Will Knott

There is a little lane way with (presumably) closed pubs in Cork City which toasts your health.

Taken during the Pre Irish Blog Awards 2009 photowalk in The English Market in Cork.

On that note, Joe Scanlon is arranging a blogger Tweet-up meet up (or as he put it, a few pints) on Friday 13th at 8pm in the Thirsty Scholar.

The bar is even setting up wi-fi for us (ain’t that sweet). I’m sure to be late, but its an excuse to meet friends (as if an excuse is needed).

take care,
Will Knott

Free speech = Net neutrality?

As a principle many people would say that the freedom to disseminate information is a requirement of a democracy. After all an informed populace can make better decisions.

Except of course information about things we don’t want to know about. Pro-Anorexia and Pro-Bulimia forums are a controversial example. Its freedom of speech, its an informed choice, and women (mostly, men tend to have image issues with not being muscular enough) on these sites that promote being (too?) thin get positive reinforcement to get thinner. After all, this information isn’t a criminal action.

What has this got to do with Blackout Ireland?

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Well imagine if various food and health industry bodies got a legal settlement with Eircom to enforce a “three strikes and your out” policy against readers of these forums, without a chance to appeal? (Let’s ignore the fact that much of our lives are now done through the internet and that the German courts thought that it was to harsh a punishment; a death sentence to a virtual world). Would there be an outcry? “We’ve doing this to help you”. Then the lobby groups arrange to get Eircom to block certain pro-ana (after all Eircom have said that they wouldn’t fight the court orders). Then go after other Irish ISPs demanding similar action.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

So of course, these sites go underground; accessible by proxy, or new different ones spring up in its place. So the information is out there. Illegal. Hidden. Cherished by a knowing few. Shared with a wider knowing few.

Would there be mistakes and false positives? Of course. Every “not caught in the act” action has the potential for mistaken identity. And with wireless networks, connecting via your neighbour (or war driving to an open location) is going to ensure the wrong people are caught. Or a printer is blamed for having image issues.

But why stop at image issues! There is too much violence on the streets, lets ban all forms of internet violence. No more over the internet first person shooters.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Cyberbullying is too much. Lets block social network sites where such a situation can take place!

Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.

We can’t have our children accessing information and images about gay life. Block these sites!

Ban.

Block.

Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

Its the start of a slope.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

The initial logical, maybe apparently sensible first step leads to a worse situation.

So, back to the point of all of this. IRMA wants Eircom to block certain file sharing sites, starting with the Pirate’s Bay.

Interestingly the international version of IRMA is trying to get the Pirate’s bay shut down. And based on the reports of the trial in Sweden, the prosecution are not doing a good job in persuading the courts that the Pirate’s Bay are any different than Google (in fact, it seems that much of the same information can be found using Google). File sharing isn’t a criminal offence. Depending on the outcome of the trial, using Pirate’s Bay may not even be viewed as a civil offence.

So block Google? It’s an option, but too many companies use their cloud computing services for the Irish economy to survive such a block.

So back to net neutrality. Actually it isn’t exactly entirely related to speech. Its closer to a deep packet inspection; what type of packet is this. Is it a web (or encrypted html) packet? A packet form an email? Or a bit torrent packet?

Which is how some software updates itself, for example Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.

Which is how millions (if not billions) around the globe saw the inauguration of President Obama on CNN’s software.

For something purely illegal, those are very odd companies to be using it. Content companies too.

So join in the week long protest against this. Shout, not whisper about the chilling effects on internet free speech.

Join with the other voices around Ireland speak out on this issue.

Darken your avatar.

Write to your local TD about it.

Write to Minister Ryan about it.

While you still can, speak out.

Will Knott

Related articles by Zemanta

• Irish Internet firm to shut off illegal music users (canada.com)
• I have Joined Blackout Ireland #blackoutirl (stephenspillane.blogspot.com)
• Pirate Bay rejects law-breaking claims (theregister.co.uk)
• Pirate Bay awaits court verdict (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Luck ran out: Irish ISP agrees to music industry demands to selectively block access to Web sites (crunchgear.com)
• Record industry talks Irish ISP into blocking P2P sites (arstechnica.com)
• Music industry’s Irish ISP shakedown letter (theregister.co.uk)
• Eircom to block Pirate Bay (theregister.co.uk)
• Maybe It’s Time To Cross Ireland Off “Places I’d Like To Live” [Bad Idea Jeans] (idolator.com)
• Irish Internet Users Blocked From The Pirate Bay (beatcrave.com)
• IRMA Threatens Irish ISPs (blacknight.com)
• Irish ISP agrees to disconnect repeat P2P users (arstechnica.com)
• Irish ISP will disconnect Internet users after three unsubstantiated copyright claims (boingboing.net)
• Irish ISP Eircom in ‘three strike’ filesharer crackdown (theregister.co.uk)
• About Defending Blasphemy (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)

I took two minutes. Have you?

To: complaints@rte.ie, Joe@RTE.ie
From: Will Knott

Dear Sir or Madam,

Recently things have changed in RTÉ, in particular, afternoons on RTÉ 2FM.
I used to listen to the “wittertainment” (wit combined with entertainment) of interesting conversation about music, musicians, movies and anything interesting from the news on your afternoon shows.

Since the new year, Nikki Hayes and Rick O’Shea seem to have been gagged. Gone are the insightful riffs on air and conversations with their audiences to be replaced with “that was a song off the play list, here is another song off the playlist“. If I want pure music I have an extensive collection of CDs on my shelves and online music streaming services at my fingertips. (The less said about mp3 files at this moment, the better).

In one stroke (probably of a pen) you have removed the added value of the presenters. At times I wonder if the show has been prerecorded. These are presenters who would appear on Radio One’s playback on a regular basis. If the editors in RTE thought they were worthy of a special mention, why shut them up?

Was Jerry Ryan complaining about the upstarts of talk in the afternoon? Did Joe Duffy fret about being upstaged by rivals on the “youth” channel? Did other presenters resent their repeated appearances in the highlighted clip show? Did the fact the aiding the public in ways over multiple channels of communication hinder a target number of plays somewhere (the kind of thing usually reserved for a payola scheme, I assume you can confirm that this is not the case). Is this a preparation routine to move them off to other projects?

So, could you answer why the afternoons have been turned in to a “all music, no talk (except for the adverts)” festival, exactly like your rivals and so eliminating the sole distinguishing feature between most of the commercial stations and your own 2FM?

Instead of “more music”, any chance of “more entertainment”?
take care,
Will Knott

Related articles by Zemanta

• Taking Two Minutes…

• Take two minutes for Rick and Nikki!
• Today is “Complain to 2FM about Rick” Day

The idea struck when Carl availed of a cheap flight to Cork and took his Sat Nav GPS device with him. He also took a camera so there will be more photobloging soon. Given that I was going to meet him a few days later at TechLudd he lent me the device for the trip.

Image by Will Knott via Pix.ie

This Cork-Dublin trip was the first time I had actually used a GPS Satellite Navigation system the way it was intended and I’m wondering if I might suggest a few things (and this might warrant giving away a business model, but I think only Apple could use it. If so, I want one). If this already exists… tell me about it please.

Driving along with both a Sat Nav and an MP3 player (full of podcasts) talking at me it occurred to me that having an integrated unit which would pause the audio to give directions would be wonderful. I think it could work in much the same way that the iPhone or some Nokia devices pause playback when a telephone call comes through the device; integrating a hands free phone would be useful for pedestrian use around a city anyway.

In fact it might make sense to integrate a hands free phone in to the device (see the Nokia and Apple angle folks?). Given the cost of these things, and how tempting they are to thieves, it makes sense to have a reason to put it in your pocket.

However the nasty part of owning a Sat Nav is not the annoying voice (it can be fixed) but, as Adam explains, the cost of the maps. So how about incremental updates via “the cloud” and wireless access?

Imagine the scenario. You want to drive from Cork (say for the Learning Festival this fortnight) to the Ice Cream Ireland book launch at the end of April. Later to the 3D Camp event in Limerick in June. Then to the Open Coffee Club BBQ in Terryglass, Co. Tipperary in either June or July. And maybe even a quick trip to London in July, or San Francisco in April. If you want up-to-date Sat Nav maps you would have to check for an update, and buy a map for the entire country (if its available). But what about an incremental update.

In April you plan your trip from its starting point (Cork) to your destination (Killarney) and the Sat Nav calculated both the route, and what map data is available. It could then use that calculated route to check if there has been an update in that area (say 20 miles within the calculated route) by checking in to the “iTunsMaps” or “KlubNocia” online store and see if there is an incremental map update (or 2) and offer to sell you the maps updates on the calculated route for 1.99 (be it Dollars or Euro).

You are not getting the whole map, but a single route. Similar to buying a single track and not the album. And you are choosing to update the route based on the age of the stored route (and the update naturally).

In addition, a pedestrian probably wouldn’t need the whole country map while he or she is in one city (the quick trip to San Francisco). So downloading a city Sat Nav map (with points of interest, an event guide for that week and free wi-fi hotspots) could cost the same as a single album would.

Straining the point, the current map sales model is akin to being forced to buy a 50 year anthology every time you want to hear a single track.

Given the advances in mapping database systems (yes geographic databases of geography do exist, its Sat Nav data) such modular updating could be useful. You could even automate it for a road trip (and hope the connection lasts to let you know that the old road is now a dead-end with a wall across it)

So guys. Think it could work and is a viable model for a business?

take care,
Will

Omani mentioned that he turns off his wireless router at night.
I do the same thing (although if I do go down the Fon route I’ll need to rethink this).

Why?

1) I unplug everything when I go to bed. Stops fires (in theory) and is one less thing to worry about

2) Security, turning the internet back in to a sneaker-net. I don’t really worry about someone piggy backing my connection (contention is contention).

3) I have something off-line to do. The web is a bloody siren call. Since the router is in the hall and the comouter isn’t (the call no place to do any business unless it’s shooing a candidate from the doorstep).

4) I’m not using it. Why leave it on? Energy saving and all of that…

Do you?

tags : router, wireless, safety, security, network, Fon