Posts by Matthew Poole

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  • Hard News: Not all victims are equal,

    Yes, of course variations are normal. I used to live in Lower Hutt, 500 metres from a river that could flood adjacent roads to a depth of 1.5 metres, so I know all about volume variation. But a 36-fold increase in volume in the space of 30 minutes is very extreme, especially when it goes away again 30 minutes later. That spike in the Ashley Gorge is impressive, but looks like it abated over a period of at least a couple of days.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Not all victims are equal,

    Sofie wrote:

    the centre needs a sat phone,and change the 'crossing a swollen river' policies.

    To put a bit of context on this, I saw an interview on Breakfast the day after, where someone (I can't remember who, but they were in a position to know. I think he was a meteorologist) was saying that in the space of an hour (measured on the hour, the half-hour, then the following hour) the river went from 0.5 cumecs, to 18 cumecs, and back to 0.5 cumecs. It's all very well to say that OPC needs to revise their procedures, and they probably do, but that is a phenomenal variation in flow volume in a very short space of time and it may be that there was actually very little that the instructor could've done differently.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: You can't always get what you…,

    Rich wrote:

    How flexible a technology is fibre? Will we spend $$$ on putting in 2010-generation fibre and then find it's obsolete in 10 years? (Good-quality copper has transitioned from the 3kHz analog it was installed for through to 20Mbit DSL). How many people will opt for expensive fibre over said 20Mbit copper (or won't we get a choice?). How much backhaul is this going to need and who's going to provide it?

    Fibre is fibre. The transmission tech keeps on improving, and consequently the capacity keeps on increasing. Even the cheap "plastic" fibre that gets used for short-distance links in server rooms can carry multiple GB/s, and the limitations keep reducing. Unlike copper, pumping more data down fibre just means adding another wavelength of light. Until the light spectrum is saturated, we won't hit the top edge of fibre's capacity.

    There's really no such thing as "2010-generation fibre". The upgrades to the transmission equipment are pretty invisible to users, and for a company that has only a fibre network as an asset putting in new tech is a no-brainer.

    Because of fibre's effectively unlimited capacity, backhaul isn't a problem. The users at home get connected to a 100Mb/s or whatever link, and that connects back to the cabinet, which multiplexes lots of piddly little links into one much-bigger link, and that connects back to the exchange, where all the cabinet links get multiplexed into one honking great (technical term) link to regional exchanges, and so forth. Eventually it makes its way back to the ISP, after much (de)multiplexing, and gets treated the same way as it does now.

    Fibre is the future. Sure we can keep on pushing copper, but the higher the speeds the shorter the distances over which they will work. Go to Wikipedia and look at the comparison tables for various DSL implementations. Sure you can get 100Mb/s with VDSL, but only for 500m from the exchange. And why stop at 100Mb/s? I realise that our pollie tubbies lack the vision to see beyond a mere 20Mb/s, but with other countries heading toward gig to the home, we need to look much, much further. Copper will not get us there, fibre can get us all the way there and far, far beyond. Think big, not small!

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Ya rly,

    Does anyone have any insight as to whether the separation of Telecom Networks might resolve the stand-off over peering?

    Yes, it should result in a fairly swift resolution.

    Peering was originally stopped, according to the multitude of cynics in the NZ internet operators' community (of which I am one), because it allowed Telecom to push ISPs to purchase expensive domestic connections to allow them to exchange traffic with Xtra. The alternative was to have to send the traffic over even-more-expensive international links (which many did, giving some indication of just how wildly expensive those domestic links were). It's interesting that the only other ISP to de-peer was Telstraclear, which is also the only other ISP attached to a company that sells physical data links.

    Now that Xtra has to pay for domestic and international connectivity at the same rates as everyone else, there is a very strong incentive for them to re-peer. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that if Xtra doesn't re-peer, it's evidence that the separation isn't actually working properly.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Buy now: spend the recession inside!,

    Gareth Ward said:

    Ouch. I actually thought the HDMI standard had HDCP within it, so I certainly would have been caught out with that...

    The HDCP "standard" changed. Its status was uncertain for a while, and subsequently HDMI was a bit uncertain too. I suspect that's why there were sets that were lacking HDCP compliance. Welcome to the wonderful world of Digital Restrictions Management.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Buy now: spend the recession inside!,

    And what about the coffee?!?!?! Oh the humanity, we would have no coffee. Or chocolate! I don't think that "nutsos" quite encompasses the depths of their depravity!

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Buy now: spend the recession inside!,

    Sue said:

    but aren't there (and this is my opinion) nutsos who think nz should be 100% self sustainable.
    these are the ones who advocate calculating food miles and only buying produce that is XXkms away from your home

    Your opinion roughly mirrors mine. Where do these people think we'll get clothing from? NZ has no cotton industry worth a damn, and the wrong climate to really grow the stuff anyway. So we'd be stuck making environmentally-friendly clothing out of hemp (what hemp?) and wool (so lots of us will be going commando!).
    We don't grow much rice, either, and again our climate's not really right for it. So there goes that staple of vegan/vegetarian diets, to be replaced by...?

    Being self-sufficient is a nice idea, but reality is a big, hard brick wall. We literally cannot produce a lot of things that are important to modern life. If we want to all go back to riding horses, wearing clothing made from hemp and flax, eating fairly poorly (only seasonal, locally-grown fruit and vege, no rice), not taking part in the modern world (where do these people think computers and all other electronic devices are made?), and generally being an early-19th-century agrarian economy, then we're sorted. For those of us who like living in the modern era, though, NZ is not, will never be, and can never be self-sufficient.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Buy now: spend the recession inside!,

    Stephen said:

    As far as I know, New Zealand foreign policy has always been of craven pragmatism whenever there are exports at stake. This latest to-do is no different.

    Us and the rest of the world. Principles are a very sometimes thing in global politics. We're a lot more principled than many nations (look at how the US cuddles up to Saudi Arabia and then in the same breath calls Mugabe a murderous thug) but there are still real downsides to shitting in the international trade lunchbox. If we can't trade, we're in deep, deep poo, more so than many nations because our internal economy is so tiny. We cannot support our standard of living just buying and selling within NZ, so trade is vital. Politicians know that, and act accordingly.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Buy now: spend the recession inside!,

    Sue said:

    my one thing i remind most people i know is that this is a country that denies the massacre that happened in tiananmen square in the summer of 1989.

    Oh, it's better than that. About three years back, I saw an article about the massacre, and how the Chinese aparatchik deal with it. The short version, incoming members who are too young (read: under about 40) to "remember" it are shown videos that decry the protesters as violent insurgents out to bring down the nation, justifying the oppression, and suggesting that it's entirely reasonable to run people down with tanks.

    That's not historic, that's recent. This material was shown to people who were taking up positions earlier this decade, so it's not something that was only done in the years immediately afterward.

    But if we don't engage with China on trade we'll be left out and that's not good for the economy. As Helen observed the other day, nearly everything that China exports to us comes in tariff-free anyway. We have about the most open marketplace in the world, bar none, but people still bitch and moan that an FTA with China will open us up to flood of cheap, crappy imports. Guess what: we're already being flooded with those cheap, crappy (and other distinctly un-cheap and un-crappy) imports. Nothing's going to change. We stand to benefit a lot if we can get our goods into China's protected markets easily, and we don't have much to lose because we have so little protection in the first place. China has very little in the way of objectionable policy that they would want to make conditional (as contrasted with the US position of their way or the highway on IP-related policy) and so we don't lose in that regard, either.

    The only possible downside is low-cost workers coming here, but Helen seems to think that that's taken care of. Without seeing what the agreement says on the matter it's irresponsible to speculate on what might occur.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: What the people want to hear,

    OK, so there's no grand conspiracy around the coverage of the supposed level of tax cuts. That's fine, because like most other people I'm willing to accept that the number was something Key pulled out of his arse at the time. Polly tubbies like doing that. I'll even accept that it was based on their tax policy from '05. A bit more information would've been nice, but either way it's not a figure that would decimate the tax base.

    However, I'm far more interested in why the suspensory loan hasn't been big news. NZ is, and rightly so as far as I'm concerned, a very vocal critic of agriculture subsidies on the part of other countries. We can pull the "holier than thou" act when discussing it because we're just about the free-est market on the planet, bar none. If National are talking about financial incentives to farmers, that's going completely counter a) to their supposed free-market roots, and b) to everything that NZ's been arguing for on the world stage for the last however many years (two decades?). The media, if they were doing their jobs properly, would be trumpeting that one from the rooftops. Why aren't they? It hasn't even been examined by the MSM, that I can find.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

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