Marc Hyman's Blog, page 6
October 22, 2009
In Estonia, firewall lessons are the new duck-and-cover drills
Readers of this blog are well aware of Estonia's cybersophistication. Unfortunately, its innovation in state-of-the-art online voting, tax filing, and money transfer has made the country a target for malicious cyberattacks. Exhibit A: the denial-of-service attacks of April and May 2007, which closed down critical Estonian government and business websites and froze the country's automated teller machine and mobile phone networks.
Vaino Reinart, Estonia's ambassador to Canada, Mexico, and the...
October 20, 2009
Press freedom continues to thrive in Estonia
Estonia was today named as one of the world's ten best countries for freedom of the press by the international press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (known by its French acronym RSF). The annual ranking looks at violations of press freedoms in 175 countries and covers print, broadcast, and online journalism.
Estonia retained the top-10 ranking it has held for four consecutive years. It placed 6th, immediately behind a five-way tie for first place among Denmark, Finland, Ireland...
October 19, 2009
Back on the Map: bonus features coming soon
This web log was conceived to serve two complementary purposes: to promote across the English-language blogosphere an awareness of and appreciation for developments in contemporary Estonia, and to serve as a real-time supplement to my book, Back on the Map: Adventures in Newly Independent Estonia.
With a focus on the second purpose I'm preparing to roll out, in the "back pages" of this blog, a series of supplementary Back on the Map "bonus features". Here are a few of the items on their...
Estonian e-voting, complete with automatic voter registration
In Estonia, you would be.
Estonia was the world's first country to enable online voting in national elections. But how exactly does it work? Thad Hall posted a nice overview of Estonia's e-voting system today over on Election Updates. Here is the key passage:
In Estonia, when you turn 18, you are automatically registered to vote at your address at that time. In addition, the person obtains a national identification card that has both a photo identification component and a digital signature...
October 14, 2009
Sakala's revenge? New Tallinn landmark Solaris suffers embarrassment in opening week
Solaris, Estonia's brand new state-of-the-art shopping mall/conference center/entertainment complex, suffered a blow yesterday, just a week after its grand opening, when the ceiling of one of its movie theatres collapsed.
Fortunately nobody was inside at the time, and there were no injuries, but there was a lot of excitement — and a lot of questions about why the ceiling of a brand new facility should suddenly collapse. Shoddy workmanship? Unrealistically tight construction deadlines? Poor...
October 12, 2009
Estonia is one of Europe's leaders in foreign language fluency
Estonia scored highly in a recent survey of linguistic skills across the European Union. Among the 29 countries surveyed (the EU 27 plus Croatia and Norway), Estonia placed 6th in the percentage of the population speaking two or more foreign languages, and 7th in the proportion of secondary students who study two or more foreign languages.
The percentage of Estonian adults speaking two or more foreign languages was 55.9%, which positioned Estonia above other acknowledged polyglot nations...
October 9, 2009
You can read the first chapter of my book online
Amazon.com has just activated their "Look Inside" and "Search Inside" services on my book. This means that you can read the entire first chapter using amazon's popup book reader, and also that you can enter search terms and find any references to these terms inside the book.
Say, for example, you wanted to find a description of Bistro, my favorite Tallinn restaurant in 1992. Simply go to this page, click on the book cover, enter "Bistro" in the "Search Inside This Book" box, click Go, and...
October 6, 2009
The Estonian criminal menace
Estonian bad boys
An article in today's Helsingin Sanomat, Helsinki's largest-circulation daily newspaper, raises the spectre of bad-boy Estonians launching a massive crime spree in Helsinki. The accompanying image, reproduced here, offers chilling photographic "proof". Close your windows and bolt your doors, Helsinki-ites; the Estonians are coming!
According to the article, unemployed young Estonians are being recruited to venture north to the Helsinki region to steal clothing from Finnish...
October 5, 2009
His majesty, the King of Estonia?
Estonia has a well-functioning parliamentary democracy. The government is led by a prime minister and the state is headed by a president. But could the country have ended up with a king instead?
This was an open question back in 1992, when Estonia held its first free elections since before the Second World War. The balloting marked a key turning point in the country's evolution from captive Soviet republic to thriving sovereign nation.
A total of 13 electoral blocs competed for the 101 seats...
October 3, 2009
Is the Estonian language endangered?
Estonia's population continues to shrink. When I first moved to Estonia in 1992, its population stood at an estimated 1.59 million. It has dwindled ever since, dropping first below 1.5 million, then below 1.4 million. It has now officially fallen below the 1.3 million threshold: the country's estimated population as of July 2009 is 1,299,371. And startlingly, as of 2009, Estonia's population growth rate of -0.63% places it 230th out of 234 countries in the world. Only Ukraine, Bulgaria...
