One remark though, better to forget coins at home than your apartment keys in a trolley. Besides, at most supermarkets, you get those things for free which you unlock the trolleys with and you can carry them in your keyring, so if you remember to take your keys in the morning, you most likely have that metallic thing with you as well when going to the supermarket.

You shouldn’t feel ‘stone age’ by paying with paper checks. Whereas we in Europe pride ourselves for pioneering widespread mplementation of paperless money transfers, let’s look at how we do it….

First, our European banking system uses the Internet, which is controlled by a series of domain servers. Those servers translate and route any request we Europeans initiate from our web browsers. Our banking system depends on these servers. Want to guess who owns them?

You’d be correct if you guessed: The United States. It owns the main Internet ‘root’ servers and the ability to route every single browser request we in Europe make. It can even turn-off our domain if it wants, thereby crippling our banking system. In essence, we use *America’s* Internet for everything from surfing FinlandForThought to making payments for our electricity bills.

Second, all our bank account information is stored in repositories called databases. In fact, we have so much information, that we’ve constructed database ‘farms’ or ‘grids’—many linked database servers which act in unison.

The database products, that our banks use, are either made by Oracle or Microsoft. As we know, both are American companies. Embarrassingly, we in Europe don’t even have a database product capable of storing our own bank system’s vast amount of information. We’re not even close. At best, we could stretch our European limits and host FinlandForThought’s archives.

So, in the case of our banking system, we might have implemented the aforementioned technologies better, but, without research efforts that were funded by American private industry, we in Europe would be the ‘stone age’ ones.

So hfb yet again your poor analogy fails.

But if Finland is such a horrible place for a gated-community american I suggest that you visit the slums of Brazil.

Anyways I’d rather that all members of society have an opportunity to free (paid by taxes) quality education and health care than a really cool expensive car that I really don’t need.

But I guess your priorities are different, damn those racist drunk finns who poop all over Punavuori surely it is hell here.

Hank – Actually, yes, I did use the stone age technology of the check/cheque

Yes in the hot tempered countries they have homeless kids sniffing glue.

But you seem to have your priorities set straight.

I’m so jealous to other countries people that they can drive with the same amount of money with better cars than I do. I paid 8k year ago and it was ’97 VW Passat.

Screw the taxes! In hot temper countries they wouldn’t take this BS…they would riot on the street but in Finland we just take everything the government gives us.

A couple of days ago there was a story in Helsingin Sanomat about possible political changes in Cuba due to Castro’s illness. The article quoted a US professor (can’t remember the name) who explained that Cubans associate revolution with free education and free healthcare, which make the revolution an overall acceptable thing.

It’s kind of funny that we Finns feel sorry for Cubans for their blight and proud for our welfare state: free education and free health care adorned with severely diminished purchasing power.

Great! I envy the purchasing power you’ll enjoy in the USA. That was always my favorite part about living in the states

By the way, living in Finland, we tend to forget the deleterious impact our government’s tax rip-off has on our own perchasing power. I did a quick search and found that the cheaper 2002 Volvos cost about 13,000-euros here in Finland—overpriced by 5K! And they’re produced next door in Sweden! The more expensive 2002 models cost about 40K in Finland!

I find it amazing how we continue to justify this condition by saying things like: “Oh, it’s ok that we pay double for everything here in Finland, we have free schooling and medical care for everyone.”

As if other countries don’t also have these things. Only difference is that we pay double for everything we own. They don’t. Germany is a good example…..and, in Germany, 2002 Volvos start at just under 9K for the nicer ones.

http://www.nettiauto.com/
http://www.mobile.de

Heh, my Russian colleague is very amused about the Finnish word for flute, ‘huilu’ and especially that a person, who plays the flute, may be called ‘huilisti’.

Ha! Age gilds memories. I was a security occifer back in the day, more in Kannelmäki Maxi, but the system worked the same. There was a few official “carriage/bottle boys” but they were generally emptying the bottle recycling area. The carts were handled, by kids yes, but usually by a “granny-mafia” of 5-6 spiteful old ladies who “belonged to the furniture”. The cart return turnstile machine was a POS and the biggest concern of the grannies was they didn’t get the coupon. And it wasn’t three euros, it was 5mk (95c) and you had to collect… 100 or so stickers for it. The grannies were all disappointed their hobby was taken from them when the coin-carts came.

Back in school for fun we could go buy nothing but a condom and a 40oz of malt liquor and grin and wink at the young cashier girl as we were checking out.

LOL! Yeah, they could have used the coin system, although I reckon he would have stole them anyways. That scene where he’s just dropping the carts down the side of that hill is hysterical. Sooooo can’t wait for Trailer Park Boys the Movie to come to Finland (although I’m betting I’ll be buying the DVD from Canada in a few months time in order to see it)