Did you have any counter arguments or are you just trolling? I have lived and worked longer in Europe than in the US, but I have done both for more than ten years. Do you have any experience? Any comments? Any rational arguments?
and how is that when you consider the EU? Also look at historical figures. US unemployment is very rarely above two figures. EU unemployment is rarely below.
Good for you. I lived and worked in the US for ten years. I think I have more experience. What do you base your assumptions on? Newspaper reports? If so I will remind you of the forever important words of Thomas Jefferson: The man who only reads newspaper is less well educated that the man who never reads at all (from memory).
Ah, I love the ignorance of dumb Europeans. They (should be "we" since I live in Europe) think that our health care system is great and that the one in the US is really, really bad. Here is some interesting news for you: The US has, by a very significant margin, the best health care system in the world.
Europeans thinks that because in the US one needs insurance, that people without will not get treatment. That is not true. A hospital that received a sick patent in an ER is required to treat that patient, insurance or not. ERs in the US equals socialized health care, it is just that nobody, Dem or Republican, will admit to that. Will they get the very best treatment, probably not, but they will get significantly better treatment than a European on a waiting list for an operation that may or may not come before he dies.
In the US, if you have insurance, which the vast majority of the US population actually does have, the treatment you will get is significantly better than in any country in the world. This is a major reason that the US spends significantly more per person in health care than any other country.
Also, and very importantly, US citizens, through taxes and insurance, sponsors to a great degree health care in Europe. They do this by paying for medications developed by US companies in full, not at cut-rate prices. In this way, the people in the US pays for development and testing of drugs that Europeans get access to. Europe is hardly in the forefront of pharmaceutical development.
You know this? How? Have you lived in both places? I have. Ten years living and working in the US. It has plenty flaws for sure. When it comes to the treatment of individuals they pale in comparison to Europe though. The EU, as an example, is the biggest threat to democracy this side of 1933.
I guess anybody who disagrees with you must be a troll. That's the/. equivalent of throwing a tantrum. If you can't disagree with someone without accusing them of being Glen Beck, I suggest you refrain from commenting until some responsible adult tells you you have finished your teens.
I'd like to have a mechanism in place to make both parties behave responsibly
You do. It's in the definition of consenting adults. If you have an adult friend who regularly throws temper tantrums for no rational reason you disengage from that relationship. Same with a temper-tantrum employer. Easy.
Nope. Because the US is (mostly, there are obvious and absurd exceptions) governed in a way that assumes consenting adults can engage in mutually beneficial relationships without a nanny telling them what to do as if they were five year old children. In Europe most laws are written to the point where they assume the ordinary citizenry are mentally handicapped five year olds that needs to be monitored, watched and told what to do at all times by responsible adults.
Most states in the US (it is dependent on state) has an at-will employment law. This means that the employer can let you go for any reason whatsoever or no reason at all. This is based on the fact that you and your employer are basically consenting adults engaged in a mutually beneficial work-pay relationship. In other words, the law treats you like you are an adult.
This is different from most countries in Europe, where the law basically assumes that the employer-employee is in a exploitative relationship with the employer exploiting the employee. In other words, most European countries treat you like you are a dumb-ass, no-brains child that needs to be protected against cruel and terrible employers. The European system is absurd. NOTE: I live and work in a European country. Some countries - France is an example, have laws that are literally insane, where employers can basically not fire anybody for any reason whatsoever.
The European system is a major contributor to the current problems in Europe, and it is also a major contributor to the fact that innovation, development and other important functions haven't worked in Europe since before WWII. Europe is going to (have to) change these laws. They are absurd.
This is really bad maths, and here is some more bad (but not as bad as yours) math to counter your argument. Amsterdam metro has about 2.15 million people on about 3 500 sq km of land. That amounts to about 615 person per sq km. With a population density of Amsterdam, which has beautiful parks and recreational areas, the world should be able to house some 92 billion people with ease.
gimp is written by experts for experts, so don't knock it just cos you can't figure it out
Sigh. Yes, Gimp is a very capable piece of software, but the user interface is a complete mess. Yes, you can do most of what you can do in PS in Gimp, but at a cost. Time and patience. Gimp has exactly one feature where it beats PS, and that is price. I value my time quite highly though, and that makes PS the clear winner. The money I paid for PS is recovered quite quickly in the time I save.
file searches are so much quicker by simply using "locate" on the cli, and i don't have to put up with dialog box hell
CLI in general is always faster than mouse and windows. This is why I install Cygwin as the first piece of software on any Windows PC I have to use. Also, Windows has PowerShell, which, if you take the time to learn it, is significantly more powerful than any shell programming available for Linux. I used to do all kinds of automation on Linux using bash, it can not compete at all against PowerShell.
i can browse the internet without fear
So can I. Given the fact that most attacks today are social engineering, Linux doesn't actually have any significant advantage over Windows here. Sure, I would highly recommend using virus scanning software on Windows, but it will not protect you from the most common forms of attacks today. Also, if users were to abandon Windows in droves for Linux, Linux would quickly be the target of virus writers, and it isn't actually inherently more secure than Windows. Believe it or not. At least not if you run something that is later than Windows XP (which you should).
there are applications for linux
No, there isn't. There is no video editing software for Linux (outside of specialty software). Not professional video editing, nor enthusiast video editing. Windows have many different packages from Adobe, Sony Creative Software, Corel and others. There is not user friendly image editing software for Linux. There is nothing like Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture on Linux. Yes, there is Open Office, but for the average user, they are nowhere near as accessible as their Microsoft counterparts. Most/.ers hate the ribbon, but forget that more than 90% of users do not even know that it is possible to search a document using Ctrl+F (or the menu equivalent). Most users search their documents by scanning through them according to a study by Google. It turns out that these users, the 90%, use the ribbon interface much more, and they actually are more comfortable with it. I think it is a good idea for Microsoft to design their user interfaces for the 90% rather than for you and me. If we don't "understand" the ribbon it is simply because we are obstinate.
if windows users are too lazy to learn how to do things on linux
and there you put your finger on the problem. Linux users thinks that users who are unwilling to put up with badly designed user interfaces are "lazy". That's pure bullshit. In fact it is the opposite. The Linux developers are too lazy and too incompetent to figure out how to create software that is usable by the average Joe. That is why Linux will never be a contender on the desktop.
If they were, why were the results so different? Reagan presided over an economy that added nearly twenty million jobs. He presided over sixty months of growth. Reagan grew discretionary spending 1.9%, which is too much, but Bush increased it a staggering 5.3%, which is insane.
Yes, there are similarities, but there are many similarities between Clinton and Bush too, that doesn't mean they are the same.
Reagan presided over the 1981 tax cuts, biggest in US history. For his friends? Hardly. What was the result? 60 (yes, sixty) months of uninterrupted economic growth, the highest since measurements started. In those 60 months, 15 million new jobs were created. Interestingly the tax cuts, and the following economic expansion, gave the government an increase in revenue. During the Reagan years, federal discretionary spending increased just shy of two percent. Under Bush it increased a massive 5.3 percent. The difference is significant.
Also, I have yet to see anyone argue that Reagan expanded entitlement programs to the insane degree that Bush did.
I would recommend the book "Impostor" by Bartlett, for an analysis of where Bush is no conservative at all. Reagan was.
but the neo-conseravatives. There are many conservatives that do not subscribe to the following of reagan and W.
Honestly, the above is a silly statement. Reagan would not support the W. regime. Not even close. W. and Reagan were almost that opposite ends of the political spectrum. Reagan was, for example, able to compromise when needed. Reagan was also fiscally conservative (though somewhat of a big spender) while W. was no such thing. Not many people increased the Fed the way W. did, a distinctly left-leaning behavior.
Bush Sr. was appalled at the W. policies. Reagan would be rotating in his grave.
One thing that should also be noted here, several of the major players in the neo-conservative movement, particularly the "intellectuals" that formed it, are ex democrats. Not only are they ex democrats, they are people who were well to the left in the democratic party when it came to fiscal policies. It is amusing when current conservatives lump Obama in with ancient communists since neocons traditionally are (fiscally) well to the left of Obama. G. W. Bush was also, fiscally, well to the left of Obama.
There is a huge difference between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives. The biggest difference is that the former exists in the GOP while the latter no longer do.
and for people with enough brains to not have to try to enlarge their balls by using 1980s technologies to develop software. Like VI(M) for example. A great editor for editing text files, but not a tool for developing software.
Ever have to chase down an issue running PHP with IIS?
No, I have not, but I am not inclined to run PHP on IIS either. To be honest, I am about as likely to use PHP on any platform as I am to use Visual Basic 6 to do real work. PHP is Yet Another Abomination That Should Be Banned:-)
I have friends who swear by Notepad++, for some reason I have never grown to like it. I think it is the simplicity of code + F5 + debug. VS2010 has a very, very capable debugger. I have not seen its like in any environment, but I have heard people say there are better debuggers for Smalltalk. I have so far not had to opportunity to work with Smalltalk.
My list of preferred web application development environments in order of preference:
Ruby with Sinatra (or Rails)
Play! Framework using Scala
ASP.NET MVC 4 and C# with the async CTP
Play Framework and Java
Things I have worked with that comes in the Abomination category - in no particular order.
ASP.NET Web Forms - programming language irrelevant
Anything with JBoss in it
Almost anything with J2EE in it
PHP or anything with BASIC in it (just felt like lumping them together, no special reason)
Most PERL stuff, but not all of it. PERL can be good and it can be bad. Depends on the task. Most PERL stuff can be done better in Ruby though.
I have seen the same (and worse) with people developing on JBoss and Java. What's your point? That some developers are bad? Honestly, working day-to-day in VS2010, NetBeans and Eclipse, VS is by a good margin the better IDE. C# is what Java could have become had its development not been handed over to Yet Another Committee With a Decision Making Disorder (TM). In many ways, C# is moving closer to good stuff like Ruby and Rails (and Sinatra). Look at what the Play! Framework guys did with version 2.0. Not implement it in C# obviously, but look at their rendering engine. Highly Razor inspired.
Prior to v 6, IIS was junk. At 6 it was OK. IIS v7 is actually very good.
On the other hand, if someone ever asks me again to maintain a Web Forms (often known as ASP.NET) project, I will decline the kind invitation. If they insist I will leave the company. Web Forms is (IMnsHO) an abomination. As is JSP. Same with the horror that is JBoss Seam.
Slashdot Mirror
Retarded, partisan drivel
Wow. That was a well founded, well argued position. Next time I need the leftist version of Glen Beck, give me a call.
Don't be dishonest, and don't pretend this approximates anything anywhere near a majority opinion.
Don't be ignorant. Learn to read. I never presented this as anything but my opinion. Don't be a moron. Don't make straw men.
The people. That is why the US has the second amendment.
Did you have any counter arguments or are you just trolling? I have lived and worked longer in Europe than in the US, but I have done both for more than ten years. Do you have any experience? Any comments? Any rational arguments?
Your story is one of personal trauma. How is it relevant to a discussion on general principles? Hint: It isn't. Anecdotes never are.
and how is that when you consider the EU? Also look at historical figures. US unemployment is very rarely above two figures. EU unemployment is rarely below.
really being used as nothing more than expendable serfs by the rich and powerful
Wow. Interesting thoughts. So what time machine did you arrive into the 21st century on? How did you manage to get a hike on a time machine in 1780?
Having visited the US
Good for you. I lived and worked in the US for ten years. I think I have more experience. What do you base your assumptions on? Newspaper reports? If so I will remind you of the forever important words of Thomas Jefferson: The man who only reads newspaper is less well educated that the man who never reads at all (from memory).
Ah, I love the ignorance of dumb Europeans. They (should be "we" since I live in Europe) think that our health care system is great and that the one in the US is really, really bad. Here is some interesting news for you: The US has, by a very significant margin, the best health care system in the world.
Europeans thinks that because in the US one needs insurance, that people without will not get treatment. That is not true. A hospital that received a sick patent in an ER is required to treat that patient, insurance or not. ERs in the US equals socialized health care, it is just that nobody, Dem or Republican, will admit to that. Will they get the very best treatment, probably not, but they will get significantly better treatment than a European on a waiting list for an operation that may or may not come before he dies.
In the US, if you have insurance, which the vast majority of the US population actually does have, the treatment you will get is significantly better than in any country in the world. This is a major reason that the US spends significantly more per person in health care than any other country.
Also, and very importantly, US citizens, through taxes and insurance, sponsors to a great degree health care in Europe. They do this by paying for medications developed by US companies in full, not at cut-rate prices. In this way, the people in the US pays for development and testing of drugs that Europeans get access to. Europe is hardly in the forefront of pharmaceutical development.
The US is really no better or worse than Europe
You know this? How? Have you lived in both places? I have. Ten years living and working in the US. It has plenty flaws for sure. When it comes to the treatment of individuals they pale in comparison to Europe though. The EU, as an example, is the biggest threat to democracy this side of 1933.
I guess anybody who disagrees with you must be a troll. That's the /. equivalent of throwing a tantrum. If you can't disagree with someone without accusing them of being Glen Beck, I suggest you refrain from commenting until some responsible adult tells you you have finished your teens.
I'd like to have a mechanism in place to make both parties behave responsibly
You do. It's in the definition of consenting adults. If you have an adult friend who regularly throws temper tantrums for no rational reason you disengage from that relationship. Same with a temper-tantrum employer. Easy.
Because the USA is run by Big Business
Nope. Because the US is (mostly, there are obvious and absurd exceptions) governed in a way that assumes consenting adults can engage in mutually beneficial relationships without a nanny telling them what to do as if they were five year old children. In Europe most laws are written to the point where they assume the ordinary citizenry are mentally handicapped five year olds that needs to be monitored, watched and told what to do at all times by responsible adults.
I prefer the government treat me as an adult.
Most states in the US (it is dependent on state) has an at-will employment law. This means that the employer can let you go for any reason whatsoever or no reason at all. This is based on the fact that you and your employer are basically consenting adults engaged in a mutually beneficial work-pay relationship. In other words, the law treats you like you are an adult.
This is different from most countries in Europe, where the law basically assumes that the employer-employee is in a exploitative relationship with the employer exploiting the employee. In other words, most European countries treat you like you are a dumb-ass, no-brains child that needs to be protected against cruel and terrible employers. The European system is absurd. NOTE: I live and work in a European country. Some countries - France is an example, have laws that are literally insane, where employers can basically not fire anybody for any reason whatsoever.
The European system is a major contributor to the current problems in Europe, and it is also a major contributor to the fact that innovation, development and other important functions haven't worked in Europe since before WWII. Europe is going to (have to) change these laws. They are absurd.
This is really bad maths, and here is some more bad (but not as bad as yours) math to counter your argument. Amsterdam metro has about 2.15 million people on about 3 500 sq km of land. That amounts to about 615 person per sq km. With a population density of Amsterdam, which has beautiful parks and recreational areas, the world should be able to house some 92 billion people with ease.
Overpopulation is a myth.
gimp is written by experts for experts, so don't knock it just cos you can't figure it out
Sigh. Yes, Gimp is a very capable piece of software, but the user interface is a complete mess. Yes, you can do most of what you can do in PS in Gimp, but at a cost. Time and patience. Gimp has exactly one feature where it beats PS, and that is price. I value my time quite highly though, and that makes PS the clear winner. The money I paid for PS is recovered quite quickly in the time I save.
file searches are so much quicker by simply using "locate" on the cli, and i don't have to put up with dialog box hell
CLI in general is always faster than mouse and windows. This is why I install Cygwin as the first piece of software on any Windows PC I have to use. Also, Windows has PowerShell, which, if you take the time to learn it, is significantly more powerful than any shell programming available for Linux. I used to do all kinds of automation on Linux using bash, it can not compete at all against PowerShell.
i can browse the internet without fear
So can I. Given the fact that most attacks today are social engineering, Linux doesn't actually have any significant advantage over Windows here. Sure, I would highly recommend using virus scanning software on Windows, but it will not protect you from the most common forms of attacks today. Also, if users were to abandon Windows in droves for Linux, Linux would quickly be the target of virus writers, and it isn't actually inherently more secure than Windows. Believe it or not. At least not if you run something that is later than Windows XP (which you should).
there are applications for linux
No, there isn't. There is no video editing software for Linux (outside of specialty software). Not professional video editing, nor enthusiast video editing. Windows have many different packages from Adobe, Sony Creative Software, Corel and others. There is not user friendly image editing software for Linux. There is nothing like Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture on Linux. Yes, there is Open Office, but for the average user, they are nowhere near as accessible as their Microsoft counterparts. Most /.ers hate the ribbon, but forget that more than 90% of users do not even know that it is possible to search a document using Ctrl+F (or the menu equivalent). Most users search their documents by scanning through them according to a study by Google. It turns out that these users, the 90%, use the ribbon interface much more, and they actually are more comfortable with it. I think it is a good idea for Microsoft to design their user interfaces for the 90% rather than for you and me. If we don't "understand" the ribbon it is simply because we are obstinate.
if windows users are too lazy to learn how to do things on linux
and there you put your finger on the problem. Linux users thinks that users who are unwilling to put up with badly designed user interfaces are "lazy". That's pure bullshit. In fact it is the opposite. The Linux developers are too lazy and too incompetent to figure out how to create software that is usable by the average Joe. That is why Linux will never be a contender on the desktop.
Why?
W policies were a FULL repeat of reagan's
If they were, why were the results so different? Reagan presided over an economy that added nearly twenty million jobs. He presided over sixty months of growth. Reagan grew discretionary spending 1.9%, which is too much, but Bush increased it a staggering 5.3%, which is insane.
Yes, there are similarities, but there are many similarities between Clinton and Bush too, that doesn't mean they are the same.
Reagan presided over the 1981 tax cuts, biggest in US history. For his friends? Hardly. What was the result? 60 (yes, sixty) months of uninterrupted economic growth, the highest since measurements started. In those 60 months, 15 million new jobs were created. Interestingly the tax cuts, and the following economic expansion, gave the government an increase in revenue. During the Reagan years, federal discretionary spending increased just shy of two percent. Under Bush it increased a massive 5.3 percent. The difference is significant.
Also, I have yet to see anyone argue that Reagan expanded entitlement programs to the insane degree that Bush did.
I would recommend the book "Impostor" by Bartlett, for an analysis of where Bush is no conservative at all. Reagan was.
So what is the GOP then?
but the neo-conseravatives. There are many conservatives that do not subscribe to the following of reagan and W.
Honestly, the above is a silly statement. Reagan would not support the W. regime. Not even close. W. and Reagan were almost that opposite ends of the political spectrum. Reagan was, for example, able to compromise when needed. Reagan was also fiscally conservative (though somewhat of a big spender) while W. was no such thing. Not many people increased the Fed the way W. did, a distinctly left-leaning behavior.
Bush Sr. was appalled at the W. policies. Reagan would be rotating in his grave.
One thing that should also be noted here, several of the major players in the neo-conservative movement, particularly the "intellectuals" that formed it, are ex democrats. Not only are they ex democrats, they are people who were well to the left in the democratic party when it came to fiscal policies. It is amusing when current conservatives lump Obama in with ancient communists since neocons traditionally are (fiscally) well to the left of Obama. G. W. Bush was also, fiscally, well to the left of Obama.
There is a huge difference between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives. The biggest difference is that the former exists in the GOP while the latter no longer do.
Are you implying that PHP is less of an abomination than Ruby. If so I'd recommend you go back to Computers 101.
and for people with enough brains to not have to try to enlarge their balls by using 1980s technologies to develop software. Like VI(M) for example. A great editor for editing text files, but not a tool for developing software.
Ever have to chase down an issue running PHP with IIS?
No, I have not, but I am not inclined to run PHP on IIS either. To be honest, I am about as likely to use PHP on any platform as I am to use Visual Basic 6 to do real work. PHP is Yet Another Abomination That Should Be Banned :-)
I have friends who swear by Notepad++, for some reason I have never grown to like it. I think it is the simplicity of code + F5 + debug. VS2010 has a very, very capable debugger. I have not seen its like in any environment, but I have heard people say there are better debuggers for Smalltalk. I have so far not had to opportunity to work with Smalltalk.
My list of preferred web application development environments in order of preference:
Things I have worked with that comes in the Abomination category - in no particular order.
I have seen the same (and worse) with people developing on JBoss and Java. What's your point? That some developers are bad? Honestly, working day-to-day in VS2010, NetBeans and Eclipse, VS is by a good margin the better IDE. C# is what Java could have become had its development not been handed over to Yet Another Committee With a Decision Making Disorder (TM). In many ways, C# is moving closer to good stuff like Ruby and Rails (and Sinatra). Look at what the Play! Framework guys did with version 2.0. Not implement it in C# obviously, but look at their rendering engine. Highly Razor inspired.
Prior to v 6, IIS was junk. At 6 it was OK. IIS v7 is actually very good.
On the other hand, if someone ever asks me again to maintain a Web Forms (often known as ASP.NET) project, I will decline the kind invitation. If they insist I will leave the company. Web Forms is (IMnsHO) an abomination. As is JSP. Same with the horror that is JBoss Seam.