Just a suggestion, but stop fucking up peoples shit around the world and people wont have a grudge against you and you wont have to intimidate people.

Contrary to popular opinion in the US, the reason for extremists from the middle east and areas of asia isn't because "they hate freedom", its because US foreign policy over the past 70 years has been screwing over whole populations of people in order to have 'friendly governments' available to them. If these governments were not willing to do anything the US wanted, a new government was installed by any means necessary. Generally speaking, if you surpress a population for that length of time, you'll have a backlash. I don't know if your politicians are either grossly ignorant of these basic facts or they are simply misleading the population, but the US isn't known around the world for freedom and democracy, they are known for oppression and tyranny. So tell me, if you knew a country known for oppression and tyranny, what would you do? Oh yeah, we've already seen that, you'd bomb the fuck out of them, be damned how many civilians you kill until "democrats" crawl out of the rubble and promise to be good little boys and girls. I swear, how people don't see the cause and effect in all this is beyond me...

Wrong, Germany suffered from a low trade surplus prior to the introduction of Euro in 2001, have a look at the historical balance of trade for Germany here. You can see very noticable climb in trade surplus. This was a direct result of the introduction of the Euro.

The Nice Treaty, which formalised the two tier Europe, the introduction of the Euro and its centralised monetary policy, the aborted EU Constitution which was then morphed into the Lisbon Treaty, the Fiscal Compact treaty which will reduce a governments ability to adopt fiscal policy. These are just off the top of my head. Now, member states government have had to approve them and in my own national case, a referendum was put had to be run, but in each of them(bar the last one which is due to be voted on at the end of the month), the Irish people voted No, until they were told, no that was the wrong answer, vote again.

Government are so terrified by the loss of structural loans and trade loss that they are unwilling to challenge the EU on these thing, why run the risk of losing out on revenue, we'll sell our sovereignty instead, that has a far less tangible impact on our budgets... until now. Again in my own national case we're told, you have no choice, you need another bailout, do what we want or we pull the trigger on the economic gun to your head. Whatever about the individual directives the EU issues, the macro effects of EU policy is killing national sovereignty and soon we really will have no choice, that "the man in Brussels/Frankfurt" says we have to do it so we have to do it.

Germany is actually quite powerful economically at the moment, mainly because in the last 17 years its had an excess of capital due to the enormous trade surplus which its had thanks to the Euro and smaller nations now having the ability to buy German goods without having to worry about exchange rates between the Deutsche Mark and the Italian Lira, the Irish Punt, the Greek Drachma or the Portuguese escudo.

Now the problem for Germany came when their banks tried to use that surplus cash, they lent it out to institutions for practically nothing. These institions then could then lend to riskier and riskier prospects because the cost of the risk was so reduced by the cheap and availability of money being provided by German and other major European banks so that even if those risky loans collapsed, they could simply avail of the cheap money to correct for such fluctuations.

The EU didn't make Germany weaker, it made Europe stronger as a whole, until they started some high risk enterprises. I'm willing to say that I don't think the EU was designed from the start to become what its become today, but certain financial interests have a way of corrupting things to their way of thinking

I've become very skeptical of the entire EU project of the last few years. I thought it was democratically based, making rational decisions in the common interest of the people. Introducing common laws to help life easier for people across the EU by identifying areas where individual nations might not be as effective as a unit. But now in the last 5 years I've seen measure after measure which are raw power-grabs by the EU to try an mitigate the sovereignty of individual member states.

Now we have yet another measure to "save the children" because anyone who might be against such a measure is an evil kiddy fiddler. I highly expect this to become mandatory and sprawl into not just children but everyone needs to be on this system. Perhaps I've just become skeptical of my own government and politicians willingness to sign over our hard fought independence that anything the power hungry EU puts down now is another attempt to control the people of Europe under a single entity.

The article itself states that this is likely to become mandatory but that there no clear definitions regarding the limits of the system.

I meant match as in will this TV fit into this shelving unit thing. Personally so long as it stores things neatly and isn't pink and covered in yellow polka dots its will do. I take functionality over aesthetics most days. No point in having an awesome TV if you have to put it sideways on whatever unit to make it fit but also no point in having an awesome TV if the unit that its on is going to be more distracting than the TV itself

I don't think I would go for a TV based on the fact that it matches the furniture, I choose the TV I want and then find furniture that I want to match it. I think most nerds would be the same. Chalk it off as do not want for me

Public land is owned by the people by very definition. Everyone has equal right to it. Why should everything have an owner that is an individual, can there not be things which are owned by society for future generations to enjoy? If (assuming you're American, since its mainly Americans who are so obsessed with private ownership) the Grand Canyon was around to contain a valuable substance, you'd be all for letting some company destroy a wonder of nature? Are you that short sighted?

I don't assume that people are pricks but I know that if we don't protect people from the pricks in society then the pricks WILL do whatever they want regardless of what everyone else thinks. I don't say this because of some theory of market responses but I say it because ITS ALL WE'VE EVER SEEN THROUGHOUT HISTORY! We need more regulation by governments to protect society and our environment

Which is more likely to find, a union that seeks to look after its members or a company who is willing to exploit its employees. I don't know about the states but where I'm from its easy to find a union that is genuine, so long as its not SIPTU

Hit the nail on the head. Can't count the amount of times I've heard a news story which is perfect for Slashdot and then went to check the firehose to see if anyone else has posted it only to find at least 4 or 5 entries for the same story. 12 hours later the story appears on slashdot.

Don't get me wrong I know Slashdot gets a large number of submissions and it takes time for people to review them, but perhaps get a few more posters/publishers so that it doesn't take as long to go through submissions. Its not like Slashdot doesn't have hundreds of regularly commenting users who have a solid head on their shoulders, can hit a spell check button and pass stories through a bullshit detector before letting them hit the front page.

We shall not speak of those who arrive between 9am and 10am...

AMD based PC built in the last two years? Why?

I voted No twice on Lisbon and I'll be voting No again now on the Fiscal Compact Treaty. The lies of FG, FF and Labour will be see for what they are. Vote Yes for jobs? Lets see how well it works this time. I swear to god the media in this country would welcome the rise of the Nazi's in this country and simply say "think of the jobs that would be created by employing the skangers to legally rob people and the revenue that would be generated by the government taxing their procedes..." I just hope that the Irish people will see through the BS from FG/LAB/FF