Slashdot Mirror

Lets take a large central African immigrant population in my country, Somalians ... over half of the potentially economically active Somalians are on welfare.

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017...

We won't have enough qualified young people to support our economy either way, but now we ALSO have to support all these extra people on welfare. Sure in theory we could reduce welfare and force them into the labour pool by creating more low paid jobs, like the US does, but as I said they all vote for leftist parties.. This will eventually destroy our economic competitiveness and unlike Japan we don't have social cohesion to keep our best and brightest in our borders as the economy takes a consistent downturn.

Massive brain drain is the future of Western Europe. For the moment highly industrious Eastern Europeans immigrants (minus the gypsies) are still offsetting the less useful immigrant streams (gutting the Eastern European countries in the process). That can't last though, Europe is a dead man walking.

In the Netherlands, you can put "No" stickers on your mailbox to indicate you don't want to be spammed. Ikea gets around it by working with the post office (google translation - hopefully deepl translator works with links soon). If I get it, I'm bringing it to Ikea to drop it on their property.

The Netherlands regulates taxis in order to maintain various standards of safety and fair competition. But Uber is an app that doesn't play by the rules. So they've been busted, several times.

Initially the drivers received warnings.

Then the fines started to increase, which Uber Corp. seems happy to pay. In January the penalties were 10,000 euros, and unlicensed drivers risk a criminal record:
(in Dutch) http://www.nu.nl/internet/3978...
(English, machine translation)

Did that stop Uber, even when they were warned the next time, and subsequent violations would become 100,000 euros. No way!
(in Dutch) http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/...
(English, machine translation)

Uber defends itself by saying that innovation is faster than legislation. Uber says The Taxi Act of 2000, is outdated, and just keeps on truckin'

Indeed, only the biggest companies have that integration. These are the "sprawling multinational oil corporations" GP was talking about. By the way, even the majors increasingly farm out work and expertise to service companies, and we're now close to the point where the small national oil companies can now hire that same expertise to handle more complex exploration and production projects, without needing to bring in the majors.

And here's your citation: Oil Company Earnings: Reality Over Rhetoric for the US. For the Netherlands: Winst op benzine rekbaar begrip. Long story in Dutch, but the most optimistic view (that of the ministry of economics) still puts the ratio of tax vs profits at 4.6:1

Just for another perspective: In the Netherlands, a constitutional deadlock between religious and liberal parties in the early 1900s resulted in a compromise with financing of religious schools and universal suffrage both constitutionally enshrined in 1917/1918.

The result is that anyone can start a school, and if it matches minimum quality requirements it has to be funded on the same (relatively generous) level as public schools. This lead to a lot of catholic and orthodox protestant schools being established, but also to Montessori, Jena and similar alternative schooling methods. The schools are under scrutiny of the government and they do need to teach a basic curriculum, but are free in teaching religion, values etc. and also in approaching the teaching the way they want it. Most bigger villages have a public primary school as well as one or more religious schools, and the religious ones are usually not very fundamentalist, many atheists have no problem sending their kid to a religious school if it is better or more convenient.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Of course, this system has some serious problems as well. People are now choosing religious schools sometimes mainly because they are more "white", there are clashes with e.g. christian schools trying to block gay or non-christian teachers, and there were some issues of low quality teaching on Islamic schools.

See e.g. http://vorige.nrc.nl/internati...

There is no major news agency in Europe reporting about this outside of Turkey.

Apparently reading newspapers is becoming a lost art.
France
Germany
Belgium
The Netherlands
Great Britain

Yes, but in the Dutch version, it is written fora, so if you wanted to be a pain about it, you could. The point is moot anyway, because there's no reason (other than convention) to favor forums over fora in English.

Do not worry, there is a dutch version as well: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/11/30/aivd-hackt-internetfora-tegen-wet-in/

The reach of those private companies is limited by design. They can see what you intentionally share with them, is not like they hack your PC if you are using an encrypted network, lower internet encryption standards so they can sneak in the communications that are not for them, plant backdoors in foreing, private networks, and force vendors of all major closed software companies to put backdoors in their code for them (and to bad apples in their organization, and whoever else that figures how to use them) to access to remote computers and servers.

Is not the same being hit by a feather than by a bullet.

Having so much NSA associated countries could be a hint of a new world order appearing, no more first/second/third world but the ones with the USA in this and the rest attacked ( puttng backdoors in their networks for future action, causing unrest in population using social networks, and of course, stripping all their populations from a basic human right) by them sometimes without noticing that. So far the confirmed list of the NSA associated countries include UK, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, South Korea and Singapore, but that list could include other close to US countries like Chile, Colombia, Panama, Mexico, South Africa, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Spain and France, maybe with different grades in that organization.

The rest of the countries could try to join to protect themselves from this (in South America and Europe several seem to be going in that direction) or try to resist by themselves in a way or another. Considering all that was disclosed since June, and all that is going from there this decade probably will bring a lot of changes to the world.

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/

This. We already have our quota filled of countries that are perpetrating attacks against the world right now to worry about.

Here's a spectacular crash.

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).

old news...dispute is already resolved: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2012/12/24/beslaglegging-jacht-steve-jobs-opgeheven/

How odd, in the Netherlands we have a surplus of trained pilots. It was big news here of few weeks ago, with many freshly graduated pilots even willing to fly for known unsafe Africa/Asia based airlines just to get a job!

Some news articles (dutch) i grabbed just now via Google:
- http://www.nrc.nl/carriere/2012/10/16/zorgen-over-opleiding-en-banenmarkt-verkeersvliegers/
- (dated) http://blog.spitsnet.nl/2010/06/28/jonge-piloot-zit-zonder-baan/

A Dutch newspaper, which this week published several of Zhous photos, found out - after a thread on Reddit began mentioning possible photoshopping - that, indeed, Zhou manipulated her pictures: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2012/10/20/google-publiceert-prachtige-fotos-van-datacentra-maar-zijn-ze-echt-nee/ is the link ( story, of course, in Dutch )

When you look at the pictures with a critical eye, you see it quite quickly: on half of the servers, the LEDs are on the wrong side, they are simply mirrored. Zhou declared she is "crazy about symmetry". As one commentor on Reddit put it: "I knew it! For a long time, Google has been trying to make us believe that they have a lot of servers. Well, this proves that they only have very many servers" Google quite quickly admitted to the news, but did not see a reason to take the Zhou series of pictures offline.

The plan is not from 2001, the idea of rekeningrijden ( http://retro.nrc.nl/W2/Lab/Rekeningrijden/politiek.html ) is something that started at the end of the 80ths.
Apparently someone is still testing whether these devices could work.

Yes, but you have to realise that the British never like to give any credit to the Dutch for anything...

  - The world's largest radiotelescope is based in the Netherlands.
  - The world's highest rate of cycling is in the Netherlands.
  - The Dutch crime rate is so low that they're having to import prisoners from other countries to avoid making prison officers redundant.
  - The Dutch manage to be the world's second largest agricultural exporter despite having just 0.03% of the world's land.
  - Dutch roads are the safest in the world.
  - Dutch obesity rates are amongst the world's lowest.
  - Teenage pregnancy rate is amongst the world's lowest.
  - Drug abuse rates are amongst the world's lowest...
  - Dutch children are the happiest in the world.

However, Britain prefers to defer to the US for advice on all these things...

>blogs.news.com.au
>ABC

I was thinking more of actual predictions (e.g. from peer-reviewed papers) than of media (mis)interpretations of predictions made either more-or-less off the cuff by scientists or by non-scientists.

And the accurate versions of those most of those predictions have not been shown wrong (I don't know anything one way or the other about Perth's prediction).

>no evidence for accelerated sea level rises
I don't read Dutch, but a google translation makes it look as though that that is one scientist's view and that at least some others their disagree.
http://www.nrc.nl/binnenland/article2089560.ece/KNMI_nuance_ontbreekt_in_plan_Deltacommissie

>predict warming in a cooling world,
the world is most definitely not cooling, nor even holding steady. Take a look at the data.

I have one from yesterday's NRC Handelsblad.
A quick & dirty translation of the main portion:

"Research was done on nearly 60,000 articles from 2006 to 2008 to determine how much they were based on sources from ANP. Almost 17,000 articles, mainly about sports, economy and foreign affairs [foreign countries really, there's a lot of that when viewed from the Netherlands], were (partly) based on a message from the press agency. The percentage ANP-news in the newspapers increased between 2006 and 2008 from on average 31 to 36 percent. This was the lowest in NRC Handelsblad and the free newspaper De Pers (20%) and the highest in the free newspapers Metro (40%) and Spits (46%)."

One problem is that ANP bulletins are often copies of other press agencies material. Another is that this doesn't say much about the original journalistic efforts of the newspapers; especially the free ones are very good at showbiz and celebrity news, car and movie reviews. Society's watchdog they're not.

The issue is the difference between destroying (in practical terms: erasing), as they are legally obliged to do, and deleting it. This pdf documentlinked from the article explains in laymen's language how the "pointer (or route) in the system to the data concerned" is removed, making 1) the data inaccessible to investigators, and 2) freeing up the space of a hard disk array for new data, and then goes on explaining that the data may theoretically still be retrieved from the disks if not yet overwritten. They don't know whether the commercial black box system they use erases the data, and suspect it doesn't.

Don't forget the nuns!

Seriously, I was boggled when my (Irish) wife explained that the local hospital (where her granny was receiving palliative are for her terminal cancer) had only been built thanks to years of fundraising by the Sisters of Whatever. Charity's fine but surely not for essential services!

Anyway, take a look at the last comment here to see how the Dutch model has been fucked over by private healthcos.

Under Dutch law, downloading games and software is illegal, but sharing copied films and music is not. The Dutch copyright law allows consumers to make a copy of CD's and DVD's they own, and to store those copies as files on their personal computers.

So there you have it.

I was asking a question but "yes" to your question of my question.

Map of underwater cables
http://www.nrc.nl/multimedia/archive/00170/270808ECO_glasvezel_170984a.jpg

I see a red squiggle going from NK to China (and a few of them going directly from China to the US)

As I just mentioned in another post, in South Africa, I pay around $15 for 2GB of data per month. That's excluding line rental. After that, its around $9-$10/GB. Fastest home DSL line speed available is officially 1MB/s, going up to 4MB/s depending on your line quality and distance from the exchange.
Local bandwidth (connecting to South African hosts) is dirt cheap, but international is pretty much daylight robbery. The US has the benefit that most datacenters are hosted in the US already, and the US also has a huge number of undersea cables running from all over the coastlines to Europe and Asia where most of the rest of the internet is hosted. The whole of Africa has a tiny number of cables, meaning that internet access is hideously expensive.

http://www.nrc.nl/multimedia/archive/00170/270808ECO_glasvezel_170984a.jpg
http://www.telegeography.com/products/map_cable/images/Cable_Map_big.gif

It always amuses me that people from the US complain when their ISPs threaten to impose 100GB/month caps. You guys have absolutely no idea how lucky you are.

A similar study has been conducted before in the Netherlands: Downloading benefits the Dutch economy (in Dutch, Google Translation). This study had been ordered by the department of Education, Culture and Science, the department of Economic Affairs and the Justice department.

A downloaded movie, CD or game is not equal to a product not sold, say the researchers. Also, "Amongst downloaders of music and film, the percentage of buyers is as high as with non-downloaders, in games, the percentage of buyers even higher. Music downloaders are also more likely to concerts and buy more merchandise. Downloaders buy more games than gamers who never downloaded and movies downloaders buy more DVDs than non-downloaders."

The hate mail generated by the Pinkeltje project forms the basis of Simonse's latest project. The artists has collected the thousands of threatening emails she received between 2004 and 2008, and published them in a yellow pages-size book titled Dearest Tinkebell.

The book has already stirred a controversy of its own because Simonse doesn't just publish the emails - almost a thousand of them - but also the names, ages, addresses of the people who sent them. She also provides links to people's YouTube videos and MySpace profiles, and any embarrassing information, photos or videos she found there.

• Dilbert - do I need to describe this?
• Explosm.com - Cyanide and Happiness comic
• Fokke & Sukke - Dutch comic. Popular daily cartoon (yes, I'm dutch and the name is intentional)
• Little Gamers - gaming comic
• Penny Arcade - gaming comic
• FAIL blog - epic fail every day

Finance & Economy

• BusinessWeek Online -- Most Popular Stories
• Calculated Risk - general blog
• The Economist - News analysis and views
• NRC | EconomieDutch newspaper, economy section

Space

• Bad Astronomy - Phil Plait's blog about astronomy and skepticism
• Chris Lintott's Universe - Astronomer, Galaxy Zoo co-founder and co-host of BBC's The Sky at Night
• NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
• New Scientist, Space - Astronomy section of New Scientist
• Space.com - More space news...
• Starts With a Bang! - Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, tries to answer some common but very complex astronomy questions.
• Universe Today - One of the most well known astronomy blogs

Tech

• Engadget - THE gadget blog
• Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - making crazy electronic stuff (and drooling over niche market product catalogues)
• Gametrailers' ScrewAttack - funny gaming videos
• Kotaku - THE games blog
• Reuters Science
• Reuters Technology
• Slashdot
• The Brainy Gamer - in-depth articles about (the history of) games in general
• Tweakers.net - the dutch Slashdot

Misc

• Greggman - American gamedev'er who lived in Japan
• Jort Kelder - Dutch dandy. Ex-editor-in-chief of Quote, a magazine about entrepeneurs and the life of the nouveau rich. Co-host of the dutch Dragons Den.
• Scalzi's Whatever - Sciencefiction author.
• The Sartorialist - Fashion photographer. If you'd like to dress like a man with some class, instead of a fake tan metrosexual...look here for inspiration.

FYI, Microsoft is whining in the Dutch-language press (Google translation) about how unfair to them this all is and how disadvantaged they would be if the government used open standards.

Couple that with the difficulty of applying the scientific method to humans (average life span of 75 years and ethical problems) and I think you'll see why medicine is a 'non-science.'

That difficulty is only a logistic difficulty, how to track a large number of people over a long period of time. But it is possible to overcome this difficulty, as is shown in the ERGO research project, where 10.000 people over 55 have from the Rotterdam district 'Ommoord' been tracked since 1990 (including yearly MRI scans of every single person). Since last year they've expanded this research to people over 45. This research already led to an astounding numbert of publications.

And indeed, some ethical issues, even by just following normal seamingly healthy persons: what do you do when you find abnormalities during the MRI brain scan? Dutch article with a picture and English article -that's not very useful is it- for subscribers only.

Patents, legislation & belief in what is good for you are what ruin medicine. Look at all the Hindu medicine that was ignored by the West for the longest time because it was ... well, Hindu.

Which is just as silly as using Hindu medicine because it was ... well, ignored by the West.

The original article, in dutch: http://www.nrc.nl/economie/article716907.ece/Econo mie_VS_staat_stil/.

Another supporting article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/01/business/01cnd-e con.html?ex=1338350400&en=13e891fe750026be&ei=5088 &partner=rssnyt&emc=rss/

It's even worse in the Netherlands though (article in Dutch, unfortunately). Summary: privacy and other citizen rights continuously eroding and no one cares.

Why bother when you're allowed to torture people? Given enough time, you get these guys to say anything you want. Why waste all that effort to find the guilty, when you can just pick someone and beat them until they admit their guilt or agree to testify to someone else's guilt?

There was an article in the science section of NRC Handelsblad a couple of weeks ago on interrogation techniques. The article was written because the whole torture discussion so far is about the morality of torture, not about the effectiveness.

What research done so far on interrogation techniques shows, is that the more pressure you put on people, the more they say the things they think the interrogator wants to hear. Which might or might not be the truth. So if you want that people to confirm the image you have in your mind, go ahead and put them under pressure, or even torture them when you are morally challenged. You will hear a lot, but most of it will be noise, not useful information. Hard interrogation techniques quite plainly cannot be used for truth finding.

On the other hand, if you want information, you have to make use of humans natural weakness: we all like to chat. If people feel comfortable, they start talking, and will sooner or later tell more than they planned to. Which is of course, I must admit, a difficult strategy to follow with suspects that do not speak your language, do not share your cultural values, and might have planted a bomb somewhere that could kill your friends any time.

The scary thing is that these so-called intelligence agencies have gathered tons and tons of noise over the past years, and that this noise will be used to base our domestic and foreign policies on. This won't be the last scaremonging incident that will have a lasting impact on our lives.

This kind of thing has been attempted by a Dutch newspaper http://wethepeople.nrc.nl/. The subject under discussion was/is how to go forward with European integration after the people France and The Netherlands had not accepted the proposed constitution. The software used was not really user friendly, and the discussion was channeled by allowing only 3 alternatives to be discussed, but the experiment is interesting, also because some politiicians of name joined it.

At least an initiative like this will bring the discussion more in the open and make the process of policymaking a little more transparent.

"Nonetheless, the spokesmen of Sony BMG Nederland says that Xcp will be introduced in Europe, and therefore also in the Netherlands, in 2006."

The article further contains no less then 17 dubious features of the Sony software, basically the same ones as circulated the news lately. However, number 15 is interesting. Blankesteijn claims he received spam after entering his e-mail adres in the request form for the Xcp removal software:

"15. Not only is this [filling in a form] in-necessary complicated and time consuming, Beet (the magazine) immediately received spam from Sony BMG containing an advertisement for their multimedia software. It turns out somewhere along the road you could have clicked on a link to Sony MBG's privacy policy. There it says your mail address can be added to marketing lists. But is very well possible that the user will not notice this link. In any way, nowhere is asked for permission to do this, which will make this way of handling illegal in many countries."

"Nonetheless, the spokesmen of Sony BMG Nederland says that Xcp will be introduced in Europe, and therefore also in the Netherlands, in 2006."

The article further contains no less then 17 dubious features of the Sony software, basically the same ones as circulated the news lately. However, number 15 is interesting. Blankesteijn claims he received spam after entering his e-mail adres in the request form for the Xcp removal software:

"15. Not only is this [filling in a form] in-necessary complicated and time consuming, Beet (the magazine) immediately received spam from Sony BMG containing an advertisement for their multimedia software. It turns out somewhere along the road you could have clicked on a link to Sony MBG's privacy policy. There it says your mail address can be added to marketing lists. But is very well possible that the user will not notice this link. In any way, nowhere is asked for permission to do this, which will make this way of handling illegal in many countries."

Another interesting Dutch headline involves the discovery that the rootkit contains parts of LAME, a LGPLed mp3 encoder. A translation can be found here.

>In America, the water bottles are all type 3 and 5. Can't recycle that.

My final remark on the plastic issue: In the Netherlands (and most european countries I've visited) most if not all plastic bottles are either PET or a close relative thereof; most softdrink and beer bottles (glass or plastic) are recollected using a stationary system; PVC is used mainly for certain corrosive substances. That probably explains why our views on this differ.

>References please. I don't take "your word for it" as an acceptable resource.

A reference about some of the difficulties of recycling non-ferro metal can be found in the NRC (a thourough, though slightly right-wing newspaper, to european standards). I hope you can use Babelfish to some make sense of it. If not, this reference will be usefull. This backs your remark that recycled aluminium saves a lot of resources compare to using bauxite.
Approximately the same percentage of iron and aluminium are recollected (40-45%), though aluminium has a larger market share than iron in cans in the UK as well (more optimistic numbers from US are here. A great resource for statistics is the official dutche statistics bureau http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/start.asp?LA=en&DM= SLEN&lp=Search/Search">CBS. Supposing 50% of aluminium is recycled, the other half is produced from bauxite, using 20 more energy (cite: 155MJ/kg, http://www.st.hhs.nl/~ipo_kon/aluminium/aluminium. htm). Same for steel, would contribute 30MJ/kg, so even including ferro's higher melting point that argues in favour of steel. (Steel and steel oxide are usually recycled as by products of ore furnaces anyway.) This is just focussing on energy and disregarding toxins; Dutch ecoindicator for aluminium is 19.60 steel is 4.66 but that may well be a political thing.
On top, your get the realtively cheap separation thing using magnetism.

> Also, quit with your snide little passive agressive jabs at me - it discredits you.

Sorry for that, I apoligize if I offended you with my childish behaviour. Guess I just got anoyed about your beat on my alleged Scandinavian nationality.;-)

The longer you're prepared to wait, the less it costs.
Newspapers should do the same thing. Keep the online edition free, [...]

Strangely enough several newspapers do just the oposite NRC a Dutch newspaper will give you the new news for free. This article is from today and is free. If you want to look at older articles, you can do a search and will find pages you will have to pay for, like here

The longer you're prepared to wait, the less it costs.
Newspapers should do the same thing. Keep the online edition free, [...]

Strangely enough several newspapers do just the oposite NRC a Dutch newspaper will give you the new news for free. This article is from today and is free. If you want to look at older articles, you can do a search and will find pages you will have to pay for, like here

The longer you're prepared to wait, the less it costs.
Newspapers should do the same thing. Keep the online edition free, [...]

Strangely enough several newspapers do just the oposite NRC a Dutch newspaper will give you the new news for free. This article is from today and is free. If you want to look at older articles, you can do a search and will find pages you will have to pay for, like here

Oh, the humanity.

I think this Broadband Reports article also brings up a good point: among the groups attacking the Act, why do so few of them bring up Echelon? It already gives the government much of the surveillance ability they claim they're lacking, and without congressional oversight.

no, it's most definately not a birdman suit. see this pic

No, it ain't that simple. Only IndyMedia is forbidden to link to, say the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad, because of http://www.nrc.nl/internet/internetcolumn/10194512 57927.html.
Anyone else stil can.

Strictly speaking.. you're right. At the moment..
There is a potential problem though, namely the fact that government does not provide complete lawbooks, or complete words of all the laws. Only new or changed laws are published, and it is left to the publisher to collect them all. Basically, the single laws aren't copyrighted, but the complete set is. I'd give you more info, but if you speak dutch, you may want to read this article (from 1998) which is a lot clearer than I'll ever be. Yes... it surprised me too :(

//rdj

Judge J. Mendlink (no joke, folks. SML) waived the arguments, stating, that if PCM, doesn't want others to use their information, that they should not put it on internet for free. He also considered it doubtful, that the newspapers in question actually incurred damage.

Funnily enough, normally internet-savvy journalist Francisco van Jole, who has been on the internet about since the start of last September (which was the '93 one, as we all know. SML.), predicted the imminent death of content on the internet.

Anyone with time and language skill is invited to translate the actual article or articles, via kranten.com or directly from for instance de Volkskrant or de NRC, the best two national newspapers as far as I can tell, with preference to the latter. Both are actually published by PCM. Though only de Volkskrant probably has van Jole's actual words.

De Volkskrant also ran another story on "Ever more Merkins in Dutch ICT". Interesting, but I've got no time to tell ya about it.

Stefan (using my initials SML for editorial comments above).
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-

A Dutch newspaper has an article about the RIAA of the Netherlands which says that the industry will find an alternative within a few months.

quote:
ROTTERDAM, 27 JULI. De grootste platenmaatschappijen hebben binnen twee maanden allemaal een 'digitaal distributiesysteem' voor hun muziek. Dat zegt de Nederlandse internetmanager L. Beerens van Universal Music Group, een van de grootste platenmaatschappijen ter wereld.

Which translates into: The biggest recordcompanies will have a digital distributionsystem for their music within three months, according to internetmanager L Beerens of the Universal Music Group. One of the biggest recordcompanies of the world.

Reading John's article, I was suprised at the high flaming rate. Of course I don't know american newspapers, but the dutch seem to grant a reasonable amount of space to tech-related topics. IT-stuff regularly makes it to the front page of the NRC Handelsblad or to the front page of the economics section. Once a weak, there is a dedicated page to electronical gadgets. At every week's science section, there is a lot of attention for tech stuff. So, as far as concerned the paper I'm reading, I don't see why newspapers are flamed so hard by John.

Added to this, I would like to recall the pro's of hardcopy news posters before me mentioned:

1. Newspapers come in a portable, handy format;
2. Newspapers (can) have high quality research and writing, because of journalism standards;
3. Newspapers more often contain high quality background articles, that you won't generally
find at your favorite news-site.
4. Newspapers are written for a broad audience, so you may find pieces that broading your view, whereas your web-site generally tries to narrow it.
5. Most of all, hard copy is better readible than those darned monitors.

Cheers,

Jeroen

PP: Slashdot seems to suffer from huge response delays today. De ping delay is only 85ms, without package loss. It the traffic getting too heavy?