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As technology upends industries and lifestyles at breakneck pace, the Old Continent is not producing any of the online giants like Google, eBay or Facebook. Its best and brightest prefer to emigrate to Silicon Valley, or sell their ideas on to U.S. firms before they have a chance to establish themselves.
The European Union's top executives in Brussels are trying to rectify that with a long-term plan of reforms and incentives but face an uphill battle. The 28-nation bloc is, above all, lacking in the risk-taking culture and financial networks needed to grow Internet startups into globally dominant companies.
Europe's relatively cautious attitude to investment stands out as one of the biggest hurdles—and among the most difficult to change. Investors in Europe want to see that a young company can generate revenue from the start. Europe's many high-technology companies are focused on manufactured goods that can be sold right away to generate revenue—industrial equipment, energy turbines, high-speed trains, medical devices, and nuclear energy.
By contrast, Internet companies often have little to no revenue at the beginning. Twitter and Facebook, for example, first focused on building up their user numbers. Only once they were established as global forces did they put more attention to making money, through advertising and other strategies.
This difference in mentality stands out as one of the key reasons that Europe has fewer venture capital firms and less investment in startups than the U.S. or Asia.Over the past five years, U.S. venture capitalists spent $167 billion on new business ideas compared with some $20 billion by their European counterparts, according to the National Venture Capital Association.
http://phys.org/news/2015-09-europe-isnt-googles-facebooks.html
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 23 2015, @04:46AM
The more unregulated it is, the higher its peaks and lower its valleys.
In the U.S. we seem to have forgotten why it's a good idea to regulate it. The E.U. hasn't made the same mistake.
Hence why the greatest successes are in the U.S.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @05:18AM
Hence why the greatest successes are in the U.S.
And the greatest failures, like Pets.com, "Bears, Sterns and Rectums", Scott Walkers, John Elias, Donald, Rick Perry, Michael Huckabee, Lyndsey Grahamcracker, Santorum (eeww!), John McCain, Ayn Rand Paul, the Bridge guy, and Curvy Findyourrea. And Micro$oft! Ha! Only thing worse than Dragons, Americans! (Reign of Fire).
(Score: 2, Interesting) by purpleland on Wednesday September 23 2015, @06:49PM
Ayn Rand. I read her books a long time ago, way before any association to US politics. I was fascinated because her ideology and manner in which her characters behaved were so completely alien to me. It opened my mind because I never realized people could think like this: to be so completely idealistic and not at all pragmatic... yet possessing a warped sense of rationality nevertheless. I was intrigued. So much so I attempted to join a gaming group that was built around her ideas hoping to get involved in some interesting discussions, but I was rejected due to philosophical differences. The scary thing was that they seemed bat shit insane.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by davester666 on Wednesday September 23 2015, @05:18AM
No, "we" haven't forgotten. The politicians have been paid to forget.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday September 23 2015, @05:14AM
You have to wonder if venture capitalists spending 167 billion aren't just burning through cash from one successful project on the hopes of finding 10 new ones.
You have to assume that the failure rate is pretty high. I suspect that the game is to collect a bunch of small companies with bright minds, ditch the projects they are on and put them onto something else. Because some of those companies you see being snapped up have no products on the street.
Hard to say if it is worthwhile or not, but it does say that quite a few people have way too much money on their hands. Easy come, easy go I suppose. Hey, at lest they are willing to share.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @05:28AM
Venture capitalists don't business with their own money: they just convince some others to back the startup and exit asap.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Wednesday September 23 2015, @07:00AM
Maybe some, but by far the most of the VCs are spending their own team's money.
Most of them don't throw money at a project and walk away any more. The trend toward closely managing the grantees is very strong. Taking money from a VC is like taking on a new partner in the firm, a bossy one.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 23 2015, @12:14PM
I have been advised by venture capitalists, who were friends of a friend, that the last thing you want to do is take investment from a venture capitalist. They'll sell off everything you have piecemeal, jettison you the founders, and destroy anything and everything good about whatever it was you were trying to build.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:19PM
I have been advised by venture capitalists, who were friends of a friend, that the last thing you want to do is take investment from a venture capitalist. They'll sell off everything you have piecemeal, jettison you the founders, and destroy anything and everything good about whatever it was you were trying to build.
To be a little more nuanced, the VC's job is to find companies they can make a profit from. And generally this means they expect a huge profit in a short amount of time. As long as they make a profit, what happens to the company they are buying is of no consequence. They have a large amount of experience and resources in writing contracts that makes theme the clear winners. Unless, as a founder of a company, you have equal experience in how to write contracts to hose the other side, you are going to be on the losing end of whatever deal you make. If you do have lots of this kind of experience (unlikely unless you are a former VC), you might be able to break even.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by M. Baranczak on Wednesday September 23 2015, @05:20AM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @07:23AM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday September 23 2015, @12:42PM
Exactly. Europe has most of the world's finest heavy industry that actually produces tangible goods. Aside from them, Japan and Korea are right behind them and China isn't letting grass grow under their feet either.
The USA was infected with the cancer of greed. Short term growth and cost cutting reign supreme. Tech companies are easy money. All you need if office space and some computers. Pride in Engineering is nonexistent. Look in an American made piece of machinery and an equivalent European one. The European, especially if German, will have an enormous attention to detail and aesthetics. Very progressive thinking is used and it really shows.
We also have an insane culture of nostalgia and adversity to progress. Especially if that progress is foreign. America is doomed by its own culture of ignorance.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @06:06PM
Not with medical devices, at least. Carl Zeiss runs Windows 7 on their ophthalmic imaging machines--new machines that are still being shipped this week. These machines have a lifespan of around 10-12 years and are running an OS that will not get security updates beyond 2020. They have built in Wifi radios/routers and always on connections to the network. Zeiss has no upgrade path for the OS other than "buy a new $80,000 imager every 5 years".
If the Germans have such an attention to detail and devotion to efficiency and performance, why aren't these machines running embedded Linux or BSD which could be patched indefinitely? They are just as lazy, incompetent, and locked into proprietary toolchains as US software engineers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday September 23 2015, @09:12PM
They make more profit by selling a new $80 000 unit in five years.
Welcome to the corporate world. Things are not designed to be best. They are designed to be most profitable.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by K_benzoate on Thursday September 24 2015, @01:26AM
They make more profit by selling a new $80 000 unit in five years.
No, they don't. Medical practices buy new machines when the old ones literally stops working--no matter what. What actually happens is they just keep using the insecure imager with the unpatched, abandoned, operating system. So Zeiss doesn't make more money. The practice doesn't get a secure machine. Patients don't get secure medical records. NO ONE WINS. Thanks capitalism!
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday September 23 2015, @09:31PM
It's not only Zeiss but many, many others who use Windows for automation.
My best guess as to why this is prevalent is because going back to the 90's, Windows was the commodity PC operating system that was already entrenched in businesses. Open Platform Communications, or OPC was developed to specifically bridge the many different and often proprietary automation protocols to Windows applications and networks for SCADA systems. Windows was then able to push into automation at the HMI and SCADA levels. The same OS that runs Wordperfect also runs your SCADA system pulling in data from the shop floor for analysis in quattro or Lotus 1-2-3. Oh the convenience!
And going back to as early as 2000, realtime extensions were developed for Windows by 3rd parties (Ardence RTX being one of them). Pretty much a dual-kernel running along side Windows handling RT hardware, networking, memory and interrupts. Even gets its own core or cores. This enabled Windows to work its way down into the PLC itself. Windows PC based Automation controllers with deterministic real time response were now a reality. And conveniently, it all runs on Windows and developed right in Visual studio using C++ and .net languages like VB and C#. It's far easier to find a programmer who can pop into VS, start a project and hammer out some code.
Windows allows for one big homogeneous computing environment. It also makes managers sleep easier at night. Sad state of affairs but it's not all Windows. There are plenty of Linux automation platforms out there. They just aren't as popular. Probably because the development workstations can run office or something...
(Score: 1) by GDX on Friday September 25 2015, @02:30AM
One think about the Windows based automation is that tend to be very difficult to convince management to go Linux or even some flavor of BSD, a old colleague from university told me that they needed near five year to convince their management to let then test Linux for automation and another three to let then use it in production. Most due the management and lawyers not understanding the GPL license and the big Microsoft/Windows inertia that came from the DOS era. Ironically the management now are pretty happy as they have more control on the platform.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by penguinoid on Wednesday September 23 2015, @05:29AM
Privacy laws?
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday September 23 2015, @05:34AM
Oh, thanks God to that! If the entire civilized world would go as reckless as Silicon Valley, we'd be fucked beyond recognition.
Well, exactly how Twitter/Facebook helped the American Joe Average stay afloat economically after 2008?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Wednesday September 23 2015, @05:44AM
Excuse me, but I do not think you used this expression correctly:
we'd be fucked beyond recognition.
Shouldn't that be FUBARed, as in "beyond all recognition"? The legacy of WWII is important, please try to keep the foo and the bar in the proper places, or we could find ourselves in a SNAFU, if you know what I mean. And please do not tell me to BOHICA, been there, done that. And, Kilroy was here. " Ü "
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @05:50AM
Industrial equipment, energy turbines, high-speed trains, medical devices, and nuclear energy didn't help either.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday September 23 2015, @06:03AM
Show me what facebook looks like without electricity. Oh -- nothing -- it's an ephemeral entertainment wrapper over a marketing product which is what? Nothing but bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @08:58AM
As every dung beetle will tell you, bullshit is very valuable. :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @05:36PM
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday September 23 2015, @06:34PM
wasn't it billy crystal in City Slickers or something that gave up his daily grind routine after he realized he spent his life trying to sell intangible objects that were invisible? He was in the business of selling marketing; advertising segments over the radio or something.
I agree that such a career produces nothing of direct worth, and I can't believe that people I know that once refused to fill out a warranty card because of being afraid to get on some list and receive a catalog now provide way more details to get a free download they may not use more than once...
Nothing but bullshit, but it comes at a cost. I wish there were more people like that character, who wake up and go do something else. (then again, he didn't go on to make material objects -- he just got to know himself and nature, which I suppose is almost to the level that modern faceboook marketing would know about him if the character were portrayed today.)
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @05:50AM
s/t
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @06:34AM
And thank goodness for that.
The greatest and most important source of information filled with nice people who just want to help make the world a better place.
TPB changed my life forever. I found so much information I would never know about otherwise. TPB is freedom.
Long live TPB and sharing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zugedneb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @07:43AM
Some things are not in our culture... facebook gathers people with a certain mindset, and it was started with the aim of gathering and selling information about the users. There has not been much market for these things over here...
The people who backed up facebook had their reasons; they were not benevolent and bold people helping a startup, they were sly as hell, and knew exactly what facebook was menat to be.
If facebook would vanish, nobody over here would make a fuss, and even of local sites would emerge to replace it, they would not grow that big.
Google was started by young people, there was no telling at that time, what it would grow to.
Ebay: a lot of countries has their own versions, but the postal services in Europe are expensive... Nobody over here would have thought of creating a site for selling junk internationally, when the transport cost is almost half the price of your education.
I have lots of examples where people bought things from asia or US by EBay, but never anyone who have shipped from Europe...
Counterexamples, anyone?
Also, although we do consider each other enemies from time to time, nobody think of the fellow european as actual idiot, and there are laws over here... That is why making enourmous amounts of cash by selling personal info or showing advertisement is a far away thought...
Now, take skype and minecraft, that come for sweden...
Minecraft is a sad story. Some guy gets billions, when others have also implemented the idea, probably because Microsoft did not want to pay tax in the us, and burned the money on something like that...
Skype was mostly used by immigrants and exchange students from india to make the daily obligatory phone call home. In europe there are some who talk and some who don't. Italian, spanish people talk all day. East and nordic people dont really need skype..
I consider it a punishment to talk to relatives often.
So even if I have the knowledge in signal processing and programming to make skype, I would have asked for a lobotomy if I would have conjured up the idea...
So, no, maybe europe is not the place for big internet things...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 2, Insightful) by brocksampson on Wednesday September 23 2015, @10:28AM
It is also hard to build a monolithic Facebook in Europe because the population is fragmented culturally. Each country seemed to have its own version of a social media whatever until Facebook eventually bought them and/or destroyed them. That is where some of the conservatism in European investments come from as well. It's hard to back a startup promising some killer app written by some kids in Sweden or whatever because it is unclear how it will scale and how localization will affect it, but the markets for trains and medical devices are self-evident. But Americans by-and-large participate in a monoculture; they watch the same TV shows and movies and buy crap they don't need from the same national chains. That and taxes. The US gives strong tax incentives for investors to take risks in a variety of ways.
Of course, European companies don't shy away from making money selling off people's information (or setting up tax shelters for giant tech companies). They might not start the companies, but they are happy to mine data and sell it off to whomever and to buy into all the Big Data trends. I can't even go food shopping now without my mobile company and grocery chain tracking my movements and shopping habits. Good thing small outdoor markets are still a big thing here.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday September 26 2015, @10:44AM
I consider it a punishment to talk to relatives often.
We must be related! XD (Oops! Sorry…)
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 3, Insightful) by inertnet on Wednesday September 23 2015, @07:48AM
Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, you name them were started by students, not by venture capitalists. I bet the founders were all surprised themselves at their success.
Furthermore, privacy used to mean something in Europe back then.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Wednesday September 23 2015, @08:35AM
The big problem (according to the founder of a successful startup in the UK who gave a talk to us a year or so ago), is the second round of funding. There are lots of startups in the UK that grow to being worth a few tens of millions. At that point, a silicon valley startup goes for the next round, has a load of VCs lining up to fund it, and then can grow to something worth a few billion - but it only gets there with a couple of hundred million of investment. The other path is to sell the company to a bigger company, which is what almost all UK startups end up doing.
In contrast, the first round funding is increasingly a problem for VCs in the valley. Most VC funds now have so much money that they can't afford to hand it out in chunks less than about $30m. That's far more than most startups can usefully spend, which causes crazy bubbles.
The other problem, which we've known about since the '80s, is that the US is a much more homogeneous market and much more likely to buy from US companies. The EU has a larger population (and GDP), but if you want to sell to everyone in the EU then you need to spend a lot on localisation. If you want to sell to the entire US market, then you need one version.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Wednesday September 23 2015, @04:30PM
The big problem (according to the founder of a successful startup in the UK who gave a talk to us a year or so ago), is the second round of funding. There are lots of startups in the UK that grow to being worth a few tens of millions. At that point, a silicon valley startup goes for the next round, has a load of VCs lining up to fund it, and then can grow to something worth a few billion - but it only gets there with a couple of hundred million of investment. The other path is to sell the company to a bigger company, which is what almost all UK startups end up doing.
Why can't your UK startup go to the Silicon Valley investors and ask for money? This is the 21st century - it's not like the investors would have to put the money in wooden boxes and send it by ship around Cape Horn. I thought transferring capital internationally is supposed to be easy now.
(Score: 1) by PocketSizeSUn on Wednesday September 23 2015, @09:32PM
They can. And they do. But most of the VCs in the valley think:
- The valley is magical and any 'computer/internet/mobile' company will fail if it not located there.
- They don't want to have an investment that is too far to drive their Tesla by and show off to their friends.
No, I don't think much of SV or it's VCs.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 23 2015, @03:48PM
Furthermore, privacy used to mean something in Europe back then.
What do you mean? The problem is that they have *too much* privacy over there. ("Right to be forgotten" and data not passing through U.S. servers)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday September 23 2015, @08:21AM
...we've already got Google and Facebook. Duh.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @08:53AM
In Germany, there are the VZ networks (StudiVZ, etc.), [wikipedia.org] which are not that successful. So it's not that there is nobody trying; the reason must be different. I guess it's the greater cost of maintaining a dozen languages before you can even think about growing large.
Note also that there's a network effect involved (no pun intended): The larger a network already is, the more likely new users will join that network, and the less likely existing users will leave it. Note that even Google couldn't compete well against Facebook, and that's after having grown to a big company with deep pockets, and with many people already having a Google account for using other services.
(Score: 2, Informative) by number6 on Wednesday September 23 2015, @11:31AM
and without their pioneering efforts the term 'online giant' can be stripped from all those US companies ......
Linus Torvalds [wikipedia.org] - (FIN) - creator of Linux operating system
Fabrice Bellard [wikipedia.org] - (FRA) - creator of the FFMPEG and QEMU software projects
Niklaus Wirth [wikipedia.org] - (CHE) - creator of Pascal programming language
Tim Berners-Lee [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - inventor of the World Wide Web
Ted Codd [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - invented the relational model for database management
Stephanie "Steve" Shirley [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - pioneer of women in IT
Martha Lane Fox [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - pioneering digital economy entrepreneur
Donald Davies [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - developed the concept of packet switching in computer networking
Clive Sinclair [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - Home computer visionary
James Clark [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - author of 'groff' and 'expat', notable contributor to open-source software and XML
(Score: 3, Informative) by zugedneb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @12:34PM
Mainframes and the Unix Revolution - Computerphile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rPPqm44xLs [youtube.com]
watch this for some insight about computing in europe...
Linus Torvalds copied an industrial operating system from the usa. He did not just sat down to have a shit, and when he came out he happened to reimplement unix, just by chance, yes? Let's not mention where Linus would be without RMS and so forth...
Fabrice Bellard "created" nothing. He IMPLEMENTED known and published algorithms, even called codecs. I can do that also, since I do have a background in signal processing.
The rest on that list are just people doing their job in the field they choose.
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 1) by pgc on Wednesday September 23 2015, @02:02PM
Did Torvald, or did he not, create Linux?
(Score: 2) by zugedneb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @06:40PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX [wikipedia.org]
He "created" linux in the same sense that "wine" (win emulator) was created.
Also, if I remember what I read, he announced it so early, like "look guys I have version 0.00001" or some shit, that it was more about people joining and contributing, than he creating anything.
So, no, in my eyes, it's just religion to say that the big names actually did anything.
A proof of me being correct, in my own eyes, is the fact that "leader personality" is so important to humans, that if someone has it, a lot will be attributed to that person...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 2, Insightful) by zugedneb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @07:42PM
Except for Stallman... He really has done a lot, more than Linus.
Also, on forums at least, he is less loved.
But I guess having a leader personality, but not bowing for the narcissism in the human, is bad.
Stallman works, and talks, gets tired and burned out, but is barely admitted as human. I guess he demands too much of people...
Also, people who use the words "invent" and "create" seldom understand what those words mean, or how things actually are done. I guess education is wasted on some, if it is so easy for them to hail on man for the work of many...
Also, yet again, Linus did never had to complain about competent programmers not being available, so by that time, there was a lot of people with knowledge in the field. This means that someone would have done something, he just was the first, or the first who had the right personality.
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 1) by pgc on Wednesday September 23 2015, @02:13PM
Stephanie "Steve" Shirley [wikipedia.org] - (GBR) - pioneer of women in IT
How on earth do you pioneer women? Being the first one to mount them?
And how does that fit in the row?
(Score: 2) by Teckla on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:50PM
If Linux had never existed, *BSD would have taken its place.
However, I agree that people worldwide have contributed to what we have now. It's silly to think the U.S. was a "necessity."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @04:37PM
In other words, capitalism works to advance progress, socialism doesn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @07:51PM
In other words, capitalism works to advance progress, socialism doesn't.
In other words, capitalism works to advance the few at the cost of the many, socialism doesn't.
FTFY.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 24 2015, @02:03AM
If you think Facebook = "progress", I feel sorry for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @06:13PM
I like to think that's what Europe does. They don't want to be evil, and also do as they say :)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @06:57PM
they are good and decent people?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by virens on Wednesday September 23 2015, @07:13PM
My humble 0.02 Euro to the discussion - as someone who can compare the life in Australia and US vs Europe (mainly France):
Not to mention horrific bureaucracy (France, you really need to pull your head out of your 17-century ass!), gazillion of regulations, exorbitant taxes (that are used to support african scum), overinflated sense of entitlement and overal 18-century lifestyle (just look at their inexpensive hotels in old houses).
Notice that I put the word culture in quotes - looking at France, the culture there is dead (like in the rest of europe). No music, no film, no decent books for last, I don't know, 20-30 years (I don't count the pulp sludge). The funny thing is this anti-US sentiment that US culture dominates european. Well, EU don't have anything to offer - no wonder everybody refer american films, music and books!
As for industry: yes, they have it, but look at the novel stuff - it is all comes from US. europe is capable only for incremental improvements and (quality) implementation of something done before them.
(Score: 2) by zugedneb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @08:03PM
...look at the novel stuff - it is all comes from US...
I think, when it comes to computers, what sunk the ship was the Microsoft contract, that thy shipped by default with all pc:s...
If Windows would have been "just a product" like everything else, others would have had a chance.
For that reason alone, there was so much inflow of cash into USA...
Secondly, if we take the main events of history: doom, starcraft, diablo, and the gaming revolution that fallowed... Yet again, an enormous inflow of cash, not undeserved, into the US...
It is not easy to compete with someone who was the first to reach the mountains of money...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 1) by Sarasani on Thursday September 24 2015, @03:39AM
My humble 0.02 Euro to the discussion
Thank you for your 2c worth of humbleness: in your own dull witted, ill-informed, unthinking fashion, you've been most helpfully instructive. But I must admit that I stopped reading after your mention of "African skum" [sic]
And yes, I have also lived in Australia, US, and Europe. Not that that brings anything to this discussion.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday September 25 2015, @03:54PM
We took risks in the past, and sailed across the globe. Looking how that turned out, we've decided not to do it again.