I am absolutely delighted to announce that my mixed-marriage wireless network (Dell PC running XP and Linux; Apple G4 12" PowerBook on OS X) is at long last, up and running!!! Thanks to help from a scad of readers, Apple, Dell and Eircom for information/advice/troubleshooting. The key problem turned out to be that I needed to upload some info to the DSL modem. Oh happy day...! Now to get Linux to see my ethernet card, get Mozilla fired up, and I'll be a truly happy girl.
6:22:50 PM  #   your two cents []

Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, and Roddy Doyle among Irish writers who support the Irish Anti-War Movement [Irish Times, sub only]:

Some 51 Irish writers opposed to the war on Iraq have contributed works to an anthology that will help fund the Irish Anti-War Movement, reports Nuala Haughey.

The publishers of the book of poetry and prose estimate the proceeds from its sale will raise at least €10,000 for the anti-war group, which is continuing to organise public protests. Contributors to the collection, Irish Writers Against War, include Seamus Heaney, Roddy Doyle and Brian Friel.

At the book's launch yesterday, the playwright and theatre director, Mr Peter Sheridan, described the volume as a publication where artists could raise their voices against an unnecessary war.

Mr Roddy Doyle, who attended the launch, said the longer the war continued, the moral issue became more and more pressing.

"How do you balance things out? Is X amount of jobs worth one Iraqi life? The 40,000 American soldiers going through Shannon aren't going on their holidays. Some of them will kill people."

4:16:24 PM  #   your two cents []

NY Times: Rumsfeld's designs for war criticised on the battlefield: "Here today, raw nerves were obvious as officers compared Mr. Rumsfeld to Robert S. McNamara, an architect of the Vietnam War who failed to grasp the political and military realities of Vietnam."
2:53:14 PM  #   your two cents []

It appears it was an American, not Iraqi, missile that hit a market in Iraq. Unless, of course, Raytheon has been selling missiles to Iraq:

Meanwhile it has emerged that the explosion in a Baghdad market which killed more than 60 people last Friday was indeed caused by a cruise missile and not an Iraqi anti-aircraft rocket as the US has suggested.

A metal fragment found at the scene by British journalist Robert Fisk carried various markings, including "MFR 96214 09". This, our reader pointed out in an email, is a manufacturer's identification number known as a "cage code".

Cage codes can be looked up on the internet (www.gidm.dlis.dla.mil), and keying in the number 96214 traces the fragment back to a plant in McKinney, Texas, owned by the Raytheon Company.

Well, the piece wasn't actually found by Robert Fisk, but by an elderly Iraqi man living nearby, who had picked it up and then showed it to Fisk.

12:18:27 PM  #   your two cents []

The misfortunes of McDonalds: "And they have gone from being the Great American Meal to being the leader in fast food. From a brand perspective, that is a really big drop."
12:16:14 PM  #   your two cents []

Oh, and happy April Fools Day! No better month in which to be a fool -- with fresh new flowers, and trees just beginning to open their leaves again, a "stretch in the evning", as the Irish say, on top of all this sun we've been having in Ireland, making you feel like acting the fool, and like fooling around. On lovely April 1, we should all be treated to this wonderful extract from the decision handed down by the Hon. John M. Woolsey in 1933, in the obscenity case brought against "One Book called Ulysses" by one James Joyce. The judge wrote:

"In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of his characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring."

12:04:11 PM  #   your two cents []

For Irish tech fans: ICT Expo is on in the RDS from today through Thursday. The Irish Internet Association has an "Innovators Pavilion" and there are other training and business-type events during the three days as well. Linuxworld seminars are on Wednesday and a range of Linux-y speakers on Thursday. And lots of stuff on display! I'll probably stop by Thursday for a look round and to get the Linux keynote.
11:14:27 AM  #   your two cents []

From the School of the Bleedin' Obvious: Iraq war may delay tech rebound, institute warns. [InfoWorld: Top News]
11:02:21 AM  #   your two cents []

From Boing Boing Blog: A beautiful collection of ice photography. Link
11:01:24 AM  #   your two cents []

The Economist weighs in on the future of hot spots: The Economist [sub only] predicts a bit of a shake-out as the early, smaller firms wind up trampled by the likes of Cisco (which acquired Linksys) and Intel (which is advertising Centrino madly and investing in hot spots). [80211b News]

11:00:00 AM  #   your two cents []

Deloitte Consulting stays put. The group will not separate from its parent firm, making the combined company stand out from other large audit firms that have clipped their consulting wings. [CNET News.com]
10:58:00 AM  #   your two cents []

Question: why is the US claiming that these seven women and children are the first known civilian casualties to have been deliberately shot , when the London Sunday Times documented several cases of same in this piece on Sunday? Also note that the report of the Washington Post reporter who was actually with the troops in the recent shooting differs totally from the official military version -- no warning shot was fired and the officer in charge berated his troops for not firing one. Contrast this report with the New York Times careful pro-army version: Failing to heed warning, 7 Iraqi women and children die. No warning shots were fired by soldiers in the Sunday Times story, either. In other Iraq news: Iraq goes offline. The latest round of bombs appears to have finally cut off Iraqi access to the Internet. [Salon.com]

10:49:50 AM  #   your two cents []

Heh!! Danny O'Brien (Irish Times columnist and co-editor with Dave of the fabulous Need To Know sarcastic UK tech newsletter) writes: the iraq of snack: "One of my most important yet life-threatening jobs at NTK is to stop Dave deleting all the Linux and cryptography crap and inserting another twenty pages or so of his in-depth sweetie and crisp reviews. It's like holding back Niagara. Hopefully, his new project, SnackSpot, will take off some of the pressure. Although, reading through it, it's actually managing to make me even more scared." [from Oblomovka]
10:42:02 AM  #   your two cents []

Vodaphone, Orange invest in wireless Java OS. U.S. startup attracts European funding [InfoWorld: Top News]
10:37:44 AM  #   your two cents []

If you're interested in reading what the Department of Justice have to say about why their glitchy website on data retention is so glitchy, their IT guy Alec Dolan has responded in comments to the item below; click here for the comments only. This is what I had to say about the site in last week's Net Results column.
10:37:14 AM  #   your two cents []

Ian Foster says time is now to think grids. He calls for pressure on vendors to support open standards [InfoWorld: Top News]
10:37:03 AM  #   your two cents []

Sir William Bragg. "God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday." [Quotes of the Day]
10:36:10 AM  #   your two cents []

Tech firms respond to deadly illness. Sun Microsystems and ATI Technologies are the latest technology companies to see plans in Asia disrupted as a result of the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). [CNET News.com]
10:35:22 AM  #   your two cents []