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On 2nd February just before 8am RTE Radio 1 in Ireland (the semi-state national broadcasters primary radio station) had an interview with a director of a computer training company here in Ireland. The piece was brought to the attention of the Irish Linux Users Group which subsequently picked apart the "computer experts" opinions. You can see a full transcript of the interview here, listen to the piece from rte themselves here or you can look through the threads on the mailing list to find an ogg transcoding of the interview.

The most controversial quote from the interview was:

the people who are behind this virus I would suspect are people who, who, em, are promoting what is called Open Sof... Open, eh, eh, .... Open System Software

we are done discussing this with Mr. Campbell, that we appreciate RTE's clarification and that we consider the matter closed.

"Electronic Voting (while at the same time, eliminating "exit polls" which might have shown a different picture) allowed the Irish Government to obtain large "YES" votes in heavily populated areas that typically vote the party line, though not usually in numbers large enough to outnumber the rural population"

Given that five times more money was spent by the Yes campaign than the No campaign, why bother with a conspiracy theory?

In any case, yours doesn't hold up to even the most rudimentary checking of facts. You're suggesting that the Yes vote was artificially inflated in urban constituencies, in order to make it outweigh the No vote in rural constituencies. If you took some time to examine the actual results, you'd see that this makes absolutely no sense:

• In the first Nice referendum, every constituency in the country returned a 'No' majority, apart from Dublin South and Dun Laoghaire.
• In the second referendum, every constituency in the country, including Dublin South and Dun Laoghaire, returned a 'Yes' majority.
• In the second referendum, electronic voting was used in 7 constituencies. In these seven constituencies, 67% voted Yes - this is not significantly higher than the national total of 63%.
• Not all of the 7 constituencies were 'heavily-populated' areas (by which I take it you mean 'densely-populated' - all constituencies have roughly the same population), and certainly not all heavily populated areas were included in the e-voting trial. The two constituencies mentioned above, which voted Yes the first time out, are densely-populated and were not included.
• The suggestion that densely-populated areas follow the 'party line' doesn't hold up. The 'party' in question, Fianna Fail, the senior party in the government, is consistently stronger in rural areas than urban areas. While there has been an urban-rural split in previous referenda on social issues (such as divorce or abortion), this is not the case with EU referenda.
• Exit polls were not eliminated. There was a proposal to prevent the holding of polls within seven days of an election (not sure if it was supposed to apply to referenda), but this did not affect exit polls. In any case, it was not introduced.

I'm not saying that fixing of the e-voting system couldn't or wouldn't happen, but your suggestion that this is what did happen in the 2002 referendum stretches credulity.

"Electronic Voting (while at the same time, eliminating "exit polls" which might have shown a different picture) allowed the Irish Government to obtain large "YES" votes in heavily populated areas that typically vote the party line, though not usually in numbers large enough to outnumber the rural population"

Given that five times more money was spent by the Yes campaign than the No campaign, why bother with a conspiracy theory?

In any case, yours doesn't hold up to even the most rudimentary checking of facts. You're suggesting that the Yes vote was artificially inflated in urban constituencies, in order to make it outweigh the No vote in rural constituencies. If you took some time to examine the actual results, you'd see that this makes absolutely no sense:

• In the first Nice referendum, every constituency in the country returned a 'No' majority, apart from Dublin South and Dun Laoghaire.
• In the second referendum, every constituency in the country, including Dublin South and Dun Laoghaire, returned a 'Yes' majority.
• In the second referendum, electronic voting was used in 7 constituencies. In these seven constituencies, 67% voted Yes - this is not significantly higher than the national total of 63%.
• Not all of the 7 constituencies were 'heavily-populated' areas (by which I take it you mean 'densely-populated' - all constituencies have roughly the same population), and certainly not all heavily populated areas were included in the e-voting trial. The two constituencies mentioned above, which voted Yes the first time out, are densely-populated and were not included.
• The suggestion that densely-populated areas follow the 'party line' doesn't hold up. The 'party' in question, Fianna Fail, the senior party in the government, is consistently stronger in rural areas than urban areas. While there has been an urban-rural split in previous referenda on social issues (such as divorce or abortion), this is not the case with EU referenda.
• Exit polls were not eliminated. There was a proposal to prevent the holding of polls within seven days of an election (not sure if it was supposed to apply to referenda), but this did not affect exit polls. In any case, it was not introduced.

I'm not saying that fixing of the e-voting system couldn't or wouldn't happen, but your suggestion that this is what did happen in the 2002 referendum stretches credulity.

Personally, I'd use Australian Broadcasting Company, though their site seems FUBAR'ed at present, or RTE (Irish state TV)
A while ago, I found a website, listing all the major news websites, by country, unfortunatly, no amount of googling refound it for me.

Ouch, you may not have noticed Widescreen TV's. Using the same diagonal measurement you can sell these at a higher price since you get a longer diagonal for the same area compared to the old 4:3 aspect ratio. Like Megapixels this is just a marketing trick which not everybody have been cool about...

Though, I must admit that the actual number of pixels isn't really as deceptive. You could argue that a small increase in x and y resolution is advertised as 4x the change, but at least it encourages improvement.

There's an article just appeared in the last while from RTE here.

This may not be quite as vaporware as some might think. Certainly it seems to be true that Adann Osmani did win the prize with a browser that speeds up internet usage by 400%. See this link: http://www.rte.ie/news/2003/0110/youngscientist.ht ml for the news report and the 9.00 video link below the article to see the presentation.

Don't quite know about the claims though. Some of the reporters may have got quite confused. It's possible that he has just modified an open source browser and added some intelligent precaching. Which might have taken him 2 years and he might just have told them how many lines of code there were in the whole app and not how many of them he wrote :-) Still seems like there's something fishy about it, but if it's a hoax, it's an elaborate one and the judges were fooled.

The competition is real, the prize (3000) is real, the winner is real, but I have my doubts about the project. Well, to put it differently, I think it's bullshit. Anyway, here's the news article about this. RTE is the Irish state broadcaster, BTW: http://www.rte.ie/news/2003/0110/9news/9news11a.ra m

Reviews: 1,2,3,4 That last one lets you submit your own review. Pretty cool.

I don't know if it is the beard or what, but I should not be picked for the random searches over 80% of the times I board a plane.

I know exactly what you mean. I have a neatly-trimmed goatee beard, and hair down to my shoulders, clean and usually tied back in a pony tail, and I dress business casual. But the guidelines airport security get don't say unkempt bushy beard, mad staring eyes and wild unwashed hair, dressed in robes like the typical terrorist, they just say "beard and long hair". But the authorities care more about the illusion of security and are so desperate to avoid accusations in the liberal press of "racial profiling" that they ignore common sense.

The media situation here is a bit confusing. The Irish constitution preaches freedom of religion, yet Catholicism pervades the media, currently in the form of reports of priests playing with little boys. The RTÉ (state TV) has a daily Catholic "Angelus" (some kind of sunset prayer), yet Richard Dawkins was on a few weeks ago, dumping on organized religion. When a jounalist is killed here, for getting too close to outing a drug dealer, it gets made into a Hollywood movie!

Taken from an article here

The result was that five licences were sold for a staggering total of £22.5 billion stg. The clear winner in the contest was the UK Exchequer, which bagged the money. Germany soon followed, raising $42.6bn, but by then doubts about the pricing had begun to emerge.

All those companies that paid those outrageous amounts for the 3G licences have got to be regretting it now. Especially since a good number of them are near bankruptcy. I never understood how prices like that could have happened. They just went nuts. And it was all done in auction style for the benefit of consumers.. Unfortunately, I think it will end up having the opposite effect. (At least in terms of the 3G stuff)..

If we all end up with cheaper, better service that has nothing to do with 3G, that would sure be ironic....

I had this same argument with a friend who used to be the editor for our national broadcaster's online news service. He was very surprised that I considered it an issue, and thought that it was in fact an advantage of the web over traditional media, that you could seamlessly update and modify stories. He wasn't swayed by the 1984 comparison, or the point that he was deleting a valuable historical reference. But then he was working for an organisation that recorded over the Wanderly Wagon archive tapes rather than buy new ones.

It's funny the way we're ending up with a de facto, distributed Big Brother. Life eh.

• Every weekday, at 6PM, they have "The Angelus". I have never seen an official explanation of what this is, but it appears to be a Catholicism-inspired "minute of silence", featuring images of crosses and the "virgin mary", interspersed with shots of people oberdiantly stopping whatever they're doing, even crossing the street.
• This is followed by the News, after which they show commercials for "psychic" hotlines.
• Sometimes, not just on Sundays, they will have programs about some old catholic fart carrying some saint's jawbone around Ireland, or swanning off to Lourdes on a pilgrimage. Last night I saw about 10 seconds of some missionary dragging women out of Bangkok brothels and preaching at them, after which (I presume) they carried on as before - this guy is a hero worthy of endorsement by a state broadcaster!

You want my opinion? Three words: Education, Education, Education! The Irish Constitution, like the US Constitution, mandates freedom of religion, and I take that to mean that people are free to do without religion. So, why are schoolchildren taught to believe in unprovable assertions? From theistic religion to aliens and ESP is but a short step, if you do not have a grounding in scientific principles.

I would have like to have had the chance to participate in this discussion, but I was asleep :(

If there is anyone still reading, let me ask you this. Do you watch TV? If so, is there anything that you like to watch religiously? Enterprise? Coronation Street? Friends back before it Jumped the Shark? And did you ever go out and forget to tape it, then ring your mom or your mate, ask them to tape it? Well unless they can break into your house, say goodbye to that.

Because DRM will also apply to TV. Programs will be copy protected. So you will be able to tape a first-run episode of The Sopranos, but only if you don't watch it at the same time, and you will only be able to watch it once. Or that old Friends episode, that's been on loads of times, so you will be able to tape it and watch it however many times you want, but don't expect to be able to lend it to your girlfriend's dad so he can watch it too.

This is not stuff that will affect geeks only. We need to be telling people about this, people outside of the napsterriffic MP3 downloaders.

Here's an idea. Find out your TD/MP/Congressman/Tribal leader's favourite programme. I'm sure that this sort of person regularly has to get someone to tape the News to see if theyre on it, or Bull Island to see if they're on that. Then tell them that they will not be able to do that within 3 years.

Then see how long this shit lasts...

It is nice to know that someone besides a politician can speak out of both sides of their mouth.

Alas, it seems to be a trick that certain Canadian politicians have yet to master.

(Sorry, Jean.)