omglog

Presidential Records Act: no private (online) correspondence allowed for US presidents

“For years, like legions of other professionals, Mr. Obama has been all but addicted to his BlackBerry [...] But before he arrives at the White House, he will probably be forced to sign off. In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas. A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing president, but aides said that seemed doubtful.”

Imagine: no private conversations for four or eight years.

[via:This Week in Tech]

German politician, former Stasi employee forbids use of wikipedia.de domain

“A German Member of parliament for a left-wing party, Lutz Heilmann, has obtained a preliminary injunction against [...] Wikimedia Deutschland e.V., forbidding the forwarding of the popular http://wikipedia.de to the proper http://de.wikipedia.org. Apparently Heilmann is not happy with the fact that his Wikipedia article (English version) contains information on his work for the former GDR Stasi, the much-hated internal secret service.”

Relying on country specific Tld’s controlled by governments while clowns, shit eaters and torturers like Lutz Heilmann are running loose in parliament is a bad idea.

2% of Finnish municipal elections votes lost due to bad UI design

“The results of the election may have been affected, because the seats in municipal assemblies are often decided by margins of a few votes”

The saddest part of the story is that the ignorant fuckers who wanted privatized e-voting (or any e-voting) sold Finland’s Democratic process to Tietoenator, a company to which most sensible persons wouldn’t assign the task of drawing a flash-based Goatse.

TE previoulsy provided the voting system for the Finnish Parliament, a project plagued by delays and instability (link in Finnish).

[via:Slashdot]

Let’s hope we won’t see palinaspresident.com

“Updated daily until November 4th!”

[via:Reddit]

Ars Technica reviews “Night of Bush Capturing” (islamist propaganda game)

The following Youtube video of the “final boss” is included in the review.

[via:rms]

The National Debt Clock near Times Square has run out of digits

“The National Debt Clock near Times Square has just run out of spaces to add more zeroes to its running count of our national debt, thanks to the one-two punch of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and the $100 billion used to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before that.”

Carved relief of naked German political leaders grabbing each other’s genitals

“…curious Germans have flocked [in Bodman-Ludwigshafen, in the far south of Germany] for over a week to see a new work by the sculptor Peter Lenk, [a] carved relief of naked German political leaders [former German Finance Minister Hans Eichel, former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, current Chancellor Angela Merkel, former governor of Bavaria Edmund Stoiber and current leader of the Free Democrats, Guido Westerwelle] … naked and laughing and grabbing each other’s genitals. A banner over their heads reads, in English, “Global Players.”"

Palin’s 17-Year-Old Daughter Is Pregnant

Ha Ha.

EU pays for, then ignores study on copyright extension

CCTV/surveillance camera swastica graffiti art (Shoreditch, London, UK)

Found on Cory Doctorow’s flickr.

The image includes the name of a mysterious site.

[via:grinding.be]

Pandora can’t make money, may pull the plug

“Despite being one of the most popular Internet radio services, the company still isn’t making money, and its founder, Tim Westergren, says it can’t last beyond its first payment of the higher royalties. SoundExchange offered a potential reprieve from the royalty hikes, but that turned out to be a red herring to sneak DRM onto web radio. In the end, SoundExchange was able to initiate a massive (and retroactive) royalty hike on Internet radio stations, imposing per-user fees for each song.”

Multi hundred billion dollar deficits

Recent US presidents and their multi hundred billion dollar deficits (except Clinton’s 200+ billion surplus). Editorial cartoon by Steve Greenberg, published in Ventura County Star on 2008-08-03.

How the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games got their logo

EDIT: The GIF animation doesn’t seem to work in my copy of Internet Explorer 7.

Original non-animated cartoon found on VC’s blog last September.

Street art: “Vote for Nobody”

The Truth is strong in Nobody

According to the notes of another photo, this is located on a wall in Guelph, Ontario, CA.

Flat Earth News: lies, distortions and propaganda in journalism

“In Flat Earth News [book], award-winning journalist Nick Davies takes the lid off newspapers and broadcasters, exposing the mechanics of falsehood, distortion and propaganda; naming names and telling the stories behind stories.”

See also: book review in The Guardian and the author’s comments on his research for the book.

[via:Tuhat sanaa]