Month: September 2005

  • Google Goes Las Vegas

    Robert Cringely has a very interesting piece on how Google Adwords might be working. Another reason to think maybe Google are not so nice afterall I have no idea what the heck is happening here, but my friendly reader, who makes his living from this stuff, has a theory. He believes the Google AdWords algorithm…

  • Bird flu 'could kill 150m people'

    Finally someone is quoting some figures (more reasonable to me anyway) that the inevitable flu pandemic could bring. Foreign Affairs had a special edition a while back on the avian flu threat, and back then I guesstimated a figure of 500 million was more likely than the figure of 20 million being suggested by most…

  • On lectures

    Caoimhe suggested that having Wifi in lectures could help for making an argument with a lecturer, as the facts are there before you while the lecturer is going on memory. At politics today the lecturer cited Robert Fisk in the course of a discussion about pre-war democracies such as the Weimar Republic or some such.…

  • A tankful of sugar, Brazil's ethanol

    I never knew that Brazil had previously gone down the road of ethanol based fuel for cars. Prompted by the oil shocks of the 1970s, Brazilian governments used laws and subsidies to promote ethanol-only cars, which had 90% of the market by the late 1980s. But supplies of sugar-based fuel dried up suddenly when planters…

  • Empty beds, empty stomachs

    Gitmo, as it has become known, still remains in a sort legal limbo. I had wondered what had happened since the Supreme Court ruling in June last year, the Economist clarifies: Earlier this summer, there was talk of Guantánamo being shut down. Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called it a…

  • The end of the affair: Rupert Murdoch in China

    So Rupert Murdoch is criticising Yahoo for its policies in China. Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York during the UN summit, the Economist reports that Murdoch castigated Yahoo: FIERCELY independent media mogul and defender of democracy everywhere—that was the Rupert Murdoch on display at a Bill Clinton-organised conference in New York on…

  • Wifi in lectures

    Most of the Boole lecture halls have Wifi, which is handy for checking things during a lecture. Or for blogging 😉

  • Shattered

    I have so much posting to catch up it’s not funny. I have bookmarked lots of interesting links. And so many things to read. And this DeLay story looks like it could be pretty darn funny. See Steve’s take. Looks like Roy Blunt will be the new majority leader.

  • Posting

    Well I finally got setup with internet access here in UCC so I should be able to start blogging again in earnest. Wireless will be signed up to later today. More soon.

  • Wifi hotpots

    I will be on the look out for open access points in Cork city, there are lots of them but mostly encrypted. I have found one in Mulligans bar, across from the bus station, Netgear, wide open. Handy for a pint and a quick browse.