Now that Google’s Street View is up and running in Germany, many of the very Germans so entsetzt (horrified) at the Datenkrake (data octopus) invading their privacy in the first place finally get to see how way cool this service really is and are now horrified that their homes have been pixelated without their permission–although this naked guy down here in his trunk in Mannheim was obviously thrilled with the Street View concept right from the start and wasn’t pixelated one tiny little bit, though he maybe shoulda outta been.
Many of these horrified Germans have now asked to have their pixelated homes unpixelated again ASAP but unfortunately this is now no longer possible, says Google, as one of the conditions for introducing Street View to Germany in the first place, as demanded by Germany’s horrified data security officials, was the immediate destruction of all photographic raw material once the data has been entered into the Street View database.
It looks like you’ll need an informant. Every apartment block should have one. You can’t be too vigilant these days. After all, someone might not tow the line, and social solidarity it at stake.
And does anyone really believe that horseshit in the article about how a Google spokesman says Hamburg people phoned up Google to personally thank them? What a joke.
I can’t believe any of this, Ian. I’ve never been able to believe how anything as harmless as Street View (as I perceive it) could rile anybody up in the first place, for instance. But to get militant about those who have “opted-out,” track down their houses and toss eggs at them? This is just too psycho, even by German standards. I keep waiting for Rod Serling to step into one of the these reports one of these days and start his spiel, know what I’m sayin’?
Hi folks.
Just my 5 cents about this topic – or better about the most topics of this Blog.
Of course some of us germans are-/or reacting kind of schizophrenic regarding certain topics.
But this is mostly reasoned by local circumstances.
Since Europe – and even Germany opened up the borders to other (poorer) european countries,
we are suffering from burglary in houses and apartments. There is a huge problem with itinerancy groups of burglars from eastern Europe or Balkan regions. They are using for example Google Street Maps to search for houses it’s worth to burglary. Of course Google Street Maps is a pretty cool tool to find a mass of houses in a certain region/City which are “valuable” and worth to “visit” them.
So alots of germans try to hide their homes from Google Street Maps.
Things here are just a little bit different from things in America:
Germans hide theirs homes from Google Street Maps – US house owners receive “such visitors” at the point of the pistol.
… Pistols, which are frequently involved in the recent cases of murdering pupils, students or teachers at US Colleges or Schools – because all these weapons are JUST available to all people!
I can comprehend the meaning of owning weapons in America in such cases a bit – but all in all german and other european people cannot comprehend US weopon laws or what it justifies offering access to weapons to non military people – since the danger of misuse is immense…
My American nethews in Geigertown/Pennsylvania really believed all Germans are wearing bavarian national dress their whole lifes, until the came to Germany and noticed it is “just a fairy tale” 😀
They also told me most American people doesn’t even know the names of the German or Italian political leaders.
So this mindset appears to european people like American people think, America is the centrum of world and all other things or nationalities are only marginal. 🙂
Germans ofc will never be Americans – and Americans will never be/or understand German people fully – but that’s not the point.
Instead, we should learn to respect other mentalities or traditions and to learn from each other – if it’s correct or worth it.
The idea that someone could be scared away from a neighborhood by blanking-out in Google Maps, what they can see by walkign down the street or looking up some public statistics is nutty.
Besides, the idea that American spend that much time thinking about their protection and thinking about weapons is hugely exxagerated, largely because in states where people can have weapons, that they don’t need to.
Germans, denied that same liberty, fixate on it. It also helps explain some thoey they once heard (whatever it is,) to complete a portrait in their minds of a place that they really don’t actually know that much about.
What makes most Americans different, is that most of them don’t pretend to know so much about, for example, Germany, to have some self-serving social theory about it.
To get back to your question on guns, I don’t own one. I don’t have to, because I live in a state where anyone who isn’t nuts or an ex-convict is legally permitted to own one. In other words, a criminal can’t readily establish that Grandma won’t greet wim with a welcoming committee.
So what value does that have? Well, in my Virginia town, a suburb of Washington DC, we have all the same social problems, unemployment, etc, as they do in DC. The difference is that we have a MUCH lower crime rate, including a MUCH LOWER MURDER RATE.
We also are a magnet for poor people, because, while the benefits aren’t as generous, THEY FEEL SAFE. After all, most murders are actually between criminals operating in nasty neighborhoods, and it’s actually the poor folks who can’t get out of there who are the real victims of most crime. The irony is that they are dominant in big cities that decided to be “gun free” by not letting people who AREN’T CRIMINALS from legally owning weapons as an option.
As I said, everyone doesn’t need a gun. It just needs to be understood by assholes that there are people who CAN own them and that they could pay for their crimes with their lives.
I agree, particularly when it comes to your comment about “respect for other mentalities or traditions and to learn from each other,” because that’s pretty much the point of why this blog is here. That doesn’t happen here in Germany (with regard to the USA). I don’t think you can appreciate this enough.
I also find what you said about Americans not really being aware of Germany or German leaders, etc. quite true and a very interesting phenomenon. If you haven’t spent much time in the US, you can’t really explain this properly to other people but it has much less to do with ignorance or arrogance than it has to do with the mass of the “American Universe” itself. It is a huge place, physically and culturally, after all, and it swallows you up pretty fast. Although it’s easier to look beyond “the event horizon” to Europe and elsewhere than it used to be (think Internet), it nevertheless tends to take hold of you and keep your attention focused there. You are surrounded by this thing and preoccupied more with the region in which you live than with, say, events in Washington or in Hollywood, much less with the rest of the world.
What you might want to think about here is that Germans, despite all the lip service they pay to the contrary, are basically no different, only they don’t even have the excuse of living in this monstorous country like Americans do. I could tell you a thing or two about amazing German ignorance when it comes to US history or US realtime, but, hey, I already am. With this blog, I mean.
Observing Hermann 
We were speculating about who in our house requested that our house view be removed. There are two main suspects.
It looks like you’ll need an informant. Every apartment block should have one. You can’t be too vigilant these days. After all, someone might not tow the line, and social solidarity it at stake.
Watch it there, Bloggerboy. The extemists on the other side might start egging your house now!
DUde. I, like, feel so totally Pixellated…
And does anyone really believe that horseshit in the article about how a Google spokesman says Hamburg people phoned up Google to personally thank them? What a joke.
I can’t believe any of this, Ian. I’ve never been able to believe how anything as harmless as Street View (as I perceive it) could rile anybody up in the first place, for instance. But to get militant about those who have “opted-out,” track down their houses and toss eggs at them? This is just too psycho, even by German standards. I keep waiting for Rod Serling to step into one of the these reports one of these days and start his spiel, know what I’m sayin’?
Hi folks.
Just my 5 cents about this topic – or better about the most topics of this Blog.
Of course some of us germans are-/or reacting kind of schizophrenic regarding certain topics.
But this is mostly reasoned by local circumstances.
Since Europe – and even Germany opened up the borders to other (poorer) european countries,
we are suffering from burglary in houses and apartments. There is a huge problem with itinerancy groups of burglars from eastern Europe or Balkan regions. They are using for example Google Street Maps to search for houses it’s worth to burglary. Of course Google Street Maps is a pretty cool tool to find a mass of houses in a certain region/City which are “valuable” and worth to “visit” them.
So alots of germans try to hide their homes from Google Street Maps.
Things here are just a little bit different from things in America:
Germans hide theirs homes from Google Street Maps – US house owners receive “such visitors” at the point of the pistol.
… Pistols, which are frequently involved in the recent cases of murdering pupils, students or teachers at US Colleges or Schools – because all these weapons are JUST available to all people!
I can comprehend the meaning of owning weapons in America in such cases a bit – but all in all german and other european people cannot comprehend US weopon laws or what it justifies offering access to weapons to non military people – since the danger of misuse is immense…
My American nethews in Geigertown/Pennsylvania really believed all Germans are wearing bavarian national dress their whole lifes, until the came to Germany and noticed it is “just a fairy tale” 😀
They also told me most American people doesn’t even know the names of the German or Italian political leaders.
So this mindset appears to european people like American people think, America is the centrum of world and all other things or nationalities are only marginal. 🙂
Germans ofc will never be Americans – and Americans will never be/or understand German people fully – but that’s not the point.
Instead, we should learn to respect other mentalities or traditions and to learn from each other – if it’s correct or worth it.
Sorry for my English – but i am onyl a German 🙂
Regards,
brush2
The idea that someone could be scared away from a neighborhood by blanking-out in Google Maps, what they can see by walkign down the street or looking up some public statistics is nutty.
Besides, the idea that American spend that much time thinking about their protection and thinking about weapons is hugely exxagerated, largely because in states where people can have weapons, that they don’t need to.
Germans, denied that same liberty, fixate on it. It also helps explain some thoey they once heard (whatever it is,) to complete a portrait in their minds of a place that they really don’t actually know that much about.
What makes most Americans different, is that most of them don’t pretend to know so much about, for example, Germany, to have some self-serving social theory about it.
To get back to your question on guns, I don’t own one. I don’t have to, because I live in a state where anyone who isn’t nuts or an ex-convict is legally permitted to own one. In other words, a criminal can’t readily establish that Grandma won’t greet wim with a welcoming committee.
So what value does that have? Well, in my Virginia town, a suburb of Washington DC, we have all the same social problems, unemployment, etc, as they do in DC. The difference is that we have a MUCH lower crime rate, including a MUCH LOWER MURDER RATE.
We also are a magnet for poor people, because, while the benefits aren’t as generous, THEY FEEL SAFE. After all, most murders are actually between criminals operating in nasty neighborhoods, and it’s actually the poor folks who can’t get out of there who are the real victims of most crime. The irony is that they are dominant in big cities that decided to be “gun free” by not letting people who AREN’T CRIMINALS from legally owning weapons as an option.
As I said, everyone doesn’t need a gun. It just needs to be understood by assholes that there are people who CAN own them and that they could pay for their crimes with their lives.
I agree, particularly when it comes to your comment about “respect for other mentalities or traditions and to learn from each other,” because that’s pretty much the point of why this blog is here. That doesn’t happen here in Germany (with regard to the USA). I don’t think you can appreciate this enough.
I also find what you said about Americans not really being aware of Germany or German leaders, etc. quite true and a very interesting phenomenon. If you haven’t spent much time in the US, you can’t really explain this properly to other people but it has much less to do with ignorance or arrogance than it has to do with the mass of the “American Universe” itself. It is a huge place, physically and culturally, after all, and it swallows you up pretty fast. Although it’s easier to look beyond “the event horizon” to Europe and elsewhere than it used to be (think Internet), it nevertheless tends to take hold of you and keep your attention focused there. You are surrounded by this thing and preoccupied more with the region in which you live than with, say, events in Washington or in Hollywood, much less with the rest of the world.
What you might want to think about here is that Germans, despite all the lip service they pay to the contrary, are basically no different, only they don’t even have the excuse of living in this monstorous country like Americans do. I could tell you a thing or two about amazing German ignorance when it comes to US history or US realtime, but, hey, I already am. With this blog, I mean.