Oh, and I wouldn't have it any other way.. damn proud of it in fact.

Seriously, this so-called article doesn't even state which country it happended in.. nor does any of the links in it.

I live in Norway, in this certainly hasn't hit the news here.. and if it did, you can be damn sure there would be hell to pay for somebody. Our authorities are so fucking nice that even after Breivik blew up our government headquarters and shot around 80 kids.. one by one.. we still hadn't scrambled the military or even gotten choppers in the air. I honestly suspect if our police (who don't have guns) tried to take a 9 year old girls laptop they would comply when she kicked them and told them go away :)

I actually worked in demining in South Sudan for a while, so just figured I could share a little bit of info:

As far as machines and how stuff is done now, check out minewolf. They're the de-facto producer of mine-clearing equipment. Basically, you have three sorts of methods for clearning an area. Machine, manual with detectors or dogs. As often as you can, you use a machine to do it quicly, and then use dogs/manual for verification. Dogs are not considering good enough for primary search, only verification.. and some organisations have trouble pulling that off even. Dogs are difficult, but a lot cheaper and faster than humans.

As far as using mice goes, they need to be very good. The UN does accredition for most humanitarion demining, so the mice will need to find all the mines in a training field before they're allowed to do real work. I really don't see that happening anytime soon.

As a low-cost solution for the army, or if you need something quick-n-dirty in a disaster zone I'm sure they have their uses though.. but with humanitarion demining, you kinda need to be able to tell people that they will not blow up if they start farming the land you just cleared.. which makes it a very slow process which takes a lot of effort, a whole different beast than military demining.

Also, on that note: fuck the US for dropping shitloads of cluster munitions on Laos, when you weren't even at war (Laos is the country next to Vietnam) and then having the fucking balls to not even attempt to help clean it up afterwards. FYI Canada and Europe are there now cleaning your mess.. some people consider less innocent children being blown up in pieces a good thing. Some people are, as a collective, not fucking assholes.

If you had any sort of decency you'd sign the Ottawa Treaty.

Personally I think Monopoly is the root cause of all the financial problems we're having for the past years.

2.5% unemployment, 520$ billion dollars stashed away in a goverment fund for later spending, universil healthcare and ridicilously good unemployment benefits (80% of your last salary, available for 100 weeks as long as you're looking for a job). Apart from the odd massacre and a holier-than-thou-attitude we're fine thank you.

If your media makes a big deal out of him gaming, read better media. If you can't find any, stop reading. You're probably better off.

His manifesto actually (readily available in english) makes a big deal out of how pretending to have a gaming addiction is really usefull for hiding nefarious activities. He wasn't a gaming addict, he was using it as a cover.

Also, if your media is one of those who kept harping on about this being muslims long after it was clear he was Norwegian you're probably better off without them either (I'm looking at you NY Times). The american coverage of this incident has been pretty much abysmal, and I'm sorry for being able to read english. I wish I couldn't.

However, while his gaming certainly didn't affect him, it's pretty clear that the fact that he was taking a coctail of anabolic steroids did. He even described it himself in his manifesto. To which extent we won't know until later, but we'll figure it out. There's plenty of time, and we have to grieve a bit of first.

Signed
A Norwegian
(Also; Glenn Beck; May you burn in hell)

Well, being Amercan you're missing half the web :)

All the different native language sites out there are hiding under .no, .sp, .de etc, and there really is quite a lot of them. About half the websites I visit are from .no, so I think it's more a matter of saying what language they use and where they do business. Basically, I think the American companies messed up, while the rest are behaving themselves... but given your view of the world that's hardly surprising (ever considered inviting other countries to the world series of baseball?)

Fine, alot of you don't see the need for this. Don't use it, and more importantly, don't complain about it.

I work as teacher, mostly for fun, and got suckered into supposedly being admin for the school network. In reality I'm a general janitor / IT-support though. I have next to no time to spend on actually setting infrastructure. If anybody gives me a simple solution for printing any document, from any operating system on any computer easily to our public printers I'd give them a big, wet kiss. I certainly don't know any easy way of doing it now, because adding printers to students laptops is a f***king bother, and there's always some weird problem.

I'm certainly sure there's lots of other uses for this, aswell as lots of places it won't be usefull.

We have a single website for this in Norway already (norge.no), it's bloody usefull. Everything you need from the government is either there, or linked to from it. They even run free phone/sms/e-mail support.

There's nothing sinister about it, it certainly hasn't magically removed the bourecrazy, but it is another of the many small reasons I'm slightly smug to be norwegian; The land where stuff for the most part just works (which still doesn't stop people from whining though).

I'm a high-school teacher (16-18 year olds) and can confirm this. When I get my students I work really hard on teaching them to relax during math tests. Mainly by going around chatting, drawing stupid stuff on the whiteboard and just generally being bored. I estimate this improves math grades by around half a point (on a scale from 1 to 6, where the entire scale is actually used). Grades jump up by atleast 1 grade when I take over classes though. The rest I attribute to me being awsome.

This game is essentially unplayable on a regular CRT TV. The text is really small, and the conversation choices aren't bounded in small coloured boxes. The colour-bleed of a regular TV will make it impossible to read. Other than that, it is a great game, but really didn't capture me like the first one did. The mining mini-game is essentially hell on a XBOX too. The last one worked great on XBOX, but this one really is best on the PC.

Blærg. Finding vulnerabalities is a good thing. Fixing them is even better.

Microsoft just did a good thing. Google did too. The world just became a slightly better place.

If we just fixed the rest of the softwarebugs, ended world hunger, fixed the environment and I got together with my ex (whom I still a miss even a year afterwards..I'm such a f***ing loser) the world be kinda ok.

Smile :)

Who is really to blame for a rape?

a) The man doing it?
b) The woman for wearing suggestive clothes?
c) The Police for not being there?
d) The nightclub they met at for not monitoring everything closely enough?

..and yes, I do know the analogy doesn't quite hold, but I do believe it's close enough. If you commit a crime, you're at fault for breaking it. Always.

The victim should never get the blame for not anticipating somebody being an asshole. You might say they already got their punishment for that mistake.

Maybe I'm an exception, but I don't think that's true at all. I navigate entirely by landmarks. I don't even know the names of half the streets I travel on regularly. Furthermore, my mental map of the city is framed by our light rail system, major bus lines, and bike throughfares, not by the major roads carrying automobile traffic.

Sounds like you still have an somewhat abstract mental map. It sounds awfully close to what I'm using. I'm still can't easily take directions from most my female friends though.. they'll just constantly use landmarks I have trouble finding even when I'm standing right there.. just turn right after the shop selling those cute figurines.. you see the really nice red building?.. uh, come again?

Yes, but in the same article Ove Skåra from Datatilsynet (computer-watch.. government institution set up to help protect our privacy. They give out permits for surveillance cameraes and can give out legally binding rulings to companies who are in breach of privacy-laws) is quoted with saying:

"- Da er et brev med en anbefaling på ingen måte nok. Hvis ikke det kommer noen nye opplysninger, vil jeg ikke tro at brevet gjør noen særlig forskjell, sier han. "

(..since we recently had a meeting with the department concerning this..)
"- A letter with a recommondation is by no means enough. Unless there is new information relevant to the case, I do not believe the letter will make any difference".

The Minister of culture has openly supported the vigilante tactics of the "pirate-hunters"

Yes, but "Trond Giske, 4.0, god som gull", is demonstratebly not the brightest chap. Anything he says without a script should be just plainly disregarded.

There's a reason he's stuck as minister of culture. He's open, friendly and generally agreeable, so they want him as a visible part of the team, but not doing anything important. If he ever gets an important position, I will consider turning in my citizinship.