I work at a small business. I'm the only one of "me". If I go on vacation, what are they going to do, hire one for two weeks? It would take that long just to train him.
If you're a bureaucratic nobody, sure. Take all the vacation you want.
I work at a giant multinational. But I'm still the only one of "me" (subject matter expert for Europe for our API technologies; some developers working under me, but none that can do all of what I do). When I take two weeks off, the work that I do has to be managed by a mix of my immediate superior and the developers working under me. It's not "easy" for them (otherwise I wouldn't be needed at all), but they get it done well enough that the company won't take a serious hit just because I'm not there.
I understand that a small business doesn't have the luxury of having redundancies in staffing, but they really should have some kind of plan for you not being there sometimes. What if something happens such as you're hospitalised from a car accident? If they haven't accounted for you not being there, they're only causing themselves problems.
No kidding. Don't take your vacation days, otherwise you can say goodbye to any chance of a promotion and hello to the front of the line for a layoff.
Here in Germany, whenever I DON'T take all of my annual leave owing, I get emails from our HR begging me to take it as soon as possible. Annual leave owing to employees is written up as a debt owing (from the company to the employee) here, so looks bad in the books.
Same thing with overtime - if I accrue too much, I pretty much get forced to take time off to knock it down a bit.
so youre under the impression that the impending euro zone failure is well planned and effective?
I don't believe there is an impending Eurozone failure. Things look a little rough at present for the Euro in general, but complete failure of the currency seems unlikely.
how much do you know about europe or are you just one of those "grass is greener on the other side" ppl?
Well, given that I live in Europe and do my best to keep up with current affairs in economics and politics, I like to think I know it reasonably well.
Are you trying to tell me that most of everywhere else in the world considers the level of retarded behavior and thought process in somewhere like San Francisco is "middle of the road"? I'm glad I don't have a visa...
The problem is actually that the WAY that "middle of the road" is implemented in such places is retarded.
Both traditional "left" (as practiced in parts of Europe) and traditional "right" (the US Conservatives) have their advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I lean significantly more "left" than "right", but I can certainly see some disadvantages to my preferences and some advantages to the other way of looking at things. However, when you take a "right" stance and then implement ONLY SOME "left" policies, you end up with a complete shitstorm that fails to work at all.
You can't have "a bit" of public transport and then ignore your road infrastructure - you need a LOT of WELL PLANNED public transport in order to even consider reducing your investment in roads. Likewise, you can't have a half-hearted attempt at a public health system and expect it to help everyone as it should. Nor can you simply throw in free education without changing a lot of the systems around it in order to compensate for the financial upheaval it would cause.
Now, I'm in favour of good public transport, public health-care, and free education; but to me, the way such things get discussed in the US miss the point entirely. The European left and the US left both share the goals of having these things, but the European left at least pays attention to how it can be achieved without fucking everything else up badly in the process; something I feel the US left ignores on the vast majority of occasions.
Many years ago I used to contribute to quite a few open source projects here and there; but now I'm married with a daughter and my job has become more demanding, I found the projects I was contributing to were taking up too much time that I'd rather spend with my family. I'd still really like to be able to contribute it some way, but finding things to do is the hardest part. With a system such as this, I could get matched up to projects that meet my time limitations, proficiencies and interests and then actually start making real contributions again.
No-one thinks Steve Jobs is cool, except the douchiest of Apple fanatics. He wore sneakers and jeans and black turtleneck. That is not cool.
Actually, as a non Apple fanatic; I thought he was pretty cool. Went a bit too far in his later years though.
I think far too many people think of him only in his "hip" later years, showing off the latest iGadget to crowds of adoring fans then heading back to Apple and being a "hard taskmaster" to the developers. They then retroactively apply this personality to his earlier years and assume he was always a douche. By all accounts he was a bit of a revolutionary back then; a "fuck the system, I'll do what I want" kind of guy. I admire that in business leaders in the technical world.
He appeared to truly want things to be better for people. He probably didn't achieve that and definitely lost sight of some important aspects of "better" in his later years; but desire is what should be measured for the mettle of a man, not results. So, I still give him the benefit of the doubt - he wanted things to be better, and he tried really hard to achieve that result. That's something that I personally find pretty cool.
(although I'd rather swap my toilet paper for sand paper than be forced to use an iPhone or iPad as my daily mobile computing device - so you can hardly call me an Apple fan)
But you are right that this comment has absolutely NOTHING to do with the topic.
How about in a construction like "ladies' choice"? I highly doubt this was ever written or pronounced "ladieses choice" by anyone apart from Gollum.
As DMUTPeregrine wrote here (and somewhat expanded on by my answer here), the "es" form is actually a contraction of a yet older system where originally you'd say "Peter his cat", "Mary her dog" or "Ladies their choice" (actually none of these are accurate since the words themselves were different in Old English; but you can consider these "translations" for clarity). The apostrophe in "Ladies' choice" would therefore stand for the entire missing word "their"; although it almost certainly didn't happen directly, but rather in connection with the "his" -> "es" -> "'s" change.
Good question though... I hadn't thought of that case as being extremely non-obvious.
Yes, you're quite right, I just didn't want to confuse matters further for most people.
The same principle still applies in many other Germanic languages - for example German "Peter seine Katze" ("Peter his cat") or "Peters Katze" (Peter's cat); but for non-named subjects, "Die Katze des Mannes" (The cat (of) the man) and never "Der Manns Katze" or similar and "Der Mann seine Katze" also wouldn't be used, although probably generally understood.
Disclaimer: I'm not German and the above could be wrong - just going from my knowledge of linguistics and a couple of quick questions to my wife who is German.
I'm sure I've seen it and done it before... but for anyone wondering, I come up as pretty far economic left, social libertarian (which is no surprise to me).
Scores: Economic Left/Right: -6.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.72
I don't know why, the MAFIAA and artists are generally very left-wing.
Only from a US (and to a somewhat lesser extent, UK) point of view. Remember that "left" from a (mainland) European perspective is generally viewed as significantly further left of "left" from a US perspective. Some policies of the US left are seen as draconianly "right" by many Europeans.
It tends to be the case that in Europe, the word "liberal" still contains the core meaning of the word "liberty". It's definitely a moderated and controlled liberty (so, not "libertarian") but the goal is to promote as much freedom as possible for the greatest number of people.
This is the case whether you agree or disagree with HOW it is done (e.g. higher taxes may seem to be the opposite of "liberty"; but it's viewed in context of using the money to promote the liberty of those who have less without impinging TOO greatly on those who have more, increasing the baseline liberty enjoyed by citizens overall (remembering for an extreme case of the opposite that in a Dictatorship, the Dictator himself has "complete liberty" at the expense of all others; this represents the most possible liberty for one; but the least for the population as a whole. At a lesser scale, the US at present provides a high level of liberty for those of moderate to high income, but less for those that are in the lowest income classes)).
In my understanding, the US left tend to be more in favour of the "war on drugs" than the US right; but the typical European left tends to be against it, with the typical European right being moderately in favour of it.
The biggest problem of course comes from the fact that "left" and "right" are pretty crappy descriptors of politics. Being in favour of higher taxes and a strong social welfare/benefit system really has almost nothing to do with your policies on gun control, which in turn usually has nothing to do with your policy on immigration. I can easily imagine multiple parties all with different platforms on each of these that would never fit in to the neat "left"/"right" divide that is so commonly thrown about.
It's simple really. Just remember that the apostrophe ALWAYS represents one or more letters having between removed. In the case of the possessive, it's due to a missing "e" that used to be used (the possessive form was made with "es" - e.g. "Peter's cat" really represents "Peteres cat"). This is quite visible in other Germanic languages, but quite hidden in English due to the weird history of our language.
In the case of the possessive "its", it was never written "ites" and therefore does not receive an apostrophe. Similarly, "his" and "her" also never had the "es" ending and therefore also do not contain an apostrophe.
"It's" contains an apostrophe for the missing "i" from "it is" (or in some cases the missing "ha" from "it has") and so it becomes very clear that the apostrophe is required.
If all that is too confusing or simply too hard to remember, relate things back to "his" and "her". You can grammatically replace "its" with "his" and still make sense, so it similarly doesn't take an apostrophe ("Its impenetrable bureaucracy" -> "His impenetrable bureaucracy" (no problem)). "It's" on the other hand can never be grammatically replaced by "his" ("It's got impenetrable bureaucracy" -> "His got impenetrable bureaucracy" (meaningless)).
The alternative (and more common, but less obvious to me personally) method is to go the other way around and mentally try replacing "its"/"it's" with "it is" to see if that fits.
Create great content
Make that content super easy to buy
Release the content worldwide on the same day
Give it a fair price
Make sure it works on any device
Absolutely... here's a list of what I buy vs what I pirate and why:
Music: Pirate: Not easy enough to get the music I want; often at a price point I don't wish to pay; often comes with other music I don't want bundled. This is slowly changing though, so I'm keeping an eye on online music purchasing options and will happily start buying if the situation improves.
Television: Pirate: I'm a native English speaker and live in a country where English television isn't generally broadcast. Some shows are sold as DVD sets eventually, but usually not what I want to watch. If there was a service I could pay for to get the shows I want, when I want, I'd almost certainly take it.
Movies: Mostly buy: I'll go to the cinema for a movie if it's showing in English. I'll also purchase DVDs of older movies (and then rip them) if available. If not available, I'll pirate it.
Books: Mostly pirate: eBook DRM is a complete pain in the arse for transferring content around. I'll buy physical books from time to time, but don't like the space they take up, so usually it's just special things (like my signed Discworld collection). eBooks that come without DRM at a reasonable price, I'll definitely consider buying, but the selection is usually very thin.
Software: Mostly buy or use free: This has changed a lot in the last few years. It used to be that to get software, I'd have to go to a store, try to find what I wanted, hope I really want it, pay for it and go home. This encouraged me to pirate, especially due to the "unknown" factor of whether I actually want it without having seen it. These days, there's usually trial versions or sufficient information online; followed by a simple purchase system that's easy to use (for the few games I play; Steam and various "App Stores/Marketplaces" helped a lot for changing my behaviour here)
So, yes, I pirate quite a bit of stuff, but it used to be more than it is these days; and my motivation is exactly as you stated. If what I want can be provided easily, when I want it, for a fair price, and works on my devices (within reason), I'll happily buy it instead.
This could apply to your full time job as well--if you're eyeing another company because of their pay rates, try getting a job offer and using that to leverage yourself into working where you want, for the amount of money you want to get paid and the benefits you want.
Parent really needs to be modded up.
Far too often, I see people complaining about their pay and jumping around different jobs. I've been with the same company for 11 years now (in two locations), and believe it or not, there are companies that do still care about company loyalty. If you're good to them, they'll be good to you.
Many times in my career so far, I've been offered positions elsewhere for significantly more pay. Twice, it was a very tempting offer (good company and good environment in addition to good pay) and both times I've discussed it with my manager and our HR; who in both cases were able to come to an arrangement to increase my salary and/or other benefits sufficiently to make me want to stay (in one case, up to the offer I had elsewhere, and in the other case only slightly below).
Not saying I wouldn't leave here if I was made the right kind of offer and my employer couldn't or wouldn't come to the table over it; but thus far they've earned my loyalty and it'd take something pretty tempting to make me want to leave at this stage.
Wonder why no outsider takes software developers seriously? Imagine telling a mining engineer that they have to participate in sing-a-longs. Or telling any highly skilled professional that they can have free pizza and ping pong in place of pay reflecting their hours. It's still fucking amateur hour, and it hurts us all in the long term.
I'll skip the sing-a-longs; but pizza and ping pong sound good to me. Of course, I'll take it in ADDITION to pay reflecting my hours thankyouverymuch. It doesn't have to be one or the other you know.
Where I work, the pay is pretty good (not great, but pretty good - somewhat above average); overtime is either paid out or given in lieu (preferred to be given in lieu whereever possible); we get 30 days paid annual leave per year plus public holidays; no fixed start or finish time (just a certain "number of hours per week" that we use to calculate our overtime from); and network gaming in the office is expressly allowed as long as you're not counting it as "work time".
I've been thinking about instituting a company paid pizza day (perhaps every second Friday) in my team, but I'm still waiting for the right time to have that discussion with my boss (who is responsible for the budget of our whole department, so I can't make team decisions without his approval unfortunately)
Since a typical American will pay for many different kinds of costs from his AFTER tax income; and a typical European pays with them in BEFORE tax income;
Oh, don't worry, we save lots of money by eating roadkill and shoving our old people off cliffs, so that makes up for it. Really, where do you get your "information" about the US and other European nations from? Pravda? Or do you just make it up out of thin air yourself?
Woah, that's quite a strawman you built there. I never said the US was "poor"; just that I dispute the differences you're trying to assert.
You never actually denied what I said though - is it or is it not true that there are many things that Americans pay out of post-tax income that Europeans typically pay out of pre-tax income? If this is true, then that must be taken in to account when looking at post-tax incomes as a comparative factor, otherwise the European incomes appear artificially lower than reality.
As for "where I get my information" - I quite clearly said that it is all anecdotal from experience and I do not have any hard figures to back it up. If you or someone else presents me with figures, I'll be happy to have learned something. The figures you provided thus far though appear to have a bias that I'd like to be able to correct for (or easier: see some figures corrected for this) if we're going to have any kind of meaningful exchange.
There are two additional things that I think must also be taken in to account with the numbers.
First is the concept of using the "median" when looking at income. In my understanding, the distribution of income in Europe is a lot flatter than in the US. A waitress here probably earns more than a waitress there (although tips do make that harder to calculate with any kind of certainty); but a CEO there earns significantly more than a CEO here. This can move the median quite significantly (in either direction for either side). If you for example imagine that 60% of the households in Germany earn the equivalent of $21500 per year, and 40% of people in the US earn $10000 per year with the rest over $25000. The median in Germany will be $21500; the median in the US will be over $25000 but overall quality of life is generally speaking better for Germany (yes, that is arguable; but from my point of view, having less people at the level of poverty that causes additional crime is definitely an improvement of quality of life). This is of course a drastic oversimplification, but does highlight that median is not a good measure.
The second thing that I think is important with the numbers you provided is that it's household income. It makes no distinction between a family where one person works and a family where both parents work. Many people (including myself) consider it much better "quality of life" to have a parent at home with the children than to have two parents working. This could dramatically effect the household incomes figures, while not indicating a better standard of living in the higher income figures.
Well, and I was actually living and working in Europe for a dozen years, paying European taxes, getting European healthcare, living in European homes, watching European TV, and paying into European retirement plans (a really bad deal). When I moved to Europe, I actually believed all this stuff about a better standard of living, an educated and cultured populace, and liberal attitudes. At first, couldn't figure out why reality differed so much from the image Europe projects of itself, but after looking at the economic numbers, it became quite clear.
I'm sorry if your experience in Europe wasn't particularly pleasant. There are nice places and horrid places all over the world - including of course both in America and in Europe. So far, my experience here in Europe (6 years in Germany this time around so far (and probably the rest of my life) and 1.5 years last time when I lived in the Netherlands)
Thanks for the link, however I might point out this from the wikipedia article you referenced:
Please note that the amounts shown in the following table are not "median household income" figures as defined by the U.S. Census, since median equivalised disposable household income reflects an amount remaining for spending or savings after deduction of taxes and other social contributions, according to the Eurostat definition.
To me, that makes this chart somewhat less useful for defining anything about standard of living and quality of life. The "deduction of taxes and other social contributions" varies wildly in many countries and also what is seen for that money also varies a great deal. Since a typical American will pay for many different kinds of costs from his AFTER tax income; and a typical European pays with them in BEFORE tax income; this needs to be taken in to account when looking at "take home pay".
I know what you mean, but you can't judge standard of living that way. Cities like London, Paris or Berlin look nice and well-maintained, but that doesn't mean that the people living there are well off. Many of those destinations are also highly subsidized, at the expense of the rest of the country.
I'm sorry but that's utter rubbish. The "moderately wealthy" in Europe don't tend to live in those big cities since they're scummy stinky hellholes (sorry to anyone living there...). Most of the really nice places in Europe are specifically outside of the big cities. Sure, the big cities have some nice "old quarters" where all the tourists go, but get away from that and they're really nowhere near as nice as the smaller towns for quality of life (especially things like larger apartments with all the modern trimmings - the big cities tend to have small, cramped apartments that haven't been renovated in over 20 years). If we were subsidising the cities, I'd expect them to be at least somewhat nicer than the rest of the country!
And I suspect that you tend to meet young people who tend to be just out of college and have lots of debt in the US; they quickly get richer, but then probably don't have time to hang out with European tourists anymore.
Well, I work for a large international company for the European HQ. When I first met colleagues from our US headquarters, it surprised me to see their comparatively low standard of living compared to my own (in fact, other than larger houses; I really viewed them as doing quite poorly compared to myself). I can't judge for a whole country, but I can at least say that the impression I got is that my own personal standard of living is higher than that of the person who does my exact job in the US; and for that matter, his boss as well.
And even if we were to take the chart you gave at face value (which I do find hard to do), you did originally say "Americans have a significantly higher standard of living than Europeans, and lower absolute poverty." (emphasis mine). The values I see there hardly qualify as "significant".
We shouldn't let people starve, and we should make sure everybody has a basic education and basic health care. But that can be done with a fraction of the entitlement spending we (US) or Europe is spending right now. Most government spending in the US and Europe goes to groups who really don't need it, but have the political power to push it through.
Let me first say that I totally agree with this statement. I think you're right on a lot of points, however:
First, the US is itself a "highly socialised democracy", with a vast social safety net. Americans have a significantly higher standard of living than Europeans, and lower absolute poverty.
This is something I absolutely can not believe without seeing some figures. I've been to the US many times, and I live in Europe. There are parts of Europe that are relatively poor, yes; but the largest and most populous areas all seem significantly better off than I've seen in the US. I see and hear of very few homeless here; the "poor" can get by without working themselves to death with 2 (or more!) jobs; and people here seem to be a lot happier than most of the people I met in the US.
Purely anecdotal of course, since I haven't looked up the figures. I'd invite you (or someone else) to do so though if you're going to make claims that fly in the face of my (and many other people's) experience.
It is of course worth noting that both Europe and the US have different areas with different levels of wealth. It's not fair to compare downtown Manhattan with downtown Bratislava; but it's also not fair to compare rural Germany with rural Arkansas. Any kind of comparison should be fair about exactly who and what is being measured.
My personal view is that the "ultra rich" in the US tend to be FAR richer than the "ultra rich" in Europe, while the poor tend to be poorer than in Europe (on average) and there's also a greater percentage of them. So simply taking averages (mean) can often be deceptive.
Typing the string has the same effect on the app as quitting the app. So.... have fun going to the apple store and quitting the apps.
Exact behaviour seems to depend on the app. Just tried it here and:
TextEdit: Prints the final/, hangs for a long time, then shows "quit unexpectedly" dialog
Safari (text box on webpage): Does not print the final/, hangs the tab indefinitely, tries to allow continued usage of Safari (in other tabs), but data won't load, and already open tabs when scrolled contain large "grey" spaces instead of further content.
Safari (address bar): Prints the final/, hangs for a short time, then shows "quit unexpectedly".
Notes (content of note): Prints the final/, hangs for a long time, then shows "quit unexpectedly" dialog
Notes (name of new note): Prints the final/, hangs for a very short time, then shows "quit unexpectedly" dialog
Preview (search field): Prints the final/, hangs for a very short time, then shows "quit unexpectedly" dialog
I assume the "Prints the final/, hangs for a very short time, then shows "quit unexpectedly" dialog" behaviour is the "immediate quit" of the assertion failure, however things like Safari's behaviour are clearly a process within the app terminating without the app itself being terminated.
And it's not like I never tried drugs. I totally did. It just wasn't fun.
Not all drugs are the same... what did you try?
I for example hate the feeling of being drunk; hate the feeling of marijuana; dislike the "out of control" feeling of most amphetamines; and so on. Essentially, I really dislike anything that makes me feel like I have less control over myself than normal (including being "slower" as with marijuana). I however love the psychedelics - LSD, psilocybin, ibogaine, mescaline and so forth are wonderful (to me) - they change how I perceive the world, without changing my ability to control myself at all.
Not that I have anything against those who drink, smoke pot, or take amphetamines. I have good friends who do these things; but they're simply not for me.
"All the drugs you want?" I don't like or do drugs. Makes me feel extremely uncomfortable not feeling normal. I just don't get why people want to do drugs.
Do you ever drink coffee or black tea? If so, you do drugs. Do you take prescription medication when a doctor says you need it? If so, you do drugs. Do you smoke? If so, you do drugs. Do you drink alcohol? If so, you do drugs.
The vast majority of people in western society do drugs.
If however you meant you don't take any drugs for the purpose of mind-alteration: Do you ever drink coffee to feel more alert (e.g. your first coffee in the morning)? If so, you do. Do you take antidepressants the doctor prescribed to help you stablise your mood? If so, you do. Do you drink alcohol to "loosen up"? If so, you do.
Maybe you don't, but if not, I think you're missing out on a whole gamut of experience that is well worth trying at least.
I take LSD a few times a year these days. I take it in relatively high doses (around 300 micrograms is my preferred dosage). When I take it, the world seems very different to me for around 12 hours. There's often a level of confusion that can be disconcerting, but aside from that, I get to look at things in new and different ways. This alone has helped me become a far better person than I was without LSD - I've solved many difficult problems at my work (I'm a software developer) through flashes of insight that came while under the influence of it.
I guess the US may be different. Here in AU real acid hasn't been seen (at least by this punter) for decades.
I'm in Germany... but if you want real acid in AU, I know a few guys in Sydney (where I used to live) that could help;) The prices are terrible (around $15 to $25 per tab), but the quality is pretty good (around 100 to 150 micrograms per tab).
Now for the people buying drugs it's a whole different story. You have to show up in person and pick up the drugs. You don't know who you're dealing with, so there could easily be a cop waiting for you when you go to get it.
Depends on where you live. Here in Germany, I just get it mailed directly to my house via normal post. If a cop ever turns up with it, I can just deny I ever ordered it - they can't prove it; I lose the drugs and my money, but there's no trouble beyond that.
Not that it's ever happened - LSD ships in an envelope easily enough and there's nothing to make them suspicious of one plain white envelope out of the millions of others passing through the post office.
using a site like SR with care probably beats meeting shady, potentially gun-toting, meth addicted drug dealers in person
For me, that's the main reason. My substance of choice is LSD. It's relatively hard to come by in many places, and in such places, is generally only sold by the same types who also sell the types of drugs that make people overconfident, bulletproof-feeling and slightly psychotic. This is of course a bad mix and not the kind of people I want to associate with.
So, when I found Silk Road (I think around 3 years ago), it became my one-stop place for LSD purchases. Also, it has the advantage that I can purchase in bulk (I generally buy 25 tabs of around 75 micrograms LSD each, which when taken with friends will last me one year (I tend to take 3 to 4 tabs at a time for a somewhat more "intense" trip - I'm not really the "party drug" type, so for me, LSD is an exploration substance, not a party substance)). This kind of buying keeps the price down to better levels as well (my most recent purchase was just before christmas and I got 25 tabs for the equivalent of 80 euro).
Slashdot Mirror
I work at a small business. I'm the only one of "me". If I go on vacation, what are they going to do, hire one for two weeks? It would take that long just to train him.
If you're a bureaucratic nobody, sure. Take all the vacation you want.
I work at a giant multinational. But I'm still the only one of "me" (subject matter expert for Europe for our API technologies; some developers working under me, but none that can do all of what I do). When I take two weeks off, the work that I do has to be managed by a mix of my immediate superior and the developers working under me. It's not "easy" for them (otherwise I wouldn't be needed at all), but they get it done well enough that the company won't take a serious hit just because I'm not there.
I understand that a small business doesn't have the luxury of having redundancies in staffing, but they really should have some kind of plan for you not being there sometimes. What if something happens such as you're hospitalised from a car accident? If they haven't accounted for you not being there, they're only causing themselves problems.
No kidding. Don't take your vacation days, otherwise you can say goodbye to any chance of a promotion and hello to the front of the line for a layoff.
Here in Germany, whenever I DON'T take all of my annual leave owing, I get emails from our HR begging me to take it as soon as possible. Annual leave owing to employees is written up as a debt owing (from the company to the employee) here, so looks bad in the books.
Same thing with overtime - if I accrue too much, I pretty much get forced to take time off to knock it down a bit.
so youre under the impression that the impending euro zone failure is well planned and effective?
I don't believe there is an impending Eurozone failure. Things look a little rough at present for the Euro in general, but complete failure of the currency seems unlikely.
how much do you know about europe or are you just one of those "grass is greener on the other side" ppl?
Well, given that I live in Europe and do my best to keep up with current affairs in economics and politics, I like to think I know it reasonably well.
Are you trying to tell me that most of everywhere else in the world considers the level of retarded behavior and thought process in somewhere like San Francisco is "middle of the road"? I'm glad I don't have a visa...
The problem is actually that the WAY that "middle of the road" is implemented in such places is retarded.
Both traditional "left" (as practiced in parts of Europe) and traditional "right" (the US Conservatives) have their advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I lean significantly more "left" than "right", but I can certainly see some disadvantages to my preferences and some advantages to the other way of looking at things. However, when you take a "right" stance and then implement ONLY SOME "left" policies, you end up with a complete shitstorm that fails to work at all.
You can't have "a bit" of public transport and then ignore your road infrastructure - you need a LOT of WELL PLANNED public transport in order to even consider reducing your investment in roads. Likewise, you can't have a half-hearted attempt at a public health system and expect it to help everyone as it should. Nor can you simply throw in free education without changing a lot of the systems around it in order to compensate for the financial upheaval it would cause.
Now, I'm in favour of good public transport, public health-care, and free education; but to me, the way such things get discussed in the US miss the point entirely. The European left and the US left both share the goals of having these things, but the European left at least pays attention to how it can be achieved without fucking everything else up badly in the process; something I feel the US left ignores on the vast majority of occasions.
I'd love to have something like this.
Many years ago I used to contribute to quite a few open source projects here and there; but now I'm married with a daughter and my job has become more demanding, I found the projects I was contributing to were taking up too much time that I'd rather spend with my family. I'd still really like to be able to contribute it some way, but finding things to do is the hardest part. With a system such as this, I could get matched up to projects that meet my time limitations, proficiencies and interests and then actually start making real contributions again.
No-one thinks Steve Jobs is cool, except the douchiest of Apple fanatics. He wore sneakers and jeans and black turtleneck. That is not cool.
Actually, as a non Apple fanatic; I thought he was pretty cool. Went a bit too far in his later years though.
I think far too many people think of him only in his "hip" later years, showing off the latest iGadget to crowds of adoring fans then heading back to Apple and being a "hard taskmaster" to the developers. They then retroactively apply this personality to his earlier years and assume he was always a douche. By all accounts he was a bit of a revolutionary back then; a "fuck the system, I'll do what I want" kind of guy. I admire that in business leaders in the technical world.
He appeared to truly want things to be better for people. He probably didn't achieve that and definitely lost sight of some important aspects of "better" in his later years; but desire is what should be measured for the mettle of a man, not results. So, I still give him the benefit of the doubt - he wanted things to be better, and he tried really hard to achieve that result. That's something that I personally find pretty cool.
(although I'd rather swap my toilet paper for sand paper than be forced to use an iPhone or iPad as my daily mobile computing device - so you can hardly call me an Apple fan)
But you are right that this comment has absolutely NOTHING to do with the topic.
How about in a construction like "ladies' choice"? I highly doubt this was ever written or pronounced "ladieses choice" by anyone apart from Gollum.
As DMUTPeregrine wrote here (and somewhat expanded on by my answer here), the "es" form is actually a contraction of a yet older system where originally you'd say "Peter his cat", "Mary her dog" or "Ladies their choice" (actually none of these are accurate since the words themselves were different in Old English; but you can consider these "translations" for clarity). The apostrophe in "Ladies' choice" would therefore stand for the entire missing word "their"; although it almost certainly didn't happen directly, but rather in connection with the "his" -> "es" -> "'s" change.
Good question though... I hadn't thought of that case as being extremely non-obvious.
Yes, you're quite right, I just didn't want to confuse matters further for most people.
The same principle still applies in many other Germanic languages - for example German "Peter seine Katze" ("Peter his cat") or "Peters Katze" (Peter's cat); but for non-named subjects, "Die Katze des Mannes" (The cat (of) the man) and never "Der Manns Katze" or similar and "Der Mann seine Katze" also wouldn't be used, although probably generally understood.
Disclaimer: I'm not German and the above could be wrong - just going from my knowledge of linguistics and a couple of quick questions to my wife who is German.
Just remember that the apostrophe ALWAYS represents one or more letters having between removed.
Except for when it doesn't.
Chris has a cat. It's Chris's cat.
I don't see anything there that violates what I just said...
Except for when it does not.
Chris has a cat. It is Chrises cat.
I'm sure I've seen it and done it before... but for anyone wondering, I come up as pretty far economic left, social libertarian (which is no surprise to me).
Scores:
Economic Left/Right: -6.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.72
What is visible is that "Peter's cat", "Dog's bollocks", "Land's End" and so forth all have apostrophes, but "its omission" doesn't.
Well yes, but nor do "his cat", "her friend" or "their father". I don't see how "its" gets treated as the odd one out in this scenario.
I don't know why, the MAFIAA and artists are generally very left-wing.
Only from a US (and to a somewhat lesser extent, UK) point of view. Remember that "left" from a (mainland) European perspective is generally viewed as significantly further left of "left" from a US perspective. Some policies of the US left are seen as draconianly "right" by many Europeans.
It tends to be the case that in Europe, the word "liberal" still contains the core meaning of the word "liberty". It's definitely a moderated and controlled liberty (so, not "libertarian") but the goal is to promote as much freedom as possible for the greatest number of people.
This is the case whether you agree or disagree with HOW it is done (e.g. higher taxes may seem to be the opposite of "liberty"; but it's viewed in context of using the money to promote the liberty of those who have less without impinging TOO greatly on those who have more, increasing the baseline liberty enjoyed by citizens overall (remembering for an extreme case of the opposite that in a Dictatorship, the Dictator himself has "complete liberty" at the expense of all others; this represents the most possible liberty for one; but the least for the population as a whole. At a lesser scale, the US at present provides a high level of liberty for those of moderate to high income, but less for those that are in the lowest income classes)).
In my understanding, the US left tend to be more in favour of the "war on drugs" than the US right; but the typical European left tends to be against it, with the typical European right being moderately in favour of it.
The biggest problem of course comes from the fact that "left" and "right" are pretty crappy descriptors of politics. Being in favour of higher taxes and a strong social welfare/benefit system really has almost nothing to do with your policies on gun control, which in turn usually has nothing to do with your policy on immigration. I can easily imagine multiple parties all with different platforms on each of these that would never fit in to the neat "left"/"right" divide that is so commonly thrown about.
It's simple really. Just remember that the apostrophe ALWAYS represents one or more letters having between removed. In the case of the possessive, it's due to a missing "e" that used to be used (the possessive form was made with "es" - e.g. "Peter's cat" really represents "Peteres cat"). This is quite visible in other Germanic languages, but quite hidden in English due to the weird history of our language.
In the case of the possessive "its", it was never written "ites" and therefore does not receive an apostrophe. Similarly, "his" and "her" also never had the "es" ending and therefore also do not contain an apostrophe.
"It's" contains an apostrophe for the missing "i" from "it is" (or in some cases the missing "ha" from "it has") and so it becomes very clear that the apostrophe is required.
If all that is too confusing or simply too hard to remember, relate things back to "his" and "her". You can grammatically replace "its" with "his" and still make sense, so it similarly doesn't take an apostrophe ("Its impenetrable bureaucracy" -> "His impenetrable bureaucracy" (no problem)). "It's" on the other hand can never be grammatically replaced by "his" ("It's got impenetrable bureaucracy" -> "His got impenetrable bureaucracy" (meaningless)).
The alternative (and more common, but less obvious to me personally) method is to go the other way around and mentally try replacing "its"/"it's" with "it is" to see if that fits.
How to end piracy:
Create great content
Make that content super easy to buy
Release the content worldwide on the same day
Give it a fair price
Make sure it works on any device
Absolutely... here's a list of what I buy vs what I pirate and why:
Music: Pirate: Not easy enough to get the music I want; often at a price point I don't wish to pay; often comes with other music I don't want bundled. This is slowly changing though, so I'm keeping an eye on online music purchasing options and will happily start buying if the situation improves.
Television: Pirate: I'm a native English speaker and live in a country where English television isn't generally broadcast. Some shows are sold as DVD sets eventually, but usually not what I want to watch. If there was a service I could pay for to get the shows I want, when I want, I'd almost certainly take it.
Movies: Mostly buy: I'll go to the cinema for a movie if it's showing in English. I'll also purchase DVDs of older movies (and then rip them) if available. If not available, I'll pirate it.
Books: Mostly pirate: eBook DRM is a complete pain in the arse for transferring content around. I'll buy physical books from time to time, but don't like the space they take up, so usually it's just special things (like my signed Discworld collection). eBooks that come without DRM at a reasonable price, I'll definitely consider buying, but the selection is usually very thin.
Software: Mostly buy or use free: This has changed a lot in the last few years. It used to be that to get software, I'd have to go to a store, try to find what I wanted, hope I really want it, pay for it and go home. This encouraged me to pirate, especially due to the "unknown" factor of whether I actually want it without having seen it. These days, there's usually trial versions or sufficient information online; followed by a simple purchase system that's easy to use (for the few games I play; Steam and various "App Stores/Marketplaces" helped a lot for changing my behaviour here)
So, yes, I pirate quite a bit of stuff, but it used to be more than it is these days; and my motivation is exactly as you stated. If what I want can be provided easily, when I want it, for a fair price, and works on my devices (within reason), I'll happily buy it instead.
This could apply to your full time job as well--if you're eyeing another company because of their pay rates, try getting a job offer and using that to leverage yourself into working where you want, for the amount of money you want to get paid and the benefits you want.
Parent really needs to be modded up.
Far too often, I see people complaining about their pay and jumping around different jobs. I've been with the same company for 11 years now (in two locations), and believe it or not, there are companies that do still care about company loyalty. If you're good to them, they'll be good to you.
Many times in my career so far, I've been offered positions elsewhere for significantly more pay. Twice, it was a very tempting offer (good company and good environment in addition to good pay) and both times I've discussed it with my manager and our HR; who in both cases were able to come to an arrangement to increase my salary and/or other benefits sufficiently to make me want to stay (in one case, up to the offer I had elsewhere, and in the other case only slightly below).
Not saying I wouldn't leave here if I was made the right kind of offer and my employer couldn't or wouldn't come to the table over it; but thus far they've earned my loyalty and it'd take something pretty tempting to make me want to leave at this stage.
Wonder why no outsider takes software developers seriously? Imagine telling a mining engineer that they have to participate in sing-a-longs. Or telling any highly skilled professional that they can have free pizza and ping pong in place of pay reflecting their hours. It's still fucking amateur hour, and it hurts us all in the long term.
I'll skip the sing-a-longs; but pizza and ping pong sound good to me. Of course, I'll take it in ADDITION to pay reflecting my hours thankyouverymuch. It doesn't have to be one or the other you know.
Where I work, the pay is pretty good (not great, but pretty good - somewhat above average); overtime is either paid out or given in lieu (preferred to be given in lieu whereever possible); we get 30 days paid annual leave per year plus public holidays; no fixed start or finish time (just a certain "number of hours per week" that we use to calculate our overtime from); and network gaming in the office is expressly allowed as long as you're not counting it as "work time".
I've been thinking about instituting a company paid pizza day (perhaps every second Friday) in my team, but I'm still waiting for the right time to have that discussion with my boss (who is responsible for the budget of our whole department, so I can't make team decisions without his approval unfortunately)
Oh, don't worry, we save lots of money by eating roadkill and shoving our old people off cliffs, so that makes up for it. Really, where do you get your "information" about the US and other European nations from? Pravda? Or do you just make it up out of thin air yourself?
Woah, that's quite a strawman you built there. I never said the US was "poor"; just that I dispute the differences you're trying to assert.
You never actually denied what I said though - is it or is it not true that there are many things that Americans pay out of post-tax income that Europeans typically pay out of pre-tax income? If this is true, then that must be taken in to account when looking at post-tax incomes as a comparative factor, otherwise the European incomes appear artificially lower than reality.
As for "where I get my information" - I quite clearly said that it is all anecdotal from experience and I do not have any hard figures to back it up. If you or someone else presents me with figures, I'll be happy to have learned something. The figures you provided thus far though appear to have a bias that I'd like to be able to correct for (or easier: see some figures corrected for this) if we're going to have any kind of meaningful exchange.
There are two additional things that I think must also be taken in to account with the numbers.
First is the concept of using the "median" when looking at income. In my understanding, the distribution of income in Europe is a lot flatter than in the US. A waitress here probably earns more than a waitress there (although tips do make that harder to calculate with any kind of certainty); but a CEO there earns significantly more than a CEO here. This can move the median quite significantly (in either direction for either side). If you for example imagine that 60% of the households in Germany earn the equivalent of $21500 per year, and 40% of people in the US earn $10000 per year with the rest over $25000. The median in Germany will be $21500; the median in the US will be over $25000 but overall quality of life is generally speaking better for Germany (yes, that is arguable; but from my point of view, having less people at the level of poverty that causes additional crime is definitely an improvement of quality of life). This is of course a drastic oversimplification, but does highlight that median is not a good measure.
The second thing that I think is important with the numbers you provided is that it's household income. It makes no distinction between a family where one person works and a family where both parents work. Many people (including myself) consider it much better "quality of life" to have a parent at home with the children than to have two parents working. This could dramatically effect the household incomes figures, while not indicating a better standard of living in the higher income figures.
Well, and I was actually living and working in Europe for a dozen years, paying European taxes, getting European healthcare, living in European homes, watching European TV, and paying into European retirement plans (a really bad deal). When I moved to Europe, I actually believed all this stuff about a better standard of living, an educated and cultured populace, and liberal attitudes. At first, couldn't figure out why reality differed so much from the image Europe projects of itself, but after looking at the economic numbers, it became quite clear.
I'm sorry if your experience in Europe wasn't particularly pleasant. There are nice places and horrid places all over the world - including of course both in America and in Europe. So far, my experience here in Europe (6 years in Germany this time around so far (and probably the rest of my life) and 1.5 years last time when I lived in the Netherlands)
Here's a simple number that sums it all up; it's median equivalized household income, meaning it's not sensitive to outliers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income
Thanks for the link, however I might point out this from the wikipedia article you referenced:
Please note that the amounts shown in the following table are not "median household income" figures as defined by the U.S. Census, since median equivalised disposable household income reflects an amount remaining for spending or savings after deduction of taxes and other social contributions, according to the Eurostat definition.
To me, that makes this chart somewhat less useful for defining anything about standard of living and quality of life. The "deduction of taxes and other social contributions" varies wildly in many countries and also what is seen for that money also varies a great deal. Since a typical American will pay for many different kinds of costs from his AFTER tax income; and a typical European pays with them in BEFORE tax income; this needs to be taken in to account when looking at "take home pay".
I know what you mean, but you can't judge standard of living that way. Cities like London, Paris or Berlin look nice and well-maintained, but that doesn't mean that the people living there are well off. Many of those destinations are also highly subsidized, at the expense of the rest of the country.
I'm sorry but that's utter rubbish. The "moderately wealthy" in Europe don't tend to live in those big cities since they're scummy stinky hellholes (sorry to anyone living there...). Most of the really nice places in Europe are specifically outside of the big cities. Sure, the big cities have some nice "old quarters" where all the tourists go, but get away from that and they're really nowhere near as nice as the smaller towns for quality of life (especially things like larger apartments with all the modern trimmings - the big cities tend to have small, cramped apartments that haven't been renovated in over 20 years). If we were subsidising the cities, I'd expect them to be at least somewhat nicer than the rest of the country!
And I suspect that you tend to meet young people who tend to be just out of college and have lots of debt in the US; they quickly get richer, but then probably don't have time to hang out with European tourists anymore.
Well, I work for a large international company for the European HQ. When I first met colleagues from our US headquarters, it surprised me to see their comparatively low standard of living compared to my own (in fact, other than larger houses; I really viewed them as doing quite poorly compared to myself). I can't judge for a whole country, but I can at least say that the impression I got is that my own personal standard of living is higher than that of the person who does my exact job in the US; and for that matter, his boss as well.
And even if we were to take the chart you gave at face value (which I do find hard to do), you did originally say "Americans have a significantly higher standard of living than Europeans, and lower absolute poverty." (emphasis mine). The values I see there hardly qualify as "significant".
We shouldn't let people starve, and we should make sure everybody has a basic education and basic health care. But that can be done with a fraction of the entitlement spending we (US) or Europe is spending right now. Most government spending in the US and Europe goes to groups who really don't need it, but have the political power to push it through.
Let me first say that I totally agree with this statement. I think you're right on a lot of points, however:
First, the US is itself a "highly socialised democracy", with a vast social safety net. Americans have a significantly higher standard of living than Europeans, and lower absolute poverty.
This is something I absolutely can not believe without seeing some figures. I've been to the US many times, and I live in Europe. There are parts of Europe that are relatively poor, yes; but the largest and most populous areas all seem significantly better off than I've seen in the US. I see and hear of very few homeless here; the "poor" can get by without working themselves to death with 2 (or more!) jobs; and people here seem to be a lot happier than most of the people I met in the US.
Purely anecdotal of course, since I haven't looked up the figures. I'd invite you (or someone else) to do so though if you're going to make claims that fly in the face of my (and many other people's) experience.
It is of course worth noting that both Europe and the US have different areas with different levels of wealth. It's not fair to compare downtown Manhattan with downtown Bratislava; but it's also not fair to compare rural Germany with rural Arkansas. Any kind of comparison should be fair about exactly who and what is being measured.
My personal view is that the "ultra rich" in the US tend to be FAR richer than the "ultra rich" in Europe, while the poor tend to be poorer than in Europe (on average) and there's also a greater percentage of them. So simply taking averages (mean) can often be deceptive.
Typing the string has the same effect on the app as quitting the app. So.... have fun going to the apple store and quitting the apps.
Exact behaviour seems to depend on the app. Just tried it here and:
TextEdit: Prints the final /, hangs for a long time, then shows "quit unexpectedly" dialog /, hangs the tab indefinitely, tries to allow continued usage of Safari (in other tabs), but data won't load, and already open tabs when scrolled contain large "grey" spaces instead of further content. /, hangs for a short time, then shows "quit unexpectedly". /, hangs for a long time, then shows "quit unexpectedly" dialog /, hangs for a very short time, then shows "quit unexpectedly" dialog /, hangs for a very short time, then shows "quit unexpectedly" dialog
Safari (text box on webpage): Does not print the final
Safari (address bar): Prints the final
Notes (content of note): Prints the final
Notes (name of new note): Prints the final
Preview (search field): Prints the final
I assume the "Prints the final /, hangs for a very short time, then shows "quit unexpectedly" dialog" behaviour is the "immediate quit" of the assertion failure, however things like Safari's behaviour are clearly a process within the app terminating without the app itself being terminated.
And it's not like I never tried drugs. I totally did. It just wasn't fun.
Not all drugs are the same... what did you try?
I for example hate the feeling of being drunk; hate the feeling of marijuana; dislike the "out of control" feeling of most amphetamines; and so on. Essentially, I really dislike anything that makes me feel like I have less control over myself than normal (including being "slower" as with marijuana). I however love the psychedelics - LSD, psilocybin, ibogaine, mescaline and so forth are wonderful (to me) - they change how I perceive the world, without changing my ability to control myself at all.
Not that I have anything against those who drink, smoke pot, or take amphetamines. I have good friends who do these things; but they're simply not for me.
"All the drugs you want?" I don't like or do drugs. Makes me feel extremely uncomfortable not feeling normal. I just don't get why people want to do drugs.
Do you ever drink coffee or black tea? If so, you do drugs.
Do you take prescription medication when a doctor says you need it? If so, you do drugs.
Do you smoke? If so, you do drugs.
Do you drink alcohol? If so, you do drugs.
The vast majority of people in western society do drugs.
If however you meant you don't take any drugs for the purpose of mind-alteration:
Do you ever drink coffee to feel more alert (e.g. your first coffee in the morning)? If so, you do.
Do you take antidepressants the doctor prescribed to help you stablise your mood? If so, you do.
Do you drink alcohol to "loosen up"? If so, you do.
Maybe you don't, but if not, I think you're missing out on a whole gamut of experience that is well worth trying at least.
I take LSD a few times a year these days. I take it in relatively high doses (around 300 micrograms is my preferred dosage). When I take it, the world seems very different to me for around 12 hours. There's often a level of confusion that can be disconcerting, but aside from that, I get to look at things in new and different ways. This alone has helped me become a far better person than I was without LSD - I've solved many difficult problems at my work (I'm a software developer) through flashes of insight that came while under the influence of it.
I guess the US may be different. Here in AU real acid hasn't been seen (at least by this punter) for decades.
I'm in Germany... but if you want real acid in AU, I know a few guys in Sydney (where I used to live) that could help ;) The prices are terrible (around $15 to $25 per tab), but the quality is pretty good (around 100 to 150 micrograms per tab).
Now for the people buying drugs it's a whole different story. You have to show up in person and pick up the drugs. You don't know who you're dealing with, so there could easily be a cop waiting for you when you go to get it.
Depends on where you live. Here in Germany, I just get it mailed directly to my house via normal post. If a cop ever turns up with it, I can just deny I ever ordered it - they can't prove it; I lose the drugs and my money, but there's no trouble beyond that.
Not that it's ever happened - LSD ships in an envelope easily enough and there's nothing to make them suspicious of one plain white envelope out of the millions of others passing through the post office.
using a site like SR with care probably beats meeting shady, potentially gun-toting, meth addicted drug dealers in person
For me, that's the main reason. My substance of choice is LSD. It's relatively hard to come by in many places, and in such places, is generally only sold by the same types who also sell the types of drugs that make people overconfident, bulletproof-feeling and slightly psychotic. This is of course a bad mix and not the kind of people I want to associate with.
So, when I found Silk Road (I think around 3 years ago), it became my one-stop place for LSD purchases. Also, it has the advantage that I can purchase in bulk (I generally buy 25 tabs of around 75 micrograms LSD each, which when taken with friends will last me one year (I tend to take 3 to 4 tabs at a time for a somewhat more "intense" trip - I'm not really the "party drug" type, so for me, LSD is an exploration substance, not a party substance)). This kind of buying keeps the price down to better levels as well (my most recent purchase was just before christmas and I got 25 tabs for the equivalent of 80 euro).