Ditto for "capitalism". Idealism is always foiled by human nature. The best systems I've seen are a mix of elements.

Atkinson's censorship of games is a part of a pattern of behaviour. This is the man who also passed a law making anonymous speech illegal specifically for this election campaign.
He then had the cheek, after intense criticism, to say if he was re-elected he'd remove it after the election. It's likely that this was more damaging to the Labor party in this election than the R18 issue.

I am very happy to hear he no longer holds office, as I detest the man and what he stands for. Australia is now a slightly better place. Next up, hopefully, Conroy and the internet filter.

His support for ACTA is consistent with what I expect of Obama, fair enough. However, one of the planks of his campaign was transparency and openness in Government. Why does he not come out and support open negotiations for ACTA? That is a broken promise.

I'm glad someone mentioned this! I voted for Turing because of his many accomplishments in mathematics and computer science. Yet whenever I hear mention of him, I also feel great sadness for the utterly horrible treatment he received at the hands of his own country and fellow citizens for the so-called 'crime' of being homosexual. It makes me feel greatly misanthropic. Only recently did the PM Gordon Brown officially apologise for these actions. Greater awareness of this awful history is much needed.

Indeed. The textbook for my first year programming class for Engineering extensively used quotes throughout from Alice/Through The Looking Glass to illustrate concepts about algorithms and object-oriented programming. They were very suitable for the purpose, I found. It was a book for teaching Pascal though...

Because then you can mix and match. Or you can replace a lost or damaged half. Funnily enough, having choice is always preferable to having no choice. Everyone has their own reasons.

I'd be less scared of a biker as Attorney General than a puritan nutjob like Atkinson.

That originally popped into my head as a joke, but I think it's actually true! See also his recent law banning anonymous speech.

So then you don't support it?

Many people see the benefit of personal filters for their children. Not many appear to agree with a mandatory filter for everybody. I'll grant you though that most people are apathetic, as about most things.

Not that I agree with censorship in any medium, but TV and radio are dumb terminals once you've tuned into a channel. The only valid justification for the censorship, in my opinion, is that people therefore want to have a reasonable expectation for what content they will get. The internet however is completely different. You have to seek out your own content and specifically request it. And if you don't like it you can filter it out yourself with perfect ease. I completely object to this choice being made for me by anyone else, especially this government which has shown itself to be fairly puritanical in its leanings (anti-gay marriage; want to ban depictions of small breasts, female ejaculation, and cartoon characters; want to raise the drinking age to 21, don't understand the concept of adult satire re. the various Chaser incidents, etc. and so on)

This filtering scheme would be like turning on SBS TV and finding it's been totally blocked by the Goverment because they feel they've shown too many foreign films with nude scenes.

And I assure you, the majority of Australians oppose the filter. Even most of the usual pro-censorship 'decency' or religious organisations oppose it. It's very hard to find people who support it. The Government is being incredibly anti-democratic to push this through. There's certainly a background motive to it, of why they're so determined against all reason and support - I wonder if Australia is being used as a testbed for this type of filtering?

It's a highly ridiculous result for what is something like a 2 second sample of a string arrangement. Somehow they end up losing the entire songwriting copyright, the lyrics, the actual composed music, everything. Certainly not justice. I try to look at it postively, as adding to the meaning of the song. They write a hit song, and get the fame and people coming to their concerts, but then get their song stolen by very rich musicians through legal injustice. It's a bittersweet symphony indeed.

Sadly, I have to agree, and it happened right from the start, as you say. For example:

Oh, except for the men from Africa or anyone recently from that lineage. They can be enslaved. I always wondered how they could write those words, then go home to their slaves. (I suppose they didn't see them as "men", which is even more depressing. What groups aren't seen as "men" now?)