I don't think so. THe group I work in has had some papers in very respectable journals, and a few high-profile ones, yet this "peer review" problem is quite felt. It's not a generalized mafia, mind you. But I'd really prefer that the refereeing would be done in double blind.

I've had some papers reviewed by two people last year (PLoS ONE).

Cyborgs. The squad in 009 has artificial bodies, but human brains.

I am not a shill. I fully believe what I wrote. I am capable of free thought, you know. And this is why moderation a la slashdot doesn't work.

However the law needs improvements: currently it targets the disseminators (journalists) while the real targets should be the ones who let the information out in the first place (judges and their staff).

Check what happened in the two years of the Prodi government before him, and you'll see a good example.

The fact that he "controls" the media is an urban myth. The public television is hostage of "currents" that aren't always sided with the government, actually the opposite most of the time. Most of the media isn't really friendly to the government, going from moderate to extreme opposition (but more than to him, to the political side he represents). Culture, teaching, etc. are by most of the opposite political spectrum. So where's the control of the media?

And if you say so that justice is impartial... well that only leads to cynicism. If you go and read through all that has been published, you'll notice that there is not a single, solid piece of evidence. All based on witness evidence. The same tht happened in other cases (not involving him at all), which were thrown out on the same basis. But this is a problem of the Italian justice system in general.

I blame the fall of the Communism. Seriously. The left wing parties are in a total identity crisis since then. With reformism being totally dead (for long time) there's not a coherent vision and parties are fragmented in different "currents" or ways of thinking. Most of them are numerically irrelevant, and usually leaders aren't strong-willed enough to gather the ranks and offer an alternative.

What does it prove? The "Legal scandals" ended up with exonerations (more than once), there is not a single case that has been proven in tribunal. Show me a single case that has merit. What was proven was just an excessive expenditure of public money targeting symbols (and it wasn't the first case: Giulio Andreotti, while being a very bad politician, was also accused in the same, but worse manner).

You may not like the man and you're free to do so, even strongly. But thinking that people are brainwashed for voting him means you do not understand democracy.

kdawson, you reallly love trolling, don't you?

First: even "the newspaper of the brother's premier" has voiced concerns over the law - the decision not to go on strike was a move by its chief, Vittorio Feltri (who also criticized the law openly), who thought that shutting down information to prevent the shutdown of information was nonsensical.

Second: It was not the only newspaper who didn't go on strike. Others, such as "Libero", "Il Foglio", "Italia Oggi", were regularly in newsstands as well.

Third: the issue with wiretapping here it's that in the current law (the one being proposed) it's misguided - it targets journalists while the fault lies in judges and their collaborators, who like to "spread" news even before investigations are complete. This is mostly a problem for people outside investigations, that are by chance talking with the plaintiffs. Sometimes personal details (completely irrelevant to the matter) make it to the newspapers, tarnishing reputations.

Information is also checking your facts. This wasn't done.

I voted for him in good faith, and I'll do it again. Not everyone who votes "the person you don't like" is a brainwashed soulless drone. What's democracy? Voting for only the "optimates"?

Let's also add that when it's time to publish on a journal you really see the worst out of people, because they'll fight tooth and nail to get a name on that piece of (e-)paper. This adds to the stress with deadlines that shift continuously, and the long working times as you've already mentioned.

And that's not all. In some environments, having a mate, a family, a life outside the laboratory is seen as detrimental to productivity. I'm currently doing post-doc fellowships but I'm not sure how long I'll last.

Criticism on the KDE message boards is, for the most part, deleted by admins, so we have to go to other websites to vent and discuss why we don't like what the batty KDE devs are doing.

Interesting... I don't recall doing anything of the sort, nor anyone else of the administration/moderation staff. We only ask users to uphold the Code of Conduct. We don't delete messages if we disagree with them.

This is blatantly false. I'm one of the three KDE Community Forums administrators and we have never deleted messages just because we disagreed with them. In fact, we have even rarely locked threads. The only people that got reprimanded were the ones that violated the KDE Community Code of Conduct, which all forum members agree to uphold when they register.

Let's not spread disinformation here.

The graphics for the time (1987) were amazing.

Exactly, although it was 1989 and not 1987 (I even bought the "special edition" that came with a T-shirt). Aside from the audio, it was extremely famous for its 13 parallax level scrolling in the outworld areas (beaten only by the 15 levels of Wrath of the Demon - although it was much worse as a game).