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Nope, I'm serious. There are many countries which have real-time scanning of license plates for a wide variety of things.

e.g. In China every other intersection you go through may have what looks like a camera flash go off. The ones that don't have been switched to IR so it stops distracting drivers. They are tracking in real time the movement of cars by licenseplate through the city and tracking registrations.

e.g. In the UAE they do the same thing. Netherlands too. They are starting in France, and Belgium too. In Australia so far they only track using speed cameras which now do automatic numberplate recognition. Also the tolling system there also works by numberplates, none of this backwards throwing coins into a machine, just cruise on through as fast as you want.

In all of the above places they use this for automatic registration tracking. No more stupid stickers on windscreens / license plates. And no more selective enforcement or the crapshoot of the past where if you get in an accident there was a 1 in 8 chance that in my previous country the driver didn't have insurance or registration.

Some places do it for environmental zones. If you drive into Rotterdam you will be greeted with the digital sign https://nos.nl/data/image/2016... here it will read your your license plate and if it says "WEL" in green then you're allowed to progress, if it says "NIET" in red and you don't make a u-turn on the other end of the bridge you get a fine in the mail shortly after. In France and Germany you still need to go get a sticker glued to your windscreen.

One day I got a letter from the department of motor vehicles. It said that they have noticed me driving daily down one of the highways during peak hour and they wanted to invite me to peak hour reduction scheme. I registered. I got 120EUR deposited into a dummy account every month. Every time my car was logged in either the morning peak or afternoon peak on one of the major highways they deducted 3EUR. At the end of the month they transferred me anything left. The scheme did wonders for traffic.

As for people's trust in their government? The vast majority of the western world doesn't fear their government. They mostly get along in harmony. Government distrust on a national level is something that is almost unique to the USA in the west.

Second, I think a 'secret service' type of organization keeps its methods secret as much as possible. In this case they seem all to eager to broadcast their achievements.

If you read the story, they say they are now shut out of Cozy Bear's systems, so they don't have much to lose.

The end of the report also strongly suggests that the reason they are shut out is that the americans burned those methods.

The last paragraph of this report by another newspaper also suggests that not only did the americans burn those methods, but they did it on purpose to protect trump:

As of now, the AIVD hackers do not seem to have access to Cozy Bear any longer. Sources suggest that the openness of US intelligence sources, who in 2017 praised the help of a Western ally in news stories, may have ruined their operation. The openness caused great anger in The Hague and Zoetermeer. In the television programme College Tour, this month, AIVD director Bertholee stated that he is extra careful when it comes to sharing intelligence with the U.S., now that Donald Trump is President.

Almost a million people in the Netherlands use anti-depressants even though they shouldn't, according to Dick Bijl, epidemiologist and chief editor of the Geneesmiddelenbulletin.
Just over a million in the country use anti-depressants, but for 98% they're ineffective, he says based on multiple studies. A lot of people get addicted and experience side-effects, such as suicidal tendencies, emotional dulling and character changes.
Source (It goes on to say that the drugs are often prescribed to people who aren't really depressed and that drugs against depression, psychosis and ADHD are over-prescribed. The Dutch GP association states they may have underestimated the issue and that they're working on it.)

The driver was going over 155 kilometers per hour (roughly 96 miles per hour) on a road where the maximum speed is 80 kilometers per hour (roughly 49 miles per hour), and the car was not on autopilot. Dutch stroy here, and google translation here.

A strong laser pen apparently can cause trouble from a distanceto the cockpit of up to 20 km at night. In the Netherlands someone has bothered airplanes approaching Schiphol airport from a distance of about 10 km.

Here is a news article in Dutch mentioning those distances. The Google translation to English is here, but it shines to be very good at choosing the wrong meaning when confronted with homonyms.

Uber said it will pay all fines forced upon its drivers by the authorities. Meanwhile the government said it will greatly increase the fines for multiple offenses by these same drivers, should they occur. I am with the government here, and welcome such regulation, as opposed to Uber's 'rating system' for driver's, or whatever Uber calls it.

Full disclosure, I'm a bicyclist and a pedestrian, and I feel threatened lately with the increase of in-car gizmos, and I believe only government will help people like me, except when it doesn't.

Back in August, the ILT (the responsible party) had already been sending out warnings to drivers that what they were doing was illegal and that they could be fined up to EUR 4200. Source (in Dutch). If it has taken more than a month for them to actually fine anyone, I'd say they've been very lenient, at least based on the current laws.

there is a video of the road on dutch television. video of the road
It does look quite nice!

When it comes to spying on citizens, the Dutch have a rather poor track record, with a history of phone taps and other activities. Ever since the Dutch joined the war on terror with a number of soldiers in the Afghan province of Uruzgan, ties with the NSA are rather close.

Sources (in Dutch):
1. Support of previous post (minister not wanting to criticize NSA): http://nos.nl/artikel/578418-rutte-kaken-op-elkaar-over-nsa.html
2. Thousands of phone taps already as early as 2009: http://www.nrcnext.nl/blog/2009/09/10/nederland-is-kampioen-afluisteren/
3. Ties with NSA since Uruzgan: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/11/23/nauwe-banden-nsa-en-nederlandse-inlichtingendiensten-dankzij-uruzgan/

The problem is that the definition for hacking is overly broad. If you enter an URL in the address bar, and change just a serial number in the URL, it is considered hacking. Like finding Queen Beatrix's Christmas speech before it was officially published http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2012/12/25/hacker-kersttoespraak-van-geen-kwaad-bewust-tijdens-strafbare-actie/ (in Dutch). Or proving access to medical files by MP Henk Krol http://nos.nl/artikel/447718-krol-vervolgd-om-hacken-dossiers.html (in Dutch).
IT journalist Brenno de Winter calls the guidance useless. "If hackers first have to report the vulnerability, they lose their anonymity without having a guarantee that they will not be prosecuted. And even if a company promises that it will not press charges, the Public Prosecutions Department can start a case." Link here: http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/5133/Media-technologie/article/detail/3372108/2013/01/04/Richtlijn-ethisch-hacken-lost-niets-op.dhtml (in Dutch).

This is PART of their punishment, it is not tacked on, it is IT! Punishment doesn't have to constrained to a jail sentence. It can include being banned from a job, restricted from an area, having to report at determined times, being banned from contacting certain individuals or groups, being banned from voting, from owning a gun, from getting a security clearance.

It is in our modern society pretty damn rare to just get a prison sentence and that is it. A probationary period following it is the norm and during your probationary period there are a LOT of conditions and terms that seperate your from a free person. And that is both part of your punishment AND rehabilitation and that is not as contradictory as it sounds. A convict who is in jail is there to be punished BUT is also encourage to study to help his rehabilitation. IF it works it is supposed to be a carrot and a stick with the carrot getting bigger and the stick getting smaller. But the carrot and the stick work ONLY if they are used together on the convict, after all when he was a free man, the carrot was not enough to stop him from getting the stick. The stick alone works in extreme cases, the death penalty.

Our entire legal system however is at the core little more then "stop, or I shall say stop again". It really just doesn't have a solution for those who think the law is for other people. A night in the slammer is enough to stop most people but not a "nutter". What do you do with a repeat offender who just isn't faced by the consequences of his actions? It is easy to say "well, we got to take that chance" but in a democracy the majority rules and the majority thinks that giving people endless free passes to re-offend is wrong.

To give you an idea of how wrong it can go when you let the bleeding hearts in charge: http://nos.nl/artikel/453072-werkstraf-na-misbruik-stiefdochter.html

Man rapes his 15 year old daughter, is sentenced to 240 hours community service, the judge deciding that sentencing him to jail would be to hard a burden on the family consisting of the man, his wife, this daughter and a younger sister... who continue to life with him...

He doesn't have to register, he can chat online but why would he. Two children right at home with him. Oh, he promised to undertake counseling... yah. Because that works instantly and with absolute success.

The really sick truth of it all? Nobody in the world really knows how to deal with those who can't follow the rules. Hard, soft punishment, therapy, making things legal. Nothing really works. Take for instance weed, legalizing makes the crime surrounding it go away? Right... because there are no tobacco and alcohol smugglers and other related crimes anymore? Outlawing it will solve drug issues? Because outlawing stuff stops people? WHEN?

The entire process of trying to stop crime, punish it and rehabilitate or otherwise deal with the criminals has been tried in countless way over thousands of years. And NONE work. Oh some claim some method works better then others but when you look at the figures it is pretty much like debating whether you tiger rock is better then my tiger stick. Both ultimately will have pretty much the same statistics.

And the ultimate lie? Recidivism rate. It counts re-offending criminals whose crimes are reported, investigated, prosecuted, sentended and the sentence recorded. Do you know how the rate of sentencing on some crimes are? Belgium scores 4% on rapes. 96 our of a hundred rapes are NOT counted in recidivism figures yet we are to believe only 70% of rapist re-offend? ONLY 70%?

THINK of the odds, what are they for a rapist who rapes twice to be sentenced TWICE?

But hey, vote for the guy who promises to fix it all. I am sure YOUR guys tiger gadget really works.

The difference that gun control makes is obvious: http://nos.nl/artikel/451509-22-chinese-kinderen-neergestoken.html

In China, man knifed 22 kids, wounding them. NOT killing them. US man kills 27 people, 18 kids.

Nutters exist around the world and around the world we suck at dealing with them.

Try this, about a year ago, a pedophile in court testified that he had asked his doctor BEFORE the offense, for voluntary castration. His doctor refused. Why? Because the doctor felt uneasy doing it, probably doing the leg crossing men do when castration is discussed. BUT it is NOT your penis about the removed, it is someone who has feelings he hates but can't stop and he wants to be stopped. All it takes is a snip. Or even just pills. But the doctor refused because the DOCTOR couldn't imagine being castrated being in that situation, that not being a "man" anymore might be better for the patient, for society then the doctor having to do something he is uncomfortable with.

To stop people from committing crimes, you must take actions on thoughts. That is scary and easy to be scared off. But if you are a hero for saving someone from commiting the crime of suicide, why aren't you a hero if you stop someone from comitting another crime? If I take you car keys away when you try to drink drive, people will cheer. If I lock you up in a mental ward where you can be cured instead of acting on your paranoia, it is a thought crime?

There are some deranged people who really need to be locked up, to protect us but also to protect them. But to do so is EXTREMELY expensive, this guy might have been saved and all his victims BUT would YOU have been willing to start paying say 5 years ago for counseling to stop today? Considering most of the west has been CLOSING mental hospitals, the answer is rather obviously: NO.

Right now, it is NOT possible for pedophiles to get voluntary help let alone castration. It is NOT possible to have yourself committed for an extended time, hell even getting locked up for a single night is hard.

We, the "normal" people like to believe everyone can be cured. MUST be cured. That for some people a decent jail cell is just the better option, for their own happiness and ours. We seem to have no problem locking insane people up for life in a hellish jail that will only increase their problems AFTER a crime but NOT protecting themselves BEFORE the crime when it is obvious they are an accident waiting to happen.

Of course, thought crimes, that is scary as hell... but so is letting people who are in obvious need in help fall ever deeper into trouble because WE want to be free.

There is no easy answer to this, it ain't right to punish the obviously insane but locking all of them up also goes against our ideas of justice.

Don't think this is just a US problem. Netherlands saw 2 recent incidents with students killing themselves because of bullying and a while ago, a mass shooting by a nutcase who got a gun permit despite being known to be insane.

It is a world wide issue and it is NOT about guns, guns just make the killings larger, it is about inadequate mental care for those who need it.

The "100%" comes from a tweet by Peter R de Vries, a crime reporter. The spokeswoman for the institute that did the actual DNA matching (NFI) said there is no such thing as 100% certainty. (both links are in Dutch)

Several countries still offer this service under various names. In The Netherlands it is called "Teletekst" and besides being available on the TV set, you can also find it online: http://teletekst.nos.nl/

I read Teletekst almost every day and I dearly miss Ceefax which since a longer time is no longer broadcast over satellite channels.

The Dutch the web implementation has serious issues with synchronisation and page linking. Never noticed that sometimes you see half a page? Never noticed that the arrows sometimes just don't bring you to a linked page? Those are tedious little bugs which should be fixed. In more than 15 years of using the service I haven't found time to report them them. The shame is on me!

It's still alive and kicking here in the Netherlands, known as Teletekst. Every journalist wants to be on page 101.

There's even a web-interface and an iPhone app for it, which is a no-nonsense, clutter-free, low-bandwidth source of news, weather, stocks and sport results. I can't live without it :)

http://teletekst.nos.nl/

I must say that I rarely use it on my tv anymore. Which is kind of funny, because nowadays it's still trapped inside the low-tech interface of the 70s although it's mostly used on devices so advanced that even the big visionaries of that age couldn't even dream about it.

Is it nostalgia? Or more like the Stockholm Syndrome? Or does it just hit a sweet spot of usability and simplicity?

Several countries still offer this service under various names. In The Netherlands it is called "Teletekst" and besides being available on the TV set, you can also find it online: http://teletekst.nos.nl/

In Holland a child molestor is currently on trial. His major griefance? That people don't appreciate the camera work he put into his video's of him raping kids that he then put on the internet. Serious.

In dutch http://nos.nl/artikel/357245-robert-m-toont-twee-gezichten.html but hey, all the cool kids speak dutch!

Hij vindt ook dat sommigen met wie hij het materiaal deelde, hem niet genoeg waardeerden voor zijn 'werk'.

He finds that some of who he shared the material with, didn't appreciate him enough for his 'work'.

As the commenter below says, this is how sociopath thinks, see the complete mind fuck of Breivik's testimony this week in Norway. People can get some really strange idea's in their head. Like software wants to be free! Mwahahahaha! I am not insane, the voices tell me I am not!

That would then be the polar opposite of NOS's reporting.

The news report that they published only states that Samsung can't sell the three phones any more, although it also says that the tablet can still be sold and it also reports on Samsung's argument that the iPad's UI was stolen from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.

P.S. NOS = Dutch Broadcasting Foundation. Of all the Dutch public broadcasters, it's the one mostly concerned with news.

Here you can see the dutch system in a "game". The site is in dutch but it should be simple enough, even for people from the colonies. Coalition game

You can select a poll to base the results on, and then select the parties you want to form a coalition with, you got to fill half of the seats to have a majority.

I will briefly list the parties to explain them to people with different political systems.

CDA: Christian Democrats, the leaders of the last government. Bakellende (sorry Balkenede) is about as popular as Blair/Bush but with the honesty or razor sharp wit. In european terms they are moderate right-wing but did take part in governments that legalized cannabis, prostitution and abortion. By American standards: Communists.

PvDA: Partij van de Allochtonen, sorry Party of labor (Allochtonen = Immigrants), a once socialist party that has become increasingly liberal. Armchair socialists. The party is split between its socialists background and its more modern liberal elite. There are clashes, because being liberal about immigrants hurts the "workers first" of the socialist backing. By American standards: Communists.

SP: Socialist Party, the protest party originally, it is now more and more the home of ex-PvDA who are "power-to-the-people" rather then tree-huggers. The party used to be lead by a charismatic guy who made the party from a tiny protest group into one of the bigger parties, but he gave up and since then the party has been in trouble. It suffers a lot from strategic voting. People who agree with them instead vote on PvDA so their vote is not "wasted". By American standards: Redder then red.

VVD: Liberals, probably closest to the lib dems. People here consider them capitalist, closest to the democrates in the US. This shows how little people here understand the US. By American standards: Communists.

PVV: Party of Liberty, Geert Wilders. The spiritual succesor to Pim Fortyun but a lot less nice, not gay and a lot more scary. The answer to everyone who is dissatisfied with the last few decades. SP if you have a heart, PVV if you don't. The party goes up and down a lot, but the signal the party is giving is that first we had Pim, he first dared to address that there might be issues with muslim immigrants. He was killed. This guy goes far further and openly blames Islam for pretty much everything. If this time the system still doesn't listen, then I fear who comes next. I don't fear Wilders, I fear the guy that comes after him. Hitler did not create the National Socialist party. There were others before him, not the same but indicators of a upcoming problem that was ignored. By American standards: Communists.

GL: Green left, prove the political spectrum goes far further then just left and right. This one is like the SP to the left of the PvDA, but also completly different from the SP, these are the tree-huggers. By American standards: Communists.

CU: Christain Union, a party impossible to really classify. Part of it is left-wing, others are right wing. Think caring conservatives, how difficult a concept that might be. Part of the last government, one of the smallest parties being given a huge role because the PvDA was to scared to form a left-wing coalition. Not the smartest move they made. By American standards: Communists.

D66: Democrats, no, not like the American ones. Yes, you know it is coming. By American standards: Communists. Liberals mostly but with a strong elitst element. In Holland the biggest struggle right now isn't so much right vs left but elitst vs man of the people. A lot of voters feel politicians don't listen to them, that they rule from an ivory tower. D66 is so far up the ivory tower they sit on gods lap. Party was decimated sometime ago, but has come back with the support of the elite who can ignore the discussion about immigration because no muslims can afford to live where they do. By American Standards: The dreamier side of the democrats

Over the past few years quite a few criminal cases were lost exactly because of this problem. In Amsterdam a huge case against Hell's Angels went south in 2007 (everyone was set free) because they didn't destroy tapped recordings with attorneys. Last year it happened again (dutch links, sorry).

I hope someone got canned because of this, but given our incompetent justice department I really can't see that happening. Phone tapping has reached epidemic proportions over here (highest number of taps per person in the western world), as it's much easier than actually investigating a case based on given evidence.

Funny that this is the second article on our incapable justice system within a day on /., go us \o/

Over the past few years quite a few criminal cases were lost exactly because of this problem. In Amsterdam a huge case against Hell's Angels went south in 2007 (everyone was set free) because they didn't destroy tapped recordings with attorneys. Last year it happened again (dutch links, sorry).

I hope someone got canned because of this, but given our incompetent justice department I really can't see that happening. Phone tapping has reached epidemic proportions over here (highest number of taps per person in the western world), as it's much easier than actually investigating a case based on given evidence.

Funny that this is the second article on our incapable justice system within a day on /., go us \o/

"So set up a taxpayer-supported news service ala BBC and CBC." Done: http://www.nos.nl/ Paid for by taxes and commercials, we used to have something similar to the UKs TV license.

Why is the NBC stream an item on Slashdot? The Dutch public broadcaster NOS has six live feeds from Turin to choose from! And has been streaming continuously for free from day one!

Feeds are restricted on ip-address and are viewable only in the Netherlands and some other European countries.

http://www.nos.nl/gfx/winterspelen2006/live/index. html

Dutch television has free streaming at http://www.nos.nl/gfx/winterspelen2006/live/index. html. Not hard to figure out the schedule below either, even if you don't speak dutch.

Where do I collect the one with my name on it?

Sorry, but your name was on this one.

Well actually, this type of pin-fraud has been wiped out completely by putting a small tongue like extension on the card input of the ATM. The extension makes it impossible to attach a magnetic card reader in front of the ATM's card entry slot.
So you can see that some problems can be solved with a very minor design change. You could even argue that the whole problem started because nobody added this (rather obvious) feature to the design in the first place.

The same can be said about all the pin-pad's (where you enter your number) that are not hidden from view. (Dutch Railways anybody)..

But then again, the same bankcards can (could?) be used in stores in France without a pincode. So the theft of your bankcard there leaves you always with an empty bankaccount.

See: http://www.nos.nl/nieuws/artikelen/2005/3/26/pinpa sfraudenederlanduitgeroeid.html , this page is in Dutch.

As a table tennis lover my favourite election game is this one. It took me a while to master the game but now I can secure a Bush defeat on a regular basis. :p

My favourite election drinking game is to take a swig every time President Bush uses the word "freedom" or "free" in a speech. Guaranteed intoxication in three minutes or less. :D

gr Bas

Here in holland (netherlands if you wish) we can check out some stations on the internet. Do other countries have a similar service?

Its called Teletekst here in the Netherlands and is still used quite a lot. The public broadcasting corporation even has a web gateway. Check it out here for those of you unfamiliar with the concept of teletekst:

http://teletekst.nos.nl/

So you basically see all the area in black on your TV screen... use your remote to search for the pages.

I guess they have this service on the web because a lot of people, like another poster said, like the sparse/terse way of information presentation. I frequently visit the weather (page 702) and news page (page 101) for a quick overview. Very useful.

Also used for TV program listings and stuff like that (page 201 usually).

Yes, in The Netherlands it's called Teletekst. And it is still very popular these days. In fact people use it as the first source for information like latest news, weather, traffic information, TV and radio schedules. Dutch Teletekst on the web can be found here.
BTW, you do not have it in the US? Didn't know that.

Arleo

but needs to be recalibrated, as Andre Kuipers (ESA) stated on an interview this morning with Dutch television (Dutch language).

I really don't understand why it's so difficult to get program guide data reliably and for free. It would seem to be in the station's interest to give this data to people as I assume they want people to watch their programs.

In Europe this has been done for ages using Teletext. Basically one text page is sent as a spurt of digital data with each video frame. The pages are numbered and you use the remote on your TV to choose which one to view. They contain program listings, weather, news headlines, traffic info, and so on. It's supported by almost all TVs, though some do it better than others - some buffer lots of pages while others make you wait around until the page comes around again (which could take a few seconds).

For an example, see this teletext-www gateway. It's in Dutch but you should be able to figure it out, seeing as how Dutch is the closest significant living language to English (and is probably closer to English than a lot of the garbled crap people write on Slashdot). Vandaag means today, morgen is tomorrow, overmorgen is the day after tomorrow. Nederland 1, Nederland 2, V8, Discovery, YORIN, etc., are different channels. Teletext pages are all numbered; just put the number into the little remote control thing at the right and then click gaan (which means "go").