It does feel weird to watch people do the voices without seeing the characters. I think the guy who does Homer will be on the Week in Politics on the BBC next Thursday night.
Archive for June, 2006
Simpsons on Conan
Friday, June 30th, 2006Intervention for broadband
Friday, June 30th, 2006On a tangent to Frank’s discussion on the costs of corruption, I asked myself a slightly related question.
While I am of the opinion that government should be kept to a minimum, and that the market should be largely left to it’s own devices, I am dismayed by the lack of broadband in this country. I would like to put existing arguments concerning the legacy of state monopolies and local loop unbundling aside for a moment and ask a straight forward question.
Should the government have mandated several years ago, that all new housing estates be piped for fibre to the kerb or even fibre to the home technology? I ask that given that the housing boom has led to something like half a million houses being built in quite a short space of time.
Now I can imagine that a person in favour of free markets would say – if the market does not demand this technology, then developers will not provide it. And if people do demand it, they will either ask for it, or specifically choose a development that does incorporate it.
But is there not a bigger picture? Is there not an argument that says economies that have implemented such policies (Korean and Scandanavian models come to mind) have benefitted from the foresight, and that such government interference has actually led to the market benefitting from something that, if left to it’s own devices, may not have happened?
I know it sounds like I’m saying the governments knew best, but it puzzles me that given such massive house building we are still in the same situation we were a decade ago – copper to homes where DSL may not reach.
It may have been sensible for developers to approach ISP’s or TV stations and offer a deal to cable homes with extremely fast connections, both to save money digging roads up again later, and give companies instant access to customer’s homes without a proxy like eircom – or even to enable a huge amount of homes to have technology that may not be available to them over copper.
Did Korean people demand super fast broadband and then benefit from it, or did the government see the benefits in advance and force it on a market that did not see the potential positive future effects on the economy?
Incidentally Cringely’s piece this week covers a similar subject.
Comments welcome!
Hip-hop producer faces Dubai drug charges
Wednesday, June 28th, 2006One thing you definately don’t do is try to bring cocaine into Dubai. I guess given its increasing perception as a ‘Western’ city, many may be fooled into thinking its laws may be equally liberal for simple possession of a class-A drug. But no, up to 15 years for this guy.
Jon Stewart on the Miami Seven
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006Classic Stewart.
Street Fighter Online
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006It’s back, and it’s free. Brings back memories. (Shockwave required)
Fired
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006The Comcast guy has been sacked. Poor guy.
Scientology orientation video
Monday, June 26th, 2006Looks like someone smuggled a video camera into a Scientology induction screening, fascinating stuff. These guys are nuts.
Best quotes:
You are at the threshold of your next trillion years. You will live it, in shrivelling agonised darkness or you will live it triumphantly in the light – the choice is yours, not ours. If you this minute say I will, for better or for worse, go on in scientology, you will open the door to your own future. If you say otherwise you slam tomorrow shut in your own face. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it really is.
If you leave this room after seeing this film, and walk out and never mention scientology again, you are perfectly free to do so. It would be stupid, but you can do it. You can also dive off a bridge or blow your brains out. That is your choice.
Haha. I can see this becoming a ‘cult’ classic!
This story outlines how some of the stuff mentioned in the video actually works…
Comment spam issues
Saturday, June 24th, 2006In the last few weeks I have noticed an increase in the amount of comment spam coming my way. Akismet catches most of them, now standing at over 37,000 comment spam caught. It increase by between 500 and 1000 a day.
Today I came across this. It appears to be a log for spammers, of whether their comment spam were successful or not. If you change the 1 in ‘log1′ in the address bar to 2 you see more pages of it.
More interestingly, if you go to here, it appears to be a form for actually sending spam. If you try to access the actual domain you get ‘directory listing denied’. You can send 1000s of comment spam per second…using various text formulas.
Evil spammers!
Orlowski on photo communities
Saturday, June 24th, 2006Andrew Orlowski over at El Reg penned an article his week where he claimed Flickr was getting far more publicity than it’s due. He cites a Hitwise survery that suggest Photobucket is the biggest of photo sharing sites, while Flickr lies in 6th place. He suggests that Flickr, being a Web 2.0 darling, receives far more publicity than it’s bigger competitor.
Web 2.0 arguments seem weird in this instance, do even half the people using Flickr know what web 2.0 is, nevermind that Flickr uses it’s technologies? And do Photobucket users realise their site doesn’t have snazzy AJAX, but still works anyway …?
Survey aside, I had a quick look to see make other comparisons.
Google trends puts Photobucket ahead, but not by a huge margin. While Alexa gives Flickr a traffic rank of 50, with Photobucket getting 76.
The survery itself appears skewed. There are other arguments in the comments after the survey suggesting that Photobucket isn’t really the same as Flickr, one being a place to store and display photos for Myspace users, and the other being a photo community in it’s own right.
Ron Suskind: The One Percent Doctrine
Wednesday, June 21st, 2006Interesting interview over on C & L where Ron Suskind alleges that the US deliberately bombed al-Jazeera in Kabul in order to teach them a lesson. He also gives an insight into the Cheney’s thinking in the months after 9/11.
Ann Coulter on Newsnight
Wednesday, June 21st, 2006Paxo wasn’t as good as I thought he would be against the American firebrand.
You can watch it here (latest programme), and fast forward to 13.25.
I’ve been added! Oh! Down with the Bourgeoisie!
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006Lo and behold, Dick O’Brien, myself and Tom Cosgrave, all old stalwarts of the blogging game have been added as contacts to Labour’s flickr page.
I promise, I didn’t ask! :-)
Henry Kelly weighs in
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006It looks like it’s taken the former presenter of the terrible ‘Going for Gold’ to actually say what everybody else in the country has been thinking. Choice quotes:
“Mr Haughey was accorded a state funeral. A state funeral. This is the honour you accord to heads of state, who have been truly loved, or men or women who have led you through war, or by their dignity have exemplified all that is best in their nation,” he told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper.
“Charles Haughey exemplified all that was, thanks to him, worst in the Irish nation: trickery; smoothness; conceit; cronyism and downright abuse of power.”
“His rules were his own. His vanity breathtaking, his dismissal of enemies, either real or imagined, vicious.”
“To have accorded this man a state funeral is nothing short of a disgrace and one that makes me feel ashamed,” he wrote.
Haughey’s legacy would one day “hopefully” evaporate but the myths about him were spectacular.
“This is what makes the honour of a state funeral so repellent. From here on, such an honour is permanently devalued,” Kelly wrote.
Questions and Answers
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006It was incendiary stuff last night. Watch it here.
Oh and on the Week in Politics on Sunday, Vincent Browne made an ass of himself, in my humble opinion.
Even better was Michael Martin’s weird response to Sean O’Rourke’s question:
As someone who was at both events, in terms of the public response, how did Charlie Haughey’s funeral in North Dublin compare with that of Jack Lynch in Cork?
Prepare yourself for the waffle answer of the week:
MM: Well there’s obviously a different, different type of funeral involved in terms of the public reaction and so forth, it was a very impressive funeral I thought in terms of the content of the Mass itself and the liturgy, onto the music.
SOR: What about the public turnout?
MM: Well it would have been greater in the Cork context but you are talking about two different contexts … in terms of numbers and volume on the streets I would imagine…
SOR: Were you and your colleagues in cabinet somewhat taken aback by the numbers?
MM: No, not particularly. I mean it was a different type of funeral. What struck me about the one last … about Charlie Haughey’s funeral was the different types of people from different parts of the country. So for example I came across 4 people from Dingle, fishermen who actually on the day, or the evening before sorry, drove up from Dingle to be at the particular funeral. So he had a range of people making their way from all over the country to get there. The Jack Lynch, Jack Lynch was a huge popular hero across the country but particularly in Cork, because of course being the first Cork Taoiseach and outstanding politician and sportsman and so on like that.
It’s the context you see.
1 million people in Dublin, 1,200 people turn out for Haughey’s funeral.
Labour on Flickr
Monday, June 19th, 2006Ah! Socialists have invaded Flickr.
Who will be on their contacts list I wonder…