March 11, 2012

Vote for the pretty girl behind the anchor

Filed under: Shows,Technology by Branko Collin @ 11:51 am

Three friends from the Eindhoven University of Technology run a website to crowd source the detection of pretty girls behind popular TV anchor Matthijs van Nieuwkerk.

The interface to hetmeisjeachtermatthijs.nl is very simple. It presents you with a screenshot of last night’s episode of talk show De Wereld Draait Door, covered in squares that any visitor can click on. Just click the square that covers the pretty girl, in your opinion, and your vote is recorded.

According to Bright, the site has been up for about 18 months, and drew 10,000 visitors last year.

“Part of the fun”, founder Teun Vinken told the tech site, “is that the girls are blurry. Half the time you cannot even be sure they are really that pretty.”

Screenshot: hetmeisjeachtermatthijs.nl.

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April 28, 2010

Residential home bins handicapped people’s voting passes

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 8:25 am

Last year, the Netherlands Supreme Court ruled that the mentally challenged who had a legal guardian are legally allowed to vote. However, in a report published by the Dutch association for care to the handicapped, the secretarial offices of residential homes rip up or throw out the voting passes. The association’s assumption is that employees do not know what to do with the passes because the actual voting is problematic. People with a physical disability are legally allowed to get help in the voting booth, but not the mentally challenged. An older man determined to vote explains that his voting pass goes to the headquarters of the residential home and not to his address. He has had to fight to make sure his pass is not thrown out to be able to vote.

Oh and electronic voting got scrapped back in 2007 for all kinds of security reasons, which probably doesn’t help, either.

(Link: trouw.nl)

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October 1, 2007

Government axes electronic voting

Filed under: IT by Branko Collin @ 9:48 am

Last week Minister of the Interior, Bijleveld announced (Dutch) that for now the Netherlands will return to paper voting. A committee headed by former minister Korthals-Altes had concluded that currently electronic voting systems are unsafe. Earlier, the Wij Vertrouwen Stemcomputers Niet group (We do not trust voting kiosks), headed by well-known hacker Rop Gongrijp, had demonstrated how easy it is to hack a voting kiosk without leaving a trace.

The Korthals-Altes committee concluded that electronic voting should leave a paper trail, so that votes can be re-counted if necessary, and that it should be transparent. The soonest moment at which electronic voting can be re-introduced would be after the 2009 elections for the European parliament.

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May 17, 2007

Dutch fined for not voting in Belgium

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:27 am
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Belgium is fining Dutch nationals who live in Belgium, registered to vote in the municipal elections last October, yet who failed to vote. Voting is compulsory for all Belgian residents who are registered to vote, even foreign nationals. The fine starts at 500 euro a person.

Rene van Ham, who lives in the Belgian-Dutch border town of Hoogstraten where 10% of the population is Dutch, said he did not realize this. A neighborhood policeman came to his door recently with a summons.

EU nationals living in Belgium are automatically eligible to vote in local elections. Non-EU nationals who have lived in Belgium for five years are also eligible to vote as of last year, but they need to sign an agreement promising to respect Belgian law. The courts in the border area confirmed that quite a few Dutch nationals failed to show up at the municipal elections.

(Link: People’s Daily)

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