yeah - "hope for humanity" ... I'm losing it fast when, supposedly, one of the smartest of us still hasn't figured out backups

hmmm, I think I run one now

"I'm not sure that the censorship claim stacks up. This is about classification systems."

"Classification systems" are an essential part of censorship. Indeed the examples he gives of "classification systems", movie and TV ratings, are age-based censorship systems.

"Conscience votes go to matters to do with life and death ..." Sure there isn't much death involved here, but there is a potentially large, and definitely some, effect on what it is like to live in Australia. Ultimately, every vote is a "conscience" vote, and even this one is, as Conroy himself challenges the conscience of Malcolm Turnbull: "[he] has to explain to Australian families that he is prepared to do nothing about blocking access to those sites."

I guess they're trying really hard "down under" to live up to the ideals of Orwell's Oceania.

Whatever route you take, at the end, make sure the students have actually automated some task, understand the value of it, and can do it again.

Give them some big piece of tedious work, and make sure they can write a little program to do it for them.
Better make sure they understand how to work iteratively and test their results too.

A society filled with regular office workers who can use a computer to automate their tasks will be much more productive, and consequently richer.

mpg, km/L ... I could only wish
we get to measure our mileage (oh - "fuel economy" I suppose, since miles aren't involved) in, are you ready for it?
L/100 km
what brain-dead bureaucrat thought it'd be a good idea to flip the ratio and divide by a factor of a hundred ? I bet he got a bonus and a promotion for "stimulating the economy" since everyone had to hire an accountant to figure out what the hell that meant it terms they could understand.

I very much agree

Having a nice printed manual to leaf through can be one of the joys of a new game ... just as there is something special about buying music on vinyl that was lost for cassettes and CDs, could there be something lost for games here?

I don't really know, the only games I play now are my childhood favourites on my SNES (yes, I still have it and it still works - though I do have to do the NES "cartridge-blow" trick from time to time) and I haven't bought a new name since Civ 3, so I'm not really in their target audience anyway ...

just "more than a few weeks ago" ... you can count months or years in weeks, no?

seriously, shouldn't he have been tasered a few times, then beaten for good measure?

brilliant - I should RTFA that I referenced!

I will be completely surprised if this works on the PS3 slim.
I understood that one of the ways Sony cut the price and reduced the size for the slim was that they did not include the IBM hypervisor that made the whole thing possible.
(see:
      http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linux-ps3-1/
      http://www.osnews.com/story/22073/Why_No_OtherOS_Option_on_PS3_Slim_Sony_Answers
for a few more details)

Without the hypervisor, its just not possible.

"using statistical analysis developed by economists to try to draw conclusions"

this sounds promising
/deadpan

Eclipse is a fairly good ide, it could use help with C/C++ development tooling.
gdb could stand some love, especially so that it can better be hidden behind a UI.

"Once all trivial tasks are handled automatically there are no trivial tasks left, and thus it is no longer a trade ..."

OK - I see what you're trying to say, but I think you're missing what a trade is about.
Consider a cabinet maker. Sure you can automate the process of building a cabinet - indeed you can find lots of manufactured cabinets. But if you're kitchen does have the perfect dimensions, or your requirements are a little unique, you better get a cabinet maker who can custom build what you need.
Not all trades are monotonous and easy to automate.

All the same, I think of software development as a craft - one that is all about design, because the implementers are not the people but the computers.