January 2003 – Gavinsblog.com

Springer for the Senate

The notorious talkshow host, and former mayor of Cincinatti, Jerry Springer is considering running for the Senate.

This is a nice piece by Mark Lawson – I like:

The state of American culture might suggest a horrible logic in President Springer, presiding over a country run by live-on-television plebiscites, with policy dilemmas snappily packaged: I’ve Got Chemical Weapons And Would Use Them!, I’m Dying And Can’t Get Medicare! Thankfully, that isn’t possible because of the presenter’s English birth: the US commander-in-chief must be a natural-born citizen.Britain may be powerless to stop some American follies, but we’ve inadvertently spared them that one.

Joyriding Irish politicians

My favourite writer on Sundays is Mr Gene Kerrgian. In this article he takes on the ‘cream’ of Irish society, our politicians.

You don’t have to be from Ireland to relate to this story, minister (secretary of state- lower level) Noel Treacy was in a rush to make a parliamentary speech, and told the driver he had to be there for 3.30, so the driver put the boot down; and was subsquently caught by the police – speeding.

This happens alot among Irish polticians, they tell us all to slow down as so many are killed on the roads in this country, but when it comes to their ‘important’ business, or even when its not business, they decide to break the speed limit.

Gene deals with the issue perfectly, great writing.

Neutrality in a time bubble

The ever learned Tom McGurk has an article today on the controversial question of Irish neutrality. Besides commenting on Rugby matters on Irish television, McGurk is a skillful writer – and I almost always agree with his views.

Here again he writes with clarity on the issue, my views with differ from his slightly though too. I like (or rather don’t like) the reply from a reader in New York who writes

YOU DONT STAND BACK AND LET OTHER NATIONS DO THE HARD WORK AND SIT BACK AND DECLARE ‘OH WE’RE NOT INVOLVED WE’RE IRISH, AND EVERYONE LOVES US – WE’RE NEUTRAL’You’re a joke as country believe me – nice scenery, good beer, great people but you think your’e some kind of great power – you ain’t, you are a small insignificant island off Europe – a techno banana republic.Ireland today – Czech republic/poland tomorrow – cheap labour – but you’re getting expensive.Think about it. Sorry for the reality trip but that’s the way it is.”

This is the typical argument, if only all countries were neutral and then we would not have replies as unreasonable, illogical and outright silly as this.

The British Empire was not evil: Neill Ferguson

To help publicise his new book, and promote the tv series, Niall Ferguson has an article in todays SBPost. In it he argues that many of the effects British rule had on Ireland were positive. I would be inclined to agree. Im sorry I missed all parts of his series since it started on Channel 4, but I will keep an eye out for it. It is something of an admission to come from a British author that

The Irish were on the receiving end of a policy of expropriation and `ethnic cleansing’ every bit as ruthless as that which would be attempted in North America.

In modern usage, ethnic cleansing is exactly what happened to the indigenous Irish people from about the 16th century on. Where I think Irish people nowadays trip up is in using the term ‘Irish’. To me its a very loose word, Ireland was invaded many times over the centuries, and was colonised by a neighbouring power.

I think many Irish people assume that it was ‘us’ against ‘them’ for the entire time since the Norman invasion. In fact, the Normans interbred with the native Celtic peoples, and Ireland became a part of the Norman world – and the same happened up until independence. Much of the history thought in Irish schools portrays Britain as the evil colonial power – Ferguson’s insight is a refreshing answer to many of these over-nationalist sentiments.

Romanians jailed in 'Minority Report' style

Top billing today is the story that 4 Romanian men were found guilty for commiting a crime they have yet to commit. Yes, in Ireland we are way ahead of the times, who needs Minority Report when you have the real thing here in Ireland. Because 4 Romanian guys were acting suspiciously in a Wicklow shop, they were arrested, charged and then jailed because it could be “reasonably inferred” that they would commit a crime.

This beggars belief, there has been practically no response to this in the Irish media, does this not set a dangerous precedent? Does this not demonstrate how racist a country Ireland is?

Let us be clear, 4 Romanians each got 6 months in jail. The judge admitted they stole nothing, but jailed them because they might have stolen something? I mean this means that I could be arrested and jailed for walking into a shop and acting ‘suspiciously’ – “we are arresting you Gavin because we believe you may commit a crime”. Straight out of science fiction.

The story is in Fridays Irish Times, subscription only, but may be on the news section of RTE too.

DMCA vs Garage Door

In the latest bit of DMCA lunacy, copyright guru David Nimmer turned me onto a case that his firm is defending, where a garage door opener company (The Chamberlain Group) has leveled a DMCA claim (among other claims) against the maker of universal garage door remotes (Skylink). Yet another case where the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA are being used to impede legitimate competition, similar to the Lexmark case. Not, I think, what Congress had in mind when enacting the DMCA.

Rumsfeld tightens arse

The .mil domain is to be locked down so as to prevent terrorists gaining acces to sensitive information, Donald Rumsfeld has said. I hope they tighten it up good because there is an awful lot of information available at defenselink.mil.

Poisoning my Kazaa

A guy who once worked for the RIAA, has revealed their methods for monitoring peer to peer networks like the now defunct Napster, and new Gnutella, Morpheus and Kazaa programs. He admits that he suggested poisoning the networks with bogus files so as to disrupt and frustrate file sharing on the Internet. Interesting reading.

Even fomatting that drive won't help

Two MIT students have found that hard drives can reveal lots of information about their previous owners. In a study they found that most hard drives still have information on them even after deletion or formatting. So next time you sell a hard drive to somebody make sure you write over all that porn.

Weird story about a stone slab

Apparently a 120 million year old stone with writing on has been discovered in the Ural mountains. This would turn all ideas about humans evolution on their head and as you might imagine I remain extremely sceptical, if not cynical about this story.