Microsoft Game Room is Shitty

If the first half of this article was a bit amusing, with its pithy cracked.com-style captions and all, then this half will turn decidedly darker. Coz Microsoft has really annoyed me on this one.

I decided to install Games for Windows - LIVE for some reason (alcohol probably). Then I went straight for any titles with the magic word: "FREE". And I found one, the so-called Game Room. This is an eclectic bunch of retro arcade-style games, bundled up into a single unit. These include the classic arcade cabinets, plus the venerable Atari 2600 and Intellivision consoles, and others. This set my old-school gaming bell a-ringing; without delay I punched the "Snarf" button and waited patiently for the 500 MByte download...

Wait... what? 500 megs? To run some mouldy old arcade games which originally fit into 8 kilobytes of memory? WTF??

You heard me, half a gig for this download. Granted, the program does portray the whole thing as a funky "virtual game room", complete with 3D renderings of various rooms, the old cabinets and WeeMee-style teenage loiterers. You can even theme each room and place random objects in your virtual arcade, like some kind of fullscreen YoVille.

It all looks cool... but what's with the chainsaw?

What theme palette would be complete without...

But we're not talking "Second Life" virtual here, or even "Sims" virtual; the texturing is basic. And it's not like you can walk through this virtual arcade at leisure; the sodding camera positions are fixed.

Don't get me wrong, it all looks very cool indeed. And there are a lot of extra features, like public leaderboards and opening your arcade to "friends" (*toot toot* here comes the social networking gravy train.)

But shit man, half a gig? What, did they give each virtual cabinet it's own copy of XP or something? This is bloatware gone absolutely haywire, and I mean Soviet N1 rocket haywire.

I'm reminded of the quip apocryphally attributed to Bill Gates some years back. You've all heard it. It's the one where he says like, "If GM kept up with technology like the computer industry has, a car would cost 25 bucks and get 1,000 miles per gallon." Bullshit! If GM made cars like computers running Microsoft software, they'd weigh 45 tons and need their own nodding donkey to run. And it's all Gates' f'king fault. (Disclaimer ;)

If cars keep pace with computers, this is how we'll all be travelling soon.

Oh but I forgot to mention, that 500 megs is just for a "virtual arcade" empty shell. It doesn't include any actual games. Hell if you wanna play something there are further downloads you must make, in the form is "packs". Each pack contains a few games, and is 50-90 megs in size.

For the second time today: WTF?? Each of these original arcade games comprises a measly ROM image mere kilobytes in size! What in the nine-levels-of-Hell are these idiots putting in to bloat it out 10,000-fold?

God only freakin knows. I think Game Room was cobbled together by a bunch of undergrads using .NET and a shitload of Red Bull.

"I predict by 2015 hard drives will be this small."

Ok point taken, this ain't 1995. Disk space is so dirt cheap, who gives a damn about it any more. Seriously, it probably costs more in instant coffee waiting a few minutes for the downloads to finish. With terabyte-size drives nowadays, 500MB represents a piddly 0.05%. So no problem there, really. After all, the games themselves are free, right?

Wrong. And here is where Microsoft is at its most despicable.

Yes, it is free to download the games. But to play the games you must pay up. After 590MB of download and an hour of installation time and tooling around with the dodgy interface, Microsoft kindly lets you play each game exactly once -- but after that you must cough up and buy it. They even show glittering virtual quarters to gently remind you of that fact. Congrats, Microsoft, that's a mighty f'king swindle you've cooked up there.

Purchase? But the man said "free"...

Ok, I get it... I think

Wait... didn't I just "buy" this thing?

 Clearly Microsoft is using Richard Stallman's definition of "Free", or possibly Kim Jong-Il's.

It'd be nice if Microsoft bloody-well specified this "free ain't free" policy before I wasted my precious time on the product. Granted, each game pack only costs a few bucks. But that's not the goddam point.

Now I don't begrudge a company charging for its products; obviously Microsoft invested time and money in this software... hang on, what's that? There's already an arcade games player available, completely free of charge? That's right, it's called MAME. This niftiest of programs can emulate any arcade machine your heart desires. Just like Game Room, but at a tiny fraction of the size. And you don't have to f**k around with silly 3D rooms and kludgy interfaces. Did I mention it's free, I mean zero cost?

(Actually the one you want is MAME32, which has an easier window-driven interface.)

Seriously, Game Room smacks of being drawn-up by pointy-haired bosses, with its emphasis on gross eye candy and couldn't-care-less design. And it probably was. Coupled with Microsoft's cynical redefinition of the word "free", I am disgusted to epic proportions.

Microsoft, here's a wake up call. The market for retro gaming is guys like me: crabby-ass 30-55 year olds. Not googly-eyed, thumb-punching teens. Pointless 3D eye candy holds our attention for exactly 1 minute, after which we wish to get on with as much gameplay as possible before the missus starts hankering about the lawn. We also resent being misled and screwed by false advertising. People like us vote with our feet pretty damn quick. Google (or, God-forbid, Bing) is but a click away.

Behold the average 80's arcade gamer. Note the "looking for a squarer deal" pose.

(Note: Although MAME is free they can't legally distribute ROM images, thanks to some douche-bags who sucked up all the copyrights and deserve a rhino horn to the scrotum. Fear not, ROM images can be found all over the place. Hell, I'll even email you my classic collection of 50-odd. It's a whopping 1 meg in size all up.)

Games for Widows - LIVE is Shitty

Ask a random stranger to express their opinion of Microsoft^(R), and odds are they'll respond with anything from profanity to the yawningly dickless "buy a Mac." Over the past 20 years that little company from Redmond has cemented itself as a 1000' tall lumbering Goliath of loathing, while millions of users the world over start spinning up their leather slings as they wrangle with yet another retarded feature which worked just fine under XP.

It's called "Add or Remove Programs", not "Programs and Features", arsehole!

Nevertheless, the unsung heroics of Linux notwithstanding, we've learnt to live with ol' Microsoft. We call it not so much "friend", but rather "devil we know". It's like that sweaty bastard from the IT department with the encyclopaedic knowledge of everything computer -- detestable but indispensable. The one who invites himself along when a group of you go to lunch, embarrassing the entire company by trying to chat up the chick at Noodle Box. Actually that analogy more fits Google...

Recently Microsoft has jumped on the Steam et.al. bandwagon and opened it's own games-on-demand site, called Games for Windows - LIVE. And in doing so Redmond has brought it's own special brand of bend-over-and-think-warm-thoughts to the online games marketplace, which I feel I must call them on.

Actually, this thing is linked to the Xbox LIVE site which has been around for a while. And it is immediately confusing as to what refers to what, since they freely mix nomenclatures between the two. For example, one has to buy "Xbox LIVE" points to download PC games, paradoxically. One must also keep logging in to the client (yes, there is a damn client) with shocking repetitiveness.

Anyway let's start by picking on the first title in LIVE's Marketplace list: Age of Empires III: Complete Collection. It's billed as "3 great games in 1", all for the low price of USD$69.95. Or is it $39.99? The AoE3 website and LIVE marketplace give different answers; but we'll go with the more expensive, since clicking "Buy it" on the website sends you to the LIVE client anyway.

Firstly, the Age of Empires III: Complete Collection is not 3 games in 1, you insufferable marketroids. It is a single game with 2 expansion packs included. Calling this thing "3 games in 1" is like calling my chinos "3 pants in 1", because they're slick enough to wear to work, to a bar, and to the track. It's like calling my missus "3 women in 1" because she cooks, cleans, and watches Babylon 5 reruns with me (and enjoys it).

Wait... there's an actual female watching us now? Riiiiiight....

This is 3 games in 1. By contrast, when I buy and install AoE3:CC I'm going to get 3 icons on my desktop which start the exact same game, only with slightly different graphics and additional campaigns. Not AoE3 and Spore and Super Mario Bros.

I mean, imagine if they started boxing the Lego X-Wing Fighter as "116 sets in 1", because you can like, take it apart and reassemble it into any number of vehicular mutants. Would Lego start winning awards for creative marketing? The hell they would.

Set #76: Super awesome X-wing-Eurofighter-submarine (with tip-mounted musket lasers)

Secondly, $69.95? Are you shitting me? For a 4-year-old game? From a freakin download site? I can go to my local EB store and buy the bloody thing cheaper, complete with disc so I don't have to back up the download myself. And with a pretty box. (Actually a crappy generic plastic case, which can hold a respectable number of ATM receipts.) Or I can buy it from a little-known website for half the effing price.

Now, I hate to rip on the whole AoE franchise; it's actually one of the finer things to come out of Redmond and pretty damn amiable. And, alright, Microsoft is not alone in committing the above sins. Coz, like, all the game manufacturers do it. Probably.

But it gets much much worse, and cuts close to the hearts of old-school gamers like moi. Later...

Alex Stewart is a Stupid Moron

It's not bad enough that some dickweed Pastor from Bumblef**k, USA has to propose burning Qurans to get his 15-seconds of fame. It's not bad enough that every blogger and vlogger from one end of the religio-belief spectrum to the other has to dribble their opinions on the matter. It's not even bad enough that every Muslim, from some camel-humping mouth-foamer to some poor bastard raking a living in the dirt, starts burning Bibles in retaliation.

No. All that is to be expected in this shitpile called The World.

But what really hacks me off are the retarded copycats who can't keep their childishness on a leash; they have to go one better. Just like this tool.

In a nutshell, a smarmy, greasy lawyer (yeah I know that's a tautology) named Alex Stewart thought it'd be really funny to sit in front of a camera and smoke (what looks like) a joint made from pages torn out of a Bible and Quran. And post it on Youtube.

Firstly, Alex Stewart, anyone who videos themselves doing lame shit that they think is cool, and then posts it on Youtube, deserves to be buried alive. You insufferable narcissist.

Secondly, I'm an atheist. The whole religious thing can go straight to the birds. But at least I understand that the Bible and Quran are deeply meaningful to many people. And I don't mean terrorists and nutjobs, I mean decent people. Yet I'm baffled as to what Alex Stewart is trying to prove. What possible kind of statement is he trying to make by smoking sacred texts? Aside from "I am a cretin."

Thanks mate, for making everyone in Brisbane Atheists look like a bunch of wankers.

"They're just f**king books," Stewart bleats, and that it was all a joke. Then he hides behind "freedom of speech". Hogwash. The Danish cartoon controversy was an exercise in freedom of speech. Alex Stewart, what you did was crass and immature. You then have the gall to tell people to "get over it." Ok then, how about I go through your old family album, roll up some photos and smoke them? How about I roll an old photo of your grandma into a tight little wad and shove it up your ass?

Get over it.

I mean, take guys like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, intelligent men who've made careers of showing how silly religion is. But at least they do it with a modicum of rationality and poise. They don't go around behaving like some 15-year-old pissed to the eyeballs, dropping his dacks in public and screaming "WOO look at me!!"

Yeah, I can just picture it... Alex Stewart sitting in front of his PC late one night, having exhausted all the latest Britney videos, and thinks to himself: "F**k I'm bored. If a random Pastor from Florida can, like, do controversial shit, why not me? I know, I'll create a scandal by smoking the Bible and Quran on Youtube. HUR, HUR, HUR, HUR!!"

To make it worse, the university Stewart works for, QUT, has been tarred with the same shit-smeared brush. And now everyone, from sunny Queensland to the murky Dagobar system will think, "Ho, this Alex Stewart is a freakin retard. All the staff at QUT must similarly be retards. Ergo, all graduates from QUT must be retards too."

Thanks for nothing, f**tard.

Furthermore, now an army of young, impressionable pseudo-children called "uni students" will take one look at what someone in their midst has done, and immediately think, "Cool!" Because as we know, the adolescent brain cannot discriminate between rational, reasonable behaviour and being a drooling dickhead. That's why we need taxpayer-funded ad campaigns telling young people to not do things like drink themselves to death.

So all you kids watching, for godsake, take it from a grown-up: Alex Stewart is not cool. Alex Stewart is not funny or subversive or radical. Alex Stewart is a knob. Period.

Seriously, man, grow the f**k up.

ps. I just read that Stewart may well get the boot from QUT. Good one mate, that video was the biggest CLM since General McChrystal said, "Rolling Stone magazine? Cool, I'll go on record!" Jeezus.

American Independence Day: Merci, France

Ah, the 4th of July... Star-spangled banners are flying, and Americans all over the world are loudly celebrating their independence. While I join our Yankee cousins in honoring the birth of their great nation, I'll also take the opportunity to gently remind everyone of who it was that helped them win their independence:

The French.

It's ironic, but America hates the French. Well not hate, but loathe. Laugh at. Deride. It's common in American culture these days to rip on the French at every opportunity. It's become a cliche. All in all, "Francophobia" has become an American pastime.

Sure, the French don't make it any easier for themselves. They are renowned for being arrogant pigs. We've all heard stories of a tourist accosting some local in Paris, asking the way to the train station in clumsy French, only to have him snidely mutter "Pardon?" And everyone knows the French are cowards. Their refusal to help out in the War on Terror, and thumbing their noses at American geopolitics in general, has become infamous. (But then, for a nation which has been at virtually continuous warfare for the past 300 years, wiping out entire generations of young men, taking a breather from death and destruction is understandable.)

But let me ask you this. If it wasn't for the French, you know what America would be today? I'll tell you: It'd be the largest colony in the British f**ing empire.

A little history lesson: The American War of Independence. Most people today don't grasp the enormous disparity between the forces of the British Empire and the fledging American nation in that conflict. Britain was the preeminent military and economic power of the day. It was a superpower. It commanded seemingly inexhaustible resources, manpower and matériel. America, on the other hand, was a pissant collection of backwater colonies. They had a huge landmass, but they still relied on the mother country for trade, manufactured goods and security. Their military was puny and disorganized. For 18th century Britain to clash with America is like imagining, say, America today invading Belgium or Tanzania. Or Canada.

Britain had the finest army in the world. It was a well-trained, well-equipped fighting machine. From the war's outset the Redcoats steamrolled their way from Connecticut to Virginia unabated. Washington's Continental army, by contrast, was a shambles. It consisted for the most part of simple farmers and laborers. They were poorly-trained, poorly-equipped and poorly-fed. Most didn't have uniforms, so they stuck a sprig of greenery in their hats to be recognized. Half of them didn't have shoes for chrissake. The only time they got the upper hand was in bush skirmishes, where their woodsman's skills came to bear and the Redcoats stood out like a dog's balls. But in pitched battles against the Brits it was a massacre. Many times the Patriots simply broke and ran. Now these guys weren't cowards. They weren't craven. They were brave men. But they were common folk, and it takes a special kind of training and discipline to hold rank while being shot at. Morale was abysmal.

Now take the Royal Navy. The Limeys had absolute supremacy on the seas. The Atlantic was their personal pond. Hundreds of ships-of-the-line, crewed by salty old dogs battle-hardened from years of pounding the crap out of the Spaniards, the Dutch and whoever else. All they had to do was park the Royal Navy off the coast and blockade the major ports. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond... even if by some miracle the Continental army was able to start besting the Redcoats, without the trade and money of the port cities the US's ability to wage war would have crumbled in months.

And yet, against these overwhelming odds, the Patriots prevailed. How? How did a ragtag bunch of colonials beat the world's foremost power?

Gumption? Guile? Good ol' American can-do?

Bullshit. It was the French.

With the revolution close to collapse and the Brits poised to reestablish dominance, the Frogs saw a perfect opportunity to stick it to their ancient adversaries. They did three things which turned the tide in favor of the Yankees. First, they supplied Washington with men, ships and equipment. True, the French troops weren't deployed to much effect, but it still provided the Redcoats with something else to worry about. Second, they supplied much needed training and battle expertise to the Patriot troops. Suddenly Washington's army started winning pitched battles and the Redcoats didn't seem so invincible anymore. Third, and perhaps most crucially, the Frenchies started attacking British interests elsewhere around the globe. This forced the Brits to spread their military resources thin, especially the Royal Navy, so they couldn't throw the entire weight of the Empire at those damn colonists.

The rest, as they say, is history.

All you red-blooded Americans, bear this in mind. It was the French who saved your asses from a deadly whoopin' at the hands of the Brits. It was French who were responsible for the genesis your great nation. It was the French who ensured you have a president instead of a queen. And it was the French who had a direct hand in the events this day is celebrated for.

Seriously.

So on this 4th of July, if you're a patriotic American and you see a Frenchie in the street, rather than busting on him, you should be thanking him. You should get down on your hands and knees and kiss his snail-eating ass. Because without La République Française, there would be no America. Furthermore, a few days hence on Bastille Day, which is France's national holiday, every American should be out there wearing berets, eating croissants and singing the freakin' Marseillaise.

Vive...

Worst iProduct Name Ever

By now, everyone has heard of Apple's newest income spinner: the iPad. Straight from Steve Jobs' stable of marketing racketeers to your coffee table, it's an iPhone that doesn't fit right in your pocket.

Most people are probably familiar with the "electronic pad" gadget seen in Star Trek and other SciFi media; now that vision of the hi-tech analogue to a clipboard has been realised as the iPad. And maybe it is a great product. But with a sticker price from AUD$650 to over $1000, I think I'll wait till Motorola or Samsung comes out with a less expensive and more feature-packed competitor.

And hopefully one with a better name.

You see, all the people I have spoken to about the iPad are unanimous in one respect: No woman was on the team that came up with that name. I mean, seriously... "iPad"?

"iPad"????

It sounds like a new brand of feminine... I don't even have to say what it sounds like. Because that's the first thing everyone thought of when they heard the name "iPad".

Everyone that is, except for the shambling mass of Jobs-philes whose brains are too addled with Applethink to make that obvious, crass connection.

I can just picture it: Outside a large boardroom in Cupertino, CA, a sign says: "New Product Naming Team: Knock Before Entering." Inside, a dozen cool and hip exec types, in their jeans and open-collar shirts with little apples on the lapels, sit around an enormous desk. There is not a woman among them. They've been holed in the boardroom for a month straight now -- there are dirty coffee cups and crushed Red Bull cans all over the place, and a huge pile of empty pizza boxes and sushi containers in the corner. Screwed up pieces of paper litter the desk and floor. A whiteboard covered in scribbled words sits along one wall. The whole place is awash with the glow from a dozen MacBook screens. The leader of the group sits at the head of the table; a portrait of Steve Jobs looking humble and noble hangs on the wall above him.

Wild-eyed and unshaven, these guys are hyped to the gills on caffeine and guarana. The lack of sleep has not dulled their enthusiasm. Finally, the leader stands and declares, "So we have it, then! The new product will be named... iPad!" There is clapping and adulation from the others. The theme from "2001" starts playing in the background.

The janitor, who has entered the boardroom unannounced, pipes up. "But doesn't that sound like a brand of feminine--" Security escorts him from the building.

God Al-friggin-mighty.

Get a Goddam Clue, People

So I'm watching TV (and hating myself) tonight, coz NCIS was on or something. Included in the many and voluminous ad breaks were the 30-second news updates. And what, you wonder, were the ground-breaking headlines for this evening?

1. Interest rates going up (again).
2. Something I can't recall.
3. Tiger Woods' press conference.

That's right. Of all the many things that happened around the vast world today, the most earth-shattering news those TV exec knobs could come up with were interest rates and Tiger Woods. TIGER F*CKING WOODS.

Are you friggin kidding me? A hundred men were rescued from a Chinese coal mine after being buried up to their arses in water for a week. The Space Shuttle just took off to deliver some cutting-edge components to the ISS. The big supermarket chains are trying their darndest to shut down Costco in this country, for Christ sake. But what are we given? What constitutes top billing news in this miserable excuse for a nation? Some twirp in expensive pants who can hit a ball with a stick. And it wasn't even news about him hitting a ball. It was about a press conference where he said he's really really sorry for his tawdry, pre-packaged sequence of despicable antics of late, (that is to say, he's sorry he got busted), and that he's ready to start making millions of dollars again.

What exactly has Tiger Woods' contribution been to this planet, anyway? What indescribably brilliant thing had he done to warrant being paid a billion dollars? Did he cure cancer? Is HIV suddenly off the books? Did he get the Jews and Palestinians to kiss and make up? Huh? Well? No. He can hit a ball into a f*cking hole. That's it. The sum total of this schmoozing dickhead's life. Oh, and he gives hope to millions of African American kids that they too can become President of the United States. Oh, wait...

Don't even get me started. Speaking of Tiger "Smack me with a 9-iron" Woods, it just reminded me of another shining pearl of the intelligence of the Human species. Before Tiger's taking his dick out of his pants had the whole world enthralled, I recall last year he got himself into big trouble by stating, after a shocker of a round, that he "played like a spaz". Woods' uttering of "spaz" caused not so much as a titter in his home nation, but across the Pond the PC nancies couldn't flip open their phones fast enough. You see kids, just in case English isn't your first language, back in Old Blighty, "spaz" (short for "spastic") is considered derogatory against disabled people. It's right up there with words like "f*cking c*nt" or "Hitler had it right all along".

Oh, the sheer impertinence! The result of Tiger Woods' faux-pas was a bitch-session of epic proportions by probably the worst combination of whinger one could imagine: British AND liberal. The sad part is, I bet we'd have trouble finding an actual disabled person who was genuinely offended by Woods' use of the word "spaz". But that didn't stop an army of gammy-toothed bleeding-heart pansies getting supremely miffed on behalf of "differently-abled" people everywhere.

And so poor ol' Tiger had to get down on his knees and beg forgiveness for committing that most heinous of crimes: Saying a Bad Word.

(And of bloody course, all of this unimportant nonsense was late-breaking plaster-scrolling-banners-all-over-Family-Guy news, even down here in the antipodes.)

The worst part is, it wouldn't have mattered what Tiger Woods had said or where he said it, someone would have taken offence. It happens to all famous people, sooner or later. They dribble something totally innocuous, and suddenly a whole cross-section of the community collectively grasps their chests and gasps in mortal horror that anyone would dare utter such an evil, derogatory epithet in public.

Would you people WAKE UP! WAKE THE F*CK UP! It was just a goddam word. I can't believe that in this day and age of death and deprivation on a biblical scale, that a simple string of phonemes would cause such gnashing of teeth. I mean, does anyone care that 100,000 children in Africa starved to death or died of AIDS in the time it took for Tiger's Freudian Slip to blow over? Or that the US government bombed another bunch of camel-f*ckers to keep millions of gasoline-powered death-traps on the road, while another family is rear-ended and burned to death? Or that, if the amount of money paid in one hour to some grimy c*nt of a CEO were spent on schools, we'd have a new generation who could actually count to 21 without dropping their pants?

I swear to God... If all the ordinary slobs got off their fat arses and got on with things with the same vitriolic vehemence as they do bitching about something TOTALLY IDIOTICALLY F*CKING TRIVIAL as a RUDE WORD, (or cheering on some shit-for-brains who hits a ball real good), maybe we'd get somewhere as a species.

But nooooooooooooooo. Who wants to do great things when mediocre is much easier. So it is with the news, the apogee of the intelligence of the People. Sigh.

Filter Out Dickhead Senators

Dear reader, I gently refer you to the "No Clean Feed" banner on the right. Long story short, there's an Australian senator and douchebag named Stephen Conroy who is doing his utmost to install an all-pervasive clean-feed internet filter in this great nation. An automatic black-box to prohibit certain websites the government has decided are too nefarious or evil for you to look at. The "Great Firewall of Australia", if you will. The same as used in China, Iran, and other such progressive countries.

I'm not going to go through manifold issues and problems associated with this hair-brained scheme, because frankly they've been done to death and I'd start swearing loudly. Again I refer you to the banner.

Let me just say this: Conroy, you bleat about doing this primarily to stamp out child porn, terrorist sites, bomb making, and what have ya. You stick out your chest and bray that you are protecting The People. I say, what a load of bullshit. What a stinking crock of shite. What you are doing is jabbing a thumb into the eye of every law-abiding Australian. Everyone who is capable of monitoring their own kids' internet usage. Every Australian who can look after their own goddam affairs and don't need a bunch of pencil-neck bureaucrats treating them like children.

No. During this whole crooked affair, you have repeatedly demonstrated that you don't care about anything as frivolous as hard facts. You couldn't care less that this ridiculous filter is opposed by every telco in the country, and is a laughing stock internationally. You don't care a skeeter's-dicks-worth that to a determined pedophile, or any 13 year-old with half a brain, this firewall might as well be made of Swiss cheese. You can't stand the fact that your scheme has been exposed as an enormous, expensive flop and completely useless at its primary function.

It's not about child porn. It's not about terrorists. It's not about bomb-making websites. It's all about you, Senator Conroy, having a statue erected to yourself, and this moronic, Orwellian scheme is it. It would be laughable if it wasn't so f*cking perverse.

Sen. Conroy, you are the worst brand of arsehole. Instead of using taxpayers money for something useful, like, I dunno, building schools and roads, you instead dump millions down this sinkhole which is a testament to your mountainous ego. And at the same time do more to kill learning and free speech than anything cooked up in the Politburo's biggest wet dream. I can only hope that history will judge you and your firewall as the steaming pile of crap it is, and it will be used evermore as a bad example. I can also hope you die horribly.

But wait... Toot toot! Here comes the clean-feed gravy train, and it's not only pollys jumping on it. Now we have lilly-livered journos sticking their fingers down their throats and emitting sputum like this. Have a read all the way to the end. All I can say is, I see The Australian is still the pandering, slobbering idiot sidekick to the federal government it always has been.

And to the author, Mr Mark Day, you blind retard, I say: This is the thin end of the wedge. Restrictions on peoples' liberties imposed by the government always ratchet forward -- they never stay still, and never ever go back. Mark my words, if this firewall goes ahead, it will not stop there. And as for your comment that, if so, "there would be immediate marching in the streets and [Conroy'd] be drummed out of office"... well as my head tips back and I roar with laughter, it's painfully obvious that you, Mark Day, are a poor student of history. You are also a knob. But then, what do we expect from a Finance writer? Bet you didn't see the global meltdown coming, either. F*ckwit.