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As stated in an article here, Irish music sales has seen a steep decline of just over €40m in 7 years. They attribute this to filesharing, but I think that's bollocks. First, that is a drop of roughly 33%. Broadband penetration in Ireland is still one of the lowest in the EU. AFAIK, something like 40% of households now have broadband. It is now 2008, the decline has been happening since 2001, and trust me, in 2001 if you were one of the extremely privledged few who could even get broadband in Ireland you would be paying about €100 per month (roughly 80 punts) for a 512k connection, so much so that if you needed faster than dial-up, ISDN was a cheaper option. This decline in sales has been happening since before people in Ireland had even knew what an mp3 was.

I can give you some reasons why I think there has been a drop in sales in Ireland. In the last few years there has been a huge jump in interest in home-grown bands. Many of these bands play gigs around the country and sell their own music themselves. They skip the corporate labels and use word of mouth and reputation to gain popularity. Then they sell their cd's at gigs and keep the money themselves rather than give it to some suit. Also, do they take into account online sales through amazon, cdwow, play.com, etc? My father buys a lot of movies and music, and buys exclusively online. Is he the only one? I think not... Or downloads from iTunes, etc, are they accounted for? I'd be sure that filesharing has caused some of the dip, but the point I'm trying to make is that the big fall in sales is not directly attributed to it.

Also, eircom have a monopoly over DSL in Ireland. There are other providers but eircom own all the exchanges and telephone lines. Even most of the other DSL providers such as BT, Digiweb, Perlico, Magnet's ADSL (not their ADSL2+), etc, all rent bandwidth from eircom and resell it to customers. This means that the filtering, if imposed, would not just affect eircom's customers, but all ADSL customers in the country. Many people in rural areas cannot get cable from Chorus/NTL or wireless from Digiweb, etc. Most people in Ireland are stuck with eircom or one of their bandwidth resellers. If this filtering did come in to play, it would effectively destroy filesharing in Ireland, but would it actually stop the decline in sales? I think that it would end up causing a monetary loss for the labels (assuming that they have to pay for the system).

It is quite clear the cables were cut to silence the Middle-east-wide shock and discussion regarding the atrocities in Gaza over the past two weeks. Furthermore, cutting the internet prevents an Anne Frank-like figure from communicating these atrocities to the rest of the world. Sure, a modern Palestinian Anne Frank might eventually communicate these events, but by then, a large section of the Gaza concentration camp members will likely have been exterminated.

"The West now only concerns itself because suddenly we're the direct targets of their actions."

Make that "the USA" rather than "the west" - other western countries have had serious terrorism problems for years. In the UK there was the IRA and the "troubles" in Northern Ireland, and in Spain there was/is ETA, to name but two.

Interestingly, look at this story today - 400lb of explosives found, with a strong suspicion of links to real-live republican terrorists. Notice how little reporting there has been of this?

Now imagine how big the headlines would be if a group of muslims had been found with 400lbs of explosive.

It would be the same amount of explosive - able to kill the same number of people.

This issue has been ongoing for some while, and Google has recently reached agreement with the IRS on the matter. The article quoted in the leader text for this posting is really ancient (Nov 2005) and is completely out of date. For ireland.com subscribers, here's a more up-to-date article:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/finance/2007/0205 /1170363595082.html

For those who don't like paying money to read quality web content, I've included the text below.

There's a lot of misunderstanding about the operation of off-shore offices of large multinational companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Dell, and a pile of others who have bases in Ireland. Lots of people view this sort of activity as purely a tax dodge, where there is little substantial activity going on in the offshore offices to justify this sort of write-off. This is simply not the case.

In the case of Google, their EU hosting services are operated out of Dublin. They do piles of development and EU related sales in the city. It's not like there's 1300 people who are paid to sit on their asses all day to do nothing but justify tax write-offs.

In the case of Microsoft, their entire EMEA internet hosting facility will be moved to Dublin within a relatively short period of time. This will include a whole pile of content which has previously only been hosted in the US (i.e. MSN, MSDN, etc). They do cartloads of localization in Dublin (which city - incidentally - hosts the largest software localisation industry in the world). They do development and sales, and media fabrication, and they are a completely legitimate EMEA headquarters. The situation is similar for all of the other companies which operate in IE.

As a large multinational company, you simply cannot afford to attempt to cheat the IRS by passing profits to tax-havens in a random manner. For each tax dollar or euro which is passed to the irish operations of these companies for the purposes of tax write-off, there _must_ be justification. If there isn't, the IRS will take these companies to the cleaners in terms of back-tax, penalties and interest. It simply isn't worth their while engaging in illigitimate accounting practices.

-b

The Irish Times
Monday, February 5, 2007

US limits Google's tax savings

Colm Keena Public Affairs Correspondent

The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has negotiated a deal with Google that limits the tax savings the internet search engine giant will make by way of its Irish subsidiaries.

The agreement, reached in December 2006, will slow or halt a decline in Google's global effective tax rate which was saving it tens of millions of euro annually by having greater proportions of its profits go through Dublin.

The deal, which concerns Google's intercompany transfer pricing arrangements, is backdated to 2003.

In financial results released last week, Google said the deal with the IRS would mean its effective tax rate this year will be higher than it would have been otherwise.

The deal, called an Advance Pricing Agreement, is a structure the US tax authorities negotiate with multinationals to cover how they account for inter company pricing.

Because Ireland's corporation tax rate is half that of the United States, US multinationals can reduce what they call their effective tax rate by locating more profits here than in the US.

The US revenue seeks to ensure that the advantages US multinationals gain from subsidiaries in lower tax jurisdictions, do not exceed what is appropriate.

Last week Google announced revenues of $3.21 billion (2.48 billion) for the quarter ended December 31st, 2006, an increase of 67 per cent on the same period in 2005. Net income was $1 billion.

The company said that depending on the accountancy rules used, its effective tax rate in 2006 was 23 per cent or 26 per cent.

Google's effective tax rate has been falling

The Irish Times (the paper of record in Ireland) launched on the web in 1994, I've been trying to find the exact date. It certainly was a pioneer online and was the first paper I can recall to start publishing the entire paper online.

http://www.ireland.com/about/

Global job cuts at IBM will not significantly affect Irish operations, the IDA confirmed today. The development authority said most of the 3,700 Irish employees at the computer giant will be unaffected despite the expected 13,000 job cuts.

An IDA spokesman said: "We are in close contact with IBM as we are with all our client companies. We don't expect the downsizing to significantly affect the Irish operations."

The world's largest computer company earlier said most of the job losses would hit the group's European operations.

:-). But maybe a more appropriate title for this comment would have been "Finer points of living on a diverse planet for ethnocentric Americans". In the rest of the English speaking world, we have no problems with Celsius.

Much the same thing happened last
week in Dublin

Last-minute indemnity for e-voting commission agreed - Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent

The Government has been forced to agree to a last-minute indemnity for the Electronic Voting Commission against legal action after hearing that the commission was set to refuse to approve the new e- voting system without such a guarantee.

The move follows the refusal of the provider of the new system to allow the commission examine the confidential "source code" without an assurance of substantial compensation should details of the computer programme fall into the hands of competitors.

The Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, yesterday introduced an amendment to the Electronic Voting Bill allowing for compensation to be paid in the event of a leak. While this has cleared one major obstacle to approval of the new system for introduction on June 11th, the commission is considering other aspects of the system before pronouncing on its accuracy and secrecy in a report due in a week's time.

Without access to the source code for the programme, the commission believed it would be unable to assess fully the system's accuracy, and would therefore be unable to declare that the system should be introduced, as planned, for the June 11th local government and European Parliament elections.

Such an outcome would be deeply embarrassing for the Government and the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, who have insisted on introducing the system on June 11th despite sustained Opposition demands for a delay to allow concerns over accuracy and security to be allayed.

This late change, which will probably be voted upon next week, would indemnify the commission and each of its members against legal actions arising from the performance of their duties.

The amendment would also allow the commission, which is chaired by Mr Justice Matthew P. Smith, itself to indemnify others "against any loss or damage in respect of intellectual property rights or other loss or damage that may arise".

The move is understood to have resolved the stand-off between Nedap Powervote, the supplier of the e-voting system, and the Department of the Environment over access to the source code.

The source code is only leased to the Government, and therefore the company has control over who has access to it.

It will now be given to the commission for examination by experts retained by it.

The commission now has just a week in which to complete its report. It was set up by the Government on March 1st to report on the secrecy and accuracy of the system after sustained Opposition claims that there were enough concerns about these aspects to postpone its introduction.

While the Taoiseach and Mr Cullen insisted then that the system would be introduced as planned on June 11th, Mr Cullen said: "If the commission came back and said we don't believe this system does what it is supposed to do, then we would not be in a position to proceed with it."

Whenever you have people involved there is going to be opinion and slant etc. Everyone tends to editorialise no matter how unbiased they are trying to be.

Look at a few different sources and you will find the truth somewhere in between. If you think a news story is suspect, read the editorials from the same source; if they show some attempt to match a piece from one point of view with a piece from another point of view there is a good chance they encourage their reporters to follow their own instincts and not the networks agenda.

One paper I have always found balanced is the irish times (online subscription unfortunately) but their Iraq coverage is free. But by no means would I rely on it exclusively as a news source.

Whenever you have people involved there is going to be opinion and slant etc. Everyone tends to editorialise no matter how unbiased they are trying to be.

Look at a few different sources and you will find the truth somewhere in between. If you think a news story is suspect, read the editorials from the same source; if they show some attempt to match a piece from one point of view with a piece from another point of view there is a good chance they encourage their reporters to follow their own instincts and not the networks agenda.

One paper I have always found balanced is the irish times (online subscription unfortunately) but their Iraq coverage is free. But by no means would I rely on it exclusively as a news source.

In todays' issue (28 Feb 2003), the Business section, page 3, there is an item by Karen Lillington on the issue. Kudos to Karen! There is also A poll on the business page of the IT. I naturally voted no and the stats were 83% No, 17% Yes just after I voted. I don't know how long the business polls are open, so make your voice heard.

As for his claims, well, I wasn't at the show this year, so I haven't seen his entry, unfortunately. They do sound fairly unbelievable, but you have to remember that they're being filtered through journalists, most of whom are really fairly tech-ignorant.

I can say though that the Young Scientist is a major and well respected competition. The quality of the winners varies a lot from year to year, as you'd expect, but it's not run by idiots likely to be taken in by a hoax. Two yeras ago they flew in a Maths professor from MIT to verify some claim, so don't just accept things blindly.

Of course, none of this prevents this guy from having stolen chunks of Mozilla or something, and then bolting some bits on.

Press reports of private censorship:

The London Daily Telegraph: High clearance fees inhibit the work of art historians.(John Whitley, "Protection - or racket? How they're keeping art out of sight--Art historians and biographers are going to the wall as the high-finance stranglehold on copyright tightens.", The Telegraph, "11/09/1999" -- I think in a UK context that means September 11th, not November 9th.)

The Irish Times: The James Joyce estate prevents the performance of a song. (Medb Ruane, "The war of words over Joyce's literary legacy" Irish Times, June 10, 2000.)

The Irish Times: As a result of Joyce estate threats, Cork University Press decides that it must excise Joyce's works from a "comprehensive" anthology of 20th century Irish literature. (Terence Killeen, "Copyright row over Joyce excerpts", Irish Times, February 19th, 2001.)

The Irish Times: The Samuel Beckett estate suppresses a 1988 French production of Endgame and a 1994 London production of Footfalls. These incidents are mentions in the article's next-to-last and 4th-to-last paragraphs.(Louise East, "All Beckett's plays to be filmed here for millennium", Irish Times, July 17th, 1999.)

The Guardian: Peter Schaufuss rewrites a ballet under pressure from the Elvis Presley estate.(Jann Parry, "Thin Elvis--Copyright problems have made rock'n'roll spectacular The King a pale shadow of its subject", April 30th, 2000.). Richard Morrison of The London Times comments on the same incident here. (Richard Morrison, "Why Elvis will never leave the auditorium", London Times, April 20th, 2000.)

The Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star: The Martha Graham Trust suppresses the production of Graham's Panorama at a Frostburg State University summer workshop. ("Officials try to shield school from fight over dancer's, legacy", Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star. The web page's graphics give a date of May 2, 2000, but the story's correct date is July 18th, 2000, as can be verified by examining the page's html source.) The New York Times article (free registration might be needed) is here. (Doreen Carvajal, "Symposium's Vision Fades in Fight Over Martha Graham's Legacy", New York Times, July 17th, 2000)

Animerica Magazine: Special Sailor Moon issue delayed due to rights clearance complications.(Julie Davis, "Sailor Moon Blues", Animerica Magazine, Volume 9, Number 5.)

Press reports of private censorship:

The London Daily Telegraph: High clearance fees inhibit the work of art historians.(John Whitley, "Protection - or racket? How they're keeping art out of sight--Art historians and biographers are going to the wall as the high-finance stranglehold on copyright tightens.", The Telegraph, "11/09/1999" -- I think in a UK context that means September 11th, not November 9th.)

The Irish Times: The James Joyce estate prevents the performance of a song. (Medb Ruane, "The war of words over Joyce's literary legacy" Irish Times, June 10, 2000.)

The Irish Times: As a result of Joyce estate threats, Cork University Press decides that it must excise Joyce's works from a "comprehensive" anthology of 20th century Irish literature. (Terence Killeen, "Copyright row over Joyce excerpts", Irish Times, February 19th, 2001.)

The Irish Times: The Samuel Beckett estate suppresses a 1988 French production of Endgame and a 1994 London production of Footfalls. These incidents are mentions in the article's next-to-last and 4th-to-last paragraphs.(Louise East, "All Beckett's plays to be filmed here for millennium", Irish Times, July 17th, 1999.)

The Guardian: Peter Schaufuss rewrites a ballet under pressure from the Elvis Presley estate.(Jann Parry, "Thin Elvis--Copyright problems have made rock'n'roll spectacular The King a pale shadow of its subject", April 30th, 2000.). Richard Morrison of The London Times comments on the same incident here. (Richard Morrison, "Why Elvis will never leave the auditorium", London Times, April 20th, 2000.)

The Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star: The Martha Graham Trust suppresses the production of Graham's Panorama at a Frostburg State University summer workshop. ("Officials try to shield school from fight over dancer's, legacy", Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star. The web page's graphics give a date of May 2, 2000, but the story's correct date is July 18th, 2000, as can be verified by examining the page's html source.) The New York Times article (free registration might be needed) is here. (Doreen Carvajal, "Symposium's Vision Fades in Fight Over Martha Graham's Legacy", New York Times, July 17th, 2000)

Animerica Magazine: Special Sailor Moon issue delayed due to rights clearance complications.(Julie Davis, "Sailor Moon Blues", Animerica Magazine, Volume 9, Number 5.)

Press reports of private censorship:

The London Daily Telegraph: High clearance fees inhibit the work of art historians.(John Whitley, "Protection - or racket? How they're keeping art out of sight--Art historians and biographers are going to the wall as the high-finance stranglehold on copyright tightens.", The Telegraph, "11/09/1999" -- I think in a UK context that means September 11th, not November 9th.)

The Irish Times: The James Joyce estate prevents the performance of a song. (Medb Ruane, "The war of words over Joyce's literary legacy" Irish Times, June 10, 2000.)

The Irish Times: As a result of Joyce estate threats, Cork University Press decides that it must excise Joyce's works from a "comprehensive" anthology of 20th century Irish literature. (Terence Killeen, "Copyright row over Joyce excerpts", Irish Times, February 19th, 2001.)

The Irish Times: The Samuel Beckett estate suppresses a 1988 French production of Endgame and a 1994 London production of Footfalls. These incidents are mentions in the article's next-to-last and 4th-to-last paragraphs.(Louise East, "All Beckett's plays to be filmed here for millennium", Irish Times, July 17th, 1999.)

The Guardian: Peter Schaufuss rewrites a ballet under pressure from the Elvis Presley estate.(Jann Parry, "Thin Elvis--Copyright problems have made rock'n'roll spectacular The King a pale shadow of its subject", April 30th, 2000.). Richard Morrison of The London Times comments on the same incident here. (Richard Morrison, "Why Elvis will never leave the auditorium", London Times, April 20th, 2000.)

The Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star: The Martha Graham Trust suppresses the production of Graham's Panorama at a Frostburg State University summer workshop. ("Officials try to shield school from fight over dancer's, legacy", Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star. The web page's graphics give a date of May 2, 2000, but the story's correct date is July 18th, 2000, as can be verified by examining the page's html source.) The New York Times article (free registration might be needed) is here. (Doreen Carvajal, "Symposium's Vision Fades in Fight Over Martha Graham's Legacy", New York Times, July 17th, 2000)

Animerica Magazine: Special Sailor Moon issue delayed due to rights clearance complications.(Julie Davis, "Sailor Moon Blues", Animerica Magazine, Volume 9, Number 5.)

You mean these same clerks?

A good example of this is the recent attempted coup in Venezuela: North American media have all relayed the information reported in Venezuelan media that government troops fired on anti-Chavez protesters. This, you'll remember, is what prompted his (ultimately unsuccessful) removal from power by the coup leaders -- which subsequently led the Bush administration to trample the ideals of democracy by refusing to denounce the coup (they didn't even call it like that at the time)! While the White House is pathetically trying to backpeddle out of this mess, it is still saying that Chavez will have to respect democracy (how Orwellian!) and not repress political dissent. However, nobody stopped to think if what was shown by the Venezuelan media was the whole truth, even though they are known to be overtly and aggressively anti-Chavez. As it happens, testimony from people who were there, including an Irish filmmaker, is starting to reveal that government troops were not the only ones to shoot, and perhaps not even the first one. Another telling detail: most of those killed by snipers on that day were Chavistas (pro-Chavez) who had come to confront the anti-Chavez demonstration...

"Some experts believe that, by integrating open-source software into their infrastructure, companies are wandering into a legal minefield."

So it doesn't matter whether it really works: your company might end up in court for using it!

Any theory of social stratification should take the above case (which seems almost too black-and-white, but trust me, it was not made up) into account. These guys have the same cultural background, the same social class - but the one had what it takes to make it in this world and come out higher up the economic food chain than he started, the other apparently didn't, and ended up on the bottom.

That's the great thing about theories, there are so many to choose from. Bordieu's theory of habitus comes to mind. People are not born equal, but accrete a physical body, mental disciplines, and social connections based on their immediate neighbours. Basically, rich people are trained to be rich, poor to be poor, and so on. But these are not absolutes, they just tend to steer an individual along a certain lifepath and limit the trajectory of their ascent or descent within society. And so social stratification endures, reproduces, and resists change. Bound by culture, human society is an amazing, adaptive meta-organism that outlives the death of its individual cell bodies.

11. Is habitus totally atomistic? That is, does it reduce society to a = large collection of individuals, to be sorted or re-sorted at the whim = of the sociologist? According to Brubaker, Bordieu is not setting up a = theory to tackle a particular problem, but rather a heuristic to help = solve whatever problem concerns one at that particular moment. Further, how similar can two individual "habituses" (Habiti? Habitae? = Aardvarks?) be if they are dependent upon initial conditions - which = Bordieu states are objectively unknowable and only inferred from the = "symptoms" of lifestyle?

Sociologists even have their own versions of organizational emergence theories, or interactionism.

Bordieu came to mind because he died quite recently.

people don't want the same shit they've been given for decades

Actually, it's quite surprising how many people really do want the same shit they've been listening to for decades. Look at your average boy-band/Britney/Christina fan. Generally, they tend to be early adolescent girls, and judging by the marketing schemes these "artists" use, it's clear that it's the image they're selling, rather than the music. And really, it's the image that will sell. The fact that they're singing and dancing is just incidental. It's not the music, it's the whole phenomenon. It's the social aspect of it, where liking these bands versus hating them helps define those lines of social stratification we loved so much in junior high school. To quote Ferris Bueller, "It's stupid and childish, but then again, so is high school."

Most people to whom the MTV generation of music is being marketed don't want to go out on a limb, take a chance, and risk buying an album that they may be ostracized later for admitting they like. It's all about fitting in, being cool, and following one's fellow lemmings to the end. That's not to say that most people in our society are like that, but they do have a rather loud voice and a significant presence in the media.

If you look at it, really, music hasn't changed all that much, at least culturally. It's just become more of a business over the years.

The first boy band, at least as we think of the term, was the Beatles. Of course, among their many differences from today's counterparts are the ideas that they wrote their own songs, could actually sing well, play their own instruments (when was the last time you saw N'Sync pick up a guitar?), and write thought-provoking, insightful, clever tunes. Of course, there was a sizeable subset of Beatles fans that didn't care about all that. They just screamed and pulled their hair when they saw their heroes on stage, and then years later discovered new dimensions to the music that most 12 or 13-year-olds don't pick up or notice.

It isn't until the past 25 years or so that music has begun migrating toward outright commercialism, where the image is more important than the substance. There's an article on the Irish Times about some observations regarding boy bands and the like. It's a pretty good read. For my part, I'll stop rambling.

/* Steve */

A link to an artists representation of the process...


tee hee... tell me that "object" in the middle isnt a sperm, geez...
did disney make the pic or something?

Here's the link to the original article, as it's not on the front page any more. Not much to it really

Firm sues Microsoft, Sony over joystick vibration

Actually, it's pretty cheap to make "oil" - you just grow fields of sunflowers, hemp, etc. and process it.

Stupid Environmentalists actually tend to be against biomass projects, since they mean big fields of (probably genetically modified) monocultured plants, and they don't really mean that pollution goes down. HOWEVER, with petrochemicals from fields, one can do everything we currently do with fossil oil, but cheaper. The oil companies are fighting tooth and nail to stop people implementing such things:

Just a few months ago, the oil companies and the French government attacked a local project to make biodiesel. No prizes for guessing why...

Please note that that reference is from a respected European national newspaper (the Irish Times), not some enviro-kook. Many europeans are _really_ becoming pissed off with the oil cartel.

People don't seem to realise just how criminal the oil companies really are, from their terrible human rights abuses, to their microsoftish grip on the world's energy economy.

This surprises me, as a European in the US, so I looked it up on Google... Found this in the Irish Times (just what came up first.

"For example, the United States has the second highest per capita income, with $29,600, and it ranks 20th in terms of poverty. Luxembourg has the highest income per capita in the world, with $33,500, but ranks only seventh in terms of poverty.

So, not only does the US have the second highest per-capita income in the world, but it also has one of the worst wealth distributions... not that this is news. The high cost of living you mention is probably just a symptom of this - e.g. if your rent is high, that money is flowing up the pyramid to your landlord, who probably feels cheated by their bank, etc.

about the Euro. See this opinion column.

http://www.hostworks.com.au/networks.html

Remember back in 2000 when an accident took out a huge fraction of Australia's international bandwidth? Better make sure those "divergent path links" don't just end up in the same undersea cable....

Yesterday I read a news artical about a US doctor that tried to row from cape cod to Europe.

On the 30th of september he went missing (story) and yesterday they found this boat of the coast of Ireland (story). He had all the electronic equipment that the participants of this race have .. but that did not help him ....

You can see his progress on the Ocean Rowing Society web page until the 30rd of september. On their web site you can also find more information about his journey.

His younger brother has created a web site with even more information

So those who say that the electronic equipment makes it easier ... should think again

Yesterday I read a news artical about a US doctor that tried to row from cape cod to Europe.

On the 30th of september he went missing (story) and yesterday they found this boat of the coast of Ireland (story). He had all the electronic equipment that the participants of this race have .. but that did not help him ....

You can see his progress on the Ocean Rowing Society web page until the 30rd of september. On their web site you can also find more information about his journey.

His younger brother has created a web site with even more information

So those who say that the electronic equipment makes it easier ... should think again

The difference here is that when the govt wants to read an email and sees that the official backdoors aren't working this will be a reasonable indication that the contents of the email are illegal.

I fail to see how this holds - The European Parliament issued a report (see this Irish Times article for a discussion) in response to Echelon encouraging citizens to use Encryption. Remember, we are not all US citizens. Some of us in the "western world" still adhere to Article 12 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights which I reproduce here:

Article 12.

• 
  

  No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

  
  

So if I, as a law-abiding European citizen, use Encryption as a means of supporting my human rights according to the United Nations, and in direct response to a recommendation by my extended government (in the EU), the US government can assume I am a criminal?

It has been said here before, and I'll say it again. Many US citizens need to take their heads out of the sand and realise that there is a whole other (civilised!) world out there that doesn't "pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America."

The obvious counter-example is the Irish cryptographer Sarah Flannery.

She's undeniably smart and talented, but not the prodigy she was made out to be.

Here are a couple of articles from The Irish Times about the demand for the PS2 in Ireland:

Some buyers consoled as Sony game arrives

PlayStation2 demand wipes out national supply

It's interesting to note that for some reason Ireland has the most Playstation One consoles per capita than any country other than Japan. For this reason the Irish allocation was relatively generous, but still totally inadequate.

Here are a couple of articles from The Irish Times about the demand for the PS2 in Ireland:

Some buyers consoled as Sony game arrives

PlayStation2 demand wipes out national supply

It's interesting to note that for some reason Ireland has the most Playstation One consoles per capita than any country other than Japan. For this reason the Irish allocation was relatively generous, but still totally inadequate.

Here are a couple of articles from The Irish Times about the demand for the PS2 in Ireland:

Some buyers consoled as Sony game arrives

PlayStation2 demand wipes out national supply

It's interesting to note that for some reason Ireland has the most Playstation One consoles per capita than any country other than Japan. For this reason the Irish allocation was relatively generous, but still totally inadequate.

June 30, 2000: MP3 Summit Ian at MP3 Summit webcast
You can find Ian's hour long talk at the MP3 Summit about 1 hour 8 minutes into the Wednesday webcast.

June 16, 2000: Guardian Free market fight for music moguls
Interesting article in a British national newspaper.

May 27, 2000: LA Weekly Genie 1, Bottle 0
Very amusing article on Freenet and copyright. Highly recommended.

May 24, 2000: Channel 4 News Hackers stay one step ahead
A very cool news item talking about recent attempts by the British government to censor the Internet and how Freenet will make this very difficult. Includes text and streaming video of the item.

May 23, 2000: Libération L'anarchie est au bout du clavier
An interesting French article about Freenet, concentrating on the freedom of information aspects of the system rather than just copyright.

May 12, 2000: National Post Napster secured page in Internet history
Interesting description of why Freenet is not vulnerable in the same way that Napster is, although I must say that their "final thought" is slightly perplexing!

May 12, 2000: O'Reilly Network Gnutella and Freenet represent true technological innovation
A nice article concentrating, for a change, on the technical side of Freenet and Gnutella. Reasonably accurate, although it understates the efficiency improvement that Freenet should provide (describing it as of comparable efficiency to the WWW where it should be much more efficient).

May 12, 2000: Het Nieuwsblad Vrijheid van downloaden
A Belgian article about Freenet.

May 10, 2000: Houston Chronicle Software developer pledges to foil all intellectual property watchdogs
A version of the article below, doesn't require that you register.

May 10, 2000: New York Times The Concept of Copyright Fights for Internet Survival
One of the better articles; concentrates on the copyright issue. Requires free registration.

April 27, 2000: PCFormat Daily FreeNet
A brief article on Freenet.

April 27, 2000: Heise News-Ticker World Wide Anarchy: Netz ohne Kontrolle
A German article on Freenet.

April 26, 2000: CNET.com Free, anonymous information on the anarchists' Net
Entertaining article with some nice quotes.

April 17, 2000: The Irish Times Anarchy Rules Alternative Web
A rather amusing article on Freenet.

April 16, 2000: Freshmeat Client As Server: The New Model
An interesting article discussing distributed systems and how systems like Freenet are actually in a similar spirit to the original Internet.

April 13, 2000: El País Freenet propone una red sin censuras, alternativa a la WWW
A Spanish article about Freenet.

April 10, 2000: Slashdot.org FreeNet's Ian Clarke Answers Privacy Questions
A very informative interview conducted by the readership of SlashDot.org, probably the closest thing to a FAQ, aside from our faq.

March 25, 2000: ABC News Freedom on the Net?
A rehash of the New Scientist article below, but likely to reach a much larger audience.

March 25, 2000: New Scientist Out of control
A "big bad Internet"-style article, but it is reasonably well researched and seeks the opinions of those who might be considered Freenet's opposition.

March 23, 2000: Heise.de Ein Netzwerk, das Zensur unmöglich machen soll
A German article on Freenet.

March 14, 2000: OLinux Freenet, a polemic concept to deal with WWW
An English translation of a Brazilian interview with Ian Clarke. Focuses on the technical aspects of Freenet, and goes into a reasonable amount of detail as to how the system works.

March 10, 2000: Webwereld Anoniem Freenet ultieme schuilplaats voor piraten
A Dutch article on Freenet. My Dutch is a little rusty but it looks like it is primarily inspired by the Wired article below.

March 8, 2000: no spoon FreeNet : le réseau anonyme distribué qui supplantera le Web
An excellent French article on Freenet, draws an interesting parallel between Freenet and the writings of Neal Stephenson.

March 3, 2000: Need To Know sufficiently advanced technology: the gathering
A brief but excellent article again approaching Freenet from a pro-freedom standpoint.

February 24, 2000: PigDog Journal Get in on the Ground Floor of Freedom
A very positive little article describing Freenet and why they think it is interesting using some rather "colorful" language.

August 14, 1999: Brave Gnu World FreeNET
One of the first articles about Freenet back when it was 100% theory. Still an excellent introduction to the way Freenet works.

Florida judge approves class-action lawsuit against America Online [snip] It'll never win 'cuz you can turn them off of course, but it's pretty dang funny.

Ahh, but the attorney taking the case has also stated the following:

"That's a new thing," he said. "Our lawsuit period goes back to 1994. That wasn't the case for the five-year period we're covering."

So there's hope yet ......

Here's a link to a detailed Irish Times article

Pete C

Now the remains of the Celtic populations are on the fringes of Western Europe and firm DNA evidence (published in Nature recently) seems to establish that the Irish and the Basques are the true Celtic gene pool and may be the oldest historical european racial group.

See this article in The Irish Times

Historic and prehistoric population migrations can also be traced through gallstone susceptibility of all things!

signed a celt!

That's pretty much what Ireland just did. Though I view it in a more positive light than you would seem to see it. The government buys the link in bulk and gets it for a discount price and then sells it on to private enterprise passing the discount down to them, which a huge corporation would not have done

Everyone wins in this scenario methinks.

C.

Some suspiciouns German Thefts and closer to my heart is the story abount monitoring all Irish International Phonecalls, This one was pretty much suspected for some time, particularly by the IDA (Irish Development Agency in charge of convincing companies to invest in Ireland), they got terribly suspicious when a few large companies got slightly better bids to set up in Scotland, each time just a little better than the Irish bid. I believe that they ended up asking travelling diplomats to transfer their most valuable documents by diplomatic pouch rather than fax or email them. Though I can't find the story where I read this one, Sunday Tribune I believe but they don't have an online search engine

C.

Some suspiciouns German Thefts and closer to my heart is the story abount monitoring all Irish International Phonecalls, This one was pretty much suspected for some time, particularly by the IDA (Irish Development Agency in charge of convincing companies to invest in Ireland), they got terribly suspicious when a few large companies got slightly better bids to set up in Scotland, each time just a little better than the Irish bid. I believe that they ended up asking travelling diplomats to transfer their most valuable documents by diplomatic pouch rather than fax or email them. Though I can't find the story where I read this one, Sunday Tribune I believe but they don't have an online search engine

C.

I'm a very selective news junkie. For instance, I avidly follow Russian and Irish politics (I don't know why). The NYTimes(print) has excellent coverage of these, asa well as a wonderful weekly tech section, which is the other subject I avidly follow.
With the exception of newswires like InterFax, it seems to me that the only advantage the net has over print journalism is accessibility. My only othe online news source, besides /. and interfax, is The Irish Times, an online form of a print paper. But I find it much more comfortable to read from a printed page, and it seems that more care goes into newspapers than online new spots like Yahoo.

Also, to any NYTimes people reading this: Comics are a Good Thing. ;)
-Ravagin
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is NPR! And that means....it's time for a drum solo!"

Perhaps another example will illustrate the orginal point. Ireland, population 3.5 million, is the second largest producer of software in the world, second only to the US, population 268 million.

The quote you used from the BBC report refers to total productivity. The point of the report is that despite working fewer hours, total productivity in Europe is almost that of the US and the gap is closing. Look at the infographs. In other words, hourly productivity is higher in Europe and has been for some time. European biz is getting more bang for it's buck and European workers aren't wasting all their waking lives in cubicles either.

I think you have it backward when you say "Europeans are discovering that longer hours does not mean more production". I think Europeans have been aware of that for a long time. I think that penny is only just beginning to drop on this side of the pond, but not in a widespread fashion thanks to the sorry state of US trade unions and the economic interests who are happy to see it stay that way.

The GPS rollover didn't go so bad. We have a clock on the roof of our building using the GPS system as its time source; it was fine, and so were the other 40 or so like it around Europe.

Here in Ireland and around the U.K., there was one marine report of difficulties due to the rollover. Bad weather over that period, poor visibility and the failure of his GPS equipement all conspired to get him lost and he had to radio in. There were several other shipping problems over that weekend, but none due to the rollover.

Dave

--

C.

They don't give much more that one or two lines of information on the job. There is no company info whatsoever for fear that the agency is bypassed. I have just visited an Irish one jobfinder and it's mind-boggling. I'd say more than 90% of the entries are various Recruitment services.

This is frustrating.

Worthy of a much better RANT really.

Checking the Irish Times newspaper (on-line) you can see the jobs pages are published in paper form only. Why? Has someone monopolised this industry? How can it not be worth the papers while to publish their job-ads? However, that said, even in the newspaper ads there is pathetically little information.

How can you choose the right job from two lines? I can't. If you ring the agencies up .... you get loads of hassle, no information until you interview with them and certainly no company or job choice. PATHETIC!

Okay you can apply and do the interview to find out what the job really is BUT I really don't want to go to all that hassle just to find out what I would be applying for.

How can there not exist an option to filter out all those nasty recruitment agencies? And why are the jobs advertised with such a tiny amount of information? Do people not know what they want someone to do? Where they will work? Hours, benefits, what is involved...?

If software companies have such problems hiring people why is it such hassle to find a nice geek job? Is there no jobsearch site that could act as a central resource for both companies and geeks? I guess not :( It would surely be worth someone's while. Think of the advertising $$$s.

Need: good job info, reject obfusticating recruitment advertisments (or filter them out) become THE job portal everyone uses, rake in loads of money.

Get Yahoo interested .... a people moderated Yahoo style jobs area would be quite interesting. Hmmm, I wonder could the ODP manage this?