Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Kracklite,
IQ above luke warm is an asset
You know, there are plenty of opportunities for humour in pointing out the difference between Celsius and Kelvin
I'm just waiting for someone to suggest that one of our elected representatives has an IQ of zero. Kelvin ;)
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Kracklite,
despite committing what would be a serious criminal offence had be not been a police officer.
umm, what? What offence, exactly? He didn't perjure himself, and in any case perjury by police officers is very definitely a criminal offence.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Kracklite,
The officer who conducted the interview with Mr Farmer was “moved sideways” within the force. Could that bus ticket be any wetter?
It was 2007 that the conviction was overturned, so slightly different internal environment. And given that detectives are something of an elite, if the guy got shuffled off into traffic that would be quite the serious status demotion. You don't always have to reduce someone's rank (and detective isn't a rank, anyway, so you can't demote someone from detective) to make it clear that they're unworthy of responsibility.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
Rich is talking about "carrier-grade NAT", which is where the ISP itself presents a handful of IP addresses to the rest of the tubes and carries out NAT between its customers and those IP addresses.
There are many technical fuckups in this law that could've been avoided if *gasp* proper consultation had occurred. But it didn't, so they weren't, and now it'll fall on the hapless ISPs to deal with it.
Or people like me, since I'm in the process of convincing my theatre group to offer hotspot services to customers. I'm comfortable that I can secure the hotspot against unauthorised users, but there's nothing to stop authorised users from abusing the service if they're really inclined. -
The thing that really fucks me off about this thing is, as others have said, the urgency. National just cannot help themselves - you know it's bad when even DPF complains about how much they've abused urgency in just one term!
Two years in National had already passed more legislation under urgency than Labour did in three whole terms. I'm a little confused as to just who is the nanny state government that knows better than the electorate. -
Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Gareth Ward,
why would they NOT just gather up those IP addresses and have the ISPs send warning letters for what will surely be a fairly small "processing fee" (what does it cost to send a letter?).
I'd expect ISPs to be charging $100-$250 as a reasonable attempt at recouping costs. It's not just the per-letter time (which is 5-10 minutes per, at a minimum, and would be cheap at $100/hour), but also the costs of the tracking system for customers who've been sent previous letters, the input from legal on the wording of the letters, sign-off from executives on the third stage action, etc etc. It's not cheap.
The biggest problem I have with what the rights-holders want from ISPs is that they want the ISPs to wear all of the costs even though they get no financial benefit. In most other industries, you don't get to make other people do your dirty work at their cost.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to nzlemming,
Don’t you believe it. The lawyergrams will cite the Act for added “authority” and most people will go “Oh, yeah, I heard about that” and pay up.
And then some canny person will complain to the police about the rights-holder's fraud.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
As has been said by others, the cost of nuclear power is not just the initial capital, but the indemnity if it all goes horribly wrong. Taken as a global aggregate, I would say there's probably sufficient data for actuarial calculations to be carried out for indemnity insurance for nuclear plant operators. It's not new tech, after all, and billions of GWh are generated by nuclear plants every year.
If it's actually financially realistic to offer insurance to nuclear power companies, why is nobody doing it? Could it be because the premiums would have to be so high that nobody would purchase cover? I find it very hard to believe that no insurance company has looked into the economics.
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Hard News: Locking in the Future, in reply to Ross Mason,
What's scarier is that it's very easy to see the parallels between the situation in the US and the situation in NZ. Our levels of inequality are increasing, but heaven forfend that one dares suggest that this is anything other than a harmonious ode to diligent work and the triumph of capitalism uber alles.
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Muse: Hey Greg O'Connor, Krup You!, in reply to Danielle,
one of my friends was once thrown in jail for the night for saying “I smell pork”
Many years ago, when McD's were doing their McRib burger, colleagues of mine came out of the drive-thru at Greenlane to be accosted by a couple of rather irate officers who'd been at the payment window as my oblivious-to-their-presence co-worker was captured over the order mic saying "I smell pork."
The explanation (well d'uh! Of course they smelled pork!) was accepted, but from accounts they were a somewhat unpleasant few minutes.