Yes, I'm glad that defence contractors and the military are still pumping tons of money and research into these ridiculously expensive, fragile, and unwieldy toys while American families are increasingly going homeless and dying from third-world diseases because they can't get healthcare.
Well, it's their own fault. If they just worked harder and got a job with a defense contractor, they'd have excellent healthcare !
It's become more and more common for me to go days and weeks with no cash whatsoever in my pocket. Credit and Debit will cover nearly everything that I need or want,
This is actually one - if not the only - are where banking in the US is actually ahead. Credit cards are accepted basically everywhere, for any purchase, with no surcharges. You can buy a chocolate bar with a credit card and no-one will even blink.
In many (most ?) other countries, the use of credit cards for small purchases (usually <$10) is strongly discouraged, if not outright refused, since pretty much every CC transaction attracts a 1.5% - 4% surcharge. This also means that for larger transactions (large pieces of electronics, furniture, cars, etc - usually anything over about $2,000) the merchant will actually pass the surcharge on in its entirety.
But in the UK, I've read over and over of instances where people doing anything at all to defend against attackers were sent to prison. One particularly ridiculous case involved an older couple who held some home intruders at gunpoint until the police arrived. The problem was that they didn't own a gun--it was a plastic toy gun that looked real, but the invaders didn't know that luckily. The couple was arrested and charged with infringing the robbers' civil rights or somesuch.
If you have some *actual* links to people being convicted for this sort of thing (without some other factor being involved), then that would be interesting. However, this is just hearsay.
As I said, pretty much every example of people supposedly being charged for defending themselves I've ever actually looked into, either wasn't really self defence, or the genuine self-defence was subsequently followed by something that could not be considered self defence.
In several states, there is a "duty to retreat". So if someone breaks into your house, armed, saying they're going to kill you and rape your wife, you're not allowed to shoot them. You have to run away, yes, even though you're in your own home. The only way you might get off is if you flee to your bedroom on the 2nd floor, and the invaders come after you, and you can't escape the house at that point because your bedroom has no exit at ground level. That to me sounds like self-defense is effectively illegal.
Except it's not. If you genuinely have to *defend* yourself (ie: the person actually attacks you rather than just talking), you're within your legal rights.
Retreat is pretty much always the best option (from a survival perspective) anyway.
I can think of some things we do OK, or at least better than the UK (such as not generally throwing people in prison for defending themselves from violent home invaders, unless they live in Illinois or New Jersey), [...]
The only examples of this "kind" of thing happening is when said person "defending themselves" did something that was most certainly not defense - like, say, shooting someone while they were running away.
They've been trying to pass laws which require citizenship validation. Its constantly fought and defeated because of morons like you who thing what actually is going on can't actually happen.
I thought it was constantly fought and defeated by the kinds of people who cut up their drivers license and think the census is huge conspiracy ?
The funny thing is, from what I see, most of the world (with the exception of Australia and maybe Canada) has been moving towards unlimited data plans everywhere. The USA are the ones regressing.
Compare the relevant land areas and population densities and you might see a possible reason for the higher costs.
No, a law whose unintended consequences undermines its intended consequences is useless against what it was intended for. A gun ban may stop a few accidental killings, and a handful of crimes, but at what cost? It never ceases to amaze me how some very bright individuals will cast away their critical thinking skills when it comes to certain hot-button issues like gun control.
Careful. Waving irony like that around could take someone's eye out.
Laws must be evaluated in terms of cost and benefit. You have plainly put forth the benefit, but have failed to consider any minimal cost whatsoever.
You claim the costs are vast and the benefits minimal, yet have demonstrated no actual cost whatsoever.
If banning guns won't prevent murders, and will in fact just prevent the good people from defending themselves against the gun crazed lunatics, what is the purpose of banning guns.
The two major objectives in reducing gun proliferation, and applying restrictions to gun ownership, are:
* Minimising accidents
* Making it more difficult for J Random Crazy Guy to go postal
You might want to read up on a concept called "defense in depth". Same principle. Just because the results are not perfect does not mean they don't exist.
So suppose you're a US Citizen moving to Australia for work; what's the deal there? Assuming you have a car you've owned for a few years, do you still have to have it converted (which sounds like a very costly proposition for the parts needed, even if it's a model that was made specifically to be manufactured either way)?
You can get a temporary permit for up to (I believe) 12 months for a LHD vehicle. I think there are also limited user permits (eg: 90 days/year). For obvious reasons (I was moving back permanently, or at least for many years) I don't know a lot about short-term arrangements.
(To a large degree this whole scenario is simply reflective of the much looser restrictions around most aspects of vehicle ownership in the typical USA state as compared to other countries. Eg: when I was living in AZ, it would appear you could register just about anything with an engine and brake lights, and licenses didn't expire for decades.)
That combined with the high prices there sounds like it'd be a giant disincentive to going to Aus for work. My wife and I were toying with the idea of going there for a few years to work, but between the housing prices and this, it seems like it'd be a total waste of time and money.
IME, for people in developed countries, emigration is largely a lifestyle, not economic, decision. If it is an economic decision, it's one with a long term (10-20+ years) timeline (ie: short term and relatively small expenses like cars aren't really a factor) or it's for extremely lucrative financial returns (ie: costs aren't really an issue).
Having moved countries myself a couple of times now, I cannot imagine many good reasons to bring a car along (or, indeed, anything else that doesn't fit in a few suitcases - unless you're moving *out* of the USA where everything is so cheap, in which case you buy up a whole household before you leave and pack it into a container like we did). The raw import (and subsequent re-export) costs alone would likely soak up most of the possible cost savings, and that's before accounting for the dramatically higher insurance you'd be paying, the huge difficulties if you ever wanted to sell it, higher repair costs, the paperwork hassles, and the inconvenience of not having the car anyway for ~2 months on either end of the move. I know plenty of people who have moved to and from Australia (and other countries) for extended periods of time. Most of them never considered bringing vehicles (in either direction) to be a particularly feasible plan.
If your car is particularly old & unique, and/or expensive, than can change the equation somewhat. But in the former case it will likely fall into one of the exception categories and in the latter case you probably have the money to either meet the import costs, or simply buy the local version.
(Obviously the situation is significantly different if you're moving between countries that have land connections - but most of those don't have the sorts of restrictions we're talking about.)
Yes, but many of the interior parts are not, and many of those parts are pretty pricey, such as the front seats, the dashboard, etc.
I would be surprised if even 5% of the components *needed* to be different between a LHD and RHD variant of the same car (no reason for anything rear of the dashboard to be different, even most of the dash components will be the same or simply mirror-flipped - the only major engineering differences will be in the steering and front suspension). There's almost certainly more differences between the multiple models and options within a vehicle family.
Yeah, but how different can those regulations be from USA or UK or EU regulations? Honestly, much of that stuff should pretty much be all the same these days, and I imagine global automakers generally design their cars to meet all those regulations simultaneously (i.e., by designing for the hi
What the hell is the problem down there? Is it just because the market is much smaller and far away from everything, or do they just charge more because they can (like in Canada)?
A certain amount of "because they can" (wages are higher here on average as well, after all) but also I believe because there's only one or two top-level distributors/importers in the country (ie: little competition). There is also a degree of simple protectionism (taxes applied to imports).
I wonder how much it'd cost for an Australian to simply buy a car in the USA and have it shipped there (assuming he doesn't mind the driver's seat being on the opposite side)?
Broadly speaking, it can't be done. To register a LHD vehicle in Australia requires it to be very old and/or of historical value. If you imported a remotely modern LHD car, you would need to have it converted to RHD. Having lived in Europe for a few years, witnessed people driving cars "on the wrong side", and done it myself, I don't have a problem with this. Driving a RHD car in a LHD country (or vice versa) is dangerous.
You would also need to have it brought up to spec with Australian vehicle standards (almost certainly costing more than you would save). Further, if it's a vehicle that's actually sold locally, or that you have owned for less than 12 months while living overseas, import duties are applied so it ends up costing as much as (if not more than) the local version anyway. Finally, thanks to numerous people rorting the personal imports system to resell vehicles, ex-pats are now only allowed to import one vehicle every five years before the import duties start kicking in regardless.
Basically, unless you're looking at a particular unique or expensive vehicle, and/or you haven't personally owned while living overseas it for at least a year before importing it, it's not (even close to being) worth importing a car.
Importing from the UK is somewhat better because you avoid the need for a LHD->RHD conversion, but the import duties still kick in if the vehicle doesn't fall under the personal imports scheme (ie: owned it for 12+ months while living overseas).
I have numerous friends living in the UK and have seriously considered buying them a vehicle to own for 12 months, importing back to Australia and then having it "sold" to me (though this only works cost-wise for more expensive vehicles - I was eyeballing a BMW M5), but a) it requires all the money up front, b) I'd have to wait for 12 months and c) could become an ugly situation.
Other RHD countries are a large chunk of southern Africa, India, New Zealand and a decent chunk of the SW Pacific. However, I struggle to believe the LHD/RHD factor makes a significant (if any) difference in price. Firstly because the volume of vehicles going to RHD markets, while smaller, is hardly trivial, secondly because of modern design and manufacturing capabilities and thirdly because the vast, vast majority of vehicle components are going to be identical between LHD and RHD models anyway. Finally, even if Australia switched to LHD, the vehicles would still need to be built to Australia's vehicle design regulations (which I expect is where the bulk of design and manufacturing cost difference goes), so you still wouldn't be able to just import any random car and drive it off the dock.
HOWEVER, the overriding issue here is not so much that Australia is massively expensive in terms of cost of living (though it's certainly the highest it's probably been, ever, that will change as the real estate market crashes/deflates over the next few years), it's that the USA is incredibly cheap compared to the rest of the world. There's a reason lots of Europeans come on annual shopping trips to the USA.
I don't know that I buy that. Foreign-manufactured goods generally cost about the same everywhere, so I seriously doubt it costs much more to buy a computer or big-screen TV or a car in Australia than it does in America.
Well, it does. Cars range from 50% (for cheap Japanese vehicles like the Mazda3) to 150% (for European luxury cars like a BMW 550) more expensive. TVs are "only" about 30% more an average, except at the high end where it's more like 100%.
Housing is generally the biggest difference place-to-place, and what I've seen of Australia is that housing is really expensive there for some odd reason. However, there's more to your daily budget than housing.
Housing is expensive because Australia's real estate market has not yet had its crash. However, that's really only true of house buyers - rents have increased roughly in line with historical norms (since rent is actually limited by income, rather than bank lending policies).
Food here is also about twice as much - a significant (and unavoidable) part of any budget. Utilities (electricity, power, etc) are in the same boat, as are clothes and, well, like I said, pretty much everything.
I've just moved from the US to Australia. The cost of living is _significantly_ higher, even in a relatively "lower cost" city like Brisbane. I would need to be earning at least 50% more to get close to the same lifestyle I had in the US.
Or better yet, move to another country: according to the first comment on that page above, teachers in Australia get $56k right out of college (last I checked, AUD was pretty much at parity with USD).
The AUD is actually higher, but pretty much everything costs (at least) twice as much as it does in the USA, so you'd be no better off.
Airlines with outstanding reputation for timliness and customer service probably could charge $25-$50 more per ticket and have the customers grateful for it.
They couldn't, because the vast majority of their customers don't fly frequently enough to care, and/or purchase solely based on price.
People who do fly frequently enough to care, are generally protected and/or bought off by their frequent flyer status (frequent flyer programs in the US are _very_ generous).
No. Especially when one takes into account it was a few _years_ after OS X was released that it became reasonably usable from a performance perspective.
The Apple revival started with the iMac, and was cemented by the iPod. Both occurred years before OS X was a meaningful factor.
Word and IE both handle a reboot just fine, but I think notepad is just too old to handle it.
Notepad is basically just a textedit control wrapped in a window. It's not so much a matter of "not handling it" as being "not even vaguely meant for anything except very quick and dirty textfile viewing".
What's the best practice when reinstalling Windows from disc so that the computer doesn't get owned before it finishes downloading the updates over a slow Internet connection?
Assuming you have XP SP2 or newer, nothing. The firewall is enabled by default.
If you only have XP, you'll have to manually enable the firewall first.
Does Microsoft pull crap like considering my copy of Windows 7 no longer validly licensed if I travel to another country?
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These two statements do not seem to agree with each other.
Well, it's their own fault. If they just worked harder and got a job with a defense contractor, they'd have excellent healthcare !
This is actually one - if not the only - are where banking in the US is actually ahead. Credit cards are accepted basically everywhere, for any purchase, with no surcharges. You can buy a chocolate bar with a credit card and no-one will even blink.
In many (most ?) other countries, the use of credit cards for small purchases (usually <$10) is strongly discouraged, if not outright refused, since pretty much every CC transaction attracts a 1.5% - 4% surcharge. This also means that for larger transactions (large pieces of electronics, furniture, cars, etc - usually anything over about $2,000) the merchant will actually pass the surcharge on in its entirety.
If you have some *actual* links to people being convicted for this sort of thing (without some other factor being involved), then that would be interesting. However, this is just hearsay.
As I said, pretty much every example of people supposedly being charged for defending themselves I've ever actually looked into, either wasn't really self defence, or the genuine self-defence was subsequently followed by something that could not be considered self defence.
Except it's not. If you genuinely have to *defend* yourself (ie: the person actually attacks you rather than just talking), you're within your legal rights.
Retreat is pretty much always the best option (from a survival perspective) anyway.
The only examples of this "kind" of thing happening is when said person "defending themselves" did something that was most certainly not defense - like, say, shooting someone while they were running away.
You lose the overhead of duplication in the definition and regulation of weights and measures standards ?
I thought it was constantly fought and defeated by the kinds of people who cut up their drivers license and think the census is huge conspiracy ?
Compare the relevant land areas and population densities and you might see a possible reason for the higher costs.
It's not quite that simple. Look at Switzerland and Canada.
Careful. Waving irony like that around could take someone's eye out.
You claim the costs are vast and the benefits minimal, yet have demonstrated no actual cost whatsoever.
The two major objectives in reducing gun proliferation, and applying restrictions to gun ownership, are:
* Minimising accidents
* Making it more difficult for J Random Crazy Guy to go postal
You might want to read up on a concept called "defense in depth". Same principle. Just because the results are not perfect does not mean they don't exist.
You can get a temporary permit for up to (I believe) 12 months for a LHD vehicle. I think there are also limited user permits (eg: 90 days/year). For obvious reasons (I was moving back permanently, or at least for many years) I don't know a lot about short-term arrangements.
(To a large degree this whole scenario is simply reflective of the much looser restrictions around most aspects of vehicle ownership in the typical USA state as compared to other countries. Eg: when I was living in AZ, it would appear you could register just about anything with an engine and brake lights, and licenses didn't expire for decades.)
IME, for people in developed countries, emigration is largely a lifestyle, not economic, decision. If it is an economic decision, it's one with a long term (10-20+ years) timeline (ie: short term and relatively small expenses like cars aren't really a factor) or it's for extremely lucrative financial returns (ie: costs aren't really an issue).
Having moved countries myself a couple of times now, I cannot imagine many good reasons to bring a car along (or, indeed, anything else that doesn't fit in a few suitcases - unless you're moving *out* of the USA where everything is so cheap, in which case you buy up a whole household before you leave and pack it into a container like we did). The raw import (and subsequent re-export) costs alone would likely soak up most of the possible cost savings, and that's before accounting for the dramatically higher insurance you'd be paying, the huge difficulties if you ever wanted to sell it, higher repair costs, the paperwork hassles, and the inconvenience of not having the car anyway for ~2 months on either end of the move. I know plenty of people who have moved to and from Australia (and other countries) for extended periods of time. Most of them never considered bringing vehicles (in either direction) to be a particularly feasible plan.
If your car is particularly old & unique, and/or expensive, than can change the equation somewhat. But in the former case it will likely fall into one of the exception categories and in the latter case you probably have the money to either meet the import costs, or simply buy the local version.
(Obviously the situation is significantly different if you're moving between countries that have land connections - but most of those don't have the sorts of restrictions we're talking about.)
I would be surprised if even 5% of the components *needed* to be different between a LHD and RHD variant of the same car (no reason for anything rear of the dashboard to be different, even most of the dash components will be the same or simply mirror-flipped - the only major engineering differences will be in the steering and front suspension). There's almost certainly more differences between the multiple models and options within a vehicle family.
A certain amount of "because they can" (wages are higher here on average as well, after all) but also I believe because there's only one or two top-level distributors/importers in the country (ie: little competition). There is also a degree of simple protectionism (taxes applied to imports).
Broadly speaking, it can't be done. To register a LHD vehicle in Australia requires it to be very old and/or of historical value. If you imported a remotely modern LHD car, you would need to have it converted to RHD. Having lived in Europe for a few years, witnessed people driving cars "on the wrong side", and done it myself, I don't have a problem with this. Driving a RHD car in a LHD country (or vice versa) is dangerous.
You would also need to have it brought up to spec with Australian vehicle standards (almost certainly costing more than you would save). Further, if it's a vehicle that's actually sold locally, or that you have owned for less than 12 months while living overseas, import duties are applied so it ends up costing as much as (if not more than) the local version anyway. Finally, thanks to numerous people rorting the personal imports system to resell vehicles, ex-pats are now only allowed to import one vehicle every five years before the import duties start kicking in regardless.
Basically, unless you're looking at a particular unique or expensive vehicle, and/or you haven't personally owned while living overseas it for at least a year before importing it, it's not (even close to being) worth importing a car.
Importing from the UK is somewhat better because you avoid the need for a LHD->RHD conversion, but the import duties still kick in if the vehicle doesn't fall under the personal imports scheme (ie: owned it for 12+ months while living overseas).
I have numerous friends living in the UK and have seriously considered buying them a vehicle to own for 12 months, importing back to Australia and then having it "sold" to me (though this only works cost-wise for more expensive vehicles - I was eyeballing a BMW M5), but a) it requires all the money up front, b) I'd have to wait for 12 months and c) could become an ugly situation.
Other RHD countries are a large chunk of southern Africa, India, New Zealand and a decent chunk of the SW Pacific. However, I struggle to believe the LHD/RHD factor makes a significant (if any) difference in price. Firstly because the volume of vehicles going to RHD markets, while smaller, is hardly trivial, secondly because of modern design and manufacturing capabilities and thirdly because the vast, vast majority of vehicle components are going to be identical between LHD and RHD models anyway. Finally, even if Australia switched to LHD, the vehicles would still need to be built to Australia's vehicle design regulations (which I expect is where the bulk of design and manufacturing cost difference goes), so you still wouldn't be able to just import any random car and drive it off the dock.
HOWEVER, the overriding issue here is not so much that Australia is massively expensive in terms of cost of living (though it's certainly the highest it's probably been, ever, that will change as the real estate market crashes/deflates over the next few years), it's that the USA is incredibly cheap compared to the rest of the world. There's a reason lots of Europeans come on annual shopping trips to the USA.
Well, it does. Cars range from 50% (for cheap Japanese vehicles like the Mazda3) to 150% (for European luxury cars like a BMW 550) more expensive. TVs are "only" about 30% more an average, except at the high end where it's more like 100%.
Housing is expensive because Australia's real estate market has not yet had its crash. However, that's really only true of house buyers - rents have increased roughly in line with historical norms (since rent is actually limited by income, rather than bank lending policies).
Food here is also about twice as much - a significant (and unavoidable) part of any budget. Utilities (electricity, power, etc) are in the same boat, as are clothes and, well, like I said, pretty much everything.
I've just moved from the US to Australia. The cost of living is _significantly_ higher, even in a relatively "lower cost" city like Brisbane. I would need to be earning at least 50% more to get close to the same lifestyle I had in the US.
The AUD is actually higher, but pretty much everything costs (at least) twice as much as it does in the USA, so you'd be no better off.
Not by anyone outside the US they couldn't.
Pretty much anywhere else in the Western world, the Democrats would be a right-wing party.
A bold assertion. Evidence ?
Best troll I've seen for weeks.
9/10
They couldn't, because the vast majority of their customers don't fly frequently enough to care, and/or purchase solely based on price.
People who do fly frequently enough to care, are generally protected and/or bought off by their frequent flyer status (frequent flyer programs in the US are _very_ generous).
The first time or the second time ?
No. Especially when one takes into account it was a few _years_ after OS X was released that it became reasonably usable from a performance perspective.
The Apple revival started with the iMac, and was cemented by the iPod. Both occurred years before OS X was a meaningful factor.
Please define what an "OS" is.
John Rau, however, is not.
Notepad is basically just a textedit control wrapped in a window. It's not so much a matter of "not handling it" as being "not even vaguely meant for anything except very quick and dirty textfile viewing".
SP2 just enables the firewall by default. It's present in all versions of XP.
Assuming you have XP SP2 or newer, nothing. The firewall is enabled by default.
If you only have XP, you'll have to manually enable the firewall first.
No. Nor have they ever done that.