ireland

Buzz Out Loud 925: Go Team Rush 27

We get tricked into supporting Robot teams we don't know anything about, plus we talk about Pluto's pimps, also known as the Illinois Assembly. And speaking of pimps, Cook County Sheriff's are trying to get Craigslist to stop helping prostitutes. Thank goodness Veronica was here to set them straight.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 925

Sheriff files lawsuit over Craigslist’s red-light district (Updated) http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/03/sheriff-sues-craigslist-over-mass-levels-of-prostitution.ars

Seattle paper may shift to online-only: reports http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2009/03/reuters_us_hearst_pi

Palm investor: Pre will trump … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 916: Fiber to the butt

Natali opens with some rage against Verizon Fios over a billing problem after she canceled the service. She feels somehow, well...Jason explains it best in the show. We also get a Molly rant over Ireland's new content filtering on the Internet and TechCrunch's reporting that Last.FM was giving data to the RIAA. Which it was not.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 916

Microsoft asks for severance back from laid off employees http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10169119-75.html

Workers ’stealing company data’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7902989.stm

Xbox Live denial … Read more

Dell's Ireland plant to shed 1,900 jobs

Dell announced Thursday that it is closing its manufacturing operation in Limerick, Ireland, and shifting production to its Polish plant and to third-party contractors.

The move will result in the loss of 1,900 jobs in a facility that employs 3,000 people.

Employees and unions in Ireland have long been expecting the decision, which is part of a $3 billion restructuring that Dell announced last year.

Dell said in a statement that the first Limerick employees would leave the company in April and the whole process of switching production will be completed by January 2010. Workers will receive a … Read more

Report: Facebook's international HQ will be in Dublin

As it expands across the globe, social network Facebook will establish its official international headquarters in the Irish capital of Dublin, the Irish Times reported Thursday. The announcement was made by Mary Coughlan, Ireland's minister for enterprise, trade, and employment, and the Times hinted that the company is already recruiting to build up a local workforce.

The Dublin office will be the center of Facebook's operations for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, from ad sales to technical support.

"After exploring various locations throughout the region, we decided Ireland was the best place to establish our new … Read more

Irish digital rights group criticizes top music labels

A digital rights group in Ireland condemned legal action taken by the major music labels against an Irish ISP.

Lobby group Digital Rights Ireland warned that attempts by the four largest music labels to hold ISPs accountable for copyright violations committed by users threatens privacy, and Ireland's reputation as an "Internet-friendly country," according to a story on Siliconrepublic.com.

"Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are intermediaries. They are not, in law, responsible for what Internet users do, any more than An Post is responsible for what individuals send in the mail," Digital Rights Ireland chairman, TJ … Read more

Ireland: Where wind power is king

DUBLIN, Ireland--It's easier here than in most industrialized nations to green the electrical grid.

Peak demand for electricity in the Republic of Ireland comes to about 5,000 megawatts, Graham Brennan, program manager for renewable-energy research and development at Sustainable Energy Ireland, the government's green-technology arm, said in an interview in SEI's Dublin offices. The peak occurred last December, at 4,907 megawatts.

Studies show that onshore and offshore wind turbines located in the republic could deliver approximately 5,000 megawatts of power over both parts of the island, he added. This figure takes into account only … Read more

Cooling chips with fluid...from the inside

CORK, Ireland--Researchers for years have devised cooling systems that sit next to or on top of chips and other hot components. Now, researchers in Ireland are trying to make one for inside these components.

The University of Limerick in Ireland, in conjunction with Cork's Tyndall Institute and other research organizations in the country, is working on a liquid cooling system for inside chip packages. Chip packages are those blue/brown plastic sleeves that surround semiconductors and let them plug into a board. When you look at a chip, you're really looking at the package.

In this system, a … Read more

Cleaning 400 years of dust from books

DUBLIN, Ireland--There isn't quite an inch of dust on top of Institutione Catholica, a two-volume theological set of books dating back a few centuries. But it looks close.

The entire top of the volumes is coated in a thick, brown mass. Some of the dust has formed into balls about the size of beetles. When a graduate student picks up one of the volumes, part of the frayed binding falls off. It will be glued back on later.

The Long Room in the Old Library at Dublin's Trinity College houses one of the most extensive collections of antique … Read more

When used servers cost more than new

GALWAY, Ireland--Think of the Multis Group as sort of the Antiques Roadshow of the server world.

The Galway, Ireland-based company specializes in refurbishing, and then selling, used servers. Refurbished PCs and servers are increasingly in vogue because remanufacturing represents a more environmentally efficient way to recycle old electronics than harvesting components from these old machines or melting them down for raw materials.

Multis, in fact, plans to open a 70,000-square-foot facility in Union City, Calif., later this month to refurbish and sell servers for North American customers. That marks a reversal in the usual U.S.-Ireland tech relationship. … Read more

Why blogging isn't big in Ireland

DUBLIN--Ireland might be one of Europe's more active technology hubs, but blogging still isn't big there.

That's the opinion of Tom Raftery, a longtime member of the tech community here and author of a blog on social media. (He's one of the bigger ones, and he starts his day by getting on Twitter.)

Part of the reason is that broadband penetration stinks. A survey published last June by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development pegged Ireland at No. 22 in terms of national broadband penetration by inhabitants, sandwiched between Italy and Portugal, but below the … Read more