They do? Not everywhere I guess... a static IPv4 address is a $5/month add-on for my current home DSL plan. And even without paying that, my IPv6 address is static (or rather, the/56 prefix they assign me is static).
But despite that I still don't really want to go to the trouble of self hosting - buying a cheap domain and using free Google Apps for mail works great and gives me high reliability while still letting me fully control my own mail.
Nah, Hotmail was THE webmail service in the late 90s to early 2000s when the internet was growing very fast, and thus I think most people have or had a Hotmail address around here. Not in the US so 'AOL' never existed.
In the 2001-2005 period when I was at university easily 2/3rds of people used a Hotmail address (and the remainder used their ISP-provided email address). Now it's a lot lot less as Gmail has pretty much taken over. I still use my Hotmail address, but only as a 'throwaway' address for website signups and where you need to enter an email in a field to continue etc. I use Google Apps/Gmail with my own domain for my primary address.
While I agree with you about the tiny screen size, you'd be surprised how little power playing video takes on the iPhone if that video is in h264 and thus using the dedicated h264 decoder chip. It uses bugger all - can watch an hour of good-resolution video and it barely chews 5% for me.
I have an iPhone 4 (not 4S) and I use it quite heavily. I get 2 days out of it almost exactly. No massive tweaks to settings:
- Push mail off - Bluetooth off - Push notifications and location services are ON on for all apps other than Mail - Brightness at default (half way, with auto-brightness on). - Don't run Skype/Viber/other things always sitting in the background waiting for incoming communication - Auto-time-zone setting off (not sure if this has any real effect but I've heard rumours it can... I'll just flick it on if I'm planning on travelling but otherwise no point to have this enabled as it seems to activate the GPS and check where you are very regularly)
My friend with an Android (Galaxy S2) is constantly complaining about his battery life. (Though I must confess I love that bigger screen of his!)
People say this, but I don't think I've ever come across a site on my iPad or iPhone that hasn't worked OK. Either Flash isn't used as that much, or most sites detect an iOS device is browsing and serve an alternate Flash-less version of their site, I don't know, but it hasn't actually been an issue in real life usage (even though I was slightly worried about not having Flash before I bought my first iOS device).
Most video sites now serve HTML5 versions of their pages. I suppose Flash games are an issue, but honestly on an iOS device there's probably a native app version of the same thing anyway (not to mention many Flash games wouldn't really work well with a touch screen since they often rely on mouseover, which doesn't really exist when you haven't got a mouse pointer).
He's an Australian citizen - Aussies are more likely to care about their own than a random foreigner who happens to be in the country (which Assange would be in Sweden)
Julian Assange is a household name, that guy wasn't. Makes quite a difference. (Also, copyright infringement is actually a crime, even if you or I don't think it should be treated anywhere near as harshly as it is by the RIAA etc.... whereas Assange committed no crime in AU - another difference)
Australia may bend over for the US, but not in this case, for two good reasons:
1. The extradition treaty between Australia and the US would not allow Assange to be extradited in these circumstances (and while the government may do whatever the US tells them to do, the High Court is unlikely to, and make no mistake, that is where this will end up)
2. The political backlash domestically would be considerable. Extraditing an Australian citizen to the US for something that isn't a crime under Australian law and that didn't actually occur in the US? Would be pretty easy to kick up a massive media fuss about that I think.
Governments provide food stamps or equivalents in many places in the world: that is, a publicly-funded way for poor people to get food.
Government in most countries have a public housing system (they may either physically provide the housing, or leave that to the private market but subsidise people's rent) for those who are unable to pay rent.
'Public' transportation is precisely that.
Etc. So don't most of the things you mentioned already exist? Universal health care is about having a safety net for people who can't afford the care. It's not about giving everyone a free ride - you pay for it somehow, whether through direct fees or via income tax etc.
A sentence from an article I read here in the local media (Australia) about this this morning:
"Few issues in America prove to be more complex or bafflingly partisan than healthcare. America is the only industrialised country in the world that doesn't have some form of universal healthcare so for those of us who have come from elsewhere sometimes the arguments can seem perplexing to say the least."
That pretty much sums it up. The rest of the world can't understand this at all - how can anyone be against this stuff? Universal health care enjoys solid bipartisan support from left AND right wing governments and everything in between, in almost every country I can think of. And yes I understand that Obamacare isn't actually universal health care - it's mandated private insurance - but it's a step in the right direction, surely? (Recognising the fact that it's going to be difficult in the US to literally throw the whole health system out and start from scratch again... need to take baby steps instead)
Not trolling here or necessarily saying it's bad that America is like this. But just to convey to our American friends know that really, the rest of us look in complete bewilderment at this issue. It's like you guys live in a parallel universe or something and we find it very hard to understand.
While I'm not doubting your story, I have to wonder how there is such massive disparity in the reported figures for how long CFLs last between different people. I replaced all the lights in my house five years ago (actually, slightly more than five years ago now) and since then, a grand total of ONE has failed. If they were incandescents probably most of them would have been through a replacement by now, if not more than one replacement.
Seems to me like the quality of these things is not very consistent. FWIW I use Mirabella brand CFLs (seems from their website they are only an Australian company though so probably only sell stuff here in Australia - http://www.mirabella.com.au/). Not because they are supposed to be particularly good or anything, just cause that's the standard brand most stores seem to carry here...
Yeah that's true. But the iOS Facebook app is an exception, it's really just a frontend for an HTML5 site and it's super-buggy, slow and annoying. So I'm glad they are rewriting it.
I'm Australian, and never stepped foot in France but I'd definitely heard of Minitel. Hell, as I recall, there were parts of my high school French text book that discussed it. It was something the French were very proud of back in the 80s and 90s, and rightly so, as it was massively popular before the WWW was just a twinkle in someone's eye...
Ok sure, that's true. However my post was in response to the statement that Telstra had a monopoly in Australia. They may have a de facto monopoly in some remoter areas, but that's a far cry from the comparison to AT&T that was being made.
This is not about 'internet restrictions'. This is to do with the fact that this represents a potential breach of the Privacy Act. Australia has fairly strong privacy regulations that govern how and when information can be sent overseas, and how people need to be notified of how their information is used, who can see it, what it can be used for etc. America OTOH is notorious for having probably the most lax privacy regulations/legislation in the developed world.
So yeah, in that respect, Australia's laws are "worse" (in that they are more strict with regards to protecting personal information). And we like it that way. Surreptitiously exporting information to a jurisdiction where similarly tough controls do not exist is not looked upon favourably.
That's complete balderdash. This article is about the Telstra NextG (3G/4G LTE) cellular network, not their fixed line stuff. And Telstra has never, ever had anything remotely approaching a monopoly in the mobile market in Australia. Indeed, Australia's always had a much wider choice and range of cellular providers than most of the US has (and nowhere near the same degree of carrier-lockin via locked devices etc.)
Anyone on NextG can switch with minimal difficulty to Optus, Vodafone, Virgin, Boost, TPG, Amaysim... (insert a dozen more carriers here). Whether or not those choices are BETTER than NextG is obviously questionable (NextG is by far the fastest and best coverage), but that does not mean there is no choice.
Another thumbs up for the WD TV Live box from me. For such a cheap device, it's really awesome and plays pretty much any video file you can throw at it. Tiny and consumes virtually no power. I just have mine hooked to the LAN and keep all my media on the big 2 TB NAS box in the other room, but you can also just plug a USB key directly into it.
Plus it has integration with YouTube, Pandora and a bunch of other services (and here in Australia, the ABC iView catchup TV service, which I have to admit probably accounts for half my viewing).
BBC offering content to foreigners will happen about as fast as Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, and all the other American services offer THEIR products to paying customers outside America (i.e. probably never):( It's unfortunately due to licensing restrictions and international copyright laws rather than them "not wanting to" or being technically unable to do it.
(Australian here who is still bitter about them taking my Pandora away... it used to be available globally, sigh. Oh well, VPNs to the rescue I guess?)
Actually I shouldn't have blurted that out... I was sure I had read they were governed by banking regulations in Australia, but I can't find a cite for that right now. I did confirm though that:
- It's NOT considered a bank in the US; and - It IS considered a bank in most European countries.
Australia tends to be more EUish than USish when it comes to banking regulations, but I can't find anything definitive on this either way. Hmmm...
Yeah, inclined to agree. I'm no more of a fan of government intrusion into more areas of life than the next guy, but as an Australian taxpayer I also want to see the welfare using our tax dollars on those who are genuinely needy (given than most government benefits in this country are means-tested). This is no different than the dodgy guy down the road claiming Centrelink benefits without declaring his job, or claiming for non-existent children etc.
$20k seems like a reasonable threshold too, though perhaps you'd want to also add a minimum number of items threshold as well (someone turning over many items to make $20k can probably be said to be a 'business on the side', whereas someone who just does a one-off sale of something expensive, say a car, and who isn't likely to use Ebay much on an on-going basis, is a different story).
The other thing is that a significant reason for the first convict settlements in Australia (circa 1788) was that they could no longer send them to the American colonies following the US War of Independence (1776).
In total, far more convicts were sent to the American colonies than were ever sent to the Australian colonies. Americans seem to forget that for some reason.
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They do? Not everywhere I guess ... a static IPv4 address is a $5/month add-on for my current home DSL plan. And even without paying that, my IPv6 address is static (or rather, the /56 prefix they assign me is static).
But despite that I still don't really want to go to the trouble of self hosting - buying a cheap domain and using free Google Apps for mail works great and gives me high reliability while still letting me fully control my own mail.
Nah, Hotmail was THE webmail service in the late 90s to early 2000s when the internet was growing very fast, and thus I think most people have or had a Hotmail address around here. Not in the US so 'AOL' never existed.
In the 2001-2005 period when I was at university easily 2/3rds of people used a Hotmail address (and the remainder used their ISP-provided email address). Now it's a lot lot less as Gmail has pretty much taken over. I still use my Hotmail address, but only as a 'throwaway' address for website signups and where you need to enter an email in a field to continue etc. I use Google Apps/Gmail with my own domain for my primary address.
While I agree with you about the tiny screen size, you'd be surprised how little power playing video takes on the iPhone if that video is in h264 and thus using the dedicated h264 decoder chip. It uses bugger all - can watch an hour of good-resolution video and it barely chews 5% for me.
I have an iPhone 4 (not 4S) and I use it quite heavily. I get 2 days out of it almost exactly. No massive tweaks to settings:
- Push mail off ... I'll just flick it on if I'm planning on travelling but otherwise no point to have this enabled as it seems to activate the GPS and check where you are very regularly)
- Bluetooth off
- Push notifications and location services are ON on for all apps other than Mail
- Brightness at default (half way, with auto-brightness on).
- Don't run Skype/Viber/other things always sitting in the background waiting for incoming communication
- Auto-time-zone setting off (not sure if this has any real effect but I've heard rumours it can
My friend with an Android (Galaxy S2) is constantly complaining about his battery life. (Though I must confess I love that bigger screen of his!)
People say this, but I don't think I've ever come across a site on my iPad or iPhone that hasn't worked OK. Either Flash isn't used as that much, or most sites detect an iOS device is browsing and serve an alternate Flash-less version of their site, I don't know, but it hasn't actually been an issue in real life usage (even though I was slightly worried about not having Flash before I bought my first iOS device).
Most video sites now serve HTML5 versions of their pages. I suppose Flash games are an issue, but honestly on an iOS device there's probably a native app version of the same thing anyway (not to mention many Flash games wouldn't really work well with a touch screen since they often rely on mouseover, which doesn't really exist when you haven't got a mouse pointer).
He's an Australian citizen - Aussies are more likely to care about their own than a random foreigner who happens to be in the country (which Assange would be in Sweden)
Julian Assange is a household name, that guy wasn't. Makes quite a difference. (Also, copyright infringement is actually a crime, even if you or I don't think it should be treated anywhere near as harshly as it is by the RIAA etc. ... whereas Assange committed no crime in AU - another difference)
Australia may bend over for the US, but not in this case, for two good reasons:
1. The extradition treaty between Australia and the US would not allow Assange to be extradited in these circumstances (and while the government may do whatever the US tells them to do, the High Court is unlikely to, and make no mistake, that is where this will end up)
2. The political backlash domestically would be considerable. Extraditing an Australian citizen to the US for something that isn't a crime under Australian law and that didn't actually occur in the US? Would be pretty easy to kick up a massive media fuss about that I think.
Governments provide food stamps or equivalents in many places in the world: that is, a publicly-funded way for poor people to get food.
Government in most countries have a public housing system (they may either physically provide the housing, or leave that to the private market but subsidise people's rent) for those who are unable to pay rent.
'Public' transportation is precisely that.
Etc. So don't most of the things you mentioned already exist? Universal health care is about having a safety net for people who can't afford the care. It's not about giving everyone a free ride - you pay for it somehow, whether through direct fees or via income tax etc.
A sentence from an article I read here in the local media (Australia) about this this morning:
"Few issues in America prove to be more complex or bafflingly partisan than healthcare. America is the only industrialised country in the world that doesn't have some form of universal healthcare so for those of us who have come from elsewhere sometimes the arguments can seem perplexing to say the least."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-29/brissenden-obamacare/4099580
That pretty much sums it up. The rest of the world can't understand this at all - how can anyone be against this stuff? Universal health care enjoys solid bipartisan support from left AND right wing governments and everything in between, in almost every country I can think of. And yes I understand that Obamacare isn't actually universal health care - it's mandated private insurance - but it's a step in the right direction, surely? (Recognising the fact that it's going to be difficult in the US to literally throw the whole health system out and start from scratch again ... need to take baby steps instead)
Not trolling here or necessarily saying it's bad that America is like this. But just to convey to our American friends know that really, the rest of us look in complete bewilderment at this issue. It's like you guys live in a parallel universe or something and we find it very hard to understand.
While I'm not doubting your story, I have to wonder how there is such massive disparity in the reported figures for how long CFLs last between different people. I replaced all the lights in my house five years ago (actually, slightly more than five years ago now) and since then, a grand total of ONE has failed. If they were incandescents probably most of them would have been through a replacement by now, if not more than one replacement.
Seems to me like the quality of these things is not very consistent. FWIW I use Mirabella brand CFLs (seems from their website they are only an Australian company though so probably only sell stuff here in Australia - http://www.mirabella.com.au/). Not because they are supposed to be particularly good or anything, just cause that's the standard brand most stores seem to carry here...
Yeah that's true. But the iOS Facebook app is an exception, it's really just a frontend for an HTML5 site and it's super-buggy, slow and annoying. So I'm glad they are rewriting it.
I'm Australian, and never stepped foot in France but I'd definitely heard of Minitel. Hell, as I recall, there were parts of my high school French text book that discussed it. It was something the French were very proud of back in the 80s and 90s, and rightly so, as it was massively popular before the WWW was just a twinkle in someone's eye...
Fine.
In the GSM era, then.
Ok sure, that's true. However my post was in response to the statement that Telstra had a monopoly in Australia. They may have a de facto monopoly in some remoter areas, but that's a far cry from the comparison to AT&T that was being made.
This is not about 'internet restrictions'. This is to do with the fact that this represents a potential breach of the Privacy Act. Australia has fairly strong privacy regulations that govern how and when information can be sent overseas, and how people need to be notified of how their information is used, who can see it, what it can be used for etc. America OTOH is notorious for having probably the most lax privacy regulations/legislation in the developed world.
So yeah, in that respect, Australia's laws are "worse" (in that they are more strict with regards to protecting personal information). And we like it that way. Surreptitiously exporting information to a jurisdiction where similarly tough controls do not exist is not looked upon favourably.
That's complete balderdash. This article is about the Telstra NextG (3G/4G LTE) cellular network, not their fixed line stuff. And Telstra has never, ever had anything remotely approaching a monopoly in the mobile market in Australia. Indeed, Australia's always had a much wider choice and range of cellular providers than most of the US has (and nowhere near the same degree of carrier-lockin via locked devices etc.)
Anyone on NextG can switch with minimal difficulty to Optus, Vodafone, Virgin, Boost, TPG, Amaysim ... (insert a dozen more carriers here). Whether or not those choices are BETTER than NextG is obviously questionable (NextG is by far the fastest and best coverage), but that does not mean there is no choice.
Another thumbs up for the WD TV Live box from me. For such a cheap device, it's really awesome and plays pretty much any video file you can throw at it. Tiny and consumes virtually no power. I just have mine hooked to the LAN and keep all my media on the big 2 TB NAS box in the other room, but you can also just plug a USB key directly into it.
Plus it has integration with YouTube, Pandora and a bunch of other services (and here in Australia, the ABC iView catchup TV service, which I have to admit probably accounts for half my viewing).
BBC offering content to foreigners will happen about as fast as Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, and all the other American services offer THEIR products to paying customers outside America (i.e. probably never) :( It's unfortunately due to licensing restrictions and international copyright laws rather than them "not wanting to" or being technically unable to do it.
(Australian here who is still bitter about them taking my Pandora away ... it used to be available globally, sigh. Oh well, VPNs to the rescue I guess?)
Unfortunately the real cheats will simply open multiple Ebay accounts and make sure they only sell $19,999 or less on each one per financial year ;)
Actually I shouldn't have blurted that out ... I was sure I had read they were governed by banking regulations in Australia, but I can't find a cite for that right now. I did confirm though that:
- It's NOT considered a bank in the US; and
- It IS considered a bank in most European countries.
Australia tends to be more EUish than USish when it comes to banking regulations, but I can't find anything definitive on this either way. Hmmm...
No but Paypal (owned by Ebay and used for most Ebay transactions) IS legally a bank in most countries, including Australia...
Yeah, inclined to agree. I'm no more of a fan of government intrusion into more areas of life than the next guy, but as an Australian taxpayer I also want to see the welfare using our tax dollars on those who are genuinely needy (given than most government benefits in this country are means-tested). This is no different than the dodgy guy down the road claiming Centrelink benefits without declaring his job, or claiming for non-existent children etc.
$20k seems like a reasonable threshold too, though perhaps you'd want to also add a minimum number of items threshold as well (someone turning over many items to make $20k can probably be said to be a 'business on the side', whereas someone who just does a one-off sale of something expensive, say a car, and who isn't likely to use Ebay much on an on-going basis, is a different story).
While NYC is somewhat expensive it's by no means the most expensive on the planet:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-worlds-50-most-expensive-cities-20120612-207lr.html?rand=1339479813872
33rd this year down from 32nd last year (according to the annual Mercer study).
The other thing is that a significant reason for the first convict settlements in Australia (circa 1788) was that they could no longer send them to the American colonies following the US War of Independence (1776).
In total, far more convicts were sent to the American colonies than were ever sent to the Australian colonies. Americans seem to forget that for some reason.