BLOG ENTRIES JULY TO SEPTEMBER 2003
WEDS 23 JULY 2003 23.35 (GMT)
-------------------------------------------------
IRELAND OFFLINE AGM...
IrelandOffline's AGM is being held this Saturday (26th July) in the upstairs room of The Clarendon pub, 32 Clarendon St, Dublin 2, just off Grafton Street. The group campaigns for affordable, unmetered and broadband internet access.
The AGM starts at 2pm and finishes up around 5pm.
AGENDA:
1. Chairman's review of the past year
2. Future direction of IrelandOffline
3. Q & A (open floor)
3. Elections
4. AOB
MONDAY 21 JULY 2003 23.35 GMT+1
-------------------------------------------------
PLUG INS...
Following last week's vulture feeding frenzy at Eircom (see my Sunday Tribune column yesterday), it was good to come across some positive news today. The Department of Communications will begin trials of internet over powerlines, which may start as early as six weeks from now.
Providing further information, David Long, the chairman of IrelandOffline, said in a post to the group's forum on Boards.ie that the ESB has been directed "by the Minister after they had a few sheckles left over from their North and South fibre rings. The initial recipients are most likely to be regional users, perhaps even island dwellers to start with. The initial trial will be available to around 1000 people I believe".
And why not? The technical problems are being sorted out and fulll commercial trials by Scottish Hydro-Electric are underway in Campbeltown and Stonehaven.
In a piece I wrote in the Tribune last March on this subject, I quoted Thomas McLaughlin, the lead engineer on the Shannon electrification scheme in 1927: "My country, of which I was so intensely proud, must not lag behind other lands. The people in our remote villages must have comforts which villagers in other lands enjoyed. Electricity, the great key to the economic uplift of the country, must be provided on a national scale, cheap and abundant".
Putting in the word internet instead of electricity brings us right bang up to date. If that seems ridiculous or utopian, well the same could be said about electricity at one time.
THURSDAY 17 JULY 2003 00.45 GMT+1
-------------------------------------------------
RESTART...
I'm just back from Donegal, and ten days seems like a month. I was at a fantastic wedding of a friend from The Sunday Tribune.
Other highlights included a ferry trip to Arranmore island and an incredible gig by Damien Dempsey in Culdaff, a small village on the Inishowen Peninsula.
Integrity and passion are rare bedfellows. With Damien they're allied to a gifted songwriter with a poet's eye. A very unique and relevant voice has emerged. It's all good.
TALKING HEADS...
Just came across the site of the Irish Skeptics Society and I can prove it! The group's goals are:
*To promote a scientific and rational point of view.
*To promote the teaching and application of critical thinking skills.
*To promote the active questioning of claims in a variety of areas, which is noticeably absent at present.
*To provide a forum for debate, discussion and rational argument on a range of relevant topics.
*To provide an access point for media for skeptical responses to questionable claims.
*To encourage the active involvement of people from a wide range of backgrounds.
Good stuff. Tom from Boards has also told me about his ideas for a Debating Chamber which he hopes to get going in the next few weeks on Boards.ie.
Talk is cheap? Yep, another reason to make the most of it.
THURSDAY 3 JULY 2003 01.30 GMT+1
-------------------------------------------------
SHUT DOWN..
I'm off on two weeks hols and this time I'm going cold turkey. No web, no email, no ftp, no nothing. I can't remember being away from the net before for such a long time, but I'm pretty sure it'll still be here when I get back.
Until then it'll be books, hiking boots, a good map and black porter.
WEDS 27 AUGUST 2003 1.55 (GMT+1)
-------------------------------------------------
DIGITAL DRAMA... Great news last weekend from the BBC which announced plans to let the public dive into all its programme archives. The radio and telly programmes will be accessible from the internet. There will be no charge so long as the material is not used for commercial purposes.
Wouldn't if be fantastic if RTE did the same? It must have a fair amount of archive material which never sees the light of day. If RTE is not making any real money from the archive, then it seems a waste to just leave it lying in the basement. Free Daithi Lacha!!!!
I was fascinated however by other remarks made by the BBC head honcho Greg Dyke when he was explaining about the new archive service.
He said that he believed "that we are about to move into a second phase of the digital revolution, a phase which will be more about public than private value; about free, not pay services; about inclusivity, not exclusion.
Open source broadcasting?
MONDAY 25 AUGUST 2003 23.55 GMT+1
-------------------------------------------------
SIGN LANGUAGE...
Sean McGrath has a very interesting idea about the government's decision to overhaul the country's speed signs. He suggests using the opportunity to deploy location-based services.
BLACKBOARD JUNGLE..
I've just put last Sunday's column up on the site: "If school students need to be educated about software and piracy, should the Business Software Alliance be the people to do it?"
SUNDAY 24 AUGUST 2003 23.45 GMT+1
-------------------------------------------------
BROWNED OFF...
Enjoyed my old boss Vincent Browne's column in today's Sunday Business Post. He wrote previously about the refinancing of Eircom and referred to "the stewardship of Valentia, the new owner".
Following up, he writes today: "There was a personalised attack on me for my temerity in criticising his Lordship [Tony O'Reilly]."
TUESDAY 12 AUGUST 2003 01.15 GMT+1
-------------------------------------------------
THOU SHALT NOT...
Sales of Christian music in the United States have taken a dive so far this year. According to the Gospel Music Association, more than 21m units were sold in the first six months of 2003, that's down 10.2% from the same time last year.
"We are not surprised at the slowdown because gospel music sales are being affected by the same issues as the rest of the music industry - an uncertain economy and music piracy," said John Styll, president of the GMA.
Apparently the GMA is getting advice and help from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on what to do about copyright and piracy. The RIAA has been waging its own version of the Spanish Inquisition on copyright for the last few years.
Watch out for an amendment to the Ten Commandments - 'Thou Shalt Not Steal (especially Mp3s)'.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE COLUMN
This interview with Christian Cooke, the newly-elected chairman of IrelandOffline, ran in last Sunday's paper.
SATURDAY 9 AUGUST 2003 16.15 GMT+1
-------------------------------------------------
SERENDIPITY...
In tomorrow's Sunday Tribune my column is an interview with Christian Cooke, the new chairman of IrelandOffline.
By a strange twist of fate (I didn't know until today), business editor Brian Carey interviews Philip Nolan, Eircom's chief executive:
Nolan rules out one of the company's mobile options: picking up the 3G licence Meteor passed up on during the tender. "I would have my doubts about whether there is room for three 3G operators in the market, never mind four," he says.
Both pieces are in the Business section.
MONDAY 4 AUGUST 2003 00.35 GMT+1
-------------------------------------------------
RESEARCH DILEMMA...
Research into the internet is vital, but getting funding and deciding how it will be spent will be a major challenge
If there is one aspect to the internet that is the most difficult to grasp in these times of rapid globalisation, it is the paradox that nobody owns the net.
Released from the grip of the Cold War, the so-called free market is now the bedrock of more and more economies around the world.
A large part of the logic of free marketism hinges on the notion that if something has value, then it will become a resource and the best way of managing such a resource is through free markets.
Nice idea on paper, but one that just doesn't stand up when it comes to the net. Perhaps that is its great strength. In spite of the trillions spent on dotcom delirium, the internet remains as a commons. No single entity or organisation owns it.
But because the net has no such claims of ownership, it means that funding for research is not a priority for private investment. Why invest in research when your competitors will benefit at your expense?
A recent discussion draft from the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), one of the net's key overseers, expresses its concerns: "if commercial funding is the main source of funding for future Internet research, the future of the Internet infrastructure could be in trouble".
The draft also delves into the area of how future funding will be spent. "In addition to issues about which projects were funded, the funding source can also affect the content of the research, for example, towards or against the development of open standards, or taking varying degrees of care about the effect of the developed protocols on the other traffic on the Internet".
The draft is well worth a read. Don't let the technical stuff get in your way, as the document provides a great background on an area that is fundamental to the net's future.
LINK: IAB Concerns & Recommendations Regarding Internet Research & Evolution
SATURDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2003 22.55 (GMT)
-------------------------------------------------
GNU WORLD...
Ciaran O'Riordan's eagle eye spotted that today is the 20th anniversary of Richard Stallman's Usenet post announcing that he is going to build a new operating system:
"I am going to write a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix), and give it away free to everyone who can use it. Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly needed."
THURSDAY 25 SEPTEMBER 2003 23.55 GMT+1
-------------------------------------------------
STABLE, HORSE...
"Security and stability [of the internet] is not limited to a narrow interpretation of the technical specifications of the protocol documents; it also includes engineering, operational, business, and policy issues."
SOURCE: ICANN Security and Advisory Committee's recommendations on Verisign's DNS grab.
MONDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2003 00.55 GMT+1
-------------------------------------------------
RUNNING ON EMPTY..
Following eight years of capturing dramatic images and surprising science from Jupiter and its moons, NASA's Galileo mission will end this Sunday with a controlled crash into Jupiter's atmosphere. The craft has run out of fuel.
Galileo found evidence of subsurface liquid layers of salt water on Jupiter's moons Europa , Ganymede and Callisto.
The shot of Europa (above) shows its approximate natural colour. It was taken on 7 September 1996 at a range of 677,000 km (417,900 miles) by Galileo's solid state imaging television camera during its second orbit around Jupiter.
SOURCE: Nasa
SATURDAY 6 SEPTEMBER 2003 22.55 GMT+1
-------------------------------------------------
CARD SHARKS...
There are staggering results in a US Federal Trade Commission report on identity theft released last week.
A survey of 4000 adults over the last five years in the US has concluded that over 27m people were affected by identity theft, 10m in the last year.
The personal cost is estimated at $5bn as well as 300m hours spent trying to repair the damage. I've worked that out as 34,246 years!! $48bn was lost by business, most of which was picked by sellers rather than the card credit companies.
Interestingly, 49% of the survey respondents did not have any idea how they were impersonated. 22% cited physicial theft, and 12% said their details were stolen in the course of a transaction.
Best of all though is the name of the director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protections. HOWARD BEALES!!!!.
SOURCE: US Federal Trade Commission
TUESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER 2003 01.55 GMT+1
-------------------------------------------------
STAR SEARCH...
'The difference between astronomy and astrology' is the topic for tomorrow's (Weds) meeting of the Irish Skeptics Society. David Moore of Astronomy Ireland is the speaker and everyone is welcome.
Venue: Yeats Room, Mont Clare Hotel, Clare Street, Dublin 2
Time: 8pm (Eur5 to cover cost of the room)