The nice person who made it left out the distance to Dublin.

I am going to suggest that the data gathered by the Irish Government belongs to the Irish People it should be made available (within the parameters of the law) so that people in this country can exploit it in business or for other purposes that may help the Irish Economy grow. An obvious example is the OSI which is a government based monopoly which appears to generate cash, it would be nice to see what parts of it are really cash generating, and not just public monies being moved like wooden dollars. Wooden dollars are money you never get but appears on your bottom line as though you earned it, for instance recharging things within a company, a division could look very profitable but when you take away the “super charge” they are raising against other departments they could be found to be just providing a necessary service and charging a lot for it.

Lets think medical for a moment, imagine if no matter where you walked into a surgery or hospital in your country the doctor that sees you can see your history, perhaps they have to have an id card or code to get that information made available to them, or have an emergency procedure to access it if you turn up unable to help them to help you. That kind of information flow would hugely facilitate the level of important data that a patient may forget due to the stress or trauma they are undergoing.

What blocks this kind of thing?

Incompatible systems all claiming to help the data owner in each location manage their data but preventing the information help the public for whom all the services should be working to help.

Lets look at academia, the person who writes a paper and submits it to a peer review journal gets lauded for their important paper which then goes on to be quoted by others in the field. That looks great, however here is the cost to society, society paid for the research, it got owned by some publication which then places constraints on the author and their organisation as the originating body has to pay a high price for the peer reviewed journal.

The thoughts that follow on from this is that these things seem to be to be overly complex expensive costs to society, society has already paid to gather this data, it should be released for a nominal fee, the work is done, the payment for that work has already been made, society can benefit from the labours of those it has employed then it should there is a thing called innovation, but if you make the cost of entry too high people can’t innovate. Innovation is small incremental improvements on what went before.

Before I start delivering a full blown lecture I will stop here.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/zombie-cookies-lawsuit/

But have a look at this:

http://jamiedubs.com/googlealarm/

Every time you land on a web site the people with adverts from google and so on embedded they are sending data back to google about who what where when why etc.

The extension may not work for you, but it is interesting, now you have already been sending them data, what will you do in the future?

It gets to be more fun:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575395073512989404.html This wall street journal talks about the business behind tracking your doings on the web.

I realise that most technical people who read this are aware of all of the above, I do know this blog is read by some non technical people, and it is for this reason I publish the above.

Update your blog.

Security patch servers.

Sort out a long running question of a domain with your brother in law.

Buy lots of Herbert Von Karjan on http://emusic.com

Read Sherlock Holmes short stories.

Do backups at home.

Check your office email (don’t tell me you didn’t).

Organise the breakfast club for Saturday Morning.

Walk the dog.

Ignore the rain outside.

Talk to a pal or three on the phone.

7:20 am and nothings changed

Hugo Hamilton’s book The Speckled People, is the early life story of children of an Irish father and German Mother in Ireland in the fifties and sixties. Told though the perspective eyes of one of their children, a consistent in age is used as the viewing point. That view does not change, but the people become older, life becomes more complicated as it usually does. Really easy to read, well written, most enjoyable.

Lastly Bill Oddie’s autobiography, One flew into the the cookoo’s egg. Bill tells the stories of growing up, becoming famous, getting older, having what is often incorrectly referred to as “a nervous breakdown”, dealing with the aftermath of recovery, he even manages to interview himself and manages not to get too caught up in a dream as a result. All in all I really liked it.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/copyrightfiltering-scribd/

we find a story about http://www/scribd.com a publishing site being attacked for not defending copyright because it tried to. The world gets funnier.

I think this could get a tag of “Why I’m glad I don’t live there”, but then I live in Ireland ……

This little piece shows how a film that grossed in excess of nine hundred million dollars lost money, “loans and distribution costs”, wow were the copies carried around in gold cases …..

Won’t someone think of the starving artists …..