A criminologist who spend his live looking at ways to deal with criminals made this conclusion before taking his own life.
What did he mean? Nobody can agree on that, at least not other criminologists who make their living coming up with new things to try. That is hardly suprising, were they to accept his final conclusion, they would be out of job.
So what does it mean? First, you have to understand statistics and how easily they can be manipulated. Lets examine the most commonly used metric to determine the success of a criminal treatment program. Recidivism. That is, what percentage of criminals commit a crime again...
Oh wait, there the problem starts already. That is NOT what recidivism is. It is a common lie that is easy to swallow but it is a LIE.
Here is the real definition of recidivism as it exist in modern society:
The recidivism rate is the percentage of people who having been found guilty of a crime are linked to another crime within a certain timeframe and have this link recorded.
What is the difference? Well, the police does not have a 100% success rate at solving crimes. So it stands to reason not all those who commit a crime are actually found guilty for it. So, if a known criminal commits another crime but is not found GUILTY for it, he doesn't count. Conviction rates are very very low and many crimes do not even get reported.
Take rape, we know many of them do not get reported, so the changes of a rapist being actually being sentenced for another rape are pretty low. That is why serial criminals are so common.
Nonetheless, those who preach a certain method of dealing with criminals often claim they get a low percentage of recidivism. How low? This is an industry in which a reduction from 72% to 70% is considered a major breakthrough. Within statistcal error rate you say? Why yes, it is, that should tell you all you need to know by itself.
The only 100% effective measure against criminal repeating himself is the death penalty and we tend to find that a bit much for shop lifting.
All other methods? Hard to compare. As said, it depends on the effectivness of the police and justice system, not just in finding and convicting criminals but in linking them together.
In Holland we don't have consecutive jail times. This means there is no motivation for the police to solve all crimes, if they know you done ten robberies, they go to court with the ones they feel they got the best evidence on and the rest remain officially unsolved. In germany they don't do this, possibly one of the reasons the germans got a far higher success rate. How do you compare then different methodes when the statistics are gathered very differently? You can't.
For instance, it is often said the US has high crime rates. WRONG, the murder rate in the US vs Holland is pretty much the same. Yes there are undoubtely very rough areas in America but Holland got no go areas as well, they are small of course but so is the whole country. Per head. the crime rates are fairly similar.
Part of the problem is that people are very ideological about this. They claim X works best not from evidence but because they feel it should be the best method. This goes both for the hardliners and the bleeding hearts. Who is right?
Junkie related crime in Holland has gone down now junkies are kept of the street with free drugs and social care. They got no reason to rob anymore so they don't. It works? Depends, do you want to pay what could be called a ransom through your taxes to keep the junkies in line? Because nothing was solved, all we did in Holland is basically cut the cost of crime by increasing the cost of social well fare. The junkies were not cured, they are just "taken care off".
And when the economy goes down the toilet thanks to the actions of right wingers were do you think they go to cut costs first?
US super prisons don't work either. Or do they? What would be the crime rate if all the super prisons are emptied? Nobody is going to do that test so we wil
Eh, this really ain't that hard. It is similar to how the Nazi's showed us how hate is bad.
This article ain't about the agenda of Lulzsec but on what the results of their actions have revealed about IT security.
Yes, antisec is idiotic, it is however not relevant.
The large number of successful hacks recently have shown IT security is in a bad state. The motivations for those hacks are not relevant nor even that a single group did it.
You pay peanuts, you get monkey's. And in India they won't fall for the glamor of working for a US company, they care only about the money.
I have seen game projects shipped to India from the EU. They still ain't up and running.
One thing to remember, the people working in the coding factories in India and China are NOT the brightest minds. Not because they are Indian or Chinese but because the brightest of China and India got better options.
Why do you think creative content has not yet been shipped abroad? Why do you think Hollywood and its million dollar actors and multi-billion directors have not been completly replaced by cheap asian productions? Japanimation tried and failed (anime doesn't count, it is horribly expensive and produced now in a country with just as high if not higher labour costs as the west). The simpsons is animated with cheap labour but only the boring part, the actual content is still from the US.
It sounds so easy to offshore, go ahead try it yourself. I make my living from recovering the disaster and if you think hiring a US team of developers is expensive, you haven't seen my bills. (If you can stand the bad code, being a project saver is a good way to make a living wihere you don't always have to be on the cutting edge of tech competing with the young kids).
Lovely bit of logic, 9/11 was done with box-cutters and was a hijack. That can be stopped by determined passengers, maybe.
But an exploding bomb? The two examples given WERE successful UP to the point the bomb failed to explode. But if the bombs had been properly made, the passengers would not have been alive enough to tacke the bomber after the explosion.
The whole security thing is the problem you always have with security, as long as the security is effective, nothing seems to happen to show the need for the security.
Think of it like this, that really big guy at the door of that peaceful bar, what the fuck is he there for? It is not as if anybody is trying anything. Nope, because the guard is there.
Want to know what happens when security isn't present at airports? Go back in history and the decade of hijacks and bombings.
It is like saying an electric fence is a waste because none of the cows are trying to break through it...
Well smartass, that was EXACTLY what the parent and the documentary are claiming isn't true. Nature was thought for a long time to be a balanced machine (to many rabbits, the foxes do well reducing the number of rabbits and then the excess of foxes dies as there are fewer rabbits to eat allowing the rabbits to restore themselves).
And the documentary showed how this believe came into being, how it was used and then how it was completely and utter debunked. In nature this does NOT happen. Not that nature doesn't appear to balance out but there is no balancing mechanism in place. It is VERY possible for the foxes to eat all the rabbits. No magic rebalancing act. Nature has plenty of example in all the extinct species.
Welcome to new century, some old ideas are going to be replaced by new ones. Constantly balancing eco system is so last century.
SWG was never a good game, it was buggy as hell and at launch had barely any of the elements that later players took for granted. Simplest example: you walked.
Compared to far more complete games like EQ2 and especially WoW, it was rough but underneat its thick crust of bugs and half completed features was a depth that few games have matched. It wasn't the insane difficulty of a FF or UO either, it was depth but friendly depth. Take for instance the way you build your character, you didn't just have a simple tree with barely explained options you can choose between or the one useful feature at the end of a tree of useless ones. The character build was well explained with clear options and lots of choice.
For crafting you had to rely on other players but it wasn't the EQ2 style "spend 5 minutes to craft a 1 minute item". Once you had made a good item, you could produce it in a factory but you couldn't run it forever because sooner or later you ran out the materials.
SWG was a intresting mix between the UO's of this world and the WoW's. It wasn't as hostile as UO to more casual players but not as idiot proof as WoW. All finished of with just enough of a Star Wars sauce. Yes, it wasn't perfect Star Wars but at least it also wasn't yet more elves and goblins. Yes okay, so you had sword fighters, but they were space opera sword fighters, no cheesy fantasy sword fighters.
No other game has come close. Not so much because other games haven't been good but because they were a different genre. It is as if a System Shock fan is supposed to be happy with any recent shooter including Bioshock. System Shock might not have been perfect but that doesn't mean other games were worthy replacements.
SWG will be missed not so much for what it was, but for what the MMORPG genre has failed to become. There are a dozen WoW clones, there are even some extreme hardcore games but just in the middle, not so much.
Have you tried driving on these "automated" roads of yours? It is hell on the suspension I can tell you. And the other drivers? No regards for other drivers. I just parked on the road for a while to take a leak and did the driver behind me stop? NO! Sirreee, well not until after he had dragged my car for a mile or two down the road. And then he got upset at ME for using the road in the first place, why didn't he just steer around it I asked but he just looked at me like I was mad.
Mad? Not me!
Sadly based on an old newspaper article where a car was hit by a train because the car driver thought he had the right of way on a level crossing...might have been a fluf piece, I was kid when I read it but it wouldn't suprise me.
Really, it is out. Look, it is there, sitting on the windowsill licking its... well, that is just rude... but it is out of the bag in any case. No you can't put it back in the back. Or the case.
Whenever now some new story breaks about the latest means of illegal filesharing and the industry moving against it, I am near instantly asked by non-techies how to do it themselves.
Educate them? What, that artists like Britney Spear would starve to death without your hard earned money? Yeah, I am sure most of the people I know, some of who have trouble making end meet month to month give a shit.
Content production has always relied on the artificial limitation of availability (we only print X amount) to keep the price up. With digital reproduction, this limit has gone. Worse, the cost of distribution is approaching trivial. I can share a movie for a couple of cents. How in the world are you going to persuade me to pay MORE for a SINGLE movie then I pay for my internet connection that can give me hundreds of them?
And yet, movie ticket sales are on the increase. Gaga earns millions. Clearly all this piracy isn't actually affecting anyone. Where are the starving artists, where are the movies that should have been made that are not made (no, the ones that should not have been made but were made do NOT count instead).
It reminds me of the anti-piracy messages in shows like Futurama. Yeah, you sold me, I felt very bad for downloading the entire series... oh wait, I didn't. The cost of purchasing series is just to high, i am not going to pay that much for a piece of plastic. As for watching it on TV, the commercials are just to long, not just the ones that make money, WHY one EARTH do TV stations struggling to keep viewers watching commercial breaks ADD to the length of the breaks by advertising their own station I am WATCHING?
Talk about oversell.
The content industry either re-invents itself or has to just accept the year after year profit increases they been suffering at the hands of pirates (oh, you thought they were making a loss? Nope, in fact investing in music back catalogs is now considered a risk free investment for pension funds).
Educating me? I am educated thank you very much, I know the costs of printing a plastic disc and the cost me of funding the superstar lifestyle of an artist versus the cost of me not funding it.
No more music? I could care less. If all the artists of the world want things to change, let them strike. Every single one of them against me not paying for their work. STRIKE. See if anyone gives a shit. Do you?
I have a tip for you, when you are trying to write a bleeding heart story, don't make the "hero" to be an asshole.
Basically you are saying that someone who disobeyed the laws of the country he was in, got in trouble with the law for breaking the law... Oh nozers!
He got arrested for being an asshole as you yourself admit. End of story.
Or do you think that someone just because they are famous shouldn't have to follow traffic law?
And just how famous do you got to be? Especially since you can't evne be bothered to name him. An athlete eh? Does it count if I been on TV in Holland, can I break traffic laws at will in the US too with your blessing?
You know why these anti-immigration laws pass? Because those that are opposed to it can't come up with anything better then your kind of story.
Why not use as your next example a mexican drug-cartel hit man being arrested as an example of why the police is wrong. That will get keep turned to your point of view REAL fast.
Anyone with a brain not controlled from Redmond knew that Silverlight was always going to be Windows only. Even if support for Linux had been better, people who buy Linux and even OSX bought it at least partially for their ill regard of MS software. Mac users might not hate MS but they also are not just going to install MS software just because an incidental site asks for it. They just continue on to another site.
The world has changed, it has changed so much that for a while (still might be the case) if you GOOGLED for CHROME, you got a PAID MS ad to the site for Inter Explorer. MS paying its BIGGEST rival to advertise a browser you can only use on a OS it already came with for "free" anyway. What is more amazing is that they showed these adds to Apple and Linux users like me. That is how much the world has changed:
MS: Here, we give this browser free with the OS, it is right there on your desktop. Oh, I see you are searching for a replacement for it, do you not want to use ours after ALL? Oh, you are on an OS it doesn't run on... well you sure you don't want to buy a new computer then?
Some people keep going on about the iPad and iPhone not having flash but everyday thousands of them are sold by an audience that doesn't care. If they don't care about flash, what do they care about silverlight? (It might or might not be installable but it sure as hell doesn't come with it by default).
And the alternative for the flash less apple devices? Android. Again, without silverlight pre-installed (if it can even be installed).
The world is not controlled by MS software anymore and what is most amazing is that few seem to care. MS has always hoped that people loved its software so much they would demand the same software to run on other devices. They thought the X-box confirmed this. It didn't (what is windows about the X-box). People are a lot more free from MS lock-in then anyone thought.
Those who actually watched the developments over the years have seen this coming. IE didn't need to totally die for that, the moment "other browsers" became more then statistical anomoly, MS domination had ended because as a website developer you could no longer do a IE only site if you had to depend on real customers.
When the boss bought a macbook, MS died a little because all of a sudden, things had to work on a non-ms OS and the boss suddenly demanded that the company became capable of dealing with non-ms solutions. Want a linux desktop? Look for a boss with a Mac.
Silverlight was pushed as the next big MS thing, that it was doomed was clear from just the fact MS claimed it would support other OS'es. That right there was MS admitting they no longer controlled the user. Any such support depended on the cooperation of not just the "other OS'es" but the users of said systems. It meant there was always going to be a high percentage of people who just didn't going to have it installed and that is not a way to push a new technology. Only those who secretly hoped to go back to the days of IE6 only websites laced with ActiveX swallowed the dog shit.
Anyone who knows that a web application has to be platform independent stayed well clear of it.
Go ahead, proof me wrong, find me a Silverlight developer who actually tested his application on non-MS software to any extent. MS shops bought into a MS sales pitch just as they always done. MS developers sure seem to have short memories.
So basically MS coders have now finally made it possible to create a single piece of software and have it run on ANY computer? As long as it runs the Windows... Windows 8? WOW! Amazing! This tech will SET the WORLD alight and give me apps that look and function exactly the same on my 3 screen desktop as on my phone...
Why is there no Firefox OS? Actually, there are LOTS of apps that use the Mozilla code base to create apps that run on ANY OS the browser runs on. Take firebug. Runs on Linux, OSX and even Windows! And ANY version of Windows far more then MS itself supports with its latest browser.
A further answer can be found in gmail. I like the interface of gmail but why oh why did Google put a DIFFERENT interface on their own phones? Because they know I would have hated the full web interface on such a small screen? Oh.... they know me so well. It is as if they got a direct line to my most secret communications! Magical.
I know MS fanboys got it hard, but really, has MS so little to offer that the notion that you can a website can be seen on single generation of Windows and be rendered without failing on one form factor or the other that amazing to you guys? Oh wait... for MS it is (has a flashback to developing for IE 5.0 for the XDA)
This doesn't affect the eccentric inventor working in his basement. It is about STANDARDS. Standards are created by large companies not individuals. The work of an individual CAN become a standard but how can an individual submarine patent his own patent? No, this only affects those standards created by multiple companies where one party seeks to contribute something that later turns out it has patended. The individual could only be affected if they deliberately create a new thing, seek to make it a standard then reveal at the end they got a second element in it that is secret. There is no way to submarine a patent as part of standard in innocence.
In Holland we got far more parties then an American can count on his toes, even a Hillbilly. Do you think we are any better off?
Our current government is lead by the VVD, they are a liberal sorta right wing party often labelled as the party of business. They are supported by the CDA, a "christian" party, you got Christians in America right? Well, they are a lot like that. They lost pretty big in the last election, punished for their leader BakEllende who combined the wit of Bush with the charm of Blair. They still deliver a lot of the ministers, because they got a lot of experience! (Yes, they were in charge when the economy took a nosedive but surely that is good experience? If you want a captain for your ship, the captain of the Titanic surely comes first to mind?)
Those two parties do not have a majority. They are supported through an open marriage type agreement to the PVV. The PVV is mostly known for its anti-immigrant agenda. Some might think that makes it a right wing party. Problem is that almost ALL its other (claimed) policies it used to present itself during the elections are left-wing and then some. Against cut back on health-care, higher retirement age etc etc.
Recent elections of our senate only worsened things with those 3 now needing the support of a tiny Christian party (drunk on power) who have 1 seat but that is enough for a majority vote on some key issues in exchange ofcourse for a 1 man party to have a LOT of influence. So CDA, trashed in the election continues to rule supported by a party of 1 vote.... democracy in action!
But it gets worse. PVV hates the PvDA, a party 1 seat below the VVD. Their names mean "Part of Labour". Labour in dutch is Arbeid. The party has been blamed for being soft on immigrants, especially the Arab kind. Can you see a funny joke coming up? Yes, the leader of the PVV is fond of calling the PvDA, the "Party of the Arabs". Hilarious!
He blames the party for betraying its own people, once the PvDA was against immigrants taking away the job from dutch labourers and lowering the wages.
This is correct, the PvDA historically was NOT a fan of immigration.
So, the PVV, the party that HATES immigrants, HATES the party that wasagainst immigration. But who then let the immigrants in? Why, the CDA and VVD, they were in charge at the time and wanted the cheap labour and made sure the obstacles were as low as possible. No learning the language or intigrating in the culture. Turks were supposed to work on the assembly line and clean and then piss off again back home. Migrant labourers.
So, the PVV is fighting the party that fought the policy it hates and supports the parties that created the police it hates.
But it gets funnier, in exchange for thougher immigration laws the PVV is totally forgetting its left wing ideals.
But since the PVV can't always be counted up on for a vote, the VVD/CDA also must make deals with the opposition parties on non-pvv supported fronts.
The amount of back room deals is insane and impossible to follow for the average human BUT what is the alternative?
The people have voted and given the country an unworkable government. Do the people want socialism or capitalism? Do they want cheap cleaners or do they want the immigrants out? For instance, I said that the party of VVD is business right? Well, CDA is also strong among farmers. Farmers are also businessmen. Do they therefor support the anti-immigration policies of the parties they tend to vote for? Like kicking the polish migrant workers out? Who work the fields?
AHAH! No... caught in a bit of a split there. The crops need harvesting and only eastern europeans are willing to work hard enough for low enough wages and arrange their own transport on top of it.
But holland got unemployed (not that much but enough to replace all immigrants with ease), so do the left wing parties support forcing the unemployed to take up the jobs? Hell no. Does the right wing support making arrangements to make the jobs attractive to dutch loca
There is no solution. You see a lot of dickheads on this and other forums spout that X should do Y and then totally fail to follow through on their chain of thought.
Take when a story about Syria or North-Korea comes up, people often say the west should intervene. But when the west intervenes, then it is bad. Are they the same people? That would be an intresting bit of research for Slashdot to perform. How consistent are people in their opinion?
Politicians know the answer, they KNOW people are fickle. If the west had not gone into Libya it would have been slammed, if it had gone in on Kadhaffi's side (the guy is very useful in keeping immigrants from Africa in passing through to Europe) it would have been slammed, and now it has gone in on the rebels side it is getting slammed. Both for doing it AND not doing enough.
How can you possibly "win" with a public like this? "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" doesn't even begin to cover it.
Recently the leader of Hezbollah came out in suppor of the Syrian leadership, causing a bit of an issue for arab apologists since apparently it is therefor okay for muslims to kill muslims but not for jews to kill muslims. And this isn't the first time Syria has attacked its own people, if anything, they are restraining themselves this time. Who do you support? It don't matter much, whatever side you support, you end up supporting the killing of people.
And it ain't just the Middle East, you got Germany making statements about human rights when they still shelter nazi war criminals from their just punishment. Since no german government has ever been serious about going after their nazi criminals, and during an election of the most famous german they had to exclude Hitler but assured the world he would NOT have been in top three otherwise... well... just who are they trying to kid?
But that is the world we got, everyone got butter on his head and their paws in the till and then someone tries something and the world got to react and whatever you do, it is wrong.
Really, let all those who critize the Libyan action come up with a better plan that doesn't result in just as big a mess.
NIMBY is the enemy of effective leadership. We don't want a nuclear powerplant, we don't want a coal powerplant, we don't want a hydro power plant, we don't want wind power, we don't want to cut down on your power usage, we don't want to be dependent on foreign power.
True democracy has never existed and never will. The ancient greeks has no true democracy and the modern greeks are showing why.
Greece is bankrupt, the country has since WW2 spend its life on a money drip from the EU and totally mis-managed its own economy. There is virtually no tax collection and corruption is a way of live. Now they find out that if you collect no taxes and spend a fortune as the state on pork projects there will be an imbalance.
The country needs 100.000.000.000 euro in a loan, after they already got one. This from greece which has nothing anybody wants except a tiny island the Turks want. They can never pay the loan off even if the greeks suddenly started paying taxes, stopped the excessive spending and actually started working for a living.
So what are all the greek protesting about? About having to pay taxes, cuts in spending and actually having to start working... because going bankrupt as a nation will make things so much better. The greeks know they got no alternatives left and still they protest.
Democracy, true democracy requires that each voter not only knows about the issue but votes for future, not the now AND not just for his own benefit.
Take this chinese proposal. gosh, the people voted to be able to earn more before having to start paying taxes... good, did they also at the same time vote to have their favorite government spending cut? To have to road in front of their own house to be no longer repaired? For police and other emergency services no longer to service their neighbourhood?
I do not think so. Cut taxes, no cut in spending (and most likely an increase in spending).
The Iceland banking scandal? All those EU people who wished the promised high return on banking there and wanted the freedom to bank anywhere in world and not have the state look into their account? Gosh, when it all went belly up, they sure wanted the state to refund the money they didn't pay taxes from tax money didn't they?
How many american industries always bitching about taxes said no to a tax handout? Wallstreet sure didn't mind going on benefits when it was them doing the benefits? But a family living on the street? No money for them.
We like to think that we humans are a social creature. We are. So are zebra's and a zebra who sees an other zebra stumble and be torn apart by lions thinks only "glad it was not me" and will happily vote for some other zebra to be devoured tomorrow, as long as it isn't him.
True democracy would require a better class of human beings then we are (and yes, that includes me).
The real issue is that representative democracy ALSO requires a better class of human beings then we got.
What type of system we can run with the human beings we got? I am afraid from history, that it ain't much. See the holocausts that just keep on happening. See the vote in California against gay marriage. A vote that cost nobody any money, didn't require any taxes and yet was voted against just because a lot of people don't want some other people to have the same rights.
All you can hope for with the human race is that someone else stumbles before you do when it is feeding time.
They recovered the bodies, identification will be a slow process. Even the bodies found at the time of the disaster took two months to identify.
And identification won't be done by lifting the sheet and having a grieving relative say "yes that is him" unless the french police is very nasty indeed.
It will be done through DNA and records of things like healed bone fractures, dental work, surgery after effects etc.
Greece is in trouble AND taking the EU with it because among its many faults one thing it doesn't have is an effective tax system. Tax evasion is rive. Now, it is possible to run a state with a minimal tax collection but then the citizens NEED to pay for everything out of there own pocket. Greece also has very big welfare state and countless state projects with lots of kickbacks. The money has to come from somewhere.
Basically, tax evasion is not something harmless and cute, it makes those who pay taxes legit pay for the income of others. And gosh, don't it seem the case that those who evade taxes also benefit the most from state protection? Like politicians living on the state still cheating on it? People living in council funded housing? Employing minimum wage slaves who need their income supplemented by the state because working a full job doesn't pay enough?
Just take a look at Greece to see what happens if the state becomes totally ineffective in collecting taxes. And do you think any greek is going "oh well, we did it ourselves, we will have to sort it out ourselves?" No... every single last one is demanding the rest of the world bail it out after having spend decades already on a money drip.
Tax evasion? We should do it old style. Tax is the price for the privilege of living in a country, don't want to pay? Then the privilege is revoked. I at least am willing to pay the extra tax for the bullet of revocing.
I was slightly older then most then the battle between the Duke and Quake raged and well... it took those who were 12 and male to like the duke back then. As it does now.
DNF is like the A-Team movie. When you were a kid you loved it, now that your an adult, you are embarrased you were ever 12.
REALLY, replay the game, it is the kind of humor that young males like. It was as hostile to women back then as it is now because when you are 12, women are scary... oh okay, also when you are nearing 50.
The game hasn't changed, the players have. Well, some of them. Poo slinging? It is the Duke, this is what it was all about. Some people just need to replay the original to remember what they once admired so much.
Only those who back then played Quake instead can bitch about DNF, we were the enlightened, the couragous, the brave, the divine.... yes I used the nick "dirty old man" if I could... what are you trying to say?
There is ONE huge problem with Duke Nukem Forever and nobody seems to get it.
What is a PC game done being reviewed on a console?
Lots of weapons? Do you remember how you selected them? That is right with the row of number keys. Easy and fast to select a weapon. Can't do that on the console. THAT is why Halo has a two gun limit, because the x-box controller lacks a means to very quickly switch weapons.
Same with the inventory items, you can't use half a dozen inventory items on a console, so they limit it.
Duke Nukem Forever just shows just what consoles have removed from games. Checkpoints? For the Duke? That nobody evens cries out about this horrow shows how much we have lost.
Is it any wonder they added poop slinging? It is the level a console player would enjoy.
He considers the novel "Forever" to be harmful to children. It is a book aimed at kids to help them understand their sexuality and feelings as they grow into their teens and become young adults.
It is probably not a book a 6 year old would be intrested in but won't harm them as a 6 year old who IS interested in it and can understand the subject matter, is EXACTLY the audience. Young people curious about the emotions happening to them. Who is to say a child of few more years might not be interested? Or a young child observing older siblings?
Where do you start to censor and where do you stop? Ultimately that is partly up to a parent. Nobody else can unless you want someone else to decide what you can watch.
Because for every parent who thinks Forever is bad for kids, there is someone who thinks Anne Frank should be banned or countless other "controversial" books that might give people the "wrong" idea.
Be careful wishing for a censored net, you just might get it.
Anyway, the censored net already exists, you can buy it. They block access to youtube, so you are safe from harmfull influences. Why should google fund a web project that will block itself? Buy some Halal or Christian ISP service. All the filters you could possibly want to make sure you kid never sees anything that might cause it to ask questions.
Well, I think I spotted why you don't have any funds. Let me guess, you would ALSO create an airliner with the slogan: We love crying babies!
It seems no doubt sensible to you to offer a service to those nobody else wants to be around. Why not put up an apartment complex specially catering to people who love to drill in walls 24/7, have dogs that bark non-stop, the afore mentioned crying babies and think the window is the garbage disposal?
Guess what, the obnoxious don't like each others presence. Being obnoxious is alright for me, it is not alright for YOU!
A local computer store tried this a few years ago: They had multiple counters, most for normal service with some tech questions, a tech one with a warning that expert advice here might take a while and a note of when the best times were to get it and a checkout only.
Gosh, how many people do you think chose the correct line? They were mostly pretty good with sending customers to the right line but gave up on the whole concept when internet shopping took off and all the fast customers started to order online anyway. To many customers thinking THEIR questions where quick enough to have everyone else wait in the checkout line.
People are assholes who can't stand other assholes.
Why do think Home Cinema has taken such a flight? Because it is cheaper? Hell no. Because it is better quality? Hell no! Because I can be my own asshole without being exposed to others? YES!
I can eat my own snacks the way I want it without having to listen to you eating yours.
I got a home cinema setup and avoid regular ones like the plague.
Utrecht is a central city in Holland where pretty much all the railway lines intersect for no smart reason.
So, if there is an issue at Utrecht like a fire alarm at the control center, there better be a backup or all train travel in Holland is seriously affected.
Luckily the backup control center is there.... right there... in the same building... small building... affected by the same fire alarm...
But hey, lets not immidiately order a load of busses to deal with stranded passengers, people have become so used to the troubles that they will no doubt fix it themselves, yet again.
You can't run complex operations on a shoe-string budget and expect to continue to work without a hitch. Yet we cut back on them or use budget operators because... well... we take the risk and then bitch about but will still refuse to fund public transport or book the cheapest flight possible.
That is why there isn't a good backup solution, you are not willing to pay for it.
Slashdot Mirror
A criminologist who spend his live looking at ways to deal with criminals made this conclusion before taking his own life.
What did he mean? Nobody can agree on that, at least not other criminologists who make their living coming up with new things to try. That is hardly suprising, were they to accept his final conclusion, they would be out of job.
So what does it mean? First, you have to understand statistics and how easily they can be manipulated. Lets examine the most commonly used metric to determine the success of a criminal treatment program. Recidivism. That is, what percentage of criminals commit a crime again...
Oh wait, there the problem starts already. That is NOT what recidivism is. It is a common lie that is easy to swallow but it is a LIE.
Here is the real definition of recidivism as it exist in modern society:
The recidivism rate is the percentage of people who having been found guilty of a crime are linked to another crime within a certain timeframe and have this link recorded.
What is the difference? Well, the police does not have a 100% success rate at solving crimes. So it stands to reason not all those who commit a crime are actually found guilty for it. So, if a known criminal commits another crime but is not found GUILTY for it, he doesn't count. Conviction rates are very very low and many crimes do not even get reported.
Take rape, we know many of them do not get reported, so the changes of a rapist being actually being sentenced for another rape are pretty low. That is why serial criminals are so common.
Nonetheless, those who preach a certain method of dealing with criminals often claim they get a low percentage of recidivism. How low? This is an industry in which a reduction from 72% to 70% is considered a major breakthrough. Within statistcal error rate you say? Why yes, it is, that should tell you all you need to know by itself.
The only 100% effective measure against criminal repeating himself is the death penalty and we tend to find that a bit much for shop lifting.
All other methods? Hard to compare. As said, it depends on the effectivness of the police and justice system, not just in finding and convicting criminals but in linking them together.
In Holland we don't have consecutive jail times. This means there is no motivation for the police to solve all crimes, if they know you done ten robberies, they go to court with the ones they feel they got the best evidence on and the rest remain officially unsolved. In germany they don't do this, possibly one of the reasons the germans got a far higher success rate. How do you compare then different methodes when the statistics are gathered very differently? You can't.
For instance, it is often said the US has high crime rates. WRONG, the murder rate in the US vs Holland is pretty much the same. Yes there are undoubtely very rough areas in America but Holland got no go areas as well, they are small of course but so is the whole country. Per head. the crime rates are fairly similar.
Part of the problem is that people are very ideological about this. They claim X works best not from evidence but because they feel it should be the best method. This goes both for the hardliners and the bleeding hearts. Who is right?
Junkie related crime in Holland has gone down now junkies are kept of the street with free drugs and social care. They got no reason to rob anymore so they don't. It works? Depends, do you want to pay what could be called a ransom through your taxes to keep the junkies in line? Because nothing was solved, all we did in Holland is basically cut the cost of crime by increasing the cost of social well fare. The junkies were not cured, they are just "taken care off".
And when the economy goes down the toilet thanks to the actions of right wingers were do you think they go to cut costs first?
US super prisons don't work either. Or do they? What would be the crime rate if all the super prisons are emptied? Nobody is going to do that test so we wil
Eh, this really ain't that hard. It is similar to how the Nazi's showed us how hate is bad.
This article ain't about the agenda of Lulzsec but on what the results of their actions have revealed about IT security.
Yes, antisec is idiotic, it is however not relevant.
The large number of successful hacks recently have shown IT security is in a bad state. The motivations for those hacks are not relevant nor even that a single group did it.
You pay peanuts, you get monkey's. And in India they won't fall for the glamor of working for a US company, they care only about the money.
I have seen game projects shipped to India from the EU. They still ain't up and running.
One thing to remember, the people working in the coding factories in India and China are NOT the brightest minds. Not because they are Indian or Chinese but because the brightest of China and India got better options.
Why do you think creative content has not yet been shipped abroad? Why do you think Hollywood and its million dollar actors and multi-billion directors have not been completly replaced by cheap asian productions? Japanimation tried and failed (anime doesn't count, it is horribly expensive and produced now in a country with just as high if not higher labour costs as the west). The simpsons is animated with cheap labour but only the boring part, the actual content is still from the US.
It sounds so easy to offshore, go ahead try it yourself. I make my living from recovering the disaster and if you think hiring a US team of developers is expensive, you haven't seen my bills. (If you can stand the bad code, being a project saver is a good way to make a living wihere you don't always have to be on the cutting edge of tech competing with the young kids).
Lovely bit of logic, 9/11 was done with box-cutters and was a hijack. That can be stopped by determined passengers, maybe.
But an exploding bomb? The two examples given WERE successful UP to the point the bomb failed to explode. But if the bombs had been properly made, the passengers would not have been alive enough to tacke the bomber after the explosion.
The whole security thing is the problem you always have with security, as long as the security is effective, nothing seems to happen to show the need for the security.
Think of it like this, that really big guy at the door of that peaceful bar, what the fuck is he there for? It is not as if anybody is trying anything. Nope, because the guard is there.
Want to know what happens when security isn't present at airports? Go back in history and the decade of hijacks and bombings.
It is like saying an electric fence is a waste because none of the cows are trying to break through it...
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=8+year+old&btnmeta_news_search=Search+News
Gosh, that wasn't so hard was it? Remember though, Islam is the religion of peace.
Well smartass, that was EXACTLY what the parent and the documentary are claiming isn't true. Nature was thought for a long time to be a balanced machine (to many rabbits, the foxes do well reducing the number of rabbits and then the excess of foxes dies as there are fewer rabbits to eat allowing the rabbits to restore themselves).
And the documentary showed how this believe came into being, how it was used and then how it was completely and utter debunked. In nature this does NOT happen. Not that nature doesn't appear to balance out but there is no balancing mechanism in place. It is VERY possible for the foxes to eat all the rabbits. No magic rebalancing act. Nature has plenty of example in all the extinct species.
Welcome to new century, some old ideas are going to be replaced by new ones. Constantly balancing eco system is so last century.
SWG was never a good game, it was buggy as hell and at launch had barely any of the elements that later players took for granted. Simplest example: you walked.
Compared to far more complete games like EQ2 and especially WoW, it was rough but underneat its thick crust of bugs and half completed features was a depth that few games have matched. It wasn't the insane difficulty of a FF or UO either, it was depth but friendly depth. Take for instance the way you build your character, you didn't just have a simple tree with barely explained options you can choose between or the one useful feature at the end of a tree of useless ones. The character build was well explained with clear options and lots of choice.
For crafting you had to rely on other players but it wasn't the EQ2 style "spend 5 minutes to craft a 1 minute item". Once you had made a good item, you could produce it in a factory but you couldn't run it forever because sooner or later you ran out the materials.
SWG was a intresting mix between the UO's of this world and the WoW's. It wasn't as hostile as UO to more casual players but not as idiot proof as WoW. All finished of with just enough of a Star Wars sauce. Yes, it wasn't perfect Star Wars but at least it also wasn't yet more elves and goblins. Yes okay, so you had sword fighters, but they were space opera sword fighters, no cheesy fantasy sword fighters.
No other game has come close. Not so much because other games haven't been good but because they were a different genre. It is as if a System Shock fan is supposed to be happy with any recent shooter including Bioshock. System Shock might not have been perfect but that doesn't mean other games were worthy replacements.
SWG will be missed not so much for what it was, but for what the MMORPG genre has failed to become. There are a dozen WoW clones, there are even some extreme hardcore games but just in the middle, not so much.
Have you tried driving on these "automated" roads of yours? It is hell on the suspension I can tell you. And the other drivers? No regards for other drivers. I just parked on the road for a while to take a leak and did the driver behind me stop? NO! Sirreee, well not until after he had dragged my car for a mile or two down the road. And then he got upset at ME for using the road in the first place, why didn't he just steer around it I asked but he just looked at me like I was mad.
Mad? Not me!
Sadly based on an old newspaper article where a car was hit by a train because the car driver thought he had the right of way on a level crossing...might have been a fluf piece, I was kid when I read it but it wouldn't suprise me.
Really, it is out. Look, it is there, sitting on the windowsill licking its... well, that is just rude... but it is out of the bag in any case. No you can't put it back in the back. Or the case.
Whenever now some new story breaks about the latest means of illegal filesharing and the industry moving against it, I am near instantly asked by non-techies how to do it themselves.
Educate them? What, that artists like Britney Spear would starve to death without your hard earned money? Yeah, I am sure most of the people I know, some of who have trouble making end meet month to month give a shit.
Content production has always relied on the artificial limitation of availability (we only print X amount) to keep the price up. With digital reproduction, this limit has gone. Worse, the cost of distribution is approaching trivial. I can share a movie for a couple of cents. How in the world are you going to persuade me to pay MORE for a SINGLE movie then I pay for my internet connection that can give me hundreds of them?
And yet, movie ticket sales are on the increase. Gaga earns millions. Clearly all this piracy isn't actually affecting anyone. Where are the starving artists, where are the movies that should have been made that are not made (no, the ones that should not have been made but were made do NOT count instead).
It reminds me of the anti-piracy messages in shows like Futurama. Yeah, you sold me, I felt very bad for downloading the entire series... oh wait, I didn't. The cost of purchasing series is just to high, i am not going to pay that much for a piece of plastic. As for watching it on TV, the commercials are just to long, not just the ones that make money, WHY one EARTH do TV stations struggling to keep viewers watching commercial breaks ADD to the length of the breaks by advertising their own station I am WATCHING?
Talk about oversell.
The content industry either re-invents itself or has to just accept the year after year profit increases they been suffering at the hands of pirates (oh, you thought they were making a loss? Nope, in fact investing in music back catalogs is now considered a risk free investment for pension funds).
Educating me? I am educated thank you very much, I know the costs of printing a plastic disc and the cost me of funding the superstar lifestyle of an artist versus the cost of me not funding it.
No more music? I could care less. If all the artists of the world want things to change, let them strike. Every single one of them against me not paying for their work. STRIKE. See if anyone gives a shit. Do you?
I have a tip for you, when you are trying to write a bleeding heart story, don't make the "hero" to be an asshole.
Basically you are saying that someone who disobeyed the laws of the country he was in, got in trouble with the law for breaking the law... Oh nozers!
He got arrested for being an asshole as you yourself admit. End of story.
Or do you think that someone just because they are famous shouldn't have to follow traffic law?
And just how famous do you got to be? Especially since you can't evne be bothered to name him. An athlete eh? Does it count if I been on TV in Holland, can I break traffic laws at will in the US too with your blessing?
You know why these anti-immigration laws pass? Because those that are opposed to it can't come up with anything better then your kind of story.
Why not use as your next example a mexican drug-cartel hit man being arrested as an example of why the police is wrong. That will get keep turned to your point of view REAL fast.
An elder Armanian is lying on his death bed surrounded by his sons and grandsons as he passes on his final lessons:
Remember my children, always defend the jews.
The eldest son asks confused: Why the jews?
The elder answers: Because when they are gone, we are next.
Anyone with a brain not controlled from Redmond knew that Silverlight was always going to be Windows only. Even if support for Linux had been better, people who buy Linux and even OSX bought it at least partially for their ill regard of MS software. Mac users might not hate MS but they also are not just going to install MS software just because an incidental site asks for it. They just continue on to another site.
The world has changed, it has changed so much that for a while (still might be the case) if you GOOGLED for CHROME, you got a PAID MS ad to the site for Inter Explorer. MS paying its BIGGEST rival to advertise a browser you can only use on a OS it already came with for "free" anyway. What is more amazing is that they showed these adds to Apple and Linux users like me. That is how much the world has changed:
MS: Here, we give this browser free with the OS, it is right there on your desktop. Oh, I see you are searching for a replacement for it, do you not want to use ours after ALL? Oh, you are on an OS it doesn't run on... well you sure you don't want to buy a new computer then?
Some people keep going on about the iPad and iPhone not having flash but everyday thousands of them are sold by an audience that doesn't care. If they don't care about flash, what do they care about silverlight? (It might or might not be installable but it sure as hell doesn't come with it by default).
And the alternative for the flash less apple devices? Android. Again, without silverlight pre-installed (if it can even be installed).
The world is not controlled by MS software anymore and what is most amazing is that few seem to care. MS has always hoped that people loved its software so much they would demand the same software to run on other devices. They thought the X-box confirmed this. It didn't (what is windows about the X-box). People are a lot more free from MS lock-in then anyone thought.
Those who actually watched the developments over the years have seen this coming. IE didn't need to totally die for that, the moment "other browsers" became more then statistical anomoly, MS domination had ended because as a website developer you could no longer do a IE only site if you had to depend on real customers.
When the boss bought a macbook, MS died a little because all of a sudden, things had to work on a non-ms OS and the boss suddenly demanded that the company became capable of dealing with non-ms solutions. Want a linux desktop? Look for a boss with a Mac.
Silverlight was pushed as the next big MS thing, that it was doomed was clear from just the fact MS claimed it would support other OS'es. That right there was MS admitting they no longer controlled the user. Any such support depended on the cooperation of not just the "other OS'es" but the users of said systems. It meant there was always going to be a high percentage of people who just didn't going to have it installed and that is not a way to push a new technology. Only those who secretly hoped to go back to the days of IE6 only websites laced with ActiveX swallowed the dog shit.
Anyone who knows that a web application has to be platform independent stayed well clear of it.
Go ahead, proof me wrong, find me a Silverlight developer who actually tested his application on non-MS software to any extent. MS shops bought into a MS sales pitch just as they always done. MS developers sure seem to have short memories.
So basically MS coders have now finally made it possible to create a single piece of software and have it run on ANY computer? As long as it runs the Windows... Windows 8? WOW! Amazing! This tech will SET the WORLD alight and give me apps that look and function exactly the same on my 3 screen desktop as on my phone...
Why is there no Firefox OS? Actually, there are LOTS of apps that use the Mozilla code base to create apps that run on ANY OS the browser runs on. Take firebug. Runs on Linux, OSX and even Windows! And ANY version of Windows far more then MS itself supports with its latest browser.
A further answer can be found in gmail. I like the interface of gmail but why oh why did Google put a DIFFERENT interface on their own phones? Because they know I would have hated the full web interface on such a small screen? Oh.... they know me so well. It is as if they got a direct line to my most secret communications! Magical.
I know MS fanboys got it hard, but really, has MS so little to offer that the notion that you can a website can be seen on single generation of Windows and be rendered without failing on one form factor or the other that amazing to you guys? Oh wait... for MS it is (has a flashback to developing for IE 5.0 for the XDA)
THE HORROR, OH THE HORROR!
A) Joce640k Should vote for the increase in salary of goverment employees and not vote for the guy who offers the biggest tax cut.
B) Joce640k Should stop trying reduce spending by trying to make institutions be profitable regardless of the effects.
C) Joce640k Should stop voting for senators that are wholly in the pocket of big business just because they promised him a tax cut.
The patent office used to work, then cut backs came along. Now it doesn't. Who voted for the cutbacks?
This doesn't affect the eccentric inventor working in his basement. It is about STANDARDS. Standards are created by large companies not individuals. The work of an individual CAN become a standard but how can an individual submarine patent his own patent? No, this only affects those standards created by multiple companies where one party seeks to contribute something that later turns out it has patended. The individual could only be affected if they deliberately create a new thing, seek to make it a standard then reveal at the end they got a second element in it that is secret. There is no way to submarine a patent as part of standard in innocence.
In Holland we got far more parties then an American can count on his toes, even a Hillbilly. Do you think we are any better off?
Our current government is lead by the VVD, they are a liberal sorta right wing party often labelled as the party of business. They are supported by the CDA, a "christian" party, you got Christians in America right? Well, they are a lot like that. They lost pretty big in the last election, punished for their leader BakEllende who combined the wit of Bush with the charm of Blair. They still deliver a lot of the ministers, because they got a lot of experience! (Yes, they were in charge when the economy took a nosedive but surely that is good experience? If you want a captain for your ship, the captain of the Titanic surely comes first to mind?)
Those two parties do not have a majority. They are supported through an open marriage type agreement to the PVV. The PVV is mostly known for its anti-immigrant agenda. Some might think that makes it a right wing party. Problem is that almost ALL its other (claimed) policies it used to present itself during the elections are left-wing and then some. Against cut back on health-care, higher retirement age etc etc.
Recent elections of our senate only worsened things with those 3 now needing the support of a tiny Christian party (drunk on power) who have 1 seat but that is enough for a majority vote on some key issues in exchange ofcourse for a 1 man party to have a LOT of influence. So CDA, trashed in the election continues to rule supported by a party of 1 vote.... democracy in action!
But it gets worse. PVV hates the PvDA, a party 1 seat below the VVD. Their names mean "Part of Labour". Labour in dutch is Arbeid. The party has been blamed for being soft on immigrants, especially the Arab kind. Can you see a funny joke coming up? Yes, the leader of the PVV is fond of calling the PvDA, the "Party of the Arabs". Hilarious!
He blames the party for betraying its own people, once the PvDA was against immigrants taking away the job from dutch labourers and lowering the wages.
This is correct, the PvDA historically was NOT a fan of immigration.
So, the PVV, the party that HATES immigrants, HATES the party that wasagainst immigration. But who then let the immigrants in? Why, the CDA and VVD, they were in charge at the time and wanted the cheap labour and made sure the obstacles were as low as possible. No learning the language or intigrating in the culture. Turks were supposed to work on the assembly line and clean and then piss off again back home. Migrant labourers.
So, the PVV is fighting the party that fought the policy it hates and supports the parties that created the police it hates.
But it gets funnier, in exchange for thougher immigration laws the PVV is totally forgetting its left wing ideals.
But since the PVV can't always be counted up on for a vote, the VVD/CDA also must make deals with the opposition parties on non-pvv supported fronts.
The amount of back room deals is insane and impossible to follow for the average human BUT what is the alternative?
The people have voted and given the country an unworkable government. Do the people want socialism or capitalism? Do they want cheap cleaners or do they want the immigrants out? For instance, I said that the party of VVD is business right? Well, CDA is also strong among farmers. Farmers are also businessmen. Do they therefor support the anti-immigration policies of the parties they tend to vote for? Like kicking the polish migrant workers out? Who work the fields?
AHAH! No... caught in a bit of a split there. The crops need harvesting and only eastern europeans are willing to work hard enough for low enough wages and arrange their own transport on top of it.
But holland got unemployed (not that much but enough to replace all immigrants with ease), so do the left wing parties support forcing the unemployed to take up the jobs? Hell no. Does the right wing support making arrangements to make the jobs attractive to dutch loca
There is no solution. You see a lot of dickheads on this and other forums spout that X should do Y and then totally fail to follow through on their chain of thought.
Take when a story about Syria or North-Korea comes up, people often say the west should intervene. But when the west intervenes, then it is bad. Are they the same people? That would be an intresting bit of research for Slashdot to perform. How consistent are people in their opinion?
Politicians know the answer, they KNOW people are fickle. If the west had not gone into Libya it would have been slammed, if it had gone in on Kadhaffi's side (the guy is very useful in keeping immigrants from Africa in passing through to Europe) it would have been slammed, and now it has gone in on the rebels side it is getting slammed. Both for doing it AND not doing enough.
How can you possibly "win" with a public like this? "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" doesn't even begin to cover it.
Recently the leader of Hezbollah came out in suppor of the Syrian leadership, causing a bit of an issue for arab apologists since apparently it is therefor okay for muslims to kill muslims but not for jews to kill muslims. And this isn't the first time Syria has attacked its own people, if anything, they are restraining themselves this time. Who do you support? It don't matter much, whatever side you support, you end up supporting the killing of people.
And it ain't just the Middle East, you got Germany making statements about human rights when they still shelter nazi war criminals from their just punishment. Since no german government has ever been serious about going after their nazi criminals, and during an election of the most famous german they had to exclude Hitler but assured the world he would NOT have been in top three otherwise... well... just who are they trying to kid?
But that is the world we got, everyone got butter on his head and their paws in the till and then someone tries something and the world got to react and whatever you do, it is wrong.
Really, let all those who critize the Libyan action come up with a better plan that doesn't result in just as big a mess.
NIMBY is the enemy of effective leadership. We don't want a nuclear powerplant, we don't want a coal powerplant, we don't want a hydro power plant, we don't want wind power, we don't want to cut down on your power usage, we don't want to be dependent on foreign power.
Get out of that one.
True democracy has never existed and never will. The ancient greeks has no true democracy and the modern greeks are showing why.
Greece is bankrupt, the country has since WW2 spend its life on a money drip from the EU and totally mis-managed its own economy. There is virtually no tax collection and corruption is a way of live. Now they find out that if you collect no taxes and spend a fortune as the state on pork projects there will be an imbalance.
The country needs 100.000.000.000 euro in a loan, after they already got one. This from greece which has nothing anybody wants except a tiny island the Turks want. They can never pay the loan off even if the greeks suddenly started paying taxes, stopped the excessive spending and actually started working for a living.
So what are all the greek protesting about? About having to pay taxes, cuts in spending and actually having to start working... because going bankrupt as a nation will make things so much better. The greeks know they got no alternatives left and still they protest.
Democracy, true democracy requires that each voter not only knows about the issue but votes for future, not the now AND not just for his own benefit.
Take this chinese proposal. gosh, the people voted to be able to earn more before having to start paying taxes... good, did they also at the same time vote to have their favorite government spending cut? To have to road in front of their own house to be no longer repaired? For police and other emergency services no longer to service their neighbourhood?
I do not think so. Cut taxes, no cut in spending (and most likely an increase in spending).
The Iceland banking scandal? All those EU people who wished the promised high return on banking there and wanted the freedom to bank anywhere in world and not have the state look into their account? Gosh, when it all went belly up, they sure wanted the state to refund the money they didn't pay taxes from tax money didn't they?
How many american industries always bitching about taxes said no to a tax handout? Wallstreet sure didn't mind going on benefits when it was them doing the benefits? But a family living on the street? No money for them.
We like to think that we humans are a social creature. We are. So are zebra's and a zebra who sees an other zebra stumble and be torn apart by lions thinks only "glad it was not me" and will happily vote for some other zebra to be devoured tomorrow, as long as it isn't him.
True democracy would require a better class of human beings then we are (and yes, that includes me).
The real issue is that representative democracy ALSO requires a better class of human beings then we got.
What type of system we can run with the human beings we got? I am afraid from history, that it ain't much. See the holocausts that just keep on happening. See the vote in California against gay marriage. A vote that cost nobody any money, didn't require any taxes and yet was voted against just because a lot of people don't want some other people to have the same rights.
All you can hope for with the human race is that someone else stumbles before you do when it is feeding time.
They recovered the bodies, identification will be a slow process. Even the bodies found at the time of the disaster took two months to identify.
And identification won't be done by lifting the sheet and having a grieving relative say "yes that is him" unless the french police is very nasty indeed.
It will be done through DNA and records of things like healed bone fractures, dental work, surgery after effects etc.
Greece is in trouble AND taking the EU with it because among its many faults one thing it doesn't have is an effective tax system. Tax evasion is rive. Now, it is possible to run a state with a minimal tax collection but then the citizens NEED to pay for everything out of there own pocket. Greece also has very big welfare state and countless state projects with lots of kickbacks. The money has to come from somewhere.
Basically, tax evasion is not something harmless and cute, it makes those who pay taxes legit pay for the income of others. And gosh, don't it seem the case that those who evade taxes also benefit the most from state protection? Like politicians living on the state still cheating on it? People living in council funded housing? Employing minimum wage slaves who need their income supplemented by the state because working a full job doesn't pay enough?
Just take a look at Greece to see what happens if the state becomes totally ineffective in collecting taxes. And do you think any greek is going "oh well, we did it ourselves, we will have to sort it out ourselves?" No... every single last one is demanding the rest of the world bail it out after having spend decades already on a money drip.
Tax evasion? We should do it old style. Tax is the price for the privilege of living in a country, don't want to pay? Then the privilege is revoked. I at least am willing to pay the extra tax for the bullet of revocing.
I was slightly older then most then the battle between the Duke and Quake raged and well... it took those who were 12 and male to like the duke back then. As it does now.
DNF is like the A-Team movie. When you were a kid you loved it, now that your an adult, you are embarrased you were ever 12.
REALLY, replay the game, it is the kind of humor that young males like. It was as hostile to women back then as it is now because when you are 12, women are scary... oh okay, also when you are nearing 50.
The game hasn't changed, the players have. Well, some of them. Poo slinging? It is the Duke, this is what it was all about. Some people just need to replay the original to remember what they once admired so much.
Only those who back then played Quake instead can bitch about DNF, we were the enlightened, the couragous, the brave, the divine.... yes I used the nick "dirty old man" if I could... what are you trying to say?
There is ONE huge problem with Duke Nukem Forever and nobody seems to get it.
What is a PC game done being reviewed on a console?
Lots of weapons? Do you remember how you selected them? That is right with the row of number keys. Easy and fast to select a weapon. Can't do that on the console. THAT is why Halo has a two gun limit, because the x-box controller lacks a means to very quickly switch weapons.
Same with the inventory items, you can't use half a dozen inventory items on a console, so they limit it.
Duke Nukem Forever just shows just what consoles have removed from games. Checkpoints? For the Duke? That nobody evens cries out about this horrow shows how much we have lost.
Is it any wonder they added poop slinging? It is the level a console player would enjoy.
The Duke is dead, the consoles killed him.
He considers the novel "Forever" to be harmful to children. It is a book aimed at kids to help them understand their sexuality and feelings as they grow into their teens and become young adults.
It is probably not a book a 6 year old would be intrested in but won't harm them as a 6 year old who IS interested in it and can understand the subject matter, is EXACTLY the audience. Young people curious about the emotions happening to them. Who is to say a child of few more years might not be interested? Or a young child observing older siblings?
Where do you start to censor and where do you stop? Ultimately that is partly up to a parent. Nobody else can unless you want someone else to decide what you can watch.
Because for every parent who thinks Forever is bad for kids, there is someone who thinks Anne Frank should be banned or countless other "controversial" books that might give people the "wrong" idea.
Be careful wishing for a censored net, you just might get it.
Anyway, the censored net already exists, you can buy it. They block access to youtube, so you are safe from harmfull influences. Why should google fund a web project that will block itself? Buy some Halal or Christian ISP service. All the filters you could possibly want to make sure you kid never sees anything that might cause it to ask questions.
Well, I think I spotted why you don't have any funds. Let me guess, you would ALSO create an airliner with the slogan: We love crying babies!
It seems no doubt sensible to you to offer a service to those nobody else wants to be around. Why not put up an apartment complex specially catering to people who love to drill in walls 24/7, have dogs that bark non-stop, the afore mentioned crying babies and think the window is the garbage disposal?
Guess what, the obnoxious don't like each others presence. Being obnoxious is alright for me, it is not alright for YOU!
A local computer store tried this a few years ago: They had multiple counters, most for normal service with some tech questions, a tech one with a warning that expert advice here might take a while and a note of when the best times were to get it and a checkout only.
Gosh, how many people do you think chose the correct line? They were mostly pretty good with sending customers to the right line but gave up on the whole concept when internet shopping took off and all the fast customers started to order online anyway. To many customers thinking THEIR questions where quick enough to have everyone else wait in the checkout line.
People are assholes who can't stand other assholes.
Why do think Home Cinema has taken such a flight? Because it is cheaper? Hell no. Because it is better quality? Hell no! Because I can be my own asshole without being exposed to others? YES!
I can eat my own snacks the way I want it without having to listen to you eating yours.
I got a home cinema setup and avoid regular ones like the plague.
Utrecht is a central city in Holland where pretty much all the railway lines intersect for no smart reason.
So, if there is an issue at Utrecht like a fire alarm at the control center, there better be a backup or all train travel in Holland is seriously affected.
Luckily the backup control center is there.... right there... in the same building... small building... affected by the same fire alarm...
But hey, lets not immidiately order a load of busses to deal with stranded passengers, people have become so used to the troubles that they will no doubt fix it themselves, yet again.
You can't run complex operations on a shoe-string budget and expect to continue to work without a hitch. Yet we cut back on them or use budget operators because... well... we take the risk and then bitch about but will still refuse to fund public transport or book the cheapest flight possible.
That is why there isn't a good backup solution, you are not willing to pay for it.