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As technology upends industries and lifestyles at breakneck pace, the Old Continent is not producing any of the online giants like Google, eBay or Facebook. Its best and brightest prefer to emigrate to Silicon Valley, or sell their ideas on to U.S. firms before they have a chance to establish themselves.
The European Union's top executives in Brussels are trying to rectify that with a long-term plan of reforms and incentives but face an uphill battle. The 28-nation bloc is, above all, lacking in the risk-taking culture and financial networks needed to grow Internet startups into globally dominant companies.
Europe's relatively cautious attitude to investment stands out as one of the biggest hurdles—and among the most difficult to change. Investors in Europe want to see that a young company can generate revenue from the start. Europe's many high-technology companies are focused on manufactured goods that can be sold right away to generate revenue—industrial equipment, energy turbines, high-speed trains, medical devices, and nuclear energy.
By contrast, Internet companies often have little to no revenue at the beginning. Twitter and Facebook, for example, first focused on building up their user numbers. Only once they were established as global forces did they put more attention to making money, through advertising and other strategies.
This difference in mentality stands out as one of the key reasons that Europe has fewer venture capital firms and less investment in startups than the U.S. or Asia.Over the past five years, U.S. venture capitalists spent $167 billion on new business ideas compared with some $20 billion by their European counterparts, according to the National Venture Capital Association.
http://phys.org/news/2015-09-europe-isnt-googles-facebooks.html
(Score: 2, Informative) by number6 on Wednesday September 23 2015, @11:31AM
and without their pioneering efforts the term 'online giant' can be stripped from all those US companies ......
Linus Torvalds [wikipedia.org] - (FIN) - creator of Linux operating system
Fabrice Bellard [wikipedia.org] - (FRA) - creator of the FFMPEG and QEMU software projects
Niklaus Wirth [wikipedia.org] - (CHE) - creator of Pascal programming language
Tim Berners-Lee [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - inventor of the World Wide Web
Ted Codd [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - invented the relational model for database management
Stephanie "Steve" Shirley [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - pioneer of women in IT
Martha Lane Fox [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - pioneering digital economy entrepreneur
Donald Davies [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - developed the concept of packet switching in computer networking
Clive Sinclair [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - Home computer visionary
James Clark [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - author of 'groff' and 'expat', notable contributor to open-source software and XML
(Score: 3, Informative) by zugedneb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @12:34PM
Mainframes and the Unix Revolution - Computerphile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rPPqm44xLs [youtube.com]
watch this for some insight about computing in europe...
Linus Torvalds copied an industrial operating system from the usa. He did not just sat down to have a shit, and when he came out he happened to reimplement unix, just by chance, yes? Let's not mention where Linus would be without RMS and so forth...
Fabrice Bellard "created" nothing. He IMPLEMENTED known and published algorithms, even called codecs. I can do that also, since I do have a background in signal processing.
The rest on that list are just people doing their job in the field they choose.
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 1) by pgc on Wednesday September 23 2015, @02:02PM
Did Torvald, or did he not, create Linux?
(Score: 2) by zugedneb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @06:40PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX [wikipedia.org]
He "created" linux in the same sense that "wine" (win emulator) was created.
Also, if I remember what I read, he announced it so early, like "look guys I have version 0.00001" or some shit, that it was more about people joining and contributing, than he creating anything.
So, no, in my eyes, it's just religion to say that the big names actually did anything.
A proof of me being correct, in my own eyes, is the fact that "leader personality" is so important to humans, that if someone has it, a lot will be attributed to that person...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 2, Insightful) by zugedneb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @07:42PM
Except for Stallman... He really has done a lot, more than Linus.
Also, on forums at least, he is less loved.
But I guess having a leader personality, but not bowing for the narcissism in the human, is bad.
Stallman works, and talks, gets tired and burned out, but is barely admitted as human. I guess he demands too much of people...
Also, people who use the words "invent" and "create" seldom understand what those words mean, or how things actually are done. I guess education is wasted on some, if it is so easy for them to hail on man for the work of many...
Also, yet again, Linus did never had to complain about competent programmers not being available, so by that time, there was a lot of people with knowledge in the field. This means that someone would have done something, he just was the first, or the first who had the right personality.
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 1) by pgc on Wednesday September 23 2015, @02:13PM
Stephanie "Steve" Shirley [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - pioneer of women in IT
How on earth do you pioneer women? Being the first one to mount them?
And how does that fit in the row?
(Score: 2) by Teckla on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:50PM
If Linux had never existed, *BSD would have taken its place.
However, I agree that people worldwide have contributed to what we have now. It's silly to think the U.S. was a "necessity."