You're right. I'm sorry. Sometimes frustration makes me overreact. My reaction was stupid. It's not the American people I'm frustrated with, it's the Bush administration. It does irk me that the American people re-elected such a destructive administration, but they were swayed by very skillful propaganda. It's no excuse for my stupidly generalizing outburst.
Seriously though, estonia? Raise your hand if you know where that is. Spoken like a true American.
There's a world out there! Get to know it!
Sheesh, these Americans want to set everything right with their useless wars, yet they don't have the first clue about the world they want to set right. If only they knew! *Sigh!*
You forgot his purple t-shirt with a picture of a tiger in yellow and green attacking a mouse. How could you forget the t-shirt? Especially that t-shirt!
But then comes the trolls that point out that it was fixed in a matter of hours and not weeks or months. Don't blame it on the trolls, they only report it here. It's the open-source developers' fault. Why can't they wait for some time and give Microsoft a chance?
Welcome to Slashdot, fishbowl! I understand that you haven't had time to get acquainted with everything here yet, but as a matter of fact we can arrange neat tables by selecting "code" in the comment-submit drop-down menu:
Category 1984 2004 Percent change Disney's Revenues $1.5 billion $30.8 billion +2,000 Disney's Income $294 million $4.49 billion +1,600 Disney's Tax-Free Cash Flow $100 million $2.9 billion +2,900 Stock Price (adjusted for splits) $1.33 $28.40 +2,100 Market Value $1.9 billion $57.4 billion +3,000
Disney's Enterprise Value $2.8 billion $69 billion +3,200 (market value plus debt minus cash)
The way we say it is that the free flow of oil is in the nation's strategic interest. So, we spend a lot on making sure that it flows freely.
[...]
From my experience, however, from the inside, people feel that they are doing a very good thing protecting our country so that the coruption is easily overlooked. I don't know when spreading peace will become a priority again. Very interesting. Several US behaviors that have seemed incomprehensible become more understandable when considering the parts I quoted.
Another annoyance was that Thunderbird 2 orders mails by send date, not received date There's a menu with several options for sorting: View -> Sort by.
In the early eighties I was a functionary in a week-long international congress in Budapest with some 2000 participants. For a congress that size there's a lot of paperwork. So you need to copy documents. Every single document that we wanted to copy had to be approved by political controllers. This was very noticeable because sometimes it took several hours.
Here in Sweden I can enter any library and put coins in the library copiers to copy anything I may have written. Nobody checks me. And if I want to distribute my copies to people, no problem.
But I have to pay for the copying myself.
Personally I don't need to go to a library because at home I have a combined printer-scanner-copier where I can make, and have made, hundreds of copies to distribute any way I like. No restrictions, as long as I respect certain elementary rules such as not slandering people. Nobody controls me.
If I want to criticize politicians in my copies, no problem. In the Warsaw pact countries, politicians were more protected against criticism than the regular Joe; here the politicians are far less protected than regular people. If I make unfounded claims that my neighbor comes across as a racist, that's slander; if I say the same thing about my prime minister, that's protected speech.
It makes no difference whether my neighbor is rich or poor, slander is slander in both cases.
My former wife is from Cuba. I wanted to give her grandmother in Cuba a fax machine. Nope, impossible, forbidden. It could perhaps have been made possible with some great difficulty, lots of permissions and paperwork, but we never did go through all that. I had a suggestion that she might sell fax services, but that was entirely out of the question. That would never be permitted. Absolutely not.
Here in Sweden anyone who wants can have a fax machine. And if he wants to sell fax services, that's entirely up to him and his customers, if he can find any. No permissions, no controls.
But he does have to find customers by himself.
Your claims about Warsaw-pact countries and Western countries being similar come across as totally ridiculous. There is no way anyone will believe you unless he's totally uninformed and extremely gullible.
I suppose your intent is to raise awareness about the problems that do exist. There are several serious problems that are real and ought to be debated. But you fail totally, you fail miserably, because your claims are so preposterous that nobody will take anything you say seriously.
Try to learn to make realistic statements without weird exaggerations. Then you'll be far more believable and far more convincing in debate. Then maybe you can get debates started and get people thinking about the real, important problems.
I mentioned the gas tax because much of or defense spending supports "lower" oil prices. I'm not sure if I understand you correctly. No, we don't want lower gas prices, on the contrary. The gas tax is there to keep the gas prices artificially high. That's so people are discouraged from spewing more carbon dioxide than necessary.
This is why I'm astonished by gas subsidies, paying people to pollute more.
If a Swedish politician advocated war for the sake of some economic advantage, like keeping some prices low, there would be an extreme uproar and he would be totally fried. In future elections he wouldn't stand a chance. That kind of thinking is totally foreign here.
But as I said I'm not sure if I understood you correctly.
in exchange for more controled spending on our part. Won't you have to rein in your spending regardless?
But reining in your military spending may turn out to be difficult. Your military industry has grown monstrously large and powerful. Power tends to corrupt. And of course like any industry it's always thirsty for more profit and more power.
Glad you were so quick to offer help back then. I appreciate that you noticed.
if you want to send some of that gas tax to us to cover our defense spending, Sorry, that's impossible, because Sweden disagrees with your methods. I don't know how Sweden's official motivation is worded, but among the general public the mainstream opinion is that the Iraq war is fueling terrorism rather than curbing it, and we don't want to fuel terrorism. This is not some after-the-fact observation, it has been the firm mainstream opinion since well before the Iraq war started.
OTOH we have Swedish troops in Afghanistan.
Speaking of our relationship, I do feel that we and the US, in fact the entire Europe and the US, need to be much stronger allies than we are, in spite of the differences that we have. We need to make every effort co-operate in those areas where we agree. We have lots of common goals, and there are lots of areas where we agree.
In fact, even when we disagree we could often co-operate. For instance, we might play good-cop/bad-cop roles when dealing with recalcitrant nations. That's far more constructive than building rivalries.
I think we could achieve lots of great things together if we could just co-operate better.
if coal, oil, gas and nuclear susbidies were ended, What? Are those things subsidized in the US? Amazing! No wonder your CO2 emissions per capita are through the roof!
Here in Sweden it's the other way round, renewable energy is subsidized (as a temporary measure to help the industry get started) and gasoline is taxed.
Yes, yes, that second "you're" ought to be "your." Mea culpa... It started so well, first an admission, then groveling in the end. So well expressed! And then...
...grammar nazis. "Nazis"? That's no groveling!
Grammar gods to you, and don't you dare forget it!
what does this "^H^H^H^H^H^H (Ad Infinitum)" actually mean? Each ^H represents one backspace keystroke erasing one character. The ^ stands for the Ctrl key and the ASCII code Ctrl-H stands for backspace, hence the H. By extension ^W stands for "delete word", though this has nothing to do with ASCII control characters, it's just something people have added.
Slashdot Mirror
I spoke foolishly. Sorry.
You're right. I'm sorry. Sometimes frustration makes me overreact. My reaction was stupid. It's not the American people I'm frustrated with, it's the Bush administration. It does irk me that the American people re-elected such a destructive administration, but they were swayed by very skillful propaganda. It's no excuse for my stupidly generalizing outburst.
You're right. I'm sorry.
There's a world out there! Get to know it!
Sheesh, these Americans want to set everything right with their useless wars, yet they don't have the first clue about the world they want to set right. If only they knew! *Sigh!*
You forgot his purple t-shirt with a picture of a tiger in yellow and green attacking a mouse. How could you forget the t-shirt? Especially that t-shirt!
Welcome to Slashdot, fishbowl! I understand that you haven't had time
to get acquainted with everything here yet, but as a matter of fact
we can arrange neat tables by selecting "code" in the comment-submit
drop-down menu:
Category 1984 2004 Percent change
Disney's Revenues $1.5 billion $30.8 billion +2,000
Disney's Income $294 million $4.49 billion +1,600
Disney's Tax-Free Cash Flow $100 million $2.9 billion +2,900
Stock Price (adjusted for splits) $1.33 $28.40 +2,100
Market Value $1.9 billion $57.4 billion +3,000
Disney's Enterprise Value $2.8 billion $69 billion +3,200
(market value plus debt minus cash)
Why assume everyone knows your acronyms.
OMG: Oh my God!
WTF: What the fuck?
BBQ: Barbecue.
HTH
[...]
From my experience, however, from the inside, people feel that they are doing a very good thing protecting our country so that the coruption is easily overlooked. I don't know when spreading peace will become a priority again. Very interesting. Several US behaviors that have seemed incomprehensible become more understandable when considering the parts I quoted.
Been nice talking to you.
Indeed!
In the early eighties I was a functionary in a week-long international congress in Budapest with some 2000 participants. For a congress that size there's a lot of paperwork. So you need to copy documents. Every single document that we wanted to copy had to be approved by political controllers. This was very noticeable because sometimes it took several hours.
Here in Sweden I can enter any library and put coins in the library copiers to copy anything I may have written. Nobody checks me. And if I want to distribute my copies to people, no problem.
But I have to pay for the copying myself.
Personally I don't need to go to a library because at home I have a combined printer-scanner-copier where I can make, and have made, hundreds of copies to distribute any way I like. No restrictions, as long as I respect certain elementary rules such as not slandering people. Nobody controls me.
If I want to criticize politicians in my copies, no problem. In the Warsaw pact countries, politicians were more protected against criticism than the regular Joe; here the politicians are far less protected than regular people. If I make unfounded claims that my neighbor comes across as a racist, that's slander; if I say the same thing about my prime minister, that's protected speech.
It makes no difference whether my neighbor is rich or poor, slander is slander in both cases.
My former wife is from Cuba. I wanted to give her grandmother in Cuba a fax machine. Nope, impossible, forbidden. It could perhaps have been made possible with some great difficulty, lots of permissions and paperwork, but we never did go through all that. I had a suggestion that she might sell fax services, but that was entirely out of the question. That would never be permitted. Absolutely not.
Here in Sweden anyone who wants can have a fax machine. And if he wants to sell fax services, that's entirely up to him and his customers, if he can find any. No permissions, no controls.
But he does have to find customers by himself.
Your claims about Warsaw-pact countries and Western countries being similar come across as totally ridiculous. There is no way anyone will believe you unless he's totally uninformed and extremely gullible.
I suppose your intent is to raise awareness about the problems that do exist. There are several serious problems that are real and ought to be debated. But you fail totally, you fail miserably, because your claims are so preposterous that nobody will take anything you say seriously.
Try to learn to make realistic statements without weird exaggerations. Then you'll be far more believable and far more convincing in debate. Then maybe you can get debates started and get people thinking about the real, important problems.
This is why I'm astonished by gas subsidies, paying people to pollute more.
If a Swedish politician advocated war for the sake of some economic advantage, like keeping some prices low, there would be an extreme uproar and he would be totally fried. In future elections he wouldn't stand a chance. That kind of thinking is totally foreign here.
But as I said I'm not sure if I understood you correctly. in exchange for more controled spending on our part. Won't you have to rein in your spending regardless?
But reining in your military spending may turn out to be difficult. Your military industry has grown monstrously large and powerful. Power tends to corrupt. And of course like any industry it's always thirsty for more profit and more power.
OTOH we have Swedish troops in Afghanistan.
Speaking of our relationship, I do feel that we and the US, in fact the entire Europe and the US, need to be much stronger allies than we are, in spite of the differences that we have. We need to make every effort co-operate in those areas where we agree. We have lots of common goals, and there are lots of areas where we agree.
In fact, even when we disagree we could often co-operate. For instance, we might play good-cop/bad-cop roles when dealing with recalcitrant nations. That's far more constructive than building rivalries.
I think we could achieve lots of great things together if we could just co-operate better.
He's Chuck Norris. Have you ever seen Chuck Norris' secretions?
Here in Sweden it's the other way round, renewable energy is subsidized (as a temporary measure to help the industry get started) and gasoline is taxed.
...grammar nazis. "Nazis"? That's no groveling!Grammar gods to you, and don't you dare forget it!
Do you have proof?
Why do you ask?
You mean like a rhetorical question?
What? Are you saying that you wouldn't notice a chemical formula on the side of a box in a movie? You must be new here.