It is pretty clear that SES goes into the deal because of political reasons. All space agencies that doesn't have their own capability to launch their satellites would benefit from having private entities that can do it for them. The countries that do have the capability still wants the competition around to have something to compare their own costs against. Even if creating those entities are primarily a US project there are plenty of organizations willing to throw money at it in the hope that they will be sustainable. Soyuz might be cheaper, but there is a large value in not depending on a single distributor.
Umm... you're aware that SES is a private company? So, which political reasons? They are of course interested in getting reliable launch services at low price. With SpaceX, they are probably taking a lowish risk at very interesting price. They've had success with their first SpaceX launch, it's also going to be free publicity if this one goes right. They also tend to distribute the risk around, having had launch services also with Ariane and Proton rockets (maybe others too, I'm not following them that closely).
Let's also note that when SES sent up their very first Astra satellite, they were unable to buy insurance, and took the risk anyway - if that Ariane rocket had failed, there would be no SES today. And some other companies around their site also wouldn't be there... also probably no Luxembourg interest in getting to the asteroids, as reported here a few months ago.
Due to custom compilation of hardware. The OS requires firmware for all of the interfaces and chips. While you may be able to get away with a "One size fits all" solution like Ubuntu on an AMD/Intel chip, there's a huge variety of ARM version chips out there, each with different clock speeds and (presumably) instruction sets. Not to mention all the different WiFi, Bluetooth, and GSM/Edge antennae.
On x86 platforms, we have standards for dealing with things like booting, drivers etc. That's what's needed for ARM too. It would help not only with smartphones, but also with SBCs like the Raspberry Pi, Odroid etc.
Somehow, I suspect it will be hard to get the different manufacturers to agree on such standards. Oblig. XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/
In the 90ies, that form you had to fill was pretty ridiculous, as if ill-minded persons would write out their nefarious plans there. The humor-less stern look by the border agent was certainly just as efficient.
I seriously doubt that the current security theater is much more effective though - but it does make sure I won't willingly travel to north america anytime soon. It's a pity really, I'd love to see some of the landscapes (Yellowstone, some of the canyons, Death Valley etc.)...
When I use the GPS on my iPhone5 it gets hot. (And it eats the battery.)
For sports activities, my wife acquired a TomTom GPS watch (including pulse measuring). I regularly wear it for running, and never noticed it getting hot. Same goes for my Samsung android phone, I never noticed it heating up more than usual when GPS is active. I'd guess that implementation on the iPhone is less than optimal, or there's another reason for it getting hot.
Indeed, I also fear for my couple of Netbooks, original Asus EEE 9" and 10". I guess the current (K|X)ubuntu 16.04 will be the last Linux distro they'll get.
the more annoying thing is, that for a device this expensive, the warranty is only 1 year long. apple even tried to bring that crap to EU. fortunately, apart from UK, the whole EU has 2 year warranty on everything.
Beware of the reversal of proof after 6 months though - if your device breaks past those first 6 months, you have to prove that there was a fault from the manufacturer, or else they won't need to fix it. Many will take up the warranty anyway (customer satisfaction and all), but definitely not everyone.
Anecdote: my telephony provider (through which I acquired it) didn't agree to have my Nexus 5 fixed after 1 1/2 years, despite warranty... and I'm 100% sure I wasn't at fault - but good luck proving that. Guess what: no more devices acquired through them, I've reduced my subscriptions with them, and I'll avoid them as much as possible in the future... and certainly no more recommendations for good service.
These systems are directly derived from DEC Alpha.
I seriously wonder where they got the Alpha stuff from. Did HP (after the DEC merger) sell it off (Carly?), was it stolen outright? I for one mourn the Alphas, they packed serious punch. If only HP had kept those on instead of Itanic... we might be seeing a bit more diversity in CPUs than what's essentially a duopoly x86 / ARM (yes, I know there's still SPARC etc., but seriously...).
In the EU, the minimum warrenty is 2 years. But! Only for the first half year, you can go back to the dealer to take back the faulty merchandise and it's automatically assumed to be a problem at the source (i.e. manufacturing). Afterwards, it's up to you, the consumer, to prove that there was a manufacturing fault, and you're in luck if the dealer will just accept the return or will send you home. Good luck bringing that proof, even if you're in the right.
Anecdote: I had a Nexus 5 go bad after 1 1/2 years - loss of the connection between microphone/speaker and the mainboard, then the connection of the screen also got flaky. The technician inspecting the phone judged I had dropped the phone or whatever, which I *know* not to have been the case. How do I go about proving I didn't mishandle that device? Yeah, right.
And not many people are about to trade a nice comfy seat traveling at 5000 MPH for a cramped, drafty, noisy cockpit...
Especially since 5000 MPH is over twice as fast as an SR-71 and is way the fuck faster than any commercial aircraft available. New York to Los Angeles in 30 minutes is kinda hard to beat.
Umm... is that a hint that Aurora actually exists? I'd sure like to hitch a ride there...
Depends on the highway. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people drive 100MPH or more every week on the Autobahn, and Germany's highway fatality rate is lower than that in the US.
100MPH on in the rain on a crowded 2-lane road with a 50MPH speed limit? Really dangerous.
100MPH on a clear day on a multi-lane highway where the average driver in the middle lane is going 80MPH or more? Not a problem.
Posting to undo moderation that went wrong.
This! Know when (not) to speed.
When I drive my Yamaha XT 600 on the highway, I won't go above 120km/h as it gets unstable (speed limit around here is 130km/h). I've driven my Triumph Sprint ST 2005 at over 200km/h and had no problem whatsoever, provided the autobahn was more or less clear of traffic (like, early sunday morning), or on a circuit.
Also, as someone else posted, tests for the driving license tend to be serious enough in these parts (western Europe), especially for the motorbike.
As to distracted driving, it suffices to look around even on a short commute - you'll pretty much see someone with their portable phone glued to their ear or doing something else rather than concentrate on their driving. It's a wonder there aren't even more accidents. But, as the germans say: if someone called out: "Lord, let it rain brains", and the Lord actually went with it, that kind of people still would use their umbrellas...
As an AC over on SoylentNews already asked - is there a significant amount of Bitcoin transactions due to ransom payments for crypto-locked data?
I seriously wonder, as there's apparently been quite a surge of corresponding infections lately, and it also seems that quite some victims actually pay up.
What people want is ssh -X and yes it is a top priority to many.
That, plus the ability to reconnect to the same session (à la screen), in case your connection goes lost for some reason, or if you want to move to a different terminal (think remote/home work first via your mobile device, then move on to your workstation as you get home after being called when on call duty).
Similar as to what Sun did ages ago, with their Sun Rays, of course updated and more flexible.
Aside from the duration of the plasma heating, I don't quite see the newsworthyness. JET (a research TOKAMAK in UK) has achieved temperatures of 100 million C and several seconds of fusion to boot.
Comparison with the german Wendelstein 7-X may not be appropriate, as it's a different type of reactor (stellarator vs. TOKAMAK). Also, its experiments have just started; longer durations are fully expected, but will be a while to achieve.
Don't forget the bane of all new telescopes - it will definitely be cloudy the first time you try to use it.
Heck, even buying a new eyepiece can clause clouds in my neighborhood!
Yep. My astro club calls it the "new equipment curse" and if a star party clouds out, they look for the culprit (in good fun of course).
It's one week of clouded sky per inch of aperture, according to astro lore from some german-language facebook astro groups I'm following (one of the very few reasons for being on facebook I might add).
There must be many such acquisitions around here lately, hardly any CS (clear skies) in months.
Every single European keyboard seems like it's been designed by a committee to make it impossible to code in. French, German, Norwegian (the ones I've used), it's no wonder most of the world's major software comes from the US, every time you want to type a square bracket or tilde or hash you have to spend five minutes figuring out how to generate it. Even this UK keyboard for some stoopid reason moves punctuation (= coding) keys into odd corners, so the # is way down there but at least there's a handy  key for all the times you need to use it (zero, ever). I know European programmers who import US keyboards because they're the only ones you can sanely code in.
I'm from Luxembourg. As we're stuck between French and German regions, we use swiss (they're in the same boat) keyboards, which provide for both languages (really only missing the german "ess-zett" which is replaced by double-s in swiss german). Thankfully, special characters as used in writing computer code are all present too, so while not everything is easily accessible, it's still ok for coding IMHO (even if I do prefer US in that context). One might imagine the EU to put together some monster-keyboard layout featuring all the characters normally used somewhere in europe and mandating its use... ups, let's not put ideas in their heads.
I have noticed grave omissions on (at least some) swiss Apple keyboards though - no @, no curly braces etc. (most of what's accessible via alt-gr), so unless you're used to it, you'll search for a long time e.g. if you simply want to send an email to somebody from some Apple machine.
I would get an iPad Pro or the Pixel C but the office apps on them are crippled (I regularly use regex, mail merges, macros, etc.). So an Ubuntu tablet with an attachable keyboard would be perfect for my usage. Looking forward to it!
Question: why not go the laptop / notebook / ultrabook / whateverthecurrentmarketingnameis route instead, if you need a physical keyboard anyway? Or, in case you don't need mobility, a classic desktop PC? You can usually run Ubuntu just fine on these. You know, right tool for the job and all...
One man's hate speech is another man's opinion. A sentence like: 'lets gather tomorrow in front of the refugee camp, burn it to the ground, kill every man running out and rape every woman...' is hardly an opinion. It is hate speach, no need to argue about it.
Who are you to judge which is which? I'm not judging that. A judge is judging that.
That's the entire point of "free speech". That is not even true in your country. Free speach in Europe means: you can attack the government in any way you want with words. And the government has no base to prosecute you for it. It does not mean that you are allowed to agitate the populace into rape and plunder and pillaging. You may disagree, I for my part, don't.
It certainly seems like what is being considered "hate speech" in the context of this article has a pretty broad and over-reaching definition. The context of this article does not mention what hate speach is. Hint: read the relevant laws, I guess you easily find english translations.
Thank you for this sensible view. I'd like to add that what much of what GOP presidential candidates are spewing forth, especially Trump, would be considered hate speech over here in ol'Europe - I frankly wonder whether those people would end up in prison or in an asylum.
Let's also add that while us europeans do have an issue with hate mongers, we don't have bigoted views on such natural things as a woman's breast, which apparently maims children for life over the big pond... a wonder breastfeeding hasn't been outlawed outright.
I'm sure things like avionics and perhaps engines have been updated over the years.
I'm positive that's a yes for the avionics. I'm less sure about the engines though. One should think that 4 engines as used on a modern 747 would out-perform the 8 old jets from the B-52 in most if not all possible categories - the only thing that comes to mind would be ground clearance.
Btw, NATO also hasn't upgraded the engines on their AWACS planes (at least those registered in Luxembourg, flying around Europe), unlike the US did for their own. I always wonder why when I get to see them and listen to them - they're noisy, generate loads of (very visible) soot, and can't possibly be as efficient as modern engines - replacing these engines should pay off pretty quickly.
From AFA: "She loved partying and going to clubs. She drank alcohol and smoked and went around with lots of different guys." (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3325180/Two-fingers-world-Pictured-Europe-s-female-suicide-bomber-booze-loving-extrovert-nicknamed-Cowgirl-love-big-hats.html)
Except that particular story has turned out to be false - the images "proving" this were actually of a totally different moroccan woman. Her pictures were sold to media by a former friend, which turned on her and did this for revenge. That woman now lives in fear, for obvious reasons. Some of the media who published the pictures took them offline, but didn't fix their reports.
The idea is to secure the Schengen borders, i.e. not the borders inside of Schengen.
It's been proven that immigration benefits the economy if it is immigration from inside EU or Europe. You can hardly say that there is any benefit to having 30% unemployment rates and high criminality among immigrants.
For your first point: well, France has closed all borders, including inside of Schengen. We'll see how long it will last, as it does have nasty repercussions (so much for "they won't change our values, our way of life").
For your second point: according to german economists, the current immigration wave is good for the german economy. Also, german police has confirmed the criminality rate is no higher with the immigrants than with the general population - adding that there's been quite a wave of extreme-right-style crimes against facilities for asylum seekers. And as to unemployment: you are aware that asylum seekers have to have their papers through before being allowed to get a job?
They certainly are cracking down on prepaid phone SIMs, where the owner of the phone isn't identified. Apparently Belgium and Luxembourg were the only EU countries left which still had them
That is certainly false. A lot of "eastern block" countries still have them like Romania, Czech Republic, I think Bulgaria. If you think they aren't "EU enough" there's also the UK (and probably Ireland) - where you don't even have mandatory ID card.
And even with registration go on german ebay (Germany has mandatory registration since before 9/11!) and you can buy preregistered cards by 10-pack, 100, sometimes 500 and 1000.
Well, that points out the fine quality of our local media reports then... </sarcasm>
Sure, close the borders. A fine example right now is the one between France and Luxembourg, passed each day but tens of thousands of commuters who live in France but work in Luxembourg. What was already bad logistics, prone to accidents and thereby traffic jams, is now a nightmare each morning and evening. No, that nightmare won't be helped by those people moving, as there isn't anywhere near sufficient housing available, and prices are already at levels comparable to inner city London or Paris. The Schengen treaty (signed in Luxembourg, very close to the french and german borders) was done for a reason, and it's for good reason that most concerned countries want to uphold it.
While we're at it, it's already been proven that immigration benefits the economy. You also shouldn't conflate muslims and these (homegrown!) terrorists, who just have no religion.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... you're aware that SES is a private company? So, which political reasons? They are of course interested in getting reliable launch services at low price. With SpaceX, they are probably taking a lowish risk at very interesting price. They've had success with their first SpaceX launch, it's also going to be free publicity if this one goes right. They also tend to distribute the risk around, having had launch services also with Ariane and Proton rockets (maybe others too, I'm not following them that closely).
Let's also note that when SES sent up their very first Astra satellite, they were unable to buy insurance, and took the risk anyway - if that Ariane rocket had failed, there would be no SES today. And some other companies around their site also wouldn't be there... also probably no Luxembourg interest in getting to the asteroids, as reported here a few months ago.
On x86 platforms, we have standards for dealing with things like booting, drivers etc. That's what's needed for ARM too. It would help not only with smartphones, but also with SBCs like the Raspberry Pi, Odroid etc.
Somehow, I suspect it will be hard to get the different manufacturers to agree on such standards. Oblig. XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/
From an EU citizen:
In the 90ies, that form you had to fill was pretty ridiculous, as if ill-minded persons would write out their nefarious plans there. The humor-less stern look by the border agent was certainly just as efficient.
I seriously doubt that the current security theater is much more effective though - but it does make sure I won't willingly travel to north america anytime soon. It's a pity really, I'd love to see some of the landscapes (Yellowstone, some of the canyons, Death Valley etc.)...
This! I wish I had mod points. Crime obviously does pay. Donating parts of the ill gotten doesn't make the crime go away.
Never mind the color - is it people?
For sports activities, my wife acquired a TomTom GPS watch (including pulse measuring). I regularly wear it for running, and never noticed it getting hot. Same goes for my Samsung android phone, I never noticed it heating up more than usual when GPS is active. I'd guess that implementation on the iPhone is less than optimal, or there's another reason for it getting hot.
Indeed, I also fear for my couple of Netbooks, original Asus EEE 9" and 10". I guess the current (K|X)ubuntu 16.04 will be the last Linux distro they'll get.
the more annoying thing is, that for a device this expensive, the warranty is only 1 year long. apple even tried to bring that crap to EU. fortunately, apart from UK, the whole EU has 2 year warranty on everything.
Beware of the reversal of proof after 6 months though - if your device breaks past those first 6 months, you have to prove that there was a fault from the manufacturer, or else they won't need to fix it. Many will take up the warranty anyway (customer satisfaction and all), but definitely not everyone.
Anecdote: my telephony provider (through which I acquired it) didn't agree to have my Nexus 5 fixed after 1 1/2 years, despite warranty... and I'm 100% sure I wasn't at fault - but good luck proving that. Guess what: no more devices acquired through them, I've reduced my subscriptions with them, and I'll avoid them as much as possible in the future... and certainly no more recommendations for good service.
These systems are directly derived from DEC Alpha.
I seriously wonder where they got the Alpha stuff from. Did HP (after the DEC merger) sell it off (Carly?), was it stolen outright?
I for one mourn the Alphas, they packed serious punch. If only HP had kept those on instead of Itanic... we might be seeing a
bit more diversity in CPUs than what's essentially a duopoly x86 / ARM (yes, I know there's still SPARC etc., but seriously...).
In the EU, the minimum warrenty is 2 years. But! Only for the first half year, you can go back to the dealer to take back the faulty merchandise and it's automatically assumed to be a problem at the source (i.e. manufacturing). Afterwards, it's up to you, the consumer, to prove that there was a manufacturing fault, and you're in luck if the dealer will just accept the return or will send you home. Good luck bringing that proof, even if you're in the right.
Anecdote: I had a Nexus 5 go bad after 1 1/2 years - loss of the connection between microphone/speaker and the mainboard, then the connection of the screen also got flaky. The technician inspecting the phone judged I had dropped the phone or whatever, which I *know* not to have been the case. How do I go about proving I didn't mishandle that device? Yeah, right.
And not many people are about to trade a nice comfy seat traveling at 5000 MPH for a cramped, drafty, noisy cockpit...
Especially since 5000 MPH is over twice as fast as an SR-71 and is way the fuck faster than any commercial aircraft available. New York to Los Angeles in 30 minutes is kinda hard to beat.
Umm... is that a hint that Aurora actually exists? I'd sure like to hitch a ride there...
S,cnr!
Depends on the highway. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people drive 100MPH or more every week on the Autobahn, and Germany's highway fatality rate is lower than that in the US.
100MPH on in the rain on a crowded 2-lane road with a 50MPH speed limit? Really dangerous.
100MPH on a clear day on a multi-lane highway where the average driver in the middle lane is going 80MPH or more? Not a problem.
Posting to undo moderation that went wrong.
This! Know when (not) to speed.
When I drive my Yamaha XT 600 on the highway, I won't go above 120km/h as it gets unstable (speed limit around here is 130km/h). I've driven my Triumph Sprint ST 2005 at over 200km/h and had no problem whatsoever, provided the autobahn was more or less clear of traffic (like, early sunday morning), or on a circuit.
Also, as someone else posted, tests for the driving license tend to be serious enough in these parts (western Europe), especially for the motorbike.
As to distracted driving, it suffices to look around even on a short commute - you'll pretty much see someone with their portable phone glued to their ear or doing something else rather than concentrate on their driving. It's a wonder there aren't even more accidents. But, as the germans say: if someone called out: "Lord, let it rain brains", and the Lord actually went with it, that kind of people still would use their umbrellas...
As an AC over on SoylentNews already asked - is there a significant amount of Bitcoin transactions due to ransom payments for crypto-locked data?
I seriously wonder, as there's apparently been quite a surge of corresponding infections lately, and it also seems that quite some victims actually pay up.
Because of course VMS crushes all competition from inferior OSs like UNIX, EDT is the real winner!
Umm... is that by any chance the same EDT as on BS2000 (Fujitsu / former Siemens mainframe)?
That one would be a contender for vi...
What people want is ssh -X and yes it is a top priority to many.
That, plus the ability to reconnect to the same session (à la screen),
in case your connection goes lost for some reason, or if you want to
move to a different terminal (think remote/home work first via your mobile
device, then move on to your workstation as you get home after being
called when on call duty).
Similar as to what Sun did ages ago, with their Sun Rays,
of course updated and more flexible.
Aside from the duration of the plasma heating, I don't quite see the newsworthyness. JET (a research TOKAMAK in UK) has achieved temperatures of 100 million C and several seconds of fusion to boot.
Comparison with the german Wendelstein 7-X may not be appropriate, as it's a different type of reactor (stellarator vs. TOKAMAK). Also, its experiments have just started; longer durations are fully expected, but will be a while to achieve.
Don't forget the bane of all new telescopes - it will definitely be cloudy the first time you try to use it.
Heck, even buying a new eyepiece can clause clouds in my neighborhood!
Yep. My astro club calls it the "new equipment curse" and if a star party clouds out, they look for the culprit (in good fun of course).
It's one week of clouded sky per inch of aperture, according to astro lore from some german-language facebook astro groups I'm following (one of the very few reasons for being on facebook I might add).
There must be many such acquisitions around here lately, hardly any CS (clear skies) in months.
Every single European keyboard seems like it's been designed by a committee to make it impossible to code in. French, German, Norwegian (the ones I've used), it's no wonder most of the world's major software comes from the US, every time you want to type a square bracket or tilde or hash you have to spend five minutes figuring out how to generate it. Even this UK keyboard for some stoopid reason moves punctuation (= coding) keys into odd corners, so the # is way down there but at least there's a handy  key for all the times you need to use it (zero, ever). I know European programmers who import US keyboards because they're the only ones you can sanely code in.
I'm from Luxembourg. As we're stuck between French and German regions, we use swiss (they're in the same boat) keyboards, which provide for both languages (really only missing the german "ess-zett" which is replaced by double-s in swiss german). Thankfully, special characters as used in writing computer code are all present too, so while not everything is easily accessible, it's still ok for coding IMHO (even if I do prefer US in that context). One might imagine the EU to put together some monster-keyboard layout featuring all the characters normally used somewhere in europe and mandating its use... ups, let's not put ideas in their heads.
I have noticed grave omissions on (at least some) swiss Apple keyboards though - no @, no curly braces etc. (most of what's accessible via alt-gr), so unless you're used to it, you'll search for a long time e.g. if you simply want to send an email to somebody from some Apple machine.
I would get an iPad Pro or the Pixel C but the office apps on them are crippled (I regularly use regex, mail merges, macros, etc.). So an Ubuntu tablet with an attachable keyboard would be perfect for my usage. Looking forward to it!
Question: why not go the laptop / notebook / ultrabook / whateverthecurrentmarketingnameis route instead, if you need a physical keyboard anyway? Or, in case you don't need mobility, a classic desktop PC? You can usually run Ubuntu just fine on these. You know, right tool for the job and all...
One man's hate speech is another man's opinion. ...' is hardly an opinion. It is hate speach, no need to argue about it.
A sentence like: 'lets gather tomorrow in front of the refugee camp, burn it to the ground, kill every man running out and rape every woman
Who are you to judge which is which?
I'm not judging that. A judge is judging that.
That's the entire point of "free speech".
That is not even true in your country. Free speach in Europe means: you can attack the government in any way you want with words. And the government has no base to prosecute you for it. It does not mean that you are allowed to agitate the populace into rape and plunder and pillaging.
You may disagree, I for my part, don't.
It certainly seems like what is being considered "hate speech" in the context of this article has a pretty broad and over-reaching definition.
The context of this article does not mention what hate speach is. Hint: read the relevant laws, I guess you easily find english translations.
Thank you for this sensible view. I'd like to add that what much of what GOP presidential candidates are spewing forth, especially Trump, would be considered hate speech over here in ol'Europe - I frankly wonder whether those people would end up in prison or in an asylum.
Let's also add that while us europeans do have an issue with hate mongers, we don't have bigoted views on such natural things as a woman's breast, which apparently maims children for life over the big pond... a wonder breastfeeding hasn't been outlawed outright.
I'm sure things like avionics and perhaps engines have been updated over the years.
I'm positive that's a yes for the avionics. I'm less sure about the engines though. One should think that 4 engines as used on a modern 747 would out-perform the 8 old jets from the B-52 in most if not all possible categories - the only thing that comes to mind would be ground clearance.
Btw, NATO also hasn't upgraded the engines on their AWACS planes (at least those registered in Luxembourg, flying around Europe), unlike the US did for their own. I always wonder why when I get to see them and listen to them - they're noisy, generate loads of (very visible) soot, and can't possibly be as efficient as modern engines - replacing these engines should pay off pretty quickly.
From AFA: "She loved partying and going to clubs. She drank alcohol and smoked and went around with lots of different guys." (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3325180/Two-fingers-world-Pictured-Europe-s-female-suicide-bomber-booze-loving-extrovert-nicknamed-Cowgirl-love-big-hats.html)
Except that particular story has turned out to be false - the images "proving" this were actually of a totally different moroccan woman. Her pictures were sold to media by a former friend, which turned on her and did this for revenge. That woman now lives in fear, for obvious reasons. Some of the media who published the pictures took them offline, but didn't fix their reports.
The idea is to secure the Schengen borders, i.e. not the borders inside of Schengen.
It's been proven that immigration benefits the economy if it is immigration from inside EU or Europe. You can hardly say that there is any benefit to having 30% unemployment rates and high criminality among immigrants.
For your first point: well, France has closed all borders, including inside of Schengen. We'll see how long it will last, as it does have nasty repercussions (so much for "they won't change our values, our way of life").
For your second point: according to german economists, the current immigration wave is good for the german economy. Also, german police has confirmed the criminality rate is no higher with the immigrants than with the general population - adding that there's been quite a wave of extreme-right-style crimes against facilities for asylum seekers. And as to unemployment: you are aware that asylum seekers have to have their papers through before being allowed to get a job?
That is certainly false. A lot of "eastern block" countries still have them like Romania, Czech Republic, I think Bulgaria. If you think they aren't "EU enough" there's also the UK (and probably Ireland) - where you don't even have mandatory ID card.
And even with registration go on german ebay (Germany has mandatory registration since before 9/11!) and you can buy preregistered cards by 10-pack, 100, sometimes 500 and 1000.
Well, that points out the fine quality of our local media reports then... </sarcasm>
Sure, close the borders. A fine example right now is the one between France and Luxembourg, passed each day but tens of thousands of commuters who live in France but work in Luxembourg. What was already bad logistics, prone to accidents and thereby traffic jams, is now a nightmare each morning and evening. No, that nightmare won't be helped by those people moving, as there isn't anywhere near sufficient housing available, and prices are already at levels comparable to inner city London or Paris. The Schengen treaty (signed in Luxembourg, very close to the french and german borders) was done for a reason, and it's for good reason that most concerned countries want to uphold it.
While we're at it, it's already been proven that immigration benefits the economy. You also shouldn't conflate muslims and these (homegrown!) terrorists, who just have no religion.