How can you afford it?

[how.about.another.slice]

After being away several months, I notice many of the same faces are still spending all day posting, despite their assurances that they work. One even spent a whole day waiting until 5.30 pm before posting just to prove she is employed!!! (only people unemployed or on benefits for years would assume the average work day is still from Nine-to-Five LOL!)

My question is, how do you afford to be here so much? Do you live off savings, an inheritance, divorce settlement, or do you simply chat from a library or a second hand notebook on limited internet usage?

To get a decent computer costs at least $2000 and without good internet connection, chatting on a forum isn't even worth it, so are these regulars going into debt over the boards? Would a bank even loan or credit them enough to supplement their activites and time usage here?

It's all very puzzling...

[lakeland27]

''

NBN Co did not deny this when asked by ZDNet, but said that the argument is semantic.

"A premises passed is a premises passed, even if that premises is, say, an office block that will receive services over the NBN outside standard order lead times," an NBN Co spokesperson said.

"We use the accepted industry definition of 'premises passed' — that is, homes and businesses passed by an active telecommunications network. That standard measure includes those complex premises that will receive services over the NBN outside standard order lead times."

[freakiness]

Ever heard of Strata titles?

MDUs take time to get permissions in order. It was always planned for the MDUs to take longer to get processes in place. 

[poddster]

Pretty neat trick if you can get away with it, Lay Fibre Optic Cable from coast to coast and then you can say "but we have passed every premises in the whole of Australia' They cant connect but they have the potential to be connected ....................at some time in the distant future.

[*crikey*mate*]

look on the bright side, next time the countru is in debt and we need to raise some revenue in order to recover, we'll have something to sell.

and then cos it is a monopoly sort of thing, no one will be able to control the prices or even guarantee what it will be used for.Will it be something that we are so dependent on and because there is neither competition or an alternative that they will be able to charge whatever they like?

I really don't understand all this technical stuff, but even if it doesn't get sold, isn't it kind of dangerous giving the government control over our communication channels?

bit by bit they'll be able to encroach on our privacy and control what we can do and what we have access to.

Am I right or wrong?

Happy to be wrong - watching Derren Brown on You Tube so might be over thinking things.

[poddster]

Yep, Sell it to the yanks so they can indoctrinate us still further. Or maybe to China, chicken chow mien anyone.

[not_an_eloi]

yeh, wot do you think abbrot's been yakkin' so earnestly to john kerry about.   free trade agreement, yeh,   the one that screws us over in terms of electronic media, and ties us into the big-money pay-TV and other paid media systems.     'oward screwed australia on that one.

[*crikey*mate*]

'ow is it 'oward's fault?

[freakiness]

---

@crikey*mate wrote:

look on the bright side, next time the countru is in debt and we need to raise some revenue in order to recover, we'll have something to sell.

and then cos it is a monopoly sort of thing, no one will be able to control the prices or even guarantee what it will be used for.Will it be something that we are so dependent on and because there is neither competition or an alternative that they will be able to charge whatever they like?

I really don't understand all this technical stuff, but even if it doesn't get sold, isn't it kind of dangerous giving the government control over our communication channels?

bit by bit they'll be able to encroach on our privacy and control what we can do and what we have access to.

Am I right or wrong?

Happy to be wrong - watching Derren Brown on You Tube so might be over thinking things.

---

You do realize that our communications network was owned by the government for most of our history and has only gone to the pack since being sold?  

Do you think the postal service should be privately owned also?

What did Howard do? He sold the lot, including the wholesale component which is owned by the largest retailer.

[monman12]

FN: "There is no way I would be able to use the old IBM DOS desktop or early windows model for what I use these days."

Actually FN DOS is only a family of operating systems, nothing to do specifically with an "old desktop", whilst XP was released with  Microsoft's default command interpreter "Command Com".
Knowing some DOS commands and booting XP into command prompt provides a useful and powerful tool to handle a HDD and manage  its contained file structure, especially when it is a "crashed" HDD.

[*crikey*mate*]

---

@freakiness wrote:

---

@crikey*mate wrote:

look on the bright side, next time the countru is in debt and we need to raise some revenue in order to recover, we'll have something to sell.

and then cos it is a monopoly sort of thing, no one will be able to control the prices or even guarantee what it will be used for.Will it be something that we are so dependent on and because there is neither competition or an alternative that they will be able to charge whatever they like?

I really don't understand all this technical stuff, but even if it doesn't get sold, isn't it kind of dangerous giving the government control over our communication channels?

bit by bit they'll be able to encroach on our privacy and control what we can do and what we have access to.

Am I right or wrong?

Happy to be wrong - watching Derren Brown on You Tube so might be over thinking things.

---

You do realize that our communications network was owned by the government for most of our history and has only gone to the pack since being sold?  

Do you think the postal service should be privately owned also?

What did Howard do? He sold the lot, including the wholesale component which is owned by the largest retailer.

---

our communications network has never had the technological power that it does now. People have never depended on it like they do now and that dependence will only increase in the future as you have said (information is doubling every 18 months? sic)) This will then leave us exposed to price increases we may not be able to afford, restrictions on what we can access and a new avenue for taxes to be imposed.

I think the postal service as it is currently operating needs a couple of viable competitors. They can do what they want, provide an increasingly inefficient service at a higher cost to the consumer, and there is nothing that we can do about it. There is no incentive for them to be competitive in ither their service or pricing.

I think any oligopoly, monopoly or duopoly is a bad thing (unless it's me with the opolies of course LOL)

I don't understand the bit about Howard, I'm sorry.

freaky, I know you are passionate about the NBN, so please do not take this as me questioning it's viability. I really don't mind if we have it or not, atm, what I have works great, 12 months ago, what I could have was horrible, so I see both sides. My only real concern with the NBN is if we can afford it just yet, There are just so many other things we are trying to afford.

But when one entity has control over anything, there are opportunities for abuse. I don't like that idea at all.

We do need choice and we do need competition.