This all conforms to the principle of a multitude of small taxes. Ask any regular European how much thay pay in taxes and they will say "about 30%". In actual fact, for the average citizen, it's about 80%, if you include all these other taxes and automobile-related taxes.
I think the last time I saw a calculation of how much of your money goes into taxes in Germany it was something like 55%. That was back when the VAT was at 15%, however. It is currently being raised from 16% to 20%.
Even worse. If you work at home and you have a special room where you work that room counts as a separate place (because workplace \neq home, even if workplace \in home) so you have to pay twice if you have a TV in your living room and a computer in your work room. I think two work rooms still count as one separate place, though.
That's not possible in Germany because a fee that every citizen has to pay is a tax and only the states can raise taxes - however, the states may not raise the fees for the public broadcasters because if they would they'd be able to influence them, which is not desired. (And I think it's rather obvious why we want the public broadcasters to be as independent as possible.) Thus the public broadcasters have their own organisation, the GEZ (Gebühreneinzugszentrale; "fee collection center"), which attempts to get money for as many kinds of telecommunication as possible to finance them.
Of course by now the entire thing has devolved into a question of semantics as the GEZ can more or less get money out of everyone so the TV fee is more or less a tax.
Oh, and note that while the private broadcasters are usually financed solely through advertisement (pay-per-view and subscription channels are uncommon in Germany) that doesn't mean that the public broadcasters can't show ads in addition to being financed through the GEZ. They are restricted to not showing any ads before 20:00, though, IIRC. But still one onders how much they are independent from their sponsors anymore...
The real hoot, of course, is that while we have to pay a broadcasting fee for our internet access there is actually little broadcasting done by the public broadcasters on the 'net. The only thing that would qualify as broadcasting would be live streams; websites and MP3s are not broadcasting. Live streams, however, are rarely available and when they are they tend to perform poorly as the public broadcasters' servers and pipes can't handle many connections. Thus the internet GEZ fee is mainly for something that doesn't exist.
However, the Unix way of using small tools that perform one single function only works so well because you have easy communication between those tools. Imagine you could not pipe one program's output into another program - every single nontrivial task would require you to juggle temporary files.
However, that's the situation with graphics editing. The GIMP has no vector editing capabilities worth mentioning, but it's good for raster images. Inkscape does vectors but not it's not good for raster stuff. The Unix way would be to combine them, of course.
There is no direct communication between the programs, but if there was copy and paste support between them we'd at least have something resembling easy communication. But in fact if you want to create a somewhat complex vector/raster image you have to do all raster editing in the GIMP, then save the stuff to (a) temporary file(s), then import the file(s) in Inkscape. You can't tell how a vector edit looks in the image until you have exported that "layer" to Inkscape. That's not the flexibility of a Unix shell, that's using no pipes and one command per line - in other words, completely inadequate. Thus, there is no decent way to use the GIMP if you want the image to have a vector component.
How about, instead of ditching GTK, making the GTK-Qt code a part of the toolkit as an optional rendering backend? That way we'd have quasi-seamless integration between GTK and Qt apps (at least for KDE users...) and (if GTK really delegates all rendering to Qt) GTK apps could just link against the native Mac Qt library and run on Macs without having X11 as a dependency.
If you want Qt compatibility you go with the Qt backend. If you want better performance (as the GTK->Qt conversion is of course going to take up a couple cycles) and/or don't want Qt to render the windows you go with the original renderer. Everyone's happy and maybe the Gnome devs can talk Trolltech into putting a GTK backend into Qt for even more interoperability fun. Also, possible infinite recursion. But mostly fun.
Note that X11 has to be loaded separately under OS X, resulting in longer loading times for the apps (because you usually don't run X unless an X app is running). Also, using an X app under OS X is slower than both running an Aqua app under OS X and running an X app under Linux (in the latter case having manually focus windows with a click is a Mac-specific issue. Yes, I know focus-follows-mouse and no, I don't like it; it makes working with X apps even more awkward).
So yes, a native UI would make using it slightly faster and more comfortable.
But in terms of where the users are (here and now, not in some thought experiment) the Mac still is important for graphic design. And yes, the GIMP is inadequate for Mac users as long as it doesn't use Carbon or Cocoa. So they either release a GTK version that uses Carbon as a back-end, they switch to a toolkit that does so (like QT) or they give the Mac release its own native interface. The alternative is having a program that has nice features but is widely rejected for being ugly, clunky, unnecessarily big (no use of the shared menu bar), slow (X11.app takes ages to load) and with a look-and-feel that differs significantly from every other Mac app.
Sure, Mac users tend to be elitist when it comes to user interfaces. Because we expect that everything integrates and adheres to common standards. It really makes for a better user experience.
While the GIMP's interface isn't my favourite (that would be pre-8.0 Paint Shop Pro) it certainly is usable - in fact I much prefer it to the (IMO insufferably unintuitive) Photoshop UI.
I'll give you a bit more detail. Unlike Windows Linux doesn't care about organizing your partitions. You have/, which is defined in the bootloader config, but that's pretty much the only constant.
Everything else is up to you, although most distros create mount points for all suitable partitions during setup (usually the mount points are defined in/etc/fstab; this might not apply to automounters though). You can mount a partition anywhere you want as long as you know the name of its device file - for example when I got me a shiny new 300 GB hard disk I turned most of it into an ext3 partition which I mount as/home. I just copied over the contents of my old/home to the new partition and bang, migration of user data complete. (Yes, it would be wise to backup any to-be-replaced directories before doing funny things to them. In my case I did the copying from a live CD which mounted neither involved partition as/home.)
It's all just a matter of making sure there's an empty directory where you want the mount point to be and changing (or writing) the corresponding/etc/fstab line to point to it. What you call the mount point and where it's located is entirely up to you. Yes, it is as flexible as it is awesome.
OTOH I still have to press the hotkey, which I don't have to with native Firefox password storage. Also, the Linux/MacOS port has "browser integration" in the "to do" list, making me wonder whether the original program's hotkey even works in the port (probably not). Lastly, it's not even in Portage, as far as I can tell.
Security-wise, KeePass is much superior, but ergonomics-wise (and "J.Random User is going to use this"-wise) it's not even in the same league. As one of the most critical passwords I have stored in Firefox is that to my/. account I don't think I really need 256-bit encrypted password storage. Once it has matured I might take a look at it though - especially if it comes with a Firefoyx plugin that makes the hotkey unnecessary. Yes, I'm that lazy.
Note that IQ tests usually measure the short-term memory but not the long-term one. I got a score of 124, mainly due to the fact that I can cram heaps of data into my head, as long as I don't need to remember them for longer than a couple dozen seconds. OTOH, I'm really forgetful - for example I'm currently preparing for an oral exam (second try) on a course I had this semester, just a couple months ago. I remember nothing. If I want to get through that exam I'll just have to fill my head with data and keep it until after the exam. Then I'll probably forget everything again.
(To be honest, the course in question is Theoretical Computer Science 2, which combines the cryptic hieroglyphs of higher mathematics with the incredible boredom of, well, theoretical computer science. Not something you can intuitively remember - but I still forget a lot of things that aren't that unintuitive.)
I would expect any adult native (or fluent) English speaker (and, in these cases, speakers of many other Latin-derived languages) to be comfortable with these words and their meanings.
I'd expect any adult native (or fluent) English speaker to be comfortable that English is not a Romance but indeed a Germanic language. Even though it has been influenced by French, the English language is much more closely related to German (cf. the Low German language, which is somewhat similar to English).
There are probably other factors involved here. For example, poverty has also been linked to obesity (in America.) And less intelligence can also be linked to poverty.
You mean "even though most of your friends are on ICQ or MSN, those that really matter are smart enough to use Jabber and thus you wonder why you maintain your own Jabber server just to be able to use the pyMSNt transport".
I'm sure it was used with full knowledge of what it means. The GPP is a mockery of the kind of logic that still is used to justify ridiculous laws. (By the way, when you're finally doing away with that insane government of yours, could you please think of Europe and give us our flight passenger data back? Even if "we'll stop trying to recruit Europe into our War Against Abstract Concepts" doesn't make for a catchy election slogan...)
Apparently it isn't for Germany. The DENIC just hast this rule regarding domain names:
Unzulässig als Domain sind die Bezeichnungen anderer TLDs (wie z. B..com,.net,.org und sämtliche länderbezogenen TLDs), Buchstabenkombinationen, die in deutschen Kfz-Kennzeichen zur Benennung des Zulassungsbezirks verwendet werden, sowie Zeichenfolgen, die sich ergeben, wenn man in derartigen Buchstabenkombinationen ä durch ae, ö durch oe und ü durch ue ersetzt.
Translated:
Inadmissible as a domain are the identifiers of other TLDs (such as.com,.net,.org and all country-specific TLDs), letter combinations used in German license plates for identification of the district of registration as well as letter combinations that result in replacing ä through ae, ö through oe and ü through ue in such letter combinations
Yes, according to the DENIC anale-penetration.de is completely valid. However, the registration can be rejected if it would be obviously illegal - which is not the case with porn.
Or they are doing the sane thing and run their Windows box behind a hardware firewall or, even better, NAT router. Really, NAT is great for securing a Windows box - at least as long as you know what you're doing and don't forward the range 1-65536 to your IP...
Actually, I'm waiting for a - to quote a certain webcomic about a Concerned citizen - shotgun blast to the crotch, self inflicted. Then again that's pretty much everything Microsoft has done in the last couple years.
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This all conforms to the principle of a multitude of small taxes. Ask any regular European how much thay pay in taxes and they will say "about 30%". In actual fact, for the average citizen, it's about 80%, if you include all these other taxes and automobile-related taxes.
I think the last time I saw a calculation of how much of your money goes into taxes in Germany it was something like 55%. That was back when the VAT was at 15%, however. It is currently being raised from 16% to 20%.
Even worse. If you work at home and you have a special room where you work that room counts as a separate place (because workplace \neq home, even if workplace \in home) so you have to pay twice if you have a TV in your living room and a computer in your work room. I think two work rooms still count as one separate place, though.
That's not possible in Germany because a fee that every citizen has to pay is a tax and only the states can raise taxes - however, the states may not raise the fees for the public broadcasters because if they would they'd be able to influence them, which is not desired. (And I think it's rather obvious why we want the public broadcasters to be as independent as possible.) Thus the public broadcasters have their own organisation, the GEZ (Gebühreneinzugszentrale; "fee collection center"), which attempts to get money for as many kinds of telecommunication as possible to finance them.
Of course by now the entire thing has devolved into a question of semantics as the GEZ can more or less get money out of everyone so the TV fee is more or less a tax.
Oh, and note that while the private broadcasters are usually financed solely through advertisement (pay-per-view and subscription channels are uncommon in Germany) that doesn't mean that the public broadcasters can't show ads in addition to being financed through the GEZ. They are restricted to not showing any ads before 20:00, though, IIRC. But still one onders how much they are independent from their sponsors anymore...
The real hoot, of course, is that while we have to pay a broadcasting fee for our internet access there is actually little broadcasting done by the public broadcasters on the 'net. The only thing that would qualify as broadcasting would be live streams; websites and MP3s are not broadcasting. Live streams, however, are rarely available and when they are they tend to perform poorly as the public broadcasters' servers and pipes can't handle many connections. Thus the internet GEZ fee is mainly for something that doesn't exist.
However, the Unix way of using small tools that perform one single function only works so well because you have easy communication between those tools. Imagine you could not pipe one program's output into another program - every single nontrivial task would require you to juggle temporary files.
However, that's the situation with graphics editing. The GIMP has no vector editing capabilities worth mentioning, but it's good for raster images. Inkscape does vectors but not it's not good for raster stuff. The Unix way would be to combine them, of course.
There is no direct communication between the programs, but if there was copy and paste support between them we'd at least have something resembling easy communication. But in fact if you want to create a somewhat complex vector/raster image you have to do all raster editing in the GIMP, then save the stuff to (a) temporary file(s), then import the file(s) in Inkscape. You can't tell how a vector edit looks in the image until you have exported that "layer" to Inkscape. That's not the flexibility of a Unix shell, that's using no pipes and one command per line - in other words, completely inadequate. Thus, there is no decent way to use the GIMP if you want the image to have a vector component.
How about, instead of ditching GTK, making the GTK-Qt code a part of the toolkit as an optional rendering backend? That way we'd have quasi-seamless integration between GTK and Qt apps (at least for KDE users...) and (if GTK really delegates all rendering to Qt) GTK apps could just link against the native Mac Qt library and run on Macs without having X11 as a dependency.
If you want Qt compatibility you go with the Qt backend. If you want better performance (as the GTK->Qt conversion is of course going to take up a couple cycles) and/or don't want Qt to render the windows you go with the original renderer. Everyone's happy and maybe the Gnome devs can talk Trolltech into putting a GTK backend into Qt for even more interoperability fun. Also, possible infinite recursion. But mostly fun.
Note that X11 has to be loaded separately under OS X, resulting in longer loading times for the apps (because you usually don't run X unless an X app is running). Also, using an X app under OS X is slower than both running an Aqua app under OS X and running an X app under Linux (in the latter case having manually focus windows with a click is a Mac-specific issue. Yes, I know focus-follows-mouse and no, I don't like it; it makes working with X apps even more awkward).
So yes, a native UI would make using it slightly faster and more comfortable.
But in terms of where the users are (here and now, not in some thought experiment) the Mac still is important for graphic design. And yes, the GIMP is inadequate for Mac users as long as it doesn't use Carbon or Cocoa. So they either release a GTK version that uses Carbon as a back-end, they switch to a toolkit that does so (like QT) or they give the Mac release its own native interface. The alternative is having a program that has nice features but is widely rejected for being ugly, clunky, unnecessarily big (no use of the shared menu bar), slow (X11.app takes ages to load) and with a look-and-feel that differs significantly from every other Mac app.
Sure, Mac users tend to be elitist when it comes to user interfaces. Because we expect that everything integrates and adheres to common standards. It really makes for a better user experience.
While the GIMP's interface isn't my favourite (that would be pre-8.0 Paint Shop Pro) it certainly is usable - in fact I much prefer it to the (IMO insufferably unintuitive) Photoshop UI.
I'll give you a bit more detail. Unlike Windows Linux doesn't care about organizing your partitions. You have /, which is defined in the bootloader config, but that's pretty much the only constant.
/etc/fstab; this might not apply to automounters though). You can mount a partition anywhere you want as long as you know the name of its device file - for example when I got me a shiny new 300 GB hard disk I turned most of it into an ext3 partition which I mount as /home. I just copied over the contents of my old /home to the new partition and bang, migration of user data complete. (Yes, it would be wise to backup any to-be-replaced directories before doing funny things to them. In my case I did the copying from a live CD which mounted neither involved partition as /home.)
/etc/fstab line to point to it. What you call the mount point and where it's located is entirely up to you. Yes, it is as flexible as it is awesome.
Everything else is up to you, although most distros create mount points for all suitable partitions during setup (usually the mount points are defined in
It's all just a matter of making sure there's an empty directory where you want the mount point to be and changing (or writing) the corresponding
OTOH I still have to press the hotkey, which I don't have to with native Firefox password storage. Also, the Linux/MacOS port has "browser integration" in the "to do" list, making me wonder whether the original program's hotkey even works in the port (probably not). Lastly, it's not even in Portage, as far as I can tell.
/. account I don't think I really need 256-bit encrypted password storage. Once it has matured I might take a look at it though - especially if it comes with a Firefoyx plugin that makes the hotkey unnecessary. Yes, I'm that lazy.
Security-wise, KeePass is much superior, but ergonomics-wise (and "J.Random User is going to use this"-wise) it's not even in the same league. As one of the most critical passwords I have stored in Firefox is that to my
Note that IQ tests usually measure the short-term memory but not the long-term one. I got a score of 124, mainly due to the fact that I can cram heaps of data into my head, as long as I don't need to remember them for longer than a couple dozen seconds. OTOH, I'm really forgetful - for example I'm currently preparing for an oral exam (second try) on a course I had this semester, just a couple months ago. I remember nothing. If I want to get through that exam I'll just have to fill my head with data and keep it until after the exam. Then I'll probably forget everything again.
(To be honest, the course in question is Theoretical Computer Science 2, which combines the cryptic hieroglyphs of higher mathematics with the incredible boredom of, well, theoretical computer science. Not something you can intuitively remember - but I still forget a lot of things that aren't that unintuitive.)
I would expect any adult native (or fluent) English speaker (and, in these cases, speakers of many other Latin-derived languages) to be comfortable with these words and their meanings.
I'd expect any adult native (or fluent) English speaker to be comfortable that English is not a Romance but indeed a Germanic language. Even though it has been influenced by French, the English language is much more closely related to German (cf. the Low German language, which is somewhat similar to English).
There are probably other factors involved here. For example, poverty has also been linked to obesity (in America.) And less intelligence can also be linked to poverty.
ld -o obesity less_intelligence poverty?
You mean "even though most of your friends are on ICQ or MSN, those that really matter are smart enough to use Jabber and thus you wonder why you maintain your own Jabber server just to be able to use the pyMSNt transport".
I'm sure it was used with full knowledge of what it means. The GPP is a mockery of the kind of logic that still is used to justify ridiculous laws. (By the way, when you're finally doing away with that insane government of yours, could you please think of Europe and give us our flight passenger data back? Even if "we'll stop trying to recruit Europe into our War Against Abstract Concepts" doesn't make for a catchy election slogan...)
It's a separate program that doesn't automatically run when Firefox runs, making it less attractive.
This would be another feature that could be made into a plugin and distributed with Firefox. If you don't like it, turn it off or uninstall it.
Translated:
Yes, according to the DENIC anale-penetration.de is completely valid. However, the registration can be rejected if it would be obviously illegal - which is not the case with porn.
Yeah, right. Tell me you've never bought a computer mag just to ogle those hot, sexy new serv-- erm, I mean, exactly!
Seconded.
Yup, the logo is there. By the way, I also don't buy CD(-workalike)s in the store anymore - the MaSu album was ordered via their webshop.
UTF are you talking about? I'm quite sure the mods are not latin-1 post like this go unmoderated.
Or they are doing the sane thing and run their Windows box behind a hardware firewall or, even better, NAT router. Really, NAT is great for securing a Windows box - at least as long as you know what you're doing and don't forward the range 1-65536 to your IP...
That and it will allow money to flow out of its system as well as in. So if you "Strike it Rich" in the game, you can take those riches and leave.
China has already proven that the same is true for World of Warcraft...
No, I am Spartacus!
Actually, I'm waiting for a - to quote a certain webcomic about a Concerned citizen - shotgun blast to the crotch, self inflicted. Then again that's pretty much everything Microsoft has done in the last couple years.