Find out here: http://improbable.com/pages/airchives/paperair/volume11/v11i4/sluggish-data-11-4.pdf

So Fallout 3 has just been refused classification (RC) by the OFLC in Australia, possibly the highest profile game to be RC, but by no means the first. Every single GTA game since III has been censored by the OFLC, largely due to the lack of an R18+ rating here. There have been calls for this for years, but lately more and more people have decided things need to change.

Films and books all have an R18+ and even X18+ category, but the highest rating a game can get without being RC is MA15+. Why is this? Do video games suffer from an image of being purely the domain of teenage boys? Does the interactive nature of games make it more "real" than if the same content was just watched or read? Does the government fear a backlash from concerned parents if they make a change? There are many factors influencing any change in government policy, some related to the issue, some not at all.

In the last few years, in Australia at least, the average gamer has moved from being the adolescent boy staring at the computer monitor in his room to a much broader audience. The mean age of today's gamer is well into their twenties, if not early thirties, and the new generation of consoles, the Wii in particular, has made video games accessible to a much larger audience. With this change in demographic needs to come a change in censorship ratings. Adults should be allowed to make choices about what they read, watch and play without the OFLC deciding what's alright first.

I can understand when people say that killing someone in a videogame is worse than watching an action movie. You don't actively participate in a film or book, but rather just spectate from the outside as events unfold. But this does not mean that violent games or games with drug use should be banned. Maybe given a higher rating than the equivalent book or film, but not banned or modified.

Changing the government policy on the rating system would be a controversial decision. Sure it would be welcomed by many, but howls of protest would be heard from every parenting and religous group in the country seeking to protect the children. I've got friends who's parent's didn't care about what games they played when they were ten or twelve. And I know people whose parents would not even let them play a violent video game at a friends house. The thing is, you will get little to no support from the parents who allow their children to play violent video games for this change as, frankly, they don't care. But you will get fierce opposition from the other parents as they do care.

Ultimately, it comes down to adults being given the choice to play what they want. Game ratings need to come into line with the film and book system, and while this change is long overdue, I wouldn't be expecting it any time soon.

I'd stop reading here if you want to read something that is worth your time and makes sense.

I'm so sick of school. I hate year 12. I want holidays.

So we finished exams, and the we have to do another two weeks of school after that until holidays. How retarded is that. Just enough time for us to learn something, and then we can forget it over the holidays.

Finished my exams, walk out the room, look around, everyone's so relieved. Then I realise oh @!*$, I've got a @!*$load of homework to do in the next two days. There go's the relaxing weekend I had planned.

Each teacher seems to think that their subject is the only one that matters."Oh, what, youv'e got exams next week. Oh don't worry, there isn't one for English. You can write a few essays and read a novel in that week can't you?"

I get the sense the teachers don't really like these two weeks either. So far a few teachers have just completely snapped. And when I say snapped, I don't mean the whole class stays after school kind of snapped. I mean snapped. Sounded like their entire life's frustrations came out in one big half hour burst aimed squarely at our class. We got verbally bashed, and in the process so did the school and just about every other teacher in the school by this teacher. And I had the good fortune to be sitting in the front row.

Top Gears on now and I have three maths assesments to study for. So thats it.

Ahh, I feel better now.

I love a good flight sim. And none of that arcade rubbish either.

The feeling you get when you just complete a mission and manage to land a heavily damaged aircraft is like nothing else in gaming, a real sense of achievement. One of the first games I ever played was USNF, and I've been hooked ever since. No other games have been played by me for as long as the flight sims I own. Countless hours of my life have been spent with a joystick in my hands flying over the England and France.

Flight sims are a dying breed sadly, with good ones coming out only every few years. The best ones currently are IL-2 Sturmovik 1946, based on a 2001 graphics engine, LOMAC, released in 2001 and the modded varieties of Falcon 4.0, and the best ones on the horizon are Storm of War and Fighter Ops. The communities around these projects are amazing, and are what really drive this tiny genre of games. Where else do you find mods still being developed and their release being eagerly awaited for a game that is ten years old. Flight sim communities also seem to have a bad image, one of people arguing over ridiculously small things, which I have to admit is partly true, but the general feeling is one of openness and inclusion. These are some of the most tight knit communities on the web.

While many people are turned away by the steep learning curves and enormous manuals of flight sims, people who are willing to spend a bit of time learning to fly properly will most likely be still playing these games in five, six, seven years, long after they have shelved that years biggest fps.

Go out and buy a decent flight sim. And please don't try to play with a keyboard.

MADE myself a new banner, pretty quick job, only took five minutes and it shows. Image is from Ace Combat 6.

Last day of the school holidays for me, which means doing all my homework that I should of done two weeks ago and counting how many weeks until the next holidays. not really much point to this blog, just trying to avoid doing work. I've applied for a my first job, and as I was writing this they have emailed me to tell me that I have been shortlisted. interview is in two weeks.

We may be getting a Wii, as my little sisters birthday is coming up and she has been asking for one every second of the day for several months now. I'm not sure about it, as there dont seem to be a whole lot of games for it, but I think I will end buying a bunch of gamecube games and controllor for it. I wanted a 360, but it looks like it's not happening, and a Wii is still pretty good compared to my current PSX.