Atropos

I'm probably a non-geek by HN standards, I primarily use my computer for internet, writing documents, media consumption etc... I have been using Ubuntu for 5 years or so and for my purposes it is "like windows, but better": (Practically) no viruses, no strange bugs, easy to reinstall/upgrade/backup. Personally I didn't like Unity and the changes at all and I didn't want to bother to learn / get used to it. Which of course is no problem, since Xubuntu works fine for me too.

Where I don't agree with the author is the image of the "average joe". The characterization is possibly correct if you are talking about non-computer literate users ages 40+ or so. But in the age group <25 there are alot of non-geeks that go from InternetExplorer->Firefox/Chrome, MicrosoftOffice->OpenOffice without considering "gloss" at all.

I don't know, the general theory of "Companies outsourcing themselves to death" sounds fine, but somehow the examples are never convincing. I mean if you compare the development of Dell vs. Asustek in GoogleFinance, it really doesn't seem that Asustek is better off. Is it really such a tragedy if Dell isn't in the dying pc-manufacturing business anymore?

This opt-in/opt-out is a false dichotomy in my opinion, because probably 90% of the population don't know this issue at all. So it doesn't seem to matter much, how difficult the opt-out mechanism is. Likewise, if you use an opt-in mechanism, practically nobody will opt-in, although if everybody could weigh the cost/benefits the result might be different.

Which is fine, it would be a huge price on society if everybody had to educate themselves on these small issues all the time. This is an area where regulation is the best choice. As long as there is no law against it, I can't see how it google is in the wrong here?

The membership in the European Union is key, having the Euro doesn't really make the integration much deeper. There are practically no laws that don't apply to the UK just because they are not in the Euro.

You can be happy that you aren't involved in the "saving the euro" mess and you should be. But believing that you are somewhat distanced from the EU or that it would be possible to believe is totally delusional - the european integration is extremely deep even if the euro fails and in my opinion cannot be stopped or reversed.

If you look at the hopfeully neutral doing business rankings compiled by the world bank (http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings) you see: - Italy: Rank 87 - Greece: Rank 100

I hope we can agree that these are horrible numbers for wealthy EU countries and not the result of political choices, but primarily bad management. I mean even countries that really cannot be considered laissez-faire capitalistic like Sweden (14), Germany (19), France (29) are doing much better. Even the former eastern european states, that started at a much lower level have better rankings...

So I wouldn't say that the aim is some "germanization" of Europe, but that the reforms in Italy+Greece are just clearly necessary.

Since Italy+Greece joined the Euro, they had the cheapest access to credit ever and it didn't help them at all. Maybe the harsh reforms and austerity now isn't optimal either because it is killing the economy, but it seems it is the only thing that can work.

The "move to AND WORK" in your last sentence is key. Because even for EU citizens it is not possible to move to a country simply to enjoy the benefits of the social systems - otherwise there would probably be alot of migration to Sweden for healthcare or Luxembourg for welfare etc...

If you are worried about minimum wage, you are likely looking for work in "unskilled areas", and of course Germany isnt great for that, which the high numbers of long-term unemployment show. It probably doesnt make sense to move between high income EU countries for minimum wage work anyway, since your cost of living etc. will probably increase if you dont have localized knowledge or a social network.

This "no minimum wage" is rather a red herring, since the Harz IV income is rather high there is a de facto minimum wage, since practically nobody would work for 3€ / hour.

Of course there are control issues as well, turkey has 73 million population and so would instantly be the 2nd largest voting bloc, very likely to become the biggest due to demographics in the future. It would make sense to have a much stricter standard for accepting large than tiny countries as new members.

That is correct, only disputes between countries are settled to WTO law. German courts and the ECJ do not apply WTO law.

The highest court the case would likely reach is the BGH. The EU courts aren't really courts of appeals, but concern the interpretation of EU directives etc. If there was an unclear EU directive in this case, the LG should have sent the case straight to the EuGH.

Nevertheless even the decision of the LG itself isn't final, but it concerns a "preliminary injunction". However in cases like these, it is unlikely the end result would be different.

Some of the professions you mentioned like biglaw firms, bankers, management consulting are lucky to operate very high up the "value chain". Look at the Motorola-Google deal: $12,5b purchase prize, and a $2,5 billion fee that Google has to pay Motorola if the deal falls through for any reason. At these high dimensions the exorbitant bankers/lawyers fees are more like a rounding error. Of course you can say it is not "fair" in a higher sense that they get to capture this value, but to say they don't add value is unrealistic as well.

Employees and shareholders do not get their money from the government. But what about old people, government employees, social services? It just seems to me that the "assets" of the government move to a low tax country, but the "liabilities" stay the same...

If there was a hypothetical "ZeroTaxCountry", to which companies could declare their allegiance and pay no taxes at all. Would you consider that "A Good Thing" as well, since it seems to have all the benefits you alluded too?

Not entirely comparable. Most universities don't have tuition fees in Germany, the highest fees are 1000€/year, while it is estimated that the costs of educating a medical student are at least 30,000€ / year. Basically the education is heavily subsidized by the German taxpayer, so if a huge number of doctors later work and pay taxes in Switzerland it is somewhat suboptimal.

I know comparative advantage, but does it really apply to competition with tax rates?

For example inside the European Union it doesn't matter in which country a company is based, you have basically freedom of trade for goods and services. In Germany the medium age is 45 years, in Ireland it is 35 years; Population > 65 years is 20,6% vs.11,6%. Even if all other regulation in Germany + Ireland was identical, it seems unrealistic that Germany could sustain as low a tax rate, since the government has bigger expenses due to demographic issues alone. (Retirement benefits, medical)

If every company moved to Ireland because of the lower tax rate, what should be done with the old people in Germany?

I agree with your view of what the realities are. But I don't see why should applaud them: What happens if a country like Switzerland or Singapore has a sustainable competitive advantage over the USA or Germany, that simply cannot be overcome? They can achieve some efficiencies by "freeloading" that bigger countries cannot match, for example Switzerland doesn't train enough doctors at their own universities but relies heavily on hiring doctors from Germany.

If companies cannot compete, in the long term they goe bankrupt and disappear. But how would a country disappear? It's not like every citizen could simply move somewhere else.

Also the correlation/causality is not entirely clear to me. Possibly countries are more succesful, because they have lower taxes. But at some point it could also be true that only countries that are already succesful are able to lower their rax rates so much.

It is legally possible to "wave away" your right to privacy. It is somewhat analogous to commercializing your "personality" by giving someone the right to advertise with your name.

However the European data protection standard demands "informed consent", the user needs to be able to understand the scope of his own decision:

Which data is captured and to what purpose? Do third parties get access, to what purpose? To which countries does data get sent and what are the risks associated with it? Will your data be possibly combined with data from other sources to build a more complete profile?

If it is impossible to answer these questions from the information given in the privacy policy etc., you do not have "informed consent" according to the European data protection standards. There also has to be a technical option present to "revoke" your consent for the future.

At the present moment, there is in fact no real solution to use the Facebook-Like button in Germany in a way that is compliant with data protection law. At least I couldn't finde one when I had to write a "memo" for a law firm. However it is somewhat possible to shield the owner of the website from liability.

I'm from Germany and I'm currently writing a dissertation (similiar to PhD) on data protection law. My take on the situation:

1) Are the european data protection laws "perfect" or reasonable? No, they can't be, the most relevant directive is from the year 1995.

2) Do Google or Facebook comply with the European data protection standard? No way. Do they even try? No. There is something called the "Safe Harbor Directive" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Harbor_Principles) which Facebook and Google have declared to uphold. However they "self-certify" and in reality it is more like a "scam". For example Facebook is boasting about a "TRUSTe" certificate, which is practically a joke.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRUSTe)

However the story about the 50,000€ fine is just for publicity. Google has lost cases in civil court against consumer protection agencies about their privacy policy, but to date there has never been a fine by a government agency. Furthermore just because the law says "up to 50,000" as a maximum sentence doesn't mean you could realistically go that high.

I maybe took 3 weeks of programming in high school 8 years ago, so I just took the test for fun and here is what I don't understand: I picked the mental model that the left variable ALWAYS takes the value of the right variable and changes its own value permanently.

Of course this mental model makes all questions trivially easy, for example:

"Question 12": int a = 5; int b = 3; int c = 7; a = c; [a becomes the value 7 permanently] c = b; [c becomes the value 3 permanently] b = a; [b becomes the value 7 permanently] a = 7; b = 7; c = 3

If I had picked a different mental model by chance that was more complicated for my working memory, I find it quite likely that I would have made some careless mistakes. So maybe some participants were not incapable of forming a consistent mental model, but picked a very hard mental model to start with?

Some other AAA countries: Switzerland, Luxembourg, Norway, Singapore.

To me it seems a little ridiculous that the US and these countries shared the same rating for such a long time. On the other hand, there are AAA countries like UK, France, Germany that do not seem to fit into the same category either.

I have no real opinion if the US deserves the AAA rating, but thinking treasuries are the safest investment in the world seems a bit optimistic.

How many different paywalls are there and how many articles are trapped? I'm able to access 5 different databases + one of the biggest research libraries in my state and there are still often articles that are simply inacessible. Or even more ridiculous: Single chapters of a book sometimes cost up to $ 20 online, even if the complete book could be bought for $ 30...

In my mind an easier way to disrupt this system would be to create a p2p site for article sharing - this often takes place informally anyway. Just a place where you could ask "Does anyone have article..." and then a friendly person would upload it to some filehoster and shares the link.