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Fluffy Links – Wednesday April 2nd 2008

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

Google “Munster Manager”, g’wan.

This was a good April 1st prank from Kieran.

While it’s a bloody shame this one is. I’d love a crowd who I can post docs to and they’ll scan em in and put them online.

For fuck’s sake this too is not a joke. Now glamour models are needed if you have cancer “up there”? Una covers it too.

Clever. I thought this was an April Fools. It’s not! Yes, do walk around your own constituency in a stabproof jacket. Sends a great message. Fecking eejit.

Brown Energy for the win.

Google says BIM.ie is a bit fishy.

Liquid Kiss. Cute.

Handy. Diary shower curtain.

I want a Pixel Couch.

VIA BB Sweet Home Alabama – Leningrad Cowboys and Red Army Choir

Subtle

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

It almost feels like a loveletter.

April Foolsfy links

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Women? Who’d have em eh? I mean, er, Alexia makes some excellent points about mandatory gender numbers and women in tech. engineering etc.

The geeky/techy/nerd readership to this blog is big enough. Got some spare RAM? (that’s computer memory Mum) Then donate it.

Via Soggy Biscuit. K.C.s in Cork has a webcam.

Conor’s piece makes me want to be a scammer. Boo.

Adrian goes all Blogorrah on us.

UK newspapers driving traffic more effectively than Google.

Via Will Mcinnes, via Helenium

Web users are going to bands’ Wikipedia entries more often than their MySpace pages, or dedicated site, by a 2-to-1 ratio.

Really nice desktop backgrounds.

People give their Best Stories ever.

“Artivist’ Will St Leger placed £50,000 worth of fake ‘Bertie’ cash in the baskets of Molly Malone’s statue on the 31st March.” Ort. Yaw.

Fluffy Links – Tuesday April 1st 2008

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Alexia takes on the feminists and those who think women should blog like boys. Hooray.

Gotta hand it to Ben, his reaction to the whole thing is sure to get the pitchforks out.

The Chancer gone? No, back already and an explanation.

Some wiley hacker meanwhile uncovered a lot of docs on the Govt website that maybe should not have been there. Ich bin embarrassed.

Not just disgusting, awful, horrible and unnatural, it’s funny too.

You can’t beat classic 1930s violent comedy though.

No videos today. Sorry.

DublinOpinion thinks Politics.ie has damaged blogging in Ireland.

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

You couldn’t make this up. And I think it’s very very unfair.

one of enormous significance for the Irish blogging community.

Oooer.

The sheer nuttiness of all of this should not take away from the very sober realization that politics.ie has managed to damage at a fundamental level the Irish blogging world. To say that his actions are irresponsible is to say that sticking your foot in your mouth makes for a gourmet meal.

Put it this way, would YOU argue for self-regulation after this mess?

Dumb and DublinOpinioner.

Myself and Dave Cochrane might disagree on some things, many things but Jesus H Christ and his allstar jazz band, trying to set off the sky is falling alarms because of what happened on one website and subsequent actions of the owner is the most moronic thing I’ve heard this year. Which I had thought was this. The same logic could be used to suggest that a suicide bomber’s actions will be used to regulate and contain anyone that follows Islam. That one website that’s not a fucking blog! can damage all the “Irish Blogging World” suggests to me that Conor in Dublin Opinion has far too high an opinion of blogging and websites.

No blogger or website owner has some kind of duty to every other website owner or blogger or anyone else that types stuff online. Should we hold anyone from one race as accountable for another? Or family or colour or country? But then Conor thinks blogging has a long way to go. I certainly don’t want this long way to go journey to end with me being obliged to blog in a certain way or be self-regulated and kept in check by other bloggers. I owe no duty to other bloggers and if I am stupid and irresponsible then the law can punish me and not some self-appointed online speech police. Don’t like what I say or do? De-link me.

I actually think David Cochrane is owed an apology for those remarks.

Best coverage so far is unsurprisingly on the Cedar Lounge.
Update: Fergal also talks that sense thing.

Angles and those that can see them

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Security professionals — at least the good ones — see the world differently. They can’t walk into a store without noticing how they might shoplift. They can’t use a computer without wondering about the security vulnerabilities. They can’t vote without trying to figure out how to vote twice. They just can’t help it.

Bruce Schneier in Wired

This is a love letter to Irish entrepreneurs like Pat Phelan, Johnny Beirne and Denis O’Brien (but not in the gay for them kind of way) and to people like Richard Branson. While I know Pat and Johnny well enough and don’t know Denis at all and certainly not like Sarah does I think the way they see the world as well as Mr. Branson is different to most people. O’Brien has shown again and again annnnnd again that he has an eye for opportunities and the vision to make them massive successes. Look at the Digicell empire he’s built when so many thought he could never tame the Caribbean and South American markets. He owns radio stations, taxi firms, football managers and job websites here in Ireland. Branson, well, Branson is into everything and doing very nicely thank you very much.

Orange Phone
Photo owned by hyku (cc)

Then there’s Mr. Phelan, now whether it’s the informal engaging attitude from him or maybe I’ve not met enough Irish business people but Pat is different. You talk to Pat about anything and he can see patterns and shapes in businesses so that he’ll find ways of making money from something that you would never see and I’ve not encountered much of that with Irish business people. From Chef to O2 voodoo doll material to big boss of MaxRoam and someone well regarded in Telecoms 2.0 circles.

And Johnny too, worked his ass off to build DownloadMusic.ie and kept going and pushing with that and along the way coming up with other ideas for other businesses and services and he’s far from finished. Pat and Johnny and the Collisons too! are of the Schneier breed, of the O’Brien breed, of the Branson breed, people that sees angles in things and they make them visible to the rest of us. They’ll never stop being like that, Pat’s busy flying all around the world but he’s already working on other pet projects and I’m sure he’ll do the same for the rest of his life. Johnny is the same with Grapevine and Patrick created an offline version of Wikipedia for the iPhone.

TV Testing Room
Photo owned by The Consumerist (cc)

In Schneier’s article he goes on to talk about a University that’s teaching people to think like a security consultant. It’s not a course on security but the security mindset. Do we have anything close to that in Ireland for business? Not exactly “Think Differently” since Apple fuzzied that one up but some kind of creative business planning classes. Is this why those business book shelves are so chock full of autobiographies as it shows you how others thought? Can this be thought or is it a natural gift that can just be coaxed out of someone and polished?

Fluffy Links – Monday March 31st 2008

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Buy a tree and watch it grow using Google Maps.

See which Irish Websites are allowing Pornography to be posted to their website.

Books. David is obesssed.

Via Off the Meatrack Guy Kawasaki thinks Pat Kenny rocks. Not a fricking joke.

Which Irish ISPs are fecking with your Bittorrents? I’ve heard eircom are doing it and Irish Broadband but encrypting stops em. Log em.

Punished for paying by cash, this BT customer, solicitor and a granny too takes em to court.

Jazzbiscuit points out DownloadMusic.ie are releasing a USB stick album/compilation. Those who decide what goes on are known to us.

Now Levi’s are making a phone but it won’t fit into the famous watch pocket.

Some nice anti-quackary stuff on Autism.

Seal cub Hunt not ….

MacBook Air Parody with a Dell.

David McSavage threatens rape to shut up heckler at comedy gig

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Just got this from a friend that was at a comedy gig tonight.

It was amusing enough that David McSavage appeared as the closing act on a night that was supposed to be for “up and coming comedians” but, nevertheless, most people inevitably went along with it. Naturally enough, as with most performances, there were one or two people nattering down the back but for Mr. McSavage, this was too much to stand. He drew attention to them from the outset, condemning women for not being able to focus without talking to each other, comparing them to the Borg by all defending each other no matter what, while their boyfriends didn’t want to tell them to shut up lest they “not get their hole”. Fine so. The show continued.

Nevertheless, time and again, he kept coming back to mock the chattering two at the back. Until, finally, one of them left and he said he had wanted to “whack the faggoty fuck with his guitar”. Still, the audience – just about – stayed with him. Finally though, he pointed to the second remaining girl at the back and said that he wanted to “bring the black-haired one up to the stage and bend her over and wallop her over this chair while she struggled”. At this point, Aidan Bishop (brother of Des Bishop), the resident MC of the International, had had just about enough and decided to call time on the whole thing. Initially he sat on the stage to the right of David, but David continued with the insinuation of the above threat until he was told that it was best to end his performance. McSavage cited this as being “uncool” and told Aidan that it was sad “that he couldn’t even set up his own comedy club”, before telling the crowd and Aidan to “go fuck themselves” while walking off.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that it was the funniest thing the audience had seen all night from a lacklustre combination of so-called ‘new talent’, who had all been doing stand-up for at least two years.

Politics.ie won’t be shut down, moving to America as Bertie’s lawyers attack

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

They’ll be back soon so don’t worry. Just been chatting to Dave. servers for Politics.ie being set up in the States now.

In case you missed the action, Bertie’s lawyers got on to Dave Cochrane about his site Politics.ie when a poster on the forum said stuff they didn’t like. Now they are hurt and annoyed and all the rest that what was posted was there for 20 hours so not only want the name of the person who made it but a few more people who also responded to the post. Right. They also want an apology. Court order please for the IPs. Apology? Dave says no and is seemingly going to fight them. You’d think the Taoiseach’s lawyers would have enough to be doing what with the 440,000+ other things surrounding Bertie.

Anyway, Dave assures me they’ll be back and annoying legal teams once again but from a new location. This really smacks of a ham fisted way of shutting down the public from talking about Bertie and all the Mahon Tribunal stuff. John has his take on attacks on free speech here.

For Bertie:

How fucking much! Dept of Comms spent €423,938.18 til Nov 2007 on National Broadband Scheme

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

From a parliamentary question.

345. Deputy Damien English Information asked the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Information Zoom the private consultancy firms his Department and the agencies which report to his Department used to date in 2007; the projects each worked on; the cost to his Department or agency of each engagement;

I removed everything bar the stuff on NBS and Regional Broadband Scheme. This is just on outside consultants.

Aneta Scieplek Advisory Services on NBS Programme 21,750.22
Arthur Cox Legal Advice in relation to the Regional broadband Programme 192,696.56
ESRI NBS Mapping Consultancy 15,247.50
Mazars Financial re GBS Scheme 46,391.90
Masons NBS Technical advice 147,672