Posts by Steve Barnes
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Hard News: The Web, in reply to Rob Stowell,
There's something wrong with my wife and I searching the same term in google and getting different results.
Yeah, that harks back to my point about the "hand holding" its getting a bit creepy.
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Just checking TVNZ Back in the Day to see what they have on WWW, nothing yet but I have Ms M. A. Hacker (great Name eh?) looking for what TVNZ has.
Did find this gem though Hi Tech Video, 1988 -
Hard News: The Web, in reply to Ross Mason,
the original ACTRIX sitting in the corner of the dining room!!!!
They are still going too.
And my first email address having to be 8 letters or less.
Yup, I used my car registration number, more hxr like ;-)
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Can’t remember dates as such but I do remember my first BBS experience, it was like WOW, my mind raced with possibilities, “I wonder if you could use this for digital music via file sharing?” (you could, and still can, download music as a .txt file and, although I can’t remember how now, convert it to music, it may have just been MIDI but back then….
I had previously, back in the mid eighties, thought about the end of having to buy a new cassette every time you wanted a new tune, “just take the cassette to the shop and they can record over it” I thought. Of course it didn’t take me long before I accepted that cassettes were rubbish and we needed a new storage medium, “What about some kind of memory chip that you connected to the Net and just download from a collection they kept of all music available?” And along came the infant internet with the BBS and the Chat rooms and the ranting and raving of new found voices. Then I got a copy of Mosaic.The most fascinating thing, to me anyway, was the HTML. You could get a link from someone and follow it, within that document you would find other links and follow them and so on and so on, who needed a search engine when you didn’t have a clue where you might end up?.
Then along came Alta Vista.
I could find stuff easily and pass that along to friends so they could play the maze game of following links to infinity and beyond.
Now we have Google the all powerful. I don’t mind Google, they say they are not evil and they are at the forefront of FREE being the new price for everything basic (you pay through the nose I guess for more than basic and that’s ok by me) BUT…
and it is a big but. As Russ says ” one that prioritised results according to the links we’d made ourselves.” and that is the problem for me, the maze has gone, you are now guided by a “helping hand” that just “knows” where you want to go because you have been there before.
Sad.
But Happy birthday big wide world web, its just a shame you got tamed. -
As I said to te Herald a few weeks back "Its bad enough that they changed their logo to something resembling a cat's rear end and now, to compound that, changed their name to Kraps spelt backwards. Do people actually get paid to be this stupid?."
Anyhoo, a few tips for those wanting to improve their TV experience.
For quite a few years now I have been using NPVR as my DVR though a comp plugged into the TV by HDMI and using Comskip to remove ads.
Recently I have rediscovered XBMC as a way of getting good on-line content. Anyone watch The Daily Show last night, I didn't think so...
XBMC actually stands for Xbox media centre but now you can use it through a comp/laptop instead.
So have a follow of those links and have fun. -
Hard News: The Mayor's marginal enemies, in reply to Craig Young,
However, this particular scandal is of lesser significance than the corpulent cavortings of the crack cocaine-imbibing Toronto mayor Rob Ford,
Oh come on. The guy had a legitimate excuse for smoking crack with gang bangers, he was drunk at the time.
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Ahh, Conservatives, “Looking Backwards for a Better Future”.
Or how about “Making Tomorrow Just Like Yesterday”?
I have an irrational distrust of a man with two first names anyway but honestly, how can you repeal a law that was repealed? surely that’s reinstatement?
As has been said by many and not listened to by the vociferous few, THERE IS NO ANTI SMACKING LAW, it was just taking away the right to smack your kids up, in a reasonable manner of course.
Can’t we just smack Colin Craig or is that just not OK? -
Cracker: Stoned in Charge, in reply to George Darroch,
Alcohol and cannabis are huge impairments, and when you overlay them on any driver the outcomes are going to be worse.
Unless, that is, your main aim is to reduce the number of bad drivers on the road and are prepared to accept collateral damage. (playing the fool of course)
I think we could increase the depth of driver education and testing and improve the overall standard of competence, our driving licences are as easy to get as a cold in this country.
Of course alcohol and drugs impair all kinds of things, that's why we do it, add to that incompetent drivers and you have the situation we find ourselves in now.And what about the severity of the accidents in which stoned drivers are involved? Are we talking injury?
Shouldn't really be factored in, an accident is always due to somebody not paying attention or pushing the limits of either their skill or the design capability of their vehicle. I have to disagree with George...
Rarely is bad driving people who are pushing those limits deliberately.
Unfortunately this is more often than not the case (I do know his point was about deliberately taking drugs or drinking alcohol but even they don't say "I'm going to get out of it so I can have a car accident"
Police are doing something about it though, they are repainting their cars and reducing their tolerance The reduced tolerance to over limit drivers, reduced from 10% to 5% seems to be working but I have to question its legality. At present the accuracy of speedometers for a vehicle are "within 10%" so it could be an interesting case if you could argue that your "speedo" said 100 but the cops say 110, what would be the outcome of that?. -
Cracker: Stoned in Charge, in reply to Stephen R,
If the tests are relevant to driving, is it possible that people who suck at that sober shouldn’t be driving even when sober?
Indeed. Also the Sausage argument. I wonder if the correlation of the number accident involving alcohol, or drugs for that matter, is more to do with the fact that so many people drink and drive, because we are a nation of drinkers lets face it. Many people I know who say they are against drinking and driving actually still do it, its just that they drink less when driving plus the fact that they don’t go out much.
I drive a lot 1000+ Ks a week sometimes and the biggest problem I see on the roads is just bad, inattentive and selfish driving, not using mirrors (apart from applying make-up or just checking how good you look) and that old chestnut “I have the right of way so fk you” -
Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
the costs of additional infrastructure should be paid for by the developers, who benefit from it.
And, like I said, pass it on to the home buyer. You really think developers, out of the kindness of their hearts, actually cough up the cash?. The whole point of Govt. paying the upfront cost was to help make building new homes more effectively and cheaply without the horrendous cost of infrastructure. The way the system works at the moment is that somebody who wants to develop land often find themselves having to stump up money that could be better spent on better quality housing. Not holding my breath there though.