Posts by Paul Campbell

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  • Speaker: This ain't a scene,

    oh you're all so silly - every age cohort needs their own thing, it has to be different, recognisable and the oldsters have to pooh-pooh it (see you're doing your part ...) .... it's just the way of the world and part of growing up and becoming separate from your parents (and older siblings)

    oh yeah and as the parent of (non-emo) Dunedin teenagers I can tell you there are too emos in Dunedin

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report

  • Hard News: We'll find out where all the…,

    well growing up in the late 70s I always took the milling around outside the pub at 10/11 looking for parties to be our equivalent of the 6-o'clock swill - enforced on young people with more energy than their elders

    What may be happening now is s hoonish version of a flash-mob - instead of information about parties being passed by word of mouth outside the pub (and forgotten or garbled by half of the recipients) - now we have reliable texting doing the exponential mob thing ....

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report

  • Hard News: Unusual Democracy,

    sigh - exchange rates - so my take home has gone down this year by about 20% (I contract to companies in the US) but my mortgage has gone up - apparently it's a good thing .....

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report

  • Hard News: A depressing day in court,

    Dave - I think the point everyone's trying to make is just going over your head - "giving someone a hiding" because they hurt someone else is part of a cycle of violence - it's a mistake to give someone a hiding whether they broke your nose or kicked you in the shin or stepped on your toe -you step away and if it's serious you bring in the cops etc what you don;t do is play judge/jury/executioner and step in and beat the crap out of someone

    If you did it to a random stranger in the street you'd both end up in the lockup for public fighting

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report

  • Hard News: A depressing day in court,

    I too have a 16yr old son, never smacked the kids and have never this sort of problems with mine - I do believe that bringing the kids up to think that violence is an answer to disputes is a caustic thing


    I can understand the frustration (on both sides, I remember being a teenager) but honestly violence doesn't ever make things better ....


    Dave - you're missing the most obvious thing here - these parents are adults - at any time they could have and should have just walked away - instead someone's machismo's probably been threatened and they just started wailing away - this is the same world view that results in pub brawls

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report

  • Hard News: Things we needed to hear,

    I must admit I too have been wondering about the effect of police training during the '81 tour ....

    But it could also be that the cause is more that because the police visibly took sides in such a contentious political issue, more than just enforcing the law but publically coming down on the side of rugby, they ended up changing the demographic that they recruited from - for a while they probably ended up only getting the 'rugby-thug' element and no one for the 'other side'

    Probably it's a bit of both

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Public Good,

    err I mean "MySky"

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Public Good,

    you know I didn't explain that well did I - the most important point - MythTV lets you turn your old PC into a PVR - a super digital VCR like "SkyTV"

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Public Good,

    one of the great things about TVNZ's digital plans are that they will be open, unencrypted, broadcast using standard protocols - that means that anyone will be able to take that old PC that just wont hack it for Vista, pop down to Dave Smith (I swear that guy hasn't aged a day in 30 years) buy a digital TV card and drop a lean and mean MythTV/Linux distro on it - I bet someone will knock up a kiwi-specific liveCD so you can just try it out without any real technical experience.

    Something there you're really missing? it's open source - hack it in yourself (or get the 13yr old down the street to do it)

    (Or maybe we'll bring in some of the boxes I design for the US and sell them here - they're even better!)

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Public Good,

    Of course what is a PVR? it's something that rips streams based on meta-data ....

    In Sky's (or the new TVNZ digital broadcasts) case the meta-data is embedded in the same digital stream as the video (or sometimes for longer-term data on the stream next door), for Tivo the meta-data comes from a modem or the 'net ...

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report

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