Regardless of the rights and wrongs of Sonny Bill Williams' sudden defection to union, this is a very dark time for league. Australia is the only country where league is a significant professional sport and if it's perceived to be losing all its top players then league's status will decline rapidly. It may not be long before league becomes softball to union's baseball.
I just hope that while union is stealing the players, SANZAR could also have stolen one of league's more successful concepts - the club system. As in English football, league clubs inspire the kind of passion that translates into healthy profits - in fact it has allowed some clubs to survive well beyond normal financial feasibility!
Unfortunately SANZAR has continued to persist with self serving franchising arrangements that are designed to prevent clubs becoming too powerful in their own right. However the pull of Europe that is causing such strife for league is also working to the detriment of southern hemisphere union.
Imagine if SANZAR had committed itself to a club system from the outset. Canterbury might by now be the world's favourite union club, and the SANZAR competition might have been resilient enough to continue to attract the best players out of TV revenues. Instead it can look forward to becoming a feeder competition that the top players will yearn to leave.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Ubuntu - sudo-user-friendly
Just the other day I bought a small cheap laptop running Ubuntu, and I'm surprised at how unhappy I am with the experience. The first thing I wanted to do was update to Firefox 3 and I'm shocked that I haven't been able to figure it out in an evening.
To put things in context, I've been a computer geek since the age of 10 and I've spent a lifetime in the technical end of IT. However Windows has always been the general business desktop operating system of choice. I have always thought Windows is average at best in meeting my needs. But now that I have something to compare it to, I'm starting to see it in a better light!
Where's the install executable in the tar.gz I downloaded and extracted from Mozilla? Why does the Synaptic Package Manager only list ancient alpha versions? Should I worry about the comments I've read out there which suggest I should use an Ubuntu specific install? It's truly bizarre that when I find instructions telling me to open up a terminal session, I feel relief!
I'm guessing the usual open source situation is to blame here: a complex compatibility matrix that's difficult to reduce down to a simple wizard.
But another big problem is open source documentation. Everyone seems to feel the need to chip in with blog posts that are intended to be helpful but clog up my searches with old, incomplete and poorly structured & linked information. I just don't know who to believe. Are you seriously expecting me to run a script written by someone called Psychocat? Sign me up for the phishing too please...
At this stage in my life I'm pretty time-poor, and I just want it to work with one click and a wizard. If there's one thing I've learnt from this, it's that a time-poor geek is hardly a geek at all.
Even Google, who you'd think would be fairly pro open source, are releasing services for Windows only. I guess they're not all in need of adult supervision at the plex!
To put things in context, I've been a computer geek since the age of 10 and I've spent a lifetime in the technical end of IT. However Windows has always been the general business desktop operating system of choice. I have always thought Windows is average at best in meeting my needs. But now that I have something to compare it to, I'm starting to see it in a better light!
Where's the install executable in the tar.gz I downloaded and extracted from Mozilla? Why does the Synaptic Package Manager only list ancient alpha versions? Should I worry about the comments I've read out there which suggest I should use an Ubuntu specific install? It's truly bizarre that when I find instructions telling me to open up a terminal session, I feel relief!
I'm guessing the usual open source situation is to blame here: a complex compatibility matrix that's difficult to reduce down to a simple wizard.
But another big problem is open source documentation. Everyone seems to feel the need to chip in with blog posts that are intended to be helpful but clog up my searches with old, incomplete and poorly structured & linked information. I just don't know who to believe. Are you seriously expecting me to run a script written by someone called Psychocat? Sign me up for the phishing too please...
At this stage in my life I'm pretty time-poor, and I just want it to work with one click and a wizard. If there's one thing I've learnt from this, it's that a time-poor geek is hardly a geek at all.
Even Google, who you'd think would be fairly pro open source, are releasing services for Windows only. I guess they're not all in need of adult supervision at the plex!
Thursday, July 03, 2008
So where is the Kiwisaver Cash PIE?
Cash PIEs have been given the nod by the government and all the banks are expected to rush out their offerings. Everyone is aping the original Raboplus product with its headline rate advertised like a term deposit and zero fees.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10515324&pnum=0
These products are ok, but why oh why doesn't Kiwisaver work this way? In these credit crunch times people want to switch from property investments to cash, and the main way that Kiwis save for retirement is through Kiwisaver.
I suspect the main reason is that the government subsidises the fees, so the fund providers want to find reasons to introduce fee structures. Fixed rate Kiwisaver cash fund providers would be hard pressed to justify any fees, especially if they also offered a fee free cash PIE equivalent.
Personally I don't care, please offer up the product and the $40/year subsidy is all yours since I can't get my hands on it anyway.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10515324&pnum=0
These products are ok, but why oh why doesn't Kiwisaver work this way? In these credit crunch times people want to switch from property investments to cash, and the main way that Kiwis save for retirement is through Kiwisaver.
I suspect the main reason is that the government subsidises the fees, so the fund providers want to find reasons to introduce fee structures. Fixed rate Kiwisaver cash fund providers would be hard pressed to justify any fees, especially if they also offered a fee free cash PIE equivalent.
Personally I don't care, please offer up the product and the $40/year subsidy is all yours since I can't get my hands on it anyway.
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