thmcmahon

Ridiculous to include PNG.

It's not convenient in Australia to have packages delivered, if you're not there when they're delivered then they generally end up either at the Post Office or at some random courier's warehouse in an out of the way part of town.

I don't think the presence of political parties would be a significant cause.

Australia has a strong two-party system and we're ranked seventh. New Zealand has an essentially two party system and they're ranked first.

Yeah I was thinking of macro in my comments. I'm currently doing an MPP in economic policy (I'm a policy public servant). The great thing about the course is that it's multidisciplinary - we do look at economics, but it keeps coming back to how it is applied in policy.

I think part of your problem was that PhD economics programs are so narrow, and this is part of the problem with economics generally.

It has ignored too much of what is occurring outside its discipline, and turned in on itself and neat models that do not actually describe how the world works.

Nope I did too.

I think that might have other less desirable connotations.

Josh Gans provides a good summary on Roth and Shapley over at Core Economics http://economics.com.au/?p=9423

Why is that a problem?

Working in IE8 here.

The problem with this line of argument is that it is anecdotal. Yes, it’s great that this guy has gone on to earn a lot of money, but that result is not typical.

This is the data from Australia:

Over the working lifetime of a university graduate the financial gain generated from income is more than $1.5 million or 70 per cent more than those whose highest qualification is Year 12, even after taking into account the foregone earnings of students while they study. (http://www.youth.nsw.gov.au/__data/page/1165/whatpricethecle...)

Bruce Chapman, the designer of Australia's income contingent education loan system, found that the Return on Investment of higher education in Australia is between 10 and 6 per cent. (http://vital.new.voced.edu.au/vital/access/services/Download...)

Wes - I think that the reason I would keep using R over pandas is all the packages in the R universe. Which I suppose is the reason why you would use pandas over R if you had more experience with python.

E.g. ggplot2 still seems to be quite a bit better than matplotlib. Also for the random data examination/sketching I absolutely love rstudio due to it's integrated help/plotting/file browsing.

Essentially what you're saying is that you understand it; therefore it's simple to understand.

Obviously GitHub believe there are people who will benefit from using Git who can't be bothered understanding setting up ssh.

Seems reasonable to me.

Should Assange win it would not make him part of the government. Senators are only part of the Government if their party is in power.

I'm not sure what the legal issues surrounding extradition of a senator would be though.

Assange's main power would be through participating on Senate committees where he can ask questions of government. He would also be able use parliament as a soap box.

I don't think the Government (regardless of which party is in power) would be that worried about it through - unless he somehow ends up with the balance of power (unlikely).

The Greens will probably lose a spot due to his running.

Just call Amazon - I broke mine by dropping it (completely my fault) and they replaced it within a week.

You think it's beyond the scope of government to be assisting low-skilled people to gain skills and employment in quality jobs in industries with a future? I don't.

By all means reduce regulation to encourage job growth, but there's more than one way to skin a cat.

It's also constant. Every single time someone tweets/blogs/talks about Codecademy they say Code Academy. It's inevitably followed by "actually it's Codecademy".

It's a distraction from what otherwise seems to be a great idea.

Works OK for countries with parliamentary democracies.

Where are we losing it to? And if we need it again won't there be an incentive for it to come back?

Australia doesn't have to be good at everything.

I agree that Australia shouldn't become complacent, and I agree that housing is historically highly priced in Australia, I just don't agree that we are looking at a catastrophic bubble.

Ireland and Australias' levels of net migration aren't comparable either. See:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ireland+net+migration%2...

Negligible Government support for industries that are not sustainable is a good thing.

Yes Australia has a higher cost of living than the United States, and recent high commodity prices have pushed up our exchange rate. However, if you are comparing prices across currency, then a lot of what you are seeing is due to a higher exchange rate. If you had moved to Australia in the early 2000s, you would've felt rich. Inflation is not currently a problem in Australia.

See: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=aud+to+usd

Re: the property bubble. House prices in Australia are high compared to historical levels. However, as this article from Crikey describes, Australian wages have risen too. While median house prices are still at a higher level compared to median wages (see: http://economics.hia.com.au/media/House%20price%20to%20incom...), they have been soft and in some cases reducing this year. They haven't 'burst' in the way the US housing bubble did.

The differences between Australia and the US where you had a massive house bubble are numerous.

* Australian banks are more heavily regulated and haven't lent 'sub-prime' mortgages.

* Australian housing market has good fundamentals - our population growth has been quite high (due to overseas migration, like yourself!), and in most areas there is an undersupply of housing (with exceptions like the gold coast).

I think you are overplaying the negatives in Australia, in general everything is working quite well as this convincing piece from Crikey shows.

In Australia we have a temporary employer sponsored skilled visa (the 457 visa). Median processing times for this visa are 21 days. It is valid for 4 years, you can be sponsored for a permanent visa after 2 years.

I wouldn't worry about your Kindle's screen. I broke mine, and Amazon replaced it, even though it was completely my fault.

Although I agree about a Kindle and pictures.

Having done the db-class here's my experience of how things worked. Although I understand it's different from class to class.

Course is like a typical Uni course. Lectures, readings, tests and exams.

I received an email a week before the class started.

Videos came out and could be watched in the browser or downloaded.

Open to anyone.

Prof. Widom said that if she were to run the class again, it would be at the same time next year, because thats when she runs it at Stanford.

Maths is certainly not my strong point, but you should check out khanacademy.org. There might be some videos there.

There is an interesting article on Bloomberg about this exact thing. Americans have converted the extra productivity into consumer possessions, while other countries (read Scandinavia/Northern Europe) have converted them into increased leisure time.

Have a look:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-03/americans-work-too-...

The lack of parking in Melbourne's city is a good thing. It acts as a cost on the negative externalities of driving into one of Australia's biggest cities.

It encourages you to catch the train, which is better for everyone around you, because you don't have to drive.

That's right. Sorry should've made that clearer.

Obviously for the Australian government we would need an Australian version of this or a similar service.

Government IT procurement for fairly trivial systems cost unbelievable amounts of money. A lot of this is due to an overly rigid scoping and dev process.