I didn't even raise my hand because you are already asking me to do it. I would pose this question to Ibn but others may also answer. And I completely agree with you all that revolution has been made and delivered in terms of software, free software and that's a huge change. So this is not one versus the other but still to what extent the fact it has been mainstreamed and a lot of big businesses have taken it up has to do with the fact that the value has shifted from the software layer to the application layer. And therefore this has become a raw material to kind of take the dominances through the application layer and I would be more specific even using Ibn's word he said software was mathematics and science and then he gave more materiality to it by saying it is renewable resources rather than the stock, non-renewable resources. What is the chance that data would start to be thought of either science or mathematics already renewable resource because I think that's where the next frontier lies. I know it's a whole different lecture but if any point just can be given to this I would be great too. So I was trained as an historian and my work therefore intellectual was based on a series of judgments about the nature of human activity, how human society is produced which we've been building since the 17th century through various stages from Adam Smith to Karl Marx to Sigmund Freud all on the basis of what introspection could tell us about what human beings think and how they act we're about to have an enormous revolution in the social sciences based around what we call being data now which really just means that when you capture all the behavior of human beings the difference between the conscious and the unconscious the scientifically oriented and the politically oriented motives of human conduct fade away and you are left with the inferences you draw from the vast bulk of what human beings do what Sandy Pentland and MIT calls social physics So it is true as a statement about industry that the application layer which is really the user data layer is of the greatest value now We were in Bombay last week listening to various customers and commentators like ourselves at the Atomic Consultancy Services talk about FOSS and a gentleman who was a primary engineer at Flipkart spoke and he spoke at great length about the FOSS that is used by Flipkart and then at the end of the presentation he said well you know really the only IP of our business is our user data Which is your point with Neatland? We spent some time this morning we should not be talking to the architects and designers and I'm going to move to Kenny's extent about what is after all essentially the same question how is learning behavior to be captured in the world and how is that to be used to benefit learning without harming the individuality of students You're right I think that the data we collect is now a very important part and will be ultimately a predominant part of the science that I'm talking about which is why I ended my remarks where I did because I think the ability to use those skills is the most important accelerator of business development in the 21st century and might as well be here On the other side I don't think this is why FOSS has succeeded That is to say I think free software succeeded long before people really understood where that was going FOSS succeeded actually in my personal judgment if we're talking about all the GNU project that Mr. Stahlman inspired and the Linux kernel that Linus Torpol inspired FOSS succeeded for a pure business reason Fragmenting Unix was a really bad idea AT&T didn't invent Unix in order to fragment it invented Unix in order to take heterogeneous hardware and make homogeneous programming environments around it Non-copy left licensing, even free software licensing created too many unices A.I.S. H. Pugs, Sonats, Solaris, South Skow Unix There was a great over differentiation in one corner of the world of software and it warred on the technical benefits of the software as it was designed FOSS succeeded in other words with respect to the stuff that is the most commercially valuable in the world because it made simpler technology not more complicated technology If you look at the relationship between Oracle and MySQL you can see the same thing again It's really important at any rate I will concede the point It's really important to have great big heavyweight Oracle data warehouses if you are a bank or an airline or a telecommunications company but you should be out of your mind to expose that data warehouse to everybody browsing for an airline ticket or everybody making a checking account transaction through the web MySQL functioned as a way of simplifying the enormous problems of vast data warehousing by affording cheap reproducible scalable satellite systems that could be used to interact with human beings for hours at a time right up until the moment when for 11 milliseconds you actually bought the airline ticket and something had to be done in the main database FOSS has simplified business big and small It's going to do it again as hardware changes how heavy computing works Software is about to become much simpler and FOSS is going to help make that simplification possible Why do I say that? To a first approximation all computer operating systems at present do one job and move data back and forth from fast memory to slow memory and slow memory to fast memory While they are busy pushing data around between types of memory with different physical characteristics occasionally for one clock tick a program actually does something and then everybody goes back to moving data around from fast to slow to slow to fast again often through six or seven layers of caching and all the rest of them We're about to live in a world in which there is a much different form of memory technology whether it is what Intel and Micron were announcing last week or what Hewlett Packard has been working on with us for a while now or what IBM or Oracle Skunkwork projects are going to produce We're going to have a lot of very dense, very fast, non-volatile memory which is essentially flat Hewlett Packard's the machine on which everybody is working right now is an architecture meant for 128 PID of lights of flat, monolithic, all-fast, all-the-same, non-volatile memory as Martin thinks Hewlett Packard likes to say answer this is faster than RAM although faster than RAM is a claim I don't think he's prepared to show yet What that means is that software is going to stop doing most of the things software doesn't is going to start doing things in different ways When you have relational database software, you have it because managing memory is really important not because everything is best considered as a table There are a lot of problems which will be solved differently in 10 years in fundamental senses because computer technology, hardware technology got out of the way and software simplified Now let's just imagine for a moment that we are actually going to have some new kinds of operating systems and some new kinds of software Does anybody in the room believe that fundamentally no patient work that is going to be done siloed as Keith would say? Hewlett Packard is currently working on the machine and it originally proposed and Martin and I originally went to work on licensing a new clean sheet operating system for the machine a very different kind of thing on which as you may notice if you've been reading the tech press in the last 60 days Hewlett Packard's given up and not forever just for now because bringing the machine to market actually means what Martin calls Linux plus plus and I call Linux minus minus It's Linux but without any rewrites no piece of memory is simply read and put back again and restructure the kernel pretty seriously when you do that and Keith Packard and other people have long histories with the kernel and he's sitting in HP doing it but the fundamental consequence is what you get done with is a thing that works like Linux except it does and it simplifies and it makes different in every way well that will be put out in GPLD too, it's a Linux kernel everybody will be able to share Hewlett Packard will be busy working on silicon photonics and changes in fundamental memory design but we will all have the Linux minus minus or the Linux plus plus kernel and we will all be getting used to building operating systems in places of hardware and somewhere out there, there's a 16-year-old who is going to make the most important fundamental innovation that we're all going to have as a consequence of that activity an impossible thing to imagine unless all the software is free to read, to study, to modify, to fix, to share and to improve so what's happening now from my point of view, Permanente is that the political economy of software and hardware industries is changing again what's about to happen with FOS is the same thing that happened last time people are about to discover the business efficiencies of simplification simplification is what we do now let's imagine the same thing about Indian government and the reason for the FOS acquisition policy you can imagine that what's going to happen is every state government's data center around India is going to be turned into a cloud all in some way somebody's going to do it with VMware somebody's going to do it with AWS or many somebody's are going to do it with OpenStack that would be imagining a disaster or we could imagine that we simplify the matter drastically and all the government activities of all Indian state and federal government agencies are conducted in one great big homogeneous Indian cloud utility computing everywhere for everybody which will in fact leave a lot of room left over for citizen computing to occur just as AWS leaves a lot of room open for computing to occur when Amazon is not in the middle of its Christmas sale when you move towards architecture of omnipresent utility computing with large amounts of memory flatly available to everybody you can begin to describe a national computing environment for a billion people which is in Facebook with a billion users it's a national cloud with a billion people in it taking and putting and making and using in ways that you can't even begin to model until we start accomplishing it I think that's fun I think it's not about we went up the value chain until we got to operating system software and then we did a little bit of computer programming languages and then we did web and now we're in the era of data I think the point is capitalism has done a terrific job complicating computing because everybody wanted to differentiate everywhere they could and build their products everywhere that they could get an edge and the sharers have been busy simplifying everything along GCC is the greatest work of simplification of compiler technology anybody has saw as the Apache web server was a big step forward on CERN HTTPB which was the first web server I ever ran everything got simpler it keeps getting simpler because one of the primary issues that young hackers have is to do it in a simpler way so they can move on to do something else there so I'm with you for the the data you're bringing to the thing but I think the evidence proves something a little bit different than you're letting on the currency of as software is getting more complex the benchmarks and currency of evaluating the value or innovation quotient of software universally amongst whether it's the VC community or governments for R&D grants still lies on patents is there any way that you guys are working to change the thought process of that community to something other than patents? Yeah I mean I mentioned the offensive publications I think if you look at IBM for many people you look at the MIT innovation review which is every first quarter of every year which looks at who's patented and who the leaders are and every year IBM is at the top of the list when people look at that that grossly underestimates the inventive power and output that they actually manifest in a given year because it doesn't take into account the thousands of defensive publications that they produce and so I think that's indicative of the problem that we see in many municipalities around the world where people struggling to find something to actually evaluate the productive output of an entity whether it be a start-up or a micro-industry a macro-industry to try to evaluate what are we really producing are we having that effect? Patents are being used inappropriately and as part of the corruption of the patent system that we're getting people to file as many patents as possible to in order to ensure that they're able to access the next tranche of money to be able to support their invention I think VCs that are clever recognize that that's complete fallacy and they recognize it a long time ago and I think if you any VC that thinks that the innovative capacities and the potential success factors associated with a start-up are tied to its patents they're very, very, very few cases with patents on the differentiator the source of honor differentiation to be able to sustain business it's how smart the people are how quickly they iterate and how quickly they're able to adapt to complex situations and so patents are important but we see a trend in the U.S. anyway where there's a movement away from creating patents with innovation by sophisticated individuals and the community clearly recognizes most people in the community the core developer, Hacker-Cadre are anti-patents the problem that I have with that is that they don't codify what they produce and prevent others from getting patents in that jurisdiction or another jurisdiction that come back to haunt all of us in the community years, months or years later and so what we're trying to do is encourage the codification of inventiveness so that we can show with the last 23 years of Lienus's Linux that there's been an incredible amount of inventive output and that inventive output is something that we're that patent trolls now have resources that they're utilizing to be able to create a total, a lost generation of the only people making money in this whole process are lawyers but all we're doing is clogging up the courts we're slowing and we're stowing the uptake of technology by creating fear and certainty and down the system and it's a lot of noise that noise is created by the fact that we didn't invent codify everything that was produced in the last 23 years of Lienus's Linux to be able to allow that to serve us as a statement of prior art preventing other people from filing patents and so we're not helping the quality challenge that's really what it is we have to raise the bar collectively it was just in Beijing last week they instituted a government program designed to produce defensive publications to capture all of the inventiveness across their various industries to be able to ensure that the quality of what ultimately gets patented is that much higher we can debate whether software should be patentable what is patentable subject matter in general but in the meantime if we are proactive and we file everything that we have in defensive publications make it accessible to the patent trademark offices here and everywhere around the world we'll have far fewer patents and then we can continue to legislate and to direct the courts to be able to deal with these issues based on their jurisdictional issues and our preferences and pre-elections but really what we need to do is be activists in making sure that people can't file on patents that are representative of the creativity of the community and I think people are starting to get that I mean clearly the Chinese get that the U.S. we have a massive repository called ip.com which is on every desktop of every patent examiner in Washington just a lot of these at least as Keith said for smart enough to understand that the strategies they also know whether whatever your product is or technology is good enough they also understand how constrained you are for money and what exactly is the smart strategy you have done to manage your IP but sometimes maybe that ok I have a defensive patent strategy maybe not patents because I did not spend $30,000 getting a patent application prosecuted in the U.S. but instead because otherwise I would not have money to enforce that to prevent someone else but instead I did the defensive patent strategy or I have a smart way to monetize my own or trade-naughts and copyrights which is not always going to be an enforcement action in India there are no software patents allowed by section 3T of the Indian Patents Act but that doesn't mean there is nothing which is actually going through the holes there and nothing is being granted out here one of the empirical studies which our organization here did until we have data until about 2013 but we are I think by next month we will have real-time data about if anything which looks like software is being granted from the patent office and what the patent office here wants to show as innovation seems to be more 98% or it is actually 98.3% of the data of the patents which are being granted are all to multinational corporations none of them are Indians so that doesn't mean whatever they want to call innovation is happening then there is but I am going to be apart from these other policies also rethinking its intellectual property rights policy because they understand whether it is the pharma sector or it is the technology sector but that is where either they are going to actually be running into some trouble or going to actually circumvent the system and get to what they want we have seen how the Novartis case played out in the Indian Supreme Court and what is the requirement of the Indian market in terms of the drug prices and what in our patent policies in our patent policies pharma did for the generic pharmaceutical industry for India in the 1970s they understand that should be the same thing here and that is any startup who is trying to make a strategy about patents one has to have a different strategy in the US or in the North Indian from what it has in India so we have been engaging with the Indian government where they understand because in the beginning they put lawyers to make a policy about law all they want is more law that is how their bread is buttered so they want you to say yes let's talk more about patents and talking more about educating ourselves about intellectual property law will make us more innovative not that I understand that argument but I understand what the motivation of that argument is in our discussions and because our clients want us to go and talk whether it is not just the free software projects but also the small and medium enterprises who are going to share about it and various other people who I at least advise in India wanted to say we don't have the money and as you said the VC is asking for what have you done about your IP and we think that patent means innovation what should we be doing and that is what we had the conversation whether it is at the highest level with the commerce minister or their think tank to say you are going to have an innovation policy not an intellectual property rights policy that is not what the ecosystem is about you are serious about this we can see it because that is what your policies are but you have to think a little more creatively to give them enough leeway for not wasting money on lawyers or trying to worry or stay up and mind about am I doing it the right way or am I going to run into a kind of problem or not many of our clients don't know and sometimes ask this question in the US do I have to do a freedom to operate myself to have to go and look for patents because I may be working on something which is already patentable without realizing that something we don't want to do because that means intentional infringement so it's also at the policy level one has to think and because there are so many people who are actually innovating and working and have the ear of the policy makers they need to hear it from you guys you are talking to them and all we heard was yes this makes a lot of sense but we do not know how to articulate it in order to present it to the people on the other side who would actually want you to have that but it's the Ericsson litigation which I do not know how many of you are following it's the standard essential patent litigation Ericsson of course is now out making business but they are now in the business of monetizing their patents so there are four litigations and some also proceeded to be non-right now in the competition commission of the debt and those four litigations are pending in telepathy against micro-max in-text and then Xiaomi also in India, not an Indian company and more of the name escapes me right now but I can give you the details and these are about of course the royalties and how the even if the standard essential patents have to be licensed on frankdowns what is it how are you going to calculate it there is not much of precedence here in India on these issues this very very clearly ties to the question of what is it that we are going to allow here what are patents actually allowed what is it that they are enforcing patent negotiations are conducted in the secret of course but when the courts step in and Delhi High Court rightly has this reputation of being pro IP because most of the lawyers in Delhi High Court who become judges or who practice there think yeah that's what we like Shahrukh Khan coming in saying that's what copyright law is all about because somehow very pro IP and coming down heavily on everything is suddenly going to make us the United States and that's all that seems like the right way to do it from their perspective or also I'm not going to say that I'm not under pressure on from the trade organizations or the U.S. IDCs or the various other companies that mitigation why it is important and to watch out what's really going on last Friday Ericsson along with Aso Chan invited the director general of the competition commissioner to present to them a paper about why patents are good that's and then a lot of people wrote about it that objecting to saying that so how does the conflict of interest rules play out here what you're going to do this is exactly what pharma would do they would gather a bunch of people and then say this is why you need patents here the only people who are going to object are Metsu or some local organizations who understood that higher price of patented drugs is not what India needs and we do not need to have the same IP policy as the United States has or Japan has we just need a different policy that does not make us a banana republic with no rule of law U.S. tries to put us on this 301 list which is a complete sham all this time to tell us we don't have enough strict enforcement of IP law it's not like China we have very strict enforcement action our copyright law is very strict I would say I guess you know when it comes to the software between the government and India has been fairly judicious in the sense that they have ensured that software is not behind in the subject matter that's what the legislation says so the parliament already legislated and decided that there's no patent in our software and the patent office has done the right thing but the shenanigans are going on anywhere that's why we see all these patents coming out and our way of doing this was that we cannot go and oppose each patent at one point in time we're going to do it a different way I would say there is this consulting company and I don't mind naming them Accenture which has a patent filed in India granting which actually just is an expert sitting in a remote location transferring knowledge to somebody who is a novice in another location now tell me which university which is using or a BPO or somebody else is not going to be covered by that patent application I have spent five years I have a similar family which we fought and had had and so they gave it up so it's outsourcing as offshore outsourcing was patented by IBM in 2007-2008 something like that there is a big hue and cry about it so yeah I mean USPTO grants some really rubbish patents no no this is Indian PTO I'm saying USPTO this is the Indian PTO they're both the same and in the Indian patting office we've spent four years with this battery of Lois on the other side just trying to find that patent and that's not that's everybody's water which we are carrying it affects everyone the universities the big IT companies or talk to anybody and all they had to come and say starting from we're not going to really use this patent I think the large companies philosophy is more from a patent troll perspective and market capture but from a startup perspective you know our experience and for example in Singapore is that they grant R&D taxation benefits if you do innovation and R&D you try and explain to them they don't get it but you waive a patent instantly they sign and say okay there you are so for a startup you know the time taken to try and do all that stuff and spend money which is not really useful to put a patent in that's the issue and tax farming in the patent code is also a popular model in France and in some other places where similar forms what you really are seeing is the public buying patents at very high prices of very low quality it's an information discrepancy problem the tax system or the subsidy system for innovation regards all patents is equal anybody who actually looks at patents knows they're nothing of the kind and so you have a pricing failure and that pricing failure should be corrected by other forms of intervention but if you sum over what has been said people are saying in different respects the pendulum has already begun to swing back the issue goes on the brief with me in the US Supreme Court and Alice Corp and what we got out of the United States Supreme Court was the third consecutive lopsided or unanimous ruling that abstract ideas aren't patentable we always told you that what we really mean is patenting business methods won't go patenting algorithms won't go and the USPTO has begun rejecting pretty much all the stuff in that law it's significant that the last cases in the United States Supreme Court have all been appeals by people who filed patent applications or didn't get them because the PTO thought they were abstract and then the courts were sure and the Supreme Court said no we didn't mean what we say similarly because of efforts by Michigan and other lords here Sam was pointing to it any effort by the Indian PTO to get around when the examiner's manual seemed to suggest that software per se was a very narrow reading everybody back now and everybody's characterization of the Indian PTO was now trying to implement the statute as a business try since we have another 15-20 minutes to go I'd like to bring the focus back to on the question which is a very blunt question if I'm a software entrepreneur or open source free software partners how does SFLC help you? if you're a free and open source software which means that you're going to make whatever technology you work on freely available for everyone to consume then we provide free legal services to any such project if you are a startup who is going to monetize it then I'm a lawyer I send you a bill and the only difference I can say is that we don't try to clock hours to just to make you work as I already was saying I see it as a counsel's job rather than as a lawyer's job I want to be telling what is going to be good for you as a strategy manager more than this is the law and I will write some policy and there you go I really want to understand your business and maybe tell you maybe I don't understand my technology but I have had another client who was trying to do something similar and I saw them make some mistake or do something really well and just to tell you okay sometimes imitation works in terms of strategy there are 20 client privilege rules which I follow very very strictly even if here they need something very different but so I cannot really tell you what someone else is doing in the same way I will not tell them what I'm doing with you but of course I know and I've learned and I've gained knowledge and that's what we can bring to you so it's usually flat and we have an Indian office many times I hand out my American card and what I hear it is we really like to hire you to court but we do have an Indian office and that sends bills in the fees and not in US dollars and not just converted but actually at market price here so if you're free software project we are free at your service but if you're not a free software project then also it's a pretty good idea let's describe what actually gets done for you we make non-profit and for-profit corporations around the world we just finished helping the client which is a free software project with an extremely complicated international banking problem we're setting up some entities in two different countries we occupy ourselves with the creation of what we call condominiums which are homes for projects that can centralize administrative and financial activities for dozens of projects at a time we help people choose their licenses is this an MIT X11 kind of a thing is this a copy left kind of a thing what kind of mixture of AGPL and LGPL might you want when people have licenses we help them make sure that those licenses are respected we haven't brought any wide scale litigation around the world since 2010 because I don't actually think litigation is a very good idea it costs a lot of money and it only makes one point at a time but having done a pretty solid job of waking everybody up then actually of course it's phone calls we do patent defense some company decides that some free software project should not be allowed to do what it is doing because they have a patent one possibility is we work with oh I had to say yeah well you're about to get yourself into all kinds of other trouble another possibility is we actually sit with clients and they claim charts and they say no we're not infringing we're pretty solid you really want to try this and the first time she swung a baseball bat at the nose of a shark like that I think she thought it was not going to work out well but the truth is if you know what you're doing you swing the right baseball bat at the nose of a shark and the right moment away it goes we were very closely with OIN as we have said before to make our project OIN licensees another very important project OpenSSL became an OIN licensee a week ago on our strong urging as it begins to understand the more complicated environment of OpenSSL in the near future in other words what we are as I said before is more is for invisible software companies we do headquarters functions the Debian the Debian project with all 33,000 of its packages in it has a very complicated trademark policy it's not like Playboy Enterprises which says we have a trademark this would hurt you what Michie actually did and she is the author of their trademark policy and the enforcer of their policy around the world what we actually had to do was say we really want you to be able to use the name Debian there are a few things you need to do in order to do that and then we really want you to be able to use the swirl sometimes and sometimes not and there are things we really need you to think about that have to do with what you're doing with this software before we license you for nothing so our trademark licensing practice is getting more complicated and sophisticated even though it produces a lot less money and a lot less litigation than that are some of the LVMHs of the world who are very they are very insistent on their trademarks but their method is very simple it's just painting the beauty as Michie said in her talk before what we do is that we do a lot of different things and we try to do them all very well in the SFLC in the United States to be a training practice as I said to train people to take care of yeast that play golden eggs and one of the really important parts about the practice is that the lawyers who work with us both here in the Indian and the United States are true experts at doing everything that software companies need we're just on a very small scale with a very small ability but we do all this stuff that our colleagues at Oracle and IBM you'll look back for that in the same process look Facebook you made a you talked about that it's a transient model and it will get replaced with something else and I know in your mind you have the next generation architecture which is much more distributed could you talk a little bit about that that would be very good I said years ago that Facebook was free web hosting with a few PHP and a spine on it and nothing that has happened has changed my mind the problem was in my judgment from a technical point of view that we created stuff called browsers and grime me as they were they worked really well people read the web no trouble my Apache clients made beautiful web servers but we didn't help people using it so the process of getting to the web was really really hard as a reader it was simple that created a technological vacuum into which all kinds of better designed software are spent and Facebook is the worst design possible for the test of giving people web hosting because it puts one man in and keeps all the logs I said in public speech actually one about Edward Snowden that not showing young people growing up web logs is like not showing them what happens if you have car crashes without seat belts I went by a billboard on the way here there's a manual of police showing in a fairly graphic way what happens if you're two miller crashes and you're not wearing helmet we didn't explain to people very well what that kind of captive web hosting does and we didn't tell people that the anonymity of reading is important so most of the students I deal with even knowledgeable law students that the Facebook privacy problem is about what they post it never really occurs to them that the Facebook privacy problem is about being surveilled and everything they read that the data mining of the web reading behavior is overwhelming and dangerous to the web reader who doesn't understand what those logs are showing about them so we created a man in the middle attack on the web and we ushered a whole lot of young people into that web with the MIT M in it and we just sort of said isn't this cool now you can keep in touch with everybody in the first grade with and that was irresponsible so what I said beginning in 2010 is we can't forbid it let's replace it and what that really means is bringing the web back as a right of remedying for people in an easy way the Wiki revolution is helpful in that sense for certain kinds of high content high quality high density high intensity content Richard Stallman wrote an article called universal encyclopedia in 1979 Wikipedia did it it works the problem is that that's not really good for status updates little smart ass comments I would like everybody to read which is also perfectly good use of the web but when you have platformized it when you have turned it into a non-distributed centralized system of I keep all the logs and I know what you think better than you do yourself you have created a social danger that ought not to exist what I see as next generation architecture could just as easily describe this Tim Berners-Lee last generation architecture federated services email is terrific in part because it's a federated service and because standing up with mail servers is no big deal everybody forgot that and so they decided to put all the world's email over here in one chingling fence off place which it was not surprising to discover the NSA and the FSB and everybody wanted it everybody thought oh no we can't have end to end encryption of mail because we want to show people ads based on the content of their email which amounts to we wish to read all the world's email in order to do better advertising this too is bad technology permitted now after Snowden that Google and Apple got that point enough that Tim Cook wants to go to the electronic privacy information center annual dinner and say Apple doesn't keep any paid on the teachers I had no idea what he was talking about and Google and Google now offers end to end mail encryption prosecutors around the world were on the front page of the New York Times yesterday said that shouldn't be allowed that's not good the original benefit of all this encryption is not as much as a cup of solving some crimes but people are beginning to get the idea you have to be able to trust the internet whatever the internet means to you you have to be able to trust it if you can't you're living in KGB land all the time whether it's the government you're afraid of corporate surrounds you're afraid of or the indimension of a 12 year old in St. Petersburg to understand your identity a thing we trust and we have to explain to people what kinds of software they can trust and what they can distributed social networking will happen it's not that hard a problem we are working here as we are working in the United States on a project I care a lot about called Freedom Box which is just cheap hardware doing router jobs using free software in ways that encourage privacy by late this year early next we'll have to do social and diaspora in there and by in there I mean villages in Karnataka an AP where Freedom Box workers are now already distributing prototypes and what we will be saying to people is servers are not hard they're just a different kind of computer they fit in your pocket, you plug them in you'll forget about them and they do your mail and you're sharing your status updates and all of those things but they don't deliver the logs to a little thug in a hoodie and therefore and therefore they also don't make the content monitoring system such a piece of cake and therefore they don't create a world in which it's so easy to get to the power of everybody and anyone who must know what's name and a whole lot of other what I guess we could call positive externalities flow from the developers what happened was we misshaded the web we didn't even know what we were doing because most of the people thought the web was supposed to be they didn't know it was a bunch of peers each doing its own thing they thought it was some system given to them by the platform maker we're going to unmisshade the web at least I hope you do I'm going to tell you one of the spots on Facebook I think we'll have this image of the thug in a hoodie well, every time you log into Facebook you should remember that the entire web is now surveilled it's not your activity on Facebook only it's every page in the web you read with a like button on it which is every page in the web you read so what's going in Menlo Park isn't just the log of your activity on Facebook what's going in Menlo Park is your log of all your activity on the web everywhere I don't think you meant to do that I'm quite sure when you think about the business for example the person at Flipkart who was speaking last week he mentioned that according to their analytics people buy diapers so that's a great idea and who would have thought about that and to know that a computerized system is understanding you to a level where it works better than you yourself I went to Evans class in 2005 and he was talking about predicting a woman was pregnant just by watching what she was buying a supermarket grocery store and you had that target situation where they sent people and in 2005 remember there was no Fitbit we are monitoring the body now for other people's benefit your phone can see your heart rate because it can see tiny changes in your complexion as you hold it up to your face that Fitbit we had an earthquake north of San Francisco last year in Mendocino and the jawbone guys with their fitness bracelets they produced a lot of data about who woke up when and how long it took them to go back to sleep there was a kind of seismic map of the society based on your bed shook you woke up you and your wife had a little conversation you went back to sleep or maybe put in sleep because you were afraid it was going to shake again that hooking up all those human bodies to monitor its structures that's pretty deep serious and not a good idea and everybody thinks it's a terrific idea because I have a fitness monitor if it were a distributed service I would say it was great as a centralized service I think it's the matrix I hate to ask very particular questions but one of the questions that I do need to ask is how does open invention help Indian startups what is the tangible benefit well sorry to interrupt in India we do not have software patents so how does the Indian startup benefit from being in India if you want to see legal advice with no bill and take an OIN license for the use of a license we've driven a culture and that's really we utilize the licenses of the vehicle but really what we're looking to do is essentially simulating what the GPL does in terms of providing rules for compliance and how we can support ourselves and how we essentially identify what we're building on when we create a product that's what you do that's what the GPL is helping you do so that you understand and can manage and make sense out of a world that might appear very complex at first in terms of how I participate in open source and stay in a positive direction and stay good on it on the patents side we didn't have that so ten years ago these companies got together and they said we need to implement something like this that allows for freedom of action in the areas where we collaborate where we're interdependent where we truly are reliant on each other to be able to create a novelty to innovate and so in what's core in all of the major projects in the world minor projects in the world we look at the fundamental technology the fundamental packages of which we've identified 2300 packages that are in all manner of distributions OS's and open source projects on which we rely and use on a regular basis whether we know it or not and basically have said this is going to be the core this is going to be the area where we're going to going to implicitly tacitly agree that we're not going to sue each other because we're relying on each other, we're interdependent here it's like the idea of co-operative we cooperate and compete we don't sue each other where we can meet normal rules apply and as I said before you can kind of pursue whatever strategy you want whatever makes sense for you driven by your need to get government funds based on you having 12 patents last quarter or whatever it happens to be but what we've done is actually get buy in from thousands of 1700 companies now and by the time I come back here in February we'll probably have companies that are participating in this community and it's not based on whether they're US companies whether they have patents, don't have patents in fact most of the companies in our community don't have any patents what we do is say if you're going to agree to this basic rule that you're not going to sue based on what's in the core of Linux and open source more broadly that we're going to give you access to 90 plus million dollars worth of patents that we buy many of which you're probably infringing because we have a fundamental e-commerce portfolio I don't go to flipkart and say hey you're probably violating this patent and the claims of this patent but the reality is we just give them what we don't have any kind of licensing program that generates revenue everything is free there's no analog in the history of technology to what OAN is we needed something that was different that was heretical to be able to work within this environment to be able to ensure inclusion and ensure that we have this whole notion of cooperation and so essentially we require that if you have patents that read on what's core to Linux and its open source kind of system that you agree that you're going to cross-license everyone else in the community so we have a cross-license of thousands of patents but the number of the own patents by the numbers of companies that are in our cross-license pool over a million patents so some percentage of those that relate to the core of Linux and open source are cross-license you get access to that plus you get access to the over a thousand patents that we have like a million dollars in the data so why is it it's done free of cost because it's the only way to maintain a pro-competitive platform where everybody gains access it's open to everyone no benefit that's unique to IBM or Red Hat or Sony or Google or any of the people who fund this they're doing it and they're guiding my hand but essentially I have a raised capital fund with more money behind the call option on additional funds to be able to accomplish the goal of creating patent freedom if you charge for non-aggression you're aggressive the real way to think about this is to do the math on it so you're a startup maybe you have a few patents maybe you don't whatever you have is not enough to defend you against big people who have lots but you have an OIN license for free now you have an agreement with non-aggression with many, maybe most of all the big players in your world your patents are available to them that's not much cost to you and it doesn't change your venture capital if you should have some patents because no VC ever thinks you should have patents you have licenses so you've cross-licensed advantageously that's a good story and you'll have eliminated whole issues whole classes of issues of risk that are going to be relevant when you decide you want to know IPO and everybody's starting to ask well what might your soft underbelly be say you've closed that up one of the reasons I like representing FSF is that Richard Stoneman runs UMass Zero as you know so I can talk about things a little bit there's an all-free version of Android called Replicant basically it's by taking on free software out of Android and leaving itself with a lump of stuff we can use Replicant was hosting itself auditorious and there is no more auditorious and so it needs a home FSF would like to provide a home to Replicant and make Replicant a new project and bring it into FSF's hosting and management system and of course a reasonable question is what could a patent problem be so might we be exposing ourselves to if we go and host a free version of Android so Michie and I did some work and I'm not going to say everything we said but I'll tell you what the first thing we said was well actually you have very small problems because FSF is an OIN license FSF doesn't advertise that it's an OIN license because it's official position of software patents are bad and you shouldn't do it and all that but our clients are rational and our expectations and FSF is an OIN license it's a free rider license it will never have any patents because it hates patents but it's not an impermissible free rider and that means we can give Replicant a home because we know that with an OIN license and with all the issues that all the OIN board and member companies have over keeping Android safe nobody's going to make a fuss with FSF that would really be done it would start an enormous war in which all the OIN parties would be on our side over the no royalties we can pay from the no income we have that's safety OIN is safety in that way for both small and young commercial properties and also for non-profit non-revenue properties because it offers non-aggression at a price everybody can afford this as he says has no analog anywhere else there's no paint companies no oil companies no trucking companies there's nobody in the world who has ever succeeded in building that kind of safety and the really important part of this both plus and minus is that you've built that in the middle of a war it was easier in some sense harder in others but you've built that in the middle of the biggest fat war in history that's really quite the cheaper thank you it's getting short of time do we have P.A. coffee we have P.A. so maybe we can take the discussions over I have a small question can an individual be part of that or is it an organization only can an individual can we have a sense of individuals so the connected question is I'm an individual I signed that but I'm working for an organization how does it relate and if I have two people authoring a patent what are the implications let's have coffee you can't find your parents but the company you work for but you can have the protection yourself so all the activities you involved as an individual if you want the company to have it then they should sign it


ect traffic because it's just a maze of lines and from my experience going around that roundabout and i'm not perfect a lot of people don't seem to understand quite where this should be and how it works but anyway uh a call of say is last before the break i believed on the gold can to cancel plan to have a nighttime closure of the l1551 strayed clan mani from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. on the 20th of november until the 15th of december with diversions up the pinch road then onto memo gap how will people access these roads if there's bad weather it's ridiculous they say so if you've any insight into that please let us know really busy on the phone lines thank you so very much the county's number one talk show the nine till noon show on highland radio the nine till noon show is brought to you by letter candy credit union digital loans now available apply online or via our app today and get your loan transferred directly to your current account get ready for a great night of live music with one for the road at the abbey hotel donnie gall town on saturday 11th november doors open at 10 admission 10 euro that's one for the road live at the abbey hotel saturday 11th of november tickets available on event bright keep out the cold cold cold and ring flaming for their full range of garage doors agri doors insulated doors milking parlor doors flaming 91 48 234 right blend oh him Dulling make her home husha ho deshig and then a hooker penvres a list of more yawler in gerson ira to the end of her for all in ish ho deshig umsa o maa foch mo hurry make her in all don more to parol most in a who a Dulling car from husha lag for tovok se fro sesh parol or the for a ball round ago wresh's paid course and it's fine when a cannery's in a limb ho lupa co-collect the credit and no it's a chas dara in the torruch technology oh yeah and a slung to oh yeah horsey It's a two-for-one deal. You don't want to miss out on a part-time trip to Salupa, but it's worth a visit. Visit ATU.com for more information. ATU. I'll see you next time. Or you can choose a 2,000-euro bumper trade-in offer. Also 3.9% finance options or 0% finance for the Nissan Leaf, our eco-friendly electric vehicle. Don't miss out. Visit iMotors today in Letterkenny and Malin. Highland radio time checks with Expressway. Travel Route 32 from Letterkenny to Dublin when you book online and travel for less. Expressway, bringing you the time, Matt? Well, the time is 17 minutes past 11. You're very welcome back to the programme now. The use of e-scooters will be banned for anyone under the age of 16. It forms part of new laws to regulate the use of vehicles. In Irish roads, Transport Minister Raymond Ryan had earlier said any age restrictions would be unenforceable. However, the Irish Examiner reports the age limit will now be introduced after interventions by the Justice Minister, the Guardi, and the Road Safety Authority. Well, Shane Ross is an author and former Transport Minister.  Good morning, Greg. Good to talk to you. Good to have you on the show, yeah. It seems like you and Eamon Ryan might be on the same page, but the Guardi, the RSA and the Justice Minister, what do you think? Do you think under 16 should be banned from using scooters? Yes, I do. Sorry, I'm not on the same page. Oh, you're OK. I beg your pardon. I misread my intro, OK. Why do you think that's important, Shane? I think that we're in a very, very dangerous situation with road deaths generally now at the moment. And as you can see, the figures every day and overnight, we're getting these terrible tragedies happening. And I think it's, you know, as far as timing is concerned, it is a very, very difficult time to introduce new vehicles and very vulnerable vehicles to the roads. So I think it's very important that we take the absolute, I mean, we're not going to stop them. They're here, they're in there, and the legislation is through. So we're not going to stop them, and nobody's going to stop them at this stage. I wouldn't be a paper stop them, but it is important that we introduce the strictest possible regulations to preserve the lives of people who are taking the roads on a new type of vehicle, which is vulnerable. I do think it's important. I think it's very wise of the minister to have taken the advice. But with respect, Shane, I mean, let's just say, for instance, in an area where, you know, there isn't public transport or here to form maybe a young person might have been cycling to and from school where they have the right lights on, the right helmet, you know, hopefully cycle paths, would it not be better to say, right, you can use an e-scooter between a certain age under 16 if it's of a certain, you know, performance and educate rather than ban? I think it's important to, you've got to have an age limit on them, I think at some stage, and they are more vulnerable than bicycles. But I think it's really important that we make people conscious of the fact that these are vulnerable vehicles and that we try and save lives. I'm in the business and was when I was in government up to three years ago, I was in the business of saving lives. And I understand fully, you know, the difficulties of people not having transport and particularly rural areas. But you've got to balance that against the fact that the people, you know, there have been accidents. I think there are four deaths. There have been four deaths on these scooters already, even though they are at the moment banned. In other words, with small numbers of them on the roads, there's some in Dublin, you can see them here quite regularly, even though they're not actually legal. And so when we do bring them in, we're going to have to make sure they're as safe as possible and we don't bring them in prematurely. It's a difficult decision, but, you know, it is absolutely likely that the more we get on the roads and the more dangerous the roads will become and we must take precaution. But the public might not be confident that whatever laws are introduced will be enforced because at the moment it's the same, particularly in the built-up areas of the northwest, you'll see the scooters going up and down, footpaths out on roads, not actual carriageways, but I've seen them on, you know, significant roads. I don't know what age these people are. I mean, who's going to enforce the rules here, the laws here? Because even now, as they are illegal in certain circumstances or at least not necessarily governed by a law at the moment, it seems to be a bit of a free-for-all. You're right. There's a real problem you can see because enforcement is a matter for the Guardi, but enforcement is not effective at the moment in terms of road deaths. You can see that the numbers are going up. One of the reasons, not the cell reason, and I don't want to blame the Guardi, but one of the reasons is that the rules are there, but they're not being enforced. And if you're going to introduce a new type of vehicle with new types of rules, which are going to be very strict, rigid, the Department of Justice is going to have to step up to the plate as other Guardi to enforce these rules. I think that's absolutely correct. And that's got to be done. They're going to have to patrol. They're going to have to be vigilant. They're going to have to have new methods of detection, which absolutely ensure that these bicycles are safe. Now, there are companies, there's both, and there's Lyme, which are both out there. And they have means, I think, now, and they're in favour, by the way, of banning people up under the age of 16. But they have means, in fact, of stopping, of taking off the road. Those who break the regulations and enforcing them in other ways under the shared schemes. And I think that's very, very important. So there's going to be a bit of self-regulation there, which will take a bit of the other sort of Guardi. But it is something which is, if you introduce a new type of vehicle and with new regulations, enforcement is a problem in which the Guard is going to have to do something. Yeah, and some would say there is generally a problem with enforcement, not just as in this area, but just taking road safety more generally. You'd be acutely aware of issues of ban drivers still driving lots and lots of people driving on provisional licenses, being able to get them renewed, even if they don't sit, they can apply for a test, but don't actually sit it. You know, all of the loopholes that exist now, the amount of people driving without insurance on Irish roads. And now we have the government introducing or looking to introduce a whole new raft of things, lowering speed limits and all that type of stuff. Again, we're not really, we don't have the laws we have now correct and enforced, and yet we're talking now about creating even more laws and what have you. Do we need to throw out, throw out what we have and start a new with tight, clear to understand enforceable regulations? I think a campaign is going to be launched now, particularly on e-scooters, but on regulations generally as well, because I mean, you're absolutely right. A lot of them aren't being enforced and you highlighted there a couple of things. I mean, with people driving on provisional license, not turning out for their tests and nothing being done about it, it's just totally and utterly unacceptable, but you know, there is a lack of political will. And when I was introducing measures on speeding and on drink driving, there was a huge reluctance amongst the back benches in both Pinafore and PinaGale and elsewhere to introduce these strict new regulations. So it's quite difficult, or the new laws in particular, it's very difficult in fact for a minister and I think Jack Chambers, who's the minister in charge, is doing a pretty good job now, but I think you'll find behind the scenes, there's an awful lot of back benches and which is what I found and I had real difficulty getting the drink driving laws through and I was stymied on speeding in some areas by back benches from the main political parties, particularly PinaGale at the time when the government was looking at the legislation and saying, no, we don't like that type of legislation. We don't want to penalize people for driving when they shouldn't be because there's a kind of culture here that people are doing it for so long. That is a real problem and it's one which quite honestly, the road safety advocates have not confronted and they've been frightened to confront and it's all very well being in favor of road safety, but if you've got politicians on the back benches who resist road safety measures, you're not going to get them through and that's been a problem certainly for the last 20 years and it's still there. OK, listen, thank you so much for your time, Shane. I appreciate it. That's Shane Ross there, author and former minister for transport. Thank you very much again. A caller says, I used to buy my bin tags in the local shop. They've now set up a new system for buying the bin tags. You can't get them in shops. I'm now an early 80. I've been to the bank to try to pay. They're making it very difficult for people like me to pay. In my opinion, there shouldn't be a bin charge. It should be included in the household charge. This is the only way we can stop illegal dumping. And I know what you're talking about there and I think really it's to try and well, obviously it's presumably cheaper for the companies as well, but too it keeps track of the weight of your rubbish as well and to make sure you don't exceed any limits or if you do that you charge for them. What is the alternative for someone whether it's that lady or gentleman who's 80 or someone else who doesn't use online or smart apps? What are the alternatives for them? 08, 6, 60, 25,000. In regards to the TV license, I know from my father that when it's approved, they send you a form to say it's approved and you don't have to pay. Now it's possible that that box was ticked and the person didn't spot it, but anyway, hopefully that person who texted us already will get back in touch with us and if we can help them any further, we will. All right, Marie's with us. Hi, Marie. And good morning, Greg. You're on about the East Gooders Day this morning. Yeah, what's your view? And my view is that they are the most dangerous thing out there. I'll tell you my experience, I was in the complex TK Max a few weeks ago and one just came shitting across in front of all the parked cars and the car was trying to reverse out. They didn't see that East Gooder because the speed, it's just like, would you be able to stop if they were kicking the ball in front of you? No, I mean... That's what the East Gooders are like. They go that fast like bicycles and motorbikes. They're not going as fast as what those East Gooders are going. And small complexes like that there and they're not obeying the rules of the road either. I was coming out the road one day at the Remelton Road at Ballerina School there and you know how the traffic lights there. Yeah. Yeah, and the cars were moving along and just this East Gooder just shitted across the road and the man in front, he didn't know where he was sitting. It was that shock that the scooter was going to pass so quickly. And is these one-off experiences that you've had or are you seeing it more and more now? I'm seeing it more and more and I'll tell you what there are two like in the footpath and it really annoys me because I have a disability and I'd be on steady in my feet and hear these East Gooders you're trying to stay out of their way. It's impossible. You're scared of them. And you're scared to make that quick movement in case you fall. You have to be in that situation to know what your balance is. Mm-hmm. So would you like to see them banned from anywhere that's pedestrian... not pedestrianised but you know, like footpaths or... I think they shouldn't be allowed in car parks and things like that there or they should be parked up just the same as a car instead of like... it's like plen... they're East Gooders like, you know, and they're going fast across these cars parked like, you know, there are no rules to them. And can you hear them? No, you can't hear them. There's no noise. There's no noise off them. That's the worst thing. There's no noise off them. I even stopped one of the lads that day afterwards.  I said, when you were down there at the Ballerina School, I said, you did not abide to the traffic lights. Yeah. And you should. But he apologized and said he was very sorry. OK, well, at least there's that. I just wonder if we're going to see more and more because the they're so handy, Greg, but the speed of them now, like, you know, is just the thing I can't get over.  I was over in Brussels there doing a program a few months back, Marie, and it was just it was a mess. There were scooters because they can rent them there.  It was a mess. They were lying everywhere, literally like rubbish. You'd think they were rubbish. These scooters lying absolutely everywhere and crossing the road was hectic. You know, cars were bad enough, but then scooters were flying in and out of cars and up and down them. And I think in Paris, they've actually banned them from the city there. I'll have to double check that. But I think they made some changes in Paris as it relates to the use of these scooters. Yeah.  You look great. You look left. You look great. But, like, they go that quick that you can't see them. Maybe places like that you talk of need to put a sign up then at the entrance saying, please, dismant from your e-scooter.  I think... You know, like... Yes. Because people are going, well, there's no rules, so I don't know. They don't need any help. But maybe it should say, please, dismant from your push-biker e-scooter before entering this facility or this car park. Yeah. That's the way that it should be. You see bicycles parked up that they're not... They're not shooting about, like, you know, people parked them up to do the shopping. But these e-scooters, like, they don't do that. I think Santi's going to be busy with them this year. It's going to be interesting, Marie. I would say so. I would say so. Because they're, like, they're handy, they're convenient. They get people from A to B. But, like, they're not designed for... car parks and things like that there and abiding by the rules. And let's just be very clear, Marie. You're speaking from two instances. You're speaking from instances that you've seen firsthand. Yeah. This is not... You're not, you know, sitting in the chair at home. You've actually been out there and experienced it. No. And you're speaking from your experience, which I think is important just to point out, because this is a lived experience, Marie. And I'm sure others might join the conversation now. Thanks for your time, Marie. Right, thank you very much. All right, hopefully you're doing well. Thank you. It's great to have you on the program. Bye-bye. Caller says those electric scooters are a hazard. They're illegal in the U.K., unless rented, which provides insurance. But if you're caught driving one in a daft manner here, you can actually get points on your license, can you? I'm not sure. Not yet, anyway. We'll see. Greg, I have an electric bike, which is limited to 15 miles per hour. I think the scooters are also limited to that, too. But that's very fast for a scooter with very little means of controlling it compared to a bike around Leicester. Kenny, they're often on footpaths and can come up behind. You can't hear them. And if you took a step left or right, they would be right on you. But the thing is, in towns like Leicester and others, there is no public transport to get around town if you live around town. And the scooters are a really good option for people heading to college or heading to some of the amazing employers that we have here. Handy. Do you know what I mean? You can commute in and from work. So there is a great value to them. And I'd love to hear people who are on e-scooters and how it's changed your life or how important it is to you. But there has to be a way where we can all share the roads, the footpaths, respectfully. Because I don't think the scooters are coming in. That's just the way it is. They're going to be legal. They're there anyway. But talk to me, then, about the benefits of the e-scooter if you're in and around Leicester, or some other urban area. And what do you think of this conversation? Do you feel that you're being tarnished with bosses? Is this going to be the new dog owners? You know, 95% of dog owners are very responsible. 5% aren't. Yet a lot of dog owners all get tired with the same brush. Are we going to see that with e-scooters now? That people who respectfully ride them in a safe way are going to be grouped in with people that are spinning around car parks on them, nearly knocking people over. I see they're advertising e-scooters as Christmas presents now. If Santa can bring them, well, there'll be many more in the road after Christmas. Indeed, I think you may be right there. The under-16s using the scooters aren't the problem. My boy is 10 and his brother is 8, and they love their e-scooters and use them very safely to just go short distances to their friends' houses. I think it's so unfair to target the young-grade group who aren't the ones who are flying through busy towns and streets on them. I kind of tried to touch on that with Shane Ross, as well, in that, you know, it's not like we're hearing of loads of young people under-16 tearing the place up on these things, you know. Is it fair that they should be banned to all under-16s, especially when maybe some are just using it for the reasons that parent outlined? Ban is correct. Peripheral vision isn't fully occurred until the age of 13. Very important to ban these for safety. Great point, perhaps, if that's the case. So maybe under-16 wouldn't have the same vision sites that someone older. No bicycle obeying the rules of the roads at the traffic lights. Is there much of a difference with these scooters? Should be some sort of an identity number visible on all bikes. I personally don't see a great deal of difference between them. You can buy D&W spin labels in any shops. There's a listener that's on a separate issue, but there are some that they've done away with labels now. There are some companies. I think Panda might be one. Actually, I have to be very careful unless I absolutely know for a fact which companies. But some companies are switching from the physical label because I saw some letters being sent out to the physical label that you can buy in a shop. So according to this quality and waste, you can still get bin labels, but that waste provider might not be our listener's waste provider. Well, they talk about people not turning up for their test funny. You never see boys like Shane saying, what about people getting their test cancels on the day of the test because there's not enough testers in Donegal? That's a fair point, of course. But what we're talking about is a particular set of statistics that show there are a group, quite a lot of them, I think 60, 70 odd thousand people that have a provisional license for a very long time. And the only way you can renew it is to book a test. But clearly they're not going because either that or they're all failing. Do you know what I mean? So I get your point, but there are a group of individuals that retain a provisional license or a learner permit by booking tests so they can renew but not turning up for the test at all, which is robbing someone of a place, by the way, to do their test legitimately as well. A caller says, if someone doesn't switch off the Polestar traffic lights, I'm afraid letter candy shops will be missing out because of all the delays, even in the supposed quiet time of the day. And that's everywhere in town. I haven't heard much from the business community. Maybe things are working well for them. Greg, where are we actually in terms of the new road and bridge at Bonnegie? Are there plans actually drawn up at this stage? The only movement so far was when Martin's shop closed, and that's a fair while ago. Everyone always says the new road would be a great job, but no one has a clue if and when it will happen or what stage it's at. It can't be too far along yet, or some politicians would be on your show bombing about it. I will go back. We had the roads engineer on. They are actively trying to progress it. I don't want to misquote the guest, but in a bit, you know, it was like that soon. I think the 2025 was mentioned. Plans are afoot. It might happen, but how long have we talked about it? The work is progressing. You know what I mean? I'm laughing because I'm trying to explain it, but I'm using all the words I would use to a child who'd wanted something and I didn't want to give it to them. Greg, I'm getting a scooter and we'll be parking my car at Manor Randabad and coming to work in the morning. Yeah, we see that's practical. That makes sense. That's a car off the roads. All right, really busy on the e-scooters. Keep them coming. Let's take a break back with more. 2999 and catch the magic glimmer of Christmas with our LED pine tree garland only 1999. Wishing you a magical Christmas with Lidl. While stocks last.  Local authorities are updating the electoral register and it's your responsibility to ensure that your details are current and correct. Even if you're already registered to vote, now is the time to check and either confirm or check your details by providing your PPSN, aircoat and date of birth. To have your say on shaping Ireland's future, you must be on the electoral register. Checking is easy. Simply go to CheckTheRegister.ie the easy way to secure your say brought to you by the Government of Ireland. Yes, that's two grand off every car. For one day only. No gimmicks. No games. No joke. That's two grand Tuesday. This coming Tuesday at Divers High on Day, Canal Road Letter Kenny, we're open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on the day. For details, see DiversGarage.ie. Looking for a good night's sleep? Rest X beds has you covered. Located at Mountaintop Letter Kenny. They are the best in the Northwest to get a quality bed or mattress. Come visit them today and wake up feeling rested and refreshed. Rest X beds, Mountaintop, Letter Kenny. At On Post, we believe in giving you more power over how you bank. That's why AIB and Bank of Ireland customers can now lodge and withdraw money at any of our 900 post offices across Ireland six days a week. That's right. Your bank is in your post office for personal and business banking alike, meaning you can bank wherever you live or work. Visit your local post office or onpost.com slash everyday banking. On Post.  Allied Irish Banks, PLC and Bank of Ireland are regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. OK, someone mentioned the closure of the N1151 Strait Strad, Clonmanny County, Donegal. That it might be happening. Will the council have issued a notice on it? Notice is hereby given that Donegal County Council intends to make an order to have the following road closed to traffic on the dates and times indicated to facilitate works to the water main. So it's Monday the 20th of November to the 15th of December. It's a nighttime closure from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. The route being closed, as I mentioned, is the L1551 from its junction with the L6114, approximately 650 meters. Traffic will be diverted via the L1611 to its junction with the L1531. More gap as it's more commonly known on the L, on to the L1541 at... I can't read that. Where is it? Oris Mina, back on to the L1551. So nighttime, nighttime closure is there. Persons wishing to object to the closure should submit an objection in writing. Well, there's no point in me reading that out because the period for which you could object has passed. These scooters are so dangerous. People in England have been knocked down badly injured and few have died. Nobody can hear them coming till it's too late. It's the lanes which are confusing at the Polestar junction in which... It's which lane do you get into, which is putting people off. You come in on two lanes from the Clannery, then suddenly at the front there is three lanes. Yeah, it is a bit complicated. So do you spread out into the middle lane, coming in that road from the left lane or the right lane, or both? Probably the left lane. If you're in the left lane, you go left on the roundabout. If you're in the middle lane, you go... I'm going to get into it.  And if you're in the right lane, you go out the Remelton Road. But what's happening is people are going into the right lane and they're going on the inside of the roundabout and stopping there. And it means traffic then can't go round the roundabout and out the four lanes again. I think if the lines were colour-coded, maybe it might be easier for people to track which lane they should be in. Kevin joins us on the roads. Good morning, Kevin. Good morning, Greg. Forget about colour-coding. You don't like my idea? No, look, Greg, I come in from... I know I'm sorry about that. It's not a good idea, but not for the situation, as far as I'm concerned. Coming in from Timmies through the roundabout, Bonnegie Dairy Road and heading out the Remelton Road. Yes. Come in, get a red light. You get a green light. You go ten yards, you get a red light. Then you get a green light and you have to cross over to your left. And then you get an old red light. Yes. On a Mickey Mouse roundabout. Like, for the size of it. I've been serious when I say Mickey Mouse because it's so small. For that, it's a laugh. It's a joke. And the people that are tweaking lights now should tweak them the way they should have been set up, which is if you get a green light on the lane that you're in, you should get in. You should get out without an old red light. So if I'm going out the Remelton Road, if I get a red light, I get a green light and I'm on that side of the lane. I should be able to go all the way around that way around the boat. And out the Remelton Road. It's kind of difficult up there. It's quite difficult, I think, with that route you're talking of, Kevin. It's quite difficult to merge, it's quite difficult to merge to the left, if you know what I mean, as you're supposed to, because then you're fearful and you feel like a natural manoeuvre to, as I say, to veer off into the left lane there, as you're supposed to, at the second set of traffic lights on the roundabout. And as you said, the confusion that happened to me, if there was somebody on my left-hand side, what I was merging over and only for the... I've seen them in the Mount Wing Mirror. I was going to club them. So the two of us were kind of side-by-side but the thing about it is just take it... I've been on before and said take away the roundabout all together now and you've got to cross-road.  And tweaker... you can tweak the lights all the way they want now. But it's not going to work until they do that, but each road has its exit and you get a green light and you get your exit.  Yeah. I've drove all over England all over France everywhere and I cannot see the sense in that.  There's no other word for it. I can tweak and take the Christmas lights or flash them with them. That's not going to work unless you do it that way. I could be wrong. I could be getting in C9 on the old age, but... I think you're all right. Kevin... I've spoken to especially people in bigger vehicles I've spoken to a couple of them who find themselves blocking the lanes because they're stopped on the roundabout. If there's one car in front of them and they progress from the first set of traffic lights that you talk of, then they're stopped at the third. They're back sides blocking the route off the roundabout in another way. Kevin, thanks for your time. That's certainly backing up what I'm saying. Get a free roundabout and that's it. Right. Kevin, thanks very much. Take care. See you next week. Hi, Tommy Bohir. Get in store to check out my new 15 Kings clothing collection available in premium gents outfitters nationwide and at 15kings.com New this week at home store and more. All cookware sets are all half price but better hurry because when all the half price cookware sets are gone, they're gone. Also, all baking trays and tins are still all half price and when all the half price baking trays and tins are gone, they're definitely gone. Drop by the store and check out my new 15 Kings clothing collection collection available in premium gents and they're definitely gone. Drop by your local home store and more or visit us online at homestoreandmore.ie New store now open in Frascati Center BlackRock Dublin. Home store and more. A happy home. Is the appearance of your staff important to your business? It's the first point of contact for customers when entering your premises. At CNM and Breudery and Letter Kenny, they have a huge range of clothing covering all areas of the workplace. It's extremely known that customers warm to and trust employees that present themselves well. Have your company name and Breudery are printed on all your work uniforms. Contact CNM and Breudery on 07491 28097 and get your staff looking their best. 2 floors of fashion open 7 days. Highland Radio Weather Updates brought you by Grant from condensing oil and HVO biofuel boilers to heat pumps and underfloor heating. You can trust Grant to heat your home. Visit grant.ie Right, so the showers that were around this morning will become less frequent in the afternoon leaving a mostly dry day highest temperatures of 9 to 11 degrees in light to moderate westerly wind. We're joined on the programme now by Grant for taking the time to speak to us. I think the best thing for me to do with what you've been through is just to start you off and let you explain the situation from the beginning. Yes, that would be great. Go ahead. Okay, so it was like two years ago we were renting, we're living in Letter Kenny for the last 10 years obviously renting and paying over our own pocket. It was about two years ago we were renting out in Port Hall and the house ended up getting taken back by the banks as the landlord wasn't paying the mortgage or whatever. And a long story short we ended up homeless. So the council were giving us the vouchers for the hotels and things like that but the hotels obviously ran out they just ran taking them the government was buying them and they were being let out obviously for other circumstances. And I have a part here now just on the nail team Blaney Road facing the tourist information office and we could be here now about a month or two. Now I've emailed the council office, I've been on to T-Days I've been on to local councillors around the Letter Kenny area looking there to fight on my behalf I've been to the traveller project as my partner is a traveller and I'm not. Now we've no run and war I'm sitting here now in the caravan at the moment looking out it's raw traffic here traffic lights obviously as you know all the new lights now and everyone that's just driving by is just looking in just there and there and if I look out they actually turned their head with a sudden reflex because they can see me catching them so I have to wake up every morning with no run and war I have to go to the local garage or use the toilet there and I have to go to the wash house at the arena 7 every week to wash and close I was diagnosed with arthritis here about two months ago, three months ago from the doctor so this is acting up now on my knee as well with the coldness the weather now for the last few days obviously is after being salted outside and I've seen the salt truck obviously going around on the roads now so there's obviously ice coming there's mice all around us and the councilman, sorry there's that three or four times a week asking for run and water a generator because the generator that we have is air and with the plug so I can't use the microwave I can't use the power I can't use the toaster and again no run and water to wash anything or wash myself and of course you're watching the weather forecast and it's going to get sub zero at night towards the end of this week and that's only the start of it before we talk about getting services to the caravan what is the situation you've been on the housing waiting list for six or seven years now do you know where you are in that process or is there any no is there any progress or if you've been given any information about maybe a house becoming available for you and your partner well so about a year and a half ago he sent me an email to say that there was a local council property coming up in the local area and that myself would be put down for one of them sure I never heard that then when I got back to him about that then he said no you're all given out there's no kids involved and things like that me personally I think that shouldn't be used against a couple that we each other for 15 years I think that should be at least a problem and the bottom line too is Sinead I mean you've had a choice but to get this caravan because you're homeless really effectively the caravan is your home you are homeless because besides that are the streets really effectively oh yeah like there was times there when we were sleeping in the car before we even before we like for a week we were going to sleep in the car waking up with spots cold sores everything just real neglected down yourself you know I think we're actually losing so much weight it's the mental health in this alone is bad enough never mind the progress of over the last two years of being promised the moon and stars and still no one has came out where we are do you know what I mean would it be difficult in your view would it be difficult for the council to provide a water supply for you oh no not at all as where we are there's there'd be no problem for him for him to come out here and help us out with a generator and running water that'd be no problem then do you know like if you could cement it or put a bit of tar mark down so there's no miter coming like running around do you know what I mean it's not something that you're used to getting up in the morning go outside it could be minus degrees outside so get up at nine ten o'clock or whatever go out and get me partner to start the generator come back in wait then for ten or fifteen minutes for it to warm up and you still can't have a breakfast at this time or go to the toilet so then I have to go to a shop to wash our teeth then we have to go to the gym then probably twice a week to wash ourselves so that's another fifteen or twenty it's all money cost and he knows to fit it and what it's doing and you're just putting me to the bottom the whole of a local authority I don't think there's any individual but anyway listen Sinead you're engaging with the local authority and Sinead just in terms of the authority or the location sorry of the caravan would there not be a more suitable place that might be you know less risk of of rodents or easier to connect to services and a pod maker and so it's not a loaded question it's a genuine question Sinead oh of course there is as I'm sure there's loads of council property around the place as I've seen this bit to feel that all around Larkinny that the council is walking on now at the moment and if they came out to me and said Sinead you can go there I'll give you the supply of a water shower wash machine things like that I will happily live there for as long as I have to live there with the right suppliers do you understand where right now it's do you know what I mean it's like crying out for help and no one listening no it's very difficult and as you say this is having a toll on your mental health and of course too the cold's gone to exacerbate your arthritical problems your arthritis problems oh a hundred but like to me and then we're driving down as well so you can't drive a lot and then we went down here to the day actually at nine o'clock in the morning I was here and I was sitting here and I looked there was two women walking in towards me and she said to me oh is this your horse around the side of the bridge then I had to go out then they come down and they said oh is this your horse I said no the dead horse I said I never did deal with those horses that never in my life and now I have people now driving by and that this was our horse staring and it's just a horrible feeling you're being profiled a little bit there I don't think it's acceptable I think it's really it's just the vast the best we can we'll make contact with the local authority and see what they have to say on the situation hopefully they'll probably say we can't comment on individual cases but they might give us a more general reply and we'll see where we can go from there best wishes to you and your partner and I do hope things will improve for the both of you soon and we'll make our inquiries and see what comes from that me too, thanks a million alright bye bye that's why we have to leave it on the programme back tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock but for me Greg Hughes and Caroline Orr who researched and produced the show and Shannon working away with us as well have a great


Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Reena Dam. And I'm Joshua Leo. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live. Scheherazade had a problem.  She had just married the powerful king of Persia. But Scheherazade was not the king's first wife. His first wife had not been faithful to him. This made the king very angry. So, he sent his first wife away to be killed. But he was still angry. Every day, the king married a new wife. And the next morning, he would send her away to be killed. Scheherazade knew that marrying the king could lead to her death. But she was very wise. She had a plan. Scheherazade began to tell the king a story. She told him the story all night long. The king was very interested in the story. The sun began to rise the next day. But Scheherazade did not finish her story. She asked the king to let her live. Then, she could finish her story the next day. He agreed. That night, Scheherazade finished her story. And then, she quickly began another one. Again, day came in the middle of her story. The king wanted to know the ending of this story too. So, he let Scheherazade live for another night. This continued for one thousand and one night. By then, the king knew that he loved Scheherazade. He would not send her to be killed. Scheherazade's storytelling saved her life. This famous story is called One Thousand and One Nights. It shows that a good storyteller like Scheherazade can have great power. She can influence individuals and the community. Today's spotlight is on storytellers. Storytelling began a very long time ago. The oldest surviving record of storytelling is from Egypt. It is a famous document called The Westcar Papyrus. Most of the stories include magic events. Ancient Egyptians believed that some people had special powers. In one story, a magician puts the head of a bird onto the body of a cow. Experts think that these stories are four thousand years old. People told the first stories orally. They would speak the stories out loud. A community would gather together. They listened to the storyteller. The storyteller told the action of the story. Many storytellers also acted out the different characters. To do this, the storyteller would make large expressions with his face. He would use his voice in different and funny ways. People enjoyed watching and listening to the storyteller. The stories were good entertainment. But the storyteller did more than this. Tawen Ahake is from the Mohawk tribe of North America. He is an artist and a community leader. He says that the storyteller was the most influential person in Mohawk culture. He wrote in an online article. The storyteller was the origin of wisdom, history, literature, knowledge, moral instruction, and learning. The old storytellers were often called tricksters. They would inject valuable lessons into the message they were sharing. The people would hear the stories, thinking that they were being entertained. But they were learning through the lessons and morals of the story. These stories stayed forever in the collective mind of the tribe. Storytellers helped communities understand their history. Chris Abani is a Nigerian writer and activist. He thinks that stories are the best way to learn. He says that we understand ourselves through stories. He said, Language makes the world in which we live. Language can only be understood in connection to story. Everything, everything, all of this is story. It is important to remember that. If we do not, we lose our history. In West Africa, the community learned their history from a storyteller called a griot. Usually, each village would have one griot. At the end of the day, the griot would call people to come hear a story. Children and adults would gather around to listen. The griot often beat on a drum or played another musical instrument. Griots told stories about tribal history, such as wars and famous events. They also told stories about village events, such as births or marriages. Some of the griot's stories were about made-up characters. Through these stories, the griot taught people good moral values. In ancient China, stories also ended with a moral lesson. The storyteller would stand behind a table in the market. He would wear a long cloth robe. In one hand, he held a folded paper fan. When he opened the fan, it was big enough to cover his face. In the other hand, he held a gavel, like a judge in a court. He hit this wooden tool on the table to mark important parts of the story. Chinese storytellers often used music and poems in their stories. Like the Mohawk storyteller, they used humor to teach people good lessons. Storytellers urged people to try to make their lives better. Their stories encouraged people to create something new. Stephen Denning writes popular books on leadership. In his book, The Leader's Guide to Storytelling, he writes, Story produces creativity. A story encourages us to bring new things into the world. It moves us forward and backward. It makes us do new things, but we must also look back to history. Over time, people began to record their stories in writing. Many more people became storytellers by writing books. Some people wrote down old stories, such as the story of Scheherazade and 1001 Nights. And many more people began to write new stories. A storyteller may tell a story with her voice, or she may write her story in a book. Either way, storytelling is an important part of human history. Storytellers have had a large influence in every culture, and they probably will continue to do so. Writer Steve Denning says, Hearing a powerful story makes the listener feel more alive. So listening to a story turns it into a living thing. The seeming aliveness of the story makes listeners want to pass it on. The writer and producer of this program was Rina Dam. The voices you heard were from the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted for this program and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this program again and read it on the Internet at www.radioenglish.net. This program is called Storytellers, shaping history and community. You can also leave your comments on our website, or you can email us at radio at radioenglish.net. You can also find us on Facebook. Just search for Spotlight Radio. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye!