I am happy to read the chapters and implement the things I learn all day every day; this kind of behaviour is a much more natural learning experience for me. Memorising tables, commands and state diagrams is not. Nor is playing dodge-ball with the sometimes extremely “Cisco-ified” questions wherein a slight misunderstanding of the wording can get you thinking in the wrong direction and ultimately missing the entire point of the question. This kind of misdirection in questions is the absolute worst way for me to incorrectly answer a question. It makes me feel cheated and contempt toward Cisco. Of course the cynical side of me would say that they have to do something to make the exams difficult, albeit the methods they use aren’t genuine. Single-word differences between two command syntaxes isn’t exactly testing the knowledge you would expect a CCNP-level technician to possess. The command interface on every Cisco device is interactive and has tab completion at a bare minimum, so as long as you know the first 3-5 letters of every command you wish to use, you can TAB-complete your entire 6,000 line configuration. Disingenuous. That’s a good word to describe this kind of exam question trickery.

Anyway, I should stop procrastinating on my blog and get back to it.

Channel 10 announced on their Facebook page a few days ago (link) that F1 broadcasts are moving from the HD channel “OneHD” to the SD channel 10. Channel 10 have stated this is to allow a “wider audience” of F1 fans to view the broadcast. In addition to the channel swap, the programming itself will start from 9.30PM in all time zones – this effectively means that viewers in SA and NT will be delayed by half an hour, and viewers in WA delayed by up to two hours. This is apparently also an attempt to get F1 viewers to a “wider audience”.

How cynical you are will determine the  kind of theories you have about the true motives behind these decisions. Channel 10 have stated they want F1 to be part of their “Super Sunday” broadcast – effectively a marketing push to collect several hours of popular programming into a prime-time slot of Sunday afternoon through evening. This was first done for the broadcast of the Australian GP due to its convenient broadcast time smack-bang in the middle of “Super Sunday”. My guess is that the “success” of the Australian GP broadcast has prompted this move to shoehorn all other F1 broadcasts into this time slot. Not only were more ad breaks than ever before seen on the Australian GP broadcast, more vapid talking heads than ever before seen were also present, thus making the broadcast “family friendly” and apparently helping it to appeal to a wider audience.

As you can see if you have clicked the link to Facebook above, nobody is happy about this decision. Approximately 150 negative comments were made on their post in the first day. Channel 10 seemingly doesn’t care, they posted this message in response:

We are wanting to bring F1 to the widest audience possible, which is why it is on Ten. This allows all Australians to access the Formula One coverage in a consistent time slot every Sunday night. Sorry, guys. This is locked in.

Since that post, several hundred more comments have been posted. The most poignant of which states “your schedule might be locked in, but your viewers aren’t” with several people posting references and links to online streaming of the F1 coverage.

What I want to do is send a message to Channel 10 to let them known this is simply unacceptable behaviour. I am annoyed personally because I am losing HD broadcast, most certainly gaining many more ads, and for some races throughout year will also be delayed. I live on the East coast of Australia, but it’s worse for the people on the West coast: all of the above, plus a two hour delay! What is the point of F1 live timing, F1 twitter accounts, and following each team’s respective ‘live postings’ on websites etc if there is no live coverage?

F1 broadcasting in Australia has always been terrible due to the structure of our commercial television networks and the timezone difference between here and where F1 happens. For a short while (2010, 2011 and the first three races of 2012), OneHD for the most part did a good job of broadcasting – all races live, almost all qualifying sessions live, and contrary to many complaints, I do feel they took minimal ad breaks.

We were given a bone, and now they’ve taken it away.

I would like all Australians to help me boycott Channel 10 and their sponsors. The following is a list of sponsors of the F1 on CH10/OneHD:

- Mercedes Benz
- Ashley & Martin
- TAGHeuer
- Swisse
- Harvey Norman
- Pedders
- Shannon’s Insurance
- Colli Hardware

I will provide contact details for these companies later.

Here are Channel 10′s contact details: http://ten.com.au/contact-us.htm
Sydney
1 Saunders Street
Pyrmont, NSW 2009
GPO BOX 10, Sydney, NSW 2001
Ph:   02 9650 1010
Fax:  02 9650 1111

Melbourne
Como Centre
Level 4, 620 Chapel Street
South Yarra, VIC 3141
Private Bag 5000, South Yarra, VIC 3141
Ph:  03 9275 1010
Fax: 03 9275 1011

Brisbane
Sir Samuel Griffith Drive
Mt Coot-tha, QLD 4066
GPO BOX 751, Brisbane, QLD 4001
Ph:  07 3214 1010
Fax: 07 3369 3786

Adelaide
80 Hutt Street
Adelaide, SA 5000
Locked Bag 10, Adelaide, SA 5001
Ph:  08 8225 1010
Fax: 08 8225 1011

Perth
Cottonwood Crescent
Perth, WA 6062
PO BOX 10, Mirrabooka, WA 6941
Ph:  08 9345 1010
Fax: 08 9344 8076

A list of their Twitter accounts:
One HD: @onehd
Ten Sport: @tensporttv
Craig Baird: @cbairdo
Greg Rust: @Thrusta1
Darryl Beattie: @Hanginfive

Their Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/TENsportTV

And a link to a discussion on Ten’s own forums about this very topic:
http://community.ten.com.au/community/other-ten-tv-shows/f/69/t/26774.aspx

Please can you all make every effort possible to contact Ten and let them know your displeasure at this move. Australians and non-Australians alike, please descend upon Channel 10′s contact points and overwhelm them with negative feedback. I would encourage people not to be vulgar or aggressive, merely state your displeasure and suggest you will be using alternative ways of watching the F1 coverage in the future.

I thought maybe it was just the temperature at that point in time causing the issue. At present, the graphics chip sits at 54 degrees celcius, but similar graphics artefacts are occasionally occuring. This makes me a sad panda. Although I have had this laptop for just short of two years, I don’t really want to buy another. What really annoys me about this is that I know it’s not my fault the thing is dying.

I look after my things. This is the reason it’s dying. nVidia and Dell fucked up a few years ago; nVidia made some dodgy graphics chips and then those dodgy graphics chips made it into several models of Dell laptop, mine included. Although Dell admirably extended the warranty on all affected laptops for 12 months for this particular issue, I still feel as though I’ve been cheated somewhat. I still have a desktop system that I built late in 2004. It’s still running perfectly fine because I thought out the system before I purchased it, built it properly, and looked after it. Despite the fact that I use my computers more than the average person (that system in particular was operated nearly 24/7, literally for about 4 years), they stand the test of time. Not so with my laptop, because nVidia and Dell fucked up.

So, although I really like Dell laptops, and I have since bought other nVidia products, I might have to look elsewhere for a future laptop, if indeed I buy one at all. My needs have changed and I rarely make use of a full laptop system anymore. I could probably do with a basic netbook, although even for simple tasks the abysmal screen resolution on those things would annoy me. I think I’ll have to have a ponder.

Words like “fuck” (OMG!) and “shit” (OMG!) are now garbled messes. Thank-you whoever fuckhead decided this was a good idea. You are a dickhead. A fuckbrain. A no-hoping moron. A fucking lunatic. A spastic deranged moron with a fucking shoe for a brain. Eat a bag of dicks.

*deep breath*

OK, I think I’m over it now. But censored music is still fucking stupid.

All you have to do is go into the Advanced Multiplayer options and tick the box next to “disable HTML MOTDs”; apparently a combination of the awesomeness of Vista 64-bit and IE7/8 causes the game to occasionally crash when trying to load IE in the background to display a HTML MOTD.

I wrote a short and sweet e-mail to Mr. Atkinson regarding his stance on the matter, and he responded to me with a form letter that was also sent out to other Australians who contacted him (credit to a redditor who scanned and uploaded this copy).

The letter essentially quoted a bunch of the same old tired statistics and was coupled with a healthy dose of Atkinson paranoia, logical fallacies and at the end, a rather roundabout way of saying “fuck you” to gamers Australia-wide.

I wrote a response, which is below, and here.

The Hon Michael Atkinson MP

11th Floor
45 Pirie Street
Adelaide SA 5000

Thank-you for your response to my e-mail concerning the lack of an R18+ classification for video games. It is certainly refreshing to see that an MP is willing to engage in discussion with individual members of the public, even if it is by form letter.

As your response has spanned several pages, I will quote the relevant section of your letter as I respond to it.

“Although some members are advocates of this classification, I believe other Attorneys- General, like me, reject it. Hitherto, Attorneys-General have not agreed to create an R. 18+ category for computer games. Other Attorneys-General who are opposed to introducing an R. 18+ classification for computer games are content to let me be the lightening rod for the gamers.”

If I were in your position, I would be quite annoyed. That aside, your belief that other Attorneys-General support your position is not verifiable by any publicly available information. Indeed, most news reports seem to put the blame for the lack of a discussion paper squarely on your shoulders. There are many, many references to this online, but the most important I think is a direct quote of Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls; “I fully support there being consultation on this issue, but ultimately SCAG is waiting for the South Australian attorney to agree to consult on the matter.”

“[...] With people travelling so readily between States and Territories, a State-based classification coding system would be unworkable and useless [...]”

I agree, the only way to properly introduce the rating is nationally through the OFLC.

“I am baffled and worried about why proponents of R. 18+ games are putting up their hands and saying ‘Give us more cruel sex and extreme violence!’”

This is the crux of the argument, and I think the major point of contention between yourself and gamers such as myself. The point of having an R18+ classification is not to allow access to explicit content, the point is to enable adults to make their own decisions about what is and is not suitable for themselves and their children.

In your letter, you go on to cite many examples of games that have been refused classification on the grounds of containing extreme violence or explicit sexual content. The examples cited are relevant to this discussion in an ancillary fashion, but to debate the validity of each and every game between yourself, myself, and the Australian public is obviously not a workable model. The main point of contention as I mentioned earlier is not one game in particular, it is the ability for adults to decide for themselves what games they want to play.

“[...] These are all activities that are illegal for individuals in the real world so why ask governments to give people the right to do them virtually?”

Why ask governments to give people the right to watch films which contain illegal activity, or read books which contain illegal activity? It’s a rhetorical question, and you’re avoiding the issue by posing it.

“Given this data, I cannot fathom what State-enforced safeguards could exist to prevent R. 18+ games being bought by households with children and how children can be stopped from using these games once the games are in the home. If adult gamers are keen to have R. 18+ games, I expect children would be just as keen.”

Your inability to understand is a common theme in your stance on this issue. Here’s an easily enforced safeguard: require proof of age for purchase of games rated R18+. It works for alcohol, cigarettes and everything else, so why not games?

“Access to electronic games, once in the home, cannot be policed and therefore the games are easily accessible to children. If adults think they can devise a lock-out system to defeat children, tell ‘em they’re dreaming.”

Replace the words “electronic games” with anything else (some examples: drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, pornography), and one is lead to ask, whose responsibility is it to protect children from explicit material? You’ve already answered my question:

“It is up to parents and responsible adults to ensure a game is appropriate for a minor whatever age he or she is.”

All modern gaming systems have parental control safeguards in place that allow the restriction of games operation on the device. It is possible to restrict a particular system, using a password, from playing games which are outside a parent-defined safe range. All of these systems require escalation to the relevant customer support agents to have “forgotten” parental control passwords reset (I.e., the child trying to circumvent the system would have to go to some lengths). This nullifies your assertion that parental controls are useless.

These systems are easy to use and setting them up is straightforward. There is no reason at all for parents not to make use of these systems if they are concerned about the material their children are able to access while playing electronic games. More to the point, introduction of an R18+ rating should have absolutely no effect on children what-so-ever. The Australian gaming public cannot understand how you are so ignorant of this fact. By definition, a person over the age of 18 is not a child, therefore the introduction of such a rating will have no effect upon children, as they are not legally allowed to view the material.

What happens if the safeguard does fail? You’ve answered that question:

“It is up to parents and responsible adults to ensure a game is appropriate for a minor whatever age he or she is.”

A parent intervening in their child’s entertainment is normal; indeed it is expected of every responsible parent. You trying to govern in such a way as to protect the few children of irresponsible parents at the liberty of adults is unfair. “One bad apple spoils the cart” is an extreme oversimplification of the issue.

“What the present law does is to keep the most extreme material off the shelves. It is true that this restricts the adult liberty to a small degree, however, I am prepared to accept this infringement in the circumstances.”

Once again we touch upon the crux of the argument: this is not about granting access to explicit material, it is about allowing adults to make their own decisions. You say that you are prepared to accept this infringement upon the liberty of an adult in order to protect children, despite the fact that this discussion and its potential outcome has no relevance at all to children.

“[...] There may be games some people consider too violent for M.A. 15+ but the solution is not to create a classification to permit even more violent games in Australia. [...]”

This kind of blanketing of the ratings system does not serve the best interests of parents or young children. I would say, and many would agree with me, that the OFLC having to shoe-horn games into a smaller number of classification categories would only serve to make decisions more difficult which would lead to a higher rate of poor decisions. Essentially, games which should receive an R18+ style rating may indeed be passed as MA15+ even though there are elements of said games which are not suitable for this rating. An example recently discussed is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: during one scene the player takes on the role of a terrorist who is participating in an attack upon a commercial airport and has the option to kill innocent civilians. The fact that killing civilians is not required to fulfill the mission objectives is relevant, but despite that, this type of gameplay scenario really is better suited to adults.

“It is up to members of the Classification Board to apply the Guidelines correctly and not to try to defeat the Guidelines because they disagree with the outcome of the deliberations of elected officials in a democratic rule-of-law society.”

Your lack of confidence in the OFLC is well-known after your interview with the Peter Mares of the ABC recently. Your approach to this is confusing. You say that the OFLC does not make correct decisions, as you admitted that the MA15+ rating of Modern Warfare 2 was inappropriate. Your criticism of the OFLC is unfounded: it is similar to asking a carpenter to produce a smooth wooden surface without using any high-grit sandpaper, or asking a painter to draw fine lines without a fine-tipped brush. Without the correct tools, neither the OFLC nor the carpenter and painter can do their job properly. Your argument here is circular: ‘the OFLC makes incorrect decisions with the current ratings system, therefore the OFLC will continue to make incorrect decisions with a new ratings system’. You are committing a logical fallacy.

You mentioned in your letter that recently the game Left 4 Dead 2 was given an RC rating. A resubmitted version in which much of the violence and gore was removed has been approved by the OFLC at MA15+. Do you know that the majority of Australian gamers who play this game today are actually playing the RC version? This has been achieved using two popular methods: buying the overseas version (typically with a credit card, so under 18′s need not apply), or, using a small computer programme to modify the game to enable the restricted content. This programme was created by an Australian gamer who was unhappy with the OFLCs decision and wanted to get the “full” version of the game. Any child with five minutes to spare can download this programme and enable the banned version of the game. What is my point? My point is that parents who made their decision about buying Left 4 Dead 2 for their children based on the rating MA15+ have done so under a false pretense provided for them by OFLC; the OFLC has failed in this instance.

You repeatedly contradict yourself.

“[...] I am particularly concerned about the impact of this extreme content on children and vulnerable adults. […]

But then you go on to state:

“It is up to parents and responsible adults to ensure a game is appropriate for a minor whatever age he or she is.”

So, which is it? Can adults make decisions for themselves or not? Please note that “adults” and “parents” are not mutually exclusive groups as your language seems to imply.

“I am next up for election in March, 2010. The State District I represent is called Croydon. I would welcome advocates of R. 18+ computer games testing public acceptance of my policy by standing a candidate against me in that general election. I think you will find this issue has little traction with my constituents who are more concerned with real-life issues than home entertainment in imaginary worlds.”

The Australian public is rising to your challenge. A group called “Gamers4Croydon” is in the process of establishing a competing candidate for this very election. Frankly, I am appalled by your lack of candour. Attempting to trivialise the discussion makes an example of your ignorance; summarising your “reasoned and considered” position with one of the most ignorant and illogical statements I’ve yet seen made on this topic only serves to bolster the arguments against your position.

You have demonstrated several times in this letter your lack of understanding of the subject at hand. Let’s take a look at the language you’ve used throughout: “I believe”, “I am baffled and worried”, “I expect”, “I imagine”, “I cannot fathom”, “To my mind”, etc. This type of language indicates that you are following your personal beliefs which I have shown to be created through partial erroneous thought. Worryingly, your use of terms which directly indicate your lack of understanding are also common. If you really have so little comprehension of the topic, then how is it that you can consider yourself suitable for the position of advising on it?

Not only are your arguments logically flawed, your evidence is dubious at best. There have been so many studies conducted on the effect of violent games on children and young adults with none conclusively proving anything on either side of the argument. Your platform stands entirely upon a single study of dubious nature.

I sincerely hope that the Gamers4Croydon group are successful and the next election in the seat of Croydon sees you removed from office. Whatever the outcome of the election, your views as expressed in this correspondence and in news media are outdated and narrow-minded and your methods of enforcing said views are ham-fisted at best.

Yours sincerely,

WHAT THE FUCK?

The skit wasn’t that great. Had a laugh because they were sending up Michael Jackson more than anyone else, and he died recently, so maybe that’s a bit offensive, whatever.

All this talk about racism and shit? What the fuck? Blackface is pretty racist, granted. Is ‘blackface’ relevant to Australia? No. It was something that happened in America over 60 years ago. Now, by and large, you wouldn’t expect everyone to know about it on account of its generally obscure nature outside the USA. I certainly hadn’t heard of it before all this controversy. That’s the definition of ignorance.

So, that brings me on to the point: how can someone be intentionally racist on a topic they are ignorant of? If you don’t actually know about something, you can’t intentionally make fun of it. You might do something similar which resembles something racist that has been done in the past, but from your point of view, and anyone elses point of view who is unaware what you are doing may be interpreted as racism, it isn’t racist. These performers, and the Hey Hey team by extension, have all apologised for being unintentionaly racist, and that’s OK. They didn’t know. Nobody can know everything.

What really fucking annoys me is HCJ, his ridiculous comments, and the shitstorm he’s ignited over the issue. He was offended, fair enough. So, Daryl was graceful and made an apology to him directly on live fucking television. That’s pretty big, and shows, I think, that they were genuinely sorry. Fine, fine, whatever. The point at which this became an issue was when HCJ decided to go on his little self-righteous rant about making a statement on behalf of America? What the fuck?

I transcribed it from the show:

And I just wanted to say on behalf of you know, of my country I know it was done humourously, but we’ve spent so much time trying to not make black people like buffoons that when we see something like that we take it really to heart. I know it was done in good fun, and the last thing I wanna do is take this show to a real y’know down level, ’cause you know how much I love this show and this country because I feel like I’m at home here, but if I knew that was gonna be a part of this show I probably, I definitely wouldn’t have done it. So thank-you for the opportunity, but I gotta give it up cause Daryl said, I told him at the break, he said, man you’ve gotta speak as an American, not as a white American or a black American, but as an American I need to say that, so thanks for giving me the opportunity.

I think Monty Python expressed this annoying personality disorder best quite some time ago. In short: “I just wanna say, let me tell you” to shut the fuck up.

And let’s not forget Kamahl boycotting the show in his own little way. Kamahl, your ‘why are people so unkind?’ line was funny at the time you said it and went on to become its own in-joke that has obviously been running a long time. There’s nothing racist about what someone said being taken humorously by other people and turned into a joke. Granted, his accent does add some of the humour, but if we aren’t allowed to make fun of accents because it’s racist… well, that actually doesn’t even make any sense. A persons accent comes from those of the people they grow up and live with and has nothing to do with a persons race.

Fuck me! The stupidity honour guard are out in force on this issue.

This is a big problem, and I have known about it for a while, but I am not going to fix it because my car isn’t worth spending money on. It would probably cost around half the worth of the vehicle to get it repaired. Considering it already has some 260,000 kilometres on it, there’s just no point. Other big things are going to start breaking soon.

What it means for me is that I can’t drive very far and I have to fill up with water every other week. I’ve recently become very sick of doing this, so I decided to throw some Chemiweld into the system (as its name implies, its a mixture of chemicals that when heated, presumably serve to weld (in some fashion) closed holes in the cooling system) which I did today. The bottle recommends you deliberately overheat the engine so that it can go to work doing its thing.

Well, as I was adding the Chemiweld with the engine running as directed, my wonderful car started to bubble and gurgle from its radiator fill-point, which prevented me adding the remaining half bottle of Chemiweld. So, I turned the car off (against directions), added the rest, topped up the water and went for a drive. Of course, with the water topped up, the car was no longer overheating (typically it lasts about 30 km), so I decided to push the engine on my drive. I thought the best way to do this would be to go on the highway for an extended period, which is what I did.

What I shouldn’t have done, however, is decided to blip the throttle and the car up to ~115Km/h in an area known for speed cameras, which according to Karma (please forgiveth me, O great universe) in its infinite wisdom, saw fit to place a speed camera at this very portion of road, on this very day, at this very time. I hit the brakes as soon as I saw it (as every fucking wanker does, even if they aren’t speeding), but I think the radar/laser system in them only takes a half second or so to lock on and photograph you if you are indeed breaking the law.

Here’s hoping my checklist for fixing the car (if the Chemiweld does indeed work) doesn’t include a $250 speeding fine. That would turn my repair job from “cheap and easy” with a $10 bottle of liquid and a few minutes of my time, to “expensive and annoying” with a speeding fine grating against my undying belief that excessive speed is not the cause of Australias motoring problems.

What can we do about it? Well, we can e-mail this guy: Michael Atkinson

Not sure what to write? Here’s one I prepared earlier:

Hon Michael Atkinson,

In light of the OFLCs recent decision to Refuse Classification to the upcoming PC game Left 4 Dead 2, I am writing to you in the hopes that I may be able to enlighten yourself and the Attorney-General’s Department on why the lack of an R18+ classification for games is not in the best interests of the Australian public.

Instead of re-writing the many great arguments in support of the R18+ classification, I will link to an excellent article published by the ABC earlier in the year:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/16/2516911.htm

The full text of which is below:

Adult rating for video games long overdue
By Ron Curry

Posted Mon Mar 16, 2009 9:30am AEDT
Updated Mon Mar 16, 2009 9:43am AEDT

When Steven Spielberg announced in 2005 that he would partner with a major games developer to collaborate on a number of games, saying at the time that he had “watched the game industry grow from a niche into a major creative force in entertainment”, there was no denying that the often marginalised industry had come into its own.

With renowned directors Peter Jackson and James Cameron following suit, it has become clear that video games had moved into the mainstream. Once deemed strictly the domain of teen boys locked in their bedrooms, the video game industry now rivals the film industry both in terms of revenue and in the range of diverse content it produces.

In January this year the industry announced that in 2008 sales of interactive games and hardware had grown a staggering 47 per cent to $1.96 billion dollars, with the largest growth category being “family entertainment” which grew by 58 per cent compared to 2007. While family gaming is quickly growing as a category, it is adults who represent the ‘average consumers’ of interactive entertainment. The most recent research, The Interactive Australia 2009 study, conducted by Bond University and commissioned by the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia found that the average age of an Australian game player is 30. It’s clear that if 30 is the average, then there are many more ‘gamers’ who are older than that.

So with interactive entertainment now closely mirroring the film industry and given the majority of game players are adults, it would come as a surprise to many that Australia is the only developed country not to have a video game classification category that allows these adults to enjoy content which is age appropriate. Instead, they are limited to content that is deemed suitable for a person of 15.

Prior to 1973, Australia did not have an R18+ classification for film in what was then, and is now, largely viewed as draconian censorship laws depriving adults of the ability to make informed choices about what they viewed. The public debate at the time shares many themes with current discussions about the introduction of an adult rating for video games. Should entertainment be morally edifying? Will civilised society as we know it collapse with the sanctioned availability of adult content? Will exposure to ‘antisocial’ themes in this content prompt copycat behaviour?

For the 91 per cent of both gamers and non-gamers surveyed for the Interactive Australia 09 study who responded that they were in favour of the introduction of an R18+ classification, these concerns do not seem to be an issue. In fact, many respondents were unaware that there wasn’t a relevant classification for games catering for mature content. These are the same adults who are confident they could protect their children from accessing this content in the same way they do from adult only film or literature.

While the lack of an R18+ rating does raise questions about adult’s rights to make choices about the content they view or play, it also has a number of other implications as the technology industry as a whole continues to move at warp speed.

With technology convergence blurring the distinction between different styles of media content, managing appropriate classification content within an inconsistent regime is increasingly difficult. The argument for harmonising not only the guidelines but also the classification scheme for films and computer and video games is compelling. To add perspective, the current legislation was written in 1994, long before the DVD was in use, let alone current generation gaming and mobile devices. As all entertainment mediums continue to evolve and collide, harmonisation of classification content (rather than delivery method) becomes increasingly important.

Finally, it is important to point out that the proposed R18+ classification for computer and video games will not result in the availability of games containing excessive violence or explicit sex. Material within the R18+ classification would be strictly limited with permissible content set out in the classification guidelines and material exceeding the R18+ guidelines would be refused a classification; just as it exists today for film and video.

The introduction of a consistent and content-specific classification system will offer consumers the information they need to confidently make choices of the entertainment content which is appropriate for them and their families.

Moving forward, a decision to approve the introduction of an R18+ rating for games must be made unanimously by attorneys general across the country. For the past six years Michael Atkinson, the South Australian Attorney-General, has maintained a long-running opposition to the proposed system, blocking its introduction.

In March 2008 however, a decision was made to take the matter to public consultation, a process that is expected to materialise in a public forum this year. As an industry, we are looking forward to the opportunity for genuine and open community discussion on the subject.

Ron Curry is CEO of the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia

As is noted at the end of the article, the author obviously has a vested interest in the availability of as many PC games as possible in the Australian market. While he may indeed be biased, the point is this: ask any gamer over the age of 18, and they’ll fully agree with him.

As an adult, I believe that I am the only one capable of making the decision of what is appropriate for me to watch, listen to, read or indeed — play.

Of course we have the classifications scheme in place as a guide for adults to make decisions about what material their children has access to, and there are R18+ or similar-style ratings for all other types of medium as I’m sure you’re aware.

Video gamers of Australia are all scratching their head and posing the question, “Why not video games too?”

- Owen

Plaintext found here.

Well, I’ll tell you: I’m someone who detests time wasting. Reinstalling my operating system was a waste of time. Whose fault was it? Well, I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure it’s a combination of the following three parties: Asus, Microsoft, Valve.

1. Asus, because their shitty driver package can’t uninstall itself properly. I originally made use of the onboard sound on my Asus motherboard, and I uninstalled it to make way for my new Asus soundcard. Unbeknownst to me, the uninstall feature of the drivers was for diddlysquat. It uninstalled the annoying configuration application, and that’s about it. There were registry entires and dll files strewn all through my system and I had no idea where or how many.
2. Microsoft, because obviously their driver management is too hard for some companies (Asus, but I’m sure there are others: why do so many driver cleaner apps exist?). Really, it’s not very hard. In Linux, many device drivers are a single binary blob, or in the case of open-source drivers, a binary blob with source attached. You load it with one command, and you unload it with one command. When you want to uninstall it (ie, remove it completely), you just delete the file. Bingo! All gone. Upgrade to your hearts content. Not with Windows.
3. Valve, because their software’s configuration options could not be more limiting or vague. Sure, I selected the correct mic input in Steam, but did that have any effect on the games themselves? No. Know why? Because they were ignoring settings from Steam. They tried to be too smart and they messed up, because whatever configuration I tried, the games themselves insisted on trying to grab input from a device which no longer existed (my old onboard sound).

But hey, who am I to criticize? Oh that’s right, I’m a paying customer. Fuck your shitty drivers, Asus. Fuck your shitty driver management, Microsoft. And fuck you, to a lesser extent, Valve, for making your software so damn vague.

Now that my rant’s over, I can talk about the problem I was having: uninstalling my old onboard soundcard software didn’t completely remove all of the hooks it left, well, everywhere. So there were dll files and registry settings and who knows what else ruining a lot of things. This lead to my Source-based games (Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead) not being able to initialise the microphone, with the following printed to the console when trying to configure audio options:

Unable to initialize DirectSoundCapture. You won’t be able to speak to other players.

It also left Unreal Tournament 3 completely unplayable, as it would lock up before even entering the main menu, presumably due to the game trying to make use of an OpenAL audio device which no longer existed. There is a file located in the Windows system directory which you can delete to resolve this issue, but the forum post describing this procedure escapes my Google-fu at this time. I do recall it was related to solving issues with Creative X-Fi audio cards and OpenAL.

So, in the end I finally have a fully working Vista gaming system. And people say Windows is “user friendly”, ha!