The Local e-democracy National Project has paid for the good people at Delib to build some Democratic Games… games that give people a bit of an idea as to how politics and democracy works. I've played around with 'Captain Campaign' and you know what – they're pretty good – not too preachy.
By far the best selling magazine in Poland is the Polish edition of Playboy. Not a huge surprise, married men openly buy the magazine in the most Catholic country I've ever come across. Sex isn't out in the open as it can seem to be in Germany and parts of Scandinavia, but it's not really something to get fussy about in Poland. They take the view that everyone does it, so what's to get embarrassed about?
Nevertheless Poles aren't targeted, as the French and Italians are, with news magazines and advertising full of topless women. This may be to protect the huge number of priests in Poland, but I can't be sure.
In spite of all this I was still rather surprised to read in the new magazine European Business that over 70% of all Polish mobile picture traffic is erotic or adult related. Can that be? I seriously doubt the figures are so high in the UK, but who knows… I wouldn't have thought a mobile phone's screen was up to the job. I thought wrong and to the mobile networks' delight Poles at least are paying for their erotica.
Once again it seems that sex sells and as with VHS and the Internet, horniness leads the way in technology adoption.
Wired News are reporting in their sidebar that Ohio's e-voting machines are replaced with optical-scan machines. Better late than never!
The full text from Wired:
Ohio may be the home of Diebold, the most prominent manufacturer of touch-screen voting machines, but the Buckeye State is jumping off the e-voting bandwagon, at least for now. Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell ordered all counties to be using optical-scan machines (which provide paper ballots) by next November's election, the Toledo Blade reported Thursday. Blackwell, who had threatened to pull the plug on e-voting machines prior to the presidential election, said he was acting because not one of the machines is “certified under Ohio's standards and rules.” A lot of Democrats are probably wishing he had pulled the trigger a bit sooner.
Here's a great graphical representation of Apple's strategy to widen its market share…
I find it absolutely astonishing how many people are falling for the utter drivel that is Scytl’s marketing guff. Their product does not verify that votes are accurately stored and counted as the voter intended. This is the essence of reliable, democratic voting and they don’t do it.
Scytl’s MD says “Whereas in physical elections you put your vote in a paper envelope, with Pnyx you put it in a digital envelope that provides the same level of security and privacy. Essentially we recreated the physical world in an online environment”. Hombre, that is a load of manure, the same level of security and privacy? Not a chance.
So you can imagine I’m delighted to hear that Scytl have won a European IST Prize. There’s a sucker born every minute it would seem.
I'm so flabbergasted by the pile of new stuff from Apple I just don't know what to say… Apple seem absolutely focussed on making the Mac experience accessible to as many people as possible.
iWork and iLife both will definitely be on my to buy list for this month.
In other news the nascent Brighton Issues Forum had a very useful meeting with Steven Clift last night.
Interesting times.
I'd heard about this extraordinary little book in passing but it wasn't until I picked up a free copy in Brighton's main Post Office that I realised quite how good it was. It's packed with uplifting stories and no-nonsense explanations to globalisation, development and changing to world.
You can download, read or order the book online.
Jason Kitcat 