Aehso’s Output

Metro (more here) is a service to watch, and maybe even try if you’re brave. It’s a great entry to the market, even if it only forces the DSL providers to improve their basic packages to match.

However, my unsucessful experiences trying Irish Broadband’s services from home (in Dublin 4) lead me to guess that this wireless service will not work for everyone. The big questions about line of sight requirements, factors that may impact actual up/down bandwidth and lag are not addressed in their FAQ. Glaring omissions like this usually make me suspicious.

Digiweb, you’ll save yourselves and prospective customers a lot of wasted time and money if you put more information about your service onto your website.

Tim Bray’s ongoing blog links to an audio recording of a recent open format meeting of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council where comments and questions from the public (including Microsoft, IBM, Novell and Sun) were entertained. This is seriously geeky, (nearly 2 hours long!) but interesting if you follow the ongoing open formats war and want to hear first hand the double talk and misdirection employed by the large software vendors when attempting to instill fear, uncertaintly and doubt in the minds of the board members. For example:

MSFT: This appears to be an assault on the intellectual property
of the private sector.

Kriss: Sovereignty trumps intellectual property. Companies
certainly have the right to own their own intellectual property.
We’re all for IP in implementations, just not in interchange
formats.

Respect to Eric Kriss and Peter Quinn for seeing through it all. Somehow, I cannot believe anyone involved in the decision making process in the Irish national government would be even remotely as clued in. Certainly to date, there is no evidence that the Irish government would attempt such a brave move (and alienate some of of their largest Corporation Tax ‘customers’).

Perfect for a Friday afternoon, Hollywood films summarized in 30 seconds using just animated bunnies.

As I commented a few months ago, wearing a heavy jacket (even if it is the coldest July day for 25 years), carring a bag with electronics, wearing glasses, missing eye contact and speaking with a foreign accent can easily get you arrested if you try to ride the Tube. I was half joking but it has since happened to David Mery.

I suppose it’s progress from shooting him in the head 5 times. It is shocking that they would misinterpret doodles in red ink as a map. It is also impossible to understand why they have not yet returned his posessions despite it all being a clear misunderstanding. Is this the authorities way of subtly “getting back at” innocent people who they arrest in error?

I’m not sure this entry even belongs under my politics category. A new “police state” category is called for.

John A. “Junior” Gotti has as been aquitted of securities fraud (but the jury was hung on other charges so he will probably will face a retrial. There is lots more background on the trial in this Washington Post piece including this gem, about one of the defectors who has turned states evidence:

“I didn’t want my wife taking favors from other men,” DiDonato said. “So I went to speak to him.” Well, that conversation turned heated. “He was screaming and yelling at me. I said some words back to him and . . . I shot him.”

Shot him right in the head, actually, at a distance of two inches. Miraculously, the guy lived and DiDonato ended up serving time for attempted murder.

What a GOON!

That’s more though - it’s the drama of the trial that continues the run right down the Copolla/Scorsese/Chase alley. The Washington Post covers the verdict decision yesterday:

The aunt of Louis Mariani, one of Gotti’s two co-defendants, screamed “Nooooooooo!” as she heard the forewoman declare her nephew guilty of securities fraud. Antoinette Laboccetta then slipped off her seat and onto the floor, her eyes rolling, a copy of a pamphlet called “The Promises of Our Lord” clutched to her chest….

All the while, the judge tried to go through the formality of polling the jury, which wasn’t easy because jurors, too, were fixated on the drama in the audience. “Pay attention to me,” she said, as cheerfully as possible. Adding to the upheaval, the clerk who’d asked about the ambulance started to cry. photos!

I almost wish I was there to see it all! Clearly the story isn’t over yet - wait for the new season! Except, err, it’s real life. A great quote from a Howard Abadinsky (in the first link above) should be noted:

You don’t resign from the mob. There is no such thing…It’s possible that John Gotti has decided that he doesn’t want to commit any more crimes. But if whoever now runs the Gambino family says ‘We’ve got something important for you to do’ and he doesn’t do it, he’s a dead man.”

Top flight football has transitioned from a sport into an entertainment industry, but someone needs to coach their employees on how to promote their product subtly. Frank Lampard thinks the title race is wide open and Wayne Rooney says he doesn’t think the league is getting boring . Well duh lads, you kind of have to say that.

People definately seem to be turning away from football in the same way they got bored with Formula 1 during the mid ’90s - the cause is obvious. The illusion of competition could only ben maintained by the media (predominately Sky) for so long - eventually people realise what they are watching (hint: it is no cooincidence that the three wealthiest clubs finished in the top three positions last year).

Domination achieved in a league through commercial wealth just isn’t interesting. Which is why I’m getting all curious about the new A1 Grand Prix circuit that starts this weekend. The World Cup of Motorsport they’re calling it and Ireland have entered a team. All teams get the same cars, all of which have identical Zytech V8 3.4 litre (540bhp) units. Zytech have a history of supplying performance engines - they have supplied the Formula 3000 circuit for a number of years now

The only thing is Sky have the TV rights…

A fellow gamer sent me a hands on report of the new Nintendo Revolution controller. Here’s Nintendo’s promotional videoI think Nintendo are onto a winner with this - it almost makes you wonder why Sony and Micrsoft didn’t introduce motion detectors in the new PS3 & XBox 360 controllers. Now that the cat is out of the bag, expect the other two to counter with “oh we will have one of those Real Soon Now(tm)” statements.

If you think it’s gimmicky bear the following in mind: Apple recently added a Sudden Motion Sensor to the inside of their powerbook laptops earlier this year. It’s a simple enough device that was designed to detect sudden changes in axis and velocity and was put in there just to protect the hard drive (the heads can damage the platters easily if the drive is in use when an impact occurs). The thing is, once developers found out about the sensor, they got curious. And the kernel guys went out and wrote drivers to use the motion sensor as a standard input device - think picking up the PowerBook and moving it about to control applications and you get the idea). It won’t take long for Apple to build and integrate a new external peripheral (SpaceMouse, anyone?) using the same sensor technology (and bluetooth). It might only be used by a small number of spatial-type applications but it is such and Apple thing to do.

Kudos to Nintendo for innovating. It’s almost a pity they still will not match the PS3 and XBox 360 sales figures but those hype machines have other features (and more marketing $$$) that will ensure their success. But Nintendo beat Apple to the punch on this one - wow!

Update: Logitech already have a SpaceMouse - damn, I liked that name.

According to Barbara Bush when interviewed on NPR (audio here):

What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this–this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them

Well that answers a few questions I had anyway. There I was thinking they’d miss their homes and way of life.

An interesting comment from a Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T. (Note: this transcript was taken before the storm hit - the day after the Mayor ordered the evacuation:)

If you look at the Atlantic, it’s perfectly fair to say that both the increase in ocean temperature in the last couple of decades and the upswing in hurricane activity is mostly natural. If there’s a global warming signal in that, it’s very hard to see. And that natural cycle, we don’t fully understand it, by the way, I don’t think anyone pretends that we do, but there have been in history, you know, periods of 20 or 30 years of inactivity followed by 20 or 30 years of activity. It’s nothing new, in fact.

Before the 1990s, a lot of hurricane specialists had forecasts that we were going to go back to an active period in the Atlantic, and again, this has nothing to do with global warming.

So these forecasts were not acted upon by a government that has formerly been accused ofdistorting scientific research that doesn’t fit with their political policies. At least not listening to their scientific advisors explains why the administration were caught flat footed when they realised how much damage had been done (8-balls can’t forecast things like that, can they)

Oh, check out the Union of Concerned Scientists site if you havn’t before. A right bunch of nuts the lot of them (the 12 Nobel Prize winners aside<ahem>).

Via Boing Boing, the Survival of New Orleans (flash-in-the-pan) blog is worth a look, if just to read things like :

They broke into Winn Dixie Monday Night. Do they steal food? No. Cigarettes and liquor. Store was a mess. All the meats were going to waste so the districts went over there to salvage food for officers. Many cops have been eating MREs.

The Iberville Housing Projects got pissed off because the police started to “shop” after they kicked out looters. Then they started shooting at cops. When the cops left, the looters looted everything. There’s probably not a grocery left in this city.

Over 30 officers have quit over the last 3 days. Out of 160 officers in his district maybe 55 or 60 are working. He hasn’t seen several since Sunday. HQ is closed, evacuated. No phones to contact them.

Not sure how much of this is true, only time will tell.

Also, it’s interesting how looting and finding can get mixed up by the news wires (does skin color qualify actions?). Under the circumstances, when law and order has broken down to the extent it appears to have, some of it is basic survuval but you can be sure a lot of it is looting.

Facinating reading nonetheless.