"It's The New Style"

I've switched to the new style system. I've tweaked the colours on one of the default themes slightly, hopefully to improve the contrast which was a bit lacking in places. If anyone has trouble with reading any of it, let me know and I'll see what else I can adjust.

Beyond the usual levels of 'police state' insanity...

"Every single person in the UK should be compelled to have their DNA on the national database in an effort to prevent crime, a senior police officer has argued." - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3088920.stm

As part of his justification, the guy uses the fact that "estimates suggest" (gotta love those definite statements) "as many as 600 people in the UK have committed murder and escaped initial detection..."

(a) Note the lack of a time scale - is this since the police started keeping records a few centuries ago, or what?
(b) Notice the word 'initial' - he doesn't happen to volunteer any data about how many of those were subsequently caught (without the aid of a massively privacy invading DNA database), does he?!

Even if there were 600 murderers running around free because this database doesn't exist, I still think that would have a less detrimental effect on our social structure overall than this kind of database could and, inevitably, eventually, would.

And people wonder why I have no respect for the legal system and the police force any more.

RIAA launch their promised campaign of lawsuits...

WASHINGTON (September 8, 2003) The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced today that its member companies have filed the first wave of what could ultimately be thousands of civil lawsuits against major offenders who have been illegally distributing substantial amounts (averaging more than 1,000 copyrighted music files each) of copyrighted music on peer-to-peer networks. The RIAA emphasized that these lawsuits have come only after a multi-year effort to educate the public about the illegality of unauthorized downloading and noted that major music companies have made vast catalogues of music available to dozens of new high-quality, low-cost, legitimate online services.

http://www.politechbot.com/p-05045.html