Posts by Rex Widerstrom
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Sacha,
Sadly that's still regarded as being class traitors by some
Good grief, castigated for debating the facts* "...rather than offering solidarity..."
It's an aspect of the "Hitchens syndrome" ((c) me, since we're swinging that way now :-P)
Cross to our side of the debate and you're an enlightened, open-minded hero. If only more of those phlegmatic, blind ideologues on t'other side had your majestic adherence to evidence-based conclusions, etc etc.
Cross away from our side of the debate and you're a self-interested class traitor who has betrayed the principles of solidarity. Etc.
Comes back to what I'm saying about political parties and their "you're either 100% with us or you're against us" atttitude to candidate selection and ranking.
* I'm assuming, knowing PASers. I took no part in those debates because, frankly, I couldn't be arsed absorbing enough information on which to form a considered opinion.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Jason Kemp,
Are there an PAS readers who would consider standing for parliament. We just have to do better than this.
And into which box of fruit loops would we jump, exactly?
Unless Russell's up for forming a PAS party, in which case I'm ready with my sub :-) Because there's a broad range of thought here, but the common thread is that it's intelligent and rarely, if ever, falls back on a cultish adherence to "party loyalty" at the expense of reason.
I mean, I'm just reading about the work of Andrew Leigh a federal Labor MP. Did his PhD at Harvard under Robert Putnam (whose work on societal disconnect is worth reading, and tangenitally relevant to the whole file sharing topic, if anyone has time).
Returned to Australia, became an economics professor at the Australian National University. Undertook an Australian study mirroring Putnam's work and published it as a book, Disconnected.
I have no idea what Leigh's positions on issues are. I may disagree with all of them. But I suspect they'll be well thought out, factual and evidence based even if I dispute the conclusions he draws from that evidence. And I suspect they'll be concisely and intelligently expressed.
Now I'm not saying the NZ Parliament ought to be stuffed with PhDs. But do we have even one person with the sort of academic track record Leigh has? Do we have a successful business person? (not a slippery derivatives trader, I'm talking about someone who's built up a business, employed people (and not just an occasional farm manager) and so on). Probably the closest we have is Steven Joyce!
Yes, we must do better. But as I've said many times before, party selection procedures:
a) require mindless adherence to the prevailing orthodoxy (which they see as "loyalty") rather than embodiment of certain principles but disparate opinions as to how to enact them; and
b) a good dose of teh stupid, so as not to be too much of a risk of challenging the existing order.To do better, we need a better vehicle. the old ones are broken down and, for all that I admire the optimism and dedication of those who believe they can be fixed, I don't think they can.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Kracklite,
the officer ... fraudulently, with intent to intimidate a suspect, lied to the suspect,
Hah! Takes me back to my first arrest... or was it my second? Anyway, a long time ago as shall become apparent.
Mr Plod storms into the interview room and tells me my friend is next door, confessing all and blaming me. Of course he was doing no such thing (at least partly because we were innocent, as a court later determined).
Fortunately, though only a callow youth I was already a cynic so my response was "You've spent too long watching Hill Street Blues" (yes, it was that long ago). That resulted in a most unseemly outburst involving words which would have got an innocent rapper arrested.
Since then virtually every contact I've had with the police, either directly or on behalf of someone else, has uncovered lying to suspects.
There was the time they told me that they had a "car full of witnesses, cleaners going to work early" who'd seen me set fire to my own vehicle in the early hours. For the insurance, apparently. Except it was uninsured and I was left catching the bus.
Evidently those witnesses turned out to be "unwilling to come to court" so I was "lucky to get off" when they withdrew the charge.
And so on...
Complaints just from me would crash the IPCA website, I suspect :-D
Sadly, though, court after court has okayed lying to a suspect as a legitimate interrogation tactic, even if the intent is to intimidate (because the intent is almost always to intimidate).
Mind you, there's always the chance the IPCA will take a different view, so kudos for taking the time (please don't think the purpose of this is to mock your efforts!) and do please post the results.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Kracklite,
MMP has nothing to do with this moronic inferno. Our representatives are… our representatives.
But in most professions where an IQ above luke warm is an asset, there's an effective filter to stop those possessed by teh dumb getting through. Unless you've had a surgeon say "the dangly bit next to your... you know, like the sausages are made of, but not of course that we make actual sausages out of ours because I remember this one time, at med school..." :-P
Unless your argument boils down to "the stupid deserve a voice too", in which case the diplomat part of me (as opposed to the diplomatic part, which errr... doesn't exist) agrees.
But the blind have a right to be able to travel. That doesn't mean we actually give them the car keys, we let those with the requisite ability drive for them.
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Katrina Shanks and Melissa Lee...
Tell me again, MMP supporters, just how good is the system which foists these people upon us and how democracy will be the worse for it if we abandon this farce come the referendum.
Yes I know FPP brought us Ben Couch and Merv Wellington, but I'm not suggesting we return to it, but rather that we adopt a system whereby people can watch this sort of festival of teh dumb (live or via a streamed candidates debate, or just hear about it from friends or online) and go "I don't think so" without being forced to either vote in a way that does not advance their preferred party, or accept these mouth breathers as their "representatives".
/threadjack
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Apropos, kind of, the topic, a note to musos that the Australian Music Industry Network (AMIN) has just released a music industry legal pack.
I'm not sure that it covers dealing with censorious police, of course. But perhaps a NZ industry body might consider preparing one that does.
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Hard News: Locking in the Future, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
A lot of commercial contracts have a clause that voids them if one party enters liquidation/bankruptcy. I wonder whether spectrum licenses do
A search of the Radio Spectrum Management site for "liquidation" proves fruitless, as does reading their policies.
Of course an on-to-it Opposition would have asked this by now. If only we had one...
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Hard News: Locking in the Future, in reply to Idiot Savant,
Joyce took a paper to Cabinet arguing that unless they got a deal, they would default on their payments and go into liquidation.
And possibly Joyce was motivated by a desire to do a favour for his old business. But what of the rest of Cabinet? Why should they care?
Let's assume the report was right, and Mediaworks ended up in liquidation. First they'd try to sell the whole thing as a going concern. It's not impossible that another player would have bought it. Or they'd have tried selling it piece-by-piece as going concerns because that'd produce the greatest return to creditors. Only as a last resort would they auction off assets and spectrum (subject, I assume, to regulatory approval of the transfer) and even then I suspect communities and smaller operators may have kept their local station going.
So what would the end result of this Chicken Little scenario have been? Different ownership and, possibly, more diverse ownership. So again - why would Cabinet care?
Unless there's a quid pro quo in place, even if (and probably) unspoken, so it won't come out in the OIA documents...
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Telstra Clear is now publicly fretting about being sidelined by an unbeatable infrastructure competitor
Oh boo hoo. As someone who's subject to Telstra's predatory pricing* I hope they go on fretting and, frankly, that they get done like a dog's dinner. As for the NBN, don't be fooled... as the ABC's Alan Kohler said just a few days ago:
...the leak and press release were just clumsy attempts at spin. The purpose of that can only be imagined - so I'll imagine something.
The thing that's becoming clear about the NBN is that it's effectively a joint venture with Telstra.
A large part of both the construction and operations budgets will be paid to Telstra for the use of its ducts and for the decommissioning of its copper wires.
After it's built, Telstra will be the NBN's biggest customer, and the largest supplier of backhaul. In fact the ACCC has enshrined Telstra's position as the key wholesaler in the future of Australian telecommunications.
Not quite the rosy open market Juha seems to feel it is (though huge kudos to him for breaking the story).
* Telstra's ownership of the infrastructure (which could have been broken when it was wholly government owned) means every retailer is beholden to it. And when the ACCC tries to regulate, Telstra finds a way to gouge. For instance when you move house, you should be able to give your ISP the former phone number and get reconnected for ~$50.
But Telstra always finds an excuse to have to send a technician out and charge you $300. So far I've been told "it's because it's an old property", "because it's a new property", "because it's an old block of flats" and "because it's a new block of flats". The tech spends 30 seconds with a multimeter and a phone and leaves looking apologetic.
So excuse the schadenfreude if they're the ones suffering at the hands of a monopoly. Which doesn't make it any better for the customer, I know.
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Hard News: Perverse Entertainment, in reply to Islander,
Little local papers like the Oamaru Mail and the Greymouth Star will be starved to death
But surely so will the Timaru Herald and the Taranaki Daily news (both owned by Fairfax)? Even The Manawatu Standard, Marlborough Express, Nelson Mail, Waikato Times etc draw a lot of content from NZPA, unless things have changed since I last saw them.
If it was a "starve the competition of quality content and save it all for ourselves" strategy it'd be nasty but logical; this seems more of a "the readers have no news? Then let them eat advertorial" move.
Radio did this back in the early 90s... never mind community engagement and compelling local content, stick a "Morning Zoo" in a studio in Auckland and have them make prank calls all morning while carefully omitting to mention anything which could let slip where they're situated.
Ratings plummeted and the smarter bosses reversed it... but only just enough to get the ratings back up, of course. Now wait for readerships to fall. And the reaction? Why more layoffs, of course.