I recently stumbled upon this marvelous piece. I title the quote “making an excuse“:
Saying that you’re forced to do something when you really aren’t is a failure to take responsibility for your actions. I generally don’t think users of proprietary software are primarily to blame for the challenges of software freedom — nearly all the blame lies with those who write, market, and distribute proprietary software. However, I think that software users should be clear about why they are using the software. It’s quite rare for someone to be compelled under threat of economic (or other) harm to use proprietary software. Therefore, only rarely is it justifiable to say you have to use proprietary software. In most cases, saying so is just making an excuse.
I’ll translate this for you to Catholicism. You can definitely adapt this to most religions (for some, add death penalties like stoning here and there):
Saying that you’re forced by your nature to masturbate when you really aren’t is a failure to take responsibility for your actions. The church generally doesn’t think masturbaters are primarily to blame for the challenges of sexuality — nearly all the blame lies with pornography. However, I think that people who masturbate should be clear about why they have sex with themselves: It’s quite rare for someone to be compelled under the desire of sexual pleasure. Therefore, only rarely is it justifiable to say you have to masturbate. In most cases, saying so is just making an excuse.
Een zelfstandige in België hoort zijn sociale bijdrage (bv. per kwartaal) vooraf te betalen. Je bent een debiel als je dat niet doet, want dan vragen ze na vier jaar lekker veel interest op het hele bedrag.
Iedereen die je tegen het lijf loopt wanneer je je firma opstart zal het je ook opnieuw zeggen. De mensen bij Unizo, op de cursus boekhouden, mijn boekhouder, de mensen van de bank en zelfs mijn notaris was het aan het uitleggen bij de oprichting. En allemaal met een dringende toon: doe dit, vergeet dat niet. Vergeet dat écht niet. Écht niet!
Je bent dus onwenselijk dom als je het toch niet doet. Maarja, dat er domme mensen bestaan is geen nieuws.
Wat weinig mensen weten is dat je het zelfs kan omdraaien: in tegenstelling tot voorafbetalingen van vennootschapsbelastingen, krijg je voor voorafbetalingen van je sociale bijdrage wél interest op het teveel betaalde bedrag.
En dat is een interest die momenteel hoger ligt dan wat je op een ferme spaarrekening krijgt.
Uiteraard moet je gokken wat je zoal gemiddeld zal verdienen op vier jaar. Dus uiteraard mag je dat vrij hoog inschatten. Weet jij misschien precies hoeveel meer winst je over enkele jaren zal maken? Nou ik niet. En ik geef mezelf uiteraard meer salaris wanneer er meer winst is, meneer de controleur. Maar ik kon het niet weten dat er na vier jaar toch niet zoveel winst was! Tja!
Dus, schat je dat vrij hoog in. En betaal je vier jaar lang te veel sociale bijdrage. Na vier jaar storten ze het teveel terug, mét een hoge interest.
Netjes toch?
Ik denk dat ik dit ga moeten vieren!
Nu niet teveel van jullie freelancers dit gaan doen he! Ik wil nog een paar jaartjes genieten van hun “probleem” ;-)
I try to avoid posting about the same subject twice in a row. But I also really think that Wikileaks is worth violating about any such rule in existence. Maybe I should make a category on my blog just for Wikileaks?
Today is the day the world is witnessing the most significant military leak in the history of mankind, so I have a feeling that today ’s gonna be a good day.
To all the people at Wikileaks, and to all whistle blowers in past, present and future: you are heroes. You guy’s ideas will be with us for centuries ahead of us. You’ll be remembered in history books. Let’s make sure you guys will.
It wasn’t the first time that I saw the movie; I think the third time or something. But I’m still convinced that the movie is even better than Dogville, about which I wrotea few years ago that it’s the best movie I ever saw.
Don’t listen to the U.S. critics. In their struggle not to see the world from a U.S. point of view, they don’t understand what it’s about (it’s not really about slavery). I guess Lars Von Trier carefully selects his audience.
The movie Manderlay, like Dogville, has a (hidden) morality. Even more than Dogville, which is basically about the moral necessity of assertiveness, is Manderlay a movie that tries to make you think. In my case about the failure of only using assertiveness to educate people (about) a new reality. Also about the failure of using democratic voting for every issue (ownership of a tool). And about the necessity of a law system: no matter how moral, or, immoral; it’s still better than absolute freedom - people need a law -. But with “freedom” being some sort of piece of shit ideological word among many readers of my blog, I’m sure many wont understand what I mean with that. I try to carefully select my audience. I’m not against “freedom”, just against its naive interpretations. Especially the “anarchy”-ones.
So Manderlay dances with the morals in Dogville. Both movies are part of a trilogy, so I guess that makes sense.
I’m grateful that Lars carefully selects his audience. You don’t create art by appeasement.
Looking forward to Wasington, the last part of this trilogy.
In 4.57 billion years our solar system went from creating simple bacteria to a large group of species. Several of which highly capable of making fairly intelligent decisions, one of which capable of having the indulgence of believing that it can think. That’s us.
The sun has an estimated 5 billion years to go before it turns into a Red Giant that in its very early stages will wipe out truly every single idea that exists inside at least our own solar system.
Unless radio waves that our planet started emitting since we invented radio are seen and understood (which requires a recipient in the first place), that will be the ultimate end of all of our ideas and culture. Unless we figure out a way to let the ideas cultivate outside of our solar system. Just the ideas would already be an insane achievement.
But imagine going from bacteria to beings, colonized by bacteria, that think that they can think, in far less time than the current age of our sun. Unless, of course, bacteria somehow arrived into our solar system from outside (unlikely, but perhaps equally unlikely than us ever exporting our ideas and culture to another solar system).
Imagine what could happen in the next 5 billion years …
It’s not popular to be critical about a (the leader of a) popular idea. This is illustrated by the intellectually absurd criticisms David Schlesinger receives.
Yet is the critic who monitors the organs of a society key to that organ either producing for its stakeholders, or failing and dragging the entire society it serves down with it.
Acknowledging the problem and changing course is what I seek in a candidate this year.
Wetten gaan anno 2010 veelal over ethiek. Verschillende filosofen uit onze tijd leggen dit uit. Het is niet nodig de intellectueel uit te hangen, deze filosofie is algemeen aangenomen in West Europa.
Ik sprak daarnet met een vriend over de volgende stelling:
Als we stellen dat democratie niet almachtig is en dat de wetten van een gemeenschap moeten gerespecteerd worden (je kan geen Burgemeester zijn als je de Vlaamse wetten en decreten niet respecteert) dan kan je ook stellen dat democratie niet almachtig is wanneer wij federale verkiezingen houden en die onwettig zouden zijn.
Dit is, mijns inziens, een onjuiste redenering. Maar waarom dan? Ik leg het uit.
De wet gaat veelal over ethiek. Moest U niet akkoord zijn, schrijf dan een boek. In de ethiek vind ik dat de meest juiste benadering van wat fout is, dat is waar de intentie fout is.
In het geval van verkiezingen is de intentie van de politiek in België niet fout. De intentie is immers om het land te regeren. Aldus is het onmogelijk dat deze verkiezing onwettig is. Hier kan de democratie dus gewoon haar gang gaan.
In het geval van die Burgemeesters is het hun intentie om de taalwetten te omzeilen. Hun intentie is het verzieken van de situatie. Daarom kunnen ze niet, nooit, benoemd worden. Hier kan de democratie niet gewoon haar gang gaan.
Ik was een week geleden een maand in Zwitserland. Ik heb daar aan een resem mensen uit Zürich gevraagd: Hoe zou U erover denken moesten Dietikon, Dietlikon en Kloten een voor 70% Italiaanse bevolking hebben en daarbij een Burgemeester hebben die weigert om Duits te spreken in de gemeenteraden?
Alle Zwitsers hun Zwitserse frank viel meteen. Ze vertelden me meteen en onmiddellijk dat dit gewoonweg oorlog zou betekenen. Dit zou absoluut en in alle talen onaanvaardbaar zou zijn. Zij zouden eisen, jazeker, eisen van de mensen die er wonen dat ze de Duitse taal zouden leren. Niemand van hen vond het vreemd dat die Burgemeesters niet benoemd konden worden.
At six in the morning the girl who was working her first day at the bar, after she and the bartender and owner got a Leffe from me, played Ne me quitte pas by Jacques Brel. I didn’t request it, they even asked me to shut the fuck up for the song.
I realized that although I’m coming from that insignificant country, insignificance doesn’t matter.
And this is why I like Europe’s many cultures. Why I like Switzerland, too. We don’t but we do understand each other.
MSNBC: You have more tapes like this? Julian Assange: Yes we do. Assange: I won’t go into the precise number. But there was a rumor that the tape that we were about to release was about a similar incident in Afghanistan, where 97 people were bombed in May last year. We euhm, have that video. MSNBC: Do you intent to release that video as well? Assange: Yes, as soon as we have finished our analysis, we will release it.
Thank you Wikileaks. Thank you Julian Assange. You are bringing Wikileak’s perspective calm and clear in the media. You’re an example to all whistleblowers. Julian, you’re doing a great job.
I understand more people are involved in this leak; thanks everybody. You’re being respected.
Information technology is all about information. Information for humanity.
Don’t you guys stop believing in this! We now believe in you. Many people like me are highly focused and when intelligence services want a battle: we’ll listen. People like me are prepared to act.
I understand you guys like Belgium’s law that protects journalist’ sources. As the owner of a Belgian Ltd. maybe I can help?
I’m not often proud about my country. Last week I told my Swiss friends here in Zürich that I have about 3000 reasons to leave Belgium and a 1000 reasons to come to Switzerland. I wasn’t exaggerating.
I’m a guy with principles and ethics. So thank you.
Today after I brought Tinne to the airport I drove around Zürichsee. She can’t stay in Switzerland the entire month; she has to go back to school on Monday.
While driving on the Seestrasse I started counting luxury cars. After I reached two for Lamborgini and three for Ferrari I started thinking: Zimmerberg Sihltal and Pfannenstiel must be expensive districts too… And yes, they are.
I was lucky today that it was nice weather. But wow, what a nice view on the mountain tops when you look south over Zürichsee. People from Zürich, you guys are so lucky! Such immense calming feeling the view gives me! For me, it beats sauna. And I’m a real sauna fan.
I’m thinking to check it out south of Zürich. But not the canton. I think the house prices are just exaggerated high in the canton of Zürich. I was thinking Sankt Gallen, Toggenburg. I’ve never been there; I’ll check it out tomorrow.
Hmmr, meteoswiss gives rain for tomorrow. Doesn’t matter.
Actually, when I came back from the airport the first thing I really did was fix coping with property changes in ontologies for Tracker. Yesterday it wasn’t my day, I think. I couldn’t find this damn problem in my code! And in the evening I lost three chess games in a row against Tinne. That’s really a bad score for me. Maybe after two weeks of playing chess almost every evening, she got better than me? Hmmrr, that’s a troubling idea.
Anyway, so when I got back from the airport I couldn’t resist beating the code problem that I didn’t find on Friday. I found it! It works!
I guess I’m both a dreamer and a realist programmer. But don’t tell my customers that I’m such a dreamer.
Today Tinne and I visited Switzerland’s capital, Bern.
We were really surprised; we’d never imagined that a capital city could offer so much peace and calm. It felt good to be there.
The fountains, the old houses, the river and the snowy mountain peaks give the city an idyllic image.
Standing on the bridge, you see the roofs of all these lovely small houses.
The bear is the symbol of Bern. Near the House of Parliament there was this statue of a bear. Tinne just couldn’t resist to give it a hug. Bern has also got real bears. Unfortunately, Tinne was not allowed to cuddle those bears.
The House of Parliament is a truly impressive building. It looks over the snowy mountains, its people and its treasury, the National Bank of Switzerland.
As you can imagine, the National Bank building is a master piece as well. And even more impressive; it issues a world leading currency.
On the market square in Oerlikon we first saw this chess board on the street; black and white stones and giant chess pieces. In Bern there was also a giant chess board in the backyard of the House of Parliament. Tinne couldn’t resist to challenge me for a game of chess. (*edit*, Armin noted in a comment that the initial position of knight and bishop are swapped. And OMG, he’s right!)
And she won!
At the House of Parliament you get a stunning, idyllic view on the mountains of Switzerland.
Congratulations to Mr. Van Rompuy for helping the EU powers to find a compromise.
Diplomats credit him with a shrewd sense of deal-making and a determination that is belied by his quiet anti-charisma, and he has already begun to win plaudits from Paris, Berlin and other capitals.
Nonetheless, I think the European community should do it just to strengthen Europe’s economy. I’m not satisfied by Europe’s economic strength: I want it to be undefeatable.
We must not let the IMF solve our problems. Europe might be a political dwarf, but we Europeans should show that we will solve our own problems. We’re an adult composition of cultures with vast amounts of experience. We know how to solve any imaginable problem. And let’s not, in our defeatism, pretend we don’t.
A EMF is a commitment to future member states: Europe often asks them fundamental changes; economic strength is what Europe offers in return. This needs to come at a highest price: Greece will have to fix their deficit problem. Even if their entire population goes on strike. Greece will be an example for countries like my own: Belgium has to fix a serious deficit problem, too.
An EMF comes at an equally high price, and that frightens me a bit: I don’t want the ECB to go as ballistic on money creation as the FED has been last two years. I want the EURO to be the strongest relevant currency mankind has ever created. No matter how insane the rest of the world thinks that ambition is: I believe that keeping the EURO’s M3 in check is a key to creating a wealthy society in Europe.
Politically I want European nations to negotiate more and more often. The European Union is a political dwarf only because finding agreement is hard. But in the long run will our solution be the most negotiated, most tested on this planet.
Together we can deal with anything. That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy; it has never been easy: just seventy years ago we were still killing each other. We’re all guilty of that one way or another. And before that it wasn’t any better. Today, not that many people still care: “it wasn’t me”, right? So stop being a bitch about it, then.
It’s time to let it be. It’s time to start a new European century that will be better. With respect for all European cultures, languages, nations, nationalities, values, borders and interests.
But also a European century with economic responsibilities for each member. It’s our strength: we figured out how to keep our population wealthy: let’s continue doing so in the future.
It was the dawn of the 1970s, at the height of worldwide student protests against the Vietnam War, and a librarian stationed at a U.S. Information Agency post abroad had received bad news: A student group was threatening to burn down her library.
But the librarian had friends among the group of student activists who made the threat. Her response on first glance might seem either naïve or foolhardy — or both: She invited the group to use the library facilities for some of their meetings.
But she also brought Americans living in the country there to listen to them — and so engineered a dialogue instead of a confrontation.
In doing so, she was capitalizing on her personal relationship with the handful of student leaders she knew well enough to trust — and for them to trust her. The tactic opened new channels of mutual understanding, and it strengthened her friendship with the student leaders. The library was never touched.
– Daniel Goleman, Working With Emotional Intelligence, Competencies of the stars. 1998
In Working with Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman explains several practical methods to improve the social skills of people. Before I bought this book a year or two ago, I read Daniel’s first book Emotional Intelligence. This weekend I finally started reading Working With.
I recommend the section Some Misconceptions. Regretfully ain’t this section available for display in the flash preview widget. Instead of violating copyright laws by typing it down here, I’m recommending to just buy the book.
You can find audiobooks online. The section about misconceptions is at track three. Track five talks about two computer programmers, which is very illustrative for many of my blog’s readers (and possibly myself). I hope you wont illegally download using torrents. Instead, buy the material.
What distinguishes Daniel Goleman from old line proponents of positive thinking, however, is his grounding in psychology and neuroscience. Armed with a Ph.D in psychology from Harvard and a first-grade journalism background at the New York Times, Dr. Goleman has authored half a dozen books that explore the physical and chemical workings on the brain and their relationship with what we experience as everyday life.
– Peter Allen, director of Google university, introduction to Daniel Goleman. August 3, 2007
I hope readers of my blog will shun away from pseudo science when it comes to emotional and social intelligence, but instead read and learn from authors like Daniel Goleman. I also (still) recommend the books available at The Moral Brain by for example Dr. Jan Verplaetse.
We would rather suffer the visible costs of a few bad decisions than incur the many invisible costs that come from decisions made too slowly - or not at all - because of a stifling bureaucracy.
– Letter by Warren E. Buffett to the shareholders of Berkshire, February 26, 2010
Perhaps we should put a damp rag like the one he mentions in his mouth next time he opens it?
Nigel Farage, you’re an disgrace to yourself. The European parliament is no place for personal attacks, and you aren’t fit to carry the title Member of the European Parliament. Please keep the honour to yourself and resign.
Every sensible person outside of the U.K. thinks you should. Even the Euro skeptics do. You’re an embarrassment for your country and its culture, so I hope for the people in the U.K. that they’ll kick you out of politics.
I fear you’re just playing the populist card, and that you’ll even get votes for this from other morons.
This (super) cool .NET developer and good friend came to me at the FOSDEM bar to tell me he was confused about why during the Tracker presentation I was asking people to replace F-Spot and Banshee.
I hope I didn’t say it like that, I would never intent to say that. But I’ll review the video of the presentation as soon as Rob publishes it.
Anyway, to ensure everybody understood correctly what I did wanted to say (whether or not I did, is another question):
The call was to inspire people to reimplement or to provide different implementations of F-Spot’s and Banshee’s data backends, so that they would use an RDF store like tracker-store instead of each app its own metadata database.
I think I also mentioned Rhythmbox in the same sentence because the last thing I would want is to turn this into a .NET vs. anti-.NET debate. It just happens to be that the best GNOME softwares for photo and music management are written in .NET (and that has a good reason).
People who know me also know that I think those anti-.NET people are disruptive ignorable people. I also actively and willingly ignore them (and they should know this). I’m actually a big fan of the Mono platform.
I’ll try to ensure that I don’t create this confusion during presentations anymore.
