The first time I tried linux, I already knew about man (from Slashdot posts, no less).
Well man just confused me more than anything else. Unreadable and full of jargon. Linux, I feel, does need some form of guide for newbies. I'm not afraid of the command line, but just listing out a whole bunch of switches with some description of what they do that itself doesn't actually mean anything to me, isn't enough.
Google reveals a lot of very helpful and well-written newbie guides though. Perhaps the best of those should be adapted and built-in to the documentation shipping with new distros?
Yep - we did this (at the backbone level only) in Australia close to a decade ago now. The Australian phone network is now 100% IP based, with the last mile being the same old POTS as always. As you said - nothing changes from a customer perspective at all. It just makes network maintenance simpler and more flexible from the telephone companies' perspective.
However is that actually what TFA is talking about here? The US proposal seems to be a bit more advanced than this, and includes some form of delivery over IP right to the actual users' homes?
Hehe that's always one thing that's mystified me about the US, and something I didn't actually realise until quite a few months of living there. That you purchase a long distance service separately from a local phone service.
A totally alien concept to most of the world where if you buy a phone service from a company, you can pick up the receiver and dial any other phone on Earth.
It initially confused the hell out of me when I visited a friend's place and he couldn't call someone who lived 50 miles away because "he didn't have long distance". I couldn't imagine only being able to call people locally... surely almost everyone has relatives/friends that live in a different area? (Also 'local' in the US seems to be a much smaller area than in my home country!)
But yeah - a shift to VoIP for the entire phone network should render such distinctions obsolete (although as you say, I'm sure the telcos will still try to figure out a way to charge you for it!)
It can also be run on copper without POTS (sometimes called "naked DSL"), but the Bells don't like that because it means letting people drop their landlines.
You're right, and it's a terrible shame... I went 'naked' a year ago and I love it (I live in Australia, telco regulations here have forced our equivalent of the US 'bells' to allow competitors to offer ULL, i.e. naked-DSL, links). Beats paying line rental on a phone line I made about 2 call on per year, and my ISP offers a high quality VoIP product for cheap calls worldwide. Love it:)
Regarding the "dialup is portable" theory... you're right, but I find that these days 3G/HDSPA has pretty much replaced dialup for the "portable connection while travelling" market. They sell those 3G USB dongles and pre-paid access at pretty competitive prices now, and coverage is good (at least where I live - most places big enough to have a hotel, will have 3G coverage, and the dongles can roll back to 2.5G EDGE if required). Speeds are better than dialup (even on EDGE) and although data quotas are limited, for checking email and web browsing, they are adequate.
Mind you, dialup can reach deep into buildings etc. where wireless can falter, so it's not a perfect solution. But I think that as mobile networks improve, dialup will really go the way of the dodo for portable connectivity.
I strongly suspect that you will still be able to called emergency services on these blocked phones. Calling 112 from a GSM phone anywhere on earth will connect you to the local emergency number. Even if the phone is PIN-locked. Even if the phone ~~doesn't even have a SIM card in it~~!
Ditto here in Australia. There's a very good reason why your phone company knows your IMEI. If your phone gets stolen, call em up and tell them. Within 24h, that phone is unusable on ANY network in Australia, and you avoid the thieves racking up an enormous bill on your stolen phone.
This obviously makes stealing phones considerably less attractive, since the potential thief knows that the phone they have stolen will very quickly only be usable overseas.
Ah yes, the old "you are free to move to a different country argument".
That hasn't been true since pre-WW1 and the invention of passports. These days we have things like "visas" and "immigration laws". And with very few exceptions, most countries do not just let anyone come in and permanently resettle without a valid reason (family, job, immigration quota-filling etc.)
You seem to have missed the point that... I wasn't making a point against the OP. I was merely saying "they are actually banned already" in some places as a response to the OP's "I hope they don't ban them".
That is, I wasn't arguing against the OP, just adding to it with some information as an aside. The OP's points are of course still completely valid.
Incandescents are already 'banned' in many areas of the world (including where I live). That is to say, stores aren't allowed to sell new ones anymore (existing ones that are still going are OK obviously). The exception to this is weird form-factor lights that they don't mass-produce CFLs for (e.g. those little ones you put into bedside tables). But for standard overhead light fittings, incandescents have already gone the way of the dodo here.
Even factoring in the impact of recycling, their total lifecycle environmental impact is considerably less than incandescents. Many vendors that sell CFLs (e.g. hardware stores) also accept back dead ones. And if not, I just pop the dead ones in a box in the back of the car and take them to the dump next time I'm in that area anyway, so the 'extra' travel is minimal. For me at least, it's worth it. My electricity bills are at least $100/year less after moving to CFLs, and they produce less waste heat (which matters to me as I don't have AC!)
LEDs will be better though of course. They should be trashable just like incandescents were, while retaining the energy savings of CFLs.
Yeah it seems like CFLs are a great example of YMMV.
I simultaneously replaced all lights in my home with CFLs three years ago. Good quality ones with a nice spectrum similar to old style incandescents (to my eye, at least).
Since then how many have failed? Only one.
I must say I'm quite impressed. Even the outdoor ones haven't died yet (exposed to a typical yearly temperature range of almost 50C). I wouldn't ever go back to incandescents... and frankly LEDs look even better (less waste heat, potentially better spectrum and range of colours).
I fully agree. The rise of surveillance of telecommunications (of whatever method) in the West is getting a bit alarming. Ubiquitous encryption will become the standard I feel. We are moving towards a word where all new software, systems and protocols that get developed, will include encryption to a greater or lesser extent.
It started with the widespread logging and monitoring of all phone calls entering and leaving the US after 9/11 (this really irritates me as a non-American - that my calls TO America are getting logged and possibly intercepted). Since then though I feel that it is the UK that is becoming the worst offender. AU and NZ are still pretty much surveillance-free... although that's mostly a product of them being isolated and not having suffered a direct attack, rather than them having stricter protections against this kind of thing. I'm sure if there were an attack or threat there, there would be impetus to implement similar systems to the US/UK.
So yeah, I would urge everyone to use encryption in their daily lives as much as they can. Of course, most of us have nothing to hide in this respect, but it's really the ~principle~ of the thing that is at stake here, rather than an actual need to encrypt. If we make it technically or financially unfeasible to monitor communications en masse, then Governments will be more reluctant to do it, and will return to concentrating on tapping into only particular, suspected communications, by way of a proper warrant. Like they ~should~ be doing.
Yeah because a couple of moronic ideas from a few extremists makes something wrong with an entire country? I'm sure no moronic ideas have ever come out of anyone in the American government either....
It really pisses me off to see how Australia gets unfairly dragged through the mud on Slashdot. Slashdot seems to have a knack for dragging up the absolutely most OBSCURE stories that I don't even hear about on any other Australian or international news service (and I consume a LOT of news sites), beating them up or misrepresenting the facts somehow, and turning it into "OMG crazy idea from Australia" stories.
A few of the categories of Slashdot stories about Australia that piss me off:
- Taking a mere PROPOSAL (sometimes not even a formal, written proposal) from some obscure quarters of government (sometimes even State or local government), and talking about it as if it's actually law that's been passed. The Internet censorship scheme springs to mind here. It was a proposal that Blind Freddy could clearly see was never going to pass Parliament and was wildly unpopular with about 90% of the population! But to this day, Americans on Slashdot seem to think we have a bloody censorship regime in place on our net connections. They don't.
- Reporting on a view put forward by one or two politicians or politicians in a minor party, and stating that as being what 'the Australian Government' wants to do. Or even worse, what 'Australia' wants to do as a whole.
- Taking a random obscure piece of news that clearly would never even make the light of day, and promoting it to headline status.
Look, like anywhere, I'm sure there's a fair share of morons around in AU. But frankly, there's there's nothing "very wrong" down there. Fundamentally they are doing better than most by almost every measure you can think of (quality of life, unemployment, economic freedom and prosperity, life expectancy, low crime rates). Plus their food isn't riddled with HFCS (banned), and they get a guaranteed-by-law minimum of 4-6 weeks of annual leave a year, free/very cheap healthcare, and a governmental system that still works pretty well (minor parties still count for something, unlike the US). Admittedly on most of these measures AU gets beaten by Norway, Sweden and a couple of other places, but of the English speaking Western democracies (US, UK, NZ, SA, AU), I know where I'd like to be right now (if for no other reason that the Australian economy is still booming and they were the only OECD country not to go into recession due to the downturn).
PS. I'm an Australian currently living in America (long term - my wife is American). So yeah, I'm biased. But you really do get a bizarre impression of Australia if all you read is Slashdot, so I had to say something!
Australia. The only OECD country that DIDN'T go into recession due to the economic meltdown... the so called miracle economy of the last 10-15 years. Mostly due to the Australian banking/financial sector having far greater regulation than the US (and hence there being nowhere near as many bad loans and general funny money in the financial system).
AU should meet most Americans' criteria for being a welfare state - considerably higher taxes than the US but also considerably more services that are Government-provided as opposed to private. (If you consider Canada a welfare state than you'd have to consider Australia one, they are pretty similar).
As an aside, the US is one of only a very small handful of countries in the world that tax on ~citizenship~ rather than residence. I'm Australian and my wife is American. We both live in Australia permanently. She is a dual-citizen (US and AU).
However, she still has to do yearly US tax returns! What's worse, if she earns more than a particular amount in a year, she has to pay US Federal income tax on her Australian income! (So on a portion of her income, she is getting double taxed by two countries). Ridiculous!
If we moved over to the US, the same would NOT apply in reverse. I would keep my Australian citizenship, but Australia doesn't collect any tax whatsoever from people not physically located in Australia (non-residents). 98% of countries are the same... the US is really the odd one out here.
HS in my area is producing graduates that can't even figure out the amount of sales tax. Useless. I also don't have any kids, so I don't see why I should have to pay.
Yes but surely YOU were educated in a school as a child - which derived at least some of its funding from taxes.
A couple of years ago, President Bush visited Australia. Audiences with him were hand-picked as well. And that's a meeting between two societies that are both English-speaking, Western liberal democracies, who are each others closest military and cultural allies.
Attendees to any forum with a world leader will be hand-picked, regardless of the country you are talking about.
Yeah same with the ABC in Australia. Accusations of bias occasionally get flung its way (let's face it, it's an easy target being government-funded), but any empirical study will show it's easily the most balanced and fair of all the TV/radio networks. Indeed, most accusations are usually of the "you are too biased AGAINST the current government, rather than for it" nature.
The Australian ABC/British BBC/Canadian CBC really do a top notch job of providing free, quality programming and journalism. It's a real shame the US doesn't have an equivalent (and no PBS do not count... having seen their stations in a number of US markets, they are nowhere near as good).
NPR/PBS, reliant as they are mostly on voluntary public donations, is a mere shadow of the legislatively-created and taxpayer funded BBC in the UK (or the Australian equivalent, ABC, for that matter). A poor cousin at best. You can't compare them like that, it's chalk and cheese quality-wise.
Not many people see PBS as a high quality or popular channel in the US. But, in Australia the ABC is one of the most-watched and best-quality networks (and has multiple channels in most areas). Ditto with the UK and the BBC.
I have to admit, the first time I visited the US I was shocked. Your night sky in the cities is like a milky hazy grey colour. Not black. Not dark. Can only see the brightest stars.
From the middle of my hometown (Canberra, Australia, population 340,000), you can EASILY see the Milky Way with the naked eye at night. Yet even in towns a quarter the size of that in the US, you can't see Jack. (To be specific, I remember that in Green Bay, WI, population 98,000, I could see only like 10 stars at night!). This applies even in large, sprawling metro areas. I can see much more at nighttime in Sydney (population >5 million and an urban area 60+ miles in diameter) than I can in a similar sized American city.
I am not sure why that is exactly. I think it's mostly due to the far greater wastage of lighting/energy in the US. I did notice that Americans tend to light things up at night a lot more than we do. So for instance, huge empty parking lots would be *brightly* floodlit all night in the US, whereas in Australia they'd use fewer lights (so you would get a dim area of light every 30 yards or whatever, with mostly-darkness inbetween, cf. the US where the entire surface is completely drenched in light). We also tend to turn off outdoor lights in unused areas after a particular time. Plus our streetlights almost always are designed to shine only down and have a 'hat' on top of them to avoid scattering light up into the air.
Never have I seen so much uglification of the countryside caused by roadside advertising, as I have in the United States (the midwest seems particularly bad). And I've pulled long, long highway hours in many countries: Australia, UK, Japan, various other EU countries, New Zealand).
In most countries you might see one advertisement on the edge of a town or something. Maybe. If you're lucky. But US highways seem to basically be a shopping catalogue! Billboards every quarter mile and quite a few of them are electronic (e.g. scrolling things like "OMG 12-packs of Coke only $5.99" or whatever.
America is blessed with astonishing natural beauty and a wider variety of landscapes than most other countries. But you ruin it with those damn billboards.
And don't even get me started on those temperature displays that every shop seems to have. Sure it's nice to know the temperature but I don't need 10 of them on one street (all reading different temperatures, of course).
Aaaaannndd I managed to reply to completely the wrong post somehow. This should be shoved a few posts further up under the guy that was talking about cup holders (wow, what a surprise!)
I had never seen a cup holder in a car before I visited the United States. I'm not kidding. It never even occurred to me that someone would want such a thing. But in America, even cheap cars had them. Here, almost no cars have them.
This might have something to do with the fact that eating or drinking while driving is, in fact, illegal for the same reasons as using your phone/texting is illegal while driving. Basically there's a blanket law that says "you must not be participating in a distracting activity while driving".
Slashdot Mirror
The first time I tried linux, I already knew about man (from Slashdot posts, no less).
Well man just confused me more than anything else. Unreadable and full of jargon. Linux, I feel, does need some form of guide for newbies. I'm not afraid of the command line, but just listing out a whole bunch of switches with some description of what they do that itself doesn't actually mean anything to me, isn't enough.
Google reveals a lot of very helpful and well-written newbie guides though. Perhaps the best of those should be adapted and built-in to the documentation shipping with new distros?
Yep - we did this (at the backbone level only) in Australia close to a decade ago now. The Australian phone network is now 100% IP based, with the last mile being the same old POTS as always. As you said - nothing changes from a customer perspective at all. It just makes network maintenance simpler and more flexible from the telephone companies' perspective.
However is that actually what TFA is talking about here? The US proposal seems to be a bit more advanced than this, and includes some form of delivery over IP right to the actual users' homes?
Hehe that's always one thing that's mystified me about the US, and something I didn't actually realise until quite a few months of living there. That you purchase a long distance service separately from a local phone service.
A totally alien concept to most of the world where if you buy a phone service from a company, you can pick up the receiver and dial any other phone on Earth.
It initially confused the hell out of me when I visited a friend's place and he couldn't call someone who lived 50 miles away because "he didn't have long distance". I couldn't imagine only being able to call people locally ... surely almost everyone has relatives/friends that live in a different area? (Also 'local' in the US seems to be a much smaller area than in my home country!)
But yeah - a shift to VoIP for the entire phone network should render such distinctions obsolete (although as you say, I'm sure the telcos will still try to figure out a way to charge you for it!)
It can also be run on copper without POTS (sometimes called "naked DSL"), but the Bells don't like that because it means letting people drop their landlines.
You're right, and it's a terrible shame ... I went 'naked' a year ago and I love it (I live in Australia, telco regulations here have forced our equivalent of the US 'bells' to allow competitors to offer ULL, i.e. naked-DSL, links). Beats paying line rental on a phone line I made about 2 call on per year, and my ISP offers a high quality VoIP product for cheap calls worldwide. Love it :)
Some very good arguments.
Regarding the "dialup is portable" theory ... you're right, but I find that these days 3G/HDSPA has pretty much replaced dialup for the "portable connection while travelling" market. They sell those 3G USB dongles and pre-paid access at pretty competitive prices now, and coverage is good (at least where I live - most places big enough to have a hotel, will have 3G coverage, and the dongles can roll back to 2.5G EDGE if required). Speeds are better than dialup (even on EDGE) and although data quotas are limited, for checking email and web browsing, they are adequate.
Mind you, dialup can reach deep into buildings etc. where wireless can falter, so it's not a perfect solution. But I think that as mobile networks improve, dialup will really go the way of the dodo for portable connectivity.
I strongly suspect that you will still be able to called emergency services on these blocked phones. Calling 112 from a GSM phone anywhere on earth will connect you to the local emergency number. Even if the phone is PIN-locked. Even if the phone ~~doesn't even have a SIM card in it~~!
Ditto here in Australia. There's a very good reason why your phone company knows your IMEI. If your phone gets stolen, call em up and tell them. Within 24h, that phone is unusable on ANY network in Australia, and you avoid the thieves racking up an enormous bill on your stolen phone.
This obviously makes stealing phones considerably less attractive, since the potential thief knows that the phone they have stolen will very quickly only be usable overseas.
Ah yes, the old "you are free to move to a different country argument".
That hasn't been true since pre-WW1 and the invention of passports. These days we have things like "visas" and "immigration laws". And with very few exceptions, most countries do not just let anyone come in and permanently resettle without a valid reason (family, job, immigration quota-filling etc.)
You seem to have missed the point that ... I wasn't making a point against the OP. I was merely saying "they are actually banned already" in some places as a response to the OP's "I hope they don't ban them".
That is, I wasn't arguing against the OP, just adding to it with some information as an aside. The OP's points are of course still completely valid.
Incandescents are already 'banned' in many areas of the world (including where I live). That is to say, stores aren't allowed to sell new ones anymore (existing ones that are still going are OK obviously). The exception to this is weird form-factor lights that they don't mass-produce CFLs for (e.g. those little ones you put into bedside tables). But for standard overhead light fittings, incandescents have already gone the way of the dodo here.
Even factoring in the impact of recycling, their total lifecycle environmental impact is considerably less than incandescents. Many vendors that sell CFLs (e.g. hardware stores) also accept back dead ones. And if not, I just pop the dead ones in a box in the back of the car and take them to the dump next time I'm in that area anyway, so the 'extra' travel is minimal. For me at least, it's worth it. My electricity bills are at least $100/year less after moving to CFLs, and they produce less waste heat (which matters to me as I don't have AC!)
LEDs will be better though of course. They should be trashable just like incandescents were, while retaining the energy savings of CFLs.
Yeah it seems like CFLs are a great example of YMMV.
I simultaneously replaced all lights in my home with CFLs three years ago. Good quality ones with a nice spectrum similar to old style incandescents (to my eye, at least).
Since then how many have failed? Only one.
I must say I'm quite impressed. Even the outdoor ones haven't died yet (exposed to a typical yearly temperature range of almost 50C). I wouldn't ever go back to incandescents ... and frankly LEDs look even better (less waste heat, potentially better spectrum and range of colours).
I'm pretty sure 'greenies' refers to a much broader spectrum of people than the (admittedly nutty) people at Greenpeace...
I fully agree. The rise of surveillance of telecommunications (of whatever method) in the West is getting a bit alarming. Ubiquitous encryption will become the standard I feel. We are moving towards a word where all new software, systems and protocols that get developed, will include encryption to a greater or lesser extent.
It started with the widespread logging and monitoring of all phone calls entering and leaving the US after 9/11 (this really irritates me as a non-American - that my calls TO America are getting logged and possibly intercepted). Since then though I feel that it is the UK that is becoming the worst offender. AU and NZ are still pretty much surveillance-free ... although that's mostly a product of them being isolated and not having suffered a direct attack, rather than them having stricter protections against this kind of thing. I'm sure if there were an attack or threat there, there would be impetus to implement similar systems to the US/UK.
So yeah, I would urge everyone to use encryption in their daily lives as much as they can. Of course, most of us have nothing to hide in this respect, but it's really the ~principle~ of the thing that is at stake here, rather than an actual need to encrypt. If we make it technically or financially unfeasible to monitor communications en masse, then Governments will be more reluctant to do it, and will return to concentrating on tapping into only particular, suspected communications, by way of a proper warrant. Like they ~should~ be doing.
Yeah because a couple of moronic ideas from a few extremists makes something wrong with an entire country? I'm sure no moronic ideas have ever come out of anyone in the American government either....
It really pisses me off to see how Australia gets unfairly dragged through the mud on Slashdot. Slashdot seems to have a knack for dragging up the absolutely most OBSCURE stories that I don't even hear about on any other Australian or international news service (and I consume a LOT of news sites), beating them up or misrepresenting the facts somehow, and turning it into "OMG crazy idea from Australia" stories.
A few of the categories of Slashdot stories about Australia that piss me off:
- Taking a mere PROPOSAL (sometimes not even a formal, written proposal) from some obscure quarters of government (sometimes even State or local government), and talking about it as if it's actually law that's been passed. The Internet censorship scheme springs to mind here. It was a proposal that Blind Freddy could clearly see was never going to pass Parliament and was wildly unpopular with about 90% of the population! But to this day, Americans on Slashdot seem to think we have a bloody censorship regime in place on our net connections. They don't.
- Reporting on a view put forward by one or two politicians or politicians in a minor party, and stating that as being what 'the Australian Government' wants to do. Or even worse, what 'Australia' wants to do as a whole.
- Taking a random obscure piece of news that clearly would never even make the light of day, and promoting it to headline status.
Look, like anywhere, I'm sure there's a fair share of morons around in AU. But frankly, there's there's nothing "very wrong" down there. Fundamentally they are doing better than most by almost every measure you can think of (quality of life, unemployment, economic freedom and prosperity, life expectancy, low crime rates). Plus their food isn't riddled with HFCS (banned), and they get a guaranteed-by-law minimum of 4-6 weeks of annual leave a year, free/very cheap healthcare, and a governmental system that still works pretty well (minor parties still count for something, unlike the US). Admittedly on most of these measures AU gets beaten by Norway, Sweden and a couple of other places, but of the English speaking Western democracies (US, UK, NZ, SA, AU), I know where I'd like to be right now (if for no other reason that the Australian economy is still booming and they were the only OECD country not to go into recession due to the downturn).
PS. I'm an Australian currently living in America (long term - my wife is American). So yeah, I'm biased. But you really do get a bizarre impression of Australia if all you read is Slashdot, so I had to say something!
Australia. The only OECD country that DIDN'T go into recession due to the economic meltdown ... the so called miracle economy of the last 10-15 years. Mostly due to the Australian banking/financial sector having far greater regulation than the US (and hence there being nowhere near as many bad loans and general funny money in the financial system).
AU should meet most Americans' criteria for being a welfare state - considerably higher taxes than the US but also considerably more services that are Government-provided as opposed to private. (If you consider Canada a welfare state than you'd have to consider Australia one, they are pretty similar).
Yes it's retarded isn't it.
As an aside, the US is one of only a very small handful of countries in the world that tax on ~citizenship~ rather than residence. I'm Australian and my wife is American. We both live in Australia permanently. She is a dual-citizen (US and AU).
However, she still has to do yearly US tax returns! What's worse, if she earns more than a particular amount in a year, she has to pay US Federal income tax on her Australian income! (So on a portion of her income, she is getting double taxed by two countries). Ridiculous!
If we moved over to the US, the same would NOT apply in reverse. I would keep my Australian citizenship, but Australia doesn't collect any tax whatsoever from people not physically located in Australia (non-residents). 98% of countries are the same ... the US is really the odd one out here.
schools
HS in my area is producing graduates that can't even figure out the amount of sales tax. Useless. I also don't have any kids, so I don't see why I should have to pay.
Yes but surely YOU were educated in a school as a child - which derived at least some of its funding from taxes.
Agreed ... that was snarky language.
A couple of years ago, President Bush visited Australia. Audiences with him were hand-picked as well. And that's a meeting between two societies that are both English-speaking, Western liberal democracies, who are each others closest military and cultural allies.
Attendees to any forum with a world leader will be hand-picked, regardless of the country you are talking about.
Yeah same with the ABC in Australia. Accusations of bias occasionally get flung its way (let's face it, it's an easy target being government-funded), but any empirical study will show it's easily the most balanced and fair of all the TV/radio networks. Indeed, most accusations are usually of the "you are too biased AGAINST the current government, rather than for it" nature.
The Australian ABC/British BBC/Canadian CBC really do a top notch job of providing free, quality programming and journalism. It's a real shame the US doesn't have an equivalent (and no PBS do not count ... having seen their stations in a number of US markets, they are nowhere near as good).
NPR/PBS, reliant as they are mostly on voluntary public donations, is a mere shadow of the legislatively-created and taxpayer funded BBC in the UK (or the Australian equivalent, ABC, for that matter). A poor cousin at best. You can't compare them like that, it's chalk and cheese quality-wise.
Not many people see PBS as a high quality or popular channel in the US. But, in Australia the ABC is one of the most-watched and best-quality networks (and has multiple channels in most areas). Ditto with the UK and the BBC.
I have to admit, the first time I visited the US I was shocked. Your night sky in the cities is like a milky hazy grey colour. Not black. Not dark. Can only see the brightest stars.
From the middle of my hometown (Canberra, Australia, population 340,000), you can EASILY see the Milky Way with the naked eye at night. Yet even in towns a quarter the size of that in the US, you can't see Jack. (To be specific, I remember that in Green Bay, WI, population 98,000, I could see only like 10 stars at night!). This applies even in large, sprawling metro areas. I can see much more at nighttime in Sydney (population >5 million and an urban area 60+ miles in diameter) than I can in a similar sized American city.
I am not sure why that is exactly. I think it's mostly due to the far greater wastage of lighting/energy in the US. I did notice that Americans tend to light things up at night a lot more than we do. So for instance, huge empty parking lots would be *brightly* floodlit all night in the US, whereas in Australia they'd use fewer lights (so you would get a dim area of light every 30 yards or whatever, with mostly-darkness inbetween, cf. the US where the entire surface is completely drenched in light). We also tend to turn off outdoor lights in unused areas after a particular time. Plus our streetlights almost always are designed to shine only down and have a 'hat' on top of them to avoid scattering light up into the air.
And thank God for that.
Never have I seen so much uglification of the countryside caused by roadside advertising, as I have in the United States (the midwest seems particularly bad). And I've pulled long, long highway hours in many countries: Australia, UK, Japan, various other EU countries, New Zealand).
In most countries you might see one advertisement on the edge of a town or something. Maybe. If you're lucky. But US highways seem to basically be a shopping catalogue! Billboards every quarter mile and quite a few of them are electronic (e.g. scrolling things like "OMG 12-packs of Coke only $5.99" or whatever.
America is blessed with astonishing natural beauty and a wider variety of landscapes than most other countries. But you ruin it with those damn billboards.
And don't even get me started on those temperature displays that every shop seems to have. Sure it's nice to know the temperature but I don't need 10 of them on one street (all reading different temperatures, of course).
Aaaaannndd I managed to reply to completely the wrong post somehow. This should be shoved a few posts further up under the guy that was talking about cup holders (wow, what a surprise!)
I had never seen a cup holder in a car before I visited the United States. I'm not kidding. It never even occurred to me that someone would want such a thing. But in America, even cheap cars had them. Here, almost no cars have them.
This might have something to do with the fact that eating or drinking while driving is, in fact, illegal for the same reasons as using your phone/texting is illegal while driving. Basically there's a blanket law that says "you must not be participating in a distracting activity while driving".
I'd say about ... minus 10 years from now.
They've been doing that for aaaages.