• No dedicated servers even after that petition.
• Maximum player count per game is 9v9 (due to lack of dedicated servers).
• You cannot adjust your field of view.
• Leaning has been removed because the game isn’t balanced for lean.
• No client-side demo recording (i.e. no frag videos).
• IWNET decides who will host; the players have no say (just like Xbox Live).
• In tests under what were likely rather ideal circumstances the developer guys were seeing pings around 100 ms.
• Text chat, graphics settings, and mouse control are the PC version’s sole features.

The last one is real, you guys!

Ignoring IW.net, is the PC version a direct port of the console version?

Mackey-IW: No, PC has custom stuff like mouse control, text chat in game, and graphics settings.

At this point it’s laughable. MW2 is looking like one of the worst console-to-PC ports (if not the worst) in the history of gaming. They’re really phoning it in by now — who’d have thought a PC game would have text-based chat and mouse control?!

MW2 is quite literally a console experience via PC. Why anyone would pay $60 for that is beyond me. The multiplayer portion will probably be fucked, and the single-player is guaranteed to be all of six hours, I’m sure. But let’s move on to the real point of this post…

Infinity Ward has learned nothing.

At least as far as multiplayer balance goes. We should all be pretty aware of how messed up CoD4’s air support is. You do nothing at all and you get rewarded for it. You crouch in a corner while your air strike kills two people and you get a chopper given to you for free. That chopper can, in turn, get your next UAV and air strike. Positive feedback loops, no balance, etc. I’ve been over it time and time again.

But check out this new gameplay video. In it you will see the following ridiculous things:

• A burst-fire gun that looks to be more powerful than the CoD4 M16 (which is the gun all console babies cried about).
• A spamtacular automatic shotgun.
• A guy “earning” an Apache chopper with an air strike.
• That same guy going from 11 to 25 kills in 30 fucking seconds using the Apache’s wall hacks.
• Our buddy using the stupidest perk ever conceived — a tactical nuke that automatically ends the game as a win for your team.
• The game going from start to finish in less than four minutes. Seriously, what a waste.

Ho. Ly. Shit. This is the worst example of gameplay balance I have ever seen in my gaming days. There isn’t any balance at all! He got all of nine legit kills before air strikes, choppers, and the nuke took care of the rest of the match. That Apache chopper is far more deadly than CoD4’s… and people whined about that thing incessantly! And then, once you’re finished raping with it, you just end the match whenever you feel like it with your nuke. Bewm. The end. So long and thanks for all the fish.

It’s just… I… I don’t even know what to say anymore. This game has turned into some kind of macabre joke. Whoever is pushing these design decisions has got to be the biggest Real Life™ troll I’ve ever seen.

In the end, maybe Infinity Ward has learned a lot — they seem to have randomly filled MW2 with anything and everything an unskilled, casual gamer would like. Screw balance — it’s all about pulling in players. They have painted the broadest target possible by pandering to every subset of deluded fan, and as a result the game will likely break all kinds console sales records.

It won’t work on me, though. I’ll stick to Borderlands for now and look forward to Bad Company 2. At least that one will have dedicated servers.

Oddly enough, even though “hardcore” mode was always filled with lesser skilled players, it seems such servers have taken the biggest hit in the skill department. Since there are far too many “hardcore” servers and not enough normal ones, I end up playing them a lot even though I’m not enthused by the idea. More often than not, things go crazy and people get angry with me.

Here’s an example of the kind of crap I’ve been pulling off recently.

I got an idea the other day, and even though it was only a few days ago, I don’t remember exactly where it came from. Maybe my aliases like ihateyou, We Are All Dead, and — dare I say — poopknuckle were too “aggressive” and that somehow made it easier for people to bitch, whine, and accuse. I’d been getting accused so much that I decided to try a little experiment.

If I alias as a girl, will people stop accusing me?

Will I cease to be called a “faggot” or “hacker” or “hacker faggot” eighteen times per match? Will the experience, in general, be nicer even though I’m still destroying everyone and pissing them off just as I would with any other alias?

Picking from a random list of suggestions from FuLLBLeeD and modifying it slightly, I decided my alias would be punkrockgrl (and later added another “r” to round it out to punkrockgrrl). After all, emo/punk/scene girls are often hot as fuck for reasons I don’t understand. Surely it’d make things go over more smoothly with all the lonely virgins I’d be beating in an online video game, right?

I don’t have a definitive answer yet, but my presence has definitely been an annoyance to people not on my team.

Results thus far have been mixed. Some people have been more sociable. I’ve had dudes saying “lol” and “son of a…” when I pulled off something impressive/annoying rather than go straight to the accusations or calling luck/spam/lag. I’ve had guys ask me questions whereas normally they wouldn’t. One even asked what kind of music I listened to. I told him rap, of course. Things started out nicely; I thought my experiment was going to be a resounding success in the realm of showing just how pathetic and predictable most gamers are.

But I’d been playing in normal mode. Normal mode tends to be where more normal people reside. You’d never believe it offhand, but in general it’s the bad players who are the fat asses, the losers, the fuglies, the virgins, etc. The good ones are quite often normal-looking, non-virgin dudes with at least some sort of social life. This has been my experience with FPS games at least. It makes it all the sweeter when one of the losers tells a good player to “get a life” because it’s more likely that he already does more away from his computer than the loser. Projection, man. It’s brutal.

Anyway, once I made my way down to “hardcore” mode the shit started to hit the fan. As my kill-death ratios started hitting 5:1, 7:1, and 9:1 — a feat much easier to accomplish in “hardcore” mode — people started getting ruthless. What started out as a slightly more calm and peaceful endeavor ended up as a noob crusade against me.

When I started one round I had eight people from the previous round spectating me. Eight! I know bad players are often insecure about their badness, but god damn! Naturally, spectating didn’t help convince some of them. Like I said in the last post, once a dumbass is convinced you’re cheating, nothing’s going to sway his opinion. He’ll look for any little thing that he can attribute to hacks and will do so with fervor. He’ll force the smallest, most inconsequential thing to be proof of foul play in his mind even if it’s entirely irrelevant or guided by chance.

As for my general findings, I’m not sure the frequency of accusations has moved at all. I’m still getting accused, but there does seem to be a bit of a change. People are either less committed to their allegations — “Are you hacking?” or “Nice prefiring.” — or more scathing and dedicated to their pointless cause — “Stop hacking, you fucking nigger.” I guess the thought of there being a girl on the other end either makes people less or more douche-like than normal depending on how socially inept they are.

Overall, I was quickly labeled a “bitch” and told to go “suck a fat cock.” Sometimes it got more personal as some guy would call me a slut and tell me to suck his cock. It was entertaining to say the least. Whereas with a guy-like alias people tend to stick with generic name calling, they seemed to get a little more creative and serious whilst I was a girl. I guess we can chalk that one up to misogyny.

I mean, if girls don’t like you in RL™, it’s pretty easy to rail on them online and try to get your ego back. Then again, when a girl’s going 9:1 on your ass, I’m not sure recovery is even possible. Most of them just rage quit, and I laugh all the way to the bank where I exchange their testicles for cash money.

I have to wonder, though. What is it with white people and their obsession with the word “cock?” “Dick” is so much nicer, in my opinion. “Cock” has a porn-like ring to it — it sounds forced and fake.

I’ve mentioned this kind of thing before, and it will probably always ring true. The clueless players of the world make up the vast majority, and if they’re convinced you’re cheating, you’re cheating. The conundrum is that they’re simply too bad at the game to ever understand that you’re not cheating. It’s simply beyond their comprehension. In response to their complete lack of talent, the only thing they can do is lash out with false accusations.

Generally, this is fine. Let the noobs vent; if you don’t they’ll probably end up too frustrated and will stop playing the game entirely, and that’s not good for the overall community. The only time whining, accusatory, talentless dorks affect anything at all is in one case…

…when the power to vote is left enabled on the server.

This is stupid, and no server admin should ever, ever let this happen. Sure, it might be useful from time to time to remove asshats, but more often than not it’s going to be used to ill effect. Legit players will be kicked, stupid maps will be voted in when half the players are having fun currently, and you can be quite assured that votes will pop up several times in every ten minute span. It’s going to be abused far more than it will be legitimately useful.

This happened to be the case tonight. So, while I quite obviously don’t hack, I was accused many times over (by the same guy), and that eventually led to my kicking. The funny thing is that the kill cam was disabled, so the idiot who did all the accusing literally had no way of knowing how I was playing because he refused to spectate me. I’d like to think that if it’d been enabled that he’d see the error of his ways, but who am I kidding? A bad player will always accuse a good player regardless of evidence that contradicts his accusation. Ego makes people retarded.

The subconscious thought process is something along these lines: I’m bad but I don’t want to admit to myself that I’m bad. Therefore, this guy who is a lot better than me is obviously cheating. This way I don’t have to take responsibility for my own lack of talent and ambition. Naturally, this is stupid, and if you’ve ever seriously accused anyone of hacking when it wasn’t blatantly obvious just because he was beating you, you are stupid.

Nothing I said in response to his claims made any difference. Never mind that I was barely going 2:1 for all the spam; I was much better than the loser who called me out and his 0.3/1 ratio. When I mentioned that I wasn’t even doing that well, he said I was merely controlling my deaths — that I was letting myself be killed at strategic times so my score wouldn’t look hacker-like.

My only response to that was (and still is), “What the fuck?” Do people actually do this? Doesn’t that completely contradict the point of hacking in the first place? If I were to hack I’d do it to piss everyone off and go 200 – 10, not to barely string together a 2:1 on Killhouse. What the hell would be the point?

Of course, I’m sure my responses to him didn’t help my case. Here’s an example of one of our exchanges prior to about the eighth time he tried to get me kicked.

• “Come on, guys. Kick this hacker fuck.”
• “Dude, I’ve been playing [this game] for a year. You just suck, bro.”
• “I’ve been playing [games] for years.”
• “Badly.”
• “So I think I know a hacker when I see one.”
• “Obviously you don’t. Obviously you’re just a delusional fat loser who lives with his mom.”

Lucky for you guys, I have found this guy on the Internet. It’s not really him but this guy is exactly the kind of idiot I’m talking about. He’s bad at the game, whiny, accusatory, and a self-admitted 30-year-old virgin. Seriously, look at him delude himself. Psychological projection much? These are the types of guys who accuse good players of cheating all the time. It’s mostly because their lives suck and they can’t take the mental stress of also sucking at video games, the only things that haven’t rejected them.

Sigh. Gaming would be so much more enjoyable if noobs would just shut the hell up. Take your beating and go cry to yourself afterward.

Back at school I had this friend. We’ll call her Mia. Mia had a roommate her freshman year (my sophomore year) whom we’ll call Molly. I, of course, noticed immediately that Molly was very cute, but like most other cute/hot girls, I just as quickly stuck her up on the “you can’t have that” shelf. Holes in your self-confidence will do that to you.

And it made sense — Molly had a boyfriend from back home at the time. There was nothing I could do. Fast-forward to my junior year I’m becoming aware of Mia and Molly’s increased presence in my room. They never seemed to stick around, but they drop by for a bit on a frequent basis. Often they show up twice in a given day — once before going to do a thing and then once after. Sometimes they are quite drunk. Sometimes I instead find myself over in the their room watching movies.

More often than not I just happened to notice Molly liked to wear low-cut tops. Very low-cut. All the time it seemed. It was rare that I wasn’t greeted by gratuitous cleavage — enough to faceplant in — whenever she came around. There was one instance in particular where she wasn’t quite sober and I practically got a front-row seat to Boobtown as her shirt hung carelessly and loosely in all the right places.

This was all fine and dandy except that, well, she was off-limits. Cute, probably too cute for me, unavailable, and perpetually off with Mia to do things that didn’t involve me. She and Mia also hung out with this tall guy all the time; if anything I figured Molly would’ve liked him. Not only that but we didn’t talk that much; for the most part Molly was simply a friend of a friend. One who happened to enjoy showing off a large percentage of her breasts to strangers.

That’s just the thing, however. Not even two weeks ago I was told by Mia, in discussing how oblivious I am to things, that there was a very specific reason I was privy to Molly’s curves back then — she had been interested in me. She didn’t actually like showing herself off to strangers. I mean, she did, of course, because all girls do, but apparently the cleavage I saw frequently was specially tailored for me. Additionally, by the time the boobs were coming out around me she was boyfriendless.

I, of course, was oblivious to this because that’s how I am. And why wouldn’t I have been? Molly and I didn’t really talk, so we never hung out in any capacity, and, since my room always seemed to be an intermediary stop between other more important activities, I figured Mia was merely dragging Molly into my presence while she said hi. The two of them were frat party frequenters too, so surely the boobage was intended for someone else. It only made sense that this be case. To me, at least.

Upon hearing this claim of interest back then, I didn’t find myself getting happy at the thought. Rather, I became somewhat agitated over the ordeal. Why hadn’t Mia let me know this back then when it would have been very useful information? Even the slightest, most noncommittal hint — “I think Molly might kind of like you a little. Maybe.” — would have sufficed. As vague as that is it would have clued me in to pay a little more attention to Molly and the things she did. But the boobs should have been enough, right? Why would I need another hint when there is so much excess skin involved, right? Wrong!

On its own cleavage is never enough.

And that, my friends, is the ultimate issue. Girls love displaying their cleavage if they’ve got some display. It’s a normal, casual, everyday occurrence. And guys, growing up in a never-ending sea of half-covered breasts, learn early on not to give it too much mind. Look at them, sure, but don’t look at them. They’re there, acknowledge them, but don’t pay them much mind unless you want to get labeled a pervert.

And so I’m posed with a quandary. How the hell could Molly expect me to notice her supposed interest by merely adjusting herself for extra boobage before she saw me? It strikes me as illogical. Unless you’re doing something directly for or to a guy, no amount of cleavage says “I want you.” Flirting, for instance, is a very good way accentuate cleavage’s message. Without something extra involved, even the greatest of cleavage is most likely to say, “Hi. I have great breasts. Don’t you wish you could squeeze them? Too bad!” Because that’s pretty much what cleavage means to a guy when it’s on a random girl. Without proper accentuation, there is a fairly large jump in logic:

1. Cleavage.
2. ???
3. Making out, dry humping, and sex.

There must be a second step if the goal is to show you’re interested, dammit! And there wasn’t one with Molly! No flirting, no hanging out, no sexy eyes. Nothing. There simply has to be more than me going, “God damn, woman!” in my head whenever you come into my room with half your boobs showing. Especially when you feel unavailable and you’re about to head off to a party and rub your junk all other some other guy’s junk. Do you know how hot it would have been if she’d looked at me and then adjusted herself and looked back? That’s an effective second step! As is dragging me off to your little party and rubbing your junk on my junk.

Alas, I was never able to bridge the logical gap, so I never knew Molly was interested in me back then. And why would I? Guys are usually fairly logical about things even when there are boobs involved. I know it’s hard to believe, but even when faced with such seemingly unsurpassable obstacles, the logical wiring of our brains is still present. Thus, I never did anything with Molly even though the potential was there for greatness.

Sigh.

Half the people in my house have caught the stomach flu that’s been going around recently. It’s the kind that makes you spew liquidy things at high velocity from both ends with enough frequency to dehydrate in a matter of hours. The toilets end up getting major workouts as they’re put through five times their normal paces, and the scent of Lysol hangs ever so delicately (<Borat>not!</Borat>) in the air because disinfectants must be sprayed on everything.

And that leaves me in my current predicament. I’m now an unwilling participant in a game of Diarrhea Roulette. I’ve managed to dodge the bullet thus far (knock on wood), but there’s no telling if in a day or two I’ll end up spending half my waking hours practicing contortionism to get my ass over the toilet and my head within suitable range of the bathtub.

One of the flu catchers is over it by now, but these past few days she’s taken to coughing wildly at night loud enough to keep everyone (including herself, of course) awake. Given the options, however, I’d take the coughs over violent double-ended squirts in an instant if I had to choose. While watery eyes and a painfully red throat aren’t that cool, it definitely beats pooping stinky water 14 times a day. And it beats getting your asshole rubbed raw by toilet paper that seems moderately comfortable the first two times but subsequently makes your sphincter pucker up in fear whenever it approaches.

The last time I was sick — like, really sick, not “Oh, noes! A cold!” sick — was when I contracted pneumonia during my sophomore year at school. Being sick is something I’ve mostly managed to avoid, though I guess my punishment for that might be my constant sinus problems. It’s been years since I last vomited, and the prospect is not one I enjoy, especially when I wouldn’t even be able to properly concentrate on it because I’d be more worried about flinging poo goo about the room.

As far as the pneumonia, during the summer preceding that school year I managed to get two centimeter-long wooden splinters jammed up under my right ring fingernail. It still gives me the willies thinking about that and how much it fucking hurt. I had to go to the doctor and get the nail ripped off with a pair of pliers — no joke! — so they could extract the stabby bits of wood. By the time they were wrapping my finger up the local anesthetic had worn off and I had to endure direct touches to the squishy nougat (comprised of ten million nerve endings of death) where my fingernail had once been.

Fast-forward at least six months and my nail is starting to grow back to its normal state, but I soon realized it had begun to hurt a lot with even the lightest of contact, similar to when the splinters so generously tore their way into what’s got to be one of the most sensitive parts of the human body. And then the nail started turning green on its right side. Turns out it’d managed to get infected, and it was this infection that paved the way for the pneumonia.

While my immune system is usually somewhat strong (I guess; it might just be my avoidant personality keeping me away from people and their cooties), the fingernail infection definitely toppled its defenses, and I guess the bacteria took up residence in one of my lungs. After three days of flu-like symptoms I couldn’t even move out of my chair/bed because I was so weak and sore. A trip to the doctor got me a prescription of some antibacterial pills big enough for a large mammalian being from eons past, and those things cleared both infections right up.

The end? I don’t know where I was going with that little anecdote, but I guess it kept the entire post from being about poop, and that’s good, right?

1. I will expand my vocabulary. Not every inanimate object, gametype or idea, or unfortunate or annoying event is “gay.” Similarly, not every skilled, loud-mouthed, lucky, or otherwise displeasing player is a “faggot.”
2. I will come to grips with my own talent (or, more likely, lack thereof). Yes, it is possible to be that good without cheating. Yes, my shortcomings in skill are mostly my own fault because either I don’t practice or I don’t know how to practice. No, it is not lag’s fault every time I die, even if I deeply wish this to be true. And, if I happen to be good — yes, I will stop making fun of lesser-skilled players to pointlessly boost my own ego. It is entirely counterproductive toward keeping a healthily-sized community intact.
3. I will realize that luck is just as relevant to the gaming experience as skill. Luck is an intrinsic part of life and it exists in games as well. I get this and I will no longer project my own frustrations outward by calling something luck as if to proclaim it illegitimate. Whether it was or wasn’t luck doesn’t matter. I will accept things and quietly move on. Luck will be on my side another time.
4. I will stop buying DRM-infested games (and music from iTunes). I want companies to stop punishing me for buying their games, and as such I will no longer be a pawn in their corporate schemes. I revel in the idea that ten years from now I’ll be able to give my old games a nostalgic play through without being hampered by DRM authentication servers that have long since gone down. And if my friend wants to borrow a game, I damn sure want to be able to let him do so. If it’s okay to let him borrow a book, a CD, and my car, it’s okay to let him borrow a game.
5. I will accept that not everything in a game will be 100% balanced and free of bugs even if the game is very good otherwise. I will stop calling certain aspects “cheap” when players who understand how the game works have realized that some items, weapons, or tactics are simply the best well-rounded choices. No multiplayer game in the history of ever has been perfectly balanced. I will get over this because whining about balance and bugs is ultimately pointless. Discussing them calmly and intelligently is fine, but crying about balance directly after getting fragged is lame and serves no useful purpose beyond a failed attempt at keeping my own ego intact.
6. I will stop buying crapware-infested games. I’d like to keep my computer as svelte as possible, and I will no longer tolerate a game installing who knows how many extra programs that I would never, ever download on my own. Games for Windows Live? Rockstar Social Club? GameSpy Arcade? Fuck off.
7. I will stop mindlessly jumping onto the hype train time and time again, as if I never learn, because I’ve finally realized the tracks usually end at the edge of a cliff. It’s time for gamers to put games like Halo 3, Gears of War (2), UT3, Spore, Mirror’s Edge, and many, many others on the shelf labeled “mediocre” where they belong — regardless of how many big-name reviews score them 90 and above. I’m going to do my part to stop these giant corporations from pumping out mediocrity and labeling it as the next big thing by not buying their crap immediately or at all. Maybe I’ll rent it, or maybe I’ll wait until it’s $30 or less. In doing so, I hope that companies like Valve, Bethesda, Infinity Ward, Stardock, Crytek, Gas Powered Games, and others will end up in the limelight they deserve much more due to the quality of their products and their community support.

Yeah. That’s all I got. Feel free to add more in the comments.

As it turns out, marrying your first cousin has been declared just peachy. Yup, Science said so. Apparently, reports of birth defects have been greatly exaggerated. In reality, the odds of them coming about are no greater than they are when a middle-aged woman decides to have a baby.

According to the National Society of Genetic Counselors, birth defects are 2 to 3 percent more common in children born to first cousins than among the general population — a real risk, but not enough to justify the bans.

Surprisingly enough, first-cousin marriage is currently only banned in 31 states, though if Science has any say in the matter, it’ll soon be zero. “It’s discrimination!” it says. I grew up assuming it was expressly forbidden to want to do your cousin (in the butt) in all states and everywhere. It inherently sounds like incest, and we’re all told that incest just isn’t cool.

But I have been mistaken! Not only were cousin relations used to keep royalty in the family in Europe, but my own state says marriage, sex, and conception with any hot cousins you might have is perfectly alright. And that, of course, is the real issue at hand — doesn’t everyone have a hot cousin?

In the midst of financial crises and an all-out global meltdown, it’s good to know Science still has its priorities straight.

If you’re wondering, the song at the beginning is the one from the (very awesome) ending of The Mist. It’s The Host of the Seraphim by Dead Can Dance.

It pains me a bit that the selection of decent small cars is so lacking on this side of the pond. It’s only poor people who drive small ones over here; everyone else drives a large, family-sized sedan, a gigantic SUV, or a truck that gets 10 miles per gallon because they sit outside the realm of EPA regulation.

With American cars sucking ass (as demonstrated by our auto industry failing and begging Congress for money), my choices for a new, small, reliable car are basically between the Mazda 3 and the Mazda 3. If the 2006+ Honda Civics weren’t so God-awfully ugly, I could easily see myself checking out an Si, but alas.

My initial want led me to the GTI, but I’m not so sure it’s economical or reliable enough to meet my needs. Plus, these little fuckers are fast, and speeding tickets aren’t something I need. Obviously, the GTI is far more cool than the Mazda 3, but the 3 ain’t too shabby in its own right.

Cost, then, is probably the deciding factor. The GTI I’d want would cost about $24,000 whereas the 3 would be a mere $16,000 or so. $8,000 is no small amount, but not only that, the next iteration of GTIs look fantastic. Since the new versions always lag a few years before making their way over here, perhaps I’ll wait until then to splurge on a 3,000-lb. go-kart.

No, seriously. Not even 48 hours after posting, me and my totally awesome in-game alias of S P A M F E S T found ourselves perma-banned from a CoD4 server I’d been playing on fairly solidly for a couple weeks.

Of course, the reasoning behind this ban was slightly different than I’d imagined. There I was, going something like 80 and 25 on some Winter Crash TDM and suddenly I’m greeted with that lovely black screen saying, “Congratulations! You’ve been perma-banned!” The brief explanation of the ban said nothing of being suspecting of cheating but — get this — that the spaces in my name were illegal. Following that was a note saying I should go to the clan website and see an admin.

My reaction? Simply this: “Wat.”

Like a good little sheep I found my way to the clan website. Fittingly, it was quite slow-loading and every action had about 30 seconds of annoyed wait tacked on. I took to the forum and posted a thread entitled HI. YOU JUST BANNED ME FOR NO REASON. to get people’s attention on this matter of serious business. I then set about putting forth evidence proving this to be true.

I mentioned that PunkBuster already disallows all extended ASCII characters in your alias (ø, for instance), so the ban was completely pointless. Spaces, then, are perfectly legit in CoD4 because they’re clearly regular ASCII characters. The issue here was one of a misunderstanding about the regular vs. extended character sets.

Naturally, I’d assumed the people with control of the server were knowledgeable in these things already, but I was mistaken. The first reply I got said that their server was specifically configured to disallow all ASCII characters and that my ban came from my circumvention of such settings. If this were somehow true then every single motherfucker who had ever played on their server should have been banned for even having a name.

I tried to reason with them, stating that ASCII isn’t all bad. There are regular characters and extended ones. You type on your keyboard and you get regular ASCII characters. My name, no matter how many spaces, was perfectly legit. No circumvention required. PunkBuster proved this by never kicking me; my ban was done manually at the behest of some random guy with the power to do so. Alternatively, you can fiddle around with Alt codes and get extended ASCII characters and invoke PunkBuster’s wrath, but I hadn’t done so.

Even facing this evidence they remained steadfast and stated that they’re very strict on their servers — they allowed what they allowed and that’s it. Either I could change my name by removing the “illegal” spaces or the ban would remain in place.

Facing the prospect of looking for yet another decent normal-mode server with a lack of overcrowding, no mods, and a heavy clan/admin presence to limit the asshattery, I decided it was in my best interest to go spaceless. Of course, my name looks much less cool now, but such is life, I guess.

Even other members of the clan agree that my name just isn’t the same without the spaces. It’s disappointing, to be honest.

That’s cool, I guess, because it’s apparently the first ever to manage this, but it should come as no surprise how they pulled it off — the PC uses nothing but the best of the latest retail hardware. The cost?

Over $8,000. No, seriously. Might as well get yourself a Real Doll if you think buying a computer like that is a worthwhile investment.

But NVIDIA, not to be outdone, is now offering what they call a personal supercomputer for a mere $10,000. With 960 parallel-processing CPU cores, they claim it’s up to 250x faster than a normal PC. Of course, given that no software has native support for that kind of bollocks, presumably you’d need to rewrite Crysis and its engine from scratch.

But I suppose getting more than 60 FPS in a crappy game is worth it to tell Falcon Northwest to shove it.