I've just discovered del.icio.us
What a great site. In the past I have (sporadically) maintained a links page so that I can have "mobile" bookmarks, whatever system I am browsing from. The difficulty has been that I usually need to e-mail myself any new links, and then add them to the link page when I get back to base.
This site lets you punch up a link on the run, but the extra benefit is that I have found a wealth of *useful* sites that others have already bookmarked!
A nice summary of what it's all about is Us.ef.ul: A beginner's guide to The Next Big Thing
Social Bookmarking ... even if you don't register, I bet you find something worthwhile here.

While trolling I came upon this little gem which is
True for any given state of Corporation ...

Salary Theorem states that Engineers and scientists can never earn as much as business executives and sales people. This theorem can now be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following two postulates:

Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power.
Postulate 2: Time is Money.

As every engineer knows: Power = Work / Time
And since: Knowledge = Power
And: Time = Money
It is therefore true that: Knowledge = Work / Money

Solving this equation for Money, we get:

Money = Work / Knowledge

Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity,
regardless of the amount of Work done.

Conclusion: The less you know, the more you make.

Rakiura

I spent a week on Stewart Island in the middle of last month, and I've only just got around to dickering with the photos.
This one is taken at the start of the Rakiura Walk.
Port William (the first hut) is in the "notch" directly across the bay, and is about 4 hours away.

It was a real spreadsheet-y day.
We needed to keep track of some inventory for a short time, so the old Lotus-honcho in me stirred, and I whipped up a spreadsheet to act as a database.
Then a little later, I needed to try & work out a sequence of interactions & events, so seeing as the spreadsheet was open, I laid out the concepts on that ... a sort of mind mapping.
That then needed to developed into a graphic which was showing the states of elements turning on & off over time, so ... yup, the spreadsheet.
Of course, that meant that the state diagram which was the next step just *had* to be done on the spreadsheet too. All circles & arrows, and it worked!
That's four uses for a software that started life as a basic accountants tool, without a single $ sign being used.

I am closing a superannuation account and withdrawing the funds.
On the application form there is a declaration:

I/we agree that if we are not the person(s) entitled to the payment of the full withdrawal Cash Value available, I/we indemnify ${COMPANY} against any costs or losses the ${COMPANY} may incur as a consequence of paying me/us the full withdrawal Cash Value available.

Which translates in my language as :
"If I'm lying, and I'm not who I say I am, then I (as who I say I am) will let you off the hook and pay you back if I really am lying." Yeah right!
Is that self-referential legalese gobbledygook, or what?

This is why Engineers should not go near marketing, salespeople and bureaucrats; we don't mix!
The munificent ${EMPLOYER}, has sold (among other things) a licence to use our software to a Polish customer. Now this software is used to manage network hosts, so this is a licence to run on a particular host, which will (in turn) manage a network. The customer already had the software installed & running, so all that was required was a wee software key for that host to be generated & e-mailed to them, which we did.
The bright sparks in marketing (or sales) in Poland have somehow translated this sale to be a licence to manage 35 hosts (why that many?). If that isn't silly enough, (like the software doesn't care how many hosts are managed), there was a requirement to supply 35 ${SOMETHINGS} for the purposes of the Polish customs. Customs had to see 35 items cross the border. So, how does our clever sales team respond? They decided that they would sent 35 CDs with a copy of the unlicensed software to the customer.
BRILLIANT!
Then there was the account rep. who wanted something signed in triplicate, so he faxed me 3 copies to sign and fax back ... strange but true.

If it's not enough to stop people smoking cigars in cigar-bars ...

New Zealand anti-smoking lobbyists are keen for age restrictions to be imposed on films featuring smoking.
"Eighteen makes the most sense to me," said Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) director Becky Freeman.
This is the age at which people can legally buy or be supplied in public with cigarettes.

Some people need to get a life!
via The Whig

Hasn't it been a busy day today, what with the Civil Unions Bill, Ahmed Zaoui being granted bail by the Supreme Court, and the buldozers are on the loose in Te Aro, and the bars are becoming smokefree.
The weekend is going to feel like a letdown after all this exitement.

On the matter of search for the laws of the land
For what it's worth, I did find the Health and Safety legislation, and (suprise, suprise) IT IS REALLY DRY READING!
Best left to lawyers and such who haven't got anything better to do.
I did however find that this PDF document (710k) was extremely useful to get a handle on all the ins and outs of the OSH requirements.

On the other hand, I can't say that I have found anything useful relating to all the road rules yet.

Imagine trying to explain this one to customs as you came back into the country ...

Maybe I'm being a bit simple, but isn't the N.Z. legislation kind of *impenetrable*?

I have been given (was "volunteered for") a task of finding out what's needed by ${EMPLOYER} for the "Health and Safety in Employment Act".
Probably simple enough you may say, I thought so too, considering the number of idiots lacking imagination who can get heavily involved in the administration of this OSH stuff.

Now when I need to know about something relating to the internet, it quickly rattles down to reading the RFC to get an authoritive view on (for instance) a particular protocol.
The RFCs define the rules of the internet, & can be read (although the SNMP section seems to be rather ponderous & convoluted).
Anyway, after a bit of digging around the internet, I came up with lots of articles & "Guides", but never the Act itself.
Then I remembered a recent occasion of unsuccessfully trying to find the traffic regulation which I had apparently transgressed. (Something obscure and petty about following road markings.)
So how am I supposed to "know" the rules of the land? Do I absorb them by some sort of social osmosis?

Surely the rules and regulations which govern my (and other's) behaviour, should be freely available.
For instance, I would like to know what that sign on the road-side (with a picture of a drunkenly-weaving car) is really supposed to mean.
If I want to understand a law or act by reading the legaleese, why can't I? I shouldn't have to pay for the right to read these things, I paid (via my taxes) to have them written in the first place!
It's not like there's a copyright on them ... is there?
The internet seems to be a sitter for this kind of information availablity.
If all this stuff *is* available, can someone let me know?

According to Merriam-Webster, "blog" headed the list of most looked-up terms on its site during the last twelve month.

TOP 10 WORDS OF 2004
# 1. blog
# 2. incumbent
# 3. electoral
# 4. insurgent
# 5. hurricane
# 6. cicada
# 7. peloton
# 8. partisan
# 9. sovereignty
# 10. defenestration

via BBC

Stumbled on this entry in wikipedia and have no reason to doubt it ...

On November 2, 1868, New Zealand officially adopted a standard time to be observed nationally, and was perhaps the first country to do so. It was based on the longitude 172° 30' East of Greenwich, that is 11 hours 30 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. This standard was known as New Zealand Mean Time.

World leaders in another field it seems.