Society

As funny as these stories are for reading, any hard data is absolutely lacking. Are there similar stories which actually cite sources? OTOH the fact that even cheap main stream devices like USB sticks and WLAN routers routinely have “compatible with Linux”, often even giving a kernel version, printed on the package tells me that the stories are not that far off. Even so, I'd be curious who these Icelandic Microsoft Certified Partners switching to Linux / Free Software are (first link, the quote below also originates there).

Microsoft Access, the only database software on the planet that’s better at printing mail-merged stickers than it is at storing data.

A blog entry I wanted to write quite some time now... Depicted on the right is a liter carton of organic whole milk of one of the two big retailers here in Switzerland. At the bottom is the red area again, enlarged. For those who don't read french, italian or german: it's an indication of the ingredients (“Ingredients: whole milk”), and a warning for people with allergies (“Contains milk”.) No doubt information like this is an essential contribution to lowering health costs by making people chose healthier foods and being aware of what they eat.

The best way to get me to read a blog entry you've made is to apologize about it in the next one ... So I've gone and clicked on the link to Amaya's previous entry. Getting a warning that I'm about to be presented with a page that may contain material only suitable for adults. What the hell, Amaya is an adult and so am I, so let's just confirm this. I was truly shocked to see her entry that indeed did contain the extremely dangerous word “love” in it (can't imagine what else may have triggered the filter.)

Together with Youtube's apparent tightening of their filtering (I'd not have noticed except that Illiad commented on it) it seems the Intarwebs are now being converted to a happy teletubby-land. So I'm forced append this disclaimer now: Attention please, the text you've just read may have contained strong words, opinions, sentences, punctuation characters and all kinds of dangerous information only suitable for inhabitants of a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.

Ok, it's not that bad. But according to LWN (Subscriber-only content at this time, Debian developers can get a free account, though), there is a possibility that the OpenStreetMap data set will be relicensed (from CC-attribution-sharealike) and that the new license will be contract based, which would mean at least a click-through license. There is, thankfully, also a group of people who think that BSD or even Public Domain-style licensing would be better. Personally, I think the latter is very much preferrable; OSM has (I think, and hope that's not too optimistic) become big enough that it should be able to out-gun every vendor trying to take away OSM's work: the vendor with his few people will just not be able to keep up with the sheer number of OSM contributors.

Reading Andrews blog entry about the movie Recount (sounds like I should watch that) got me thinking: what is all the fuss about? Living in Switzerland, I'm quite used to votes and elections, and usually the results are available within a few hours after closing time: voting/elections always is on Sundays here, but most people vote by letter beforehand. You can vote until 12:00, so we get early estimates from around 13:00 or even earlier and the end results sometimes as early as 15:00 for simple yes/no votes, with only few hours later for elections. This is all (there are a few vote by phone/Internet projects, on a very small scale) paper, without election machines. Counting done by volunteers (or, rarely, people who are “volunteered” by the state)

Now, I accept difficulties in states with widespread corruption and a shaky legal system. And, of course, the U.S. presidial election has a complicated algorithm, and people are afraid of mistakes if the outcome is decided on a margin of 0.1 per cent or less (that's why you recount.) But, all in all, once the question of who is able to vote is solved, running the vote itself (including recounting it if it's a narrow outcome) is not that difficult in a modern state, is it?