Most of what you say is true, especially that they were many and diverse elements who wanted to get rid of the republic. Von Papen (the guy who overthrew the Prussia government) is a good example, but he never wanted to see Hitler in power. And it is also true that the military build-up began before Hitler took power, the Luftwaffe is a good example. To say something good about Hindenburg though, AFAIK he always acted within the confines of the Weimar law.
Anyway, I still take issue with your view that history as it turned out was inevitable. If you want to take that view then the root causes lie much earlier. I'm thinking of the Faustian pact that Friedrich Ebert made in 1919 or 1920 with the right-wing military establishment to put down the general strike.
And then there's this:
(3) The final nail in the coffin of the Weimar republic was the Enabling Act of 1933. By that time the communist opposition (who got 12% in the election before it) was outlawed and terrorized. The social democrats received a good beating as well.
The real action didn't start till 1934.
Tell that to the communist and social democratic deputies who were brutalized in the run-up to the 1933 election. If you can read German, I suggest you read the speech by Otto Wels from the SPD before the passage of the Enabling Act. It was the last free speech in the Reichstag for a long time and it is very enlightening.
It was not a matter of "if", but "who" and "when" for the dissolution of the Weimar Republic and its replacement by an authoritarian government. Hitler just happened to be the one who ended up on top.
That is a far-fetched assertion. Just because there are elements plotting to overthrow a regime doesn't make said overthrow inevitable.
Second, Hitler's abuses didn't really start until he had dissolved the Republic. That happened rather quickly once he became Chancellor...
And of course, the timeline of Hitler's rise to power shows that he acted cautiously until the debris of the Republic was swept away.
History doesn't agree with you.
(1) Hitler putshed in Bavaria in 1923 and was convicted to 5 years in prison for it. (He was released after 9 months for "good behavior.") It was in prison where he wrote his seminal work in which he was pretty open about his hatred for any democratic regime and his plan to overthrow it using "democratic" means.
(2) The SA (the early paramilitary wing of the NSDAP) had clashed with the communists and social democrats since the 1920s. Nothing cautious about these street battles, either.
(3) The final nail in the coffin of the Weimar republic was the Enabling Act of 1933. By that time the communist opposition (who got 12% in the election before it) was outlawed and terrorized. The social democrats received a good beating as well.
(4) Before the "dissolution" of the Weimar republic (which legally never happened), the Prussian state government was overthrown and Prussia was directly administered by the Reich. That wasn't done by Hitler, but it played directly into his hands, because the Prussia would have been in a strong position to defy Hitler.
I didn't say that they undid a democracy, after all Germany was under military occupation after being a fascist dictatorship. But there were democratically minded people there. In the Soviet occupation zone these sentiments were crushed and a Stalinist dictatorship was installed. Hence the Soviets "took away" democracy from the people in the East.
The Berlin wall was built in August 1961 (60 years and a few days ago). That was 12 years after the end of the Berlin blockade and the definite beginning of the German split in May/October 1949.
By completely preventing any cooperation between the Soviet and the three Western occupied territories. By blocking any meaningful development of political parties except their pet communist SED. By trying to grab the entirety of Berlin which precipitated the building of the Berlin Wall 12 years later.
Nobody forced democracy onto the Germans. If anything, the Soviets took it away from us in 1949. Germany's democratic desires can be traced back to when Napoleon invaded the Rhineland. That was 200 years ago.
The electoral support of the Nazis was waning in 1933 and indeed they gained power by terrorizing the opposition. Hitler convinced Hindenburg to outlaw the communist party after blaming the Reichstag fire on them. Their deputies were subsequently arrested in mass. The conservatives somehow believed they could hold Hitler in check and abdicated their parliamentary responsibilities. Only the social democrats stood up to him to the bitter end.
I have apparently a completely different perception of Slashdot than you do. People come here to have their beliefs confirmed, do they not? Either that or they come for comic relief. Why else would you go to a site that posts inflammatory summaries of articles that nobody bothers to read? It's rare to find a comment that shows as much empathy as yours.
The law does not define what is right and what is wrong. Only people can do that. If you think a law is unjust -- and are prepared to live with the consequences (!) -- then it is morally imperative to defy and break the law.
Very true. What's more, it was an Angel who brought Mitochondrial Eve to Earth by punching in the notes of a Bob Dylan song into a FTL jump drive. Also, Eve was a half-Cyborg.
LaTeX presentations usually look like crap. I agree that for documents LaTeX beats a word processor every time, but a presentation is a very visual product and a proper presentation suite is much better suited to create one. Of course, Powerpoint is a crappy presentation suite, as is the Open Office variant. Keynote is pretty decent.
The report concludes that the studies reviewed do not provide a basis for inferring that increasing the severity of sentences generally is capable of enhancing deterrent effects....
Correlations: Severity Effects. In the Farrington studies just mentioned, the statistical associations between severity of punishment and crime rates were much weaker. Such negative correlations between sentence severity and crime rates as were found to exist generally were not sufficient to achieve statistical significance. These patterns, which are consistent with those found in earlier studies, provide little support for an hypothesis of marginal deterrence with respect to severity of punishment. One of these studies, Farrington, Langan and Wikstrom (1994), provides calculations that compare the English and America (as well as Swedish) trends. The absence of a finding in that study of strong correlations for severity is notable -- because U.S. penalty levels have been substantially higher than English levels during the periods studied.
Increasing evidence shows great diversity in the effects of the criminal sanction. Legal punishment either reduces, increases, or has no effect on future crimes, depending on the type of offenders, offenses, social settings, and levels of analysis. A theory of “defiance” helps explain the conditions under which punishment increases crime. Procedural justice (fairness or legitimacy) of experienced punishment is essential for the acknowledgment of shame, which conditions deterrence; punishment perceived as unjust can lead to unacknowledged shame and defiant pride that increases future crime. Both “specific” defiance by individuals and “general” defiance by collectivities results from punishment perceived as unfair or excessive, unless deterrent effects counterbalance defiance and render the net effect of sanctions irrelevant. By implication, crime might be reduced more by police and courts treating all citizens with fairness and respect than by increasing punishments. A variety of research designs can be used to test, refine, or reject the theory.
Nine relevant attributes of legal punishment are noted by the author: objective certainty, perceived certainty, perceived severity of prescribed punishments, perceived severity of actual punishments, presumptive severity of actual punishments, objective celerity, perceived celerity, presumptive celerity of prescribed punishments, and knowledge of prescribed punishments. The author's critical review of purported tests of the deterrence doctrine shows that only three of the attributes of punishment have been considered and that the investigators ignored possible preventive consequences of punishment other than deterrence. Nine such consequences (incapacitation, normative validation, etc.) are analyzed in this book. The author maintains that all of the attributes of punishment and their possible preventive consequences are crucial in considering contending penal policies. The author notes that legislators are preoccupied with the severity of statutory penalties; however, that attribute of legal punishment is of questionable significance. Moreover, he states that a defensible penal policy is precluded unless policy makers recognize three t
Early in the interview he says that they need to write apps for "things that every computer needs to be able to do. Like managing photos, music and documents. So we want to write some of those basic utilities, that are more part of the OS than a third-party-application would be."
The only conclusion I can draw from such a statement is that the existing Gnome apps are crap. Why else reinvent the wheel?!
Their behavior is more like a 9-year-old child on a playground announcing "Screw you guys, I'm going home!" and taking all his toys with him. Of course, he didn't buy those toys himself, they were paid for by his mom.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of what you say is true, especially that they were many and diverse elements who wanted to get rid of the republic. Von Papen (the guy who overthrew the Prussia government) is a good example, but he never wanted to see Hitler in power. And it is also true that the military build-up began before Hitler took power, the Luftwaffe is a good example. To say something good about Hindenburg though, AFAIK he always acted within the confines of the Weimar law.
Anyway, I still take issue with your view that history as it turned out was inevitable. If you want to take that view then the root causes lie much earlier. I'm thinking of the Faustian pact that Friedrich Ebert made in 1919 or 1920 with the right-wing military establishment to put down the general strike.
And then there's this:
(3) The final nail in the coffin of the Weimar republic was the Enabling Act of 1933. By that time the communist opposition (who got 12% in the election before it) was outlawed and terrorized. The social democrats received a good beating as well.
The real action didn't start till 1934.
Tell that to the communist and social democratic deputies who were brutalized in the run-up to the 1933 election. If you can read German, I suggest you read the speech by Otto Wels from the SPD before the passage of the Enabling Act. It was the last free speech in the Reichstag for a long time and it is very enlightening.
It was not a matter of "if", but "who" and "when" for the dissolution of the Weimar Republic and its replacement by an authoritarian government. Hitler just happened to be the one who ended up on top.
That is a far-fetched assertion. Just because there are elements plotting to overthrow a regime doesn't make said overthrow inevitable.
Second, Hitler's abuses didn't really start until he had dissolved the Republic. That happened rather quickly once he became Chancellor...
And of course, the timeline of Hitler's rise to power shows that he acted cautiously until the debris of the Republic was swept away.
History doesn't agree with you.
(1) Hitler putshed in Bavaria in 1923 and was convicted to 5 years in prison for it. (He was released after 9 months for "good behavior.") It was in prison where he wrote his seminal work in which he was pretty open about his hatred for any democratic regime and his plan to overthrow it using "democratic" means.
(2) The SA (the early paramilitary wing of the NSDAP) had clashed with the communists and social democrats since the 1920s. Nothing cautious about these street battles, either.
(3) The final nail in the coffin of the Weimar republic was the Enabling Act of 1933. By that time the communist opposition (who got 12% in the election before it) was outlawed and terrorized. The social democrats received a good beating as well.
(4) Before the "dissolution" of the Weimar republic (which legally never happened), the Prussian state government was overthrown and Prussia was directly administered by the Reich. That wasn't done by Hitler, but it played directly into his hands, because the Prussia would have been in a strong position to defy Hitler.
I didn't say that they undid a democracy, after all Germany was under military occupation after being a fascist dictatorship. But there were democratically minded people there. In the Soviet occupation zone these sentiments were crushed and a Stalinist dictatorship was installed. Hence the Soviets "took away" democracy from the people in the East.
The Berlin wall was built in August 1961 (60 years and a few days ago). That was 12 years after the end of the Berlin blockade and the definite beginning of the German split in May/October 1949.
By completely preventing any cooperation between the Soviet and the three Western occupied territories. By blocking any meaningful development of political parties except their pet communist SED. By trying to grab the entirety of Berlin which precipitated the building of the Berlin Wall 12 years later.
Nobody forced democracy onto the Germans. If anything, the Soviets took it away from us in 1949. Germany's democratic desires can be traced back to when Napoleon invaded the Rhineland. That was 200 years ago.
Germany wasn't a democracy when Hitler began fucking people over and the end of that democracy was obvious for quite some time.
Care to explain?
The electoral support of the Nazis was waning in 1933 and indeed they gained power by terrorizing the opposition. Hitler convinced Hindenburg to outlaw the communist party after blaming the Reichstag fire on them. Their deputies were subsequently arrested in mass. The conservatives somehow believed they could hold Hitler in check and abdicated their parliamentary responsibilities. Only the social democrats stood up to him to the bitter end.
Please explain to me the rationale of that rule. How is a restriction on drinking in class conductive to a good learning environment?
Who is causing a scene in your hypothetical scenario? The student or the teacher? Hint: It's not the person who just wants to drink a soda.
Lots of illusions get shattered here.
I have apparently a completely different perception of Slashdot than you do. People come here to have their beliefs confirmed, do they not? Either that or they come for comic relief. Why else would you go to a site that posts inflammatory summaries of articles that nobody bothers to read? It's rare to find a comment that shows as much empathy as yours.
The law does not define what is right and what is wrong. Only people can do that. If you think a law is unjust -- and are prepared to live with the consequences (!) -- then it is morally imperative to defy and break the law.
Just throwing out a wild guess with no evidence behind it, but could it be because engineers are less able to hold simutainous contradictory beliefs?
No. Knowing that people hold contradictory beliefs doesn't stop anybody from holding contradictory beliefs themselves. It's how we're wired.
How do you know that the 60k leaked NPD emails were part of the data that DDB supposedly had? That's the first time I've heard of this.
Conservative = averse to change, motto is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
Very true. What's more, it was an Angel who brought Mitochondrial Eve to Earth by punching in the notes of a Bob Dylan song into a FTL jump drive. Also, Eve was a half-Cyborg.
Where did you plug the mouse in?
people don't like to explore because they're afraid they'll break something
noticed that with a lot of my friends who aren't very computer-literate
LaTeX presentations usually look like crap. I agree that for documents LaTeX beats a word processor every time, but a presentation is a very visual product and a proper presentation suite is much better suited to create one. Of course, Powerpoint is a crappy presentation suite, as is the Open Office variant. Keynote is pretty decent.
To suggest that harsh penalties don't work as a deterrent flies in the face of all common sense.
Lot's of human behavior defies common sense. Learn to live with it. (Too be fair the word excessive might have been more appropriate here than harsh.)
See my other post for links to research supporting my statement.
From a study done by the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University commissioned by the Home Office in 1999: http://members.multimania.co.uk/lawnet/SENTENCE.PDF
The report concludes that the studies reviewed do not provide a basis for inferring that increasing ...
the severity of sentences generally is capable of enhancing deterrent effects.
Correlations: Severity Effects. In the Farrington studies just mentioned, the statistical
associations between severity of punishment and crime rates were much weaker. Such negative
correlations between sentence severity and crime rates as were found to exist generally were not
sufficient to achieve statistical significance. These patterns, which are consistent with those found in
earlier studies, provide little support for an hypothesis of marginal deterrence with respect to
severity of punishment. One of these studies, Farrington, Langan and Wikstrom (1994), provides
calculations that compare the English and America (as well as Swedish) trends. The absence of a
finding in that study of strong correlations for severity is notable -- because U.S. penalty levels have
been substantially higher than English levels during the periods studied.
Then there's this study from 1993: http://jrc.sagepub.com/content/30/4/445.short
Increasing evidence shows great diversity in the effects of the criminal sanction. Legal punishment either reduces, increases, or has no effect on future crimes, depending on the type of offenders, offenses, social settings, and levels of analysis. A theory of “defiance” helps explain the conditions under which punishment increases crime. Procedural justice (fairness or legitimacy) of experienced punishment is essential for the acknowledgment of shame, which conditions deterrence; punishment perceived as unjust can lead to unacknowledged shame and defiant pride that increases future crime. Both “specific” defiance by individuals and “general” defiance by collectivities results from punishment perceived as unfair or excessive, unless deterrent effects counterbalance defiance and render the net effect of sanctions irrelevant. By implication, crime might be reduced more by police and courts treating all citizens with fairness and respect than by increasing punishments. A variety of research designs can be used to test, refine, or reject the theory.
And another study from 1975: https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=27596
Nine relevant attributes of legal punishment are noted by the author: objective certainty, perceived certainty, perceived severity of prescribed punishments, perceived severity of actual punishments, presumptive severity of actual punishments, objective celerity, perceived celerity, presumptive celerity of prescribed punishments, and knowledge of prescribed punishments. The author's critical review of purported tests of the deterrence doctrine shows that only three of the attributes of punishment have been considered and that the investigators ignored possible preventive consequences of punishment other than deterrence. Nine such consequences (incapacitation, normative validation, etc.) are analyzed in this book. The author maintains that all of the attributes of punishment and their possible preventive consequences are crucial in considering contending penal policies. The author notes that legislators are preoccupied with the severity of statutory penalties; however, that attribute of legal punishment is of questionable significance. Moreover, he states that a defensible penal policy is precluded unless policy makers recognize three t
First of all, research has shown again and again that harsh penalties simply do not work as a deterrent to other offenders.
Secondly, does the judge expect that another riot is around the corner? Who is he trying to deter?
I expect the sentence to be reduced on appeal.
Early in the interview he says that they need to write apps for "things that every computer needs to be able to do. Like managing photos, music and documents. So we want to write some of those basic utilities, that are more part of the OS than a third-party-application would be."
The only conclusion I can draw from such a statement is that the existing Gnome apps are crap. Why else reinvent the wheel?!
I'm afraid you've fallen victim to Poe's paradox. At least I didn't mean it as a parody, more like tongue-in-cheek.
PS: I love learning something new!
Their behavior is more like a 9-year-old child on a playground announcing "Screw you guys, I'm going home!" and taking all his toys with him. Of course, he didn't buy those toys himself, they were paid for by his mom.
So their gated communities with their private security services aren't enough for these fuckers. Now they want to live in their private countries.
What a waste! There should be a tax on anti-social behavior.