Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Europe Now Has Its Own "Most Wanted Fugitives" Web Page (eumostwanted.eu)

Posted by timothy on from the needs-to-merge-with-tumblr dept.

New submitter ffkom writes: European police organization Europol was probably jealous of the fame and popularity of the FBI's Most Wanted site, so they finally launched their own, European version. And if you want to know what a peaceful place Europe is, just consider this: You don't even have to kill anyone to get on the current "Most Wanted Fugitives" list. A mere fraud worth 12€ is currently enough to get you into this "Hall of questionable fame."

23 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Not 12 euros... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...but 12,563 euros. Some European countries use "." instead of ",".

    Still not much in the grand scheme of things though!

    1. Re:Not 12 euros... by ffkom · · Score: 2

      Sorry, but it is not me who cannot read: The text of the story that I submitted specifically said 12 k€, see: http://slashdot.org/submission...

      I've got no idea why the "k" before the "€" mysteriously disappeared when the story was published.

    2. Re:Not 12 euros... by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Informative

      Notice that the submitted story had it right: http://slashdot.org/submission...

      A mere fraud worth 12 k€

      After edited by timothy it changed to:

      A mere fraud worth 12€

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    3. Re:Not 12 euros... by ffkom · · Score: 2

      The publication.europa.eu site you cite makes other even less ASCII-compatible and some outright stupid proposals:

      They propose to put a "hard space" between the currency and the value, but "hard" or "non breaking" spaces are not included in ASCII.

      They propose "m EUR or bn EUR may only be used when space is insufficent for spelling out", which is outright stupid because there is a SI prefix "M" for "million" already, and "m" is also an existing SI prefix meaning "milli" - 1/1000.

      However, it's a pity this site does not support Unicode, like almost every contemporary software.

    4. Re:Not 12 euros... by arth1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      They propose "m EUR or bn EUR may only be used when space is insufficent for spelling out", which is outright stupid because there is a SI prefix "M" for "million" already, and "m" is also an existing SI prefix meaning "milli" - 1/1000.

      And also stupid because the EU countries are split on what "bn" or billion would mean. In most of the EU, a billion means a million million, but then there are a few countries that use the short scale like the US, and a billion means a thousand million.

    5. Re:Not 12 euros... by rossdee · · Score: 2

      > Some European countries use "." instead of ",".

      spreadsheet data stored in a ..CSV file must really confuse them.

    6. Re:Not 12 euros... by ericloewe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ISO 31 specifically states that both "," and "." are valid separators.

      If one cannot infer what the number is in this particular case, they have no business writing anything at all. Confusing 12€ with 12 523€ is a new level of stupidity.

    7. Re:Not 12 euros... by KiloByte · · Score: 2

      Uhm, you're missing the word milliard. And yeah, we need two scales with confusing names about as much as we need systemd.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    8. Re:Not 12 euros... by arth1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've never understood the rationale for the non-US billion. Both 10^6 and 10^9 (and to a lesser extent 10^12) are numbers that come up all the time, why not have explicit names for them?

      Um, that is the rationale. There are names.

      Million = 10^6
      Milliard = 10^9
      Billion = 10^12 = million^2
      Billiard = 10^15 (and a game)
      Trillion - 10^18 = million^3 ... and so on

      It also makes it easier to figure out that a septillion is a million^7. Likewise, to go the other way, 10^30=10^6^5, i.e. a pentillion.

      The US short scale system has no good relation between the names and the actual numbers. A septillion in US terminology is 10^24 - where does the seven come in?

    9. Re:Not 12 euros... by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      There is only systemd, and when I choose it, I know exactly which one I'm choosing.

      If only I could say the same for Gtk, or European numerical units.

  2. Ah, Slashdot. by aix+tom · · Score: 3, Funny

    The place where the editors don't know the "." is the thousands separator in several European languages. ;-P

    1. Re:Ah, Slashdot. by Derling+Whirvish · · Score: 2

      Nor do they know that in English the Euro symbol goes in front of the numerals representing the value, not after (same for the Dollar sign by the way).

  3. Gee learn to read by aepervius · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It was 12K euro not 12 euro.

    --
    C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org
    1. Re:Gee learn to read by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 2

      12 Kelvin-euro?

      Economic growth is barely above absolute zero....

      --
      Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
  4. 12 THOUSAND Euro not 12 by bloodhawk · · Score: 2

    new owners, same god aweful outright wrong summaries. 12 Thousand Euros not 12.

  5. Which region you mean ? by aepervius · · Score: 2

    That's a Europe region web page for an Europe audience in an Europe zone by Europole and therefore use convention that most of europe uses (e.g. decimal notation). Do you have any other extremely evidence question question ? Alternatively you go there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and count the countries in Europe which uses point as decimal separator. Hint : only UK , and SWISS (only for currency). In fact the majority of the world use comma as separator. Look at the picture.

    --
    C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org
    1. Re:Which region you mean ? by iTrawl · · Score: 3, Informative

      Your point doesn't take one aspect into account: most of Europe doesn't use English as the primary language. The decimal point is pretty much an English language feature these days (although Mexico appear to use it too, in distinction from all the other countries that use Spanish, and China and India probably do so because of English language influence). Canada seems to do it right: decimal point when the text is in English, decimal comma when it's in French. Europol should be following this convention too, as the editors weren't the only ones confused.

      Too many times I have to second guess numbers written by non-English folks in English texts because of this variation, but it usually ends up like this: if there are three digits after the point, they made a mistake and meant "thousands separator". If there are two digits, they meant "decimal separator". Ditto for when the use the comma. What I hate about it is the "garden path" I have to take when parsing the numbers.

      --
      "Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
  6. Re: 12k€ not 12€ by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 2

    You might be interested in my new book, Learn Franglo-Sinaic-Hindpañesish. Lénga de la fùtven is-ji.

    --
    Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
  7. Re:12k€ not 12€ by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 5, Interesting

    TFA says "12.523 EUR".

    Of course the fixation of (continental?) Europe to use decimal points as thousands separators is a bit stupid (saying that as someone from there).

    Except that Europe doesn't use the decimal point as thousands separators, you use the period character. The traditional anglophone decimal separator is a mid-height dot, which I'd demonstrate for you, but it doesn't seem to be available in the default iOS keyboard. What happened is that it was missed off some mechanical typewriters and was left off the keyboards and character sets for most computers. Computer programmers cheated and used a period instead of a decimal point, and as publishing moved to digital formats, it was easier for people to use the period in place of the point. By the time Unicode finally introduced the decimal point into computing, it was already dead.

    --
    Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
  8. Submitted story DID say 12 k€! by ffkom · · Score: 2

    Sorry, but it is not me who cannot read: The text of the story that I submitted specifically said 12 k€, see: http://slashdot.org/submission...

    I've got no idea why the "k" before the "€" mysteriously disappeared when the story was published.

    1. Re:Submitted story DID say 12 k€! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Ahh, good to see not much has changed in editorial quality since Slashdot's recent acquisition. Gotta keep the traditions alive!

      (and yes I know it's not realistic to expect much to change immediately after a change of ownership, but that doesn't mean we can't still be snarky about it)

    2. Re:Submitted story DID say 12 k€! by KGIII · · Score: 2

      It not only doesn't mean that you can't be snarky about it - it means you should. So far, I like the new group of masters. It's probably best that we break them in properly. I, um... I left the guy a few comments in replies to his comments in the thread about the sale. I even left a reply indicating that we'd be needing a picture of them naked and covered in chicken fried steak batter if they wanted any success. I mean, it's the only way...

      So, you have an obligation to be snarky. It's your/our duty. You don't go "putting on airs" for guests.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  9. Re:12k€ not 12€ by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Funny

    We'll stop using the comma when you stop celebrating the bombing of the world trade centre November 9/11/2001 instead of September when it actually happened.