A note from the editor: The content trapped behind the jump is potentially NSFW and does not represent the views of Icrontic, its editors, its owners, or even the author. People just like to read ridiculous talking points get run through the mud. Someone has to deliver the goods.

In the spirit of Halloween I had intended to wear the guise of a slutty sphenisciforme cowgirl. But I was too lazy and too cheap to be assed, so I figured I would spend my time being amused at the proletariat meandering about the office in their $29.95 Halloween USA duds. Go pro or go home, mirite?

While amusement belies the spite required of this article, I found enough refuse to be sufficiently irritated for you lot. Today’s topic includes NVIDIA’s butthurt PR team, Australia’s obsession with being a dick to the internet, and big IP continuing with its miserably inaccurate petty thuggery.

If you can’t win, libel

I roll deep (Dep?) with this one. DEEP.

It’s no secret that NVIDIA has been losing precious traction to ATi in the ever-escalating GPU war. Kicking off NVIDIA’s current plight was a $300 million rash of crappy chips that squandered consumer confidence with early attempts at a coverup (nice goin’, wankers). Leaning straight into another financial punch, the success of ATI’s 4000-series GPUs forced NVIDIA to slash their ridicuterrible GPU pricess well ahead of schedule. Subsequently, sporting two sweet black eyes, a desperate NVIDIA forfeited their authority to dictate the terms of SLI implementations and let SLI sleep around with Intel’s X58. So, what is a beleaguered NVIDIA to do? Cry like a dork slapped in the face with a tennis racket, apparently.

The plaintive whining all starts with a little technology known as the z-buffer. Video cards use this technology called z-buffering to determine which objects occlude others when looking out into the distance in 3D space.

This moderately resource-intensive process is conducted by evaluating every frame of a 3D scene on a two-dimensional plane. Each object that could be rendered to display in the scene is assigned a z-index, or a number that indicates how close to the origin of the user’s POV that object is. If two objects in the scene occupy the same pixels on this two-dimensional plane, the object with the higher z-value is displayed, and performance is gained when the object that wasn’t displayed is not rendered in a process known as z-culling.

There are many ways to perform z-buffering, and the method determines how meticulously the scene is evaluated when discerning which objects should and should not appear.

Consequently, z-buffering is why the legs of that asshole City 17 walker can’t be seen behind the buildings in which it’s doing the electric boogaloo. The buildings have a higher z-index and, being closer to you the player, are rendered instead.

With ATI’s recent Catalyst 8.10 hotfix, users noticed that scads of rocks that are to appear on the shores of riverbanks had mysteriously disappeared. Woops. NVIDIA lept right to the conclusion that the “Far Cry 2 performance enhancements” promised by the hotfix was secret ATI language for “we’re gonna pick up a few frames per second by $#@&ing with the z-buffer.”

Of course, if NVIDIA had the journalistic credibility of other sites (guess not, as they’re a GPU firm), they would have called ATI driver lead Terry Makedon to see what was goin’ down in ATI town. Come to find out, it was nothing more than an engineer’s cockup in the code for the Far Cry 2 performance hotfix. Woops again.

Twelve hours after the “cheating” had been brought to light, the matter was sorted out and bundled with a scheduled hotfix to address STALKER: Clear Sky’s newly-minted DX10.1 support. NVIDIA, still butthurt that ATI is pissing in their Profit Flakes, claimed that the haste of the release was damning evidence.

Just in case you missed it: the hotfix for STALKER was pre-scheduled. Would it have been better if ATI sat on the fix for a later point release of their drivers?

Dear NVIDIA,

Not all press is good press. PC enthusiasts have famously efficient bull&^#@ detectors and a low threshold for FUD. Do yourselves a favor and leash your irritating little PR hounds.

Love,

Space Penguin

Heh, you said “penal”

The land of Oz just announced that it would be instituting a nationalized filter for content on the internet. Piddling concerns about privacy, scope, cost and efficacy aside, the first of two filters scrubs pornographic material from the tubes of Australia and the second — unavoidably — blocks infringing or pirated content.

While Australian citizens are free to get their fap on by opting out of the pr0n filter, pirated content is set to be a permanent no-no. All jokes about an Imperial penal colony aside, the frightening implications of a government deciding what constitutes illegality and pornography speaks for itself.

While nobody (except for anakata, TiAMO and brokep) is sanely going to argue in favor of piracy, governments around the world have a horrid inability to wisely use an expanded scope of power. Knowing that some slice of the free world is filtered by frumpy old white men makes me want to off myself.

Already in testing, Australia has pandered to social neanderthals by posing the filters as a protection for the angelic minds of children. The disingenuousness of this misrepresentation hardly needs illustration.

With your awesome beaches and hot accents, you used to be pretty sweet, Australia. I’m sorry your government wants to run around and be an asshole to you on the internet. I hope you win some boat races to make up for it, or something.

Anti-piracy reaffirms incompetence

As the UK ramps up its efforts to reach feature-parity with the United States’ ill-executed witch hunt for software pirates, UK game developers have hired anti-piracy firm Logistep to monitor IP addresses involved in illegal file sharing.

Just like the United States, the UK firms have taken to unleashing an avalanche of exploratory proceedings intended to reveal the names behind the numbers. In spite of the fact that I could incriminate my neighbor with a million dollars of downloaded evidence over the next thirty days (thanks, wireless!), big IP remains convinced that this method is super accurate.

Further proving this method’s efficacy is Atari’s recent accusation of piracy leveled against Scotland residents Gill and Ken Murdoch. You can imagine the elder couple, having never played a video game, was miffed to receive a bill demanding 500 quid for illegally downloading some shite game called Race 07.

WOOPS AGAIN.

The firm representing Atari has subsequently dropped the case but has refused to release details backing the decision. It’s hard for a penguin to figure abstractly, but I imagine it’s because the announcement would tacitly admit the exploratory method’s negligent inaccuracy.

Moral of the day

There’s nothing more stupid and terrible than righteously indignant old white guys. I mean, really… They’re complete dicks.