An easy (and capitalist) solution is to simply make copyright free for the first year and start charging per year after that.

The only issue with this I can think of is that it may encourage some no talent artists (I.E. most of them) to blatantly copy old works and sell them as their own, but this is easily fixed by having a longer automatic copyright term for commercial purposes only.

This is also something that is never and realistically can never be enforced.

By the sounds of it, most of the games are mobile games (I still have trouble accepting mobile games as proper games, they're the modern equivalent of the old flash games I used to play in a browser in the early 00's) so a lot of the sales will never take place in Australia, the method of distribution doesn't take place in Australia and the method of distribution is pretty much unstoppable. This is just government bureaucracy trying to say it's doing something.

However this is the kind of shit that happens when elect an ultra conservative government. As an Australian this wasn't even on my radar and realistically, still isn't because we have so many other problems such as the government trying to make it possible for them to strip citizenship (in the name of fighting teh terr'sts), trying to neuter the ABC, trying to strip the public health and education systems, increasing unemployment and destroying the economy. Australia elected it's own George W Bush in Tony Abbott and yes, we were warned.

You honestly think airlines haven't considered that. They figured out it costs more than it will save.

Besides that, do you think an airport rent-a-cop is going to tell Mr SteroidJunkie that he has to pay and Mr Tubby gets through for free he weighs more than the Chubster?

BTW, when you fly on light aircraft in commercial service like a Dash-8, you do get weighed because that plane has a very low MTOW. There's a reason they know it's unworkable.

Virgin still operates the EMB 190's between some cities on low volume flights. They're slowly being replaced by A320's and 737's though. But regional flights are still dominated by small jets, 717's Fokker 70's, Dash 8's and even old BAe146's.

The Regional jets aren't bad if they're being used correctly. I've flown between Panama and Santiago, DR on a EMB 190 and it was fine but COPA are actually a decent airline (checked baggage, free seat selection, food and drink) but that was only a 3 hour flight (as a fellow Aussie, you'd know that's a trip to the shops where we come from) and wasn't packed in like sardines. They had a 2-2 configuration in the seats so they were the same size as the ones on a 737. Airlines that try to cram a 2-3 or even 3-3 into an EMB E-Jet or 717 are insane.

Pretty much this.

However this means that they will have to allocate storage for baggage instead of selling that storage for cargo... Erm, which means ticket prices go up.

You can fly from LA to DC for $170 If you would like to remember how bad prices used to be, feel free to come to Australia where Perth to Sydney (roughly the same amount of air time) is around $400.

Realistically US airlines are going to need to do something about oversized carry ons but they're probably going to go along the same route as budget airlines in other parts of the world. Weight and size restrictions for carry ons.

As a side note, this is one of the reasons I prefer to fly Southwest when in the States. Having travelled from Australia I'm going to have a checked bag regardless of if I'm only spending a few days at my destination.

This sir, is completely and utterly not true.

The US uses US Customary Units. The Imperial system was established in the English parliament as the Weights and Measures act of 1824, near to some 50 years after the US cut the apron strings. To say they are advanced as the Imperial system is a utter falsification.

Switch to an IP voice provider. Then you just need an internet connection and a IP handest (or even a soft client). Only a fax machine requires an old style POTS analogue line in this day and age... and if you need a fax, get a separate line and a fax machine that doesn't accept calls.

I've set up Asterisk on an IP line for a few small businesses for just this purpose (killing spam and robocalls), just put it on a VM for no additional cost (well practically no running cost). Asterisk is not hard to set up at all and virtualising it makes backups and restores easy, all you need to do to kill most robocalls is to have an automated IVR menu that has a short welcome message (10-15 sec) and forces the user to press a key, something like "Welcome to Blah Co, Melbournes premier suppliers of organic, all natural, gluten free defence solutions. Please press 0 to talk to a representative."

At home, I've had my landline cut off for a decade. There is nothing I need it for and it's too expensive to robocall my mobile so I never get hassled.

BTW, if you really want the hardware for cheap, look second hand.

My main defence against robocalls is not having a landline telephone.

Its become completely unnecessary to have one in Australia as you can get landline internet without phone services these days. Cold calling mobile phones costs a lot more money so its not viable to do that. Even bulk SMS is too expensive (for once, the high cost of everything in Australia is working out in my favour).

As for corporate phones, every phone system these days has a provision for routing external calls to an IVR menu these days. All you need to do to kill robocalls is to have the welcome message go for 10-15 seconds and then force a keypress, the same as your method.

The problem with sequels is that they often fail as they have to have original scripts.

Now remakes, there's a safe bet.

This is what Google did with its applications ages ago and recommends manufacturers do.
b Google has solved the problem of carriers controlling updates to a large degree by uncoupling applications from the OS, I cant speak for HTC users as I've been on the Nexus phones for a few years now but for us, it's been a fantastic success (in fact Gmail updated itself last night). Like you said, the only thing they cant update this way is Android itself, but there are other ways around that (for nexus phones, the images can be downloaded and installed manually).

Most, if not all of my passwords are 5 characters.

I simply take a four letter word like "farm" and a number and capitalise the first letter so it becomes "Farm4". Then I simply multiply that to meet complexity requirements and add a special character corresponding to the number if need be so it becomes something like "Farm4farm4", "Farm4$farm4$" or "Farm4farm4farm4farm4farm4" but all I need to remember is "Farm4" and how many times it is duplicated.

The problem with most people is that they trust explicitly rather than being careful when they need to be and lax when high security is unnecessary. I break the cardinal password rule when dealing with things like online forums and sites that I consider disposable and have no access to sensitive information, I use the same password and let Firefox or Chrome remember it. When it comes to things like my bank, important email accounts, phone and Internet services, my work account, I use a unique password and I dont allow anything to remember it.

However I'll never use an external service to remember my password, not even for something I'd consider disposable like my OzHonda forum login. The recent LastPass hack has demonstrated why.

Pretty much. AirBNB offers and arranges the service, takes the payment and pays the employee their cut. The people renting out the room just provide the service.

Nope and if you need it explained to you as to why, you've pretty much failed Introduction to Basic Economics (economics 101 for those in the US). But here goes (because no doubt you have failed intro to basic econ), Ebay sellers are more akin to cottage industries and are already treated in this fashion. They're the online equivalent of people selling trinkets from a van at a swap meet or cupcakes from a stall at a school so they're subject to the same rules. This doesn't change just because they're doing it with a computer.

The central theme of your complaint is that medallions are expensive, not that they're unnecessary.

The thing is, in places with no regulations you have the problem of oversupply which either means you have hundreds of taxis sitting out of work as there is only so much demand or the oversupply problem is solved through other means. Usually this means that taxi operators set themselves up into gangs, fight over turf and if they become powerful enough, destroy public transport systems.

Taxi licensing systems prevent this by regulating supply and drivers as to prevent the formation of gangs.

I've lived in places where the "free market" regulated the industry, Phuket, Thailand. Paying off the cops was fantastic, as were the fact that every taxi ride was an adventure as you didn't know whether the drivers lack of driving skill or penchant to use the firearm he kept in the glove box would kill you first. You really need to live somewhere where regulations dont really exist to appreciate just how fucked up the notion of "the free market will fix it" really is.

Are you seriously trying to refute it.

If so, please exercise your free market right to start up a taxi service in unregulated Phuket and see how far you get.