It's nice to have GTK and all, but look at QT4, it has much more advanced features.
I suggest you do a careful feature comparison; it's not as clearcut. Furthermore, more isn't necessarily better; it matters that toolkits offer the right collection of features.
However, the showstopper for many developers are two things. First, Qt4 is written in C++ (in fact, C++ with some non-standard features). Second, if you ever want to use Qt for non-free software, there is a large up-front cost.
If Nokia change it too much, people will move. For the people using the commercial version, it's *easier* to stay as long is it isn't punitive.
If the don't change the licensing, people will probably move even more. With Troll Tech, at least, commercial developers knew that the company's survival depended on doing a good job with Qt on all platforms. But Nokia has more than 1000x the revenue of Troll Tech (and most of that probably from mobile); commercial desktop sales of Qt simply do not matter to Nokia as a company, and that's something that worries commercial developers.
As to your BSD hope, why the hell would Nokia take it BSD? What do Nokia get that they don't already?
What they gain is trust by the commercial developer community that Qt for the desktop will be available and usable for commercial development in the future. Right now, Nokia has the option of effectively killing Qt for the desktop any time they choose.
but why would Nokia, a for-profit company, ignore shareholder value and reduce profit "to be more popular"?
Because Nokia is in the business of phone platforms and phone hardware, not desktop software. Relicensing Qt under BSD could lower their costs and could greatly increase the number of commercial and non-commercial developers for the platform.
commercial licenses are the issue
on
Nokia Buys Trolltech
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Having said all of the above, I can't help but remain a bit concerned about this turn of events. I was under the impression that Nokia have a rather tarnished reputation in the eyes of the Free Software world,
That's not the main issue. Qt already is under the GPL, so whatever Nokia does or doesn't do won't affect KDE.
The big question is what Nokia will do for commercial developers.
I think Nokia's best bet is to re-release the desktop edition of Qt under a BSD-style license right away. Nokia isn't going to make much money from licensing anyway, and a BSD release could make Qt much more popular as a toolkit for everybody.
Qt is already released under the GPL; it can't go "closed source". KDE applications themselves are safe.
The big question is what happens to commercial users. For example, Nokia might stop Mac support. Or they might make the desktop versions really buggy. Or they might jack up licensing fees. In that case, it's the commercial developers that are in trouble because they can't get another commercial version of Qt from anybody. Right now, we don't know what Nokia is going to do. But they don't have much of a track record on desktop software.
I wonder what this means for commercial users of Qt. Despite what they say, Nokia doesn't strike me as a company that will do a good job at providing cross-platform desktop toolkits. So... either they re-release Qt under a BSD-like license, or commercial users will be out of luck.
I'm also not sure this acquisition makes sense from a mobile perspective. Nokia needs a better UI strategy than they have right now, but Qt isn't really the top choice in that space either. This purchase really strikes me as one company with an aging platform buying another company with an aging platform.
Well, I guess we'll know how things turn out when the dust settles.
"They can't hide behind anonymity while they are saying these scurrilous and menacing things," said Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Seems to me that they can, both legally and practically. Anonymous speech is protected in the US. It's unfortunate that that also permits anonymous defamation, but that's the price we pay. If it hadn't been defaming speech on a web site, people might also have spread around anonymous pamphlets or sent anonymous mail.
Besides, even if this lawsuit were to succeed and even if they found the posters, the result will simply be that people will be more careful about anonymizing their IP addresses. For example, if you connect from Starbuck's, your name isn't linked to your IP.
issue, and neither can one seriously claim that Mr. Schaar has no idea what he is talking about and thus his testimony or advice not be heard.
Where do you get that from? Of course, his testimony should be heard. I'm saying people need to look at his and Germany's record and not just believe the German myth that Germany has strong data protection laws.
I find it interesting that you seem to consider low voter turnout a good thing, and the reason given for it.
Where do you get that from? I said "Voter turnout tells you little about the health of a democracy. The relatively low voter turnout in the US results from..." Voter turnout is a meaningless criterion of democratic values.
By the time that ballot would be cast, sure, a lot of "controversial" choices are weeded out (namely anybody not openly touting their Christianity, anybody without either huge coffers or the backing of one of the two (TWO!) parties, anybody the common Joe would not want to drink a beer with some time, etc).
That's the choice the American people are making, quite democratically, and it's served the US well for 200 years. Besides, one of the major parties in Germany is the Christian Democrats, and German federal and state governments involve church officials in politics; talk about a disturbing non-separation of church and state.
As for "two parties", the existence of multiple parties was a big factor in the downfall of the Weimar Republic. What do you think having more than two parties accomplishes? Can you point to any historical examples showing that having more parties results in better democracy?
In any case, the turnouts for the primaries are not looking particularly well, either. A cursory glance at turnout figures for 2004 did not look better than those of the general election; by your argumentation, those should have been a lot higher, if this is where the real voting happens.
There is no "real voting", not even in Germany. By the time the vote happens, candidates and their positions will already have self-selected based on polls.
Personally I consider it a duty of any citizen of my country to vote come election day,
And personally, I consider it a duty for any citizen that hasn't informed himself on the issues and candidates to stay home and not vote. Furthermore, I don't see any problem with people not voting who don't have a preference. I certainly don't vote when I don't have a preference.
The current US system during the primaries is a great theatralical production, but the often-touted "let's talk issues" is a talking point, nothing more.
That's not the part that counts; what matters is the extensive political analysis, statements, vetting, and endorsements.
I don't believe the US has a monopoly on that particular front (nor has that particular mechanism been working over there, recently, IMHO).
Why do you keep responding to points that I never made? I pointed out to you that the US has a long history of fixing its political problems, hence your criticism of US politics is unwarranted, nothing more.
But since you mention it: what kinds of important legislative innovations has Germany actually contributed to the world? The US kickstarted widespread adoption of FOIA, data protection, free-speech, privacy, and civil rights legislation.
I couldn't paint a picture of any society with just history alone; it sets the surroundings, it doesn't force an outcome.
Neither can I. But I'm not saying that Germany is a bad democracy, I'm disagreeing with you that the world should look to Germany as a model of privacy protection and democracy. Germany has not faced a major crisis change since WWII, so nobody knows how it would hold up.
That's where stuff is going awry, IMHO. If that is how DEMOCRACY should work, then it is not democracy we are talking about; freedom of speech, of the press, and a rule of law (not martial law) are prerequisites -- eroding any of those three reduces the resulting form of democracy.
I think the same demand for perfection that makes German cars nice (but expensive to repair) has made German democracy brittle in the past. Democracy includes the ability of the government and citizens to screw up. The US government screws up all the time, but then things get fixed and the whole system improves as a result. Historically, when the German government screws up in a big way, the country falls apart.
Apathy is not distrust. You distrust your government. Many are just apathetic towards it,
I have no idea what you base that on. Have you lived in the US? I can make the comparison directly, and from everything I have seen, US participation in the political process is far more vigorous than it is in Germany.
(and 50% is abysmal by any standard already)
Voter turnout tells you little about the health of a democracy. The relatively low voter turnout in the US (comparable to Switzerland) results from the political process selecting candidates in such a way that a large percentage of the population simply has no preference between them and doesn't need to vote anymore by the time the election comes around. In different words, the real US presidential election is happening right now, and the choice in November will likely be between two fairly middle-of-the-road candidates (middle of the road = conservative by German standards).
It's actually a good system. If the Weimar Republic had had a US-style voting system, Hitler would likely never have come to power: too much dirt would have come out on him during the primaries, and he would have been too controversial a choice to make it into the actual election.
Anyone claiming that there hasn't been any innovation in software over the last 10 years because of the lack of ability to patent it in the UK is clearly barking mad.
Actually, there hasn't been much innovation in software... and US software patents have contributed to that.
Whether the UK does or does not have software patents has some symbolic significance, but it doesn't matter much in terms of the software business.
However, please don't paint it with a broad-brushed Americanization; The system is sufficiently different from what the US is modeled on, and the US is not the only allied force
I didn't claim that Germany society was a carbon copy of the US, I said that German democratic values and traditions are largely derived from American ones (which are basically the same as the allied ones).
but no, democracy existed in these parts before it, with tradition.
Really? Like where? German intellectuals liked to talk a lot about liberty and democracy, but the only actual democracies were the result of WWI and WWII.
You can gauge the current state of this society with the same tools you'd gauge other societies with (and the same caveats).
I don't think anyone can gauge the state of a society. And that leaves us with history.
Oh please. National Security Letters ? "Secret" NSA wiretaps ? Nixon ? CIA operations inside the US ? Patriot I and II ?
That's the way US democracy is supposed to work. The president deliberately has broad powers, and Congress will defer to the executive in questions of war and defense. That's how the US survived the civil war, expanded across the continent, and got through the 20th century in one piece. But it's inevitable that the president will abuse his powers, as he has again and again over the past 200 years. But Congress and voters eventually reign it in. Landmark legislation, like FOIA, civil rights, and the Privacy Act have been the result. (Many nations, including Germany, then look to the US as a model for such legislation and enact their own versions without ever having to go through the wrenching scandals themselves.)
One should even consider the possibility that a repeated severe economic depression could propel the US
One should indeed, and that's why, overwhelmingly, Americans distrust their government and want as little to do with it as possible. What concerns me is that Germans don't seem to distrust their government anywhere near as much.
submitted that these values and traditions exist more in Germany currently than they do in the US; don't throw with stones when sitting in a glass house, as they say.
Where do you think modern German values come from? Post-WWII Germany was shaped by the victors of WWII, its constitution was written under US supervision, it was de-nazified and re-educated under allied control, and Germany was integrated into a complex web of economic and military relationships. In fact, you might say that today's Germany is not so much an expression of German values, but of American values and traditions.
It looks like these values are being assimilated into German culture in general, but nobody knows how far along that process is. We do know that 16 million East Germans accommodated a totalitarian government for half a century and that support for the Nazis and anti-semitism in the 1950's was still disturbingly high.
In the US that scale has long since tipped in favor of curtailed or eradicated freedoms for some semblance of security (though even that, objectively speaking, cannot be achieved through the measures taken thus far or even in that direction).
No. Even with the post-9/11 changes, the ability of the US government to track and spy on Americans is much more limited than that of the German government, and many of those powers expire or are being overturned.
Proclaiming a certain outcome as all-but-certain due to historic events of a region is foolishness, and hardly constructive
What is "foolish" is to assume that things will just keep getting better. Whatever the cause, every nation experiences severe economic meltdowns periodically; the real question is how it gets through it. Post-WWII Germany has not lived through one yet, so we don't know.
We could have had the same discussion 90 years ago: the Weimar Republic looked like it was more progressive and democratic than the US. But, in fact, two decades later, Germany was a fascist dictatorship setting out to gas millions of Jews, while the US somehow muddled through again.
(i.e. data collection without existing suspicion) is not covered by these 14(1) exceptions
Section 14 doesn't talk about data collection at all; it talks about how government agencies can use data already collected by other agencies for new purposes. And evidently they do.
Neither 14(2)(6) nor 14(2)(7) apply without cause ("Präventive Strafverfolgung" in and of itself is not allowed as per PolG, "Straftatprävention" has to meet a proportionality-test as it affects article 2 GG).
You claimed that the police can't get at that data, and that's clearly wrong. Now you're only arguing about the conditions under which they can get at the data.
Since you mentioned democratic tradition and democratic values, it seemed only fair to bring up the current state thereof in that particular country.
Most of the points you raised aren't about freedom, they are about good governance. The fact that a nation is a democracy doesn't mean it's well governed or nice to its neighbors, and the US currently is neither. On the other hand, many well-governed and peaceful nations in history have not been democracies and have restricted personal freedoms.
In fact, I think that's the fundamental flaw with the German model: there's an inevitable tradeoff between safety, security, and comfort on the one hand, and liberty and freedom on the other, but Germans want it all. Germany has achieved comfort and safety, but at the expense of individual liberties.
My point is that it does not really matter whether/you/ trust or agree with Germany's rule of law or society -- Germans do not have to convince you -- much like US Americans do not need to convince others that theirs is the best system.
No, but Germany does need to convince other nations when it comes to making statements in the EU or UN. I think the EU and the US should tell any German data protection representative to go take a hike and get his own house in order first. And as far as the US is concerned, that's just what the US is doing.
(and much of this is a matter of opinion, in any case),
I wouldn't be so complacent about it. Germany hasn't faced any real challenges over the last half century. The last time things went bad in Germany was after a great depression. Whether Germany will be able to get through a halving of its living standard, collapse of the auto industry, and a 30% Muslim population, and come out democratic at the other end remains to be seen, because something like that is in the cards and Germany has historically not been able to get through any major crisis without the Germans throwing in the towel and changing their government.
How is it possible that people still don't get how the GPL works, and still think they can treat it like a contract or something?
It does work like a contract: you cannot unilaterally get out of a contract (unless it has a termination clause letting you), just like you can't unilaterally get out of the GPL.
I have no clue if this will turn out to be enforceable or not. If it is then it will certainly fuel concerns we have heard before about using GPL'd software in commercial applications.
It will "fuel concerns" only if you're terminally stupid, because the GPL actually protects you from these kinds of problems. In different words, because the software is covered by the GPL, there is no problem. The author can scream until he's turning blue, the software is out there and you have the right to use it under the GPL.
In fact, a far more common thing is that a commercial vendor of a proprietary piece of software simply disappears or changes the license or price on the next release, and then you're completely out of luck. In contrast, the GPL gives you rights and ensures that you can continue to use software you already have, even if the author disappears or changes his mind.
In that case, the author didn't own the copyright, so he never had the right to place the software under the GPL in the first place and the GPL never got revoked.
In this case, the author does seem to own the copyright, so when he put the software under the GPL, it's valid and can't be revoked.
It would be like saying Castro can void the US leasing agreement at Gitmo made by the Trujillo regime.
Actually, legally speaking, Cuba can do that: nations can invalidate contracts if it's in the national interest. The US government has done this many times. The reason Cuba doesn't do it is because they couldn't enforce it and because the US would use it as an excuse to wage a war.
A copyright owner can revoke outstanding licenses. The only way the GPL is non-revokable is if the original copyright owner has assigned the copyright to the FSF,
The license is binding on both parties. A copyright owner cannot revoke licenses, "outstanding" or otherwise. For the GPL, this is even explicitly guaranteed by the license:
However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
Sources would be the BDSG (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz). Personal data of a special nature (religious affiliation is of that kind, specifically mentioned) gets even more protection.
In 14(2)(6), 14(2)(7), and 14(5)(1), that law effectively permits the use personal data collected by any government agency for police purposes, including highly personal information, like religion and sexuality. That's in addition to several other loopholes in that law that would make it possible for that data to be shared.
As for having something to prove; nope, Germany doesn't.
Whether other people trust Germans on issues of democracy, privacy, and freedom is not for Germans to decide, it's something Germans need to convince other people of. You aren't doing a good job, and I'm not convinced.
it does beat at least the spreader of democracy in the middle east
I don't see what those points have to do with anything. We're talking about whether a German government representative has much credibility when making statements about privacy and free speech, and I don't think he does, based on Germany's actual privacy situation.
As for US foreign policy, the responsibility of US politicians is to US voters alone. When the US "spreads democracy" (as it did in Germany and Japan), it's to serve US interests, nothing more.
You should specify cellphone when you are talking about phones.
The law applies to all phones: land line, Internet, and cell phones.
No, I do not need to pay a fee to leave that field blank.
You can't "leave" that field blank; that field is filled in automatically on your tax forms every year unless you take explicit action. In order to change it, you need to explicitly file a form with the government, and there's a fee associated with that. http://www.kirchenaustritt.de/
And no, the police does not have access to this information absent a judge-ordered lawful subpoena
Sources? And what's to stop them anyway?
If and once that happens, you have strong legal recourse
How can you sue over something that you don't know about?
You seem to love to compare current Germany to Nazi Germany.
Don't put words in my mouth. I'm not "comparing" current Germany to Nazi Germany. The analysis of "what would a fascist government do with this data" is one people also apply in the US in political debate. The fact that you dismiss the possibility and instead say "we have laws to protect us" shows again that you simply aren't vigilant.
You seem to forget one vital piece of historic fact though -- Germans, generally, know their history.
And where is that "fact" documented? Germans generally do no better in academic subjects than other nations (cf Pisa). And your own knowledge of German governmental powers seems to be somewhat limited.
but I posit your rambling about how we are heading for another Nazi Germany are quite narrow-minded paranoia -- a good Feindbild, if you will.
Germany isn't a "feind"; with tens of thousands of US troops stationed in Germany, Germany is hardly in a position of doing harm to anyone. But it is also hardly a shining example of a long democratic tradition or popular democratic values. Given its history, Germany has something to prove and should be at the forefront of free speech, separation of church and state, and protections against intrusive government, but it clearly is not; the German government and police have more powers than in many other democratic nations, church and state are more intertwined, and free speech is less protected than elsewhere.
Phones need to be registered -- sure, with your carrier. The one who bills you. Same as the US and other countries
This is quite incorrect. In the US and other nations, you can get a phone for cash or with just a credit card number (and you can get anonymous credit cards if you like). In Germany, you need to give your home address to the carrier, because of government regulations. This is one of the reasons getting a Skype number in Germany is such a problem.
(In addition, in Germany, your home address itself has to be registered with the government.)
As for registering my religion with the government : I can leave that field blank. It is used for taxation; while I abhor this practice, it's nevertheless not something that is problematic
That, too, is incorrect. You might personally still consider yourself a Catholic or Protestant, but if you don't declare yourself officially to be a member of those churches, those churches won't consider you a member. Furthermore, you can't just "leave that field blank"; if you want to leave the church, you need to do so by paying a fee and registering that fact with the government. Once you do, a number of people will find out, including your employer. And, of course, that information is available to the police; who do you think they'll go looking for first when it comes to terrorism? Registered Christians or registered non-Christians?
The German government cannot get all your connection information. I do not know where you get your facts from.
German ISPs and carriers are now required to retain all connection information:
Germany has one of the toughest privacy laws around. You should be so lucky as to have these laws.
Germany does have tough privacy laws. The problem is that you can't rely on tough privacy laws to protect you from governmental abuse: once the government collects the data, if it's intent on misusing the data, the laws don't matter. If a new fascist government came to power in Germany, it would immediately have all the data it wanted, on religion, on social networks, etc.
You misrepresent the state of data protection in Germany in quite fundamental ways, but then again, misrepresentation seems to be your aim.
I'm not misrepresenting that at all: Germany's privacy laws are useless against governmental abuse because you need to trust your government to respect those laws in order for them to mean anything.
What your response illustrates is that Germans still have a naive trust in their government ("obrigkeitsglaeubigkeit"); that's what allowed the Nazis to come to power last century, and who knows what evils it will bring this century.
Think about it, how come the most known OS for its GUI and GUI origins (OS X) still uses 'lists of words(menus)' as it primary interface to features and functions?
Because they work, and they work efficiently.
This is not something you should honestly be slamming Vista over, as MS is pushing new GUI and UI constructs forward beyond what OSX and the industry has seen.
There is nothing "new" about these concepts. Microsoft didn't invent them and Microsoft isn't the first to implement them.
A Vista user, especially a newb or professional that isn't stuck in thinking in terms of FileManager concepts, can run circles around XP and OS X users.
Where are the usability studies?
Here is a quick test if you are old school or slow on usability - Do you mainly use Save and Open Dialog boxes in your daily work?
I mostly use Google Docs, and I don't see Save and Open dialog boxes at all.
Germans learned from nazism and sovietism that privacy was a damn serious issue. That any entity with personal information about several million people can turn into something nasty.
Optimistic? Americans are deeply distrustful of their government and protective of their ability to remain anonymous, far more than Germans.
but Germans already have undergone two periods of oppression that relied on an extensive invasion of privacy.
Yes, Germans did. The question is whether they learned anything from it, and looking at current German government policies, that seems questionable. Americans, in contrast, have been vigilant enough to avoid both fascism and communism for two centuries, and public debate about issues of privacy, government intrusion, and anonymity is far more vigorous in the US than in Germany.
Yes, you are right. Let's all use your recommended method for inferring user base. Oh wait...
My recommended method is no method at all: there is no simple, reliable way of determining user base for operating systems. Even the concept is meaningless.
For example, there probably have been more Linux-based routers (like the WRT54G) sold than Mac desktops and laptops; does that mean Linux has a bigger user base?
Slashdot Mirror
It's nice to have GTK and all, but look at QT4, it has much more advanced features.
I suggest you do a careful feature comparison; it's not as clearcut. Furthermore, more isn't necessarily better; it matters that toolkits offer the right collection of features.
However, the showstopper for many developers are two things. First, Qt4 is written in C++ (in fact, C++ with some non-standard features). Second, if you ever want to use Qt for non-free software, there is a large up-front cost.
If Nokia change it too much, people will move. For the people using the commercial version, it's *easier* to stay as long is it isn't punitive.
If the don't change the licensing, people will probably move even more. With Troll Tech, at least, commercial developers knew that the company's survival depended on doing a good job with Qt on all platforms. But Nokia has more than 1000x the revenue of Troll Tech (and most of that probably from mobile); commercial desktop sales of Qt simply do not matter to Nokia as a company, and that's something that worries commercial developers.
As to your BSD hope, why the hell would Nokia take it BSD? What do Nokia get that they don't already?
What they gain is trust by the commercial developer community that Qt for the desktop will be available and usable for commercial development in the future. Right now, Nokia has the option of effectively killing Qt for the desktop any time they choose.
but why would Nokia, a for-profit company, ignore shareholder value and reduce profit "to be more popular"?
Because Nokia is in the business of phone platforms and phone hardware, not desktop software. Relicensing Qt under BSD could lower their costs and could greatly increase the number of commercial and non-commercial developers for the platform.
Having said all of the above, I can't help but remain a bit concerned about this turn of events. I was under the impression that Nokia have a rather tarnished reputation in the eyes of the Free Software world,
That's not the main issue. Qt already is under the GPL, so whatever Nokia does or doesn't do won't affect KDE.
The big question is what Nokia will do for commercial developers.
I think Nokia's best bet is to re-release the desktop edition of Qt under a BSD-style license right away. Nokia isn't going to make much money from licensing anyway, and a BSD release could make Qt much more popular as a toolkit for everybody.
Qt is already released under the GPL; it can't go "closed source". KDE applications themselves are safe.
The big question is what happens to commercial users. For example, Nokia might stop Mac support. Or they might make the desktop versions really buggy. Or they might jack up licensing fees. In that case, it's the commercial developers that are in trouble because they can't get another commercial version of Qt from anybody. Right now, we don't know what Nokia is going to do. But they don't have much of a track record on desktop software.
I wonder what this means for commercial users of Qt. Despite what they say, Nokia doesn't strike me as a company that will do a good job at providing cross-platform desktop toolkits. So... either they re-release Qt under a BSD-like license, or commercial users will be out of luck.
I'm also not sure this acquisition makes sense from a mobile perspective. Nokia needs a better UI strategy than they have right now, but Qt isn't really the top choice in that space either. This purchase really strikes me as one company with an aging platform buying another company with an aging platform.
Well, I guess we'll know how things turn out when the dust settles.
"They can't hide behind anonymity while they are saying these scurrilous and menacing things," said Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Seems to me that they can, both legally and practically. Anonymous speech is protected in the US. It's unfortunate that that also permits anonymous defamation, but that's the price we pay. If it hadn't been defaming speech on a web site, people might also have spread around anonymous pamphlets or sent anonymous mail.
Besides, even if this lawsuit were to succeed and even if they found the posters, the result will simply be that people will be more careful about anonymizing their IP addresses. For example, if you connect from Starbuck's, your name isn't linked to your IP.
issue, and neither can one seriously claim that Mr. Schaar has no idea what he is talking about and thus his testimony or advice not be heard.
Where do you get that from? Of course, his testimony should be heard. I'm saying people need to look at his and Germany's record and not just believe the German myth that Germany has strong data protection laws.
I find it interesting that you seem to consider low voter turnout a good thing, and the reason given for it.
Where do you get that from? I said "Voter turnout tells you little about the health of a democracy. The relatively low voter turnout in the US results from..." Voter turnout is a meaningless criterion of democratic values.
By the time that ballot would be cast, sure, a lot of "controversial" choices are weeded out (namely anybody not openly touting their Christianity, anybody without either huge coffers or the backing of one of the two (TWO!) parties, anybody the common Joe would not want to drink a beer with some time, etc).
That's the choice the American people are making, quite democratically, and it's served the US well for 200 years. Besides, one of the major parties in Germany is the Christian Democrats, and German federal and state governments involve church officials in politics; talk about a disturbing non-separation of church and state.
As for "two parties", the existence of multiple parties was a big factor in the downfall of the Weimar Republic. What do you think having more than two parties accomplishes? Can you point to any historical examples showing that having more parties results in better democracy?
In any case, the turnouts for the primaries are not looking particularly well, either. A cursory glance at turnout figures for 2004 did not look better than those of the general election; by your argumentation, those should have been a lot higher, if this is where the real voting happens.
There is no "real voting", not even in Germany. By the time the vote happens, candidates and their positions will already have self-selected based on polls.
Personally I consider it a duty of any citizen of my country to vote come election day,
And personally, I consider it a duty for any citizen that hasn't informed himself on the issues and candidates to stay home and not vote. Furthermore, I don't see any problem with people not voting who don't have a preference. I certainly don't vote when I don't have a preference.
The current US system during the primaries is a great theatralical production, but the often-touted "let's talk issues" is a talking point, nothing more.
That's not the part that counts; what matters is the extensive political analysis, statements, vetting, and endorsements.
I don't believe the US has a monopoly on that particular front (nor has that particular mechanism been working over there, recently, IMHO).
Why do you keep responding to points that I never made? I pointed out to you that the US has a long history of fixing its political problems, hence your criticism of US politics is unwarranted, nothing more.
But since you mention it: what kinds of important legislative innovations has Germany actually contributed to the world? The US kickstarted widespread adoption of FOIA, data protection, free-speech, privacy, and civil rights legislation.
I couldn't paint a picture of any society with just history alone; it sets the surroundings, it doesn't force an outcome.
Neither can I. But I'm not saying that Germany is a bad democracy, I'm disagreeing with you that the world should look to Germany as a model of privacy protection and democracy. Germany has not faced a major crisis change since WWII, so nobody knows how it would hold up.
That's where stuff is going awry, IMHO. If that is how DEMOCRACY should work, then it is not democracy we are talking about; freedom of speech, of the press, and a rule of law (not martial law) are prerequisites -- eroding any of those three reduces the resulting form of democracy.
I think the same demand for perfection that makes German cars nice (but expensive to repair) has made German democracy brittle in the past. Democracy includes the ability of the government and citizens to screw up. The US government screws up all the time, but then things get fixed and the whole system improves as a result. Historically, when the German government screws up in a big way, the country falls apart.
Apathy is not distrust. You distrust your government. Many are just apathetic towards it,
I have no idea what you base that on. Have you lived in the US? I can make the comparison directly, and from everything I have seen, US participation in the political process is far more vigorous than it is in Germany.
(and 50% is abysmal by any standard already)
Voter turnout tells you little about the health of a democracy. The relatively low voter turnout in the US (comparable to Switzerland) results from the political process selecting candidates in such a way that a large percentage of the population simply has no preference between them and doesn't need to vote anymore by the time the election comes around. In different words, the real US presidential election is happening right now, and the choice in November will likely be between two fairly middle-of-the-road candidates (middle of the road = conservative by German standards).
It's actually a good system. If the Weimar Republic had had a US-style voting system, Hitler would likely never have come to power: too much dirt would have come out on him during the primaries, and he would have been too controversial a choice to make it into the actual election.
Anyone claiming that there hasn't been any innovation in software over the last 10 years because of the lack of ability to patent it in the UK is clearly barking mad.
Actually, there hasn't been much innovation in software... and US software patents have contributed to that.
Whether the UK does or does not have software patents has some symbolic significance, but it doesn't matter much in terms of the software business.
However, please don't paint it with a broad-brushed Americanization; The system is sufficiently different from what the US is modeled on, and the US is not the only allied force
I didn't claim that Germany society was a carbon copy of the US, I said that German democratic values and traditions are largely derived from American ones (which are basically the same as the allied ones).
but no, democracy existed in these parts before it, with tradition.
Really? Like where? German intellectuals liked to talk a lot about liberty and democracy, but the only actual democracies were the result of WWI and WWII.
You can gauge the current state of this society with the same tools you'd gauge other societies with (and the same caveats).
I don't think anyone can gauge the state of a society. And that leaves us with history.
Oh please. National Security Letters ? "Secret" NSA wiretaps ? Nixon ? CIA operations inside the US ? Patriot I and II ?
That's the way US democracy is supposed to work. The president deliberately has broad powers, and Congress will defer to the executive in questions of war and defense. That's how the US survived the civil war, expanded across the continent, and got through the 20th century in one piece. But it's inevitable that the president will abuse his powers, as he has again and again over the past 200 years. But Congress and voters eventually reign it in. Landmark legislation, like FOIA, civil rights, and the Privacy Act have been the result. (Many nations, including Germany, then look to the US as a model for such legislation and enact their own versions without ever having to go through the wrenching scandals themselves.)
One should even consider the possibility that a repeated severe economic depression could propel the US
One should indeed, and that's why, overwhelmingly, Americans distrust their government and want as little to do with it as possible. What concerns me is that Germans don't seem to distrust their government anywhere near as much.
submitted that these values and traditions exist more in Germany currently than they do in the US; don't throw with stones when sitting in a glass house, as they say.
Where do you think modern German values come from? Post-WWII Germany was shaped by the victors of WWII, its constitution was written under US supervision, it was de-nazified and re-educated under allied control, and Germany was integrated into a complex web of economic and military relationships. In fact, you might say that today's Germany is not so much an expression of German values, but of American values and traditions.
It looks like these values are being assimilated into German culture in general, but nobody knows how far along that process is. We do know that 16 million East Germans accommodated a totalitarian government for half a century and that support for the Nazis and anti-semitism in the 1950's was still disturbingly high.
In the US that scale has long since tipped in favor of curtailed or eradicated freedoms for some semblance of security (though even that, objectively speaking, cannot be achieved through the measures taken thus far or even in that direction).
No. Even with the post-9/11 changes, the ability of the US government to track and spy on Americans is much more limited than that of the German government, and many of those powers expire or are being overturned.
Proclaiming a certain outcome as all-but-certain due to historic events of a region is foolishness, and hardly constructive
What is "foolish" is to assume that things will just keep getting better. Whatever the cause, every nation experiences severe economic meltdowns periodically; the real question is how it gets through it. Post-WWII Germany has not lived through one yet, so we don't know.
We could have had the same discussion 90 years ago: the Weimar Republic looked like it was more progressive and democratic than the US. But, in fact, two decades later, Germany was a fascist dictatorship setting out to gas millions of Jews, while the US somehow muddled through again.
(i.e. data collection without existing suspicion) is not covered by these 14(1) exceptions
/you/ trust or agree with Germany's rule of law or society -- Germans do not have to convince you -- much like US Americans do not need to convince others that theirs is the best system.
Section 14 doesn't talk about data collection at all; it talks about how government agencies can use data already collected by other agencies for new purposes. And evidently they do.
Neither 14(2)(6) nor 14(2)(7) apply without cause ("Präventive Strafverfolgung" in and of itself is not allowed as per PolG, "Straftatprävention" has to meet a proportionality-test as it affects article 2 GG).
You claimed that the police can't get at that data, and that's clearly wrong. Now you're only arguing about the conditions under which they can get at the data.
Since you mentioned democratic tradition and democratic values, it seemed only fair to bring up the current state thereof in that particular country.
Most of the points you raised aren't about freedom, they are about good governance. The fact that a nation is a democracy doesn't mean it's well governed or nice to its neighbors, and the US currently is neither. On the other hand, many well-governed and peaceful nations in history have not been democracies and have restricted personal freedoms.
In fact, I think that's the fundamental flaw with the German model: there's an inevitable tradeoff between safety, security, and comfort on the one hand, and liberty and freedom on the other, but Germans want it all. Germany has achieved comfort and safety, but at the expense of individual liberties.
My point is that it does not really matter whether
No, but Germany does need to convince other nations when it comes to making statements in the EU or UN. I think the EU and the US should tell any German data protection representative to go take a hike and get his own house in order first. And as far as the US is concerned, that's just what the US is doing.
(and much of this is a matter of opinion, in any case),
I wouldn't be so complacent about it. Germany hasn't faced any real challenges over the last half century. The last time things went bad in Germany was after a great depression. Whether Germany will be able to get through a halving of its living standard, collapse of the auto industry, and a 30% Muslim population, and come out democratic at the other end remains to be seen, because something like that is in the cards and Germany has historically not been able to get through any major crisis without the Germans throwing in the towel and changing their government.
Well, it may not reverse Alzheimer's, but it will reverse hair loss! Guaranteed!
How is it possible that people still don't get how the GPL works, and still think they can treat it like a contract or something?
It does work like a contract: you cannot unilaterally get out of a contract (unless it has a termination clause letting you), just like you can't unilaterally get out of the GPL.
I have no clue if this will turn out to be enforceable or not. If it is then it will certainly fuel concerns we have heard before about using GPL'd software in commercial applications.
It will "fuel concerns" only if you're terminally stupid, because the GPL actually protects you from these kinds of problems. In different words, because the software is covered by the GPL, there is no problem. The author can scream until he's turning blue, the software is out there and you have the right to use it under the GPL.
In fact, a far more common thing is that a commercial vendor of a proprietary piece of software simply disappears or changes the license or price on the next release, and then you're completely out of luck. In contrast, the GPL gives you rights and ensures that you can continue to use software you already have, even if the author disappears or changes his mind.
In that case, the author didn't own the copyright, so he never had the right to place the software under the GPL in the first place and the GPL never got revoked.
In this case, the author does seem to own the copyright, so when he put the software under the GPL, it's valid and can't be revoked.
It would be like saying Castro can void the US leasing agreement at Gitmo made by the Trujillo regime.
Actually, legally speaking, Cuba can do that: nations can invalidate contracts if it's in the national interest. The US government has done this many times. The reason Cuba doesn't do it is because they couldn't enforce it and because the US would use it as an excuse to wage a war.
The license is binding on both parties. A copyright owner cannot revoke licenses, "outstanding" or otherwise. For the GPL, this is even explicitly guaranteed by the license:
Sources would be the BDSG (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz). Personal data of a special nature (religious affiliation is of that kind, specifically mentioned) gets even more protection.
http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bdsg_1990/BJNR029550990.html
In 14(2)(6), 14(2)(7), and 14(5)(1), that law effectively permits the use personal data collected by any government agency for police purposes, including highly personal information, like religion and sexuality. That's in addition to several other loopholes in that law that would make it possible for that data to be shared.
As for having something to prove; nope, Germany doesn't.
Whether other people trust Germans on issues of democracy, privacy, and freedom is not for Germans to decide, it's something Germans need to convince other people of. You aren't doing a good job, and I'm not convinced.
it does beat at least the spreader of democracy in the middle east
I don't see what those points have to do with anything. We're talking about whether a German government representative has much credibility when making statements about privacy and free speech, and I don't think he does, based on Germany's actual privacy situation.
As for US foreign policy, the responsibility of US politicians is to US voters alone. When the US "spreads democracy" (as it did in Germany and Japan), it's to serve US interests, nothing more.
You should specify cellphone when you are talking about phones.
The law applies to all phones: land line, Internet, and cell phones.
No, I do not need to pay a fee to leave that field blank.
You can't "leave" that field blank; that field is filled in automatically on your tax forms every year unless you take explicit action. In order to change it, you need to explicitly file a form with the government, and there's a fee associated with that. http://www.kirchenaustritt.de/
And no, the police does not have access to this information absent a judge-ordered lawful subpoena
Sources? And what's to stop them anyway?
If and once that happens, you have strong legal recourse
How can you sue over something that you don't know about?
You seem to love to compare current Germany to Nazi Germany.
Don't put words in my mouth. I'm not "comparing" current Germany to Nazi Germany. The analysis of "what would a fascist government do with this data" is one people also apply in the US in political debate. The fact that you dismiss the possibility and instead say "we have laws to protect us" shows again that you simply aren't vigilant.
You seem to forget one vital piece of historic fact though -- Germans, generally, know their history.
And where is that "fact" documented? Germans generally do no better in academic subjects than other nations (cf Pisa). And your own knowledge of German governmental powers seems to be somewhat limited.
but I posit your rambling about how we are heading for another Nazi Germany are quite narrow-minded paranoia -- a good Feindbild, if you will.
Germany isn't a "feind"; with tens of thousands of US troops stationed in Germany, Germany is hardly in a position of doing harm to anyone. But it is also hardly a shining example of a long democratic tradition or popular democratic values. Given its history, Germany has something to prove and should be at the forefront of free speech, separation of church and state, and protections against intrusive government, but it clearly is not; the German government and police have more powers than in many other democratic nations, church and state are more intertwined, and free speech is less protected than elsewhere.
As a programmer, I'm most excited by the possibility of a new platform and the programming jobs that will be created by it.
The thought of the average programmer hacking DNA is pretty scary.
Phones need to be registered -- sure, with your carrier. The one who bills you. Same as the US and other countries
This is quite incorrect. In the US and other nations, you can get a phone for cash or with just a credit card number (and you can get anonymous credit cards if you like). In Germany, you need to give your home address to the carrier, because of government regulations. This is one of the reasons getting a Skype number in Germany is such a problem.
(In addition, in Germany, your home address itself has to be registered with the government.)
As for registering my religion with the government : I can leave that field blank. It is used for taxation; while I abhor this practice, it's nevertheless not something that is problematic
That, too, is incorrect. You might personally still consider yourself a Catholic or Protestant, but if you don't declare yourself officially to be a member of those churches, those churches won't consider you a member. Furthermore, you can't just "leave that field blank"; if you want to leave the church, you need to do so by paying a fee and registering that fact with the government. Once you do, a number of people will find out, including your employer. And, of course, that information is available to the police; who do you think they'll go looking for first when it comes to terrorism? Registered Christians or registered non-Christians?
The German government cannot get all your connection information. I do not know where you get your facts from.
German ISPs and carriers are now required to retain all connection information:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/98747
http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/vorratsdatenspeicherung22.html
Germany has one of the toughest privacy laws around. You should be so lucky as to have these laws.
Germany does have tough privacy laws. The problem is that you can't rely on tough privacy laws to protect you from governmental abuse: once the government collects the data, if it's intent on misusing the data, the laws don't matter. If a new fascist government came to power in Germany, it would immediately have all the data it wanted, on religion, on social networks, etc.
You misrepresent the state of data protection in Germany in quite fundamental ways, but then again, misrepresentation seems to be your aim.
I'm not misrepresenting that at all: Germany's privacy laws are useless against governmental abuse because you need to trust your government to respect those laws in order for them to mean anything.
What your response illustrates is that Germans still have a naive trust in their government ("obrigkeitsglaeubigkeit"); that's what allowed the Nazis to come to power last century, and who knows what evils it will bring this century.
Think about it, how come the most known OS for its GUI and GUI origins (OS X) still uses 'lists of words(menus)' as it primary interface to features and functions?
Because they work, and they work efficiently.
This is not something you should honestly be slamming Vista over, as MS is pushing new GUI and UI constructs forward beyond what OSX and the industry has seen.
There is nothing "new" about these concepts. Microsoft didn't invent them and Microsoft isn't the first to implement them.
A Vista user, especially a newb or professional that isn't stuck in thinking in terms of FileManager concepts, can run circles around XP and OS X users.
Where are the usability studies?
Here is a quick test if you are old school or slow on usability - Do you mainly use Save and Open Dialog boxes in your daily work?
I mostly use Google Docs, and I don't see Save and Open dialog boxes at all.
Germans learned from nazism and sovietism that privacy was a damn serious issue. That any entity with personal information about several million people can turn into something nasty.
Well, apparently Germans didn't learn:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/98747
http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/vorratsdatenspeicherung22.html
Americans tend to be optimistic about this
Optimistic? Americans are deeply distrustful of their government and protective of their ability to remain anonymous, far more than Germans.
but Germans already have undergone two periods of oppression that relied on an extensive invasion of privacy.
Yes, Germans did. The question is whether they learned anything from it, and looking at current German government policies, that seems questionable. Americans, in contrast, have been vigilant enough to avoid both fascism and communism for two centuries, and public debate about issues of privacy, government intrusion, and anonymity is far more vigorous in the US than in Germany.
Yes, you are right. Let's all use your recommended method for inferring user base. Oh wait...
My recommended method is no method at all: there is no simple, reliable way of determining user base for operating systems. Even the concept is meaningless.
For example, there probably have been more Linux-based routers (like the WRT54G) sold than Mac desktops and laptops; does that mean Linux has a bigger user base?