Why is this moderated up? This is absolutely no different from "I was thinking about my aunt, then the phone rang, and I found out she was dead!".
The poster had a brainfart a couple of minutes before something happened. These things happens, you know, because of the huge amount of people on planet earth, but temporal coincidende does not relation make (I am sure there is a better/well known way of saying this is english).
In Denmark, the law requires you to walk around the vehicle and inspect it for damages and that e.g. lights work, each and every time you get in the vehicle to drive. Also, to check if an animal or small child should be under the vehicle.
I have never even heard about anyone doing this.
My current vehicle has parking sensors, front and back. The manual states that you should never rely on these solely, but always use your own judgement. They are only a help, not to be relied on. In the approx 3 years I have had them, they have not only worked flawlessly (and, they beeep, if they are covered in snow, such that I know to clean them), they have worked *way better* than my own judgement. I have come to rely on them to the extent that I "fear" driving cars without them, because I forget they are not there.
Sometimes there is a big difference between what the law requires, what the manifactor has to put in the manual, and the real world.
My bet is, that when we get the selfdriving cars, most people will take a good long nap in stop-and-go traffic. Or perhaps read a book. Or check email. And, we will all know this "public secret".
You are sorely lacking in the history department of Linux Video Editors.
Kino was originally developed with only DV editing in mind. It grew to be pretty usefull, but around the mid 00's, the main developers (Charles Yates and Dan Dennedy) realised that the basic foundation of Kino would never accomodate anything besides a clip-oriented DV editor. They therefore wrote the MLT framework (http://www.mltframework.org/) that is a powerfull (open source) multimedia framework, which is used in TV productions, and is the basis of several open source video editors, most notable Kdenlive and OpenShot. (See list here: http://www.mltframework.org/bin/view/MLT/Projects).
Dan Dennedy decided to keep Kino "alive" as it is usefull to some people, but not do any further development on it.
Dan Dennedy still maintains MLT and have contributed to several of the MLT related projects. Kdenlive is a powerfull NLE video editor that can do most of, if not all, that the very expensive tools for other platforms do. In some cases way more. (And, yes, it runs under Gnome or other desktops, you just need the KDE libs)
It is unfortunate that people keep referencing Kino. No new development have been made on it for literally years, and e.g. Kdenlive are much, much more powerfull.
(On a side note, it is also unfortunate that so few people know of the massive amount of work that Dan Dennedy has invested in to Video editing on Linux. Besides Kino and MLT, he has been heavily involved in the Firewire/dv1394 drivers of the Linux kernels, and it is amazing how much he has contributed).
If you want to see Kdenlive related videos, search for kdenlive on youtube. Tons of people have made videos with Kdenlive.
Disclaimer: I have contributed code and translations to both Kino and Kdenlive. I belive I may even be listed as one of the authors of Kino (or at least was at some point).
I am not advocating they should "just change". I am just saying that on a personal level I am very happy that thrustworthy alternatives exists, and that Windows (no longer) is an requirement at the workplace or at home, but just an option.
Thank you, Stallman, Linus, and all you other people around the world, who have used your time to provide us with these alternatives.
And, yes, I know some people will claim that Windows is an requirement for the specific uses you have. I don't really care - for the wast majority of computing users around the world, Windows is an option, not an requirement. And, I am happy for that.
an HTTP replacement that's stateful rather than stateless,
I stopped reading your post there. I take it you have never actually implemented anything non-trivial networkwise, with a stateful protocol, or you would not suggest replacing HTTP with something statefull. Its like asking for encryption directly in the IP - its just plain wrong for HTTP and its ilk. Go read up on it.
I don't understand why this comment got +5. It is pretty misguided.
The statement:
> I realized, you can't speed up assembly language -- It's a perfectly optimized language, there's nothing under the hood to tweak
makes some limited sense in some contexts (one could argue that the microcode supporting the assembler on the CPU is repeatedly optimized), but none in this. The IonMonkey JIT does essentially optimize the assembler code[*], by rearranging it in various ways to make it faster. E.g. it takes stuff like this (in javascript, as I have not written assembler in years):
for ( var i = 0; i != 10 ; ++ i ) {
var foo = "bar"; }
and changes it to e.g. this:
for ( var i = 0; i != 10; ++i ) { } var foo = "bar";
possibly then this:
var foo = "bar";
This is an optimization and it is performed at assembler level (Again: the above is not meant to be read as JavaScript, but assembler).
The other statement that really sticks out is this:
> A sign of a horribly designed language is that the speed of its implementations can be repeatedly increased "by leaps and bounds"...
This simply highlights that the poster really do not understand the goals behind crossplatform languages, such as Java, Dalvik, JavaScript, lisp, ML, Python, Perl, and so on, or the goals for weakly typed languages.
[*] It works on an abstract representation of the assembler code, but it might as well have been working directly on the assembler, was it not for the fact that this would require it to learn to many assembler variants.
I live in Denmark, and recently spent 30 minutes to try and buy an english e-book online.
Found it at 3 different retailers (US, UK, Australia), that refused to sell it to me (add it to the basket), because of my location.
Then found it at 2 additional retailers, that allowed me to add it to a basket, then accepted my credit-card information, before refusing to actually sell it to me.
Then I got sort of mad and decided to break a 15 year old principle on not pirating stuff. Went to google, and had the ebook literally 30 seconds later! 10 seconds later on my device, and I could start reading.
What on earth are they thinking!
Oh, and I then later wrote the agent for the writer in question here in Denmark, and in the UK to offer payment. I have not heard a word from the UK agent, and the Danish one just confirmed that they do not sell the english language version of that writer in Denmark as an ebook.
Fools, really. And, they are probably, as I write this, banging on the door to the parliament, requiering stricter copyright laws.
Yes thanks. It was actually the one we got closest to working, but it failed to start properly. My son told me that it had installed the US version of WoW and that his account (which he uses from school) is european, so it refused to start. Or something like that.
At this point it just seems a whole lot easier to go with Windows.
We do not have any World of Warcraft install mediums, so we resort to some sort of online install thingy (been a couple of weeks since we last tried, and I have forgot the details). I think the last we tried was PlayOnLinux - took several hours, and as far as we could tell, it eventually installed a US version. However, the account/whatever my kid has is European, and for that reason it refused to work. Or something in that neighbourhood.
At this point, going with Windows just seems so much easier. For this particular usage.
I did not actually say I can't afford it. I said I was surprised by the price. We live in Denmark, and the cheapest full install of Windows 7 here is kr. 1.399,- which is approx. $244.
Yes, I have a spare Lenove T400. This is a four year old laptop which I used myself until quite recently. No, I do not have the windows medium or license that came with it.
How much money I spend on this, even for my kids, is a choice. Up until recently, my kids have not really been lacking in the "video games" department. Now my son wants to play a game that we are unable to support on the platforms we have. So, we need a new platform. I am actually trying to supply that to him (with the kind help of Slashdot users). I think that Windows PC gaming is not so relevant now, as it used to be. At least is has not been for my kid and his friends. So I am reluctant to just pay out $1000 dollars for a new Windows PC/laptop.
Yes. What can I say? I could not make it work. We tried Wine, Crossover and PlayOnLinux using various approaches. All failed in various ways.
I am not exactly happy about this. However, that is the reality, and at this point I don't think my kid should "pay" more for his dads lack of technical skills.
And, I used to actually run Doom servers. Under Linux. On Novell networks, using IPX. That was approx. 1995. Of course, the Doom binaries were Linux native, but still, IPX was sort of foreign to Linux, and the installs were "complicated".
I think the big difference from then to now is lack of time, and that I do not do this for myself, but for my kids. He just wants to play with his friends. He don't really care a lot about all the time his "computerwise" dad uses to (not) get it to work. His friends just boots dads Windows PC and plays...
Sorry, I did not really appreciate that T400's vary that much.
The T400 I have here, has an Intel Core 2 Duo P9500 @ 2.53 GHz, and a ATI RV620 [Mobility Radeon HD 3400], 4GB of ram, and 120 GB of SSD. The CPU seems to match recommended, and the GPU is somewhere just below minimum?
There is a cost thing here - if he wants more beefy hardware, he must raise the money.
I realise that you are correct. However, I have not been able to make it work! We tried Wine, Crossover and PlayOnLinux. Each of the them bailed out at various points. Some of our "tests" were very, very close, but failed after huge downloads. I think we were almost there with PlayOnLinux, but it appears that it installed a US version of WoW, and we live in Europe, and for some reason this then was not OK.
I do realise that not making it work may be a shortcoming of mine. However, my kid should not have to miss playing with his friends, because of his fathers lack of technical skills in getting Wine to work.
We considered Apple because it is my impression that it is more secure (out of the box) than Windows. Also, I believe he can continue to run a number of linux programs on it?
I may be mistaken.
Also, a lot of the "cool kids" (older kids in school) appears to choose Apple laptops. (iPod, iPhone, iPad, iPaid?)...
We did try out both Crossover and PlayOnLinux. I have forgotten the specifics of what did not work, but I did not manage to make any of them work. I realise this is/should be possible - but regrettably I could not make it work. I think PlayOnLinux was closest, but that it installed the US version of WoW. Because we are in Europe, this apparently did not work. Or something. For some of the things we tried, the result was log files full of unsuccesfull calls to obscure Windows APIs. I have lost count of the hours we have used on this.
There may very well be ways around this, but I have reached the point where I don't care anymore. My son should not be limited from the social experience playing WoW with his friends is, because of his dads shortcomings, or stubbornes regarding choice of OS.
Yes, we do backups: daily rsync backups of the latops, mirrored disks in the "home server", nightly backups to the NAS, regular backups to mobile drive stored in fireproof safe, and occasional backups to mobile drives stored "off-site". I am paranoid about loosing pictures, videos and so on due to hardware failures, fire or theft - but clueless about protecting a Windows 7 installation for virus, malware, etc...
Step 1: There is no windows to uninstall. There are literally no Windows installations in this house, (and actually never have been, as we built the house in 2004, but that is another story). The kid in question - my 12 year old son - does run Linux (Kubuntu 12.04) and uses e.g. Scratch from MIT for programming, libreoffice for school work, minecraft for, well, minecraft and so on, and so on. Oh, and he runs his own minecraft server.
But, no, I can't get WoW and LOL to work with/under Linux (neither can he). Starting point is some semi-old laptop (not the T400, which have just become available recently), running Kubuntu 12.04. Been through various permutations of Wine, Crossover and some "just install this, guaranteed to work, autoinstall Wow" permutation of crossover (I think, have forgotten the details). For all, it looks as "the right thing" happens, but eventually it turns out something or other does not work, e.g. the system is left for 24 hours to download the last 1% and it just does not happen. I think the last approach we tried, we ended up installing a US version (?) and beeing in Europe, this apparently (eventually) failed to start. Or something. I have lost count of the hours we have used. I simply can not make it work, and I do not know any persons that can. I could possibly hire someone to do it, but I have no idea if it ends there. What if all his friends plays "FunkyNewGame" next year, that only runs under Windws? What then? Make no mistake: I consider Windows in this context simply a console, much like the PS3 - but a console that needs a lot more handhelding than the PS3 (And, I understand that WoW does not run on the Xbox).
Now, beside that I personally have other things to use my time on, all this fidling is also a very frustrating experience for my kid. I do not expect you to understand this, especially not, if you have no kids, but he gets his hopes up high, and sort of thinks his dad is "the shit" for finally making this work, and then, after 4-5 hours of reading, installing, downloading, and whatnot, it just does not work. And, another day/week/month has gone by with him still not beeing able to play WoW/LOL with his friends. So, as I stated, I am going to bite the bullet and get Windows. For this particular purpose. (Oh, and possibly to reprogram the properitary house control system of this house, which was the only legal option to install, according to Danish Law, when the house was built - but again, that is another story).
You may argue that my linux skills are inadequeate because of this - you may be perfectly right. The sad truth is then, that my Windows skills are even worse.
Not so. The process still work. The effects of society (treatment, social services, etc) is simply now a part of the environment in which the natural selection takes place. There really is no difference.
Danmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway at least are non-tanking. Plenty more in the rest of Europe, I would reckon.
The US is unique in beeing a "western world" country without universal healthcare, btw, and while we do have a financial crisis in Europe right now, I am not sure there are any relations to the health sector.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is this moderated up? This is absolutely no different from "I was thinking about my aunt, then the phone rang, and I found out she was dead!".
The poster had a brainfart a couple of minutes before something happened. These things happens, you know, because of the huge amount of people on planet earth, but temporal coincidende does not relation make (I am sure there is a better/well known way of saying this is english).
In Denmark, the law requires you to walk around the vehicle and inspect it for damages and that e.g. lights work, each and every time you get in the vehicle to drive. Also, to check if an animal or small child should be under the vehicle.
I have never even heard about anyone doing this.
My current vehicle has parking sensors, front and back. The manual states that you should never rely on these solely, but always use your own judgement. They are only a help, not to be relied on. In the approx 3 years I have had them, they have not only worked flawlessly (and, they beeep, if they are covered in snow, such that I know to clean them), they have worked *way better* than my own judgement. I have come to rely on them to the extent that I "fear" driving cars without them, because I forget they are not there.
Sometimes there is a big difference between what the law requires, what the manifactor has to put in the manual, and the real world.
My bet is, that when we get the selfdriving cars, most people will take a good long nap in stop-and-go traffic. Or perhaps read a book. Or check email. And, we will all know this "public secret".
You are sorely lacking in the history department of Linux Video Editors.
Kino was originally developed with only DV editing in mind. It grew to be pretty usefull, but around the mid 00's, the main developers (Charles Yates and Dan Dennedy) realised that the basic foundation of Kino would never accomodate anything besides a clip-oriented DV editor. They therefore wrote the MLT framework (http://www.mltframework.org/) that is a powerfull (open source) multimedia framework, which is used in TV productions, and is the basis of several open source video editors, most notable Kdenlive and OpenShot. (See list here: http://www.mltframework.org/bin/view/MLT/Projects).
Dan Dennedy decided to keep Kino "alive" as it is usefull to some people, but not do any further development on it.
Dan Dennedy still maintains MLT and have contributed to several of the MLT related projects. Kdenlive is a powerfull NLE video editor that can do most of, if not all, that the very expensive tools for other platforms do. In some cases way more. (And, yes, it runs under Gnome or other desktops, you just need the KDE libs)
It is unfortunate that people keep referencing Kino. No new development have been made on it for literally years, and e.g. Kdenlive are much, much more powerfull.
(On a side note, it is also unfortunate that so few people know of the massive amount of work that Dan Dennedy has invested in to Video editing on Linux. Besides Kino and MLT, he has been heavily involved in the Firewire/dv1394 drivers of the Linux kernels, and it is amazing how much he has contributed).
If you want to see Kdenlive related videos, search for kdenlive on youtube. Tons of people have made videos with Kdenlive.
Disclaimer: I have contributed code and translations to both Kino and Kdenlive. I belive I may even be listed as one of the authors of Kino (or at least was at some point).
Good thing alternatives exists.
I am not advocating they should "just change". I am just saying that on a personal level I am very happy that thrustworthy alternatives exists, and that Windows (no longer) is an requirement at the workplace or at home, but just an option.
Thank you, Stallman, Linus, and all you other people around the world, who have used your time to provide us with these alternatives.
And, yes, I know some people will claim that Windows is an requirement for the specific uses you have. I don't really care - for the wast majority of computing users around the world, Windows is an option, not an requirement. And, I am happy for that.
an HTTP replacement that's stateful rather than stateless,
I stopped reading your post there. I take it you have never actually implemented anything non-trivial networkwise, with a stateful protocol, or you would not suggest replacing HTTP with something statefull. Its like asking for encryption directly in the IP - its just plain wrong for HTTP and its ilk. Go read up on it.
I invite you to go read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_optimization#.22Levels.22_of_optimization
And perhaps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracing_just-in-time_compilation
As I said: The statement might make limited sense in some contexts, but not in this.
I don't understand why this comment got +5. It is pretty misguided.
The statement:
> I realized, you can't speed up assembly language -- It's a perfectly optimized language, there's nothing under the hood to tweak
makes some limited sense in some contexts (one could argue that the microcode supporting the assembler on the CPU is repeatedly optimized), but none in this. The IonMonkey JIT does essentially optimize the assembler code[*], by rearranging it in various ways to make it faster. E.g. it takes stuff like this (in javascript, as I have not written assembler in years):
for ( var i = 0; i != 10 ; ++ i ) {
var foo = "bar";
}
and changes it to e.g. this:
for ( var i = 0; i != 10; ++i ) {
}
var foo = "bar";
possibly then this:
var foo = "bar";
This is an optimization and it is performed at assembler level (Again: the above is not meant to be read as JavaScript, but assembler).
The other statement that really sticks out is this:
> A sign of a horribly designed language is that the speed of its implementations can be repeatedly increased "by leaps and bounds"...
This simply highlights that the poster really do not understand the goals behind crossplatform languages, such as Java, Dalvik, JavaScript, lisp, ML, Python, Perl, and so on, or the goals for weakly typed languages.
[*] It works on an abstract representation of the assembler code, but it might as well have been working directly on the assembler, was it not for the fact that this would require it to learn to many assembler variants.
+1 informative.
At least for me - I did not know of this, and find the article that is linked to very interessting.
I live in Denmark, and recently spent 30 minutes to try and buy an english e-book online.
Found it at 3 different retailers (US, UK, Australia), that refused to sell it to me (add it to the basket), because of my location.
Then found it at 2 additional retailers, that allowed me to add it to a basket, then accepted my credit-card information, before refusing to actually sell it to me.
Then I got sort of mad and decided to break a 15 year old principle on not pirating stuff. Went to google, and had the ebook literally 30 seconds later! 10 seconds later on my device, and I could start reading.
What on earth are they thinking!
Oh, and I then later wrote the agent for the writer in question here in Denmark, and in the UK to offer payment. I have not heard a word from the UK agent, and the Danish one just confirmed that they do not sell the english language version of that writer in Denmark as an ebook.
Fools, really. And, they are probably, as I write this, banging on the door to the parliament, requiering stricter copyright laws.
Fools.
Tak skal du have :-)
(For the Danish challenged: Thanks).
Yes thanks. It was actually the one we got closest to working, but it failed to start properly. My son told me that it had installed the US version of WoW and that his account (which he uses from school) is european, so it refused to start. Or something like that.
At this point it just seems a whole lot easier to go with Windows.
Sorry, but how, exactly?
We do not have any World of Warcraft install mediums, so we resort to some sort of online install thingy (been a couple of weeks since we last tried, and I have forgot the details). I think the last we tried was PlayOnLinux - took several hours, and as far as we could tell, it eventually installed a US version. However, the account/whatever my kid has is European, and for that reason it refused to work. Or something in that neighbourhood.
At this point, going with Windows just seems so much easier. For this particular usage.
I did not actually say I can't afford it. I said I was surprised by the price. We live in Denmark, and the cheapest full install of Windows 7 here is kr. 1.399,- which is approx. $244.
Yes, I have a spare Lenove T400. This is a four year old laptop which I used myself until quite recently. No, I do not have the windows medium or license that came with it.
How much money I spend on this, even for my kids, is a choice. Up until recently, my kids have not really been lacking in the "video games" department. Now my son wants to play a game that we are unable to support on the platforms we have. So, we need a new platform. I am actually trying to supply that to him (with the kind help of Slashdot users). I think that Windows PC gaming is not so relevant now, as it used to be. At least is has not been for my kid and his friends. So I am reluctant to just pay out $1000 dollars for a new Windows PC/laptop.
Yes. What can I say? I could not make it work. We tried Wine, Crossover and PlayOnLinux using various approaches. All failed in various ways.
I am not exactly happy about this. However, that is the reality, and at this point I don't think my kid should "pay" more for his dads lack of technical skills.
And, I used to actually run Doom servers. Under Linux. On Novell networks, using IPX. That was approx. 1995. Of course, the Doom binaries were Linux native, but still, IPX was sort of foreign to Linux, and the installs were "complicated".
I think the big difference from then to now is lack of time, and that I do not do this for myself, but for my kids. He just wants to play with his friends. He don't really care a lot about all the time his "computerwise" dad uses to (not) get it to work. His friends just boots dads Windows PC and plays...
Thanks for your answer.
Sorry, I did not really appreciate that T400's vary that much.
The T400 I have here, has an Intel Core 2 Duo P9500 @ 2.53 GHz, and a ATI RV620 [Mobility Radeon HD 3400], 4GB of ram, and 120 GB of SSD. The CPU seems to match recommended, and the GPU is somewhere just below minimum?
There is a cost thing here - if he wants more beefy hardware, he must raise the money.
Thanks for your answer.
I realise that you are correct. However, I have not been able to make it work! We tried Wine, Crossover and PlayOnLinux. Each of the them bailed out at various points. Some of our "tests" were very, very close, but failed after huge downloads. I think we were almost there with PlayOnLinux, but it appears that it installed a US version of WoW, and we live in Europe, and for some reason this then was not OK.
I do realise that not making it work may be a shortcoming of mine. However, my kid should not have to miss playing with his friends, because of his fathers lack of technical skills in getting Wine to work.
Thanks for your answer.
We considered Apple because it is my impression that it is more secure (out of the box) than Windows. Also, I believe he can continue to run a number of linux programs on it?
I may be mistaken.
Also, a lot of the "cool kids" (older kids in school) appears to choose Apple laptops. (iPod, iPhone, iPad, iPaid?)...
The cheapest price I have been able to find here in Denmark is kr. 1399,- which is $244,-. I was surprised by this.
Thanks for your answer.
We did try out both Crossover and PlayOnLinux. I have forgotten the specifics of what did not work, but I did not manage to make any of them work. I realise this is/should be possible - but regrettably I could not make it work. I think PlayOnLinux was closest, but that it installed the US version of WoW. Because we are in Europe, this apparently did not work. Or something. For some of the things we tried, the result was log files full of unsuccesfull calls to obscure Windows APIs. I have lost count of the hours we have used on this.
There may very well be ways around this, but I have reached the point where I don't care anymore. My son should not be limited from the social experience playing WoW with his friends is, because of his dads shortcomings, or stubbornes regarding choice of OS.
Thanks for you kind answer.
Yes, we do backups: daily rsync backups of the latops, mirrored disks in the "home server", nightly backups to the NAS, regular backups to mobile drive stored in fireproof safe, and occasional backups to mobile drives stored "off-site". I am paranoid about loosing pictures, videos and so on due to hardware failures, fire or theft - but clueless about protecting a Windows 7 installation for virus, malware, etc...
Thanks a lot for your answer.
I don't think I have really avoided Windows with a passion! I simply have not had a need for it - until now. Linux does what I need it to do.
My kids should be safe: Windows is used heavily in their schools. But, the cool kids (in the older classes mostly) use Apple laptops now, btw.
Submitter here:
Step 1: There is no windows to uninstall. There are literally no Windows installations in this house, (and actually never have been, as we built the house in 2004, but that is another story). The kid in question - my 12 year old son - does run Linux (Kubuntu 12.04) and uses e.g. Scratch from MIT for programming, libreoffice for school work, minecraft for, well, minecraft and so on, and so on. Oh, and he runs his own minecraft server.
But, no, I can't get WoW and LOL to work with/under Linux (neither can he). Starting point is some semi-old laptop (not the T400, which have just become available recently), running Kubuntu 12.04. Been through various permutations of Wine, Crossover and some "just install this, guaranteed to work, autoinstall Wow" permutation of crossover (I think, have forgotten the details). For all, it looks as "the right thing" happens, but eventually it turns out something or other does not work, e.g. the system is left for 24 hours to download the last 1% and it just does not happen. I think the last approach we tried, we ended up installing a US version (?) and beeing in Europe, this apparently (eventually) failed to start. Or something. I have lost count of the hours we have used. I simply can not make it work, and I do not know any persons that can. I could possibly hire someone to do it, but I have no idea if it ends there. What if all his friends plays "FunkyNewGame" next year, that only runs under Windws? What then? Make no mistake: I consider Windows in this context simply a console, much like the PS3 - but a console that needs a lot more handhelding than the PS3 (And, I understand that WoW does not run on the Xbox).
Now, beside that I personally have other things to use my time on, all this fidling is also a very frustrating experience for my kid. I do not expect you to understand this, especially not, if you have no kids, but he gets his hopes up high, and sort of thinks his dad is "the shit" for finally making this work, and then, after 4-5 hours of reading, installing, downloading, and whatnot, it just does not work. And, another day/week/month has gone by with him still not beeing able to play WoW/LOL with his friends. So, as I stated, I am going to bite the bullet and get Windows. For this particular purpose. (Oh, and possibly to reprogram the properitary house control system of this house, which was the only legal option to install, according to Danish Law, when the house was built - but again, that is another story).
You may argue that my linux skills are inadequeate because of this - you may be perfectly right. The sad truth is then, that my Windows skills are even worse.
Interesstingly, about 80% of drivers believe they are better drivers than average.
Not so. The process still work. The effects of society (treatment, social services, etc) is simply now a part of the environment in which the natural selection takes place. There really is no difference.
Danmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway at least are non-tanking. Plenty more in the rest of Europe, I would reckon.
The US is unique in beeing a "western world" country without universal healthcare, btw, and while we do have a financial crisis in Europe right now, I am not sure there are any relations to the health sector.