Yes, it does... Because the stereotype is that we don't pay any taxes. I can assure you that's not true: we provide safe haven for tax dodgers (and even that's waning), but citizens pay taxes. The initial income tax isn't high, but they come at the end of the year and when you earn enough you pay through the nose. As a matter of fact, combined income of me and my wife results in us paying my net salary every three months in "advances"... Knowing them, I'm pretty sure that at the end of the year they'll still be hungry for more. Do note that it makes extremely hard to budget things, if you don't really know what you earn per month, as you can't really foresee the "surprise" at the end of the year. I'd rather be taxed more heavily initially on my income.

Luxembourgish taxes: Good for foreigners and people with a mortgage and lots of kids...

I'm well aware the stereotype exists... If I'd get 1€ for every time someone told me I don't pay taxes, I'd.... well... pay even more taxes, I guess :-(

For the record: I was born Belgian and have a lot of friends and family over there. I took the Luxembourgish nationality around ten years ago. I know of first hand experience that the Belgian national sport is tax dodging, and "black money" is way too common. Belgians admit that openly, though... Well unless he's talking to a tax inspector of course :-p

Here in Luxembourg, some gas stations have queues every damned weekend from non locals filling up. While I have a gas guzzler (~9l/100km to 7.5l/100km... it's a 11 year old car by now, which I bought new back in the day. It suits my needs and I see no reason replacing it with something new, even if it would be more economical... Breaking even would take years), I would applaud if they matched gas prices in neighbouring countries.

As a matter of fact, this is one of the places where the EU should step in and harmonize the prices and taxation over the whole EU.

Let's hang the landlords. All of them. All proper revolutions start that way, with good reason.

Pray please? How about overgeneralising? My dad happens to be a landlord, well, he used to be. He bought apartments for his kids and he rented them out during the time we didn't need them (yet). He ALWAYS made sure that the tenants had everything they needed (something broke, he was there immediately), and the rents were below market rate. The apartment themselves, were in a good neighborhood, close to public transport, with private parking and in vicinity of a supermarket, post office, schools, pharmacy, several restaurants, and all that kind of stuff. Not cheap... Market rate would be 1300€/month cold.

Several reasons, he liked to help young families, who were able to save up a bit more and hence eventually buy their own thing quicker (which many did!). He's too kind hearted sometimes :-P. He knew that if he made money on the apartments he would have to pay exorbitant taxes on the income generated by them. So basically, he let them pay off the loan, minus a certain amount, which he chipped in and then could declare to the taxman that he was in debt and earned nothing on it.

Not all landlords are evil. Mine, being my dad, asks me nothing as rent, except that I have to put the rent I would have paid aside for eventual future use. (Which might be coming soon!)

It again boils down to the fact that real estate should be bought for the real estate itself and not for making money.

Because MSM fucked up public perception of (already unpopular) nuclear power. I'm not pro-nuclear, but I'm a realist. We need it, at least still in the short term, and we could use all the so called "waste" to produce more energy, but there is no political will to do so.

Yesterday, I talked to my FiL about this. He was anti-nuclear, but at least he was willing to listen to the explanations from the engineering stanpoint. It didn't change his opinion, but mainly because of the waste issue. He did say, that the accident moved his view to "more negative". Oddly enough, in my view it should provoke the exact opposite: it proves how safe it really is and that this was a cascade of misfortune that was pretty much well prepared for.

Two weeks ago, with MiL, it was much worse. She didn't want to listen at all, said it was Tchernobyl all over again, etc, etc, etc...

My parents? We talked about it, and we all agree on the security of these installations and we know there is a remaining risk.

The difference, my parents both have a academic education and pretty sound understanding of science. My in-laws... let's be nice... less so.

Disclaimer: I live 45km from Cattenom. I am in the dead-zone in a Tchernobyl like event.

Go with Windows 7, 64-bit Ultimate... You know you want to :-p

Seriously: Kimvette is right. Unless you want to help debug the distro always stay a bit behind. There is a reason I run Debian stable and Ubuntu LTS... and Windows XP. Yes, even for proprietary, better stay a few versions behind. I only started using XP /after/ it was in SP2 for a long time. Stayed on NT4 while 2000 was out for years.

Let the others suffer the bugs and problems... I want to do just my work/play/surf.

My dad insisted using it on native resolution (1600x1200) and 96dpi. I had more trouble at reading the screen than he did... old hawk :-P

I think we just need to agree to disagree. I don't think that current IGPs fail when using basic modern programs (Meaning, Aero/Compiz. I don't know of any "basic" program requiring a 3D graphics card except those) and do "high resolution" (Which I will define now as Full HD, which is the most common you'll find) output. In the thread you'll find plenty people defending that stance.

You prefer non IGP? Fair enough. I don't need it and I'd rather spend the saved money on something that has value to me.

I'd gladly try out Shaker on my 01/2007 laptop and get back to you.... If you want, I just won't spend money on it... I'd be very surprised if it didn't work adequately.

We're on slashdot. I am not surprised in any way that I'll find people who need extra power.

At work, I do have a better machine even that on todays standards it's still low end (Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, NVidia Quadro, got it new when I started here 2 years ago), but I also run Linux and not Windows. That makes a world in resource usage. Yes, and I do run a few VMs too. Graphics usage, however, limit themselves to compiz and the occasional Flash Game.

For non-work, well, I do basically the same... Which is run Linux and sometimes a few VMs. Sure with the 2GB RAM, I have in my personal laptop, I have to limit myself to two VMs, but it works fine. I played (and finished) World Of Goo on that machine, worked fine, but that's really about the maximum needs in the graphics department.

I also admit that I am a dumpster diver by passion and have fun at making my hardware last as much as possible saving money in the long run. Thing is, I can do exactly what you do: put myself in a coffee shop and do whatever I'd do at home. Difference is that we have different usage patterns. Now, the question here is: which usage pattern of us to is closer to the usage pattern of the normal user. I don't know...

I hope you saw the post about me admitting being wrong about the fact that the iMacs graphics card is not an IGP. I really thought it was, because I didn't realize it had dedicated memory.

Yes, I know, someone admitting on slashdot he's wrong... The riders on the apocalypse are in sight.