Text 14273, 85 rader
Skriven 2010-04-26 14:54:04 av Maurice Kinal (1:261/38)
     Kommentar till en text av Johan Zwiekhorst
Ärende: discorporate and come with me
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Hey Johan!

> The word is pronounced like 'canadace', by the way.

Even better to know.  Thank you.

> first economic union called BeNeLux

That is new to me although I was aware that there was a long standing
cooperation within that part of the world for quite some time.

> absorbed by the European Union

Much talk in Canada about the EU and trade.  Also I believe Canada has economic
ties with the ESA.  I don't think we're a full member though.

> Is that localized in Quebec or at the Canadian national
> parlement?

Both.  The Bloc is a federal party despite it being an entirely Quebec entity.

> such a small number of francophones would have WAY too much
> influence on a national level.

Many Canadians have made that exact arguement.  Personally I am neutral, mostly
because I have no real say over the issue one way or the other, and do see
advantages to it simply because it distracts politicians from doing any real
damage.  :-)

> As usual, the big problems are created by francophone
> polititians, not by francophone citizens.

Sounds familiar but I'd be inclined to add the nonfrancophone politians as
well.  Mixing them all up in Parliment almost guarentees impotency which can be
a good thing for the rest of us.  Not always but I think on the major issues it
works out, or at least so far it has.  :::knock on wood:::

> Throughout the history of Europe, the Big Three (England,
> Germany and France)

I thought Germany only became a major player after the Napoleonic War(s) and I
believe we can safely blame the French for that.  ;-)

Before that then Spain would have been one of the big players but argueably
they'd have been more aligned with whatever the Hapsburg's were controlling
given that the Spanish monarchy were a branch of the Hapsburgs ... I think they
were.

> middle of all that commotion and was taken by invading forces
> all the time? Right: Belgium.

Yes.  I believe that goes all the way back to the Roman times.

> Especially Flanders

There is a national poem here in Canada about Flanders.  We hear it every Nov
11th.

> I have always worked with text interfaces in the past, but only
> up until the early nineties, when I was exposed to OS/2.

My brief experience with OS/2 was a bit later than that, BBS's aside. Did
notice that the best BBS's from a user's perspective were the Maximus ones on
OS/2 but only on dialup or POTS if you prefer.  As for any networking, POTS
included, a Unix based server was the way to go and still is.

> I know it can all be done using a text interface, but it's
> cumbersome and why would you want to?

I don't.  You're the one that wants office software.  ;-)

Perhaps a better question would be, what are you currently using on Ubuntu for
word processing and why?

> For the challenge of it? ;-)

I've done it in the past for that exact reason.  However I've found more
interesting challenges.  Latley it is to get this new gcc-4.5.0 and a linux
kernel optimized for 64 bit Atom processors.  Not quite there yet.

La vie est belle,
Maurice

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