New opportunities, Old reactions

Well, almost another year has passed by, and nothing seems to change…

The Public Administration just keeps on pumping out useless and illegal waste of public monies to slide in “under the deadline”.

“Damn the citizens, full speed ahead“. This time in the Lombardy Region.

(is that logo growing “fuzz” or do I need new glasses?)

Where to start?

The end, or a new chance to screw things up worse?

*Probe End: 2008-01-18 08:36:08 GMT
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*Probe End: 2008-01-18 08:41:09 GMT
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*Probe End: 2008-01-18 08:30:35 GMT
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These are the last signals of (non)life of italia.it, recorded by the site monitor already mentioned (Thanks Bruno!).

(Read more in Italian)

Letter to Romano Prodi, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers answers: checking of the correct working of the Public Administration is no concern of its citizenry

After the letter to Prodi, Rutelli and Nicolais signed by over 1500 citizens, many of whom design, web and multimedia professionals, in which a request was advanced for transparency in the public documents related to the Protal Italia.it, here, finally, a sign of life from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.

Today, from the email address postacertificata.dit@palazzochigi.it we received the following PDF attachment with the answer:

Response to the Letter to Romano Prodi – DOWNLOAD PDF (in Italian)

It is comprised of two documents.

(read the rest in Italian)

Geography anyone?

It is sooo annoying that the Flash programmers that Italia.it employs do not have the least sense of geography or its conventions and use in the modern world.

Since when has Vicenza EVER been one step left (East) and three steps up (North) on any geographical mapping projection system?

Anyone that looked at the coordinates (much less has ever been anywhere near the Italian Northwest) would know that they are relatively close to the same Latitude (North-South position, geographically speaking) but over an hour’s travel apart in Longitude (East-West position, geographically speaking). Even the Italian State Railways, known worldwide for their inefficiency, horrible train-sign translations and generalized incompetency have gotten it better than the Italia.it programmers.

Please, get your act together!

Please note the mapping according to Saint Google deMap, the patron saint of mappers since medieval times:

Notice that the traditional North-South-East-West conventions give hardly any difference in the North-South relations between Venice and Vicenza, but create roughly a square between Vicenza and Parma, and that Parma correctly results South of both Venice and Vicenza (seeing as it is almost a degree of Latitude South of both, it is only natural and comprehensible that it be represented that way, or at least one would think…).