Papal elections are more secure than US
elections

How hard is this to hack? The first observation is that the system is entirely manual, making it immune to the sorts of technological attacks that make modern voting systems so risky. The second observation is that the small group of voters -- all of whom know each other -- makes it impossible for an outsider to affect the voting in any way. The chapel is cleared and locked before voting. No one is going to dress up as a cardinal and sneak into the Sistine Chapel. In effect, the voter verification process is about as perfect as you're ever going to find.

Eavesdropping on the process is certainly possible, although the rules explicitly state that the chapel is to be checked for recording and transmission devices "with the help of trustworthy individuals of proven technical ability." I read that the Vatican is worried about laser microphones, as there are windows near the chapel's roof.

That leaves us with insider attacks. Can a cardinal influence the election? Certainly the Scrutineers could potentially modify votes, but it's difficult. The counting is conducted in public, and there are multiple people checking every step. It's possible for the first Scrutineer, if he's good at sleight of hand, to swap one ballot paper for another before recording it. Or for the third Scrutineer to swap ballots during the counting process.

Parliamentary disclosure

Russia Ups Security Ahead of
Parliamentary Poll

Internet Portals Ready for Parliamentary
Polls

Parliamentary group analysing eScience &
the Grid

Parliamentary panel nods to Kuwait's
third mobile operator (AFP)

Parliamentary committee supports
personal music copying

Parliamentary committee condemns HM
Customs e-programme as risky & costly

Scientific Response to Terrorism: Home
Office responds to Parliamentary
Committe

Finnish Fun

Heli kirjoitti pienen mukavan tarinan uljaas ta prinssistä, joka uponnee jokaiseen naiseen, joka on ikinä seurustellut nörtin kanssa. On suorastaan pelottavaa tunnistaa itsensä. (Ei se komeuskohta. Mutta se muu...)

Kiitos! :-D

Finnish Thanksgiving

« The bas-relief on this slab of dark granite becomes a cool bit of snowy art. A Thanksgiving day postprandial gallery of pictures from a November Snow to gape at in a turkey induced coma. »

Thanksgiving, a treasured holiday that involves lots of food, family and no religious obligations. A day that likely makes all the surviving Native Americans wonder what in the hell the Wampanoag tribe was thinking when they helped those prissy pilgrims survive the first few winters instead of taking care of the problem early. So much romanticism is imbued in the whole idea of Thanksgiving that even Plymouth Rock is a major tourist attraction which, I can tell you from personal experience, is the saddest bit of rock anyone might waste their time travelling down two hours from Boston to gape at.

In the annual fit of family and patriotic turkey eating frenzy, the Pilgrims were, in fact, immigrants celebrating the fact that they managed to survive a year or two in their new homeland, one that they either chose to or were forced to move to. Not that everyone shouldn't have something to reflect happily upon in the previous 365 days, but people who move to an alien land have a completely different need to do so since, like with the Pilgrims, there are lots of days where the misery you knew back home seems a lot more comfortable than the misery you are just beginning to make friends with. Simple things you once took for granted are a new challenge and few things come easily.

I didn't go home this year, much as I wanted to, but we had a 'Finnish Thanksgiving' dinner of turkey meatballs, mashed potatoes with aura cheese and garlic, and lingonberry sauce. It wasn't the same as a full spread of turkey, stuffing, giblet gravy, yams, cranberry relish, pumpkin pie, and piles of other food you try to cram in before you feel so full that you feel sick, but it was good. I don't feel much like a pilgrim but, like them, I've managed to survive so far and that's something worth treating yourself to a big meal that would drop a moose in 50 paces. Of course, this year I have something to be quite thankful for and that is, after much waiting and hoping, I finally got a job. Not only a job, but a job at the one place I wanted to work for above all the others. :) I'm happy, too, that I'll be working somewhere that I'll be, I think, the only native English speaker and where the operating language is Finnish and I will have no choice but to finally start speaking a bit more Finnish. I hope I survive the awkward stage. Getting back into a regular workday routine is going to feel really strange for a week or three I think. :)

Also, this week's paper had a story about Korttelit.fi, a pictorial map of every building in downtown Helsinki. The interface is very nicely done and the pictures are good as well. It's not finished as the person who created it is doing it himself, but I suspect there will be some commercial interest in it to make it worth his while.

"review (in Finnish)"

In Finnish, for a change.

Sinä puuhaat keittiössä. Laitat paikkoja kuntoon.
Minä kuuntelen sitä, rakastan sinua
ja kaikki on sitä myöten selvää.

- Pentti Saarikoski -

(<idlewonder>Lieneekö yhden runon lainaaminen tekijänoikeusrikkomus? Sehän on itsenäinen teos, ja pikkaisesta runosta on aika vaikea lainata pelkkää osaa tekijänoikeuslain 22§:n tarkoittamalla tavalla. Hum.</idlewonder>)

Finnish CC Licence

Finnish Blog Awards

How could I not do this?

Apologizes to all English readers - here's the official announcement:

Kultainen Kuukkeli 2003 - palkinto tullaan jakamaan useammassa blogikategoriassa, ml. paras suomalainen blogi. Lisäinfoa on sivulla Kultainen Kuukkeli 2003.

Ehdotuksia kategorioista voi joko lähettää meilitse tai jättämällä kommenti tähän merkintään.

Mikäli joku haluaa sponsoroida palkintoja, ole hyvä ja ilmoita itsestäsi ylläolevin keinoin.

Finnish WISPs Roam

Cory's DRM talk in Finnish

Almost a Finnish knit bl0g

However, since this is a blog dedicated to blog research, it's actually a map of the Finnish blogrolls - i.e. who endorses whom in their sidebars. The reason why I'm in the middle with the most links is not because I'm part of a mythical Bloggers Inner Circle [BTW, meeting at eleven at the Usual Place. Bring your capes. And a frog.], but likely because I happen to have my entire up-to-date subscription list available automatically, whereas most others seem to maintain their "recommended reading list" manually. Or that's my guess.

It's a fun pic. You can find all sorts of interesting data in it, and support almost any opinion you can think of. It'll be interesting to see what Jere can dig out of it :)

(I'm reading too many blogs anyway. I should probably start dropping the ones I don't read so regularly anymore...)

Obscure Finnish joke

Stupid Finnish poetry

Apologies to my foreign readers. It would be worse in English, trust me :-). I just had to put this one in the form of a tanka poem. I have no explanation.

W3C Launches Finnish Office

Finnish bl0ggers awarded

The award went to sukellus.fi, with Alex Nieminen, Petri Ahoniemi, Janne Miikkulainen, Matti Anttila, Sami Köykkä, Mimmu Pekkanen, and Kalle Valkama for "fast and professional internet information dissemination during a crisis".

(A timeline of the events in English can be found here.)

Congrats to all! Good work, and rightfully awarded!

Low stakes Finnish Hold 'Em

After sitting down to dinner at Moustache in the East Village, a bunch of us pulled out our phones, which activity I've noticed is some kind of nerd group tic. Several at the table had the Nokia 7610 and we were still futzing with them when the waiter came up to take our order. When he saw the phone, his eyes went wide. "What phone is this? You all have the same one? What is this phone and where did you get them?"

We told him a little about the phone and he seemed impressed. Smirking a little, he set down his order pad and reached into his pocket. "Here is my phone," he said as he placed a recently-released uber-thin M otorola RAZR down on the table, stepped back, and crossed his arms proudly. We all pulled back slightly from the table, silent for a moment, and then leaned in to get a closer look with a collective "oooooh...." The waiter beamed, happy at besting a bunch of geeks at a hand of cell phone poker.

Finnish chainsaw politics

The issue is complicated, as always, but Metsähallitus is really trying to make it simple: you can either scorn or hate them for being such jerks and allowing such idiotic things to happen - in their name, by their employees, nonetheless. One would imagine that grown people would have enough sense to sit down and negotiate, but this? It also casts a bad light on the Center Party, currently holding the seat of the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.

Things like these tend to develop into a public relations fight. Greenpeace has been talking to buyers of Finnish paper, and quite a few authors and paper companies have already started to question the ethics of logging.

Metsähallitus is definitely not doing a good job on the PR front.

(Disclaimer: I support Greenpeace financially, though I am not a member. I also own some forest, so I support forestry. I don't think these are irreconcilably at odds, though...)

Web addiction gets Finnish conscripts
out of army

Net Addiction Gets Finnish Soldiers Out
Of Army

Keeping up with Finnish or Buffer
Overflow

« Sticker art girl with a long neck. »

I managed to survive the first week at work. There is always a period of feeling awkward and exposed when you first start working somewhere as you get to know the people you work with and find your way into the daily routine. The work is very familiar even though I'm a bit rusty in places and there are products in use that I've not worked with before. I have some large datacenter experience that might be helpful as well. The most challenging part of the job is, and will likely continue to be for a while, keeping up with conversations and meetings in Finnish. I understand quite a lot, but I have to concentrate on everything that is said. My vocabulary isn't all that great, but even if I only get half the words, context will usually help me figure out the rest. It's like working a cryptogram in real-time. My coworkers have been very nice in speaking Finnish to me even though I'm sure they find my replying in English somewhat annoying and, hopefully, I'll get over my self-consciousness about speaking Finnish sometime soon. Most of the people speak English very well which makes it too easy at times to be lazy. I keep hoping I have a Thirteenth Warrior experience and just start speaking it at some point and quip "I listened" when asked how I learned it. One person has such a perfect American accent that had he not said he was Finnish, I would have pegged him as being from somewhere in the Midwest. I hate that when people who aren't from the US have a better American accent than I do. :)

The atmosphere of the office reminds me so much of WU and BBN that I feel pretty much at home already. Everyone is some sort of academic who found their way into computing. I had to stand up and introduce myself at a meeting on my first day where I was told I had to describe my hobbies lest I be asked about them repeatedly. It seemed a little odd until I started to figure out that people really do value their hobbies and are interested in yours as well. I was really excited to meet a coworker who is involved with a student photography club and lab since I didn't want to build my own darkroom with an enlarger or buy one of the new photo printers since they generally suck at B&W printing. I'm also going to try and play s�hly, Finnish floorball, with the company team once a week. I'd better look up the word for "incoming!" before hitting the arena. :)

Perhaps one of the most obvious differences between working in the US and here is the general approach to the amount of time you spend in the office. At BBN, 80 hours wasn't an unusual week and if you were on call, 100 or more. Here, people go home at a reasonable hour and I've yet to notice anyone sleeping under their desk. You're even expected to take your holiday time. What a novel concept! I had 5 or 6 weeks of holiday time per year when I left WU, but I never really had the chance to take it so that I had a giant check for 16 weeks of accrued holiday time along with my last paycheck. Holiday time works a little different here as you accrue time much like you do in the US, but you need 6 days of holiday time to take a week off from work. I am told this is a vestige from the 60s or thereabouts when the workweek was 6 days rather than 5. The employee manual also had some interesting holiday tidbits such as a day per annum for moving house and if your 50th or 60th birthday falls on a weekday you get the day off. I have a few years to go before that happens. :)

And, the breeders have supplied us with 2 more pictures of puppy cuteness. :)

Life for Finnish student's killer

Finnish army 'drops web addicts'

Finnish bl0g list bought

However, what I find to be far more interesting is that Typepad (from Six Apart, the worlds largest blogging company) is reaching its tendrils into Finland now: first with Typepad Finland and now with partnership to blogilista.fi. Through the latter they get much needed publicity and visibility in Finland - after all, most Finnish bloggers seem to use Blogger these days. Typepad will have to compete against Vuodatus.net, though. Having tried both, I have to say that I prefer Vuodatus for their ease of use while still doing everything that's necessary.

I do find it interesting though that Typepad would partner with an aggregation service...

HP to manage IT for Finnish energy giant

Finnish bl0gging service open

Looks very comprehensive, yet easy for a new blogger. And has enough power to work for a bit more experienced bloggers as well. Very good and all the best to them!

(Very few of the blogs on vuodatus.net seem to be in the Pinseri blog-list. Why?)

Finnish police admits mistake

While it is worrying that the police do not seem to know the law, it's very positive that mistakes are acknowledged and hopefully learned from. A memo has been sent to the Oulu Provincial Police Command, and it's likely that the state provincial office will also need to address the issue due to an official complaint from Jani.

This is not the first case, nor will it be the last. In fact, my guess is that we'll see at least another attack like this against online personal publishing. Granted, there are some blogs which probably deserve it, but as this is arguably a new domain of publishing, the legislation will have to be tested in the blogosphere as well. And as such, I welcome it, as it clears the rules and the playing field. I just hope nobody would need to suffer for it...

Jani has been called in for questioning by the local police on the matter for next Friday. This will be interesting...

(Read the previous part of the story.)

Wireless from start to Finnish [Mobile
comms]

Internet addicts sent home from Finnish
military

Finnish operators allowed to share 3G
networks

HP inks deal with Finnish energy firm

Finnish bl0g awards nominees published

(224 voters, 2301 votes cast.)

Finnish Parliamentary Elections