May 2007

I have spent quite a bit of time driving today across Auckland. Consequently I also spent a lot of time listening to talkback. The topic of the day is the woman who croaked after Mercury Energy turned off her power and her Oxygen system failed.

I heard person after person complaining about how terrible it all was…blah..blah…blah.

At risk of sounding like a callous bastard I fail to see how her husband could have sat by for two hours while his missus was dying in front of him.

Let me tell you, if someone came to turn off my power and the missus was hooked to a life saving device, they wouldn't get near the house let alone the power meter. If that failed, I would run a lead from the neighbours until the situation was sorted and failing that i would have called a fricken ambulance, not sat around waiting for her to die.

Whatever the arguments for or against Mercury Energy cutting off the power what the fuck happened to individual responsibility for;

• Paying your bills
• Making arrangements if you can't  pay your bills
• Arranging alternative power supplies
• Call an ambulance

Tough as it may seem, callous as it sounds, the responsibilty for this poor lady's death rests with the family. 

I got myself a new toy yesterday. Admittedly it is is secondhand, but hey it was a bargain.

It is an Apple Mac PowerBook, all nice and shiny and silver. Everything works fine including my Vodem and the Wireless card.

If you want great re-conditioned laptops you can't go past NZ Laptops.  

Just perfect for my Aussie sojourn that starts Friday. 

Alright folks, here's the evidence, straight from the Auckland CEO himself that C&R were sticking up for Auckland Ratepayers.

As mentioned earlier , C&R Councillors Armstrong and Millar did NOT vote for the Metrowater price hikes. As the email below from David Rankin (Auckland City CEO) proves, Armstrong and Millar in fact tried to force the whole issue back onto the full Auckland City Council of 20 politicians to take a full vote on the massive water hikes, not just those who sit on the Finance and Corporate Business Committee. Had it been forced back onto the full council, panicked City Vision politicians may have backed down over their massive spending plans, and finally agree with C&R proposals to seek efficiencies and reduce council spending, thus not requiring either a rates increase or water price increase.

Let's remember folks – C&R have been pushing for core council activity from the opposition benches for the last two years. In revenge, one of the City Visioners leaked false minutes of the meeting to the Herald.

You heard it here first……..

David Rankin's email follows now:

______________________________________________

From: Russell, Nicki On Behalf Of Rankin, David

Sent: Friday, 25 May 2007 16:35

To: 'Bernard.Orsman@nzherald.co.nz'

Cc: Cr Armstrong, Douglas; Cr Millar, Toni

Subject: COMPLAINT

Bernard

Regarding your specific questions to assist the Herald in dealing with complaints by Councillors Millar and Armstrong, I note as follows:

1. If Councillors Armstrong, Millar and Milne had voted in favour of Councillor Fryer’s amendment, with the three councillors who supported it, the effect would have been to pass the motion 6-5. Metrowater would not have required a price increase and depending on other cost factors, could have considered reducing their price. Correspondingly, the council’s ten-year budget would have had $220.8 million of revenue removed from it. This would have required expenditure cuts of this level or a 4.7 per cent rates increase in 2008/2009 to compensate, and smaller additional increases to this in future years.

2. If the committee had not adopted the substantive motion to approve the three-year statement of intent, a valid statement of intent would not have been approved by 30 June by the council as required to do under local government legislation. This would have necessitated further urgent consideration by the council of the price increase issue, to enable a statement of intent to be approved at a further meeting to be held in the near future. This was, as I understand it, the intent of Councillors Millar and Armstrong. In essence, a future such meeting would have had to resolve to either:

a. confirm the 9.1 per cent price increase and leave council’s ten-year expenditure and proposed rates increase unchanged; or

b. arrive at some different price increase figure for Metrowater requiring an offsetting balance in some mixture of spending cuts and rate increases for the year to compensate.

Regards
David Rankin

Fresh from the news that a Japanese Cabinet Minister embroiled in dodgy dealings committed seppuku is the news that in China has sentenced the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration to death for corruption, in an unusually harsh sentence which could be reduced on appeal.

We'll be lucky to see the crooks from Labour ever get a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket andel jefe will probably never see the inside of a prison cell. 

In Japan they have a different set of values when it come to Ministerial responsibility. Here the government obfuscates and supports their scandal tainted ministers, in Japan they have a more permanent solution to scandal.

If this was Japan Clark-san would have very few ministers left after ritual seppuku for scandal tainted ministers.

hat tip Gizmag

I regularly check Gizmag to see what is happeing in all sorts of tech areas. My favourite section is military and that is where I found this product.

The X-Net system can fully arrest a range of vehicles using a unique spiked net design. The non-lethal system is man portable, can be deployed in a matter of seconds and causes minimal damage to target vehicles. The product is so good that QinetiQ has secured a five-year Indefinite Duration, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with the US Military, for the supply of QinetiQ’s Vehicle Lightweight Arresting Device (VLAD), the US military designation for the X-Net system.

It should readily stop boy-racers in their tracks. Check out the demonstration video.

Microsoft are insisting that schools that use their Office product on Macs cough up for licensing and the Education department is saying nah as well.

Of course the stupid minister and echoing him is the even dimmer MSM who should know better are saying that they can use NeoOffice. NeoOffice is simply a port of OpenOffice, but why would you use a port when you can have the real thing.

You would think that the journalist press release copier would ahve walked down the hallway and spoken to the technology journalist and asked what alternatives their were to using Microsoft products on a Mac. If he had, he would know that there are very credible alternatives that cost nothing.

The best office applications are to be had at OpenOffice.org. This is supported financially by Sun and provides everything you could actually want in an Office suite. I use this myself on a Mac. Sure it uses x11 to run but so what and doesn't have native Mac features but again so what, it works.

Of course there are now online alternatives such as Google Docs which provide a Word processor and a Spreadsheet. Again I use this fine product from Google, in fact far more than I do any other Office type product.

Then there is ThinkFree, which offers Desktop installation or online use with a free 1Gb of storage. The Desktop version costs but is a miniscule amount compared to Microsoft's bloated price and product.

Mariner Software also provide an Office suite of applications in their MarinerMac Suite. Yes it costs, but it is $199.95 USD. Compare that with Mac:Office Professional at $880 NZD!!!! 

OpenOSX: Office provides another opensource option with the added bonus of GIMP and Database support. At only $40 USD it again kicks the ass of any Microsoft product in terms of price/feature ratio.

As you can see there are many option available to the end user with out having to rely on Microsoft products. Anyone who says you can't get popular applications for a Mac is seriously deluded or deliberatly muddying the water.

Helen Clark thinks it is the smacking debate and a little bit of mid-term blues that is causing their shellacking in the polls.

Good. I hope she keeps thinking that way.

Clearly Labour thinks it has a little bit of a cold when in fact they have terminal case Avian Flu.

John Armstrong has an opinion on their problems as well.

[quote]To put it bluntly, Labour has only eight months to close the yawning polls gap which has opened between it and National.

If Labour is still trailing by even half as much by next February – when election-year politics begin in earnest – it will probably be too late.

Precedent suggests that if National's lead is entrenched at around 10 percentage points by then, it will be almost impossible for Labour to haul it back.[/quote]

DPF has kindly provided us with quotes from Labour Party Lickspittle Jordan Carter on polls since January.

The poor wee soul is seriusly deluded, of course we can't tell him that because he has shut down comments in typical socialist fashion. 

No doubt apologist Sonic/Frank will jump in at about 0900 to stick up for poor wee Jordan.

DPF points out some more quotes from Labour MP's about the fine upstanding bent, corrupt MP for Mangere.

Can't wait for the court case….all those Ministers lining up, all the Labour election secrets coming out.