I'd rather have ratings done by a non-government funded agency.
Wat. How will having a private entity help with non-biased labeling?
This regulatory label was bought to you by the Globex corporation, Globex, we make tomorrow, today. Before we display the regulatory information please watch this short advertisement.
Contrast this with Nissan, another Japanese automobile manufacturer, which has invested so deeply into battery technology that if the Leaf were to fail, it's quite likely that they'd become a battery company. (A while back, I read (or watched?) a really compelling article/documentary on Nissan's battery research. It concluded that Nissan was gambling so heavily on both its own future with the Leaf and the future of automobiles as being electric that the company would likely stop making cars if the Leaf were to fail. Sorry I can't find a good citation to that.)
You cant find a citation because it isn't true.
Nissan sells 5,000,000 cars per year and made US$3 billion in profit last FY. Nissan makes good cars that sell well, pretty much the antithesis of American car corporations, so they're quite safe.
The Leaf has sold 100,000 units worldwide since 2010... which is actually 45% of the total EV's sold in that time.
Besides, I wouldn't read too much into names. Nissan made a car called the Skyline that was pretty low to the ground and the Pulsar doesn't emit radiation. Mostly they're picked because it sounds good, Mirai just happens to be good in English as well as Japanese.
Gasoline does not explode (detonate) under STP conditions, no matter what the concentration, distribution, environment geometry, you name it. It simply doesn't. In ideal situations you can get a rapid conflagration, but even that requires very specific, often hard to achieve conditions. What you linked is a page about car fires, not explosions. Simply burning the gasoline, over a period of minutes.
If you're in the car when this happens, it's still going to be bad.
I blame hollywood for the common misconception that cars and petrol tanks explode.
generally calculated to average 2 tons, even "big" SUVs aren't usually as heavy as their size might imply. I don't like SUVs either, but that's no excuse for bad policy.
2 tonnes is heavy for a car. It is fucking insane for an average.
To put the numbers into perspective. here's some weights of the top selling cars in the US from 2013 that aren't SUV's or pickups:
Honda Accord = 1500-1670 KG
Toyota Camry = 1500-1600 KG
Honda Civic = 1200-1300 KG
Nissan Altima = 1450-1550 KG
Toyota Corolla = 1250 KG
How many heavy cars are on the road to get the average to 2 Tonnes (2 tonnes is 2000 KG for the uninitiated)? A large sedan should be between 1500 and 1800 KG, a small car should be under 1200-1400 KG and a city car should be under 1200 KG.
Your heaviest Mustang (500GT convertible) weighs in at under 1850 KG and a Chysler 300 SRT-8 just inches over at 2012 KG when weighed with fluids and a full tank (basically ready to drive). 2T is stupidly high for an average weight.
Can we please stop calling it "ride sharing"? It is no more ride sharing that a grocery store is "food sharing".
But then we'd have to call them what they are, taxis... and that means they'll have to meet the same standards and requirements as regular taxis.
Uber and Lyft will ultimately fail. Mini-cabbing (which is essentially what Uber is doing) has been legal in London for ages and the London black cabs are still around and going strong. In Australia, Uber isn't any cheaper than getting a legit taxi who has a license, insurance and may actually know where they're going.
I think Lollipop was influenced much, much more by WebOS than it was by iOS. Makes it glaringly obvious why they made that patent agreement with LG a few weeks ago.
I would agree with this, but the comparison between Android and IOS is more to do with IOS looking more and more like Android in the last 4 releases.
IOS 3 and 4 looked and behaved radically different to IOS 7, I would not be supprised if we find the IOS 9 or 10 UI had more in common with Android 4 than IOS4.
My sister changed jobs last month, handed in her Iphone 5 to her old job and got a Galaxy S5 at her new job... She had no difficulty moving between the two as the UI's perform the same these days. Once she got her head around the concept of the "long press" she was fine (and this took her all of 5 minutes).
albeit not for those users who enjoy Apple's security and hate Android's extensive malware
Fans of iOS like to trot this out, but they've never really explained where this "extensive malware" is coming from. Is it on Google Play, Amazon Appstore, F-Droid, and other major app stores in countries that use the Latin alphabet? Or is it largely confined to pirate or Chinese stores that someone in North America or Western Europe isn't likely to encounter?
Further more, it's never actually been demonstrated that this "extensive malware" is widespread in any way, shape or form. In fact the worst thing they've been able to show is a fake app that might steal some of your personal data or show you ads. We're yet to get something really bad like a mass mailing worm, DDOS or cryptolocker.
Yep, I said "yet to", as long as there's money to be made and dumb users to install it, eventually it will happen. However with things like Masque on IOS, there's no guarantee it's going to happen on Android first any more.
Haven't we learned by now that physical access to a device steamrolls every security measure put in place?? Why are we still shocked and awed by headlines like these?
Except that these can all be remote exploits.
- The Iphone 6 was pwned first via a web browser exploit allowing the exploit to escape the sandbox.
- The Samsung Galaxy S5 was second with an NFC exploit.
- The Nexus 5 was third with a Bluetooth exploit that forced a pairing between devices
All three of these can be executed remotely, however of the three only the Iphone attack escaped the sandbox. The NFC exploit used on the Samsung can be used on all NFC enabled Android phones but it uses a model specific code, so it's not a one size fits all exploit. Beyond this, the simple fix/workaround for the Android exploits is to turn off NFC and Bluetooth when not in use (I already do this anyway).
But as we're all enlightened, security minded slashdotters I'm sure none of us are keeping important information on our smartphones.
Oh, and the Windows phone was also crackd... but no-one cares about Windows phones.
You can't stop viruses that are manually installed by ridiculously dumb users unless you have virus scanners, and even then it's hit and miss. I wouldn't even call it an exploit.
B-B-B-B-But Apple said I was protected and viruses dont happen to them.
OK, I'm talking more about commercial airliners here rather than piston engined aircraft, but don't they test those engines by firing frozen chickens onto them? If a lightweight plastic drone presents such a risk to an Airbus, then I might holiday closer to home on the future. Do flocks of drones really sit around on the grass at airports waiting to throw themselves into the path of approaching aircraft?
Of course I'm not seriously suggesting that they present zero risk, until some loon packs them with explosives before deliberately placing them in a flight path.
Aircraft engine casinga are designed to contain a fan blade breaking lose. They're designed to explode outwards (as demonstrated by the Trent 900's) and aircraft are designed to fly even when you've got one engine out of commission... however.
1. Do you really want to test how well they're built on a regular basis when they're in operation.
2. Do you really want to pay more for air travel because they're replacing engines due to "drone strikes".
So sure as shit an Airbus (or Boeing) will survive a drone being sucked into engine #2, but that flight will be turning right around, disgorging it's passengers and heading to the maintenance shed for a new engine. Meanwhile you'll be placed onto later scheduled flights and you'd better hope it's not a once a day flight.
I live in Perth, Western Australia, there is nowhere close to here worth holidaying in (its shit and its expensive), so I'd rather not have my flight play chicken with some moron's drone.
The GOP is in an ongoing revolt against the party machinery. The Tea Party started that way, but got co-opted by the machinery. The revolt continues - lots of new faces in the GOP now. The potential is there, but just that.
LoL,
The Tea Party was just a ruse to prevent disaffected Republicans from not voting for the Republicans. They may as well have called it the "I cant believe its not the republicans" party. They receive almost all of their funding from the same lobbyists as the Republicans.
The Republicans are not revolting against the machine, they're feeding the machine. You've just been sucked in by good marketing.
As for the new faces, faces are replaceable, if one actually rebels, he'll be out before you know it. Its the "faceless men", the powerbrokers in the back room you need to worry about and I have no doubt they're still the same as they were when Clinton was in power... if not before Clinton.
No, they got this one wrong. Taxes should be sensible, fair, and enforceable. The current system of "use taxes" is not sensible, not fair, and not enforced at all (~98% cheat). Almost everyone evades the tax, and many don't even know they are cheating. That penalizes the small number of people that are both informed and honest. It also unfairly penalizes local merchants over internet merchants that thrive (partly) because of the tax evasion by their customers.
This was a sensible reform, and it is a shame to see it blocked.
To make taxes fair and sensible in the US you need to throw out your current tax system and start again from scratch.
Having a different tax collection for each state is pretty stupid. Most western countries have gotten rid of the old state/territory/province based sales taxes and replaced them with a single VAT (Value Added Tax) so no matter where you are you still pay the same amount of tax (and it can be easily calculated into the advertised price of goods, so the advertised price can be the purchase price).
Having been a consumer in many countries, the taxation regime in the US is almost as retarded as that of third world nations. The biggest difference is in places like the Philippines, I can avoid paying tax by paying cash (which is why almost all hotels give you a cash discount over there).
Of course they're not going to. Both the republicans and democrats are responsible for all of that.
Indeed. The GOP has a chance here - the GOP congresscritters are now younger and more diverse than the Dems. They might just turn over a new leaf. Maybe.
And just maybe, I'll arrive for my date with Seychelles Gabriel on a flying Lamborghini unicorn.
All major political parties are controlled from the back rooms, in Australia these are called the "faceless men" and no matter what party, Democrat or Republican, Labor or Tory, Labor or Liberal they are beholden to these backroom interests. As long as we have dual party systems we'll continue to have the same problems.
Multi-party governments may not be perfect but at least the deal making is removed from the back room and made public. Otherwise it's just a choice between spit or swallow.
They don't, and I don't want them to have it. Can you imagine the "social engineering" if the IRS had the authority to determine what someone "should" be paying in taxes and could go after them for that amount? Can you imagine the effect on business if they had the authority, on a whim, to go through every account in a company to decide what the company "should" be paying?
Yes, personal tax rates would lower as tax corporations are meant to pay replaces that revenue.
With lower personal taxes, we have more disposable income, more disposable income means that more people are buying more things, which means the companies selling those things are making more money. Sorry if this doesn't fit in with your nebulous threat.
Like all new ideas, it will be a huge shock when implemented, then settle down to lower levels as the new status quo.
You can almost hear the sound of CEOs packing up their suitcases and moving to a warm tax free country taking all future revenues with them... I'm afraid the answer is not that simple.
You see, it doesn't matter where the CEO's live, it matters where the company does business.
If an arrest warrant for a CEO is put out, that severely limits their travel options to countries that have no extradition treaties with the country in question, so no EU, no US and probably no SE Asia as they seem to roll over for the US whenever offered a treat. That's most of the worlds travel hubs. Meanwhile, ever asset they own in a western county is frozen and probably auctioned off for far less than their actual value.
CEO's and businesses will lose if they want to make push come to shove, they know they will lose hard which is why they're so desperate to get any conflict stopped at the legislative level.
No, the Mom and Pop likely uses a 3rd-party payment processor.
What, you thought *everyone* taking credit / debit payments have their own in-house?
I used to work for an outsourcing outfit that looked after small stores, including their EFTPOS systems and you'd be surprised how many small "mum and dad" stores used things like an EFTPOS client sitting on an unpatched XP box in the back room (half the time the staff would also be using this box for email/excel/Facebook). Using a 3rd party payment processor is expensive, you're talking about $500 p/m expensive per terminal for the most basic services. For a cafe $500 a month is the difference between being in the red and being in the black.
If you need to be convinced why you should pay cash in physical stores, go do tech support for one.
Most people who own high-end off road capable vehicles never take them off road.
A lot of the SUV's sold these days aren't even capable of being taken off road.
To go off road you need a proper four wheel drive system, not the 4x4 systems you find in most SUV's. A proper 4WD system is separated from 4x4 and AWD (All Wheel Drive) by a low range gearbox and limited slip differentials (LSD). Without a low range gearbox you wont be able to get past a puddle and without a limited slip diff you wouldn't be able to clime a slightly damp grassy slope.
In fact most don't even have underside protection (which is only something you need if you plan to take your car off road more than once).
Most SUV's can be described as "soft roaders". Not even the Ford F150 is capable of going off road, it's RWD unlike a Toyota Hilux.
Next time try a front wheel drive with decent tires. Safer and better than a 4wd in anything other than steep / deep (ie, on roads).
4WD vehicles have this funny habit of breaking all four tires loose at the same time. Front wheel drive vehicles tend to break the rear tires first, allowing you to control the vehicle with the fronts. Anyhow, it's mostly tires and driver.
4WD SUVs are fun to watch flip over. The combination of an icy road, a 4WD, a bad driver, some speed and the laws of physics can be pretty entertaining.
This.
When they say "larger cars are safer" they mean large sedan/saloon cars. SUV's and 4WD's have a high centre of gravity, which tends to cause them to roll over in accidents and rolling causes severe head and neck injuries (the big killers in car accidents). Add to this the fact that most drivers are not that competent and regularly drive beyond their ability thanks to drivers aids.
Amongst young drivers in Australia, SUV's and 4WD's are the biggest killers, killing 5 times more drivers under the age of 25 than high performance sedans and coupes.
A Toyota Camry/Aurion will be safer than a Toyota Corolla, but the Corolla will still be safer than an SUV.
Sure Australia Post, a government owned entity, gets money from it when people pay them for the service.
From a snooping perspective it makes no difference. The government can search any package it wants that is being imported into the country.
This.
If I get a packaged Fed Ex'd from the US to Australia (which is something I do on a semi regular basis) it still has to pass customs and quarantine. For some things I have to do a customs declaration as I did for some knives and a bottle of spirits that you cant get in Oz (yep you can import liquor, but you still have to pay tax on it).
So it's not a snooping issue. It's Australia post trying to make more money and stay relevant in the market in an age where traditional post is almost dead. Personally I think it's a good thing that Oz post is doing this, more competition and all that.
After reading the links it's still not clear to me why this is occurring. Is it that sellers charge Australians more just because they can, and if so, are they not able to get away with it elsewhere? Do even huge online retailers like Amazon charge different prices depending on the country the items are going to? I'd have thought the US Federal Trade Commission would be scrutinizing these practices.
For a variety of reasons.
The most obvious ones are Australian distributors with exclusivity deals - for some products like Adobe and Microsoft software, this is the primary reason why it costs more.
Others include legal requirements - taxes, duties, support, warranties and other things, some of which only apply in Australia. So an Australian using this service might lose out on that or may find they need to ship the product back to the US because the Australian depot refuses to service it for not being purchased in Australia. Or maybe Australia forces a product to be warrantied for 2 years or more, while the US version is 90 days to a year, and stuff like that usually gets factored into the price. So some Australians might get confused when the product they buy only has a 1 year warranty because it was purchased through this service rather than through the Australian distributor (where it has 2 years). Apple products come to mind for this - if you buy it in Europe, you get the 2-3 years EU law provides (and pay for it), whereas if you bought it in the US, you get standard 1 year.
Taxes are low in Australia, so you automatically lose that argument.
But the same products are cheaper in the UK and EU that have more strenuous requirements for warranties and support, so you lose that argument too.
You need to admit that things cost more because someone is profiteering. It literally costs less to fly to the US, buy an adobe product and fly back to Australia than to buy it here and there is not additional warranty provided on software. Software is pretty much sold "as is" in Australia.
The answer to this profiteering is to allow grey imports. This has worked wonders for the price of cameras.
You have to deliver the package to the prison office for inspection before prisoners can receive the delivery.
I'll have you know that in Oz, having criminals in your family history who were deported to Australia is actually a bit of a status symbol. Especially if you can trace them back to the First Fleet. I'm a bit pissed, as I can't do that as all my ancestors were free settlers.
And the reason that the Brits started dumping convicts in Australia was partly because of some war or something that they had with a former colony that stopped them from sending the prisoners there.
And in the words of some comic (who I can't remember)
I'd rather live in a country founded by convicts, than one founded by Puritans
The interesting thing about penal transportation from England is that they never transported dangerous criminals, only petty criminals. So the majority of crimes were petty theft, unable to repay debt (there were debtors prisons back then) and being Irish (because displaying an Irish flag was considered sedition). The hardened criminals like rapists, murderers, politicians were imprisoned in England. So we call them POHMS (Prisoners of His/Her Majesty).
One of the reasons Australia has such a high occurrences of Irish surnames is because a lot of the people transported here were sent here, just for being Irish.
Also the Swan River Colony (what later became Perth, Western Australia) were the last to receive convicts in 1857. Technically we didn't even become Australia until federation in 1901.
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I'd rather have ratings done by a non-government funded agency.
Wat. How will having a private entity help with non-biased labeling?
This regulatory label was bought to you by the Globex corporation, Globex, we make tomorrow, today. Before we display the regulatory information please watch this short advertisement.
Contrast this with Nissan, another Japanese automobile manufacturer, which has invested so deeply into battery technology that if the Leaf were to fail, it's quite likely that they'd become a battery company. (A while back, I read (or watched?) a really compelling article/documentary on Nissan's battery research. It concluded that Nissan was gambling so heavily on both its own future with the Leaf and the future of automobiles as being electric that the company would likely stop making cars if the Leaf were to fail. Sorry I can't find a good citation to that.)
You cant find a citation because it isn't true.
Nissan sells 5,000,000 cars per year and made US$3 billion in profit last FY. Nissan makes good cars that sell well, pretty much the antithesis of American car corporations, so they're quite safe.
The Leaf has sold 100,000 units worldwide since 2010... which is actually 45% of the total EV's sold in that time.
Besides, I wouldn't read too much into names. Nissan made a car called the Skyline that was pretty low to the ground and the Pulsar doesn't emit radiation. Mostly they're picked because it sounds good, Mirai just happens to be good in English as well as Japanese.
Gasoline does not explode (detonate) under STP conditions, no matter what the concentration, distribution, environment geometry, you name it. It simply doesn't. In ideal situations you can get a rapid conflagration, but even that requires very specific, often hard to achieve conditions. What you linked is a page about car fires, not explosions. Simply burning the gasoline, over a period of minutes.
If you're in the car when this happens, it's still going to be bad.
I blame hollywood for the common misconception that cars and petrol tanks explode.
generally calculated to average 2 tons, even "big" SUVs aren't usually as heavy as their size might imply. I don't like SUVs either, but that's no excuse for bad policy.
2 tonnes is heavy for a car. It is fucking insane for an average.
To put the numbers into perspective. here's some weights of the top selling cars in the US from 2013 that aren't SUV's or pickups:
Honda Accord = 1500-1670 KG
Toyota Camry = 1500-1600 KG
Honda Civic = 1200-1300 KG
Nissan Altima = 1450-1550 KG
Toyota Corolla = 1250 KG
How many heavy cars are on the road to get the average to 2 Tonnes (2 tonnes is 2000 KG for the uninitiated)? A large sedan should be between 1500 and 1800 KG, a small car should be under 1200-1400 KG and a city car should be under 1200 KG.
Your heaviest Mustang (500GT convertible) weighs in at under 1850 KG and a Chysler 300 SRT-8 just inches over at 2012 KG when weighed with fluids and a full tank (basically ready to drive). 2T is stupidly high for an average weight.
Can we please stop calling it "ride sharing"? It is no more ride sharing that a grocery store is "food sharing".
But then we'd have to call them what they are, taxis... and that means they'll have to meet the same standards and requirements as regular taxis. Uber and Lyft will ultimately fail. Mini-cabbing (which is essentially what Uber is doing) has been legal in London for ages and the London black cabs are still around and going strong. In Australia, Uber isn't any cheaper than getting a legit taxi who has a license, insurance and may actually know where they're going.
Here's the best thing they could do to PROVE they are respecting our privacy.
Install a simple OFF SWITCH.
Or better yet, make the entire tracking system a paid optional extra... but knowing car makers, the off switch would be a paid optional extra.
I think Lollipop was influenced much, much more by WebOS than it was by iOS. Makes it glaringly obvious why they made that patent agreement with LG a few weeks ago.
I would agree with this, but the comparison between Android and IOS is more to do with IOS looking more and more like Android in the last 4 releases.
IOS 3 and 4 looked and behaved radically different to IOS 7, I would not be supprised if we find the IOS 9 or 10 UI had more in common with Android 4 than IOS4.
My sister changed jobs last month, handed in her Iphone 5 to her old job and got a Galaxy S5 at her new job... She had no difficulty moving between the two as the UI's perform the same these days. Once she got her head around the concept of the "long press" she was fine (and this took her all of 5 minutes).
albeit not for those users who enjoy Apple's security and hate Android's extensive malware
Fans of iOS like to trot this out, but they've never really explained where this "extensive malware" is coming from. Is it on Google Play, Amazon Appstore, F-Droid, and other major app stores in countries that use the Latin alphabet? Or is it largely confined to pirate or Chinese stores that someone in North America or Western Europe isn't likely to encounter?
Further more, it's never actually been demonstrated that this "extensive malware" is widespread in any way, shape or form. In fact the worst thing they've been able to show is a fake app that might steal some of your personal data or show you ads. We're yet to get something really bad like a mass mailing worm, DDOS or cryptolocker.
Yep, I said "yet to", as long as there's money to be made and dumb users to install it, eventually it will happen. However with things like Masque on IOS, there's no guarantee it's going to happen on Android first any more.
Haven't we learned by now that physical access to a device steamrolls every security measure put in place?? Why are we still shocked and awed by headlines like these?
Except that these can all be remote exploits.
- The Iphone 6 was pwned first via a web browser exploit allowing the exploit to escape the sandbox.
- The Samsung Galaxy S5 was second with an NFC exploit.
- The Nexus 5 was third with a Bluetooth exploit that forced a pairing between devices
All three of these can be executed remotely, however of the three only the Iphone attack escaped the sandbox. The NFC exploit used on the Samsung can be used on all NFC enabled Android phones but it uses a model specific code, so it's not a one size fits all exploit. Beyond this, the simple fix/workaround for the Android exploits is to turn off NFC and Bluetooth when not in use (I already do this anyway).
But as we're all enlightened, security minded slashdotters I'm sure none of us are keeping important information on our smartphones.
Oh, and the Windows phone was also crackd... but no-one cares about Windows phones.
You can't stop viruses that are manually installed by ridiculously dumb users unless you have virus scanners, and even then it's hit and miss. I wouldn't even call it an exploit.
B-B-B-B-But Apple said I was protected and viruses dont happen to them.
OK, I'm talking more about commercial airliners here rather than piston engined aircraft, but don't they test those engines by firing frozen chickens onto them? If a lightweight plastic drone presents such a risk to an Airbus, then I might holiday closer to home on the future. Do flocks of drones really sit around on the grass at airports waiting to throw themselves into the path of approaching aircraft? Of course I'm not seriously suggesting that they present zero risk, until some loon packs them with explosives before deliberately placing them in a flight path.
Aircraft engine casinga are designed to contain a fan blade breaking lose. They're designed to explode outwards (as demonstrated by the Trent 900's) and aircraft are designed to fly even when you've got one engine out of commission... however.
1. Do you really want to test how well they're built on a regular basis when they're in operation.
2. Do you really want to pay more for air travel because they're replacing engines due to "drone strikes".
So sure as shit an Airbus (or Boeing) will survive a drone being sucked into engine #2, but that flight will be turning right around, disgorging it's passengers and heading to the maintenance shed for a new engine. Meanwhile you'll be placed onto later scheduled flights and you'd better hope it's not a once a day flight.
I live in Perth, Western Australia, there is nowhere close to here worth holidaying in (its shit and its expensive), so I'd rather not have my flight play chicken with some moron's drone.
The GOP is in an ongoing revolt against the party machinery. The Tea Party started that way, but got co-opted by the machinery. The revolt continues - lots of new faces in the GOP now. The potential is there, but just that.
LoL,
The Tea Party was just a ruse to prevent disaffected Republicans from not voting for the Republicans. They may as well have called it the "I cant believe its not the republicans" party. They receive almost all of their funding from the same lobbyists as the Republicans.
The Republicans are not revolting against the machine, they're feeding the machine. You've just been sucked in by good marketing.
As for the new faces, faces are replaceable, if one actually rebels, he'll be out before you know it. Its the "faceless men", the powerbrokers in the back room you need to worry about and I have no doubt they're still the same as they were when Clinton was in power... if not before Clinton.
but at least they got this one concept correct.
No, they got this one wrong. Taxes should be sensible, fair, and enforceable. The current system of "use taxes" is not sensible, not fair, and not enforced at all (~98% cheat). Almost everyone evades the tax, and many don't even know they are cheating. That penalizes the small number of people that are both informed and honest. It also unfairly penalizes local merchants over internet merchants that thrive (partly) because of the tax evasion by their customers.
This was a sensible reform, and it is a shame to see it blocked.
To make taxes fair and sensible in the US you need to throw out your current tax system and start again from scratch.
Having a different tax collection for each state is pretty stupid. Most western countries have gotten rid of the old state/territory/province based sales taxes and replaced them with a single VAT (Value Added Tax) so no matter where you are you still pay the same amount of tax (and it can be easily calculated into the advertised price of goods, so the advertised price can be the purchase price).
Having been a consumer in many countries, the taxation regime in the US is almost as retarded as that of third world nations. The biggest difference is in places like the Philippines, I can avoid paying tax by paying cash (which is why almost all hotels give you a cash discount over there).
Of course they're not going to. Both the republicans and democrats are responsible for all of that.
Indeed. The GOP has a chance here - the GOP congresscritters are now younger and more diverse than the Dems. They might just turn over a new leaf. Maybe.
And just maybe, I'll arrive for my date with Seychelles Gabriel on a flying Lamborghini unicorn.
All major political parties are controlled from the back rooms, in Australia these are called the "faceless men" and no matter what party, Democrat or Republican, Labor or Tory, Labor or Liberal they are beholden to these backroom interests. As long as we have dual party systems we'll continue to have the same problems.
Multi-party governments may not be perfect but at least the deal making is removed from the back room and made public. Otherwise it's just a choice between spit or swallow.
Yes, personal tax rates would lower as tax corporations are meant to pay replaces that revenue.
With lower personal taxes, we have more disposable income, more disposable income means that more people are buying more things, which means the companies selling those things are making more money. Sorry if this doesn't fit in with your nebulous threat.
Like all new ideas, it will be a huge shock when implemented, then settle down to lower levels as the new status quo.
You can almost hear the sound of CEOs packing up their suitcases and moving to a warm tax free country taking all future revenues with them... I'm afraid the answer is not that simple.
You see, it doesn't matter where the CEO's live, it matters where the company does business.
If an arrest warrant for a CEO is put out, that severely limits their travel options to countries that have no extradition treaties with the country in question, so no EU, no US and probably no SE Asia as they seem to roll over for the US whenever offered a treat. That's most of the worlds travel hubs. Meanwhile, ever asset they own in a western county is frozen and probably auctioned off for far less than their actual value.
CEO's and businesses will lose if they want to make push come to shove, they know they will lose hard which is why they're so desperate to get any conflict stopped at the legislative level.
No, the Mom and Pop likely uses a 3rd-party payment processor.
What, you thought *everyone* taking credit / debit payments have their own in-house?
I used to work for an outsourcing outfit that looked after small stores, including their EFTPOS systems and you'd be surprised how many small "mum and dad" stores used things like an EFTPOS client sitting on an unpatched XP box in the back room (half the time the staff would also be using this box for email/excel/Facebook). Using a 3rd party payment processor is expensive, you're talking about $500 p/m expensive per terminal for the most basic services. For a cafe $500 a month is the difference between being in the red and being in the black.
If you need to be convinced why you should pay cash in physical stores, go do tech support for one.
A lot of the SUV's sold these days aren't even capable of being taken off road.
To go off road you need a proper four wheel drive system, not the 4x4 systems you find in most SUV's. A proper 4WD system is separated from 4x4 and AWD (All Wheel Drive) by a low range gearbox and limited slip differentials (LSD). Without a low range gearbox you wont be able to get past a puddle and without a limited slip diff you wouldn't be able to clime a slightly damp grassy slope.
In fact most don't even have underside protection (which is only something you need if you plan to take your car off road more than once).
Most SUV's can be described as "soft roaders". Not even the Ford F150 is capable of going off road, it's RWD unlike a Toyota Hilux.
Next time try a front wheel drive with decent tires. Safer and better than a 4wd in anything other than steep / deep (ie, on roads).
4WD vehicles have this funny habit of breaking all four tires loose at the same time. Front wheel drive vehicles tend to break the rear tires first, allowing you to control the vehicle with the fronts. Anyhow, it's mostly tires and driver.
4WD SUVs are fun to watch flip over. The combination of an icy road, a 4WD, a bad driver, some speed and the laws of physics can be pretty entertaining.
This.
When they say "larger cars are safer" they mean large sedan/saloon cars. SUV's and 4WD's have a high centre of gravity, which tends to cause them to roll over in accidents and rolling causes severe head and neck injuries (the big killers in car accidents). Add to this the fact that most drivers are not that competent and regularly drive beyond their ability thanks to drivers aids.
Amongst young drivers in Australia, SUV's and 4WD's are the biggest killers, killing 5 times more drivers under the age of 25 than high performance sedans and coupes.
A Toyota Camry/Aurion will be safer than a Toyota Corolla, but the Corolla will still be safer than an SUV.
That's pheasant. Although, traditionally, it was fine to harass peasants, but peasants weren't allowed to hunt pheasants.
Bloody English.
The pleasant peasant presents the pheasant's presence.
English, because fuck you.
It sounds like you're applying a rational process to women... Stop it.
Sure Australia Post, a government owned entity, gets money from it when people pay them for the service.
From a snooping perspective it makes no difference. The government can search any package it wants that is being imported into the country.
This.
If I get a packaged Fed Ex'd from the US to Australia (which is something I do on a semi regular basis) it still has to pass customs and quarantine. For some things I have to do a customs declaration as I did for some knives and a bottle of spirits that you cant get in Oz (yep you can import liquor, but you still have to pay tax on it).
So it's not a snooping issue. It's Australia post trying to make more money and stay relevant in the market in an age where traditional post is almost dead. Personally I think it's a good thing that Oz post is doing this, more competition and all that.
For a variety of reasons.
The most obvious ones are Australian distributors with exclusivity deals - for some products like Adobe and Microsoft software, this is the primary reason why it costs more.
Others include legal requirements - taxes, duties, support, warranties and other things, some of which only apply in Australia. So an Australian using this service might lose out on that or may find they need to ship the product back to the US because the Australian depot refuses to service it for not being purchased in Australia. Or maybe Australia forces a product to be warrantied for 2 years or more, while the US version is 90 days to a year, and stuff like that usually gets factored into the price. So some Australians might get confused when the product they buy only has a 1 year warranty because it was purchased through this service rather than through the Australian distributor (where it has 2 years). Apple products come to mind for this - if you buy it in Europe, you get the 2-3 years EU law provides (and pay for it), whereas if you bought it in the US, you get standard 1 year.
Taxes are low in Australia, so you automatically lose that argument.
But the same products are cheaper in the UK and EU that have more strenuous requirements for warranties and support, so you lose that argument too.
You need to admit that things cost more because someone is profiteering. It literally costs less to fly to the US, buy an adobe product and fly back to Australia than to buy it here and there is not additional warranty provided on software. Software is pretty much sold "as is" in Australia.
The answer to this profiteering is to allow grey imports. This has worked wonders for the price of cameras.
You have to deliver the package to the prison office for inspection before prisoners can receive the delivery.
I'll have you know that in Oz, having criminals in your family history who were deported to Australia is actually a bit of a status symbol. Especially if you can trace them back to the First Fleet. I'm a bit pissed, as I can't do that as all my ancestors were free settlers.
And the reason that the Brits started dumping convicts in Australia was partly because of some war or something that they had with a former colony that stopped them from sending the prisoners there.
And in the words of some comic (who I can't remember)
I'd rather live in a country founded by convicts, than one founded by Puritans
The interesting thing about penal transportation from England is that they never transported dangerous criminals, only petty criminals. So the majority of crimes were petty theft, unable to repay debt (there were debtors prisons back then) and being Irish (because displaying an Irish flag was considered sedition). The hardened criminals like rapists, murderers, politicians were imprisoned in England. So we call them POHMS (Prisoners of His/Her Majesty).
One of the reasons Australia has such a high occurrences of Irish surnames is because a lot of the people transported here were sent here, just for being Irish.
Also the Swan River Colony (what later became Perth, Western Australia) were the last to receive convicts in 1857. Technically we didn't even become Australia until federation in 1901.
You're kidding, right?
I hope he is.
First off, the service is actually being run by Singapore Post, Australia Post are simply re-branding it.
Secondly, Australia post is a corportised entity, meaning they aren't controlled by the government despite receiving government funding.