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Underway in Ireland
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31 December 2002 |
Jenny Levine -- Many people have declared blogs officially "mainstream," especially after the whole Trent Lott debacle, however, there's definitive proof in the January 2003 issue of Ladies Home Journal.
"Teenagers used to file first kisses and missed curfews safely under lock and key in a private diary. But today's tech-savvy teens are keeping a blog (short for Web log) or online journal instead. In essence, a blog is a form of personal publishing that allows willing diarists - sometimes anonymous, usually not - to create a Web page where they can share their stories in cyberspace, and update them frequently (there are now as many as 500,000). At livejournal.com, a blog home base, of sorts, the need to build a Web page or buy software is eliminated (users only have to sign up before letting it all out). And letting it out teens are. Says the site's supervisor and developer Jesse Proulx: 'Some kids even consider blogging a new form of therapy.' Tom Murphy echoes much the same, speaking from the the PR world where he says "blogs were obviously the hottest topic in the online PR world and there was plenty of good advice on how to tackle them" in 2002.
["Their Heart on Their Screen" in Ladies Home Journal, Jan 03 p88 and The Shifted Librarian. Plus Lloyd Trufelman and Laura Goldberg in "Pitching Blogs." And Phil Gomes in "Blogs: Ignore them at your peril."]
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GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- I concur with comments raised in Business Opinion sections of several Irish papers.
- The Irish Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources should direct participation by his colleagues in the public discussion forum of the Department website, including a rallying cry to the thread that asks, "Is this forum a sham."
- Minister Ahern should publicly advocate a major project, like the metropolitan fibre ring in Kilkenny (YES!) or the Digital Hub in The Liberties of Dublin.
- Minister Ahern ought to champion an easy victory in the realm of WiFi enablement, perhaps by "a national policy to encourage the development of wireless hotpspots in public areas such as libraries, airports and universities" as articulated by Karlin Lillington.
["Communication must be Minister Ahern's keyword" by Karlin Lillington in The Irish Times and The Ireland Offline Forum and The Eircom Tribunal.]
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 Aaron Swartz -- What Should I Do With My Life? asks Aaron the teenager. Po Bronson also asks this in his new book. Some of Aaron's shortlist items could be my resolutions, including
- Use wireless to bring back the community-run Internet
- Write software to make non-commercial copying easier
- Read lots of books
- Answer email and chat on IRC
[Dewayne Mikkelson and Aaron Swartz]
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Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day nine] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- The big news is the puppy has relieved herself outside when directed to go outside. (I wonder if this means I've got a housebreaking victory ahead of Karlin Lillington completing her XP installation?) She (Holly) needs to be invited outside when it's dark out back. She would rather use the newspaper inside the house because it's warm and familiar. I haven't been able to get her to be productive when on short or long walks. However, we'll take our small victories and outside action of any kind is good.
PLAN:
- Walk Holly solo, with a treat in my pocket and keep her in an area where other dogs have marked.
- Find another cleaning agent because Toilet Duck cleanser does not remove the residue of her previous markings.
[Karlin Lillington]
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GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- I have a single New Year's Resolution and it is to execute at least one line of an outline each day. That's no mean feat, when using a Bonsai outline on a Palm planner. Chris Gulker offers encouragement: "I like simple resolutions that are easy to keep and that can add up to big changes."
[Bonsai]
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30 December 2002 |
Aboard Irish Rail -- I combed through a slow day on my blog by examining everything that occurred on the web server for 25 December 2002. Here is a record of the 31 distinct individuals who visited the Topgold Blog on Christmas Day 2002.
- Visitor from Germany Used Google at 0010 searched for “nokia cardphone gprs"
- Visitor from Reston VA USA Used Google at 0030 for "innogear MP302"
- Visitor from Ealing UK Used Google at 0206 for “PSC 750 hp review”
- Visitor from Bombay at 0232
- Visitor from AOL Used Daypop at 0240 for “macromedia”
- Visitor from AOL Used Google at 0251 for "Open Mailing List” and “horstmann”
- Visitor from El Paso TX USA Used Google at 0504 for “moblogging tools”
- Visitor from Jersey City NJ USA at 0650 referred by cyberjournalist.net
- Visitor from Montevideo Uruguay Used Overture at 0714 for “underway”
- Visitor from Amsterdam NL at 0750
- Visitor from Denver CO USA at 0758
- Visitor from Beijing China at 1058
- Visitor from Dublin Ireland at 1259
- Visitor from UTV Internet Ireland at 1313
- Visitor from UTV Internet Ireland Viewed 3 Pages at 1324
- Visitor from China at 1501
- Visitor from St Louis MO USA Referred by Gulker at 1554
- Visitor from Hong Kong to Legacy Page at 1612
- Visitor from Louisville CO USA at 1632
- Visitor from Hard Rock Café Kuwait Used Yahoo at 1723 for “videos for Nokia 7650”
- Visitor from Toronto Ontario Canada at 1732
- Visitor from Bletchley UK Used Google at 1756 for “wireless PC to Stereo Link”
- Visitor from ICT Eurotel Ireland Used Google at 1756 for “notebooks Dublin”
- Visitor from Albany NY USA Used Google at 1933 for “Vincent Fuschino”
- Visitor from Denver CO USA at 2043
- Visitor from Milton Australia at 2102
- Visitor from Indigo Ireland at 2107
- Visitor from Iowa USA Used Yahoo at 2152 for “Prairie Inet p2p”
- WAP Browser Using Google on Nokia 7210 at 2252
- Visitor Used Google for "gianni Jacklone" and Viewed 3 Pages at 2308
- Visitor from Ireland at 2312
[G! See also Chris Gulker's Robot Noise Study.
Filed from IBM TransNote using Nokia D211 HSD Service en route to Kilkenny.
x: 119]
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Aboard Irish Rail -- I think the Portland Airport Authority should seriously consider the demeanor of its security personnel. Americans should not expect passengers to politely endure humiliating personal searches, even under the claim of 9-11 safety standards.
[G! started at Nicholas Monahan and Hack the Planet but not fact-checked.]
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Bookshelf: The Design of Sites BAWNTAMEENA -- Van Dune, Landay and Hong have an excellent book that includes wonderful coverage of pattern groups for e-commerce. It's available in 2003 from Addison Wesley, entitled The Design Of Sites: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience.
[ISBN 0-201-72149-X]
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Mark Pilgrim -- Great thoughts from Mark about using semantic web techniques to get the most out of lightweight content management systems.
[Dare Obasanjo and Tantek Celik and Hans Nowak and Nico Brunjes and Sam Ruby]
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Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day eight] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- After eight days, young Holly the Samoyed cross is using newspapers placed next to outside doors. But she isn't relieving herself while on long or short walks outdoors. Occasionally, she misses the newspaper and goes on tiles that were previously marked with urine that leaked through the newspapers.
PLAN:
- Walk Holly solo, unaccompanied by the other house dog.
- Evaluate whether Toilet Duck cleanser removes the residue of her previous markings.
[The Shopping Bag advises Toilet Duck cleans but does not disinfect.]
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29 December 2002 |
ZDNET -- If you're a moblogger, you should cast your eye on the best products of 2002 because most of the recommendations will deliver years of productive use for those working the mobile Web.
[Alex Kidman]
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Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day seven] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Well, less than 12 hours remain on the seven day clock and my mixed Samoyed stray named Holly still pees on papers in the house, even when the papers are placed next to an open door. She won't relieve herself while on short or long walks, even when accompanied by a companion Pomeranian who goes everywhere. I think we're looking at another week of housebreaking for the puppy.
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Bookshelf: The Twenty-First Century: A Coat Hanger Culture? GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- I remember 1903 as the year of the first flight and the year my grandmother was born but there were other notable events too. Albert Parkhouse picked up and bent a piece of wire to fashion the world's first coat hanger. Mary Anderson drew up designs for the first windshield wiper. Edouard Benedictus accidentally discovered how to make a shatterproof windscreen. Binney and Smith launched the world's first box of colour crayons. Other notable centennial celebrations in 2003 will be the world's first canned tuna, the registration of the Pepsi-Cola brand name, and the building of the first Harley-Davidson in a wooden shed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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Bookshelf: The Millennium Atlas Jonathan Leake -- The Millennium Atlas: Petroleum Geology of the Central and Northern North Sea is a 22lb tome that could be Britain's heaviest academic publication and one of its most expensive at STG199 a copy. The atlas describes the geological development that has led to the petroleum deposits in the North Sea. It shows that 540m years ago southern England, Wales and Southern Ireland lay close together about 2,000 miles from the South Pole. They were part of the supercontinent Gondwana that also included South America and Africa, Antarctica, Australia and India.
["We're being sent to Siberia" by Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times, December 29, 2002]
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ANTARCTIC WAVES -- Here is a fun musical program that encourages learning, creativity and technical know-how. The CD-ROM helps you to create music by manipulating scientific survey data that has been transmogrified into sound. You can rearrange solar pings against the ocean floor into rhythmical patterns. The pitch of gurgling ice floes can be harmonised as if on a keyboard.
[James Knight]
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No Irish IT Floatations in 2003 Sunday Business Post -- No Irish technology firms are expected to go public in 2003, according to a straw poll of venture capital funders and corporate financiers conducted by The Sunday Business Post.
[Gavin Daly]
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Irish e-government tender remains stalled Sunday Business Post -- A multimillion-euro plan to offer public services online has stalled on selecting a shortlist of prospective service providers because the tenders have come in above the original costing targets allocated by the government.
I would be concerned about the degree of protection given to all the records gathered under the Irish government's plan. In Arizona, where I once contemplated retireing, thieves have compromised the files of TriWest Healthcare Alliance, a private firm that runs the Defense Department's TriCare HMO program for the military in 16 states. Tens of thousands of Arizonans had confidential information compromised during a Dec. 14 break-in.
Thieves made off with computer equipment and data files that contained plan beneficiaries' names and addresses, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, medical claims histories and, in some cases, credit card information.
[Gavin Daly]
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Silicon Technologies Europe Receives Government Subsidies Sunday Business Post -- Silicon Technologies Europe Ltd is based in offices at the government-subsidised Shannon Development Clare Business Centre in Ennis. Dylan Creaven has a hand in the company's stated assets of €4.16m. Creaven also has a hand in conspiring to cheat the British Inland Revenue of STG 162m of VAT. What I would like to know is can you get VAT back on aircraft leasing arrangements. One of the mobile phone traders arrested by British VAT investigators had the personalised automobile registration plate of JU51 VAT (JUST VAT) and another car he owns bears the plate ABU 51T (ABUSE IT). The owner had run a scheme to exploit the zero VAT rate for trading partners in the EU single market. Creaven is not unique.
"Assets of €70m in VAT fraud probe" by Barry O'Kelly in The Sunday Business Post.
Barry O'Kelly: The big VAT call in The Sunday Times, May 25, 2003.
x_ref1481
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28 December 2002 |
Karlin Lillington -- I think I can housebreak my dog faster than Karlin can complete a clean install of Windows XP. Time will tell.
[Follow the saga by reading technoculture.]
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Kurt Grigg -- "They are now able to see every click they make on the internet. Privacy advocates say this is bad, but the FBI says you will never even notice, and it won't affect the common man at all."
[Have a look for yourself, with JavaScript turned on :-)]
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GARRINGREEN -- Holly knows she needs to find a doorway with tiles before she squeaks, squats and shits. Unfortunately, the tiled doorway area need not have newspaper coverage. As far as I can figure, she's going to places she has used before. So I must get some potent solution that can remove traces of her urine and runny poo from the grouted sections of the tiled hallway. It's good to know that she is giving us regular cues before she has to go. She paces with purpose and she utters cute little squeaky noises when she needs to find a poo point. Our problem is we're sometimes engrossed in a television show and we don't notice her get up to go. She doesn't make the noises in carpeted areas or on hardwood floors, just near the point of impact for her four puppy-sized (approx 100g) poo piles.
[G!]
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Rick Klau -- It pays to think in outline format because it's easier to direct actions from lists instead of from lengthy paragraphs. At least that's what I believe. Marc Barrott's activeRenderer tales Radio outlines and converts them to very useable HTML pages. My registered copy of Bonsai lets me create outlines that export to Radio. This means I can make and revise edits on my Palm m505 and they sync to Radio. Then I can use activeRenderer to upload (and render) those outlines to the Web.
Rick Klau tells you how.]
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27 December 2002 |
CEIVA -- My father is proud to be ungoogleable. Well, he thinks he's not in Google, but he's wrong. Dad doesn't trust this Internet stuff, but he enjoys contact. I'm sure he would enjoy a Ceiva digital picture frame. You hang this Internet-enabled frame near a phone line and it calls out for new photos. The traditional frame houses an LCD screen that displays up to 20 pictures in a single-view or slide-show format.  Once a day, the frame dials in to Ceiva's Web site and downloads any new photos that have been sent to a special Internet address. This is so unintrusive that my dad would never know he was using an Internet connection in the house.
[Thanks to Xeni Jardin and Karlin Lillington for reminding me.]
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TECH CENTRAL STATION -- So if 2002 is "The Year of the Blog" we might watch 2003 pan out as "The Year of Blog Rot." While 2003 will see the increased expansion of blogs into areas such as research and learning, blogs will also rot away. They're too time-intensive for most authors. Many employers equate them to time-wasting. And few bloggers have learned techniques of knowledge logging where they could distill blogged content into action-based knowledge objects.
[Glenn Harlan Reynolds and "Essential Web Journaling"]
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26 December 2002 |
TECHDIRT -- The Washington Post rounded up 2002 in technology and concluded it was pretty damn boring. Most companies are trying to figure out what to do with all that technology crap they bought at the end of the 90s, so the last thing they want to do is buy any new technology crap. Some seminal trends deserve noting. - The Internet has now clearly permeated mainstream society. In Ireland, the Intenet is on lamposts and in purses.
- Companies now focus on building useful technologies instead of pie-in-the-sky technologies.
[Mike on TechDirt and Leslie Walker in The Washington Post.]
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GARRINGREEN -- One of the most lucrative channels for revenue transfer in Ireland is the millions of euro spent each month in the purchase of mobile phone ringtones. Christopher Stern explains the business that college students can enter with a MIDI keyboard and an ear for music. It seems to me that many of the loudest gameboys on Slashdot don't get it. However, there are others in the Slashdot discussion who politely educate the rabble to the potential of ringer revenues.
[Washington Post and SlashDot]
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GARRINGREEN -- I you are keeping count, you will detect that little Holly (a female Samoyed cross) has been in my Kilkenny home for six days, not five. We're not counting Christmas as a performance day because someone gave Holly dinner table helpings and that rich food (liquer-enriched cranberry sauce on turkey meat) gave her the runs. I can happily report that she now goes on papers on top of tiles placed next to doors. She will not deface wood floors or carpet. AND THE BIG NEWS: we have figured out the special way she walks and the little noises she makes when she has to go. So we just pick her up and place her outside. Unfortunately, she has to go every four hours so we don't hear her little whimpering at night, which is when she shits on pictures of Manchester United soccer star Roy Keane. Nothing personal, Roy, but the titles I buy shoot your face bigger than anyone else and that gives Holly a big plopping target.
G!
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GARRINGREEN -- In the States, Congressman Bernard Sanders plans to introduce legislation to exempt libraries and bookstores from parts of the sweeping USA Patriot Act. In Ireland, Karlin Lillington points out why the Irish government should not be given free rein to information gathering. Both initiatives deserve a good reading. And both deserve support by anyone with an active electronic identity.
Both the US and Irish government are eroding civil liberties with new directions in legislation. Dan Gillmor recommends some places where you can donate money to fight to defend the gift of liberty.
[Patrick Armstrong in The Brattleboro Reformer and Karlin Lillington in The Irish Times. Karlin's "In Defense of Data Privacy" should be read aloud to every elected member of Irish government.
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25 December 2002 |
Grannies in the Blogosphere at Christmas  GARRINGREEN -- I went online once, early on Christmas Day, in search of recipes for roast turkey and cranberry sauce from scratch. Then I kept the online recipes in cache to show our guests how I made both of them. The Scottish grannies down the street think it's remarkable how this Internet thing works. And to think the recipes cost me nothing! Well, they actually cost me 99 cents, which is about the amount I paid eircom for the phone call and the daily line rental for ISDN.
Dave was whinging that "it's hard to find much news on Christmas Day" as he trawled Weblogs.Com for interesting tidbits. "It's kind of lack-of-news news, but I guess that's news," he surmised.
While online with Ms Dynamite playing in the background, my Newzcrawler grabbed over 220 breaking stories, so I made a hard copy of all the pages for guest to hold and read. You can't buy a current copy of an Irish broadsheet on Christmas Day, so it's important to be able to roll your own personal newspaper.
Then I cut and printed my blogroll for the grannies. I don't think they understand what this blogging thing is all about. But when I told them it was like getting a daily Christmas card from friends and families, they had to see how that worked. They didn't understand the funny looking letter C on the printout, so I showed them The Creative Commons Weblog but they still don't get it.
My Christmas wish: to set up one nursing home with a hands-free Internet experience for residents before 2004. If I'm to retain my sanity when I'm old, I will need my daily dosage of online mental interactions. That includes my contact with the blogosphere and a way to share files with my kids.
Musings from Garringreen, County Kilkenny, Ireland.
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24 December 2002 |
Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day four] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Holly can now sleep through the night in a bedroom without soiling anything. Plus, she can confine her pee and poo to one sheet of newspaper. She prefers that paper to be placed half-open right behind the front door. We still haven't figured out how to get her to relieve herself while on a daily walk, but we're armed with dog treats to reinforce her behaviour once she cops on to that.
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Margaret Kane -- Margaret describes a NASA remote sensing data set that will remap the Lewis and Clark expedition. I remember reading the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery Journals and marveled at how they created a wonderful snapshot of the natural history of North America, two hundred years ago. Patching together a satellite photo mosaic of the expedition's route represents another snapshot in time.
[RSS.com]
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Margaret Kane -- BizRate thinks there's an increase of about 40 percent in the number of online shoppers. BizRate surveys consumers as they finish making purchases in its 2,000 online shops. "The figures arrive amid a discouraging season for retail in general. Major retailers including Wal-Mart, Federated Department Stores and Kmart all noted that sales for the holiday season would be at the low end of their forecasts, or miss them altogether."
Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog over Vodafone HSD.
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TEMPLE BAR -- JD Lasica notes "there are now more than 970,000 registered users of Pyra's Blogger software, up from 343,000 a year ago. So perhaps it's fair to say there are as many as a million bloggers today." This tracks with the sublte growth of Irish blogs during the past year. They've more than doubled, with fewer than 10 percent dying of link rot. I've many of the Irish URLs noted as "Irish Sources" on my daily blog page.
Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog during a moccachino.
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ZENARK HOTSPOT -- Anyone with an interest in the e-business dimension of Ireland will undoubtedly follow the talking points and controversy around IEDR. Here's a tip: Google for "Mike Fagan" AND IEDR, then let your mouse tell an interesting story.
Connected to Buffalo by Nokia D211 Transnote.
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The Smallest Computers That I Use ZENARK HOTSPOT -- I carry two small computers. One is a Palm m505 running Palm OS4. The other is a Nokia 9210i running Symbian. I also treasure my IBM TransNote notebook. In Shanowen, I've used a Cappuchino mini-computer with a thin TFT screen and that gave me the smallest desktop footprint ever. If I had a Compaq T1000, I would have the smallest desktop computer on the market. Each week, people come here looking for the Dell Optiplex SX260, perhaps because of its small footprint. I don't have that computer nor have I tested it but since people are coming on the back of a search engine query string, looking for the "smallest desktop computer," I mention it here.
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Ekahau's Positioning Engine 2.0Pinpoint the location of all the users on your WLAN within a few feet with Ekahau's technology.
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Go Figure 41B -- As a seasoned traveler who gives a minimum of EUR 400 to Irish Rail each month, I have something in my bag that marks the fact that I have given Irish Rail enough to buy a 1996 Peugeot 406. I have a new pocket calendar, illustrated with maps of Ireland. However, the country maps do not mark the locations of the rail lines. Go figure out where they run on our own.
Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog while crawling along Dublin Freeflow traffic.
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23 December 2002 |
Two of My Favourite Things Aboard Irish Rail -- It's a v.quiet train today and that means more full-fare passengers are aboard. The students travel with leaky headset and irritating ringtones. The free traveling pensioners talk to anyone with ears but paying passengers use travel time to think, read, sleep or work Like me -- because I think I am lucky to have a Palm m505 and a Nokia 9210i. Although they actually perfrom similar functions, I toggle between the two of them quite well. I would deeply miss either one if misplaced. And at the moment, I cannot see a reason to replace either of them, even though both are more tha 14 months old.
Sent from Nokia 9210i mail2blog nonstop through Newbridge, County Kildare.
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OPEN -- On an otherwise quiet day with the Open Mailing List, Alex Horstmann wonders if we're looking at a future of Microsoft Flash. He points to a story in The Register that says "Microsoft is believed to have trained its acquisition crosshairs on Macromedia Inc, lining up a deal that would throw enterprise Java into a spin." I wouldn't expect to see much more integration between Java and Flash if MS went through with the buy-out. As The Register sees it, "a Microsoft acquisition of Macromedia would inevitably see Flash, and Macromedia's other cross-platform tools, tailored purely for Windows and .NET."
[The Register and Alex Horstmann]
Sent by Nokia 9210i Communicator mail2blog.
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OPEN -- The European Union has funded research into Web Accessibility ands Usability but there's one site purportedly advocating elements of usability that isn't. Check it out yourself at http://www.usabilitynet.org/home.htm
[Derek Lawless]
Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog aboard Irish Rail.
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Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day three] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- She now squats at the front door or along the side of the tiled hallway on pieces of newspaper. She doesn't eat the newspaper anymore. Plus, she has found three places outside where she circles to squat and she doesn't roll in her own waste. On the downside, she makes a lake whenever she's excited near the front door. And she still drops a sizeable load inside whenever the urge hits her. However, we might actually get a housebroken dog within seven days!
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22 December 2002 |
Music Silenced by Immigration SUNDAY TIMES -- Several international musicians have fallen foul of the Irish government's crackdown on illegal immigration, writes Scott Millar in the Sunday Times. On 17 Dec 02, Youssou N'Dour, an internationally-renowned Senegalese musician, was detained at Dublin airport for four hours.
Members of N'Dour's group have complained that they were individually interviewed without a translator despite their poor English, and say the band was confined without easy access to toilet facilities. The group was freed only after direct intervention by the Department of Justice and took the stage an hour late.
Ireland's opting out of the Schengen agreement, which allows non-EU nationals resident in the EU to travel freely, is a cause of confusion. The opt-out has disproportionately affected musicians from the Third World, many of whom are resident in Paris, the unofficial capital of world music.
Chief Superintendent Martin Donnellan, head of the Garda National Immigration Bureau, thinks it's necessary to run a tight ship. He told The Sunday Times that "more than 3,000 people attempted to enter the country illegally through Dublin airport last year and the immigration police must apply the letter of the law in each case regardless."
Performances in America have been complicated by the need to inform immigration services of an intention to perform six months in advance, and by an increase in visa costs.
Scott Millar
x: 174
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Tax-free Creative Income While Resident in Ireland GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Under an exemption system that dates back to 1969, an artists who lives and works in Ireland doesn't have to pay tax on income earned from an original artistic product. The product can be a painting, sculpture, musical composition, fictional writing or personalised non-fiction, such as an autobiography. Because it is the product and not the producer that is tax-eempt, performers such as Westlife, many of whose songs are written for them, are not eligible. Neither are actors, because they are seen to be performing the original product of someone else (the playwright) whose income is exempt. Enya, whose Day Without Rain became the world's bestseller of 2001, is eligible for exemption from Irish tax. She composes every song herself, without use of samplers, synthesisers or backing vocals. That means she spends months laying down hundreds of vocal layers for each track. Plus, she spends much of her time in her studio, so she rarely performs live or goes on tour. When applying for tax exemption, an artist fills in a form, which is submitted along with an example of their work. The Revenue Commissioners then decide whether the income is tax exempt. They may take advice from the Arts Council on borderline cases. Enya's income in 2001 was estimated at €102m, putting her ahead of Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, Moya Doherty of Riverdance and Chris de Burgh. Like any other artist, she must pay PRSI on her tax-exempt income.
["Artistic Talent Receives Original Reward" in The Sunday Times, 22 Dec 02.]
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Housebreaking My New Dog in Seven Days [day two] GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- We have got the new puppy to the point where she is walking to the front door before she squats on the tile. Plus, she poos in along one area of the back yard. These are workable habits and suggest we can look forward to a housebroken dog before the New Year.
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GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- There are also practical reasons why businesses may want to cloak their databases. In today's Sunday papers, whole pages are being printed about subpoenas for phone records and diaries. These subpeonas are a tax on people who keep good records. Shipping companies like FedEx have entire divisions devoted to answering calls from law enforcement and the courts. As Peter Wayner tells Declan McCullagh, "It's not just spies defending the realm either--divorce lawyers love to poke around for evidence. A business that keeps the records must also spend the costs to answer questions."
[Peter Wayner and Declan McCullagh]
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GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- The Irish government will have to invest almost €7bn to improve the Irish rail service over the next 20 years, according to an internal government report. Merely maintaining the rail system at current levels will require a €3.45bn investment. The report calls for rail investment to be directed towards two strategic areas: large inter-urban routes and the commuter belt around Dublin. This will marginalise myself, living in Kilkenny and commuting to Dublin.
"Strategic Rail Review"
x: 17
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21 December 2002 |
Nokia Screensavers Got a Lot Easier Kilkenny -- Along with some friends, I'm tricking up my Nokia phone with some of the coolest screensavers. It's much easier to get these things nowadays, especially compared to how things were back when I bought my Nokia 7110. It took me the time to order and eat a pizza before I got that phone configured for WAP. Today, Irish network operators supply Nokia phones with WAP features ready-configured, so you do not have to do anything in order to use WAP. All you need to do is save it. That guarantees the easy transfer of millions of euro, paid by those who want really cool colour animations on their new Nokia phones.
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Mark Pilgrim -- Mark frets about taxonomy and how it's so difficult trying to agree on a common lexicon. The problem becomes even more significant when sitting around a table discussing a product launch with marketers, technicians and sales managers. It's an age-old issue and it reflects our failure to insist on precision in expression.
[Dive Into Mark]
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ALTO -- The Association of Licensed Telecoms Operatios (Alto) claims fixed line operators such as Eircom are paying over €300m a year to mobile phone companies for use of their networks. According to Alto, only €55.4m of that money can be justified using acceptable market rates. Put another way, each month spent by the Irish telecoms Regulator introducing cost-based termination rates imposes an extra cost of over €20m on the industry and consumers.
[Irish Examiner and Gavin Daly]
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GARRINGREEN -- Like Ben Hammersley, I have a new puppy and the challenge of the holiday season is to housebreak her. She is relieving herself with generous, well-formed droppings on the hallway tile. I guess that's not unusual because she spent the first three months of her life standing and pooing on concrete. I have taken her on one 20 minute walk. She didn't pee or poo so I couldn't compliment her. I can sense challenging times ahead. I guess I could make a Christmas wish for a book about training dogs but she likes eating The Irish Times and teething on the 2003 IPA Yearbook and Diary, so I can't imagine she would let me get through a book without tearing a few pages out of it for herself. She certainly doesn't think newspapers are for reading or defecating because she seems to know humans wrap their fish and chips in newsprint so it's alright for her to shred the papers as well.
[Shirlee Kalstone for a book and Ben Hammersley (link is FOAF) for Pico Poo.]
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20 December 2002 |
HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE -- But what of the future of books? The narrator argues that Gutenberg's invention will soon disappear. Reading causes lassitude and wearies us tremendously. Words through the speaking tube, however, give us a special vibrancy. The gramophone will destroy printed works. Our eyes are easily damaged, but our ears are strong.
But, his listeners object, gramophones are heavy and the cylinders easily damaged. This will be taken care of; new models will be built which will fit in the pocket; the precision of watchmaking will be applied to them. Devices will collect electricity from the movements of the individual, which will power the gramophones.
The author will become his own editor. In order to avoid imitations and counterfeits, he will deposit his voice at the Patent Office. Instead of famous men of letters, we will have famous narrators. The art of diction will become extremely important. The ladies will no longer say that they like an author's style, but that his voice is so charming, so serious, that he leaves you full of emotion after listening to his work--it is an incomparable ravishment of the ear.
[The Schism Matrix and Boing Boing]
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Aaron Swartz --
Every so often the people fighting sharing slip up and tell us what they really think. Ed Felten points to an article about a program that lets you copy DVDs. “It’s like somebody selling a digital crowbar,” said Patricia Benson, an attorney for the studios. As Felten points out, crowbars are available at the local hardware store, even though they can be used to break into private property and actually steel things, as well as attacking people. Last time I checked, you didn’t need a licence to get one. In the movie studios world, they’d pass tough new laws making it illegal to sell crowbars, or describe how to build one. They’d speak out against the makers of crowbars, claiming they were only selling them for profit and ignoring the terrible harm they can do. They’d try to throw people who created new innovative crowbars in jail. And, of course, they’d ignore the legitimate reasons to have crowbars. Would you like to live in that world?
[Aaron Swartz]
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DUBBERLEY -- Since I like Emily's Blog, I am going to have to buy the magazine and the book.
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BUSINESS WEEK -- There's nothing difficult or mysterious about putting together a press kit aimed at generating some free publicity. Blogging your message helps elevate its prominence, because as Greg Elin notes, once you blog, you're Googled. And as Mark Pilgrim knows, a good blog with a reach in the thousands can get you a publishing deal out of the blue.
[Karen Klein and Greg Elin plus Dive into XML]
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DUBLIN -- Semi-sober discussions around Molloy's pub in Christchurch focused on the revenue horizon ahead for Ireland's mobile phone networks. Only one person among the 22 techies assembled had an MMS-capable cameraphone. Another planned to buy a Nokia 7650 before the New Year. That leaves more than 90 percent of our anecdotal audience without MMS in 2003.Nokia plans to release more new models next year than in any in its history. Even without buying up, everyone in the group can download ringtones, operator logos and games. So like Strategy Analytics, we think MMS is a good idea, but it won't generate significant revenue for the mobile telecos until more than half of the users have camera phones. That event horizon is more than two years away.
[ENN and Business Week and Brian Greene and Electric Search]
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Dave Winer -- The mainstream press missed incinderary comments made by Senator Trent Lott, but those remarks were picked up and stirred for public consumption but several astute bloggers, giving the story cause for follow-up days after the tempest would have cleared.
[Scripting News and Cynthia Webb in the Washington Post]
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SEARCH ENGINE WATCH -- "More than any other country, the U.S. government has used the Web to make a wealth of information available to its citizens. But as we are now discovering, the dark side of Web-based information is the ease with which it can be deleted," notes Danny Sullivan. Recognising the need for best practise, Irish developers in South Tipperary have built their county council site structure around traditional documents and hypertext. Visitors can get information in lightweight HTML while also downloading traditional documents for applications such as standard forms-based transactions. So even if someone wipes the HTML, core documents will remain.
Moblogged with the best colour phone on the mobile market today.
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Chey and Stephen Cobb -- This week a former sysadmin for UBS PaineWebber, Roger Duronio, was arraigned in a New Jersey federal court on charges of sabotaging two-thirds of the company's computer systems. His alleged motive? To undermine the company's stock price and make a bunch of money. He is alleged to have "shorted" over 30,000 shares of UBS stock prior to unleashing his attack which means the potential was there to make 30,000 times the amount by which the stock dropped when the media got wind of the attacks. In the recent stock manipulation case involving Emulex, shares fell 50 percent. Based on the trading range of UBS PaineWebber stock at the time of Duronio's alleged attack, it is reasonable to say his profits could have exceeded half a million dollars.
The flaw in Duronio's alleged scheme was the obviously unexpected ability of UBS PaineWebber to prevent news of the attack getting out. This was quite a feat on the company's part because the logic bombs activated on about 1,000 of its nearly 1,500 computers and the malicious programs did actually delete files. Indeed, the company says attack cost it $3 million.
These days, newer forms of malicious programming, such as viruses and worms, tend to vie for our attention, but the logic bomb, dormant code that is later activated or triggered by specific circumstances, is one of the oldest forms of computer attack, dating back to mainframe days. For example, in September 1987, Donald Burleson, a programmer at the Fort Worth-based insurance company, USPA, was fired for allegedly being quarrelsome and difficult to work with. Two days later, approximately 168,000 vital records erased themselves from the company's computers. Burleson was caught after investigators went back through several years' worth of system files and found that, two years before he was fired, Burleson had planted a logic bomb that lay dormant until he triggered it on the day of his dismissal.
Burleson became the first person in America to be convicted of "harmful access to a computer." This week, the federal grand jury charged Duronio with one count of securities fraud and one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If found guilty, Duronio could be hit with up to 20 years in prison and fines of more than $1.25 million.
Earlier this year, Timothy Allen Lloyd was sentenced to 41 months in prison for leaving behind malicious programs that deleted critical data from the servers of Omega Engineering, a high-tech measurement company that claimed the cost of the attack was $10m.
How can companies defend against such attacks? By hiring the right people and then treating them right. In other words, this is a people problem and so it needs a human solution. All the technology in the world is not going to prevent an insider, with authorized system access and detailed knowledge of the system, from planting a logic bomb. There are some technologies, such as network surveillance and monitoring programs, that might detect attempts to create logic bombs. Integrity checking software might deflect attacks from logic bombs. Properly enforced software development policies and procedures will make it harder for someone to plant a logic bomb. But the bottom line is that a determined insider is almost impossible to stop.
On the other hand, it is fairly easy for other humans to spot a disgruntled insider. We've seen numerous cases of insider system abuse where the identity of the culprit came as no surprise, at least to co-workers, if not supervisors or managers.. So, before your company spends money on technology to cut down on insider system abuse, take a look at morale and working conditions. Talk to the people who have the skills and access to mount this sort of attack. And read the landmark 1993 paper on the subject by Dr. Mich Kabay: "Psycho-Social Factors in the Implementation of Information Security Policy" (Risks Digest).
[Chey Cobb and Stephen Cobb and NewsScan]
Sent by Nokia 9210i mail2blog over Vodafone HSD aboard Irish Rail.
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Finding: First Time for No Inbox Mail DUBLIN -- At 1711 GMT on Friday, 21 December 2002, I used my Nokia Communicator to check for e-mail and discovered nothing to download. No spam. No list mail. No direct mail. No SMS text mail. In my 17 months of using a Nokia Communicator to handle mail-on-the-go, I have never had a totally empty mail queue during the course of a working business day. This is a first for me and an occasion that helps me restrain my expenses.
Sent from Nokia 9210i as mail2blog.
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ONLINE BLOG -- Sun has released a new form of Java for mobile phones. The latest version comes from a developer group headed by Motorola, Zdnet reports today. Mobile Information Device Platform 2 (MIDP 2) will give developers more control over interface design, improve game performance and standardise data transfer, among other improvements. But MIDP 2.0 will require up to 100k of memory to run - exceeding the limits of most mobile phones currently available. Nevertheless, the new Java platform indicates that Sun's platform-independent software is consolidating its position in areas where Microsoft has failed to dominate.
[ZDNet and Alistair Alexander]
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CRYPTO-GRAM -- The MPAA disabling someone's computer because he's suspected of copying a movie is wrong, even if the movie was copied. Revenge is a basic human emotion, but revenge only becomes justice if carried out by the State.
[Counterpane]
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Sylvia Leatham -- The Information Society Commission presented its intial report to Mary Hanafin, the Irish Government's Chief Whip. The report, which contains 60 key recommendations, encompasses the views of government, industry and representative bodies with regard to building a knowledge society in Ireland. The study identifies three key points that the government should take on board.
- A climate of innovation building on world-class research must be encouraged.
- Accessibility to affordable broadband must be accelerated.
- Lifelong learning must become a key public policy objective.
[Building the Knowledge Society by ISC and ENN]
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GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- I think it is notable to document that even in an economy that has slowed down, the Irish Internet Association remains an active focal point for the industry. It logged an enviable track record during the past 12 months. - Ran over 30 events in 2002 with 12 in the regions
- Launched the IIA North West Branch
- Ran two 2-day Conferences - National Conference in Dublin and ICT and eWork @ Work Conference in Kilkenny
- Moved into Temple Bar
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Launched the IIA eGovernment EzineBecame a major contributor to public policy
- Developed Website Privacy Policy Template for Members
- Relaunched the Members and Non-Members Ezines in html format
- Launched the new IIA Website with members extranet
I believe Sinead Murnane deserves special mention for the dedication required to accomplish all these tasks.
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TECHDIRT -- Mike had lunch with a friend who started his own company a few years ago. They laughed about how far off the mark venture capitalists seem to be, and how many people are building real businesses the old fashioned way: bootstrap a product with extremely low costs, and then make money by actually selling that product to real customers. That's the new Silicon Valley plan, it seems. Companies are being started inside people's homes. Everything is cheap these days, including labor. The get-rich-quick tourists have all gone home. The excitement among startups is how little they spend on expenses, not how much money they've raised. In the end this means counting "honest revenue" - which is real money from real customers paying for real products. It seems like such an obvious concept, and it's happening all over the valley.
[G!]
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John Blau -- Marriott plans to add wireless to 400 of its hotels. It will collaborate with wireless service provider STSN to offer the service in hotel lobbies, meeting rooms, restaurants and other public spaces, complementing its current in-room high-speed access. The plans involve services from STSN because Marriott has a stake in the Salt Lake City service provider, as does the Intel Communication Fund. STSN will deliver dual band 802.11a and 802.11b wireless access in the hotels, the company said. It expects to complete the deployment by June 2003.
[Infoworld]
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19 December 2002 |
 SJ MERCURY NEWS -- At a time when copyright news seems to be so consistently sour, new technology and a positive court ruling give us light. First, a nod of appreciation to The Creative Commons who have created a 1.5MB Flash presentation that outlines the essentials of the Creative Commons project. "It can be that easy," says the presentation, "when you skip the intermediaries."
The second piece of good news for the creative community comes from the dutiful ElcomSoft jury. In a case that may have enormous implications, a federal jury in San Jose brought back a not guilty verdict against a Russian software company charged with violating copyright law. The company, ElcomSoft, had sold a tool that gave purchasers of electronic-book software more flexibility in how they could use e- books but which also broke the e-books' copy protection.
Adobe brought the case on the claim that ElcomSoft was selling products designed to hack Adobe's eBook Reader. When ElcomSoft programmer Dmitry Sklyarov spoke at a conference in Las Vegas, he was handcuffed and tossed in jail. Adobe deserves the wrath of the technical community for its actions. Fortunately, the jury returned sanity to the situation in its decision to acquit.
[ Dan Gillmor and Tomalak's Realm]
Photo inside Garringreen Upper by Bernie Goldbach using Concord EyeQ IrTranP camera and Nokia 9210i Communicator.
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GUARDIAN co uk -- US military radar is shutting down vehicles that use special frequencies in their key fobs. The radar emissions are globally approved, but their strength is deadly. You don't want to drive a new BMWs or 4WD SUV around the perimeter of a UK air base anymore. The anti-missile radar will shut them down. I wouldn't mind Dublin Corporation using that capability whenever a vehicle stopped on a yellow box in city centre.
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 GARRINGREEN HOTSPOT -- Even in small town Kilkenny, my local SuperQuinn provides me with news shorts, weather forecasts and advertisements while I stand in the checkout queue. But how effective are these placements in the "outernet"? Has anybody done an eyeball audit to measure the effectiveness of flat screen digital advertising? According to New Century Media Inc., flat screen plasma placements dramatically outperform static backlit advertising campaigns.
Sign Web
"Signs of the Times" by Sean O'Leary, April 2002.
"Coolsigns Coming to a Theater Near You," by Ken Liebeskind, MediaPost, May 23, 2002.
"Signs Going Up in New Venues," by Greg Johnson in the Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2002.
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COOLSIGN -- AdSpace Networks Inc. is the developer of CoolSign, dynamic digital signage for public spaces. The AdSpace NOC in Las Vegas controls a national network of Coolsigns, using Cisco IP technology running over LANs near each installation. This is an advertising-driven piece of technology that meets prospective customers in high footfall areas, targeting people with digital messages. The back-end system allows advertisers a method to examine their campaigns, downloading proof-of-play statistics.
[Photo by Brian Greene using Sony Ericsson T68 cameraphone in Chicago.]
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WASHINGTON POST -- "Te same law that relates to publishing in the offline world, generally speaking, applies to material posted publicly on a Web log, legal and human resources experts said. Posting information or opinions on the Internet is not much different from publishing in a newspaper, and if the information is defamatory, compromises trade secrets, or violates copyright or trademark regulations, the publisher could face legal claims and monetary damages."
"You never know who is lurking."
[Jennifer Balderama and Dave Winer]
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Mark Pilgrim -- If you need to know about RSS, you should "dive into Mark." He explains that RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news- oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs.
It's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way.
[XML.com and Dave Winer]
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Irish Times -- Mike Fagan, has settled his legal action against the Irish Domain Registry. Fagan had sought an injunction to prevent the company from considering a report prepared by KPMG, on the basis that doing so would be in breach of the rules of natural justice. The report makes 18 allegations against Fagan, including overpayment of salary and incorrect treatment of expenses. Fagan has now agreed that IE Domain Registry can use the report in disciplinary proceedings against him.
[ENN and Open]
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John Cradden -- "There is a persistent reluctance among Irish businesses to embrace e-working, despite the potential benefits, according to experts in the sector." From my vantage point at a Kilkenny Information Seminar, it's good news that e-working percentages have not declined as employment numbers slip during an economic downturn.
[ENN]
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Martyn Williams -- Apple's QuickTime 6 is becoming standard on some 44 million Japanese mobile phones. Apple and many other companies are pressuring hard to make MPEG-4 the industry standard for video-on-demand services in 3G cellular networks, and to keep Microsoft and its proprietary Windows Media out of the mobile phones market.
[IDG News and Slashdot]
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OREILLY -- A new O'Reilly release,"Designing Embedded Hardware" (Catsoulis, US $39.95) is the most in-depth, practical, and up-to-date guide to building your own embedded computer systems. Whether you're working on cell phones, cars, handheld organizers, or refrigerators, this book provides software and hardware engineers with the necessary conceptual and design building blocks to understand the architectures of embedded systems. Steering between the practical and the philosophical, the book enables you to both create your own devices and gadgets and customize and extend off-the-shelf systems.
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