Open mike 31/03/2010

54 comments on “Open mike 31/03/2010 ”

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1. Joe Bloggs 1

   31 March 2010 at 8:49 am

   An interesting insight into how going green may make you mean.

   http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/15/green-consumers-more-likely-steal
2. Tigger 2

   31 March 2010 at 9:13 am

   Gee Mr Key, I know you want Dame in front of your name but choosing an English song for our World Cup isn’t necessarily going to win you brownie points with the Queen.
   • felix 2.1

     31 March 2010 at 12:41 pm

     The Feeeeeelers being all breathy and heartfelt and emotional all over a Jesus Jones song while huge crowds of drunken men sway together and sing along. Nothing gay about that.
3. prism 3

   31 March 2010 at 9:45 am

   The Emperors New Clothes is an odd little fable that keeps resonating in modern society. The Princess’s Old Paint Job could be the title of the story translated into Tongan.
   The Princess Ashika ferry was obviously rusty, people who looked at it could see it was a rust bucket and dodgy looking, but there wasn’t a naive young boy handy to point and say ‘What an awful looking old boat. When are we getting our nice white boat like the cruise ships that visit?’
4. JAS 4

   31 March 2010 at 9:46 am

   Great to see NZ rating well against the rest of the world yet again. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10635493

   * One of the highest school dropout rates, with the sixth-lowest high-school completion rate in the developed world (74 per cent).

   * The second-highest proportion of the unemployed who are aged 15 to 19 (29 per cent).

   * The sixth-highest rate of deaths by assault across all age groups (1.6 for every 100,000 people), with a much higher rate among youth.

   * The highest teen suicide rate (15.9 suicides for every 100,000 teens aged 15 to 19).

   These high disadvantage rates are all linked to a higher inequality rate – “a bigger gap between rich and poor” – than all but six developed countries.

   New Zealand’s income structure became much less equal during the 1990s and has not changed much since.

   Dr Boven said that, in contrast to clear economic targets such as “catching up with Australia”, New Zealand seemed to have no clear social targets.
   • JAS 4.1

     31 March 2010 at 9:54 am

     Surely this is where we should be focusing if we really want to make changes in this country, but I guess its not a “quick enough fix” for our government.
   • Bored 4.2

     31 March 2010 at 2:18 pm

     We also rate very highly for:

     * number of currently endangered species (to add to the A+++ rating for extinct fauna).
     * lack of success at Rugby World cups
     * cycleways (plan for only so far)……
     * the vision of our leadership who have decided to follow every failed overseas model to date (except we will “do it better”).

     We are truly the lucky country. Aussie watch out, we are coming to get you (r coat tails).
5. prism 5

   31 March 2010 at 10:06 am

   “These high disadvantage rates are all linked to a higher inequality rate “a bigger gap between rich and poor’ than all but six developed countries.”

   It would be interesting to see a table showing this information – all the developed countries and their ratings.

   captcha desiring
   • JAS 5.1

     31 March 2010 at 10:32 am

     Not sure if this is what you want but found the full report with some bar graphs here
     • prism 5.1.1

       31 March 2010 at 11:40 am

       Thanks JAS I had a look and there is a lot there to see. Do you find pdf format easy to read and handle? I don’t. But maybe there are techniques I don’t know yet.
       • JAS 5.1.1.1

         31 March 2010 at 3:36 pm

         I have had to get used to pdfs after years as a student …… most research is in that format.

         As a parent of adolescents, that report is rather scary reading, wish I could believe the powers that be would take notice of it and make some headway in correcting things….. but sadly I doubt it.
6. prism 6

   31 March 2010 at 10:29 am

   Just to note the passing of Margaret Page who carried out her wish to release herself from existence on this earth by bringing her death forward. Rest in peace Margaret.

   Google has obituary
   Margaret Page dies in rest home after 16 days‎ – 1 hour ago
   AN ACTIVE LIFE: Margaret Page enjoyed karate, scuba diving, kayaking and sporting activities before suffering a brain haemorrhage while kayaking down the …
7. travellerev 7

   31 March 2010 at 10:54 am

   On the 20th of February 2010 the Dutch government collapsed over the withdrawal of all of the Dutch troops from Afghanistan.
   This was supported by 71% of the Dutch population and the ruling party (the Dutch National or Tories) could no longer keep the Government together as the Dutch Labour party withdrew its support.

   It had already extended its stay two years and when a Dutch enquiry concluded that Dutch involvement with the Iraq war had no legal mandate the opposition party decided to pull the plug on it’s support for Dutch involvement with the war in Afghanistan as well.

   Why publish this on a New Zealand blog?

   What happened next was something you might want to know about because it shows how deep the Pentagon and the CIA are involved in manipulating the News in the Mainstream media and with the News about New Zealand involvement not going beyond the “Our heroic boys over there” crap in our Main Stream media, a technique well developed by warmongering governments like the English and the US to keep their populations from questioning their involvement you might well ask is the same technique used here and if so why.

   On the 26th of March a document was leaked and published for pdf download on Wikileak. Wikileak is an organisation devoted to publishing documents given to them by Wistleblowers in an effort to give some transparency to the many secretive organisations trying to manipulate the population.

   The document was confidential and was written by a small group called the Red cell and it’s tag line was: Why counting on apathy might not be enough.

   The content: How to manipulate the Main Stream media message in order to keep the public from questioning their governments involvement in the wars and possible subjects (Afghan Women for example) to use in order to achieve this.

   Needless to say that the Pentagon did not look to kindly to said site and according to another document released on Wikileak is actively involved in trying to smear and destroy the site and its owners.
   • BLiP 7.1

     31 March 2010 at 12:36 pm

     Speaking of Wikileaks – get your credit cards out and chip in $10 or so before we lose it. Information is power.
8. The Voice of Reason 8

   31 March 2010 at 2:22 pm

   Don’t know Brian Fallow’s tuesday article has come to people’s attention, but it’s interesting reading: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10635455

   And can someone please edit the ad for Scoop Micro Patrons please. It currently reads Mictropatrons, which might be appropriate on the North Shore, but not in an ad for Quality Journalism.
9. prism 9

   31 March 2010 at 2:44 pm

   tvr Very subtle!
10. lprent 10

    3 April 2010 at 4:02 pm

    Time to run a load test. See if we have eliminated the bloody wait on lock problem
11. lprent 11

    3 April 2010 at 5:03 pm

    Test the comment editor
12. lprent 12

    3 April 2010 at 5:09 pm

    Test as a anonymous user
13. lprent 13

    3 April 2010 at 5:48 pm

    Test again. Now that the database death has finished. Test editing – seems to work ok
14. sk 14

    3 April 2010 at 6:08 pm

    Glad to see ‘The Standard’ is back up. NZ was a poorer place without it!
    • lprent 14.1

      3 April 2010 at 6:55 pm

      I have extreme sleep deprivation. Looks like it was something way down in the OS that died. The last thing I checked of course.

      Had to rebuild from the operating system outwards.

      I seem to have mislaid some images for the last three months when I nuked the old image…. damnit… Should be in the backups, but I need to tune this beast first.
15. lprent 15

    3 April 2010 at 7:28 pm

    Testing the comment save again… Lets hope that the MySQL doesn’t peak massively this time
    • lprent 15.1

      3 April 2010 at 7:29 pm

      It does, that is pretty strange. Lets look at the slow log. Adding a comment should not be a major operation.
16. Peter Johns 16

    3 April 2010 at 7:33 pm

    see the Trojan my mate sent to you kept you busy for a few days.
    • lprent 16.1

      3 April 2010 at 7:50 pm

      You really are a bit of a blustering blowhard dipshit aren’t you…

      Those were amongst the first things we eliminated as being a possible cause.
      • Peter Johns 16.1.1

        3 April 2010 at 10:24 pm

        Have a sense of humour, good yo wind a lefty up. I hoped you got paid time & a half for working yesterday.
        Hope you have a happy Easter!
        • lprent 16.1.1.1

          3 April 2010 at 10:34 pm

          Ha… I skipped work on thursday (on contract, so no work, no pay) and have been beavering away gratis since then looking for what the damn problem is. Learnt more about the entails of linux locking and logging systems than I really wanted to know.

          The final solution – wiping the operating system and rebuilding from scratch fixed the problem.
    • sk 16.2

      3 April 2010 at 8:29 pm

      What a complete jerk Mr Johns. You must enjoy living in an arid intellectual desert. That is where the Right has lost it globally. In the days of Hayek and Friedman you guys did the thinking, now you are a bunch of anti-intellectuals who would prefer any debate shut down. Which is how you have ended up ‘smile and wave’ in NZ and David Cameron in the UK. Enjoy.
17. prism 17

    3 April 2010 at 7:56 pm

    What an Easter! Hope you have time for a break. Good to see The Standard waving.
    • lprent 17.1

      3 April 2010 at 8:04 pm

      What break? As far as I’m concerned it is still Wednesday.

      We have to get a full-blown hot backup system so I don’t have to do this kind of bug-hunting in real-time. The historic hot backup system is well, historic. It doesn’t cut it under the load these days so I can’t even think about putting it online.
18. lprent 18

    3 April 2010 at 7:57 pm

    Ok lets try that again. Looks like this version of MySQL is a bit sluggish on sub-part indexes.
19. Brett 19

    3 April 2010 at 8:19 pm

    Isn’t it odd how Kiwi blog never has these sorts of problems.That David Farrer must be some sort of web programming genius, I would recommend asking him for advise.
    • lprent 19.1

      3 April 2010 at 8:43 pm

      From memory there is a local ISP that is supporting him which has been doing so for a long time. That means that there are hot backup systems available and on-call support. I have no idea if he pays for that or if it is done as part of some sponsorship deal. However either way it is a very costly exercise for someone. Not to mention that he appears to do blogging as a fulltime activity with his other activities in-between it. Most of his funded activities appear to be related directly or indirectly to the National party.

      We have been running this system on the smell of oily rag because it is done as a spare time activity between home and work. We haven’t really bothered to seek sponsorship or funding. In fact we haven’t bothered to get around to finishing getting a bank account so we have somewhere to put the revenues from the advertising yet. The current cost to run the whole system is $US99 per month (ie peanuts), and you get what you pay for (monkeys).

      As a blogger it pays to virtually be an employee of the National party. It doesn’t pay to be doing it as a part-time unpaid activity because you can’t pay for hot backups. Does that answer your question?
    • lprent 19.2

      3 April 2010 at 8:55 pm

      I should have added that the distinguishing factor is that there are few blogs with much traffic that run their own servers. Most blogs run on either blogspot.com or wordpress.com, which are serviced blogsites – but which also have some strong restrictions on what can run on their servers.

      When we setup we knew that we wanted a lot more freedom about layout and operation. Generally it has been a good thing. However it does sometimes mean that you have scaling issues.
      • Brett 19.2.1

        3 April 2010 at 9:27 pm

        I was just having you on 🙂
        • lprent 19.2.1.1

          3 April 2010 at 9:53 pm

          Figured that. But it was worth responding to…. Especially since I seem to have lost two kilos in the past three days. I guess I’d eat a bit more and follow Lyn’s policy about rehydration.
      • felix 19.2.2

        3 April 2010 at 9:30 pm

        I had to laugh when I saw this thread over at no munster – especially at one SHG who reckons he could’ve sorted it in 10 minutes.

        Glad you’re back.
      • sk 19.2.3

        3 April 2010 at 11:18 pm

        You should at some point outline the funding required to run ‘The Standard’. It is clear that ‘The Standard’ have morphed beyond a blog into an alternative to MSM – which Kiwiblog is not. In a country where civil society and debate has atrophied, The Standard is increasingly unique. What does that cost?
    • illuminatedtiger 19.3

      3 April 2010 at 9:28 pm

      If DPF’s writing recent writing is anything to go by I’d say (and that’s my opinion) he would struggle.

      Running a site this busy is not childs play and often requires a small team behind it to keep it running. And here Lynn is on his own reacting to what sounds to have been a small crisis. Cut the man some slack and go back to the sewer where you belong.
20. felix 20

    3 April 2010 at 10:13 pm

    Hey Lynn, if you’ve lost 2 kg at the computer it’s definitely Farrar who should be asking you for advice.

    Also, this.
    • lprent 20.1

      3 April 2010 at 10:17 pm

      Well it isn’t unexpected. I’ve now dropped 10.2 kgs in this year. Nearing the target weight of 95kgs, when I can get onto a maintenance diet. Just a bit too rapid in the last week.
21. gingercrush 21

    3 April 2010 at 11:16 pm

    WTF are the things below “Your comment”.
    • lprent 21.1

      3 April 2010 at 11:59 pm

      Oh I see.

      1: ABC> Quick spell check – I will probably turn that off. Looks like it only works on some obsolete machines. Windoze anyone?
      Everyone uses a browser with automatic spell checking these days don’t they?

      2: Expansion arrow… Have a bigger editing space with bigger fonts for the blind until I css them down to utility sizes.
      Comes complete with its own bug report. Looks like I should turn off the php buffering. That gives people the impression of a faster site. What it really does is slow the server down

      New and improved Ajax Comment Editing….
22. lprent 22

    3 April 2010 at 11:25 pm

    Gc: are you logged in or not? can’t see on the cellphone. Most likely the new re-edit edit, delete, and time buttons and text.

    I have to look at their css tomorrow
23. marty mars 23

    3 April 2010 at 11:40 pm

    Thank goodness you’re back. There was a massive hole in the blogosphere, I hope it’s all fixed now. kia kaha
    • lprent 23.1

      3 April 2010 at 11:52 pm

      Still have some optimizing to do. The site is a bit slow at present as half of the optimizations still have to go back in.
24. lprent 24

    3 April 2010 at 11:50 pm

    Interesting…

    
# Query_time: 6 Lock_time: 0 Rows_sent: 15 Rows_examined: 156344
SELECT * FROM wp_comments JOIN wp_posts ON wp_posts.ID=wp_comments.comment_post_id WHERE {conditions} ORDER BY {date} LIMIT 15


    Ouch – it examines 156k records to extract the first 15 for the Comments tab after each comment. Damn thing takes between 4 and a colossal 40 seconds when several comments are added close together.

    That is a crazy query. Would work on a small blog and be a total time waster on a large one and will steadily get worse. It is the single most common slow query…

    Guess I’ll have to write a time-saver plugin to replace it if it isn’t in the theme (I hope it is in the theme…).
    • r0b 24.1

      4 April 2010 at 12:15 am

      Lynn – go to sleep! Optimisation can wait until tomorrow. It’s great that we’re back on line, but you shouldn’t be risking your health over it!
      • ak 24.1.1

        4 April 2010 at 1:22 am

        Kia ora r0b – goodonya Lynn, serious Standard withdrawals here, hey about time we all chipped in some real cash to help Lynn out and keep the Standard up and running eh? – lovely being all voluntary and dedicated ‘n all, but we’re up against the party of money and marketing, and only lots of wee donations will match the fat cats. Obama (and China) did it – our turn now. Beat em at their own game. Here’s mine…(er… as soon as you’re sure it’s all up and running pukka again Lynn)
    • Marty G 24.2

      4 April 2010 at 1:06 am

      maybe we just delete the first 150K comments 🙂

      cheers lynn. we know you’ve been working your arse off on this.
      • lprent 24.2.1

        4 April 2010 at 8:21 am

        No need. It is just a SQL query somewhere they needs an attitude adjustment..
25. Lew 25

    4 April 2010 at 12:34 am

    What r0b says.

    . . . and thanks very much Lynn.
26. Draco T Bastard 26

    4 April 2010 at 1:53 am

    John Armstrong: To right and left, Key support in disarray

    Act is now paralysed by a very public fight over its direction and who should be its leader. The trouble is that the differing factions have reached a stalemate – a dreadful outcome which leaves the party stuck in limbo going neither forwards nor backwards.

    To Key’s left is the Maori Party, which is feeling increasingly hassled about its relationship with National and, as a result, increasingly bolshie.

    History offers Key no comfort. Of the five governments formed since the introduction of MMP, three have experienced minor-party meltdowns. There is no reason Key’s Government should be exempt, especially as it has yet to reach the halfway stage of its three-year term and trouble is already brewing.

    Now, this (the bolded part) had me scratching me head wondering just WTF he was talking about because, of the minor party “meltdowns” that I recall, only one came close to toppling the then government and that was the Winston First fracas in 1997/8 in coalition with National. Although implied, this wasn’t true of two of the other minor party “meltdowns”. The Alliance split into some of it’s component parts prior to the 2k2 election (the Greens went back to being the Greens and New Labour left to become the Progressives) but confidence and supply were maintained. The third one that I can think of was the attack on Winston First in 2k7/8 led by National and supported by ACT but, again, confidence and supply were maintained.

    In the present National led government the meltdown of the minor parties may lead to a lack of confidence and supply and could lead to the collapse of the present government. Armstrong is right though, in one way, history doesn’t support Jonkey because the history is that right-wing parties are unstable. They just don’t like playing together.

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