Posts by mpledger

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  • Hard News: Not yet standing upright,

    Ian Dalziel, in reply to steven crawford, A day ago
    Surely NZ deserves a flag that anyone could knit at home!

    ~~
    I suggested before the design process started that we should go for a Lenticular flag - one that changes as it flies (as you see it from a different angle).
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenticular_printing

    You can do that with knitting e.g.
    http://delightedhands.blogspot.co.nz/2014/01/moms-shadow.html

    And it has amazing possibilities when combined with the hypno flag
    http://giphy.com/gifs/animated-psychedelic-hypnotic-Z8fmnqFAHAdeo

    ~~~~
    Yea, the hypnoflag is basically screwed unless it gets over 50% of first preference votes.

    We should be able to put all our preference on one flag and it count the same as people who split their votes across the fern flags.

    Since Oct 2012 • 97 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Sky Trench,

    My office in Auckland use to look back towards the Grafton Bridge and I saw someone jump off once. They jumped at the hospital end so the drop wasn't large enough to kill themselves, they just broke their legs. I think this was the gap in time between when the fence came down along the bridge and when a new fence went up.

    Being a Wellingtonian, I suspect cross-winds are an issue on the bridge but it looks like a great place for every graffiti arttist to get their work seen.

    Since Oct 2012 • 97 posts Report

  • Legal Beagle: Cameron Slater: computer hacker?,

    LB wrote:
    "For me, this subsection means that Cameron, who was, like the rest of us, authorised to go to Labour’s server to look at Labour’s website, was not committing a crime by looking at the other files that Labour had left open to view on their server."

    If a person follows links and sees a webpage they shouldn't then that ought not to be a crime.

    But, if they then actively download the file for storage on their own system (i.e. not cached but actively saved) knowing it was not something they should not have access to than that is something different. (It breaks copyright at the very least.)

    But, IIRC, they needed an IT specialist to help them so it doesn't look like their access was in any way accidental nor does it look like the files would have been able to be seen by a typical member of the population using the ordinary tools available to browse the web.

    Since Oct 2012 • 97 posts Report

  • Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,

    It works the other way as well. Two of my workmates (one Maori, one Pacific) were mistaken for Mexican when they visited Los Angeles (separately). One was by a Mexican American who spoke to her in Spanish and then got mad at her for not being able to speak the language back.

    Since Oct 2012 • 97 posts Report

  • OnPoint: My last name sounds Chinese,

    "Third, it makes no sense to assume that only those earning $50,000 a year can afford to buy a house, because only 26% of people in Auckland earn more than $50k, but 61.5% of homes are owner-occupied (both from Census 2013)."

    ~~~~
    You need roughly 3x your yearly income to finance a house (ignoring the 10% deposit) so it's actually a yearly income of close to $150,000 per anum (joint income) to buy a $450,000 house/apartment/unit. And that's the low end of the market.

    Two things - the baby boomers who have been in the market for 30 - 40 years have seen house prices increase up to 10-fold since their first home so it's not their income from work that's buying the next house but the profit from their previous house sale.

    I suspect there are a reasonably number of people who bought many years ago, have paid off their mortgage and have no intention of moving. My parents have moved once in the last 50 years and my in-laws have never moved in roughly the same time frame.

    Since Oct 2012 • 97 posts Report

  • Hard News: Nelson Street: Not too…, in reply to EE,

    As long as the foliage is low - anything too high then it becomes a bit scare for this women cyclist - who knows who is hiding behind the trees waiting to catch a lone female cyclist.

    Since Oct 2012 • 97 posts Report

  • Hard News: About Campbell Live,

    The easiest way to increase viewship is to watch it on demand over the internet. You don't even have to watch it just let it run in the background, even turn the sound off.

    The good thing about it is that every download can be counted whereas every live watcher isn't so who even knows if their live stats are anywhere near right. (And live watchers have programs running as background noise rather than actually watching it anyway.)

    ~~~
    Just out of interest, didn't mediaworks get bailed out by the govt for three years? Is that three years almost up? Do mediaworks need more govt bailouts? And are mediaworks giving payback in something other than money?

    Since Oct 2012 • 97 posts Report

  • Hard News: Talking to the United Nations…, in reply to Russell Brown,

    > it’s actually wrong to criminalise people for using something that works for them

    Some people can get medicinal cannabis prescribed for them in the form of sativex. See
    http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/RIss/Sativex.asp
    for details.

    it's not subsidised and because it pharmaceutical grade it's more expensive. A few years - maybe 5 - we OIA-ed to find out how many were using it and only a handful were IIRC.

    Since Oct 2012 • 97 posts Report

  • Speaker: Women, science and superheroes,

    I'm kinda weary of promoting internships unless they are paid because
    a) if they are not paid then only the rich can afford to take them up and
    b) if they are not paid then it tends to be an informal process in the "hiring" which means they go to "the bosses nephew" etc.

    In States and Canada they have turned into a racket where companies used unpaid graduates for a year and keep turning them over instead of hiring someone full time to do the job. And in the end the graduate with experience can't get work anyway because a newer graduate gets employed for free. And the former just keeps on taking on more unpaid work.

    Since Oct 2012 • 97 posts Report

  • Hard News: Incomplete, inaccurate and misleading, in reply to Bart Janssen,

    But would you trust the government not to pull a fast one on the day the report that clears your name is released to the media? Goff got in early before the PMs office, via the blogs and colluding media, had a chance to obfuscate and diminish via multiple report dumping. And he got some pretty good stuff out.

    Since Oct 2012 • 97 posts Report

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