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Would you take part in the proposed IrelandOffline BLACKOUT ?
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I'm in favour of the boycott...and i'll be telling all my contacts on the net not to expect my online presence and the reason for it and also anyone i know with a phone to join in....i'm sure everybody could do with an excuse not to spend money.
Well done! I had, in the early days suggested a boycott as a form of protest and so had some others.......but I can see now that there seems to be a broad concesus on the topic...so count me in
BTW Sky handles my telephone calls so they won't be too happy either....
I think all the retoric in the world will fall on deaf ears or be subterfuged by the slick PR types employed by the telecos however the accounts dept will set the alarm bells ringing on the loss of revenue and may make the bosses sit up and take notice!
the initial amount of people that voted is small, but by broadcasting the message by all means a very large amount of people can be made aware of it.....everyone has contacts, I dare say that even the 120 or so votes could generate a wide spread not only here in ireland but beyond. Now is the time for action, get this thing rolling.0 -
Hi angryuser,
We have to be realistic about this whole subject and ask ourselves some questions. How many internet users in Ireland ?
Far less than there should be, but I guess that's why we're here. As an aside and to possibly address what you're suggesting here, I will grant you that, unfortunately, IrelandOffline doesn't have all those users as members or even supporters; but that one of the less obvious effects of the IrelandOffline BLACKOUT would be in educating the general public and building membership. I didn't want to say this in public until I had gauged a reaction, but it has to be said that even if The BLACKOUT is for the most part a failure, it will draw interest and so traffic and so new members to the IrelandOffline website at the time. Even if we only draw the attention of a thousand people, we will have doubled the membership of IrelandOffline in just a few days. That's not to be sneezed at, as we do need numbers to further our cause. And of course that's a worst case scenario too - our ultimate aim is to educate and get the attention of: the public, the media, the telco's and the government.
How many votes for the boycott todate ? 120. How many 'Viewers' 1257. The percentage of viewers therefore who have voted 'yes' sofar is about 0.1% ? I appreciate that this idea is to be generated if possible to the media and ISP's and politicians, and in particular Eircom, but anybody can view this site and forum and see the same figures that I see ??
Actually it's 10% angryuser (the anger has upset your mathematical ability I'll wager!), which is a percentage not to be sneezed at. Obviously the figure isn't truly representative, since most Irish Internet users don't even *know* there's a problem, but that's pretty much the whole point. Yes, the number itself is on the low side (understatement of the year), but that's without publicising this to any great degree. This is a closed community to all intents and purposes, the only other people who know about this are the wider Boards.ie community who just happened to notice somebody's sigfile. When it comes to the crunch, popularising the BLACKOUT itself, we have many methods of propogation available to us, including the media, email, and of course the Internet itself.
Surely if we are to proceed we need much larger figures than those above ? Failing that , surely we will be doing ourselves more harm than good ? 120 web sites lets face it is miniscule even in the Irish context, but on an international basis it must be so small as to be irrelevant ? If it is to succeed, even minimally it must have very many more than 120 backers
First of all, it's not 120 websites or 120 backers. For a start, there are and will always be "the silent majority". Ok, it may not be a majority by any manner of means, but there are always people in the background paying attention but not actually taking part (mailing list have proved that this figure works out to 90-95%, and often higher). As to 120 websites, well, not everyone has a website, but not everyone here has just the one either. I control dozens of them, as do a couple of other on the boards. On top of that, we will be contacting the hosting companies to ask for their support, and we will be asking them to discuss this with their clients. The trick is in doing this the right way, as we don't want to be viewed as spammers. Which brings me neatly into your next comments...
and as has been suggested elsewhere the power of email MUST be used. An email should surely be sent to EVERY TD, especially the opposition, EVERY member of the Senate and MEP's, every principle of every college and educational establishment in the Country, every member of the SFA and IBEC, every newspaper (including regional and local) and magazine in the Country. PCLive and its 'sister' Computerscope. Plus many more others, that no doubt other contributors can think of ? This would not be regarded as Spam as we are making an appeal, not trying to flog somebody some useless thing they don't want. I am not trying to throw 'cold water' but trying to be completely objective and realistic. The biggest danger we face is to do harm to ourselves and ruin all that that has been achieved so far. We need to 'stand back' and take a cold view of everything said and everything proposed, and look even harder at the figures above ? This could turn into a 'make' or 'break' situation ??
Absolutely, and as I've said myself, I don't want people to limit themselves to my suggestions. I'm preparing a list of suggestions for publication on the website, and they include using email to its maximum potential. But, and this is a very big but, there is a very big risk of putting out foot in it. Email must be used responsibly, and there's a fine line between tons of email looking for support and Unsolicited Bulk Email. Good cause or no, there will be people put there that will be annoyed if they receive a ton of email about this, so it has to be managed. As an example, if everyone email the Taoiseach's email address with the first thoughts that come into their head, I can guarantee that a lot of them will be binned by the second line. If it's organised though, either a form letter produced by IrelandOffline and signed individually; or a well-thought-out opinion of the state of comms in Ireland, it stands a much better chance of being considered. To that end, as I said, I will be preparing a list of recommendations on how to approach this, and we will also prepare a form letter for those who don't have the time. So ultimately I'm saying yes, using email is a great idea, and we will use it, but we want to encourage people to use it correctly.
The other thing that worries me is the complete lack of interest shown by the SFA and IBEC, as already stated by 'Bard'. Surely these are the very people we need 'onboard' ??
Very much so. I don't know what the status is here to be honest, but I'll look into it. In the meantime, are you a small firm, or do you represent one? Well, how about firing together a nice, polite email asking them to support IrelandOffline?
adam0 -
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Right... as I'm the "web site manager" type person on the IOFFL committee... I guess I'll kludge a page together for it and see what you think.
Cool. I'm doing some content for the "support site", and we can either work on the actual site together or individually or whatever. I don't care as long as it actually gets done.
There's a section in the properties of every virtual directory or site within IIS where you can choose custom HTML pages for the server to serve in the case of standard errors (404, 550, etc.) - that's easily changeable - IF you have direct or remote control access to the server.
What about .htaccess style? (htaccess files are small wee files you stick in a directory to modify the server config in that area of the site. Availability is dependant on the master config.)
I don't know what you mean exactly by mod_rewrite.
mod_rewrite is an Apache module that allows you to rewrite URL's on-the-fly. Most advanced Apache admins would use them as a matter of course. It's better in some ways than using ErrorDocument's because an error will often result in a default error page in MSIE. Rewritten URL's won't though.
adam0 -
Originally posted by kendragon
I'm just looking at the amount of people who voted on this poll, its a 156 as i write this. Thats seems to be a small portion of the members of Irelandoffline. I seem to remember the membership exceeding 2000 people a while back, or am i getting confused with something else. (not much sleep last night)
What happend to all the rest of the members?
The actual membership is just over 1,000, but they certainly don't all use the Boards.ie forums. As far as I'm aware, the total number of users on the IrelandOFFLine forum on Boards.ie is somewhere between 300 and 350. Getting 156 people (SO FAR) out of about 300 to vote on one topic isn't all that bad - but yes, you're right- more people need to be made aware... hence further upcoming publicity being needed and the need to work on a few web pages, etc. about it.
We need more support here guys, if were to make any impact.
Too right.
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dahamsta... I don't know if such a module exists in IIS... remember, a lot of web site owners/designers (me, for example) wont actually have access to their IIS configuration, and a lot of hosting companies won't make such changes for them.
I suggest a simple zero-second redirect with a text link on web pages that support the Blackout.
I'll work with you on the support site - no probs there. The Blackout is your baby ... so to speak (
) - Content can be all yours (with committee input presumably)... I'd just like to still have my hand in doing the design...
Cheers,0 -
dahamsta... I don't know if such a module exists in IIS... remember, a lot of web site owners/designers (me, for example) wont actually have access to their IIS configuration, and a lot of hosting companies won't make such changes for them.
True, although some sysadmins and hostmasters will hopefully be backing the BLACKOUT and will be helpful. For example, I'll be taking my entire US machine, which mostly has ieWebs sites and portals on it, down for the weekend, and that'll take me all of a minutes work to do. For my UK machine, it's not so clear cut, but I'll be doing it from the master config file, with mod_rewrite rules; again, a minute or two's work.
I suggest a simple zero-second redirect with a text link on web pages that support the Blackout.
Although that can of course be an option, I wouldn't suggest using that as the default. I dislike autmatic redirects intensely for the most part, it takes power out of the hands of the individual, and it implies that "we know better". Let them make the choice to view more information themselves, eh?
I'll work with you on the support site - no probs there. The Blackout is your baby ... so to speak ( ) - Content can be all yours (with committee input presumably)... I'd just like to still have my hand in doing the design...
Okay. Once again, can you split this off into a new topic, say "The IrelandOffline BLACKOUT website"?
Ta,
adam0 -
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Thanks Adam. It was a little embarrassing to find that I had typed 0.1% in stead of 10% !! (to say the least)
Just to respond to some of your points. We must at all costs avoid being seen as just a 2 bit organisation with no 'clout' ?
The only answer to this is numbers. surely. ? Those whom we are trying to influence are people who respect numbers. We need a 100% turnout of our total membership. Not 120 !! 2000 is a heck of a lot more impressive than 120 !! If we don't get a large % of those 2000 in at the end, then its likely to be a failure ?
On the question of the use of Email, I admit to being a little misleading in what I wrote. I did not mean, "everybody" to write an email to all those recipients, just the committee, attaching perhaps a list of the members. ? Only the committee could really handle such an important and sensitive email as that, and the receipt by anyone of 100's of email's would be very annoying and would, apart from being 'binned' get us a bad name anyway.
"It will draw interest and so traffic and so new members"
Should we not perhaps be doing this, as a 1st priority, before we undertake the blackout ??
"The silent majority, or people in the background paying attention"
I think we are grasping at straws here. ? A silent majority is no good to us at all. We need a vocal majority, with the silent minority in the background !!
The SFA and IBEC. Yes, I run some small companies, as well as having clients in the practise, so a letter to both organisations will be sent this week. But I really do feel we need to do some lobbying of these important organisations, on a larger scale ??0 -
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Thanks Adam. It was a little embarrassing to find that I had typed 0.1% in stead of 10% !! (to say the least)
Don't worry about it, we've all made silly mistakes like that. I continually expand the acronym "WAN" into "Wireless Area Network" for some stupid reason I still can't fathom.
We must at all costs avoid being seen as just a 2 bit organisation with no 'clout' ?
At all costs? This is going to sound patronising, but what the hell, you're intelligent, I reckon you'll get what I'm trying to say...
What if, for some strange reason, the cost to the IrelandOffline organisation was devastation, but the gain to the consumer was unmetered access to the Internet, or DSL at an affordable price? Ok, so I'm stretching the imagination here, but I'm also making a general point by doing that - overstatements are a bad idea. Sure, we can project, imagine and hope, but we also have to be realistic, and we have to take risks. We took a risk with the seminar, and some people said it would be a joke, that it wouldn't draw any media attention.
But it did - not as much as we would have liked, but it was a good (very good to my mind) first step. This is the second, public, visible step we're going to take. We'll think about it before we do. We'll weigh the risks and balance them against the gains, and if the gains are higher, we'll go ahead and do it. And if the costs are higher, we'll bin it, but not "at all costs". There will always be costs, and you will always have to take risks.
The only answer to this is numbers. surely. ? Those whom we are trying to influence are people who respect numbers. We need a 100% turnout of our total membership. Not 120 !! 2000 is a heck of a lot more impressive than 120 !! If we don't get a large % of those 2000 in at the end, then its likely to be a failure ?
This is going to sound just as patronising as the last section, but I'm trying to inject a sense of realism here. As I've learned from time on mailing lists and forums, people tend to believe what they read, and overstatements quite often have the opposite affect to that intended. So sure, we need as many people as possible, we should have 100% turnout, but let's be straight with each other here - that's not going to happen, is it? There's no such thing as 100% in this kind of situation. You have doubters and you have lazy people, and no matter how good the reasons you give them to get involved, they simply won't.
So what do you think is a large percentage? Me, I'd be absolutely delighted to get 90%, but I'd be chuffed to get 75%, and I'd be happy to get 50%. But, and let me be crystal clear about this, it's an even smaller percentage of that 50% I would be concerned with, the hardcore. It's the hardcore that will spread the message to the people that aren't in the organisation. As we build up to the actual protest, they'll get more excited and they'll tell their friends. And we hope that they'll tell their friends, and so on, and so on.
So yes, we're trying to get media coverage, and the attention of the telco's and the politicians, and we need as many people as possible to do that. But we're also trying to educate people, using something called "viral marketing", or to use a more common description, "word of mouth". If we can achieve one of those objectives, I believe we'll have succeeded. If we can achieve both, well, I for one will be expecting a few pints at the end of it.
On the question of the use of Email, I admit to being a little misleading in what I wrote. I did not mean, "everybody" to write an email to all those recipients, just the committee, attaching perhaps a list of the members. ? Only the committee could really handle such an important and sensitive email as that, and the receipt by anyone of 100's of email's would be very annoying and would, apart from being 'binned' get us a bad name anyway.
Ok, now I'm really going to come across as the bad guy, because I have to disagree with you again. I wasn't saying people shouldn't email their TD's, and MEP's, and other people of importance, because it's my view that they should. The problems in the telecommunications industry have, for the most part, been caused by shoddy politics, and the only way to fix those problems properly, is politically. And we all know that the only way to get the attention of politicians is to stand in front of them until they take notice of you.
So, if I get a consensus from the committee, I will be encouraging people to use email as a tool in the protest. BUT, and this is a very big and important but, and the point I was trying to make in my previous post, it needs to be used responsibly. Any abuse of email will be disruptive to government and the organisations involved, and that will inevitably be detrimental to IrelandOffline. So there will be guidelines, form letters and tools made available to control that.
On the topic of the IrelandOffline committee, I also need to make a point: Ten (is it ten?) emails from ten self-important but ultimately inconsequential people (no offense to my peers, but you know what I mean), representing an organisation that for the most part is unheard of, will achieve very little, if anything at all. Imagine the scene: "Martin Harran? Never heard of 'im. Elena Kehoe? Nah. Adam Beecher? Who?" And they won't have heard of you either, I'm guessing. But government is duty bound to read our emails. They have to, it's the way it works. So if they get hundreds of emails, sure, they'll throw out the rants and the profanities and the utter loonies, but they will have to read some of them.
And it's most likely that it will be intelligent commentary and reasoned anger that they'll read, so it's your duty - and mine, and everyone else's - to make sure that any email is logical, and reasoned, and well-thought-out. And we'll help you to do that if needs be.
"It will draw interest and so traffic and so new members"
Should we not perhaps be doing this, as a 1st priority, before we undertake the blackout ??
First of all, although I admit I did set a date, it was only a suggestion, a projected scenario. We don't have a whole lot of time to play with here, and to be honest I'm still concerned that the day in question, the Friday, is the day before a Holiday Weekend, and that will burden us with the risk of losing small businesses that need to get work done before the long weekend. So we're going to have to discuss this between ourselves before we actually decide on a date, and nothing is set in stone yet. I hope we'll have a final decision for you soon.
Bearing that in mind, the question still has to be asked: When is the right time? 1250 members? (We might have that already, I don't know.) 1500? 3000? How long do we wait? The problem here is that, oddly enough, the situation is in fact progressing. The Regulator seems to be growing teeth. The court case on LLU is being held this month. Local loops are being requested. DSL is on the cards. So our original aim of initiating the process is now in effect, and we have to morph our goals more towards acceleration; we need to expedite the process.
And that means we don't have a hell of a lot of time. If we delay too long, we won't have anything to protest about. Or more accurately, we won't have anything of substance to the consumer to protest about, because you have to remember that the only way to solve this in the long term is with legislation, otherwise it's going to happen all over again, just in a different way. However if we protest soon, we stand a better chance of getting the support of consumers and small businesses, and of making it happen even faster, and better.
"The silent majority, or people in the background paying attention"
I think we are grasping at straws here. ? A silent majority is no good to us at all. We need a vocal majority, with the silent minority in the background
Nah, I don't necessarily agree with that. Ireland is a nation of people who for the most part take what they're given without complaint. Only a small proportion of the population, and so a small proportion of groups like this, actually stand up and make their voices heard. That small proportion tends to be fairly loud and dramatic though, they can get attention. And if we (I'm lumping myself into that category, as anyone who's ever met me will testify) can get the implicit support of a lot of those silent people, as registered supporters for example, we'll make damn sure those who are listening to us will know about it.
Look at our current situation as an example. Out of the thousand-odd registered supporters of Ireland, only a hundred or so come on Boards.ie and express their opinions. Only ten or fifteen organised the Seminar, and only a few hundred turned up. But boy did we make our feelings known. What I'm saying is that there's power in just the existance of implicit supporters, and the silent majority do have voices. It's just not their own voices.
The SFA and IBEC. Yes, I run some small companies, as well as having clients in the practise, so a letter to both organisations will be sent this week.
Good, well you're a better man than me if you do, because I haven't done that yet. I will though, I will...
But I really do feel we need to do some lobbying of these important organisations, on a larger scale ??
I don't know what the status is with IBEC and the SFA (Sweet Fanny Adams?), but I can say that there is political lobbying going on in the background, including a little of my own. We can't reveal details of this for obvious reasons, but when we can, we will, and the details of dealings with organisations like IBEC and the SFA will be revealed as well, I have no doubt. On this matter though, you're just going to have to trust us, ok?
adam0 -
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