Ok, sorry, haven't spoken a lot of French in the last years... So it wasn't a test track, but it was still not during normal operation, i.e. with passengers and normal safety regulations (not written in your link but I read that once somewhere), which was the whole point of my post.
Well, you only use the English part of the Internet, I presume? Start using some German services (goes for other countries/languages as well, I guess...) and you'll start seeing your international spam...:-)
I, for once, would be happy, if at least the German part of my daily spam stopped appearing...
Just to put some numbers behind the various claims made here. Nobody can claim, the UK doesn't pay into the EU. But those defending the UK, should please not diss Germany as it pays a quarter of the EU's budget alone, and more than doubles the net payment of the UK.
Anyway, I think the critics of the UK are more refering to the political union than to the economical. I for once would love to the the UK moving to more integration, instead of seeing the EU as a pure free-trade zone.
And please, if I see one more "Fly to Europe" ad in London I'm going to kill someone...
Sure, everything which has something to do with Germany and the US has to be connected to the war these days... That's just plain stupid!
The game was put on the list three weeks ago, before the war started. Thanks C|net for noticing...
Many games are put on that list, independently of who produces them.
CC3 does promote war, force and use of WMDs as the only option without alternatives. So, if you think a list like that makes sense (which I don't necessarily do), it reasonable to put CC3 on it.
Note that being on the list hasn't stopped the success of these games in Germany in the past...
Looks like they even got some former Mozilla people working on it...:-)
The actual ranking...
on
DSL Rising
·
· Score: 5, Informative
For those who are interested, the actual numbers can be found here.
Top five for those who are too lazy to click:
(country, DSL-lines in 1000, lines per 100 population)
South-Korea, 6076, 12.7
USA, 5837, 2.0
Japan, 4223, 3.3
Germany, 2800, 3.4
China, 2220, 0.2
Numbers are supposely from september, but I know that Germany is at >3000000 lines right now, so maybe they're not too accurate (or Germany's market is growing real fast...:-))
Look out for China, it'll lead this ranking soon, just because of being HUGE.
(What do non-English native speakers think of the "K"?)
I think, one of the reasons for the 'K' could be, that KDE was started by a German developer (and then joined by a lot more). In the German language the 'K' is much more common. There are many German words, which are similar to their English translations, only with the 'c' substituted by a 'k'.
"Kalender" is an actual German word (ok, the 'e' is different, too), as is "plankalkül". Other examples would be "Konfiguration" (although not used in KDE), "Kopete" or "Karbon". So maybe the initial predominant quota of German/European (don't know about other European languages) in the project was the reason, that nobody cared about the 'k'. I (native German) don't particularly like it much, but I don't think it sounds bad either...
I think so. The point is, that SuSE is developing a new version of their distribution aimed at the corporate desktop. Crossover Office is just one special component, that'll differ from their normal distribution. There will be other stuff to make the transition from windows easier and probably no more server installations.
Second thing you miss is this. "Now for only $54.95"... CrossOver Office is not free. You can't just "download it seperately" for your normal SuSE distribution.
That guy obviously either has no clue, or some pretty big ego-problem. I won't answer to his article, because it would take to long to invalidate every single argument of him...
Instead some facts:
CDMA is superior to the TDMA/FDMA used by GSM (yes, it's a combination). Big deal. The GSM-standard is a lot older than IS-95.
A mobile phone net consists of a lot more than just the air interface. One of the advantages of GSM is its close integration with the ISDN fixed network.
With the exception of one network in Korea (IS-95) and Japan (build their own system), the whole world (or did I miss someone?) decided to go with GSM not IS-95. All because of bribery?
Everybody agrees, that (W)CDMA is the way to go for 3G (although there were different proposals in the beginning). There's an international standardization body called 3GPP working on the specification (i.e. already finished it). The standard is called UMTS and uses WCDMA.
Japan decided to use UMTS and take a very important part in its specification, although they don't upgrade from a GSM network.
The UMTS standard is a new technology without legacy, while CDMA2000 has to make some compromises to be compatible to IS-95.
Europe doesn't have to 'throw the switch' for UMTS. New spectrum has already been licensed. The old GSM network will work like before for another couple of years at least. Nokia just presented the first combined GSM/UMTS network.
On the example of MobilCom: Yes, they may very well go bankrupt. Yes, it's probably France Telecom's fault. How this'll impact the German mobile market? Hmm, let's think. Current number of MobilCom network customers: Zero! Nope, don't think it'll be a big deal... (MobilCom was one of the 'fresh starters' for UMTS. They were generally expected to have problems or even go bankrupt)
There's so much more BS in his article, which could be invalidated easily (especially on the 'government dictated' vs. 'free market' part), it's really not worth the read.
I have no doubt, that the US will eventually catch up with Europe and Japan, but I nevertheless think that the NIH-syndrom lies clearly on the side of the US. The standardization of UMTS (WCDMA) was an open process done in 3GPP. Several nations took part, like Europe, Japan, Korea, China. However the US operators decided to go with CDMA2000, because it's developed by Qualcomm...
His recent blahblah parade about Schröder's comparison of Bush to Hitler (the comparison is fair and valid to anyone who has studied the rise of the 3rd Reich) reveals a "Patriot" who just doesn't get it.
AARGH!! This story is getting worse everytime it's being told!
First: It wasn't Schröder who did this, but one of his ministers in a unimportant election speech in some small town! Second: She didn't compare GWB and Hitler either, but just happened to mention both names within one sentence without any direct comparision!!
I recently was in Taiwan and even there I saw this story on the front page of the newspaper. People, move on. Nothing to see here. The whole thing is not true and has been dramatically overblown by the media!
Sorry for being OT, but this whole story makes me angry...
Siemens and Thyssen also founded a "Transrapid USA" company. They were trying to sell the train to several cities and states in the US, and several tracks were (are?) being evaluated by the government.
Just an addition: As you could have guessed the URL for that is www.transrapid-usa.com. There's a map of the US with all proposed routes and other stuff. The German site is still more informative about the train itself, though.
The German train is called "Transrapid", you can read everything about it here (there's an english version also). It's actually quite old already. Siemens and Thyssen have been running a test track for it since 1984!!! It's been ready for "real life" use for years now.
The original plan to build a track Berlin - Hamburg has been scrapped after years of planning in 2000 due to high costs. Now two alternative tracks are planned, one in Bavaria and one in Northrhine-Westfalia. The only case, in which Germany was successful in selling this train is China. There's a short track being build in Shanghai, with the hope to get an additional order for a long track between Shanghai and Beijing.
By now the Transrapid is seen in Germany as an example where an advantage in technology is being lost due to not enough courage to take a risk (i.e. build a track). The story's been going on for years now, and the Chinese track is pretty much the last hope for the project. It's great technology, but it's also very expensive and makes only sense on real long tracks...
btw: Siemens and Thyssen also founded a "Transrapid USA" company. They were trying to sell the train to several cities and states in the US, and several tracks were (are?) being evaluated by the government. Don't know what happened to that...
Because of CAFE, the auto manufacturers do not make many large cars, and they charge a lot for them, because of the poor mileage of CAFE. But SUV's are exempt from CAFE, which is why Americans buy them.
Ok, got it. Surprises me nevertheless, because I've seen quite some cars in the US, which I would consider "big" (I never said, everybody is driving a SUV). So why are SUVs excluded? Sounds pretty stupid...
The National Academy of Sciences, not exactly a biased group, has estimated that somewhere between 2 and 3 thousand Americans die every year due to CAFE.
At this point, it would be really interesting to see some reliable figures of traffic deaths per capita or per car in the US vs. Europe. Unfortunately, at least my quick google search didn't turn up anything official... Anybody?
When I lived in Paris, I could buy all of my daily needs within a block. I didn't need to make a shopping trip. Americans, OTOH, need to go miles typically just to buy groceries.
When I lived in San Francisco, I could buy all of my daily needs within a block (ok, actually two). I didn't need to make a shopping trip. You're comparing the wrong places. If you live in rural areas in Europe you have to drive to a shopping center too... However, as I said before, I agree that this is more often the case in America than in Europe. But still I don't see, why you would need a SUV for that...
What Europeans tend to be is "superior" in that Americans are constantly getting lectured by you guys (at least in the media).
Right. But it's not like Americans never feel like they know how we Europeans should proceed...:-)
I would argue that Europeans have the luxury of worrying about such things because it doesn't cost them much personally to do so.
You said that before, and I still don't get it. Why would it cost you more to care about the environment? The Kyoto protocol want relative reducement! Nobody says, the US should have the same level of car emissions as Europe. And honestly: The height of the emission per captia figure of the US (2.5 times as high as Europe or Japan) can't really be explained with more transportation usage... So there should be a big area of possible improvement.
I also would argue that the Europeans are much more likely to approve of government regulating their lives and in general interfering more in their economy.
True. On of the fundamental differences in European and American culture. Not a bad thing in my opinion. I never understood this "don't trust your government"-attitude some Americans have.
pollution problems cannot be solved without the intervention of government, because the costs are not felt by the polluter and thus market mechanisms are not sufficient. The difference is that I have far less faith in governments to make correct interventions than Europeans seem to have.
I agree with both points. As I said, I don't know where this gerenal government distrust of many Americans comes from... (And before somebody flaims: There's a big difference between trusting your government in certain area and not questioning anything it does...).
And in the case of global warming, a good argument can be made that no action other than research is appropriate at this time. The uncertainties are too high as I have mentioned in previous posts.
No. First off, there's already disagreement about if there are any uncertainties about global warming. But let's say there are. Let's assume, we don't know for sure if global warming is happening. Then it's still not worth the risk! Reducing emissions now is the only way to assure we're not destroying the environment (well, not more than we already do, anyway).
You assert that Europe isn't pushing the protocol due to a desire to hobble the US. While that is not the only motive, it is definitely one motive.
I still don't believe that. I don't even see, where the big advantage for Europe would be. We have to reduce our emissions, too. (Well, now only _we_ have to) Anyway, the motives are not really important in this case.
Oh, and people care about the environment here in the US also.
I know. I didn't say otherwise. I just said, that concluding from my observations the average "environmental awareness" is lot higher in Europe than in the US.
But we also care about freedom, and we would like our environmental sacrifices to be meaninful and likely to produce success.
Oh, and people care about freedom here in Europe also.
Honestly, I don't really get that CAFE law argument. Why are you forced to buy SUVs, because manufacturers have to make their cars more efficient?
Americans understand this instinctively and they know that larger cars are safer (and they are).
Yes, against other SUVs. I don't buy this safety argument. And of course if you add pedestrians and cyclists to the calculation, the safety record may look differently.
[Americans need big cars, because they have big shopping centers...]
You know... We have shopping outlets too. I agree, that they're much more integrated in the American culture. But anyway: The connection "Big shopping center" --> "Need for SUV" is totally bogus in my eyes.
Just driving across Texas is equivalent to driving the length of Europe!
Not even close...:-) Look at a map.
Most foreign cars and even US CAFE limited cars are too small for a significant percentage of Americans (who on average are fairly tall) to drive long distances in.
ROTFL!! You're not serious with that one, are you? Americans need bigger cars, because they're taller? Compared to Europeans? Come on, Americans _by_definition_ have to be smaller than Europeans in average, because the largest part of the US population originally steems from Europe, but you also have a lot of (originally) asian people, which in general are smaller than European people. Anyway, taller or not, I'm 6.6 feet tall and find my small car quite comfortable...
Now, Europeans, with their provincial viewpoint don't realize most of these factors.
I do. I agree that the US has far bigger distances than Europe and that having a car is much more important in the US. I also agree that that's the reason why US mass transportation (outside the cities) pretty much sucks and that it's probably impossible to change that.
Oh, and talking about "provincial viewpoints". Americans don't exactly have a great track record in having viewpoints other than their owns (i.e. considering out-of-america stuff...).
They want us to follow the same rules that they, with their high population densities and inefficient retail systems must follow.
Inefficient retail systems??? Anyway, they don't want you to do any of this. What they want you to do, is to be more aware about gas usage. That was the whole point I was trying to make. In my experience many Americans just don't REALLY care how much gas their car uses. Well, it's cheap, so why should they? I was just saying, that the awareness for these kind of things is a lot higher in Europe than in the US.
I won't respond to your first part, because our opinions are so far from each other, it's not worth discussing, but...
Kyoto is nothing more than another European inspired attempt at hobbling the United States and improving European competitive position. Europe, because of its much greater population density, needs less fuel than the US.
This is such a bullshit, that I can't resist. Europe isn't pushing the Kyoto protocol, because they want to "hobble" the US. Come on guys, it's not always about you... Europe is pushing Kyoto, because they actually care about the environment! What many Americans don't get is that environmental concerns are far more common and usual in Europe than in the US. And I'm not talking about environmental extremist. People DO care about pollution and the environment in general here. BY FAR more than in the US. (Yes, and I've been and worked in both places...)
Furthermore, its citizens already drive in tiny cars (due to extortionate fuel taxes and other laws)
Bullshit Nr. 2. Yes, people drive smaller cars. (I do, for sure.) But it's not only because of the fuel taxes and "other laws", but more because most Europeans don't feel the need to have two meters of steel around you. I (and no European I know) never understood the American affection for SUVs (especially in Texas. Why do you need all that trucks??). And people look for cars with high mileage not only because of the costs, but mainly because it's perceived as bad for the environment, if the car uses to much gas.
There's actually a lot of research going in this field. VW just presented the first one-liter-car (translates to about 230 miles per gallon) as a prototype.
and already suffer a much higher traffic death rate per mile.
Would you care to back this claim with some official numbers?
Re:CeBit is the largest trade show WORLDWIDE
on
Great gadgets at CeBIT
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
True. I'll be there tomorrow. I hope it's not as full as last year...
Additional it may be interesting to the American readers, that there will be a "CeBIT america" next year in New York, which will be positioned against Comdex. (Heise reports here. In German, couldn't find the English announcement... I'm sure it's somewhere on www.cebit.de...).
Ambitious undertaking, will be interesting to see how they'll do. On the other hand there are already several CeBITs worldwide which AFAIK are doing quite well...
While this is great I suppose, I am surprised that they will not begin with the usual heavy-weight mobile-phone-friendly countries, such as Finland, Sweden..
I think the reason for that is, that DoCoMo holds a large share of KPN, the Netherland's biggest mobile phone operator, which in turn posseses a part of E-Plus a smaller german operator. I'd guess the picture is simillar in Belgium. They're planning to introduce the service in Germany at the CeBIT (biggest computer fair in the world), which would be in 10 days.
The Germans use Reichstag to describe the building. The political institution Reichstag is gone a long time ago.
True. But to be nitpicking: Connecting the Reichstag with the
Nazis in unfair. The Reichstag has been there long before the Nazis,
it's been build in 1884!
Well, it is! They just don't build new ones, and the
existing nuclear plants are being phased out.
If they don't the Christ Democrats which are ultra conservatives who think GW Bush's enviromental policies are to compromising will scrap the whole thing.
Come on. The Christ Democrats are conservative, and I hope
they don't win, but comparing their environmental politics with those
of GWB?? Environmental support has always been very strong
in germany, even with the Christ Democrats.
... that it can take upto 10 working days to cache a checque.
Maybe, because you're the only one, who does it? I've
lived all my live in Germany, and I've used a checque only once!
I got the money instantly... Who needs checques?
... with a Genetic finger print embedded in the national ID...
Unfortunately you're right with this one. May very well happen. On a
side note: In the moment the US is pushing european countries
to introduce biometrical finger prints on the IDs, threatening
to require visas for imigration again...
... a free for Corporations to use Genetic database...
Very unlikely! Privacy concerns have been very strong in Germany,
I could never imaginge the government to let corporations
access a (hypothetical) genetic database!
Not that I would agree with your generally praise of germany
(although it sounds good:-)), but in this point you were right.
Germany passed digital signature laws in 1997 already,
being the first state in the world to do so.
The German government just tries to extend this rule to public law.
WRONG! Digitial signatures were equal to written ones in Germany
long before the EU directive. IIRC germany was actually
the first state in the world to pass such laws.
Who do you think was the strongest supporter of the EU-directive?
The german security requirements were actually much
harder than those now demanded by the EU. Many big
companies, who had already invested in the needed
infrastructure (setting up an CA in a secure building, etc.)
were pretty much pissed after the laws got relaxed
with the EU-directive.
The new thing now is, that the german government is
trying to push the use of digital signatures, because the
adoption has been really low.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, sorry, haven't spoken a lot of French in the last years... So it wasn't a test track, but it was still not during normal operation, i.e. with passengers and normal safety regulations (not written in your link but I read that once somewhere), which was the whole point of my post.
Once. On a test-track. This one goes 430 km/h in regular traffic, which is a huge difference. Max speed is >500, too.
Nothing against the TGV, though. Great trains...
I, for once, would be happy, if at least the German part of my daily spam stopped appearing...
Anyway, I think the critics of the UK are more refering to the political union than to the economical. I for once would love to the the UK moving to more integration, instead of seeing the EU as a pure free-trade zone.
And please, if I see one more "Fly to Europe" ad in London I'm going to kill someone...
Eeh, of course I mean C&C Generals and not CC3... (which AFAIK is not on the list, btw)
- The game was put on the list three weeks ago, before the war started. Thanks C|net for noticing...
- Many games are put on that list, independently of who produces them.
- CC3 does promote war, force and use of WMDs as the only option without alternatives. So, if you think a list like that makes sense (which I don't necessarily do), it reasonable to put CC3 on it.
Note that being on the list hasn't stopped the success of these games in Germany in the past...Looks like they even got some former Mozilla people working on it... :-)
Top five for those who are too lazy to click:
(country, DSL-lines in 1000, lines per 100 population)
- South-Korea, 6076, 12.7
- USA, 5837, 2.0
- Japan, 4223, 3.3
- Germany, 2800, 3.4
- China, 2220, 0.2
Numbers are supposely from september, but I know that Germany is at >3000000 lines right now, so maybe they're not too accurate (or Germany's market is growing real fast...Look out for China, it'll lead this ranking soon, just because of being HUGE.
Good question. I thought it was German, but apparently it's not (according to the Duden), although it sounds familiar...
I have some wild association with a posthorn in my head (which would match the application), but I couldn't find anything about it on the net.
Anyone knows?
I think, one of the reasons for the 'K' could be, that KDE was started by a German developer (and then joined by a lot more). In the German language the 'K' is much more common. There are many German words, which are similar to their English translations, only with the 'c' substituted by a 'k'.
"Kalender" is an actual German word (ok, the 'e' is different, too), as is "plankalkül". Other examples would be "Konfiguration" (although not used in KDE), "Kopete" or "Karbon". So maybe the initial predominant quota of German/European (don't know about other European languages) in the project was the reason, that nobody cared about the 'k'. I (native German) don't particularly like it much, but I don't think it sounds bad either...
I think so. The point is, that SuSE is developing a new version of their distribution aimed at the corporate desktop. Crossover Office is just one special component, that'll differ from their normal distribution. There will be other stuff to make the transition from windows easier and probably no more server installations.
Second thing you miss is this. "Now for only $54.95"... CrossOver Office is not free. You can't just "download it seperately" for your normal SuSE distribution.
Nokia just presented the first combined GSM/UMTS network.
Of course that should be 'combined GSM/UMTS mobile phone'...
And please excuse all the typos...
Instead some facts:
- CDMA is superior to the TDMA/FDMA used by GSM (yes, it's a combination). Big deal. The GSM-standard is a lot older than IS-95.
- A mobile phone net consists of a lot more than just the air interface. One of the advantages of GSM is its close integration with the ISDN fixed network.
- With the exception of one network in Korea (IS-95) and Japan (build their own system), the whole world (or did I miss someone?) decided to go with GSM not IS-95. All because of bribery?
- Everybody agrees, that (W)CDMA is the way to go for 3G (although there were different proposals in the beginning). There's an international standardization body called 3GPP working on the specification (i.e. already finished it). The standard is called UMTS and uses WCDMA.
- Japan decided to use UMTS and take a very important part in its specification, although they don't upgrade from a GSM network.
- The UMTS standard is a new technology without legacy, while CDMA2000 has to make some compromises to be compatible to IS-95.
- Europe doesn't have to 'throw the switch' for UMTS. New spectrum has already been licensed. The old GSM network will work like before for another couple of years at least. Nokia just presented the first combined GSM/UMTS network.
- On the example of MobilCom: Yes, they may very well go bankrupt. Yes, it's probably France Telecom's fault. How this'll impact the German mobile market? Hmm, let's think. Current number of MobilCom network customers: Zero! Nope, don't think it'll be a big deal... (MobilCom was one of the 'fresh starters' for UMTS. They were generally expected to have problems or even go bankrupt)
There's so much more BS in his article, which could be invalidated easily (especially on the 'government dictated' vs. 'free market' part), it's really not worth the read.I have no doubt, that the US will eventually catch up with Europe and Japan, but I nevertheless think that the NIH-syndrom lies clearly on the side of the US. The standardization of UMTS (WCDMA) was an open process done in 3GPP. Several nations took part, like Europe, Japan, Korea, China. However the US operators decided to go with CDMA2000, because it's developed by Qualcomm...
AARGH!! This story is getting worse everytime it's being told!
First: It wasn't Schröder who did this, but one of his ministers in a unimportant election speech in some small town!
Second: She didn't compare GWB and Hitler either, but just happened to mention both names within one sentence without any direct comparision!!
I recently was in Taiwan and even there I saw this story on the front page of the newspaper. People, move on. Nothing to see here. The whole thing is not true and has been dramatically overblown by the media!
Sorry for being OT, but this whole story makes me angry...
Just an addition: As you could have guessed the URL for that is www.transrapid-usa.com. There's a map of the US with all proposed routes and other stuff. The German site is still more informative about the train itself, though.
The original plan to build a track Berlin - Hamburg has been scrapped after years of planning in 2000 due to high costs. Now two alternative tracks are planned, one in Bavaria and one in Northrhine-Westfalia. The only case, in which Germany was successful in selling this train is China. There's a short track being build in Shanghai, with the hope to get an additional order for a long track between Shanghai and Beijing.
By now the Transrapid is seen in Germany as an example where an advantage in technology is being lost due to not enough courage to take a risk (i.e. build a track). The story's been going on for years now, and the Chinese track is pretty much the last hope for the project. It's great technology, but it's also very expensive and makes only sense on real long tracks...
btw: Siemens and Thyssen also founded a "Transrapid USA" company. They were trying to sell the train to several cities and states in the US, and several tracks were (are?) being evaluated by the government. Don't know what happened to that...
Ok, got it. Surprises me nevertheless, because I've seen quite some cars in the US, which I would consider "big" (I never said, everybody is driving a SUV). So why are SUVs excluded? Sounds pretty stupid...
The National Academy of Sciences, not exactly a biased group, has estimated that somewhere between 2 and 3 thousand Americans die every year due to CAFE.
At this point, it would be really interesting to see some reliable figures of traffic deaths per capita or per car in the US vs. Europe. Unfortunately, at least my quick google search didn't turn up anything official... Anybody?
When I lived in Paris, I could buy all of my daily needs within a block. I didn't need to make a shopping trip. Americans, OTOH, need to go miles typically just to buy groceries.
When I lived in San Francisco, I could buy all of my daily needs within a block (ok, actually two). I didn't need to make a shopping trip. You're comparing the wrong places. If you live in rural areas in Europe you have to drive to a shopping center too... However, as I said before, I agree that this is more often the case in America than in Europe. But still I don't see, why you would need a SUV for that...
What Europeans tend to be is "superior" in that Americans are constantly getting lectured by you guys (at least in the media).
Right. But it's not like Americans never feel like they know how we Europeans should proceed... :-)
I would argue that Europeans have the luxury of worrying about such things because it doesn't cost them much personally to do so.
You said that before, and I still don't get it. Why would it cost you more to care about the environment? The Kyoto protocol want relative reducement! Nobody says, the US should have the same level of car emissions as Europe. And honestly: The height of the emission per captia figure of the US (2.5 times as high as Europe or Japan) can't really be explained with more transportation usage... So there should be a big area of possible improvement.
I also would argue that the Europeans are much more likely to approve of government regulating their lives and in general interfering more in their economy.
True. On of the fundamental differences in European and American culture. Not a bad thing in my opinion. I never understood this "don't trust your government"-attitude some Americans have.
pollution problems cannot be solved without the intervention of government, because the costs are not felt by the polluter and thus market mechanisms are not sufficient. The difference is that I have far less faith in governments to make correct interventions than Europeans seem to have.
I agree with both points. As I said, I don't know where this gerenal government distrust of many Americans comes from... (And before somebody flaims: There's a big difference between trusting your government in certain area and not questioning anything it does...).
And in the case of global warming, a good argument can be made that no action other than research is appropriate at this time. The uncertainties are too high as I have mentioned in previous posts.
No. First off, there's already disagreement about if there are any uncertainties about global warming. But let's say there are. Let's assume, we don't know for sure if global warming is happening. Then it's still not worth the risk! Reducing emissions now is the only way to assure we're not destroying the environment (well, not more than we already do, anyway).
I still don't believe that. I don't even see, where the big advantage for Europe would be. We have to reduce our emissions, too. (Well, now only _we_ have to) Anyway, the motives are not really important in this case.
Oh, and people care about the environment here in the US also.
I know. I didn't say otherwise. I just said, that concluding from my observations the average "environmental awareness" is lot higher in Europe than in the US.
But we also care about freedom, and we would like our environmental sacrifices to be meaninful and likely to produce success.
Oh, and people care about freedom here in Europe also.
Honestly, I don't really get that CAFE law argument. Why are you forced to buy SUVs, because manufacturers have to make their cars more efficient?
Americans understand this instinctively and they know that larger cars are safer (and they are).
Yes, against other SUVs. I don't buy this safety argument. And of course if you add pedestrians and cyclists to the calculation, the safety record may look differently.
[Americans need big cars, because they have big shopping centers...]
You know... We have shopping outlets too. I agree, that they're much more integrated in the American culture. But anyway: The connection "Big shopping center" --> "Need for SUV" is totally bogus in my eyes.
Just driving across Texas is equivalent to driving the length of Europe!
Not even close... :-) Look at a map.
Most foreign cars and even US CAFE limited cars are too small for a significant percentage of Americans (who on average are fairly tall) to drive long distances in.
ROTFL!! You're not serious with that one, are you? Americans need bigger cars, because they're taller? Compared to Europeans? Come on, Americans _by_definition_ have to be smaller than Europeans in average, because the largest part of the US population originally steems from Europe, but you also have a lot of (originally) asian people, which in general are smaller than European people. Anyway, taller or not, I'm 6.6 feet tall and find my small car quite comfortable...
Now, Europeans, with their provincial viewpoint don't realize most of these factors.
I do. I agree that the US has far bigger distances than Europe and that having a car is much more important in the US. I also agree that that's the reason why US mass transportation (outside the cities) pretty much sucks and that it's probably impossible to change that.
Oh, and talking about "provincial viewpoints". Americans don't exactly have a great track record in having viewpoints other than their owns (i.e. considering out-of-america stuff...).
They want us to follow the same rules that they, with their high population densities and inefficient retail systems must follow.
Inefficient retail systems??? Anyway, they don't want you to do any of this. What they want you to do, is to be more aware about gas usage. That was the whole point I was trying to make. In my experience many Americans just don't REALLY care how much gas their car uses. Well, it's cheap, so why should they? I was just saying, that the awareness for these kind of things is a lot higher in Europe than in the US.
Kyoto is nothing more than another European inspired attempt at hobbling the United States and improving European competitive position. Europe, because of its much greater population density, needs less fuel than the US.
This is such a bullshit, that I can't resist. Europe isn't pushing the Kyoto protocol, because they want to "hobble" the US. Come on guys, it's not always about you... Europe is pushing Kyoto, because they actually care about the environment! What many Americans don't get is that environmental concerns are far more common and usual in Europe than in the US. And I'm not talking about environmental extremist. People DO care about pollution and the environment in general here. BY FAR more than in the US. (Yes, and I've been and worked in both places...)
Furthermore, its citizens already drive in tiny cars (due to extortionate fuel taxes and other laws)
Bullshit Nr. 2. Yes, people drive smaller cars. (I do, for sure.) But it's not only because of the fuel taxes and "other laws", but more because most Europeans don't feel the need to have two meters of steel around you. I (and no European I know) never understood the American affection for SUVs (especially in Texas. Why do you need all that trucks??). And people look for cars with high mileage not only because of the costs, but mainly because it's perceived as bad for the environment, if the car uses to much gas.
There's actually a lot of research going in this field. VW just presented the first one-liter-car (translates to about 230 miles per gallon) as a prototype.
and already suffer a much higher traffic death rate per mile.
Would you care to back this claim with some official numbers?
Additional it may be interesting to the American readers, that there will be a "CeBIT america" next year in New York, which will be positioned against Comdex. (Heise reports here. In German, couldn't find the English announcement... I'm sure it's somewhere on www.cebit.de...).
Ambitious undertaking, will be interesting to see how they'll do. On the other hand there are already several CeBITs worldwide which AFAIK are doing quite well...
I think the reason for that is, that DoCoMo holds a large share of KPN, the Netherland's biggest mobile phone operator, which in turn posseses a part of E-Plus a smaller german operator. I'd guess the picture is simillar in Belgium. They're planning to introduce the service in Germany at the CeBIT (biggest computer fair in the world), which would be in 10 days.
True. But to be nitpicking: Connecting the Reichstag with the Nazis in unfair. The Reichstag has been there long before the Nazis, it's been build in 1884!
Well, it is! They just don't build new ones, and the existing nuclear plants are being phased out.
If they don't the Christ Democrats which are ultra conservatives who think GW Bush's enviromental policies are to compromising will scrap the whole thing.
Come on. The Christ Democrats are conservative, and I hope they don't win, but comparing their environmental politics with those of GWB?? Environmental support has always been very strong in germany, even with the Christ Democrats.
Maybe, because you're the only one, who does it? I've lived all my live in Germany, and I've used a checque only once! I got the money instantly... Who needs checques?
Unfortunately you're right with this one. May very well happen. On a side note: In the moment the US is pushing european countries to introduce biometrical finger prints on the IDs, threatening to require visas for imigration again...
Very unlikely! Privacy concerns have been very strong in Germany, I could never imaginge the government to let corporations access a (hypothetical) genetic database!
Not that I would agree with your generally praise of germany (although it sounds good :-)), but in this point you were right.
Germany passed digital signature laws in 1997 already,
being the first state in the world to do so.
WRONG! Digitial signatures were equal to written ones in Germany long before the EU directive. IIRC germany was actually the first state in the world to pass such laws.
Who do you think was the strongest supporter of the EU-directive? The german security requirements were actually much harder than those now demanded by the EU. Many big companies, who had already invested in the needed infrastructure (setting up an CA in a secure building, etc.) were pretty much pissed after the laws got relaxed with the EU-directive.
The new thing now is, that the german government is trying to push the use of digital signatures, because the adoption has been really low.