Experts advocate for VAT increase - if you look at these alleged experts, you find IW director Hüther and the chief economist of Deutsche Bank. Completely neutral experts, of course. Why do these allegedly professional journalists write such nonsense? Every idiot from some employers' association or employer-affiliated institute or major bank is called an expert - but if something comes from the employees' camp, they are critics from the unions. This is how the neoliberal crap is beautifully upheld and the citizen is told where to look for his experts - regardless of whether these experts are anything but experts (I still think with horror of the mathematically completely untalented and otherwise quite incompetent financial expert Mertz) or pursue their own political agenda. That in this specific case something must be rotten with the experts should also be noticeable to the dumbest journalist: although the VAT should be increased, but of course only with accompanying measures. Look at these measures. One screams for a reduction in wage-related costs as an accompanying measure and the abolition of the solidarity surcharge - but only the latter is relevant for the consumer. And now look at what someone on social assistance or unemployment benefit II pays in solidarity surcharge - nothing. But this person still fully bears the VAT increase.
The other talks about the fact that the risk of reduced consumption must be accepted, as the advantages of reducing labor costs outweigh - because he also wants to reduce various payments. At least for both sides - at least he did not explicitly talk only from the employers' side, but presumably he simply forgot that there is also an employees' side. And here too: social assistance recipients and unemployment benefit II recipients are not relieved and get the full VAT increase.
None of the so-called experts has spoken about the fact that a VAT increase must be accompanied by an increase in social assistance and unemployment benefit II. Both accept that people who are already impoverished will be even worse off and that more people will fall below the poverty line. They act as if they were experts - but in the end they are only the henchmen of the exploiters and swindlers and want only the same thing that the employers' side has been demanding all along: to squeeze the employees even more.
VAT is the most unsocial tax we have. On the one hand, it is only relevant for consumers, and indeed for domestic consumers. On the other hand, it is based on consumption - and this can of course not fall below a certain level, because everyone has to live and has to pay for it - and thus this tax hits the hardest those who have the least. Because their consumption can hardly be reduced any further.
FDP will block disclosure of executive compensation - that's where you see who the FDP really represents.
Mass criminalization feared at the 2006 World Cup - the whole of Germany is being turned into a prison with permanent surveillance. In the name of security and football. Does anyone really believe that the security facilities will be dismantled after the World Cup?
Kodak confirm SLR/n and SLR/c discontinued - after Kodak was one of the first to build digital SLRs, and not even bad ones, it's now probably over. Ok, the SLR/n and SLR/c do make rather bad impressions, compared to current SLR bodies from Canon or Nikon. Earlier Kodaks like the 6xx and 7xx series were really great devices.
Sony BMG: "Sterile" Audio-CDs sollen illegale Kopien verhindern. Excerpt: It's just about making it more difficult for the average user to copy. - but the average users are allowed to make copies legally. However, professional pirates won't care. Just another example that the music industry doesn't really care only about eradicating pirates - they explicitly want to eliminate private copying. Because they are criminalized by such copy protection measures - because bypassing even such trivialities is prohibited by law. Professional pirates couldn't care less about the illegality of bypassing.
Who doesn't feel like paying Microsoft for Virtual PC and isn't exactly thrilled by the other well-known alternatives, might want to check out a less known one: iEmulator PC Emulator for MAC OS X is an emulator for the Mac based on QEmu. The special feature: not only the normal 32-bit Intel chips can be emulated, but also the 64-bit ones, as well as Sparc, ARM, and PPC. Pretty cool, that thing. And for those who find even the 25 dollars for iEmulator too much (or are hardcore OSS users), there's QEmuX - a free graphical interface for QEmu on the Mac.
To take it for a test drive, you can get suitable pre-prepared images from FreeOSZoo.
In initial tests, I had the usual problem: the keyboard layout just doesn't fit. You can only get something similar to a German keyboard layout, it doesn't fit exactly - the umlauts are off, some special characters are wrong, the whole thing is quite rough in that regard. Not that Virtual PC is any better: I could never properly enter the angle brackets and the pipe symbol under Virtual PC (which is pretty stupid for programmers).
A frequently overlooked (also by me) Scheme implementation is the CHICKEN Scheme Compiler. What's special about this implementation: in addition to the interactive interpreter, there is a compiler that produces portable C and compiles it into loadable modules using a C compiler. This makes this compiler particularly good for integrating C libraries. In principle, this is still quite similar to Gambit-C, another Scheme implementation that uses C as an intermediate language.
But Chicken goes beyond Gambit-C in terms of generated C code - the system is explicitly designed to be mixed with C, while Gambit-C simply uses C as a portable assembler. In Chicken, the FFIs (Foreign Function Interfaces) are much simpler. This is evident in finished interfaces to various databases such as metakit (used in the Python Desktop Server), PostgreSQL, and sqlite.
In addition, Chicken has gained a nice infrastructure of network-installable extensions with the Eggs - with web server, database, and many other delicacies. This of course helps immensely in programming - I have come to love such an infrastructure of ready-made code with MZScheme, Python, and Perl.
Chicken also compiles under Mac OS X. At the moment, the compiler is running in the background for me.
... to install Desktop Manager, set it to Transition Cube, and then constantly switch back and forth between two desktops just for the fun of the visual effect
After upgrading, there might be some unusual effects - if you notice anything, please let me know. I'm referring to unusual effects that weren't there before - the other unusual effects that have been here for a while are probably intentional.
