From Boing boing

The Elec­tronic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion has taken a num­ber of court cases against bully boy stu­dios who are using DMCA take­down notices ille­gally. I am a party sev­eral of those cases after some of my videos were taken down.

EFF Board Chair Brad Tem­ple­ton has made a bril­liant Down­fall remix. The video is inter­est­ing not just for being funny, but also for the trou­bles Brad had cre­at­ing it. In order to avoid any DMCA vio­la­tions, he had to make it with­out cir­cum­vent­ing encryp­tion, which nat­u­rally led to mul­ti­ple headaches.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Don’t get Twit­ter? Are you a Labour MP that doesn’t get Twit­ter? Watch this nifty lit­tle video from @CommonCraft.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

The Con­tainer Ter­mi­nals at Fer­gus­son and Bledis­loe will strike this Fri­day, this story has been per­co­lat­ing along largely behind the scenes. That is all set to change this week.

Behind the pres­sures is the desire of the Port Com­pany to make labour reforms, and alter work prac­tices at the behest of the left con­trolled ARC. What has not been reported on is the weak finan­cial posi­tion Ports of Auck­land is in.

When the com­pany was pri­va­tised, and taken within the Auck­land Regional Coun­cil (Auck­land Regional Hold­ings) the bal­ance sheet was healthy. Since then the com­pany has “pur­chased” the Maersk busi­ness, and been viewed as a prime fund­ing source for the Regional Council’s social agenda in order to posi­tion favourably Mike Lee’s per­sonal cru­sade to be the first Super City Mayor. These two fac­tors have com­bined to put the Port Com­pany into a dif­fi­cult posi­tion. Add a reces­sion, and the out­look is not very good. Be pre­pared for the Port Com­pany to try and slug its cus­tomers in every way for any­thing that they do. This may come in the form of increased charges or decreased ser­vice lev­els, both of which are cur­rently being expe­ri­enced by Port users this blog has spo­ken to.

The Port Com­pany have been very hard nosed with their trad­ing terms and con­di­tions, and it is obvi­ous that they will seek to “tax” busi­ness to replace the funds sucked out to sat­isfy the Regional Council’s social agenda. I do not know exactly where the money has gone, but I would haz­ard a guess that the Regional Coun­cil has effec­tively been pre­pared to sac­ri­fice the Port Com­pany to build some train lines and some other “empires”.

The Port response to “tax” busi­ness by increas­ing charges is effec­tively a tax on the pro­duc­tive sec­tor to fund a social agenda.

The pro­posed merger between Tau­ranga and Auck­land was dis­missed by the Regional Coun­cil as they con­sid­ered that the Auck­land Port was a much bet­ter busi­ness than Tau­ranga, and they wanted a dom­i­nant posi­tion (pre­sum­ably so that they could suck more money out?). Now the sit­u­a­tion is vis­i­bly turned, and Tau­ranga (who report pub­licly) will show a profit of around $40,000,000 while Auck­land is look­ing to be around $8,000,000 if they are lucky. There will have to be some rear­rang­ing of num­bers to achieve that! Four years ago the posi­tion was reversed and Tau­ranga was lucky to break ten mil­lion. Tau­ranga now prob­a­bly has the money to bail Auck­land out of the mire.

This doesn’t even con­sider the debt moun­tain referred to in yes­ter­days Sun­day Star:

A $105.5 mil­lion debt time bomb is putting pres­sure on Ports of Auck­land owner Auck­land Regional Hold­ings to inject cash into the com­pany for the first time.

The money must be repaid by Decem­ber 18, and Ports of Auck­land chief finan­cial offi­cer Wayne Thomp­son told the Sun­day Star-Times he is “highly con­fi­dent” the debt will be refi­nanced in time.

Ana­lysts and indus­try sources have wel­comed those assur­ances, given the fact that the $105.5m debt has blown the Port’s cur­rent lia­bil­i­ties out to $131.3m, more than four times its cur­rent assets of $28.3m and, accord­ing to the text­books at least, a posi­tion of sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal insolvency.

There is spec­u­la­tion the bal­ance sheet cri­sis was a fac­tor in the depar­ture of Ports chair­man Gary Judd, forcibly dumped by ARH just over a week ago.

In the four years since it bought the Ports shares it did not already own, ARH has stripped out more than half a bil­lion dol­lars from the for­mer listed ports com­pany, earn­ing the invest­ment arm of the Auck­land Regional Coun­cil the sobri­quets of “cor­po­rate raider” and “asset stripper”.

It could be a long cold hard win­ter on the Port. Watch for extreme con­di­tions, with some cold winds and a lot of hail, not to men­tion wail­ing from the unions. One thing cer­tain is that there will not be a lot of warm weather for indus­trial set­tle­ments for some time (unless they merge with Tauranga!!)

There is a real case to release the Port from its polit­i­cal hand­cuffs, and get out in the mar­ket again, and per­form like a busi­ness, not a social service.

Auck­land Regional Hold­ings has effec­tively neutered a very effi­cient organ­i­sa­tion, and left no money for the Unions to get in wage settlements.

I wouldn’t hold much hope for the Unions in obtain­ing any con­ces­sions. The irony is that the left wing poli­cies of the ARC and ARH have effec­tively destroyed the left wing aspi­ra­tions of the Union in this case and ulti­mately Mike Lee’s aspo­ra­tions to become the Super City Mayor.

Merg­ing with Tau­ranga would make so much more sense now. It could even free up a goodly por­tion of Auckland’s water­front for mean­ing­ful devel­op­ment allow­ing cash to be released to build bet­ter infra­struc­ture between Tau­ranga and Auckland.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Is it true;

That Helen Clark threat­ened a polit­i­cal repeater with out­ing his secret love child to his part­ner if cov­er­age didn’t improve?

That Win­ston Ray­mond Peters, 64, unem­ployed of no fixed abode is con­sid­er­ing stand­ing for the Auck­land Mayoralty?

That Win­ston Ray­mond Peters, 64, unem­ployed of no fixed abode likes liv­ing close to drug dealers?

That a self styled tough guy MP attended a S&M party in Turangi dressed as a gimp?

That Richard “Water­gate” Northey is keep­ing a low pro­file just in case some affi­davits get leaked?

That every time Richard “Water­gate” Northey walks into a room with other coun­cil­lors they all cover up their papers?

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Pork Chop’s mother, the increas­ingly mad and irra­tional, Drew Glu­cina is suing Brid­get Saunders.

Read­ing the Sun­day News arti­cle you have have to ask your­self whether this tart is delu­sional, men­da­cious or vex­a­tious. The likely sce­nario is a bit of all three.

Drew Glu­cina – mother of Her­ald on Sun­day gos­sip colum­nist Rachel – claims she was defamed by for­mer Sun­day Star-Times gos­sip queen Brid­get Saun­ders three years ago.

Drew Glucina’s legal team is seek­ing $100,000.

Sun­day News has obtained a list of high-profile iden­ti­ties who are set to be called to court to give evi­dence on behalf of Drew Glu­cina. They include a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and the wife of Rich Lis­ter Mark Hotchin.

The legal action cen­tres around an alleged poison-pen let­ter which the Auck­land Dis­trict Court has been told was sent by Drew Glu­cina to Saun­ders in 2006.

Legal doc­u­ments show Drew Glu­cina denies send­ing the let­ter which included a photo mon­tage to Saunders.

The alleged defama­tion occurred, accord­ing to Drew Glucina’s lawyers, when Saun­ders told peo­ple she had received a nasty let­ter from the mother of her then-rival.

It is Drew Glucina’s claim that because peo­ple have been told she sent the poison-pen let­ter, she is now con­sid­ered to be a per­son who does not “abide by law” and “acts unethically”.

Right lets look at this ratio­nally rather than through the eyes of Drew’s lawyer who will be the only one to ben­e­fit from this cat fight.

Firstly, she is only seek­ing a hundy! No one in right mind only seeks a hundy. She is suing for defama­tion which means that the value she puts on her “rep­u­ta­tion” is a hundy. A slap­per work­ing K Road would ask for more.

In the unlikely event she wins, I say unlikely because it is actu­ally dif­fi­cult to prove defama­tion, a hundy wouldn’t even cover the legal expenses. For starters you have to prove you had a rep­u­ta­tion that could be destroyed or dam­aged in the first place and then you have to quan­tify it. Both of those are ten­u­ous no mat­ter which way you look at it. Fur­ther, If Mrs Chop didn’t write on the note then whose hand­writ­ing is it? Like mother like daugh­ter perhaps?

When you look at her con­tention that she is “now con­sid­ered to be a per­son who does not “abide by law” and “acts uneth­i­cally”.” That is very dif­fu­clt to prove. If I was defend­ing this I would seek to find out whether she has ever been made bank­rupt, got a park­ing, speed­ing or other kind of ticket, ever been fined etc. Prove just one of those and you would see the pros­e­cu­tion crum­ble before their botoxed faces. As for act­ing “uneth­i­cally” well she is in busi­ness with her daugh­ter, need I say more.

If Drew is rely­ing on the court to award costs in order to pay her lawyer then she will be mis­taken. Costs are laugh­able. As I said before, ask­ing for a hundy will ensure she gets almost noth­ing and due to the large num­ber of “wit­nesses” the fool has called that will be eaten up in nano-seconds.

When going into a legal bat­tle it is always best to have the strat­egy of play­ing not to lose. Right now it appears that Brid­get Saun­ders is play­ing that beau­ti­fully. The costs would be mount­ing against Glu­cina and she hasn’t even got into court yet.

While we are talk­ing about court, Why doesn’t the Judge throw it out for being friv­ilous? I am sure we all like to see our courts clogged up with civil cases based on ten­u­ous grounds to safe a non-reputation.

This case will all end in tears for Drew Glu­cina, even if she wins. As I said always play to not lose. She may win, the judge may award the full amount and about $6k in expenses but she will have spent far in excess of $300,000 to prove it all. Brid­get Saun­ders will be laugh­ing all the way back home to her blind trust’s Pon­sonby Villa.

One final com­ment, if Drew Glu­cina thinks that rely­ing on the evi­dence of a pill-popping, mom­mies boy, whose daddy does the laun­dry and washes his car is a win­ning strat­egy then she is mad­der than her daugh­ter who thinks that telling peo­ple she is hav­ing brain surgery will cover up the stom­ach sta­pling at Christmas.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

MPs end silence over expenses – In the heat of the by-election bat­tle for Mt Albert, two MPs are tak­ing the sur­prise step of break­ing ranks with all their polit­i­cal col­leagues to dis­close their Par­lia­men­tary expenses. Green Party co-leader Rus­sel Nor­man and Act’s… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

There is an old adage about politi­cians and being able to tell they are lying. The answer of course is that their lips are mov­ing and today in the HoS we wee two MP’s whose lips have been moving.

There is much more trough­ing going on in Mt Albert than just the can­di­dates. Labour is fly­ing in all their MP’s with the lit­tle ginga tool spend­ing the most time in Auck­land when he is the erst­while mem­ber for Otaki.

The media needs to be loook­ing very closely at ALL MP’s that are spend­ing an awful amount of time, tax­pay­ers money, on trav­el­ling via Mt Albert.

Of course it is very dif­fi­cult to ascer­tain whether there is extreme trough­ing going on because MP’s refused to allow the OIA to apply to them. it is time it did.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

For months now both Labour and their lick­spit­tles in CityVi­sion includ­ing Richard “Water­gate” northey have been hound­ing Sam Lotu-Iiga about his atten­dence at coun­cil meetings.

They have clearly been whis­per­ing in the ears of Her­ald on Sun­day repeaters and so they have con­ducted a lit­tle sur­vey of coun­cil­lors around the region.

Stran­g­ley in their lit­tle hatchet job there is no men­tion of Sam Loti-Iiga. That is prob­a­bly because his atten­dence rate is over 84%, far higher than any of the whin­ing lefty twats who have been so nasty towards Sam because he had teh temer­ity to dbeat them in a fair election.

I doubt we will hear any squeaks from the left about Sam for the forsee­able future lest some affa­davits see the light day.

Of course they couldn’t get Sam so the HoS con­tin­ued their vicious cam­paign of innu­endo onto Chris­tine Rankin yet again. Despite her Chair­man Mike Lee prais­ing her work level.

Biz­zarely Andrew William’s, the mad mayor of North Shore, the Clown of Camp­bells Bay, has attacked the Her­ald repeater instead of sim­ply refer­ing on the inquiry to the appro­pri­ate level. Clearly the repeater gave him the call after 10am. Every­one knows that to et a sen­si­ble answer out of Andre Williams you need to call before 10am, or at the lat­est before the sun is over the yardarm.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

I call time of death on The Progressives.

In Mt Albert it has been observed on numer­ous occa­sions that David “Black­wa­ter” Shear­ers media min­der is John pagani, for­mer loyal lieu­tenant to Jim Anderton.

Spot­ted today sport­ing a fetch­ing Labour party rosette was Matt Rob­son who is/was num­ber 2 on the Pro­gres­sives list.

I think that The Speaker, The Hon. Dr. Lock­wood Smith needs to look at the fund­ing of Jim Ander­ton as “party leader”.

I’d like to thank Matt Rob­son and John Pagani for prov­ing in Mt Albert that the pro­gres­sives have ceased to exist and that now we can have a fis­cal sav­ing in cut­ting the “lead­ers” bud­get of Jim Ander­ton. They have finally achieved some­thing afer all these years.

Per­haps Jim could now con­firm the rumours that he is flag­ging it all away.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

As expected the anar­chist Metiria Turei has beaten the com­mu­nist Sue Brad­ford for the role of leader with­out a penis of the Greens.

The hard left is said to be aghast that Braford has missed out after bankrolling her bid. The whis­pers are that turei hasn’t deliv­ered a sin­gle thing whilst in par­lia­ment and that Brad­ford deliv­ered par­tic­u­larly on the anti-smacking bill that passe almost unan­i­mously in parliament.

I pre­dict ruc­tions from within the Greens. Happy times.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

You prob­a­bly think that the head­line is a lit­tle over the top but it is true that a global pan­demic far worse than Swine Flu in envelop­ing the world and the con­se­quences are very, very lethal.

I am of course talk­ing about Silly First Name Syn­drome and loyal read­ers have been email­ing cases to high­light the global pan­demic of Silly First Name Syndrome.

Mike Tyson’s daugh­ter has suc­cumbed to Silly First Name Syn­drome.

When I heard about the death of Mike Tyson’s four-year-old daugh­ter, Exo­dus, who stran­gled on a tread­mill cord, I got a bad feel­ing in the pit of my stom­ach. I have a 4 1/2 and a 2 1/2 year old, and before I learned the news, I had just made a phone call to get our tread­mill put back together to be used in the base­ment. Now, I’m reconsidering.

This silly fool thinks it was the tread­mill that killed. WRONG! it was her silly first name.

Police have stormed the Horowhenua Sail­ing Club to evict squat­ters who had lived in the club rooms for months.

But the squat­ters, some asso­ci­ated with the Nomads gang, were not phased by the tres­pass notices issued dur­ing Wednesday’s raid, and were out­side the club house yesterday.

They said they were going to chain the gates shut at the Lake Horowhenua entrance and begin another occupation.

A woman, who did not want to be named, was out­side the club rooms when police arrived on Wednesday.

“We were just sur­rounded by police … we were telling them to get the f*** off our land.

“They chucked every­thing off the top balcony.”

A power com­pany cut off the elec­tric­ity, which had been con­nected by the squatters.

The woman who didn’t want to be named appar­ently was Misty Nel­son. Bad things hap­pen to peo­ple with Silly First Names and the peo­ple around them.

It can strike in all sorts of places, includ­ing swanky hotels.

French police are search­ing for a British busi­ness­man after his girl­friend was found bat­tered to death in their suite at Paris’s famous Hotel Bristol.

Ian Grif­fin, 39, from the Lon­don area, was said to have fled the hotel in a Porsche 911 after the naked body of his 36-year-old part­ner, Kinga Legg, was found in the bath.

Some in the main­stream media are also start­ing to notice. Vet­eran pinko Simon Cun­liffe must have been read­ing this blog because he has writ­ten in the ODT about Silly First Name Syn­drome. Appar­ently Simon Cun­liffe was a Labour Gov­ern­ment spin-doctor before join­ing the ODT (but from his writ­ings, it is hard to tell that he has changed jobs).   He has a whine and food blog, as well as lit­er­ary pre­ten­sions. Nev­er­the­less he has noticed the increas­ing preva­lence of Silly First Name Syndrome.

Just remem­ber when your doc­tor informs you of the ter­ri­ble toll that Swine Flu may visit upon the earth that a far more men­ac­ing ill­ness is already killing and maim­ing. Also remem­ber that it may not be you who is afflicted by Silly First Name Syn­drome, but you could eas­ily be affected by close con­tact with an afflicted person.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Check out this.

It is John Key’s speech in reply to “Whack it on the bill” Phil Goff pre­pos­ter­ous sug­ges­tion that New Zealand racks up almost three quar­ters of a tril­lion dol­lars of debt if Labour was the government.

He describes Phil Goff’s eco­nom­ics as “Visa­nomics”. Visa­nomics was coined on this blog back on  11/03/2009.

Visa­nomics

vi⋅sa⋅nom⋅ics     [ve-sa-no-miks]
–noun
1. The Phil Goff school of eco­nom­ics: “I can pay this month’s super con­tri­bu­tion with my visa card and then pay my visa bill with my Mastercard”

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Below is an email exchange from a reader who raised some ques­tions with Rus­sel Nor­man after Bryce Edwards blogged about MP’s cam­paign­ing on the tax­pay­ers ticket espe­cially Rus­sel Nor­man who lives in Wellington.

Russel’s reply is inter­est­ing, I won­der, per­haps, if he has been fol­low­ing the scan­dal over MP’s expenses in the UK. Over there all the outed MP’s claimed that they fol­lowed the rules. Rules they may be but whether or not they are morally right in doing so is another issue altogether.

Is he really try­ing to say that he only vis­its Auck­land when he is invited to an event as Greens co-leader?   Even then should Par­lia­men­tary Ser­vices pay for it?

Subject: RE: Wor­ry­ing Arti­cle
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 17:52:51 +1200
From: Rus­sel Nor­man <Russel.Norman@parliament.govt.nz>
To: Bob
Ref­er­ences:

Hi Bob

I am care­fully fol­low­ing the rules laid down by Par­lia­men­tary Ser­vices.
When cam­paign­ing in Mt Albert I pay for my cabs (I have a car from a
friend up there so don’t use cabs much) and accom­mo­da­tion (again stay­ing
with Green supporters).

I travel around NZ con­stantly as co-leader and Par­lia­men­tary ser­vices
pays for my flights. For exam­ple, I am off to Auck­land shortly so that I
can attend the Child Poverty Action Group bud­get break­fast tomorrow.

Bryce has a long his­tory of per­sonal attacks on me and the Greens, it is
tedious. I no longer read his stuff.

Best wishes

Rus­sel

—–Orig­i­nal Mes­sage—–
From: Bob
Sent: Thurs­day, 28 May 2009 4:47 p.m.
To: Rus­sel Nor­man
Sub­ject: Wor­ry­ing Article

Hi Rus­sel – I’ve just read the arti­cle by Bryce Edwards “MP expenses and
cor­rup­tion in Mt Albert?” dated 27 may.

Can you please con­firm who is pay­ing your travel expenses to the Mt
Albert elec­torate?

Regards

Bob

–

 

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

There is a lot of talk around the inter­net about Google Wave. Per­haps the best sum­mary is at Mash­able and it looks seri­ously cool.

Essen­tially Google Wave is;

• Real-time: In most instances, you can see what some­one else is typ­ing, character-by-character.
• Embed­d­a­bil­ity: Waves can be embed­ded on any blog or website.
• Appli­ca­tions and Exten­sions: Just like a Face­book appli­ca­tion or an iGoogle gad­get, devel­op­ers can build their own apps within waves. They can be any­thing from bots to com­plex real-time games.
• Wiki func­tion­al­ity: Any­thing writ­ten within a Google Wave can be edited by any­one else, because all con­ver­sa­tions within the plat­form are shared. Thus, you can cor­rect infor­ma­tion, append infor­ma­tion, or add your own com­men­tary within a devel­op­ing conversation.
• Open source: The Google Wave code will be open source, to fos­ter inno­va­tion and adop­tion amongst developers.
• Play­back: You can play­back any part of the wave to see what was said.
• Nat­ural lan­guage: Google Wave can auto­cor­rect your spelling, even going as far as know­ing the dif­fer­ence between sim­i­lar words, like “been” and “bean.” It can also auto-translate on-the-fly.

I have signed up for noti­fi­ca­tion of when it goes live. Can’t wait.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

John Key con­tin­ues to be Labour’s worst night­mare. He con­tin­ues the mis­ery by super­vis­ing Bill Eng­lish in the deliv­ery of his budget.

I am not going to com­ment mainly because I care not a jot, but also because bet­ter ana­lysts than me have already com­mented on the budget.

The last word ulti­mately on any bud­get though is what the pub­lic think of it, on that I think John Key and Bill Eng­lish have prob­a­bly got it right.

At least that is what the NZ Her­ald online sur­vey says.

Still it was a bud­get that showed that National still needs some gonads. They still talk of “enti­tle­ments”. This social­ist fan­tasy that some­how peo­ple are enti­tled to other peo­ples money must be stamped out.

Right now our wel­fare state is sim­ply unsus­tain­able and hard deci­sions will have to be made sooner rather than later.

It looks like the next elec­tion will be fought on super­an­nu­a­tion and what­ever dirt Labour can fling about. My only wish is that we can have a sen­si­ble debate about the unsus­tain­abil­ity of Uni­ver­sal Super­an­nu­a­tion. Hope­fully with NZ First dead and buried that may be possible.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Labour’s strate­gists have called for all hands to help in the bat­tle for Mt Albert. Today they received more bad news. David Shearer is barely in front of Melissa Lee despite Trevor Mallard’s smear cam­paign for which he is yet to apologise.

My deep throat Labour sources tell me that the lat­est polling from multi-national polling com­pany UMR shows that David Shearer is polling at 36 per cent and Melissa Lee is just behind on 34% despite all the mud­sling­ing by Labour.

Labour’s strate­gists are said to be pan­ick­ing and called for a full turnout. Expect all of Labour’s out of town MP’s to be cam­paign­ing on the tax­pay­ers tit.

We could be look­ing at another One­hunga here. No won­der Labour/EPMU func­tionar­ies are lying to con­stituents telling them it is ille­gal not to vote.

David “Black­wa­ter” Shearer will be in real trou­ble if there is any dirt out on him that lands in the final week.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]