Similar here. I live in inland SE Australia in a mountainous area. This is well outside the area that can get cyclones. The topography of the region makes widespread flooding impossible. And Australia being in the middle of a tectonic plate does not experience (major) earthquakes, nor does it have any volcanoes. Too far inland for tsunamis to be an issue. The only natural disaster that could affect a widespread area around here is a fire, and even that is exceedingly unlikely to be of a 'society collapsing' scale (being in the middle of an urban area means that the bushfires we do get around here burn at the edges of the city, but not wipe the whole place off the map or anything - you need abundant dry vegetation to keep the fire going).
So basically, my disaster preparation is 'small to none'. But short of nuclear war or meteorite, there's nothing that could really require such preparation in this area. Some people on this forum seem to love the survivalist mindset, but even in earthquake/hurricane/etc prone regions I honestly can't see how you'd ever need more than a few days worth of food and water as a precaution. Look at Japan, look at the NZ earthquake, look at the massive flooding and cyclones that smashed huge areas of northern Australia in the last year. In each case, people lost homes, power and phones were out for a while, etc, but being first world countries, help was on the ground immediately, people were sheltered, and noone starved. If I lived in a chaotic, undeveloped country in Africa or something then yeah, I'd see the need for preparation and self-sufficiency. But that shouldn't be needed in a developed country other than a bit of food and water, and maybe a generator if you really can't live without power for a few days. And even that would only be needed in a major disaster of the type that can't really happen in many areas of the world, such as where I live, or in Ireland;)
If I lived in, say, California, I'd definitely have a basic survival pack sitting in the basement. A big earthquake will happen there sooner or later. Even if it wasn't actually needed in an emergency, it's the polite thing to do: if you can draw upon your own supplies for a while rather than burdening the emergency services, that is a good thing - less work and cost for them, less strain on the system, more for other people etc. I'd do it out of politeness and as consideration to others in the society, rather than any particular need for self-sufficiency though.
I'd agree with that... 60 Hz does seem to make more sense. But I'm not particularly knowledgeable about electricity and I'm sure someone will reply with some perfectly good reasons why 50 Hz was chosen in some places.:) It is interesting that the US uses 240 for some things (I knew this but hadn't thought about it in a while). The 'keep it simple as possible' side of me prefers a single voltage used on everything (as in 230-240V nominal countries), rather than mixing and matching, though it makes little practical difference I admit. And I've heard good arguments (re transmission loss etc.) why certain voltages were used in certain countries.
Re driving though: I wouldn't say it's a 'handful'. A full one-third of the world's population drives on the left hand side. Right-hand side is the majority yes, but not an overwhelming majority with just a couple of holdouts bucking the trend. It's a good example though of another thing that would be nice to standardise but very difficult to switch. Thankfully there are very few places where countries with opposite driving sides have a land border though: they are generally separated by oceans.
Outages was one example. Not the most common one but the first thing that sprung to mind that people would find useful to know. I live in Australia which is most definitely industrialised, but floods and storms etc. happen and can cause short term disruption to phone networks as I'm sure you are aware!
Snarky little comment too: do you really think a telco in the non-industrialised world would use ~Twitter~ of all things?
It's nice being able to get customer-service answers from all the companies I deal with in a single place. And also to follow all those companies so that you can get all news that might be relevant to you, from any company, in one place. That's basically how I use Twitter: like some kind of glorified RSS feed that has the added advantage of being two-way when required. Noone really follows me (since I don't tweet), but I follow plenty of news sites/companies/etc.
For simple queries where you need a quick response (like 'what time do you close'), its generally much quicker than calling them and being on hold for an hour, or emailing them and getting the usual '5-7 business days' response. IM on the website would work for that too but the advantage of something like Twitter is that you have clients for all kinds of devices (whereas some piece of code on a website to implement IM may or may not work on some browsers, phones, etc.).
Also, it's not like having a Twitter account automatically means every other avenue of communication doesn't exist anymore, ya know? Feel free to use other methods if you prefer. Adding an option harms nobody.
I'm pretty sure you realise this, but that's not what any company uses Twitter for. They don't reveal personal/account details. But for quick, generic queries, Twitter is an excellent way to do customer service.
My mobile telephone company uses Twitter and I've used it for asking general questions about plans, prices, availability of new phones etc. They use it to announce new services, or outage notices (e.g. "Having some issues with our towers in location X, should be back to normal by 8am tomorrow!") and things like that. I've had some issues/questions resolved by going down this route in a matter of minutes, as opposed to sitting on their customer service phone line on hold for 30 minutes then finally getting some idiot who doesn't know the answer to your question anyway.
Plus, you can also use it for customer or account-specific queries as well, provided you already have a ticket number lodged. So lets say you called with a problem the other day and were given a ticket number. You might want to provide them with some updated info, or see what progress has been made with the issue. So you can tweet "hey any news on yet? Ticket #12345". A ticket number is useless to anyone but the company and no personal information gets revealed. My ISP does this and you usually get a reply on Twitter in a matter of minutes.
Can't see why this kind of thing can't work for banks either (although admittedly the scope of things going 'wrong' at a bank is less: maybe some ATM outages, or general enquiry* about interest rates and accounts etc.)
--- * Why the hell is Chrome underlining enquiry as being misspelt? Argh, 'misspelt' too! FFS! You'd think for a global company which has properly localised versions of all their other products and websites, that Google could put an option for Commonwealth/International English into Chrome, rather than assuming everyone uses US English. Worse than bloody Microsoft!
Exactly. It's one of those things that is simply too expensive to 'fix' these days (replacing half a countries entire power grid and people's equipment that gets plugged into it). Once things reach a certain level of entrenchment or investment, changing them becomes near-impossible (from both an economic and logistical viewpoint).
Kinda reminds me of the US being the only (developed) country left not using the metric system. The biggest argument why this is the case is simply that it would cost too much to change: too much signage, equipment etc. There's so much investment and momentum behind the old system that it seems an insurmountable task to change, despite the obvious advantages of doing so. Similarly, Japan probably knew that having two different power frequencies in different halves of the country could pose a problem and probably ought to be fixed, but it's just too expensive to do it.
The analogy's not perfect: changing to metric can be done in a phased approach where you use both systems for a period of time, whereas you can't really do that with an electric grid. But I think the mentality of 'yes this could be improved, but it's simply too hard/expensive to do it' is similar.
Hehe... electricity as a relatively early technological development (i.e. invented before international standards bodies were as well established as they are now) is a perfect example of what happens when each country (or in Japan's case, even separate regions within a country) is free to roll out whatever system they prefer. In a way, it's surprising that we didn't end up with more variation. Most countries are 50 or 60 Hz, ~110-120V or ~230-240V, but it could have ended up worse with places using all kinds of bizarre voltages and frequencies. The only thing that prevented that is that most countries bought their initial electrical equipment from one of just a few vendors, which basically made the choice of standard for them.
I really wish it could be globally standardised though. I move between Australia and the US frequently (dual citizen) and it annoys the hell out of me that most electrical equipment bought in one place won't work in the other. I mean, I know it is an impossible dream (noone is going to spend the money replacing an entire electrical grid along with all the equipment that people plug into it), but it really would be nice. Still, it seems more stuff these days is multi-voltage capable at least (computers, games consoles, anything else with a transformer 'brick' on its power cable).
But they ~could~ standardise the ~plugs~ in each country at least. The number of different plug shapes is just phenomenal... far more than the number of differing frequency/voltage combos. Some are objectively better than others too. IMO the US ones aren't very 'secure' feeling, they fall out too easily and it's not clear, especially in the dark, which way 'up' they go. The UK ones are much more solid, but IMO also too bulky. The ones used in Australia are pretty good I think: cannot be inserted upside down, very secure, and although bigger than the US plugs, not as bulky as the UK ones. Also why doesn't the US have on/off switches on their power outlets like every other damn country? Much nicer than physically unplugging something if you want to guarantee zero power draw. But I digress: I wouldn't really care which plug was chosen, but it really would be nice if it were the same everywhere.:)
Re:And of course ISPs will start filtering .xxx
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My ISP still offers Usenet thankfully (including binaries with >500 days retention). Though I do admit its one of a dying breed.:(
Sorry, but in (white collar) ~business~ (which is what we are talking about here - the kind of industries where business cards are the norm), most people do have a smart phone on them. Often corporate-issued rather than personal. Not everyone, no, but a significant majority. So I think the assumption that ~most~ people you meet in a business context will have a smartphone is a reasonable one in this day and age.
I have given away only a handful of business cards in the last few years but have often sent contacts details to other people's phones in a meeting (generally not via any fancy short-range communication methods though, just plain old email).
Well usually if you're meeting people, some form of emails have been exchanged between those people previously (in order to set up the meeting, agree on the agenda, and so on). Any company I've ever dealt with has some form of standard email signature on the bottom of those emails with email, phone and other personal details that you'd find on a business card. So normally I find that by the time I'm actually walking into the meeting, I have the contact details of everyone there already. It's honestly very rare that this isn't the case.
Obviously this will vary depending on your industry. But it's my experience working for a large software company. I do have business cards printed but I haven't ever needed to give away more than half a dozen of them out of a pack of 500, so they mostly just sit there on my desk...
To play devil's advocate: what is this incredibly sensitive personal information that Facebook has that could not be obtained by anyone else very easily?
Most people on Facebook have their name, email and maybe their address and phone number. Name and numbers are already in the phone book. Addresses are on the publicly-searchable electoral roll (though you'd be an idiot to put your address on Facebook anyway). I just think most people couldn't care less that someone might find out these things. It's not like their banking information or tax file number/SSN or passport number or other information that someone could actually use to hurt them is on there.
The only other 'valuable' information from a privacy perspective that Facebook might reveal is who you are friends with. But again, this is fairly unlikely to be information that is unique to Facebook (unless you are completely indiscriminate with who you add, and what read/write rights you give them to your profile/wall/etc). Provided you understand that anything you put on Facebook should be considered public knowledge and can never be retracted (like anything on the Internet), I don't really see a problem. I know there are some that are stupid about what they post, or stupid about who they add (e.g. adding their boss or colleagues). But that doesn't mean everyone who chooses to use Facebook is an idiot or ignorant of the potential consequences. They just don't perceive basic personal details to really be secret information in the first place.
Ah, your previous posts didn't mention the US specifically so I didn't know where you were commenting from. That may well be the case in the US so I can't argue with that. I am in the US reasonably regularly but I tend not to use credit cards there so I just assumed it was like other places... apparently not:)
All I can definitely say is that I've been using a PIN with a credit card at the point of sale for quite a few years now in the places I've lived (various European countries, Singapore, Australia). It's currently mandatory to have the chip on all new cards in Australia (where I am at the moment), though actually ~using~ it is still optional since not all retailers have upgraded their equipment to support the chip/PIN. I still imagine even if PIN use becomes mandatory though there will have to be some exceptions (online/phone purchases for one).
OK so maybe not a decade, but I've had a PIN for use at the point of sale for purchases (i.e. swipe and type PIN, rather than swipe and sign) since at least 2005 (I know this for a fact as I was definitely using a chip-and-PIN card while living in London, and 2005 was my last year there). I've since moved elsewhere but all credit cards I've had since then have had one of those little chips in it and are capable of doing PIN-authenticated purchases.
Admittedly though, in many countries, it's not mandatory to use it (you can ~choose~ whether to PIN or sign), which sorta defeats the point;) As you say, if you can get the physical card, you can use it fraudulently (even if it has a PIN) if signing is still an option and you can convincingly forge the signature. I tend to use the PIN myself, simply because it's quicker than signing.
The internet situation in Australia is, frankly, preferable to those in most US markets. Your comment seems to imply that it's awful over here... which was true a few years ago but not so much these days. I am a dual Australian/US citizen and live in both countries at various times in the year. I pay for net access in both countries too. So while I'm obviously not capable of giving a definitive statement about every option in every place in both countries, I'm better informed than most on this particular topic.
Aussie ISPs are usually capped, but you have a ~choice~ of cap. You can get a low end cap (5-10 GB) for a very cheap monthly rate, if that suits your needs (e.g. email and a bit of web browsing). Most people choose a mid-range cap (e.g. 50-100 GB) which costs around what a DSL connection in the US costs (and generally less than cable in the US, since you aren't forced to bundle TV and phone and other crap with it). But if you are a heavy user, most ISPs offer plans with huge caps: 500 GB, 1 TB, or even more. The cost isn't that high either considering what you're getting: maybe 30-50% more than a typical cable plan in the US. But the market for these huge cap plans is quite small outside of large share-houses, families that do a LOT of video-streaming, or P2P addicts.
On the flip side, Australia does NOT have the monopoly/duopoly problem that the US does. In most areas, you can choose from a ~huge~ number of ISPs. We're talking 20, 30, 40 ISPs here. They compete on price-per-GB, quality of network, and bundled services. Furthermore, because there is a set limit to what you can download per month, ISPs don't care how fast you download it. ADSL2+ (up to 24 Mbps) is ubiquitous, and cable networks are DOCSIS3 in many places. Contrast this with the US where DSL links are stuck on ADSL1, and often artificially capped even beyond that to 6Mbit/384kbit max. There is simply no impetus for DSL ISPs in the US to increase the speeds available because they can't charge more for it (since unlimited plans are the norm), and it would lead to more strain on their networks.
Caps have their downsides, but they aren't automatically a bad thing. But they need to be done right, and for the right reasons (to make ISPs a sustainable business, to encourage competition or increase choice, NOT to simply screw the customer and make they pay more for what they are already getting). Australia has unique problems due to its geographic isolation and being far from most English-speaking content hosting, that has historically led to caps being the only sustainable way to run an ISP. Until the last year or two, anyone that tried to offer uncapped/unlimited residential Internet (and there have been quite a few) has failed and gone bankrupt (few undersea cables + a nation that demands a greater proportion of its traffic from overseas hosts than any other). You can get true unlimited plans in some areas now (due mostly to there being competition and capacity on the undersea cable networks that has been lacking in previous years), but even where you can't, the capped plans work well, because you have a large CHOICE of caps (from a few GB, to TB+). The average low or medium-usage customer actually ends up with a better deal than they would in the US (especially for DSL where download and upload speeds offered are much faster).
I much prefer my 150 GB capped, 24 Mbps downstream/1 Mbps upstream DSL plan in Australia than my 6 Mbit/384 kbps AT&T DSL plan in the US. I pay the same for both (give or take $5 depending on exchange rate). The Aussie connection is faster, gets less congestion in peak times, and gives me a bunch of other nice extras such as free full binary usenet, static IP etc, that it's definitely worth the 'cap' (which I never get close to hitting anyway).
That's a very good point. Interestingly, if you look at places where data caps have always been the norm (some European countries, New Zealand, Australia etc.) you will generally see that there is a LOT more competition in the ISP sector. You can select from dozens of providers. Those providers generally compete on price-per-GB ("we're cheaper than X!") or on the basis that they have better infrastructure ("Our backbone and international links are faster and more reliable than X!").
Data caps may appear to suck at first, but provided the caps are large enough that they don't affect 99% of users, or you can purchase higher-end caps if required, they do have some benefits. They make net neutrality a non-issue, since you're paying for what you use regardless of source. And they encourage competition in the market.
I've lived in a couple of countries where caps were the norm, and one thing I liked was the huge variety of ISPs you could choose from (with different strengths and unique add-on services). Not like in the US where in most areas it's either the local DSL monopoly or the local cable monopoly. Furthermore, ISPs always offered a wide range of plans with different caps and different cost, e.g. 2 GB, 10 GB, 50 GB, 100 GB, 250 GB, 1 TB, so you could genuinely save money if you were a light user. In the US you pay the same amount whether you use 1 GB a month (like my mother who basically just checks her email and does her banking), or 1 TB a month (P2P-addict).
The final advantage is that ISPs can predict in advance what the maximum possible traffic on their network will be. They know they've got X customers with a total of Y cap per month. They can see how many new customers they are adding each month. Therefore they can extrapolate when and where they will need network upgrades ahead of time, to maintain quality of service. There is a definite difference I have seen in performance and reliability in 'capped' countries cf. 'unlimited' countries. You don't see the peak time congestion and the service actually delivers the advertised speed 24/7.
Note that all the negatives of caps still exist though and I fully acknowledge them. It is nice being able to download whatever you like without thinking of whether or not that might affect whether you hit the cap this month or not. I'm not here to say caps are great... merely to suggest that they have their advantages and to some users, those advantages outweigh the disadvantage (of having a cap that, for your usage pattern, you will never come close to hitting). Note that for caps to work though, there needs to be a range of caps available at different prices, not a one-size-fits-all approach. ATT does not appear to be doing this though.
Not quite. The 'take out your sim and put in another' only works if the phone you are using has not previously been associated with you in any way. Which, considering you are chucking the SIM due to it no longer providing anonymity in the first place, seems unlikely. The IMEI of your phone is sent to the network (along with the data on the SIM card) every time you use it. The IMEI is static and will never change; there may be ways of spoofing it that I'm not aware of but it's probably not something particularly quick or easy to do.
Throw the whole phone, and get a new phone (with different IMEI obviously) that cannot be tied to you. Then you can change SIMs every so often thereafter. SIM changing alone only works if you are starting from a clean, anonymous slate, so to speak.
What are you on about? Japan hasn't refused help. There are search and rescue teams on the ground, right now, from many countries including the US. The US Navy is using carriers to provide landing/refueling statons for aircraft. The Australian Air Force is airdropping food, water and other supplies (including radiation detectors). There's just two examples I can think of off the top of my head that I've seen in the last 24 hours and I'm sure there are many more...
This isn't really hard. Many people already have to do this, including the >1 billion that live in India which is on a half hour offset timezone. As are certain areas of Canada, Australia and several other nations.
Even if that happened, the US wouldn't be the only place with a half hour offset from the rest of the world's timezones. There are several places already that have offsets that are not whole hours from GMT, including India (with over a billion people), some parts of Australia, some parts of Canada, Venezula. Hell there are even some oddball places with 15 minute offsets.
Australia is a Federal system with the same divisions of power in the Constitution between Federal Govt. and States (i.e. powers not specifically given to the Federal government are reserved to the States: the AU constitution was in fact heavily based on the US one). So at least for that example, the assumption that other countries don't have this delay due to this reason is inaccurate. The Federal-State system the US has is by no means unique.
I'm pretty sure in America, a child would come home and say "I went to school today". They don't say "I went to THE school today".
Yet Americans say "the hospital" and "the university"! The latter is particularly weird since a university is an educational institution just like a school is!
Two points:
1. In the case of schools, hospitals and universities, there are more than one. Saying 'the' implies that there is only one.
2. Regardless of whichever is grammatically 'correct', at least the UK/Australia/NZ/etc are consistent which grammatical structure they use. In America it's all over the place ('to school' is OK, but not 'to hospital' or 'to university').
Note that I don't actually care about this. Language has lots of regional differences and it's a petty thing to be worried about. But if you are going to be critical of someone pointing out one of these oddities, you had better at least recognise that your own way of doing things is not without its own glaring inconsistencies.
I've complained about that image before. But I got cut down: everyone just told me I was being overly sensitive.
But seriously. Other countries don't seem to get that treatment. The image is ludicrously stereotyped. And frankly, to an Australian, it seems a rather bizarre choice: yes the Akubra is an iconic piece of Australiana associated with those living on the land and our pioneer forebears, but it's not the ~first~ (or second or even tenth) thing that springs to mind if you're going to pick a stereotyped icon. It'd be like using a 10-gallon cowboy hat icon for any story concerning the US: something that represents a rather specific time and place in US history, rather than the country as a whole.
Honest question: if you asked 100 random Americans to name the first image or object associated with Australia that they could think of, how many would say an Akubra hat??
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Similar here. I live in inland SE Australia in a mountainous area. This is well outside the area that can get cyclones. The topography of the region makes widespread flooding impossible. And Australia being in the middle of a tectonic plate does not experience (major) earthquakes, nor does it have any volcanoes. Too far inland for tsunamis to be an issue. The only natural disaster that could affect a widespread area around here is a fire, and even that is exceedingly unlikely to be of a 'society collapsing' scale (being in the middle of an urban area means that the bushfires we do get around here burn at the edges of the city, but not wipe the whole place off the map or anything - you need abundant dry vegetation to keep the fire going).
So basically, my disaster preparation is 'small to none'. But short of nuclear war or meteorite, there's nothing that could really require such preparation in this area. Some people on this forum seem to love the survivalist mindset, but even in earthquake/hurricane/etc prone regions I honestly can't see how you'd ever need more than a few days worth of food and water as a precaution. Look at Japan, look at the NZ earthquake, look at the massive flooding and cyclones that smashed huge areas of northern Australia in the last year. In each case, people lost homes, power and phones were out for a while, etc, but being first world countries, help was on the ground immediately, people were sheltered, and noone starved. If I lived in a chaotic, undeveloped country in Africa or something then yeah, I'd see the need for preparation and self-sufficiency. But that shouldn't be needed in a developed country other than a bit of food and water, and maybe a generator if you really can't live without power for a few days. And even that would only be needed in a major disaster of the type that can't really happen in many areas of the world, such as where I live, or in Ireland ;)
If I lived in, say, California, I'd definitely have a basic survival pack sitting in the basement. A big earthquake will happen there sooner or later. Even if it wasn't actually needed in an emergency, it's the polite thing to do: if you can draw upon your own supplies for a while rather than burdening the emergency services, that is a good thing - less work and cost for them, less strain on the system, more for other people etc. I'd do it out of politeness and as consideration to others in the society, rather than any particular need for self-sufficiency though.
a large crowbar
Oh then you'll definitely be OK. Gordon Freeman would be proud. :)
I'd agree with that ... 60 Hz does seem to make more sense. But I'm not particularly knowledgeable about electricity and I'm sure someone will reply with some perfectly good reasons why 50 Hz was chosen in some places. :) It is interesting that the US uses 240 for some things (I knew this but hadn't thought about it in a while). The 'keep it simple as possible' side of me prefers a single voltage used on everything (as in 230-240V nominal countries), rather than mixing and matching, though it makes little practical difference I admit. And I've heard good arguments (re transmission loss etc.) why certain voltages were used in certain countries.
Re driving though: I wouldn't say it's a 'handful'. A full one-third of the world's population drives on the left hand side. Right-hand side is the majority yes, but not an overwhelming majority with just a couple of holdouts bucking the trend. It's a good example though of another thing that would be nice to standardise but very difficult to switch. Thankfully there are very few places where countries with opposite driving sides have a land border though: they are generally separated by oceans.
Outages was one example. Not the most common one but the first thing that sprung to mind that people would find useful to know. I live in Australia which is most definitely industrialised, but floods and storms etc. happen and can cause short term disruption to phone networks as I'm sure you are aware!
Snarky little comment too: do you really think a telco in the non-industrialised world would use ~Twitter~ of all things?
It's nice being able to get customer-service answers from all the companies I deal with in a single place. And also to follow all those companies so that you can get all news that might be relevant to you, from any company, in one place. That's basically how I use Twitter: like some kind of glorified RSS feed that has the added advantage of being two-way when required. Noone really follows me (since I don't tweet), but I follow plenty of news sites/companies/etc.
For simple queries where you need a quick response (like 'what time do you close'), its generally much quicker than calling them and being on hold for an hour, or emailing them and getting the usual '5-7 business days' response. IM on the website would work for that too but the advantage of something like Twitter is that you have clients for all kinds of devices (whereas some piece of code on a website to implement IM may or may not work on some browsers, phones, etc.).
Also, it's not like having a Twitter account automatically means every other avenue of communication doesn't exist anymore, ya know? Feel free to use other methods if you prefer. Adding an option harms nobody.
I'm pretty sure you realise this, but that's not what any company uses Twitter for. They don't reveal personal/account details. But for quick, generic queries, Twitter is an excellent way to do customer service.
My mobile telephone company uses Twitter and I've used it for asking general questions about plans, prices, availability of new phones etc. They use it to announce new services, or outage notices (e.g. "Having some issues with our towers in location X, should be back to normal by 8am tomorrow!") and things like that. I've had some issues/questions resolved by going down this route in a matter of minutes, as opposed to sitting on their customer service phone line on hold for 30 minutes then finally getting some idiot who doesn't know the answer to your question anyway.
Plus, you can also use it for customer or account-specific queries as well, provided you already have a ticket number lodged. So lets say you called with a problem the other day and were given a ticket number. You might want to provide them with some updated info, or see what progress has been made with the issue. So you can tweet "hey any news on yet? Ticket #12345". A ticket number is useless to anyone but the company and no personal information gets revealed. My ISP does this and you usually get a reply on Twitter in a matter of minutes.
Can't see why this kind of thing can't work for banks either (although admittedly the scope of things going 'wrong' at a bank is less: maybe some ATM outages, or general enquiry* about interest rates and accounts etc.)
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* Why the hell is Chrome underlining enquiry as being misspelt? Argh, 'misspelt' too! FFS! You'd think for a global company which has properly localised versions of all their other products and websites, that Google could put an option for Commonwealth/International English into Chrome, rather than assuming everyone uses US English. Worse than bloody Microsoft!
No, but a lot of the people I work with are ;)
Exactly. It's one of those things that is simply too expensive to 'fix' these days (replacing half a countries entire power grid and people's equipment that gets plugged into it). Once things reach a certain level of entrenchment or investment, changing them becomes near-impossible (from both an economic and logistical viewpoint).
Kinda reminds me of the US being the only (developed) country left not using the metric system. The biggest argument why this is the case is simply that it would cost too much to change: too much signage, equipment etc. There's so much investment and momentum behind the old system that it seems an insurmountable task to change, despite the obvious advantages of doing so. Similarly, Japan probably knew that having two different power frequencies in different halves of the country could pose a problem and probably ought to be fixed, but it's just too expensive to do it.
The analogy's not perfect: changing to metric can be done in a phased approach where you use both systems for a period of time, whereas you can't really do that with an electric grid. But I think the mentality of 'yes this could be improved, but it's simply too hard/expensive to do it' is similar.
Hehe ... electricity as a relatively early technological development (i.e. invented before international standards bodies were as well established as they are now) is a perfect example of what happens when each country (or in Japan's case, even separate regions within a country) is free to roll out whatever system they prefer. In a way, it's surprising that we didn't end up with more variation. Most countries are 50 or 60 Hz, ~110-120V or ~230-240V, but it could have ended up worse with places using all kinds of bizarre voltages and frequencies. The only thing that prevented that is that most countries bought their initial electrical equipment from one of just a few vendors, which basically made the choice of standard for them.
I really wish it could be globally standardised though. I move between Australia and the US frequently (dual citizen) and it annoys the hell out of me that most electrical equipment bought in one place won't work in the other. I mean, I know it is an impossible dream (noone is going to spend the money replacing an entire electrical grid along with all the equipment that people plug into it), but it really would be nice. Still, it seems more stuff these days is multi-voltage capable at least (computers, games consoles, anything else with a transformer 'brick' on its power cable).
But they ~could~ standardise the ~plugs~ in each country at least. The number of different plug shapes is just phenomenal ... far more than the number of differing frequency/voltage combos. Some are objectively better than others too. IMO the US ones aren't very 'secure' feeling, they fall out too easily and it's not clear, especially in the dark, which way 'up' they go. The UK ones are much more solid, but IMO also too bulky. The ones used in Australia are pretty good I think: cannot be inserted upside down, very secure, and although bigger than the US plugs, not as bulky as the UK ones. Also why doesn't the US have on/off switches on their power outlets like every other damn country? Much nicer than physically unplugging something if you want to guarantee zero power draw. But I digress: I wouldn't really care which plug was chosen, but it really would be nice if it were the same everywhere. :)
My ISP still offers Usenet thankfully (including binaries with >500 days retention). Though I do admit its one of a dying breed. :(
Sorry, but in (white collar) ~business~ (which is what we are talking about here - the kind of industries where business cards are the norm), most people do have a smart phone on them. Often corporate-issued rather than personal. Not everyone, no, but a significant majority. So I think the assumption that ~most~ people you meet in a business context will have a smartphone is a reasonable one in this day and age.
I have given away only a handful of business cards in the last few years but have often sent contacts details to other people's phones in a meeting (generally not via any fancy short-range communication methods though, just plain old email).
Well usually if you're meeting people, some form of emails have been exchanged between those people previously (in order to set up the meeting, agree on the agenda, and so on). Any company I've ever dealt with has some form of standard email signature on the bottom of those emails with email, phone and other personal details that you'd find on a business card. So normally I find that by the time I'm actually walking into the meeting, I have the contact details of everyone there already. It's honestly very rare that this isn't the case.
Obviously this will vary depending on your industry. But it's my experience working for a large software company. I do have business cards printed but I haven't ever needed to give away more than half a dozen of them out of a pack of 500, so they mostly just sit there on my desk...
To play devil's advocate: what is this incredibly sensitive personal information that Facebook has that could not be obtained by anyone else very easily?
Most people on Facebook have their name, email and maybe their address and phone number. Name and numbers are already in the phone book. Addresses are on the publicly-searchable electoral roll (though you'd be an idiot to put your address on Facebook anyway). I just think most people couldn't care less that someone might find out these things. It's not like their banking information or tax file number/SSN or passport number or other information that someone could actually use to hurt them is on there.
The only other 'valuable' information from a privacy perspective that Facebook might reveal is who you are friends with. But again, this is fairly unlikely to be information that is unique to Facebook (unless you are completely indiscriminate with who you add, and what read/write rights you give them to your profile/wall/etc). Provided you understand that anything you put on Facebook should be considered public knowledge and can never be retracted (like anything on the Internet), I don't really see a problem. I know there are some that are stupid about what they post, or stupid about who they add (e.g. adding their boss or colleagues). But that doesn't mean everyone who chooses to use Facebook is an idiot or ignorant of the potential consequences. They just don't perceive basic personal details to really be secret information in the first place.
Ah, your previous posts didn't mention the US specifically so I didn't know where you were commenting from. That may well be the case in the US so I can't argue with that. I am in the US reasonably regularly but I tend not to use credit cards there so I just assumed it was like other places ... apparently not :)
All I can definitely say is that I've been using a PIN with a credit card at the point of sale for quite a few years now in the places I've lived (various European countries, Singapore, Australia). It's currently mandatory to have the chip on all new cards in Australia (where I am at the moment), though actually ~using~ it is still optional since not all retailers have upgraded their equipment to support the chip/PIN. I still imagine even if PIN use becomes mandatory though there will have to be some exceptions (online/phone purchases for one).
OK so maybe not a decade, but I've had a PIN for use at the point of sale for purchases (i.e. swipe and type PIN, rather than swipe and sign) since at least 2005 (I know this for a fact as I was definitely using a chip-and-PIN card while living in London, and 2005 was my last year there). I've since moved elsewhere but all credit cards I've had since then have had one of those little chips in it and are capable of doing PIN-authenticated purchases.
Admittedly though, in many countries, it's not mandatory to use it (you can ~choose~ whether to PIN or sign), which sorta defeats the point ;) As you say, if you can get the physical card, you can use it fraudulently (even if it has a PIN) if signing is still an option and you can convincingly forge the signature. I tend to use the PIN myself, simply because it's quicker than signing.
Wait what? My credit card has had a PIN since the dawn of time (well, at least since I turned 18 and got my first credit card, around a decade ago...)
The internet situation in Australia is, frankly, preferable to those in most US markets. Your comment seems to imply that it's awful over here ... which was true a few years ago but not so much these days. I am a dual Australian/US citizen and live in both countries at various times in the year. I pay for net access in both countries too. So while I'm obviously not capable of giving a definitive statement about every option in every place in both countries, I'm better informed than most on this particular topic.
Aussie ISPs are usually capped, but you have a ~choice~ of cap. You can get a low end cap (5-10 GB) for a very cheap monthly rate, if that suits your needs (e.g. email and a bit of web browsing). Most people choose a mid-range cap (e.g. 50-100 GB) which costs around what a DSL connection in the US costs (and generally less than cable in the US, since you aren't forced to bundle TV and phone and other crap with it). But if you are a heavy user, most ISPs offer plans with huge caps: 500 GB, 1 TB, or even more. The cost isn't that high either considering what you're getting: maybe 30-50% more than a typical cable plan in the US. But the market for these huge cap plans is quite small outside of large share-houses, families that do a LOT of video-streaming, or P2P addicts.
On the flip side, Australia does NOT have the monopoly/duopoly problem that the US does. In most areas, you can choose from a ~huge~ number of ISPs. We're talking 20, 30, 40 ISPs here. They compete on price-per-GB, quality of network, and bundled services. Furthermore, because there is a set limit to what you can download per month, ISPs don't care how fast you download it. ADSL2+ (up to 24 Mbps) is ubiquitous, and cable networks are DOCSIS3 in many places. Contrast this with the US where DSL links are stuck on ADSL1, and often artificially capped even beyond that to 6Mbit/384kbit max. There is simply no impetus for DSL ISPs in the US to increase the speeds available because they can't charge more for it (since unlimited plans are the norm), and it would lead to more strain on their networks.
Caps have their downsides, but they aren't automatically a bad thing. But they need to be done right, and for the right reasons (to make ISPs a sustainable business, to encourage competition or increase choice, NOT to simply screw the customer and make they pay more for what they are already getting). Australia has unique problems due to its geographic isolation and being far from most English-speaking content hosting, that has historically led to caps being the only sustainable way to run an ISP. Until the last year or two, anyone that tried to offer uncapped/unlimited residential Internet (and there have been quite a few) has failed and gone bankrupt (few undersea cables + a nation that demands a greater proportion of its traffic from overseas hosts than any other). You can get true unlimited plans in some areas now (due mostly to there being competition and capacity on the undersea cable networks that has been lacking in previous years), but even where you can't, the capped plans work well, because you have a large CHOICE of caps (from a few GB, to TB+). The average low or medium-usage customer actually ends up with a better deal than they would in the US (especially for DSL where download and upload speeds offered are much faster).
I much prefer my 150 GB capped, 24 Mbps downstream/1 Mbps upstream DSL plan in Australia than my 6 Mbit/384 kbps AT&T DSL plan in the US. I pay the same for both (give or take $5 depending on exchange rate). The Aussie connection is faster, gets less congestion in peak times, and gives me a bunch of other nice extras such as free full binary usenet, static IP etc, that it's definitely worth the 'cap' (which I never get close to hitting anyway).
That's a very good point. Interestingly, if you look at places where data caps have always been the norm (some European countries, New Zealand, Australia etc.) you will generally see that there is a LOT more competition in the ISP sector. You can select from dozens of providers. Those providers generally compete on price-per-GB ("we're cheaper than X!") or on the basis that they have better infrastructure ("Our backbone and international links are faster and more reliable than X!").
Data caps may appear to suck at first, but provided the caps are large enough that they don't affect 99% of users, or you can purchase higher-end caps if required, they do have some benefits. They make net neutrality a non-issue, since you're paying for what you use regardless of source. And they encourage competition in the market.
I've lived in a couple of countries where caps were the norm, and one thing I liked was the huge variety of ISPs you could choose from (with different strengths and unique add-on services). Not like in the US where in most areas it's either the local DSL monopoly or the local cable monopoly. Furthermore, ISPs always offered a wide range of plans with different caps and different cost, e.g. 2 GB, 10 GB, 50 GB, 100 GB, 250 GB, 1 TB, so you could genuinely save money if you were a light user. In the US you pay the same amount whether you use 1 GB a month (like my mother who basically just checks her email and does her banking), or 1 TB a month (P2P-addict).
The final advantage is that ISPs can predict in advance what the maximum possible traffic on their network will be. They know they've got X customers with a total of Y cap per month. They can see how many new customers they are adding each month. Therefore they can extrapolate when and where they will need network upgrades ahead of time, to maintain quality of service. There is a definite difference I have seen in performance and reliability in 'capped' countries cf. 'unlimited' countries. You don't see the peak time congestion and the service actually delivers the advertised speed 24/7.
Note that all the negatives of caps still exist though and I fully acknowledge them. It is nice being able to download whatever you like without thinking of whether or not that might affect whether you hit the cap this month or not. I'm not here to say caps are great ... merely to suggest that they have their advantages and to some users, those advantages outweigh the disadvantage (of having a cap that, for your usage pattern, you will never come close to hitting). Note that for caps to work though, there needs to be a range of caps available at different prices, not a one-size-fits-all approach. ATT does not appear to be doing this though.
Not quite. The 'take out your sim and put in another' only works if the phone you are using has not previously been associated with you in any way. Which, considering you are chucking the SIM due to it no longer providing anonymity in the first place, seems unlikely. The IMEI of your phone is sent to the network (along with the data on the SIM card) every time you use it. The IMEI is static and will never change; there may be ways of spoofing it that I'm not aware of but it's probably not something particularly quick or easy to do.
Throw the whole phone, and get a new phone (with different IMEI obviously) that cannot be tied to you. Then you can change SIMs every so often thereafter. SIM changing alone only works if you are starting from a clean, anonymous slate, so to speak.
What are you on about? Japan hasn't refused help. There are search and rescue teams on the ground, right now, from many countries including the US. The US Navy is using carriers to provide landing/refueling statons for aircraft. The Australian Air Force is airdropping food, water and other supplies (including radiation detectors). There's just two examples I can think of off the top of my head that I've seen in the last 24 hours and I'm sure there are many more...
This isn't really hard. Many people already have to do this, including the >1 billion that live in India which is on a half hour offset timezone. As are certain areas of Canada, Australia and several other nations.
Even if that happened, the US wouldn't be the only place with a half hour offset from the rest of the world's timezones. There are several places already that have offsets that are not whole hours from GMT, including India (with over a billion people), some parts of Australia, some parts of Canada, Venezula. Hell there are even some oddball places with 15 minute offsets.
Australia is a Federal system with the same divisions of power in the Constitution between Federal Govt. and States (i.e. powers not specifically given to the Federal government are reserved to the States: the AU constitution was in fact heavily based on the US one). So at least for that example, the assumption that other countries don't have this delay due to this reason is inaccurate. The Federal-State system the US has is by no means unique.
I'm pretty sure in America, a child would come home and say "I went to school today". They don't say "I went to THE school today".
Yet Americans say "the hospital" and "the university"! The latter is particularly weird since a university is an educational institution just like a school is!
Two points:
1. In the case of schools, hospitals and universities, there are more than one. Saying 'the' implies that there is only one.
2. Regardless of whichever is grammatically 'correct', at least the UK/Australia/NZ/etc are consistent which grammatical structure they use. In America it's all over the place ('to school' is OK, but not 'to hospital' or 'to university').
Note that I don't actually care about this. Language has lots of regional differences and it's a petty thing to be worried about. But if you are going to be critical of someone pointing out one of these oddities, you had better at least recognise that your own way of doing things is not without its own glaring inconsistencies.
I've complained about that image before. But I got cut down: everyone just told me I was being overly sensitive.
But seriously. Other countries don't seem to get that treatment. The image is ludicrously stereotyped. And frankly, to an Australian, it seems a rather bizarre choice: yes the Akubra is an iconic piece of Australiana associated with those living on the land and our pioneer forebears, but it's not the ~first~ (or second or even tenth) thing that springs to mind if you're going to pick a stereotyped icon. It'd be like using a 10-gallon cowboy hat icon for any story concerning the US: something that represents a rather specific time and place in US history, rather than the country as a whole.
Honest question: if you asked 100 random Americans to name the first image or object associated with Australia that they could think of, how many would say an Akubra hat??