" There is no valid reason why software or other companies should be able to use globalism for cheaper labor whilst denying consumers globalism for cheaper products"

Fucking profound and succint, christ almighty you're on the money.

While your response has some merit and comedy - fact is, for closed platform systems like the PS3 / PS4 / Xbox and so on, we're scewed - not a viable option.

Even if there is trickery to route through it, I have an Australian credit card and billing address.

The next gen of consoles are going to screw us on digital sales, infact anyone selling movies / games / music digitally in general, I hate to go all tinfoil on you guys but they've proven time and time again, they simply do not care about foreigners.

If you can charge bob 3$ for the icecream and mary 8$, then do it â" especially if you're the only place selling icecream now. Only bob is America and we're mary.

To take it to 11 on the tinfoil mode, when things become all digital "they" will have control, full control. EA have already proven just how evil digital control is, go find a GOTY edition of Mass Effect 1 2 or 3. They don't exist. You think you're getting a bargain when you buy Mass Effect 2, a 50$ US PC game for 5$ on a Steam sale? Awesome! (Well you are, it's still good) but the DLC is on THEIR controlled internal store and it's ONLY on their store and do you think the DLC is marked down to 10 or 15% of the original cost like the full game? Ok what about 20%? or 30%? No. Not only is it extremely rarely marked down, when it is, it's a small amount (I think it's been on sale twice, in nearly 3 years)

The console manufacturers are sadly GOING to region lock us when it's all digital and they WILL charge us more than Americans. Interestingly we probably wouldn't even notice or care if it was 20 years ago and we didn't have American buddies posting on the same forums or links to deals or reddit threads or whatever saying "holy crap, I just got a sweet God of War 4 deal on the PSN store for only 9.99" â" except we'll click the link "not available in your region" or "on special, this week only, 49$ AUD"

Australians need to be prepared that this whole digital thing IS going to shoot us square in the wallet, then the face. I'd wager good money on this.
Long story short, region free PS3 took me from being a dodgy pirate to someone really happy to purchase games, I'm happy to pay 20 to 50$ US a game, no qualms - hell the Americans do it, don't you? Except they frequently try to stiff us from 95 to 120$ US a shot,....... it's unreasonable, it's bullshit and unacceptable.

Even worse is on digital stores online, they detect my IP and the price for a digital product of 1's and 0's is 30 to 100% more. It's _incredibly_ frustrating as almost any foreigner could tell you.
Long story short? You think this is bad now? Just wait, soon there won't BE steam "gifting" from your American pals, there won't be a US PSN store to log in to with PSN credits you purchased on Amazon, there won't be stores which will ship you foreign region free games. There won't be a G2play where I can buy a cheap key of Diablo or Starcraft cheaper than the Blizzard online store or retail. Why would Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft provide these 3'rd party 'stores' keys to sell?

Australians, in my opinion we're actually in the peak part of bargains right here, in 2011/2012/2013 and maybe 2014 - we've got fairly cheap international shipping, we're in the mid retail -> digital conversion so everyone is clamouring for our buck. Soon the loopholes will be closed, the infrastructure, policies, design all in place for a single store for companies and bam. Kiss the awesome times we've had goodbye.
Finally, most stores won't do deals like Valve, they seem to be one of the few with respect for the customer, we're in for a bad time :/

"You're kidding me, how spoilt were the Americans to have weekend delivery?? Damn!"

You want to make a console like steam, no lending to friends and no used sales?
Well Microsoft, I can deal with that - I buy heaps of things on steam and I buy a heap of things on my consoles, so maybe we can come to an arrangement here,...

Only one problem is, the average price of games I buy on steam would be between 15 and 30$ and the average price of games I pay for on consoles is probably 40 to 50$, Steam games are _very_ regularly discounted to sensible prices.

So if you're willing to drop the prices of console games down to a similar, sensible level, then you might see me participate in this. but don't for a second think I'm signing up for this bullshit at 60$ US a shot for a game (and I KNOW you assholes will region lock it, so as an Australian, I'll be paying - 110$ US per game with no way for American friends to "gift" me the game at US prices and I paypal them)

You wanna have your cake and eat it too? Sure but I'm not participating if so.

It's childish "hold a grudge" bullshit, why try to understand and analyse a post when you can just write it off straight away due to the little coloured icon telling you if you automatically dislike the person or not?

I'm surprised it's lasted this long to begin with.

I rarely need to print something which can't wait until I'm at work - so maybe once or twice a year and most of the time it was me printing out a screenshot of a google map and an address.

With my smartphone now, my print needs are even less than before, I mainly use it for passive aggressive messages to my douchebag neighbours in my apartment block to stop slamming their doors.

Man how many of you guys don't get it, Apple defense squad indeed.

The difference is, one requires me to wait for a "jailbreak" because such simple innovation was blocked, the other one was built IN to the core OS? How can you people not see this,...?

Oh...

I had no interest in Android and then a buddy showed me his phone and he pulled down this amazing notification slide and right there, RIGHT THERE he could turn on or off wifi, change brightness, turn on or off data - it was amazing.

The same functionality I had to hack to get SBSettings on my iphone was in, as default on Android. As far as I was concerned, Android is /literally easier to use/ - I didn't have to hunt and peck through settings to do these things.

Then there was the menu button! - it was in a consistent location! Always menu, always one spot, always back, always one spot - not anywhere on the goddamned screen that the dev wants, nope! Always in one location! This is incredible.
Sold my iphone 4, got a HTC HD2 (with Android) and moved from there since.

Never going back and anecdotally, I literally know of dozens of people who have switched and not a single one has gone back.
Apple isn't going anywhere, the iphone will always be around, but it's about to become the "tried and true" Nokia of the late 90's and 00's - just a reliable dumbphone - but if you want anything advanced or fancy, you go elsewhere.

Apple, no thanks.

I've heard stories as described in the subject previously from Americans and it's /fully completely mind boggingly insane/
I can't even contemplate how it's legal in any possible way. I know you guys get shafted on terrible policies / regulations and I guess 'social norms' of how things are meant to be with cell phone usage but err yeah this takes the cake.

In Australia what's described in the subject, simply wouldn't occur, at all.
I have a BlackBerry Bold 9000 as my spare phone and use it purely as a voice only 2g phone, no data at all. My provider has no issue with this at all. If I put that same SIM inside an iphone or my Galaxy S3 - I simply end up with no data, my tough luck - if I want it, I need to call them and add a data plan to my account.

You can also get phones unlocked here, you can buy phones outright and you get different priced plans - so purchasing an outright high end smartphone can be paired with a fairly minimal data and voice plan if you just use it for casual browsing / twitter / facebook and you're near wifi all the time.

I realise getting angry isn't really a solution for you guys - but based on the article? I would be angry, extremely goddamned angry. It simply shouldn't be legal.

Now convince Victoria Australia, I sincerely doubt we'll ever get rid of the revenue raisers over here. The local govt need the money too much.

The rumour is that the PS4 will actually use linux as the backend OS for the developers, might be bullshit but could be interesting.

It's incredible just how often 'phone jobs' make their staff fucking miserable. If you're doodling / drawing you must be either not busy enough or not engaged in the conversations well enough to do your work properly.

Now I don't entirely agree with that, as someone who passes work out to the other staff, I can understand a small aspect of wanting the staff to look busy but I'd rather they were happy than miserable, often happy employees are more productive or at least easier to manage.

Any phone jobs I've had have been IT based, so my web browsing was traditionally, incredibly excessive but I've mostly got away with it throughout my career. None the less I can sympathise for sure. (There was a time when older women were welcome to do knitting during phone jobs, those days seem gone too as well)

Look, I'll do it for $50 but please don't tell anyone!!!

I find it surprisingly good with a keyboard.
Yes a wireless keyboard, logitech Dinovo edge for me- I find myself browsing in the lounge all the time now too.
Glorious.