Also, I would like to point you to http://www.osflash.org/ for all your opensource Flash-needs.
Yeah, I'm using those tools, too ("AMES" -- ASDT, MTASC, Eclipse and SWFMill). I wanted to switch to Linux for a long time and I finally could. Recently I began looking into ActionStep, and I must say I'm impressed. Other notable projects are ASwing (Swing implementation in ActionScript), and Red5 (server needed to make use of the client's webcam and for streaming videos).
On the player side, Gnash looks like the most promising attempt at the moment, but still has a far way to go. But once it's done, it will become possible to integrate it into "traditional" apps and use an SWF as the GUI (at least if the app is GPL), which is where Flash is best at. I don't see it replacing the proprietary plugin any time soon, though -- the next version (8.5, currently available as public alpha) will be a huge step.
I'm always amazed by the irrational comments each time something Flash related gets posted. I hate Flash banners, too. I also hated the animated GIF banners we had before Flash, especially combined with MIDI sound. Sometimes I think it's too easy to get started with Flash for people who have no idea what they're doing, but that doesn't mean it's inherently bad (I'm sure some will disagree). Accessibility is an issue, because unlike HTML, it takes extra effort to support it. And yeah, the official plugin is proprietary, but it's being worked on. Other than that, most of the stuff I read is either nonsense or due to improper use (which includes both how it's done and whether Flash is the right tool for the job in the first place).
Thus leading one to wonder if college students lack literacy, or are simply too lazy to read everything that comes across their face. It's not rocket science, but you do have to read through some pretty small fine print to get to the truth.
I assume that for the test, they actually did read it, and that the designers of the test used a decent font size since they were making a literacy test, not an eye chart.
Making a point by missing it, dragging the moderators with you (Score:5, Insightful). Good work, depending on how you look at it.
The real question to ask is why Germans shouldn't actually bury the past at this point. Germans born after WWII clearly hold no responsibility whatsoever for the Nazi atrocities, they clearly didn't benefit in any way from the Nazis, and they have grown up in a political and social environment that's entirely different from the one in which the Nazis came to power. What grounds does anybody have to believe that Germans born after WWII need to be educated about Nazi atrocities than any other human on this planet?
IMHO, there are several reasons, the most trivial being that everywhere you will notice history lessons focus on the country they are taught in. In Germany the Third Reich is a dominant factor in history which is important to be educated about in order to understand not only general public opinions (e.g. strong opposition against wars), but also our current constitution. The Federal Republic was founded directly after World War II, and the then recent experience had a very strong influence on its characteristics -- one of the implications is the very topic of this thread, that the protection of the individual generally has priority over Freedom of Speech. Article one (the Basic Law, which serves as the constitution, has articles instead of paragraphs) states that "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority", Freedom of Speech is article five.
Germany had gone from a young democracy (end of World War I until 1933), which had a very liberal, by most measures more democratic than the current, constitution, to a fascist dictatorship that murdered millions of its own people by industrial means and started the most devastating war in human history -- all within a few years, and (technically) without violating the constitution (lawyers can be surprisingly creative sometimes). On top of that, this transition had been supported by the majority of the population for a variaty of reasons, and finalized when it passed a vote by the remaining members of parliament. Based on that experiene the Basic Law of the new republic was written to include several security mechanisms, one of which is that you can't abuse Freedom of Speech in an attempt to overthrow the democratic system.
If not the Third Reich by itself, but the war it started (along with several previous ones), is also important to understand the history of the EU.
Another reasons why it's important to educate children born after 1945 is their immediate environment. Imagine grandpa telling the kids the Nazis efficiently solved the unemployment problem (a huge problem back then, as it is today), that they weren't as bad as everybody makes them to be, and then proudly pointing at a picture of him in a SS uniform. Then I believe it's important they get independently educated about the Third Reich at school, go and visit a concentration camp with their class and so on.
Finally, we must learn from history. Of course this is equaly important in other countries, but that part of German history stands out, and no matter what you say I feel there is some sort of a special responsibility for Germans to have at least a basic understanding how it happened. I agree with you that I don't share a responsibility for the Nazi's actions, but "to bury the past" would be to deny what is a part of my heritage, and of what happened just outside the city.
Societies can change rather quickly. It doesn't have to be as extreme as in Germany, but it would be foolish to take our current way of life for granted. As Hermann Goering put it: "Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in
England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after
all, it is th
If I recall correctly, as of 3 years ago when I was a junior in college, one windmill could power one house. A small house, at that. I don't think technology has improved substantially in the three years since.
I just checked a manufacturer's site, theirs produce 1.5 to 5MW. So, even if we assume their smallest model, that would mean the household in question would have to run almost 10.000 XBox 360s, which of course is impossible since nobody could survive in such a hot environment.
I fully agree with the other half of your comment, though, and would like to add that you wouldn't be able to hear them from a few hundred meters distance anyway.
...is not getting to place a link to the site of your chosing. The reward for having a story accepted is to have a story accepted. If you are submitting stories for any other reason, then your motivation is wrong. Add the no follow tag, and end the debate for good.
So, what's my motivation to read/.?
I want to read interesting stories. The motivation of the submitter doesn't interest me one bit. Pay them, let them access your pr0n folder, I really couldn't care less. Link to press releases if you have to, as long as it's interesting I don't care. I just want the stories.
Now, the link they get skews search results. Next time I search for Beatles stuff, I might be confronted with a crappy site in the search results that wouldn't be there otherwise, so I understand your demand for a nofollow tag to a certain extend. However, I can live with that, and feel it would be somewhat unfair to "legitimate" submitters -- why not give them something in return for pointing me to an interesting tidbit of information? Contrary to spamming blogs' comment sections and wikis, this practice could even be considered constructive. If Beatles-Beatles spends an hour a day looking for stories I might not have come across otherwise, then it's OK if gets some kind of reward, IMHO. If there was an option to get access to the super secret/. editors' pr0n FTP in exchange for an accepted submission, I'd do it, too, with a quality abstract and all that.
To me, it looks like a win-win situation -- they get the link, I get the story. Plus, I get to read entertaining conspirace theories.
As a side note, why the "* *" prefix in Beatles-Beatles user name?
Does this mean that Adobe will speed up the development of a 64-bit Flash plug-in? IMO, that's long overdue.
Or maybe the FlashPlayer 8 Plugin for Linux. I check this job opening regularly, I figure as long as it's there the player is still far off.
Actually I can live with lack of a 64bit plugin. It means I have to use a precompiled 32bit Firefox-bin, but it's OK. Lack of 8 really bugs me, though. For my own stuff ant launches the windos standalone player under wine, but running Firefox under wine for normal web surfing just in case I come across an 8 website is too much.
In half a year or so the next player (8.5) will be released, with a new VM (JIT compiling etc). That's about when it'll become difficult to bear not to have it, because the alpha really looks good.
Pretty much all over Europe prices are in the $5-6/gallon range, it seems to work well, i.e. you don't have to pay $6 for a loaf of bread as another poster claimed would happen if fuel prices were that high.
It's true that particularly Germany has a higher population density than the US, and a decent public transport system. However, I wouldn't say people use public transport to save money -- a modern car would cost less in fuel, despite the high prices we have here. It's just that it's a comfortable way to travel if you want to go from city to city, i.e. if you're lucky enough to have a good connection to where you want to go. Some read a book, some work (or play) on their laptops. You can't do that while you drive. Public transport for shorter distances has the advantage that you don't need to find a parking space. For those who use it to get to work on a daily bases there are monthly tickets that make it affordable, and in some cities it has the advantage that special bus lanes go past the rush hour traffic jams. But as with trains, it depends on your personal situation whether it is a good option or not. Depending on where you live and where and when you want to go you might have to change (potentially crowded) busses, walk to the neares bus station in the rain, and so on. So, it really depends, and doesn't necessarily save you any money if you have a car anyway (however, it makes it possible to live without one, depending on personal circumstances).
No, the main effect the higher prices really have isn't that people drive less or buy less cars (Germany even has more cars per capita than the US), but that consumers buy more efficient cars. Germans drive more than they used to, but use less fuel -- the average new car is down to 30mpg (link in German, sorry).
I just read somewhere that 47% of new cars bought in western Europe have diesel engines, they use roughly 40% less fuel for the same power. Modern diesel engines don't have the disadvantages you might associate with them, i.e. they're not noisy, they accelerate quickly and so on. There are filters for particles.
So, my conclusion is that instead of whining about high fuel prices (which aren't that high at all, compared to what it costs elsewhere), Americans should simply buy more efficient cars. I can understand that some people need cars to get around for their job, that they're needed for travel and all that, no problem. It's just that, personally, I'd buy an efficient car if I was in that situation, no matter what fuel costs. You don't even have to buy an expensive hybrid, modern diesels come pretty close.
I'm just curious how many scientists have looked at the possibility that the earth warms and cools in cycles, and there's really not anything we can do to affect it, or stop it.
Yeah, those "scientists" jump at conclusions way to fast. Their consensus means absolutely nothing as long as I keep reading somebody with a degree related to science has doubts.
Take that heretic Darwin. Those "scientists" claim we used to be monkeys! I wonder how many of them have looked at the possibility that the Lord has created us the way we are now.
Granted the motivation is noble, you are still less restricted in the states.
I don't think noble describes it, there is far more to it. We went from a democracy to dictatorship, and the current system is designed to prevent it from happening again. It's a protective measure more than anything else, based on past experience. You have to look at it with its historic background.
You can join the Ku Klux Klan, or the Nazi party and argue your points. You should be allowed to believe that you want even if it upsets others. If you are in the KKK, it is not uncommon for you to claim slavery is great, etc.., just like the Nazi party can claim that the Holocaust was awesome, and they can hang swastikas out their window.
You are allowed to believe what you want, too. As soon as you are in public, however, there are different rules. If you write on your website that the Holocaust was awesome (or that it didn't happen), it's not your personal thing anymore but directly affects the dignity of the victims. If somebody read it and felt offended odds are you'd lose in court.
It's about priorities, and they simply are different here. There are things you can do publicly in Europe you can't in the US, e.g. there is no list of words you can't say on TV, and nobody cares about nipples. For me, not being allowed to publicly say "kill all jews" has no practical implications, but seeing some nice breasts has (OK, I lied -- I do care about nipples).
If that is a measure, the US has the highest prison population in the world, both per capita and in absolute numbers. Freedom is about more than being allowed to say what you want. It's also about what you are allowed to actually do, and about being free of fear from what others might do to you. It's an ideal, and we have a different approach of trying to achieve it.
That *is* freedom of speech, allowing others to speak what they want despite who it may offend or whos views it may conflict with. I believe that most of the stuff they shout is ignoarnt bullshit, but I'll die defending their right to say it.
We let them say what they wanted before, and Free Speech advocates were only a tiny fraction of the ones they murdered. But I definitely see where you're coming from -- those are your values, and you stand in for them out of principle. It's just that in Europe the values have a different priority. Free Speech is very important, just not the top priority.
Also, it's not that even extreme positions couldn't be discussed publicly. There are exceptions, like calling for violence to achieve your goals, or making comments that have the potential to cause violence against a group of people. The US has some restrictions, too, that some of ours aren't covered by them doesn't mean puplic expression is censored.
If it infringes on someone's copyright or is a direct threat at someone with the intention and knowledge that it may result in their personal injury, then it can be taken down but only in certain cases.
I believe calling for cops to be burned qualifies as "intention and knowledge that it may result in their personal injury", don't you?
Basically, European hate-speech laws prohibit public expression with the potential to cause violence against a group of people. You need only very basic knowledge of history to know why that is the case.
The laws in France, and unfortunately most of Europe, are there specifically to censor the public.
Could you please be a bit more specific? I really have no idea what you're talking about. Personally, I don't feel censored at all. The press is doing fine, too.
They are there to manipulate what information gets out, hell at least in the U.S. we don't try to erase our past, instead we embrace it, unlike many European countries where you you can't write about Nazi's (even in areas where it isn't illegal, it is still frowned upon and will get many eyes from the law looking at you).
I live in Germany. In history class we went through the transition to the Third Reich, the Holocaust and WW2 three times with increasing detail as we got older. So I guess what you mean is public display of the swastica which is indeed illegal with exceptions like art and education -- what you're not allowed to do is to wear it on a t-shirt or hang a flag out of your window. What the being frowned upon is concerned, this and last year's biggest German movie productions both were about Nazi Germany (yes, including swasticas) and they ran quite successfully.
The reason for this "censorship" is of course German history. Our constitution is designed to ensure the protection of the individual and of the democratic system. The first Paragraph is "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." It also prohibits censorship, but the protection of human dignity has a higher priority. That is a significant difference from having Free Speech as the first amendment, of course. "Censorship" of Nazi symbols, depending on context, follows the same reasoning. Imagine you'd be a Holocaust survivor and somebody would stand in front of you and shout "Heil Hitler", or waive the Nazi flag.
Also, any political movement aiming to abolish the constituion can be ruled illegal (in practice this is only done if they turn violent or gain significance for fear of making them go underground and losing methods of control). Nazis of course fall into the anti-constitutional category.
Adjunct Scholar, Competitive Enterprise Institute. Member, CEI Board of Directors. President and Founder, Solutions Consulting. President Emeritus, Global Climate Coalition. President, Solutions Consulting, Inc. Former Senior Vice President, Jellinek, Schwartz and Conolly, Inc. Chief Administrative Officer, Center for Naval Analyses.
According to federal lobbying records, O'Keef e was a paid lobbyist for ExxonMobil, 2001, 2002 and 2003 on the issues of environment and climate change, with contacts with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget. He writes frequently about climate change in his presidentail role at the George C. Marshall Institute.
O'Keefe has a long history of involvement with the fossil fuel industry. O'Keefe also served as Executive Vice President and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, a position he held until 2000.
In my opinion this is a mistake, but please look up the difference between porn and obsenity. You can start here
That's exactly the point. As obscenity is defined in the US, it depends on the local community where it is provided, how this works on the Internet isn't entirely clear. But I would say that on average, the threshold in Europe is a bit higher than in the US, especially since the TheoCons have gained more influence.
There is one example listed in the Wikipedia article, another one is of the guy who runs nowthatsfuckedup.com. He has just been arrested for obscenity. Interestingly, his site also shows images provided by soldiers in Iraq in exchange for free access, some of which put a somewhat unfavourable light on war.
The current US administration has a history of acting unilaterally, and that of course raises some doubts if it is sensible to let them be in control of what the world has become dependent on. I realise the US has a high standard for free-speech, but it isn't unlimited, either. There's also the issue with the US' weird obsession with patents and strange understanding of copyright, which could have unpredictable consequences.
So, instead of leaving one country in control, it would be good to give control to one international body that guarantees the Internet can not be affected by individual countries' decisions. That body doesn't have to be the UN, but could be something completely new. Maybe it would even be an opportunity to get a "no-censorship rule" into its charta, since the US is still in the position to make demands that have to be met in order for them to let go of control without making much fuzz about it. That would also act as a safeguard against future changes of the US' stand on this.
And that's why per-capita models for pollution control are flawed. Breed a lot of people living in mut huts somewhere and you get a free pass on your heavily polluted industries.
I see. They're "[breeding] a lot of people living in mut huts" to get a "free pass". So you suggest we go by what? Per country? The very few living in Liechtenstein will be happy to hear that. If you want to go by economic output, China looked in fact pretty bad -- they heavily rely on coal to produce energy. They still do, nowhere near as bad as they used to, but they're still about at US levels.
You can find various relevant statistics here, among other measures graphs of carbon dioxide emmissions per economic output for the G7 countries and developing asian nations.
I've been to Beijing. The air there ain't clean. I've never actually felt sick just from breathing a city's air before, and I've been to most major cities in the US and Europe.
The USA might pollute more then Europe, but China is poised to overtake the US in pollution in a couple years, with India not so far behind. Why should the countries that pollute almost as much as the US be exempt?
Because it's not so much a per country-, but a per capita thing. Yes, China might eventually emmitt more than the US. However, like India, they have about four times the population. So when they're on par with the US, then it would still take about four Chinese to produce the same amount of carbon dioxide as one person in the US causes. At the moment, it takes about 20 Indians, so despite their bigger population it will take a while for them to catch up, I guess.
There is a certain correlation between energy consumption and living standard. That doesn't mean it's proportional, though. Much can be saved by increasing efficiency -- better insulation for houses, cars with better milage, modern power plants, that kind of stuff. Still, to a certain degree that correlation is undeniable, and when we in the rich countries say we want to keep our wasteful lifestyles unless the poorer countries reduce their energy consumption, too, then we're saying they're not entitled to a higher living standard than they have today. Since we caused the mess in the first place, I have a bit of a problem with that attitude.
There is no good reason, and that is why Kyoto is flawed. I do have to commend Europe for their work with the environment, but once they play favorites, they lost me on wanting such a treaty for the US.
Try to look at it from our (I'm in Europe) perspective. The science is pretty solid, our climate is changing. Even if there were doubts -- and there aren't any to be taken seriously -- considering what is at risk, we should play it safe. So we try to reduce our energy consumption, and carbon dioxide emmissions in general. But even if Kyoto meets its target, the reductions will be less than the increased output of the US in the same timeframe. We read about the outrage at US gas stations because you now have to pay $3 per gallon. We pay twice as much, so people buy efficient cars.
You use a quarter of the world's oil production, and you could do with much less if there were some decent incentives for efficiency, without lowering your living standard one bit. Instead you point at poor countries where people use a fraction of what we use in our countries before we even have lunch, and claim it's unfair that they don't have to reduce their output. Those are countries where the average person makes much, much less than we make, so if $3 per gallon seems like much for somebody in the US, you can imagine what it means to them even if they would only have to pay the $2 a gallon costs to produce at today's oil prices. Reducing consumption also means less of an impact of higher oil prices due to growing global demand -- do you understand why some see the US as somewhat unfavorable when they read arguments like yours?
considering how they reacted to Katrina, I find it very hard to feel sorry for anything that happens to Europe.
You mean that we sent everything from food and shelter over water purification systems and high power pumps to generators and a cellular phone network? After Dubya finally decided to accept foreign aid, at least from us and other regions, unlike the more than 1000 fully equipped doctors Cuba offered?
The satellite wouldn't have only benefitted Europe, you know. It's not that we treat environmental scientific data like military secrets.
Just why should Europe and the US neuter their economies and therefore the standard of living of their populations just so India, China, Africa, and South America get a free pass on pollution?
Because the global average of CO2 emmissions per capita is about 5 tons per year. The distribution of emmissions per capita is roughly US 4 : EU 2 : World 1. And please don't forget the World includes the US and Europe.
As far as the neutering is concerned, if that's what you're trying to compensate with a huge SUV...
Re:WAAAAAAAH! I'M SAD!
on
Pay vs. Happiness
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· Score: 2, Informative
not poland. the average working hours per year there are even higher than in the US -- 1983 vs 1824. the oecd countries below 1500h/yr are: denmark (1454), france (1441), germany (1443), netherlands (1357) and norway (1363). sweden has 1585, but i'll list it anyway because in some areas you can get a 100Mb/s connection without transfer limit at consumer prices -- i'm sure you agree that's a big plus.
southern france is hot, too. the netherlands famously have very liberal drug laws, and you could expect pretty much everybody to speak excellent english. eurostat has statistics galore that will give you some hints, but keep in mind to weight the living expenditures against the income.
what you should do, imho, is take a couple of weeks off and travel around a bit. we have cheap airlines that will let you get around on a low budget. we also have an excellent railway system, you'd see more that way.
it's not just the working hours (and cheap bandwidth, although it's important, of course) that make for quality of living, but also the food and the people. those are highly individual factors, so going there first before you decide to begin a new life would be a smart investment of the little time and money it would cost you, imho.
initially it was a random picture, one pixel per second gets changed so if you would count how many pixels of each colour it contains you already should be able to notice some standing out. then, you'd do the same with the thumbnails of games in your favorite online store to see which one fits best. (assuming it's the cover)
what would help would be to save an early version and use it to filter the noise out of later versions by only displaying what has changed.
really. _THE_ augmented reality lab? you're not the only one. there are many.
what makes you think the submitter is one of them? s/he even refers to them as "they", indicating s/he is not a member.
if s/he would be, s/he would have probably not made the holodeck remark everybody is jumping on -- because that's really not at all what it's about.
Half that? Over here in Australia Flash costs about $1000.
Yes, US$500. I had actually checked their online store before I posted.
If you're talking about the "Pro" version and those are Australian Dollars, it should be about right if one considers the usual we-like-to-charge-people-from-other-countries-more fee that vendors like to add for some odd reason.
What community support are you talking about? They are offering the Flash Player for free and charging $1000 for Flash MX 2004? That is not community support! That is marketing. Windows Media Player, MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer all free of cost. Does that mean that Microsoft is being supportive of the community? No, that is once again marketing.
I said they were supportive. Discussions on mailing lists, blog entries, that sort of thing. Encouraging.
For example, a friend of mine published a little tool to create SWFs under the GPL. It was on a Macromedia blog with some positive remarks within an hour after it had been announced, and we could see from the server logs that that was where most of the traffic was coming from. They're obviously not making any money from it directly, on first sight it even means they will sell less copies of Flash (which, btw, costs half of what you said), because people like me can now do without -- I have it, but I don't need it any more, and I most likely won't need the next version. What I meant by saying they would understand it's for the benefit of all is that by reaching out to the OS developers their platform (as they like to call it now) gains acceptance, and in the end they will sell more copies to designers, and most of all, FlashPlayer licenses to e.g. the mobile phone manufacturers.
Macromedia is a company. They want to make money, and so far it looks like they understood they can make more by embracing the SWF related Open Source community instead of fighting it (GPLFlash is a different story, of course).
You can't hold it against them that they charge money for their products. If you don't like it -- don't buy it.
I still can't create flash content on Linux; and I can't even use shockwave applets.
Maybe you can't create Flash content on Linux, but that's what I do. And I'm not talking about Laszlo.
My current workflow is this: I describe my SWF in XML and include all assets I'm going to use. An Open Source compiler adds the code I've written in Eclipse after the SWF has been assembled and the Ant build then launches Firefox with it. The next version of an Eclipse plugin that allows for viewing the SWF inside Eclipse has been announced, and it will support Linux, too (sorry, the latter is only free-as-in-beer).
Have a look here.
So far, Macromedia has been quite supportive of the community, they seem to understand it's for the benefit of all.
As far as the Shockwave plugin is concerned... personally, I don't miss it.
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Yeah, I'm using those tools, too ("AMES" -- ASDT, MTASC, Eclipse and SWFMill). I wanted to switch to Linux for a long time and I finally could. Recently I began looking into ActionStep, and I must say I'm impressed. Other notable projects are ASwing (Swing implementation in ActionScript), and Red5 (server needed to make use of the client's webcam and for streaming videos).
On the player side, Gnash looks like the most promising attempt at the moment, but still has a far way to go. But once it's done, it will become possible to integrate it into "traditional" apps and use an SWF as the GUI (at least if the app is GPL), which is where Flash is best at. I don't see it replacing the proprietary plugin any time soon, though -- the next version (8.5, currently available as public alpha) will be a huge step.
I'm always amazed by the irrational comments each time something Flash related gets posted. I hate Flash banners, too. I also hated the animated GIF banners we had before Flash, especially combined with MIDI sound. Sometimes I think it's too easy to get started with Flash for people who have no idea what they're doing, but that doesn't mean it's inherently bad (I'm sure some will disagree). Accessibility is an issue, because unlike HTML, it takes extra effort to support it. And yeah, the official plugin is proprietary, but it's being worked on. Other than that, most of the stuff I read is either nonsense or due to improper use (which includes both how it's done and whether Flash is the right tool for the job in the first place).
I assume that for the test, they actually did read it, and that the designers of the test used a decent font size since they were making a literacy test, not an eye chart.
Making a point by missing it, dragging the moderators with you (Score:5, Insightful). Good work, depending on how you look at it.
IMHO, there are several reasons, the most trivial being that everywhere you will notice history lessons focus on the country they are taught in. In Germany the Third Reich is a dominant factor in history which is important to be educated about in order to understand not only general public opinions (e.g. strong opposition against wars), but also our current constitution. The Federal Republic was founded directly after World War II, and the then recent experience had a very strong influence on its characteristics -- one of the implications is the very topic of this thread, that the protection of the individual generally has priority over Freedom of Speech. Article one (the Basic Law, which serves as the constitution, has articles instead of paragraphs) states that "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority", Freedom of Speech is article five.
Germany had gone from a young democracy (end of World War I until 1933), which had a very liberal, by most measures more democratic than the current, constitution, to a fascist dictatorship that murdered millions of its own people by industrial means and started the most devastating war in human history -- all within a few years, and (technically) without violating the constitution (lawyers can be surprisingly creative sometimes). On top of that, this transition had been supported by the majority of the population for a variaty of reasons, and finalized when it passed a vote by the remaining members of parliament. Based on that experiene the Basic Law of the new republic was written to include several security mechanisms, one of which is that you can't abuse Freedom of Speech in an attempt to overthrow the democratic system.
If not the Third Reich by itself, but the war it started (along with several previous ones), is also important to understand the history of the EU.
Another reasons why it's important to educate children born after 1945 is their immediate environment. Imagine grandpa telling the kids the Nazis efficiently solved the unemployment problem (a huge problem back then, as it is today), that they weren't as bad as everybody makes them to be, and then proudly pointing at a picture of him in a SS uniform. Then I believe it's important they get independently educated about the Third Reich at school, go and visit a concentration camp with their class and so on.
Finally, we must learn from history. Of course this is equaly important in other countries, but that part of German history stands out, and no matter what you say I feel there is some sort of a special responsibility for Germans to have at least a basic understanding how it happened. I agree with you that I don't share a responsibility for the Nazi's actions, but "to bury the past" would be to deny what is a part of my heritage, and of what happened just outside the city.
Societies can change rather quickly. It doesn't have to be as extreme as in Germany, but it would be foolish to take our current way of life for granted. As Hermann Goering put it:
"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is th
I just checked a manufacturer's site, theirs produce 1.5 to 5MW. So, even if we assume their smallest model, that would mean the household in question would have to run almost 10.000 XBox 360s, which of course is impossible since nobody could survive in such a hot environment.
I fully agree with the other half of your comment, though, and would like to add that you wouldn't be able to hear them from a few hundred meters distance anyway.
So, what's my motivation to read /.?
I want to read interesting stories. The motivation of the submitter doesn't interest me one bit. Pay them, let them access your pr0n folder, I really couldn't care less. Link to press releases if you have to, as long as it's interesting I don't care. I just want the stories.
Now, the link they get skews search results. Next time I search for Beatles stuff, I might be confronted with a crappy site in the search results that wouldn't be there otherwise, so I understand your demand for a nofollow tag to a certain extend. However, I can live with that, and feel it would be somewhat unfair to "legitimate" submitters -- why not give them something in return for pointing me to an interesting tidbit of information? Contrary to spamming blogs' comment sections and wikis, this practice could even be considered constructive. If Beatles-Beatles spends an hour a day looking for stories I might not have come across otherwise, then it's OK if gets some kind of reward, IMHO. If there was an option to get access to the super secret /. editors' pr0n FTP in exchange for an accepted submission, I'd do it, too, with a quality abstract and all that.
To me, it looks like a win-win situation -- they get the link, I get the story. Plus, I get to read entertaining conspirace theories.
As a side note, why the "* *" prefix in Beatles-Beatles user name?
Or maybe the FlashPlayer 8 Plugin for Linux. I check this job opening regularly, I figure as long as it's there the player is still far off.
Actually I can live with lack of a 64bit plugin. It means I have to use a precompiled 32bit Firefox-bin, but it's OK. Lack of 8 really bugs me, though. For my own stuff ant launches the windos standalone player under wine, but running Firefox under wine for normal web surfing just in case I come across an 8 website is too much.
In half a year or so the next player (8.5) will be released, with a new VM (JIT compiling etc). That's about when it'll become difficult to bear not to have it, because the alpha really looks good.
But yeah, a 64bit version would be nice, too.
I totally agree with you, just as a general FYI:
You can convert with the Google Calculator, it can do pretty nifty conversions.
It's true that particularly Germany has a higher population density than the US, and a decent public transport system. However, I wouldn't say people use public transport to save money -- a modern car would cost less in fuel, despite the high prices we have here. It's just that it's a comfortable way to travel if you want to go from city to city, i.e. if you're lucky enough to have a good connection to where you want to go. Some read a book, some work (or play) on their laptops. You can't do that while you drive. Public transport for shorter distances has the advantage that you don't need to find a parking space. For those who use it to get to work on a daily bases there are monthly tickets that make it affordable, and in some cities it has the advantage that special bus lanes go past the rush hour traffic jams. But as with trains, it depends on your personal situation whether it is a good option or not. Depending on where you live and where and when you want to go you might have to change (potentially crowded) busses, walk to the neares bus station in the rain, and so on. So, it really depends, and doesn't necessarily save you any money if you have a car anyway (however, it makes it possible to live without one, depending on personal circumstances).
No, the main effect the higher prices really have isn't that people drive less or buy less cars (Germany even has more cars per capita than the US), but that consumers buy more efficient cars. Germans drive more than they used to, but use less fuel -- the average new car is down to 30mpg (link in German, sorry).
I just read somewhere that 47% of new cars bought in western Europe have diesel engines, they use roughly 40% less fuel for the same power. Modern diesel engines don't have the disadvantages you might associate with them, i.e. they're not noisy, they accelerate quickly and so on. There are filters for particles.
So, my conclusion is that instead of whining about high fuel prices (which aren't that high at all, compared to what it costs elsewhere), Americans should simply buy more efficient cars. I can understand that some people need cars to get around for their job, that they're needed for travel and all that, no problem. It's just that, personally, I'd buy an efficient car if I was in that situation, no matter what fuel costs. You don't even have to buy an expensive hybrid, modern diesels come pretty close.
Yeah, those "scientists" jump at conclusions way to fast. Their consensus means absolutely nothing as long as I keep reading somebody with a degree related to science has doubts.
Take that heretic Darwin. Those "scientists" claim we used to be monkeys! I wonder how many of them have looked at the possibility that the Lord has created us the way we are now.
I don't think noble describes it, there is far more to it. We went from a democracy to dictatorship, and the current system is designed to prevent it from happening again. It's a protective measure more than anything else, based on past experience. You have to look at it with its historic background.
You can join the Ku Klux Klan, or the Nazi party and argue your points. You should be allowed to believe that you want even if it upsets others. If you are in the KKK, it is not uncommon for you to claim slavery is great, etc.., just like the Nazi party can claim that the Holocaust was awesome, and they can hang swastikas out their window.
You are allowed to believe what you want, too. As soon as you are in public, however, there are different rules. If you write on your website that the Holocaust was awesome (or that it didn't happen), it's not your personal thing anymore but directly affects the dignity of the victims. If somebody read it and felt offended odds are you'd lose in court.
It's about priorities, and they simply are different here. There are things you can do publicly in Europe you can't in the US, e.g. there is no list of words you can't say on TV, and nobody cares about nipples. For me, not being allowed to publicly say "kill all jews" has no practical implications, but seeing some nice breasts has (OK, I lied -- I do care about nipples).
If that is a measure, the US has the highest prison population in the world, both per capita and in absolute numbers. Freedom is about more than being allowed to say what you want. It's also about what you are allowed to actually do, and about being free of fear from what others might do to you. It's an ideal, and we have a different approach of trying to achieve it.
That *is* freedom of speech, allowing others to speak what they want despite who it may offend or whos views it may conflict with. I believe that most of the stuff they shout is ignoarnt bullshit, but I'll die defending their right to say it.
We let them say what they wanted before, and Free Speech advocates were only a tiny fraction of the ones they murdered. But I definitely see where you're coming from -- those are your values, and you stand in for them out of principle. It's just that in Europe the values have a different priority. Free Speech is very important, just not the top priority.
Also, it's not that even extreme positions couldn't be discussed publicly. There are exceptions, like calling for violence to achieve your goals, or making comments that have the potential to cause violence against a group of people. The US has some restrictions, too, that some of ours aren't covered by them doesn't mean puplic expression is censored.
I believe calling for cops to be burned qualifies as "intention and knowledge that it may result in their personal injury", don't you?
Basically, European hate-speech laws prohibit public expression with the potential to cause violence against a group of people. You need only very basic knowledge of history to know why that is the case.
The laws in France, and unfortunately most of Europe, are there specifically to censor the public.
Could you please be a bit more specific? I really have no idea what you're talking about. Personally, I don't feel censored at all. The press is doing fine, too.
They are there to manipulate what information gets out, hell at least in the U.S. we don't try to erase our past, instead we embrace it, unlike many European countries where you you can't write about Nazi's (even in areas where it isn't illegal, it is still frowned upon and will get many eyes from the law looking at you).
I live in Germany. In history class we went through the transition to the Third Reich, the Holocaust and WW2 three times with increasing detail as we got older. So I guess what you mean is public display of the swastica which is indeed illegal with exceptions like art and education -- what you're not allowed to do is to wear it on a t-shirt or hang a flag out of your window. What the being frowned upon is concerned, this and last year's biggest German movie productions both were about Nazi Germany (yes, including swasticas) and they ran quite successfully.
The reason for this "censorship" is of course German history. Our constitution is designed to ensure the protection of the individual and of the democratic system. The first Paragraph is "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." It also prohibits censorship, but the protection of human dignity has a higher priority. That is a significant difference from having Free Speech as the first amendment, of course. "Censorship" of Nazi symbols, depending on context, follows the same reasoning. Imagine you'd be a Holocaust survivor and somebody would stand in front of you and shout "Heil Hitler", or waive the Nazi flag.
Also, any political movement aiming to abolish the constituion can be ruled illegal (in practice this is only done if they turn violent or gain significance for fear of making them go underground and losing methods of control). Nazis of course fall into the anti-constitutional category.
Anyway, thanks for making this available and for all the bandwidth :)
The promised information about him is here:
President, George C. Marshall Institute.
Adjunct Scholar, Competitive Enterprise Institute. Member, CEI Board of Directors. President and Founder, Solutions Consulting. President Emeritus, Global Climate Coalition. President, Solutions Consulting, Inc. Former Senior Vice President, Jellinek, Schwartz and Conolly, Inc. Chief Administrative Officer, Center for Naval Analyses.
According to federal lobbying records, O'Keef e was a paid lobbyist for ExxonMobil, 2001, 2002 and 2003 on the issues of environment and climate change, with contacts with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget. He writes frequently about climate change in his presidentail role at the George C. Marshall Institute.
O'Keefe has a long history of involvement with the fossil fuel industry. O'Keefe also served as Executive Vice President and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, a position he held until 2000.
Competitive Enterprise Institute has received $1,645,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
George C. Marshall Institute has received $515,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
American Petroleum Institute
Currently "deactivated", the Global Climate Coalition was "A coalition of companies and trade associations seeking to present the views of industry in the global warming debate."
That's exactly the point. As obscenity is defined in the US, it depends on the local community where it is provided, how this works on the Internet isn't entirely clear. But I would say that on average, the threshold in Europe is a bit higher than in the US, especially since the TheoCons have gained more influence.
There is one example listed in the Wikipedia article, another one is of the guy who runs nowthatsfuckedup.com. He has just been arrested for obscenity. Interestingly, his site also shows images provided by soldiers in Iraq in exchange for free access, some of which put a somewhat unfavourable light on war.
The current US administration has a history of acting unilaterally, and that of course raises some doubts if it is sensible to let them be in control of what the world has become dependent on. I realise the US has a high standard for free-speech, but it isn't unlimited, either. There's also the issue with the US' weird obsession with patents and strange understanding of copyright, which could have unpredictable consequences.
So, instead of leaving one country in control, it would be good to give control to one international body that guarantees the Internet can not be affected by individual countries' decisions. That body doesn't have to be the UN, but could be something completely new. Maybe it would even be an opportunity to get a "no-censorship rule" into its charta, since the US is still in the position to make demands that have to be met in order for them to let go of control without making much fuzz about it. That would also act as a safeguard against future changes of the US' stand on this.
I see. They're "[breeding] a lot of people living in mut huts" to get a "free pass". So you suggest we go by what? Per country? The very few living in Liechtenstein will be happy to hear that. If you want to go by economic output, China looked in fact pretty bad -- they heavily rely on coal to produce energy. They still do, nowhere near as bad as they used to, but they're still about at US levels.
You can find various relevant statistics here, among other measures graphs of carbon dioxide emmissions per economic output for the G7 countries and developing asian nations.
I've been to Beijing. The air there ain't clean. I've never actually felt sick just from breathing a city's air before, and I've been to most major cities in the US and Europe.
At least they're doing something about it.
Because it's not so much a per country-, but a per capita thing. Yes, China might eventually emmitt more than the US. However, like India, they have about four times the population. So when they're on par with the US, then it would still take about four Chinese to produce the same amount of carbon dioxide as one person in the US causes. At the moment, it takes about 20 Indians, so despite their bigger population it will take a while for them to catch up, I guess.
There is a certain correlation between energy consumption and living standard. That doesn't mean it's proportional, though. Much can be saved by increasing efficiency -- better insulation for houses, cars with better milage, modern power plants, that kind of stuff. Still, to a certain degree that correlation is undeniable, and when we in the rich countries say we want to keep our wasteful lifestyles unless the poorer countries reduce their energy consumption, too, then we're saying they're not entitled to a higher living standard than they have today. Since we caused the mess in the first place, I have a bit of a problem with that attitude.
There is no good reason, and that is why Kyoto is flawed. I do have to commend Europe for their work with the environment, but once they play favorites, they lost me on wanting such a treaty for the US.
Try to look at it from our (I'm in Europe) perspective. The science is pretty solid, our climate is changing. Even if there were doubts -- and there aren't any to be taken seriously -- considering what is at risk, we should play it safe. So we try to reduce our energy consumption, and carbon dioxide emmissions in general. But even if Kyoto meets its target, the reductions will be less than the increased output of the US in the same timeframe. We read about the outrage at US gas stations because you now have to pay $3 per gallon. We pay twice as much, so people buy efficient cars.
You use a quarter of the world's oil production, and you could do with much less if there were some decent incentives for efficiency, without lowering your living standard one bit. Instead you point at poor countries where people use a fraction of what we use in our countries before we even have lunch, and claim it's unfair that they don't have to reduce their output. Those are countries where the average person makes much, much less than we make, so if $3 per gallon seems like much for somebody in the US, you can imagine what it means to them even if they would only have to pay the $2 a gallon costs to produce at today's oil prices. Reducing consumption also means less of an impact of higher oil prices due to growing global demand -- do you understand why some see the US as somewhat unfavorable when they read arguments like yours?
You mean that we sent everything from food and shelter over water purification systems and high power pumps to generators and a cellular phone network? After Dubya finally decided to accept foreign aid, at least from us and other regions, unlike the more than 1000 fully equipped doctors Cuba offered?
The satellite wouldn't have only benefitted Europe, you know. It's not that we treat environmental scientific data like military secrets.
Because the global average of CO2 emmissions per capita is about 5 tons per year. The distribution of emmissions per capita is roughly US 4 : EU 2 : World 1. And please don't forget the World includes the US and Europe.
As far as the neutering is concerned, if that's what you're trying to compensate with a huge SUV...
southern france is hot, too. the netherlands famously have very liberal drug laws, and you could expect pretty much everybody to speak excellent english.
eurostat has statistics galore that will give you some hints, but keep in mind to weight the living expenditures against the income.
what you should do, imho, is take a couple of weeks off and travel around a bit. we have cheap airlines that will let you get around on a low budget. we also have an excellent railway system, you'd see more that way.
it's not just the working hours (and cheap bandwidth, although it's important, of course) that make for quality of living, but also the food and the people. those are highly individual factors, so going there first before you decide to begin a new life would be a smart investment of the little time and money it would cost you, imho.
what would help would be to save an early version and use it to filter the noise out of later versions by only displaying what has changed.
but it's a jpg...
what makes you think the submitter is one of them? s/he even refers to them as "they", indicating s/he is not a member.
if s/he would be, s/he would have probably not made the holodeck remark everybody is jumping on -- because that's really not at all what it's about.
She also wrote the article from the Apple Making a Spreadsheet? story just three entries down from this one on the /. main page -- congrats!
Yes, US$500. I had actually checked their online store before I posted.e fee that vendors like to add for some odd reason.
If you're talking about the "Pro" version and those are Australian Dollars, it should be about right if one considers the usual we-like-to-charge-people-from-other-countries-mor
I said they were supportive. Discussions on mailing lists, blog entries, that sort of thing. Encouraging.
For example, a friend of mine published a little tool to create SWFs under the GPL. It was on a Macromedia blog with some positive remarks within an hour after it had been announced, and we could see from the server logs that that was where most of the traffic was coming from. They're obviously not making any money from it directly, on first sight it even means they will sell less copies of Flash (which, btw, costs half of what you said), because people like me can now do without -- I have it, but I don't need it any more, and I most likely won't need the next version. What I meant by saying they would understand it's for the benefit of all is that by reaching out to the OS developers their platform (as they like to call it now) gains acceptance, and in the end they will sell more copies to designers, and most of all, FlashPlayer licenses to e.g. the mobile phone manufacturers.
Macromedia is a company. They want to make money, and so far it looks like they understood they can make more by embracing the SWF related Open Source community instead of fighting it (GPLFlash is a different story, of course).
You can't hold it against them that they charge money for their products. If you don't like it -- don't buy it.
Maybe you can't create Flash content on Linux, but that's what I do. And I'm not talking about Laszlo.
My current workflow is this: I describe my SWF in XML and include all assets I'm going to use. An Open Source compiler adds the code I've written in Eclipse after the SWF has been assembled and the Ant build then launches Firefox with it. The next version of an Eclipse plugin that allows for viewing the SWF inside Eclipse has been announced, and it will support Linux, too (sorry, the latter is only free-as-in-beer).
Have a look here.
So far, Macromedia has been quite supportive of the community, they seem to understand it's for the benefit of all.
As far as the Shockwave plugin is concerned... personally, I don't miss it.