There is no law here against stating anything that is factual right but the rest is true.
What's the point of having free speech if you can't offend anybody? Didn't opposition to the monarchy or Hitler offend someone? Didn't Luther's 100 theses nailed to the Catholic church door offend the church?
Ok, thats 3 things: 1) as I said elsewhere, 'freedom of speech' is not the topmost priority here - its dignity of the person. So offending is a crime. Stating facts is not. 2) we never opposed our monarchs - that would be un-german.:)
The lesson we learned from Hitler is that we can't have someone yelling untruths about some minority group (e.g. anti-jewish propaganda) and making a mass movement out of it. Does make sense, does it? 3) Luther did indeed offend the church and would have gone to jail if he hadn't fled. Nowadays we would have caught him.;)
Different countries run on different rules. Many things may look strange to you but they are not necessarily bad. Don't start me on whats weird in the USA... Try to understand the history of a nation and many things get an explanation.
The 16 Interior Ministers are ministers of the 16 states. There is a seperate minister of the interior for germany. The states ministers control the police of their state. They have no legislative power. In theory they can ask the Bundestag as much as I can although they obviously make a bigger fuss... This year is a year with a lot of elections in different states, european and communal votes (all on different dates). That makes idiotic statements by politicians more likely. Also Spiegel Online noticed that there is a generation gap between those who 'understand' the internet/games and those who don't. As this gap is roughly at the age of 35-40 most of the people in the power are in the 'don't' category. But recently there has sprung up a movement to give those who do a public voice. An online petition to the Bundestag against censorship has recently gained over 100000 supporters. And lastly theres very often that 'free speech' argument. Different to the USA free speech is not the number one in our constitution (Grundgesetz in Germany) - it is the dignity of the person. IMHO neither option is better than the other but it makes public discussions work different here than in the USA. You can't use the free speech thing as an argument against 'killer games' here - 'think of the children' comes first.
Blenders interface is as good as vims or emacs. Impossible to guess, hard to learn but once you get there you will love it (and be quicker than with other more intuitive interfaces).
And mastering vim doesn't make you a good programmer - its just learning the tool you need to get the job done.
If you want to learn Blender get yourself a book and a few weeks time.
(I'm german) We are supposed to be thick sometimes but the germans learned a lesson from WWII: to stay away from military actions (see Iraq war for instance). Who taught us that: the US (thankfully!). Its not legal to own any lethal weapons here and its very hard to buy one illegally. As a result the chances to win the lottery are much higher than getting shot. That means that any killing with guns is BIG news here and creates quite a fuzz. Add to that the general opinion that there should be no violence in games (see the load of family board games germany produces). Computer games OTOH don't have a good reputation (thats changing though). Add to that that just before that raid we had a school shooting (Erfurt) which had no precedent here and the guy was supposed to be playing counterstrike.
Sum it all up and you have a crazed public and politicians with no clue but who have to show their voters that they are 'doing' something.
The thread under the article is worth a read, too. Explains much (if you are interested).
(BTW: If you work more than 183 days in Germany, you become liable for German taxes, which are a punitive 60%+, so make sure you factor this
Hmm, I don't know, who 'helped' you with taxes (which _is_ tricky here), but the highest tax rate is 53% and you got to have an income of 200.000+ $ to get that high (and if you earn that much you actually don't pay 53%...)
Re:Remember what Germany did with MS...
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Nazis on Napster
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This is plain wrong.
The sale of NT/2000 is not forbidden here. Only the state and the churches do not use it yet until this matter is resolved.
Germany also does not consider Scientology to be a terrorist group, it is just not believed to be a church and is under scrutiny of the Verfassungschutz.
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That would have been nice because then I wouldn't have had to go to the army.
Yes, Japan and Germany have an army. We have electricity, too.
There is no law here against stating anything that is factual right but the rest is true.
What's the point of having free speech if you can't offend anybody? Didn't opposition to the monarchy or Hitler offend someone? Didn't Luther's 100 theses nailed to the Catholic church door offend the church?
Ok, thats 3 things: :) ;)
1) as I said elsewhere, 'freedom of speech' is not the topmost priority here - its dignity of the person. So offending is a crime. Stating facts is not.
2) we never opposed our monarchs - that would be un-german.
The lesson we learned from Hitler is that we can't have someone yelling untruths about some minority group (e.g. anti-jewish propaganda) and making a mass movement out of it. Does make sense, does it?
3) Luther did indeed offend the church and would have gone to jail if he hadn't fled. Nowadays we would have caught him.
Different countries run on different rules. Many things may look strange to you but they are not necessarily bad. Don't start me on whats weird in the USA... Try to understand the history of a nation and many things get an explanation.
The 16 Interior Ministers are ministers of the 16 states. There is a seperate minister of the interior for germany. The states ministers control the police of their state. They have no legislative power. In theory they can ask the Bundestag as much as I can although they obviously make a bigger fuss...
This year is a year with a lot of elections in different states, european and communal votes (all on different dates). That makes idiotic statements by politicians more likely.
Also Spiegel Online noticed that there is a generation gap between those who 'understand' the internet/games and those who don't. As this gap is roughly at the age of 35-40 most of the people in the power are in the 'don't' category. But recently there has sprung up a movement to give those who do a public voice. An online petition to the Bundestag against censorship has recently gained over 100000 supporters.
And lastly theres very often that 'free speech' argument. Different to the USA free speech is not the number one in our constitution (Grundgesetz in Germany) - it is the dignity of the person. IMHO neither option is better than the other but it makes public discussions work different here than in the USA. You can't use the free speech thing as an argument against 'killer games' here - 'think of the children' comes first.
First game where a person died on screen was this Atari 2600 2 player cowboy game whith cacti to hide behind. Sorry, can't remember the exact name.
Blenders interface is as good as vims or emacs. Impossible to guess, hard to learn but once you get there you will love it (and be quicker than with other more intuitive interfaces).
And mastering vim doesn't make you a good programmer - its just learning the tool you need to get the job done.
If you want to learn Blender get yourself a book and a few weeks time.
Please note that since there is no East Germany theres also no West anymore. Also before and shortly after WWII there was only one Germany. :)
(I'm german) We are supposed to be thick sometimes but the germans learned a lesson from WWII: to stay away from military actions (see Iraq war for instance).
Who taught us that: the US (thankfully!).
Its not legal to own any lethal weapons here and its very hard to buy one illegally. As a result the chances to win the lottery are much higher than getting shot. That means that any killing with guns is BIG news here and creates quite a fuzz.
Add to that the general opinion that there should be no violence in games (see the load of family board games germany produces). Computer games OTOH don't have a good reputation (thats changing though).
Add to that that just before that raid we had a school shooting (Erfurt) which had no precedent here and the guy was supposed to be playing counterstrike.
Sum it all up and you have a crazed public and politicians with no clue but who have to show their voters that they are 'doing' something.
The thread under the article is worth a read, too. Explains much (if you are interested).
(BTW: If you work more than 183 days in Germany, you become liable for German taxes, which are a punitive 60%+, so make sure you factor this
Hmm, I don't know, who 'helped' you with taxes (which _is_ tricky here), but the highest tax rate is 53% and you got to have an income of 200.000+ $ to get that high (and if you earn that much you actually don't pay 53%...)
This is plain wrong.
The sale of NT/2000 is not forbidden here. Only the state and the churches do not use it yet until this matter is resolved.
Germany also does not consider Scientology to be a terrorist group, it is just not believed to be a church and is under scrutiny of the Verfassungschutz.
Get your facts right before you post
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