provocatio

There is a (snopes-confirmed) apocryphal story that former US President George W. Bush commented to then British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the problem with the French “… is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur”. As much as I would like to think it’s true, it happens not to be.

However, that’s doesn’t stop us from having fun with a bit of word-play. I would like to come up with as many of these as possible, and I am looking for donations: How many “The X can’t Y: they have no word for Z” are there out there? I’d say there’re thousands. I’m going to kick it off here, and anyone who wants to leave a sample or a few, please do so as comments, and I’ll add them to the post.

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Is there anyway that we can get people to stop using the term “Ireland Inc.”?
It’s disgusting.
It suggests that the responsibility of the government is to maximise profit.
It suggests that spending is irresponsible, unless it can be shown to be maximising profit.
It suggests that those who don’t agree shouldn’t be considered.

Ireland is a country. It’s not a company. The how and why of running it is, and should be, completely different to a company.

Stop it.

Please.

In somewhat of a follow-up in this previous entry, there is news that some provisions of the PATRIOT act that was used against the people involved are unconstitutional. Again, I say to all those who argue that if you do nothing wrong you’ve nothing to hide: that’s an argument that not even courts will accept.

My ISP, name2host.com, lost their data centre recently, and we lost all access to our systems recently, including our website and all the e-mail accounts. The guys are seriously annoyed about this, and I have a lot of pity for them. They have managed to get a data centre for the moment, but it’s horrendously slow, and I still don’t have reliable use of my preferred e-mail address.

I will have to make a decision soon as to whether to go somewhere else. Hopefully they’ll sort it out in the next couple of weeks and all will be well.

I wish them well.

Éibhear

I got a story on to slashdot. I don’t submit often, and the other two I have submitted were rejected, so this came as a bit of a surprise

One of the lessons I did learn, though, is not to give my e-mail address in plain format: my spam count has trebbled overnight!

Éibhear

News just in from Slashdot: apparently, the US PATRIOT act has been used to investigate someone accused of copyright violations.

Let me be clear about this: violating someone’s copyright is not an act of terrorism. No argument to the contrary, in my opinion, can hold water.

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