Don’t Let Violence Into Your Home

With the trend toward extreme violence in videogames, parents need to be informed about their children’s gaming activities. Although most videogames carry ratings, few stores are willing to lose a sale when a child is attempting to purchase a game rated “M” for mature players. So it is up to parents to ensure that such games don’t make it into the home.

Family Media Guide (www.familymediaguide.com) has prepared a list of the Top 10 most violent videogames released so far this year based upon information supplied by PSVratings. Utilizing a proprietary audit process, the PSVratings trained videogame analysts capture and document instances of profanity, sex, violence and substance abuse using a database-driven technology employing approximately 4,000 rules and algorithms governing millions of potential rule combinations. This data is then analyzed to generate an objective rating, superior to the existing ESRB (Electronic Software Ratings Board) industry association-based review approach, which assigns ratings based upon the subjective opinions of three individuals who may not even play the game.

Following are 2005’s Top 10 ultraviolent videogames (in no particular order):

• Resident Evil 4 — Player is a Special Forces agent sent to recover the president’s kidnapped daughter. During the first minutes of play, it’s possible to find the corpse of a woman pinned up on a wall by a pitchfork through her face.

• Grand Theft Auto — San Andreas: Player is a young man working with gangs to gain respect. His mission includes murder, theft and destruction on every imaginable level.

• Narc — Player can choose between two narcotics agents attempting to take a dangerous drug off the streets and shut down the KRAK cartel while being subject to temptations including drugs and money. To enhance his powers, the player takes drugs, one of which provides the ability to kick enemies’ heads off.

• Killer 7 — Player takes control of seven assassins who must combine skills to defeat a band of suicidal, monstrous terrorists. Player collects the blood of fallen victims to heal himself and must slit his own wrists to spray blood to find hidden passages.

• The Warriors — Based on a 1970’s action flick that set new standards for “artistic violence,” a street gang battles its way across NYC in an attempt to reach its home turf. Player issues commands to his gang, including “mayhem,” which causes the gang to smash everything in sight.

• 50 Cent: Bulletproof — Game is loosely based on the gangster lifestyle of rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. Player engages in gangster shootouts and loots the bodies of victims to buy new 50 Cent recordings and music videos.

• Crime Life: Gang Wars — Player is the leader of a ruthless street gang, spending time fighting, recruiting new gangsters, looting and, of course, more fighting. Player can roam the streets and fight or kill anyone in sight for no apparent reason.

• Condemned: Criminal Origins — Player is an FBI serial killer hunter in one of the first titles for the Xbox 360. Game emphasizes the use of melee weapons over firearms, allowing players to use virtually any part of their environment as a weapon. The next generation graphics provide a new level of detail to various injuries, especially “finishing moves.”

• True Crime: New York City — Player is a NYC cop looking for information regarding the mysterious death of a friend. Player can plant evidence on civilians and shake them down to earn extra money.

Firms Turning to AMD64 Dual-Core Technology

At the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) International Exposition & 75th Annual Meeting, AMD announced that energy companies are increasingly turning to the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor to help improve efficiencies and reduce risk and costs during exploration and production (E&P). Solutions based on the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor increase compute cycles, helping these companies improve efficiencies and reduce risks in finding and producing hydrocarbons.

As a leading provider of integrated geophysical information and services to the petroleum industry worldwide, Veritas DGC Inc. has helped transform how the energy industry views seismic data. Veritas uses AMD64 technology and their own proprietary algorithms to process and analyze vast volumes of seismic data in their state-of-the-art Global Processing Facility, which is powered by the AMD Opteron processor with Direct Connect Architecture. AMD64 technology allows Veritas to more effectively manage the extreme computing demands of today’s most advanced geophysical processing technologies and techniques.

“With thousands of AMD Opteron processors crunching data in our Global Processing Center, we are able to dramatically increase computing performance,” said Colin Murdoch, senior vice president, Technology, Veritas DGC Inc. “This translates into being able to apply higher fidelity imaging techniques with significantly increased throughput and reduced turnaround time. Ultimately, this improves the detail and quality of subsurface information in the Veritas seismic data and enables our customers to maximize their recovery of oil and natural gas.”

HP Server Growth Outpaces All Others

HP’s server revenue growth outpaced that of all other major server vendors worldwide, including IBM, Sun and Dell, according to third quarter 2005 figures released by IDC. HP was No. 1 in total worldwide revenue for the three major operating systems of Windows, Linux and UNIX individually as well as combined — together, these three operating systems comprise more than 95 percent of all servers shipped worldwide and 80 percent of all server revenue earned.

Additionally, HP had strong year-over-year revenue growth for x86 servers, up 22.7 percent, x86 blade servers, up 64.9 percent and Intel Itanium 2 (EPIC)-based servers, up 74.6 percent. The HP ProLiant server family shipped 24 times as many servers as Sun in this space. In the rapidly growing AMD Opteron processor-based server segment, HP outpaced year-over-year unit and revenue market growth rates by well over a factor of two.