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.

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,

I have been collecting various images for inspiration – most of them official wallpapers from the various albums of NIN. I also have some official tour photos, some amateur tour photos, and some other interesting imagery. I have been thinking, though, that perhaps I don’t want to get a NIN tattoo – perhaps I want one that is about something more general, like industrial music, or even just music itself. However, these categories seem even more daunting to contemplate than just NIN.

I can tell straight away that I don’t think I would like to tattoo myself with something generic like industrial music – it’s too broad. Besides, it would imply that I love industrial music as a whole. I do not. I appreciate many fine artists whose work could be tentatively considered industrial music, but as a whole I do not love the genre itself. I don’t even fully agree with the naming of the genre. That rules that out.

As for music … well, once again I’m getting the whole ‘generic’ vibe here. When I say that I want a NIN related tattoo, it’s not necessarily something like a NIN logo. It’s more about capturing some of the emotions, beliefs and thoughts that are played in my mind’s eye, inspired by the music that NIN create. It would be wrong for me to get a “music” themed tattoo and simply declare that “I love music”. It’s like saying “I love air”. Well, of course I love air. I need it to live. I hold music in the same reverence – I do not worship music as a whole, but I cannot live without it.

However, as I sit here listening to Fear Factory’s Hatefiles album; an album full of some of the best industrial music I’ve heard, I am wondering if perhaps I am artificially limiting myself by desiring to choose something that is only NIN-related. But, even now as I think about it, the emotions and thoughts that I associate with NIN are also associated with Fear Factory and the like, but I believe in a different way.

Some time passes…

However: after listening to Fear Factory for some time this evening, I come to the conclusion that what I think of them, while many of their tracks are energetic, fun, and help me to concentrate on some of my darker emotions – mostly anger, and in some cases hate – these are not the emotions that I wish to get tattoo’d permanently onto my skin. Fear Factory is really great to go absolutely FUCKING SPASTIC to, but they’re not what I’m after in a tattoo. At the moment.

I want my tattoo to have some deeper meaning … something that Fear Factory doesn’t provide. Oh, sure, I still get angry, and I still feel what I believe is akin to hatred toward certain things, but these feelings no longer occupy as much of my time as they once did, back in my angsty teen days. At the moment, Nine Inch Nails’ music provokes some of the deepest emotional exploration I’ve yet to experience from any music. Artists like Cog, Karnivool and Tool also provide deep, emotional investigations, but these artists are relatively new to me, and I would not commit myself to loving them as much as I do NIN just yet. With Cog and Karnivool, both new bands, I am yet to come to rely upon them as a whole – having only released two full albums each, I cannot yet know whether or not in the future I will surely enjoy their music, and I cannot yet know, more importantly, whether I fully agree with the sentiment expressed in future music. I don’t feel as though they’re yet old enough, as an entity, for me to base such a pivotal decision upon.

Tool has released many albums, but I don’t like all of them… not yet, anyway. I am slowly coming to appreciate their older material, but I am presently fixated mainly on Lateralus and to a lesser extent 10,000 Days – both extremely complex and technical albums, while their older material, from what I’ve heard (which is admittedly limited), is not less technical, but more raw – which is not a bad thing. I haven’t yet come to appreciate it.

So, that leads me then to trying to explain about why I like NIN so much – there isn’t a NIN song that I can’t listen to. Sure, some of the tracks from Pretty Hate Machine and With Teeth aren’t my favourites – PHM because, as with Tool, the sound is raw, and Teeth because it doesn’t take the same format as most of NIN’s other work. A quote from Trent Reznor himself:

About five or six songs into writing it, the songs started to sound good on their own and they didn’t need this framework to work together,” and that With Teeth consists of “a collection of songs that are friends with each other, but don’t have to rely on each other to make sense”, however, the album’s narrative arc describes “a difficult journey that begins with a nightmare and ends with acceptance of a new reality.” (source)

And from the July 2009 issue of UK Kerrang! magazine, talking about With Teeth:

The first recorded (sic) by the newly sober Reznor he later described it as a “cautious” album, one that he admits wouldn’t be his “favourite NIN record today”. “Looking back, I can see I wasn’t completely sure of myself,” he said. “[After] I got sober… I took a few years just trying to stay alive and feel comfortable in my own skin before I jumped back into work to possibly fail.”

So, there are some songs that I am not a great fan of. That isn’t to say that With Teeth is not an important album in NINs history and discography (without it, we may not have had Year Zero or any of the following albums!); merely that it is not my favourite entry. Nor is it Trent’s.

So that’s a little about the songs which aren’t my favourite. How about the ones that are? I honestly don’t know where to start with that – there is so much quality in the NIN discography I am almost overwhelmed by the prospect of trying to discuss it all!

In fact, that’s quite a good thing, really. This article is now already 1100-ish words long. I won’t kill my readers interest with an amateur analysis of music. I’ll just list my thoughts.

I really like the song Echoplex from The Slip. Awesomely, each song from The Slip is accompanied by a piece of artwork. As the discussion on the ninwiki page goes:

The artwork may symbolize someone being surrounded by sound, as if it were echoing around them. It may also symbolize walls around the person, which makes sense due to the lyrics making a reference to sound bouncing off of walls.

The lyrics suggest a scenario where someone has been in solitary confinement for too long, driving him or her, to insanity, where “you will never ever get to me in here.” Another possible scenario is a direct link between the lyrics present on this song and “Demon Seed” (“You feel me breathe” on “Echoplex” vs. “I can hear it breathe”). They could also be extremely literal, referring to the solitude of wherever frontman Trent Reznor comes up with his music.

An interesting facet of the artwork is the red scribbling line which seems to pass through and around the inside of the echoplex – this scratching appears in many of the other art pieces for The Slip and suggests that these songs are somehow interconnected and related. My thinking was that I could have the echoplex artwork as the start of my tattoo. It would represent me and how I interact with the world: from behind the safety and security of my echoplex, I allow a small channel – or, I am forced to have a small channel – of communications to the outside world.

The scratching could represent many specific things (stream of consciousness, blood, physical connectedness), but mostly I see it as communication, with all of the aforementioned concepts coming under the communication umbrella concept.

Thus, I need to decide what satellite concepts surround my echoplex. Some will be directly connected via my communications channel, and others, perhaps not. Also, I am thinking that I will have to expand upon the available NIN artwork repository before I can come up with some suitable imagery. No doubt I will be taking concepts from some of the work present on The Downward Spiral, and perhaps some more from The Slip, but perhaps not so literally. So many of the concepts explored in all of the NIN albums are without existing imagery — I will have to get arty and create my own!

I set my desktop system up to make 100% use of its CPU (Folding@Home, rainbow tables). I set my headless server up with Arch Linux and run Windows in a virtual machine. I walk around the city with my laptop in my backpack, turned on, with kismet running, capturing networks.

Of course anyone with the knowledge to be able to understand what I’m talking about would probably answer the initial question with a resounding ‘no’; but I wonder if the general computer-using populace would, if they were given knowledge, be able to understand?

I’m not talking about understanding who, what, when, or where, I’m talking about understanding why… why do people walk around with their laptops in their backpacks, turned on, capturing other peoples network traffic?

The simple ansewr is: because it’s fun.

I picked up today’s issue as I was on my way through Central Station; I figured I might as well give my brain something vaguely interesting to churn through as I readied myself for the long journey home. mX isn’t the worst printed publication I’ve read; though it certainly isn’t the best. This was confirmed for me as I read through it, and came across an article about someone creating a bot system which automates mundane tasks for you in World of Warcraft. “Hang on,” I thought to myself, “This feels like deja vu.”

It was a very strong case of deja vu.

I had read the same article earlier that day online; on Slashdot originally, though they’d linked an article first published on the BBC. Slashdot’s linkage of the article I can accept; the audience of the BBC news site, while almost definitely having some cross-section with the Slashdot audience, is by no means similar. In addition to that, Slashdot’s audience are provided with the means to discuss articles with great depth and fidelity with the use of Slashdot’s comment and moderation system.

This got me thinking about a few things; firstly, it totally ruined any conceptions I’d had about the mX newspaper. I knew it was more a throwaway paper than any of the big-name journalistic strongholds (as is clearly evidenced by advertising throughout the pages, urging readers to ‘pick me up, then bin me’), but I thought that, even so, there was original research and good old-fashioned journalism going on behind the scenes. Apparently not quite as much as I’d thought, however.

It seems to me as though mX is mostly a paper version of the day’s internet news — no doubt the WoW story is not the only news adapted (barely — the text in the mX article and that of the BBC/Slashdot ones were nearly identical) for consumption “IRL” by the news-reading masses. It makes me wonder just how much original thought is left in the news articles we read every day; be they online or printed.

I suppose it’s part of the reason why blogging was such a big thing — it’s essentially millions of people, worldwide, for the most part, thinking, and writing down those thoughts. Makes for an interesting digital landscape.

I think one of the reasons is that whether I write things or not, nobody really seems to pay attention. I have delusions of grandeur; I want everyone to read my blog when I have something important to say, but most of the things that I think are important don’t matter much to anyone else.

I have some readers; well, I believe about two or three, who check when something new pops into their feed-reader, and I appreciate their audience. However, I can’t write as well as I’d like to, and due to the aforementioned lack of interest in my general postings, I don’t see the need to put any further effort into improving the quality of my prose. I suppose that’s a kind of catch-22; but even if I do improve my writing quality and bump up the interest level a bit, it’s not guaranteed to increase my audience.

I suppose now with my new job I’ll be able to post up interesting snippets concerning many random things; hopefully guides and useful information for people who are in a similar position to myself. I’ve just decided that’s going to be my plan. How about it, eh? The blog’s already served a useful purpose: now I can remember why I used to write here; as I sit pondering the next few keystrokes, I’m reeling through any number of information streams that could potentially contain interesting posting material, and as I happen upon something unique or appealing, I’ll type it down. In addition to that, it helps me to focus my thoughts. I’m procrastinating by writing here, and I know I’ve got some things to do, so after this post I’m going to go do them.

So, to my readers: although you are few, I will continue to write for you. Perhaps you will be joined by others, perhaps not.

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