Actually, in saner societies, there are help groups for people addicted to sports... (although it's a little disturbing - if you Google for "sports addiction" you have to go through several pages to find them - it seems the term is used a lot as ADVERTISING as if it's a good thing)
A gamer doesn't want to quit. And if he/she does want to quit, they do
I think what you're describing there is "someone who enjoys playing a game" rather than a "game addict". From the sounds of it, it seems you believe that the latter doesn't exist, and only the former does.
I myself have next to no interest in games - I used to play a MUD quite a lot, and from time to time I still fire up Nethack, but it's pretty rare. When I did MUD however, I did find myself "bordering" on the addicted side when I decided to quit. I'd say to myself, "right that's it, not interested anymore" and then stop for a couple of days. After that, I'd say, "I wonder what everyone is up to?" or "Maybe they've tweaked a quest I can do" or something that like that and then I'd log in again. I didn't really WANT to play, I just found myself getting a bit worried about what was going on in the MUD if I didn't play.
I haven't logged in to that MUD (or any other) in close to a year now, and it really doesn't bother me anymore, but it definitely did for awhile. And I've seen people in MUCH worse states than that. As one poster above wrote (humorously, but not without the strong hint of truth), there are people who stand around all day on World of Warcraft complaining that they're bored. Clearly they're not enjoying playing, but they don't log out - they just stay online and complain about it. I'd say that's pretty sure evidence of addiction in action.
Addictions aren't always physical/physiological... I'm addicted to nicotine - that's a fairly classic addiction. However, it's also possible to be addicted to "non-addictive" substances as well - I used to take a lot of LSD in my younger days (I still enjoy it from time to time, but nowhere near the excess that I used to), and I would find myself sometimes saying "this evening would be so much better if I were tripping". That led to a rather bad situation where pretty much EVERY weekend, I'd be in an altered state. LSD is non-addictive (physically and physiologically), yet I was definitely psychologically addicted to it. The same can apply with games.
A cow is certainly animate, but it is not sentient
I'd disagree there, I definitely consider a cow (or dog, cat, pig, sheep, hawk, dolphin, most lizards, or pretty much anything else with a brain that goes beyond basic central nervous system functions) to be sentient - in some cases, astoundingly stupid in comparison to human beings (and in other cases, perhaps not), but definitely sentient regardless... and that leads to a very different and much larger discussion, which we probably shouldn't get in to (wildly offtopic, and I don't think either of us could prove our point sufficiently to convince the other)
I'm from many different places, but the country I went to school in is New Zealand. As far as I'm aware, it's not a standard curriculum item, but it is pretty common (both my school and my brother's school had it (we went to different schools)). It's considered a "module" of the "social studies" part of the curriculum (or at least, that was the case when I was at high school between 13 and 18 years ago).
Also, just to clarify further, it's not really "comparative religion" (someone else brought that term up, not me) - it's basically just "learning about what people believe"... not necessarily directly comparing them, although comparisons do happen within the class for the purposes of clarification. In the class, they were always VERY careful not to present ANYTHING as being true OR as being false - they just presented the beliefs and would even actively evade questions regarding "truth" (which is fair enough I guess). The closest they'd get to a statement about truth would be something like, "yes, it is true that people believe this".
Yes, it is... that's why I had the asterisk which referred to the final paragraph:
English spelling is currently a bit weird, so I'm not saying it's Frisian that has the problem - the problem in English comes from that the words, as they are written, is how they were pronounced (generally) in MIDDLE English, so our spoken language changed, but we kept the old spelling. That lead to the horrible things like silent "g" in "ough" (through, thought etc - compare to Dutch or German for those words, and the "g" quite clearly should be/used to be a pronounced letter (historically the letter "yogh" that we don't have anymore, but makes roughly a similar sound to Dutch "g" or German "ch" (depending on region of course)))
The best description of our language I've ever heard was from an Italian who called it a throat disease (Dutch has very harsh consonants).
Hah, that's not bad. Especially my Dutch actually - I learned it mostly in Amsterdam, but I still seem to have a much "harsher" G sound that a lot of people there. I've heard everything from a throat rasp to similar to the German "ch", to more of an almost "h" sound, depending on the region.
German dialects from the north-west are practically indistinguishable from Dutch dialects from the nort-east. I can certainly understand them, even though I'm not from the north-east of Netherland, and I don't speak German. Official Dutch and official German are completely different languages, however.
Yep, those German dialects are all part of the "Platdeutsch" group of dialects. Generally, they're referred to as German dialects, but in general, they're actually more or less a distinct group of Low West Germanic languages, so they share more in common with Dutch than they do with German (although they're strongly influenced by High German as well). The most noticeable part is that in Low German languages, there wasn't a sound shift from T to S, whereas there was in High German - so we've got English "street", Dutch "straat" and German "Strasse", or English "water", Dutch "water", German "Wasser".
English is actually more similar to Frisian (a language only spoken in Friesland, a province in the north of Netherland) than to Dutch.
Definitely - but generally only for the sound of the language. The spelling is VERY different* (classic example being, "Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries" - spoken, any English speaker can understand it, but as it's written it's a bit hard!). That mostly comes from the fact that both Old English and Frisian are Low West Germanic with influences from Northern Germanic (the Scandanavian languages) (English however later had influence from Middle French, which really screwed up the language)
I keep hearing complaints from foreigners that they can't learn Dutch because everybody is always speaking English.
That does happen, but when I lived there, I really didn't have a hard time learning it. I had a Dutch girlfriend who I once asked to NEVER speak English to me. She was willing to do that, and my Dutch improved VERY quickly after that. My comment was actually more about the style of the language rather than other barriers to learning it (e.g. willingness of people to help teach you)
* English spelling is currently a bit weird, so I'm not saying it's Frisian that has the problem - the problem in English comes from that the words, as they are written, is how they were pronounced (generally) in MIDDLE English, so our spoken language changed, but we kept the old spelling. That lead to the horrible things like silent "g" in "ough" (through, thought etc - compare to Dutch or German for those words, and the "g" quite clearly should be/used to be a pronounced letter (historically the letter "yogh" that we don't have anymore, but makes roughly a similar sound to Dutch "g" or German "ch" (depending on region of course)))
And sorry, yes, I am a language geek... especially when it comes to the Germanic branches of the Indo-European family!
Last time I looked, public schools did not have religion classes
Really? I'm not from the US, and this comment actually surprised me. I'm what I describe as "staunchly atheist" (I consider religion to be a kind of mental disease), and yet I'm actually in FAVOUR of there being education in schools about religious beliefs. At my school, we were taught the fundamentals of Hinduism, Buddhism, and the Abrahamic Religions (with separate sub topics for Islam, Judaism and Christianity). Some other religions were mentioned for comparison (especially the ancient Greek, Roman and Norse pantheons), but we really only concentrated on the big ones (there's just not enough TIME to study all of them!). That was at the lower level of high school, and it was considered that if you did well at that class and enjoyed it (in conjunction with social science) that you would then move on to advanced social sciences in senior high school, and then things like sociology, psychiatry, teaching, or similar things at the university level.
Religion is a major part of the world, and there NEEDS to be an understanding of it taught at schools so that people understand what it's all about. Not as an "indoctrination", but as an "education". If the schools DON'T teach this, you end up with people not being able to accurately question religious beliefs, or completely misunderstand things about the people around them (e.g. the view that it seems many "lesser educated" people in the US have about Muslims)
Absolutely - I wasn't disagreeing with you on that point! If it doesn't think (which these embryos certainly do not), then it is ridiculous to try and grant it any kind of rights. I was more or less just going one step further and saying that even if something DOES think, it doesn't necessarily grant it rights, and therefore it is beyond ridiculous to try and grant rights to something that doesn't.
Aside from that, perhaps we should be granting rights to sentience rather than by genetics?
I agree with your idea in principle, but not exactly... the problem is that most living creatures from rats upwards appear to be sentient, including the vast majority of creatures that we eat. I really think we actually just need to stop trying to take a moral high-ground and accept that we're willing to slaughter certain things. If they're non-sentient (including human embryos), we've got a good case, but we also don't exactly want to stop slaughtering some sentient things either. There's nothing biologically special about human beings over any other creature, but we are in the position of "power" and should probably just shrug and say, "well, sucks to be a cow" rather than getting mired down in any kind of "rights" issue when it comes time to kill and eat it.
I'm also quite comfortable with creating "sentient" machines and then essentially treating them as slaves - sucks to be a robot.
Actually, yeh, it still does. I spent 6 years living in Sydney, Australia (which is comparable to places to Italy or Spain as far as weather goes). It just happens that the complaints are the other way around to what we hear in the colder climes - e.g. "This summer is going on forever", "It's too bloody hot", "What I wouldn't give for some rain", etc etc.
Nice for you that you've got enough liquid capital sloshing about that this wouldn't be a problem. Though since it was implicit in the original poster's comment that this *would* be a problem for most people
I make around 2750 euro a month after tax, of which I can save about 1250 a month, and pay 350 euro a month in rent. Having a spare 3500 to pay 10 months in advance is hardly a big deal. And I do NOT consider myself to be especially well off - I would consider that "most people" are probably in a similar situation. Anyone who does NOT have enough disposable income to afford 10 months rent in advance really needs to find somewhere cheaper to live.
Anyway, if you're that well off, it'd probably make more financial sense to simply buy the place you're staying in.
Hmmm... I am in no way interested in buying a crappy little apartment in downtown Hannover.
your answer missed the point- intentionally, I assume, so that you could make a smartass answer that was both smug and pat.
No, I did not miss the point - I simply do not accept that "most people" can not afford 10 months of rent.
Am I the only one, who finds the expression - especially, when used in reference to oneself - rather pretentious?
Yes, I'm pretty sure you probably are the only one... what's pretentious about it? If they'd said something like, "Being science-experts, we wanted...", THAT would perhaps be pretentious, but there's nothing pretentious about claiming you love something, is there?
I don't see any qualitative difference to the sentence, "Being cat lovers, we decided to spend the weekend at the cat show that was in town.".
We're stuck with slow Pizza delivery? Where are you based? My local pizza place delivers in about 20 minutes most of the time here in Hannover, Germany. (pizza.de is a WONDERFUL website by the way - anyone in Germany, check it out! Enter your delivery details ONCE and then order from any Bringdienst in your locality without needing to pick up a phone, or give your details over again)
Everyone says that, but are there actually any stats to prove it? The site is RUN in the US, but I'd be interested to see the percentages of people that visit (nationality / locality). It seems I see a LOT of comments from people saying, "I'm from xyz-country and I think...". So, there may be a higher percentage of non-Americans than you think... (and no, server logs aren't helpful - we're all geeks here, and proxies are pretty common - I switch proxies a lot, and sometimes forget to turn off my proxy settings again after visiting a "can only access this from the US" site)
10 to 12 years ago, I wasn't in Australia, so I can't comment on how it was back then, but I WAS there from 7 years ago through to 1 year ago (I've since moved to Germany).
The current "popular" system in Australia is BPay, which I really like. The biller sends you a normal bill, but to pay it you simply go online, select the biller from your list (or type their code if you haven't paid them before), type the amount, and hit OK (optionally, I could also select a date/time for the payment instead of paying immediately upon hitting OK). You get all the advantages of manual control over your bill payments, and the ease of paying them. I would generally pay my bill (or set up a payment for a later date) within a few minutes of receiving it in the mail. Direct Debits and Automatic Payments are still used for some things, but in general, I used BPay for everything except the "recurring fixed costs" (e.g. rent and my ISP) which I could definitively say were always exactly the same at the exact same time each month.
Here in Germany, it seems to be a bit of a mess, but it might just be that I don't understand everything yet. Some things, I'm paying by an automatic payment (such as my rent), other things (such as gas/power/water) I receive a bill and have to go to the bank, fill out a payment slip, and give it to the bank teller, other things (such as my car insurance), the payment slip (pre-filled out) is included in the bill, so I just tear it off, write on my account details, sign it, and then take it to the bank, and yet more things (such as my ISP/Phone) they have direct debit from my account, which I guess I agreed to, but am not so happy about since I have no idea what I've paid until I receive my bank statement at the end of the month. Suffice to say, I end up going to the bank once or twice a month, which actually really annoys me after Australia where the ONLY time I went to the bank was to open my account.
Absolutely - I live in Germany these days, but was happy to call Holland home a few years back. I'm originally from New Zealand, but have travelled the world pretty extensively, and lived in 5 countries so far. Holland was by far the best place I ever lived. The most striking thing is the feeling of absolute freedom. If what you're doing doesn't cause a problem for other people, it's generally okay (regardless of the official "laws" about the matter). Of course, you can't get out of hand with this - I'm not saying you can do ANYTHING you want, but just as an overall general feeling, it's definitely there.
Living here in Germany is also great - friendly people, good beer and great quality of life for a pretty reasonable price (I make 1.5 times as much money as I did living in Sydney, Australia, but pay about 75% as much to live, so it feels like I'm making MUCH more). On the negative side of Germany though, the bureaucracy here is incredible - everything you do is paperwork, done in triplicate. Go to an office to get something stamped, to take it to another office where you sign something, which you then take back to the first to get a second stamp, and then finally you get what you wanted. NL is definitely more "streamlined" and comfortable from that side of life.
Luckily for me, I can drive to Amsterdam any time I like from where I am in Germany, so visiting places like my old "favourite local cafe" is dead simple.
As the parent pointed out, speaking Dutch is not necessary, however I do recommend learning it - it's a fun language, with a lot of great words that just don't exist in English, and a foreigner speaking Dutch is always considered cute by the girls (also speaking from experience there;-) )
No, speaking from experience, none of those statements are true about the Netherlands. Yes, it can rain a lot, and the locals complain about the weather, but the locals complain about the weather pretty much ANYWHERE in the world - it's really not that bad. The statements about women and dark skinned people are 100% incorrect (NL is one of the most tolerant countries I've ever been to - there's a small racial issue with migrants from some places, but it's NOTHING like the problems elsewhere in the world).
Canberra... are you mad?! I used to live in Sydney (for about 6 years before I moved to Europe), and I'm SO glad to be gone. The only part of Australia that I could really handle was S.A. (specifically Adelaide, which is just amazing) and Tasmania (although it can be a little "rural" at times). It could be that I grew up in New Zealand, and most of Australia seems to have a rather negative view of their neighbours across the ditch, but in general I find Australia to be loud, annoying, smelly, too large to go anywhere without taking a week to do it, and just generally unpleasant. It also doesn't help that Sydney is a large boring "business city" where if you're not a suit wearing yuppie, everyone looks down on you, and that most of Australia is extra-ordinarily racist against people of a different skin colour (I'm white, and that sort of makes it worse - they expect me to be just as racist as them). And lastly, the weather... how ANYONE can get any real work done for 6 months of the year is beyond me. I was pretty productive in my job during winter there (which compares to the summer of a colder climate), but for around 6 months of the year, I went down to about 20% efficiency just because of the damn heat.
The UK. They are the only country in Europe, to the best of my knowledge, that has a fairly easy-to-obtain permit-free work visa
My work visa here for Germany required that I was sponsored by a company to get it, however I do NOT lose it if I stop working. If I stop working, and then don't have a new job by the time my visa expires, then I must leave - but my current one expires in 2010, so I could be unemployed for at least another year and a bit should I lose my job tomorrow - plenty of time to find a new job. On the negative side however, I do have to live and work within this one area of Germany - I can't go anywhere else in Germany, let alone another European country, without getting a new permit.
Plus, if you're being sponsored by a company, the chances of being made redundant in the foreseeable future are pretty low anyway.
Definitely not as open as the visa you describe for the UK, but I'd sooner drive a nail through my face than live in London (sorry to anyone that actually likes living in London!). Most of the rest of the UK is okay though, however it really is quite isolated from the rest of Europe, and if you're after the real "European feel" for life, you will NOT get it there.
There are a lot of language schools that will help you learn German if you're interested, of course. Sometimes the company you work at even pays the course or at least part of it, just ask your potential employer.
Actually, depending on the kind of work permit/residence permit, there are even schools that the GOVERNMENT will basically pay for you (however also make it mandatory that you go). The government is paying for me to learn German for example, as my residence permit is essentially open ended, which means I have to go through the same kinds of things that an immigrant would go through (it's possible that if I stay here long enough that I might want to immigrate, and will be allowed to). I'm paying 1 euro per 1 hour of language instruction - the rest is paid by the government.
I also recommend Germany as a great place to come to live/work if you're interested in tech jobs.
You should start by defining a country and then examine your proficiency in that country's language...
Not really necessary. Language can be learned, and almost everywhere in Europe you can get by in English (you'll always be treated as a foreigner until you learn the language, but it doesn't stop you living there). What's more important is finding a culture that the person likes. I've lived in two European countries (and three non-European countries), and I learned the language AFTER arriving - it's really been no problem. The culture is definitely a much bigger difference though - I've travelled all over Europe and while there are some amazing places to visit, there's some that are just so "different" to what I'm comfortable with that I'd never want to live there. For me, that's mostly in the south - Spain, Italy, Greece, parts of southern France - they're just too "not me". By contrast, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway are all places that suit me very well. Even amongst these there are some VERY big differences in culture, so I'm not just suggesting there's a "split" between north and south or anything like that, but there are certain characteristics that are more common in some areas than others, and it's these that I personally find give me a much higher or lower level of comfort when there.
Note that I was careful to say that that's just me personally - other people may find the complete opposite, or be comfortable in "Norway and Italy" but not "Germany and Spain" - it's just a matter of ones own preferred conditions.
South... or north... or maybe Berlin. Leaving it pretty open there aren't you?! Specifically, as a foreigner living here, I can say that Hannover is a great city to live. Best place for learning German too as there's really no dialect here - it's pretty much standard "High German" (which is a misnomer, but lets leave the language lesson for another day).
Hannover is probably actually one of the most dull cities in Germany - it doesn't have really beautiful architecture, and it's not the centre of a great deal of nightlife or anything like that, but it IS very easy to go from here to pretty much anywhere else. The weather is reasonable, and the people are (in general) pretty friendly.
I'm from germany, and for an IT guy, this is a very good place to start. We have lots of international companies here, that do their busines entirely in english.
Very true - I myself work for one:)
But if I'ld have to choose freely, I'ld of course go to the Netherlands, where you can legally buy and smoke pot. Their language is like a mix of english and german and seemingly easy to learn, but it is not spoken by too many people around the globe. Anyway, Netherlands is a really multi cultural country, and almost everybody speaks English.
Dutch is my second language, after English (French is my third, and German is my fourth). Don't let a Dutchman hear you describe their language that way! In some ways you're right, as it's a low west Germanic language, just like old Saxonian, which is what English evolved from (however with a GREAT deal of influence from French around 1066 when it changed drastically from Old English to Middle English). Suffice to say, it's definitely easier for an English speaker to learn than German is, but neither is particularly hard. I found both Dutch and German to be significantly easier than French, and ALL Indo-European languages are significantly easier for an English speaker than non-Indo-European languages (I also started learning Japanese once, but I don't generally list it as a language I can speak since I can't hold a conversation in it - just a few phrases, and enough to get the "idea" of a conversation others are having)
The Netherlands was a GREAT place to live 10 years ago (when I lived there), but it's less so now. It's still one of the best places to live in Europe, but not as wonderful as it once was unfortunately. There's a saying in the Netherlands that the only two laws anyone REALLY cares about are speeding and taxes. If you don't speed, and do pay your taxes, you can feel free to do pretty much anything that doesn't hurt others. That feeling of real freedom still exists, but it is becoming a bit less so as times go by. I live in Germany, but I can drive to Amsterdam in about 4 or 5 hours (depending on traffic), so visiting my old stomping grounds is pretty easy.
As for the hassle with a permit and stuff: As a tech-worker there should be no problem whatsoever to get a time-limited working permit (lets say for a year or so).
That's true... however...
And if you are allowed to work in one country in the EU you're free to work everywhere in the EU (which is everywhere in Europe except Switzerland).
That's not necessarily true. It really depends on your work permit. I have permission to work in Germany ONLY - actually, specifically, I have permission to live and work ONLY in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony). I can of course travel anywhere in Europe, no problem, but the terms of my Aufenthalterlaubnis (residence permit) make it pretty clear that if I stop living and/or working in Niedersachsen, it becomes null and void.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, in saner societies, there are help groups for people addicted to sports... (although it's a little disturbing - if you Google for "sports addiction" you have to go through several pages to find them - it seems the term is used a lot as ADVERTISING as if it's a good thing)
A gamer doesn't want to quit. And if he/she does want to quit, they do
I think what you're describing there is "someone who enjoys playing a game" rather than a "game addict". From the sounds of it, it seems you believe that the latter doesn't exist, and only the former does.
I myself have next to no interest in games - I used to play a MUD quite a lot, and from time to time I still fire up Nethack, but it's pretty rare. When I did MUD however, I did find myself "bordering" on the addicted side when I decided to quit. I'd say to myself, "right that's it, not interested anymore" and then stop for a couple of days. After that, I'd say, "I wonder what everyone is up to?" or "Maybe they've tweaked a quest I can do" or something that like that and then I'd log in again. I didn't really WANT to play, I just found myself getting a bit worried about what was going on in the MUD if I didn't play.
I haven't logged in to that MUD (or any other) in close to a year now, and it really doesn't bother me anymore, but it definitely did for awhile. And I've seen people in MUCH worse states than that. As one poster above wrote (humorously, but not without the strong hint of truth), there are people who stand around all day on World of Warcraft complaining that they're bored. Clearly they're not enjoying playing, but they don't log out - they just stay online and complain about it. I'd say that's pretty sure evidence of addiction in action.
Addictions aren't always physical/physiological... I'm addicted to nicotine - that's a fairly classic addiction. However, it's also possible to be addicted to "non-addictive" substances as well - I used to take a lot of LSD in my younger days (I still enjoy it from time to time, but nowhere near the excess that I used to), and I would find myself sometimes saying "this evening would be so much better if I were tripping". That led to a rather bad situation where pretty much EVERY weekend, I'd be in an altered state. LSD is non-addictive (physically and physiologically), yet I was definitely psychologically addicted to it. The same can apply with games.
A cow is certainly animate, but it is not sentient
I'd disagree there, I definitely consider a cow (or dog, cat, pig, sheep, hawk, dolphin, most lizards, or pretty much anything else with a brain that goes beyond basic central nervous system functions) to be sentient - in some cases, astoundingly stupid in comparison to human beings (and in other cases, perhaps not), but definitely sentient regardless... and that leads to a very different and much larger discussion, which we probably shouldn't get in to (wildly offtopic, and I don't think either of us could prove our point sufficiently to convince the other)
I'm from many different places, but the country I went to school in is New Zealand. As far as I'm aware, it's not a standard curriculum item, but it is pretty common (both my school and my brother's school had it (we went to different schools)). It's considered a "module" of the "social studies" part of the curriculum (or at least, that was the case when I was at high school between 13 and 18 years ago).
Also, just to clarify further, it's not really "comparative religion" (someone else brought that term up, not me) - it's basically just "learning about what people believe"... not necessarily directly comparing them, although comparisons do happen within the class for the purposes of clarification. In the class, they were always VERY careful not to present ANYTHING as being true OR as being false - they just presented the beliefs and would even actively evade questions regarding "truth" (which is fair enough I guess). The closest they'd get to a statement about truth would be something like, "yes, it is true that people believe this".
But isn't that English's fault?
Yes, it is... that's why I had the asterisk which referred to the final paragraph:
English spelling is currently a bit weird, so I'm not saying it's Frisian that has the problem - the problem in English comes from that the words, as they are written, is how they were pronounced (generally) in MIDDLE English, so our spoken language changed, but we kept the old spelling. That lead to the horrible things like silent "g" in "ough" (through, thought etc - compare to Dutch or German for those words, and the "g" quite clearly should be/used to be a pronounced letter (historically the letter "yogh" that we don't have anymore, but makes roughly a similar sound to Dutch "g" or German "ch" (depending on region of course)))
Sorry if I wasn't clear on that...
The best description of our language I've ever heard was from an Italian who called it a throat disease (Dutch has very harsh consonants).
Hah, that's not bad. Especially my Dutch actually - I learned it mostly in Amsterdam, but I still seem to have a much "harsher" G sound that a lot of people there. I've heard everything from a throat rasp to similar to the German "ch", to more of an almost "h" sound, depending on the region.
German dialects from the north-west are practically indistinguishable from Dutch dialects from the nort-east. I can certainly understand them, even though I'm not from the north-east of Netherland, and I don't speak German. Official Dutch and official German are completely different languages, however.
Yep, those German dialects are all part of the "Platdeutsch" group of dialects. Generally, they're referred to as German dialects, but in general, they're actually more or less a distinct group of Low West Germanic languages, so they share more in common with Dutch than they do with German (although they're strongly influenced by High German as well). The most noticeable part is that in Low German languages, there wasn't a sound shift from T to S, whereas there was in High German - so we've got English "street", Dutch "straat" and German "Strasse", or English "water", Dutch "water", German "Wasser".
English is actually more similar to Frisian (a language only spoken in Friesland, a province in the north of Netherland) than to Dutch.
Definitely - but generally only for the sound of the language. The spelling is VERY different* (classic example being, "Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries" - spoken, any English speaker can understand it, but as it's written it's a bit hard!). That mostly comes from the fact that both Old English and Frisian are Low West Germanic with influences from Northern Germanic (the Scandanavian languages) (English however later had influence from Middle French, which really screwed up the language)
I keep hearing complaints from foreigners that they can't learn Dutch because everybody is always speaking English.
That does happen, but when I lived there, I really didn't have a hard time learning it. I had a Dutch girlfriend who I once asked to NEVER speak English to me. She was willing to do that, and my Dutch improved VERY quickly after that. My comment was actually more about the style of the language rather than other barriers to learning it (e.g. willingness of people to help teach you)
* English spelling is currently a bit weird, so I'm not saying it's Frisian that has the problem - the problem in English comes from that the words, as they are written, is how they were pronounced (generally) in MIDDLE English, so our spoken language changed, but we kept the old spelling. That lead to the horrible things like silent "g" in "ough" (through, thought etc - compare to Dutch or German for those words, and the "g" quite clearly should be/used to be a pronounced letter (historically the letter "yogh" that we don't have anymore, but makes roughly a similar sound to Dutch "g" or German "ch" (depending on region of course)))
And sorry, yes, I am a language geek... especially when it comes to the Germanic branches of the Indo-European family!
Last time I looked, public schools did not have religion classes
Really? I'm not from the US, and this comment actually surprised me. I'm what I describe as "staunchly atheist" (I consider religion to be a kind of mental disease), and yet I'm actually in FAVOUR of there being education in schools about religious beliefs. At my school, we were taught the fundamentals of Hinduism, Buddhism, and the Abrahamic Religions (with separate sub topics for Islam, Judaism and Christianity). Some other religions were mentioned for comparison (especially the ancient Greek, Roman and Norse pantheons), but we really only concentrated on the big ones (there's just not enough TIME to study all of them!). That was at the lower level of high school, and it was considered that if you did well at that class and enjoyed it (in conjunction with social science) that you would then move on to advanced social sciences in senior high school, and then things like sociology, psychiatry, teaching, or similar things at the university level.
Religion is a major part of the world, and there NEEDS to be an understanding of it taught at schools so that people understand what it's all about. Not as an "indoctrination", but as an "education". If the schools DON'T teach this, you end up with people not being able to accurately question religious beliefs, or completely misunderstand things about the people around them (e.g. the view that it seems many "lesser educated" people in the US have about Muslims)
Absolutely - I wasn't disagreeing with you on that point! If it doesn't think (which these embryos certainly do not), then it is ridiculous to try and grant it any kind of rights.
I was more or less just going one step further and saying that even if something DOES think, it doesn't necessarily grant it rights, and therefore it is beyond ridiculous to try and grant rights to something that doesn't.
Aside from that, perhaps we should be granting rights to sentience rather than by genetics?
I agree with your idea in principle, but not exactly... the problem is that most living creatures from rats upwards appear to be sentient, including the vast majority of creatures that we eat. I really think we actually just need to stop trying to take a moral high-ground and accept that we're willing to slaughter certain things. If they're non-sentient (including human embryos), we've got a good case, but we also don't exactly want to stop slaughtering some sentient things either. There's nothing biologically special about human beings over any other creature, but we are in the position of "power" and should probably just shrug and say, "well, sucks to be a cow" rather than getting mired down in any kind of "rights" issue when it comes time to kill and eat it.
I'm also quite comfortable with creating "sentient" machines and then essentially treating them as slaves - sucks to be a robot.
Actually, yeh, it still does. I spent 6 years living in Sydney, Australia (which is comparable to places to Italy or Spain as far as weather goes). It just happens that the complaints are the other way around to what we hear in the colder climes - e.g. "This summer is going on forever", "It's too bloody hot", "What I wouldn't give for some rain", etc etc.
Nice for you that you've got enough liquid capital sloshing about that this wouldn't be a problem. Though since it was implicit in the original poster's comment that this *would* be a problem for most people
I make around 2750 euro a month after tax, of which I can save about 1250 a month, and pay 350 euro a month in rent. Having a spare 3500 to pay 10 months in advance is hardly a big deal. And I do NOT consider myself to be especially well off - I would consider that "most people" are probably in a similar situation. Anyone who does NOT have enough disposable income to afford 10 months rent in advance really needs to find somewhere cheaper to live.
Anyway, if you're that well off, it'd probably make more financial sense to simply buy the place you're staying in.
Hmmm... I am in no way interested in buying a crappy little apartment in downtown Hannover.
your answer missed the point- intentionally, I assume, so that you could make a smartass answer that was both smug and pat.
No, I did not miss the point - I simply do not accept that "most people" can not afford 10 months of rent.
Am I the only one, who finds the expression - especially, when used in reference to oneself - rather pretentious?
Yes, I'm pretty sure you probably are the only one... what's pretentious about it? If they'd said something like, "Being science-experts, we wanted...", THAT would perhaps be pretentious, but there's nothing pretentious about claiming you love something, is there?
I don't see any qualitative difference to the sentence, "Being cat lovers, we decided to spend the weekend at the cat show that was in town.".
What's the potential cost to you of your landlord accidentally withdrawing 10x rent even once?
Very little - it'd just mean I don't have to worry about rent for most of the next year. That'd be quite nice.
I wish all of my billers would LET me pay a whole years payments in one go - so much less to think about from day to day then...
We're stuck with slow Pizza delivery? Where are you based? My local pizza place delivers in about 20 minutes most of the time here in Hannover, Germany. (pizza.de is a WONDERFUL website by the way - anyone in Germany, check it out! Enter your delivery details ONCE and then order from any Bringdienst in your locality without needing to pick up a phone, or give your details over again)
Oh we know but this is a primarily American site.
Everyone says that, but are there actually any stats to prove it? The site is RUN in the US, but I'd be interested to see the percentages of people that visit (nationality / locality). It seems I see a LOT of comments from people saying, "I'm from xyz-country and I think...". So, there may be a higher percentage of non-Americans than you think... (and no, server logs aren't helpful - we're all geeks here, and proxies are pretty common - I switch proxies a lot, and sometimes forget to turn off my proxy settings again after visiting a "can only access this from the US" site)
10 to 12 years ago, I wasn't in Australia, so I can't comment on how it was back then, but I WAS there from 7 years ago through to 1 year ago (I've since moved to Germany).
The current "popular" system in Australia is BPay, which I really like. The biller sends you a normal bill, but to pay it you simply go online, select the biller from your list (or type their code if you haven't paid them before), type the amount, and hit OK (optionally, I could also select a date/time for the payment instead of paying immediately upon hitting OK). You get all the advantages of manual control over your bill payments, and the ease of paying them. I would generally pay my bill (or set up a payment for a later date) within a few minutes of receiving it in the mail. Direct Debits and Automatic Payments are still used for some things, but in general, I used BPay for everything except the "recurring fixed costs" (e.g. rent and my ISP) which I could definitively say were always exactly the same at the exact same time each month.
Here in Germany, it seems to be a bit of a mess, but it might just be that I don't understand everything yet. Some things, I'm paying by an automatic payment (such as my rent), other things (such as gas/power/water) I receive a bill and have to go to the bank, fill out a payment slip, and give it to the bank teller, other things (such as my car insurance), the payment slip (pre-filled out) is included in the bill, so I just tear it off, write on my account details, sign it, and then take it to the bank, and yet more things (such as my ISP/Phone) they have direct debit from my account, which I guess I agreed to, but am not so happy about since I have no idea what I've paid until I receive my bank statement at the end of the month. Suffice to say, I end up going to the bank once or twice a month, which actually really annoys me after Australia where the ONLY time I went to the bank was to open my account.
Absolutely - I live in Germany these days, but was happy to call Holland home a few years back. I'm originally from New Zealand, but have travelled the world pretty extensively, and lived in 5 countries so far. Holland was by far the best place I ever lived. The most striking thing is the feeling of absolute freedom. If what you're doing doesn't cause a problem for other people, it's generally okay (regardless of the official "laws" about the matter). Of course, you can't get out of hand with this - I'm not saying you can do ANYTHING you want, but just as an overall general feeling, it's definitely there.
Living here in Germany is also great - friendly people, good beer and great quality of life for a pretty reasonable price (I make 1.5 times as much money as I did living in Sydney, Australia, but pay about 75% as much to live, so it feels like I'm making MUCH more). On the negative side of Germany though, the bureaucracy here is incredible - everything you do is paperwork, done in triplicate. Go to an office to get something stamped, to take it to another office where you sign something, which you then take back to the first to get a second stamp, and then finally you get what you wanted. NL is definitely more "streamlined" and comfortable from that side of life.
Luckily for me, I can drive to Amsterdam any time I like from where I am in Germany, so visiting places like my old "favourite local cafe" is dead simple.
As the parent pointed out, speaking Dutch is not necessary, however I do recommend learning it - it's a fun language, with a lot of great words that just don't exist in English, and a foreigner speaking Dutch is always considered cute by the girls (also speaking from experience there ;-) )
No, speaking from experience, none of those statements are true about the Netherlands. Yes, it can rain a lot, and the locals complain about the weather, but the locals complain about the weather pretty much ANYWHERE in the world - it's really not that bad. The statements about women and dark skinned people are 100% incorrect (NL is one of the most tolerant countries I've ever been to - there's a small racial issue with migrants from some places, but it's NOTHING like the problems elsewhere in the world).
Canberra... are you mad?! I used to live in Sydney (for about 6 years before I moved to Europe), and I'm SO glad to be gone. The only part of Australia that I could really handle was S.A. (specifically Adelaide, which is just amazing) and Tasmania (although it can be a little "rural" at times). It could be that I grew up in New Zealand, and most of Australia seems to have a rather negative view of their neighbours across the ditch, but in general I find Australia to be loud, annoying, smelly, too large to go anywhere without taking a week to do it, and just generally unpleasant. It also doesn't help that Sydney is a large boring "business city" where if you're not a suit wearing yuppie, everyone looks down on you, and that most of Australia is extra-ordinarily racist against people of a different skin colour (I'm white, and that sort of makes it worse - they expect me to be just as racist as them). And lastly, the weather... how ANYONE can get any real work done for 6 months of the year is beyond me. I was pretty productive in my job during winter there (which compares to the summer of a colder climate), but for around 6 months of the year, I went down to about 20% efficiency just because of the damn heat.
The UK. They are the only country in Europe, to the best of my knowledge, that has a fairly easy-to-obtain permit-free work visa
My work visa here for Germany required that I was sponsored by a company to get it, however I do NOT lose it if I stop working. If I stop working, and then don't have a new job by the time my visa expires, then I must leave - but my current one expires in 2010, so I could be unemployed for at least another year and a bit should I lose my job tomorrow - plenty of time to find a new job. On the negative side however, I do have to live and work within this one area of Germany - I can't go anywhere else in Germany, let alone another European country, without getting a new permit.
Plus, if you're being sponsored by a company, the chances of being made redundant in the foreseeable future are pretty low anyway.
Definitely not as open as the visa you describe for the UK, but I'd sooner drive a nail through my face than live in London (sorry to anyone that actually likes living in London!). Most of the rest of the UK is okay though, however it really is quite isolated from the rest of Europe, and if you're after the real "European feel" for life, you will NOT get it there.
There are a lot of language schools that will help you learn German if you're interested, of course. Sometimes the company you work at even pays the course or at least part of it, just ask your potential employer.
Actually, depending on the kind of work permit/residence permit, there are even schools that the GOVERNMENT will basically pay for you (however also make it mandatory that you go). The government is paying for me to learn German for example, as my residence permit is essentially open ended, which means I have to go through the same kinds of things that an immigrant would go through (it's possible that if I stay here long enough that I might want to immigrate, and will be allowed to). I'm paying 1 euro per 1 hour of language instruction - the rest is paid by the government.
I also recommend Germany as a great place to come to live/work if you're interested in tech jobs.
You should start by defining a country and then examine your proficiency in that country's language...
Not really necessary. Language can be learned, and almost everywhere in Europe you can get by in English (you'll always be treated as a foreigner until you learn the language, but it doesn't stop you living there). What's more important is finding a culture that the person likes. I've lived in two European countries (and three non-European countries), and I learned the language AFTER arriving - it's really been no problem. The culture is definitely a much bigger difference though - I've travelled all over Europe and while there are some amazing places to visit, there's some that are just so "different" to what I'm comfortable with that I'd never want to live there. For me, that's mostly in the south - Spain, Italy, Greece, parts of southern France - they're just too "not me". By contrast, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway are all places that suit me very well.
Even amongst these there are some VERY big differences in culture, so I'm not just suggesting there's a "split" between north and south or anything like that, but there are certain characteristics that are more common in some areas than others, and it's these that I personally find give me a much higher or lower level of comfort when there.
Note that I was careful to say that that's just me personally - other people may find the complete opposite, or be comfortable in "Norway and Italy" but not "Germany and Spain" - it's just a matter of ones own preferred conditions.
South... or north... or maybe Berlin. Leaving it pretty open there aren't you?!
Specifically, as a foreigner living here, I can say that Hannover is a great city to live. Best place for learning German too as there's really no dialect here - it's pretty much standard "High German" (which is a misnomer, but lets leave the language lesson for another day).
Hannover is probably actually one of the most dull cities in Germany - it doesn't have really beautiful architecture, and it's not the centre of a great deal of nightlife or anything like that, but it IS very easy to go from here to pretty much anywhere else. The weather is reasonable, and the people are (in general) pretty friendly.
I'm from germany, and for an IT guy, this is a very good place to start. We have lots of international companies here, that do their busines entirely in english.
Very true - I myself work for one :)
But if I'ld have to choose freely, I'ld of course go to the Netherlands, where you can legally buy and smoke pot. Their language is like a mix of english and german and seemingly easy to learn, but it is not spoken by too many people around the globe. Anyway, Netherlands is a really multi cultural country, and almost everybody speaks English.
Dutch is my second language, after English (French is my third, and German is my fourth). Don't let a Dutchman hear you describe their language that way! In some ways you're right, as it's a low west Germanic language, just like old Saxonian, which is what English evolved from (however with a GREAT deal of influence from French around 1066 when it changed drastically from Old English to Middle English). Suffice to say, it's definitely easier for an English speaker to learn than German is, but neither is particularly hard. I found both Dutch and German to be significantly easier than French, and ALL Indo-European languages are significantly easier for an English speaker than non-Indo-European languages (I also started learning Japanese once, but I don't generally list it as a language I can speak since I can't hold a conversation in it - just a few phrases, and enough to get the "idea" of a conversation others are having)
The Netherlands was a GREAT place to live 10 years ago (when I lived there), but it's less so now. It's still one of the best places to live in Europe, but not as wonderful as it once was unfortunately. There's a saying in the Netherlands that the only two laws anyone REALLY cares about are speeding and taxes. If you don't speed, and do pay your taxes, you can feel free to do pretty much anything that doesn't hurt others. That feeling of real freedom still exists, but it is becoming a bit less so as times go by. I live in Germany, but I can drive to Amsterdam in about 4 or 5 hours (depending on traffic), so visiting my old stomping grounds is pretty easy.
As for the hassle with a permit and stuff: As a tech-worker there should be no problem whatsoever to get a time-limited working permit (lets say for a year or so).
That's true... however...
And if you are allowed to work in one country in the EU you're free to work everywhere in the EU (which is everywhere in Europe except Switzerland).
That's not necessarily true. It really depends on your work permit. I have permission to work in Germany ONLY - actually, specifically, I have permission to live and work ONLY in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony). I can of course travel anywhere in Europe, no problem, but the terms of my Aufenthalterlaubnis (residence permit) make it pretty clear that if I stop living and/or working in Niedersachsen, it becomes null and void.