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Comment Re:Disband the E.U. (Score 4, Informative) 238

The countries the AC has listed are governed by right-wring governments, one of them more or less a dictatorship, and all of them take down terrorist content and incitements to violence as fast as they can right now, without the need of any EU directive. Turkey has put tens of thousands of citizens into prison under vague terrorist accusations and there are currently, as we speak, EU actions against Hungary and Poland, because their governments have stifled the press and interfered with the judicial system. Last but not least, the UK has enacted extensive internet surveillance laws and is known to barely protect journalists. In a nutshell, these countries belong to those within the EU that are for more censorship, not against it.

So yeah, the AC's post makes zero sense., even if some US Slashdot mods don't understand that.

Comment Re:Disband the E.U. (Score 0, Troll) 238

Well, "Hungry" doesn't exist, Turkey has turned into a full-fledged dictatorship and is not a member of EU anyway, and the Poland government is a bunch of lunatics who have just dismantled their own Supreme Court and erroneously believe in the conspiracy that the Russians have killed their former president. That leaves us with the UK as the only halfway sane actor among the ones you mention, and the majority there already regrets the Brexit according to representative surveys.

Comment Re:Ditch DST, no "permanent" DST (Score 1) 260

I participated in the poll. The problem with it is that they first asked whether you want to abolish time switching or keep it. Afterwards they asked separately whether you would like to have summer time or winter time if you're against switching. At least that's the poll I've got in early August, maybe they changed it later. That's why they now have the silly, although almost certainly intended result to abolish switching. Which time zone is chosen, however, is left to each country, and it's very likely that many countries will go the 'easy route' to have permanent winter time. For countries in the south this can be fairly bad, though, and these countries now might even ignore the popular majority because they have to synchronize with neighboring countries.

The poll should have asked for 3 options and nothing else: 1 - keep switching between DST and winter time, 2 - permanent winter time, 3 - permanent summer time.

These are the actual choices in that matter. They didn't ask that way because then the result would have been pretty undecided with a lot of variation between countries, and they wanted to get a popular result they can sell EU-wide. This was an absolutely dishonest survey.

Comment Re:Ditch DST, no "permanent" DST (Score 1) 260

Well, I live in Portugal where permanent wintertime would be pretty bad, both for residents and for tourism. People go to bed late and wake up late, work starts at 9 AM, for some people even at 10 AM, and get back home late. One hour more daylight after work in the evening is important for many people here. Switching to permanent DST is generally the right thing for southern countries. (Of course, there are also people whose mileage differs, but I'm talking about the majority.)

Staying in permanent "summer time" just means you are in another timezone than you claim. So that is plain stupid. Now you don't only have to know which time zone a country is in, you also have to know if they decided to be in permanent summer time or use the normal time associated with the time zone.

As you've stated, permanent DST just means that you're in another time zone. Your rant makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Comment Re: Everyone knew the pump and dump was coming... (Score 1) 1445

No, these are social democracies, not socialist countries. Socialism is a pre-form of communism, it's a step before communism in the historical-teleological model that communists have proposed as a natural explanation of human history. Social democracy has historically been opposed to socialism, to communism, and of course also to national socialism and fascism. It's an older tradition of a democratic parliamentary that arose as one of many answers to the "social question" in the unrestricted capitalism of the 19th Century, at a time were child labor was normal and many workers were crippled in factories. Social democracy was already established as a political position in many European countries at the beginning of 20th Century.

Scandinavian social democracy is also kind of special in comparison to others for historical and cultural reasons but I'll stop there.

Comment Re:Just label it and move on (Score 1) 166

So the only thing you seem to be wanting is the ability to choose only GMO foods, since some manufacturers may not label their food GMO-free when they otherwise could.

You literally don't know what choice means, and I'm giving up on you. You have presented a whacky argument without presenting any kind of evidence - you were neither able to produce any figures about which percentage of non-GMO food is labelled as such and which percentage isn't nor did you present any other evidence besides anecdotal claims - for something completely different than what I have argued for, and then have chosen to ignore my arguments. It's pointless trying to discuss with you any further, get back when you've learned how to argue.

Excess government regulation when there is no benefit is absurd.

At the risk of repeating myself, the benefit is that the customers will have a guarantee that they get the information they need to make a free and informed choice. Your suggestions ostensibly do not provide such a guarantee, which is why I reject them. It's not absurd at all to ask companies to label food in a way such that customers can find out what's in the package.

The ironic thing about this conversation is that I have personally no problem with buying GMO food, but I'm mature and freedom-loving enough to understand that other people's mileage may differ, that they can make their own decisions and that it's principally not a good idea to patronize costumers by deliberately withholding information from them. To guarantee that no information is withhold and since this is a controversial topic (whether rightly or not) , providing the information on the packaging must be mandatory. I would argue the same way about any such issue. Whenever a large industry lobbies excessively for withholding information from customers, better make damn sure to force them by law to inform their customers.

You can choose to continue to pretend that you don't understand the argument and continue with your ridiculous story ("trust me, I'm a random guy from the Internet, voluntary labeling would work just fine and would not limit individual choices at all") but that doesn't mean I have to take you seriously. I have understood your argument loud and clearly, you have repeated it often enough, and I'm not convinced by it, because I believe, for all of the reasons laid out earlier, that ensuring free customer choice with a labeling requirement is better.

Who are the people who care about that? You realize that it's pretty much just you, right?

Are you always just pulling "data" out of ass like that? I guess that makes you even more credible as a self-proclaimed Internet grocery store expert! /s

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