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(in the uk) reoffending rates are more than 50%

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1953079, 00.html..

perhaps the best way to predict who'll commit crime is to look at what we let out of our prisons early. Why do we only seem to think that paedophiles are the only ones who'll reoffend?

It looks like Scotland Yard is also looking for scary new tactics in fighting crime. The latest idea of Laura Richards, head of analysis of the Metropolitan Police's Homicide Prevention Unit, sounds like a strangely familiar concept to those who have seen Minority Report. She aims to create a database of people who could supposedly commit a crime in the future, based on their psychological profile.

Even though preventing crimes is a noble motivation, this idea raises serious privacy issues.

As a sidemark it should be mentioned that Laura Richard also seems to be part of the team that "revealed" Jack the Ripper's face some time ago.

It's amusing that you accuse the left of the what GWB and Blair's administration have been most guilty of. Here's an interesting leaked memo from the pre-war planning stage:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-15936 07,00.html

Of course, all politicians lie for a living - it's part of the job. We just don't put up with being led into a war under false pretences. That's a crime.

This one.

Also covered here.

And here.

If there was crypto used, it absolutely sucked.

If all you need is a modem line tap or an illegal program to crack ATM's, there isn't much security is there?

I don't think there is crypto. I think the information is sent across the phone lines as plain text. The purpose of the modem line tap or illegal program is to convert the signal going over the line (the same signal you hear when you pick up the phone during a fax or internet connection) to text. From there, no mention is made of encryption.

See this page. "The Modem Line Tap, MLT2400A is a modem protocol analyzer that translates telephone data communications into standard ASCII characters for display on a PC screen."

If the data was properly encrypted before it was sent, the hackers wouldn't have been able to use the data. If there was crypto, it was token crypto at best. Just enough to tell their share holders it was encrypted.

Main bullet from TFA:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2475021, 00.html
* "back pain is part of human nature"

This is crap. Most "human nature" is a result of our activities and culture (long term), not the cause. The real nature of people is very simple: have the good feelings and avoid the bad ones. That is it. Most everything else about how we act is learned.

We need to rethink this idea that humans have evolved to be ABLE to sit in a cubicle for 8 hours a day, 200 days a year and function. They didn't. Humans need to be active, challenged and mobile. The reason sitting people have back pain is because they are sitting so much. Hmmmm, let's arrange the deck chairs and tell people to sit differently???

Have you read about Litvinenko's final statement? Quote:

You may succeed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics claim.

You may succeed in silencing one man. But a howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done.

Whether any of this bothers Putin is irrelevant, the point is how Litvinenko saw it.

As for KGB/FSB not hiring the mentally unbalanced, they only care about the mental state of their agents while they're employed by the FSB. Read a bit about Litvinenko's background (e.g. here or in this obituary), and a few things stand out: he was very angry about how he was ejected from the FSB, he spent 9 months in a "remand center" before being acquitted of his alleged crimes, and then went into exile in England. That kind of thing has a strong effect on anyone's mental state. He's been a vocal critic of the FSB and Putin since being in exile in England, and is notoriously paranoid. Of course, it's possible that the FSB has been harrassing him, but if you really think about it, wouldn't they either just kill him efficiently if they really cared, or forget about him?

One very plausible explanation of Litvinenko's behavior is that he was unwilling to let go of his previous lifestyle, and had a strong need to remain "important" and involved in the kind of work he had been forcibly ejected from, as well as a need to try to correct what he saw as injustices in his home country. The sheer mental pressure of his paranoia (justified or not) combined with a taste for the dramatic and a desire to be "proved right" could have led to him taking his own life in this way.

Try to put yourself in the position of someone who has fought his way to the top of Russia's secret service only to be ejected without honor and exiled from your own home country, left to fret in irrelevance in another country. Combine with that the concern that an agency notorious for its theatric brutality against its enemies might be after you. Litvinenko clearly was not the kind of person able to put such things out of his mind and move on. His previous lifestyle and treacherous bosses loomed large in his mind. By striking back, as he would have seen it (by his own statements), he would have been able to take a kind of control back from the fear that was ruling his life.

Then again, I could just be an FSB agent assigned to Slashdot to sow FUD. In which case, argue with me at your peril! ;)

Mr. Litvinenko fell ill after having lunch at a sushi restaraunt with one Mario Scaramella (now hiding in fear of his life somewhere, according to http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2462 162,00.html. There are also reports he had tea with a Russian friend before going to lunch. So ingestion isn't exactly far-fetched.

They say " pedestrians could also be asked to give prints if they are suspected to have committed an offence".

Considering that anyone can be suspected of anything, this opens the gates for totally random fingerprinting in the street. We already have random checks and detentions for the flimsiest of reasons. Consider the 34 year old woman labeled a terrorist for walking along a cycle path, the stopping and searching of an 11 year old girl near an RAF base, "the detention of a 21 year old student for taking pictures of the M3 motorway for a web-design company", the ejection of an 82 year old man at the 2005 Labour Party conference, and the detention of an 80-year-old man carrying an anti-Blair placard, for example. If you refuse, the precedents set by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Terrorism Act 2000, and Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 would ensure it unlikely you'd get off scott-free but instead become more of a suspect.

Still, I'm not going to do anything about it other than complain about it online, as is my wont. In another 50 years when I'm eating my Soylent Green in my 29th-floor bugged apartment, I can pull out ruffled print-outs of Web pages like these, and think back to a time when at least my bowel movements weren't RFID tagged and scanned for prohibited substances.

Basically, the British government is corrupt to the core and bordering on fascist. But.. what government isn't these days?

I'm quite sure that most of these bastards had/have a religion, so while I agree with your point that religion has been used and abused to murder in its name, that does not mean that the opposite of religion (atheism) is the true cause, nor does the above rant gives any argument why and how atheism leads to mass murder.

Communism in most countries has been militantly atheistic, engaging in harsh suppression of religion and programs for the spread of militant atheism. The Soviets even established an All-Union League of the Godless and museums of atheism in former churches. (North Korea still executes Christians.) At the same time, Communism was responsible for killing about 100,000,000 people in the last century. There were even incidents of cannibalism in the People's Republic of China to prove your loyalty to the party, literally eating the rich. The brutality of communism was one that repeated itself from country to country to country. Stalin outdid Hitler in body count, and Mao dwarfed Stalin. As a percentage of his country, Pol Pot outdid Mao. The vile regime of North Korea is still engaged in horror after horror after horror.

How is that that Communism, allegedly founded on a scientific basis, stressing rationality and scientific though, with principles regarded as altruistic (from each according to his ability to each according to his need), repeatedly produced such carnage and such leaders? Do you think it is possible that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of man at work there?

Therefore, these folks must be retarded

I'm just guessing you haven't dealt with councils / government departments in the UK then...

These are the same sort of people who told a company that welsh dragon sausages should be made of welsh dragons

Are you sure about that?

Indeed, there are some applications that allow you to send SMS messages wrote in Morse code, like Morse Texter (http://laivakoira.typepad.com/blog/2005/05/morse_ texter.html).

Also, seems that Morse is actually quite faster than regular text messaging. An article about it can be found at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-2- 1571664,00.html, and there was a "competition" between two text messengers and two Morse coders in Jay Leno's show some time ago, where Morse coders where MUCH faster than their text message writers counterparts.

degenerated into the Crazy Olympics

Degenerated? "Crazy Olympics?"

It isn't even a contest. South Korea is left setting on the bench, consoled by its modern economy and democracy. The field is North Korea all the way.

North Korea has the:
Gold
Silver
Bronze
Runner Up
and "Miss Congeniality"

With the recently added events, they could be in an even better medal position next year.

I think that North Korea's official motto must be the inverse of Google's.

The junior Kim has vowed 'complete liberation of the peninsula', a task left 'half-done' by Kim Il-sung. He is apparently determined to become 'the president of a unified Korea' through armed force.-- Hwang Jang-yop (former Worker's Party Secretary) Speaks

You mean like this?

So can regular ones. Your point?

Did you see this article about tax collection in India this weekend off of LRC? I was astounded to read this paragraph:

About 4 per cent of India's population pay tax, an improvement on 2 per cent last year, but still a pitiful statistic for one of the world's fastest-growing economies.

I hate that it's assumed to be pitiful that most people don't pay tax. That's like the insanity here in America of assuming it's pitiful that so many people don't get healthcare insurance.

I suggest a multi-thousand dollar prize for the first hacker who can open up their servers so the N.K. citizens can see the whole web.

I can't say there is much to recommend it. It is likely that there would be no meaningful payoff that would last more than minutes. Even if you were successful in creating temporary access to a wider range of internet sites, it is likely that the few North Koreas who use the web would be too terrified to make use of it, assuming they even knew about it. Given the nature of the regime, you can assume that their secret police record, monitor, review, and act on the traffic in ways that far exceed the most lurid fantasies about the NSA. Surfing unauthorized web sites would likely constitute a punishable act, especially if an unauthorized site was visited that contained unvetted political, economic, or religious information. If you've stepped over the line in North Korea, you could easily fall prey to the "heredity rule", developed the Dear Leader's father. Under that rule, the North Korean secret police arrest and imprison three generations of a family for the misdeeds of one of them, often for life, which can be short in a North Korean "prison camp" AKA death camp.

Besides, the international incident with the paranoid, now nuclear armed, barbaric regime which is starving its people wouldn't be worth it.

If anyone still insists on it, I suggest you stay away from at least the Koreas and Japan as North Korea has a long history of kidnapping people from those countries for various reasons. Given their ties to organized crime, due to their many criminal enterprises, they could reach even further. Life there is tough even when you are useful to them.

Libelous, that I can see, but how about factually incorrect?

Britannica isn't the only encyclopedia around. There's a lot of much smaller ones. What would be the result of exposing something similar in any other encyclopedia? My best guess is that if you contacted one with a correction you'd be likely to be silently ignored. The press would probably ignore as well, unless you had something really juicy for them.

I only remember hearing of one of those cases on TV: 12 year old found several mistakes in an encyclopedia. Case was presented roughly as follows: "Aww, isn't the kid clever?". A few minutes to imply that not all young people are morons after all, a statement from the encyclopedia of "we appreciate the corrections and will make sure it goes in the next release", and in general it could be said that even the encyclopedia got good PR out of it.

See the link. Compared with the reaction Wikipedia gets sometimes, it's incredibly positive. "In spite of the mistakes, Lucian said he still considered the encyclopaedia to be the single best source of information." I don't think encyclopedias have all that much to fear.

BS political scare stories

Um... what, because when UK journalists report the story, it's Americans getting all excited? Or would you be trying to pretend that an actually disturbing development, field by Iran's posture, is somehow the US's fault, rather than being the regional scariness that it is?

Well, it's been going on in this administration at least since 2002. The Office of Strategic Influence was its former name, which was officially shut down because of backlash from the press, but its activities continued. That office was intended to influence foreign media, but the question is, how much of the disinformation makes its way back into (or is spread directly into) our media in the form of blowback. Contracts for this type of work run into the hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraq. You better believe they are using the same strategies at home (no reg.).

I don't know about putting it in the ball - it would mess up the weight and balance, even if you could build it tough enough to survive a match - but certainly such statistics are very useful. The top clubs in the English Premiership employ a system called ProZone, which tracks the motion of players on the pitch - and, presumably, the ball - for later analysis. For instance, the areas a player has covered, the mileage he's done, his position in relation to others, and so forth. Useful for spotting tactical flaws in your side, gaps in defence and so on, and also for training - say, for speed, or for endurance?

Apparently, the system's made an appearance in the latest Championship Manager game. Those guys are really, really obsessive :-)

"From today [October 05, 2006] all British citizens renewing their passport will receive a new biometric passport. The hi-tech, or ePassports contain a secure chip with an image of the holder's face, and are designed to make forgery more difficult and improve international security ... also from today passport fees will rise. A 10-year adult passport will now cost £66" - Times

Q. So why are we paying this tax on holidays for a technology that apparantly couldn't tell Osama bin Laden from Captain Birdseye?

A. Although "facial recognition biometric data" all sounds very sci-fi, it is in fact the least accurate biometric identifier there is, according to experts. It will, however, be good enough for entry into the US without a visa - BBC

and they have no idea who you are. If they don't already have your fingerprint on file (for previous drunk and disorderly behaviour) they don't know you from Adam.

Yes they do - "Clubbers and drinkers will be asked to register by providing proof of ID and personal information including name, address, date of birth and a photograph." ( http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2033473, 00.html ).

Like you, when I read theregister article I assumed it would just check against a fingerprint list, but it seems a lot more worrying. Yes, they will know all sorts about you.

They claim that they're not spying on us, but if that's so, why do they need these extra details?

Maybe you should READ The Times before offering that opinion - here is today's edition.

Oops. I meant to link to the article.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2033473, 00.html

As much as I agree with your "need to get verification" stance, it didn't take me more than 30 seconds to find this. And I believe the Times should be considered a reliable news source.

Since the "wiped off the map" phrase is used so often I think it should be noted that the phrase appears to be mistranslated, yet is being repeated over and over. Rhethoric like this is not that unusual in such a volatile region. Just have a look at Israel's chief of staff Dan Halutz, who said "if the [two] soldiers are not returned, we will turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years" or Richard Armitage stating the US would bomb Pakistan back to the stone age if it didn't comply.

Given the current fallout from the last change to voting in the U.K., I doubt that changing the system is politically possible at the moment.

Wow, I find it interesting that there's only one tiny small eeenie weenie reference to this fact mentioned anywhere that I saw:

"The court was told that Mr Jones, 43, had posted personal details about himself online and used his real name when participating in a Yahoo! chatroom dedicated to Islam, where he met Gibbons." - from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2409469, 00.html

What a surprise, an act of violence occurs after some people were in a chatroom about that peaceful religion we kep hearing about lately, Islam, and furthermore, the media barely even mentions the fact. They don't even say whether Gibbons, or Jones, or both, were muslims - I for one would actualy like to know whether it was the muslim getting beat up, or the muslim doing the beating (or both).
Really, I would like to know. Does anyone have any other links giving more detail on the story?

Anyway, I don't mean to start a religious flame war here, but it makes it hard when this whole big 'first case in britain of web rage' headline comes along - and it's about an argument on an Islamic chat room.

AND PEOPLE DON'T EVEN NOTICE.

Calling it "web rage" seems to be a play on "road rage". "Road rage" is when someone cuts you off & you flip out on them.

Here's what road rage isn't: writing down the guy's license plate, looking up his address at the DMV, then a week or two later, driving over to the next town and slashing their tires. The second you start planning to attack someone, it stops being a crime of 'passion'.

As always Google News will provide more & better information.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2409469, 00.html
"Gibbons, who used the username Pastordevil, argued about Muslims and the war on Iraq with Mr Jones [victim] through the chatroom. He then accused the father of three of being a paedophile, and told other chat room users of his plans for revenge."

"[5 days before the attack] he wrote: "I am a law-abiding person but I'll make an exception for Jones."

Another message, sent the day before the attack, read: "He's going to regret it tomorrow. I'm looking forward to tomorrow."

Hours after the assault, Gibbons, who also used the user names Exudes, Devilishness and Pastordevil-tard-killer, logged on again and told Angie: "I had his knife at his throat. He was screaming in fear. He never stood a chance. Jones was freaked." He later added: "It went perfectly to plan.""

This Gibbons is a violent sociopath, with a history of violence. Nutjobs like that are one of the reasons I keep a minimal internet presence. If I ever piss someone off, I can walk away & not have to worry about being hunted down & knifed.

During the assault, Mr Jones's throat was cut from his Adam's apple to his ear, narrowly missing the jugular vein.

And when we see fearless regenerative howling hyper-muscular mice with giant human brains, then we know our world is lost.

Also, I wonder what Fatmouse thinks of all this? Some mice get all the good mutations...

The thing is you think you've met 2 people who killed people, you don't know how many you've come across in your lifetime. Furthermore, I don't socialize with people like that knowingly (Though I have been threatened with my life on a few occasions, even by a family member) but my thing is not an eye for an eye, because there are always going to be times where someone is wrongly accused of something as heinous as murder. My thing is it's wrong to kill someone, and it's especially wrong to kill someone out of rage. There are exceptions to this rule such as warfare, but I'm not talking about war.

I understand that there are plenty of people who come around and do some great things, even while in prison (Stanley Williams, for example), but those are the exception, not the rule.

On general crime and why I am ultimately skeptical, here's one link specifically about the situation in Britain as of December 2005. More convicts reoffend after release from jail, and another from Sweden check where it talks about reoffending. I know in my experience that this is the case far too many times, as well. YMMV, but I stick to what I say here.

The same sort of thing is already being used for ADHD and depression therapy, as well:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,204 09-2379616,00.html

China's already worried and guarding the border. Things are only getting worse in NKorea, take a read of this Times of London article. Warning though, it's pretty graphic.

The Chinese are worried about a potential influx of North Korean refugees. They are also vexed with counterfeit US currency coming from North Korea and "...vast quantities of fake Viagra from North Korea."

I've also found Strategy Page a good source for intelligence and analysis on NKorea.

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12389- 2348813,00.html

Paragraph 13.

'nuff said.

I would have to agree with you on the intolerance thing. Check out this lovely quote...

Tasnim Aslam, a spokeswoman for the Pakistani foreign ministry, came out with this little piece of doublethink beauty: "Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence."

See http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-23613 28,00.html for the full article.

OIC.

So the new video showing Bin Laden with the 9/11 pilots reading their wills on camera shows NO relationship between the head of Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda operatives?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/42280 95.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-23829 19,00.html

RIGHT.
Let's hurry up and attack Iran then, so we can get their Oi.... I mean stop their nucular weapons program.

Given that Microsoft was fined 280m euros, perhaps this tactic backfired.

I wondered how much that was in terms of Microsoft's income; could they afford this easily or would it really change minds? According to Gervase Markham, Microsoft made £14 million a day from Microsoft Windows client licenses alone. 280 million Euros is about £188 million today, so Microsoft will need to spend roughly half a month's worth of Windows license fees to pay off that fine. So, challenging the fine with the lawyers Microsoft is already paying (and have no intention of firing) makes a lot of financial sense. Countries around the world have shown by example that they will either back down or stifle themselves from making Microsoft do something Microsoft doesn't want to do. Therefore, there's nothing lost in trying to reduce the fine.

When the fine was announced, Neelie Kroes was quoted as saying "The fine is at a substantial level to induce Microsoft to comply. They have to behave.".

Is that this will probably further endanger native wildlife such as polar bears which have been drowning due to lack of ice.

And a few others I failed to mention earlier: Renault Grand Scenic or Espace, Citroen Xsara Picasso or the new C4 Picasso, Citroen C8,Peugot 807, Fiat Ulysse, Lancia Phedra, Mazda 5, Mercedes B Class. All powered by clean turbo diesel engines (they all meet _and_ exceed EURO-IV emission standards).

Nerds lack a sense of irony, which is why you were modded down. However, you're actually partially right: Leonardo was a quite poor scientist and technologist.

Note that I never defended Hezbollah's behaviour. In fact I'm quite sure I called it both unpalatable and abhorrent.

Afaik, Israel hasn't targeted civilians as primary targets.

Well, Amnesty International, for one, would disagree with you. So would Human Rights Watch. As do the UN.

The Times newspaper did.

Belgians do not speak Belgian. They speak either French or a dialect of Dutch known as Flemish.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1604253, 00.html

KFG

Why on earth is it being left to the Information Commissioner to pursue spammers? Does he not have enough on his plate with the British Govt...

a) ... about to reverse the legal right to privacy trying create the world's most intrusive database on citizens.
b) ... using taxpayers' resources to frustrate hundreds of thousands of valid requests under the Freedom of Information Act?

Kids have a genuine need for real toys and mud and water and sand to play with. If all they ever interact with is a computer, not only will they be more likely to become overweight, they won't have a single learned concept in physics.

I believe that the article that davecor66 is referring to is "Failing to teach them how to handle real life". If you haven't read it, then read it now!

If I ever have kids, I'm kicking them outside the minute that they discover out the existence of computer games.

September 5, 2006

Pakistan admits that terror gangs find sanctuary in border hideouts.

So WHO are the appeasers again?

London is a bad place for them unless you want to pay fines and/or do time.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,204 11-2322051.html