der bastler

Well, read the Preamble and then tell me again that this constitution is just another treaty. And please remember what "Verfassungsrang" means. This constitution sets limits for social topics, but apparently unlimits economic rights. Consumer protection is included but remains fuzzy -- in a paper that otherwise uses verbalisations in lawyer-speak! http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone04262005.html See also: http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb5/frieden/themen/Europa/duchrow.html (German) I did. It talks about more topics the parliament can participate in. But it doesn't state any changes of current procedures. Legislative acts are proposed by the Commission alone. Please read Art.III-396. And then compare it to the procedure used today. http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/60169 (German) "Council wants to bypass parliament" This bypass is also possible with the constitution: http://www.europarl.eu.int/code/information/guide_de.pdf (German) It will only elect who was proposed by the Council (Art.II-27.1).

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/20/20100/1.html "Der Geist der Gesetze" "The Spirit of Laws" Well let's look at some other articles refering to parliament and council: ...shall act on its own initiative with opinion and consent of of the Council... The commission doesn't have to submit a proposal, it can dismiss it with a small "We don't want to"-information. The parliament has to accept this decision... Again, "after obtaining the consent of the Council and of the Commission"... The Council The Council shall be heard, the Commission may attend -- and the other way around? Ah, yes, the President of the European Parliament may be invited. If it pleases the Council. If not -- bad luck, President. Oh, the Council can act only after consulting the Commission. What about the parliament? Forgotten? Don't want to ask the parliament? Then why do we need a parliament? The Commission Compulsory retirement? What's that? May, may, may... May's gone, we have June (just kidding ). But seriously, why not "has to"? "May" is a bit diffuse, isn't it? Ok, as a point pro constitution you can say that the parliament can elect the president of the commission. But what does it mean exactly? See, the parliament only has the right to nod through what the Council proposes... And how about foreign and security policy? Very nice. The parliament is asked from time to time. Plus it will get some informations about the process. This means: No common defence policy (members are allowed to have their own not policies); obligatory and controlled armament; the parliament can't intervene. Conclusion: This constitution provides no more democracy, no common policy and prefers economy over social rights. Thanks, France and Netherlands! Merci, mes amis, you couldn't have offered a better cadeau d'anniversaire to me on sunday! P.S.: Just another review: http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone04262005.html

Then why for heaven's sake did they not inform the people? Every small election is accompanied by a massive PR campaign, but the EU constitution... They said it was something big, something important -- but left the voter alone with a thick brick of paper containing hundreds of articles. Definitely something's going wrong. And not only in the process of pushing software patents through the political institutions (i.e. disfranchisement of parliament by council/commission, which btw wouldn't be changed by this constitution).

Do you mean employee (does the job) or employer (offers the job)? Now I'm confused. Same question: employee or employer?

No. Just a warning shot to reconsider some topics. Just look into the constitution and then ask yourself: "Does most of this stuff have to be in a constitution? Why are social rights limited by Union Law? Why is the definition of consumer protection very diffuse, opposite to the rich definitions about internal economic policies? Why is War on Terrorism™ explicitly mentioned in the constitution, turning EU armed forces into an international intervention force?" One reads the constitution and one thinks "Well, sounds good". But while reading on one notices that there are many ammendments from apparently many, many people with very own interests. "Viele Köche verderben den Brei" -- "Too many cooks spoil the broth."

Why does a constitution have to include definitions about market and the like? Isn't European Law a more suitable place for stuff like this? Imo a constitution is something important (ie. civil rights, type of government) which represents the base for all the other more precisely defined laws. Then why do we have to include many, many articles about market liberation, currency policy, services, etc...? My point is: They can say "look, it's written in the constitution." -- a killer argument to end further discussions about e.g. social services. I have a bad feeling about that.

A little bit sad that the towel day (day to remember Douglas Adams who died May 2001) topic was closed. Hey, you sass that hoopy Douglas Adams? There's a frood who really knew where his towel was...

Then why are most Europeans not involved in the process? Hell, every election is accompanied by tons of placards, buttons, flyers and other PR stuff. But politicians are incapable of explaining the constitution to the uneducated masses? And why is this constitution that complicated? Smokescreen formulations? *peersatbillofrights* Objection (correct term technique?)! Example: We had two swimming baths in our town. Some time ago the town council said both are too expensive. Their solution: Close both and build a new one for just 20 Mio EUR(!). Profit expertises contradicted themselves and/or were not published, overall the whole business seemed risky. Other towns were ruined by similar projects. But the town council (in a rare coalition of SPD and CDU) founded a corporation to manage the new bath, with many council members also populating the management. They knocked down one of the existent baths to make room for a new building of the administration and said "Look, now we need a new bath". I call that immoral, on the edge of crime... Some citizens intervened -- they collected signatures and forced a referendum. 60 % said "No!" to the new-bath-idea, but that didn't sufficed. We needed 25 % of all registrated voters! A nearly impossible task regarding the overall low participation. On the other hand, the major got elected with fewer votes some years ago... -- I will have to pay higher Grundsteuer (land tax) because that project will fail, and the town's depts will double. The politicians who are responsible will quit unharmed. With much more money. At least I have done what was possible... Exactly. Representative democracy? Not with these politicians. Imo it is very dangerous to keep most Europeans away from important European decisions. It could make many people vote for undemocratic parties... I suspect the next Reich will not be an exclusive German idea...

Probably not... http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb5....mm.html The politics tv magazine "Panorama" has asked several politicians several questions about the new constitution. 1.) Is it possible to get a referendum on level of the EU? Correct answer: Yes, with more than one million signatures. Answers of members of the parliament: Wolfgang Gerhardt (FDP expert foreign policy): "As far as I know, no." Friedbert Pflüger (CDU expert foreign policy): "On EU level, I don't think so." Horst Schild (SPD): "No" Ernst-Reinhard Beck (CDU): "No, not at all." Marga Elser (SPD): "That's not provided in the constitution." (...) 2.) On which fields does the Bundestag have no further right of decision, for which does the EU take responsibility? Answers of members of the parliament: Marga Elser (SPD): "Yes, that's the European defence policy." Hans-Christian Ströbele (Greens): "I can't tell you off-hand. There are many." Ortwin Runde (SPD): "Honestly, I don't know any except for exclusive competence." Petra Pau (PDS): "I can't tell you this precisely by now." Silke Stokar (Greens): "The EU alone, hmm, foreign... dunno." (...) Wrong. Correct answers would be: customs union, competition of the inner market and currency policy. And now for the sticking point: Qualified majority and its weight. Which majority is needed to pass a new law in Brussels? At the day of the interviews it was in the newspapers: 55 % of the member states with at least 65 % of the EU population. Answers of members of the parliament: Marga Elser (SPD): "Oh (laughs), I didn't think of it in numbers and percent yet." Silke Stokar (Greens): "No idea." Cornelia Pieper (FDP): "Oh, now you get very detailled on this early morning (laughs)." Friedbert Pflüger (CDU): "I don't know, I have to look that up." Petra Pau (PDS): "Oh, can't say." Last question: How many stars are shown on the EU flag? Wolfgang Thierse (SPD, president of the Bundestag, second man in state): "God, didn't count them, I hope there are 25, as many as member states." Wolfgang Gerhardt (FDP): "Oh, I can't answer this one." Wolfgang Clement (SPD, Minister for Economic Affairs): "You better count on your own." (...) Renate Künast (Greens, farming and consumer protection minister): "12 or 15. In any case not the number of member states at the moment." At least one knew it (Well done, Renate!). There are 12 stars. Sidenote: 569 voted for the constitution, i.e. 95 % of the Bundestag. In varietate concordia, unity in diversity? At least we can say: Unity in ignorance...

Ever read the constitution (or parts of it)? Economy comes first, social justice and protection last? Sounds good? Compare with German Basic Law, Article 14, 2: Property imposes duties. Not in the European Constitution, where it is written that public interest can only be enforced by law. Combine that with Article II-76 and you have a new economic hunting ground... Intellectual property shall be protected -- great for international relations (see also: TRIPS), bad for developing countries (seeds, medicine). Support of TRIPS seems to be of high importance, if it appears in the European Constitution... Let's go on: Solidarity is mentioned (Part II, Title IV), and it starts with -- what else -- economic interest and workers rights. The right to receive a guaranteed pension isn't mentioned. Other social rights and services are limited to national laws. Consumer protection (Article II-98) shall be ensured by union policies. Let's take a look at the union policies, shall we? Noticed the order of mentioned policies? Economy first, employment and social policy follow as "other policies"... Stop! Remember Article I-3.3? "The Union shall work for the sustainable development of Europe based on balanced economic growth and price stability, a highly competitive social market economy, [...]" Now it is defined as an "open market with free competition"? How does this fit? Or is Article I-3 only poetry to make it look nice? And what about military tasks? This means the EU should become an international intervention force? Another catch: "joint disarmament operations" are mentioned, but in Article I-41 it is written: In future we do joint disarmament operations with upgraded armed forces? Armament mandatory in the EU? If you can read German, here's a nice review: http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb5/frieden/themen/Europa/duchrow.html As a German who could not vote against it I can only say: "Go France, go!"

Well, to me it's a choice between pest and cholera. To me, the important topics are software patents (No!), data protection (Yes!), civil rights (Respect 'em!) and direct democracy (More!). Evaluation of mentioned parties based on these topics leads to a zero result... Time for a new party (like the Greens in the early 80s)?

Nobody cared for the Eurovision Song Contest, imo most people wanted a last place. Good point to reduce the payment btw... Anyway after reviewing the chancellors behaviour in the last weeks my assessment is that he doesn't want to do the job anymore. Ok, one could say, the election announcement is some kind of PR gag to change todays headlines ("Neuwahlen" instead of "SPD verliert in NRW") and to catch the opposition off-balance. On the other hand, with the soccer world championship next year he would have had the advantage of patriotism. Similar to Schröder. They differ in some points, but both CDU and SPD are just two shades of grey. CDU is centre-right, SPD is centre-left, but the current minister of the interior -- Otto Schily (SPD) -- overtook the CDU to the right with his PATRIOT-act-like security packets. In case of software patents both parties don't define their positions. Regarding data protection both parties compete in being the worst choice. And referendums or more direct democracy is a no-no for all big parties. Conclusion: In fall I'll have a serious Entscheidungsproblem.

State elections in North Rhine-Westphalia -- SPD loses domination in traditional labour party state http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,357076,00.html http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/05/22/germany.state.ap/index.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4571465.stm Now, that came with a surprise...

One grandpa was sent to Denmark, i.e. was lucky. Died when I was a year or so old (afaik cancer). The other grandpa served on a submarine in the Baltic. He was born 1920, is still alive and kickin, can still drive his car and just got a new mobile phone (my old nokia). If I would give him a computer I suppose he'd start to learn how to use it. Admirable man. From what I know he didn't encountered much action (some time ago he told that once, when they returned from shore leave, they found their boat bombed; so I suspect it was more like a garrison job; didn't hear any Schleichfahrt stories from him). Some years ago I did a recherche at the Kriegsgräberfürsorge and found that at least one ancestor from another branch of family lies in a wood somewhere in the Ukraine. Easter front -- bad luck.

Ah, Ok, I don't use Office for footnotes, long texts and the like. That's something I do in LaTeX/PDFTex (finishing my project doc atm)... Kile is very nice... I use OO for letters, various sketches (for the LaTeX-doc mentioned above) and some spread sheet work for which I don't want to start MATLAB... Edit: I had my never-again event with MS Word last year, when I was writing a longer report for my internship on my work station (company PC with Win). At some point I could not save my work any longer... "Ah, that's a known bug, try this..." "No, doesn't work" "And that?" "Neither. Hm, That did it!"... Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, opened Notepad, Ctrl+V. Saved as text, next day brought my notebook and finished a fine pdf report in LaTeX...

Which functions?

May 8th. End of World War II. No more War! Really? A small post-WWII collection of 35 VIWs (very important wars): 1. Greek Civil War 1945-1949 -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War 2. Chinese Civil War (1946-1949) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War 3. First Vietnam War (1946-1954) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Indochina_War 4. First Arab-Israeli War (1948-1949) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab-Israeli_War 5. Korean War (1950-1953) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War 6. Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_War_of_Independence 7. Second Arab-Israeli War (1956) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis 8. Civil War in Guatemala (1960-1996) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Guatemala 9. Congo Civil War (since 1960) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Civil_War 10. Guerilla War in Colombia (since 1964) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia 11. Second Vietnam War (1964-1975) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War 12. Burundi Civil War (1965-2003) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burundi_Civil_War 13. Second Indo-Pakistani War (1965) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1965 14. Third Arab-Israeli War (1967) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War 15. Cambodian Civil War (1967-1997) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_Civil_War 16. Biafra Conflict (1967-1970) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Civil_War 17. Third Indo-Pakistani War (1971) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1971 18. Fourth Arab-Israeli War (1973) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War 19. Cyprus Crisis (1974) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki....d_after 20. Civil War in Angola (1975-2002) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angola 21. Civil War in Mozambique (1975-1992) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambique 22. Fourth Afghanistan War (1979-1997) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Afghanistan 23. Civil War in El Salvador (1979-1992) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Salvador 24. First Gulf War (1980-1988) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War 25. Falklands War (1982) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War 26. Civil War in Nicaragua (1982-1990) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua 27. Civil War in Sri Lanka (1983-2002) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_conflict_in_Sri_Lanka 28. Civil War in Sudan (1983-2005) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sudanese_Civil_War 29. Second Gulf War (1991) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_War 30. Civil War in Yugoslavia (1991-1995) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_wars 31. Chechen Wars (since 1994) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War 32. Ethiopia-Eritrea War (1998-2000) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia-Eritrea_War 33. Kosovo War (1999) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War 34. Fifth Afghanistan War (2001) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._invasion_of_Afghanistan 35. Third Gulf War (2003) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq These are major ones, overall there were more than 250 armed conflicts since 1945 with approx. 23 Million dead (most of them civilians). [source: "7th day", week end special of Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung] No more war? The world doesn't seem interested...

Strictly for work? Do you need any special apps? Generally I'd say IBook.

Funny story how you can unclassify it: http://it.slashdot.org/article....tid=103 Copy and paste... You can't tell me they are that dumb when it comes to handling classified documents. Can't believe that. Perhaps an act of disinformation? *remembers Sun Zi*

"Irrlicht" (German for "ghost light") looks promising, perhaps I adapt this one for a 2D adventure (similar to OSX's GUI: Sprites as textured polygons). For me, earliest point of beginning would be autumn, when personal job situation is solved.

Added Peanut and Krycek

I have a PC, but no DirectX anymore. Why not design the game platform-independent right from the start? As for DirectX was a pita to program when I tried it some years ago (see also Ron Gilberts Blog: http://grumpygamer.com/9848959) As mentioned in my former post: OOP Base library http://clanlib.org/ GFX: http://crystal.sourceforge.net/ http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/ http://nebuladevice.cubik.org/ http://www.twilight3d.com/index.html Physics: http://ode.org/

Suggestions: Base ClanLib: http://clanlib.org/ 3D engines Crystal Space: http://crystal.sourceforge.net/ Examples: http://community.crystalspace3d.org/tiki-br....geId=87 http://community.crystalspace3d.org/tiki-br....geId=49 http://community.crystalspace3d.org/tiki-br....eId=124 Irrlicht Engine: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/ Examples: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/images/sotw/024l.jpg http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/images/shots/057.jpg http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/images/shots/052.jpg http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/images/shots/047.jpg http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/images/shots/064.jpg http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/images/shots/055.jpg

Look in an up-to-date dictionary: We have thousands of different symbols, too. Ok, we compose them out of 26 letter symbols and call them words, but words/syllables are equal to chinese symbols. Iirc they chopped the jungle of symbols (cut back to 5000? most used symbols) in the 50s/60s... In our Chinese classes we learned that each symbol consists of a limited number of different lines and curves and represents a very simplified picture of its meaning. Look at Wester languages: We compose our symbols out of a limited pool of characters, too... Found this today: http://mandarin.org.sg/multimedia/evolution/default.htm To me it's a very fascinating language...

What I found confusing is that there are apparently no words for Yes or No in Chinese? On the other hand one just exchanges one word to turn a question into an answer...