Could this technology be combined with desalinization, i.e. take salt water, pull the salt out to produce potable water, and use the salt to improve the plant's efficiency? Desalinization is a very energy-intensive process but I wonder if a lot of that could be offset using solar and redirecting the waste salt into the energy plant that powers the process in the first place.

That might potentially be true of the PC market, but interestingly the console games market is different - 64% prefer physical media.

As a games collector, I prefer physical copies, but I also buy my fair share of stuff digitally as well. It really comes down to price and availability a lot of the time.

"Antimalware" generally speaking is the term the industry has come up with to describe solutions that bundle Antivirus and Antispyware into a single package, rather than having them run separately. Generally if you're running an Antimalware product that should be all you need.

Technically in Australia it's illegal to import into the country anything that has been refused classification - the situation with our backward laws regarding the lack of an 18+ game rating is well-known. It's legal to possess the material, but technically bringing them into the country is an offense.

However if downloaded material is not 'goods' then do import restrictions apply? Customs & import laws are only applied to goods, after all.

The Democrats also oppose it, but they haven't really been a significant political force in quite a while. May not be a wasted vote to try and put them in the senate though.

I'm not sure if they've been officially registered yet, but the Pirate Party may be somewhat of an option as well, depending on your stance on IP issues in addition to the filtering.

They never wanted one because they didn't feel it was necessary. The idea is that if the government infringes on what is seen as our rights, they will to be voted out.

Of course it's a fairly naive approach since it completely ignores the issue that arises when you have a system dominated by two parties who both have the same policy. You're pretty much screwed if none of the parties represent your opinions, you end up having to pick the least horrible.

If anything though, I'd say that the reluctance to introduce a bill of rights is related to the condition of aboriginal communities more than it is detaining illegal immigrants.

R2 was perfectly capable of serving drinks on Jabba's sail barge so I don't see why he couldn't do it on the ISS?

That's an Australian accent, not British. Her actress is Australian, and I think she was being deliberately directed to try and cover it up for story-related reasons. Plus there's the fact that they're trying to translate an extremely Japanese character archetype into a context where she doesn't quite work.

If I was to complain about anything in the dub, it wouldn't be Vanille, it would be the constant grunting and groaning. It's distracting and I'm sure that the original Japanese dialogue didn't have as much of it. It's like noise for noise's sake.

There's federal elections later this year so I imagine the government will be wanting to keep this particular piece of extremely unpopular legislation on the down-low for the rest of the year so that they can do what they did last time and trot it back out after the elections with the statement that they received a mandate from the people to implement it, despite it not actually being a major part of their platform.

After all, no political party in a supposedly free country would want to start campaigning with something as undemocratic on their books as a secret censorship blacklist run by the government with no judicial oversight and no right of appeal which blocks 'undesireable' content as defined by the government's whim at that particular time of the day. Any competent opposition could make it into a very major issue.

Australian slang is all about making everything have two syllables. 'Bike' has one syllable, so we add '-ie' to make it two. Lebanese has three syllables, so we take the first syllable and add '-o' to make Lebbo.

It gets a lot more surreal when we apply this kind of abbreviation slang to things that are already slang. The best example being 'seppo', which is abbreviated from 'septic tank' which is cockney rhyming slang for 'yank'.

Possession isn't illegal, but importing RC material can actually be a violation of Australian customs laws. RC material is considered 'objectionable content' and you are required to have a permit from the classification board before importing it (and yes, purchasing online and having it shipped to an Australian address makes you an 'importer').

In practical terms, the chances that customs will bother to open your packages and inspect them provided that they're correctly labeled with a customs declaration is fairly remote. They have their hands full stopping people from importing heroin and live rattlesnakes as it is.

The problem that Australians have with the extremely unpopular internet filtering proposed is that it doesn't block access to "sites featuring material such as rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse." It blocks access to "unwanted content." The definition of that is completely left up to the government. There is no judicial oversight. There is no process for appealing a listing. The blacklist is completely secret and leaked copies have shown that its content is in no way limited to the above. It might be that the content initially may be deplorable, but the way the whole system has been put forward will easily allow them to escalate what is 'unacceptable'.

A secretive, government-mandated, government-run censorship system is a very, very bad thing.

However Anonymous has essentially shot those protesting the proposal in the kneecaps with this move. Now, in addition to claiming that anyone who protests the filtering system must be a pervert and a kiddy fiddler, the proponents can accuse us of being 'internet terrorists' or something as well.

Whether or not the two companies are talking isn't really as relevant as who it was that brought up the possibility. Did Apple approach MS (in which case it's all but assured to happen) or did MS approach Apple as a potential vehicle for marketing Bing to people? Semantics, maybe, but the origin of the push will make a big difference to the outcome of any talks.

While he won't admit it, he's the main reason why this study - which was due to be released quite a while ago - has taken until now to reach this stage.

I expect he'll just ignore the public and continue to veto any changes.

It was a fairly deliberate design decision, they wanted to make you feel constricted and claustrophobic. Apparently it worked too well in your case.

One of the biggest tricks with PC Dead Space was that you *must* disable vsync. Vsync in the game is horribly bugged and causes major input lag. Without the lag, the controls (especially the camera) are a lot more responsive and you'd probably find that after a bit of play the constricted view becomes less of an issue because the game no longer feels like you're issuing commands to someone on the moon.