Posts by TracyMac
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Just fab.
I'd like to see the BDSM-azoola as well, mind you. More?
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Coming a bit late to this party, I completely second the OpenDNS rec. Easy to configure, nice and granular (I think the built-in "low" setting would work for most teens), and requires no client software, so it's nice and whizzy.
I use it for my own network, purely to block phishing and adware sites.
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Thanks for the stonking track, Russell. I'll be getting yet more of Mr Free's oeuvre, I can tell. Why o why did Mesh never release anything, even a poxy EP?
Getting back to Kiwisaver and tax cuts, did anyone notice the sloppy journalism in The Herald (why am I surprised), essentially saying that the majority of people would be better off with the proposed National tax cuts, since they're earning at or over the average wage. Has no-one understood the difference between average and median in journalism-land? I wandered through the Statistics website, and found the illuminating datum that the average wage was about 10K more a year than the median. That median wage is around $37,000 (sorry, can't be bothered digging out the links again).
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I'm kind of hoping the idea will be quietly swept under the carpet in Oz. They've had their trial, so the fundies will shut up for a while, and the impact on services so bad, I can't imagine the ISPs will roll over easily.
If they do, the likely outcomes are that all the "virtuous" people who never look at porn will bitch mightily at the impact on service (because Aussie internet speeds aren't much to write home about outside a few blocks of the Syd and Melb CBDs); and the huge percentage of people who do look at porn ("sex" is still the top search term in Google) will be demanding they be taken off any filter list, thus rendering it effectively useless.
I can't see any witch hunts evolving from asking to be taken off the filter - safety in numbers and all that. Interesting stats in this wee clip:
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"Mainstream NZers" is just insulting... although not quite as bad as the "working families" locution the current Aussie govt spouts at every opportunity. I don't want a goddamned family, thank you, and I also think that those who aren't currently working for wages are not necessarily unworthy of govt attention.
If they invent the Cuban Lesbos of the South Pacific, I might even be able to convince my g/f to move over the ditch. "Is that a cigar in your pocket, baybeh, or are you just pleased to see me?"
As for that Herald article "announcing the election", funnily enough, I skipped over it on Friday, since somehow "Key promises 'issues' election" didn't give me the impression that it was a story about the PM announcing the date. The Herald isn't even pretending to be unbiased these days, which would be fine if there were a leftie-liberal rag to counter-balance it. Oh for the days of the Star, before it got screwed up. Ok, it wasn't exactly "leftie-liberal", but then again, the Herald had pretensions of objectivity way back when.
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Did someone mention the Simple Cottage? The *only* thing edible in that place was the nachos. I had blocked the memory of the macrobiotic brown rice vego "sushi rolls" out of my mind till now.
DKD did the hot chocolates of awesomeness, fab coffee, and kindly hosted us queer kids on Sunday afternoons. Dominos did do coffee and some nice cakes - the food was slop (except for soup). I have fond memories of Midnight Espresso et all in Wellers in the late 80s.
The "most remote" good coffee experience I've had in NZ is in Kohukohu - some of those old hippies are still there, and are now doing excellent things with coffee.
Monmouth Coffee in London is still going strong, but I was peeved with them when I went back a couple of months ago, because they *still* don't do soy milk. I need a latte sometimes - there are only so many espressos I can drink in a day (one). There's a new chain in London called AMT, and they're pretty good, with very tasty fairtrade organic offerings. And soy milk. I'd say they're a bit like Sierra in quality. And there's one at Terminal One in Heathrow right at the arrivals area. There's also good kiwi coffee (and Anzac biscuits) to be had a surf/ski/outdoor shop around the corner from Covent Garden - it's down one of those alleyways leading towards Neal St, the cafe is on the top floor, free internet and for the life of me, I can't remember what the shop is called.
I second the recommendation for Campos in Newtown in Sydders. I walked past the place any number of times before finding it (why isn't it *right* on King St? Gah!) - best coffee in Sydney, and I agree that finding decent stuff in Melbourne is a lot easier. Canberra has two places that make decent coffee, a few "ok" and a local roaster who likes a dirty acid flavour for his beans, which is a shame. There are other local-ish roasters, but no cafes using their beans, as far as I know (other than their own stall at the farmers' market at the showgrounds on the weekends - shame about the 10 minute queues, though).
As for the coffee vs tea dichotomy, it's a false one. I like beautifully extracted locally roasted fruity chocolatey arabica coffee whereever I can find it; I like my personal blend of Assam and Sri Lankan Organic Highland teas first thing in the morning and last thing at night. It's all what tastes good, innit?
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Can't you assign a static address to the gadget? If your router is on 192.168.0.1, you should be able to assign anything else on 192.168.0.x (that another machine isn't using), using your router address as the gateway, and the appropriate subnet mask (255.255.255.0 in the example given)
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If I was a less-than-conventional adolescent living in Bridgend, I'd want to top myself too. Miserable place, nothing to do, even when you're an adult and have the option of getting pissed.
As for the SG "confusion", I can't believe that those journalists didn't thoroughly check out the site. Decline of journalism... in my day... Penthouse in every desk with the whisky bottle... blah blah. Can't think of anything much more life-affirming than the SG site, personally.
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The Libs really did cut their own throats with the "WorkChoices" crap, which actually isn't as severe as that shit the National govt pulled back when, and then the unions rolled over and died (7 years work, and 2 weeks "redundancy" pay? Thanks guys. Thanks union for not supporting my unfair dismissal claim after 10 years of dues). It galls me that Labor won't undo AWAs that are currently in force, since that's what I'm stuck with at present.
Most of the people I know here voted Green, as pretty much the only viable 3rd-party option (the Democrats were a dog's dinner), and the bizarre voting scheme for the Reps certainly didn't do them any favours. While MMP has its faults, at least it gives a proportional result. The flavour of STV used for the Senate is slightly better, but it still uses a dodgy transfer method. As I/S points out, the more modern STV systems, such as that used in Ireland, give better results.
I don't know of one Australian who is in favour of the fact that you have to fill in all the little boxes if you choose to vote "below the line", which is why most vote above the line. I mean, there are plenty of candidates I wouldn't want even the tiniest proportion of my vote going to. I don't think there is much motivation for the incumbents to change the system though.
Finally, as for Costello spitting the dummy, someone I know Who Knows reckons the bugger is much too lazy to stick it out as Leader of the Opposition without a guaranteed payoff at the end of it. Better to quietly chug along on the backbenches rather than do that tedious graft.
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PA is "counselled" by ContentKeeper, which is a pretty big web content-checking appliance. Apparently it's a "chatroom". The trouble is, virtually every site that allows comments is so tagged - and really, what media-related/technical site doesn't have that functionality these days? Even Al Iverson's antispam blogs are "counselled".
I actually don't have a problem with blocking chat protocols and actual chat sites - unless you're using IM in the enterprise, it uses up a schwag of bandwidth and is a nice vector for viruses/malware. So too with gambling sites and the like. But I would like these things to be correctly categorised.
Amusingly enough, sites that are banned (Wired - it's "entertainment") can be freely viewed via an RSS reader, including Google Reader. Any chance of getting full RSS feeds of PA content? It's a pain being "counselled" every time I come here (and I must say that partial "teaser" RSS feeds irk me - you can plonk your advertising in as post footers or whatever).