I noticed the same thing here in Brisbane, just before the floods last summer. And than the power was turned off even before the water rise ...

Thank you Nish, I didn't think for a moment that it would have some many responses. Phew! :)

The vast majority was in English, that probably counts for something?

Exactly! We obviously need an Australian sectionm because it is clearly a different language.

I haven't noticed too many unusual expressions or words on that forum. One could argue that Australian English is another language: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdjuq7bhSUs[^]

True, although not entirely true for Australia where I live.

Yankee and Dixie sections, I guess?

Ok, there might be locality element there, but it's still English, isn't it?

Just realized that there is a non-English language section in Code Project (it's the last one in the main menu on the left side). I have never noticed it before, it could have been there a long time. There are currently two items in the section, Chinese topics and Indian topics. Most of Chinese topics are in Mandarin or Cantonese, can't tell. As expected. All Indian topics are in English, which is again hardly suprising. Strangely, Indian section is listed under 'non-English' section. It might be worth changing the title in that menu ...

No, I am saying that neither Italy nor UK are third world countries. Simply, it's time to move away from some 50-100 years old prejudices. World has changed dramatically since that time. Make no mistake, I enjoyed watching 'Fawlty Towers' and loughed at relationship between Basil Fawlty and Manuel (ok, that's Spain) - but that simply wouldn't be the same today. Things change.

It seems that Italy and UK have practically equal gross domestic product (GDP), for similar population size. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)[^]

Oh, just some personal experiences. I am between contracts at the moment, and situation has certainly deteriorated since last year. There are still some jobs on the market, it hasn't entirely dried out, but it's much tougher to get one. About 80-90% of the contracts here in Queensland are now the government ones, private sector has almost stopped hiring. Hourly rates have gone down markedly, and we are now starting to see the beginning of the predatorial job advertisements. None of this is new for the IT, it happened before back in 2000. It took us some time, actually years to recover. Sadly, good times only lasted for a few years this time (2006-2008). Australia is, more than other developed countries, exposed to the influence of boom and bust cycles. It is not only the IT thing, tourism or mining are just the same. Situation swings widely; For the majority of people last 12-13 years were ok, but historically industries were on the mercy of these cycles. Mining towns in central Queensland were unable to attract truck drivers by offering 150K last year - some of these towns are now all but abandoned as a result of the downturn. With only six months between the extremes. Never forget that Australia is a small market after all. Only 22 million of isolated individuals living in endless yet empty country. I might be overly pessimistic, actually I had a number of calls today (after a while). There are bad things here, and there are some fantastic things here as well. Just as is the case anywhere else. Cheers,

Labour day is not a national holiday in Australia; Every state has an independent labor holiday. It is celebrated in March in Victoria/Tasmania, in May in Queensland, etc. Therefore, it is unlikely that Australian embassy was closed anywhere because of some local Australian state holiday. Work wise, it is ugly and it gets only worse. Great country, but not a great time I am afraid.

If you are using Firefox you can download add-on called Download Helper (version 3.5 is current). It allows saving the YouTube downloads in formats other than native. DH will need to install additional format converters, but once you are done with this process becomes one click download & conversion while listening.

Some interesting observations regarding your privacy while using Chrome : http://wildermuth.com/2008/09/02/More_On_Chrome[^] Regards, Dejan Petrovic

Switch to Internode if you can. They seem to be more reliable and have better support services. Dejan Petrovic

Australian goverment is dead serious about these issues. It's just that their plans are slightly different than yours. Kind regards, Dejan Petrovic

Christian Graus wrote:

if you have a choice between a skilled VB team and a skilled C# team ...

Christian Graus wrote:

If you have a choice between a C# team and a team who went to VB.NET from VB6 ...

Is there a single VB.NET team that does not have an origin in the VB? :-O

Programmers never die. They just go to the next level of abstraction. DP

I agree that Telstra can be quite unpleasant to deal with (personal experience :mad: ), which is the result of their de-facto monopoly in Australia (they own the communication infrastructure). Semi-privatized, fully privatized, or any other way, they’ll behave arrogantly as long as they own the ‘copper wire’. Australia needs real competition in this area, ground up. Can you switch to Optus or somebody else, in your area? Hit them where it hurts. Dejan