it sounds a little bit too whimpy to say euro follows a tradition, that brings to the wrong people the money and the jobs. (sl). the peter principle is known everywhere. therefore no mercy. simplemente apply, don´t cry. i find a lot of euro-projects stupid. sometimes i get the feeling, research is done as long until all major player have got a bit from the pie. and sometimes - tragic enough - after listening to some project descriptions, i can just leave the room with the conclusio: well, at least some people have found a way how to survive the next year. is this worse as the vc (thanks chris!) system?

it´s too austriacentric just to mention the axis germany - france, there is un otra historical fight between: france and inglaterra, there is the south with its own history and there is the east that once followed different survival tactics under the cover. and not all of them are forgotten. and far north? no sé, just know aki kaurismäki.

euroland in my opinion often enough follows a simple role model: "everything was going on so nice and cosy and comftable; than somebody called the clarion call and everybody was trying to put their trousers on to get on to their horses." (raymond steele about 3g) the results are obvious and well known by now.

I got to defend my snippet although I had a little feeling of whimpiness myself. I tried to describe gradual differences in competence and I think it is extremely important that Europe as a community admit for once that we are less competent in software. VC has certain advantages over bank money and state money. If American vc is incompetent than European vc is ridicolous. Financing of research and good projects is important for a craft culture to grow, build and mature. This mixture of survival, self-exploitiation and robbing of naive investors can't go on forever.

I mentioned Germany and France in answer to a supposition that my remarks on differences where generated by a feeling alone. I did not want to negate the argument wholly and mentioned France and Germany as the too many exponents of European perfectness and the old Roman superiority feeling. I did not say this is a good way. I also wanted to give a hint about attidude differences in Euroland. I did not speak about Russia. I could have mentioned that they have a deep literate and mathematical tradition and are duct tape magicians in the extreme. All of that would have made my argument even longer than it was already. Oje!