I have to laugh at a post that tries to be erudite by using "whom" (usually incorrectly) but doesn't know the difference between there, their, and they're. Those kinds of aliteracies really slow my reading down.
Yes, those are probably even worse... It makes me wonder how they were taught to write English. Nowadays you almost semi-automatically pick up on English just by hanging on the Internet a lot of the time, even if you've never met a native English speaker. One would expect grammar to be improved by it as well, but apparently not...
By the way, I learned two new words from your post, thanks:)
I'm more concerned with errors on non-idiomatic speech, like "should of" and "could of" instead of "should have" and "could have"
THIS, a thousand times this! I'm not much of a grammar nazi, as I view communication to be the primarry purpose of text and not syntax... but "should of" actively takes chunks out of my brain every time I read it. It honestly makes me feel like I'm trying to talk to a retard, it just makes so little sense.
The worst part is, while currently it's almost exclusively native English speakers who make this mistake (which is pretty odd), soon enough people like me who learnt by practice are going to start using it en masse, and then it'll be here to stay (like "could care less" - another one perpetuated by native speakers, btw).
I'm all for legalization of a lot of substances and ending the Violence Due To Illegalization, but this one is so over-the-top in terms of both addiction and toxicity that I don't know what a rational response could be.
You forget the fact that the only reason these people are injecting this shit is because they're hooked on heroin, and can't get any of it.
Addiction at this level is not like how most Slashdotters seem to imagine it, it's not just a strong craving "that you will weather if you are smart like me". The physical pain is just one part; the psychological addiction part is the one that will short-circuit your rationality by simply changing your thoughts (pretty much all the time) from how bad or dangerous this is, to how good it feels when you do it. And when you're deciding whether or not to do something, and the only argument your mind even takes into consideration is "it feels fucking awesome and I want to feel it again", it doesn't matter how smart you are; you're going to do it.
Aside from the obvious screaming lunacy of militarizing even Earth orbit, I have to wonder what the hell the "leaders" of this new Amerikan Union are trying to accomplish with this. Surely if they were responding to a threat, they wouldn't be announcing it for the whole planet to know. They want the whole planet to go "fuck, I'm scared of those Americans".
Well, I am. The USSA is terrifying at this point. But that's not going to make people think, "ooh we better be nice to the Americans so they don't kick our asses" - what they're going to be thinking will be more along the lines of "the Americans are dooming us all, we must do something to stop them".
Which, come to think of it, might be exactly what they want: a war that they didn't start.
This is completely off-topic, but try to re-read your post imagining you were reading someone else's. You are boiling over with frustration, and I'm not convinced it's all other people's fault like you say. People are inconceivably diverse not just genetically but behaviorally, emotionally, in the way they think about and perceive the world and other people in it, as well as in how they communicate. Since most people do not have any traits (like being a genius) that stand significantly out from the rest, they have an easier time finding and learning the efficient ways to get their thoughts across to others similar to them (ie., the majority), but they too have to put effort into actively trying to picture the other person's frame of reference in order to do that well. People like you, me, and a large portion of the Slashdot/programmer crowd, often have a harder time with this, and if you know for certain that your intelligence is radically different (notice I did not say 'better', but 'different' - being "better" is irrelevant here) from that of the people in your environment, it's not hard to see it's going to make communication more difficult. Most geeks and true geniuses never find a way to deal with this well, ending up in more and more isolation as they go, ending up as depressed, frustrated jerks who belittle everyone else who they perceive to be less intelligent than them. (Despite the fact that anyone considered a "genius" would certainly know intelligence is not a simple one-dimensional continuum from dumb to smart.) It seems to me like you are destined for the same fate, unless you can put in the effort to change how you relate to others. I'm basing this assumption on the fact that you seem to be convinced everything that is wrong about your work environment is the fault of those "stupid" other people, and that all your frustration with them is clearly a simple consequence of you being "too smart for your own good". I'm sure someone as smart as you can see what a load of bull that is!;)
I try to avoid situations where my intelligence may peek out, as it ultimately results in frustration.
Yet, here you are writing a lengthy post basically amounting to how you are a certain genius and how much smarter you are than everyone around you, and how much your life sucks because of that. Well, think about it: if we consider increased intelligence to be an enabler, a trait that lets you perceive more detail, recognize patterns easier and seize more opportunities in life (which I believe it is), and that people with less intelligence than yourself are thus more generally restricted in their range of options, isn't it then your responsibility, with all your extra capabilities, to find where the bottleneck is, to figure out how to communicate your ideas better? (You can start with a specific person like your boss, but if you do figure it out it will be so much better you probably won't stop there;]) Or (failing that), simply to minimize friction between you and them? After all, you're saying you have "too much" intelligence and this is causing problems with the "stupid people", yet if a "stupid" person can integrate themselves just fine, shouldn't you be able to do the same thing and then some?
I think the primary reason many of us geeks are exhibiting the same antagonistic attitude towards others as you are, is that the vast majority of people - whose minds do not contain the oceans of wisdom, knowledge and insight we believe our minds do - simply get more practice interacting with people throughout their lives, as they do not have anywhere near as many options to occupy themselves as we do... Good social interaction (where you actually strive to understand each other) is a very rewarding experience (even - or especially - for an introvert), except you and I are additionally capable of finding or creating entirely new rewarding experiences for ourselves, even when all we have are the contents of our own skull. Imagine losing that abil
As has been discussed earlier, a polygraph test is a tool in the same toolkit as the War o(n|f) Terror and the TSA security theatre. Its effectiveness comes from nothing but the intimidation factor - if the belief that your lies will be "scientifically" detected persists, you can get the victim to blurt out all his secrets by simply telling them that you "know" they're lying. They will feel like they've lost even the privacy of their own thoughts, and with that predicament it can seem pretty futile to resist giving in.
That psychological end state is pretty much what torturing during interrogations used to accomplish, until they realized that people will say anything they think their captors want to hear. With this technique that issue is solved, since the victim believes their captors will know whether he's telling the truth.
Obviously, this means that the actual effectiveness of lie detectors must be made, and kept, a widely-believed "fact", and people who express doubts (or provide proof) must be discredited. After all, they were trying to cheat the Establishment, so they must be evil, immoral, scheming criminals who just lie for personal gain.
I feel like I'm barking up a dead (burning) tree here, so to speak, but what you just did is exactly the kind of non-thinking knee-jerk self-defense of what America used to be that the grandparent poster was so eloquently talking about. To reiterate:
Not only is our citizenry unable to have an intelligent conversation about world affairs, but they can't be led by facts or argument to any truth that conflicts with their jingoist worldview.
And sure enough, here you go excusing your country's willful atrocities (ones previously reserved for third-world shitholes and dictatorships) and stating things like "there most certainly is a process at gitmo, even if you don't know or understand it" as if you temporarily forgot what "due process" actually means. (I know you know, you were probably just too pissed off to argue rationally - I hope.)
Sadly, cementing the GP's points in the minds of international readers, you go on to display your eerie lack of understanding of the outside world - or even the willingness to read or believe a fact stated numerous times in this very discussion - by stating:
China has more prisoners by what an order of magnitude or 2.
Your thought experiments are retarded.
China has more than four times the population of the United States, in addition to being an oppressive communist dictatorship, so that should be a fair assumption to make. In fact, in order for the US to have as many people in prison as there are in China, it would need to be locking up a chunk of its population 4.3 times as large.
As you can see, the United States has 1.5x as many people in prison (2.4 out of 311mil) as China does out of 1.344 billion (from a population that size, 1.6mil is not really a large amount). So in fact, despite what you were led to believe, your country actually imprisons a group of people 7 times as large as China does compared to the size of your country.
You should be skeptical of all propaganda, but it does tell you a lot about the country that produces it. Try reading some North Korean propaganda: http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm and tell me what sort of country produces something like that.
Let's take a look at some of the current articles, shall we?
War Veteran Delegates Leave Delegation of Korean War Veterans of Russia Leaves S. Korean Believers Slam IS's Interference in Election S. Korean Students Protest against IS's Interference in Election DPRK's Victory in War Marked in Bulgaria, Czech Republic Anniversary of Korean People's Victory in War Celebrated in Various Countries Kim Jong Un Meets Women Soccer Players Kim Jong Un Watches Men's Soccer Match
The crushing heat can reach thirty celcius. In somewhere like the southern US they'd laugh at that
30C (86F) is stifling heat? We laugh at that in the Northern US. True, it would be a little uncomfortable indoors without A/C or at least good ventilation, but you would have to start talking at least 35C or maybe 40C before making US southerners uncomfortable outside.
That's quite "moderate" by mainland European standards, too: I'm sitting in 34C indoors at the moment (Central Europe), and it's almost 40 outside (93F/104F). I've had hotter summers, too, but only in the last couple of years; I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but I distinctly remember the weather being completely different (more predictable, less extreme) as I was growing up...
PS. Kudos for being the first American I've seen on Slashdot who recognizes noone else uses F.:-) As an aside - seeing as this article is already a few days old and people are not discussing anymore - have you, over there in the US, experienced the same kind of perceptible change in weather patterns in the last 10-15 years? It might just be faster here because my country is in a rather peculiar spot geographically.
Mod this comment up, please. While GP poster's original point was valid, his primary argument pivoted around her being a newcomer to the group (an assumption that I can't help but attribute to the complainant being referred to as "she" and not "he"), and when it was shown that she is not, in fact, a newcomer, the GP just reiterated his point using different words and arrived at the exact same conclusion. (If they [ie. the group she is also a part of] are unwilling to change, SHE should just accept it or leave)
How long before the current administration uses this against their political foes, if they haven't been already?
It'd be ridiculous to even consider them not having done it already. Systematic centralization of power didn't happen by itself, and it didn't happen just for show either. They amassed all that power to use it.
Just out of the last few tabs I have open (without even searching), here's one example:
You're making the mistake of assuming everyone speaks your language.
They don't.
Since letter frequencies and usage differ significantly from language to language, the net result that would have is forcing a lot of people to get used to a new layout, while only benefitting a fraction of them (and disadvantaging many others).
This is largely off-topic, but I found the Guardian article you linked to to be surprisingly interesting, especially this paragraph:
The Mail holds aloft the banner of press freedom when citing the public's right to know about Hugh Grant's private life, but it appears to find it unacceptable for a paper to inform the people that their privacy has been compromised by their own government.
That is unexpectedly outspoken and clear-sighted for a mainstream newspaper that should basically have been standing in the same line-up that The Mail, etc. are forming.
From where I am right now in Europe, I am seeing a disturbing trend of media outlets being secretly herded together, formerly independent newspapers and radio & TV channels being bought out and control over them centralized. I'm afraid this is not coincidental, seeing how crucial the controlled news media in the US is to manipulating public perception of national issues.
Last I heard, Internet connection speeds are significantly behind the curve in large parts of the US. Still, better than Australia, but not quite "pretty fucking fast" territory!:)
That's how we write dates in Hungary/Central Europe too (not sure if our neighbors do as well), I always thought it's the most logical way of writing it - most significant part first. After all, you don't say "it's 35 seconds, 6 minutes and 5pm" when referring to the time-of-day do you?:)
It's frustrating and scary to me too, and I'm nowhere near as close to the fire as you are!
Since you mentioned Nazi Germany's case, the irony is that the social climate that allowed Hitler to rise to power was also largely based on patriotism (<our country> is/was the mightiest) and paranoia about the "enemy" corrupting that great country of theirs - without that fear, Hitler's "it's all because of the Jews" propaganda wouldn't have worked, or at least nowhere near as effectively. In today's USA, it's terrrists and Muslims instead of Jews, but one can't ignore the similarities with the fear-mongering tactics being applied (making people feel as afraid as if they were at war). Except, of course, in the 21st century, all you have to do is sprinkle them into the News Cycle and add water!
That's right, Hungary. And yeah, we do have quite a lot to worry about right now as well, what with Mr. Ego running the show. But bigger problems?
Hell no.
In our case, it boils down to us having put the (truly) wrong person in the leading position, and we are now paying for it - but it's causing a great uproar in the process, both inside the country and outside it. He is not getting away with it, and he is just one guy. Once he's out of the way, we can start fixing things. In the USA's case, well... do you really see any chance of that happening?
This isn't some random whacko politician's dystopic reign, that will only last while he's there. What's happening now in the USA is systematic. And it is continuing effortlessly under the command of (at least) the second administration/president now. Even large-scale citizen unrest has happened, was effectively dealt with, and is apparently gone with no effect at all.
I genuinely don't know what to say to Americans now. It's not like they can just pack up and move to the next country over. But I sure as hell wouldn't be staying another week if I was there... what a sad ending to a country with great promise.
Some decades ago, when the Space Race happened, people began saying that humanity has entered the Space Age, but the subsequent years of sitting on our asses and accomplishing nothing have proven that wrong, demolishing several generations' worth of dreams.
Today, perhaps, that might actually be coming true.
Wikipedia seems to be slightly contradicting itself on these two pages. This one, however, is the one I believe to be correct (from having heard the same thing from numerous different sources).
And that proves what? You pointed to the term being used in a further two countries, as if that somehow negates the GP's point that you should not expect everyone on an international network to be familiar with your particular culture's abbreviations and other shorthands.
He might have ended his post with pointless flaming, but then you went and turned yourself into the exact stereotype he was accusing you of representing: You thought the world consists only of you and others like you.
What we can thus gather from this is that you're an ignorant fucking retard.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to laugh at a post that tries to be erudite by using "whom" (usually incorrectly) but doesn't know the difference between there, their, and they're. Those kinds of aliteracies really slow my reading down.
Yes, those are probably even worse... It makes me wonder how they were taught to write English. Nowadays you almost semi-automatically pick up on English just by hanging on the Internet a lot of the time, even if you've never met a native English speaker. One would expect grammar to be improved by it as well, but apparently not...
By the way, I learned two new words from your post, thanks :)
I'm more concerned with errors on non-idiomatic speech, like "should of" and "could of" instead of "should have" and "could have"
THIS, a thousand times this!
I'm not much of a grammar nazi, as I view communication to be the primarry purpose of text and not syntax... but "should of" actively takes chunks out of my brain every time I read it. It honestly makes me feel like I'm trying to talk to a retard, it just makes so little sense.
The worst part is, while currently it's almost exclusively native English speakers who make this mistake (which is pretty odd), soon enough people like me who learnt by practice are going to start using it en masse, and then it'll be here to stay (like "could care less" - another one perpetuated by native speakers, btw).
That was a very interesting read, thank you.
...and me at:
That's why the NSA could only tap foreign data centers, which is perfectly fine.
Exactly what is it about stealing data from everyone that is "perfectly fine"?
Moreover, what is it about being within the borders of one arbitrary country that makes the above suddenly "no longer perfectly fine"?
...the 16 year old girl trying to apply makeup and text her boyfriend while driving on the highway?
lol, that is allowed in your country? Whoever thought that was a good idea? :) (I mean the 16 bit, I bet there's a law against the texting...)
I'm all for legalization of a lot of substances and ending the Violence Due To Illegalization, but this one is so over-the-top in terms of both addiction and toxicity that I don't know what a rational response could be.
You forget the fact that the only reason these people are injecting this shit is because they're hooked on heroin, and can't get any of it.
Addiction at this level is not like how most Slashdotters seem to imagine it, it's not just a strong craving "that you will weather if you are smart like me". The physical pain is just one part; the psychological addiction part is the one that will short-circuit your rationality by simply changing your thoughts (pretty much all the time) from how bad or dangerous this is, to how good it feels when you do it. And when you're deciding whether or not to do something, and the only argument your mind even takes into consideration is "it feels fucking awesome and I want to feel it again", it doesn't matter how smart you are; you're going to do it.
...let me be the first to say: oh shit!!!
Aside from the obvious screaming lunacy of militarizing even Earth orbit, I have to wonder what the hell the "leaders" of this new Amerikan Union are trying to accomplish with this. Surely if they were responding to a threat, they wouldn't be announcing it for the whole planet to know. They want the whole planet to go "fuck, I'm scared of those Americans".
Well, I am. The USSA is terrifying at this point. But that's not going to make people think, "ooh we better be nice to the Americans so they don't kick our asses" - what they're going to be thinking will be more along the lines of "the Americans are dooming us all, we must do something to stop them".
Which, come to think of it, might be exactly what they want: a war that they didn't start.
This is completely off-topic, but try to re-read your post imagining you were reading someone else's. You are boiling over with frustration, and I'm not convinced it's all other people's fault like you say. People are inconceivably diverse not just genetically but behaviorally, emotionally, in the way they think about and perceive the world and other people in it, as well as in how they communicate. Since most people do not have any traits (like being a genius) that stand significantly out from the rest, they have an easier time finding and learning the efficient ways to get their thoughts across to others similar to them (ie., the majority), but they too have to put effort into actively trying to picture the other person's frame of reference in order to do that well. ;)
People like you, me, and a large portion of the Slashdot/programmer crowd, often have a harder time with this, and if you know for certain that your intelligence is radically different (notice I did not say 'better', but 'different' - being "better" is irrelevant here) from that of the people in your environment, it's not hard to see it's going to make communication more difficult. Most geeks and true geniuses never find a way to deal with this well, ending up in more and more isolation as they go, ending up as depressed, frustrated jerks who belittle everyone else who they perceive to be less intelligent than them. (Despite the fact that anyone considered a "genius" would certainly know intelligence is not a simple one-dimensional continuum from dumb to smart.)
It seems to me like you are destined for the same fate, unless you can put in the effort to change how you relate to others. I'm basing this assumption on the fact that you seem to be convinced everything that is wrong about your work environment is the fault of those "stupid" other people, and that all your frustration with them is clearly a simple consequence of you being "too smart for your own good". I'm sure someone as smart as you can see what a load of bull that is!
I try to avoid situations where my intelligence may peek out, as it ultimately results in frustration.
Yet, here you are writing a lengthy post basically amounting to how you are a certain genius and how much smarter you are than everyone around you, and how much your life sucks because of that. Well, think about it: if we consider increased intelligence to be an enabler, a trait that lets you perceive more detail, recognize patterns easier and seize more opportunities in life (which I believe it is), and that people with less intelligence than yourself are thus more generally restricted in their range of options, isn't it then your responsibility, with all your extra capabilities, to find where the bottleneck is, to figure out how to communicate your ideas better? (You can start with a specific person like your boss, but if you do figure it out it will be so much better you probably won't stop there;])
Or (failing that), simply to minimize friction between you and them? After all, you're saying you have "too much" intelligence and this is causing problems with the "stupid people", yet if a "stupid" person can integrate themselves just fine, shouldn't you be able to do the same thing and then some?
I think the primary reason many of us geeks are exhibiting the same antagonistic attitude towards others as you are, is that the vast majority of people - whose minds do not contain the oceans of wisdom, knowledge and insight we believe our minds do - simply get more practice interacting with people throughout their lives, as they do not have anywhere near as many options to occupy themselves as we do... Good social interaction (where you actually strive to understand each other) is a very rewarding experience (even - or especially - for an introvert), except you and I are additionally capable of finding or creating entirely new rewarding experiences for ourselves, even when all we have are the contents of our own skull. Imagine losing that abil
As has been discussed earlier, a polygraph test is a tool in the same toolkit as the War o(n|f) Terror and the TSA security theatre. Its effectiveness comes from nothing but the intimidation factor - if the belief that your lies will be "scientifically" detected persists, you can get the victim to blurt out all his secrets by simply telling them that you "know" they're lying. They will feel like they've lost even the privacy of their own thoughts, and with that predicament it can seem pretty futile to resist giving in.
That psychological end state is pretty much what torturing during interrogations used to accomplish, until they realized that people will say anything they think their captors want to hear. With this technique that issue is solved, since the victim believes their captors will know whether he's telling the truth.
Obviously, this means that the actual effectiveness of lie detectors must be made, and kept, a widely-believed "fact", and people who express doubts (or provide proof) must be discredited. After all, they were trying to cheat the Establishment, so they must be evil, immoral, scheming criminals who just lie for personal gain.
I feel like I'm barking up a dead (burning) tree here, so to speak, but what you just did is exactly the kind of non-thinking knee-jerk self-defense of what America used to be that the grandparent poster was so eloquently talking about. To reiterate:
Not only is our citizenry unable to have an intelligent conversation about world affairs, but they can't be led by facts or argument to any truth that conflicts with their jingoist worldview.
And sure enough, here you go excusing your country's willful atrocities (ones previously reserved for third-world shitholes and dictatorships) and stating things like "there most certainly is a process at gitmo, even if you don't know or understand it" as if you temporarily forgot what "due process" actually means. (I know you know, you were probably just too pissed off to argue rationally - I hope.)
Sadly, cementing the GP's points in the minds of international readers, you go on to display your eerie lack of understanding of the outside world - or even the willingness to read or believe a fact stated numerous times in this very discussion - by stating:
China has more prisoners by what an order of magnitude or 2.
Your thought experiments are retarded.
China has more than four times the population of the United States, in addition to being an oppressive communist dictatorship, so that should be a fair assumption to make. In fact, in order for the US to have as many people in prison as there are in China, it would need to be locking up a chunk of its population 4.3 times as large.
So, let's take a look at the facts:
http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/wpb_stats.php?area=all&category=wb_poptotal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
As you can see, the United States has 1.5x as many people in prison (2.4 out of 311mil) as China does out of 1.344 billion (from a population that size, 1.6mil is not really a large amount). So in fact, despite what you were led to believe, your country actually imprisons a group of people 7 times as large as China does compared to the size of your country.
You should be skeptical of all propaganda, but it does tell you a lot about the country that produces it. Try reading some North Korean propaganda: http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm and tell me what sort of country produces something like that.
Let's take a look at some of the current articles, shall we?
War Veteran Delegates Leave
Delegation of Korean War Veterans of Russia Leaves
S. Korean Believers Slam IS's Interference in Election
S. Korean Students Protest against IS's Interference in Election
DPRK's Victory in War Marked in Bulgaria, Czech Republic
Anniversary of Korean People's Victory in War Celebrated in Various Countries
Kim Jong Un Meets Women Soccer Players
Kim Jong Un Watches Men's Soccer Match
Hey, it looks pretty similar to Slashdot to me!
The crushing heat can reach thirty celcius. In somewhere like the southern US they'd laugh at that
30C (86F) is stifling heat? We laugh at that in the Northern US. True, it would be a little uncomfortable indoors without A/C or at least good ventilation, but you would have to start talking at least 35C or maybe 40C before making US southerners uncomfortable outside.
That's quite "moderate" by mainland European standards, too: I'm sitting in 34C indoors at the moment (Central Europe), and it's almost 40 outside (93F/104F). I've had hotter summers, too, but only in the last couple of years; I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but I distinctly remember the weather being completely different (more predictable, less extreme) as I was growing up...
PS. Kudos for being the first American I've seen on Slashdot who recognizes noone else uses F. :-)
As an aside - seeing as this article is already a few days old and people are not discussing anymore - have you, over there in the US, experienced the same kind of perceptible change in weather patterns in the last 10-15 years? It might just be faster here because my country is in a rather peculiar spot geographically.
Ask Eric Snowden, I hear he has some experience with this very thing.
Hate to be Mr. Obvious, but his name is Edward Snowden.
Mod this comment up, please. While GP poster's original point was valid, his primary argument pivoted around her being a newcomer to the group (an assumption that I can't help but attribute to the complainant being referred to as "she" and not "he"), and when it was shown that she is not, in fact, a newcomer, the GP just reiterated his point using different words and arrived at the exact same conclusion. (If they [ie. the group she is also a part of] are unwilling to change, SHE should just accept it or leave)
How long before the current administration uses this against their political foes, if they haven't been already?
It'd be ridiculous to even consider them not having done it already. Systematic centralization of power didn't happen by itself, and it didn't happen just for show either. They amassed all that power to use it.
Just out of the last few tabs I have open (without even searching), here's one example:
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/04/10/460754/laura-poitras/?mobile=nc
You're making the mistake of assuming everyone speaks your language.
They don't.
Since letter frequencies and usage differ significantly from language to language, the net result that would have is forcing a lot of people to get used to a new layout, while only benefitting a fraction of them (and disadvantaging many others).
This is largely off-topic, but I found the Guardian article you linked to to be surprisingly interesting, especially this paragraph:
The Mail holds aloft the banner of press freedom when citing the public's right to know about Hugh Grant's private life, but it appears to find it unacceptable for a paper to inform the people that their privacy has been compromised by their own government.
That is unexpectedly outspoken and clear-sighted for a mainstream newspaper that should basically have been standing in the same line-up that The Mail, etc. are forming.
From where I am right now in Europe, I am seeing a disturbing trend of media outlets being secretly herded together, formerly independent newspapers and radio & TV channels being bought out and control over them centralized. I'm afraid this is not coincidental, seeing how crucial the controlled news media in the US is to manipulating public perception of national issues.
Internet speed is pretty fucking fast here.
Compared to what?
Last I heard, Internet connection speeds are significantly behind the curve in large parts of the US. Still, better than Australia, but not quite "pretty fucking fast" territory! :)
That's how we write dates in Hungary/Central Europe too (not sure if our neighbors do as well), I always thought it's the most logical way of writing it - most significant part first. After all, you don't say "it's 35 seconds, 6 minutes and 5pm" when referring to the time-of-day do you? :)
It's frustrating and scary to me too, and I'm nowhere near as close to the fire as you are!
Since you mentioned Nazi Germany's case, the irony is that the social climate that allowed Hitler to rise to power was also largely based on patriotism (<our country> is/was the mightiest) and paranoia about the "enemy" corrupting that great country of theirs - without that fear, Hitler's "it's all because of the Jews" propaganda wouldn't have worked, or at least nowhere near as effectively. In today's USA, it's terrrists and Muslims instead of Jews, but one can't ignore the similarities with the fear-mongering tactics being applied (making people feel as afraid as if they were at war). Except, of course, in the 21st century, all you have to do is sprinkle them into the News Cycle and add water!
That's right, Hungary. And yeah, we do have quite a lot to worry about right now as well, what with Mr. Ego running the show. But bigger problems?
Hell no.
In our case, it boils down to us having put the (truly) wrong person in the leading position, and we are now paying for it - but it's causing a great uproar in the process, both inside the country and outside it. He is not getting away with it, and he is just one guy. Once he's out of the way, we can start fixing things. In the USA's case, well... do you really see any chance of that happening?
This isn't some random whacko politician's dystopic reign, that will only last while he's there. What's happening now in the USA is systematic. And it is continuing effortlessly under the command of (at least) the second administration/president now. Even large-scale citizen unrest has happened, was effectively dealt with, and is apparently gone with no effect at all.
...right down the drain.
I genuinely don't know what to say to Americans now. It's not like they can just pack up and move to the next country over. But I sure as hell wouldn't be staying another week if I was there... what a sad ending to a country with great promise.
Some decades ago, when the Space Race happened, people began saying that humanity has entered the Space Age, but the subsequent years of sitting on our asses and accomplishing nothing have proven that wrong, demolishing several generations' worth of dreams.
Today, perhaps, that might actually be coming true.
We sure as hell are living in exciting times.
As far as I can tell, you're wrong; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange#Historic_perspective
Wikipedia seems to be slightly contradicting itself on these two pages. This one, however, is the one I believe to be correct (from having heard the same thing from numerous different sources).
I'm a Canadian and the acronym RFP is used here as well. Judging by a quick search it's also uses in the UK (ie. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2012/07/goldoa.aspx ).
And that proves what?
You pointed to the term being used in a further two countries, as if that somehow negates the GP's point that you should not expect everyone on an international network to be familiar with your particular culture's abbreviations and other shorthands.
He might have ended his post with pointless flaming, but then you went and turned yourself into the exact stereotype he was accusing you of representing: You thought the world consists only of you and others like you.
What we can thus gather from this is that you're an ignorant fucking retard.
Oh, the irony.