Posts by Ben Austin

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  • Hard News: Brown bigots etc.,

    Front page, leading story of the Oamaru Mail today was about a local primary school devastated at the MS Office/Education Ministry spat.

    This whole event is going to publicise to a much wider audience the joys of using alternative office software to MS Office. Anyway, it is a bloody good reason why large corporations have Marketing or Communications people, and why they can be useful.

    Someone needs to ask the hard question "Are you sure you want to be a jerk given that nearly every family with school age children will get worked up over this thanks to the MSM's hunger for such stories, no matter that you might well be in the right, contractually?"

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report

  • Hard News: Brown bigots etc.,

    So i've installed NeoOffice now, to play with it. Any traps for young players that i should look out for?

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report

  • Hard News: Brown bigots etc.,

    The .odt/ODT will forever be seared in my mind, however I have to say it has improved markedly from the 1990s, as a newspaper. Oh I believe the ODT still has premium content, but then a parochial paper like that wouldn't dare outsource sub editing.

    Leading the ODT today, as per most days, is the now seemingly endless development vs. anti development debate on any number of different items - stadiums, museums, wind farms, power/irrigation schemes, concrete plants, and my personal favourite - Opera House renovations.

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report

  • Hard News: Brown bigots etc.,

    Steve,

    What I meant by "understand the differences" is that 1) There is such a thing as a file type, 2) That MS Office Word uses (generally) .doc, 3) that OpenOffice uses something different, .odt, and 4) that OO can save as .doc if necessary.

    I used to push OpenOffice when I worked at DSE back during university and after a while I realised I couldn't assume that people would necessarily easily understand the above. I also found it useful to tell people how to save as Word files if they wanted to share. Then having ended up being labelled as a "word expert" (not really deserved either) at my last work I became pretty cynical about the general level of Office/Word expertise amongst the 20+ age group.

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report

  • Hard News: Brown bigots etc.,

    The anthem was written in the 1870s when one could state that we were a Christian nation because the vast majority of us would have been. In fact I suspect one would have had to profess to a Christian faith to be admitted into normal society. I don't think anyone denies that the state of New Zealand was formed by people who were Christian, and probably even went to church, not just ticked the box in the census.

    At some point in time we are no longer bound by the traditions of our forefathers, even in they felt strongly about said traditions.

    Oh and re OpenOffice, just so long as you can explain and people will understand the differences between a .doc and a .odt file I'm sure it will be fine. I've just transferred my parents from Office to OpenOffice and they are coping fine (well, except for a weird printer issue)

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report

  • Island Life: Show that white girl a good…,

    Chi is a compromise facilitator, and the world needs more of them.

    So far as the advertising goes I think it time to do some reaserch. I think we need a professional acting extra, someone who has spent a lot of time being in the background at advertising shoots. Tell us your story, what have you seen, or counted, racially that is.

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report

  • Island Life: Show that white girl a good…,

    I'm thinking of multinationals here, like say Epson, HP, etc, that kind of thing. Really any company that uses glossy advertising/packaging.

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report

  • Island Life: Show that white girl a good…,

    Joe, I suspect a lot of the Asians you see in advertising for high value items is because NZ is deemed to be in the Asian zone for many multinationals. It isn't worth their while to change advertising for a marginal market like NZ. I suspect, but cannot be certain, that if you were living in Europe or North America you'd see a lot of Europeans.

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report

  • Island Life: Show that white girl a good…,

    Oh, and it sort of worked, still out of prison!

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report

  • Island Life: Show that white girl a good…,

    At high school one of my English teachers gave me the Big Huey to read, which was Greg Newbold's account of his time in NZ prisons (if i remember correctly).

    I was never really sure if he gave it to me because he knew I enjoyed reading, or if he was trying to tell me something. Either way, it kind of freaked me out a little.

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report

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