And treating well might mean that Assange will not be executed or tortured, but might still receive 100000 year sentence in jail without possibility for parole.
The question is that is somebody going to pay this? In normal cases the man is going to pay it, but how about this case? And how is the property is going to be divided in divorce?
And in my opinion government shouldn't on purpose get involved in creating broken families and creating mental traumas for children as it is unethical even though similar cases may happen in real life as well.
The problem is not just the sex. One of the undercover cops married and had two children with one he was supposed to spy. When the woman finds out this deception she might very well want to divorce, get alimony, child support etc. Who is going to pay these things? And what kind of mental scars will this kind of deception leave to children?
It is quite likely that sooner or later the deception has to be revealed. Unless of course, the undercover cop will play this role until he dies of old age, is willing to live in deception in rest of his age and not get real family for himself.
In UK case there wasn't just sex. The undercover cop married and even had two children with the woman he was supposed to spy.
BTW, in Finland police quite recently got permission to do undercover operations. Soon afterwards there was a case where undercover police became the new boyfriend of a woman suspected (and later convicted) of killing his husband.
It is also good if you are deaf, mute, if there is so much noise that phone call wouldn't work, if radio signal is too poor for a call, if the telephone network is congested etc.
Actually, I think that the Finnish church is trying to do its best and balancing between liberal majority and small, but conservative minority (who are nowhere near as fundamentalist as the fundamentalists in USA).
The archbishop said that being a gay is not a sin and even the religiously conservative woman who was on the TV show has tried to backpedal by saying that she has gay friends. And it seems that quite many at the church have a panic as the number of people resigning seems to be constantly increasing and if this continues long, it will be huge blow for the church.
During just few days over 20 000 persons have resigned which is huge number compared to the number of people who resign during the whole year. For last 10 years the number of people who resign has been between 13000-52000 persons.
Although I am an atheist and a gay I start to feel a bit sorry for most priest in the Finnish church. Even though I am happy that people became less religious, I feel sorry for them, because most of them are decent people and don't hate gays.
I haven't ever heard before about this kind of things in Finland although I often speak with persons from atheistic organizations, so I think it must be quite rare. Are you sure they weren't Jehova's Witnesses?
I am an atheist and a gay, but I feel somewhat sorry for the Finnish church for this situation. Most of the priests, bishops etc are pretty decent and moderate people and not any hate mongers. And the religious people on the TV program didn't really represent the church (many of them were just lay members of the church and not priests) and although they were more fundamentalist than church and most members of the church, even they weren't that bad in my opinion.
I think that many atheists and gays in Finland are also a bit surprised that the public reaction has been so strong. On the other hand, I am happy that the church is slowly losing its members and influence. It is finally time for the people to get rid of the religions and base their thinking on humanistic and rational values which has already happened to most part, although majority of the people in Finland are still officially members of the church even though most people are extremely secular and visit churches only during funerals and weddings.
Frankly, cursive is stupid, and people who use it today are just trying to make themselves look erudite.
For some of us, cursive is the only writing system we have learned to write. At school block capitals and cursive were the only writing systems that were taught to us. Some other students seemed to learn to write using lower case block letters without being taught it, but I never learned it except some symbols that were common in mathematics or physics (like letter e). That is why I usually use cursive if I have to write something by hand (and using capital block letters if I want be 100 percent sure that others will be able to interpret my handwriting correctly without any mistakes).
I suspect that only quite small percentage of the photos or videos is truely shocking. Probably most of them are just indecent, somewhat offending or disgusting.
Of course every now and then there will be truely shocking material, but I don't it is that serious if you don't see it too often. And at least for me, images of shocking material aren't that shocking. But animal abuse or torture videos which often end when the victim is killed, are quite horrifying -- and I have seen that kind of videos.
But I don't think I have been scarred for life for seeing those videos as I know it is something that has already happened and there is nothing I or anyone else can do to undo it. However, what is troubling me a great deal, are ongoing human right abuses, ethnic cleansings etc. I often have serious trouble falling asleep if I have read for example what Israel is doing to Palestinians without any real opposition from international community.
In Finland they started DAB broadcasts in 1998 but the system was shut down in 2005. I think it was shut down because people just didn't buy DAB receivers.
I am not sure about Scandinavian countries, but at least in Finland you don't have to carry any kind of id with you. However, if police suspects that you have done some crime, then you probably have to proof your identity, but even that doesn't require ID card. And if you want to open bank account etc, then you have to have some kind official proof of your identity (at least ID card, passport and relatively new drivers licence are accepted as proof).
And even though you can get an ID card, you don't have to get one if you don't want to. I think that most people I know, have only passport and drivers licence but not the general ID card.
I think that there are at least two things that might make using nuclear bomb difficult in this case:
1) Water pressure is high because the sea is so deep. Ordinary nuclear device probably won't work at that kind of pressure and needs thick protective case, which makes the diameter of the bomb even larger.
2) In order to prevent radioactive leak, the bomb should be detonated deep underground. But it is not easy to dig several hundreds of meters deep well, when the sea depth is 1.5 kilometers. They could use oil drilling equipment to do this, but even that would take some time and the diameter of the well might not be enough for the nuclear device.
It is true it depends on how they are going to use this software, but I find it troubling. If they use it for sentencing, it could mean for example that people of race X would get on average longer sentences than people of race Y even for the exactly same crime. And if they use race directly as one of the predictors, it would cause this disparity even if the race would be the only different background variable. I and many other people would find this unfair even if it would in some way optimal.
In a similar way, we could use for example Bayesian classification to decide if there is enough evidence to show a person has committed a crime. If poorness and the criminality thas has strong correlation with poorness is higher in race X than race Y, then you would need less evidence to convict person if his race is X instead of Y. This might make sentences somewhat more accurate but it would be against legal norms and people would find it unfair that we wouldn't judge person only by his own acts, but also using his race and the doings of other people as a kind of evidence against him.
One should remember that intelligence agencies also break foreign laws most of the times. And it is also possible to fight against intelligence agencies by offering them their own medicine.
For example, if a large number of people would hint on net that they have sensitive information that they are going to publish soon, it would overwhelm the capabilities of following these leads. Of course most of those leads would be false, but it would still overwhelm the spies. And if somebody is physically following you, take their picture and publish it on net.
First at all, in most cases intentional insulting any person is and has been for ages a crime in Finland. Even when there were almost no immigrants living in Finland.
And not all parts of refugee culture is tolerated or encouraged. For example -- female circumcision is a crime and refugee parents are educated about this.
And as far as I know, hotels that have been converted to use for temporary places for refugeess, haven't been really at the best places. And for this kind of conversions there probably has been good economic reasons. It has probably been cheaper to buy or rent already build and more or less suitable buildings than to build completely new buildings for refugees.
And as far as I know, intolerance against gays is not encouraged in any way and officials try to encourage refuge women to have more equal status. And I find it somewhat odd that anti-immigrants claim to be so concerned about the treatment of gays as usually skinheads are themselves known to be against both gays and immigrants.
In most cases intentional insulting a person is a crime in Finland regardless ethnic origins or religion. And even speaking truth is not absolute protection against libel/slander in Finland.
But inciting hate of a ethnic or religious group is offered special protections. And disturbing religious ceremony or intentionally insulting a religion is also illegal.
I am not sure if I agree 100 percent with these laws, because I think that criticism should also be offered official protection. But in practise this hasn't usually been problem for reasonable criticism.
Here in Finland there has been rumours/news that say that for some reason this dropped calls problem doesn't exist in Finland. I am not sure if this is true, but at least a friend of mine who has iPhone 3G says that he hasn't had problem with dropped calls. And he is on the phone for severals hour each day.
According to a news I recently read, there was speculation that the reason why iPhone works well in Finland but not in Sweden, had something to do with the way operators work. If I remember correctly, in Sweden the operators shared some infrastructure that isn't done in Finland.
I think nationality and language are related, but don't have 1-to-1 mapping. In my opinion many Swedish speaking citizens of Finland feel that they are Swedish speaking Finns (and some of them find it insulting if you suggest that Finnish and Swedish speaking citizens are two different nationalities), but there also Swedish speaking citizens who feel that they their nationality is separate from Finnish speaking Finns.
It is worth remembering that many of Finnish speakers changed their family language to Swedish when Finland was part of Sweden and the only official language was Swedish.
It is true that Finland has quite large number of guns (I think part of it is explained by large number of rifles used for hunting), but I think it is at least a bit misleading to call Finland gun happy.
For example, I think carrying a gun in everyday life is a big no-no and probably in most cases even illegal. Practically only polimen are allowed to carry a gun with them. And if you use a weapon for self defence situation, you will most likely receive heavy sentence even if you were in danger and you don't even hit anybody with the bullet.
I think most of the guns are at least somewhat hidden. Because of that most Finns think that guns are pretty rare in Finland even though according to statistics there seems to be quite many guns.
One interesting detail is that the shooter seemed to be at least somewhat contraditory in his writings. He had some nazi symphaties, but on the other hand he also said that he is against racism.
Slashdot Mirror
Swedish law wasn't able to prevent extraordinary rendition and torture of two asylum seekers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the_United_States#Sweden
And treating well might mean that Assange will not be executed or tortured, but might still receive 100000 year sentence in jail without possibility for parole.
And in my opinion government shouldn't on purpose get involved in creating broken families and creating mental traumas for children as it is unethical even though similar cases may happen in real life as well.
The problem is not just the sex. One of the undercover cops married and had two children with one he was supposed to spy. When the woman finds out this deception she might very well want to divorce, get alimony, child support etc. Who is going to pay these things? And what kind of mental scars will this kind of deception leave to children? It is quite likely that sooner or later the deception has to be revealed. Unless of course, the undercover cop will play this role until he dies of old age, is willing to live in deception in rest of his age and not get real family for himself.
In UK case there wasn't just sex. The undercover cop married and even had two children with the woman he was supposed to spy.
BTW, in Finland police quite recently got permission to do undercover operations. Soon afterwards there was a case where undercover police became the new boyfriend of a woman suspected (and later convicted) of killing his husband.
Making a phone call is not always possible.
It is also good if you are deaf, mute, if there is so much noise that phone call wouldn't work, if radio signal is too poor for a call, if the telephone network is congested etc.
Actually, I think that the Finnish church is trying to do its best and balancing between liberal majority and small, but conservative minority (who are nowhere near as fundamentalist as the fundamentalists in USA).
The archbishop said that being a gay is not a sin and even the religiously conservative woman who was on the TV show has tried to backpedal by saying that she has gay friends. And it seems that quite many at the church have a panic as the number of people resigning seems to be constantly increasing and if this continues long, it will be huge blow for the church.
During just few days over 20 000 persons have resigned which is huge number compared to the number of people who resign during the whole year. For last 10 years the number of people who resign has been between 13000-52000 persons.
Although I am an atheist and a gay I start to feel a bit sorry for most priest in the Finnish church. Even though I am happy that people became less religious, I feel sorry for them, because most of them are decent people and don't hate gays.
In Finland you don't have to pay anything to get out, but you have to pay church tax if you don't get out.
I haven't ever heard before about this kind of things in Finland although I often speak with persons from atheistic organizations, so I think it must be quite rare. Are you sure they weren't Jehova's Witnesses?
I am an atheist and a gay, but I feel somewhat sorry for the Finnish church for this situation. Most of the priests, bishops etc are pretty decent and moderate people and not any hate mongers. And the religious people on the TV program didn't really represent the church (many of them were just lay members of the church and not priests) and although they were more fundamentalist than church and most members of the church, even they weren't that bad in my opinion.
I think that many atheists and gays in Finland are also a bit surprised that the public reaction has been so strong. On the other hand, I am happy that the church is slowly losing its members and influence. It is finally time for the people to get rid of the religions and base their thinking on humanistic and rational values which has already happened to most part, although majority of the people in Finland are still officially members of the church even though most people are extremely secular and visit churches only during funerals and weddings.
For some of us, cursive is the only writing system we have learned to write. At school block capitals and cursive were the only writing systems that were taught to us. Some other students seemed to learn to write using lower case block letters without being taught it, but I never learned it except some symbols that were common in mathematics or physics (like letter e). That is why I usually use cursive if I have to write something by hand (and using capital block letters if I want be 100 percent sure that others will be able to interpret my handwriting correctly without any mistakes).
I suspect that only quite small percentage of the photos or videos is truely shocking. Probably most of them are just indecent, somewhat offending or disgusting. Of course every now and then there will be truely shocking material, but I don't it is that serious if you don't see it too often. And at least for me, images of shocking material aren't that shocking. But animal abuse or torture videos which often end when the victim is killed, are quite horrifying -- and I have seen that kind of videos. But I don't think I have been scarred for life for seeing those videos as I know it is something that has already happened and there is nothing I or anyone else can do to undo it. However, what is troubling me a great deal, are ongoing human right abuses, ethnic cleansings etc. I often have serious trouble falling asleep if I have read for example what Israel is doing to Palestinians without any real opposition from international community.
In Finland they started DAB broadcasts in 1998 but the system was shut down in 2005. I think it was shut down because people just didn't buy DAB receivers.
I am not sure about Scandinavian countries, but at least in Finland you don't have to carry any kind of id with you. However, if police suspects that you have done some crime, then you probably have to proof your identity, but even that doesn't require ID card. And if you want to open bank account etc, then you have to have some kind official proof of your identity (at least ID card, passport and relatively new drivers licence are accepted as proof).
And even though you can get an ID card, you don't have to get one if you don't want to. I think that most people I know, have only passport and drivers licence but not the general ID card.
I think that there are at least two things that might make using nuclear bomb difficult in this case:
1) Water pressure is high because the sea is so deep. Ordinary nuclear device probably won't work at that kind of pressure and needs thick protective case, which makes the diameter of the bomb even larger.
2) In order to prevent radioactive leak, the bomb should be detonated deep underground. But it is not easy to dig several hundreds of meters deep well, when the sea depth is 1.5 kilometers. They could use oil drilling equipment to do this, but even that would take some time and the diameter of the well might not be enough for the nuclear device.
It is true it depends on how they are going to use this software, but I find it troubling. If they use it for sentencing, it could mean for example that people of race X would get on average longer sentences than people of race Y even for the exactly same crime. And if they use race directly as one of the predictors, it would cause this disparity even if the race would be the only different background variable. I and many other people would find this unfair even if it would in some way optimal.
In a similar way, we could use for example Bayesian classification to decide if there is enough evidence to show a person has committed a crime. If poorness and the criminality thas has strong correlation with poorness is higher in race X than race Y, then you would need less evidence to convict person if his race is X instead of Y. This might make sentences somewhat more accurate but it would be against legal norms and people would find it unfair that we wouldn't judge person only by his own acts, but also using his race and the doings of other people as a kind of evidence against him.
One should remember that intelligence agencies also break foreign laws most of the times. And it is also possible to fight against intelligence agencies by offering them their own medicine.
For example, if a large number of people would hint on net that they have sensitive information that they are going to publish soon, it would overwhelm the capabilities of following these leads. Of course most of those leads would be false, but it would still overwhelm the spies. And if somebody is physically following you, take their picture and publish it on net.
First at all, in most cases intentional insulting any person is and has been for ages a crime in Finland. Even when there were almost no immigrants living in Finland.
And not all parts of refugee culture is tolerated or encouraged. For example -- female circumcision is a crime and refugee parents are educated about this.
And as far as I know, hotels that have been converted to use for temporary places for refugeess, haven't been really at the best places. And for this kind of conversions there probably has been good economic reasons. It has probably been cheaper to buy or rent already build and more or less suitable buildings than to build completely new buildings for refugees.
And as far as I know, intolerance against gays is not encouraged in any way and officials try to encourage refuge women to have more equal status. And I find it somewhat odd that anti-immigrants claim to be so concerned about the treatment of gays as usually skinheads are themselves known to be against both gays and immigrants.
In most cases intentional insulting a person is a crime in Finland regardless ethnic origins or religion. And even speaking truth is not absolute protection against libel/slander in Finland.
But inciting hate of a ethnic or religious group is offered special protections. And disturbing religious ceremony or intentionally insulting a religion is also illegal.
I am not sure if I agree 100 percent with these laws, because I think that criticism should also be offered official protection. But in practise this hasn't usually been problem for reasonable criticism.
Here in Finland there has been rumours/news that say that for some reason this dropped calls problem doesn't exist in Finland. I am not sure if this is true, but at least a friend of mine who has iPhone 3G says that he hasn't had problem with dropped calls. And he is on the phone for severals hour each day. According to a news I recently read, there was speculation that the reason why iPhone works well in Finland but not in Sweden, had something to do with the way operators work. If I remember correctly, in Sweden the operators shared some infrastructure that isn't done in Finland.
I think nationality and language are related, but don't have 1-to-1 mapping. In my opinion many Swedish speaking citizens of Finland feel that they are Swedish speaking Finns (and some of them find it insulting if you suggest that Finnish and Swedish speaking citizens are two different nationalities), but there also Swedish speaking citizens who feel that they their nationality is separate from Finnish speaking Finns.
It is worth remembering that many of Finnish speakers changed their family language to Swedish when Finland was part of Sweden and the only official language was Swedish.
s/shooted/shooter/
According to some news, the shooted had long history of being bullying victim at school.
It is true that Finland has quite large number of guns (I think part of it is explained by large number of rifles used for hunting), but I think it is at least a bit misleading to call Finland gun happy.
For example, I think carrying a gun in everyday life is a big no-no and probably in most cases even illegal. Practically only polimen are allowed to carry a gun with them. And if you use a weapon for self defence situation, you will most likely receive heavy sentence even if you were in danger and you don't even hit anybody with the bullet.
I think most of the guns are at least somewhat hidden. Because of that most Finns think that guns are pretty rare in Finland even though according to statistics there seems to be quite many guns.
One interesting detail is that the shooter seemed to be at least somewhat contraditory in his writings. He had some nazi symphaties, but on the other hand he also said that he is against racism.