Jason-Saggers.com

Interesting articles about an R18+ Classification in Australia and my thoughts on the subject, if you are going to ban one game why not ban others because they are just as violent.

A quick post with some interesting links to Gamespot with a few articles:

The head of Electronic Frontiers Australia discusses the current effectiveness of communicating ratings, the accuracy of classification, and the hurdles to be cleared before R18+ can be introduced for games in Australia link here

The classification FAQ link here

A list of other related links, stories etc link here

Aussie’s heavily pro-R18+ in consultation link here

Australian Christian Lobby’s Jim Wallace on R18+ games for Australia link here

I know a few games with plenty of gore etc.

Here is an unrelated video of a death match I played and in parts of the video you can see quiet a few bodies been destroyed, I know it’s nothing compared to games that get blocked but in my opinion it is just as bad.
Nothing compared to Fallout 3 or the new Aliens vs. Predator… not that I have any problem with either game.

The video below is my attempt to show that the current games that get banned in Australia are no more violent than current games that don’t get banned or are allowed to be sold.
Hence shouldn’t more games get banned because they are all just as violent as each other.
Why should one game be allowed and another one not? hence the reason we need a higher classification such as R18+ so that these games get covered under that.

I would like to know how they work out this whole classification scheme anyway, seems that the game has to have a certain amount of gore, body animation such as flying bodies after an explosion.
I know what I am getting at

I personally think that a game should be fun and I find that things like gore, blood etc, etc just get in the way.
Below is my favorite game Unreal Tournament 3 of which I have hundreds of hours of game play with gore disabled (enabled for the video of course)

If the R18 classification does pass and come into affect then I think that a lot of games need to be closely reexamined and reclassified to strict guidelines.

The outcome in all off this seems very cloudy so to speak but I am following it closely.

I so want to play and learn this game, pitty it’s $69.99USD in steam which to me is just a little to much.

Here is a video titled “How not to be a noob at Bad Company 2″

I found this quiet cool, also goes to show the sort of things that can be done in the game.

Also the game has quiet high recommended specs.

• OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad or higher
• Memory: 2GB
• Graphics: 512 MB Video Card (GeForce GTX 260/ ATI Radeon 4870)

Back to my BF2 with the 1.5 patch which updates to many things to list.

I threw out my Dual CPU motherboard the other day as it wasn’t needed, I did have a server for a while but I find it overkill since my desktop system is going most of the time and has more HDD space than a server that I owned ever did.

Tyan dual slot one

Tyan dual slot one with Ram

I know it was old but it was in perfect condition, no one wanted to give it a loving home so I put it in the rubbish bin along with about 10 sticks of 256mb SDRAM (pc133 dual sided for this board)

Here is something interesting that I done on the weekend, took about 4 hours but went quiet quick and wasn’t that hard to do.

Below is the 4 new disc’s and matching brake pads.

new-brakes

A few of them where very worn and all the disc’s where quiet thin and marked.

very-worn

The front is all done.

front-left-done

The rear is all done.

rear-left-done

The last one getting done and me all dirty, grease and brake dust etc is a nasty yucky combination

me-showcasing

That all took me about 4 hours to complete and i saved my sister at least $500+ dollars in the process.

I went to my gmail account this morning and this new feature or screen appeared.

google-buzz

I will try it’s features and see how it all goes, looks like it has all ready added my Flickr, RSS feeds, Facebook and Twitter, this could get messy actually Buzz comes up on my Google profile.

Seems to be similar to friend feed, not what I really need in gmail, seems to me that it should have been integrated into Google Wave instead of gmail.

Jennifer Leggio on the zdnet blog has some good things to say about it.

I shall check it out more but I will more than likely disable it (if you can)

The cool game known as Trine is on special on Steam right now for $4.99US 75% off, so normal price of $19.95…

trine-steam-special

A 3D side scroll style game.

This GameSpot review shows the game off.

Browsing the PC Case Gear web site as I often do at least 5 times a day (sad I know)
I saw this new case and loved it immediately.

Pitty I just purchased the Thermaltake V3 case. That is how it works though, you buy something one day and not to long after there is something better.

I love my V3 so I am content for now, well at least another year anyway:)

I didn’t know that the space station was so old, here is a quick video tour of the station.

We purchased Ice Age 3 the other week and I noticed it come with an electronic version also.

So I loaded it up and it launched itunes, I entered the supplied unlock code and now I have the electronic version in my itunes movies list.

first-digital-copy-first-use

transfer to itunes

They really need to do this to more DVD’s that you can buy, problem is that I would need an ipod with more space.

I have been keeping track of the whole AFACT vs iinet case for a while now.

The judge ruled in favor of iinet in the end, but now iinet has lost at least $4 million dollars, the good thing is that its shares seem to have gone up so it might just balance out after all, well as long as they don’t re appeal.

Why would iinet be responsible for what its customers download or what web sites they visit. That is upto the customer and not iinet.

“Justice Dennis Cowdroy ruled it was “impossible” to hold iiNet responsible for what its customers did online”

iinet says:

“Copyright violations don’t benefit iiNet at all. We would much prefer to be working with the studios to find some way to be able to make video legitimately available to users. We think that’s the best way to tackle piracy on the internet.”

ISP’s could block certain sites, after all they normally have/keep a complete list of IP address, well I know ours does.

I am not to sure how they would block file sharing programs, these programs must leave behind something can is recognized by the ISP so that they can block it from going out to the internet.

Some more from the iinet site:

Continuing his opening statement today, iiNet’s barrister, Richard Cobden SC, said the BitTorrent website which hosts the software and promotes downloading and sharing of files clearly displayed the logos of several of the film studios who have pressed the case against iiNet.

• As shown above, the BitTorrent.com homepage displays the logos of Fox, Paramount and Warner Brothers – all applicants in the AFACT claim. A number of other studios in the case also have contractual relationships with BitTorrent or related sites and companies.
• Despite the connection with several of the applicants, there were no warnings on the sites about downloading copyright material.
• By contrast, iiNet does not own, control, promote or support BitTorrent software.
• Similarly, by contrast, iiNet warns customers against downloading copyright material illegally.
• Mr Cobden also said that if all the copyright notices iiNet received from film studios over a five month period were printed it would take 180 large folders and more than 12 trolleys to bring them into the court.
• Mr Cobden also revealed that Telstra, Australia’s largest Internet Service Provider, had also written to AFACT indicating Telstra did not agree with AFACT’s method for combating copyright infringement.

I personally think it comes down to people/companies wanting more money

Why don’t [laces like the AFACT and the large movie companies etc actually work with the ISP’s in order to find a way to combat these problems instead of taking every man and his dog to court, I suppose these movie companies won’t to be compensated for the money they have lost when people decide to download the movie and not purchase it, I personally prefer to buy it as the crap that you can download is 99% of the time total shit quality.

That is my thoughts on the matter.