Like India REALLY needs more government interference and disincentive to investment.
When will people learn that you get less of what you tax more? Good news for all those US and European workers worried about losing their jobs to offshoring! India is shooting themselves in the foot.
Cisco IOS isn't an RTOS. The XR version is based on an RTOS, but the $40K versions of Cisco's gear don't run it.
Don't get me started on how underpowered the hardware is. PCI-X 1x is faster than most CISCO backplanes. What Cisco routers are 1U? Let's compare the big pig switches with a 2 or 4U box, and then we'll see apples to apples.
Sure, you can get your ultra-ancient lame SNA to work on the Crisco, but if you're using one for IP forwarding, you're overpaying for underpowered HW and lame old software that does everything, but nothing well. If you're using one for any added services, note that everything that isn't handled by the VIPs is on the slow path, IE through the main CPU, and that CPU is orders of magnitude slower, due to purchasing and design leadtimes, than the latest Opteron or Core CPU. As for the RAM, have you seen any Cisco routers with gigs of DDR2?
In short, Vyatta is going to make OSS do for routing what LAMP did for hosting.
Discrediting the Army, Receiving Stolen Goods, Theft, Assault (threats are assault, carrying them out is battery), conspiracy to defraud, etc. etc.
He's toast, if he's really a soldier (I was one for 13 years).
Actually, I've been involved in many of the "better" (IMNSHO) solutions, and am working on a new one.
In all cases, my first rule has to "Do no harm" as much as possible.
BTW: I'm not the only one with a "misconception" as to how BF works. Wired seems to think it is, essentially, a DDOS engine directed @ Spammers.
P.S. On what planet is a considered response that someone happens not to agree with a Troll? Troll is ad-hominem and inflamatory. Someone fix the moderation of the parent (and remove moderator access from whoever abused it)!!!
Apparently you are unfamiliar with the nature of corporate NewSpeak. Frequently, when used by corporations, but especially by lawyers, things mean the opposite of what they would appear to mean in plain English. Hence my enclosing the phrase in quotes.
Kind of like the fact that "Compliance" usually means ways to do the bare minimum to meet the appearance of having complied, not actually complying.
I was very rudely awakened to this fact when attending a conference where I was looking for ways to help companies comply with both the letter and the spirit of the Sarbanes-Oxley act, and found that the vast majority of attendees were there to figure out how they could end run it, but not get caught.
Actually, companies have a vested interest in aging (IE: Destroying or rendering illegible) documents. There's an entire industry, dubbed "document retention" that is actually focused on destroying anything that might be used as evidence in a legal proceeding as soon as it is no longer needed or as soon as legally allowable, whichever comes first.
I did attempt to research this, but the BlueSecurity site (which, as I understand it, is one of the ways in which BlueFrog is controlled to send messages) was down, and the documentation on SF is sparse. Even with the site back up, there is no real documentation on it.
SO, pardon my ignorance, but I am going from memory based on prior publicity, as well as from the other posts on/. . My understanding is that BlueSecurity leads to ALL subscribed BlueFrog clients sending opt-out messages on behalf of individuals who determine that a message is SPAM. It's entirely possible that I am confusing BlueSecurity with something else.
The matter of trust and redirection refers to a compromise of the database telling the client machines to DDos someone. Doesn't require a trojan to do that, just a command from the controller (which could be hacked, or even spoofed), since the client is, in effect a DDos engine by design. However, just because the code from SourceForge compiles and the checksums are correct doesn't mean that there isn't some function there that allows subversion, either by design, or through a bug. The only way to verify it would be full source audit and code coverage testing. Have you done that?
I'll disregard the ad hominem stuff. However, insulting people you don't know but disagree with on one topic in a public forum doesn't indicate that you are a rational person who stays within the law and accepted practice in general, so I doubt you stay within the law in your battle against SPAM (you admitted as much).
Have you thought about the effects on your ISP, and the intermediate networks, or the hosting facilities (which are often the simple free to cheap ones used by ordinary people but constantly used as throwaways by spammers) of your actions? Seems to me that a smart spammer would point their opt-out form at someplace that wasn't them. Alternatively, by DOSing the opt-out site, you are preventing spammers who actually DO honor the opt-out's systems from working.
Last, but not least, to use your analogy, "Community Action" in the war on terror would be lynching middle eastern looking people who happened to express opinions you didn't like, which is the meatspace equivalent of DOSing sites.
There are better ways of solving the problem. As another poster said, violence begets violence. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
I hate spam as much as the next guy, and have even helped design some solutions to the problem for service providers, but the points made in the back-spam are valid.
1: By mailbombing suspected spammers, you guys are committing a crime.
2: The potential for innocent victims in this scheme is huge.
3: You are trusting a group of people whose credentials you don't really know. It's entirely possible, even probable, that they are, in fact, using your systems for purposes you don't support.
4: Even if 3 above isn't true, all it would take is a compromise of the system, which is a pretty juicy target, to make it true.
The probelm with a war on spam is the same as the problem with a war on terror. How do you tell who the bad guys are, and who gets to decide? It's not the same as a war against a state actor that engages in unrestricted U-Boat war. In fact, it's more analagous to having a bunch of destroyers depth charging where there are both U-Boats and friendly submarines, and hoping the gunnery officers get it right.
The problem with diffuse threats is that you can ONLY defend, not attack, and no defense is perfect.
In the melee here, has anyone actually looked at Kinderstart's Webpage?
They seem to me to be a cybersquatter-esque colection of links, with no real content. Seems to me that Google did the world a favor by deprecating their listing.
My guess is that all of their revenue was from click-throughs. Google is doing the world a favor by not putting other directories on their first page. We go to Google to get content, not link-lists.
I predict that they will lose in court, if their page is entered as evidence.
Remember, Google is about providing relevant content, to their users (people who search), and click through to their advertisers. I'm not exactly sure how Kinderstart has any standing here, unless there is an implied contract, which I strongly doubt.
Actually, I disagree. Lead Acid batteries are neither environmentally friendly in their manufacture, nor easily disposed of. Yes, the hybrid produces less emissions and burns less hydrocarbons over its lifetime than the economy car, but it uses a lot more toxic and non-recyclable materials, not just in the battery, but in the weight saving polymers, electric motors, etc.
At least the Hybrid DOES actually reduce emissions, as opposed to the pure electric car, which merely relocates them (to a coal fired electric power plant), and, due to power transmission losses, usually actually requires MORE CO2 in total emissions per mile driven.
Read the first part about the history of the Mediterranean Sea
Note the reconnection of the black sea to the mediterranean circa 6000 BCE.
It's entirely possible that there have been catclysmic extinctions of civilizations as the sea level in the Mediterranean, due to its narrow exits to the rest of the world, can tend to fluctuate more dramtically as those connections are made and broken.
I think they should also talk to the customers of the companies who sent jobs overseas about their experiences pre and post offshoring.
My personal experience, with Dell and HP support, is that offshoring leads to terrible customer support.
Yes, "Customers" were affected. There are plenty of people who pay for extra storage on Hotmail. Also, Windows Messenger is a part of XP, which people pay for, so it is a service that they PAID for.
Last, but by no means least, anyone who uses other Passport authenticated services, like MSDN (Costs over $2K a year, I have it) was unable to connect. Considering that many of those services are the very ones that people need to prep for deployment of XP SP2, which I would wager a lot of organizations were planning on testing and/or deploying this weekend, having the tech resources needed to properly configure and evaluate that deployment off-line presents a major problem.
Your assertion that no-one of consequence, or who paid for a service, was harmed is complete BS. It simply indicates that you have no idea what else Passport authenticates, or maybe even how Hotmail works.
Nice partisan dig, but you should note that this was propsed by a DEMOCRAT in a state where the governor is a DEMOCRAT. I know it's hard to step out from behind the pink colored glasses, but really, both parties actually stink.
General rule of thumb:
Well meaning but ultimately fascist leaning restrictions on personal freedom "for the children" or to absolve people from responsibility for their actions that make the world only suitable for juveniles, and make those who work hard pay for the sloth of others: Democrat.
Well meaning restrictions on personal freedom "to make us safe" that protect you from a 0.0001% chance by inexorably leading to the certainty of a fascist state, that treat everyone like they are a criminal even though less than 1% of the population actually are, and that make the world only safe for cops: Republican.
Stupid laws: Both.
Is ad-hominem your first resort in debate, or do you only use it when you have no actual point to make?
I hope people click on the link to my posts. The content therein refutes your allegation of Troll, unless you think that anyone who happens to disagree with you is a Troll.
BTW: I think a great deal of your breathless invective makes my point. I'm sure you learned how to write, but not actually have a structured argument, in College.
I note from your post that you are going straight from school to teaching. I think you make my point that "those who can, do, those who can't teach". You would do your future students better service by getting experience outside the ivory tower before purporting to tell them what they need to know to succeed there.
Q.E.D. (Quod Erat Demonstratum, That which was to be proved).
BTW: Since it seems to be the presumption of most respondents that I am some non-professional ignoramus: I went to College. Actually to two: one the idiot Liberal Arts kind with the spoilt upper middle class party kids predominating that is typical of most ( Providence College), the other a real University that taught, because it had a coop program, and its professors were all involved in industry ( Northeastern University). My father, after a career that involved being VP Of Ops for IBM, and then CEO of 2 phone companies, is now an MBA professor at a major national university in Europe. He shares my disdain for most of American third level education.
I reiterate my point: most "College" is a self perpetuating scam to separate people from their money for the benefit of the mediocrities, who have no real world experience, that run it. The elevation of it to a government subsidized requirement for all but the most menial jobs short changes the K-12 system (of money), most people who attend it (they wind up in debt for no good reason), employers (because they still need to actually train people who have college degrees, only they have to pay them more while doing it because they have grand expectations), and the economy (by wasting tax $ and postponing the changeover from tax burden to productive citizen of a substantial portion of the population).
In short: Too many people go to College, there are too many colleges, most of them learn and teach nothing of much use, and the money spent on it could be used far better reforming the K-12 system.
It's not just the textbooks. The whole College/University system is a self perpetuating racket. In reality, a college degree means nothing in most cases, but those who have one feel the need to validate their efforts, so they require one for any job they hire for.
So, You have to get a degree, which in most cases teaches you nothing you couldn't learn better through experience. This costs you at least 2 years of take-home pay, plus interest, and while you are there you get used at indentured servant rates by the university (called "work-study") to do what would otherwise cost them $40K/yr. You are generally taught by the people least qualified in the field, often by people who you can't understand the first word they say (Foreign Grad Students). The best engineers are working as engineers, the best businesspeople running companies, it is, by and large, the mediocrities who are teaching, with a few notable exceptions at the most prestigious of universities.
The whole system is a racket designed to benefit the administrators and faculty who, in most cases, are 1960's and '70s reject recycled hippies who have used the university as a place to hide all their lives.
The system is broken. We should replace "College" with a decent high-school system (a lot of what gets taught in College is remedial education on basic math, reading and writing, and hard science) and apprenticeships for most things. Universities are for advanced research, not a 4 year party. Think about it: if you spent what you spent on college on certifications and books, you'd have plenty left over for a few years world-trekking!
So, I guess you all know what I think of tax $$ being used to continue to subsidize College. I think it's a waste of money, and it would be better spent on vocational training, and fixing the K-12 system.
Since some PC wanker modded my post Troll, we're basically in our private conversation. What do you think? That I don't read www.ireland.com daily? That I haven't been home in 20 years (I'm home 2 weeks a year)? That I don't talk to my friends & family weekly? (Using SKYPE to avoid the Eircom & France Telecom Highway Robbery).
No, I know what it's like. It sucks less, but it still sucks.
Yes, Europe has become more "Eastern" due to the Dirigiste nature of most European governments, as well as the power of unelected Eurocrats. More and more people wait for Godot, rather than taking control of their lives. You can also see this atrophication of will in many European companies. Most companies, especially on the continent, are either very large, or very small. The large ones are typically, if not actually owned by, hand-in-glove with the government, and the small ones are frequently doing at least as much business on the black market/unreported for taxes, as they are above board.
It was in large part to escape the stifling conformism and political correctness, as well as the sky-high unemployment caused by that, that I emigrated from Ireland to the US in 1984.
I've also lived in France, and the bureaucracy there is enough to drive anyone mad.
Slashdot Mirror
This seems to all have come out of a set of disputes over how to deal with troubled kids that led to them being placed in a school that is part of a group that has a long trail of allegations and convictions for child abuse.
Sue Scheff's site is here: http://www.helpyourteens.com/index.html
A google for "WWASP" and "PURE" "Sue Scheff" gives interesting information.
The original thread and allegations are here.
Members of that board don't have anything particularly nice to say about this event.
Like India REALLY needs more government interference and disincentive to investment.
When will people learn that you get less of what you tax more? Good news for all those US and European workers worried about losing their jobs to offshoring! India is shooting themselves in the foot.
Cisco IOS isn't an RTOS. The XR version is based on an RTOS, but the $40K versions of Cisco's gear don't run it.
Don't get me started on how underpowered the hardware is. PCI-X 1x is faster than most CISCO backplanes. What Cisco routers are 1U? Let's compare the big pig switches with a 2 or 4U box, and then we'll see apples to apples.
Sure, you can get your ultra-ancient lame SNA to work on the Crisco, but if you're using one for IP forwarding, you're overpaying for underpowered HW and lame old software that does everything, but nothing well. If you're using one for any added services, note that everything that isn't handled by the VIPs is on the slow path, IE through the main CPU, and that CPU is orders of magnitude slower, due to purchasing and design leadtimes, than the latest Opteron or Core CPU. As for the RAM, have you seen any Cisco routers with gigs of DDR2?
In short, Vyatta is going to make OSS do for routing what LAMP did for hosting.
Ms. DiBattiste doesn't have a very good rep as a privacy advocate.
Discrediting the Army, Receiving Stolen Goods, Theft, Assault (threats are assault, carrying them out is battery), conspiracy to defraud, etc. etc.
He's toast, if he's really a soldier (I was one for 13 years).
Actually, I've been involved in many of the "better" (IMNSHO) solutions, and am working on a new one.
In all cases, my first rule has to "Do no harm" as much as possible.
BTW: I'm not the only one with a "misconception" as to how BF works. Wired seems to think it is, essentially, a DDOS engine directed @ Spammers.
P.S. On what planet is a considered response that someone happens not to agree with a Troll? Troll is ad-hominem and inflamatory. Someone fix the moderation of the parent (and remove moderator access from whoever abused it)!!!
Apparently you are unfamiliar with the nature of corporate NewSpeak. Frequently, when used by corporations, but especially by lawyers, things mean the opposite of what they would appear to mean in plain English. Hence my enclosing the phrase in quotes.
Kind of like the fact that "Compliance" usually means ways to do the bare minimum to meet the appearance of having complied, not actually complying.
I was very rudely awakened to this fact when attending a conference where I was looking for ways to help companies comply with both the letter and the spirit of the Sarbanes-Oxley act, and found that the vast majority of attendees were there to figure out how they could end run it, but not get caught.
Actually, companies have a vested interest in aging (IE: Destroying or rendering illegible) documents. There's an entire industry, dubbed "document retention" that is actually focused on destroying anything that might be used as evidence in a legal proceeding as soon as it is no longer needed or as soon as legally allowable, whichever comes first.
I did attempt to research this, but the BlueSecurity site (which, as I understand it, is one of the ways in which BlueFrog is controlled to send messages) was down, and the documentation on SF is sparse. Even with the site back up, there is no real documentation on it.
/. . My understanding is that BlueSecurity leads to ALL subscribed BlueFrog clients sending opt-out messages on behalf of individuals who determine that a message is SPAM. It's entirely possible that I am confusing BlueSecurity with something else.
SO, pardon my ignorance, but I am going from memory based on prior publicity, as well as from the other posts on
The matter of trust and redirection refers to a compromise of the database telling the client machines to DDos someone. Doesn't require a trojan to do that, just a command from the controller (which could be hacked, or even spoofed), since the client is, in effect a DDos engine by design. However, just because the code from SourceForge compiles and the checksums are correct doesn't mean that there isn't some function there that allows subversion, either by design, or through a bug. The only way to verify it would be full source audit and code coverage testing. Have you done that?
I'll disregard the ad hominem stuff. However, insulting people you don't know but disagree with on one topic in a public forum doesn't indicate that you are a rational person who stays within the law and accepted practice in general, so I doubt you stay within the law in your battle against SPAM (you admitted as much).
Have you thought about the effects on your ISP, and the intermediate networks, or the hosting facilities (which are often the simple free to cheap ones used by ordinary people but constantly used as throwaways by spammers) of your actions? Seems to me that a smart spammer would point their opt-out form at someplace that wasn't them. Alternatively, by DOSing the opt-out site, you are preventing spammers who actually DO honor the opt-out's systems from working.
Last, but not least, to use your analogy, "Community Action" in the war on terror would be lynching middle eastern looking people who happened to express opinions you didn't like, which is the meatspace equivalent of DOSing sites.
There are better ways of solving the problem. As another poster said, violence begets violence. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
I hate spam as much as the next guy, and have even helped design some solutions to the problem for service providers, but the points made in the back-spam are valid.
1: By mailbombing suspected spammers, you guys are committing a crime.
2: The potential for innocent victims in this scheme is huge.
3: You are trusting a group of people whose credentials you don't really know. It's entirely possible, even probable, that they are, in fact, using your systems for purposes you don't support.
4: Even if 3 above isn't true, all it would take is a compromise of the system, which is a pretty juicy target, to make it true.
The probelm with a war on spam is the same as the problem with a war on terror. How do you tell who the bad guys are, and who gets to decide? It's not the same as a war against a state actor that engages in unrestricted U-Boat war. In fact, it's more analagous to having a bunch of destroyers depth charging where there are both U-Boats and friendly submarines, and hoping the gunnery officers get it right.
The problem with diffuse threats is that you can ONLY defend, not attack, and no defense is perfect.
It's A record is so 404 DNS can't find it . Is this the first case of the /. effect crashing the Authoritative DNS servers, or something more sinister?
You can use any USB Keyboard on a Mac. I use Windows multimedia Keyboards and Logitech mice all the time.
You can already have it. Check out: The OSx86 Project
In the melee here, has anyone actually looked at Kinderstart's Webpage?
They seem to me to be a cybersquatter-esque colection of links, with no real content. Seems to me that Google did the world a favor by deprecating their listing.
My guess is that all of their revenue was from click-throughs. Google is doing the world a favor by not putting other directories on their first page. We go to Google to get content, not link-lists.
I predict that they will lose in court, if their page is entered as evidence.
Remember, Google is about providing relevant content, to their users (people who search), and click through to their advertisers. I'm not exactly sure how Kinderstart has any standing here, unless there is an implied contract, which I strongly doubt.
Actually, I disagree. Lead Acid batteries are neither environmentally friendly in their manufacture, nor easily disposed of. Yes, the hybrid produces less emissions and burns less hydrocarbons over its lifetime than the economy car, but it uses a lot more toxic and non-recyclable materials, not just in the battery, but in the weight saving polymers, electric motors, etc. At least the Hybrid DOES actually reduce emissions, as opposed to the pure electric car, which merely relocates them (to a coal fired electric power plant), and, due to power transmission losses, usually actually requires MORE CO2 in total emissions per mile driven.
Read the first part about the history of the Mediterranean Sea Note the reconnection of the black sea to the mediterranean circa 6000 BCE. It's entirely possible that there have been catclysmic extinctions of civilizations as the sea level in the Mediterranean, due to its narrow exits to the rest of the world, can tend to fluctuate more dramtically as those connections are made and broken.
I think they should also talk to the customers of the companies who sent jobs overseas about their experiences pre and post offshoring.
My personal experience, with Dell and HP support, is that offshoring leads to terrible customer support.
Yes, "Customers" were affected. There are plenty of people who pay for extra storage on Hotmail. Also, Windows Messenger is a part of XP, which people pay for, so it is a service that they PAID for.
Last, but by no means least, anyone who uses other Passport authenticated services, like MSDN (Costs over $2K a year, I have it) was unable to connect. Considering that many of those services are the very ones that people need to prep for deployment of XP SP2, which I would wager a lot of organizations were planning on testing and/or deploying this weekend, having the tech resources needed to properly configure and evaluate that deployment off-line presents a major problem.
Your assertion that no-one of consequence, or who paid for a service, was harmed is complete BS. It simply indicates that you have no idea what else Passport authenticates, or maybe even how Hotmail works.
Nice partisan dig, but you should note that this was propsed by a DEMOCRAT in a state where the governor is a DEMOCRAT. I know it's hard to step out from behind the pink colored glasses, but really, both parties actually stink.
General rule of thumb:
Well meaning but ultimately fascist leaning restrictions on personal freedom "for the children" or to absolve people from responsibility for their actions that make the world only suitable for juveniles, and make those who work hard pay for the sloth of others: Democrat.
Well meaning restrictions on personal freedom "to make us safe" that protect you from a 0.0001% chance by inexorably leading to the certainty of a fascist state, that treat everyone like they are a criminal even though less than 1% of the population actually are, and that make the world only safe for cops: Republican.
Stupid laws: Both.
Formats fine in Mozilla.
Is ad-hominem your first resort in debate, or do you only use it when you have no actual point to make?
I hope people click on the link to my posts. The content therein refutes your allegation of Troll, unless you think that anyone who happens to disagree with you is a Troll.
BTW: I think a great deal of your breathless invective makes my point. I'm sure you learned how to write, but not actually have a structured argument, in College.
I note from your post that you are going straight from school to teaching. I think you make my point that "those who can, do, those who can't teach". You would do your future students better service by getting experience outside the ivory tower before purporting to tell them what they need to know to succeed there.
Q.E.D. (Quod Erat Demonstratum, That which was to be proved).
BTW: Since it seems to be the presumption of most respondents that I am some non-professional ignoramus: I went to College. Actually to two: one the idiot Liberal Arts kind with the spoilt upper middle class party kids predominating that is typical of most ( Providence College), the other a real University that taught, because it had a coop program, and its professors were all involved in industry ( Northeastern University). My father, after a career that involved being VP Of Ops for IBM, and then CEO of 2 phone companies, is now an MBA professor at a major national university in Europe. He shares my disdain for most of American third level education.
I reiterate my point: most "College" is a self perpetuating scam to separate people from their money for the benefit of the mediocrities, who have no real world experience, that run it. The elevation of it to a government subsidized requirement for all but the most menial jobs short changes the K-12 system (of money), most people who attend it (they wind up in debt for no good reason), employers (because they still need to actually train people who have college degrees, only they have to pay them more while doing it because they have grand expectations), and the economy (by wasting tax $ and postponing the changeover from tax burden to productive citizen of a substantial portion of the population).
In short: Too many people go to College, there are too many colleges, most of them learn and teach nothing of much use, and the money spent on it could be used far better reforming the K-12 system.
It's not just the textbooks. The whole College/University system is a self perpetuating racket. In reality, a college degree means nothing in most cases, but those who have one feel the need to validate their efforts, so they require one for any job they hire for.
So, You have to get a degree, which in most cases teaches you nothing you couldn't learn better through experience. This costs you at least 2 years of take-home pay, plus interest, and while you are there you get used at indentured servant rates by the university (called "work-study") to do what would otherwise cost them $40K/yr. You are generally taught by the people least qualified in the field, often by people who you can't understand the first word they say (Foreign Grad Students). The best engineers are working as engineers, the best businesspeople running companies, it is, by and large, the mediocrities who are teaching, with a few notable exceptions at the most prestigious of universities.
The whole system is a racket designed to benefit the administrators and faculty who, in most cases, are 1960's and '70s reject recycled hippies who have used the university as a place to hide all their lives.
The system is broken. We should replace "College" with a decent high-school system (a lot of what gets taught in College is remedial education on basic math, reading and writing, and hard science) and apprenticeships for most things. Universities are for advanced research, not a 4 year party. Think about it: if you spent what you spent on college on certifications and books, you'd have plenty left over for a few years world-trekking!
So, I guess you all know what I think of tax $$ being used to continue to subsidize College. I think it's a waste of money, and it would be better spent on vocational training, and fixing the K-12 system.
Since some PC wanker modded my post Troll, we're basically in our private conversation. What do you think? That I don't read www.ireland.com daily? That I haven't been home in 20 years (I'm home 2 weeks a year)? That I don't talk to my friends & family weekly? (Using SKYPE to avoid the Eircom & France Telecom Highway Robbery). No, I know what it's like. It sucks less, but it still sucks.
Yes, Europe has become more "Eastern" due to the Dirigiste nature of most European governments, as well as the power of unelected Eurocrats. More and more people wait for Godot, rather than taking control of their lives. You can also see this atrophication of will in many European companies. Most companies, especially on the continent, are either very large, or very small. The large ones are typically, if not actually owned by, hand-in-glove with the government, and the small ones are frequently doing at least as much business on the black market/unreported for taxes, as they are above board.
It was in large part to escape the stifling conformism and political correctness, as well as the sky-high unemployment caused by that, that I emigrated from Ireland to the US in 1984.
I've also lived in France, and the bureaucracy there is enough to drive anyone mad.