Oh you are kidding me!

Just when I thought that the Government had pulled its head in and abandoned the costly blunder that is the Mandatory Internet Filter, they pull a little gem out of their collective posteriors that gets me riled up something chronic.
While Stephen Conroy seems to intent on destroying the internet for Australian’s, I had thought that as long as I had access to video games, I would be fine.

Well it would seem that now these fools are going to set their sights on Gamers, to block websites hosting and selling games not suitable for 15 year olds. On top of this, they have also hinted that games such as World of Warcraft, Second Life, and Lord of the Rings: Battles; games played almost exclusively online, and such not rated because of their online nature, may also be blocked.

Considering for some entirely moronic reason, Australia is the only developed nation to not have an R18+ rating, thanks in part to yet another politician, the South Australian Attorney General Atkinson, who believes that gamers are only children, despite the fact that according to a recent survey conducted by the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia, a survey I participated in, discovered that the majority of Australian Gamers are aged between 21-35, with the average age of gamers being 30.
Because of this discrepancy, any game deemed to violent, horrifying, or sexual, is simply refused sale here, alternatively Game developers who make games such as Resident Evil, Grand Theft Auto 4 and Fallout 3, have to tailor versions of their games, exclusively for the Australian market, toning down on the gore and generally removing the fun from the game.

While this may currently only apply to games bought domestically in stores, selling physical, disc versions of games; a spokesperson for Senator Conroy confirmed that under the flawed and delusional Filter, that Downloadable games, Flash Games, and Websites that sell games not available for sale in Australia will be affected.

What will this mean for Gamers? It means that websites like Newgrounds, that specialise in hilarious flash based fun, but also has a few games of the risqué natures, will soon become unavailable in Australia, it will also mean that adult Gamers, who may want to buy adult games, such as Japanese Dating Sims (I just went to Supanova and they sell them there, that’s why I brought it up), they will no longer be able to do so. Sure, this will piss of Aussie gamers, but Australian Gamers have been repetitively been on the receiving end of the Governments Baby boomer inconsistencies to the point where its almost expected of them.

This revelation brings new light on the speculation raised by both myself and Big T, that this would only be the beginning, that the Federal Government would use these new, still largely unknown powers, to enforce their collective Online will onto the masses, considering it was initially proposed as way to protect children from the dangers of the internet, instead of you know, the parents actually doing it, this has greatly overstepped its mandate, by extending their hand into a domain that they understand even less than the internet.

This mess brings even larger calls for Australia to have an R18+ rating system, at least to  allow parents the ability to know if the game that their child wants is appropriate for them, though I have a feeling that if parents actually looked at the game that they were buying for their kid, and didn’t buy the MA-15+ game for their 12 year old, we would not have been in this mess to begin with. Education, not for children and gamers, but for the rest of society of what you shouldn’t let your child play/watch, would be a far greater use of this money, instead of wasting everyone’s time by restricting what I, as a 23 year old with no children can do with my own disposable income and time.

While every bad story has to have a silver lining, and this one is that the British ISP industry has nominated our own little cyber-Nazi, Stephen Conroy, for their annual “Internet Villain” award, for continuing to promote network-level blocking despite significant national and international opposition". However when asked if he would attend and receive his award, his office declined to comment in classic Conroy Fashion.

We at the DocNetwork offices wish him all the best, and hope he wins, it would be far less than what we would nominate him for, coincidently, we can’t print what we would.

And now something completely Different…

Big T swung by the DocNetwork’s offices yesterday, as I had him in do help me out with some typing jobs I had piled up, I asked him if he had a Gripe List under his hat for us.

While he didn’t have a Gripe List available, he did have a brain teaser, that racked the minds of my staff, though it took me about 15 minutes, I’m pretty sure that my readers can do it faster.

My first is in ruins as time takes its toll

My second in unicorn never in troll

My third never in always but always in never

My fourth is intelligent and also in clever

My fifth in first but also in last

I am but a symbol of things from the past

Instead of having people comment the answer, and ruin it for everyone else, email me the answer, or what you think the answer is, and I will let you know if your right or not.

I will post the answer in a week

Oh god, I kill me sometimes

Here’s the scene: You take somewhat attractive 18 year old Kimberly Vlaminck, to a Romanian Tattooist that doesn’t speak the same language as her, and have her ask for some facial art. Now have the Teen ‘fall asleep’ in the tattooist chair.

Now here’s the punch line, and stop me if you’ve heard this one, but the girl wakes up, to find that half her entire face is now covered in 56 stars. Now I mean not even Hollywood could make this stuff up, but now that daddy has seen a face full of ink, they want to sue to tattooist for the cost of removing 53 of the 56 stars.

However this is where this cavalcade of hilarity starts to become sad, as the tattooist is swearing that the teen was awake for the entire procedure, and that she knew exactly what was going on, so on one hand you have the Teen co-ed claiming that she’s been duped into having the excessive ink done, and a tattooist who looks like someone I would never meet in a dark alley, claiming the exact opposite.

Now what I want to know, considering that in Belgium, that there is a written agreement between the tattooist and tattooe (yes I know that is not a word) as to what is going on, and apparently the father of the teen paid for this, so when it came for the bill to be paid, what I want to know is was this the cheapest 56 stars tattoo… or the most expensive 3? cause I mean if it was paid before hand, that would make this oh so much more hilarious.

So what my dear readers is the moral of this story? Don’t get a tattoo unless you and the tattooist speak the same freaking language, now that isn’t a no-brainer, but on that same hand, after you do go and get some ‘ugly’, and your daddy-dearest doesn’t approve, try and make up a more credible story that you fell asleep and couldn’t tell that your face was being pricked by hundreds of tiny needles.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall of the tattoo parlour when the father found out that his daughter had more stars than Old Glory, and I would love to find out just how this little episode ends up, cause I mean, seriously, I’m expecting it to be turned into an episode on a sitcom by the end of the year.

No I am not related to you.

I’ve recently been inundated by messages from associates of mine, asking me if a message they received from Facebook stating that I was related to them. Now I would like to point out that I am not related to most of those people, and the reason for that query is due to a piece of scamware that has popped up on Facebook.

Using the commonly used Relatives application as a front, a piece of scamware called Zuggio, or something similar, will automatically send all your friends a message stating that you are related to the original sender. However all this does is propagates the scam, as soon as you click on the link to figure out just what the hell Joe Bloggs thinks by adding you as a relative, it sends the same link to all your friends.

This article is not without its caveats, considering the fact that this is for lack of a better term, a harmless piece of scamware, it does point out a large security flaw in Facebook. If this application can exist, and spread like the proverbial virus throughout the site, this also means that more malicious applications, things that may steal identities or install viruses, may do so with impunity. How do I know that this situation exists? Because it happened to me.

Facebook, you’ve done so much in recent months to try and fix bugs and vulnerabilities, unfortunately you also don’t have someone vetting applications to make sure things like this don’t exist.

Sorry for the disappearing act, I have a website, and a costume that needs working on so I have put this thing on hiatus until such time as either of those has been completed, I have a few articles lined up and I will get getting them out ASAP.

I want a Zune HD!

While there is no hiding the fact that I own a Zune, the fact that I am the only person probably in the entire state with Microsoft’s mp3 player. That being told it does have a great deal of bragging rights and interest, much akin to the original iPod when it was first globally released. The only problem I ever had was the fact that I had to create a new email address to enable me to use it as it has not been released anywhere outside North America.

To this end, I found it quite interesting to discover that version 3.1 of the Zune Marketplace software is available to download in regions where the device itself is not available, granted I’ve only been able to determine that it available in Australia and England, and fills an identical capacity to iTunes, despite the fact that you still can’t create a user account in these regions, which really isn’t a problem since at the time being you still can’t get the devices in these countries…

That was until news of the 3rd Generation Zune devices, known as the Zune HD has been announced. what’s more, there is speculation that the Zune HD will be released outside North America, making it possibly the first Zune device that can be legally obtained outside America and Canada.

The fact that the Zune software is available for download outside the regions that the device itself is sold in, hopefully means that the Zune HD will be also released in these regions. Microsoft has been keeping very quiet about the concept of an international release, but they have also not ruled out the prospect. Gadget blogs have speculated that Microsoft will release the Zune HD in Europe as the only non North America region, but I would not be surprised if it is released in Australia/New Zealand as well, at least in the English speaking world.

Worse case scenario, I have one shipped to Australia, just like I did with my old one. I’m not fussed either way, but I would like it if people can look at my Zune and not wonder just what the hell it is, while yes I enjoy being the only person in a geographic location to have a Zune, I would really, and I mean REALLY would love to locally get a hold of peripherals. It would also be good to see for a change a stand in the electronics section not dedicated to Apple products, and no that was not a jab at the fact that I have to go passed the iMacs to get to the Toshiba notebooks at Myer.

So hurry up Microsoft I want my Zune HD, hell I wouldn’t mind the standard Zune being released here as well, I want to be able to use the Social software at least once in Australia.