Nov
15
The director general of the statutory body charged with funding basic science research has expressed his concern at proposals to abolish funding for postgraduate students. Dr Graham Love was speaking at the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Summit in Athlone, an …
Sep
11
There was a time when book burning mattered. Once upon a time, religions enforced dictates by burning books containing the wrong opinions. To be orthodox was, literally, to hold the right opinion. And just in case that didn’t work, heretics …
Aug
29
Irish schools should abandon textbooks in favour of online educational content, says Fergus O’Dowd, FG education spokesman. “Texas and California are investigating the use of ‘open source textbooks’, providing approved digital texts online, written by educational experts such as retired …
May
26
I deleted my facebook account today, though it will take fourteen days for the cancellation to become final. [If you want to know how I did it, follow the simple instructions at WikiHow.] If you really want to opt out, …
May
09
Linux is hard. I know this is true, because I’ve been told it so many times. Never mind that I’ve been using it quite happily for the past few years, it’s hard. Sometimes, I even have to type something using …
Apr
13
Ubuntu, the Linux distribution from Canonical and marketed as ‘Linux for human beings’, manages to both annoy and please me with every release. On the one hand, it sure does look pretty, and gets prettier with every new release. The …
Mar
16
With the Blog Awards approaching, it’s time to revist an idea I’ve been toying with for some time. Blogs are fine, but even the finest blog in Ireland has a limited readership. Unless yuou’re lucky, you may never stumble across …
Jan
27
Outside, the new Criminal Courts Complex is distinctive, but not hugely original. Busáras with a facelift. Inside, it feels like a science fiction set. Something American, definitely lacking the post-industrial grime that besets most UK efforts, from 28 Days Later …
Jul
07
By all accounts, Eircom has been hacked. The telco has confirmed that there was a domain name server (DNS) outage on its website last night. Internet users throughout Ireland complained they were being redirected to bogus sites. Eircom customers have …
Jun
12
A decade after it insisted that it couldn’t be done in front of a US federal judge, Microsoft has decided to unbundle Internet Explorer from its operating system. From October, when Windows 7 hits the shelves, customers in Europe can …