Actually, these days in science one is not granted a PhD if one does not advance the field, if only a little bit, by means of at least one publication.
They all believe in things written in a book hundreds (if not thousands) of years ago
Euclid's elements were written more than 2000 years ago, yet the content is provably correct. Age of a document has nothing to do with truth and accuracy.
I'm sorry, but no matter how 'liberal' your beliefs are, if you adhere to any religion, you're part of the problem and not the solution.
That's amazingly tolerant of you. Prove that you have never had, and never will have any irrational thoughts or beliefs of your own.
Personnally I believe tolerance it the issue. What other people believe is none of my business as long as it does not affect people who do not share these beliefs.
In fact many core Christian or Islamic values are commendable and useful in society : generosity, tolerance, peace, understanding, and more. Problem arise when people call themselves members of such and such religion while simultaneously upholding only a small, carefully selected subset of their tenets.
Actually, funny you should mention that, but what did France's economy in lately was essentially immobilism, whether from the left or the right.
Also I think France is too small a country to be superpower ever. You'd need 6 or 7 Frances to match the US in population alone. Japan is actually a populous country (1/2 the size of the US approx).
While I sincerely applaud your feats and those of your family, I think it's fair to say 60+ hours/week is for everybody, and in some contexts it's not only insane but counterproductive. I'm very much against someone working long hours at a critical piece of equipment (nuclear plant, missile defence, whatever).
Also I think it's only OK to work that hard if you enjoy it, which is probably the case for you and your family. I think 14h+ of sweatshop labor is simply a disgrace.
Finally, the point was that work is not the only finality in life. It's rather important to take care of one's kid, and that include spending time with them, not working.
Actually, I think the fact that Bayrou got attacked viciously on both sides played in his favour. Vicious attacks can sometimes be handled more easily than subtle ones.
If the heirs didn't "earn" it, then certainly neither "society" or "the government" earned it.
Why not? There is the small matter of lifelong education, social security, various benefits like public transport, that both society and "the government" provide while the person was living. "Earning" is very relative. If someone earns reasonable income now, it may be partly thanks to good cheap education.
The idea that heirs have the best claim could very well be construed as perfectly ridiculous in a society.
Your opinion is just that, an opinion, not a natural truth.
In France direct descendants (sons & daughters) are not death-taxed much, while grand-children, cousins, etc are taxed more and total stranger even more. I think primary dwelling is treated separately and may not be taxed at all. AFAIK my wife inherited part of the dwelling of her father and had no tax to pay.
In the emotional case of a primary family dwelling, this would not be a problem I think.
The whole idea behind this is that dead people don't have rights, therefore they cannot be violated. I think if you check, you'll find that dead people in the US don't have rights either. Indeed the US has the concept of a "death tax", currently at 46% apparently. The rights you think you have seem to be imaginary, my friend. In France, the current death tax rate for direct descendants in France is I think around 20%, perhaps less.
The people who are taxed are not the dead people but their heir. See my other reply for the rationale behind taxing dead people (or at death) rather than living ones.
In addition, in France like elsewhere, if you don't want the state to pillage your hard-earned assets, you can set up a foundation, you can set up a company and give your heir shares, etc. Oh, this requires a bit of planning, for sure.
This is almost a moot point, as (1) direct descendant (like children of a store owner) would pay little taxes today. It's only remote descendants and total strangers mentionned on the will that are taxed heavily -- and (2) there are in place perfectly legal ways to pass on businesses to children (*before* you die) without them having to pay anything besides normal business transfer fees. It does suppose that you are getting along fine with your children though : if you make them an associate and then a majority share of them fire you, what can you do ?
Sarkozy's gesture is not empty though. How will he make up the lost tax revenue? This point is not often mentionned.
To clarify a bit, a person's earning belong to them. However, there is a "death tax" in France, i.e. some of the inheritance value must be paid in the form of tax when a person dies. The tax is low if the heirs are the person's children, and get progressively higher as heirs get further away from being the person's descendant, up to a cap of 60% for a total stranger on the testament, IIRC.
If one makes the assumption that governments are a necessary evil, and that they must be supported by taxes, then I'd much rather that the state taxes the dead rather than the living, but that's just me. Therefore, the "death tax", which is very common in many countries, actually makes some sense.
On the other hand, if you think rich dynasties are a good thing (and there may be a few examples of that), then taxing the living workers makes more sense.
Finally, if you are for small goverment, then cutting taxes is good. It forces government to be lean and mean. However Nicolas Sarkozy has no intention to run lean and mean. Sure he will eventually cut some government jobs, but he is broadly for "Reaganomics" : continue spending, borrow, cut taxes. It worked for Reagan, it may not work for Sarkozy. For a start the GDP growth in France is projected to about 3% a year this year, which is not enough to reduce the debt burden fast enough for it to not be a problem.
So dear jcr, I've noticed you post often, it's always a joy to read you.
Howard is very good at dog-whistle politics : asylum seekers == queue jumpers. Children overboard. Interest rates will go up with Labor. He is a master at conjuring a negative attitude about something he uses for his own political ends. Notice he (AFAIK) never used the same trick to describe something positive Australians might federate around.
History will not remember him as a kind, progressive person who helped Australia come to the 21st century.
The one reason the US (and its coalition) is at war with Iraq is that president Bush had some kind of fixation against Saddam Hussein. He wanted to invade Iraq even long before 9/11. Listen to what everybody who has been close to the president now says, don't just listen to Fox news.
Bush senior lead a successful international coalition against SH in 1991, but then the international community balked at removing SH from power since this was against the mandate they had from the UN (which was in effect, liberate Kuwait, then stop). Then we had this big mess with the situation worsening on several fronts in Iraq, with SH stopping at nothing to hang to power. We had this "food for oil" program into which several nations including the French tried to get some dibs, and a game of cat and mouse with the UN inspector to disable the WMD. This was disgraceful to say the least.
I can understant GWB wanted to come in and clean the mess, but to invade Iraq and topple SH he had to invent some kind of credible threat. That's where he went wrong IMHO. "The end justify the means" is rarely a good option, and now the end itself is now seriously in question with 3500 US dead and counting, and Iraq nowhere near democracy.
As we now know, SH had no WMD left, the inspectors had in fact done their job (who will ever thank them?).
To blame the French and in particular Chirac who has been president since 1995 for all of what caused the US to invade Iraq for the second time is disingenuous at best.
Aussie living in France right now. The key is to speak *some* french. If you do live in France that only makes sense. Even the Americans are treated nicely then. One of my friend is an American married to a French lady. He speaks excellent french and is invited to all the parties:-)
The flip coin of this is of course that a self-supporting woman is more likely to leave the couple for any reason. Also there is more to an individual than their ability to make a living, although I would agree this is important;-)
I didn't notice a nice dialog popping up prompting me to upgrade from Panther to Tiger when it became available. I suspect there won't be one either when Leopard come out in a few months time.
On most hardware, suspend works out of the box, until recently the problem was mostly linked to proprietary video drivers. Dual-screen doesn't work out of the box, but is in fact fairly easy to enable. I suspect it would have been worked out long ago with truly opened Nvidia and ATI drivers. As it is, enabling dual-screen is a different procedure depending on the manufacturer.
There is still a big difference between using sudo and being root, even if you use sudo a lot : it compartimentize what you do as a user and what you do as an administrator. At least you are not using your mail client and web browser as root, to name a couple.
Speaking about research, Grandma doesn't want to have to worry about spyware, viruses and self-degrading XP installs.
To be honest, change is difficult and people are busy. I'm used to all 3 : Windows, Linux and OS/X, but even getting used to OS/X took time and effort. In terms of efforts required to keep a clean, efficient, working computer, Windows does not look very good compared to the other two.
Actually, you can build a very good house by looking at an example. Merely knowing something is possible is usually enough of an incentive for some people to provide an implementation, sometimes better than the original.
Reverse engineering works very well. For instance, take a look at what happened to IBM after its IBM PC BIOS was reversed-engineered. Last I heard, IBM doesn't make any PCs anymore.
In virtually every field, like you write, the USA is a minority leader. For instance, it has the largest single country economy in the world, however it's economy represents only about 30% of the entire world's, and is rougly the same as that of the European Union. In addition, this position is not guaranteed for ever. Again, for instance, the average world's economy grows faster (about 5%) than the US's (about 3%). The situation is comparable in the EU.
In the next few decades we are likely to see the economic or otherwise importance of the West diminish, and in particular that of the US. The Economist foresees that China will be the dominant economy by 2050. Now western economies represent about 60% of the world's GDP, but by then it will be less than 30%.
Just about the only area where the US is an undisputed leader is the military, but I'd argue that this is of limited value in a democracy.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, these days in science one is not granted a PhD if one does not advance the field, if only a little bit, by means of at least one publication.
Euclid's elements were written more than 2000 years ago, yet the content is provably correct. Age of a document has nothing to do with truth and accuracy.
That's amazingly tolerant of you. Prove that you have never had, and never will have any irrational thoughts or beliefs of your own.
Personnally I believe tolerance it the issue. What other people believe is none of my business as long as it does not affect people who do not share these beliefs.
In fact many core Christian or Islamic values are commendable and useful in society : generosity, tolerance, peace, understanding, and more. Problem arise when people call themselves members of such and such religion while simultaneously upholding only a small, carefully selected subset of their tenets.
Actually, funny you should mention that, but what did France's economy in lately was essentially immobilism, whether from the left or the right.
Also I think France is too small a country to be superpower ever. You'd need 6 or 7 Frances to match the US in population alone. Japan is actually a populous country (1/2 the size of the US approx).
While I sincerely applaud your feats and those of your family, I think it's fair to say 60+ hours/week is for everybody, and in some contexts it's not only insane but counterproductive. I'm very much against someone working long hours at a critical piece of equipment (nuclear plant, missile defence, whatever).
Also I think it's only OK to work that hard if you enjoy it, which is probably the case for you and your family. I think 14h+ of sweatshop labor is simply a disgrace.
Finally, the point was that work is not the only finality in life. It's rather important to take care of one's kid, and that include spending time with them, not working.
Keep up the good work though.
Actually, I think the fact that Bayrou got attacked viciously on both sides played in his favour. Vicious attacks can sometimes be handled more easily than subtle ones.
Why not? There is the small matter of lifelong education, social security, various benefits like public transport, that both society and "the government" provide while the person was living. "Earning" is very relative. If someone earns reasonable income now, it may be partly thanks to good cheap education.
The idea that heirs have the best claim could very well be construed as perfectly ridiculous in a society.
Your opinion is just that, an opinion, not a natural truth.
In France direct descendants (sons & daughters) are not death-taxed much, while grand-children, cousins, etc are taxed more and total stranger even more. I think primary dwelling is treated separately and may not be taxed at all. AFAIK my wife inherited part of the dwelling of her father and had no tax to pay.
In the emotional case of a primary family dwelling, this would not be a problem I think.
The whole idea behind this is that dead people don't have rights, therefore they cannot be violated. I think if you check, you'll find that dead people in the US don't have rights either. Indeed the US has the concept of a "death tax", currently at 46% apparently. The rights you think you have seem to be imaginary, my friend. In France, the current death tax rate for direct descendants in France is I think around 20%, perhaps less.
The people who are taxed are not the dead people but their heir. See my other reply for the rationale behind taxing dead people (or at death) rather than living ones.
In addition, in France like elsewhere, if you don't want the state to pillage your hard-earned assets, you can set up a foundation, you can set up a company and give your heir shares, etc. Oh, this requires a bit of planning, for sure.
This is almost a moot point, as (1) direct descendant (like children of a store owner) would pay little taxes today. It's only remote descendants and total strangers mentionned on the will that are taxed heavily -- and (2) there are in place perfectly legal ways to pass on businesses to children (*before* you die) without them having to pay anything besides normal business transfer fees. It does suppose that you are getting along fine with your children though : if you make them an associate and then a majority share of them fire you, what can you do ?
Sarkozy's gesture is not empty though. How will he make up the lost tax revenue? This point is not often mentionned.
To clarify a bit, a person's earning belong to them. However, there is a "death tax" in France, i.e. some of the inheritance value must be paid in the form of tax when a person dies. The tax is low if the heirs are the person's children, and get progressively higher as heirs get further away from being the person's descendant, up to a cap of 60% for a total stranger on the testament, IIRC.
If one makes the assumption that governments are a necessary evil, and that they must be supported by taxes, then I'd much rather that the state taxes the dead rather than the living, but that's just me. Therefore, the "death tax", which is very common in many countries, actually makes some sense.
On the other hand, if you think rich dynasties are a good thing (and there may be a few examples of that), then taxing the living workers makes more sense.
Finally, if you are for small goverment, then cutting taxes is good. It forces government to be lean and mean. However Nicolas Sarkozy has no intention to run lean and mean. Sure he will eventually cut some government jobs, but he is broadly for "Reaganomics" : continue spending, borrow, cut taxes. It worked for Reagan, it may not work for Sarkozy. For a start the GDP growth in France is projected to about 3% a year this year, which is not enough to reduce the debt burden fast enough for it to not be a problem.
So dear jcr, I've noticed you post often, it's always a joy to read you.
Howard is very good at dog-whistle politics : asylum seekers == queue jumpers. Children overboard. Interest rates will go up with Labor. He is a master at conjuring a negative attitude about something he uses for his own political ends. Notice he (AFAIK) never used the same trick to describe something positive Australians might federate around.
History will not remember him as a kind, progressive person who helped Australia come to the 21st century.
Rewriting history.
The one reason the US (and its coalition) is at war with Iraq is that president Bush had some kind of fixation against Saddam Hussein. He wanted to invade Iraq even long before 9/11. Listen to what everybody who has been close to the president now says, don't just listen to Fox news.
Bush senior lead a successful international coalition against SH in 1991, but then the international community balked at removing SH from power since this was against the mandate they had from the UN (which was in effect, liberate Kuwait, then stop). Then we had this big mess with the situation worsening on several fronts in Iraq, with SH stopping at nothing to hang to power. We had this "food for oil" program into which several nations including the French tried to get some dibs, and a game of cat and mouse with the UN inspector to disable the WMD. This was disgraceful to say the least.
I can understant GWB wanted to come in and clean the mess, but to invade Iraq and topple SH he had to invent some kind of credible threat. That's where he went wrong IMHO. "The end justify the means" is rarely a good option, and now the end itself is now seriously in question with 3500 US dead and counting, and Iraq nowhere near democracy.
As we now know, SH had no WMD left, the inspectors had in fact done their job (who will ever thank them?).
To blame the French and in particular Chirac who has been president since 1995 for all of what caused the US to invade Iraq for the second time is disingenuous at best.
G'day matey,
:-)
Aussie living in France right now. The key is to speak *some* french. If you do live in France that only makes sense. Even the Americans are treated nicely then. One of my friend is an American married to a French lady. He speaks excellent french and is invited to all the parties
If I did something like that and got caught I would say I was planning to come clean as well.
Yes, now we are haggling over the terms of the license. Will anyone deny that DRM-free music is more consumer friendly ?
The flip coin of this is of course that a self-supporting woman is more likely to leave the couple for any reason. Also there is more to an individual than their ability to make a living, although I would agree this is important ;-)
Exactly, please mod up !
Pretty soon, we'll be talking about serious money.
I didn't notice a nice dialog popping up prompting me to upgrade from Panther to Tiger when it became available. I suspect there won't be one either when Leopard come out in a few months time.
Hello,
On most hardware, suspend works out of the box, until recently the problem was mostly linked to proprietary video drivers. Dual-screen doesn't work out of the box, but is in fact fairly easy to enable. I suspect it would have been worked out long ago with truly opened Nvidia and ATI drivers. As it is, enabling dual-screen is a different procedure depending on the manufacturer.
There is still a big difference between using sudo and being root, even if you use sudo a lot : it compartimentize what you do as a user and what you do as an administrator. At least you are not using your mail client and web browser as root, to name a couple.
Speaking about research, Grandma doesn't want to have to worry about spyware, viruses and self-degrading XP installs.
To be honest, change is difficult and people are busy. I'm used to all 3 : Windows, Linux and OS/X, but even getting used to OS/X took time and effort. In terms of efforts required to keep a clean, efficient, working computer, Windows does not look very good compared to the other two.
I essentially agree, this structure could simply be a cone like SR1987a, seen edge on.
It does compare the quality of the Cedega DirectX implementation vs. native OpenGL under Linux for the games they tested.
Actually, you can build a very good house by looking at an example. Merely knowing something is possible is usually enough of an incentive for some people to provide an implementation, sometimes better than the original.
Reverse engineering works very well. For instance, take a look at what happened to IBM after its IBM PC BIOS was reversed-engineered. Last I heard, IBM doesn't make any PCs anymore.
Technically O.J. has been found "not guilty beyond reasonable doubt".
In virtually every field, like you write, the USA is a minority leader. For instance, it has the largest single country economy in the world, however it's economy represents only about 30% of the entire world's, and is rougly the same as that of the European Union. In addition, this position is not guaranteed for ever. Again, for instance, the average world's economy grows faster (about 5%) than the US's (about 3%). The situation is comparable in the EU.
In the next few decades we are likely to see the economic or otherwise importance of the West diminish, and in particular that of the US. The Economist foresees that China will be the dominant economy by 2050. Now western economies represent about 60% of the world's GDP, but by then it will be less than 30%.
Just about the only area where the US is an undisputed leader is the military, but I'd argue that this is of limited value in a democracy.