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The world is talking, are you listening?

Inspired by sf.citi (San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology & Innovation), Jakub Ptačin [sk] and Peter Fabor [sk] have launched It's Not Possible (“To Sa Nedá”; sk; on Facebook – here), an initiative whose goal is to redesign websites of selected state institutions – for free and without political ambitions. In the initial phase, they created a public text file for citizens to report problems of the Slovak land register portal. They have also already met with a member of the Slovak Blind and Partially Sighted [Persons'] Union.

Blogger Robert Huran reports [sk] on the initial success of his online form [sk] for entrepreneurs, which was created two months ago in response to the news [sk] of the €200 million governmental support for ten selected companies. The reasons these companies were chosen included promises of investment and creation of 2,400 new jobs, as well as preservation of about 1,500 jobs. Now, thanks to Huran, over 200 companies are going to ask for €33 million in state support for providing over 3,200 new and existing jobs. Huran's goal is to push for clear rules that will be the same for everyone – or to discourage stimulus at all, to prevent deformation of entrepreneurial environment.

Every year, the Slovak state pays about 200 Euros per computer for a license allowing the use of the newest Microsoft products and services.
Activist Štefan Szilva has collected information [pdf, sk] about 30 percent of the 82,000 ‘state-owned computers'. From it, the IT website dsl.sk has computed this statistics [sk]: 76.4 percent of PCs have Windows XP (released in 2001) and 50.2 percent of PCs have MS Office 2003.

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About 100 people took part in a follow-up “Together for a Decent and Safe Life” protest [sk, images, videos], co-organized by Oskar Dobrovodský, in Bratislava on Nov. 10 (more about Dobrovodský's case and the previous, Oct. 13, rally is here). After the protesters burned the EU flag, police detained two of them.

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Last month, in response to “the worsening situation in coexistence of citizens of towns and villages with the undisciplined and antisocial fellow citizens,” residents of the town of Partizanske came up with a “Petition for increased protection of the rights of decent people” [sk]. This past weekend, over 3,000 mostly elderly people from Partizanske and nearby towns attended the “march for the rights of decent people”; their slogans included “Decent people are sending children to school” and “Decent people pay rent.”

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A concert in support of Róbert Bezák, the popular archbishop of Trnava who was sacked for unknown reasons, took place on Tuesday and was the next step in various protests, including this online petition [sk] as well as worshipping in front of the church [sk] instead of inside it. Three years ago, Bezák replaced Ján Sokol, who, allegedly, had been on the payroll [en] of the Communist-era secret police. Upon entering office, Bezák ordered a financial audit, which – just a few days after his removal – ended with a criminal complaint.