Video game censorship for the public to decide

If you read my previous post, you would have figured out that the appropriate governing bodies for though control met to decide if we should have a R18+ rating for video games. The meeting happened, but a decision wasn't made. What they did decide upon was to open it up to the public to decide.

This is a refreshing change, and I hope the majority of games (who according to the article are now over 28 years old) voice their opinion, and the it doesn't get side-tracked by some high-morality group that doesn't understand anything about modern technology.

Video game censorship in Australia

This may be an interesting day in the history of censorship in Australia. According to an article on news.com.au, the government is going to be discussing if a R18+ rating needs to be implemented for video games.

While I am opposed to censorship in general - believing that all information should be accessible to anyone who is seeking for it, I believe that not implementing the R18+ rating is just an indication that the Australian government has not caught up with technology, and is still living in the past.

I do believe that kids should be protected from certain content, but this should be done by role models (ie. their parents) - and not regulated by a governing body "for the good of all". As history has always show, what starts off as a great idea (eg. protecting lives on the road by limiting the speed of vehicles travelling on it), will get corrupted over time (eg. revenue raising via speed cameras - or "road safety camera" as the government will lead you to believe).

Let us all hope that the correct decision is made...

Australia China draw

Well done to Mark Schwarzer for his fantastic save against China in the World Cup 2010 qualifier keeping Australia's hopes alive. I should start thinking at how to get to South Africa in 2010 to watch Australia take to the world's largest stage for football!

Well done Socceroos!

My kind of food around Canberra...

I've previously written (twice) about steak tartare before - well mentioned it slightly. I recently went to Kingsley's Steak and Crabhouse, and after several visits and some feedback, they took on the feedback, and presented me with a really good steak tartare. I enjoyed it so much, I went back and took a photo of another one before I consumed it:
The raw egg really combines well with the sauce, the meat and the other ingredients to make it a very flavoursome and well textured meal. I do suggest you try it, as it's NOT JUST RAW MEAT.

I was hoping to pop over to Koko Black, which is next door to Kingsley's, but unfortunately it was closed. If you haven't tried Koko Black's chocolate, then you must. It's Belgian chocolate which is made in store. And it's delicious! I can't show you any pictures of their products (smeared all over my overweight face!), but I can show you the store:Lastly, I have to make mention of the guys that keep me fed (usually 2 - 4 times a week) - Turkish Pide House Restaurant (the link is not their site - I can't seem to find their site at the moment - also the link points to their Woden restaurant, I visit their Civic location). Great value Turkish style BBQ (Grill) meals!

Linux for work and home - and well done to the Melbourne Victory!

I haven't written for a while as I've been really tired from the long days at work. I've just moved over to a new laptop at work, and it came with a 120GB drive. Half an hour later, it had the Windows image from the company I work for, as well as Ubuntu. No issues with hardware - except if you want "wobbly windows" then you have to tweak the xorg.conf file a bit. Have a look at the Ubuntu Guide (unofficial) for tips on doing this. There's only one small issue with Ubuntu at work. I don't work off my companies backbone network, but work from at outsourced location which is co-located with the clients. I need to set up Aventail VPN to connect to my company's backbone, but the configuration of the current Aventail client is not very helpful. Instead of using the *.cfg files, it wants to have all the variables hand-coded in. If you are reading this, and are able to assist, please don't hesitate to contact me. Credit / acknowledgement will be given!

At home, the situation is still "Business as Usual". Gentoo continues to seamlessly upgrade itself:

root@lasek ~ # uname -a
Linux lasek 2.6.24-gentoo-r3 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Mar 15 13:01:58 EST 2008 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

In the case of the organisation / project, they will be electing a new board (or at the minimum shuffling the people around). It appears drobbins (Daniel Robbins) did not get enough interest to get back in the commanding position, but I'm hoping this will change and he gets the opportunity to "steady the ship" again - unless he doesn't want to.

Lastly, congratulations goes to the Melbourne Victory for their 2-0 win over the Chunnam Dragons from the Korean League. It has been an awesome example in consistency from Kevin Muscat as well for hitting his last 17 penalty kicks ("from the spot") without fail. Hopefully the Victory will be able to advance in the AFC and show how good Australian Football can be.

Back to on-call duties...

Back to being on-call. Goodbye sleep. Hello more money (but I keep thinking if this is truly worth it). Hello to me being a grumpy guy! Maybe I'll post more black and white photos. Looks like me configuring WiFi on my Gentoo PC will have to wait for a few weeks.

Still no WiFi, but a new kernel...

Still haven't gotten to the computer store that sells the WiFi card I'm after. I have called their Sydney store, and confirmed they have the part in their Canberra store. Hopefully I'll be able to catch them before I go on-call again for work -- which is this coming Wednesday.

On another note, Gentoo's issued out a new kernel (although it's more like an update on a previous version that was installed on my machine).

evilric@lasek ~ $ uname -a
Linux lasek 2.6.23-gentoo-r9 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Mar 1 00:08:23 EST 2008 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

Well done guys!