[ILUG] [OT] The IrelandOffline Blackout

[Liam Bedford]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 12:14:30AM +0000, Ronan Waide came forth with:
> On November 7, analog at eircom.net said:
> > representative (though if it's not a pot-hole or a medical card, they're
> > not going to do much about it).
> 
> I'll reiterate a point I made to Adam Beecher in offlist mail earlier
> - despite all the trumpeting about Ireland being some sort of European
> Silicon Valley, the fact of the matter is that we're heavily dependant
> on non-technical and certainly non-internet-related industries. Thus
> when it comes to an election, the issues /are/ pot-holes, medical
> cards, compensation for foot & mouth, task forces to combat job
> losses, etc. Do you really think that, for example, the 100 people who
> lost their jobs in Waterford Wedgewood give a toss about what speed
> you can and can't connect to the Internet at? I suspect they'll be
> more worried about what they can and can't afford for dinner next
> month.
> 
Surely all the people from Nua, Ebeon, Rondomondo, and all the other
stupidly named and suprisingly badly run companies that have laid people off
might start to have a say too.

IIRC, the whole Eircom being spun off and booted up the ass by the
government was sped along when they refused to give MS 155M to their
Sandyford offices (probably just an Urban myth, but one I like), and MS said
"well, we only work in countries where we can have 155M to our offices". The
government is perfectly capable of getting things sorted when a large
company says "we're out of here, with grants etc".

If home users can get good, reasonably priced internet access, and small
companies (that might someday turn into bigger companies) can do so too,
surely that will improve the lot of the companies who want to employ highly
skilled generation X++'ers who haven't gone abroad to get what they want.

(Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can phrase my thought above correctly, but it
generally goes along the line of "not having good access means not having
experience, not getting to play with the latest high bandwidth net thingys,
and thus not being able to take those skills into the office". And I know
heanet provide feic loads of bandwidth to colleges. It's the people who
aren't in college I'm thinking of here. Or maybe that's part of the
government's diabolical plans to get everyone to go to 3rd level, so they
don't whine when they can't get good bandwidth to their homes).

(Anyone else hear Ian Dempsey discussing plans to make a film about Haughey
this morning.. argh)

L.
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