Advertising as we like it – funny, greatly executed and with high current relevance to make most people smile.

RyanAir with a new ad shown on their web site is offering Silvio Berlusconi “another possibility to escape“.

In difference to about 10%+ of his colleagues in the Italian parliament who are already convicted criminals, Silvio Berlusconi has during the last years successfully used his financial and political powers to shield away any criminal prosecution from himself by new laws and delay tactics – at least as long he stays in power and that now might soon be changing…

Click on the image below for the link

The Ad reads:

Caro Silvio
Un’altra occasione per scappare – con RyanAir

in English: Dear Silvio
another possibility to escape – with RyanAir

BTW did you know that the FireFox / OpenOffice spell checker considers Berlusconi a spelling mistake and offers Coniferous – a cone bearing tree – as correction

There are quite a few tasks that for humans seem to be very simple and do happen nearly automatically, but for robots and their creators these have turned out to be rather challenging. Walking, running, balancing things and of course bicycling are some of those tasks.

Now here’s a robot with two legs riding on a bicycle.

Pretty funny watching the little guy. Looks a bit like someone riding a bike after too many beers or someone having used a bike for some years. And quite impressive – guess it would look even more impressive when little biped puts out his arm when doing a turn or ringing the bell.

Tonight it is the 5th of November – Guy Fawkes’ night the 406th – and celebrations of this event are becoming more and more lively particularly in the UK.

Sign of the time?

Hover over the image below (and click it if you like)

Guy Fawkes Night

“…Remember, remember the Fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot
I know of no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot…”

images wikimedia

At the age of 70 on 12-Oct-2011 tech giant and Turing award winner Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie, co-creator of Unix and C has passed away.

RIP, our thanks will always be with you. Very few things that today hundreds of million people use on their computers everyday would have been possible or here without your work.

#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
	printf(“Goodbye, Dennis\n”);
	return 0;
}

“…His pointer has been cast to void *“

image wikimedia

Almost every western country is currently developing or has implemented plans to reduce administrative overheads and cost of government services. Often this happened by just reducing service levels and extent instead of looking for ways to spend the government money more wisely.

Sometimes such blunt tactics shed a light on the true intentions behind some of these “cost cuttings” – quick & dirty fixes, reduce social benefits and put even more pressure and fear into the majority of citizens.

Cost cuttings are seen across all areas of government services not stopping even with closing hospitals, fire services or massive cuts with other essential services.

A “Golden Calf” like the DoD budget that does not even pass an financial audit or pet projects of congress men are often excluded from such reviews. The worst of such projects, the notorious KBR LOGCAP contract to supply logistics to U.S. troops in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is (even publicly) known to be awash in fraud and waste. And with budgets now beyond USD 40 billion on this project alone one could expect finding savings of a few hundred million dollars to be an easy morning exercise.

But some congress men seem to have other ideas of saving government money.

They would instead like to cut the budgets of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to an extend that it most likely will hamper their current and future work. Anyone familiar with government blocking tactics might easily see what really could be behind that – no more finding of “real” waste across government programs.

GAO – a 90-year-old federal agency – that so far has returned USD 87 for every dollar invested, is recommending around USD 50 billion in savings every year and writes over 1,000 reports to Congress annually. About 80 percent of its recommendations over the past five years have been instituted (at least on paper). GAO has an annual budget of about USD 500 million – nothing compared to the savings generated and to other government agencies.

It would not be the first time that some in the U.S. government or even in international organizations within their walled gardens of lobbyism, notorious overspending, fraud and waste in their pet programs are seeing GAO as a big threat to their or their buddies coffers. Suggesting GAO budget cuts might on top of that be also driven by the hope that it diverts such activity away from them.

While anyone who has at least a basic understanding of management or how to efficiently use entrusted funds would in times like these substantially increase the budgets of an successful organization like GAO, those objecting such a proven and most likely successful move should demonstrate their true intentions by stopping to shield other programs off any scrutiny or budget cuts.

Others might go a step further asking if America can still afford to fight two wars it can not win, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the death toll rising to thousands of service men. And for every dead service (wo)man their families and communities are also affected. But when current budget cuts continue maybe soon each weapon fired, each grenade thrown in those wars might not kill that many insurgents but more Americans at home who lack food and health services due to the massive waste of billions within / surrounding those military programs and the lack of funds remaining for essential services at home.

Further reading:
More on the planned GAO budget cuts at Truthout.com. They are asking their readers to email Senator Nelson (link corrected) and tell them to restore the GAO cuts and invest in oversight instead of waste.

Elizabeth Warren at the first debate of Democrats in Massachusetts:

“…Everyone has to follow the law. That has to be the story in place. But no one understands better what the frustration is right now.

The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. It happened more than three years ago, and there is still no basic accountability, and there has been no real effort to fix it…”

The last weeks you could experience first hand how right she is on Wall Street, that the only people politicians and police are applying the law to are the protesters on the street and not those in the buildings who’s crimes have affected millions of Americans and continue to destroy lives.

video of (part) speech by Elizabeth Warren