Which you can then use as toilet paper... :)

Especially on cold winterdays invite families, friends and neighbours and cook meals, together. It saves a lot of money = less power, time, grocery. Rotate regularly so every family can save power (money) in not have to cook and heating the house.

I would agree about using open source, but only to a point. Open source doesn't come with any support, apart from other users on forums, who may or maynot chose to help you. So if you were a business, and were setting up a shopping cart, to configure it and get it working may take you substainally longer, than paying for a commercial version, and also tends to be more frustrating. Also if the shopping cart breaks in after a month, your business could be losing business while you try to fix your open sourcce shopping cart, unlike a commercial vesion, where you have that commercial grade of support. There have been some research about open source vs commecial software, and when taking into consideration costs in time and frustration with open source, commericial software ends up being lower cost in the long run. I set up shopping carts, and used to use open source ones like os commerce and zen cart, but have moved to commerical versions, as they work out cheaper and more robust in the long run, and you have the company to fall back to who are accountable to fix any problems.

I disagree on open source...just choose your appilcations carefully.
Apache, php, perl, hmailer, squirrel, phpnuke and mods.
Full webserver, mailer server webmail server, and web site that is reliable and solid, and last for yrs...or at least till the MB or HD dies.
And loosing business while trying to fix...an old saying, "he who makes a back up laughs last" If hacked or HD goes down, run the backup and back in business in around 10 mins.

@Rob & Steptoe: let the open source v proprietary battle begin :-)

At interest.co.nz we use an open source LAMP solution running on a VMWare ESX virtual server solution from Webdrive supported by open source gurus Automatem. We have found this a very robust option.

The VMWare ESX virtual server is great: on a couple of occasions we have been able to address massive increases in load demand with a simple phone call to Webdrive requesting a doubling in processor resources.

While the rest of the team do use Microsoft Office Excel for it's heavy lifting capability I use Open Office and find it works with Office 2007 documents perfectly.

Rob Says:
April 25th, 2009 at 1:05 pm

That is a very dangerous and potentially costly suggestion. I know someone who did that by purchasing cheap galsses online, and they damaged their eyesight with the glasses as they were not the right prescription. There is no accountability with these overseas online companies.

Maybe I should clarify and say buy your frames online and get the lenses fitted by your optometrist.

There are a number of local companies and my coworkers I have bought contact lenses from them"”no problems. Like everything else, do a bit of research first!

Open Source software has no support is false, but I agree this is really no place to discuss this.
I support a New Zealand website that can and does turn over 100K an hour, there is a place for both, highly depends on the actual technology in question.
I see you run PHP here, great and fast...but never has been secure has it ?!

Get a trusted forensic accountant to go over your banking records. There has been some horrendous cases of overcharging of interest in NZ financial history.

James
Great to see you have a Scottish heart! Wins every time, like my Granny never missed a cent. She also said penny wise pound foolish,its sad the way many children miss out on time with grandparents.

Its true, if only Gordon Brown had spent more time with his Scottish Gran & Da. Bet he's in for a right bollocking when he moves on to a higher place. But then again perhaps it's all a brilliant Scottish plot to avenge the past - Braveheart2.

@bernard - If you paid $10 for that haircut Fair Go could probably get you a refund. Maybe even damages.

Steven, I should have conveyed my sarcasm a bit more clearly...

I do not want to waste others time and go into details of difference between "free" software and "open source" software, but please check this for yourself. Giving away ESX for free does not make it an Open Source software. Please be precise in your argumentation.

I did not mention what kind of software the "Guardian Angel, or TradeMe, or any ISP who hosts hundreds of thousans mailboxes, or banks" use to their advantage. You wrongly assumed that I meant Closed Source. I did not give the list as an example of superiority of Closed Source over Open Source (that would have been quite a weak argument which you so easily reacted to mentioning NY Exchange). I was only referring to restoration times.

In your post you are referring mainly to Fault Tolerance, not data backup/restore, which is not the same (think about a requirement to keep copy of your data offsite, just for instance). Indeed, the difference is quickly disappearing, with utilization of geographically dispersed SANs, replication of the storage across data centres, etc. But you do not assume that Steptoe was referring to THAT kind of backup in his post do you?

And again, this is the last thing I wanted to do, distracting readers of this blog to technical intricacies of the information systems.

The only reason I posted was to try and draw their attention to what concerns me, namely treating Open Source software first, as panacea for all (technical) problems in IT, and now as a remedy for economical problems as well. The most important paragraphs of my post were the last two of my first post. Seems to me that they did not attract any attention :(

Please do not react directly and post new arguments about what fantastic job snapshots/cloning of disk set/free software, etc. do, believe me I am closer to all this than you think, and do not need to be educated here. Others will find this discussion annoying and irrelevant to the topic.

If am unable to get others hear what I say, I just remain what I am, Passer-by..

andy
rents are falling around here too. look at the size of this mess,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/522011...

Here is the story about possible NZ importation of the disease.

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/akld-students-show-swine-flu-symptoms-26...

I say shut the borders immediately!

guess being nice and not raising the rents might just be a saving grace, as all tenants know they are paying well under maximum levels, then they might just stay put.

this flu business give me the sh1ts though, real or introduced, government hype, big business, or the end of us all - either and every way it is a mind number

certainly gives me less reason to care about what Bollard says next week

From that CNN item:

"The students and teachers at Auckland's Rangitoto College returned to New Zealand via Los Angeles on Saturday, and the group remained quarantined at home."

Shoudn't the Govt urgently track down everyone who was in that LA/AKL flight and quarantine them asap? This things gonna spread fast of it is not taken seriously and if it gets hold here we will have no tourism industry!

Here another link:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/26/2552882.htm?section=world

BM
1. Alarmism is not going to help one iota.
2. Closing the borders is nonsensical given it appears the Auckland kids have already contracted the virus - if it is highly infectious then their family/contacts will have already been exposed. As such NZ would already be a focus of transmission.
3. We know nothing of the mortality rate - yes 80 people appear to have died in Mexico city (which also happens to have some of the worst air pollution in the world, leading to a pre-disposition to respiratory diseases to begin with, and a likely worse morbidity/mortality once infection has taken place), but we have no idea how many have been infected/have survived. For example if 80 have died but 8000 have had the disease/recovered then you are talking about a 1% mortality rate.
4.Early indications from the outbreaks in the US and here in NZ (where we have been told some of the kids are already recovering) are seemingly more optimistic in terms of mortality/morbidity.
5. That is not to say that those at high risk (the immunosuppresed/the aged/those with existing respiratory disease) should not be concerned - bur running around like headless chooks demanding Tamiflu is not going to accomplish much at the moment.

It may be alarmist but a global pandemic will be far worse than any recession

http://www.pandemicflu.gov/index.html

I pick Bollard dropping cash rate by 0.5% on Thursday given this latest news.

Tony Ryall NZ Health Minister on BBC News 10pm - "highly likely" these kids have the swine flu. Testing being done in Melbourne results in a couple of days.

This is nothing like bird flu - swine flu transfers rapidly human to human, reports now coming in from Mexico of more deaths.

If this thing goes pandemic what will world economies look lke in 6 months?

Swine Flu? ... sounds like a condition that investors in failed finance companies have contracted.

Andy,
Already got the Tamiflu from the last couple of scares.
You can see today's 90 at 9 off the home page.
We're putting it up now in the blog. Still 30 minutes away.
Bryan and I have just got back from interviewing the CFO of Rabobank

cheers
Bernard

Bernard - glad to hear you will be last man standing.

A fascinating piece perhaps worth including in one of your reviews today - it seems while this recent Wall St bounce has been going on insiders (ie those who actually run the companies concerned) have been dumpting shares into the rally in record amounts - clearly they do not think the rally has legs:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/04/beware-insider-selling/

Trev - Tamiflu is made by Roche - their shares are listed internationally so you can buy them relatively easily if you wish.
I assume BankManager was being mischevious last night; either that or he was short the share market.........

north island tamiflu was all gone before 8.30am. south island reserves probably gone by now too. let's just say running around like a headless chook might just stop you lying around like a dead pig...

@PoP - you should submit that one for a Tui's billboard.

I never bought into the bird flu scare- the virus was only transmitted from birds to people not person to person. The swine flu is different- it seems to be very infectious and is transmitted person to person. The Spanish flu of 1918 that killed 40 million people was also of swine origin. I bought two boxes of Tamiflu this morning but if you want some you will need to be quick- it is selling out quickly.

I am serious about getting a trusted forensic accountant to run a fine tooth comb over your banking records;
http://www.ihatebanks.com.au/behave.htm
- The Sun-Herald ran an article on 06-Apr-1997 entitled "Why you can bank on loan figure errors". It quotes Interest Research Bureau statistics as finding that the average error on a 3yr $50K overdraft is $15K in the banks favour.

- And the problem is not isolated to Australia. On 3-4 June 2000, the New Zealand Herald ran a front page headline with the title "Bank blunders costing millions". It cited research that suggested an average overcharge of $2500 on a $190K mortgage, with New Zealanders as a whole being $300-$400 million and Australians $2.5 to $3 billion out of pocket due to bank errors in the preceding 5 years.

The below is from Hansard 2005;
http://www.hansard.parliament.govt.nz/hansard/Final/FINAL_2005_05_17.htm...

Banking"”Interest-charging Procedures

7. GORDON COPELAND (United Future) to the Minister of Commerce: Is he confident that the interest-charging procedures of banks operating in New Zealand are subject to adequate legal scrutiny?

Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Commerce): Mostly.

Gordon Copeland: Is the Minister aware that Gray Eatwell and the Bank Customers Action Collective have made numerous efforts to have the interest-charging procedures of the Bank of New Zealand investigated by various authorities, including the Serious Fraud Office, the Commerce Commission , the Banking Ombudsman, and the Minister of Finance, yet, to date, a full investigation has not been undertaken; and does he think that is acceptable?

Hon PETE HODGSON: Yes, I am aware of the gentleman's activity over many years, and I am aware of his group. I am also aware that the authorities that he has approached have pretty well universally come to the view that he does not have prima facie evidence apart from that in his own case, in which the Bank of New Zealand overcharged him and then refunded him about $20,000.

Gordon Copeland: Is the Minister aware of an overseas court finding that the National Irish Bank has been engaged in illegal interest overcharging, and given the fact that the National Australia Bank was the parent company of the National Irish Bank at the time, and is still the parent company of the Bank of New Zealand, has he considered whether the New Zealand authorities are giving this matter the amount of attention it properly deserves?

Hon PETE HODGSON: The answer to the first question is yes. The answer to the second question is that as soon as they are presented with sufficient prima facie evidence I would be confident that they would act.

Gordon Copeland: Will the Minister consider appointing a suitable forensic accountant to conduct a preliminary investigation into this matter, so that the facts can be established and justice finally delivered to the Bank Customers Action Collective after its 10-year fight; if not, why not?

Hon PETE HODGSON: No, we already have investigative and enforcement agencies, in the form of the Commerce Commission or, if there is fraudulent activity, the Serious Fraud Office, and it is to those bodies, which are independent of the Crown, that Mr Eatwell or anyone else should turn.