If the company you worked for was a US company, it sounds like they were in clear violation of the FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act). US companies are barred from bribing foreign officials. I'm surprised to hear that such illegal acts would be included in the budget. Or perhaps were you working for a non-US firm in a country that does not have a similar law?

Damn, where are my mod points today?
SIGSEGV
Forklift is NULL

I went to see what's ArsTechnica been up to lately, and holy cow has that site grown in the last couple of years! They have all the topics I'm interested in, and apparently, not days late. Also, they don't have contempt for their members.

So, I'm going to type in a random password for my Slashdot account and log out.

G'bye Slashdot editors, go fuck yirselves!

While your reply may contain a kernel of truth, let me qualify my statement: the only person I've ever seen "joking" like this - repeating essentially the same unfunny joke over and over and over - was one with IQ of about 65. And yes, he was laughing his retarded ass off, for sure.

If you think these are "jokes", your IQ is the same as Slashdot editors' - about 65.

Some sub-sections of Reddit (like /science/) are awesome and WAY above the Slashdot story quality.

I agree, but am worried that it may be just a fluke.

That's too bad because, to be honest, The Netherlands is an awesome country, and Amsterdam... is IMHO, the most interesting city in the entire world (and that's compared to some pretty interesting places like Bangkok, Seoul or Atlanta).

Also, I'll never forget the almost universal, genuine kindness of the people in Amsterdam.

It's not an April's fool joke if you can tell by looking at it for 2 microseconds.

April 1st is just the day when Slashdot is utterly useless. Every Single One of the news stories is a ridiculously badly camouflaged "joke".

Too bad, 'cause I'm in bed with a flu. Oh well...

The whole day, and right now, this story is in the top 10 most read articles on BBC News
So clearly, someone does give a rat's ass.

Dude... 50 million without healthcare.

You know which other first world country doesn't have universal heathcare?

None.

Cuba definitely does have better healthcare than the US, where 50 million people have none.

For instance, Cuba has two and a half more doctors per capita than the US

Oh, and here's another datapoint: the table shows literacy levels in Cuba being higher than the USA.

FWIW, in my case cutural differences didn't play a role. It was a misunderstanding about Schengen countries vs. visa requirement.

Also FWIW, I was told that the Belgian border policemen had no business telling me about the 10 year ban on entry. No such thing exists in such cases. Stil, the memory was bad enough that I never went back. I remember that, sometimes 4 or 5 years ago, I just realized "hey, I actually didn't visit Belgium this whole time!!". :D

There are only 1-2% psychopaths in the world - psychopaths like you. This place would be heaven if your kind were removed.

The exact same thing happened to me, just replace Poland with Croatia, Mexico with Finland and USA with Belgium. The asshole border police at the Bruxelles airport let me fly to Finland finally, but admonished me that "I am not allowed to come to Belgium for the next 10 years". This was 15 years ago and I now have a Finnish citizenship and have traveled all around the world, visited four different continents. But funnily enough, by pure chance I never went to Belgium again. Maybe it wasn't chance, maybe the bad experience made me put Belgium in the "fuck that country"-category.