Slashdot Mirror

No. The Chinese alone are not responsible for exorbitant Australian property prices. They are just one of many factors. Larger factors include generous tax concessions (negative gearing and capital gains discounts) and the role of property investors (mostly mum's and dad's) buying their second (or more) property. Possibly the biggest factor is that everyone want's to buy in the inner-city areas of Melbourne and Sydney due to poor infrastructure and jobs growth outside these areas. House prices in other Australian capital cities are much lower in general and rarely in boom conditions.

Look at this article from the Murdoch press (aka. right side of politics) chinese property investment in Australia its a more balanced view of the effect of Chinese property investments.

Journalist Michael Hastings Was Investigating CIA Director John Brennan Before He Was Killed in Fiery Car Crash

http://www.news.com.au/finance...

Some of us have been saying that for a long time. I work in security in the auto industry. The vehicle Michael Hastings was driving has throttle-by-wire. The Mercedes C-class has a feature called ADAPTIVE BRAKE which sounds like it needs brake-by-wire. If you've got by-wire control of throttle and break, a sophisticated attacker (like the CIA or NSA) could mostly likely cause a crash like the Michael Hastings crash.

http://www.news.com.au/finance...

USA Airport Immigration has recently started putting programming questions to travellers who claim to be software engineers. In one case they asked the traveller Python questions.

(Not to be confused with the Monty Python questions the UK immigration authorities ask.)

actually, they copied that feature, too, it seems.

http://www.news.com.au/technol...

Yeah, one phone out of over a hundred million iPhone 7 in 5 months is totally like over a hundred out of 2 million Note 7 shipped in a little over a month.

actually, they copied that feature, too, it seems.

http://www.news.com.au/technol...

There was a case here in Australia where a someone bought the copyright to the Australia song "Kookaburra" from the deceased writer's estate. The song was originally written by a school teacher for the girl guides in 1932.

They then proceeded to sue the band Men at Work for copyright infringement on a flute line in their song "Land Down Under" which supposedly shared similarities. They were ordered to back pay royalties for the song.

The guy who played the flute riff in the song ended up committing suicide some time after.
There is a news article about it here

guess again: http://www.news.com.au/finance...

you people that try to control others with taxes are hilarious. also wrong.

So you think the role of the US is to replicate the role of EU? Not really, otherwise the US would have Chancellor Merkel.... er, .. President Hillary Clinton.

Germany's Migrant Rape Crisis Spirals out of Control
‘Cologne is every day’: Europe’s rape epidemic
Why Did British Police Ignore Pakistani Gangs Abusing 1,400 Rotherham Children? Political Correctness

What are you talking about? They aren't forbidden. Lots of drivers work for Lyft AND Uber.

Not independent

Not allowed to deviate from GPS?? so the uber auto drive car will just drive

Into a sand pile? http://www.news.com.au/lifesty...
drive down boat launch into lake https://youtu.be/a2QIH2uz3p8

drive into Pacific Ocean https://youtu.be/h89RT_dc-v0 http://www.redlandcitybulletin...

drivers off cliff https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

follows directions onto railroad tracks http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

follows GPS down flight of steps http://croatiantimes.com/?id=5...

directed to wrong part of Italy http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

takes goat trail up mountain http://metro.co.uk/2010/09/28/...

  into Tree http://news.softpedia.com/news...

crash after GPS orders U-turn http://www.expatica.com/fr/new...

Some alternate sources:
Australia: http://www.news.com.au/technol...
BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article...

Looks like they were paid $9.6 million for the job

source

(3) To quote from this WPo article:

Speaking to Bloomberg News, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said staffers at the Russian Embassy in Washington met with members of Trump's campaign - meetings she described as "normal practice." Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign refused similar requests for meetings, Zakharova told the agency.

(8) I guess this Australian News service is Breitbart's left counter-part down under?

Sorry buddy, this rumor can't be knocked down that easily, it just fits the facts way too frighteningly well.

That he made Flynn national security adviser is just icing on the cake. That guy celebrated Russia's propaganda channel RT with Putin in attendance,

"... I hate the syntax of PowerShell."

Agreed. PowerShell is the Zune of syntaxes.

Microsoft needs better managers. Former Microsoft CEO Monkey Boy, was the least respected CEO of a big company. Ballmer was rated the worst CEO in the United States: Quote from an article in Forbes Magazine about Steve Ballmer: "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today." Another quote: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs." (May 12, 2012)

This story doesn't even mention the Zune: Microsoft's 10 biggest failures.

http://www.news.com.au/technol... Only in China?

Still skeptical. There are no pictures of the phone, only of her burns. I feel like her phone would have to have taken damage to burn her like that. Unless she's claiming that the charger cable also got hot enough to burn her? I know that anyone's Li-Ion batteries can burn quite vigorously, but every example I have seen results in the phone at least bulging.

http://www.news.com.au/technol...
Only in China?

Does "bending over backwards" include lawsuits and bribes?

A YouTube video of a GTA gamer using the phone as a bomb has been pulled due to a copyright complaint by Samsung — which given that Samsung doesn’t own the game or the modification makes rather little sense... According to some reports, Samsung tried to bribe one man to keep quiet after his phone began spewing smoke and melting in front of him. So perhaps it’s no surprise the company is trying to keep a lid on the fallout from the recall once these videos began circulating.

Apart from the operators bragging about it on social media you mean? And the cellular metadata putting them all in the right place at the right time, and wire tapped calls of their connections with Moscow?

You refer to John Kerry's statement from july 2014, right?

Couldn't remember the original source, but there is plenty on the Internets...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.news.com.au/travel/...

This is a helpful graphic:

https://twitter.com/DrJillStei...

Here's the linked article:
http://www.news.com.au/world/m...

Unless you happen to be in Norway (the only European country with a higher per-hour productivity than the US) you're just spewing anecdotes. As a whole, Americans work longer AND are more productive than almost any European country - at least according to the UN. http://www.news.com.au/nationa...

I won't say that this is necessarily a good thing. I will say that your arrogance appears misplaced.

The problem is that Norway has oil. You are in many ways measuring produce, not people working. And while significant, it is not exactly an accurate description of the efficiency of the workers.

Unless you happen to be in Norway (the only European country with a higher per-hour productivity than the US) you're just spewing anecdotes. As a whole, Americans work longer AND are more productive than almost any European country - at least according to the UN. http://www.news.com.au/nationa...

I won't say that this is necessarily a good thing. I will say that your arrogance appears misplaced.

Someone else linked this which seems to indicate that south Europeans are simply lazy sods.

However, when measured as value added per hour worked, Norway had the highest labour productivity level per worker at $46.55, followed by the US at $43.66 and France at $42.99.

So, if a good hardworking Nord tells me I'm doing my work wrong, I'll listen (but may ignore the advice). If a Frank criticizes me for anything, I'll pour out his wine and feed his cheese to the rats.

In this case, though, it does. Americans have one of highest productivity per person in world.

I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's true. Personally. I use ALL my vacation and rarely work more than my allotted time (I work in internal medicine, so I do 7 on and 7 off).

http://www.news.com.au/nationa...

So, does anybody want to run the numbers on 569 gigabytes on a cell phone over "just a few days" ?
How does that even compare to the max rate of download those things are even capable of?

In general some would call that a weak effort

Eich wasn't dismissed, he resigned.

Distinction without difference.

they didn't fire him, he left because he realized he couldn't do his job and would ultimately be a disaster for is employer

The clear and present deterioration of Mozilla software is a disaster for Mozilla. Reading this very page, you can see users talking about abandoning Firefox for other browsers, because it increasingly sucks.

Eich remaining, could've caused some users (SJWs) to drop Firefox too, but, as Chick-Fill-A demonstrated, SJWs lack the staying power for any long-term damage.

Are you now arguing that people should have self-censored their criticism for the benefit of Mozilla's products

I'm arguing — now and before — that the SJWs are responsible for the quality of Mozilla software going down. Whether their achievement was a good thing or bad depends on whether you value a program's quality above or below the programmers' adherence to the Social Justice values.

What they should have done is a bogus question to ask. When, for example, a teen-ager is driven to suicide, we don't ask, whether the bullies should've self-sensored their criticism of him. Being driven to resignation is not any different — if you consider the outcome a good thing, you praise those who caused it, if you think it was bad, you criticize them...

But if you insist on your question's validity, how about you answer it first: should Brendan Eich have self-censored his criticism of "gay marriage" concept?

Well, sure, if they've 100% absolutely verified that position, then I guess there's nothing further to discuss.

Except, I guess... http://www.news.com.au/technol...

Dayum, you sound like our Prime Minister - http://www.news.com.au/technol... Just a reminder that he is the one responsible for changing the planned national rollout of 'fibre to everywhere possible + wireless & satellite where not' to 'whatever old tech we find and throw at the wall'.

What about Australia?

We got our data retention laws last year (2015).

They might not have been designed for this, but they are tax/regulation evasion schemes. But it's the only way for the Bates Motel to get any business these days. And Norman drives for Uber now.

Why is this post at -1? These are legitimate issues that have been raised by many people.

I'll again cite this article: http://www.news.com.au/sport/sports-life/a-dark-olympic-legacy-for-greece/news-story/8dcf6d1e8df9fe2e0f93ff12e74b1b72.

The article notes that Sydney fared much better with the costs of hosting the Summer Olympics because they had plans to continue using the venues they built, even after the Olympics were over. They brought in additional revenue which helped to offset the costs. The Olympic Stadium in 1996 was Turner Field in Atlanta. That stadium is now being replaced, but the Braves have played there for 20 years. That hasn't happened in Athens, where those venues were built at a similarly large price tag but have subsequently sat vacant.

In the case of the World Cup, Qatar is using migrant workers, who have awful working conditions, to build numerous stadiums in the desert for the 2022 World Cup. Many of these stadiums won't long term uses. It would have been far better to choose the primary competing bid from the United States, which has more than enough stadiums to host the World Cup. No additional venues would be built to host the World Cup in the US; we would use what we already have. It's a far less costly solution and one that produces far less waste and has much less environmental impact.

There's no good reason for the above post to be at -1. I can only assume it was modded down because someone disagreed. That's an abuse of moderation. Too often, posts that get modded down incorrectly don't get modded back up and people don't see them. Why bother making good comments when abusive moderators are going to mod them down?

I made the above comment in good faith, as I did with a similar comment elsewhere in this thread. Both are at -1.

The effect of hosting the Olympics on Greek debt has been widely reported.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-08-02/how-the-2004-olympics-triggered-greeces-decline
http://www.news.com.au/sport/sports-life/a-dark-olympic-legacy-for-greece/news-story/8dcf6d1e8df9fe2e0f93ff12e74b1b72

Furthermore, there are economic studies in the US that show that public subsidies for sports venues aren't worth it.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/use-of-taxpayer-money-for-pro-sports-arenas-draws-fresh-scrutiny-1425856677

My comments are supported by plenty of research on these topics. There's no good reason why my posts were modded down. I'm not sure why I bother trying to make good posts if moderators are going to downmod them to -1 where most people won't see them. I can only assume I was modded down because someone disagreed with my posts, which is a blatant abuse of moderation.

You talk as if terrorists were some kind of fixed number, like that some tiny fraction of the population will mentally snap and kill someone. That if we just don't draw attention to it, it won't really be much of an issue. And if they were so mostly lurking in the corners, extremists sharing their views with other extremists or lone wolves with twisted perceptions of reality I might be inclined to agree. But they've long since stepped out of the shadows, raised their flags and ceased vast areas with fucking armies. They recently stopped a shipment with 20000 uniforms for IS and terrorists are their "special forces".

At the risk of invoking Godwin, Nazi Germany didn't start out that way. It took years of radicalization, indoctrination, shaping a society around der Führer whose authority shall not be questioned. What Germany did in the 1930s is what IS is doing right now, in fact Hiterjugend was never this militant. Do you realize that IS controls Mosul, that originally had 1.8 million inhabitants and would be bigger than Philadelphia? Currently estimates are uncertain but it's probably roughly a million left which would put it around top 10 biggest cities in the US. They'll find collaborators and sympathizers, stomp out rebellion and dissent. People will hear propaganda, more propaganda and it will work.

The Nazis hid their torture and death camps, IS puts it on YouTube. And despite that, people keep joining their cause. If you don't find that freaking scary, you should. Sure it's far, far away on the other side of the globe right now. But if someone threatens to set the world on fire maybe it's not so good an idea to let them pour the gasoline? I'm sure it seemed Hitler was far away too, but do you really need another Pearl Harbor to see that it's not going to stay that way? Yes, it will get messy as they fight as dirty as they can but the alternatives are going to be even messier in the long run. Pretending there is no problem isn't going to solve it.

The cruise ships should get some benefits from this though.

I live in Australia and I have barely even heard about this vote

Well no shit. If http://www.news.com.au/ is the premier news site that people go to, then it's hardly surprising people remain uninformed and dumb/stupid. I'd say my country deserves better politicians but I'm not so sure anymore.

Good point. I'm not a fan of reporters. Oftentimes it seems they're trying to sensationalize a story and have many in accuracies in even simple facts that don't require advanced education to understand.

Check this story out as an easy-to-see exampe: http://www.news.com.au/travel/...

In the story they say (in the text) the guy in the parachute got entangled at 75 feet. The video clearly shows it was at like 5 feet, maybe 10. That day when it was on the news and several news anchors repeated that 75 feet with a video playing behind them that was clearly lower.

That's just one example, I see it all the time at tons of news outlets. It's one of the reasons I've stopped paying attention to most of the media.

What the hell happened to fact checkers? Is that even still anyone's job at a news agency?

http://www.news.com.au/lifesty...

To avoid unknown 5-ton trucks in your driveway, you can fence and gate. Will drones obey this?

For any that didn't get the reference:

http://www.news.com.au/finance...

Video at bottom.

Firstly, I think you're an overly-emotional sentimental pussy. Let's just get that out of the way.

There are negative consequences to this, like people having unrealistic expectations.

Such as what?

A lot of young men aren't getting married and are disappointed in sex because of porn. Possible effect (these things ARE happening, but correlation != causation): fewer young men are having to get divorced due to not getting married (i.e. taken to the cleaners then raped in family courts), the birth rate is declining, an epic amount of weed is being smoked and more Playstation being played. Sports cars are being purchased; multi-thousand dollar/pound/euro engagement rings not so much. Sexbots would kick this up a notch.

In western society we don't even have enough fulfilling jobs for the people who are currently looking, let alone natural resources over the long haul. Why breed more?

I'll tell you why this hack of a 'researcher' *thinks* this is an issue (I'll match her lack of research with my own empiricism of the many venues I've lived): the pussy is losing power over men. That's it. It's sexual economics. The Porn Myth alludes to this.

I was married *once* and was not stupid enough to repeat the mistake. When dating (I'm a graduate degreed engineer who dates other professionals), I'm seeing a constant flow of 'women who wanted to have it all'.. and waited until they're 35-45 to start looking for a husband. It's not my problem, and not my gender's problem. Female entitlement in western society has become legendary. Men's issues such as suicide and combat related PTSD are swept aside and minimized for shit like the author above brings up.. for something that *might* happen. I work with co-op grad students, and sometimes the males that ask me for advice off the clock. Over a few beers I ruin them for the opposite sex because I show them the truth in that they are going to be used and manipulated, and the best way around it is not to play the game. You can be hetero and still not want a woman. The sexbot is the way forward.

Thankfully RISUG/Vasagel is on the way. No more entrapment. No more strings. *If* sex occurs, it will be on even footing. The power of the pussy and the womb diminish further.

If I want to get off with a hottie sexbotthus avoiding a woman's emotional bullshit, that's *my* prerogative, motherfucker... and quite simply, in my country with the walls falling on stuff like marijuana, this ban will never get off the ground. Most people just don't give a shit what you do in your own bedroom any more, and if it disenfranchises women in the sexual market place (where they've had a decisive advantage for CENTURIES) more power to the 'bot.

An interesting idea that's been talked about: Bringing elephants to Australia.

No, but you can use ELIoT to phone home... /ducks

I dunno if AC will check back or not - but in no particular order:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.reuters.com/
http://rt.com/
http://www.cbc.ca/
http://www.news.com.au/
http://www.dailytelegraph.com....
http://news.sky.com/
http://kurdishdailynews.org/
http://rt.com/
http://www.jpost.com/
http://www.aljazeera.com/
http://www.china.org.cn/
http://www.scientificamerican....
http://timesofindia.indiatimes...
http://english.pravda.ru/
http://www.projectcensored.org...
http://www.arabtimesonline.com...

I think I've covered the best - be aware, some national sites are heavy into propaganda. Pravda very much so, RT somewhat less so.

Depending on your own interests - you might type in some country in a Google search, and add "times" or "post" or "news". From time to time, I do something like that - the earthquake in Tibet for instance. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=pale... That search offered up a number of sites, but I didn't add any of them to my feeds. Note that many of the hits are very politicized, but you can still find Tibetan news sources among them.

Have fun!

But it was all good-and-well when Greece, amongst 20 other nations, forgave Germany a massive swathe of her crushing debts following World War 2

Please nominate --

http://slashdot.org/submission...

Fox News reports Patrick Stewart, who starred in the Star Trek TV and movie franchises, has defended a bakery which was found guilty of discrimination for refusing to bake a cake with a pro-gay marriage slogan. Last month, a judge ruled that Ashers Baking Company in Northern Ireland had discriminated against a gay customer by refusing to make a cake with the words “support gay marriage”, along with a picture of Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street. “Finally I found myself on the side of the bakers,” Stewart said. “It was not because this was a gay couple they objected, it was not because they were going to be celebrating some kind of marriage, it was the actual words on the cake they objected to, they found them offensive."

http://www.foxnews.com/enterta...

As the productivity grows, the amount of wealth that one person can produce can (in fact, already is) well in excess of what that same person needs to live fairly comfortably. Today, that excess amount goes mostly to make the very few live lavishly to the point of grotesque. But there's no reason why that same amount can't be spread around more evenly for UBC.

As for taxing everybody the same: good idea! Let's start by making the capital gains tax rate the same as that for the personal income tax, hmm?

I have no idea what MightyMartian thinks the Tea Party is all about, but TEA means "Taxed Enough Already". It's about focusing on the economic issues over the social/cultural issues. IMHO, the "core conservative base" isn't as hung on cultural crap as the Republican party tries to be.

Riiiight...

Tea Party candidate advocates for stoning homosexuals to death.

Tea Party candidate against abortion and against exceptions for incest or rape.

Tea Party candidate takes Medicaid for 8 of his kids, but, thinks Medicaid and all welfare programs should be abolished.

http://www.news.com.au/world/n...

Food for thought. And note that despite breaking into a home to sexually assault someone, she was not punished. A man in the same position would have gone to jail for some hard time.

I mean, what kind of cool inventions have come out of Australia lately?

An anonymous comment mentioned Wi-Fi. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is responsible for at least a dozen other inventions.

Ah, yes, that gospel of truth, The Daily Mail.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/...
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foo...
http://www.standard.co.uk/news...
http://www.theguardian.com/lif...
http://www.news.com.au/enterta...

I reviewed the parent post and don't find that insulting at all... I thought he was quite polite.

Cadbury, for their part, aren't timeless traditionalists. Famously, they had to revert oil its substitution of cocoa butter by palm oil in Australia:
http://www.news.com.au/finance...