Posts by Danyl Mclauchlan

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  • Legal Beagle: Kim Dotcom and the GCSB,

    I've known a few people that worked for GCSB - they used to have a very high turn-over rate due to a dysfunctional culture. I'm not sure if this has been resolved.

    The complaint I always heard from staffers and ex-staffers is that the organisation consists of (a) computer scientists and mathematicians working for (b) ex-military officers with no background in those fields, and that this worked about as well as you'd expect it to.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 927 posts Report

  • OnPoint: Re: Education,

    Are the values clustered to the bottom left the special schools?

    Yep. I have no idea why they're in the data set.

    Most of the other low scoring, high ratio schools are remote rural low decile schools with, like one teacher and eleven students. Amazingly they aren't delivering a comprehensive education.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 927 posts Report

  • Hard News: Tired and emotional, for reals,

    Apparently the APEC gig was pretty shitty, with sleep-deprived journalists left waiting outside meeting rooms for six hours without access to food or water. I can see how irritating it must be to put up with that then read criticism of your work from someone back home, no matter how accurate the criticism might have been. And I could see why Armstrong wanted to hit back, no matter how foolish it made him look. It was really up to his editor to exercise some judgment and refuse to run the piece.

    I guess that didn't happen because John Armstrong is John Armstrong. In the political blogosphere he's a bit of a joke: someone who writes light-weight color-pieces about the House and obsequious praises of whoever happens to be in government (people who allege Armstrong is 'tory' or 'pro-National' should go back and read his cringingly fawning columns about Helen Clark in the early 2000s).

    But in the press gallery he's well liked and hugely respected. He has access to the highest levels of government, and is very influential and well-informed. People were probably a bit taken aback when Campbell and Edwards criticised his reporting, and thrilled when he deigned to retaliate.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 927 posts Report

  • Hard News: Higgs Live!,

    It's big news for physicists because it helps validate the standard model. If they didn't find it they'd have about a century of really hard work ahead of them.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 927 posts Report

  • Speaker: How's that three strikes thing…,

    The ISPs make no more money from the downloading of illegal content than they do from legitimate content. It’s clear you’ve never worked for an ISP or even talked to one..

    I work at a university. I know how much traffic was used up by file-sharing before proper safeguards got put in place, roughly 1% of which were legitimate linux distros, ect, and the rest of which was Avatar torrents. It’s true that ISPs make the same amount of money transferring the linux distros as they do from pirated material, but the amount of people who want the former compared to the latter is tiny.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 927 posts Report

  • Speaker: How's that three strikes thing…,

    Feel free to produce an example of an ISP promoting piracy though. They’d just as soon make money selling access to legitimate services, or do deals for zero-rating.

    Sure - but in the absence of a legitimate way for their consumers to obtain Game of Thrones, they're the people profiting off the illegitimate means.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 927 posts Report

  • Speaker: How's that three strikes thing…,

    It's also in the interest of the ISPs to promote piracy and make life difficult for the copyright holders, because the network traffic generates significant profits for them . . .

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 927 posts Report

  • Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…,

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 927 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Vision Thing,

    Shearer’s speech also did not contain – as certain of my gloomier friends have been confidently predicting – a fresh stanza of dog-whistling about welfare.

    Shearer's office were briefing to this effect a month or so ago. I'm guessing the party couldn't reach a consensus on policy. It seems significant that Shearer didn't mention the WFF to beneficiary policy, which seems like the first thing to go if you're moving to the centre.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 927 posts Report

  • Hard News: European Horror Stories,

    Silly stat. Cause and effect are not proven. You could argue equally from the data that working less causes you to earn more and be more productive.

    Or you could look at the actual data and see that, yes, like I originally said, German workers are far more productive than Greek workers.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 927 posts Report

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