Posts by Cameron Pitches
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Google had trouble matching ads to content – it works much better for product and technical blogs.
But Google ads don't relate to the content of the website they appear on. Google decides what ads to display to each unique visitor, based on whatever the visitor has been googling previously
For instance just now I googled Adobe subscriptions, and now ads for Adobe appear for me on a number of sites that run Google ads. So advertising revenue from Google ads should be more or less in direct proportion to the number of visitors you get to your site.
Different story if you disable cookies or run an ad blocker though I guess.
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If you think of anything, let me know
Russell, what's your take on Google ads? It's not unheard of for NZ blogging sites to bring in a hundred bucks a day. Surely better than a kick in the pants?
As a reader, I think it's a fair trade to read good articles for free in exchange for scanning over a few ads (as long as they don't slow down the loading of the site).
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My main concerns with the Boards of Inquiry approach is the lack of consistency.
I submitted to the recent Board of Inquiry on the Puhoi Warkworth toll road, on behalf of the Campaign for Better Transport. The new toll road will be just 700m shorter than the existing road and will have a travel time saving of just three minutes over the current time of 13 minutes. The BOI ended up approving the project, despite the fact that no economic evidence in support of the project was presented by the NZTA. In summing up, the Board said:
One of the difficulties with which these submissions posed the Board is that no expert evidence was called to challenge the economic and cost benefit assumptions on which NZTA’s applications were based.
We pointed out that no economic evidence in chief was supplied by the applicant in support of the project, so there was no evidence to challenge. All along I had hoped the Board would be of a mind to inquire of such things, by appointing their own experts to judge the economic impacts on the community, as the Board of the Basin Reserve had done. However, the Puhoi Warkworth Board was apparently of a mind to simply judge the evidence put forward. I pointed out that for the Basin Reserve Inquiry the NZTA themselves declared that "The economic wellbeing of people and communities and the efficient use of resources are relevant considerations under the RMA", but the Puhoi Warkworth Board took a different view:
Perhaps I’ll just mention, Mr Pitches, talking about cost benefit ratios, the Board of course cannot take cost benefit ratios into account in its decision making.
In retrospect, we should have engaged our own economist to prove the low (or negative) economic worth of the project, but we simply didn't have the resources to do this.
For those interested, I did a series of posts at Transport Blog that cover the Puhoi Warkworth BOI here:
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Hear, hear. Can someone please explain the contract between the Govt and SkyCity, where the Govt ends up being liable for the increased scope of a five star hotel?
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...and a drummer...
Who was that masked man? Watching from the audience, he didn't miss a beat, and those beats are such a big part of the Lorde sound. I guess band introductions will come later, like when she gets a band.
This tiny, composed, bewilderingly talented teenager is, by example, asking everyone around her to raise their own games.
Amen to that.
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Thanks Graeme. This all relates to sec 216b of the Crimes Act, I gather.
So who could potentially investigate the breach of sec 14 of the GCSB Act? Does this rely on a civil action being undertaken by an aggrieved party?
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And isn't the test here just intent, not criminal intent?
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Given the police were the ones that asked the GCSB to intercept communications in the first place, isn't there a conflict of interest here? Who normally investigates illegal acts that involve the police? Surely not the police?
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OK, so the Electroral Commission cancelling the registration of United Future does not affect its status as a Party in Parliament. Gotcha.
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Legal Beagle: D-Day for Dunne (updated), in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
He was called as United Future, that's my point.