Posts by Idiot Savant
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Hide has had similar problems getting access to the spreadsheets underpinning the 2012 City Centre Future Access Study. Even if he pays the $3850 demanded by Auckland Transport, their position is that they will only send him the printed output. If I ask the question "What would Keith Ng do?" the answer is: complain very loudly.
He'd go to the Ombudsman, because it is an open and shut case. The ombudsman has ruled in the past that agencies must provide information in the format it is requested in, unless it would be contrary to the interests protected by the Act, contrary to a legal duty, or impair efficient administration. Furthermore, it seems that the charge is purely an artefact of Auckland Transport's refusal to provide the information digitally, and hence it is unreasonable.
It will take six months to a year due to chronic underfunding, but when the Ombudsman gets around to picking up the complaint and writing a letter to Auckland Transport, the information should be released very quickly.
It's not good enough. Even if Auckland Transport officials feel that their provision of the data in this form would only lead to faulty analysis, they should provide it on reasonable terms.
Fear that release would lead to faulty analysis is not a valid witholding reason under the OIA or LGOIMA.
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Hard News: The Treasure at the End of…, in reply to George Darroch,
It's heartening to see this pull through. Looking at the no votes, the almost entire absence of women is striking. There are a few (Lee, Tolley, Lole Taylor, Tisch), but opposition is almost entirely a men's game. If we had more equality in Parliament, we'd have more equality in Parliament.
Lindsay Tisch is a man (he was presiding as Deputy Speaker at the actual vote). Which strengthens your point.
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Hard News: Thatcher, in reply to Matthew Poole,
If I were Roger I’d be planning to be cremated, with my ashes scattered on Sir Rob Jones’ farm. That would deny the bastards the chance to dance on my grave.
Thatcher's mate Pinochet had to be disposed of the same way to prevent post-mortem revenge by his victims.
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Up Front: Card on the Table, in reply to linger,
I/S notes that there's too much business on the agenda ahead of the Marriage Equality bill, so there'll almost certainly be no vote on it until the next Member's Day.
Yeah, I was horribly wrong on that.
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Or to put it another way: don't give money to arseholes, it just enables their arseholery.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Russell Brown,
You’re not about to bring down anything by using an ad-blocker as an individual – but if everyone took the same stance as you, there wouldn’t be any Scoop to rely on. You may wish to consider parallels with, say, taxes and resource use. Or at least come down from that high horse.
(shrug) The invention of the car put buggy-whip sellers out of business. I love and use Scoop, but technology has shitcanned its business model, just as it has for newspapers. And if they want to stay in business, its up to them, not me, to come up with an alternative to secure their future.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Russell Brown,
And so my right to decide what’s displayed on my site, next to my work, is unimportant? Good to know.
Pretty much. Adblock. Killfiles. "If you don't like it, don't read it". This is the way the internet has always worked, both culturally and as a practical reality. Substituting content for other content is part of this, and isn't new either. If I want, I can wear a filter which will reduce all your carefully-crafted prose to Piratespeak. At its heart, this isn't any different.
(And as for ethically: my screen, my eyeballs, my brain. Absolutely I get to control and filter my inputs however I like. Your rights as a creator do not extend to parasitizing my brain space, or to dictating how I experience and interact with your product)
The good news is that MegaBox's spamware will likely suffer exactly the same fate.
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As someone who uses Adblock to control what I see, I have zero sympathy for advertisers getting "hijacked" in this way. Sorry, but its my screen, not yours, and I'll decide what I see there thanks.
What does worry me is that it suggests that the new model of internet advertising is going to be competing strains of Spamware. Which just makes things more unpleasant for the clueless.
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Hard News: Calling the race before it's over, in reply to Gareth Ward,
I've often wondered how the Greens intend their structure to work if they actually managed to win leadership of Government... 2.5 days a week each and on-off international junkets?
I expect they'd simply nominate a PM like everyone else. Party leadership is seperate from the constitutional position.
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Hard News: Calling the race before it's over, in reply to Barnard,
What's going to change between now and February other than the rules under which any vote's taken?
We'll have had 3 more months to see if Shearer can cut it or not.
When he was appointed leader, Labour was pretty clear that he had a year to show he could do the job. That year is almost up; judgement is in February.