Solitair

Reply to Death of a Superpower? in Politics JoeUser Forums

As a member of the EU I constant gripe about the EU farm subsidies. We spend 50% of our entire budget supporting farmers!!!! Worse, the subsidies go to the bigger farmers with most of the money going to the pockets of those who don't need it. It's ludacrous, and I totalyl agree with anyone who feels these subsidies should be removed. I don't have an issue with spending money to preserve the nature of the rural countryside though, but such money should be spent on these things and not on paying f

Death of a Superpower? in Politics JoeUser Forums

This morning I noticed in the news papers that the EU has finally decided to start applying trade tarrifs against the US. 3 years after the deadline for action on a world trade organisation ruling against the US expired the EU has finally had enough of American arrogance and is acting. As of March $200M worth of trade tarriffs will be levied, rising by $40M a month for a year and then rising to the full $4B. Why? Well it all begain a few years ago when the US created tax break

Reply to Lying Liars and their Lies in Politics JoeUser Forums

I love watching threads on American politics. They're sooo funny. As a non American 'independent' viewer may I say that I oppossed both Clinton's bombing of a factory in Sudan and Bush's WMD argument for going to war. I did however support both wars. The problem I see with America politics is that you're a two party system. It's so easy to gain popularity by villanising the other side. So long as one side is on the left or the right of the other is easy to imply that they're very far left or ver

Reply to deviantART WindowBlinds library in Press Room JoeUser Forums

Actually I'm all in favour of America leaving Nato. I would love to see Nato disbanded. It has served it's function. The sooner the EU governments start taking responsibility for their own defensive needs (the rapid reaction force is a step in the right direction) the better. As for being dominated by Germany, do you have any idea what the EU is about? What it's laws are? how it operates? Obviously not. Please research a bit before posting such statements. Informed opinion is much more

Reply to JoeUser Feedback2 in Software Development JoeUser Forums

As mentioned before Pat, would it be possible to add more comments information. It's like using a forum, you want to see which articles have new comments from the top so you can read those comments. At the moment you are only told how many comments an article has, not if it has new comments since your last visit. It would be nice to see a list of all your comments from your home page. Why? When I look at a users home page I may be interested in seeing what other articles they

Reply to How much coffee is too much? in Misc JoeUser Forums

Jolt used to be great for those late night / all night study sessions before exams! A bottle an hour would keep you going all night, sit your exam in the morning, pass and then collaspe for 2 days :-) Those were the days, Paul.

Reply to RateMyTeacher.com -- Students Fight Back in Home & Family JoeUser Forums

Many student unions already have an informal rate your lecturers. Certainly the student union in the last university I worked at asked all students to rate lecturers at the end of term. Ratings wear split into knowledge, presentation skills, question answering skills, and general helpfulness / friendliness. Courses would then be rated seperately under difficulty, quantity of work and class size. The results would be sent to the deaprtments each term and be available to students. LEcture

Reply to JoeUser Feedback in Software Development JoeUser Forums

T-Man, the way I usually use the site is to look at the new articles and then go looking for the older articles that I posted in and was interested in. The track watch list can be used to do this, but would need to be expanded. What I would really love is the following. Recent Comment list: date Article last comment date This would allow you to quickly scan through all the articles you've been posting in and look at the updated comments. A sort under d

Reply to Federal Taxes, paid by the few to be given to the many in Politics JoeUser Forums

Madine, my system doesn't have a 0% rating. It may have people who are not earning money and therefore not paying tax, but any money they do earn is taxed. The system is designed that the social welfare is also the pension, is also the child allowance, is also the tax credit. Very simple, but when you do the figures it actually works well. The precise tax rate, amount to be returned in social wefare, spending priorities, etc would all need to be tweaked depending on the wishes of the elec

Reply to Why Christmas drives me insane. in Home & Family JoeUser Forums

It's interestinmg you feel stores start Christmas too early. Over here in England there was a major backlash against this. Up to two years ago Christmas decoration would pop up in September with all the stores starting. People got seriously fed up though and last year I didn't hear the first Christmas song till December! This year I still haven't heard a Christmas and no sign of decoratinos yet thankfully! There are some shops beginning to place Christmas gifts and one or two TV ads have started

Reply to RateMyTeacher.com -- Students Fight Back in Home & Family JoeUser Forums

Most students don't have the experience to rate their teachers. It's a nice gimmic though which lets kids feel they have a say, and teachers may see some comments which make them improve their work. For it to be anyway useful they should only let students rate their previous teachers and not their current teacher. Then they could at least rate them with a reference against their current teacher. Paul.

Reply to DirectSkin 4.2 can make your existing application skinnable in Press Room JoeUser Forums

I'll be interesting to see what happens if any of these 30,000 chemicals ARE proven to be dangerous. Will the EU have the guts to ban then of will big business water it down to below x%. It's good to see the EU starting on this work but it'll be how it implements the results that will really matter. Paul.

Reply to JoeUser Feedback in Software Development JoeUser Forums

Like the latest updates. The 'my articles' is nice. Any change of a my posts (which would include replies to other articles)? Paul.

Reply to How much coffee is too much? in Misc JoeUser Forums

Have you tried Jolt Cola? Paul.

Reply to Blah Blah Blah in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Having your hobby being your work can indeed be a bit of a downer at times. You sometimes just need a break from one or the other. Hard to do when they are so linked. We do really appreciate the work you do in producing such great software (especially the games ;-)). Looking forward to the political machine. I have very little knowledge of American politics (left v right, democrate v republican all confuses me. It seems far more centre v centre). SHould learn lots by playing it though. No idea w

Reply to What's wrong with the Tablet PC? in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

Working in technology development I would have to agree with your analysis. The big problem with tablet PC's is their market. There isn't one! They have not located a market and tried to meet it's requirements. The first task in any technology development is knowing your market. Until the manufacturers even identify a market they are lost. Once they identify the market they need to determine what is important. I don't think that every item in yourt list is likely to be important for every market

Reply to The Bush Doctrine will spell doom to American hegemony in Politics JoeUser Forums

North Korea has considered itself at war with the US since the 1950's. It was trying to develop nuclear weapons during the 80's and agreed to stop in return for US help in building nuclear power stations. It has now restarted it's nuclear programme and accelerated it. Why? Because it can. America is stretched too thin and can't afford another war. America invaded Iraq claiming that it had weapons of mass destruction. In doing so it reduced it's ability to threathen North Korea enough so that it

Reply to Are Europeans smarter or just luckier in History JoeUser Forums

Not sure where the discussion is going. Is this a question as to why Europe dominated the world in the 1400-1900 time period or a suggestion that modern Europeans are more intelligent? The latter I don't believe is true and have seen no information to support it. I would argue that the biggest factor is advancement and creativity is cultural. Doesn't matter how bright or intelligent peopel are if the culture is not interested in the ideas and chages. European culture from the renassainc

Reply to Federal Taxes, paid by the few to be given to the many in Politics JoeUser Forums

I love the complexity of your tax system! 6 tax bands!!!!!! Accountants must love it! How much time and effort is wasted every year in the US trying to work out tax. Think of the money that could be saved. My feelings on this are already clear, but to reiterate, I believe there should be 1 single tax band. Everyone should pay the exact same percentage of tax. If that means that the richest 1% of the population pay 90% of the tax then it's because they earn 90% of the m

Reply to Universal Suffrage in Politics JoeUser Forums

Reply By: Draginol ------------------------------ I do believe that everyone should have to pay some sort of minimal federal tax in order to be allowed to vote or they need to serve in the military. ------------------------------ I'd rather see everyone vote. The problem isn't people who don't pay tax getting to vote, the problem is people not contributing to the society they get to vote in. The right to vote should be sacred. The problem is ensuring that all those who

Reply to JoeUser Feedback in Software Development JoeUser Forums

I like the increase to 10 articles per page. Might be an idea to make this a user setting for those users on slower connections. Still could do with more lists or filters on lists (eg. list all political articles, list all development articles). Looking good. Paul.

Reply to Are we having fun yet? in Misc JoeUser Forums

Seems to be fairly fast here. I am on a T1 connect though. One issue I sometimes get is that if I click to another window the JoeUser window is blank when I return to it. Resizing the window instantly makes the data reappear. Haven't seen it today though so maybe this is also fixed, Paul.

Reply to DesktopX 2 Public Gamma in Press Room JoeUser Forums

Reading this article is a beautiful lesson in Americanm arrogance. Let me elaborate "UN is a body that America created after WWII " - Ever heard of the League of Nations? This was the predecessor to the UN that America, in that so American way, decided not to be part of. The LoN failed to stop WW2 from occurring primarily because it did not represent ALL nations, and did nto have the clout. Strong countries could therefore ignore it without fear of reprisal. The UN was formed in 1945 by

Reply to The Bush Doctrine will spell doom to American hegemony in Politics JoeUser Forums

Draginol, I think you overestimate the benefits of US military power. No one is suggesting we re-write history or take away current military strength. The article just suggests that the US is aggravating other countries and in time may end up causing the very thing it's policy is trying to stop. To fight Iraq the US had to reduce committment elsewhere. The US couldn't project force towards North Korea for it's nuclear programme. Use of military force in Iraq allowed north Korea to

Reply to Where did all the foreign intelligence mistakes came from... in Politics JoeUser Forums

I'm not sure which is more worrying. The idea that Bush could have knowingly lied to the American people in order to persue the war , or that his administration is that inept. I hope they learn the lessons before they start looking for excuses to attack Canada and find out about all those Canadian plots and WMD's. Paul.