Posts by Tim Darlington

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  • Hard News: Scuffling and screaming on…,

    Are we really seriously considering that NZ's anarchists... are somehow in the same abhorrent political category as neo-Nazis?

    No, we're not. We're attempting to figure out the alliance between them and Tame Iti's crowd, an alliance which certainly baffles me. Follow the quote trail:

    Tom Semmens:

    I have a wider question for the lefty-left - why do people who profess such anarchistic and revolutionary views make such a knee jerk alliance with a bunch of reactionary, patriarchal tribalists with a fixation on the 19th century?

    Rich of Observationz:

    I think Winston Churchill gave one answer to this after the German invasion of Russia:
    If Hitler invaded hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil

    Me:

    So, if anarchists are happy to ally themselves with Tame Iti on the basis of "My enemy's enemy is my friend," does the same principle apply to allying themselves with neo-Nazis?

    In what sense is it not a fair question, given the preceding discussion?

    PS - yes, the thread has been thoroughly Godwined. Everyone loves WW2.

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Scuffling and screaming on…,

    So, if anarchists are happy to ally themselves with Tame Iti on the basis of "My enemy's enemy is my friend," does the same principle apply to allying themselves with neo-Nazis? After all, if Hitler invaded hell you'd have a kind word for Satan...

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: In other news, the sky is falling,

    It certainly is funny to blurt some figure of 95% that you just made up and in the next paragraph complain that others "rarely research any offerings."

    I think pseudonyms are eminently sensible for bloggers, especially ones like me that tend to run off at the mouth. When future potential employers google my name I'd prefer them to find nice professional-looking stuff, not pages of internet blather. Then there's the comfort of knowing the nutjob you just ridiculed won't be phoning at 3am to give you an earful. Of course, one alternative would be to take a measured and polite approach under one's own name, as on Public Address, but let's face it, some of us simply lack discipline.

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report Reply

  • Flying Nun Moments,

    Here's two:

    1. The Clean playing Cathedral Square to largely uninterested passers-by in 1981. I became an instant fan during "Point That Thing Somewhere Else."

    2. Tall Dwarfs play Uni of Canterbury orientation, not long after they formed - maybe 1982? The various beery wallies assembled find the music somewhat inaccessible, and eventually there's an incredulous crowd standing still, silent and staring, approx 2 feet from the Dwarfs. I was busy worshipping Mr Knox from this ca 2-foot distance on the basis of my almost-knackered Toy Love album, but someone less idolatrous called out "Play one you just wrote this morning!" - at which Knox snickered quietly "We already have - twice."

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Copywrong,

    Product lock-in is one reason I still buy CDs. I noticed 3 News running an extended promotion for the new Itunes store, which included cheerfully telling us it will sell albums for under $20 without once mentioning the restrictions that will apply to them. They can fuck off - I'd rather pay full price for something that won't tell me what I can and can't play it on.

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Uncapturing Content,

    Your National Library action point sums up the big problem libraries have in taking this kind of thing on: we're usually official and public representatives of large organisations (city councils, universities, central govt in NLNZ's case), but constrained from making any decisions on that organisation's behalf. The bigger the organisation represented, the more any action points like yours have to be driven through endless policy and strategy committees, with appropriate documentation etc. Which is why individuals and private companies are making all the running on this, and why librarians are generally left to bemoaning the fact that it ought to be us.

    The universities are moving towards the principle of making publicly-funded research publicly accessible, and I'm involved in implementing one "institutional repository" for making that research avaiable. But as at the National Library, it's like wading through treacle - on the one hand, the thousands of potential authors who might contribute have to be individually satisfied that their intellectual property will be adequately safeguarded, and on the other university administrations have an interest in the legitimacy of what gets posted as official research output of the university, so ensuring the validity of what gets posted is an issue. To cap it off, academic publishers don't like having their own copyright breached, and can be expected to be grumpy about any examples they find. The owners of a private venture like YouTube can shrug their shoulders and just go for it and see what happens, but employees who do that kind of thing at a big organisation don't last long.

    Hmm - on reading back through, it looks like yet another case of librarians whinging about how unfair life is. Wasn't intended as such - just wanted to point out the constraints we operate under are always going to leave us way behind outfits like Google or YouTube.

    Since Nov 2006 • 56 posts Report Reply

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