It also appears that a big, big part of the systems is invisible: a real time calculator, the size of which is unknown. But it may guzzle some Watts in my opinion....
As for the political aspects of the affair, well... It is certainly very unelegant from the US space authorities to publicize European spy satellites trajectories, and we cannot get accustomed to the sheer amount of unelegance that has flown eastward to Britanny since 2003.
Next, I doubt amateurs could do what Graves does, especially since trajectories can change, thanks to usefull thrusters. Graves is apparently a real time system...
And by the way, would it detect incomming balistic missiles too? That may be useful for the likes of Aster.
We French are generally too ambitious when it comes to weapon systems (not enough money for so many lethal ideas...), but we provide some amusing toys, indeed. I always wondered what were the real possibilities of this ship (http://www.netmarine.net/bat/divers/monge/photos.htm), for instance...
Last but not least: thanks to all Americans that are now bashing French haters, we have heard enough, your support is appreciated. I hope Sarkozy will not be the fool he pretends to be.:-)
Another point of concern in Michael Asher Daily Tech blog entry is this assertion about a "Y2K bug" that would have corrupted 1998 data.
Time warps are daily tech oddities.
And by the way: currently is the really _worse_ summer that Paris has seen for a long time. Temperature below 25C, clouds and rain. Place it after the warmest winter heard of +4 or +5C _above_ the average!) and contemplate genuine local anomalies.
A good indication that the climate changes is not absolute measurements here or there. It is the sheer amount of exceptionnal observations, of broken records, of new bounds attained.
Well. I just bought an iceberg to speculate. I sell a put for below zero Celsius natural water on year 2050, 4658798870 tons, delivered by sea. My current price is 1M $. If someone has some dollar to spare and a new speculative market to invade, I provide one. Iceberg for sale!!!
I mean, come on, would you Australians to define scientific standards? I won't!
For starters, those guys believe the South is on the top and North is at the bottom of the maps! I feel upside down just thinking of it. And on which side of the road are they driving already? North or south? See: you cannot trust those guys!
Second, the issue with "the" current "reference" in Paris (there are three cylinders in fact) is that is loses atoms sometimes, so its mass diminishes. I mean it is still The Kilogramme but the kilogramme is not what it was some years ago when the grass was greener and the boys were nice and, hum! Anyway, how would that be different with yet another physical object? Wouldn't it lose some random atoms from time to time?
Third, it is well known that international standards are defined in Paris: the internationnal skirts lenght association, the general contest of retreat speed and the cheese-smelling index are all defined in my city and everybody agrees with that. M. Sarkozy has just battled staunchly with M. Puttin to assert our rights on those essential fields.
Finally, I suspect that the kilogramme may be re-defined in October 2007 in Paris (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogramme): a meeting of the Bureau Internationnal des Poids et Mesures (BIPM, Internationnal Weights and Measures Bureau in French) is scheduled this year.
To put it simply: your answer is a pack of propaganda at a great scale. <p> There were no WMD in Irak at the time Blair and Bush decided to invade, that's why the inspectors found nothing. Please take some time to read the official US documents about that, from the Iraq Survey Group for instance. <p> I am sure you can find them in full and cite them correctly if a quote contradicts me. <p> Oh, by the way, Chirac never threatened to put France veto to _any_ military action against Iraq _forever_. On the contrary, he stressed that he would vote "no" under "the current crcumstances", i.e. as long as the UN inspectors were reporting that progress was made and that they needed some more time before concluding. Want to have it in full? It is <a href="http://www.elysee.fr/elysee/elysee.fr/franca is/interventions/interviews_articles_de_presse_et_ interventions_televisees/2003/mars/interview_telev isee_du_president_de_la_republique_sur_tf1_et_fran ce_2.935.html">there </a> (in French, quite evidently). <p> Best kisses from Paris.
"we wouldn't have needed to goto war." There _was_ _no_ _need_. With or without Sarkozy.
"But what they don't understand is that the reasons for going into Iraq before then consisted entirely on the fact that Iraq had failed to disarm [...]" No. They _had_ disarmed and they had _hidden_ it. The inspectors never stated that Iraq was not cooperating in 1991: on the contrary, their last communication in the UN security council was stating that Iraq was cooperating better, even if it was not perfect, and this statement was the basis of Chirac's refusal to agree with Bush.
And so on.
Everything I read in your post was false, though I have not finished it...
It is true if one has the opportunity to answer the attacks, which he had not.
During one month, and frequently several times a day, all big medias (but Liberation perhaps) have stressed that he was "down in the polls" and finished, they relayed the blatantly false PS-UMP talking point that he had "no programm", and that he would find nobody to govern with (good joke !). I would better say "hammered". Oh, and he was "flip-flopping" and "soft on crime" too. Good! Now, the new prez loves so much the country that he just left it "to breath a little". Do we stink so much?
You have made it clear that you cannot properly read a text when its general meaning displeases you.
I am sure that you know the famous words "We, the people" engraved at the heart of the US constitution: they spell out that this federal state comes from then people, for the people. The mechanisms by which this is processed could be discussed and changed, but those words mean that the government emanates from the people: it is (or should not be) an ugly untamed beast devouring your tiny budget. Its funding is (should be) legitimate and decided by the people or its representants.
The "Declaration de l'homme et du citoyen" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_R ights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen) written in France in the same years during which your constitution was polished deals with both property and taxes, mind you.
Was that what you were refering to? And what was your idea again?
One question for instance: does he want more protectionism or less? He wants to stop replacing one over two civil servants that goes into retirement. The current government wanted that too, and he was the n°2 by the way ("minister of state"). has he achieved anything in this field? No? Was it all for Chirac "liberal bias" or could it be possible that the current and future team is as bad as the formers and especially badly helped by an homogeneous but stupid, old, national assembly?
By the way: nobody, nor my brother nor your girlfriend, I guess, believes he can fulfill his oath about unemployments being brought back to 5% in 5 years.
We'll see. The hope bearing candidate got nearly 7 millions votes (over 44) and was eliminated on the first round. His budget was a tenth of that of Sarkozy, he was attacked viciously on both sides, betrayed by the pollsters and supported by _no_ media whatsoever but one weekly publication. that is not _that_ bad. The fight goes on.
Well, you are perfectly right, and the same may be said, perhaps, of whatever has gained much value and cannot be easily divided: problems arise when one heir wants to buy the shares of the others and cannot afford it.
As for the example in the Ile de Ré, it is certainly sad, but the same goes on in Paris and so on, perhaps on a lesser scale. The issue lies not in the inheritance tax in my opinion, but in the conjunction of several factors: - very low interests rates, - big money comming from abroad from -for instance- Britons paid three time more in a country where the cost of living is four time that of Paris: purchasing power parity between currencies is a myth, it is easy for them to buy here. Not sure they are all welcome. - a belief from everybody in my generation that we will have _no_ decent retirement considering the pilage currently underway by our parent's generation (I am not 40 years old yet), - the fact that there are more and more single people following divorces: separate houses are needed, that fuel the buying fever. - Frogs love to own their houses. I believe the figure is that more than 60% of the French owns their dwellings. - and more generally, more money comming to the very affluent, Bush's base: some places are hyped.
So what is your solution? The inheritance tax is just a part of the issue in the Ile de Ré; part of the solution could be, for some time, to rent that so-valuable house to reimburse the mortgage...
You are right: some extremly smart people like my brother believe this guy, they believe he want to change thinghs and that he knows how.
I really wonder why they believe him.
He has been the leader of the UMP for 4 years, a political party that : - has a wide majority in the Senate and the Parliament, detains 7 of the 9 seats in our High Court. - has strongly supported the government with some arguments only, provoked by Sarkozy himself to blow any hopes for Mr. de Villepin. - has such strong ties with the big medias that they openly campaigned for him, or covertly as Le Monde who decided, god still wonder why), that a vote for Mr. Bayrou would have been "undemocratic". The reason being that all polls were predicting that Sarko would lose against Bayrou.
Sarkozy has been a Finance minister before, and the debt has strived under his rule at an unknown pace, much more than under the socialist government, mind you.
But be sure that the Great Decider (tm) will solve everything by the virtues of his magic gaze!
I am glad your girlfriend knows a lot about economics. I studied that too in the Sorbonne. And I am not impressed by Sarkozy.
Your question is fully biased and I am pleased to blow it.
"government getting one last shot at looting personal wealth" is a very subjective point of view. - First of all, most of the money the "government" collects actually _creates value_, for instance under the guise of quite efficient health services, clean streets, museums and free education for all, TV programms, roads, etc... So those services may or may not be provided with more efficiency by the private sector, but all that money is not wasted. - public taxes are decided by a democratic instance, private taxes are not. For instance, I would rather escape the costs of the "marketting" stuff included in cars, Ms Windows Vista licences with my PC, etc... They are very expensive, as hidden as possible and much less democratically decided.
And finally: - considering that no poor people currently pays any inheritance tax, - considering that most people who currently pay this tax can afford it very well, - considering that most heirs do not deserve their good fate, and that many of them have already received a very significant heritage under the guise of privileged conditions at the beginning of their life (address book, healthy food and home, education, free housing, cars, etc... during 50 years...) - considering that I just paid some inheritance fees, mind you, and that Mr. Sarkozy will waste them in gifts to his really wealthy pals who escape most taxes thanks to numerous and cunningly designed-for-them fiscal holes, - I am all _against_ any suppression of the inheritance tax.
The sole question as for me relates to enterprises being sold for cheap because the owner has died and the heirs cannot afford to pay the related taxes. Most of the time, it has not been properly prepared, but this should be addressed...
In France, we have conservative politicians who somewhat favor business and increase the public debt.
The aim of Sarkozy is different : - increasing debt a lot (both public and private)! - by favoring the rich people and the big corp.
I had hoped that Slashdot would have definitely forgotten France. Instead of that, this -probably real bad- news is on the first page, one of so few first-page news about France in a year. (sigh).
What is he talking about: - suppressing inheritance taxes - easing private borowing of money (i.e. increasing bank profits for short time benefits and lifetime interests for poor people) - "an ownership society" - he is glorifying the "France of the Crusades". (discourse in besançon, March 13th 2007) - "le travail rend libre" (one of the offical videos, first sentence) - he thought some months ago that "France had been arrogant in 2003" while attempting to stop the Iraq war. - if he survives two more weeks, he will realise his public lifelong dream: becoming president in place of The President. - he is a lawyer with a speciality: fiscality. I have not written tax evasion even if you read that.
Technology has brought instant money transfers without borders. This has brought many possibilities to crooks for moving, hiding, stealing money through swift with the complicity of the banks or the very big companies.
And the laws have lagged behind: most Laws will not apply or not quickly enough to prevent this kind of thievery, a judge will take years to trace funds from one place to another (it will have left then) and there are much holes and fiscal paradises that are exploited to loot in a legal way. A recent estimation by an international group (the GAFI as far as I remeber) estimated that 20% of those huge funds were mafia money.
This system is imposed to most nations in the world, and never endorsed by their people. I am sorry to say that Britain and the US are flagships of that, or perceived as such everywhere. Now, Halliburton simply proves that most super-rich people are stateless people. The US has been somewhat protected from that phenomenon by its size and a remarkable national pride, but this pride even money may corrupt...
Well USA, you are impacting us all with your system through your power. It is only due time to amend it in many ways (the environment, the fascinatinon for money are two).
And what occur the garge owners use their remote-control? Does this jam the Airforce frequency??
8:30 am: "- Chief, we have fired the missile! "- Hum, which missile? "- Well, The Missile, ya know! "- Ah..... Ah? Who has given that order? "- Well, you know, Washington signals nowadays are rather mixed but I confirm the emission was on the usual frequency and has been repeated frantically in the last minutes. According to the Terrestrial Message Bluring Scheme we have had for some years now, the Message came from many locations but with the same words in it". "- Hum... It certainly comes from the White House then. Big affair."
eheh... I _was_ agreeing with him. About my sig : - I am not very good at finding signatures. - And I am regularly fed up of being unable to fill in posts with non-us-ascii characters in it: slashhdot will just spout such HTML code nonsens whenever I try to type in an accentuated letter (disclaimer : I am French). - so this is a protestation rather then a funny signature. Indeed. Not funny at all.
Unless you spend half of your weeks to roam forums about this game, there's no way to understand this article.
I was hoping that just reading games.slashdot.org twice a month would be enough to make me appear a shining gammer amongst my friends but... I just cannot read it anymore!
Gosh... then, what were those acronyms again? UDE, CCQ, MtG, MiG, THAT, RTFA, IANAL...
... some more (French, sorry) 400,000 PCs are to swith to Open Office in 2007 in the oublic sector, folowing a successfull move in the Gendarmerie (rural police, 90,000 PCs).
- A summary here or in the official French annouce.
Some Open Source headways in Europe, indeed, can clearly be seen in EU site.
Quite heartening indeed! Maybe the big conservative companies will finaly notice this trend. I am sure Microsoft did.
Errr... This is apparently a "real" PC as you say, with AbiWord, Gimp, a spreadsheet, and some other apps. And a browser & mailer certainly!
Nice or original features: - the hot line apparently plan to seize control of the PC whenever one has an issue. Just like in any company indeed, just with much more logs. - they will not accept whatever hardware : they sell or rent some. I hope they will contribute to the drivers.
Licensing & privacy issues are to be looked after.
Some more information in French: http://www.easyneuf.fr/flash/ (the official launch date is October the 15th) http://www.silicon.fr/articles/16846/Neuf-Cegetel- lance-EasyGate-un-croisement-entre-une-box-ADSL-et -un-PC.html https://linuxfr.org/2006/09/22/21362.html
By the way, have you heard recently that Free.fr was to invest 1.0 Bn Euro in the next years to provide ultra-high bandwidth access in big French cities (i.e. 50 Mbit/s by optical fibers, possibly with symetric data-rates, for 30 Euros a month with triple pay)?
Maybe will I finaly lend a core to the CERN for free...
Beyond HD-TV, I wonder if very high speed Internet access, multi-core personnal PCs and virtualisation technologies (not sure for this one) will allow us to share our CPUs and our disks. What would you think?
And since this is now a many-stupid thoughts in one late post, let me put some more in it: - this reminds me of a ThinkGeek T-Shirt claiming "will work for bandwith": all you now need is 30 € a month... - I will be happy when Linus comes back to Europe. I do not even believe he thinks about it, but let's dream. Linus? 50 Mb/s nearly for free, both ways, with free phone to the US and half of the Free World? We've got good Belgian or Irish or German beers too, come on, come back!!!!
Guys. Last time I was taught about this, this came right down from the Latin language... In French, the singular is "scénario", and the plural may be "scénarios" (common) or "scénarii" (rare, direct from the Latin). Note the funny accent on the "E" which is no Latin sprach whatsoever !-)
Anyway, no need to boast any moral superiority there.
Implementing other companies intellectual property, licenced or not, would certainly explain why they would hide the code. But they may also simply be afraid to use patented technology without knowing it, or to become easier targets for undue litigation in this field. Hiding the code somehow protect them from being sued. Another kind of "security by obscurity", legal style?
I am sorry to annouce that tunnels can be badly damaged by simple means. I do not know for this precise one, maybe it is very wide and high, NY style indeed. But just have a look at what happened in the Mont Blanc tunnel between France and Italy some years ago, or in the Gothard in Switzerland: fire.
Put together a long tunnel, packed with people and, more importantly, vehicules. Choose the right time, when the traffic jam crams them into the tunnel with no easy escape. Put fire to two several vehicles with enough fuel in them, and preferably with some high-temperature inflammable load, generating lots of heat and fumes. Pich fools to ignite, watch TV.
The mont Blanc tunnel was no terrorist plot as far as we know, but the fire went so intense quickly that they just found melted lorries and cars, no bones nor teeth. The fumes were deadly. The tunnel was severely dammaged by the intense heat and closed for lenghty months.
And how much would that cost? Stolen lorries, 4 free-of-charge-ready-to-die terrorists, minimum coordination... Well, I do not know this NY tunnel, maybe this would fail with only some dozens casualty. Ahem...
From a very different perspective, it has been predicted recently that the lower the Republican party figures in the polls, the higher the probability to hear of "red alerts" from anonymous official cowards. There you are, according to the polls.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.onera.fr/photos/instexp/graves.php
http://www.onera.fr/dprs/graves/index.php
It also appears that a big, big part of the systems is invisible: a real time calculator, the size of which is unknown. But it may guzzle some Watts in my opinion....
As for the political aspects of the affair, well... It is certainly very unelegant from the US space authorities to publicize European spy satellites trajectories, and we cannot get accustomed to the sheer amount of unelegance that has flown eastward to Britanny since 2003.
Next, I doubt amateurs could do what Graves does, especially since trajectories can change, thanks to usefull thrusters. Graves is apparently a real time system...
And by the way, would it detect incomming balistic missiles too? That may be useful for the likes of Aster.
We French are generally too ambitious when it comes to weapon systems (not enough money for so many lethal ideas...), but we provide some amusing toys, indeed. I always wondered what were the real possibilities of this ship (http://www.netmarine.net/bat/divers/monge/photos.htm), for instance...
Last but not least: thanks to all Americans that are now bashing French haters, we have heard enough, your support is appreciated. I hope Sarkozy will not be the fool he pretends to be. :-)
Another point of concern in Michael Asher Daily Tech blog entry is this assertion about a "Y2K bug" that would have corrupted 1998 data.
Time warps are daily tech oddities.
And by the way: currently is the really _worse_ summer that Paris has seen for a long time. Temperature below 25C, clouds and rain. Place it after the warmest winter heard of +4 or +5C _above_ the average!) and contemplate genuine local anomalies.
A good indication that the climate changes is not absolute measurements here or there. It is the sheer amount of exceptionnal observations, of broken records, of new bounds attained.
Well. I just bought an iceberg to speculate. I sell a put for below zero Celsius natural water on year 2050, 4658798870 tons, delivered by sea. My current price is 1M $. If someone has some dollar to spare and a new speculative market to invade, I provide one. Iceberg for sale!!!
I mean, come on, would you Australians to define scientific standards? I won't!
For starters, those guys believe the South is on the top and North is at the bottom of the maps! I feel upside down just thinking of it. And on which side of the road are they driving already? North or south? See: you cannot trust those guys!
Second, the issue with "the" current "reference" in Paris (there are three cylinders in fact) is that is loses atoms sometimes, so its mass diminishes. I mean it is still The Kilogramme but the kilogramme is not what it was some years ago when the grass was greener and the boys were nice and, hum! Anyway, how would that be different with yet another physical object? Wouldn't it lose some random atoms from time to time?
Third, it is well known that international standards are defined in Paris: the internationnal skirts lenght association, the general contest of retreat speed and the cheese-smelling index are all defined in my city and everybody agrees with that. M. Sarkozy has just battled staunchly with M. Puttin to assert our rights on those essential fields.
Finally, I suspect that the kilogramme may be re-defined in October 2007 in Paris (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogramme): a meeting of the Bureau Internationnal des Poids et Mesures (BIPM, Internationnal Weights and Measures Bureau in French) is scheduled this year.
Best kisses from Earth.
To put it simply: your answer is a pack of propaganda at a great scale.a is/interventions/interviews_articles_de_presse_et_ interventions_televisees/2003/mars/interview_telev isee_du_president_de_la_republique_sur_tf1_et_fran ce_2.935.html">there </a> (in French, quite evidently).
<p>
There were no WMD in Irak at the time Blair and Bush decided to invade, that's why the inspectors found nothing. Please take some time to read the official US documents about that, from the Iraq Survey Group for instance.
<p>
I am sure you can find them in full and cite them correctly if a quote contradicts me.
<p>
Oh, by the way, Chirac never threatened to put France veto to _any_ military action against Iraq _forever_. On the contrary, he stressed that he would vote "no" under "the current crcumstances", i.e. as long as the UN inspectors were reporting that progress was made and that they needed some more time before concluding. Want to have it in full? It is <a href="http://www.elysee.fr/elysee/elysee.fr/franc
<p>
Best kisses from Paris.
That's hogwash.
"we wouldn't have needed to goto war."
There _was_ _no_ _need_. With or without Sarkozy.
"But what they don't understand is that the reasons for going into Iraq before then consisted entirely on the fact that Iraq had failed to disarm [...]"
No. They _had_ disarmed and they had _hidden_ it. The inspectors never stated that Iraq was not cooperating in 1991: on the contrary, their last communication in the UN security council was stating that Iraq was cooperating better, even if it was not perfect, and this statement was the basis of Chirac's refusal to agree with Bush.
And so on.
Everything I read in your post was false, though I have not finished it...
It is true if one has the opportunity to answer the attacks, which he had not.
During one month, and frequently several times a day, all big medias (but Liberation perhaps) have stressed that he was "down in the polls" and finished, they relayed the blatantly false PS-UMP talking point that he had "no programm", and that he would find nobody to govern with (good joke !). I would better say "hammered".
Oh, and he was "flip-flopping" and "soft on crime" too.
Good! Now, the new prez loves so much the country that he just left it "to breath a little". Do we stink so much?
You have made it clear that you cannot properly read a text when its general meaning displeases you.
R ights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen) written in France in the same years during which your constitution was polished deals with both property and taxes, mind you.
I am sure that you know the famous words "We, the people" engraved at the heart of the US constitution: they spell out that this federal state comes from then people, for the people. The mechanisms by which this is processed could be discussed and changed, but those words mean that the government emanates from the people: it is (or should not be) an ugly untamed beast devouring your tiny budget. Its funding is (should be) legitimate and decided by the people or its representants.
The "Declaration de l'homme et du citoyen" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_
Was that what you were refering to?
And what was your idea again?
The question being: what is his plan, precisely?
One question for instance: does he want more protectionism or less? He wants to stop replacing one over two civil servants that goes into retirement. The current government wanted that too, and he was the n°2 by the way ("minister of state"). has he achieved anything in this field? No? Was it all for Chirac "liberal bias" or could it be possible that the current and future team is as bad as the formers and especially badly helped by an homogeneous but stupid, old, national assembly?
By the way: nobody, nor my brother nor your girlfriend, I guess, believes he can fulfill his oath about unemployments being brought back to 5% in 5 years.
We'll see. The hope bearing candidate got nearly 7 millions votes (over 44) and was eliminated on the first round. His budget was a tenth of that of Sarkozy, he was attacked viciously on both sides, betrayed by the pollsters and supported by _no_ media whatsoever but one weekly publication. that is not _that_ bad. The fight goes on.
Could you elaborate a bit, please: which human rights have I disregarded in my post?
Well, you are perfectly right, and the same may be said, perhaps, of whatever has gained much value and cannot be easily divided: problems arise when one heir wants to buy the shares of the others and cannot afford it.
As for the example in the Ile de Ré, it is certainly sad, but the same goes on in Paris and so on, perhaps on a lesser scale. The issue lies not in the inheritance tax in my opinion, but in the conjunction of several factors:
- very low interests rates,
- big money comming from abroad from -for instance- Britons paid three time more in a country where the cost of living is four time that of Paris: purchasing power parity between currencies is a myth, it is easy for them to buy here. Not sure they are all welcome.
- a belief from everybody in my generation that we will have _no_ decent retirement considering the pilage currently underway by our parent's generation (I am not 40 years old yet),
- the fact that there are more and more single people following divorces: separate houses are needed, that fuel the buying fever.
- Frogs love to own their houses. I believe the figure is that more than 60% of the French owns their dwellings.
- and more generally, more money comming to the very affluent, Bush's base: some places are hyped.
So what is your solution? The inheritance tax is just a part of the issue in the Ile de Ré; part of the solution could be, for some time, to rent that so-valuable house to reimburse the mortgage...
You are right: some extremly smart people like my brother believe this guy, they believe he want to change thinghs and that he knows how.
I really wonder why they believe him.
He has been the leader of the UMP for 4 years, a political party that :
- has a wide majority in the Senate and the Parliament, detains 7 of the 9 seats in our High Court.
- has strongly supported the government with some arguments only, provoked by Sarkozy himself to blow any hopes for Mr. de Villepin.
- has such strong ties with the big medias that they openly campaigned for him, or covertly as Le Monde who decided, god still wonder why), that a vote for Mr. Bayrou would have been "undemocratic". The reason being that all polls were predicting that Sarko would lose against Bayrou.
Sarkozy has been a Finance minister before, and the debt has strived under his rule at an unknown pace, much more than under the socialist government, mind you.
But be sure that the Great Decider (tm) will solve everything by the virtues of his magic gaze!
I am glad your girlfriend knows a lot about economics. I studied that too in the Sorbonne. And I am not impressed by Sarkozy.
Your question is fully biased and I am pleased to blow it.
"government getting one last shot at looting personal wealth" is a very subjective point of view.
- First of all, most of the money the "government" collects actually _creates value_, for instance under the guise of quite efficient health services, clean streets, museums and free education for all, TV programms, roads, etc... So those services may or may not be provided with more efficiency by the private sector, but all that money is not wasted.
- public taxes are decided by a democratic instance, private taxes are not. For instance, I would rather escape the costs of the "marketting" stuff included in cars, Ms Windows Vista licences with my PC, etc... They are very expensive, as hidden as possible and much less democratically decided.
And finally:
- considering that no poor people currently pays any inheritance tax,
- considering that most people who currently pay this tax can afford it very well,
- considering that most heirs do not deserve their good fate, and that many of them have already received a very significant heritage under the guise of privileged conditions at the beginning of their life (address book, healthy food and home, education, free housing, cars, etc... during 50 years...)
- considering that I just paid some inheritance fees, mind you, and that Mr. Sarkozy will waste them in gifts to his really wealthy pals who escape most taxes thanks to numerous and cunningly designed-for-them fiscal holes,
- I am all _against_ any suppression of the inheritance tax.
The sole question as for me relates to enterprises being sold for cheap because the owner has died and the heirs cannot afford to pay the related taxes. Most of the time, it has not been properly prepared, but this should be addressed...
In France, we have conservative politicians who somewhat favor business and increase the public debt.
The aim of Sarkozy is different :
- increasing debt a lot (both public and private)!
- by favoring the rich people and the big corp.
I had hoped that Slashdot would have definitely forgotten France. Instead of that, this -probably real bad- news is on the first page, one of so few first-page news about France in a year. (sigh).
What is he talking about:
- suppressing inheritance taxes
- easing private borowing of money (i.e. increasing bank profits for short time benefits and lifetime interests for poor people)
- "an ownership society"
- he is glorifying the "France of the Crusades". (discourse in besançon, March 13th 2007)
- "le travail rend libre" (one of the offical videos, first sentence)
- he thought some months ago that "France had been arrogant in 2003" while attempting to stop the Iraq war.
- if he survives two more weeks, he will realise his public lifelong dream: becoming president in place of The President.
- he is a lawyer with a speciality: fiscality. I have not written tax evasion even if you read that.
I love him! I am sure you won't.
Technology has brought instant money transfers without borders. This has brought many possibilities to crooks for moving, hiding, stealing money through swift with the complicity of the banks or the very big companies.
:-)
And the laws have lagged behind: most Laws will not apply or not quickly enough to prevent this kind of thievery, a judge will take years to trace funds from one place to another (it will have left then) and there are much holes and fiscal paradises that are exploited to loot in a legal way. A recent estimation by an international group (the GAFI as far as I remeber) estimated that 20% of those huge funds were mafia money.
This system is imposed to most nations in the world, and never endorsed by their people. I am sorry to say that Britain and the US are flagships of that, or perceived as such everywhere. Now, Halliburton simply proves that most super-rich people are stateless people. The US has been somewhat protected from that phenomenon by its size and a remarkable national pride, but this pride even money may corrupt...
Well USA, you are impacting us all with your system through your power. It is only due time to amend it in many ways (the environment, the fascinatinon for money are two).
I hope you will not find that too arrogant
And what occur the garge owners use their remote-control? Does this jam the Airforce frequency??
8:30 am:
"- Chief, we have fired the missile!
"- Hum, which missile?
"- Well, The Missile, ya know!
"- Ah..... Ah? Who has given that order?
"- Well, you know, Washington signals nowadays are rather mixed but I confirm the emission was on the usual frequency and has been repeated frantically in the last minutes. According to the Terrestrial Message Bluring Scheme we have had for some years now, the Message came from many locations but with the same words in it".
"- Hum... It certainly comes from the White House then. Big affair."
eheh... I _was_ agreeing with him. About my sig :
- I am not very good at finding signatures.
- And I am regularly fed up of being unable to fill in posts with non-us-ascii characters in it: slashhdot will just spout such HTML code nonsens whenever I try to type in an accentuated letter (disclaimer : I am French).
- so this is a protestation rather then a funny signature. Indeed. Not funny at all.
Sig: sorry for my sig.
I fully agree. Mod him up.
Unless you spend half of your weeks to roam forums about this game, there's no way to understand this article.
I was hoping that just reading games.slashdot.org twice a month would be enough to make me appear a shining gammer amongst my friends but... I just cannot read it anymore!
Gosh... then, what were those acronyms again? UDE, CCQ, MtG, MiG, THAT, RTFA, IANAL...
Some Open Source headways in Europe, indeed, can clearly be seen in EU site.
Quite heartening indeed! Maybe the big conservative companies will finaly notice this trend. I am sure Microsoft did.
I am not so sure they will keep many things on the server : they will attach USB-2 hard drives instead, since USB ports are happily provided.
Errr... This is apparently a "real" PC as you say, with AbiWord, Gimp, a spreadsheet, and some other apps. And a browser & mailer certainly!
- lance-EasyGate-un-croisement-entre-une-box-ADSL-et -un-PC.html
Nice or original features:
- the hot line apparently plan to seize control of the PC whenever one has an issue. Just like in any company indeed, just with much more logs.
- they will not accept whatever hardware : they sell or rent some. I hope they will contribute to the drivers.
Licensing & privacy issues are to be looked after.
Some more information in French:
http://www.easyneuf.fr/flash/ (the official launch date is October the 15th)
http://www.silicon.fr/articles/16846/Neuf-Cegetel
https://linuxfr.org/2006/09/22/21362.html
By the way, have you heard recently that Free.fr was to invest 1.0 Bn Euro in the next years to provide ultra-high bandwidth access in big French cities (i.e. 50 Mbit/s by optical fibers, possibly with symetric data-rates, for 30 Euros a month with triple pay)?
Maybe will I finaly lend a core to the CERN for free...
Beyond HD-TV, I wonder if very high speed Internet access, multi-core personnal PCs and virtualisation technologies (not sure for this one) will allow us to share our CPUs and our disks. What would you think?
And since this is now a many-stupid thoughts in one late post, let me put some more in it:
- this reminds me of a ThinkGeek T-Shirt claiming "will work for bandwith": all you now need is 30 € a month...
- I will be happy when Linus comes back to Europe. I do not even believe he thinks about it, but let's dream. Linus? 50 Mb/s nearly for free, both ways, with free phone to the US and half of the Free World? We've got good Belgian or Irish or German beers too, come on, come back!!!!
They have just embedded Lynx in IE, just in case the later would provide too wide an access to the OS.
It's good news: we now know that Lynx compiles on Win32 and runs as nobody.
Well, we are happy not to have a "war [happy] president".
Well, frogs joke with the Belgians, I begin to get along with French jokes in the US. If only the related matters were not so deadly serious...
Anyway, no need to boast any moral superiority there.
Implementing other companies intellectual property, licenced or not, would certainly explain why they would hide the code. But they may also simply be afraid to use patented technology without knowing it, or to become easier targets for undue litigation in this field. Hiding the code somehow protect them from being sued. Another kind of "security by obscurity", legal style?
I am sorry to annouce that tunnels can be badly damaged by simple means. I do not know for this precise one, maybe it is very wide and high, NY style indeed. But just have a look at what happened in the Mont Blanc tunnel between France and Italy some years ago, or in the Gothard in Switzerland: fire.
Put together a long tunnel, packed with people and, more importantly, vehicules. Choose the right time, when the traffic jam crams them into the tunnel with no easy escape. Put fire to two several vehicles with enough fuel in them, and preferably with some high-temperature inflammable load, generating lots of heat and fumes. Pich fools to ignite, watch TV.
The mont Blanc tunnel was no terrorist plot as far as we know, but the fire went so intense quickly that they just found melted lorries and cars, no bones nor teeth. The fumes were deadly. The tunnel was severely dammaged by the intense heat and closed for lenghty months.
And how much would that cost? Stolen lorries, 4 free-of-charge-ready-to-die terrorists, minimum coordination... Well, I do not know this NY tunnel, maybe this would fail with only some dozens casualty. Ahem...
From a very different perspective, it has been predicted recently that the lower the Republican party figures in the polls, the higher the probability to hear of "red alerts" from anonymous official cowards. There you are, according to the polls.