this company to thrive.
from www.pegasosppc.com/operating_systems.php "The following Operating Systems are in final stages of being ported to the Pegasos Platform and should be completed soon: AROS, Gentoo, Knoppix, NewOS, OpenBSD, QNX The following Operating Systems are in the early stages of being ported to the Pegasos Platform: AmigaDE, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBeOS, OpenDarwin, Zynot The following Operating Systems can be run on the Pegasos through emulation: Amiga OS 3.x, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X"
Personally speaking, as a fan of silent machines and a user of a PC that exclusively runs Linux, I am very tempted by this machine. I don't have to worry about the company going bust because by running Linux, I can easily switch hardware platforms should I need to, and I can play with Morphos and all this Mac stuff too.
"-and stuff asking the English on how to make tea, or even buying English (packaged, not grown) tea - the best tea comes from the country that invented it - China of course (good quality tea is also produced by Japan and Taiwan)"
Yeah, but it's not like us Brits drink tea for the authentic Chinese Tea experience - we dunk milk and sugar in it for a start. The thing is that if you want a good English cup of tea, the method described in that H2G2 entry is fine.
Although not acting in a computer game, some pretty atrocious advertising accompanied the launch of the Amiga CD32 games console in Europe.
The official "Creation" commercial for the CD32 went something like this: A young man in a white coat was welcomed to a laboratory by a scientist in another white coat. Then there was a voice-over: "I never understood why he chose *me* to share his secret." (show a CD32), "this was twice as fast, twice as powerful" (pan over the "32Bit" text on the CD32) Then he continued "and colours, so many colours", before a robot was called over to play Microcosm, a pretty impressive FMV game at the time. The game is so amazing that the robot malfunctions, the scientist hits loads of red buttons, the robot explodes, and the picture stops at "CD32 - The worlds first 32-bit games console".
Nope, afraid not. It's size and simplicity makes it very appealing, but I think I want those extra keys. I don't like the position/size of the cursor keys on the HH2, and would miss the Home/End/PageUp/PageDown, function and numeric (for NetHack and FreeCiv etc) keys.
What would be cool would be some (cheap) way of having a keyboard made with your own custom key layout. Any ideas?
Ooh, look at that "Linux 101" keyboard with the Ctrl, Caps-Lock and Esc keys in the right places. They have two layouts, 1 and 2. Layout 2 looks better to me.
Slashdot Mirror
What vote are you talking about? - Denmark is a real member of the EU (if it's not I'd like you to explain my Danish EU passport). Also, you clearly don't know that the ammendments to the draft Directive effectively newter it
Also, read this transcript to see just how many politicians were on our side. If the draft Directive had not been passed at all, we would probably be faced with the prospect of renegotiating the European Patent Convention, and there would have been no democratic input at all.
We've come out of this pretty well.
Please could everyone calm down. Look for posts by Halo1 and JPHM, and read this
Read this thread
...it's not that bad
Oh God, another little-Englander. When will people like you get with the program, and realise that the EU is here to stay, that it's good for Britain, and that it's in our interests to be actively involved in all apsects of it so that we can shape it from within...
My only problem with it is that it's not as democratic as I would like it to be, and that was largely due to the fact that the Brits and Scandinavians weren't in it at the beginning. Maastricht saw a sea change, and the new constitution should help somewhat. It's not perfect but a definate improvement, and the EU *IS* reforming slowly.
And besides, do you have any idea what would hapen if we were to leave the EU? Foreign investment in Britain from outside the EU fell by 73% in 2002, while rising in countries that have adopted the Euro, as a result of us staying out of the currency so far. Why would anyone invest in us if we left the EU?
Of all of my local MEPs that I've emailed, Caroline Lucas (Green) has been both the most responsive, and the most supportive of our position. If they were only pro-Euro, they'd get my vote every time...
(Christopher Hume (LibDem) has sent me a number of letters, the most recent of which (16/09/2003) says that "software should not be patentable simply because it is running on generic computer equipment", and goes on to say that they want a Directive to "enforce the original EPC, rather than codifying what has become common practice - and illegal practice - of allowing the patenting of computer-implemented inventions".)
More specifically, check out the "Linux 101" keyboard for a remake of the classic IBM 101-key buckling spring keyboard with the Ctrl, Caps-Lock and Esc keys in the right places. Of the two layouts, Layout 2 looks better to me.
Check out the "Linux 101" keyboard for a remake of the classic IBM 101-key buckling spring keyboard with the Ctrl, Caps-Lock and Esc keys in the right places. Of the two layouts, Layout 2 looks better to me.
The best version of course was Worms: The Director's Cut, which only came out on AGA Amigas (A1200 and A4000), and was probably the last big game to come out on that platform. That said, it was the ultimate version with loads of cool new weapons and silky smooth quarter pixel scrolling. Mmm - custom chips...
And "dub-dub-dub"'s semi official too, since it's got an entry in the Jargon File
When I was paid to be a nu-meeja-hor I always heard it shortened to "dub-dub-dub", which I think sounds better than "wuh-wuh-wuh".
Personally, I think both the "www." and domain extensions are pointless. National domains are daft on the border-free internet, and how many Merkans use ".us" anyway?
Absolutely. I'm sick of the flipping in British politics between the Tories and Labour. Blair had the chance to introduce Proportional Representation (with which the LibDems could have propspered), but he fluffed it. Frankly it would be nice to have a consensual and constructive style of government in this country where our "representatives" were actaully representative of the wishes of the electorate.
"Very likely this is related to the fact that cars go where the owner wants whereas public transport only takes you along the routes the State lays down... Interesting how much pressure there is here in Britain to demonise cars and subsidise public transport these days."
Oh come on, you know as well as I do the problems that Britain is having with traffic congestion, and having less vehicles on the road is good for the environment too. The govts attempts to promote public transport are admirable (if a little half hearted), and the suggestion that this is so that the state can control where you go is absurd.
I just got this email from Dr Caroline Lucas, a Green MEP for the South East of England. It makes for interesting reading, and highlights the positions of the major parties. At the bottom of the email she includes a press release called "MEPs must back EU plans for patents for inventions" that was given to all of the Labour MEPs.
Subject: software patenting - the vote has been postponed until the week of 22 September
As a constituent who has emailed me recently on the issue of software patenting I am writing to inform you that the vote, due to have taken place on Tuesday, was postponed until September 24th. The reason for this is as follows:
Back in July we Greens wanted to delay the vote as we knew that some of the big political groups in the Parliament were divided. Furthermore, we want to wait for the conclusions of the work of the Committee of Petitions as there is a petition, signed by 200,000 people against software patents, being presented to the Committee on 30 September.
The PPE (of which the UK Conservatives are members) agreed with the Greens asking for a postponement of the vote, then changed their mind. The Socialists then asked for a delay realising that they were hopelessly divided.
The current state of play within the Socialist group is that the Rapporteur, Labour MEP Arlene McCarthy, is only supported by the other Labour MEPs and half the Germans. The PPE group are mostly in support of Arlene McCarthy's proposal, except for the Catalonian and Scandanavian members (among the UK Conservatives, Malcolm Harbour MEP has been very supportive of Arlene McCarthy). Furthermore, the lead member of the PPE on this issue is Mme. Janelly Fourtou MEP, whose husband is the CEO of Vivendi Universal. The UK Liberal Democrats have been quite silent on this issue despite party policy being opposed to such patents.
The reason why no vote is taking place is that the pro-patenting lobby is refusing to negotiate a sensible compromise, simply arguing that the law, as presently drafted would not grant unlimited patentability of software.
This is simply not true.
Given the strong lobby against the proposed legislation, Arlene McCarthy has launched a counter offensive and below I have copied a press release issued by the Labour Group of MEPs.
I will of course contact you again to let you know if and when the vote proceeds. The Greens are co-organising a demonstration against software patents on the morning of the vote outside the Parliament building in Strasbourg.
Yours sincerely,
Caroline Lucas
Green MEP for South East England
This Press Release was sent out by the "UK Labour Delegation in the European Parliament" to all Labour MEPs on monday Sep 1st 18:11 for immediate publication.
Subject: MEPs must back EU plans for patents for inventions
For immediate release
1st September 2003
MEPs must back EU plans for patents for inventions
Controversial new legislation on patents for computer-implemented inventions will be put to a critical vote in the European Parliament in Strasbourg at the end of this month (Parliamentary Session 22-25 September).
Following a barrage of misinformation about the new EU wide patenting proposals, Labour MEP Arlene McCarthy - who wrote the Parliament's Report on the new proposals and is steering it through the Parliament - spoke out against the systematic campaign of misinformation being waged against new rules in the run up to the Strasbourg vote saying:
A proposal for an EU wide law on patents for computer-implemented inventions is essential both to protect the interests of European Industry and prevent the drift towards US-style patenting of business methods. In a situation where both the European Patent Office (EPO) and the 15 national patent offices are handing out patents for computer-implemented inventions, an EU law can assist in clarifying the limits to patentability in the field of computer-implemented inventions. This would give industry more
Unlike VB 6 and C++, which were at "opposite ends of the world," the differences between VB.NET and C# are minor, said Janacek, who began working with .NET while it was still in beta. "You can code in C# and show that code to a VB.NET programmer, who can read it straight out. The framework controls are identical. The syntax is a little bit different. But catching errors, writing to files--that's the same across languages," he said.
So C# is just VB.NET with squiggly brackets? MS are geniuses.
Please mod the parent down - it is wrong and therefore not informative.
Scandinavia is Denmark, Sweden and Norway and sometimes Iceland (the ancient lands of the Norsemen), while the Nordic countries are Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland.
See here for more info.
Buy a Pegasos G5 when they come out and run Linux on it and you'll have yourself a quiet and energy efficient 64 bit desktop with no lock-in effect.
Ahh, interesting. They seem to have some problems with Linux though:
"Partial/Unsupported:
* Audio (Has stopped working in this release)
* Floppy
* Real Time Clock
* Podules
Kernel issues:
The ethernet driver needs modification to read ts MAC address from eeprom and has instead been modified to read it from its PCI memory as a temporary measure.
Because the real time clock is currently unsupported (boiler plate code only currently), it is recommenend you install the Debian "ntpdate" package if you are on a permenent connection. Otherwise, you will need to use the "date --set" command to set the time.
The USB card is not reset fully on reboot, therefore if you reboot from Linux you will need to reset the machine to regain USB functionality in RISC OS.
X Windows:
X can be made to work with some modification to the X Server using and using the frame buffer. This is very slow and the colours are wrong. We hope to soon have a working accelerated 'nv' driver for the machine."
Look here to see MacOS 9 running on the Pegasos - apparently OS X works fine too. AFAIK, the Pegasos does not use an Apple ROM.
Yeah, it was a shame what happenned to the BeBox - I think it was probably a mistake for Be to concentrate on the x86, although I can understand their reasoning. Nowadays, with Linux being the mainstream "geek" OS, platforms like the BeBox and the Pegasos have a much better chance of surviving, since people can buy a machine purely on the merits of the hardware (all open-source programs can be re-compiled to different traget platforms). Until an ARM (nicest processor IMHO) based desktop motherboard appears, the Pegasos is probably the way to go for the discerning geek (and lets face it, if the x86 platform had not been commoditised in the way it was (which led to its cheap price) noone would be using it - the original designers of the IBM PC wanted to use the Motorola 68k).
For those of you who don't know, the company behind Pegasos is focused on creating the ultimate "geek" machine. A number of Pegasos machines have been provided to various alternative OS developments, and it seems that the alternative OS market is a good niche that should allow this company to thrive.
from www.pegasosppc.com/operating_systems.php
"The following Operating Systems are in final stages of being ported to the Pegasos Platform and should be completed soon: AROS, Gentoo, Knoppix, NewOS, OpenBSD, QNX
The following Operating Systems are in the early stages of being ported to the Pegasos Platform: AmigaDE, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBeOS, OpenDarwin, Zynot
The following Operating Systems can be run on the Pegasos through emulation: Amiga OS 3.x, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X"
Personally speaking, as a fan of silent machines and a user of a PC that exclusively runs Linux, I am very tempted by this machine. I don't have to worry about the company going bust because by running Linux, I can easily switch hardware platforms should I need to, and I can play with Morphos and all this Mac stuff too.
"-and stuff asking the English on how to make tea, or even buying English (packaged, not grown) tea - the best tea comes from the country that invented it - China of course (good quality tea is also produced by Japan and Taiwan)"
Yeah, but it's not like us Brits drink tea for the authentic Chinese Tea experience - we dunk milk and sugar in it for a start. The thing is that if you want a good English cup of tea, the method described in that H2G2 entry is fine.
Although not acting in a computer game, some pretty atrocious advertising accompanied the launch of the Amiga CD32 games console in Europe.
The official "Creation" commercial for the CD32 went something like this: A young man in a white coat was welcomed to a laboratory by a scientist in another white coat. Then there was a voice-over: "I never understood why he chose *me* to share his secret." (show a CD32), "this was twice as fast, twice as powerful" (pan over the "32Bit" text on the CD32) Then he continued "and colours, so many colours", before a robot was called over to play Microcosm, a pretty impressive FMV game at the time. The game is so amazing that the robot malfunctions, the scientist hits loads of red buttons, the robot explodes, and the picture stops at "CD32 - The worlds first 32-bit games console".
Sheer quality.
Nope, afraid not. It's size and simplicity makes it very appealing, but I think I want those extra keys. I don't like the position/size of the cursor keys on the HH2, and would miss the Home/End/PageUp/PageDown, function and numeric (for NetHack and FreeCiv etc) keys.
What would be cool would be some (cheap) way of having a keyboard made with your own custom key layout. Any ideas?
Ooh, look at that "Linux 101" keyboard with the Ctrl, Caps-Lock and Esc keys in the right places. They have two layouts, 1 and 2. Layout 2 looks better to me.