The Vision

The government today announced the $500m investment programme on country's infrastructures, including more capial injection on new schools and roads. This will be part of the $9 billion stimulus package.

I have very little knowledge on that $9 billion total package, but today's announcement amused me a little - it may sounds like "new" schools and roads, but in fact most of the them were already planned, and I believe some projects are possibly already on the book. All the government did is to "bring them forward", accelerate the speed.

Now this is bit strange, other countries invest on new things, or improvement of current infrastructure, but we just could not bother to do that - do we really need to bring forward a construction for a bridge so Aucklanders can have a nice holiday without worrying the traffic bottleneck? Or maybe New Zealand is just too small so  there isn't much we can invest on? I'm sure you don't agree with this.

Or even worse, maybe the government is just cutting and pasting some of the planned spendings and relabel it as part of the "package"?

Crisis also means opportunity, an opportunity that could enable us to grow even faster, stronger after the bad times. However, I failed to see how this infrastructure spending plan will help us doing that - where's the investment on new technologies? I don't expect nats to invest on "green stuffs"  , but energy efficient and electrified car/train aren't all about green?

Uncertainty on energy cost was, and still is a huge barrier that have restrained growth in NZ, high and fluctuating  oil prices hurt just about every one bad, and rising demand of electricity requires either more water dam, or an easier and cheaper option of improving what we got now and make it more efficient.

So where's that man with a vision? Sure I cannot find him here.

The compassion

A picture is worth a thousand words.

No matter how hopeless it may seems, I have no doubt in my mind that people of Australia will get through this. With that kind of compassion, love and spirit, there's no doubt that Australia will bounce back, even stronger.

My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones.

Ministry of Truth on Fire!

My deepest condolences to the family of the firefighter who died on his duty, but it's also extremely fortunate that Mandarin Oriental Hotel (owned by cctv) is not completed yet so it's likely that nobody was actually inside the building.

But no sympathy for CCTV though, it deserves this, and with little bit of guilt, I was kind of hoping that  the main building also catches the fire.

And I was amazed on how fast the social network like Twitter responded to this news. Pictures of the building on fire were already widely circulated less than half an hour after the fire, and official media were busy reporting another fire in Australia ... another prove to show that even the State thinks foreign lives are more valuable than Chinese.

More on section 92A of the Copyright Act

As you noticed, the original Act lacks details on how ISP should react in relation to copyright holder complains. Telecommunications Carriers' Forum recently published a draft Code of practice and is open for public submission.

I kind of like this code. In summary:

• Four strikes out, final warning after three strikes;
• No matter how many times you infringed copyright, only one time is counted for a month;
• The strike expires 18 months after it was first issued;
• ISP serves you a "education notice" (one strike) when copyright holders made a complain.
• If you dispute,  the notice is revoked, and the copyright holder won't get your personal details ( you don't have the right to dispute after three strikes).
• If you don't dispute, that counts as one strike.
• Four strikes, and you are out.

If this is the way the ISPs will act after section 92A comes in force, then I'm pretty happy.This code of practice reminds me of another important Internet copyright Act - DMCA. They are pretty similar as the duty of identifying whether someone infringed copyright ultimately falls to the justice system, and ISP, as a neutral party, only act upon notices.

If you dispute the "education notice", the only way left for copyright holders is to sue you in court, which is quite unlikely in my opinion, unless you've downloaded too many stuffs justifying their cost and benefit analysis.

TCF definitly made a good call.

New theme

Nothing much to say really, I'm very resistant to change, so everytime when I adapt a new theme, the appearance would still look similar to previous versions - not this time though, I added another column.

I also added an interesting widget:

I always say, as a language, Chinese does more than just a tool for conversations, it is also the carrier of Chinese traditions,  philosophy, and ideas - that's why the culture lasted thousands of years, as long as the language is still present, we all remember that you cannot spell crisis（危机） without opportunity（机） in Chinese.

More on RMA changes

just got this file, and inside there are, in my opinion  some worrying trend.

Since the RMA nobody, no political parties have changed the definition of the word "Environment", it's the footstone of the legislation, change it would mean a new law is created. Well I guess that's why National wants to change it, that's the most easy way to divert the way we were heading without abolishment of the whole law.

So for those who are not very familiar with the RMA, here's current definition of "Environment":

Environment includes:

(a) ecosystems and their constituent parts, including people and communities; and

(b)all natural and physical resources; and

(c)Amenity values; and

(d)the social, economic, aestheic and cultural condition of which are affected by those matters

Second part of (a) is most vulnerable to the next law change. Act would definitely like to see it removed, National ... don't know, old guards like to see it go, don't know much about how John Key take on this issue.

Some pats in (d) are also vulnerable.

I think for most people, the question "whether we are part of the environment" should be a no brainer. The real issue here is whether Resource Management Act should cover people like us - well go and check the purpose of the RMA:

Sustainable management means managing the use, development ... which enables people and communities to provide for their social, eocnomic, and cultural wellbeing and for their health and safety while ...

:)

Another strange thing regarding RMA from Nats' policy is about the resource consent. If a council did not process it on time, then it's free.  I don't want to spend too much time on this, because you don't need a brainy Chinese kid, even a dumb one can tell you council can simply use gibberish excuses to decline the consent application before exceeds the the statutory timeframe, not to mention there are also some clauses that allow councils to extend deadline, legally.

To get the job done, you either exploit people's labour, or pay enough.