Posts by Russell Brown
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One Saturday in 1997, I joined my friend Andrew Black and several others at his corporate reserve seating for a test match at Eden Park. Until recently, the corporate reserve seats were the blocks in the middle of the South Stand, with a fridge at the end of each.
As a fairly dull afternoon's cricket unfolded, the fridge was refilled more than once. We hailed Barry Jenkin and bid him join us. Later , we adjourned to Barry's place, where certain activities left a prominent music management figure somewhat unwell. Eventually, I decided that this disreputable day should be drawn to a close, and helped the young manager into a taxi.
As I sashayed somewhat unsteadily into my house, my darling greeted me: "Well, thanks for letting me know you were going to be gone for hours and hours -- and by the way, your editor rang and Telecom is suing you."
This was very difficult news to process in the circumstances, and I was fairly speechlees. But it was true. A mocking story I had written for the IDGNet website the day before had caused a certain under-pressure Telecom executive to snap, and at his urging, Telecom had somehow got a judge to convene in a room at Trentham race course. (As per a later legal agreement, I can't go into the details of the story, but, basically, although I was quite right in the story, the matter going to court could have made life difficult for a couple of other people.)
Trouble was, they hadn't been able to find me (nobody thought to try Eden Park, clearly). But I went into my office, and there it was, on my computer: I had just become the first person in New Zealand to be served with notice of defamation action by email.
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Anyway, I think it's fair to discuss media tactics, but we should steer clear of the actual charges and associated claims which are to come before the court.
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Clearly someone on team Dunne-Powell leaked the initial allegations, and all the other information that followed it.
I don't think the actual sequence of events is that clear, and I get the impression that the D-P side didn't really want to go to court, but yes, it seems that the original document (the agreement for financial compensation) was given to the Dominion Post by someone known to her. Woman's Day and possibly others had the same document in hand when the story broke.
But what we're seeing now goes beyond tit-for-tat: it's a very methodical working of the media on matters that are now sub judice. I think it really has to stop.
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What does pwned mean?
To be defeated, especially in a humiliating way.
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quick time is crap for playing avi files, its codec this and codec that, where as vlc just plays them without discussion, and its free,
It's my experience that, enhanced with a single set of free codecs, Perian (which has the sweetest install process you could hope for), QuickTime does a better job of most files (including .flv Flash files), and offers many features VLC doesn't. Yes, just downloading VLC is the easiest solution, but I don't think that means QT is "crap".
With Windows Media files, it's not even close: if you're on a Mac you need the Flip4Mac components. VLC's WM support is pretty flaky, and it doesn't offer a plug-in, so you can't use it to play WM files in a browser.
Of course, all this is with respect to Mac OS. QuickTime for Windows is a rather different beast.
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The copyright question is interesting. On one hand, you'd want to fairly let copyright rest with the author. On the other hand, you'd see virtue in funding content that could be freely distributed with attribution.
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But that's just me...
It's me too, to be honest. Review and editorial writing is my crack.
But, dispassionately, it's the really big jobs where there's a deficit, and where the public good can most amply be served.
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Senator Biden voted for the invasion and the war.Obama now has lost the high moral ground argument which I think appealed to so many.
Biden is getting raps for the likes of this:
Your kitchen table is like mine, you sit there at night after you put the kids to bed and you talk about what you need. That's not a worry John McCain has to worry about. He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at.
Rightly or wrongly, the Democrats have decided the gap between McCain's hardscrabble image and the reality of his marrying into wealth decades ago (after walking out on his seriously ill first wife) is worth exploiting. Biden's way more able to do that: he's the poorest guy in the Senate.
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or you could just download the best media player for mac and not worry with all that other carry on.
VLC player
Nah, I'm gonna disagree. I use VLC for the odd job, but tooled-up QuickTime provides, I think, better performance and far more options for saving, exporting, etc.
The NewsMash section of Media7 is principally compiled by me using those tools, plus VideoHub and a couple of different video downloader add-ons for Firefox. All free or cheap software.
The funny thing is that the AVID suite we actually use to compile the show isn't nearly as flexible and turns to sludge trying to import most file formats. I now do rough edits and export the clips to DV-PAL and drive them over to Images for the others to work their gentle editing magic.
God. Video geekery.
thank you LEDS for the present.
And bloody good on you for being the first to say so.
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I don't have time to boil down all of this right now, but I see a fund to finance journalism projects as completely different from the idea of a new publication, and more do-able.
The fund lets you make a much more compelling case as the honest broker. I think there are people who could be approached for assistance on a clear public-good basis who wouldn't see a reason to support a publication.
Also, commentary will survive regardless. What we're missing in New Zealand is resourcing for investigative reporting and heavily researched feature writing.
I'm going to think some more about this.
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