Er I'm assuming this is a troll, but just in case anyone else doesn't realise, Australia has a reasonable number of ethnically east Asian people. As in >10% of the population (and closer to >20% in some urban areas).
Australia isn't technically in Asia, but its geographic proximity definitely affects the makeup of the population. Far more Asians per capita here than in the US, for instance.
You're right, although as an Australia always think of the US as being only a 'moderate' distance away. Takes me 13-14 hours on a plane to get to LA or San Fran from here. It's almost double that (~23 hours) to get to UK/France etc though. So it seems weird to think of Australia as being 'super far' from the US.
I fly to the US very regularly from my home country (Australia). The rule is that you can bring up to 1L total, but are limited to 100 mL for each ~individual item~.
So I can bring 10 separate 100 mL bottles of shampoo on, but I can't bring that same amount of shampoo on in a single 1L bottle. Basically, each item has to be = 100 mL, and all the items have to fit in a single 1L ziplock sandwich bag.
In the US they refer to it as the 3-1-1 rule, which is a wonderfully confusing mix of metric and imperial units (lol): 3 fl oz. max per item, 1 L bag total, 1 bag per passenger.
Nothing says the person has to be a ~real~ or identifiable person. Just a representation of something that looks like a human being. I'm pretty sure that's what it means. Otherwise you could just generate 'fake' faces on images and say "but it's not a person, your honour... it's just an idea, this 'person' doesn't exist, they can't vote etc.".
Are you sure about that? He may have discussed details about the release/cracking techniques on social networking sites with other people. That is evidence relevant to the case and would be discoverable under US evidence laws just as in Australia.
If he had committed an armed robbery at the local gas station, sure the social networking passwords would be irrelevant. But this is an offence that was clearly connected to the online world and where those sites may contain useful evidence.
Not in this case. Australia was due to get the game on Nov 12th, the first in the (English speaking) world to get it, in fact. Before even the US (Nov 15th).
It's true - region locking isn't permitted here. The most obvious manifestation of this is the fact that any DVD player you buy in Australia can play any region disc with no issues. Really pissed me off when I moved to the US for a few years and found I couldn't play any of my DVDs with a US DVD player except for the couple I had that were region 1 (I have an assortment of region 1, 2 and 4 DVDs, depending on which ones I could find cheapest on Ebay usually).
Secondly we don't exactly have "laws against violent videogames". We just don't have a classification above MA15+ for video games, so they get refused classification. Without a valid classification, they aren't allowed to be sold on retail shelves. So the effect is sorta the same, but there's a big difference between a law actively against something or banning something, and there just not being an appropriate legal category in which to place certain games. That's why this doesn't really conflict with the 'no region locking' laws... I have plenty of RC (refused classification) games in Australia - I just bought them overseas or online (i.e. from a different region).
Slashdot tends to indulge in quite a bit of hyperbole when reporting situations in other countries than the US, particularly surrounding censorship issues - always keep that in mind.
Yup. Not to mention the fact that Antarctica in particular is very dry. A desert in fact. They don't get a huge amount of snow in a given year (although the high winds mean that you can get fairly large drifts blowing up against solid objects).
Most of the Australian bases are on the Antarctic coast however, which does mean they get a bit more snow than the interior. But that comes with the benefit of higher temperatures (-20 or -30 is pretty mild for Antartica... the bases on the high interior plateau (3000, even 4000 metres above sea level) are truly godforsaken locations. Thin air, endless gales, zero scenery other than endless flat white in all directions and temperatures in the -60s to -80s C (ambient... wind chills are in negative triple digit territory).
The relevant Australian law requires a depiction of a person that is, or appears to be, under 18. Maggie/Lisa/Bart satisfy this definition by any 'reasonable person's' standard (which is what the law looks at in interpreting this kind of stuff).
The real story here is NOT that the judge erred in his ruling. A judge can only work with the law as written, and as interpreted in the light of normal statutory interpretation rules and past judgements (precedent/stare decisis).
The story here is that the Australian definition of child porn was apparently written in such a way as to (unintentionally) include drawn/cartoon images. And yes, it should probably be amended (I'll leave that argument alone for now though). The point is though that the judge only has some leeway in interpretation. He can't go against clearly written and unambiguous language.
Here is the relevant Australian legal definition of child pornography:
(a) material that depicts a person, or a representation of a person, who is, or appears to be, under 18 years of age and who: (i) is engaged in, or appears to be engaged in, a sexual pose or sexual activity (whether or not in the presence of other persons); or (ii) is in the presence of a person who is engaged in, or appears to be engaged in, a sexual pose or sexual activity; and does this in a way that reasonable persons would regard as being, in all the circumstances, offensive; or
(b) material the dominant characteristic of which is the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of: (i) a sexual organ or the anal region of a person who is, or appears to be, under 18 years of age; or (ii) a representation of such a sexual organ or anal region; or (iii) the breasts, or a representation of the breasts, of a female person who is, or appears to be, under 18 years of age; in a way that reasonable persons would regard as being, in all the circumstances, offensive; or (c) ; or (d) .
Note that the key test under Australian law is whether or not a reasonable person would deem the material offensive, rather than merely consideration of the content itself. This test is almost certainly satisfied by most 'Simpsons porn' cartoon drawings. It requires only a representation of a person who 'appears to be' under 18 years of age. Certainly Bart, Lisa and Maggie satisfy this definition.
The equivalent US law requires that the subject of the images be "identifiable", which one might equate to "real". But there is no requirement for "identifiable" or "real" persons in the Australian law.
So basically the story here is that Australia has a section of law that could probably use an overhaul. I don't really feel that the judge did anything wrong here - he judged in accordance with the law (and given the defendant's past history of having REAL child porn images, I don't think he was hard done by).
For the 7385th time Slashdot, repeat after me: there is no censorship of the Internet in Australia.
A couple of senators have put forward a proposal for a filter, that is all. One much more basic than China's. But this filter does not actually exist and probably never will given its widespread unpopularity. In fact it's not even to the stage of being an actual Bill introduced into the House or Senate yet. It's just an idea at this stage. An issue of public debate.
Not to say we aren't worried about it or that the idea isn't reprehensible. But it doesn't actually ~exist~ at this point... which is probably why Sen. Clinton wouldn't really say anything.
There's a rather big difference between a random Senator saying "I would like to do X", and X actually happening.
Absolutely agree with your post but I wouldn' include the 'comfortably well off' component of that. Compared to developing nations? Absolutely. But not really among its peers (which seems to be where the 'trendy hate' mostly originates from). With the state of their economy at the moment and their unemployment rates/cost of health care/other issue, they aren't any more well off than any other OECD nation (and probably considerably worse-off than most in terms of median standard of living). The US has a large underclass and a vast amount of urban poverty compared to almost anywhere in Europe/Australia/NZ/Japan etc. The only reason they have such a high per capita GDP is the flip side of that huge gap between the rich and the poor - i.e. the rich. And the American rich are richer far, far beyond those in other developed countries (all countries have plenty of rich people, but the hyper rich, the billionaires, are still overwhelmingly American).
Culturally though you are absolutely correct - US music, movies, clothing etc. still dominates the world and has no real challenger on the horizon, for better or worse. And the US still contributes the bulk of advancement in the sciences and technology, thanks in part to its numerous excellent universities.
Correct. This doesn't change a thing for RMTers. All the court has said is that it is not illegal to do this. This doesn't affect the fact that most games' EULAs state that the currency is not to be bought or sold with/for real currency, and that you are liable to get your account banned for doing this. Nor does it affect the part that states that all in-game goods (including currency) remain property of the game publisher - you are just 'borrowing' them, and they are within their rights to take it back at any time.
Actually I'm not really sure this changes anything as I don't think the practice was illegal even before the court ruling. The court has just clarified the situation that has already existed for some time. Not illegal (but may still break the game's EULA/agreement).
For me, it's mostly a tradeoff between the value of the information and the extra work/performance overheads involved in using encryption.
I usually don't bother encrypting my email because it's mostly mundane stuff, and frankly there's more of a threat from the owner of the email server reading my stuff than there is from a MITM attack. Also, getting and using a cert is a bit of extra work.
But if I do need to send sensitive information via email, I will use encryption. Generally by putting that sensitive information in an attachment, and encrypting the attachment using AxCrypt or something similar (128 bit AES which is pretty decent for anything I'd be communicating).
I upload and download files from a web server regularly, that permits standard FTP connections as well as SFTP and SCP. But I generally just use FTP because a) the stuff is usually mundane; and b) FTP maxes out my connection, whereas SCP/SFTP to the same server seems to bottleneck at 60 kB/s upstream for some reason - seems like quite a large performance overhead!
Also I'd argue that there's no real need for the majority of HTTP traffic to be encrypted anyway. Certainly anything that's a 'two way' kind of site should use encryption (anything that allows users to post stuff, or allows/requires them to sign in) is probably wise to encrypt, but for standard 'read only' websites where anyone can just read stuff, why bother encrypting? Even Slashdot doesn't require HTTPS connections for anything other than the sign-in process - again because there's no point encrypting things that are not usernames/passwords/sensitive information.
HTTPS has a significant performance overhead too, which is worth keeping in mind.
This applies to email as well, in a way. For the average user that just wants to fire up their Thunderbird/Outlook Express/other mail client of choice, getting an cert (e.g. from Thawte) is just too difficult. It needs to be seamless and built-in before the masses will use it.
Just to clarify... the above does ~not~ mean that you have to physically assault someone before it becomes a crime, in Australia at least.
"that causes another to apprehend immediate and personal violence" does not require the violence to occur, just that the person honestly believes that violence is immediately about to be imposed on them. I.e. that they are fearful for their life or wellbeing.
So there are three situations here:
1. Mere threat without any real hint of physical action. This would be assault in the US, but not in AU/NZ, as correctly stated by the parent post.
2. Reasonable belief that you are about to have violence inflicted upon you in the immediate future (i.e. the next few seconds). This would be assault in AU/NZ (and the US one would assume).
3. Actual physical violence: this is in fact 'battery' in AU/NZ, although colloquially people call it an assault. But actually assault was the fear of the violence that occurred immediately before this... the physical act is a battery.
Japan: mostly wants Japanese content, which is mostly hosted domestically. Plus, large population in small area.
Australia: mostly wants English content, which is mostly hosted 15,000 km away in the US. Plus a small population in a huge area. Plus relatively fewer undersea cables AU-US cf. JP-US (due to aforementioned population).
US: has the same 'huge area' problem as Australia, but less of the 'small population' problem, and far less of the '90% of data comes from other side of Earth' problem.
Being an English speaking country a long way from all the other English speaking countries (with exception of NZ) has its downsides. We pull more of our internet traffic from the other side of the planet than any other country.
Things are improving though. The opening of PPC1 (new cable from east coast AU to Guam, where it can tap into Asia-US capacity) a few months ago has already seen the quota on my particular plan increase by ~50% in that time (for the same price).
They don't 'impose' ridiculous caps (that makes it sounds like there's no choice in the matter). You choose your plan with the ISP (i.e. you choose the cap - it's not like they've forced you to pick a particular plan).
e.g. My parents have what you and I would consider an 'insanely inadequate' 10 GB/month cap, for instance. But they've never even used half of it. All they do is check their mail and browse the web. And it costs them almost nothing, as a result. On the other hand I pay for a 60 GB cap at home because I find that is suitable for my needs (I tend to average 40-50 GB/month). Costs a bit more... an average amount you might say.
There are large cap plans too (200+ GB) and some providers offer true unlimited (although usually this is at ADSL1 speeds rather than ADSL2+). Obviously this costs more.
I'm not arguing that we don't have caps. We obviously do. But you choose a cap appropriate for your needs. Means that light users can get pretty cheap connections and heavy users pay a bit more. You can generally move between plans (with most ISPs) for no penalty if you find your needs change. So I don't think 'impose' is the right word:)
Either way... 40,000 years is a phenomenal amount of time. I mean, that's 10 time older than the pyramids.
History is a funny thing... here's an interesting thought experiment:
One of the key drivers for Britain settling Australia was the US War of Independence, 12 years earlier in 1776. The Brits lost their American colonies, which they used for several things, including the shipment of convicts (yes the US had them too... always remember that when making your 'haha Australians are convicts' jokes people!). James Cook having mapped the east coast of Australia around this time, it was decided that they needed a new penal colony and so New South Wales was born (which eventually became one of the modern-day Australian states... keep in mind some Australian colonies/states were never penal settlements, e.g. WA and SA).
But what if that hadn't happened? What if the US War of Independence never happened, or happened substantially later. The Dutch had mapped the area around Australia reasonably well too by that time, but showed little interest in it since it was so barren and useless;) When would Australia have eventually been 'settled' by non-indigenous people, and who would it be? It could well have actually been the Indonesians. Maybe even the Japanese. How different this part of the world might have been had an Asian power settled Australia?
And would the Aborigines have fared better or worse under such a scenario?
Well 'rent' means just 'rent' in my post above. Utilities are on top of that: power, water and natural gas.
In America (my wife's old place), I think 'heat' was included, but nothing else (that's still funny to me that 'heat' is considered a separate thing than the power/gas that produces the heat).
Well Canberra is the second most expensive rental market in the country (and is where I live), but it's worse in Sydney and not much better in Melbourne or Brisbane. Once you start talking Adelaide, Hobart, Perth etc. yeah it's not too bad. I suppose. But really, 2/3rds of the population live in the 'expensive' cities, so it's a big problem:(
Noone wants to live 50 km from the city centre - you'd spend more on fuel getting to work each day than you were saving on rent. I guess the fact that fuel is a good 30-40% cheaper in the US than in Australia helps to promote people living 'further out'.
quite frankly the state of mobile phones is much better in areas that enforce standards.
I'll say.
I remember the first time I travelled to the US (which was in 2001). As a business traveller I had been all over the place - SE Asia, most of Europe, Australia and NZ etc. And my standard, average (at the time) 2.5G GSM phone just worked in all those places. The plane landed, I turned it on, and within 1-2 minutes it had connected, usually followed by a "welcome to $country!" text message shortly thereafter.
Then I went to the US and there was no coverage at all. Of course back then, there was NO GSM network at all in the US. I was there 2 months with no functioning phone! Yes, I should have researched it before I went there, but seriously, it worked everywhere else, (even in third-world countries).
Things are a bit better now... AT&T and T-mobile at least use 3G/HSDPA/GSM, but the coverage of the 'old style' American networks (CDMA/TDMA/analogue) still seems to be better once you get away from the east and west coasts.
Japan used to be a bit of an outlier too back in the day (although at least it still provided a GSM network for visitors in the major cities), but these days is pretty standard. Most of the world has settled on HSDPA/3G.
Forcing someone to comply with a standard is socialism.
WTF? I think that the above electrical socket analogy is a decent one. Even in the US you have a standard electrical socket. Not to mention a standard mains voltage. And even the US has laws enforcing that (requiring builders to use that kind of socket, and power companies to supply that voltage of power). That is just common sense, not socialism. I think you keep using this word without knowing what it actually means.
Oh and incidentally, it's not "every website", but US laws already require all government and corporate websites (and most commercially available software) to confirm to certain accessibility standards. In fact these standards are known as being some of the strictest in the world. Companies can face stiff fines if they attempt to sell stuff in the US without conforming to these.
There are heaps of standards that the US follows. At the moment, cell phones are not one of them. There is nothing inherently more socialist about enforcing a standard for cell phones, as there is for enforcing a standard type of electrical socket, a standard efficiency rating for appliances, standard nation-wide road rules... etc etc.
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Er I'm assuming this is a troll, but just in case anyone else doesn't realise, Australia has a reasonable number of ethnically east Asian people. As in >10% of the population (and closer to >20% in some urban areas).
Australia isn't technically in Asia, but its geographic proximity definitely affects the makeup of the population. Far more Asians per capita here than in the US, for instance.
Oops, I meant "as an Australian, I always think of the US...". /. really needs an edit function.
You're right, although as an Australia always think of the US as being only a 'moderate' distance away. Takes me 13-14 hours on a plane to get to LA or San Fran from here. It's almost double that (~23 hours) to get to UK/France etc though. So it seems weird to think of Australia as being 'super far' from the US.
I fly to the US very regularly from my home country (Australia). The rule is that you can bring up to 1L total, but are limited to 100 mL for each ~individual item~.
So I can bring 10 separate 100 mL bottles of shampoo on, but I can't bring that same amount of shampoo on in a single 1L bottle. Basically, each item has to be = 100 mL, and all the items have to fit in a single 1L ziplock sandwich bag.
In the US they refer to it as the 3-1-1 rule, which is a wonderfully confusing mix of metric and imperial units (lol): 3 fl oz. max per item, 1 L bag total, 1 bag per passenger.
Nothing says the person has to be a ~real~ or identifiable person. Just a representation of something that looks like a human being. I'm pretty sure that's what it means. Otherwise you could just generate 'fake' faces on images and say "but it's not a person, your honour ... it's just an idea, this 'person' doesn't exist, they can't vote etc.".
Are you sure about that? He may have discussed details about the release/cracking techniques on social networking sites with other people. That is evidence relevant to the case and would be discoverable under US evidence laws just as in Australia.
If he had committed an armed robbery at the local gas station, sure the social networking passwords would be irrelevant. But this is an offence that was clearly connected to the online world and where those sites may contain useful evidence.
Not in this case. Australia was due to get the game on Nov 12th, the first in the (English speaking) world to get it, in fact. Before even the US (Nov 15th).
It's true - region locking isn't permitted here. The most obvious manifestation of this is the fact that any DVD player you buy in Australia can play any region disc with no issues. Really pissed me off when I moved to the US for a few years and found I couldn't play any of my DVDs with a US DVD player except for the couple I had that were region 1 (I have an assortment of region 1, 2 and 4 DVDs, depending on which ones I could find cheapest on Ebay usually).
Secondly we don't exactly have "laws against violent videogames". We just don't have a classification above MA15+ for video games, so they get refused classification. Without a valid classification, they aren't allowed to be sold on retail shelves. So the effect is sorta the same, but there's a big difference between a law actively against something or banning something, and there just not being an appropriate legal category in which to place certain games. That's why this doesn't really conflict with the 'no region locking' laws ... I have plenty of RC (refused classification) games in Australia - I just bought them overseas or online (i.e. from a different region).
Slashdot tends to indulge in quite a bit of hyperbole when reporting situations in other countries than the US, particularly surrounding censorship issues - always keep that in mind.
Yup. Not to mention the fact that Antarctica in particular is very dry. A desert in fact. They don't get a huge amount of snow in a given year (although the high winds mean that you can get fairly large drifts blowing up against solid objects).
Most of the Australian bases are on the Antarctic coast however, which does mean they get a bit more snow than the interior. But that comes with the benefit of higher temperatures (-20 or -30 is pretty mild for Antartica ... the bases on the high interior plateau (3000, even 4000 metres above sea level) are truly godforsaken locations. Thin air, endless gales, zero scenery other than endless flat white in all directions and temperatures in the -60s to -80s C (ambient ... wind chills are in negative triple digit territory).
The relevant Australian law requires a depiction of a person that is, or appears to be, under 18. Maggie/Lisa/Bart satisfy this definition by any 'reasonable person's' standard (which is what the law looks at in interpreting this kind of stuff).
Mod parent up.
The real story here is NOT that the judge erred in his ruling. A judge can only work with the law as written, and as interpreted in the light of normal statutory interpretation rules and past judgements (precedent/stare decisis).
The story here is that the Australian definition of child porn was apparently written in such a way as to (unintentionally) include drawn/cartoon images. And yes, it should probably be amended (I'll leave that argument alone for now though). The point is though that the judge only has some leeway in interpretation. He can't go against clearly written and unambiguous language.
Here is the relevant Australian legal definition of child pornography:
CRIMINAL CODE ACT 1995 (Cth)
SECT 473.1 Definitions
"child pornography material "means:
(a) material that depicts a person, or a representation of a person, who is, or appears to be, under 18 years of age and who:
(i) is engaged in, or appears to be engaged in, a sexual pose or sexual activity (whether or not in the presence of other persons); or
(ii) is in the presence of a person who is engaged in, or appears to be engaged in, a sexual pose or sexual activity;
and does this in a way that reasonable persons would regard as being, in all the circumstances, offensive; or
(b) material the dominant characteristic of which is the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of:
(i) a sexual organ or the anal region of a person who is, or appears to be, under 18 years of age; or
(ii) a representation of such a sexual organ or anal region; or
(iii) the breasts, or a representation of the breasts, of a female person who is, or appears to be, under 18 years of age;
in a way that reasonable persons would regard as being, in all the circumstances, offensive; or
(c) ; or
(d) .
Note that the key test under Australian law is whether or not a reasonable person would deem the material offensive, rather than merely consideration of the content itself. This test is almost certainly satisfied by most 'Simpsons porn' cartoon drawings. It requires only a representation of a person who 'appears to be' under 18 years of age. Certainly Bart, Lisa and Maggie satisfy this definition.
The equivalent US law requires that the subject of the images be "identifiable", which one might equate to "real". But there is no requirement for "identifiable" or "real" persons in the Australian law.
So basically the story here is that Australia has a section of law that could probably use an overhaul. I don't really feel that the judge did anything wrong here - he judged in accordance with the law (and given the defendant's past history of having REAL child porn images, I don't think he was hard done by).
Sigh.
For the 7385th time Slashdot, repeat after me: there is no censorship of the Internet in Australia.
A couple of senators have put forward a proposal for a filter, that is all. One much more basic than China's. But this filter does not actually exist and probably never will given its widespread unpopularity. In fact it's not even to the stage of being an actual Bill introduced into the House or Senate yet. It's just an idea at this stage. An issue of public debate.
Not to say we aren't worried about it or that the idea isn't reprehensible. But it doesn't actually ~exist~ at this point ... which is probably why Sen. Clinton wouldn't really say anything.
There's a rather big difference between a random Senator saying "I would like to do X", and X actually happening.
Absolutely agree with your post but I wouldn' include the 'comfortably well off' component of that. Compared to developing nations? Absolutely. But not really among its peers (which seems to be where the 'trendy hate' mostly originates from). With the state of their economy at the moment and their unemployment rates/cost of health care/other issue, they aren't any more well off than any other OECD nation (and probably considerably worse-off than most in terms of median standard of living). The US has a large underclass and a vast amount of urban poverty compared to almost anywhere in Europe/Australia/NZ/Japan etc. The only reason they have such a high per capita GDP is the flip side of that huge gap between the rich and the poor - i.e. the rich. And the American rich are richer far, far beyond those in other developed countries (all countries have plenty of rich people, but the hyper rich, the billionaires, are still overwhelmingly American).
Culturally though you are absolutely correct - US music, movies, clothing etc. still dominates the world and has no real challenger on the horizon, for better or worse. And the US still contributes the bulk of advancement in the sciences and technology, thanks in part to its numerous excellent universities.
Correct. This doesn't change a thing for RMTers. All the court has said is that it is not illegal to do this. This doesn't affect the fact that most games' EULAs state that the currency is not to be bought or sold with/for real currency, and that you are liable to get your account banned for doing this. Nor does it affect the part that states that all in-game goods (including currency) remain property of the game publisher - you are just 'borrowing' them, and they are within their rights to take it back at any time.
Actually I'm not really sure this changes anything as I don't think the practice was illegal even before the court ruling. The court has just clarified the situation that has already existed for some time. Not illegal (but may still break the game's EULA/agreement).
For me, it's mostly a tradeoff between the value of the information and the extra work/performance overheads involved in using encryption.
I usually don't bother encrypting my email because it's mostly mundane stuff, and frankly there's more of a threat from the owner of the email server reading my stuff than there is from a MITM attack. Also, getting and using a cert is a bit of extra work.
But if I do need to send sensitive information via email, I will use encryption. Generally by putting that sensitive information in an attachment, and encrypting the attachment using AxCrypt or something similar (128 bit AES which is pretty decent for anything I'd be communicating).
I upload and download files from a web server regularly, that permits standard FTP connections as well as SFTP and SCP. But I generally just use FTP because a) the stuff is usually mundane; and b) FTP maxes out my connection, whereas SCP/SFTP to the same server seems to bottleneck at 60 kB/s upstream for some reason - seems like quite a large performance overhead!
Agreed.
Also I'd argue that there's no real need for the majority of HTTP traffic to be encrypted anyway. Certainly anything that's a 'two way' kind of site should use encryption (anything that allows users to post stuff, or allows/requires them to sign in) is probably wise to encrypt, but for standard 'read only' websites where anyone can just read stuff, why bother encrypting? Even Slashdot doesn't require HTTPS connections for anything other than the sign-in process - again because there's no point encrypting things that are not usernames/passwords/sensitive information.
HTTPS has a significant performance overhead too, which is worth keeping in mind.
This applies to email as well, in a way. For the average user that just wants to fire up their Thunderbird/Outlook Express/other mail client of choice, getting an cert (e.g. from Thawte) is just too difficult. It needs to be seamless and built-in before the masses will use it.
Just to clarify ... the above does ~not~ mean that you have to physically assault someone before it becomes a crime, in Australia at least.
"that causes another to apprehend immediate and personal violence" does not require the violence to occur, just that the person honestly believes that violence is immediately about to be imposed on them. I.e. that they are fearful for their life or wellbeing.
So there are three situations here:
1. Mere threat without any real hint of physical action. This would be assault in the US, but not in AU/NZ, as correctly stated by the parent post.
2. Reasonable belief that you are about to have violence inflicted upon you in the immediate future (i.e. the next few seconds). This would be assault in AU/NZ (and the US one would assume).
3. Actual physical violence: this is in fact 'battery' in AU/NZ, although colloquially people call it an assault. But actually assault was the fear of the violence that occurred immediately before this ... the physical act is a battery.
Japan: mostly wants Japanese content, which is mostly hosted domestically. Plus, large population in small area.
Australia: mostly wants English content, which is mostly hosted 15,000 km away in the US. Plus a small population in a huge area. Plus relatively fewer undersea cables AU-US cf. JP-US (due to aforementioned population).
US: has the same 'huge area' problem as Australia, but less of the 'small population' problem, and far less of the '90% of data comes from other side of Earth' problem.
Being an English speaking country a long way from all the other English speaking countries (with exception of NZ) has its downsides. We pull more of our internet traffic from the other side of the planet than any other country.
Things are improving though. The opening of PPC1 (new cable from east coast AU to Guam, where it can tap into Asia-US capacity) a few months ago has already seen the quota on my particular plan increase by ~50% in that time (for the same price).
They don't 'impose' ridiculous caps (that makes it sounds like there's no choice in the matter). You choose your plan with the ISP (i.e. you choose the cap - it's not like they've forced you to pick a particular plan).
e.g. My parents have what you and I would consider an 'insanely inadequate' 10 GB/month cap, for instance. But they've never even used half of it. All they do is check their mail and browse the web. And it costs them almost nothing, as a result. On the other hand I pay for a 60 GB cap at home because I find that is suitable for my needs (I tend to average 40-50 GB/month). Costs a bit more ... an average amount you might say.
There are large cap plans too (200+ GB) and some providers offer true unlimited (although usually this is at ADSL1 speeds rather than ADSL2+). Obviously this costs more.
I'm not arguing that we don't have caps. We obviously do. But you choose a cap appropriate for your needs. Means that light users can get pretty cheap connections and heavy users pay a bit more. You can generally move between plans (with most ISPs) for no penalty if you find your needs change. So I don't think 'impose' is the right word :)
Yeah you're right. - my bad I know SA was freely settled and I'm sure there was one other that wasn't a penal colony too. Qld or Vic maybe?
Either way ... 40,000 years is a phenomenal amount of time. I mean, that's 10 time older than the pyramids.
History is a funny thing ... here's an interesting thought experiment:
One of the key drivers for Britain settling Australia was the US War of Independence, 12 years earlier in 1776. The Brits lost their American colonies, which they used for several things, including the shipment of convicts (yes the US had them too ... always remember that when making your 'haha Australians are convicts' jokes people!). James Cook having mapped the east coast of Australia around this time, it was decided that they needed a new penal colony and so New South Wales was born (which eventually became one of the modern-day Australian states ... keep in mind some Australian colonies/states were never penal settlements, e.g. WA and SA).
But what if that hadn't happened? What if the US War of Independence never happened, or happened substantially later. The Dutch had mapped the area around Australia reasonably well too by that time, but showed little interest in it since it was so barren and useless ;) When would Australia have eventually been 'settled' by non-indigenous people, and who would it be? It could well have actually been the Indonesians. Maybe even the Japanese. How different this part of the world might have been had an Asian power settled Australia?
And would the Aborigines have fared better or worse under such a scenario?
Well 'rent' means just 'rent' in my post above. Utilities are on top of that: power, water and natural gas.
In America (my wife's old place), I think 'heat' was included, but nothing else (that's still funny to me that 'heat' is considered a separate thing than the power/gas that produces the heat).
Well Canberra is the second most expensive rental market in the country (and is where I live), but it's worse in Sydney and not much better in Melbourne or Brisbane. Once you start talking Adelaide, Hobart, Perth etc. yeah it's not too bad. I suppose. But really, 2/3rds of the population live in the 'expensive' cities, so it's a big problem :(
Noone wants to live 50 km from the city centre - you'd spend more on fuel getting to work each day than you were saving on rent. I guess the fact that fuel is a good 30-40% cheaper in the US than in Australia helps to promote people living 'further out'.
quite frankly the state of mobile phones is much better in areas that enforce standards.
I'll say.
I remember the first time I travelled to the US (which was in 2001). As a business traveller I had been all over the place - SE Asia, most of Europe, Australia and NZ etc. And my standard, average (at the time) 2.5G GSM phone just worked in all those places. The plane landed, I turned it on, and within 1-2 minutes it had connected, usually followed by a "welcome to $country!" text message shortly thereafter.
Then I went to the US and there was no coverage at all. Of course back then, there was NO GSM network at all in the US. I was there 2 months with no functioning phone! Yes, I should have researched it before I went there, but seriously, it worked everywhere else, (even in third-world countries).
Things are a bit better now ... AT&T and T-mobile at least use 3G/HSDPA/GSM, but the coverage of the 'old style' American networks (CDMA/TDMA/analogue) still seems to be better once you get away from the east and west coasts.
Japan used to be a bit of an outlier too back in the day (although at least it still provided a GSM network for visitors in the major cities), but these days is pretty standard. Most of the world has settled on HSDPA/3G.
Forcing someone to comply with a standard is socialism.
WTF? I think that the above electrical socket analogy is a decent one. Even in the US you have a standard electrical socket. Not to mention a standard mains voltage. And even the US has laws enforcing that (requiring builders to use that kind of socket, and power companies to supply that voltage of power). That is just common sense, not socialism. I think you keep using this word without knowing what it actually means.
Oh and incidentally, it's not "every website", but US laws already require all government and corporate websites (and most commercially available software) to confirm to certain accessibility standards. In fact these standards are known as being some of the strictest in the world. Companies can face stiff fines if they attempt to sell stuff in the US without conforming to these.
There are heaps of standards that the US follows. At the moment, cell phones are not one of them. There is nothing inherently more socialist about enforcing a standard for cell phones, as there is for enforcing a standard type of electrical socket, a standard efficiency rating for appliances, standard nation-wide road rules ... etc etc.