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Re: future tech - OFF TOPIC
Ira Abramov wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Apr 1998, Miki Shapiro wrote:
>
> well said Miki, thanks for trying to help out :-) but I have a nagging
> feeling we haven't heard the last of it yet...
>
> > by the way, all ISDN development for linux is in germany for some reason
> > and the S.U.S.E distro handles it best. do they give out ISDN for free
> > in germany or something?
>
> some of the first/cheapest/best cards for PCs came from German companies
> like TELES, and the German phone network was one of the first to make ISDN
> cheap and usable for the public in Europe, that sums it up. the fact this
> is so painfully evident (nobody complains about SCSI driver and kernel
> work being almost entirely developped in the Silicon Valley) is that
> germans have this proudness virus about their language and culture, and
> will be very adamant about language in FAQs, sources and docs. very stupid
> if you ask me, in these days of globally distributed Open sources. I have
> twice posted questions in English to their mailing list in the past (when
> I was trying to test linux with equipment from citicom) and got answers in
> Deutsch. Sheisheads, what can I say?
>
I shouldn't feel like having to defend the Germans, but Israelis have a tendency
to feel slighted by Germans which very often stems from different cultures. So
here goes, after quite a few visits to Germany, and discussions with quite a
few Germans, it appears that unlike the Hebrew speaking community, the
German community is quite a bit larger. Even in Universities they use German
books (many translated from English). I once thought of buying 3rd year Physics
book (which doubles for MSc as well) in Germany in a university town and to my
surprise they only keep it in German (and this is probably not a high volume
book).
Anyhow, the bottomline is that they really don't speak English that well even
many
of the university graduates. This is not so much because of proudness but
because
they don't have the need. I reckon, if Israelis had all their books in Hebrew as
well
as movies, we probably would have had some pretty lousy English. However unlike
the infamous French, they're usually mostly helpful when approached in English
even if in somewhat broken German-English.
P.S.
I can also testify that they're pretty good medics after a motorcycle fall
I've had in
Australia in some remote area where after 2 hours of drying in the sun some 4
Germans appeared who did not speak English but were perfectly good at bandaging.
Ofcourse, they did joke among themselves that they should charge me but they
didn't
know I've understood. Ever since I've got some softspot for non English speaking
Germans...
Yuval