Hard News: Brown bigots etc.
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Sue,
The advertiser bought 60,000 impressions as an auction item at the recent fundraiser for our kids
those are savvy people because we love our kitty kats at PA
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Ben - to answer a previous question - we put together customised debian distro's to suit the clients' needs. Mind you, desktop support is hardly our core business. The fact we are able to do it at all speaks volumes for the stability and ease of use of the platform.
First role outs a couple of years ago, obviously updates keep flowing. These days we would probably just use Ubuntu with whatever extras are required.
By the way, plenty Mac people around at work running Linux and OS X. Macs are cute but in my mind you pay a premium for that cuteness if you happen to live outside of the USA.
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argh, the typo and grammar gods.
That's what you get for not sacrificing a goat before each comment.
I didn't, and wrote BSA instead of ASA, thanks for the catch Graeme
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Macs are cute but in my mind you pay a premium for that cuteness if you happen to live outside of the USA.
The way I heard a friend put it: "I'm not a Mac fan. But I am an OSX fan."
I'm glad the prices are gradually coming down with the Intel chips - mac minis and macbooks are nearly competitive, even in NZ. And thanks to Bootcamp, Parallels, etc etc, I get to run OSX, Linux-of-choice, and Windows on whatever my next Mac purchase is.
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And can I register my immense distaste at and irritation with the crying-little-kid-my-pet-is-dead-because-mummy-and-daddy-didn't-get-kitty-insurance ad at the top of the page?
Ahh, but its gone to a non-denominational open source kitty heaven...
A bit more seriously....I'd previously concluded the theological fudge of 'God Defend NZ' is one of the things in its favour. The only thing, really. There isn't even anything in the way of Christian imagery in the lyrics. And I like the 'men of every creed and race' bit.Musicially its a dirge, lyrically its pretty cringemaking, but it's a national anthem. They're all like that.
The Aussie one is a a bit more perky I suppose (read an alternative version once which went 'Australians we all say "choice!!" de dum de dum de dum'....)
I've argued elsewhere our National Anthem should be Fred Dagg's 'We Don't Know How Lucky We Are' because its a good jaunty number, and it slyly sends up our national smugness.
It's also true. You can't say that about most national anthems.
A national religion? I don't understand why anyone would want one, especially anyone who adheres strongly to a particular faith. State religions are there mostly to bolster the regime of the day, and really make no difference to individual faith.
England has a state religion only by accident: a mix of power grab and regal lust by Henry VIII.
Hitler tried to make the Lutheran Church Germany's state religion in the 1930s: it split the church and those who set up a free Lutheran Church wound up in concentration camps.
I don't share the visceral anti-Christian views of some who are posting here. I'm not a Christian, but I was brought up in a fairly decent version of the Christian tradition and I have seen its good side. And there is one, a pretty strong one.
I'm dubious of charismatics though, be they religious or political. They're always up to no good.
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Sold - The 1973 national anthem 'God defend NZ' protects everyone and the 4th Artile of the Treaty does too. Massive!
Triple Star has refference to the maori baskets of knowledge that the writer knew about but hidden/overwritten knowledge and exclude maori.
Now please be upstanding for the 1st and still reigning anthem 'God save the Queen' - This was always a show stopper in my house.
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Totally unrelated...
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WH,
The Census figures on religious affiliation , if anyone is interested, are here.
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Front page, leading story of the Oamaru Mail today was about a local primary school devastated at the MS Office/Education Ministry spat.
This whole event is going to publicise to a much wider audience the joys of using alternative office software to MS Office. Anyway, it is a bloody good reason why large corporations have Marketing or Communications people, and why they can be useful.
Someone needs to ask the hard question "Are you sure you want to be a jerk given that nearly every family with school age children will get worked up over this thanks to the MSM's hunger for such stories, no matter that you might well be in the right, contractually?"
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As a result, our job has become much easier. It is easier to produce the sort of solutions we are required to, it is less costly and we make far fewer design and architectural compromises due to stupid and bizarre licensing rules. In short we invariably end up with a better end result than we did in a previous life. Technically it is satisfying and it is gratifying to be able to make a difference to someone's business without compromises.
I agree. This stuff increases transparency and means people in the software game provide what is needed, rather than a generic one-size-fits-all suits nobody solution that contains more stuff that I'm never going to use, than stuff I am going to use, which the user is obliged to pay big bucks for. When I look for a parallel in the natural kingdom, I begin thinking more and more about the extinction of the dinosaurs.
I feel a rant about collaboration and the need for reform of intelluctual property rights (copyright) coming on.
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LOLCODE? http://lolcode.com/</quote>
I hate myself for hearting that site so, so much. -
oops
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or maybe the females are all working during the day
Perhaps if you promise your husband more interesting recipes he'll let you have a computer in the kitchen?
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The Census figures on religious affiliation , if anyone is interested, are here.
I wonder how long before an argument breaks out on PA System about interpreting those stats?
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I think we should opt for an open-source Mac/PC/Linux compatible National Anthemn that is inclusive of atheists.
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cheers for the link Weston
The number and proportion of people indicating that they had no religion continued to increase in the 2006 Census. In 2006, 1,297,104 people (34.7 percent) stated that they had no religion, compared with 1,028,052 people (29.6 percent) in the 2001 Census.
compared to
In the 2006 Census, just over 2 million people, or 55.6 percent of those answering the religious affiliation question, affiliated with a Christian religion (including Māori Christian). This compares with the 2001 Census, when 60.6 percent of people affiliated with a Christian religion.
Christians drop 5 percentage points, Atheists pick up 5.1 points! Watch out, we're catching up!
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Michael, what is it you have against Netware?
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The instability is a function of how much new stuff we're getting every day. It would be nice if it all came out perfect from the word go, but it would cost a lot more, and we'd be waiting a lot longer.
The first operating system that Microsoft delivered was QDOS, which stood for "Quick and Dirty Operating System" It was written in a hurry by some guy to run a project he was working on. This was bought by Bill Gates and Steve Balmer and Licenced to a computer manufacturer (not IBM but by some small company, look I don't have time to look up the details ok, I've got to get to the pub) up until win2000 this was the underlying os. So quick and dirty was the name of the game and we have MS to blame for that. If it had been left to the open source model we may have had it later but not by much and it would have evolved in a much less painful and sordid manner.
Oh, while I'm here I suppose I should put in my 2c worth on the religion thing.
Gods ok, it's his bloody fan clubs that piss me off.
Cher to the Cher
I'm off to have a berr. -
I wonder how long before an argument breaks out on PA System about interpreting those stats?
No bet, you can't misinterpret stats*. And these aren't too controversial anyway.
*if you agree with me :) -
Gods ok, it's his bloody fan clubs that piss me off.
Maybe we could all pitch in and buy Bishop Brian one of these...
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At least it's not a terrifyingly nationalistic anthem. Other countries expound on their plans to overrun the world.
'All other countries have inferior potassium . . .'
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But if you happen to believe there is no god then the whole anthem becomes a bit much - and the Maori version of it even more so.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I get a little annoyed when someone feels the need to patronise folks at 'multicultral' gatherings by hideously mispronouncing a simple greeting in a dozen different languages without pausing for breath. OTOH, as far as plastic tiki tokenism goes, it's not really worth firing up the indignation gland for.
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I think we should opt for an open-source Mac/PC/Linux compatible National Anthemn that is inclusive of atheists.
Mac/PC/Linux compatible
"Platform independent" is the term. Java is platform independent....dunno what the stats are about java, but chances are if your computer just stopped to catch it's breath for a while (ie has hung), java was responsible....(perhaps I'm being unfair).
Perhaps we could have a new reality show. Write (& perhaps perform) NZ's new national anthem?...it would almost worth leaving NZ to avoid and might solve some of the problems with NCEA....can't imagine too many people would be keen to retain a TV with that sort of dribble on the idiotbox.
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This is going to sound horrible, but... I love singing the Maori version of the anthem because I have no idea what the words mean. I mean, I know the odd word here and there but not whole sentences. And I learnt it when I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
It just sounds nicer.
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Just to bring the two threads together: here's a map that I created just now showing the proportion of people who put "no religion" in the last census, created entirely using open-source GIS tools. Just for Wellington so far, but I can create others.
By the way, the tools were QuantumGIS and PostGIS. Unfortunately, the data itself isn't open source, but that's a whole 'nother can of beef.
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