As you know, I am paying for XBox Live. It’s a very bandwidth intensive service that was once working fine but now isn’t. Around the first week of August I had a ‘moderate’ NAT (Network Address Translation) which meant I could join anyone with an ‘open’ or ‘moderate’ NAT. The third week of August comes around and I start noticing I can’t join most of my friend’s games. This surprises me because I had not changed anything on my side. I go into the network settings blade and run a test and lo and behold, my NAT is now ’strict’. That means I can only join people with ‘open’ NAT which is WAY less then 33.3%.

Anyone have a way for me to force my ISP to fix what they did when they have no idea what they did?

We’ve all seen the news reports on these days since the Virginia Tech shooting and even the Colombine shooting. There are always those people that believe that videogames like Gears of War or Halo make kids violent. I’ve been playing those games and others like them for 14 years. I haven’t shot anyone. I’ve had plenty of opprotunities to do so but I never did.

Now there is a school that is screwing up a senior’s life because he made a map out of his school because it was ‘terroristical’. Link. This kid is only wanting to have fun in a place that most kids don’t have fun. It’s better that the kid gets rid of his pent up anger in a game than real life. If I have a bad day, I go home and play Gears of War.

You never know how good your day will be until after you chainsaw some kid that thinks he’s “OMG TEH L33T UBER!” Does that make me a terrorist? Label me what you want but just because a few kids can’t tell the difference between a video game and real life, doesn’t mean all kids can’t. If the kid kills someone because of a video game, it’s the parent’s fault for buying it for them, not the game makers. The publishers are trying to make a fun game and make money. In my opinion, most ‘non-violent’ games are not that fun. The only exception is Guitar Hero.

If a kid creates a mod with skills that most people don’t have, that’s a good thing. He probably will go into a field to do that. If another kid goes and plays his map and then goes to shoot someone, the media probably will NOT blame the kid that made the map, they would blame the game. If the game actually did make the kid go shoot someone, then the kid has some serious mental issues and the parents shouldn’t have bought him those games. Thats what the little black letters on a white background mean. For more information, for those that don’t already know, click here.