^^ What he said.
Those who voted in the National Government chose to elect a party that is well known for its position supporting business (over the individual).

There's reports that around 1 Million NZ'rs (out of ~4.4M) didn't vote in the last election. There's still a chance to have an affect on the outcomes if enough of the apathetic step up and make their voices heard. Unfortunately for laws such as this, many folks don't see it as affecting them, and will remain oblivious...

Yes i'm cynical about it. :(

And as a non American, I support the above. My email archive goes back to the days prior to Gmail, prior to my current email address, infact even prior to using Thunderbird (it's been in Eudora, Netscape Communicator, Mozilla Suite, and Thunderbird variously over the years).

I keep the last month or so's email live on my mail server and read it with IMAP. From Thunderbird. On a half dozen different machines. Windows and Linux. All Thunderbird.

Every month or so I use POP3 to pull all the email server-side down to my archive installation of Thunderbird on my home server.

I refer to my archive about every month or two at minimum, and have already found value in being able to pull transactional email notifications from 2 years ago out of an archived folder, to help rebuild a mailing list that was hosted in the cloud (but where said cloud service provider decided to be nasty and delete an entire VM, plus backups, simply because they could, and not because it was reasonable).

My email archive is mine, it's on hardware I control, backed up by my own backup regime, sitting in property I control and subject to local jursidiction. My live mail platform is one I personally administer, that I can read from the several computers I use week-to-week using exactly the same software (Thunderbird).

I'm glad to hear Thunderbird will still have 'some' attention, though I hope the writing isn't on the wall. We need Thunderbird. My entire corporate office uses Thunderbird + Lightning (Mac and Linux clients) to talk to our POP/IMAP platform and soon, to talk to Zimbra. Zimbra might be a powerful web based app but it's still nice to be able to carry out work when you're disconnected!

I'm sure they are, but that's not a crime covered by the Extradition Treaty.

Any Extradition from NZ will be under the terms of the Extradition Treaty and won't be for DMCA violations, but for other charges - such as the Money Laundering and so on which is indeed covered by the Treaty.

Some interesting reads:

Provision Warrants: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1999/0055/latest/DLM26216.html
Extradition Offenses http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1999/0055/latest/DLM25681.html#DLM25681
How Extradition Request must be made http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1999/0055/latest/DLM26211.html?search=ts_act_extradition_resel&p=1#DLM26211
Minister may request warrant http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1999/0055/latest/DLM26215.html?search=ts_act_extradition_resel&p=1
The Extradition Treaty Itself http://newzealand.usembassy.gov/uploads/images/o16y8MOyHW2l-jJTxaMpeQ/ExtraditionUSNZ.pdf

This old argument... I know exactly what you mean, but if your productivity is being hindered by 'stone knives and bearskins' then surely this is something that management simply get to live with? When Management cease to support the employee, surely the employee should become a 'timecard-worker'....

if your productivity is high, they're going to think all is well. Let your productivity slide and when they ask why, point out to them how they're screwing themselves over with their stone-age conventions?

Sucks I know, but otherwise you're shooting yourself in the foot.

Agree with the other response; you apparently have the wrong end of the straw.

The IT dept support the _company_, not individual employees. If you want a tool that the company hasn't provided you, the right channel to go through is via management and the procurement process. Then your required tool gets a proper introduction-to-service and your IT guy is appropriate trained and ready to support it, rather than just having it shoved in his lap because it's the new toy you've just decided you 'need'.

if it's a device that you need for business purposes, the business will provide it for you. (Or should, if it's a genuine need.)

The influx of personal smart devices into business is great; but if you expect to connect them to my corporate network, you best be prepared to see them integrate into my corporate network requirements around security and support. I've seen policies from 'sure, but you support it' through to 'absolutely not' and the support guy's job is to enforce that policy. No more, no less. Oh and by the way, support guy rarely dictates policy, most especially in larger companies.

^ This. The IT dept's worst nightmare are employees who *think* they know better.

Pager on silent/vibrate, under my pillow, tends to work well.
Only so much you can do about the noise of the vibration unit, though.
Have done this with my phone before also.

Oh i'm sure they're related. I'm just not sure that one is to blame for the other.

^^ This.
Get sick of pointing out that 'correlation != causation'.

Zing! The world loves hypocrytes, right?

Mod parent up.

The 40%/10% example above comes straight out of Google Maps and the Nav tool on my Android.
I've been tinkering with iGO recently as an alternative.

Oh c'mon, it's nothing new.
Just ask anyone in emergency services who has to implement road closures due to an accident or similar.
This has a tendency to turn some motorists into melonheads because you've taken them off the one route they know about that gets them from A to B. Even when A is home and B is the same workplace they've commuted to for years.
Taking away people's need to think leaves them utterly without option when they're taken out of the comfort zone - say, for example, when the GPS fails.[1]

At least pre GPS folks actually had to look at a map, plan their route and were at least peripherally aware that alternatives existed. And heck, maybe they'd even carry their map in the car to consult if a road was blocked/closed?

Yes of course my comment was a generalisation. However I do think that the bell curve is being flattened by GPS.

[1]Ironically the one thing the GPS is good at, is 'rerouting' and giving you an option that doesn't require you to stop and consult a map. But my point stands. It actually reminds me of the difference between catching someone their fish for dinner, and teaching them to fish...

1) Smart people who know how to take GPS information and couple it with some commonsense / a genuine interest in being a little self sufficient and a little clever about navigation.

2) People who don't care to know any better, and will simply treat them as a tool that prevents them from having to think. These are the kinds of people who will follow their GPS into a river / off a cliff / the wrong way on a one way street / etc.

When navigating in a foreign country or in a city i'm utterly unfamiliar with, the GPS is golden. But having only had a personal one for the last few months i'm working hard not to let it dilute my head-for-direction, by continuing to look at flat maps, find points of reference, and continue to let the 'relationships' between geographic locations build in my conciousness, particularly in my home city.

I've also found that GPS's don't always make smart navigation decisions; for example I don't believe that adding an additional 40% in distance for a theoretical 10% saving in time is actually smart driving, esp when that time saving is based on projected speed limits and doesn't deal to traffic, traffic lights, road works...