>have you read the article ? :)

TBH, no. I just wanted to mention that French statisticians are no dummies, and the fact is that thousands of people died from the heat wave, for various reasons.

>"The new estimate comes a day after the French Parliament >released a harshly worded report... "

Ha! Talk is cheap...

>it seems their bosses have some other opinion, since they did not >blame anthropogenic global warming.

You had me smile there. It's no wonder, really : people may be more 'ecologically aware' these days, but campaigns still cost a lot of money, and the funds come from businesses, if you get my drift...

I know this seems sarcastic, but I have been following environmental news since 1993.

>Thank you for the comparison with the "deniers of climate change", I >am honored by it ... ... well, honored if I am am allowed to pick >which "denier" to be compared with.

The anthropogenic part of global warming is the subject of debate, but it is getting an ever larger percentage of responsability in litterature, as far as I can tell?

In any case, I am amazed at having watched politicians posture for the last twenty years, while doing next to nothing for the environment, if not worse, I mean actively financing private interests to destroy it :-(

We will see other strongly worded reports, I am sure.

>This class of vulnerability has been known about since at least 2003.

Yes, I read another comment to that effect.

So, why is MS suddenly issuing an out-of-band security update then? There was plenty of time for quiet regular updates before.

>Well, there's the typical cultist response from a Warmist - "You pointed out something that is embarrassing to my faith so Shut Up"!

It's not embarrassing at all.

All kinds of problems happen with sensors, this is just one of them. The number of monitiors, as well as validation tests, compensate for them.

Scientists are not usually stupid.

"and many, like the French, are very soap-thrifty"

Dude, I'm French, and I'm disappointed when women smell soap :-(

"They just compared with the death in the previous year but did not adjust to the population structure."

FYI, the statisticians that calculated these figures are extremely highly trained mathematicians, with 10 to 15 years of specialized studies on their resume, sometimes more.

Your way of disparaging their work is very similar to the disinformation tactics used by deniers of climate change.

I, for one, really enjoy that name. It really conveys the right feeling, as seems to be confirmed by the onslaught of the schills against it.

Disclaimer : I'm a French programmer

This may be because I had a twenty hour work day, but I had a good laugh with your post.

If someone has mod points...

who says they need one? they only have to pay for a contractor instead of licence fees. And they can also replace him, if need be.

It also has an outstanding documentation

>I am a huge fan of open source, but it rarely comes with enterprise level support, most cases the best you can do is a a forum or IRC Channel

I second that. Most cases, that is actually the best you can do : very competent, often instantaneous support. No charge

>So Yes you will save 1000's on licensing costs (THANKS BSA!), but you will spend 40K a year on an IT guy to provide support.

Hahaha! Right... that, my friend sounds like pure FUD to me, because in my experience (software for government organizations) quite the opposite is true.

Proprietary software actually very rarely sells at the official listed price, discounts of 80% being common. But the maintenance contracts are for a percentage of the *official price*. Those contracts can run for much for than what you quote. I do not see that the service provided by the very expensive executives that promote them is better than the forum you mentionned above. Quite the opposite, in fact.

+1

I have been working full time with linux desktops for the past 6-7 years. Everything just works, and upgrades too. Installs are a breeze, and *much* faster than w/ windows.

It is very easy to try also : just burn a Knoppix CD and boot a machine with it : very likely you'll have a complete desktop, office suite included, and a working internet connection if your LAN allows it, all in a matter of minutes.

I sometimes have to do work on customers' machines, I can't believe how everything seems so cumbersome now in the Windows world.

>Been around since ~1997 too. Perhaps technical discussions went on here some time before that?

I have read comments to the same effect in other discussions (can't find one at the moment).

I'll admit I noticed a sort of dilution of the technical level of late, but it may be the price to pay for popularity. I followed some very interesting discussions here, and recently.

Besides, who could follow high level technical discussions about so many subjects? For instance, the posts below yours, that quickly explain why GPUs are good at password cracking, are _good_ information for me.

Hi,

You write :

>I am surprised at the cynicism about Bitcoins

and then

>Well and no central company making a fortune with the digital currency

Well, I'd say you answered yourself : the few people currently making a fortune are hellbent on keeping it that way. They don't want things to be shaken up at all.

Hu? I have examples to the contrary.

I have been installing an Access application on clients' desktops for the past ten years; an option to switch between single/multiple instances in the taskbar as you open forms was added in the 2000 and 2003 versions, and -thankfully- dropped thereafter, still causing me grief both ways (because of the changes in user's interaction with the software).

All that time, I've been working happily all day long on a linux only system, and sending compatible LibreOffice(*) documents to clients that have all possible versions of windows.

And I am absolutely miserable whenever I have to work on that dreadful windows 7.

(* : Since the fork from OpenOffice, obviously)

Seconded. I heard as much from real life hippies: those near industrial hemp fields(*) pull their hair out.

As far as the Dupont story goes, I read they got hemp banned so it would not be able to compete with coton. The latter needs a lot of various chemicals to grow, whereas hemp is naturally robust.

(* : writing from France)