We're going to IPv6 the Irish Internet! - Blacknight Blog

"we want to get as many websites on our IPv6 platform before the end of 2008"

They said it so much better than I could!! I wish more ISPs could be so proactive.

Crude Ideas - from Fast Company

From the Editor of Fast Company: Crude Ideas
This post is interesting as it seems as if the concept of the end of cheap oil is finally becoming mainstream as oil hovers around $90/bb. Finally the people who have been warning us about peak oil for decades are being seen as the true prophets that they are.
Now the question is - what are we going to do about it? Are we going to transfer a lot of corn production to ethanol, fueling rising food prices, so that we can drive an ethanol-guzzling big SUV? Or are we going to look to reduce our consumptioon of energy, as well as transferring the generation of that energy away from the non-renewable, carbon-based sources and into "clean" generation, like wind, wave, solar?
I don't think that the shift to alternative fuel will make any sense without a serious reconsideration of the way we use power. Architecture needs to be more suited to the climates in which the buildings are situated. Remember the tropical architecture in Trinidad in colonial days? Houses were built with thick walls, verandas, jalosie windows that blocked sun but encouraged breeze. Nowadays, we build block houses that block breeze with lots of glass walls that trap adn intensify heat and we counter this with freezing cold air conditioning.
This doesn't make sense in an era when fuel costs are more expensive,, does it?

On T&T elections - Local issues vs national issues

One thing we need to really start to think about is the role of national government vs local government. National government should be working on macro issues, with the representatives picked to consider the good of their constituency within the policies of the government with respect to things like economic development, national security, highway building etc.

Local government should be the people who deal with things like getting a piece of road paved. However, as our local government is powerless (note that we haven't voted for them and it is overdue by 2 years) the national govt is (in our paternalistic society) looked to for everything. That sucks.

The fact that the Min of Works said in public that they will be taking over certain roads form the local govt because the local govt can't manage road maintenance and repair is wrong. We should be giving the local govt the skills to manage the roads and other items that are their mandate, not taking them over because they can't do it well! That just reinforces the negativity.

The flooding in POS - the City Council hasn't cleaned the drains. That is the mandate of the City Council not the Ministry of Works. So why aren't we picketing the mayor's office, and threatening to remove him from office? OP right - we have no idea when we will be voting for councils!

But the things we need to ask our parliamentarians are things like - why did you vote to postpone the local elections for 2 years? Why did you vote against the evidentiary bill to allow sworn testimony to be read in court when the witnesses have been found to be threatened? Do you have a personal stake in the outcome of this bill? Will it make your private project more profitable?

But we don't ask these questions, we judge our national politicians based on patronage (yes, getting a parliamentarian to get a road paved is patronage!)

We blame the wrong people. We vote for a national election based on local issues, and not the larger national issues that should be at stake and should be debated, and on which we should make our decisions. And even so, we don't bother with facts, we use anecdotal "evidence". Every -ve anecdote can be countered with a +ve one, or vv! Where are the actual facts?

Healthcare - where's the survey for wait times in emergency rooms broken down by severity of injury? Is it that emergency rooms are a total mess and everyone has to wait 4 + hours or is it that triage means that accident victims are treated before others? We don't know for a fact, as this data isn't public, if it has at all been collected.

So - let's ask John Rahael why we don't have that data. That's what they need to be held accountable to - verifiable facts about whether the policies that they have implemented are doing what we want them to do - saving lives, increasing jobs, etc.

BTW - anybody see a plan or manifesto yet from ANY party? Look at the US.

Over a year away, and already all the potential candidates are publishing big detailed plans for healthcare, for national security, etc. We are 4 weeks away, how long are we going to get to evaluate the plans for national policies, debate them and make up our minds?

Actually - we don't do that at all, so they don't even have to tell us what they plan to do, far less in detail.

We'll go off and fish, or vote blindly for the party of our parents or of our race, or we'll vote for or against a person because we like how they look. We won't ever vote on actual policies with verifiable results, against which we can judge the government when the time comes around in 5 (or fewer) years to vote again.

Government Election data on a commercial site?

Election fever has hit Trinidad and Tobago. One good thing is that all sorts of people have been working on a registration drive - make sure you're registered, only a few more days left to register, etc. That's great. The Election and Boundaries Commission set up a telephone hotline and has been putting ads in every media outlet to get people to make sure they're registered to vote.

BUT

Recently there have been a lot of emails along the lines of the following:

Please have all persons check the following site to check their registration
http://www.votett.com/

Now - I have a problem with this. This is not an official Government website. When I registered to vote, I gave my information to the Government. Not to a commercial website. The EBC has publicly indicated that they don't know anything about this site. So HOW did they get the ENTIRE election database?

And more disturbingly, why is no-one asking this question? Why are Trinidad and Tobago nationals blithely logging on to a website that has their national identification information without asking them - hey - whoo are you and how did you get MY INFO?

If the Govt gave it to them, then we need to know under what law are they allowed to hand over something as important as the election database, how do they determine who gets it, and what information do they get? The EBC has my ID number, my address, my age, my date of birth. In other words, more than enough information for anyone to open a bank account in my name, take out a credit card, even a loan or a mortgage.

Who are the people behind this website and what precautions are they taking with my data? What do they intend to do with it besides allow me to find out if I am registered to vote? Will they use it later on to spam me? To steal my identity? To interfere with my life?

Do our laws allow the Government to had this information over to just anyone? Dry so?

Has anyone heard of identity theft? This website and the process that allowed this data to fall into commercial hands needs to be investigated, and precautions put into place to prevent such access to sensitive data and posting it online!

The site is currently offline and I hope it stays that way. It's important for people to have an easy way to check their electoral status, but not at the risk that this poses.

10 Future Web Trends

10 Future Web Trends
From read/Write Web, one of the standard annual (or more frequent) prediction lists - but this one does have some interesting stuff.

Microsoft + Facebook = Trouble for Google

Interesting take on the MS/Google/Facebook wars that are coming? Who's really buying whom? Both Google and MS have indicated interest in buying FB. But then Google may out-open the FB API with thier own? All that's sure is that interesting times lie ahead. And lots and lots of advertising revenue is at stake.

read more | digg story

An educated and informed electorate? In Trinidad and Tobago? Not seeing it!

A friend wrote this recently in response to a mailing list thread about development and national wealth building.
Trinidad and Tobago Government has indicated that their goal is for us to attain developed nation status by 2020.

"Please be aware that we have raised a bunch of politicians, the majority of which are only interested in the prestige and money without handling the responsibility.

We have let them get away with it for so long that it is WE who are to blame. We have been lazy in choosing representatives. We need to make the younger generation understand that voting is essentially hiring a group of SERVANTS to run the country.

Prime Minister is not KING. He is HEAD SERVANT.

When the politicians understand that, we may actually have a stab at building a "developed country".

/mike/"

and this is what I wrote in response (I have been thinking on this for a while)

In any democracy , it is the RESPONSIBILITY of the electorate to:

1) Educate themselves abouthte issues

2) Debate in a REASONED manner

3) Decide based on REASON who we are going to put to run the country the way we want them to

4) Hold them to certain standards, and

5) REMOVE them if they do not uphold the standards we set

Unfortunately we have not got 1 or 2, and hence the rest simply cannot follow.

What we have is a mass of people who consistently look for a paternalistic government to “give them this and that” and “take care of them” – totally missing the point that the Government has NOTHING to give. It is OUR patrimony, and we determine who we put as TRUSTEE of the national assets. It is not for Manning or Panday or Dookeran or any one of them to give us anything. It is already ours.

We have grossly abdicated our responsibility as citizens. We have handed over our assets, without any checking on who is managing it and what they intend to do with it. WHenn they unilaterally change the terms of the contract under which we allow them to manage our stuff, we do not complain (Draft constitution anyone? Systematic ignoring of Parliament? Defacto passing of laws by Cabinet instead of Parliament? Postponing of local government elections illegally for 2 years? – the 1 year postponement was legal, the extension wasn’t .)

If we allow people to push the line, the line goes further and further each time. We do not stand up and say – this is enough, we don’t like what you are doing.

Of course, they ALL do the same thing, and now people see Government as being a big bran tub, so anyone going into politics, I tend to assume (until they show me otherwise) that they only going to get their chance to dip.

The only solution to this is rational debate and discussion by the population, but with the total lack of literacy and critical thought that exists in this nation - I have serious doubts that this will happen.

For example – the last generation of thinkers are dying out. Who is there to take the place of Lloyd Best in the national discourse? We have stopped creating the intellectual class, who are so necessary to debate and create these ideas.

UWI is hugely responsible – it has been a training college and not a UNIVERSITY. UWI no longer teaches people to think, to exercise intellectual curiosity, and mental honesty. It teaches people to pass the exams, get the paper and get a wuk.

Getting a wuk is not conducive to development or national wealth building.

And as to how it encompasses computers – ICT is vital for development, but it needs to be understood and deployed in a sensible and rational manner by people who UNDERSTAND. If we cannot manage basic literacy for a large proportion of the population, imagine the level of technical illiteracy.

There are many people I encounter who STILL look at a computer as if it were a strange and wonderful thing dropped from the heavens by a beneficial god.

So – when Dookeran says things like – we will give the people 100,000 computers – they are more likely to go - OOOH! How wonderful. And not to think about the HOW, the WHY , the OUTCOMES of such a move. And then say – that’s crap because 1,2,3 or – that could work because a,b,c…

We ignore the BECAUSE. We make statements with no reference to fact or logic to distract from the beauty of the words forming the argument, the malapropisms, the sheer joy of hearing one’s own voice (green verbs, mispronunciations, and all)

AND WE DO NOT CALL PEOPLE ON IT. Where is the back story, where are the facts on which you based this opinion? Are those “facts” even really facts, or are they more opinion, rumour and hearsay dressed up in beads and feathers like Carnival Tuesday and masquerading as “fact”?