Posts by Moz
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Took my Long John to the mall this morning, grocery shopping and stuff. It holds about the same as a supermarket trolley, so I can just shop 'til the trolley is getting full (or heavy) and know that it's all going to fit in the bin.
Being Sydney, it was 28 degrees at 11am when I was riding home. Which is why I buy icecream and other frozen stuff on my way home from work. Free image hosting pic with ads, sorry, don't have proper access to my website from here.
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The gender-essentialist nonsense is triggering for many of us. We have been exposed to it in very trying situations and sometimes from people who explicitly see our suicides as a positive outcome. Because "one less probable abuser". So please try to avoid saying those things.
But I havn’t been able to find much academic awareness about male victims of childhood abuse who are not convicted pedophiles, in New Zealand.
I hope that out of the various inquiries in Australia on this topic we will gain a cohort of men who can be studied. I don't know about NZ, but in Oz we have a whole lot of historical institutional child abuse coming out and being discussed (as well as litigated).
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to chris,
I appreciate that you and others have the best intentions Katharine, but incessant genderising leaves me feeling unwell.
Thanks Chris. I've been reluctant to read the thread and was not going to engage, but I feel it's useful to say: thank you for reminding people of this.
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Hard News: NZME and you, in reply to Jason Kemp,
here are not many sites in NZ that do more than 50,000 a month. The google ads total is closer to $150 a month at that level.
Yep. I used to comfortably pay for decent hosting using google ads even on my small sites, but it stopped being worth the hassle a few years ago. By the time I quit I wasn't make enough out of the ads to justify the admin overhead of having to click the "pay me" link once a year. That model is gone.
I do think some kind of levy to pay for public broadcasting is needed, assuming we're allowed to do that any more (has Key signed away our ability to do that yet?) And tying it somehow directly to purpose seems to be necessary. But possibly not sufficient if the recent Australian arts experience is anything to go by (Minister stepped in and took much of that funding from the long-term planners and gave it out himself using "what I like" as the apparent criteria... and specifically excluding anyone who had annoyed him by expressing dissatisfaction)
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Hard News: NZME and you, in reply to Russell Brown,
When I played with an iPhone a while ago the "free" apps I saw all had ads embedded in them. ... Isn't that exactly the case with free apps on Google Play?
I assume so, but the ad-blocker I have removes them. It's been a while since I saw an ad other than "buy the pro version of this app".
Well, yeah, iOS is better locked down than Android. Which means you get few malicious apps
Oh, absolutely. But the price for that is a crippled device, and it's locked down primarily against the user. The licensee is only allowed to do the things Apple think they should do. Unfortunately a few of the things I do a lot are not on the list, so iPhones don't work for me (web-based terminal emulators are not an acceptable substitute, for example). And the tiny storage space kills it - I cycle tour and use airplanes, so relying on iCloud for storing music and photos isn't an option. To be worth even looking at they'd need a 256GB option (since extra internal storage is also not allowed and dongles break), but given their prices I expect that would be a $2000 phone. And on that note, not being able to drive my DAC would be an annoying restriction.
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Hard News: NZME and you, in reply to Russell Brown,
one reason I avoid apple is because they insist on ads everywhere. ... Genuine question: what ads are these?
When I played with an iPhone a while ago the "free" apps I saw all had ads embedded in them. One complaint from the tech-savvy owner was that those ads were impossible to filter out without breaking the apps. At least one app that I found useful had no paid option, you just had to accept 1/5 of the screen being ads. Blinking ads. And don't get me started on the screen size Apple lets you have. I'm one of the "no-one wants a big screen" people that Apple doesn't want.
Plus I read an article talking about Apples new news service that uses an Apple advertising system. So it sounds more like a "no competing ads" move. Call me a cynic, but I really don't think Apple is doing this because they hate advertising. Hate seeing billions go to Doubleclick sounds much more plausible.
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FWIW there is active discussion around the geeky traps of how to replace online ads with a workable system, but it's a non-trival challenge. The human factors and repeated failures of micropayments make it difficult, but the music and tv subscription services do point to ways forward. In general, "pay for what you use" breaks because people don't like knowing that everything they do has a cost (and the cost is as much the mental effort of wondering it it's really worth paying for this). So we end up with subscriptions... but the media landscape is so fragmented that it makes music seem simple. Google/Apple News doesn't work because the money goes to Goople rather than the writers. And for people like me that don't read mainstream media it's not relevant because I can't access PA through it (or any other site I read).
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Hard News: NZME and you, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
I can and do already block ads as much as possible, and one reason I avoid apple is because they insist on ads everywhere. This latest move only allows people to block browser ads AFAIK, not all ads and especially not Apple-ecosystem ads. It's less of a "remove the ads" and more "remove Google/DoubleClick ads"... who are their competition. Gee, what a surprise that they should want to block those.
We ask a lot, but we're willing to trade very little in return. I balk at a paywall and apparently I don't want to see ads either, but by god they'd better not get rid of any of those journalists, how dare they!
I disagree. I donate to places like PA every year, and I donated to TheConversation even though they are still trying to decide whether they want comment threads and how those might work if they had them (moderation is extremely erratic), and their article range from excellent to WTF.
I really hope the adblocking shakeout leads to a workable solution. I'm willing to be tracked by the people who supply the content so I can pay them, but I object vigorously to having my computer taken over by people who exist purely to annoy me (apparently advertising is the art of being just annoying enough to be noticed without being so annoying that too many people opt out).
I would happily pay a fee to the operator of my feed aggregator that goes to the feed sources. I already pay for the aggregator. If it was like the various music systems... no, wait, it should be completely unlike those and based on a compulsory license so that I don't have to subscribe to 10 different services. But yeah, $10/mo for my news habit would be fine.
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Speaker: The problem is Serco, in reply to Tinakori,
"Yes, they’re expecting $30,000,000 a year in profit from South Auckland Wiri prison" ... I think that's revenue not profit.
I thought revenue was gross turnover, profit was what they kept after expenses. So 10% profit seems reasonable (in the sense that "high profits from bilking the taxpayer is reasonable" sense that Serco and their ilk use the term).
I agree with Mark - the incentives set up are all wrong, and should focus on the outcomes we want. Apparently what we've asked for is "cheap and shoddy", when we should be aiming for, say, respecting the human rights of inmates and staff while reducing the recidivism rate. The whole point of profit-oriented companies doing this is that if we don't ask for it, we don't get it. Hence the need to say "prisoners must be fed" and the obvious problems with not saying "prisoners must not be made to fight each other for the amusement of staff".
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Heh, I still treasure Dave playing the full outro to Roger Waters "Radio K.A.O.S." Sunset Strip that ends with "I don't care. Shut up. Play the record". And Carole Ray doing the station promo that was just her saying "RDU. It's a radio station".
That said, I never really got into student radio as a listening experience because it was just too up and down for me. Community radio in general is like that for me. Every now and then there'll be a couple of hours that I like, but I find people talking when I'm listening to music annoying. Hence, I suppose, my love for DJ No Ego (the multi-disk CD player RDU used to fill the dead shifts). Who had "his" own station identification tracks and everything.