I haven’t been able to blog for the past week because I’ve been busy setting up my new computer. The excitement of getting a beast of a computer is sort of ruined by the pain of installing all the software, getting all the drivers working and setting the preferences so the computer is just right.

Here is my new computer:

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Intel Core i7-870 CPU
Antec 900 Advanced Gaming Case
4 GB of RAM (needs more, 16 GB maybe)
NVIDIA GTX 295 graphics card
Seagate 1.3 terabyte HDD

A very nice machine.

One good thing about setting up my new computer is it forced me to go through the my documents folder to find what I wanted to keep and wanted to throw away. I have got into the habit of writing comments I leave on other blogs in Word before I submit them. In this way I don’t lose the comment when I accidentally hold down backspace or the cat decides to jump onto the keyboard, but it also allows me to keep a record of comments. Look at these few gems I dug up. I don’t know the blogs I left them on and I don’t know when I left them.

In this one I was obviously having a discussion about the health system with a bunch of libertarians. They believe in a user pays system and that the government should but out on any kind of regulation at all.

Ra, SB, Yobbo,

I have spoken to many people who have lived in the US. Their number-one complaint is the nonexistent public health system. You really want to live in a country where you have a car accident then have many operations to get put back together then receive a $50,000 bill?

You’re a moronic, uncaring fool if you want the same for us.

Yeah I know you’d rather the money spent on public health care went back into your pocket. I don’t know how greedy people like you sleep at night.

I know for a fact that I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for our public health system. If you don’t like the way things work in Australia go live somewhere else. We happen to be a caring nation. Deal with it.

Can we still be considered caring with Kevin Rudd’s refugee policy?

This next one is from when I made the mistake of leaving a comment on an ultra-right-wing site. As I found out they don’t like having their views challenged.

“…site for leftoid scumbags or pretentious wannabe intellectuals to strut their pathetic wares.”

The problem for someone like me who visits a site like this is that none of you want to engage in a legitimate discussion. What happens to so many people who have firm views is they engage in personal attacks, instead of defending their views using reason. How can you hope to convince anybody of your beliefs if you are unable to defend them without verbal violence.

Of course all of you are entitled to your opinions and I would fight for your right to have them even though I disagree with them. I believe that opinions should have a firm foundation if they are to mean anything. This means a lot of discussion a lot of thought and argument.

I would really love you guys to make me think. Tell me what is actually wrong with what I have said and why.

See you, I probably won’t be back.

I seem to be really good at getting into fights on my blog. I dared to write a post about the protests in Tibet just before the Chinese Olympics in 2008 and a Chinese person by the name of Yun really didn’t like what I had to say. This started a very heated discussion in this post that just degenerated into pointless insults. I agreed to disagree, but this wasn’t enough for Yun and he started to spam my site with copyrighted material supporting his views. I was forced to ban him.

Yun, you are setting a marvelous example to the rest of the world of the quality of people in China. In case you can’t realize, I’m being sarcastic.

This is my favourite quote of yours, I feel it demonstrates your true character: “I will lay back and enjoy more of the terrorists masterpieces in the years to come. And I will have no sympathy for you westerners at all. YOU GUYS WELL DESERVE IT!” In Mao’s day, they would line someone like you (a nationalist) up next to a mass grave and stick a bullet in the back of your head (see, I can be nasty too).

I hope to hear more from you in the future.

I am a bit ashamed about my reaction. Suggesting that someone deserves a bullet in the back of the head is not a worthy thing for anyone to say. I find it very scary that there are people around with views such as his.

The torture debate has started up again. In the new World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King there is a quests called “the art of persuasion.” This quest involves the torture of a captive through the use of a device called the neural needler.

This of course has stirred up all sorts of controversy, with those for and against torture doing battle again. I do not wish to talk about the controversy or the morality of including such a quest in a game. I do wish to make an attempt to explain why torture is not only bad, but in some ways counter-productive.

The most popular argument put forward by torture proponents is the ticking time bomb scenario. Terrorists have placed a bomb somewhere in a crowded city. The ‘good’ guys have captured one of them. They think he knows where the bomb is planted. He says that he knows nothing about it. The answer is of course to torture the information out of him.

Many people would say that torture is okay in that scenario – one person is sacrificed to save hundreds.

Most people will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid pain. The threat of torture would be enough for most people to crack and reveal everything they know. But just imagine that you are the one being tortured. Wouldn’t you say anything to get out of that room, to make them stop? Rationality would be the first thing to leave your mind. Your goal would not be to tell the truth it would be for the torture to stop.

The person doing the torture would not know when you are telling the truth. The interrogators would have an idea of the information they wish to obtain from you. And you would no doubt have an image of the information they want. What if the truth is something that the torturers do not wish to hear? Maybe there is no bomb and maybe it is a hoax. What do you think they would do if you told your interrogators this fact? Or if there were multiple bombs and you don’t know where they all are.

What if you are innocent?

An innocent captive has a lot more to fear from torture as they have no truth to reveal.

The thing that devalues torture the most is when you look at the big picture. When people are tortured we give the terrorists a gift. They can point to the West and say: “look how evil they are. They talk about the rule of law about human rights and then completely ignore them.” Those who were on the borderline of supporting the terrorists are now able to support them wholeheartedly. It becomes a recruitment tool creating more terrorists.

Even if the torture of one person saves lives, in the long run it will kill many more.

I was surprised at to find out this morning that Brazil has chosen to ban two decade-old computer games Everquest and Counter Strike.

Everquest is a swords and sorcery massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Counter Strike is a free mod to the popular game Half-Life, both were released in 1999.

The Federal Court of Brazil made the ruling to ban the games in October 2007. But the Brazilian consumer protection agency PROCON has only now acted. According to the judge the games are harmful to consumers health. The games are “the subversion of public order, were an attack against the democratic state and the law and against public security.”

According to the site Kotaku, counter strike was banned because it teaches users war tactics. Also one of the maps include a Brazilian streetscape where drug dealers kidnapped three UN workers and police are sent in to rescue them.

EverQuest was banned for even more ridiculous reasons. It allows players of the game to choose both good or bad quests. Apparently this creates a moral conflict that results in psychological stress.

Apparently both these violent games can cause players to become violent in the real world.

There are so many things wrong with this decision that it would be a struggle to list everything.

First of all. What right does a court have to ban games let alone for such ridiculous reasons?

Counter Strike does not even have a regular developer like most other games – it was created by the fans for the fans and remains free to download. It’s not the kind of thing you can ban. This also unfairly taints the developers of Half-Life who had nothing to do with the development of Counter Strike.

They are old games. These games are nine years old and the vast majority of people have moved on to other games. This decision is also counter-productive – the only thing it does is give free advertising to the games they are trying to ban.

Also what about all those other terrible games? Virtually every game has violence, difficult moral decisions and no thought of political correctness. To many all these are the great things about computer games. It allows you to do things that you just can’t do in the real world.

Many older people remain ignorant of computer games. They just don’t understand. It is also a worrying trend among western nations to “protect” the population by limiting our rights. It’s a computer game today a book tomorrow – next thing you know you’re in jail for insulting the Prime Minister.

There is a game, its browser-based, its massively multiplayer and has over a billion players. It is not prohibitively expensive to play and it is not resource intensive; you won’t need to install a new graphics card to play when this game. This game doesn’t necessarily require a lot of attention, you can check on it once a week or once per hour and still be successful either way. The great thing about this game is if you are good at it, it pays! The best thing about this game is it is fun. What is this game? Why the sharemarket of course.

I play world of Warcraft. To start with I was crap, but over a period of years I have become very good at the game, but now I’m sick of it. And what have I achieved playing this game? Lots of wasted time where I could have been writing. I could have written several novels in all the time I’ve wasted playing this game. But with the sharemarket you may lose to begin with, but when you get good at playing the sharemarket you win in more than one way. It is not wasted time.

Anyway I think I’ll sign up. I will tell you how I do.

The other day I was playing World of Warcraft (WoW) and an interesting discussion started in guild chat. It seems many members of the US military play WoW, this one guy Uranus (a homophobe named Uranus…that’s something) was saying how gays are still not allowed to sign up. The US military’s policy is still “don’t ask don’t tell”, but according to Uranus a homophobic attitude is almost compulsory. “We are required to be homophobic.”

I told him it was really quite silly that gays are not allowed in the military as some of the best warriors in history were gay, such as Alexander the Great. He told me I was wrong. Alex was not gay! Bullshit.

My guild is mainly Aussie so we told him that the Australian military allows gays, he answered, “that’s why Australia has second rate military.” After this the augment turned personal, and really quite funny.

But this raises a question, can gays fight? Can gays be an asset to the military? If you are in a foxhole with a gay solder will this have unfortunate consequences?

The whole argument boils down to gays not being “real” men apparently. Gays are meant to be sissy – like woman in other words. All the arguments used against woman get directed at gays. Frankly this line of argument is stupid. Woman are physically weaker but gay men are still men. So it comes down to mental toughness, leadership ability and courage.

Women have babies – that’s courage. In my opinion women also have fine leadership under pressure. My guild master and raid leader in WoW is a woman. She has to be in command of 25 people leading them through a dungeon with many hideous monsters. It can be quite stressful and has lead other weaker leaders to crack, to start swearing on vent (Ventrillo is a program used by WoW addicts to talk to each other – it’s like a conference call) and saying things like, “THAT’S A 50DKP MINUS.” She is the best raid leader I’ve had, and has lead our guild to some great achievements. If she was the inferior, weak willed and emotion ruled person that some bigots believe all women to be then this would not be possible.

If sissy women are able to achieve great things why can’t sissy men?