That's not a valid comparison.
Firstly, it's much more like voting for the Republicans in the House elections since the PM has legislative power rather than just executive.
More importantly, the elections were run on completely different issues. Howard didn't run the budget at a huge deficit. Rudd had very little policy differences to Howard.
The Republicans are far-right by Australian standards, the Liberals are centre-right. They don't outrightly oppose socialised health care, for instance.
This still has the potential to end up horribly wrong.
Possibly, but at least they haven't made a new Telstra by keeping the retail separate, the new company will be wholesale only and I would think they'd legislate to keep it that way, so all of the resellers will be competing on an even footing, unlike the current situation - where Telstra wholesales to its retail competitors.
You put 'Liberal' in quotes and say 'conservative' as if there is a socially liberal alternative. Neither major party in Australia is socially liberal as a whole; as evidenced by the filtering plan, Labor are a bunch of populist fascists. The Liberal party includes both small-l (social) liberals and right-wing conservatives, they're all "liberal" in the economic sense.
Are you just looking at Telstra's pricing? Those are not realistic prices. Try Whirlpool's Broadband Choice search. I count 11 plans that have more than 16GB for less than $50. That's in Brisbane, but if anything there'd be more choice in Victoria. Then there's plans with large off peak quota that aren't included in the search, like Exetel's 6GB+54GB for $40.
Probably because college is optional whereas for a 14 year old schooling is compulsory. If you want to waste the money you're paying for college that's your choice, but a 14 year old isn't considered mature enough to decide that they want to ruin their future by not being educated.
It's possible, Steve Fielding is obviously going to vote for it and if they just tacked on an amendment for making ISPs greener or something and something about gambling they could conceivably win over the Greens and Xenophon.
There's probably a tenuous argument that it breaches the implied right to freedom of political communication that the High Court found in the constitution but there aren't very many rights actually in the constitution and we don't have a Bill of Rights.
The trial is opt-in on the customers' part and one of the ISPs actually provides a 'clean feed' as its service, so the customers there actually want to be censored.
If/when it passes the trial stage then it will be universal and compulsory so there won't be an ISP to switch to.
Your analogy to rape or mugging fails when you consider that she voluntarily gave the money away, in the case of rape or a mugging the person is threatened with violence or physically forced, this woman simply handed away her life savings under no duress. The scammers are bad people, certainly, but falling for the scam requires you to be severely stupid.
The fact that it's now partially government owned doesn't make it the largest, no, but the fact that previously it was the only choice and is the default choice does, along with the fact that a large part of the non-techie crowd are unaware of any real alternatives besides Optus. And I would think Optus are the 2nd largest because the majority of people don't realise the variety of ISPs available and Optus are the only others that are well known in the maintstream.
Surely there's more than those 3 alternative ISPs on your DSLAM. It's quite surprising (and ridiculous) how many different small ISPs there are when you use Whirlpool's Broadband Choice search. I'd bet you could get Exetel and I know their prices are much better than iiNet's, I just wish I'd seen them before I signed my contract with iiNet.
How is iiNet Australia's largest ISP? That's ludicrous. Telstra Bigpond is by far the largest due to their former government monopoly, Optus would be a 2nd and then perhaps iiNet would be there along with a dozen other medium sized providers.
Canberra too. But to be fair national capitals where government workers are required to go are hardly a proper comparison. Are there any examples that weren't created as seats of government?
You can also toggle between displaying images, displaying cached images only and not displaying images. If you need an image you can right click it and select reload image.
It's probably the most helpful feature when you're on a slow connection or saving bytes.
Unfortunately we still have the best part of 2 years to wait to get rid of this bunch of morons, and with the way the Opposition are going we'll most likely get them for another term.
Our best chance is to simply hope that this doesn't pass the non-Government controlled Senate.
Well to be picky, we have "freedom of communication" in relation to political matters, at least as long as the High Court says that that's what the Constitution says.
Even better than that, I live in Australia and I can download and watch a TV episode weeks to months before it broadcasts here. These download services won't even sell to me. Admittedly this is related to the networks here and their licensing agreements, and they are getting better in airing the new shows soon after they broadcast in the US, but I'll still be watching Heroes at least a few days earlier when it starts up again, and Amazon or iTunes wouldn't sell it to me if I missed it on TV after it aired.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not a valid comparison. Firstly, it's much more like voting for the Republicans in the House elections since the PM has legislative power rather than just executive. More importantly, the elections were run on completely different issues. Howard didn't run the budget at a huge deficit. Rudd had very little policy differences to Howard. The Republicans are far-right by Australian standards, the Liberals are centre-right. They don't outrightly oppose socialised health care, for instance.
This still has the potential to end up horribly wrong.
Possibly, but at least they haven't made a new Telstra by keeping the retail separate, the new company will be wholesale only and I would think they'd legislate to keep it that way, so all of the resellers will be competing on an even footing, unlike the current situation - where Telstra wholesales to its retail competitors.
You put 'Liberal' in quotes and say 'conservative' as if there is a socially liberal alternative. Neither major party in Australia is socially liberal as a whole; as evidenced by the filtering plan, Labor are a bunch of populist fascists. The Liberal party includes both small-l (social) liberals and right-wing conservatives, they're all "liberal" in the economic sense.
Are you just looking at Telstra's pricing? Those are not realistic prices. Try Whirlpool's Broadband Choice search. I count 11 plans that have more than 16GB for less than $50. That's in Brisbane, but if anything there'd be more choice in Victoria. Then there's plans with large off peak quota that aren't included in the search, like Exetel's 6GB+54GB for $40.
Actually the majority of Labor's support was from the younger generations...
Were you trying to send the photo in ASCII? Otherwise I'm not surprised that you couldn't use the SMS to send multimedia, that's what MMS is for.
Probably because college is optional whereas for a 14 year old schooling is compulsory. If you want to waste the money you're paying for college that's your choice, but a 14 year old isn't considered mature enough to decide that they want to ruin their future by not being educated.
Thanks, I hadn't seen that. This makes me a little less worried about this horrible plan passing.
It's possible, Steve Fielding is obviously going to vote for it and if they just tacked on an amendment for making ISPs greener or something and something about gambling they could conceivably win over the Greens and Xenophon.
There's probably a tenuous argument that it breaches the implied right to freedom of political communication that the High Court found in the constitution but there aren't very many rights actually in the constitution and we don't have a Bill of Rights.
The trial is opt-in on the customers' part and one of the ISPs actually provides a 'clean feed' as its service, so the customers there actually want to be censored. If/when it passes the trial stage then it will be universal and compulsory so there won't be an ISP to switch to.
Yes, because the Internet is just for porn and Facebook, right?
No, there's Slashdot as well!
Actually I knew we were getting a bunch of cock-wads and didn't vote for them. Those cock-wads would prefer it if you would mispell Labour as Labor.
Your analogy to rape or mugging fails when you consider that she voluntarily gave the money away, in the case of rape or a mugging the person is threatened with violence or physically forced, this woman simply handed away her life savings under no duress. The scammers are bad people, certainly, but falling for the scam requires you to be severely stupid.
The fact that it's now partially government owned doesn't make it the largest, no, but the fact that previously it was the only choice and is the default choice does, along with the fact that a large part of the non-techie crowd are unaware of any real alternatives besides Optus. And I would think Optus are the 2nd largest because the majority of people don't realise the variety of ISPs available and Optus are the only others that are well known in the maintstream.
Surely there's more than those 3 alternative ISPs on your DSLAM. It's quite surprising (and ridiculous) how many different small ISPs there are when you use Whirlpool's Broadband Choice search. I'd bet you could get Exetel and I know their prices are much better than iiNet's, I just wish I'd seen them before I signed my contract with iiNet.
How is iiNet Australia's largest ISP? That's ludicrous. Telstra Bigpond is by far the largest due to their former government monopoly, Optus would be a 2nd and then perhaps iiNet would be there along with a dozen other medium sized providers.
Canberra too. But to be fair national capitals where government workers are required to go are hardly a proper comparison. Are there any examples that weren't created as seats of government?
I live in Brisbane, you insensitive clod; I wouldn't enjoy being radiated!
You can also toggle between displaying images, displaying cached images only and not displaying images. If you need an image you can right click it and select reload image.
It's probably the most helpful feature when you're on a slow connection or saving bytes.
Unfortunately we still have the best part of 2 years to wait to get rid of this bunch of morons, and with the way the Opposition are going we'll most likely get them for another term.
Our best chance is to simply hope that this doesn't pass the non-Government controlled Senate.
Well to be picky, we have "freedom of communication" in relation to political matters, at least as long as the High Court says that that's what the Constitution says.
Not quite the same as real free speech though.
mis-moderated
If the High Court is sitting with all 7 judges, however, it may be because they are thinking of changing this
With the judges we have, that seems unlikely. This is based on nothing related to the actual case itself, just the judges. Perhaps Kirby will dissent.
Even better than that, I live in Australia and I can download and watch a TV episode weeks to months before it broadcasts here. These download services won't even sell to me.
Admittedly this is related to the networks here and their licensing agreements, and they are getting better in airing the new shows soon after they broadcast in the US, but I'll still be watching Heroes at least a few days earlier when it starts up again, and Amazon or iTunes wouldn't sell it to me if I missed it on TV after it aired.