MEP Daniel Hannan said in early August, "The worst thing to be is elderly under the UK Health System..... you will be denied care and left starving in wards."
For some reason I'm reminded by the American Republican (or something) who railed against the Obama plan in a newspaper-article by saying "If Stephen Hawking had to rely on UK healthcare, he would be long dead by now!". The retard didn't realize that Hawking has been relying on UK healthcare for all his life....
It seems to me that the whole healthcare-discussion in USA is plagued by buzzwords and stupidity. Some people oppose it because it "socialism" and everything that is related to socialism is automatically bad. They never stop and think about the issue, they just see the S-word being thrown around and automatically oppose it with zero critical thinking.
I4I said they would have sued sooner but were having financial problems.
I checked out the i4i web site. My impression is that i4i had financial problems because they were a dinky little company with almost no significant products. I suspect they had no more than one software developer, and were probably lucky to stay in business all this time. I doubt MS even bothered to ever meet with them.
Well, this paints a totally different kind of picture. Few quotes:
"Nine years ago, an unusual and powerful alliance approached a tiny Toronto software company with a fateful proposition. Microsoft was helping U.S. intelligence sift through relentless mountains of documents relating to the 9/11 terrorist attacks but had few means to sort them out. This firm, i4i, had the software that could intuit crucial, revelatory patterns that its own software could not.
It wasn't long before Microsoft recognized the value of the firm's technology, and, as it is now famously alleged, pinched it."
"Their circumstances are more humble than they used to be, when i4i took up 21/2 floors of the building and employed roughly 200 people, with offices in Manchester, Paris, Amsterdam, Washington, D.C., and San Diego. âoeWhen Microsoft began offering their technology for free,â Mr. Vulpe says, âoeall of our customers went away.â"
It should be noted that it sure as hell wouldn't be the first time MS did something like this. They did it with Quicktime in the 90's as well.
For what do you need multitasking on a phone? How would multitasking be different from how iPhone does things (you switch between apps)? Only use I could think of it is audio-streaming or something like that. Multitasking might make sense on normal computers, where you can have several app-windows open, and you could move stuff between them. But that is not possible on a phone. Phones display one app at a time.
Hell, you don't really multitask on a computer either. Or do you edit spreadsheet and presentations at the same time? No you do not. You do your tasks one at a time, switching between different apps. And you can do that just fine on the iPhone as well.
Video recording support?
That might be nifty, but hardly a major shortcoming.
Flash support?
I remember a recent review of a phone that had a "full flash-support". Flash was so slow on the phone that it was useless. Why waste resources on supporting features that would be useless in actual usage? Just so you would have a useless paper-spec?
specs are better than the iphone and the interface looks nice.
There are more to phones that just specs and screenshots. Or do we buy cars based solely on which car has more HP?
My Nokia E71 has good specs as well. expandable memory, WiFi, web-browser etc... But it's still crap when compared to my 1st gen iPod touch. Just because device has certain features does not mean that those features are actually usable.
Of course it remains to be seen how good those features are on the device, but we can't just stare at specs on a screen and say "it's better than this other device".
Al-Qaida was not part of the Mujahedin and did not exist until after the soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. It's sort of impossible to claim Al-Qaida benefited when it was nowhere to be known of during the time.
Many of the Al-Qaida operatives were Mujahediin veterans. Taleban was also built on Mujahediin as well. USA had no problems supporting militant Islam as long as they were fighting against commies.
This is exactly the problem. The BBC management thinks that MMGW is an established fact, and presents it in that way, even though there are quite a lot of people who don't think it is a fact.
And quite a few people think that Osama bin Laden is a hero. Should BCB then spend considerable amount of time telling us what a great guy Osama is?
But they should be impartial about things that aren't facts.
And when would this become a fact? If 1% if relevant scientists disagree, does that mean that BBC should be "impartial"?
They should be honest and acknowledge the limits of their understanding.
BBC is a broadcaster, they are not scientists. It's unreasonable to expect BBC to have deep understanding regarding climatology. What we can expect BBC to do is to report on what scientists and experts think about the matter.
Again, how would you like to be forced to pay for an organisation that broadcasts Christian fundamentalist beliefs as if they were true
Well, global warming has bit more science behind it than Christian crackpots do....
p>In 1991, when there were first democratic elections. Before that were elections in 1989, but the communists were guaranteed 65% of places in the parliament at that time
So by that logic, Poland and/or Poles could not be accused of anything that took place between 1940 - 1989?
Yes, after Poland regained independence and was no longer a Soviet satellite country. And could decide for itself.
And when did that happen?
Poland wasn't "influenced" by Soviets - it was ruled by Soviets.
So all the bad things that Poland and/or Poles did during that time does not count? If some Pole raped a German (for example), it does not count because "the country was ruled by the Soviets"? If Government of Poland drove Germans out of the country, it does not count, since it was in reality done by the Soviets?
I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. Poland can't just wash their hands on this thing, and blame everything on Soviets.
Good, you can admit we weren't only bad guys;)
Compared to Nazi-Germany, post-WW2 Poland was paradise on Earth. But that doesn't change the fact that some bad things happened in Poland, and many of those bad things were done by the Polish Government and Poles.
The BBC is not impartial about this and many other issues.
Let me repeat my question: should they be impartial about everything? Story about Osama bin Laden should give equal airtime to his negative sides as well as his positive sides? Documentary about deforestation in Amazon should spend half of it's time telling us about the positive aspects of deforestation? Documentary about Exxon Valdez disaster should spend half it's time telling us how it was actually a good thing?
Is "man-made global warming" a scientific certainty?
It seems to be abiout as certain as scientific isuues like this can be.
But point remains, that Germany has cut their emissions, and their economy has NOT collapsed because of it.
As to their unemployment-rate.... It currently stands at 9.1%? It seems that in USA; the unemployment-rate is currently at 9.4%, bigger than Germany's. So what exactly is your point?
What "revisionism"? USA was a big supporter of Saddam during Iraq-Iran war. Al-Qaida benefitted substantially from the aid USA funnueled to Mujahideen in Afganistan As to Noriega, Wikipedia sez: "Noriega worked with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from the late 1950s to the 1980s, and was on the CIA payroll for much of this time, although the relationship had not become contractual until 1967".
What "revisionism" are you referring to here exactly?
Well, they have a lot of money to devote to it since they don't have to spend ANY money on defense.
In 2008-2009 EU (or rather, EU-countries) spends 312 billion dollars on defence. I don't know about yiou, but that's quite a bit of money....
If the USA took all of its money from defense and put it into Healthcare or "Green Tech," then yes, we'd be able to claim advances in those areas. But we can't, because we're the only Western World with a _real_ military
If only USA has "real military", then I guess that that it wouldn't matter one bit if EU-countries pulled their troops from Afganistan? I mean, they don't have any military in the first place, so their troops are more or less equivalent to tourists, right?
If that is the case, then why exactly is USA begging for NATO-countries (which are mostly also members of the EU) to send in more troops?
Or, to put it bluntly: you are a fucking moron and a liar.
The Great Global Warming Swindle is crap. Even the scientists they interviewed on the film complained that the filmmakers misrepresented and distorted their comments
As to the Ozone Hole.... You do realize that it didn't cause us any major problems was because the governments of the world made a joint agreement to resolve the issue (which they then did)?
No, really; watch it.
I'm sorry, but I don't waste my time watching crap.
These people have no monetary value for speaking out- quite the opposite. They risk their careers.
One of the people who "spoke out" on the film has said this about it:
""In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerousâ"because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very importantâ"diametrically opposite to the point I was makingâ"which is that global warming is both real and threatening."
So why exactly should I waste my time watching that crap?
So, are you saying that BBC not being "impartial" about climate change is a bad thing? Should news-outlets give each viewpoint equal airtime? If they are talking about deforestation in Amazon, they should also talk about the supposed benefits of cutting down the Amazon will bring us? Or if they are talking about Osama Bin Laden, they should also talk about his positive qualities and accomplishments?
Is it okay to mistreat Germans now? No. Of course not.
But had things went the way you wanted them to go, there would be no Germans today.
Anyone born after WWII in Germany has no moral culpability for what happened then. I'm not even saying it should have happened that way. What I'm saying is this: After WWII, anything contemporary Germans got, they had coming to them, in spades, and sounds more like justice, rather than an atrocity.
So, guilt by association? Are all Americans therefore responsible for what happened during Bush Administration? Or does that privilege only extend to WW2-era Germans? Also, if all Germans were guilty, does that mean that people like Von Stauffenberg are guilty as well? How about Erwin Rommel?
There was no Polish government when the deportations were performed.
So when did Poland get a proper government? The government that ruled Poland for decades after WW" was a continuation of that government.
Why do I get the idea that whatever bad things was done in Poland after WW2, Poles had no responsibility for it? Even if the people doing them were Poles?
Likewise, German people couldn't be offered Polish citizenship (even if Polish people would agree, Soviet government wouldn't).
"While most of the ethnic German population of pre-war Poland fled or was expelled, some were "rehabilitated" and offered their pre-war Polish citizenship back.[94] "Rehabilitation" was offered to people who had been subject to forced labour before, spoke Polish and were rated as not constituting a threat"
So some Germans were given Polish citizenship.
I'm not saying that Polish people didn't take part in that - many did - I'm saying that it wasn't organized and ordered by Poland.
A country called "Poland" existed back then, and it had a working government, and that government took part in deportations. Hell, even the Polish government in exile had spoken in favour of deportations earlier!
If you say that it doesn't count, because Poland back then was influenced by the Soviets, then you could conveniently brush aside any of the possible bad things that happened during communist era and say "there was no independent Poland, Poland regained their independence when USSR fell".
And why didn't you quote whole paragraph but omitted last sentence?
Because I was quoting the part that supported my point? The fact that many Poles helped Germans after WW2 does not change the fact that many Poles abused Germans after the war.
If it was done 100% by the Soviets, then why was there a Polish government organization that was dedicated for these deportations? Why were there Polish guards at the camps?
USSR had decided on the new borders and decided that all the Germans have to move to new Eastern Germany country
The borders were decided by USSR and Allied. And Poles were active in the deportations as well. And most of them were deported to West Germany, not East.
Why don't you just read the link I provided?
"The attitude of Polish civilians, many of whom had experienced brutalities only surpassed by the treatment of the Jews during the preceding Nazi occupation, was ambiguous.[12] Many engaged in looting, robberies, beatings and even murders and rapes."
"As early as in 1941, WÅadysÅaw Sikorski of the Polish government in exile insisted on driving "the German horde (...) back far [westward]"[26], while in 1942 memoranda he expressed concern about Poland acquiring Lower Silesia, populated with "fanatically anti-Polish Germans".[27][28] Yet as the war went on, Lower Silesia also became a Polish war aim, as well as occupation of the Baltic coast west of Szczecin as far as Rostock and occupation of the Kiel Canal.[28] Expulsions of Germans from East Prussia and pre-war Poland had become a war aim as early as in February 1940, expressed by Polish Foreign Minister August Zaleski[28]."
"Soviet troops,[13][14] as well as Polish civilians[12] and militias[59] exacted revenge on ethnic Germans and German nationals. While many Germans had already fled ahead of the advancing Soviet Army, millions of Reichs- and Volksdeutsche remained in East and West Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, the Sudetenland, and in pockets throughout Central and Eastern Europe.[11] The Polish courier Jan Karski warned US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the possibility of Polish reprisals, describing them as "unavoidable" and "an encouragement for all the Germans in Poland to go west, to Germany proper, where they belong"
"In 1995, Polish foreign minister WÅadysÅaw Bartoszewski expressed regret about the suffering of innocent Germans during the expulsions in a speech held before German parliament and federative council."
Like I said, it's dishonest to claim that the expulsions were carried out by Soviets, while Poles just stood back and watched. while the border-changes were made with no (or very little) input from the Poles, they could have always offered the Germans in Poland a Polish citizenship or they could have left them where they were. And that's exactly what they did with Germans who were deemed "Indispensable Germans" for the Polish economy.
What Germany did to Poland and Poles was a lot worse than what Poland and Poles did to Germans. But that still does not justify the claims that "hey, we didn't do anything, it was these other guys who did all the bad things!".
You're asking wrong nation. We didn't have anything to say about new borders and moving the population (both Polish and German). It was decided and done by USSR and their troops.
Who is "we" in this context? Besides, Germans were being mistreated by the Poles (and Russians). The act of driving them from their homes is mistreatment in on itself. And even on individual level, there were lots of Poles mistreating Germans (and there were lots of Poles who helped the Germans). It's quite dishonest to claim that the expulsions were done by the Russians, and Poland had nothing to do with it.
No, I'm not trying to claim that Germans were the "good guys" and Poles were the "bad guys" of the war. That would be ludicrous. I'm just disputing the idea that Poland and Poles never did anything bad to Germans after the war. You don't displace millions of people and then claim that "nothing bad happened". I believe that the modern word for that is "ethnic cleansing", and it's considered to be a crime against humanity these days.
I have no desire to make excuses for the atrocities that Nazis committed in Poland during WW2. I was merely answering the question regarding expulsion of Germans from Poland, which did happen.
And it should also be noted that most of the Germans were expelled from areas that used to be part of Germany, not areas that Germany conquered from Poland during the war.
Also, atrocity is an atrocity. Driving people from their homes through threats (and sometimes more than just threats) of violence is an atrocity that should be condemned. Yes, Poland went through hell and back during the war. Does that make it OK for them to mistreat others in return? Is it OK to mistreat Germans because some other Germans did some shitty things?
After the Holocaust and WWII in general, you could make a decent argument that the German language should only live on in Hell.
No you could not. Or are you saying that we would be better off today, had Germans been exterminated during and after WW2? To me it seems that modern Germany makes a positive contribution to the World, a contribution that we would lack, had history taken the course you desire. And how exactly would the Allied been one bit better than Nazis were, had they started killing surrendered Germans in their millions?
In this case, Apple, commercial Linux distros (i.e. the ones that have assets that can be seized), and every other player in the OS market would be forced to provide the choice to ONLY have one browser installed
Those other OS'es are not monopolies.
In this case, the "They're a convicted monopoly" argument is a ton of BS. (Specifically, a metric ton.) EVERY Operating System comes with the official browser of the people who made the operating system. Apple comes with Safari by default. Debian comes with Iceweasel. A KDE 3.5 system comes with Konqueror. ChromeOS will include Chrome.
None of those OS'es are monopolies. Only Windows is a monopoly, and it's illegal to use your monopoly in one are to gain monopoly in another area.
By the way, the complaint was brought by Opera, which is a European company.
So what? Most fines EU mandates for antitrust-violations are targetted at European companies.
The only reason the EU took this case was to benefit a European company at the expense of an American one.
That's a load of bullshit. Most fines and remedies EU mandates are targetted against European companies, not American,
The European "You have to provide a choice of web browsers" decision was really just a tax on a non-European company
If you actually bothered to check your facts, you would find out that most fines that EU hands down to companies for antitrust-violations are targeted at EUROPEAN companies. Of course those cases are not widely reported in USA, so drooling retards like you get the idea that EU is just bullying innocent American companies, while letting European companies do whatever they please.
Slashdot Mirror
MEP Daniel Hannan said in early August, "The worst thing to be is elderly under the UK Health System..... you will be denied care and left starving in wards."
For some reason I'm reminded by the American Republican (or something) who railed against the Obama plan in a newspaper-article by saying "If Stephen Hawking had to rely on UK healthcare, he would be long dead by now!". The retard didn't realize that Hawking has been relying on UK healthcare for all his life....
It seems to me that the whole healthcare-discussion in USA is plagued by buzzwords and stupidity. Some people oppose it because it "socialism" and everything that is related to socialism is automatically bad. They never stop and think about the issue, they just see the S-word being thrown around and automatically oppose it with zero critical thinking.
I checked out the i4i web site. My impression is that i4i had financial problems because they were a dinky little company with almost no significant products. I suspect they had no more than one software developer, and were probably lucky to stay in business all this time. I doubt MS even bothered to ever meet with them.
Well, this paints a totally different kind of picture. Few quotes:
"Nine years ago, an unusual and powerful alliance approached a tiny Toronto software company with a fateful proposition. Microsoft was helping U.S. intelligence sift through relentless mountains of documents relating to the 9/11 terrorist attacks but had few means to sort them out. This firm, i4i, had the software that could intuit crucial, revelatory patterns that its own software could not.
It wasn't long before Microsoft recognized the value of the firm's technology, and, as it is now famously alleged, pinched it."
"Their circumstances are more humble than they used to be, when i4i took up 21/2 floors of the building and employed roughly 200 people, with offices in Manchester, Paris, Amsterdam, Washington, D.C., and San Diego. âoeWhen Microsoft began offering their technology for free,â Mr. Vulpe says, âoeall of our customers went away.â"
It should be noted that it sure as hell wouldn't be the first time MS did something like this. They did it with Quicktime in the 90's as well.
One thing I can think of which would be extremely useful would be an IM client.
Would it? what would multitasking accomplish that push-notifications does not?
Which killer features?
For what do you need multitasking on a phone? How would multitasking be different from how iPhone does things (you switch between apps)? Only use I could think of it is audio-streaming or something like that. Multitasking might make sense on normal computers, where you can have several app-windows open, and you could move stuff between them. But that is not possible on a phone. Phones display one app at a time.
Hell, you don't really multitask on a computer either. Or do you edit spreadsheet and presentations at the same time? No you do not. You do your tasks one at a time, switching between different apps. And you can do that just fine on the iPhone as well.
Video recording support?
That might be nifty, but hardly a major shortcoming.
Flash support?
I remember a recent review of a phone that had a "full flash-support". Flash was so slow on the phone that it was useless. Why waste resources on supporting features that would be useless in actual usage? Just so you would have a useless paper-spec?
Aren't both iPhone and pre unbranded? iPhone at least has no AT&T-stickers on it or something.
specs are better than the iphone and the interface looks nice.
There are more to phones that just specs and screenshots. Or do we buy cars based solely on which car has more HP?
My Nokia E71 has good specs as well. expandable memory, WiFi, web-browser etc... But it's still crap when compared to my 1st gen iPod touch. Just because device has certain features does not mean that those features are actually usable.
Of course it remains to be seen how good those features are on the device, but we can't just stare at specs on a screen and say "it's better than this other device".
Saddam was supported by the US through Kuwait
Saddam was supported by USA, period.
Al-Qaida was not part of the Mujahedin and did not exist until after the soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. It's sort of impossible to claim Al-Qaida benefited when it was nowhere to be known of during the time.
Many of the Al-Qaida operatives were Mujahediin veterans. Taleban was also built on Mujahediin as well. USA had no problems supporting militant Islam as long as they were fighting against commies.
And you conveniently skipped over Noriega....
This is exactly the problem. The BBC management thinks that MMGW is an established fact, and presents it in that way, even though there are quite a lot of people who don't think it is a fact.
And quite a few people think that Osama bin Laden is a hero. Should BCB then spend considerable amount of time telling us what a great guy Osama is?
But they should be impartial about things that aren't facts.
And when would this become a fact? If 1% if relevant scientists disagree, does that mean that BBC should be "impartial"?
They should be honest and acknowledge the limits of their understanding.
BBC is a broadcaster, they are not scientists. It's unreasonable to expect BBC to have deep understanding regarding climatology. What we can expect BBC to do is to report on what scientists and experts think about the matter.
Again, how would you like to be forced to pay for an organisation that broadcasts Christian fundamentalist beliefs as if they were true
Well, global warming has bit more science behind it than Christian crackpots do....
p>In 1991, when there were first democratic elections. Before that were elections in 1989, but the communists were guaranteed 65% of places in the parliament at that time
So by that logic, Poland and/or Poles could not be accused of anything that took place between 1940 - 1989?
Yes, after Poland regained independence and was no longer a Soviet satellite country. And could decide for itself.
And when did that happen?
Poland wasn't "influenced" by Soviets - it was ruled by Soviets.
So all the bad things that Poland and/or Poles did during that time does not count? If some Pole raped a German (for example), it does not count because "the country was ruled by the Soviets"? If Government of Poland drove Germans out of the country, it does not count, since it was in reality done by the Soviets?
I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. Poland can't just wash their hands on this thing, and blame everything on Soviets.
Good, you can admit we weren't only bad guys ;)
Compared to Nazi-Germany, post-WW2 Poland was paradise on Earth. But that doesn't change the fact that some bad things happened in Poland, and many of those bad things were done by the Polish Government and Poles.
The BBC is not impartial about this and many other issues.
Let me repeat my question: should they be impartial about everything? Story about Osama bin Laden should give equal airtime to his negative sides as well as his positive sides? Documentary about deforestation in Amazon should spend half of it's time telling us about the positive aspects of deforestation? Documentary about Exxon Valdez disaster should spend half it's time telling us how it was actually a good thing?
Is "man-made global warming" a scientific certainty?
It seems to be abiout as certain as scientific isuues like this can be.
But point remains, that Germany has cut their emissions, and their economy has NOT collapsed because of it.
As to their unemployment-rate.... It currently stands at 9.1%? It seems that in USA; the unemployment-rate is currently at 9.4%, bigger than Germany's. So what exactly is your point?
That's after you spent 12 years containing a madman and his army after the invasion of another country
Why didn't you try to contain him when he invaded Iran? You didn't send in troops back then. No, you sent Rumsfeld so he could shake Saddams hand.
What "revisionism"? USA was a big supporter of Saddam during Iraq-Iran war. Al-Qaida benefitted substantially from the aid USA funnueled to Mujahideen in Afganistan As to Noriega, Wikipedia sez: "Noriega worked with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from the late 1950s to the 1980s, and was on the CIA payroll for much of this time, although the relationship had not become contractual until 1967".
What "revisionism" are you referring to here exactly?
Well, they have a lot of money to devote to it since they don't have to spend ANY money on defense.
In 2008-2009 EU (or rather, EU-countries) spends 312 billion dollars on defence. I don't know about yiou, but that's quite a bit of money....
If the USA took all of its money from defense and put it into Healthcare or "Green Tech," then yes, we'd be able to claim advances in those areas. But we can't, because we're the only Western World with a _real_ military
If only USA has "real military", then I guess that that it wouldn't matter one bit if EU-countries pulled their troops from Afganistan? I mean, they don't have any military in the first place, so their troops are more or less equivalent to tourists, right?
If that is the case, then why exactly is USA begging for NATO-countries (which are mostly also members of the EU) to send in more troops?
Or, to put it bluntly: you are a fucking moron and a liar.
The Great Global Warming Swindle is crap. Even the scientists they interviewed on the film complained that the filmmakers misrepresented and distorted their comments
As to the Ozone Hole.... You do realize that it didn't cause us any major problems was because the governments of the world made a joint agreement to resolve the issue (which they then did)?
No, really; watch it.
I'm sorry, but I don't waste my time watching crap.
These people have no monetary value for speaking out- quite the opposite. They risk their careers.
One of the people who "spoke out" on the film has said this about it:
""In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerousâ"because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very importantâ"diametrically opposite to the point I was makingâ"which is that global warming is both real and threatening."
So why exactly should I waste my time watching that crap?
So, are you saying that BBC not being "impartial" about climate change is a bad thing? Should news-outlets give each viewpoint equal airtime? If they are talking about deforestation in Amazon, they should also talk about the supposed benefits of cutting down the Amazon will bring us? Or if they are talking about Osama Bin Laden, they should also talk about his positive qualities and accomplishments?
I mean, they should be "impartial", right?
Is it okay to mistreat Germans now? No. Of course not.
But had things went the way you wanted them to go, there would be no Germans today.
Anyone born after WWII in Germany has no moral culpability for what happened then. I'm not even saying it should have happened that way. What I'm saying is this: After WWII, anything contemporary Germans got, they had coming to them, in spades, and sounds more like justice, rather than an atrocity.
So, guilt by association? Are all Americans therefore responsible for what happened during Bush Administration? Or does that privilege only extend to WW2-era Germans? Also, if all Germans were guilty, does that mean that people like Von Stauffenberg are guilty as well? How about Erwin Rommel?
There was no Polish government when the deportations were performed.
So when did Poland get a proper government? The government that ruled Poland for decades after WW" was a continuation of that government.
Why do I get the idea that whatever bad things was done in Poland after WW2, Poles had no responsibility for it? Even if the people doing them were Poles?
Likewise, German people couldn't be offered Polish citizenship (even if Polish people would agree, Soviet government wouldn't).
"While most of the ethnic German population of pre-war Poland fled or was expelled, some were "rehabilitated" and offered their pre-war Polish citizenship back.[94] "Rehabilitation" was offered to people who had been subject to forced labour before, spoke Polish and were rated as not constituting a threat"
So some Germans were given Polish citizenship.
I'm not saying that Polish people didn't take part in that - many did - I'm saying that it wasn't organized and ordered by Poland.
A country called "Poland" existed back then, and it had a working government, and that government took part in deportations. Hell, even the Polish government in exile had spoken in favour of deportations earlier!
If you say that it doesn't count, because Poland back then was influenced by the Soviets, then you could conveniently brush aside any of the possible bad things that happened during communist era and say "there was no independent Poland, Poland regained their independence when USSR fell".
And why didn't you quote whole paragraph but omitted last sentence?
Because I was quoting the part that supported my point? The fact that many Poles helped Germans after WW2 does not change the fact that many Poles abused Germans after the war.
A few of them do use Macs however, I'm not really sure why.
Maybe they like the hardware? I know that even if I didn't use OS X, I would still prefer a Mac to some generic PC-laptop.
But they were done by the Soviets.
If it was done 100% by the Soviets, then why was there a Polish government organization that was dedicated for these deportations? Why were there Polish guards at the camps?
USSR had decided on the new borders and decided that all the Germans have to move to new Eastern Germany country
The borders were decided by USSR and Allied. And Poles were active in the deportations as well. And most of them were deported to West Germany, not East.
Why don't you just read the link I provided?
"The attitude of Polish civilians, many of whom had experienced brutalities only surpassed by the treatment of the Jews during the preceding Nazi occupation, was ambiguous.[12] Many engaged in looting, robberies, beatings and even murders and rapes."
"As early as in 1941, WÅadysÅaw Sikorski of the Polish government in exile insisted on driving "the German horde (...) back far [westward]"[26], while in 1942 memoranda he expressed concern about Poland acquiring Lower Silesia, populated with "fanatically anti-Polish Germans".[27][28] Yet as the war went on, Lower Silesia also became a Polish war aim, as well as occupation of the Baltic coast west of Szczecin as far as Rostock and occupation of the Kiel Canal.[28] Expulsions of Germans from East Prussia and pre-war Poland had become a war aim as early as in February 1940, expressed by Polish Foreign Minister August Zaleski[28]."
"Soviet troops,[13][14] as well as Polish civilians[12] and militias[59] exacted revenge on ethnic Germans and German nationals. While many Germans had already fled ahead of the advancing Soviet Army, millions of Reichs- and Volksdeutsche remained in East and West Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, the Sudetenland, and in pockets throughout Central and Eastern Europe.[11] The Polish courier Jan Karski warned US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the possibility of Polish reprisals, describing them as "unavoidable" and "an encouragement for all the Germans in Poland to go west, to Germany proper, where they belong"
"In 1995, Polish foreign minister WÅadysÅaw Bartoszewski expressed regret about the suffering of innocent Germans during the expulsions in a speech held before German parliament and federative council."
Like I said, it's dishonest to claim that the expulsions were carried out by Soviets, while Poles just stood back and watched. while the border-changes were made with no (or very little) input from the Poles, they could have always offered the Germans in Poland a Polish citizenship or they could have left them where they were. And that's exactly what they did with Germans who were deemed "Indispensable Germans" for the Polish economy.
What Germany did to Poland and Poles was a lot worse than what Poland and Poles did to Germans. But that still does not justify the claims that "hey, we didn't do anything, it was these other guys who did all the bad things!".
You're asking wrong nation. We didn't have anything to say about new borders and moving the population (both Polish and German). It was decided and done by USSR and their troops.
Who is "we" in this context? Besides, Germans were being mistreated by the Poles (and Russians). The act of driving them from their homes is mistreatment in on itself. And even on individual level, there were lots of Poles mistreating Germans (and there were lots of Poles who helped the Germans). It's quite dishonest to claim that the expulsions were done by the Russians, and Poland had nothing to do with it.
No, I'm not trying to claim that Germans were the "good guys" and Poles were the "bad guys" of the war. That would be ludicrous. I'm just disputing the idea that Poland and Poles never did anything bad to Germans after the war. You don't displace millions of people and then claim that "nothing bad happened". I believe that the modern word for that is "ethnic cleansing", and it's considered to be a crime against humanity these days.
I have no desire to make excuses for the atrocities that Nazis committed in Poland during WW2. I was merely answering the question regarding expulsion of Germans from Poland, which did happen.
And it should also be noted that most of the Germans were expelled from areas that used to be part of Germany, not areas that Germany conquered from Poland during the war.
Also, atrocity is an atrocity. Driving people from their homes through threats (and sometimes more than just threats) of violence is an atrocity that should be condemned. Yes, Poland went through hell and back during the war. Does that make it OK for them to mistreat others in return? Is it OK to mistreat Germans because some other Germans did some shitty things?
After the Holocaust and WWII in general, you could make a decent argument that the German language should only live on in Hell.
No you could not. Or are you saying that we would be better off today, had Germans been exterminated during and after WW2? To me it seems that modern Germany makes a positive contribution to the World, a contribution that we would lack, had history taken the course you desire. And how exactly would the Allied been one bit better than Nazis were, had they started killing surrendered Germans in their millions?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_from_Poland_during_and_after_World_War_II
In this case, Apple, commercial Linux distros (i.e. the ones that have assets that can be seized), and every other player in the OS market would be forced to provide the choice to ONLY have one browser installed
Those other OS'es are not monopolies.
In this case, the "They're a convicted monopoly" argument is a ton of BS. (Specifically, a metric ton.) EVERY Operating System comes with the official browser of the people who made the operating system. Apple comes with Safari by default. Debian comes with Iceweasel. A KDE 3.5 system comes with Konqueror. ChromeOS will include Chrome.
None of those OS'es are monopolies. Only Windows is a monopoly, and it's illegal to use your monopoly in one are to gain monopoly in another area.
By the way, the complaint was brought by Opera, which is a European company.
So what? Most fines EU mandates for antitrust-violations are targetted at European companies.
The only reason the EU took this case was to benefit a European company at the expense of an American one.
That's a load of bullshit. Most fines and remedies EU mandates are targetted against European companies, not American,
Oh, and they get to tax the American company.
Don't be a retard. Oh wait, too late for that....
The European "You have to provide a choice of web browsers" decision was really just a tax on a non-European company
If you actually bothered to check your facts, you would find out that most fines that EU hands down to companies for antitrust-violations are targeted at EUROPEAN companies. Of course those cases are not widely reported in USA, so drooling retards like you get the idea that EU is just bullying innocent American companies, while letting European companies do whatever they please.