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Slashback: Summer, Sail, Sex Offenders
from the so-sibilant-so-slippery dept.
A new definition for optimism. Rei writes "According to a weblog entry from the Planetary Society, it appears that Cosmos 1 - the world's first controlled solar-sail spacecraft - has been found. The data is still tentative, but they have detected evidence of the spacecraft's signal in multiple tracking stations. There is a chance that it is in the wrong orbit, but it appears to be up there. This is after it was reported that the Volna rocket that launched it lost an engine after 83 seconds, and many had assumed that the craft was lost."
The power of the tag can only grow with time. An Anonymous reader writes "Saw your coverage of YubNub - I've been playing with a similar tool for a while that might interest your readers. It's called Ambedo and works in a way that you can tag search engines or bookmarks with a bookmarklet (you can also enter them manually if you want to). These are then added to you own tag directory. You then access these tags by typing them in a search box -- but all the matching is done client-side in javascript. It also has nice features like matching IP addresses, domain names, FedEx packages, calculator in the search box and so on."
If you like it so much, why don'tcha marry it? Mad Merlin writes "Groklaw has an interview with Chris DiBona of Google with regards to their Summer of Code program (as previously covered here). When asked why Google is doing the SoC program, Chris responds, 'It is simple: We love open source. A great number of Googlers have and are donating their 20% time to the open source efforts that we're doing.'"
Just kidding! scotty777 writes "Japan plans to give up its bid to have the world's first nuclear fusion reactor built in Aomori Prefecture. Japan Today reports the government decision, which means that the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) site decision can be made. Japan Times reports that the government announced the decision by saying 'it plans to back down [from the Aomori site proposal] if the European Union stands firm on bringing the project to Cadarache, in southern France.'"
Surely this won't cause any controversy. davenaffis writes "Here's a little site I developed that uses Google Maps to map sex offenders. Only Washington, D.C. data is available right now, but I'll be adding more states soon."
Now why Did I think.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now why Did I think.... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Now why Did I think.... (Score:4, Funny)
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LOST???? (Score:5, Funny)
4 8 15 16 23 42
Re:LOST???? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:LOST???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously the guy was joking, the humor of which is that nobody would legitimately ask what TV is, but he was modded as flamebait and criticized as a zealot. Get a grip people. It's okay to laugh.
Parent
Three things (Score:5, Interesting)
Solar sail - if we launched it, and it's transmitting a signal, and it's in orbit, and we still can't find it, what are the chances that we'd discover an asteroid headed our way? Put more funding into astronoomy please.
Ambedo - the first thing I did was view source. It's not a good sign when its own website makes basic HTML and Javascript errors.
Sex offenders - this list contains people who have done nothing more than urinate in public. This kind of map only encourages vigilantes and hysteria.
Re:Three things (Score:3, Informative)
TGIK got his address removed from the list a while back when he found out that the dude who lived at his place before he did, was a sex offender.
Mistakenly, his address was still on the list.
Re:Three things (Score:3, Insightful)
If you really wanted to protect the public you'd make the address of career violent criminals (like those who commit multiple armed robberies, assault, etc.) public.
Re:Three things (Score:3, Informative)
Eespecially since sex offenders are generally less likely to reoffend than other criminals (see here [johnhoward.ab.ca] and here [csom.org])
Re:Three things (Score:4, Insightful)
Or one who goes by thier own sensibilities, intuition and comminications with the person in general.
Parent
Re:Three things (Score:3, Interesting)
This has been bothering me for some time. I keep reading that these lists are horrible because you can wind up on them for minor offenses, while others say only dangerous offenders are listed. But in my own casual perusal of the sites (checking a few from this latest Slashback link and checking out the online registry entries form my neighborhood), I've n
Use a little google why don't you? (Score:4, Informative)
This mentions people on the michigan sex offender list, without names.. but states a woman is there for public urination, and some guys are there for consensual sex with underage girlfriends.
Both are examples given by the grandparent.
Have a look here to:
http://www.geocities.com/eadvocate/issues/harm-re
Parent
Re:Three things (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, genius. It's not okay if even one person gets hurt because of this. Not. Okay.
And that's true no matter what he or she has done. Because there is an appropriate penalty for what they have done, and that is to be administered according to law, by a court.
Not by some yahoo like you who thinks that he is qualified to unilaterally judge what other people deserve.
Parent
Re:Three things (Score:4, Insightful)
We have no system of justice, and the law is whatever you can pay for.
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Re:Three things (Score:3, Interesting)
They did a story about this on the news here a while back. The thing is that (at least here in Iowa) there is a law that prevents them from living within a certain distance of a school. They then overlayed a map of Des Moines with the locations of the schools, and highlighted that radius around them. Pretty much the entire city is off limits to these folks.
Which is fine by me.
It does i
The solar sail wasn't lost... (Score:4, Funny)
(There's gotta be a better Gilligan joke in all of this, I just can't think of it now.)
Re:The solar sail wasn't lost... (Score:5, Funny)
A tale of a fateful trip.
That started out in the Barrents sea
Aboard a sub-sea ship
The sub was unpronouncable [planetary.org]
The Volna's risk unsure
One spacecraft took off that day for a three month tour ("a three month tour...")
The Volna burn was getting rough, the tiny craft was tossed
If not for the courage of the CPU, the Cosmos would be lost ("the Cosmos would be lost..").
The craft impacted far away, on a tiny desert moon
With Obi-Wan!
The Princess, too!
The Jedi Knight!
And his droids!
A speeder car!
The wookie, and Solo (Han)
Here on Parody Isle!!
Parent
"Summer, Sail, Sex Offenders" (Score:5, Funny)
Mapping Michigan Sex Offenders (Score:5, Interesting)
For an example, look here [ofdoom.com].
The biggest suprise I've had is the ammount of incorrect data in the database. Only about 25% of the entries geocode on the first pass. I've had to do "best matching" to correct misspelled street names, I've seen birth years with obviously transposed digits, and some quite amusing obvious test entries.
In addition to the sex offender data, I also map the locations of domains with dns-loc [ofdoom.com] location records, sites registered with geourl.org [geourl.org], or my own Geographic Crawler experiment [ofdoom.com], sites on or considered for the Superfund NPL list, and any other data I can force into a format I can plot.
Re:Mapping Michigan Sex Offenders (Score:3, Funny)
You know those girl put out.
Re:Mapping Michigan Sex Offenders (Score:5, Funny)
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ethics? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the kind of project I can easily imagine myself starting -- but around the time I was making guesses about misspelled street names, I think I'd can it and move on to something with less potential to ruin lives. With no negative judgment implied, why didn't you?
On a separate note, at a first glance I see a surprising number of pairs of dots very near to each other. Is this some kind of bug in the data or the mapping process? Am I just inventing patterns where there aren't any? Or perhaps there's some strange tendency for sex offenders to settle in pairs
Thanks for the interesting link.
Parent
Plus... not all crimes are equal (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of them definitely fit in with what I'd think of dangerously disturbed... rape of child under 12, etc. etc... but there are also crimes like "enticing a child under 16 years of age". I'm not even sure what that means -- does it really put this guy in the same category? We don't even know that he knew the girl he was "enticing" was underage... and perhaps he would have found out for sur
Ethical problem with guesses not the real problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Which brings me back around to the real point. Sex offenders are apparantly still dangerous to society following their release from prison. Shouldn't the solution to continue to segregate them from society rather than to just let 'em go and tell people, "Sorry, there's a dangerous new person in your neighborhood, watch your kids/wife/backside." We could put them in a concrete building with bars over the windows and locks on the doors.. a lot like.. more prison! If it's been shown that these people are a danger to society following their terms and that they are incapable of reform*, then it is obvious, at least to me, that the terms are not long enough to protect society from them and them from society.
*statistical incapability** is indistinguishable from real incapability if you cannot say for certain if they've been reformed until they die having not regressed.
**within a socially acceptable error margin. (is 3 standard deviations enough (~99.7% confidence)? 30 (100-(.98e-195) percent confidence)? I don't claim to have the answer)
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Re:Mapping Michigan Sex Offenders (Score:3, Interesting)
A map too far? (Score:5, Insightful)
Being able to plot the home locations of sex offenders on a map, as if they were tire-fitting chains or restaurants, is one step too far for me. I can see the logical extension from the things the Chicago Crime maps were achieving, but its really data that shouldn't be made accessible in such a contextless and simple manner. There could be people on the list for any number of reasons (not just the most serious offences..) who suffer greatly due to a 'Find your local sex offender' site.
I wouldn't be surprised if google maps chose to pull their data from being used by this site in such a way, it certainly wouldn't look good if anything unsavoury occurred. I'm all for cool and nifty uses of google maps, but this just doesn't seem tasteful.
Re:A map too far? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm skeptical (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering that the definition of "sex offender" can be so broad, compiling a map from every state and local database (each with its own criteria for listing people) seems like a really really bad idea.
Re:A map too far? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and I want a map of everyone who has back taxes yet to pay - you know they want to steal my car along with the car theif to pay some of those back taxes.
Don't forget the people who have late library books - they're cleptos, and just want to take my garden gnomes out front...
Mapping this kind of thing isn't a detternt - look at how many registered sex offenders there are. And it doesn't help parents to "make good decisions", either - if you aren't watching your kids enough already, it doesn't matter if there's a sex offender *LIVING* nearby... if something happens, you are partly responsible for not being prepared and educating your kids, and keeping track of them, and following up when they say they're giong to a friend's house...
Parents need to be prepared for the worst, but having a list like this will only make it possible for these people to be punished while they're not in prison or on parole or probation by some holier-than-thou zealot with a shotgun and too much Bud Light in his system. Click and shoot.
Parent
Agreed, it's unjust without context (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens when two consenting homosexual adults get railroaded by some backwater anti-sodomy laws? Now the ignorant have a map to the house for vandalism and hate crime intimidation?
Without context these maps have huge potential to inflict harm upon innocent people. These are just two of the examples that come off the top of my head.
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PUBLIC EXHIBIITONISM == LISTABLE SEX OFFENCE. (Score:5, Informative)
public urination, exhibitionism, nudism, streaking, flashing, mooning, outdoor consensual sex, lewd behaviour.
Dont believe me?
utah law book says:
(d) "Sex offender" means any person convicted by this state or who enters a plea in abeyance for violating Section 76-7-102, 76-9-702.5, 76-5a-3, 76-10-1306, or 76-5-301.1
and all of those are for lewd behaviour that specifically includes public urination, streaking, and mooning.
LAW LINK [oshkosh.net]
"The study found that people charged with crimes such as public urination, flashing, consensual sex between teenagers, possession of child pornography and adult prostitution are all classified as sex offenders in some states."
Link to source [theledger.com]
"Plaistow Deputy Chief Kathleen Jones also said that not every person on the sex offender list has necessarily committed an egregious crime such as rape or molestation because a conviction of indecent exposure, even in cases such as public urination, can land someone on the list."
Link [seacoastonline.com]
"According to Michigan State Police Sgt. Troy Fellows, urinating in public is classified as indecent exposure, and requires sex offender registration after three convictions...[And] Judges [can] to order registration after any number of convictions..."
Link [geocities.com]
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Re:A map too far? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:A map too far? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? What good can possibly be done with this information? Maybe you'll be excessively paranoid about your kids when they're out, but what good does that do anyone? Lock up the real criminals longer, don't bother with crap like this that encourages paranoia and lynch mobs.
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Sex offenders have no rights? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sex offenders have no rights? (Score:5, Informative)
There exist lists of convicted sex offenders. They have to register when they move. They have to register every year even if they don't move. If the community they move into doesn't want them around, they can get a petition thrown together and the sex offender cannot live there. Oh, and they'll know when he moves in. Usually some group will make a big stink about the whole deal.
Once you commit a sex crime (or are convicted of ANY felony) you lose the majority of your rights.
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Re:Sex offenders have no rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you don't believe that the rehabilitation system works then. Certainly you lose your rights for the duration of the applied sentence, but once you are released and your parole period is up you are once more deemed to be an up-standing, reputable member of society.
Parent
Re:Sex offenders have no rights? (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't have a prison system based on rehabilitation in the U.S. We have a system based on detainment.
Re:Sex offenders have no rights? (Score:3, Informative)
That's only true for federal elections and certain states. It's a common misconception that it's true everywhere, which leads to tons of felons who are eligible to vote for state and municipal issues not voting.
So I thought I'd point that out before the urban legend spreads further.
Re:Sex offenders have no rights? (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing t
The Culture Wars (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine this:
People from conservative websites search liberal websites for anyone admitting that they have smoked pot. They compile a database of who said they smoked pot, linking the person's name, the person's address, and the comment(s) where the person admitted to smoking pot.
Now liberals respond. To take revenge, they categorize the different types of beliefs held by conservatives, and begin compiling a database of people, evidence, addresses.
Hostilities rise. If you live in a tower, a grid of condos, anywhere where there are a lot of people- stories start to spread, and people take sides.
Sex Offender boogeyman (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember reading last year sometime about a guy in Aurora, CO (It was in westword) was having sex with a woman that told her she was over 18. A while later, he was busted because the woman was 16 or so. The guy got nailed by the courts and his life is now ruined.
The general "Sex Offender" term is just wrong. I can see why it's a bad thing to have your normal raper out on the loose, but to have your life ruined because of some stupid chick? Come' on people.
Re:Sex Offender boogeyman (Score:5, Insightful)
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(Warning Soviet Joke Imminent) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:(Warning Soviet Joke Imminent) (Score:3, Funny)
+1, Creepy?
ITER intro (Score:5, Informative)
In other news: the idiot mapper (Score:4, Funny)
So far only 1 idiot is listed there, but it is the biggest idiot on this planet.
sex offender map (Score:3, Funny)
I had no idea... [longlines.com]
The question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Informative)