"Why do people believe that our current broadband speeds, both wireless and wired, would remain at ADSL2 and even LTE for much more than another 5 years? I mean, there is already VDSL2 tech (ironically, the NBN plans on using this in multi-story dwellings), and wireless has had and is projected to have a bandwidth growth profile that is just incredible."

Five years ago I was paying $120/mth for 60G of data. Now I'm paying $100/mth for 200G of data. Fixed on-a-good-day-5Mbps. It started as 8Mbps but as more people have built onto the copper network the speeds have dropped. Private industry of all flavours have done nothing to make the copper faster - its the same pathetic copper network that has been in the ground here since the suburb was built 20 years ago. Those data prices have only fallen recently because NBNCo has added extra backhaul into the city which cuts out Telstra and their gouging.

Wireless, through Telstra since they're the only ones who provide coverage here - 3km from the CBD - will sell me 20G of data for $100/mth. If the planets are in the right alignment, that might give me 4Mbps. My parents who are only another few kms away from me cannot get a phone line. So no ADSL. But they can get a NextG dongle from Telstra and get anywhere up to 1Mbps.

Politically biased? No, biased against stupidity. One party's idea of broadband under the OPEL program was 12Mbps. They haven't changed their minds since 2007, they still think that 12Mbps should be fast enough for everyone. Except the rich. For the rich suburbs they'll be quite happy to spend the chunk of the 10-20B pork barrel to give them speeds of up to 100Mbps, delivered by a hodge-podge of cable and FTTN whilst maintain the horrendous regulatory environment that pretty much gives Telstra the power to do what-ever they wish whilst their competitors have to take all of the complaints to the regulator who can take months to make a decision. More of the "private industry doing it better" (where it = screwing over consumers and other companies).

NBNCo are working towards giving most Australians access to a fibre network with a regulatory environment that favours no single provider. That is a good thing. They are actively fixing broadband blackspots and providing a single, common price for bandwidth be it wireless or fixed. That is a good thing. They are doing what no private company will do (replacing copper with fibre) and doing it in a fair manner. That is a good thing too. They've also planned to make the network profitable, which is also a good thing.

Most importantly, suggesting that FTTH is overkill for Australia is down-right obnoxious. Australia can afford to do it. Australian's deserve the best solution for the money our Government is spending. Spending the money now means that future generations have the opportunity to put the network to uses that we haven't even dreamed of yet, much like the workers spreading the copper network 80 years ago had no idea that one day we'd be arguing about ripping it up because we can't get enough bandwidth out of it.

I'd like to apologise for the ill-informed comments from the "Aussies" above who think that Australia's current telecommunications infrastructure is "good". When areas 5kms from the cities CBD can't get broadband because of the incumbant telco, or are forced to use wireless that drops out when it rains, or aren't in the big three cities so there is no chance of broadband delivered by the cable network, or ... Problems that probably affect every other first world nation where warped conservative, fascist ideology has driven communications infrastructure deployment.

The NBN is already delivering benefits. They've significantly altered the backhaul networks around Australia so anyone who doesn't live in Sydney or Melbourne have the chance of receiving ADSL at a competitive rate (for the non-Aussies, and people who live in Sydney/Melbourne, Australia is more than just those two cities). They've managed to get the incumbant telco to agree to seperate their wholesale and retail arms and hand over infrastructure to NBNCo. More importantly they are actually building infrastructure that will be used for generations and will offer a return to successive Governments.

The Coalition's plan is to sell off what has been built already (because private industry can do it better, the same private industry that sat on their hands for the last 20 years..) to deploy wireless to some places (and do nothing about the gouging which the private companies do with wireless data whilst offering blistering fast speeds of up to 12Mbps) and a combination of FTTN/DSL/Cable to marginal electorates. Spending anywhere from $11 - 20b in the process.

"I don't mean to be patronizing - but I just can't see how Sa can win over Au in term of safety"

I think its more likely Australia's poor record at developing and capitalising on high-tech R&D.

Australia doesn't do high-tech. Look at Government policy for the last 20 years. Look at which companies in Oz actually do R&D. The poster child for Australian R&D is the CSIRO, and really they're the poster child because there is no-one else.

Then there is our Universities that are churning out business-types and lawyers but fewer and fewer scientists. So even if we wanted to start doing anything remotely high-tech, we don't have the people to do it - we'd need to import them. And there is a madness around these parts about letting immigrants into the country, fanned by the right-wing Opposition.

This isn't meant to be dismissive of the Australian proposal; it was very good and by all accounts so was the SA one. The plans for the supporting infrastructure was very impressive. But Australia has a reputation of only being interested in what we can dig out of the ground, not what we can use our brains for.

Now Apple will sue anyone who else that makes a tablet with a 2048x1536 screen..

Hang on, something is fishy here.. weren't the moon landings faked anyway? Could these remote-viewers have been picking up a late night B-grade movie instead..

And if you had tentacles your technology would only need to reach the stage where you can trap helpless human females.

Because having read the initial email and the PR guys follow-ups, both authors came off looking pretty stupid.

"At this point in history they should be using an emulator on standard hardware. No really."

The writing has been on the wall for PowerPC since before Apple jumped to Intel, but Hyperion and some of the Amiga community still want to believe.

Want to see rabid fanboi's? Post on AmigaWorld or Amiga.org asking why there isn't x86/ARM based Amiga's.

"Gaddafi's son Khamis and a group of 10,000 well-trained troops happened to "just disappear" when the rebels got to Tripoli."

Its a trap!