Yeah the whole lot of em.
Jazzbiscuit has more of John and his bike versus the might of China. Fair play for what he said. Now how about speaking out closer to home about samesex couples and their right to have rights to their kids?
Stoled this from Jazzy, but it’s actually recycling. Go Greens!
Remember that? Probably not. Way back in January 2006 the Government decided to have a consultation about how to stimulate demand for broadband in Ireland. They got a lot of reponses, nearly all of which (except eircom and Forfas) said the biggest issue was supply not demand. A report was written as a result of all the feedback on methods to increase usage of broadband in Ireland. It appeared to have just been buried. Well until now. Broadband Demand conclusions come on down!
Photo owned by johnthescone (cc)
I sent in the following Freedom of Information request in January of this year:
A digital copy of all consultation responses, drafts and the final version of the Broadband Demand Report. I believe this report/consultation happened around January 2006
Last week the Department of Communications uploaded the digital versions of the documents I received to their website. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
It’s all rather boring really until you get to the report that was generated from all the suggestions. The FOI request showed me the three versions of the final report which itself was not made public. Amazing to see how the civil service works and watching as the initial draft get severely butchered as it probably went up the chain of command and became rather tame. Part 6. A 19 page document got turned into a 16 page document and then got turned into a 12 page document (Page 81)and on the way suggestions from the Department were removed. But even with that final report, it never actually got published after all the people sending in their views and it all being sifted through. What a horrible waste.
The overall conclusion of this report was: Stimulating demand is not a concern at present and it’s still not.
Where did the Murphy’s go?
The draft versions of the report on the conclusions saw the report split into two parts, stimulating demand and tackling availability/infrastructure issues. In the cleaned report (page 81) they turn from “suggestions” into “summaries”. It is obvious in the drafts that the Department have come up with their own constructive suggestions on demand and availability but further along the line they seemed to have been disappeared. Shame. But it at least shows that like every org they are some great minds and constructive suggestions being worked on but politics comes into play.
BT Ireland and eircom had massively different data on line failure rates which was mentioned in one draft:
BT in their submission, claim that up to 62% of FRIACO lines they surveyed (a sample of 4,300) failed the line test for broadband. Eircom state the figure is 10%. The truth is probably somewhere in between and it would prove a worthy exercise for the Department to ascertain the real truth, if only to counter the spin Eircom put on the figures in the national media.
The clean report turns this into:
BT reported that a high share of FRIACO lines failed the line test for broadband. However, in relation to coverage issue, Eircom stated that by “March 2006, 85%+ of telephone customers will be connected to DSL enabled exchanges”
Nowhere does it mention that this is just fiddling with numbers but it is warned about in the two drafts:
The wording of this is very careful. They are not saying that 85% of customers can get DSL, they are saying 85% of customer lines are attached to a DSL enabled exchange. This brings the numbers of the population down from the 67% of the country who have a land line, down to 56.95% who have a landline attached to an exchange.
Eircom claim there is only a 10% failure rate on lines, which brings to sum down to 51.26% of the population who have a land line, attached to an enabled exchange, with no failure problems. … and is assuming you accept Eircom’s word
And the Murphys:
A suggestion was made to pick out the first 100 Murphys in each area code and put their number into the eircom line checker and see what the %s would be. It never made it into the “clean” report. Neither did lots of other very good suggestions probably because it would have added more reality to the situation the Department had been preaching up until then.
There are dozens of other great suggestions in those draft reports. They’re worth checking out. I still think the Murphy’s idea is great and maybe someone should try it out and see what the line failure rates are.
I really like Adam’s post here on the Young Fine Gael’s attitude to their Lisbon campaign and those of Rock the Vote.
Via Ciarán Cuffe, the Green Party’s 12 green steps blog. Not those 12 steps, though am sure they might have other 12 step plans over the next few years, like how to redeem their good name. Despite being one of the core people in the Green Party, he’s still my favourite blogging politician due to his enthusiasm for the medium, including playing with videos and the fact that he appears to be so transparent. His Wow blog post is still the best one about Bertie’s resignation.
Congrats to Keithy the sweety for the Failte Ireland gig. He’ll be involved in a combination of e-business training and mentoring for FI’s clients.
Help Joe Garde write some copy and win money.
The House of Lords are now blogging. Shark jump.
The googlebot is now filling in web forms in order to see what’s behind them? Interesting. Paranoia time.
Hope for those with Alzheimer’s?
Wordpess vunerable again? And again.
The hosting industry is well established but mature? (Check out the comments)
Like airplanes? Low flying ones?
and from another vantage point:
We’re heading to venus venus venus, the Final Countdown on cellos:
Staying on the movie theme for today. Congrats to Moviestar.ie who are apparently going into movie downloads as well as DVD distribution via post. Been thinking about Moviestar.ie a bit of late, mainly because they came along and offered some wonderful goodybag vouchers at the blog awards as well as 30! dvd players too. DVDs by post is a new enough concept in Ireland but it seems to be doing very well in the States, probably because of having so many armed postmen or something. I heard they shoot to kill if you try and rob them.
DVD rentals, a la NetFlix. So isn’t the core business of Moviestar.ie to keep people indoors? Are their main competitors the cinemas and the pubs? Possibly not the cinemas and maybe not the pub either. Are RTE and Sky competitors I wonder? Maybe every one of the above is a competitor and maybe an ally too.
None of my business, but…
What would I do with Moviestar.ie? Not that it’s any of my business but I’d definitely set up a group blog and ask some of the totally obsessive movie bloggers to come on board and blog every now and then about DVDs that are in the Moviestar catalog. There are gems in there, even for the movie fascists some of us are. A blog is good for generating a little interest and a good bit of Google rankings to draw people in. What else can be done though?
Complimentary to our lives
Well I think Moviestar.ie could compliment life with sets of DVDs. Christmas movies around .. Christmas. Romance movies around Valentine’s, the best of horror around Halloween. Getting me? Movie marathons. Box sets and weekend long marathons of TV shows are the norm now, so why not exploit it? Don’t send a single DVD but a whole set. What about tie-ins with cinemas and upcoming movies? An example? Well how about watching all of the existing Rambo movies before watching the latest in the cinema? Same for Rocky, Die Hard etc. etc. Sequels could be a great business. Birthday party DVD specials too for kids. Imagine having a personal shopper for movies or a bluffers guide to gangster movies, cowboy movies etc.?
Cross-promotions
DVDs and cinemas compliment each other in my view. Perhaps there could be tie-ins with the cinemas with cross-promotions for upcoming movies or maybe with the movie distributors themselves since there’s an existing relationship. It would pay for distributors to do something like this with Moviestar to boost an upcoming film. Sequel out, get Moviestar to promote the previous movies and do offers for people to watch them. Build some hype. Then there’s the offies. Get the beer, the chips and the Evil Dead movies. Or the superhero collection. Corona and a cowboy movie or two.
I love the idea of social objects and creating something that could gather people around to enjoy their time together. Whether it be to act as ambassadors or just community building.
Any other “none of our business, but” suggestions?
Ohmygodwhatadamnedamazinglookingtrailerandsosarcastic.
You’ve seen the trailer for Iron Man, right? No? Don’t. It might be even more fun when you see it if you don’t see any clips. But the trailers for it look really sweet. Robert Downey Jr. is so good even with facial hair that you want to pinch his cheeks.
Anyways, Movies.ie is a new site on the block in the entertainment space and Vincent that runs Q&A is one of the people behind it. Nice design. Nice features too. Have a looksee. I already sent Vincent my long list of wants. The carbon footprint of the printed off email will probably equate to a few trees. Their video podcast is on iTunes and YouTube and has Paul Byrne interviews famous and wantstobefamous people. 10,000 views for the latest one.
So yes, Movies.ie also organising an advance screening for Iron Man on April 30th and if you are a member of the site, you might get picked to come along. Details how here.
My favourite part of the site are the Movies.ie blogs (but you knew I’d say that) and hopefully they’ll get updated a bit more. I especially like Lenny Abrahamson’s blog (he the guy that directed Garage) and the blog post where he lays into the IFTAs and the shit organisation of them.
Best Blog Post this month, I know already. More people need to know about this atrocious shite in Hotpress.
Have a look at Maria Horan’s blog. New on the block. She teaches Irish. Some nice views.
Green Ink on the PaulWilliamsisation of crime reporting. He no likely. He right. Long right.
Seriously now. If you don’t upgrade buggypress you’ll get blacklisted by Google.
Rob is well impressed with the Google App Engine. Anyone else have thoughts?
Love the idea of colour changing road surfaces to warn about ice and so forth.
iPlayer on the Wii. Weeeeee!
The Avenue Q puppets singing Popular from “Wicked”
Rage Against the Machine – Testify – Live at Reading
“No Lucinda, I meant Barry. Barry stop fucking playing vroom vroom.”
Meanwhile, the branez of Young Fine Gowl said that this is marketing and all the people talking about it are spreading the word about Lisbon. Jesus, isn’t that what those idiots in RockTheVote said? There was more talk about the whackery of the campaign than the election but apparently that’s still classed as a positive key performance indicator. Oh I got the word wrong. Sorry, let me try this is a Lucindkar accent: “Morketing, yaw”. There we go.
Anyways, the branez are now pictured below. Apparently the idea to put an emasculated hairless man just wearing tight underwear was decided by these guys as well as a fairly bland picture of a woman. Do the branez of Fine Gael honestly think a man showing some of his pubic area (also hairless) is a good image of masculinity or is attractive to a woman? Real mean have body hair. I doubt real people exist in the universe of any youth wing though if this is the carry-on.
If you wade through the childishness of some of their comments on Politics.ie you’ll see that these kids actually think that any publicity is good publicity. Noise is as good as volume and quality? Even sitting in a four wheeled bike looking like a gimp is good publicity?
Libertas are sooooo scared now. This is FinePower unleashed. Genie and bottle, Pandora and box. Even if Libertas secretly are the CIA. Oh you didn’t know that? Yeah, Libertas even have their own private jet whisking people from Dublin to Galway and back. Dec Force one. Waterboarding happens on the short flight using the complimentary Ballygowan fizzy water. But as the below photo shows, Team FinePower gets the last laugh.
Well found by Dave Cochrane over on (still running despite FF) Politics.ie
What better way to campaign for Europe then get a fit looking male model to wear EU flag underwear and then a not so fit girl to make a grapefruit/titty joke:
FYI:
Actual urls for these images: http://www.yfg.ie/downloads/Lisbon%20male.jpg and http://www.yfg.ie/downloads/Lisbon%20female.jpg
Update: Check out how it looks on the Young Fine Gael site. Enda next to the bloke and Olwyn Enright next to the woman.
Update 2: What the FOCK!!!
Via Green Ink:sinead
and Hat Tip to Sinéad: Lucinda and some Jazz Handed guy. Lucinda looks less tanned than someone shocker!
Update 3: And the photoshops er, grow:
Via: Devil’s Kitchen
Firstly, a friend is looking for spare tix for the bud rising gig on Fri evening. Yes, the sold out one. Anyone got any?
Along the same lines, Derek is DJing on Phantom as a warm up to the Simian Mobile Disco gig on at Spy tonight. Check it check it out.
Enda Kenny’s Facebook group now has 200+ people saying go. Sign that contract Enda!
Gay graves. Gay sections in gaves. April 10th is not ten times April 1st. This is true. Our outgoing Gay Rights Taoiseach will sneak this in before he heads.
Google Sweden as an app that allows you to nuke any city on Google maps. (Simulation only) Hat tips to Josie.
An Animal’s Home on Twitter. Clever.
Let’s play with the traffic and make traffic jam shockwaves:
Can you spot the future Taoiseach in this?
Damien Mulley is proudly powered by
WordPress
Entries (RSS)
and Comments (RSS).
