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

The Australian Classification system is a system of government-run censorship. Media which is refused classification is not allowed to be sold in the country.

The debate is fundamentally about censorship.

It is legal to possess and view unclassified and refused-classification material in most of Australia, provided that it is not material which is actually illegal (child porn, for example). What Conroy wants to do is circumvent the ability for adults to decide what they can view. To make it illegal to view online things which are legal to possess in reality. It is censorship. To argue otherwise is completely dishonest.

The Trappist breweries would probably disagree with you.

PS3 Media Server's transcoding can be used to correct the framerate too, if you set it up right.

For decades we've had films which are "essentially created as entertainment and to make money" and which depict major conflicts, often with input from people who fought in them. They'll often attack more recent subject matter than games will, too.

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.