Ah, but:

guest@xkcd:/$ sudo make me a sandwich

Okay.

First reply! From Wellington

... wait, that's the wrong way round

What on earth are you talking about? or even think you are talking about? What is it you imagine Google has done here? Conroy was simply attacking Google to distract attention from how much everyone hates the censorship, not because Google had done or said anything at all.

Maybe a full transcript of his remarks will help. TRANSCRIPT follows. Context: the host is trying to get quick closing comments from the Minister and from Colin Jacobs, the VP of Electronic Frontiers Australia. He asks for a closing comment from the Minister first; Jacobs is not given a chance to comment. (No one has even mentioned Google, Inc.)

CONROY. And while I appreciate some people might want to elevate the internet into something special, could I just draw them back to the - this argument, and those who advocate this argument, I mean recently the founder of Google have got themselves into a little bit of trouble because, notwithstanding -

HOST. Mm.

CONROY. - their alleged "Do no evil" policy, they recently created something called, ah, "Buzz", and there was a - a reaction, ah, and people said, well look, aren't you publishing private information.

HOST. Mm.

CONROY. And -

HOST. We are almost out of time, by the way, Minister.

CONROY. - Mr Schmidt said, said the following: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." This is the founder of Google.

HOST. Mm.

CONROY. He also said recently to Wall Street analysts, "We - love - cash." In a sentence, that was it, just "We - love - cash."

HOST. Yes, heh heh -

CONROY. So when people say, shouldn't we just leave it up to, y'know the Googles of this world - to determine - what the filtering policy should be, and make no mistake, anybody who wants to go onto Google's sites now and look up their filtering policy will actually find - they filter more material -

HOST. Minister -

CONROY. - on a broader range of topics than we are proposing to do for what -

HOST. We, we have - uh - we - heh -

CONROY. I'll back our parliament to stand fast on these issues rather than Google.

HOST. We have to wrap it.

CONROY. Thank you.

HOST. Good to talk to you. Thanks very much ... [thanks guests, end of programme]

(a) It's called "lobbying". I realise this may shock you, but it's not actually uncommon, and it is rarely frowned on anywhere.

(b) Google has done nothing of the kind. Conroy's comments were an unprovoked attack on Google, not a response to an attack by Google.

I just came here after playing some Morrowind. That takes a lot less than 1 GB. Even heavily modded to make it look visually stunning it takes less than 1 GB.

Now, sure, there are serious immersion-breaking AI limitations, gameplay irritations, it's got olde-style graphics, and the art design isn't to everyone's taste. But I still find it a hell of a lot more immersive than any game published since that I can think of. No invisible walls; no unopenable doors; no unkillable NPCs; lethal parts of the world are explicably lethal; major towns are major, minor out-in-the-wop-wops towns are out-in-the-wop-wops. Any artificiality that is there doesn't come from the design, but from the limitations of gaming technology in 2001. That kind of limitation is something I can forgive; invisible walls, no.

I'm not saying it's perfect, just that what the author of TFA is asking for is not something unachievable. It has been done. It could be done even better. I look forward to that (and welcome recommendations!).

Addendum: there's a link to a higher-quality QuickTime copy of the demo video, and also a Youtube copy if you dislike Vimeo.

Yes, video. Not commercially yet, but it's on its way. Take a look at Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene, from 2007. It's ... rather impressive. Removal of defects and occluding objects is shown in the demo video at 00:44 onwards and 6:00 onwards.

Judging from the results of several Google searches, one of the people credited for the demo, Aseem Agarwala, works for Adobe -- look for interesting things in After Effects CS5. One of the others, Pravin Bhat, apparently works for Weta Digital; and two of the others, Michael Cohen and Sing Bing Kang, are with Microsoft. The rest appear to be academics.

It's not just about politics and current events, it's about culture as well. I get that. Look at it this way: when you were 6, had your parents taught you not to accept rides or candy from strangers? Well, imagine that kind of thing, plus being taught one or more of the following:

• that there are things you must (never) say when someone in a uniform asks you a question
• that the man accompanying the class on the field trip works for the government
• not to mention that your aunt married a Jewish man
• not to mention that you are Jewish
• not to mention that you are Muslim
• not to mention that your family goes to church
• not to mention that your family doesn't go to church
• not to go into the field with the big sign with a skull and crossbones
• what a curfew is
• etc.

Any child who has to be taught any of the above things is living in an oppressed society (not necessarily by their own government, in the minefield case), and will remember and recognise what these things mean as they get older.

I would too, as things stand.

However, if Ubuntu had a monopoly market share, and Canonical produced its own browser/graphics app/etc., and then Canonical used Ubuntu's market share to leverage market share for the browser/graphics app/etc., ... then I think I might have a different attitude.

Also important:

Numerous ISPs unaccounted for there, but I've been meaning to move away from TelstraClear ever since I first found out about this. I'm fairly deeply ashamed that I haven't already.

It's not ostensible at all, since the scope of what is filtered is secret. In effect, its only use is political. IMHO.

An earlier report mentioned it would chew through 1.5 Mb/s; the figure you quote is probably more realistic. But even using the smaller figure, if you had a cap of, say, 30 GB/month, you'd eat through it in 44 hours.

Or at 5 Mb/s, 13 hours. Enjoy your half-hour of gameplay per day!

The full list of "no" voters, with voting history, contact details, etc.

Netherlands
Louis Bontes, Partij voor de Vrijheid
Laurence J.A.J. Stassen, Partij voor de Vrijheid
Daniel van der Stoep, Partij voor de Vrijheid

UK
John Stewart Agnew, UK Independence Party
Marta Andreasen, UK Independence Party
Gerard Batten, UK Independence Party
John Bufton, UK Independence Party
Trevor Coleman, UK Independence Party
William, Earl of Dartmouth, UK Independence Party
Nigel Farage, UK Independence Party
Mike Nattrass, UK Independence Party
Paul Nuttall, UK Independence Party
Nicole Sinclaire, UK Independence Party

All of the "no" voters are either independent of any EU parliament groups, or belong to the "Europe of Freedom and Democracy" group. Although the EFD group is officially pro-ACTA, of the 31 EFD members

• 6 were not present
• 8 abstained
• 9 voted against ACTA
• 8 voted in favour.

I suspect a fairly substantial library of games will become available, probably fairly swiftly. Someone's already compiled a list of Steam games that already have Mac ports. There's ... quite a lot.

Probably a lot of people have already seen the lovely series of pictures that Valve released last week to hint at this announcement in advance, but in case you haven't, here's a compilation, in the correct sequence (and note the iPhone motif at the bottom of each image):
image 1 (1980s Mac classic theme)
image 2 (Gordon Freeman with shiny Mac hazard suit)
image 3 (turrets)
image 4 (Team Fortress 2 -- "take a bite out of the ... sandwich")
image 5 (Left 4 Dead -- "I hate different")
image 6 (HL2 + 1984 Mac commercial)