Different cultures are indeed different, but Australians and Americans are the same on this front. Both want their suburban home. In fact that's exactly what the 'Australian Dream' is... your own home on a quarter-acre block.
The difference is that those suburban homes are more expensive closer to downtown in Australia, and more expensive further away from downtown in America. I'm not saying Australians all want to live RIGHT downtown...but they want to be closer to it if possible, while still owning their own standalone home with yard etc. It's just easier living near things, rather than at the outskirts where services (transport, schools, shopping) tend to be less convenient.
I would also point out that assuming the dense, downtown areas are a "meat-market and drug cesspool" assumes something that simply isn't true. Cities aren't like that in Australia. The 'problem areas' in AU are almost always surburban, if they exist at all (see my second point re ensuring that people from different backgrounds and classes are 'mixed' in the way cities are designed).
Interestingly, property in more attractive areas is actually more profitable as apartments than offices in most cases in Australia. Common to buy up an under-used piece of downtown realestate and convert it into high-end apartments that sell for seven figures each...
Mod parent up - as someone who moved from Australia to the US recently, this was one of the things that struck me almost immediately about most US cities. They are 'inside out' in terms of property prices/desirability.
In almost all Australian cities (and for that matter European and Asian cities), the closer you get to the CBD/downtown, the pricier property is. People want to live close to work, close to the vibrant downtown lifestyle (shops, cafes, restaurants, entertainment, nightlife etc.). Right in the urban core you have the super-expensive high-density places where the young, rich and hip want to live. Then as you go out in rings you get suburban housing of gradually decreasing price. First, the older, leafy, established suburbs with big old houses and established families that may have held the land for a long time. Expensive, because it's close to downtown while still offering detached houses rather than apartment living. Then mid-range suburbs... then right at the outskirts of the city, the newest-built dwellings that are also generally the cheapest because they are far away. This where you'll find young families and first home buyers. They may eventually sell and move closer in once they can afford to. Or they may stay there (and eventually, these outer areas aren't as 'outer' anymore as the city expands).
But in the US it's all backwards. The areas in/close to downtown are the cheapest and no one seems to want to live there, and the expensive houses are all at the outskirts. It's kind of weird. Gives many US downtowns a kind of drab, utilitarian feeling... a place people go to work but not live. (There are exceptions of course, NYC being the most obvious one, but sounds like SF is that way too, though I haven't been there).
The other point the parent made was excellent too - you don't want to segregate the social classes too much (either by concentrating the poor at the outskirts or in the center of the city). I used to live in Canberra, Australia, and one very noticeable thing there is that they have public housing developments (subsidized/free housing for poor people) scattered relatively evenly across all neighbourhoods. From the wealthiest to the poorest. You can easily have a block of public housing next to trendy modern townhouses or across the road from multi-million dollar ranch-style homes. This means you don't get that disconnect between social groups (and also means you don't get much crime, as you don't have these concentrated areas of desperate people where that activity can thrive)
That rent is on par with many cities around the world (in Europe, Asia, Australia and even other North American cities such as NYC). Hell, even some not-so-major cities... I was paying only marginally less than that when I used to live in Canberra (Australia) which is a relatively small, suburban place of 350,000 people. I now live in the US in a moderately-pricey city and I get a lot more floorspace for the same money. Close to double, I'd say.
US rents are renowned worldwide for being insanely cheap (even before the property market crash, let alone now). SF just happens to be one of the few cities in the US where the property prices approach the 'norm' for large global cities (which let's face it, SF is, being the center of the tech industry). I'm not sure there's much you can do about it as it's all based on supply, demand and the income/salaries of people living in the area.
Well one reason I would like this is that the nano SIMs in a lot of current phones are simply too tiny to easily change while on a plane. I travel for work to several different countries and have a local SIM for each. Trying to manipulate and swap out those tiny SIMs while cramped up into an aeroplane seat sucks.
I could wait until I arrive I suppose, but it's something useful to do while you have dead time on the plane, plus there usually isn't a good place to do it when you arrive and are herded into the immigration/customs area of the airport. It's useful to have the local SIM in and working soon as you hit the ground so you can catch up on any important emails, check for schedule/gate changes for your next connecting flight etc.
I don't know about that. Doom was the first game I played multiplayer and the game that opened my eyes to just how fun multiplayer FPS could be. The whole concept that you and your friends were in the same map in real time shooting each other rather than mobs was quite mind-blowing!
You could do it via null-modem cable, but the real fun happened when you got more than two people together and set up a proper network. I did that a few times (IIRC old school IPX networking over coax... grrr terminators!). Doom was the birth of LAN parties for me and most of the gamers I know, so I think quite a reasonable proportion of them experienced Doom's multiplayer aspect.
You could do it over direct modem connection too (just two players... directly dial your friend's number with the modem) so you didn't necessarily need computers next to each other.
True. Though if he was using his iPhone without a SIM card, chances are he's put it on Airplane Mode to save on power. It should be 'invisible' then (assuming we trust that turning Airplane Mode on really does stop all wireless transmissions from the device, whether cellular or otherwise).
Having said that, yeah, if the cellular radio is still turned on, it's just as traceable as any other phone, as the tracing would be done using IMEI, and a phone without a SIM is still pinging towers and transmitting its IMEI (remembering that you can make an emergency call from a phone without a SIM card, and it will be honoured by whatever network happens to be in range).
I think the Australian FTTH proposal technically only delivers fibre to the 'outside' of the house too. Or more exactly, it's fibre to the ONT (Optical Network Termination). The installers will then run CAT6/ethernet to a point inside the house for you (or multiple points if you want to pay for it).
Don't quote me on it but I believe the ONT can be placed either inside or outside the building, or in a garage etc. Depends on the particular house.
Problem is, private enterprise will simply cherry pick the few dense and/or wealthy suburbs to roll out to that will generate them the biggest return on investment and cover only those areas (see: Foxtel and Optus cable). While I support an appropriate mix of public and private investment in such things, if it were left to the private sector alone, many smaller and even mid-sized settlements wouldn't have ANY form of broadband today.
Australia, despite its large size and small population, is actually significantly more urbanised than, say, the US. Cover the dozen or so largest cities (capitals plus Newcastle, Wollongong, Gold Coast etc.) and you've got 90%+ of the population (unlike the US which has hundreds of mid-sized cities dotted across the whole country and a much higher percentage living in rural areas). Sprawling suburbia is indeed rampant but at least it's clustered together in a relatively small number of locations.
The Liberal proposal is cheaper and more modest than Labors, but only by 20-30%. Yet it will be finished only a year or two earlier and the outcomes are more than 20-30% inferior (think not only in terms of speed, but future capacity to expand and upgrade the service, and maintenance costs etc.). Labor's proposal was more expensive but actually gets you more bang for buck over the long term, I think.
I'm pretty technologically and politically agnostic on the matter. I don't really care which plan gets up at the end of the day. And if private enterprise covers my area then I'm happy that they do so. But realistically I think the government needs some role in this, if not in actually delivering the network, then at least in mandating certain basic standards of access and rules about geographic coverage.
I should point out, if you're American, that some parts of AT&T's U-verse service are precisely this - fibre to the node, then VDSL to the premises. Not true in all areas though - U-verse also uses ADSL2+ and even some ADSL1 in some areas still, I believe.
Compare to Verizon FiOS which is a true FTTH service.
When you say 'cable', are you referring to cable as in US-style cable TV (and internet, using DOCSIS)?
If so, then no, most areas of Australia do not have this. Subscription TV is delivered by satellite in virtually all areas of Australia, save for small sections of urban Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Far more cost effective for such a big and sparsely settled continent. So the cable footprint would be lucky to cover 5 or 10% of the population.
Currently most people in Australia get their internet via ye olde copper phone line using ADSL2+ (which can provide up to 24 Mbps if you have a short line, but degrades rapidly and can barely push a few Mbps at distances of 4-6 km, depending on the quality and gauge of line).
FTTN rollout would thus require that nodes be built, branching out from or replacing the current telephone exchanges/central offices (where lines currently terminate) so that they would be no further than a few hundred metres from any given house, and leverage the existing phone lines as much as possible to cover the remaining distance. You can push 50-100 Mbps using VDSL2 over these kind of distances. But only if the lines are in good condition (which they aren't, in many cases).
It should also be pointed out that most newer areas (built in the last 10 years or so) already have fibre right to the door, and also that some parts of the original FTTH NBN network have already been completed (I have some friends that are already on it, at 100 Mbps). But the rollout is still only 10% complete at most.
Well it was never going to be FTTH ~everywhere~. The original plan proposed by the Labor government was for every town with more than 1000 people to have FTTH, with the remainder being served with either fixed wireless, or for the most remote 1% or so, satellite (which is already available of course, but the plan included a significant upgrade of satellite speeds and capacity). Doing the calculations, it essentially meant 93% of the population would get FTTH.
The Liberal government from the outset said that if they got elected, they'd scale back the FTTH and rely mostly on FTTN/VDSL for existing developed areas (though, still supporting FTTH for new greenfields development, since if you have to lay cable anyway it may as well be fibre). As you say, that's probably fast enough for most purposes provided you can keep copper line lengths down to a few hundred metres at most.
The criticisms of this revised plan, broadly speaking, are that:
1. Much of the existing copper is in bad condition and would need to be replaced anyway anyway to deliver decent VDSL speeds and reliability. Telstra, responsible for managing the copper network, has publicly stated that they consider the copper network at end of life.
2. The Liberals' plan, compared to the original Labor plan, would only result in cost savings of 20-30%, yet deliver an outcome that is a lot more than 20-30% worse (in terms of speeds, reliability and future capacity for growth and upgrades).
YMMV of course. I haven't seen a card issued in the last several years that doesn't have a chip (even in Australia which was notoriously late getting on the chip-and-PIN bandwagon compared to Europe... I remember having issues using my Australian card in the UK in the mid-2000s because they all required a chip even a decade ago). I think it's only pretty much the US now where it's not standard.
Australia was late to the game compared to Europe, but as you say, chip and pin is pretty ubiquitous now, and contactless is catching up fast. I'm Australian but have been in the US the last six months and I've not seen a single reader that supports EITHER of those techs here.
I have seen quite a few of these Square readers from TFA though.
Yeah they do have an email option (and I think it's actually the standard/default option?) I take taxis a lot when travelling for business in the US and they virtually all seem to use Square. It's pretty cool actually because once you pay using Square the first time and supply your email address, every other time you pay with that card, your email address is already pre-filled. So it's just swipe the card and you're done. The receipt is waiting in my inbox a few minutes later (which I need to claim expenses for work). The receipt even has a little Google Maps inlay with a mark showing the exact location on the map where the swipe was made (since the tablet or phone the Square reader hooks into generally has GPS).
Sorry but he has a point. Square might do OK in the US for now, but wouldn't work anywhere else. Most countries (including most of Europe and east Asia, which definitely do have populations big enough to matter) have moved to chip and PIN cards and a good proportion of banks in those countries have made using the PIN compulsory.
I'm Australian but live in the US at the moment. I have three credit cards in my wallet: an Australian-issued Mastercard, an Australian-issued AMEX and a US-issued Visa. Both the Australian ones have a chip AND also have contactless payment (tap the card on the reader ala PayPass). They do both still have magnetic strips for legacy use, but if the reader has the capability of using the chip (most do in Australia), then the swipe won't work - it'll tell you to insert the card and type PIN instead. Contactless payment is pretty common too... most of the big retailers (supermarkets, gas stations etc.) have it.
The US card has neither a chip nor contactless capabilities AFAIK - it's a plain old magnetic strip. I would have serious issues actually trying to use that card back home (or in most other countries), as plenty of places simply won't take a swipe anymore.
I have no idea why banking, payments and dealing with money is so backwards in the US (see also: checks still actually existing). I mean, they invented credit cards right? And much of the technology that underlies payment systems...
Huh - Australia has fewer 'base' timezones (not considering DST) than the US (+10, +9:30, +8). Three zones in winter, five in summer. The US has six in winter (four mainland, plus Hawaii and Alaska) and also has areas that don't do daylight saving time just like Qld/WA/NT in Australia (e.g. Arizona). All up, the complexity is, if anything, more in the US.
Though I think at least they do all change on the same day in the US (for the places that do actually change...)
Australians may colloquially call it 'summer time' (I have myself on occasion) but of course AEST is only Australian Eastern Standard Time (observed in QLD year-round and NSW/ACT/VIC/TAS in the winter months). The +11 time zone is AEDT ('daylight' time), even if you don't hear people actually say it out loud often. ABC gets it right - if you listen to NewsRadio or News24, they'll say "it's X O'Clock Eastern Daylight Time..."
True. But no two countries on earth share a common history and culture... that's kind of why they are different countries to begin with. Yet almost developed countries, despite their differing cultures, have tighter gun controls and agree that this does more good than harm. It's not like there's some countries on one side and a roughly equal number on the other. It's pretty much the US who stands alone on this one (which is a common theme - see also: metric system).
So yeah, America is different from other countries. But it's not 'special'... it's no more 'different' from everyone else than any number of other pairs of countries you could name. (Note that I'm not arguing for or against gun control specifically in this post, I'm just pointing out that saying that you don't share a culture with others doesn't really have much relevance... it's not like all 'non-Americans' are a monolithic bunch either!)
Agreed - the problem is nutcase people, not the tool. BUT... the tool in this case is capable of killing more quickly, more effectively and at a greater distance than almost any other tool out there. You're somewhat removed from the act of killing, unlike a knife where you have to get up close, messy and personal. Mentally I think it's a lot harder to stab someone than shoot them - a higher degree of craziness is needed.
Furthermore, a gun is designed specifically for the purpose, unlike a car or a bat or a chainsaw, which are tools that have other main uses (the ability for them to hurt other people is secondary). You couldn't ban cars or all those other items you could theoretically kill with, because they are needed for society to function. Guns, not as much (yes people shoot for sport, but it's not as vital a function as transportation/construction/etc.)
For those reasons, I would argue that a gun isn't really comparable to other tools or methods of killing. Noone is arguing that banning guns will put a stop to violence - as you say, people will use other means to achieve the same end. But the barriers to killing with guns are far lower than with other tools or objects. The point is to do what you can to reduce violence like this, not necessarily eliminate it... and guns are the 'low hanging fruit'.
Problem is, the US is a federation of States and each State has its own gun laws, of varying strictness. Combine that with the fact that anyone can freely travel and move goods between the States at will... and yeah, gun control at a state level isn't going to work. It can't possibly work.
To prove whether or not gun control works in the US, the laws would have to be consistent everywhere in the nation (or defined Federally). I'm not making any judgement either way on whether it WOULD work... I'm just saying that it has no chance whatsoever of working at a state level. So the argument (which you see quite often) that 'gun control doesn't work because a gun crime occurred in state X, which has strict gun laws' is absurd.
All quite true - some criminals still have guns in Australia (though not many, as a proportion of total criminals). However they are almost invariably handguns, shotguns or single-shot rifles (not semi autos which tend to the be weapon of choice in the US it seems). Furthermore, it's very rare that they are used in random attacks or sprees such as you see in the US. Think about when you hear of a shooting in Australia these days. 95+% of the time it's criminal-on-criminal (related to bikie gangs or other forms of organized crime). Other more petty crims with guns might use them in a holdup or robbery, but rarely seem to actually ~use~ them (i.e. they use the weapon to threaten the victim). I can't recall more than a couple of instances of actual murder of an innocent person or people with a firearm in Australia (outside of organized crime) in the last decade. One in particular I recall from a couple of years ago where someone shot, intending to hit person X, but missed and hit person Y, way in the distance, who was a poor truck driver that just happened to driving past. But still, incidents like that are rare.
Source: anecdotal admittedly, but I'm a dual Aussie-US citizen who spends a decent amount of time in both countries. The situation in Australia ain't perfect of course, but I don't really care about bikie gangs shooting each other up to be honest - good riddance. You don't see criminals with guns killing indiscriminately, or the mass shooting sprees, that you see in the US.
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Different cultures are indeed different, but Australians and Americans are the same on this front. Both want their suburban home. In fact that's exactly what the 'Australian Dream' is ... your own home on a quarter-acre block.
The difference is that those suburban homes are more expensive closer to downtown in Australia, and more expensive further away from downtown in America. I'm not saying Australians all want to live RIGHT downtown...but they want to be closer to it if possible, while still owning their own standalone home with yard etc. It's just easier living near things, rather than at the outskirts where services (transport, schools, shopping) tend to be less convenient.
I would also point out that assuming the dense, downtown areas are a "meat-market and drug cesspool" assumes something that simply isn't true. Cities aren't like that in Australia. The 'problem areas' in AU are almost always surburban, if they exist at all (see my second point re ensuring that people from different backgrounds and classes are 'mixed' in the way cities are designed).
Interestingly, property in more attractive areas is actually more profitable as apartments than offices in most cases in Australia. Common to buy up an under-used piece of downtown realestate and convert it into high-end apartments that sell for seven figures each...
Mod parent up - as someone who moved from Australia to the US recently, this was one of the things that struck me almost immediately about most US cities. They are 'inside out' in terms of property prices/desirability.
In almost all Australian cities (and for that matter European and Asian cities), the closer you get to the CBD/downtown, the pricier property is. People want to live close to work, close to the vibrant downtown lifestyle (shops, cafes, restaurants, entertainment, nightlife etc.). Right in the urban core you have the super-expensive high-density places where the young, rich and hip want to live. Then as you go out in rings you get suburban housing of gradually decreasing price. First, the older, leafy, established suburbs with big old houses and established families that may have held the land for a long time. Expensive, because it's close to downtown while still offering detached houses rather than apartment living. Then mid-range suburbs ... then right at the outskirts of the city, the newest-built dwellings that are also generally the cheapest because they are far away. This where you'll find young families and first home buyers. They may eventually sell and move closer in once they can afford to. Or they may stay there (and eventually, these outer areas aren't as 'outer' anymore as the city expands).
But in the US it's all backwards. The areas in/close to downtown are the cheapest and no one seems to want to live there, and the expensive houses are all at the outskirts. It's kind of weird. Gives many US downtowns a kind of drab, utilitarian feeling ... a place people go to work but not live. (There are exceptions of course, NYC being the most obvious one, but sounds like SF is that way too, though I haven't been there).
The other point the parent made was excellent too - you don't want to segregate the social classes too much (either by concentrating the poor at the outskirts or in the center of the city). I used to live in Canberra, Australia, and one very noticeable thing there is that they have public housing developments (subsidized/free housing for poor people) scattered relatively evenly across all neighbourhoods. From the wealthiest to the poorest. You can easily have a block of public housing next to trendy modern townhouses or across the road from multi-million dollar ranch-style homes. This means you don't get that disconnect between social groups (and also means you don't get much crime, as you don't have these concentrated areas of desperate people where that activity can thrive)
That rent is on par with many cities around the world (in Europe, Asia, Australia and even other North American cities such as NYC). Hell, even some not-so-major cities ... I was paying only marginally less than that when I used to live in Canberra (Australia) which is a relatively small, suburban place of 350,000 people. I now live in the US in a moderately-pricey city and I get a lot more floorspace for the same money. Close to double, I'd say.
US rents are renowned worldwide for being insanely cheap (even before the property market crash, let alone now). SF just happens to be one of the few cities in the US where the property prices approach the 'norm' for large global cities (which let's face it, SF is, being the center of the tech industry). I'm not sure there's much you can do about it as it's all based on supply, demand and the income/salaries of people living in the area.
Well one reason I would like this is that the nano SIMs in a lot of current phones are simply too tiny to easily change while on a plane. I travel for work to several different countries and have a local SIM for each. Trying to manipulate and swap out those tiny SIMs while cramped up into an aeroplane seat sucks.
I could wait until I arrive I suppose, but it's something useful to do while you have dead time on the plane, plus there usually isn't a good place to do it when you arrive and are herded into the immigration/customs area of the airport. It's useful to have the local SIM in and working soon as you hit the ground so you can catch up on any important emails, check for schedule/gate changes for your next connecting flight etc.
You're missing the point. He typed mHz (millihertz) instead of MHz (megahertz).
Um, are you sure? If by "room" you mean surface area, A4 paper is slightly larger than letter.
A4 = 210 x 297 mm = 62,370 mm^2
Letter = 215.9 x 279 mm = 60,322 mm^2 (rounded to nearest mm^2)
I don't know about that. Doom was the first game I played multiplayer and the game that opened my eyes to just how fun multiplayer FPS could be. The whole concept that you and your friends were in the same map in real time shooting each other rather than mobs was quite mind-blowing!
You could do it via null-modem cable, but the real fun happened when you got more than two people together and set up a proper network. I did that a few times (IIRC old school IPX networking over coax ... grrr terminators!). Doom was the birth of LAN parties for me and most of the gamers I know, so I think quite a reasonable proportion of them experienced Doom's multiplayer aspect.
You could do it over direct modem connection too (just two players ... directly dial your friend's number with the modem) so you didn't necessarily need computers next to each other.
True. Though if he was using his iPhone without a SIM card, chances are he's put it on Airplane Mode to save on power. It should be 'invisible' then (assuming we trust that turning Airplane Mode on really does stop all wireless transmissions from the device, whether cellular or otherwise).
Having said that, yeah, if the cellular radio is still turned on, it's just as traceable as any other phone, as the tracing would be done using IMEI, and a phone without a SIM is still pinging towers and transmitting its IMEI (remembering that you can make an emergency call from a phone without a SIM card, and it will be honoured by whatever network happens to be in range).
I think the Australian FTTH proposal technically only delivers fibre to the 'outside' of the house too. Or more exactly, it's fibre to the ONT (Optical Network Termination). The installers will then run CAT6/ethernet to a point inside the house for you (or multiple points if you want to pay for it).
Don't quote me on it but I believe the ONT can be placed either inside or outside the building, or in a garage etc. Depends on the particular house.
Problem is, private enterprise will simply cherry pick the few dense and/or wealthy suburbs to roll out to that will generate them the biggest return on investment and cover only those areas (see: Foxtel and Optus cable). While I support an appropriate mix of public and private investment in such things, if it were left to the private sector alone, many smaller and even mid-sized settlements wouldn't have ANY form of broadband today.
Australia, despite its large size and small population, is actually significantly more urbanised than, say, the US. Cover the dozen or so largest cities (capitals plus Newcastle, Wollongong, Gold Coast etc.) and you've got 90%+ of the population (unlike the US which has hundreds of mid-sized cities dotted across the whole country and a much higher percentage living in rural areas). Sprawling suburbia is indeed rampant but at least it's clustered together in a relatively small number of locations.
The Liberal proposal is cheaper and more modest than Labors, but only by 20-30%. Yet it will be finished only a year or two earlier and the outcomes are more than 20-30% inferior (think not only in terms of speed, but future capacity to expand and upgrade the service, and maintenance costs etc.). Labor's proposal was more expensive but actually gets you more bang for buck over the long term, I think.
I'm pretty technologically and politically agnostic on the matter. I don't really care which plan gets up at the end of the day. And if private enterprise covers my area then I'm happy that they do so. But realistically I think the government needs some role in this, if not in actually delivering the network, then at least in mandating certain basic standards of access and rules about geographic coverage.
I should point out, if you're American, that some parts of AT&T's U-verse service are precisely this - fibre to the node, then VDSL to the premises. Not true in all areas though - U-verse also uses ADSL2+ and even some ADSL1 in some areas still, I believe.
Compare to Verizon FiOS which is a true FTTH service.
When you say 'cable', are you referring to cable as in US-style cable TV (and internet, using DOCSIS)?
If so, then no, most areas of Australia do not have this. Subscription TV is delivered by satellite in virtually all areas of Australia, save for small sections of urban Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Far more cost effective for such a big and sparsely settled continent. So the cable footprint would be lucky to cover 5 or 10% of the population.
Currently most people in Australia get their internet via ye olde copper phone line using ADSL2+ (which can provide up to 24 Mbps if you have a short line, but degrades rapidly and can barely push a few Mbps at distances of 4-6 km, depending on the quality and gauge of line).
FTTN rollout would thus require that nodes be built, branching out from or replacing the current telephone exchanges/central offices (where lines currently terminate) so that they would be no further than a few hundred metres from any given house, and leverage the existing phone lines as much as possible to cover the remaining distance. You can push 50-100 Mbps using VDSL2 over these kind of distances. But only if the lines are in good condition (which they aren't, in many cases).
It should also be pointed out that most newer areas (built in the last 10 years or so) already have fibre right to the door, and also that some parts of the original FTTH NBN network have already been completed (I have some friends that are already on it, at 100 Mbps). But the rollout is still only 10% complete at most.
Well it was never going to be FTTH ~everywhere~. The original plan proposed by the Labor government was for every town with more than 1000 people to have FTTH, with the remainder being served with either fixed wireless, or for the most remote 1% or so, satellite (which is already available of course, but the plan included a significant upgrade of satellite speeds and capacity). Doing the calculations, it essentially meant 93% of the population would get FTTH.
The Liberal government from the outset said that if they got elected, they'd scale back the FTTH and rely mostly on FTTN/VDSL for existing developed areas (though, still supporting FTTH for new greenfields development, since if you have to lay cable anyway it may as well be fibre). As you say, that's probably fast enough for most purposes provided you can keep copper line lengths down to a few hundred metres at most.
The criticisms of this revised plan, broadly speaking, are that:
1. Much of the existing copper is in bad condition and would need to be replaced anyway anyway to deliver decent VDSL speeds and reliability. Telstra, responsible for managing the copper network, has publicly stated that they consider the copper network at end of life.
2. The Liberals' plan, compared to the original Labor plan, would only result in cost savings of 20-30%, yet deliver an outcome that is a lot more than 20-30% worse (in terms of speeds, reliability and future capacity for growth and upgrades).
Why on earth would you get that picture?
Image search for "bikie gangs": https://www.google.com/search?q=bikie+gangs&espv=210&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=pqqBUuvbDsj22AWRkIDYBA&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ
Motorcycle outlaw gangs - I do believe you have them in the US as well (though they aren't quite as notorious as the Australian ones perhaps?)
YMMV of course. I haven't seen a card issued in the last several years that doesn't have a chip (even in Australia which was notoriously late getting on the chip-and-PIN bandwagon compared to Europe ... I remember having issues using my Australian card in the UK in the mid-2000s because they all required a chip even a decade ago). I think it's only pretty much the US now where it's not standard.
Australia was late to the game compared to Europe, but as you say, chip and pin is pretty ubiquitous now, and contactless is catching up fast. I'm Australian but have been in the US the last six months and I've not seen a single reader that supports EITHER of those techs here.
I have seen quite a few of these Square readers from TFA though.
Yeah they do have an email option (and I think it's actually the standard/default option?) I take taxis a lot when travelling for business in the US and they virtually all seem to use Square. It's pretty cool actually because once you pay using Square the first time and supply your email address, every other time you pay with that card, your email address is already pre-filled. So it's just swipe the card and you're done. The receipt is waiting in my inbox a few minutes later (which I need to claim expenses for work). The receipt even has a little Google Maps inlay with a mark showing the exact location on the map where the swipe was made (since the tablet or phone the Square reader hooks into generally has GPS).
Sorry but he has a point. Square might do OK in the US for now, but wouldn't work anywhere else. Most countries (including most of Europe and east Asia, which definitely do have populations big enough to matter) have moved to chip and PIN cards and a good proportion of banks in those countries have made using the PIN compulsory.
I'm Australian but live in the US at the moment. I have three credit cards in my wallet: an Australian-issued Mastercard, an Australian-issued AMEX and a US-issued Visa. Both the Australian ones have a chip AND also have contactless payment (tap the card on the reader ala PayPass). They do both still have magnetic strips for legacy use, but if the reader has the capability of using the chip (most do in Australia), then the swipe won't work - it'll tell you to insert the card and type PIN instead. Contactless payment is pretty common too ... most of the big retailers (supermarkets, gas stations etc.) have it.
The US card has neither a chip nor contactless capabilities AFAIK - it's a plain old magnetic strip. I would have serious issues actually trying to use that card back home (or in most other countries), as plenty of places simply won't take a swipe anymore.
I have no idea why banking, payments and dealing with money is so backwards in the US (see also: checks still actually existing). I mean, they invented credit cards right? And much of the technology that underlies payment systems...
Huh - Australia has fewer 'base' timezones (not considering DST) than the US (+10, +9:30, +8). Three zones in winter, five in summer. The US has six in winter (four mainland, plus Hawaii and Alaska) and also has areas that don't do daylight saving time just like Qld/WA/NT in Australia (e.g. Arizona). All up, the complexity is, if anything, more in the US.
Though I think at least they do all change on the same day in the US (for the places that do actually change...)
Australians may colloquially call it 'summer time' (I have myself on occasion) but of course AEST is only Australian Eastern Standard Time (observed in QLD year-round and NSW/ACT/VIC/TAS in the winter months). The +11 time zone is AEDT ('daylight' time), even if you don't hear people actually say it out loud often. ABC gets it right - if you listen to NewsRadio or News24, they'll say "it's X O'Clock Eastern Daylight Time..."
True. But no two countries on earth share a common history and culture ... that's kind of why they are different countries to begin with. Yet almost developed countries, despite their differing cultures, have tighter gun controls and agree that this does more good than harm. It's not like there's some countries on one side and a roughly equal number on the other. It's pretty much the US who stands alone on this one (which is a common theme - see also: metric system).
So yeah, America is different from other countries. But it's not 'special' ... it's no more 'different' from everyone else than any number of other pairs of countries you could name. (Note that I'm not arguing for or against gun control specifically in this post, I'm just pointing out that saying that you don't share a culture with others doesn't really have much relevance ... it's not like all 'non-Americans' are a monolithic bunch either!)
Agreed - the problem is nutcase people, not the tool. BUT ... the tool in this case is capable of killing more quickly, more effectively and at a greater distance than almost any other tool out there. You're somewhat removed from the act of killing, unlike a knife where you have to get up close, messy and personal. Mentally I think it's a lot harder to stab someone than shoot them - a higher degree of craziness is needed.
Furthermore, a gun is designed specifically for the purpose, unlike a car or a bat or a chainsaw, which are tools that have other main uses (the ability for them to hurt other people is secondary). You couldn't ban cars or all those other items you could theoretically kill with, because they are needed for society to function. Guns, not as much (yes people shoot for sport, but it's not as vital a function as transportation/construction/etc.)
For those reasons, I would argue that a gun isn't really comparable to other tools or methods of killing. Noone is arguing that banning guns will put a stop to violence - as you say, people will use other means to achieve the same end. But the barriers to killing with guns are far lower than with other tools or objects. The point is to do what you can to reduce violence like this, not necessarily eliminate it ... and guns are the 'low hanging fruit'.
Problem is, the US is a federation of States and each State has its own gun laws, of varying strictness. Combine that with the fact that anyone can freely travel and move goods between the States at will ... and yeah, gun control at a state level isn't going to work. It can't possibly work.
To prove whether or not gun control works in the US, the laws would have to be consistent everywhere in the nation (or defined Federally). I'm not making any judgement either way on whether it WOULD work ... I'm just saying that it has no chance whatsoever of working at a state level. So the argument (which you see quite often) that 'gun control doesn't work because a gun crime occurred in state X, which has strict gun laws' is absurd.
All quite true - some criminals still have guns in Australia (though not many, as a proportion of total criminals). However they are almost invariably handguns, shotguns or single-shot rifles (not semi autos which tend to the be weapon of choice in the US it seems). Furthermore, it's very rare that they are used in random attacks or sprees such as you see in the US. Think about when you hear of a shooting in Australia these days. 95+% of the time it's criminal-on-criminal (related to bikie gangs or other forms of organized crime). Other more petty crims with guns might use them in a holdup or robbery, but rarely seem to actually ~use~ them (i.e. they use the weapon to threaten the victim). I can't recall more than a couple of instances of actual murder of an innocent person or people with a firearm in Australia (outside of organized crime) in the last decade. One in particular I recall from a couple of years ago where someone shot, intending to hit person X, but missed and hit person Y, way in the distance, who was a poor truck driver that just happened to driving past. But still, incidents like that are rare.
Source: anecdotal admittedly, but I'm a dual Aussie-US citizen who spends a decent amount of time in both countries. The situation in Australia ain't perfect of course, but I don't really care about bikie gangs shooting each other up to be honest - good riddance. You don't see criminals with guns killing indiscriminately, or the mass shooting sprees, that you see in the US.
Daylight savings is currently in effect in the US too, you know...
(it ends this upcoming weekend, after Halloween)