Lobbyism is bribery, period. It doesn't matter how much you dress it up it's still the same thing, people using money to gain more power than they're legally entitled to.
And the media companies don't innovate, they take innovative work from one group of people and show it to another group of people, and charge high prices for the service. A service that's no longer required.
While I certainly don't support media companies, this is certainly not restricted to media companies. Tech companies don't innovate either, their employees do.
Right.. Get back to me when I can do this with VNC: 1. Run matlab -nodesktop in screen on remote server 2. Let it run some calculations for a few days or so 3. Connect with ssh -X and set the DISPLAY variable 4. Plot the results
I can with X11 network transparency.. VNC is all or nothing - either I connect to an entire desktop session and waste bandwidth on sending pictures of a bunch of characters or I don't get any graphics at all.
From Wikipedia: 2 C8H18 + 25 O2 -> 16 CO2 + 18 H2O Carbon is about 12 standard atomic weights, hydrogen about 1 and oxygen about 16, so 228 atomic weights of gasoline and 800 atomic weights of oxygen results in 704 atomic weights of CO2 and 324 atomic weights of water. Sounds about right to me when you take into account a few additives to the gasoline.
Yeah we have a similar problem, everything is outsourced to consultants who overcharge for crappy solutions instead of hiring a few competent people to develop and run the systems. A few months ago, some glitch in Tieto's datacenter caused problems for getting prescription drugs, vehicle inspection as well as several commune services, apparently they didn't have any redundancy. IMO, the state should create a public "cloud" service with built-in redundancy which all government services can use, the companies hired by individual agencies certainly can't handle it.
I believe Norway has similar identification numbers as Sweden, i.e. birthdate, a few other digits and a control digit, if you throw some of the other digits off, it likely won't be a valid number. Besides, these numbers are not secret and you usually need some other form of authentication than just the number, electronic identification, number printed on tax form, etc.
Ah I didn't get that you were talking about the cover fee, I don't think you can pay for that with a card here either, though when I go out it's usually to a bar and they tend not to charge cover fees here, mostly clubs do and I stay away from those.
35 years for a full pension seems perfectly reasonable to me, as does 80% of wages as pension. 46%? Are you kidding me? Do they think people can live on peanuts just because they retire? As long as the employees are actually doing something productive, there's nothing bad about having a large public sector, though obviously if you're only employing a bunch of bureaucrats that's a problem.
I'm not saying that Greece has handled everything well, but the main problem as I see it is that they haven't been collecting the taxes as they should and the tax-morale in Greece is very low, especially among the wealthy. If you're going to have such benefits, you have to pay for it and this is the part of the equation that they obviously forgot...
The solution will not come from cutting wages and benefits so drastically as they have been forced to do though, these "solutions" only further exacerbate the problem by leaving people with a lot less money to spend and leading many of the educated young (i.e. the ones who have any kind of chance of foreign employment) to leave the country altogether, which leads to even less revenues which leads to even further cuts, etc. It only creates a downward spiral from which will be extremely hard to ever recover.
Actually most of the profits from oil in Norway goes into a government fund set up as a cushion, very little goes to the budget. We don't have any oil in Sweden but we don't work 60-hour days either, neither does Denmark nor Finland.
As our laws are very strict on those things, and is set to 37.5 hours a week (lunch is calculated as half an hour off each day).
Interesting, I knew Denmark had a 37.5 hour work-week, but I didn't about Norway. Here in Sweden we still have a 40 hour work week, when the new Left Party leader suggested we should finally start gradually reducing our work-week again (last time was in 1970) with a 37.5 hour workweek as a first step. Right wing media and parties went crazy, claiming that we have to work more, not less, or civilization as we know it would fall. Of course this was the expected response, it was the same when we abandoned working on Saturdays in 1970 and when we got the 8-hour day in 1919, it's always doom and gloom, the economy will fail, etc.
Of course when taken to the extreme these systems can and will be abused (Greece...)
This myth must end. The Greeks are actually some of the most hard-working people in Europe, the average time spent at work is much higher either Germany or up here in the north. In 2010, Greeks worked 2109 hours on average, Swedes worked 1624 hours, Finns 1697 hours, Norwegians 1414, Germans 1419 hours.
The EU is a neoliberal project seeking to further enrich the elite and has been from the beginning. What does it have to do with the discussion at hand though?
It seems that you do not understand what socialism is. In its most basic form (there are many, many branches of socialism), it is in ideology striving for a society where the workers own the means of production instead of as is the case now (and especially in the past decades) when the capitalist class owns the means of production. The goal is essentially a classless society, though it should be noted that this does not necessarily mean that there are no differences between people, just that they are not so wide as they are today. In Marxist analysis, society is divided into two classes, the working class and the capitalist class, the capitalist class is what we in today's terminology would call the "one percent", the people on top who have enough capital to survive merely on the returns of capital without actually having to work, this is the type of class-society that socialism aims to get rid of.
Regarding democracy, I would say it's not possible to have a democracy in a society where such a small elite owns so much wealth while the rest has so little and is mostly in debt to the elite by way of bank loans. The elite simply has too much power, even if you restrict campaign funding by law, they will always have influence over the politicians much moreso than the common man, meaning democracy, i.e. the rule of the people, is essentially null and void.
What we have is a plutocratic system, we've had it for a long time, it's just getting more and more obvious now that the elite has amassed so much wealth and power and any safeguards put in place in our "democratic" institutions completely crumble. Why do you think we get all these new laws: ACTA, Data retention, IPRED, etc? Do you seriously think all these laws of late were the will of the people? No, they were the will of the capital, the will of the small elite that essentially controls the world economy.
How do people profit from government run prisons? Are prisoners used as slave labor? I can certainly see how that would create an incentive for jailing more people as well..
Actually, IAEA inspectors have been to Iran, repeatedly, but considering the new head of the IAEA is essentially a US appointee, I doubt any amount of inspections will do them any good. Israel doesn't allow inspectors at all, shouldn't we be the least bit concerned about them actually having nuclear weapons? They even repeatedly refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty.
This statement is so absurd that I can't tell whether you're being factitious or not.. Are you seriously saying that all the men, women and children residing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were making bombs?
Slashdot Mirror
Lobbyism is bribery, period. It doesn't matter how much you dress it up it's still the same thing, people using money to gain more power than they're legally entitled to.
Not when the speech comes with a little something under the table...
And the media companies don't innovate, they take innovative work from one group of people and show it to another group of people, and charge high prices for the service. A service that's no longer required.
While I certainly don't support media companies, this is certainly not restricted to media companies. Tech companies don't innovate either, their employees do.
Right.. Get back to me when I can do this with VNC:
1. Run matlab -nodesktop in screen on remote server
2. Let it run some calculations for a few days or so
3. Connect with ssh -X and set the DISPLAY variable
4. Plot the results
I can with X11 network transparency.. VNC is all or nothing - either I connect to an entire desktop session and waste bandwidth on sending pictures of a bunch of characters or I don't get any graphics at all.
So why include the old testament in the bibles at all if it's not relevant to Christianity?
From Wikipedia: 2 C8H18 + 25 O2 -> 16 CO2 + 18 H2O
Carbon is about 12 standard atomic weights, hydrogen about 1 and oxygen about 16, so 228 atomic weights of gasoline and 800 atomic weights of oxygen results in 704 atomic weights of CO2 and 324 atomic weights of water. Sounds about right to me when you take into account a few additives to the gasoline.
(IAMNAC)
Sounds to me like you need to get rid of the idiotic Cxx types...
No it's not, says so right there above your post. :)
"by wmbetts (1306001) on Sunday April 01, @12:50AM "
Yeah we have a similar problem, everything is outsourced to consultants who overcharge for crappy solutions instead of hiring a few competent people to develop and run the systems. A few months ago, some glitch in Tieto's datacenter caused problems for getting prescription drugs, vehicle inspection as well as several commune services, apparently they didn't have any redundancy. IMO, the state should create a public "cloud" service with built-in redundancy which all government services can use, the companies hired by individual agencies certainly can't handle it.
I believe Norway has similar identification numbers as Sweden, i.e. birthdate, a few other digits and a control digit, if you throw some of the other digits off, it likely won't be a valid number. Besides, these numbers are not secret and you usually need some other form of authentication than just the number, electronic identification, number printed on tax form, etc.
Ah I didn't get that you were talking about the cover fee, I don't think you can pay for that with a card here either, though when I go out it's usually to a bar and they tend not to charge cover fees here, mostly clubs do and I stay away from those.
$20 will get you something like 2 decent beers or 3 watery pale lagers in Sweden ;)
35 years for a full pension seems perfectly reasonable to me, as does 80% of wages as pension. 46%? Are you kidding me? Do they think people can live on peanuts just because they retire? As long as the employees are actually doing something productive, there's nothing bad about having a large public sector, though obviously if you're only employing a bunch of bureaucrats that's a problem.
I'm not saying that Greece has handled everything well, but the main problem as I see it is that they haven't been collecting the taxes as they should and the tax-morale in Greece is very low, especially among the wealthy. If you're going to have such benefits, you have to pay for it and this is the part of the equation that they obviously forgot...
The solution will not come from cutting wages and benefits so drastically as they have been forced to do though, these "solutions" only further exacerbate the problem by leaving people with a lot less money to spend and leading many of the educated young (i.e. the ones who have any kind of chance of foreign employment) to leave the country altogether, which leads to even less revenues which leads to even further cuts, etc. It only creates a downward spiral from which will be extremely hard to ever recover.
Actually most of the profits from oil in Norway goes into a government fund set up as a cushion, very little goes to the budget. We don't have any oil in Sweden but we don't work 60-hour days either, neither does Denmark nor Finland.
As our laws are very strict on those things, and is set to 37.5 hours a week (lunch is calculated as half an hour off each day).
Interesting, I knew Denmark had a 37.5 hour work-week, but I didn't about Norway. Here in Sweden we still have a 40 hour work week, when the new Left Party leader suggested we should finally start gradually reducing our work-week again (last time was in 1970) with a 37.5 hour workweek as a first step. Right wing media and parties went crazy, claiming that we have to work more, not less, or civilization as we know it would fall. Of course this was the expected response, it was the same when we abandoned working on Saturdays in 1970 and when we got the 8-hour day in 1919, it's always doom and gloom, the economy will fail, etc.
Or you're overproducing crap which lasts a year or so to satisfy an ever-growing consumerist society...
Of course when taken to the extreme these systems can and will be abused (Greece...)
This myth must end. The Greeks are actually some of the most hard-working people in Europe, the average time spent at work is much higher either Germany or up here in the north. In 2010, Greeks worked 2109 hours on average, Swedes worked 1624 hours, Finns 1697 hours, Norwegians 1414, Germans 1419 hours.
Hmm.. Maybe she would be less angry if you actually spent some of your waking hours at home? ;)
The EU is a neoliberal project seeking to further enrich the elite and has been from the beginning. What does it have to do with the discussion at hand though?
It seems that you do not understand what socialism is. In its most basic form (there are many, many branches of socialism), it is in ideology striving for a society where the workers own the means of production instead of as is the case now (and especially in the past decades) when the capitalist class owns the means of production. The goal is essentially a classless society, though it should be noted that this does not necessarily mean that there are no differences between people, just that they are not so wide as they are today. In Marxist analysis, society is divided into two classes, the working class and the capitalist class, the capitalist class is what we in today's terminology would call the "one percent", the people on top who have enough capital to survive merely on the returns of capital without actually having to work, this is the type of class-society that socialism aims to get rid of.
Regarding democracy, I would say it's not possible to have a democracy in a society where such a small elite owns so much wealth while the rest has so little and is mostly in debt to the elite by way of bank loans. The elite simply has too much power, even if you restrict campaign funding by law, they will always have influence over the politicians much moreso than the common man, meaning democracy, i.e. the rule of the people, is essentially null and void.
What we have is a plutocratic system, we've had it for a long time, it's just getting more and more obvious now that the elite has amassed so much wealth and power and any safeguards put in place in our "democratic" institutions completely crumble. Why do you think we get all these new laws: ACTA, Data retention, IPRED, etc? Do you seriously think all these laws of late were the will of the people? No, they were the will of the capital, the will of the small elite that essentially controls the world economy.
Agreed. It's only going to get worse, the amount of education required will only increase with time as more and more advanced work is automated.
How do people profit from government run prisons? Are prisoners used as slave labor? I can certainly see how that would create an incentive for jailing more people as well..
Privatizing prisons is insane, it creates an incentive for throwing more people in jail..
Oh please, get your head out of your ass and start reading beyond your idiotic mainstream media, you've been brainwashed.
You can start by reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy#Support_for_Israeli_apartheid_analogy
Actually, IAEA inspectors have been to Iran, repeatedly, but considering the new head of the IAEA is essentially a US appointee, I doubt any amount of inspections will do them any good.
Israel doesn't allow inspectors at all, shouldn't we be the least bit concerned about them actually having nuclear weapons? They even repeatedly refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty.
This statement is so absurd that I can't tell whether you're being factitious or not.. Are you seriously saying that all the men, women and children residing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were making bombs?