I moved from the US to NZ 7 years ago, and also had the need for a mail forwarder. I chose an outfit named "USA2ME", and that worked out pretty well. They charged a monthly fee and forwarded all kinds of mail, envelopes and packages. When the volume of mail dropped to only about 1 envelope a month, I dropped the service as not economical. Now I use my step-daughter's address and she sends things on to me by regular post.

I also use the NZPost's YouShop service when doing online retail shopping in the US. Most places will not ship internationally, you know. YouShop provides a shipping address in Oregon from which they onship to NZ -- for a price.

After moving to NZ, I found the retail scene to be lacking in choice. Eventually, I got over it.

Actually, the typical American does NOT know what "socialism" is -- only that it something bad, to be feared

I know this was a fan effort, and I enjoyed the whole episode. The feel of TOS was really there for me. But, let's face it, the actors (fans) were a bit beyond the expected age demographic one would expect in a spaceship crew. Too many were a bit old to be serving in quasi-military roles. The guy playing Bones was particularly off-putting. But the youngish lady doctor certainly lit up the screen.

What is socialistic about this? To me, it sounds like a really good thing to have, as bus service in the US is generally really crappy to begin with.

When I read the summary of the article, the first thing that occurred to me is that it sounded really similar to the transportation system that prevails on the island of Efate in Vanauatu (but in Vanuatu there is no cellphone app for it. You just stand by the road and wait for the bus to come by), and when I was there I found it to be more convenient and more effective than any public transportation system that I had encountered before, first or third world.

Results of such experiments sometimes take days to be known and verified to the point of publication. The news reported in early October may well be as early as possible. Who knows why the US press did not get it out first?

When I first saw:
What if you could build a computer that works just like the human brain?

My first reaction was: And what if you wound up with the brain of a Hitler?

The one I see most often is in downtown Nelson, right beside the entrance to the parking lot that I use most often when I am in town. It is very noticeable, a tall glass and aluminum box with a big Telecom logo on the glass and a sign saying "Free WiFi Hotspot". Hard to miss that one. I also see a free Telecom WiFi network available on my phone when I am in Richmond, though I could not tell you if there is a phone box anywhere near. I never set out to look for any.

As someone who lives in NZ, I assure you there are Telecom phonebooths in lots of places. You may have not been looking carefully enough to see them.

And, also, they would be mainly in urban centers. Arrowtown is not an urban center, though it is a popular holiday spot. Much of NZ is very rural with small communities and they may have never had a booth.

It has been my thought that Telecom embarked on this program to cater to the tourists who come every summer.

No need to sympathize with Telecom. They are THE phone company in NZ, not just the payphone network. Telecom has most of the landline, mobile, and broadband business in NZ, and own the wires they lease to most of the other providers. So, they are not hurting over the demise of payphones.

The Telecom WiFi hotspots have been set up around NZ for a couple of years now. I guess it was a trial. Where I live in Nelson, there are at least two that I encounter often. They work, and they are free to everyone. I have used them several times when out shopping or getting a coffee. And I am not a Telecom customer.

I think the original poster you have responded to meant "past", not "passed" as he said. That changes the meaning of what he said to you, and makes your comment kind of pointless.

Yup, what you say is quite true about the CDC 6500. I was at the University of Texas in 1966 when they received #13 CDC 6600. There was a bank of 12 x 12 switches in which the ultimate boot program was encoded. Typically they caused a read to be initiated at location 0 of the hard disk, and thus loaded in the rest of the boot sequence. In its day, it was the be-all end-all supercomputer with a 1 microsecond cycle time.

My thesis work, computing a potential energy curve for a diatomic molecule took 8 solid hours of computing on the 6600 for each plotted point. I don't know what it would have taken on the machine we had before. I was the night operators' friend. They started my runs at the beginning of their shift, and had nothing to do until morning.

I wonder the same, but then I seem to be quite a different consumer than those who post here. I don't play games. I don't download music. If I want to watch a movie, I go to the cinema and enjoy sitting in the dark while eating popcorn. I watch TV shows on the "gasp" TV from my satellite service. I spend 4 - 6 hours every day on the internet, mainly following news items (a lot on /.) I watch videos associated with those news items when I want. Sometimes my wife watches the same videos, which costs the data transfer again. I do automatic backup of both computers to the cloud. And all my landline phone usage is VOIP. I use about 25GB per month.

Streaming video services are just almost beginning to be available in NZ.

Here in NZ, we have limited choices I guess. There are quite a few ISPs, but they generally are reselling DSL services on lines owned by the telco. My speeds are ~12 Mbps down, ~1Mbps up. Almost all providers have data caps, either going to dialup speed or $$ extra when the cap is exceeded. I chose one that had no data allowance at all. I much preferred just paying for what I used at NZ$1/GB plus a base monthly charge. I am quite happy with that.

I had the privilege of meeting Capt Hopper (she was not Adm. yet) many years ago. She was a real dynamo, enjoying her life and very turned on about what she was doing. Everyone would be well to have someone encourage them into a lifetime activity that would give them such enjoyment as she had!

I cannot actually say whether she was a really good developer or not. Much of the accolades she got were because she was the first to do a number of things, not necessarily because she was the "best" in some sense.

Is there an evolution of the American English language going on of which I have not been aware? In this series of comments, I have seen many, many instances of the use of "breaks" when "brakes" is intended. It is mind-boggling that people who seem to be very competent in the language otherwise will then dip into this aberration.

Hear! Hear! You got that right.