Dear Infratil,

Nice to see that you are making efforts to improve the efficiency of payments on our bus system.

However, the system you are using is based on Oyster. This system is insecure by design, as published by a Netherlands University; see for instance:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/cwire/20080723/ttc-court-rules-university-can-p...

The Oyster system crashed recently in the UK, with terrible consequences.

"Hacked Oyster Card System Crashes Again"
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/07/25/1239225.shtml

I saw this press release so I thought I'd check it out.

According to various sources cited by Wikipedia, Mercury in fluorescent bulbs is in elemental form, at a negative pressure (ie, close to vacuum). Otherwise, the bulb wouldn't work.

I think that Idiot/Savant is right; Winston Peters must be sacked.

This will likely result in the dissolution of government, but that would;

1. Show voters that Labour does have a spine and care about corruption

2. Not really change much, after all they were going to have to call it soon anyway.
   

*cue applause*

Many that have talked with me about Climate Change, will be familiar with my position as a skeptic. Initially, like everyone else, accepting "happily" that climate change was real, at some point I got indoctrinated into the field of skeptics. I listened to a lot of arguments to see the holes in the theory.

And I'm still skeptical.

Not one mention of "MicroSoft" in their press release. Instead, they're blaming the issue on "SQL servers".

Well, the third roll of this die (no doubt my critics will use the fact I'm using a 41-sided die in concert with symmetry theory to prove I'm a flatlander), I get 17. Looks like I lucked out somewhat - that's landed in the "Believe global warming is primarily caused by natural processes" section again.

This time, it's actually a climatologist, what luck!

The second roll was 41 - is this die weighted? This time we're in the "warming will be beneficial to humanity" section of the list.

Over at Hot Topic, I was challenged to:

Pick three of the “dissidents” from that list at random (roll a dice or summat). Read who they are - is this really an expert on the climate? Then read what they say. Read it carefully and critically, and if they give numbers cross-check them, and then check for rebuttals. If you tackle any of their work with the level of skepticism you’ve shown here you’ll find it illuminating.

So, I picked up a 41-sided die, rolled and the first number was 26.

The 2008 Budget offers a whopping $591 million to Polytechnics and Universities.

All this, while constantly lowering the funding of the most highly performing educational institutes in New Zealand - Private Training Establishments. Despite these institutions being set completion quotas and post-qualification job placement requirements which are far, far beyond the free lunch that polytechnics and universities get, they get absolutely nothing out of this budget.