Posts by Rich of Observationz
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It's not to be forgotten that in the 1950s, Australia actively sought low income, ill-educated people from southern Europe to work as manual labourers. According to John Pilger, potential immigrants were vetted to exclude anyone with an education because they would be "uppity". Not the best way to build stable communities.
On a lighter note, Josh's reference to Waltzing Matilda reminds me of Bill Bryson's alternate lyrics:
Forgetting hot liquids are better stirred with a spoon,
The swagman stuck his dick in his tea,
and he sung and he stirred while he waited while his willy boiled,
"I can't bugger you so will you bugger me?"Well I found it funny!
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A lot of the outer Sydney suburbs are close to being slums - being too far to commute to get to decent jobs in the city.
There are not many fewer houses in Greater Auckland than people wanting to live in the area - lack of properties isn't what causes house price inflation, it's more a classic speculative boom as people pile in in the expectation of returns.
To me the solution to house price inflation is to start with a target (say a 2% real decrease each year until affordability is regained). Then, there should be a self-regulating mechanism of CGT, GST on mortgage interest and a stamp duty or similar on house sales to bring prices down - the longer they keep going up the bigger the tax disincentive until the market tips.
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"Australia will kill you if it gets half a chance, its all poisonous this and salt croc that and boiling desert heat the other."
Hang on! I lived there for over a year, spending most of my time, as 90% of Aussies do, in urban areas. The only wildlife I met (if you don;'t count flies and roaches) was a Huntsman spider (harmless but impressive) a medium sized snake (allegedly deadly but asleep) and various possums and roos (not believed to be hostile).
According to that argument, the cold, ice and grizzlies should have turned the Canadians into raging xenophobic psychopaths by now.
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I think NZ is a fairly unique market as both US and UK indie bands have healthy sales here, whereas in the UK a lot of the american college bands don't really make much of an impact.
I missed out on BDO this year but went to the Big Night Before - less than half the price, you got to actually see and hear the sets properly *and* you could buy a beer quickly and easily and take it back to your seat! I think, and this is not a dig, that the BDO is infinitely better for those who get comped into VIP lounges and the like. Which means that they get excellent press that doesn't really reflect the ordinary punters experience.
BTW, what does a table cost? And can anyone with the money get one or do you have to be in a media magic circle?
Maybe NZ could justify a 2 day min-Glastonbury style festival on a largish rural site these days? Preferably BYO (and ok - hike the ticket prices to cover the lack of beer sales). (Or, why can't dance parties have a license like Pirongia races - it's not R18, you can buy cans at the bar and take them anywhere *or* bring your own booze in?)
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"find me an internationally used statistical definition of 'Asian' that does."
You are right, of course! Every census seems different. I found these docs:
UK: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/about/ethnic_group_statistics/downloads/ethnic_group_statistics.pdf
USA: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen1990/cp-s/cp-s-1-2.pdfI think the US is actually the most sensible in that they have three categories:
North Africa and Southwest Asia
South Asia
Other AsiaReally, Stats NZ should rename their Asian category as "East and South Asian" - then it would be geographically consistent.
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The process I went through when I migrated here was:
- apply for residence, wait ages, six-month work-residence gets abolished
- come to NZ on a visitor visa
- find a job, get a 2yr work permit (easy)
- some months later, my residence finally turned upIt's a dumb system - all based on trying to second guess the employer as to whether one is actually employable in NZ.
Incidentally, what happened to all the Iranians, Turks and Israelis in the stats? Asia doesn't stop at the Iran/Afghan border - it continues for another 3000km to the Bosporos.
And while I'm being pedantic, why do Chinese people self-identify as "yellow" when they have much the same range of skin tone as Europeans?
For instance:
Wen Jiabou: http://www.china.org.cn/images/59460.jpg
George Bush: http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j186/momsquawk/george-bush.gifThey look the same colour to mean.
(I'm not being rude - I'm just genuinely interested?)
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The Studio has three bars - one along the side of the main hall, one in the foyer, one upstairs. If it's an all ages gig though, all but upstairs has to be closed.
One reason I'm not to fussed to miss out on BDO this year is the whole checkpoint/barrier/drinking area thing. It's like going to a gig in pre-1989 Eastern Europe. I think the steps licensees are meant to go to in NZ to stop a 17-year old having a sneaky Tui are ridiculous.
(At all the UK festivals I've been to The Workers Beer Company do an excellent range of drinks, served quickly and efficiently - you can then go and enjoy your drink anywhere you want. I didn't notice too many pissed, rioting 15-year olds).
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It does strike me that the various politicians in the Aussie government were probably quite keen to criticise "Australia's laws" when they were out of office. How come naturalized citizens don't get this right?
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Edward:
My understanding of the music industry is that the only way artists make real big money (e.g the Queens and Paul McCartneys) is from back catalogue CD sales. Concerts are marginally profitable and done to promote music sales. At the indie end of the scale, I guess that bands make zero money from recorded music and marginally more from gigs - at least the ones I know do.
I'm in no way saying that MS will make it possible to *circumvent* the DRM in Vista. What they will almost certainly allow is to opt out of using your PC as a (DRMed) media player - the corporate and server markets will insist on it.
My view on how future practical DRM media systems will work - you will have a physical extra wire from the Blu-Ray player to the monitor (just like the old CD analog audio). When you watch an HDTV film, it will send the content down this wire rather than through the motherboard electronics - which don't have much value add on movie viewing anyway.
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I do always feel that the words "Homeland Security" taint everything around them with US-style paranoia (more people have been killed by lightning strikes since 2001 than died in the attacks on NYC).
I strongly suspect that the content protection features in Vista will:
a) stay dormant until you install hardware that supports them
b) be able to be disabled at least partially
c) at least in the server version be able to be disabled by policy - so a sysadmin could (and possibly should on business/safety critical systems) ban them sitewideIt's likely that these features will never be widely accepted in their present form. If content is available in illegal open and legal protected form, there is a strong incentive for consumers to go with the illegal version - and it only takes one copy of a work to "leak" into open format for it to become available. This pretty much put paid to copy protected CDs.
<rant>Having just spent two days trying to set up a Linux/Sybase system I hope Linux doesn't become any more prevalent than now. Told it to use high-video on startup. X wouldn't start, I had to edit a hidden config file with a non-WYSIWYG editor to adjust the video res by hand back to a supported value. And that sort of thing happens *every* time I touch Linux - last year I had to edit and rebuild a kernel just to make a common software product install. Utter, utter, crap!</rant>