The Refined Geek

Long time readers will know that I’m not much of a fan of DLC as those little extra tid bits of gameplay are rarely worth the price of admission, usually only adding small amount of extra game time and little more to the overall story. Still there are some that capture my attention like the Missing Link DLC for Deus Ex and the Knife of Dunwall DLC for Dishonored is another. This can wholly be attributed to the single image they used to market it, showing a view from a rooftop showing the main character of Dishonored in the pivotal opening scene. Since that whole side of the plot remains something of a mystery to you during the main game the possibility of playing the other side was just too good to resist and I snapped it up on release.

But there’s a reason why I’m only getting around to reviewing it today.

The events of Knife of Dunwall take place alongside those of Dishonored, telling the story of Daud the master assassin who is responsible for killing the Queen and stealing her daughter away. The DLC starts just after that pivotal scene where it’s revealed that Daud is one of the Outsider’s chosen, just like Corvo, except that his powers differ slightly from that of protagonist from the main game. The Outsider also reveals that Daud’s life will soon come to a close but before that will happen he is given a clue, a single word “Delilah”.

Now I’ll be completely honest here, when I first saw the screenshot that announced the Knife of Dunwall DLC I figured that it would centre around the events that lead up to the Queen’s death, letting you plan out your route and ultimately deal the final deadly blow. Instead you’re dumped in right after those events, with the introduction being one of a myriad of comic book panel styled cut scenes that depicts your role in Dishonored’s key moment. I will admit that this disappointed me greatly as whilst it’s cool to see part of the story that you didn’t really have an insight into I really wanted to play that particular scene from the other side, as I’m sure anyone who played Dishonored would.

Like most DLCs Knife of Dunwall doesn’t deviate too much from its parent game, keeping the vast majority of key mechanics whilst introducing some new powers and reworking other elements to fit Daud’s story. All of the core abilities are still there, like blink and most of the mechanical arsenal you had, but there’s also the addition of new skills and weapons that can change the gameplay significantly. Again you can make the choice of playing it as a guns blazing ruthless killer or a hide in the shadows humanist who doesn’t kill anyone. If I’m honest Knife of Dunwall seemed to urge you to be more of a killer than anything else, but that could just be due to my frustration with some of the other elements.

Since there’s no hometown for Daud like there is for Corvo in Dishonored you’re instead presented with an upgrades screen before every mission. This means you’re essentially picking your play style before you start which is probably a good thing considering how short the DLC is and forcing you to do the same level of work in order to get the same upgrades as you had in Dishonored would just be tedious. You also have the option of purchasing favours which will make certain sections of the missions easier or provide you with upgrades. They’re usually worth it too, save for one in the last mission that didn’t seem to help at all.

Knife of Dunwall plays somewhat similarly to Dishonored with the core mission structure and numerous possible paths to get to it being par for the course. As I mentioned before, and somewhat similarly to Dishonored itself, whilst you can do the entire thing without killing anyone (apart from a few at key points) Knife of Dunwall seems to try its darndest to get you to use lethal force most of the time. There are many sections where you’ll be confronted with a couple enemies that don’t move and you’ll be forced to either sleep dart both of them (something which you can only do a limited number of times) or go rambo and just mow them all down. Whilst I tried my best to be sneaky I got fed up with it after a while and just started going to town on everyone and I have to admit it was pretty fun.

The additional insight you gain into Daud’s motives and origins is nice however the plot is a little lackluster, possibly due to the heavy amount of foreshadowing that the Outsider gives you. It’s certainly not terrible and the voice acting is above games of similar calibre which helps it tremendously as even the best plot can be ruined by flat delivery. It’s quite possible that my impression is heavily tainted by my expectations of what the Knife of Dunwall would and wouldn’t include however.

For a DLC Knife of Dunwall provides a decent extension to Dishonored, providing multiple hours of gameplay that’s different enough from the core game so that you don’t feel like you’re retreading the same ground again. Whilst I may have fallen prey to the hype machine of my own head I still can’t refute that it’s a solid addition to Dishonored, expanding on the idea and giving some insight into the main plot. It probably wasn’t worth the price I paid for it and whilst $10 is semi reasonable I’d probably recommend holding off until its on sale unless you’re desperate for more Dishonored action.

Rating: 7.0/10

Dishonored: Knife of Dunwall is available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox360 right now for $9.99 or an equivalent amount of points. Total game time was approximately 3 hours.

Before I dig my hooks into the reasons why negative gearing isn’t to blame for high house prices (a seemingly controversial view these days) I will tell you, in the interests of full disclosure, that I’ve been negatively gearing property for the past 5 years or so. Back when we first bought our property I lamented the dearth of good properties that were available in our price range, focusing much of my anger of the property boom that took place mere years before we went into buy. However we found something that we could just afford if we played our cards right, even though it was out in the sticks of Canberra. During that time though I never once blamed the negative gearers for this predicament but the more I talk about it the more it seems my generation blames investors for it when they should really be looking elsewhere.

Depending on what figures you’ve read though I’d find it hard to blame you like the table above (from this ATO document) that has been doing the rounds lately. On the surface it seems pretty hefty with some $7.8 billion in total losses being claimed by investors with negatively geared property. Realistically though the total cost to the government is far less than that as even if everyone was on the top marginal rate (which they aren’t, most are on $80,000 per year or less) the total tax revenue loss is closer to  $3.5 billion. Out of context that sounds like a lot of dosh, especially when this year’s budget came in at a deficit of $18 billion, but it’s like 0.9% of total tax revenue which is significantly dwarfed by other incentives and exemptions. If your first argument is that it costs the government too much then you’re unfortunately in the wrong there, but that’s not the reason I’m writing this article.

The typical narrative against negative gearing usually tells a story of investors competing against homebuyers (usually first timers), driving up the price because they are more able to afford the property thanks to negative gearing and the higher amount of capital that they have. Whilst I won’t argue that this never happens it fails to take into account the primary driver for upward trending house prices: owner occupiers. Initially this idea sounds ludicrous, since homeowners aren’t taking advantage of negative gearing gains nor are they in the market for new property, but the thing is that the vast majority of capital gains in Australia are held by just such people, to the tune of 84% of the total property market.

In Australia the primary mechanism which drove house prices up, with most of the increase occurring between 1994~2004, was current home owners upgrading their houses. For a current homeowner  especially ones that own their property outright, the cost of upgrading to a larger property is a fraction of what it would cost to buy it outright. However anyone looking to upgrade will also try to extract the maximum amount of value out of their house in order to reduce the resulting loan and thus the cheaper priced houses get pushed up as well. Couple that with the fact that the majority of Australian owner/occupiers move at least once every 15 years and that selling your primary place of residence is exempt from capital gains tax and you have a recipe for house prices going up that’s not predicated on negative gearing’s influence.

Indeed the ABS Household Wealth and Wealth Distribution supports this theory as the average value of an owner occupied property is $531,000 which is drastically higher than the Australian average (which includes all investor properties) at $365,000. Considering that the bulk of the Australian property market is dominated by owner-occupiers (since investors only make up 16% of it) then its hard to see how they could be solely responsible for the dramatic increases that many seem to blame them for. Most will retort that investors are snapping up all the properties that would be first home owners would get which is something I can’t find any evidence for (believe me, I’ve been looking) and the best I could come up with was the distribution of investment property among the 5 sections shown here which would lead you to believe that the investors are normally distributed and not heavily weighted towards the lower end.

The final salvo shot across the negative gearing bow usually comes in the form of it providing no benefit to Australia and only helps to line the pockets of wealthy investors. The counter argument is that negative gearing helps keeps rent costs down as otherwise investors would be forced to pass on the majority of the cost of the mortgage onto renters, something we did see when negative gearing was temporarily removed. Indeed the government actually comes off quite well for this investment as using that revenue to instead build houses would result in a net loss of rentable dwellings which would put an upward pressure on rents.

I completely understand the frustration that aspiring home buyers go through, I went through it myself not too long ago when I was in a position that wasn’t too different from average Australian. But levelling the blame at investors and those who negatively gear their property for the current state of the Australian property market is at best misguided and at worse could lead to policy decisions that will leave Australia, as a whole, worse off. You may believe to the contrary, and if you do I encourage you to express that view in the comments, as the current Australian property market is a product of the Great Australian Dream, not negative gearing.

It’s no secret that I’m something of a fan of Windows 8 but then again my experience is somewhat biased by my extreme early adopter attitude. I haven’t yet had to support it in a production environment although I have installed it on varying levels of hardware that I have access to and I’ve yet to struggle with the issues that plagued me with previous Windows releases. The thing is though, whilst I’m a firm believer in Windows 8 and the features it brings, I’m of the opinion that it probably won’t see a high level of adoption in the enterprise space as the default desktop OS but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Despite the fact that Windows 7 has been out for a good 4 years at this point many enterprises are still in the midsts of deploying it within their organisation. This is wholly due to the initial disaster that Windows Vista was which caused the vast majority of organisations to not consider it as a possible upgrade to their Windows XP infrastructure. Past SP1 though Vista was a perfectly usable operating system and by that point many of the OEMs had caught up with their drivers which was the main cause of headaches for Vista users. Still it seemed the damage was done and Vista never managed to gain the market share it needed, leaving many organisations languishing on XP.

Not only was this bad for Microsoft in terms of sales it was worse for the organisations who stayed on it. Now systems that were designed for XP became far more entrenched and the rework required for applications to be Vista compatible got further delayed. Thus when it finally came time to move operating systems the cost of doing so (in both real terms and the effort required) was quite a lot higher and the larger the organisation the longer the transition it would take. Indeed the organisation I’m currently working for still has XP (using Netware for directory services no less) is only just getting around to rolling out Windows 7 this year due to the numerous number of applications that require remediation.

Whilst Microsoft will likely make good on their promise of delivering more updates, like they’re doing with the Windows Blue update this year, and major releases more frequently it’s likely that organisations are still reeling from their Windows 7 transition. Windows 9 is still a way off with estimates for a release dating anywhere from mid-2014 to somewhere in 2015 but that’s around the time when enterprises will be looking to upgrade in order to get the next set of killer features as Windows 7 starts to show its age. Now it’s entirely possible that with the frequent Blue style updates that Windows 8 will become far more attractive for enterprise before this date but if history has taught us anything the disruptive versions of Windows are usually the ones that end up being skipped, and Windows 8 certainly fits that bill.

There’s definitely potential for Windows 8 to make inroads into the enterprise space as the Surface would seem to be an ideal fit for the enterprise, even if most of the usability comes from the non-Metro side of it. Developing proper Metro applications for Microsoft’s enterprise products would go a long way to improving its market penetration and I know that IT admins at large would much prefer to maintain a fleet of Surfaces than a comparable fleet of iDevices. It’s clear that Metro was primarily consumer oriented but as we know many IT decisions a top driven in nature and if they want to get more people on board providing a better tablet experience to organizational executives could be the in that Windows 8 needs.

Still after 2 decades of watching Windows releases it won’t come as a surprise if Windows 8 gets passed over in favour of its next generation cousin. What we really need to avoid though is another decade of OS stagnation as whilst Windows 7 it has the potential to keep the mentality that developed with XP alive and that just makes change more painful than it needs to be. With Microsoft being committed to more releases more often we’re in a good position to avoid this and all that’s needed is for us to continue pushing our organisations in the right direction.

Even if you’re not a space nut like myself you’re likely familiar with Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut who’s social media presence has captured the attention of hundreds of thousands of people. He’s been responsible for dozens of videos showcasing life aboard the International Space Station and has done numerous outreach programs during his time in orbit. As I write this he’s in the final stages of preparation for departure which will end his nearly 5 month tenure as the first Canadian commander of the ISS. As if he didn’t already have enough to do whilst he was up there he recorded this amazing video of him singing a (slightly modified) version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, and it’s bloody brilliant:

There’s nothing more I can add to this, really

I have to be honest after my experience with buying from Kogan last year I was pretty soured on buying from them as the hodge podge shipping and strange purchasing requirements didn’t endear them to me. It wasn’t bad enough that I actively told people to not buy from them, indeed I said as much in my post about it, but for some strange reason that post seem to strike a chord with a lot of people who had similar issues. Whilst I’ve always been a terrible judge as to whether or not a particular post will resonate with a larger audience having that one be so popular didn’t help Kogan’s reputation in my mind.

Then they went and started stocking GoPros.

So I’ve been a GoPro user for about 2 years or so, getting my first one (a HD Hero2) as a birthday present in the lead up to my first Tough Mudder event. They’re a great little unit being able to take a massive battering and keep on trucking without issue. I used mine for all sorts of things from snorkeling in Bali to taking time lapses of my backyard and I was quite impressed with the results every time I used it. Of course when the new version came out I was instantly captivated by its specifications, not least of which was the addition of WiFi which would open up quite a few new use cases for an intrepid user like myself. However the price of getting one in Australia, either by paying the outrageous shipping cost from GoPro themselves or the markup in retail stores, meant that it was put in the “nice to have” basket along with a multitude of other things I always have my eye on.

Kogan however were selling them for an incredibly reasonable price, some $150 below the RRP when I saw it, enough so that that with the few additional accessories I wanted the total price was actually cheaper than just the unit itself with shipping included. Now I’m not usually one to be suckered into a deal, especially from a place that had burned me in the past, but I figured that it was worth it given how much use I had gotten out of the previous unit and how long this one would remain current. So out came the credit card and I sent Kogan a chunk of change in exchange for the promise of a new GoPro and I anxiously awaited the multiple packaging spree that was about to occur.

Except, strangely, they sent me a single tracking notice with all the items on it. Score one point for Kogan.

Indeed not only did they actually ship everything as one unit despite their site stating that it would probably take 2~3 weeks for my order to arrive I received it bang on a week after I placed my order. This is in stark contrast to my previous transaction with them that required me to verify my identity through a landline phone and arrived piecemeal over the course of a 2 week span. The GoPro also came with all English manuals that weren’t reprints like my Canon manuals were, a small thing that has gone a long way to improving Kogan’s image in my books.

So there you have it, a year on since my last purchase from Kogan and I’m glad to say they’ve drastically improved their whole experience. Whilst I have no idea if anyone from Kogan ended up reading my previous piece it does seem like they’ve taken the feedback to heart and fixed up the issues that their customers were complaining about. If my last post on this had you wondering whether or not you should buy from them then hopefully this one shows you that you can, at least if you’re ordering a GoPro.

There’s something to be said for a game that’s been around for 8 years and can still claim the title of most subscribed game in the world. There’s a good reason for that, World of Warcraft provides one of the most polished gaming experiences around and continues to provide fresh content on a very regular basis. It’s for that reason that many people like me find themselves coming back for every expansion, even if we don’t end up staying for long after we finish the main quest line. I’ve been a little late to the party on this one, mostly because I didn’t have much incentive to go back, but when my friends told me they had reactivated the accounts I figured it was a good time to give it a playthrough and I’m very glad I did.

Mists of Pandaria takes place after the events of Cataclysm and the defeat of Deathwing. The young prince Anduin Wrynn (I played on Alliance side for this one) was travelling between the continents when his ship came into contact with the horde. During the ensuing battle an as of yet unknown landmass was discovered and both the ships were wrecked there. One of the crew managed to get a message out prior to this happening and you, along with a crack team of alliance soldiers are sent to rescue him. However what you discover is the long hidden land of Pandaria, inhabited by a race of humanoid Pandas who have embraced a monkish life, favouring balance over all things. The Horde and Alliance presence there has had the unfortunate effect of awakening an old evil, one that must be defeated lest Pandaria fall.

As always Blizzard has done an amazing job with the graphical improvements in Mists of Pandaria. The draw distance has been increased dramatically, allowing you to take in massive vistas that seem to sprawl out forever in front of you. The modelling and texturing in the new areas also appears to be vastly improved over its predecessors which does unfortunately highlight how dated some other aspects are (like when you’re browsing faces in the character creator). Still it says a lot that my screenshot folder was filled with all sorts of wonderful landscapes as they really were quite impressive.

Whilst a lot has changed since I last played World of Warcraft (around a year or so) the core of it still remains largely the same. You start off in one location, head off to do some quests and once you’re finished in that area you’ll head off to the next one to repeat the process. How you go about that has changed rather dramatically with the ideas introduced in Cataclysm, quest hubs and the like, improved upon considerably. There’s also been vast changes to the skill and talent systems which meant that character classes I was once familiar with suddenly feel very different. All of this adds up to a game that has the same overall feel as previous expansions did but plays very differently.

Probably my favourite among the improvements in Mists of Pandaria is the much smarter rewards system that takes into account your current class and specialization, offering you gear that is quite likely to be useful to you. I can’t tell you how many of the rewards in previous expansions just went straight to the vendor but in Mists the vast majority of them were useful upgrades. Even better was the fact the rewards kept scaling upwards with each new area I’d go to, ensuring that I always had enough gear to complete quests there rather than me having to hunt through the Auction House in order to make the cut. Couple this with a few dungeons here and there and I never felt like struggling, unless the encounter was specifically design to test me.

I think that feeds into the larger overall feeling that the whole World of Warcraft experience has just been streamlined, almost to the point of perfection. After I had blasted through 80 to 85 (as I got a Scroll of Resurrection from a friend) I was surprised just how well the quest chains seemed to line up. It was pretty much spot on for me gaining a new level and then a quest would send me onto the next area, ensuring that I didn’t waste my time in an area that would slow down my levelling pace. Couple this with other things like the in built quest tracker, better designed quests and dungeons that don’t require Deadly Boss Mods and 10 minutes on Wowhead to understand means that you’ll rarely find yourself wanting for anything, bar possibly the occasional Google search.

I unfortunately failed to get to 90 before deadline so I didn’t get a look into some of the endgame content but my friends who have been playing for a while before me say its top notch. The addition of raids to the dungeon finder has apparently made the whole experience much more enjoyable. Gearing up for current raid tiers has also been made a lot easier by significantly upping the drop rates of items in previous raids, saving people a lot of time by not requiring them to run old content constantly (something that was a real drag in the past). There’s also a whole host of other things I didn’t bother trying like crafting or pet battles but I highly doubt I was missing out on anything amazing there.

What really impressed me though was the huge amount of work Blizzard has put into the quests and the storylines behind them. All of the storyline quests, of which there are many, are fully voice acted, something that was limited to in game cutscenes and cinematics previously. This would be cool on its own but every quest hub also has its own little story line behind it, giving you an insight into why they’re there and how it all fits into the larger picture. It says a lot when you actually start caring about the NPCs as they just felt like part of the environment before. Now they’re actual characters, integral to the overall story.

This goes hand in hand with the brilliant music direction care of Russell Brower who’s been behind the music of all the expansions since The Burning Crusade. Whilst many games can get music right in pre-rendered scenes and scripted in game events rarely does the music feel like its meant to be there during the regular parts of the game. In Mists of Pandaria it’s far more than background noise, adding that extra element that complements everything else. If you’re interested it’s available on iTunes, if you don’t want to play the game that is.

I’ve been a long time fan of the World of Warcraft series having followed it from closed beta all the way up to the game that it is today. The way I’ve played it has changed dramatically over the past 8 years and the changes they’ve made are the reason I’ve kept coming back time and time again. Whilst I don’t believe I will ever get back to the same insane, near addiction levels that I did all the way back when I first started playing I don’t believe that’s a bad thing. Instead World of Warcraft has become that co-operative RPG that I play with friends every year or so and I’ll be damned if I don’t have fun every time.

Rating: 9.0/10

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is available on PC right now for $69.99. Total play time on a new level 80 character was 32 hours, reaching level 89 (and maybe 1/3rd of the way through that).

Bar our own planet Mars is by far the most studied planet in the solar system. Despite the fact that almost half the missions sent to Mars have ended in disaster we’ve still managed to do a whole lot of science  there and our most recent mission, the Curiosity rover, has managed to capture the attention of millions worldwide. The next logical step would then be to send ourselves over there as whilst robotic explorers are great at specific tasks there’s a whole host of other things we could do if we had a few pairs of boots over there. Such a mission has been on everyone’s minds ever since we first set foot on the Moon over 4 decades ago but progress towards achieving it has been slow, verging on non-existent.

This is not to say that there isn’t interest in doing this. NASA currently has a mandate set by the Obama government to reach Mars by 2030 a goal which they’re actively working towards with the Space Launch System. SpaceX has also expressed a keen interest in doing something similar, albeit without help from NASA, in a much more aggressive time frame. Russia has also alluded to a revamp in their space program, primarily aimed at modernizing their current fleet, which could see them establishing a moon base and possibly flying a mission to Mars. However none of these have created the stir that the fully private Mars One mission and that’s probably for good reason.

For the uninitiated Mars One is a non-profit organisation that has the extremely ambitious goal of landing 4 people on the surface of Mars by 2023. They believe they can do this at a total cost of about $6 billion for the first 4 ($4 billion for the second lot) and plan to raise a chunk of that change through making a reality TV show based around the recruitment process. This is where it gets interesting/controversial as the application process is open to anyone and has already garnered 78,000 applications from around the world. In case you’re wondering no, I’m not one of them because I’m quite sceptical that they, or anyone really, could pull off this feat with the budget they’re claiming. I’d do a detailed breakdown of why this is so but I came across this article this morning that does a far better job of explaining it than I’d do.

At the same time Buzz Aldrin has just released his new book Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration which is the culmination of his many decades of experience and ideas for getting us humans to our red sister. Whilst I haven’t had a chance to read it I do know of many of the things he’ll be discussing in it (like the Aldrin Cycler) and they’re solid, realistic goals that could be achieved by NASA in the time frames he sets out. If you’re doubting his credentials Buzz has a Phd in astronautics and has done a lot of work for NASA that’s still in use today. Whether or not NASA, or any other space faring nation for that matter, takes his advice under wing will remain to be seen but I’m sure the book will make great reading regardless.

All that being said I do get the feeling that we’re starting to see the beginnings of a mini-space race, one that’s taking place between the private space industry and the super power governments of the world. It’s anyone’s guess who will emerge the victor from this but I’m just thankful that there are multiple entities all driving towards the same goal as the more players we have in the field the more likely it is to happen. I’m sceptical that we’ll see humans on Mars within the next decade but we’re likely to push the boundaries of human exploration further than has ever been done before, fixing us firmly on a path to our celestial sister.

I wrote a post just last month that laid out the reasons why the banks would probably not be dropping rates independently of the RBA, even though the current funding climate could allow them to do so. Indeed current interest rates are comparable to when we were in the depths of the Global Financial Crisis however our, and the vast majority of others worldwide, economy is no longer struggling. These are things you don’t usually see going hand in hand because when times are good people like to borrow and spend which usually leads to a healthy credit market. It seems that punters are still wary of another GFC-esque situation as whilst the economy has vastly improve the desire for credit hasn’t which is quite odd, but nothing to be concerned about in the grand scheme of things (unless you’re a lender, of course).

It was for those reasons that many did not expect a rate cut from the Reserve Bank yesterday as all the pressures that prompted past cuts (decline in demand for Australian products, Eurozone Crisis, etc.) have run their course. It came as something of a shock then that they decided to cut another 25 basis points off the current cast rate bringing it to a record low 2.75%, dipping below even the lowest rate available during the height of the GFC. The rate decision release makes for some interesting reading as the reasons behind the decision aren’t the ones I was expecting.

The RBA acknowledges that the funding climate has improved dramatically with many of our larger trading partners undergoing periods of expansion. The Eurozone is still in recession although its effect on us is muted, largely thanks to the limited amount of trade with do with them. They also expect investment in the resources sector to reach its peak this year and so part of this rate cut could be a proactive move to encourage people to start investing in other areas before the resources boom starts to tail off. Inflation has remained within their target range being at 2.5% for the past year. However the major factor in cutting rates seems to come from the desire to encourage more spending and moving their savings into more productive asset classes.

It’s true that rate cuts take a while to work their way through the economy and the last year or so of cuts is still having an effect. Primarily this is due to relieving mortgage pressure which doesn’t yield benefits quickly but sustained periods of low rates will eventually lead to more consumer spending (as the RBA notes). This rate cut then appears to be more of a shock tactic rather than a long play, hoping to encourage people to either spend more or entice people into taking out mortgages at rates that will likely not be repeated for quite some time, boosting the credit industry. Additionally rate cuts always put a downward pressure on the Australian dollar which will help boost exports.

The ideas are sound as historically moving the cash rate downward does all the things that they’re expecting this current rate cut to do. However I’m a little sceptical as to whether it will have the desired effect this time around due to the circumstances we find ourselves in. The numerous cuts over the past 18 months, which were largely in reaction to the deteriorating conditions in the Eurozone, haven’t had the large impacts that they did during the GFC. Primarily this is because of how well insulated we are from said crisis but it also appears that Australian’s have lost their appetite for credit. Whilst its easy to lay the blame at the GFC for this I can’t help but feel there’s something else at play here, something which moving the cash rate won’t do much to alleviate.

This whole situation is a result of the weird financial climate we find ourselves in currently. Whilst I might not think the RBA is on the right track with this decision I don’t have any good solutions to the issues at hand because, as far as I can tell, what we have is a crisis of consumer sentiment, not a problem with the funding environment. It’s quite possible that this last dip will be the hair trigger for a major ramp up but I’ll remain sceptical for now as the previous cuts failed to bring that same idea to fruition, even if they were done for different reasons.

Unquestionably the Internet has drastically altered my behaviour in many ways. In the beginning it was merely a curiosity, something I was able to lord over the other kids in the playground because I was one of the precious few that had it and would become instant friends with many who wanted to see it. As I grew older and my interests broadened it became my primary resource for finding information, leading me to investigate many wild things that I would not have paid any attention to otherwise. Most recently it became my platform for communicating with the wider world whilst also elevating my career to places that I couldn’t of dreamed of.

In short, I feel the Internet has been good to me.

Looking from the outside in however would probably paint a much different picture. My near fanatical obsession for my current object of desire often led me down destructive paths, one of which was my World of Warcraft addiction would could not exist without an Internet connection. My desire for information often leads me down paths that aren’t relevant for anything past satisfying my curiosity, filling my head with facts that I will likely never find a use for. The Internet has also chronicled some of my worst moments and whilst they’re not exactly common knowledge they serve as a reminder of the parts of myself that I’m not particularly proud of.

However whilst it would be easy to lay the blame directly at the tool which enabled this behaviour, an easy thing to do given its current ease of use and pseudo-anonymity that enables everyone’s Inner Fuckwad, I can’t say that these same things would happen absent the Internet. There are many, many people that advocate cutting down or doing away with the Internet (or anything, realistically) will lead you onto untold benefits but as a Verge reporter found these effects are usually only temporary:

It’s a been a year now since I “surfed the web” or “checked my email” or “liked” anything with a figurative rather than literal thumbs up. I’ve managed to stay disconnected, just like I planned. I’m internet free.

And now I’m supposed to tell you how it solved all my problems. I’m supposed to be enlightened. I’m supposed to be more “real,” now. More perfect.

But instead it’s 8PM and I just woke up. I slept all day, woke with eight voicemails on my phone from friends and coworkers. I went to my coffee shop to consume dinner, the Knicks game, my two newspapers, and a copy of The New Yorker. And now I’m watching Toy Story while I glance occasionally at the blinking cursor in this text document, willing it to write itself, willing it to generate the epiphanies my life has failed to produce.

I’m not going to say that the Internet isn’t an enabler for some particularly bad behaviours, my use of it is a great testament to that, but the issues that cause can always be traced back to the person. For me my WoW addiction was an escape from the crazy world I had put myself into, working 3 different jobs while studying full time at university. In my escape I found some control and, unfortunately, also power over other people that was incredibly intoxicating. Only when that power dwindled and I was left with no one else to turn to did I start to realise how destructive it had become and I ended up leaving that part of me behind for several years.

Maybe we need that time away in order to get clarity on those destructive behaviours that we associate with specific tools. My honeymoon was decidedly devoid of technology, even though I smuggled my laptop along with me, and after the first couple days of adjustment I felt oddly liberated. Whilst the revelations I came to at that time weren’t about my use of the Internet (indeed this was several years after I dreged myself out of that rather dark place) I certainly felt I had a better understanding of how I interacted with those things that I was absent from. Perhaps then instead of advocating giving up something completely we should take time constrained breaks, lest we establish the same bad habits using alternative means.

That is definitely something I can attest to as many of my life changing decisions have been made when I’ve been in situations that were decidedly different from the norm, not from giving something up completely. Indeed I feel abandoning something completely often means giving up part of yourself, your identity. Of course there are times when this is appropriate but for something as benign as Internet use I don’t believe that giving it up will solve your problems. However seconding yourself away from it for a time might just give you the insight needed to rectify the worst parts of it and broaden your perspective on the issues at hand.

The current norms for games consoles are going to be flipped on their head when the next generation comes online. There are some things we could argue that are expected, like the lack of backwards compatibility, but the amount of change coming our way really doesn’t have any comparison in previous console generations. In nearly all respects I believe this is a good thing as many of the decisions made seemed to be born out of a mindset that worked 2 decades ago but was becoming rapidly outdated in today’s market. However one significant change could have a detrimental impact on consoles at large and could open up an opportunity for the PC (and by extension the SteamBox) to make a comeback.

The next generation of games consoles are shaping up to be some of the most developer friendly platforms ever created. Not only are they x86 under the hood, allowing many frameworks developers for regular PC games to be ported across with relative ease, many of the features that they have are a direct response to the requests from developers. This means that developers will be able to make use of the full power of these consoles from much earlier on and whilst this will make for some great launch titles that will be leaps and bounds above their previous generation predecessors it does mean that they’ll reach their peak early, and that might not be a good thing.

It was always expected that the best games of a console generation would come out towards the end of its lifecycle. This was due to games developers becoming far more familiar with the platform and the tools reaching a maturity level that made creating those games possible. The current generation, with its record breaking longevity, is a great example of this with the demos of current and next gen titles running on both platforms being very comparable. With the next generation being so developer friendly however I can’t imagine it taking long for them to be able to exploit the system to its fullest extent within a short time frame. Couple this with the next gen expected to have a similar life to the current gen and you’ve got a recipe for console games being stagnant (from a technology point of view) for a very long time.

Granted there will always be improvements that can be made and I’d still expect the best titles to come towards the end of its lifecycle. However the difference between first year and last year titles will be a lot smaller and in the case of the end user I doubt many will notice the difference. With the shared x86 base however there’s a big potential here for the PC versions of the games to start out pacing their console counterparts much earlier on as some of the optimizations will translate readily across, something which just wasn’t possible with previous platforms.

Indeed due to the current gen limitations we’ve already begun to see something of a resurgence in PC gaming. Now its likely that this could be dampened when the next gen of consoles get released however due the reasons I’ve outlined I’d expect to see the cycle begin again not too long afterwards. I do doubt that this will see PCs return to the glory days of being the king of gaming but there’s a definite opportunity for them to grab some significant market share, possibly enough to be elevated past their current also-ran status.

Of course this is wild speculation on my part but I do believe that the next generation of consoles will peak much earlier in its lifecycle which, as history has shown us, will usher people back towards the PC as a platform. With the SteamBox readying itself for release around the same time there’s ample opportunity for current gen console customers to be swayed over to the PC platform, even if it’s camouflaged itself as one of the enemy. In the end though the next gen consoles will still represent good value for money for several years to come, even if they’re quickly outpaced.