Posts by David Hood

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  • Muse: Hooray for Wellywood (Really!), in reply to giovanni tiso,

    I assume this has happened elsewhere as well.

    Queenstown springs to mind. From memory they, and other fast food places, all got firm No to the kind of signs found in other places when they first came to town.

    Dunedin • Since May 2007 • 1445 posts Report

  • Hard News: Budget 2011: While you wait,

    If they limit to Working For Families to the poorest, but don't do anything about family trusts I could imagine that as a effective talking point- "National are cutting support for middle New Zealand, but leaving it for those whose wealth is hidden in family trusts". Of course, to mount this argument, Labour would probably need to be prepared to do something about family trusts, and I don't really see that as likely.

    Dunedin • Since May 2007 • 1445 posts Report

  • Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,

    Acupuncture

    I suggest people track down the episode of the TV Show Brianiac where they (being a TV show and so not bound by the ethical concerns of medical practitioners) got the elderly asian man from the local fish and chip shop, gave him some needles, and brought people in to have "acupuncture" (the man from the fish and chip shop not having the slightest clue about acupuncture). The reported pain relief from people have needles stuck in them at random by an old asian guy in a white coat matched actual acupuncture results. I actually squirmed a bit watching that.

    Dunedin • Since May 2007 • 1445 posts Report

  • Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Kyle Matthews,

    If you’re under Mac OS X, with the Maori keyboard chosen, I think they key command is `-a (“back apostrophe"-a).

    Correct (as with Windows 7 apparently), though I use the alternative option-a which also works.

    Dunedin • Since May 2007 • 1445 posts Report

  • Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Steve Barnes,

    can’t find an Apple on mine.

    Well, the Windows 7 instructions are pretty easy as well. XP is harder (but it is a 2001 operating system). Linux is about what you would expect.

    Dunedin • Since May 2007 • 1445 posts Report

  • Hard News: The witless on the pitiless,

    I worked document preparation support through the period before unicode became commonplace on webpages (I'd call it about 5 years ago you could rely on the right encodings being understood and the viewing machine having the right fonts). Prior to that the only real choices were "Try putting the characters on the page, but they may not have the fonts and it will look like garbage" "Use HTML entities and the style of font used for the character may not match the surrounding text" or "Make a pdf with embedded fonts".
    These days it is no longer a special effort to go to when you want to produce macrons. For example, set a Mac to use the Maori* (or on older machines the Hawaiian) keyboard and hit option-a, or the extended U.S. keyboard with option-a followed by a.
    Even setting keyboards is a comparatively easy task these days, I recently sent a "nontechnical user" a one paragraph description of how to make their computer type in Turkish, and they were quickly off exploring the world of unicode.
    *the keyboard name does not use the macron.

    Dunedin • Since May 2007 • 1445 posts Report

  • Speaker: Why the disaster in Japan made…,

    As well as using the migration assistant with Firewire, you can also use it across ethernet or through a wireless connection (ethernet is slow, wireless is very very slow). If one is backing up the computer with Time Machine, you can also use the backup volume as a source for transferring files with Migration Assistant (I did this one last week).
    Unless you are talking about having an iMac too old for Migration Assistant to understand (System 9? pre 2002?), which I would agree would need manual copying.

    Dunedin • Since May 2007 • 1445 posts Report

  • Hard News: For the kids, if nothing else, in reply to JLM,

    Just listened. Priceless.

    I do have to note that deliberate parasitic worm infection has shown a lot of promise in clinical trials of the treatment of Chron's and Ulcerative Colitis (Inflammatory Bowel Diseases). And with the choice of your immune system eating your digestive tract, or have worms coexist in it, I think most people would say "give me the worms" (admittedly, these are more benign varieties than Guinea worms).

    Dunedin • Since May 2007 • 1445 posts Report

  • Cracker: Send in the Clowns,

    When my twelve year old daughter was reading High School prospectuses late last year, she was noting grammatical errors in them (and the actual enrollment forms) as she went.
    But then, as she said to me while I was writing something the other evening, "You know, you should really use words for numbers under 10".

    Dunedin • Since May 2007 • 1445 posts Report

  • Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to Sacha,

    AMI Insurance covers many smaller policies and has been exposed to two large payout events in a statistically-unlikely short time.

    AMI also have a reputation for having been undercutting other other insurance companies premium prices, by not buying the same level of reinsurance cover as other companies.

    Dunedin • Since May 2007 • 1445 posts Report

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