The implication in your reply being that he mocked and attacked you because he disagreed with you?

Either that's a strawman or you really weren't paying attention.

The paragraph you replied to was mocking you not because he disagreed with you on a matter of opinion, but because your belief that "people were allowed to have their own beliefs in this country without others attacking them for it" was *factually wrong* (and by implication showed that you really don't understand what "freedom of speech" does and doesn't get you.). End of story.

Wow, that's a lot. I wonder why they allow so much power per outlet?

Because of all those damn industrial vaccuum cleaners.

4.5 times faster than QEMU is still very slow

Well... not really. It just came across- or so it seemed originally- as a bad hybrid of stock cliche Italian and Chinese accents (which may well be considered racist now, but it's not like *I* was the one doing them! Mind you, we can't blame Jeremiah Cornelius for that either, at least not in intent- his only crime was being very bad at Scottish accents :-) ).

On reflection, though, it's *not* actually that much like Chinese at all- not even the most offensively stereotyped version- and it only looked cod-Italian because of the vowel at the end of "need(a)"- not sure how that's even incorrectly reminiscent of a Scottish accent!

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure *what* the fsck it *does* resemble, to be honest.... oh yeah, a very bad Scots accent. :-)

Thank you for your half-baked opinion on why Scotland is "proving itself stupid".

In fact, the freedom to speak Gaelic (which is the "mother tongue" of very few Scots, and still only spoken by a small proportion) has little to do with the push for independence.

Your er.... *eloquent* speech on remaining together did nothing to address the contradiction that traditional Tory voters in their south-east England heartlands are moving against EU membership. The Tories-- afraid of losing votes to UKIP (the UK Independence party) who are pushing this policy- are pandering to *their* potential voters by promising a referendum on EU membership in 2017, which- if they win- would result in the UK leaving the EU.

Scotland is (in general) much more in favour of the EU, and UKIP support here is *much* lower than it is in the south-east of England. But, of course, if the English vote is sufficiently against EU membership... tough for poor Scotland who (hypothetically) remained attached to Little England. Should Scotland "stand together" with the people who didn't "stand together" with the EU?

Devolution has improved things somewhat, but control of the UK overall- including the economy and many devolved matters- remains with Westminster, which is run by an increasingly right-wing Tory government which the Scots did *not* elect, and whose political trajectory has been veering away from Scottish values for a generation. (Some readers may be surprised to note that the Tories once had a significant share of the Scottish vote. In the 1955 general election, they gained a majority of votes and a majority of the seats here. Such a prospect would be unthinkable now- there is only one Scottish Tory MP).

This has been happening since Thatcher came to power in the late-1970s, promising "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony"- either hugely ironic or intentionally hypocritical since she was a divide-and-rule politician with a "them and us" mentality that abandoned any notion of "one nation conservatism", decimated Scottish industry, squandered revenues from North Sea Oil- most of which would have belonged to Scotland if independent- on funding the unemployment her policies caused. In short, she pandered to the Tory heartland of the South East (England), and foisted her values on Scots who profoundly disagreed with them.

In the post-Thatcher era, we got the once left-wing Labour party selling out to stand any chance of being elected by the South East, to the point they were arguably more right wing and more pro free market than the pre-Thatcher Conservatives. Following Blair's nauseating arse-licking of George W Bush (which bought him nothing- as any idiot could see at the time- and was a result of his egotism, hubris and messiah complex) we got the Tories again, even more right wing despite initial promises, and the Liberal Democrats selling out to become their meaningless lapdogs, and Labour giving laughably diluted wishy-washy concessions to their socialist past. All three promising nothing I- and many other Scots- find of value.

And that's partly what it comes down to. Some people clearly did vote for all this- but not the Scots. If the "Yes" campaign loses, it'll be because the "No"s cast sufficient doubt on Scotland's ability to go it alone, not because they had anything inspiring or positive to say about the Union.

I could go on about this all day, but I have other things to get on with. But once again, thank you for your patronising opinion on our stupidity. Cheers!

We've actually paid more tax per head, and received less back per head, than England for every one of the last 110 years, which is as far back as the available data goes. So it's long before the discovery of oil.

However, that's not the point. The United Kingdom has, through imperialism and military adventurism, very reasonably made itself the second most hated nation on the planet. I'm tired of being embarrassed to travel on a UK passport. I'm tired of paying taxes to bomb other people's countries. I'm tired of my country providing bases for the US to set up its torture centres. I'm tired of my country supporting every two-bit dictator who will buy weapons.

We can do better than this - and we will.

It's actually quite impressive that you didn't even say anything out loud, yet still managed to convincingly give the impression of the least-convincing Scots accent *ever*. :-)

I mean, what does the Italian-Chinese community have to do with it?!

AlienOn. Apply directly to the forehead.
AlienOn. Apply directly to the forehead.
AlienOn. Apply directly to the forehead.
AlienOn. Apply directly to the forehead.

You're making quite a big assumption there- we didn't actually *see* any of this. (*) It's far more likely that Kirk- being Kirk- is engaging in what we can euphemistically call "inter-species sex" (cough) and just doesn't give that much of a ****. (**) I'm sure that if there wasn't a... compatible hole, he'd find one that fits closely enough.

That looks a lot worse now that it's been typed out. :-/

(*) Though I'm sure that one or more geeks have attempted an unofficial porno version focusing on this anyway.

(*) And no, post-hoc rationalisation 30 years down the line doesn't count. Pretty sure that as far as the original authors were concerned, Kirk was banging green-skinned alien, er, chicks, and that was it.

Obligatory.

While we're here, what's up with that Ancient Aliens guy's hair? Is he a massive Babylon 5 fan or something?!

You conflate "intelligence" with being coldly logical and rational in purely monetary terms.

In my experience, human psychology is not purely logical. For example, people will often respect someone- or something- more if they are paying more for them; and, conversely, less if they are getting something on the cheap or free.

An employer that does that is probably paying through the nose for the minor privilege of being able to treat some people with such "contempt".

It would smack of someone who was more interested in indulging his bullying than running a business competently and thus raise two sets of alarms for any potential employee(!)

But even assuming the company's long-term survival was assured... Some people *will* undoubtedly accept this if they're being paid enough, but in *some* cases (which will vary depending upon the psychology of the persons involved and their motivation), it's unlikely that you'll ever get their best work, regardless of how much you pay, if you treat them with contempt.

Which, of course, makes them worth less.

Again, you are imposing your own pseudo-logical values on the concept of "intelligence". I say "pseudo-logical" because since human beings *don't* always behave as the purely rational, logical, self-interest-maximising idealised entities you assume, anything that relies on this being the case is ultimately flawed. Which, ironically, makes it illogical.

Once again, this assumes that all human behaviour is purely logical and can be traded off and gamed in such terms.

I would guess that you are probably more suited to the "in and out", supposedly demonstrable-value contractor style of doing things, as it's probably closer to the situation you describe above. If that's what suits you, then fair enough, but your chosen way of working isn't how everything works.

Remind me never, *ever* to work for you.

Ironically, by (possibly unintentionally) personalising the role of "investor/owner" you undermine the case I thought you were making (i.e. that of a corporation being an abstract, purely profit-maximising entity with no feelings and behaviour that would be considered "sociopathic" if they were human).

If the "investor/owner" was a single individual (or small group) that had personally planned out and set up every aspect of the functioning of the company- as the tone of your argument suggests- one could argue that he/she is a human being, and unless they are a sociopath, it'd be quite reasonable to expect him or her to view fellow human beings as more than just cogs in a machine, a means to an end. (*)

Of course, as mentioned above, in reality even the set up- let alone the running- of a larger company will require many people, to the point that people *are* cogs in a money-making machine, leading to the abstract, soulless "company" becoming something distinct from any of its employees.

That's the case I thought you were making at first, but even that well-worn argument would miss the point here.

Companies are still made up of individual people with a generally-shared group culture and values, and it's *those* values that one is ultimately talking about when we speak about companies "understanding" (or not understanding) and "respecting" engineers.

A "group" is- after all- just a set of individuals, but we talk about what certain groups of people think, their behaviours, their value judgements, etc. etc. because human beings *are* social creatures.

And even when such people are constrained by the fact they're working for a company whose ultimate aim is to make money, their interactions with each other still reflect the values and culture associated with that company. Those values may have been explicitly encouraged by those that run the company, they may have arisen indirectly due to the mentality of those at the top (e.g. lack of respect for engineers) percolating down, they might reflect behaviour that the structure of the company has encouraged.... whatever the reason, groups of humans share values even when that group is made up of millions of individuals (e.g. nations).

(*) Of course, many people running companies small and large *are* sociopaths anyway. But that'd be a reflection on them personally, and not the same thing as the purely profit-maximising "sociopathic" behaviour often ascribed to the abstract concept of a corporation.

If that's the case, I'd suggest that all the money MS paid those consultants for endless rebrandings has ultimately proved to be hugely counter-productive. As I commented on another site a couple of years back:-

I'm guessing that either:-
(i) MS were throwing money at consultants for repeated relaunches because they had no focus
(ii) The environment was conducive to consultants making money out of MS by constantly encouraging pricey rebrandings and relaunches
(iii) The constant rebranding was a reflection of the politics, internal power struggles and identity-stamping going in within MS, or
(iv) All of the above.

At any rate, I'd be interested to find out how on the money- if at all- this guesswork is, from someone like yourself who actually worked at MS. :-)

Since Chevrolet is a GM brand anyway (and has been since the early 20th century), I'd assume that's redundant unless Chevrolet is run and/or seen as being significantly separate from GM's other operations in North America?

I specifically noted North America because I live in the UK, and your mention of those brands brought up and issue- the European market is quite different, both in terms of cars and in perception of brands. Chevrolet was virtually nonexistent here until the mid-2000s, when GM started using it for Korean-built lower-end models formerly sold under the Daewoo Motors brand (which they'd bought out). *That* probably bears little resemblance to what the brand is associated with in North America.

(The Chrysler brand is interesting in that- following its reintroduction in the UK and Ireland (*) after the Fiat takeover a few years back - they *did* use an all-American voiceover and American-style ads relating to their heritage... hinting at, but never explicitly linking it to America. Which is probably because the cars being sold as "Chryslers" in those ads were those sold elsewhere in Europe under the Italian "Lancia" brand! (**))

Similarly, Vauxhall and Opel, GM's "main" brands in the UK, and in the rest of Europe respectively (***) have a generally decent reputation, and even though Ford sells cars under its own name here, it doesn't have the generally-bad reputation it does over there. In both cases, this is almost certainly because most models sold by those companies in Europe are entirely different to the North American lineup, and also because they're generally either built in Europe or imported from Asia, not North America.

In fact, to some extent, it's not so much North America and Europe, as it is North America and the rest of the world. It's been pointed out that the North American car industry may be an example of the Galapagos syndrome relative to the rest of the world. (For example, I can imagine many Japanese cars being usable on British streets, but some of the larger American models would be massively out of place and impractical on smaller and twistier British roads).

But the tl;dr bottom line is that the repuation of such companies and their brands is often very different outside the US- often to their advantage!

(*) Chrysler apparently tried entering the European market in the 1960s, but- unlike GM and Ford- didn't succeed, and left in the late 1970s.
(**) Lancias were taken off the UK market after they gained a notorious reputation for corrosion problems in the 1980s- probably exacerbated by the climate here- and I suspect Fiat's decision not to use the brand here may still be for this reason, i.e. a European example of a hard-to-shake bad reputation.
(**) Vauxhall has long been to all intents and purposes just the UK counterpart brand for Opel cars- the models are virtually identical.