For Christmas Cath got me a gift voucher for bookdepository.co.uk, going through my list of what I wanted to purchase they were all books in trilogies or series’. So I grabbed 10 books, mostly the start in a series and would grab the rest of the series if they were worth it.

I had not read a book in a while so when I picked up my first one to start reading I was like a sponge, I just seemed to absorb the book, pages at a time.

Keeping It Real by Justina Robson. I read the whole book in a sitting and when I put it down I reflected on it. I liked it, it was not a bad book but something was off, something was out of place or off kilter and it was starting to get to me.

The story is about a female operative in Earth Security force. Years ago there was a massive disturbance that ripped open holes to connecting realities. Our main character, Lila Black, has become a cyborg of outstanding capabilities. She is strong, tough, sexy and has this amazing cyborg body to enable her to be an unstoppable force of nature.

Then it hit me. She wasn’t. Female author writing a novel where the main character is this incredibly strong female lead, who isn’t strong at all. Every interaction with new people she cannot control her emotions, she has trouble thinking her way around things. That’s fine, because the author has given her a powerful black motorbike! That’s tough right? Whenever our heroine gets into a fight one of three things happen. She loses, she wins because of someone else or her inbuilt AI in the cyborg body takes over and wins for her.

Throughout the book the author builds up how powerful our heroine is in her Cyborg body, Stronger, faster, equipped with more weapons than you can count all controlled either by her or assisted by an incredibly advanced AI system. So I spent the whole book waiting, waiting for the watershed moment where she is forced into a situation where she goes completely off the wall. No restrictions, no holding back just all out assualt.

Of course this never happens, she either runs away or someone else saves her. Everything about it seems like the character herself is fighting against the author.

That’s what got me. This well built, amazingly setup and fleshed out character, stupidly strong and self reliant and this author turned her into a weak-willed emotional female who is useless unless the strong manly, men come to save her.

Here’s hoping the rest of the books are better.

So by now I thought the world would have caught up with this massive piece of news. It occurred two days ago and I am still having trouble finding any information about it.

Google smacked China. Basically what happened was Google became aware that it was under highly advanced and targeted attacks against its Gmail section. It was originating from inside China and going after the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Then they got serious and started digging. Finding that dozens of US, European and Chinese Gmail account for activists were being routinely accessed, not through Google’s breach but through each account holders breach. Add in to all this that the attack was not just on Google but on around 20 other large companies this is massive news.

With this Google has been sharing around the information it has gathered so far with other relevant parties.

The upshot of this? When Google first entered into China, opened up offices and started up Google.cn I was impressed. I have lived in China for a while and the greatest problem there, is not the corruption, the systemic caste system of communist party members and non-members. No the greatest problem is knowledge about the world and current events. opening up Google like this could only be a good thing… and then we found out that Google would filter the results. I can see their argument, opening up the internet is a great achievement and paying for it by censoring some results was a small price. however like the rest of the world China is hurriedly going ass-backwards on how the internet should work.

So now Google has flat out said “No, no more. We will not censor results for you. if you don’t like that then we will take our ball and go home.” effectively? Suck it China.

This is amazing, this is  wonderful and yet I can’t find much information or coverage on this. The ramifications are huge. If nothing else this should force a light onto China, if Google does pull out then everyone will sit up and pay attention.

As I said the greatest problem in China is the lack of world knowledge, so the greatest threat to the Chinese government is people waking up and paying attention.

I wanted to wait over a week before I brought this up. By now I am sure most people have forgotten their resolutions or just moved on because they were unrealistic. Also because of the massive failure rate in resolutions people become jaded. A friend of mine who shall be nameless (*cough*Eamon*cough*) has gone so far as to say his resolutions is to have no resolutions.

As David Klemke already wrote over on his blog people use New Year Resolutions as dreams. That’s a good way of putting it. The majority of my friends resolutions boil down to the usual few, Cut back on drinking, play less games, lose weight, get fit, etc, etc.

They are great ideas in theory but in practice they are so nebulous that trying to achieve them is nigh impossible. Not only because you don’t have a plan but because you don’t have a goal! Cut back on drinking, as in what? Once a day, a week, an hour? What?

To achieve in a resolution you need a defined goal then you need to construct the required steps to achieve that goal. If it is lose weight, how much? So you are 100kg with 25% body fat, create a target, say 90kg and 17% and then define down how you are to go about achieving it.

New Year’s Resolutions have gone out of fashion and a lot of people make the comment of why bother making them only on New Years? Well it’s a good enough time, you might as well. Set a goal, set what you need to achieve it, track your progress and then get it done.

I tackled this problem myself like a geek. I built a spreadsheet of what I wanted to achieve each day and defined down a point system for this. At a glance I can see what I achieved on any given day and what I should achieve to feel good about myself. I am currently trying to clean it up as a few people have expressed interest in it.

It’s now 12 days after New Years. It’s no longer a New year’s Resolution, it’s a life resolution. Make one, see what happens.

I realise that people have been banging on and on about this for a while. Everyone should be aware of what my stance is on this, however I wanted to cover two points that I only really encountered recently.

First, just in case, the internet filter is a scheme by which the Australian government will filter websites at the URL level. This is being put forth as a way to protect the children, the rallying cry of people with ulterior motives.

I will not be pointing out the flaws of this service, that has already been covered many times, for more reading go here.

No, what has me more worried are two things. One, the only people who really seem to care about this are tech people. People who understand the dangers of limiting our access to a free and open internet, the people who understand the “think of the children” as a ploy. This is anecdotal, sure, but the general response from people who don’t quite understand it is “what’s your point? It’s a good thing right? it stops child porn!” I am not sure how to combat this, there does not seem to be any form of widespread movement against it, No Clean Feed are doing their best but they can only do so much. Add in the fact Conroy is being a sneaky bitch by trying to get it passed in February but will not implement anything until after the election.

The other thing that worries me more and is a growing trend to match the trend of the world’s leaders trying to filter the internet. The tech people, the people who are the best placed to understand what is going on and to do something about it. The overwhelming response? “It’s so stupid, they can put this in place but I will just get around it!” No! That is not the point! Open access to the internet is not something you should have to “get around”. What about the average user? Should we not be fighting this trend of retardation? Should we not be using our knowledge to show why open access to the internet is the best possible option?

The thing that gets most people, is you have to pay for the good with the bad. Let me explain. All forms of freedom are tempered. The freedom of speech means that you are free to speak what you believe in without fear of reprisal. The flip side is you will hear a lot of things that you don’t agree with. The freedom to access whatever reading material’s or magazine’s you want means that you have to allow porn. There is always a price. The freedom of having an unrestricted, open internet mean everyone can access what sites they want without judgement. That also means, again, lots of porn.

This all comes back to the original problem. The filtering will go through under the banner of Think of the Children. however the same argument stands. The government should not be able to judge what you can and cannot do. If you as a parent are worried about your children, how about you act like a parent and do your fucking job? do you let your children have their own machine in an unmonitored area? Then anything that happens is your fault. Do you notice your children spending hours a day on the machine? How about connecting with your children over what is it currently their main pastime.

We as tech people need to stop saying this will not affect me because we can circumvent it. We need to start doing something about educating people to the dangers of this god awful scheme. If someone says “Think of the Children” then simply help them setup OpenDNS on their children’s machine. It’s worth the effort.

First off, I hope everyone had a great holidays. Enjoyed your Christmas, revelled in new years and generally took it easy.

With my time of I decided to finally start up the game I was scared off. Dragon Age. Scared because I know what I am like with Bioware games, I stop all required functions to survive to play those games as they take over my life. So I picked up a copy when the game came out but waited, left it sitting there taunting me. I needed time when me disappearing from reality would not be so detrimental.

I am glad I did. I started Dragon Age last Thursday, now on Monday my stats are showing I have put a shade over 60 hours into this game. Sickening? maybe… worth it? Totally.

I will not gush fanboy style over it, as I can easily see its faults. However this is easily the game of the last year. No question. The other thing it should be is the poster child of gaming. This is what people should associate with gaming, this grown up, adult story of grand fiction. Filled with care and depth that extends past most novels. With characterization on such levels that sometimes I had to just stop and walk away, unable to continue the conversation.

Instead we get Modern Warfare 2. MW2 is what is the public face of gaming and that makes me sad. When MW1 came out it was a big hit, you could make the argument, rightly so.  Not to get onto my PC gaming is king spiel, but what made MW1 so popular is that it feels right, the movement, the aiming and the shooting are all spot on. You know, Counter Strike for the console generation. So after the popularity of MW1 we got a slew of games that suddenly had to be like Modern Warfare, copycats if you will. Now with MW2 reaching such heights of exposure you can bet your ass people are going to copy…oh what’s that? Medal of Honour the big competing console franchise is shifting its focus of Warfare into the Modern era? Really?…..

These are the two big games of last year and the influence on them is easy to see. They are both trying to achieve the same thing, an immersive, epic experience for their players. But they are coming from two different directions, MW2 has looked at the money and popularity of movies and gone “We can do that better”. Hence it playing like a summer blockbuster, exciting and noisy but when you scratch away its surface you find it hollow underneath. Dragon age comes from books and storytelling so it is unapologetically involved. The sheer amount of history and writing involved is scary to think of, designing a whole new world with a coherent power, economic and religious structure.

As I said before it is not without its faults. They are mostly on the technical level, the camera is like a wayward child who has gotten drunk out the back, the fact it starts up and goes “here is the world… have fun!” Not hand holding, no real tutorials, it is a PC-assed PC game. I had played for 30 hours before I found out I could pick pockets, or that = would select my entire party.

Sure gaming has a long way to go to be grown up. But it will be games like Dragon Age that will be maturing the field, companies like Bioware that will expand on what is possible.