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.
There are no open source companies. There are companies and there are open source projects.
Some companies work on open source projects, some parent open source projects, some don’t.
Some of those companies are good at fostering a community that contributes to these open source projects. Others are unwilling and some don’t yet understand the process. And again others have many open source projects being done by teams that do get it and have at the same time other projects being done by teams that don’t get it. Actually that last dual situation is the most common among the large companies. You know, the ones that often sponsor your community’s main conference and the ones that employ your heros.
If you do a quick reality-check then you’ll conclude there are no black / white companies. Actually, nothing in life nor in ethics is black / white. Nothing at all.
What you do have is a small group of amazingly disturbing purists who do zero coding themselves (that is, near zero) but do think black / white, and consequently write a lot of absurd nonsense in blog post-comments, on slashdot in particular, forums and mailing lists. These people are the reason numéro uno why many companies quit trying to understand open source.
It’s sad that the actual (open source) developers have to waste time explaining companies, for whom they do consultancy, that these people can be ignored. It’s also sad that these purists have turned so vocal, even violent, that they often can’t really be ignored anymore: people’s employers have been harassed.
“You have to fire somebody because he’s being unethical by disagreeing with my religious believe-system that Microsoft is evil!”. Maybe it’s just me who’s behind on ethics in this world? Well, those people can still get lost because I, in ethics, disagree with them.
Now, let’s get back to the projects and away from the open source vs. open core debates. We have a lot of work to do. And a lot of companies to convince opening their projects.
Open source developers succeeded in (for example) getting some software on phones. The people who did aren’t the religious black / white people. Maybe the media around open source should track down the people who did, and write quite a bit more about their work, ideas and passion?
Finally, the best companies are driven by the ideas and passions of their best employees. Those are the people who you should admire. Not their company’s open core PR.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not all discussions are easy. If discussions were to be easy, the bar wouldn’t be high enough for your bullshit filter to be effective here.
During dark hours of discussions the nineties syndrome of wanting immediate results plays its role among spectators: It’s not a popular job to be a dissident. 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.
In Western Europe we traded Kings and Popes for a government that is held accountable by an opposition. Many countries and cultures adopted this system of governance. That’s because it undeniably works. If you have a better system in mind, that can be put to the test, please come forward.
It is good that the GNOME foundation board has decided to increase the amount of surveys. But I have one request which I didn’t succeed in raising before the end of last year:
Although I accept the decisive role a group of leadership has to take, I want foundation board members and employees to be held accountable for the decisions they make. Especially the ones where they go against the results of such a survey.
But this is not up to me.
*edit* They are showing an old episode of Married with Children on TV, I’ll be back in half an hour!
Thank you for trying to forbid the burka. I hope my country will also forbid it. We need to protect (but not overprotect) the women of Muslim cultures, cultures who are massively migrating to Western Europe at this moment, against the oppressive anti-woman and religious nature of the burka.
I don’t believe, at all, that the burka is an expression of free speech. I believe it’s an instrument to oppress woman, and that this is its only purpose. There is no place for that in Western European culture. None. And we must be assertive about it.
I’d also like to ask Muslim countries to stay out of the debate: we decide about Western European values, you don’t. Equality between men and woman is a Western European value. If you don’t like that, sorry, it’s not negotiable.
In the third segment of The Real News‘ interview with Dr. Brzezinski, Paul Jay asks him about Israel’s threat to bomb Iranian Nuclear facilities and the American strategy towards Iran.
Brzezinski talks about how this might force the U.S. out of the region in the short term, how it would affect the price of oil, how the U.S. would be militarily involved and how the U.S. would be alone in this. And what the fundamental consequences for Israel would be.
You can find all three parts of the interview and their transcripts here:
It’s Sunday so I skim Facebook a bit. I came across Lefty’s link to a 100 quotes every geek should know blog. Artwork like humor often represents a philosophy. I think this first quote on that blog is a very good meme, also for foundation boards:
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. — Dennis the Peasant, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
