Posts by anth

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  • Cracker: Go Figure,

    I often pay more attention to ads as I fast forward them than I do to the actual programme. My wife will usually be there too, and as I'm making sure to return to normal playing speed at the end of the ads she can ignore them completely.

    I expect it'd be very different if we used Commercial Flagging though.

    Since Nov 2006 • 77 posts Report

  • Cracker: Go Figure,

    According to the NZ Television Broadcaster's Council page on peoplemeters there are 500 households being measured with 1100 people.

    More importantly with respect to Stephen Judd's comment "Homes may remain on the panel for a maximum of 36 months", so there is at least some churn.

    Since Nov 2006 • 77 posts Report

  • Speaker: ACTA: Don't sell us down the river,

    I doubt s92A had anything at all to do with the demise of the last government

    Of course it didn't. National supported that too so there wouldn't be any point changing the government to them because of it.

    For Auckland Central it may have changed the outcome though. 750 votes going to Tizard instead of Kaye would have tipped things the other way. So would 1500 going to Tizard instead of Roche (Green Party). That would be almost a third of Roche's votes, but no one expected her to win yet we knew the race between Tizard and Kaye would be close so for many voters this must have been a deliberate choice to let Kaye in. Or a bit of both would have done it too, Tizard losing 500 votes each to Kaye and anyone else would have cost her the seat.

    Auckland Central contains one of the first two exchanges to get unbundled ADSL. Part of the reason it got chosen is technical, but part of it was based on how many customers Orcon had there or expected to gain so I think we can conclude that the internet was important to a significant chunk of this electorate.

    I've never used any peer to peer software, but the history of certain organisations going after alleged file sharers with apparently little regard as to the quality of their evidence makes me think that just obeying the law may not actually help that much if there is no judicial oversight. I use the internet a lot both personally and for work so this is not a risk I'm willing to take. I would suffer more from having the internet cut off than I would if I were to lose my driver licence, yet there has been no suggestion of that happening if I were to drive somewhere to get an illegally copied CD/DVD, let alone for merely being accused of doing that.

    So for me, living in Auckland Central, this one issue meant that for this first time under MMP I didn't vote for the Labour candidate, and that is despite knowing that unlike some previous elections my vote could make a difference. As to whether enough other voters in this electorate made a similar decision, well who knows but I'm sure that at the very least the contest would have been much closer.

    Since Nov 2006 • 77 posts Report

  • Hard News: New Lounge Toy Update,

    Obviously this is most worth the money if you want to use your phone as a satnav (which require's TomTom's expensive iPhone app, and also a recent iPhone)

    I wonder how long that price will last now that Google have announced the same function for Android for free

    Since Nov 2006 • 77 posts Report

  • Hard News: Safer Communities Together,

    I thought that moving to 50 posts/page was a big improvement. If there is going to be a compromise then surely the number should be 42.

    Since Nov 2006 • 77 posts Report

  • Hard News: Do these people even talk?,

    Who is it that causes the most motorcycle accidents?
    car drivers.

    According to the page you linked to the other driver is at fault 62% of the time in the 67% of motorcycle accidents that involve another vehicle. That suggests that the other driver is at fault in 41.5% of motorcycle accidents, which isn't quite "most". That isn't to say that the motorcyclist is responsible for all of the other 58.5% though.

    Still, some of the extra ACC costs for motorcyclists should be covered by the other drivers, just as one persons car insurance permiums don't increase if that car is hit by another and the other driver's insurance company pays for the damage.

    As for cyclists the number of injuries and even deaths is meaningless in terms of ACC, the important figure is how much those injuries cost. I've not been able to find this, though AA says that motocycles are 2% of vehicles but 17% of ACC costs.

    Cyclists are in a better position to argue that most accidents involving them aren't their fault:
    http://www.transport.govt.nz/research/Documents/Motorcycle-Crash-Factsheet.pdf
    http://www.transport.govt.nz/research/Documents/Cyclist-Crash-Factsheet.pdf

    Since Nov 2006 • 77 posts Report

  • Up Front: Outraged of Sockburn,

    Are there numbers somewhere for this?

    Oops, you're right. I'd searched the internet but unfortunately came back with a sample of well rated OF episodes and badly rated international rugby.

    Here are some more comprehensive numbers, giving 6 international rugby matches an average of 479.4k, and 10 OF episodes an average of 435.8k. That covers a period of June-September for both. Looks like 13-19 September repeated the previous week's data.

    And yeah, I've doubts about media ratings numbers too.

    Since Nov 2006 • 77 posts Report

  • Up Front: Outraged of Sockburn,

    To tie this into another recent discussion: OF gets higher ratings than rugby. Admittedly being free-to-air helps.

    Since Nov 2006 • 77 posts Report

  • Hard News: In the Game,

    The WC quarterfinal loss in 2007 was on a Sunday morning around 8am on free to air TV (TV3) and had 1,000,000 viewers.

    And the numbers have been going down since then. All Blacks v Wallabees a month and a half ago had 444k viewers, and Sky's annual presentation from around the same time said they have 779k subscribers. I would have thought that rugby was the main reason for getting Sky so was surprised that even amongst that group only a slight majority watched one of the biggest games of the year. Super whatever-number-they're-up-to matches get much lower ratings than that.

    Since Nov 2006 • 77 posts Report

  • Speaker: The Freeviewer Diaries (1),

    I think it uses a Linux file system

    I'd thought it used VFAT, ie an old Windows file system that can be used by just about everything but limits file sizes to 2GB. Some of the boxes with built in hard drives use EXT2, which is Linux native and has size limits big enough to ignore but which will require extra drivers if you want to also use it with Windows. There is no reason for them not to automatically recognise and use a variety of file systems.

    Since Nov 2006 • 77 posts Report

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