Symonds took one for the team

Australia couldn't beat Singh on the field, so they took him on with the rulebook instead, despite probably being aware of the risk to Symonds' fragile emotional balance. I guess this either makes them consummate sporting professionals or heartless cynical scumbags, depending on where you draw the line. I don't know who hatched the plan but it's not surprising that Ponting and Hayden were eager participants, given their poor stats against Singh.

Harping on about NZ rugby

The lure of European money looks set to trigger a slow but inevitable decline in the fortunes of NZ rugby. For those of you who think it was inevitable, I strongly disagree - it didn't have to be this way. The NZRU could have played it much better.

Consider this: England hosts the world's premier football competition with a global audience and fanbase. It's not the most populous or weathiest country in the world, but it has by far the strongest football brands. The market in which these brands trade is global, with American and Russian billionaires pouring money into the Premier League.

New Zealand is similarly well positioned - the All Blacks are synonymous with elite rugby. So it should have been possible to build a similar global audience for the NZ club competition. Right now globetrotting fat cats should be outbidding each other to buy our clubs. Pay TV networks should be queueing up for broadcasting rights. Canterbury club shirts should be selling in their millions.

Instead the NZRU's need for total control has resulted in clubs being treated with a mixture of indifference and fear. This is evident in the way that they're created out of thin air when needed (e.g. for the Super 14) and prevented from having any degree of self-determination.

The problem with this is that clubs have personalities. They engage the fans, make them care, make them worry about what's going to happen on Saturday. The net result of the NZRU's machinations is that I care more about how Aston Villa and the Manly Sea Eagles fare on the weekend than anything going on in rugby.

If NZ hosted the world's premier club rugby competition, it would be isolated from the threat of international money - in fact the competition would be a huge money and player attractor. Instead it would be the rest of the world complaining that NZ was luring its best away! As it is, if a Russian oligarch even wanted to buy a club here, there'd be absolutely nothing to buy.

It's probably too late to reverse the trend, but surely it's worth a go! What do we have to lose? At least union isn't in the position of league, which has a limited global audience and is too similar to union to prevent players switching to the bigger code.

The end of rugby league?

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.

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!

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.

Lights out at EDS

HP boasts about its "lights out" data centers that require no staff apart from odd visits by the drone who changes the backup tapes. EDS makes no such boasts. Could the last one out the door please turn off the lights?

Morale at EDS wasn't great even before the acquisition - the acronym is informally expanded out by staffers to "Every Day Sucks". Be at peace, my children, for your misery will soon be at an end...

New Zealanders - the ultimate Rugby philistines?

New Zealanders claim to love rugby more than women, beer or life itself. But set aside the fixation with the All Blacks for a moment, and you'll find that the average Kiwi has little passion for club rugby compared to equivalent football fans from around the world. The reason is simply that a firm grip is kept on rugby by the national association. They don't hesitate to create transient entities such as the Super 14 clubs if they think they can squeeze more dollars out of fans or TV companies.

This leaves your average punter being expected to support different clubs depending on the time of year. The resultant emotional detachment has resulted in rugby becoming a mere cultural backdrop, much like the TV being left on when guests come round because the hosts are worried they have nothing worthwhile to converse about.

Cricket is getting a timely kick up its nationalist arse at present thanks to Indian Twenty20. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be the same pent up demand for rugby in any of the mega-rich or mega-populous countries that would trigger a similar avalanche of player and club power.

ICL crushes IPL in the battle of the websites

Rebel flashiness overwhelms establishment minimalism. In a weak and confused performance, the cobbled together IPL side is comprised of content targeted at franchises, potential sponsors and other commercial interests, providing a thoroughly indifferent experience to its potential fanbase. Pdfs are everywhere - perfect for copying to corporate portals or dropping in network drives, but hopeless for your typical bandwidth-conscious home internet user.

Common sense is overrated

In the early 1800s common sense said that cholera was caused by bad smells, not contaminated water. As a consequence at least 14000 people died. Cheers common sense, we owe you one!

Simple answers for burning philosophical questions

Q: Nature vs Nurture?

A: If a baby is brought up to adulthood by wolves then it is almost incapable of developing further when put in a modern human environment. About the only new skill that wolf children have been observed to develop is smoking. Nurture wins.

Q: What is Free Will?

A: You have more free will than PacMan. Why? Because PacMan lives in a very simple environment, which means there are less permutations of action for PacMan to choose from. Free will is completely dependent on environmental complexity. As soon as someone figures out how to predict the future of the universe, free will will come to an end.

Q: Is Plato's Cave valid?

Plato believed that all physical chairs are merely reflections of the pure essence of "chairness" that exists somewhere dimly revealed to us, like a reflection on the wall of a cave.

Plato got it completely arse about face. We develop mental models to explain and understand the nature and events of our environment. By necessity these models are simpler than the universe, partly because of the sheer volume and complexity of information in the world to deal with, but also because generalisation is a useful technique for dealing with many similar but not quite identical situations. The idea of pure essence of things appeals to us for these reasons. Consequently "chairness" is the reflection of physical chairs, not vice versa.

Most Evil Supermarket - Take Your Pick

This week, The Warehouse Extra introduced a third supermarket option to New Zealanders for the first time in many years. Glossy brochures from Progressive flew into our letterbox and cosy duopoly prices flew out the window. But I won't be going to any Progressive stores; my resentment is too great at the ease with which they could match TWE's pricing (but curiously only at the Sylvia Park store).

I had barely come to terms with my fury at being overcharged all this time when Foodstuffs made their bid for The Warehouse. There was nowhere left to go but apoplexy over this news. Fortunately they failed to make a significant dent, not even reaching a position that would prevent a takeover by another company.

I guess Progressive will have to be subbed off and replaced by Foodstuffs in my boycott team.

Road Pricing Study for Auckland

Congestion control feels like a secondary consideration in this document. It's very clear that Treasury refuses to allow debt to be taken on for public transport capital expenditure, so it has to be funded from taxes. Frankly Treasury can kiss my furry little butt.

But in the event that their intrasigence wins the day then I would plump for a daily parking surcharge because it would be cheap to administer and has at least some correlation to congestion (as opposed to a fuel surcharge). It would have to apply over a large proportion of the region to be fair and effective.

Businesses will howl because they'd find it difficult to pass the cost on to employees and customers without losing them. Too bad I say - so many employers make no effort to promote public transport usage. I know of unenlightened employers who reimburse employee parking costs but not public transport costs.

It would be infuriating if any of this money got diverted into things other than public transport. Actually I think it would be untenable for any non maintenance or safety related road spending to take place during the pt infrastructure buildout. So just hand it over Transit :)

In Praise of Top-Posting

• Threads are structured according to relevance.

Top-posting effectively provides a drill-down structure with the most recent messages at the top. If you don't care about the context, the latest info is right there in front of you. If you do want to see the history, the scrolling effort is proportional to how far back you want to go.

• Messages remain coherent instead of being scattered throughout a thread.

There are many instances where the exact content of someone's message needs to be referred to, complete with header. How do you do this if the message is inline-scattered?

I'm not aware of any commonly used messaging system that manages individual points and replies within a message. And why would it? The elements of a thread are individual characters grouped into messages. Any intermediate groupings would be totally arbitrary.

• Weak-brained people who can't mentally flip mirror images or visualise the fourth dimension are screwed.

Reverse-order contributions seem to throw some people, particularly Usenet old-timers. We need less of these people contributing to threads anyway :)

The law maketh the man

I'm rather too quick to slag off New Zealanders in general and Aucklanders in particular as being deeply suburban and too unsophisticated to invest in anything other than property. In truth their attitudes are the result of severe biases in the tax system and town/transport planning.

Deaf culture isn't listening

In my teens, I felt insecure, unpopular and poorly equipped for social success. In my misery I reached out to music that spoke to me, and what it said was "I'm insecure, unpopular and poorly equipped for social success, but I'm not apologising to anyone!" I had found the emotional crutch I needed to help me out of my rut.

However it was very easy to become dependent on such a helpful prop, and part of my personality was shrivelling as a consequence. It took me until my mid twenties to finally cast it aside and accept that I shouldn't limit myself by identifying so strongly with my shortcomings.

The analogy to deaf culture should be obvious.

World Baseball Classic...can't wait.

Apparently, in March there's going to be a Baseball "World Cup".

In the words of Maurice Le Point: "there is a fine line between playing baseball and standing in a pasture dressed like an idiot"

I've found the evil prick who created Family Health Diary

But no-one else seems to have. Go visit and write him a nice comment, he doesn't seem to have any.

Your baby boy is not a different species

Homo floresiensis is the real "little man". So stop calling your baby that. OK?

Endangered Species: Hatchback

For quite a while now I've noted the total domination of sedans in the Auckland car population. It wasn't that long ago that everyone was saying the hatchback is the car of the future because of its balance of handling and versatility, closely followed by so-called "crossovers" which I interpret to mean vehicles like the Toyota Spacio. So where are they all?

Taking a closer look at the cars on our streets, I noticed a few things:

- there are lots of older hatchbacks, say early nineties

- a large proportion of the hatchbacks I see are non-Japanese makes - Euro or Aussie marques.

Try selecting hatchbacks in www.autoselect.co.nz! Not a single Jap is displayed.

- the styling of new hatchbacks often lacks any subtlety compared to the sedan of the same model.

Check out the Mazda3 hatch, it reminds me of those revolting overdesigned chrome stereo systems you get on one side of Noel Leemings, while the other side has the classy black minimalist stuff that doesn't cause involuntary retching. By contrast, the sedan looks fairly ordinary.

So what do my observations amount to?

Hypothesis #1: the Japanese don't like hatchbacks.

We import a colossal quantity from Japan and these end up constituting the bulk of our cars. And it appears that relatively few of these imports are hatchbacks.

But what about all those old hatchbacks? Aren't they imports too? My suspicion is that more Japanese cars were NZ built back then. Or it may be that Japanese tastes changed for some reason.

Hypothesis #2: ordinary people don't like hatchbacks.

The design and marketing of new hatchbacks suggests to me that auto makers realise they're popular with younger drivers who like to soup up. An essential requirement for this buyer type is the ability to fill the boot with stereo equipment, hence their predilection for hatchbacks.

However this demographic also feel the need to overcompensate with loud public displays of both vehicular and musical noise. This has alienated them from most of the rest of the driving public and it may well have turned the average driver off hatchbacks.

A corollary factor may be that hatchbacks have become highly desirable to the doof-doof contingent, making them theft targets which is also a turnoff to the motoring public.

Highly paid idiots crawl out of the Susan Wood-work

• Unsurprised at zero public sympathy for Susan Wood ($450k/year)
• Disgusted at the buck passing tactics perpetrated by her managers Bill Ralston (???k/year) and Ian Fraser (300k/6mths)
• Disgruntled at the failure of the TVNZ HR department to produce a watertight contract. Ultimate responsibility: Sidney Smith (???k/year)
• Consterned at observations about the general public's failure to accept massive salaries ventured by Leon Robinson (???k/year)
• And finally, cynically amused that Susan Wood had the opportunity to claim a penalty from TVNZ for failure to inform her that she should take independent advice about her contract, but this was missed by top lawyer Mai Chen (?????k/year)