How on earth is/was this dogma, if scientists immediate reaction to this is "hmm, that's interesting. Let's study this further"?
You have a professor emeritus publishing a paper in a journal on astrophysical measurements and press releases. That's not "scientists" in general, it's someone who doesn't have to give a damn about dogma or funding publishing in an obscure journal. The scientists that matter when it comes to dogma are peer reviewers, tenure committees, and grant reviewers, and publishing a paper on solar effects on nuclear decay rates is likely to be a big negative with all of those.
Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive, but I'm annoyed at the use of the word 'dogma' to refer to what scientists do.
Then you're just out of touch with how science works in the real world. Read Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". Dogma is a big part of science, and it's not even necessarily all bad; it gives focus and direction to scientific research, it just means that sometimes, radical new ideas take longer to catch on than they would in a totally objective and rational framework.
Of course, claims of dogmatism are used to attack science unfairly as well, but that doesn't mean that pointing out any kind of dogma in science is automatically an unfair attack.
Take it from someone who has lived in the US and Europe: that is a democracy in the western sense. Or, as Churchill put it, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."
In fact, I think the situation is already worse in, say, Germany. AFAIK, there you don't even get the choice of opting out of collection societies, and several societies have government mandated monopolies.
There are a whole bunch of displays like this in the work. What they give you is on-off pixels of a single wavelength. That's not all that useful for a display: in order to get gray scale or full color, you need to group a whole bunch of these pixels together, and you still get serious color quantization issues. Furthermore, it doesn't use light very efficiently; a white region would have to be composed of many of these of different colors and it would reflect/transmit only a fraction of the light compared to a standard LCD or e-ink display.
Even with the higher resolution, this display is going to be worse than a regular LCD or OLED display.
The Scientific Method has nothing to do with a person's religious faith
No, that is an ignorant assertion. Historically, religion has been on a constant retreat, as the scientific method has proved one dogma after another untenable.
(Religions like Catholicism and fundamentalist Christianity are now trying to cling to authority with pseudo-science like "natural law" and "creation science", but such ideas don't hold up to scientific scrutiny.)
Let that hatred drain out of you. It's probably good therapy.
Good advice; you should give it to the Pope and his cardinals and bishops, who call anybody who disagrees with their theology "evil", "immoral", "not fully human", and "disordered".
Clearly there are some religions that are more tolerant of people who believe other things, but for the most part, religions are mutually exclusive. You can be a nice Buddhist or something and maybe tolerate everyone, but that doesn't mean that if Buddhism's ultimate world view is right that somehow the other religions can be right.
Oh, there are many more possibilities. Some religions believe that all religions (including their own) are incomplete and flawed because human understanding is limited. To such religions, Christianity is just one more flawed religion among many; practice it and maybe it helps you fulfill your purpose in life. The Abrahamic religions, however, claim absolute truth and require worship of a specific God and in specific ways. They postulate that Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed were unique, and that their religious texts were handed down by God. Other religions believe that while Christianity may or may not be true as far as it goes, it is irrelevant because there is a greater truth.
Thinking that "religions are mutually exclusive" is itself a fundamental error of the Abrahamic religions. The Abrahamic religions are exclusive of all others because they claim complete and ultimate truth and authority. But there is nothing "mutual" about it.
It doesn't really matter anyway. Tolerance is not inherently right or wrong, [...] (And yes, I prefer tolerance. In fact, many of the Semitic religions have that as a core value, but that doesn't mean I am right or that the religions are followed.)
It "doesn't really matter", but it's a "core value"? See, you put your finger on it: while the Abrahamic religions claim to be tolerant, they are inherently intolerant.
If you start picking and choosing, you have to prove that your sample matches the general population FIRST.
Nonsense. They study Alzheimers in nuns, period. If they find something that's interesting regardless of whether it is specific to nuns or not. If they come up with a treatment in nuns, they can then apply it to the general population and see whether it works. They don't need to show that anything matches the general population "FIRST". Heck, we do tons of medical research in mice, and they certainly don't match the general population.
Just one of these women does more real, genuine capital 'G' Good in a week than a land-fill of snarky Internet tough guys like you will do in your entire life.
These women would do Good even if they weren't part of an ancient, evil, lying, murderous cult; more, actually, because they wouldn't be recruiting into that cult.
What makes Disney happy isn't relevant to trademarks. Trademarks exist to make buyers happy, not corporations.
Legally, of course, LucasFilm can get away with this nonsense; my point is that this wasn't the intent of trademark law. You are only supposed to get trademarks on actual products, not on the names of fictional characters, and aren't supposed to be able to reserve names forever.
If there is no reasonable possibility of confusion of a "Jedi" product from Lucas Film and the "Jedi Mind" product, there should be no trademark protection, nor a need to defend the trademark.
He's using Lucas' neologism to specifically call attention to the similarities between his products and the abilities of the characters that the neologism belongs to. Is there any way in which this is not a textbook correct application of trademarks?
Where can I buy a "Jedi"? Does "Jedi Mind" make the same category of product? If not, there should be no trademark infringement.
The sole purpose of trademarks is to protect buyers; it is not to give companies additional revenue sources.
Most of those restrictions are in place since WWII, mandated by the allies. Most of the restrictions are pretty much tailored to cover national sozialists. But yes, I'd really like a little bit more free speech in Germany.
I'm not talking about the restrictions on Nazi-related activities. Many of Germany's restrictions are hold-overs from Bismarck, the Weimar Republic, or the Nazis: restrictive libel laws, Abmahnung, preferential treatment of some churches, etc. Those laws weren't imposed by the allies, they are a part of Germany's broken political heritage.
I'm not content with many things in our current gouverment, but to say its close to US republicans is simply ridiculous.
No, it's not ridiculous, you're simply so deeply steeped in German politics that you don't see it. Two major German parties are Christian parties. Merkel nearly killed the EU constitution by insisting on putting "God" in it. The current German president has ties to Christian fundamentalists and managed to keep crosses in public school rooms in his state. Most German presidents have proclaimed Germany to be a Christian nation. Neither party is following the constitutional mandate of eliminating the special treatment of churches. Abortion is illegal; penalties can be avoided only if there is counseling. Government surveillance and eaves-dropping are legal under a wide variety of circumstances, often without court order. Gay marriage doesn't exist and domestic partnerships are not treated equally. German is the official and mandatory national language. Immigration is restrictive and gives preference based on German origins. Stem cell research is restricted and creating new stem cell lines is illegal. Assisted suicide is illegal. The German government funnels billions a year to religiously based health and social services. Etc. Germany is socially and fiscally conservative.
Moderately high taxes and extensive mandatory government "insurance" programs are not a sign of liberalism or left wing orientation, they are a tool of governmental control, and they existed in Nazi Germany as much as the Weimar Republic and the GDR. And Germany's greens are a feel-good middle class institution, not particularly liberal, nor particularly effective on environment issues.
You're right that German conservatism isn't quite like US Republicans: US Republicans have a libertarian streak and history that is completely absent from German politics. That makes German politics more right wing, not less.
So how is US employees' protection against dismissal going? Human right to social security? Human right to health?
In many states, protections are as strong or stronger than in Germany. Social security and unemployment insurance laws were passed in 1935. The US has universal health insurance. Anti-discrimination, privacy, and data protection laws were passed decades before equivalent legislation in Germany, and they have teeth.
How are those things going in Germany? Oh, right, there are a lot of laws on the books, but they often don't really work or don't get enforced, and Germany is starting to dismantle them because it can't afford them anymore.
In Germany, the term "liberal" is used for what you might call Social liberalism.
Social liberalism imposes a constraint of egalitarianism and social justice on liberalism. Free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press are independent of egalitarianism and social justice, yet Germany restricts those still more strongly, for reasons completely unrelated to social justice.
No matter how you define "liberal", in my experience, actual mainstream German politics is fairly right-wing and closer to US Republicans (with a few exceptions).
As for privacy, of course that concept can be interpreted differently in different cultures.
You can call it what you want, what matters is what actual policies are. Democracy and the rule of law require transparency and informed decision making on the part of citizens, but Germany is steadily eroding those. If you don't like the US view (which personally I consider fairly balanced), have a look at Sweden.
Take a look at the story of the waitress beeing fired because talking bad of customers on facebook. In germany, you would not be able to fire her, because she didn't break any law and she didn't fail at doing her job.
And that legal opinion is based on what? As far as I can tell, she could still be fired even under the new, proposed regulation.
Germany may have less individual rights than the US, however Germany has a better protection of those rights agains non-gouvermental entities.
Really? I suggest you do an actual comparison instead of guessing.
Here is a simple example. The US passed laws against age discrimination in 1967; Germany only did so in 2006, and only because an EU directive required it. In fact, most issues like that start as social movements in the US, become law in the US, and then make it to Europe decades later.
Furthermore, just because Germany has a lot of laws on the books doesn't mean they are effective or that even the government observes them. Age discrimination in Germany is rampant and pervasive, despite the law. Germany continues to grant special status to Christian churches despite a constitutional requirement to end this status. Etc.
Microsoft wasn't the original evil that drove open source; Symbolics, IBM, AT&T, and a whole bunch of other companies were. Microsoft essentially just took over from IBM.
Microsoft "loves" open source in the same way that Oracle, Sun, and Apple "love" open source: as something to exploit, score PR points with, and sue people into oblivion over. Oh, and as a source of ideas for new bogus patents, too.
Well, why don't you Google for, oh, 10 seconds and find the original source: Referentenentwurf.
You have a pretty narrow definition of privacy.... Actually my political orientation is what would be called liberal in Germany, which should be pretty much left wing in US terms.
Terms like "liberal" and "privacy" have standard meanings and a long legal and philosophical tradition; neither you nor German politicians get to change them arbitrarily.
As for Germany, if you go down the checklist of liberal issues--limited government, liberty of individuals, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, and free markets--Germany is far more restrictive than the US on pretty much each and every one of them. Germany may be more libertine, but it is not more liberal.
And thanks for the almost-Godwin.
There is nothing "almost" about it; German democracy and German society still have a long ways to go to prove themselves.
You tried to argue that "US allways had those regulations, and Europe is (barely) catching up".
Putting things in quotes that people didn't say is completely dishonest (and you can't even spell when you forge people's quotations). Even as a paraphrase, you're misrepresenting what I said. What I said was: "Many of these protections are already in place in the US and Europe is just catching up. For example, US employers have been limited for years"
All examples show people who were fired for something they wrote on facebook. How is beeing fired not work related?
One of the cases was about cheerleading; cheerleading is not a job. Another one of your examples was about a case that was going to court, so it is not an example of a failure of law. All of them appear to be about public Facebook pages, whose use appears to be generally legal even under the proposed German law.
What I do in my private time on my private site is my private thing. As long as I don't do something illegal like selling business secrets, I should be able to do what I want.
Just because you believe that doesn't make it good policy.
And you're playing word-games with the word "private". Your site is "private" in that you pay for it privately, but the information on your site is not "private" if the site is published to the web at large.
I have a right to privacy. My employer should respect that
If you publish your Facebook page, it is obviously not private information anymore and you should lose control over it.
Obviously (as shown by the links I provided), companies in the US misuse facebook to fire employees that execercise their right of free speech.
You don't understand what "free speech" means. The Second Amendment says that government cannot restrict speech through laws. That doesn't mean that you can say whatever you like without consequences from anyone.
And coming from someone defending German laws, free speech arguments are ridiculous, given the massive legal restrictions on free speech in Germany.
Thus, the US approach does not work. Thus, a "blanket prohibition" is probably better.
That is an incorrect representation of the proposal. The proposal does not suggest a "blanket prohibition" on using Facebook, it suggests a prohibition on using unpublished Facebook data (e.g., through friending) and it suggests limits on how published data (including published data from Facebook) can be used. Even under the proposed German law, many of the firings you list are probably still legal. Of course, even those restrictions are a bit naive, since so many people use Facebook for job-related networking; how are employers supposed to avoid using information from Facebook?
Forged quotations, erroneous paraphrases, lack of understanding of the proposed laws, lack of understanding of the meaning of "privacy" and "free speech"--you just about sum up the level of incompetent political debate happening in Germany. Your political orientation is right wing populism, which is pretty far down the slippery slow to you-know-what.
In continental Europe, protections enumerated in a constitution or principles stated in some law cannot be enforced; legislators generally need to translate those protections into specific laws every time a new situation or new technology arises.
In the US, constitutional protections and principles can be enforced by the courts through common law without legislators having to get involved. Legislators only need to get involved when court decisions start deviating significantly from the will of the people. For example, privacy in the US is well protected, but mostly through common law.
Slashdot Mirror
How on earth is/was this dogma, if scientists immediate reaction to this is "hmm, that's interesting. Let's study this further"?
You have a professor emeritus publishing a paper in a journal on astrophysical measurements and press releases. That's not "scientists" in general, it's someone who doesn't have to give a damn about dogma or funding publishing in an obscure journal. The scientists that matter when it comes to dogma are peer reviewers, tenure committees, and grant reviewers, and publishing a paper on solar effects on nuclear decay rates is likely to be a big negative with all of those.
Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive, but I'm annoyed at the use of the word 'dogma' to refer to what scientists do.
Then you're just out of touch with how science works in the real world. Read Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". Dogma is a big part of science, and it's not even necessarily all bad; it gives focus and direction to scientific research, it just means that sometimes, radical new ideas take longer to catch on than they would in a totally objective and rational framework.
Of course, claims of dogmatism are used to attack science unfairly as well, but that doesn't mean that pointing out any kind of dogma in science is automatically an unfair attack.
Take it from someone who has lived in the US and Europe: that is a democracy in the western sense. Or, as Churchill put it, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."
In fact, I think the situation is already worse in, say, Germany. AFAIK, there you don't even get the choice of opting out of collection societies, and several societies have government mandated monopolies.
There are a whole bunch of displays like this in the work. What they give you is on-off pixels of a single wavelength. That's not all that useful for a display: in order to get gray scale or full color, you need to group a whole bunch of these pixels together, and you still get serious color quantization issues. Furthermore, it doesn't use light very efficiently; a white region would have to be composed of many of these of different colors and it would reflect/transmit only a fraction of the light compared to a standard LCD or e-ink display.
Even with the higher resolution, this display is going to be worse than a regular LCD or OLED display.
The Scientific Method has nothing to do with a person's religious faith
No, that is an ignorant assertion. Historically, religion has been on a constant retreat, as the scientific method has proved one dogma after another untenable.
(Religions like Catholicism and fundamentalist Christianity are now trying to cling to authority with pseudo-science like "natural law" and "creation science", but such ideas don't hold up to scientific scrutiny.)
Let that hatred drain out of you. It's probably good therapy.
Good advice; you should give it to the Pope and his cardinals and bishops, who call anybody who disagrees with their theology "evil", "immoral", "not fully human", and "disordered".
Clearly there are some religions that are more tolerant of people who believe other things, but for the most part, religions are mutually exclusive. You can be a nice Buddhist or something and maybe tolerate everyone, but that doesn't mean that if Buddhism's ultimate world view is right that somehow the other religions can be right.
Oh, there are many more possibilities. Some religions believe that all religions (including their own) are incomplete and flawed because human understanding is limited. To such religions, Christianity is just one more flawed religion among many; practice it and maybe it helps you fulfill your purpose in life. The Abrahamic religions, however, claim absolute truth and require worship of a specific God and in specific ways. They postulate that Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed were unique, and that their religious texts were handed down by God. Other religions believe that while Christianity may or may not be true as far as it goes, it is irrelevant because there is a greater truth.
Thinking that "religions are mutually exclusive" is itself a fundamental error of the Abrahamic religions. The Abrahamic religions are exclusive of all others because they claim complete and ultimate truth and authority. But there is nothing "mutual" about it.
It doesn't really matter anyway. Tolerance is not inherently right or wrong, [...] (And yes, I prefer tolerance. In fact, many of the Semitic religions have that as a core value, but that doesn't mean I am right or that the religions are followed.)
It "doesn't really matter", but it's a "core value"? See, you put your finger on it: while the Abrahamic religions claim to be tolerant, they are inherently intolerant.
You should have left out the last sentence. New drugs do not go directly from mice to the general population.
I didn't say they did. You should have used your brain.
If you start picking and choosing, you have to prove that your sample matches the general population FIRST.
Nonsense. They study Alzheimers in nuns, period. If they find something that's interesting regardless of whether it is specific to nuns or not. If they come up with a treatment in nuns, they can then apply it to the general population and see whether it works. They don't need to show that anything matches the general population "FIRST". Heck, we do tons of medical research in mice, and they certainly don't match the general population.
Like the rest of us, they probably believe every religion they don't belong to is misguided.
Speak for yourself. Intolerance of other religions and an assumption of absolute truth are largely errors of the Abrahamic religions.
I doubt monastic brains are hardwired for superstition any more than those of the general population.
I'm sure they are, actually, but it doesn't matter that they are not representative of the general population.
Just one of these women does more real, genuine capital 'G' Good in a week than a land-fill of snarky Internet tough guys like you will do in your entire life.
These women would do Good even if they weren't part of an ancient, evil, lying, murderous cult; more, actually, because they wouldn't be recruiting into that cult.
What makes Disney happy isn't relevant to trademarks. Trademarks exist to make buyers happy, not corporations.
Legally, of course, LucasFilm can get away with this nonsense; my point is that this wasn't the intent of trademark law. You are only supposed to get trademarks on actual products, not on the names of fictional characters, and aren't supposed to be able to reserve names forever.
If there is no reasonable possibility of confusion of a "Jedi" product from Lucas Film and the "Jedi Mind" product, there should be no trademark protection, nor a need to defend the trademark.
He's using Lucas' neologism to specifically call attention to the similarities between his products and the abilities of the characters that the neologism belongs to. Is there any way in which this is not a textbook correct application of trademarks?
Where can I buy a "Jedi"? Does "Jedi Mind" make the same category of product? If not, there should be no trademark infringement.
The sole purpose of trademarks is to protect buyers; it is not to give companies additional revenue sources.
There'll always be prokaryotes, cockroaches and RIAA lawyers to reboot evolution.
Ah, all species that reproduce asexually.
All of that stuff's actually still here, except for the couple tons of metal that we sent to other planets.
The atoms are still here, but they aren't resources anymore because they have become too costly to exploit.
Sorry, but that's not radioactive decay, it's fission. Two different processes.
Most of those restrictions are in place since WWII, mandated by the allies. Most of the restrictions are pretty much tailored to cover national sozialists. But yes, I'd really like a little bit more free speech in Germany.
I'm not talking about the restrictions on Nazi-related activities. Many of Germany's restrictions are hold-overs from Bismarck, the Weimar Republic, or the Nazis: restrictive libel laws, Abmahnung, preferential treatment of some churches, etc. Those laws weren't imposed by the allies, they are a part of Germany's broken political heritage.
I'm not content with many things in our current gouverment, but to say its close to US republicans is simply ridiculous.
No, it's not ridiculous, you're simply so deeply steeped in German politics that you don't see it. Two major German parties are Christian parties. Merkel nearly killed the EU constitution by insisting on putting "God" in it. The current German president has ties to Christian fundamentalists and managed to keep crosses in public school rooms in his state. Most German presidents have proclaimed Germany to be a Christian nation. Neither party is following the constitutional mandate of eliminating the special treatment of churches. Abortion is illegal; penalties can be avoided only if there is counseling. Government surveillance and eaves-dropping are legal under a wide variety of circumstances, often without court order. Gay marriage doesn't exist and domestic partnerships are not treated equally. German is the official and mandatory national language. Immigration is restrictive and gives preference based on German origins. Stem cell research is restricted and creating new stem cell lines is illegal. Assisted suicide is illegal. The German government funnels billions a year to religiously based health and social services. Etc. Germany is socially and fiscally conservative.
Moderately high taxes and extensive mandatory government "insurance" programs are not a sign of liberalism or left wing orientation, they are a tool of governmental control, and they existed in Nazi Germany as much as the Weimar Republic and the GDR. And Germany's greens are a feel-good middle class institution, not particularly liberal, nor particularly effective on environment issues.
You're right that German conservatism isn't quite like US Republicans: US Republicans have a libertarian streak and history that is completely absent from German politics. That makes German politics more right wing, not less.
So how is US employees' protection against dismissal going? Human right to social security? Human right to health?
In many states, protections are as strong or stronger than in Germany. Social security and unemployment insurance laws were passed in 1935. The US has universal health insurance. Anti-discrimination, privacy, and data protection laws were passed decades before equivalent legislation in Germany, and they have teeth.
How are those things going in Germany? Oh, right, there are a lot of laws on the books, but they often don't really work or don't get enforced, and Germany is starting to dismantle them because it can't afford them anymore.
In Germany, the term "liberal" is used for what you might call Social liberalism.
Social liberalism imposes a constraint of egalitarianism and social justice on liberalism. Free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press are independent of egalitarianism and social justice, yet Germany restricts those still more strongly, for reasons completely unrelated to social justice.
No matter how you define "liberal", in my experience, actual mainstream German politics is fairly right-wing and closer to US Republicans (with a few exceptions).
As for privacy, of course that concept can be interpreted differently in different cultures.
You can call it what you want, what matters is what actual policies are. Democracy and the rule of law require transparency and informed decision making on the part of citizens, but Germany is steadily eroding those. If you don't like the US view (which personally I consider fairly balanced), have a look at Sweden.
Take a look at the story of the waitress beeing fired because talking bad of customers on facebook. In germany, you would not be able to fire her, because she didn't break any law and she didn't fail at doing her job.
And that legal opinion is based on what? As far as I can tell, she could still be fired even under the new, proposed regulation.
Germany may have less individual rights than the US, however Germany has a better protection of those rights agains non-gouvermental entities.
Really? I suggest you do an actual comparison instead of guessing.
Here is a simple example. The US passed laws against age discrimination in 1967; Germany only did so in 2006, and only because an EU directive required it. In fact, most issues like that start as social movements in the US, become law in the US, and then make it to Europe decades later.
Furthermore, just because Germany has a lot of laws on the books doesn't mean they are effective or that even the government observes them. Age discrimination in Germany is rampant and pervasive, despite the law. Germany continues to grant special status to Christian churches despite a constitutional requirement to end this status. Etc.
Traditional physics dogma was that nothing affected decay rates. There is probably a lot of other dogma that eventually needs to fall.
Microsoft wasn't the original evil that drove open source; Symbolics, IBM, AT&T, and a whole bunch of other companies were. Microsoft essentially just took over from IBM.
Microsoft "loves" open source in the same way that Oracle, Sun, and Apple "love" open source: as something to exploit, score PR points with, and sue people into oblivion over. Oh, and as a source of ideas for new bogus patents, too.
We're all supposed to set our clocks wrong because Oracle can't write software that doesn't crash? I think not.
Probably just another attempt by Larry Ellison to demonstrate his power; one really wonders what he is trying to compensate for.
citation needed. TFA (german original) [spiegel.de] says,
Well, why don't you Google for, oh, 10 seconds and find the original source: Referentenentwurf.
You have a pretty narrow definition of privacy. ... Actually my political orientation is what would be called liberal in Germany, which should be pretty much left wing in US terms.
Terms like "liberal" and "privacy" have standard meanings and a long legal and philosophical tradition; neither you nor German politicians get to change them arbitrarily.
As for Germany, if you go down the checklist of liberal issues--limited government, liberty of individuals, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, and free markets--Germany is far more restrictive than the US on pretty much each and every one of them. Germany may be more libertine, but it is not more liberal.
And thanks for the almost-Godwin.
There is nothing "almost" about it; German democracy and German society still have a long ways to go to prove themselves.
You tried to argue that "US allways had those regulations, and Europe is (barely) catching up".
Putting things in quotes that people didn't say is completely dishonest (and you can't even spell when you forge people's quotations). Even as a paraphrase, you're misrepresenting what I said. What I said was: "Many of these protections are already in place in the US and Europe is just catching up. For example, US employers have been limited for years"
All examples show people who were fired for something they wrote on facebook. How is beeing fired not work related?
One of the cases was about cheerleading; cheerleading is not a job. Another one of your examples was about a case that was going to court, so it is not an example of a failure of law. All of them appear to be about public Facebook pages, whose use appears to be generally legal even under the proposed German law.
What I do in my private time on my private site is my private thing. As long as I don't do something illegal like selling business secrets, I should be able to do what I want.
Just because you believe that doesn't make it good policy.
And you're playing word-games with the word "private". Your site is "private" in that you pay for it privately, but the information on your site is not "private" if the site is published to the web at large.
I have a right to privacy. My employer should respect that
If you publish your Facebook page, it is obviously not private information anymore and you should lose control over it.
Obviously (as shown by the links I provided), companies in the US misuse facebook to fire employees that execercise their right of free speech.
You don't understand what "free speech" means. The Second Amendment says that government cannot restrict speech through laws. That doesn't mean that you can say whatever you like without consequences from anyone.
And coming from someone defending German laws, free speech arguments are ridiculous, given the massive legal restrictions on free speech in Germany.
Thus, the US approach does not work. Thus, a "blanket prohibition" is probably better.
That is an incorrect representation of the proposal. The proposal does not suggest a "blanket prohibition" on using Facebook, it suggests a prohibition on using unpublished Facebook data (e.g., through friending) and it suggests limits on how published data (including published data from Facebook) can be used. Even under the proposed German law, many of the firings you list are probably still legal. Of course, even those restrictions are a bit naive, since so many people use Facebook for job-related networking; how are employers supposed to avoid using information from Facebook?
Forged quotations, erroneous paraphrases, lack of understanding of the proposed laws, lack of understanding of the meaning of "privacy" and "free speech"--you just about sum up the level of incompetent political debate happening in Germany. Your political orientation is right wing populism, which is pretty far down the slippery slow to you-know-what.
It's really a difference in legal systems.
In continental Europe, protections enumerated in a constitution or principles stated in some law cannot be enforced; legislators generally need to translate those protections into specific laws every time a new situation or new technology arises.
In the US, constitutional protections and principles can be enforced by the courts through common law without legislators having to get involved. Legislators only need to get involved when court decisions start deviating significantly from the will of the people. For example, privacy in the US is well protected, but mostly through common law.