Damien Mulley

Just watched Syriana for the first time. I actually liked it. But maybe it was because it was the first time in a while that I watched anything. 🙂

and a quote from it:

Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. That’s Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win.

Vote here. I wish we could have gotten this out the door last week so there’d be more time for voting. It’ll be very interesting to see how many votes there’ll be. Best of luck to everyone. We’ll be releasing lists of all the nominees in a while. Once sleep is had.

The voting for the blog awards will hopefully go live later tonight or in the morning. Until then here are the videos nominated for the Best Videocast Award. (Sponsored by Cork Internet Exchange)

Aine Chambers Dooney Rock, Sligo

Allyn Quigley – DWIC – X-mas No#1

Allyn Quigley – Size Matters

Brody Sweeney on why he decided on politics

Disappear by JL Pagano

Minister to Nowhere – Simon McGarr

PD Election Video

Technolotics #44 – Flying Naked

Technolotics #29 – ZZ Fops

Uisce In New Hampshire

You pay taxes so we don’t have to

Edit: Suspicion confirmed.

IrelandOffline got a few calls/emails in the past while from individuals asking why Magnet are not taking their orders. It isn’t like they are overcapacity in the exchanges they are in. Now after the articles in SiliconRepublic and ENN yesterday, a careful reading might suggest they are just going to sell to business customers.

This bit is interesting:

He said that the company is committed to offering services to businesses and consumers exclusively on a local loop unbundling (LLU) basis and would not be content with reselling broadband for the incumbent, which he likened to selling customers “stale old chips in a new bag�.

Netsource is part of Magnet now and that’s exactly what they do.

Then there’s this:

“We will do this through focusing on our original fibre-to-the-home strategy but also on quality business broadband products. We are going to take all our resources and focus them on those two areas,� Kennedy said.

So fibre to the home in Magnet controlled housing states and apartment complexes and business broadband via LLU? I really am not seeing anything that actually mentions their plans for the consumers using their non-fibre assets.

Having a Bebo profile is fine but do the politicians have to spam you on it?

Conor O’Neill has these “notions”. 🙂

Passion for the work, not the company.

How to be cheap.

Via PlasticBag.org is IMfied. Tried it and seems interesting enough. Add them to GMail chat or MSN or AIM and you can use the service to set up reminders and create ToDo lists.

Skype accesses your BIOS details? Whyyyy?

A snake massage? Arghh.

Text is linear. This has been all over the shop (web) the past few days. Finally got round to seeing it. Great video but I think it would have had less of an impact if the music wasn’t there. Very positive music pushing you to the ending.

The poodle released figures for calls to their consumerline service.

October to December 2006 – 5200 calls.
For July to September 2006 – 4,600 calls
For April to June 2006 – 4,200 calls
For January – March 2006 – 4,000 calls

Now from October to December was the time when 45,000 people were terminated from Smart and there was a holy outcry from all corners of the Island. Yet there was an extra 600 calls? But looking at the growth rate, it seems that 5000 calls would have been expected too. Fishy fishy.

I tried to do an FOI before on the stats for the ComReg consumerline. They told me they did not have a system in place to actually calculate the calls and log them properly. Perhaps that has since changed, but given the predeliction for the regulator to lie consistently in their reports, I don’t trust these stats and one would have thought (even with the lines being dead) that more than 200 people would have phoned into ComReg and expressed their pissed-offness.

Almost as good as the Google canteen, this is what we have for Valentine’s day

Freshly steamed asparagus , citrus & Chive Crème Fraiche € 2.60
Baked Chicken Supreme Stuffed With a Prawn Mousse , Served on a Bed of fresh Spinach , baby Potatoes & a Crayfish Veloute € 3.80
Trio of Chocolate Mousse € 3.50

Breastfeeding site gets legal letters over a pretty tame t-shirt. Fair enough. I just love the name of the site though. “The Lactivist”.

Seems printers were printing secret codes on our documents so the spooks could monitor us.

Helpful sign for prostitutes.

You are bidding on a mistake.

Gay Straight Guys

The Chicken Fight is back! (thanks Andrew)