Europeans wouldn't know free speech if it jumped at them and beat them with a sack full of gold fillings snatched from the maws of blood-thirsty jewish vampires back for revenge.
I was pointing out that books showing swastikas are not necessarily illegal in Germany and gave examples what IMHO is illegal and what not. I was not claiming that this meets the requirements of free speech purists. Maybe you should work on your ability to read and comprehend what is written. Free speech is much more fun if you understand what is said...;)
...Some of the books that are illegal to sell in France and Germany are 1936 Olympics memorabilia. (They were held in Berlin that year. There are swastikas in some of the pictures.)
I don't know what the specific books are you are not allowed to ship to Germany, but usually the swastikas can not be the problem. It is right that the nazi swastika symbol is banned in Germany for being a symbol of an "unconstitutional organisation" (the NSDAP, the Nazi party). But there are plenty of books, films etc. were you see these symbols regularly, basically everything that deals with this period of German history (and that includes the Berlin Olympics). What is not allowed is to show this symbol in a non-historical contest (eg flying the swastika flag on you flag pole in your backyard).
OK, but as long as they use the word socialist,...
They don't, that's simply a wrong translation. Their name is "Christlich-soziale Union", which means "Christian Social Union". "Christian Socialist Union" would translate to "Christlich Sozialistische Union". There is a big difference between "social" and "socialist". "Social" sounds positive, basically every political party in Germany would like to claim that they make social (=something like fair and balanced) politics. The governing party in Germany is called the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland, SPD). There is only one party (at least from the well known parties) that carries "socialistic" in their name, the PDS (Partei des demokratischen Sozialismus, Party of the democratic socialism), which is the successor of the former East German communists. They are basically the political antipode to the CSU.
Interesting - mostly I hear people claiming that supposedly there are already lots of places we need ID, so therefore an ID card would be a good thing for convenience. Now here's the argument the other way round. I agree that there's few places we need to show ID - in which case, what's the use of an ID card?
Even though I rarely use my ID card, I actually see it as a convenient way to prove your ID if you need to. If you want to collect a parcel at the post office because they did not reach you at home - just show your ID card. If you go to a bank where they don't know you and you want to do something you can't do at the cash machine - just show your ID card. Furthermore, when travelling in Europe, you mostly don't need a passport - the ID card is enough (and, in contrast to that passport 'booklet', theplastic card fits nicely into your wallet...;) ). Now, surely I don't have the feeling that ID cards are essential and society wouln't work otherwise, but I never was in a situation where it bothered me to have one, but I surely was in situations where it came in handy.
Issuing this ID card is costing billions, and taking several years - hardly "no major problem" for the would be dictator.
I don't know why this card is so expensive. Maybe it's the cost for collecting all this biometric data and putting it on some modern plastic card which maybe contains also a chip or whatever... I think a would be dictator could do with less. Certainly in the 1930s (which I was talking about) , where an ID document was much more simple - a paper with a glued in picture which was filled out at some local registration office - the effort would have been much lower. And it certainly wouldn't have stopped them...
If you have my credit card number, what do you know about my library usage? My driving habits? Do you know my loyalty card number? Sweet fuck all is what you know. To monitor me, you have to find me in all of the various different and incompatible indexes used by dozens of organisations...[...]Buy access to the offshore supermarket loyalty database and query my ID number (you know, that thing I have to present all over the place), bam! You know how many sheets of toilet paper I use when taking a shit.
You seem to have a pretty scary idea of how it is to live in a country which issues ID cards to their citizens. I live in Germany where we have ID cards since decades.
If I show my ID card to the police, they still don't know what I'm borowing at the library or what I buy in supermarkets. Because I never show my ID there. Probably the only people showing their ID in supermarkets are teenagers who have to prove that they are old enough to buy that alcohol. But even then the person at the cashier looks at the birth data and whether the guy in front of him/here looks like the guy on the picture and that's it. And I honestly don't remember when I had to show my ID card to anybody in Germany. So I don't know where you get the idea that you have to show it 'all over the place'.
To monitor me, you have to find me in all of the various different and incompatible indexes used by dozens of organisations. Not impossible, but decidedly non trivial. If everything is indexed onto a single number (and that *IS* the goal), it becomes trivial.
Yes, but indexing everything onto one single number is completely independent from issuing an ID card or not. If your government gives you an ID number and connects to that number all your credit cards, bank accounts, library cards, driving license, payback cards...whatever, then they can find out a lot about your way of living. Whether they give you another plastic card with this number does not really matter.
I have never seen my ID card as something else as a standard way to prove my identity if I need to. As long as I don't have the feeling that this way of identification is not misused to control my life I don't mind. And considering that hardly anybody ever wants to see my ID card...
ID cards are by definition a tool to allow discrimination. Dictators just find them extraordinarily useful when they decide which ethnic group they want to commit genocide upon.
That of course depends on whether any such information is contained in the ID card. My ID card does not tell you which ethnic group I belong to, it does not tell you to which God(s) I pray (if any). Even the Nazis (as you mentioned them earlier) had to put a stamp into the ID document (I think it was the passport and not the ID card...) of people which were considered Jewish, since otherwise you just could not tell from the document. There was AFAIK not even a central register in Germany were they (the Nazis) could look up who was (by their definition) Jewish or not. That's why millions of people had to submit a so called 'Ariernachweis', where they had to show that their parents and grandparents where not Jewish. That most (or maybe all) people in Germany had a passport or other ID where they just could stamp a 'J' in if the bearer was considered Jewish was not at all important for the genocide. I mean, issuing another ID document with the label 'Jewish' or the label 'German' (or 'Arian' or whatever) would have been no major problem.
So maybe it will change that you not only have to punch your ticket, but you have to swipe your ID card or passport so they know exactly where and when you boarded or left a station.
Maybe, but just because they introduce an ID card in the UK it doesn't mean that suddenly you are subject to total control or anything. We have had ID cards in Germany for decades, and nowhere in Germany do you have to show your card when going on a subway or train. In fact, I don't remember ever beeing stopped on the street by the police and asked for my ID. I always saw the ID card as a convenient standard to identify yourself when you need something for identification, eg in certain situations in a bank, or maybe when you are still a teenager and have to prove that you are old enough to by beer - just show your idea card. Not everybody has a drivers license.But maybe in the modern times of 'terrorist threat' countries which now introduce ID cards have 'higher' plans...
May I remind you that the history of the current ruling party of Germany includes two wars fought without hesitation?
Well, I remember the war against Yugoslavia (which was the other one?), if I recall correctly the whole process was already started before the government changed (including Germany agreeing to take part if it should come to a war). Not that I want to defend the current government, I'm not to fond of them, and there surely was some irony the way the SPD/Greens were involved in this war just after they came to power. Nevertheless, I think the situations are quite different, and I can say many bad things about the government, but I don't think that they secretely were in favour of the Iraq war while publicly oposing it...
Elections for european parliament are coming up. That's why.
Yes. And, I mean, everybody knows that software patents is a hotly debated topic where the average german/european voter is emotionally very attached to, right? Right.
they voted against the iraq war even though they probably wanted it - to win elections.
I don't have any reason to believe that the german government really wanted the war. And knowing the political history of the current ruling parties in Germany, doubly so.
If you want to do that I suggest write an email to SuSE suppot and ask them. I did that ~6 months ago, and after 2 weeks got a reply stating that it is legal under some conditions, e.g. free download with no strings attached, it has to be made clear that it is not officially from SuSE and comes with no support etc. (They didn't mention stripping of any commercial packages, though)
German police have powers to stop random passers-by and demand to see ID.
Yes, they can. It just didn't happen to me in the last 30 years. Only when driving my car (but then they wanted to see my driver's license), or at the border or the airport (allthough that is rare now as long as you travel within certain EU states).
They can hold people without being charged.
I don't know the regulations there, but I'm sure there are pretty well defined regulations when the police is allowed to hold people. In Germany (nowadays) people don't just disappear into prisons, without rights etc. And we don't even have special prisons eg on some Caribbean island to keep people we don't want to treat according to our law.
In Germany, you have to register at a police station every time you move.
No. You have to go to some office of your new city or community and register there that you are now a citizen of city X and no longer of city Y. (The police is not envolved.) Among other things that has tax reasons (some taxes go to the community you live in), also by registering in the local community you get on the voter's list for the next local elections.
Second, every mobile phone network, including GSM networks, will be upgrading to CDMA over the next several years. So, when there is one mobile phone technology, it will be CDMA.
Yes, but while they are all CDMA technologies, they are (AFAIK) still incompatible. The W-CDMA (UMTS) networks deployed in Europe will not work with phones from the current US CDMA networks.
That's great, now when Joe Average installs SuSE and it boots up with all his programs set and doesn't even ask him if he'd like to change them, where's the choices? Joe Average won't even realize there are alternate choices ON the DVD, much less how the hell to change the defaults.
On the other hand, a quick look in the user's guide reveals a chapter each about Konqueror as webbrowser, Galeon as web browser and Mozilla as web browser. There is a chapter about kmail, one about korganizer, there is also one about Evolution. So anybody who at least looks at the contents of the books coming with SuSE Linux will realise that there is choice. And in the end, I think, though you should make it easy for the user there are limits how far you can go, and at what time the user has to start to explore (and read!) for himself.
If you would have read the article, then you would now that the Heise article is exactly the one NewsForge is referring to. So not much of an independent confirmation...
For example, I wonder how many sites discussing the history of WW II would be allowed? Germany has some pretty strict laws about anything relating to the Nazis. It's not particularly clear to me that you could even, say, cite Hitler's writings or show pictures of historical artifacts without running afoul of it, even should you (rightfully!) condemn the horrible things that happened during that war.
Considering the abundance of books, films etc. in Germany about the Nazi era I'm pretty sure that it is legal to use symbols, citations etc. in historical context (that is, as long as you don't use them to glorify national sozialism, make a Hitler fan page or whatever).
I'm not entirely sure what all the tasks of ICANN are, but I guess regulating who can show what content under which domain never was part of them (and should never be).
According to an article in a German newspaper (sorry, it's in German) the money will go to the EU budget, reducing the money the EU member states would have to contribute by the same amount. For Germany that would mean 100 million Euros less to pay to the EU in that year.
Yes, but he replied to the statement: "'ll still consider in Anti-American till they start coming down on European monopolists with as much fervor." Since Switzerland is European (although not EU) and not American, I think the poster you replied to gave a valid example. BTW, according to BBC, the second highest fine so far (296m euros) was imposed on BASF, which is a German company and thus European as well as from the EU.
After a fashion. VAT revenue goes to pay the fatcats in Brussels, not the state government. Here (Ireland) we look on it as an insurance policy against malfeasance by our own government.
I hope you know that Irland is getting more from the fatcats in Brussels than you pay. The country which absolutely paying most netto (=(money from Brussels)-(money to Brussels)) is Germany, in relation to the national economy it's the Netherlands (0.5% of GDP). Ireland makes a surplus of 1.5% of its GDP. If that is a tax, I would like to pay these kind of taxes.;)
Correct, but I believe it was still forbidden (somehow or another) to post ISO's for download...Again, the source of all the consternation over YAST was the confusion.
Well, I used to believe that also, but after reading the Yast license I realized that nothing was preventing me to give away Yast freely, including making it available freely on the net. I then wrote an email to the SuSE customer care and asked why it would be illegal for me to offer SuSE ISOs for free download. The answer was that technically it is not forbidden if it is really a free download with no strings attached. I'm still not sure if I misunderstood the mail or got a wrong answer, because I can't believe that there are no ISOs available just because SuSE chose not to offer them themselves and nobody else bothered to clarify if they could...;)
Slashdot Mirror
Europeans wouldn't know free speech if it jumped at them and beat them with a sack full of gold fillings snatched from the maws of blood-thirsty jewish vampires back for revenge.
;)
I was pointing out that books showing swastikas are not necessarily illegal in Germany and gave examples what IMHO is illegal and what not. I was not claiming that this meets the requirements of free speech purists. Maybe you should work on your ability to read and comprehend what is written. Free speech is much more fun if you understand what is said...
...Some of the books that are illegal to sell in France and Germany are 1936 Olympics memorabilia. (They were held in Berlin that year. There are swastikas in some of the pictures.)
I don't know what the specific books are you are not allowed to ship to Germany, but usually the swastikas can not be the problem. It is right that the nazi swastika symbol is banned in Germany for being a symbol of an "unconstitutional organisation" (the NSDAP, the Nazi party). But there are plenty of books, films etc. were you see these symbols regularly, basically everything that deals with this period of German history (and that includes the Berlin Olympics). What is not allowed is to show this symbol in a non-historical contest (eg flying the swastika flag on you flag pole in your backyard).
You are right about the German citizenship laws
Why? What is it that you don't like about them? Or what is so different in comparison to other countries laws?
OK, but as long as they use the word socialist,...
They don't, that's simply a wrong translation. Their name is "Christlich-soziale Union", which means "Christian Social Union". "Christian Socialist Union" would translate to "Christlich Sozialistische Union". There is a big difference between "social" and "socialist". "Social" sounds positive, basically every political party in Germany would like to claim that they make social (=something like fair and balanced) politics. The governing party in Germany is called the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland, SPD). There is only one party (at least from the well known parties) that carries "socialistic" in their name, the PDS (Partei des demokratischen Sozialismus, Party of the democratic socialism), which is the successor of the former East German communists. They are basically the political antipode to the CSU.
Well, Europe also has already got one. What they are talking about now ist the next generation...
Interesting - mostly I hear people claiming that supposedly there are already lots of places we need ID, so therefore an ID card would be a good thing for convenience. Now here's the argument the other way round. I agree that there's few places we need to show ID - in which case, what's the use of an ID card?
;) ). Now, surely I don't have the feeling that ID cards are essential and society wouln't work otherwise, but I never was in a situation where it bothered me to have one, but I surely was in situations where it came in handy.
Even though I rarely use my ID card, I actually see it as a convenient way to prove your ID if you need to. If you want to collect a parcel at the post office because they did not reach you at home - just show your ID card. If you go to a bank where they don't know you and you want to do something you can't do at the cash machine - just show your ID card. Furthermore, when travelling in Europe, you mostly don't need a passport - the ID card is enough (and, in contrast to that passport 'booklet', theplastic card fits nicely into your wallet...
Issuing this ID card is costing billions, and taking several years - hardly "no major problem" for the would be dictator.
I don't know why this card is so expensive. Maybe it's the cost for collecting all this biometric data and putting it on some modern plastic card which maybe contains also a chip or whatever... I think a would be dictator could do with less. Certainly in the 1930s (which I was talking about) , where an ID document was much more simple - a paper with a glued in picture which was filled out at some local registration office - the effort would have been much lower. And it certainly wouldn't have stopped them...
If you have my credit card number, what do you know about my library usage? My driving habits? Do you know my loyalty card number? Sweet fuck all is what you know. To monitor me, you have to find me in all of the various different and incompatible indexes used by dozens of organisations...[...]Buy access to the offshore supermarket loyalty database and query my ID number (you know, that thing I have to present all over the place), bam! You know how many sheets of toilet paper I use when taking a shit.
You seem to have a pretty scary idea of how it is to live in a country which issues ID cards to their citizens. I live in Germany where we have ID cards since decades.
If I show my ID card to the police, they still don't know what I'm borowing at the library or what I buy in supermarkets. Because I never show my ID there. Probably the only people showing their ID in supermarkets are teenagers who have to prove that they are old enough to buy that alcohol. But even then the person at the cashier looks at the birth data and whether the guy in front of him/here looks like the guy on the picture and that's it. And I honestly don't remember when I had to show my ID card to anybody in Germany. So I don't know where you get the idea that you have to show it 'all over the place'.
To monitor me, you have to find me in all of the various different and incompatible indexes used by dozens of organisations. Not impossible, but decidedly non trivial. If everything is indexed onto a single number (and that *IS* the goal), it becomes trivial.
Yes, but indexing everything onto one single number is completely independent from issuing an ID card or not. If your government gives you an ID number and connects to that number all your credit cards, bank accounts, library cards, driving license, payback cards...whatever, then they can find out a lot about your way of living. Whether they give you another plastic card with this number does not really matter.
I have never seen my ID card as something else as a standard way to prove my identity if I need to. As long as I don't have the feeling that this way of identification is not misused to control my life I don't mind. And considering that hardly anybody ever wants to see my ID card...
ID cards are by definition a tool to allow discrimination. Dictators just find them extraordinarily useful when they decide which ethnic group they want to commit genocide upon.
That of course depends on whether any such information is contained in the ID card. My ID card does not tell you which ethnic group I belong to, it does not tell you to which God(s) I pray (if any). Even the Nazis (as you mentioned them earlier) had to put a stamp into the ID document (I think it was the passport and not the ID card...) of people which were considered Jewish, since otherwise you just could not tell from the document. There was AFAIK not even a central register in Germany were they (the Nazis) could look up who was (by their definition) Jewish or not. That's why millions of people had to submit a so called 'Ariernachweis', where they had to show that their parents and grandparents where not Jewish. That most (or maybe all) people in Germany had a passport or other ID where they just could stamp a 'J' in if the bearer was considered Jewish was not at all important for the genocide. I mean, issuing another ID document with the label 'Jewish' or the label 'German' (or 'Arian' or whatever) would have been no major problem.
So maybe it will change that you not only have to punch your ticket, but you have to swipe your ID card or passport so they know exactly where and when you boarded or left a station.
Maybe, but just because they introduce an ID card in the UK it doesn't mean that suddenly you are subject to total control or anything. We have had ID cards in Germany for decades, and nowhere in Germany do you have to show your card when going on a subway or train. In fact, I don't remember ever beeing stopped on the street by the police and asked for my ID. I always saw the ID card as a convenient standard to identify yourself when you need something for identification, eg in certain situations in a bank, or maybe when you are still a teenager and have to prove that you are old enough to by beer - just show your idea card. Not everybody has a drivers license.But maybe in the modern times of 'terrorist threat' countries which now introduce ID cards have 'higher' plans...
Or like we say over here:
:)
;) )
11.7607292 liters / (100 kilometer)
(or 1.17607292 × 10-07 m2? Whatever...
Afghanistan.
You are right. I forgot about the involvement of the KSK special forces against the taliban.
May I remind you that the history of the current ruling party of Germany includes two wars fought without hesitation?
Well, I remember the war against Yugoslavia (which was the other one?), if I recall correctly the whole process was already started before the government changed (including Germany agreeing to take part if it should come to a war). Not that I want to defend the current government, I'm not to fond of them, and there surely was some irony the way the SPD/Greens were involved in this war just after they came to power. Nevertheless, I think the situations are quite different, and I can say many bad things about the government, but I don't think that they secretely were in favour of the Iraq war while publicly oposing it...
Elections for european parliament are coming up. That's why.
Yes. And, I mean, everybody knows that software patents is a hotly debated topic where the average german/european voter is emotionally very attached to, right? Right.
they voted against the iraq war even though they probably wanted it - to win elections.
I don't have any reason to believe that the german government really wanted the war. And knowing the political history of the current ruling parties in Germany, doubly so.
If you want to do that I suggest write an email to SuSE suppot and ask them. I did that ~6 months ago, and after 2 weeks got a reply stating that it is legal under some conditions, e.g. free download with no strings attached, it has to be made clear that it is not officially from SuSE and comes with no support etc. (They didn't mention stripping of any commercial packages, though)
German police have powers to stop random passers-by and demand to see ID.
Yes, they can. It just didn't happen to me in the last 30 years. Only when driving my car (but then they wanted to see my driver's license), or at the border or the airport (allthough that is rare now as long as you travel within certain EU states).
They can hold people without being charged.
I don't know the regulations there, but I'm sure there are pretty well defined regulations when the police is allowed to hold people. In Germany (nowadays) people don't just disappear into prisons, without rights etc. And we don't even have special prisons eg on some Caribbean island to keep people we don't want to treat according to our law.
In Germany, you have to register at a police station every time you move.
No. You have to go to some office of your new city or community and register there that you are now a citizen of city X and no longer of city Y. (The police is not envolved.) Among other things that has tax reasons (some taxes go to the community you live in), also by registering in the local community you get on the voter's list for the next local elections.
Second, every mobile phone network, including GSM networks, will be upgrading to CDMA over the next several years. So, when there is one mobile phone technology, it will be CDMA.
Yes, but while they are all CDMA technologies, they are (AFAIK) still incompatible. The W-CDMA (UMTS) networks deployed in Europe will not work with phones from the current US CDMA networks.
If you go to asia your going to have to rent a phone anyway; they're CDMA.
Which Asian countries except Japan do not have at least one GSM network?
That's great, now when Joe Average installs SuSE and it boots up with all his programs set and doesn't even ask him if he'd like to change them, where's the choices? Joe Average won't even realize there are alternate choices ON the DVD, much less how the hell to change the defaults.
On the other hand, a quick look in the user's guide reveals a chapter each about Konqueror as webbrowser, Galeon as web browser and Mozilla as web browser. There is a chapter about kmail, one about korganizer, there is also one about Evolution. So anybody who at least looks at the contents of the books coming with SuSE Linux will realise that there is choice. And in the end, I think, though you should make it easy for the user there are limits how far you can go, and at what time the user has to start to explore (and read!) for himself.
If you would have read the article, then you would now that the Heise article is exactly the one NewsForge is referring to. So not much of an independent confirmation...
For example, I wonder how many sites discussing the history of WW II would be allowed? Germany has some pretty strict laws about anything relating to the Nazis. It's not particularly clear to me that you could even, say, cite Hitler's writings or show pictures of historical artifacts without running afoul of it, even should you (rightfully!) condemn the horrible things that happened during that war.
Considering the abundance of books, films etc. in Germany about the Nazi era I'm pretty sure that it is legal to use symbols, citations etc. in historical context (that is, as long as you don't use them to glorify national sozialism, make a Hitler fan page or whatever).
I'm not entirely sure what all the tasks of ICANN are, but I guess regulating who can show what content under which domain never was part of them (and should never be).
According to an article in a German newspaper (sorry, it's in German) the money will go to the EU budget, reducing the money the EU member states would have to contribute by the same amount. For Germany that would mean 100 million Euros less to pay to the EU in that year.
Switzerland is not part of the EU.
Yes, but he replied to the statement: "'ll still consider in Anti-American till they start coming down on European monopolists with as much fervor." Since Switzerland is European (although not EU) and not American, I think the poster you replied to gave a valid example. BTW, according to BBC, the second highest fine so far (296m euros) was imposed on BASF, which is a German company and thus European as well as from the EU.
After a fashion. VAT revenue goes to pay the fatcats in Brussels, not the state government. Here (Ireland) we look on it as an insurance policy against malfeasance by our own government.
;)
I hope you know that Irland is getting more from the fatcats in Brussels than you pay. The country which absolutely paying most netto (=(money from Brussels)-(money to Brussels)) is Germany, in relation to the national economy it's the Netherlands (0.5% of GDP). Ireland makes a surplus of 1.5% of its GDP. If that is a tax, I would like to pay these kind of taxes.
Not very surprising. Considering that both AAC and Ogg Vorbis (and possibly flac, but I can not find the page) support 5.1.(search for 'surround')
Yes and no. AAC is not really competition from the point of view of the Fraunhofer Institute, since it's developed mainly by the same group:
"Fraunhofer IIS has been the main developer of the most advanced audio coding schemes, like MPEG Layer-3 (MP3) and MPEG AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)."
Hmm, how does your audio format get any more proprietary than before when the folks who developed it in the first place extend it?
Correct, but I believe it was still forbidden (somehow or another) to post ISO's for download...Again, the source of all the consternation over YAST was the confusion.
;)
Well, I used to believe that also, but after reading the Yast license I realized that nothing was preventing me to give away Yast freely, including making it available freely on the net. I then wrote an email to the SuSE customer care and asked why it would be illegal for me to offer SuSE ISOs for free download. The answer was that technically it is not forbidden if it is really a free download with no strings attached. I'm still not sure if I misunderstood the mail or got a wrong answer, because I can't believe that there are no ISOs available just because SuSE chose not to offer them themselves and nobody else bothered to clarify if they could...