In recent days we have seen the controversy over the statutory rape legislation in Ireland. Yesterday a man sentenced for the rape of a 12-year-old girl was set free because somebody had exposed a loophole in the legislation. What kind of person goes looking for loopholes in such legislation and what kind of person defends…
Today I was knee deep in meetings and documentation – neither of which is a joy to partake in but must be done in order to get to the fun coding stuff. While coining my Machiavellian masterpiece of documentation I tried to source some rather funky images from a co-worker; a presentation that they had…
A story in the Times today covers how only 170 out of an estimated 37,000 childminders in the country have applied for a tax exemption brought in by the last budget. The article reflects, much like I did after reading the headline, that many childminders probably don’t want to register as they are already living…
I have given up on the pursuit of unattainable web pages and instead have just started to research/investigate the various aspects of DRM with respect to the sharing of video content. Naturally the first stop for such things would be MPEG-21 and possibly the Open Mobile Alliance who have their own DRM solution currently on…
Yahoo and eBay have just announced that they are going to collaborate on several initiatives in the near future. Expect to see plenty of eBay links in Yahoo! search results and so forth. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on Yahoo usage. Hopefully the indexing will be conducted in a sensible…
Today I just happened upon Google Pack – a bundle of wonderful, free utilities and applications. The Google Pack installer helps you to keep track of all these applications, makes sure you have the most up-to-date versions and everything else. Not sure how out of date I am with this post as I have been…
A couple of days ago I was looking to purchase a new mobile phone and as I am currently a customer of O2 in Ireland I went to their website to pick out my new handset. However, when I got there the cupboard was certainly bare. The website was down for maintenance for a period…
My poor old weblog has suffered recently at the hands of focussed thought. As such I have decided to split my ramblings into two and try to divide my publishing practice into both my typical rambling zone but also a new tech-related ramble zone. A vain attempt to produce two blogs out of no time…
Hollywood hath no inspiration like real life: A story I heard on the Last Word (Today FM) yesterday seemed so bizarre I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Seemingly two old ladies in the US took it upon themselves to seek an active retirement fund. How did they manage this? Well they befriended homeless…
A phrase that surely sums up the weekend; a weekend that saw Munster finally claim the European cup after so long trying. Hats off to Peter Stringer, who by all accounts played out of his skin as he always does for Ireland anyway. Congrats to the lads on a great victory – I’m sure that…