KiwiCoromandel

the item in question was posted exactly as it was laid out on the original news site...i myself have no links to any greenpeace type organisations.....i do, however have connections to the new zealand green party......my views on seal hunting and whale hunting are based on my own personal judgement and life experience...new zealand had a huge seal industry and many people relied on it for income......i`ve heard both sides of the argument more than once....i`ve worked hard for a living too....and still do......in my view that still doesn`t make it right..... :)

ipod

nice one....good link...

our `puters changed over automatically....i always check for that........ :)

nice pic of the family amber.......very sad concerning your sister.....i hope her situation improves..... :)

Marietta Gross - Scoop Media Auckland......linked to the green/animals rights movement by the looks..that in no way changes my view that this is a barbaric activity...i am only too well aware that others don`t see things that way.....that`s their right.......the message here looks the same to me.....and there doesn`t seem to be any point in shooting that messenger.......slaughtering baby seals seems to me to be a barbaric activity....no matter who the messenger is.....

..it`s pretty horrific alright...... :( :nope:

Canada Permits 320,000 Seals To Be Slaughtered Thursday, 24 March 2005, 4:06 pm Article: Marietta Gross - Scoop Media Auckland Scoop Report: Massive protests by animal-rights activists have not stopped the Canadian government from allowing the mass slaughter of Harp Seals. Canada has permitted the killing of 320,000 Harp Seals (phoca groenlandia). The plan has sparked massive protests in Canada by of animal-rights activists. Canada's two-month-hunt starts on March 29 and takes place on ice floes in the Atlantic where the animals give birth to their babies. The Canadian government described the killing as necessary to keep the number of the animals low. At the moment there are about five million Harp Seals, three times more than in the 1970ies. The culling will continue until the number of animals has been decimated to 3.85 million. The Canadian government argues that by killing the Seals fishing grounds will be protected and will susptain jobs for the fishing industry. Conservationists argue that in the past, about 30 million Harp Seals lived in the Arctic region. Moreover many animals will be skinned while still alive. This week, opponents of the hunt held rallies in 50 cities around the world and called for a boycott of Canadian fish. Canada’s fish exports profit about three billion Canadian dollars (1.89 billion Euro) yearly. Seal hunting earns “only” 16.5 million Canadian dollars. Pat Ragan from an U.S. animal rights organization told Reuters: “I think, this time they are really feeling the pressure.” The campaign would also target restaurant franchises like “Red Lobster”, she added. Canada's fishing minister, Geoff Regan, accused the animal rights groups of publishing “delusive rhetoric and attention arousing pictures”, which portrayed a “selective, one-sided and often wrong story”. “It’s really a shame, that such a negative light is cast on the Canadian men and women within this industry,” Regan said.

Peter Jackson has been filming the final scenes of King Kong, in which the giant ape battles biplanes atop the Empire State Building. The website kongisking.net shows Jackson shooting scenes in his Miramar studios of a pilot and gunner, in a replica 1930s Curtis Helldiver aircraft. The replica of the American naval fighter – seen in the 1933 film – had to be built from scratch. Jackson and his team used plans from the Smithsonian Institution in the United States to build the biplane for the climactic confrontation in King Kong. The millionaire director got James Dietz, an American artist known for his World War I paintings, to play a pilot and Lord of the Rings co-producer Rick Porras, in New Zealand on holiday, to be a gunner. After filming is completed, the replica will go on display in a $3 million aviation museum at the Omaka Aerodrome near Blenheim. Jackson attended the Marlborough airshow on Saturday to watch the public debut of a newly restored biplane from his collection. The replica of a World War I German fighter Pflaz DIII was originally built for the 1966 American movie The Blue Max. Stuart Tantrum, who extensively restored it, flew it at the air show. Meanwhile, more details have been revealed about Jackson's $200 million movie. Richard Taylor, head of Wellington special effects company Weta, told British movie magazine Empire that though all shots of the giant ape in King Kong would be computer-generated, Weta had built a full-scale "stand-in" of its head. Read more...... http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3229342a1870,00.html

Schiavo at the 'point of no return' 28 March 2005 PINELLAS PARK: A wrenching dispute over the fate of Terri Schiavo neared its end today as the brain-damaged Florida woman moved closer to death and her parents gave up their long and bitter legal battle to prolong her life. "I'm not saying we wouldn't be open to any idea that comes up. But at this point, it appears that time has finally run out," David Gibbs, an attorney for Schiavo's parents, said late on Saturday, the St Petersburg Times reported on Sunday. The tube feeding that has sustained Schiavo for 15 years was halted on March 18 under a state court order, setting off a flurry of efforts by Bob and Mary Schindler to get their daughter's feeding restored. Their effort drew in the US Congress, President George W Bush and his brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush. But a string of judicial rebuffs, including from the US Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court, effectively ended the Schindlers' seven-year legal dispute with Schiavo's husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, over whether she should live or die. Gibbs said Schiavo, 41, was declining rapidly. "They've begun to give her morphine drip for the pain. And at this point, we would say Terri has passed the point of no return," he told CBS television. Doctors have said Schiavo, who is being cared for at a Florida hospice, would live for up to two weeks without the feeding tube. They say patients in her condition appear to feel little or no discomfort when deprived of nutrition and water. A state court first ruled in 2000 Schiavo should be allowed to die. It declared she was in a "persistent vegetative state" since suffering a heart attack that deprived her brain of oxygen in 1990 and sided with her husband in ruling she would not have wanted to live in that condition. The Schindlers, who are practicing Roman Catholics, have attracted passionate support from an array of conservative christians, right-to-life and anti-abortion activists. Passions boiled over on Sunday among the crowd of about 100 protesters holding vigil in front of the hospice in Pinellas Park, with the first two violent arrests. One of those was Don McBurney, a member of the Denver Bible Church, who grabbed a paper cup of water and rushed the police lines standing guard in the driveway. Three policemen wrestled him to the ground, cuffed his hands and forced him into the police van. He struggled, screaming, "Bring her water". McBurney was charged with trespassing. There have been 38 arrests in the past 10 days, including three others on Sunday, but so far they had been peaceful. Some in the crowd suggested militias should form to storm the hospice. Others prayed quietly and sang hymns. Ardith Cooper of Morris, Illinois, stood sketching a chalk drawing of Terri Schiavo nailed to a crucifix. Christians mark Easter Sunday as the day they believe Jesus Christ was resurrected after being crucified. In a protest lasting about an hour, seven people in wheelchairs rolled to the driveway, hoisted themselves out of their chairs and sat on the ground, screaming, "We're not dead yet, let Terri live". Michael Schiavo and the parents were alternating time at Schiavo's bedside - having long ago stopped speaking to each other in a bitter family feud that escalated into a highly politicised dispute. Lobbied by evangelical christians who have felt emboldened since Bush's re-election last November, the Republican-controlled Congress raced through a special law to push the case into federal courts, and the president interrupted a vacation to sign it into law. But federal courts, up to the Supreme Court, turned down the Schindlers' request for an order to resume feeding. Fresh efforts in state courts also failed and Governor Bush was rebuffed in a move to get the state welfare agency to take custody of Schiavo. Jeb Bush told CNN on Sunday he had done everything within his powers and could not violate a court order. Congress' effort was assailed by critics as meddling in a family affair that had already been decided by state courts. Opinion polls showed most Americans disapproved of the congressional move and felt Schiavo should be allowed to die. A Time Magazine poll released on Sunday found a majority of Americans surveyed who called themselves born again Christians or evangelicals agreed with the decision to remove Schiavo's feeding tube.

evolution........

Former Crowded House drummer dies 28 March 2005 Former Crowded House and Split Enz drummer Paul Hester died on Saturday after a long battle with depression, the Age newspaper in Melbourne reported today. Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported police found his body yesterday in Elsternwick Park near his home after he failed to return home from walking his two dogs on Saturday night. Hester, born in 1959, teamed up with New Zealand brothers Neil and Tim Finn, to form 80s band Split Enz. He then went on to play drums for Crowded House, which formed out of the ashes of Split Enz in 1985, with Neil Finn on vocals and guitar, and Nick Seymour on bass. Based in Australia, the band went on to become a majorly successful pop group of the late 1980s and early 90s. Guitarist Kev Garant, who played with Hester in the Bay of Pigs, said: "He was considered an absolute world class drummer in the pop field." As recently as two weeks ago, Hester, 46, was at the Espy in St Kilda to appear in the SBS music quiz show, RockWiz. RockWiz's Brian Nankervis said: "He could be everything and anything in one go. He had a lightning wit, he could be wonderfully sensitive, clever and unpredictable."

mark knopfler?? :)

Big Deal for rap's "Fuckin' forty inch rims" .........

rumour has it that a huge paramedics team will take up a large amount of the available space at wembley......the rest of the audience at the rolling bones concert will be largely made up of doctors , accountants and undertakers... :bigsmile:

When the music stops March 23, 2005 A shadow is following Kevin Bermeister. He can't see his pursuer, but he knows someone is there. Half-walking, half-running from the Queen Square court district towards Martin Place, Bermeister scans Phillip Street's reflection in shop windows. Sensing something, he stops and changes direction. Bermeister is used to the feeling. He has been tailed, photographed and filmed by private investigators for a year. The Sydney entrepreneur is No.1 with a bullet on the global music industry's hit list, and their investigators never let him out of their sight - whether in the street or at his $8 million Vaucluse home. A video of one such cat-and-mouse game was viewed by the Herald. On this occasion a music industry investigator is following him with a video camera hidden in the strap of a backpack. The investigator has followed Bermeister out of a courtroom where music industry barristers are attacking the internet song-swapping program Kazaa, which is linked to several Bermeister-associated companies. This week the music industry's long-running lawsuit against Kazaa - which it blames for the illegal online copying of millions of pop songs - is winding up in a federal courtroom in Sydney. The case has been closely watched around the world: "Kazaa assets frozen in Australia" (Wired magazine, March 4); "Australian labels sue Kazaa owner" (BBC, November 29); "Kazaa offices raided in Australia" (The Washington Post, February 7 last year). Just as the industry stomped on Napster - the 1990s song-swapping dot com that famously drew the ire of heavy metal band Metallica - it hopes to kill off Kazaa. Kazaa has become the most popular software program in history with more than 300 million downloads. Although competing programs have taken away some market share in recent years, Kazaa still boasts 60 million "customers" who trade 3 billion files - songs, television programs, games, anything digital - every month. Read on.............. http://smh.com.au/news/Breaking/When-the-m...1525205259.html

Kazaa 'built on piracy' Sydney March 23, 2005 When the music stops The internet file-sharing service Kazaa was not akin to community radio and there was no "bill of rights" giving the community a voice because it was built on piracy, the Federal Court has heard. Tony Bannon, SC, for the music industry, said people could set up their own websites to say what they wanted to say, or express their voice on Google or BigPond. They did not need to do it on Kazaa, which was a commercial operation, not a community service. "You can't let the tail wag the dog," he said. He was responding to a submission by the Australian Consumers' Association, Electronic Frontiers Australia and the NSW Civil Liberties Council, which argued a broader public interest in the music piracy case. The music industry has asked the court to shut down Kazaa in its current form. It also wants the court to block any swapping of MP3 files on future Kazaa versions, filtering of songs and titles to be imposed, and the activity of Kazaa users to be monitored. Consumer groups have argued the privacy of users may be at risk. Read more...... http://smh.com.au/news/Breaking/Kazaa-buil...1525205604.html

A legal outcome in a public domain March 22, 2005 Over the past 12 months, a greater awareness has emerged among lawyers about the existence of open source software and the need to identify its use within an organisation. Lawyers should not assume that, alerted to its existence, they can apply their usual skills and easily advise their client or employer. The Free Software Foundation coined the term "copyleft", as opposed to copyright, to distinguish the key philosophy that modifications to open source should be made freely available to everyone. A lawyer new to this topic needs to understand that open source software is not in the public domain. Its use is governed by licence terms and these terms differ markedly from those they may have reviewed. The terms often reflect a political manifesto rather than predictable commercial terms that serve a business purpose, there is ambiguity and uncertainty in the licence terms and no warranties or indemnities are provided for unsupported versions. There are several key licensing issues that counsel will have to address. Assuming there is a process to capture the use of open source within an organisation, counsel will be expected to review the licences that the IT department wishes to use. In the case of the general public licence (GPL), the challenge is to review its terms and provide definitive advice. Say your in-house IT department wants to incorporate open source into a you-beaut software product it is developing. Provided modification of the open source software by your IT department is restricted to internal use and there is no distribution of the modified version outside your organisation, there may be no issues. But what if you want to make the application available to related companies of your organisation? Say, the separate companies established to represent the various lines of an insurance business. Under section two of the GPL, if you modify the software and then distribute it, you must license the modified software as a whole at no charge to all third parties. Arguably, this means that if your organisation licenses modified GPL code to a related company, it would have to make that modified source code available under the licence terms of the GPL - which are governed by copyleft rather than copyright principles to, say, your competitors. There is no concept of a group licence and there is no definition of what is meant by a third party. However, there is a long list of FAQs associated with the queries about the GPL. But do the FAQs form part of the licence terms? Certainly, when you read them, they give one possible interpretation of the licence term. Usually, that view supports the social movement behind open source, but not necessarily your interpretation. The lesser general public licence (LGPL), for instance, permits linking of a subroutine library to a proprietary application; the mere running of an application using the library is not restricted. An organisation could use its own licence terms and there would be no viral impact. If the library is modified and used with an organisation's proprietary application, then the complete program must be made available to all third parties at no charge under the LGPL. Whenever proprietary code is mixed with open source, there is a risk that licence terms have been infringed. If the proprietary code was granted under a commercial licence, then it is likely that its terms would be breached by seeking to comply with the terms of the GPL. Relatively few cases have reached the courts and they tend to be at the interlocutory stage. The court appears to take the view that the GPL terms are clear on use of code and therefore decisions have been in favour of the plaintiff GPL licensor. It would be interesting if a lower-court decision enforcing the terms of the GPL was appealed against. There seems to be a reluctance to take that challenge, which, in part, could be a concern that if you challenge a GPL licensor you may end up taking on the whole open source community. With open source code being continually developed by the community, the issue of just who is the copyright owner may prove a challenge for someone seeking to establish they have the legal standing to begin an action for copyright infringement. Despite the complexities, the benefits of open source make it worth persevering. There are still many licences that permit the use, modification and distribution of open source code upon minimal terms. What's different about an OSS licence? Its use is governed by licence terms and these terms differ markedly from those counsel may have reviewed before. An OSS licence is not written by lawyers for lawyers. You won't find expressions such as the supplier provides a non-exclusive, royalty free revocable licence, for the territory of X, to do the following. No warranties or indemnities are provided for unsupported versions. There is ambiguity and uncertainty in the drafting of the licence terms. Having an IT background (or a friend who understands software development) is a significant advantage, because in these licences the technology sits in the front seat and the commercial and legal terms with which IT and IP lawyers, in particular, are familiar, are relegated, somewhat to the back stalls.

Yahoo! seeks ruling on free speech case March 25, 2005 Lawyers for Yahoo! Inc. asked a federal appeals court on Thursday for legal protection for US-based internet portals whose content is protected by the First Amendment in the United States, but illegal in foreign countries. Some of the judges acknowledged the need for a shield for American companies in such situations, but suggested it was premature in the case of Yahoo!, which is challenging a fine levied by a Paris court four years ago for allowing the site's French users to buy and sell Nazi memorabilia, in violation of French law. Yahoo! asked the 11-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday to prevent the two French human rights groups that sued from collecting the fine - now at about $15 million (€11.55 million) and growing by as much as $15,000 (€11,554) per day. But during 70 minutes of arguments, some judges noted that the French groups had not tried to collect. "Where's the beef? Why are we here?" asked Judge Ronald Gould. Yahoo! attorney Robert Vanderet said the human rights groups might try to collect, and that Yahoo! was not the only internet portal that needed to know whether US courts would shield American companies from being liable abroad for lawfully protected speech originating in America. "Yahoo! needs assurances that that order is not enforceable in the United States," Vanderet told the panel. Yahoo's French subsidiary, yahoo.fr, complies with French law, but a French judge ordered Sunnyvale-based Yahoo! to strip Nazi paraphernalia from the portal's most popular site, yahoo.com. Yahoo! did not appeal against the French order, and instead sought protection in US courts. A San Jose federal judge in 2002 ruled Yahoo!, as an American company, was not liable, and the human rights groups appealed. A three-judge 9th Circuit panel overturned the judgement, saying the judge ruled prematurely, since France's Union of Jewish Students and the International Anti-Racism and Anti-Semitism League had not acted on the French judgement. Yahoo! then sought Thursday's rehearing before an 11-judge panel. Judge Raymond Fisher speculated that Yahoo!'s case was premature, but acknowledged the implications for free speech. "They're seeking a remedy that is going to have a major impact in the United States," he said. Read more......... http://smh.com.au/news/Breaking/Yahoo-seek...1692612653.html

US mulls rules for online political activity March 25, 2005 The US Federal Election Commission took its first step on Thursday in extending campaign finance controls to political activity on the internet, asking for public input on limited regulations for the medium. Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, who took the lead on drafting proposals with vice-chairman Michael Toner, described the steps as "restrained." The commission emphasised a hands-off approach to bloggers, or authors of web logs, among the loudest and unruliest voices online. "We are not the speech police," said Weintraub, a Democrat. "The FEC does not tell private citizens what they can or cannot say, on the internet, or elsewhere." The draft guidelines suggest applying limits that exist in other media to certain political advertising on the web and political spam email. The six-member commission approved a work in progress and invited public comment for 60 days before a hearing in June. Republican David Mason was the sole dissenter. The commission said it was exploring internet regulation reluctantly - as it was ordered to do so by a court - and with the lightest touch possible, exempting everything except certain kinds of paid political advertising. But the Centre for Individual Freedom, a non-profit advocacy group, said any regulation was too much. Read more........ http://smh.com.au/news/Breaking/US-mulls-r...1692608961.html

Single out your music taste March 28, 2005 The days of the album will soon be over, with online options creating a music publisher in everyone, writes Steve Dow. The death of the album is nigh. With talk of Apple launching its iTunes Music Store in Australia, the single is about to be declared king, and the concept of recording a year's output of songs and calling it an album is in terminal decline. Today's young music buyers think much less of suffering a pop group or artist's entire yearly quota of work, which is often recorded just to meet music labels' contractual obligations. As consumers, young listeners have surfed in on the crest of downloading technology, using MP3 digital files to choose the songs they want. Apple has launched its iTunes internet music store in most major record markets overseas, but has taken its time setting up the service in Australia. That could be about to change, though no one knows precisely when. While there are other pay-per-single music download legal services already established in Australia, such as Telstra's Big Pond music service, iTunes will rapidly become the market leader if and when it arrives, given its dominant market penetration of hardware music listening devices. Having downloaded the iTunes software on their computer, Australians will be able to log on to the site, preview songs with 30-second grabs, buy a song, have it downloaded permanently to the software, then transfer the songs to their iPods. In the US, iTunes songs sell for 99 cents and in the UK for 79 pence; Australians will probably pay more. Customers will even be able to "publish an iMix" - leave a list online of their favourite tracks for friends or strangers to copy in their own eclectic running order; the digital equivalent of compiling a cassette tape of mixed songs. No wonder the album mix as decided by a record company or artists is looking stale. Read more......... http://smh.com.au/news/Technology/Single-o...1862253325.html

rest in peace paul..well known in nz muso circles...i met him a few times in nz and aussie in 1983 when he was playing with new zealand rock icons split enz....a hell of a nice guy and a real character with a great sense of humor. his untimely death by suicide is a terrible shock and is big news down here this morning......... r.i.p.

walk

Mitchell Retrospective On Its Way Joni Mitchell continues to reshape the context in which her music is presented with a second retrospective, Songs of a Prairie Girl due out late April via Warner Strategic Marketing. The first, Dreamland was released last fall and debuted at No. 177 on The Billboard 200. "This collection of songs and photographs is my contribution to Saskatchewan's Centennial celebrations," Mitchell says, referring to the Canadian province from which she hails. "I recommend that you get yourself a hot beverage and stand by the heater as you listen to these musical tales of long, cold winters with a hint of short but glorious summers." Like Dreamland the material on Prairie Girl was handpicked by Mitchell, who worked closely with the label to design the package. Among such selections as 'Ray's Dad's Cadillac' and 'Raised on Robbery' is a new mix of the song 'Paprika Plains' from her 1977 album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. Reuters/Billboard

Moby Hits Out At Stefani Dance music pioneer Moby has blasted pop singer Gwen Stefani for inviting too many of her famous friends to perform on her latest album Love Angel Music Baby. Moby, who has worked with Stefani himself, argues the album should have been simpler, with just the singer, 34, and an acoustic guitar. Instead, she brought in artists such as Andre 3000, Missy Elliott, New Order and rap star Eve, who appears on the current hit 'Rich Girl'. Moby, 39, says, "I like her as a person and she's made some great records, but that new one has too many people involved. "There's not enough Gwen on it. I'd rather she produced it herself and used just an acoustic guitar. "It would have made it a more interesting record for me."