Rte fun and games - who runs that bank?

rtefunandgames
Originally uploaded by bluepelican

Rte were obviously having fun with names today as they messed up the names for the Six One news and then inverted them for the Nine news. I'm wondering if this is yet another sign of the declining standards of our national broadcaster, given the sad sad piece of TV that was Prime Time last night and the very slanted rumour mongering about Declan Ganley (Dan has this in more detail), one has got to wonder what exactly is our license money paying for ?

Votes lost - no its not America rather Finland

Just an update on the current Finnish e-voting farce where 232 votes were lost due to `usability' issues with the voting machines, this Finnish EFF (see their statement). This might seem pretty small but this was only a pilot in three small areas and actually accounted for 2% of the electoral register. The problem happened when after a voter had inserted their smart card to verify their identity, selected their candidate by typing his/her number and pressing okay, then a verification screen was shown and some voters did not press the okay on this screen but removed their smart cards which caused the ballots to be lost. The instructions on the machine said that the only way to cancel a vote was by clicking the cancel button and then removing their smart card, this of course didn't help matters. So a hit tip to the both the EFFi in Finland and to the EDRI for pointing this out. If you're interested in digital civil rights in Europe, I'd recommend subscribing to the EDRI-gram newsletter and checking out its archive.

Obama's speech

In case you had to work today or just fell asleep on the counch in the early morning hours, here's a link to President-Elect Obama's acceptance speech. I'm really happy to see the change in the US, it'll still be a bit of a battle for him to get all his policies past the Senate given the current results leave open the potential for many fillibusters but it is definitely a new dawn for America. Who'd have thought that they'd elect a black man to sit in the Oval office, it is really a day that shows the American dream is possible for one and all. Ireland will have to wait a few more months to see if the taxing of overseas American companies (FDI) will be taxed according to his earlier plans but today its a happy day for the world as America has shown democracy in action.