Actually, we're more of a Type 0.7 than a Type 1. Type 1 civilizations are able to harness the entire energy of their planet. Type 2, the entire energy of their star. Type 3, the entire energy of their galaxy.
There's a nice wiki article on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
Okay, cue car analogy:
Your bittorrent program is trying to construct the car of your choosing. [Let's say a Prius.] It's going to grab all the different parts from all the Prius owners out there, but not just that! If all the Pinto owners happen to have the same hubcaps as your Prius, then your bittorrent program will use those hubcaps on your Prius. They're the same parts, just from a different car.
That's how this is going to work. The code itself is exactly the same, the only difference is in where it comes from. Which means that if Ubuntu shares 2 lines of the exact same code as a Nickelback song, you can download those select lines of code from someone sharing Ubuntu over P2P. It's the same parts, they just come from different places.
The plans cover five main areas
1. geology
2. mechanical engineering
3. metallurgical engineering
4. aeronautical engineering.
5. ???
6. Profit! I see their cunning plan!
I'm not sure how feasible it would really be, but I remember ideas of solar collectors in space that would beam their energy back down to the Earth by microwaves.
Err... No one's actually made a game yet that pits a controller vs a keyboard/mouse. [Shadowrun will be out soon, though.] So how exactly do you know a keyboard/mouse will always win over a controller? That doesn't sound so much like logical reasoning to me as it does faith and an unwillingness to accept change.
You don't use the same password for both. To log onto xboxlive you have to enter a 4 digit code based off the buttons on your controller. Your live ID password is entered using a keyboard when you log into microsoft stuff online - hotmail, bungie.net, xbox.com, etc.
Maybe instead of printing a monthly edition of the journal, publishers could switch to an annual edition containing all the significant content of that year, while they distribute an online monthly version at virtually no cost.
Because most people, honestly, do not know that they're not very good at most everything. People don't have the critical thinking skills to separate quality work (say, reporting/editorial work) from amateurishness, and so they fancy themselves just as able to do anything that an experienced professional can do, if the subject matter is interesting to them. This is bolstered, these days, by 'reality' TV shows that make celebrities out of addled-brained twits, and by grade school warm-and-fuzziness that goes to great lengths to proclaim everyone a star at everything, regardless of actual merit, capacity, charm, motivation, DNA, or hard work.
Collaborative "reporting" attracts only those people that have some vested interest or an axe to grind. That vested interest distorts most people's sense of whether their own opinion is valid or objective, and makes their contributions highly suspect (in terms of actual journalism). Someone truly objective is practicing a true skill/profession, and if they're any good at it, they're usually going to be looking for an actual job at it. And what makes someone who IS a professional journalist skip on over to a collaborative arena, for no pay, to work on some other material? Personal vested interest in that topic area, and the resulting lack of objectivity on that particular topic.
So, you've got either serious, capable people who are good journalists, and capable communicators/researchers who are off on a project that isn't part of their career, per se... or, you've got what amounts to activists and fan boys who are solely motivated by the outcome of the reporting, usually as characterized by a glorious dollup of spin... or, you've got people who think they've got more to offer on this front than they really do, and get social validation from having their hands in it - and everyone's too politically correct to tell them that they're really not very good at it, actually. And since operations like Wired are really just looking to build more brand loyalty and eyeballs on their site, of course they're going to position this get-other-people-to-do-the-work effort as being a vital, fresh, hip, we're-really-all-journalists shrine to Web 2.0. Balls, I say. You're kidding right? You honestly think the only good journalists are the ones that get paid? That your average joe on the street is so corrupt, and so stupid, that he cannot tell a story straight?
Maybe you got things mixed up, because I could swear current media corporations do the very thing you say only joeblow reporters would be capable of. Agenda? Check. Spinning the facts? Check. Too politically correct? Check.
Personally, I'm not too worried. Flash drives are gaining speed, and the Magnetic Drive manufacturers are going to be finding themselves out of customers if they can't offer reliable storage at cheap prices.
Stop blaming Microsoft for corporations wanting to keep their drivers secret so that their competitors don't use them to improve their OWN drivers. Oh shit! I guess that means they'd have to make better and better drivers to stay ahead of the competition!
3. The game world is the real world
There should almost never be just one way from one place to another; the player should never feel constrained in their options.
Example: Halo 2. The open city environments allows Master Chief different ways to complete his objectives, adding replay value to the game by rewarding the player for doing nothing more than exploring their environment.
Highly linear game play quickly becomes repetitive and predictable; using false paths to provide the illusion of free choice only serves to make players angry.
Personally, I feel he got this one completely wrong. Halo's levels were open and allowed you to reach and complete your objective in different ways. Halo 2 doesn't even come close; you get railroaded through a confined passage of enemies everywhere you go. Sure, the levels themselves were MASSIVE, but invisible barriers and instant kill zones stopped you from exploring anything.
The only exception was Metropolis [The city level] wherein you could get on top of buildings with clever jumping. But once you get up there, it was easy to see that the developers hadn't really fleshed it out: Bad textures, invisible walls, an incomplete skymap, no weapons to use, and being able to just run past every enemy encounter without having to fight. [None of them could get on the roofs.]
Contrast this with Halo. The only level with an arbitrary invisible barrier was the island. [Silent Cartographer] and even then, you could drive the warthog out a kilometer or so into the water before you hit it. [Halo 2 let you go about ten feet.] That whole island is like the epitome of open design. Other levels in Halo did restrict your movements [For instance, Truth and Reconciliation] but they did it in a way that made sense. In Truth and Reconciliation, you're stuck on a narrow windy path on the side of a gigantic cliff. In Assault on the Control Room you are at the bottom of a gigantic canyon. Not just that, but the actual playable area is huuuuge. Assault on the Control Room is easily several kilometers long, and almost always 100+ meters across in every location.
In Halo 2, the levels are equally massive, but you can't actually go anywhere. Yeah, those gigantic pillars in the Covenant holy city might be actual geometry, but you can't reach them because they're behind invisible barriers and instant death zones. The only path you can take is usually confined to being about 10 meters across. Unless they wanted you in a vehicle. Then it was more like 50 meters.
This is actually one of the largest complaints from fans of the original game, and I'm really surprised that the author would choose Halo 2 as his example of open gameplay. Halo 2 wasn't open, it was confined spaces with very shooty, spray n' pray weapons. Almost like the game was designed by committee to 'FPS standards', that included stupid things like boss battles and so on.
Wrong. Those 1,054 nuclear tests you mention were only tests. They happened in controlled environment, several months/years apart from each other You completely missed the point. Let's suppose Iran nukes a few cities. Given that the US has already conducted a thousand nuclear tests, it's pretty safe to say that the radiation from Iran's nuclear arsenal won't be enough to really hurt anyone. They just don't have enough nukes [if they even have any!] to do significant harm to the world.
Maybe it wouldn't kill all humans immediately, but in some 10 years disease (cancer, infertility), famine (wasted crops), poverty (economic chaos) would have screwed survivor's life badly. You sure don't put much faith in the human race, or nature. Even if a nuclear war killed 90% of the world's population, there would still be 650 million people alive. Then assume the cancer, famine and poverty kills a further 90% [Which it probably wouldn't.] of the population... what we're left with is 65 million people. That is far from the extinction of the human race.
And so will everyone else on the planet. It would be a disaster for the human race. I think it's scary you could even say such a thing as if Iran dropped a nuke on Israel, it would be a matter that simply concerned Israel and Iran. Who ever drops the next nuke bomb, it signals the end of the human race. The U.S. alone has conducted 1,054 nuclear tests according to this wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_tests
We're not grotesque super-mutants, [Yet.;P] so I'd find it difficult to believe that any kind of nuclear attack performed by Iran would actually cause some kind of global catastrophe, as you propose. Certainly, Iran has nowhere near enough nuclear weapons and the necessary technologies to kill even one percent of Earth's population. Even a massive full scale nuclear war between superpowers would have a hard time wiping all of us humans off the planet.
Am I worried that Iran might nuke someone? No. That'd be suicide for them. What would they have to gain? A giant radioactive hole where their country used to be? What I am, is overjoyed to see yet another nation joining the space club. The more the merrier in my eyes, things have kinda stalled since those lunar landings.
I have a nagging suspicion this is the North Korea nuke test all over again. There are a lot of knowledgeable people who think that was a fake (yielded under 1 megaton). And this fits the pattern: desperate, weird country claims major technological achievement but refuses to provide visual evidence. I think you should ask these 'knowledgeable' people some more questions...
By Jeff Bliss
Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Radioactivity found in air samples has verified North Korea's claims that it conducted an underground nuclear test on Oct. 9, according to the top U.S. intelligence agency.
``Analysis of air samples collected Oct. 11, 2006, detected radioactive debris which confirms North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion,'' said a statement from the office of Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.
U.S. intelligence officials estimate that the explosion was less than a kiloton, according to the statement.
The detonation took place near P'unggye, in the northeast of the country, according to the agency.
While the U.S. had notified South Korea officials on Oct. 14 that it had detected evidence of radioactivity, the conclusions were preliminary. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&si d=aO7kW.RjqqaE&refer=japan
Doesn't sound like North Korea was making everything up.
If the missile can carry a scientific payload into space, it can carry explosives; the warhead just replaces the normal payload.
Personally, I find this story to be good news. We can't very well hold back every nation on the Earth for fear that they'll use their new found power to attack us. If Iran chooses to use a nuclear weapon on another country, they'll reap the consequences. But telling a country they can't start a space program because they might use it for ill deeds is far from fair.
Imagine for a second that in this Role Playing Game, you define your character through your choices and consequences. The character grows not by getting +2 strength at fifth level, or by attaining +3 Vorpal Telekinesis of the Ethers at seventh, but by making choices that effect him and other characters in the world.
The focus is taken away from making some kind of uber character that can defeat bosses, to a character who does what he does because of the choices he has made. This is, what I feel, almost every RPG on the PC or Console has completely missed.
At the gaming table, when you're surrounded by friends, it's easy to tell a story. The DM can come up with quick rational, and random things to the choices a player has made. Player A is trying to get it on with the barmaid? "Okay, you succeed, the barmaid is all yours. You two get it on. Now please make a fortitude save against disease."
This is where cRPG's tend to fail - The vast majority don't convey any sort of story or consequence for your actions, they just serve up monsters for you to kill, so you can level up and kill more different monsters. Their concept of "Choices and Consequences" can pretty much be summed up as "Do this quest or do not do this quest - the choice is yours!"
Generally the cRPG market looks pretty bleak on this. There's a ray of hope with the indies though: Age of Decadence by Iron Tower Studio, http://www.irontowerstudio.com/ sounds like it might be what I, and others, have been wishing for.
Maybe we can get some more usefulness out of the spacecraft still. Crash it into something, the moon, an asteroid, the sun? I'm not really sure if the satellite has enough fuel to do any of those things, but it's worth a try. Better, I think, than returning an empty capsule to Earth.
I remember when Bungie first announced their matchmaking system. A lot of people got in a hissy fit over what they thought was a stupid idea. Fast forward to today, and you couldn't possibly convince a Halo 2 player to go back to the PC gamer's lobby system.
The matchmaking system in Halo 2 might not be entirely appropriate for use on the PC - but there should be almost no excuse for why it isn't used on a console game. It's almost as mandatory as an FPS having guns.
...the single most useful step Bungie can take to make multiplayer more fun, more fair, and less frustrating would be to simply host the matches on Xbox Live rather than the users themselves hosting the matches. This would eliminate a lot of the cheating that goes on, like standby-ing, lagging people out of matches, as well as balancing the competition--probably anyone who plays a significant amount in matchmaking in Halo 2 knows about the edge that goes to whoever is serving the match on their system. Just having MS handle the match serving would make a tremendous difference. There's a big problem with that. There are too many Halo 2 players. From November 9th 2004 to October 17th 2005 there were 324,362,454 Halo 2 games played. If I did my math right that's 396 days, with around 819,097 games per day. http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=hal o2numbers&p=5077337
I don't know for sure how much bandwidth a game of Halo 2 uses, nor how much that bandwidth and the servers would cost. But I hazard a guess that it would be very expensive.
...than the summary. It seems to imply the Romans headed east of their own free will until they met the Chinese. Here's the full story for anyone interested:
THE LOST LEGION
The battle of Carrhae ended 53 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, in the last day of
the month of may, with a shameful disaster for the Roman army. Seven legions
having the strength of 45,000 soldiers were humiliated and routed by 10,000 Parthian
archers.
Carrhae, an ancient biblical city now known as Harran, is located on Turkey's oriental
border.
The commanding officer of this unfortunate expedition was Marcus Licinius Crassus,
a 62 years old tribune who had organized that campaign eager to gain glory and
wealth, even though he was already one of the most rich and powerful men in Rome.
Perhaps he did it just because he envied the military successes of Pompeius Magnus
and Caesar, and foolishly thought that he may equal them, even though Pompeius
Magnus and Caesar were war professionals while Crassus was a mere amateur. His
only triumph had been the bloody defeat of Spartacus, but achieved with Pompeius'
help: in fact he had too little experience and genius to embark on a large-scale
operation abroad.
The Republican government loathed to let him depart with such a sizeable army as
there was no real emergency in the east, but Crassus eventually enlisted the support of
Pompeius Magnus and Caesar, who did not fail to see the opportunity to free
themselves of a powerful competitor whilst waiting to settle the score with each other.
During the hot public debate in the Senate a tribunus plebis named Ateius attempted
to stop him. Plutarcus writes that, when he realised that his efforts were in vain and
that he would not receive enough supporting votes, he lit a brazier and, while
throwing grains of incense into the flames, started to curse Crassus and evoke the
infernal gods. Judging from the name and the behaviour of this man, we can guess
that he was of Etruscan descent.
Some metropolitan legions grouped in Rome and marched through Campania and
then met at Brindisi with the others coming up from Calabria and then left in spite of
the stormy sea. Not all the ships reached the other shore.
Crassus had fortune, the blind goddess, on his side during his youth: he came out
unscathed from the civil wars; then was implicated in the Catiline conspiracy but bore
no consequences; he paid the debts of a spendthrift Caesar whilst being tightfisted
himself and with his family.
But things had changed and while aging he became a blunderer, making mistakes
which were numerous and serious.
For instance, in a speech to his soldiers he proclaimed that he would destroy a bridge
"so that none of you will be able to return". Noticing their dismayed expression,
Crassus corrected himself by explaining that he was referring to the enemy, not his
own soldiers.
He ordered the distribution of lentils and salt to the troops, oblivious of the fact that
this was the meal offered at funerals.
The worst possible omen occurred when Crassus dropped on the floor the slippery
entrails of a sacrificial animal that were placed in his hands by a haruspex. (a
soothsayer) Crassus attempted to correct this mistake by crying, "Fear not, despite my
age, the hilt of my sword will not slip out of my hand".
On the day of the battle, Crassus wore a black tunic, instead of the purple one de
rigeur for Roman generals. Even though Crassus quickly returned to his tent to
change, he left his officers speechless. We can still imagine those officers crossing their fingers ("fare le corna", forefinger and little finger raised, a very efficacious
propitiatory gesture of Etruscan origin) and grasp a certain part of their body.
Moreover, Crassus refused to listen to his veterans who were in favour of marching
on the coast and avoid the desert to reach the Parthian capital. Rather, he trusted the
arab Arimanes and his six thousand horsemen, who had secretly sided with the
Parthians and abandoned the Romans few
Halo 2 is still one of the most played and most stable games. And one of the best looking for its generation. This is just marketing to try to hype up expectation for Halo 3. Halo 2 is not perfect, no game is. But to say there isn't any polish on it is just a flat out lie. Maybe you didn't read the article, but its a Bungie developer who said they didn't have time to polish the game. Pretty sure he isn't lying.
Besides which, I'm an avid Halo fan, and I can tell you straight up that the game has an overall unpolished feel. From some lame weapon sounds, to the lack of medals when you complete the game on various difficulties. I for one, am very happy that Bungie is admitting they've gotten some things wrong. Compared to other studios I've seen, Bungie aught to be commended. At least they know when their shit stinks and have the courage to come out and say it.
The new Tomahawks are $600,000 a pop. The article says each railgun projectile is going to cost $1,000 and deliver the same kind of power. Navy's around the world are going to want these things. 200 Nautical miles turns into 370.4 kilometers. You could park a warship in Vancouver's port, and then hit something in British Columbia's interior. You could do it 10 times a day, at $10,000 a day. Doing the same with Tomahawk's, it'd be 6 million dollars.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, we're more of a Type 0.7 than a Type 1. Type 1 civilizations are able to harness the entire energy of their planet. Type 2, the entire energy of their star. Type 3, the entire energy of their galaxy. There's a nice wiki article on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
Okay, cue car analogy: Your bittorrent program is trying to construct the car of your choosing. [Let's say a Prius.] It's going to grab all the different parts from all the Prius owners out there, but not just that! If all the Pinto owners happen to have the same hubcaps as your Prius, then your bittorrent program will use those hubcaps on your Prius. They're the same parts, just from a different car.
That's how this is going to work. The code itself is exactly the same, the only difference is in where it comes from. Which means that if Ubuntu shares 2 lines of the exact same code as a Nickelback song, you can download those select lines of code from someone sharing Ubuntu over P2P. It's the same parts, they just come from different places.
1. geology
2. mechanical engineering
3. metallurgical engineering
4. aeronautical engineering.
5. ???
6. Profit! I see their cunning plan!
Actually, in Halo this is called Territories. King of the hill involves one location. Sometimes it moves around.
I'm not sure how feasible it would really be, but I remember ideas of solar collectors in space that would beam their energy back down to the Earth by microwaves.
Err... No one's actually made a game yet that pits a controller vs a keyboard/mouse. [Shadowrun will be out soon, though.] So how exactly do you know a keyboard/mouse will always win over a controller? That doesn't sound so much like logical reasoning to me as it does faith and an unwillingness to accept change.
Oh, I'm sorry, I guess you didn't hear. Captain Copyright passed away last month.
You don't use the same password for both. To log onto xboxlive you have to enter a 4 digit code based off the buttons on your controller. Your live ID password is entered using a keyboard when you log into microsoft stuff online - hotmail, bungie.net, xbox.com, etc.
A different way of doing things?
Maybe instead of printing a monthly edition of the journal, publishers could switch to an annual edition containing all the significant content of that year, while they distribute an online monthly version at virtually no cost.
Collaborative "reporting" attracts only those people that have some vested interest or an axe to grind. That vested interest distorts most people's sense of whether their own opinion is valid or objective, and makes their contributions highly suspect (in terms of actual journalism). Someone truly objective is practicing a true skill/profession, and if they're any good at it, they're usually going to be looking for an actual job at it. And what makes someone who IS a professional journalist skip on over to a collaborative arena, for no pay, to work on some other material? Personal vested interest in that topic area, and the resulting lack of objectivity on that particular topic.
So, you've got either serious, capable people who are good journalists, and capable communicators/researchers who are off on a project that isn't part of their career, per se... or, you've got what amounts to activists and fan boys who are solely motivated by the outcome of the reporting, usually as characterized by a glorious dollup of spin... or, you've got people who think they've got more to offer on this front than they really do, and get social validation from having their hands in it - and everyone's too politically correct to tell them that they're really not very good at it, actually. And since operations like Wired are really just looking to build more brand loyalty and eyeballs on their site, of course they're going to position this get-other-people-to-do-the-work effort as being a vital, fresh, hip, we're-really-all-journalists shrine to Web 2.0. Balls, I say. You're kidding right? You honestly think the only good journalists are the ones that get paid? That your average joe on the street is so corrupt, and so stupid, that he cannot tell a story straight?
Maybe you got things mixed up, because I could swear current media corporations do the very thing you say only joeblow reporters would be capable of. Agenda? Check. Spinning the facts? Check. Too politically correct? Check.
Personally, I'm not too worried. Flash drives are gaining speed, and the Magnetic Drive manufacturers are going to be finding themselves out of customers if they can't offer reliable storage at cheap prices.
Personally, I feel he got this one completely wrong. Halo's levels were open and allowed you to reach and complete your objective in different ways. Halo 2 doesn't even come close; you get railroaded through a confined passage of enemies everywhere you go. Sure, the levels themselves were MASSIVE, but invisible barriers and instant kill zones stopped you from exploring anything.
The only exception was Metropolis [The city level] wherein you could get on top of buildings with clever jumping. But once you get up there, it was easy to see that the developers hadn't really fleshed it out: Bad textures, invisible walls, an incomplete skymap, no weapons to use, and being able to just run past every enemy encounter without having to fight. [None of them could get on the roofs.]
Contrast this with Halo. The only level with an arbitrary invisible barrier was the island. [Silent Cartographer] and even then, you could drive the warthog out a kilometer or so into the water before you hit it. [Halo 2 let you go about ten feet.] That whole island is like the epitome of open design. Other levels in Halo did restrict your movements [For instance, Truth and Reconciliation] but they did it in a way that made sense. In Truth and Reconciliation, you're stuck on a narrow windy path on the side of a gigantic cliff. In Assault on the Control Room you are at the bottom of a gigantic canyon. Not just that, but the actual playable area is huuuuge. Assault on the Control Room is easily several kilometers long, and almost always 100+ meters across in every location.
In Halo 2, the levels are equally massive, but you can't actually go anywhere. Yeah, those gigantic pillars in the Covenant holy city might be actual geometry, but you can't reach them because they're behind invisible barriers and instant death zones. The only path you can take is usually confined to being about 10 meters across. Unless they wanted you in a vehicle. Then it was more like 50 meters.
This is actually one of the largest complaints from fans of the original game, and I'm really surprised that the author would choose Halo 2 as his example of open gameplay. Halo 2 wasn't open, it was confined spaces with very shooty, spray n' pray weapons. Almost like the game was designed by committee to 'FPS standards', that included stupid things like boss battles and so on.
We're not grotesque super-mutants, [Yet.
Am I worried that Iran might nuke someone? No. That'd be suicide for them. What would they have to gain? A giant radioactive hole where their country used to be? What I am, is overjoyed to see yet another nation joining the space club. The more the merrier in my eyes, things have kinda stalled since those lunar landings.
Doesn't sound like North Korea was making everything up.
If the missile can carry a scientific payload into space, it can carry explosives; the warhead just replaces the normal payload.
Personally, I find this story to be good news. We can't very well hold back every nation on the Earth for fear that they'll use their new found power to attack us. If Iran chooses to use a nuclear weapon on another country, they'll reap the consequences. But telling a country they can't start a space program because they might use it for ill deeds is far from fair.
Get rid of leveling altogether.
Imagine for a second that in this Role Playing Game, you define your character through your choices and consequences. The character grows not by getting +2 strength at fifth level, or by attaining +3 Vorpal Telekinesis of the Ethers at seventh, but by making choices that effect him and other characters in the world.
The focus is taken away from making some kind of uber character that can defeat bosses, to a character who does what he does because of the choices he has made. This is, what I feel, almost every RPG on the PC or Console has completely missed.
At the gaming table, when you're surrounded by friends, it's easy to tell a story. The DM can come up with quick rational, and random things to the choices a player has made. Player A is trying to get it on with the barmaid? "Okay, you succeed, the barmaid is all yours. You two get it on. Now please make a fortitude save against disease."
This is where cRPG's tend to fail - The vast majority don't convey any sort of story or consequence for your actions, they just serve up monsters for you to kill, so you can level up and kill more different monsters. Their concept of "Choices and Consequences" can pretty much be summed up as "Do this quest or do not do this quest - the choice is yours!"
Generally the cRPG market looks pretty bleak on this. There's a ray of hope with the indies though: Age of Decadence by Iron Tower Studio, http://www.irontowerstudio.com/ sounds like it might be what I, and others, have been wishing for.
Maybe we can get some more usefulness out of the spacecraft still. Crash it into something, the moon, an asteroid, the sun? I'm not really sure if the satellite has enough fuel to do any of those things, but it's worth a try. Better, I think, than returning an empty capsule to Earth.
I remember when Bungie first announced their matchmaking system. A lot of people got in a hissy fit over what they thought was a stupid idea. Fast forward to today, and you couldn't possibly convince a Halo 2 player to go back to the PC gamer's lobby system.
The matchmaking system in Halo 2 might not be entirely appropriate for use on the PC - but there should be almost no excuse for why it isn't used on a console game. It's almost as mandatory as an FPS having guns.
...the single most useful step Bungie can take to make multiplayer more fun, more fair, and less frustrating would be to simply host the matches on Xbox Live rather than the users themselves hosting the matches. This would eliminate a lot of the cheating that goes on, like standby-ing, lagging people out of matches, as well as balancing the competition--probably anyone who plays a significant amount in matchmaking in Halo 2 knows about the edge that goes to whoever is serving the match on their system. Just having MS handle the match serving would make a tremendous difference. There's a big problem with that. There are too many Halo 2 players. From November 9th 2004 to October 17th 2005 there were 324,362,454 Halo 2 games played. If I did my math right that's 396 days, with around 819,097 games per day. http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=haI don't know for sure how much bandwidth a game of Halo 2 uses, nor how much that bandwidth and the servers would cost. But I hazard a guess that it would be very expensive.
THE LOST LEGION
The battle of Carrhae ended 53 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, in the last day of the month of may, with a shameful disaster for the Roman army. Seven legions having the strength of 45,000 soldiers were humiliated and routed by 10,000 Parthian archers. Carrhae, an ancient biblical city now known as Harran, is located on Turkey's oriental border. The commanding officer of this unfortunate expedition was Marcus Licinius Crassus, a 62 years old tribune who had organized that campaign eager to gain glory and wealth, even though he was already one of the most rich and powerful men in Rome. Perhaps he did it just because he envied the military successes of Pompeius Magnus and Caesar, and foolishly thought that he may equal them, even though Pompeius Magnus and Caesar were war professionals while Crassus was a mere amateur. His only triumph had been the bloody defeat of Spartacus, but achieved with Pompeius' help: in fact he had too little experience and genius to embark on a large-scale operation abroad.
The Republican government loathed to let him depart with such a sizeable army as there was no real emergency in the east, but Crassus eventually enlisted the support of Pompeius Magnus and Caesar, who did not fail to see the opportunity to free themselves of a powerful competitor whilst waiting to settle the score with each other. During the hot public debate in the Senate a tribunus plebis named Ateius attempted to stop him. Plutarcus writes that, when he realised that his efforts were in vain and that he would not receive enough supporting votes, he lit a brazier and, while throwing grains of incense into the flames, started to curse Crassus and evoke the infernal gods. Judging from the name and the behaviour of this man, we can guess that he was of Etruscan descent. Some metropolitan legions grouped in Rome and marched through Campania and then met at Brindisi with the others coming up from Calabria and then left in spite of the stormy sea. Not all the ships reached the other shore. Crassus had fortune, the blind goddess, on his side during his youth: he came out unscathed from the civil wars; then was implicated in the Catiline conspiracy but bore no consequences; he paid the debts of a spendthrift Caesar whilst being tightfisted himself and with his family. But things had changed and while aging he became a blunderer, making mistakes which were numerous and serious. For instance, in a speech to his soldiers he proclaimed that he would destroy a bridge "so that none of you will be able to return". Noticing their dismayed expression, Crassus corrected himself by explaining that he was referring to the enemy, not his own soldiers. He ordered the distribution of lentils and salt to the troops, oblivious of the fact that this was the meal offered at funerals. The worst possible omen occurred when Crassus dropped on the floor the slippery entrails of a sacrificial animal that were placed in his hands by a haruspex. (a soothsayer) Crassus attempted to correct this mistake by crying, "Fear not, despite my age, the hilt of my sword will not slip out of my hand". On the day of the battle, Crassus wore a black tunic, instead of the purple one de rigeur for Roman generals. Even though Crassus quickly returned to his tent to change, he left his officers speechless. We can still imagine those officers crossing their fingers ("fare le corna", forefinger and little finger raised, a very efficacious propitiatory gesture of Etruscan origin) and grasp a certain part of their body. Moreover, Crassus refused to listen to his veterans who were in favour of marching on the coast and avoid the desert to reach the Parthian capital. Rather, he trusted the arab Arimanes and his six thousand horsemen, who had secretly sided with the Parthians and abandoned the Romans few
Uhhh.... Halo: Combat Evolved isn't a sequel.
Besides which, I'm an avid Halo fan, and I can tell you straight up that the game has an overall unpolished feel. From some lame weapon sounds, to the lack of medals when you complete the game on various difficulties. I for one, am very happy that Bungie is admitting they've gotten some things wrong. Compared to other studios I've seen, Bungie aught to be commended. At least they know when their shit stinks and have the courage to come out and say it.
Are you kidding me? These things are a godsend for the military, it's going to save them millions.
"It was said that the new Tomahawk missile will be able to cut production cost in half to $600,000." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-109_Tomahawk
The new Tomahawks are $600,000 a pop. The article says each railgun projectile is going to cost $1,000 and deliver the same kind of power. Navy's around the world are going to want these things. 200 Nautical miles turns into 370.4 kilometers. You could park a warship in Vancouver's port, and then hit something in British Columbia's interior. You could do it 10 times a day, at $10,000 a day. Doing the same with Tomahawk's, it'd be 6 million dollars.