Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Cyprus is preparing for the presidential elections, which will take place this coming Sunday - February 17th, 2008 - and then another Sunday after that - February 24th, 2008. Unfortunately, most of the information about the elections is in Greek, so there isn’t much point in linking to it or quoting it.

Anyway, I came across this post in Linkbox blog, which links to web sites of some candidates, as well as the main web site of the elections.  Being a curious web worker, I wanted to see which tools these web sites use, and how well they use them.  Here are my findings.

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Slashdot quotes:

Two thirds of the students at NYU would give up their right to vote in the next election for a full scholarship. Some would be satisfied with an ipod. A few would be willing to give up the right for the rest of their lives for one million dollars.

With elections coming up in both Russia and USA, it’s interesting to see sometimes how similar a few things are.   I’ve heard something similar to the above quote about Russian youth too.  In fact, I have to say that I feel pretty much the same.  The simple reason for it is that my vote isn’t worth anything.  It affects nothing.  And eve if it did, I am to vote for one choice of those that I would rather not have at all.  And those for who I’d run to vote for either don’t make it to the candidate status or don’t even try to.

Slashdot discussion has a few insightful comments on the subject.  Here are some quotes:

 Theoretically, if we had candidates that represented us instead of the interests of corporations and special interest groups, our right to vote would be worth a great deal.

According to our forefathers, the right to vote is worth your life. My how times have slipped. But I do agree. I can’t blame the voter when you have the choices you have today.

Logically, you’re not capable of voting if you’re dead - your statement is patriotic but makes no sense.

 The article didn’t surprise me much either. I think many people feel the same way you do. Many people don’t use their right to vote, so they actually give it up for free, so why not give it up for an iPod?

 You could have far more influence over the government with that $1,000,000 than you ever will by voting.

Yes, I’ve heard it all before and it wasn’t always coming from the Americans…

It’s nice to see that pop music is not the only one getting top charts, awards, and noisy promotions:

The world’s biggest classical music radio station and the world’s most influential classical music magazine have joined forces to make an already great classical music award even better 

Particularly, I’m glad to see that people can vote via a web site.

Some of my friends are voting for the conductor Valery Gergiev. If you are not familiar with his work, you can listen to some of it here.

I was wondering around IMDB and noticed that my voting history was rather small. I checked it for a few movies and realized that a lot of stuff that I’ve seen isn’t there. Not that they lost something. It’s just I never voted in the first place. Some movies I saw before I knew what IMDB was. Others were even before I knew what Internet was. Yet others I saw recently, but forgot to vote. Or just didn’t care much.

So, I opened profiles of a few famous actors, and voted for those films that I remember seeing. I checked blog archives for all of them, and some were even mentioned. That made the whole thing easier.

Anyway, I have voted on about 50 films. My current total is 436. There’s still plenty of stuff missing, but I’ll find it eventually.

I have also noticed that IMDB now allows sharing of Voting History, so I made mine public and you can check it out here (you still have to be registered and logged in to view).

I’ve just noticed that in my voting history at IMDB I have exactly 300 movies. Not so bad for a couple of years, if you ask me. In fact, I’ve watched a bit more than 300 movies technically. Some of the movies aren’t at IMDB, some I’ve seen but didn’t remember the title or didn’t vote at all, and some I’ve watched more than once.

Anyway, 300 is a round number. And it is a big one too. So I thought I’d post about it and acknoledge the fact.