I wish I was hurting as much as they are. This is the same kind of scare the Mining companies did with WorkChoices, the Mining Tax Review, and Reason knows how many other cronyist schemes before those. These people post increased (often record) profits and then cry foul. And we forget.

Come on. they only passed on savings when there was competition in town.

Even when AUD was below parity, a surprising amount of products would be cheaper to purchase overseas with shipping than to buy at the larger retailers. I used to by ram overseas when AUD was ~.6 US because it was cheaper. I knew of plenty of other products that I personally didn't need that could be purchased and shipped from overseas cheaper than locally. I can't think of a product that ever followed the exchange rate even allowing for a six month shelf lag price. Exchange rate has *nothing* to do with the gouging. It has only made it more obvious to those who have trouble with simple maths.

You obviously haven't tried to buy online at Harvey Norman. It is easier to go into the store, 600km away.

It snowed in December in New South Wales, Australia in 2010. Southern hemisphere's summer.

What about Personalbrain? It is a multi level mind-mapping software, which is flexible enough to be used for a graphical tree of the family. Doesn't have the genealogy stuff built in but makes it easier to do funny and interesting anecdotes if you are trying to put together a living memory family history. 'course in that case you could also just use freemind for purely in OSS. Genealogy is hard and lengthy. 4 days to do it? eep.

(Lisp().)

http://faxmate.com.au/. You are tied (heh) to a email account, not a physical location. Good stuff. There should be something available for the rest of the world. Good luck.

You are still paying to watch the ads. I don't mind watching a preview or two, but sitting in the cinema and being told downloading is stealing is a bit hard to take.

Paying to be told the industry is dying, when the apparent evidence is to the contrary... /facepalm

Heh, seems we must do it differently here (Qld, Australia). You make it sound like you go to a bar to sing!? Bars are for drinking at.

Here you go to a bar for a quiet beer, watch some hotties dance and watch sport on the Bigscreen. Then some dickhead sets up a mic to the sound system, replaces the sport/video clips* with words and then encourage other dickheads to sing.

I don't know what *caffeinated* soap is. Another TV show that hasn't been imported to Australia?

It isn't the 'singing' people can reasonably object to; it is the 'in public' that the problem lies. Of course, often once the latter occurs, the former becomes objectionable too.

And you contributed/rebutted the argument how? I suppose gp was supposed to google/bing/whoop it?

Actually, it is reasonable to assume that the past reoccurring actions is a fair indication of the likelihood that it has happened again. That is why prosecution love to show to the jury that the defendant has done bad thing before, so probably did it this time. Now, that isn't enough to make a conviction, but it swings the bias in that way. Other evidence is then easier to believe.

The only logical fallacy that is made is to exclude a student from making an abysmally unintelligent decision as well.

I do grunt IT work at a school* and any laptops that are returned are not even checked to see if there is an OS on the computer. They are just wiped and prepped for the next user, ad infinitum.

We have been instructed that unless we are told by judicial authorities (i.e., above the principal) we are not to browse the data on the computer. Anything that would warrant our examination of the data would be handed over to the police to do anyway. If it has been returned and the user comes back asking for data, we are to report the computer has already been wiped, and why didn't they have a backup? (Politely and professionally.) We should not ever put ourselves in a legal position where we could accidentally have come across suspicious data. Whether your organisation owns the laptop or you are performing services on someones personal laptop^, that is the only way to behave ethically and professionally unless you are undertaking the action under advised investigations.

We only look at the user data when requested by the user, using their login. Technically, we should only be guiding the user to do what they are requesting with their data, but of course that is too slow...

So ethically it still remains there is something dodgy about the schools side of the story if it was 'accidentally found'. It may be legal, but I wouldn't want to work at that school; it would make me dirty.

*Australian, so maybe there are caveats.
^On someone personal laptop, a professional would take an image of the hdd/s to restore in a pinch. I mostly meet that standard.