Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category
Mr Biao, Mr Wan or whatever his name is?
In case that you did not catch up news lately and wonder what I'm talking about, Mr Wan Biao, a Chinese Student in New Zealand, was kidnapped and murdered last year. His body was found in a suitcase floating near the Prince Wharf good Friday last year.
If you did catch up the news, you may already know that three suspects responsible for the killing are in the court lately.
It's a straightforward case so there is really nothing to talk about except how fast the court gonna bring those scums to justice. What I have found very weird is the New Zealand Herald's handle of the victim's name.
It's more than year now since the Mr Wan Biao's name first came in the news, but until today, the New Zealand Herald still cannot get the basic news fact, the name of that "who" in the 5Ws.
As you may know, family name comes first in a Chinese name, it's pretty clear that in the case of Wan Biao, Wan is the family name.
Now let's look at one of our best newspapers, the New Zealand Herald:
Mr Biao:
Mother told son 'offended' kidnappers - 5 September 2007
'Body in suitcase' planned for months, court told - 3 September 2007
Mr Wan:
Murder accused felt threatened himself, court told - 4 September 2007
Body in suitcase murder trial begins - 3 September 2007
There are more examples of reports, just do a search of "Mr Wan Biao" in the herald website.
I'm not calling this "culture ignorance". As I understand, people do get confused of different naming rules sometimes.
What looks quite weird to me is that, the editor(if there is any) seems to be very careless on the consistancy on writting style of the paper. It's a very unprofessional pratice, no matter which way to say that name is right, you can say it in the wrong way, but you got to have that consistancy and just cannot have both on the same paper.
If a media does not have that consistancy, the news will just looks like there were two chinese student, Mr Wan, and Mr Biao, both named "Wan Biao", maybe they are twins or something, were killed good friday last year.
You know it's quite lucky for herald readers that most people only has one 'start' and one 'end' in their names, it's either the left to right or the opposite to make it right. I don't know there is any people that have their family name in the middle, but if there is, I would be really interested to see if the Herald is gong to create triplets on that one.
This is very worrying.
Herald on Sunday today reported that a 15 year-old girl was sent to jail by court for 45 minutes because she was unwilling to testify against her father.
She was constantly verbally abused by other inmates inside the jail.
The judge was actually acting fully compliant to the law. According to University of Auckland senior law lecturer Scott Optican, the new Evidence Law, effective just from 1st August this year, requires that everyone must testify under the request of court, regardless any connection or relationship with the person(s) of the matter witness testifies for.
Otherwise the court has the power to put the witness into a jail for while under the name of contempt of court.
This sounds like a very stupid law. If my interpretation is right, technically speaking, a court can put a baby into jail, if that baby accidentally saw a crime while having sunbathing in her baby carriage, and ... she can’t say anything about it.
Don't tell me I'm trying to split hairs, I'm not sure but I think a baby and that 15 years old all qualify as the "minor" in law？
That Evidence Law has no regard to youth benefit and other extraordinary circumstances; at least, it should gives judges the right of discretion in individual cases.
This law has to be changed in some way otherwise this kind of cases will just keep happening.
World’s largest LAN is just about to form
Recent news from China showed a worrying trend of declining internet freedom there. Started from 16 July, Chinese email service providers discovered that a vast amount email failed to reach the oversea addresses. Some of them reached the intended recipients, but body of the message got manipulated to non-senses like “aaazzzaaazzz”.
Most ESP in China blamed an ‘unknown outage’ in Internet environment, but as far as I understand, there is no such an outage. Noticeably there is one ESP explained to their customers that ‘there is a system beyond normal SMTP system caused this to happen.’
Tests confirmed that there is something in between that changed normal emails to “aaazzzaaazzz” in China, and the only ‘thing’ that has the power to do that, is Great Firewall of China.
Most people now suspect that the Great Firewall of China is the reason behind this. Not necessarily start blocking emails, might be just some tests.
China already censors large amount of foreign website such as Wikipedia and BBC. Thankfully it just recently lifted the ban on WordPress, so Chinese audiences of my blog can get in and start to appear on that little clusters map.
Most Chinese people now get used to Internet censoring, and know the “skills” to overpass the wall. However, things such as email censoring that directly invade normal people’s privacy is just something very unacceptable and I believe it’s a direct act of human right abuse.
Rumours dated back as far as more than 4 years agao suggests that the Chinese government was planning to build world’s largest LAN, which in another way, means that they want to isolate the Chinese internet community from the rest of the world so there is no connection between the two and every link with the ‘outside world’ can be monitored, managed, and ... ‘stopped’ if it is 'inappropriate'.
That rumour seems to be quite true today, first is the HTTP, then HTTPS (Great Firewall of China gained ability to block most HTTPS access), now it’s the private EMAIL that they want to have the control on. Can you imagine to live in a countrythat your every incoming and outbound email is censored and if there are any ‘sensitive word’ inside, your mail will be destroyed.
Only thing I'm hoping is that later news can rule out the effect of GFW. Otherwise, this would be the tipping point of Chinese internet censorship, once this point is passed, there is no going back, and the communists can censor everything they want and have nothing to worry about anymore.
Are we getting a tunnel or what?
I'm pretty tired to see all sorts of consultation, public hearings from local and central government regarding the Auckland transportion issue. Few days ago they were backing on a tunnel option from Tank Farm to Northcote, and less than a week, it is in doudt again and a somewhat foolish councillor thinks that the traffic can "manage itself". So what we need the council for? Fire all transport planner and engineers then, oh, yes, and don't forget to vote this councillor Robyn Hughes out of her office: we don't need her anymore since everything can manage itself.
It is true that the traffic on Harbour bridge has been decreased, but it comes with the price: imagine how many businesses suffered opportunity and economic loss since their employees want to avoid communte peak time and finish work early? If we let traffic to "manage itself", the harbour bridge will only have no cars at all: we all moved oversea, MS. Hughes, happy?
The Harbour Bridge is a bottleneck that would have serious effects on region's future. Not to mention the fuel wasted and pollution created on the current bridge, without a expedite channel between North Shore City and Auckland City, both cities will struggle on their economic growth.
We may not need the second link now but we will need that, in the future. Transit New Zealand reacons that time is year 2020, but I believe it will be much earlier like early 2010.
Auckland's spending on its traffic will be a well-worth investment for region's future. We cannot try to save money from this issue now or we'll just pay more in the future, no matter a tunnel or second bridge, something has to be done now.
People are tired to the debates just go on and on and on ... why can't we have a local referendum combined with the coming local body election? Put up all the options, and let the public who voted "manages itself" councillors to decide which option is best, tunnel, bridge, or the one I support: buyback Auckland's Public transportation system and control the price to "a dollar everywhere".
Sleepy New Zealand
First ... Go Team NZ! just three more races!
New Zealand is a sports mad country. It's good, but there are some side effects. The country's employers are reporting a declining business productivity because their employees are too addicted to America's Cup, which usually starts at 1am and finishes around 3am NZT, and do not have enough energy to work next day, even missing from the work.
One of the many reaons that Kiwis want to bring the cup back is because of its economic benefit. I'm not an economist, but I think it would be very interesting to calculate out the economic loss as up to 5% of country's population try to catch up the sleep while they are at work.
I watch the cup only if it starts as planned: 3AM finish is still acceptable for me, but anytime later than that, I say sorry to the telly and I go to sleep. It's not about the employer, but your own beneift. Sleep less than 8 hours not only means less productivity next day, it will also put yourself at risk while driving or working in the day.
Our Prime Minister, Helen Clark has set a very good example for us. She managed to stay awake to watch the cup but went to sleep just because... Team NZ was lacking behind.
But what she didn't expect ... or as the result of her sleep is that Team NZ had a dramatic comeback and finally won the race since her went to the bed
For god's sake, Ms Clark, don't watch the cup tonight, please.
Daylight Saving time ended.
I personally strongly oppose to the extension of Daylight Saving Time (DST).
New Zealand was in what GMT +11 time zone before, if my memory serves me right. There was never a shortage of people request extension of DST, government listened, and extented the summer.
Eventually the DST overruled the normal time i.e the DST time period is far longer than normal time. What we should do then? Move the whole timezone forward.
The same situation seems to happening again, and take my word, we will eventually move New Zealand's timezone again, possibly to the another side of international date line, which isn't a bad thing in some means as it gives you an extra day...
But the weather last week across the country proved one thing: we can't change the rules of nature, and the nature won't run as the way we hoped. When summer ends, it means that.
If some people want enjoy summer everyday, I have a simple solution: when the sun comes up you wake up, when the sun goes down, that should put you into sleepy bed as well.
Oh sorry, did I forget your night life?
However, I support to move DST forward few weeks.
