Author Archives: Donncha

Irish Consumer Boycott, December 2, 2002.
On December 2nd this year there will a boycott by the consumers of Ireland in protest to the excessive and unjust prices that are being charged to the Irish consumer. A similar protest was organized in Greece this year 3rd September where consumers avoided all shops, pubs and restaurants etc. in protest of the prices that were being charged.
The European commissioner for consumer affairs (an Irish man, David Byrne) and the Irish Government have both being entirely passive with this issue when a lot feel something could have been done. Since the Euro change over Ireland leap frogged above France and Germany to become the second most expensive country in the euro zone after Finland. This contention is supported by several leading companies and organisations including Forfas and Price Waterhouse Coopers.
Please advise those you know to support the boycott. The boycott is set to last for one day as in Greece.

Got this in email about 4 or 5 times so here it is for everyone else.
What good will it do? We’ll all go back to buying stuff on the 3rd. It’s also a weekday, if I need to buy my lunch nobody’s getting between me and my food!

Cringely discusses PC upgrade cycles.

Bryan Bell is a very talented designer! Sorry to hear about your grandfather though 🙁

APOD: Leonids vs The Moon, nice picture. I wish Ireland was as cloud-free.

Dublin Bus pilots real-time service – it’s also happening in the UK and elsewhere, but I don’t think it’ll help alleviate the traffic problems in Dublin. We Irish have a “must drive there” attitude, of which I’m guilty of too!

Why Red Hat Owns Linux – no they don’t, but this is still a good overview of where RH are and what might happen in the future. (from a business perspective)

The Register reports on a leaked internal document from Microsoft that touts Unix in Hotmail’s Win2k switch. Of course, that’s presuming it’s real, but the article is an entertaining read anyway.

Black Hole Breakaway: Supernova Gives Birth to Cosmic Monster – Fascinating. It makes me feel really small and inconsequential when I read stuff like, “There are two main types of black holes. The most massive variety anchor large galaxies; our own galaxy has a black hole that weighs as much as 2.6 million suns” and “Our solar system sits on a spiral arm in the outskirts of the main disk of the galaxy.”
Look out the window at life going by, it’s so busy but we’re just a little speck in terms of the larger galaxy! *phew*

Hot Babe Hot-babe is a small graphical utility which display the system activity in a very special way. When the CPU is idle, it displays a dressed girl, and when the activity goes up, as the temperature increases, the girl begins to undress, to finish totally naked when the system activity reaches 100%. Of course, if you can be shocked by nudity, don’t use it!

Apple and the Pirate Everyman – Apple and piracy.