Messy Mind » GearGOD’s

Australian welfare: we don’t care about full time students

GearGOD — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:33:11 +0000

Today I called up centrelink to ask them for some financial help as I’m really starting to feel the pressure of studying full time and trying to pay for rent and bills and food. My parents don’t support me. I had to drop one of my 4 subjects this semester so I can work 2 days a week and barely keep up with my expenses. Sounds like some help is in order, right?

Wrong.

The lovely lady on the phone informed me that there are only two ways that they will help me: either I must earn 18 thousand dollars (aka work full time) or I must show that its unreasonable to live at home, which by their definition is only the case if you’re getting raped or beaten up or something along those lines. Nevermind that I got practically kicked out, nevermind that my parents live 3 hours from where I work and study, nevermind that parents are not legally obliged to support their children after 21. No, Centrelink looks past all that and sees me as receiving financial help from them – help which they couldn’t provide even if they wanted to because they’re so deep in debt.

Apparently I’m not the only one in this ridiculous situation, and it has driven students to cheating the system or living in poverty or even resorting to prostitution to pay the bills. What the hell is wrong with our government? Why do lazy dole bludgers, who never worked in their life and never intend to get support from the government while the youth that chooses full time tertiary education gets ignored?

The worst thing is that it is us, the students, who will go on to well paid jobs which will attract the high taxes that will go to drive the system that screwed us over when we needed it most. I don’t think I’ll have any moral dilemma about doing everything I can to evade taxes after this.

Microsoft Drops IE7 WGA Validation

GearGOD — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 21:58:56 +0000

How timely! Microsoft has released an updated Internet Explorer 7 which amongst other things, drops the WGA validation so now anyone can install it. This appears to be a move to increase its currently miniscule market share, but I’m for one happy because more people using IE7 means less people using IE6.

Slashdot Article

Stop using IE6!

GearGOD — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 07:38:05 +0000

Traffic statistics show that 52% of visitors here are using Firefox, which is awesome. However they show that the next most common browser is IE6 at 22%. People running that piece of crap should really switch to a real browser. I never hated it, I just plain didn’t use it because it sucked and Opera offered much more. Now however, I joined the ranks of web developers who hate it with a passion and understood why they do. Nothing bloody works!
The layout for this site is pretty much consistent between ff and opera, but in ie it’s completely different, and really fucked up. Things are in the wrong places, PNGs don’t show up seethrough, this that.. Bleh. The png issue especially is driving me nuts. I implemented a fix that tricks it into rendering them properly but you’ll see every png with an image cannot be displayed X over it.

People do yourelf a favour and stop using that piece of shit that only Microsoft could call a browser. At the very least, move on to IE7. Firefox and Opera are years ahead in terms of features. Extensions, skins, rss readers, quickdial, billions of things that IE doesn’t have.

(Wild-Tiger addon:) And don’t forget security issues and all that. IE is a death-trap, because IE only updates when they feel like it. More to the point, IE is targeted by virus’ not only because hackers have had years to penetrate it, but because it’s such a popular browser it makes it the better target.