Ahh fair enough. Yeah I do tend to turn the iPhone 5 sideways when typing (since it makes the on-screen keyboard 'spread out' more and easier to hit the right key). And I'm not a huge guy... could easily see how it could be problematic for someone bigger.
The US is no better. There are huge areas here that have 6 Mbit ADSL and nothing else (including where my parents-in-law live, which is in a city of 100,000 people). You can cherry pick places in both countries that have good speeds and bad speeds. My connection back in Australia (TransACT VDSL2, inner-south Canberra) was 60 Mbit downstream and 15 Mbps upstream. Definitely not slow at all. Much faster than what I can get in the US in fact.
Yes I realise I lucked out and just happened to live in a place I could get that in Australia. But my point is that the US also has a lot of places stuck with slow speeds - it's not unique to Australia.
The NBN should hopefully bring more equity in speeds (even if it's the Coalitions plan - this will still bring faster speeds to a greater proportion of the population, though the original Labor plan is obviously better).
1. Even if you did use something like Netflix, if you got a 500 GB or 1 TB+ cap you aren't ever going to hit it.
2. Some ISPs in Australia offer unlimited data (no caps). So again, the option is there. But you can often save money by going on a capped plan (and if you get one that's in excess of your usage anyway, why wouldn't you?)
3. Similar to in the UK, capped plans in Australia have extensive "quota free" zones which include file mirrors, streaming video services etc. My ISP didn't count iTunes traffic, ABC iView (IPTV) traffic, Steam traffic and a bunch of other stuff. Realistically, if Netflix came to Australia, all the big ISPs would have it on their quota-free zone pretty quick (once one did, the others would have to get on the bandwagon to compete).
Obviously no caps is ideal. However I was merely comparing the US (no options, one size fits all) approach with the Australian (clear choice of plans and providers with different caps), and observing that if you're going to have caps, it's OK provided there are choices (including, in Australia at least, some ISPs that offer 'no cap' as a choice).
The business connection is not a REALISTIC option for many people. They are much more expensive than the consumer/residential connections in many cases and you may need to prove you are a registered business to qualify. Yes you could register a company and pay the fees and yes, by that measure it IS an option. But I was comparing the residential markets in two countries and basically saying "caps are fine if there are options". I don't really think anyone could argue against more options not being a good thing.
How on earth do people sit with those giant things in their pockets (if it even fits in there at all?). A 4 or maybe 5 inch screen on a phone seems OK to me but anything bigger and you might as well just go and get a full-sized tablet (and put a VoIP application on it so you can make calls).
I suppose there's a market there for those that want a single device (rather than carrying around a phone plus a tablet or laptop), don't tend to keep their phone in their pocket (or have huge pockets) and use hands-free kits to make calls (since holding some of those giant phones up to your head seems awkward for long periods).
This isn't a pro-iPhone post. I just personally don't understand the attraction to those "too big for a phone, too small for a serious tablet" devices. iPhone 5/Galaxy S4 are fine but I'd never buy anything bigger.
Yep. They said their statistics showed 50% of users didn't use any security at all. So I see the fingerprint option as something for that group of users. I'll be sticking with my 8-digit PIN.
Teens in the west are one market, but I suspect non-western markets are the real targets of the iPhone 5C. Not 'emerging' markets (it'll still be too expensive for those), but mid-tier places like China, Malaysia, Indonesia, many south American countries etc. I'll be curious to see what the outright/unsubsidized price of it is, but if it can get down to a $400ish range then it would be quite competitive in a lot of those areas (compared to the ~$800 outright price of the full-fledged iPhone).
True, but that's the way it works pretty much everywhere else - plans and plans and phones are phones. A given plan will be cheaper if you BYO phone, because it doesn't include the phone repayment component. The US (and Japan too) OTOH work on the "virtually everyone goes on a two year contract" method and thus don't usually offer the BYO phone plans.
Having said that you can still do it if you want. The US Apple store does allow you to buy iPhones outright and unlocked. You can then use a pre-paid/MVNO plan of your choosing. It can be a bit of a pain to set up, but it does work (my wife uses AirVoice's prepaid $29.95 plan on her iPhone 4S).
We used to live in Australia and there we always bought phones outright and then went to whatever phone company we wanted, looked at their SIM Only/BYO phone plans, and chose what we needed. I much prefer it that way as it ends up the same cost or cheaper over two years, PLUS you have the advantage of being able to change carriers/plans at the drop of a hat, whenever you want.
Bit of hyperbole there don't you think? I know many people with iPhones and not one has had an issue with the screen, power button or any other aspect of the hardware. The only guy I know who had a cracked screen had a Galaxy S3... and yeah if you drop your phone on concrete it's going to crack no matter what kind of phone it is.
Now of course my anecdote isn't evidence of any sort. But given that all modern phones are pretty much made out of the same materials I don't think iPhones are any more or less prone to damage than other phones. I've owned iPhone 3GS, 4, Galaxy S3, HTC One and iPhone 5 and none have had any hardware issues (though, I do take care of them and am careful not to drop them!)
Right. I have a Noctua NH-D14 on my perfectly stock i7 4770K. I might dabble in overclocking at some point but for the moment, the improved cooling simply allows me to run the fans at lower speeds and produce less noise. Combined with an SSD (and no HDD), quiet video card and a case choice generally geared towards noise reduction, it's a pretty quiet machine that you have to have your ear up against to really tell whether it's on or not.
Agreed. Transfer caps in Australia aren't the big problem they were 10 years ago. There are enough choices of cap (at different price points) that there'll be one to suit pretty much everyone. My ISP in Australia (Internode) has caps ranging from 30 GB to 1.2 TB per month.
The problem in the US though is twofold:
1. In many areas there are only one or two ISPs available (the local cable monopoly and the local phone/DSL monopoly). Not like in Australia where pretty much everyone has 15-20 ISPs to pick from (even if many of them are Telstra resellers).
2. Some US ISPs have transfer caps, but it's a one-size-fits all approach. You can't choose different caps for different prices like you can in Australia. My (cable) ISP in the US had a 300 GB cap but there was no option to move to a higher cap if I needed it (other than to get a business connection).
Basically, I have nothing against caps *IF* you provide options. Grandma who just checks her email and does a bit of banking can get by on her 10 GB cap which costs some measly $15/month or whatever, the average family of four can get the mid-range "few hundred GB" plan and Mr. Uber Torrenter can get his 1 TB+ cap (but has to pay more for it). That's how it works in Australia and it's fine. In some other places though there's a cap, and no choice.
Did you actually read the summary? It's a non-policy that they've already backtracked from due to public outcry.
Also even if this ridiculous policy would have become reality, it was an opt-out system. Comparisons with China aren't very useful (you can't really opt out of their filter, though you can easily bypass it).
I'm not implying anything (hence the second paragraph beginning "Whichever it was..."). Not trying to judge either way whether it was an actual mistake, or a genuine policy which they've hastily backtracked from (I agree that it looks like the latter). Just putting the link up there for people.
For the record, I've already voted (I'm overseas so voted by mail) and it wasn't for the Coalition.
This was alluded to in the summary but in case people just read the headline and make a knee jerk post about it... they have already back tracked from the plan. In fact they said they never had such a plan and it was a mistaken statement in the first place.
Whichever it was, the correction certainly occurred in record time. Seeing the whole thing go down on Twitter there was barely a few hours between news outlets picking up the story of the filtering plan and Malcolm Turnbull responding and saying the whole thing was incorrect.
- Money and corporate influence: The money required to run a campaign puts huge barriers in front of anyone from more 'regular' walks of life ever standing for office. It's resulted in an established political class, to which you will need to belong to even get your foot in the door of politics. On top of this (or because of this), companies and industries have a disproportionate influence on policy. Other countries have much stronger laws preventing this (restrictions on lobbying, corporate donations, political advertising, transparency of party finances etc.)
- The way Congress works and the way elections work basically result in an entrenched two-party system where no one else has any realistic influence. Compare to Parliamentary systems/preferential voting/proportional representation used by most other OECD nations that mean third and fourth parties actually matter. There is a wider diversity of opinion and wider choice of candidates. Here in the US, you only have two choices, and they are both as bad as each other when it comes to privacy/surveillance matters.
The US system needs to be reformed for the modern age and to address the above issues. Problem is, people treat the Constitution as some kind of untouchable, unchangeable thing, rather than a living document. Yes, it's the supreme law of the land... but it's still a law, and law can (and should) change with the times. The ability to make amendments exists for a reason.
It seems that in general, it is impossible to make large-scale reforms happen in the US. The system works against it (just takes a couple of people in Congress to oppose something and it'll get held up forever). Other countries out there, in modern times, have done things like completely rewrite their tax code from the ground up. Or change the way elections are held. Or introduce new currencies. Or convert to the metric system. Grand reforms, not just tinkering around the edges with things. Imagine that kind of stuff happening in the US - seems impossible doesn't it? Look at the difficulty experienced in even getting minor changes to health care through. Even suggesting little things like getting rid of the penny seems to attract massive controversy.
Some say that the fact that Congress can get so easily gridlocked is actually a benefit of the system. It prevents politicians pushing their own agendas through and acts as a limit on government power. I can see that side of the argument and it's valid. But nonetheless, I still think we need to be more agile than we are or we'll be left behind. Change happens more rapidly now than it did when the Constitution was written.
Well that would be logical wouldn't it, given that Android is a more widely used platform. Hackers often try to get the biggest 'bang for buck' and target the most popular platforms (see also number of Windows viruses vs. Mac OS ones).
Yeah um, MN is as flat as a pancake. That's the difference.
(Coming from someone living next door in WI which is also as flat as a pancake, but grew up in a mountainous area in which any snow made non 4x4 driving essentially impossible).
Aha, I'm not alone in hating the lack of lane bumps/reflectors on roads in the Midwest.
I'm from Australia but recently moved to Wisconsin, which like its neighbour to the west also suffers from all the things you mention. But yeah, the lack of road reflectors drives me nuts - rainy weather is the worst but even just driving at night is bad in some spots where the lane markings are faded.
Compared to Australia where they use a lot number of reflectors marking the edges of the road (denser than anywhere I've seen in the US, including CA) and every lane (putting your high beams on at night makes it look like a aircraft landing strip - a really bright line of red, yellow and white reflectors stretching off into the distance.
I always thought that it was because of snow plowing too... but you say they use them in CA on roads that get plowed without issues? Hmmm. I guess they are just cheap asses in the Midwest then.
Well Europe has high fuel taxes on top of their income taxes. Australia also does (to a lesser extent - their income tax is approximately the same as in the US and their fuel taxes are high by US standards, but still much lower than Europe).
Don't get me wrong - I love my car and the open road. In both countries, long road trips are something I look forward to - the sense of freedom you get being able to go where you want, stop when you want etc. is great. But for the little trips around town where you're really just trying to get your stuff done (shopping, getting to work etc.), that's where I see the difference.
My post wasn't really about public transport, pre-determined destinations, or going where the government wants you to etc. I was strictly referring to the design and walkability of cities in the two countries and how the zoning laws make small car trips necessary in the US, but optional in Australia. You CAN still drive in Australia to go grab a loaf of bread from the store a mile away if you want (nobody's stopping you)... but walking's also a valid option. The design of some cities in the US though (particularly Midwestern cities) basically force you to drive.
This. Coming from Australia, a country similarly sized to the US and also lacking high speed rail (and thus essentially dependent on the car and air travel), there are a lot of short trips that I am forced to make in my car here (in the US) that I could have walked in Australia. This is because many (not all, but most) US cities are terribly designed. It's not suburban sprawl that's the issue (Australia has just as much of that as teh US), but rather that there's no sidewalks, random uncrossable highways (walls, no pedestrian underpasses/overpasses), isolated far-flung strip malls and malls far from residential neighborhoods (instead of the little local shopping centres like you have in Australia).
I work from home and thus don't need to commute. I live in a similarly sized city than I did in Australia (400,000 vs 360,000). But nonetheless I am noticing I'm putting approximately twice the miles on my car per year than I did at home, despite living a similar lifestyle. I used to be able to walk 10 minutes and get to my local shops, which had a supermarket, butcher, baker, post office, newsagent and a few cafes and restaurants. Now I have to drive ten minutes to get to that stuff. And I'd still have to drive even if I lived closer, because it's a giant mall surrounded by 2 square miles of concrete parking lot, right off a major highway with no way of crossing.
In both countries, long distance travel relies, and will continue to rely on air and the car (though Australia is seriously considering an east-coast high speed rail line - the 600 mile long Sydney-Melbourne corridor is the fourth busiest air route in the world so it'd probably work). But car use could be reduced locally in the US with some urban planning changes (and incentives to get people to change their habits... which may or may not include raising the price of fuel, which is very low by developed-world standards anyway).
Hmm yeah, I suppose the "9-5" idiom doesn't make sense in Europe anyway considering they generally use 24h time there. 0900-1700 doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
Um.... I'm pretty sure 9 to 5 (8 hours) is longer than 12 to 6 (6 hours)... unless you mean noon until 6am the next day (or midnight until 6pm, both of which seem ridiculous). Am I missing something obvious here?
I'm Australian too (though living in the US). All sources have some bias (which is why it's a good idea to try and get your news from multiple sources). However compared to the News Ltd. and Fairfax newspaper alternatives, or the commercial TV channels, I feel that the ABC has less.
While it's traditionally thought to have a somewhat Labor-leaning bias, there was a period there during the Howard era where it was accused of having a Liberal one. But at least, as a public broadcaster, it has tighter controls/charters and operates more transparently than the alternatives.
And aside from the issue of bias, the ABCs online stuff is awesome (iView, apps etc.) They've always been way ahead of the curve compared to the other news sources in Australia when it comes to embracing new tech. So if nothing else, it's more convenient. The Australian has a pretty good app too, which I do use occasionally when I want a more conservative leaning source.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh fair enough. Yeah I do tend to turn the iPhone 5 sideways when typing (since it makes the on-screen keyboard 'spread out' more and easier to hit the right key). And I'm not a huge guy ... could easily see how it could be problematic for someone bigger.
The US is no better. There are huge areas here that have 6 Mbit ADSL and nothing else (including where my parents-in-law live, which is in a city of 100,000 people). You can cherry pick places in both countries that have good speeds and bad speeds. My connection back in Australia (TransACT VDSL2, inner-south Canberra) was 60 Mbit downstream and 15 Mbps upstream. Definitely not slow at all. Much faster than what I can get in the US in fact.
Yes I realise I lucked out and just happened to live in a place I could get that in Australia. But my point is that the US also has a lot of places stuck with slow speeds - it's not unique to Australia.
The NBN should hopefully bring more equity in speeds (even if it's the Coalitions plan - this will still bring faster speeds to a greater proportion of the population, though the original Labor plan is obviously better).
1. Even if you did use something like Netflix, if you got a 500 GB or 1 TB+ cap you aren't ever going to hit it.
2. Some ISPs in Australia offer unlimited data (no caps). So again, the option is there. But you can often save money by going on a capped plan (and if you get one that's in excess of your usage anyway, why wouldn't you?)
3. Similar to in the UK, capped plans in Australia have extensive "quota free" zones which include file mirrors, streaming video services etc. My ISP didn't count iTunes traffic, ABC iView (IPTV) traffic, Steam traffic and a bunch of other stuff. Realistically, if Netflix came to Australia, all the big ISPs would have it on their quota-free zone pretty quick (once one did, the others would have to get on the bandwagon to compete).
Obviously no caps is ideal. However I was merely comparing the US (no options, one size fits all) approach with the Australian (clear choice of plans and providers with different caps), and observing that if you're going to have caps, it's OK provided there are choices (including, in Australia at least, some ISPs that offer 'no cap' as a choice).
The business connection is not a REALISTIC option for many people. They are much more expensive than the consumer/residential connections in many cases and you may need to prove you are a registered business to qualify. Yes you could register a company and pay the fees and yes, by that measure it IS an option. But I was comparing the residential markets in two countries and basically saying "caps are fine if there are options". I don't really think anyone could argue against more options not being a good thing.
How on earth do people sit with those giant things in their pockets (if it even fits in there at all?). A 4 or maybe 5 inch screen on a phone seems OK to me but anything bigger and you might as well just go and get a full-sized tablet (and put a VoIP application on it so you can make calls).
I suppose there's a market there for those that want a single device (rather than carrying around a phone plus a tablet or laptop), don't tend to keep their phone in their pocket (or have huge pockets) and use hands-free kits to make calls (since holding some of those giant phones up to your head seems awkward for long periods).
This isn't a pro-iPhone post. I just personally don't understand the attraction to those "too big for a phone, too small for a serious tablet" devices. iPhone 5/Galaxy S4 are fine but I'd never buy anything bigger.
Yep. They said their statistics showed 50% of users didn't use any security at all. So I see the fingerprint option as something for that group of users. I'll be sticking with my 8-digit PIN.
Teens in the west are one market, but I suspect non-western markets are the real targets of the iPhone 5C. Not 'emerging' markets (it'll still be too expensive for those), but mid-tier places like China, Malaysia, Indonesia, many south American countries etc. I'll be curious to see what the outright/unsubsidized price of it is, but if it can get down to a $400ish range then it would be quite competitive in a lot of those areas (compared to the ~$800 outright price of the full-fledged iPhone).
True, but that's the way it works pretty much everywhere else - plans and plans and phones are phones. A given plan will be cheaper if you BYO phone, because it doesn't include the phone repayment component. The US (and Japan too) OTOH work on the "virtually everyone goes on a two year contract" method and thus don't usually offer the BYO phone plans.
Having said that you can still do it if you want. The US Apple store does allow you to buy iPhones outright and unlocked. You can then use a pre-paid/MVNO plan of your choosing. It can be a bit of a pain to set up, but it does work (my wife uses AirVoice's prepaid $29.95 plan on her iPhone 4S).
We used to live in Australia and there we always bought phones outright and then went to whatever phone company we wanted, looked at their SIM Only/BYO phone plans, and chose what we needed. I much prefer it that way as it ends up the same cost or cheaper over two years, PLUS you have the advantage of being able to change carriers/plans at the drop of a hat, whenever you want.
Bit of hyperbole there don't you think? I know many people with iPhones and not one has had an issue with the screen, power button or any other aspect of the hardware. The only guy I know who had a cracked screen had a Galaxy S3 ... and yeah if you drop your phone on concrete it's going to crack no matter what kind of phone it is.
Now of course my anecdote isn't evidence of any sort. But given that all modern phones are pretty much made out of the same materials I don't think iPhones are any more or less prone to damage than other phones. I've owned iPhone 3GS, 4, Galaxy S3, HTC One and iPhone 5 and none have had any hardware issues (though, I do take care of them and am careful not to drop them!)
Right. I have a Noctua NH-D14 on my perfectly stock i7 4770K. I might dabble in overclocking at some point but for the moment, the improved cooling simply allows me to run the fans at lower speeds and produce less noise. Combined with an SSD (and no HDD), quiet video card and a case choice generally geared towards noise reduction, it's a pretty quiet machine that you have to have your ear up against to really tell whether it's on or not.
Agreed. Transfer caps in Australia aren't the big problem they were 10 years ago. There are enough choices of cap (at different price points) that there'll be one to suit pretty much everyone. My ISP in Australia (Internode) has caps ranging from 30 GB to 1.2 TB per month.
The problem in the US though is twofold:
1. In many areas there are only one or two ISPs available (the local cable monopoly and the local phone/DSL monopoly). Not like in Australia where pretty much everyone has 15-20 ISPs to pick from (even if many of them are Telstra resellers).
2. Some US ISPs have transfer caps, but it's a one-size-fits all approach. You can't choose different caps for different prices like you can in Australia. My (cable) ISP in the US had a 300 GB cap but there was no option to move to a higher cap if I needed it (other than to get a business connection).
Basically, I have nothing against caps *IF* you provide options. Grandma who just checks her email and does a bit of banking can get by on her 10 GB cap which costs some measly $15/month or whatever, the average family of four can get the mid-range "few hundred GB" plan and Mr. Uber Torrenter can get his 1 TB+ cap (but has to pay more for it). That's how it works in Australia and it's fine. In some other places though there's a cap, and no choice.
Did you actually read the summary? It's a non-policy that they've already backtracked from due to public outcry.
Also even if this ridiculous policy would have become reality, it was an opt-out system. Comparisons with China aren't very useful (you can't really opt out of their filter, though you can easily bypass it).
I'm not implying anything (hence the second paragraph beginning "Whichever it was..."). Not trying to judge either way whether it was an actual mistake, or a genuine policy which they've hastily backtracked from (I agree that it looks like the latter). Just putting the link up there for people.
For the record, I've already voted (I'm overseas so voted by mail) and it wasn't for the Coalition.
This was alluded to in the summary but in case people just read the headline and make a knee jerk post about it ... they have already back tracked from the plan. In fact they said they never had such a plan and it was a mistaken statement in the first place.
Whichever it was, the correction certainly occurred in record time. Seeing the whole thing go down on Twitter there was barely a few hours between news outlets picking up the story of the filtering plan and Malcolm Turnbull responding and saying the whole thing was incorrect.
Official Liberal Party press release clarifying that they do NOT intend to introduce filtering: http://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2013/09/05/coalitions-policy-enhance-online-safety-children
There's various other reasons that you shouldn't vote for the LNP this election. But thankfully this isn't one of them.
Two big problems as I see it:
- Money and corporate influence: The money required to run a campaign puts huge barriers in front of anyone from more 'regular' walks of life ever standing for office. It's resulted in an established political class, to which you will need to belong to even get your foot in the door of politics. On top of this (or because of this), companies and industries have a disproportionate influence on policy. Other countries have much stronger laws preventing this (restrictions on lobbying, corporate donations, political advertising, transparency of party finances etc.)
- The way Congress works and the way elections work basically result in an entrenched two-party system where no one else has any realistic influence. Compare to Parliamentary systems/preferential voting/proportional representation used by most other OECD nations that mean third and fourth parties actually matter. There is a wider diversity of opinion and wider choice of candidates. Here in the US, you only have two choices, and they are both as bad as each other when it comes to privacy/surveillance matters.
The US system needs to be reformed for the modern age and to address the above issues. Problem is, people treat the Constitution as some kind of untouchable, unchangeable thing, rather than a living document. Yes, it's the supreme law of the land ... but it's still a law, and law can (and should) change with the times. The ability to make amendments exists for a reason.
It seems that in general, it is impossible to make large-scale reforms happen in the US. The system works against it (just takes a couple of people in Congress to oppose something and it'll get held up forever). Other countries out there, in modern times, have done things like completely rewrite their tax code from the ground up. Or change the way elections are held. Or introduce new currencies. Or convert to the metric system. Grand reforms, not just tinkering around the edges with things. Imagine that kind of stuff happening in the US - seems impossible doesn't it? Look at the difficulty experienced in even getting minor changes to health care through. Even suggesting little things like getting rid of the penny seems to attract massive controversy.
Some say that the fact that Congress can get so easily gridlocked is actually a benefit of the system. It prevents politicians pushing their own agendas through and acts as a limit on government power. I can see that side of the argument and it's valid. But nonetheless, I still think we need to be more agile than we are or we'll be left behind. Change happens more rapidly now than it did when the Constitution was written.
Well that would be logical wouldn't it, given that Android is a more widely used platform. Hackers often try to get the biggest 'bang for buck' and target the most popular platforms (see also number of Windows viruses vs. Mac OS ones).
Yeah um, MN is as flat as a pancake. That's the difference.
(Coming from someone living next door in WI which is also as flat as a pancake, but grew up in a mountainous area in which any snow made non 4x4 driving essentially impossible).
Aha, I'm not alone in hating the lack of lane bumps/reflectors on roads in the Midwest.
I'm from Australia but recently moved to Wisconsin, which like its neighbour to the west also suffers from all the things you mention. But yeah, the lack of road reflectors drives me nuts - rainy weather is the worst but even just driving at night is bad in some spots where the lane markings are faded.
Compared to Australia where they use a lot number of reflectors marking the edges of the road (denser than anywhere I've seen in the US, including CA) and every lane (putting your high beams on at night makes it look like a aircraft landing strip - a really bright line of red, yellow and white reflectors stretching off into the distance.
I always thought that it was because of snow plowing too ... but you say they use them in CA on roads that get plowed without issues? Hmmm. I guess they are just cheap asses in the Midwest then.
Well Europe has high fuel taxes on top of their income taxes. Australia also does (to a lesser extent - their income tax is approximately the same as in the US and their fuel taxes are high by US standards, but still much lower than Europe).
Don't get me wrong - I love my car and the open road. In both countries, long road trips are something I look forward to - the sense of freedom you get being able to go where you want, stop when you want etc. is great. But for the little trips around town where you're really just trying to get your stuff done (shopping, getting to work etc.), that's where I see the difference.
My post wasn't really about public transport, pre-determined destinations, or going where the government wants you to etc. I was strictly referring to the design and walkability of cities in the two countries and how the zoning laws make small car trips necessary in the US, but optional in Australia. You CAN still drive in Australia to go grab a loaf of bread from the store a mile away if you want (nobody's stopping you) ... but walking's also a valid option. The design of some cities in the US though (particularly Midwestern cities) basically force you to drive.
This. Coming from Australia, a country similarly sized to the US and also lacking high speed rail (and thus essentially dependent on the car and air travel), there are a lot of short trips that I am forced to make in my car here (in the US) that I could have walked in Australia. This is because many (not all, but most) US cities are terribly designed. It's not suburban sprawl that's the issue (Australia has just as much of that as teh US), but rather that there's no sidewalks, random uncrossable highways (walls, no pedestrian underpasses/overpasses), isolated far-flung strip malls and malls far from residential neighborhoods (instead of the little local shopping centres like you have in Australia).
I work from home and thus don't need to commute. I live in a similarly sized city than I did in Australia (400,000 vs 360,000). But nonetheless I am noticing I'm putting approximately twice the miles on my car per year than I did at home, despite living a similar lifestyle. I used to be able to walk 10 minutes and get to my local shops, which had a supermarket, butcher, baker, post office, newsagent and a few cafes and restaurants. Now I have to drive ten minutes to get to that stuff. And I'd still have to drive even if I lived closer, because it's a giant mall surrounded by 2 square miles of concrete parking lot, right off a major highway with no way of crossing.
In both countries, long distance travel relies, and will continue to rely on air and the car (though Australia is seriously considering an east-coast high speed rail line - the 600 mile long Sydney-Melbourne corridor is the fourth busiest air route in the world so it'd probably work). But car use could be reduced locally in the US with some urban planning changes (and incentives to get people to change their habits ... which may or may not include raising the price of fuel, which is very low by developed-world standards anyway).
Ah ok I see.
Hmm yeah, I suppose the "9-5" idiom doesn't make sense in Europe anyway considering they generally use 24h time there. 0900-1700 doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
Um .... I'm pretty sure 9 to 5 (8 hours) is longer than 12 to 6 (6 hours) ... unless you mean noon until 6am the next day (or midnight until 6pm, both of which seem ridiculous). Am I missing something obvious here?
I'm Australian too (though living in the US). All sources have some bias (which is why it's a good idea to try and get your news from multiple sources). However compared to the News Ltd. and Fairfax newspaper alternatives, or the commercial TV channels, I feel that the ABC has less.
While it's traditionally thought to have a somewhat Labor-leaning bias, there was a period there during the Howard era where it was accused of having a Liberal one. But at least, as a public broadcaster, it has tighter controls/charters and operates more transparently than the alternatives.
And aside from the issue of bias, the ABCs online stuff is awesome (iView, apps etc.) They've always been way ahead of the curve compared to the other news sources in Australia when it comes to embracing new tech. So if nothing else, it's more convenient. The Australian has a pretty good app too, which I do use occasionally when I want a more conservative leaning source.
Ok my mistake then. BBC and ABC are ad-free (in all mediums, radio, web and TV)
Yes but not 24/7 (on the TV side, at least).