Government-Mandated Record Keeping Causes Pandemonium

The Federal Government is proposing a bill that will require everyone operating a DHCP-based server or routing system to maintain logs of every IP address that is assigned from their particular access points. AP owners that will be affected will include everyone; Businesses, Government Agencies, individuals even. No matter what the case (WEP, WPA, WPA2, Encryption, MAC Filtering, etc) these persons will be required to keep logs of each IP for the purpose of "assisting police investigations".

Why? How are you going to prove that any one person was using any one IP address? There's no face tied to this IP, there's not even a name in most cases. Concrete proof of usage would be impossible to obtain even with this system in place. Even if this system could prove usage by any one person, is this a practical system? How many billions, trillions of IP addresses are going to have to be logged only to "assist" in only a handful of cases each year?

Another issue facing this problem is un-permitted access. Even if someone sets up a WPA key or equivalent security, there are always ways of cracking them. Those that do crack the keys would not be permitted to access the network, and often fly under the radar to the owner. How can the owner possibly be aware of every single user on their device at any one time given this information?

All of this, of coure, is being sold under the umbrella of protecting kids on the internet. Here's an idea: Children are minors, therefore they have limited rights. Less kids on the internet means less kids being molested and killed. Just as parents should teach their kids not to talk to strangers IRL they should teach their kids not to talk to bigdaddychildrapist09 on the internet. Take kids off of the internet, spare me the paperwork, and stop holding me accountable for your shitty parenting job, please.

The Lost and The Damned: Rockstar's New School of Marketing

With the great success of the original GTA IV title, Rockstar is now seeking to expand their horizons within the game by releasing an "expansion" of sorts for IV called "The Lost and The Damned". The game takes place in the already-existing Liberty City in a time parallel to the story of Niko and his excapades. What makes this so phenomenal is the fact that this is crossing the line from "expansion" to "game" and making for an overall experience that is much richer and more diverse, while utilizing everything that Liberty City has to offer. What we see here is a conservation of development and a streamlined process of production. No longer do level designers need to toil away at a new map every time Rockstar says "New GTA. Six months until release. Go.". This, in-turn, makes for happier consumers (assuming this title will live up to the hype) because they get to see what they thought was "Niko's Liberty City" in a different light, in a new way, while also releases come in more frequently. I also think this makes for a much more eye-opening and intriguing gaming experience than the previous "one map, one story line" approach that most developers have taken thus far.

Now, before anyone gets upset and starts pointing to Operation Anchorage as the frontrunner to this concept, I must say that I agree with them. However, I feel that Operation Anchorage was a small side quest, whereas L&D will be an entire revamp of plot and story. Bethesda had the right idea, but I think Rockstar is taking it to a whole new level.

I would love to see this concept implemented in other games as well (like an alternative character in FO3 or Fable, etc.). I think that this release could spark a revolution into the realm of game content, delivery, and development.

Of course, all of this is assuming that Rockstar put the time and effort that would have been spent in level design and core game development into story and plot progression. Elsewise, my entire article is moot. With all the hype preceding the last few GTA games, I am confident that Rockstar & Take Two will deliver, as they usually do. We'll see this week when it's released on XBL for $20.

RE5 and Racism:

Recently there has been some uproar about the upcoming Resident Evil title hailing racism and discrimination. The game is set in Africa where the __-Virus has taken over. You are leading a squadron of people trying to get through the masses yadda yadda yadda roll credits.

Ok, this is where I start to get pissed:

In the 30+ years of history that video gaming has seen, we have yet to see a game where you're not targeting a certain group of people. Germans (WWII shooters), Japanese (WWII Shooters), Bhuddists (Tomb Raider), Vietnamese (Conflict: Vietnam), Arabic people (WoT shooters), even Women (Grand Theft Auto) have all been target groups of video games in some form or another. Where have these groups been? Why aren't they complaining? They don't see a video game as a racist attack; They see it as entertainment for the masses that just happens to include members of their particular race. Hell, I've watched Japanese kids play "MoH: Rising Sun" before without batting an eye.

Quite frankly, I'm surprised that there hasn't been an FPS set in Africa yet. It seems to be the only ethnic group that seems taboo to include in the bloodbath that is the video gaming world is Africans or African-Americans. I think that we are being far too hypersensitive to this issue. God forbid we do a game about tribal warfare in Africa, I think the NAACP would have a hayday.

You know what? I'm offended that Fallout 3 is set in Washington DC, because you're shooting white people that are afflicted by some terrible disease (ghouls). Where are the black ghouls? Where are the muslim ghouls? Seriously, how stupid does that sound? Get over it, people.

Oh, and I voted for Obama.

Behold... The GTX 295!

Alas, nVidia has taken another leap forward in their GPU development with the release of the GeForce GTX 295. This card is exemplary of everything that nVidia is trying to do with their new CUDA technology, which, unless you've been living under a rock for the last few months, you would know is nVidia's new mutli-GPU technology, allowing for systems with several graphics cards to run at the same time. At this point, the consumer market has made available a quad-SLi configuration, but there are testbeds that exist which run 20, 30 or more Tesla GPUs in tandem.

What makes the GTX 295 so special is the fact that nVidia has crammed two GTX 280 GPUs into one card, along with GDDR3 RAM equivalent to that of the GTX260 (with twice the frame buffer size). Those 480 stream processors, along with a massive frame buffer, allow the GTX 295 to squeeze out 30 FPS on Crysis in DX10 mode with 1900x1200 resolution, 4x AntiAliasing and Anisotropic filtering enabled (all of this with equivalent hardware of course) with a SINGLE CARD!

Now, before you ATi fanboys get in an uproar, the 4870x2 loses to the GTX295 in nearly all benchmarking tests (on a rig constructed by Tom's Hardware). Whilst the 4870x2 has GDDR5 memory, three times the amount of shader processors, and offers 200MB more frame buffer; The GTX 295 still prevails even with those "limitations". The only case where the 4870x2 achieved victory status was in the Crysis test at 2560x1600 resolution. The larger frame buffer allowed the 4870x2 to eek out 15 FPS at this level, whilst the GTX 295 crawls at a mere 2.80 FPS. Overall, however, the GTX 295 puts out an average performance increase of 30.69% over the ATi 4870x2.

The cards themselves are pretty, but very large. One of these will cost you two ventilation slots and a PCI-e slot. Something else I find interesting about the 295 is the free-flowing ventilation slot that this card has. Stacking these up and worrying about cooling is somewhat relieved due to the fact that the fan expels air through the card, rather than just out of it. When these are stacked up in an SLi configuration (in which case you have far too much money on-tap and need to donate some to me), the air moves freely through the cards, up to the CPU heatsink and the main case fan. Impressive, if I do say so myself.

Both cards come at a pricetag of over $500 so you'd better save your pennies if you want one of these behemoths. In my opinion, however, either one would be worth the money (although I would be investing in the nVidia chipset myself). 256 FPS in Dead Space would make me want to cry tears of joy.