'Kit' is a casual term for 'gear', 'equipment', 'stuff' etc. Contrary to what others have said, it is not 'a Britishism'. It is a term used basically everywhere that speaks standard/Commonwealth English (as opposed to American English).
But even if you didn't know what it meant, isn't it obvious from context?
I see a lot of that on this site actually (presumably mostly from North Americans): the inability to figure out the likely meaning of a word from context. They all seem to take everything so... literally. There's a huge amount of American slang and expressions too that aren't used outside America, but the meaning of them is still usually obvious to an outsider.
You don't necessarily need to go prepaid to avoid giving a CC number. You just need to use a billing option other than 'automatic credit card deducations'.
I've been a Vodafone AU customer for over a decade and I've always paid via Bpay. Not only is it cheaper (no credit card surcharge), but you don't have to give any personal financial information to them.
Not that that's much comfort: "Gee, instead of leaking my name, address, phone number, drivers licence number, date of birth and credit card number... they just have the first five of those!". Hmm. This might be the final straw for me. Vodafone used to be good but in the last year or so their network quality has deteriorated insanely... and now this privacy breach? Pains me to say it but maybe I should move to Telstra (ewww).
- Imagine that Twitter is a 'push' medium. A tweet from the WL account could arguably then be classified as a communication ~from~ the account, to other users, who have (by 'following') agreed to receive that communication.
- Then imagine that these pushed messages constituted a 'connection made to ~or from~ the account'.
- You then could argue under subsection 1 above that Twitter would need to reveal the 'destination usernames/IP addresses'.
But it's a very, very long bow to draw. Firstly, Twitter doesn't work that way. Secondly, the list of following usernames isn't private and the feds could find that out simply by going to WL's Twitter page themselves and clicking 'followers'. And thirdly I doubt Twitter even has the IP addresses of every single followers login, every time that they received each individual tweet. I mean, personally I access Twitter from half a dozen IPs, some of which could never identify me personally anyway. What's more I'm usually logged in from multiple places at once (so it's not like a tweet goes 'to' any particular IP... it just appears on whatever devices I have logged in at the time).
So I think you're right - the subpoena doesn't cover followers. Which would make sense as 99% of those followers are just random dudes that saw something retweeted by a news site or blog, and just thought 'meh, why not follow WL and hear this directly from the source'. They aren't 'useful' to the investigation in any way.
I would agree. Even though I vehemently disagree with what the US Govt. is doing here, and even though I am a follower of @wikileaks myself on Twitter (merely for the same reasons as I follow news sites and the like: some of the stuff is interesting, though I have no strong personal opinion either way about Wikileaks), I struggle to see how the subpoena could be interpreted that way.
Besides, if the subpoena covered every random dude that's clicked on 'follow', i.e. people that haven't communicated directly with Wikileaks but merely received some headlines from them in a one way, RSS-feed-like manner, you'd think they would be drowned in information. 600,000+ Twitter accounts is a lot of information to sort through...
Well if you look at countries that have 'banned guns', you will generally find they have banned ~handguns~, not all weapons.
Specifically, in countries like Australia, hunting firearms are still perfectly available if you have a legitimate need for them. People hunt. And farmers need a gun as a tool of their profession (shooting pests on their property, protecting livestock, etc). What is 'banned', are guns that primarily designed to shoot people (i.e. handguns). They are useless for hunting or farming purposes due to their lesser range and power (as you mention), and are also concealable. A hunter or farmer doesn't require a small, concealed weapon, so they can continue to own a rifle or shotgun etc. as required...
As you alluded to, all those methods require more effort, more time and in most cases, physical contact with the victim. A gun on the other hand can be fired, from a distance, with minimal effort, at a moment's whim. Even if you regret the action 1 second later... it is too late. Whereas if you are beating them to death, your actions can be reconsidered (or stopped by others) before it's too late (unless you managed to kill your target with the first blow, which is not particularly likely... not to mention the fact that you'd have to actually get in contact with them first, which would be difficult for a guarded target like a politician).
Having said that I don't disagree with you - gun control isn't the whole story here (or, I suspect, even a large part of the story). As you say, other countries with high gun ownership rates have far less crime. The cultural and societal problems in America need to be addressed for gun control to have any effect.
And frankly, there are too many guns in America to ever have any hope of recovering them all, even if draconian laws were introduced - the cat is out of the bag so to speak. Strict gun control works well in countries that never HAD much of a gun culture in the first place... the number of weapons that require recovering is much smaller. But in America? No chance. Gun control laws would pretty much result in only criminals having them. So even though I strongly support guns being banned in my home country (where it has worked very well - I have never even ~seen~ a firearm other than on a cop's belt), it wouldn't work in America. It'd simply be impossible to recover them all (or even a substantial portion of them). Better off keeping the balance of power between criminals and the rest of us, by allowing both 'sides' to be armed.
And can I just say, from a non-American's perspective, you guys take your politics WAY too seriously. I mean, in my country (Australia), people discuss politics in a serious fashion... but at the end of the day most people don't hold political views personally against others. People at work might give each other a bit of a friendly ribbing about voting for 'the other guy', but that's about it.
Whereas in the US it seems if you are of a different political persuasion, well, you can't even be friends with each other. So much hatred seems to spew forth from Americans' mouths directed mostly at other Americans. It's bizarre. Assassinations have occurred comparatively often in the US (even of Presidents!). But if you look at other western countries, most have zero assassinations in their entire history.
I mean, I could understand the vitriol and violence if politics was going to determine whether or not you starved, or your kids would be enslaved or something if Party X got into power. But America is a first world country and life there is still better than most of the rest of the world. Politics might affect your wallet a bit but geez, talk about blowing things out of proportion...
There's quite a bit of truth to what they are telling you. As MichaelSmith alluded to, it's mostly because of the lack of airborne moisture, particulates and pollution cf. the comparatively wetter, more land-covered, more populated northern hemisphere.
In fact as an Australian that went overseas to the US and Europe for the first time as a 20 year old, it's one of the first things I noticed when I stepped off the plane. The sky is often a light, hazy blue, close to ~white~ near the horizon, even on a cloudless day. Put simply, it's the greater humidity in your atmosphere (with some contribution from both man-made pollution, and natural particulates such as pollen etc). OTOH as soon as you are >50km away from the coast in Australia, a sunny sky will be a deep, deep blue, with no discernable difference in colour between 'straight up' and 'at the horizon'. Not to say you can't get days like that elsewhere (desert regions would be like this world-wide), but this is the norm over most of Australia. Where I live (which is in the inland of Australia), I have never seen that 'white haze' that is common in the northern hemisphere sky.
Of course that viciously blue sky, although nice for solar power and photography, is a curse in many ways. Low average humidity makes us the driest inhabited continent, and we also have the highest UV irradiation on earth (and the highest rates of skin cancer as a consequence). The UV index used worldwide was obviously developed in the northern hemisphere since the highest category 'Extreme' starts at 11+ (and is supposed to represent the 'top few days' in a year). The scale is kinda useless in Australia since EVERY day is 'Extreme' (our normal summertime UV here is typically in the 13 to 15 range, and I've seen higher): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_index
I'm wondering what approach Apple will take with the increasingly-likely-looking VZW compatible iPhone:
1. Special CDMA iPhone for use on Verizon's network; no 3GSM/UMTS ability;
2. A single global phone model with both 3GSM and CDMA chipsets.
It would seem to me that option '1' would require Apple to have confidence that they will sell a lot of Verizon iPhones. After all, they'd have to have a separate R&D and manufacturing run for a separate model of phone that is completely useless to anyone but Verizon users (CDMA is virtually unused outside of the US... it's GSM all the way in most places). Apple tend not to like fragmenting their models like that: in the past they have just had a single model each year (with different on-board storage capacities).
Which would suggest that option '2' might happen instead. BUT I'm wondering what having both chipsets in the phone would do to manufacturing cost, and to the size of the battery (since you have more internal components, you have less space for the battery). There are VERY few existing phones that can roam between CDMA and GSM networks so it would be a very unusual beast to say the least. On the plus side it would be great for Verizon users who travel internationally. (I imagine most CDMA users in the US normally have to rent a phone when they go overseas since CDMA networks are non-existent over most of the rest of the planet?)
When it expires and Apple is allowed to sell the iPhone with whoever they want, Google is going to be hurting.
Doubt it. Remember that the carrier exclusivity of the iPhone only exists in the US and maybe one or two other countries. In the vast majority of the world, it's a GSM phone like any other that you buy, pop your SIM card in (from any carrier) and off you go. And in all those countries, Android is doing quite well.
So I don't think the carrier exclusivity is holding Apple's sales in the US back as much as you might think. I mean, sure, it has SOME effect. But Android is a quality platform and I don't think the population of "people who would have got an iPhone but for their carrier" is ~that~ significant (I mean, if you REALLY wanted an iPhone in the US, wouldn't you just change carrier?)
Disclaimer: I own an iPhone 4 and like it a lot. However I am not a blind fanboi: Android is pretty sweet too. I've used both and both have some points better than the other.
More like one article EVERY WEEK for most of 2010. "AU government wants to apply nation-wide filtering." "AU ministry releases blacklist of sites." "ISP volunteers to do test-run for the filtered internet." And so on.
Ok fair enough, there were a crapload of articles. But they were all just ideas or proposals or rants by some random guy. Nothing that actually said 'yep, filter is happening'.
Of course I don't blame you for getting the wrong impression. Slashdot reports stuff like this in an incredibly sensationalized and hyped up manner. Also, it was quick to post any 'filtering might happen' article, but neglected to post many articles about the reality of the situation and the fact that the idea pretty much got dropped. So I fully understand WHY many on here got the impression that they did. Nonetheless it hurts to see Australia continually attacked on here for something that doesn't exist. By all means things aren't perfect here, but it'd at least be nice to get our name dragged through the mud for a REAL reason instead;)
Stop persisting this myth about Internet in Australia - seriously I swear everyone on Slashdot saw one article about it and therefore thinks it exists.
It was proposed by a couple of senators. It was widely unpopular and the government knew it. It contributed to the Labor party almost losing the 2010 election. Mandatory filtering as a political position is essentially dead and buried - it never actually even got introduced as a BILL into Parliament, let alone passed into law. There's no way in hell it would get through the senate anyway. So please stop persisting this falsehood. The net in Australia is not filtered.
Oh and incidentally, it's quite amusing that you think Westminster democracies such as Canada and Australia are less free than the US. Our political systems are far less corrupt, not run by lobby groups or big business, more accountable, more transparent and actually have a role for third and fourth parties to play. Also we aren't getting nudie scanned at airports, the government still needs a warrant to wiretap someone and frankly have more freedom to speak as we like without fear, despite the fact that it's not specifically enshrined in our Constitutions...
The fact that health care IS one sixth of the US economy... see that, right there, is the problem.
Do you think that's normal? What does it tell you about the degree of waste and inefficiency inherent in the health care system, when it comprises such a huge part of the total economy.
Also the usual: government-paid health care does not (in most countries) mean government-run healthcare. We have full single payer public health care in my country but doctors still run private practices/businesses - they aren't run by the government, the government just helps pay the bill at the end of the day...
Yeah same here - in fact I've never even used >50% of any hard drive I've ever owned come to think of it. I've always had way more space than I need.
I quite clearly remember only ever using 11 or 12 MB on my IBM AT which had a 30 MB HDD.
Never went past 400 MB on my 486DX4/100 (with 850 MB Maxtor HDD)
Never went past around 1.4 GB on my Pentium 2 (which had a 3.2 GB Quantum Fireball).
Next machine I had was a Dell laptop (while living in college for a few years). It had 80 GB but I never used more than around 30 GB.
My current main machine only has 150 GB (Raptor 10,000 rpm) and I'm using almost exactly half of it. I guess I've never had an appetite for hoarding large amounts of data - speed is more important than capacity for me (will be getting an SSD next computer, obviously, but waiting for the tech to mature another year or so).
Admittedly though I do have a NAS sitting in the other room with 1 TB in RAID 1, which is slightly more than half-used. But that data is mostly replaceable (music and movies and the like).
I'm pretty sure most true Slashdotters have multiple machines running a variety of systems. Personally I have:
- Two linux boxes (one headless server, one desktop) - One Windows 7 box (gaming and multimedia) - One Windows XP laptop (employer standard issue, bogged down with eleventy billion anti virus and firewall apps that make it incredibly slow)
- One MacOS laptop...plus various other appliances (e.g. NAS, UPnP media players) that mostly run embedded *nixes of some description.
Any Slashdotter that is even remotely into gaming will have a Windows partition, somewhere, I dare say;)
Exactly - I imagine if they are forced to include MicroUSB charging they'll just add a MicroUSB port in addition to the standard dock connector. Especially on the iPad this wouldn't be a big deal - MicroUSB is TINY. There's plenty of space they could shove one. On the iPhone it might be a bit more tricky but I bet they could still squeeze it in somehow.
Indeed. This is roughly the model used in the NBN (National Broadband Network) currently being built in Australia. A company ('NBNCo') is laying fiber with an aim to bring 100 Mbps-1 Gbps to 93% of the population in the next 8 years. But they are purely a wholesale-only layer 2 provider. It is up to ISPs to provide layer 3 services to the end user over the network. The idea being that it provides a level playing field for ISP competition to thrive.
Good to see Google intends to take this approach in the US too. It's sorely needed in the US (moreso than elsewhere) due to the fact that there's essentially only a choice between the local DSL monopoly or the local cable monopoly in most places... not much ISP competition to be found.
McDonalds in Europe, Australia, Japan etc. are a lot nicer than the US ones. They sell wraps and decent salads and reasonably good cafe-type food. The actual restaurants themselves are generally much cleaner and have nicer decor than the American ones. So I don't mind the odd visit there. Even if I buy a big fatty burger, a couple of times a year isn't exactly going to hurt.
Exactly. I wouldn't say satellite phones are 'failing'. But they are simply a niche market. You use the right tool for the right job, and a satellite phone is a tool intended for use in remote locations. There are better and cheaper technologies (i.e. cellular) for widespread use in more densely populated areas.
Sat phones get extensive use in the remote areas here in Australia. Every farmer has one, and they are generally very reliable and hold a good quality call. The people who benefit from having an 'available everywhere' phone are already using sat phones (farmers in remote areas, very frequent travellers, etc). It's simply that the percentage of people who fit this profile is quite small.
Saying sat phones are failing to achieve more widespread penetration is missing the point - they are simply a square peg in a round hole for most people's telecommunication needs.
Small population. Small market. Geographically remote. High import taxes. There's no conspiracy here - things would cost even more if the dollar was still at US 60c or whatever.
As for Steam, that is admittedly a rip off, but apparently people are buying things at those prices. If it was too expensive, people wouldn't buy things, and Steam would lower prices. Since they aren't lowering prices though we can only surmise that Australians are willingly paying those prices. I know if I were running a business, I wouldn't be lowering prices just because 'they are higher than other places', if I was still managing to sell product at those prices.
Australians have very high disposable incomes compared to most countries - including the US. Although on paper the US' per capita GDP is slightly higher, that's due to the small proportion of hyper-rich people that they have, that Australia doesn't really have. The average Aussie lives way better than the average American (Australia's income curve is very egalitarian... most people are comfortably middle class, whereas in the US the rich are richer, but there's also a ~astronomically high~ proportion of urban poor barely living above the poverty line).
So it is not surprising that Australians are still able (and apparently willing) to pay higher costs. It's also kinda a cultural thing. Being a dual American/Australian citizen, I've seen it many times myself: Americans as a whole are much more price sensitive. They will simply say "no, that's too expensive" and not buy something. Whereas Australians almost always go "gah, that's expensive" but end up paying anyway. So prices aren't going to change with that kind of attitude. As you say, people go on paying the prices because that's how it's always been. And it will stay that way unless there's a massive shift in Australian income demographics and distribution.
You must have travelled to a lot of rather odd countries then...
nedlohs has cited a few examples so I won't repeat them. Most Western countries do have an equivalent of EFTPOS that is separate from 'debit cards'/masquerading as credit cards via Visa/MC/AMEX etc.
The cards are Maestro/Cirrus compatible, for when the user is travelling in countries that use Maestro. However the system in Australia is completely independant from these systems. They are just there for 'compatibility purposes' when travelling overseas.
The sad thing is, standard DSL technology is capable of up to 24 Mbps downstream (ADSL2+), and 1 Mbps (Annex A) or 2.5 Mbps (Annex M) upstream. In most of Europe, Asia, Australia/NZ etc, ADSL2+ is the 'standard' DSL technology and thus customers can enjoy these speeds (dependant on distance from the DSLAM/CO/exchange). Given the prevalence of DSL in the US, it's surprising to me that virtually the whole country is stuck on ADSL1 (up to 8/1 Mbps, and it seems most ISPs cap it at 6Mbps/768kbps for some God-unknown reason).
A minor software/config change by the ISP to uncripple DSL back to its standard 8Mbps down / 1Mbps up capacity would be sufficient to allow it to satisfy the definition of broadband in the US. All current DSL modems are capable of this speed: it is only at the ISP's end that these speeds are being restricted for some reason...
Countries don't, but ISPs do. Your ISP has to buy capacity on peering/transit trunks to get in and out of the country. If they don't buy enough, you'll get slow international speeds.
Note also that this is why comparisons to countries like Japan and South Korea are a bit unfair. Countries like that will have 99% of their traffic being local, because people are mostly going to be downloading Japanese/Korean language content, which will be hosted domestically (since those are the only countries that use those languages natively). ISPs in those countries can therefore afford to spend less on international transit and more on local infrastructure. Those gigabit connections in Japan aren't going to acheive anywhere near their rated speed to somewhere in the UK, for instance. But they will be blazing fast for local content, which is all that really matters to most people.
Note also this is why bandwidth caps exist in countries like Australia: they are an English speaking country a LONG way from where 98% of English speaking content is hosted (the US). In fact Australia (and New Zealand) have by far the highest proportion of their Internet traffic bound for overseas of any other Western country. Something like 90% of traffic in Australia is to hosts in the US, 15,000 km away via undersea cable. That's damn expensive for ISPs to cope with, and thus they must cap usage. In the past these caps have been restrictive due to a monopoly on capacity to the US - now that several new cables have come online, caps are becoming huge (e.g. 1 TB is available for the price that 100 GB was only a year or two ago).
Slashdot Mirror
'Kit' is a casual term for 'gear', 'equipment', 'stuff' etc. Contrary to what others have said, it is not 'a Britishism'. It is a term used basically everywhere that speaks standard/Commonwealth English (as opposed to American English).
But even if you didn't know what it meant, isn't it obvious from context?
I see a lot of that on this site actually (presumably mostly from North Americans): the inability to figure out the likely meaning of a word from context. They all seem to take everything so ... literally. There's a huge amount of American slang and expressions too that aren't used outside America, but the meaning of them is still usually obvious to an outsider.
That'd be the largest mobile telecommunications company in the world.
Kinda like saying "WTF's a McDonalds?" :P
You don't necessarily need to go prepaid to avoid giving a CC number. You just need to use a billing option other than 'automatic credit card deducations'.
I've been a Vodafone AU customer for over a decade and I've always paid via Bpay. Not only is it cheaper (no credit card surcharge), but you don't have to give any personal financial information to them.
Not that that's much comfort: "Gee, instead of leaking my name, address, phone number, drivers licence number, date of birth and credit card number ... they just have the first five of those!". Hmm. This might be the final straw for me. Vodafone used to be good but in the last year or so their network quality has deteriorated insanely ... and now this privacy breach? Pains me to say it but maybe I should move to Telstra (ewww).
I think that WL is twisting it thus:
- Imagine that Twitter is a 'push' medium. A tweet from the WL account could arguably then be classified as a communication ~from~ the account, to other users, who have (by 'following') agreed to receive that communication.
- Then imagine that these pushed messages constituted a 'connection made to ~or from~ the account'.
- You then could argue under subsection 1 above that Twitter would need to reveal the 'destination usernames/IP addresses'.
But it's a very, very long bow to draw. Firstly, Twitter doesn't work that way. Secondly, the list of following usernames isn't private and the feds could find that out simply by going to WL's Twitter page themselves and clicking 'followers'. And thirdly I doubt Twitter even has the IP addresses of every single followers login, every time that they received each individual tweet. I mean, personally I access Twitter from half a dozen IPs, some of which could never identify me personally anyway. What's more I'm usually logged in from multiple places at once (so it's not like a tweet goes 'to' any particular IP ... it just appears on whatever devices I have logged in at the time).
So I think you're right - the subpoena doesn't cover followers. Which would make sense as 99% of those followers are just random dudes that saw something retweeted by a news site or blog, and just thought 'meh, why not follow WL and hear this directly from the source'. They aren't 'useful' to the investigation in any way.
I would agree. Even though I vehemently disagree with what the US Govt. is doing here, and even though I am a follower of @wikileaks myself on Twitter (merely for the same reasons as I follow news sites and the like: some of the stuff is interesting, though I have no strong personal opinion either way about Wikileaks), I struggle to see how the subpoena could be interpreted that way.
Besides, if the subpoena covered every random dude that's clicked on 'follow', i.e. people that haven't communicated directly with Wikileaks but merely received some headlines from them in a one way, RSS-feed-like manner, you'd think they would be drowned in information. 600,000+ Twitter accounts is a lot of information to sort through...
Well if you look at countries that have 'banned guns', you will generally find they have banned ~handguns~, not all weapons.
Specifically, in countries like Australia, hunting firearms are still perfectly available if you have a legitimate need for them. People hunt. And farmers need a gun as a tool of their profession (shooting pests on their property, protecting livestock, etc). What is 'banned', are guns that primarily designed to shoot people (i.e. handguns). They are useless for hunting or farming purposes due to their lesser range and power (as you mention), and are also concealable. A hunter or farmer doesn't require a small, concealed weapon, so they can continue to own a rifle or shotgun etc. as required...
As you alluded to, all those methods require more effort, more time and in most cases, physical contact with the victim. A gun on the other hand can be fired, from a distance, with minimal effort, at a moment's whim. Even if you regret the action 1 second later ... it is too late. Whereas if you are beating them to death, your actions can be reconsidered (or stopped by others) before it's too late (unless you managed to kill your target with the first blow, which is not particularly likely ... not to mention the fact that you'd have to actually get in contact with them first, which would be difficult for a guarded target like a politician).
Having said that I don't disagree with you - gun control isn't the whole story here (or, I suspect, even a large part of the story). As you say, other countries with high gun ownership rates have far less crime. The cultural and societal problems in America need to be addressed for gun control to have any effect.
And frankly, there are too many guns in America to ever have any hope of recovering them all, even if draconian laws were introduced - the cat is out of the bag so to speak. Strict gun control works well in countries that never HAD much of a gun culture in the first place ... the number of weapons that require recovering is much smaller. But in America? No chance. Gun control laws would pretty much result in only criminals having them. So even though I strongly support guns being banned in my home country (where it has worked very well - I have never even ~seen~ a firearm other than on a cop's belt), it wouldn't work in America. It'd simply be impossible to recover them all (or even a substantial portion of them). Better off keeping the balance of power between criminals and the rest of us, by allowing both 'sides' to be armed.
Indeed.
And can I just say, from a non-American's perspective, you guys take your politics WAY too seriously. I mean, in my country (Australia), people discuss politics in a serious fashion ... but at the end of the day most people don't hold political views personally against others. People at work might give each other a bit of a friendly ribbing about voting for 'the other guy', but that's about it.
Whereas in the US it seems if you are of a different political persuasion, well, you can't even be friends with each other. So much hatred seems to spew forth from Americans' mouths directed mostly at other Americans. It's bizarre. Assassinations have occurred comparatively often in the US (even of Presidents!). But if you look at other western countries, most have zero assassinations in their entire history.
I mean, I could understand the vitriol and violence if politics was going to determine whether or not you starved, or your kids would be enslaved or something if Party X got into power. But America is a first world country and life there is still better than most of the rest of the world. Politics might affect your wallet a bit but geez, talk about blowing things out of proportion...
There's quite a bit of truth to what they are telling you. As MichaelSmith alluded to, it's mostly because of the lack of airborne moisture, particulates and pollution cf. the comparatively wetter, more land-covered, more populated northern hemisphere.
In fact as an Australian that went overseas to the US and Europe for the first time as a 20 year old, it's one of the first things I noticed when I stepped off the plane. The sky is often a light, hazy blue, close to ~white~ near the horizon, even on a cloudless day. Put simply, it's the greater humidity in your atmosphere (with some contribution from both man-made pollution, and natural particulates such as pollen etc). OTOH as soon as you are >50km away from the coast in Australia, a sunny sky will be a deep, deep blue, with no discernable difference in colour between 'straight up' and 'at the horizon'. Not to say you can't get days like that elsewhere (desert regions would be like this world-wide), but this is the norm over most of Australia. Where I live (which is in the inland of Australia), I have never seen that 'white haze' that is common in the northern hemisphere sky.
Of course that viciously blue sky, although nice for solar power and photography, is a curse in many ways. Low average humidity makes us the driest inhabited continent, and we also have the highest UV irradiation on earth (and the highest rates of skin cancer as a consequence). The UV index used worldwide was obviously developed in the northern hemisphere since the highest category 'Extreme' starts at 11+ (and is supposed to represent the 'top few days' in a year). The scale is kinda useless in Australia since EVERY day is 'Extreme' (our normal summertime UV here is typically in the 13 to 15 range, and I've seen higher): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_index
I'm wondering what approach Apple will take with the increasingly-likely-looking VZW compatible iPhone:
1. Special CDMA iPhone for use on Verizon's network; no 3GSM/UMTS ability;
2. A single global phone model with both 3GSM and CDMA chipsets.
It would seem to me that option '1' would require Apple to have confidence that they will sell a lot of Verizon iPhones. After all, they'd have to have a separate R&D and manufacturing run for a separate model of phone that is completely useless to anyone but Verizon users (CDMA is virtually unused outside of the US ... it's GSM all the way in most places). Apple tend not to like fragmenting their models like that: in the past they have just had a single model each year (with different on-board storage capacities).
Which would suggest that option '2' might happen instead. BUT I'm wondering what having both chipsets in the phone would do to manufacturing cost, and to the size of the battery (since you have more internal components, you have less space for the battery). There are VERY few existing phones that can roam between CDMA and GSM networks so it would be a very unusual beast to say the least. On the plus side it would be great for Verizon users who travel internationally. (I imagine most CDMA users in the US normally have to rent a phone when they go overseas since CDMA networks are non-existent over most of the rest of the planet?)
When it expires and Apple is allowed to sell the iPhone with whoever they want, Google is going to be hurting.
Doubt it. Remember that the carrier exclusivity of the iPhone only exists in the US and maybe one or two other countries. In the vast majority of the world, it's a GSM phone like any other that you buy, pop your SIM card in (from any carrier) and off you go. And in all those countries, Android is doing quite well.
So I don't think the carrier exclusivity is holding Apple's sales in the US back as much as you might think. I mean, sure, it has SOME effect. But Android is a quality platform and I don't think the population of "people who would have got an iPhone but for their carrier" is ~that~ significant (I mean, if you REALLY wanted an iPhone in the US, wouldn't you just change carrier?)
Disclaimer: I own an iPhone 4 and like it a lot. However I am not a blind fanboi: Android is pretty sweet too. I've used both and both have some points better than the other.
>>>I swear everyone on Slashdot saw one article
More like one article EVERY WEEK for most of 2010. "AU government wants to apply nation-wide filtering." "AU ministry releases blacklist of sites." "ISP volunteers to do test-run for the filtered internet." And so on.
Ok fair enough, there were a crapload of articles. But they were all just ideas or proposals or rants by some random guy. Nothing that actually said 'yep, filter is happening'.
Of course I don't blame you for getting the wrong impression. Slashdot reports stuff like this in an incredibly sensationalized and hyped up manner. Also, it was quick to post any 'filtering might happen' article, but neglected to post many articles about the reality of the situation and the fact that the idea pretty much got dropped. So I fully understand WHY many on here got the impression that they did. Nonetheless it hurts to see Australia continually attacked on here for something that doesn't exist. By all means things aren't perfect here, but it'd at least be nice to get our name dragged through the mud for a REAL reason instead ;)
Stop persisting this myth about Internet in Australia - seriously I swear everyone on Slashdot saw one article about it and therefore thinks it exists.
It was proposed by a couple of senators. It was widely unpopular and the government knew it. It contributed to the Labor party almost losing the 2010 election. Mandatory filtering as a political position is essentially dead and buried - it never actually even got introduced as a BILL into Parliament, let alone passed into law. There's no way in hell it would get through the senate anyway. So please stop persisting this falsehood. The net in Australia is not filtered.
Oh and incidentally, it's quite amusing that you think Westminster democracies such as Canada and Australia are less free than the US. Our political systems are far less corrupt, not run by lobby groups or big business, more accountable, more transparent and actually have a role for third and fourth parties to play. Also we aren't getting nudie scanned at airports, the government still needs a warrant to wiretap someone and frankly have more freedom to speak as we like without fear, despite the fact that it's not specifically enshrined in our Constitutions...
The fact that health care IS one sixth of the US economy ... see that, right there, is the problem.
Do you think that's normal? What does it tell you about the degree of waste and inefficiency inherent in the health care system, when it comprises such a huge part of the total economy.
Also the usual: government-paid health care does not (in most countries) mean government-run healthcare. We have full single payer public health care in my country but doctors still run private practices/businesses - they aren't run by the government, the government just helps pay the bill at the end of the day...
Yeah same here - in fact I've never even used >50% of any hard drive I've ever owned come to think of it. I've always had way more space than I need.
I quite clearly remember only ever using 11 or 12 MB on my IBM AT which had a 30 MB HDD.
Never went past 400 MB on my 486DX4/100 (with 850 MB Maxtor HDD)
Never went past around 1.4 GB on my Pentium 2 (which had a 3.2 GB Quantum Fireball).
Next machine I had was a Dell laptop (while living in college for a few years). It had 80 GB but I never used more than around 30 GB.
My current main machine only has 150 GB (Raptor 10,000 rpm) and I'm using almost exactly half of it. I guess I've never had an appetite for hoarding large amounts of data - speed is more important than capacity for me (will be getting an SSD next computer, obviously, but waiting for the tech to mature another year or so).
Admittedly though I do have a NAS sitting in the other room with 1 TB in RAID 1, which is slightly more than half-used. But that data is mostly replaceable (music and movies and the like).
I'm pretty sure most true Slashdotters have multiple machines running a variety of systems. Personally I have:
- Two linux boxes (one headless server, one desktop)
- One Windows 7 box (gaming and multimedia)
- One Windows XP laptop (employer standard issue, bogged down with eleventy billion anti virus and firewall apps that make it incredibly slow)
- One MacOS laptop ...plus various other appliances (e.g. NAS, UPnP media players) that mostly run embedded *nixes of some description.
Any Slashdotter that is even remotely into gaming will have a Windows partition, somewhere, I dare say ;)
Exactly - I imagine if they are forced to include MicroUSB charging they'll just add a MicroUSB port in addition to the standard dock connector. Especially on the iPad this wouldn't be a big deal - MicroUSB is TINY. There's plenty of space they could shove one. On the iPhone it might be a bit more tricky but I bet they could still squeeze it in somehow.
Indeed. This is roughly the model used in the NBN (National Broadband Network) currently being built in Australia. A company ('NBNCo') is laying fiber with an aim to bring 100 Mbps-1 Gbps to 93% of the population in the next 8 years. But they are purely a wholesale-only layer 2 provider. It is up to ISPs to provide layer 3 services to the end user over the network. The idea being that it provides a level playing field for ISP competition to thrive.
Good to see Google intends to take this approach in the US too. It's sorely needed in the US (moreso than elsewhere) due to the fact that there's essentially only a choice between the local DSL monopoly or the local cable monopoly in most places ... not much ISP competition to be found.
McDonalds in Europe, Australia, Japan etc. are a lot nicer than the US ones. They sell wraps and decent salads and reasonably good cafe-type food. The actual restaurants themselves are generally much cleaner and have nicer decor than the American ones. So I don't mind the odd visit there. Even if I buy a big fatty burger, a couple of times a year isn't exactly going to hurt.
Exactly. I wouldn't say satellite phones are 'failing'. But they are simply a niche market. You use the right tool for the right job, and a satellite phone is a tool intended for use in remote locations. There are better and cheaper technologies (i.e. cellular) for widespread use in more densely populated areas.
Sat phones get extensive use in the remote areas here in Australia. Every farmer has one, and they are generally very reliable and hold a good quality call. The people who benefit from having an 'available everywhere' phone are already using sat phones (farmers in remote areas, very frequent travellers, etc). It's simply that the percentage of people who fit this profile is quite small.
Saying sat phones are failing to achieve more widespread penetration is missing the point - they are simply a square peg in a round hole for most people's telecommunication needs.
Small population. Small market. Geographically remote. High import taxes. There's no conspiracy here - things would cost even more if the dollar was still at US 60c or whatever.
As for Steam, that is admittedly a rip off, but apparently people are buying things at those prices. If it was too expensive, people wouldn't buy things, and Steam would lower prices. Since they aren't lowering prices though we can only surmise that Australians are willingly paying those prices. I know if I were running a business, I wouldn't be lowering prices just because 'they are higher than other places', if I was still managing to sell product at those prices.
Australians have very high disposable incomes compared to most countries - including the US. Although on paper the US' per capita GDP is slightly higher, that's due to the small proportion of hyper-rich people that they have, that Australia doesn't really have. The average Aussie lives way better than the average American (Australia's income curve is very egalitarian ... most people are comfortably middle class, whereas in the US the rich are richer, but there's also a ~astronomically high~ proportion of urban poor barely living above the poverty line).
So it is not surprising that Australians are still able (and apparently willing) to pay higher costs. It's also kinda a cultural thing. Being a dual American/Australian citizen, I've seen it many times myself: Americans as a whole are much more price sensitive. They will simply say "no, that's too expensive" and not buy something. Whereas Australians almost always go "gah, that's expensive" but end up paying anyway. So prices aren't going to change with that kind of attitude. As you say, people go on paying the prices because that's how it's always been. And it will stay that way unless there's a massive shift in Australian income demographics and distribution.
You must have travelled to a lot of rather odd countries then...
nedlohs has cited a few examples so I won't repeat them. Most Western countries do have an equivalent of EFTPOS that is separate from 'debit cards'/masquerading as credit cards via Visa/MC/AMEX etc.
That is wrong.
The cards are Maestro/Cirrus compatible, for when the user is travelling in countries that use Maestro. However the system in Australia is completely independant from these systems. They are just there for 'compatibility purposes' when travelling overseas.
The sad thing is, standard DSL technology is capable of up to 24 Mbps downstream (ADSL2+), and 1 Mbps (Annex A) or 2.5 Mbps (Annex M) upstream. In most of Europe, Asia, Australia/NZ etc, ADSL2+ is the 'standard' DSL technology and thus customers can enjoy these speeds (dependant on distance from the DSLAM/CO/exchange). Given the prevalence of DSL in the US, it's surprising to me that virtually the whole country is stuck on ADSL1 (up to 8/1 Mbps, and it seems most ISPs cap it at 6Mbps/768kbps for some God-unknown reason).
A minor software/config change by the ISP to uncripple DSL back to its standard 8Mbps down / 1Mbps up capacity would be sufficient to allow it to satisfy the definition of broadband in the US. All current DSL modems are capable of this speed: it is only at the ISP's end that these speeds are being restricted for some reason...
Countries don't, but ISPs do. Your ISP has to buy capacity on peering/transit trunks to get in and out of the country. If they don't buy enough, you'll get slow international speeds.
Note also that this is why comparisons to countries like Japan and South Korea are a bit unfair. Countries like that will have 99% of their traffic being local, because people are mostly going to be downloading Japanese/Korean language content, which will be hosted domestically (since those are the only countries that use those languages natively). ISPs in those countries can therefore afford to spend less on international transit and more on local infrastructure. Those gigabit connections in Japan aren't going to acheive anywhere near their rated speed to somewhere in the UK, for instance. But they will be blazing fast for local content, which is all that really matters to most people.
Note also this is why bandwidth caps exist in countries like Australia: they are an English speaking country a LONG way from where 98% of English speaking content is hosted (the US). In fact Australia (and New Zealand) have by far the highest proportion of their Internet traffic bound for overseas of any other Western country. Something like 90% of traffic in Australia is to hosts in the US, 15,000 km away via undersea cable. That's damn expensive for ISPs to cope with, and thus they must cap usage. In the past these caps have been restrictive due to a monopoly on capacity to the US - now that several new cables have come online, caps are becoming huge (e.g. 1 TB is available for the price that 100 GB was only a year or two ago).