I'm a big fan of private business, but this is akin to the laws that prevent the government from competing with private business for anything - so instead of having electronic tax filing provided for free at the IRS site, we have to pay a private entity to do the filing for us. The IRS still has to have a back end paid for with tax money.
Wow, that must really suck. Here in Sweden we have at least three different ways to file our taxes all provided by Skatteverket (The department for taxes). A four page paper form is sent out to everyone with some pre-entered information. You can then either choose to fill out the form and send it in or you can logg on to their homepage and do you taxes there or you can simply send an SMS to confirm that all the pre-entered information was correct. It's a bit more complicated for companies but we're getting there. And all free of charge. Don't think anyone ever considered that the citizens should pay for it. If Skatteverket wants money/information they get to pay for it themselves.
But since A) they aren't real people, and B) the drawings aren't usually pornographic per se, it would terribly inaccurate to call it "child porn".
In this case be happy you don't live in Sweden where even drawings are people and where the possession of pictures of cartoon characters portrayed in sexual situations are considered child pornography...
In sweden you can get a so called twin-card (not sure if that is the correct english term). It's a sim-card with the same phone number as the original. You have to choose which one you want to get calls on but you can call using both and more importantly you can use the data transfer on both. Costs around $5/month, if I had a tablet this is what I would be using.
Children in USA has never had them in school. No rights, only obligations. It's an violation of Convention on the Rights of the Child, article 12. Stating that child has the right to express themselves. USA and Somalia is the only two countries within the UN that has not signed the agreement.
Remember a story of a kid who got suspended for wearing a pepsi t-shirt in school during a photo op for Coca Cola. Might have been vice versa. Ain't that great though? We force you to participate and earn money of your face and punish you if you don't comply.
You have been missing out. I used to hate the windows-key as well, pressing it in games and what not but I'm now at the point that if I had to chose betwene an model-m and the windows-key model-m would lose. And that's despite me liking the model-m. The windows key have upped my productivity, every time you need to move your hands from the keyboard you lose.:) My most common use is win+e for file explorer, win+d for showing the desktop, win+r to display the run program dialog.
Actually it's not as good as that. You don't need passports when moving betwine countries but you do need passport or id inside a country. That's right, we traded the hassel of having to show passport once at the border for joy of needing to prove our identity whenever the police feel like it. Might not happen that often in Sweden but I bet that the Romani in France doesn't have it that good.
Who are you kidding? It's the ONLY STRATEGY. You know what you call someone who tries to weaken a brutal dictator with the bald-faced truth? A martyr.
Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela...? One of my school teachers once said something that I have kept close to my heart. People who have the capacity to start a military revolt seldom wants to hand over the power to a democraticly elected leader. It has happened time and time again.
What you are saying is true but not for all the classes. The lower classes has had more freedom when it came to love and marrige. The middle classes and up has never made up an majoirty of the population in a country. On the other hand the lower classes didn't always marry and instead "chose" to "live in sin" due to the costs related to getting married. Getting married might have been what one should do but the part of society that constituted the lower classes can hardly have raised an eyebrow regarding two persons living together without being married.
Not only is history written by the winner, it's also written by the rich.
Agreed (and part of my point). They're just more autistic than dogs; they lack the social intelligence because they didn't evolve as a pack species.
People likes to say this but I'm not so sure it's true. Abandoned and feral cats tends to natually form packs. I got two cats and usually where one of them is the other one is probably nearby. The love sleeping in a pile or in a cute ying-yang manner. Cats are social animals they just aren't dogs.
It's a bit like claiming that a american is stupid because he doesn't know japanese:)
Two examples, wagging of the tail usually means that a dog is happy to see you. When a cat does it he is probably about to rip your throath out, probably because you think he is a dog.
A dog might not stare at you when he is happy to see you bu he has his eyes open. A cat when he likes you closes them because he trust you not to hurt him.
Yes of course there are some people who are wrongfully accused for rape and that sucks but that is probably not the case most of the time. In courts in Sweden the girls character is always in question. Was she drunk, has she had many boyfriends, is she a slut? Any of that could be reason not to convict. There has even been a case where the girl didn't have time to say no before the guy showed his pipe organ in her throat and at least one where the girl was too drunk to be able to speak where both guys where acquitted since the girls didn't protest enough This is hardly the signs of a country in moral panic (oh and your link goes nowhere).
So why are there so many cases of rape in Sweden? There's a couple of reasons. The police most often don't laugh at the girls or kick them out again and we do take it serious when it comes to rape even if the courts sometimes fubar things. Another reason is that the spouse in Sweden can be convicted for rape of his wife. There are still, strangely enough, countries where the husband can't be convicted for raping his wife. Don't confuse higher numbers for larger amounts of rapists or moral panic, it might just be that we are doing more things right than you are.
Just as the death penalty is made acceptable by lethal injection, appropriate technology could assist information extraction with less stress on the people doing the interrogating.
On the other hand. Not everyone believes that the death penalty is acceptable regardless of the method.
I agree with you in general but ridicule is considered one of the "Master suppression techniques", meaning that it is very hard stand up against. You can't really defend against it since it doesn't really leave any open vectors of attack to work with. They are also very sneaky and it's often hard to even realise that you are being subjected to the attack.
If you ever have had a colleague or boss that constantly made you unhappy or depressed and you couldn't really say why then they were probably using Master suppression techniques on you.
It's like telling someone being bullied that they just need to stand up for them self. Sure that might work but they are the ones in the underdog position. It's hard to stand when people keeps on walking over you back.
Lofty goals and though I support you in general, would you let your own children starve to death to enable humans to someday maybe reach the stars?
A bit mean question but it is always easy to profess a willingness to sacrifice lots of people you don't know. To do the same with your children, your friends, your wife and your family is much harder.
Oh this is painfully and embarrassingly true. Remembering how proud I felt when I was skiing in France and a "native" referred to me as "Un Monsieur Anglais".:)
I agree that Spore wasn't the game I thought it would be but I wouldn't say that it is a flop. At least in Sweden it's on the top 10 list of sold PC-games. Just a bit depressing:)
Reason that I like Steam is that most of the time it doesn't get in my way and it keeps my game collection with me. I seldom go any where there isn't internet but carrying around the 30 games or so that I have on steam in physical form would be a real bother.
No but if my memory serves me right if your computer is hacked, and someone does something illegal using it, then you are responsible if you're not using the program.
That's right, if you get hacked and they perform illegal file sharing you will be charged with a crime...
I tend to agree with you. Travelling to USA is on my "do not fly"-list.
Your story reminds me of the story my father told about when he and his school class where leaving East-germany. A nervous passing considering he and his family had escaped East-germany just a couple of years prior.
Why a Swedish school class were in East-Germany and why my father thought it was a good idea to go along I'll probably never understand:)
Just question since I'm a bit uncertain about this point but do they really need to submit proof that you are a terrorist?
Here in Sweden because of stupid ass "jump when usa tells you" policy an Swedish citizen got all his bank accounts locked because usa said that he was a terrorist. No trial no nothing. He had a hard time defending himself.
First because he could access no money and it was illegal to give him any money at all. Seriously, if he was begging on the street it would have been a crime to give him a dollar. Thankfully people ignored that and so did the police.
The next problem was that the so called evidence was classified. Good luck putting up a defence in that case.
I got the impression that after USA had had him judged without a trial they lost interest.
Besides if they, in your example, had proof then they wouldn't need to just detain you now would they? If they have proof the can arrest and go to trial. The law is only useful if they have suspicions but can't prove anything. As such it could be used to harass almost whoever they want.
If I could I would have modded you up.
IIRC, what they called homosexual in ancient Rome was not what we would call it today. Back then it was mostly about having sex with young boys. Just like you said, a long way from consensual homosexual relationships.
I'm sorry but I think you're a bit off when it comes to Easter. English is one of the few countries where it is even called Easter as seen in this wiki article. In Sweden for instance it's called Påsk.
Easter was something the Jews celebrated long before Jesus lived. Jesus, being a Jew, is said to have been celebrating Easter before he was taken away.
Sure, there is a lot of pagan trappings and fertility symbols around it, eggs for instance, but that is not anything any church I've been to have claimed is Christian.
But Christmas was just like you said an holiday modified from the pagans rituals as was Hallows-eve.
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I'm a big fan of private business, but this is akin to the laws that prevent the government from competing with private business for anything - so instead of having electronic tax filing provided for free at the IRS site, we have to pay a private entity to do the filing for us. The IRS still has to have a back end paid for with tax money.
Wow, that must really suck. Here in Sweden we have at least three different ways to file our taxes all provided by Skatteverket (The department for taxes). A four page paper form is sent out to everyone with some pre-entered information. You can then either choose to fill out the form and send it in or you can logg on to their homepage and do you taxes there or you can simply send an SMS to confirm that all the pre-entered information was correct.
It's a bit more complicated for companies but we're getting there. And all free of charge. Don't think anyone ever considered that the citizens should pay for it. If Skatteverket wants money/information they get to pay for it themselves.
But since A) they aren't real people, and B) the drawings aren't usually pornographic per se, it would terribly inaccurate to call it "child porn".
In this case be happy you don't live in Sweden where even drawings are people and where the possession of pictures of cartoon characters portrayed in sexual situations are considered child pornography...
In sweden you can get a so called twin-card (not sure if that is the correct english term). It's a sim-card with the same phone number as the original. You have to choose which one you want to get calls on but you can call using both and more importantly you can use the data transfer on both.
Costs around $5/month, if I had a tablet this is what I would be using.
Children in USA has never had them in school. No rights, only obligations. It's an violation of Convention on the Rights of the Child, article 12. Stating that child has the right to express themselves. USA and Somalia is the only two countries within the UN that has not signed the agreement.
Remember a story of a kid who got suspended for wearing a pepsi t-shirt in school during a photo op for Coca Cola. Might have been vice versa.
Ain't that great though? We force you to participate and earn money of your face and punish you if you don't comply.
You have been missing out. I used to hate the windows-key as well, pressing it in games and what not but I'm now at the point that if I had to chose betwene an model-m and the windows-key model-m would lose. And that's despite me liking the model-m. The windows key have upped my productivity, every time you need to move your hands from the keyboard you lose. :)
My most common use is win+e for file explorer, win+d for showing the desktop, win+r to display the run program dialog.
Coool, a coffin with wifi. Gotto get me one of them when I die. :)
Interresting stats but "citation needed".
Actually it's not as good as that. You don't need passports when moving betwine countries but you do need passport or id inside a country. That's right, we traded the hassel of having to show passport once at the border for joy of needing to prove our identity whenever the police feel like it. Might not happen that often in Sweden but I bet that the Romani in France doesn't have it that good.
Who are you kidding? It's the ONLY STRATEGY. You know what you call someone who tries to weaken a brutal dictator with the bald-faced truth? A martyr.
Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela...?
One of my school teachers once said something that I have kept close to my heart. People who have the capacity to start a military revolt seldom wants to hand over the power to a democraticly elected leader. It has happened time and time again.
What you are saying is true but not for all the classes. The lower classes has had more freedom when it came to love and marrige. The middle classes and up has never made up an majoirty of the population in a country.
On the other hand the lower classes didn't always marry and instead "chose" to "live in sin" due to the costs related to getting married. Getting married might have been what one should do but the part of society that constituted the lower classes can hardly have raised an eyebrow regarding two persons living together without being married.
Not only is history written by the winner, it's also written by the rich.
Agreed (and part of my point). They're just more autistic than dogs; they lack the social intelligence because they didn't evolve as a pack species.
People likes to say this but I'm not so sure it's true. Abandoned and feral cats tends to natually form packs. I got two cats and usually where one of them is the other one is probably nearby. The love sleeping in a pile or in a cute ying-yang manner. Cats are social animals they just aren't dogs.
It's a bit like claiming that a american is stupid because he doesn't know japanese :)
Two examples, wagging of the tail usually means that a dog is happy to see you. When a cat does it he is probably about to rip your throath out, probably because you think he is a dog.
A dog might not stare at you when he is happy to see you bu he has his eyes open. A cat when he likes you closes them because he trust you not to hurt him.
Yes of course there are some people who are wrongfully accused for rape and that sucks but that is probably not the case most of the time.
In courts in Sweden the girls character is always in question. Was she drunk, has she had many boyfriends, is she a slut? Any of that could be reason not to convict. There has even been a case where the girl didn't have time to say no before the guy showed his pipe organ in her throat and at least one where the girl was too drunk to be able to speak where both guys where acquitted since the girls didn't protest enough
This is hardly the signs of a country in moral panic (oh and your link goes nowhere).
So why are there so many cases of rape in Sweden? There's a couple of reasons. The police most often don't laugh at the girls or kick them out again and we do take it serious when it comes to rape even if the courts sometimes fubar things. Another reason is that the spouse in Sweden can be convicted for rape of his wife. There are still, strangely enough, countries where the husband can't be convicted for raping his wife.
Don't confuse higher numbers for larger amounts of rapists or moral panic, it might just be that we are doing more things right than you are.
Just as the death penalty is made acceptable by lethal injection, appropriate technology could assist information extraction with less stress on the people doing the interrogating.
On the other hand. Not everyone believes that the death penalty is acceptable regardless of the method.
I agree with you in general but ridicule is considered one of the "Master suppression techniques", meaning that it is very hard stand up against. You can't really defend against it since it doesn't really leave any open vectors of attack to work with. They are also very sneaky and it's often hard to even realise that you are being subjected to the attack.
If you ever have had a colleague or boss that constantly made you unhappy or depressed and you couldn't really say why then they were probably using Master suppression techniques on you.
It's like telling someone being bullied that they just need to stand up for them self. Sure that might work but they are the ones in the underdog position. It's hard to stand when people keeps on walking over you back.
I'm guessing though that writing a column every other month as described in the article wouldn't be enough for most people to live on :)
Lofty goals and though I support you in general, would you let your own children starve to death to enable humans to someday maybe reach the stars? A bit mean question but it is always easy to profess a willingness to sacrifice lots of people you don't know. To do the same with your children, your friends, your wife and your family is much harder.
Because it would be fun. What more reason do you need? :)
Oh this is painfully and embarrassingly true. Remembering how proud I felt when I was skiing in France and a "native" referred to me as "Un Monsieur Anglais". :)
I agree that Spore wasn't the game I thought it would be but I wouldn't say that it is a flop. At least in Sweden it's on the top 10 list of sold PC-games. Just a bit depressing :)
Reason that I like Steam is that most of the time it doesn't get in my way and it keeps my game collection with me. I seldom go any where there isn't internet but carrying around the 30 games or so that I have on steam in physical form would be a real bother.
No but if my memory serves me right if your computer is hacked, and someone does something illegal using it, then you are responsible if you're not using the program.
That's right, if you get hacked and they perform illegal file sharing you will be charged with a crime...
I tend to agree with you. Travelling to USA is on my "do not fly"-list. Your story reminds me of the story my father told about when he and his school class where leaving East-germany. A nervous passing considering he and his family had escaped East-germany just a couple of years prior.
Why a Swedish school class were in East-Germany and why my father thought it was a good idea to go along I'll probably never understand :)
Just question since I'm a bit uncertain about this point but do they really need to submit proof that you are a terrorist?
Here in Sweden because of stupid ass "jump when usa tells you" policy an Swedish citizen got all his bank accounts locked because usa said that he was a terrorist. No trial no nothing. He had a hard time defending himself.
First because he could access no money and it was illegal to give him any money at all. Seriously, if he was begging on the street it would have been a crime to give him a dollar. Thankfully people ignored that and so did the police.
The next problem was that the so called evidence was classified. Good luck putting up a defence in that case.
I got the impression that after USA had had him judged without a trial they lost interest.
Besides if they, in your example, had proof then they wouldn't need to just detain you now would they? If they have proof the can arrest and go to trial. The law is only useful if they have suspicions but can't prove anything. As such it could be used to harass almost whoever they want.
I'm not sure that you are right at all points but I can't understand why you where modded troll?
If I could I would have modded you up. IIRC, what they called homosexual in ancient Rome was not what we would call it today. Back then it was mostly about having sex with young boys. Just like you said, a long way from consensual homosexual relationships.
I'm sorry but I think you're a bit off when it comes to Easter. English is one of the few countries where it is even called Easter as seen in this wiki article. In Sweden for instance it's called Påsk.
Easter was something the Jews celebrated long before Jesus lived. Jesus, being a Jew, is said to have been celebrating Easter before he was taken away.
Sure, there is a lot of pagan trappings and fertility symbols around it, eggs for instance, but that is not anything any church I've been to have claimed is Christian.
But Christmas was just like you said an holiday modified from the pagans rituals as was Hallows-eve.