I don't see the point of the economic argument at all. With growing traffic and very slow speed in some urban area. We want to make the cars go faster. But on a grander scale. How can one improve the traffic efficiency in a country, as opposed to one person gaining 5 minutes by over speeding on an unencumbered highway. If autonomous car, networked to each other and with the city grid. One can find automatically the most efficient path for all stakeholders. Safe speed limit would be far different for cars that drives automatically.

France is storing its yellow cake in its forest, below and on the side of motorways, and even below childrens playgrounds. In Europe the greens makes it impossible to build new, more efficient and safer plants because we are leaving the nuclear, they say. But on the other hand we still have the same energy need, so the only solution not to build new plants is to keep the old ones long past their due date. I don't think our centrals would sustain a level 9 earthquake + tsunami as well as the japanese ones. Nuclear with current plants in Europe is "less safe than I thought".

Simple things like looping trough regular files, fusion files, sorting items, tree manipulations ... are algorithms one couldn't do without ! How do you get from a real life situations to Classes, objects and a database schema is also worthy of interest. Also nowadays, you're going nowhere in Java if you don't, at least, understand design patterns ! And those to me are also kinds of algorithms.

I don't get it. You wouldn't object them taking a picture of you. Even though your face is unique, the length between your facial features are unique and can help identify you as precisely as fingerprints. But when it comes to fingerprints one starts freaking out .... They are legitimate reasons to be able to identify people. I think you are overeacting here. The real issue of privacy lies with the databases containing that kind of data about you. Who can retrieve that informations, if it is retrieveable, and cross-reference with other data about you. We need laws and standards, to make sure one can retains one's privacy as best as possible.

For apple fans, the locking down is a feature ! You'd never think of installing a Free and Open firmware on a Hammer ? would you ? I agree with the free argument, but I also want computers to be a commodity as easy to use as any tool and objects we use everyday. In that sense the iPad is a step further in that direction. Now if it could be open, use open standards and keep the experience. I am all for it. By the way, I guess it's gonna be hacke quite fast.

Actually if you're using IE6 they will advise you to use a modern browser, IE (8) being the first one they propose. Thus yes, in a way.

Well, I understand Coca-cola doesn't want to reveal its recipe. That's the very reason their recipe is not copyrighted. It's a trade secret. Meaning if tommorow I discover their recipe, I can start Coca Cola2 and sell it like crazy, they can't sue me. If they had copyrighted it, they would be able to sue me. But by now, the recipe would be public. Also, even if one doesn't know the recipe of Coke. It's been tested and approved by the FDA. On the other hand, the closed software your running has been approved by nothing, if the reputation of its creator. I'd rather live in a world where people ask for the sources, an where as many as possible check it. Rather than living in a black box world, where somebody is ressponsible, but we might ass well die from the blow. (It's not my fault).

I had the same feeling after seeing him at FOSDEM. He is kinda obnoxious, and yes, arrogant. But on the other hand, the more I think about his ideas the more I like them (the ideas). It's just that I find him a little too aggressive. But of course that's why I am not a top FSF activist. The same way, I like and agree with most of Dawkins ideas. In some situations I found him a little too agressive.

Merci pour la correction ;-) I take much pride in the fact you couldn't find more mistakes in my broken english.

Obviously Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is not for you. I am currently using it on all of my server. It's not my choice. But it's working really well. Indeed, If anny issues arise I always find the support I need on the internet. I understand one want's something else on one's desktop. And actually I really enjoy tasting many "edge" distro on the desktop. But for my servers I want something as stable and as supported as possible. Ubuntu is a good middleground for the IT people I work with, and Ubuntu, CentOS or RHEL would also be a good fit, regardless of their support of pulseaudio.

Has any of you read TFA. Belgium demands private informations about BELGIAN USERS ..., "The United States and Belgium have a formal international treaty which the prosecutor should have followed to properly seek information from a US company." Had they gone trough the proper, channels the might have well received it legally, since Belgium has special agreements with the U.S on such matters, and it goes without saying that it goes both ways. What I really don't understand is why they didn't do it the right way, and didn't understand how laughable it was to fine Yahoo when it didn't work out as expected.

Can't you see the notorious disruptive behaviour of the flemish people in this thread ? As far as I know they are still belgians ;-) Well I don't want to offend anyone, but I was offendended reading some of these post. I had noticed our ineffective politicians, made a big deal out of stupid little quarels, but I am astounded to see that some belgians start to feel so much hate towards each others. This sound too far right and extremist to me. Belgium never intended of being a part of France, neither of the Netherlands. Actually the most and best protected minority in Europe are is the German speaking community leaving in Belgium ... not the Waloons. Waloons and Flemish are fighting over Brussels, failing to understand that Brussels doesn't belong to either one of them. It is a federal state of Belgium with the same rights as the 2 other federals states : Walonia and Flanders.

I have nothing about individuals, but about the very exploitation of wealth difference between our countries and less wealthy countries in order to get cheaper labor. This is unethical to me.

Right, I don't have anny issues with outsourcing locally. Since the closer I outsource, the closer 1 hour of my work is worth one hour work of somebody else I outsource my work. But we are outsourcing very far on the very basis that 1 hour of my work in a rich country is economically worth 50 hours of some other people in poor countries. This is not right. It is radically different and unfair.

When people won't hire me because the can hire indians, romanians or whatever else worker that will cost them less. They are actually disabling me of getting a job, unless I can offer the same service for the same price. To keep my job I'll have to accept less money, more hours or whatever to make up for that unfair competition. I hope I don't sound racist, because I am not, it surely has to do with the poor choice of wording.

Actually "everyone" doesn't get to keep their job, but happen to lose it to "superior" foreigners. One job for a "superior" foreigner is one job less for us. Outsourcing of labor, isn't that far a concept to slavery. Except that nowadays we have to compete with the slaves of this economic system. It shouldn't be indians that tells us how we should work and in which conditions, but rather them asking to work in the same conditions that we enjoy here.

KDE 4.2 in Manrdriva can work really well. It's a very enjoyable DE and it's a world appart from KDE 4.2 in Kubuntu. Kubuntu 8.04 was something coming from hell, I felt like s.b. did a bad joke to me. Windows 98 was a monument of stability compared to it. ON MY HARDWARE, it failed completely. But, since I used to love KDE, I decided to try it in a distro that implements it correctly "Mandriva" or "Suse". Since Mandriva was the most recent released distro I picked that one and I was amazed. I learned to love KDE 3.5 and got really used to it. And of course it's not yet the perfect. But really I have no issue working with KDE 4.2, everything works for me. I think the community needs give a fresh look at KDE in distro where it works well.