Notes and Jottings

So, am I mad? I’m following the advice “given here”:http://www.bythom.com/support.htm, and feeling that yes I am going to need a tripod, and yes a good tripod will work so much better. And I don’t have a car so I might use a small, light tripod where a heavier one would be left at home. So the following is the list of items to be purchased.

# “Gitzo G1228 Tripod”:http://www.gitzo.com/products/metric/tripods/mountaineer/rightscreen.php3
# “Gitzo G1277M centre ball head”:http://www.gitzo.com/products/metric/heads/ball/rightscreen.php3
# “LowePro Mini Trekker AW”:http://www.lowepro.com/pages/series/trekking/minitrkaw.htm

In buying these items, I’m giving up on the idea of buying either a flash or another lens (besides the kit lens for the Nikon D70) for the rest of the year. From what I’ve seen and read, a tripod gives the biggest increase in the number of “possible” shots, compared with the extra options opened by a telephoto lens, or a wide-angle lens, or a good flash. I’m not sure though–anybody have any comments on this?

The “directive on software patents was passed”:http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39155028,00.htm. So now it’s going to become far more difficult to reverse. Very annoying, and slightly worrying. I hope I can meet some of these EU election candidates and have a “chat” with them…

+*Update*: The proposal which went through was a compromise, but not generally thought to be one which goes far enough to stop software patents. The only chance to get this reversed now is through a majority vote in the EU parliament.+

+*Update 2*: The proposal “actually didn’t get through”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3726375.stm. Okay, I just don’t know what to think at the moment, I’m going to let the dust clear and see what’s left…+

+According to the BBC site, the proposal came unstuck after EU officials were unable to agree on how many languages patent applications should be converted into. What a trite reason for it to fail, if that’s true!+

+*Update 3*: Okay, the Community Patent was a different issue. The software patenting issue did go through, worse luck for everybody!+

“The article from the New Yorker”:http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040524fa_fact that everybody must have read by now, and really implies that somebody in the CIA fired a broadside against poor oppressed Donald Rumsfeld (everybody say awwww). How long can Rumsfeld last now?

Richard Stallman “is giving a talk about the dangers of software patents”:http://www.ifso.ie/news.html#n7 in the MacNeill theatre in Trinity College (Hamilton Building) at 19:30 on Monday 24 May.

He is in the country as a guest of “IFSO”:http://www.ifso.ie/, and the talk itself has been organised by “TCD Netsoc”:http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/, who have had a number of luminaries to speak over the years (including Richard Stallman himself a few years ago). I wonder if Mary Harney has gotten her invitation yet

Here is the content of my post to Groklaw on the issue:

Of course we dislike it! Well - actually, a lot of IT workers in Ireland are
quite ignorant of the issues, which doesn’t help. I get the feeling that
mainland European IT workers are a lot more politically motivated in general
than those living in Ireland. When it was explained to them, a few people in the
company I work for agreed with my interpretation of the issues, but they hadn’t
even thought about the issues with software patents up until
this.

Richard Stallman is coming to Ireland in about a week, and current
plans include giving his prepared speech, “The Danger of Software Patents”, on
Monday 24 May, which will hopefully help to raise awareness a bit
higher.

Anyway, this is the most stupid ill-advised, ignorant thing our government has done during its years in office in the IT/computers area, that I’m aware of. They’re never not getting my vote again for a long time.

Mary
Harney is chair of the competitiveness forum, and seems to have been the main
instigator of the change (aka harmonisation) in patent laws.

Mary Harney
is the head of the Progressive
Democrats (one of the two parties in the current coalition government). They
pride themselves on being friendly to business, and this is all a natural
extension of that - even if you think this is actually bad for business, large
existing businesses usually don’t think so.

If we’d been watching (but I
certainly wasn’t), this issue was well-flagged in various articles. An interesting article from January has the
following enlightening quote from Mary Harney:

The Irish Presidency recognises that the Community Patent is important for industry, and must be made available to firms at a reasonable cost. It therefore pledges to ‘make every effort to ensure its adoption.’ It also highlights the importance of the directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights and promises to make every effort to achieve a common position within the Council.

A search for “Mary Harney” in the search engine on
that site maps out the current policy quite well.

Groklaw “points out”:http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040513125154288 that Germany may vote against the new patent harmonisation proposals on 17 May, which would be a major blow to the pro-software-patent lobby, as well as a huge relief to me. Thank goodness Germany will prevent Ireland from being its own worst enemy. The council of ministers should never have done that end run around the EU parliament.

Actually, this may not be as good as initially appeared–all this means is that the issue will have to be discussed, rather than passing through without discussion.

Tim Bray “points out the excellent implementation of web services”:http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/05/11/ReachPSB which is currently being implemented by “Reach”:http://www.reach.ie/, a branch of the Irish government.

Tim points out a number of facets of this implementation which are quite heartwarming to read. The system is scalable, vendor-independent, secure and accountable. These are all important facets of enterprise-level architecture implementations, and a government should be held to at least that level of quality and engineering.

It is a proud day to see that at least one part of the Irish government is doing the right thing with respect to system deployments. The UK government could learn a thing or two from this

This “Nikon AF-S VR 70-200 f/2.8 IF-ED”:http://www.europe-nikon.com/details.aspx?countryId=20&languageId=22&prodId=275&catId=121 lens would be a lovely present. Go on, go on. I’ll buy the camera, you buy the lens… it’s a wonderful wonderful lens, perhaps a bit large to bring to parties and suchlike, but hey nothing’s perfect
Okay, you won’t buy that for me, meanie! But I will have to start thinking about getting either a telephoto or zoom telephoto at some stage after I buy my new camera. Or just a plain f/1.8 50mm lens? What *do* I want? Portraits or action shots and wildlife? Every lens has its place. Aaah so much to choose from! And no wonder Nikon and Canon make so much from photographers! As you go up the scale, techy lust becomes even more obvious than usual… though at the end of the day (as many a photographer has said), you just have to go out and shoot, and practice practice practice. Many’s a perfect photo has been taken with a snapshot–the right place, the right time, and an eye for the scene.

Perfectly timed exit; left just before 5am as the last song finished; grabbed a taxi; back home in a tick
The night as a whole went thusly: dinner and drinks with “Mal”:http://www.illyana.com/ and “Davida”:http://www.diddles.net/. Drinks with Linda, Dan, Dawn, Greg, Andrew, Sheila (the usual gang from my year in CS). Then came the ball; met “Dermot”:http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dfrost/, “Stella”:http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~snpower/ and “Elaina”:http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~laina/ (who left for the call of free drink, can’t blame them). Met “Vlad”:http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~villiros/, “Ash”:http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~ashj/, “John”:http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~jgilbert/, “Nithin”:http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~dude/, “Conall”:http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~conall/, “Anya”:http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~anya/, “Annie”:http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~abedford/, “Paul”:http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~paul/ and others (whose names I can’t remember) from current CS. Met Claire from Medicine (still an E.R. fan). Met pretty much the whole skitrip gang, and hung around with them for most of the night; “Juan”:http://www.seqn.net/, Annette, Laura, Clare, Sharon, Brian, Daire, Kate. Mad dancing group, meaning good fun at something like the Trinity Ball. And “Kevin”:http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~moroneyk/ popped his head in, but didn’t see much of him over the whole night.

All in all, another good night at the Trinity Ball–dance-filled and search-for-people-filled. Which is as it should be.

Thanks to all who helped make the night all it was. *sniff*

*Update:* “Photos available here”:http://www.lyranthe.org/gallery/trinityball2004/ for the photos taken with my (brother’s) camera during the evening.

Tonight’s forecasted weather: Dry and clear tonight. Low 4 C.

So–no umbrella, and I’ll be bringing my brother’s camera (yay, brothers are cool!). See youse who are going later on.