Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Policy, finally | Sep 21, 2007 09:43

By all means, pile on over to No Right Turn for Idiot/Savant's preliminary analysis of the emissions trading scheme announced yesterday. I/S has been waiting for policy a long time, and he has already distilled the key points, as well as noting that our Kyoto liability has blown out, again.

If you feel you need to talk to someone afterwards, come back here. I/S had to suspend comments a little while ago after striking wingnut trouble, but I trust he can pop back here to discuss the policy too.

Me? Well, I drove a Prius around for a week last week. Loved the technology -- it feels very good to sit silently at the lights and not be belching fumes, and we used less than half the petrol we'd normally consume -- didn't dig the hatchback form factor of the Generation III model, which presented problems with visibility and reversing.

The car was a loaner from The Clean Green Car Company, which brings them in used from Japan. The main barrier with the Prius is still price: it not only performs like a V6 Camry (with a 1500cc petrol engine!), it costs like one too. Assuming that the price can be brought down as manufacturing scales up (and petrol becomes pricier), it's not hard to see a lot of people driving hybrid cars in five or 10 years' time. The company has a useful FAQ on exactly how the Prius works.

Campbell Live took an interview with visiting Arctic explorer Rod Stege as its angle on the announcement. (Check out the Pulp Sport promo at the end too -- it's priceless.)

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to a preview this afternoon of what Throng is calling a unique world-first TV listings format. Rachel and Regan seem very excited about what they've got.

Stuff I've got that you haven't: a five-track sampler from the forthcoming Phoenix Foundation album, which includes a couple of standouts from their live shows in 'Bright Grey' and '40 Years' and suggests a more upbeat, live-band feel. And an advance copy of Paul Shannon's second novel, The Totem Hole. The style is quite different from that of Davey Darling -- well, obviously, given that the narrative isn't cast in the voice of a 12 year-old boy -- and the language more expansive and poetic. I'm enjoying it, not least because Paul has graduated to a big, tasty trade paperback format.

Peter M over at Dub Dot Dash has the worst New Zealand album cover of the year nominees for your consideration.

Spare Room notes a sequel to If Business Meetings Were Like Internet Comments: If Retirement Functions Were Like Internet Comments.

And, finally teh free stuff! Halo 3 is released next week, and I'm offering up a Halo 3 Collector's Edition (in swanky metal box) and Halo 3 sweatshirt. All you have to do (this is Leo's question) is click the reply button below and answer me this: What is Master Chief's real name? Put the answer in the subject line.

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Deriving satisfaction from the misfortune of others | Sep 20, 2007 09:09

It rather redefines schadenfreude, doesn't it? The new pan-Christian party cooked up by Gordon Copeland and the fun-loving guys from Destiny has emerged not so much half-baked as a big sloppy mess of batter.

The Fundy Post is passing the popcorn, Colin Espiner had time to come up with a delightful name for the new party -- Destiny's Child -- and Scoop's Lyndon Hood reports that God is yet to decide whether he'll vote for any new party. Although frankly, I'm not sure whether any of them surpass the comedic value of Bishop Brian's press release.

Meanwhile, there are ructions within my own faith, the Cult of Macintosh.

At 2.00am on Sunday September 30, New Zealand Daylight Saving Time will begin -- a week earlier than has previously been the case. And therein lies the problem. It's looking very much like Macs won't be there.

Although a patch to take account of the new date has been filed as a feature request with Apple for at least six months, Cupertino has given no sign it recognises the deadline.

Apple could still post the MacOS X 10.4.11 update, which contains the new rules (as do the test builds of 10.5, aka Leopard), but there's no sign that will appear before Sunday week. Even if it does, that doesn't give users a lot of time to act -- and it's no use at all to the people still running 10.3.x versions.

So what happens if 2am Sunday week arrives without a patch? In most cases it will probably simply be an irritation. Rather than setting a time zone, you'll have to manually adjust the time on your computer. As a result, the computer will miscalculate current times for everywhere else in the world; email you send will misreport the time; and timestamps on files will be out by an hour even after you are able to eventually set the proper time zone. But there may be more serious impacts on the kind of non-consumer applications where Apple should be looking to emphasise its credibility.

The local developers don't have a lot of faith, judging by this excerpt from an email discussion on the matter:

I would like to think someone at Apple has decreed that 10.4.11 must ship by September 22nd at the latest, but even if that is the case, based on past experience I wouldn't be surprised if they got the deadline completely wrong because of one of the following:

* They confused it with daylight savings ending in the US on November 4th.

* They don't think we need an update until early next year as daylight savings doesn't start this time of year in the northern hemisphere, and they don't realize there is a difference between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere.

* They don't think we need an update until early next year as daylight savings doesn't start this time of year in the northern hemisphere, and they think New Zealand is somewhere in Europe.

* They get the time zone difference wrong and think New Zealand is a day behind the US rather than a day ahead and don't ship it until the 24th NZ time.

I would have much preferred that they just shipped a daylight savings update a month ago. We are going to have to embrace 10.4.11 warts and all just to get an easy to install daylight savings update, I just hope it has less warts than 10.4.10 and no significant new warts.

The only solutions I've seen so far involve mucking about in the Terminal in ways I'm not sure I want to do, but if you're confident with that, you can email me and I'll hook you up with some instructions.

And, yes, Microsoft already has this one covered.

You may commence your schadenfreude now.

PS: It occurred to me in the middle of the night last night that there's a a better way of doing the weekly giveaways from Whisky Galore, the sponsor of Some Foreign Field, our Rugby World Cup blog. Instead of awarding the prize to the author of the best comment, I'm going to give it to the person who can give me the best lines for the Whisky Galore ads. I'll need no more than 12 words to run across two frames. Something about the Scots would be handy this week, for obvious reasons. Go and study the ads (on all Public Address pages, but not System) and you'll get the idea. Just post 'em in the discussion.

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He might be crazy, but he's not dumb | Sep 19, 2007 11:13

I have known Jordan luck for many years. I met him some time shortly after I wrote my first review for Rip It Up, covering a rather strange gig at Lincoln University by The Clean and his band, the (as they were then) Dance Exponents.

Later, I accompanied the Dance Exponents on a South Island tour memorable to me mainly for the fact that in the bar of the Golden Eagle in Greymouth after they'd played, I met my old girlfriend from primary school and we walked to her place as the sun was rising. It would be ungentlemanly to reveal exactly what we did the moment we got in the front door, but suffice to say we did not bother with the cup of tea that was the ostensible reason for the visit.

Still later, Jordan and I shared a flat in Parnell, near Mandrill studios. Flatting with Jordan could be a health hazard. Once, a nice woman came around to conduct an alcohol use survey -- she was pretty startled as she wrote down the numbers.

But those aren't the reasons I'm pleased that Jordan became the first inductee to the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame at the Silver Scroll Awards last night. I'm pleased because it's richly deserved. Jordan has, over the years, demonstrated a remarkable ability to get into the hearts and minds of successive generations of New Zealanders with his songs.

No, it's not as if I sit around at home listening to old Exponents albums, but one of the better evenings of my life was spent watching the All Blacks' dazzling victory over the Lions at the Wellington Stadium. The Lions fans were in full voice from the start, while we locals wandered awkwardly, as we do, through our dreary national anthem. But, shamed by the British, the New Zealanders began to sing along to the Kiwi hits that played through the stadium PA during breaks in play. And then, on one song, we sang so happily and mightily that the Lions fans actually joined in. The song, as if you couldn't guess, was 'Why Does Love Do This To Me?'.

I'd guessed whose name Mike Chunn was going to announce by the time he'd concluded his speech last night, but clearly Jordan himself hadn't. I turned around to look at him after the announcement and he looked genuinely shocked. Then he got up to the stage and, typically, couldn't talk about himself but burbled out a list of other musicians he thought deserved the honour.

He's a hell of a nice guy who writes pop songs so enduring that kids who weren't born when some of them were written still bawl them out as they guzzle their drinks. He might be crazy, but he's not dumb.

Speaking of which, the Mint Chicks 'Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!' didn't win the Silver Scroll last night, and neither did my pick, SJD's 'Beautiful Haze'. The winner was Brooke Fraser's 'Albertine', a song I'd struggle to even recognise if you played it to me. It wasn't helped last night by being performed by Ddub, who bear out every unflattering perception about barbecue reggae. "They make the Black Seeds sound like King Tubby," growled the chap next to me.

The best covers were Tyra and the Tornados' take on 'Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!", which wound up to a scorching crescendo, and Eight Foot Sativa's version of OpShop's 'Maybe', which was almost unrecognisable, but good noisy fun. (Another notable performance took place in the men's loos, where I was fortunate enough to hear The Braz recite a lyric poem containing the lines "They're coming to arrest me on Tuesday … Under a Surrey Crescent moon," his voice resonating off the tiles.)

There were speeches, of course. I missed the Prime Minister (I was outside interviewing Jordan for the radio show), but I'm told she sounded quite chirpy. Arthur Baysting had a grump about the ISP takedown provisions in the Copyright Amendment Bill that might have astonished Internet NZ, and also revealed that Corben Simpson and Geoff Murphy had come to APRA to request a change to the writing credit on Blerta's 'Dance All Around the World', which still earns rights money. In the middle of the song, there is a poem by Margaret Mahy. They wanted her to have a songwriting credit, which means she will also derive income from performances of the song. She is, apparently, chuffed about it.

The entertainment closed with Blam Blam Blam and a horn section belting out 'There is No Depression in New Zealand', which made everyone happy (look out for a King's Arms reunion show soon), and from there it was a party like it always is at the Silver Scrolls. Musicians and the people who love them crowded the bar and roared away to each other while people got up on the second stage and attempted to play songs. I caught up with a lot of people and I think I did quite well to be out the door not too long after midnight. But I am not, as you might have guessed, on top form this morning ….

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Get a Clue | Sep 17, 2007 09:26

The things people say and do on the social internet are now an important source for news reporting. It doesn't matter whether you like it or not: it's a simple fact. Kids talking on Bebo have driven the story of the Augustine Borrell murder for more than a week now. But reporters harvesting online need to make sure they have a clue.

Tony Reid, the One News reporter covering the Zaoui story on Friday clearly did not have a clue.

The text version of the story contains the same elements as the original report. It covers Ahmed Zaoui's "first day of freedom" -- it's Ramadan -- and moves on to this:

But not everyone is jumping for joy. On the internet, there were many blogs expressing their anger at the SIS's decision.

"He should have been turned around at the border. His family will now arrive and all will go on a benefit and live in a state house," one blogger said.

"New Zealand will regret this decision to let this parasite into our country," another commented.

In the report that aired on the 6pm news, the two quotes are excerpted and presented over clearly identifiable screen shots of, first, Kiwiblog, and then a Hard News page on Public Address. Anyone who didn't know better would have gained the impression that the respective bloggers -- ie: David Farrar and myself -- were the authors of the quotes.

Clue One: People who write blogs and people who post comments in subsequent discussions are not the same thing. Both those quotes should have been described as comments by readers of Kiwiblog. As David Farrar points out, letters to the editor of a newspaper are never confused with the paper's own editorials.

Clue Two: The text implicitly attributed to me was not even posted to this site. I was quoting a comment posted to the discussion at Kiwiblog, and identified it as such. The One News report quoted the same comment. Should I therefore attribute the sentiments in question to Television New Zealand?

One News is lucky that David and I are doing no more than registering a modest protest here. A similar slip involving someone else might have wound up in a broadcasting standards complaint or worse. If One News wants to pay me to come and brief its reporters on the use of the internet, I daresay I can find the time. But it's not exactly rocket science.

Meanwhile, geeks are buzzing over an extraordinary leak: six months' worth of internal emails from a company called MediaDefender, running to more than 6000 messages. MediaDefender works for major copyright interests, including the Recording Industry Association of America, providing intelligence on the scale and content of P2P traffic. And, with its black hat on, it creates fake torrent sites and broken torrent files to dissuade and frustrate users.

It appears that one MediaDefender employee created a Gmail account, to which he automatically forwarded all his company email. He then went and signed up to a P2P torrent using that Gmail address and the same password he used for his Gmail. He connected to the forum from an IP address the owners knew was associated with MediaDefender. Shit happened.

This isn't unambiguous. There are, after all, obvious and massive copyright breaches at the centre of this. The leak puts all the company's employees at risk of ill-judged retribution: the emails included spreadsheet attachments that contain personal information.

But the emails are out there now -- available, ironically, as a torrent. They confirm that MediaDefender was in fact carrying out "honeypot" and entrapment activities that it had told journalists it had no part in.

Excerpts in this extensive discussion on Slashdot will doubtless be of interest to MediaDefender clients who want to know what the company really thinks of them. And, basically, the company's entire strategy is now out in the wild -- someone has even helpfully set up a threaded HTML interface to them. It's all incredibly interesting -- unless, of course, you happen to be involved.

And, finally, it'll be interesting to see how the Bush cultists handle this one. In his forthcoming book, former Federal Reserve chairman (and Ayn Rand fanboy) Alan Greenspan slams President Bush for fiscal fecklessness and praises Bill Clinton's understanding of economic policy. The other zinger: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

PS: As our readers have discovered, Prime TV's page for Weeds has been hacked. I guess it could be some clever marketing subterfge, but if it is, it's lost on me.

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