What makes your country better than any other?
I will answer for my country, Romania:INTERNET ACCESS is an advantage (as for great speeds and low costs), compared to US and most other West European countries nowdays.The reason is simple: after 1990, Romania allowed a maze of totally unregulated “neighborhood networks” to appear. More precise, people started to connect to neighbours via simple UTP cables passed from house to house, from balcony to balcony, without paying any official fee and asking permission to no one. So we quickly had great speeds (please compare even a FastEthernet link via UTP cable, 100 Mbps, with dial-up 56 kbps or even common ADSL speeds!) and low costs (the cost of the wire itself, some cheap switches, some tiny electrical power…)The main disadvantage of the system resides in its lack of uniformity over the territory. It’s very simple to connect the most dense areas (like cities, smaller towns or even villages) and get fast speeds quickly (even tens of Gigabits!), but the WAN connections over long distances or access to more remote points remains difficult, since it implies prohibitive costs. It’s a mixed blessing, that deepens the “digital divide” between large cities and more disadvantaged small communities.
Why is Australia's internet so bad?
Because it’s speeds are inconsistent, some places have 100mbit and others only 4mbit.Because technology has not improved in some areas in over 10 years. I got 7.5mbit DSL2 10 years ago and since then my connection speed has slowly degraded to 4mbit.Because there is no competition in some areas. My exchange only has Telstra DSLAMs in it. Telstra are not know for competitive pricing. So no matter which ISP I choose they have to pass the wholesale cost onto me.Because the rest of the world has fast internet and build their software and devices around this being the standard.Because Xbox software purchased on disk requires a 20 gig updates before being able to run.Because every device wants to do updates.Because each person has at least 2 internet enabled devices, all trying to share the same internet connection.Because companies sell subscriptions that barely work with 4mbit, let alone sharing that 4mbit with other devices.Because the world is switching to HTTPS making local caching impossible.Because our PM blames bad internet on our choice of where we are living.Because the issues are technical and difficult to explain that to my wife why we are paying double for our internet where ISPs are advertising unlimited at half our cost and why we can’t go on one of those plans.sorry for the rant, I’ve been extremely unhappy with my internet for a few years and cannot do anything about it. I got even more annoyed after hearing FTTH was canned.
It is an historic day in Australia as same-sex marriage has been legalized. What does this mean to you?
I am not LGBT - but I never got the logic or purpose of preventing that small section of the community having access to the same rights that the rest of us take for granted. Yes to Same Sex Marriage does not mean the rest of us have to turn gay and take on a gay partner - hence I am unable to understand the great danger that made 40% of the population vote No. People who voted against are raining on somebody else's parade out of sheer cussedness.In the normal election we vote on issues that affect us all - however in this postal survey the government spent $ 100 million to ask 100% of the population on an issue that affects at most about 5% of the population - this says more about Liberal party politics than Aussie society.The irony is not lost that the only people who agree with Tony Abbot and Peter Dutton on the evils of SSM are the immigrants ! This is same the group that has been held to be the root of all evils besetting Aussie society by Abbot and Dutton!The best thing about the Postal survey is that now we have an exact count of number of dickheads here!!I cannot help but highlight the cheek of the Anglican and Catholic churches in asking their parishioners to vote No - when the Royal commission has just pointed out over 7% of the priests in these august institutions were accused of child sex abuse- mostly against boys!
Pro-choice people: Do you find rude, ignorant comments from anti-choicers to be scary or amusing?
"Pro-choice people: Do you find rude, ignorant comments from anti-choicers to be scary or amusing?" They're Pathetic.... Standard answer to this one cos I'm sick of it... *******************Ignore what doesn’t pertain to you******************* EVERYONE is PRO-life... excepting maybe psychopaths. I am PRO choice and you are ANTI choice... let's call it what it is... Not some emotive term denigrating people who believe in freedom of choice. It sounds very much like you're another willing tool of the religious right, driven by misogynistic wrinkled old men. The modus operandi of ANTI choicers is to pick on the weak and vulnerable. The ANTI choicers' main tools of trade are FEAR, GUILT, lies and hypocrisy. I am against abortion BUT 1. I am a man; I should have NO say. 2. I am NOT that girl; I should have NO say. I'm pro-choice, not pro-abortion… Religion needs to stay out of a woman's vagina; it has no business there. Only the terminally gullible believe that making abortion illegal makes it stop... it just drives it underground and kills more women. There is nothing I can think of more barbaric than forcing a girl-woman to gestate unwillingly. AND… IF men could become pregnant, abortion would NOT be an issue and you know it. Tony Abbott (Australian Catholic sexist politician): Abortion is the easy way out. Yeah… right, Tony. http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/15384367/ireland-probes-death-of-woman-refused-abortion/ Addendum: “Our tax dollars already go into welfare, child protection programs, and abuse counseling for underprivileged children. These are necessary programs, but wouldn't be great if they could be less necessary? If more children were wanted and were born to people who were emotionally prepared to be parents these and other programs would not be as flooded as they currently are by neglected, unloved children. I'd rather pay for someone's abortion, than pay for 18 years of child care. Giving women access to reproductive health choices, including birth control and elective abortion means healthier, happier families, and less strain on the tax payer.” ~