From the Irish Times breaking news:
EU and US officials reached a deal today on the transfer to the United States of private data on transatlantic air passengers for use in the fight against terrorism, an EU spokesman said.
Interesting. It now has to be approved by the 27 member states. I look forward to reading the details of this ‘deal’. Why the quotes? I’m betting that ‘deal’ is not what it is - more likely dictat from the US officials - sign it or ground your planes. And I’m also betting that I won’t like what I read.
Well I’ve built my new PC. Core2Duo, 8800GTS, 2Gb, 2*750Gb on RAID1 all in a full tower Thermaltake Armor case. It’s a beauty 
I made the decision long ago to go FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) when I finally got around to this build. And I have. Ubuntu 7 Feisty Fawn is the only OS on it. It was ridiculously easy to install. Everything worked first time. Of course I need to install the video drivers - but Alberto Milone’s Envy made it easy. And that was it. Fully installed Operating system that is so much faster than anything Microsoft have provided. Full productivity suite and various software installed by default. And any other software I want it available with a simple terminal command or if you want the slow way through the Synaptic GUI. And all free!
Then on to the hard stuff. I’m a gamer. But all games are Windows games right? Nope. Unreal Tournament has a Linux port - it’s on the DVD. So that one was easy. World of Warcraft is the other one I play at the moment. Now that one’s Windows only. WINE to the rescue. Installed Wine with apt-get and installed WoW inside it. Took about 10 minutes to get it installed. Then the acid test - patches. Kicked off Wow - patches downloaded and installed automatically - no problem. And getting a framerate of 60-70 in game so Wine not causing any problems there either. Happy days.
Then the other stuff I needed. Cisco VPN was a bit of a problem. I need it for work but the current version is not directly compatible with the current Kernel. A little googling and I found a patch and step by step instructions to get it working. Wasn’t too hard - just took a little research. And that’s it - machine with a whole new OS (to me) working perfectly. Now I just need to learn how to do everything in the terminal. You can use the GUI for a lot of stuff but where’s the fun in that 
So I’m Microsoft free at last. No requirement for proprietary software anymore. And the performance increase is high using software that doesn’t feel the need to give you value for money by including crap you never will need. I’m happy anyway.
Well two winners actually. Firstly it’s been a while - I’ve been lazy - so sue me :p
Common sense - and the law - won out in the case mentioned below. The High Court not only granted that Miss D had a right to travel without asking permission they castigated the HSE for their actions. Good to see that some sense prevails in our justice system.
And the second winner is …. Fianna Fail … again! Bertie’s back in it seems with the support of the Green Party. I emailed the Greens weeks before the election. I’ve been a Green voter all my voting life yet I wasn’t voting for them this year. Why? Because they said that they would consider coalition with Fianna Fail. That’s a bridge too far for me. I got an email back from Trevor Sargeant himself saying:
If you are seriously interested in change to benefit Ireland as the Green Party is, then ruling out Fianna Fail weakens the leverage the Green Party will have in forming an effective government with Fine Gael and Labour. I share your view that Fianna Fail needs to be put out of office and I believe that most people in the Green Party would see this as a preferable option. The Green Party has decided, however, to be independent of any pre-election arrangement and this is ensure that the voters have a clear choice between green policies and non-green policies, given that the policies of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, in that both depend on corporate sponsorship, are not hugely different if examined closely.
Is he right? Not in my opinion. I’d rather see FF returned with out them truth be told. Trevor menions corporate sponsorship - that’s one of the bugbears they let FF keep in the cage. Banning corporate sponsorship is off the table. What else have the Green’s been adamant on? M3 through Tara … they’ve conceded that. Private hospitals on public land … they’ve conceded that. US troops using Shannon … they’ve conceded that. These were the main policies of this party. And a dog on the street could have told you that there was no way Bertie would concede on them.
And what did we get in return? A climate change commission. A taxation commission. An electoral reform commission. New building standards. Accelerate growth in renewable energy. A carbon tax. Let’s look at these. Carbon tax is an EU directive - it’s happening anyway with or without the Greens. Renewable energy growth? The ESB are at it already - it cheap and they can charge at least the same price for it - why wouldn’t they? And the rest - there’s a lot of commisions there - whoop-dee-doo. More tax money spent on hot air (and that hot air isn’t even captured to power houses).
And for some reason the PD’s still have a pull with Bertie. Harney was offered Foreign Affairs instead of Health. This was one of the conditions of the Greens. She turned it down outright and she’s won. What the hell? My maths is pretty good. 78 (FF) + 6 (GP) = 84 which is a majority. Add the mercenaries … sorry Independants … like Lowry, Healy-Rae, Flynn, McGrath - and the 2 remaining Progressive Dictators aren’t even needed - but Harney is still getting Health? For fricks sake guys - the HSE hate her, the nurses went on strike under her, the consultants won’t talk to her, and she’s giving public land to corporate health care! Plus the fact that her party lost 75% of it’s seats - including the party leader! There’s a message there somewhere. Nobody wants them Bertie! If she said no to Foreign Affairs then show her where the stagecoach is and get her out of town. She has no pull - you don’t need her. Or do you? Does she know something? Something that hasn’t hit a tribunal yet? I can’t think of another reason why a decimated party can hold such sway over a Teflon Taoiseach.