Posts by DPF
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Rob - the former CIA Officer alleging that has not only not worked there for 15 years, but is a radical activist who has served "war crimes indictments" on the Bush White House from a "peoples tribunal." and alleged that western Governments will stage terror attacks across Europe and the U.S. in order to justify a potential invasion of Iran.
Marshall himself is credible on the Niger issue, relying on facts (and he is very critical of the USG on it). McGovern though is a Rosie O'Donnell type conspiracy theorist.
-
Whoops Russell not Russel - I blame Dr Norman for introducing the other variation!
-
Red Herring. Private charity in relation to food in schools was never touted by anyone as a solution to poverty.
It was touted as a solution to hungry kids at school, which affects learning.
And thanks to the initiative there are several thousand less kids now hungry at school. Oh how awful.
Oh and Russel, despite spending 30 seconds blogging about the media reporting one of Clark's forgeries ws being auctioned, I've also covered in the last week free speech re ANZAC Day x 2, RMA costs x 2, dog muzzling, billboard bans, climate change x 4, smacking x 3, Ruth Richardson, sedition x 2, exchange rates, NCEA, Destiny x 2, Maori Party, broadband, minor parties x 2, interest rates, John Key, unions, Exclusive Brethren x 2, bail, Electoral Act, petrol levy, Telecom separation x 2, housing prices, electoral boundaries, art royalty proposal, unemployment rates, Kiwi Saver, and joint currency!
-
Steve the ISO codes long predated having domain names. The UK was using .gb for other things as their official code, just not for domain names.
-
Why is that?
For example, Queens' Uni, Belfast is in .uk, as it should be since the UK is "the United Kindom of Great Britian and Northern Ireland", so if .uk should be .gb and ireland is .ie then Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, would have to have its own designation, but it isn't a different country (well, no more than England, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man.... are).
Heh I was hoping someone would ask that. The codes are meant to come from ISO3166-1 for ccTLDs. If you check that list you will see the GB is the official code the United Kingdom. They got .uk delegated to them before the ISO-3166 list usage became official in 1994.
-
.nz was delegated in January 1987 to John Houlker who was then at Waikato University.
.uk had started up two years earlier in July 1985. .com a bit before that in Jan 1985. Incidentally .uk should be .gb
As I understand it John, probably consulting with some colleagues, chose to use the .uk second level domains such as co.uk and ac.uk as the basis for our 2lds rather than what .au did which is follow the gTLDs and have com.au and edu.au. The unique iwi.nz 2ld was also set up in the early days. I don't know why UK was chosen as the model but guess it was because most of our systems come from the UK over the US.
ISOCNZ (now InternetNZ) took over management of .nz in 1996 and started the process of formalising policies. The pre-existing 2LDs were co.nz, net.nz, org.nz, school,nz, ge,.nz, govt.nz, ac.nz, iwi.nz, cri.nz and mil.nz
Since then maori.nz, geek.nz and parliament.nz have also been created. Plus bank.nz has been applied for.
A couple of years ago the concept of allowing direct registrations at the second level (ie farrar.nz) was investigated but not seen as desirable (mainly due to transition issues).
As more and more gTLDs are added, similiarities between TLDs and 2LDS will become less and less. That is unless someone really thinks we need an aero.nz, pro.nz, tel.nz etc.
-
Thanks Hamish - that looks potentially very useful. Will check it out.
I don't actually read all the comments myself as there are so many. Im fact generally I stop reading most threads at 40 or so comments as I figure any good points will have been made by then. People may not see them all, but there have been quite a few warnings by me to people lately, plus considerable editing of comments by me.
As I said I hope to impose tougher rules when the new platform goes live, as it will allow me to actually register and ban people. I can only ban IP addresses at present.
In terms of a public statement, I am working on a rant about terms which should not be used, and just piss me off. They include:
Klark
Liarbour (was only funny the first 500 times)
any derogatory term for gays
any reference to the PM being childless. Jesus - get over it.
any reference to communists (unless backed up by research from Trevor Loudon)
any reference to child beaters, unless referring to someone who actually does
any reference to hating poor people
any threats of violence against any MP
any referring to a female MP as a bitch -
Alas Che I am profoundly deaf when there is background noise (called having a low signal to noise ability) so the comment was not heard, and I indeed have no idea which particular person you were. But nice to know people will laugh at you rather than introduce themselves. Even Paisley and Adams manage to be polite to each other now.
And no I don't think I am being referred to as the one commenting on women's shoes only. Just to live up to stereotype I'm not a legs man, I'm a xxxxxxx man.
I would have no problem with you, or any other reasoned blogger, as my substitute when I am overseas. I suspect you being a civil servant might be the bigger hindrance. Also I don't know who decides who the replacements are. TVNZ have the final say but I suspect they'll ask for suggestions.
Finally in terms of standard of comments, it might surprise some but it drives me crazy also. If there was some magical way to improve them I'd love to know about it. I actually admire that PA System has a much much better signal to noise ratio in the discussion threads. I think it helps that you set the culture right from the beginning, while kiwiblog has just evolved.
I am moving to wordpress as a platform shortly and that will allow commenters to register and may in fact become compulsory. That plus a tougher moderation policy may help.
What I would really like is some system where people can rate how good a comment and a commenter is, and easily set it not to display those below a certain level - like on slash dot. Then the loons and trolls could have their place to insult each other, but most people wouldn't see them unless they chose to.
-
Che - I'll take responsibility for many things, but not for webmarhsall or net nanny software which blocks my blog. Probably doesn't like my mention of Britney's Spears p***y :-)
And I did not say raising the minimum wage was a bad thing. In fact I said I reject those who regard increases as universally good ro universally bad and that they can have a negative impact on employment and inflation, but that it depends on how big an increase is and other factiors.
And to reassure merc I have far more interest in drinking good red wine than being on or near the levers of power. Eight years in Parliament was more than enough thank you.
-
Thanks Nandor for the comments. It would be great to have you included as a non voting member. Likewise also great to get the timeframe extended.
In terms of how much a select committee can rewrite a bill, there are few limits so long as they don't tinker with with the purpose of the bill. So you can't turn the anti-spam bill into the educational vouchers bill.
In regards to the question about the introductionary intent not being reflected in the clauses you are right in that the clauses set the law. However Judges do look at the intent of the act. More relevant is that if we can demonstrate that the clauses do not reflect the intent, it should be easier to persuade the select cmte of changes.