Astronomer

Netball is similar to basketball... I think it's most popular in Australia and New Zealand so I thought some people might not be familiar with it. Main differences include not being able to dribble, but instead only bounce pass, and not being able to take steps when you catch/ get a hold of the ball, and different set positions and limitations as to where these positions can travel in the court. Kind-of hard to explain but it's a really fun/ awesome/ challenging sport! And it's quite big over here, most people play it or play in a team during their schooling, predominantly females though.

Netball - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Janszoon

It's played over here too, but it's pretty much just one of those weird games you play in gym class. I don't think anyone really plays it at all outside of that scenario here.

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AleG

What's the public transport system like in developed countries? (Cost; How many people use a certain mode, anything else).

Same question for televised programming. (Cost; Number of channels on cable/satellite, anything else)

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Burning Down

In Canada public transportation is run by the cities (for the most part anyways), so I can really only speak for Toronto (although I'm fairly sure most other cities here have good transport systems). The system here is pretty good, in my opinion. Of course there are always people who complain, saying the fares are too high, buses and trains are never on schedule, etc., but I've never had a problem. The entire city is accessible by bus, and the downtown core (where I live) is also served by streetcars (or trams or trolleys, same thing) and the underground subway. The subway is generally a better mode of transport because it bypasses all the road traffic (obviously!), whereas the buses and streetcars can get stuck in traffic. Our subway system is much smaller than that of New York's though, and I believe it is also older. Thousands of people use public transport here everyday, and the peak times are at rush hour in the mornings and afternoons, when everyone is heading to work or school.

It costs $3 for each ride, but there are passes and tickets available, and the price is lower. Passes and tickets are good if you use the system everyday or for the better part of a week. Oh yeah, it is also MUCH cheaper than a car, for which you have to buy gas and pay for maintenance, etc. I have a car that I use almost everyday because it's pretty good on gas and my uncle is a mechanic who gives me good deals on maintenance, but I sometimes like to take the bus or whatever. And public transport here is a good way to pick out all the weirdos in the city, just as long as you keep yourself safe!

Cable and satellite? It's pretty good here. Though most of the stuff on TV is garbage! There's basic cable packages, in which you get an analog signal and about 40 channels. I think that's about $100/month, but I'm not sure because I don't have it. I have digital cable. Digital cable is a major step up from basic and it's basically equal to satellite, except you don't need a dish. That package offers (well here anyways) up to 500 channels. Most of the programming is repeated though because the majority of channels are networks that broadcast the same shows at different times across the country. That costs almost $200/month. Satellite offers pretty much the same thing for roughly the same price, and sometimes you can get a radio package (like XM or Sirius) for an additional fee. Both digital cable and satellite offer specialty channels that show only movies for example.

In Toronto, the channels are mostly Canadian, but we do get a lot of American channels that broadcast from Buffalo or Rochester (the networks like Fox, NBC, CNN, CBS, etc). With the digital cable and satellite, you get all of that plus the channels that come from other parts of Canada or the US. What's so great about that is, if you know you're going to miss your favourite TV show you can either record it to PVR or catch it later from a more western time zone.

Lateralus, thanks for telling me what netball is! I sort of had an idea but I wasn't really clear on the dynamics of it.

Janszoon

In the US public transportation really varies. In the bigger cities it's usually pretty good. Elsewhere, no so much. In Philadelphia, where I live and which I would describe as a sort of a second-tier American city (1.5 million people), we have two subway lines, trollies, and extensive bus and light-rail service. It's not bad but it doesn't run late enough and some parts of the city don't really have access.

As far as TV goes, I don't have cable so it's free for me. And I get maybe 12 or so channels that anyone would actually want to watch, plus probably another 12 with crappy local programming, infomercials, religious crap, etc. When I had cable, it cost $40 or $50 a month and I had maybe 20 or 30 channels that might be of potential interest and then probably an equal amount of filler. That was one of the really low end packages. Higher end packages I believe run somewhat over $100 a month an give you a couple hundred channels.

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