Eat at McDonalds next time and mind the coffee! It's hot.

No, don't eat at McDonald's in France. Apparently it's perfectly legal for restaurant employees to physicall assault you there:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/an...

I think I'll just avoid France and go over to Germany, where they don't seem to have all these problems.

Yep, people make snarky comments, but when I read stuff like this, it just places France lower and lower on my list of tourist destinations, and makes me prioritize other European countries where I've never heard of this crap happening, such as Germany and Denmark. It's not just this case with this restaurant; it seems I regularly see negative stuff in the press about France (remember the case of the Google Glass-wearing guy getting beaten by the staff at McDonald's in Paris? Or how about the big anti-gay protests? Or the recent news item about a bunch of Muslims attacking a French synagogue in response to Israeli activity in Gaza? Or the general problem of lots of poor and violent Muslims in French cities?), whereas I almost never hear anything bad about most other (northern/western) European nations.

I'll tell you why I have Comcrap: when I first signed up, it was only $30/month, for 6 months, for just internet service. It then rose up to its present price, about $75/month. The speed is better than Verizon, and it's fairly reliable. Yes, the price sucks, and I'm not looking forward to cancelling when I move out, but what choice do I have? It's either this or Verizon. Verizon isn't any cheaper; it's about the same price actually, unless I sign up for some 2-year plan (which is a bad idea since I most probably will not be living here that much longer), the speeds are slower, and Verizon doesn't exactly have a great reputation either. Also, my neighbors have Verizon and they have a lot of problems with it going out.

Fuck the employees. Call center employees I've talked to are always on the side of the company, and will defend it to the death. They're not just working for a paycheck, they really believe the shit they spew. We like to believe that most employees really are just working to make ends meet and feed their families, but it's really not true; most people become emotionally invested in the power structure they're part of. It's the same phenomenon that drives patriotism, defending "your side's" political candidate, etc.

Exactly. But if you refuse to pay taxes with the argument "you can't make my employer withhold taxes because they're in another state, so neener neener!!", they'll still throw you in prison for tax evasion because you didn't voluntarily remit the taxes.

(By the way, EU != Europe. Iceland is not in the EU)

Oh sorry. I wasn't aware of that; I knew Norway and Switzerland were not members, but I didn't realize Iceland was also in that camp. A quick Google search shows that Iceland was in talks to join, but it appears they've backed out as of last year. My point with the example was however to pick a very small country with very low population, for the reasons you list: very few resources compared to a large country, very few people, thus poor economies of scale for implementing a spying apparatus like the NSA, and very low international power, but also a country with a good reputation in most ways (human rights, etc.). I think I was trying to pick an EU member, however, so that US bullying wouldn't be a factor; maybe Luxembourg or Andorra would have been a better example. They're tiny, but they're also EU members so they're not too likely to bow to US bullying the way a fully independent nation might.

That's simple: the US executives go to jail for obstruction of justice. It was their choice to set things up that way, and store their emails offshore with the intent of obstructing justice.

Well most of your liberal buddies voted for him. He certainly wasn't elected by conservatives. Not every single conservative voted for Bush either, but they still collectively bear the blame for his disastrous tenure.

Software? From China? You're kidding, right?

The engineering work (mainly software) is still all done in the US. For whatever reasons, other countries simply haven't developed so much expertise with software as Silicon Valley has.

Yes, I believe this is the exact point I'm trying to make. When the people in power have YOU, they don't need cooperation from foreign governments. You comply with their wishes, or else.

Yes, but the US does have the ability to make life miserable for YOU when you're on US soil. They don't need the Swiss government to help; they just have to "convince" you to give them the money voluntarily. Enter your PIN number here to transfer the money, or else.... Don't bother arguing legalities; the only thing that matters is power. Seizing cash because it's laced with cocaine isn't legal either (4th Amendment), but that doesn't stop them.

The DoI is not a legal document, and has zero legal weight. The Southern states tried something like what you suggest and it didn't turn out well for them. I do believe it's possible the US might break apart eventually, but due to the whole "united we stand, divided we fall" mentality plus the principles established by Lincoln concerning secession, the only way it'll happen is when things are SO bad the Federal government is simply powerless to prevent the states from leaving.

Then maybe you should do a better job voting. You liberals voted for Obama, and he's now your figurehead, and he flatly disagrees with you; he thinks the government IS entitled to all the irrelevant data it wants. Most other liberal politicians agree with Obama, and they make the laws. Good job.

There's a bit of a fallacy in that comment -- we have no proof that Iceland wouldn't be just as bad if they had the opportunity. If Iceland had the same vendor presence internationally that the US and China do, there's a fairly good chance that sooner or later someone would come into power who feels a need to abuse their position.

I'm pretty sure this is itself a fallacy. You can't just assume every country operates identically, given the same opportunity. That's just like saying every man would rape a woman given a good opportunity, just because one guy did so.

Iceland hasn't done anything to earn a bad reputation. The US government has.

What will (and in a lot of places has started to) happen is that all of the countries will just turn inwards and shut out everyone.

No, they'll erect better fences between themselves and stop sharing data they don't need to, which is a good thing. Data shouldn't be passed through untrustworthy countries. More backbones being built (as you cite with Canada) means more routes for data to move around in case some countries become bad actors. It's better that people/countries become more self-sufficient. This doesn't mean that all cross-border communications are going to cease. If I send an email from Canada to my friend in the US, that email needs to cross US backbones, and it's OK that US authorities can read it (if that's the law there, as the People there have voted for by electing pro-spying politicians). However, if I send an email from Canada to Iceland, it's not OK for US authorities to read that, so it's better if Canada has a link directly to Iceland (or at least the EU at large), without that traffic having to pass through the US first.