I quite like the one click scenario however it’s flawed in some respects that I can forward a newsletter to a friend as I often do and they’ll end up with my one click link

Today I found myself unsubscribing from the Dublin City Enterprise Board emails … I think I’d been at an event a while back so they signed me up as a result.

Firstly I was required to login … really don’t remember setting up an account but anyways I found their Reminder Sent notification quite funny

Once I was all logged in I’m hit with more strangeness usually I like to tick to opt in to emails … not tick to opt out

Also receive I before E except after C … *sighs*

I’ve been lying here in bed for the last hour or two unable to sleep as I do from time to time and my mind inevitably wanders to the news and what’s happening at the moment and I start thinking about the whole Stop SOPA Ireland thing.

I laugh a little to myself and start to wonder

How many people actually know what it’s all about?

• How many people are speaking out against SOPA Ireland cus they are afraid they won’t be able to download their favourite TV show?
• How many are having their voice heard that they don’t want to be bullied by the big corporations?
• How many are true advocates of freedom of speech?

I grew up with transition from Records and Tapes over to CDs so yes I’m not actually that old or if you’re the generation that doesn’t know what a tape is then maybe I am that old. At the time we bought a new HiFi system our old record player had finally packed it in and we went down shop street to O’Connors in Galway. It was a time when shop street wasn’t pedestrianised so just a few years back. We heard the sound quality from one of the demo CDs and it was a little bit of a wow moment for me. Not necessarily one that I’ll take to my grave just a this is cool moment. The selection of available CDs was truly terrible I could have probably counted them on one hand. They were mostly classical music CDs and £20 or maybe even a bit more. HUGE price difference there on the cost of a Tape which would have been around £8. I actually didn’t start to get into music until the mid 90s so my figures may be off here. One thing to note however was the huge price difference. I remember at the time being told ah it was because of the production costs of the CDs that they were so pricey. Tapes started to be phased out over the next few years but the prices of CDs didn’t really drop that much especially on new releases.

The mid to late 90s saw me come across digital music for the first time. From the time of downloading sound bites from TV shows in wav format to the coming on stream of the first MP3 players. It was pretty ground breaking stuff. I was quite possibly the first one to have an MP3 player amongst my friends a Diamond Rio rather shiny little device with a MASSIVE 32MBs of space. If I tweaked the settings when I was converting tracks I could nearly fit a whole album on there That was in let me think maybe 97? I’m not exactly sure when the first commercial MP3 track was sold but it wasn’t around this time. Meanwhile CDs have stabilized at around 15 or 16€ in price. Factor in distribution costs and so on and fair enough. The end artist still probably only gets 5% or something if that ( source of comments like that from friends who produced music in the early 90s). Flash forward 5 or 6 years and after countless court cases to do with the illegal distribution of music and we’re coming to the iTunes Store. The iPod being an insanely cool device is helping leap portable music years forward. We’re finally able to get music online in a relatively sane way. Though at a price.

Looking today at the price of downloading an album on iTunes I’m seeing a price tag of 9.99€ for the new Lana Del Rey album. Individual tracks are what €1.29. Interesting and I don’t have to go to a store you say. NICE .. of course you’re always going to have the people with a need to buy CDs or a physical collection but I’d guess that number if dwindling. I’m not currently sure but the amount of people I know who have Discman’s or whatever other type of physical media player is relatively low. They have MP3 players left right and center and in general it’s the iPod or their mobile phone. YET in the Irish medai we seem to be getting quoted figures about dwindling CD sales? wow … do ya think? !!!

My wife for example used purchase a HUGE amount of CDs, I’ve a relatively small collection in comparison. I’m currently not sure when she last purchased a CD. I know we received a present the other day for our daughter of an instrumental Coldplay greatest hits collection and my immediate thought goes to aw that’s so cool I must rip that so we can actually use it. My wife when we were in Spain started to listen to Spotify for new and old music the pain of switching CDs starts to get to be a bit much after a while. Initially she was using the ad fueled version but has since upgraded to the basic offering. One year now and I’m not sure if she has bought a CD in that time. We’re both working from home so generally at a computer most of the time so why would you need to buy a CD. Hang on given the subscription price on Spotify why would you need to go to iTunes to buy an album? Just listen away to your hearts content. Yet the major record labels / associations are still obsessed with falling CD sales and what they are flagging as piracy. My wife can’t be the only one feeling this way. Hang on I’m on iTunes and I don’t want the whole album why would I buy it when I can just grab that track I heard on the radio.

The other day I saw it announced that Spotify now has 3 million paid subscribers? That’s a hell of a lot of lost CD sales They’ve got another 12 million non paying customers who are using the ad fueled version. This is pretty amazing a company that is moving with the times and giving people what they want.

In the early 90s I had a problem getting my hands on computer games the stores around Galway didn’t really stock much and the price was insane … 3 years after the release of a title it’d still be on the shelf at the day one price. I think at the time a lot of “demos” passed hands alternatives were to buy from the UK and I could end up getting hit with UK customs and also had to go through the hassle of sterling bank drafts and so on. BUT the gaming industry took note or at least one company did Steam. They made it so easy for me to buy a game and download it that it’s too much hassle to go pirate one. These days I see a sale on steam and I even end up buying games I don’t really want but think that’d be cool to have at some stage. In store most shops I’ve been to tend not to stock a great selection of PC games and again they sometimes suffer from this day one pricing.

So could the music industry please take note and in the words of a great man “For the times they are a changing”.

But my rant is going strange places

I have to admit I don’t fully understand the SOPA Ireland thing. I’ve read through some of it and it all seems a bit mad Ted. Giving over a lot of power to the music industry to have certain sites shut down seems to be the gist of it maybe someone will write a very simple bullet point of the whole thing for me at some stage?

As I see it there was a legal case brought against UPC by EMI to block a music sharing site from being able to be used through their service.

An example that was cited was that Aslan had 22,000 tracks downloaded. I’m not exactly sure where and how they came up with this figure. A search online came across someone refuting this figure basing their calculations on the number of seeders / leechers and so on and that figure came well below the mark.

Converting 22,000 tracks into album sales 10 tracks in an album we’d have 2,200 albums. Give it a nice round figure of 10 Euro for a CD and we’re back up to €22,000 euro that that would convert into in sales. What would an artist see of that 5 – 10% maybe? I’ve no idea of the exact figure they’d have gotten from it tbh but having spoken to a few artists in the past album sales were nothing to them it was all about the touring. Let us say that’s 10% of €22,000 and we’re back down to 2,200 and there are 5 members? (someone correct me) in the band so that’s less than 500 quid each. Work in the legal fees if the band wanted to go after it all and yeah that doesn’t seem worth it. I wonder how many of those albums that were pirated would have been an actual album sale? No idea to be honest but I’d guess not the full 2,200 albums or singles or whatever. The band would have maybe picked up extra ticket sales from any gigs they’d be doing. But hang on that sounds like me trying to justify piracy which I’m not here.

Flash forward to today and they want the music industry bodies to have more control on things ok. They are saying that don’t be ridiculous they couldn’t shut down the likes of Google / YouTube and people are talking through their asses. Are they though?

I head on over to SoundCloud lets do a search for Aslan http://soundcloud.com/search?q[fulltext]=OfficialAslan ooh and I see a few tracks there NICE and I can play them for free. Lets take a look at this system for a minute. I’m a web designer / developer and one of the tools I use is FireBug. http://getfirebug.com/ FireBug does some rather cool stuff for debugging webpages and seeing how things work. In the course of using it I started looking into best practices in optimizing websites. Fair enough I may not always implement them BUT that’s another story entirely time and money factor heavily in decisions like that. Anyways I digress …

I click the little inspect element button. Click the Net tab and enable it and I reload my sound cloud page

Oooh jibberish for most people but to me I see file size .. load time and funnily I look at where the files are being pulled from.

I click play on Aslan – Crazy World in there ( This file has been uploaded by OfficialAslan so I take it that’s really them? )

Back in my firebug net monitoring window and I’m seeing it loading up a 3.6MB file. I wonder what that could be.

Lets right click on that and open it up in a new window

Hang on why is this starting to play music in my other window http://ak-media.soundcloud.com/ [ link withheld by me I don't want to be accused of anything ].mp3 <– what on earth is that? This is on the soundcloud site and they are linking into MP3s ???

So we’re being assured that the likes of Google / YouTube won’t be shut down by this new SOPA law???

What about the likes of SoundCloud? it seems to be distributing music is … is this legal???

Lets head on over to the Guardian where I saw the new Paul McCartney album is available to play online.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/jan/30/paul-mccartney-kisses-on-bottom-stream?CMP=twt_gu
Let me check … turn on network monitoring once again and .. erm .. HANG ON .. what’s that 3MB file that has a GET request in there hmm.

BUT BUT this new SOPA law is only about illegal file sharing isn’t it and torrents are evil. Hang on no torrents aren’t evil though they may provide links to copyright material I think I’ve just proved that the Guardian and SoundCloud are both linking to copyright material as well.

Hang on lets investigate further …

Lets head on over to myspace.com they can’t be doing anything like this.

Ah there we are http://www.myspace.com/aslanireland again I’ll assume it’s an official page as well lots of bands have them don’t they?

http://www.myspace.com/aslanireland

Now surely they can’t be linking to files on there let’s click play on one of the songs …
OK they’ve disabled the little download icon in their player there PHEW

OK quick check and it seems that they are streaming the music .. I could be wrong though I’ve just had a quick check.

SO before you go an say things like we won’t be shutting down websites like google or so on can we please have an investigation into the whole thing properly and not go passing over power to the record labels. The internet has changed a lot of things and and I feel certain industries aren’t moving with the times.

People are impatient and they want things now. A show that airs in the US why hasn’t the show aired here yet? (Though I think the divide on this may be changing slightly with things airing in both the US and EU at the same ish time though I could be wrong). If a movie or TV show is 1000MBs in size and you’re on a 20Mbit line that takes somewhere around 500 seconds ( 8+ minutes ) to download vrs. waiting a few weeks to see your favourite show.

I guess however with the introduction of NetFlix in Ireland now things will change slightly though no hang on most of the shows I want aren’t available on the NetFlix Ireland account yet … but they are available on the US version… what to do what to do…

The whole thing needs to be revisited. Obviously if piracy is happening it’s happening for a reason it’s my belief that people are inherently good if you give them a simple effective means to do something they will. You’ll never rid the world of piracy / crime altogether but …

Distribution models / Pricing models need to be investigated companies need to move with the times or you end up in situation similar to the one Kodak finds itself in.

Found it over on http://whiteappleer.tw/2011/09/25/steve-jobs-stay-hungry-stay-foolish-the-whole-earth-catalog/.

RIP Steve

My Wallpaper for the day that’s in it shall be

Yesterday LinkedIn pissed me off I found out via someone on Google Plus that my photo could be used in advertising on there?

Click to enlarge

Hang on when did I agree to that?

LinkedIn may sometimes pair an advertiser’s message with social content from LinkedIn’s network in order to make the ad more relevant. When LinkedIn members recommend people and services, follow companies, or take other actions, their name/photo may show up in related ads shown to you. Conversely, when you take these actions on LinkedIn, your name/photo may show up in related ads shown to LinkedIn members. By providing social context, we make it easy for our members to learn about products and services that the LinkedIn network is interacting with.

Ways to piss me off … lesson 1 sign me up to something and make like I agree with random advertising I’ve no control of.

NOT COOL LinkedIn

So yet another reason I don’t much see a use for LinkedIn though I’ve probably originally agreed to LinkedIn’s terms and conditions this is just wrong.

I give you my little friend and the first picture.

Today was the second echographie and I just can’t describe the high I’m feeling and on right now

152 beats per minute is the most amazing music I’ve ever heard in my life.

38.11mm foot wonder what that is in UK size ?

You can use the hash tag #slavesIE / #slaveIE and you’ll appear on the site. Obviously though like all hash tags that are on those twitter widgets it’s potentially open to abuse.

While maybe not abuse of the hash tag a company and an internship was called into question. Personally (I know I probably keep using that term but my opinions expressed are my own and I want to make that clear) for me the job didn’t strike me as abuse of the system. A company may end up with negative rep from a few people as well. If I were involved in video production in any way and in need of a job it would have been the kind of job I’d have jumped at. I pretty much immediately made this clear on twitter. Assuming of course I’m working with people involved in video production who can mentor me this is a great opportunity. I’ve played with video in the past and it’s a complex area and I think not something I could just jump into. ( Hell I’ve been using PhotoShop for 10+ years and I’m learning new things every day )

I think I need to make some things clear.

• I support the idea of internships in companies.
• I support the idea of people being able to get active, learn something and be useful to a company
• I don’t support the idea of unpaid internships (by unpaid I mean non gov sanctioned) ( it creates elitism where the people who can afford it … yadda yadda … )
• I don’t support the idea of someone working in a role where they are earning a company a substantial amount of money this I feel is exploitation of the internship role.

A friend has just applied to an internship via the jobbridge scheme I believe for work in a non profit org. There’s no carrot dangling with a potential job at the end of it but you know what. She’s happy she knows what she’s getting into and well I honestly couldn’t be more delighted for her (well I could if she got a full time job but you know what I mean). I’m unsure just how much extra training she’ll get but yes there’ll be some benefits from working there for her.

Ooooohh … I hear you say but it’s for a charity this isn’t trying to create a job it’s just filling a vacancy that a non profit can’t fill. Yes I realise this. So be it. All people involved in slaves.ie have different views on things. I think there are benefits for her from this and so long as she can continue to apply for roles and potentially have time off for interviews its all cool.

So I’ve outlined some of my feelings above and well we ended up adding a disclaimer to the site before these tweets started happening

Disclaimer: This site aggregates and displays tweets using the hashtag “#slavesie OR #slaveIE “. We have no control nor accept any responsibility for the contents of tweets using the hashtag, nor do we have any editorial control over which tweets appear on this site.

So to sum up internships good. Abuse of the system bad! see some more views from people over on slaves.ie and I’d love to hear from any positive internships NOT from companies saying they are positive. I know it’s a two sides of the coin situation but lots of people taking on interns at the moment are complaining about the site but I’ve yet to see one intern say the site is stupid / the message is stupid.

An example from a job searcher on twitterand I’m really happy she found a job

Thanks

If you’ve looking for the kittens you can find them here http://www.flickr.com/photos/forbairt/sets/72157626554801016/

Warning this post contains fowl language …. DUCKS … GEESE … CHICKENS … it may also contain some foul language so depending on your views it may well be not safe to read any further.

Ended up launching slaves.ie this morning and I just can’t believe the response to it I must be honest. I thought it’d get a few ReTweets and a few negative/positive comments and that would be that. I’d hire an intern and live like a king on the money they earn me … erm hang on that’s what I’m complaining about. Why am I complaining about it? Cus you’re FUCKING over the Intern. Taking on an intern is about maybe giving a little back and figuring out if they are the right person for your organisation no? In my previous post Internship = Slavery 2.0 I probably said many of the same things. I was taken on as a placement student. I was paid a decent enough wage … and I was on my summer holidays in second year 11 weeks of a self found placement where I learned all about perl and revision control systems. I learned a hell of a lot … ended up getting a 3rd year project not mission critical stuff for the company but fun all the same. I ended up back on placement with them for 6 months in my 3rd year ( more of my previous 2nd year project and also embedded C++ error logging for a HDSL2 modem … at the time seriously .. WOW) and in my final year while they couldn’t actually think up a project for me they ended up offering me a full time job. Sweet … Dude!!!

Times have changed though and well there aren’t amazing jobs like that out there anymore. Unfortunately there is the whole internship thing doing the rounds and we’ve ended up with companies taking on skilled / semi skilled people and well not exactly giving that much back. There is the carrot held out before the interns eyes … oooh look a potential job at the end of it all. Yes folks … a potential job there’s no guarantee you’ll end up with one. You may end up putting your heart and soul into it and what will you end up with? Work experience and probably a hole in your pocket .. lunch / socialising with work mates (an integral part of any job I feel yes I mean heading for a few pints) / travel … rent for where you’re living and so on = OUCH!

BUT they are creating jobs so fair play to them. No … hang on they are not. Creating a job would mean paying a wage and they aren’t doing that are they?

So tax payer to the rescue I assume once again … if it’s not a bank bail out it’s funding someones business ( on this I’d probably agree I’d prefer to fund a business but that’s probably a rather naive take on things )

So we’re onto other arguments about potentially being able to create business with the intern and hence hire them afterwards .. hang on so you mean they are doing a normal job and bringing you in business? Ouch again a no no.

So what type of joys are we seeing

Receptionist (since removed from JobBridge graphic over on slaves.ie)
Pizza Chef – 9 Months making pizza? While I think training to be a chef is not something that happens overnight this is something people generally get 1 – 3 weeks training in. Unless of course I’m missing the point and there are extra layers of complexity I’m missing – I’ve had friends working in 4star / dominos )
Business Development Intern Vacancy (not advertised on JobBridge so don’t even qualify for the social welfare allowance? The comments you may find interesting)
I’ve also seen a shop assistant advertised hell head over to JobBridge.ie and see what you do and don’t agree with as being an internship am I completely wrong in my thoughts on it all?

but please don’t get me wrong I do think an internship can be a great place to learn and I’m most definitely not against them (I’ve semi been there in the past only I got paid) what I’m against is people being exploited in a normal wage paying position where on the job training is an expected part of every day life in most professions these days.

So Slaves.ie is born like it or hate it #SlavesIE it

Being the good natured / nosey bastard I am I decided to click on over and just try login for the hell of it. Please note I can’t remember my account details it’s a long time since I’ve using BOI or am not even sure if I’ve an online account.

Anyways I’ve no valid account numbers so decide what the hell I might as well click login and see if it’s causing an error and can let Ken know that yes it’s a general issue and not just one for him.

Hitting enter I get taken to

Erm why am I getting to this screen isn’t this rather basic … check if you’ve entered in details? Lets hit enter again. JS popup and I disable that and hey presto I get to

Telling me my login details are incorrect and I may have been locked out ? ERM WTF why am I allowed to get this far? Why am I being passed out dates I last logged in?

How much was spent on this system an Online Banking portal and I’m getting access to info I shouldn’t be. Sorry but if there are silly bugs like this in the login screen where it’s passing back some form of data then it REALLY DOES NOT instill any confidence. How much was spent on this and how were these basic things overlooked?

And I see the bosses picture in there underneath one of the items and I think to myself oh he +’d that it must be reliable.

So erm how long before Facebook or Microsoft issue a lawsuit over it being Anti Competitive I’m wondering?