Maybe you would prefer IntelliJ IDEA?

Please remind me, because I haven't seen it in a while for some reason -- how long does the Java plugin take to start up again?

Flash supports the mouse wheel, since Flash 6. We'll see how well the Flash Player will work on touch screens when it's out for Android.

You have a point, but this effect is limited by the fact that while developers like to play, new iterations of the Player are usually only targeted long after release, when adoption is close to 100%. New versions of the authoring tool are bought primarily because of new features unrelated to the target platform.

Argh, my link about the P2P streaming is missing.

Additionally, the Flash Player will let you save a lot of bandwidth cost through P2P streaming.

HTML5 is great, and it will replace Flash in some areas. But it's already years behind, and it's not even properly adapted yet.
And that's the latest iteration of HTML. When do you think HTML6 will be out? Meanwhile, Flash evolves further.

What I've heard about WiMax from several (former) subscribers in my city wasn't good, either. Unreliable, low bandwidth even when connectivity was there, and so on.

Between ADSL2+, cable, and now the local utility rolling out 100Mb/s (with their 50Mb/s plan being cheaper than WiMax), I don't understand how they even managed to stay in business until now. Also, local HSDPA is faster.

Actually, no, I'm not missing the part where plants soak up CO2 during growth -- that's why I like the growing aspect of the scheme.

I was arguing against the claim that biofuels were "carbon-neutral by definition," because that doesn't take everything into account. By one estimate, corn based ethanol even takes more energy to produce than it contains. We have producers that grow on cheap land in the Ukraine and ship the crop all the way to Germany for processing. Even if the whole system would run on biofuels itself, the crops for all that would grow on fertile land that presumably wouldn't be covered by nothing but sand otherwise. So at the minimum, the net "emission" is the amount of CO2 the plants that would normally grow on the land would bind.

So, grow stuff, and burn as little as possible.

No carbon emissions during production? And wouldn't something else grow on the land that is used to produce the raw materials?

I like the growing part. What I have a problem with is burning it afterwards. It's still CO2, no matter when the plant grew, the goal should be to simply burn less. For example, this is a very nice car running on bio-ethanol, but would you call it ecological?

The point is, it's more important what comes out of your car than what goes into it. Get a car with a highly efficient diesel engine, or better yet, take the train.

Yeah, but now you have to explain what a direct mandate is, how that relates to the proportional representation by party, what an Überhangmandat is, what a fraction is, and so on. I didn't want to go there...

You may own Mein Kampf, but you may not sell it

Actually, you may not copy it. The State of Bavaria claims copyright, like with any book, it will expire 70 years after the author's death, in 2015.

The German constitution has checks and balances, too. It just goes further, being designed to resist change even if supported by the majority of the elected representatives. The final check is an explicit right to militant resistance, should it be abolished somehow anyway.

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.)