You are confusing Denmark and the Netherlands.

We've a good wind supply though.

If the US or Spain want to compete with Ireland on tax, they are welcome to. Why should we apologise for being competitive? The City of London has similar tax arrangements, and yet that hyprocrite David Cameron frown at Ireland doing it. The right wing in the USA want lower taxes AND higher subsidies for all corporations, but when Ireland offers lower coporation tax, and no subsidies, the same Americans whinge and whine. Personally I don't believe the location of this data center has nothing got to do with our low corporate taxes btw, and everything got to do with our cool windy climate.

Exactly. Slashdotters are forgetting that Apple has customers in the EU.

And because AFAIK data held on EU customers must be held on servers within the EU, for data protection reasons.

The area of forestry they are felling in Ireland is 300 acres, not thousands of acres. I know because I walk my dogs there sometimes.

They were on 10% in Sunday's election, I think.

Where I live, in the EU, there will be soon a law mandating stores that sell bulbs to take them back for recycling.

Isn't that what the story in the link is mainly about?

That is why people always say, "It is cold in here: turn on the lights!" Except they don't. Because the bulbs only heat the ceiling above them. Let's face it, bulbs are not an efficient form of heating.

It is interesting to note that the Pirate Party sit with the Greens in the EU parliament. (Sitting together effectively means they act as one bloc)

The cost of storage of the machines is a valid concern too. It was costing a couple of million per year.

But in Ireland, we never had a Florida situation. We never used hanging chads. We just used simple paper and pencil. The minister responsible for introducing e-voting did so because he was seduced by slick sales guys into buying something the state didn't need. It also gave his party an opportunity to give storage contracts to supporters. I'm glad that his successor, )John Gormley, leader of the Irish Green Party) has scrapped this waste of money.

What the fuck would be good about e-voting? It is far more expensive than paper ballots. And the count process is not as exciting.

The e-voting machines were used in two constituencies in Ireland for one election. The results came out minutes after the polls closed rather than the usual 1 to 3 days. However, this was considered a drawback. We like a bit excitement in our election counts, and this sucked the excitement right out of it.