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Governmental Servers Wiped? Never!
Geoff writes with a story from Australia: "Eighteen AIX servers purchased from government via auction -- none of them had data removed from them. Ticket Vending and Validation source code, Payroll, Finance, Emails and Customer complaints. All there on every server; they were even nice enough to include some old backup tapes. At ~$14USD per server, it's amazing how cheap personal information has become."
OT:
If you think it's bad that people's DATA got away... consider other examples of Aust. gov't incompetencies:
- in its paranoic attempt to "save" its citizens from "foreigners" (a.k.a.
asylum seekers), an Australia CITIZEN was locked up in the South Australia
based Detention Centre.
She had a German accent, but was quite a legal resident of Australia!!!
- another case (possibly fed by remains of Australia's anti-Asian sentiment - the
same that gave rise & support to the simple but no less dreaded political party of
Pauline Hanson, in recent memory) was that of a woman from the Philipines.
She'd just been either beaten or involved in a serious car crash, ie, the day before
being put on a plane back to the Philipines!
The gov't-provided doctor who examined her for fitness to travel by air on such a trip WAS NEVER TOLD
of the conditions (injuries & a loss of consciousness in the past 24 hours, before the
examination).
- a doctor who had been BANNED from practicing in USA had been working in Bundaberg, Queensland
- and ruining his patients' lives there FOR YEARS,
while complaints of his incompetence were being ignored by Queensland's
health department (He's known as "Dr Death" here)
Of course, no background checks were made... when he flew back to USA (the trip paid for by
the Queensland gov't!!!), we was leaving a position - head of surgery - for which he did not
have the requisite qualifications!!!
- An Aussie scientist was caught irresponsibly
reporting results from OLD EXPERIMENTS, instead of
doing new experiments. A squeeky-clean research
associate (from Asia), who reported his fraudulent behaviours, had her funding cut!!!
Later, even after the facts were deemed to bear out
the truth of her allogations, her research was
unduly delayed, without explanation...
----
Thinking of coming to Australia? Excellent!
Think of how many of your $'s will be extracted,
ie, after you are far from home...
In South Australia, for example, would-be teachers from USA are paid LESS
than their S Aussie counterparts, and can miss out on supposedly subsidised "country incentives"
for braving life in the Outback or Rural South Australia.
First, a 4-year degree earned in USA is
considered (by the So Australian education
department) to be equivalent to a 3-year
South Aussie degree.
(It's the old "Not educated here" syndrome,
a spin-off from the "tall-poppy syndrome"
that holds back many, here... even Aussies!)
So, start out with a LOWER gov't salary grade
for having studied at what might be a better
university.
Of course, a Masters degree & industry experi-
ence carries less weight towards a higher
salary here, if any.
The guy who made cars for Holden (it used to be
a General Motors company, until recent past)
only needed to take a 1 year university course
before registering to teach in gov't schools.
He got the same salary as a South Australian
graduate, ie, one salary grade HIGHER than the
other guy's 4-year B Sc with practice teaching