Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Databases It's funny.  Laugh. Politics Idle

Swedes Cast Write-In Votes for SQL Injection, Donald Duck 210

An anonymous reader writes "The Swedish elections were held recently (the third Sunday of September to be exact) and it seems that a few people tried to interfere with the election by voting for parties which were in effect named to be SQL injection attacks or similar. Clever stuff! Little Bobby Tables in real life." That wasn't the only oddity of the election; reader MZeroOne writes: "The Swedish Election Authority published the results of last Sunday's general election and even though the current prime minister retained power, the candidate who got the most individual handwritten votes was Disney's Donald Duck." Maybe the existence of the Hard Alcohol Party (237 votes) helps explain why the Pirate Party didn't have a better showing.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Swedes Cast Write-In Votes for SQL Injection, Donald Duck

Comments Filter:
  • by Dayofswords ( 1548243 ) on Friday September 24, 2010 @04:27AM (#33684958)

    The 'Little Bobby Tables' reference:

    "Exploits of a Mom"
    http://xkcd.com/327/ [xkcd.com]

    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24, 2010 @05:09AM (#33685108)

      Sweden, is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe.

      • Additionally it is in the northern hemisphere of the planet earth and has a population of 9.2 million.

      • Its capital is Bern, and they are famous for cuckoo clocks and Hitler.

      • what is this europe you speak of?

        is it some sort of territory somehow unincorporated into the american union for some ungodly reason?

        do they eat their own babies there?

        • do they eat their own babies there?

          You jest, but when my wife spend one year in a US high school, she was (seriously) asked if we had running water in Europe.

        • do they eat their own babies there?

          Yes. Europeans are tree hugging pot smoking liberal evolutionist god hating nanny state abortionist lesbian commies. Everybody knows what communists enjoy for breakfast. And they also execute non-productive elders with an injection behind the ear.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by JazzXP ( 770338 )
      There's somebody on /. that hasn't seen that comic?!?!
    • I'm not sure it's the Disney duck the Swedes were voting for...
      this duck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_Anka [wikipedia.org] is pretty famous as well over here in Skandinavia...
    • by Muros ( 1167213 )
      Ssshhh dont give government ideas. They'll be sanitising polling station input if you show them that.
  • by FlorianMueller ( 801981 ) on Friday September 24, 2010 @04:35AM (#33684974) Homepage

    Since a number of activists from the anti-software-patent movement joined the Pirate Party, including its first MEP (Christian Engström), I've been following its development closely and at some point even lent them a signature to support their participation in an election in my country (Germany), even though I ultimately didn't vote for them.

    I've commented on the Pirate Party's failure to evolve into a serious political force. The EUobserver, an independent website covering European politics, published a streamlined version of my analysis [euobserver.com]. The original version [blogspot.com] goes into some more detail and appeared on my blog.

    • by FuckingNickName ( 1362625 ) on Friday September 24, 2010 @04:41AM (#33685000) Journal

      What every young, unrepresentative group of loud, idealistic men don't realise is that most people just want peace, a job and a house. And, if you spend your time employed rather than campaigning for the abandonment of the intellectual property concept, you will have enough money to pay for it anyway. And what you cannot pay for, you put on credit. And debt doesn't really matter... continue working hard and you can pay fast enough that no-one takes your stuff away... your government is not going to let civilisation collapse even if everyone else is in debt too.

      Life has been easy for quite a while. And of course I want to exploit you if I have the intelligence to do so. And I want to protect my legal rights to make it possible, not to share. Then I'm even more secure and my surroundings even more luxurious.

      • by Nursie ( 632944 ) on Friday September 24, 2010 @04:52AM (#33685044)

        The only bit I object to in your argument is this -

        And, if you spend your time employed rather than campaigning for the abandonment of the intellectual property concept, you will have enough money to pay for it anyway.

        It's not necessarily about being able to afford to buy stuff. It's about rights and reform in the new digital age.

        Other than that you're spot on, most people would rather get on with life and vote for whoever requires them to think about it the least.

      • filler text. i'm really just posting my sig.

      • by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Friday September 24, 2010 @06:17AM (#33685302) Homepage

        No, it's not about that.

        I don't object paying for stuff. I pay for indie games, and donated to the musopen project and some others. Many of those are things I don't even have to pay for if I don't want to.

        I object paying to parasites who want to create laws that will make it impossible for me to avoid paying them, because they want to introduce taxes on media, internet connections, and restrictions as to what my hardware can do. Simply not buying their stuff doesn't do it, because even if I don't buy or pirate a single CD they'll still put a tax on my hard disk and connection, throttle my torrent of CC licensed music, include DRM crap in my hardware, and prevent centuries old material from entering the public domain. If I don't buy, they'll say that I'm torrenting and use that as a justification for the things I've listed.

        That bullshit has to be removed at the source, through laws that make it illegal and cut its funding. I'll gladly pay the artists, but I don't want to give a single cent to the parasites from the RIAA, MPAA and ASCAP.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Joce640k ( 829181 )

          This ... and the fact the the government is piggybacking all sorts of censorship and internet-usage-log laws on top of what the RIAA wants. And the fact that the government is selling out to the RIAA in the first place, thus undermining the entire democratic process.

          I was never particularly militant, I'm now old enough to have a job/house/mortgage, I'm voting pirate in the next elections.

        • Excellent description.

          I'd like to see someone get a group of musicians together (there were a lot of them in the 80s and 90s) to express the discontent they had for the RIAA. Some of the agreements they signed borderlined on the unconscionable. The real problem with a pirate party is that there isn't really a public face for this issue other than 18-30 year olds that older voters have no real connection to. Any kind of real movement needs a "battered wife".

        • Amen. The companies that are represented by the RIAA and MPAA actually own the rights to things they did not create. They do this by controlling all the distribution and production facilities of the material so the only way for an artist to make money is to play along and sign a contract giving up their rights to their own stuff. The internet, open-hardware (non DRM) and file-sharing is a big blow to that business model because it takes away their media distribution oligopolies (shared monopoly). Intellectu
    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24, 2010 @05:01AM (#33685080)

      Most pirates probably just vote for the green party (miljöpartiet) instead - they changed their policy to support filesharing after the pp got 7% in the EU election - because they are a mainstream party and there was no doubt that they would get in. How much of a difference this has made I don't know but they did do very well in the election.

      Their internet-related policies [www.mp.se]

      • No that wasn't the case. The truth is that file sharing was never an issue that was discussed during the election, the issue got lost.

        Instead it was a race beetween two blocks of 3 and 4 parties that both was vying for power - none of the blocks won since a 8th party joined and became the deciding factor in the parlament.

    • by tenchikaibyaku ( 1847212 ) on Friday September 24, 2010 @05:08AM (#33685098)
      As not all the ballots are counted as of yet it's possible that the final result will differ a few points, but it's worth noting that the Swedish Pirate Party basically seems to have retained its voters from the previous election:
      2006: 0.63%
      2010: 0.65% (preliminary)
      This even though they were more or less absent from the public debate before the election.

      I also think that the existence of a Pirate Party here in Sweden has managed to affect the public debate regarding piracy and privacy related questions more than what shows up in the polls.
    • I've commented on the Pirate Party's failure to evolve into a serious political force.

      Err, what? That hardly seems worth commenting on. To become a "serious political force" they'd need to actually make some effort and have some desire to become such a force.

      I wasn't aware that anyone thought they were serious about it.

      • by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Friday September 24, 2010 @05:39AM (#33685192) Journal
        In the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, they got 90 votes in the last UK election. To put this in perspective, Mad Cap'n Tom, a joke candidate, got 84 votes in the same constituency. If the Pirate Party actually want to achieve something, then they need to start being constructive. A few suggestions:
        • Change the name. Pirate Party makes them sound like a bunch of teenagers.
        • Propose a sensible alternative to copyright, or propose a reasonable term for copyright. Their current proposals, if implemented, would cause significant damage to the economies of most western countries.
        • Focus more on the privacy and security policies - people are more sympathetic to people who want to be left alone than to freeloaders.
        • by TeraCo ( 410407 )
          They should also put up their policies regarding other key issues as well. If you want to be a viable candidate to the majors, people need to know that you're not going to do crazy things with their favourite issue.
        • by VJ42 ( 860241 ) *

          In the Cities of London and Westminster constituency... propose a reasonable term for copyright.

          At the last election, the Pirate party UK proposal was s a 5+5 copyright term; whilst I personally think it should be a 10 (well, up to 15) year fixed term, it's not that dissimilar - how is this unreasonable in the digital age?


          Disclaimer - I'm a PPUK member

          • by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Friday September 24, 2010 @07:34AM (#33685674) Journal
            They also proposed non-commercial copyright infringement be completely legal. This basically means that there is no reason for anyone to ever purchase entertainment, or any other copyright material that they are not going to make a profit from using, because they can legally get it for free. On the other hand, they didn't (for example) say anything about forcing the BBC to abandon DRM, support open standards for distributing its own work, and use CC (or similar) licensing for license-fee funded programming.
            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by VJ42 ( 860241 ) *

              They also proposed non-commercial copyright infringement be completely legal.

              Yes, because millions are doing it anyway; the law is next to useless and serves no point except to criminalize teenagers in their bedrooms

              On the other hand, they didn't (for example) say anything about forcing the BBC to abandon DRM, support open standards for distributing its own work, and use CC (or similar) licensing for license-fee funded programming.

              This is plain wrong: from the relevant section of the PPUK Manifesto [pirateparty.org.uk]

              Government copyrights are increasingly becoming a problem for society, with data such as maps and postcodes being jealously protected by government departments. We will introduce a new right of access to government funded data, requiring the release of all maps, statistics and so on that have been paid for by the taxpayer in open formats, under a Creative Commons or similar licence, giving the public access to research that they have already paid for. An exception will be made for cases that genuinely have national security or privacy concerns.

              This will include the output of the BBC, which is funded by the licence paying public and should therefore belong to the licence paying public. We will amend the BBC's charter to prevent the BBC from using DRM technology, and to require the BBC to release all their content under a Creative Commons licence. We pledge to maintain and expand the current list of important national events that cannot be exclusively broadcast pay TV services, and we pledge to put into action the government's existing but widely ignored Open Source Action Plan, which would encourage the use of free software in the public sector, saving money, and making the UK less reliant on foreign software suppliers.

              As you can see, we covered all of that.

              • This will include the output of the BBC, which is funded by the licence paying public and should therefore belong to the licence paying public. We will amend the BBC's charter to prevent the BBC from using DRM technology, and to require the BBC to release all their content under a Creative Commons licence.

                So, you basically want to eliminate an important source of income for the BBC, licensing shows internationally. So, you'll discourage creativity and increase the cost of running the BBC for the citizens. Nice job there.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by dkleinsc ( 563838 )

          I'm not sure the name is their problem. After all, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party has won elections in Britain.

          No, their major limitation is that they're primarily a single-issue party, and their stance on that issue has been taken by some of their opponents. So while they haven't experienced much by way of electoral success, as far as putting their ideas into mainstream politics in Sweden they've done a fantastic job.

        • by Hatta ( 162192 )

          I'm still waiting for someone to propose a sensible alternative to abandoning copyright.

        • by Hatta ( 162192 )

          Alright, I was being glib earlier but this I mean. Abolishing copyright would not damage the economy. It would expose damage that has already been done to the economy. Big difference. It would be best if we came to terms with the fact that copies of data have no value now, rather than keep up this fraud. It's not sustainable, it will end, and it will be worse for everyone the longer we put it off.

        • If the Pirate Party actually want to achieve something, then they need to start being constructive. A few suggestions:

          * Change the name. Pirate Party makes them sound like a bunch of teenagers.
          * Propose a sensible alternative to copyright, or propose a reasonable term for copyright. Their current proposals, if implemented, would cause significant damage to the economies of most western countries.
          * Focus more on the privac

          • As soon as they do that, they're no longer "the Pirate Party". They're just another easily ignored ho-hum political group with no constituency.

            Isn't that what they already are?

      • It's telling that you doubt they ever had the "desire" to become a serious political force. That shows what impression they created. But their founder, Rick Falkvinge, said repeatedly in recent years that Swedish elections usually have a close outcome between the left wing and the right wing and his game plan was to make it into parliament so that the Pirate Party would then be able to tip the scales in favor of either left or right, subject to concessions on intellectual property policy by whomever they wo
        • Being the decisive small part that determines who governs a country was a pretty serious plan, I would say.

          It might be a serious goal, but I don't see anything that indicates they had any kind of plan for achieving that.

          If they were serious, why did they name their party the "Pirate Party" and where are their policy positions on other issues not related to copyright and similar issues? You know, the issues that people vote on, and want their government to address?

          • You ask all the right questions but let me explain what they said their plan was (I've been describing all the time, not justifying).

            They thought that the "Pirate" name was key to draw attention to the issue and they tried to ride on that PR wave. By now, however, I'm convinced that the "Pirate" name -- more befitting of a costume party than of a political party -- was a mistake and with a "dull" name they might not have had that initial PR momentum but they could have built a real organization that's here

            • They thought that the "Pirate" name was key to draw attention to the issue and they tried to ride on that PR wave

              Yeah, not really such a good idea. Contrary to popular sayings, not all attention is good attention. It's kind of like calling a marijuana legalization party the "Getting Really Fucked Up On Drugs Party." That will certainly win much attention, but not votes.

              In terms of single-issue party or not, they figured they could do it like the Greens, who started out as an environmentalist and pacifist movement that over time took positions on all of the issues.

              Well, yeah. Whether you agree with it or not, environmentalism is a fairly coherent, holistic philosophy. There's enough broad support and substance behind the ideas to make a workable government. Opposing copyright just isn't in the same ballpark of us

              • It's kind of like calling a marijuana legalization party the "Getting Really Fucked Up On Drugs Party."

                There was a time when "democracy" referred to mob rule, and "democratic party" was an insult. Even the Democratic Republican Party, which grew into today's Democratic Party, preferred to be called "Republican" at the start.

                Whether you agree with it or not, environmentalism is a fairly coherent, holistic philosophy.

                Is freedom of expression likewise "a fairly coherent, holistic philosophy"?

                • Is freedom of expression likewise "a fairly coherent, holistic philosophy"?

                  Mostly, but that's not what the Pirate Party's position is. Even if it were, I don't think it's enough, as it doesn't provide any guidance on things like expenditure and infrastructure.

            • I honestly don't think anyone cares at all about what name they attach to their politics, have you looked at the names of all the established parties? They're all equally silly.

            • They thought that the "Pirate" name was key to draw attention to the issue and they tried to ride on that PR wave. By now, however, I'm convinced that the "Pirate" name -- more befitting of a costume party than of a political party -- was a mistake and with a "dull" name they might not have had that initial PR momentum but they could have built a real organization that's here to stay.

              I feel I must mention that there's a long tradition of political parties having names like that.

              In the UK-

              the name "Tory" derrives from tóraidhe- meaning outlaw or robber.
              'from the Irish word tóir, meaning "pursuit", since outlaws were "pursued men".'

              • the name "Tory" derrives from tóraidhe- meaning outlaw or robber.

                But isn't Tory and epithet for the Conservative Party? I've never heard it used in a positive sense.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Friday September 24, 2010 @05:59AM (#33685256) Homepage

      Just a few things:
      1) The EU and national elections are really not comparable, people care about so vastly different things. Neither before, during or after did PP have anything like a 7% support in polls for the national parliament. But in retrospect, they didn't have a good enough national election platform to push while they still had media's attention because all the effort had gone into the EU election. They got silent and when it was ready media had lost attention.

      2) There has been extremely little room for any other than the traditional parties and SD who got almost 3% in the last election, the number of "other" votes dropped from 2.75% to 1.41% and all others backed while PP increased from 0.63% to 0.65%. All major issues related to PPs politics have been pushed back to past the election, like the TPB trial who "coincidentally" begins next week.

      3) It might look more like an activist group, but as long as no party is willing to seriously fight for the same issues then PP will have to fight for representation on their own. It took three days after the election for the Greens - including the Swedish representative - to vote for another anti-filesharing bill in the EU, they are only playing the populist opinion but will trade it away in any negotiation.

      4) There have been no rounds ot mass lawsuits in Sweden, TPB is still up and running, they get some of the world's best free services like Spotify, in short people don't see the immidiate need for political change. But polls asking people for their opinions rather which party they'd vote for show that PP is having an effect on the attitude to copyrights. More and more people dispute that copyright infringement equals theft. If it again becomes a political topic, PP will do better than last "wave".

      Personally I'm at least hopeful for 2014...

      • To comment particularly on item #4, the Pirate Party might have done gradually better if there had been some procedural moves in a major lawsuit involving "piracy". That apparently was the case before the EU elections but not this time, where some court proceeding will start next week or so. But then the question is whether it's really a serious political game plan to be so much "event-driven" that you get 0.7% without an event and 7.1% with one occurring at the right time. That's actually another character
        • by Kjella ( 173770 )

          The comparison is like I said wildly invalid. And obviously something like "miljöpartiet" = the greens is driven up by high-profile environmental events, so I don't see why the pirate party can't be.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wertigon ( 1204486 )

      Actually, I disagree... The Pirate Party is everything but a one-hit wonder. However in the world of politics, things move slowly, by neccessity.

      The Pirate Party made a really bad election this year, but that does not seem to have demotivated any of it's members. If anything, it has made them even more interested in continuing the fight. The fact that members from other parties join PP here in sweden only serve to prove that PP is here to stay, IMO.

      So a one-hit wonder? Nay. Not when their core issues are so

    • I personally find that in my country and the european parliament the greens party sufficiently has an anti-copyright and software patents stance that I voted for them instead of a single issue party like the Pirate Party. I also like a lot of the other policies they stand for.

    • by t0p ( 1154575 )
      In the last local authorities election in England, I voted for the local Pirate Party candidate. Unfortunately I was almost alone in doing so: he got just 16 votes IIRC. That's pretty much the party's own fault though: I saw *no* publicity for them, and I didn't even know a PP candidate was standing until I was in the voting booth and read the ballot paper. Idiots. Who's going to vote for someone who calls himself a pirate if they don't know what he stands for? He might be campaigning for the legalisati
      • Was this the Edinburgh Liberton/Gilmerton by-election earlier this month? If so, you should have at least received a flyer through the door, and I think our candidate canvassed a decent percentage of homes in the ward (you may have been out when he came round).

        Unfortunately, most media is only interested in the "big" parties (I believe that in Scotland, those are Labour, Lib Dems, Conservatives, Greens and the SNP), and without a big campaign that is expensive both in terms of volunteers' time and in terms

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24, 2010 @04:36AM (#33684982)

    ... sadly isn't what you'd think. They are antibooze-ists. Huge disappointment.
    Translated homepage: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http://www.spritpartiet.se/&prev=_t&twu=1

    On a separate note, other notable entities voted for were "Shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits", and a silly javascript insertion attempt. Full data at http://www.val.se/val/val2010/handskrivna/handskrivna.skv

  • Seems to just reference itself. Clever but a bit of a waste. Or are they aiming for a stack overflow? Didn't seem to bother firefox here.

  • Donald Duck (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BetterThanCaesar ( 625636 ) on Friday September 24, 2010 @04:51AM (#33685042)
    The Donald Duck party is an all time favourite joke vote in Sweden, but it is actually a registered party. They promise free alcohol and wider sidewalks. They don't have a budget for voting slips, but write-in votes are valid (if spelt correctly). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Duck_Party [wikipedia.org]
  • According to the Swedish Election Authority's published hand written votes [www.val.se], Donald Duck got one vote and the Pirate Party got ~500.
  • . . . it really says a lot about the quality of the "serious" candidates. As in, none of them are worth voting for anyway, so why not vote for a joke candidate?

  • Yuck it up (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Meanwhile, the neo-Nazi Sweden Democrats [wikipedia.org] won 5.7% of the vote, 20 seats, giving them the balance of power.

    Thanks for the joke votes. Your apathy just gave actual Nazis a say in parliament.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      Nazis? They are actually more Israel friendly than most established parties, and one of their MP:s is jewish.

      While their ideological platform is built mainly on restricting immigration, that hardly qualifies as nazism. And joke votes are hardly a sign of apathy. If you really need to point fingers, why not aim them at the ~18% of the population that didn't vote at all? Get your facts straight.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Vintermann ( 400722 )

        The SD was created by the merger of several small, right-wing anti immigration parties, some of which were pretty openly nazist. The Jewish community in Sweden are among the many who accuse them of still "wearing their brown shirts under their jackets".

        For what it's worth, though, there is still at least one openly neo-nazi party that did not join them, and now occupies the niche (such as it is) on their right.

    • To be fair, the blame should be on those who actually voted for SD, many of whom say they "only want a more sane immigration policy".

      Meanwhile, in reality, the party they voted for is openly against any immigration from outside of Europe, they say Islam is a threat to Sweden's culture, and their members are people who are significalty more likely to have been convicted of assault, abuse, rape and hate crimes. Stopping immigration is pitched as a question of cost for society – give the money to the s

  • I'd like to see their reaction one day when they somehow get enough people to write-in an idea/patent/cartoon character/medical condition into office. Maybe no one will be laughing then.

    Psoriasis for Prime Minister in 2050.

  • Yeah! The reason our party didn't do better is there are too many other parties! They oughta outlaw the other parties! There should just be one party, our party ! Maybe we could have some kind of way of forcing peole to join our party, I don't know, some little groups called soviets!

  • I don't think 237 votes would have increased the Pirate Party's tally to any significant degree... How many millions of voters does Sweden have?

    Down in the noise is down in the noise.

  • by Drakkenmensch ( 1255800 ) on Friday September 24, 2010 @07:05AM (#33685492)

    From the Norm MacDonald Show, Laurie's concession speech:

    "I'd like to congratulate the winners who got more votes than I did, write-in candidates Mickey Mouse and pornstar Wendy Whoopers."

If all else fails, lower your standards.

Working...