Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: NetHui is here, in reply to Don Christie,
Well, no. My company, Catalyst IT, creates thousands of lines of "content" every single week. I really do object to not being included in the sector that has interest in content creation and therefore issues of copyright etc.
Fair call.
That said, it is a sad that members of the film and music sectors in particular may not be attending. This is a reflection of many in those industry's inability to harness business models that their consumers are demanding.
It does seem to me that perhaps the hand could have been more actively extended. RIANZ has a new CEO, Chris Caddick, who seems less combative than his predecessor, and it would have been good to have musicians and film-makers there to talk about their work -- I thought the presence of artists at this year's Webstock really brought something fresh and useful to that event.
Perhaps next year.
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Just in case anyone's feeling too flushed with hope, Bob McCoskrie has Key and Goff for his election-year forum:
http://www.familyfirst.org.nz/forum
One of the guest speakers is Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby. Ugh.
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Hard News: And we may never meet again ..., in reply to chris,
Russell, while you deeply dislike these people, you (and correct me if I’m wrong here) do seem to hold a great deal of respect for hardware and software companies such as Apple and Microsoft that have facilitated this sea change, companies who make billions of dollars of profit facilitating people’s desire to share media.
I don't buy that logic at all. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Sony, etc etc don't make anyone behave in that way. (BTW, I didn't say I deeply disliked people who grab entire catalogues via BitTorrent -- I dislike it as a way of acting. It's a bullshit way of being a music fan.)
And as Kyle notes, Apple is he leading digital music retailer. I don't have the info to hand, but from memory it has returned about $16 billion to artists and their labels. The new cloud music services will multiply that return.
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Craig, we agreed to differ on civil unions: they seemed a useful increment to me, a way of demonstrating that the world would not not be ended by some measure of relationship equality. Something achievable then and there. I do think their impact has been overwhelmingly positive. We do have a new normal now.
But my immediate thought on hearing of the New York vote was that it was time for us here to just finish the job. It’s past time for marriage equality.
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The TVNZ web story refers to "hundreds of skimpily clad" people. It's fairly staggering how inaccurate a characterisation of the actual crowd this is.
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Here's the Herald's story, in which Tower's MD explains how a house being bulldozed doesn't make it a write-off.
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I should have followed John Drinnan's advice and stayed well clear of those blog things.
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Hard News: That's Entertainment!, in reply to Danielle,
Hippy.
Ahem. Techno-hippy.
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Hard News: That's Entertainment!, in reply to Robert Fox,
Magic mushrooms, Mutoid Waste Company Car Henge
Me too! One of the most amazing experiences of my life.
My buddy Greg and I were there till dawn on the Saturday night, bashing bits of metal on the mutated cars and just soaking up the techno-pagan vibe.
And then dawn broke over the beautiful white fog down in the valley. It was really, really beautiful.
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I may have to do some shouting. Loudly.