Adventure Ausrama Blog

Everyone is spying on everyone else. This is a matter of fact. Life has changed so much since the advent of the computer. Trojans are easy to create and even easier to spread. When you log on to just about any site trojans flood onto your system. Even if you delete them they are immediately put back on your computer again. They do their work as soon as you start work on anything, sending information back to the target source. PCs, tablets and mobile phones are all vulnerable. New trojans are created daily in their thousands. Some are very damaging. The presence of the Hesperbot banking trojan doubled in two weeks. They spread li ke "wildfire". Emails commonly contain phishing bugs that look like real banking communications. They are after your username and password so they can empty your bank account. When you are working on your PC have you ever had a txt file mysteriously open on it own? This could indicate keystroking where what you type is being wat

I was in my twenties in 1967 when the referendum on giving Aboriginals the vote was held. Obviously, I must have voted, but I cannot remember anything at all about it nor the way I voted. Should I be ashamed about this? Well it seems many Australians do not remember a thing in regard to the referendum. It was nearly half a century ago. Rarely does a yes vote to change the Constitution "get up". This to non-Australians means that few attempts to make a change have been successful. Of the 24 referendums held only four have got a majority yes vote. People from other countries would think it odd that an advanced country such as Australia had not given Aboriginals the vote decades before. However, think about the racial discrimination in the United States in the supposedly enlightened 1960s. Other discrimination existed then. Young Australian men who were forcibly enlisted into the military to fight in the Vietnam War could not go into a pub and drink alcohol unt

Tony Abbot said that he would like to be known as the "development" prime minister. With the deficit that the Australian Coalition government aims to reduce as soon as possible, this simply cannot happen. Investment on roads, schools and hospitals takes cash that Australia does not have. Just how he planned to invest and save is a mystery. Legacies cannot be planned. They happen due to one's behavior and circumstances that cannot be controlled. Planning the future particularly your own is difficult. Of course he stopped the boats by being ruthless and taking action that has infuriated our neighbor, Indonesia. This always was a dangerous course of action. Diplomatically it is an absolute mess with future repercussions unknown. What is certain is that he will be known as the prime minister who killed the Australian automotive industry. Blaming labor costs is tunnel vision on his part. Other input costs are high : a strong currency, power costs, transpor

Everyone is in debt. That seems to be the case. But if we all owe money to whom are we indebted? Who are these fat cats who spend their days on the beach having cool drinks brought to them while they while away the time sunbathing? If truth be known the money does not actually exist. It has been created in the books of independent and national banks. In centuries passed the local blacksmith acted as the bank. Gold, silver and promissory notes were left in his safe. He soon became aware that the "goods" left for safe keeping would not be taken out by the owner for a very long time, if ever. For storing the valuable minerals and promissory notes he gave promissory notes in return. This meant that he could create money. He could also give loans, a large part of which would return directly back because the debtor opened a new account. When large private banks started, governments gave an assurance that a run on an institution would be protected by public money. We have see

Though banks are now more cautious with their lending, National Australia Bank CEO Cameron Clyne says the community blames the banks for the economic crisis and rightly so too. Banks have kept their operations very secret while they risked investors money by loaning out money to potential defaulters. He says banks should be more open about their interest rate tables and fees. Investors in the community are hit all the time by getting lower interest than they believe they will get, and being hit by fees without being informed why. Fees in particular have technical wording rather than "real life" wording. In short, he says people believe that banks are robbing bastards. He further warns that banks will increase interest charged on loans or keep them the same despite the central bank lowering rates. People will see this as plain robbery. They will call for government intervention. Economics by Ty Buchanan http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia

There is clearly something wrong with the Australian economy. We seem to in the same position of Indonesia several decades ago when it had oil and the high price was pushing up the value of the currency. A high currency makes it difficult for those producing "non-boom" products to export. That is why the US is printing more dollars to weaken the currency, improve the economy and create more jobs. Nothing much is happening for it though because the US dollar is the major international currency as gold used to be. Just why Australian shopkeepers are crying fowl is more difficult to understand. A strong currency means imports are cheaper. Australians are very import dependent in their spending habits and buying cheap imports is what they like to do. They buy such imports over more expensive Australian made products, but this shouldn't hurt the bottom line of retailers. They claim Australians are spending less. Though figures show this to be the case, spendin

Whether we like it or not, many people do not carry cash. While the older generation draws money from ATMs and banks to go shopping, young people prefer to carry just a credit card. Most debit cards are held by the aged who do not like to go into credit card debt. In Australia 86 per cent of transactions are made with a card. This puts Australia 6th in the world in the cashless country list. Developing nations still use cash for about half of all payments. Using cards for payments is safer than cash. If felons know a person is carrying cash they could be theft targets. There is another side to a fully cashless society: the taxman will be able to trace all transactions, business and private, if suitable laws are passed to gain access to bank data. At present only the police can view data on a person's financial affairs if they are investigating a crime. This will probably be extended over coming decades to social security and the tax department to make sure people

Despite the boom times in Australia which has finally peaked, a significant proportion of working Australians do not have permanent full-time positions. This is because both sides of politics have freed-up the hiring contract between employers and employees. The claim that bank holiday and annual leave pay is included in the casual rate is rubbish. People are hired for a per hour fee. No moneys are set aside for rest day payment.  Part-time employees can be called in to work at any time of the day or night. Even in management the market is distorted. Tests to find the "ideal" personality to do the job have never been tested in the real world. They have been written by university people who teach and must write a certain number of papers for "respected" journals. Governments are reducing employment in the public sector. When they have to get the work done in future by the private sector the real cost will become apparent.  While contractors offering specific

The Internet has disrupted the security of ordinary money. The economic system controlled by the banks for centuries is now under threat. Bitcoin is an example of new money. Its mere presence in feared by the banks. Money, or at least its value, depends on people having faith that it can easily be exchanged for different goods. In Germany before WWII security in money was severely challenged. There was rampant inflation, so much so that people had to push barrow loads of  cash to a shop to get a loaf of bread. New money is everywhere: PayPal has taken the banking world by storm. These bank-like services are being offered by Google, Apple and eBay. To get Followers on Twitter, many sites are offering seeds. Though the websites deny trading for followers, this is exactly what it is. Google's Wallet is really a bank service. Smartphones can be swiped in store terminals to buy goods. The problem is most money does not really exist it is just recorded in books as they used

Endangered species in Australia tend to be those that do not fair well in human affection. Plenty is spent on koalas because they are seen as cuddly. In reality though they are not. Indeed, if one attempts to pick up a wild koala it goes on an all out attack if it cannot get away. Some endangered animals are not exactly ugly. The grey-headed flying fox, a bat, is quite cute as shown in the photo.  It is just not in the mainline thinking of people. The average person knows very little about it. Many cringe when the word "bat" is mentioned. They do carry some diseases, but cases where bats pass these on to humans are quite rare. The grey-headed bat is Australia's largest and is responsible for pollination of many plants, mostly trees. There are more than 19,000 threatened species in Australia, 1,000 of them mammals. Some species that could be saved with a small amount of money are not helped, while others such as koalas get too much money. Koalas are being pampe

Treating the effect as the cause is wasting valuable time in finding a cure for cancer. A Study found that depressed people lived shorter lives when they had cancer. Depression per se and lack of hope, optimism and anxiety were tested. Those suffering from these "attributes" didn't live as long as "optimists" who were also cancer sufferers. A great leap of faith was made to claim that mood sufferers did not seek second opinions on cancer. Note that this was not proven it was just surmised. Overall findings were that optimism did not lead to better survival in people with cancer. Well this is game. set and match. You can't have it both ways. Either being optimistic improves survival or it doesn't. There is no doubt that psychological treatment improves the well being of cancer patients, but let's not get ahead of ourselves and say optimistic cancer sufferers live longer. A great deal of money is set aside for medical research. We have to be caref

Banks are to significantly cut the return on money invested. This is not surprising considering the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is cutting interest rates. As the banks follow the RBA down, which they are not obliged to do, they must cut outgoings on term deposits for example. Considering banks make 60 per cent of their funds from various savings products, it is no wonder cutting what they pay out is on the horizon. If rates fall much lower people will be drawing out their savings and hiding their "loot" under the bed. Customers are borrowing less because the bar for loans has been pushed too high. Well, perhaps that is a good thing. Australians were condemned for not saving enough; now they are criticized for not borrowing enough. With an election date already set the government will push for full RBA flow - ons in the popular media. This does not look good for retirees who rely on money put aside in investments for their retirement. Money is getting cheaper in

Google Gmail offers a new Internet phone service if you have a Gmail Account. There is one thing about running such a service on the Internet; that is it costs nothing for the company providing the service to run. Users pay a local telephone company for access to the Internet from their homes and on their mobile phones. The connection goes through each country via local telephone companies servicing the internet and phone lines. There is no charge for US Gmail users and a charge per call for those living in other countries. Though it is a small amount it is discriminatory. The Internet goes all around the world like a net. Access to this net is open to anyone. No country charges its population to access the net to other countries . The European furniture company Ikea has already been accused of cross-subsidization for charging different prices for the same products in different countries. The production and even distribution costs are much the same. Google's discriminatio