2008 April

Need More Signatures!

photo credit: Wellstone

Family Fist have fallen short on their petition to force a referendum on repealing the amendment to Section 59 of the Crimes Act. Under the law, a petition requires 10% of the eligible electorate to force a referendum for an issue. Family Fist had around 269,500 signatures that were allowable, many discarded due to fake names or multiple signatures. They now require around 15.5k signatures within 2 months to allow this to go ahead.

However, as mentioned elsewhere, this may jepordise their chance to have this referendum alongside the general election – something they would definitely prefer as to try and influence the votes for the general election.

“The passing of the anti-smacking law by most of our politicians last year was an act of breathtaking arrogance which ignored the wishes of the very people who elected them to represent them in the making of our laws.”
– Bob McCroskie

It should be noted that a citizen initiated referendum is non-binding, it’s an official poll on public opinion but politicians are not required to act on it. Considering that the law was passed in the house 113:8 with members from both the left and the right voting on it, one wonders how effective it will be should it go ahead.

Here Comes the New Boss

Same as the old boss…

Clinton further displayed tough talk in an interview airing on “Good Morning America” Tuesday. ABC News’ Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Clinton said. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Hat-tip: Kiwiblog

We Want PlayTV – Freeview For Your PS3

photo credit: yngrich

There’s a lot of buzz about Freeview at the moment. They’re almost through their DVB-T rollout. DVB-T means Digital Video Broadcast and differs from Sky and the current Freeview implementation in that it doesn’t require a satellite to recieve broadcasts, it uses the bog-standard UHF arial almost ubiquitously installed across New Zealand. Difference is, the broadcast is digital and will enable broadcasters to, finally, broadcast shows in full 1080p HD.

I know a few people that have gotten their grubby little mitts on Freeview set top boxes (Interested? Head down to Eastern Hi-Fi with a few hundred bucks and see what happens!) that realise this new standard and the feedback that I’ve heard from them is absolutely stellar.

All well and good, but for the love of God I don’t want another set-top box. What I want is a PlayTV. It’s a dual-tuner, well integrated little box for your Playstation 3 thats incredibly easy to use and integrates with the rest of my devices (UPnp NAS, PSP, HDTV). For those who are interested – here’s a little video showing off some of what it can do.

I don’t want Sky anymore. I don’t want their re-hashed movie channels, their proprietary access methods and all the buggy firmware to go with them, I don’t want to pay them for MySky for their half-baked PVR and I don’t want to pay them again to upgrade to HD.

If Sony gets their act together and releases this product here as soon as possible, they can quite easily position the PS3 as the gadget to have for all AV setups. They’ve also recently announced that they’ll be hosting a “Video On Demand” service – basically streaming High Definition movie downloads from the Playstation Store over your broadband connection. So between gaming, Bluray, HDTV PVR and video on demand it will become an impressive centerpiece for any living room.

Maori Party Invokes Godwin’s Law

The Maori Party invokes Godwin’s Law with their comment about National MP Chester Borrow’s “gang-patch” proposal. I hope to have a direct quote when the transcript goes up but basically the reports are that they likened the law to the “targeting of Jews during WW2″.

Now I generally support the Maori Party and, unsurprisingly, do not agree with Chester’s Bill. However, this sort of hysterical exaggeration is really not needed.

Gold star to NZ First MP, Ron Mark, for his usual valued input, which you can easily tell is straight across the party line:

“The banning of gang insignia in public places should be just the start and the next step is to ban gangs altogether.”

Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill

photo credit: hugh07

Well, it seems this one flew in just under my radar…

New Zealand has passed an amendment to the Copyright Bill to include “New Technologies”, which refers to the digital medium.

Most alarming in this bill is the inclusion of the DMCA-like offence of owning “Digital lockpicks” to free the data which you already own. The new clause makes it illegal to circumvent a copyright protection, even for personal use such as format-shifting (although there are limited format-shifting provisions in the bill). Since I can’t seem to find a copy of the actual text, it’s unknown how this will affect products such as region-free DVD players and the like.

Considering I have personally circumvented copyright protection using a black marker, a shift key and a line out in the past we shall see if this law is as “effective” as the USA’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act. At the same time, I’m happy they didn’t take some of the more draconian provisions from the DMCA such as the infamous “takedown notice”.

Hopefully I can get a look at it shortly.

Update: It’s worse than I thought, Notice & Takedown provisions are there in full force. Herald.

TechTidBit: Avoid MagnumMac

photo credit: teknopata

I recently had the misfortune of dealing with MagnumMac to process a warranty battery replacement for my Mac Book Pro. Needless to say that they are dragging the normally good name of Apple Customer Care through the mud with their penny-pinching and cagey, neglectful attitudes.

I won’t go all the way into it but I went to see them for a battery issue with a machine that is still under warranty, they sent me home with the battery-less laptop shell and a foul taste in my mouth for having talked to them. The support agent, when questioned, indicated that it was Apple’s global policy that a return is not issued until the faulty part is shipped and delivered. Sounded like honk to me considering Apple’s stunning record of Customer Care worldwide and a quick call to the Apple Support call center confirmed this, this was a Renaissance/MagnumMac policy and not Apple.

I called the MM branch back and spoke to another muppet who went to the full extent to patronise me (“One week without a battery is not the end of the world”) before bestowing the wisdom: “If you really need another battery for this week, then you should purchase a new one”. Which I did. And it arrived first thing this morning. But not from them.

I made a few calls and escalations to both Apple Support (in Australia) and Renassance/MagnumMac but I don’t expect to hear back from either, however Apple Support indicated they’ve been hearing about these sorts of complaints with MM fairly often. In the meantime, if you need help, support or want to purchase any Apple product, do yourself a favour go through the Apple Online Store or another one of their Service Providers and avoid MagnumMac and their parent company Renaissance completely.