I hadn’t seen this …
The Six Dollar Fifty Man from NZ Shorts on Vimeo.
An excellent primer on why the Treaty of Waitangi applies to ‘modern stuff’ like the radio spectrum
Broadcaster and Te Reo lobbyist/activist/legend Piripi Walker lays out the case:
Why Maori seek share of 4G spectrum
(stuff.co.nz via Bryce Edwards NZPD)
A highlight for me, early in his argument:
We should not be surprised in the digital age that its protections, in respect of the assumed royal prerogative (the right of kings, queens and parliaments to assert ownership over raw resources and the right to own and sell) reaches into areas like the spectrum resource. The courts have accepted that the Treaty deliberately placed a fetter over the prerogative in New Zealand.
Maori should not be blamed for the length and sharpness of those guarantees. Maori didn’t write the Treaty nor initiate the migration and colonisation which necessitated it. They are entitled to cling to the contract their ancestors signed.
It’s useful to remember that in all the claims Maori have made for spectrum in both broadcasting and telecommunications, they have displayed a clear idea of what they would do with spectrum and why it is needed. All have faced fierce Crown opposition and produced bitter fights in the courts.
All over the world a person or a group’s or a government’s attitude to ‘indigenous rights’ is like a litmus test. These issues, righting past injustices, have always seemed to me parallel with attitudes and responses to resettling wealth and goods confiscated from dispossessed Jews in the lead up to and during World War II.
I’m not Jewish or Maori (I’ve had a little to do with the impressive Piripi Walker and Huirangi Waikerepuru and, early on, some in the Wellington Maori Radio crowd through my late mother-in-law Tungia and Otaki whanau, and always wish them well) but let me say this as a New Zealander:
I’m intolerant of the shallow evasiveness of arguments like “The past is the past, what’s that got to do with us today?” (And don’t get me started on John Ansell’s heinous “Stone Age” and “Maorification” racist dog whistle politics.)
It’s easy to see that for generations Swiss Banks held on to what was fairly obviously Nazi plunder, resisting all attempts to repatriate that treasure to its rightful owners or their heirs … and then eking out the slenderest of token gestures as damage control after their decades of stonewalling provoked despair for the claimants.
Is that an unfair or offensive comparison to the Crown’s actions here in NZ? Perhaps your answer to that question is another litmus test.
– P
I haz Vodafone LTE in Auckland
I rang Vodafone yesterday and agreed to the extra $10 a month to enable 4G LTE on my iPhone 5. I could see from their coverage map that my home in Howick isn’t “in the zone”, and my Epsom office is on the margin (as it turns out, no dice there either).
So I’ve yet to give it a good test. (I’m busy at present with other stuff.) But I drifted into a LTE zone on Auckland’s southern motorway south of Greenlane this afternoon and took the opportunity to have a play. Much faster.
I’ll report back in more detail later.
– P
Update 7 March: Here are a couple of Speedtest results from Karangahape Rd in Auckland today: http://twitpic.com/c97l29
Gower on ‘Teflon John’ Key
Quite a good column — readable, at least — from 3News’ Patrick Gower on the narrative that he’s been promoting lately: that NZ Prime Minister ‘Teflon John’ Key has regained his ‘vice-like grip on the centre voter’.
It’s not the first time, of course, the ‘Teflon’ label has been used referring to Mr Key. But clichés emerge because they are commonly used.
See what you think of Patrick’s piece. I think it’s a good read: The Left’s ‘Nightmare on Key Street’ at TV3.
– P
There’s a joke in this … somewhere
Hello new thing. This (below) is apparently a tractor slander shaft.
Oh, boy. There’s got to be a joke in there …
Tractor slander shaft – pic: indiamart.com (click)
And then there’s the ASB Bank’s use of the wonderful Brian Blessed (immortal in Blackadder as Richard IV) in their ‘be proud/celebrate success’ advertising campaign. I don’t rilly get the joke (yet).
Below the fold is a Blackadder Brian Blessed clip and the bank’s video with nice-guy-but-very-English Blessed …er, earnestly explaining.
Does it ‘work’? Well, I already bank with the ASB but it’s got me thinking … oops. Cunning devils!
Continue reading →
Calling out haters like Cameron Slater
Recently, in a post Cameron Slater is social media “beef lasagne” I referred to the tactics of Pakuranga’s political attack blogger:
Cameron’s schtick is fizzing up nonsense for the purposes of Shock! Horror! spittle-flecked and dishonest attacks on people with whom he disagrees online. His purpose is to ‘hurt’ them. If by his ravings and incitement of his followers he can cause negative ‘real world’ effects for his targets (like, say, financial, or their employment), then all the better, according to this nasty bully-boy.
Yesterday I was directed to a brief interchange about another aspect of this online stalker’s modus operandi that bears examination: his frequent use of hate speech and persistent smear campaigns where he (and his gang) seek to denigrate or defame opponents with nasty one-sided personal abuse. See John Stringer’s The Whale Gets Another Harpoon.
Lately, presumably in thirsty pursuit of increased page-views, Cameron and his crew have noticeably increased the rate of posting on the website (pushing more volume through the partisan sphincter) and adopted a more ‘magazine-y’ style — complete with cute kitten videos (only dead ones) and ‘pop culture’ breaking news like (I’m not kidding) Harlem Shake videos.
They’ve also made virtually all of their posts, even short ones, require a ‘Read more »’ click … again, one presumes, this change is an effort to game the webstats which have become such an important part of Cameron’s self-identity. Of course, being Cameron Slater, those webstats have become a cudgel, and a platform for more of his crass and illogical your-opinion-don’t-matter-cos-I-haz-more-page-views! sessions like this: Continue reading →
Samsung’s walk in the park
Daniel Eran Dilger is a ranter — but a ranter who builds a persuasive case by (often sarcastically) citing facts, history and numbers. I have a lot of time for him. I appreciate his attention span.
This very dense paragraph (below) is from one of his wonderful takedowns — in this case of a pliant business press — Bloomberg — being fed optimistic-to-the-point-of-misleading … pap (and liking it!) to regurgitate to the ‘investment community’. Bloomberg’s breathtaking propaganda piece suggests trouble for Samsung (Roughly Drafted Magazine)
Enjoy.
But if Samsung can find a new customer with an appetite for billions of dollars worth of RAM and SoCs and the cold hard cash to pay for building the production capacity years in advance, it shouldn’t find it too hard to also ditch Android for a reliable operating system with the security credentials needed to be accepted by the enterprise and the development tools and established user base to provide it with a software library competitive with Apple’s App Store.
Awesome. Too bad for Bloomberg‘s Jun Yang, Anand Krishnamoorthy and Jungah Lee. Dilger’s piece is a total down trou.
I would not like Dilger on my case.
– P
PS I admired a friend’s Samsung smartphone (complete with smashed screen) this afternoon on the way back from the beach after swimming and boating with three boys. He said that was the second one he’d smashed (believe me, I’ve seen smashed iPhones too).
One of the boys said “My dad’s been through six iPhones” which made me gasp as I’ve yet to smash one, despite some close calls. (I’ve had three — 3G, 4 & 5 — since they were launched here in 2008.) “But four of them he dropped in the ocean,” he said. His dad is a harbour pilot.
The gutsy Amanda Palmer: The Art of Asking (TED)
It’s easy (and in some cases, almost fashionable) to knock TED Talks. I don’t care. I love and value them so much.
Here’s the brave and visionary Amanda Palmer’s talk filmed in Feb 2013, posted March 2013.
Gutsy.
– P
I would have thought Dana Perino would have learned about the risks of ambiguity
Bob Woodward’s credibility-eviscerating ‘I been threatened by the White House!’ (er, not really, actually) episode has seen a lot of ink and electrons spilt. I don’t need to add to it.
But this short statement (above) from former GW Bush press secretary Dana Perino caught my eye because it wasn’t clear. Even my favourite right wing vixen Louise Mensch (through whose twitterstream I saw it) responded with:
although I have no idea what you just said, it sounds scary.
Some of the other responses, when I clicked through, made me laugh too. Such is the ridiculousness of pretending one’s own political partisans are somehow more worthy morally than ‘the other side’.
If a senior admin official had sent that email to Bob Woodward when I was press sec, that someone would have to meet me out on west exec.
— Dana Perino (@DanaPerino) February 28, 2013
Top Posts – February 2013
Some of the most-viewed posts at ThePaepae.com in February …
graphic: logicalagent.com
- We was brung up proper!
- Cameron Slater is social media “beef lasagne”
- An update on Michael Williams and the Howick Local Board
- Beware the ubiquitous PDF? Really?
- Top 10 NZ property investment books – Auckland City Libraries
- Mr Phil Jones: re-heating cold horseshit
- Let a little air in, @BarnsleyBill.
- About The Paepae
- On one’s motivations for a rant
- The dissatisfying hollowness of @BarnsleyBill, Russsell Beaumont’s internet imposter
- Watchdog issues warning about Sean Wood Property Tutors enterprise
- So who CAN afford a house?
- Facebook as ‘digiphrenia’ or technology that misrepresents us
- Linking to sources — why it’s vital for credibility (Case study: property spruiker Sean Wood)
- Colin Craig: getting ahead in politics by being polarising
Again, it intrigues me what’s ‘popular’.
– P
Computer coding as super power
I was a geek way back, too.
– P
PS: Look at all the Macs!
hat tip: EmpowerNetwork.com
Dodgy use of panorama effect = bent lighthouse
Click to enlarge (pic: Mike Lowery)
A friend, Mike, took this photo of the lighthouse on Tiritiri Matangi using his phone-camera’s panorama effect in vertical mode.
Oops, he wasn’t quite straight in his ‘pan’…
Vi Hart’s Guide to Comments
If you’ve ever felt a sting from someone knocking your creative work (or your expressions of opinion, comments about people you like, or the way you approached a situation*), here’s a wonderful ‘guide’ from Vi Hart.
– P
*I copped a bit of what she calls ‘disappointed high-horse’ (5:10 in the video) from Ivan the other day. C’est la vie.
via Maria Popova. Bless her heart.
Facebook as ‘digiphrenia’ or technology that misrepresents us
image: adapted from zdnet.com
… Facebook is just such a technology. It does things on our behalf when we’re not even there. It actively misrepresents us to our friends, and worse misrepresents those who have befriended us to still others. To enable this dysfunctional situation — I call it “digiphrenia” — would be at the very least hypocritical. But to participate on Facebook as an author, in a way specifically intended to draw out the “likes” and resulting vulnerability of others, is untenable.
Facebook has never been merely a social platform. Rather, it exploits our social interactions the way a Tupperware party does.
Facebook does not exist to help us make friends, but to turn our network of connections, brand preferences and activities over time — our “social graphs” — into money for others.
We Facebook users have been building a treasure lode of big data that government and corporate researchers have been mining to predict and influence what we buy and for whom we vote. We have been handing over to them vast quantities of information about ourselves and our friends, loved ones and acquaintances. With this information, Facebook and the “big data” research firms purchasing their data predict still more things about us — from our future product purchases or sexual orientation to our likelihood for civil disobedience or even terrorism.
The true end users of Facebook are the marketers who want to reach and influence us. They are Facebook’s paying customers; we are the product. And we are its workers. The countless hours that we — and the young, particularly — spend on our profiles are the unpaid labor on which Facebook justifies its stock valuation.
It *is* creepy. And he’s right about the HOURS people spend updating their profiles and info for Facebook. One of the things I do for a living is data grooming … hours of it in sporadic bursts … because it can be worthwhile. Links and networks and ‘social leverage points’ are highly valuable. Some without scruples exploit them, as we have seen, following down the line of social networks, professional networks, church and iwi networks with their toxic snake oil, pyramid schemes and investment scams.
Be careful what you give away to Facebook. Yes, it’s where the young people are (and the over 55’s, according to research quoted by the lovely Cate Owen on Radio NZ’s Mediawatch last weekend, 24 Feb 2013) … but be aware there’s the Facebook corporation, desperate, urgent, striving to ‘monetize’ their membership with stunts and offers like: ‘promote’ your posts to your ‘friends’ (and their ‘friends’).
My working model is that Facebook is, and always has been, untrustworthy.
Your opinion may differ, naturally. I recommend you read Rushkoff’s thoughtful article.
– P
