If you don't want to cause a scene in airport security this week, take that game console out of your backpack.

While heading to Chicago yesterday for the holidays, I learned this the hard way: airports consider game consoles to be laptops.

Laptops have to be removed separately from carry-on bags and scanned independently.

Me? Because I couldn't pick just one, I brought both an Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (and a laptop!) through security, and had no idea this rule existed. Fortunately, the security guys were pretty nice about it, though the lady operating the scanning machine shot a nasty look before announcing the rule to the line behind me.

Oops. Don't make the same mistake I did!

[Photo Credit: Transportation Security Administration]

We've already reported that "Grand Theft Auto IV" does not have split-screen multiplayer. I am sure we did. A while ago.

Yeah, right here, in a "GTA IV" article that I filed on April 8, I wrote:

The multiplayer modes cannot be played split-screen, so forget about playing this with buddies on a single couch.

I was told that by Rockstar representatives while they played the multiplayer game with me over a dev-kit LAN in the company's New York City office.

But people keep asking about split-screen options on the comments sections of our "GTA IV" posts.

Sorry, but the option is just not there. Players can go anywhere in "GTA IV"'s massive city while in any of the multiplayer modes. I just can't see how a single Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 could have been expected to render two different parts of Liberty City at once even in a half-screen size. That's what many game makers tell me, too, when this topic comes up.

For all horsepower of this new generation of hardware, split-screen is just something that doesn't work. Not when the alternative -- online one-system-per-TV gaming -- is so easily achievable.