Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Critiques Australian IT Policies
StorminNorman writes: "Microsoft have criticised the Australian Government's handling of IT policy. It's not the first time they've done this either. Basically they talk about the lack of competition in the Australian broadband market, as well as the current Australian Government's boneheaded IT policy. Story here." Source aside, what do Australians (and anyone else for that matter) think of the conclusions? For a company which on some fronts decries government intervention, Microsoft seems to have a different tack here.
While I agree with these points, I find it ironic that Microsoft, of all companies, is complaining about "insufficient competition". And, with the US's current situation as far as AOL/TimeWarner and AT&T is concerned, they shouldn't be throwing rocks regarding the broadband market.
So the timing is "peculiar". Also, as some people pointed out, this is not new - Uncle Bill came downunder about 6 months ago and spoke at length about why Australian broadband had a long way to go etc etc ..(tried to find the link for this but couldn't oh well..it was done via webcast to all major Australian Universities)
Or perhaps it is because Bill is a little pissed about his treatment in the media (check out the headings on this search done of the fairfax web search =))
--
Jon - TheSpork
For reference, I'm not an Aussie (proudly USA).
One thing that has not been addressed..
I realize that any individual on the planet has the right to an opinion (some governments do not allow this right). But globally, what right does a corporation have to publish an opinion, and whose opinion gets published (CEO, stockholders, etc.)?
Assuming that a corporation does not have the same rights of speech that an individual does (treading on very thin ice here since I'm too tired to do the research right now), how the heck does microscrew expect their stupid commentary to influence anything? (Insert flames here)
Yes, Australia does have some interesting (and wrong) policies, but where does microscrew get the right to tell a sovereign what to do?
Gates: Hey France, you have less than 95% microscrew usage. Pick it up or we will install a virus into all your wine.
France: Shove it.
Gates: Licenses just jumped up 300%. Hahahaha.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Actually the majority of information systems in Federal and State governments do use MS products. I've worked in two Federatl Departments and two State Departments recently, and due to deals with EDS and Compaq, almost everything rolls with MS.
Anyway, local industry is happy - they were never even remotely in the running for the Government tenders. Now it's up to the individual govt departments as to when and if to outsource.
Short form is, when the US has finished with its current President, can we please have him? He seems to have a clue, and we won't let him near any female interns with big hair. You can keep Dubs and Chainsaw tho - we have enough people like that running the country already :-)
Yeah but you've got all those lovely snow-capped mountains, and you understand what _real_ football is.
-"I still believe in revolution; I just don't capitalize it anymore." - srini!
[I posted this in response to another comment, but I think it's relevant here too. :-)]
While I agree that the government here - on IT issues especially - couldn't find it's own arse if it used both hands and a map, I think Microsoft's suggestions are uniformly self-serving and would actually make the situation worse.
Our vaunted 'deregulation' has turned Telecom from a slothful but competent beauracracy into an agency that gouges more money from Australians than can be imagined, (biggest profits in australian corporate history) while sacking most of the technicians who actually run the system. Remember; they only started charging that $0.17/Mb in 1995 once they'd wrested control of AARNet from the vice-chancellors committee. As for the situation in the bush...
Frankly, what this nation needs is not more corporate investment and control, but:
* Nationalization of the telecom infrastructure (yes, you heard me) and deregulation only of services and support. Same for electricity, water, and all basic infrastructure; which is frankly why governments are supposed to exist.
* Significant government investment in education and basic research. Again.
* Sane and sensible policy on issues like digital signatures, privacy, and datacasting. (Die! Alston, Die!)
* Use of government clout to introduce new technology once past the incubator stage, which is where we have traditionally fallen down.
Of course, none of that is going to happen. I despair.
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
Well, I live in an area in South Australia where I can't get cable (No one in South Oz can), and I can't get ADSL, firstly because I am too far away from the exchange (which they only converted to ADSL September last year) but if I weren't, I would have to pay around AU$99 for a 256Kbit all you can download link. Plus when a telstra contractor comes over to install to for you, it's a windoze system or nothing... I know 3 people that had to make a windoze system just to get it installed, then format the HDD and put a Linux server in place. AND, there have been wide spread complaints about pauses, and computers locking up after the installation (which really pisses off the gamers). AND, the only ADSL gateway is in Melbourne (Victoria) so to ping a server in South Oz, the ping goes to Vic. then back to SA adding 30ms along it's trip. I'm just sick of it. All those people out there with cable and ADSL with ping's around 50ms, and here's me, with my 56Kb with the lowest ping of 200.
Another interesting question (which I am not in a position to answer) is why would Microsoft make statements like this to begin with?
Just like "the russkies don't take a dump without a plan (The Hunt for Red October)", Microsoft does not make a public stink like this without some ulterior motive.
Any idea what that motive(s) might be?
Sadly Microsoft has been pushing governments for centuries. Back in 1974, when I was stationed in Transylvania (working on L4 cache in a CC-NUMA hub) Microsoft invaded the neighboring country of Aquaphobia. We had to deal with all the refugees. Not only that Microsoft infected them with a MELLISSA virus that acts like a chemical agent (007) and causes their lungs to BSOD. Many Aquians died that winter and all we could do was download them into their mass graves (under water of couse as that is their custom). We quickly finished the project and headed back to the states. To this day, I have not step foot in Antartica.
---
---
Don't lead me into temptation; I can find it myself.
Sadly, the Australian government DOES listen to Microsoft. Every time Bill Gates comes out here, politicians fall over themselves to get photographed with him, our sad little prime-minister included.
It might also have something to do with MS's heavy involvement with the media over here. NineMSN particularly. (Think MSNBC) Politicians are always nice to people with significant media influence.
And partly it's the tired old "He's the richest man in the world, so he must be right."
Not that Microsoft doesn't ALREADY have a significant corporate presence here. They may not do much R&D, but their Sales and Certification departments are pretty big.
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
All of this is well and good, provided you live in one of the "chosen suburbs". Telstra is notoriously bad at making newer technologies available to people outside Sydney. For example, living about a hours drive from CBD and no longer can you get cable or DSL (in any of it's forms). Believe me, there are plenty who'd be willing to pay for any form of reasonable broadband access (that doesn't require a satellite to connect to your ISP that is). But for reasons based on Telstra monopolies and local councils taxing cable providers for allowing the cables to exist, broadband ain't coming soon. I think Microshaft has a point, even if they're addressing the wrong crowd.
There are a few things that people who are not from Australia need to know: * Until a few years ago there was only one Telecommunications company in Australia, Telecom, now Telstra. When Optus arrives services went throught hte roof and prices came down, things began to improve, as a result we are gaining more infrastructure and services. * The Australian Government is like any other, an old boys club. Richard Alston is an idiot who probably does not know how to program a VCR. The policy relating to Internet Censorship (aka. The Information Control policy) was going to need new tecknology to get it working as I dont know any programmer who could figure out how to do it fully. * Hardly any R&D is done in this country. A prime example of this is our medical tech. we have some of the best medical researchers, doctors and breakthoughs here, unfortunately they all need to go off-shore to be developped as the facilities to further are not here. This is symtomatic of many areas and it is due to the lack of R&D done here. The IT area is up there, we are better than many countries, but we do not have the facilities and infrastructure due to only recently (in the last few years) getting some major telelcommunications competition. Australia is a country that does not have the infrastructure of the US, but we also do not have the investment or the population. From 'The Great Southern Land'
And thank God. The plan is that for now they'll get some of Optus' bandwidth on that pipe, and in the long term AARNet gets their own transcontinental bandwidth to play with.
AARNet (Australian Academic and Research Network)are doing some very, very cool stuff. For instance, most Aussie unis (four actually have it up and running) are implementing Voice-over-IP PABX gateways. So if someone at a university calls someone at another university, the call goes over AARNet's IP backbone rather than the public telephone network. Even cooler, if a uni in Melbourne calls a private residence in Sydney, it goes VoIP to a university in Sydney, through their PABX and to the house in Sydney, avoiding local call charges.
http://www.aarnet.edu.au for the interested.
I only have one thing to say, You can't have your cake and eat it too, Bill.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Now that's great : a democratically elected governement would have to consider critiques from a foreign corporation ? This is crazy. I hope Australians become outraged by this and that it backfires against M$'s image in the Australian public opinion.
I am Australian. I hate beer.
Education Huge funding cuts to higher education and a focus towards full fee paying students (there is currently a senate hearing into full fee paying students getting passed when they should be failed).
I'm studying CS part time, my employer pays for it, they also have to pay fringe benefits tax (FBT) on it! If I was doing a private course, even one that cost several thousand dollars a day there would be no FBT but because it university FBT is applied.
The public school system is in shamble, especially for boys. Every year boys perform worse and worse in the HSC (sorta like SAT's). Boys literacy rates are truly scary.
Broadband: Up untill recently I could not get any affordable broadband, where did I live about 15 mins drive from Sydney's CBD. I can only get it now because I moved, and it's capped at 512kbs. ADSL has been increadibly slow to roll out, the govt. has (finally) ordered Telstra to open their exchanges and allow competing providers in so ADSL rollout should start to speed up.
TV: (The industry I work in) HDTV spectrum was GIVEN to the free-to-air broadcasters, no charge and no competition in it till 2008.
I Hate to agree with MS, but this time they're right on the money.
Australian? Join EFA
Whoever modded that down to -1 while leaving the parent at 2 is a fucking idiot.
In this case, I thought MS owned part of Telewest, granting them control of a broadband media, although it is cable. I don't know about Australia, but I would suspect MS don't have any interests there, and are trying to get their foot in the door.
Psychos do not explode when the sunlight hits them, I don't care how fucked up they are.
This is great! Microsoft goes to all the trouble to do a State by State study of lost revenue due to piracy and add up the cost. They are quick to point out the loss of TAX income to the state. When another country does tax, they cry foul because taxes may raise the price of something and encourage piracy. Is this a double standard?
The truth shall set you free!
This makes more sence: Microsoft's .net strategy is going to have it's whole 'downloadable aspects' of software bit going. Your office suite will be downloaded from Microsoft. Your Operating System will be downloaded from Microsoft. Your media player, web browser, paint app, game of solitare (well, maybe going overboard here) will all be downloaded from Microsoft.
Obviously 'taking to Microsoft over the net and downloading stuff' will be a big thing with .net, and Windows in a version or two. And now it all makes sence; Microsoft NEED a large rollout of high bandwith in places all around the world or their latest jihad has a major flaw. Why else would a company obessed with profit give out free advice to nations on their current flaws?
Xenex's thought of the day...
No really :]
I'm an employee of a small to medium sized ISP in Australia.
All we can offer is 56K modem access... or ISDN if you have a stupid amount of money and nothing to do with it...
The politicians in this country have almost no idea about IT - look at the internet censorship debacle.
If one political party makes a sugestion, no matter how uh, innovative, it may be, the other side will do everything they can to oppose it...
But you get that.
Maybe they're just doing some preemptive strikes to try and undermine Australian reputations in preparation for conflict. Check out this extract from hansard attributed to Christopher Pyne (South Australian member of the federal government) late last year:
"Far from closing small business down, that bane of the cheat, the ACCC, has proposed that we help small business by reducing the cost to them of computer software-but, of course, I would not expect [a member of the opposition who had been interjecting] to understand that. This could soon change for the worse. The Sydney Morning Herald reported last week that Microsoft Australia has announced a 10 to 18 per cent increase in the retail price of its software products, effective from December. Microsoft cites exchange rates as the reason behind the price hike, but there is little doubt that the price rises are largely due to a lack of competition in the software market.
This impacts on all facets of the Australian economy. The Yellow Pages Small Business Index of February 2000 showed that 84 6per cent of Australian small businesses and 100 per cent of medium sized businesses use a computer and therefore require computer software. The current monopolistic arrangement of allowing only one importer to source software product does not serve the long-term interests of consumers. Lifting the prohibition on the parallel importing of computer software and allowing people to compete in the alternative sourcing of products will help push down the price of software and promote product innovation and development. "
The ACCC is the consumer affairs commission, and prioritises fair and free marketplace competition. Could Microsoft be another monolith gearing itself up to avoid a slapping from the Australian authorities?
"..Labor are giving Australian consumers every indication that, despite being proved wrong on the deregulation of the CD market, they are prepared to trundle out the same tired old arguments in the current parallel import debate.
Mr Albanese -Just because Wham CDs are cheaper.
Mr PYNE -As a 1980s child, I am a great fan of Wham. They have moved, and now we are a fan of more modern music, especially some of our own home-grown South Australian music.
Mr Albanese -Name them.
Mr PYNE -I already have. I named them earlier in my speech. People like Kasey Chambers, Killing Heidi and Powderfinger.
Mr Sidebottom -Never heard of them.
Mr PYNE -You would never have heard of them. Of course you wouldn't. You are the troglodytes on the Labor side of the House. Mr Deputy Speaker, I must get on with my address-
Mr Albanese -Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. The member opposite is not only insulting members with personal remarks but also misleading the House, because Killing Heidi are in fact from Victoria.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Jenkins)-The honourable member will resume his seat. Honourable members will cease interjecting."
Believe with me, my saplings.
I guess Microsoft realised not many Australians will be using their net-based Office 2002 with their 33.6 modems.
My reckoning is they should de-bloat the software, not try and get government approval to relaunch MSN.
Well, being from Australia myself I can understand _everything_, and I know the costs.
Me personally, I am 100km north of Melbourne (a very major IT area in oz (IMHO)), and pretty much 100km from anywhere, and suddenly our internet costs go sky high, modem only, on crappy phone lines because the local telco (only one in the country areas) pumps it's dollars into cities, and they have been warned not to do it on multiple occasions by the ACCC, on top of that, there is no local entry point for local ISP's to get to the internet, when we end up with, unlimited internet connections for $50+ (avg speed, < 1.0kbyte/s), or on of the 3 local ISP's you can get mostly full speed out of your modem, but your paying about $1/hour on average(cheapest: $88 for 150 hours, then $66 for 60 hours). In case you are wondering, I am in Seymour.
On Universities, I have seen, and heard on multiple occasions that Australian universities are the best in the world, so we obviously have the smarts before they finnish uni, but as many people have said, the get offered more then twice the ammount of pay (in some cases) overseas, even I am looking at getting a job overseas in a few years time. Also, I was full time uni, but I now have a full time job, and I am at uni only part time, but the facilities at the uni I go too (Latrobe Uni, Bendigo Campus) provides are very good for it's location, and even it's average entrance marks are low, but it does get a lot of asians (you have to see to believe)(oh, and I'm not meaning that it is a bad thing). It also has high speed microwave links to it's central location (4x27mhz), which I believe says something about what they think of the local telco's.
When it comes down to it, Australia needs a better internet/IT/etc... policies, and as far as I am concerned, M$ just want's to get us, maily 'cause we pirate so much (like many people I know, I hate beeing called a consumer, mainly because I don't mindlessly devour, or in this case buy everything), and because, for M$'s point of view, when we see a new, good technology, we will embrace it, I think that's what they're hoping for. (to give you an idea of the level of piracy, Sony is currently fighting with the local law enforcement on who's job it is to tackle playstation game piracy, the fed. police say they have done thier bit, and like _any_ other software company in oz, the companies have to do most of the work themselves. Oh, and I recently watched a pile of DVD's that were supposedly from asia, but being that some aren't even in cinema's, I'd say they are...)
VK3TST
-- "People aren't stupid. Usually." -- jd
australia is set to become the bangladesh of the 21C.
technoshamanic resistance within hyper-transgressive ontology
You say that people were too incompetent, however you obviously didn't read the new constitution or the proposed changes. I am all for a republic, but the fact was the changes sucked. As the AC said, it was probably done on purpose, and I agree.
What they should have done was had the referendum to have a simple yes/no question, do we want republic rather than incoporate the constitution in it. That way they could see if the general public wanted it, which I believe would have been yes. Then they could have made the new constitution and we'd be a republic. Eventually we'll have a republic, it's just the constitution changes that need to be "perfected".
But by "block offensive content", do you mean that your ISP really blocks web sites? That would suck. At least the US isn't the only English-speaking country faced with bouts of radically silly puritanism contrasting with the generally more modern outloook.
Time to start using an anonymizer or redirector!
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
If you don't want to vote, don't register! It's not compulsory.
If you register, you do so knowing that voting is compulsory.
And what is wrong with that? It's just another civic duty like jury duty. And after seeing the pathetic bullshit that constitutes a US campaign just to get some interest from voters to get off their arses, I'm glad for it.
What's wrong with that? I have absolutly no problem with that at all! It makes people at least take an interest in who is running the country, unlike the US, where the turn out rate is pathetic
Funny guy, you want a government who tells you if you should vote or not? Now that's pathetic. and I don't see why anyone would take interest in politics, we got nothing good out of politicians except taxes, wars, more taxes. I have to handed to them though they teached me how to find good excuses and make better lies, they do have some good technique in that field, actually they're the best.
Much as I hate to say it - Microsoft have it right on the money. I earn a reasonably sized wage as a web app developer, and I take home about 6 grand than more than people who earn 20 - 30 grand less than me the taxes here are screwed beyond all belief, espcially since the new GST which has taken a lot of smaller operators out of business. I mean if Ireland can operate without income tax at all - why can't we? as far access goes - broadband isn't even really a solution here. Cable is completely controlled here, and the options available are pathetic speeds and access for incredibly high rates. You can't just wander out and buy a cablke modem here like you can in the uk or us - you have to pay huge amounts and get one form one of the two providers. No other way to do it. ALL of the current DSL plans are even worse. More money for slower speeds - in some cases the dsl speeds, which were touted a year or so ago as going to be huge) have come out at LESS THAN WHAT CABLE IS ADVERTISED TO GIVE US HERE. The advertised cable speed never becomes reality in Oz, and dsl speeds are even lower than that. It's crap. Very very crap. The majority of us are stuck on a 56K connection for personal home use, and those that have Australia's constipated version of broadband aren't doing much better. Our prime minister (apart from looking like a hamster) seems to see technologicl advancement as a fad, certainly not as important as rural farming in the middle of the outback, or more tributes to the "diggers". The technology officer is far past it and has neither genuine interest nor any real contact with the current industry. Forgive the rant people - but the internet is seen by those in power here to be an amusement and an aside, instead of the future. It drives me nuts... -- Lyric
"Warrior, Poet, Wiseman, Child...
Listen up Australians: Your economic policies are not pro-business enough. You have been warned. If you dont change your policies you 'will not be competitive in the new global economy'. This alone should be the basis of your governments actions - you MUST address the concerns of Microsoft Corporation or face economic sanctions from them.
The arrogance that some company would trot around spouting this kind of drivel astounds me. What makes these corporate $WHORES$ think that the people of Australia should be concerned that M$ isnt given enough tax breaks????
The whole world needs very aggressive/progressive reforms to the 'corporate entity' -- the whole idea that a private organization, whos sole purpose is to make the lives of a few better than the lives of the rest (profit) will be 'listened to' by our governments regarding policy. I thought the government was supposed to represent citizens equally? Does anyone think that they might have a little bit of bias -- that they should therefore not be 'listened to'
Its amazing how governments now have to serve these lobbies instead of their people...
How did we get so far 'off track' and allow these bastards to gain this kind of power?
I don't think the US have an Embasy [sic] here. I'm sure if they did I would have seen it. Zilch
Think of welfare not as something which keeps "bludgers in booze money", but something that stops them from having to break into your house and kill you in order to survive.
:-)
Cut welfare, and that's what you get. Take away the safety net, and see what the cost to society is when tens of thousands of people start hitting rock bottom. Violent crime increases. You either pay for people to not do anything, or you pay for the consequences.
Unemployment is inevitable. We're been running at about 10% for as long as I can remember, most of that in youth unemployment. Given that we need less and less people every year to do the same work (all that 'efficiency' we keep saying is a good thing) the situation is only going to get worse. Oh, look what we're doing to Centrelink! That'll help!
All the stupid government make-work programs in the world aren't going to help this, either. We should make education free again, so they can go back into the universities where they belong
Seriously though, spending 10 years trying to get an Arts degree (ie: surfing and drinking beer on Austudy) is better than breaking and entering because there's no jobs, no money for this weeks' rent - or food - and no future.
As for your cretinous attitude to the Arts... it's on par with your misunderstanding of politics.
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
Maybe this is just the paranoid acidhead deep inside me, but isn't it interesting how Microsoft seems to be testing the limits of how far it can push governments?
Microsoft: Blurring the Lines Between Bad Software and Bad Government
- 'tis an ill wind that blows no minds -
Insufficient investment incentives:
This is really ironic in the light of recent "welfare reforms" to move us towards a US-style "tough love" society. Incentive for workers is "work for us or starve, or go to prison"; incentive for multinational corporations is "here's pots of money - go crazy!"
Inadequate infrastructure and bandwith:
Bandwidth for what? A one-way pipeline from advertiser to you. I can see the point of getting the equivalent of a T1 to every home in the country if I could run a server from home, but every cable modem service I've seen prohibits running servers in the Terms of Service. I want the Internet, not MSN on steroids. Who's asking to be the target of "datacasting" or "media convergence"? I've already got a TV, and it's been sitting idle since I found the net.
Insufficient support for information economy R&D:
The fact that R&D tax concessions exist at all is outrageous, so it may be some consolation that Miscrosoft considers them inadequate. How on earth can you argue that research directed by private power must be paid for by the public?
Failure to create local centres of excellence:
"Australia could stand to benefit if it were able to increase the competitiveness of its institutions of higher education..." Now correct me if I'm wrong , but isn't the purpose of an institution of higher education to educate people? The reason why I've never gone to university is that they already serve as publicly-subsidised skilled worker farms, competing to meet the needs of the private sector.
Failure to protect against piracy:
Heven't these people heard of RMS? It's not "piracy", it's "sharing". It's academic anyway, since it's getting to the point where there's enough good free software around that nobody needs to share Microsoft software anyway. This is good news for Microsoft; if nobody uses their software, nobody's "pirating" it.
A skills shortage:
Garbage. We've probably got more MSCEs and VBScript kiddies per capita than any country on earth, thanks to Microsoft's effective marketing of their powerful and innovative technologies. I mean in my book, that consitutes a skills shortage, but surely to Microsoft it's a cornucopia.
Technology security:
Read intellectual property protection mechanisms.
Lack of access to capital:
No, when "investment" is a byword for "plunder", the problem is too much access to capital. I recommend reading economist Frank Stillwell's "Changing Track" for a good summary of the effects of "opening up the economy", also Jane Kelsey has written comprehensively of the New Zealand experience. Basically, the consequense of "investment incentives", and the privatisation of public assets in Australia and New Zealand has been that most of the wealth generated by economic activity in these countries leaves them, never to return.
Microsoft is right. Who would have guessed.
I don't *really* think the government has set out to screw the local IT sector.
Given the "living in the '50s" attitude of Mr. Howard, et. al., it wouldn't surprise me one bit.
deus does not exist but if he does
It's Microsoft has NOT "Microsoft have."
Thanks to competition, I'm now on a relatively unlimited download cable connection (though O@H, of course).
Thanks to the lack of competition, I, living in Adelaide, am unable to get any cable access. I have a socket in my wall that Foxtel (Murdoch's Fox and the half-privatized Telstra) will only sell me cable TV programming through, purely because Optus stopped their cable rollout (and thus data access) after doing the eastern coast.
In the past few weeks ADSL has become available... now which body part should I sell to afford it? Or should I wait several years until Telstra give other telecom companies local loop access, so I can use another provider?
Competition? Not sure what it's really like, here...
deus does not exist but if he does
After Reading the Article, It Just Sounds Like M$ is just bitchin and whining cause the austrailian government didn'want to give them all the freebies that they get here. The Article points to the fact the M$ probably wanted to relocate the business to another country to seek an asylum of sorts, and was denied so being a big cry baby they are gonna try and make them look bad, for not giving the what they wanted. Well la di da. Well i think this is a feeble attempt for microsoft to try and muscle somebody down with bad press. Provided that this is actually what is going on, I hope the austrailian doesn't back down.
Most of the things that austrailia has as labeled as having bad IT can be seen in a lot of countries even in the US. For Instance the
" Inadequate infrastructure and bandwith " There are places Even In America were people can't even get decent 28.8 ? and DSL and cable are way of thier radars
" Failure to protect against piracy " Piracy is gonna happen regardless of where you are. Can you say gnutella?
m$ft is bitching about tax incentives????? in the us thats standard practice for any city/state. i wonder what kind of deals that they (m$ft) has gotten for placing any of its own facilities? the australians are just trying to compete with the rest of the world...
"The chief enemy of creativity is 'good taste'" -Pablo Picasso
The dilemma is that there isn't one around. However, with my new-found ability to vote in the election we will have this year, I'll be voting for "not Liberal". I don't know if they alternative will be better, but these guys have been in control for too long now.
There is a history of government doing stuff in Australia, that is they are interventionist. The richest people in Australia are those who manipulate the government of the day in their favour.
So given that Microsoft Australia is almost certainly predominately staffed by Australians, this would be business as normal.
"Basically they talk about the lack of competition in the Australian broadband market, as well as the current Australian Government's boneheaded IT policy."
Uh... since when does Microsoft have the right to complain about lack of competition?? I mean, they crush competition in their parts of the industry and then say theres not enough competition in Australia's broadband market.
WTF?
> I don't know if they alternative will be better
I can't see how they could be - the Labor Party is filled with people for whom politics is a life choice.
Surely the dilemma is that people like you sit around whining and don't get up and make a difference. Running around and voting anti isn't going to make the world a better place. Make a difference. Write a research paper on things that affect your industry, join a political party and get some policy happening. God knows they'll probably love you for being a young person with an interest in politics and passion for putting your ideas forward.
Seriously.
Believe with me, my saplings.
It's not suprising that MS is bitching about Broadband - They got severely dissed by Telstra for not delivering on a service agreement last year. It was their biggest site in the souther hemisphere and one of the biggest in the world. And Telstra said that basically their software was shit. So no real suprises there.
The Australian government and business are both lacking when it comes to IT initiative - but that isn't going to change any time soon. Business wants the government to pay for everything and investors are used to mining investment where they can make their money back by fleecing the public.
Add to that the fact that IT professionals in Australia routinely head overseas (Asia or Britain) where they can earn serious money and avoid the short sighted policies of Australian management weened on 80's techniques. Hot-desking being a current fave.
Fun all round
.sig
The fact that Australia lacks good broadband simply comes down to an exercise in geography. As a new zealander (to put it bluntly) the country is simply too bloody big, with too few people. Telstra was originally created because the australian goverment basically had to mortgage the country to raise the finace to build telephone lines over a continent the size of the US with 1/100 of the population.
Upgrading all these lines, many of which are so old that they give pityful adsl speeds is a mega task, not to mention the cost of laying fiber and coax everywhere to serve a very limited user group.
The big question is why microsoft is bitching about this. I thought they had invested large sums in satellite broadband. Althought sat broadband isn't the ideal solution, it would be far easier to roll out across Australia than adsl. Instead of moaning about the situation, gates and co could launch a new broadband bird and start laughing all the way to the bank
for $74 we are capped at 512 kbs dl and 128kbps ul.
Also no servers of any kind allowed.
It's not ironic at all when you consider that they want more competition so that:
- they won't have to pay as much for broadband themselves
- If it's cheaper, they can sell MSN to more people
- They can sell more "upgrades" so people have the best "online experience"
They don't like people competing with them, but they do like people competing to supply them.Kinda funny how MS is criticizing someone because of lack of competition... ironic to say the least...
--
"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
It is somewhat ironic that as far as I'm concerned, one of the most serious screwups in Aus. Govt. IT policy is the fact that several state governments have made outsourcing contracts which include provisions binding them to Microsoft for ludicrous lengths of time (20 years for the South Australian govt., I believe, via a contract with EDS). It boggles the mind that one could even contemplate signing an exclusive contract with a company for nearly as long or longer than that company has existed.
Real football has a round ball.
:)
It's 'The World Game'(tm).
deus does not exist but if he does
Yes. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I have to agree. I mean, what's this headline supposed to mean?
"For a company which on some fronts decries government intervention, Microsoft seems to have a different tack here."
Of course and so what. "Intervention" is a pretty broad term. A strip search could be considered government intervention. So could maintaining a municipal fire department. There's nothing ironic about being in favor of one, and not the other.
Slashdot editors: inflammatory remarks are not "insightful" or "interesting". The topic of discussion seems worthy, but silly little editorial snippets like these seem to owe more to the tradition of trash television and tabloids than to serious journalism.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
I've never completely understood why people say broadband cable access in Australia is expensive, for geeks anyway.
Let's do a little math.
Telstra land line == $15/month
Two calls a day to local ISP = $0.50/day = $15.50/month
Subscription to unlimited download account, 150 hours/month == $38/month
We're already at $68.50 a month for 56k dialup. Most people don't have two phone lines, and if it's a share house, chances are you'll be dropped out because of someone ringing you.
Telstra Bigpond cable, 256k/64k is $67.00/month, and 512k/128k is $72.55/month. Optus@Home is $63.95/month, and you don't have rate limiting active there.The installation fee is roughly the same as a decent modem.
Given that (iirc) 75% of Australia's population live within cable serviced areas, that's done pretty darn cheap.
The only complaints I've seen are when a user averages over a gigabyte a day, everyday for a month. If you manage to download that much, you really need to get out of the house and do something else.
Also for the record, keep in mind the following
Insufficient investment incentives:
Totally agree, reducing the concession rate was a very bad move (not just for IT, in general). As others have pointed out, this is *business* R&D - Australia is very competitive on the academic side. We do occasionally come up with some good stuff, but end up selling out to overseas due to lack of local support.
Inadequate infrastructure and bandwith:
Cable prices have been a lot more reasonable since about Feb. last year (2000) once there were two players. ASDL is now rolling out with a lot more people becoming able to access the 'net at reasonable speeds. As pointed out elsewhere in the article "...other studies had found that Australians had good access to bandwidth and a high level of Internet penetration."
Insufficient support for information economy R&D:
Redundant, should be rolled into point 1 - Investment incentives
Failure to create local centres of excellence:
Again, probably partly due to population levels / distribution. Without a resonable definition on exactly how we failed its hard to responds to this point. Anyone would benefit from carrying out MS's generic suggestion, USA included.
Failure to protect against piracy:
Don't know enough to respond to this aside from the fact its probably partly due to Australia being a target market for Asian pirates due to its locality. Why they supposedly think our laws make it easier to counterfeit stuff I have no idea...?
A skills shortage:
And who doesn't have a skills shortage?
Technology security:
More meaningless waffle no more or less relevant to Australia than anywhere else in the world.
Lack of access to capital:
Journalist is getting desperate at this point I think. More meaningless, generic stuff. Again, can be equally true for anywhere in the world. We've actually recently had the corporate tax rate reduced by 3% anyway? Just because MS doesn't see us as an attractive investment doesn't mean we should change "Australia's banking and finance laws". Sheesh.
Inability of some groups to have Internet access:
Woo, even more generic, unsubstantied stuff - which groups? Where? Who? Oh, and thanks for the tip, never would have thought of that....
Again, this is journalism at its finest, rush something to press, make it sound good, hope the reader doesn't actually critically think about what they've written and whether its meaningful or not.
The only potential good thing about this is that the Australian Government might do something positive about this (but then again, they might turn round and do something stupid, they've done it before....).
As a computer science PhD student at an Australian university I can tell you that research is in crisis. Research at Australian universities used to be really top class. But the government has been slashing university funding for years, while at the same time student numbers have drastically increased. The net result is that most academics have to spend all their time teaching and have almost zero time for research.
There was recently a dispute between Melbourne University's management and the academic staff. Here's what one disgruntled academic had to say.
Ireland does not have extremely high normal tax levels ,income tax maybe but corporations only care about corporation tax and that has been at 10% for years.
You have a massive choice of political parties because of proportional representation, labour(left),Fianna Fail(populist center ground), Fianna Gael (rightish), Progressive democrats (farther right), Green (leftie organic hippie party) + many smaller parties and independents. A party rarely gets a full majority so you are usually left with a coalition of two or more of these parties.
We don't forbid calculators in school, when I was in school (3 or 4 years ago) we were permitted to use them for all our subjects.
The vast majority of our citizens could barely string a scentence together in Irish. It is compulsory in school but all it ever did was create an antagonism towards the language and take up time better spent on other more useful languages (irish native speakers =20-40,000). We don't have great language ability (the dutch or germans are miles ahead of us in that department)Our great language advantage is that we speak english as our first language (an advantage for american investment) and that the only other english speaking country in europe (britain) has even worse language skills than we do.
yea thats the same story for public schools here in south australia, all NT. the school i attend, a regional private school, also uses win9x boxes
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one!
"Adelaide is the free world's headquarters for IT innovation"
:)
Laughable -- and I live in Adelaide
Does that slogan imply that the world behind the Iron Curtain has a similar HQ for IT innovation? Soviet-era Leningrad, perchance?
deus does not exist but if he does
Jeremy Lee makes some good points with which I totally agree.
Microsoft clearly has no idea what the actual situation here is regarding broadband or they would have realised that broadband is widely available, is reliable and competitivly priced. Naturally Australias lower population density means that smaller communities are unable to access cable data yet, however almost all communities can now access satelite broadband downloads (POTS uploads).
Australia has high taxes - by strange coincidence we also have a high degree of social welfare. I can walk into any public hospital (of which there are many) get fixed up and walk out without ever being asked for my credit card number. Try doing that in good 'ol Microsoft land!
As far as Technological Security goes Australia has almost none of the problems that the US has . Still, I'm sure if we used more Microsoft products we could fix that.
The entire MS diatribe appears to me to be a totally self serving attempt to coerce government into opening up Australia so that Microsoft can invade.
And that's the last thing we need.
i live in australia our city (1.5 million people, state capital) only got ADSL access 5 months ago we still dont have cable internet we have 500000000000000000 dial up ISP's tho :)
From the scant details in the article, I can't tell whether Microsoft is asking for more or less government intervention. Praise for a "strong public-private partnership" is typical Clintonspeak for political corruption and protectionism, but elsewhere Microsoft complains about insufficient deregulation of the communication industry.
Other quotes are ambiguous. When Microsoft says, "The R & D tax concession is not well focused on boosting the future competitiveness of the Australian economy," are they complaining that taxes are simply too high, or are they complaining that cuts weren't targetted to their own interests? When they say "The fact that business R & D . . . remains at persistently low levels in Australia may be interpreted as a failure to provide sufficient incentives," are they asking the government to provide welfare or to remove barriers?
So I don't know whether Microsoft wants the Australian government to back off or hop in bed. Having said that, Microsoft is hypocritical. While they were defending themselves against an antitrust suit from the DOJ, they asked the FCC to force AOL to open their network to competitors. It's difficult to have sympathy for them.
I don't think the majority didn't want a republic - they just didn't want the model set forward by the current government, and therefore rejected it in order to vote for a more reasonable model next time around. (For example: Where the people actually get to choose the president, not the current government).
Again, more bone-headedness from Australian politicians, but one the whole I don't think they're any better or worse on average than anywhere else in the world, even if their local policies aren't attractive to MS...
They're kind of right about the broadband situation though. There's two main cable networks but it's common to only be able to connect to one of them. ADSL is in it's infancy and satellite is an inferior option (IMO).
Yes, but do you honestly think that M$ cares about the consumers in AU other then in terms of how much money they can make off of them?
/. (as well as many other places) that they truly deserve.
While the set-up right now in Aussie-land sucks rocks through a wet paper straw, would it honestly be any better with M$ in the field as well? This is the company that "upgrades" their OS every couple of years, stops supporting the old versions as soon as possible to force people to buy the upgrade, would love to charge rental fees on software (and I think they are still planning on doing that), and does all kinds of other "wonderful" practices that earns them the disparaging comments here on
M$ has their own interests at heart (not a shock, really). That their interests happen to match that of many disgruntled Aussies means nothing. They're not doing this for you. They're doing this for themselves.
Just my 2 shekels.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
For the record, I live and work in Australia and the points that MS raised are absolutely and utterly correct to the very last point.
Looking at some of the posts on /., who cares if MS has a vested interest, who cares if the timing is suspect, who cares that a corporation is critising a government, the fact of the matter is that MS has raised perfectly valid points with what needs to be improved to help grow the Australian IT industry.
We should be applauding that someone has brought these issues to the attention of our bonehead government - not critising them. Sheesh.
The NDC is still retarded and slow. NDC, the main Fibre-Laying body in this country, is only recently divorced from Telstra, the government carrier.
While the NDC clearly has the capacity to ramp up their pathetic response to capacity requests, they won't until they're sold. The problem is, everybody that's thought about buying them has found the same thing: they're top-heavy with old government employees and they've all retained their pension plans. They're not changing themselves and the rumours are that it's too much of an old boys club to ever do so.
Meanwhile, the fibre licenses have recently been shelled out to all the power companies, as they already have the right to dig up the streets. They're now scrambling around like headless chickens trying to figure out IP.
While things do look to be about to hot up, the history is bad. ISDN still costs ridiculous amounts now, and isn't any better than multiplexing a couple of modems for most users. Frame was never a widely-pblicised option and ATM is now too expensive to implement. The main carriers don't want to offer cable to businesses, and most people that have played with DSL have shyed away from the thought of placing gear at each Telstra exchange. Much less having to deal with the evil giant.
There's a lot of potential out there, but things are a wee while from being made clear. Certain providers are building brand new networks based on V90, which is missing the point. We're building the dream network of 1998 with only the dim spectre of VoIP sustaining the thought of network viability.
Sorry, but Bill's right.
toeslikefingers.com - because
It does sound pro-Microsoft, but I'm not sure about the anti-linux bit! Sadly, although pro-Microsoft, it does raise some very true points about the sorry state of IT in Australia. I'm an Aussie currently contracting in London, one for the money, which is very good due to the exchange rate, but mainly so I can travel around and see Europe. In a couple of years when I get back to Melbourne, I plan to start up a small software company ... in some countries - the US, Ireland, Malaysia etc. this is encouraged... in Australia it is a very frightening task.
The Australian government does a lot to promote big overseas companies investing in Australia, but very little to promote small IT/Technology based businesses. There is virtually nothing in the way of a venture capital market, so Government R&D grants are very important for simulating local growth... pity the Government doesn't realise this.
I think Microsoft is very right (as much as that pains me :) in highlighting these points. A couple of years ago, to secure the passage of a couple of important bills through the senate, the Government had to negotiate with the ultra-conservative independent Tasmanian Senator Harridine who held the balance of power. He was very concerned about the level of pornography accessible on the internet. Fair enough... but, he and the Government agreed to pass a series of bills aiming at making the ISPs and owners of the Teleco infrastructure (ie Telstra) LEGALLY RESPONSBILE FOR material illegally downloaded. At one stage they (the Government) were talking about requiring blocking of illegal web sites AT THE ROUTER LEVEL! Only after numerous protests from Teleco companies and an in depth report by the CSIRO outlining the impracticality of the proposed nationwide filtering schemes that they softened their stance.
The Communications Minister back then is the same Communications Minister now, Senator Alston. Pretty worrying. The sooner the Australian government gets some people with foresight and vision for promoting Australia as a technological leader, built upon the talents of it's local companies, small and large, instead of relying on investment from big multinationals, the sooner I, and many other Aussies working abroad, will be home.
To wit, the censorship regime was first introduced when the government was trying to garner the support of a moral conservative in the Senate (Brian Harradine) for a controversial piece of tax legislation. Coincidence? Hardly. (The senator in question just said "Thank you very much" and voted against said tax legislation anyway.)
Similarly, the new digital broadcasting regime is simply an attempt to appease the most powerful television mogul in the country (who also happens to be the richest man in the country), Kerry Packer. (There was an excellent piece on the ABC's Four Corners program about this, but I don't know whether there's a transcript online.)
And the underfunding of universities is simply another facet of the conservative "privatise everything that isn't nailed down" ideology that's rampant in this country right now.
In short, don't blame malice when utter, total stupidity will do.
I definately think that education cuts will have long term effects on this country, for IT, and many other industries
Before I left uni, I was one of the last years to attend many of the compulsory subjects. About 4 or 5 of the core subjects of Comp Sci were being axed because the students didn't like them. I mean please, I imagine that faculty would be in a better position to know what sort of thing we need to learn than a bunch of whining undergraduates who don't feel like doing hard work
Australian universities are finding that they have to attract students to their courses, or else they will get axed, and any faculties are adopting a "student friendly" approach which involves letting the students dictate what is and isn't taught.
While I don't have a problem with getting student feedback, this is going to far, and new students will find that they are lacking basic knowledge that previous graduates had. This can only be a bad thing
"Me and my girl named bimbo . . . limbo . . . spam" - Captain Beefheart.
And you might want to get a new television. The ABC - state run television - seem to get most programming from the UK.
And it's SBS - state owned, some commercials - that shows 98% of the good programs on Australian TV. Mainly documentaries & cult/arthouse films.
deus does not exist but if he does
As an IT worker in Oz ...
...
:-(
:-(
.... superannuation funds (ie.
:-(
:-)
Insufficient investment incentives:
"The fact that business R & D (the so-called BERD) remains at persistently low levels in Australia may be interpreted as a failure to provide sufficient incentives."
Maybe, however even when the R&D tax
concession was 150% there was neglible
R&D done. Australian companies are
EXTREMELY loathe to "spend money to
make money" - they seem to think that
that's the government's job (eg. CSIRO).
Sucks big time.
Inadequate infrastructure and bandwith:
"There has not been sufficient deregulation of Australia's communications industries to induce participants to roll-out broadband technology rapidly at a reasonable price."
Not really true any more - we have good
cable and ADSL availability (now)
some have argued that we have excess
broadband capability since, for example,
many places have the choice of Optus or
Telstra for cable, and the cost of two
completely separate infrastructures is
ludicrous. Compare this with the USA
where, AFAIK, in many/most places there
is a designated local telco who supplies
your 'phone/cable/whatever and you get no
choice in the matter. I would like to see
Microsoft spend the b/millions required
to roll out broadband infrastructure to
the relatively small market here in Oz!
Boy would they complain then when they
couldn't make a buck!
Insufficient support for information economy R&D:
"The R & D tax concession is not well focused on boosting the future competitiveness of the Australian economy."
Um, how do you "focus" a general tax
concession that is pretty indiscriminate?
AFAIK pretty-well anyone doing anything
deemed to be R&D can get the concession.
Convincing the ATO (Oz for IRS) that it
is R&D remains the hard part
Failure to create local centres of excellence:
"Companies like Microsoft will locate their R&D centres where a large talent pool exists and major research efforts are taking place. Australia could stand to benefit if it were able to increase the competitiveness of its institutions of higher education and encourage the development of centres of specialisation."
We have a few *very* good CoE's, though
not many/any in IT (eg. Melbourne's
photonics group is world class,
apparently). Like some one else said,
all M$ would want these for is to poach
from anyway.
On the other hand, the present government
especially acts as if it is anti-
intellectual. Unis must be businesses
now, which makes it very difficult for
researchers.
Failure to protect against piracy:
"The unique situation in Australia is that the proposal to remove deregulation of parallel importation protection creates opportunities for piracy and counterfeiting."
I'm sure the author believes there is
some logic in there somewhere, but I
fail to see it. Standard M$ crap?
A skills shortage:
"Australia faces many specific hurdles to train and retain skilled people."
And, unfortunately, the dotcom mania in
the US is largely to blame for the IT
shortage. Lack of government or business
investment in other areas is to blame,
since the best-and-brightest will go to
wherever the most interesting/well paid
work is, and that ain't here
Technology security:
"The recent denial of service attacks against web sites, the proliferation of viruses and the criminal activities of hackers remind us how ever of the importance of a strong public-private partnership".
Why is this directed at the OZ gov?
Lack of access to capital:
"By re-evaluating Australia's banking and finance laws, there may be opportunities to stimulate this increased investment."
Ho ho! Australia has one of the most
deregulated banking and financial sectors
in the world (sadly, some would say).
Short of the government mandating that
banks give M$ money, I really don't know
what they want.
What _is_ a problem is one that's similar
in the US
retirment investment funds). These guys
have **HUGE** buckets of money to spend,
but unfortunately they are severely
limited in what they can/will invest it
in, and venture capital things is not
one of them, since the legal and
"investor" backlash if the venture fails
is not worth the risk to them. Some form
of incentive/requirement that these funds
invest in R&D or VC stuff would be good.
AFAIK, it's not as bad in the US coz
everyone was jumping on the dotcom
bandwagon so the funds there had to as
well - it wasn't quite as manic here
(for better or for worse).
Inability of some groups to have Internet access:
"There is still much work to be done and the solution lies in cooperative efforts among industry."
Probably more of a problem in the USA
than here. As pointed out by another
poster, there are public access points
available for the really poor, however
in general Oz has a much smaller
percentage and number of these really
poor than the USA (though the
distribution is flattening out). We don't
have quite the range of extremes in
wealth and poverty here as in the US.
Despite the fact that I disagree with
much of what they said, it must be said
that Australia's current goverment, in
keeping with most of our governments, is
extremely short-sighted when it comes to
anything other than primary producers -
if you can't eat it or it doesn't come
out of the ground, it's not worth
thinking about.
This is not helped by the fact that the
current minister for telecommunications,
Richard Alston, is breathtakingly
incompetent. Some of the decisions this
goverment have made are absolutely
brain-numbingly dumb. Sadly, we are so
used to that here no-one really gets
upset anymore
I am curious why M$ even care. As a
market, Oz is insignificant (pop. of
20 million or so). India's middle-class
is a much bigger and more lucrative
group than all of us put together - why
don't they whinge about them instead
-------------------------------------------------
klaatu barada nikto
You "Highly Recommend" $89 per month on a 18 month contract???? Are you serious?
All women want is honesty, if you can fake that, you're in.
AS someone who *was* trying to get a B2B business off-the-ground in Oz in the period 1995-2000 I concluded that the Govt's IT strategy & polies were so poor I voted with my feet.... I now work in Hong Kong. I believe there are a lot of others who feel the same way I do. By about 1998 I had looked at trying to move by business to San Jose (where they had at the time a lot of schemes to assist new IT companies). Singapore shines in our region as a country that has done all it can and more to foster IT entrepreneurial talent and interest. Singapore has been that way for years. The Australian govt in a general sense still thinks that IT might only be some new invention from Dean Kamen. Cheers - Doug Marker
Seeing that a good deal of the threads on this topic are of the flavour "Telstra Sucks", here's my 2 cents worth.
Having lived in Australia for the last oh, 17 years, but currently working in the UK, there are a few things to point out about the supposed poor quality of service in Australia provided by Telstra and that provided here by BT and the other telephone service companies.
After spending the last 7 months or so in Australia, I have to chuckle at people having a go at Telstra (I used to run an ISP, so I have had my fair share of dealings with them in the past). The service I used to get from them far exceeds the level of service I can get here for anything like the same money.
Here in the UK, you pay 3p per minute for a local call at peak times, in Australia the rate was 25c (I think it might have gone down since) for an untimed local call (go figure that's 10p or about what you pay for a 3 minute call in the UK) try. I used to use Telstra's Big Pond service (their 150 hour service) when I was in Australia $44/month for 150 hours. Never (repeat after me, never) had a problem dialing in, getting frequent engaged signals etc. That's a better experience than I've had with any other ISP I've found (though yes it is more expensive), but again adding the monthly cost and the call cost and the line cost my total Internet usage bill was SIGNIFICANTLY smaller in Australia than it is in the UK. I wont even mention the experience I've had so far with the free Internet access/phone line from my UK cable company, suffice to say that I've given up.
As ar as broadband goes, comparing the cost of an 512Kbps ADSL connection in Australia to those in the UK. For a HOME user installation runs at $110 (or about £45) and monthly rental runs at $89(or about £35). There are no bandwith costs, but things are subject to a fair use policy (fair enough). From what I can gather, the same service here costs about £275 to install and about £99 in monthly rental.
So far in a comparison between services available here and those in Australia, no contest. Those available in Australia win hands down, even taking into account income differences and especially when you consider Australia's large size and low population density.
BTW as a footnote, to those people who consider bandwith costs to be a bad thing (having run an ISP), figure it out. Your ISP is paying for bandwith in one way or another. Bandwith is a LIMITED resource, just like any other (electricity for example). Laying fibre/cable installing hubs, routers etc. and maintaining networks to a high standard all costs money. All the more when you consider the current rate at which equipment becomes obselete. Companies need to recoup their costs.
<tagline></tagline>
How interesting - they went to the other country with laws different from US laws, and now want to change them to suit their needs.....
Kind of like I come to visit you in your house , and in the process I rearrange your furniture, because I don't like the layout.
It is very simple - Australian government won't let Microsoft "compete" the way Microsoft wants to - by shoving Microsoft approved broadband providers down their throats.
Leave them alone - after all, it's their country!
Though it's fairly obvious Bill's not speaking up for the sake of the Australian IT industry, but out of his own self-interest (does he have any other kind of interest?) - his contribution to the discussion of governmental policy with respect to IT in this country is more important than practically any other factor, opinion or belief (possibly with the exception of the half-assed reactionary nonsense spouted by any "independant" members of parliament in marginal electorates that may feel like getting involved).
Every point that decefette makes in the previous post is correct, but is merely scratching the surface of the depths of ignorance and ambivilence this, and previous Australian governments have displayed to any local commercial pursuit not undertandable in terms of livestock or pop singers (is that a redundancy?).
Naturally Bill's only concern is that the government immediately redress the imbalance in their priorities by locking the entire nation into Microsoft Office 2001, HAL Edition (or whatever) but he has the only voice that the government knows that the electorate will recognise, and therefore should be supported by us in this cause - even by those of us lucky enough to be working in Australia for European-owned Linux-friendly corporations like myself - especially by us. Otherwise Austraila loses (our taxes, knowledge, and potential) when we go off and work in Ireland, Finland, Sweden, the US or England, and we lose when we don't get to live in Australia :)
Peace
You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.
First I think we need our system of goverment needs changing. If we actually had a system where the vote was direct, then Liberals wouldn't be in power due to them actually comming second. Then again Labour is just as bad....
I mean you *have* to vote or they fine you.
What's wrong with that? I have absolutly no problem with that at all! It makes people at least take an interest in who is running the country, unlike the US, where the turn out rate is pathetic
They drive Holdens and insist that they're somehow different from Fords.
Umm, that's because they are different. The same way Ford and GM are different in the US.
why state run television is a Bad Thing (tm)
The ABC is extreamly under-funded due to cut backs. It has produced some of Australias' best talent. More than I can say of "home and away" etc.(Corp. funded generic soap)
a long held "all white" immigration policy
That's long gone. Melbourne has the highest Greek population outside of athens, and Sydney is also a very multi-cultural city. I'd like to see some stats on a US city. I had heard a stat that the chinese population in NT was 7 times greater then "british" during the early 1900s'
India ushers forth from it's collective womb the entire population of Australia each year
Mass over population is a good thing now?
an un-homogenious population...
more trolling...see above
There's a lot of things that I'm not proud of, but you've missed the mark on what is important... Try reading some papers for the current issues in this country, not ones that are 20-40 years old.
I am an Australian, but I have been living outside of Australia for the past three years, however I think I can offer a few perspectives.
Firstly, Australia is a geographically large country, although the majority of the population is strewn along the eastern coast. Also, the major cities tend to be large urban sprawls. What this means is that the costs and economies of scale for cable networks are perhaps a little different than other countries. Complete market freedom may not produce a good result for everyone (I am an advocate of market freedom and competition, but I also realise that in some cases, regulation and control is necessary - I don't think that I have enough knowledge to judge whether it is appropriate in this case, but I making this point). It is interesting to note that attempts to provide pay television (notably Australis) were not very successful - the market did not grow very fast, and there were several companies competing for what is a small market (and a large financial and infrastructure investment). Consider the difference between mobile networks in the US and Europe. In Europe, there is network competition, but fortunately just about everyone offers that competition on the GSM network - so there is no technological competition, perhaps it would be more useful in Australia if there was a common technological platform, on which competition could occur, that would be more beneficial in the long run, than wasted competition between different technological platforms.
Secondly, Australian media is control by a few interests - kerry packer, rupert murdoch, the fairfax family, kerry stokes and others. And these constitute some powerful groups that have political weight. Unfortunately, this can lead to some regressive media policies.
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net
Ahh, hello?! We don't get Crocks in the city... And deadly snakes only kill stupid people who attack there nests.
The R&D world in Oz is small when compared to the USA but is growing. Many larger companies have, or have had, R&D centers in Oz. Motorola are building up their work here, Canon do a lot, CISCO have people here, DEC and HP had places. Then there's the Europeans and military work. Sun and SGI put money into Oz too. And that's not counting any local enterprises - lots of very high tech medical equipment is done here for instance.
The USA companies like us because we're not that different (we can talk about a lot of the same TV shows), speak English, education levels are pretty good and the place is pretty close to China (think call centres). The Japanese like us because they think its the USA without the guns (which was actually said to me by the executive of a Japanese company). And with the exchange rates the way they are the non-Oz corps are getting a bargin and there must be some kind of tax break they can wrangle in there too. Lots of pluses for all.
As for not poaching academic types? It happens and is happening more. The low rate of pay in Oz education and quasi-government R&D means they're going to private industry. Sometimes they can even do similar things to their original research and get paid a lot more to do it.
Microsoft even do a little, quite interesting, work with/via Macquarie University. ISTR some real-time extensions to NT done there. It's a small group though. Sponsored, and therefore owned, PhDs.
I am an Australian, and I basically agree with all your points (although I'm not entirely up on the bandwidth situation right now). With regard to R&D, it would seem that the government is already trying to do what Microsoft want by trying to wean universities and other institutions off the public purse and get them hooked on corporate sponsorship (something with which I vehemently disagree). I don't know what they're complaining about. :)
Broadband in Australia is actually pretty darn good. For a fee about twice that of a good dial-up service, you can get fast cable internet which is not heavily restricted (considering we don't have uberpipes to America fully running yet).
Both major cable services let you download a few hundred megs per day without worry -- a pretty sweet deal imho. Optus@Home is not download capped, but is upload capped at 8k/sec. Big Pond Broadband's 'Freedom' plan is capped at 64k/sec(16k/sec up), which is still pretty good.
There are also various ADSL and sattelite services running.
As an Australian, I'm pretty darn satisfied with our broadband availability. You can check out my site here: http://whirlpool.net.au
On a not-so-related note, here is an article of mine that got rejected recently:
-----------
In late 1999, the Federal Parliament of Australia passed a piece of legislature, widely touted as the 'internet censorship bill'. One year later, it has been interesting to see what this bill has achieved: aside from a couple of locally hosted porn sites moving overseas, not much at all. Recently, the Australian Broadcasting Authority (the body responsible for implementing this bill) has acted on a number of complaints from users about various newsgroups, particularly those involving child pornography. Satisfied that the content is locally hosted, it has used this bill to issue a final take-down notice against Australia's largest ISP and phone co, Telstra. This has garnered a mixed reaction from Australian net users.
----------
--
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
I'm serious, that was almost but not quite the catchphrase of an advertisement that was inflicted upon me on an International flight into Sydney. I couldn't believe my eyes, it's funny enough when Melbourne claims to have IT clues. The video was nice though, lots of fancy transitions and pictures zooming into others etc.
--
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Looking at some of the previous posts from the Australians out there, it would seem that Microsoft has made some valid points in their critique of Australian governmental policies. But then your question becomes, why are they saying those things? Is Microsoft a genuinely benevolent corporation that only wants to vastly improve the lives of the ordinary Australian? Or are they following their own motives?
Corporations are the problem. It's highly unlikely that their advice is going to offer any solutions.
Some of their criticisms have justification, others do not.
In this piece, Microsoft have simply attacked features of the Australian corporate landscape that do not suit their own marketing ambitions; for example, they do not distinguish between piracy and greymarketing when criticising import policies, I guess because they are after maximum market monop^H^H^H^H^Hcontrol.
OTOH, there are a number of things that M$ should be complaining about (if they truly are ``disinterested'' critics of the situation) but don't.
Why do Telstra, for example, send ALL ADSL traffic to Melbourne (including from Perth - gawp at a map and be amazed), and why do they refuse to parity peer? Why are their ISDN and similar services relatively expensive ($Oz1.00/hr/channel vs 15c/call for voice on local calls) when an ISDN call uses no more exchange equipment than a voice call? Why hasn't the Oz gummint done anything about this?
Why do many Oz gummint websites use technology that only works ``properly'' with M$ clients? Why is the Oz gummint purchasing expensive software from a foreign monopoly for computers which are being used to train primary age students with a proprietary system which will be thoroughly obselete by the time said students hit the job market? Why can't said students pull apart their software and find out what makes it tick? Or improve it for themselves? That's the best way to breed developers!
...an eerie silence ensues from the M$ camp...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Interesting you note that Australia is meant to be a testing ground. Many companies view Australia's smaller neighbour, New Zealand, as an ideal testing ground for new products, services and (genetically modified) food. It's perfect because they have a small (4 million) but diverse population that is isolated (I think they are about 2-4 hours away by plane from Australia). When it comes to new products and services (i.e. a new type of shampoo), the focus is marketing studies to see if consumers will accept it, etc. What other companies wanted to do was test their genetically modified food in NZ and it caused an uproar, because it had more to do with marketing studies. Imagine this genetically modified (GM) food made people, animals or plants sick and/or die. In the eyes of these companies, it would only affect a (relatively) tiny population and therefore it would be acceptable to risk them. BTW, in Canada, I play $40 CND for 1 MBit DSL service and the core competition here is not between DSL providers, but DSL versus cable.
I'm serious, that was almost but not quite the catchphrase of an advertisement that was inflicted upon me on an International flight into Sydney. I couldn't believe my eyes, it's funny enough when Melbourne claims to have IT clues. The video was nice though, lots of fancy transitions and pictures zooming into others etc.
:)
Not to knock Adelaide, some interesting stuff does come out of here from time to time, but I'd hardly describe it as a world HQ of 'IT innovation'. Stand aside Silicon Valley! *snort*
Melbourne's main advantage is its status as the traditional home of television content development... translates to "multimedia content" in this new media corporate climate.
Oh, I often find too many transitions in videos rather disorienting... like seeing 10 fonts in one 3-page document
deus does not exist but if he does
Corporations suck at real R&D.
Not all of them.
It's an oldie but a goodie.
Your Working Boy,
Don't make a lot of sense.
In Illinois (in the U.S. for you international folks) a lot of cities grant tax breaks to industries for locating in their towns. The idea is that it's a chance for citizens to find jobs in their home town. On the surface it sounds like a great idea (workers have a shorter commute therefore less pollution, less strain on the inadequate road system, better quality of life, etc, etc.). Most of the time the complaints about these corporate tax benefits come from normal citizens who wind up taking up the slack. Also, the corporations wind up shutting down just before the tax break period ends leaving town and a large empty building that no one's paying taxes on.
Why Microsoft would be complaing about a tax break that largely benefits corporations is beyond me.
I sort of agree with the poster who asked whether this was Microsoft's way of testing the waters of how far they can push governments around. Dear Prime Minister of Australia: Don't let them do it.
If Microsoft has anyone to complain about the lack of broadband it'd be the telecomm industry. They're much too busy getting everyone to walk around with a cell phone glued to their ear to find the time to install decent broadband to most of their customers. IMHO, their take on broadband is something like: ``We still don't get this packet thing... but we do understand people talking across wires.''
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Oh boy. This is NOT going down well.
.NET. Make of that what you will.
:-) Most of that 'piracy' happens on an individual level. Software swapping with friends, etc. Small and 'backyard' businesses run a lot of 'grey' software. Large companies tend to be utterly legit, though.
I really should read the whole 'Accellerating Innovation' paper before commenting on details, but I can give a first-glance perspective:
On Bandwidth:
Australia was significantly behind the US in terms of broadband until about six months ago. Cable and DSL have arrived here with a vengance! $60 a month will get you 400kbit/s DSL. Really. The technical implementation has been rock-solid: none of the problems the US has been having. There are still political issues with the 'duopoly' telco situation, but the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Comission) should do a good job of sorting out the more draconian stupidities in their 'Acceptable Usage Agreements' if they try to enforce them.
(The ACCC is way cool. They're currently having a spat with the MPAA over DVD regional coding.)
Home users here are in the best position they've ever been in. The biggest problem is that Telstra keeps running out of cable modems.
Academic and Business users are, however, in a position of paying rather more for interet access than is really sane. Telstra and Optus C&W both charge about $0.17 per megabyte for inbound traffic, (yes, you heard right) something which deregulation should have put an end to. But Optus likes the money too. Things should change with the recent landing of the Southern Cross Network pacific fibre.
Microsoft wants more broadband in Australia because they've targeted us as one of the prime test markets for
As far as accessibility goes, anyone who wants net access can get it. It's in every library, government department, and medium to large business. ISP's and net cafe's abound. The only people who don't have access are those too lazy to get off their fat arse and walk down the street.
On Taxes:
Yes, Australia has fairly high income and corporate taxes. We have correspondingly higher 'socialist' programs like decent state-sponsored Education, Medical care and Welfare. Australians are, on the whole, happy with this situation. Similar to Canada, in many respects. Multinationals don't like high taxes, though.
On R&D:
There is a cultural difference in what R&D means. We still have a very strong Academic research tradition: most really innovative stuff in Oz gets done by the CSIRO (commonwealth science and industry research organisation) and the universities. I think this is fine. Corporations suck at real R&D. I think Microsoft are just complaining they can't twiddle their thumbs inventing things like "Microsoft Bob" and get massive tax rebates for it.
Besides, what most US companies would call R&D, we call 'getting shit done'. We're an emminently practical people in many ways.
Failure to create local centres of excellence:
Rubbish. See above. The main issue seem to be the existing centres of excellence contain people who work outside the corporate domain and are, therefore, fairly unpoachable. ie: No talent pool waiting for Microsoft to snaffle them all.
On Piracy:
Australia has one of the highest rates of 'Piracy' in the western world. And literacy too. We are significant users of information products, even if we can't quite afford it.
There are some historical reasons for that, mostly due to semi-monopoly locks on imports of information products (the mentioned "parallel import restrictions") like software and music that kept the price artificially high for a long time. These have been changed recently, and will change again, since anyone with a net connection and credit card essentially ignores it.
A skills shortage:
"Australia faces many specific hurdles to train and retain skilled people."
Duh!! You know why? Because of the famous 'brain drain'. US/UK companies tend to make our best and brightest offers they can't refuse. We'd have better people if Microsoft stopped poaching them all.
On Capital:
Australia doesn't have anywhere near the level of Venture Capitalism that exists in the states. (but who does?) Yes, this does hurt us. He has a point here. But, if microsoft want to fix it, all they need to is start investing themselves. A billion US dollars goes a long, long way here. Microsoft has no lack of access to capital. I think what they mean is; there's no easy pool of money for Microsoft to suck from.
Technology security:
I can't think of any Oz sites that have been DoS'd, or even defaced. (I'm sure there's been some. Nothing to the level of Yahoo or Ebay. Mostly a US phenomenon) All major banks in Australia now offer internet service, and I've never heard of any problems. What has the writer been smoking?
Summary:
Yes, as many people would expect, Microsoft are complaining about local factors that tend to favor individuals and small businesses over large multinationals like them. There are one or two decent points in the dross, specifically those about lack of telecom deregulation and capital availability.
The gist of the complaint seems to be "give us more money or we won't invade your nation".
Sounds fine to me.
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
If Australia's leaders can't or won't recognize that there is a problem, then good on Microsoft for telling them. I never fail to find amusing the "Adelaide is the free world's headquarters for IT innovation" and "Victoria is the world's multimedia and gaming mecca" advertisements, but come on.. Radiata? Net censorship? Trying to have broadband media classified as television? Telstra telling us all for the last 5 years that DSL does not exist?
--
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
If they dont know what IT is, then why are they in the position they are today?
Australian government have been making backward IT decisions for years, just look at their lovely ammendment to the cummunications act with regard to censorship.
I must say I took the entire article with a grain of salt, as it is quite obvious what perspective this was written from and who stands to benefit from changes.
How can you compare the IT market in Australia to that of another country? Australia hardly owns any of it's big industry because of international corporations like Microsoft, so what sort of 'innovation' (TM) are they expecting? We are a very passive country which may not be on the cutting edge of new technology but is quite happy to sit back and watch new technology evolve and prove itself.
Our telecommunications industry was only recently deregulated and unlike many other countries, we have around 2 prominant carriers, both of which offer a range of broadband access options (Telstra Bigpond and Optus@Home). Speaking from a Canberran's point of view, the transact system which is being rolled out at this moment across Canberra bringing fibre to the curb and vDSL to houses from junction boxes is in itself a world first. Australia's IT industry is very strong and while I am not a bit interested in the political side of it, the notion that we should be carbon copying the IT industries of other countries like the united states is lacking in innovation.. a popular word.
And you might want to get a new television. The ABC - state run television - seem to get most programming from the UK. It's the commericial stations who run the fscking infomercials and evangelists direct from the USA (and the sitcoms).
And you obviously haven't been here long enough to know the real differences between Holdens (GM to non-Oz friends) and Fords (Ford to non-Oz friends, Mazda to Nihon friends, Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin to UK friends, Volvo to Swedish friends). Next you'll be telling us VB tastes like MB or some other seppo crap :)
Insufficient investment incentives
The government seems so preoccupied with their own internal expense account scandals, the introduction of GST and the preservation of their 4 year term to do anything for the long term future of the country.
Inadequate infrastructure and bandwith
Since the government floated Telstra and deregulated the telecom industry, service level has only dropped. Instead of investing in infastructure development, subsidies are given to Telstra to guarentee that remote regions will continue to receive the same service. This was necessary to convince the public to allow the float of the company (which was just a quick dash-for-cash to make them look like they're managing their money better) but doesn't really solve the problem. It just compensates for it.
Insufficient support for information economy R&D
See point one.
A skills shortage
If you're interested in getting Honours in Computer Science, Australia might just be the easiest place. At least in several Universities I know of, a credit average (65%) is all thats required to be eligable for Honours in CS Major degrees. Theres a huge number of people that seem to be doing computer science for the wrong reasons, bumming through the course and coming out with a degree but few skills. I personally have several Chinese friends doing their final Master's year in Computing Science who have never done a single year of CS prior to now whom will return to China at the end of the year to collect a wealthy salary. The government has it all wrong about the IT shortage. Theres plenty of people, just not enough GOOD people.
I won't go through all the other points but I agree whole-heartedly with all of them. On this issue Microsoft seems right on the mark so the MS bashing really is unjustified.
basically if i want a dynamic ip i can pay maybe 80 a month for a cable connection if im able to get it, and now similar for adsl. however soon as you wish to run any kind of server they screw you for every penny. at present i am stuck on a somewhat decent 56k connection thru a small isp for 100 a month. this get me about 500meg a month. if i wanted to go to anything higher on a static ip like 64k isdn thru telstra, last time i checked it was something lime 500 a month for isp charges, with a 500meg limit, plus 250 a month for line rentals = 750 a month. now that is going from 100 a month for 56k static ip to 750 a month for 64k isdn static ip. and then it just gets worse. fortunately adsl is now available and some smaller isps have paid telstra the rediculous "cover chrge" to get access to the adsl lines, and are starting to put up pricing for static ips on adsl which is actually somewhat affordable for your average person. mind you these max out at 256k upstream, 1.5meg downstream a few hops away from any major backbones at 130 a month. a shit load better than anything else. around tho. telstra optus and the other big boys of course dont even offer static ips on adsl or cable connections unless you are talking in the multi thousands per month for hdsl etc. they keep saying they will release static ip pricing for adsl "any time now", which is what ive been hearing for about 6 months.
meridian at tha.net
It is a common ploy.
When you have a selfish point or points you want to make (like Failure to protect against piracy: ) but don't want to appear selfish, you dream up a list of other points and submit them all. Your selfish points then get hidden in the smokescreen.
Microsoft is complaining about someone else's restrictive policies? Man, that's definitely the pot calling the kettle black...
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Think that's bad...
I live in Perth!
(Maybe that "If you're primary user of any MS application(s) at work, you can install the same at home" clause helped.)
I wonder if the real reason for such contracts lies closer to the potential for big under-the-table 'grants' - to use another word for it - to be made to those few who sign-up for them, on behalf of such governments.
And it's a L-O-N-G contract, too! (In -time-)
I can't understand what MS has to complain about... in South Australia, at least.
On the other hand, those of us who are endeavoring to promote Linux-based OSS systems here... well... let's just say that we're not expecting much (if any) business from State Government any time soon...
SA Gov't readers: Correct me if I'm wrong, please! ;-)
Reportedly, reliable non-Microsoft servers that well and truly -needed- to be replaced were kept online years longer than they might otherwise have been, as a result of the requirement to use Microsoft op sys software in any replacement box.
PS Has anybody got any references to officially published -details- of this OSS-unfriendly elephant of a contract? (Preferably, official... but in case all is "under the carpet" then some insider reports might be interesting).
Of course, in 1997 Bill Gates met with Tony Blair...I see an article in The Independent of the time where they claim that Microsoft immediately claimed that he was a special advisor to the UK Govt. on Computers in schools - a claim that the Govt quickly denied after complaints from Oracle, Sun etc.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
If I was a community college writing teacher, and Microsoft kept on turning in reports to me where they used the word 'innovation' everytime they meant 'good', I would start marking their papers down.
I would have taken this paper as almost a serious critique of communications policies, but the minute I see that damn word, I realize that is is more M$ propaganda. And for a company that probably spends more on propaganda then the budgets of many countries (and infinitly more then they do on taxes :)), M$ really needs to come up with something fresher then the word innovative. Maybe they need to form a committee called "Freedom to Innovate into Using New Adjectives"...okay, enough rant for me for right now.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
From the article, it certainly looks like Australia's schools aren't peddling MS products to Bill's liking.
Microsoft: ducking, weaving and jiving their way away from a breakup.
-Legion
fucko: 'microsoft' is an entity, a singular object. say 'microsoft is,' it's very simple. btw anyone who doesn't agree microsoft is an entity 1. is a moron and 2. should check up on standard tax law and business type definitions.
what business is it of microsoft. Surely this is a case of double standards.. microsoft does not like governments interferring with their business, therefore microsoft should keep out of governments policy.
They probably don't like it because it makes it more expensive and life hard for them to have an office in austrialia...
However, enough of ms bashing.. reading the article, it seems like it makes it hard for any software company to run a business: ie, lack of IT skills to recruit local staff, infrastructure, piracy, lack of internet access and generally, makes life for businesses harder there than other places in the world.
Austrialia may have messed up a lot of things, i don't know. But at the end of the day if it hurts the country due to the governments policies then sobeit. They will learn it due course.
Austrilia however, a couple of years ago, relaxed their immegration rules to help the IT shortage their - they were targetting people in britain and the rest of europe.
They will get their.. slowly.
There's plenty of broadband. At least in the major cities that is. Hell, in Wellington you've even got a *choice*.
Some cynics in the local IT press have even gone so far as to suggest that there must be votes in pissing off the local IT and, more broadly, the "knowledge" sector, they do it so effectively.
To list just some examples of screwed up policy in the area:
Take it from me, I could go on for a *lot* longer.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The Australian internet is in a stranglehold by Telstra. Let's see, the government owns a majority of the "privatised" Telstra, and also has oversight over the telecommunications industry. Sound fair?
Australia has a pool of outstanding IT talent, but they're wasted because businesses don't have incentives to open offices there.
Spot on.
...at his "keynote" speech when he was over here for the Olympics.
And they don't like parallel importing? Gee - so they can charge us whatever they like for their software. Well you know what Billy can do with that.
And if we had more trained IT staff M$ would move their labs over here? Suuuuuure.
Zilch.
So let me see... Bill Gates complaining about a lack of competition. What part of this doesn't fit?
Given a reasonably level playing field, who would win a fight between a bear and a shark?
But why should Billy boy have such an interest as he has displayed recently in this tiny market? Perhaps he is planning on buying Australia? Maybe he'll name it New Redmond.
Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]
but blame Telstra.
For years now Telstra has had the monopoly over phone lines and internet, suddenly with the advent of competitive competitions its lucious profits have to be found some other way.
The best way to do that and to maintain competition is to up the charge to which all other phone companies would have to pay. Telstra own the phonelines, therefore they have the power. The up the charges for use of the phone lines, other phone companies pay that charge, which in turn is passed onto the consumer in the form of an added service charge.
The thing that really gets me angry is Telstra's marketing of their broadband, in one of their television ad's they try to portray their satellite service as a 'just as good' alternative to cable or adsl. Funny how they dont' mention that you also need a dial up ISP. Add that to the charge of having the satellite dish installed.
Lets do some math in AU dollars
Installation - $300
Monthly Fee - $80
---
Now the costs their reluctant to inform people about
Dialup Fee - $30-$60
Add to that the cost of a second line
Second line, Installation - $100 (maybe more, maybe less)
Monthly fee - $30 at least.
And woe betide anyone who needs to make a STD (long distance) phonecall to reach an ISP.
The other major problem Telstra have created is their weak links to major rural centres. I live in a semi rural town (around 100k population), yet it only has a 1Mbit connection to Melbourne (the nearest major city), no wonder they don't want broadband in use everywhere yet. They don't have enough bandwidth, hence their AUP gets enforced incredibly tightly.
Their lack of movement in such areas seems to be only the result of their constant adoration with high profits. And since most of Australia owns Telstra shares, there's not much that can be done to upseat the board, or anything else that might help.
Cheers,
leroy.
Well, you can't expect much from the government in regards for IT, especially since the minister who has been in charge of it (Richard Alston) for the last 5 years hadn't even used the internet until about 2 years ago (and apparently still doesn't use it enough to be knoledgeable about it, let alone represent it in parliment). The whole internet thing isn't helped here when a partially-government-owned telco (Telstra) owns virtually all of the bandwith in oz, and gets away with charging 18c for each MB of traffic over all non-consumer links (don't forget, those are links going to other *cough*competing*cough* isp's). If Optus@Home hadn't had come around, people on cable connections would still be charged per MB charges if they went over their 500mb per month limit ;p - Thanks to competition, I'm now on a relatively unlimited download cable connection (though O@H, of course).
Your response, which embodies standard "correct" usage, embodies the former: what subject-verb agreement is sensitive to is not the semantics of the subject, but the morphosyntactic categories "plural" and "singular". The poster, apparently, has semantic (not morphosyntactic) subject-verb agreement, which is non-standard, but no less logical. Consider the fact that the very same "error" can be attested in many languages.
Of course, this all rests in the assumption that there is such a thing as purely morphological plurals (i.e. that plural marking on nominal represents plural semantics in a completely iconic fashion). This is not an uncontroversial assumption, since the typical purported counter examples ("sissors", "pants", etc.) are frequently argued to be (at least potentially) semantically plural. But of course, such a topic would take us far afield.
Im an aussie, the australian goverment roots up everything they touch, the gst was a complete screw up, fuel, we pay more in tax (which includes a tax on a tax...) than for the prouduct, but fuel wount go up under the gst... They take forever to change there train of thought, go ahead with anything nomatter what the public opinions, even when they could/will affect the country. They keep changing the import/export regulations to favor importing rather than local products... but were doing it for the country, more jobs... most places in australia can only have a modem, only in a few select citys can you get cable modems or dsl. at a astronomical costs... well, so they say...
There are a few people to blame here. First of all Little Johnny Coward, for making all the wrong decisions - look at Ireland, tax breaks galore, that works so lets do it!
Secondly Richard Alston, that old man who doesn't understand these new fangled computer things...Internet censorship bill, yeah, why not...
Third, telstra, they don't care so much about broadband, as long as they make money (which they will, no matter what we use.
As far as I can tell the only way to fix the problem is elect a govenment that gives a shit about the way the world looks at us.
Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to pull the trigger of a sniper rifle.
You carve a message in the baby's stomach and it's off.
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
And does the US Embasy really have really have a machine that makes the toilet flush the correct way?
Your average monthly phone bill in Australia is 4 or 5 times what North Americans pay, because on top of a ridiculous line rental charge, you are also charged per call.
Recently DSL was rolled out in my area. $80/month and a $200 installation fee if you commit to 12 months. The installation fee is much higher if you are not willing to commit.
There is competition in the long distance market but in the short term there is no hope for the average punter who just wants reasonable local calling and high speed internet. A company called Optus does a sort of half arsed job at this but for most Australians it's not even an option. Besides Optus seems to be focussing more on niche areas like reselling bandwidth on their Southern cross cable network to ISP's in Australia, who are also sick of putting up with Telstra's bullshit. Still I'd estimate 95% of traffic in Australia is still over 56K connections over Telstra's PSTN, and this will probably stay like this for awhile.
Where do they get off? How do they even expect the Australian Gov't to have good policy regarding IT when they don't even know what IT is? Sheesh...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
This article screams out for a pro-Microsoft, anti-linux troll.
Failing that, a right-wing anti-government troll would work.
And let us not forget the beauty that is a left wing, anti-corporate, amerika is a cultural imperialist troll.
All 3 would pretty much write themselves.
I appreciate your throwing us a bone timothy, but trolling is just no fun without a challenge.
I feel a bit patronized.
--Shoeboy