You forget that USA rules most of the world de facto. They have economic and military dominion. They don't have formal political dominion, but actually control a great deal of the governments in the world. If this is not an empire, I don't know what it could be.
they're a long, very long way away from parity with Europe much less United States.
Parity on what? Your post implies that Europe is somewhat "inferior" to the USA in whatever criteria you're thinking about and not mentioning. The European Union has the largest GDP, most European are in the top positions in Human Development Index and every other possible indicator you can imagine.
Except if you're considering stuff like gun murder rates, imprisonment rate or military presence all around the world. In those indicators, the USA lead the way!
Sociopaths are sociopaths. I know some stories like that. After losing entire teams and getting huge penalties for failing contracts, they just went along happily doing the same shit over and over, and over.
I don't care what people think. I am a slacker, and I enjoy it.
You're not a slacker, just a normal person. And it's very likely you're more productive than your slave 24/7 co-workers. Stop saying you're a slacker, it's time to cut this mentality for good.
Many studies have found that people are productive only 7 or 8 hours a day. The extra hours are less productive, since people lose their concentration and start making mistakes. Also, working too many hours for long periods of time causes permanent concentration problems, irritability and depression. Not taking vacations is scientifically proven to seriously increase the possibility of depression, hearth disease and a bunch of other problems. Not mentioning all the problems with family and friends. If you're working all the time, what kind of parent are you? Are you going to raise happy, successful and self-confident kids this way?
Here in Europe, paid vacation is mandatory. In my country (Portugal) we get 25 days of paid vacation every year and we can't legally change them for money.
Portugal is the perfect poster child for the work-many-hours stupidity. Most companies pressure people to work unpaid extra hours, of even outright force them. I have personally seen companies threatening people to not take vacation. In companies that don't do this, I've seen coworkers not taking vacation days, not because of any pressure, but because the slave mentality is already encrusted. However, the results of all this stupidity are very dim. We're in the top places in stress-related health problems (depression, sleep deprivation, mental disorders, etc.) and work injuries. Our productivity is the worse in OECD, just second to Mexico. We have the lowest wages in the Euro Zone.
Usually, the people I know that work too much and force others to do the same are not disciplined, or even good at their job. They try to compensate their lack of discipline by working too many hours and not taking vacation. This usually impresses bosses and makes these people go up the ladder. Which makes the problem even worse, because, when these shitheads start managing other people, they force them into their system of indiscipline and workaholism. I know people who are exceptionally energetic and work really really hard, but they make a fucking mess out of everything they touch. These people are regarded here as "great leaders", go figure.
At this moment, with debt up to our ears, our right-wing government is applying measures to "increase productivity". All the proposals they make are about making people work more hours for free and reducing worker's rights. This won't make a lot of difference because our current labour legislation is used as toilet paper in most companies. Reducing worker's rights is going to have the inverse result actually, because employees will be even more afraid to contest any unproductive stupidity their bosses order them to do. Sociopaths that happen to be in management positions will have the free rein they've been dreaming of to treat people even more like shit. These "measures" are based in the US-born neoliberal doctrine. They will be a disastrous failure, like all the other neoliberal stupidities that have been applied all around the world for decades. Neoliberalism is like fast food: one of the most successful exports of the USA, despite being absolute shit that makes people sick.
People have to work too much for lack of organisation. In other countries in Europe people work a lot less (hours and days) and won't bow to the boss's pressure easily. This gives a strong incentive to management to make organisational improvements to increase productivity. This is why the more developed European countries are the most productive countries in the world.
The ultra-individualistic mentality in the USA is eventually going to ruin your country. Managers don't give a fuck if their flunkies die from overwork, nobody cares if the next door neighbour can't afford private healthcare and
I had a Windows Mobile 5 HTC. I had a problem with my calendar. Suddenly, the calendar alerts stopped working. And they stopped working forever, so I was regularly missing appointments.
I read that this was a known bug, and they weren't going fix it because Windows Mobile 6 was already out.
Add this to:
Being a pain to synchronise with Linux;
Even the synchronisation with Outlook was awful. It was always creating copies for periodical events, like holidays. For some strange reason, every time I synchronised, it would create me, for instance a new Christmas event in December 25. I had to regularly clean these. Also, it always created a single copy of that event in the day before. I deleted it, after a synch it was there again.
The phone regularly crashed.
After some time, I dumped my phone and bought a cheap Android phone. I love it.
but if you live in the EU, so close to those crazies you'll see no problem with EU's sanctions.
Being a EU citizen, I can assure you that most of the people here don't give a fuck about Iran's nukes, except American-ass-kisser pundits on TV. Please don't use us as an excuse for your own stupidity.
Not in my country, Portugal. Here, locked phones are the norm. Paradoxically, one of the earliest adopters of mobile phones and one of the countries in the world with more mobile phones per person.
The explosion of mobile phones in Portugal can in part be explained by locking. Being able to sell locked phones, the operators gave the phones almost for free and made money on calls. This made it possible for every cat and dog to buy a locked mobile phone really cheap. If calling between operators is too expensive, no problem. Buy more phones locked to the other operators.
The fat, greedy and parasitical financial industry have been sucking all the money from the European governments and then claiming the states have incurred into too much debt.
The corrupt governments take advantage to take away from their own citizens everything they have worked hard for: Liberty, security, health care, education, etc.
The governments then tell them it serves them right for living irresponsibly all these years. The citizens then apologise and bow down just a little bit more.
Apparently, the con is not working any more. So they need to find some baddies to blame and divert attentions. Who's your favourite baddie? Of course, OMG teh Terrahist! Thay comes ta get us! We're all gonna diiiiiie!
I don't think it will work, though. This baddie is a little worn out. Why don't you try to blame the immigrants? That one never gets old!
Before, the guys would go to the pub, or hunt, or fish, or play soccer, whatever, with their friends, complaint about their wives to each other, harmlessly flirt with a girl or two. Girls would go shopping or have a drink, or go to the gym, whatever, with their friend girls, complaint about their husbands, check out some good looking dudes, no problem.
Everybody needs to blow some steam once in a while. It's really, really hard to keep a marriage. It takes lots of patience and you need to go out and decompress or else looking at your spouse's face every fucking day will become unbearable. People used to talk to friends and have a few drinks, words would be forgotten overnight. Now, every little fucking detail of what you do or say gets recorded forever. This is not the way normal life is meant to be.
I don't know who is more stupid. People having behaviours online that can put them in trouble, knowing they'll be publicly available forever, or their spouses, spying on them and them overreacting to things that would be perfectly normal if they hadn't happened online.
Divorces are painful and destructive. You basically have to turn all your life inside out. You destroy your children's world. Is it worth it because of pesky things like Facebook blabbering? If you don't have the stomach to put up with a lot of stuff you should never have gotten married and had kids in the first place.
You have to generate heat to generate cold -- in fact, more heat than you generate cold, due to entropy.
That's not true. An air conditioner is a heat pump, it moves heat from one place to the other, doesn't create it. A heater converts electricity in heat, so it creates heat.
The whole world uses metric. The USA are only a small portion of it. Are you saying that Americans are unable to do something that all the other countries in the world accomplished succesfully?
Reagan swooped in to save us from having to drive 370 kilosocialists from DC to NY.
What the fuck do kilometres have to do with Socialism? What's so special about the obsolete and absurd American measurement system that makes you cling to it so passionately?
Climate change is a great example, because the problem is so enormous and the implications mean restructuring our economy and our energy supply system."
Yeah, because coping with increasing natural catastrophes and losing Florida and Louisiana to the sea will make your economy great.
Over and over, we read of hidden, manipulated, and cherry-picked data, refusals to abide with having outsiders vet their work, and allowing naked advocacy into the IPCC reports on climate change as if they were peer-reviewed science.
Wow, you're describing the exact behaviour of the anti-AGW oil-company-shilling crowd. If you have multiple personalities, you shouldn't switch between them in the middle of a paragraph.
Slashdot Mirror
You forget that USA rules most of the world de facto. They have economic and military dominion. They don't have formal political dominion, but actually control a great deal of the governments in the world. If this is not an empire, I don't know what it could be.
WTF???
In Communist China, backwater is YOU!
they're a long, very long way away from parity with Europe much less United States.
Parity on what? Your post implies that Europe is somewhat "inferior" to the USA in whatever criteria you're thinking about and not mentioning. The European Union has the largest GDP, most European are in the top positions in Human Development Index and every other possible indicator you can imagine.
Except if you're considering stuff like gun murder rates, imprisonment rate or military presence all around the world. In those indicators, the USA lead the way!
Great! Keep it there, America. Kudos for you.
Sociopaths are sociopaths. I know some stories like that. After losing entire teams and getting huge penalties for failing contracts, they just went along happily doing the same shit over and over, and over.
I don't care what people think. I am a slacker, and I enjoy it.
You're not a slacker, just a normal person. And it's very likely you're more productive than your slave 24/7 co-workers. Stop saying you're a slacker, it's time to cut this mentality for good.
Many studies have found that people are productive only 7 or 8 hours a day. The extra hours are less productive, since people lose their concentration and start making mistakes. Also, working too many hours for long periods of time causes permanent concentration problems, irritability and depression. Not taking vacations is scientifically proven to seriously increase the possibility of depression, hearth disease and a bunch of other problems. Not mentioning all the problems with family and friends. If you're working all the time, what kind of parent are you? Are you going to raise happy, successful and self-confident kids this way?
Here in Europe, paid vacation is mandatory. In my country (Portugal) we get 25 days of paid vacation every year and we can't legally change them for money.
Portugal is the perfect poster child for the work-many-hours stupidity. Most companies pressure people to work unpaid extra hours, of even outright force them. I have personally seen companies threatening people to not take vacation. In companies that don't do this, I've seen coworkers not taking vacation days, not because of any pressure, but because the slave mentality is already encrusted. However, the results of all this stupidity are very dim. We're in the top places in stress-related health problems (depression, sleep deprivation, mental disorders, etc.) and work injuries. Our productivity is the worse in OECD, just second to Mexico. We have the lowest wages in the Euro Zone.
Usually, the people I know that work too much and force others to do the same are not disciplined, or even good at their job. They try to compensate their lack of discipline by working too many hours and not taking vacation. This usually impresses bosses and makes these people go up the ladder. Which makes the problem even worse, because, when these shitheads start managing other people, they force them into their system of indiscipline and workaholism. I know people who are exceptionally energetic and work really really hard, but they make a fucking mess out of everything they touch. These people are regarded here as "great leaders", go figure.
At this moment, with debt up to our ears, our right-wing government is applying measures to "increase productivity". All the proposals they make are about making people work more hours for free and reducing worker's rights. This won't make a lot of difference because our current labour legislation is used as toilet paper in most companies. Reducing worker's rights is going to have the inverse result actually, because employees will be even more afraid to contest any unproductive stupidity their bosses order them to do. Sociopaths that happen to be in management positions will have the free rein they've been dreaming of to treat people even more like shit. These "measures" are based in the US-born neoliberal doctrine. They will be a disastrous failure, like all the other neoliberal stupidities that have been applied all around the world for decades. Neoliberalism is like fast food: one of the most successful exports of the USA, despite being absolute shit that makes people sick.
People have to work too much for lack of organisation. In other countries in Europe people work a lot less (hours and days) and won't bow to the boss's pressure easily. This gives a strong incentive to management to make organisational improvements to increase productivity. This is why the more developed European countries are the most productive countries in the world.
The ultra-individualistic mentality in the USA is eventually going to ruin your country. Managers don't give a fuck if their flunkies die from overwork, nobody cares if the next door neighbour can't afford private healthcare and
Look who's talking. 40% of Americans believe in Creationism.
I had a Windows Mobile 5 HTC. I had a problem with my calendar. Suddenly, the calendar alerts stopped working. And they stopped working forever, so I was regularly missing appointments.
I read that this was a known bug, and they weren't going fix it because Windows Mobile 6 was already out.
Add this to:
After some time, I dumped my phone and bought a cheap Android phone. I love it.
Your nickname is one of the most accurate I've seen 'round here.
but if you live in the EU, so close to those crazies you'll see no problem with EU's sanctions.
Being a EU citizen, I can assure you that most of the people here don't give a fuck about Iran's nukes, except American-ass-kisser pundits on TV. Please don't use us as an excuse for your own stupidity.
Who cares which of the two delusional religious nutjobs is going to lose the presidential election?
In Portuguese, SOPA means "soup". PIPA means "barrel".
So, it has been fun for a Portuguese to read Slashdot lately and find Americans want to feed the whole world soup and wine by the barrel.
We're eagerly waiting you create more legislations like these:
Not in my country, Portugal. Here, locked phones are the norm. Paradoxically, one of the earliest adopters of mobile phones and one of the countries in the world with more mobile phones per person.
The explosion of mobile phones in Portugal can in part be explained by locking. Being able to sell locked phones, the operators gave the phones almost for free and made money on calls. This made it possible for every cat and dog to buy a locked mobile phone really cheap. If calling between operators is too expensive, no problem. Buy more phones locked to the other operators.
The fat, greedy and parasitical financial industry have been sucking all the money from the European governments and then claiming the states have incurred into too much debt.
The corrupt governments take advantage to take away from their own citizens everything they have worked hard for: Liberty, security, health care, education, etc.
The governments then tell them it serves them right for living irresponsibly all these years. The citizens then apologise and bow down just a little bit more.
Apparently, the con is not working any more. So they need to find some baddies to blame and divert attentions. Who's your favourite baddie? Of course, OMG teh Terrahist! Thay comes ta get us! We're all gonna diiiiiie!
I don't think it will work, though. This baddie is a little worn out. Why don't you try to blame the immigrants? That one never gets old!
Before, the guys would go to the pub, or hunt, or fish, or play soccer, whatever, with their friends, complaint about their wives to each other, harmlessly flirt with a girl or two. Girls would go shopping or have a drink, or go to the gym, whatever, with their friend girls, complaint about their husbands, check out some good looking dudes, no problem.
Everybody needs to blow some steam once in a while. It's really, really hard to keep a marriage. It takes lots of patience and you need to go out and decompress or else looking at your spouse's face every fucking day will become unbearable. People used to talk to friends and have a few drinks, words would be forgotten overnight. Now, every little fucking detail of what you do or say gets recorded forever. This is not the way normal life is meant to be.
I don't know who is more stupid. People having behaviours online that can put them in trouble, knowing they'll be publicly available forever, or their spouses, spying on them and them overreacting to things that would be perfectly normal if they hadn't happened online.
Divorces are painful and destructive. You basically have to turn all your life inside out. You destroy your children's world. Is it worth it because of pesky things like Facebook blabbering? If you don't have the stomach to put up with a lot of stuff you should never have gotten married and had kids in the first place.
I think Heavy Metal is not allowed by the regime, because it's satanic and pollutes youth's minds.
And it will CONTINUE until the EU gets off its ass and invades the USA.
Why the FUCK would we want to invade you?
But you people won't do that, you're too placid and too cowardly
Not cowardly, just smart. G.W. Bush's boldness is not a quality, just a consequence of unconscience and stupidity.
we'll be taking over your countries soon enough, just like we did Iraq.
Yeah, because it has been such a huge fucking success! Don't you have enough problems, already?
What?
You have to generate heat to generate cold -- in fact, more heat than you generate cold, due to entropy.
That's not true. An air conditioner is a heat pump, it moves heat from one place to the other, doesn't create it. A heater converts electricity in heat, so it creates heat.
Well, Americans are regarded as "Imperialists" for as long as I can remember. And the USA are sometimes referred to as "The Empire".
The whole world uses metric. The USA are only a small portion of it. Are you saying that Americans are unable to do something that all the other countries in the world accomplished succesfully?
Reagan swooped in to save us from having to drive 370 kilosocialists from DC to NY.
What the fuck do kilometres have to do with Socialism? What's so special about the obsolete and absurd American measurement system that makes you cling to it so passionately?
What about single mothers, you insensitive clod???
Climate change is a great example, because the problem is so enormous and the implications mean restructuring our economy and our energy supply system."
Yeah, because coping with increasing natural catastrophes and losing Florida and Louisiana to the sea will make your economy great.
Over and over, we read of hidden, manipulated, and cherry-picked data, refusals to abide with having outsiders vet their work, and allowing naked advocacy into the IPCC reports on climate change as if they were peer-reviewed science.
Wow, you're describing the exact behaviour of the anti-AGW oil-company-shilling crowd. If you have multiple personalities, you shouldn't switch between them in the middle of a paragraph.