Posts by Paul Campbell
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Maybe part of the issue here is the conflict between being an electorate MP and a cabinet minister - in an MMP world there's scope for cabinet ministers that don't have electorate responsibilities (and don't need a house out of Wellington) - as a deputy leader and potential minister of finance he probably should have gone in on the list rather then as the MP for Dipton.
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Hmm, the only thing I could see as a conflict could be the HD decoding capacity, both TV3 and TV1/2 are HD, 1080i and 720 respectively, while all the others are plain SD.
It's not doing decoding when it's recording - more likely it's a disk bandwidth issue - it's tough to stream 2 HD streams to cheap disks and be able to guarantee that the user can still play back a third (it gets worse if you plug in a random USB disk and try and use that).
When I designed PVRs for a living explaining physical limitations to users was hard - what you can and can't do me be limited by disk bandwidth, number of tuners, what else has been scheduled, who else is doing what (we built multi-headed PVRs that serviced more than one room).
Explaining in simple enough terms to a user why they can't do something is really really hard in some circumstances - often the reason is some combination of 4 different things - for example a dialog box: "this show is starting to record just as it ends, but this other thing is recording now and Joe in the other room is doing this other thing and for 30 seconds the disk will be maxed out - I could let you look at it live but you can't push the pause button in the last 30 seconds of the show you want to watch" wont fit on the screen .... but "scheduling conflict" will and saying you have to cancel some other show to make it work is more acceptable than the marketing dept worried about how people will accept that 30 second if we don't warn them about it.
I did once build a 4 tuner satellite box just for the hell of it (SD only in those days) - the first time we got a 5-way scheduling conflict the UI crashed trying to present something that could never have a hope of fitting on the screen. On the other hand the family wasn't happy when we went back to a 2 tuner box (what do you mean we can't record The Simpsons, Sex in the City, and the Sopranos on a Sat night?
Finaly a note about "Series Link" that functionality is hard to get right - allowing someone to just record "The Simpsons" can be disastrous - as we discovered when my kids did that the weekend of a channel's Simsons Marathon - you try and delete 200 shows manually (we added a series delete to the UI as a result) - alternately you can just record it if it plays at a particular time each week then you miss it if the time changes for a while.
Often series link sort of functionality is filtered by episode title - that's probably why when I last tried to record Media7 I got 5 copies each week - shows that don't have a title all get recorded
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I honestly think there's just some people in society who haven't learned to internalise "if I do this I will go to jail" at least to the extent that it makes them think otherwise before committing a crime (for some it might be more like "if I do this I probably wont get caught").
I think these people are the ones we're more likely to see committing crime - but equally it means that increasing sentences has no effect - because they don't think it applies to them - by the time they do get caught it's too late.
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Actually the West Coast US Immigration experience isn't really that bad - yes they treat you like cattle - largely because they never have enough people on duty - and yes they're a bit surly (but then we probably are too after 12 hours of airNZ) - a smile goes a long way in both directions - it's usually over in 10-15 minutes.
To be fair I pass through 2-3 times a year so somewhere in their computer it probably says "he always leaves before his visa is up", and because I used to have a green card there's probably a copy of my (hopefully empty) police record - then again I don't look like the usual biz traveler - the ponytail and beard probably raise their BS detectors a little.
The fingerprinting and photo I don't mind - but in my case they already have both of those on file already from 25 years ago - I'm not giving them anything they don't already have (and if you have an electronic passport you just handed them a copy anyway ....) - there's been some form of that green 'moral turpitude'/'have you ever tried to overthrow a government' (well I voted ...)/'are you a communist' (do Socialists count? what about little 's' socialists) etc etc form around forever - these days it's a joke almost a historical artifact from another age ....
JFK on the other hand .... not my favorite place for US immigration ....
One thing EVERYONE who visits the US should do - that copy of the green form they staple in your passport - the airline's supposed to take it when you check in to leave - sometimes they forget - if they do the INS thinks you're still in the country - don't go to the gates until you're sure the airline took it from you
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I don't know about Austin - my only experience was a one day business trip that we finished by midday - we were stuck in suits in a rental with a failing AC - the only places we could find that were vaguely cold were the state capitol building and the LBJ library .... and eventually a bar ... on the way back to the airport we almost missed our flight because traffic was stopped because the road was full of hookers - it just didn't seem to be the cool place I know it probably is.
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I must admit I had a lot of "oh that's how it works" sort after I first moved to the US - a lot if it was trying to figure how much of my expectations of how things would work were based on TV/movies - for example accents were something I was wasn't prepared for - african americans really do talk differently - my first week at work I had to deal with a customer from Dallas - she had a broad Texan accent - said "y'all" - I'd assumed that people didn't really talk that way, it was some sort of code they used on TV to indicate a corrupt southern sheriff .... but they do ....
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deep: Well because of my lingering accent I get a bit of this - I'd suggest it's probably the first - then again that may just be the circles I wander in
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When we moved back to NZ my 11 yr old daughter announced that she wanted to lose her american accent before school started (in about 2 weeks) - she was a bit scared about the new place and didn't want to stand out - of course it drew people to her rather than set her apart and she was off to friends houses after school before the first week was out
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Letterman used to have Conan's late night slot - it was a "we don't care we're in bed" for the tVT execs so pretty much any thing went (one night they recorded the entire show from one camera - that performed a 360 degree rotation during that hour) - they did 'off the wall' really well - now he has a more conventional time slot and a larger straighter audience and he's changed to match and is more like Leno because that's what people expect from that time slot (right after the late news)
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Yeah as i said the thing about the NZ papers is that they cover everything and loudly- largely I think because they feel they have to to compete with the immediacy of TV.
It didn't used to be like that: My father-in-law looking to move his family from the US to get his 16-year old son away from the reach of the Vietnam War draft chose NZ on the strength of an early 1970s NZ Herald headline: "Man knocked off bicycle"