Probably because I dont have a landline phone and scammers (and telemarketers for that matter) dont call on Australian mobiles because it costs them too much.

Hacker spaces have gotten all manner of expensive-when-new gear from all sorts of places (usually because the company that owns it has bought a new gadget and is tossing out the old one or someone has gone out of business and the liquidators are having a fire sale to sell everything off as fast as possible).
Electron microscopes. Mass spectrometers. Pick & Place machines. Robot arms. High-end electronic test gear. And more.

Its not unrealistic to think that a hacker space or individual could get their hands on used bio-science gear in much the same way.

Back in high school I used to play (and write) games on my Casio CFX-9850G (in the crappy internal "basic" type language). I know the games you can do on the TIs (especially if you are programming in z80 ASM) are far better.

That's assuming you can actually find a desktop board that supports the Haswel-E/Devils Canyon CPUs the OP wants AND is supported by Coreboot. A read of the Coreboot compatibility list shows not a single supported desktop board that can run anything Intel past a Pentium 3 (there are laptops/embedded/dev boards that can run something newer but no full-on desktop boards)

+1 for this, my current motherboard is an Intel and if I had the money I would upgrade to a Core series chip (instead of the Core 2 Duo I have now) with an Intel board.

I am in Australia and have Visa PayWave attached to my card yet I never use it (using EFTPOS instead) because there are fees attached to PayWave but not EFTPOS (with my bank at least) and because EFTPOS transactions show up faster and better on my online banking.

Not sure where I read it but I believe part of why Broadcom is so secretive when it comes to their SoCs and things is that a lot of their market is (or was) for SoCs used in things like cable TV set-top boxes. Keeping things secret from the public at large makes it harder for hackers to figure out how their chips work so they can hack the firmware of these cable TV boxes and things.

Except that the proxy server will have to MITM SSL for it to work.

If you are the IT director of a big corporation, you have no option but to MITM SSL traffic. The alternative is providing a perfect way for malicious insiders to steal corporate secrets (like a whole pile of credit card numbers or the blueprints/source code for the companies latest products). And providing a vector for malware or attacks to bypass all the edge-level intrusion detection systems.

And providing a way for the people on the inside to access things that they shouldn't (whether its pornography, pirated content, or anything else). That last one is even more important in, say, a school or educational environment or library than in a corporate network.

Its not just Japan, France and many other countries seem to have laws that limit discounting of books or fix their prices. Why do governments continue to maintain these restrictions?

Does this stuff say anything about the performance (good or otherwise) of Rupert's other big Australian media asset, Foxtel?

I recon if you were trying to convince someone to take security of critical infrastructure, one way to do it would be to show them Die Hard 4.0 (best example I know of when it comes to hackers breaking into infrastructure) and say "this may only be a Hollywood movie but do you want to be the one who said "no" to better security when that shit happens for real?"

Considering that Citibank is part of the gang of big US banks directly responsible for the Global Financial Crisis through their dodgy practices and considering they are just as bad as the big 4 when it comes to doing evil crap, I wouldn't go with them either.

I used to be with the National once, then I switched to P&N Bank (formerly Police & Nurses credit society) who were really really good (and are the only WA based bank left). Then I moved to Queensland and wanted to switch banks to one that had branches here. After checking all my options (including a number of credit unions) I ended up with an account from the Bank of Queensland because they have both a GREAT zero-fee everyday bank account (with attached Visa Debit card) AND the best customer service I have ever gotten from ANY financial institution.

Anyone in Australia who hasn't at least considered one of the many smaller (and better) financial institutions instead of the big 4 banks (or one of their subsidiaries) is stupid, the smaller guys are just as good (if not better) than the big 4 when it comes to service, products etc and they dont do a lot of the crap the big 4 do.

Plenty of people on the roads who only have licenses because the cops haven't caught them yet (driving dangerously, hooning, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, driving unsafe or un-roadworthy cars or otherwise doing things that put the lives of other road users at risk)