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Swift Justice? Mobile Justice In Brazil

Posted by timothy on from the M-M-M-M-M�ximo-Headroom-meets-Juiz-Dredd dept.

tech_imp writes: "Yikes! Talk about swift justice. The BBC is reporting that Judges 'roaming' the streets in Brazil will be using laptops and an app written in VB to help dispense justice. I'm not sure that I would not want to trust my judgement to a VB app ... couldn't they have at least written it something more robust ... like Perl? I can see it now ... your sentence is GPF :')" Three words that spring to mind: "General Protection Fault."

4 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Languages are NOT inherently maintainable/readable by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 5
    I agree with you on the blatant Microsoft bashing that goes on here (par for the course really), but to maintain that one language is easier to maintain or read than any other is just plain wrong. I can write lousy code in Perl just as easily as I can in Visual Basic, C, Java, FORTRAN, or any of the myriad other computer programming languages out there. To claim otherwise is ignorant. The code is only as good as the programmer who wrote it, but has little to do with the language it's written in. - A.P.
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    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

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    "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
  2. NEWS: Brazilian Drug Kingpin Sentenced by cje · · Score: 5

    BRAZILIAN DRUG KINGPIN SENTENCED TO BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH
    Harsh Sentence From Judge Raises Some Eyebrows

    RIO DE JANIERO (UPI) - Luis Sanchez, overlord of a drug cartel that stretches from the Cape Horn to the Bering Strait, was sentenced to the blue screen of death this afternoon by a federal judge. Judge Roberto Gonzalez carried out the sentence at a Starbuck's coffee house in downtown Rio after he was spotted by undercover agents. The agents called in Gonzalez and restrained Sanchez until he arrived with his laptop computer, running the Automatic Brazilian Justice Service Pack (ABJSP) of the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system. The ABJSP is part of the default installation.

    Opponents of the blue screen of death penalty were quick to criticize Gonzalez's actions. "The blue screen of death penalty is never justified," explained Mary Madalyn Murray Coughlin O'Laughlin, a representative of the National Council of Churches. "What sort of message do we send when we carry out a penalty like this? It puts us in the same boat with countries like China, Iran, and Afghanistan. It's brutal, it's barbaric, and it's an idea that is about a thousand years too old."

    Famous programmer Linus Torvalds agreed with Coughlin O'Laughlin. "I'm from Finland," explained Torvalds, "and I can tell you that I have never, ever seen a blue screen of death penalty carried out. Ever. It's just something that doesn't happen in a sufficiently evolved society."

    Ed Muth, newly-appointed Brazilian Minister of Justice, had a slightly different take.

    "We need the blue screen of death penalty," explained Muth. "Studies have shown that it acts as a deterrent, that it gives criminals something to think about, that it stops them from committing violent crimes. Also, we cannot forget about the closure factor. While it might seem barbaric, I've had family members of murder victims come up to me and thank me for blue-screening a criminal. They'll tell me that they're finally able to get a good night's sleep, now that their long nightmare is over."

    Texas governor and United States presidential candidate George W. Bush agrees. "The blue screen of death penalty remains a necessary evil," Bush explained during a campaign stopover at Berkeley. "It sends a compassionate, yet conservative message to the criminal population of the world." Over the past thirty years, Bush's home state of Texas has blue-screened more inmates than the rest of the Western world combined.

    The big black guy from "The Green Mile" contributed to this report.

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  3. Puh-leeze by konstant · · Score: 5

    I'm not sure that I would not want to trust my judgement to a VB app ... couldn't they have at least written it something more robust ... like Perl?

    What is with the VB bigotry? In your review of competing products, do you dismiss out of hand the fact that VB is easily maintainable and readable, whereas Perl resembles abstract art drawn from the inner, inarticulate recesses of the mind that coded it?

    I like VB, and I'm not alone in liking it. Lay off.

    -konstant
    Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!

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    -konstant
    Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
  4. Judge, not Computer, is Interpreter of Law by Speare · · Score: 5

    Give me a break. This is just a stupid story to fill space and generate a lot of banal arguments about nothing.

    If the Judge wore sneakers with holes through them, it would say nothing of the judgements he made.

    If the Judge drove a Fiat, it would not suggest bias or improper legal process.

    If the Judge wired her decision to the clerk's office using Handspring or Linux or BeOS, it would not aid nor hinder the quality of justice.

    And if the laptop in question burned up because it wasn't using a low-heat Transmeta chip, but was instead slogging away at slashdot-impoverished microsoft-laden Dell/Intel circuitry instead, the criminals would just have to wait for a handwritten slip to meet their legal fates.

    (Judge, not Computer, is Interpreter of Law =anagram>
    Mature projection upsetting free world.)

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