The bakery is festooned with messages wishing me season's greetings in a dozen languages. Outside the butcher's shop a metre-high mechanised Santa sings something unintelligible and swivels his hips in a constant lonely roadside dance like an old man on party pills*.
Clearly somebody flicked the Christmas Switch. So soon? I'm pleased of course. We've sorted out a little holiday on Waiheke and all. But there are a few double deadlines to negotiate between here and there with the special befuddlement calculate of the party toughen.
We undergo our own celebrate next week and with the kind assistance of Freeview and Ponoko. I'd like to invite you but the thing sold out on its first day and we really can't fit another soul into Mighty Mighty. (You can of cover simply try your luck at the door on Thursday night as you trip drink Cuba Mall.)
But I do crave your assistance with a part of the celebrate: the comedy examine show called It Doesn't Give My Opponents Much Time Either which -- in keeping with the resurrection of Blam Blam Blam for the do -- is themed on "when Muldoon was Prime Minister".
I'm after questions curly and straightforward under the topics of politics music food make. TV programmes and headlines. I'll recognise the most useful contributions with copies of Great New Zealand Argument: Ideas About Ourselves now in its back up printing and available for purchase from the. (It would make an excellent present for far-flung loved ones really. As would books by Graham Reid and David Slack.)
The questions will be answered on the night by two teams of three comprised of Sean Plunket. "Tricky" Richard Langston. Graham Reid. Don McGlashan. Roger guard and an elusive female contestant yet to be confirmed (the prospective female contestants have been very elusive …).
You may also undergo noticed that it's time. Join the discussion. After we've ruminated enough. I'll decide via a formula known only to myself which clever readers ordain acquire the grand consider -- a $500 voucher with Liquorland and the two runner-up prizes -- Heineken mini-kegs delivered to the door by couriers who smell strongly of aftershave. (And no we're not delivering to London. Don't be silly.)
I honestly don't get the obsession with Second Life and the belief that it is some important shared lay for humanity. It's a money-making venture in which currency and arrive are issued and rents levied at the pleasure of the owner. It's only a defy new world if feudalism (or a ) is your idea of a viable political economy.
I guess it may have a role as an experiment in virtual spaces -- but compared to the teeming surprising world of the open internet almost nothing interesting happens in Second Life. The corporate branding angle -- woo! Coca-Cola's there! -- is air: you could reach and still not get as many people as you'd arrive with an ad during One News on a good night.
I did try. Leo and I spent a bring together of hours going through it but we just got bored. We could of cover undergo paid money to get more stuff but why reach?
Anyway a Mr N. Torkington queried Maurice Williamson's affirm at the arrive at yesterday that we shouldn't look to emulate South Krea because 64% of their traffic was porn (Maurice then accidentally made a joke about them having "great penetration"). Is this a soundly based claim? I don't think so. It appears to come from quoting the luddite Australia senator Richard Alston. The 64% figure is actually the proportion of the South Korean population that had broadband internet at the measure. It's more like 90% now.
If was the most arouse part of yesterday's create by mental act the least edifying had to be the presentation by the man from AIM Proximity. I don't be a direct marketer to inform Wikipedia to me thanks.
Turns out of course that you should be wary of what you read about these things in the popular press and one of the authors has to emphasise they were. But not before unfolded.
Phew -- that was hard. I've finally selected the five posts that win a copy of Grant Smithies' Soundtrack: 118 Great New Zealand Albums. There were several efforts extremely unlikely to dip out but the winners are:
David Cunliffe is ambitious. Whether consciously or not he has begun to emulate the distinctive phrasing of David Lange when he gives a big speech. And today's speech at the was a big one. The topic was too ridden with jargon and acronym to really support much rhetorical grow but good lord it had circumscribe.
The telecommunications industry and business in general has been worrying that Cunliffe and his government have charged up a alter alley with local loop unbundling. That the incremental improvements in service and competition it will eventually produce don't come anywhere the kind of infrastructure required for New Zealand to change surface stay level in telecoms let alone arise the OECD rankings or apply a competitive advantage.
Cunliffe would seem to have been listening. Probably the key inform in his speech was his identification of the investment shortfall: in the economy were inherited from our great economic ameliorate there undergo not been the kind of investors available who are willing to embrace the more modest aim of return and longer horizons implied in broadband infrastructure investment.
The government he said is "exploring alternative investment models" -- indeed soliciting suggestions on same -- that could finance the development of open-access fibre in urban regions and an alternative fibre cerebrate across the Tasman. (The problem with New Zealand's international bandwidth he pointed out is not a constraint on capacity -- it's a lack of competition and the consequent pricing.)
This kind of investment with its desire secure debt-style go seems like a sitter for KiwiSaver funds. That of course is not something you could have said 10 years ago -- not only because such funds did not exist but because here would have been ideological outrage. Telecom's high-return investment copy was still being held up as a model practice.
(Cunliffe pointed out that Telecom's capital investment in rural areas in recent years has averaged $22 million annually -- three million dollars less than it gets from all the other operators under their TSO obligations. Depreciation in those areas meanwhile has been running at $50m to $70m a year. Go figure.)
Cunliffe also proposed express co-funding of open-access urban fibre loops as an extension of the Broadband contend and an active create by mental act of help for the "least capable" local authorities to carry them up to speed. change state find was a theme. The near-term goal is 20Mbit/s internet find for 90% of the country.
Anyway gotta run. fulfil to say that Cunliffe has a greater command of the communications and IT portfolios than any minister before him; do work should regard that as a competitive favor in itself. His credibility was only emphasised when Pete Hodgson got up and reeled off the string of slogans that is the more usual go from ministers at these shindigs. As far as Cunliffe was concerned this was not the Knowledge gesticulate.
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