Approximately three hours ago Barack Obama became America’s 44th president. Perhaps I never paid attention, but it seems to me like today is a much more joyous occasion than any of the presidential inaugurations that I can remember (for the record, it’s 3). But the thing that I find the most interesting is the technology used by the new administration. The inauguration has used Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube, just to name a few.

My faith in the ability of society to continue to exist is at an all time low. First there’s the financial crisis. Then there’s Worldbank’s most sensitive data is apparently free for the taking. And to top it all off, your government is spying on you because they think it’s funny.

Did the economy turn into a giant pile of steaming dung just yesterday, or is this the first I’ve heard of it? Government Seizes Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Lehman Group Files for Bankruptcy Merrill Lynch Is Sold to Bank of America Washington Mutual Credit Rating Is Cut to Junk by S&P Financial Russian Roulette “When do we run down to the bank in a mob like in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’?

There are several articles about people who want a portable music player but adamantly do not want an iPod. I find this a little bit interesting, having been one of those people myself. There are essentially two reasons behind this. 1) preference for a format not supported on the iPod and 2) Apple resentment. I’ll set aside 3) DRM because if you have DRM’d music that creates a naturally high barrier to departure and there’s two kinds of DRM, each falling into the other two categories (“I can’t play may PlaysForSure/Zune music on an iPod “or I hate FairPlay, but willingly subject myself to PFS/Z”).

The horse’s mouth: In Roman times the employees of Fannie Mae would be decimated, i.e., they would draw lots and 90 percent of them would beat the unlucky 10 percent to death with clubs. What would be a modern equivalent? At the very least taxpayers should have the satisfaction of seeing the highest paid 100 Fannie Mae employees fired with two weeks of severance pay (it can’t be that hard to find replacements given that the current staff’s primary achievements have been accounting fraud and then insolvency).