Yeah similar here in Australia (well, at least in my State).
Australia Post only delivers Monday-Friday as well, but most things you can do at a post office you can also do at a newsagent (North America, as I have discovered, does not really have any equivalent to the stores we call 'newsagents' in Australia/NZ/UK - essentially a place you go to buy newspapers, cards, magazines, stationery etc. - these things are generally not in supermarkets unlike the US).
And newsagents are a) open 7 days a week; and b) everywhere (as in, every second street corner in urban areas). So it's not really a big deal that the post office itself is closed. About the only reason to go to a real post office these days is if you want to set up a PO Box, or get a passport etc.
This has made the news a bit overseas too. There were some doubts voiced that the US could effectively completely 'kill' the Internet. Sure most of the DNS root servers are located in the US, and they could SEVERELY disrupt it. But perhaps not kill it entirely.
The summary here makes a bit more sense though - it's talking about shutting down ACCESS to the internet (at an ISP level) rather than necessarily the network itself. Either way though it would have a huge effect. Given that a large proportion of all servers/hosts are in the US, a nationwide shut down would affect many, many sites used by other countries as well.
I can see two sides to the argument. One is that the US, as a single country, shouldn't have the right to shut down what is now a truly global network. The other is that the US military (well, DARPA) did invent the damn thing in the first place, funded by American taxpayers' money, so perhaps they have an inherent right to do this, in an emergency, if it's in the US' national interest.
Thing is, I can't really think of a national security scenario that would be 'helped' by a total shut down of the Internet (as opposed to a targeted shut down of particular peoples' access or particular networks/providers/areas etc).
I'm going to assume the parent is American and thus doesn't realise what the office of Prime Minister actually represents. If the parent is Australian, then, I don't know what to say:P
The Prime Minister is the almost-exact equivalent of the House Majority Leader in the US. The leader of the political party currently holding the most seats in the lower house/chamber.
In the US, the House Majority Leader is not directly elected. Similarly, neither is the Prime Minister in the UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, or any other Westminster system country. This does not mean those countries are not democracies.
After all, US States have Governors. Imagine there was also a Governor for the whole Union as well. A general Governor, if you will. Like the Attorney-General. Gee what could we call that office...
In the case of Australia, Canada, NZ etc. we certainly can't call them a President (because those countries are not republics). I'm sure we could have come up with far more bizarre names for the position than Governor-General, but we didn't.
Agreed. There are two reasons why this should be a story on Slashdot, and neither of them relate to Ms. Gillard's gender.
1. This is the first time that a serving Prime Minister has been deposed by his own party without even having completed his first term of office (not counting those that died in office, or were temporary caretaker PMs such as Forde). That alone is newsworthy and will make today a notable day in Australian poltical history. What's more, it would have to also be the most rapid fall from grace of a PM in living memory - Kevin Rudd, as recently as three months ago, was enjoying one of the highest approval ratings of any PM, ever. And now he is gone, removed by the very colleagues who as little as 48 hours ago were voicing complete support for him.
2. More relevant to Slashdot as a technology-related site, this coup means that there will be a ministerial reshuffle and a new Cabinet. Which means there is a good chance that Senator Conroy will be dumped as Communications Minister. Perhaps in favour of Kate Lundy (although this is far from certain). Given that the internet filter proposal was already on shaky ground (Labor has quietly been putting it on the backburner as being "too toxic a topic" for an election year), this may be the extra push needed to make sure it sinks into oblivion (and good riddance!).
Whatever happens, it certainly has been a dramatic day in politics. It has made the upcoming election, which was looking to be one of the most boring in recent history, into something a little bit more interesting;)
Yeah I think you're mostly right. In my case, I would be 'the neighbourhood geek'. And I almost always recommend a router that's a step up on the default stuff ISPs try to sell you.
Personally I use a Billion 7404 VNPX. Chose it mostly cause I wanted gigabit ports on the LAN side, VoIP support, and external antennae. Cost a lot more (like, 3x-4x as much) as what an ISP would recommend, but it's stable and hasn't crashed on me once (even after purposefully attempting to fill its NAT tables by P2Ping with thousands of connections).
Like any consumer level gear it has its shortcomings... but I didn't really want to shell out for Cisco or other enterprise-grade stuff for home use.
Slowest and most expensive in the world? That might be stretching it a bit. Sure it's more expensive than the US, but it's still a crapload cheaper than many other places (see: NZ and South Africa, just to name two to start with). Being 15,000 km from where the majority of content Australians want (English language stuff, i.e. US/UK) is hosted has its drawbacks.
Also, we are specifically talking about DSL technology here. Australia has ADSL2+ available in most exchanges (that's up to 24 Mbps). In the US, most areas top out at ADSL1 speeds (8 Mbps... and from what I can see from AT&T's website, to pick a random telco, their top plan is 6 Mbps). So in terms of DSL, at least, Australia ain't slow at all. It's just that we don't have cable or fibre (e.g. FiOS) available in as many areas as the US that brings our 'average' speed down (the areas in Australia that do have cable get 30 Mbps, or 100 Mbps depending on location, and fibre is starting to be rolled out too).
Having said that, just remove the specific references to Australia in the article and it makes sense. Cheap DSL (in all countries) -> less research/development on consumer level DSL devices). There are a few decent router/modems out there, but most of them are frickin awful.
I think that the summary/article is just written for an Australian audience, that's all. I think it could equally be applied to the US or Europe or any other major market. Let's face it - the same modem/router brands as are common in AU are common in the US too. In many cases the exact same models.
I think the point is "cheaply available DSL (all over the world) has led to stagnation in research into consumer-level DSL modem/routers". It doesn't even really matter if the ISP throws one in for free or not. The ISPs that DON'T include a modem almost always have a few models that they will sell separately to the user. So even if the user has to pay for one separately, 95% of the time they are going to go the cheapest, crappiest one the ISP 'recommends' to them anyway. Same result.
The market for DSL modems in Australia isn't really different than the market for DSL modems in the US though. Hell, in most cases, both countries use the same models with just a different power plug (due to different voltage and plug shape).
There's a couple of firmware/configuration differences (e.g. WiFi channels 12 and 13 are usable in Australia, but not in the US due to FCC regulations).
As others have said though, there are good products out there... but not the cheap ones that ISPs are likely to recommend. The Airport Extreme is pretty decent. As are some high end Billions. But for every vaguely decent one, there are 10 terrible ones with buggy software, poor interfaces, and insufficient processing power to keep up with gigabit LAN connections (or in some cases, even to keep up with fast ADSL2+ connections!)
Untrue. The community, or even entire State is an extension of the family in many cultures. Just because it isn't in yours doesn't mean that's true everywhere.
Slashdot tends to hype things up, exaggerate, and report on suggestions, ideas, and whimsical musings from a couple of politicians, as if they were a done deal and were being introduced into law right away.
It's not the case though.
Internet filter: Conroy and his lot have been talking about it for two years now. But their own trials showed it was essentially useless. The draft legislation hasn't even been written, let alone introduced into Parliament as a Bill. And if it were introduced, it would never pass - Labor doesn't have the numbers to get it through. And they recently announced that they are, essentially, scrapping the idea in its current form.
Forcing ISPs to record users' internet history: This is already done in most of the EU. But Australians definitely don't like the idea, and like the filter above, it will die before any real steps are taken to get this into law.
Subject of this article: This is one step below even those two things. It's a recommendation by a committee. Do you know how many commiitees there are and how many random recommendations they make? Generally a very very small proportion of such recommendations ever find their way into official Government policy. The idea of disconnecting infected machines spewing out spam or participating in a botnet is a good idea. But requiring AV software as a precondition to getting online? Hahahaha... that is completely unworkable. Think of the average home user's technical abilities. Think of the outrage in the ISP industry. Think of the fact that Mac and Linux users don't really need AV software. Etc.
Basically, Slashdot always tries to make as scary a sounding summary as possible, and the non-Australian commenters lap it up and go "omg Australia sucks", ignoring the fact that these things are all just IDEAS or proposals which are unlikely to ever see the light of day. Result: Australia's name has been unfairly dragged through the mud on here in the last year. Yes - the current Government has had some awful ideas, which have and should be criticised. But some politicians' ideas/= actual policy or law. And in the case of the things mentioned here, are never likely to be. Australia as a whole hasn't miraculously changed in the last 12 months. As a culture, we are still laid back. Oh and it's not like Americans don't have some scary ass laws too... warrantless wiretapping anyone? That even affects me as a foreigner - anytime I call someone in America, my conversation might be being recorded or listened to.
Agreed. The Australian system I think is the best fit for the US if they want to just copy another system. It works well... at least as well as Canada's system and better than the UK NHS IMO.
It might be more palatable to the Americans than the Canadian system because it's less likely to attract as many 'omg socialist' rants. Why? Because, Australia's system still allows for a healthy private insurance market for those people that want it, and allows private practice to continue just like it does in the US now.
The Australian system is a universal, single-payer, health care system. It is funded by a levy included in income tax for medium to high earners (an extra 1.5% of your taxable income once you earn above a particular amount). But if you choose to pay for private insurance, that levy can be reduced or eliminated (so you make a tax saving, which makes sense since you aren't burdening the public health system as much anymore). But the poor and unemployed, who couldn't afford private insurance even if they wanted to, are still completely covered, for free, by the universal public system. It's a 'safety net' if you will.
You have the choice in the Australian system. You aren't forced to participate in a 'socialist' public system if you don't want to. You aren't 'forced' to buy insurance either (like some opponents of the Obama reforms have complained of). So perhaps I'm being naive but I think, if you are going to simply copy another system, it's a better fit than Canada or the UK.
agree. But I think the 'only criminals have guns' argument isn't inherently silly. It depends on the country you are talking about.
I am a dual US/Australian citizen who spends part of each year in either country. However, I am perhaps unusual in that I advocate two completely different gun policies for two different countries. I am in favour of (responsible and regulated) gun ownership in the US, and very much against any guns at all in Australia.
Why? It's to do with history. Australia has never HAD a lot of guns, so as you so rightfully pointed out, very few people have them. Even criminals. They simply aren't 'there' to obtain (in any great number). Not to say it's ~impossible~ for a criminal to get one, but it's much, much harder than in the US. The average Australian criminal doesn't have one. As a result, the number of deaths related to firearms in Australia per year is minute... 20 or 30 out of a population of 22 million. I'd like to keep it that way and I fully support the tough gun laws we have in AU.
OTOH I support the 2nd Amendment in the US and would be against a proposal to make guns illegal in America. Why? It's because there are simply already too many guns out there. Guns are one of those things that, once the cat is out of the bag so to speak, it's impossible to get it back in. Revoking the right of Americans to bear arms now WOULD result in 'only the criminals having guns' (law abiding citizens might hand in their guns, but criminals certainly wouldn't!). And then, unlike in Australia where both victims and criminals are on a level, gun-less playing field, the criminals in the US would have a field day. They'd have all the power and victims would have none. That'd be a scary world to live in.
Another way to put it - I feel safe walking the streets in Australia because I know everyone, including those that would do me harm, are unarmed. But in the US, since I know criminals are armed (more often than not), I'd feel safer knowing other responsible people around me were armed as well, just in case some punk criminal wants to make me his victim.
That is, it should always be a level 'playing field'... either everyone has guns, or noone does. So gun control policies need to differ according to the culture and history of the particular country you are talking about. There's no one size fits all solution.
Oh and incidentally, the Liberal Party is actually the more conservative major party in Australia. Confusingly named I know (there are historical reasons for this). So of course they wouldn't oppose the filter.
The Australian vs. US political spectrums (very roughly, don't nitpick!) look like this:
Greens --- Labor --- Liberal
Democrats ------ Republicans
I've left out minor parties such as Family First in Australia that sit to the right of the Liberals, and also various minor parties that tend to sit to the left of the Democrats in the US.
But the point is, our Liberal Party are our conservatives, and the whole US political spectrum really sits well to the right of ours. Additionally, there's less difference in the positions of our parties than yours (most of ours are fairly similar and centrist, the gap isn't as large as between Dems and Reps in the US).
"Most 'sites' accessed are outside the country" may well be bunk. But 'most sites' is not 'most traffic'. HTTP/web in general comprises a tiny amount of the overall traffic most ISPs deal with these days.
Also I honestly find it hard to believe that 85% of domestic NZ HTTP traffic is to trademe. That doesn't even pass a sanity check - Google and Facebook and Youtube alone would comprise a LOT more than the remaining 15%, and I'm pretty sure there's more than a handful of other websites to visit in NZ;)
TV and film and literature are classified so that people can make informed choices about what media the consume. That is not the same as mandatory censorship. The poll you cite is therefore not really relevant... the question doesn't even mention the mandatory filter issue. How that turns in your mind into "begging for the filter" is beyond me.
Any poll that DOES directly mention the internet filter, OTOH, generally has well over 75% in the 'against' category. And there have been many of these polls, from reputable sources using proper polling techniques (i.e. I'm not talking about random online polls here).
In a way you emphasise my point - the situation is exaggerated and hyped up by Slashdot and its sensationalist summaries/headlines. However, the situation on the ground here in Australia is NOT anywhere near as bad as how it appears to an outsider. Any rational person who actually lives here hasn't been too worried about the filter, because it isn't going to happen. Too many political and technical obstacles, too much opposition, and the filter itself is completely ineffectual (only a few hundred URLs blocked, and easily proxied/VPNed around in about 5 seconds).
You're right of course. But it still isn't a good look for Google. A lot of countries have fairly strict laws against this kind of thing, and the "if it was private it should have been secured" argument isn't a valid excuse, legally speaking.
You can add Oceania to your list in the second sentence too (i.e. Australia/NZ etc.). Unless you consider that part of Asia (most people here generally don't). But we too are completely standardised on GSM in the same way as Europe etc.
As a regular traveller to North America (both US and Canada), the state of cell phones over there has pissed me off for almost two decades now. Even in the mid 90s, I could take my Nokia brick (GSM) to any other country on earth, step off the plane, and be roaming without issue within minutes. But in the US and Canada, I had no phone coverage at all. Even in the early 2000s, when the US was starting to get GSM networks, I still couldn't get any signal because you guys used some non-standard frequency that most non-American phones couldn't use.
Things have got gradually better each time I have returned to the US though (which I do 2-3 times a year):
~2003: first time I succesfully got a signal using my (Australian-bought) GSM phone in the US. This was mostly due to phones starting to be triband/quadband and hence able to connect to American frequency GSM networks. But sadly, it only worked in LA (I was transiting through LAX). Couldn't get a signal anywhere else in the country that I went to (even large places like Chicago).
~2006: started to get GSM coverage in most major cities now, although still hit and miss, especially in the midwest.
~2008: finally had GSM coverage almost everywhere I went in the US, although there's still some holes (including in some places where there's a decent population).
It's still not perfect though. SMS to overseas numbers still seems flaky in certain areas of North America... I've had a lot of messages just never make it to their recipients (even though it works flawlessly in every other country). I think this is more to do with inter-carrier agreements and stuff rather than the technology itself though... the US seems to have a lot of small regional operators, particularly in rural areas, whereas most other countries just have a couple of large networks covering the whole country).
Depends if you think of the phone as a 'portable personal computing device', or really just 'an appliance'.
Like you, I couldn't stand anyone telling me what software I could or could not run on my personal computer (running Linux or Windows or whatever). It's a ~personal~ microcomputer which I should be able to make run any arbitrary code I desire to feed into it. I can even write my own software for it.
Some might also consider a phone to be the same - a completely open bit of personal hardware that they should be allowed to do with as they please.
OTOH I think a lot of people out there (not saying I'm one of them) consider a phone as merely an appliance. They buy it in the knowledge that its not an 'open' device you can do what you want with. But they don't care. I mean... they don't really care that I can't run arbitrary code on their DVD player or their microwave or their car stereo system or whatever. And they think of a phone as being in the same class of device - they just want it to work and don't have a desire to do anything more fancy with it.
Apple has been successful selling such locked down products to that kind of consumer. You (and I) disagree with that approach, but there are good alternatives out there, so there's no real reason to get worked up about it. If I don't like it, I won't buy it.
The 'locked to a carrier' thing is also strictly a US thing. In my country (and most others) you can just whack any old SIM card in an iPhone and it will work on any network like any other phone. I should also point out that Apple's actual ~computers~ (i.e. Mac OS X running laptops and desktops) are still open platform 'personal computers'... indeed these days you can even run Windows or Linux on them). So I don't think the lock-ins pervade every product they sell. Just the iPad/iPhone/iPod/etc.
But you're right - you shouldn't be modded as troll for discussing these things. They are legitimate concerns with Apple's products. But I just think that you are not Apple's target market - you want a computer when they are really just trying to sell an appliance.
That seems odd though, because you'd think such behaviour would have to be carrier-specific. I.e. AT&Ts systems would have to know to expect such updates from the iPhone and rely on the iPhone to monitor its usage.
But the iPhone in other countries is sold completely unlocked and you can whack any SIM card in it and use it on any network. The network doesn't know that you're connecting from an iPhone or any other 3G/HSDPA device. So the network wouldn't know to listen for these iPhone data updates (and would be keeping track of data usage on the network side like it would for any other device).
I don't own an iPhone, so this may be something completely obvious. But it sounds to me like the US iPhone software/firmware is different from the software run on non-US devices (i.e. there's a "AT&T-locked" version for the US which contains this data reporting feature, and a 'regular' version which does not, for use internationally)
Makes sense. I clearly remember an amusing segment on the TV news here not long after the original iPhone was released. All those tiny little bits of data that the iPhone constantly connects to send/receive, combined with data charges still being a relatively rare/new thing as far as phone company billing software was concerned, literally led to people receiving itemised phone bills the size of books. Hundreds of pages:)
Billing software in phone companies has no doubt improved since then. But at the same time it would not surprise me that Apple also updated the iPhone software in such a way that it behaved as described in the summary.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah similar here in Australia (well, at least in my State).
Australia Post only delivers Monday-Friday as well, but most things you can do at a post office you can also do at a newsagent (North America, as I have discovered, does not really have any equivalent to the stores we call 'newsagents' in Australia/NZ/UK - essentially a place you go to buy newspapers, cards, magazines, stationery etc. - these things are generally not in supermarkets unlike the US).
And newsagents are a) open 7 days a week; and b) everywhere (as in, every second street corner in urban areas). So it's not really a big deal that the post office itself is closed. About the only reason to go to a real post office these days is if you want to set up a PO Box, or get a passport etc.
/facepalm
He clearly means .net.au, .edu.au, org.au, gov.au etc...
We also have some odd ones like id.au and asn.au :)
This has made the news a bit overseas too. There were some doubts voiced that the US could effectively completely 'kill' the Internet. Sure most of the DNS root servers are located in the US, and they could SEVERELY disrupt it. But perhaps not kill it entirely.
The summary here makes a bit more sense though - it's talking about shutting down ACCESS to the internet (at an ISP level) rather than necessarily the network itself. Either way though it would have a huge effect. Given that a large proportion of all servers/hosts are in the US, a nationwide shut down would affect many, many sites used by other countries as well.
I can see two sides to the argument. One is that the US, as a single country, shouldn't have the right to shut down what is now a truly global network. The other is that the US military (well, DARPA) did invent the damn thing in the first place, funded by American taxpayers' money, so perhaps they have an inherent right to do this, in an emergency, if it's in the US' national interest.
Thing is, I can't really think of a national security scenario that would be 'helped' by a total shut down of the Internet (as opposed to a targeted shut down of particular peoples' access or particular networks/providers/areas etc).
I'm going to assume the parent is American and thus doesn't realise what the office of Prime Minister actually represents. If the parent is Australian, then, I don't know what to say :P
The Prime Minister is the almost-exact equivalent of the House Majority Leader in the US. The leader of the political party currently holding the most seats in the lower house/chamber.
In the US, the House Majority Leader is not directly elected. Similarly, neither is the Prime Minister in the UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, or any other Westminster system country. This does not mean those countries are not democracies.
Don't see why it's that 'funny'.
After all, US States have Governors. Imagine there was also a Governor for the whole Union as well. A general Governor, if you will. Like the Attorney-General. Gee what could we call that office ...
In the case of Australia, Canada, NZ etc. we certainly can't call them a President (because those countries are not republics). I'm sure we could have come up with far more bizarre names for the position than Governor-General, but we didn't.
Newcastle Sydney Wollongong, obviously. The limits of the known world.
Hmm that's genuinely interesting. Pretty similar story to what's happened down here today...thanks for that. No mod points to give you unfortunately!
Agreed. There are two reasons why this should be a story on Slashdot, and neither of them relate to Ms. Gillard's gender.
1. This is the first time that a serving Prime Minister has been deposed by his own party without even having completed his first term of office (not counting those that died in office, or were temporary caretaker PMs such as Forde). That alone is newsworthy and will make today a notable day in Australian poltical history. What's more, it would have to also be the most rapid fall from grace of a PM in living memory - Kevin Rudd, as recently as three months ago, was enjoying one of the highest approval ratings of any PM, ever. And now he is gone, removed by the very colleagues who as little as 48 hours ago were voicing complete support for him.
2. More relevant to Slashdot as a technology-related site, this coup means that there will be a ministerial reshuffle and a new Cabinet. Which means there is a good chance that Senator Conroy will be dumped as Communications Minister. Perhaps in favour of Kate Lundy (although this is far from certain). Given that the internet filter proposal was already on shaky ground (Labor has quietly been putting it on the backburner as being "too toxic a topic" for an election year), this may be the extra push needed to make sure it sinks into oblivion (and good riddance!).
Whatever happens, it certainly has been a dramatic day in politics. It has made the upcoming election, which was looking to be one of the most boring in recent history, into something a little bit more interesting ;)
Yeah I think you're mostly right. In my case, I would be 'the neighbourhood geek'. And I almost always recommend a router that's a step up on the default stuff ISPs try to sell you.
Personally I use a Billion 7404 VNPX. Chose it mostly cause I wanted gigabit ports on the LAN side, VoIP support, and external antennae. Cost a lot more (like, 3x-4x as much) as what an ISP would recommend, but it's stable and hasn't crashed on me once (even after purposefully attempting to fill its NAT tables by P2Ping with thousands of connections).
Like any consumer level gear it has its shortcomings ... but I didn't really want to shell out for Cisco or other enterprise-grade stuff for home use.
Slowest and most expensive in the world? That might be stretching it a bit. Sure it's more expensive than the US, but it's still a crapload cheaper than many other places (see: NZ and South Africa, just to name two to start with). Being 15,000 km from where the majority of content Australians want (English language stuff, i.e. US/UK) is hosted has its drawbacks.
Also, we are specifically talking about DSL technology here. Australia has ADSL2+ available in most exchanges (that's up to 24 Mbps). In the US, most areas top out at ADSL1 speeds (8 Mbps ... and from what I can see from AT&T's website, to pick a random telco, their top plan is 6 Mbps). So in terms of DSL, at least, Australia ain't slow at all. It's just that we don't have cable or fibre (e.g. FiOS) available in as many areas as the US that brings our 'average' speed down (the areas in Australia that do have cable get 30 Mbps, or 100 Mbps depending on location, and fibre is starting to be rolled out too).
Having said that, just remove the specific references to Australia in the article and it makes sense. Cheap DSL (in all countries) -> less research/development on consumer level DSL devices). There are a few decent router/modems out there, but most of them are frickin awful.
I think that the summary/article is just written for an Australian audience, that's all. I think it could equally be applied to the US or Europe or any other major market. Let's face it - the same modem/router brands as are common in AU are common in the US too. In many cases the exact same models.
I think the point is "cheaply available DSL (all over the world) has led to stagnation in research into consumer-level DSL modem/routers". It doesn't even really matter if the ISP throws one in for free or not. The ISPs that DON'T include a modem almost always have a few models that they will sell separately to the user. So even if the user has to pay for one separately, 95% of the time they are going to go the cheapest, crappiest one the ISP 'recommends' to them anyway. Same result.
The market for DSL modems in Australia isn't really different than the market for DSL modems in the US though. Hell, in most cases, both countries use the same models with just a different power plug (due to different voltage and plug shape).
There's a couple of firmware/configuration differences (e.g. WiFi channels 12 and 13 are usable in Australia, but not in the US due to FCC regulations).
As others have said though, there are good products out there ... but not the cheap ones that ISPs are likely to recommend. The Airport Extreme is pretty decent. As are some high end Billions. But for every vaguely decent one, there are 10 terrible ones with buggy software, poor interfaces, and insufficient processing power to keep up with gigabit LAN connections (or in some cases, even to keep up with fast ADSL2+ connections!)
Untrue. The community, or even entire State is an extension of the family in many cultures. Just because it isn't in yours doesn't mean that's true everywhere.
We still are.
Slashdot tends to hype things up, exaggerate, and report on suggestions, ideas, and whimsical musings from a couple of politicians, as if they were a done deal and were being introduced into law right away.
It's not the case though.
Internet filter: Conroy and his lot have been talking about it for two years now. But their own trials showed it was essentially useless. The draft legislation hasn't even been written, let alone introduced into Parliament as a Bill. And if it were introduced, it would never pass - Labor doesn't have the numbers to get it through. And they recently announced that they are, essentially, scrapping the idea in its current form.
Forcing ISPs to record users' internet history: This is already done in most of the EU. But Australians definitely don't like the idea, and like the filter above, it will die before any real steps are taken to get this into law.
Subject of this article: This is one step below even those two things. It's a recommendation by a committee. Do you know how many commiitees there are and how many random recommendations they make? Generally a very very small proportion of such recommendations ever find their way into official Government policy. The idea of disconnecting infected machines spewing out spam or participating in a botnet is a good idea. But requiring AV software as a precondition to getting online? Hahahaha ... that is completely unworkable. Think of the average home user's technical abilities. Think of the outrage in the ISP industry. Think of the fact that Mac and Linux users don't really need AV software. Etc.
Basically, Slashdot always tries to make as scary a sounding summary as possible, and the non-Australian commenters lap it up and go "omg Australia sucks", ignoring the fact that these things are all just IDEAS or proposals which are unlikely to ever see the light of day. Result: Australia's name has been unfairly dragged through the mud on here in the last year. Yes - the current Government has had some awful ideas, which have and should be criticised. But some politicians' ideas /= actual policy or law. And in the case of the things mentioned here, are never likely to be. Australia as a whole hasn't miraculously changed in the last 12 months. As a culture, we are still laid back. Oh and it's not like Americans don't have some scary ass laws too ... warrantless wiretapping anyone? That even affects me as a foreigner - anytime I call someone in America, my conversation might be being recorded or listened to.
Agreed. The Australian system I think is the best fit for the US if they want to just copy another system. It works well ... at least as well as Canada's system and better than the UK NHS IMO.
It might be more palatable to the Americans than the Canadian system because it's less likely to attract as many 'omg socialist' rants. Why? Because, Australia's system still allows for a healthy private insurance market for those people that want it, and allows private practice to continue just like it does in the US now.
The Australian system is a universal, single-payer, health care system. It is funded by a levy included in income tax for medium to high earners (an extra 1.5% of your taxable income once you earn above a particular amount). But if you choose to pay for private insurance, that levy can be reduced or eliminated (so you make a tax saving, which makes sense since you aren't burdening the public health system as much anymore). But the poor and unemployed, who couldn't afford private insurance even if they wanted to, are still completely covered, for free, by the universal public system. It's a 'safety net' if you will.
You have the choice in the Australian system. You aren't forced to participate in a 'socialist' public system if you don't want to. You aren't 'forced' to buy insurance either (like some opponents of the Obama reforms have complained of). So perhaps I'm being naive but I think, if you are going to simply copy another system, it's a better fit than Canada or the UK.
agree. But I think the 'only criminals have guns' argument isn't inherently silly. It depends on the country you are talking about.
I am a dual US/Australian citizen who spends part of each year in either country. However, I am perhaps unusual in that I advocate two completely different gun policies for two different countries. I am in favour of (responsible and regulated) gun ownership in the US, and very much against any guns at all in Australia.
Why? It's to do with history. Australia has never HAD a lot of guns, so as you so rightfully pointed out, very few people have them. Even criminals. They simply aren't 'there' to obtain (in any great number). Not to say it's ~impossible~ for a criminal to get one, but it's much, much harder than in the US. The average Australian criminal doesn't have one. As a result, the number of deaths related to firearms in Australia per year is minute ... 20 or 30 out of a population of 22 million. I'd like to keep it that way and I fully support the tough gun laws we have in AU.
OTOH I support the 2nd Amendment in the US and would be against a proposal to make guns illegal in America. Why? It's because there are simply already too many guns out there. Guns are one of those things that, once the cat is out of the bag so to speak, it's impossible to get it back in. Revoking the right of Americans to bear arms now WOULD result in 'only the criminals having guns' (law abiding citizens might hand in their guns, but criminals certainly wouldn't!). And then, unlike in Australia where both victims and criminals are on a level, gun-less playing field, the criminals in the US would have a field day. They'd have all the power and victims would have none. That'd be a scary world to live in.
Another way to put it - I feel safe walking the streets in Australia because I know everyone, including those that would do me harm, are unarmed. But in the US, since I know criminals are armed (more often than not), I'd feel safer knowing other responsible people around me were armed as well, just in case some punk criminal wants to make me his victim.
That is, it should always be a level 'playing field' ... either everyone has guns, or noone does. So gun control policies need to differ according to the culture and history of the particular country you are talking about. There's no one size fits all solution.
Oh and incidentally, the Liberal Party is actually the more conservative major party in Australia. Confusingly named I know (there are historical reasons for this). So of course they wouldn't oppose the filter.
The Australian vs. US political spectrums (very roughly, don't nitpick!) look like this:
Greens --- Labor --- Liberal
Democrats ------ Republicans
I've left out minor parties such as Family First in Australia that sit to the right of the Liberals, and also various minor parties that tend to sit to the left of the Democrats in the US.
But the point is, our Liberal Party are our conservatives, and the whole US political spectrum really sits well to the right of ours. Additionally, there's less difference in the positions of our parties than yours (most of ours are fairly similar and centrist, the gap isn't as large as between Dems and Reps in the US).
"Most 'sites' accessed are outside the country" may well be bunk. But 'most sites' is not 'most traffic'. HTTP/web in general comprises a tiny amount of the overall traffic most ISPs deal with these days.
Also I honestly find it hard to believe that 85% of domestic NZ HTTP traffic is to trademe. That doesn't even pass a sanity check - Google and Facebook and Youtube alone would comprise a LOT more than the remaining 15%, and I'm pretty sure there's more than a handful of other websites to visit in NZ ;)
Regulation /= censorship.
TV and film and literature are classified so that people can make informed choices about what media the consume. That is not the same as mandatory censorship. The poll you cite is therefore not really relevant ... the question doesn't even mention the mandatory filter issue. How that turns in your mind into "begging for the filter" is beyond me.
Any poll that DOES directly mention the internet filter, OTOH, generally has well over 75% in the 'against' category. And there have been many of these polls, from reputable sources using proper polling techniques (i.e. I'm not talking about random online polls here).
In a way you emphasise my point - the situation is exaggerated and hyped up by Slashdot and its sensationalist summaries/headlines. However, the situation on the ground here in Australia is NOT anywhere near as bad as how it appears to an outsider. Any rational person who actually lives here hasn't been too worried about the filter, because it isn't going to happen. Too many political and technical obstacles, too much opposition, and the filter itself is completely ineffectual (only a few hundred URLs blocked, and easily proxied/VPNed around in about 5 seconds).
You're right of course. But it still isn't a good look for Google. A lot of countries have fairly strict laws against this kind of thing, and the "if it was private it should have been secured" argument isn't a valid excuse, legally speaking.
You can add Oceania to your list in the second sentence too (i.e. Australia/NZ etc.). Unless you consider that part of Asia (most people here generally don't). But we too are completely standardised on GSM in the same way as Europe etc.
As a regular traveller to North America (both US and Canada), the state of cell phones over there has pissed me off for almost two decades now. Even in the mid 90s, I could take my Nokia brick (GSM) to any other country on earth, step off the plane, and be roaming without issue within minutes. But in the US and Canada, I had no phone coverage at all. Even in the early 2000s, when the US was starting to get GSM networks, I still couldn't get any signal because you guys used some non-standard frequency that most non-American phones couldn't use.
Things have got gradually better each time I have returned to the US though (which I do 2-3 times a year):
~2003: first time I succesfully got a signal using my (Australian-bought) GSM phone in the US. This was mostly due to phones starting to be triband/quadband and hence able to connect to American frequency GSM networks. But sadly, it only worked in LA (I was transiting through LAX). Couldn't get a signal anywhere else in the country that I went to (even large places like Chicago).
~2006: started to get GSM coverage in most major cities now, although still hit and miss, especially in the midwest.
~2008: finally had GSM coverage almost everywhere I went in the US, although there's still some holes (including in some places where there's a decent population).
It's still not perfect though. SMS to overseas numbers still seems flaky in certain areas of North America ... I've had a lot of messages just never make it to their recipients (even though it works flawlessly in every other country). I think this is more to do with inter-carrier agreements and stuff rather than the technology itself though ... the US seems to have a lot of small regional operators, particularly in rural areas, whereas most other countries just have a couple of large networks covering the whole country).
Ditto here as an Australian. Only difference is replace 1994 with ~1996. :)
Depends if you think of the phone as a 'portable personal computing device', or really just 'an appliance'.
Like you, I couldn't stand anyone telling me what software I could or could not run on my personal computer (running Linux or Windows or whatever). It's a ~personal~ microcomputer which I should be able to make run any arbitrary code I desire to feed into it. I can even write my own software for it.
Some might also consider a phone to be the same - a completely open bit of personal hardware that they should be allowed to do with as they please.
OTOH I think a lot of people out there (not saying I'm one of them) consider a phone as merely an appliance. They buy it in the knowledge that its not an 'open' device you can do what you want with. But they don't care. I mean ... they don't really care that I can't run arbitrary code on their DVD player or their microwave or their car stereo system or whatever. And they think of a phone as being in the same class of device - they just want it to work and don't have a desire to do anything more fancy with it.
Apple has been successful selling such locked down products to that kind of consumer. You (and I) disagree with that approach, but there are good alternatives out there, so there's no real reason to get worked up about it. If I don't like it, I won't buy it.
The 'locked to a carrier' thing is also strictly a US thing. In my country (and most others) you can just whack any old SIM card in an iPhone and it will work on any network like any other phone. I should also point out that Apple's actual ~computers~ (i.e. Mac OS X running laptops and desktops) are still open platform 'personal computers' ... indeed these days you can even run Windows or Linux on them). So I don't think the lock-ins pervade every product they sell. Just the iPad/iPhone/iPod/etc.
But you're right - you shouldn't be modded as troll for discussing these things. They are legitimate concerns with Apple's products. But I just think that you are not Apple's target market - you want a computer when they are really just trying to sell an appliance.
That seems odd though, because you'd think such behaviour would have to be carrier-specific. I.e. AT&Ts systems would have to know to expect such updates from the iPhone and rely on the iPhone to monitor its usage.
But the iPhone in other countries is sold completely unlocked and you can whack any SIM card in it and use it on any network. The network doesn't know that you're connecting from an iPhone or any other 3G/HSDPA device. So the network wouldn't know to listen for these iPhone data updates (and would be keeping track of data usage on the network side like it would for any other device).
I don't own an iPhone, so this may be something completely obvious. But it sounds to me like the US iPhone software/firmware is different from the software run on non-US devices (i.e. there's a "AT&T-locked" version for the US which contains this data reporting feature, and a 'regular' version which does not, for use internationally)
Makes sense. I clearly remember an amusing segment on the TV news here not long after the original iPhone was released. All those tiny little bits of data that the iPhone constantly connects to send/receive, combined with data charges still being a relatively rare/new thing as far as phone company billing software was concerned, literally led to people receiving itemised phone bills the size of books. Hundreds of pages :)
Billing software in phone companies has no doubt improved since then. But at the same time it would not surprise me that Apple also updated the iPhone software in such a way that it behaved as described in the summary.