Nope. Uber drivers are Uber employees on a casual basis. Paid for the time they work.

It would be the same if a delivery driver worked for a pizza shop and Chinese shop next door at the same time (assuming their contract of employment permitted this). In fact in Australia, this kind of arrangement is not unusual as it allows stores to split the costs of a delivery driver.

The only reason Uber does not want its employees to be listed as employees is because it gives the drivers some rights and Uber some obligations. This isn't an issue in Australia, but what does a full time Uber driver do for health care in the US?

But, with my non-humorous hat on, I would say MICROSOFT is the biggest problem on the internet.

Without Microsoft uncoupling the OS from the hardware, we'd still be in a land of 100's of barely compatible systems each with their own OS.

Who's to say that Linus would even have had the idea to code his own version of Minix if not for Microsoft's work in the 80's to make the OS a separate thing.

As much as the fanboys will hate it, I view Apple as the biggest threat in the future. They want to eliminate our ability to chose not only what computer we buy but also what we can do with our own computers. Apple are as bad, if not worse than Microsoft at paying lip service to open standards and co-opting them into ones that are dependent on their technologies.

Remember that the real damage that Microsoft did to computing and IT in general wasn't an insecure OS. It was vendor lock-in and sabotaging competitors. People are following Apple down the same path today.

This is going to be interesting to watch. If I understand the nature of the criminal complaint, there's a class of sexual crime that does not exist in the UK that he stands accused of in Sweden, and that this whole mess is going to be a giant can of worms.

What makes you think the UK govt is willing to step in for Assange, he's been a thorn in their side for ages so they'd be just as happy for any justification to throw him to the dogs.

I think this may be a sign that Sweden's getting sick of having this case open and just wants to see it resolved. They cant do that until they've spoken to Assange due to this outdated concept the Swedes hold on to called due process.

They own the copyright so it is their right to do this if they wish. It may be thuggish in your view, but it is their stuff to license and it's their job to enforce their license terms.

This is why I'm glad this kind of rent-seeking thuggery is illegal in my country.

A copyright holder is not permitted to cold call businesses to threaten legal action or extort license fees. They are not permitted to conduct raids and secret investigations and they are definitely not permitted to sue without evidence (further more, under the Australian legal system they'll be up for the defences legal costs if they try).

The BMI is a private corporation, they should not ever have the license or capabilities to enforce anything (that is the job of the police and judiciary). Even the private entities Australia permits to issue their own parking fines (mostly universities) have to get the police and courts to do the enforcement.

You're defending rent seekers, there's nothing correct or noble about that.

Citation.

Here are the reasons you dont use left foot braking, especially in an emergency situation.

1. In an emergency, you use the left foot to brace yourself against the body of the car to prevent injury (for those of us who can drive properly, this means dont clutch in when you're going to crash for the same reason).
2. You're less likely to mistake the brake for the accelerator.
3. You're less likely to press the brake as you're accelerating. In the olden days, this only meant that the brake lights would come on as you rode the pedal. In modern cars this cuts the accelerator and increasing the risk of a collision with the person behind you.

Further more, in an emergency situation it doesn't help you stop faster as your reaction speed is still the same (this is the time it takes your brain to realise something is wrong and send a message to do something) and you are more likely to continue pressing the accelerator at the same time as the brake, in many cars this means you'll be accelerating and braking at the same time, which will increase the braking distance.

Further more, left foot braking under power (which is why you do it in racing cars) can induce oversteer in FWD cars (I personally have drifted a Honda Integra using this method) meaning the driver loses control over the rear wheels.

So I re-iterate, if you're left foot braking, you're doing it wrong.

They were only introduced in the 1840's and only became popular after the American Civil War. Prior to that, human beings had the right to move between nations as they desired,

Prior to the 1840's people didn't regularly cross borders and governments didn't provide services.

Passports were invented as a necessity to international travel opening up to the middle and lower classes.

I wouldn't want to give up my Australian Passport as it grants me a lot of rights, even in foreign countries.

Because you cant imagine the chaos of hundreds of thousands of undocumented border crossings.

I guarantee every solution you have to that is either going to be stupid, useless or a passport like system (or possibly all three at once).

Its called a "ute"

The thing is, at least in western countries, that there's currently no shortage of starry-eyed suckers who have been enamoured by the Uber propaganda so they can afford to churn and burn. As people slowly figure out that they're not making money after the costs of running the vehicle or find their insurance wont pay out after an accident Uber can afford to dump them because there are still 2 others willing to take their place.

This wont last forever, eventually enough people will figure it out so all they'll be left with are the worst of the worst. Drivers that even the dodgiest courier company refuses to employ. This of course is assuming that an Uber driver doesn't cause a pileup in a country with sane laws like Australia and the UK and Uber is sued into bankruptcy by the insurance companies and local governments.

In third world nations where taxi's are already run by gangs and mafias, the Uber problem will be solved by having Uber drivers dragged out of their cars and beaten.

Chinese R&D (Remember and Duplicate).

Jokes aside, whilst a lot of Chinese educational institutions are set up for rote memorisation (this is the same across most of Asia) China still manages to produce quite a few people capable of creative and independent thought. Typically these people try to get into western universities where degrees have a good value. The sad thing is, a lot of the rote memorisation crowd are trying to do the same thing for the same reason.

You get geniuses and idiots in all cultures, I've worked with some absolutely brilliant Chinese engineers and some who are thick as two bricks.

But of course: If this was due to someone not following procedures or messing around with maintenance this can (and will) have consequences. I'm also pretty sure that one or more people will lose their job over that.

If someone was deliberately messing around with the files when they weren't meant to, that would be grounds for criminal negligence. They could end up in front of a court, not just out of work. But I agree with your point, harsh punishments dont work as much as people pretend they do. But this incident will be investigated with the attention to detail that only an aviation security board can bring. There's no point in pre-judging anyone until they've completed their investigation, it could be negligence on part of the worker, company or just an event which no-one could have foreseen. The A400 has been in service since 2009 and flying since 2007, this is the first incident.

SUV's arent built to go off road.

They dont have locking diffs, a low range gearbox and often, not even underside protection. Most SUV's dont even have full time AWD as they dont have a centre diff, they use systems like the Haldex Traction to transfer power from a latitudinally mounted engine (transverse mounted, AKA: east-west) that drives the front wheels 99% of the time.

Most SUV's are no more suited to going off road than your average Camry and get stumped by the first slightly damp grassy slope they come across.

And yes, if you're left foot braking you're doing things horribly, horribly wrong. Doubly so for heel-toe. There are very few times when you need to left foot brake or heel-toe and none of them are on the road. Keep the fancy foot work for the track and dance floor, drive properly on the road.

sure, also you get troubles installing osx on that hp-box,

I consider that a feature, not a bug.

I dont really want to be locked into a single ecosystem, I dual boot Linux and Windows, except for the box that runs ESXi but technically that also runs Windows and Linux in VMs. I haven't found a use for OSX that these two didn't cover... in fact I haven't really found a use for OSX at all.

Most of the TPP is your standard free trade agreement fare - removing tarriffs, stopping countries from favoring their local companies and punishing foreign ones, etc.

This isn't the part of the TPP that we object to.

I oppose protectionism because I've never seen an example of it that HASN'T been detrimental to the people they're trying to protect but I dont want US laws foisted onto Australia as they are in the TPP.

If the TPP only contained a trade partnership eliminating tariffs, trade restrictions and opening up the market then I and a lot of people wouldn't have an issue with it but it's not a just a trade treaty. The Intellectual Property provisions will force signatories to enforce US laws on IP. Also the fact it's being negotiated in secret is a clear sign that there are provisions in there they would rather not have people know.

Beyond this, it's a one sided treaty. Australia will be forced to drop it's tariffs on US goods but the US is maintaining a tariff on Australian agriculture.

The TPP is bad news all round if you're not an American company.

That was the PR, the reality was very different.

From the link to Wikipedia you posted

Italian Fascism was rooted in Italian nationalism and the desire to restore and expand Italian territories, which Italian Fascists deemed necessary for a nation to assert its superiority and strength and to avoid succumbing to decay

In 1925, the PNF declared that Italy's Fascist state was to be totalitarian.[9] The term "totalitarian" had initially been used as a pejorative accusation by Italy's liberal opposition, that denounced the Fascist movement for seeking to create a total dictatorship.[9] However the Fascists responded by accepting that they were totalitarian, but presented totalitarianism from a positive viewpoint.

So in reality Fascist Italy was nothing like modern Democratic Germany. If anything, Germany is more democratic than most western nations providing more power to the people. Fascism resulted in the centralisation of power, power around Mussolini, power around Hitler in which the few gained and the majority simply lived in it.

So nice try to compare Germany to Fascism, however the Germans have a lot more experience with it than you and know well how to avoid it.

When something this big is discovered in Australia, the politicians responsible are sacked. That tends to motivate them to do their jobs a little better. No politician wants to be on the receiving end of a royal commission... and I predict a few of those after the Abbott government (and to be fair the Abbott govt fired the first shot with the Royal Commission into union corruption which was nothing more than a witch hunt for their political enemies).