iTunes music only had DRM for the first year or two. It's been DRM-free for a long time now (for music, at least). And in most cases it'll allow you to upgrade old DRMed files to the newer iTunes Plus ones for a small fee.
I buy quite a bit of iTunes music and did a quick scan of my library. Only one old album I have appears to be still DRMed (for some reason... I suspect because the publisher of that particular album didn't agree to the unDRMing and no longer sells on iTunes).
The 'international bottleneck' is a bit of a myth. The capacity we have now, on SXC, PPC1, AJC and others, isn't fully utilised. In fact, some of those cables aren't even being close to fully ~lit~. Plus, our total international capacity is due to almost double in the near future as the Pacific Fibre cable project is completed (estimated to be in 2013). ~The particular ISP you are using~ may be too stingy to spend the money on buying enough international capacity (and hence you may experience slower connections to overseas hosts than you would like). But that doesn't mean there's a bottleneck for the country as a whole.
Either way this has little to do with AARNet, which isn't a residential ISP and which buys more than sufficient international capacity. I certainly didn't notice any international bottleneck when I lived on campus (i.e. connected to AARNet). Well-connected overseas sites were just as fast as well-connected domestic ones and often came close to maxing out the 100 Mbit interface speed. Good on em for continuing to plan for the future (though I don't think this is particularly newsworthy - every decent network is planning the same way).
Well yes and no. Theft (and subsequent sale) of materials from phone/power/communications lines is rampant in most countries, including developed ones. But no so much cables that are actually installed and live (e.g. stealing off power poles) - that doesn't really happen much here. But stealing the cables ~before~ they are installed is another thing altogether.
As you say though, they are after copper rather than fibre. Problem is you often can't tell whether what you're stealing has copper in it or not.
I live in Australia and there was a theft of a very large amount of copper cable from a construction site just up the road from me last year. There were building three large (multi-storey) residential towers on the site and so had all the cable that would be necessary to wire up each apartment sitting around in a shed there somewhere. Not sure whether it was comms (cat 6) or power cable, but either way, it was stolen. The site was reasonably well secured too, so the heist must have been planned well (and there's a fair chance it was at least partly an inside job).
Eh? Sat internet systems that use dialup for the upstream went the way of the dodo years ago (at least in this country). Most are properly bi-directional these days.
Not just Africa. This kind of network is a requirement in remoter areas of developed countries like Canada, Australia and (shock!) the US too. Areas where phonelines are too long to support DSL, where there is no cable/fibre, etc. Cellular solutions currently fill this gap, but the range and speed of a (3G) cellular tower is well and truly surpassed by this technology (or other techs like WiMax).
Sigh - this is what happens when articles/summaries are written by people with no idea how the law works. Do a bit of reading of the court's actual words, and generally about injunctions and discovery while you're at it. Slashdot always likes to make things sound more ridiculous/inflammatory than they really are.
A Zumba class in a building only a block away from where I work caused noticeable movement in that building, so much so that some people were afraid for their safety. Of course, the building was up to code and engineers reported that nothing was wrong, but still, interesting...
Er...there are plenty of alternative browsers on the App Store. What are you on about? I personally prefer Atomic (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/atomic-web-browser-browse/id347929410?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4)
Email clients?... well I don't know because I've never looked. So you might have a point there.
While I agree that that is what will probably occur, the question needs to be asked: are we even capable of even getting to that peak without massive problems (famine, war, disease).
As you say all first world countries - North America, Europe, Australia and NZ, Japan and Korea etc. - already have negative population growth (not including immigration), and places like China are likely to get there too before too long. India is a bit more of a concern. But most projections I've seen do see us plateauing off within the next 100-150 years somewhere between 10 and 14 billion. But do we have the resources to (even temporarily) cope with those numbers? It's close to double what we have now (and the strain is already showing in some ways).
I think humanity has the knowledge and technology to cope with those numbers, personally. But they may not have the political and personal will to make necessary (and perhaps difficult) changes that will be necessary. There are so many societal, religious and political factors in play here across the world's various cultures that I honestly am not particularly optimistic. Even in the West, it seems like even comparatively minor changes draw uproar from one segment of the community or another, so politicians just play it safe and shy away from major reform (because they know that change is politically unpopular).
Hm fair enough. I wasn't really using 'urbanised' in the official sense/meaning of the word that Wikipedia is using. I perhaps should have used 'centralised' or something instead. I mean, Sydney and Melbourne alone account for half the total population, and most of the rest is in 3 or 4 more places. A few large cities, rather than many medium-sized ones.
Still 17th in the world is pretty high considering none of the places listed above it are anywhere near as physically large. Almost all are absolutely tiny (islands, and places like Monaco, Gibraltar, etc.). Even the decent sized countries listed higher (Argentina, Belgium, UK, etc.) are still smaller than most of our States. Nonetheless, I wasn't really talking about urbanisation in that sense (% of population in urban areas), I was more referring to % of population centralised within just a couple of cities and nowhere else.
Yeah it's kinda funny to see how the remaining stock in them has slowly dwindled over the last few weeks as they've been shutting down. There's a pretty large borders in the Canberra Centre mall that I walk past quite often. The other day I peeked in and it was just like a huge void of empty shelves, with the odd book still sitting around but not much else. Oh, and they were selling the shelves too!
The VAT model cannot work under the current law, that is true. But law (even the Consitution) can be amended. It just requires the political will to do so.
Australia has a very similar Constitution to the US, and very similar division of power between States and the Federal Govt. It has a flat nationwide GST. So it ~can~ work... it just requires some changes to the law and a new Constitutional Amendment. (Haha, yeah I know, "just" an amendment, as if that's a minor thing... but it has been done before and can be done again, theoretically).
God that sounds like a crazy system. Australia has roughly the same Federal/State system as the US, and generally has the same division between State rights and Federal legislative powers, but did manage replace a bunch of random old taxes with a single Federal GST back in 2001. A flat rate of tax applied to most goods and services, nationwide (some things are exempt, such as most food and essential grocery items). It works well and solved the 'online advantage' problem (at least domestically... orders from overseas websites still have that advantage and this has actually been a recent issue in the news, with Australian businesses complaining they cannot compete against foreign websites).
Of course, Federal law and the US Constitution currently do not allow for a similar system in America (The Federal Govt. can't impose a taxes except in proportion to the population of the states, or the Federal income tax under the 16th Amendment). But hey, Federal law can be changed. Even the Constitution can be changed (all those Amendments weren't there originally). But there's simply no political will to make large-scale changes in the current climate I think, and the American government has much, much more important issues to deal with right now (economic, mostly).
Nope I don't have it to myself. I'm married - so me and the wife. It's too small for our needs really, so looking to upsize soon. But any move, even just to a similar but slightly bigger place, will up it from $1400 towards $1600 or $1700. Ah well... we can afford it on dual incomes. But it's still a huge chunk of change:(
Firstly, iOS has had the hotspot feature for quite some time (since iOS 4.2 I think). Prior to that, yep you needed to jailbreak to do it. But it's built-in as standard now and allows up to 5 other wifi devices to leech off the phone's 3G connection. You can also directly tether to a single device via bluetooth or USB, as always.
My carrier used to charge a fee for tethering (but doesn't any more). However the phones themselves didn't 'know' this. I always had the tethering/hotspot options visible on both my iPhone and my Android phone (even on plans that didn't permit tethering). However if I tried to USE it (and hadn't paid for tethering), it simply wouldn't work (the carrier's APN for tethering would obviously perform a check to see if the person trying to use it was allowed to, and if not, simply wouldn't let any data pass). Wouldn't work on iOS, wouldn't work on Android, wouldn't work on Blackberry.
So it wasn't restricted on the ~phone~, per se, it was restricted on the carrier's APN/servers. When the carrier decided to stop charging for tethering, I suppose they simply changed the configuration on the APN to allow people on any plan to connect, and it just 'started working'. (Now in fact you have got around this earlier if your carrier was sloppy like mine was, by manually changing the APN used for tethering to one that's used for normal data access - but this can be done on Android or iOS out of the box, no jailbreaking/rooting required. You just change the APN settings. Fiddling with APNs has other benefits too since on my carrier the tethering APN gives you a proper public IP and the regular one gives you a NAT'ed address).
BUT... having said that I know that on iOS at least, in some markets, the carrier file data that iTunes downloads when you initially activate the phone (based on the SIM card you have in it) does have the ability to actually physically HIDE options from the UI. I've seen it on iPhones while travelling in America which are missing a bunch of the normal settings that should normally be present in the Settings (the manual network selection, APN settings and the hotspot/tethering options are a few that spring to mind that I've seen absent from US iPhones - it really catches your eye if you're really used to seeing the 'standard' options screen in iOS... things are in the 'wrong' order and place due to the missing stuff).
Which makes me start to understand why iOS is perceived as being a lot more "locked down" than (default) Android firmware in the US. In the US, the iPhone comes network-locked and the AT&T carrier file that iTunes downloads when you initially activate it hides some settings from the UI. In other places an iPhone is just like any other phone. You buy it from Apple, or another vendor, take it home, and pop your choice of SIM card into it (which is associated with a plan on some GSM provider). It doesn't hide the tethering/hotspot option or the network settings/selection stuff, because it has no idea what network you're going to use it on (so control of that stuff has to be done on the carrier side of things, and that will affect you no matter what phone you're using). The carrier does not know or care what phone you use on their plan. It just knows that you are connecting using a GSM phone and whether or not to permit a tethering-type connection to that phone.
My iPhone and Android phones have always been purchased outright (not from a carrier) and unlocked. Most people here hate locked phones and 2 year contracts etc... they like the ability to to switch networks regularly since we have 5 or 6 GSM providers and they are constantly updating their plans to compete with each other. I'd hate to be stuck on a plan from any of the carriers from 2 years ago - they would be very poor value by today's standards. Plus I travel frequently and need the ability to put foreign SIM cards in when I get to a country without any fuss. So I admit I may have jumped to iOSes defence too quickly. It does inde
I dare say an iPhone will run 'current gen' apps for a lot longer than "a year, maybe two". A lot of people out there are still using the (3 year old) iPhone 3G, and that still runs ~most~ current apps just fine. Maybe not some particularly resource-intensive games or graphics software, but most other stuff. I can't imagine apps on ~any~ platform (Apple, Android or otherwise) becoming unusable in so short a time frame... most people keep their phones for 2-3 years at least.
Interesting that you mention the FB iPhone app being better... I always thought that the iOS Facebook app was nothing more than an HTML rendering wrapper around their standard mobile site. It's not really an 'app' at all, is it? Just their mobile site viewed in its own (non-browser) window? In which case it should behave the same on all platforms. Or am I completely mistaken...
The Galaxy S2 is pretty awesome. A friend of mine has a shiny new one that I played around with last week. Even as someone that's a firm Apple/iPhone fan, I must admit it's got me thinking about Android next time I am due for an upgrade. The larger screen is a real selling point and makes me wonder whether Apple might actually increase the screen size on the next iPhone to compete, even though they've said in the past they aren't interested in increasing the current model's screen size.
Hmm the Australian Constitution has a similarish clause re freedom of inter-state trade. I'm not sure if it's more or less permissive than the US version. Let's see:
US:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 3: [The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;
Australia:
Chapter I, Part V, s 51(i): [The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to] Trade and commerce with other countries, and among the States;
Pretty similar in text really. So I suppose any practical difference may lie in the interpretation of the scope of the clause made by the courts of the respective countries, and how other provisions of the Constitution may interact with it.
They would have had to find a Constitutional power for them to legislate over that. I'm not familiar with that exact case, but my guess is they related it to matters relating to health (which the Commonwealth can make laws regarding under the Constitution... that's why Medicare is able to exist).
Yeah I'd never seen 'shingles' on roofs before I visited the US. Here in Australia clay/terracotta tiling is the standard roofing material on virtually all houses. Some use corrugated steel. But 'shingles' as a concept was foreign to me. In fact, to this day I still don't really think of them as a 'proper' roofing material. I mean they are so thin and flimsy...just doesn't seem like they are suited for a permanent structure (then again, many houses in the US seem to be built from all kinds of 'light' materials like wood and vinyl (siding), which is radically different to here where most houses are solid brick, concrete and steel). That's just a bias I have due to not being exposed to those kind of buildings till I was in my 20s though - I know that they serve their purpose effectively and are suitable for the climates they are in... it's just this niggling bias in the back of my mind that such materials aren't appropriate for a 'serious' building.
Around here people have all different colours for their roof tiles. Natural reddish clay colour is popular but I've seen everything from black to white.
Yeah Perth isn't ~quite~ as bad as the eastern States for rents it seems. The difference isn't huge though.
You wouldn't get a 3 bedroom freestanding house for $1300/month here though (Canberra) unless you live way on the outskirts or it's a place not in the best state of repair. We have the second-most, or most, expensive rents in the country depending on which statistics you listen to. Especially for flats.:( Canberra is relatively compact and non-sprawly so the price differential between CBD rents and suburban rents isn't very large.
Stupid Slashdot swallowing my greater-than/less-than symbols. The second last sentence of the third para should read "populations more than 100k, but less than 1M".
Yeah that's what I suspected. The US does have rents as high as here in Australia, but only in certain places. There are still plenty of 'cheap' places.
The problem here is that Australia is that the population distribution is INCREDIBLY centralised. Virtually ALL of the population live in the 10 or so decent sized cities. It is, in fact, the most urbanised country on Earth if you don't count tiny places like Singapore or the Vatican etc.
Australia is basically half a dozen huge coastal metropolises (populations in the millions, and containing ~95% of all people), plus a scattering of tiny tiny little towns (i.e. with just hundreds of people). There's almost no 'middle ground' in the way of mid-sized cities: Newcastle, Wollongong, Canberra, Gold Coast are pretty much the only 4 places off the top of my head that have populations >100,000 but 1,000,000. And rents there are no better than the larger cities.
Compare that to the US where you have literally hundreds upon hundreds of mid-sized (6-figure population) cities scattered across the country. So much choice of places to live with a large enough population to be able to get a job etc., and thus, much more ability to move somewhere else to take advantage of cheaper rents.
No, they can still RC a game even if an R18+ rating exists. R18+ is just an additional category that games may now be placed in.
Some stuff that used to be RC will fit under that category and can now be sold. However, something that was RC before, and cannot fit into the new R18+ classification, will still be RC and thus illegal to sell in Australia.
However the number of games that are likely to be 'truly RC' and not fit into R18+ is pretty freaking small. So yes it's still a huge step foward.
Slashdot Mirror
iTunes music only had DRM for the first year or two. It's been DRM-free for a long time now (for music, at least). And in most cases it'll allow you to upgrade old DRMed files to the newer iTunes Plus ones for a small fee.
I buy quite a bit of iTunes music and did a quick scan of my library. Only one old album I have appears to be still DRMed (for some reason ... I suspect because the publisher of that particular album didn't agree to the unDRMing and no longer sells on iTunes).
The 'international bottleneck' is a bit of a myth. The capacity we have now, on SXC, PPC1, AJC and others, isn't fully utilised. In fact, some of those cables aren't even being close to fully ~lit~. Plus, our total international capacity is due to almost double in the near future as the Pacific Fibre cable project is completed (estimated to be in 2013). ~The particular ISP you are using~ may be too stingy to spend the money on buying enough international capacity (and hence you may experience slower connections to overseas hosts than you would like). But that doesn't mean there's a bottleneck for the country as a whole.
Either way this has little to do with AARNet, which isn't a residential ISP and which buys more than sufficient international capacity. I certainly didn't notice any international bottleneck when I lived on campus (i.e. connected to AARNet). Well-connected overseas sites were just as fast as well-connected domestic ones and often came close to maxing out the 100 Mbit interface speed. Good on em for continuing to plan for the future (though I don't think this is particularly newsworthy - every decent network is planning the same way).
Well yes and no. Theft (and subsequent sale) of materials from phone/power/communications lines is rampant in most countries, including developed ones. But no so much cables that are actually installed and live (e.g. stealing off power poles) - that doesn't really happen much here. But stealing the cables ~before~ they are installed is another thing altogether.
As you say though, they are after copper rather than fibre. Problem is you often can't tell whether what you're stealing has copper in it or not.
I live in Australia and there was a theft of a very large amount of copper cable from a construction site just up the road from me last year. There were building three large (multi-storey) residential towers on the site and so had all the cable that would be necessary to wire up each apartment sitting around in a shed there somewhere. Not sure whether it was comms (cat 6) or power cable, but either way, it was stolen. The site was reasonably well secured too, so the heist must have been planned well (and there's a fair chance it was at least partly an inside job).
Eh? Sat internet systems that use dialup for the upstream went the way of the dodo years ago (at least in this country). Most are properly bi-directional these days.
Not just Africa. This kind of network is a requirement in remoter areas of developed countries like Canada, Australia and (shock!) the US too. Areas where phonelines are too long to support DSL, where there is no cable/fibre, etc. Cellular solutions currently fill this gap, but the range and speed of a (3G) cellular tower is well and truly surpassed by this technology (or other techs like WiMax).
Sigh - this is what happens when articles/summaries are written by people with no idea how the law works. Do a bit of reading of the court's actual words, and generally about injunctions and discovery while you're at it. Slashdot always likes to make things sound more ridiculous/inflammatory than they really are.
Not the first time such things have happened:
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/zumba-class-has-office-all-shook-up-20110224-1b73p.html
A Zumba class in a building only a block away from where I work caused noticeable movement in that building, so much so that some people were afraid for their safety. Of course, the building was up to code and engineers reported that nothing was wrong, but still, interesting...
Er...there are plenty of alternative browsers on the App Store. What are you on about? I personally prefer Atomic (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/atomic-web-browser-browse/id347929410?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4)
Email clients? ... well I don't know because I've never looked. So you might have a point there.
While I agree that that is what will probably occur, the question needs to be asked: are we even capable of even getting to that peak without massive problems (famine, war, disease).
As you say all first world countries - North America, Europe, Australia and NZ, Japan and Korea etc. - already have negative population growth (not including immigration), and places like China are likely to get there too before too long. India is a bit more of a concern. But most projections I've seen do see us plateauing off within the next 100-150 years somewhere between 10 and 14 billion. But do we have the resources to (even temporarily) cope with those numbers? It's close to double what we have now (and the strain is already showing in some ways).
I think humanity has the knowledge and technology to cope with those numbers, personally. But they may not have the political and personal will to make necessary (and perhaps difficult) changes that will be necessary. There are so many societal, religious and political factors in play here across the world's various cultures that I honestly am not particularly optimistic. Even in the West, it seems like even comparatively minor changes draw uproar from one segment of the community or another, so politicians just play it safe and shy away from major reform (because they know that change is politically unpopular).
Hm fair enough. I wasn't really using 'urbanised' in the official sense/meaning of the word that Wikipedia is using. I perhaps should have used 'centralised' or something instead. I mean, Sydney and Melbourne alone account for half the total population, and most of the rest is in 3 or 4 more places. A few large cities, rather than many medium-sized ones.
Still 17th in the world is pretty high considering none of the places listed above it are anywhere near as physically large. Almost all are absolutely tiny (islands, and places like Monaco, Gibraltar, etc.). Even the decent sized countries listed higher (Argentina, Belgium, UK, etc.) are still smaller than most of our States. Nonetheless, I wasn't really talking about urbanisation in that sense (% of population in urban areas), I was more referring to % of population centralised within just a couple of cities and nowhere else.
Yeah it's kinda funny to see how the remaining stock in them has slowly dwindled over the last few weeks as they've been shutting down. There's a pretty large borders in the Canberra Centre mall that I walk past quite often. The other day I peeked in and it was just like a huge void of empty shelves, with the odd book still sitting around but not much else. Oh, and they were selling the shelves too!
The VAT model cannot work under the current law, that is true. But law (even the Consitution) can be amended. It just requires the political will to do so.
Australia has a very similar Constitution to the US, and very similar division of power between States and the Federal Govt. It has a flat nationwide GST. So it ~can~ work ... it just requires some changes to the law and a new Constitutional Amendment. (Haha, yeah I know, "just" an amendment, as if that's a minor thing ... but it has been done before and can be done again, theoretically).
God that sounds like a crazy system. Australia has roughly the same Federal/State system as the US, and generally has the same division between State rights and Federal legislative powers, but did manage replace a bunch of random old taxes with a single Federal GST back in 2001. A flat rate of tax applied to most goods and services, nationwide (some things are exempt, such as most food and essential grocery items). It works well and solved the 'online advantage' problem (at least domestically ... orders from overseas websites still have that advantage and this has actually been a recent issue in the news, with Australian businesses complaining they cannot compete against foreign websites).
Of course, Federal law and the US Constitution currently do not allow for a similar system in America (The Federal Govt. can't impose a taxes except in proportion to the population of the states, or the Federal income tax under the 16th Amendment). But hey, Federal law can be changed. Even the Constitution can be changed (all those Amendments weren't there originally). But there's simply no political will to make large-scale changes in the current climate I think, and the American government has much, much more important issues to deal with right now (economic, mostly).
Nope I don't have it to myself. I'm married - so me and the wife. It's too small for our needs really, so looking to upsize soon. But any move, even just to a similar but slightly bigger place, will up it from $1400 towards $1600 or $1700. Ah well ... we can afford it on dual incomes. But it's still a huge chunk of change :(
Firstly, iOS has had the hotspot feature for quite some time (since iOS 4.2 I think). Prior to that, yep you needed to jailbreak to do it. But it's built-in as standard now and allows up to 5 other wifi devices to leech off the phone's 3G connection. You can also directly tether to a single device via bluetooth or USB, as always.
My carrier used to charge a fee for tethering (but doesn't any more). However the phones themselves didn't 'know' this. I always had the tethering/hotspot options visible on both my iPhone and my Android phone (even on plans that didn't permit tethering). However if I tried to USE it (and hadn't paid for tethering), it simply wouldn't work (the carrier's APN for tethering would obviously perform a check to see if the person trying to use it was allowed to, and if not, simply wouldn't let any data pass). Wouldn't work on iOS, wouldn't work on Android, wouldn't work on Blackberry.
So it wasn't restricted on the ~phone~, per se, it was restricted on the carrier's APN/servers. When the carrier decided to stop charging for tethering, I suppose they simply changed the configuration on the APN to allow people on any plan to connect, and it just 'started working'. (Now in fact you have got around this earlier if your carrier was sloppy like mine was, by manually changing the APN used for tethering to one that's used for normal data access - but this can be done on Android or iOS out of the box, no jailbreaking/rooting required. You just change the APN settings. Fiddling with APNs has other benefits too since on my carrier the tethering APN gives you a proper public IP and the regular one gives you a NAT'ed address).
BUT ... having said that I know that on iOS at least, in some markets, the carrier file data that iTunes downloads when you initially activate the phone (based on the SIM card you have in it) does have the ability to actually physically HIDE options from the UI. I've seen it on iPhones while travelling in America which are missing a bunch of the normal settings that should normally be present in the Settings (the manual network selection, APN settings and the hotspot/tethering options are a few that spring to mind that I've seen absent from US iPhones - it really catches your eye if you're really used to seeing the 'standard' options screen in iOS ... things are in the 'wrong' order and place due to the missing stuff).
Which makes me start to understand why iOS is perceived as being a lot more "locked down" than (default) Android firmware in the US. In the US, the iPhone comes network-locked and the AT&T carrier file that iTunes downloads when you initially activate it hides some settings from the UI. In other places an iPhone is just like any other phone. You buy it from Apple, or another vendor, take it home, and pop your choice of SIM card into it (which is associated with a plan on some GSM provider). It doesn't hide the tethering/hotspot option or the network settings/selection stuff, because it has no idea what network you're going to use it on (so control of that stuff has to be done on the carrier side of things, and that will affect you no matter what phone you're using). The carrier does not know or care what phone you use on their plan. It just knows that you are connecting using a GSM phone and whether or not to permit a tethering-type connection to that phone.
My iPhone and Android phones have always been purchased outright (not from a carrier) and unlocked. Most people here hate locked phones and 2 year contracts etc ... they like the ability to to switch networks regularly since we have 5 or 6 GSM providers and they are constantly updating their plans to compete with each other. I'd hate to be stuck on a plan from any of the carriers from 2 years ago - they would be very poor value by today's standards. Plus I travel frequently and need the ability to put foreign SIM cards in when I get to a country without any fuss. So I admit I may have jumped to iOSes defence too quickly. It does inde
I dare say an iPhone will run 'current gen' apps for a lot longer than "a year, maybe two". A lot of people out there are still using the (3 year old) iPhone 3G, and that still runs ~most~ current apps just fine. Maybe not some particularly resource-intensive games or graphics software, but most other stuff. I can't imagine apps on ~any~ platform (Apple, Android or otherwise) becoming unusable in so short a time frame ... most people keep their phones for 2-3 years at least.
Interesting that you mention the FB iPhone app being better ... I always thought that the iOS Facebook app was nothing more than an HTML rendering wrapper around their standard mobile site. It's not really an 'app' at all, is it? Just their mobile site viewed in its own (non-browser) window? In which case it should behave the same on all platforms. Or am I completely mistaken...
The Galaxy S2 is pretty awesome. A friend of mine has a shiny new one that I played around with last week. Even as someone that's a firm Apple/iPhone fan, I must admit it's got me thinking about Android next time I am due for an upgrade. The larger screen is a real selling point and makes me wonder whether Apple might actually increase the screen size on the next iPhone to compete, even though they've said in the past they aren't interested in increasing the current model's screen size.
I must point out that there are literally ~thousands~ of free apps on iTunes. Indeed I have far more free apps than paid ones.
Other than that I agree with your post. The markup paid just to get more storage space on the iPhone is ridiculous.
Hmm the Australian Constitution has a similarish clause re freedom of inter-state trade. I'm not sure if it's more or less permissive than the US version. Let's see:
US:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 3: [The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;
Australia:
Chapter I, Part V, s 51(i): [The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to] Trade and commerce with other countries, and among the States;
Pretty similar in text really. So I suppose any practical difference may lie in the interpretation of the scope of the clause made by the courts of the respective countries, and how other provisions of the Constitution may interact with it.
They would have had to find a Constitutional power for them to legislate over that. I'm not familiar with that exact case, but my guess is they related it to matters relating to health (which the Commonwealth can make laws regarding under the Constitution ... that's why Medicare is able to exist).
Yeah I'd never seen 'shingles' on roofs before I visited the US. Here in Australia clay/terracotta tiling is the standard roofing material on virtually all houses. Some use corrugated steel. But 'shingles' as a concept was foreign to me. In fact, to this day I still don't really think of them as a 'proper' roofing material. I mean they are so thin and flimsy...just doesn't seem like they are suited for a permanent structure (then again, many houses in the US seem to be built from all kinds of 'light' materials like wood and vinyl (siding), which is radically different to here where most houses are solid brick, concrete and steel). That's just a bias I have due to not being exposed to those kind of buildings till I was in my 20s though - I know that they serve their purpose effectively and are suitable for the climates they are in ... it's just this niggling bias in the back of my mind that such materials aren't appropriate for a 'serious' building.
Around here people have all different colours for their roof tiles. Natural reddish clay colour is popular but I've seen everything from black to white.
Yeah Perth isn't ~quite~ as bad as the eastern States for rents it seems. The difference isn't huge though.
You wouldn't get a 3 bedroom freestanding house for $1300/month here though (Canberra) unless you live way on the outskirts or it's a place not in the best state of repair. We have the second-most, or most, expensive rents in the country depending on which statistics you listen to. Especially for flats. :( Canberra is relatively compact and non-sprawly so the price differential between CBD rents and suburban rents isn't very large.
Stupid Slashdot swallowing my greater-than/less-than symbols. The second last sentence of the third para should read "populations more than 100k, but less than 1M".
Yeah that's what I suspected. The US does have rents as high as here in Australia, but only in certain places. There are still plenty of 'cheap' places.
The problem here is that Australia is that the population distribution is INCREDIBLY centralised. Virtually ALL of the population live in the 10 or so decent sized cities. It is, in fact, the most urbanised country on Earth if you don't count tiny places like Singapore or the Vatican etc.
Australia is basically half a dozen huge coastal metropolises (populations in the millions, and containing ~95% of all people), plus a scattering of tiny tiny little towns (i.e. with just hundreds of people). There's almost no 'middle ground' in the way of mid-sized cities: Newcastle, Wollongong, Canberra, Gold Coast are pretty much the only 4 places off the top of my head that have populations >100,000 but 1,000,000. And rents there are no better than the larger cities.
Compare that to the US where you have literally hundreds upon hundreds of mid-sized (6-figure population) cities scattered across the country. So much choice of places to live with a large enough population to be able to get a job etc., and thus, much more ability to move somewhere else to take advantage of cheaper rents.
No, they can still RC a game even if an R18+ rating exists. R18+ is just an additional category that games may now be placed in.
Some stuff that used to be RC will fit under that category and can now be sold. However, something that was RC before, and cannot fit into the new R18+ classification, will still be RC and thus illegal to sell in Australia.
However the number of games that are likely to be 'truly RC' and not fit into R18+ is pretty freaking small. So yes it's still a huge step foward.