I was disappointed in it because of the location they shot from. It's taken from János hegy. Although this is the highest point in Budapest, it is so far from the city itself that there isn't much to see.

There is some waffle on the page about why they chose that point. They say it is the highest point and that the observation platform there will have its 100th anniversary in September. But then there is mention of the support and cooperation that they had from the district council for that district of Budapest.

So presumably the authorities responsible for the other more reasonable vantage points were less cooperative.

But Moldova should, by every right, be a part of Romania

So by the same logic would you say that Transylvania should be part of Hungary?

I'm sure that you will be able to come up with some contorted rationalization that justifies only the particular border changes that support your national views, but the rest of us would laugh if it weren't so tragic.

As I suggesting in another comment, it looks like another attempt to humiliate the opposition. And, as I said, with such a resounding electoral win, Fidesz can afford to be more gracious.

I left Hungary in late 1994. The (two) websites were terrible back then.

First of all, we've all been operating under the incorrect assumption that the prior content is down. It isn't down. There's a link at the bottom of the OMB page that takes you to the old site. So there is nothing really pernicious here (just bad design)

This "unworthy" business is an attempt to humiliate the previous government and plays into the tone of the campaign. Considering that Fidesz won so overwhelmingly in the elections, they could afford to be more gracious now. But no doubt they want to continue with the message that the parties to the Left of them are unworthy to be considered Real Hungarians.

Still, I wish Fidesz well. They have an enormous task ahead of them. This is where the real test lies. Will they do what is necessary but unpopular or will they just work to stay in power? Certainly they will be able to go after local government spending (where the largess and patronage of the previous government really was), but will they get rid of the various child support programs (which give a lot more money to rich mothers than to poor ones). Will they get serious about property taxes (which will end up sending pensioners out of their big empty nests in the countryside)? Maybe if they keep picking symbolic fights with Slovakia and Romania so they'll be able to maintain their True Hungarian credibility as they swallow the IMF pill.

As I said, this is not what I'm betting on. But if asked to speculate in this area, suppose that a government website had information on poverty among Gypsies. That might be the kind of thing that the new government may not wish to emphasize.

There is another things as well. Fidesz will have to implement enormous and extremely painful budget cuts. If the MSzP run sites had bragged about social programs and how many people they helped, Fidesz may well want those squirreled away.

But on the whole, I take their OMG message at face value. The previous websites were a mess. It's just disturbing that at the moment for those ministries there is no online information. It's like when the radio news is replaced with Beethoven.

Yeah, but today is the day that the new government (elected in April) run by Fidesz takes over control of government ministries from the old MSzP-SzDSz coalition. So it will be interesting to see whether they actually quickly get useful information on to those sites or whether this is just an attempt to limit access to embarrassing data (Fidesz is more than a bit nationalistic). I suspect that this is an honest attempt to transition to presenting information more clearly, but I wouldn't be too surprised if I were wrong.

Te jo eg.

In this case it mean OMG. The page, even the Hungarian language version, has wikipedia links explaining that OMG is an English abbreviation meaning something like "Istenem!" (My God!) or "Te jo eg!" ("Oh, great heaven!").

I never would have thought that Fidesz (the new ruling party) still had anyone in it with a sense of humor. Back in the day (1990) they had the best campaign posters. I guess when you have complete control of parliament (more than 2/3) you can take a few risks. Also keep in mind that in Hungary, the Internet is used mostly by the young.

Back in the 80s, I remember someone saying that a paperless office would be about as useful as the paperless toilet.

I'm not sure why I feel that this is true. But I'm hoping this discussion will provide insight.

And although they are difficult to find, they are easy to catch on account of their left legs having a different length than their right legs.

I'm not asking the name of the individual. But surely it is relevant to know for anyone dealing with security issues whether this particular part of the attack could have been prevented by Google.

Thanks, but I think that people are being too hard on Schneier. The Computer World article that I cited is based on an "unnamed source" who is "not authorized to speak to the press." Obviously that article should have been cited, but I that oversight in citation is a blunder, not something that challenges the integrity of Schneier.

But it is consistent with the official report out of Google, which stated that the Gmail accounts themselves were not compromised, and that the information stolen was subject lines and account creation date. The only purpose I can see for having a system that would just have access to that kind of information is would be for some kind of "pre-scanning" for law enforcement.

Among the many questions that I want answered is whether the credentials used to access that system (presumably obtained via long standing Adobe Reader or IE zero-day vulnerabilities) belong to a Google employee or someone else who had access to that system.

When I blogged about this the week before last, I was relying on an article in Computer World which talked about the intruders gaining access to "a system used to help Google comply with search warrants by providing data on Google users."