Technically, the East turned into five states which then joined the existing Federal Republic of Germany ("West Germany".) It's the same thing, same constitution (minus the article that lets states join, it was abolished shortly afterwards), same institutions.
Short answer: You've just witnessed how your country went from a democracy to fascism in just a few years, murdered millions of its own citizens and killed many more millions across the continent. Now you've been given the task of writing a new constitution. What do you do?
Given the then very recent atrocities, the first thing you write down is that Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority. With that out of the way, you analyze what went wrong with the old constitution, and decide the new constitution must be resistant against attempts to abolish it or alter its basic principles. Part of that is that some articles can't have their essential meaning changed, others can't be changed at all. But it goes further -- organizations that have the goal to abolish the constitution can be banned (along with symbols that represent them), and if the Federal Constitutional Court agrees, even parties (so far a successor party of the NSDAP and a communist party in the 50s.) Also, no speech that is capable of inciting violence against minorities.
Those are the limits. I realize some of the consequences sound ridiculous to Americans, but you have to see it in the historical context. Also, some impressions Americans often have about those limitations are simply not true. For example, showing swastikas. I've seen plenty of swastikas in history class or in movies. That's perfectly legal (education/art). A T-shirt with the NSDAP flag, on the other hand, can indeed get you a fine of several hundred euros.
In practice, Freedom of Expression is alive and well in Germany (unless you're a Nazi.) There are no beeps during TV shows and wardrobe malfunctions are something to laugh about. You're much less likely to get sued, and civil and criminal sentences are much lower (incarceration rate is a bit over a tenth of the US'.) Nobody raises an eyebrow when you proclaim that you're an Atheist and several openly gay politicians have been elected into high offices (two equivalent to a governor and our new Foreign Minister/Vice Chancellor, for example.)
When you read that the president can't veto a law, keep in mind that he's merely the Head of State. The US President is also the Head of Government, and elected directly (in practice.) Sufficient to say that last time those positions were held by the same person, it didn't work out that well for us. The parliament elects the chancellor, and the parliament can also elect a new one at any time. The ability to get rid of a Head of Government, without an "impeachable offense", can be useful at times. The parliament has proportional representation (with the limitation that only parties that get >5% of the votes are taken into account), so it almost never happens that a single party can form the government on its own, and those coalitions can break apart to form a new government with other parties. Finally, the courts usually do a very good job, some attempts to introduce particularly stupid laws you may have heard about backfire and we get a new Fundamental Right out of it.
One more thing that may be important: Election campaigns, particularly financing, work differently. Parties and their candidates get most of their financing out of tax money, depending on how many votes they had in the last elections, and membership fees. There's a limited number of campaign spot slots available that get assigned the same way, you can't just buy more. Also, no PACs.
The swastika is not actually outlawed in Germany, only symbols of unconstitutional organizations.
It depends on the context. You can use the NSDAP flag for education and arts, but if you're marching down the streets behind it you're breaking the law (unless it's, say, part of a movie set.)
I'm 33, I remember my parents paying with cheques when I was a little kid. I received one from an aunt when I was 18, specifically so that I could have the experience of caching a paper cheque at least once in my life. I haven't seen one since, but I hear you can still technically use them as a method of payment.
Why don't you just buy from Amazon.de, then? I often do it the other way round when something is cheaper on your Amazon site, they now even display the cost in euros.
we generally burn 200-300 gallons of gas in a single day of fishing
With the proposed standard of 42 mpg, 300 gallons would take you half way around the globe. At least for long distance flights, airplanes are even (slightly) more efficient than that.
So how far do you live from the nearest movie theater?
Yes, they most certainly would get into trouble. As I said, display of symbols of organizations that have the goal of abolishing the constitution is illegal. Look at it as advertising of a criminal organization, which wouldn't even begin to describe the Nazis.
Also, hey, that ban was your idea, back in the day.
Can you think of anything that you can say in Germany that can get you arrested in the US? Because you are free to criticize the holocaust, call Catholicism a sham, or say that some racial group is stupid in the US. Try that in Germany and you are breaking the law.
I can call Catholicism, or any other religion, a sham as often as I like in Germany, and I do so regularly. Same goes for calling radicals stupid.
I can't publicly deny the Holocaust, because Human Dignity has been given the same priority in our constitution as Freedom of Speech has in yours, but the tits I get to watch on TV make more than up for that.
I live in Germany and have been to several counter-demonstrations where neo-nazis were under police protection.
I think you confuse that with the display of Nazi symbols, which is indeed illegal outside educational or artistic context (school and movies: OK, at neo-nazi marches: not). According to a skin-head I asked, the swastika t-shirt he was wearing would yield a fine up to 500€. That's because it's considered a symbol of an organization with the goal of abolishing the constitution, which has a number of protective measures based on our experience with our previous, much more liberal constitution, including the right to resistance against a government that tries to abolish it.
That's weird, because I've seen plenty of swastikas in history class and school books. Also, you can see it frequently in movies or documentaries. This one even features a swastika quite prominently on its poster.
It's no problem in educational or art context. As a rule of thumb, if Nazis would enjoy it, it's illegal, if they'd hate it, it's fine.
I'm not sure if the removal of swastikas in games is actually required by law, it's hard to see how Wolfenstein could spawn an anti-constitutional movement. If anybody knows, I'd be curious.
When you look for a job, I doubt that studying in a foreign country is likely to add much, if any. It may even raise questions as to your diligence and motivation toward your career rather than fun.
How odd. Over here, having spent one or two semesters in a foreign country is almost mandatory. It shows you can rely on yourself, are open for new experiences and culturally curious. Typically, it also improves your foreign language skills.
But that might be a cultural difference right there.
Tamarin is under the Mozilla Tri-License. It currently only is widely distributed as part of the Flashplayer, but it will become part of Firefox and will quite possibly be available as ScreamingMonkey IE plugin.
Will there be a point on the blades where the linear velocity is 88 miles per hour? The REpower 5M has a rotor with a 126m diameter, going at up to 12.1 rpm. That's 126m * PI * 12.1 / 60s = 80m/s = 178.5 mph.
Also, this makes a Linux Flash writer possible. oOFlash? I really don't see anything to complain about here.
I've been making SWFs on Linux for years. Swfmill is quite capable (the svn version has very good SVG support and works well with Inkscape), there is a fine language and compiler called haXe that can even compile for other targets as well (the Neko and generated Javascript, with PHP support in the works), among other tools.
Also, the Flex SDK is already open and works on Linux (it's Java). Finally, their (proprietary) Flexbuilder for Linux is currently a public alpha.
If by supporting you mean "have thrown an alpha or two over the wall for 32-bit x86 processors back in December", then yes, Adobe supports Linux with Flex.
Personally, I'm very happy about them releasing alphas. It's already quite usable.
Also, there's another commercial IDE, the SDK itself is under the MPL, and there are alternative (non-Adobe) tools as well.
Anyway, I highly recommend haXe, it's a fine language that you can also use to generate JavaScript, with a great type system.
1. The government is asking you what religion you are on your tax forms at all, and that they will be the instrument of collection for the "official" churches of Germany.
Yes, that's a "service" the government does for the churches to make up for the Secularization of 1803, when properties were taken from the churches and secularized. Note that "properties" here means rather large areas of populated land, including cities and so on. By German standards at the time, whole countries, just that they had been ruled by the churches and not by some other feudal lord.
2. That if you are a Catholic, but don't want to pay the tax, you have to lie to the government and say you aren't. In which case you are "removed" from the church and can't have a church wedding.
Well, yeah. If you don't pay your membership fee you're not in the club. I somewhat doubt that you can't have a church wedding, though, since that would mean cross-nomination weddings wouldn't be possible, either. But church weddings have purely symbolic meaning in Germany anyway, a priest can't wed you and requires you to have had a secular wedding before the ceremony.
3. That you have to tell the government when you move (police station, town hall, whatever) ?
Town hall, yes. You'll probably have to do that too when you guys get a national ID card (which we already have).
4. Assigned an official religion by the state, based on what you parent were/are ? This in itself might be the worst of all of it!
No, only if your parents sign you up at their club.
All in all, I'd say Germany is much more secular than the US.
Slashdot Mirror
Technically, the East turned into five states which then joined the existing Federal Republic of Germany ("West Germany".) It's the same thing, same constitution (minus the article that lets states join, it was abolished shortly afterwards), same institutions.
Short answer: You've just witnessed how your country went from a democracy to fascism in just a few years, murdered millions of its own citizens and killed many more millions across the continent. Now you've been given the task of writing a new constitution. What do you do?
Given the then very recent atrocities, the first thing you write down is that Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority. With that out of the way, you analyze what went wrong with the old constitution, and decide the new constitution must be resistant against attempts to abolish it or alter its basic principles. Part of that is that some articles can't have their essential meaning changed, others can't be changed at all. But it goes further -- organizations that have the goal to abolish the constitution can be banned (along with symbols that represent them), and if the Federal Constitutional Court agrees, even parties (so far a successor party of the NSDAP and a communist party in the 50s.) Also, no speech that is capable of inciting violence against minorities.
Those are the limits. I realize some of the consequences sound ridiculous to Americans, but you have to see it in the historical context. Also, some impressions Americans often have about those limitations are simply not true. For example, showing swastikas. I've seen plenty of swastikas in history class or in movies. That's perfectly legal (education/art). A T-shirt with the NSDAP flag, on the other hand, can indeed get you a fine of several hundred euros.
In practice, Freedom of Expression is alive and well in Germany (unless you're a Nazi.) There are no beeps during TV shows and wardrobe malfunctions are something to laugh about. You're much less likely to get sued, and civil and criminal sentences are much lower (incarceration rate is a bit over a tenth of the US'.) Nobody raises an eyebrow when you proclaim that you're an Atheist and several openly gay politicians have been elected into high offices (two equivalent to a governor and our new Foreign Minister/Vice Chancellor, for example.)
When you read that the president can't veto a law, keep in mind that he's merely the Head of State. The US President is also the Head of Government, and elected directly (in practice.) Sufficient to say that last time those positions were held by the same person, it didn't work out that well for us. The parliament elects the chancellor, and the parliament can also elect a new one at any time. The ability to get rid of a Head of Government, without an "impeachable offense", can be useful at times. The parliament has proportional representation (with the limitation that only parties that get >5% of the votes are taken into account), so it almost never happens that a single party can form the government on its own, and those coalitions can break apart to form a new government with other parties. Finally, the courts usually do a very good job, some attempts to introduce particularly stupid laws you may have heard about backfire and we get a new Fundamental Right out of it.
One more thing that may be important: Election campaigns, particularly financing, work differently. Parties and their candidates get most of their financing out of tax money, depending on how many votes they had in the last elections, and membership fees. There's a limited number of campaign spot slots available that get assigned the same way, you can't just buy more. Also, no PACs.
The swastika is not actually outlawed in Germany, only symbols of unconstitutional organizations.
It depends on the context. You can use the NSDAP flag for education and arts, but if you're marching down the streets behind it you're breaking the law (unless it's, say, part of a movie set.)
I'm 33, I remember my parents paying with cheques when I was a little kid. I received one from an aunt when I was 18, specifically so that I could have the experience of caching a paper cheque at least once in my life. I haven't seen one since, but I hear you can still technically use them as a method of payment.
Oh... I forgot about keyboard layout. SÃrry for that.
Other vendors may give you some choice there, though. At least US layout is a common option.
Hello, fellow EU resident!
Why don't you just buy from Amazon.de, then? I often do it the other way round when something is cheaper on your Amazon site, they now even display the cost in euros.
As you wrote above:
we generally burn 200-300 gallons of gas in a single day of fishing
With the proposed standard of 42 mpg, 300 gallons would take you half way around the globe. At least for long distance flights, airplanes are even (slightly) more efficient than that.
So how far do you live from the nearest movie theater?
Yes, they most certainly would get into trouble. As I said, display of symbols of organizations that have the goal of abolishing the constitution is illegal. Look at it as advertising of a criminal organization, which wouldn't even begin to describe the Nazis.
Also, hey, that ban was your idea, back in the day.
Can you think of anything that you can say in Germany that can get you arrested in the US? Because you are free to criticize the holocaust, call Catholicism a sham, or say that some racial group is stupid in the US. Try that in Germany and you are breaking the law.
I can call Catholicism, or any other religion, a sham as often as I like in Germany, and I do so regularly. Same goes for calling radicals stupid.
I can't publicly deny the Holocaust, because Human Dignity has been given the same priority in our constitution as Freedom of Speech has in yours, but the tits I get to watch on TV make more than up for that.
I live in Germany and have been to several counter-demonstrations where neo-nazis were under police protection.
I think you confuse that with the display of Nazi symbols, which is indeed illegal outside educational or artistic context (school and movies: OK, at neo-nazi marches: not). According to a skin-head I asked, the swastika t-shirt he was wearing would yield a fine up to 500€. That's because it's considered a symbol of an organization with the goal of abolishing the constitution, which has a number of protective measures based on our experience with our previous, much more liberal constitution, including the right to resistance against a government that tries to abolish it.
It's not the only western movie about Stalingrad.
Actually, we pay the high gas prices to pay for the roads, so we don't have to subsidize them as heavily as socialist America does.
That's weird, because I've seen plenty of swastikas in history class and school books.
Also, you can see it frequently in movies or documentaries. This one even features a swastika quite prominently on its poster.
It's no problem in educational or art context. As a rule of thumb, if Nazis would enjoy it, it's illegal, if they'd hate it, it's fine. I'm not sure if the removal of swastikas in games is actually required by law, it's hard to see how Wolfenstein could spawn an anti-constitutional movement. If anybody knows, I'd be curious.
1. "Europe" isn't doing the research, some European researchers are.
It's EU funded and coordinated research. It should have been "EU is testing...", because Europe is a continent, but otherwise it's correct.
You can add it up here. The EU has more than twice the capacity of the US, Spain and Denmark are particularly impressive.
Here's the same for photovoltaics, if you're interested.
Yes, a very nice, short read that you can order for cheap. The author is A. Square.
When you look for a job, I doubt that studying in a foreign country is likely to add much, if any. It may even raise questions as to your diligence and motivation toward your career rather than fun.
How odd. Over here, having spent one or two semesters in a foreign country is almost mandatory. It shows you can rely on yourself, are open for new experiences and culturally curious. Typically, it also improves your foreign language skills.
But that might be a cultural difference right there.
Tamarin is under the Mozilla Tri-License. It currently only is widely distributed as part of the Flashplayer, but it will become part of Firefox and will quite possibly be available as ScreamingMonkey IE plugin.
That is certainly news to me, as a German. And the word doesn't even make sense. Is that supposed to be a regional dialect?
No, it's supposed to be a joke. I assume GP knew "toten" and made up the rest to sound like German to English speakers.
It seems to work... had me confused at first, too...
I've been making SWFs on Linux for years. Swfmill is quite capable (the svn version has very good SVG support and works well with Inkscape), there is a fine language and compiler called haXe that can even compile for other targets as well (the Neko and generated Javascript, with PHP support in the works), among other tools.
Also, the Flex SDK is already open and works on Linux (it's Java). Finally, their (proprietary) Flexbuilder for Linux is currently a public alpha.
If by supporting you mean "have thrown an alpha or two over the wall for 32-bit x86 processors back in December", then yes, Adobe supports Linux with Flex.
Personally, I'm very happy about them releasing alphas. It's already quite usable.
Also, there's another commercial IDE, the SDK itself is under the MPL, and there are alternative (non-Adobe) tools as well.
Anyway, I highly recommend haXe, it's a fine language that you can also use to generate JavaScript, with a great type system.
1. The government is asking you what religion you are on your tax forms at all, and that they will be the instrument of collection for the "official" churches of Germany.
Yes, that's a "service" the government does for the churches to make up for the Secularization of 1803, when properties were taken from the churches and secularized. Note that "properties" here means rather large areas of populated land, including cities and so on. By German standards at the time, whole countries, just that they had been ruled by the churches and not by some other feudal lord.
2. That if you are a Catholic, but don't want to pay the tax, you have to lie to the government and say you aren't. In which case you are "removed" from the church and can't have a church wedding.
Well, yeah. If you don't pay your membership fee you're not in the club. I somewhat doubt that you can't have a church wedding, though, since that would mean cross-nomination weddings wouldn't be possible, either. But church weddings have purely symbolic meaning in Germany anyway, a priest can't wed you and requires you to have had a secular wedding before the ceremony.
3. That you have to tell the government when you move (police station, town hall, whatever) ?
Town hall, yes. You'll probably have to do that too when you guys get a national ID card (which we already have).
4. Assigned an official religion by the state, based on what you parent were/are ? This in itself might be the worst of all of it!
No, only if your parents sign you up at their club.
All in all, I'd say Germany is much more secular than the US.
...and I had just switched to 2.6.24-r1 the minute before reading your reply. Now there is indeed a 2.6.24-r2... Sigh... emerge --sync...