Brian Greene

as 3ireland launch today i think what we did before mobiles.

less contactable equalled more free time (more me time) less responsive equalled more meaningful when we did f2f (face to face, or eyeball if you were a CB’er) There it is again, me an CB radio, the name said it all. Citizens Band, Power to the People. now its not crazy 40’s its ARPU’s (Average Revenue Per User) how much these feckers can stitch us for. And the Irish are the most screwed. We talk a lot, gift of the gab, licence to print money, well it was if you could get a capped 2G licence. Irish customers still show the highest level of voice usage per customer in the entire Vodafone Group?s controlled mobile businesses, the company claimed.

Will Irish people take to video calling as much? do we talk so much to stay in touch or fill voids, empty vessels making the most sound. Will we pay annually 4 times the TV licence fee to see a goal on the back of a matchbox when we could watch the match on the box for free?

02 make about 12Billion a year, and like Vodafone they too have one of their highest ARPU’s (Amplified Radiation Penetrating yoU) in Ireland. One thing the ejits in the Govt. forgot, Its our airwaves its our national resource, they managed it, and leased it, rented it and sold it to the big telcos. If ever there was a case for nationalisation post revolution (after the Banks) it would be these guys, sure it would just be the re management of the spectrum in the interest of people not profit.

{*} from the picture at the top of the story you can see that there is an unclaimed b1 licence available in the Irish market. Now that meteor has a sugar daddy, perhaps they to will think 3G. And then we can have the total waste of four duplicated networks spilling EMR into our homes and schools in the name of national development, profit and competition. It doesn’t make me sick, but there is 1-2% of population that are very sick, and some are sleeping in cars tonight.

why are network TV news brands falling over each other to get our pics and vidz from the terror zone? I can understand ‘one wants it they all want it’, but what is it they want?

Pictures of sub standard quality of no great importance, there are AP & Reuters vans in London and they will be beaming clean feed live within minutes of an incident. if the networks have broadcast quality pictures why go for wobble and smudgie low res. They want to be edgy. TV news wants a new angle and perspective. In doing so they are lowering technical and journalistic standards. Eye witness reporting, mixed with blogging and podcasting has its space. Its cross over to mainstream TV makes me a little uncomfortable. We have come through an era where the top story on the evening news was the location where a pre arranged SNG van would give a live piece to camera even when there was no news there, think of all the failed Northern Ireland talks, a break through never comes but the cameras keep rolling, keeping something else off the news agenda. Now with 3G and video phones prim proper news channels are giving way to me TV even if there is little value in the pictures and less in the sound on offer. There has been times in the past where amature footage was all that was available and it was used with the “amature footage” bar added to the graphic, think Omagh for example, this higher quality image and its news value and uniqueness is good use of available footage, 3 dozen nokia’s from any angel most times wont reach that level of need for our news intake, but still they use it, and still they beg for it to be sent to them and not rival TV services. Today I heard a live eyewitness report from London including bad language which was directed at reporters circling an eyewitness while she gave her story to BBC news 24. Each to their own, ham cams have their place and importance, we are not so hungry that we must lower the standard so far that what we end up with is citizen band reporting just because its cool.

39 images from TV on 07/07

I spend lots of time trying to work with PCs and trying to get them to work for me

for fun, what would make them not work! last thursday the Police in London had to decide switch off or leave on the mobile networks… could the same happen for landlines/dsl or wireless?

if you were not the police, and wanted to make your network notwork, or take out a PC on its own how would you do it?

my xdaii is on top of the PC, and when I get a txt it takes out the mouse for 10 seconds.. if I blast 12watts of am/usb voice modulated RF (eg key up a CB radio) beside or 10 feet from a PC it has a good chance of dying quickly, if I remove the rubber ball in the mouse, it stops the kids using it!

I’m not trying to take out a system or anything like that but just welcome views on ways to make PCs not-work. PCs power photo machines, kids rides, bio metric ID machines…

lights are off (and we have no windows) air con is on, fans are blowing, trying to keep the doop office cool. bring back the 15C temps. please.

I’ve just gone through a maxi and standard sized skip in the past week filling it with household junk. In general, I have no problem with skip hunters but as Tayto says “there’s always one”.

Due to the opposite of skip hunters it is prudent to place your skip as close to ones house in eye shot for security. The opposite of skip hunters are skip tippers, the type of neighbour that is so mean they aren’t arsed to get their own skip, so you find their unwanted computers in your skip when you wake the next day. So with the skip so close to house this draws in the species I usually tolerate ‘the skip hunter’. A modern day Womble, reducing my refuse bill for free and reusing and recycling my waste for their better use. [read on]

But there’s always one, this guy with an accent that is difficult to pin down to any one area, driving a window company van, he has been back 3 times. Old drills, wire copper, records (Wham et al) that’s what he wants, and I don’t have any. “Are ya sure boss”, “yes I sure”. Yes im sure down deep inside (the skip) I have nothing he wants. But still he comes back routing for cables and stuff and unsettling the loose fly away content off the top to fly around the estate in the next gust.

I’ve managed my own waste for two years, driving to the dump, opposed to double taxation, and yes there is millions of euro dumped that could be saved from the tip head, but there needs to be a more formal way to engage these skip hunters than the current intrusive tactics of my problem hunter. Yes I want both of us to be happy with the outcome of his endeavors, but there needs to be rules of engagement, where my unwanted rubbish is not cast away in a roadside when he finds no route to market for what he has found.

Take Swap Shop & Scrap Saturday, and you get “Scrap Saturday Swap Shop” a bit like “the hill” a market on North Cumberland Street Dublin 1 (off Parnell Street) when all the crap that hasn’t been bought is left behind the council tidy up. Add a bit of car boot sale and you have a structure for the trailer pulling junkies to trade rubbish.

Its a dirty business the Govt. are doing nothing about.