I would also be wary of taking some of these articles at face value.

You're a big company. You're obliged to comply with stupid asshat law that some ${CITIZENS} approved by proxy through their representative. In an effort to discourage such requests, you do your best to inflate "costs" which you are permitted to recover from the requesting organization....

Suddenly some reporters with slightly less than two brain cells to rub together equate this to "selling customer data".

You mean like a micro-USB MHL port that supports the USB charging spec? That my past three phones have had?

Though you'll only get 900mA@5V with data transfer or MHL active, unless you have MHL 3.0 (which is unikely at this point).

(Okay, not a microusb cable, but it can use the same physical port, provides charging and remote instructions, and adapters start at about $5)

As a bonus it will probably actually work directly with your TV if you dig the cable thing.

I think I spent more time copying out BASIC programs from the manual than playing games on it ;-) (I was six or seven at the time).

My parents noticed my interest and convinced some local guy running a class to take me (normally he only took older kids). He had a room full of Plus4's (going for slightly esoteric Commodore models here...)

But you could look and see if Jet is within your budget.

http://www.obsidian.com.au/products/jet/jet-isp-telco

At the very least a base install will give you some billing software and hooks for other automation. It wouldn't hurt to drop them a line, at any rate.

disclaimer: I used to work for obsidian ~6 years ago. they're a small company, but full of bright people and they have a lot of experience in the area. if jet isn't for you i have no doubts they can at least give you some honest advice on what to look at instead that's within your budget, fits your needs.

Of course that would require a newspaper to make a profit... I don't think squeezing tech companies is a long term viable business strategy though.

But that's not the case. Google honours such requests.

They want to force Google to index them *and* pay them. (Comments from Eric Schmidt that Google might have to stop indexing the sites if such a law was passed, was decried as a "threat")

I only see a problem with this if you're *not* a rent seeking industry organization or an artist with an incredible sense of entitlement.

If you're not one of those, then your opinion doesn't really matter, does it?

$600k for a 3br house? You're talking like 90+ minutes from the city, right? ;-)

$400k+ for a decent 1br+study apartment in the inner suburbs.