Eoin O’Dell writes about the legal risks of sharing wi-fi and about my presentation about FON at Barcamp. I was amazed to hear that a couple of people have been prosecuted for wi-fi sharing in the UK. This might not seem to make much sense, but it makes FON an even better idea.
Bonus link: my presentation from barcamp
Well, I said it would be difficult to do, and now the government has admitted it really isn’t practical.
Michael Dell is using Ubuntu on his desktop computer according to an email from him to Martin Varsavsky. Michael obviously didn’t tell Martin this to indulge in idle banter, and I’m sure he wasn’t too surprised to see it on Martin’s blog.
Dell is sending out a clear signal to Microsoft. We don’t need you anymore. The desktop operating system and the standard productivity applications are becoming a commodity. Give us a better deal.
Marko Ahtisaari on why I use Jaiku. Marko’s point about the living phone book seems to me to be an important part of what ordinary people want from online social networking tools.
Fast Forward Ireland is a film festival with a difference, and it’s on in Dublin this weekend. The participants group together into teams, and they go and make a film in 24 hours. They have as many teams as they can handle, but maybe they could put the odd person into a short-handed team?
I hope some of the films can go into Votetube.
Tom met Steve Jobs and talked about Freedom vs Simplicity. This is something Umberto Eco wrote on the topic quite a while ago.
The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the “ratio studiorum” of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach – if not the Kingdom of Heaven – the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.
DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. Continue reading
Check out The Century Of The Self – Part 1. It covers Edward Bernays and how he basically founded the modern practice of public relations and laid the foundations of the consumerist economy we know and love today, based on some of the ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud. (Was recommended to me by a person connected with a government party.)
The government is about to spend an awful lot of money deploying a Tetra system for Irish emergency services. Why are they doing this when they could use the existing 2G and 3G mobile phone networks? This is a question being asked in Sweden where they started implementing Tetra 10 years ago (and it still doesn’t really work).
Is Tetra/Rakel good enough? | stupid.domain.name
This is the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome. Let’s be honest. Nobody cares about the Treaty of Rome. But the Treaty of Rome is the foundation of the peaceful, growing Europe we know today. Everyone who cares about Europe should read at least a few sections of it. It’s actually pretty readable. If you are interested in commercial law, Title VI is worth reading.
