Posts by nzlemming
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to JackElder,
*Mess*-all impact, if you please.
Mess you, mother-messer! #sfwswearing
Where the mess does that leave Liam?
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to recordari,
In nomine Ian
et Ian
et spiritus Ian... -
OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Lew Stoddart,
It seems to me, in that piece, he equates price with value and uses both words a little recklessly.
We know that demand for security in general is fairly elastic. Why else would we see such price dispersion in the various grades of, for example, kid car seats? Some folks put a lot of value on it, others don't.
I think some analysis on his part, rather than supposition, would find that some people can afford more expensive child seats, which has no relevance to how safe the various seats are, nor how much people value their children's safety. Whether they have a seat at all is more likely to show their appreciation of value.
He also fails by assuming that all players have perfect knowledge of all options, and consequently chides them for acting irrationally in the face of that knowledge. "The law says get a car seat, we've got a car seat, we're good to go" is about the level of analysis many would put to the issue - compliance rather than safety (cf. use of safety belts by adults).
I wish we could get rid of this whole "rational actor" thing - it gets in the way of understanding how people operate.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Meh… I contained my disappointment by picturing you topless on the radio
It wasn't just me, then? Good to know...
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Sacha,
I think he means it. Lordy lordy lordy...
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Sacha,
So we repeat to each other the human voices, stories both terrible and hopeful, for no reason other than to be with them.
Wow. That's a nice piece of writing.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Kracklite,
Wunderbar, but can you tell me what strategy is employed to avoid obsolescence?
I hope that it’s not just taken for granted that it will be readable decades from now. Clay tablets are easier to read than floppy discs these days.
See http://www.natlib.govt.nz/about-us/current-initiatives/web-harvest-2010
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Megan Wegan,
Not now we know that whole thing about the archiving national library.
Future generations need to know!
Also, NatLib attempts to archive the entire NZ Web on a more-or-less annual basis. They recognise that legal deposit doesn't really work online, so they harvest all .nz sites and those they know about in the gTLD space, like this one. Just so you know...
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Hard News: Welfare: Back to the Future?, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Hindsight is twenty-twenty.
They didn’t put it in Wellington for precisely that reason. It had to be Auckland or Christchurch for population reasons (pool of temporary workers etc) and Auckland is just too expensive for this type of operation for a government agency, in terms of ground rent, wage differentials, cost of living etc.
As to faults under Canterbury, New Zealand is one big faultline, Even Palmy is not immune to quakes, and the two quakes in Chch were on unknown faults.
Stop trying to second-guess everything, Matthew. The decisions made sense at the time, whether you agree with them or not..
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Hard News: Welfare: Back to the Future?, in reply to Ross Mason,
Funding got cut to all those programs last year. Apparently, sitting in front of the television is preferable to actually learning anything.