Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Hard News: If wishing made it so ..., in reply to Matthew Poole,
There is a whole industry around extracting useful information from sparse data.
If outlets are required to report EFTPOS details against transactions, that means any non-cash topup will potentially hook it to a name. So a large percentage of cards will become personally identified eventually.
You've then got a system that can classify people as 'potential troublemaker' on a basis of being in certain areas (or 'predicate drunk/druggie' if they're measured as being out and about in entertainment districts late at night. That's then available for employment checks, benefit offices and the like.
As I said, if you'd bothered reading, it's fairly useless for specific incidents but great for building a picture of the behaviour of a state's subjects.
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Hard News: If wishing made it so ..., in reply to Matthew Poole,
I guess if you want to find a (smart) murderer, they'll probably pay cash on the bus, or cycle to the scene of the crime.
If you want to see who travelled to the venue of various demonstrations, you'd probably have more luck.
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Not to mention farting around with a website and some evil loyalty card shite just so I can use the bus
Nobodies mentioned yet the ability to use the system to track people's movements, which is widely used with Oyster.
I don't think this has been rolled out in NZ, possibly because no self respecting criminal/terrerist/dissident would take the bus.
However, I do have a solution which might appeal to the social authoritarian instincts of certain posters. Make everyone wear a corrections-style electronic tag, and bill them for any time spent colocated with a bus.
After all, moving around is a privilege.
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It fails if you've got a handful of other rfid cards in your wallet - you have to take it out and away from all those barfly loyalty cards.
So, BTW, does London's Oyster. I had to take my Snapper out of my wallet for Oyster to work reliably.
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Have you made a conscious decision to be stupid?
Like I said on CIF a while ago, it's a crowded field.
I don't know whether to be worried or impressed that a busy magazine editor has the time to write 326 words in response to a casual jibe on a blog.
Anyways, sorry if I offended you. I don't read Metro because I don't live in Auckland - I do remember having read some good stuff. Your cover shot and straplines said to me 'smart looking kids in uniform' and I didn't really look further.
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Citizens choosing to break laws and in turn suffering the consequences, is not the strongest argument against these laws, which by virtue of being tend to criminalize percentages of the population
I'd say it's a *very* good argument against using the law as an instrument of social control.
The more people's normal activities are proscribed, the less commitment they have to society as a whole. If you take the Venn diagram of populations indulging in illegal activities (drug users, boy racers, copyright violators...) then you start to cover an (un-) surprisingly large chunk of the population.
I'd argue having more minimal laws based on wide consent is much better and more effective.
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Hard News: The frustrating politics of…, in reply to Sacha,
How did Portugal's political process enable decriminalisation?
I believe that much of continental Europe has been amenable to liberal policies in general as part of a 'recoil-reaction' to mid-20th century fascism (Portugal was a dictatorship until 1974). Unfortunately this natural liberalism seems to be declining (and being twisted into islamophobia) as that fascism slips into more distant memory.
Because (most of) the 'anglosphere' remained nominally democratic through the 20th century, this effect didn't take place and politics remained dominated by 'moderate authoritarianism'.
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Hard News: If wishing made it so ..., in reply to Matthew Poole,
The UK had this sorted for the first 80 or so years of the 20th century. They had a big doubledecker bus and employed a person called a 'conductor' who took fares as the bus was moving. They also had an open platform at the back so people could jump on and off at will.
Increased employment and customer convenience, so it got dumped.
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Hard News: The frustrating politics of…, in reply to David Cormack,
Yeah, while it's very sad what happened to Anderton's daughter (?), people with a emotional baggage in a problem usually aren't the ones to deal with that problem rationally.
Anderton should have been given associate agriculture or something (given the need to have him (and initially the other member of his vanity party) in government at all).
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Hard News: Strange days for journalism, in reply to izogi,
( wildly digressing here )
Yes, it's oddly drafted, isn't it, in that it doesn't seem to proscribe a visitor making a nuke.
Also, if I, as an NZ citizen, were to go and work for AWE (the UK's nuclear weapons lab), would I violate S.5.2.b ? Because I'd be a servant of the Crown, albeit not in right of New Zealand - does 'Crown' mean the latter?