101–106 of 106 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has to be the most simplistic, nationalistic, view of history I've ever read. Ignoring that throughout history it is extremely common for groups to leave their countries and settle elsewhere when it becomes oppressive, for example America...
It's also extremely common for countries to be conquered by foreign invaders.
This is a bit offtopic, but Berlin is really beautifully mapped in OSM. In places the details are more than what I would have ever thought of, for example the individual pillars of the Holocaust Memorial: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/arriving-in-berlin-a-map...
Adding details to OSM is actually very relaxing. I do it to unwind and kill time sometimes. The job is never done, however, and there is always room for more detail.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adding details to OSM is actually very relaxing. I do it to unwind and kill time sometimes. The job is never done, however, and there is always room for more detail.
Can OSM accept 3D laser scanner/cloud point data?
A simple rubric is whether someone standing in the street can reasonably improve the data there, another is to what extent each individual piece of data is interesting in isolation.
That doesn't mean you can't do interesting things with such data:
http://chris-osm.blogspot.com/2015/09/extracting-building-he...
(I realize that someone could reasonably fix some error in some lidar data, but I think the most likely outcome of storing such data in the OSM database is that the cumulative edits would frustrate anyone looking to use the data, to the extent that they would go to the source)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can OSM accept 3D laser scanner/cloud point data?
Not really. You could jam it into the data model, but it isn't meant to be a clearinghouse for arbitrary data sets where an update is making another sensor pass. A simple rubric is whether someone standing in the street can reasonably improve the data there, another is to what extent each individual piece of data is interesting in isolation. That doesn't mean you can't do interesting things with such data: http://chr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany was struggling with the reunification, having added 20 Million people from a collapsed country, the German Democratic Republic. That was difficult enough. Currently there are no special labor restrictions for EU citizens in Germany.
It's easy to forget that the German re-unification wasn't simply two countries merging together. The reason East Germany was merged into West Germany was that it was effectively defunct. East Germany had mostly sustained itself by forbidding people from leaving the country (under threat of death), forcefully keeping its citizens in line (via ubiquitous surveillance and extortion) and frequently selling captives ("tra…
It's not. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland took over what was once the GDR.
> While the US and its closer allies limited themselves to seizing high-tech and research after WW2, the Soviets transferred a large part of the industry and factories out of Germany as reparations.
The US and its allies transferred as much as the soviet union from Germany - though from a larger zone.
The US soon wanted their part of Germany as a future ally against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union needed the German factories/etc., because they suffered large scale destruction in the western parts. Germany destroyed large parts of the USSR infrastructure where it could.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easy to forget that the German re-unification wasn't simply two countries merging together. The reason East Germany was merged into West Germany was that it was effectively defunct. East Germany had mostly sustained itself by forbidding people from leaving the country (under threat of death), forcefully keeping its citizens in line (via ubiquitous surveillance and extortion) and frequently selling captives ("tra…
> It's easy to forget that the German re-unification wasn't simply two countries merging together. It's not. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland took over what was once the GDR. > While the US and its closer allies limited themselves to seizing high-tech and research after WW2, the Soviets transferred a large part of the industry and factories out of Germany as reparations. The US and its allies transferred as much as the…
Exactly. The GDR was dissolved, the FRG simply swallowed the remnants.
> The US and its allies transferred as much as the soviet union from Germany - though from a larger zone.
I'm not arguing the morality of it -- Nazi Germany had wreaked havoc in the USSR (and some Germans were surprised to see how well the soldiers treated them considering how badly the Soviets had been treated by Germany).
But the industry of East Germany was demolished to a far greater extent than that of West Germany. I'm well aware of the plans for West Germany that were discussed prior to the decision to grow it into an ally (rather than to de-industrialize it beyond insignificance).
My point is simply this: while West Germany had become an economic powerhouse deeply integrated into European and international economics, East Germany's economy was largely a farce. By the time the borders were opened, the country was heading for disaster.
What's more, after the reunification most of what little industry East Germany had moved to the West. It took a ton of state funding to get the east of Germany to where it is now and it's still largely defined by large-scale unemployment and an ageing population (because the young adults always seek greener pastures).
In other words: yes, Germany is a powerful economy. But East Germany was nothing like that and naturalizing all East Germans as citizens and even exchanging their devalued currency at ridiculous rates was an enormous expense.