Posts by Nigel McNie
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Hard News: The unstable Supercity, in reply to nzlemming,
Dad has filled me in now. He says you owe him a beer ;) but he also told me to say that just to wind you up :)
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Hi folks. Looks like my words were somewhat confusing. nzlemming has my position basically right. I don't consider open source to be some kind of antidote _for large projects_. It's a very good strategy for smaller projects, but it won't counteract the problems you will encounter when the project gets too large. Cheers!
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Up Front: Reviewing the Election, in reply to izogi,
I write a bit about this. I've written about the issues for online voting regarding our rights here: https://medium.com/@nigelmcnie/democratic-principles-and-online-voting-836b7dbd1c73
And also about New Zealand's steady march towards having online voting here: https://medium.com/@nigelmcnie/the-next-step-for-online-voting-in-new-zealand-498ce4e86201
In short: In today's internet environment, it's just not possible to uphold our democratic rights to a free and fair election, as per article 21 of the UN declaration of human rights: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a21
And despite this, we are pushing on with politically binding rollouts of online voting in NZ local government elections, laughably called "trials".
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Up Front: Reviewing the Election, in reply to Emma Hart,
Indeed, that's a really good point. There are some myths around online voting, and the "it might lift turnout" is so common it make me ill. It was even listed as one of the main benefits in the Online Voting Working Group's report, despite Elections (and Statistics NZ) sitting on data that says it's just not true.
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"...you can download a ballot paper, print it out, fill it in, scan it, and upload it."
As the number of votes received from overseas grows, and as the internet voting push from government moves forward, we are beginning to head towards a time where hacking our elections become merely a question of cost/benefit. I'm glad to hear online voting isn't a priority for the 2017 general election at least.
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No sledging. In a world of diving, cheating and drug taking, what an amazing game it was. That match, and both teams, should be held high as examples of sporting conduct at its best.
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Hear, hear.
We chose our school because it had no religious instruction. If they brought it in, I think I'd go NATO. They'd be wanting to take away 30 minutes of class time a week in order to undo all the education we're doing at home about their bodies, their choices and their morals?
When you look at it that way around, bible in schools doesn't seem "necessary" to give parents "choice", does it.
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Speaker: Confidential information: the…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
The "under urgency" wouldn't be great, I agree. More a response to the field day that could open up if a judge interprets the existing law in a foolish way.
All I'm hoping for is that the law is clarified or changed such that it gives sensible results in cases that we techies understand. As in, "Labour made their website available therefore anything else I deliberately look for on there is fair game" becomes illegal, as would some of the other cases outlined by several of the earlier commenters.
Maybe the law is good enough now, maybe it'll be clarified in a sane way by a judge later, or maybe we'll need to pass something new. Good law is all I want.
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Speaker: Confidential information: the…, in reply to Alan Armstrong,
Not better at all. The content could not be found by clicking. The content could be found by deliberately looking for it by trying various requests (aka: "what happens if we go to labour.org.nz/backups?), but there's no way that content was overtly linked from on their website, and no way they intended for it to be accessed by the public in that fashion.
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A court case around this would either result in sanity in interpretation, or a new bill under urgency. Maybe they'd listen to the experts this time. Bring it on.