you still have to reconcile yourself with the fact that a prominent right politician was murdered for political reasons.
I don't find that at all difficult to reconcile. The actions of a lone gunman taking out a politician is hugely rare in Europe, but it's no more than that.
In the USA, in contrast, it's almost a grand tradition. Do you really need me to list all of the assassination attempts made on US politicians in the last 40 years?
Maybe the Netherlands simply has no "problem" with dissent because all of its press thinks alike, eh?
I also don't have the most respect for any of the "without borders" organizations as being scrupulously honest and without some lefty bias
Well, to be honest, I never expected you to accept any evidence that I put forward. It's a trait among large numbers of Americans -- and particularly so those who lean towards the right. My country right or wrong, and if anyone tries to tell me anything that I don't want to hear, then there's clearly some problem with the messenger because we could never, ever, under any circumstances, possibly be wrong!!!!
The problem isn't that Macs aren't good really. But Mac users tend to take many of these "Mac is better" statements on faith rather than fact.
I own and use both, daily. A Mac and a Pentium IV running Windows. In terms of usability, OS design, stability and system engineering quality, the Mac is better.
My PC, on the other hand, was a fair bit cheaper and runs more software -- but in no other way can I see it as being superior to the Mac.
On the other hand, if you come to work taking pictures of internal affairs and publish them on the web
So do Internal Affairs investigate all Microsoft staff, or is it like a normal Internal Affairs where they just investigate crimes by the Microsoft Campus Security?
Even stores and restaurants (like McDonald's) have policies against cameras being used and at the very least will escort you out if they catch you taking pictures inside.
Damn. So when you see all those snaps of happy smiling kids being entertained by Ronald McDonald at their birthday party, five minutes later, security arrived and escorted them off the premises?
If that's true, the McDonald's executives should have hot cups of coffee poured all over their genital areas as punishment.
Many companies have policies about photographing the work place which can lead to termination if broken.
Sure. The company had every right to do what it did, nobody would dispute that.
The more interesting question is, was firing him a reasonable response, when he would have been perfectly happy to take down the site and no further damage would have been done?
As I say, Microsoft have every right to behave like the Stazi in the way that they manage their workplace, but in that case, I'm pretty damn sure that I wouldn't want to work there.
Others might be only too happy to be employed by vindictive, power-crazed arseholes, and I wish nothing but good luck to them in what is sure to be an eventful if somewhat frustrating and humiliating career.
How the hell is this insightful? The point of the story isn't that Microsoft owns Macs. The point of the story is that a guy got fired for revealing what everyone already knows.
And I yours. If truth be told, I don't really spend enough time in either place to get more than a very superficial impression of how both countries are, so I'm really only giving my impression based on that.
I'm happy to acknowledge the possibility that by living there, your view may well be a much more accurate one than mine.
Hold on a second. First you accuse the USA of being intolerant of dissent, and then you boast about how the Netherlands don't have a Pat Bunchanan or a Rush Limbaugh?..
It isn't a boast, it's an observation. I live in the UK. We have our own Pat n' Rush equivalents in people like Richard Littlejohn and Norman Tebbit.
Are you under the impression that those two represent the American mainstream?
Remind me, who is the American president again? George W. Bush, right? Yeah, they don't seem to be too far from the mark to me.
In the Netherlands people with their views would certainly be considered "voices of dissent," so why aren't you willing to be tolerant of them?
Where do I say that I'm not? I may well (indeed I do) disagree with them. I may also think that they contribute hugely to the atmosphere of intolerance and moral rectitude that I see as being prevalent in the USA today, but I believe they have every right to air those views for as long as they can find an audience willing to listen to them.
In fact, I imply as much in my post.
I often have to struggle to reconcile the good things I like about the political system there (such as the very spirited defence of freedoms of speech and expression, the constitution
Gotcha
Not really, but thanks for playing. Better luck next time.
My point is while there is certainly nice tolerance it is a facade to some degree. Ask immigrants how they feel, the warm welcome that the Turkish and Marocans receive in Dutch society.
Well, my African-American friends say much the same things about the USA, only they aren't recent immigrants but have been there for several generations.
Turks and Marocans aren't very likely to be gunned down in their homes, or have a broomstick jammed up their arses by arresting police officers in the Netherlands either. Are these typical? Of course not, but such incidents do happen with a disturbing regularity in the USA and I can't recall ever hearing of such events in the Netherlands.
Tolerance just to ideas is also lacking. Try critizing the Dutch government in front of them, they'll either 1) tell you how broken American government is in response or 2) tell you you're clueless because you don't know how brilliant the Dutch system is.
Yeah, I think that's right. However, in my experience, they're far less strident than the United States in their defence of 'my country right or wrong', and I can perfectly understand their unwillingness to be lectured on how they should run their government from an American. I certainly don't have the sense that the only way to achieve high political office in the Netherlands is by being in thrall to vested interests.
In reference to Rush Limbaugh or Pat Buchanan, did you not hear about Pim Fortuin? He wasn't as hateful as good ole Rush or Pat, but he was pretty radical in views
I don't think Fortuin was comparable for a moment -- and if anything, Fortuin is a pretty good counter-example to the things that you're saying.
Firstly, he was gay. Can you even begin to contemplate a gay Jesse Helms?
Secondly, he was critical of the existing Dutch system -- and gained an immense amount of support from the population for expressing what were effectively heretical views that broke with the longstanding liberal consensus.
Finally, Fortuin wasn't opposed to immigrants simply because they were different -- inferior mongrel races -- but rather, was concerned about the impact that immigrants from certain other cultures were having on the Dutch way of life -- and most particularly, those enlightenment values of tolerance, equality, etc. that the Netherlands has worked so hard to enshrine.
This isn't an issue that's ever likely to arise in the USA because you insist that every immigrant pledge allegiance to the flag, motherhood and apple pie before they ever get citizenship, and the moment you begin to even start perceiving them as a potential threat you start locking them up or expelling them, regardless of the evidence against them.
Don't get me wrong. The USA has many great qualities and I love the place as much -- perhaps even more -- than I love the Netherlands. But freedom and tolerance just aren't the first things that spring to mind when I think about the place and I often have to struggle to reconcile the good things I like about the political system there (such as the very spirited defence of freedoms of speech and expression, the constitution, etc.) with the reality of how that system actually operates.
If you believe your choice of media (often) protraying the difficulties of living in America (e.g. everyone's mother was a crack whore, crime is terrible), then you're simply missing part of the picture.
I'm pretty familiar with both the USA and the Netherlands, and have spent some time in both countries every year for the last ten years or so.
The thing about the USA is that it appears more free if you're an orthodox sort of person that fits in with everyone else around you and doesn't actually want to make any choices that the rest of your culture think are somehow immoral or improper.
What the USA doesn't do very well, in my opinion, is brook difference or dissent -- and to me, a culture that is able to tolerate or embrace those those things is one that meets my idea of a free.
There's no equivalent of Rush Limbaugh or Pat Buchanan in the Netherlands, spewing hate across the airwaves. And if you want to smoke pot or have some kind of unorthodox sex, the state doesn't feel it has any role in policing those areas of private morality.
So while I think your main point is essentially correct -- the Netherlands is a conservative country, and the culture and many of its institutions are also somewhat conservative, but its profound and deep-rooted tolerance for me makes it a much freer environment than the USA could ever be.
That said, what you do have in the USA is a much greater degree of economic freedom -- be that the freedom to make a million, or the freedom to sleep under a bridge because minimum wage jobs don't pay enough to both feed and accomodate you.
Good grief, talk about mods on crack! My previous post, in which I call the person I'm responding to idiotic and an imbecile is modded up as interesting, whereas this one, which is as dry and as unslanted as a post can possibly be, is modded as flamebait?
Well forgive me, oh mighty anonymous coward, for making a mistake in the workings of a foreign country's legal system. I feel so useless now.
Don't feel useless, AC, as you were perfectly correct. Criminal libel (while fairly rare) is an offence both in the UK, and also in the USA and you *can* be charged with it. Even in Utah apparently.
Frankly, I hope not: if you did, then your headline is slanderous, instead of merely biased and deceptive.
Are we reading the same headline, or are you retarded? The headline that says SCO asks IBM to make its case for it? What on earth could possibly be slanderous about that?
Assume, for the moment, that SCO is telling the truth.
Telling the truth about what, exactly? Did you read the article that the post referred to? It made it quite clear from a host of documented evidence that SCO can't stick to the same allegations for more than five minutes at a time.
So I'd be quite happy to assume that SCO was telling the truth, provided you limit that claim to SCO's statement that they believe that they own all unix or unix-style code, regardless of who wrote it.
This belief would make them as idiotic as you clearly are, but I have no difficulty whatsoever believing that they believe it.
This is just getting stupid. At some point, can't one side or the other just go all in per se, and call the other player out?
Damn, I'd like to get in a game with you some time.
Here's a poker clue. If there's nothing in your hand, and you're trying to steal the pot, you've only got one option.
BLUFF.
SCO has 9 4 offsuit but has been stringing out their bluff as long as they can. IBM has pocket rockets and has raised them with a countersuit.
SCO are desperately clutching their hand to their chest praying something good will turn up before the river but we've seen the flop and there's no help there.
Of course, the real money is in the sidebets, where a load of degenerate gamblers are taking long odds on SCO drawing to a straight. Somebody ought to tell those people that if you don't know who the sucker at the table is, then it's probably you.
On the other hand if you said "all birds fly" and nobody *ever* saw a bird that didn't fly, it still wouldn't prove the proposition - because without knowledge of all the universe past present and future you could never prove it.
This was my (poorly expressed) point. Take the converse argument. Not all birds fly. In order to rebut such an argument, you literally have to have experience of all birds. Hence my claim that it could take a very long time.
Slashdot Mirror
you still have to reconcile yourself with the fact that a prominent right politician was murdered for political reasons.
I don't find that at all difficult to reconcile. The actions of a lone gunman taking out a politician is hugely rare in Europe, but it's no more than that.
In the USA, in contrast, it's almost a grand tradition. Do you really need me to list all of the assassination attempts made on US politicians in the last 40 years? Maybe the Netherlands simply has no "problem" with dissent because all of its press thinks alike, eh?
I also don't have the most respect for any of the "without borders" organizations as being scrupulously honest and without some lefty bias
Well, to be honest, I never expected you to accept any evidence that I put forward. It's a trait among large numbers of Americans -- and particularly so those who lean towards the right. My country right or wrong, and if anyone tries to tell me anything that I don't want to hear, then there's clearly some problem with the messenger because we could never, ever, under any circumstances, possibly be wrong!!!!
I strive daily to better master Shakespeare's and Snoop Doggy Dog's language
Ah. In that case, the word you were looking for was 'brizzled', MizzutherFizzucker.
Hope this helps.
The problem isn't that Macs aren't good really. But Mac users tend to take many of these "Mac is better" statements on faith rather than fact.
I own and use both, daily. A Mac and a Pentium IV running Windows. In terms of usability, OS design, stability and system engineering quality, the Mac is better.
My PC, on the other hand, was a fair bit cheaper and runs more software -- but in no other way can I see it as being superior to the Mac.
You really do get what you pay for.
It's a SOOPERCOMPUTER!
Well, this particular one is, anyway.
The third fastest in the world, apparently.
Anyone who reads here regularly could be forgiven for thinking that the one true hacker logo could be this.
OK, so don't take my word for it, try this instead. Reporters without Borders have just issued their second league table of press freedoms.
The Netherlands is in joint first place. The USA comes in in 31st place.
Not to mention that fact that MS has always written a lot of apps for Apple. Do people think they do it on an Etch-a-Sketch?
That would explain the quality of Internet Explorer on OSX, yes.
On the other hand, if you come to work taking pictures of internal affairs and publish them on the web
So do Internal Affairs investigate all Microsoft staff, or is it like a normal Internal Affairs where they just investigate crimes by the Microsoft Campus Security?
Even stores and restaurants (like McDonald's) have policies against cameras being used and at the very least will escort you out if they catch you taking pictures inside.
Damn. So when you see all those snaps of happy smiling kids being entertained by Ronald McDonald at their birthday party, five minutes later, security arrived and escorted them off the premises?
If that's true, the McDonald's executives should have hot cups of coffee poured all over their genital areas as punishment.
That's it, you're not going to be hired now.
Why do you suppose he posted as an AC?
Bill's sekret police are everywhere
Many companies have policies about photographing the work place which can lead to termination if broken.
Sure. The company had every right to do what it did, nobody would dispute that.
The more interesting question is, was firing him a reasonable response, when he would have been perfectly happy to take down the site and no further damage would have been done?
As I say, Microsoft have every right to behave like the Stazi in the way that they manage their workplace, but in that case, I'm pretty damn sure that I wouldn't want to work there.
Others might be only too happy to be employed by vindictive, power-crazed arseholes, and I wish nothing but good luck to them in what is sure to be an eventful if somewhat frustrating and humiliating career.
How the hell is this insightful? The point of the story isn't that Microsoft owns Macs. The point of the story is that a guy got fired for revealing what everyone already knows.
I appreciate the different view
And I yours. If truth be told, I don't really spend enough time in either place to get more than a very superficial impression of how both countries are, so I'm really only giving my impression based on that.
I'm happy to acknowledge the possibility that by living there, your view may well be a much more accurate one than mine.
It isn't a boast, it's an observation. I live in the UK. We have our own Pat n' Rush equivalents in people like Richard Littlejohn and Norman Tebbit.
Are you under the impression that those two represent the American mainstream?
Remind me, who is the American president again? George W. Bush, right? Yeah, they don't seem to be too far from the mark to me.
In the Netherlands people with their views would certainly be considered "voices of dissent," so why aren't you willing to be tolerant of them?
Where do I say that I'm not? I may well (indeed I do) disagree with them. I may also think that they contribute hugely to the atmosphere of intolerance and moral rectitude that I see as being prevalent in the USA today, but I believe they have every right to air those views for as long as they can find an audience willing to listen to them.
In fact, I imply as much in my post.
Gotcha
Not really, but thanks for playing. Better luck next time.
That's because it would be illegal.
Um, OK.
You've never actually *been* out of Bumfuck, Alabama, have you?
How is that "more free" again?
Sorry, I erred. If you're a typical example, that should be "more free and better educated."
My point is while there is certainly nice tolerance it is a facade to some degree. Ask immigrants how they feel, the warm welcome that the Turkish and Marocans receive in Dutch society.
Well, my African-American friends say much the same things about the USA, only they aren't recent immigrants but have been there for several generations.
Turks and Marocans aren't very likely to be gunned down in their homes, or have a broomstick jammed up their arses by arresting police officers in the Netherlands either. Are these typical? Of course not, but such incidents do happen with a disturbing regularity in the USA and I can't recall ever hearing of such events in the Netherlands.
Tolerance just to ideas is also lacking. Try critizing the Dutch government in front of them, they'll either 1) tell you how broken American government is in response or 2) tell you you're clueless because you don't know how brilliant the Dutch system is.
Yeah, I think that's right. However, in my experience, they're far less strident than the United States in their defence of 'my country right or wrong', and I can perfectly understand their unwillingness to be lectured on how they should run their government from an American. I certainly don't have the sense that the only way to achieve high political office in the Netherlands is by being in thrall to vested interests. In reference to Rush Limbaugh or Pat Buchanan, did you not hear about Pim Fortuin? He wasn't as hateful as good ole Rush or Pat, but he was pretty radical in views
I don't think Fortuin was comparable for a moment -- and if anything, Fortuin is a pretty good counter-example to the things that you're saying.
Firstly, he was gay. Can you even begin to contemplate a gay Jesse Helms?
Secondly, he was critical of the existing Dutch system -- and gained an immense amount of support from the population for expressing what were effectively heretical views that broke with the longstanding liberal consensus.
Finally, Fortuin wasn't opposed to immigrants simply because they were different -- inferior mongrel races -- but rather, was concerned about the impact that immigrants from certain other cultures were having on the Dutch way of life -- and most particularly, those enlightenment values of tolerance, equality, etc. that the Netherlands has worked so hard to enshrine.
This isn't an issue that's ever likely to arise in the USA because you insist that every immigrant pledge allegiance to the flag, motherhood and apple pie before they ever get citizenship, and the moment you begin to even start perceiving them as a potential threat you start locking them up or expelling them, regardless of the evidence against them.
Don't get me wrong. The USA has many great qualities and I love the place as much -- perhaps even more -- than I love the Netherlands. But freedom and tolerance just aren't the first things that spring to mind when I think about the place and I often have to struggle to reconcile the good things I like about the political system there (such as the very spirited defence of freedoms of speech and expression, the constitution, etc.) with the reality of how that system actually operates.
Somebody mod *this* fucker ALL the way up!
If you believe your choice of media (often) protraying the difficulties of living in America (e.g. everyone's mother was a crack whore, crime is terrible), then you're simply missing part of the picture.
I'm pretty familiar with both the USA and the Netherlands, and have spent some time in both countries every year for the last ten years or so.
The thing about the USA is that it appears more free if you're an orthodox sort of person that fits in with everyone else around you and doesn't actually want to make any choices that the rest of your culture think are somehow immoral or improper.
What the USA doesn't do very well, in my opinion, is brook difference or dissent -- and to me, a culture that is able to tolerate or embrace those those things is one that meets my idea of a free.
There's no equivalent of Rush Limbaugh or Pat Buchanan in the Netherlands, spewing hate across the airwaves. And if you want to smoke pot or have some kind of unorthodox sex, the state doesn't feel it has any role in policing those areas of private morality.
So while I think your main point is essentially correct -- the Netherlands is a conservative country, and the culture and many of its institutions are also somewhat conservative, but its profound and deep-rooted tolerance for me makes it a much freer environment than the USA could ever be.
That said, what you do have in the USA is a much greater degree of economic freedom -- be that the freedom to make a million, or the freedom to sleep under a bridge because minimum wage jobs don't pay enough to both feed and accomodate you.
Good grief, talk about mods on crack! My previous post, in which I call the person I'm responding to idiotic and an imbecile is modded up as interesting, whereas this one, which is as dry and as unslanted as a post can possibly be, is modded as flamebait?
Has somebody given Darl McBride moderator points?
Well forgive me, oh mighty anonymous coward, for making a mistake in the workings of a foreign country's legal system. I feel so useless now.
Don't feel useless, AC, as you were perfectly correct. Criminal libel (while fairly rare) is an offence both in the UK, and also in the USA and you *can* be charged with it. Even in Utah apparently.
Frankly, I hope not: if you did, then your headline is slanderous, instead of merely biased and deceptive.
Are we reading the same headline, or are you retarded? The headline that says SCO asks IBM to make its case for it? What on earth could possibly be slanderous about that?
Assume, for the moment, that SCO is telling the truth.
Telling the truth about what, exactly? Did you read the article that the post referred to? It made it quite clear from a host of documented evidence that SCO can't stick to the same allegations for more than five minutes at a time.
So I'd be quite happy to assume that SCO was telling the truth, provided you limit that claim to SCO's statement that they believe that they own all unix or unix-style code, regardless of who wrote it.
This belief would make them as idiotic as you clearly are, but I have no difficulty whatsoever believing that they believe it.
This is just getting stupid. At some point, can't one side or the other just go all in per se, and call the other player out?
Damn, I'd like to get in a game with you some time.
Here's a poker clue. If there's nothing in your hand, and you're trying to steal the pot, you've only got one option.
BLUFF.
SCO has 9 4 offsuit but has been stringing out their bluff as long as they can. IBM has pocket rockets and has raised them with a countersuit.
SCO are desperately clutching their hand to their chest praying something good will turn up before the river but we've seen the flop and there's no help there.
Of course, the real money is in the sidebets, where a load of degenerate gamblers are taking long odds on SCO drawing to a straight. Somebody ought to tell those people that if you don't know who the sucker at the table is, then it's probably you.
On the other hand if you said "all birds fly" and nobody *ever* saw a bird that didn't fly, it still wouldn't prove the proposition - because without knowledge of all the universe past present and future you could never prove it.
This was my (poorly expressed) point. Take the converse argument. Not all birds fly. In order to rebut such an argument, you literally have to have experience of all birds. Hence my claim that it could take a very long time.
And that would actually be bad.
No it wouldn't. It would actually be the exact opposite.
Linux needs to be totally vindicated of containing any tainted SysV code
Given the impossibility of proving a negative, that might take rather a long time.
It *was* great on the Mac in 1993. It's definitely a piece of shit today though. Elm is better than today's Eudora.