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Lounge weekend | Jun 07, 2005 10:19
I spent my long weekend watching rugby, reading, making comfort food - roast organic chicken, smoked fish pie and spaghetti bolognaise on successive evenings - and trying not to drink too much wine. I really had planned to at least get out to the Banana conference, but I eventually accepted the counsel of my darling: stay put, rest up, do nothing.
Anyway, Keith and Tze Ming were at the conference, Keith has already had a little blog about it.
I'm excited about the rugby avalanche. Friday night's All Black trial was, I think, a lot better than anyone expected. Both sides played surprisingly structured rugby. Sivivatu and Nonu stood out on attack, but Nonu continues to get himself out of position on defence. Up front, Tony Woodcock showed why he's the incumbent All Black loosehead. But I didn't see anything from Ali Williams to make me more comfortable with him as Chris Jack's locking partner in the Lions tests: good athleticism in the lineouts, dumb mistakes in open play.
Derren Witcombe's elevation to test status after the trial seems well-deserved. Fitzy thought so too, although he named Conrad Smith his player of the trial.
An incomplete New Zealand Maori team was less impressive in squeaking a win over Fiji, and will have to step up markedly to beat the Lions. On the other hand, even given their three-try opening blitz, the Lions were no more than competent in their tour opener against a doughty Bay of Plenty side - and in some areas of the game rather less than competent. If referees decline as enthusiastically as Paul Honiss did to let them slow the ball down at the tackle, their lack of openside flanker talent will undo them. And they'll want to do a lot of work on defensive formations. The loss of Lawrence Dallaglio to a horrible injury in the most innocuous circumstances is a huge blow to them, but it seems admirable to me that even as he was being shipped off to hospital with a smashed and dislocated leg, Dallaglio remembered to leave his Lions jersey for his BOP opposite.
The worst big game of the weekend was the Martin Johnson-Jonah Lomu invitational. Too many errors, too many also-rans in action. The most interesting part was seeing Ian Jones back in action - he looked quite good. Also pretty average: Keith Quinn's commentary - we all love him dearly I'm sure, but his work was confused. Although there was certainly some amusement when he barked "Eric Rush, going down on it like a teenager!"
After some lame efforts, funnier culture-jams on the National billboard campaign by Lyndon Hood here and Gonzo here.
While we play the waiting game to see what National chop to allow its tax cuts - Working for Families will be gutted, according to Labour, while John Key is talking about more government borrowing - any fool can see that there's one area where National will be merrily wielding the axe: arts and culture. Gerry Brownlee (Gerry Brownlee?) has apparently spoken of a 30% cut in arts funding, but National's only firm arts policy so far seems to be scrapping the PACE (Pathways to Arts and Culture Employment) scheme; a no-brainer for them, but nonetheless petty and wrong-headed.
National happily operated much looser employment schemes in 1990s; schemes which were open to budding artists but offered no sector-specific support, didn't impose a work test and did not embody an entrepreneurial philosophy as PACE does. Unlike those schemes, the PACE payment actually abates against outside income at the same rate as other benefits: the difference being that artists and performers can count expenses against their declared income. But it's a soft target.
Georgina Te Heuheu's hapless performance on Frontseat on Sunday suggested that scrapping PACE is the total so far of National's arts policies. She muttered something about a national portrait gallery, mouthed some platitudes about hip-hop and made a claim that National presently had no intention to cuts arts funding that clearly even she didn't believe.
This is interesting: the American conservative weekly Human Events Online asked 15 "conservative scholars and public policy leaders" to compile their lists of the 10 Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th centuries, and has compiled and published the results: they include The Kinsey Report (fourth), John Dewey's Democracy and Education and Berry Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and J.M. Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (which, amusingly, the authors blame for the current US fiscal deficit). Also-rans included John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and Darwin's Origin of the Species.
Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly decided to have a crack with his own list of "Books we beg to differ with", making it more interesting by deliberately leaving out books by fascists and communists. His version is more interesting, but the presence of The Road to Serfdom has been controversial with his readers.
Biggest tech news of the year - so big that Slashdot slashdotted itself in all the excitement - is Apple's announcement that it will switch from the PowerPC architecture to Intel chips from next year. I can see the logic in this: PowerPC's a great architecture, but IBM is much more focused on producing versions for use in consumer devices (Playstation 3 and the new Xbox) than for personal computers. Also: Apple has presumably decided that it will lose Hollywood unless it buys into the hardware-based DRM being developed by Intel. Wired's Leander Kahney speculated on this when the rumours broke on Friday. Apple won't allow MacOS X to run on any old Intel box, but won't do anything to prevent Windows running on Intel-based Macs.
And so we wait for a Michael Jackson verdict … I think there's still quite a good chance of acquittal all round, given the damage done to the credibility of the accuser and his family - but innocent? Quite another matter. Would you let your child sleep in the same bed as a man whose sanctuary for children was shown to be piled high with pornography - not just a few dirty mags under the bed, but porn everywhere? Didn't think so. It's a little like the OJ trial - the acquittal there was not inappropriate on a beyong-reasonable-doubt test, but you'd be deluded to think he actually didn't commit the murders.
Very much on | Jun 03, 2005 07:03
I though this might happen: today's NBR Philips Fox poll has National on 38% support, a point ahead of Labour on 37, on a margin of error of 3.6%. Two polls last week had Labour ahead by seven and four points respectively, but fighting the trend. It would seem fair to say that at this point they're basically neck and neck.
Tax is quite obviously the issue here: last week's Herald poll had it coming out of nowhere to become the major issue for 14.9% of voters, making it second only to health. It's worth noting that in April last year, National was polling as high at 49%, with the Treaty and race relations as the hot-button issue. That was gone by August, which suggests rather strongly to me that this year's election will be delayed as long as possible, while Labour gathers its wits. The problem for Labour is that having played its hand in the Budget, it will be hard to backtrack, but it could start by stopping whining about TV3. It seems likely that public regard for Helen Clark's leadership, which has basically held against the polling trend (especially in comparison with Don Brash's ratings), will be a key asset.
National still obviously figures that there's mileage in racial unease: Aaron Bhatnagar's "Iwis versus Kiwi" billboard wasn't that far off the mark. The Herald has a story. I genuinely despair of this. Apart from being inaccurate and dishonest, National's billboard sets New Zealanders against each other. It is simultaneously cute and very ugly. Someone should ask Georgina Te Heu Heu what she thinks about it.
Unnerving also: at the moment, Winston Peters looks like kingmaker - both major parties would hold their noses and deal with him if it meant being able to form a government. Given the clear direction of his campaign - hey! racial unease again! - that is not pretty.
Hey, this is good: the Big geeks around NZNOG have turned a presentation by Joe Abley this year into an unofficial New Zealand Internet History. I'm pretty stoked that my giant 1998 story for Unlimited on Telecom and the Internet gets a couple of links.
This just in (hat tip to Richard Ram) for intelligence on that very important topic: beer. Realbeer.co.nz has been pursuing the question of whether selling pints is illegal. The answer is it depends, although a publican selling "real pints" would be breaching Section 10 of the Weights and Measures Act 1987.
And before someone runs off with this as some sort of libertarian crusade ("I'm riding a bicycle without a helmet whilst downing a 'real' pint. Come and get me, Helen!"), standardised measurements are part of consumer law almost everywhere. It's how you know what you're getting when you hand over money.
So you can still order a "pint"; the publican can still offer you a "pint" - but might fall foul of regulations if he was to advertise his beer in "real pints". In theory anyway - there have been no prosecutions.
The law stipulates a pint serving can't be less than 568ml. Which, so far as I can see, is exactly the same as one (British) imperial pint anyway. What you really want to avoid is a US pint, which is only 473ml.
Sticking with measurements: I presume the editors of the Herald's business section knew they were making a completely bogus comparison before they headlined Monday's story on the latest National bank business confidence survey Optimism dives to '87 crash low-point - and went ahead and did it anyway. The figure does not measure the depth of any economic pessimism, but the consensus - and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to realise that most analysts, commentators and Michael Cullen all expect economic growth to cycle down over the next year. Some people, including the National Bank's chief economist, who is quoted in the Herald story, think that's not entirely a bad thing.
Minor hilarities: how did a Google ad for "Gay Dunedin" find its way alongside Garth George's imperious prediction of the fall of Europe yesterday? Is somebody having a laugh?
Garth's conclusion is that "the European Union will disintegrate just as the Soviet Union did. Why? Because the foundations upon which they both were and are built are Godless."
It joins all manner of ill-informed offshore prognosticating since the French voted "non" to the European Constitution this week - the most hilarious of which was (surprise!) John Hinderaker of Power Line's attempt to declare "Red State/Blue State France": He said the "urban islands of blue, like Paris and Lyon ... would seem to correspond reasonably well to American 'liberalism'," because they're, um, blue, presumably. When a reader with half a clue got in touch, he posted a follow-up allowing that "if that is correct, then my suggestion that blue-state France parallels blue-state America was almost exactly wrong." Stunning.
Meanwhile, Garth's tirade against multiculturalism was kept company by an edited version of Tze Ming Mok's essay 'Race You There', which will appear in full in the Great New Zealand Argument book in about a month's time.
Did you see Tze Ming on Campbell Live last night? Nice of JC to give Public Address a mention. We're bad, we're nationwide! I'll be getting along to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Banana: The Conference during the weekend. And trying not think about Winston Peters.
Perverse Routing Decisions | Jun 02, 2005 09:26
A few people have asked for a copy of my recent Mediawatch comment on the Internet peering controversy. Given that the old Mediawatch site is frozen pending a transfer to a new home on the revamped Radio New Zealand site, I thought it would be useful to post the text of the comment here (and in keeping with an informal tradition of posting geeky stuff on Thursdays). So far as I can see, nothing's happened to require an update, so here is the original text:
---
You may think that getting access to the Internet is, in a commercial sense, fairly straightforward. You decide what kind of connection you want, you pay an ISP - Internet service provider - and off you go, visiting any website you wish.
Not so fast.
Would it surprise you to know that the country's two biggest telecommunications companies, Telecom and TelstraClear, also want website owners to pay them to deliver you the content you're paying them to receive?
It wasn't always thus. This time last year, both companies connected to the Wellington Internet Exchange and the Auckland Peering Exchange; the WIX and the APE as they're commonly called.
Traffic flows freely and directly between operators connected to these exchanges, but is not actually free. If you connect to the Internet and use, say, Trade Me, the website owner carries the cost of the first leg of the journey - from his web server to the exchange. You, through your account with your ISP, pay for the second leg - from the exchange to you.
But not any more if you're a customer of Xtra, Paradise or Clear Net, or you use a Telecom JetStream connection sold to you by another ISP. That's because Telecom and TelstraClear want to charge both you and the website owner for that second leg.
Metaphorically, it's like a supermarket taking delivery of sausages from a sausage supplier. The supplier pays for the journey to the supermarket's back door. And you, because you can't get to the market, pay the supermarket to have those sausages delivered to your door.
But now the supermarket wants to charge the sausage supplier for delivery to your door too.
Specfically, the telcos want other operators to buy a dedicated connection from them, in order to connect to their networks. They regard this demand for payment as no more than a justifiable return on their substantial investment in their networks. They have spent billions between them on fibreoptic cables and other hardware. We couldn't do without them. Why should they not clip the ticket wherever they can?
But most of the organisations connected to the peering exchanges aren't paying up. And now a web page sent from Trade Me in Wellington to your computer in Wellington - which used to pass directly across the exchange - is now likely to go via Auckland.
Depending on the circumstances, it is quite possible for such traffic to take a path right out of the country and back again. This is what Internet engineers call a "perverse routing decision".
There is, of course, nothing in this new charge for you, the retail customer. Your Internet bill will not decrease as a result of it - that is calculated largely on the cost of getting data to you across the ocean from outside New Zealand. And furthermore, your Internet experience may not be as advertised.
You may find some websites are slower to use: especially in the case of the kind of audio and video content offered by TVNZ and, lately, Radio New Zealand. RNZ guarantees only a slow "base service" to customers of those ISPs owned by Telecom and TelstraClear. The broadband version isn't guaranteed. Your taxes are paying for content you can't get.
And that's not all. Various government agencies connect to the WIX in Wellington. They're not paying up either. As a result, traffic between a ministry and someone on an affected Internet connection within - literally, if you wish - spitting distance can go via Australia. That this may actually breach the law has not escaped the notice of the e-government unit at State Services.
It's quite likely that many content providers would decide that hosting their New Zealand websites for New Zealanders in America made more economic sense than staying here and paying more. But what if they did just fork over? Would that fix everything? No.
The key idea of peering is keeping local traffic local, because that means better performance. The way the telcos want to run things, it would still be quite possible for traffic between you and a website in the same town to go via Auckland. Remember that phrase: perverse routing decision.
It's the great old Internet argument: geeks versus suits, and it's fair to say that minds are set on both sides. There's certainly a degree of fervour amongst the pro-peering lobby led by the Wellington network company CityLink, which operates the exchanges as a public good. A recent seminar on the issue had the atmosphere of a revival meeting.
Part of the problem is that there's no overseas precedent for this. In Wellington, CityLink has lowered the cost of entry so much that some end users - website owners, companies and public agencies - are simply connecting directly to the exchange, rather than going through an ISP. That doesn't happen at exchanges overseas.
This is great for users, especially if they want to communicate directly with each other, but it also cuts the big ISPs out of the picture.
So what we have now is a standoff. But it's one that might soon be broken.
CityLink is establishing a national network of Internet exchanges - in Palmerston North, Hamilton, Christchurch, Dunedin and Southland. At each of those exchanges, a group of media companies - TVNZ, Radio New Zealand and probably APN, Fairfax and others - will install mirror servers, each containing a copy of their web content. You'll get your media stuff quickly from the exchange nearest to you.
Unless, of course you are an Xtra, Clear Net, Paradise or Telecom JetStream customer. You'll get yours from the other mirror being established - the one in California.
The capacity to bring all this data across the ocean from America will represent a genuine cost to Telecom and Telstra Clear. If they were picking up the traffic directly from local exchanges New Zealand the cost would be negligible.
Their determination to push for sales income at an expense both to them and their customers may end up looking very perverse indeed.
D'oh! | Jun 01, 2005 07:54
Michael Cullen apparently surprised a few gallery reporters yesterday morning by laying into TV3, claiming that one of its reporters had posed as a former Bayfield High student on the Internet in search of historical scuttlebutt on David Benson Pope. I am given to understand that they suggested perhaps he was referring to my column in the Listener this week. In which case, the broadcaster in question was surely Prime TV? No, he insisted.
But he subsequently got it straight, apologised, retracted, and said that it was Prime. Which promptly issued a release rejecting any criticism and insisting that its reporter Steve Hopkins "did not imply that he was a former pupil of Bayfield High school."
It certainly looked that way to me. And I feel bound to say that Prime had plenty of time to correct that impression when I was researching the column. I called Hopkins who confirmed that it was he who had posted the message ("Anyone else remember the beatings Benson-Pope used to dish out?") under the Bayfield High section of Oldfriends.co.nz. He then referred me to Prime's communications department, where I explained the story. They called back and said that Paul Holmes producer Pip Keane would call me "very soon".
She didn't. I called her repeatedly over two days, leaving half a dozen voicemail messages emphasising that I needed to hear from her, and even called another staff member asking her to pass on a message to Keane that I needed to hear from her. I don't think Hopkins' was a hanging offence, or that it need necessarily reflect on the overall performance of the programme. But it's a bit late now to be coming on all affronted and misunderstood.
Anyway, here's the thread - although sometime last evening, Hopkins' original post ("Anyone else remember the beatings Benson-Pope used to dish out?" under the title 'David Benson Pope'), which had been there since he posted it in March, was removed by someone. But the rest of it's there. You be the judge, as they sometimes say in television.
And Michael Cullen really needs to get to The Listener earlier in the week …
So I appear to be in the news this week, kicking off with that all-important nod from Bridget Saunders in the Star Times' About Town section. And the immunisation. Why didn't I listen to Graham Reid?
New contender for the keenly-contested prize of Biggest Occupation Fuckup - US forces kick off Operation Lightning by raiding the home of moderate Iraqi Sunni leader Muhsin Abd al-Hamid, who was appointed to the Iraqi Governing Council by Paul Bremer, and served briefly as president. They smash up his home, arrest him, three sons and their guests, and take money, passports and jewellery. Hamid's wife tells the press "They even wanted to arrest me too, but I told them I had leukaemia so they left me." It's the day after Hamid's party has released a statement condemning violence. And then they say, whoops, wrong guy. Arrrgh. Does it actually get any worse than this? Plenty of spewing at Daily Kos. Sober coverage by Juan Cole. Riverbend can't believe it.
Bush tells journalists at a Rose Garden news conference that last week's critical Amnesty International report relied on information from "people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble - that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report." Not as absurd as your grasp of English, pal. Stick to the short words, George.
Alleged product placement in an Arnold Schwarzenegger political ad.
I actually assumed the new National Party billboard was some sort of online wheeze when I saw it, then it appeared that it was for real and now it appears that it really is just a product of the overactive imagination of the hands-down winner of the "most annoying blogger" poll, the pride of the centre right, Aaron Bhatnagar. The real one will be different, apparently. One would hope so, because that one's a disgrace.
And in conclusion: it looks like I'll be in Wellington for the weekend of July 2, the Lions test. I don't have a ticket, of course. But if anyone could see their way forward to offering me a ticket at face value, or extending some form of hospitality, my gratitude would know no limits. I guess I might even be induced to do a turn. Did I mention I've never been to the Stadium before?
Treading Carefully | May 30, 2005 10:47
When I wrote Friday's blog I didn't expect to be leading Nine to Noon today on the strength of it. But I guess if you say something once, you should be prepared to say it again. It was flattering to hear Linda Clark tell everyone how "influential" Hard News is, but also a little unnerving: I don't wish for what I said to be taken as advice against having children vaccinated.
As I noted on Friday, you only need to read the literature to disabuse yourself of some of the wilder claims about this programme. Also, there is no evidence of long-term adverse reactions to MeNZB.
But I think the concerns I've expressed about the way the programme has been handled are valid. Parents and schools might not have been so surprised by the impact of the vaccine had the printed consumer advice not been so bland; if it had included the kind of detail available in the Medsafe data sheet on MeNZB.
The fact is that the schools attended by our two children have been surprised at the impact of the vaccine, and by the level of consequent absences. It seems likely to me that our son suffered as badly as he did from the flu (ie: much worse than the other two family members who got it) because he was either infected in a weakened state or was infected when he had his second shot; our school-age babysitter, who ended up in hospital after her first jab, was actually told that she got so sick because she probably had a flu infection that hadn't manifested when she presented for a shot. It's reasonable to ask whether the current "unheard of" rate of absence from central Auckland schools reflects something similar. (And even if it is simply an unusually virulent flu, whether this is a good time to be carrying out the vaccination cycle.)
Anyway, our 14-year-old is feeling better but is still at home. If he goes back for a third shot, it will be to a GP, on a Friday afternoon, to give him the weekend to recover, and it won't be until he's back to robust health.
PA reader Bonnie gave me a ticking off:
Basically, anecdotal evidence isn't evidence of anything but the possibility of something happening. It can't be used to support statements like "adverse responses to the vaccine have been both more significant and more widespread than the Ministry of Health has indicated." Only an investigation with a large representative sample can work out whether something is really more widespread than previously believed. An anecdotal sample is likely to be skewed by its size or its confirmation bias.
Not only that, even if event B follows event A, it doesn't mean that A caused B. Feeling ill after having had a vaccination may be a coincidence (especially when other diseases are around) - anecdotal evidence can't prove or disprove this. It can make people needlessly fearful, though.
I admired the rigorous attention you paid to the science when you covered the GE debate. Surely it's worth using the same tools to address this issue, especially when the consequences are far more serious. I agree people should make informed choices - fallacious reasoning doesn't help people do this.
Fair enough: you might even say that the words "anecdotal" and "evidence" should never be used together. There is a sophisticated reporting project built into the vaccination programme, and we'll duly learn from that - as we will learn about the long-term efficacy of the vaccine itself (it can presently only be said that three shots offer most people immunity for "a number of years"). In the meantime, I don't think wishing that parents had been given better information equates to making people "needlessly fearful", and it was nice to hear a doctor emphatically agreeing with me in an email later read out by Linda Clark. (He used the word "spin", but I don't have the information or reason to use words like that.)
This just in from PA reader Karl Woodhead. I think it makes the point about information extremely well:
I agree with what I think is your main point - that the information we were given as parents was poor and left us unprepared for what happened following the vaccination.
We took our 3 1/2 month old son in for the first vaccination last week. I asked "what are the likely side-effects" and was told that on that day there was likely to be a bit of a temperature and maybe some grizzliness, but that's all.
Until I read the Medsafe sheet you linked to, we didn't link the vaccination to the subsequent inability to sleep for longer than 90 minutes (after having started sleeping 9 hours), and the severe irritability. This all lasted about five days and we had all manner of things checked out - ears, flu, etc. But if we had known the side effects, we would have been less concerned. We would still have had him vaccinated, but we would have had a better week as we would have understood what was happening.
Anyway, enough of being a public health cause celebre. I have work to do. Politics tomorrow, then. In the meantime: Gordon Paynter and Jordan Carter have both noted this story in the Capital Times about bizarre goings-on at Wellington City Council with respect to approval for the now-scuttled V8 race. One councillor was banned from voting after it was decided that he had already made up his mind. Um, and Kerry Prendergast hadn't?
PS: 3 News has just called to ask if I'd go on camera for tonight's bulletin. I had to disappoint them. What I've said above is all I'm going to say. That's it.
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