And is Europe switching to CDMA? Yes, most of Europe is switching to WCDMA, because it is easier to administrate (see cell layout above) and has superior call-carrying capacity. In any non-tortured sense of that sentence, Europe is switching to CDMA.
Yes. Although, the trouble for the mobile phone companies is that most users seem to be happy with making phone calls, sending SMS and (strangely enough) downloading ring tones and are more or less apathetic to network technologies. If I remember correctly, the German phone networks got an extension for their GSM licenses until 2015 or so...
Anyway, CDMA is the future, Europe knows it. It would have come sooner, except for two things: 1. It is illegal/impossible in most countries in Europe to set-up a non-GSM wireless phone system. How's that for stifiling competition!
Until the end of the 1980s, basically every (West-)European country had its own mobile phone system, which was (a) analog and (b) incompatible to the other standards. GSM was developed (from the mid-80s on) as a (EC funded) research project to get a digital replacement for all this national standards. From the very beginning "removing incompatibilities" was one of the main goals. So when around 1990 a dozen (or whatever) states issued the new digital licenses, of course the technology was mandated. After all, nobody wanted again the situation that you need a different phone in Spain than in, say, France. (And IS-95 was not even an option at that time, since (AFAIK), it was introduced in 1995, like the name suggests).
Competition is good, but that does not mean "the more incompatible standards, the better". Mandating GSM created a level playing field across Europe for handset & network manufacturers and network operators (the latter, of course, regulated by the number of national licenses). That created a mass market and was very benificial for the consumer.
I don't know. That sounds like he's whining that Apple doesn't merge the code back for them.
Well, I absolutely don't have any insight in this matter. But to me it seems that he is not so happy that they only get a couple of weeks (or rather months) worth of changes in one big chunck, littered with changes specific to Mac OS X. I can understand that this is a pain in the ass to merge back (if you can do it at all). This has nothing to do with being lazy, especially if your working on kHTML as a hobby. And I can also understand that he would have wished for a more fruitful cooperation (maybe being able to see and apply individual patches?).
And he is also explicitly stating that Apple has the right to do what they are doing. He is merely pointing out that people will not understand why the changes are not merged into KDE (quickly or at all), and the developers will get the blame. I can understand him...
Well, as you quoted yourself: San Francisco spend $1 Billion for a new 23-gate terminal, which includes 5 gates for the A380. Saying they spend that money to accommodate the A380 when almost 80% of the gates are obviously not build for the A380 is a bit... strange. Maybe SFI just needed more capacity anyway?
It recieves no free handouts of operating cash, no below market rate loans, etc from the government.
For the A380 program Airbus received one third of the development costs as credits from the governments of the involved countries. They are repayable including market interest rates, but I guess depending on the success of the program.
Airbus, on the other hand, is owned by its member governments,
80% of Airbus is owned by EADS, the rest by BAE Systems. EADS is partly owned by the French government (below 30%), the major owner is DaimlerChrysler (30%), another third is free floating. For BAESystems I didn't find the info on their site, but I found the information that about 50% is in foreign (=non-British) hands, so BAE Systems is surely not owned by the British government.
started with capital from those governments
The Airbus consortium was not 'started' with government money, it was a consortium founded by the respective companies (surely with a political motivation). It is founded on much older companies, like MBB.
and gets low/no interest and/or outright gift grants to develop new planes, including the 380
The point is the SuSE/Novell have chosen to not pay for the license and there is no excuse for this. There is no DVD support in the paid-for version. There is simply no legal DVD playback support or MP3 encoding in SuSE. Yet little-ole Linspire was able to afford this "heavy" licensing fee and still ship its distro and DVD player for a lower price than SuSE 9.3.
On the other hand, it seems to me that Linspire does not allow you to copy and share the distribution with friends (you get a 'Family license' for your household, and I guess, these licensing issues might be one of the reasons for that). With SuSE, that is allowed. If I have the choice between being able to add MP3 support with a few mouse clicks via online update and being allowed to share the distribtution with friends (like SuSE does) or having a more restrictive license that doesn't allow me to share the distribution, I would rather take the SuSE approach.
They're planning on shipping KDE 3.4 when it's released, or they're including the current RC?
KDE 3.4 is scheduled for March 16th and AFAIK the packages are basically done. So I guess they won't have problems shipping KDE 3.4 final mid-April, especially since they surely have used the Betas and RCs in their distribution betas...
I bought SuSE 9.1 Pro, paid my 100 euros, and two weeks after that SuSE 9.2 came out.
That's of course bad luck, but not really SuSE fault. The usually announce the release of new versions one month in advance (like the probably will do today or the next days for their 9.3 release in April). And with a bit of research one can find out that SuSE releases twice a year, approx. April and October. But the possibility that someone accidentially buys a product shortly before the release of a new version is a problem which is not restricted to SuSE.
The SuSE ftp and yast provided support for my old 9.1 (e.g. KDE, thunderbird, firefox) packages, but didn't upgrade them to the latest, 9.2 releases.
No, of course not (at least not automatically). They only update packages for YOU to fix bugs and security issues. That makes sense to me. AFAIK, you can point Yast to the FTP version of 9.2 and make a distro update.
Apart from that, there are plenty of other ways to install new software on a SuSE installation, among them apt-get. This includes packages provided by SuSE employes for older versions, for example new KDE versions (including the KDE 3.4 beta versions).
Copying from friends is always an option, for every OS, but it defies the entire commercial OS price argument doesn't it:)
Sure.:) But contrary to certain other OSes, it is absolutely legal to copy SuSE Linux (and always has been). You only don't get official support by SuSE and no printed books...
last I checked only Home version was available for ISO download
Sure. But again this is then true for every Linux distribution, whether commercial or non-commercial.
To be honest, the thing I found most annoying about SuSE was the 'technical support' that I specifically paid for by buying my Pro package. After an out of the box installation, firefox kept crashing whenever I was opening it. The tech support reply was alogn the lines that they don't offer support for 3rd party applications, only for their product.
On the one hand, I can understand that they don't feel the obligation to support every single of the thousands of packages they provide with their distro. I see many of them provided as convinience. I'm a bit surprised, though, that they don't want to help with Firefox issues, since that, in my opinion, is one of the 'core' programs. In any case they have released (Yast-upgradable) updates for Firefox in 9,1 (and probably have also before that date). But I have no experience with SuSE support, so I can't judge whether they are worth their money.
If only Suse didn't have this really annoying habit of changing versions every few months, then quickly reducing and eventually dropping updates support from older versions...
Patches are supplied for example via the Yast Online Update feature (YOU) for two years. They change their version twice a year, like many other distributions, too. What is your problem with that?
It sucks paying 100 euros for an OS that lasts for 6 months.
As I said, you use your distribution for two years. Apart from that, if you want to have always the latest distribution, you can also copy it from friends, or (with 1-2 months delay) install it via FTP or download the ISO (yes, they are available for both 9.1 and 9.2). And even if you insist on buying every single distribution, you can get the SuSE Professional update package for 55 Euro. So your '100 Euro' is off by almost 100%.
In other words, only vote yes for the consitution if you think this is the way the EU needs to be governed for the next couple of centuries.
Also constitutions are not set in stone, they can be changed. For example, the German constitution was last changed in summer 2002 (animal protection was added as a 'state goal' to the constitution). Unlike 'normal' laws, however, it takes more to be able to change it - in Germany, a 2/3 majority in both chambers is required. I don't know what is necessary to change the EU constitution, and no doubt it will be more difficult than for other regulations. But it surely is not like we are stuck with it for the next centuries...
I've been fundamentally opposed to the EEC/EU for as long as I've been an adult voter. I first voted "No" to a proposal to expand EEC powers in 1986, and I've consistently followed this path, ever since. In recent years, however, I had been considering a number of arguments in favour of the EU, and I was actually leaning towards voting in favour of the new constitutional treaty, at the upcoming referendum (in my native Denmark).
The decision today was taken by the EU council, so a council in which every single of the 25 national governments has a minister as representative. So, in essence, the patent directive was accepted today by your and my government. The real EU body for me is the European parliament, and the limitations of the parliament's power are in my opinion exactly due to the thinking that not too much power should be taken away from the national states. Face it, decisions which affect the common market (like patents) will be taken on a European level, whether by representatives of the national governments (the council) or by real European institutions (the parliament). In this case, the governments decided in favor of patents. If you have the chance of voting whether to give the parliament more power in an upcoming referendum, at least this case is not a good reason against it.
Nobody wants to ride in trains here. Why spend all that time cooped up when you can have total freedom on the road?
That depends of course on the train service. If I have the choice between a fast train connection in modern trains or going by car, I usually prefer the train. If having to stare on the road for a few hours means freedom to you, then we surelly have different attitudes.:) For me, freedom means the ability to read while traveling, or to lazily gaze out of the window, listening to some music... Of course a fast, moden train service will usually only be available when traveling between major metropolitan areas - and for large distances, planes would become my prefered option.
Hmm, it seems that it is possible, because also in the UK T-Mobile has announced to offer WLAN via WiMax in some trains, starting next month. At least according to the Register and others.
Funnily enough, I think it is to some part the missing support for a 'real' EU (especially by the EU sceptics) which leads to state of the EU where such things can happen. Apparently, the national states rather want the 'commision' to make the important decisions, because the commision is the direct representative of the national states (you said they are unelected scum. They are appointed by elected governments, so they are as democratically legitimized as any other body appointed by a government). AFAIK, it has been states like the UK (not exclusively, of course) which always were against to much power for an elected supranational body like the European parliament. So that's what you get.
Keep in mind the swastika far predates world war II.
Yes, I know. I remember about 15 years ago, when I was (here in Germany) in a museum about a Germanic tribe living in that area about 2000 years ago. I was a bit surprised when I saw a display cabinet with swastika brooches which were used at that time. According to wikipedia, it was a symbol used by many cultures on different continents, often associated with luck and happiness. Still, I would not like to run around with a swastika symbol in Germany, even if it would be legal. Here, almost everybody would have the same association with that symbol...
Some people said that were NSDAP permitted to stand in 1945 elections in occupied Germany, it would win. So some hand-holding was necessary, I suppose.
Initially, "hand holding" was surely a good thing. I don't know whether the NSDAP would have been able to win an election in 1945 - I kind of doubt it. They got a bit more than 30% in the last free elections 1933. The approval surely rose in the following years, up to the first "succesful" years of the war - in the wake of all the propaganda and high flying national emotions. But I would guess that many people came down to earth when everything fell together. It was not so uncommon to listen to allied radio, and AFAIK the western allies received a relative friendly welcome. Many people were just happy that it was all over. I have a hard time believing that a majority would have voted for the same crackpots again right away.
People are wrong, are idiots, and ignore facts all the time...why is this form of idiocy that harms no one, against the law? Just being offensive to someone, doesn't mean they are being harmed.
I can understand that the German take on 'free speech', or rather the limitations of it, is debatable (although in Germany it is seldom a matter of debate, and this is surely not due to lack of freedom of speech...).
I think to understand the German position one really has to see where we are coming from. The laws were introduced after WWII in Germany when the feeling was that democracy has to be defended, and that counting on the intelligence of the majority alone probably does not work. After all the "idiots" just brainwashed a lot of people (enough to establish a "stable dictatorship", anyway), and this caused a lot of harm. Of course, the society in the Weimar Republic was quite different from what it is today. Democratic traditions were quite weak, and there were some gripes that just asked to be exploited (Versailles treaty...).
In any case, I think given that experience it was seen as worth the sacrifice to render racist and anti-democratic propaganda illegal. I know that many people especially in the US don't agree with that view, but in Germany the general public agrees. Right now there is discussion about more restrictions on having to allow right wing extremists demonstrate close to "sensitive" areas like holocaust memorials, Jewish facilities or national monuments. Many Germans rather want more power to the state against extremist organisations than having images of neonazis demonstrating in front of the national holocaust memorial in Berlin being broadcasted around the world.
People like me who are interested in history would never entertain even the thought to search for "Adolf Hitler" or "Holocaust" on the web.
Well, "holocaust" is still working. But censoring Adolf Hitler is scary (though, I am quite sure, a decision by msn.de and not "the law"). And completely ridiculous is the given reason: this search might return adult material and thus is currently not supported. Sure...
So that means no more Hitler...or anything remotely linked to WWII...i feel bad for the German student writing the book report about WWII's causes...that's gonna be pretty odd..
If you once get the chance to come to Germany I invite you to go to a book shop. I assure you you will find plenty of books about WWII and the general period of the "3. Reich".
The german government also censors religion (Scientology is actually forbidden by federal law)
Just 2 weeks ago I had a scientology flyer in my mailbox (the 'real' one, not the 'virtual' one) inviting me to come to the local scientology center and see a scientology movie. Would be pretty bold if they actually would be forbidden. There are partys who want that, but it hasn't happened yet, apparently.
Scientology is not recognized as a religion/church in Germany, which means they don't fall under the special tax regulations like other churches. Also, AFAIK the German state does not employ people who are member of Scientology, claiming that it is part of Scientologies strategy to infiltrate society.
Nazi symbols in and of themselves are *not* perfectly legal, even for purely educational purposes.
I bet you can go in any reasonably sized book shop in Germany and you will find plenty of books containing all the Nazi symbols you want. Your assertion that you have to go to "specially regulated and protected collections" in libraries to get books about national socialism is wrong.
Yes, I completely agree. In case it wasn't clear, I was just refering to the poster before me, who claimed:"Do a little research and you'll find that Trolltech is going to answer any questions you may have regarding their connection to the Canopy Group, their board of directors, and the connections between same with a bland 'no comment.'", which is complete BS as can be seen by this interview.
There is nothing they can do about this investment, and with ~5% it's also nothing to worry about. Apart from that, they don't agree with Canopy/SCO. That's all I need to know.
Canopy is also a major stakeholder in the SCO group [...] Do a little research and you'll find that Trolltech is going to answer any questions you may have regarding their connection to the Canopy Group, their board of directors, and the connections between same with a bland "no comment."
Well, Trolltech is not really secretive about their investors. Do a little research and you'll find this site. Out of the 9 parties and groups listed there, Canopy is number 7 and SCO number 9, with a combined share of about 5%. Now if you want to call that major... To me it would seem that Trolltech is majorly owned by it's employes.
With a little more research you even might find for axample this interview with the Trolltech President, where he talks about the Canopy investment: ----- PF: Somebody mentioned that the Canopy Group & SCO owns some parts of Trolltech.
ME: Sorry, we don't have any influence on them.
PF: Do they have any influence on you?
ME: Not really. They have a 5.7% stake in Trolltech. Historically Canopy became an investor because we cooperated with Caldera. As you might know we made and delivered the graphic install, which was the first graphical install for Linux, for Caldera Linux. The Canopy Group as the main investor in Caldera was so impressed by the work we had done that they wanted to invest in Trolltech, to make sure that Trolltech could become a solid company that could continue to deliver software to the Linux community. It's pretty ironic to see what has happened historically after that of course. But they don't have any influence on Trolltech. Trolltech is employee-owned, 65% of the shares are owned by the employees and we control the business so they have a small stake in us and that is it.
PF: You haven't talk about this complicated with SCO on Linux
EE: The patent issue or the corporate issue?
PF: The thing that SCO is asking and preparing to sue everybody about some code they pretend they own in Linux.
EE: I can tell you that we do not support these actions from SCO. Trolltech in many ways is dependent on the success of Linux. We think Linux is a Good Thing. We support Linux in many ways. On the other hand everybody has the right to bring his case to court. In this case it is very strange that they have not pinpointed exactly where in the code there is a problem and we feel that if they really had a problem with this, they could have acted very differently in presenting this to the community. So again we do not support these actions. ------------------
Seems to be a quite complicated way to say 'no comment'.
And yet, despite all these contributions, none of these guys are remembered by history.
I guess it depends where you learn your history. Daimler and Benz are quite well known names here in Germany. One of the first divison football clubs plays in the "Gottlieb Daimler Stadion" (Stuttgart, of course, where the headquater of todays DaimlerChrysler is located). If you have the fealing that they were not remembered by the history, than it rather tells something about the common phenomenon called "not invented here syndrom".
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And is Europe switching to CDMA? Yes, most of Europe is switching to WCDMA, because it is easier to administrate (see cell layout above) and has superior call-carrying capacity. In any non-tortured sense of that sentence, Europe is switching to CDMA.
Yes. Although, the trouble for the mobile phone companies is that most users seem to be happy with making phone calls, sending SMS and (strangely enough) downloading ring tones and are more or less apathetic to network technologies. If I remember correctly, the German phone networks got an extension for their GSM licenses until 2015 or so...
Anyway, CDMA is the future, Europe knows it. It would have come sooner, except for two things:
1. It is illegal/impossible in most countries in Europe to set-up a non-GSM wireless phone system. How's that for stifiling competition!
Until the end of the 1980s, basically every (West-)European country had its own mobile phone system, which was (a) analog and (b) incompatible to the other standards. GSM was developed (from the mid-80s on) as a (EC funded) research project
to get a digital replacement for all this national standards. From the very beginning "removing incompatibilities" was one of the main goals. So when around 1990 a dozen (or whatever) states issued the new digital licenses, of course the technology was mandated. After all, nobody wanted again the situation that you need a different phone in Spain than in, say, France. (And IS-95 was not even an option at that time, since (AFAIK), it was introduced in 1995, like the name suggests).
Competition is good, but that does not mean "the more incompatible standards, the better". Mandating GSM created a level playing field across Europe for handset & network manufacturers and network operators (the latter, of course, regulated by the number of national licenses). That created a mass market and was very benificial for the consumer.
And tell me what exactly about KDE seems very useful?
;)
For me? Quite a lot...
I don't know. That sounds like he's whining that Apple doesn't merge the code back for them.
Well, I absolutely don't have any insight in this matter. But to me it seems that he is not so happy that they only get a couple of weeks (or rather months) worth of changes in one big chunck, littered with changes specific to Mac OS X. I can understand that this is a pain in the ass to merge back (if you can do it at all). This has nothing to do with being lazy, especially if your working on kHTML as a hobby. And I can also understand that he would have wished for a more fruitful cooperation (maybe being able to see and apply individual patches?).
And he is also explicitly stating that Apple has the right to do what they are doing. He is merely pointing out that people will not understand why the changes are not merged into KDE (quickly or at all), and the developers will get the blame. I can understand him...
Apple feeds their improvements back to KHTML after the Safari version they appear in is public.
Although it doesn't seem to be very useful.
Well, as you quoted yourself: San Francisco spend $1 Billion for a new 23-gate terminal, which includes 5 gates for the A380. Saying they spend that money to accommodate the A380 when almost 80% of the gates are obviously not build for the A380 is a bit ... strange. Maybe SFI just needed more capacity anyway?
It recieves no free handouts of operating cash, no below market rate loans, etc from the government.
For the A380 program Airbus received one third of the development costs as credits from the governments of the involved countries. They are repayable including market interest rates, but I guess depending on the success of the program.
Airbus, on the other hand, is owned by its member governments,
80% of Airbus is owned by EADS, the rest by BAE Systems. EADS is partly owned by the French government (below 30%), the major owner is DaimlerChrysler (30%), another third is free floating. For BAESystems I didn't find the info on their site, but I found the information that about 50% is in foreign (=non-British) hands, so BAE Systems is surely not owned by the British government.
started with capital from those governments
The Airbus consortium was not 'started' with government money, it was a consortium founded by the respective companies (surely with a political motivation). It is founded on much older companies, like MBB.
and gets low/no interest and/or outright gift grants to develop new planes, including the 380
I think I already adressed that...
The point is the SuSE/Novell have chosen to not pay for the license and there is no excuse for this. There is no DVD support in the paid-for version. There is simply no legal DVD playback support or MP3 encoding in SuSE. Yet little-ole Linspire was able to afford this "heavy" licensing fee and still ship its distro and DVD player for a lower price than SuSE 9.3.
On the other hand, it seems to me that Linspire does not allow you to copy and share the distribution with friends (you get a 'Family license' for your household, and I guess, these licensing issues might be one of the reasons for that). With SuSE, that is allowed. If I have the choice between being able to add MP3 support with a few mouse clicks via online update and being allowed to share the distribtution with friends (like SuSE does) or having a more restrictive license that doesn't allow me to share the distribution, I would rather take the SuSE approach.
They're planning on shipping KDE 3.4 when it's released, or they're including the current RC?
KDE 3.4 is scheduled for March 16th and AFAIK the packages are basically done. So I guess they won't have problems shipping KDE 3.4 final mid-April, especially since they surely have used the Betas and RCs in their distribution betas...
I bought SuSE 9.1 Pro, paid my 100 euros, and two weeks after that SuSE 9.2 came out.
:)
:) But contrary to certain other OSes, it is absolutely legal to copy SuSE Linux (and always has been). You only don't get official support by SuSE and no printed books...
:)
That's of course bad luck, but not really SuSE fault. The usually announce the release of new versions one month in advance (like the probably will do today or the next days for their 9.3 release in April). And with a bit of research one can find out that SuSE releases twice a year, approx. April and October. But the possibility that someone accidentially buys a product shortly before the release of a new version is a problem which is not restricted to SuSE.
The SuSE ftp and yast provided support for my old 9.1 (e.g. KDE, thunderbird, firefox) packages, but didn't upgrade them to the latest, 9.2 releases.
No, of course not (at least not automatically). They only update packages for YOU to fix bugs and security issues. That makes sense to me. AFAIK, you can point Yast to the FTP version of 9.2 and make a distro update.
Apart from that, there are plenty of other ways to install new software on a SuSE installation, among them apt-get. This includes packages provided by SuSE employes for older versions, for example new KDE versions (including the KDE 3.4 beta versions).
Copying from friends is always an option, for every OS, but it defies the entire commercial OS price argument doesn't it
Sure.
last I checked only Home version was available for ISO download
The DVD is here.
this is hardly an option when you're on 64k ISDN.
Sure. But again this is then true for every Linux distribution, whether commercial or non-commercial.
To be honest, the thing I found most annoying about SuSE was the 'technical support' that I specifically paid for by buying my Pro package. After an out of the box installation, firefox kept crashing whenever I was opening it. The tech support reply was alogn the lines that they don't offer support for 3rd party applications, only for their product.
On the one hand, I can understand that they don't feel the obligation to support every single of the thousands of packages they provide with their distro. I see many of them provided as convinience. I'm a bit surprised, though, that they don't want to help with Firefox issues, since that, in my opinion, is one of the 'core' programs. In any case they have released (Yast-upgradable) updates for Firefox in 9,1 (and probably have also before that date). But I have no experience with SuSE support, so I can't judge whether they are worth their money.
Bye bye SuSE.
Well, that's the good thing about choice.
If only Suse didn't have this really annoying habit of changing versions every few months, then quickly reducing and eventually dropping updates support from older versions...
Patches are supplied for example via the Yast Online Update feature (YOU) for two years. They change their version twice a year, like many other distributions, too. What is your problem with that?
It sucks paying 100 euros for an OS that lasts for 6 months.
As I said, you use your distribution for two years. Apart from that, if you want to have always the latest distribution, you can also copy it from friends, or (with 1-2 months delay) install it via FTP or download the ISO (yes, they are available for both 9.1 and 9.2). And even if you insist on buying every single distribution, you can get the SuSE Professional update package for 55 Euro. So your '100 Euro' is off by almost 100%.
In other words, only vote yes for the consitution if you think this is the way the EU needs to be governed for the next couple of centuries.
Also constitutions are not set in stone, they can be changed. For example, the German constitution was last changed in summer 2002 (animal protection was added as a 'state goal' to the constitution). Unlike 'normal' laws, however, it takes more to be able to change it - in Germany, a 2/3 majority in both chambers is required. I don't know what is necessary to change the EU constitution, and no doubt it will be more difficult than for other regulations. But it surely is not like we are stuck with it for the next centuries...
I've been fundamentally opposed to the EEC/EU for as long as I've been an adult voter. I first voted "No" to a proposal to expand EEC powers in 1986, and I've consistently followed this path, ever since.
In recent years, however, I had been considering a number of arguments in favour of the EU, and I was actually leaning towards voting in favour of the new constitutional treaty, at the upcoming referendum (in my native Denmark).
The decision today was taken by the EU council, so a council in which every single of the 25 national governments has a minister as representative. So, in essence, the patent directive was accepted today by your and my government. The real EU body for me is the European parliament, and the limitations of the parliament's power are in my opinion exactly due to the thinking that not too much power should be taken away from the national states. Face it, decisions which affect the common market (like patents) will be taken on a European level, whether by representatives of the national governments (the council) or by real European institutions (the parliament). In this case, the governments decided in favor of patents. If you have the chance of voting whether to give the parliament more power in an upcoming referendum, at least this case is not a good reason against it.
Nobody wants to ride in trains here. Why spend all that time cooped up when you can have total freedom on the road?
:) For me, freedom means the ability to read while traveling, or to lazily gaze out of the window, listening to some music... Of course a fast, moden train service will usually only be available when traveling between major metropolitan areas - and for large distances, planes would become my prefered option.
That depends of course on the train service. If I have the choice between a fast train connection in modern trains or going by car, I usually prefer the train. If having to stare on the road for a few hours means freedom to you, then we surelly have different attitudes.
Hmm, it seems that it is possible, because also in the UK T-Mobile has announced to offer WLAN via WiMax in some trains, starting next month. At least according to the Register and others.
Funnily enough, I think it is to some part the missing support for a 'real' EU (especially by the EU sceptics) which leads to state of the EU where such things can happen. Apparently, the national states rather want the 'commision' to make the important decisions, because the commision is the direct representative of the national states (you said they are unelected scum. They are appointed by elected governments, so they are as democratically legitimized as any other body appointed by a government). AFAIK, it has been states like the UK (not exclusively, of course) which always were against to much power for an elected supranational body like the European parliament. So that's what you get.
Keep in mind the swastika far predates world war II.
Yes, I know. I remember about 15 years ago, when I was (here in Germany) in a museum about a Germanic tribe living in that area about 2000 years ago. I was a bit surprised when I saw a display cabinet with swastika brooches which were used at that time. According to wikipedia, it was a symbol used by many cultures on different continents, often associated with luck and happiness. Still, I would not like to run around with a swastika symbol in Germany, even if it would be legal. Here, almost everybody would have the same association with that symbol...
Some people said that were NSDAP permitted to stand in 1945 elections in occupied Germany, it would win. So some hand-holding was necessary, I suppose.
Initially, "hand holding" was surely a good thing. I don't know whether the NSDAP would have been able to win an election in 1945 - I kind of doubt it. They got a bit more than 30% in the last free elections 1933. The approval surely rose in the following years, up to the first "succesful" years of the war - in the wake of all the propaganda and high flying national emotions. But I would guess that many people came down to earth when everything fell together. It was not so uncommon to listen to allied radio, and AFAIK the western allies received a relative friendly welcome. Many people were just happy that it was all over. I have a hard time believing that a majority would have voted for the same crackpots again right away.
People are wrong, are idiots, and ignore facts all the time...why is this form of idiocy that harms no one, against the law? Just being offensive to someone, doesn't mean they are being harmed.
I can understand that the German take on 'free speech', or rather the limitations of it, is debatable (although in Germany it is seldom a matter of debate, and this is surely not due to lack of freedom of speech...).
I think to understand the German position one really has to see where we are coming from. The laws were introduced after WWII in Germany when the feeling was that democracy has to be defended, and that counting on the intelligence of the majority alone probably does not work. After all the "idiots" just brainwashed a lot of people (enough to establish a "stable dictatorship", anyway), and this caused a lot of harm. Of course, the society in the Weimar Republic was quite different from what it is today. Democratic traditions were quite weak, and there were some gripes that just asked to be exploited (Versailles treaty...).
In any case, I think given that experience it was seen as worth the sacrifice to render racist and anti-democratic propaganda illegal. I know that many people especially in the US don't agree with that view, but in Germany the general public agrees. Right now there is discussion about more restrictions on having to allow right wing extremists demonstrate close to "sensitive" areas like holocaust memorials, Jewish facilities or national monuments. Many Germans rather want more power to the state against extremist organisations than having images of neonazis demonstrating in front of the national holocaust memorial in Berlin being broadcasted around the world.
People like me who are interested in history would never entertain even the thought to search for "Adolf Hitler" or "Holocaust" on the web.
Well, "holocaust" is still working. But censoring Adolf Hitler is scary (though, I am quite sure, a decision by msn.de and not "the law"). And completely ridiculous is the given reason: this search might return adult material and thus is currently not supported. Sure...
So that means no more Hitler...or anything remotely linked to WWII...i feel bad for the German student writing the book report about WWII's causes...that's gonna be pretty odd..
If you once get the chance to come to Germany I invite you to go to a book shop. I assure you you will find plenty of books about WWII and the general period of the "3. Reich".
The german government also censors religion (Scientology is actually forbidden by federal law)
Just 2 weeks ago I had a scientology flyer in my mailbox (the 'real' one, not the 'virtual' one) inviting me to come to the local scientology center and see a scientology movie. Would be pretty bold if they actually would be forbidden. There are partys who want that, but it hasn't happened yet, apparently.
Scientology is not recognized as a religion/church in Germany, which means they don't fall under the special tax regulations like other churches. Also, AFAIK the German state does not employ people who are member of Scientology, claiming that it is part of Scientologies strategy to infiltrate society.
Nazi symbols in and of themselves are *not* perfectly legal, even for purely educational purposes.
I bet you can go in any reasonably sized book shop in Germany and you will find plenty of books containing all the Nazi symbols you want. Your assertion that you have to go to "specially regulated and protected collections" in libraries to get books about national socialism is wrong.
How can this phone claim to support iTunes when it doesn't support AAC/AAC+??
AAC is part of the MPEG-4 standard, which this phone supports...
Yes, I completely agree. In case it wasn't clear, I was just refering to the poster before me, who claimed:"Do a little research and you'll find that Trolltech is going to answer any questions you may have regarding their connection to the Canopy Group, their board of directors, and the connections between same with a bland 'no comment.'", which is complete BS as can be seen by this interview.
There is nothing they can do about this investment, and with ~5% it's also nothing to worry about. Apart from that, they don't agree with Canopy/SCO. That's all I need to know.
Canopy is also a major stakeholder in the SCO group
[...]
Do a little research and you'll find that Trolltech is going to answer any questions you may have regarding their connection to the Canopy Group, their board of directors, and the connections between same with a bland "no comment."
Well, Trolltech is not really secretive about their investors. Do a little research and you'll find this site. Out of the 9 parties and groups listed there, Canopy is number 7 and SCO number 9, with a combined share of about 5%. Now if you want to call that major... To me it would seem that Trolltech is majorly owned by it's employes.
With a little more research you even might find for axample this interview with the Trolltech President, where he talks about the Canopy investment:
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PF: Somebody mentioned that the Canopy Group & SCO owns some parts of Trolltech.
ME: Sorry, we don't have any influence on them.
PF: Do they have any influence on you?
ME: Not really. They have a 5.7% stake in Trolltech. Historically Canopy became an investor because we cooperated with Caldera. As you might know we made and delivered the graphic install, which was the first graphical install for Linux, for Caldera Linux. The Canopy Group as the main investor in Caldera was so impressed by the work we had done that they wanted to invest in Trolltech, to make sure that Trolltech could become a solid company that could continue to deliver software to the Linux community. It's pretty ironic to see what has happened historically after that of course. But they don't have any influence on Trolltech. Trolltech is employee-owned, 65% of the shares are owned by the employees and we control the business so they have a small stake in us and that is it.
PF: You haven't talk about this complicated with SCO on Linux
EE: The patent issue or the corporate issue?
PF: The thing that SCO is asking and preparing to sue everybody about some code they pretend they own in Linux.
EE: I can tell you that we do not support these actions from SCO. Trolltech in many ways is dependent on the success of Linux. We think Linux is a Good Thing. We support Linux in many ways. On the other hand everybody has the right to bring his case to court. In this case it is very strange that they have not pinpointed exactly where in the code there is a problem and we feel that if they really had a problem with this, they could have acted very differently in presenting this to the community. So again we do not support these actions.
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Seems to be a quite complicated way to say 'no comment'.
And yet, despite all these contributions, none of these guys are remembered by history.
I guess it depends where you learn your history. Daimler and Benz are quite well known names here in Germany. One of the first divison football clubs plays in the "Gottlieb Daimler Stadion" (Stuttgart, of course, where the headquater of todays DaimlerChrysler is located). If you have the fealing that they were not remembered by the history, than it rather tells something about the common phenomenon called "not invented here syndrom".