10 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|AUG 08 |www.maximumpc.com
QUICKSTART^
THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALLCisco Denies
Aiding
Censorship
in ChinaHardware manufacturer
Cisco has been called out
for allegedly assisting the
Chinese government in
censoring what its citizens
are able to see on the web.
An internal Cisco Power-
Point presentation that was
leaked to the Associated
Press listed the Chinese
government’s technology
goals as “to stop network-
related crimes, guarantee
the security and services
of a public network, and
combat Falun Gong evil re-
ligion and other hostiles.”
Cisco counters that
while these may, in fact,
be goals of the Chinese
government, the company
does not assist in censor-
ship in any way and the
inclusion of the slide was
simply an oversight. In his
testimony before Congress,
Cisco General Counsel
Mark Chandler went on to
explain that while Cisco
does not modify its prod-
ucts for any government,
the company cannot con-
trol how certain features
are utilized. –T ERIAA
Retrial
Jammie Thomas, the
fi rst person to take an
RIAA copyright violation
case to court rather than
settle, may have won
the right to a retrial. In
October 2007, Thomas
was found guilty of copy-
right infringement and
ordered to pay $220,
in damages for mak-
ing 24 songs available
on KaZaA, a peer-to-
peer fi le-sharing site.
However, the trial judge,
Michael Davis, has
determined that a retrial
may be in order due to
an error made during
jury instructions. In the
original trial, jurors
were told that simply
making fi les available
for download constituted
copyright infringement.
Davis has since recon-
sidered this decision and
believes a third party
must actually download
fi les for infringement to
take place. A ruling on
the issue is expected in
July. –T EXxxxxxxxxxxx
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xThomas L. McDonald has been covering games
for 17 years. He is an editor at large for Games
magazine.W
atching Grand Theft Auto IV rack up
the highest recorded sales in gaming
history was one of the most disap-
pointing things I’ve witnessed in 17-plus years
of covering this hobby. (PC gamers should get a
crack at the game this fall.) If the gaming press
is to be believed, GTA4 is simply the greatest
game ever made.
This is utter nonsense, even by the game’s
own rather warped standards. Putting aside
the flaky driving model, clipping problems, and
clichéd plot and dialogue, there is a gigantic el-
ephant in the room that the gaming press seems
hell-bent on ignoring: the issue of morality. It’s
like we’re afraid to acknowledge the rancid, mi-
sogynistic ethics of GTA4 because we might give
aid and comfort to those who want to control or
suppress the freedom of game designers to cre-
ate. Tough luck. This is simply a vile game utterly
lacking any recognizably human moral context.
As Warren Spector, the man behind Deus Ex,
recently observed, “GTA is the ultimate urban
thuggery simulation, and you can’t take a step
back from that... I am frustrated that the games
in the GTA series, some of the finest combina-
tions of pure game design and commercial
appeal, offer a fictional package that makes
them difficult to hold up as examples of what our
medium is capable of achieving.”
Exactly right. DePalma’s Scarface has a
stronger sense of right and wrong, and The
Sopranos is positively conservative by compari-
son. Like it or not, there is a difference between
what movies and games can get away with. The
Sopranos is a drama in which the viewer is a pas-
sive observer. In GTA, the character is under your
control: The choices are yours. That distinction
matters.
Go on YouTube and check out IGN’s “GTA
Sex” video, and then imagine it projected on
the screen before the Congressional Subcom-
mittee on Sticking Our Noses in Other People’s
Business. Dan and Sam Houser have given the
government the gun it’s going to use to put a bul-
let in the brainpan of the gaming industry.
Why the hell are we defending them?GAME THEORYHouser Problems
THOMAS MCDONALDXerox Saves
Trees
According to Xerox, two
out of every fi ve pages
printed in the offi ce are
for single, short-term use.
Be it notes for a meeting,
driving directions to an
appointment, or the recipe
Aunt Madge emailed you,
these temporary uses of
paper needn’t lead to the
senseless destruction of
more trees—not now that
Xerox has fi led a patent
for erasable paper. The
paper is made of a mol-
ecule that changes color
when hit with ultraviolet
light. The molecule chang-
es back to its original state
aft er 24 hours, or sooner
if exposed to heat, aft er
which it can be reused
up to 100 times. All that’s
needed now is the ultravi-
olet-light-emitting printer.
Researchers at PARC (Palo
Alto Research Center, Inc.)
are currently working on
that. -K S