I have a problem with laws against the private use of relatively harmless substances such as marijuana, especially when enforcement of such laws reduces civil liberties and privacy for all citizens. (No, I don't use pot myself.) And I hope you can agree that the DMCA and Disney Copyright Extension Act are blatant abuses of government power.
Pots just not a big deal to me. I've never seen it do good, and have seen many friends crash when getting into smoking and all, so I say good that it's illegal. As for DMCA + et al, I think they go too far, and yet, I think the artists and others have a right to protect their work from being stolen / whatever you want to call it on napster like systems, which is what a DMCA type law should handle.
Do you have any problem with cheesburgers being illegal too? How about with Slashdot? Just because you "have no problem" with something doesn't mean that something is not contrary to the Constitution and rights acknowledged in it.
You don't get my point--the post was about "unjust" laws, and I was saying that I find none of the mentioned laws unjust in the slightest--or unconstitutional.
First let me thank you for calling me "moroneas," I really appreciate your dedication to an actual adult discussion. Secondly, you now admit that it's only highend dvd players that don't support vcd (I'm not even sure this is true)? So as evidence that America isn't free you're using the fact that you can't buy a highend combination dvd/vcd player. give me a break...
Regardless of whether the law is just? Besides, you don't have to break any laws to suffer. 80% of citizens whose property is confiscated via asset forfeiture are never even charged with crimes.
What unjust laws are you referring to (note: I'm not denying that there are unjust laws, I just am unsure which you are referring to). I have no problems with drugs being illegal or terrorism being illegal.
as for your 80% stat--do you have any way of backing that up? I'd be really interested to know if that is true.
Actually, it's instructive to compare the tax rates that angered the colonists with our tremendously higher taxes today.
I hate taxes ok, but that's not the issue--the issue is taxation without representation. We are represented, feel free to vote for a candidate who DOESN'T want to raise taxes.
And look at the War on (some) Drugs and the Eternal War on Terror for many examples of infringements on freedom.
If you break the law, you're going to get in trouble, I have no problem with this.
god that is so stupid. With the lack of any TRUE infringments on freedom (see Revolutionary War) todays generation has nothing better to do than whine about companies not including vcd support as evidence that the US is not free. WHAT BULL.
Don't buy their DVD player, how about that? no one's making you. You can buy one that supports playing vcd, they exist! Hell, you could even start your own company to supply such a product, because demand is clearly high, you could become rich by doing this too! Rich and in the moral highground, way to go !! Or you could start a petition, again, because vcd is so overwhelmingly popular. Or you could do the lazy crap thing to do--whine about it on slashdot.
Re:Freg Gallagher: Talented Artist, No Story Skill
on
In Print: MegaTokyo
·
· Score: 2
I don't think so. For one, I believe in one of his diary entries Piro talks about how he had never heard of Love Hina before the comic was well underway. Secondly, more action occurrs on one page of the Love Hina manga than 3 weeks of MT.
Try looking at the parent comment before being sarcastic.
Yeah I know, I was the one that posted that.
Re:Freg Gallagher: Talented Artist, No Story Skill
on
In Print: MegaTokyo
·
· Score: 2
I have to take exception with this--while the actual plot in each comic has perhaps covered more (they got to the beer garden--woo hoo), the rate of comics is still slow. And Largo has morphed from an interesting teacher to some stupid febrile 2-year old it seems to me, who just babbles about zombies and "cool things"
I never suggested that I ought to be able to move C:\WINDOWS. But I ought to be able to move the folder I installed a word processor in. Try it with your Windows box. I dares ya!
First point--I beleive you can move the System Folder in MacOS and have it still function. Secondly, I took your challenge, and moved my c:\progam files\microsoft office\ to c:\program files\microsoft office23423482--first thing that happens is that a warning pops up saying "this could break stuff, are you sure you want to do this" (not verbatim). I then rebooted. No error messages. I try to start word, it starts an installer and asks me to insert the CD, which I don't have at the moment, so I cancel. I then move the folder back. Now trying to start word, it starts fine. That seems ok to me. I'm not sure what would have happen had I had the CD.
try moving my/bin dir without being logged in as root.
Try moving windows as a regular user under an NTFS system. It shouldn't work (I don't use NTFS).
You do make a good point though, in general windows is easier to fuxor than unix. This is a lot different in windows2k/xp though.
In Windows, moving an application folder from one drive to another drive can render the system more or less completely unusable. In *nix this is not so, although the app itself may fail because, like the registry, config files are not self updating.
Try moving/bin to/hoobookie and let me know how your boot goes. AS for your example of moving an appliation folder to kill windows, I'm not sure how this would happen--got an example? What if in nix/bsd you moved a library that, say, gnome was linked to, and you nomrally booted graphically--the system would fail to boot normally there, right?
Unified, and without any documentation within that interface as to what any of those settings actually mean. Can't remark things out for testing. Best of all, and this really is the kicker... no GUI, no fixie!
There are actually command lines tool for bnacking up/restoring the registry, as well as repairing, compressing, scanning, etc it. You are correct though in that if these don't work, you're fuxored. As for your comment about IRQ conflict--I don't understand. IRQ conflicts generally just make the conflicting hardware not work correctly. Moreover, since the days of ACPI (FreeBSD-5/Current supports ACPI) it's not really a big deal.
Quite to the contrary. The separate storage locations of user settings and system settings in the UNIX way is one of the big advantages over the registry, as is the fact that you can use standard commands like "grep -Irs mykey/etc" to search. As a system manager, all you have to be concerned with is/etc and/var. Users automatically get their settings everywhere they log on because of file sharing. Windows, in contrast, first blends everything together and then has complicated schemes for distributing user settings again. It's something worthy of Rube Goldberg. It would be funny if it didn't make the lives of thousands of system managers miserable.
It's true win95/98 approach to multi-user registry sucks, the situation isn't the same in the 2k/xp. For instance recently I migrated to roaming profiles in samba. Thanks to the way hkey_user works, all the same settings transfer over. I'm not saying there aren't any troubles here (I don't know--I've never run into any), but it's worked fine for me.
The UNIX world tried registry databases before Windows 3.1 was even around and it was the same adminstrative nightmare as the Windows registry.
Really? That's interesting, I didn't know that, what was it called? The only somewhat similar thing I know of is Netinfo from NeXT and at present Mac OSX. I like your last line where you call windows backwards and insult windows administrators. This isn't a holy war, though the term zealot certaintly applies to many OS advocates (where OS = {Open Source, Operating System}).
For the registry, there are plenty. For example, if the file system fills up during some registry operations, you're in deep trouble. With separate text files in/etc, that's not a problem: maybe the one file you were writing gets truncated (easy to diagnose and fix), but the others are never touched.
Well, you're in trouble in any OS if you run out of diskspace and start trying to write new data. Generally, AFAIK, the registry in windows keeps "empty" space in the registry files, in case of just this situation.
You also get separate permissions for each set of settings, and you can use standard file system tools. The file system is a secure, concurrent, multi-user, hierarchical, distributed database, something the registry tries to be but fails at miserably.
The registry has permissions in it--it's how for instance normal users can't changed priviled settings. Secondly, you throw out lots of keywords saying the registry files at them all--how so?
You would be. But unlike the Windows registry, which in practice gets corrupted with some regularity,/etc just does not usually get corrupted. That's because people put a lot of effort into making the file system bulletproof.
Do you have actual evidence about this? I'm not saying this in a jerkass way, but rather, I've been running windows since 3.1, and have only once had a registry corruption--when I had some ram go bad, and it was able to restore from an automatic backup when I got in new ram. (this was in win98 I believe).
Wow, imagine that. Compared to 0.016 seconds for grepping through the files in/etc, or 0.162 seconds for grepping through the whole tree under/etc, I'd say that is "forever".
It's all relative, but I do acknowledge the point that searching the registry can be slow. Again, I imagine the total time of grepping through/etc/usr/local/etc maybe/var/opt/home, etc. isn't too much different if you're "blind" looking for something. In addition there's one thing you ignore, and that's the different file formats of unix config files. For instance, apache and sendmail could hardly be more different. Registry gives a unified interface.
So, basically, you are saying that your procedure for moving application settings under Windows is: click around in regedit guessing what keys might or might not belong to an application (most Windows programs don't document that), export it somehow, drag and drop it onto the other machine (let's hope it exports its file systems), log in there, and then add it back in with regedit on that side. Then you cross your fingers hoping you didn't make something inconsistent in the registry. And you think that's some way to manage systems?
There's no "more or less" to it, I documented the steps in few sentences; you obfuscated it. The points you do make though--for one, you face similar inconsistencies with config files in unix. In addition, regedit can, as I mentioned, do remote connections, ie, I can do your scp equivalent directly via regedit.
It's also generally not so hard to find application keys. You face the same problems in unix with badly behaved apps. This isn't a problem with the OS, but the app.
How very amusing. Let your and my technical comments speak for themselves.
How exactly does a directory of text files get corrupted?
How does a binary file get corrupted? Same way any file gets corrupted. hardware errors are one way. Can you think of any more?
Is finding something in the registry faster than grepping files in/etc?
Maybe not, but it sure beats searching/etc, subdirectories, user home directories,/usr/local/etc, and other similar locations.
Is exporting some keys easier than copying a directory from/etc
Yeah, I think so. You can use registory files to make selective changes. Sure, you could use patch or something, but I do think this way is very easy.
I'll take text files any day...
That's of course the great thing about choice and competition. The windows world moved away from where the unix world is today since windows 3.1 (registy might have existed before then). I for one am glad that there are no longer a million.ini files sitting around.
o, let's see: if it gets corrupted, you are in big trouble
likewise if your/etc directory got corrupted, you'd be in trouble
applications like regedit take forever to search through it,
I searched through my registory for a non-existent string just now in 1 minute and 2 seconds. So yeah, that's fairly slow, but not "forever" or as bad as you make it sound.
and it needs regular tuning and maintenance.
What kind of tuning and maintenance are need for regular work? The things people have talked about here (defraging etc) are optimizations only.
And as a system manager, I have a hell of a time trying to express simple concepts like "take the configuration of sshd from this machine and put it on that other machine" with the registry.
That's really unfortunate--maybe you should try to do some more learning in the windows world, this is an incredibly easy thing to do. Open regedit, find SSH settings, right click on the directory side the key, select "export". Copy this file to the new machine, double click, you're done.
So, what again is "not too bad" about it? I can't think of one feature resulting from putting everything into a single database that I as a user or system manager would care about.
What do you mean by "system manager"? I'm assuming you mean managing a single system, becasue the knowledge level and ignorance here is shameful for any kind of system administrator. The registry can be accessed remotely for easy remote administrative changes. It can be easily backed up to rollback changes. It offers a way to make sure users can't change certain settings, install software that they shouldn't etc (user security levels need to access registry). On the programmer level, it offers an easy way to store all program information with a single interface. You miss.ini hell (or in the unix world have a billion files in the/etc dircetory).
Ok, I'm going to totally ignore your cell phone bashing which I'm sure others can refute better than I. However I have to make a point with the test of your message.
You say that "90% of americans don't have passports". Let's check the data--I couldn't find anywhere a specific mention of how many passports in total are issued at any one time. however I could find press releases such as this one:
http://secretary.state.gov/www/briefings/stateme nt s/970919.html
Which state that: -In 1997 a record number of 6 million passports were issued -each year 40 million americas go abroad -in 1996 5.7 million passports were issued -each year since 1992 has seen more passports issued in 1992, in which 3.5 million passports were issed.
So, we can assume that 40 million passports is the absolute floor number of possible passports. Also take note that many people who travel to other countries (Canada for instance, one of our two langbased neighbors in the US. Actually I just checked, and a border crossing into Mexico doesn't require a passport either) don't always have passports--I got into canada with a driver's license. So all those "international" travellers (of which there are a large number! don't always get passports).
Also let's assume that since not everyone who has a passport goes broad every-year (and thus won't be represented in above 40M) that there are 30M who have passports sitting in a box at home. So we have a conservative number of 70M people with passports (I'm guessing the 30M is an under-representation).
Also, on the web I read that around 16M people from the US visit Mexico every year. I couldn't find a number for Canada, but I'd bet it's similar. So right there we have 40M going abroad, and 30M going to other North American countries. That number alone is practically the population of Germany!! But anyway, disregarding Canada+Mexico (and also Alaska,Hawaii, smaller US islands etc, options most European nations don't have) somewhere around 1/4 of the population (population is around 270M) has a passport by my estimation, and enough people to roughly equal the population of Germany visit another country. And you're complaining about this why??
Slashdot Mirror
Please read the post before trolling--3/15 was the original install date.
I like to think that there's a difference between revolution for representative governance and smoking up behind the schoolyard.
I have a problem with laws against the private use of relatively harmless substances such as marijuana, especially when enforcement of such laws reduces civil liberties and privacy for all citizens. (No, I don't use pot myself.) And I hope you can agree that the DMCA and Disney Copyright Extension Act are blatant abuses of government power.
Pots just not a big deal to me. I've never seen it do good, and have seen many friends crash when getting into smoking and all, so I say good that it's illegal. As for DMCA + et al, I think they go too far, and yet, I think the artists and others have a right to protect their work from being stolen / whatever you want to call it on napster like systems, which is what a DMCA type law should handle.
Thanks for the links.
Do you have any problem with cheesburgers being illegal too? How about with Slashdot?
Just because you "have no problem" with something doesn't mean that something is not contrary to the Constitution and rights acknowledged in it.
You don't get my point--the post was about "unjust" laws, and I was saying that I find none of the mentioned laws unjust in the slightest--or unconstitutional.
Why on earth is it crashing? Check your event logs. That should NOT be happening--sounds for sure like a hardware failure.
Here's the output from the "systeminfo" command on my work computer fyi:
Original Install Date: 3/15/2002, 11:24:37 AM
System Up Time: 60 Days, 6 Hours, 36 Minutes, 21 Seconds
Incidentally....
http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers.php
It seems that almost all the players there support VCD...what's the problem?
First let me thank you for calling me "moroneas," I really appreciate your dedication to an actual adult discussion. Secondly, you now admit that it's only highend dvd players that don't support vcd (I'm not even sure this is true)? So as evidence that America isn't free you're using the fact that you can't buy a highend combination dvd/vcd player. give me a break...
Regardless of whether the law is just? Besides, you don't have to break any laws to suffer. 80% of citizens whose property is confiscated via asset forfeiture are never even charged with crimes.
What unjust laws are you referring to (note: I'm not denying that there are unjust laws, I just am unsure which you are referring to). I have no problems with drugs being illegal or terrorism being illegal.
as for your 80% stat--do you have any way of backing that up? I'd be really interested to know if that is true.
Yeah, you're right, it was just the first thing off the top of my head. Thanks for the superior examples.
Actually, it's instructive to compare the tax rates that angered the colonists with our tremendously higher taxes today.
I hate taxes ok, but that's not the issue--the issue is taxation without representation. We are represented, feel free to vote for a candidate who DOESN'T want to raise taxes.
And look at the War on (some) Drugs and the Eternal War on Terror for many examples of infringements on freedom.
If you break the law, you're going to get in trouble, I have no problem with this.
god that is so stupid. With the lack of any TRUE infringments on freedom (see Revolutionary War) todays generation has nothing better to do than whine about companies not including vcd support as evidence that the US is not free. WHAT BULL.
Don't buy their DVD player, how about that? no one's making you. You can buy one that supports playing vcd, they exist! Hell, you could even start your own company to supply such a product, because demand is clearly high, you could become rich by doing this too! Rich and in the moral highground, way to go !! Or you could start a petition, again, because vcd is so overwhelmingly popular. Or you could do the lazy crap thing to do--whine about it on slashdot.
I don't think so. For one, I believe in one of his diary entries Piro talks about how he had never heard of Love Hina before the comic was well underway. Secondly, more action occurrs on one page of the Love Hina manga than 3 weeks of MT.
Try looking at the parent comment before being sarcastic.
Yeah I know, I was the one that posted that.
I have to take exception with this--while the actual plot in each comic has perhaps covered more (they got to the beer garden--woo hoo), the rate of comics is still slow. And Largo has morphed from an interesting teacher to some stupid febrile 2-year old it seems to me, who just babbles about zombies and "cool things"
Try writing an app that runs with System priviledges on Windows, that moves C:\WINNT\, then reboot.
What's your point? Try writing an app that runs with suid priviledges on Unix, that movies /bin, then reboot.
Sure. Move Office.
I never suggested that I ought to be able to move C:\WINDOWS. But I ought to be able to move the folder I installed a word processor in. Try it with your Windows box. I dares ya!
First point--I beleive you can move the System Folder in MacOS and have it still function. Secondly, I took your challenge, and moved my c:\progam files\microsoft office\ to c:\program files\microsoft office23423482--first thing that happens is that a warning pops up saying "this could break stuff, are you sure you want to do this" (not verbatim). I then rebooted. No error messages. I try to start word, it starts an installer and asks me to insert the CD, which I don't have at the moment, so I cancel. I then move the folder back. Now trying to start word, it starts fine. That seems ok to me. I'm not sure what would have happen had I had the CD.
try moving my /bin dir without being logged in as root.
Try moving windows as a regular user under an NTFS system. It shouldn't work (I don't use NTFS).
You do make a good point though, in general windows is easier to fuxor than unix. This is a lot different in windows2k/xp though.
In Windows, moving an application folder from one drive to another drive can render the system more or less completely unusable. In *nix this is not so, although the app itself may fail because, like the registry, config files are not self updating.
Try moving /bin to /hoobookie and let me know how your boot goes. AS for your example of moving an appliation folder to kill windows, I'm not sure how this would happen--got an example? What if in nix/bsd you moved a library that, say, gnome was linked to, and you nomrally booted graphically--the system would fail to boot normally there, right?
Unified, and without any documentation within that interface as to what any of those settings actually mean. Can't remark things out for testing. Best of all, and this really is the kicker... no GUI, no fixie!
There are actually command lines tool for bnacking up/restoring the registry, as well as repairing, compressing, scanning, etc it. You are correct though in that if these don't work, you're fuxored. As for your comment about IRQ conflict--I don't understand. IRQ conflicts generally just make the conflicting hardware not work correctly. Moreover, since the days of ACPI (FreeBSD-5/Current supports ACPI) it's not really a big deal.
Forgot to address the rest, sorry.
Quite to the contrary. The separate storage locations of user settings and system settings in the UNIX way is one of the big advantages over the registry, as is the fact that you can use standard commands like "grep -Irs mykey /etc" to search. As a system manager, all you have to be concerned with is /etc and /var. Users automatically get their settings everywhere they log on because of file sharing. Windows, in contrast, first blends everything together and then has complicated schemes for distributing user settings again. It's something worthy of Rube Goldberg. It would be funny if it didn't make the lives of thousands of system managers miserable.
It's true win95/98 approach to multi-user registry sucks, the situation isn't the same in the 2k/xp. For instance recently I migrated to roaming profiles in samba. Thanks to the way hkey_user works, all the same settings transfer over. I'm not saying there aren't any troubles here (I don't know--I've never run into any), but it's worked fine for me.
The UNIX world tried registry databases before Windows 3.1 was even around and it was the same adminstrative nightmare as the Windows registry.
Really? That's interesting, I didn't know that, what was it called? The only somewhat similar thing I know of is Netinfo from NeXT and at present Mac OSX. I like your last line where you call windows backwards and insult windows administrators. This isn't a holy war, though the term zealot certaintly applies to many OS advocates (where OS = {Open Source, Operating System}).
For the registry, there are plenty. For example, if the file system fills up during some registry operations, you're in deep trouble. With separate text files in /etc, that's not a problem: maybe the one file you were writing gets truncated (easy to diagnose and fix), but the others are never touched.
Well, you're in trouble in any OS if you run out of diskspace and start trying to write new data. Generally, AFAIK, the registry in windows keeps "empty" space in the registry files, in case of just this situation.
You also get separate permissions for each set of settings, and you can use standard file system tools. The file system is a secure, concurrent, multi-user, hierarchical, distributed database, something the registry tries to be but fails at miserably.
The registry has permissions in it--it's how for instance normal users can't changed priviled settings. Secondly, you throw out lots of keywords saying the registry files at them all--how so?
You would be. But unlike the Windows registry, which in practice gets corrupted with some regularity, /etc just does not usually get corrupted. That's because people put a lot of effort into making the file system bulletproof.
Do you have actual evidence about this? I'm not saying this in a jerkass way, but rather, I've been running windows since 3.1, and have only once had a registry corruption--when I had some ram go bad, and it was able to restore from an automatic backup when I got in new ram. (this was in win98 I believe).
Wow, imagine that. Compared to 0.016 seconds for grepping through the files in /etc, or 0.162 seconds for grepping through the whole tree under /etc, I'd say that is "forever".
It's all relative, but I do acknowledge the point that searching the registry can be slow. Again, I imagine the total time of grepping through /etc /usr/local/etc maybe /var /opt /home, etc. isn't too much different if you're "blind" looking for something. In addition there's one thing you ignore, and that's the different file formats of unix config files. For instance, apache and sendmail could hardly be more different. Registry gives a unified interface.
So, basically, you are saying that your procedure for moving application settings under Windows is: click around in regedit guessing what keys might or might not belong to an application (most Windows programs don't document that), export it somehow, drag and drop it onto the other machine (let's hope it exports its file systems), log in there, and then add it back in with regedit on that side. Then you cross your fingers hoping you didn't make something inconsistent in the registry. And you think that's some way to manage systems?
There's no "more or less" to it, I documented the steps in few sentences; you obfuscated it. The points you do make though--for one, you face similar inconsistencies with config files in unix. In addition, regedit can, as I mentioned, do remote connections, ie, I can do your scp equivalent directly via regedit.
It's also generally not so hard to find application keys. You face the same problems in unix with badly behaved apps. This isn't a problem with the OS, but the app.
How very amusing. Let your and my technical comments speak for themselves.
Indeed.
How exactly does a directory of text files get corrupted?
How does a binary file get corrupted? Same way any file gets corrupted. hardware errors are one way. Can you think of any more?
Is finding something in the registry faster than grepping files in /etc?
Maybe not, but it sure beats searching /etc, subdirectories, user home directories, /usr/local/etc, and other similar locations.
Is exporting some keys easier than copying a directory from /etc
Yeah, I think so. You can use registory files to make selective changes. Sure, you could use patch or something, but I do think this way is very easy.
I'll take text files any day...
That's of course the great thing about choice and competition. The windows world moved away from where the unix world is today since windows 3.1 (registy might have existed before then). I for one am glad that there are no longer a million .ini files sitting around.
o, let's see: if it gets corrupted, you are in big trouble
likewise if your /etc directory got corrupted, you'd be in trouble
applications like regedit take forever to search through it,
I searched through my registory for a non-existent string just now in 1 minute and 2 seconds. So yeah, that's fairly slow, but not "forever" or as bad as you make it sound.
and it needs regular tuning and maintenance.
What kind of tuning and maintenance are need for regular work? The things people have talked about here (defraging etc) are optimizations only.
And as a system manager, I have a hell of a time trying to express simple concepts like "take the configuration of sshd from this machine and put it on that other machine" with the registry.
That's really unfortunate--maybe you should try to do some more learning in the windows world, this is an incredibly easy thing to do. Open regedit, find SSH settings, right click on the directory side the key, select "export". Copy this file to the new machine, double click, you're done.
So, what again is "not too bad" about it? I can't think of one feature resulting from putting everything into a single database that I as a user or system manager would care about.
What do you mean by "system manager"? I'm assuming you mean managing a single system, becasue the knowledge level and ignorance here is shameful for any kind of system administrator. The registry can be accessed remotely for easy remote administrative changes. It can be easily backed up to rollback changes. It offers a way to make sure users can't change certain settings, install software that they shouldn't etc (user security levels need to access registry). On the programmer level, it offers an easy way to store all program information with a single interface. You miss .ini hell (or in the unix world have a billion files in the /etc dircetory).
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
Population is 278M.
And as for a military tribunal, unless you're a terrorist, plotting death and destruction you have nothing to worry about.
Ok, I'm going to totally ignore your cell phone bashing which I'm sure others can refute better than I. However I have to make a point with the test of your message.
e nt s/970919.html
You say that "90% of americans don't have passports". Let's check the data--I couldn't find anywhere a specific mention of how many passports in total are issued at any one time. however I could find press releases such as this one:
http://secretary.state.gov/www/briefings/statem
Which state that:
-In 1997 a record number of 6 million passports were issued
-each year 40 million americas go abroad
-in 1996 5.7 million passports were issued
-each year since 1992 has seen more passports issued in 1992, in which 3.5 million passports were issed.
So, we can assume that 40 million passports is the absolute floor number of possible passports. Also take note that many people who travel to other countries (Canada for instance, one of our two langbased neighbors in the US. Actually I just checked, and a border crossing into Mexico doesn't require a passport either) don't always have passports--I got into canada with a driver's license. So all those "international" travellers (of which there are a large number! don't always get passports).
Also let's assume that since not everyone who has a passport goes broad every-year (and thus won't be represented in above 40M) that there are 30M who have passports sitting in a box at home. So we have a conservative number of 70M people with passports (I'm guessing the 30M is an under-representation).
Also, on the web I read that around 16M people from the US visit Mexico every year. I couldn't find a number for Canada, but I'd bet it's similar. So right there we have 40M going abroad, and 30M going to other North American countries. That number alone is practically the population of Germany!! But anyway, disregarding Canada+Mexico (and also Alaska,Hawaii, smaller US islands etc, options most European nations don't have) somewhere around 1/4 of the population (population is around 270M) has a passport by my estimation, and enough people to roughly equal the population of Germany visit another country. And you're complaining about this why??
This is just fud, fud, fud, us bashing.