Comments on: OECD: Australia’s broadband is rubbish. Who knew?

By: Venise Alstergren

Venise Alstergren — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:30:52 +0000

Stilgherrian: The minute I read an article detailing Australia’s ranking to the rest of the world. I turn off. Why should Scandinavians living in a climate so diametrically opposed to Australia’s be of any relevance? Ditto our distances.

As soon as a writer resorts to saying, “Australia has more pollutants than any other nation on earth”, or we have more flying mice per population, whatever. I know the writer is being mentally lazy. Certainly I can accept broadband is good/bad/feeble etc. But to quote your own words back to you ‘a meaningless measure that fails to account for….’ accurate description of someone comparing the Swiss to Swine flu.
Scandinavia to Australia.

By: Venise Alstergren

Venise Alstergren — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:15:52 +0000

Scottyea. No, I don’t agree with you on the basis of your acquaintance, Edward. Someone as addicted as this would merely find another form of addiction to whit…
A friend of a friend called Jim was a complete and total alcoholic. A gentleman, of the old school pata ti pata ta. He could still canter on three bottles of Scotch a day. One day (as it is said in fairy stories-although this is no fairy-story) A medico got the message through to him that the booze wasn’t doing his health a lot of good. Jim’s friend stopped dead in his tracks and hasn’t been seen to have a drink since then.

What do you suppose came to replace his alcohol addiction? Antiques. The last time I saw him was at a house auction. He had changed his house three times, each one larger than the preceding one to house his collection. Fortunately he had lots of money. And he kept a lot of dealers very happy.

By: dhorswood

dhorswood — Sat, 23 May 2009 05:54:38 +0000

You might not be alone but I’m not with you.

I don’t think people grasp how much new industry it will create having a high speed broadband network.

We have the technology to deliver rich media to the end user just not the infrastructure to support it. Once we have the infrastructure and the end user is online the developers can start providing this content with confidence that there will be a market to use it.

Internet services is very much a global marketplace but often the companies have to start local. Without potential local customers we lose our ability to develop the industries that we can export to the world.

And one last thing, why not? Because your friend has no self control?

By: scottyea

scottyea — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:32:58 +0000

Luddites weren’t against the introduction of new technology per se - they just wanted some kind of moderation in the speed and extent to which it was introduced, so that the social impacts could be more effectively managed. …

My point here is that I’m thinking about my acquaintance Edward. Once in the Navy, he’s a pretty smart guy, who nowadays spends ALL day inside in front of his computer. He’s grossly obese, and has a nasty attitude towards his neighbours when he does emerge, pasty and as mentioned, grossly obese. Sure, the internet, spore or whatever isn’t the cause of Edward’s decline into “Uggh, oh dude, look at yourself”, but it makes me wonder if all that money might possibly be better spent on something more socially productive?

Am I alone here?