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But how much does it cost the telcos to provide a text message? Well below 1c, according to Sydney-based telecoms commentator Paul Budde.

According to the Dominion Post, they're hooking up to Massey University WiFi points. I'm guessing it's included in the fees.

After seeing these films, I'm going to be very keen indeed to see what these Kiwis can come up with next!

Shrek?

All jokes aside (as I am sure many "two daddy trailerpark" jokes are immanent) but this is indeed quite an advancement in biotech, because we may see future developments arrive in the development of cloning endangered species back from the brink of extinction; now species threatened from a lack of suitable mates, could be quite possibly saved, with the proper funding. The hard part would be digging deeper gene pools, enabling a true future for endangered species (although, I guess that's next week on /., right CmdrTaco?). Also, I wonder if it's possible to grow offspring with only two male subjects.

Hi Michael,

I have just read the article at http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2852764a11,00. html. You say you are totally opposed to the move, because you believe it would "open the floodgates" to unrestricted piracy.

As a software developer I spend a lot of time in front of a computer at both home and work. I like to listen to music when I am using computers. Under the current law (which is what you support, given that you are totally opposed to the move), I can only legally play copyrighted music from CDs in CD-ROM drives on my computers (and don't even get me started on copy-controlled CDs). During the course of a workday, this means interrupting my workflow up to 10 times to switch CDs. Of course, if I decide I'm sick of a CD before it is finished it means another switch. Clearly switching CDs quickly gets annoying. It also proves very annoying to transport CDs I want to listen to between work and home each day.

In fact (as I am sure you are aware), Sony itself currently sells Minidisc recorders which currently allow music to be copied illegally under the current law. Given your position, I hope you are overseeing the removal of these useless recorders (as it is illegal for people to use them to copy music) from sale in New Zealand.

However, if the law changes to allow fair personal use, my life suddenly becomes easier because I can make a copy of my music in a digital format which makes it much easier to transport and switch between listening to different music.

Your viewpoint is analagous to saying no-one should be able to drive cars because some people speed and cause accidents in which people die. However, in real life, people are allowed to drive cars. Why? Because cars make our lives easier. The speeding problem is dealt with through driver education, and dealing punishment to those who do speed as a discouragement to them and others. Similarly the music sharing problem is dealt with by consumer education, and dealing punishment to those who do share music as a discouragement to them and others.

Without education and punishment, the current law would be effectively 'powerless' to discourage people from sharing copyrighted music. Under the proposed changes, it still will be illegal to share copyrighted music. Provided there is still continued education and punishment, I can't see any reason why the proposed law change will result in increased music sharing activity.

By opposing the move, you are only denying otherwise law abiding consumers the opportunity to use technology to make their lives easier.

Simon

From New Zealand - Festival of Weird Foods ...Hare's testicle on menu at Wildfood Festival ...

Oh really? Check out this article about young Aussies being handcuffed and held in prison in The Land Of The Free, The United States of America, because they were non-white and had non-Christian names. But I guess it's ok to be a bunch of raciasts, cos you have 300 million people.

Pigeons were used instead of email in India until 2002.

Avian carriers are used commercially even today to deliver digital photographs.

The article linked talks about $50m worth of damage. I'm assuming it's $NZ as it's a NZ site. That's around $US34m. According to the CIA Factbook there is a population of 2145, but I've heard numbers as low as 1200. Let's assume 2000. Also on the CIA site is a GDP of $US3600 per capita. I read somewhere (can't find a reference) that a few hundred houses were destroyed.

So, $50m sounds like an awful lot - I'd like to know where that number comes from.

If you're going to use UN resolutions as a justification for anything, please enforce them in numerical order....

Its a lot more complicated than that. I assume you are talking about resolution 242 and the subsequent resolutions passed regarding Israel and the Palestinians, but you cannot compare them to resolution 687.

Basically, there are 3 types of resolutions that can come out of the United Nations:
- General Assembly resolutions, which carry the same authority as a suggestion and are not enforceable by the UN
- Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter 6, which are cease-fire agreements, and again are not enforceable by the UN
- Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter 7, which not only are enforceable, but the UN charter mandates that member states do enforce them

Resolution 242 and the subsequent resolutions against Israel/Palestine were passed under Chapter 6 of the charter. 242 was a cease fire that basically stated that Israel should give up some occupied territory and Palestinians should stop threatening Israel. Now Israel has given up over 90% of the territory that it originally occupied, but they are still very much threatoned by the Palestinians. Either way, the resolution is not enforceable under the UN charter.

On the other hand, all of the resolutions against Iraq, starting with 678 in 1990, were passed under chapter 7, and as such they are enforeable by the member states of the UN. You really cannot compare them.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2673781a11,00. html

what do I think?

Of course it's silly, of course it's fun

but it whiffs to me of fad

if you go back 5, 10, 15, and more years pop culture is absolutely littered with "the next big thing"

really smart people, god bless their souls, are often prone to getting too excited and reading too much meaning into what is essentially meaningless and temporary inanity

hey, by all means, keep thinking big thoughts folks, but watch out for self-reinforcing over-intellectualizing hype

the economy of intellectual ideas can go into bubble burst mode just as easily as a bubble economy of internet start ups a few years back

follow flash mobs with intellectual glee my fellow news hungry nerds

but don't invest your doctoral thesis in it ;-P

I really can't decide which is worse. GPS or RFID? I used to think that we had pretty rational politicians in NZ - until I read this recently.

Motorists face travel tax and 'Big Brother' microchip law enforcement

Motorists face being taxed on how far they travel under government plans to generate cash. Transport Minister Paul Swain said with vehicles becoming more fuel efficient, revenue from petrol tax would drop and alternative charges needed to be considered. It is one of a number of transport schemes being looked at by officials, including a Big Brother-style project to equip every car with a personalised microchip so law-breaking motorists can be prosecuted by computer.

If fuel economy is the problem, then the simple and cheap solution is to raise the petrol tax a suitable proportion. It does not require extra costs to create the infrastructure to deal with the increased fuel efficiency issue.

That argument alone should be enough to show that this is not about efficiency and tax, but something else. I'm guessing that something else is that they really would like to invade citizens privacy. Of course if they can automate mindless policing functions, such as vehicle registrations, parking fines, speeding; then that frees up a police force to focus on real crime. Here in NZ police have quotas for speeding fines that they have to meet!

I think these proposals must be looked at in the broader context of what the technological change will mean for society. There are some benefits such as more efficient policing, but the potential privacy costs are huge, and I would suggest that not everyone will agree with that.

Actually, the man behind the whole venture is a New Zealander. We've had this story all over the news tonight. Here's an article from stuff.co.nz claiming it was us all along.

And I saw it on the front page of The Press this morning (in Christchurch, NZ, it is now 11pm)

"If you don't want to receive spam, don't connect to the Internet, or don't have an e-mail address." - Shane Atkinson, 15th Aug 2003.

The US definitely lives in a glass house as far as oppression and the killing innocent people is concerned.

At least from a local (New Zealand) perspective, this is totally wrong. Let me elaborate.

Here the ISP and the phone company are completely different people. Telecom scamper around plumbing in DSLAM's etc. etc. and wire them all together to make a grande country wide ATM network called (ironically) IPnet. The point with IPnet is that it gets packets from your subscribers ADSL routers to some boxen in your datacentre, then you deal with it from there, including international backhaul. Telecom charge you, basically, $60/month/subscriber for this service.

Therefore, fixed costs of setting up an ISP in New Zealand = fuck all. Marginal costs = lots.

Under these circumstances, the speakeasy plan would work a treat. Imagine I own an ISP and charge $100/month for an ADSL connection, but you can connect your neighbours via WiFi and get $50/month back. So, each ADSL connection I get $40 (because $60 goes to Telecom), and each WiFi piggybacked connection I get $50. Woohoo! Quids in, with Telecom footing the worst of the bill!

Unfortunately it doesn't quite work like this. The $60/month buys you a very limited quantity of throughput - 512MB/month in it's most basic form. Yes, you did read that right, less than one iso. Per month. After this it's $0.20/MB, enough to kill the connection sharing thing outright.

But... shit. 512MB/month, and IPnet craps itself, like, all the time. The funny thing is that Telecom have no idea why their broadband takeup is so low. Really. NO idea. They also have no idea why competitiors are starting to appear bloody everywhere.

Dave

If I buy the new Harry Potter book, for instance, can't I assume I have a license to read it?

NZ TV Listing Star Trek Comedy starring Kim Basinger and Bruce Willis. A workaholic is set up on a business blind date with a woman who when drunk, loses control and becomes a wild party girl. Directed by Blake Edwards. Ok, off-topic, but where else can I post this? And I'm sure some /.er can quote the episode that will make this on-topic...

Set up a few service contracts for American companies to improve Iraq's infrastructure.

Like this one, quoted from Stuff

The US Agency for International Development yesterday awarded a contract worth up to $US680 million ($NZ1.23 billion) to Bechtel Group Inc, a privately owned San Francisco company, the biggest Iraqi deal awarded so far by the United States.

Bechtel's initial projects are to rebuild Iraq's power generation, water and sewage systems. But the contract is expected to include repair of airports, ports and possibly work on hospitals and schools.

There are pictures of it at these two stories

Stuff.co.nz

and

BBC

From small hobbits to King Kong
Canada.com - 8 hours ago
Oscar best-director nominee Peter Jackson poses outside his Wingnut Films office in Wellington, New Zealand earlier this year. ...
RotK Delayed Until May 2004 Slashdot
Peter Jackson resurrecting King Kong in NZ Stuff.co.nz
Northland Age - BBC - Nzoom.com - The Scotsman - and 72 related

More on this here

Don't forget Stuff.co.nz. I prefer them to nzoom.

Check out this cool map :-)

Check out this cool map :-)

Check out this cool map :-)

The prime minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, is showing off her country, as featured in the LOTR movies, by jetboating, ice-picking, rappelling into sinkholes, and overall doing some incredible things for a head of state.

Makes George Bush look sedentary!

(article)

The Time article they mention is online. It mentions Jackson's 10+%, it also mentions that Harvey Weinstein (of Miramax) gets 5% of gross. And it mentions that New Line's initial investment was only $25M per film which is only about 30% of the costs (presumably they invested further when budget blew out by $40M from $270M to $310M). So I think it is highly likely that New Line are not making anywhere near the sort of money a lot of people think.

What good are teachers unions if they don't strike under conditions like these?

Then people get resentful like "Oh well they're not helping our kids by striking instead of being at school teaching". We're going through the same sort of issues in NZ. Teachers striking.

It seems obvious to me that my teachers at school worked a hell of a lot harder than I do today and yet I earn twice as much.

I'm sitting back in the Operations Armchair, watching the computer room closed circuit TV, which just happens to be connected to the frame-grabber's video player (sent off for repair, due back sometime in 2007) when the phone rings. That must be the 2nd time today, and it's really starting to get to me!

"Hello?" I say.

"Who is this?" they say

"It's me I think" I say, having successfully attended a telephone skills course

"Me Who?"

"Is this like a knock knock joke?" I say, trying to concentrate on the cute secretary picking up a jar of paperclips that somehow fell off her desk, via the security camera I located in her office last night.

"uhhh.... I have a problem here" says the slow drawly voice down the phone.

I hit pause on the video; can't concentrate with this voice whining in my ear. "What is your issue?" I enquire politely.

"I can't reach my keyboard from here - its too far away. Can I use a keyboard extension cable?"

I'm puzzled by this... I've done nothing to this particular beancounter moron lately that I'm aware of.

"Perhaps you've shrunk since you last used your workstation?" I suggest.

"No", says the user. "I'm hiding under my desk, because theres a tall white plastic scary robot wandering around."

I think - shit! is Christine Rankin in the office? Quickly I flick the CCTV on to channel 27, which covers that area of the building to find that its Marvin the new Security Droid (no, too star-warsy) Dalek (no, thats taken too) Big Scarey Robotic Vehicle (yeah) has ended up banging repeatedly against a table.

"I see the problem" I whisper down the phone. "Be very quiet - this unit has fantastic audio tracking techniques."

"errrp" is all I hear

"You need to sneak around your desk, to the rear of the robot, then put your arm around the front and press the button on the front. It's about 50 centimetres above the floor level. Remember - QUIET or else it'll hear you."

God I'm a bastard - the poor moron can't ask me any questions cos Marvin will hear him speak.

"Nod if you understand" On the CCTV I see him slowly lowers his head and raise it again.

"Go to it Tiger!" I encourage.

I can see the pleb clearly on the screen... he is quivvering with fear. He lays the phone handset gently down on the carpet and proceeds to crawl around the end of his desk.

This is amusing! I quickly shove another tape in the video recorder... ya never know when something blackmailworthy will happen...

Beancounter Bob has reached a position behind Marvin. He reaches his hand out slowly and ever so gently presses the button.

Immediately Marvin blurts out "EXTERMINATE!!!" and his head starts to rotate faster and faster. I quickly patch into the office PA system and yell out "RUN FOR IT!!!"

The twit jumps two metres in the air (I know - I measured it later) and runs out of the building screaming "RUN!!! IT'S COMING TO GET US ALL!!!"

Damn that was a good reset routine I slipped into the eprom data files down in the R&D labs.

(major appologies to Simon)

While I don't agree with the groups request that sales of the game be halted (it'd be a pretty good way of advertising maori culture I would have thought), I agree entirely with them wanting to know if Lego are going to trademark/patent the character names and or cultral concepts. The character names seem to be taken directly from the maori language so in my opinion, Lego has no right to them. This could just be a misunderstanding I guess :)

Here's a link to a NZHerald article that puts a different spin on the issue. While I'm at it, here's a BBC one as well. Another paper (the Dominion) had this and this to say.

While I don't agree with the groups request that sales of the game be halted (it'd be a pretty good way of advertising maori culture I would have thought), I agree entirely with them wanting to know if Lego are going to trademark/patent the character names and or cultral concepts. The character names seem to be taken directly from the maori language so in my opinion, Lego has no right to them. This could just be a misunderstanding I guess :)

Here's a link to a NZHerald article that puts a different spin on the issue. While I'm at it, here's a BBC one as well. Another paper (the Dominion) had this and this to say.

Ridiculous? You bet. But it's just one example of the kind of thing the Hague Convention could make possible.

I can think of many people who would be pissed if all of a sudden Lego started making Jesus Legos and games, horribly botched the story, and then claimed their product was "made up in Denmark without reference to any particular culture."

These people are fighting the "monetizing" of their entire lifestyle. When people stand up to Microsoft, its heroicism (or insanity), but when somebody fights the gross overgeneralization of their religion, thats ludicrous.

On another note, the CNN story also features the classic "hole in the satellite picture:" the Maori believe that Lego is allready taking steps to trademark their own culture. This story covers the other side pretty well, but its a shame that neither story was written by a good journalist, who would be objective enough to cover both side's concerns.

It seems the problem is the Maori people are pissed from the possibility (or fact) of Lego trademarking these Maori names, so nobody (not even Maori people making traditional toys or something), could use them. That's a radically different way of reporting the issue, IMHO.

I'm told in some parts of the world it is illegal to even mention the holocaust ... does anyone know if this is true?

well this piece from a New Zealand newspaper titled "MIR Headed Our Way" warns about how pieces are likely to fall over a reasonabbly populated country.


bats = bugs

Here and Here

Here in New Zealand the general attitude is very paranoid (or cautious, depending on who you are) towards genetic engineering, and at least on paper it's quite heavily regulated.

Anyway, there was recently a government probe that found that a full 18% of the genetic engineering experiments were completely unauthorised. (Followup scientist reaction here.) I'm inclined to go with the scientists, if for no other reason because from where I am the whole public attitude seems more like an ignorant vigilante mob.

Does anyone have any ideas on how this could or should be regulated (if at all) if for no other reason, to prevent potentially dangerous results accidently (or deliberately) seeping into the environment?

Here in New Zealand the general attitude is very paranoid (or cautious, depending on who you are) towards genetic engineering, and at least on paper it's quite heavily regulated.

Anyway, there was recently a government probe that found that a full 18% of the genetic engineering experiments were completely unauthorised. (Followup scientist reaction here.) I'm inclined to go with the scientists, if for no other reason because from where I am the whole public attitude seems more like an ignorant vigilante mob.

Does anyone have any ideas on how this could or should be regulated (if at all) if for no other reason, to prevent potentially dangerous results accidently (or deliberately) seeping into the environment?