Posts by MaxNZ

The silicon supply chain crunch is worrying. Now comes a critical concern: A coffee shortage

Re: REM

Suggest you try some Goya or Toraja coffee - better than Java

US's secret spy payload offloaded: Rocket Lab demos missile muscle with second Electron guided home

Deer recovery by chopper

An example of what the guys were doing back in the day with deer recovery. This looks like a bit of a sanitised version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKWvsS-z9PU

Kiwi tax probe squeezed $25m out of Microsoft – now it's Oracle's turn

Re: Alternative Minimum Tax

New Zealand has a Goods and Services Tax - a form of VAT with very few exemptions. The rules have also changed for low value imports - now any overseas supplier supplying more than NZ$60,000 in any one year need to register for and pay GST so the likes of Amazon need to charge GST.

The problem is getting companies to pay tax on the profits they make selling in NZ.

It's now officially the WhackBook Pro: If the keyboards weren't bad enough, now MacBook Pro batts are a fire risk

Turn around time

I booked my Macbook in for battery replacement Friday afternoon and was told could be up to two weeks - not the news I was wanting as I am heading overseas. I ended up getting the machine back on Wednesday afternoon - in time to take it away with me.

Giga-hurts radio: Terrorists build Wi-Fi bombs to dodge cops' cellphone jammers

Re: Elections???

Population is somewhere around 269 million spread over many islands so logistics of getting all the voting papers to a central place for checking is difficult. This was parliamentary as well as presidential election.

The incumbent, Joko Widodo is a reformer. The hopeful, Prabowo is ex-military (dishonourable discharge) and ex-son in law of the former dictator President Suharto. Entirely possible Probowo supporters would plant a bomb then blamed it on the Islamists. Try to make the case that Indonesia needs a military man in charge to clean up the insurgents. It was this kind of clean up that got Prabowo kicked out of the army in the first place.

The brave British boat men hoping to poke Larry Ellison's lads in the eye

cyclists on board

Emirates Team New Zealand have put their grinders (the guys who power the hydraulics) onto bicycles - leg muscles are stronger than arm muscles so the grinders can supply more power for longer.

http://www.sail-world.com/NZ/Americas-Cup---Emirates-Team-New-Zealand-reveal-big-AC50-breakthrough/151751

If you are fan of the big boats KZ1 is on display outside the Auckland Maritime Museum.

Steve Jobs, MS Office, Israel, and a basic feature Microsoft took 13 years to install

Zulu (and all the other related Bantu languages) had no written form prior to European colonisation so the it was Europeans who decided how it should be written. Gets a bit complicated when trying to map the different click sounds.

Toyota to launch hydrogen (ie, NATURAL GAS) powered fuel cell hybrid

Re: Dreaming

In New Zealand there is a prawn farm situated near a geothermal power plant, using the waste heat from the power plant to warm the water for the prawns. A bit like your idea of bananas in Scotland.

VC who wants to split California REVEALED as Silk Road Bitcoin slurper

Many jurisdictions have a provision for the seizure of the proceeds of crime that does not require a criminal conviction but still must go through the courts.

In New Zealand the "Crown" (government) only need to prove that on the balance of probability the assets are the proceeds of crime, rather than the more rigorous standard of beyond reasonable doubt required for a criminal conviction. This is commonly used to target people dealing in drugs or stolen property. Often the people up the chain who are organising for instance drug dealing never get their hands dirty so it is difficult to prove that they were selling drugs. Easier to show they have a connection to drug dealing and cannot provide a reasonable explanation of where the money/assets came from, therefore must have come from drugs etc.