Posts by Andre Alessi
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In a democracy, there doesn't need to be legislation around things like MP absences or party-hopping. If it's a big deal for us, we get to kick them out.
To go off on a slight tangent: as someone who at one time voted Alliance with my list vote, only to see Alamein Kopu paid $70K a year not turn up to work, then to refuse to represent the party she was a List MP for, for more than two years, I would disagree that simply being able to vote them out every general election is sufficient as a check against this sort of behaviour.
At the same time, I'm not sure that leaving this sort of thing to the discretion of the Speaker is such a good idea either-I find myself agreeing with Lockwood Smith's underlying implication that the unusual power of the Speaker over someone's career and livelihood should be looked at carefully. We so often speak of expecting MPs to "play by the same rules as the rest of us"; maybe we should start looking at treating their conditions of employment the same as the rest of us too.
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petchakutcha
I think you misspelled "Pikachu".
But yes, hotel internet tends to be terribly managed for a pretty simple reason: most hotels will think it's economic to get a couple of ADSL connections off their existing phone lines to deliver to patrons. Because of the low bandwith limits and relatively slow speeds, they're effectively trying to share something that isn't really meant to be shared between that many people. It'd be much more effective (and customer-friendly) to purchase a mid-range dedicated data circuit (from someone such as, as you note, Citylink fibre) but the accountants just see the high setup and higher-than-ADSL monthly fixed fees and think it's not worth it.
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It'd be nice to see this kind of skepticism and meta-analysis of other sources of information on a regular basis. I understand why Wikileaks gets the attention it does, and why their information needs to be critically examined, but that doesn't make them that much different to any source of "the news".
Assange deserves blame for not framing what Wikileaks does as reporting (the "Information wants to be free" angle doesn't really hold up) but he is operating within a wider framework where reporting is routinely accepted or dismissed based on the political leanings of the journalist or publication (if known.)
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http://www.youtube.com/v/iG8zNSf0c9k
Double Rainbow Guy from a different angle.
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I think lack of keyboard on a machine is an indication about how we've failed to communicate properly with our machines. It's somewhat bizarre that we learn a special skill simply to convert our thoughts to letters on a computer when we can all talk fine
I'm very late to the party, but I'd just like to point out that Windows Voice Recognition (which comes bundled with Win 7) is absolutely amazing. Takes about half an hour to set up and you're away. Integrate that with Windows Speech Recognition Macros and you can do virtually anything you want on your PC without touching your mouse or keyboard.
I use it for gaming (although some games have security protocals that prevent non-keyboard input from feeding in for certain commands to avoid botting.) It's quite amazing to be able to sit at my desk and say "Fire Phasers" then watch the results on screen. Total set up time was in the region of about an hour, but only because I wanted to et up some very complicated actions. YOu can set up most macros in no time flat.
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That being the loudest restaurant in the universe, where it's always at least three people's birthday.
Gina's?
Last time I was there there was one birthday and two hen's nights on top of our Christmas work dinner..
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Has anyone asked whether there was a requirement that we have a terribly bad cover of a terribly bad song by a terribly bad band, then?
Because if not, we should also try to quietly drop that.
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Credit to Danielle, really. I just took her comment and made it closer to the meme she was paraphrasing. Not exactly original thought.
Oh, goodness, what have I started?
I saw Russell use it the other day and did a double take. Fun fact: the original version (not mine) was "Women be shoppin'". My girlfriend and I have used it as a kind of shorthand to mock boneheaded stereotypes ever since, modifying as appropriate.
FYI It's originally a quote from The Nutty Professor.
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The way things happen in this country, he'd take over Greg Newbold's regular spot as academic talking head on matters criminal.
As Newbold's ready media comments in recent years had pretty much ossified into stating the bleeding obvious, one could be forgiven for wondering if it wasn't time that he went back inside for a sabbatical. Instead they've made him a professor.
To be fair, Newbold does actually do a fair amount of academic research. He didn't get his position just for being a source of quotes for the media.
And some of the things he has been quoted as saying aren't obvious to the "tough on crime" crowd. He's gotten better at deflecting attention from it when quoted, but some of his ideas would be considered quite radical not too long ago.
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Fscking rainbows, how do they work?