Posts by Rich of Observationz
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It's interesting how Key's ministers are eminently qualified for their roles:
- interferes with a criminal investigation => Police Minister
- fails to manage an outsourcing contract => Local Government
- believes taxation is a form of theft => Inland RevenueI'm assuming Gerry Brownlee is in line to add Aviation Security to his roles. Guess if any keen backbencher fancies a job as Agriculture Minister, then they only have to be picked up smuggling half a dozen apples and a gerbil into the country.
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So what happens with third party cookies is that a website loads resources (such as an advert) from another domain and those resources set a cookie. For instance, PA drops a tracking cookie from their ad source: imrworldwide.com.
It would be possible for a government entity to buy advertising on blogs and drop tracking cookies to see what other sites the blog readers go to. However:
- they probably aren't that smart
- they'd most likely use a different domain if they wanted to be sneaky
- or just collect browser spoor and match that, which is invisible to the user -
I'm not seeing those cookies. Page load logs (Tools/Developer tools) would be interesting to see which page element is dropping the cookie?
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Collins must have threatened a nuclear option of some sort: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/74795885/surprise-cabinet-reshuffle-will-see-judith-collins-return-to-corrections
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Hard News: Friday Music: Back to a…, in reply to Russell Brown,
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11554644
I would not be surprised if refunds don't turn up (where funds have already been paid by ticketing company to promoter). If the company hasn't funds to pay out all the creditors (suppliers, artists, venue cancellation fees, etc) then it would probably be illegal to refund ticket holders preferentially.
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Having now finished the book, I don't think the Censor's real issue was with any "repetitive coarse language" at all.
I'd suspect that the combination of the (probably accurate) portrayal of a posh Auckland school as a fount of bullying, abuse and racism with a depiction of a staff-student sexual relationship in less than horrified terms was the crux of it.
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Polity: Hosking’s right about jobs, in reply to Kumara Republic,
I don’t believe there is a major skills shortage in the IT sector.
I think there’s an unwillingness of some employers (going up the value chain to corporate purchasers of IT) to (a) pay the rate for the job and (b) develop staff skills rather than expecting to hire people with a 99% fit to their tech of the day.
it partly addresses the issue of automation and technological unemployment
Well, only if IT processes don't themselves get automated away, which they've been somewhat resistant to over the last 50 years (demand for increased functionality and complexity eating up productivity improvements), but that process might end. (If it doesn't end in the bootstrapping of an AI that can perform any programming task - which in turn depends to some degree on Gödel's incompleteness theorem).
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Polity: Hosking’s right about jobs, in reply to Sacha,
Have there been any expelled MPs over the years? I thought they all walked. I don't think anyone's ever come back though, unlike the Nats revolving door with ACT.
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Polity: Hosking’s right about jobs, in reply to Sacha,
I think they invited everyone who has ever been a Labour MP - really, they only had the choice of doing that or restricting it to those who have always been in the party - otherwise they'd have to make a value judgement about each of the renegades.
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This reminds me of Harold Macmillan's quote:
“I am always hearing about the Middle Classes, What is it they really want? Can you put it down on a sheet of notepaper, and I will see whether we can give it to them.”
The trouble with this sort of approach, now modernised as "data-driven policy" is twofold:
- National will do exactly the same thing, and given that they own the media, will come across as being better able to implement said policies.
- Should Labour actually get elected and implement these policies, they will fail in exactly the same way as for National (and presumably Labour will only have been elected because things have stopped going well for Key).