In less than a week’s time, four undersea cables
that carry a large percentage of Internet traffi c
throughout much of the Middle East and India
were mysteriously damaged. Initially, it was
believed that two cables located off the Egyptian
coast were severed by an anchor, but the Egyptian
government later stated no ships were in the area
when the break occurred. While the cause of the
damage to these cables as well as a subsequent
third cable off the coast of Dubai is still undeter-
mined, unoffi cial reports blame damage done to a
nearby fourth cable on a power issue. The incidents
have had a widespread effect on Internet usage,
reducing bandwidth in some regions by as much
as 70 percent.
So far, neither the telcos nor governments of
the affected countries have voiced concerns over
foul play.Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and
Comcast—three of the nation’s
largest Internet service provid-
ers—are reportedly consider-
ing changing their broadband
service plans so that custom-
ers are billed on a consump-
tion basis, as opposed to the
current business model: con-
nection speed.
BroadbandReports.com
recently obtained a memo
leaked from Time Warner
Cable revealing the company’s
plan to test such a concept
with new customers of its
RoadRunner cable broadband
service in Beaumont, Texas.
In the memo, the ISP claims
the change will “impact only
5 percent of subscribers who
utilize over half of the total
network bandwidth.”
Time Warner’s assess-
ment indicates that the com-
pany believes only a fringe
element of its customer base
is using P2P fi le-sharing
networks. The impact will be
much broader, however, if it
cripples the nascent online
movie-rental market that
Apple, Microsoft, Netfl ix, and
other companies have just
begun to explore.Undersea
Cables Damaged
Web traffic in India and the Middle East slows
to a crawlThe End
of All You
Can Eat?
quick start THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL
10 MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC | APR 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
Thomas L. McDonald has been covering games for 17 years.
He is Editor-at-Large of Games Magazine.E
very serious PC gamer needs to pay attention
to the Independent Games Festival ( http://www.igf
.com ). Now in its tenth year, the IGF is an annual
gathering that allows small and indie developers a
chance to show their wares and discuss their craft.
Since conventions and trade shows bore me
spitless, I’ve never gone and probably never will.
But IGF does something very, very important for
the future of PC gaming. Each year, it creates a
roster of nominees for the IGF Awards. Like con-
ventions, annual awards are also low on my love
list, but the IGF nominees are something different.
This is the soil where the seeds of PC gaming
grow. It’s what we have that consoles don’t.
Anyone with a little programming ability and a lot
of passion and spare time can create a PC game
and get it on the web where millions of people
can download and play it.
This means that anyone—lots and lots of
anyones—can and do create and upload all kinds
of useless and offensive crap. I have neither
the time nor the patience to wade through that
download dunghill looking for a stray diamond,
and thanks to the IGF, I don’t have to. The festival
plucks quality games from obscurity and gives
them a forum to shine.
Two of the best—Crayon Physics Deluxe and
World of Goo—emerged from Carnegie Mellon’s
Experimental Gameplay Project, which set a
goal of creating 50 games in a single semester.
Each game was done in less than a week by one
person to prove how quickly imaginative solo pro-
grammers can create casual games. The elegant
simplicity of Crayon Physics—in which drawn
objects take on physical properties—is a thing of
beauty and a testament to the goals of EGP.
There are too many quality games among the
nominees to really do them justice in this space.
Audiosurf, Gumboy Tournament, Synaesthete, and
many others are already available as demos and
downloads, while others are still edging toward
final builds. Major mainstream releases are well
and good, but it’s the lone programmer and the
passionate amateur who often produce the quirky
and interesting work that is unique to PCs.
And just remember, the 2006 Student
Showcase winner was a little game called
Narbacular Drop. You know it better as Portal.The Sundance
of Gaming
GAME THEORY
THOMAS
MCDONALDNetscape Bites
the Dust
After years of languishing in
obscurity, the browser that started
the web revolution is laid to restTo think, parts of this region have been deprived of
YouTube!The bundling of Internet Explorer
with every copy of Windows left
Netscape neglected and vulnera-
ble to mistreatment by AOL, which
purchased the browser in 1999.