Posts by Matthew Poole
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I am all for social diversity and tolerance but we can only have one rule of law at any one time… if the Malaysian immigrant can have two wives, why can’t I… and if the Malaysian man living here can have two wives then surely a Malaysian woman can have two husbands? Not!
And here's a very key part of the issue. If we allow people who are already in recognised polygamous marriages to come into NZ, and retain the status of marriage with all their spouses, why shouldn't kiwis be allowed to enter into polygamous marriages? Also, don't forget that polygamy is a very one-sided concept. One man, many wives. Never the other way around. Do we, as a country, actually want to countenance such views of women? That's not marriage as an equal partnership between two people, that's marriage as a contract of ownership (and, in many contexts, that's precisely what it is).
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Seems completely inconsistent with not being able to copyright things like forms or bus timetables. Any comment from our legal brethren?
That's not entirely accurate. You can copyright layouts, but you cannot (generally) copyright factual information.
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I think expecting Act to be our bulwark against social authoritarianism is a bit hopeful, really. Some of them might have these libertarian ideas, but when it comes down to it they're just another bunch of hangers and floggers.
Yeah, if you look at ACT's voting record on the big conscience votes of the last term (and I wonder if we'll get any of those this term) they're not really a socially libertarian party at all, just fiscally.
Ah, yes, but you're both making the mistake of assuming that I think Act would turn it down because they're "our bulwark against social authoritarianism". I wouldn't ever think of Act in those terms, not least of which reasons being their close association with Family Fist. My logic is much more fiscal. Filtering costs, and would require a significant bureaucracy to be implemented. That goes totally counter to Act's positions and policies. If it could be done entirely by the private sector they'd still be agin it, because it's imposing costs on business for regulatory compliance. Again, against their positions and policies.
I described Rodney and Winston as the same kind of beast the other day. They're both "narrow-minded reactionaries" - Rodney of the economic kind, Winston of the racist kind.
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How long before we see something like in New Zealand?
According to David Cunliffe Labour had no plans to investigate such a thing. I imagine Act'd get all kinds of pissy if National were to try and change that position, too, so we're probably safe.
Never thought I'd be glad that Act's in government.On a related note, my flatmate wondered last night how long it'll be before Maurice takes his minister-outside-cabinet toys and skulks off to Act's sandpit. Anyone care to give odds?
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Oh, and something else that's semi-related to this, and to discussions about copyright, anyone else think it's a complete nonsense that TV networks can get copyright in their programme listings and then stop anyone else from recreating them?
Not just talking about the layouts of the listing in printed guides, but the actual information of channel, time, and the name of the show. That's copyright in facts, and that's, supposedly, wrong!That's one of the big impediments to stuff like TiVo coming here, since the creators cannot make their own EPGs because it's a breach of copyright.
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I did mention that their sales reps were lying to people to get them to sign up.
Yeah, that's the risk with door-knockers. I used to work for a moderately-large (top five, at the time) telco/ISP, and they had exactly the same problem with their commission-only sales reps. They outright lied to get people to "sign up for information", which was actually a signature on a contract for service. And unlike your Sky experience, which was easily caught when you were called to sort out when the installer should come over, these contracts gave us authority (which was followed through) to switch them from their current tolls provider to us as well as signing up for the ISP service.
Moral: never, ever "sign up for information" if it involves putting down a signature. And get the rep to write your details rather than doing it yourself, because it makes forged signatures much easier to spot.
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I don't think we're as open and liberal about sex as we like to think we are, either.
I didn't realise we thought we were, to be honest. As a country we fuck like rabbits, but heaven forbid that we dare talk about it (except when Durex puts out their international sex survey results) in public.
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I'm really disappointed. It's been two hours, you've got a post involving gay marriage, and Craig's totally absent. Paging Mr Ranapia...
On a more serious note, though, one must hope that National take the same pragmatic view of a national internet filter as Labour did. Namely, it's not being considered. Our intarweb is slow enough as it is, without imposing even more of a throttle by passing everything through filtering appliances. A performance hit is inevitable, and unavoidable, in such circumstances.
Australia's antics with the filtering reminds me of this UserFriendly strip. They seem to enjoy being viewed as the global village idiot, given their propensity for making boneheaded decisions about protecting the children from the internet.
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That USB port's only ever going to be allowed to run one way -- and it won't be out.
But I guess they could possibly allow people to fit more storage one day, assuming the content could be made unusable anywhere else.
USB's not going to do so good for adding extra storage if you're trying to do it for HD content. USB is awful for high-bandwidth streaming; absolutely horrible. It's a nasty, hackish attempt to compete with firewire, and it fails miserably. The SATA connection is a much better bet for external storage, but as you say it'll be highly dependant on them finding a strong DRM system. Which will, of course, be thoroughly cracked within weeks of being released.
The accuracy of this comment does, of course, rely on Sky's engineers having a clue. Lots of people look at the headline data rate and assume USB's up to the job, and that includes plenty of geeks.
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Andrew, even if the panels themselves are outside the OIA their recommendations and other material that's given over to the Crown is absolutely OIA-worthy. And the Ombudsmen have shown themselves quite willing to tell pollies to hand over reports that originated outside their departments.