Muzza

What on earth do you mean? Someone (the article) claimed the system was free market. I showed otherwise. It's about as far from semantic BS arguments as you can come.

I was not debating the efficiency of the private schools visavi public schools. Introducing strawmen is stupid.

Also: home schooling has been illegal in Sweden since 2010.

Now, since I'm not in favor of any form of mandatory schooling it doesn't really matter to me exactly why the Swedish schools suck... But you must keep in mind that there was another, rather large reform in the early 90's: the responsibility for the schools were transferred from the state to the municipalities. This hasn't exactly worked out well either and surely has had impact on the PISA rankings (see e.g Maciej Zaremba's articles in DN, http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/maciej-zaremba-en-forolampning-... ).

I'll try, but I don't see how I can make it any simpler.

These "free market" schools receive payments from the government for each student they have.

The government mandates that everyone attend school between the ages of 7 and 16 (or 6 and 15).

This is not a free market. You cannot have the government create customers like this in a free market.

The school system in Sweden is many things (despicable, horrendous, etc etc), but free market it is not. These private schools don't operate on a free market - the government supplies the "customers" (students) under penalty of prison* for the students' parents, for crying out loud.

* Or possibly even worse: a student who doesn't go to school is liable to end up in the clutches of the meddling welfare board.

Very common in mathematical circles. Actually, the entire first page of Google's results for "we conjecture that" appears to be math.

Sigh. Because men are totally free from being judged.

This might be OT, but that guy sure has some weird ideas about how to build a website.

Why are the images lazy loaded? There are like ten small images per page. It also doesn't revert to img tags in the absence of Javascript.

At one point on the first page he needs to show something with a fixed-width font. This also requires Javascript, when obviously CSS should do.

> Contrary to the portrayal of mental health professionals in the piece, these people are intelligent well-meaning individuals who are severely over-burdened and undervalued (A masters-level social worker starts out making $12/hr). Combined with the absurdity of state laws and general ignorance in most communities, it's a wonder that anyone gets treated at all.

As far as I can see the article only mentions the actions of the social workers. It makes no mention of their intelligence or (lack of) well-meaning. (As an aside: "I only meant well" is an extremely effective shield against criticism and anyone who uses it should be distrusted. Also, even a truly well-meaning individual can do a lot of harm.)

In what way are social workers undervalued? Apparently they can't get anything done due to the laws. How would they get more done if we paid them more?

Yes yes. Women good, men bad. We get it.

> Assange cannot have his cake and eat it. It is somewhat hypocritical for Assange to seek asylum on the grounds of human rights whilst denying the women who are accusing him of obtaining due process through the law (most countries agree that due process is in itself a fundamental right).

Not if the law which he is accused of breaking is fucked up (to say the least).

> Though I back his politics 100%, he has every responsibility to face his accusers in a fair trial.

With Sweden's looney toons laws, I strongly disagree.

Hmm. I've written code which assumes that Monday is two days after Saturday and one day after Sunday.

Throwing the baby out with the bath water. I'd much rather have good comments.

>In some part of the code (see dmap page) there are actually more comments than statements.

>Dmap source code is very well commented, just look at the amount of green: There is more comments than code !

You know, in my experience that's not a good thing. I work on similar, heavily-commented code and find it extremely painful. At some point it becomes a burden to see the code behind the comments. (And just so no one misinterprets me: I am not against comments /per se/.)

It's like when you read code written by someone who simply loved whitespace and who appended a useless "banner comment" after each real comment[1]:

// If x is less than 3, do stuff 50 times.

// -----------------------------

if ( x < 3 )

{

// While i goes from 0 to 50.

// --------------------------

for ( int i = 0; i < 50; i++ )

{

// Do stuff.

// ---------------

doStuff ( ) ;

}

}

So what would've fitted in one screen of text, if written in a sensible fashion, now requires one and a half screen and lots of scrolling.

[1] The comments in the example are actually both crappy and pointless. Sadly, the program I work on is riddled with them. Please don't write out what the programming language constructs do in English.

There have been patents in Europe for quite some time now.

> * Or other object-oriented abstraction layer for database access, ORMs aren't the only option.

What do you mean by this? That you should consider a non-relational database? Clearly any mapping from an OOP language to a relational database is an object-relational mapping.

Alltså we have typ that in Swedish as well änna.

Alright, I misunderstood (But I disagree. "Up until now, no African country except SA has developed a supercomputer" gives me quite a lot of information (55 states in Africa don't have supercomputers); it's not at all meaningless.)

Also, you seriously don't expect Americans to know that Africa is made up of many countries, nor understand the difference between Morocco and Kongo (for instance)? As a non-American, that's rather shocking.

No, since America can be used to refer to both the USA[1] and a continent/two continents, but there is no country commonly called just "Africa".

[1] Please don't argue with this. This is common usage in modern day English, even if you might not like it. You know it, I know it, we all know it. Also note that the Estados Unidos Mexicanos (United Mexican States) are commonly referred to as just Mexico, so why should there be a problem with calling the "United States of America" just "America" for short?

> Huh? Drivers are gatekeepers that let people onto the bus and validate that the people that enter the bus have tickets.

There are many cities where you can enter through any of the bus' doors.

1) It does not follow from "I am not responsible for Romania's poverty" that I claimed "I built Sweden". Läs om, läs rätt. 2) I am not unemployed, nor paid to work with my hands. 3) Even unemployed people and manual laborers can have valid views on things, you elitist. 4) I never once mentioned wanting a free ride!

> If anything, we can breathe a bit easier here in Romania with all the gangs gone to better countries.

Ha! At least two parties (the gangs and the Romanians in Romania) are profiting.

> I do disagree though that deporting is the way to go. The problem is real, and shoving it under the carpet doesn't really solve much of it. What is needed is an EU-wide solution, and it needs to be well-thought and well implemented, because the problem isn't easier.

Yes. My criticism concerns only various leftists who believe that Romania's (and Bulgaria's, etc) problems should be solved by Sweden alone.

> No, I am not a Bulgarian or a Romanian. But yes, I am offended by people who use nationalities to denote groups of criminals. I am not that old, yet I have heard "Albanian", "Italian", "Spanish", "Polish", "Romanian", "Turkish", "Portuguese", "African", "Brazilian", "Senegalese", "Nigerian", "Egyptian", "Moroccan", "Chinese", "Arab" and many other demonyms used as an insult and to identify the latest and biggest threat to EU security and welfare systems. I find it difficult to think that all the Albanians, Italians, Spanish, Polish, etc., are all criminals. I am pretty sure that each country has its own fair share of criminals and that many of these flew to other countries in order to exploit their there-unknown cons, but I doubt that this warrants anyone the possibility to call out a whole nation as a problematic issue.

Straw man. I have never suggested that all Bulgarians (or Romanians) are criminals. For Christ's sake, I even acknowledge that the current beggars on the streets where I live AREN'T criminals!

> Isn't compassion part of human nature as well?

I pay a 30% income tax (and my employer pays an additional 30% in payroll taxes, which is of course simply a hidden tax on me) and then 25% VAT on everything I buy. This pays for much welfare. I think it's /exceedingly/ compassionate of me to give away such a large part of my income - certainly more than the Christian concept of tithe. My compassion is not endless, however. And neither is yours.

But I wonder, why aren't the Bulgarians compassionate towards their own countrymen? Why don't you criticize them?

> This is your problem, not foreigners' problems. Your police is subject to bribery from gangs from other countries, what is the most effective action? Fix your police system or kick out gang X waiting for gang Y to start bribing the police?

I never suggested it was the foreigners' problems. Please stop your fucking straw man arguments.

And once again the Swede* must atone for the sins of others (such as the Académie française).

* Or more generally: white Western European.

> If you are ready to accept these freedoms

Who says I am? I am not Ingvar Kamprad.

> that may be so, but the actual beggars are not at fault, and this is important. simply because someone was not born within the borders of your country does not make them any less human.

I have never denied anyone their humanity, only insisted that I shouldn't have to support them.

> A swedish life is worth no more or less than a romanian one.

If we are all equal, why do the left insist that a Romanian arriving in Sweden should have more entitlements than a Swedish citizen?

> Have you a problem with Bulgarian people or Bulgarian criminals?

> If you have a problem with Bulgarian people in general, then, well, that is called xenophobia or more simply racism.

Presumably you are Bulgarian and I have offended you by not being nice to those compatriots of you who are begging on my streets. I am actually kind of sad for that, because I'm sure you and I could in fact get along quite beautifully. But the fact still remains: when I go out, I don't wish to be accosted by beggars. This is human nature.

> If you have a problem with Bulgarian criminals, then complain to your police force. How come you able to spot such criminals so easily while they cannot? Did you make precise and detailed reports to the police about cases you witnessed, experienced personally or know from local hearsay?

My bloody point was that vagrancy SHOULD be a crime. It ISN'T at present. (Also, the police are corrupt and willing to overlook crime when it suits them.)

> Do you also agree on the principle that the needs for every lawful person should be addressed regardless of their country of origin?

Certainly not. I find it totally absurd that if I (a Swedish citizen who's paid a lot of tax to the Swedish state) were to wind up on the streets, the Swedish state could quite possibly refuse me even a bed at a homeless shelter, at the same as a foreigner should be given his or her own apartment, no questions asked. This is not just. It's borderline evil.

The answer is mu ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28negative%29 ). There is no link between mass murder and the deportation of criminals; my stance on Breivik is irrelevant.

I am certainly not responsible in any way for (for instance) Romania's poverty. There was this guy called Ceaușescu; he had a little bit to do with it.

What is your point? Do you think I'm somehow ignorant of what the EU means? I know about the free movement of people - I reject it since it has negative consequences for me!

For some reason you are unwilling to come right out and simply say what you think about IKEA, thus leaving me to read your mind. Presumably your argument goes something like this:

"Ingvar Kamprad is Swedish, Ingvar Kamprad used forced labor in the GDR, therefore all Swedish people must pay for these sins by putting up with foreign beggars on their streets".