Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Just as a matter of interest, could you please tell me what the frig anyone's religion - or lack thereof - has to do with public policy? Serious question, serious answers appreciated because I'm open to being convinced not to object to state next time around.
Public policy is only one use of the census.
A hundred years from now people are going to want to know a lot of things about now, and the census is an important way of doing that.
If the current forms had been universally filled in in the nineteenth century, we'd know a lot more about religious conversion of Maori, we'd probably have an answer everyone would be happy with about Io. We'd know a lot more about the settlers that came here, how being in NZ changed them, and be able to look at their conversion from British settlers to NZers much more closely.
I suspect in the future one of the things we'll be interested in is whether or not the perceived decline in Christianity is backed up by the data, the increase in people professing to follow Islamic faith, and (I'm not sure if it gets this specific), the rise of 'cults' such as Destiny Church.
And if you talk to a political scientist rather than a historian, there's interesting questions to be asked about the failure of explicit Christian political parties to capture widespread support in NZ, when half of New Zealanders claim to be Christian. This at a time where if you look at America for example, religion plays a massive role in national political discussions.
The people who write census forms aren't just writing them for people in government now. They're trying to guess what people will want to know about people in New Zealand, fifty or a hundred years from now. Not an easy task, but certainly a lot of current historians would argue that religion is something that we should have asked a lot more questions about a hundred years ago.
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Can we run a competition to name your child?
I've ended up stuck on a three little pigs reference:
Brick Haywood.
It's a long weekend now right? Good.
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If cars were able to get me home a million times faster than they could in the 70s, could store 100 millions times as much stuff, and could fit in my pocket, could do basically everything, I think I'd probably not be too bitter on them.
Yeah. Standard response, from a hundred places on the web (don't think it's real, but haven't checked):
At a recent computer exposition, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If General Motors had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."
In response to Bill's comments, GM issued a press release stating: "If General Motors had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason, you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive -- but would run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "General Protection Fault" warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.My point was, that it'd be nice if users could have a system that was easy enough to understand and use that they didn't need all the support.
The computer industry has put a vast amount of work into smaller, faster, better, graphics, games, features. Yet we're still stuck with keyboards and mice and screen interfaces that are very unnatural, and software where you have to do all sorts of strange things to get out what you want.
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I wish! I have actually never done a TV voice over in my life. Be interesting to know who sounds like me though....
Really? That's not you doing... one of the insurance companies TV adverts?
Man, a Jeremy Elwood sound-alike. You should sue.
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I want the next generation to be something other than MS users who blindly call helpdesk any time their file won't format properly.
I want the next generation to have computers that format properly without people having to call the helpdesk.
I mean, many places will run about 1 technical support person to every 60 or so users. The ratio will be lower if the systems are complex, the users turn over frequently (like a school for example), or there are multiple instances of hardware/software (again, like these schools now where the staff have office, the kids have neooffice).
How would we feel if we had 1 mechanic for every 60 cars in society, and we had to phone one second day to help us get home?
I think the general evolution in computers has been to make them more intuitive and user-friendly for the ordinary user. Since we moved to a gui interface from text, I only get phone calls once a fortnight from my mother, I used to get them a couple of times a week.
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I haven't looked at neooffice, but I presume it's a viable alternative.
However I was listening to national radio this morning where the Ministry of Education person pointed out that this was curriculum computers, teachers and other staff would still have Microsoft on their computers.
That's a bit of a nightmare. As technical support, you need to have and to use regularly the software that your 'clients' are using. For teachers to be able to help students with computers and teach them how to use them as tools in any subject, they need to be using the same software.
Even if there aren't any compatibility problems, teachers need to know how to do the tasks that they're asking students to complete. They're going to have to learn two different software systems, and I'm not sure if they have a whole heap of spare time lying around to do that.
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Apparently the comedy fest isn't the only place he did it. Critic, in its review of M2 magazine, commented on his orientation show being the same as last year (and said some other things about him as well):
Mr Lovegrove (at least I presume it's him, Critic certainly thought so), got letter of the week in this week's Critic for a fairly aggressive & threatening letter attacking the reviewer. It's not online yet (or particularly literate, apparently his keyboard has no shift keys). But I quote (I've tried to maintain the typos):
the reason i found out if critic has mentioned anything is because pseudo intellectual dickheads like u make the mistake of getting personal in reviews and i like to pass the names of those who do on to people in various publications so in future they can avoid having to employ a gutless fuck like u. i have worked on tv ,am working on radio and write for news papers and mags. the guy who wrote the article is highly respected and i will make sure he knows what u said.if u have a prob with me u had the chance to tell me on the night. dont hide behind yr pen u pathetic loser. i have hrs of material but every yr in otago they let students under 18 in ,and alot of them. it is regarded as the most difficult student gig by far. i would change my act there more if the students were older,but i can only do what i think they will get.
anyway u got personal, u made an enemy and thats clearly how u operate. fine i will pass yr name on so people know yr a fucking tool.
ps go on publish the letter in yr student mag, wow yr so hard core
[Brendhan] Lovegrove
There's a reply from Critic which I won't bother typing out.
Interesting in light of Graham's recent comments on reviewing.
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Yeah. I think parliamentary privilege has some useful purposes (the ability of elected representatives to speak out without fear that they will be squashed by legal gargantuans), but some MPs just use it for political gain, dropping muck and then moving on without fear of it catching up with them, which annoys me.
Though perhaps that says more about the politicians than the privilege.
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Some males (and presumably some females) have unusual ideas about lesbians. One chap was talking to me the other day, before we participated in a sporting fixture, about how there were 'too many lesbian cock fags in New Zealand'.
Apart from the fact that he was obviously a teeny bit homophobic, the phrase 'lesbian cock fag' didn't make any sense to me.
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Kyle: I think those were firelogs, a different thing (and more expensive then pellets)
Dammit. Apparently not everyone gets a bargain.