An interesting aside is that, as I understand it, the technical development on Quakestudies was done by Learning Media for the UoC consortium.

This time it's binding

Can it be? A parliament can't bind it's successor.

If Labour get in at the 2011 election, they are perfectly entitled to change National's timetable/plans and ignore any referendum result. or indeed, it's possible that the minor parties could vote with the opposition to block FPP.

After all, there hasn't been any sort of all-party constitutional convention to discuss the Nats scheme. It's just being imposed, like everything else (and in the same manner that made the National controlled media scream "dictatorship" when Labour made people put their name on election posters).

MPs who get booted out of their electorates can come in through the "back door'' on the list

That's part of the moronic myth that list MPs have less of a mandate than electorate ones.

People chose to vote for their party. The party members (in the case of a democratically run party, like the Greens) gave the MP a list position. So the MP has been just as, if not more, fairly elected than if they got 12,000 people in Waikikamukau South to vote for them.

In some ways an open list system might be a good idea. People could choose to either vote for a party, or fill in a detailed ballot paper that ranks candidates by preference. The Australian Senate uses a not dissimilar system. 95% of voters go with the parties ranking.

I remember Gen-i reps 3 yearsago trying to convince me that Vista was actually a really good step forward

Did you ask the rep to open their laptop and show you what OS it was running? I'm thinking XP, if not Win 2k. (Also, check out the conspicuous "EDS" asset tag next time a Gen-i person drops by).

Dogfood?

Hmm. I guess sending your employees off to wierd cults for indoctrination has to be added to Ferrit, CDMA, trying to stare down the government on regulation, etc, etc.

Apparently Ms G. had a knee operated button under her desk that summoned a minion to interrupt her when she didn't like how a meeting was going. Allegedly.

My take on the Ferrit thing was that Telecom (and the departed Ms Gattung in particular) saw how much TradeMe was looking like selling for (I assume they were offered the chance to buy it and passed).

There was then a decision that they had to create a Web 2.0 property, *any* Web 2.0 property as quickly as possible. Somebody suggested a shopping comparison site and in the absence of any better ideas, they went for it with a budget of a few tens of millions.

Being a half-baked idea badly executed to boot, it had no chance long term. But it probably lifted the share price a few cents for a few weeks.

See also: CDMA, AAPT, staunching it out with the government on broadband, etc, etc..