I like these two. I use yahoo mail as my main (private) email application. I would hate to see this absorbed into hotmail. I don't see them surviving on their own for much longer though. Bing and Google seem to be the two biggest at the moment, with google the biggest by far. Bing is the default on windows and google is a verb... yahoo is just not a search destination anymore. Back in the days, I used to use search.yahoo.com quite a lot. Simple design and quick enough. But, I guess the world will move on.

Well, in Australia, everyone gets health cover included in their tax. Employers don't matter. Minimum payment is 1.5%, and since I earn over 50K pa, then I pay an extra 1%
Out of my pay, a compulsory 9% (my company pays 12%) goes towards a retirement fund (super annuation)

Sounds like a lot, but it's actually pretty good:
Healthcre is free, medicines are subsidised and I am guaranteed a good retirement income (provided I send my super annuation to a good fund manager)

By American standards, Australia is communist country for all these social benefits it imposes on it's people!

I started a "sole trader" business for IT consulting primarily to do work "on the side" from my main paid job.

After a while and realising it's pretty time consuming, I decided to can the idea. I did a couple of big projects, but the headaches were too much to be worth it.
Now I manage the IT department for my current employer, and I'm loving the fact that I have a regular paycheque every month and am treated well.

Just a bit of clarifiction so you don't end up shooting the messenger and the source of the message:

The Interpol is not a "political" body. It is an international liaison body for participating countries police departments.

Essentially, they liaise with each other. If one country issues a warrant and then asks Interpol to distribute it, this is what they do. Nothing to do with politics. That happens in the country issuing the warrant or the country where the warrantee is present!

Actually, this is true for most companies.
At our company, I do not offer the employees iPhones, but if they bring their own, and want to use the company mobile number (instead of carrying two phones) then I let them.

They can do whatever they want on the iPhone, but expect me to protect the company info if need be.

I was actually thinking about that this morning on my way to work (not sure why!)
And my conclusion is that I will not change anything, because I am where I am today because of the events that happened in the past.
I understand that many people will prefer to be somewhere else, but, for me, where I am today is great.
I have all I need (I can do with a lot more though) and I can still control the direction (not necessarily the events) that my life will take in the future.

If I had the chance to do it again all again, I will not change anything.

Disclaimer: I would love for firefly to be brought back!

When I used to catch public transport (trains) to work, I used to average about a book every forthnight. That's for a 2 hour round trip daily.
Now that I drive to work, so my average is very down. I seem to read about 1 every 5-6 weeks if not more. Pretty disappointing since I love reading.
I wish I could effectively catch public transport again, but it's much simpler and quicker to drive 10-20 minutes to work instead of 1 hour one way by public transport!
Ah well. Compromises!

I Stay clear of these things, even if I have to wait an extra 5 minutes in line at a manned checkout.
I do this simply out of principle. I prefer my shopping contribute to a person's pay not just super company's profits.
I do this even when I have only one or two items. It's worth the effort to help one extra teenager keep or get a job.

One has the extra letter "L"?

I'm an Australian, and half the options are not considered in such situations:

- Health insurance
  There is universal health coverage (unless you're not a resident), so not an issue.

- Car insurance or transit pass
Car insurance is divided into two parts (personal injury (to others) and 3rd party property damage. The latter is optional and the first is compulsory, so not an option if you have a legal car.

- Current account with non-pharma drug provider
no idea. must be a US thing.

- Birth control pill prescription
I'm a guy, so I have already given this one up.
- NPR membership
well, the ABC here is taxpayer funded not public subscription funded, so not an issue. I don't care if NPR goes unsupported, although I do enjoy some of their re-broadcast programs here sometimes.

Now, for the options that have some relevance to me:

- Mobile phone account - includes data
Useful if you are looking for a job. Can be interchanged with a homephone with voicemail (in case you're out of the house)
- Home phone account -- includes broadband
This is the same as a mobile phone and is a tossup really if there is a crunch. Mobile phones can be pre-paid, meaning I don't have to pay a monthly fee, so might win this round.

- Gym membership
I don't have one, and my local park with good running tracks and such is always free. This would be the first one to go. The phones are the last to go.

It's a good point, but not universal. I don't always feel guilty when break the speeding law!

Not all laws are for problem solving, there are regulations, preventions and assigning rights and obligations. I'm not sure where this one would fall though.

Laws are not about "hurting" anyone, or shouldn't be anyway. They are or should spell out consequences of actions.

This is a quite technically possible solution: Recording source and destination requests into a massive database. Now, wether this is useful info or not, remains to be seen.
I just want to highlight something about legislation creation in Australia (I'm assuming federally is the same as state) but most laws are requested by departments and make their way up to minister then parliament (the exceptions are big ticket items like the new mining tax etc)
The departments would have a need for something, an example, for the police to be able to do some sort of monitoring but current legislations does not support it, go through their head of department (or commissioner) to the minister with a proposal and then the minister will put it before cabinet and then parliament.
I have not had dealings with police, or other legislations, but in the emergency service I'm involved in, I've had input into proposed laws that were then sent to our relevant minister, which after about a year became law. These were initiated by us, and not by the minister.
The intro to this article came from the "industry reps" who were in on the meetings. This means that the relevant department is still in the consultation process. This is quite routine. It may or may not turn political. This remains to be seen.

I don't like lean steaks. They're tasteless. I prefer them well done (no red bits) with some fat on them to turn them juicy and not hard.
Not so much marinade, but a lot of spices and also herbs:

Favourite recipe:

Chop fatty lamb into 2-3cm cubes
Stick them on skewers alternately spaced by button mushrooms, pickling onions or capsicum slices
BBQ on a flame (preferably charcoal) NEVER on a hot plate.
Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste

Bon Apetit.

I use all these to store documents. Mostly handy but harmless stuff that I like to have occasionally from random places, but if I lose them, it's not a big deal.

However, almost everything I have on all three services only adds up to about 4GB (incluging emails).

Here you go: http://xn--4gbrim.xn----rmckbbajlc6dj7bxne2c.xn--wgbh1c/ar/default.aspx

This is equivalent to http://mcit.gov.eg/ except it directs you to the English webpages instead of the Arabic webpages.
Notice teh directory structure after the last slash.
one thing to notice in the TLD above, which is in Arabic, is that the TLD happens to be 3 letters the arabic equivalent of MSR (which is egypt)

The other TLDs mentioned in the ICANN blog are much longer:
Egypt: (Egypt)
Saudi Arabia: (AlSaudiah)
United Arab Emirates: (Emarat)

I was wondering why they arrived at this decision and then I read this document: http://arabic-domains.org/docs/NIC-docs/SupportingArabicDomainNmaes.pdf which seems to explain the logic behind the choice.
It is still a lot to type though, so if i have the choice, I'll use latin domain names.

The most recent offshore well "gusher" happened last year:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/24/2664927.htm
and
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=aXeZj2cxULVU

This spill was just as big as the current Gulf spill in the US.
It took a couple of months to stop the flow.