This is clearly a political move in preparation for the coming elections. For example the resignation took place right AFTER the IMF visit (and I just lost a bet to an older friend who anticipated this since December).
The current president is on the 2nd term and he cannot run for any more terms (in Romania you cannot be president more than twice). So a new candidate must be prepared. Because of this, the ex-prime minister made the most unpopular (but needed) reforms, and paved the way for a new person to become prime minister now, and presidential candidate soon.
Basically, the ex prime minister will now take all "the bullets", from crap like ACTA, to pension reform, no matter how much it depended or not on him.
BTW: let's not forget when the opposition party was in power 10 years ago and they used to send journalists to jail because they dared to uncover their theft (ie: "Armaggedon Reports"). So I doubt that they really are concerned about ACTA. It is more likely something extra to throw in the political battle.
Be serious. 2000 people protesting in a town of 2 million is not a mass protest. A couple of hundred people people protesting in several other towns, which have a population of 300.000 each, is not a mass protest.
Btw, do you remember what happened when one opposition politician tried to join the demonstrators? He had to be dragged out by police for his own safety. And to prove how dumb he is, he tried to do this once again a couple of days later, with the same outcome.
Now, about ACTA, I don't think that ANY Romanian politician knows what it means. They just signed according to the instructions received from their EU groups.
If I remember well, XP wasn't received with great enthusiasm either. A lot of companies remained on Windows 2000. XP became good with the release of SP2.
A tramway can be 50 meters long. A bus is usually 12-18 meters.
A tram system can be fully automated.
An electric engine is more efficient (constant torque) in an urban area with lots of stops.
In countries like those in Eastern Europe, car drivers don't give a fk about buses and bus lanes. But they are scared enough to make way for the trams (if they collide, the tram will barely be scratched while their car ends up totally smashed).
The tram vehicle lasts more time. My town uses 50 year old trams without any issues, while the buses must be replaced after 10-15 years.
My impression is that Bing is getting better and better. I WILL switch to it IF they provide date filtering for all searches. (For example it's impossible for me to use Bing for searching on HN because I get out of date results, while on Google I just apply the "last 24 hrs" filter).
How did the author connect the number of startups with the safety net and reached the conclusion that the safety net is a good (or a bad) thing?
What if in countries with social safety nets it is much more cheaper to spawn a new extra company than to let your current one grow too big? For example, a country might require a lot less paperwork from companies with less than 10 employees. The same country might require a lot of extra regulation for a company with more than 20 employees. So you might be BETTER OFF WITH 3 companies x 10 employees than with 1 company x 30 employees.
I am curious to know:
(1) what is the ratio of startups that grow beyond the stage of a small company in those contries.
(2) what is the ratio of startups which provide jobs for at least 2 other people besides the owners. I'm willing to bet that in the European ex-communist countries, the vast majority of startups are actually small shops which barelly allow a family to survive (with the only employees being husband and wife).
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The number of startups as presented in the article doesn't really say much at all and the conclusion really was just pulled out of thin air. One could as well say "Safety nets: ball and chain (You can't grow beyond startup level)" without changing a single word in that article.