Haha. Am reasonably confident my router's firewall is up to the task, but because the IPv6/64 assigned to my router (and the/56 prefix assigned to my network) is static, figured I'd better remove it, just in case:)
Well any decent router that offers NAT will also have an actual firewall as well. Which will continue to work on IPv6... so it's not like you're unprotected or anything. I'm not one of those rabid "NAT is an awful hack" people, but it's just another tool in the box that ceases to really have a purpose in the IPv6 world.
Anyway, if your point is that you don't NEED IPv6 (yet), then you're absolutely right. I was merely offering my experience of IPv6 adoption as an end user. And that it was pretty painless (both for me personally, but also for the ISP - they ran quite a few blog articles about the migration and since it was done in a steady, staged manner in the course of the normal business of replacing hardware and reconfiguring networks, it didn't really cost them too much extra time or money).
The reason I did this is that it seems to me that some organisations are very stuck in the mud about IPv6 - they dig their heels in and take the attitude that it's preferable to use workarounds to make the existing IPv4 space last longer, than just bite the bullet and get IPv6 up and running. Note that I don't mean people that simply have a "what I have now works fine, so why bother" opinion - that's a perfectly reasonable position to take. Or those that have a real reason they can't do it (legacy hardware/software, in enterprises particularly). But there are also those that actively try to reject IPv6 for no reason other than that they seemingly don't like the idea of it. They aren't just ambivalent about it - they go out of their way to find reasons not to use it. The reluctance they have for implementing IPv6 is not commensurate with the actual difficulty of doing so. Hell I was bit like that myself, but my ISP did things well and it was so brain-dead easy that I kinda feel silly for having been like that.
I've been on native IPv6 for a couple of years on my home DSL connection. It works very well - only thing I had to do was check the 'enable IPv6' option in my modem/router and everything 'just worked'. It is rather nice not having to deal with NAT and port forwarding etc.
I'm in Australia (so within the Asia-Pacific/APNIC region, which as the summary mentions, is a bit ahead of the curve when it comes to IPv6 adoption. Most of the major sites are fully IPv6 now too (e.g. all the Google sites, Facebook, etc. etc.) But the point is, done properly, it should be a completely seamless transition to enable dual-stack (and eventually to turn off IPv4, though I'm sure that won't happen for decades!). Hell I usually forget I'm even on IPv6, unless I happen to do a ping/tracert to an IPv6 host and see all those long-ass IPs:)
C:\>tracert www.google.com
Tracing route to www.google.com [2404:6800:4006:800::1014] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms gateway [2001:44b8:(snip!)]
2 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms loop0.lns20.cbr1.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:9010::5]
3 7 ms * 7 ms gi0-0-2.cor3.cbr1.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:9010:14::1]
4 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms te6-0-0.bdr1.syd4.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:9010:e::2]
5 11 ms * 11 ms te0-0-0.bdr1.syd7.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:b070:1::11]
6 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms gi1-2-121.cor2.syd7.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:b060:121::2]
7 11 ms * 12 ms gi6-0-0-101.bdr1.syd7.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:b070:104::1]
8 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms 2001:4860:1:1:0:1283:0:4
9 13 ms 13 ms 12 ms 2001:4860:0:1::1fb
10 13 ms 12 ms 11 ms 2404:6800:4006:800::1014
Oh I agree, it's stupid. An effect of old law being applied to a new medium that it's not suited for.
The court's argument is simply that:
- A page of content has an 'original' publisher. - The Google Image Search results page is generated by Google, and that page does not exist anywhere else on the web. - Therefore, Google must be the publisher, simply because no-one else can be.
The issue as far as I can tell is that the concept of 'original publisher' doesn't work well in a world where 'publications' can be ~dynamically~ generated. The image search results is indeed a unique page that doesn't exist anywhere else, but it's really just an amalgamation of content from other sources, presented in a particular way...
Read the judgement. Of particular relevance, the paragraphs beginning with paragraph 18. If they WERE just linking, then it would not be publication and they would not have been found guilty. But in this case, they were generating content themselves (under the legal definition, at least...)
If you read the judgement (radical idea, I know), you'll see that a big part of the reason that Google was found liable here was the cached version of the article, as well as the Google Image Search results (which are a "page of Google's own making" not merely a link or reference to another source).
Indeed the judgement makes it quite clear that merely linking or indexing is not considered publication under Australian common law. Google themselves have been found not guilty in similar cases in Australia before, by relying on this defence. But this case was a bit different. There was the image search results, which Google must be assumed under the law to be the original publisher of (who else could be, given that the page is generated by Google and not exist anywhere else on the web?).
18 The question of whether or not Google Inc was a publisher is a matter of mixed fact and law. In my view, it was open to the jury to find the facts in this proceeding in such a way as to entitle the jury to conclude that Google Inc was a publisher even before it had any notice from anybody acting on behalf of the plaintiff. The jury were entitled to conclude that Google Inc intended to publish the material that its automated systems produced, because that was what they were designed to do upon a search request being typed into one of Google Inc’s search products. In that sense, Google Inc is like the newsagent that sells a newspaper containing a defamatory article. While there might be no specific intention to publish defamatory material, there is a relevant intention by the newsagent to publish the newspaper for the purposes of the law of defamation.
19 By parity of reasoning, those who operate libraries have sometimes been held to be publishers for the purposes of defamation law. That said, newsagents, librarians and the like usually avoid liability for defamation because of their ability to avail themselves of the defence of innocent dissemination (a defence which Google Inc was able to avail itself of for publications of the images matter prior to 11 October 2009, and all of the publications of the web matter that were the subject of this proceeding).
20 As was pointed out by counsel for the plaintiff in his address to the jury, the first page of the images matter (containing the photographs I have referred to and each named “Michael Trkulja” and each with a caption “melbournecrime”) was a page not published by any person other than Google Inc. It was a page of Google Inc’s creation – put together as a result of the Google Inc search engine working as it was intended to work by those who wrote the relevant computer programs. It was a cut and paste creation (if somewhat more sophisticated than one involving cutting word or phrases from a newspaper and gluing them onto a piece of paper). If Google Inc’s submission was to be accepted then, while this page might on one view be the natural and probable consequence of the material published on the source page from which it is derived, there would be no actual original publisher of this page.
Good post, and I agree, though should point out that this was a jury trial and so the jurors bear some of the responsibility as well here. I think it's a case of old law being applied to the letter, to a new medium to which it is unsuited. Not so much the judge not understanding the net - but at the end of the day they have to apply the law as it exists.
The Supreme Court is the highest court in Victoria, but if they can find a point of law to appeal on, Google could appeal to a Federal court (I.e. the High Court).
If being a troll or flamer was actually a serious crime, of which you were being falsely accused, and the Slashdot page concerned came up as a top link when searching for your name, then maybe...:)
I don't think many people are being affected by this bug - some are, for sure, but it's not hugely wide-spread. I certainly haven't noticed anything odd going on with the data usage of the 3 iOS devices in this household since upgrading to iOS6.
The new maps does suck, that's for sure though. Not so much the app itself (the vector-based mapping engine is pretty awesome actually, much faster and lighter on data usage than the old bitmap maps)... it's just the data that is terribly bad. Which is fixable, thankfully.
iPhone has always done this (so definitely not an iOS 6 or iOS 5-specific thing). It's a battery-saving measure. Actually, don't most smartphones do this? (Apple or not)
Or, indeed, try to avoid using the modems/routers sold by telcos/ISPs. The ones they try to sell you usually suck anyway... I've always preferred to use my own. Bought a good high-end ADSL2+ modem/router quite a few years ago and it's served me well through 3 or 4 ISPs.
Also, people should be avoiding Telstra as a matter of principle anyway:)
But in countries with ubiquitous electronic banking, he WOULD have a computer or card reader. It'd be a fundamental tool of the job, without which he simply couldn't run his business. They're not exactly expensive these days, especially the ones that just attach to an existing mobile phone. Your builder probably spent more on his last new hammer.
Can't speak for Sweden, but honestly I'm surprised there are still places that have any measurable use of paper cheques still. I'm in my 30s and have never had a cheque account. Never written a cheque. Never received one. Hell, never even seen one other than vague recollections of my parents using them in the 80s when I was a kid.
I'm in Australia and while they technically haven't abolished cheques here, virtually no one uses them. The need for them vanished due to the invention (and more importantly standardisation, so that they are ubiquitous) of electronic methods:
- Paying paper bills: BPay - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPAY - Paying in-person for services (i.e. builders, plumbers): they all have mobile EFT terminals... seriously never found one that doesn't - Paying your friend back the money you owe him/sending your relatives some money etc: log onto bank's website, type their account and the amount, hit enter. Done instantly.
Electronic methods are no more PITA than scrambling for a pen and writing out a cheque... they take roughly the same amount of time. And they are processed straight away so your balance isn't in limbo until the cheque clears etc. While I agree that there are conceivable situations where a cheque would be useful, I'm yet to actually come across any of these situations in real life, so I'm fine with the way things are.
...which is why they randomise the order of candidates on every ballot paper. Not to mention where I live, at least, you have to indicate your preference of all candidates on the paper, not just choose one (i.e. mark your favourite candidate as '1', next favourite as '2', etc.) So someone that just comes in and marks the candidate who appears first on the ballot: a) won't be marking the same candidate in every case; and b) will have produced an invalid ballot anyway.
Love how you seem to think anyone's opinion that is not your own is automatically 'bullshit'. I've heard good arguments both for and against compulsory voting and while I personally think that while not perfect, it produces better democratic outcomes on average, that doesn't mean I think non-compulsory voting systems are complete rubbish. A lot also depends on the vote-counting method of the country/jurisdiction in which the elections are being held - some systems are much better suited to non-compulsory voting (particularly non-proportional or non-preferential voting systems).
Yes - that's exactly how it's seen in countries with compulsory voting... and is why it IS compulsory.* It's a responsibility, not a right that you may or may not choose to exercise.
----- * Well technically, in countries with compulsory voting, what is compulsory is that you turn up at a polling place on election day and get your name marked off the register. You are perfectly free to then put a blank ballot in the box, or draw smiley faces all over it, or whatever. They can't actually force you to vote, because that would obviously undermine the principal of having a secret, anonymous ballot.
But in some places, voting is seen more as a responsibility that goes along with being a citizen. If you become naturalised, you take an oath of citizenship which includes the concept that citizenship comes with rights, but also responsibilities. Similarly the State has mutual responsibilities towards its citizens.
So in countries with compulsory voting, it's not really that you are being forced to exercise a right (which I agree is a bit non-nonsensical). Rather, the act of voting itself is seen in a somewhat different light. More as a citizenly duty, that fulfils your side of the government-citizen relationship, than a mere right.
Yes as an Australian who has newly also become a US citizen, I was rather shocked to see how shoddily US elections are run compared to ours. It seems so inconsistent from state to state and city to city. Made me appreciate what a damn fine job does the AEC does in Australia - I've never heard of any significant problems with ballot counting/machines/fraud etc. including in places where they use a lot of electronic voting, such as the recent ACT elections.
A quick Googling shows that the US has the Federal Election Commission, which sounded at first like it might be an equivalent to the Australian Electoral Commission, but really, it's not. The FEC's areas of responsibility are quite small compared to the AEC: http://www.fec.gov/ans/answers_general.shtml - seems to be more about regulating the funding of elections than actually enforcing the integrity of the ballot-box and vote-counting processes.
I live in Australia and had a phone lost/stolen a few years ago (I say lost/stolen because it was my fault I lost it, but when I called the number, some random picked up and talked with me for a minute, until it became obvious that I was the owner of the phone and that I wanted it back, at which point they abruptly hung up). All I had to do was call my provider and report the phone lost and the IMEI was blocked on all Australian networks within a day or two.
Note though that YOU have to provide the IMEI, which usually acts as sufficient proof of purchase/ID. I couldn't just call up and say "please block my phone". I had to call, prove I was the account holder, AND read them the IMEI I wanted blocked (which was on the box the phone came in). They obviously have a record of what IMEIs were used on the account, but I still had to tell them which to block, both as a security measure and because I could have potentially used any number of phones on that account/with that SIM card, so they need to ensure the correct phone is blocked.
If you're looking to purchase a second hand phone in Australia, on the other hand, you should always ask for the IMEI and check it on this site: http://www.amta.org.au/pages/amta/Check.the.Status.of.your.Handset - this allows you to check whether an IMEI is blocked in Australia or not.
Not really - the service includes a large premium used to amortise the cost of the handset. This becomes quite plain when you look at the comparative costs of the handsets and service in other countries where people tend to buy phones outright/don't use contracts/BYO phone.
For instance, an iPhone or higher-end Android device costs typically $500-$1000 outright in most countries. A lot of people buy them outright then put them on a relatively cheap plan (e.g. $15 a month). Losing the handset is a big deal in that scenario... the service is cheap.
Understood that this has little relevance to the US mobile market where virtually everyone buys phone+plan as a 2 year contract and pays the handset off as part of the plan price. But to simply say that the cellphone 'costs less' than the service isn't really right.
I only found this out after I bought a Macbook from the US, brought it home, and mysteriously couldn't see my home Wifi connection. It took me AGES to figure out it was because my access point was broadcasting on channel 14 (which is perfectly OK in the country I live), a channel apparently completely ignored (or at least hidden) by the firmware of the wireless card in the US-market Macbook.
What's more, changing all my regional settings etc. did not seem to help. I Googled around a bit and found some obscure terminal commands that supposedly would re-enable the higher channels, but they too didn't work. So I gave up and just resigned myself to using channel 1/6/11 again, which sucks because they are all super congested around my apartment.
It was shown (live) on this side of the ~other~ pond (Australia, the Pacific). Seems odd that the UK wouldn't be showing it. Might be a time-zone thing? It fell at exactly midday here so a quiet (non-prime-time) period.
There's a difference between a mere petition, and public consultation on a Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee under the Westminster system of government (i.e. as used in the UK, Canada, Australia, NZ etc.) The JPC is tasked with discussing and researching matters related to a specific piece of policy and as such must take into account the submissions it receives from industry and the public in forming its final opinion. They are commonly used when the subject matter of a proposed policy is controversial, complex or technical (beyond the expertise of Parliamentarians themselves) and thus requires public/industry/expert consultation.
Indeed. Another example is the recent introduction of R18+ classification for video games here in Australia. Public submissions (of which tens of thousands were received) were overwhelmingly in support of the bill, like 98% to 2%. But there was still that 2% against. In this case we have literally a 100%-0% split. That's very significant.
Slashdot Mirror
Haha. Am reasonably confident my router's firewall is up to the task, but because the IPv6 /64 assigned to my router (and the /56 prefix assigned to my network) is static, figured I'd better remove it, just in case :)
Well any decent router that offers NAT will also have an actual firewall as well. Which will continue to work on IPv6 ... so it's not like you're unprotected or anything. I'm not one of those rabid "NAT is an awful hack" people, but it's just another tool in the box that ceases to really have a purpose in the IPv6 world.
Anyway, if your point is that you don't NEED IPv6 (yet), then you're absolutely right. I was merely offering my experience of IPv6 adoption as an end user. And that it was pretty painless (both for me personally, but also for the ISP - they ran quite a few blog articles about the migration and since it was done in a steady, staged manner in the course of the normal business of replacing hardware and reconfiguring networks, it didn't really cost them too much extra time or money).
The reason I did this is that it seems to me that some organisations are very stuck in the mud about IPv6 - they dig their heels in and take the attitude that it's preferable to use workarounds to make the existing IPv4 space last longer, than just bite the bullet and get IPv6 up and running. Note that I don't mean people that simply have a "what I have now works fine, so why bother" opinion - that's a perfectly reasonable position to take. Or those that have a real reason they can't do it (legacy hardware/software, in enterprises particularly). But there are also those that actively try to reject IPv6 for no reason other than that they seemingly don't like the idea of it. They aren't just ambivalent about it - they go out of their way to find reasons not to use it. The reluctance they have for implementing IPv6 is not commensurate with the actual difficulty of doing so. Hell I was bit like that myself, but my ISP did things well and it was so brain-dead easy that I kinda feel silly for having been like that.
I've been on native IPv6 for a couple of years on my home DSL connection. It works very well - only thing I had to do was check the 'enable IPv6' option in my modem/router and everything 'just worked'. It is rather nice not having to deal with NAT and port forwarding etc.
I'm in Australia (so within the Asia-Pacific/APNIC region, which as the summary mentions, is a bit ahead of the curve when it comes to IPv6 adoption. Most of the major sites are fully IPv6 now too (e.g. all the Google sites, Facebook, etc. etc.) But the point is, done properly, it should be a completely seamless transition to enable dual-stack (and eventually to turn off IPv4, though I'm sure that won't happen for decades!). Hell I usually forget I'm even on IPv6, unless I happen to do a ping/tracert to an IPv6 host and see all those long-ass IPs :)
C:\>tracert www.google.com
Tracing route to www.google.com [2404:6800:4006:800::1014] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms gateway [2001:44b8:(snip!)]
2 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms loop0.lns20.cbr1.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:9010::5]
3 7 ms * 7 ms gi0-0-2.cor3.cbr1.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:9010:14::1]
4 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms te6-0-0.bdr1.syd4.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:9010:e::2]
5 11 ms * 11 ms te0-0-0.bdr1.syd7.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:b070:1::11]
6 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms gi1-2-121.cor2.syd7.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:b060:121::2]
7 11 ms * 12 ms gi6-0-0-101.bdr1.syd7.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:b070:104::1]
8 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms 2001:4860:1:1:0:1283:0:4
9 13 ms 13 ms 12 ms 2001:4860:0:1::1fb
10 13 ms 12 ms 11 ms 2404:6800:4006:800::1014
Oh I agree, it's stupid. An effect of old law being applied to a new medium that it's not suited for.
The court's argument is simply that:
- A page of content has an 'original' publisher.
- The Google Image Search results page is generated by Google, and that page does not exist anywhere else on the web.
- Therefore, Google must be the publisher, simply because no-one else can be.
The issue as far as I can tell is that the concept of 'original publisher' doesn't work well in a world where 'publications' can be ~dynamically~ generated. The image search results is indeed a unique page that doesn't exist anywhere else, but it's really just an amalgamation of content from other sources, presented in a particular way...
Read the judgement. Of particular relevance, the paragraphs beginning with paragraph 18. If they WERE just linking, then it would not be publication and they would not have been found guilty. But in this case, they were generating content themselves (under the legal definition, at least...)
I would suggest you read the judgement, starting at paragraph 18. The judge specifically talks about the newsagent analogy, and why this is different.
Not that that makes the judgement sensible at all, but remember, the judge has to apply the law as it exists, not as he'd LIKE it to be.
If you read the judgement (radical idea, I know), you'll see that a big part of the reason that Google was found liable here was the cached version of the article, as well as the Google Image Search results (which are a "page of Google's own making" not merely a link or reference to another source).
Indeed the judgement makes it quite clear that merely linking or indexing is not considered publication under Australian common law. Google themselves have been found not guilty in similar cases in Australia before, by relying on this defence. But this case was a bit different. There was the image search results, which Google must be assumed under the law to be the original publisher of (who else could be, given that the page is generated by Google and not exist anywhere else on the web?).
18 The question of whether or not Google Inc was a publisher is a matter of mixed fact and law. In my view, it was open to the jury to find the facts in this proceeding in such a way as to entitle the jury to conclude that Google Inc was a publisher even before it had any notice from anybody acting on behalf of the plaintiff. The jury were entitled to conclude that Google Inc intended to publish the material that its automated systems produced, because that was what they were designed to do upon a search request being typed into one of Google Inc’s search products. In that sense, Google Inc is like the newsagent that sells a newspaper containing a defamatory article. While there might be no specific intention to publish defamatory material, there is a relevant intention by the newsagent to publish the newspaper for the purposes of the law of defamation.
19 By parity of reasoning, those who operate libraries have sometimes been held to be publishers for the purposes of defamation law. That said, newsagents, librarians and the like usually avoid liability for defamation because of their ability to avail themselves of the defence of innocent dissemination (a defence which Google Inc was able to avail itself of for publications of the images matter prior to 11 October 2009, and all of the publications of the web matter that were the subject of this proceeding).
20 As was pointed out by counsel for the plaintiff in his address to the jury, the first page of the images matter (containing the photographs I have referred to and each named “Michael Trkulja” and each with a caption “melbournecrime”) was a page not published by any person other than Google Inc. It was a page of Google Inc’s creation – put together as a result of the Google Inc search engine working as it was intended to work by those who wrote the relevant computer programs. It was a cut and paste creation (if somewhat more sophisticated than one involving cutting word or phrases from a newspaper and gluing them onto a piece of paper). If Google Inc’s submission was to be accepted then, while this page might on one view be the natural and probable consequence of the material published on the source page from which it is derived, there would be no actual original publisher of this page.
Good post, and I agree, though should point out that this was a jury trial and so the jurors bear some of the responsibility as well here. I think it's a case of old law being applied to the letter, to a new medium to which it is unsuited. Not so much the judge not understanding the net - but at the end of the day they have to apply the law as it exists.
The Supreme Court is the highest court in Victoria, but if they can find a point of law to appeal on, Google could appeal to a Federal court (I.e. the High Court).
If being a troll or flamer was actually a serious crime, of which you were being falsely accused, and the Slashdot page concerned came up as a top link when searching for your name, then maybe... :)
I don't think many people are being affected by this bug - some are, for sure, but it's not hugely wide-spread. I certainly haven't noticed anything odd going on with the data usage of the 3 iOS devices in this household since upgrading to iOS6.
The new maps does suck, that's for sure though. Not so much the app itself (the vector-based mapping engine is pretty awesome actually, much faster and lighter on data usage than the old bitmap maps) ... it's just the data that is terribly bad. Which is fixable, thankfully.
iPhone has always done this (so definitely not an iOS 6 or iOS 5-specific thing). It's a battery-saving measure. Actually, don't most smartphones do this? (Apple or not)
Or, indeed, try to avoid using the modems/routers sold by telcos/ISPs. The ones they try to sell you usually suck anyway ... I've always preferred to use my own. Bought a good high-end ADSL2+ modem/router quite a few years ago and it's served me well through 3 or 4 ISPs.
Also, people should be avoiding Telstra as a matter of principle anyway :)
But in countries with ubiquitous electronic banking, he WOULD have a computer or card reader. It'd be a fundamental tool of the job, without which he simply couldn't run his business. They're not exactly expensive these days, especially the ones that just attach to an existing mobile phone. Your builder probably spent more on his last new hammer.
Can't speak for Sweden, but honestly I'm surprised there are still places that have any measurable use of paper cheques still. I'm in my 30s and have never had a cheque account. Never written a cheque. Never received one. Hell, never even seen one other than vague recollections of my parents using them in the 80s when I was a kid.
I'm in Australia and while they technically haven't abolished cheques here, virtually no one uses them. The need for them vanished due to the invention (and more importantly standardisation, so that they are ubiquitous) of electronic methods:
- Paying paper bills: BPay - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPAY ... seriously never found one that doesn't
- Paying in-person for services (i.e. builders, plumbers): they all have mobile EFT terminals
- Paying your friend back the money you owe him/sending your relatives some money etc: log onto bank's website, type their account and the amount, hit enter. Done instantly.
Electronic methods are no more PITA than scrambling for a pen and writing out a cheque ... they take roughly the same amount of time. And they are processed straight away so your balance isn't in limbo until the cheque clears etc. While I agree that there are conceivable situations where a cheque would be useful, I'm yet to actually come across any of these situations in real life, so I'm fine with the way things are.
...which is why they randomise the order of candidates on every ballot paper. Not to mention where I live, at least, you have to indicate your preference of all candidates on the paper, not just choose one (i.e. mark your favourite candidate as '1', next favourite as '2', etc.) So someone that just comes in and marks the candidate who appears first on the ballot: a) won't be marking the same candidate in every case; and b) will have produced an invalid ballot anyway.
Love how you seem to think anyone's opinion that is not your own is automatically 'bullshit'. I've heard good arguments both for and against compulsory voting and while I personally think that while not perfect, it produces better democratic outcomes on average, that doesn't mean I think non-compulsory voting systems are complete rubbish. A lot also depends on the vote-counting method of the country/jurisdiction in which the elections are being held - some systems are much better suited to non-compulsory voting (particularly non-proportional or non-preferential voting systems).
"A vote is a responsibility"
Yes - that's exactly how it's seen in countries with compulsory voting ... and is why it IS compulsory.* It's a responsibility, not a right that you may or may not choose to exercise.
-----
* Well technically, in countries with compulsory voting, what is compulsory is that you turn up at a polling place on election day and get your name marked off the register. You are perfectly free to then put a blank ballot in the box, or draw smiley faces all over it, or whatever. They can't actually force you to vote, because that would obviously undermine the principal of having a secret, anonymous ballot.
Rights aren't obligations - very true.
But in some places, voting is seen more as a responsibility that goes along with being a citizen. If you become naturalised, you take an oath of citizenship which includes the concept that citizenship comes with rights, but also responsibilities. Similarly the State has mutual responsibilities towards its citizens.
So in countries with compulsory voting, it's not really that you are being forced to exercise a right (which I agree is a bit non-nonsensical). Rather, the act of voting itself is seen in a somewhat different light. More as a citizenly duty, that fulfils your side of the government-citizen relationship, than a mere right.
Yes as an Australian who has newly also become a US citizen, I was rather shocked to see how shoddily US elections are run compared to ours. It seems so inconsistent from state to state and city to city. Made me appreciate what a damn fine job does the AEC does in Australia - I've never heard of any significant problems with ballot counting/machines/fraud etc. including in places where they use a lot of electronic voting, such as the recent ACT elections.
A quick Googling shows that the US has the Federal Election Commission, which sounded at first like it might be an equivalent to the Australian Electoral Commission, but really, it's not. The FEC's areas of responsibility are quite small compared to the AEC: http://www.fec.gov/ans/answers_general.shtml - seems to be more about regulating the funding of elections than actually enforcing the integrity of the ballot-box and vote-counting processes.
No, this is overkill.
I live in Australia and had a phone lost/stolen a few years ago (I say lost/stolen because it was my fault I lost it, but when I called the number, some random picked up and talked with me for a minute, until it became obvious that I was the owner of the phone and that I wanted it back, at which point they abruptly hung up). All I had to do was call my provider and report the phone lost and the IMEI was blocked on all Australian networks within a day or two.
Note though that YOU have to provide the IMEI, which usually acts as sufficient proof of purchase/ID. I couldn't just call up and say "please block my phone". I had to call, prove I was the account holder, AND read them the IMEI I wanted blocked (which was on the box the phone came in). They obviously have a record of what IMEIs were used on the account, but I still had to tell them which to block, both as a security measure and because I could have potentially used any number of phones on that account/with that SIM card, so they need to ensure the correct phone is blocked.
If you're looking to purchase a second hand phone in Australia, on the other hand, you should always ask for the IMEI and check it on this site: http://www.amta.org.au/pages/amta/Check.the.Status.of.your.Handset - this allows you to check whether an IMEI is blocked in Australia or not.
Not really - the service includes a large premium used to amortise the cost of the handset. This becomes quite plain when you look at the comparative costs of the handsets and service in other countries where people tend to buy phones outright/don't use contracts/BYO phone.
For instance, an iPhone or higher-end Android device costs typically $500-$1000 outright in most countries. A lot of people buy them outright then put them on a relatively cheap plan (e.g. $15 a month). Losing the handset is a big deal in that scenario ... the service is cheap.
Understood that this has little relevance to the US mobile market where virtually everyone buys phone+plan as a 2 year contract and pays the handset off as part of the plan price. But to simply say that the cellphone 'costs less' than the service isn't really right.
Hell, welcome to the 20th century. Some countries had IMEI blocking across GSM networks in the 90s...
I only found this out after I bought a Macbook from the US, brought it home, and mysteriously couldn't see my home Wifi connection. It took me AGES to figure out it was because my access point was broadcasting on channel 14 (which is perfectly OK in the country I live), a channel apparently completely ignored (or at least hidden) by the firmware of the wireless card in the US-market Macbook.
What's more, changing all my regional settings etc. did not seem to help. I Googled around a bit and found some obscure terminal commands that supposedly would re-enable the higher channels, but they too didn't work. So I gave up and just resigned myself to using channel 1/6/11 again, which sucks because they are all super congested around my apartment.
It was shown (live) on this side of the ~other~ pond (Australia, the Pacific). Seems odd that the UK wouldn't be showing it. Might be a time-zone thing? It fell at exactly midday here so a quiet (non-prime-time) period.
There's a difference between a mere petition, and public consultation on a Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee under the Westminster system of government (i.e. as used in the UK, Canada, Australia, NZ etc.) The JPC is tasked with discussing and researching matters related to a specific piece of policy and as such must take into account the submissions it receives from industry and the public in forming its final opinion. They are commonly used when the subject matter of a proposed policy is controversial, complex or technical (beyond the expertise of Parliamentarians themselves) and thus requires public/industry/expert consultation.
Indeed. Another example is the recent introduction of R18+ classification for video games here in Australia. Public submissions (of which tens of thousands were received) were overwhelmingly in support of the bill, like 98% to 2%. But there was still that 2% against. In this case we have literally a 100%-0% split. That's very significant.