Since I am not even asserting what you are saying I am in your second sentence ("Europeans brag..."), I am not even going to dignify this with a rebuttal. You can fuck your strawman for all I care.
Hahaha, you make it sound as if "being licensed" has some implication of advanced skill.
In Germany? You bet it does.
I wish people would stop projecting American incompetence at running government services on the rest of the world.
Oh yes, the Jezebel editors should just grow a thicker skin and take all the abuse they get, but God forbid they post a tongue-in-cheek reaction to a newspiece that might be construed as hurtful by the little boys, then it is suddenly 'criminal domestic abuse'.
Grow the fuck up.
The problem with Slashdot is that the moderation system actually works. You mention AGW, but I've found that while there is a strong denier community here, on AGW articles they mostly end up at +5 in equal proportions to the people posting scientifically more accurate responses.[1]
Why is this a problem then? Well, it takes several hours and rounds of moderation to bring a comment section to that state. By that time, although the discussion has become readable and interesting, it hardly pays to add your viewpoint, as most people will now be paying attention to newer threads.
[1] Note to the peanut gallery: read very carefully. Nowhere in that statement do I equate 'scientifically more accurate' with being pro- or anti-AGW.
Of course he's not kidding. There's plenty of men around who seem to think that anything beyond "Yes master, I will blow you right now" is militant feminism.
Well, obviously the cutters get traction because no-one on the government side is willing to call them on their stupid arguments; that they have right wing media moguls backing them doesn't help either.
And to get this in before one of the many idiots that plague this site tries to put words in my mouth: if after rationalising the spending it turns out that we can deliver equal or better quality services on a lower budget, by all means return the excess budget as a tax cut.
You want to know why the tax cutters are so strident? It is because they are so badly outnumbered by the tax squanderers.
Which is a stupid argument. If tax money is being spent unwisely, the solution is obviously not to cut taxes, the solution is to fix the spending.
Anyone who seriously tries to make this argument is obviously not interested in fixing the squandering issue at all, but merely wanting to cut his tax liability. Why can't they be honest about it?
No, I didn't 'read an opinion on pros and cons of large-scale snooping' as an anti-government rant. I read an anti-government rant, which had nothing to do with the topic at hand, namely Microsoft snooping on your mail.
My exact opinions don't matter, and I don't have to provide a complete essay to tell you that you were off-topic.
Blah blah blah Standard Libertarian Dismount blah blah blah
Dude, you turned a corporation misusing its power to go off on an anti-government rant. Without MS or Google's power, the government couldn't have gotten involved, so please keep your puberal ranting to yourself.
One fly in your ointment: last I checked Google and Microsoft were not the Government.
Ok, who did I hurt by contradicting his faith?
Ok, that's too bad. I was genuinely curious about the work being done.
Sorry if I sounded a bit gruff, but when I see categorical statements, I like to have references to check myself.
[citation needed]
I really want to believe you are sincere and everything you say is true. Unfortunately, you don't seem to have provided any references.
This is the Web. Hyperlinks exist for a reason. Use them.
It's nonsense. Individualism is all fine and dandy, but completely denying any commonality is quite frankly stupid. And rather typical of geeks, so there you have at least one point of geek culture: the persistent belief that we're all special snowflakes. Even I find that one hard to shed.
There are certainly some traits that carry over between the groups you mentions. A love for a logically ordered universe is at least one of them. Yes, geek culture has strands in it that may be conflicting. D'oh. Just like baseball fans might dislike American Football, doesn't make either of those groups part of American culture.
Say "twenty-three-skiddoo" to logout.
