Damien Mulley

I’m going to see the harp playing Mizz Newsom on Saturday, if anyone wants a spare ticket let me know by email. Seating. Here’s an older post about her and a nice video.

EDIT: Still available!

We need more campaign groups out there. Amazing how little we have. Not Government funded hamstrung groups that spend all their time kissing ass so they can ensure their future funding. Far too many of them about. We need more groups like Digital Rights Ireland for example. Here’s a few I’d love to see:

ComRegWatch
From my side I’d like to see a group that is dedicated just to ComReg and all the nefarious stuff they do. I don’t think IrelandOffline alone has the resources to tackle this brainless monster. A lean group which just monitors this regulator is needed.

EnergyRegWatch
Staying with the theme of regulatory capture, think ComReg are bad? Try the energy regulator. Captain fricking Caveman and co. This is the guy who let Bord Gais raise prices through the roof and then Bord Gais turned around and said “nah, not really” or something like that and made the guy look like a complete wally after he justifying why the full increase was needed.

Cut the Bullshit in IT – CBIT
I’d really like to see a tech representative group to counter the complete bullshit that comes out via press releases from security companies warning about high levels of spam, or viruses, or the fact that right this very second paedophiles are on Bebo waiting for your child to come online. Oh and these groups just happen to be pimping some product that promises to nuke this kind of activity but like any good “product” it isn’t 100% effective so sister products will have to be bought.

Be great to see people brought on to the Last Word who tell these marketing cluetards to shut up. We all know some managers are really stupid and will sign the company up to some new service without first checking with the IT guys, perhaps if CBIT was about, the salesman would get less unchecked airtime. Adrian Weckler can’t be cloned, so we need more people with tech credentials but with a cynical streak. We don’t want the cynicism turned up to 11 though, cos there can only be one John McCormac. And we love ye JMCC!

ConsumerWatch.
National Consumer Agency? Celia Larkin looking after your consumer rights? Really? You’d be happy with da? The Consumers Association are a business who sit on far too many Government funded quangos to be independent or to give too much of a fuck. Well-intentioned they may be but I have no respect for a group that is given 1500 quid to attend ComReg “consumer” meetings and then when asked by the EU how everything is in Ireland, spouts the LIES that ComReg fed to them at those meetings. This is what I experienced a few months back when the EU came over to check out the telecoms situation in Ireland. Shame on the Consumers Association.

Teleworking Group
Telework.ie hasn’t been updated in years and appears to be offline now. With broadband availability finally becoming a reality, it might be good once and for all to have a group that will guide and represent the needs of Teleworkers. A recent survey said the number of teleworkers doubled but a massive proportion of people who want to work from home and who are allowed to by their empolyees still can’t because of the broadband situation. These people deserve a voice.

DataCommWatch
The Data Protection/Privacy Commissioner. 6-12 months to investigate a spam complaint. Will they prosecute? Will they feck? Will they follow up on SMS spam? Seems no. Data proection is a good idea, as is data privacy, but is the Data Protection Commissioner doing a good job? Or would this group step on the toes of Digital Rights Ireland?

So, any other groups that are needed? Won’t someone create some flatpack type software/product so groups like this can be created?

I thought a blogger other than John would have scooped this!. Well deserved. Send all your tech news his way. So will you also be tech blogging on the Irish Times website?

IBEC underling, the Irish Software Assocation says in the Sunday Business Post that a trade delegation to Irish businesses is needed. Specifically the public sector. It certainly is a cashcow for road builders and e-voting machine makers. Good idea. How many of the new breed of companies are members of this group? Any benefit?

Nice quote:

‘‘Bebo is software, Google is software, Stockbyte [the Kerry company sold for $135 million last year] is software. Software is not just something that gets delivered on a CD – it is embedded knowledge, whether it is in computer chips, in website, or in more conventional methods. This is an industry that is driven by creativity and innovation.â€?

So while, they have a delegation going to Government buildings, another tech delegation heads to Silicon Valley.

Fianna Fail are putting DVDs instead of leaflets in our doors? Snazzy.

Walter gives a Cliff notes version of the “Microsoft is dead” essay. Please buy Snipshot – it’s going for a song.

The Union of Students in Ireland cut their links with SIPTU and instead align themselves with drink industry astroturf group MEAS and also with IBEC. Jesus. I can’t stand IBEC for their eircom sponsored crap through the years like: 2″we are the cheapest in Europe for telecoms prices and that those official EU reports are wrong” or “we’re not second last for broadband” or the real doozy: “we are poor for broadband because nobody wants broadband”. This excuse was flipped when the new eircom said it was availablity not demand which was the problem. USI and IBEC. These kids are the future of our country? I’d hate to be poor when they take over.

Farmers Market supplier in the UK found to be ripoff merchants. Hope the came is not the case in Ireland, though I notice some organic veg sellers seem to add a 100% hippy tax on to their good. Organic foods should not be luxury items, right?

So, The Economist will give me a discount and I can get a yearly subscription for just €92 a year. Saving 63% on the cover price. Or, thanks to this UK crowd, I can get the magazine for €72 a year. Quite a saving. Now, do I have time to read The Economist?

Here comes more monetization in Second Life. You can now pay for your real name to be shown in Second Life. I quite like being Casio Tone in Second Life. I can see some issues though for those with the same names as famous people. God love David Hasselhoff of Leap, Co. Cork if he tries to use that name. (Person may not actually exist. Just like KITT.)

Nice timeline of Twitter and Jaiku.

Now begins the usual back-tracking. “What I actually meant was…” “I think you got me wrong there, I wasn’t saying” “No, what I was saying is different.” Abort, Retry, Fail.

So who doesn’t like the code of conduct idea? Here are just a few from my own feed reader:

Pat Phelan:

I can personally promise that I will never subscribe to a site or will unsubscribe to one that has this crap displayed.
Whatever happened to freedom of speech. If I don’t like you I will let you know and I totally subscribe to Shel Israel’s living room policy rather than this police state bull.

Paul Watson:

I am on the side of anarchy in this. It comes down to the individual how they run their domain. So long as it is legal I don’t want interference from any party. It is the readership that decides what they read.

Valleywag

While we’re at it, how about an ombudsman, required ethics courses at J-school, and regulation by the FCC? Because that’s worked so well for America’s breathtakingly turgid daily newspapers, and bland network news

Hugh Macleod:

I suppose if it makes some people feel better about their lives, then that’s a good thing. Whatever.

Michael Arrington:

And whenever someone, no matter how much I respect them, tries to tell me what I can and cannot do by defining “civility� around their own ideals, I tense up. It feels like a big angry mob is arming itself to the teeth and looking for targets, and I need to choose whether I’m with them or against them.

Jeff Jarvis:

This effort misses the point of the internet, blogs, and even of civilized behavior. They treat the blogosphere as if it were a school library where someone — they’ll do us the favor — can maintain order and control.

Dave Winer:

If you want to reform the blogosphere, here’s where to start. Have a brigade of people whose job it is to put out fires when they start. To defend the people who no one wants to defend. That, imho, would be a very positive first step.

JP Rangaswami.:

When you take the lyrics of John Lennon, or for that matter even some of the early Bob Dylan, civility is not the word that comes to mind. They’re passionate to the point of being irascible.

Fred Wilson:

Blogs are the epitome of free speech. Let’s not take an iota of freedom away from them.

Jason Kottke:

There has to be a mechanism for anonymous comments, even if they need to be approved before being posted. As the EFF says, “anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse”.

Twenty Major (In the comments on O’Reilly’s blog post):

A blogger’s code of conduct is the biggest load of simpering bollocks I’ve ever heard in my life.

Nobody is clear to the exact words from Ben Franklin but this is close enough to what he said:

Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

I like this variation: Those who would sacrifice Internet freedoms for some pieces of silver deserve to be called money grabbing cunts.

I’m not a fan of the term “blawg” which is used to refer to Law Blogs but still, I thought I’d make a list of ambulance chasers legal folk who blog in Ireland.

Well, the first crowd I noticed way back when were Fergal and Simon over on the Tuppenceworth Blog. Not soley a law blog as it has a great mix of other things too, but a great stop on your law blog travels and I think it was the first one I encountered when I first started looking at blogs.

Then there’s also the mostly dead blog of Fiona de Londras though she reappeared in a guest starring role over here recently. Come back Fiona!

Karole Cuddihy‘s blog is also near-dead as well, which is another great shame. Some great essays on that blog and maybe we’ll see a few more.

The blog for McGarr Solicitors is great and they’re involved in some very interesting cases. When I grow up I want to fight their good fights.

Irish Law Updates. Managed by Darius Whelan. Nice resource, as are many other online projects from Darius and UCC.

TJ McIntyre‘s IT Law in Ireland blog. A fantastic resource for anyone working in tech. Well worth subscribing to. TJ is also the chair of Digital Rights Ireland who are currently suing the Government for being too like Big Brother..

Two very good blogs that have been posting quality stuff quite a lot in recent times are the relatively new blog from Dr. Eoin O’Dell called Cearta.ie. Well worth checking out and adding to your Google Reader or Bloglines. The coverage of the Trocaire debacle was fantastic. I just realised I don’t have Eoin in my links. Apologies, Eoin. Might actually add an Irish Law Blogs section altogether. And by the power of Greyskull, I have.

The other blog I’m reading on a daily basis is from Daithí Mac Síthigh. Daithí is writing a PhD on the regulation of ‘Web media’. Quite a fan of Daithí’s writing and he gives great insights into media, tech and the web.

I’m in no doubt that I’m missing some very good blogs, so let me know which ones in the comments.

Lastly, I’d hate to have an argument with any of the above, they’d kick my ass. Not physically though, I could take them all, apart from O’Dell, we know about your ninja past Eoin. 🙂

Via Tara Hunt, take the Coworking survey. (If you are interested in coworking that is.) Bonus link: Irish Coworking website.

Wobbery! FatMammyCat is latest to get ripped off.

Phoar, for the mapping lovers out there. This is a map of what locations on maps are referenced the most. A thing of beauty to be honest.

Staying on the mapping theme is OpenBible.info. All locations from the Bible put on Google Earth. Raw data files exported too.

David Weinberger’s new book is out on May 1st. Prebook now.

This is very very odd. Is the song satire? Free speech or a legal case in the making?

Some really good podcasts (with notes) from the Times.

The Times and Times Online bring you the Best of the MBA. Ten of the world’s leading business thinkers provide the latest thinking in economics, management, finance, strategy and marketing. The weekly series of lectures will be available as a 30-minute podcast, in text online and in an abridged version in the newspaper

Via Antoin is the first of four parts of the documentary Century of the Self:Niall Larkin reimagines Gordon Gecko talking about Google, instead of greed. I love the Gordon Gecko greed speech, which is here:

Talk about not being a regular thing. These irregular posts are when I make suggestions for business ideas without being asked. Backseat driving in a way. This post actually been in draft for about 2 months or maybe more as today I’m cleaning out and deleting about 40 posts I have in draft. On to the idea…

A total clone of the first IDAFYfA, this would be the same idea as the Sixty Second Interview except it would be a longer interview. 365 seconds, naturally. 🙂

The suggestion though is that Hosting 365 would video interview their own clients and put them online at 365Interviews.com or something like that. A nice marketing/attention grabbing thing for Hosting365 as they have some clients that others would certainly sit down and watch being interviewed and it would then be a free bonus for their clients for getting their name onto the net and onto YouTube. Another free way of getting the Hosting365 name bandied about.