It's not a new thing - back in 1948 Groucho came to blows with Warner Brothers over the same kind of issue - here then is the transcript of the letter sent... for your reading pleasure.
http://www.riles.org/musings8.htm
or try here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/15344.ht ml
Great climate, speak English, cheap property, beaches, snow, adventure sports... oh, and enough bandwidth so you can AALLLLL be LPBs...
IDGNet has a collection of stories What am I worth? questions about skills and experience and what sort of job they would get in NZ. Answered by recruitment firms - we often get employers calling after the story's been published asking for contact details... http://www.idg.net.nz
Obviously the posting wasn't about the acutal finding of ETs - it was about the number of people willing to sign over their cycles to a task and the defeating/fending off of any major problems with the service and the data (early boo-boos not withstanding).
Don't be obtuse - it's beneath you.
Paul Swain is minister of Everything Electronic (poor bastard) and for his sins is: Minister for IT Minister of Communications Minister of Commerce (although the deputy PM has basically subsumed this role... Swain still gets the tricky e-commerce stuff) Minister of Statistics Minister for Land Information (!) as well as associate Minister for Justice (e-crimes stuff) AND associate Minister of State (e-govt stuff - this one might not be confirmed yet)... for more on NZ government check out: http://www.govt.nz
True, but I've just come back from the Coromandel where it was lush, green, loverly and my father in law had plenty of Y2K supplies (sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, bubbles, beer, barbecue etc) so it feels summery, even if Orkland does suck weather wise. My favourite Spice Girl... Papa Spice, the little blue one.
Yes, New Zealand (gidday) is first to see the dawn - now if only the marketing people had actually got their shit together, we could all be down here having a party (did I mention it's the summertime and all is well at the beach?) instead of working. I'm going to be based in Auckland watching the dawn break, filing stories to http://www.idg.net if anything does happen - and I'll fire them off to Slashdot as well. Good luck - may the force be with you. Person your battle-stations and FULL STEAM AHEAD
It's not the software we should be worried about - it's the embedded systems. I don't believe these guys in the Ukraine are using the same water pumps etc that they first installed - they've installed replacements over the years. How many of these have embedded chips in and how many of those are catalogued and checked? I'd still be worried. As for Y2K, anyone remember the Peach Bottom reactor in Pennsylvania making the news? During testing for Y2K, the plant's safety monitoring equipment shut down for around seven hours. The problem was put down to "improper test procedures" and the plant did continue to operate at full capacity during the failure. Their safety protocols saved their butts (and ours) and sure, it's not Y2K causing the problem, but Y2K testing. Still, if they have trouble in Pennsylvania, what about the Ukraine?
All I can tell you is I have zero pressure applied to me from the advertising people here at the paper and any pressure the advertisers themselves try to apply is firmly rebuffed at a higher level than myself - my editor and publisher both take a very (VERY) dim view of advertisers who try to pull ads because they "didn't get the editorial coverage" they felt they deserved. Perhaps it's different in the US but here in NZ we're still fighting the good fight.
As a journalist working on an IT publication in New Zealand I have to tell you that we seriously don't care what ads are in the paper - in fact, as I write each story, I have no idea who or what is being advertised. We have a strict policy that editorial and advertising just don't mingle. Once in a while we get someone ring up asking to submit "editorial copy" and they are firmly set straight. You can buy an ad if that's what you want, but editorial content is written by the journalists and no-one else. If you have any blurring of the lines as you've all pointed out, your readers hate you for it. There's no such thing as being a little big compromised - that's like being a little bit pregnant.
This is not only a good idea, it is fundamentally important. In the future there are likely to be two classes of people (ala Shockwave Rider by John Brunner) - those in the know and the poor. We are at that cusp - those controlling the rich nations have yet to realise (for the most part) that the information age is upon them and the world is about to shift, just as it did with the industrial revolution. This isn't just a shift in the way we work but in the fabric of our society. We can't afford to make information the realm of the elite -it has (HAS) to be available to all and the best way to do that is to start with the children. Good luck in your mission. I have seen similar projects attempted here in New Zealand and one school in particular is looking at installing Citrix Metaframe so parents can install a thin client unit at home and have net access on the cheap (buying bandwidth from schools, using their IT support etc). Great idea.
The best water pistol (as the rest of the world calls them) I ever saw was called The Saturator. Kind of like a pistol-grip shotgun with a banana clip magazine underneath - it was about 2ft long with a pump action that would load the barrel completely full with water. Firing it loosed the whole lot out to about 15ft max, but it was so powerful it had recoil that was surprising and you had to be careful not to aim for the head. It was beautiful... Mmmmmm, Saturatooooorrrrr! If anyone knows where to get one (last seen late 80s) I'd be droolingly grateful for the info.
The best water pistol (as the rest of the world calls them) I ever saw was called The Saturator. Kind of like a pistol-grip shotgun with a banana clip magazine underneath - it was about 2ft long with a pump action that would load the barrel completely full with water. Firing it loosed the whole lot out to about 15ft max, but it was so powerful it had recoil that was surprising and you had to be careful not to aim for the head. It was beautiful... Mmmmmm, Saturatooooorrrrr!
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a new thing - back in 1948 Groucho came to blows with Warner Brothers over the same kind of issue - here then is the transcript of the letter sent ... for your reading pleasure.
t ml
http://www.riles.org/musings8.htm
or try here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/15344.h
Great climate, speak English, cheap property, beaches, snow, adventure sports... oh, and enough bandwidth so you can AALLLLL be LPBs... IDGNet has a collection of stories What am I worth? questions about skills and experience and what sort of job they would get in NZ. Answered by recruitment firms - we often get employers calling after the story's been published asking for contact details... http://www.idg.net.nz
Obviously the posting wasn't about the acutal finding of ETs - it was about the number of people willing to sign over their cycles to a task and the defeating/fending off of any major problems with the service and the data (early boo-boos not withstanding). Don't be obtuse - it's beneath you.
Paul Swain is minister of Everything Electronic (poor bastard) and for his sins is: Minister for IT Minister of Communications Minister of Commerce (although the deputy PM has basically subsumed this role... Swain still gets the tricky e-commerce stuff) Minister of Statistics Minister for Land Information (!) as well as associate Minister for Justice (e-crimes stuff) AND associate Minister of State (e-govt stuff - this one might not be confirmed yet)... for more on NZ government check out: http://www.govt.nz
True, but I've just come back from the Coromandel where it was lush, green, loverly and my father in law had plenty of Y2K supplies (sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, bubbles, beer, barbecue etc) so it feels summery, even if Orkland does suck weather wise. My favourite Spice Girl... Papa Spice, the little blue one.
Yes, New Zealand (gidday) is first to see the dawn - now if only the marketing people had actually got their shit together, we could all be down here having a party (did I mention it's the summertime and all is well at the beach?) instead of working. I'm going to be based in Auckland watching the dawn break, filing stories to http://www.idg.net if anything does happen - and I'll fire them off to Slashdot as well.
Good luck - may the force be with you. Person your battle-stations and FULL STEAM AHEAD
It's not the software we should be worried about - it's the embedded systems. I don't believe these guys in the Ukraine are using the same water pumps etc that they first installed - they've installed replacements over the years. How many of these have embedded chips in and how many of those are catalogued and checked? I'd still be worried.
As for Y2K, anyone remember the Peach Bottom reactor in Pennsylvania making the news? During testing for Y2K, the plant's safety monitoring equipment shut down for around seven hours. The problem was put down to "improper test procedures" and the plant did continue to operate at full capacity during the failure. Their safety protocols saved their butts (and ours) and sure, it's not Y2K causing the problem, but Y2K testing. Still, if they have trouble in Pennsylvania, what about the Ukraine?
All I can tell you is I have zero pressure applied to me from the advertising people here at the paper and any pressure the advertisers themselves try to apply is firmly rebuffed at a higher level than myself - my editor and publisher both take a very (VERY) dim view of advertisers who try to pull ads because they "didn't get the editorial coverage" they felt they deserved. Perhaps it's different in the US but here in NZ we're still fighting the good fight.
As a journalist working on an IT publication in New Zealand I have to tell you that we seriously don't care what ads are in the paper - in fact, as I write each story, I have no idea who or what is being advertised. We have a strict policy that editorial and advertising just don't mingle. Once in a while we get someone ring up asking to submit "editorial copy" and they are firmly set straight. You can buy an ad if that's what you want, but editorial content is written by the journalists and no-one else. If you have any blurring of the lines as you've all pointed out, your readers hate you for it. There's no such thing as being a little big compromised - that's like being a little bit pregnant.
NOT!!
This is not only a good idea, it is fundamentally important. In the future there are likely to be two classes of people (ala Shockwave Rider by John Brunner) - those in the know and the poor. We are at that cusp - those controlling the rich nations have yet to realise (for the most part) that the information age is upon them and the world is about to shift, just as it did with the industrial revolution. This isn't just a shift in the way we work but in the fabric of our society. We can't afford to make information the realm of the elite -it has (HAS) to be available to all and the best way to do that is to start with the children.
Good luck in your mission.
I have seen similar projects attempted here in New Zealand and one school in particular is looking at installing Citrix Metaframe so parents can install a thin client unit at home and have net access on the cheap (buying bandwidth from schools, using their IT support etc). Great idea.
The best water pistol (as the rest of the world calls them) I ever saw was called The Saturator. Kind of like a pistol-grip shotgun with a banana clip magazine underneath - it was about 2ft long with a pump action that would load the barrel completely full with water. Firing it loosed the whole lot out to about 15ft max, but it was so powerful it had recoil that was surprising and you had to be careful not to aim for the head.
It was beautiful... Mmmmmm, Saturatooooorrrrr! If anyone knows where to get one (last seen late 80s) I'd be droolingly grateful for the info.
The best water pistol (as the rest of the world calls them) I ever saw was called The Saturator. Kind of like a pistol-grip shotgun with a banana clip magazine underneath - it was about 2ft long with a pump action that would load the barrel completely full with water. Firing it loosed the whole lot out to about 15ft max, but it was so powerful it had recoil that was surprising and you had to be careful not to aim for the head.
It was beautiful... Mmmmmm, Saturatooooorrrrr!